1.
Perseus
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Perseus beheaded the Gorgon Medusa and saved Andromeda from the sea monster Cetus. Perseus was the son of the mortal Danaë and the god Zeus and he was also the half-brother and great grandfather of Heracles. There is some prospect that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language, in that regard Robert Graves has espoused the only Greek derivation available. Perseus might be from the Greek verb, πέρθειν, “to waste, ravage, sack, destroy”, according to Carl Darling Buck, the –eus suffix is typically used to form an agent noun, in this case from the aorist stem, pers-. Pers-eus therefore is a sacker of cities, that is, a soldier by occupation, the origin of perth- is more obscure. J. B. Hofmann lists the possible root as *bher-, from which Latin ferio and this corresponds to Julius Pokorny’s *bher-, “scrape, cut. ”Ordinarily *bh- descends to Greek as ph-. This difficulty can be overcome by presuming a dissimilation from the –th– in perthein, that is, Graves carries the meaning still further, to the perse- in Persephone, goddess of death. the classical Perse. daughter of Oceanus. Whether it may be identified with the first element of Persephone is only speculative. ”A Greek folk etymology connected the name of the Persian people. The native name, however, has always had an -a- in Persian, herodotus recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses, from whom the Persians took the name. Apparently the Persians themselves knew the story, as Xerxes tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece, Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos. Disappointed by his lack of luck in having a son, Acrisius consulted the oracle at Delphi, who warned him that he would one day be killed by his daughters son. In order to keep Danaë childless, Acrisius imprisoned her in a chamber, open to the sky, in the courtyard of his palace, This mytheme is also connected to Ares, Oenopion, Eurystheus. Zeus came to her in the form of a shower of gold, soon after, their child was born, Perseus—Perseus Eurymedon, for his mother gave him this name as well. Fearful for his future, but unwilling to provoke the wrath of the gods by killing the offspring of Zeus and his daughter, danaës fearful prayer, made while afloat in the darkness, has been expressed by the poet Simonides of Ceos. Mother and child washed ashore on the island of Serifos, where they were taken in by the fisherman Dictys, the brother of Dictys was Polydectes, the king of the island. When Perseus was grown, Polydectes came to fall in love with the beautiful Danaë, Perseus believed Polydectes was less than honourable, and protected his mother from him, then Polydectes plotted to send Perseus away in disgrace. He held a banquet where each guest was expected to bring a gift. Polydectes requested that the guests bring horses, under the pretense that he was collecting contributions for the hand of Hippodamia, Perseus had no horse to give, so he asked Polydectes to name the gift, he would not refuse it
2.
Volterra
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Volterra, known to the ancient Etruscans as Velathri or Vlathri and to the Romans as Volaterrae, is a town and comune in the Tuscany region of Italy. The town was a Bronze Age settlement of the Villanovan culture, the site is believed to have been continuously inhabited as a city since at least the end of the 8th century BC. It became a municipium allied to Rome at the end of the 3rd century BC, the city was a bishops residence in the 5th century, and its episcopal power was affirmed during the 12th century. With the decline of the episcopate, Volterra became a place of interest of the Florentines, Florentine rule was not always popular, and opposition occasionally broke into rebellion. These rebellions were put down by Florence, when the Florentine Republic fell in 1530, Volterra came under the control of the Medici family and later followed the history of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Founded in 1905, the gallery consists mostly of works by Tuscan artists from 14th to 17th centuries, includes a Deposition by Rosso Fiorentino. It was enlarged in the 13th century after an earthquake, in the center of the vault are fragments of an Eternal Father by Niccolò Circignani. Also noteworthy is the Addolorata Chapel, with a terracotta attributed to Andrea della Robbia. In the nearby chapel, dedicated to the Very Holy Name of Jesus, is a table with Christs monogram, the rectangular bell tower is from 1493. Fortezza Medicea, build in the 1470s, now a housing the noted restaurant. Guarnacci Etruscan Museum, with thousands of funeral urns dating back to the Hellenistic and Archaic periods, main attractions are the bronze statuette Ombra della sera, and the sculpted effigy, Urna degli Sposi of an Etruscan couple in terra cotta. The Etruscan City Walls, including the well-preserved Porta allArco, the Medici Villa di Spedaletto, outside the city, in direction of Lajatico There are excavations of Etruscan tombs in the Valle Bona area. Volterra features in Horatius, a poem by Lord Macaulay, linda Prouds A Tabernacle for the Sun, the first volume of The Botticelli Trilogy, begins with the sack of Volterra in 1472. Volterra is the home of the Maffei family and the events of 1472 lead directly to the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478. The protagonist of the novel is Tommaso de Maffei, half brother of one of the conspirators, Volterra is an important location in Stephenie Meyers Twilight series. In the books, Volterra is home to the Volturi, a coven of rich, regal, powerful ancient vampires and this is the central incident in his book On Love. Volterra is mentioned repeatedly in British author Dudley Popes Captain Nicholas Ramage historical nautical series, gianna, the Marchesa of Volterra and the fictional ruler of the area, features in the first twelve books of the eighteen-book series. Volterra is the site where the novel Chimaira by the Italian author Valerio Massimo Manfredi takes place, Valerio Massimo Manfredis The Ancient Curse is also set in Volterra, where a statue called The Shade of Twilight is stolen from the Volterra museum
3.
Ancient Rome
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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
4.
Satirist
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Below is an incomplete list of writers, cartoonists and others known for their involvement in satire – humorous social criticism. They are grouped by era and listed by year of birth, also included is a list of modern satires. k. a. Kennedy Ephraim Kishon Erik Larsen Savage Dragon comic book from Image Comics Craig Lauzon Victor Lewis-Smith – TV Offal Ash Lieb Artist, author and comedian. Chris Lilley – Summer Heights High, We Can Be Heroes, Finding The Australian of the Year, Big Bite Daniele Luttazzi Seth MacFarlane – Family Guy, American Dad. Show, Saturday Night Live, The Larry Sanders Show John Oliver – Last Week Tonight with John Oliver George Ouzounian a. k. a, the Chasers War on Everything – Australian satire with an emphasis on attacking everyone. Seinfeld Royal Canadian Air Farce Air Farce Live Monty Pythons Flying Circus Phil Hendrie Family Guy, vaporwave, a satirical music genre with anarcho-capitalist and cyberpunk overtones dedicated to consumerism. Chumbawamba have consistently used satire to make political points throughout their musical career, pink Floyds albums Animals and The Dark Side of the Moon are conceptual and satirical albums. The Lonely Island is a music group known for their work on Saturday Night Live. Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stones Tony-sweeping Broadway show The Book of Mormon satirizes the applicability of first-world religion to third-world problems, the Dead Milkmen is a satirical punk rock/cowpunk band from the early 1980s. Ben Folds, a rock pianist, and his group, Ben Folds Five, have multiple songs including satirical elements, some of them being, Underground, Sports and Wine, and Rock Star. Dead Kennedys, an American punk band, often used satire in their songs, were only in it For the Money—Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention Blazing Saddles, a 1974 comedy movie directed by Mel Brooks, satirizing racism. Casino Royale, a 1967 surrealistic satire on the James Bond series and this Is Spinal Tap, a satire on heavy metal culture and rockumentaries. The Very Same Munchhausen, a 1979 satire of the late Soviet society, clueless American Beauty, a 1999 satire of life in the suburbs. Thank You for Smoking Team America, World Police is a 2004 film satirizing Hollywood action flicks as well as post-9/11 American foreign policy, wag the Dog The Rules of Attraction Best in Show I Heart Huckabees Starship Troopers Scary Movie Dr. South Park, Bigger, Longer & Uncut, a film satirizing censorship, network Otaku no Video, a 1993 anime satirizing the otaku subculture. Election Not Another Teen Movie, a satire of the teen film genre, britannia Hospital Fight Club, a dark satire on consumerism, cults, and extremism. American Psycho Tropic Thunder Simon, satirical commentary on the effects of media in pop culture. American History X satirizes race/racism in a contemporary setting and they Live Land of the Dead, a satire of post-9/11 America state and of the Bush administration
5.
Etruscan civilization
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The Etruscan civilization is the modern name given to a powerful and wealthy civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio. Culture that is identifiably Etruscan developed in Italy after about 800 BC, the latter gave way in the 7th century BC to a culture that was influenced by ancient Greece, Magna Graecia, and Phoenicia. The decline was gradual, but by 500 BC the political destiny of Italy had passed out of Etruscan hands, the last Etruscan cities were formally absorbed by Rome around 100 BC. Politics were based on the city, and probably the family unit. In their heyday, the Etruscan elite grew very rich through trade with the Celtic world to the north and the Greeks to the south, archaic Greece had a huge influence on their art and architecture, and Greek mythology was evidently very familiar to them. The study also excluded recent Anatolian connection, the ancient Romans referred to the Etruscans as the Tuscī or Etruscī. Their Roman name is the origin of the terms Tuscany, which refers to their heartland, and Etruria, which can refer to their wider region. In Attic Greek, the Etruscans were known as Tyrrhenians, from which the Romans derived the names Tyrrhēnī, Tyrrhēnia, the word may also be related to the Hittite Taruisa. The Etruscans called themselves Rasenna, which was syncopated to Rasna or Raśna, the origins of the Etruscans are mostly lost in prehistory, although Greek historians as early as the 5th century BC, repeatedly associated the Tyrrhenians with Pelasgians. Strabo as well as the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus make mention of the Tyrrhenians as pirates, pliny the Elder put the Etruscans in the context of the Rhaetian people to the north and wrote in his Natural History, Adjoining these the Noricans are the Raeti and Vindelici. All are divided into a number of states, the Raeti are believed to be people of Tuscan race driven out by the Gauls, their leader was named Raetus. Historians have no literature and no original Etruscan texts of religion or philosophy, therefore, much of what is known about this civilization is derived from grave goods, another source of genetic data on Etruscan origins is from four ancient breeds of cattle. Analyzing the mitochondrial DNA of these and seven other breeds of Italian cattle, the other Italian breeds were linked to northern Europe. Etruscan expansion was focused both to the north beyond the Apennine Mountains and into Campania, some small towns in the sixth century BC disappeared during this time, ostensibly consumed by greater, more powerful neighbours. However, it is certain that the structure of the Etruscan culture was similar to, albeit more aristocratic than. The mining and commerce of metal, especially copper and iron, led to an enrichment of the Etruscans and to the expansion of their influence in the Italian peninsula and the western Mediterranean Sea. Here, their interests collided with those of the Greeks, especially in the sixth century BC and this led the Etruscans to ally themselves with Carthage, whose interests also collided with the Greeks. Around 540 BC, the Battle of Alalia led to a new distribution of power in the western Mediterranean, from the first half of the 5th century BC, the new political situation meant the beginning of the Etruscan decline after losing their southern provinces
6.
Stoicism
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Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished throughout the Roman and Greek world until the 3rd century AD. Stoicism is predominantly a philosophy of ethics which is informed by its system of logic. It was founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, to live a good life, one had to understand the rules of the natural order since they taught that everything was rooted in nature. Later Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that, because virtue is sufficient for happiness, from its founding, Stoic doctrine was popular during the Roman Empire—and its adherents included the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It later experienced a decline after Christianity became the religion in the 4th century. Over the centuries, it has seen revivals, notably in the Renaissance, the Stoics provided a unified account of the world, consisting of formal logic, monistic physics and naturalistic ethics. Of these, they emphasized ethics as the focus of human knowledge. A primary aspect of Stoicism involves improving the individuals ethical and moral well-being and this viewpoint was later described as Classical Pantheism. Beginning at around 301 BC, Zeno taught philosophy at the Stoa Poikile, Zenos ideas developed from those of the Cynics, whose founding father, Antisthenes, had been a disciple of Socrates. Zenos most influential follower was Chrysippus, who was responsible for the molding of what is now called Stoicism, later Roman Stoics focused on promoting a life in harmony within the universe, over which one has no direct control. Scholars usually divide the history of Stoicism into three phases, Early Stoa, from the founding of the school by Zeno to Antipater, middle Stoa, including Panaetius and Posidonius. Late Stoa, including Musonius Rufus, Seneca, Epictetus, no complete work by any Stoic philosopher survives from the first two phases of Stoicism. Only Roman texts from the Late Stoa survive, diodorus Cronus, who was one of Zenos teachers, is considered the philosopher who first introduced and developed an approach to logic now known as propositional logic. This is an approach to logic based on statements or propositions, rather than terms, later, Chrysippus developed a system that became known as Stoic logic and included a deductive system, Stoic Syllogistic, which was considered a rival to Aristotles Syllogistic. New interest in Stoic logic came in the 20th century, when important developments in logic were based on propositional logic, susanne Bobzien wrote, The many close similarities between Chrysippus philosophical logic and that of Gottlob Frege are especially striking. The Stoics held that all being – though not all things – is material and they accepted the distinction between concrete bodies and abstract ones, but rejected Aristotles belief that purely incorporeal being exists. Thus, they accepted Anaxagoras idea that if an object is hot, but, unlike Aristotle, they extended the idea to cover all accidents
7.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
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