Medieval castles evolved as needs or technology changed. Normal castle construction consisted of thick stone walls, battlements, ample food storage for soldiers, and perhaps a moat or an internal spring. Builders constructed castles in various ways over time, creating many unique structures without the aid of blueprints. A Norman stone keep in Britain looks […]

Calypso was a beautiful nymph who lived alone on the isolated island of Ogygia. Her solitude changed when the shipwrecked hero Odysseus washed ashore. Calypso fell in love with him and offered him immortality and an idyllic paradise in exchange for staying with her and marrying her. However, Odysseus longed to return home to […]

Does life weigh us down, or is it an adventure we should accept? Nietzsche and Schopenhauer disagreed deeply on the meaning of existence and the nature of human suffering. Schopenhauer, the original pessimist, thought that life inevitably brought pain and torment—and that the best way to deal with this was to have nothing to […]

The story of Pandora’s box is a well-known tale about Pandora, the first woman according to ancient Greek mythology, and a box given to her by the gods. Recounted in Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days, the box was originally conceptualized as a jar, only becoming a box when a later author, Erasmus, translated […]

According to many flight crews, the most beautiful city from above is Athens. Its hilly landscape features vast olive groves, palm tree-lined coastal avenues, and urban neighborhoods sprawling across the Attic peninsula. The city is even more breathtaking from the ground, with the historic sites of the world’s oldest democracy intertwined with modern quirky […]