Alastair J.L. Blanshard has held positions at Merton College, Oxford, the University of Reading, and the University of Sydney. He is currently the Paul Eliadis Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland. His area of research interest is the ancient Greek world and its legacy. He is the author of Hercules: A heroic life (2005) translated into Italian, German, and Dutch, Sex: Vice and lovefrom antiquity to modernity (2010), Classics on Screen: Ancient Greece and Rome on film (2011), and The Classical World: All that matters (2015).
Towards the end of the fourth century BCE, the Athenian orator Hyperides found himself in a difficult predicament. His client, the notorious courtesan Phryne, was on trial for her life. Facing accusations of lewd impiety, should she be convicted, death almost certainly would follow. The case was going badly. The jurors were refusing to listen to his pleas. Their minds were made up. They couldn’t ... (read more)
We know exactly when the first image of a Roman emperor arrived in Australia. It came as part of the goods on board the ill-fated Batavia, which ran aground off the west coast of Australia on 4 June 1629. This shipwreck went down in infamy following the mutiny of a group of the survivors and the subsequent murder of, at least, 110 men, women, and children. Eventually, the survivors were rescued an ... (read more)
When the Abbé Michel Fourmont travelled to Sparta in the 1730s, he thought he was going to make his fortune and academic reputation. The depths of Ottoman Greece were largely unknown territory to European travellers at this time. What fabulous discoveries lay in store for him, wondered the Abbé. What treasures had been left behind by this one of the greatest powers that the Greek world had ever ... (read more)
What is the value of useless knowledge? One of the by-products of the rise of artificial intelligence is that the realm of what one really needs to know to function in society is ever shrinking. Wikipedia makes learning facts completely redundant. Pub trivia competitions now seem a fundamentally anachronistic form of entertainment, like watching a jousting tournament in the age of artillery. One c ... (read more)
