Quotes from Bettany Hughes

In Socrates' lifetime more than 800 triremes were launched from Athenian-controlled harbours: the largest manned navy the world had ever known.

So at that time of day when the early sun still rings haloes on human heads, Socrates is walking through the Agora to his judgement day.

The highest hope of Socrates' peers, of young Athenian men, was to serve Athens by dying for her.

The history of this place with three names–Byzantion or Byzantium (c. 670 BC to AD 330), Constantinople, al-Qustantiniyye then Kostantiniyye (c. AD 330 to 1930), Istanbul or Stimboli (c. AD 1453 onwards)–is often isolated into discrete blocks: ancient, Byzantine, Ottoman, Turkish.

For excess breeds hubris, when great prosperity comes to men of unsound mind.16

Their fathers had been slaughtered over the stretch of a half-century by the Persians, their mothers raped. And still they had not caved in.

Rivayete göre ?eytan, Mesih ?sa'ya Asya yakas?ndaki Çaml?ca tepelerinden, "dünyan?n ve içindeki krall?klar?n bütün ihti?am? budur" derken Bo?az'?, Haliç'i ve Bizans akropolisini göstermi?tir. Buras? kusursuz ve bu yüzden sürekli yeni ba?tan hayat bulan, ba?tan ç?kar?c? ?ey olarak tasvir edilecek bir yerdi.

he comes across as alarmingly unpredictable, leaping out at unsuspecting passers-by and startling them with a moral challenge.

A journey through the Mediterranean is not only inspiring and stimulating, it is also humbling. The men and women who created antique treasures for us to marvel at had to deal with plague, genocide, a world without writing, iron tools, or penicillin - and yet they made something extraordinary of their life and times.

Cricket's in the blood - my dad loves it and my brother Simon played for Middlesex before becoming a radio and TV cricket commentator.

I cannot write about the past unless I go where history happened. Some make very good armchair historians, I'm not one of them. If you're going to inhabit someone else's world, the very least you can do is to spend a little time in it.

My best writing day starts with coffee from our local Cypriot cafe and a newspaper from the Tamil corner shop - they always ask what I'm up to, and why I haven't brushed my hair - then a short, sharp walk. I think as I go.

I'm horrified at the idea of intimidating someone. I think that's the opposite of what we should be doing.

Buttressed by an acceptance of female wisdom in the sacred sphere from the beginnings of organised religion 12,000 years ago to late antiquity and beyond, key women used wit and the power of the word to change the world around them.

One of the flashpoints of the grand war between Athens and Sparta, a millennium after Helen first caused trouble for the Mediterranean world, was nearby Thassos. Thassos - Greece's northernmost island, is pine-rich, honey-sweet, gold-bearing and picture-postcard perfect.

It's become this sort of strange competition about who's in the coolest place, who's in the coolest street. Suddenly we're having to engage with all those social pressures. It's helpful, I find, as a mother and a teacher, to say you've always got a choice.

It was this epic adventure and I had this mad idea that it would be interesting to follow the Greek hero Odysseus on his trail from what is modern day Turkey to the west of Greece. He took 10 years to do that and I took six months. I was on 27 different boats for 1,700 miles and I went to 13 different islands.

Maybe it is not just social history - the belt buckles and soup ladles - that connects us to the past, but a grander idea, an idea that shared memory is essential to being human.

It was drilled into me from an early age that nothing is certain and that you have to be incredibly careful and sensible with money. However, if you are lucky enough to have a little bit spare, you should also try to enjoy it.

A number of politicians have failed to recognise the consistent truth of history: that we're both an emotional and a rational species, and that we make decisions very emotionally.

To me that is what the Odyssey is all about, it's about being in the world and unexpected challenges and dangers are thrown at you.

Both my parents were professional actors, so I grew up in a household that had no real financial stability.

Once universities, rather than religious orders, were established as the key repositories of learning, women would find it ever harder to prove the pen as mighty as the sword.

Taught by actor parents never to leave an awkward gap in the conversation I gabble out unsolicited responses to fill the voids.