1.
Aelianus Tacticus
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Aelianus Tacticus, also known as Aelian, was a Greek military writer who lived in Rome. It is a handbook of Greek, i. e. Macedonian, drill, the author claims to have consulted all the best authorities, the most important of which was a lost treatise on the subject by Polybius. Perhaps the chief value of Aelians work lies in his account of preceding works on the art of war. He also gives an account of the constitution of a Roman army at that time. The work arose, he says, from a conversation he had with the emperor Nerva at Frontinuss house at Formiae and he promises a work on Naval Tactics also, but this, if it was written, is lost. Emperor Leo VI the Wise incorporated much of Aelians text in his own work on the military art, the Arabic version of Aelian was made about 1350. It was first translated into Latin by Theodore Gaza, published at Rome in 1487, the Greek editio princeps was edited by Francesco Robortello and published at Venice in 1552. The letter is influential in supporting the thesis of the early-modern Military Revolution, in the letter William Louis discusses the use of ranks by soldiers of Imperial Rome as discussed in Aelians Tactica. Aelian was discussing the use of the march in the context of the Roman sword gladius. William Louis in a crucial leap realized that the technique could work for men with firearms. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology
2.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
3.
Palestrina
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Palestrina is an ancient city and comune with a population of about 21,000, in Lazio, about 35 kilometres east of Rome. It is connected to the latter by the Via Prenestina and it is the birthplace of composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Palestrina is sited on a spur of the Monti Prenestini, a range in the central Apennines. Palestrina borders the municipalities, Artena, Castel San Pietro Romano, Cave, Gallicano nel Lazio, Labico, Rocca di Cave, Rocca Priora, Rome, San Cesareo, Valmontone. Early burials show that the site was occupied in the 8th or 7th century BC. The ancient necropolis lay on a plateau at the foot of the hill below the ancient town, from these come the famous bronze boxes and hand mirrors with inscriptions partly in Etruscan. Also famous is the bronze Ficoroni Cista, engraved pictures of the arrival of the Argonauts in Bithynia. An example of archaic Latin is the inscription on the Ficoroni Cista, the caskets are unique in Italy, but a large number of mirrors of precisely similar style have been discovered in Etruria. Hence, although it would be reasonable to conjecture that objects with Etruscan characteristics came from Etruria, other imported objects in the burials show that Praeneste traded not only with Etruria but also with the Greek east. The origin of Praeneste was attributed by the ancients to Ulysses, the name derives probably from the word Praenesteus, referring to its overlooking location. Praeneste was probably under the hegemony of Alba Longa while that city was the head of the Latin League and it withdrew from the league in 499 BC, according to Livy, and formed an alliance with Rome. After Rome was weakened by the Gauls of Brennus, Praeneste switched allegiances, from 373 to 370, it was in continual war against Rome or her allies, and was defeated by Cincinnatus. Eventually in 354 and in 338 the Romans were victorious and Praeneste was punished by the loss of portions of its territory, as such, it furnished contingents to the Roman army, and Roman exiles were permitted to live at Praeneste, which grew prosperous. The roses of Praeneste were a byword for profusion and beauty, præneste was situated on the Via Labicana. Its citizens were offered Roman citizenship in 90 BC in the Social War, in Sullas second civil war, Gaius Marius the Younger was blockaded in the town by the forces of Sulla. When the city was captured, Marius slew himself, the inhabitants were massacred in cold blood. From an inscription it appears that Sulla delegated the foundation of the new colony to Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, within a decade the lands of the colonia had been assembled by a few large landowners. From the late Republic to the late Empire, markets, baths, shrines and even a second forum were built in the lower city, the poet Horace ranked cool Praeneste with Tibur and Baiae as favored resorts
4.
Rhetoric
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Rhetoric is the art of discourse, wherein a writer or speaker strives to inform, persuade or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of study and a productive civic practice. Its best known definition comes from Aristotle, who considers it a counterpart of both logic and politics, and calls it the faculty of observing in any case the available means of persuasion. The five canons of rhetoric, which trace the traditional tasks in designing a persuasive speech, were first codified in classical Rome, invention, arrangement, style, memory, along with grammar and logic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, it was a part of Western education. Scholars have debated the scope of rhetoric since ancient times, although some have limited rhetoric to the specific realm of political discourse, many modern scholars liberate it to encompass every aspect of culture. Contemporary studies of rhetoric address a diverse range of domains than was the case in ancient times. Many contemporary approaches treat rhetoric as human communication that includes purposeful, Public relations, lobbying, law, marketing, professional and technical writing, and advertising are modern professions that employ rhetorical practitioners. Because the ancient Greeks highly valued public political participation, rhetoric emerged as a tool to influence politics. Consequently, rhetoric remains associated with its political origins, however, even the original instructors of Western speech—the Sophists—disputed this limited view of rhetoric. According to the Sophists, such as Gorgias, a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic and this method suggested rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just politics. In his Encomium to Helen, Gorgias even applied rhetoric to fiction by seeking for his own pleasure to prove the blamelessness of the mythical Helen of Troy in starting the Trojan War. Looking to another key rhetorical theorist, Plato defined the scope of rhetoric according to his opinions of the art. He criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric as a means of deceit instead of discovering truth, in Gorgias, one of his Socratic Dialogues, Plato defines rhetoric as the persuasion of ignorant masses within the courts and assemblies. Rhetoric, in Platos opinion, is merely a form of flattery and functions similarly to cookery, thus, Plato considered any speech of lengthy prose aimed at flattery as within the scope of rhetoric. Aristotle both redeemed rhetoric from his teacher and narrowed its focus by defining three genres of rhetoric—deliberative, forensic or judicial, and epideictic, when one considers that rhetoric included torture, it is clear that rhetoric cannot be viewed only in academic terms. However, the enthymeme based upon logic was viewed as the basis of rhetoric, however, since the time of Aristotle, logic has changed. For example, Modal logic has undergone a major development that also modifies rhetoric, yet, Aristotle also outlined generic constraints that focused the rhetorical art squarely within the domain of public political practice
5.
Septimius Severus
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Septimius Severus, also known as Severus, was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. Severus was born in Leptis Magna in the Roman province of Africa, as a young man he advanced through the cursus honorum—the customary succession of offices—under the reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Severus seized power after the death of Emperor Pertinax in 193 during the Year of the Five Emperors, after deposing and killing the incumbent emperor Didius Julianus, Severus fought his rival claimants, the generals Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus. Niger was defeated in 194 at the Battle of Issus in Cilicia, later that year Severus waged a short punitive campaign beyond the eastern frontier, annexing the Kingdom of Osroene as a new province. Severus defeated Albinus three years later at the Battle of Lugdunum in Gaul, furthermore, he enlarged and fortified the Limes Arabicus in Arabia Petraea. In 202, he campaigned in Africa and Mauretania against the Garamantes, capturing their capital Garama, late in his reign he travelled to Britain, strengthening Hadrians Wall and reoccupying the Antonine Wall. In 208 he invaded Caledonia, but his ambitions were cut short when he fell ill in late 210. Severus died in early 211 at Eboracum, succeeded by his sons Caracalla, with the succession of his sons, Severus founded the Severan dynasty, the last dynasty of the empire before the Crisis of the Third Century. Born on 11 April 145 at Leptis Magna as the son of Publius Septimius Geta and Fulvia Pia, Septimius Severus came from a wealthy and he had Italian Roman ancestry on his mothers side and descended from Punic - and perhaps also Libyan - forebears on his fathers side. His mothers ancestors had moved from Italy to North Africa, they belonged to the gens Fulvia, Septimius Severus had two siblings, an older brother, Publius Septimius Geta, and a younger sister, Septimia Octavilla. Severuss maternal cousin was Praetorian prefect and consul Gaius Fulvius Plautianus, Septimius Severus grew up in the town of Leptis Magna. He spoke the local Punic language fluently, but he was educated in Latin and Greek. Little else is known of the young Severus education, but according to Cassius Dio the boy had been eager for education than he had actually got. Presumably Severus received lessons in oratory, at age 17 he gave his first public speech, sometime around 162 Septimius Severus set out for Rome seeking a public career. At the recommendation of his relative Gaius Septimius Severus, the emperor Marcus Aurelius granted him entry into the senatorial ranks, membership of the senatorial order was a prerequisite to attain positions within the cursus honorum and to gain entry into the Roman Senate. Nevertheless, it appears that Severus career during the 160s met with some difficulties and it is likely that he served as a vigintivir in Rome, overseeing road maintenance in or near the city, and he may have appeared in court as an advocate. At the time of Emperor Marcus Aurelius he was the State Attorney, however, he omitted the military tribunate from the cursus honorum and had to delay his quaestorship until he had reached the required minimum age of 25. To make matters worse, the Antonine Plague swept through the capital in 166, with his career at a halt, Severus decided to temporarily return to Leptis, where the climate was healthier
6.
Elagabalus
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Elagabalus /ˌɛləˈɡæbələs/, also known as Heliogabalus, was Roman emperor from 218 to 222. A member of the Severan dynasty, he was Syrian, the son of Julia Soaemias. In his early youth he served as a priest of the god Elagabal in the hometown of his mothers family, as a private citizen, he was probably named Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus. Upon becoming emperor he took the name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus and he was called Elagabalus only after his death. In 217, the emperor Caracalla was assassinated and replaced by his Praetorian prefect, Caracallas maternal aunt, Julia Maesa, successfully instigated a revolt among the Legio III Gallica to have her eldest grandson, Elagabalus, declared emperor in his place. Macrinus was defeated on 8 June 218 at the Battle of Antioch, Elagabalus, barely 14 years old, became emperor, initiating a reign remembered mainly for sex scandals and religious controversy. Later historians suggest Elagabalus showed a disregard for Roman religious traditions and he replaced the traditional head of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter, with the deity of whom he was high priest, Elagabalus. He forced leading members of Romes government to participate in religious rites celebrating this deity and his behavior estranged the Praetorian Guard, the Senate, and the common people alike. Amidst growing opposition, Elagabalus, just 18 years old, was assassinated and replaced by his cousin Severus Alexander on 11 March 222, the plot was devised by his grandmother, Julia Maesa, and carried out by disaffected members of the Praetorian Guard. Elagabalus developed a reputation among his contemporaries for extreme eccentricity, decadence and this tradition has persisted, and with writers of the early modern age he suffers one of the worst reputations among Roman emperors. Edward Gibbon, for example, wrote that Elagabalus abandoned himself to the grossest pleasures, according to Barthold Georg Niebuhr, The name Elagabalus is branded in history above all others because of his unspeakably disgusting life. Elagabalus was born around the year 203 to Sextus Varius Marcellus and his father was initially a member of the Equites class, but was later elevated to the rank of senator. His grandmother, Julia Maesa, was the widow of the consul Julius Avitus, the sister of Julia Domna, and he had at least one sibling, an unnamed elder brother. His mother, Julia Soaemias, was a cousin of the Roman emperor Caracalla and his other relatives included his aunt Julia Avita Mamaea and uncle Marcus Julius Gessius Marcianus and among their children, their son Severus Alexander. Elagabaluss family held hereditary rights to the priesthood of the sun god Elagabal, the deity Elagabalus was initially venerated at Emesa. This form of the name is a Latinized version of the Syrian Ilāh hag-Gabal, which derives from Ilāh and gabal, resulting in the God of the Mountain. The cult of the deity spread to parts of the Roman Empire in the 2nd century. The god was later imported and assimilated with the Roman sun god known as Sol Indiges in republican times and as Sol Invictus during the second, in Greek the sun god is Helios, hence Heliogabalus, a hybrid conjunction of Helios and Elagabalus
7.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
8.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
9.
Loeb Classical Library
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The General Editor is Jeffrey Henderson, holder of the William Goodwin Aurelio Professorship of Greek Language and Literature at Boston University. The Loeb Classical Library was conceived and initially funded by the Jewish-German-American banker and philanthropist James Loeb. The first volumes were edited by T. E. Page, W. H. D. Rouse, and Edward Capps, since then scores of new titles have been added, and the earliest translations have been revised several times. Profit from the editions continues to fund graduate student fellowships at Harvard University, the Loebs have only a minimal critical apparatus, when compared to other publications of the text. They are intended for the reader of Greek or Latin. In 1917 Virginia Woolf wrote, The Loeb Library, with its Greek or Latin on one side of the page and its English on the other, the existence of the amateur was recognised by the publication of this Library, and to a great extent made respectable. The difficulty of Greek is not sufficiently dwelt upon, chiefly perhaps because the sirens who lure us to these waters are generally scholars have forgotten. But for the ordinary amateur they are real and very great. Harvard University assumed complete responsibility for the series in 1989 and in recent years four or five new or re-edited volumes have been published annually, in 2001, Harvard University Press began issuing a second series of books with a similar format. The I Tatti Renaissance Library presents key Renaissance works in Latin with a facing English translation, it is similarly to the Loeb Classics. A third series, the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, was introduced in 2010 covering works in Byzantine Greek, Medieval Latin, volumes have the same format as the I Tatti series, but with a brown cover. The Clay Sanskrit Library, bound in cloth, was also modeled on the Loeb Classical Library. As the command of Latin among generalist historians and archaeologists shrank in the course of the 20th century, the listings of Loeb volumes at online bookstores and library catalogues vary considerably and are often best navigated via ISBN numbers. L170N) Iliad, Second Edition, Volume I, Books 1–12 L171N) Iliad, Volume II. Books 13–24 L104) Odyssey, Volume I, Books 1–12 L105) Odyssey, Volume II. Other Fragments L344) Dionysiaca, Volume I, Books 1–15 L354) Dionysiaca, Volume II. Books 16–35 L356) Dionysiaca, Volume III, Lives of Homer L497) Greek Epic Fragments L001) Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica L019) Quintus Smyrnaeus, The Fall of Troy L219) Oppian, Colluthus, and Tryphiodorus L142) Greek Lyric Poetry, Volume I. Sappho and Alcaeus L143) Greek Lyric Poetry, Volume II, anacreon, Anacreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to Alcman L476) Greek Lyric Poetry, Volume III
10.
Pliny the Elder
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In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions. Pliny is referring to the fact that Tacitus relied on his uncles now missing work on the History of the German Wars. The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the eruption would not allow his ship to leave the shore, and Pliny probably died during this event. Plinys dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 and a statement of his nephew that he died in his 56th year, Pliny was the son of an equestrian, Gaius Plinius Celer, and his wife, Marcella. Neither the younger nor the elder Pliny mention the names and their ultimate source is a fragmentary inscription found in a field in Verona and recorded by the 16th century Augustinian monk Onofrio Panvinio at Verona. The reading of the inscription depends on the reconstruction, but in all cases the names come through, whether he was an augur and whether she was named Grania Marcella are less certain. Jean Hardouin presents a statement from a source that he claims was ancient, that Pliny was from Verona. Hardouin also cites the conterraneity of Catullus, additional efforts to connect Celer and Marcella with other gentes are highly speculative. Hardouin is the scholar to use his unknown source. He kept statues of his ancestors there, a statue of Pliny on the facade of the Duomo of Como celebrates him as a native son. He had a sister, Plinia, who married into the Caecilii and was the mother of his nephew, Pliny the Younger, whose letters describe his work and study regimen in detail. In one of his letters to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger details how his uncles breakfasts would be light and simple following the customs of our forefathers. This shows that Pliny the Younger wanted it to be conveyed that Pliny the Elder was a good Roman and this statement would have pleased Tacitus. Two inscriptions identifying the hometown of Pliny the Younger as Como take precedence over the Verona theory, one commemorates the youngers career as imperial magistrate and details his considerable charitable and municipal expenses on behalf of the people of Como. Another identifies his father Lucius village as Fecchio near Como and it is likely therefore that Plinia was a local girl and Pliny the Elder, her brother, was from Como. Gaius was a member of the Plinii gens and he did not take his fathers cognomen, Celer, but assumed his own, Secundus. As his adopted son took the same cognomen, Pliny founded a branch, no earlier instances of the Plinii are known. In 59 BC, only about 82 years before Plinys birth, Julius Caesar founded Novum Comum as a colonia to secure the region against the Alpine tribes, whom he had been unable to defeat
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aelian". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 256. This cites:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
