Theodorus Lector
Theodorus Lector was a lector, or reader, at the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople during the early sixth century. He wrote two works of history; the other is Theodorus' own work, retelling events from the death of Theodosius II in 450 to the beginning of Justin I's reign in 518. The former work is important to scholars editing the authors quoted by Theodorus. While a lector at Hagia Sophia, Theodorus collected the works of the fifth-century historians Socrates Scholasticus and Theodoret of Cyrrhus to create a chronicle of church history from Constantine to Theodosius II; the resulting work, Selections from Church History, known better by its Latin title Historia Tripartita, is a single narrative in four books which gives Theodorus' preferred reading for each section of history related, with notes and comparisons in the margins. Theodorus continued his chronicle, using other available sources to write his Church History from the death of Theodosius II down to 518; the date of composition is not known, though it was finished before 543, as it can be conjectured that Theodorus would not have spoken of the "holy memory" of Theodoret following the onset of the Three-Chapter Controversy.
The chronicle has not survived. It is believed that a badly damaged manuscript of this work survives in the Library of St. Mark's in Venice, however no scholarly research has yet been done into it. Theodorus Lector - Catholic Encyclopedia article Theodorus Lector - Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A. D Theodorus Lector in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 86a View online
Menologium
Menologium written menology, menologe, is a service-book used in the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Rite of Constantinople. From its derivation from Greek μηνολόγιον, menológion, from μήν mén "a month", via Latin menologium, the literal meaning is "month-set"—in other words, a book arranged according to the months. Like a good many other liturgical terms, the word has been used in several quite distinct senses. Menologion has several different meanings: "Menologion" is not infrequently used as synonymous with "Menaion"; the Menaia in twelve volumes—one for each month—but sometimes bound in three, form an office-book, which in the Orthodox Church, corresponds to the Proprium Sanctorum of the Latin Breviary. They include all the propers of the services connected with the commemoration of saints and in particular the canons sung at Orthros, including the synaxaries, i. e. the lives of the saints of the day, which are always inserted between the sixth and seventh odes of the canon.
The Synaxaries are read in this place much as the Martyrologium for the day is interpolated in the choral recitation of Prime in the offices of Western Christendom. Secondly and more "menologion" is the collection of those lives of the saints just mentioned, without the other liturgical materials; such a collection, consisting as it does purely of historical matter, bears a considerable resemblance, as will be understood, to a Catholic Martyrology, although the lives of the saints are, for the most part larger and fuller than those found in a Martyrology, while on the other hand the number of entries is smaller. The Menologion of Basil II, a work of early date referred to in connexion with the history of the Orthodox Offices, is a book of this class; the tables of scriptural lessons, arranged according to months and saints' days, which are found at the beginning of Gospel Books or other lectionaries, are described as menologia. The saints' days are named and the readings indicated beside each.
The word "menologion" is widely applied to the collections of long lives of the saints of the Orthodox Church, whenever these lives, as happens, are arranged according to months and days of each month. This arrangement has always been a favourite one in the great Legendaria of the West, it might be illustrated from the Acta Sanctorum or the Lives of the Saints by Surius. In the liturgical calendar of the Orthodox Church, September is the first month of the ecclesiastical year, August is the last. One of the most important collections of this kind is. Father Delehaye and Albert Ehrhard working independently grouped together works which are attributable to this author, but uncertainty remained to the provenance of his materials, as to the relation between this collection and certain contracted biographies many of which exist among the manuscripts of our great libraries; the synaxaries, or histories for liturgical use, are nearly all extracted from the older Menologia, but Delehaye, who gave special attention to the study of this class of documents, considered that the authors of these compendia have added, though sparsely, materials of their own, derived from various sources.
The fact that the word martyrology was consecrated to a liturgical or quasi-liturgical compilation arranged according to months and days, including only canonized saints and festivals universally received led to the employment of menologium for works of a somewhat analogous character, of private authority, not intended for liturgical use and including the names and elogia of persons in repute for sanctity but not in any sense canonized Saints. In most of the religious orders it became the custom to commemorate the memory of their dead brethren specially renowned for holiness or learning. In more than one such order during the 17th and 18th centuries, the collection of these short eulogistic biographies was printed under the name of Menologium and so arranged as to form a selection for each day of the year. Since they were made by private authority which could not pronounce judgment on the sanctity of those so commemorated, the Church prohibited the reading of these compilations as part of the Divine Office.
Thus the collection made by the Franciscan Fortunatus Hüber of the abbreviated lives of those of the Friars Minor who had died in the odour of sanctity, printed in 1691 under the title of "Menologium Franciscanum", was evidently intended for public recitation. In lieu of the concluding formula "Et alibi aliorum" etc. of the Roman Martyrology, the compiler suggests as the ferialis terminatio cuiuscumque diei the three verses of the Apocalypse beginning: "Post hæc vidi turbam magnam". The earliest printed work of this kind is that which bears the title "Menologium Carmelitanum" compiled by the Carmelite Saracenus, printed at Bologna in 1627. A year or two in 1630, Father Crisóstomo Henríquez published at Antwerp his Menologium Cisterciense; that no general custom existed of reading the Menology at table appears from his remark: "It would not app
Charles Fellows
Sir Charles Fellows was a British archaeologist and explorer, known for his numerous expeditions in what is present-day Turkey. Fellows was born at Nottingham; when fourteen he drew sketches to illustrate a trip to the ruins of Newstead Abbey, which afterwards appeared on the title-page of Moore's Life of Lord Byron. In 1820 he settled in London. In 1827 he discovered the modern ascent of Mont Blanc. After the death of his mother in 1832 he passed the greater portion of his time in Italy and the Levant; the numerous sketches he executed were used in illustrating Childe Harold. In 1838 he went to Asia Minor, his explorations in the interior and the south led him to districts unknown to Europeans, he thus discovered ruins of a number of ancient cities. He explored the Xanthus from the mouth at Patara upwards. Nine miles from Patara he discovered the ruins of Xanthus, the ancient capital of Lycia, finely situated on hills, abounding in magnificent remains. About 15 miles farther up he came upon the ruins of Tlos.
After taking sketches of the most interesting objects and copying a number of inscriptions, he returned to Smyrna through Caria and Lydia. The publication in 1839 of A Journal written during an Excursion in Asia Minor roused such interest that Lord Palmerston, at the request of the British Museum authorities, asked the British consul at Constantinople to obtain a firman from the sultan to export a number of the Lycian works of art to England. Having obtained the firman, under the auspices of the British Museum, again set out for Lycia in late 1839, he was accompanied by the painter George Scharf. This second visit resulted in the discovery of thirteen ancient cities, chief among them Xanthos, he made a further trip in 1841. Fellows led the archaeological excavation of Xanthos and other Lycian cities in Asia Minor and shipped an enormous amount of antique monuments to England, where they may be seen today in the halls of the British Museum, they include reliefs amongst many others. In 1841, he published An Account of Discoveries in Lycia, being a Journal kept during a Second Excursion in Asia Minor.
Three years he presented to the British Museum his portfolios, accounts of his expeditions, specimens of natural history illustrative of Lycia. In 1845, he was knighted as an acknowledgment of his services in the removal of the Xanthian antiquities to Britain. Fellows paid his own expenses in all his journeys and received no financial reward for his endeavours. Fellows was married twice, he was buried in Highgate Cemetery. In addition to the works above mentioned, Fellows published the following:The Xanthian Marbles. An Account of the Ionic Trophy Monument excavated at Xanthus Travels and Researches in Asia Minor in the Province of Lycia, a cheap edition of his two Journals. Coins of Ancient Lycia before the Reign of Alexander. Brown, C.. "Sir Charles Fellows". Lives of Nottinghamshire Worthies. Pp. 352–353. Journal of the Royal Geographic Society, 1861. Slatter, E. Xanthus, Travels of discoveries in Turkey, The Rubicon Press, London, 1990 The British Museum in London Lykian discoveries Charles Fellows correspondence, 1820-1879 finding aid, The Getty Research Institute
Arzawa
Arzawa was the name of a region and a political entity in Western Anatolia in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. The core of Arzawa is believed to be along the Kestros River, with its capital at Apasa known as Ephesus; when the Hittites conquered Arzawa it was divided into three Hittite provinces: a southern province called Mira along the Maeander River, which would become known as Caria. A successor of the Assuwa league, which included parts of western Anatolia, but was conquered by the Hittites in c. 1400 BC. Arzawa was the western rival of the Middle and New Hittite Kingdoms. On the other hand, it was in close contact with the Ahhiyawa of the Hittite texts, which corresponds to the Achaeans of Mycenaean Greece. Moreover and Arzawa formed a coalition against the Hittites, in various periods. According to Hittite sources, the capital of the Kingdom of Arzawa was Apasa, corresponding with Greek Ephesus; the languages spoken in Arzawa during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age cannot be directly determined due to the paucity of indigenous written sources.
It was believed that the linguistic identity of Arzawa was predominantly Luwian, inter alia, on the replacement of the designation Luwiya with Arzawa in a corrupt passage of a New Hittite copy of the Laws. However, it was argued that Luwiya and Arzawa were two separate entities, because Luwiya is mentioned in the Hittite Laws as a part of the Hittite Old Kingdom, whereas Arzawa was independent from the Hittites during this period; the geographic identity between Luwiya and Arzawa was rejected or doubted in a variety of recent publications, although the ethnolinguistic implications of this analysis remain to be assessed. One scholar suggested that there was no significant Luwian population in Arzawa, but instead that it was predominantly inhabited by speakers of Proto-Lydian and Proto-Carian; the difference between the two approaches need not be exaggerated since the Carian language belongs to the Luwic branch of the Anatolian languages. Thus, the Luwic presence in Arzawa is universally acknowledged, but whether the elites of Arzawa were Luwian in the narrow sense remains a matter of debate.
The zenith of the kingdom was during the 15th and 14th centuries BC. The Hittites were weakened, Arzawa was an ally of Egypt; this alliance is recorded in the correspondence between the Arzawan ruler Tarhundaradu and the Pharaoh Amenophis III called the Arzawa letters, part of the archive of the Amarna letters, having played a substantial role in the decipherment of the Hittite language in which they were written. According to Hittite records, in c. 1320 BC Arzawa joined an anti-Hittite alliance together with the region of Millawanta under the king of the Ahhiyawa. As a response to this initiative, the Hittite kings Suppiluliuma I and Mursili II managed to defeat Arzawa around 1300 BC; the king of Arzawa managed to escape to Mycenaean-controlled territory. Arzawa was split by the Hittites into vassal kingdoms; these were called: Kingdom of Mira, Hapalla, "Seha river land"."Seha river" is now believed to be the present-day Gediz River, although some scholars said it was the Bakırçay river. Mursili's son Muwatalli added Wilusa as a vassal.
In 1998, J. David Hawkins succeeded in reading the Karabel relief inscription, located at the Karabel pass, about 20 km from Izmir; this has provided evidence that the kingdom of Mira was south of the'Seha river land', thus locating the latter along the Gediz River. These kingdoms termed as "lands" in Hittite registers, could have formed part of the Arzawa complex during the existence of the Arzawa kingdom. Known western Anatolian late-Bronze Age regions and/or political entities which, to date, have not been cited as having been part of the Arzawa complex are: Land of Masa/Masha Karkiya Lukka lands After the collapse of the Hittite Empire from the 12th century, while Neo-Hittite states pursued Hittite history in southern Anatolia and Syria, the chain seems to have broken as far as the Arzawa lands in western Anatolia were concerned and these could have pursued their own cultural path until unification came with the emergence of Lydia as a state under the Mermnad dynasty in the 7th century BC.
There has been evidence from a British expedition in 1954 to Beycesultan in inner western Anatolia which suggests that the local king had central heating in his home. Nothing more was heard from this invention until Gaius Sergius Orata reinvented it in Ancient Rome around 80 BC. Kupanta-Kurunta c.1440's BC Madduwatta of Zippasla c.1420's BC Tarhundaradu c.1370's BC Anzapahhadu c. 1350's Piyama-Kurunda c. 1343 BC Tapalazunaulis c.1342 BC Muwa-Malwis Manappa-Tarhunta c.1340 BC Ura-Tarhunta c.1330 BC Tarksnawa c.1320's BC Uhha-Ziti - defeated by Mursili II around 1320 BC Ura-Hattusa c.1315 BC Mashturi c.1310 BC Piyama-Radu c.1300 BC Tarhuna-Radu c.1245 BC Ancient regions of Anatolia History of the Hittites Assuwa Lukka Lydia
Tyche
Tyche was the presiding tutelary deity who governed the fortune and prosperity of a city, its destiny. In Classical Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Zeus or Hermes. In literature, she might be given various genealogies, as a daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite, or considered as one of the Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus, Tethys, or of Zeus, she was connected with Agathos Daimon. The Greek historian Polybius believed that when no cause can be discovered to events such as floods, frosts, or in politics the cause of these events may be attributed to Tyche. During the Hellenistic period, cities venerated their own specific iconic version of Tyche, wearing a mural crown. Tyche had temples at Caesarea Maritima, Antioch and Constantinople. In Alexandria the Tychaeon, the Greek temple of Tyche, was described by Libanius as one of the most magnificent of the entire Hellenistic world, she was uniquely venerated at Itanos in Crete, as Tyche Protogeneia, linked with the Athenian Protogeneia, daughter of Erechtheus, whose self-sacrifice saved the city.
Stylianos Spyridacis concisely expressed Tyche's appeal in a Hellenistic world of arbitrary violence and unmeaning reverses: "In the turbulent years of the Epigoni of Alexander, an awareness of the instability of human affairs led people to believe that Tyche, the blind mistress of Fortune, governed mankind with an inconstancy which explained the vicissitudes of the time." Tyche appears on many coins of the Hellenistic period in the three centuries before the Christian era from cities in the Aegean. Unpredictable turns of fortune drive the complicated plotlines of Hellenistic romances, such as, Leucippe and Clitophon or Daphnis and Chloe, she experienced a resurgence in another era of uneasy change, the final days of publicly sanctioned Paganism, between the late-fourth-century emperors Julian and Theodosius I, who definitively closed the temples. The effectiveness of her capricious power achieved respectability in philosophical circles during that generation, although among poets it was a commonplace to revile her for a fickle harlot.
In Greco-Roman and medieval art she was depicted as carrying a cornucopia, an emblematic gubernaculum, the wheel of fortune, or she may stand on the wheel, presiding over the entire circle of fate. The constellation of Virgo is sometimes identified as the heavenly figure of Tyche, as well as other goddesses such as Demeter and Astraea. Tyche of Constantinople Media related to Tyche at Wikimedia Commons
Acts of the Apostles
Acts of the Apostles referred to as Acts, or formally the Book of Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament. Acts and the Gospel of Luke make up a two-part work, Luke–Acts, by the same anonymous author dated to around 80–90 AD; the first part, the Gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Acts continues the story of Christianity in the 1st century, beginning with Jesus's ascension to Heaven; the early chapters, set in Jerusalem, describe the Day of Pentecost and the growth of the church in Jerusalem. The Jews are receptive to the Christian message, but soon they turn against the followers of Jesus. Rejected by the Jews, under the guidance of the Apostle Peter the message is taken to the Gentiles; the chapters tell of Paul's conversion, his mission in Asia Minor and the Aegean, his imprisonment in Rome, where, as the book ends, he awaits trial. Luke–Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church.
Luke–Acts can be seen as a defense of the Jesus movement addressed to the Jews: the bulk of the speeches and sermons in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences, with the Romans serving as external arbiters on disputes concerning Jewish customs and law. On the one hand, Luke portrays the Christians as a sect of the Jews, therefore entitled to legal protection as a recognised religion; the title "Acts of the Apostles" was first used by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century. It is not known whether this was one invented by Irenaeus; the Gospel of Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution attributed to a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus and the early church. The author is not named in either volume. According to Church tradition dating from the 2nd century, he was the "Luke" named as a companion of the apostle Paul in three of the letters attributed to Paul himself.
The author "does not share Paul's own view of himself as an apostle. He was educated, a man of means urban, someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself. While no proposed date for the composition of Acts is universally accepted, the most common scholarly position is to date Luke–Acts to 80-90 AD, on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul; the earliest possible date for the composition of Acts is set by the events with which it ends, Paul's imprisonment in Rome c. 63 AD, but such an early dating is a minority position. The last possible date would be set by its first definite citation by another author, but there is no unanimity on this. A minority of scholars in the latter camp, conclude that Acts dates to the 2nd century, believing that it shows awareness of the letters of Paul, the works of Josephus, or the writings of Marcion. There are two major textual variants of the Western text-type and the Alexandrian.
The oldest complete Alexandrian manuscripts date from the 4th century and the oldest Western ones from the 6th, with fragments and citations going back to the 3rd. Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts. The majority of scholars prefer the Alexandrian text-type over the Western as the more authentic, but this same argument would favour the Western over the Alexandrian for the Gospel of Luke, as in that case the Western version is the shorter; the title "Acts of the Apostles" would seem to identify it with the genre telling of the deeds and achievements of great men, but it was not the title given by the author. The anonymous author aligned Luke–Acts to the "narratives" (διήγησ
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and colonization of the Mediterranean Basin; this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedon, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea; the Hellenistic period came to an end with the conquests and annexations of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic, which established the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, the province of Achaea during the Roman Empire. Classical Greek culture philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe.
For this reason, Classical Greece is considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Greek culture gave great importance to knowledge. Science and religion were not separate and getting closer to the truth meant getting closer to the gods. In this context, they understood the importance of mathematics as an instrument for obtaining more reliable knowledge. Greek culture, in a few centuries and with a limited population, managed to explore and make progress in many fields of science, mathematics and knowledge in general. Classical antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC and ended in the 6th century AD. Classical antiquity in Greece was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages, archaeologically characterised by the protogeometric and geometric styles of designs on pottery. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic Period, beginning around the 8th century BC.
The Archaic Period saw early developments in Greek culture and society which formed the basis for the Classical Period. After the Archaic Period, the Classical Period in Greece is conventionally considered to have lasted from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 until the death of Alexander the Great in 323; the period is characterized by a style, considered by observers to be exemplary, i.e. "classical", as shown in the Parthenon, for instance. Politically, the Classical Period was dominated by Athens and the Delian League during the 5th century, but displaced by Spartan hegemony during the early 4th century BC, before power shifted to Thebes and the Boeotian League and to the League of Corinth led by Macedon; this period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon. Following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East; this period ends with the Roman conquest. Roman Greece is considered to be the period between Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC and the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in AD 330.
Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the 4th to early 6th centuries AD, sometimes taken to be complete with the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529. The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in proper historiography, while earlier ancient history or proto-history is known by much more circumstantial evidence, such as annals or king lists, pragmatic epigraphy. Herodotus is known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Written between the 450s and 420s BC, Herodotus' work reaches about a century into the past, discussing 6th century historical figures such as Darius I of Persia, Cambyses II and Psamtik III, alluding to some 8th century ones such as Candaules. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Demosthenes and Aristotle. Most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities.
Their scope is further limited by a focus on political and diplomatic history, ignoring economic and social history. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. Objects with Phoenician writing on them may have been available in Greece from the 9th century BC, but the earliest evidence of Greek writing comes from graffiti on Greek pottery from the mid-8th century. Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern dictated by Greek geography: every island and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges; the Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period. It was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, though Chalcis was the nominal victor.
A mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC. This
