Greece

RIGHT HMS Penelope was damaged by Stuka attack during the Dodecanese campaign. She is pictured here in June 1942, riddled with holes from an earlier attack.

Defeat from the jaws of victory: the Dodecanese campaign of 1943

Naval historian and museum curator Nick Hewitt explores a little-known British disaster of the Second World War.

Opposite page Still growing, this olive tree at Azorias, on Crete, is a staggering 3,250 years old; its fruit may well have been harvested for the earliest known production of olive oil. above The Palace of Knossos, with olives visible in the background.

Olives: oiling the wheels of civilisation

Olive trees thrive on poor soil where little else will grow, which means land that would otherwise be barren can produce food. This realisation triggered a true agricultural revolution – but when and where did it take place? Colin Renfrew and Evi Margaritis believe the clues were grown on Crete.

Sex, sport, and sacrifice: reconstructing the ancient Olympics

Forget London 2012. What about Olympia in 388 BC? Archaeologist Neil Faulkner has just published a new book that attempts to reconstruct the lived experience of the ancient games. So what were they really like?

Evans at Knossos

Neil Faulkner on the greatest excavations.

Epaminondas: the man who destroyed Sparta

The Spartans are so famous that their name has become part of the language. But the name of the military genius who broke their power – and whose example inspired Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great – is hardly remembered at all. This is the story of Epaminondas and the Theban revolution in war.

Who was the Greatest Leader of All Time?

The search continues for Military Times’ greatest leader of all time. This month Alexander the Great and George Washington are under the microscope.

Above Crete and its Homeric ‘wine dark tectonic sea’. A view from Minoan town of Gournia: how did the island shake and tip over the centuries? Spratt was determined to find out.

Captain Spratt’s Crete: the island that tipped

Crete lies in an earthquake zone. This has affected the island over the centuries, but how? Although never fully recognised, in the 1850s Captain Spratt, of the Royal Navy, worked it out. Dudley Moore explains.

Above and right A bronze shield from Scotland and a bronze trumpet from Denmark. Fine metalwork of this kind heralds the existence of a Europe wide warrior elite in the Late Bronze Age.

The Land between the Oceans: ships, metals and warriors (Part Two)

In the second part of our mini-series based on Barry Cunliffe’s new book Europe between the Oceans, our focus is the period c.2800-140 BC. We see the rise and fall of great civilisations, and a looming clash between a Mediterranean-based superpower and the Celtic peoples of Iron Age Europe. Once again, it is the movement of people, goods, and ideas that is central to Cunliffe’s vision of Europe’s distinctive history.

Olympic link on Antikythera Mechanism

In CWA 30 we reported on recent research to understand the 2,000 year old scientific instrument salvaged from a Roman ship that sank off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera in the 1st century BC. Since then, Mike…

Ancient Greek calculator reconstructed

The mechanism was used to predict the positions of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon and possibly planetary motions.

South entrance to the Agora by the Tower of the Winds

A postcard from Athens

Athens conjures up ancient Greece and the civilisation symbolized by the fastidious re-building of the Parthenon. Yet Athens boasts possibly the most extensive remains of any Roman city in Greece. Why should this matter? Well, for the imperial Romans, Greece…