Quotes from Roderick Beaton

539, great numbers of them, called 'Huns' by Procopius, crossed the Danube

and broke through the undefended Balkans to devastate all of mainland Greece north of the Peloponnese.

Should the main line of defence be drawn at the Isthmus of Corinth, as the Spartans proposed?

if the Persian fleet was left intact to sail round and take the infantrymen from the rear.

From Thessaly, the only way for an army to enter southern Greece

was through the narrow pass known as Thermopylae, where the crags of Mount Oeta fell

The dynasty he founded, the Mauryans, would go on to dominate much of the Indian subcontinent.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself', declares Paul in one of his most frequently quoted sentences.

As Plato had noticed, when Greeks left their homeland to establish communities abroad

they hardly ever ventured very far from the sea.

It was the sea, and their evident mastery of shipbuilding and navigation

The Romans had expelled their last king in 509 BCE.

At the time of Constantine's deathbed baptism in 337, the overwhelming majority of his subjects were still pagans.

Mycenaean traders at the time were exchanging goods all over the Mediterranean.

res publica, literally 'the thing belonging to the people'