Ancient

Plant-based diets high in carbohydrates made the Roman ‘barley men’ appear more spectacular.

The tactics adopted by the Gallic leader Vercingetorix to resist Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul played into Roman hands.

Christians have long relied on scribes’ copies of Biblical texts; J. K. Elliot describes how the Codex Sinaiticus, discovered in 1844, dates from the fourth century.

In the first millennium, Christianity spread east from Palestine to Iraq, and on to India and China, becoming a global religion accepting of, and accepted by, other faiths. But with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, Christianity’s eastern journey came to an end. Philip Jenkins recovers this lost history.

David Winter visits a land beset for millennia by the fantasies of outsiders.

Anthea Gerrie explores a remarkable excavation, a Roman surgeon’s house in Rimini.

China and Rome were the two great economic superpowers of the Ancient World. Yet their empires were separated by thousands of miles of inhospitable terrain, dramatically reducing the opportunities for direct communication. Raoul McLaughlin investigates.

Clive Foss introduces the Kharijites, a radical sect from the first century of Islam based in southern Iraq and Iran, who adopted an extreme interpretation of the Koran, ruthless tactics and opposed hereditary political leadership. After causing centuries of problems to the caliphate, they survive in a quietist form in East Africa and Oman.

After the Crucifixion, writes J.K. Elliott, the disciples had a vivid and personal feeling that Jesus was in some sense still with them.