This week's unsourced claims about the ancient world from the popular press:

From the Daily Herald:

But, as an active volcano (last eruption: 1891), Pantelleria also has rich soil and is lush with cultivated greenery. In fact, scholars peg it as Ogygia, the mythical island of plenty where Odysseus dallied for seven years with the nymph Calypso.

Not quite sure about this one from the Gazette:

The most prestigious of the three grapes is the noble nebbiolo, which produces two of Italy's greatest wines, Barolo and Barbaresco, the most distinguished wines in the Piemonte region and arguably in the whole of Italy. This grape, which is native to the region, is thought to have been there in Roman times, and there are those who claim it was mentioned by Pliny the elder, a Roman scholar, in his 37- volume Natural History, volume 18 of which deals with agriculture.

From the Yemen Times:

Unfortunately Socotra does not export any of its incense or other products now. Yet a time ago it used to be famous for all that and used to be called the “Incense and Fragrance Land”. In those days incense was widely used in many ceremonies and was a vital material for every family either for religious purposes or just cultural. Herodotus in his notes had mentioned that: “Arabia is the only place where chewing-gum, cinnamon, myrrh and ladnim (which is a material of beautiful fragrance). They suffer so as to produce all types except for myrrh. They need to burn certain glue under gum trees in order to produce the chewing gum, this glue that is brought from Phoenicia where it is used to get rid of hampering birds to their crops.”

From Miami New Times:

"What is food to one man may be fierce poison to others" said the Roman poet Lucretius, and this year FAAN is focusing on how food to one child may be fierce poison to another child.

From the Times Colonist comes the latest Cleopatric beauty secret:

They say Cleopatra maintained her youth by wearing a face mask of pure gold to bed. Now in luxury-obsessed Japan, you too can gild your features and feel like a modern-day queen.

From the Hindu, where there is a debate raging about corporal punishment in schools:

Even as early as the first century Plutarch said "Children ought to be led to honourable practices by means of encouragement and reasoning, and most certainly not by blows and ill treatment."

From CHN:

According to Islamic documents, prior to construction of Gour city, the area where the Gour is located was flooded by order of Alexander the Great during his conquest to Iran and turned into a wetland. Later during Sassanid era, by order of Ardeshir I, the wetland was drained and in addition to agricultural lands, an appropriate place was created for establishing the city.

From the Orange County Register:

The idea that some kind of fair, general, universal use can be made of public lands is a myth, one identified at least as far back as about 400 B.C., by the Greek historian Thucydides. As he observed, when people own things in common, "each fancies that no harm will come to his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays."