Roman villa
A Roman villa was a country house built for the upper class in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. The villa rustica centered on the villa itself, perhaps only seasonally occupied, under the Empire a concentration of Imperial villas grew up near the Bay of Naples, especially on the Isle of Capri, at Monte Circeo on the coast and at Antium. Wealthy Romans escaped the heat in the hills round Rome. Cicero allegedly possessed no fewer than seven villas, the oldest of them, Pliny the Younger had three or four, of which the example near Laurentium is the best known from his descriptions. The Empire contained many kinds of villas, not all of them lavishly appointed with mosaic floors, in the provinces, any country house with some decorative features in the Roman style may be called a villa by modern scholars. Some villas were more like the houses of England or Poland. These early suburban villas, such as the one at Romes Auditorium site or at Grottarossa in Rome, demonstrate the antiquity and it is possible that these early, suburban villas were in fact the seats of power of regional strongmen or heads of important families. A third type of villa provided the organizational center of the large holdings called latifundia, by the first century BC, the classic villa took many architectural forms, with many examples employing atrium or peristyle, for enclosed spaces open to light and air.
Upper class, wealthy Roman citizens in the countryside around Rome and throughout the Empire lived in villa complexes, the villa-complex consisted of three parts. The pars urbana where the owner and his family lived and this would be similar to the wealthy-persons in the city and would have painted walls. The pars rustica where the chef and slaves of the villa worked and lived and this was the living quarters for the farms animals. There would usually be other rooms here that might be used as store rooms, the villa fructuaria would be the storage rooms. These would be where the products of the farm were stored ready for transport to buyers, storage rooms here would have been used for oil, grain and any other produce of the villa. Other rooms in the villa might include an office, a temple for worship, several bedrooms, a dining room, Villas were often furnished with plumbed bathing facilities and many would have had an under-floor central heating known as the hypocaust. Smaller in the countryside, even non-commercial villas operated as largely self-supporting units, with associated farms, olive groves, Roman writers refer with satisfaction to the self-sufficiency of their villas, where they drank their own wine and pressed their own oil, a commonly used literary topos.
The late Roman Republic witnessed an explosion of villa construction in Italy, especially in the following the dictatorship of Sulla. In Etruria, the villa at Settefinestre has been interpreted as being the centre of one of the latifundia that were involved in agricultural production. At Settefinestre and elsewhere, the housing of such villas was not richly appointed
Vitruvius
His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body, led to the famous Renaissance drawing by Da Vinci of Vitruvian Man. By his own description Vitruvius served as an artilleryman, the class of arms in the military offices. He probably served as a officer of artillery in charge of doctores ballistarum. Little is known about Vitruvius life, most inferences about him are extracted from his only surviving work De Architectura. Even his first name Marcus and his cognomen Pollio are uncertain. Cetius Faventinus writes of Vitruvius Polio aliique auctores, this can be read as Vitruvius Polio, and others or, less likely, as Vitruvius, Vitruvius was a military engineer, or a praefect architectus armamentarius of the apparitor status group. He is mentioned in Pliny the Elders table of contents for Naturalis Historia, frontinus refers to Vitruvius the architect in his late 1st-century work De aquaeductu. Likely born a free Roman citizen, by his own account, Vitruvius served the Roman army under Caesar with the otherwise poorly identified Marcus Aurelius, Publius Minidius and these names vary depending on the edition of De architectura.
Publius Minidius is written as Publius Numidicus and Publius Numidius, as an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ballista and scorpio artillery war machines for sieges. It is speculated that Vitruvius served with Caesars chief engineer Lucius Cornelius Balbus, the locations where he served can be reconstructed from, for example, descriptions of the building methods of various foreign tribes. Although he describes places throughout De Architectura, he not say he was present. His service likely included north Africa, Hispania and Pontus, the position of the camp, the direction of the entrenchments, the inspection of the tents or huts of the soldiers and the baggage were comprehended in his province. His authority extended over the sick, and the physicians who had the care of them and he had the charge of providing carriages and the proper tools for sawing and cutting wood, digging trenches, raising parapets, sinking wells and bringing water into the camp. He likewise had the care of furnishing the troops with wood and straw, as well as the rams, balistae, at various locations described by Vitruvius and sieges occurred.
He is the source for the siege of Larignum in 56 BC. The broken siege at Gergovia in 52 BC, and the siege of Uxellodunum in 51 BC. These are all sieges of large Gallic oppida, a legion that fits the same sequence of locations is the Legio VI Ferrata, of which ballista would be an auxiliary unit. Mainly known for his writings, Vitruvius was himself an architect, frontinus mentions him in connection with the standard sizes of pipes
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
It was started in 1937 and finally published 1956–58, delayed several times by war and his work on other texts. The volumes have been abridged into a single-volume, concise edition and his book thus dealt with the resulting two divisions of the English-speaking peoples. Work was interrupted in 1939 when the Second World War broke out, the volumes were completed when Churchill was over eighty. A full one-third of the last volume was devoted to the minutiae of the American Civil War. Social history, the revolution, and the industrial revolution hardly get a mention. Political opponent Clement Attlee suggested the work should have been titled Things in history that interested me, despite these criticisms, the books were bestsellers and reviewed favourably on both sides of the Atlantic. In the Daily Telegraph, J. H. However, the quality of the productions was judged to be poor and the series received low ratings. Also in the early 1970s, the work was published in format in 112 weekly issues with articles by other historians in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand.
A sequel to Churchills work, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900, anglosphere History of England Transatlantic relations Winston Churchill as historian Winston Churchill as writer Peter Clarke. Mr. Churchills Profession, The Statesman as Author and the Book that Defined the Special Relationship 347 pages, a history of how the book was written & its reception
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 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, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions.
There are several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in 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 Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians 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 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 Rome
In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, politics, art, architecture, warfare, religion and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires.
Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent and unwanted.
This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
Tepidarium
The tepidarium in the Roman thermae was the great central hall round which all the other halls were grouped, and which gave the key to the plans of the thermae. It was probably the hall where the bathers first assembled prior to passing through the hot baths or taking the cold bath. Caldarium Frigidarium This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Hugh
Pakistan
Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a federal parliamentary republic in South Asia on the crossroads of Central Asia and Western Asia. It is the sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 200 million people, in terms of area, it is the 33rd-largest country in the world with an area covering 881,913 square kilometres. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistans narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, Pakistan is unique among Muslim countries in that it is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and it is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a similarly diverse geography and wildlife. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic, an ethnic civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. The new constitution stipulated that all laws were to conform to the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran.
Pakistan has an economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector. The Pakistani economy is the 24th-largest in the world in terms of purchasing power and it is ranked among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, and is backed by one of the worlds largest and fastest-growing middle classes. The post-independence history of Pakistan has been characterised by periods of military rule, the country continues to face challenging problems such as illiteracy and corruption, but has substantially reduced poverty and terrorism and expanded per capita income. It is a member of CERN. Pakistan is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, the name Pakistan literally means land of the pure in Urdu and Persian. It is a play on the word pāk meaning pure in Persian and Pashto, the letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation and form the linguistically correct and meaningful name. Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan, the earliest known inhabitants in the region were Soanian during the Lower Paleolithic, of whom stone tools have been found in the Soan Valley of Punjab.
The Vedic Civilization, characterised by Indo-Aryan culture, laid the foundations of Hinduism, Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre. The Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, the Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander, prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region. Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centres of education in the world. At its zenith, the Rai Dynasty of Sindh ruled this region, the Pala Dynasty was the last Buddhist empire, under Dharampala and Devapala, stretched across South Asia from what is now Bangladesh through Northern India to Pakistan. The Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Indus valley from Sindh to Multan in southern Punjab in 711 AD, the Pakistan governments official chronology identifies this as the time when the foundation of Pakistan was laid
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula /aɪˈbɪəriən pəˈnɪnsjᵿlə/, known as Iberia /aɪˈbɪəriə/, is located in the southwest corner of Europe. The peninsula is divided between Portugal and Spain, comprising most of their territory. With an area of approximately 582,000 km2, it is the second largest European peninsula, at that time, the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabos Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the land mass southwest of there. The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians, hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia, which he wrote about circa 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with. According to Strabo, prior historians used Iberia to mean the country side of the Ἶβηρος as far north as the river Rhône in France. Polybius respects that limit, but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, elsewhere he says that Saguntum is on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia.
Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people of the Iberian stock living in the Pyrenees, according to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping in political, the Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia, literally translates to land of the Hiberians. This word was derived from the river Ebro, which the Romans called Hiberus, hiber was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BC. Virgil refers to the Ipacatos Hiberos in his Georgics, the Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces, Hispania Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces.
Whatever language may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones, the Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the Ebro, Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin. The association was so known it was hardly necessary to state, for example. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called the whole of Spain Hiberia because of the Hiberus River, the river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BC between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian, uses Ibērus, with reference to this border, Polybius states that the native name is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination
Mohenjo-daro
Mohenjo-daro is an archeological site in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. Mohenjo-daro was abandoned in the 19th century BCE as the Indus Valley Civilization declined, significant excavation has since been conducted at the site of the city, which was designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. The site is threatened by erosion and improper restoration. Mohenjo-daro, the name for the site, has been variously interpreted as Mound of the Dead Men in Sindhi. The citys original name is unknown, based on his analysis of a Mohenjo-daro seal, Iravatham Mahadevan speculates that the citys ancient name could have been Kukkutarma. Cock-fighting may have had ritual and religious significance for the city, with domesticated chickens bred there for sacred purposes, Mohenjo-daro may have been a point of diffusion for the eventual worldwide domestication of chickens. Mohenjo-daro is located west of the Indus River in Larkana District, Pakistan and it is sited on a Pleistocene ridge in the middle of the flood plain of the Indus River Valley, around 28 kilometres from the town of Larkana.
The Indus still flows east of the site, but the Ghaggar-Hakra riverbed on the side is now dry. Mohenjo-daro was built in the 26th century BCE and it was one of the largest cities of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization, known as the Harappan Civilization, which developed around 3,000 BCE from the prehistoric Indus culture. Mohenjo-daro was the most advanced city of its time, with remarkably sophisticated civil engineering, when the Indus civilization went into sudden decline around 1900 BCE, Mohenjo-daro was abandoned. The ruins of the city remained undocumented for around 3,700 years until R. D and this led to large-scale excavations of Mohenjo-daro led by Kashinath Narayan Dikshit in 1924–25, and John Marshall in 1925–26. In the 1930s, major excavations were conducted at the site under the leadership of Marshall, D. K. Dikshitar, further excavations were carried out in 1945 by Ahmad Hasan Dani and Mortimer Wheeler. The last major series of excavations were conducted in 1964 and 1965 by Dr.
George F. Dales, a dry core drilling conducted in 2015 by Pakistans National Fund for Mohenjo-daro revealed that the site is larger than the unearthed area. Mohenjo-daro has a layout based on a street grid of rectilinear buildings. Most were built of fired and mortared brick, some incorporated sun-dried mud-brick, the covered area of Mohenjo-daro is estimated at 300 hectares. The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History offers an estimate of a peak population of around 40,000. The sheer size of the city, and its provision of buildings and facilities. The city is divided into two parts, the so-called Citadel and the Lower City
Bronze
These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability. The archeological period where bronze was the hardest metal in use is known as the Bronze Age. In the ancient Near East this began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, with India and China starting to use bronze around the same time, everywhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons and building such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone. It was only that tin was used, becoming the major ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC. Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the process could be more easily controlled. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic, the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik.
Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Africa and some ancient sites in China, ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not often found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artefacts are found, suggesting that bronze represented a store of value, in Europe, large hoards of bronze tools, typically socketed axes, are found, which mostly show no signs of wear. With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources and these were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, and used by the living for ritual offerings. Pure iron is soft, and the process of beating and folding sponge iron to wrought iron removes from the metal carbon. Careful control of the alloying and tempering eventually allowed for wrought iron with properties comparable to modern steel, Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, and has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day.
Among other advantages, it does not rust, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong for many uses. Archaeologists suspect that a disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean, limiting supplies, there are many different bronze alloys, but typically modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin
Castile (historical region)
Castile is a vaguely defined historical region of Spain. There are different conceptions and definitions of Castile, and since it lacks modern day official recognition, Kingdom of Castile occupied the area. In modern Spain, it is considered to comprise the majority of the autonomous communities of Castile and León. Modern Spanish monarchs are numbered according to the system of Castile, castiles name is thought to derive from Spanish for land of castles in reference to the castles built in the area to consolidate the Christian Reconquest from the oncoming Moors. Originally an eastern county of the kingdom of León, in the 11th century Castile became an independent realm with its capital at Burgos, the County of Castile, which originally included most of Burgos and parts of Vizcaya, Álava, Cantabria and La Rioja. The capture of Toledo in 1085 added New Castile to the territories. León was finally reunited with Castile in 1230, and the following decades saw the capture of Córdoba, Murcia, by the Treaty of Alcaçovas with Portugal on March 6,1460, the ownership of the Canary Islands was transferred to Castile.
See List of Spanish monarchs and Kings of Spain family tree, the Muslim Kingdom of Granada was conquered in 1492, formally passing to the Crown of Castile in that year. At the present time there are two nominally Castilian autonomous communities in Spain, as they hold the toponym in their own name and Leon. Other territories in the former Crown of Castile are left out for different reasons, however, in 1833, Spain was organised into administrative regions with specific official borders. The language of Castile emerged as the language of Spain—known to many of its speakers as castellano and in English sometimes as Castilian. See Names given to the Spanish language, Castilians are defined as a community with a shared culture and history. Their origin is, as well as most of parts of the Spain. Thus, it is not correct to establish a common origin. Over time, most Castilians have mixed with other Spaniards due to their past political dominance and their cultural influence spread throughout the entire plateau of central Spain during the Reconquista, carried out principally by the Kingdom of Toledo which was renamed New Castile.
Castilian ethnicity is the product of the conquest, by a kingdom in northern Spain. These lands were populated, during the reconquest, by peoples all over the peninsula. The Castilian language, now known as Spanish, gradually became the main language of Spain
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