Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery; the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, the modern period. The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early and Late Middle Ages. Population decline, counterurbanisation, collapse of centralized authority and mass migrations of tribes, which had begun in Late Antiquity, continued in the Early Middle Ages; the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors. Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete.
The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became admired in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded; the Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty established the Carolingian Empire during the 8th and early 9th century. It covered much of Western Europe but succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and the Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism, the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles, feudalism, the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors, were two of the ways society was organised in the High Middle Ages.
The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states, reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, by the founding of universities; the theology of Thomas Aquinas, the paintings of Giotto, the poetry of Dante and Chaucer, the travels of Marco Polo, the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine and war, which diminished the population of Europe. Controversy and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period.
The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history: classical civilisation, or Antiquity. The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, media saecula, or "middle ages", first recorded in 1625; the alternative term "medieval" derives from medium aevum. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the "Six Ages" or the "Four Empires", considered their time to be the last before the end of the world; when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua and to the Christian period as nova. Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People, with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries".
Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient and modern. The most given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516, the death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and late
Rome
Rome is the capital city and a special comune of Italy. Rome serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2, it is the country's most populated comune, it is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber; the Vatican City is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been defined as capital of two states. Rome's history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe; the city's early population originated from a mix of Latins and Sabines.
The city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, is regarded by some as the first metropolis. It was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, the expression was taken up by Ovid and Livy. Rome is called the "Caput Mundi". After the fall of the Western Empire, which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, Rome fell under the political control of the Papacy, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance all the popes since Nicholas V pursued over four hundred years a coherent architectural and urban programme aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world. In this way, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout the city.
In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city. In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, the most popular tourist attraction in Italy, its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The famous Vatican Museums are among the world's most visited museums while the Colosseum was the most popular tourist attraction in world with 7.4 million visitors in 2018. Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development; the city hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p. A. and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL.
Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, financial services. Rome is an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome's Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies. According to the founding myth of the city by the Ancient Romans themselves, the long-held tradition of the origin of the name Roma is believed to have come from the city's founder and first king, Romulus. However, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was derived from Rome itself; as early as the 4th century, there have been alternative theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. Several hypotheses have been advanced focusing on its linguistic roots which however remain uncertain: from Rumon or Rumen, archaic name of the Tiber, which in turn has the same root as the Greek verb ῥέω and the Latin verb ruo, which both mean "flow". There is archaeological evidence of human occupation of the Rome area from 14,000 years ago, but the dense layer of much younger debris obscures Palaeolithic and Neolithic sites.
Evidence of stone tools and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence. Several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the bronze age and the beginning of the Iron age, each hill between the sea and the Capitol was topped by a village. However, none of them had yet an urban quality. Nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city developed through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine; this aggregation was facilitated by the increase of agricultural productivity above the subsistence level, which allowed the establishment of secondary and tertiary activities. These in turn boosted the development of trade with the Greek colonies of southern Italy; these developments, which according to archaeological ev
Kylix
In the pottery of ancient Greece, a kylix is the most common type of wine-drinking cup. It has a broad shallow, body raised on a stem from a foot and two horizontal handles disposed symmetrically; the main alternative wine-cup shape was the kantharos, with a narrower and deeper cup and high vertical handles. The flat interior circle of the base of the cup, called the tondo, was the primary surface for painted decoration in the black-figure or red-figure pottery styles of the 6th and 5th century BC, the outside was often painted; as the representations would be covered with wine, the scenes would only be revealed in stages as the wine was drained. They were designed with this in mind, with scenes created so that they would surprise or titillate the drinker as they were revealed; the word comes from the Greek kylix "cup,", cognate with Latin calix, the source of the English word "chalice" but not related to the similar Greek word calyx which means "husk" or "pod". The term seems to have been rather more used in ancient Greece.
Individual examples and the many named sub-varieties of kylix are called names just using "cup". Like all other types of Greek pottery vessels, they are covered by the general term of "vase"; the primary use for the kylix was drinking wine at a symposium or male "drinking party" in the ancient Greek world, so they are decorated with scenes of a humorous, light-hearted, or sexual nature that would only become visible when the cup was drained. Dionysos, the god of wine, his satyrs or related komastic scenes, are common subjects. On the external surface sometimes, large eyes were depicted also with humorous purposes. Other humorous purposes would include designs on the base of the cup, such as the male genitals on the Bomford Cup, a late 6th century kylix; the shape of the kylix enabled the drinker to drink whilst recumbent, as was the case in the symposia. It enabled them to play kottabos, a game played by flinging wine lees at targets. A typical bowl held 8 oz/250ml of fluid, though this varied with size and shape.
There are many sub-types of kylix, variously defined by their basic shape, the location or subject of their painting, or their main place of production, or a combination of these. Several of these are grouped under the term of Little-Master cup; the sub-types include: After the kylikes were formed, an artisan drew a depiction of an event from Greek mythology or everyday life with a diluted glaze on the outer surface of the formation. Inside the drinking bowl was a portrait of dancing and/or festive drinking. Unique compositional skills were necessary for the artisans to attain due to the lack of verticals and horizontals on the surface. Onesimos and Douris were famous painters in this field, renowned for their works. Individual kylixes with articles include: Arkesilas Cup unusual because it shows a living political figure, Arkesilaos II, king of Kyrene, it is dated to about 565/560 BC, is now in Paris. Dionysus Cup, famous for its painting, 540–530 BC, it is one of the masterpieces of the Attic Black-figure potter Exekias and one of the most significant works in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich.
Berlin Foundry Cup, a red-figure kylix from the early 5th century BC. It is the name vase of the Attic vase painter known conventionally as the Foundry Painter, its most striking feature is the exterior depiction of activities in an Athenian bronze workshop or foundry. It is an important source on ancient Greek metal-working technology. Brygos Cup of Würzburg, an Attic red-figure kylix from about 480 BC, it was painted by the man known as the Brygos Painter. Its symposium scenes are some of the best-known images of Greek pottery. Gordion cup Media related to Kylixes at Wikimedia Commons
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, pleasure and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, named after the Roman goddess Venus, with whom Aphrodite was extensively syncretized. Aphrodite's major symbols include myrtles, doves and swans; the cult of Aphrodite was derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna. Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera, Cyprus and Athens, her main festival was the Aphrodisia, celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess, she was the patron goddess of prostitutes, an association which led early scholars to propose the concept of "sacred prostitution", an idea, now seen as erroneous. In Hesiod's Theogony, Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam produced by Uranus's genitals, which his son Cronus has severed and thrown into the sea. In Homer's Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione.
Plato, in his Symposium 180e, asserts that these two origins belong to separate entities: Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos. Aphrodite had many other epithets, each emphasizing a different aspect of the same goddess, or used by a different local cult, thus she was known as Cytherea and Cypris, due to the fact that both locations claimed to be the place of her birth. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite was married to the god of blacksmiths and metalworking. Despite this, Aphrodite was unfaithful to him and had many lovers. In the First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, she seduces the mortal shepherd Anchises. Aphrodite was the surrogate mother and lover of the mortal shepherd Adonis, killed by a wild boar. Along with Athena and Hera, Aphrodite was one of the three goddesses whose feud resulted in the beginning of the Trojan War and she plays a major role throughout the Iliad. Aphrodite has been featured in western art as a symbol of female beauty and has appeared in numerous works of western literature.
She is a major deity in modern Neopagan religions, including the Church of Aphrodite and Hellenismos. Hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós "sea-foam", interpreting the name as "risen from the foam", but most modern scholars regard this as a spurious folk etymology. Early modern scholars of classical mythology attempted to argue that Aphrodite's name was of Greek or Indo-European origin, but these efforts have now been abandoned. Aphrodite's name is accepted to be of non-Greek Semitic, but its exact derivation cannot be determined. Scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, accepting Hesiod's "foam" etymology as genuine, analyzed the second part of Aphrodite's name as *-odítē "wanderer" or *-dítē "bright". Michael Janda accepting Hesiod's etymology, has argued in favor of the latter of these interpretations and claims the story of a birth from the foam as an Indo-European mytheme. Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- "very" and *dʰei- "to shine" referring to Eos.
Other scholars have argued that these hypotheses are unlikely since Aphrodite's attributes are different from those of both Eos and the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have been suggested. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a female demon that appears in Middle Babylonian and Late Babylonian texts. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni "lord", an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις; this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, "the lady". Most scholars reject this etymology as implausible since Aphrodite appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru; the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a 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 "familiar" characteristic of Greek "obvious from the Macedonians"; the cult of Aphrodite in Greece was imported from, or at least influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia, which, in turn, was influenced by the cult of the Mesopotamian goddess known as "Ishtar" to the East Semitic peoples and as "Inanna" to the Sumerians.
Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians, the Paphians of Cyprus, the Phoenicians at Ascalon. The Phoenicians, in turn, taught her worship to the people of Cythera. Aphrodite took on Inanna-Ishtar's associations with procreation. Furthermore, she was known as Ourania, which means "heavenly", a title corresponding to Inanna's role as the Queen of Heaven. Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are similar on Inanna-Ishtar. Like Inanna-Ishtar, Aphrodite was a warrior goddess, he mentions that Aphrodite's most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms. Modern scholars note that Aphrodite's warrior-goddess aspects appear in the oldest strata of her worship and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins. Nineteenth century classical scholars had a general aversion to the idea that ancient Greek religion was at all influenced by the cultures of the Near East, but Friedrich Got
Geneva
Geneva is the second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situated where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the capital of the Canton of Geneva; the municipality has a population of 200,548, the canton has 495,249 residents. In 2014, the compact agglomération du Grand Genève had 946,000 inhabitants in 212 communities in both Switzerland and France. Within Swiss territory, the commuter area named "Métropole lémanique" contains a population of 1.26 million. This area is spread east from Geneva towards the Riviera area and north-east towards Yverdon-les-Bains, in the neighbouring canton of Vaud. Geneva is a global city, a financial centre, a worldwide centre for diplomacy due to the presence of numerous international organizations, including the headquarters of many agencies of the United Nations and the Red Cross. Geneva hosts the highest number of international organizations in the world, it is where the Geneva Conventions were signed, which chiefly concern the treatment of wartime non-combatants and prisoners of war.
In 2017, Geneva was ranked as the world's fifteenth most important financial centre for competitiveness by the Global Financial Centres Index, fifth in Europe behind London, Zürich and Luxembourg. In 2019 Geneva was ranked among the ten most liveable cities in the world by Mercer together with Zürich and Basel; the city has been referred to as the world's most compact metropolis and the "Peace Capital". In 2017, Geneva was ranked as the seventh most expensive city in the world. Geneva was ranked third in purchasing power in a global cities ranking by UBS in 2018; the city was mentioned in Latin texts, by Caesar, with the spelling Genava from the Celtic *genawa- from the stem *genu-, in the sense of a bending river or estuary. The medieval county of Geneva in Middle Latin was known as pagus major Genevensis or Comitatus Genevensis. After 1400 it became the Genevois province of Savoy; the name takes various forms in modern languages, Geneva in English, French: Genève, German: Genf, Italian: Ginevra, Romansh: Genevra.
The city shares the origin of * genawa "estuary", with the Italian port city of Genoa. Geneva was an Allobrogian border town, fortified against the Helvetii tribe, when the Romans took it in 121 BC, it became Christian under the Late Roman Empire, acquired its first bishop in the 5th century, having been connected to the Bishopric of Vienne in the 4th. In the Middle Ages, Geneva was ruled by a count under the Holy Roman Empire until the late 14th century, when it was granted a charter giving it a high degree of self-governance. Around this time, the House of Savoy came to at least nominally dominate the city. In the 15th century, an oligarchic republican government emerged with the creation of the Grand Council. In the first half of the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation reached the city, causing religious strife, during which Savoy rule was thrown off and Geneva allied itself with the Swiss Confederacy. In 1541, with Protestantism on the rise, John Calvin, the Protestant Reformer and proponent of Calvinism, became the spiritual leader of the city and established the Republic of Geneva.
By the 18th century, Geneva had come under the influence of Catholic France, which cultivated the city as its own. France tended to be at odds with the ordinary townsfolk, which inspired the failed Geneva Revolution of 1782, an attempt to win representation in the government for men of modest means. In 1798, revolutionary France under the Directory annexed Geneva. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, on 1 June 1814, Geneva was admitted to the Swiss Confederation. In 1907, the separation of Church and State was adopted. Geneva flourished in the 19th and 20th centuries, becoming the seat of many international organizations. Geneva is located at 46°12' North, 6°09' East, at the south-western end of Lake Geneva, where the Rhône flows out, it is surrounded by three mountain chains, each belonging to the Jura: the Jura main range lies north-westward, the Vuache southward, the Salève south-eastward. The city covers an area of 15.93 km2, while the area of the canton is 282 km2, including the two small exclaves of Céligny in Vaud.
The part of the lake, attached to Geneva has an area of 38 km2 and is sometimes referred to as petit lac. The canton has only a 4.5-kilometre-long border with the rest of Switzerland. Of 107.5 km of border, 103 are shared with France, the Département de l'Ain to the north and west and the Département de la Haute-Savoie to the south and east. Of the land in the city, 0.24 km2, or 1.5%, is used for agricultural purposes, while 0.5 km2, or 3.1%, is forested. The rest of the land, 14.63 km2, or 91.8%, is built up, 0.49 km2, or 3.1%, is either rivers or lakes and 0.02 km2, or 0.1%, is wasteland. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 3.4%, housing and buildings made up 46.2% and transportation infrastructure 25.8%, while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 15.7%. Of the agricultural land, 0.3% is used for growing crops. Of the water in the municipality, 0.2 % is composed of lakes and 2.9 % streams. The altitude of Geneva is 373.6 metres, corresponds to the altitude of
Etruscan civilization
The Etruscan civilization is the modern name given to a powerful and wealthy civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding to Tuscany, south of the Arno river, western Umbria and central Lazio, with offshoots to the north in the Po Valley, in the current Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy and southern Veneto, to the south, in some areas of Campania. As distinguished by its unique language, this civilization endured from before the time of the earliest Etruscan inscriptions until its assimilation into the Roman Republic, beginning in the late 4th century BC with the Roman–Etruscan Wars. Culture, identifiably Etruscan developed in Italy after about 900 BC with the Iron Age Villanovan culture, regarded as the oldest phase of Etruscan civilization; the latter gave way in the 7th century BCE to a culture, influenced by Ancient Greek culture, during the Archaic and the Hellenistic period. At its maximum extent, during the foundational period of Rome and the Roman Kingdom, Etruscan civilization flourished in three confederacies of cities: of Etruria, of the Po Valley with the eastern Alps, of Campania.
The league in northern Italy is mentioned in Livy. The decline was gradual, but by 500 BCE the political destiny of Italy had passed out of Etruscan hands; the last Etruscan cities were formally absorbed by Rome around 100 BCE. Although the Etruscans developed a system of writing, the Etruscan language remains only understood, only a handful of texts of any length survive, making modern understanding of their society and culture dependent on much and disapproving Roman and Greek sources. Politics was based on the small city and the family unit. In their heyday, the Etruscan elite grew rich through trade with the Celtic world to the north and the Greeks to the south and filled their large family tombs with imported luxuries. Archaic Greece had a huge influence on their art and architecture, Greek mythology was evidently familiar to them; the Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, syncopated to Rasna or Raśna, while the ancient Romans referred to the Etruscans as the Tuscī or Etruscī. Their Roman name is the origin of the terms "Toscana", which refers to their heartland, "Etruria", which can refer to their wider region.
In Attic Greek, the Etruscans were known as Tyrrhenians, from which the Romans derived the names Tyrrhēnī, Tyrrhēnia, Mare Tyrrhēnum, prompting some to associate them with the Teresh. The origins of the Etruscans are lost in prehistory, although Greek historians as early as the 5th century BC associated the Tyrrhenians with Pelasgians, which could both be broad descriptive terms. Strabo and the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus make mention of the Tyrrhenians as pirates. Thucydides and Strabo all denote Lemnos as settled by Pelasgians, whom Thucydides identifies as "belonging to the Tyrrhenians". Although both Strabo and Herodotus agree that Tyrrhenus / Tyrsenos, son of Atys, king of Lydia, led the migration, Strabo specifies that it was the Pelasgians of Lemnos and Imbros who followed Tyrrhenus to the Italian Peninsula. A link between Lemnos and the Tyrrhenians was further manifested by the discovery of the Lemnos Stele, whose inscriptions were written in a language which shows strong structural resemblances to the language of the Etruscans.
This has led to the suggestion of a "Tyrrhenian language group" comprising Etruscan and the Raetic spoken in the Alps. Hellanicus of Lesbos records a Pelasgian migration from Thessaly to the Italian peninsula, noting that "the Pelasgi made themselves masters of some of the lands belonging to the Umbri". By contrast, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek writer living in Rome, dismisses many of the ancient theories of the other Greek historians and postulates that the Etruscans were indigenous people who had always lived in Etruria. For this reason, therefore, I am persuaded that the Pelasgians are a different people from the Tyrrhenians, and I do not believe, that the Tyrrhenians were a colony of the Lydians. For they neither worship the same gods as the Lydians nor make use of similar laws or institutions, but in these respects they differ more from the Lydians than from the Pelasgians. Indeed, those come nearest to the truth who declare that the nation migrated from nowhere else, but was native to the country, since it is found to be a ancient nation and to agree with no other either in its language or in its manner of living.
Furthermore, Dionysius of Halicarnassus is the first ancient writer who reports the endonym of the Etruscans: Rasenna. The Romans, give them other names: from the country they once inhabited, named Etruria, they call them Etruscans, from their knowledge of the ceremonies relating to divine worship, in which they excel others, they now call them, rather inaccurately, but with the same accuracy as the Greeks, they called them Thyoscoï, their own name for themselves, however, is the same as that of one of Rasenna. Livy in his Ab Urbe Condita Libri says the Rhaetians were Etruscans driven into the mountains by the invading Gauls, asserts that the inhabitants of Raetia were of Etruscan origin; the Alpine tribes have no doubt, the same origin the Raetians.
Hades
Hades, in the ancient Greek religion and myth, is the god of the dead and the king of the underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Hades was the eldest son of Rhea, although the last son regurgitated by his father, he and his brothers and Poseidon, defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, available to all three concurrently. Hades was portrayed with his three-headed guard dog Cerberus; the Etruscan god Aita and the Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus were taken as equivalent to Hades and merged into Pluto, a Latinization of Plouton, itself a euphemistic title given to Hades. The origin of Hades' name is uncertain, but has been seen as meaning "the unseen one" since antiquity. An extensive section of Plato's dialogue Cratylus is devoted to the etymology of the god's name, in which Socrates is arguing for a folk etymology not from "unseen" but from "his knowledge of all noble things".
Modern linguists have proposed the Proto-Greek form *Awides. The earliest attested form is Aḯdēs. West argues instead for an original meaning of "the one who presides over meeting up" from the universality of death. In Homeric and Ionic Greek, he was known as Áïdēs. Other poetic variations of the name include Aïdōneús and the inflected forms Áïdos, Áïdi, Áïda, whose reconstructed nominative case *Áïs is, not attested; the name as it came to be known in classical times was Háidēs. The iota became silent a subscript marking, omitted entirely. From fear of pronouncing his name, around the 5th century BC, the Greeks started referring to Hades as Plouton, with a root meaning "wealthy", considering that from the abode below come riches. Plouton became the Roman god who both distributed riches from below; this deity was a mixture of the Greek god Hades and the Eleusinian icon Ploutos, from this he received a priestess, not practiced in Greece. More elaborate names of the same genre were Ploutodótēs or Ploutodotḗr, meaning "giver of wealth".
Epithets of Hades include Agesander and Agesilaos, both from ágō and anḗr or laos, describing Hades as the god who carries away all. Nicander uses the form Hegesilaus, he was referred to as Zeus katachthonios, meaning "the Zeus of the Underworld", by those avoiding his actual name, as he had complete control over the Underworld. In Greek mythology, the god of the underworld, was the first-born son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea, he had three older sisters, Hestia and Hera, as well as a younger brother, all of whom had been swallowed whole by their father as soon as they were born. Zeus was the youngest child and through the machinations of their mother, Rhea, he was the only one that had escaped this fate. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After their release, the six younger gods, along with allies they managed to gather, challenged the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war; the war ended with the victory of the younger gods. Following their victory, according to a single famous passage in the Iliad and his two brothers and Zeus, drew lots for realms to rule.
Zeus received the sky, Poseidon received the seas, Hades received the underworld, the unseen realm to which the souls of the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth. Some myths suggest that Hades was dissatisfied with his turnout, but had no choice and moved to his new realm. Hades obtained his wife and queen, through abduction at the behest of Zeus; this myth is the most important one. Helios told the grieving Demeter that Hades was not unworthy as a consort for Persephone: Aidoneus, the Ruler of Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your child, being your own brother and born of the same stock: for honor, he has that third share which he received when division was made at the first, is appointed lord of those among whom he dwells. Despite modern connotations of death as evil, Hades was more altruistically inclined in mythology. Hades was portrayed as passive rather than evil; that said, he was depicted as cold and stern, he held all of his subjects accountable to his laws.
Any other individual aspects of his personality are not given, as Greeks refrained from giving him much thought to avoid attracting his attention. Hades ruled the dead, assisted by others over; the House of Hades was described as full of "guests," though he left the Underworld. He cared little about what happened in the world above, as his primary attention was ensuring none of his subjects left, he forbade his subjects to leave his domain and would become quite enraged when anyone tried to leave, or if someone tried to steal the souls from his realm. His wrath was terri
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