By Anita Fattori, PhD candidate in Social History, University of São Paulo. “Puzur-Ishtar married Ishtar-Lamassī, daughter of Assur-nada, as a secondary wife and he must take her with him on his journey wherever he may be. However, he must bring her back to Kanesh. If he leaves her, he must pay 2.5 kilograms of silver; if she is the one who leaves him, she must pay 2.5 kilograms of silver. Furthermore, apart from his main wife in the city of Assur, he must not take anyone els

Maria Cecilia Colombani, Philosophy professor at the University of Morón, Argentina, was in São Paulo between June 10 and 14, 2019 for a week of studies on Hesiod's work (Theogony and Works and Days). During her visit to the University of São Paulo, where she presented a lecture about women as a subaltern group based on Hesiod's work, a lecture about women as a subaltern group based on Hesiod's work, she spoke to the Blog about her research, the construction of the feminine i

By Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, University of São Paulo. The rapid spread of the new coronavirus and the transformation of Covid-19 into a pandemic affecting all continents (with the exception of Antarctica) has once again aroused interest in the history of infectious diseases. Since the emergence of AIDS in the 1980s and even more so with the globalisation process and the global scale diffusion of infectious agents such as the coronavirus associated with SARS, Zika and

By Renata Senna Garraffoni, Universidade Federal do Paraná. If I started this text by asking: were there children among the ancient Romans? Certainly, readers would answer that there were. But if I changed the question a little bit: what do you know about Roman children? Probably nothing or very little, am I right? So, how do you explain this? The point is that questions about the past are highly dependent on the interests of the present. For a long time, what capture the int

By Pedro Benedetti, PhD in Social History by the Universidade de São Paulo. The wall on the Mexican American border has always been a much-debated issue not only among the Americans, but also in the whole world. It has been argued by some that the uncontrolled and illegal immigration is closely linked with the rise in criminality and the easiness with which the Mexican drug cartels act within American territory. They advocate for the construction of a wall between the two cou

By Juliana Marques Morais, Doctor in Social History, Universidade de São Paulo. Among the sumptuous buildings that make up the Roman historic centre, the Basilica of Sant’Agnese in Agone, located in Piazza Navona, stands out in the landscape for its magnitude. One of its main attractions is the small sanctuary installed inside, where the skull of St. Agnes is deposited. The young Roman citizen is one (perhaps the best known and celebrated) of the female figures that make up t

Published in 1989, the book Cultura Popular na Antiguidade Clássica (São Paulo: Contexto), by Pedro Paulo A. Funari, today Professor at the University of Campinas, had in its time an unusual impact. Breaking with the elitism until then characteristic of the discipline, the book became a landmark in the renovation of Ancient History in Brazil, at the moment of the country's re-democratization, and at a decisive turning point in the constitution of a specifically Brazilian trad

By Rafael Monpean, PhD candidate in Social History, University of São Paulo. Every year a few million tourists visit Rome, Ostia, Pompeii, Herculaneum. They appreciate several ancient monuments in each of these cities, such as temples, houses, theatres, amphitheatres, baths, and shops. But, at the end of a day's journey, few give importance to the space through which they walked on these visits. The streets they walked through become something naturalized, when they are not a

By Cristina Rosillo López, Universidad Pablo de Olavide “It was done aloud and with a kind of song to be heard from afar, which caused a scandal, because it was considered that there was a good reason for it”. The “escrache” (a noisy protest against politicians held outside their homes) has become one of the current buzzwords. Its legality or not, the modalities of its organization and expression have become subjects of public debate. Famous in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, e

Interview with Adriane da Silva Duarte, professor of Greek Language and Literature at the Departamento de Letras Clássicas de Vernáculas of the Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo (DLCV-FFLCH/USP). What can the love stories of the Greek elites under the Roman Empire reveal to us about the lives of poor free men and other subaltern groups in the "slave order"? Is it possible to make an Ancient History from below using literary works? In

By Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, Universidade de São Paulo. The street demonstrations by fans of rival football teams united in favour of democracy and the clashes with Bolsonaro’s militants and police that followed in São Paulo and other Brazilian cities by the end of May 2020 have resurfaced the traditional reductionism that branded the organised fans as homogeneous groups and essentially violent, ignoring their capacity for mobilisation and criticism. For many comment

By Fábio Augusto Morales, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Morena dos olhos d'água, tire os seus olhos do mar Vem ver que a vida ainda vale o sorriso que eu tenho pra lhe dar Descansa em meu pobre peito, que jamais enfrenta o mar Mas que tem abraço estreito, Morena, com jeito de lhe agradar (Chico Buarque, Morena dos olhos d'água, 1967) [Water-eyed brunette, take your eyes off the sea Come see that life is still worth the smile I have to give you Rest on my poor che

By Fábio Joly, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto. Few moments enable us to glimpse, in such a direct and accentuated way, the political and public impact of slavery in the city of Rome as in the description, by the senator and historian Cornelius Tacitus (56-117 CE), of an episode that occurred at the time of Emperor Nero. In 61 CE, Pedanius Secundus, prefect of the city of Rome, was killed at home by one of his slaves (Ann. 14.42-45). There was then a lively debate in the S

By Pedro Paulo A. Funari, Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Paulo Nogueira, a notorious scholar of ancient religiosity, returns in his last book to a recurrent theme: the popular character of Jesus' followers. It is worth reflecting on this a little: how popular were these early Christians? All history is interpretation, and that in the present, even if it is about the past, and with a view to longings for the future. It can't be any other way. Nogueira starts from an approa

By Jessica Brustolim, Master's student in Social History, University of São Paulo. Around 130 BCE, in the city of Mogontiacum (present-day Mainz, Germany), a widow asked the goddess Magna Mater to avenge her for her husband's goods: Rogo te, domina Mater / Magna, ut tu me uindices / de bonis Flori coniugis mei. / qui me fraudavit Ulattius / Seuerus, quemadmod<um> / hoc ego auerse scribo, sic illi // omnia, quidquid agit, quidquid / aginat, omnia illi auersa fi ant. / ut sal e

By Anita Fattori, PhD candidate in Social History, University of São Paulo. One day, on a remote tour in the ancient Mesopotamia, I come across a group of letters that I am quite intrigued by. I begin this text by inviting the reader to observe, for a brief moment, two small excerpts from two clay letters and ask themselves: who sent them? “You sent me about 80 grams of gold to store barley, but your representatives haven't done the job yet. Therefore, our report on this acti

By Cyril Courrier (Aix-Marseille Université) and Jean-Pierre Guilhembet (Université Paris-Diderot-Université de Paris). The image of the city of Rome in ancient sources is ambiguous. Augustus boasted about having turned it into a model of urbanity, but other descriptions remain very negative: a city where poverty reigned, and a population of miserable marginalized and poor people lived. For Horace, Rome seemed to be entirely made up of brothels and bars. According to Catullus

By Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, Universidade de São Paulo. “Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?” In this 1935 poem, the German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht imagined the questions of a reading worker who noticed the absence of workers in the history books. "Who built the pyramids of Egypt?" was not one of those questions, but what the worker in the poem said about Thebes would

By Márcio Monteneri, Ms. in Social History, Universidade de São Paulo Bars were one of the hallmarks of Roman cities. In Ostia and Pompeii, as the archaeological data attest, they were numerous and were found in places of intense movement such as street corners, large avenues and near the city gates. They also occupied the facades of apartment buildings, hotels and public baths. Bohemian spaces could be easily recognized by passersby in the urban landscape and were real hotsp

By Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira, University of São Paulo. Why do people protest? The reasons for discontent are many, but discontent does not always result in protest or revolt.Studying the food riots in eighteenth-century England, E. P. Thompson opposed, a few decades ago, the interpretations that simplistically linked the rise in bread prices and riots, as if these protests were nothing more than “rebellions of the belly”, occasional and thoughtless reactions to econom