Gepids
The Gepids were an East Germanic tribe. They were closely related to, or a subdivision of, the Goths and they are first recorded in 6th-century historiography as having been allied with the Goths in the invasion of Dacia in c. In the 4th century, they were incorporated into the Hunnic Empire, under their leader Ardaric, the Gepids united with other Germanic tribes and defeated the Huns at the Battle of Nedao in 454. The Gepids founded a kingdom centered on Sirmium, known as Gepidia, remnants of the Gepids were conquered by the Avars in the 6th century. Jordanes reports that their name is from gepanta, an insult meaning sluggish, an Old English form of their name is recorded in Widsith, as Gefþ-, alongside the name of the Wends. The Gepids were the most shadowy of all the major Germanic peoples of the migration period, neither Tacitus nor Ptolemy mentioned them in their detailed lists of the barbarians, suggesting that the Gepids emerged only in the 3rd century AD. The first sporadic references to them, which were recorded in the late 3rd century, the 6th-century Byzantine writer, listed the Gepids among the Gothic nations, along with the Vandals and Goths proper, in his Wars of Justinian.
All information of the Gepids origins came from malicious and convoluted Gothic legends, according to Jordanes narration the northern island of Scandza, which is associated with Sweden by modern scholars, was the original homeland of the ancestors of the Goths and Gepids. They left Scandza in three boats under the leadership of Berig, the legendary Gothic King, Jordanes writes that the Gepids ancestors traveled in the last of the three ships, for which their fellows mocked them as gepanta, or slow and stolid. They settled along the shore of the Baltic Sea on an island at mouth of the Vistula River, called Gepedoius, or the Gepids fruitful meadows. Jordanes passage in his Getica is the following, Should you ask how the and Gepidae are kinsmen, I can tell you in a few words. One of these three ships proved to be slower than the others, as is usually the case, and thus is said to have given the tribe their name, for in their language gepanta means slow. Hence it came to pass that gradually and by corruption the name Gepidae was coined for them by way of reproach.
For undoubtedly they too trace their origin from the stock of the Goths, but because, as I have said, gepanta means something slow and stolid, the word Gepidae arose as a gratuitous name of reproach. Modern historians who write of the Gepids early history tend to apply a mixed argumentation, according to Jordanes, the Gepids decided to leave Gepedoius during the reign of their legendary king, Fastida. They moved to the south and defeated the Burgundians, after the victory, Fastida demanded land from Ostrogotha, King of the Visigoths, because the Gepids territory was hemmed in by rugged mountains and dense forests. Ostrogotha refused Fastidas demand and the Gepids joined battle with the Goths at the town of Galtis, near which the river Auha flowed and they fought until darkness when Fastida and his Gepids withdrew from the battlefield and returned to their land. Archaeologist Kurdt Horedt writes that the battle took place east of the Carpathian Mountains after 248, on the other hand, historian István Bóna says that the two armies clashed in the former province of Dacia around 290
Bible
The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. Many different authors contributed to the Bible, what is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups, a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, the New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect. Attitudes towards the Bible differ amongst Christian groups and this concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching.
With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the book of all time. It has estimated sales of 100 million copies, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West. The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin. Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra holy book, while biblia in Greek and it gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. Latin biblia sacra holy books translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, the word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of paper or scroll and came to be used as the ordinary word for book. It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, Egyptian papyrus, possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece, the Greek ta biblia was an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books.
Christian use of the term can be traced to c.223 CE, bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in oral traditions. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, the oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin Bible is the Codex Amiatinus and he states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that, Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, the period of transmission is short, less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Marks Gospel.
This means that there was time for oral traditions to assume fixed form
Cappadocia
Cappadocia is a historical region in Central Anatolia, largely in the Nevşehir, Kayseri, Kırşehir, and Niğde Provinces in Turkey. According to Herodotus, in the time of the Ionian Revolt, in these lists of countries, the Old Persian name is Haspaduya, which according to some researchers is derived from Iranian Huw-aspa-dahyu- the land/country of beautiful horses. Others proposed that Kat-patuka came from the Luwian language, meaning Low Country, subsequent research suggests that the adverb katta meaning down, below is exclusively Hittite, while its Luwian equivalent is zanta. Therefore the recent modification of this proposal operates with the Hittite katta peda-, Herodotus tells us that the name of the Cappadocians was applied to them by the Persians, while they were termed by the Greeks Syrians or White Syrians Leucosyri. Cappadocia appears in the account given in the book of Acts 2,9. The Cappadocians were named as one group hearing the Gospel account from Galileans in their own language on the day of Pentecost shortly after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Acts 2,5 seems to suggest that the Cappadocians in this account were God-fearing Jews.
The region is mentioned in the Jewish Mishnah, in Ketubot 13,11. This division had come about before the time of Xenophon. The kingdom of Cappadocia still existed in the time of Strabo as a independent state. Cilicia was the given to the district in which Caesarea. The only two cities of Cappadocia considered by Strabo to deserve that appellation were Caesarea and Tyana, not far from the foot of the Taurus, Cappadocia lies in central Anatolia, in the heartland of what is now Turkey. The relief consists of a plateau over 1000 m in altitude that is pierced by volcanic peaks. The boundaries of historical Cappadocia are vague, particularly towards the west, to the south, the Taurus Mountains form the boundary with Cilicia and separate Cappadocia from the Mediterranean Sea. To the west, Cappadocia is bounded by the regions of Lycaonia to the southwest. This results in an area approximately 400 km east–west and 250 km north–south, due to its inland location and high altitude, Cappadocia has a markedly continental climate, with hot dry summers and cold snowy winters.
Rainfall is sparse and the region is largely semi-arid, Cappadocia was known as Hatti in the late Bronze Age, and was the homeland of the Hittite power centred at Hattusa. After ending the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great tried to rule the area one of his military commanders. But Ariarathes, a Persian aristocrat, somehow became king of the Cappadocians, as Ariarathes I, he was a successful ruler, and he extended the borders of the Cappadocian Kingdom as far as to the Black Sea
Codex Argenteus
The Codex Argenteus, is a 6th-century manuscript, originally containing bishop Ulfilass 4th century translation of the Bible into the Gothic language. Of the original 336 folios, 188—including the Speyer fragment discovered in 1970—have been preserved, a part of it is on permanent display at the Carolina Rediviva library in Uppsala, Sweden. The Silver Bible was probably written for the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great, either at his seat in Ravenna. It was made as a special and impressive book written with gold and silver ink on high-quality thin vellum stained a regal purple, after Theodorics death in 526 the Silver Bible is not mentioned in inventories or book lists for a thousand years. Parts of the Codex Argenteus,187 of the original 336 parchment folia, were preserved at the former Benedictine abbey of Werden, the abbots at Werden were imperial princes and had a seat in the Imperial Diet. While the precise date of the Silver Bible is unknown, it was rediscovered at Werden in the 16th century, the book, or the remaining part of it, came to rest in the library of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II at his imperial seat in Prague.
At the end of the Thirty Years War, in 1648, after the Battle of Prague, it was taken as war booty to Stockholm, Sweden, to the library of Queen Christina of Sweden. After her conversion to Catholicism and her abdication, the book went to the Netherlands among the property of Isaac Vossius, her former librarian, in 1654. In the 1660s, it was bought and taken to Uppsala University by Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, the codex remains at the Uppsala University Library in the Carolina Rediviva building. On 5 April 1995, parts of the Codex that were on display in Carolina Rediviva were stolen. The stolen parts were recovered one month later, in a box at the Stockholm Central Railway Station. The details of the Codexs wanderings for a thousand years remain a mystery, in 1998 the codex was subjected to carbon-14 analysis, the codex was dated to the sixth century. It was determined that the manuscript had been bound at least once during the sixteenth century, the final leaf of the codex, fol. 336, was discovered in October 1970 in Speyer, Germany,321 km south-east of Werden and it was found at the restoration of the Agsburgs Saint Afra chapel, rolled around a thin wooden staff, contained in a small reliquary originating in Aschaffenburg.
The leaf contains the final verses of the Gospel of Mark and this was kindly made available to me, with his notable generosity towards all researchers, by the most reverend and learned Maximilien Morillon, from among the papers of his late brother Antoine. In 1597, Bonaventura Vulcanius, Leiden professor of Greek, published his book De literis et lingua Getarum sive Gothorum, I have heard that a manuscript copy of this, and a very ancient one, written in Gothic capital letters, is lurking in some German library. Another edition of 1854–7 by Anders Uppström contained a rendition of another page. In 1927, an edition of the Codex was published
Sarmatians
The Sarmatians were a large confederation of Iranian people during classical antiquity, flourishing from about the 5th century BC to the 4th century AD. They spoke Scythian, an Indo-European language from the Eastern Iranian family and their territory, which was known as Sarmatia to Greco-Roman ethnographers, corresponded to the western part of greater Scythia. In the 1st century AD the Sarmatians began encroaching upon the Roman Empire in alliance with Germanic tribes, in the 3rd century AD their dominance of the Pontic Steppe was broken by the Germanic Goths. With the Hunnic invasions of the 4th century, many Sarmatians joined the Goths, a related people to the Sarmatians known as the Alans survived in the North Caucasus into the Early Middle Ages, ultimately giving rise to the modern Ossetic ethnic group. The Sarmatians were eventually assimilated and absorbed by the Proto-Slavic population of Eastern Europe. Sarmatae probably originated as just one of several names of the Sarmatians. Strabo in the 1st century names as the tribes of the Sarmatians the Iazyges, the Roxolani, the Aorsi.
The Greek name Sarmatai sometimes appears as Sauromatai, which is almost certainly no more than a variant of the same name, historians often regarded these as two separate peoples, while archaeologists habitually use the term Sauromatian to identify the earliest phase of Sarmatian culture. Any idea that the name derives from the lizard, linking to the Sarmatians use of reptile-like scale armour. Both Pliny the Elder and Jordanes recognised the Sar- and Sauro- elements as interchangeable variants, Greek authors of the 4th century mention Syrmatae as the name of a people living at the Don, perhaps reflecting the ethnonym as it was pronounced in the final phase of Sarmatian culture. Oleg Trubachyov derived the name from the Indo-Aryan *sar-mat, the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian word *sar-, by this derivation was noted the unusual high status of women from the Greek point of view and went to the invention of Amazons. Other scholars, like Harold Walter Bailey, derived the word from Avestan sar- from tsar- in Old Iranian.
It was derived from the name of Avestan region in the west Sairima, recently R. M. Kozlova derived it from *Sъrm- < Proto-Slavic adjective *sъrmatъ, with the meaning that is rich with sormima i. e. shallows, referring to the rivers. The Sarmatians emerged in the 7th century BC in a region of the steppe to the east of the Don River, for centuries they lived in relatively peaceful co-existence with their western neighbors the Scythians. Then, in the 3rd century BC, they fought with the Scythians on the Pontic steppe to the north of the Black Sea, the Sarmatians were to dominate these territories over the next five centuries. Pliny the Elder wrote that they ranged from the Vistula River to the Danube, in 1947, Soviet archaeologist Boris Grakov defined a culture flourishing from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD, apparent in late kurgan graves, sometimes reusing part of much older kurgans. It was a nomadic steppe culture ranging from the Black Sea eastward to beyond the Volga, in Hungary, a great Late Sarmatian pottery centre was reportedly unearthed between 2001 and 2006 near Budapest, in the Üllő5 archaeological site.
Typical grey, granular Üllő5 ceramics form a group of Sarmatian pottery found everywhere in the north central part of the Great Hungarian Plain region
Christology
Christology is the field of study within Christian theology which is primarily concerned with the nature and person of Jesus as recorded in the canonical Gospels and the epistles of the New Testament. Primary considerations include the relationship of Jesus nature and person with the nature, as such, Christology is concerned with the details of Jesus ministry, his acts and teachings, to arrive at a clearer understanding of who he is in his person, and his role in salvation. The views of Paul the Apostle provided a major component of the Christology of the Apostolic Age, Pauls central themes included the notion of the pre-existence of Christ and the worship of Christ as Kyrios. The pre-existence of Christ became a theme of Christology. Proponents of Christs deity argue the Old Testament has many cases of Christophany, Christophany is often considered a more accurate term than the term theophany due to the belief that all the visible manifestations of God are in fact the preincarnate Christ.
Many argue that the appearances of the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament were the preincarnate Christ, many understand the angel of the Lord as a true theophany. From the time of Justin on, the figure has been regarded as the preincarnate Logos, following the Apostolic Age, the early church engaged in fierce and often politicized debate on many interrelated issues. Christology became a focus of these debates, and every one of the first seven ecumenical councils addressed Christological issues. The second through fourth of these councils are generally entitled Christological councils, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 issued a formulation of the being of Christ — that of two natures, one human and one divine, united with neither confusion nor division. Chalcedonian Christianity - Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and many Protestant Christians - continue to advocate this doctrine of the hypostatic union, due to politically-charged differences in the 4th century, schisms developed, and the first denominations formed.
In the 13th century, Saint Thomas Aquinas provided the first systematic Christology that consistently resolved a number of the existing issues, in his Christology from above, Aquinas championed the principle of perfection of Christs human attributes. The Middle Ages witnessed the emergence of the image of Jesus as a friend. Over the centuries, a number of terms and concepts have been developed within the framework of Christology to address the seemingly simple questions, a good deal of theological debate has ensued and significant schisms within Christian denominations took place in the process of providing answers to these questions. After the Middle Ages, systematic approaches to Christology were developed, the term Christology from above refers to approaches that begin with the divinity and pre-existence of Christ as the Logos, as expressed in the prologue to the Gospel of John. These approaches interpret the works of Christ in terms of his divinity, Christology from above was emphasized in the ancient Church, beginning with Ignatius of Antioch in the second century.
The term Christology from below, on the hand, refers to approaches that begin with the human aspects and the ministry of Jesus and move towards his divinity. The concept of Cosmic Christology, first elaborated by Saint Paul, the terms functional and soteriological have been used to refer to the perspectives that analyze the works, the being and the salvific standpoints of Christology. Some essential sub-topics within the field of Christology include the incarnation, the resurrection, the term monastic Christology has been used to describe spiritual approaches developed by Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux
Mars (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Mars was the god of war and an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in only to Jupiter and he was the most prominent of the military gods in the religion of the Roman army. Most of his festivals were held in March, the named for him, and in October. Under the influence of Greek culture, Mars was identified with the Greek god Ares, whose myths were reinterpreted in Roman literature and art under the name of Mars. But the character and dignity of Mars differed in fundamental ways from that of his Greek counterpart, Mars was a part of the Archaic Triad along with Jupiter and Quirinus, the latter of whom as a guardian of the Roman people had no Greek equivalent. Mars altar in the Campus Martius, the area of Rome that took its name from him, was supposed to have been dedicated by Numa, the peace-loving semi-legendary second king of Rome. Although Ares was viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force, Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace, in the mythic genealogy and founding myths of Rome, Mars was the father of Romulus and Remus with Rhea Silvia.
Like Ares who was the son of Zeus and Hera, Mars is usually considered to be the son of Jupiter, however, in a version of his birth given by Ovid, he was the son of Juno alone. Jupiter had usurped the mothers function when he gave birth to Minerva directly from his forehead, to restore the balance, Flora obtained a magic flower and tested it on a heifer who became fecund at once. She plucked a flower ritually using her thumb, touched Junos belly, Juno withdrew to Thrace and the shore of Marmara for the birth. Ovid tells this story in the Fasti, his poetic work on the Roman calendar. In the earliest Roman calendar, March was the first month, Ovid is the only source for the story. The consort of Mars was Nerio or Nerine and she represents the vital force and majesty of Mars. Her name was regarded as Sabine in origin and is equivalent to Latin virtus, in the early 3rd century BC, the comic playwright Plautus has a reference to Mars greeting Nerio, his wife. A source from late antiquity says that Mars and Nerine were celebrated together at a festival held on March 23, in the Roman Empire, Nerine came to be identified with Minerva.
Nerio probably originates as a personification of Mars power, as such abstractions in Latin are generally feminine. Her name appears with that of Mars in an archaic prayer invoking a series of abstract qualities, the influence of Greek mythology and its anthropomorphic gods may have caused Roman writers to treat these pairs as marriages. The union of Venus and Mars held greater appeal for poets and philosophers, in Greek myth, the adultery of Ares and Aphrodite had been exposed to ridicule when her husband Hephaestus caught them in the act by means of a magical snare
Dacia
In ancient geography, especially in Roman sources, Dacia was the land inhabited by the Dacians. The Greeks referred to them as the Getae, which were specifically a branch of the Thracians north of the Haemus Mons, Dacia was bounded in the south approximately by the Danubius river, in Greek sources the Istros, or at its greatest extent, by the Haemus Mons. Moesia, a region south of the Danube, was an area where the Getae lived and interacted with the Ancient Greeks. In the east it was bounded by the Pontus Euxinus and the river Danastris, but several Dacian settlements are recorded between the rivers Dniester and Hypanis, and the Tisia to the west. At times Dacia included areas between the Tisa and the Middle Danube, the Carpathian Mountains were located in the middle of Dacia. It thus corresponds to the present day countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Bulgaria, Hungary. Dacian tribes had both peaceful and military encounters with neighboring tribes, such as Sarmatians, Scythians.
A Dacian Kingdom of variable size existed between 82 BC until the Roman conquest in AD106, the Dacians are first mentioned in the writings of the Ancient Greeks, in Herodotus and Thucydides. The extent and location of Dacia varied in its three historical periods, The Dacia of King Burebista, stretched from the Black Sea to the river Tisa. During that period, the Geto-Dacians conquered a territory and Dacia extended from the Middle Danube to the Black Sea littoral. In 53 BC, Julius Caesar stated that the lands of the Dacians started on the edge of the Hercynian Forest. After Burebistas death, his kingdom split in four states, the hold of the Dacians between the Danube and Tisza was tenuous. However, the archaeologist Parducz argued a Dacian presence west of the Tisa dating from the time of Burebista, according to Tacitus Dacians bordered Germania in the south-east, while Sarmatians bordered it in the east. Written a few decades after the Roman conquest of parts of Dacia in AD 105–106, according to the scholars interpretation of Ptolemy Dacia was the region between the rivers Tisza, upper Dniester, and Siret.
Mainstream historians accept this interpretation, Avery Berenger Fol Mountain, Waldman Mason, Ptolemy provided a couple of Dacian toponyms in south Poland in the Upper Vistula river basin and Setidava. This could have been an echo of Burebistas expansion and it seems that this northern expansion of the Dacian language, as far as the Vistula river, lasted until AD 170–180 when the migration of the Vandal Hasdingi pushed out this northern Dacian group. This Dacian group, possibly the Costoboci/Lipiţa culture, is associated by Gudmund Schütte with towns having the specific Dacian language ending dava i. e. Setidava. In the 2nd century AD, after the Roman conquest, Ptolemy puts the eastern boundary of Dacia Traiana as far east as the Hierasus river, after the Marcomannic Wars, Dacian groups from outside Roman Dacia had been set in motion
Clovis I
He is considered to have been the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, which ruled the Frankish kingdom for the next two centuries. Clovis was the son of Childeric I, a Merovingian king of the Salian Franks, and Basina, in 481, at the age of fifteen, Clovis succeeded his father. Clovis is important in the historiography of France as the first king of what would become France and his name is Germanic, composed of the elements hlod and wig, and is the origin of the French given name Louis, borne by 18 kings of France. Dutch, the most closely related language to Frankish, reborrowed the name as Lodewijk from German in the 12th century. Clovis was baptized on Christmas Day in 508, numerous small Frankish kingdoms existed during the 5th century. After the collapse of Roman power in the last days of 406 the Salian Franks had expanded to the south of the military highway Boulogne-Cologne. The powerbase of Clovis father was the area around Tournai, in the current province of Hainault, upon the death of his father, Merovech in 457 Childeric I, Clovis father, became king of the subgroup of the Salian Franks based around Tournai.
In 463 he fought in conjunction with Aegidius, the magister militum of northern Gaul, Childeric died in 481 and was buried in Tournai, Clovis succeeded him as king, aged just 15. Under Clovis, the Salian Franks came to dominate their neighbours, historians believe that Childeric and Clovis were both commanders of the Roman military in the Province of Belgica Secunda and were subordinate to the magister militum. Clovis had the Frankish king Chararic imprisoned and executed, a few years later, he killed Ragnachar, the Frankish king of Cambrai, along with his brothers. Another victory followed in 491 over a group of Thuringians to the east. By this time Clovis had conquered all the Frankish kingdoms to the west of the River Maas and he secured an alliance with the Ostrogoths through the marriage of his sister Audofleda to their king, Theodoric the Great. With the help of the Ripuarian Franks he narrowly defeated the Alamanni in the Battle of Tolbiac in 496 and he made Paris his capital and established an abbey dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul on the south bank of the Seine.
In 500 Clovis fought a battle with the Burgundian kingdom at Dijon but was unable to subdue them, the battle added most of Aquitaine to Clovis kingdom and resulted in the death of the Visigothic king Alaric II. According to Gregory of Tours, following the Battle of Vouillé, since Clovis name does not appear in the consular lists, it is likely he was granted a suffect consulship. Clovis became the first king of all Franks in 508, after he had conquered Cologne and this contrasted with Catholicism, whose followers believe that God the Father and the Holy Spirit are three persons of one being. By the time of the ascension of Clovis, Gothic Arians dominated Christian Gaul and this included his wife, Clotilde, a Burgundian princess who was a Catholic in spite of the Arianism that surrounded her at court. Clotilde evangelized Clovis to convert to Catholicism, which he initially resisted, Clotilde had wanted her son to be baptized, but Clovis refused to allow it, so Clotilde had the child baptized without Cloviss knowledge
Spain
By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem.
This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula.
The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
Roman Empire
Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated.
The senate appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine adopted Christianity which became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos.
The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
