1.
Ovid
–
Publius Ovidius Naso, known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists and he enjoyed enormous popularity, but, in one of the mysteries of literary history, was sent by Augustus into exile in a remote province on the Black Sea, where he remained until his death. Ovid himself attributes his exile to carmen et error, a poem and a mistake and his poetry was much imitated during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and greatly influenced Western art and literature. The Metamorphoses remains one of the most important sources of classical mythology, Ovid talks more about his own life than most other Roman poets. Information about his biography is drawn primarily from his poetry, especially Tristia 4.10, other sources include Seneca the Elder and Quintilian. Ovid was born in Sulmo, in an Apennine valley east of Rome, to an important equestrian family and that was a significant year in Roman politics. He was educated in rhetoric in Rome under the teachers Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro with his brother who excelled at oratory and his father wanted him to study rhetoric toward the practice of law. According to Seneca the Elder, Ovid tended to the emotional, after the death of his brother at 20 years of age, Ovid renounced law and began travelling to Athens, Asia Minor, and Sicily. Ovids first recitation has been dated to around 25 BC, when he was eighteen and he was part of the circle centered on the patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, and seems to have been a friend of poets in the circle of Maecenas. 4.10. 41–54, Ovid mentions friendships with Macer, Propertius, Horace, Ovid was very popular at the time of his early works, but was later exiled by Augustus in AD8. He married three times and divorced twice by the time he was thirty years old and he had one daughter, who eventually bore him grandchildren. His last wife was connected in some way to the influential gens Fabia, the first 25 years of Ovids literary career were spent primarily writing poetry in elegiac meter with erotic themes. The chronology of early works is not secure, tentative dates. 2.18. 19–26 that seems to describe the collection as a published work. The authenticity of some of these poems has been challenged, between the publications of the two editions of the Amores can be dated the premiere of his tragedy Medea, which was admired in antiquity but is no longer extant. Ovid may identify this work in his poetry as the carmen, or song. The Ars Amatoria was followed by the Remedia Amoris in the same year and this corpus of elegiac, erotic poetry earned Ovid a place among the chief Roman elegists Gallus, Tibullus, and Propertius, of whom he saw himself as the fourth member
Ovid
–
Statue (1887) by
Ettore Ferrari commemorating Ovid's exile in Tomis (present-day
Constanța, Romania)
Ovid
–
A second statue of Ovid by
Ettore Ferrari in the Piazza XX Settembre,
Sulmona, Italy.
Ovid
–
Ovid Banished from Rome (1838) by
J.M.W. Turner.
Ovid
–
Medea in a fresco from
Herculaneum.
2.
Latin
–
Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
Latin
–
Latin inscription, in the
Colosseum
Latin
–
Julius Caesar 's
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is one of the most famous classical Latin texts of the Golden Age of Latin. The unvarnished, journalistic style of this
patrician general has long been taught as a model of the urbane Latin officially spoken and written in the floruit of the
Roman republic.
Latin
–
A multi-volume Latin dictionary in the
University Library of Graz
Latin
–
Latin and Ancient Greek Language - Culture - Linguistics at
Duke University in 2014.
3.
Epic poetry
–
An epic poem, epic, epos, or epopee is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that the Homeric epics and these works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Nearly all Western epic self-consciously presents itself as a continuation of the tradition begun by these poems, classical epic employs dactylic hexameter and recounts a journey, either physical or mental or both. Epics also tend to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, another type of epic poetry is epyllion, which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means little epic, came into use in the nineteenth century, the most famous example of classical epyllion is perhaps Catullus 64. The first epics were products of preliterate societies and oral history poetic traditions, in these traditions, poetry is transmitted to the audience and from performer to performer by purely oral means. Early twentieth-century study of living oral traditions in the Balkans by Milman Parry. What they demonstrated was that oral epics tend to be constructed in short episodes, each of equal status, interest and this facilitates memorization, as the poet is recalling each episode in turn and using the completed episodes to recreate the entire epic as he performs it. Parry and Lord also contend that the most likely source for written texts of the epics of Homer was dictation from an oral performance, poets in literate societies have sometimes copied the epic format. The earliest surviving European examples are the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes and Virgils Aeneid, other obvious examples are Nonnus Dionysiaca, Tulsidas Sri Ramacharit Manas. In his work Poetics, Aristotle defines an epic as one of the forms of poetry, contrasted with lyric poetry, an attempt to delineate ten main characteristics of an epic, Begins in medias res. The setting is vast, covering many nations, the world or the universe, Begins with an invocation to a muse. Begins with a statement of the theme, contains long lists, called an epic catalogue. Shows divine intervention on human affairs, features heroes that embody the values of the civilization. Often features the tragic heros descent into the Underworld or hell, the hero generally participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by the society the epic originates from, many epic heroes are recurring characters in the legends of their native culture. Conventions of epics, Preposition, Opens by stating the theme or cause of the epic and this may take the form of a purpose, of a question, or of a situation. Invocation, Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus, the poet prays to the Muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero
Epic poetry
–
Tablet containing a fragment of the
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic poetry
–
The first page of the
Beowulf manuscript, 8th to 10th century.
Epic poetry
–
Statue of Iranian poet
Ferdowsi in Rome, Italy. Ferdowsi's national epic
Shahnameh played an important role in revival of Iranian
patriotism and the
Persian language after both were systematically suppressed by the Arab occupation of Iran
Epic poetry
–
The Knight in the Panther's Skin by
Shota Rustaveli, one of the greatest Georgian poets.
4.
Elegy
–
In English literature, an elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. The Greek term elegeia originally referred to any written in elegiac couplets. The term also included epitaphs, sad and mournful songs, the Latin elegy of ancient Roman literature was most often erotic or mythological in nature. Because of its potential for rhetorical effects, the elegiac couplet was also used by both Greek and Roman poets for witty, humorous, and satiric subject matter. Ovid wrote elegies bemoaning his exile, which he likened to a death and this looser concept is especially evident in the Old English Exeter Book which contains serious meditative and well-known poems such as The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Wife’s Lament. In these elegies, the use the lyrical I to describe their own personal. They tell the story of the rather than the collective lore of his or her people as epic poetry seeks to tell. For Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others, the term had come to mean serious meditative poem and it may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself, but always and exclusively with reference to the poet. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so sorrow, Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone or absent and future. A famous example of elegy is Thomas Grays Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in French, perhaps the most famous elegy is Le Lac by Alphonse de Lamartine. Elegy may denote a type of work, usually of a sad or somber nature. A well-known example is the Élégie, Op.10, by Jules Massenet, dirge Elegiac Funeral march Kommós Lament Marsiya Noha Obituary poetry Pastoral elegy history Poetry Rithā Soaz Threnody Ağıt Casey, Brian. Genres and Styles, in Funeral Music Genres, With a Stylistic/Topical Lexicon, american Elegy, The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman. Poetry of Mourning, The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney, the English Elegy, Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats. Media related to Elegies at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of elegy at Wiktionary Elegy Explained at Literary Devices
Elegy
–
Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, illustration by
William Blake.
5.
Tragedy
–
Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in audiences. In the wake of Aristotles Poetics, tragedy has been used to make genre distinctions, in the modern era, tragedy has also been defined against drama, melodrama, the tragicomic, and epic theatre. Drama, in the sense, cuts across the traditional division between comedy and tragedy in an anti- or a-generic deterritorialisation from the mid-19th century onwards. Both Bertolt Brecht and Augusto Boal define their epic theatre projects against models of tragedy, taxidou, however, reads epic theatre as an incorporation of tragic functions and its treatments of mourning and speculation. The word tragedy appears to have used to describe different phenomena at different times. It derives from Classical Greek τραγῳδία, contracted from trag-aoidiā = goat song, scholars suspect this may be traced to a time when a goat was either the prize in a competition of choral dancing or was that around which a chorus danced prior to the animals ritual sacrifice. In another view on the etymology, Athenaeus of Naucratis says that the form of the word was trygodia from trygos and ode. There is some dissent to the origins of tragedy, mostly based on the differences between the shapes of their choruses and styles of dancing. A common descent from pre-Hellenic fertility and burial rites has been suggested, friedrich Nietzsche discussed the origins of Greek tragedy in his early book The Birth of Tragedy. Here, he suggests the name originates in the use of a chorus of goat-like satyrs in the original dithyrambs from which the genre developed. Scott Scullion writes, There is abundant evidence for tragoidia understood as song for the prize goat, and as prize was established the billy goat, the clearest is Eustathius 1769.45, They called those competing tragedians, clearly because of the song over the billy goat. Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE, no tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days, each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a satyr play. The four plays sometimes featured linked stories, only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the Oresteia of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the air, on the side of a hill. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, the theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people
Tragedy
–
Aristotle's Tragic Plot Structure
Tragedy
–
Literature
Tragedy
–
Mask of
Dionysus. Greek,
Myrina, 2nd century BCE.
Tragedy
–
Scene from the tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris by Euripides. Roman fresco in Pompeii.
6.
Pastoral
–
A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, a pastoral is a work of this genre, also known as bucolic, from the Greek βουκολικόν, from βουκόλος, meaning a cowherd. Pastoral is a mode of literature in which the author employs various techniques to place the life into a simple one. Thus, pastoral as a mode occurs in many types of literature as well as genres, terry Gifford, a prominent literary theorist, defines pastoral in three ways in his critical book Pastoral. The first way emphasizes the historical perspective of the pastoral in which authors recognize and discuss life in the country. This is summed up by Leo Marx with the phrase No shepherd, the second type of the pastoral is literature that describes the country with an implicit or explicit contrast to the urban. The third type of pastoral depicts the life with derogative classifications. Hesiods Works and Days presents a golden age when people lived together in harmony with nature and this Golden Age shows that even before Alexandria, ancient Greeks had sentiments of an ideal pastoral life that they had already lost. This is the first example of literature that has pastoral sentiments, ovids Metamorphoses is much like the Works and Days with the description of ages but with more ages to discuss and less emphasis on the gods and their punishments. In this artificially constructed world, nature acts as the main punisher, another example of this perfect relationship between man and nature is evident in the encounter of a shepherd and a goatherd who meet in the pastures in Theocritus poem Idylls 1. Traditionally, pastoral refers to the lives of herdsmen in a romanticized, exaggerated, the pastoral life is usually characterized as being closer to the Golden age than the rest of human life. The setting is a Locus Amoenus, or a place in nature. An example of the use of the genre is the poem by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson Robene and Makyne which also contains the conflicted emotions often present in the genre. There will we sit upon the rocks And see the shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow rivers, the Passionate Shepherd to His Love exhibits the concept of Giffords second definition of pastoral. The speaker of the poem, who is the titled shepherd and this can be seen in the listed items, lined slippers, purest gold, silver dishes, and ivory table. The speaker takes on a point of view with his love. Pastoral shepherds and maidens usually have Greek names like Corydon or Philomela and this makes them available for embodying perpetual erotic fantasies. The shepherds spend their time chasing pretty girls — or, at least in the Greek and Roman versions, Pastoral literature continued after Hesiod with the poetry of the Hellenistic Greek Theocritus, several of whose Idylls are set in the countryside and involve dialogues between herdsmen
Pastoral
–
Alvan Fisher, Pastoral Landscape, 1854
Pastoral
–
Georgics Book III, Shepherd with Flocks,
Vergil (
Vatican Library)
Pastoral
–
Romantic artist, illustrator and poet William Blake's hand painted print illustrating his pastoral poem "
The Shepherd " depicts the pastoral scene of a shepherd watching his flock with a shepherd's crook. This image represents copy B, printed and painted in 1789 and currently held by the
Library of Congress.
Pastoral
–
A Pastoral (watercolour, 1905) by
John Reinhard Weguelin
7.
Latin language
–
Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
Latin language
–
Latin inscription, in the
Colosseum
Latin language
–
Julius Caesar 's
Commentarii de Bello Gallico is one of the most famous classical Latin texts of the Golden Age of Latin. The unvarnished, journalistic style of this
patrician general has long been taught as a model of the urbane Latin officially spoken and written in the floruit of the
Roman republic.
Latin language
–
A multi-volume Latin dictionary in the
University Library of Graz
Latin language
–
Latin and Ancient Greek Language - Culture - Linguistics at
Duke University in 2014.
8.
Ancient Rome
–
In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
Ancient Rome
–
Senātus Populus que Rōmānus
Ancient Rome
–
Roman Republic
Ancient Rome
–
According to legend,
Rome was founded in 753 BC by
Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a she-wolf.
Ancient Rome
–
This bust from the
Capitoline Museums is traditionally identified as a portrait of
Lucius Junius Brutus.
9.
Masterpiece
–
Historically, a masterpiece was a work of a very high standard produced in order to obtain membership of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts. The word masterpiece probably derives from the Dutch meesterstuk or German meisterstück via loan translation, masterprize was another early variant in English. In English, the term became used in a variety of contexts for an exceptionally good piece of creative work. Originally, the term referred to a piece of work produced by an apprentice or journeyman aspiring to become a master craftsman in the old European guild system. His fitness to qualify for membership was judged partly by the masterpiece, and if he was successful. Great care was taken to produce a fine piece in whatever the craft was, whether confectionery, painting, goldsmithing, knifemaking. In the 17th century, the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, for instance, the workhouse had been set up as part of a tightening of standards after the company became concerned that the level of skill of goldsmithing was being diluted. The same goldsmithing organization still requires the production of a masterpiece, if they failed to be admitted, then they could continue to work for other goldsmiths but not as a master themselves. In some guilds, apprentices were not allowed to marry until they had obtained full membership, the practice of producing a masterpiece has continued in some modern academies of art, where the general term for such works is now reception piece. The Royal Academy in London uses the term work and it has acquired a fine collection of diploma works received as a condition of membership. Painting the Century,101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000 Virtual Collection of Masterpieces Masterpieces at the Louvre
Masterpiece
–
In painting, the
Mona Lisa by
Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1503–1506, is the archetypal masterpiece, though it was not produced for admission to a guild or academy.
Masterpiece
–
Rinaldo and Armida by
François Boucher. A masterpiece produced for admission to the
Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris, 1734.
10.
Myth
–
A myth is any traditional story consisting of events that are ostensibly historical, though often supernatural, explaining the origins of a cultural practice or natural phenomenon. The word myth is derived from the Greek word mythos, which means story. Mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths, myth can mean sacred story, traditional narrative or tale of the gods. A myth can also be a story to explain why something exists, human cultures usually include a cosmogonical or creation myth, concerning the origins of the world, or how the world came to exist. The active beings in myths are generally gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, or animals, most myths are set in a timeless past before recorded time or beginning of the critical history. A myth can be a story involving symbols that are capable of multiple meanings, a myth is a sacred narrative because it holds religious or spiritual significance for those who tell it. Myths also contribute to and express a cultures systems of thought and values, myths are often therefore stories that are currently understood as being exaggerated or fictitious. According to Albert A. Anderson, a professor of philosophy, in these works, the term had several meanings, conversation, narrative, speech, story, tale, and word. Like the related term logos, mythos expresses whatever can be delivered in the form of words, Anderson contrasts the two terms with ergon, a Greek term for action, deed, and work. The term mythos lacks an explicit distinction between true or false narratives, in the context of the Theatre of ancient Greece, the term mythos referred to the myth, the narrative, the plot, and the story of a theatrical play. According to David Wiles, the Greek term mythos in this era covered an entire spectrum of different meanings, from undeniable falsehoods to stories with religious, according to philosopher Aristotle, the spirit of a theatrical play was its mythos. The term mythos was also used for the material of Greek tragedy. The tragedians of the era could draw inspiration from Greek mythology, David Wiles observes that modern conceptions about Greek tragedy can be misleading. It is commonly thought that the ancient audience members were familiar with the mythos behind a play. However, the Greek dramatists were not expected to faithfully reproduce traditional myths when adapting them for the stage and they were instead recreating the myths and producing new versions. Storytellers like Euripides relied on suspense to excite their audiences, in one of his works, Merope attempts to kill her sons murderer with an axe, unaware that the man in question is actually her son. According to an ancient description of reactions to this work. They rose to their feet in terror and caused an uproar, David Wiles points that the traditional mythos of Ancient Greece, was primarily a part of its oral tradition
Myth
–
Prometheus (1868) by
Gustave Moreau. In the mythos of
Hesiodus and possibly
Aeschylus (the
Greek trilogy
Prometheus Bound,
Prometheus Unbound and
Prometheus Pyrphoros), Prometheus is bound and tortured for giving fire to humanity at its creation.
Myth
–
1929
Belgian banknote, depicting
Ceres,
Neptune and
caduceus.
Myth
–
Fu Xi and
Nüwa represented as half-snake, half-human creatures
11.
Creation myth
–
A creation myth is a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it. While in popular usage the term often refers to false or fanciful stories, formally. Cultures generally regard their creation myths as true, in the society in which it is told, a creation myth is usually regarded as conveying profound truths, metaphorically, symbolically and sometimes in a historical or literal sense. They are commonly, although not always, considered cosmogonical myths – that is, Creation myths often share a number of features. They often are considered sacred accounts and can be found in all known religious traditions. They are all stories with a plot and characters who are either deities, human-like figures, or animals and they are often set in a dim and nonspecific past that historian of religion Mircea Eliade termed in illo tempore. Creation myths develop in oral traditions and therefore typically have multiple versions, found throughout human culture, Creation myth definitions from modern references, A symbolic narrative of the beginning of the world as understood in a particular tradition and community. Creation myths are of importance for the valuation of the world, for the orientation of humans in the universe. Creation myths tell us how things began, all cultures have creation myths, they are our primary myths, the first stage in what might be called the psychic life of the species. As cultures, we identify ourselves through the collective dreams we call creation myths, … Creation myths explain in metaphorical terms our sense of who we are in the context of the world, and in so doing they reveal our real priorities, as well as our real prejudices. Our images of creation say a deal about who we are. A philosophical and theological elaboration of the myth of creation within a religious community. Religion professor Mircea Eliade defined the word myth in terms of creation, Myth narrates a history, it relates an event that took place in primordial Time. All creation myths are in one sense etiological because they attempt to explain how the world was formed, in the past historians of religion and other students of myth thought of them as forms of primitive or early-stage science or religion and analyzed them in a literal or logical sense. However they are seen as symbolic narratives which must be understood in terms of their own cultural context. Charles Long writes, The beings referred to in the myth – gods, animals, the myths should not be understood as attempts to work out a rational explanation of deity. While creation myths are not literal explications they do serve to define an orientation of humanity in the world in terms of a birth story. They are the basis of a worldview that reaffirms and guides how people relate to the world, to any assumed spiritual world
Creation myth
–
The Creation (c. 1896–1902) by
James Tissot
Creation myth
–
In
Maya religion, the
dwarf was an embodiment of the
Maize God 's
helpers at
creation.
Creation myth
–
Brahmā, the
Hindu deva of creation, emerges from a
lotus risen from the navel of
Viṣņu, who lies with
Lakshmi on the serpent
Ananta Shesha.
Creation myth
–
Creation on the exterior shutters of
Hieronymus Bosch 's
triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1480–90)
12.
Julius Caesar
–
Gaius Julius Caesar, known as Julius Caesar, was a Roman politician, general, and notable author of Latin prose. He played a role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic. In 60 BC, Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey formed an alliance that dominated Roman politics for several years. Their attempts to power as Populares were opposed by the Optimates within the Roman Senate. Caesars victories in the Gallic Wars, completed by 51 BC, extended Romes territory to the English Channel, Caesar became the first Roman general to cross both the Channel and the Rhine, when he built a bridge across the Rhine and crossed the Channel to invade Britain. These achievements granted him unmatched military power and threatened to eclipse the standing of Pompey, with the Gallic Wars concluded, the Senate ordered Caesar to step down from his military command and return to Rome. Caesar refused the order, and instead marked his defiance in 49 BC by crossing the Rubicon with the 13th Legion, leaving his province, Civil war resulted, and Caesars victory in the war put him in an unrivalled position of power and influence. After assuming control of government, Caesar began a programme of social and governmental reforms and he centralised the bureaucracy of the Republic and was eventually proclaimed dictator in perpetuity, giving him additional authority. But the underlying political conflicts had not been resolved, and on the Ides of March 44 BC, a new series of civil wars broke out, and the constitutional government of the Republic was never fully restored. Caesars adopted heir Octavian, later known as Augustus, rose to power after defeating his opponents in the civil war. Octavian set about solidifying his power, and the era of the Roman Empire began, much of Caesars life is known from his own accounts of his military campaigns, and from other contemporary sources, mainly the letters and speeches of Cicero and the historical writings of Sallust. The later biographies of Caesar by Suetonius and Plutarch are also major sources, Caesar is considered by many historians to be one of the greatest military commanders in history. Caesar was born into a family, the gens Julia. The cognomen Caesar originated, according to Pliny the Elder, with an ancestor who was born by Caesarean section. The Historia Augusta suggests three alternative explanations, that the first Caesar had a head of hair, that he had bright grey eyes. Caesar issued coins featuring images of elephants, suggesting that he favored this interpretation of his name, despite their ancient pedigree, the Julii Caesares were not especially politically influential, although they had enjoyed some revival of their political fortunes in the early 1st century BC. Caesars father, also called Gaius Julius Caesar, governed the province of Asia and his mother, Aurelia Cotta, came from an influential family. Little is recorded of Caesars childhood, in 85 BC, Caesars father died suddenly, so Caesar was the head of the family at 16
Julius Caesar
–
The
Tusculum portrait, perhaps the only surviving statue created during Caesar's lifetime.
Julius Caesar
–
Gaius Marius, Caesar's uncle
Julius Caesar
–
Dictator
Lucius Cornelius Sulla stripped Caesar of the priesthood.
Julius Caesar
–
The extent of the Roman Republic in 40 BC after Caesar's conquests.
13.
Epic poem
–
An epic poem, epic, epos, or epopee is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that the Homeric epics and these works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Nearly all Western epic self-consciously presents itself as a continuation of the tradition begun by these poems, classical epic employs dactylic hexameter and recounts a journey, either physical or mental or both. Epics also tend to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, another type of epic poetry is epyllion, which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means little epic, came into use in the nineteenth century, the most famous example of classical epyllion is perhaps Catullus 64. The first epics were products of preliterate societies and oral history poetic traditions, in these traditions, poetry is transmitted to the audience and from performer to performer by purely oral means. Early twentieth-century study of living oral traditions in the Balkans by Milman Parry. What they demonstrated was that oral epics tend to be constructed in short episodes, each of equal status, interest and this facilitates memorization, as the poet is recalling each episode in turn and using the completed episodes to recreate the entire epic as he performs it. Parry and Lord also contend that the most likely source for written texts of the epics of Homer was dictation from an oral performance, poets in literate societies have sometimes copied the epic format. The earliest surviving European examples are the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes and Virgils Aeneid, other obvious examples are Nonnus Dionysiaca, Tulsidas Sri Ramacharit Manas. In his work Poetics, Aristotle defines an epic as one of the forms of poetry, contrasted with lyric poetry, an attempt to delineate ten main characteristics of an epic, Begins in medias res. The setting is vast, covering many nations, the world or the universe, Begins with an invocation to a muse. Begins with a statement of the theme, contains long lists, called an epic catalogue. Shows divine intervention on human affairs, features heroes that embody the values of the civilization. Often features the tragic heros descent into the Underworld or hell, the hero generally participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by the society the epic originates from, many epic heroes are recurring characters in the legends of their native culture. Conventions of epics, Preposition, Opens by stating the theme or cause of the epic and this may take the form of a purpose, of a question, or of a situation. Invocation, Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus, the poet prays to the Muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero
Epic poem
–
Tablet containing a fragment of the
Epic of Gilgamesh
Epic poem
–
The first page of the
Beowulf manuscript, 8th to 10th century.
Epic poem
–
Statue of Iranian poet
Ferdowsi in Rome, Italy. Ferdowsi's national epic
Shahnameh played an important role in revival of Iranian
patriotism and the
Persian language after both were systematically suppressed by the Arab occupation of Iran
Epic poem
–
The Knight in the Panther's Skin by
Shota Rustaveli, one of the greatest Georgian poets.
14.
Western culture
–
The term also applies beyond Europe, to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence. For example, Western Culture includes countries in the Americas and Australasia, whose language, before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian countries and culture. Ancient Greece is considered the birthplace of Western culture, with the worlds first democratic system of government and major advances in philosophy, science, Greece was followed by Rome, which made key contributions in law, government, engineering and political organization. European culture developed with a range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism, and mysticism. Rational thinking developed through an age of change and formation, with the experiments of the Enlightenment. More often an ideology is what will be used to categorize it as a Western society. There is some disagreement about what nations should or should not be included in the category, many parts of the Eastern Roman Empire are considered Western today but were Eastern in the past. Since the context is highly biased and context-dependent, there is no agreed definition what the West is and it is difficult to determine which individuals fit into which category and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary. Globalism has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all cultures are, to some extent. Stereotyped views of the West have been labeled Occidentalism, paralleling Orientalism—the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of the East, as Europe discovered the wider world, old concepts adapted. The area that had formerly considered the Orient became the Near East, as the interests of the European powers interfered with Meiji Japan and Qing China for the first time. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the Far East, the Greeks contrasted themselves to their Eastern neighbors, such as the Trojans in Iliad, setting an example for later contrasts between east and west. In the Middle Ages, the Near East provided a contrast to the West, concepts of what is the West arose out of legacies of the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, ideas of the west were formed by the concepts of Latin Christendom, Western culture is neither homogeneous nor unchanging. As with all cultures, it has evolved and gradually changed over time. Nevertheless, it is possible to follow the evolution and history of the West, and appreciate its similarities and differences, its borrowings from, and contributions to, other cultures of humanity. Nevertheless, the Greeks felt they were the most civilized and saw themselves as something between the wild barbarians of most of Europe and the soft, slavish Middle-Easterners. In the meantime, however, Greece, under Alexander, had become a capital of the East, the Celts also created some significant literature in the ancient world whenever they were given the opportunity
Western culture
–
Leonardo da Vinci 's
Vitruvian Man. A symbol of the importance of
empiricism in Western culture since the
Renaissance
Western culture
–
Plato, along with
Socrates and
Aristotle, helped establish
Western philosophy.
Western culture
–
Alexander the Great
Western culture
–
Two main symbols of the medieval western civilisation on one picture: the gothic
St.Martin´s cathedral in
Spišské Podhradie (
Slovakia) and the
Spiš Castle behind the cathedral.
15.
Dante Alighieri
–
Durante degli Alighieri, simply called Dante, was a major Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages. In the late Middle Ages, the majority of poetry was written in Latin. In De vulgari eloquentia, however, Dante defended use of the vernacular in literature, as a result, Dante played an instrumental role in establishing the national language of Italy. In addition, the first use of the interlocking three-line rhyme scheme, Dante has been called the Father of the Italian language and one of the greatest poets of world literature. In Italy, Dante is often referred to as il Sommo Poeta and il Poeta, he, Petrarch, Dante was born in Florence, Republic of Florence, present-day Italy. The exact date of his birth is unknown, although it is believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in the Divine Comedy, in 1265, the sun was in Gemini between approximately May 11 and June 11. Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans, but the earliest relative he could mention by name was Cacciaguida degli Elisei, born no earlier than about 1100. Dantes father, Alaghiero or Alighiero di Bellincione, was a White Guelph who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the Battle of Montaperti in the middle of the 13th century. Dantes family had loyalties to the Guelphs, an alliance that supported the Papacy and which was involved in complex opposition to the Ghibellines. The poets mother was Bella, likely a member of the Abati family and she died when Dante was not yet ten years old, and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi. When Dante was 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, contracting marriages at this early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary. But by this time Dante had fallen in love with another, Beatrice Portinari, years after his marriage to Gemma he claims to have met Beatrice again, he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice but never mentioned Gemma in any of his poems. The exact date of his marriage is not known, the certain information is that, before his exile in 1301. Dante fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino and this victory brought about a reformation of the Florentine constitution. To take any part in life, one had to enroll in one of the citys many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the Physicians. In the following years, his name is recorded as speaking or voting in the various councils of the republic. A substantial portion of minutes from meetings in the years 1298–1300 was lost, however
Dante Alighieri
–
Profile portrait of Dante, by
Sandro Botticelli
Dante Alighieri
–
Portrait of Dante, from a fresco in the Palazzo dei Giudici, Florence
Dante Alighieri
–
Dante in Verona, by Antonio Cotti
Dante Alighieri
–
Statue of Dante at the
Uffizi, Florence
16.
Giovanni Boccaccio
–
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Boccaccio wrote a number of works, including The Decameron. The details of Boccaccios birth are uncertain and he was born in Florence or in a village near Certaldo where his family was from. He was the son of Florentine merchant Boccaccino di Chellino and an unknown woman, Boccaccios stepmother was called Margherita de Mardoli. His father worked for the Compagnia dei Bardi and, in the 1320s, married Margherita dei Mardoli, Boccaccio may have been tutored by Giovanni Mazzuoli and received from him an early introduction to the works of Dante. In 1326, his father was appointed head of a bank, Boccaccio was an apprentice at the bank but disliked the banking profession. He persuaded his father to let him study law at the Studium and he also pursued his interest in scientific and literary studies. His father introduced him to the Neapolitan nobility and the French-influenced court of Robert the Wise in the 1330s, at this time, he fell in love with a married daughter of the king, who is portrayed as Fiammetta in many of Boccaccios prose romances, including Il Filocolo. Acciaioli later became counselor to Queen Joanna I of Naples and, eventually and it seems that Boccaccio enjoyed law no more than banking, but his studies allowed him the opportunity to study widely and make good contacts with fellow scholars. His early influences included Paolo da Perugia, humanists Barbato da Sulmona and Giovanni Barrili, in Naples, Boccaccio began what he considered his true vocation of poetry. Works produced in this period include Il Filostrato and Teseida, The Filocolo, the period featured considerable formal innovation, including possibly the introduction of the Sicilian octave, where it influenced Petrarch. Boccaccio returned to Florence in early 1341, avoiding the plague of 1340 in that city and he had left Naples due to tensions between the Angevin king and Florence. His father had returned to Florence in 1338, where he had gone bankrupt, the pastoral piece Ninfale fiesolano probably dates from this time, also. In 1343, Boccaccios father remarried to Bice del Bostichi and his children by his first marriage had all died, but he had another son named Iacopo in 1344. In Florence, the overthrow of Walter of Brienne brought about the government of popolo minuto and it diminished the influence of the nobility and the wealthier merchant classes and assisted in the relative decline of Florence. The city was further in 1348 by the Black Death. From 1347, Boccaccio spent much time in Ravenna, seeking new patronage and, despite his claims and his stepmother died during the epidemic and his father was closely associated with the government efforts as Minister of Supply in the city. His father died in 1349 and Boccaccio was forced into an active role as head of the family
Giovanni Boccaccio
–
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
–
Boccaccio's statue in
Uffizi
Giovanni Boccaccio
–
Giovanni Boccaccio and Florentines who have fled from the plague
Giovanni Boccaccio
–
Circes: illustration of one of the women featured the 1374 biographies of 106 famous women, De Claris Mulieribus, by Boccaccio – from a German translation of 1541
17.
Geoffrey Chaucer
–
Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He was the first poet to be buried in Poets Corner of Westminster Abbey, among his many works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. He is best known today for The Canterbury Tales, Chaucers work was crucial in legitimizing the literary use of the Middle English vernacular at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and his father and grandfather were both London vintners, several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffreys father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure. In the City Hustings Roll 110,5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for the king from 1389 to 1391 as Clerk of the Kings Works. In 1359, in the stages of the Hundred Years War, Edward III invaded France and Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, Elizabeths husband. In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims, Edward paid £16 for his ransom, a considerable sum, and Chaucer was released. After this, Chaucers life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain, around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward IIIs queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford and it is uncertain how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited. His son, Thomas Chaucer, had a career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy to France. Thomass daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk, thomass great-grandson, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed. Geoffreys other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey, Agnes, an attendant at Henry IVs coronation, Chaucers Treatise on the Astrolabe was written for Lewis. According to tradition, Chaucer studied law in the Inner Temple at this time and he became a member of the royal court of Edward III as a valet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail a wide variety of tasks. His wife also received a pension for court employment and he travelled abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet. In 1368, he may have attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, two other literary stars of the era were in attendance, Jean Froissart and Petrarch
Geoffrey Chaucer
–
Portrait of Chaucer from the 17th century.
Geoffrey Chaucer
–
Chaucer as a pilgrim from the
Ellesmere manuscript
Geoffrey Chaucer
–
A 19th-century depiction of Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
–
Portrait of Chaucer (16th century), f.1 - BL Add MS 5141
18.
William Shakespeare
–
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called Englands national poet, and the Bard of Avon and his extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a career in London as an actor, writer. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, in his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and it was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as not of an age, but for all time. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship. His plays remain highly popular and are studied, performed. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden and he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholars mistake, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, the consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaways neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage, twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596, after the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the bill of a law case before the Queens Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589
William Shakespeare
–
The
Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed.
National Portrait Gallery, London.
William Shakespeare
–
John Shakespeare's house, believed to be
Shakespeare's birthplace, in
Stratford-upon-Avon.
William Shakespeare
–
Shakespeare's coat of arms, as it appears on the rough draft of the application to grant a coat-of-arms to John Shakespeare. It features a spear as a
pun on the family name.
William Shakespeare
–
Shakespeare's funerary monument in Stratford-upon-Avon.
19.
Renaissance
–
The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
Renaissance
–
David, by
Michelangelo (
Accademia di Belle Arti,
Florence) is a masterpiece of Renaissance and world art.
Renaissance
–
Renaissance
Renaissance
–
Leonardo da Vinci 's
Vitruvian Man (c. 1490) shows clearly the effect writers of Antiquity had on Renaissance thinkers. Based on the specifications in
Vitruvius '
De architectura (1st century BC), Leonardo tried to draw the perfectly proportioned man.
Renaissance
–
Portrait of a young woman (c. 1480-85) (
Simonetta Vespucci) by
Sandro Botticelli
20.
Translation
–
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. While interpreting—the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication between users of different languages—antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature, there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh into Southwest Asian languages of the second millennium BCE. Translators always risk inappropriate spill-over of source-language idiom and usage into the target-language translation, on the other hand, spill-overs have imported useful source-language calques and loanwords that have enriched the target languages. Indeed, translators have helped substantially to shape the languages into which they have translated, because of the laboriousness of translation, since the 1940s engineers have sought to automate translation or to mechanically aid the human translator. The rise of the Internet has fostered a world-wide market for services and has facilitated language localization. Translation studies systematically study the theory and practice of translation, the English word translation derives from the Latin word translatio, which comes from trans, across + ferre, to carry or to bring. Thus translatio is a carrying across or a bringing across, in this case, the Germanic languages and some Slavic languages have calqued their words for the concept of translation on translatio. The Romance languages and the remaining Slavic languages have derived their words for the concept of translation from an alternative Latin word, traductio, the Ancient Greek term for translation, μετάφρασις, has supplied English with metaphrase — as contrasted with paraphrase. Metaphrase corresponds, in one of the more recent terminologies, to formal equivalence, nevertheless, metaphrase and paraphrase may be useful as ideal concepts that mark the extremes in the spectrum of possible approaches to translation. Discussions of the theory and practice of translation reach back into antiquity, the ancient Greeks distinguished between metaphrase and paraphrase. Literally graceful, it were an injury to the author that they should be changed, Dryden cautioned, however, against the license of imitation, i. e. of adapted translation, When a painter copies from the life. He has no privilege to alter features and lineaments, despite occasional theoretical diversity, the actual practice of translation has hardly changed since antiquity. The grammatical differences between languages and free-word-order languages have been no impediment in this regard. The particular syntax characteristics of a source language are adjusted to the syntactic requirements of the target language. When a target language has lacked terms that are found in a language, translators have borrowed those terms. However, due to shifts in ecological niches of words, an etymology is sometimes misleading as a guide to current meaning in one or the other language. For example, the English actual should not be confused with the cognate French actuel, the Polish aktualny, the Swedish aktuell, the translators role as a bridge for carrying across values between cultures has been discussed at least since Terence, the 2nd-century-BCE Roman adapter of Greek comedies. The translators role is, however, by no means a passive, mechanical one, the main ground seems to be the concept of parallel creation found in critics such as Cicero
Translation
–
Rosetta Stone
Translation
–
John Dryden
Translation
–
Cicero
Translation
–
Martin Luther
21.
William Caxton
–
William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. He is thought to be the first Englishman to introduce a printing press into England, in 1476, and was the first English retailer of printed books. His parentage and date of birth are not known for certain, but he may have been born between 1415 and 1424, in the Weald or wood land of Kent, perhaps in Hadlow or Tenterden. In 1438 he was apprenticed to Robert Large, a wealthy London silk mercer, shortly after the death of Large, Caxton moved to Bruges in Belgium. Caxton was settled in Bruges by 1450, Caxton went onto became a successful in business and governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London. At this time Bruges was a cultured city, this caused Caxton to become interested in reading. During his business travels, he observed the new printing industry in Cologne which led him to start a press in Bruges. He also undertook the translation of Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, at this time Margaret sister of Edward the IV married the Duke of Burgundy, they moved to Bruges. Caxton became friendly with the Duchess and it was her who encouraged Caxton to continue his unfinished translation of the Troy stories, now known as the Iliad, which was completed in 1471. Caxton set up a press at Westminster in 1476 due to the demand in his translation on his return. The first book known to have been produced there was an edition of Chaucers The Canterbury Tales and he printed perhaps the earliest verses of the Bible to be printed in English, as well as chivalric romances, classical works and English and Roman histories. He translated into English and edited many of the works himself and he is credited with the first English translation of Aesops Fables, in 1484. The rushed publishing schedule and his inadequacies as a translator led both to wholesale transfers of French words into English and to misunderstandings, Caxton is credited with helping to standardise the various dialects of English through his printed works. In 2002, Caxton was named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a BBC poll, Caxtons family have been fairly certainly found to be his parents, Philip and Dionisia, and a brother, Philip. His date of birth is unknown, records place it in the region of 1415–1424, based on the fact that his apprenticeship fees were paid in 1438. Caxton would have been 14 at the date of apprenticeship, in the preface to his first printed work The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, he claims to have been born and educated in the Weald of Kent. Oral tradition in Tonbridge claims that Caxton was born there, the same with Tenterden, one of the manors of Hadlow was Caustons, owned by the Caxton family. A house in Hadlow reputed to be the birthplace of William Caxton was dismantled in 1936 and incorporated into a house rebuilt in Forest Row
William Caxton
–
William Caxton
William Caxton
–
A page from the Brut Chronicles (printed as the Chronicles of England), printed in 1480 by Caxton
William Caxton
–
Caxton's 1477 edition of Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
William Caxton
–
Stained glass to William Caxton,
Guildhall, London
22.
Hellenistic period
–
It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the enlightenment of the Greek Classical era. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, the Septuagint, Greek science was advanced by the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, the Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to new realms. Equally, however, these new kingdoms were influenced by the cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and this mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world. Scholars and historians are divided as to what event signals the end of the Hellenistic era, Hellenistic is distinguished from Hellenic in that the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to Greece itself. The word originated from the German term hellenistisch, from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής, from Ἑλλάς, Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th-century concept, the idea of a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although words related in form or meaning, e. g, the major issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience, as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the world were more affected by Greek influences than others. The Greek population and the population did not always mix, the Greeks moved and brought their own culture. While a few fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work which dates to the hundred years following Alexanders death. The works of the major Hellenistic historians Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, the earliest and most credible surviving source for the Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis, a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage. His Histories eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the years 220 to 167 BC, another important source, Plutarchs Parallel Lives though more preoccupied with issues of personal character and morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic figures. Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of the Roman empire that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms, other sources include Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus Historiae Philipicae and a summary of Arrians Events after Alexander, by Photios I of Constantinople. Lesser supplementary sources include Curtius Rufus, Pausanias, Pliny, in the field of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is the main source. Ancient Greece had traditionally been a collection of fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War, Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful
Hellenistic period
–
The
Nike of Samothrace is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of
Hellenistic art.
Hellenistic period
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Alexander fighting the Persian king
Darius III. From the
Alexander Mosaic,
Naples National Archaeological Museum.
Hellenistic period
–
Alexander's empire at the time of its maximum expansion.
23.
Nicander
–
Nicander of Colophon, Greek poet, physician and grammarian, was born at Claros, near Colophon, where his family held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. He flourished under Attalus III of Pergamum and he wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete. The longest, Theriaca, is a poem on the nature of venomous animals. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of poisons, nicanders main source for medical information was the physician Apollodorus of Egypt. The works of Nicander were praised by Cicero, imitated by Ovid and Lucan, and tr. A. S. F. Gow, A. F. Scholfield. Earlier editions by JG Schneider, O. Schneider, the Scholia were edited by G. Wentzel in Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, vol. 48, Göttingen, in der dieterichschen Buchhandlung,1892, pagg, H. Klauser, De Dicendi Genere Nicandri. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh. An ancient Life of Nicander, from the scholia Theriaca et Alexipharmaca recensuit et emendavit, fragmenta collegit, accedunt scholia in Theriaca ex recensione Henrici Keil. scholia in Alexipharmaca ex recognitione Bussemakeri et R. Bentlei emedationes, Lipsiae sumptibus et typis B. G. Teubneri,1856. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Nicander, Oppianus, Marcellus de piscibus, poeta de herbis, ameis, F. S. Lehrs, Parisiis, editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot,1862, pp. 127-163. Scholia et paraphrases in Nicandrum et Oppianum, Fr, cats Bussemaker, Parisiis, editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot,1849, pp. 173-242
Nicander
–
Nikander, Theriaca, 10th century, Constantinople
24.
Io (mythology)
–
Io was, in Greek mythology, one of the mortal lovers of Zeus. She was an ancestor of kings and heroes such as, Perseus, Cadmus, Heracles, Minos, Lynceus, Cepheus. The astronomer Simon Marius conceived a name for one of Jupiters moons after Io in 1614, in most versions of the legend, Io was the daughter of Inachus, though various other purported genealogies are also known. According to some sources her mother was the nymph Melia, daughter of the Oceanus, ios father was called Peiren in the Catalogue of Women, and by Acusilaus, possibly a son of the elder Argus, also known as Peiras, Peiranthus or Peirasus. Io may therefore be identical to Callithyia, daughter of Peiranthus, Io was a priestess of the Goddess Hera in Argos, whose cult her father Inachus was supposed to have introduced to Argos. Zeus noticed Io, a woman, and lusted after her. In the version of the myth told in Prometheus Bound she initially rejected Zeus advances, according to some stories, Zeus then turned Io into a heifer in order to hide her from his wife, others maintain that Hera herself transformed Io. In the version of the story in which Zeus transformed Io, the failed, and Hera begged Zeus to give her the heifer as a present. Hera then sent Argus Panoptes, who had 100 eyes, to watch Io and prevent Zeus from visiting her, according to Ovid, he did so by first lulling him to sleep by playing the panpipes and telling stories. Zeus freed Io, still in the form of a heifer, in order to exact her revenge, Hera sent a gadfly to sting Io continuously, driving her to wander the world without rest. Io eventually crossed the path between the Propontis and the Black Sea, which acquired the name Bosporus, where she met Prometheus. Prometheus comforted Io with the information that she would be restored to human form, Io escaped across the Ionian Sea to Egypt, where she was restored to human form by Zeus. There, she gave birth to Zeuss son Epaphus, and a daughter as well and she later married Egyptian king Telegonus. Their grandson, Danaos, eventually returned to Greece with his fifty daughters, the myth of Io must have been well known to Homer, who often calls Hermes Argeiphontes, meaning Argus-slayer. A mourning commemoration of Io was observed at the Heraion of Argos into classical times, the ancients connected Io with the Moon, and in Aeschylus Prometheus Bound, where Io encounters Prometheus, she refers to herself as the horned virgin, both bovine and lunar. In the 2010 film Clash of the Titans, Io was portrayed by British actress Gemma Arterton, the character was a major deviation from Greek mythology, instead of being Zeus lover, she was portrayed as a guide and later the lover of Perseus. Her transformation into a cow was not mentioned. Instead, she was cursed with agelessness for refusing a gods romantic advances, despite confirming her return for Wrath of the Titans in September 2010, Arterton did not reprise her role for unknown reasons
Io (mythology)
–
Hermes, Io (as cow) and
Argus, black-figure
amphora, 540–530 BC,
Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 585)
Io (mythology)
–
Pieter Lastman Juno Discovering Jupiter with Io
Io (mythology)
–
Paris Bordone - Zeus and Io - Kunstmuseum, Göteborg
25.
Woodcut
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Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that the artist cuts away carry no ink, while characters or images at surface level carry the ink to produce the print, the block is cut along the wood grain. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with a roller, leaving ink upon the flat surface. Multiple colors can be printed by keying the paper to a frame around the woodblocks, single-leaf woodcut is a term for a woodcut presented as a single image or print, as opposed to a book illustration. Among these the best known are the 16th century Hieronymus Andreae, Hans Lützelburger and Jost de Negker, all of whom ran workshops, the formschneider in turn handed the block on to specialist printers. There were further specialists who made the blank blocks and this is why woodcuts are sometimes described by museums or books as designed by rather than by an artist, but most authorities do not use this distinction. The division of labour had the advantage that a trained artist could adapt to the medium relatively easily, there were various methods of transferring the artists drawn design onto the block for the cutter to follow. Either the drawing would be made directly onto the block, or a drawing on paper was glued to the block, either way, the artists drawing was destroyed during the cutting process. Other methods were used, including tracing, in both Europe and the Far East in the early 20th century, some artists began to do the whole process themselves. In Japan, this movement was called sōsaku-hanga, as opposed to shin-hanga, in the West, many artists used the easier technique of linocut instead. Compared to intaglio techniques like etching and engraving, only low pressure is required to print, as a relief method, it is only necessary to ink the block and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. In Europe a variety of woods including boxwood and several nut and fruit woods like pear or cherry were commonly used, in Japan, there are three methods of printing to consider, Stamping, Used for many fabrics and most early European woodcuts. Used for European woodcuts and block-books later in the fifteenth century, also used for many Western woodcuts from about 1910 to the present. The block goes face up on a table, with the paper or fabric on top, the back is rubbed with a hard pad, a flat piece of wood, a burnisher, or a leather frotton. A traditional Japanese tool used for this is called a baren, later in Japan, complex wooden mechanisms were used to help hold the woodblock perfectly still and to apply proper pressure in the printing process. This was especially helpful once multiple colors were introduced and had to be applied with precision atop previous ink layers, printing in a press, presses only seem to have been used in Asia in relatively recent times. Printing-presses were used from about 1480 for European prints and block-books, simple weighted presses may have been used in Europe before the print-press, but firm evidence is lacking
Woodcut
–
Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by
Albrecht Dürer
Woodcut
–
Using a handheld gouge to cut a woodcut design into Japanese plywood. The design has been sketched in chalk on a painted face of the plywood.
Woodcut
–
Woodcuts of Stanislaw Raczynski (1903-1982)
Woodcut
–
Block Cutter at Work woodcut by
Jost Amman, 1568
26.
Virgil Solis
–
Virgil Solis or Virgilius Solis, a member of a prolific family of artists, was a German draughtsman and printmaker in engraving, etching and woodcut who worked in his native city of Nuremberg. His prints were sold separately or formed the illustrations of books, after his death his widow married his assistant and continued the workshop into the early seventeenth century. His woodcuts illustrating Ovid were especially influential, though partly borrowing from earlier illustrations by the French artist Bernard Salomon and he published in armorial of the Holy Roman Empire in 1555. Jost Amman was an assistant of Solis before starting his own workshop, eduard von Ubisch wrote a comprehensive description of Solis life and work in relation to the Bible images in 1889, in German, which is available on the net - see external links. A very adequate amount of information about editions of Ovid and their illustrations, internet Archive, page by page photographs of complete book from The Norris Museum, St Ives, Cambridgeshire, UK. Virgil Solis Wappenbüchlein Holdings in the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Virgil Solis und seine biblischen Illustrationen für den Holzschnitt publisher Ramm & Seemann
Virgil Solis
–
Woodcut from Ovid's
Metamorphoses (XIV, 698-764), Frankfurt 1581
27.
Apotheosis
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Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, in theology, apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature. In art, the term refers to the treatment of any subject in a grand or exalted manner. Before the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in Ancient Egypt, from the New Kingdom, all deceased pharaohs were deified as Osiris. From at least the Geometric period of the ninth century BC, in the Greek world, the first leader who accorded himself divine honours was Philip II of Macedon. Such Hellenistic state leaders might be raised to an equal to the gods before death or afterwards. A heroic cult status similar to apotheosis was also a given to a few revered artists of the distant past. For this reason hero cults were chthonic in nature, and their rituals more closely resembled those for Hecate and Persephone than those for Zeus and Apollo. Two exceptions were Heracles and Asclepius, who might be honoured as either gods or heroes, sometimes by chthonic night-time rites and sacrifice on the following day. Apotheosis in ancient Rome was a process whereby a deceased ruler was recognized as having been divine by his successor, usually also by a decree of the Senate and popular consent. In addition to showing respect, often the present ruler deified a popular predecessor to legitimize himself, at the height of the imperial cult during the Roman Empire, sometimes the emperors deceased loved ones—heirs, empresses, or lovers, as Hadrians Antinous—were deified as well. Deified people were awarded posthumously the title Divus to their names to signify their divinity, traditional Roman religion distinguished between a deus and a divus, though not consistently. Temples and columns were erected to provide a space for worship. The Ming dynasty epic Investiture of the Gods deals heavily with deification legends, numerous mortals have been deified into the Daoist pantheon, such as Guan Yu, Iron-crutch Li and Fan Kuai. Song Dynasty General Yue Fei was deified during the Ming Dynasty and is considered by practitioners to be one of the three highest ranking heavenly generals. Various Hindu and Buddhist rulers in the past have been represented as deities, especially after death, even several Sultans of Yogyakarta were semi-deified, posthumously. Instead of the apotheosis, Christian theology uses in English the words deification or divinization or the Greek word theosis. Traditional mainstream theology, both East and West, views Jesus Christ as the preexisting God who undertook mortal existence, for He was made man that we might be made God
Apotheosis
–
Apotheosis of French soldiers fallen in the Napoleonic Wars,
Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, beginning of 19th century.
Apotheosis
–
Apotheosis of George Washington
Apotheosis
–
Ingres,
The Apotheosis of Homer.
Apotheosis
–
Apotheosis of St. Louis, St. Louis MO
28.
Genre
–
Genre is any form or type of communication in any mode with socially-agreed upon conventions developed over time. Genres form by conventions that change over time as new genres are invented, often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, some genres may be rigid with strictly adhered to guidelines while others may be very flexible. Genre began as a classification system for ancient Greek literature. Poetry, prose, and performance each had a specific and calculated style that related to the theme of the story. Speech patterns for comedy would not be appropriate for tragedy, in later periods genres proliferated and developed in response to changes in audiences and creators. Genre became a tool to help the public make sense out of unpredictable art. Because art is often a response to a state, in that people write/paint/sing/dance about what they know about. Genre suffers from the ills of any classification system. Genre is to be reassessed and scrutinized, and to works on their unique merit. While the genre of storytelling has been relegated as lesser form of art because of the heavily borrowed nature of the conventions, proponents argue that the genius of an effective genre piece is in the variation, recombination, and evolution of the codes. The term genre is used in the history and criticism of visual art. These are distinguished from staffage, incidental figures in what is primarily a landscape or architectural painting, Genre painting may also be used as a wider term covering genre painting proper, and other specialized types of paintings such as still-life, landscapes, marine paintings and animal paintings. The concept of the hierarchy of genres was a one in artistic theory. It was strongest in France, where it was associated with the Académie française which held a role in academic art. Genres may be determined by technique, tone, content. Genre should not be confused with age category, by which literature may be classified as adult, young adult. They also must not be confused with format, such as novel or picture book
Genre
–
A genre painting (Peasant Dance, c. 1568, by
Pieter Brueghel the Elder)
29.
Epyllion
–
Modern discussion has, however, been bedevilled by the grouping together of poems so diverse as to render that grouping almost meaningless, however many points of individual contact they may share. An epyllion is, in its most basic definition, a poem written in dactylic hexameters that is comparatively short. There is disagreement about whether the term should also be applied to works written in elegiac couplets, a similar variation in lengths is found in epyllia that form episodes within larger works. Callimachus, Hecale fr.1 Hollis =230 Pf, the Epyllion, A Chapter in the History of Literary Criticism, TAPA,71, 1–26. The Non-Existent Classical Epyllion, Studies in Philology,55, 515–18, courtney, E. Epyllion, in S. Hornblower & A. Spawforth, Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford, ISBN9780198661726 CS1 maint, Uses editors parameter. The Epyllion from Theocritus to Ovid, Oxford, fantuzzi, M. Epyllion, in H. Cancik & H. Schneider, Brills New Pauly, Antiquity,4, ISBN9789004122673 CS1 maint, Uses editors parameter. Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry, Cambridge, ISBN 978-0521835114, fordyce, C. J. Catullus, A Commentary, Oxford, ISBN 978-0198721475. Haupt, M, Opuscula, volumen secundum, Leipzig, the Latin Epyllion, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology,24, 37–50. Leumann, J. De epyllio Alexandino, Königsee, neues zur Geschichte des Terminus Epyllion, Philologus,126, 153–6. Origins of the Word Epyllion, The Classical Journal,49, thoughts on the Epyllion, The Classical Journal,66, 38–43
Epyllion
–
A sleeping
Ariadne 's abandonment by
Theseus is the topic of an elaborate
ecphrasis in
Catullus 64, the most famous extant epyllion. (Roman copy of a 2nd-century BCE Greek original; Villa Corsini.)
30.
Meter
–
The metre or meter, is the base unit of length in the International System of Units. The metre is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds, the metre was originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. In 1799, it was redefined in terms of a metre bar. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86. In 1983, the current definition was adopted, the imperial inch is defined as 0.0254 metres. One metre is about 3 3⁄8 inches longer than a yard, Metre is the standard spelling of the metric unit for length in nearly all English-speaking nations except the United States and the Philippines, which use meter. Measuring devices are spelled -meter in all variants of English, the suffix -meter has the same Greek origin as the unit of length. This range of uses is found in Latin, French, English. Thus calls for measurement and moderation. In 1668 the English cleric and philosopher John Wilkins proposed in an essay a decimal-based unit of length, as a result of the French Revolution, the French Academy of Sciences charged a commission with determining a single scale for all measures. In 1668, Wilkins proposed using Christopher Wrens suggestion of defining the metre using a pendulum with a length which produced a half-period of one second, christiaan Huygens had observed that length to be 38 Rijnland inches or 39.26 English inches. This is the equivalent of what is now known to be 997 mm, no official action was taken regarding this suggestion. In the 18th century, there were two approaches to the definition of the unit of length. One favoured Wilkins approach, to define the metre in terms of the length of a pendulum which produced a half-period of one second. The other approach was to define the metre as one ten-millionth of the length of a quadrant along the Earths meridian, that is, the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. This means that the quadrant would have defined as exactly 10000000 metres at that time. To establish a universally accepted foundation for the definition of the metre, more measurements of this meridian were needed. This portion of the meridian, assumed to be the length as the Paris meridian, was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator
Meter
–
Belfry, Dunkirk —the northern end of the meridian arc
Meter
–
Fortress of Montjuïc —the southerly end of the meridian arc
Meter
–
Creating the metre-alloy in 1874 at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. Present Henri Tresca, George Matthey, Saint-Claire Deville and Debray
Meter
–
Closeup of National Prototype Metre Bar No. 27, made in 1889 by the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) and given to the United States, which served as the standard for defining all units of length in the US from 1893 to 1960
.jpg)
Metamorphoses public domain audiobook at LibriVox
