Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinople. It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic and military force in Europe. Both the terms "Byzantine Empire" and "Eastern Roman Empire" are historiographical terms created after the end of the realm. Several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empire's Greek East and Latin West diverged. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, legalised Christianity. Under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empire's official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed.
Under the reign of Heraclius, the Empire's military and administration were restructured and adopted Greek for official use in place of Latin. Thus, although the Roman state continued and its traditions were maintained, modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was centred on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, characterised by Eastern Orthodox Christianity; the borders of the empire evolved over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Justinian I, the empire reached its greatest extent after reconquering much of the Roman western Mediterranean coast, including North Africa and Rome itself, which it held for two more centuries; the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 exhausted the empire's resources and contributed to major territorial losses during the Early Muslim conquests of the 7th century, when it lost its richest provinces and Syria, to the Arab caliphate. During the Macedonian dynasty, the empire expanded again and experienced the two-century long Macedonian Renaissance, which came to an end with the loss of much of Asia Minor to the Seljuk Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071.
This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia. The empire recovered during the Komnenian restoration, by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city. However, it was delivered a mortal blow during the Fourth Crusade, when Constantinople was sacked in 1204 and the territories that the empire governed were divided into competing Byzantine Greek and Latin realms. Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small rival states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence, its remaining territories were progressively annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 ended the Byzantine Empire; the last of the imperial Byzantine successor states, the Empire of Trebizond, would be conquered by the Ottomans eight years in the 1461 Siege of Trebizond. The first use of the term "Byzantine" to label the years of the Roman Empire was in 1557, when the German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ, a collection of historical sources.
The term comes from "Byzantium", the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantine's capital. This older name of the city would be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts; the publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, in 1680 of Du Cange's Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of "Byzantine" among French authors, such as Montesquieu. However, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world; the Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the "Roman Empire", the "Empire of the Romans", "Romania", the "Roman Republic", as "Rhōmais". The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and as late as the 19th century Greeks referred to Modern Greek as Romaiika "Romaic." After 1204 when the Byzantine Empire was confined to its purely Greek provinces the term'Hellenes' was used instead. While the Byzantine Empire had a multi-ethnic character during most of its history and preserved Romano-Hellenistic traditions, it became identified by its western and northern contemporaries with its predominant Greek element.
The occasional use of the term "Empire of the Greeks" in the West to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire and of the Byzantine Emperor as Imperator Graecorum were used to separate it from the prestige of the Roman Empire within the new kingdoms of the West. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more straightforwardly seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known as Rûm; the name millet-i Rûm, or "Roman nation," was used by the Ottomans through the 20th century to refer to the former subjects of the Byzantine Empire
Aristophanes
Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive complete; these provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries. Known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author, his powers of ridicule were acknowledged by influential contemporaries. Aristophanes' second play, The Babylonians, was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian polis, it is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays The Knights, the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through that play's Chorus, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all."
Less is known about Aristophanes than about his plays. In fact, his plays are the main source of information about his life, it was conventional in Old Comedy for the Chorus to speak on behalf of the author during an address called the'parabasis' and thus some biographical facts can be found there. However, these facts relate entirely to his career as a dramatist and the plays contain few clear and unambiguous clues about his personal beliefs or his private life, he was a comic poet in an age when it was conventional for a poet to assume the role of'teacher', though this referred to his training of the Chorus in rehearsal, it covered his relationship with the audience as a commentator on significant issues. Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience, yet he declared that'other times' would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays, he sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist yet his plays espouse opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society.
He caricatured leading figures in the arts, in politics, in philosophy/religion. Such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions, it has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays to entertain the audience and to win prestigious competitions. His plays were written for production at the great dramatic festivals of Athens, the Lenaia and City Dionysia, where they were judged and awarded prizes in competition with the works of other comic dramatists. An elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five; these judges reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is much uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were huge, with seating for at least 10,000 at the Theatre of Dionysus; the day's program at the City Dionysia for example was crowded, with three tragedies and a'satyr' play ahead of a comedy, but it is possible that many of the poorer citizens occupied the festival holiday with other pursuits.
The conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience. The production process might have influenced the views expressed in the plays. Throughout most of Aristophanes' career, the Chorus was essential to a play's success and it was recruited and funded by a choregus, a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. A choregus could regard his personal expenditure on the Chorus as a civic duty and a public honour, but Aristophanes showed in The Knights that wealthy citizens might regard civic responsibilities as punishment imposed on them by demagogues and populists like Cleon, thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, on whose generosity all dramatists depended for putting on their plays. When Aristophanes' first play The Banqueters was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year.
His plays express pride in the achievement of the older generation yet they are not jingoistic, they are staunchly opposed to the war with Sparta. The plays are scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. By the time his last play was produced Athens had been defeated in war, its empire had been dismantled and it had undergone a transformation from being the political to the intellectual centre of Greece. Aristophanes was part of this transformation and he shared in the intellectual fashions of the period—the structure of his plays evolves from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play, Wealth II, it more resembles New Comedy; however it is uncertain whether he led or responded to changes in audience expectations. Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play The Banqueters, he won first prize there with The Babylonians. It was usual for foreign d
Baelo Claudia
Baelo Claudia is the name of an ancient Roman town, located 22 kilometres outside of Tarifa, near the village of Bolonia, in southern Spain. Lying on the shores of the Strait of Gibraltar, the town was a fishing village and trade link when it was settled some 2,000 years ago. Although prosperous at the time of Emperor Claudius, it went into a decline hastened by earthquakes and was abandoned by the 6th century; the study of its architectural remains shows its Roman origin at the end of the 2nd century BC observed since that time a great wealth that makes it an important economic center in the Mediterranean area. Baelo Claudia is situated on the northern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar; the town was founded in the end of the 2nd century BC as a result of trade with North Africa. It is possible that Baelo Claudia had some functions of governmental administration, but tuna fishing and the production of garum were the primary sources of wealth; the city was successful enough to be granted the title of municipium by Emperor Claudius.
The life of the inhabitants reached its greatest splendor during the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD. In the middle of the 2nd century, the town declined as a result of a major earthquake which wiped out a large part. In addition to such natural disasters, by the 3rd century, the town was beset by hordes of pirates, both Germanic and Barbary. Although it experienced a slight renaissance in the century, by the 6th century, the town had been abandoned. Excavations have revealed the most comprehensive remains of a Roman town in the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, with interesting monuments such as the basilica, theatre and the temple of Isis; the spectacular setting in El Estrecho Natural Park allows the visitor to see the coast of Morocco. A modern Visitor Centre has a comprehensive introduction to the site, it offers parking, toilets, a shop and good views of the sea. Admission is free to citizens of the European Economic Area on production of an ID card; the figure of Jorge Bonsor is key in the recovery of the archaeological site.
In its urban layout are distinguished the two main classical routes of the Roman city: the decumanus maximus, which ran from East to West and at the ends were located the entrance to the city, the cardo maximus, which crosses it at a right angle and therefore in a north-south direction. In the meeting of these two main streets was the forum or main square, whose current pavement is the original slabs of Tarifa preserved since the 1st century, around which the main public buildings were distributed; this was an open square with porticos on three sides, from one of which three of them were accessed: the emperor's temple, the curia, another that served as a meeting room. The main building, located in the background is the basilica, for various purposes and the seat of the courts of justice. In the archaeological site the most representative elements that constituted the essence of a Roman city are preserved; this one had: A walls, reinforced with more than forty watchtowers, of which the main gates of the city are conserved, the one, directed to Gades, to the west, the one, directed a Carteia.
Towards the East, there existed a third door located to the north of the city, called Puerta de Asido. Buildings of an administrative nature such as curia or the municipal archive. A public square. A courthouse, located in the forum in front of the temples, it has rectangular plant and measures 19.5 by 35.5 meters. It was presided by a statue of the emperor Trajan more than three meters high. Four temples: three dedicated to each of the components of the Capitoline Triad and one dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis, related to the Isiac cult in the peninsula discovered by a group of archaeologists of Histdeutsch. A similar provision has only been found in the city of Sbeitla in Tunisia; the largest building in Baelo Claudia is the theater, with a capacity of up to 2000 people, where all the actors were men in the roles of women, which to interpret were they put on masks, depending on the character they represented. You can see remains of the shops, the market, enclosed area intended for the sale of meat and edible in general and formed by fourteen stores and an inner courtyard.
The water supply of the city was carried out by means of four aqueducts. The industrial area can be seen with remains of the garum manufacturing facilities, aqueducts, remnants of the sewerage system, etc. In no other Roman site of the Iberian Peninsula is it possible to extract after the visit such a complete vision of Roman urbanism as in Baelo Claudia. In this lies its main interest, highlighted by the spectacular landscape that surrounds the city. Bien de Interés Cultural, its publication as a Monument appeared in La Gaceta de Madrid, in the year 1925; the archaeological site has been accompanied by a museum since 2007, incorporated into the Institutional Headquarters and Visitors Center of the Archaeological Site of Baelo Claudia, designed by the architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra. The archaeological site is next to a tourist area, so it is beginning to exploit its potential cultural tourism; the site is accessed and visits are free, except for foreigners who must pay a fee to visit it.
The Junta de Andalucía has built a new Visitor Reception Center and has carried out a
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder was a Roman author and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, friend of emperor Vespasian. Spending most of his spare time studying and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field, Pliny wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias, his nephew, Pliny the Younger, wrote of him in a letter to the historian Tacitus: For my part I deem those blessed to whom, by favour of the gods, it has been granted either to do what is worth writing of, or to write what is worth reading. In the latter number will be my uncle, of your compositions. Pliny the Younger refers to Tacitus’s reliance upon his uncle's book, the History of the German Wars. Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting the rescue of a friend and his family by ship from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which had destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum; the wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the volcano’s eruption did not allow his ship to leave port, Pliny died during that event.
Pliny's dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and a statement of his nephew that he died in his 56th year, which would put his birth in AD 23 or 24. Pliny was the son of an equestrian, Gaius Plinius Celer, his wife, Marcella. Neither the younger nor the elder Pliny mention the names, 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 form is an elegy; the most accepted reconstruction is PLINIVS SECVNDVS AVGV. LERI. PATRI. MATRI. MARCELLAE. TESTAMENTO FIERI IVSSOThe Vs represent Us, it should say "Plinius Secundus augur ordered this to be made as a testament to his father ler and his mother Marcella"The actual words are fragmentary. 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 an unknown source that he claims was ancient, that Pliny was from Verona and that his parents were Celer and Marcella.
Hardouin cites the conterraneity of Catullus. How the inscription got to Verona is unknown, but it could have arrived by dispersal of property from Pliny the Younger's Tuscan estate at Colle Plinio, north of Città di Castello, identified for certain by his initials in the roof tiles, he kept statues of his ancestors there. Pliny the Elder was born at Como, not at Verona: it is only as a native of old Gallia Transpadana that he calls Catullus of Verona his conterraneus, or fellow-countryman, not his municeps, or fellow-townsman. A statue of Pliny on the façade of the Duomo of Como celebrates him as a native son, he had a sister, 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 uncle's 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", which means that he maintained the customs of the great Roman forefathers.
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 younger's career as the 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. Therefore, Plinia was a local girl and Pliny the Elder, her brother, was from Como. Gaius was a member of the Plinia gens: the insubric root Plina still persists, with rhotacism, in the local surname "Prina", he did not take his father's cognomen, but assumed his own, Secundus. As his adopted son took the same cognomen, Pliny founded the Plinii Secundi; the family was prosperous. No earlier instances of the Plinii are known. In 59 BC, only about 82 years before Pliny's birth, Julius Caesar founded Novum Comum as a colonia to secure the region against the Alpine tribes, whom he had been unable to defeat, he imported a population of 4,500 from other provinces to be placed in Comasco and 500 aristocratic Greeks to found Novum Comum itself.
The community was thus multi-ethnic and the Plinies could have come from anywhere. No record of any ethnic distinctions in Pliny's time is apparent; the population prided themselves on being Roman citizens. Pliny the Elder had no children. In his will, he adopted his nephew; the adoption is called a "testamental adoption" by writers on the topic, who assert that it applied to the name change only, but Roman jurisprudence recognizes no such category. Pliny the Younger thus became the adopted son of Pliny the Elder after the latter's death. Fo
Onion
The onion known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable, the most cultivated species of the genus Allium. Its close relatives include the garlic, leek and Chinese onion; this genus contains several other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion, the tree onion, the Canada onion. The name "wild onion" is applied to a number of Allium species, but A. cepa is known from cultivation. Its ancestral wild original form is not known, although escapes from cultivation have become established in some regions; the onion is most a biennial or a perennial plant, but is treated as an annual and harvested in its first growing season. The onion plant has a fan of hollow, bluish-green leaves and its bulb at the base of the plant begins to swell when a certain day-length is reached; the bulbs are composed of shortened, underground stems surrounded by fleshy modified scale that envelop a central bud at the tip of the stem. In the autumn, the foliage dies down and the outer layers of the bulb become dry and brittle.
The crop is harvested and dried and the onions are ready for use or storage. The crop is prone to attack by a number of pests and diseases the onion fly, the onion eelworm, various fungi cause rotting; some varieties of A. cepa, such as shallots and potato onions, produce multiple bulbs. Onions are used around the world; as a food item, they are served cooked, as a vegetable or part of a prepared savoury dish, but can be eaten raw or used to make pickles or chutneys. They are pungent when contain certain chemical substances which irritate the eyes; the onion plant known as the bulb onion or common onion, is the most cultivated species of the genus Allium. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1753 work Species Plantarum. A number of synonyms have appeared in its taxonomic history: Allium cepa var. aggregatum – G. Don Allium cepa var. bulbiferum – Regel Allium cepa var. cepa – Linnaeus Allium cepa var. multiplicans – L. H. Bailey Allium cepa var. proliferum – Regel Allium cepa var. solaninum – Alef Allium cepa var. viviparum – Mansf.
A. Cepa is known from cultivation, but related wild species occur in Central Asia; the most related species include A. vavilovii and A. asarense from Iran. However and Hopf state that "there are doubts whether the A. vavilovii collections tested represent genuine wild material or only feral derivatives of the crop."The vast majority of cultivars of A. cepa belong to the "common onion group" and are referred to as "onions". The Aggregatum group of cultivars includes both shallots and potato onions; the genus Allium contains a number of other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion, Egyptian onion, Canada onion. Cepa is accepted as Latin for "onion" and has an affinity with Ancient Greek: κάπια and Albanian: qepë and is ancestral to Aromanian: tseapã, Catalan: ceba, Occitan: ceba, Spanish: cebolla, Romanian: ceapă; the English word chive is derived from the Old French cive, which derived from cepa. The onion plant has been selectively bred in cultivation for at least 7,000 years.
It is a biennial plant, but is grown as an annual. Modern varieties grow to a height of 15 to 45 cm; the leaves are yellowish - to bluish green and grow alternately in a fan-shaped swathe. They are fleshy and cylindrical, with one flattened side, they are at their broadest about a quarter of the way up, beyond which they taper towards a blunt tip. The base of each leaf is a flattened white sheath that grows out of a basal disc. From the underside of the disc, a bundle of fibrous roots extends for a short way into the soil; as the onion matures, food reserves begin to accumulate in the leaf bases and the bulb of the onion swells. In the autumn, the leaves die back and the outer scales of the bulb become dry and brittle, so the crop is normally harvested. If left in the soil over winter, the growing point in the middle of the bulb begins to develop in the spring. New leaves appear and a long, hollow stem expands, topped by a bract protecting a developing inflorescence; the inflorescence takes the form of a globular umbel of white flowers with parts in sixes.
The seeds are glossy triangular in cross section. The average pH of an onion is around 5.5 Because the wild onion is extinct and ancient records of using onions span western and eastern Asia, the geographic origin of the onion is uncertain, with domestication worldwide. Food uses of onions date back thousands of years in China and Persia. Traces of onions recovered from Bronze Age settlements in China suggest that onions were used as far back as 5000 BCE, not only for their flavour, but the bulb's durability in storage and transport. Ancient Egyptians revered the onion bulb, viewing its spherical shape and concentric rings as symbols of eternal life. Onions were used in Egyptian burials, as evidenced by onion traces found in the eye sockets of Ramesses IV. Pliny the Elder of the first century CE wrote about the use of onions and cabbage in Pompeii, he documented Roman beliefs about the onion's ability to improve ocular ailments, aid in sleep, heal everything from oral sores and toothaches to dog bites and dysentery.
Archaeologists une
Liguria
Liguria is a coastal region of north-western Italy. The region coincides with the Italian Riviera and is popular with tourists for its beaches and cuisine; the name Liguria predates Latin and is of obscure origin, however the Latin adjectives Ligusticum and Liguscus reveal the original -sc- in the root ligusc-, which shortened to -s- and turned into -r- in the Latin name Liguria according to rhotacism. The formant -sc- is present in the names Etruscan, Gascony and is believed by some researchers to relate to maritime people or sailors. Compare Greek Lígus λίγυς, a Ligurian, a person from Liguria, whence Ligustikḗ λιγυστική, the name of the place Liguria. Liguria is bordered by France to the west, Piedmont to the north, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany to the east, it lies on the Ligurian Sea. The narrow strip of land is bordered by the Alps and the Apennines mountains; some mountains rise above 2,000 m. The highest point of the region is the summit of Monte Saccarello; the winding arched extension goes from Ventimiglia to La Spezia.
Of this, 3,524.08 km2 are mountainous and 891.95 km2 are hills. Liguria's natural reserves cover 600 km2 of land, they are made up of one national reserve, six large parks, two smaller parks and three nature reserves. The continental shelf is narrow, so steep it descends immediately to considerable depths along its 350-kilometre coastline. Except for the Portovenere and Portofino promontories, the coast is not jagged, is high. At the mouths of the biggest watercourses are small beaches, but there are no deep bays and natural harbours except at Genoa and La Spezia; the hills lying beyond the coast together with the sea account for a mild climate year-round. Average winter temperatures are 7 to 10 °C and summer temperatures are 23 to 24 °C, which make for a pleasant stay in the dead of winter. Rainfall can be abundant at times, as mountains close to the coast create an orographic effect. Genoa and La Spezia can see up to 2,000 mm of rain in a year. According to classical sources, the Ligurians once lived in a far broader territory than present-day Liguria.
For example, the Greek colony of Massalia, modern Marseille, was recorded to lie in Ligurian territory. During the first Punic War, the ancient Ligurians were divided, some of them siding with Carthage and a minority with Rome, whose allies included the future Genoese. Under Augustus, Liguria was designated a region of Italy stretching from the coast to the banks of the Po River; the great Roman roads helped increase communication and trade. Important towns developed on the coast, of which evidence is left in the ruins of Albenga and Luni. Between the 4th and the 10th centuries Liguria was dominated by the Byzantines, the Lombards of King Rothari and the Franks, it was invaded by Saracen and Norman raiders. In the 10th century, once the danger of pirates decreased, the Ligurian territory was divided into three marches: Obertenga and Aleramica. In the 11th and 12th centuries the marches were split into fees, with the strengthening of the bishops’ power, the feudal structure began to weaken; the main Ligurian towns on the coast, became city-states, over which Genoa soon extended its rule.
Inland, fiefs belonging to noble families survived for a long time. Between the 11th century and the 15th century, the Republic of Genoa experienced an extraordinary political and commercial success, it was one of the most powerful maritime republics in the Mediterranean from the 12th to the 14th century: after the decisive victory in the battle of Meloria, it acquired control over the Tyrrhenian Sea and was present in the nerve centres of power during the last phase of the Byzantine empire, having colonies up to Black Sea and Crimean. After the introduction of the title of doge for life and the election of Simone Boccanegra, Genoa resumed its struggles against the Marquis of Finale and the Counts of Laigueglia and it conquered again the territories of Finale and Porto Maurizio. In spite of its military and commercial successes, Genoa fell prey to the internal factions which put pressure on its political structure. Due to the vulnerable situation, the rule of the republic went to the hands of the Visconti family of Milan.
After their expulsion by the popular forces under Boccanegra’s lead, the republic remained in Genoese hands until 1396, when the internal instability led the doge Antoniotto Adorno to surrender the title of Seignior of Genoa to the king of France. The French were driven away in 1409 and Liguria went back under Milanese control in 1421, thus remaining until 1435; the alternation of French and Milanese dominions over Liguria went on until the first half of the 16th century. The French influence ceased in 1528, when Andrea Doria allied with the powerful king of Spain and imposed an aristocratic government, which gave the republic a relative stability fo
Soy sauce
Soy sauce is a liquid condiment of Chinese origin, made from a fermented paste of soybeans, roasted grain and Aspergillus oryzae or Aspergillus sojae molds. Soy sauce in its current form was created about 2,200 years ago during the Western Han dynasty of ancient China, spread throughout East and Southeast Asia where it is used in cooking and as a condiment. Soy sauce is considered as old as soy paste—a type of fermented paste obtained from soybeans—which had appeared during the Western Han dynasty and was listed in the bamboo slips found in the archaeological site Mawangdui. There are several precursors of soy sauce. Among them the earliest one is Qingjiang, listed in Simin Yueling. Others are Jiangqing and Chiqing which are recorded in Qimin Yaoshu in AD 540. By the time of the Song dynasty, the term soy sauce had become the accepted name for the liquid condiment, which are documented in two books: Shanjia Qinggong and Pujiang Wushi Zhongkuilu during the Song dynasty. Like many salty condiments, soy sauce was a way to stretch salt an expensive commodity.
During the Zhou dynasty of ancient China, fermented fish with salt was used as a condiment in which soybeans were included during the fermentation process. By the time of the Han dynasty, this had been replaced with the recipe for soy paste and its by-product soy sauce, by using soybeans as the principal ingredient, with fermented fish-based sauces developing separately into fish sauce; the 19th century Sinologist Samuel Wells Williams wrote that in China, the best soy sauce is "made by boiling beans soft, adding an equal quantity of wheat or barley, leaving the mass to ferment. The earliest soy sauce brewing in Korea seems to have begun prior to the era of the Three Kingdoms c. 57 BC. The Records of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese historical text written and published in the 3rd century, mentions that "Goguryeo people are good at brewing fermented soy beans." In the section named Dongyi, in the Book of Wei. Jangdoks used for soy sauce brewing are found in the mural paintings of Anak Tomb No.3 from the 4th century Goguryeo.
In Samguk Sagi, a historical record of the Three Kingdoms era, it is written that ganjang and doenjang along with meju and jeotgal were prepared for the wedding ceremony of the King Sinmun in February 683. Sikhwaji, a section from Goryeosa, recorded that ganjang and doenjang were included in the relief supplies in 1018, after a Khitan invasion, in 1052, when a famine occurred. Joseon texts such as Guhwangchwaryo and Jeungbo sallim gyeongje contain the detailed procedures on how to brew good quality ganjang and doenjang. Gyuhap chongseo explains how to pick a date for brewing, what to forbear, how to keep and preserve ganjang and doenjang. Chinese Buddhist monks introduced soy sauce into Japan in the 7th century, where it is known as shōyu. Records of the Dutch East India Company list soy sauce as a commodity in 1737, when seventy-five large barrels were shipped from Dejima, Japan, to Batavia on the island of Java. Thirty-five barrels from that shipment were shipped to the Netherlands. In the 18th century and scholar Isaac Titsingh published accounts of brewing soy sauce.
Although earlier descriptions of soy sauce had been disseminated in the West, his was among the earliest to focus on the brewing of the Japanese version. By the mid-19th century, Japanese soy sauce disappeared from the European market, the condiment became synonymous with the Chinese product. Europeans were unable to make soy sauce because they did not understand the function of Aspergillus oryzae, the fungus used in its brewing. Soy sauce made from ingredients such as Portobello mushrooms were disseminated in European cookbooks during the late 18th century. A Swedish recipe for "Soija" was published in the 1770 edition of Cajsa Warg's Hjelpreda i Hushållningen för Unga Fruentimber and was flavored with allspice and mace. Soy sauce is made either by hydrolysis; some commercial sauces have both chemical sauces. Flavor and aroma developments during production are attributed to non-enzymatic Maillard browning. Variation is achieved as the result of different methods and durations of fermentation, different ratios of water and fermented soy, or through the addition of other ingredients.
Traditional soy sauces are made by mixing soybeans and grain with mold cultures such as Aspergillus oryzae and other related microorganisms and yeasts. The mixture was fermented in large urns and under the sun, believed to contribute extra flavors. Today, the mixture is placed in a humidity controlled incubation chamber. Traditional soy sauces take months to make: Soaking and cooking: The soybeans are soaked in water and boiled until cooked. Wheat is roasted, crushed. Koji culturing: An equal amount of boiled soybeans and roasted wheat are mixed to form a grain mixture. A culture of Aspergillus spore is added to the grain mixture and mixed or the mixture is allowed to gather spores from the environment itself; the cultures include: Aspergillus: a genus of fungus, used for f
