Eleanor Whitcombe

Eleanor writes about the ancient and medieval world: the empires, cities and ideas that quietly built the modern one. She has a weakness for archaeology stories where the ground gives up something nobody expected.

Fragments of the Fasti Antiates Maiores, the pre-Julian Roman calendar painted on plaster, showing the columns of months with festival namesWorld History

Why October Is the Tenth Month, and Why Two Emperors Could Not Rename It

Eleanor Whitcombe · October 20, 2026