Ancient History Fangirl

 We’re taking a slight departure from our Gender Rebels series to tell you the story of Zeus and Ganymede. This is the story about the time Zeus kidnapped a teenage boy named Ganymede and brought him to Olympus to be his “cup bearer.” Zeus and Ganymede were not gender rebels. In fact, they set the standard for the erastes-eromenos binary of the time. This story was used to send the message that th...

Not only was abortion broadly legal in ancient Greece and Rome, but some of the methods used were surprisingly similar to today. And the Bible doesn’t mention it at all—except in one obscure passage, where it tells you how to administer one. In this episode, we’re joined by feminist Biblical scholar and author Princess O’Nika Auguste to discuss the history of abortion in ancient Greece and Rome, a...

This episode is part of our abortion rights takeover series. It was originally dropped on our Patreon. It deals with the miracle plant of ancient Greece and Rome: Silphium. The people of Cyrene printed it on their money. It was considered a delicacy throughout the Greek and Roman world, as well as a powerful medicine that could be used to cure everything from baldness to epilepsy to poisonings. An...

This episode is part of our abortion rights takeover. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled series on gender rebels on June 2. In this re-release, Kate from the Exploress podcast joined us to discuss the intimate lives of sex workers in ancient Greece and Rome--including methods of contraception and abortion. Pliny the Elder interviewed sex workers to get the lowdown on how they dealt with unwa...

What happened to people in ancient Rome who were freed from slavery? Turns out there were still invisible threads--economic pressures, imbalances of status, and debts owed to wealthy patrons--that kept many of them in bondage. On the streets of Pompeii, freedom came at a steep price--especially for women. Today, we talk to Elodie Harper--bestselling author of the Wolf Den and the House with the Go...

As most of you probably already know, abortion rights in the US are under attack. Somebody leaked a Supreme Court initial majority draft that was a full throated, loud and proud revocation of pregnant-capable people’s right to choose who gets to use our bodies. Abortion is a totally normal procedure that people have been doing for millennia--probably for as long as people could get pregnant, they'...

This week, we're taking a break from the story of Achilles to discuss the Illiad from an angle that's not as often covered: the story of the women of the House of Atreus, the family of Agamemnon. In this episode, bestselling author Jennifer Saint introduces us to Clytemnestra and Elektra--Agamemnon's wife and daughter--as well as the priestess and prophetess Cassandra, and the murderous curse that...

In this episode, we explore what happened to gender in the pressure-cooker of ancient war. To do that, we skip ahead ten years to a different beach: the war-blasted, corpse-strewn sands below the walls of Troy. As the Trojan War dragged on, the most respect went to those who were able to slaughter and pillage and plunder: gender for men devolved into “Smash and Grab” masculinity. Meanwhile, gender...

In our last episode we looked at Achilles’ early life and his relationships with the women who crossed his path. In this episode, we follow him to the beach at Aulis—where all the Greek kings and heroes, anyone who was anyone, had gathered at the start of the Trojan War. Achilles left Pyrrha behind, but his time as a dancing girl followed him to that beach. This is where the wind stalled. This is...

Achilles is so often portrayed as the most masculine of heroes, but those portrayals generally leave out that he spent a few years of his life passing as a girl. Today, we’re going to explore that time in Achilles’ life, and what it tells us about his gender. We’ll also delve into his relationships with the women in his early life: his mom, Thetis, and a girl named Deidameia.  Get ad-free episodes...

In the first part of our Gender Rebels series, we talked about queer history—queer women, Intersex people, transgender people, and eunuchs. Now, we’re going to begin another series that takes that lens to Greek mythology.   There are plenty of queer myths that break the binary as the ancient Greeks saw it—and heroes and gods who were gender rebels. Sometimes those gender rebels aren’t who you’d ex...

Last week, we told you about the Sacred Band’s first important military victories—victories that depended on the intense trust and love the Sacred Band members had for each other. Victories that showed that the Spartans weren’t so tough after all. But as Spartan control in Greece receded, opportunistic warlords and upstart city-states rose up to take advantage of a power vacuum. One of their most...

In our last episode, we told you the story of how the Spartans took over the city of Thebes and how an intrepid and very queer group of Theban rebels, led by a firebrand named Pelopidas, took it back while dressed as women. The Thebans had their city back. Now they had to figure out how to hold it against the Spartans, because the Spartans would strike back. Their solution was to form an elite 300...

The time was the 300s BC. The place was Thebes. And in this place, in this time, there was an elite military force—the best of the best special ops shock troops—made up of 150 male lovers. Their love for each other was the key to their strength. It made them better fighters. More effective. It made them strong enough to break the iron-fisted control of oppressive regimes. This is their incredible...

Last week, we focused on people who chose to undergo castration for religious reasons. But this probably wasn’t the most common experience most people had who were castrated. Enslaved people were castrated as well--often in childhood. Today, we're going to take a deep dive into their lives and circumstances. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In ancient Rome, there were a lot of eunuchs. Some were enslaved, some were free; some were members of religious cults, some were not. No study of queer history in ancient Greece and Rome would be complete without them.  Today, we’re going to take a look at the history of people who underwent castration in the Roman Empire—why they did it, when they did and didn’t have a choice, and what their liv...

Intersex people are sometimes featured in Greek mythology in a positive way—for instance, the beautiful child of Aphrodite who became an important part of her entourage. But the ancient Romans saw Intersex people as imbued with a specific kind of magic associated with frightening signs and portents—and that made it dangerous to be Intersex in the ancient world. Join us as we explore the lives of I...

We are SO excited that we have a book coming out in August 2022! Our book, Women of Myth, will be available worldwide from Simon and Schuster.  Listen in as we talk about our favorite Women of Myth from around the world with Liv Albert from Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! Our book is about epic women in mythology from around the world. We cover a diverse range of cultures, from Greek and Roman mytho...

Join us for a deep dive into queer history in ancient Greece and Rome. This week, we focus on transgender men and women. It's a common belief that being trans is somehow a "modern" invention and there were no trans people in the ancient world. But nothing could be further from the truth. From the trans women who led the worship of an influential state cult to the trans guys who lived right under t...

This mini-series-within-a-series will be a deep dive into queer history in ancient Greece and Rome--starting with queer women. Because how could we do a season about sex and sex magic without talking about the magical provenance of those who fell outside the accepted binary? Women who loved other women were gender rebels in the ancient world. They challenged the gender binary in some of the most b...

She's the Tenth Muse, Western literature's first lyric poet, and a woman who openly, unabashedly loved women and wrote about it--in an extremely patriarchal society where queer women's experiences were almost universally erased. But what has come down to us about the life and times of Sappho? Like her poetry, our picture of Sappho's life is very fragmentary. This week, we team up with Leesa Charlo...

In this episode, we talk to Jennifer Saint, bestselling author of Ariadne, to discuss myth, storytelling, the lives of women in Minoan Crete--and the process of recreating mysterious, ancient religious rites based on the clues left in mythology. Get ad-free episodes here: https://www.patreon.com/ancienthistoryfangirl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Janus is the two-faced god of the Roman pantheon. He was the god of beginnings and endings, of dual natures, of passageways and passage through time. He’s the god of thresholds and doorways and gates, and the god of change, both concrete and abstract. He’s constantly in motion; he’s the god who’s always just passing through. Janus may not be very well-known. But in his time, he was considered one...

This year, we decided that the holiday season wouldn’t be complete without a mythological foray into one of the most famous characters of the season: The Krampus. And some of you might be saying: wait a minute, Krampus isn’t ancient; he’s modern. Also, everyone knows about Krampus, the festive demon of Christmas. Why are you covering this well-trodden topic? Wait until you hear the wild things we...

How did sex workers in ancient Greece and Rome manage their periods? What were the most popular fashions for pubic hair? What underwear was everyone wearing? And how did sex workers handle contraception and unwanted pregnancies? In this episode, we team up with Kate the Exploress to delve into the most intimate aspects of daily life for sex workers in ancient Greece and Rome, including the most po...