A curious window into the ancient world
Turn a crank. Follow a constellation. Trace a story back to its source.
Our interactive tools and companion reading projects bring ancient ideas within reach. Choose a place to begin.
Interactive reconstruction
Turn the crank. Follow the heavens.
Explore an interactive reconstruction of the ancient mechanism: its dials, celestial cycles, and intricate gearing. Compare the reconstruction with the sky and inspect the evidence and limitations.
Explore Antikythera →Astronomy simulator
See the sky from an ancient point of view.
Choose a planet and follow its epicycles and retrograde motion in a historical Earth-centered model. Explore how the geometry accounts for apparent motion; this is a historical model, not modern astronomy.
Explore Ptolemy’s Cosmos →Clock reconstruction
Tell time with water and stars.
Explore a working model of a Roman anaphoric water clock after Vitruvius, with Ptolemy’s stars. Examine what measurements of the surviving bronze dials from Salzburg and Grand can tell us.
Explore The Star Clock →Literary research tool
Who was reading whom?
Follow machine-detected connections between ancient Greek and Latin authors, open the passages, and inspect their sources. Treat matches as leads to investigate: some are wrong, and others are missed.
Explore Testimonia →Interactive myth atlas
Follow a name into a world of stories.
Explore gods, heroes, monsters, places, and treasures across eight mythological traditions. Trace relationships, read myths built from ancient texts, and compare places where the sources disagree.
Explore Atlas of Ancient Myth →Research & reading
Read what the sources actually say.
A long-form report tracing how cultures defined, practised, and punished magic, from ancient Egypt through Shakespeare. Start with the five-minute overview, then follow the cited passages into the full investigation.
Explore Magic in the Ancient Texts →Companion text library
Read alongside the original.
English AI translations of ancient and medieval texts cited by the Atlas and the magic report, presented beside the originals with source and licence information. No specialist has reviewed these translations; use them as reading aids and check important details against the source.
Explore AI Translations →Literary research tool
Who kept quoting the classics?
Follow machine-detected citations of classical Latin by later writers, line by line, and see who quoted what and when. This is AI work that no specialist has reviewed, and the matcher misses many citations, so treat it as a place to start.
Explore Afterlives →Historical reconstructions, machine-detected connections, and AI translations each have limits. The individual projects explain their sources, methods, and uncertainties so you can examine the evidence for yourself.
