A Review of the Penn Museum’s New Eastern Mediterranean Gallery

A Review of the Penn Museum’s New Eastern Mediterranean Gallery
By Evan Dash

The Penn Museum celebrated its grand opening of the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery on November 19. In the months leading up to the exhibit’s opening, I visited the museum weekly for my Mediterranean archaeology class, and there was clearly excitement in the air for the new installation. After taking two separate tours of the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery, I have concluded that the buzz surrounding the exhibit’s debut was more than justified. The Eastern Mediterranean Gallery is unlike any other exhibit at the Penn Museum.

Book Review: Harper’s The Wolf Den

Book Review: Harper’s The Wolf Den
By Maggie Yuan

From 2018’s Circe to the Illiad retelling The Silence of the Girls, the women of antiquity have taken the literary world by storm in a recent wave of feminist mythological retellings. Though the subjects differ, the common thread is the authors’ complex reimagining of the often one-dimensional women. Surprisingly, the lives of Rome’s most mysterious, enigmatic, and real women were…

Summer TV Recs, Classics Edition

Summer TV Recs, Classics Edition
By Olivia Wells

Succession fans, rise up! The HBO series that has taken the world by storm may not, at first glance, bear any resemblance to classical antiquity. But if you watch closely, you’ll begin to recognize names, places, and plot points reminiscent of the classical past of Greece and Rome.

Circe: A Human Witch? Reviewing Madeline Miller’s “Epic”

Circe: A Human Witch? Reviewing Madeline Miller’s “Epic”
By Olivia Wells

If you’ve read the Odyssey, you remember the enchantress Circe. While the legendary epic doesn’t tell us much about her background, we know she’s wily like Odysseus; she has magical powers and turns men to pigs, seemingly for fun. In a new retelling of this familiar story from antiquity, Madeline Miller expands the witch’s short role in the Odyssey into a full novel, Circe, which illuminates her story in a feminist light while harkening back to Homer’s epic…

Barbarians: Ancient History, Reimagined

Barbarians: Ancient History, Reimagined
A Review of the New Netflix Series
By Sara Chopra, Margaret Dunn, and Olivia Wells

As the three Articles Editors of Discentes, each of whom happens to focus on a different aspect of the ancient world—Sara reads classical languages and literature, Margaret studies classical civilizations, and Olivia dedicates her work to Mediterranean archaeology—we decided to watch Barbarians ourselves and share some of our own thoughts on the popular series. Should Barbarians be the next show on your winter break Netflix binge list? Our answer—yes. Read our full review of its first season below to learn why…