'Love in the Ancient World' explores the Mediterranean basin in search of long-lost attitudes to love and lust, passion and desire. It finds them in European cave paintings and Egyptian cosmologies, Hebraic commandments and Latin codexes. It finds them also in the teachings of Plato and the histories of Plutarch, and weaves them together into a colourful and controversial reassessment of our ancestors' preoccupation with love and sex, from which we can learn a great deal today.