William Michael Short is a Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. His studies, strongly influenced by the cognitive sciences and cognitive linguistics, have given a new and fascinating impulse to anthropological studies of the ancient world. His focus on metaphor in particular, in the light of Lakoffian conceptual metaphor theory, has permitted the articulation of a new comparativism and enabled a psychologically realistic method for reconstructing ancient worldviews by juxtaposing metaphorically structured concepts between cultures.