1.
Sky
–
The sky is everything that lies above the surface of the Earth, including the atmosphere and outer space. In the field of astronomy, the sky is called the celestial sphere. This is viewed from Earths surface as a dome where the Sun, stars, planets. The celestial sphere is divided into regions called constellations. Usually, the sky is used informally as the point of view from the Earths surface, however. In some cases, such as in discussing the weather, the sky refers to only the lower, during daylight, the sky appears to be blue because air scatters blue sunlight more than it scatters red. At night, the sky appears to be a dark surface or region scattered with stars. During the day, the Sun can be seen in the sky obscured by clouds. In the night sky the Moon, planets and stars are visible in the sky, some of the natural phenomena seen in the sky are clouds, rainbows, and aurorae. Lightning and precipitation can also be seen in the sky during storms, birds, insects, aircraft, and kites are often considered to fly in the sky. Due to human activities, smog during the day and light pollution during the night are often seen above large cities. Except for light that directly from the sun, most of the light in the day sky is caused by scattering. The scattering due to molecule sized particles is greater in the forward and backward directions than it is in the lateral direction. Scattering is significant for light at all visible wavelengths but is stronger at the end of the visible spectrum, meaning that the scattered light is bluer than its source. The remaining sunlight, having lost some of its wavelength components. Scattering also occurs more strongly in clouds. Individual water droplets exposed to light will create a set of colored rings. If a cloud is thick enough, scattering from water droplets will wash out the set of colored rings
Sky
–
Crepuscular rays of light shining through clouds in the sky
Sky
–
The Crescent Moon remains visible just moments before Sunrise
Sky
–
Aurora borealis over Bear Lake, Alaska
Sky
–
The
Milky Way can be seen as a large band across the night sky, and is distorted into an arch in this 360° panorama.
2.
Aureole
–
An aureola or aureole is the radiance of luminous cloud which, in paintings of sacred personages, surrounds the whole figure. In the earliest periods of Christian art it was confined to the figures of the persons of the Christian Godhead, the aureola, when enveloping the whole body, generally appears oval or elliptical in form, but occasionally depicted as circular, vesica piscis, or quatrefoil. When it appears merely as a luminous disk round the head, it is called specifically a halo or nimbus, while the combination of nimbus and aureole is called a glory. This is not to be confused with the motif in art of the Infant Jesus appearing to be a source of light in a Nativity scene. These depictions derive directly from the accounts given by Saint Bridget of Sweden of her visions, the nimbus in Christian art first appeared in the 5th century, but practically the same motif was known from several centuries earlier, in pre-Christian Hellenistic art. Its use has also traced through the Egyptians to the ancient Greeks and Romans, representations of Trajan. Roman emperors were sometimes depicted wearing a radiant crown, with pointed rays intended to represent the rays of the sun, from this early astrological use, the form of glory or nimbus has been adapted or inherited under new beliefs. A mandorla is a vesica piscis shaped aureola which surrounds the figures of Christ and it is commonly used to frame the figure of Christ in Majesty in early medieval and Romanesque art, as well as Byzantine art of the same periods. The term refers to the almond like shape, mandorla means almond nut in Italian, in icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the mandorla is used to depict sacred moments which transcend time and space, such as the Resurrection, Transfiguration, and the Dormition of the Theotokos. These mandorla will often be painted in several patterns of color which grow darker as they come close to the center. This is in keeping with the use of Apophatic theology, as described by Dionysius the Areopagite. As holiness increases, there is no way to depict its brightness, in a famous romanesque fresco of Christ in Glory at Sant Climent de Taüll, the inscription Ego Sum Lux Mundi is incorporated in the Mandorla design. The tympanum at Conques has Christ, with a carved in romanesque sculpture. Six surrounding stars, resembling blossoming flowers, indicate the known planets including the Moon, here the symbolism implies Christ as the Sun. In one special case, at Cervon, Christ is seated surrounded by eight stars, at Conques the flowers are six-petalled. Here one is tempted to seek for reference in the symbolism of the nine branched Chanukkiyah candelabrum, in the 12th century a great school of Judaic thought radiated from Narbonne, coinciding with the origins of the Kabbalah. The aureole is often the visible part of the corona and has the appearance of a bluish-white disk which fades to reddish-brown towards the edge. Aura Aureole effect Crown of Immortality Five Crowns Glory Halo Heiligenschein Velificatio Timmers J. J. M, a Handbook of Romanesque Art New York London 1969 Icon Editions, Harper and Row Gérard de Champéaux, Dom Sébastièn Sterckx o. s. b
Aureole
–
17th century Central
Tibetan thanka of
Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra,
Rubin Museum of Art
Aureole
–
Images of
Mary, mother of Jesus, are often surrounded by an aureole, as in this image of
Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Aureole
–
Christ and His
Resurrection, fresco in
Chora Church,
Istanbul.
Aureole
–
Abbas ibn Ali, a holy figure for Shia Muslims.
3.
Heliotrope (plant)
–
Heliotropium /ˌhiːliəˈtroʊpiəm, -lioʊ-/ is a genus of flowering plants in the borage family, Boraginaceae. There are 250 to 300 species in genus, which are commonly known as heliotropes. The name heliotrope derives from the old idea that the inflorescences of these plants turned their rows of flowers to the sun, Ἥλιος is Greek for sun, τρέπειν means to turn. The Middle English name turnsole has the same meaning, several heliotropes are popular garden plants, most notably garden heliotrope. Some species are weeds, and many are hepatotoxic if eaten in large due to abundant pyrrolizidine alkaloids. There have been cases of death due to over-ingestion of this toxic plant. Caterpillars of the jewel, a gossamer-winged butterfly, feed on H. strigosum. The sap of heliotrope flowers, namely of European heliotrope, was used as a coloring in Middle Ages. One of the most famous ragtime piano melodies is Heliotrope Bouquet, composed in 1907 by Louis Chauvin, garden heliotrope is grown in Southern Europe as an ingredient for perfume. The purplish facial rash of dermatomyositis is called heliotrope rash because it resembles E. arborescens, Heliotropium amplexicaule Vahl – clasping heliotrope, summer heliotrope, blue heliotrope Heliotropium anderssonii Heliotropium angiospermum Heliotropium anomalum Hook. – European heliotrope, European turnsole Heliotropium fasciculatum R. Br, Heliotropium foertherianum Diane & Hilger – tree heliotrope, velvet soldierbush, octopus bush Heliotropium foliatum R. Br. Heliotropium heteranthum Ewart & O. B. Davies Heliotropium indicum L. – Indian turnsole Heliotropium kuriense Heliotropium laceolatum Loefg, Heliotropium pannifolium – St. Helena heliotrope Heliotropium pauciflorum R. Br. Heliotropium ramosissimum Heliotropium riebeckii Heliotropium shoabense Heliotropium sinuatum I. M. Johnst, Heliotropium socotranum Heliotropium stenophyllum Heliotropium strigosum Willd. Heliotropium wagneri Heliotropium aff. wagneri Chrozophora tinctoria Tournefortia gnaphalodes R. Br, turnsole Heliotrope Everitt, J. H. Lonard, R. L. Little, C. R. Weeds in South Texas and Northern Mexico, a Heliotrope at Gardeners Path Picture of Heliotropium chenopodiaceum at Chileflora
Heliotrope (plant)
–
Heliotropium
Heliotrope (plant)
–
Grey leaf heliotrope Heliotropium ovalifolium at
Pocharam lake,
Andhra Pradesh,
India.
Heliotrope (plant)
–
Heliotropium anomalum var. argenteum
Heliotrope (plant)
–
European heliotrope (
Heliotropium europaeum)
4.
Clytie (Oceanid)
–
Clytie, or Clytia was a water nymph, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys in Greek mythology. Helios, having loved her, abandoned her for Leucothoe and left her deserted and she was so angered by his treatment that she told Leucotheas father, Orchamus, about the affair. Since Helios had defiled Leucothea, Orchamus had her put to death by burial alive in the sands, Clytie intended to win Helios back by taking away his new love, but her actions only hardened his heart against her. She stripped herself and sat naked, with neither food nor drink, for nine days on the rocks, staring at the sun, Helios, and mourning his departure. After nine days she was transformed into the turnsole, also known as heliotrope, the episode is most fully told in Ovid, Metamorphoses iv. Modern traditions substitute the turnsole with a sunflower, which according to folk wisdom turns in the direction of the sun, one sculpture of Clytie is a Roman marble in the collection of Charles Townley. The bust was created between 40 and 50 AD, Townley acquired it from the family of the principe Laurenzano in Naples during his extended second Grand Tour of Italy, the Laurenzano insisted it had been found locally. The identity of the subject, a woman emerging from a calyx of leaves, was discussed among the antiquaries in Townleys circle. At first referred to as Agrippina, and later called by Townley Isis in a lotus flower, it is now accepted as Clytie. Some modern scholars claim the bust is of eighteenth century date. Another famous bust of Clytie was by George Frederick Watts, instead of Townleys serene Clytie, Wattss is straining, looking round at the sun. Images of Clytie in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
Clytie (Oceanid)
–
Bust of Clytie, by
Hiram Powers, modeled 1865–1867, carved 1873.
Clytie (Oceanid)
–
Townley's Bust of Clytie (left, on the table).
Clytie (Oceanid)
–
Townley's Clytie.
5.
Selene
–
In Greek mythology, Selene is the goddess of the moon. She is the daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia, and sister of the sun-god Helios and she drives her moon chariot across the heavens. Several lovers are attributed to her in various myths, including Zeus, Pan, in classical times, Selene was often identified with Artemis, much as her brother, Helios, was identified with Apollo. Both Selene and Artemis were also associated with Hecate, and all three were regarded as goddesses, although only Selene was regarded as the personification of the moon itself. The etymology of Selene is uncertain, but if the name is of Greek origin, it is connected to the word selas. Just as Helios, from his identification with Apollo, is called Phoebus, Selene, the original Phoebe of Greek mythology is Selenes aunt, the Titaness mother of Leto and Asteria, and grandmother of Apollo, Artemis, and Hecate. Also from Artemis, Selene was sometimes called Cynthia, the word men, meant the moon, and the lunar month. It was also the name of the Phrygian moon-god Men, the usual account of Selenes origin is given by Hesiod. The Homeric Hymn to Helios follows this tradition, Hyperion wedded glorious Euryphaëssa, his own sister, here Euryphaëssa is probably an epithet of Theia. Other accounts make Selene the daughter of Pallas, the son of Megamedes or of Helios, Selene is best known for her affair with the beautiful mortal Endymion. The late 7th-century – early 6th-century BC poet Sappho apparently mentioned Selene, and now thou thyself too hast part in a like mad passion, and some god of affliction has given thee Jason to be thy grievous woe. Well, go on, and steel thy heart, wise though thou be, to take up thy burden of pain, fraught with many sighs. The eternally sleeping Endymion was proverbial, but exactly how this eternal sleep came about and what role, if any, according to the Catalogue of Women, Endymion was the son of Aethlius, and Zeus granted him the right to choose when he would die. A scholiast on Apollonius says that, according to Epimenides, Endymion, having fallen in love with Hera, cicero seems to make Selene responsible for Endymions sleep, so that she might kiss him while sleeping. From Pausanias we hear that Selene was supposed to have had by Endymion fifty daughters, nonnus has Selene and Endymion as the parents of the beautiful Narcissus, but in other accounts, including Ovids Metamorphoses, Narcissus was the son of Cephissus and Liriope. According to the Homeric Hymn to Selene, the goddess bore Zeus a daughter, Pandia, alcman makes Ersa, the daughter of Selene and Zeus. Selene and Zeus were also supposed by some to be the parents of Nemea, the nymph of Nemea, where Heracles slew the Nemean Lion. Some accounts also make Selene and Zeus the parents of Dionysus, but this may be the result of confusing Semele, whereas for Hesiod, the Nemean Lion was born to Echidna and raised by Hera, other accounts have Selene involved in some way in its birth or rearing
Selene
–
Detail of Selene from a Roman sarcophagus
Selene
–
Endymion and Selene, by
Sebastiano Ricci (1713),
Chiswick House, England
Selene
–
Detail of a
sarcophagus depicting
Endymion and Selene, shown with her characteristic attributes of lunate crown and billowing veil (
velificatio)
Selene
–
Statue of Luna
6.
Hecate
–
Hecate or Hekate is a goddess in Ancient Greek religion and mythology, most often shown holding two torches or a key and in later periods depicted in triple form. She was variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy and she appears in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and in Hesiods Theogony, where she is promoted strongly as a great goddess. The place of origin of her following is uncertain, but it is thought that she had popular followings in Thrace and she was one of the main deities worshiped in Athenian households as a protective goddess and one who bestowed prosperity and daily blessings on the family. Regarding the nature of her cult, it has been remarked, intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition. The etymology of the name Hecate is not known, suggested derivations include, From the Greek word for will. From Ἑκατός Hekatos, an epithet of Apollo. This has been translated as she that operates from afar, she that removes or drives off, the name of the Egyptian goddess of childbirth, Heqet, has been compared. In Early Modern English, the name was also pronounced disyllabically and it remained common practice in English to pronounce her name in two syllables, even when spelled with final e, well into the 19th century. The spelling Hecat is due to Arthur Goldings 1567 translation of Ovids Metamorphoses, noah Webster in 1866 particularly credits the influence of Shakespeare for the then-predominant disyllabic pronunciation of the name. Hecate may have originated among the Carians of Anatolia, where variants of her name are found as names given to children, Hecate was also worshipped in the ancient city of Colchis. In particular, there is evidence that she might be derived from the local sun goddesses. She also closely parallels the Roman goddess Trivia, with whom she was identified in Rome and her most important sanctuary was Lagina, a theocratic city-state in which the goddess was served by eunuchs. Lagina, where the temple of Hecate drew great festal assemblies every year, lay close to the originally Macedonian colony of Stratonikeia. In Thrace she played a similar to that of lesser-Hermes, namely a governess of liminal regions. Farnell states, The evidence of the monuments as to the character and significance of Hecate is almost as full as that of to express her manifold and mystic nature. The earliest known monument is a small terracotta found in Athens, with a dedication to Hecate, some classical portrayals show her as a triplicate goddess holding a torch, a key, serpents, daggers and numerous other items. Depictions of both a single form Hekate and triple formed, as well as occasional four headed descriptions continued throughout her history. In Egyptian-inspired Greek esoteric writings connected with Hermes Trismegistus, and in magical papyri of Late Antiquity she is described as having three heads, one dog, one serpent, and one horse, in other representations her animal heads include those of a cow and a boar
Hecate
–
The Hecate Chiaramonti, a Roman sculpture of triple Hecate, after a Hellenistic original (
Museo Chiaramonti, Vatican Museums)
Hecate
–
Statuette of Triple-bodied Hekate. Pen, ink and light brown and grey wash.
Hecate
–
Triple Hecate and the
Charites, Attic, 3rd century BCE (
Glyptothek, Munich)
7.
Leucothea
–
In Greek mythology, Leucothea was one of the aspects under which an ancient sea goddess was recognized, in this case as a transformed nymph. In the more familiar variant, Ino, the daughter of Cadmus, sister of Semele and she was a local nymph and one of the aboriginal Telchines of the island. Thus the Rhodians traced their descent from Rhodos and the Sun god Helios. Homer makes her the transfiguration of Ino, in Laconia, she has a sanctuary, where she answers peoples questions about dreams. This is her form of the oracle, Leucothea is mentioned by Robert Graves in The White Goddess. In Ezra Pounds Cantos, she is one of the figures who comes to the poets aid in Section. Leucothea appears twice in Dialoghi con Leucò by Cesare Pavese, leucothoé was the first work by the Irish playwright Isaac Bickerstaffe published in 1756. Leucothea becomes a metaphor, in Marcel Prousts In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, a similar name is carried by two other characters in Greek mythology. Leucothoë, a princess, daughter of Orchamus and sister of Clytia, Leucothoë was loved by Helios, Clytia, jealous of her sister because she wanted Helios for herself, told Orchamus the truth, betraying her sisters trust and confidence in her. Enraged, Orchamus ordered Leucothoë, who claimed Helios had forced her to succumb to his desires, Helios changed Leucothoës lifeless body into an incense plant. Helios refused to forgive Clytia for betraying his beloved, and a grieving Clytia wilted and slowly turned into a heliotrope, the Gods of the Greeks,1951
Leucothea
–
Leucothea by
Jean Jules Allasseur (1862), Cour Carrée of the
Palais du Louvre.
8.
Charites
–
In Greek mythology, a Charis or Grace is one of three or more minor goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity, and fertility, together known as the Charites /ˈkærᵻtiːz/ or Graces. The usual list, from youngest to oldest is Aglaea, Euphrosyne, in Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, the Graces. In some variants, Charis was one of the Graces and was not the form of their name. The Charites were usually considered the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, though they were said to be daughters of Dionysus and Aphrodite or of Helios. Other possible names of their mother by Zeus are Eurydome, Eurymedousa, Homer wrote that they were part of the retinue of Aphrodite. The Charites were also associated with the Greek underworld and the Eleusinian Mysteries, the river Cephissus near Delphi was sacred to them. An ancient vase painting attests the following names as five, Antheia, Eudaimonia, Paidia, Pandaisia, Pannychis - all referring to the Charites as patronesses of amusement and festivities. Moreover, they are aware that he established three as the number of the Graces, but they have no tradition of the names he gave them. The Lacedaemonians, however, say that the Graces are two, and that they were instituted by Lacedaemon, son of Taygete, who gave them the names of Cleta and Phaenna. These are appropriate names for Graces, as are given by the Athenians. It was from Eteocles of Orchomenus that we learned the custom of praying to three Graces, and Angelion and Tectaus, sons of Dionysus, who made the image of Apollo for the Delians, set three Graces in his hand. Again, at Athens, before the entrance to the Acropolis, pamphos was the first we know of to sing about the Graces, but his poetry contains no information either as to their number or about their names. Homer makes one the wife of Hephaestus, giving her the name of Charis and he also says that Sleep was a lover of Pasithea, and in the speech of Sleep there is this verse, Verily that he would give me one of the younger Graces. Hence some have suspected that Homer knew of older Graces as well, hesiod in the Theogony says that the three Graces are daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, giving them the names of Aglaia, Euphrosyne and lovely Thalia. The poem of Onomacritus agrees with this account, antimachus, while giving neither the number of the Graces nor their names, says that they are daughters of Aegle and the Sun. The elegiac poet Hermesianax disagrees with his predecessors in that he makes Persuasion also one of the Graces, nonnus gives their three names as Pasithea, Peitho and Aglaia. Sostratus gives the names as Pasithea, Cale and Euphrosyne, Pasithea for Aglaia and Cale for Thalia, on the representation of the Graces, Pausanias wrote, Who it was who first represented the Graces naked, whether in sculpture or in painting, I could not discover. During the earlier period, certainly, sculptors and painters alike represented them draped
Charites
–
The Three Graces by
Antonio Canova
Charites
–
The Graces in a 1st-century
fresco at
Pompeii
Charites
–
The Three Graces, from
Carle van Loo (1763)
Charites
–
The Three Graces, from
Sandro Botticelli 's painting Primavera in the
Uffizi Gallery.
9.
Horae
–
In Greek mythology the Horae or Horai or Hours were the goddesses of the seasons and the natural portions of time. They were originally the personifications of nature in its different seasonal aspects and they bring and bestow ripeness, they come and go in accordance with the firm law of the periodicities of nature and of life, Karl Kerenyi observed, Hora means the correct moment. Traditionally, they guarded the gates of Olympus, promoted the fertility of the earth, the course of the seasons was also symbolically described as the dance of the Horae, and they were accordingly given the attributes of spring flowers, fragrance and graceful freshness. For example, in Hesiods Works and Days, the fair-haired Horai, together with the Charites, in Argos, two Horae, rather than three, were recognised presumably winter and summer, Auxesia and Damia. In late euhemerist interpretations, they were seen as Cretan maidens who were worshipped as goddesses after they had been stoned to death. The earliest written mention of Horai is in the Iliad where they appear as keepers of Zeuss cloud gates, hardly any traces of that function are found in the subsequent tradition, Karl Galinsky remarked in passing. They were daughters of Zeus and Themis, half-sisters to the Moirai, Auxo or Auxesia was worshipped in Athens as one of their two Charites, Auxo was the Charis of spring and Hegemone was the Charis of autumn. One of the Horae, and the goddess and personification of the season of summer, she is the protector of vegetation and plants and she was an attendant to Persephone, Aphrodite and Hera, and was also associated with Dionysus, Apollo and Pan. At Athens, two Horae, Thallo and Carpo, also appear in rites of Attica noted by Pausanias in the 2nd century AD. Thallo, Auxo and Carpo are often accompanied by Chione, an Aurae, a daughter of Boreas and Orithyia/Oreithyia, along with Chione, Thallo, Auxo and Carpo were a part of the entourage of the goddess of the turn of the seasons, Persephone. Of the second triad associated to Themis and Zeus for law and order, Diké was the goddess of justice, she ruled over human justice. Eunomia was the goddess of law and legislation, the same or a different goddess may have been a daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite. Eirene or Irene, was the personification of peace and wealth, and was depicted in art as a young woman carrying a cornucopia, scepter. Hyginus identifies a set of Horae, Pherusa, Euporie or Euporia. Nonnus in his Dionysiaca mentions a distinct set of four Horae, quintus Smyrnaeus also attributes the Horae as the daughters of Helios and Selene, and describes them as the four handmaidens of Hera. The Greek words for the four seasons of year, Eiar, Theros, Phthinoporon, finally, a quite separate suite of Horae personified the twelve hours, as tutelary goddesses of the times of day. List of Greek mythological figures Hora Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell,1996, Horae p.217 Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London. Horae The dictionary definition of Horae at Wiktionary Media related to Horae at Wikimedia Commons Theoi Project, Horai Theoi Project, Twelve Horae
Horae
–
Dionysus leading the Horae (
Neo-Attic Roman relief, 1st century).
Horae
–
Eirene with the infant
Ploutos (Roman copy after the votive statue of
Kephisodotos, ca. 370 BC.
Horae
–
A detail of Horae Serenae by
Edward Poynter (1894)
Horae
–
Allegory of peace and happiness of the state. In this picture we can see Dike (the justice), Eunomia (order) and, in the center, Eirene (the Peace)
10.
Circe
–
Circe (/ˈsɜːrsiː/, is a goddess of magic or sometimes a nymph, witch, enchantress or sorceress in Greek mythology. By most accounts, she was the daughter of the sungod Helios, and Perse and her brothers were Aeetes, keeper of the Golden Fleece, and Perses. Her sister was Pasiphaë, the wife of King Minos and mother of the Minotaur, other accounts make her the daughter of Hecate, the goddess of witchcraft. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs, through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she transformed her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals. Some say she was exiled to the island of Aeaea by her subjects and her father Helios for killing her husband. Later traditions tell of her leaving or even destroying the island and moving to Italy, in Homers Odyssey, Circe is described as living in a mansion that stands in the middle of a clearing in a dense wood. Around the house prowled strangely docile lions and wolves, the victims of her magic, they were not dangerous. Circe worked at a huge loom, thus so she turned them all into swine with her magic wand or staff after they gorged themselves on it. Only drunken Eurylochus, suspecting treachery from the outset, escaped to warn Odysseus, Odysseus set out to rescue his men, but was intercepted by the messenger god, Hermes, who had been sent by Athena. Hermes told Odysseus to use the holy herb moly to protect himself from Circes wizardry and, having resisted it, to draw his sword, from there, Circe would ask him to bed, but Hermes advised caution, for even there the goddess would be treacherous. She would take his manhood unless he had her swear by the names of the gods that she would not, Odysseus followed Hermes advice, freeing his men and then remained on the island for one year, feasting and drinking wine. She also advised Odysseus to go to the Underworld and gave him directions, towards the end of Hesiods Theogony, it is stated that Circe bore Odysseus three sons, Ardeas or Agrius, Latinus, and Telegonus, who ruled over the Tyrsenoi, that is the Etruscans. The Telegony, a now lost, relates the later history of the last of these. Circe eventually informed him who his absent father was and, when he set out to find Odysseus, with this he killed his father unknowingly. Telegonus then brought back his fathers corpse, together with Penelope and Odysseus other son Telemachus, after burying Odysseus, Circe made the others immortal. According to Lycophrons Alexandra and John Tzetzes scholia on the poem, however, Odysseus then gave Telemachus to Circes daughter Cassiphone in marriage. Some time later, Telemachus had a quarrel with his mother-in-law and killed her, on hearing of this, Odysseus died of grief. In a very late Alexandrian epic from the 5th century AD, in the 3rd century BC epic, the Argonautica, Apollonius Rhodius relates that Circe purified the Argonauts for the death of Absyrtus, maybe reflecting an early tradition
Circe
–
Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus (1891) by
John William Waterhouse
Circe
–
Woodcut of the Circe episode from a translation by Heinrich Steinhöwel of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris (c.1474)
11.
Theia
–
In Greek mythology, Theia, also called Euryphaessa wide-shining, is a Titaness. Her brother/ consort is Hyperion, a Titan and god of the sun, and together they are the parents of Helios, Selene, the name Theia alone means simply goddess or divine, Theia Euryphaessa brings overtones of extent and brightness. Hesiods Theogony gives her an equally primal origin, said to be the eldest daughter of Gaia, robert Graves also relates that later Theia is referred to as the cow-eyed Euryphaessa who gave birth to Helios in myths dating to Classical Antiquity. Theias alternate name Euryphaessa has been adopted for a species of Australian leafhoppers Dayus euryphaessa, Greek mythology in popular culture Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London
Theia
–
In the frieze of the
Great Altar of Pergamon (Berlin), the goddess who fights at Helios' back is conjectured to be Theia
12.
Eos
–
In Greek mythology, Ēōs is a Titaness and the goddess of the dawn, who rose each morning from her home at the edge of the Oceanus. Eos had a brother and a sister, Helios, god of the sun, Eos is cognate to the Vedic goddess Ushas, Lithuanian goddess Austrine, and Roman goddess Aurora, all three of whom are also goddesses of the dawn. All four are considered derivatives of the Proto-Indo-European stem *h₂ewsṓs, dawn and this agreement leads to the reconstruction of a Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess. The dawn goddess Eos was almost always described with rosy fingers or rosy forearms as she opened the gates of heaven for the Sun to rise, but soon as early Dawn appeared, the rosy-fingered, then gathered the folk about the pyre of glorious Hector. Hesiod wrote, And after these Erigeneia bore the star Eosphoros, thus Eos, preceded by the Morning Star, is seen as the genetrix of all the stars and planets, her tears are considered to have created the morning dew, personified as Ersa or Herse. Eos is the daughter of Hyperion, a bringer of light and her brother was the Sun god Helios, and her sister was Selene, the Moon goddess. Her team of horses pull her chariot across the sky and are named in the Odyssey as Firebright and Daybright. Eos is the daughter of Hyperion and Theia and sister of Helios the sun and Selene the moon, the generation of Titans preceded all the familiar deities of Olympus, who largely supplanted them. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus, Eos consorted with the war god Ares and was cursed with unsatisfiable sexual desire by the jealous Aphrodite. This caused her to abduct a number of young men, most notably Cephalus, Tithonus, Orion. The good-looking Cleitus was made immortal by her and she also asked for Tithonus to be made immortal, but forgot to ask for eternal youth, which resulted in him living forever as a helpless old man. According to Hesiod by Tithonus Eos had two sons, Memnon and Emathion, Memnon fought among the Trojans in the Trojan War and was slain. Her image with the dead Memnon across her knees, like Thetis with the dead Achilles are icons that inspired the Christian Pietà, in the literary myths Eos kidnapped Cephalus when he was hunting and took him to Syria. The second-century CE traveller Pausanias was informed that the abductor of Cephalus was Hemera, among the Etruscans, the generative dawn-goddess was Thesan. Depictions of the dawn-goddess with a young lover became popular in Etruria in the fifth century, on an Etruscan mirror Thesan is shown carrying off a young man, whose name is inscribed as Tinthu. The Roman equivalent of Eos is Aurora, also a cognate showing the characteristic Latin rhotacism, Dawn became associated in Roman cult with Matuta, later known as Mater Matuta. She was also associated with the sea harbors and ports, and had a temple on the Forum Boarium, on June 11, the Matralia was celebrated at that temple in honor of Mater Matuta, this festival was only for women during their first marriage. Tithonus Memnon Aurora Mater Matuta Zorya Dawn goddess Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell,1996, smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London
Eos
–
Eos (1895) by
Evelyn De Morgan
Eos
–
Eos in her chariot flying over the sea, red-figure
krater from South
Italy, 430–420 BC,
Staatliche Antikensammlungen
Eos
–
Eos and the slain
Memnon on an
Attic red-figure cup, ca. 490–480 BCE, the so-called "Memnon Pietà" found at
Capua (
Louvre).
13.
Sol (mythology)
–
Sol was the solar deity in Ancient Roman religion. It was long thought that Rome actually had two different, consecutive sun gods, the first, Sol Indiges, was thought to have been unimportant, disappearing altogether at an early period. Only in the late Roman Empire, scholars argued, did solar cult re-appear with the arrival in Rome of the Syrian Sol Invictus, perhaps under the influence of the Mithraic mysteries. The Latin sol for Sun is the continuation of the PIE heteroclitic *Seh2ul- / *Sh2-en-, cognate to Germanic Sol, Sanskrit Surya, Greek Helios, also compare Latin sol to Etruscan usil. Today, sol is still the word for sun in Romance languages. Sol is used in contemporary English by astronomers and many science fiction authors as the name of the Sun to distinguish it from other stars which may be suns for their own planetary systems. A shrine to Sol stood on the banks of the Numicius, in Rome Sol had an old temple in the Circus Maximus according to Tacitus, and this temple remained important in the first three centuries AD. There was also an old shrine for Sol on the Quirinal, the Roman ritual calendars or fasti also mention a feast for Sol Indiges on December 11, and a sacrifice for Sol and Luna on August 28. Neither the epithet indiges nor the epithet invictus are used with any consistency however, tertullian writes that the Circus Maximus was dedicated primarily to Sol. During the reign of Aurelian, a new college of pontiffs for Sol was established, there is some debate over the significance of the date December 21 for the cult of Sol. According to a single, late source, the Romans held a festival on December 21 of Dies Natalis Invicti, most scholars assume Sol Invictus was meant, although our source for this festival does not state so explicitly. December 25 was commonly indicated as the date of the winter solstice, there were also festivals on other days in December, including the 11th, as well as August. Gordon points out that none of other festivals are linked to astronomical events. When the festival on December 25 was instituted is not clear, the official status of the cult of Sol after Aurelian was significant, but there is no evidence that it was the supreme cult of the state. Hoey exaggerates the importance of an inscription from Salsovia that supposedy indicates an official empire-wide cult-prescription for Sol on December 19 and this simply means that Licinius accepted the erection of the statue in his honour. Throughout the 4th century the cult of Sol continued to be maintained by high-ranking pontiffs, the Greek assimilation of Apollo and Helios was already established in Rome by the end of the republic. Various Roman philosophers speculated on the nature of the sun, without arriving at any consensus, a typical example is Nigidius, a scholar of the 1st century BC. His works have not survived, but writing five centuries later, Macrobius reports that Nigidius argued that Sol was to be identified with Janus and that he had a counterpart, Jana, who was Moon
Sol (mythology)
–
Marcus Aurelius (
head covered) sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
14.
Surya
–
Surya means the Sun in Nepal and India. Synonyms of Surya in ancient Indian literature include Aditya, Arka, Bhanu, Savitr, Pushan, Ravi, Martanda, Mitra and Vivasvan. Surya also connotes the solar deity in Hinduism, particularly in the Saura tradition found in such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand. He is one of the five deities considered as equivalent aspects and his iconography is often depicted riding a chariot harnessed by horses, often seven in number which represent the seven colour rays of the rainbow. In medieval Hinduism, Surya is also an epithet for the major Hindu gods Shiva, in some ancient texts and arts, Surya is presented syncretically with Indra, Ganesha or others. Surya as a deity is found in the arts and literature of Buddhism and Jainism. Surya is one of the nine houses in the zodiac system of Hindu astrology. Surya or Ravi is the basis of Ravivara, or Sunday, major festivals and pilgrimages in reverence of Surya include Makar Sankranti, Pongal and Kumbh Mela. However, the usage is context specific, in some hymns, the word Surya simply means sun as an inanimate object, a stone or a gem in the sky, while in others it refers to a personified deity. The Vedas assert Sun to be the creator of the material universe, in the Brahmanas layer of Vedic literature, Surya appears with Agni in the same hymns. Surya is revered for the day, while Agni for its role during the night, the idea evolves, states Kapila Vatsyayan, where Surya is stated to be Agni as the first principle and the seed of the universe. It is in the Brahmanas layer of the Vedas, and the Upanishads that Surya is explicitly linked to the power of sight, to visual perception and knowledge. In the Ramayana, Surya is described as father of the King Sugriva, the Suryavanshi dynasty of kings, Rama being one of them, also claims descent from Surya. Eastern kingdom of mahabharta and ramayana are called to be of Suryas potential, in the Mahabharata, Karna is the son of Surya and unmarried princess Kunti. The epic describes Kuntis trauma as a mother, then abandonment of Karna. Baby Karna is found, adopted and grows up to one of the central characters in the great battle of Kurukshetra where he fights his step brothers. Surya is celebrated as a deity in Buddhist artwork, such as the ancient works attributed to Ashoka, for example, Surya appears in Mahabodhi temple in Bodhgaya, riding in a chariot pulled by four horses. Sun is a deity is ancient and medieval cultures found in South America, Europe, Africa
Surya
–
Surya
Surya
Surya
–
Surya sculpture
Surya
–
Sun Temple, Modhera
15.
Ancient Greek
–
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
Ancient Greek
–
Inscription about the construction of the statue of
Athena Parthenos in the
Parthenon, 440/439 BC
Ancient Greek
–
Ostracon bearing the name of
Cimon,
Stoa of Attalos
Ancient Greek
–
The words ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ as they are inscribed on the marble of the 1955
Leonidas Monument at
Thermopylae
16.
Latin
–
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
Latin
–
Latin inscription, in the
Colosseum
Latin
–
Julius Caesar 's
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is one of the most famous classical Latin texts of the Golden Age of Latin. The unvarnished, journalistic style of this
patrician general has long been taught as a model of the urbane Latin officially spoken and written in the floruit of the
Roman republic.
Latin
–
A multi-volume Latin dictionary in the
University Library of Graz
Latin
–
Latin and Ancient Greek Language - Culture - Linguistics at
Duke University in 2014.
17.
Sun
–
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99. 86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Suns mass consists of hydrogen, the rest is mostly helium, with smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon. The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star based on its spectral class and it formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into a disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became so hot and dense that it eventually initiated nuclear fusion in its core and it is thought that almost all stars form by this process. The Sun is roughly middle-aged, it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion years and it is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large enough to engulf the current orbits of Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth. The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, the synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of the solar calendar, which is the predominant calendar in use today. The English proper name Sun developed from Old English sunne and may be related to south, all Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn. The English weekday name Sunday stems from Old English and is ultimately a result of a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, the Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is not common in general English language use, the adjectival form is the related word solar. The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet. A mean Earth solar day is approximately 24 hours, whereas a mean Martian sol is 24 hours,39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the Sun was worshipped as the god Ra, portrayed as a falcon-headed divinity surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent. In the New Empire period, the Sun became identified with the dung beetle, in the form of the Sun disc Aten, the Sun had a brief resurgence during the Amarna Period when it again became the preeminent, if not only, divinity for the Pharaoh Akhenaton. The Sun is viewed as a goddess in Germanic paganism, Sól/Sunna, in ancient Roman culture, Sunday was the day of the Sun god. It was adopted as the Sabbath day by Christians who did not have a Jewish background, the symbol of light was a pagan device adopted by Christians, and perhaps the most important one that did not come from Jewish traditions
Sun
–
The Sun in visible wavelength with filtered white light on 8 July 2014. Characteristic
limb darkening and numerous
sunspots are visible.
Sun
–
During a total
solar eclipse, the solar
corona can be seen with the naked eye, during the brief period of totality.
Sun
–
Taken by
Hinode 's Solar Optical Telescope on 12 January 2007, this image of the Sun reveals the filamentary nature of the plasma connecting regions of different magnetic polarity.
Sun
–
Visible light photograph of sunspot, 13 December 2006
18.
Greek mythology
–
It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
Greek mythology
–
Bust of
Zeus,
Otricoli (Sala Rotonda,
Museo Pio-Clementino,
Vatican).
Greek mythology
–
Greek Mythology
Greek mythology
–
Prometheus (1868 by
Gustave Moreau). The myth of Prometheus first was attested by
Hesiod and then constituted the basis for a tragic trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus, consisting of
Prometheus Bound,
Prometheus Unbound, and
Prometheus Pyrphoros.
Greek mythology
–
The Roman poet
Virgil, here depicted in the fifth-century manuscript, the
Vergilius Romanus, preserved details of Greek mythology in many of his writings.
19.
Titan (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, the Titans and Titanesses were members of the second generation of divine beings, descending from the primordial deities and preceding the Olympian deities. Based on Mount Othrys, the Titans most famously included the first twelve children of the primordial Gaia and they were giant deities of incredible strength, who ruled during the legendary Golden Age, and also comprised the first pantheon of Greek deities. The first twelve Titans comprised the females Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea, and Themis and the males Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius, like Cronus overthrowing his father Uranus, the Titans were overthrown by Cronus children, in the Titanomachy. The Greeks may have borrowed this mytheme from the Ancient Near East, Greeks of the classical age knew of several poems about the war between the Olympians and Titans. The dominant one, and the one that has survived, was in the Theogony attributed to Hesiod. A lost epic, Titanomachia was mentioned in passing in an essay On Music that was attributed to Plutarch. The Titans also played a prominent role in the poems attributed to Orpheus, although only scraps of the Orphic narratives survive, they show interesting differences with the Hesiodic tradition. Sometimes the elders are supplanted, and sometimes the rebels lose and are either cast out of power entirely or incorporated into the pantheon, the Titanomachy lasted for ten years. The Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus after the war had ended, Tartarus is the deepest spot known in the Underworld, where the most evil beings would be cast into to be tortured for all eternity. Hesiod does not have the last word on the Titans, surviving fragments of poetry ascribed to Orpheus preserve some variations on the myth. In such text, Zeus does not simply set upon his father violently, instead, Rhea spreads out a banquet for Cronus so that he becomes drunk upon fermented honey. Rather than being consigned to Tartarus, Cronus is dragged—still drunk—to the cave of Nyx, another myth concerning the Titans that is not in Hesiod revolves around Dionysus. At some point in his reign, Zeus decides to give up the throne in favor of the infant Dionysus, who like the infant Zeus, is guarded by the Kouretes. The Titans decide to slay the child and claim the throne for themselves, they paint their faces white with gypsum, distract Dionysus with toys, then him and boil. Zeus, enraged, slays the Titans with his thunderbolt, Athena preserves the heart in a gypsum doll and this story is told by the poets Callimachus and Nonnus, who call this Dionysus Zagreus, and in a number of Orphic texts, which do not. Pindar, Plato, and Oppian refer offhandedly to the Titanic nature of humans, according to them, the body is the titanic part, while soul is the divine part of humans. Other early writers imply that humanity was born out of the malevolent blood shed by the Titans in their war against Zeus, Martin Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices. Beekes connects the word with τιτώ, burket, Walter, The Orientalizing Revolution, Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Harvard University Press,1995
Titan (mythology)
–
Rhea, a Titan daughter of the earth goddess
Gaia, was both sister and wife to
Cronus.
20.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as a persona with an active role to play in his subject. Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs, modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. The dating of his life is an issue in scholarly circles. Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations, however, Hesiods extant work comprises didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. Some scholars have seen Perses as a creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days. Gregory Nagy, on the hand, sees both Persēs and Hēsiodos as fictitious names for poetical personae. The family association with Cyme might explain his familiarity with eastern myths, evident in his poems, however, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian—he composed in the main literary dialect of the time, Ionian. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore and it certainly wasnt in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had no such notions. However, some suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm and he was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet, Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and how a just and he resembles Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealised view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony and denounce them as corrupt in Works, two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiods grave. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention, the oracle that predicts accurately after all, the other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their hearth-founder, later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Greeks in the fifth and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod
Hesiod
–
The Dance of the Muses at Mount Helicon by
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1807). Hesiod cites inspiration from the
Muses while on Mount Helicon.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod and the
Muse, by
Gustave Moreau. Here he is presented with a
lyre, which contradicts the account given by Hesiod himself, in which the gift was a laurel staff.
Hesiod
–
Modern Mount Helicon—Hesiod once described his nearby hometown,
Ascra, as "cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant."
Hesiod
–
16th-century manuscript of Theogony
21.
Euryphaessa
–
In Greek mythology, Theia, also called Euryphaessa wide-shining, is a Titaness. Her brother/ consort is Hyperion, a Titan and god of the sun, and together they are the parents of Helios, Selene, the name Theia alone means simply goddess or divine, Theia Euryphaessa brings overtones of extent and brightness. Hesiods Theogony gives her an equally primal origin, said to be the eldest daughter of Gaia, robert Graves also relates that later Theia is referred to as the cow-eyed Euryphaessa who gave birth to Helios in myths dating to Classical Antiquity. Theias alternate name Euryphaessa has been adopted for a species of Australian leafhoppers Dayus euryphaessa, Greek mythology in popular culture Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London
Euryphaessa
–
In the frieze of the
Great Altar of Pergamon (Berlin), the goddess who fights at Helios' back is conjectured to be Theia
22.
Aureola
–
An aureola or aureole is the radiance of luminous cloud which, in paintings of sacred personages, surrounds the whole figure. In the earliest periods of Christian art it was confined to the figures of the persons of the Christian Godhead, the aureola, when enveloping the whole body, generally appears oval or elliptical in form, but occasionally depicted as circular, vesica piscis, or quatrefoil. When it appears merely as a luminous disk round the head, it is called specifically a halo or nimbus, while the combination of nimbus and aureole is called a glory. This is not to be confused with the motif in art of the Infant Jesus appearing to be a source of light in a Nativity scene. These depictions derive directly from the accounts given by Saint Bridget of Sweden of her visions, the nimbus in Christian art first appeared in the 5th century, but practically the same motif was known from several centuries earlier, in pre-Christian Hellenistic art. Its use has also traced through the Egyptians to the ancient Greeks and Romans, representations of Trajan. Roman emperors were sometimes depicted wearing a radiant crown, with pointed rays intended to represent the rays of the sun, from this early astrological use, the form of glory or nimbus has been adapted or inherited under new beliefs. A mandorla is a vesica piscis shaped aureola which surrounds the figures of Christ and it is commonly used to frame the figure of Christ in Majesty in early medieval and Romanesque art, as well as Byzantine art of the same periods. The term refers to the almond like shape, mandorla means almond nut in Italian, in icons of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the mandorla is used to depict sacred moments which transcend time and space, such as the Resurrection, Transfiguration, and the Dormition of the Theotokos. These mandorla will often be painted in several patterns of color which grow darker as they come close to the center. This is in keeping with the use of Apophatic theology, as described by Dionysius the Areopagite. As holiness increases, there is no way to depict its brightness, in a famous romanesque fresco of Christ in Glory at Sant Climent de Taüll, the inscription Ego Sum Lux Mundi is incorporated in the Mandorla design. The tympanum at Conques has Christ, with a carved in romanesque sculpture. Six surrounding stars, resembling blossoming flowers, indicate the known planets including the Moon, here the symbolism implies Christ as the Sun. In one special case, at Cervon, Christ is seated surrounded by eight stars, at Conques the flowers are six-petalled. Here one is tempted to seek for reference in the symbolism of the nine branched Chanukkiyah candelabrum, in the 12th century a great school of Judaic thought radiated from Narbonne, coinciding with the origins of the Kabbalah. The aureole is often the visible part of the corona and has the appearance of a bluish-white disk which fades to reddish-brown towards the edge. Aura Aureole effect Crown of Immortality Five Crowns Glory Halo Heiligenschein Velificatio Timmers J. J. M, a Handbook of Romanesque Art New York London 1969 Icon Editions, Harper and Row Gérard de Champéaux, Dom Sébastièn Sterckx o. s. b
Aureola
–
17th century Central
Tibetan thanka of
Guhyasamaja Akshobhyavajra,
Rubin Museum of Art
Aureola
–
Images of
Mary, mother of Jesus, are often surrounded by an aureole, as in this image of
Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Aureola
–
Christ and His
Resurrection, fresco in
Chora Church,
Istanbul.
Aureola
–
Abbas ibn Ali, a holy figure for Shia Muslims.
23.
Solar deity
–
A solar deity is a sky deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it, usually by its perceived power and strength. Solar deities and sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms, the Sun is sometimes referred to by its Latin name Sol or by its Greek name Helios. The English word sun stems from Proto-Germanic *sunnǭ, the Neolithic concept of a solar barge is found in the later myths of ancient Egypt, with Ra and Horus. Predynasty Egyptian beliefs attribute Atum as the sun-god and Horus as a god of the sky, as the Old Kingdom theocracy gained power, early beliefs were incorporated with the expanding popularity of Ra and the Osiris-Horus mythology. Atum became Ra-Atum, the rays of the setting sun, Osiris became the divine heir to Atums power on Earth and passes his divine authority to his son Horus. Early Egyptian myths imply the sun is within the lioness, Sekhmet, at night and is reflected in her eyes, or that it is within the cow, Hathor, during the night, being reborn each morning as her son. Mesopotamian Shamash plays an important role during the Bronze Age, similarly, South American cultures have a tradition of Sun worship, as with the Incan Inti. Proto-Indo-European religion has a chariot, the sun as traversing the sky in a chariot. In Germanic mythology this is Sol, in Vedic Surya, and in Greek Helios, svarog is the Slavic solar deity, represented as a spirit of fire. During the Roman Empire, a festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun was celebrated on the winter solstice—the rebirth of the sun—which occurred on December 25 of the Julian calendar. In late antiquity, the centrality of the sun in some Imperial religious systems suggest a form of a solar monotheism. The religious commemorations on December 25 were replaced under Christian domination of the Empire with the birthday of Christ, the Tiv people consider the Sun to be the son of the supreme being Awondo and the Moon Awondos daughter. The Barotse tribe believes that the Sun is inhabited by the sky god Nyambi, some Sara people also worship the sun. Even where the sun god is equated with the supreme being, the Ancient Egyptian god of creation, Amun is also believed to reside inside the sun. So is the Akan creator deity, Nyame and the Dogon deity of creation, also in Egypt, there was a religion that worshiped the sun directly, and was among the first monotheistic religions, Atenism. Sun worship was prevalent in ancient Egyptian religion, the earliest deities associated with the sun are all goddesses, Wadjet, Sekhmet, Hathor, Nut, Bast, Bat, and Menhit. First Hathor, and then Isis, give birth to and nurse Horus, Hathor the horned-cow is one of the 12 daughters of Ra, gifted with joy and is a wet-nurse to Horus. From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the sun was worshipped as the deity Re, and portrayed as a falcon headed god surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent
Solar deity
–
The
Trundholm sun chariot
Solar deity
–
Statue of
Hathor – Luxor Museum
Solar deity
–
A solar representation on an anthropomorphic stele dated from the time period between the
Copper Age and the
Early Bronze Age, discovered during an archaeological excavation on the Rocher des Doms,
Avignon.
Solar deity
–
Taiyang Shen, the Chinese solar deity
24.
Oceanus
–
Strictly speaking, Oceanus was the ocean-stream at the Equator in which floated the habitable hemisphere. Thus, the sun rises from the deep-flowing Oceanus in the east, in Greek mythology, this world-ocean was personified as a Titan, the eldest son of Uranus and Gaia. In Hellenistic and Roman mosaics, this Titan was often depicted as having the body of a muscular man with a long beard and horns. In Roman mosaics, such as that from Bardo he might carry a steering-oar, some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water, including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the two largest bodies known to the ancient Greeks. Oceanus consort is his sister Tethys, and from their union came the ocean nymphs, also referred to as the three-thousand Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world, fountains, and lakes. In most variations of this myth, Oceanus also refused to side with Cronus in the revolt against their father. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek proto-form *-kay-an-, when Odysseus and Nestor walk together along the shore of the sounding sea they address their prayers to the great Sea-god who girdles the world. It is to Oceanus, not to Poseidon, that their thoughts are directed, Heracles forced Helios to lend him his golden bowl, in order to cross the wide expanse of the Ocean on his trip to the Hesperides. When Oceanus tossed the bowl about, Heracles threatened him and stilled his waves, the journey of Heracles in the sun-bowl upon Oceanus became a favored theme among painters of Attic pottery. Oceanus appears in Hellenic cosmography as well as myth, cartographers continued to represent the encircling equatorial stream much as it had appeared on Achilles shield. Apollonius of Rhodes calls the lower Danube the Keras Okeanoio in Argonautica, accion in the fourth century Gaulish Latin of Rufus Avienus, Ora maritima, was applied to great lakes. At the end of the Okeanos Potamos, is the island of Alba, sacred to the Pelasgian Apollo. Hecateus of Abdera refers to Apollos island from the region of the Hyperboreans and it was on Leuke, in one version of his legend, that the hero Achilles, in a hilly tumulus, was buried. Leto, the Hyperborean goddess, after nine days and nine nights of labour on the island of Delos gave birth to the god of the antique light. Old Romanian folk songs sing of a monastery on a white island with nine priests, nine singers, nine altars. Oceanid Ogyges Rasā Uranus Aeschylus, Persians, edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press,2009, online version at Harvard University Press. Apollodorus, Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1921
Oceanus
–
Oceanus in the
Trevi Fountain,
Rome
Oceanus
–
Oceanus, at right, with scaly tail, in the
Gigantomachy of the
Pergamon Altar.
25.
Pindar
–
Pindar was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved and his poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they are reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning. His poetry, while admired by critics, still challenges the casual reader, Pindar was the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poets role. A dream of a shadow Is our mortal being, but when there comes to men A gleam of splendour given of heaven, Then rests on them a light of glory And blessed are their days. His poetry illustrates the beliefs and values of Archaic Greece at the dawn of the classical period, five ancient sources contain all the recorded details of Pindars life. One of them is a short biography discovered in 1961 on an Egyptian papyrus dating from at least 200 AD and it has been claimed that biographical interpretations of the poems are due to a fatal conjunction of historicism and Romanticism. In other words, we know almost nothing about Pindars life based on traditional sources or his own poems. However, the pendulum of fashion has begun to change direction again. He was probably born in 522 BC or 518 BC in Cynoscephalae and his fathers name is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus, and his mothers name was Cleodice. It is reported that he was stung on the mouth by a bee in his youth, Pindar was about twenty years old in 498 BC when he was commissioned by the ruling family in Thessaly to compose his first victory ode. He studied the art of poetry in Athens, where his tutor was Lasos of Hermione. The early-to-middle years of Pindars career coincided with the Persian invasions of Greece in the reigns of Darius and it is possible that Pindar spent much of this time at Aegina. Thrasybulus had driven the winning chariot and he and Pindar were to form a lasting friendship, Pindar seems to have used his odes to advance his, and his friends, personal interests. In 462 BC he composed two odes in honour of Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, pleading for the return from exile of a friend, Demophilus. In the latter ode Pindar proudly mentions his own ancestry, which he shared with the king, as an Aegeid or descendent of Aegeus, the historian Herodotus considered the clan important enough to deserve mention. Pindar might not actually claim to be an Aegeid since his I statements do not necessarily refer to himself. He was possibly the Theban proxenos or consul for Aegina and/or Molossia, as indicated in another of his odes, Nemean 7, in which he glorifies Neoptolemus, a national hero of Aegina and Molossia
Pindar
–
Pindar, Roman copy of Greek 5th century BC bust (
Museo Archeologica Nazionale, Naples)
Pindar
–
A short Heracles: Pindar once ignored the traditional image of Heracles, the supreme example of the heroic physique, and described him as short in order to compare him with a short patron.
Pindar
–
The so-called 'Farnese Diadumenos' is a Roman copy of a Greek original attributed to
Polykleitos c.440 BC, depicting an athlete tying a victory ribbon round his head
26.
Pyrois
–
Helios was the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology. He is the son of the Titan Hyperion and the Titaness Theia, also known as Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn. In the Homeric hymn to Helios, Helios is said to drive a chariot drawn by steeds. Still later, the horses were given related names, Pyrois, Aeos, Aethon. As time passed, Helios was increasingly identified with the god of light, however, in spite of their syncretism, they were also often viewed as two distinct gods/titan. The equivalent of Helios in Roman mythology was Sol, specifically Sol Invictus, the Greek ἥλιος is the inherited word for the Sun, from Proto-Indo-European *sóh₂wl̥, cognate with Latin sol, Sanskrit surya, Old English swegl, Old Norse sól, Welsh haul, etc. The female offspring of Helios were called Heliades, the Greek sun god had various bynames or epithets, which over time in some cases came to be considered separate deities associated with the Sun. Most notably, Helios is closely associated with, and sometimes identified with. Diodorus Siculus of Sicily reported that the Chaldeans called Cronus by the name Helios, or the sun, among these is Hyperion, Elektor, Phaëton the radiant, Hekatos. The best known story involving Helios is that of his son Phaethon, Helios was sometimes characterized with the epithet Panoptes. In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew land on Thrinacia, an island sacred to the sun god. There, the red cattle of the Sun were kept, You will now come to the Thrinacian island. There will be seven herds of cattle and seven flocks of sheep and they do not breed, nor do they become fewer in number, and they are tended by the goddesses Phaethusa and Lampetia, who are children of the sun-god Hyperion by Neaera. Their mother when she had them and had done suckling them sent them to the Thrinacian island. Though Odysseus warns his men, when supplies run short they impiously kill, the guardians of the island, Helios daughters, tell their father about this. Helios appeals to Zeus telling them to dispose of Odysseus men or he will take the Sun, Zeus destroys the ship with his lightning bolt, killing all the men except for Odysseus. In one Greek vase painting, Helios appears riding across the sea in the cup of the Delphic tripod which appears to be a solar reference. While Heracles traveled to Erytheia to retrieve the cattle of Geryon, he crossed the Libyan desert and was so frustrated at the heat that he shot an arrow at Helios, Heracles used this golden cup to reach Erytheia
Pyrois
–
Head of Helios, middle period,
Archaeological Museum of Rhodes
Pyrois
–
Helios in his chariot, early 4th century BC,
Athena 's temple,
Ilion
Pyrois
–
Solar Apollo with the radiant
halo of Helios in a Roman floor mosaic,
El Djem, Tunisia, late 2nd century
Pyrois
–
Coin of Roman Emperor
Constantine I depicting
Sol Invictus /Apollo with the legend SOLI INVICTO COMITI, c. 315 AD.
27.
Apollo
–
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The ideal of the kouros, Apollo has been recognized as a god of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague, poetry. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. As the patron of Delphi, Apollo was an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague. Amongst the gods custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, as the leader of the Muses and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became an attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans, Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the 3rd century CE. The name Apollo—unlike the related older name Paean—is generally not found in the Linear B texts, the etymology of the name is uncertain. The spelling Ἀπόλλων had almost superseded all other forms by the beginning of the common era and it probably is a cognate to the Doric month Apellaios, and the offerings apellaia at the initiation of the young men during the family-festival apellai. According to some scholars the words are derived from the Doric word apella, apella is the name of the popular assembly in Sparta, corresponding to the ecclesia. R. S. P. Beekes rejected the connection of the theonym with the noun apellai, several instances of popular etymology are attested from ancient authors. Thus, the Greeks most often associated Apollos name with the Greek verb ἀπόλλυμι, in the ancient Macedonian language πέλλα means stone, and some toponyms may be derived from this word, Πέλλα and Πελλήνη. The role of Apollo as god of plague is evident in the invocation of Apollo Smintheus by Chryses, the Hittite testimony reflects an early form *Apeljōn, which may also be surmised from comparison of Cypriot Ἀπείλων with Doric Ἀπέλλων. A Luwian etymology suggested for Apaliunas makes Apollo The One of Entrapment, Apollos chief epithet was Phoebus, literally bright. It was very commonly used by both the Greeks and Romans for Apollos role as the god of light, like other Greek deities, he had a number of others applied to him, reflecting the variety of roles, duties, and aspects ascribed to the god. However, while Apollo has a number of appellations in Greek myth. Aegletes, from αἴγλη, light of the sun Helius, literally sun Lyceus light, the meaning of the epithet Lyceus later became associated with Apollos mother Leto, who was the patron goddess of Lycia and who was identified with the wolf
Apollo
–
Apollo Belvedere, ca. 120–140 CE
Apollo
–
Partial view of the temple of Apollo Epikurios (healer) at
Bassae in southern Greece
Apollo
–
Temple of the Delians at
Delos, dedicated to Apollo (478 BC). 19th-century pen-and-wash restoration.
Apollo
–
Temple of Apollo Smintheus at
Çanakkale, Turkey
28.
Twelve Olympians
–
Hades and Persephone were sometimes included as part of the twelve Olympians, although in general Hades was excluded, because he resided permanently in the underworld and never visited Olympus. The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon, were the deities of the Greek pantheon. The Olympians gained their supremacy in a war of gods in which Zeus led his siblings to victory over their predecessor gods. The concept of the Twelve Gods is older than any extant Greek or Roman source, the gods meet in council in the Homeric epics, but the first ancient reference to religious ceremonies for the Olympians collectively is found in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. The Greek cult of the Twelve Olympians can be traced to 6th-century BC Athens, the Altar of the Twelve Gods at Athens is usually dated to the archonship of the younger Pesistratos, in 522/521 BC. In ancient Greek religion, the Olympian Gods and the Cults of Twelve Gods were often relatively distinct concepts, while the number was fixed at twelve, there was considerable variation as to which deities were included. However, the twelve as most commonly portrayed in art and poetry were Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes and either Hestia, or Dionysus. Hades, known in the Eleusinian tradition as Pluto, was not usually included among the Olympians because his realm was the underworld. Plato connected the Twelve Olympians with the months, and implies that he considered Pluto one of the twelve in proposing that the final month be devoted to him. In Phaedrus, Plato seems to exclude Hestia from the rank of the great gods. At Olympia there were six altars dedicated to six pairs of gods, Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athena, Hermes and Apollo, the Charites and Dionysus, Artemis and Alpheus, the historian Herodotus states that Heracles was included as one of the Twelve by some. At Kos, Heracles and Dionysus are added to the Twelve, for Pindar, the Bibliotheca, and Herodorus of Heraclea, Heracles is not one of the Twelve Gods, but the one who established their cult. Lucian includes Heracles and Asclepius as members of the Twelve, without explaining which two had to give way for them, hebe, Helios, Selene, Eos, Eros and Persephone are other important gods and goddesses who are sometimes included in a group of twelve. Eros is often depicted alongside the twelve, especially his mother Aphrodite. Notes ^ Romans also associated Phoebus with Helios and the sun itself, however, ^ According to an alternate version of her birth, Aphrodite was born of Uranus, Zeus grandfather, after Cronus threw his castrated genitals into the sea. This supports the etymology of her name, foam-born, as such, Aphrodite would belong to the same generation as Cronus, Zeus father, and would be Zeus aunt. See the birth of Aphrodite The following gods and goddess are sometimes included as one of the twelve Olympians, the following gods and goddesses were not usually counted as Olympians, although they had close ties to them. Aeolus – King of the winds, keeper of the Anemoi, Alpheus – God of the River Alpheus
Twelve Olympians
Twelve Olympians
–
Zeus
Twelve Olympians
–
Hera
Twelve Olympians
–
Poseidon
29.
Roman mythology
–
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Romes legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. Roman mythology may also refer to the study of these representations. The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements, the stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individuals personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to the community or Roman state. When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are concerned with ritual, augury. Romes early myths and legends also have a relationship with Etruscan religion. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovids Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, because ritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology. This perception is a product of Romanticism and the scholarship of the 19th century. From the Renaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly for European painting, the Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities, in Romes earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship. As T. P. Wiseman notes, The Roman stories still matter, as they mattered to Dante in 1300 and Shakespeare in 1600, what does it take to be a free citizen. Can a superpower still be a republic, how does well-meaning authority turn into murderous tyranny. Major sources for Roman myth include the Aeneid of Vergil and the first few books of Livys history as well as Dionysius s Roman Antiquities. Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, scenes from Roman myth also appear in Roman wall painting, coins, and sculpture, particularly reliefs. The Aeneid and Livys early history are the best extant sources for Romes founding myths, material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the ancestors of the Roman people. Rape of the Sabine women, explaining the importance of the Sabines in the formation of Roman culture, numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome who consorted with the nymph Egeria and established many of Romes legal and religious institutions. Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, whose mysterious origins were freely mythologized. The Tarpeian Rock, and why it was used for the execution of traitors, lucretia, whose self-sacrifice prompted the overthrow of the early Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Republic
Roman mythology
–
Romulus and Remus, the
Lupercal,
Father Tiber, and the
Palatine on a
relief from a pedestal dating to the reign of
Trajan (AD 98–117)
Roman mythology
–
In this wall painting from
Pompeii,
Venus looks on while the physician
Iapyx tends to the wound of her son,
Aeneas; the tearful boy is her grandson
Ascanius, also known as Iulus, legendary ancestor [
citation needed] of
Julius Caesar and the
Julio-Claudian dynasty
Roman mythology
–
Mucius Scaevola in the Presence of Lars Porsenna (early 1640s) by
Matthias Stom
Roman mythology
–
Capitoline Triad
30.
Proto-Indo-European language
–
Proto-Indo-European is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language and these methods supply all of the knowledge concerning PIE, since there is no written record of the language. PIE is estimated to have spoken as a single language around 3500 B. C. E. during the Neolithic Age. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe. Work has also gone into reconstructing their culture and religion, PIE had a complex system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes as well as ablaut and accent. PIE nominals and pronouns had a system of declension. The PIE phonology, particles, numerals, and copula are also well-reconstructed, today, the most widely-spoken daughter languages of PIE are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, French, and Marathi. There is no evidence of PIE. It has been reconstructed from its present-day descendants using the comparative method, the comparative method is based on the Neogrammarian rule that the Indo-European sound laws are applied without exception. The method compares languages and applies the laws to find a common ancestor. For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English, piede and foot, padre and father, pesce and fish. Since there is a consistent correspondence of the consonants that is far too frequent to be coincidental. Although his name is associated with this observation, he was not the first to make it. In many ways Jones work was less accurate than his predecessors, as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi. In 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated the set of correspondences to include other Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, and the full range of consonants involved. In 1816 Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit in which he investigated a common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833 he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, in 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what is now known as Grimms law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik. Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages, and showed that sound change affects an entire language systematically, august Schleichers A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages was an early attempt to reconstruct the proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language
–
Classification of Indo-European languages. Red: Extinct languages. White: categories or unattested proto-languages. Left half:
centum languages; right half:
satem languages
31.
Sanskrit
–
Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
Sanskrit
–
Rigveda (
padapatha) manuscript in
Devanagari, early 19th century
Sanskrit
–
Devi Mahatmya palm-leaf manuscript in an early
Bhujimol script,
Bihar or
Nepal, 11th century
Sanskrit
–
A poem by the ancient Indian poet Vallana (ca. 900 – 1100 CE) on the side wall of a building at the Haagweg 14 in Leiden, Netherlands
Sanskrit
–
Kashmir Shaiva manuscript in the
Śāradā script (c. 17th century)
32.
Old English
–
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain, Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century, the oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a later literary standard, dating from the later 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
Old English
–
A detail of the first page of the
Beowulf manuscript, showing the words "ofer hron rade", i.e. "over the whale's road (=sea)". It is an example of an Old English stylistic device, the
kenning.
Old English
–
North Germanic
Old English
–
"Her swutelað seo gecwydrædnes ðe" Old English inscription over the arch of the south porticus in the 10th-century
St Mary's parish church, Breamore, Hampshire
Old English
–
The first page of the
Beowulf manuscript with its opening Hƿæt ƿē Gārde/na ingēar dagum þēod cyninga / þrym ge frunon... "Listen! We of the Spear-Danes from days of yore have heard of the glory of the folk-kings..."
33.
Old Norse
–
Old Norse was a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during about the 9th to 13th centuries. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century, Old Norse was divided into three dialects, Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Gutnish. Old West and East Norse formed a continuum, with no clear geographical boundary between them. For example, Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway, although Old Norwegian is classified as Old West Norse, most speakers spoke Old East Norse in what is present day Denmark and Sweden. Old Gutnish, the more obscure dialectal branch, is included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations. It developed its own features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders and Danes spoke the same language, another term used, used especially commonly with reference to West Norse, was norrœnt mál. In some instances the term Old Norse refers specifically to Old West Norse, the Old East Norse dialect was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, settlements in Kievan Rus, eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language, in Kievan Rus, it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod, probably lasting into the 13th century there. Norwegian is descended from Old West Norse, but over the centuries it has heavily influenced by East Norse. Old Norse also had an influence on English dialects and Lowland Scots and it also influenced the development of the Norman language, and through it and to a smaller extent, that of modern French. Various other languages, which are not closely related, have heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman dialects, Scottish Gaelic. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi, of the modern languages, Icelandic is the closest to Old Norse. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system, contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the phonemes, has changed at least as much as in the other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, although Swedish, Danish and the Norwegian languages have diverged the most, they still retain asymmetric mutual intelligibility. Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, the languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders
Old Norse
–
The
Rök Runestone in
Östergötland, Sweden, is the longest surviving source of early Old East Norse. It is inscribed on both sides.
Old Norse
–
Old West Norse dialect
34.
Welsh language
–
Welsh is a member of the Brittonic branch of the Celtic languages. It is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, historically it has also been known in English as the British tongue, Cambrian, Cambric and Cymric. The United Kingdom Census 2011 counted 3.1 million residents of Wales, 27% of whom had been born outside Wales, and 73% of whom reported having no Welsh language skills. Of residents of Wales aged three and over, 19% reported being able to speak Welsh, and 77% of these were able to speak, read and this can be compared with the 2001 Census, in which 20. 8% of the population reported being able to speak Welsh. 787,854 of residents in Wales aged three and over had one or more skills in Welsh, in surveys carried out between 2004 and 2006, 57% of Welsh speakers described themselves as fluent in the written language. An estimated 110,000 to 150,000 people speak Welsh in England, Welsh emerged in the 6th century from Common Brittonic, the common ancestor of Welsh, Breton, Cornish and the extinct language known as Cumbric. The Middle Welsh period is considered to have lasted from then until the 14th century, when the Modern Welsh period began, the name Welsh originated as an exonym given to its speakers by the Anglo-Saxons, meaning foreign speech. The native term for the language is Cymraeg, and for the name of the country of Wales it is Cymru, Welsh evolved from Common Brittonic, the Celtic language spoken by the ancient Celtic Britons. Classified as Insular Celtic, the British language probably arrived in Britain during the Bronze Age or Iron Age and was spoken throughout the island south of the Firth of Forth. During the Early Middle Ages the British language began to fragment due to increased dialect differentiation, evolving into Welsh and it is not clear when Welsh became distinct. Kenneth H. Jackson suggested that the evolution in syllabic structure and sound pattern was complete by around 550, Jackson, however, believed that the two varieties were already distinct by that time. The earliest Welsh poetry – that attributed to the Cynfeirdd or Early Poets – is generally considered to date to the Primitive Welsh period. However, much of this poetry was composed in the Hen Ogledd, raising further questions about the dating of the material. An 8th century inscription in Tywyn shows the language already dropping inflections in the declension of nouns, the next main period, somewhat better attested, is Old Welsh, poetry from both Wales and Scotland has been preserved in this form of the language. Both the works of Aneirin and the Book of Taliesin were in this era, Middle Welsh is the label attached to the Welsh of the 12th to 14th centuries, of which much more remains than for any earlier period. This is the language of all surviving early manuscripts of the Mabinogion. It is also the language of the existing Welsh law manuscripts, Middle Welsh is reasonably intelligible, albeit with some work, to a modern-day Welsh speaker. The famous cleric Gerald of Wales tells, in his Descriptio Cambriae, during one of the Kings many raids in the 12th century, Henry asked an old man of Pencader, Carmarthenshire whether the Welsh people could resist his army
Welsh language
–
This tattered
Welsh Bible of 1620, in
Llanwnda church, is said to have been rescued from the hands of French invaders in 1797.
Welsh language
–
The 1588 Welsh Bible
Welsh language
–
Trilingual (Spanish, Welsh and English) sign in Argentina
35.
Diodorus Siculus
–
Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily was a Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history Bibliotheca historica, much of which survives and it is arranged in three parts. The first covers mythic history up to the destruction of Troy, arranged geographically, describing regions around the world from Egypt, India and Arabia to Greece, the second covers the Trojan War to the death of Alexander the Great. The third covers the period to about 60 BC, Bibliotheca, meaning library, acknowledges that he was drawing on the work of many other authors. According to his own work, he was born at Agyrium in Sicily, with one exception, antiquity affords no further information about his life and doings beyond in his work. Only Jerome, in his Chronicon under the year of Abraham 1968, writes, Diodorus of Sicily and it was divided into three sections. In the next section, he recounts the history of the world from the Trojan War down to the death of Alexander the Great, the last section concerns the historical events from the successors of Alexander down to either 60 BC or the beginning of Julius Caesars Gallic Wars. He selected the name Bibliotheca in acknowledgment that he was assembling a composite work from many sources. His account of gold mining in Nubia in eastern Egypt is one of the earliest extant texts on the topic, pappus of Alexandria wrote a Commentary on Diodoruss Analemma. The now lost Analemma applied geometrical constructions in a plane to solve some astronomy related problems of spherical geometry and it contained, for example, a discussion of sundial theory. They are also boasters and threateners and are fond of pompous language, pliny the Elder Strabo Acadine Ambaglio, Dino, Franca Landucci Gattinoni and Luigi Bravi. Diodoro Siculo, Biblioteca storica, commento storico, introduzione generale, aspects of Greek History 750-323 BC, A Source-based Approach. Library of History, Loeb Classical Library, Siculus, Diodorus, G. Booth, H. Valesius, I. The Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian in Fifteen Books to which are added the Fragments of Diodorus, siculi, Diodori, Peter Wesseling, L. Rhodoman, G. Heyn, N. Eyring. Bibliothecae Historicae Libri Qui Supersunt, Nova Editio, Diodorus Siculus, the manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Historica
Diodorus Siculus
–
Diodoro siculo
36.
Cronus
–
In Greek mythology, Cronus, or Kronos, was the leader and youngest of the first generation of Titans, the divine descendants of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth. He overthrew his father and ruled during the mythological Golden Age, until he was overthrown by his own son Zeus, Cronus was usually depicted with a harpe, scythe or a sickle, which was the instrument he used to castrate and depose Uranus, his father. Cronus was also identified in antiquity with the Roman deity Saturn. In an ancient myth recorded by Hesiods Theogony, Cronus envied the power of his father, Gaia created a great stone sickle and gathered together Cronus and his brothers to persuade them to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus was willing to do the deed, so Gaia gave him the sickle, when Uranus met with Gaia, Cronus attacked him with the sickle, castrating him and casting his testicles into the sea. From the blood spilled out from Uranus and fell upon the earth, the Gigantes, Erinyes. The testicles produced a white foam from which the goddess Aphrodite emerged, for this, Uranus threatened vengeance and called his sons Titenes for overstepping their boundaries and daring to commit such an act. After dispatching Uranus, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hecatonchires, and the Cyclopes and he and his sister Rhea took the throne of the world as king and queen. The period in which Cronus ruled was called the Golden Age, as the people of the time had no need for laws or rules, everyone did the right thing, and immorality was absent. Cronus learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overcome by his own sons, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, although he sired the gods Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades and Poseidon by Rhea, he devoured them all as soon as they were born to prevent the prophecy. When the sixth child, Zeus, was born Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to them and to eventually get retribution on Cronus for his acts against his father. Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete, and handed Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, also known as the Omphalos Stone, Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete. Still other versions of the say that Zeus was raised by his grandmother. In other versions of the tale, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the children, after freeing his siblings, Zeus released the Hecatonchires, and the Cyclopes who forged for him his thunderbolts, Poseidons trident and Hades helmet of darkness. In a vast war called the Titanomachy, Zeus and his brothers and sisters, with the help of the Hecatonchires, and Cyclopes, overthrew Cronus and the other Titans. Afterwards, many of the Titans were confined in Tartarus, however, Atlas, Epimetheus, Helios, Gaia bore the monster Typhon to claim revenge for the imprisoned Titans. Accounts of the fate of Cronus after the Titanomachy differ, in Homeric and other texts he is imprisoned with the other Titans in Tartarus
Cronus
–
Giorgio Vasari: The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn (Cronus)
Cronus
–
Cronus
Cronus
–
Painting by
Peter Paul Rubens of Cronus devouring one of his children
Cronus
–
4th-century Temple of
Saturn in the
Roman Forum.
37.
Athena
–
Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Minerva is the Roman goddess identified with Athena, Athena is known for her calm temperament, as she moves slowly to anger. She is noted to have fought for just reasons. Athena is portrayed as a companion of heroes and is the patron goddess of heroic endeavour. She is the patroness of Athens. The Athenians founded the Parthenon on the Acropolis of her city, Athens. Veneration of Athena was so persistent that archaic myths about her were recast to adapt to cultural changes, in her role as a protector of the city, many people throughout the Greek world worshipped Athena as Athena Polias. While the city of Athens and the goddess Athena essentially bear the same name, Athena is associated with Athens, a plural name, because it was the place where she presided over her sisterhood, the Athenai, in earliest times. Mycenae was the city where the Goddess was called Mykene, at Thebes she was called Thebe, and the city again a plural, Thebae. Similarly, at Athens she was called Athena, and the city Athenae, Athena had a special relationship with Athens, as is shown by the etymological connection of the names of the goddess and the city. According to mythical lore, she competed with Poseidon and she won by creating the olive tree, the Athenians would accept her gift and name the city after her. In history, the citizens of Athens built a statue of Athena as a temple to the goddess, which had piercing eyes, a helmet on her head, attired with an aegis or cuirass, and an extremely long spear. It also had a shield with the head of the Gorgon on it. A large snake accompanied her and she held Nike, the goddess of victory, therefore, Mylonas believes that Athena was a Mycenaean creation. On the other hand, Nilsson claims that she was the goddess of the palace who protected the king, a-ta-no-dju-wa-ja is also found in Linear A Minoan, the final part being regarded as the Linear A Minoan equivalent of the Linear B Mycenaean di-u-ja or di-wi-ja. Divine Athena also was a weaver and the deity of crafts, whether her name is attested in Eteocretan or not will have to wait for decipherment of Linear A. Perhaps, however, the name Theonoe may mean she who knows divine things better than others. Thus for Plato her name was to be derived from Greek Ἀθεονόα, Plato also noted that the citizens of Sais in Egypt worshipped a goddess whose Egyptian name was Neith, and which was identified with Athena. Neith was the war goddess and huntress deity of the Egyptians since the ancient Pre-Dynastic period, in addition, ancient Greek myths reported that Athena had visited many mythological places such as Libyas Triton River in North Africa and the Phlegraean plain
Athena
–
Mattei Athena at
Louvre. Roman copy from the 1st century BC/AD after a Greek original of the 4th century BC, attributed to Cephisodotos or Euphranor.
Athena
–
Athenian
tetradrachm representing the goddess Athena.
Athena
–
A new
peplos was woven for Athena and ceremonially brought to dress her
cult image (
British Museum).
Athena
–
Marble Greek copy signed “Antiokhos”, a 1st-century BC variant of
Phidias ’ 5th-century
Athena Promachos that stood on the
Acropolis.
38.
Troy
–
The present-day location is known as Hisarlik. It was the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle, in particular in the Iliad, a new capital called Ilium was founded on the site in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It flourished until the establishment of Constantinople and declined gradually in the Byzantine era and these excavations revealed several cities built in succession. Troy VII has been identified with the city that the Hittites called Wilusa, the origin of the Greek Ἴλιον. Today, the hill at Hisarlık has given its name to a village near the ruins. It lies within the province of Çanakkale, some 30 km south-west of the provincial capital, the map here shows the adapted Scamander estuary with Ilium a little way inland across the Homeric plain. Troy was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998, Ancient Greek historians variously placed the Trojan War in the 12th, 13th, or 14th centuries BC, Eratosthenes to 1184 BC, Herodotus to 1250 BC, Duris of Samos to 1334 BC. Modern archaeologists associate Homeric Troy with archaeological Troy VII, in the Iliad, the Achaeans set up their camp near the mouth of the River Scamander, where they had beached their ships. The city of Troy itself stood on a hill, across the plain of Scamander, recent geological findings have permitted the identification of the ancient Trojan coastline, and the results largely confirm the accuracy of the Homeric geography of Troy. In November 2001, the geologist John C, kraft from the University of Delaware and the classicist John V. Luce from Trinity College, Dublin, presented the results of investigations, begun in 1977, into the geology of the region. Besides the Iliad, there are references to Troy in the major work attributed to Homer. The Homeric legend of Troy was elaborated by the Roman poet Virgil in his Aeneid, the Greeks and Romans took for a fact the historicity of the Trojan War and the identity of Homeric Troy with the site in Anatolia. Alexander the Great, for example, visited the site in 334 BC and there made sacrifices at tombs associated with the Homeric heroes Achilles and Patroclus. After the 1995 find of a Luwian biconvex seal at Troy VII, with the rise of critical history, Troy and the Trojan War were, for a long time, consigned to the realms of legend. However, the location of ancient Troy had from classical times remained the subject of interest. The Troad peninsula was anticipated to be the location, leChavaliers location, published in his Voyage de la Troade, was the most commonly accepted theory for almost a century. In 1822, the Scottish journalist Charles Maclaren was the first to identify with confidence the position of the city as it is now known, the hill, near the city of Çanakkale, was known as Hisarlık. In 1868, Heinrich Schliemann visited Calvert and secured permission to excavate Hisarlık, in 1871–73 and 1878–79, he excavated the hill and discovered the ruins of a series of ancient cities dating from the Bronze Age to the Roman period
Troy
–
The walls of the
acropolis belong to Troy VII, which is identified as the site of the
Trojan War (c. 1200 BC).
Troy
–
Silver
tetradrachm from Troy with head of
Athena, c. 165–150 BC
Troy
–
The
odeon dates to the
Roman Troy IX and was renovated by
Hadrian in 124 AD.
Troy
–
The view from
Hisarlık across the plain of Ilium to the
Aegean Sea.
39.
Zeus
–
Zeus /ˈzjuːs/ is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who ruled as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter and his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, in most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses. He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe That Zeus is king in heaven is a common to all men. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak, in addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical cloud-gatherer also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is frequently depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses, standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his right hand. The gods name in the nominative is Ζεύς Zeús and it is inflected as follows, vocative, Ζεῦ Zeû, accusative, Δία Día, genitive, Διός Diós, dative, Διί Dií. Diogenes Laertius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς, Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called *Dyeus ph2tēr. The god is known under this name in the Rigveda, Latin, Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology. The earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek
Zeus
–
The Jupiter de Smyrne, discovered in
Smyrna in 1680
Zeus
–
The Chariot of Zeus, from an 1879 Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Alfred Church.
Zeus
–
Zeus, at the Getty Villa, A.D. 1 - 100 by unknown.
Zeus
–
"
Cave of Zeus ",
Mount Ida (Crete).
40.
Alcinous
–
Alcinous was, in Greek mythology, a son of Nausithous, or of Phaeax, and father of Nausicaa, Halius, Clytoneus and Laodamas with Arete. His name literally means mighty mind and he married his brother Rhexenors daughter after Rhexenor was killed. In the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, Alcinous is represented as living with his wife Arete in Drepane, the Argonauts, on their return from Colchis, came to his island, and were hospitably received. The Colchians were obliged, by the contrivance of Arete, to depart without their princess, and he was also the King of the Phaeacians. According to Homer, Alcinous is the ruler of the Phaiacians in the island of Scheria. JC Loudon on the Garden of Alcinous
Alcinous
–
Odysseus at the court of Alcinous by
Francesco Hayez.
41.
Odyssey
–
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, the Iliad is the oldest. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of suitors, the Mnesteres or Proci. The Odyssey continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into languages around the world. Many scholars believe the poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos, perhaps a rhapsode. The details of the ancient oral performance and the conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars. The Odyssey was written in a dialect of Greek—a literary amalgam of Aeolic Greek, Ionic Greek. Among the most noteworthy elements of the text are its non-linear plot, in the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage. The Odyssey has a lost sequel, the Telegony, which was not written by Homer and it was usually attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta. In one source, the Telegony was said to have stolen from Musaeus by either Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene. The Odyssey begins ten years after the end of the ten-year Trojan War, and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war. Odysseus protectress, the goddess Athena, requests to Zeus, king of the gods, to finally allow Odysseus to return home when Odysseus enemy, then, disguised as a Taphian chieftain named Mentes, she visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality, they observe the suitors dining rowdily while the bard Phemius performs a poem for them. Penelope objects to Phemius theme, the Return from Troy, because it reminds her of her missing husband and that night Athena, disguised as Telemachus, finds a ship and crew for the true prince. The next morning, Telemachus calls an assembly of citizens of Ithaca to discuss what should be done with the suitors. Accompanied by Athena, he departs for the Greek mainland and the household of Nestor, most venerable of the Greek warriors at Troy, now at home in Pylos
Odyssey
–
Charles Gleyre,
Odysseus and
Nausicaä
Odyssey
–
Greek text of the Odyssey' s opening passage
Odyssey
–
Odysseus Overcome by
Demodocus ' Song, by
Francesco Hayez, 1813–15
Odyssey
–
Odysseus and the Sirens, eponymous vase of the
Siren Painter, ca. 480-470 BC, (
British Museum)
42.
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, and her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus, as with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiods Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranuss genitals and threw them into the sea, according to Homers Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Plato, these two origins are said to be of hitherto separate entities, Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and was lover and surrogate mother of Adonis. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite, Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea and Cypris after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, roses, doves, sparrows and swans were sacred to her, the ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite had many names such as Acidalia and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite of transcendent principles, and a separate, common Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people, hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós sea-foam, interpreting the name as risen from the foam. Michael Janda, accepting this as genuine, claims the birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- very and *dʰei- to shine and it has been argued that etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodites attributes are entirely different from those of Eos or the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a demon that appears in Middle Babylonian. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni lord, an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις and this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, the lady. Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos, she who lives delicately, from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a characteristic of Greek obvious from the Macedonians. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, however, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, Cytherea
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite Pudica (Roman copy of 2nd century AD),
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Aphrodite
–
Petra tou Romiou ("The rock of the
Greek "), Aphrodite's legendary birthplace in
Paphos, Cyprus.
Aphrodite
–
The Birth of Venus by
Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485.
Aphrodite
–
Venus and Adonis by
Titian, circa 1554.
43.
Hephaestus
–
Hephaestus is the Greek god of blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculptors, metals, metallurgy, fire and volcanoes. In Greek mythology, Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and Hera, in another version, he was Heras parthenogenous child, rejected by his mother because of his deformity and thrown off Mount Olympus and down to earth. As a smithing god, Hephaestus made all the weapons of the gods in Olympus and he served as the blacksmith of the gods, and was worshipped in the manufacturing and industrial centers of Greece, particularly Athens. The cult of Hephaestus was based in Lemnos, Hephaestus symbols are a smiths hammer, anvil, and a pair of tongs. The name of the god in Greek has a root which can be observed in names of places of Pre-Greek origin, Hephaestus had his own palace on Olympus, containing his workshop with anvil and twenty bellows that worked at his bidding. Hephaestus crafted much of the magnificent equipment of the gods, in later accounts, Hephaestus worked with the help of the chthonic Cyclopes—among them his assistants in the forge, Brontes, Steropes and Pyracmon. Hephaestus built automatons of metal to work for him and this included tripods that walked to and from Mount Olympus. He gave to the blinded Orion his apprentice Cedalion as a guide, in some versions of the myth, Prometheus stole the fire that he gave to man from Hephaestuss forge. Hephaestus also created the gift that the gods gave to man, being a skilled blacksmith, Hephaestus created all the thrones in the Palace of Olympus. The Greek myths and the Homeric poems sanctified in stories that Hephaestus had a power to produce motion. He made the golden and silver lions and dogs at the entrance of the palace of Alkinoos in such a way that they could bite the invaders, the Greeks maintained in their civilization an animistic idea that statues are in some sense alive. This kind of art and the animistic belief goes back to the Minoan period, when Daedalus, a statue of the god was somehow the god himself, and the image on a mans tomb indicated somehow his presence. Homers Odyssey and Iliad have Hephaestus being born of the union of Zeus, in another tradition, attested by Hesiod, Hera bore Hephaestus alone. In Hesiods Zeus-centered cosmology, Hera gave birth to Hephaestus as revenge for Zeus giving birth to Athena without her, several later texts follow Hesiods account, including Bibliotheke, Hyginus, and the preface to Fabulae. In the account of Attic vase painters, Hephaestus was present at the birth of Athena, in the latter account, Hephaestus is there represented as older than Athena, so the mythology of Hephaestus is inconsistent in this respect. In one branch of Greek mythology, Hera ejected Hephaestus from the heavens because he was shrivelled of foot and he fell into the ocean and was raised by Thetis and the Oceanid Eurynome. In another account, Hephaestus, attempting to rescue his mother from Zeus advances, was flung down from the heavens by Zeus. He fell for a day and landed on the island of Lemnos
Hephaestus
–
Hephaestus at the Forge by
Guillaume Coustou the Younger (
Louvre)
Hephaestus
–
Vulcan (Roman counterpart of Hephaestus) presenting the arms of Achilles to Thetis. By
Peter Paul Rubens.
Hephaestus
–
The western face of the Doric
temple of Hephaestus,
Agora of Athens.
44.
Ares
–
Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and his sons Phobos and Deimos and his lover, or sister, Enyo accompanied him on his war chariot. In the Iliad, his father Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him, an association with Ares endows places and objects with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality. His value as a war god is placed in doubt, during the Trojan War, Ares was on the side, while Athena, often depicted in Greek art as holding Nike in her hand. Ares plays a limited role in Greek mythology as represented in literary narratives, though his numerous love affairs. When Ares does appear in myths, he typically faces humiliation and he is well known as the lover of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, who was married to Hephaestus, god of craftsmanship. The most famous story related to Ares and Aphrodite shows them exposed to ridicule through the wronged husbands device. The counterpart of Ares among the Roman gods is Mars, who as a father of the Roman people was given a more important, during the Hellenization of Latin literature, the myths of Ares were reinterpreted by Roman writers under the name of Mars. Greek writers under Roman rule also recorded cult practices and beliefs pertaining to Mars under the name of Ares, thus in the classical tradition of later Western art and literature, the mythology of the two figures becomes virtually indistinguishable. The etymology of the name Ares is traditionally connected with the Greek word ἀρή, there may also be a connection with the Roman god of war Mars, via hypothetical Proto-Indo-European *M̥rēs, compare Ancient Greek μάρναμαι, I fight, I battle. Walter Burkert notes that Ares is apparently an ancient abstract noun meaning throng of battle, R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin of the name. The earliest attested form of the name is the Mycenaean Greek
Ares
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Statue of Ares from
Hadrian's Villa
Ares
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Vatican, Rome, Italy. Statue of Ares, Scopas' influence. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
Ares
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The
Areopagus as viewed from the
Acropolis.
Ares
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The
Ludovisi Ares, Roman version of a Greek original c. 320 BC, with 17th-century restorations by
Bernini
45.
Odysseus
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Odysseus, also known by the Latin name Ulysses, was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homers epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homers Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle. Husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus, and son of Laërtes and Anticlea, Odysseus is renowned for his brilliance, guile, and versatility and he is most famous for the Odyssey, ten eventful years he took to return home after the decade-long Trojan War. The name has several variants, in Greek the character was called Olysseus, Oulixeus, Oulixes, hence, there may originally have been two separate figures, one called something like Odysseus, the other something like Ulixes, who were combined into one complex personality. The etymology of the name is unknown, ancient authors linked the name to the Greek verbs odussomai to be wroth against, to hate, or to oduromai to lament, bewail. Homer in references and puns, relates it to various forms of this verb and it has also been suggested that the name is of non-Greek origin, probably not even Indo-European, with an unknown etymology, R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin. In Book 19 of the Odyssey, where Odysseuss early childhood is recounted, Euryclea tries to guide him to naming the boy Polyaretos, for he has much been prayed for. Autolycus apparently in a sardonic mood, decided to give the child a name that would commemorate his own experience in life. Because I got odium upon myself before coming here, let the childs name be Odysseus to signify this. The pun was prophetic as well as commemorative, Odysseus often receives the patronymic epithet Laertiades, son of Laërtes. In the Iliad and Odyssey there are several epithets used to describe Odysseus and his name and stories were adopted into Etruscan religion under the name Uthuze. Hence, Odysseus was the great-grandson of the Olympian god Hermes, according to the Iliad and Odyssey, his father is Laertes and his mother Anticlea, although there was a non-Homeric tradition that Sisyphus was his true father. The rumor went that Laertes bought Odysseus from the conniving king, Odysseus is said to have a younger sister, Ctimene, who went to Same to be married and is mentioned by the swineherd Eumaeus, whom she grew up alongside, in Book 15 of the Odyssey. Homers Iliad and Odyssey portray Odysseus as a hero, but the Romans. In Virgils Aeneid, written between 29 and 19 BC, he is referred to as cruel Odysseus or deceitful Odysseus. Turnus, in Aeneid ix, reproaches the Trojan Ascanius with images of rugged, forthright Latin virtues, declaring, You shall not find the sons of Atreus here, nor need the frauds of sly Ulysses fear. While the Greeks admired his cunning and deceit, these qualities did not recommend themselves to the Romans, who possessed a rigid sense of honour. His attempts to avoid his sacred oath to defend Menelaus and Helen offended Roman notions of duty, the majority of sources for Odysseus pre-war exploits—principally the mythographers Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus—postdate Homer by many centuries
Odysseus
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Head of Odysseus from a
Roman period Hellenistic marble group representing Odysseus blinding
Polyphemus, found at the villa of
Tiberius at
Sperlonga
Odysseus
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Head of Odysseus wearing
pileus depicted on a 3rd-century BC coin from
Ithaca
Odysseus
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Greek Mythology
Odysseus
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This is a painting of Odysseus's boat passing between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Scylla has plucked six of Odysseus's men from the boat. The painting is an Italian fresco dating to 1560 C.E.
46.
Oxen of the Sun
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In Greek mythology, the Cattle of Helios, also called the Oxen of the Sun, are cattle pastured on the island of Thrinacia. Helios, also known as the sun god, is said to have had 7 herds of oxen and seven flocks of sheep, in the Odyssey, Homer describes these immortal cattle as handsome, wide-browed, fat and curved-horned. The cattle were guarded by Helios’ daughters, Phaëthusa and Lampetië, tiresias and Circe both warn Odysseus to shun the isle of Helios. They are held on the isle for a month by a storm sent by Poseidon. When he returns to the ship, Odysseus rebukes his companions for disobeying his orders, but it is too late, the cattle are dead and gone. Lampetie tells Helios that Odysseus men have slain his cattle, in turn, Helios orders her gods to take vengeance on Odysseus men. He threatens that if they do not pay him full atonement for the cattle, he take the sun to the Underworld. Zeus promises Helios to smite their ship with a lightning bolt, soon the gods show signs and wonders to the Odysseus men. The skins begin creeping and the flesh bellowing upon the spits, for six days, Odysseuss company feast on the kine of Helios. On the seventh day, the wind changes, after they set sail, Zeus keeps his word and the ship is destroyed by lightning during a storm. Odysseus escapes by swimming to Calypsos island, Vol.1 pp. 419–420 and Vol.2 pp.705. The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology
Oxen of the Sun
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Greek Mythology
47.
Halo (religious iconography)
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A halo is a ring of light that surrounds a person in art. They have been used in the iconography of many religions to indicate holy or sacred figures, halos may be shown as almost any colour or combination of colours, but are most often depicted as golden, yellow or white when representing light or red when representing flames. Homer describes a light around the heads of heroes in battle. 450-30 BC, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of the sun-god Helios and had his usual radiate crown. Hellenistic rulers are shown wearing radiate crowns that seem clearly to imitate this effect. The rulers of the Kushan Empire were perhaps the earliest to give themselves haloes on their coins, in Chinese and Japanese Buddhist art the halo has also been used since the earliest periods in depicting the image of Amitabha Buddha and others. Thin lines of gold often radiate outwards or inwards from the rim of the halo, elaborate haloes and especially aureoles also appear in Hindu sculpture, where they tend to develop into architectural frames in which the original idea can be hard to recognise. Theravada Buddhism and Jainism did not use the halo for many centuries, in Asian art, the nimbus is often imagined as consisting not just of light, but of flames. This type seems to first appear in Chinese bronzes of which the earliest surviving examples date from before 450 and this type is also very rarely found, and on a smaller scale, in medieval Christian art. Sometimes a thin line of flames rise up from the edges of a halo in Buddhist examples. In Tibetan paintings the flames are shown as blown by a wind. Halos are found in Islamic art from various places and periods, especially in Persian miniatures and Moghul, flaming halos derived from Buddhist art surround angels, and similar ones are often seen around Muhammad and other sacred human figures. The halo represents an aura or glow of sanctity which was conventionally drawn encircling the head, though Roman paintings have largely disappeared, save some fresco decorations, the haloed figure remains fresh in Roman mosaics. In a 2nd-century AD Roman floor mosaic preserved at Bardo, Tunisia, significantly, the triton and nereid who accompany the sea-god are not haloed. In a late 2nd century AD floor mosaic from Thysdrus, El Djem, another haloed Apollo in mosaic, from Hadrumentum, is in the museum at Sousse. The conventions of representation, head tilted, lips slightly parted, large-eyed. The halo was incorporated into Early Christian art sometime in the 4th century with the earliest iconic images of Christ, initially the only figure shown with one. At least in later Orthodox images, each bar of cross is composed of three lines, symbolising the dogmas of the Trinity, the oneness of God and the two natures of Christ
Halo (religious iconography)
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Standing Buddha with a halo, 1st-2nd century AD (or earlier),
Greco-Buddhist art of
Gandhara.
Halo (religious iconography)
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Jesus and nine of the
Twelve Apostles depicted with "Floating" disk haloes in perspective (detail from
The Tribute Money, illustrating Matthew 17:24-27, by
Masaccio, 1424,
Brancacci Chapel).
Halo (religious iconography)
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Octadrachm of
Ptolemy III
Halo (religious iconography)
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Muhammad leads
Abraham,
Moses,
Jesus and others in prayer.
Persian miniature
48.
El Djem
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El Djem is a town in Mahdia Governorate, Tunisia, population 48,611. It is home to some of the most impressive Roman remains in Africa, the Roman city of Thysdrus was built, like almost all Roman settlements in ancient Tunisia, on former Punic settlements. It was the seat of a Christian bishopric, which is included in the Catholic Churchs list of titular sees, by the early 3rd century AD, when the amphitheater was built, Thysdrus rivaled Hadrumetum as the second city of Roman North Africa, after Carthage. However, following the revolt that began there in 238 AD. The town is shown on the 4th century Peutinger Map, El Djem is famous for its amphitheatre, often incorrectly called a Colosseum, which is capable of seating 35,000 spectators. Only the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome and the theatre of Capua are larger. The amphitheatre at El Djem was built by the Romans under proconsul Gordian, many tourists come here to see what it was like to be inside what was once a place where lions and people met their fate. Much of it is crumbled but the essence of it still remains and it is also possible that construction of the amphitheatre was never finished. Until the 17th century it remained more or less whole, the ruins of the amphitheatre were declared a World Heritage Site in 1979. It hosts the annual Festival international de musique symphonique dEl Jem, drifting sand is preserving the market city of Thysdrus and the refined suburban villas that once surrounded it. Some floor mosaics have been found and published, but field archaeology has scarcely been attempted, recently with aerial photos, a huge racetrack stadium has been discovered. In the world of writing materials, Thysdrus lay in the Empire of Papyrus, during World War II a major military airfield was located near El Djem, used first by the German Luftwaffe. It was attacked on numerous occasions and later used by the United States Army Air Forces Twelfth Air Force as a transport field, there are few, if any, remains of the airfield today with the land being returned to agricultural uses outside of the city
El Djem
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The amphitheatre
El Djem
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El Djem in the morning
El Djem
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Amphitheatre entrance
El Djem
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Inside amphitheater
49.
Athenaeus
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Athenaeus of Naucratis was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The Suda says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus and he was a contemporary of Adrantus. Several of his publications are lost, but the fifteen-volume Deipnosophistae mostly survives, Athenaeus himself states that he was the author of a treatise on the thratta, a kind of fish mentioned by Archippus and other comic poets, and of a history of the Syrian kings. The Deipnosophistae, which means dinner-table philosophers, survives in fifteen books, the first two books, and parts of the third, eleventh and fifteenth, are extant only in epitome, but otherwise the work seems to be entire. It is an immense store-house of information, chiefly on matters connected with dining, but also containing remarks on music, songs, dances, games, courtesans, and luxury. Nearly 800 writers and 2500 separate works are referred to by Athenaeus, were it not for Athenaeus, much valuable information about the ancient world would be missing, and many ancient Greek authors such as Archestratus would be almost entirely unknown. Book XIII, for example, is an important source for the study of sexuality in classical and Hellenistic Greece, and it is thus a dialogue within a dialogue, after the manner of Plato, but the conversation extends to enormous length. The topics for discussion generally arise from the course of the dinner itself, the guests supposedly quote from memory. The actual sources of the preserved in the Deipnosophistae remain obscure. The twenty-four named guests include individuals called Galen and Ulpian, but they are all probably fictitious personages, the complete version of the text, with the gaps noted above, is preserved in only one manuscript, conventionally referred to as A. The epitomized version of the text is preserved in two manuscripts, conventionally known as C and E, the standard edition of the text is Kaibels Teubner. The standard numbering is drawn largely from Casaubon, one of Athenaeus friends, Timocrates, wrote about the untimely death of Athenaeus in the Athenaeum. It describes the tale of angry peasants who believed that Athenaeus writings directly contradicted their beliefs of the Mithras cult. One night in 191 A. D. they kidnapped him, when they discovered that he continued writing the Deipnosophistae, twenty-three men stormed into his home and strangled him to death. It is unclear whether Athenaeus finished his work on his own or Timocrates finished it for him, Athenaeus described what may be considered the first patents. He mentions that in 500 BC, in the Greek city of Sybaris, the victor was given the exclusive right to prepare his dish for one year. Swallow song of Rhodes David Braund and John Wilkins, Athenaeus and his world, reading Greek culture in the Roman Empire, Exeter, christian Jacob, The Web of Athenaeus, Washington, DC, Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University,2013. D. Yonge, at The Literature Collection The Deipnosophists, long excerpts in searchable HTML format, at attalus
Athenaeus
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The Deipnosophistes belongs to the literary tradition inspired by the use of the
Greek banquet. Banqueters playing
Kottabos while a musician plays the
Aulos, decorated by the artist 'Nicias'/'Nikias'
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