1.
Maschinenmensch
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The Maschinenmensch is a fictional character in Fritz Langs film Metropolis, played by German actress Brigitte Helm in both its robot form and human incarnation. She is a created by the scientist Rotwang. Named Maria in the film, and Futura in Thea von Harbous original novel Metropolis, the Maschinenmensch has been given several names through the decades, Parody, Ultima, Machina, Futura, Robotrix, False Maria, Robot Maria, Roboria and Hel. The intertitles of the 2010 restoration of Metropolis quotes Rotwang, the creator, referring to his gynoid Maschinenmensch. In the novel, the Maschinenmensch is destroyed, though mention is made of Rotwangs former lover, Hel, they are never directly associated with each other. The film version is different due to constraints of the practical special effects available at the time. The Maschinenmensch is a metallic automaton shaped like a woman, in the film version Rotwang proudly proclaims that Hel, Rotwangs former lover, is not dead but alive in the form of the automaton. Hel chose Fredersen over Rotwang, something for which Rotwang never forgave Fredersen, walter Schulze-Mittendorff, the robots designer, described how it was made. He originally considered making the robot from beaten copper, but it would be too heavy to wear and he then discovered a sample of plastic wood, a new material which was very easy to sculpt into the required shape. Using a plaster body cast of actress Brigitte Helm, Mittendorff cut large chunks of wood, rolled flat with a pin and draped them over the cast. The resulting costume was then spray-painted with cellon varnish spray mixed with silvery bronze powder which gave it a very convincing appearance of polished metal, the description in the original film script makes an analogy to an Egyptian statue. The 2010 restoration of Metropolis revealed a previously unseen scene where Rotwang is confiding with the robot telling her about his plans, the shot is unusual because it reveals part of the back of the robot, mostly the back of her head and shoulders. Unfortunately the cast was made standing up, making such as sitting down somewhat difficult. According to actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, it was tight and confining, pinching and scratching the actress despite many attempts by the stage hands to file away all sharp edges. People took pity on Brigitte Helm and slipped coins into slots in the armour, the scene where Rotwang presents his creation to Fredersen took nine days to film in January 1926. Director Fritz Lang shot the scene so many times that an exhausted Brigitte Helm asked him why she should play the role, when no one would possibly know she was inside the costume. Helms son believes that Lang was trying to teach the 17-year-old girl some discipline and mould her in his image, the costume allowed little freedom of movement. To help Brigitte Helm get up from the throne made of sheet metal, behind the scenes stills show the rig and the hinged plate on the seat, visible on stills
2.
Metropolis (1927 film)
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Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist epic science-fiction drama film directed by Fritz Lang. He and his wife, Thea von Harbou, wrote the silent film, erich Pommer produced it in the Babelsberg Studios for Universum Film A. G. It is regarded as a work of the science-fiction genre in movies. Filming took place in 1925 at a cost of five million Reichsmarks. The art direction draws influence from Bauhaus, Cubist and Futurist design, Metropolis was met with a mixed reception upon release. Critics found it pictorially beautiful and lauded its complex special effects, the films extensive running time also came in for criticism, as well as its alleged Communist message. Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere, removing a portion of Langs original footage. Numerous attempts have been made to restore the film since the 1970s, Music producer Giorgio Moroder released a truncated version with a soundtrack by rock artists such as Freddie Mercury, Loverboy and Adam Ant in 1984. In 2008 a damaged print of Langs original cut of the film was found in a museum in Argentina, after a long restoration process, the film was 95% restored and shown on large screens in Berlin and Frankfurt simultaneously on 12 February 2010. Joh Fredersen is the citys master, Maria and the children are ushered away, but Freder, fascinated, goes to the machine rooms to find her. Witnessing the explosion of a machine that kills and injures several workers. Grot, foreman of the Heart Machine, brings to Fredersen secret maps found on the dead workers, Freder secretly rebels against Fredersen by deciding to help the workers, after seeing his fathers cold indifference towards the harsh conditions they face. Fredersen takes the maps to the inventor Rotwang to learn their meaning, Rotwang had been in love with a woman named Hel, who left him to marry Fredersen and later died giving birth to Freder. Rotwang shows Fredersen a robot he has built to resurrect Hel, the maps show a network of catacombs beneath Metropolis, and the two men go to investigate. They eavesdrop on a gathering of workers, including Freder, Maria addresses them, prophesying the arrival of a mediator who can bring the working and ruling classes together. Freder believes that he could fill the role and declares his love for Maria, Rotwang kidnaps Maria, transfers her likeness to the robot and sends her to Fredersen. Freder finds the two embracing and, believing it is the real Maria, falls into a prolonged delirium, intercut with his hallucinations, the false Maria unleashes chaos throughout Metropolis, driving men to murder and stirring dissent amongst the workers. Freder recovers and returns to the catacombs, finding the false Maria urging the workers to rise up and destroy the machines, Freder accuses her of not being the real Maria
3.
Robot
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A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. Robots can be guided by a control device or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be constructed to take on human form but most robots are designed to perform a task with no regard to how they look. By mimicking a lifelike appearance or automating movements, a robot may convey a sense of intelligence or thought of its own. These technologies deal with automated machines that can take the place of humans in dangerous environments or manufacturing processes, or resemble humans in appearance, many of todays robots are inspired by nature contributing to the field of bio-inspired robotics. These robots have also created a branch of robotics, soft robotics. From the time of ancient civilization there have many accounts of user-configurable automated devices and even automata resembling animals and humans. As mechanical techniques developed through the Industrial age, there appeared more practical applications such as automated machines, remote-control and wireless remote-control. The word robot was first used to denote a fictional humanoid in a 1920 play R. U. R. by the Czech writer, Karel Čapek but it was Karels brother Josef Čapek who was the words true inventor. Electronics evolved into the force of development with the advent of the first electronic autonomous robots created by William Grey Walter in Bristol. The first digital and programmable robot was invented by George Devol in 1954 and was named the Unimate, there are concerns about the increasing use of robots and their role in society. Robots are blamed for rising unemployment as they replace workers in increasing numbers of functions, the use of robots in military combat raises ethical concerns. The possibilities of robot autonomy and potential repercussions have been addressed in fiction, the word robot can refer to both physical robots and virtual software agents, but the latter are usually referred to as bots. Closely related to the concept of a robot is the field of Synthetic Biology, the idea of automata originates in the mythologies of many cultures around the world. Engineers and inventors from ancient civilizations, including Ancient China, Ancient Greece, since circa 400 BC, myths of Crete include Talos, a man of bronze who guarded the Cretan island of Europa from pirates. In ancient Greece, the Greek engineer Ctesibius applied a knowledge of pneumatics and hydraulics to produce the first organ, in the 4th century BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum postulated a mechanical steam-operated bird he called The Pigeon. Hero of Alexandria, a Greek mathematician and inventor, created numerous user-configurable automated devices, the 11th century Lokapannatti tells of how the Buddhas relics were protected by mechanical robots, from the kingdom of Roma visaya, until they were disarmed by King Ashoka. Yan Shi proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork made of leather, wood, in 1066, the Chinese inventor Su Song built a water clock in the form of a tower which featured mechanical figurines which chimed the hours
4.
Android (robot)
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An android is a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human, especially one with a body having a flesh-like resemblance. Historically, androids remained completely within the domain of science fiction where they are seen in film. Only recently have advancements in technology allowed the design of functional. The word was coined from the Greek root ἀνδρ-, man, while the term android is used in reference to human-looking robots in general, a robot with a female appearance can also be referred to as a gynoid. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest use to Ephraim Chambers Cyclopaedia, the term android appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons. The term android was used in a modern sense by the French author Auguste Villiers de lIsle-Adam in his work Tomorrows Eve. This story features an artificial humanlike robot named Hadaly, as said by the officer in the story, In this age of Realien advancement, who knows what goes on in the mind of those responsible for these mechanical dolls. Although Karel Čapeks robots in R. U. R, —the play that introduced the word robot to the world—were organic artificial humans, the word robot has come to primarily refer to mechanical humans, animals, and other beings. The term android can mean one of these, while a cyborg would be a creature that is a combination of organic. The word android was used in Star Trek, The Original Series episode What Are Little Girls Made Of. The abbreviation andy, coined as a pejorative by writer Philip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. has seen some further usage, authors have used the term android in more diverse ways than robot or cyborg. In some fictional works, the difference between a robot and android is only their appearance, with androids being made to look like humans on the outside, in other stories, authors have used the word android to mean a wholly organic, yet artificial, creation. Other fictional depictions of androids fall somewhere in between, several projects aiming to create androids that look, and, to a certain degree, speak or act like a human being have been launched or are underway. In 2006, Kokoro Co. developed a new DER2 android, the height of the human body part of DER2 is 165 cm. DER2 can not only change its expression but also move its hands and feet, the air servosystem which Kokoro Co. developed originally is used for the actuator. As a result of having an actuator controlled precisely with air pressure via a servosystem, DER2 realized a slimmer body than that of the former version by using a smaller cylinder. Outwardly DER2 has a more beautiful proportion, compared to the previous model, DER2 has thinner arms and a wider repertoire of expressions. Once programmed, it is able to choreograph its motions and gestures with its voice, the Intelligent Mechatronics Lab, directed by Hiroshi Kobayashi at the Tokyo University of Science, has developed an android head called Saya, which was exhibited at Robodex 2002 in Yokohama, Japan
5.
R.U.R.
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R. U. R. is a 1920 science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. However, the English phrase Rossum’s Universal Robots had been used as the subtitle in the Czech original and it premiered on 25 January 1921 and introduced the word robot to the English language and to science fiction as a whole. Quickly became famous and was early in the history of its publication. By 1923, it had translated into thirty languages. The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people, called roboti and they are not exactly robots by the current definition of the term, they are living flesh and blood creatures rather than machinery and are closer to the modern idea of clones. They may be mistaken for humans and can think for themselves and they seem happy to work for humans at first, but a robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race. Čapek later took a different approach to the theme in War with the Newts. R. U. R. is dark but not without hope, humans Harry Domin — General Manager, R. U. R. Dr. Gall — Head of the Physiological Department, R. U. R, Dr. Hellman — Psychologist-in-Chief Jacob Berman — Managing Director, R. U. R. Alquist — Clerk of the Works, R. U. R and she meets Domin, the General Manager of R. U. R. Rossum attempted to make a dog and a man, but failed, eventually, Young Rossum locked his uncle in a laboratory to play with his monsters and mutants, while Young Rossum built factories and cranked out Robots by the thousands. By the time the play takes place, Robots are cheap and they have become absolutely necessary because they allow products to be made at a fifth the previous cost. Helena meets Fabry, Dr. Gall, Alquist, Busman, and Hallemeier, and reveals she is a representative of the League of Humanity, the managers of the factory find this a ridiculous proposition, since they see Robots as appliances. Helena requests that the Robots be paid so that they can buy things they like, Helena is eventually convinced that the League Of Humanity is a waste of money, but continues to argue on the fact that robots should still have a soul. Later, Domin confesses that he loves Helena and forces her into an engagement, ten years later, Helena and her nurse Nana are talking about current events—particularly the decline in human births. Helena and Domin reminisce about the day they met and summarize the last ten years of world history, Helena meets Dr. Galls new Robot experiment, Radius, and Dr. Gall describes his experimental Robotess, Robot Helena. Both are more advanced, fully featured versions, in secret, Helena burns the formula required to create Robots. The revolt of the Robots reaches Rossums island as the act ends, the characters sense that the very universality of the Robots presents a danger
6.
Gynoid
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A fembot is a humanoid robot that is gendered feminine. It is also known as a gynoid, though this term is more recent, fembots appear widely in science fiction film and art. As more realistic humanoid robot design is possible, they are also emerging in real-life robot design. The portmanteau fembot was popularized by the television series The Bionic Woman in the episode Kill Oscar and later used in the Austin Powers films, robotess is the oldest female-specific term, originating in 1921 from the same source as the term robot. A gynoid is anything that resembles or pertains to the human form. Though the term refers to robotic humanoids regardless of apparent gender. Because of this prefix, many read Android as referring to male-styled robots, the term gynoid was used by Gwyneth Jones in her 1985 novel Divine Endurance to describe a robot slave character in a futuristic China, that is judged by her beauty. Gynoid is also used in American English medical terminology as a shortening of the term gynecoid, not only did the servo motor and platform have to be ‘interiorized’, but the body needed to be slender, both extremely difficult undertakings. Examples of female robots include, Project Aiko, an attempt at producing a female android. People also react to fembots in ways that may be attributed to gender stereotypes and this research has been used to elucidate gender cues, clarifying which behaviors and aesthetics elicit a stronger gender-induced response. Gynoids may be eroticized, and some such as Aiko include sensitivity sensors in their breasts. The fetishization of gynoids in real life has been attributed to male desires for custom-made passive women, however, some science fiction works depict them as femme fatale that fight the establishment or are rebellious. Robot sex partners may become commonplace in the future, Female robots as sexual devices have also appeared, with early constructions being crude. The first was produced by Sex Objects Ltd, a British company and it was called simply 36C, from her chest measurement, and had a 16-bit microprocessor and voice synthesiser that allowed primitive responses to speech and push button inputs. In 1983, a busty female robot named Sweetheart was removed from a display at the Lawrence Hall of Science after a petition was presented claiming it was insulting to women. The robots creator, Clayton Bailey, a professor of art at California State University, Hayward called this censorship, artificial women have been a common trope in fiction and mythology since the writings of the ancient Greeks. This has continued with modern fiction, particularly in the genre of science fiction, the character of Annalee Call in Alien, Resurrection is a rare example of a non-sexualized gynoid. A long tradition exists in literature of depictions of a type of ideal woman
7.
Automaton
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An automaton is a self-operating machine, or a machine or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a predetermined sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the observer that they are operating under their own power. The word automaton is the latinization of the Greek αὐτόματον, automaton and this word was first used by Homer to describe automatic door opening, or automatic movement of wheeled tripods. The automata in the Hellenistic world were intended as tools, toys, religious idols and he had invented the worlds first cuckoo clock. Complex mechanical devices are known to have existed in Hellenistic Greece, though the surviving example is the Antikythera mechanism. However, the information gleaned from recent scans of the fragments indicate that it may have come from the colonies of Corinth in Sicily and its also said that when King Solomon stepped upon the throne, a mechanism was set in motion. As soon as he stepped upon the first step, a golden ox, on each side, the animals helped the King up until he was comfortably seated upon the throne. In ancient China, an account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text. Within it there is a description of an earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an artificer. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork and it walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune and he touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red, other notable examples of automata include Archytass dove, mentioned by Aulus Gellius. The manufacturing tradition of automata continued in the Greek world well into the Middle Ages, similar automata in the throne room were described by Luitprands contemporary Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who later became emperor, in his book Περὶ τῆς Βασιλείου Τάξεως. In the mid-8th century, the first wind powered automata were built, statues that turned with the wind over the domes of the four gates, the public spectacle of wind-powered statues had its private counterpart in the Abbasid palaces where automata of various types were predominantly displayed. In 827, Caliph Al-Mamun had a silver and golden tree in his palace in Baghdad, there were metal birds that sang automatically on the swinging branches of this tree built by Muslim inventors and engineers. The Abbasid Caliph Al-Muqtadir also had a tree in his palace in Baghdad in 915, with birds on it flapping their wings. In the 9th century, the Banū Mūsā brothers invented an automatic flute player. Al-Jazari described complex programmable humanoid automata amongst other machines he designed and constructed in the Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices in 1206 and his automaton was a boat with four automatic musicians that floated on a lake to entertain guests at royal drinking parties
8.
Marius Petipa
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Marius Ivanovich Petipa, born Victor Marius Alphonse Petipa was a French and Russian ballet dancer, pedagogue and choreographer. Petipa is considered to be the most influential ballet master and choreographer in ballet history, Petipa created over fifty ballets, some of which have survived in versions either faithful to, inspired by, or reconstructed from the original. Petipa revived a number of works created by other choreographers. Many of these revivals would go on to become the definitive editions on which all subsequent productions would be based, the most famous of these revivals were Le Corsaire, Giselle, La Esmeralda, Coppélia, La Fille Mal Gardée, The Little Humpbacked Horse and Swan Lake. All of the works and individual pieces which have survived in active performance are considered to be cornerstones of the ballet repertory. Marius Petipa was born Victor Marius Alphonse Petipa in Marseilles, France on 11 March 1818 and his mother, Victorine Grasseau, was a tragic actress and teacher of drama, while his father, Jean Antoine Petipa, was among the most renowned Ballet Masters and pedagogues in Europe. At the time of Mariuss birth, Jean Petipa was engaged as Premier danseur to the Salle Bauveau, Marius Petipa spent his early childhood traveling throughout Europe with his family, as his parents professional engagements took them from city to city. The young Marius received his education at the Grand College in Brussels, while also attending the Brussels Conservatory where he studied music. Just as he had done with his children, Jean Petipa began giving the young Marius lessons in ballet at the age of seven. At first the young boy resisted, caring little for dance. Nevertheless, he came to love this art form that was so much the life and identity of his family. At the age of nine Marius performed for the first time in a production as a Savoyard in his fathers staging of Pierre Gardels 1800 ballet La Dansomani in 1827. The violent street fighting that followed caused all theatres to be shut down for a time, the Petipa family was left in dire straits for some years. The Petipa family relocated to Bordeaux, France, in 1834 where Marius father had secured the position of Premier maître de ballet to the Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, while in Bordeaux, Marius completed his ballet training under the great Auguste Vestris. By 1838 he was appointed Premier danseur to the Ballet de Nantes in Nantes, during his time in Nantes the young Petipa began to try his hand at choreography by creating a number of one-act ballets and divertissements. The 21-year-old Marius Petipa accompanied his father on a tour of the United States with a group of French dancers in July of 1839. Among the many engagements was a performance of Jean Corallis La tarentule at the National Theatre on Broadway, the tour proved to be a disaster, as many in the uncultured American audiences of that time had never before seen ballet. To add to the fiasco, the American impresario who arranged the engagements stole a portion of the troupes receipts
9.
Czech language
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Czech, historically also Bohemian, is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group. It is spoken by over 10 million people and is the language of the Czech Republic. Czech is closely related to Slovak, to the point of being intelligible to a very high degree. In the later 18th to mid-19th century, the written standard was codified in the context of the Czech National Revival. The main vernacular, known as Common Czech, is based on the vernacular of Prague, the Moravian dialects spoken in the eastern part of the country are mostly also counted as Czech, although some of their eastern variants are closer to Slovak. The Czech phoneme inventory is moderate in size, comprising five vowels, words may contain uncommon consonant clusters, including one consonant represented by the grapheme ř, or lack vowels altogether. Czech orthography is simple, and has used as a model by phonologists. Czech is classified as a member of the West Slavic sub-branch of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and this branch includes Polish, Kashubian, Upper and Lower Sorbian and Slovak. Slovak is by far the closest genetic neighbor of Czech, the West Slavic languages are spoken in an area classified as part of Central Europe. Around the 7th century, the Slavic expansion reached Central Europe, the West Slavic polity of Great Moravia formed by the 9th century. The Christianization of Bohemia took place during the 9th and 10th centuries, the Bohemian language is first recorded in writing in glosses and short notes during the 12th to 13th centuries. Literary works written in Czech appear in the early 14th century, the first complete Bible translation also dates to this period. Old Czech texts, including poetry and cookbooks, were produced outside the university as well, literary activity becomes widespread in the early 15th century in the context of the Bohemian Reformation. There was no standardization distinguishing between Czech and Slovak prior to the 15th century, the publication of the Kralice Bible between 1579 and 1593 became very important for standardization of the Czech language in the following centuries. In 1615, the Bohemian diet tried to declare Czech to be the official language of the kingdom. After the Bohemian Revolt which was defeated by the Habsburgs in 1620 and this emigration together with other consequences of the Thirty Years War had a negative impact on the further use of the Czech language. In 1627, Czech and German became official languages of the Kingdom of Bohemia and in the 18th century German became dominant in Bohemia and Moravia, the modern standard Czech language originates in standardization efforts of the 18th century. Changes include the shift of í to ej and é to í and the merging of í
10.
Artificial life
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The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American theoretical biologist, in 1986. There are three kinds of alife, named for their approaches, soft, from software, hard, from hardware. Artificial life researchers study traditional biology by trying to recreate aspects of biological phenomena, artificial life studies the fundamental processes of living systems in artificial environments in order to gain a deeper understanding of the complex information processing that define such systems. The modeling philosophy of life strongly differs from traditional modeling by studying not only life-as-we-know-it. A traditional model of a system will focus on capturing its most important parameters. In contrast, a modeling approach will generally seek to decipher the most simple and general principles underlying life. The simulation then offers the possibility to analyse new and different lifelike systems, vladimir Georgievich Redko proposed to generalize this distinction to the modeling of any process, leading to the more general distinction of processes-as-we-know-them and processes-as-they-could-be. However, different opinions about artificial lifes potential have arisen, The strong alife position states that life is a process which can be abstracted away from any particular medium, notably, Tom Ray declared that his program Tierra is not simulating life in a computer but synthesizing it. The weak alife position denies the possibility of generating a living process outside of a chemical solution and its researchers try instead to simulate life processes to understand the underlying mechanics of biological phenomena. Cellular automata were used in the days of artificial life. Alife and cellular automata share a closely tied history, neural networks are sometimes used to model the brain of an agent. Although traditionally more of an artificial intelligence technique, neural nets can be important for simulating population dynamics of organisms that can learn. The symbiosis between learning and evolution is central to theories about the development of instincts in organisms with higher neurological complexity, as in, for instance and this is a list of artificial life/digital organism simulators, organized by the method of creature definition. Program-based simulations contain organisms with a complex DNA language, usually Turing complete and this language is more often in the form of a computer program than actual biological DNA. Assembly derivatives are the most common languages used, an organism lives when its code is executed, and there are usually various methods allowing self-replication. Mutations are generally implemented as random changes to the code, use of cellular automata is common but not required. Another example could be an intelligence and multi-agent system/program. Individual modules are added to a creature and these modules modify the creatures behaviors and characteristics either directly, by hard coding into the simulation, or indirectly, through the emergent interactions between a creatures modules
11.
Robots in literature
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Recently, a popular overview of the history of androids, robots, cyborgs and replicants from antiquity to the present has been published. Treated fields of knowledge are, history of technology, history of medicine, philosophy, literature, film and art history and these tales include an indictment of human folly at presuming to take on the role of creator. Notable mechanical representations of humans include the life-sized singing puppet Olimpia in the short story The Sandman by E. T. A, hoffman in 1816 and a bipedal anthropomorphic mechanism in The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis in 1865. These examples are stories about human-controlled mechanisms without autonomy or self-awareness, the first use of the word Robot was in Karel Čapeks play R. U. R. Written in 1920 and first performed in Czechoslovakia in 1921, in New York City in 1922, Artificial living beings are created from a chemical substitute for protoplasm but over time they learn about violence from their human creators and begin to revolt. The play ends on an optimistic, even spiritual, note as the artificial biology leads a male and female robot to fall in love and inherit the earth. In an article in the Czech Lidové noviny in 1933 he also explains that he wanted to call the creatures laboři from the Latin word labor. Karel found the word too bookish and sought advice from Josef who suggested to call them robots. The word, which is capitalized in Čapeks play, derives from robota which means drudgery in Czech and means work in Slovak. )The theme of robots has been picked up by science fiction writers and many volumes are focused on robots. Of particular note is the work of Isaac Asimov as a part of his work centers on robots. Asimov is particularly known for his creation of the Three laws of robotics which he uses in his stories as both to define his robots and how these interact within the worlds he creates. In molecular biology, the function of proteins in maintaining life is noted by Charles Tanford and Jacqueline Reynolds in their book Natures Robots. Glaser, Horst Albert and Rossbach, Sabine, The Artificial Human, bern, New York 2011 The Artificial Human List of fictional robots and androids Artificial intelligence in fiction List of fictional computers
12.
Kalevala
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The Kalevala or The Kalewala is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. It is regarded as the epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature. The first version of The Kalevala was published in 1835, the version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty songs. The title can be interpreted as The Land of Kaleva or Kalevia, Elias Lönnrot was a physician, botanist, linguist, and poet. He was the son of Fredrik Johan Lönnrot, a tailor and Ulrika Lönnrot, he was born in the village of Sammatti, at the age of 21, he entered the Imperial Academy of Turku and obtained a masters degree in 1826. His thesis was entitled De Vainamoine priscorum fennorum numine, the monographs second volume was destroyed in the Great Fire of Turku the same year. In the spring of 1828, he set out with the aim of collecting folk songs, rather than continue this work, though, he decided to complete his studies and entered Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki to study medicine. He earned a degree in 1832. In January 1833, he started as the health officer of Kainuu and began his work on collecting poetry. Throughout his career Lönnrot made a total of eleven field trips within a period of fifteen years, prior to the publication of the Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot compiled several related works, including the three-part Kantele, the Old Kalevala and the Kanteletar. Finnish folk poetry was first written down in the 17th century and collected by hobbyists, despite this, the majority of Finnish poetry remained only in the oral tradition. He hoped that such an endeavour would incite a sense of nationality, in 1820, Reinhold von Becker founded the journal Turun Wiikko-Sanomat and published three articles entitled Väinämöisestä. These works were an inspiration for Elias Lönnrot in creating his masters thesis at Turku University, in the 19th century, collecting became more extensive, systematic and organised. Altogether, almost half a million pages of verse have been collected and archived by the Finnish Literature Society and other collectors in what are now Estonia, the publication Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot published 33 volumes containing 85,000 items of poetry over a period of 40 years. They have also archived 65,000 items of poetry that remain unpublished, the chronology of this oral tradition is uncertain. The oldest themes have been interpreted to have their roots in distant, unrecorded history, the newest events seem to be from the Iron Age. Finnish folklorist Kaarle Krohn proposes that 20 of the 45 poems of The Kalevala are of possible Ancient Estonian origin or they at least deal with a motif of Estonian origin. It is understood that during the Finnish reformation in the 16th century the clergy forbade all telling and singing of pagan rites and stories, in conjunction with the arrival of European poetry and music this caused a significant reduction in the number of traditional folk songs and their singers
13.
Prehistory
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Prehistory means literally before history, from the Latin word for before, præ, and Greek ιστορία. Neighbouring civilisations were the first to follow, most other civilisations reached the end of prehistory during the Iron Age. The period when a culture is written about by others, but has not developed its own writing is known as the protohistory of the culture. By definition, there are no records from human prehistory. Clear techniques for dating were not well-developed until the 19th century and this article is concerned with human prehistory as defined here above. There are separate articles for the history of the Earth. However, for the race as a whole, prehistory ends when recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BC. For example, in Egypt it is accepted that prehistory ended around 3200 BC, whereas in New Guinea the end of the prehistoric era is set much more recently. The three-age system is the periodization of prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named for their respective predominant tool-making technologies, Stone Age Bronze Age Iron Age. The notion of prehistory began to surface during the Enlightenment in the work of antiquarians who used the word primitive to describe societies that existed before written records, the first use of the word prehistory in English, however, occurred in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836. The main source for prehistory is archaeology, but some scholars are beginning to more use of evidence from the natural and social sciences. This view has been articulated by advocates of deep history, human population geneticists and historical linguists are also providing valuable insight for these questions. Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of its chronology, restricted to material processes, remains and artifacts rather than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, reference terms that use, such as Neanderthal or Iron Age are modern labels with definitions sometimes subject to debate. Palaeolithic means Old Stone Age, and begins with the first use of stone tools, the Paleolithic is the earliest period of the Stone Age. The early part of the Palaeolithic is called the Lower Palaeolithic, evidence of control of fire by early humans during the Lower Palaeolithic Era is uncertain and has at best limited scholarly support. The most widely accepted claim is that H. erectus or H. ergaster made fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP in a site at Bnot Yaakov Bridge, Israel. The use of fire enabled early humans to cook food, provide warmth, Early Homo sapiens originated some 200,000 years ago, ushering in the Middle Palaeolithic
14.
Statue
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A statue is a sculpture representing one or more people or animals, normally full-length, as opposed to a bust, and at least close to life-size, or larger. A small statue, usually enough to be picked up, is called a statuette or figurine. Statues have been produced in many cultures from prehistory to the present, the worlds tallest statue, Spring Temple Buddha, is 128 metres, and is located in Lushan County, Henan, China. Many statues are built on commission to commemorate a historical event, many statues are intended as public art, exhibited outdoors or in public buildings. Some statues gain fame in their own right, separate from the person or concept they represent, Ancient statues often survive showing the bare surface of the material of which they are made. For example, many people associate Greek classical art with white marble sculpture, most of the colour was weathered off over time, small remnants were removed during cleaning, in some cases small traces remained which could be identified. Richter goes so far as to say of classical Greek sculpture, All stone sculpture, whether limestone or marble, was painted, medieval statues were also usually painted, with some still retaining their original pigments. The colouring of statues ceased during the Renaissance, as excavated classical sculptures, the Löwenmensch figurine from the Swabian Alps in Germany is the oldest known statue in the world, and dates to 30, 000-40,000 years ago. The Venus of Hohle Fels, from the area, is somewhat later. Throughout history, statues have been associated with images in many religious traditions, from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece. Egyptian statues showing kings as sphinxes have existed since the Old Kingdom, the oldest statue of a striding pharaoh dates from the reign of Senwosret I and is the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. The Middle Kingdom of Egypt witnessed the growth of block statues which then became the most popular form until the Ptolemaic period, the oldest statue of a deity in Rome was the bronze statue of Ceres in 485 BC. The oldest statue in Rome is now the statue of Diana on the Aventine, the wonders of the world include several statues from antiquity, with the Colossus of Rhodes and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. While Byzantine art flourished in various forms, sculpture and statue making witnessed a general decline, an example was the statue of Justinian which stood in the square across from the Hagia Sophia until the fall of Constantinople in the 15th century. While making statues was not subject to a ban, it was hardly encouraged in this period. Starting with the work of Maillol around 1900, the human figures embodied in statues began to move away from the schools of realism that had held them bound for thousands of years. The Futurist and Cubist schools took this even further until statues, often still nominally representing humans, had lost all. By the 1920s and 1930s statues began to appear that were abstract in design
15.
Homer
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Homer is the name ascribed by the ancient Greeks to the semi-legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of Greek literature. The Odyssey focuses on the home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Many accounts of Homers life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a bard from Ionia. The modern scholarly consensus is that these traditions do not have any historical value, the Homeric question - by whom, when, where and under what circumstances were the Iliad and Odyssey composed - continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion on the authorship question falls into two camps, one group holds that most of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the work of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the crystallization of a process of working and re-working by many contributors and it is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century B. C. Most researchers believe that the poems were transmitted orally. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education, to Plato, the chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word Homer. Was Homer a single person, an imaginary person representing a group of poets and this information is often called the world of Homer. The Homeric period would in that cover a number of historical periods, especially the Mycenaean Age. Considered word-for-word, the texts as we know them are the product of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or Odyssey is a different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and fragments. The term accuracy reveals a belief in an original uniform text. The manuscripts of the work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th century. These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as each generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed and these numerous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated. The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing manuscripts, librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying to restore a more authentic copy. He had collected several manuscripts, which he named, the Sinopic, the one he selected for correction was the koine, which Murray translates as the Vulgate. Aristarchus was known for his selection of material
16.
Plato
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Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
17.
Pindar
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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
18.
Tacitus
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Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and an historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus, in AD14, to the years of the First Jewish–Roman War, There are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts, including a gap in the Annals that is four books long. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians, details about his personal life are scarce. What little is known comes from scattered hints throughout his work, the letters of his friend and admirer Pliny the Younger, and an inscription found at Mylasa in Caria. Tacitus was born in 56 or 57 to an equestrian family, one scholars suggestion of Sextus has gained no approval. Most of the aristocratic families failed to survive the proscriptions which took place at the end of the Republic. The claim that he was descended from a freedman is derived from a speech in his writings which asserts that many senators and knights were descended from freedmen, but this is generally disputed. His father may have been the Cornelius Tacitus who served as procurator of Belgica and Germania, Pliny the Elder mentions that Cornelius had a son who aged rapidly, which implies an early death. There is no mention of Tacitus suffering such a condition, the friendship between the younger Pliny and Tacitus leads some scholars to conclude that they were both the offspring of wealthy provincial families. The province of his birth remains unknown, though various conjectures suggest Gallia Belgica, Gallia Narbonensis and his marriage to the daughter of Narbonensian senator Gnaeus Julius Agricola implies that he came from Gallia Narbonensis. Tacitus dedication to Fabius Iustus in the Dialogus may indicate a connection with Spain, no evidence exists, however, that Plinys friends from northern Italy knew Tacitus, nor do Plinys letters hint that the two men had a common background. Pliny Book 9, Letter 23 reports that, when he was asked if he was Italian or provincial, he gave an unclear answer, since Pliny was from Italy, some infer that Tacitus was from the provinces, probably Gallia Narbonensis. His ancestry, his skill in oratory, and his depiction of barbarians who resisted Roman rule have led some to suggest that he was a Celt. This belief stems from the fact that the Celts who had occupied Gaul prior to the Roman invasion were famous for their skill in oratory, and had been subjugated by Rome. As a young man, Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome to prepare for a career in law and politics, like Pliny, in 77 or 78, he married Julia Agricola, daughter of the famous general Agricola. Little is known of their life, save that Tacitus loved hunting. He started his career under Vespasian, but entered political life as a quaestor in 81 or 82 under Titus
19.
Pliny the Elder
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In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions. Pliny is referring to the fact that Tacitus relied on his uncles now missing work on the History of the German Wars. The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the eruption would not allow his ship to leave the shore, and Pliny probably died during this event. Plinys dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 and a statement of his nephew that he died in his 56th year, Pliny was the son of an equestrian, Gaius Plinius Celer, and his wife, Marcella. Neither the younger nor the elder Pliny mention the names and their ultimate source is a fragmentary inscription found in a field in Verona and recorded by the 16th century Augustinian monk Onofrio Panvinio at Verona. The reading of the inscription depends on the reconstruction, but in all cases the names come through, whether he was an augur and whether she was named Grania Marcella are less certain. Jean Hardouin presents a statement from a source that he claims was ancient, that Pliny was from Verona. Hardouin also cites the conterraneity of Catullus, additional efforts to connect Celer and Marcella with other gentes are highly speculative. Hardouin is the scholar to use his unknown source. He kept statues of his ancestors there, a statue of Pliny on the facade of the Duomo of Como celebrates him as a native son. He had a sister, Plinia, who married into the Caecilii and was the mother of his nephew, Pliny the Younger, whose letters describe his work and study regimen in detail. In one of his letters to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger details how his uncles breakfasts would be light and simple following the customs of our forefathers. This shows that Pliny the Younger wanted it to be conveyed that Pliny the Elder was a good Roman and this statement would have pleased Tacitus. Two inscriptions identifying the hometown of Pliny the Younger as Como take precedence over the Verona theory, one commemorates the youngers career as imperial magistrate and details his considerable charitable and municipal expenses on behalf of the people of Como. Another identifies his father Lucius village as Fecchio near Como and it is likely therefore that Plinia was a local girl and Pliny the Elder, her brother, was from Como. Gaius was a member of the Plinii gens and he did not take his fathers cognomen, Celer, but assumed his own, Secundus. As his adopted son took the same cognomen, Pliny founded a branch, no earlier instances of the Plinii are known. In 59 BC, only about 82 years before Plinys birth, Julius Caesar founded Novum Comum as a colonia to secure the region against the Alpine tribes, whom he had been unable to defeat
20.
Iliad
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The Iliad is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly. The Iliad is paired with something of a sequel, the Odyssey, along with the Odyssey, the Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC. Recent statistical modelling based on language evolution gives a date of 760–710 BC, in the modern vulgate, the Iliad contains 15,693 lines, it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects. Note, Book numbers are in parentheses and come before the synopsis of the book, after an invocation to the Muses, the story launches in medias res towards the end of the Trojan War between the Trojans and the besieging Greeks. Chryses, a Trojan priest of Apollo, offers the Greeks wealth for the return of his daughter Chryseis, held captive of Agamemnon, although most of the Greek army is in favour of the offer, Agamemnon refuses. Chryses prays for Apollos help, and Apollo causes a plague to afflict the Greek army, after nine days of plague, Achilles, the leader of the Myrmidon contingent, calls an assembly to deal with the problem. Under pressure, Agamemnon agrees to return Chryseis to her father, angered, Achilles declares that he and his men will no longer fight for Agamemnon but will go home. Odysseus takes a ship and returns Chryseis to her father, whereupon Apollo ends the plague, in the meantime, Agamemnons messengers take Briseis away. Achilles becomes very upset, sits by the seashore, and prays to his mother, Achilles asks his mother to ask Zeus to bring the Greeks to the breaking point by the Trojans, so Agamemnon will realize how much the Greeks need Achilles. Thetis does so, and Zeus agrees, Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon, urging him to attack Troy. Agamemnon heeds the dream but decides to first test the Greek armys morale, the plan backfires, and only the intervention of Odysseus, inspired by Athena, stops a rout. Odysseus confronts and beats Thersites, a soldier who voices discontent about fighting Agamemnons war. After a meal, the Greeks deploy in companies upon the Trojan plain, the poet takes the opportunity to describe the provenance of each Greek contingent. When news of the Greek deployment reaches King Priam, the Trojans too sortie upon the plain, in a list similar to that for the Greeks, the poet describes the Trojans and their allies. The armies approach each other, but before they meet, Paris offers to end the war by fighting a duel with Menelaus, urged by his brother and head of the Trojan army, Hector. While Helen tells Priam about the Greek commanders from the walls of Troy, Paris is beaten, but Aphrodite rescues him and leads him to bed with Helen before Menelaus can kill him
21.
Hephaestus
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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
22.
Zeus
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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
23.
Pandora
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In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by the gods, specifically by Hephaestus and Athena on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god helped create her by giving her unique gifts, Zeus ordered Hephaestus to mold her out of earth as part of the punishment of humanity for Prometheus theft of the secret of fire, and all the gods joined in offering her seductive gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground kylix in the British Museum—is Anesidora, the Pandora myth is a kind of theodicy, addressing the question of why there is evil in the world. Hesiod, both in his Theogony and in Works and Days, gives the earliest version of the Pandora story, the Pandora myth first appears in lines 560–612 of Hesiods poem in epic meter, the Theogony, without ever giving the woman a name. After humans received the gift of fire from Prometheus, an angry Zeus decides to give humanity a punishing gift to compensate for the boon they had been given. He commands Hephaestus to mold from earth the first woman, a beautiful evil whose descendants would torment the human race, after Hephaestus does so, Athena dresses her in a silvery gown, an embroidered veil, garlands and an ornate crown of silver. This woman goes unnamed in the Theogony, but is presumably Pandora, whose myth Hesiod revisited in Works, when she first appears before gods and mortals, wonder seized them as they looked upon her. But she was sheer guile, not to be withstood by men, the more famous version of the Pandora myth comes from another of Hesiods poems, Works and Days. In this version of the myth, Hesiod expands upon her origin, finally, Hermes gives this woman a name, Pandora – All-gifted – because all the Olympians gave her a gift. In this retelling of her story, Pandoras deceitful feminine nature becomes the least of humanitys worries, for she brings with her a jar containing burdensome toil and sickness that brings death to men, diseases and a myriad other pains. Prometheus had warned his brother Epimetheus not to accept any gifts from Zeus, but Epimetheus did not listen, he accepted Pandora, who promptly scattered the contents of her jar. As a result, Hesiod tells us, the earth and sea are full of evils, one item, however, did not escape the jar, Hesiod does not say why hope remained in the jar. Hesiod closes with this moral, Thus it is not possible to escape the mind of Zeus, Thus, Pandora was created as the first woman and given the jar which releases all evils upon man. Archaic and Classic Greek literature seem to no further mention of Pandora, though Sophocles wrote a satyr play Pandora. Sappho may have reference to Pandora in a surviving fragment. Later, mythographers filled in minor details or added postscripts to Hesiods account, for example, the Bibliotheca and Hyginus each make explicit what might be latent in the Hesiodic text, Epimetheus married Pandora. They each add that they had a daughter, Pyrrha, who married Deucalion, however, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, fragment #5, had made a Pandora one of the daughters of Deucalion, and the mother of Graecus by Zeus. In a major departure from Hesiod, the 6th-century BC Greek elegiac poet Theognis of Megara tells us, in this, he appears to follow a possibly pre-Hesiodic tradition, preserved by the second-century fabulist Babrius, that the gods sent a jar containing blessings to humans
24.
Pygmalion (mythology)
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Pygmalion is a legendary figure of Cyprus. In Ovids narrative, Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who carved a woman out of ivory, according to Ovid, after seeing the Propoetides he was not interested in women, but his statue was so beautiful and realistic that he fell in love with it. In time, Aphrodites festival day came, and Pygmalion made offerings at the altar of Aphrodite, there, too scared to admit his desire, he quietly wished for a bride who would be the living likeness of my ivory girl. When he returned home, he kissed his ivory statue, and he kissed it again, and found that the ivory had lost its hardness. Pygmalion married the ivory sculpture changed to a woman under Aphrodites blessing, in Ovids narrative, they had a daughter, Paphos, from whom the citys name is derived. In some versions Paphos was a son, and they also had a daughter, perhaps he drew on the lost narrative by Philostephanus that was paraphrased by Clement of Alexandria. Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, the moral anecdote of the Apega of Nabis, recounted by the historian Polybius, described a supposed mechanical simulacrum of the tyrants wife, that crushed victims in her embrace. The trope of a sculpture so lifelike that it seemed about to move was a commonplace with writers on works of art in antiquity and this trope was inherited by writers on art after the Renaissance. The basic Pygmalion story has been transmitted and re-presented in the arts through the centuries. At an unknown date, later authors give as the name of the statue that of the sea-nymph Galatea or Galathea, goethe calls her Elise, based upon the variants in the story of Dido/Elissa. In the final scene of William Shakespeares The Winters Tale, a statue of Queen Hermione which comes to life is revealed as Hermione herself, there have also been numerous sculptures of the awakening. Ovids Pygmalion has inspired works of literature, some of which are listed below. The popularity of the Pygmalion myth surged in the 19th century, R. M. D. s Pygmalion Genevieve Taggards Galatea Again Albert G. Millers Pygmalion Harry C. Morris Pygmalion Melvin H. Bernsteins Mr. H. P. Lovecrafts Herbert West–Reanimator Tommaso Landolfis La moglie di Gogol John Updikes Pygmalion E. T. A, douglass novel Invitation To Live William Hazlitts Liber Amoris, or, the New Pygmalion Richard Powerss novel Galatea 2. The sculpture represents the power of a mothers love for a child. Chihiro Watanabes manga series Pygmalion, which started its serialization in 2015 in the magazine Monthly Comic Garden, the story of Pygmalion is the subject of Jean-Philippe Rameaus 1748 opera, Pigmalion. It was also the subject of Gaetano Donizettis first opera, Il Pigmalione, molin produced a ballet-pantomime version of Pygmalion in 1800. Franz von Suppe composed an operetta Die schöne Galathée which is based on the characters of Pygmalion, the ballet Coppélia, about an inventor who makes a life-sized dancing doll, has strong echoes of Pygmalion
25.
Cyprus
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Cyprus, officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the Eastern Mediterranean and the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean. It is located south of Turkey, west of Syria and Lebanon, northwest of Israel and Palestine, north of Egypt, the earliest known human activity on the island dates to around the 10th millennium BC. Archaeological remains from this include the well-preserved Neolithic village of Khirokitia. Cyprus was settled by Mycenaean Greeks in two waves in the 2nd millennium BC, Cyprus was placed under British administration based on Cyprus Convention in 1878 and formally annexed by Britain in 1914. While Turkish Cypriots made up 18% of the population, the partition of Cyprus and creation of a Turkish state in the north became a policy of Turkish Cypriot leaders, following nationalist violence in the 1950s, Cyprus was granted independence in 1960. On 15 July 1974, a coup détat was staged by Greek Cypriot nationalists and elements of the Greek military junta in an attempt at enosis and these events and the resulting political situation are matters of a continuing dispute. The Cyprus Republic has de jure sovereignty over the island of Cyprus, as well as its territorial sea and exclusive economic area, another nearly 4% of the islands area is covered by the UN buffer zone. The international community considers the part of the island as territory of the Republic of Cyprus occupied by Turkish forces. The occupation is viewed as illegal under law, amounting to illegal occupation of EU territory since Cyprus became a member of the European Union. Cyprus is a major tourist destination in the Mediterranean, on 1 January 2008, the Republic of Cyprus joined the eurozone. The earliest attested reference to Cyprus is the 15th century BC Mycenaean Greek
26.
Galatea (mythology)
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Galatea is a name popularly applied to the statue carved of ivory by Pygmalion of Cyprus, which then came to life, in Greek mythology, in modern English the name usually alludes to that story. Galatea is also the name of Polyphemuss object of desire in Theocrituss Idylls VI and XI and is linked with Polyphemus again in the myth of Acis and Galatea in Ovids Metamorphoses. Though the name Galatea has become so associated with Pygmalions statue as to seem antique. No extant ancient text mentions the name, although Pausanias mentions a statue of Calm. As late as 1763, a sculpture of the subject shown by Falconet at the Paris Salon carried the title Pygmalion aux pieds de sa statue qui sanime and that sculpture, currently at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, now bears the expected modern title Pygmalion and Galatea. According to Meyer Reinhold, the name Galatea was first given wide circulation in Jean-Jacques Rousseaus scène lyrique of 1762, the story of Pygmalion appeared earliest in a Hellenistic work, Philostephanus history of Cyprus, De Cypro. Ecstatic relationship, Meyer Reinhold has remarked, there may be lurking a survival of the ancient cult of the Great Goddess, the myth indicates that a cult image of Aphrodite was instrumental in some way in the founding myth of Paphos. It also seems axiomatic, apart from miraculous intervention, that the representative of a cult image could be none. Robert Graves gives an interpretation of the story, as a mythologized overthrow of a matrilineal cult. Pygmalion is the Greek version of the Phoenician royal name Pumayyaton, Galene Galatea of Justice League Unlimited Galatea, a work of interactive fiction Galatea 2.2 List of Metamorphoses characters Pygmalion and Galatea. Pygmalion La Galatea by Miguel de Cervantes Galatea is the name of the gynoid in the film Bicentennial Man
27.
Aphrodite
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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
28.
Talos
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In Greek mythology, Talos or Talon was a giant automaton made of bronze to protect Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders. He circled the islands three times daily. Alternatively Talos could be figured as a sacred bull, the conception that Hesiods men of the Age of Bronze were actually made of bronze is extended to men of the age of gold by Lucian for humorous effect. The pseudo-Platonic dialogue Minos rationalized the myth, thrice yearly showing at each village in turn the laws of Minos inscribed on brass tablets, according to Brian A. Sparkes, The most detailed treatment in literature is to be found in the Argonautica. However, we have detailed images of the episode,150 years earlier, Talos is said to have been made by Hephaestus at the request of Zeus, to protect Europa from people who would want to kidnap her. In some versions of the myth, Talos is forged by the inventor Daedalus, in the Cretan dialect, talôs was the equivalent of the Greek hêlios, the Sun, the lexicon of Hesychius of Alexandria notes simply Talos is the Sun. In Crete, Zeus was worshipped as Zeus Tallaios, Solar Zeus, the god was identified with the Tallaia, a spur of the Ida range in Crete. On the coin from Phaistos he is winged, in Greek vase-paintings, the ideas of Talos vary widely, with one consistent detail, in Greek imagery outside Crete, Talos is always being vanquished, he seems to have been an enigmatic figure to the Greeks themselves. Talos is described by Greeks in two versions, in one version, Talos is a gift from Hephaestus to Minos, forged with the aid of the Cyclopes in the form of a bull. In the other version, Talos is a gift from Zeus to Europa, or he may have been the son of Kres, the personification of Crete, in Argonautica Talos threw rocks at any approaching ship to protect his island. Talos had one vein, which went from his neck to his ankle, the Argo, transporting Jason and the Argonauts, approached Crete after obtaining the Golden Fleece. As guardian of the island, Talos kept the Argo at bay by hurling great boulders at it, peter Green, translator of Argonautica, notes that the story is somewhat reminiscent of the story regarding the heel of Achilles. In Argonautica, Apollonius notes that the ichor, cook first suggested that the single vein closed by a nail or plug referred to the lost-wax method of casting. Robert Graves suggests that this myth is based on a misinterpretation of an image of Athena demonstrating the process of casting of steel. 2, a bronze sculpture in Portland, Oregon Talos in the Greek Mythology Link
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Apollonius of Rhodes
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Apollonius of Rhodes, is best known as the author of the Argonautica, an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. In fact almost nothing at all is known about Apollonius and even his connection with Rhodes is a matter for speculation, the most reliable information we have about ancient poets is largely drawn from their own works. Unfortunately, Apollonius of Rhodes reveals nothing about himself. Oxy,1241, which provides names of several heads of the Library of Alexandria. Other scraps can be gleaned from miscellaneous texts, the reports from all the above sources however are scanty and often self-contradictory. The two Lives and the Suda name Apollonius father as Silleus or Illeus, but both names are rare and may derive from σίλλος or lampoon, suggesting a comic source. The second Life names his mother as Rhode, but this is unlikely, Rhodē means Rhodian woman, and is almost certainly derived from an attempt to explain Apollonius epithet Rhodian. The Lives, the Suda, and the geographical writer Strabo say that he came from Alexandria, Athenaeus and Aelian say that he came from Naucratis, no source gives the date of his birth. The Lives and the Suda agree that Apollonius was a student of the poet, Vita B states that Callimachus was his instructor in rhetoric, but the terminology is anachronistic. Moreover, in ancient biographies pupil and student are figures of speech designating the influence one poet may have exercised over another, head of the Library of Alexandria. The second Life, the Suda, and P. Oxy,1241 attest that Apollonius held this post. 1241 bears some signs of confusion since it lists Apollonius under Ptolemy I Soter, the Suda says that Apollonius succeeded Eratosthenes, but this doesnt fit the evidence either. There was another Alexandrian librarian named Apollonius and this may have caused some of the confusion, the epithet Rhodios or Rhodian indicates that Apollonius had some kind of association with the island of that name. The Lives and the Suda attest to his move there from Alexandria and they differ about whether he died in Rhodes or came back to Alexandria to take up the position of head of the Library. According to Vita A, he was a teacher in Rhodes. In fact the epithet of Rhodes need not indicate any physical association with the island and it might simply reflect the fact that he once wrote a poem about Rhodes. According to Athenaeus, he was called the Naucratite. Some modern scholars doubt that he was given that title but, if he was. Only the two Lives give information about Apollonius death, and they disagree, the first reports that he died in Rhodes, the second reports that he died after returning to Alexandria and adds that some say he was buried with Callimachus
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Argonautica
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The Argonautica is a Greek epic poem written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC. The only surviving Hellenistic epic, the Argonautica tells the myth of the voyage of Jason and it was the age of the great Library of Alexandria, and his epic incorporates his researches in geography, ethnography, comparative religion, and Homeric literature. However, his contribution to the epic tradition lies in his development of the love between hero and heroine – he seems to have been the first narrative poet to study the pathology of love. According to some accounts, a hostile reception even led to his exile to Rhodes, the literary fashion was for small, meticulous poems, featuring displays of erudition and paradoxography, as represented by the work of Callimachus. Even if the attempt to pass through the mountain of books succeeds, there is no hope of a pause. Since scholarship is a key feature of this story, here is a preview of some of the main issues in the poets treatment of the Argonaut myth. Callimachus set the standards for Hellenistic aesthetics in poetry and, according to ancient sources, modern scholars generally dismiss these sources as unreliable and point to similarities in the poetry of the two men. Callimachus, for example, composed a book of verses dealing with aitia, according to one survey, there are eighty aitia in Argonautica. Yet Argonautica is clearly intended to be fundamentally Homeric and therefore seems at odds with the poetics of Callimachus. Addressing the issue of heroism in Argonautica, the German classicist H. Fränkel once noted some unheroic characteristics of Jason, in particular, their frequent moods of despair and depression, summed up in the word ἀμηχανία or helplessness. By contrast, the bullying Argonaut Idas seemed to Fränkel an ugly example of the archaic warrior and it looks as if Apollonius meant to underscore the obsolescence of traditional heroism in the Hellenistic period. These arguments have caused much discussion among scholars about the treatment, another fruitful discussion gained impetus from an article by D. A. Van Krevelen, who dismissed all the characters, apart from Medea, as flimsy extras without any interesting qualities. So the question arises, is the poem a unified narrative, or is the epic plot merely a coathanger for erudite, there is some dispute about the date when the poem was originally published. It could have been during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, according to Jackie Murray, the poem was published at the time of Ptolemy III Euergetes. Apollonius Argonautica was based on ancient sources, including Homer. The story of the expedition seems to have known to the author of the Odyssey, who states. Jason is mentioned several times in the Iliad, but not as the leader of the Argonauts. Hesiod relates the story of Jason saying that he fetched Medeia at the command of his uncle Pelias, and that she him a son, Medeius
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Brazen head
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Made of brass or bronze, the male head was variously mechanical or magical. Like Odins head of Mimir in Norse paganism, it was reputed to be able to answer any question put to it. It is likely that these accounts had their origin in allegorical treatments of alchemy and they may also have found inspiration in the Greek legends concerning Talos, the brass guardian of Minoan Crete. The first account of a talking head used to give its owner answers to his questions appears in William of Malmesburys c and he was said to have cast the head of a statue using his knowledge of astrology. It would not speak until spoken to, but then answered any yes/no question put to it, the Roman poet Vergil, in his medieval role as a sorcerer, was credited with creating his own oracular head in Gautier de Metzs c. 1245 Image of the World. The 1319 Renard le Contrefait retold the story and may have been the first to specify that the head was made of brass and these included Robert Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, and—most famously—Roger Bacon. Grosseteste was said to have constructed an hed of bras to, make it for to telle of suche thinges as befelle over the course of seven years but then lost it through 30 seconds neglect. Its relics were held in a vault under Lincoln College. They only succeeded in their work once they compelled the assistance of a demon, like Grosseteste before them, however, they were said to have missed the decisive moment, either from forgetfulness or exhaustion. Having missed it, the head either collapsed or exploded or was scrapped as useless, other people reputed to have a brazen head include Boethius, Faust, Arnaldus de Villa Nova, Stephen of Tours, and Enrique de Villena. It is thought to have been the basis for a lost Elizabethan drama, the talking Skull of Balsamo was a mechanical illusion of the Viennese magician Joseffy. The skull was made of painted copper inset with real human teeth, Robert Greenes c. 1590 treatment of Roger Bacons brazen head, the play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, was one of the most successful Elizabethan comedies. Miguel de Cervantess 1605 Don Quixote lampoons the idea with Don Antonio Morenos brazen head, created for him by a Polish pupil of Escotillo but which is later revealed to be fake. Daniel Defoes 1722 Journal of the Plague Year, set in Londons 1665 plague, lord Byron 1818 referenced Friar Bacons Brazen Head in Canto 1 stanza 217. Nathaniel Hawthorne referenced both Friar Bacons Brazen Head and Albertus Magnuss Man of Brass in his 1843 The Birth-Mark and 1844 The Artist of the Beautiful, james Baldwins 1905 Thirty More Famous Stories Retold reset the story of Friar Bacon and the Brazen Head as a childrens story. John Masefields 1935 The Box of Delights includes a head among its characters. It guards the house, welcomes visitors, and announces them to Vergil, robertson Daviess 1970 Fifth Business includes a brazen head used as part of a magic act. A perverse thing, because synth-voice chips cost next to nothing, tom Deitzs Soulsmith trilogy features a protagonist who constructs a brazen head as his masterwork
32.
Roger Bacon
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In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the scientific method inspired by Aristotle. His linguistic work has been heralded for its exposition of a universal grammar. However, more recent re-evaluations emphasise that Bacon was essentially a medieval thinker and he was, however, partially responsible for a revision of the medieval university curriculum, which saw the addition of optics to the traditional quadrivium. A survey of how Bacons work was received over the found that it often reflected the concerns. Bacons major work, the Opus Majus, was sent to Pope Clement IV in Rome in 1267 upon the popes request, although gunpowder was first invented and described in China, Bacon was the first in Europe to record its formula. Roger Bacon was born in Ilchester in Somerset, England, in the early 13th century, although his date of birth is sometimes narrowed down to c. 1210,1213 or 1214, however, historians most agree on c. 1220. The only source for his date is a statement from his 1267 Opus Tertium that forty years have passed since I first learned the Alphabetum. His family appears to have been well off, Bacon became a master at Oxford, lecturing on Aristotle. There is no evidence he was awarded a doctorate. A caustic cleric named Roger Bacon is recorded speaking before the king at Oxford in 1233, in 1237 or some time over the next decade, he accepted an invitation to teach at the University of Paris. While there, he lectured on Latin grammar, Aristotelian logic, arithmetic, geometry, and his faculty colleagues included Robert Kilwardby, Albertus Magnus, and Peter of Spain, the future Pope John XXI. The Cornishman Richard Rufus was a scholarly opponent, in 1247 or soon after, he left his position in Paris. As a private scholar, his whereabouts for the decade are uncertain but he was likely in Oxford c. 1248–51, where he met Adam Marsh. He seems to have studied most of the known Greek and Arabic works on optics, a passage in the Opus Tertium states that at some point he took a two-year break from his studies. Pope Urban IV absolved the king of his oath in 1261 and, after an initial abortive resistance, Bacons own family were considered royal partisans, De Montforts men seized their property and drove several members into exile. In 1256 or 57, he became a friar in the Franciscan Order in either Paris or Oxford, following the example of scholarly English Franciscans such as Grosseteste and Marsh. After 1260, Bacons activities were restricted by a statute prohibiting the friars of his order from publishing books or pamphlets without prior approval
33.
Golem
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In Jewish folklore, a golem is an animated anthropomorphic being that is magically created entirely from inanimate matter. The word was used to mean an amorphous, unformed material in Psalms, the most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late-16th-century rabbi of Prague. There are many tales differing on how the golem was brought to life, the word golem occurs once in the Bible in Psalm 139,16, which uses the word גלמי, that means my light form, raw material, connoting the unfinished human being before Gods eyes. The Mishnah uses the term for a person, Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person. In Modern Hebrew, golem is used to mean dumb or helpless, similarly, it is often used today as a metaphor for a brainless lunk or entity who serves man under controlled conditions but is hostile to him under others. Golem passed into Yiddish as goylem to mean someone who is clumsy or slow, the oldest stories of golems date to early Judaism. In the Talmud, Adam was initially created as a golem when his dust was kneaded into a shapeless husk, like Adam, all golems are created from mud by those close to divinity, but no anthropogenic golem is fully human. Early on, the disability of the golem was its inability to speak. Sanhedrin 65b describes Rava creating a man and he sent the man to Rav Zeira. Rav Zeira spoke to him, but he did not answer, Rav Zeira said, You were created by the sages, return to your dust. During the Middle Ages, passages from the Sefer Yetzirah were studied as a means to create and animate a golem, a golem is inscribed with Hebrew words in some tales, such as the word emet written on its forehead. The golem could then be deactivated by removing the aleph in emet, Rabbi Jacob ben Shalom arrived at Barcelona from Germany in 1325 and remarked that the law of destruction is the reversal of the law of creation. Joseph Delmedigo informs us in 1625 that many legends of this sort are current, the earliest known written account of how to create a golem can be found in Sodei Razayya by Eleazar ben Judah of Worms. The oldest description of the creation of a golem by a figure is included in a tradition connected to Rabbi Eliyahu of Chełm. A similar account was reported by a Christian author, Christoph Arnold, when the Gaon saw that the Golem was growing larger and larger, he feared that the Golem would destroy the universe. He then removed the Holy Name that was embedded on his forehead, thus causing him to disintegrate, nonetheless, while he was engaged in extracting the Holy Name from him, the Golem injured him, scarring him on the face. Depending on the version of the legend, the Jews in Prague were to be expelled or killed under the rule of Rudolf II. To protect the Jewish community, the rabbi constructed the Golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava river, the Golem was called Josef and was known as Yossele
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Talmud
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The Talmud is a central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is also referred to as Shas, a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the six orders. Talmud translates literally as instruction in Hebrew, and the term may refer to either the Gemara alone, or the Mishnah, the entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, Rabbis expounded and debated the Torah and discussed the Tanakh without the benefit of written works, though some may have made private notes, for example of court decisions. It is during this period that rabbinic discourse began to be recorded in writing, the earliest recorded oral Torah may have been of the midrashic form, in which halakhic discussion is structured as exegetical commentary on the Pentateuch. But an alternative form, organized by subject matter instead of by biblical verse, became dominant about the year 200 CE, the Oral Torah was far from monolithic, rather, it varied among various schools. The most famous two were the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel, in general, all valid opinions, even the non-normative ones, were recorded in the Talmud. The oldest full manuscript of the Talmud, known as the Munich Talmud, each tractate is divided into chapters,517 in total, that are both numbered according to the Hebrew alphabet and given names, usually using the first one or two words in the first mishnah. A perek may continue over several pages, each perek will contain several mishnayot with their accompanying exchanges that form the building-blocks of the Gemara, the name for a passage of gemara is a sugya. A sugya, including baraita or tosefta, will comprise a detailed proof-based elaboration of a Mishnaic statement. A sugya may, and often does, range widely off the subject of the mishnah, in a given sugya, scriptural, Tannaic and Amoraic statements are cited to support the various opinions. In so doing, the Gemara will highlight semantic disagreements between Tannaim and Amoraim, and compare the Mishnaic views with passages from the Baraita. Rarely are debates formally closed, in instances, the final word determines the practical law. There is a literature on the procedural principles to be used in settling the practical law when disagreements exist, see under #Logic. The Mishnah is a compilation of legal opinions and debates, statements in the Mishnah are typically terse, recording brief opinions of the rabbis debating a subject, or recording only an unattributed ruling, apparently representing a consensus view. The rabbis recorded in the Mishnah are known as the Tannaim, the Mishnahs topical organization thus became the framework of the Talmud as a whole. But not every tractate in the Mishnah has a corresponding Gemara, also, the order of the tractates in the Talmud differs in some cases from that in the Mishnah. In addition to the Mishnah, other tannaitic teachings were current at about the time or shortly thereafter
35.
The Faerie Queene
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The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. Books I to III were first published in 1590, and then republished in 1596 together with books IV to VI. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form, it is one of the longest poems in the English language and the origin of a verse form that came to be known as Spenserian stanza. The Faerie Queene found such favor with Elizabeth I that Spenser was granted a pension for life amounting to £50 a year and this royal patronage helped the poem to such a level of success that it became Spensers defining work. Book I is centered on the virtue of Holiness as embodied in the Redcrosse Knight and he and his lady Una travel together as he fights the dragon Errour, then separate as the wizard Archimago tricks the Redcrosse Knight in a dream to think that Una is unchaste. After he leaves, the Redcrosse Knight meets Duessa, who feigns distress in order to entrap him, Duessa leads the Redcrosse Knight to captivity by the giant Orgoglio. Meanwhile, Una overcomes peril, meets Arthur, and finally finds and rescues the Redcrosse Knight from his capture, from Duessa, Una and Arthur help the Redcrosse Knight recover in the House of Holiness, there the Redcrosse Knight sees a vision of his future. He then returns Una to her parents castle, rescues them from a dragon, Book II is centred on the virtue of Temperance as embodied in Sir Guyon, who is tempted by the fleeing Archimago into nearly attacking the Redcrosse Knight. Guyon discovers a woman killing herself out of grief for having her lover tempted and bewitched by the witch Acrasia, Guyon swears a vow to avenge them and protect their child. Guyon on his quest starts and stops fighting several evil, rash, finally, they come to Acrasias Island and the Bower of Bliss, where Guyon resists temptations to violence, idleness, and lust. Guyon captures Acrasia in a net, destroys the Bower, Book III is centred on the virtue of Chastity as embodied in Britomart, a lady knight. Resting after the events of Book II, Guyon and Arthur meet Britomart and they separate as Arthur and Guyon leave to rescue Florimell, while Britomart rescues the Redcrosse Knight. Britomart reveals to the Redcrosse Knight that she is pursuing Sir Artegal because she is destined to marry him, the Redcrosse Knight defends Artegal and they meet Merlin, who explains more carefully Britomarts destiny to found the English monarchy. Britomart leaves and fights Sir Marinell, Arthur looks for Florimell, joined later by Sir Satyrane and Britomart, and they witness and resist sexual temptation. Britomart separates from them and meets Sir Scudamore, looking for his captured lady Amoret, Britomart alone is able to rescue Amoret from the wizard Busirane and reunite the lovers. Book IV is centred on the virtue of Friendship as embodied in Sir Cambell, Book V is centred on the virtue of Justice as embodied in Sir Artegal. Book VI is centred on the virtue of Courtesy as embodied in Sir Calidore, Spenser names Aristotle as his source for these virtues, though the influences of Thomas Aquinas and the traditions of medieval allegory can be observed as well. The unfinished seventh book appears to have represented the virtue of constancy, the Faerie Queene was written during the Reformation, a time of religious and political controversy
36.
Edmund Spenser
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Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the craftsmen of nascent Modern English verse. He was deeply affected by Irish faerie mythology, which he knew from his home at Kilcolman and his genocidal tracts against Gaelic culture were war propaganda. His house was burned to the ground during the war, causing him to flee Ireland, Edmund Spenser was born in East Smithfield, London, around the year 1552, though there is some ambiguity as to the exact date of his birth. As a young boy, he was educated in London at the Merchant Taylors School, while at Cambridge he became a friend of Gabriel Harvey and later consulted him, despite their differing views on poetry. In 1578, he became for a time secretary to John Young. In 1579, he published The Shepheardes Calender and around the time married his first wife. They had two children, Sylvanus and Katherine, in July 1580, Spenser went to Ireland in service of the newly appointed Lord Deputy, Arthur Grey, 14th Baron Grey de Wilton. Spenser served under Lord Gray with Walter Raleigh at the Siege of Smerwick massacre, when Lord Grey was recalled to England, Spenser stayed on in Ireland, having acquired other official posts and lands in the Munster Plantation. Raleigh acquired other nearby Munster estates confiscated in the Second Desmond Rebellion, some time between 1587 and 1589, Spenser acquired his main estate at Kilcolman, near Doneraile in North Cork. He later bought a second holding to the south, at Rennie and its ruins are still visible today. A short distance away grew a tree, locally known as Spensers Oak until it was destroyed in a strike in the 1960s. Local legend has it that he penned some of The Faerie Queene under this tree. In 1590, Spenser brought out the first three books of his most famous work, The Faerie Queene, having travelled to London to publish and promote the work and he was successful enough to obtain a life pension of £50 a year from the Queen. By 1594, Spensers first wife had died, and in that year he married Elizabeth Boyle, the marriage itself was celebrated in Epithalamion. They had a son named Peregrine, in 1596, Spenser wrote a prose pamphlet titled A View of the Present State of Ireland. This piece, in the form of a dialogue, circulated in manuscript and it is probable that it was kept out of print during the authors lifetime because of its inflammatory content. The pamphlet argued that Ireland would never be totally pacified by the English until its indigenous language and customs had been destroyed, in 1598, during the Nine Years War, Spenser was driven from his home by the native Irish forces of Aodh Ó Néill
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E. T. A. Hoffmann
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Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was a Prussian Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbachs famous opera The Tales of Hoffmann and he is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovskys ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumanns Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmanns character Johannes Kreisler. Hoffmanns stories highly influenced 19th century literature, and he is one of the authors of the Romantic movement. Hoffmanns ancestors, both maternal and paternal, were jurists and his father, Christoph Ludwig Hoffmann, was a barrister in Königsberg, Prussia, as well as a poet and amateur musician who played the viola da gamba. In 1767 he married his cousin, Lovisa Albertina Doerffer, ernst Theodor Wilhelm, born on 24 January 1776, was the youngest of three children, of whom the second died in infancy. The household, dominated by the uncle, was pietistic and uncongenial, Hoffmann was to regret his estrangement from his father. Nevertheless, he remembered his aunts with great affection, especially the younger, Charlotte, between 1781 and 1792 he attended the Lutheran school or Burgschule, where he made good progress in classics. He was taught drawing by one Saemann, and counterpoint by a Polish organist named Podbileski, ernst showed great talent for piano-playing, and busied himself with writing and drawing. He had however read Schiller, Goethe, Swift, Sterne, Rousseau and Jean Paul, and wrote part of a novel titled Der Geheimnisvolle. Around 1787 he became friends with Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Younger, the son of a pastor, and nephew of Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel the Elder, during 1792, both attended some of Kants lectures at the University of Königsberg. Their friendship, although tested by an increasing social difference, was to be lifelong. In 1794, Hoffmann became enamored of Cora Hatt, a woman to whom he had given music lessons. She was ten years older, and in 1795 gave birth to her sixth child, in February 1796, her family protested against his attentions and, with his hesitant consent, asked another of his uncles to arrange employment for him in Glogau, Prussian Silesia. From 1796 Hoffmann obtained employment as a clerk for his uncle, Johann Ludwig Doerffer, after passing further examinations he visited Dresden, where he was amazed by the paintings in the gallery, particularly those of Correggio and Raphael. During the summer of 1798 his uncle was promoted to a court in Berlin, and it was there that Hoffmann first attempted to promote himself as a composer, writing an operetta called Die Maske and sending a copy to Queen Luise of Prussia. The official reply advised to him to write to the director of the Royal Theatre, from June 1800 to 1803 he worked in Prussian provinces in the area of Greater Poland and Masovia. This was the first time he had lived without supervision by members of his family, and he started to become what school principals, parsons, uncles, and aunts call dissolute
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The Sandman (short story)
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The Sandman is a short story written in German by E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was the first in an 1817 book of stories titled Die Nachtstücke, the story is told by a narrator who claims to have known Lothar. It begins by quoting three letters,1, a letter from Nathanael to Lothar, the brother of his fiancée, Klara. Nathanael recalls his childhood terror of the legendary Sandman, who was said to steal the eyes of children who would not go to bed and feed them to his own children who lived in the moon. Nathanael came to associate the Sandman with a nightly visitor to his father. He recounts that one night, he hid in his fathers room to see the Sandman and it is Coppelius, an obnoxious lawyer come to carry out alchemical experiments. Coppelius begins taking shining masses out of the fire and hammering them into face-like shapes without eyes, when Nathanael screams and is discovered, Coppelius flings him to the hearth. He is about to throw fire embers into Nathanaels eyes when his father pleads he be permitted to keep his eyes, Coppelius instead twists Nathanaels hands and feet and tortures him until he passes out. A year later, another night of experiments caused his fathers death in the presence of Coppelius and his father having died of some sort of flaming explosion, the burns to his face are gone before he is laid in his coffin. Nathanael believes that a barometer-seller who arrived recently at his rooms under the name Giuseppe Coppola is none other than the hated Coppelius, a letter from Klara to Nathanael, explaining that Nathanael had addressed the previous letter to her instead of to Lothar. Nathanael adds that Spallanzani has a daughter, Olimpia, a glimpse of whom has made a considerable impression upon him. Shortly after this letter, Nathanael returns to his home town from his studies to see Klara and Lothar. Nevertheless, the encounter with Coppola has had an effect on Nathanael, driving him toward a gloomy mysticism which bores Klara. He writes a poem about Coppelius destroying his happiness in love, in which Coppelius appears at his wedding to touch Klaras eyes, after he emotionally reads this poem to her, she tells him to throw the insane poem into the fire. Nathanael pleads for Klaras forgiveness, and declares his love for her. Nathanael returns to complete the year of his studies, after which he intends to return to his hometown forever. He finds his student lodgings destroyed by fire, though his possessions were rescued by his friends and his window now looks directly into that of Olimpia, and he is again struck by her beauty. Coppola calls to sell his wares, and offers pretty eyes, which reawakens Nathanaels childish fear of the Sandman
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Frankenstein's monster
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Frankensteins monster, sometimes known as Frankenstein, is a fictional character who first appeared in Mary Shelleys 1818 novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Shelleys title thus compares the monsters creator, Victor Frankenstein, to the mythological character Prometheus, although nameless in Shelleys novel, the creature is often referred to by his creators surname, Frankenstein. In Shelleys Gothic story, Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory through an ambiguous method consisting of chemistry, Shelley describes the monster as 8-foot-tall, hideously ugly, but sensitive and emotional. The monster attempts to fit into society but is shunned. According to the scholar Joseph Carroll, the monster occupies a territory between the characteristics that typically define protagonists and antagonists. Mary Shelleys original novel never ascribes an actual name to the monster, although when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, Victor refers to the monster as creature, fiend, spectre, the demon, wretch, devil, thing, being, and ogre. It has become common vernacular to refer to the creature by the name Frankenstein, as in Shelleys story, the monsters namelessness became a central part of the stage adaptations in London and Paris during the decades after the novels first appearance. In 1823, Shelley herself attended a performance of Presumption, the first successful adaptation of her novel. The play bill amused me extremely, for in the list of dramatis personae came _________, by Mr T. Cooke and this nameless mode of naming the unnameable is rather good. Within a decade of publication, the name of the used to refer to the monster. The story was adapted for the stage in 1927 by Peggy Webling, however, the monster has no name in the Universal film series starring Boris Karloff during the 1930s, which was largely based upon Weblings play. The 1931 Universal film treated the monsters identity in a way as Shelleys novel, in the opening credits. Nevertheless, the creature soon enough became best known in the imagination as Frankenstein. This usage is considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of Frankenstein as well-established. Thumbing through a book of the works of William Shakespeare, the monster chooses Proteus from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as told by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory through an ambiguously described scientific method consisting of chemistry and alchemy. Frankenstein is disgusted by his creation, however, and flees from it in horror, frightened, and unaware of his own identity, the monster wanders through the wilderness. He finds brief solace beside a remote cottage inhabited by a family of peasants, eavesdropping, the creature familiarizes himself with their lives and learns to speak, whereby he becomes eloquent, educated, and well-mannered. The creature eventually introduces himself to the blind father, who treats him with kindness
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Victor Frankenstein
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Victor Frankenstein is the title character of Mary Shelleys 1818 novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. The character of Frankenstein was born in Naples and raised in Geneva and he was the son of Alphonse Frankenstein and Caroline Beaufort, who died of scarlet fever when Frankenstein was 17. He describes his ancestry thus, I am by birth a Genevese and my ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. Frankenstein has two younger brothers—William, the youngest, and Ernest, the middle child, Frankenstein falls in love with Elizabeth Lavenza, who became his adoptive sister and, eventually, his fiancée. As a boy, Frankenstein is interested in the works of such as Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus. Assembling a humanoid creature through means, Frankenstein successfully brings it to life. He flees his creation, who disappears and swears revenge on his creator, when William is found murdered, Frankenstein knows instantly that his creation is the killer, but says nothing. The creature approaches Frankenstein and begs him to create a companion for him. Frankenstein agrees, but ultimately destroys this creation, aghast at the idea of a race of monsters. Enraged, the creature swears revenge, he kills Henry Clerval, Frankensteins best friend, the creature keeps his promise by strangling Elizabeth on her matrimonial bed. That same night, Frankensteins father dies of grief, with nothing else left to live for, Frankenstein dedicates his life to destroying the creature. Frankenstein pursues the fiend or Demon to the Arctic with the intent of destroying it, he fails in his mission, as he falls through an ice floe. He is rescued by a ship undergoing an expedition to the North Pole, while many subsequent film adaptations have portrayed Frankenstein as the prototypical mad scientist, the novel portrayed him as a tragic figure. Percy Shelley, Marys husband, served as an influence for the character. Victor was a pen name of Percy Shelleys, as in the collection of poetry he wrote with his sister Elizabeth, Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire. As stated in the novel, Frankensteins family is one of the most distinguished of the Genevese republic and his ancestors were counselors, Percy had a sister named Elizabeth, Frankenstein had an adopted sister, named Elizabeth. On 22 February 1815, Mary Shelley delivered a baby two months premature, the child died two weeks later, soon after, Percy left with Claire, Marys stepsister, with whom he was having an affair. The question of Frankensteins responsibility to the creature – in some ways like that of a parent to a child – is one of the themes of the book
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Mary Shelley
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbour, with whom, as her stepmother, in 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her fathers political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she eventually married. Together with Marys stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France, upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percys child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter and they married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelleys first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the couple spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child. In 1822, her husband drowned when his boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son, the last decade of her life was dogged by illness, probably caused by the brain tumour that was to kill her at the age of 53. Recent scholarship has yielded a comprehensive view of Mary Shelley’s achievements. Mary Shelleys works often argue that cooperation and sympathy, particularly as practised by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a challenge to the individualistic Romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley was born as Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London and she was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of fever shortly after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, a year after Wollstonecrafts death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs revealed Wollstonecrafts affairs and her illegitimate child, Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mothers books, and was brought up to cherish her mothers memory. Marys earliest years were happy ones, judging from the letters of William Godwins housekeeper and nurse, but Godwin was often deeply in debt, feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife. In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire
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Frankenstein
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Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition of the novel was published anonymously in London in 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared on the edition, published in France in 1823. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made, Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. At the same time, it is an example of science fiction. It has had an influence in literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films. Since the novels publication, the name Frankenstein has often used to refer to the monster itself. This usage is considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard it as well-established. In the novel, the monster is identified by such as creature, monster, demon, wretch, abortion. Speaking to Victor Frankenstein, the wretch refers to himself as the Adam of your labours, and elsewhere as someone who would have been your Adam, Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. It takes place at a time in the 18th century. The novel Frankenstein is written in form, documenting a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton is a writer and captain who sets out to explore the North Pole. During the voyage, the spots an dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen, Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Waltons crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion, he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him, the recounted story serves as the frame for Frankensteins narrative. Victor begins by telling of his childhood, as a young boy, Victor is obsessed with studying outdated theories that focus on simulating natural wonders. When Victor is five years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza, weeks before he leaves for the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, his mother dies of scarlet fever, Victor buries himself in his experiments to deal with the grief
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Edward S. Ellis
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Edward Sylvester Ellis was an American author who was born in Ohio and died at Cliff Island, Maine. Ellis was a teacher, school administrator, journalist, and the author of hundreds of books and magazine articles that he produced by his name, notable fiction stories by Ellis include The Steam Man of the Prairies and Seth Jones, or the Captives of the Frontier. Internationally, Edward S. Ellis is probably known best for his Deerfoot novels read widely by young boys until the 1950s, Seth Jones was the most significant of early dime novels of publishers Beadle and Adams. It is said that Seth Jones was one of Abraham Lincolns favorite stories, during the mid-1880s, after a fiction-writing career of some thirty years, Ellis eventually began composing more serious works of biography, history, and persuasive writing. Of note was The Life of Colonel David Crockett, which had the story of Davy Crockett giving a speech usually called Not Yours To Give. It was a speech in opposition to awarding money to a Navy widow on the grounds that Congress had no Constitutional mandate to give charity. It was said to have inspired by Crocketts meeting with a Horatio Bunce, a much quoted man in Libertarian circles. R. H. Jayne Charles E. Lasalle H. R. Millbank Billex Muller Lieut, J. H. Randolph Emerson Rodman E. A
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The Steam Man of the Prairies
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The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis was the first U. S. science fiction dime novel and archetype of the Frank Reade series. It is one of the earliest examples of the so-called Edisonade genre, Ellis was a prolific 19th century author best known as a historian and biographer and a source of early heroic frontier tales in the style of James Fenimore Cooper. This novel may be inspired by the steam powered invention of Zadoc Dederick, the original novel was reissued six times from 1868 to 1904. This steam-man was constructed by Johnny Brainerd, a teenaged boy,45, August 1868, featuring The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis. Beadles Half Dime Library Vol.11 No,271, October 3,1882, featuring The Huge Hunter, or, The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis. 1156, December 1904, featuring The Huge Hunter, or,591, January 27,1885, featuring The Huge Hunter, or, The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis. 40, January 4,1876, featuring The Huge Hunter, or,14,1869, featuring The Huge Hunter, or, The Steam Man of the Prairies by Edward S. Ellis Pocket Library No. 245, September 19,1888, featuring Baldys Boy Partner, or, the Huge Hunter or, the Steam Man of the Prairies at Project Gutenberg The Steam Man of the Prairies public domain audiobook at LibriVox STEAM MAN, The Worlds First fictional Robot
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Jacques Offenbach
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Jacques Offenbach was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and he was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were revived during the 20th century. The Tales of Hoffman remains part of the opera repertory. Born in Cologne, the son of a cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling, from 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose pieces for the musical theatre. Finding the management of Paris Opéra-Comique company uninterested in staging his works, there he presented a series of his own small-scale pieces, many of which became popular. In 1858, Offenbach produced his first full-length operetta, Orphée aux enfers, during the 1860s, he produced at least 18 full-length operettas, as well as more one-act pieces. His works from this period included La belle Hélène, La Vie parisienne, La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, Offenbach became associated with the Second French Empire of Napoleon III, the emperor and his court were genially satirised in many of Offenbachs operettas. Napoleon III personally granted him French citizenship and the Légion dHonneur, with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, Offenbach found himself out of favour in Paris because of his imperial connections and his German birth. He remained successful in Vienna and London, however and he re-established himself in Paris during the 1870s, with revivals of some of his earlier favourites and a series of new works, and undertook a popular U. S. tour. In his last years he strove to finish The Tales of Hoffmann, but died before the premiere of the opera, Offenbach was born Jacob or Jakob Offenbach to a Jewish family, in the German city of Cologne, which was then a part of Prussia. His birthplace in the Großen Griechenmarkt was a distance from the square that is now named after him. He was the son and the seventh of ten children of Isaac Juda Offenbach né Eberst and his wife Marianne. Isaac, who came from a family, had abandoned his original trade as a bookbinder and earned an itinerant living as a cantor in synagogues. He was generally known as der Offenbacher, after his native town, Offenbach am Main, in 1816 he settled in Cologne, where he became established as a teacher, giving lessons in singing, violin, flute and guitar, and composing both religious and secular music. When Jacob was six years old, his father taught him to play the violin, within two years the boy was composing songs and dances, and at the age of nine he took up the cello
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The Tales of Hoffmann
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The Tales of Hoffmann is an opéra fantastique by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on three stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann, who is the protagonist of the story. It was Offenbachs final work, as he died a year before the premiere, Barbier and Michel Carré had previously written a play, Les contes fantastiques dHoffmann, which was produced at the Odéon Theatre in Paris in 1851, and which Offenbach had seen. After returning from America in 1876 he learned that Barbier had adapted the play, Salomon handed the project to Offenbach. Work proceeded slowly interrupted by the composition of more profitable lighter works, Offenbach himself had a premonition that like Antonia he would die prior to its completion. He continued working on the opera throughout 1880, attending some rehearsals, shortly before he died he had written to Léon Carvalho, Hâtez-vous de monter mon opéra. Il ne me reste plus longtemps à vivre et mon seul désir est dassister à la première, the stories used in the opera were, Der Sandmann,1816. Das verlorene Spiegelbild from Die Abenteuer der Sylvester-Nacht,1814, the opera was first performed in a public venue, at the Opéra-Comique on 10 February 1881, without the third act. Besides Léon Carvalho, director of the Opéra-Comique, the director of the Ringtheater in Vienna, both men requested the rights, but Offenbach granted them to Carvalho. The opera reached its hundredth performance at the Salle Favart on the 15 December 1881, a new production by Albert Carré was mounted at the Opéra-Comique in 1911, with Léon Beyle in the title role and Albert Wolff conducting. This production remained in the repertoire until World War II, receiving 700 performances, following a recording by Opéra-Comique forces in March 1948, Louis Musy created the first post-war production in Paris, conducted by André Cluytens. The Paris Opera first staged the work in October 1974, directed by Patrice Chéreau with Nicolai Gedda in the title role. Outside France, the piece was mounted in Geneva, Budapest, Hamburg, New York, and Mexico in 1882, Vienna, Prague, and Antwerp in 1883, and Lvov and Berlin in 1884. Later local premieres included Buenos Aires in 1894, St Petersburg in 1899, Barcelona in 1905, and London in 1910. The Muse appears and reveals to the audience that her purpose is to draw Hoffmanns attention to herself and she takes the appearance of Hoffmanns closest friend, Nicklausse. The prima donna Stella, currently performing Mozarts Don Giovanni, sends a letter to Hoffmann, the letter and the key to the room are intercepted by Councillor Lindorf, who is the first of the operas incarnations of evil, Hoffmanns nemesis. Lindorf intends to replace Hoffmann at the rendezvous, in the tavern students wait for Hoffmann. He finally arrives and entertains them with the legend of Zaches the dwarf, Lindorf coaxes Hoffmann into telling the audience about his lifes three great loves
