Let’s trace the paths of some of Rome’s first imperial superstars: the wives, sisters, and daughters who rose with Octavian to become ancient Rome’s first family, famous throughout the Roman world. Livia, Octavia, Julia the Elder. Who were these women, behind the rumors and the legends? How much influence did they wield and what mark did they leave?

Cleopatra, the last great queen of Egypt, doesn’t really need an introduction. You can see her in your mind already: Pretty and sultry with her cat-eye makeup, covered head to toe in shiny gold. Extravagant, self-serving: this epic seductress used every magic trick in her lady arsenal to hold onto power. That’s the Cleopatra the ancient Romans want us to see. The truth is that few women’s stories have been more brutally revised by sexist haters. Who was Cleopatra, beyond the smoke and hate and glitter?

What was it like to be a woman in the ancient Roman Empire? Let’s find out.

Let’s dive into the lives and times of the women who helped shape Alexander’s Greatness, and accomplished a whole lot of their own along the way. Get ready to enter Macedonia. We’ll face assassinations, intrigue, a little snake worship, warrior women, and an epic battle for an empire that would put Game of Thrones to shame. 

The ancient world saw its fair share of warrior women, living on the move, hunting and fighting, living and dying on their own terms. It turns out the Amazons were as real as it gets. Who were these women the Greeks saw in their pleasant dreams and worst nightmares? Let’s go hunting beyond the myths and legends to try and find them.

When it comes to the words that made it through time to us, ancient Greece is particularly loud with men’s voices. But if you listen, you hear one woman through the crowd—we still hear her today, thousands of years after she lived. Heralded as a genius in her time, she was called “The Poetess” and “The Tenth Muse.” People made coins with her face on them, and created honorary statues of her all over Greece. Even Aristotle, that grumpy bastard, wrote she was “honored even though she was a woman.” Sappho wrote poetry that rocked her ancient world. 

Ancient Greece has a rep for liking their ladies silent, veiled, and chained to the loom. But was life for women in places like Athens really so restrictive? Let’s strap on our sandals and go find out.

We tend to think of beer, even now, as a “man’s drink.” But for most of history, it was women who brewed it. Let’s explore how they brewed in the ancient world, then hop forward through time, tracing the ever-evolving and complex relationship between women, brewing, and beer.