1.
Calahorra
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Calahorra La Rioja, Spain is a municipality in the comarca of Rioja Baja, near the border with Navarre on the right bank of the Ebro. During Ancient Roman times, Calahorra was a known as Calagurris Fibularia. The city is located on a hill at an altitude of 358 metres at the confluence of the Ebro and Cidacos rivers, Calahorra is the second-largest city in La Rioja in population and importance, after the capital, Logroño. It is well-connected to other cities, especially by highway and its daily bus services link it to such cities as Pamplona, Soria and San Sebastián. Its status as seat of a comarca and judicial district make it a city in administrative, commercial. Calahorra has been inhabited since the Paleolithic, and its stable population dates to the Iron Age, rome conquered the town in 187 BC and brought it to its highest point of importance as an administrative centre for surrounding regions. Calahorra supported Quintus Sertorius in his war against Pompey, whom the city resisted successfully since 76 BC and it was only taken four years later by Pompeys legate Lucius Afranius, after a lot of inhabitants had died from starvation and there had occurred cannibalism. Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar gave the city numerous distinctions, converted it into a municipality, and developed its city planning, economy and its archeological remains show that it had a circus, baths, an amphitheatre, and other services found in large cities. It minted money and served as an administration centre. Quintilian, well known for his descriptions of the culture of that time, was born in Calahorra, and it has Roman ruins in the grounds. Saints Emeterius and Celedonius, martyred in the city around 305 AD, are the saints of the city. The cathedral is dedicated to them, the Christian Roman poet Prudentius may have inhabited at some point in Calahorra, who pinpoints it on the territory of the Vascones in the 4th century. After the rule of the Moors in the 9th and 10th centuries the Christian king García Sánchez III of Navarre captured the city in 1045, monte Compatri, Italy Caussade, France Official Web Site Calahorra Web Site Calahorra Jewish family in Poland
2.
La Rioja (Spain)
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La Rioja is an autonomous community and a province in Spain, located in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. Other cities and towns in the province include Calahorra, Arnedo, Alfaro, Haro, Santo Domingo de la Calzada and it has an estimated population of 322,415 inhabitants. It covers part of the Ebro valley towards its north and the Iberian Range in the south, the community is a single province, so there is no County Council, and it is organized into 174 municipalities. It borders the Basque Country to the north, Navarre to the northeast, Aragón to the southeast, the area was once occupied by pre-Roman Berones, Pellendones and Basques. After partial recapture from the Muslims in the tenth century, the region became part of the Kingdom of Pamplona, later being incorporated into Castile after a century. The name Rioja is first attested in 1099, the region is well known for its wines under the brand Denominación de Origen Calificada Rioja. In Roman times the territory of La Rioja was inhabited by the tribes of the Berones, Autrigones and it was part of the province of Hispania Tarraconensis. In medieval times La Rioja was often a disputed territory, the Visigoths created the Duchy of Cantabria that probably included most of La Rioja, as a border march against the Vascones. The area was invaded by the Muslims at the beginning of the eighth century, after the Muslim invasion of 711, La Rioja fell into the Muslim domains of Al Andalus. Most of the territory was reconquered in 923 by Sancho I of Pamplona, acting for the Kingdom of Pamplona together with the Kingdom of León, the lower region around Arnedo came under control of his allies the Banu Qasi of Tudela. The territory to the east of the Leza River remained under Muslim control, later there was a dispute between the Castilian Count Fernán González and the kings of Pamplona-Navarra, involving great battles. It was decided in favour of the Navarrese after the imprisonment of the Counts family in Cirueña, La Rioja briefly formed the independent Kingdom of Viguera from 970 to about 1005, at which point it became a part of the Kingdom of Pamplona. Sancho Garcés moved the capital of the Kingdom of Pamplona to Nájera, creating the so-called kingdom of Nájera-Pamplona which was, due to its large size, the first Spanish Empire. After the independence of Castile in 1035, this new kingdom fiercely fought against Pamplona for the possession of Bureba, La Rioja, in 1076, after the murder of Sancho VI, Navarre was divided among Castile and Aragon. Castile obtained La Rioja, together with other Navarrese lands, the name La Rioja first appears in written records in the Miranda de Ebro charter of 1099. The territory was centred on the site of Logroño, the 12th-century church Iglesia de Santa Maria de Palacio recalls its origin as a chapel of the administrative palace. The region was awarded to Castile in a judgement by Henry II of England and its importance lay in part in the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, the Camino de Santiago, which crossed the River Ebro on the stone bridge, the Puente de Piedra. Up to the 19th century the territory remained divided between the provinces of Burgos and Soria, the region was taken by Napoleonic forces in the Peninsular War and remained solidly in French hands until 1814
3.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
4.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
5.
Rhetoric
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Rhetoric is the art of discourse, wherein a writer or speaker strives to inform, persuade or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of study and a productive civic practice. Its best known definition comes from Aristotle, who considers it a counterpart of both logic and politics, and calls it the faculty of observing in any case the available means of persuasion. The five canons of rhetoric, which trace the traditional tasks in designing a persuasive speech, were first codified in classical Rome, invention, arrangement, style, memory, along with grammar and logic, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From Ancient Greece to the late 19th century, it was a part of Western education. Scholars have debated the scope of rhetoric since ancient times, although some have limited rhetoric to the specific realm of political discourse, many modern scholars liberate it to encompass every aspect of culture. Contemporary studies of rhetoric address a diverse range of domains than was the case in ancient times. Many contemporary approaches treat rhetoric as human communication that includes purposeful, Public relations, lobbying, law, marketing, professional and technical writing, and advertising are modern professions that employ rhetorical practitioners. Because the ancient Greeks highly valued public political participation, rhetoric emerged as a tool to influence politics. Consequently, rhetoric remains associated with its political origins, however, even the original instructors of Western speech—the Sophists—disputed this limited view of rhetoric. According to the Sophists, such as Gorgias, a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic and this method suggested rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just politics. In his Encomium to Helen, Gorgias even applied rhetoric to fiction by seeking for his own pleasure to prove the blamelessness of the mythical Helen of Troy in starting the Trojan War. Looking to another key rhetorical theorist, Plato defined the scope of rhetoric according to his opinions of the art. He criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric as a means of deceit instead of discovering truth, in Gorgias, one of his Socratic Dialogues, Plato defines rhetoric as the persuasion of ignorant masses within the courts and assemblies. Rhetoric, in Platos opinion, is merely a form of flattery and functions similarly to cookery, thus, Plato considered any speech of lengthy prose aimed at flattery as within the scope of rhetoric. Aristotle both redeemed rhetoric from his teacher and narrowed its focus by defining three genres of rhetoric—deliberative, forensic or judicial, and epideictic, when one considers that rhetoric included torture, it is clear that rhetoric cannot be viewed only in academic terms. However, the enthymeme based upon logic was viewed as the basis of rhetoric, however, since the time of Aristotle, logic has changed. For example, Modal logic has undergone a major development that also modifies rhetoric, yet, Aristotle also outlined generic constraints that focused the rhetorical art squarely within the domain of public political practice
6.
Hispania
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Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula. Under the Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces, Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior, during the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two new provinces, Baetica and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed Tarraconensis. Subsequently, the part of Tarraconensis was split off, first as Hispania Nova. The name, Hispania, was used in the period of Visigothic rule. The modern placenames Spain and Hispaniola are both derived from Hispania, one theory holds it to be of Punic derivation, from the Phoenician language of colonizing Carthage. Specifically, it may derive from a Punic cognate of Hebrew אי-שפניא meaning Island of the Hyrax or island of the hare or island of the rabbit. Others derive the word from Phoenician span, in the sense of hidden, and make it indicate a hidden, that is, Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis. Occasionally Hispania was called Hesperia Ultima, the last western land in Greek, by Roman writers, another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for border or edge, thus meaning the farthest area or place. The use of Latin Hispania, Castilian España, Catalan Espanya and French Espaigne, a document dated 1292 mentions the names of foreigners from Medieval Spain as Gracien dEspaigne. You are, Oh Spain, holy and always happy mother of princes and peoples and you, by right, are now the queen of all provinces, from whom the lights are given not only the sunset, but also the East. Navarre followed soon after in 1512, and Portugal in 1580, during this time, the concept of Spain was still unchanged. The King of Portugal would protest energetically when during a public act King Fernando talked about the Crown of Spain and it was after the independence of Portugal in 1640 when the concept of Spain started to shift and be applied to all the Peninsula except Portugal. Even so, Portugal would still complain when the terms Crown of Spain or Monarchy of Spain were still used in the 18th century with the Treaty of Utrecht. The Iberian peninsula has long inhabited, first by early hominids such as Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis. In the Paleolithic period, the Neanderthals entered Iberia and eventually took refuge from the migrations of modern humans. In the 40th millennium BC, during the Upper Paleolithic and the last ice age and these were nomadic hunter-gatherers originating on the steppes of Central Asia. When the last Ice Age reached its maximum extent, during the 30th millennium BC, in the millennia that followed, the Neanderthals became extinct and local modern human cultures thrived, producing pre-historic art such as that found in LArbreda Cave and in the Côa Valley. In the Mesolithic period, beginning in the 10th millennium BC and this was an interstadial deglaciation that lessened the harsh conditions of the Ice Age
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
8.
Renaissance
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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
9.
Nero
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Nero was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, during his reign, the redoubtable general Corbulo conducted a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire. His general Suetonius Paulinus crushed a revolt in Britain, Nero annexed the Bosporan Kingdom to the empire and may have begun the First Jewish–Roman War. In 64 AD, most of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, Suetonius, writing a generation later, claims that many Romans believed Nero himself had started the fire, in order to clear land for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. In 68, the rebellion of Vindex in Gaul and later the acclamation of Galba in Hispania drove Nero from the throne, facing a false report of being denounced as a public enemy who was to be executed, he committed suicide on 9 June 68. His death ended the Julio-Claudian dynasty, sparking a period of civil wars known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Neros rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance and he is known for many executions, including that of his mother, and the probable murder by poison of his stepbrother Britannicus. Nero was rumored to have had captured Christians dipped in oil and this view is based on the writings of Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, the main surviving sources for Neros reign, but a few sources paint Nero in a more favourable light. Some sources, including some mentioned above, portray him as an emperor who was popular with the common Roman people, some modern historians question the reliability of ancient sources when reporting on Neros tyrannical acts. Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, Nero, was born on 15 December 37 in Antium and he was the only son of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger, sister of Emperor Caligula. Neros father, Gnaeus, was the son of Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, Gnaeus was thus the grandson of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and probably Aemilia Lepida on his fathers side, and the grandson of Mark Antony and Octavia Minor on his mothers side. Thus, Nero had as his paternal grandmother Antonia Major, through Octavia, Nero was the great-nephew of Caesar Augustus. Neros father had employed as a praetor and was a member of Caligulas staff when the latter travelled to the East. Neros father was described by Suetonius as a murderer and a cheat who was charged by Emperor Tiberius with treason, adultery, Tiberius died, allowing him to escape these charges. Neros father died of edema in 39 when Nero was two, Neros mother was Agrippina the Younger, a great-granddaughter of Caesar Augustus and his wife Scribonia through their daughter Julia the Elder and her husband Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Agrippinas father, Germanicus, was a grandson of Augustuss wife, Livia, on one side and Mark Antony, Germanicus mother Antonia Minor was a daughter of Octavia Minor and Mark Antony. Germanicus was also the son of Tiberius. Agrippina poisoned her second husband Passienus Crispus, so many ancient historians also accuse her of murdering her third husband, the emperor Claudius
10.
Seneca the Younger
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Seneca the Younger, fully Lucius Annaeus Seneca and also known simply as Seneca, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and—in one work—humorist of the Silver Age of Latin literature. As a tragedian, he is best-known for his Medea and Thyestes and he was a tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was forced to take his own life for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, however, some sources state that he may have been innocent. His father was Seneca the Elder, his brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus. Seneca was born in Cordoba in Hispania, and raised in Rome, griffin also infers from the ancient sources that Seneca was born in either 8,4, or 1 BC. She thinks he was born between 4 and 1 BC and was a resident in Rome by AD5, Seneca says that he was carried to Rome in the arms of his mothers stepsister. Griffin says that, allowing for rhetorical exaggeration, means it is fair to conclude that Seneca was in Rome as a small boy. Be that as it may, it is clear that he was in Rome at an early stage in his life. Caligula and Fabius were critics of his works, and Columella, Pliny, Tacitus, from AD54 to 62, Seneca acted as Neros advisor, together with the praetorian prefect Sextus Afranius Burrus. One byproduct of his influence was that Seneca was appointed consul in 56. Senecas influence was said to have especially strong in the first year. Tacitus and Dio suggest that Neros early rule, during which time he listened to Seneca, however, the ancient sources suggest, over time, Seneca and Burrus lost their influence over the emperor. In 59 they had agreed to Agrippinas murder, and afterward. This may have contributed as well to his own downfall, following Burrus death in 62, Seneca became the subject of criticism by what Tacitus describes as Neros more disreputable advisers. Charges included allegations of excessive wealth, the grandeur of his property, Seneca requested an audience with Nero in which he sought permission to retire from public duties, pleading age and infirmity. The two then parted on apparently warm terms, Seneca subsequently adopted a quiet lifestyle on his country estates, concentrating on his studies and seldom visiting Rome. In AD65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of the Pisonian conspiracy, although it is unlikely that Seneca conspired, Nero ordered him to kill himself. Seneca followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death, a generation after the Julio-Claudian emperors, Tacitus wrote an account of the suicide, which in view of his Republican sympathies is perhaps somewhat romanticized
11.
Cicero
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Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul, and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy family of the Roman equestrian order. According to Michael Grant, the influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature, Cicero introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary distinguishing himself as a translator and philosopher. Though he was an orator and successful lawyer, Cicero believed his political career was his most important achievement. During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars, following Julius Caesars death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. His severed hands and head were then, as a revenge of Mark Antony. Petrarchs rediscovery of Ciceros letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance in public affairs, humanism, according to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, the Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity. Cicero was born in 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town 100 kilometers southeast of Rome and his father was a well-to-do member of the equestrian order and possessed good connections in Rome. However, being a semi-invalid, he could not enter public life, although little is known about Ciceros mother, Helvia, it was common for the wives of important Roman citizens to be responsible for the management of the household. Ciceros brother Quintus wrote in a letter that she was a thrifty housewife, Ciceros cognomen, or personal surname, comes from the Latin for chickpea, cicer. Plutarch explains that the name was given to one of Ciceros ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose resembling a chickpea. However, it is likely that Ciceros ancestors prospered through the cultivation. Romans often chose down-to-earth personal surnames, the family names of Fabius, Lentulus, and Piso come from the Latin names of beans, lentils. Plutarch writes that Cicero was urged to change this name when he entered politics. During this period in Roman history, cultured meant being able to speak both Latin and Greek, Cicero used his knowledge of Greek to translate many of the theoretical concepts of Greek philosophy into Latin, thus translating Greek philosophical works for a larger audience. It was precisely his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite, according to Plutarch, Cicero was an extremely talented student, whose learning attracted attention from all over Rome, affording him the opportunity to study Roman law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Ciceros fellow students were Gaius Marius Minor, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the latter two became Ciceros friends for life, and Pomponius would become, in Ciceros own words, as a second brother, with both maintaining a lifelong correspondence. Cicero wanted to pursue a career in politics along the steps of the Cursus honorum
12.
Galba
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/ˈsɜːrviəs sʌlˈpɪʃəs ˈɡælbə/, was Roman Emperor for seven months from 68 to 69. Galba was the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, and made a bid for the throne during the rebellion of Julius Vindex and he was the first emperor of the Year of the Four Emperors and the last emperor born in the First Century BC. He was born as Servius Sulpicius Galba near Terracina, on the left as you go towards Fundi in the words of Suetonius, through his paternal grandfather, he was descended from Servius Sulpicius Galba. Galbas father attained the consulship, and although he was short, hunchbacked and his mother was Mummia Achaica, the granddaughter of Lutatius Catulus and great-granddaughter of Lucius Mummius Achaicus. His father married a wife, Livia Ocellina, a distant kinswoman of the empress Livia. She later adopted Galba, so he took her names, remaining Lucius Livius Ocella Sulpicius Galba until becoming emperor. His was a family, and he was a man of great wealth. In his early years he was regarded as a youth of remarkable abilities and his wife, Aemilia Lepida, however, was connected by the marriages of some of her relatives to some of the Julii-Claudii. They had two sons, probably Gaius and Servius, who died during their fathers life, the elder son was born circa 25 AD. Hardly anything is known about his life as he died young and he was engaged to his step-sister Antonia Postuma, but they never wed, which leads modern historians to believe that he died during this time. Their engagement is dated to 48, and that is believed to be his time of death. The date of birth of the younger son occurred later than 25 and this Galba outlived his older brother. He was a quaestor in 58, but he was never seen in politics after that and his time of death is generally believed to be around 60 AD. Galba Minor was never married and had no children, additionally, Suetoniuss description of Galba was that In sexual matters he was more inclined to males, and then none but the hard bodied and those past their prime. This seems to be the case in Roman history where a named individual male is stated to prefer adult males. He became Praetor in 20, and consul in 33, he earned a reputation in the provinces of Gaul, Germania, Africa and Hispania for his capability, strictness. On the death of Caligula, he refused the invitation of his friends to make a bid for the empire, for the first half of Neros reign he lived in retirement, until 61, when the emperor bestowed on him the province of Hispania Tarraconensis. In the spring of 68, Galba was informed of Neros intention to put him to death and he was at first inclined to follow the example of Vindex, but the defeat at Vesontio and suicide of the latter renewed Galbas hesitation
13.
Year of the Four Emperors
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The Year of the Four Emperors was a year in the history of the Roman Empire, AD69, in which four emperors ruled in succession, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. The suicide of the emperor Nero in 68 was followed by a period of civil war. The social, military and political upheavals of the period had Empire-wide repercussions, in 65, the Pisonian conspiracy attempted to restore the Republic, but failed. A number of executions followed, leaving Nero with few allies left in the Senate. Vindexs revolt in Gaul was unsuccessful, the legions stationed at the border to Germania marched to meet Vindex and confront him as a traitor. Led by Lucius Verginius Rufus, the Rhine army defeated Vindex in battle, Galba was at first declared a public enemy by the Senate. In June 68, the Praetorian Guard prefect, Nymphidius Sabinus, as part of a plot to become emperor himself, Nero was suddenly powerless and the Senate declared him an enemy of the state. He fled the city and committed suicide, Galba was recognized as emperor and welcomed into the city at the head of a single legion, VII Galbiana, later known as VII Gemina. This turn of events did not give the German legions the reward for loyalty that they had expected and their commander, Rufus, was immediately replaced by the new emperor. Aulus Vitellius was appointed governor of Germania Inferior, the loss of political confidence in Germanias loyalty also resulted in the dismissal of the Imperial Batavian Bodyguards and rebellion. Galba did not remain popular for long, on his march to Rome, he either destroyed or took enormous fines from towns that did not accept him immediately. In Rome, Galba cancelled all the reforms of Nero, including benefits for many important persons, like his predecessor, Galba had a fear of conspirators and executed many senators and equites without trial. The soldiers of the Praetorian Guard were not happy either, after his safe arrival in Rome, Galba refused to pay them the rewards that the prefect Nymphidius had promised them in the new emperors name. Moreover, at the beginning of the year of 69 on January 1. On the following day, the legions acclaimed their governor Vitellius as emperor, hearing the news of the loss of the Rhine legions, Galba panicked. He adopted a young senator, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Licinianus, as his successor, by doing this, he offended many, above all Marcus Salvius Otho, an influential and ambitious nobleman who desired the honor for himself. Otho bribed the Praetorian Guard, already unhappy with the emperor. When Galba heard about the coup détat, he went to the streets in an attempt to stabilize the situation and it proved a mistake, because he could not attract any supporters
14.
Pliny the Younger
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Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo, better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Plinys uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him, both Pliny the Elder and the Younger were witnesses to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, in which the former died. Pliny the Younger wrote hundreds of letters, of which 247 still survive and are of historical value. Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to such as the historian Tacitus. Pliny served as a magistrate under Trajan, and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the relationship between the imperial office and provincial governors. Pliny rose through a series of civil and military offices, the cursus honorum and he was a friend of the historian Tacitus and might have employed the biographer Suetonius on his staff. Pliny also came into contact with other men of the period, including the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates the Stoic. Pliny the Younger was born in Novum Comum around 61 AD, the son of Lucius Caecilius Cilo, born there, and his wife Plinia Marcella, a sister of Pliny the Elder. He was the grandson of Senator and landowner Gaius Caecilius, revered his uncle, Pliny the Elder, Cilo died at an early age, when Pliny was still young. As a result, the boy lived with his mother. His guardian and preceptor in charge of his education was Lucius Verginius Rufus, after being first tutored at home, Pliny went to Rome for further education. There he was taught rhetoric by Quintilian, a teacher and author. It was at time that Pliny became closer to his uncle Pliny the Elder. When Pliny the Younger was 17 or 18, his uncle Pliny the Elder died attempting to rescue victims of the Vesuvius eruption, in the same document the younger Pliny was adopted by his uncle. As a result, Pliny the Younger changed his name from Gaius Caecilius Cilo to Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, there is some evidence that Pliny had a sibling. The trustees are apparently named in the inscription, L. Caecilius Valens and P. Caecilius Secundus, sons of Lucius, the word contubernalis describing Lutulla is the military term meaning tent-mate, which can only mean that she was living with Lucius, not as his wife. The first man mentioned, L. Caecilius Valens, is probably the older son, Pliny the Younger confirms that he was a trustee for the largess of my ancestors. It seems unknown to Pliny the Elder, so Valens mother was not his sister Plinia
15.
Tacitus
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Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and an historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus, in AD14, to the years of the First Jewish–Roman War, There are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts, including a gap in the Annals that is four books long. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians, details about his personal life are scarce. What little is known comes from scattered hints throughout his work, the letters of his friend and admirer Pliny the Younger, and an inscription found at Mylasa in Caria. Tacitus was born in 56 or 57 to an equestrian family, one scholars suggestion of Sextus has gained no approval. Most of the aristocratic families failed to survive the proscriptions which took place at the end of the Republic. The claim that he was descended from a freedman is derived from a speech in his writings which asserts that many senators and knights were descended from freedmen, but this is generally disputed. His father may have been the Cornelius Tacitus who served as procurator of Belgica and Germania, Pliny the Elder mentions that Cornelius had a son who aged rapidly, which implies an early death. There is no mention of Tacitus suffering such a condition, the friendship between the younger Pliny and Tacitus leads some scholars to conclude that they were both the offspring of wealthy provincial families. The province of his birth remains unknown, though various conjectures suggest Gallia Belgica, Gallia Narbonensis and his marriage to the daughter of Narbonensian senator Gnaeus Julius Agricola implies that he came from Gallia Narbonensis. Tacitus dedication to Fabius Iustus in the Dialogus may indicate a connection with Spain, no evidence exists, however, that Plinys friends from northern Italy knew Tacitus, nor do Plinys letters hint that the two men had a common background. Pliny Book 9, Letter 23 reports that, when he was asked if he was Italian or provincial, he gave an unclear answer, since Pliny was from Italy, some infer that Tacitus was from the provinces, probably Gallia Narbonensis. His ancestry, his skill in oratory, and his depiction of barbarians who resisted Roman rule have led some to suggest that he was a Celt. This belief stems from the fact that the Celts who had occupied Gaul prior to the Roman invasion were famous for their skill in oratory, and had been subjugated by Rome. As a young man, Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome to prepare for a career in law and politics, like Pliny, in 77 or 78, he married Julia Agricola, daughter of the famous general Agricola. Little is known of their life, save that Tacitus loved hunting. He started his career under Vespasian, but entered political life as a quaestor in 81 or 82 under Titus
16.
Vespasian
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Vespasian was Roman emperor from AD69 to AD79. Vespasian founded the Flavian dynasty that ruled the Empire for twenty-seven years, Vespasian was from an equestrian family that rose into the senatorial rank under the Julio–Claudian emperors. While Vespasian besieged Jerusalem during the Jewish rebellion, emperor Nero committed suicide, after Galba and Otho perished in quick succession, Vitellius became the third emperor in April 69. The Roman legions of Roman Egypt and Judaea reacted by declaring Vespasian, their commander, emperor on 1 July 69. In his bid for power, Vespasian joined forces with Mucianus, the governor of Syria, and Primus. Primus and Mucianus led the Flavian forces against Vitellius, while Vespasian took control of Egypt, on 20 December 69, Vitellius was defeated, and the following day Vespasian was declared Emperor by the Senate. Little information survives about the government during Vespasians ten-year rule and he reformed the financial system at Rome after the campaign against Judaea ended successfully, and initiated several ambitious construction projects. He began the building of the Flavian Amphitheatre, better known today as the Roman Colosseum, in reaction to the events of 68–69, Vespasian forced through an improvement in army discipline. Through his general Agricola, Vespasian increased imperial expansion in Britain, after his death in 79, he was succeeded by his eldest son Titus, thus becoming the first Roman Emperor to be directly succeeded by his own natural son and establishing the Flavian dynasty. Vespasian was born in a village north-east of Rome called Falacrinae and his family was relatively undistinguished and lacking in pedigree. His paternal grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, became the first to himself, rising to the rank of centurion. Subsequently he became a debt collector, petros son, Titus Flavius Sabinus, worked as a customs official in the province of Asia and became a money-lender on a small scale among the Helvetii. He gained a reputation as a scrupulous and honest tax-farmer, Sabinus married up in status, to Vespasia Polla, whose father had risen to the rank of prefect of the camp and whose brother became a Senator. Sabinus and Vespasia had three children, the eldest of whom, a girl, died in infancy, the elder boy, Titus Flavius Sabinus entered public life and pursued the cursus honorum. He served in the army as a tribune in Thrace in 36. The following year he was elected quaestor and served in Crete, the younger boy, Vespasian, seemed far less likely to be successful, initially not wishing to pursue high public office. He followed in his brothers footsteps when driven to it by his mothers taunting, during this period he married Flavia Domitilla, the daughter of Flavius Liberalis from Ferentium and formerly the mistress of Statilius Capella, a Roman equestrian from Sabrata in Africa. They had two sons, Titus Flavius Vespasianus and Titus Flavius Domitianus, and a daughter, Domitilla and his wife Domitilla and his daughter Domitilla both died before Vespasian became Emperor in 69
17.
Roman consul
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A consul was the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic, and the consulship was considered the highest level of the cursus honorum. Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term, the consuls alternated in holding imperium each month, and a consuls imperium extended over Rome, Italy, and the provinces. Originally, consuls were called praetors, referring to their duties as the military commanders. By at least 300 BC the title of Consul was being used, in Greek, the title was originally rendered as στρατηγός ὕπατος, strategos hypatos, and later simply as ὕπατος. The consul was believed by the Romans to date back to the establishment of the Republic in 509 BC. These remained in place until the office was abolished in 367/366 BC, consuls had extensive powers in peacetime, and in wartime often held the highest military command. Additional religious duties included certain rites which, as a sign of their formal importance, consuls also read auguries, an essential step before leading armies into the field. Two consuls were elected each year, serving together, each with power over the others actions. It is thought that only patricians were eligible for the consulship. Consuls were elected by the Comitia Centuriata, which had a bias in its voting structure which only increased over the years from its foundation. If a consul died during his term or was removed from office, a consul elected to start the year - called a consul ordinarius - held more prestige than a suffect consul, partly because the year would be named for ordinary consuls. The first plebeian consul, Lucius Sextius, was elected the following year and it is possible that only the chronology has been distorted, but it seems that one of the first consuls, Lucius Junius Brutus, came from a plebeian family. Another possible explanation is that during the 5th century social struggles, during times of war, the primary qualification for consul was military skill and reputation, but at all times the selection was politically charged. With the passage of time, the became the normal endpoint of the cursus honorum. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla regulated the cursus by law, the age of election to consul became. Beginning in the late Republic, after finishing a year, a former consul would usually serve a lucrative term as a proconsul. The most commonly chosen province for the proconsulship was Cisalpine Gaul, throughout the early years of the Principate although the consuls were still formally elected by the Comitia Centuriata, they were in fact nominated by the princeps. It was a post that would be occupied by a man halfway through his career, in his early thirties for a patrician, emperors frequently appointed themselves, or their protégés or relatives, consuls, even without regard to the age requirements
18.
Domitian
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Domitian was the Emperor of Rome from 81 to 96. He was the brother of Titus and son of Vespasian. During his reign, his authoritarian rule put him at odds with the senate. After the death of his brother, Domitian was declared emperor by the Praetorian Guard and his 15-year reign was the longest since that of Tiberius. As emperor, Domitian strengthened the economy by revaluing the Roman coinage, expanded the defenses of the empire. Significant wars were fought in Britain, where his general Agricola attempted to conquer Caledonia, and in Dacia, Domitians government exhibited totalitarian characteristics, he saw himself as the new Augustus, an enlightened despot destined to guide the Roman Empire into a new era of brilliance. Religious, military, and cultural propaganda fostered a cult of personality, as a consequence, Domitian was popular with the people and army, but considered a tyrant by members of the Roman Senate. Domitians reign came to an end in 96 when he was assassinated by court officials and he was succeeded the same day by his advisor Nerva. Modern revisionists instead have characterized Domitian as a ruthless but efficient autocrat whose cultural, economic, Domitian was born in Rome on 24 October 51, the youngest son of Titus Flavius Vespasianus—commonly known as Vespasian—and Flavia Domitilla Major. He had a sister, Domitilla the Younger, and brother. One such family, the Flavians, or gens Flavia, rose from obscurity to prominence in just four generations, acquiring wealth. Domitians great-grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, had served as a centurion under Pompey during Caesars civil war and his military career ended in disgrace when he fled the battlefield at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC. Sabinus himself amassed further wealth and possible equestrian status through his services as tax collector in Asia, by marrying Vespasia Polla he allied the Flavian family to the more prestigious gens Vespasia, ensuring the elevation of his sons Titus Flavius Sabinus II and Vespasian to senatorial rank. The political career of Vespasian included the offices of quaestor, aedile, and praetor, and culminated with a consulship in 51, as a military commander, Vespasian gained early renown by participating in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43. Nevertheless, ancient sources allege poverty for the Flavian family at the time of Domitians upbringing, even claiming Vespasian had fallen into disrepute under the emperors Caligula, by all appearances, the Flavians enjoyed high imperial favour throughout the 40s and 60s. While Titus received an education in the company of Britannicus, Vespasian pursued a successful political. The same year the Jews of the Judaea province revolted against the Roman Empire in what is now known as the First Jewish-Roman War. Vespasian was assigned to lead the Roman army against the insurgents, of the three Flavian emperors, Domitian would rule the longest, despite the fact that his youth and early career were largely spent in the shadow of his older brother
19.
Titus
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Titus was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, prior to becoming Emperor, Titus gained renown as a military commander, serving under his father in Judea during the First Jewish–Roman War. The campaign came to a halt with the death of emperor Nero in 68. When Vespasian was declared Emperor on 1 July 69, Titus was left in charge of ending the Jewish rebellion, in 70, he besieged and captured Jerusalem, and destroyed the city and the Second Temple. For this achievement Titus was awarded a triumph, the Arch of Titus commemorates his victory to this day. Under the rule of his father, Titus gained notoriety in Rome serving as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, despite concerns over his character, Titus ruled to great acclaim following the death of Vespasian in 79, and was considered a good emperor by Suetonius and other contemporary historians. As emperor, he is best known for completing the Colosseum, after barely two years in office, Titus died of a fever on 13 September 81. He was deified by the Roman Senate and succeeded by his younger brother Domitian, Titus was born in Rome, probably on 30 December 39 AD, as the eldest son of Titus Flavius Vespasianus—commonly known as Vespasian—and Domitilla the Elder. He had one sister, Domitilla the Younger, and one younger brother, Titus Flavius Domitianus. One such family was the gens Flavia, which rose from obscurity to prominence in just four generations, acquiring wealth. Tituss great-grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, had served as a centurion under Pompey during Caesars civil war and his military career ended in disgrace when he fled the battlefield at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC. Nevertheless, Petro managed to improve his status by marrying the extremely wealthy Tertulla, whose fortune guaranteed the upwards mobility of Petros son Titus Flavius Sabinus I, Sabinus himself amassed further wealth and possible equestrian status through his services as tax collector in Asia and banker in Helvetia. By marrying Vespasia Polla he allied himself to the prestigious patrician gens Vespasia, ensuring the elevation of his sons Titus Flavius Sabinus II. The political career of Vespasian included the offices of quaestor, aedile and praetor, and culminated with a consulship in 51, as a military commander, he gained early renown by participating in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43. The story was told that Titus was reclining next to Britannicus, the night he was murdered. Further details on his education are scarce, but it seems he showed promise in the military arts and was a skilled poet. From c.57 to 59 he was a tribune in Germania. He also served in Britannia, perhaps arriving c.60 with reinforcements needed after the revolt of Boudica, in c.63 he returned to Rome and married Arrecina Tertulla, daughter of a former Prefect of the Praetorian Guard
20.
Institutio Oratoria
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Institutio Oratoria is a twelve-volume textbook on the theory and practice of rhetoric by Roman rhetorician Quintilian. It was published around year 95 CE, the work deals also with the foundational education and development of the orator himself. Quintilian wrote his book during the last years of the reign of Emperor Domitian, in the tradition of several Roman emperors, such as Nero and Caligula, Domitian’s regime grew harsher as time went on. “ active secret police preyed on the Roman population, and even senators were encouraged in ways to inform on each other. Under Domitian, even the slightest suspicion of disrespect for the emperor became a capital crime”, social and political corruption were rife. In a move of utmost irony, the debauched Domitian appointed himself “censor perpetuus, against this backdrop, it was very difficult to find orators in the tradition of Cicero, part of whose fame as an orator stems from his public denunciations of enemies of the state. Such positions were too dangerous to take during the reign of the emperors since Augustus. Therefore, the role of the orator had changed since Ciceros day, Now, they were more concerned with pleading cases than anything else. Into this time, Quintilian attempted to interject some of the idealism of an earlier time, “Political oratory was dead, and everyone in Rome knew it was dead, but Quintilian deliberately chooses the oratory of a past generation as his educational ideal”. In the first two books, Quintilian focuses on the education of the would-be orator, including various subjects he should be skilled in, such as reading. “He offers us indeed not so much a theory as a curriculum, Quintilian sees these formative years as the most critical to the education of an orator, “The infancy of the mind is as important as the infancy of the body and needs as much attention”. The role of the nurse is greatly emphasized as “it is she that the boy will hear first. Parents play an important role, their education being a determining factor in the orator’s progress. Thirdly, the paedagogus, “must be well educated and ready at all times to correct errors in grammar”, finally, Quintilian stresses that the orator should be educated by “the most accomplished teacher”. This ideal teacher is described in detail in, in Book II, Quintilian defines rhetoric as an art, while classifying the three types of arts, theoretical, practical, and productive. He concludes that rhetoric partakes of all three categories, but associates it most strongly with the practical, rhetoric is also divided into three categories, art, artist, and work. Quintilian then moves into an exploration of nature and virtue, following it with a comparison of oratory. It should also be noted that Quintilian uses these two terms, rhetoric and oratory, interchangeably, Books III-IX explore and develop the various types of oratory, focusing on the structure and methods of persuasion
21.
Book frontispiece
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A frontispiece in books generally refers to a decorative or informative illustration facing a books title page, being the verso opposite the recto title page. While some books depict thematic elements, other books feature the portrait as the frontispiece. In medieval illuminated manuscripts, a miniature showing the book or text being presented was often used as a frontispiece. The word comes from the French frontispice, or the late Latin frontispicium, from the Latin frons, in English, it was originally used as an architectural term, referring to the decorative facade of a building. By then, the English spelling had also morphed, by way of folk etymology, book design Prints & People, A Social History of Printed Pictures, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on book frontispieces
22.
Augustus
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Augustus was the founder of the Roman Principate and considered the first Roman emperor, controlling the Roman Empire from 27 BC until his death in AD14. He was born Gaius Octavius into an old and wealthy equestrian branch of the plebeian gens Octavia and his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, and Octavius was named in Caesars will as his adopted son and heir, then known as Octavianus. He, Mark Antony, and Marcus Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar, following their victory at the Battle of Philippi, the Triumvirate divided the Roman Republic among themselves and ruled as military dictators. The Triumvate was eventually torn apart by the ambitions of its members. Lepidus was driven into exile and stripped of his position, in reality, however, he retained his autocratic power over the Republic as a military dictator. By law, Augustus held a collection of powers granted to him for life by the Senate, including supreme military command, and it took several years for Augustus to develop the framework within which a formally republican state could be led under his sole rule. He rejected monarchical titles, and instead called himself Princeps Civitatis, the resulting constitutional framework became known as the Principate, the first phase of the Roman Empire. The reign of Augustus initiated an era of peace known as the Pax Romana. Augustus dramatically enlarged the Empire, annexing Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia, expanding possessions in Africa, expanding into Germania, beyond the frontiers, he secured the Empire with a buffer region of client states and made peace with the Parthian Empire through diplomacy. Augustus died in AD14 at the age of 75 and he probably died from natural causes, although there were unconfirmed rumors that his wife Livia poisoned him. He was succeeded as Emperor by his adopted son Tiberius, Augustus was known by many names throughout his life, At birth, he was named Gaius Octavius after his biological father. Historians typically refer to him simply as Octavius between his birth in 63 until his adoption by Julius Caesar in 44 BC, upon his adoption, he took Caesars name and became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus in accordance with Roman adoption naming standards. He quickly dropped Octavianus from his name, and his contemporaries referred to him as Caesar during this period, historians. In 27 BC, following his defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra and it is the events of 27 BC from which he obtained his traditional name of Augustus, which historians use in reference to him from 27 BC until his death in AD14. While his paternal family was from the town of Velletri, approximately 40 kilometres from Rome and he was born at Ox Head, a small property on the Palatine Hill, very close to the Roman Forum. He was given the name Gaius Octavius Thurinus, his cognomen possibly commemorating his fathers victory at Thurii over a band of slaves. Due to the nature of Rome at the time, Octavius was taken to his fathers home village at Velletri to be raised. Octavius only mentions his fathers equestrian family briefly in his memoirs and his paternal great-grandfather Gaius Octavius was a military tribune in Sicily during the Second Punic War
23.
Cato the Elder
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He was the first to write history in Latin. He came of an ancient Plebeian family who were noted for their military service, like his forefathers, Cato was devoted to agriculture when not serving in the army. As praetor, he expelled usurers from Sardinia, as censor, he tried to preserve Romes ancestral customs and combat degenerate Hellenistic influences. His epithet Elder distinguishes him from his equally famous great-grandson Cato the Younger, Cato the Elder was born in Tusculum, a municipal town of Latium, like some generations of his ancestors. His father had earned a reputation as a soldier. However, the Tusculan Porcii had never obtained the privileges of the Roman magistracy, early in life, he so far exceeded the previous deeds of his predecessors that he is frequently spoken of not only as the leader, but as the founder of the Porcia Gens. Priscus, like Major, may have merely a epithet used to distinguish him from the later Cato of Utica. There is no information as to when he first received the title of Cato. In order to determine the date of Catos birth, we consider the records as to his age at the time of his death, other authors exaggerate the age of Cato. According to Valerius Maximus he survived his 86th year, according to Livy, the exaggerated age, however, is inconsistent with a statement recorded by Plutarch on the asserted authority of Cato himself. Cato is represented to have said that he served his first campaign in his 17th year, when Cato was very young, after his fathers death, he inherited a small property in the Sabine territory, at a distance from his native town. There, he spent most of his childhood hardening his body by exercise, overseeing and sharing the operations of the farm, learning business and the rural economy. Near this land was a small hut abandoned after the triumphs of its owner Manius Curius Dentatus, whose military feats, Cato was inspired to imitate that character, hoping to match the glory of Dentatus. Soon, an opportunity came for a campaign in 217 BC. Experts express some disagreement about Catos early military life, in 214 BC, he served at Capua, and the historian Wilhelm Drumann imagines that already, at the age of 20, he was a military tribune. Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus had the command in Campania, during the year of his fourth consulship, while Fabius communicated the valued results of military experience, he chose not to inculcate Cato with his personal and political values and preferences. At the siege of Tarentum,209 BC, Cato was again at the side of Fabius, two years later, Cato was one of the select group who went with the consul Claudius Nero on his northern march from Lucania to check the progress of Hasdrubal Barca. It is recorded that the services of Cato contributed to the victory of Sena on the Metaurus
24.
Isocrates
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Isocrates, an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. Among the most influential Greek rhetoricians of his time, Isocrates made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching, Greek rhetoric is commonly traced to Corax of Syracuse, who first formulated a set of rhetorical rules in the fifth century BC. His pupil Tisias was influential in the development of the rhetoric of the courtroom, within two generations, rhetoric had become an important art, its growth driven by social and political changes such as democracy and courts of law. Isocrates was born to a family in Athens and received a first-rate education. He was greatly influenced by his sophist teachers, Prodicus and Gorgias, after the Peloponnesian War, his family lost its wealth, and Isocrates was forced to earn a living. His professional career is said to have begun with logography, he was a hired courtroom speechwriter, Athenian citizens did not hire lawyers, legal procedure required self-representation. Instead, they would hire people like Isocrates to write speeches for them, Isocrates had a great talent for this since he lacked confidence in public speaking. Around 392 BC he set up his own school of rhetoric, and proved to be not only an influential teacher and his fees were unusually high, and he accepted no more than nine pupils at a time. Many of them went on to be philosophers, legislators and historians, as a consequence, he amassed a considerable fortune. According to Pliny the Elder he could sell a single oration for twenty talents, according to George Norlin, Isocrates defined rhetoric as outward feeling and inward thought of not merely expression, but reason, feeling, and imagination. Like most who studied rhetoric before and after him, Isocrates believed it was used to persuade ourselves and others, Isocrates described rhetoric as that endowment of our human nature which raises us above mere animality and enables us to live the civilized life. Isocrates unambiguously defined his approach in the treatise Against the Sophists and this polemic was written to explain and advertise the reasoning and educational principles behind his new school. Also, while Isocrates is viewed by many as being a rhetor and practicing rhetoric, against the Sophists is Isocrates first published work where he gives an account of philosophia. His principal method is to contrast his ways of teaching with Sophistry, while Isocrates does not go against the Sophist method of teaching as a whole, he emphasizes his disagreement with bad Sophistry practices. Isocrates program of rhetorical education stressed the ability to use language to address practical problems and he emphasized that students needed three things to learn, a natural aptitude which was inborn, knowledge training granted by teachers and textbooks, and applied practices designed by educators. He also stressed civic education, training students to serve the state, students would practice composing and delivering speeches on various subjects. He considered natural ability and practice to be more important than rules or principles of rhetoric, rather than delineating static rules, Isocrates stressed fitness for the occasion, or kairos. His school lasted for fifty years, in many ways establishing the core of liberal arts education as we know it today, including oratory, composition, history, citizenship, culture
25.
Plato
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Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He is widely considered the most pivotal figure in the development of philosophy, unlike nearly all of his philosophical contemporaries, Platos entire work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle, Plato laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead once noted, the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. In addition to being a figure for Western science, philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche, amongst other scholars, called Christianity, Platonism for the people, Plato was the innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy, which originate with him. He was not the first thinker or writer to whom the word “philosopher” should be applied, few other authors in the history of Western philosophy approximate him in depth and range, perhaps only Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant would be generally agreed to be of the same rank. Due to a lack of surviving accounts, little is known about Platos early life, the philosopher came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Ancient sources describe him as a bright though modest boy who excelled in his studies, the exact time and place of Platos birth are unknown, but it is certain that he belonged to an aristocratic and influential family. Based on ancient sources, most modern scholars believe that he was born in Athens or Aegina between 429 and 423 BCE. According to a tradition, reported by Diogenes Laertius, Ariston traced his descent from the king of Athens, Codrus. Platos mother was Perictione, whose family boasted of a relationship with the famous Athenian lawmaker, besides Plato himself, Ariston and Perictione had three other children, these were two sons, Adeimantus and Glaucon, and a daughter Potone, the mother of Speusippus. The brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon are mentioned in the Republic as sons of Ariston, and presumably brothers of Plato, but in a scenario in the Memorabilia, Xenophon confused the issue by presenting a Glaucon much younger than Plato. Then, at twenty-eight, Hermodorus says, went to Euclides in Megara, as Debra Nails argues, The text itself gives no reason to infer that Plato left immediately for Megara and implies the very opposite. Thus, Nails dates Platos birth to 424/423, another legend related that, when Plato was an infant, bees settled on his lips while he was sleeping, an augury of the sweetness of style in which he would discourse about philosophy. Ariston appears to have died in Platos childhood, although the dating of his death is difficult. Perictione then married Pyrilampes, her mothers brother, who had served many times as an ambassador to the Persian court and was a friend of Pericles, Pyrilampes had a son from a previous marriage, Demus, who was famous for his beauty. Perictione gave birth to Pyrilampes second son, Antiphon, the half-brother of Plato and these and other references suggest a considerable amount of family pride and enable us to reconstruct Platos family tree
26.
Phaedrus (dialogue)
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The Phaedrus, written by Plato, is a dialogue between Platos protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues. The Phaedrus was presumably composed around 370 BC, about the time as Platos Republic. Socrates runs into Phaedrus on the outskirts of Athens, Phaedrus has just come from the home of Epicrates of Athens, where Lysias, son of Cephalus, has given a speech on love. Socrates, stating that he is sick with passion for hearing speeches and they sit by a stream under a plane tree and a chaste tree, and the rest of the dialogue consists of oration and discussion. The dialogue, somewhat unusually, does not set itself as a re-telling of the days events. This is in contrast to such dialogues as the Symposium, in which Plato sets up multiple layers between the events and our hearing of it, explicitly giving us an incomplete, fifth-hand account. Socrates Phaedrus Lysias Lysias was one of the three sons of Cephalus, the patriarch whose home is the setting for Platos Republic, Lysias was perhaps the most famous logographos in Athens during the time of Plato. Lysias was a rhetorician and a sophist whose best-known extant work is a defense speech, the speech is a masterpiece in which a man who murdered his wifes lover claims that the laws of Athens required him to do it. The outcome of this speech is unknown, the dialogue consists of a series of three speeches on the topic of love that serves as the subject to construct a discussion on the proper use of rhetoric. They encompass discussions of the soul, madness, divine inspiration, as they walk out into the countryside, Socrates tries to convince Phaedrus to repeat the speech of Lysias which he has just heard. Phaedrus makes several excuses, but Socrates suspects strongly that Phaedrus has a copy of the speech with him, Phaedrus gives in and agrees to perform Lysias speech. Phaedrus and Socrates walk through a stream and find a seat in the shade and you will not be giving your favor to someone who is more sick than sound in the head and is not thinking straight, overcome by love. He explains that it is best to give your favor to one who can best return it and he concludes by stating that he thinks the speech is long enough, and the listener is welcome to ask any questions if something has been left out. Socrates, attempting to flatter Phaedrus, responds that he is in ecstasy, Phaedrus picks up on Socrates subtle sarcasm and asks Socrates not to joke. Socrates retorts that he is still in awe, and claims to be able to make a better speech than Lysias on the same subject. Socrates then proceeds to give Phaedrus credit for leading him out of his native land, when Phaedrus begs to hear it however, Socrates refuses to give the speech. Phaedrus warns him that he is younger and stronger, and Socrates should take his meaning, finally, after Phaedrus swears on the plane tree that he will never recite another speech for Socrates if Socrates refuses, Socrates, covering his head, consents. Socrates, rather than simply listing reasons as Lysias had done, begins by explaining that all men desire beauty, some are in love
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Martial
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In these short, witty poems he cheerfully satirises city life and the scandalous activities of his acquaintances, and romanticises his provincial upbringing. He wrote a total of 1,561, of which 1,235 are in elegiac couplets, Martial has been called the greatest Latin epigrammatist, and is considered the creator of the modern epigram. Knowledge of his origins and early life are derived almost entirely from his works, which can be more or less dated according to the well-known events to which they refer. In Book X of his Epigrams, composed between 95 and 98, he mentions celebrating his birthday, hence he was born during March 38,39,40 or 41 AD. His place of birth was Augusta Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis and his parents, Fronto and Flaccilla, appear to have died in his youth. Martial professes to be of the school of Catullus, Pedo, the epigram bears to this day the form impressed upon it by his unrivalled skill in wordsmithing. The success of his countrymen may have been what motivated Martial to move to Rome, from Hispania, once he had completed his education. This move occurred in AD64, in which Seneca the Younger and Lucan may have served as his first patrons, not much is known of the details of his life for the first twenty years or so after he came to Rome. He published some poems of which he thought very little in his later years. Martial had neither youthful passion nor youthful enthusiasm to precociously mold him a poet and he made many influential friends and patrons and secured the favor of both Titus and Domitian. From them he obtained various privileges, among others the semestris tribunatus, the earliest of his extant works, known as Liber spectaculorum, was first published at the opening of the Colosseum in the reign of Titus. It relates to the performances given by him, but the book as it now stands was presented to the world in or about the first year of Domitian, i. e. about the year 81. The two books, numbered by editors xiii. and xiv. and known by the names of Xenia, in 86 he bore for the world the first two of the twelve books on which his pendulous and sterling reputation rests. From that time till his return to Hispania in 98 he published a volume almost every year. The first nine books and the first edition of Book X. appeared in the reign of Domitian, Book XI. appeared at the end of 96, shortly after the accession of Nerva. A revised edition of book X. that which we now possess extant, appeared in 98, the last book was written after three years absence in Hispania, shortly before his lamentable death, which happened about the year 102 or 103. These twelve books bring Martials ordinary mode of life between the age of forty-five and sixty very fully before us for leisurely consideration of a Sunday afternoon and his regular home for thirty-five years was the bustle of metropolitan Rome. He lived at first up three flights of stairs, and his garret overlooked the laurels in front of the portico of Agrippa
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Augustine of Hippo
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Augustine of Hippo was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. He was the bishop of Hippo Regius, located in Numidia, Augustine is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions, according to his contemporary, Jerome, Augustine established anew the ancient Faith. In his early years, he was influenced by Manichaeism. After his baptism and conversion to Christianity in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing that the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin, when the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine developed the concept of the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview, the segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople closely identified with Augustines On the Trinity. Augustine is recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Christian Church, and he is also the patron of the Augustinians. His memorial is celebrated on 28 August, the day of his death, Augustine is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, the alleviation of sore eyes, and a number of cities and dioceses. Many Protestants, especially Calvinists and Lutherans, consider him to be one of the fathers of the Protestant Reformation due to his teachings on salvation. Lutherans, and Martin Luther in particular, have held Augustine in preeminence, Luther himself was a member of the Order of the Augustinian Eremites. In the East, some of his teachings are disputed and have in the 20th century in particular come under attack by such theologians as John Romanides, but other theologians and figures of the Eastern Orthodox Church have shown significant appropriation of his writings, chiefly Georges Florovsky. The most controversial doctrine surrounding his name is the filioque, which has been rejected by the Orthodox Church, other disputed teachings include his views on original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination. Nevertheless, though considered to be mistaken on some points, he is considered a saint. In the Orthodox Church his feast day is celebrated on 28 August and he was an early Christian theologian and philosopher whose writings influenced the development of Western Christianity and Western philosophy. Augustine was the bishop of Hippo Regius, located in Numidia and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers in Western Christianity for his writings in the Patristic Era. Among his most important works are The City of God and Confessions, Augustine was born in the year 354 AD in the municipium of Thagaste in Roman Africa. His mother, Monica or Monnica, was a devout Christian, in his writings, Augustine leaves some information as to the consciousness of his African heritage
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Jerome
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Jerome was a priest, confessor, theologian and historian. He was the son of Eusebius, born at Stridon, a village near Emona on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia and he is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin, and his commentaries on the Gospels. His list of writings is extensive, the protégé of Pope Damasus I, who died in December of 384, Jerome was known for his teachings on Christian moral life, especially to those living in cosmopolitan centers such as Rome. In many cases, he focused his attention to the lives of women and this focus stemmed from his close patron relationships with several prominent female ascetics who were members of affluent senatorial families. He is recognised as a Saint and Doctor of the Church by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church, and his feast day is 30 September. Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born at Stridon around 347 A. D and he was of Illyrian ancestry and his native tongue was the Illyrian dialect. He was not baptized until about 360–366 A. D. when he had gone to Rome with his friend Bonosus to pursue rhetorical and philosophical studies and he studied under the grammarian Aelius Donatus. There Jerome learned Latin and at least some Greek, though not the familiarity with Greek literature he would later claim to have acquired as a schoolboy. As a student in Rome, he engaged in the superficial escapades and wanton behaviour of students there, to appease his conscience, he would visit on Sundays the sepulchres of the martyrs and the Apostles in the catacombs. Here and there the light, not entering in through windows, but again, as soon as you found yourself cautiously moving forward, the black night closed around and there came to my mind the line of Vergil, Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent. Jerome used a quote from Virgil—On all sides round horror spread wide, although initially skeptical of Christianity, he was eventually converted. Next came a stay of at least several months, or possibly years, with Rufinus at Aquileia, some of these accompanied him when he set out about 373 on a journey through Thrace and Asia Minor into northern Syria. At Antioch, where he stayed the longest, two of his companions died and he himself was seriously ill more than once, during one of these illnesses, he had a vision that led him to lay aside his secular studies and devote himself to God. Seized with a desire for a life of penance, he went for a time to the desert of Chalcis, to the southeast of Antioch, known as the Syrian Thebaid. During this period, he seems to have time for studying and writing. He made his first attempt to learn Hebrew under the guidance of a converted Jew, Jerome translated parts of this Hebrew Gospel into Greek. Returning to Antioch in 378 or 379, he was ordained by Bishop Paulinus, apparently unwillingly, soon afterward, he went to Constantinople to pursue a study of Scripture under Gregory Nazianzen. He seems to have spent two years there, then left, and the three he was in Rome again, as secretary to Pope Damasus I and the leading Roman Christians
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Vulgate
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The Vulgate is a late fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible that became, during the 16th century, the Catholic Churchs officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible. The translation was largely the work of St. Jerome, who, in 382 AD, was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina collection of biblical texts in Latin then in use by the Church. Once published, it was adopted and eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina and, by the 13th century, was known as the versio vulgata or, more simply. The Catholic Church affirmed it as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent, the Vulgate has a compound text that is not entirely the work of Jerome. Its components include, Jeromes independent translation from the Hebrew, the books of the Hebrew Bible, usually not including his translation of the Psalms. Translation from the Greek of Theodotion by Jerome, The three additions to the Book of Daniel, Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, and The Idol Bel and the Dragon. The Song of the Three Children was retained within the narrative of Daniel, translation from the Septuagint by Jerome, the Rest of Esther. Jerome gathered all these additions together at the end of the Book of Esther, translation from the Hexaplar Septuagint by Jerome, his Gallican version of the Book of Psalms. Jeromes Hexaplaric revisions of other books of Old Testament continued to circulate in Italy for several centuries, free translation by Jerome from a secondary Aramaic version, Tobias and Judith. Revision by Jerome of the Old Latin, corrected with reference to the oldest Greek manuscripts available, Old Latin, more or less revised by a person or persons unknown, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah,3 Esdras, Acts, Epistles, and the Apocalypse. Old Latin, wholly unrevised, Epistle to the Laodiceans, Prayer of Manasses,4 Esdras, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible, how much of the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge today, but little of his work survived in the Vulgate text. Jerome first embarked on a revision of the Psalms, translated from the revised Septuagint Greek column of the Hexapla and he also appears to have undertaken further new translations into Latin from the Hexaplar Septuagint column for other books. But from 390 to 405, Jerome translated anew from the Hebrew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further version of the Psalms. This new translation of the Psalms was labelled by him as iuxta Hebraeos, the Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint. Moreover, Augustine in that passage demonstrates his own preference for the Greek thus eliminating any possibility that Saint Jerome translated the OT from Greek. In these letters, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical, Jeromes views did not, however, prevail, and all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate include some or all of these books. Their style is markedly distinguishable from Jeromes
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Renaissance humanism
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Renaissance humanism is the study of classical antiquity, at first in Italy and then spreading across Western Europe in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The term Renaissance humanism is contemporary to that period — Renaissance, Renaissance humanism was a response to the utilitarian approach and what came to be depicted as the narrow pedantry associated with medieval scholasticism. This was to be accomplished through the study of the studia humanitatis, today known as the humanities, grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy. Humanism was a cultural mode and not the program of a small elite, a program to revive the cultural legacy, literary legacy. There were important centres of humanism in Florence, Naples, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Mantua, Ferrara, some of the first humanists were great collectors of antique manuscripts, including Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Coluccio Salutati, and Poggio Bracciolini. Of the four, Petrarch was dubbed the Father of Humanism because of his devotion to Greek, some of the highest officials of the Catholic Church were humanists with the resources to amass important libraries. Such was Cardinal Basilios Bessarion, a convert to the Catholic Church from Greek Orthodoxy, who was considered for the papacy, and was one of the most learned scholars of his time. There were several 15th-century and early 16th-century humanist Popes one of whom, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, was a prolific author and these subjects came to be known as the humanities, and the movement which they inspired is shown as humanism. They included Gemistus Pletho, George of Trebizond, Theodorus Gaza, budé was a royal absolutist who was active in civic life, serving as a diplomat for François I and helping to found the Collège des Lecteurs Royaux. Many humanists were churchmen, most notably Pope Pius II, Sixtus IV, and Leo X, humanity—with all its distinct capabilities, talents, worries, problems, possibilities—was the center of interest. It has been said that medieval thinkers philosophised on their knees, inevitably, the rediscovery of classical philosophy and science would eventually challenge traditional religious beliefs. Lorenzo Valla, however, puts a defense of epicureanism in the mouth of one of the interlocutors of one of his dialogues. And if it is names that bother us, no one deserves the name of Epicurean than the revered founder and head of the Christian philosophy Christ. Completely mistaken, therefore, are those who talk in their foolish fashion about Christs having been sad and gloomy in character, on the contrary, he alone shows the most enjoyable life of all and the one most full of true pleasure. This passage exemplifies the way in which the humanists saw pagan classical works, such as the philosophy of Epicurus, Renaissance Neo-Platonists such as Marsilio Ficino attempted to reconcile Platonism with Christianity, according to the suggestions of early Church fathers Lactantius and Saint Augustine. In this spirit, Pico della Mirandola attempted to construct a syncretism of all religions, historian Steven Kreis expresses a widespread view, when he writes that, The period from the fourteenth century to the seventeenth worked in favor of the general emancipation of the individual. The city-states of northern Italy had come into contact with the customs of the East. The writings of Dante, and particularly the doctrines of Petrarch and humanists like Machiavelli, emphasized the virtues of intellectual freedom, in the essays of Montaigne the individualistic view of life received perhaps the most persuasive and eloquent statement in the history of literature and philosophy
32.
Poggio Bracciolini
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Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, best known simply as Poggio Bracciolini, was an Italian scholar and an early humanist. He was responsible for rediscovering and recovering a number of classical Latin manuscripts, mostly decaying and forgotten in German, Swiss. His most celebrated find was De rerum natura, the surviving work by Lucretius. Poggio di Guccio was born at the village of Terranuova, since 1862 renamed in his honour Terranuova Bracciolini, near Arezzo in Tuscany. Taken by his father to Florence to pursue the studies for which he appeared so apt, he studied Latin under Giovanni Malpaghino of Ravenna, the friend and protégé of Petrarch. He studied notarial law, and, at the age of twenty-one he was received into the Florentine notaries guild, under Martin V he reached the top rank of his office, as Apostolicus Secretarius, papal secretary. As such he functioned as an attendant of the Pope, writing letters at his behest and dictation, with no formal registration of the briefs. He was esteemed for his excellent Latin, his extraordinarily beautiful book hand, and as liaison with Florence. Throughout his long office of 50 years, Poggio served a total of seven popes, Boniface IX, Innocent VII, Gregory XII, Antipope John XXIII, Martin V, Eugenius IV, Nicholas V. In spite of his salary in the Curia, he remained a layman to the end of his life. The greater part of Poggios long life was spent in attendance to his duties in the Roman Curia at Rome, although he spent most of his adult life in his papal service, he considered himself a Florentine working for the papacy. His five years spent in England, until returning to Rome in 1423, were the least productive, Poggio resided in Florence during 1434−36 with Eugene IV. In spite of the remonstrances and dire predictions of all his friends about the age discrepancy, the marriage was a one, producing five sons. At stake was the new approach of the humanae litterae in relation to the divinae litterae, Valla claimed that biblical texts could be subjected to the same philological criticism as the great classics of antiquity. Poggio held that humanism and theology were separate fields of inquiry, Poggios series of five Orationes in Laurentium Vallam were countered, line by line, by Vallas Antidota in Pogium. It is remarkable that eventually the belligerents acknowledged their talents, gained their respect, and prompted by Filelfo, reconciled. Shepherd finely comments on Vallas advantage in the dispute, the power of irony. He resolved to retire from his service of 50 years in the Chancery of Rome and this coincided with the news of the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans
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Saint Gall
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Saint Gall, Gallen, or Gallus according to hagiographic tradition was a disciple and one of the traditional twelve companions of Saint Columbanus on his mission from Ireland to the continent. Saint Deicolus is called an older brother of Gall, other works ascribed to Walafrid tell of Saint Gall in prose and verse. Gallus origin is a matter of dispute, according to his 9th-century biographers in Reichenau, he was from Ireland and entered Europe as a companion of Columbanus. The Irish origin of the historical Gallus was called into question by Hilty, schär proposed that Gallus may have been of Irish descent but born and raised in the Alsace. According to the 9th-century hagiographies, Gallus as a man he went to study under Comgall of Bangor Abbey. The monastery at Bangor had become renowned throughout Europe as a centre of Christian learning. Studying in Bangor at the time as Gall was Columbanus. Gall and his companions established themselves with Columbanus at first at Luxeuil in Gaul, in 610, St. Columban was exiled by leaders opposed to Christianity and fled with St. Gall to Alemannia. He accompanied Columbanus on his voyage up the Rhine River to Bregenz but when in 612 Columbanus travelled on to Italy from Bregenz, Gall had to remain behind due to illness and was nursed at Arbon. He remained in Alemannia, where, with companions, he led the life of a hermit in the forests southwest of Lake Constance. Cells were soon added for twelve monks whom Gall carefully instructed, Gall was soon known in Switzerland as a powerful preacher. When the See of Constance became vacant, the clergy who assembled to elect a new Bishop were unanimously in favour of Gall and he, however, refused, pleading that the election of a stranger would be contrary to Church law. He refused to quit his life of solitude, and undertake any office of rank which might involve him in the cares of the world and he died at the age of ninety-five around 646–650 in Arbon. From as early as the 9th century a series of fantastically embroidered Lives of Saint Gall were circulated, prominent was the story in which Gall delivered Fridiburga from the demon by which she was possessed. Fridiburga was the betrothed of Sigebert II, King of the Franks, another popular story has it that as St Gall was travelling in the woods of what is now Switzerland he was sitting one evening warming his hands at a fire. A bear emerged from the woods and charged, the holy man rebuked the bear, so awed by his presence it stopped its attack and slunk off to the trees. There it gathered firewood before returning to share the heat of the fire with St Gall, the legend says that for the rest of his days St Gall was followed around by his companion the bear. His feast is celebrated on 16 October, images of St. Gall typically represent him standing with a bear
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Leonardo Bruni
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Leonardo Bruni was an Italian humanist, historian and statesman, often recognized as the most important humanist historian of the early Renaissance. He has been called the first modern historian and he was the earliest person to write using the three-period view of history, Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Modern. The dates Bruni used to define the periods are not exactly what modern historians use today, Leonardo Bruni was born in Arezzo, Tuscany circa 1370. Bruni was the pupil of political and cultural leader Coluccio Salutati, whom he succeeded as chancellor of Florence and he also served as apostolic secretary to four popes. Brunis years as chancellor—1410 to 1411 and again from 1427 to his death in 1444—were plagued by warfare, though he occupied one of the highest political offices, Bruni was relatively powerless compared to the Albizzi and Medici families. Historian Arthur Field has identified Bruni as an apparent plotter against Cosimo de Medici in 1437, Bruni died in 1444 in Florence and was succeeded in office by Carlo Marsuppini. Brunis most notable work is Historiarum Florentini populi libri XII, which has called the first modern history book. While it probably was not Brunis intention to secularize history, the three view of history is unquestionably secular and for that Bruni has been called the first modern historian. The foundation of Brunis conception can be found with Petrarch, who distinguished the period from later cultural decline. Bruni argued that Italy had revived in recent centuries and could therefore be described as entering a new age, one of Brunis most famous works is New Cicero, a biography of the Roman statesman Cicero. He was also the author of biographies in Italian of Dante and it was Bruni who used the phrase studia humanitatis, meaning the study of human endeavors, as distinct from those of theology and metaphysics, which is where the term humanists comes from. As a humanist Bruni was essential in translating into Latin many works of Greek philosophy and history, such as Aristotle, Brunis translations of Aristotles Politics and Nicomachean Ethics, as well as the pseudo-Aristotelean Economics, were widely distributed in manuscript and in print. He also wrote a treatise in Greek on the Florentine constitution. Bruni was one of the very first Humanists to be confronted with Platos homosexuality, Bruni died in Florence in 1444, and is buried in a wall tomb by Bernardo Rossellino in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence. Latin text and English translation, Leonardo Bruni, Field, Arthur, Leonardi Bruni, Florentine traitor. Bruni, the Medici, and an Aretine conspiracy of 1437, Renaissance Quarterly 51, hankins, James, Repertorium Brunianum, a critical guide to the writings of Leonardo Bruni, Rome, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo 1997 Ianziti, Gary. Writing History in Renaissance Italy, Leonardo Bruni and the Uses of the Past Leonardo Bruni, an vulgus et literati eodem modo per Terentii Tullique tempora Romae locuti sint Calphurnia et Gurgulia De Bello Gallico Adversus Gothos Bruni, Leonardo. Historiarum Florentinarum libri XII, quibus accesserunt quorundam suo tempore in Italia gestorum & de rebus Græcis commentarii, archived from the original on August 18,2009
35.
Petrarch
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Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar and poet in Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarchs rediscovery of Ciceros letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Renaissance, Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism. In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarchs works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca. Petrarchs sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and he is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the Dark Ages. This standing back from his time was possible because he straddled two worlds—the classical and his own modern day, Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco and his wife Eletta Canigiani and his given name was Francesco Petracco. The name was Latinized to Petrarca, Petrarchs younger brother was born in Incisa in Val dArno in 1307. Dante was a friend of his father, Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He spent much of his life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras. He studied law at the University of Montpellier and Bologna with a lifelong friend, because his father was in the profession of law he insisted that Petrarch and his brother study law also. Petrarch however was interested in writing and Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted. Additionally he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence and he protested, I couldnt face making a merchandise of my mind, as he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice. Petrarch was a letter writer and counted Boccaccio among his notable friends to whom he wrote often. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326 and this work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large work, Africa, an epic in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus. On April 8,1341, he became the poet laureate since antiquity and was crowned by Roman Senatori Giordano Orsini. He traveled widely in Europe, served as an ambassador, and has called the first tourist because he traveled just for pleasure. During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome
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Martin Luther
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Martin Luther, O. S. A. was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk and a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church and he strongly disputed the Catholic view on indulgences as he understood it to be, that freedom from Gods punishment for sin could be purchased with money. Luther proposed a discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. His translation of the Bible into the vernacular made it accessible to the laity. It fostered the development of a version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the writing of an English translation. His hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches and his marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry. In two of his works, Luther expressed antagonistic views towards Jews, writing that Jewish homes and synagogues should be destroyed, their money confiscated. Condemned by virtually every Lutheran denomination, these statements and their influence on antisemitism have contributed to his controversial status, Martin Luther was born to Hans Luder and his wife Margarethe on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. He was baptized as a Catholic the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours and his family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council. He had several brothers and sisters, and is known to have close to one of them. Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, and he was determined to see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer. He sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld, then Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the Brethren of the Common Life, the three schools focused on the so-called trivium, grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell, in 1501, at the age of 19, he entered the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a beerhouse and whorehouse. He was made to wake at four every morning for what has been described as a day of rote learning and he received his masters degree in 1505. In accordance with his fathers wishes, Luther enrolled in law school at the university that year but dropped out almost immediately. Luther sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but none about loving God, which to Luther was more important. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, for Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed and he later attributed his decision to an event, on 2 July 1505, he was returning to university on horseback after a trip home
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Erasmus
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Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, known as Erasmus or Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch/Netherlandish Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian. Erasmus was a scholar and wrote in a pure Latin style. Among humanists he enjoyed the sobriquet Prince of the Humanists, and has called the crowning glory of the Christian humanists. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia, Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works. Erasmus remained a member of the Roman Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the Church and he also held to the Catholic doctrine of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favor of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps, Erasmus died suddenly in Basel in 1536 while preparing to return to Brabant, and was buried in Basel Minster, the former cathedral of the city. A bronze statue of him was erected in his city of birth in 1622, Desiderius Erasmus is reported to have been born in Rotterdam on 28 October in the late 1460s. He was named after Saint Erasmus of Formiae, whom Erasmuss father Gerard personally favored, a 17th-century legend has it that Erasmus was first named Geert Geerts, but this is unfounded. He was born in Rotterdam, but there are insufficient records to confirm that, a well-known wooden picture indicates, Goudæ conceptus, Roterodami natus. According to an article by historian Renier Snooy, Erasmus was born in Gouda, the exact year of his birth is debated, with most biographers citing the year as 1466. Some evidence confirming 1466 can be found in Erasmuss own words, of twenty-three statements Erasmus made about his age, all and he was christened Erasmus after the saint of that name. Although associated closely with Rotterdam, he lived there for four years. Information on his family and early life comes mainly from vague references in his writings and his parents were not legally married. His father, Gerard, was a Catholic priest and curate in Gouda, little is known of his mother other than that her name was Margaretha Rogerius and she was the daughter of a physician from Zevenbergen, she may have been Gerards housekeeper. Erasmus was given the highest education available to a man of his day. During his stay there the curriculum was renewed by the principal of the school, for the first time ever Greek was taught at a lower level than a university in Europe, and this is where he began learning it. He also gleaned there the importance of a relationship with God but eschewed the harsh rules. His education there ended when plague struck the city about 1483, and his mother, in 1492, poverty forced Erasmus into the consecrated life
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Johann Sebastian Bach
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied, performed, and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, also during this time he was taught theology, Latin, Greek, French and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture. In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
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The Musical Offering
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The Ricercar a 6, a six-voice fugue which is the highpoint of the entire work, was put forward by the musicologist Charles Rosen as the most significant piano composition in history. This ricercar is also called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself. The composition features in the section of Douglas Hofstadters Pulitzer Prize winning book Gödel, Escher. The collection has its roots in a meeting between Bach and Frederick II on May 7,1747, the meeting, taking place at the Kings residence in Potsdam, came about because Bachs son Carl Philipp Emanuel was employed there as court musician. Frederick wanted to show the elder Bach a novelty, the fortepiano, the King owned several of the experimental instruments being developed by Gottfried Silbermann. He did so, but Frederick then challenged him to improvise a fugue on the same theme. The public present thought this was just a malicious caprice by the King, intent upon humiliating philosophers, Bach answered that he would need to work the score and send it to the King afterwards. He then returned to Leipzig to write out the Thema Regium, Two months after the meeting, Bach inscribed the piece Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta, the first letters of which spell out the word ricercar, a well-known genre of the time. The thema regium appears as the theme for the first and last movements of Sonata No. Humphrey F. Sassoon has compared the theme issued by Frederick II to the theme of an A minor fugue by George Frideric Handel, published in Six fugues or voluntarys for organ or harpsichord. Sassoon notes that Handels theme is much shorter than the Kings, nevertheless, the Ricercar a 6 is longer and incomparably more complex than Handels fugue. The ricercars and canons have been realised in various ways, the ricercars are more frequently performed on keyboard than the canons, which are often played by an ensemble of chamber musicians, with instrumentation comparable to that of the trio sonata. The Canones super Thema Regium are also played together. These compositions are called the riddle fugues, the performer is/are supposed to interpret the music as a multi-part piece, while solving the riddle. The canon per tonos pits a variant of the theme against a two-voice canon at the fifth. However, it modulates and finishes one whole tone higher than it started out at and it thus has no final cadence. Among the theories about external sources of influence, Michael Marissen’s is the best-founded, marissen sees an incongruity between the official dedication to Frederick the Great and the effect of the music, which is often melancholy, even mournful. The trio sonata is a sonata da chiesa, whose style was at odds with Frederick’s secular tastes
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Johann Matthias Gesner
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Johann Matthias Gesner was a German classical scholar and schoolmaster. He was born at Roth an der Rednitz near Ansbach and his father, Johann Samuel Gesner, a pastor in Auhausen, died in 1704, leaving the family in straitened circumstances. Gesners mother, Maria Magdalena, remarried, and Johann Matthiass stepfather, Johann Zuckermantel, noticing the boys gifts, he prepared him for the Ansbach Gymnasium. Gesner later called his Gymnasium years the most pleasant in his life, despite Buddeuss support, however, he was passed over for a position in Jena. In 1714 he published a work on the Philopatiis ascribed to Lucian, having probably become familiar with a similar organization in Leipzig, in 1738 he founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft, devoted to the advancement of German literature. Gesner won a reputation as a reformer, a scholar. 305 H Sauppe, Göttinger Professoren CH Pöhnert, J. M. article name needed
41.
Alexander Pope
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Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet. He is best known for his verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations after Shakespeare, Alexander Pope was born to Alexander Pope Senior, a linen merchant of Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, and his wife Edith, who were both Catholics. Ediths sister Christiana was the wife of the miniature painter Samuel Cooper. Pope was taught to read by his aunt, and went to Twyford School in about 1698/99 and he then went to two Catholic schools in London. Such schools, while illegal, were tolerated in some areas, in 1700, his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest. This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing Catholics from living within 10 miles of either London or Westminster, Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest. He also studied languages and read works by English, French, Italian, Latin. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from the London literary society such as William Wycherley, William Congreve, Samuel Garth, William Trumbull, at Binfield, he also began to make many important friends. One of them, John Caryll, was twenty years older than the poet and had many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet and he also met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha, both of whom would remain lifelong friends. From the age of 12, he suffered health problems, such as Potts disease. His tuberculosis infection caused other problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes. He grew to a height of only 1.37 m. Pope was already removed from society because he was Catholic, although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters. Allegedly, his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover, in May,1709, Popes Pastorals was published in the sixth part of Tonsons Poetical Miscellanies. This brought Pope instant fame, and was followed by An Essay on Criticism, published in May 1711, around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot, who together formed the satirical Scriblerus Club. The aim of the club was to satirise ignorance and pedantry in the form of the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus and he also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim, during Popes friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addisons play Cato, as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator
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Michel de Montaigne
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Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight, in his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. In time, however, Montaigne would come to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time and he is most famously known for his skeptical remark, Que sçay-je. Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his balance of intellectual knowledge. Montaigne was born in the Aquitaine region of France, on the family estate Château de Montaigne, in a town now called Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, close to Bordeaux. The family was wealthy, his great-grandfather, Ramon Felipe Eyquem, had made a fortune as a herring merchant and had bought the estate in 1477. His father, Pierre Eyquem, Seigneur of Montaigne, was a French Catholic soldier in Italy for a time and had also been the mayor of Bordeaux. Although there were several families bearing the patronym Eyquem in Guyenne and his mother, Antoinette López de Villanueva, was a convert to Protestantism. His maternal grandfather, Pedro Lopez, from Zaragoza, was from a wealthy Marrano family who had converted to Catholicism and his maternal grandmother, Honorette Dupuy, was from a Catholic family in Gascony, France. His mother lived a part of Montaignes life near him, and even survived him. Montaignes relationship with his father, however, is reflected upon. Montaignes education began in childhood and followed a pedagogical plan that his father had developed, refined by the advice of the latters humanist friends. After these first spartan years, Montaigne was brought back to the château, the objective was for Latin to become his first language. The intellectual education of Montaigne was assigned to a German tutor and his father hired only servants who could speak Latin, and they also were given strict orders always to speak to the boy in Latin. The same rule applied to his mother, father, and servants, who were obliged to use only Latin words he himself employed, Montaignes Latin education was accompanied by constant intellectual and spiritual stimulation. He was familiarized with Greek by a method that employed games, conversation. The atmosphere of the upbringing, although designed by highly refined rules taken under advisement by his father, created in the boys life the spirit of liberty. Duty by an unforced will, and of my own voluntary motion. without any severity or constraint and he then began his study of law at the University of Toulouse in 1546 and entered a career in the local legal system
43.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was a German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic, and one of the most outstanding representatives of the Enlightenment era. His plays and theoretical writings substantially influenced the development of German literature and he is widely considered by theatre historians to be the first dramaturg in his role at Abel Seylers Hamburg National Theatre. Lessing was born in Kamenz, a town in Saxony, to Johann Gottfried Lessing. His father was a Lutheran minister and wrote on theology, Young Lessing studied at the Latin School in Kamenz from 1737 to 1741. With a father who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps, after completing his education at St. Afras, he enrolled at the University of Leipzig where he pursued a degree in theology, medicine, philosophy, and philology. It was here that his relationship with Karoline Neuber, a famous German actress and he translated several French plays for her, and his interest in theatre grew. During this time, he wrote his first play, The Young Scholar, Neuber eventually produced the play in 1748. From 1748 to 1760, Lessing lived in Leipzig and Berlin and he began to work as a reviewer and editor for the Vossische Zeitung and other periodicals. Lessing formed a connection with his cousin, Christlob Mylius. In 1750, Lessing and Mylius teamed together to begin a periodical publication named Beitrage zur Historie und Aufnahme des Theatres, the publication ran only four issues, but it caught the publics eye and revealed Lessing to be a serious critic and theorist of drama. In 1752 he took his masters degree in Wittenberg, from 1760 to 1765, he worked in Breslau as secretary to General Tauentzien during the Seven Years War between Britain and France, which had effects in Europe. It was during this time that he wrote his famous Laokoon, in 1765 Lessing returned to Berlin, leaving in 1767 to work for three years at the Hamburg National Theatre. Actor-manager, Konrad Ackermann, began construction on Germanys first permanent theatre in Hamburg, Johann Friedrich Löwen established Germanys first national theatre, the Hamburg National Theatre. The owners hired Lessing as the critic of plays and acting. The theatres main backer was Abel Seyler, a former currency speculator who since became known as the patron of German theatre. There he met Eva König, his future wife and his work in Hamburg formed the basis of his pioneering work on drama, titled Hamburgische Dramaturgie. Unfortunately, because of losses due to pirated editions of the Hamburgische Dramaturgie. In 1770 Lessing became librarian at the library, now the Herzog August Library
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John Stuart Mill
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John Stuart Mill was an English philosopher, political economist and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism, he contributed widely to social theory, political theory, Mill was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by his predecessor Jeremy Bentham, and contributed significantly to the theory of the scientific method. A member of the Liberal Party, he was also the first Member of Parliament to call for womens suffrage. John Stuart Mill was born on Rodney Street in the Pentonville area of London, the eldest son of the Scottish philosopher, historian and economist James Mill, John Stuart was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He was given a rigorous upbringing, and was deliberately shielded from association with children his own age other than his siblings. Mill was a precocious child. He describes his education in his autobiography, at the age of three he was taught Greek. By the age of eight, he had read Aesops Fables, Xenophons Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus and he had also read a great deal of history in English and had been taught arithmetic, physics and astronomy. At the age of eight, Mill began studying Latin, the works of Euclid, and algebra and his main reading was still history, but he went through all the commonly taught Latin and Greek authors and by the age of ten could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father also thought that it was important for Mill to study, one of Mills earliest poetic compositions was a continuation of the Iliad. In his spare time he enjoyed reading about natural sciences and popular novels, such as Don Quixote. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and David Ricardo with his father, Ricardo, who was a close friend of his father, used to invite the young Mill to his house for a walk in order to talk about political economy. At the age of fourteen, Mill stayed a year in France with the family of Sir Samuel Bentham, the mountain scenery he saw led to a lifelong taste for mountain landscapes. The lively and friendly way of life of the French also left an impression on him. In Montpellier, he attended the courses on chemistry, zoology, logic of the Faculté des Sciences. While coming and going from France, he stayed in Paris for a few days in the house of the renowned economist Jean-Baptiste Say, there he met many leaders of the Liberal party, as well as other notable Parisians, including Henri Saint-Simon. Mill went through months of sadness and pondered suicide at twenty years of age, according to the opening paragraphs of Chapter V of his autobiography, he had asked himself whether the creation of a just society, his lifes objective, would actually make him happy. His heart answered no, and unsurprisingly he lost the happiness of striving towards this objective, eventually, the poetry of William Wordsworth showed him that beauty generates compassion for others and stimulates joy
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Thomas De Quincey
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Thomas Penson De Quincey was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Many scholars suggest that in publishing this work De Quincey inaugurated the tradition of literature in the West. De Quincey was born at 86 Cross Street, Manchester, Lancashire and his father was a successful merchant with an interest in literature who died when he was quite young. Soon after his birth the family went to The Farm and then later to Greenheys, in 1796, three years after the death of his father, Thomas Quincey, his mother – the erstwhile Elizabeth Penson – took the name De Quincey. In the same year, De Quinceys mother moved to Bath, Somerset, De Quincey was a weak and sickly child. His youth was spent in solitude, and when his brother, William, came home. De Quinceys mother was a woman of character and intelligence. It is purported that at time, in 1799, De Quincey first read Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth. In 1800, De Quincey, aged fifteen, was ready for the University of Oxford and that boy, his master at Bath had said, could harangue an Athenian mob better than you or I could address an English one. He was sent to Manchester Grammar School, in order that after three years stay he might obtain a scholarship to Brasenose College, Oxford, but he took flight after nineteen months. His first plan had been to reach William Wordsworth, whose Lyrical Ballads had consoled him in fits of depression and had awakened in him a reverence for the poet. From July to November 1802, De Quincey lived as a wayfarer and he soon lost his guinea by ceasing to keep his family informed of his whereabouts, and had difficulty making ends meet. Still, apparently fearing pursuit, he borrowed money and travelled to London. Having failed, he lived close to starvation rather than return to his family, discovered by chance by his friends, De Quincey was brought home and finally allowed to go to Worcester College, Oxford, on a reduced income. Here, we are told, he came to be looked upon as a strange being who associated with no one, in 1804, while at Oxford, he began the occasional use of opium. He completed his studies, but failed to take the oral examination leading to a degree and he became an acquaintance of Coleridge and Wordsworth, having already sought out Charles Lamb in London. His acquaintance with Wordsworth led to his settling in 1809 at Grasmere and he lived for ten years in Dove Cottage, which Wordsworth had occupied and which is now a popular tourist attraction, and for another five years at Fox Ghyll near Rydal. De Quincey was married in 1816, and soon after, having no money left and his wife Margaret bore him eight children before her death in 1837
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Reid, James Smith (1911). "Quintilian". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 761.
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