Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

Fearsome Amazons, men who turned into wolves, and tribes who never grew old. Ancient Greek and Roman texts are packed

with extraordinary descriptions of the people living beyond their borders. Here in conversation

with Spencer Mizzen, Dr Owen Reese, who's written a new book on the subject, explores these

classical superpowerpowers sense of

cultural superiority and reveals what we can learn about the ancient world by exploring life

on their frontiers. So, Owen, why do you think it's important that we look at the ancient world

from the perspective of frontiers, of the boundaries of empire,

rather than, say, the great centres of power such as Athens and Rome.

What can we learn from the approach that you've adopted in your new book?

The kind of core lesson, by looking at the periphery, by looking away from the usual

stories we hear, are just hearing different stories.

I think ancient history is told from a very, not one-dimensional point of view, but a very

specific perspective.

And it's like you said, it's those cultural centres of, you know, all the

ones we kind of grow up with, Athens, Rome, Alexandria, you know, all these amazing places,

doesn't take away from just how phenomenal these places were. And their stories are just fascinating

us, why we're so captivated by them. But in the back of my mind, whenever I'm reading

these sort of histories, I'm always thinking, well, what's everyone else up to? Rome had a large

population, but it's nowhere near the population of its entire empire. So what is the rest of Rome,

shall we say, up to? And what I found as I started to explore this question is, first of all, an awful lot. They're up to

an awful lot. But the other thing was, because we move away from central stories and the traditional

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