1.
Roman mosaic
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A Roman mosaic is a mosaic made during the Roman period, throughout the Roman Empire. Mosaics were used in a variety of private and public buildings, the outstanding examples of the Late Imperial period are the mosaics in the villa of Casale in Sicily. The mosaic decoration of the palace complex culminates in the gallery. Roman mosaics are constructed from geometrical blocks called tesserae, placed together to create the shapes of figures, motifs, polychrome patterns were most common, but monochrome examples are known. Marble and glass were used as tesserae, as were small pebbles. Mosaic decoration was not just confined to floors but featured on walls, traces of guidelines have been found beneath some mosaics, either scored into or painted onto the mortar bedding. The design might also be pegged out in string, or mounted in a wooden frame, the collapse of buildings in antiquity can, paradoxically, both irrevocably destroy mosaics or protect and preserve them. As well as patterns and designs, Roman mosaics frequently depicted divine characters or mythological scenes. Imagery of famous individuals or entertaining scenes are common on Roman mosaics, the Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun, Pompeii depicts the Battle of Issus between Alexander the Great and Darius III. In addition to people from antiquity, mosaics can depict aspects of daily life. The Gladiator Mosaic from Rome depicts a scene, naming each gladiator involved. A gladiatorial scene is known from Leptis Magna. One of the earliest depictions of Roman Christianity is a mosaic from Hinton St Mary which shows Christ with a Chi-Rho behind his head, the mosaic is now in the British Museum. Progression within the technique developed the emblem, the heart of all mosaics. The Alexander Mosaic from the House of the Faun, Pompeii, the Tomb of the Julii in the Vatican Necropolis, beneath St. Peters Basilica, Rome. The Gladiator Mosaic from the Via Casilina outside Rome, the Zliten Mosaic from Zliten in Libya
2.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
3.
Ancient Greek comedy
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Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy, New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that comedy is a representation of laughable people, C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world. These divisions appear to be arbitrary, and ancient comedy almost certainly developed constantly over the years. The most important Old Comic dramatist is Aristophanes, born in 446 B. C. his works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively define the genre today. He was one of a number of comic poets working in Athens in the late 5th century, his most important contemporary rivals being Hermippus. The Old Comedy subsequently influenced later European writers such as Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, in particular, they copied the technique of disguising a political attack as buffoonery. For ancient scholars, the term may have meant little more than later than Aristophanes and his contemporaries, for at least a time, mythological burlesque was popular among the Middle Comic poets. Stock characters of all sorts also emerge, courtesans, parasites, revellers, philosophers, boastful soldiers, because no complete Middle Comic plays have been preserved, it is impossible to offer any real assessment of their literary value or genius. But many Middle Comic plays appear to have revived in Sicily and Magna Graecia in this period, suggesting that they had considerable widespread literary. New Comedy followed the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and lasted throughout the reign of the Macedonian rulers and it is comparable to situation comedy and comedy of manners. The three best-known playwrights belonging to this genre are Menander, Philemon and Diphilus, Menander was the most successful of these three comedians. His comedies not only provided their audience with a respite from reality. This led an ancient critic to ask if life influenced Menander in the writing of his plays or if the case was vice versa and this seems to be what made him more successful than the other Greek comedians who wrote in the same genre. These plays were much less satirical than preceding comedies, the other two comedians are Philemon and Diphilus. Philemon was a comedian whose comedies dwelt on philosophical issues and Diphilus was a comedian whose comedies were noted for their broad comedy, philemons comedies survive only in fragments, but Diphilus comedies were translated and adapted by Plautus. Examples of these comedies are Plautus Asinaria and Rudens, based on the translation and adaptation of Diphilus comedies by Plautus, one can conclude that he was skilled in the construction of his plots. Substantial fragments of New Comedy have survived, but no complete plays, the most substantially preserved text is the Dyskolos by Menander, discovered on a papyrus, and first published in 1958
4.
Menander
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Menander was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times and his record at the City Dionysia is unknown but may well have been similarly spectacular. One of the most popular writers of antiquity, his work was lost during the Middle Ages and is known in modernity in highly fragmentary form, only one play, Dyskolos, has survived almost entirely. He presumably derived his taste for drama from his uncle Alexis. He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus and he also enjoyed the patronage of Ptolemy Soter, the son of Lagus, who invited him to his court. But Menander, preferring the independence of his villa in the Piraeus and the company of his mistress Glycera, refused. According to the note of a scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid, he drowned while bathing, and his countrymen honored him with a tomb on the leading to Athens. Numerous supposed busts of him survive, including a statue in the Vatican. His rival in dramatic art was Philemon, who appears to have more popular. Menander, however, believed himself to be the better dramatist, how long complete copies of his plays survived is unclear, although 23 of them, with commentary by Michael Psellus, were said to still have been available in Constantinople in the 11th century. He is praised by Plutarch and Quintilian, who accepted the tradition that he was the author of the speeches published under the name of the Attic orator Charisius. These maxims were afterwards collected, and, with additions from other sources, were edited as Menanders One-Verse Maxims, a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools. The single surviving speech from his early play Drunkenness is an attack on the politician Callimedon, in the manner of Aristophanes, whose bawdy style was adopted in many of his plays. Eunuchus, Andria, Heauton Timorumenos and Adelphi of Terence were avowedly taken from Menander, the original of Terences Hecyra is generally supposed to be, not by Menander, but Apollodorus of Carystus. Caecilius Statius, Luscius Lanuvinus, Turpilius and Atilius also imitated Menander, most of Menanders work did not survive the Middle Ages, except as short fragments. Michael Psellos might be the last writer who may have more than we do today. Until the end of the 19th century, all that was known of Menander were fragments quoted by authors and collected by Augustus Meineke and Theodor Kock. These consist of some 1650 verses or parts of verses, in addition to a number of words quoted from Menander by ancient lexicographers
5.
Dyskolos
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Dyskolos is an Ancient Greek comedy by Menander, the only one of his plays, and of the whole New Comedy, that has survived in almost complete form. It was first presented at the Lenaian festival in 317–16 BC, the play is set in motion by the mischievous Pan, who speaks the prologue and whose personality dominates the play. Pan makes young Sostratos fall in love with a peasant girl he has glimpsed, Sostratos sends his servant to see the girls father. This ends in violence, as the father is Knemon, a farmer who becomes enraged at anyone who ventures onto his land or tries to converse with him. His wife and stepson have left him, he is alone with his daughter, knemons daughter has no written name and so she is referred to as Girl. Sostratos meets Knemon’s stepson, Gorgias, and enlists his assistance in getting Knemon to allow Sostratos to wed his daughter, according to Gorgias, Knemon has vowed that he will permit only a man like himself to marry his daughter. Therefore, Sostratos dons a rough sheepskin coat so as not to appear a gentleman of leisure, a cry goes up that Knemon has accidentally fallen down his own well. Gorgias jumps in to rescue him, Sostratos, although entirely preoccupied with admiring the beautiful daughter, pulls the rope to haul the misanthrope out, nearly killing the old man by his inattention. Having nearly drowned and believing himself about to die, Knemon sees the error of his ways and grants all his property to Gorgias, telling him also to take his daughter, Gorgias introduces Sostratos to Knemon, who gives his indifferent approval. The jubilant Sostratos tells his own father, Kallippides, of the wedding plan, Kallippides balks for a moment at taking two paupers into the family. Sostratos scolds his father, pointing out that wealth is inherently unstable, therefore, Kallippides should not begrudge sharing wealth with others, money cant be held forever, and luck will simply assign that wealth to someone else someday, perhaps to someone less deserving. Sostratos argues out that wealth imposes upon its owner a responsibility to act nobly, summarizing the plays key theme, Sostratos explains that what goes around comes around, By acting nobly now, Kallippides may himself—in a future moment of need—benefit from someone elses kindness. Sostratos finally persuades Kallippides that it is far better to have a friend than invisible wealth which you keep buried away. Menanders Dyskolos, translated by Vincent J. Rosivach Dyskolos, translated by G. Theodoridis
6.
Bodmer Papyri
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The Bodmer Papyri are a group of twenty-two papyri discovered in Egypt in 1952. They are named after Martin Bodmer who purchased them, the papyri contain segments from the Old and New Testaments, early Christian literature, Homer, and Menander. The oldest, P66 dates to c.200 AD, most of the papyri are kept at the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, in Cologny, Switzerland outside Geneva. In 2007 the Vatican Library acquired Bodmer Papyrus 14-15, and is kept at the Vatican Library. The manuscripts were covertly assembled by a Cypriote, Phokio Tano of Cairo, then smuggled to Switzerland, the series Papyrus Bodmer began to be published in 1954, giving transcriptions of the texts with note and introduction in French and a French translation. With fragments of correspondence, the number of individual texts represented reaches to fifty, most of the works are in codex form, a few in scrolls. P72 is the earliest known copy of the Epistle of Jude, Papyrus 75 is a partial codex containing most of Luke and John. There are also Christian texts that would become declared apocryphal in the fourth century, there is a Greek-Latin lexicon to some of Pauls letters, and there are fragments of Melito of Sardis. The earliest extant copy of the Third Epistle to the Corinthians is published in Bodmer Papryri X, the latest of the Bodmer Papyri dates to the sixth or seventh century. The papyri had been sold for a significant price to Frank Hanna III, of Atlanta. In January 2007, Hanna presented the papyri to the Pope and they are kept in the Vatican Library and will be made available for scholarly review, and in the future, excerpts may be put on display for the general public. They were transported from Switzerland to the Vatican in An armed motorcade surrounded by people with machine guns, the Story of the Bodmer Papyri, the First Christian Monastic Library Includes an inventory of the Bodmer Papyri. Category, Bodmer Papyri on Wikimedia Commons A folio of Bodmer codex containing parts of Luke and John The Anchor Bible Dictionary Volume 1, 766-767
7.
Roman Republic
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It was during this period that Romes control expanded from the citys immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. During the first two centuries of its existence, the Roman Republic expanded through a combination of conquest and alliance, by the following century, it included North Africa, most of the Iberian Peninsula, and what is now southern France. Two centuries after that, towards the end of the 1st century BC, it included the rest of modern France, Greece, and much of the eastern Mediterranean. By this time, internal tensions led to a series of wars, culminating with the assassination of Julius Caesar. The exact date of transition can be a matter of interpretation, Roman government was headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and advised by a senate composed of appointed magistrates. Over time, the laws that gave exclusive rights to Romes highest offices were repealed or weakened. The leaders of the Republic developed a tradition and morality requiring public service and patronage in peace and war, making military. Many of Romes legal and legislative structures can still be observed throughout Europe and much of the world in modern nation states, the exact causes and motivations for Romes military conflicts and expansions during the republic are subject to wide debate. While they can be seen as motivated by outright aggression and imperialism and they argue that Romes expansion was driven by short-term defensive and inter-state factors, and the new contingencies that these decisions created. In its early history, as Rome successfully defended itself against foreign threats in central and then northern Italy, with some important exceptions, successful wars in early republican Rome generally led not to annexation or military occupation, but to the restoration of the way things were. But the defeated city would be weakened and thus able to resist Romanizing influences. It was also able to defend itself against its non-Roman enemies. It was, therefore, more likely to seek an alliance of protection with Rome and this growing coalition expanded the potential enemies that Rome might face, and moved Rome closer to confrontation with major powers. The result was more alliance-seeking, on the part of both the Roman confederacy and city-states seeking membership within that confederacy. While there were exceptions to this, it was not until after the Second Punic War that these alliances started to harden into something more like an empire and this shift mainly took place in parts of the west, such as the southern Italian towns that sided with Hannibal. In contrast, Roman expansion into Spain and Gaul occurred as a mix of alliance-seeking, in the 2nd century BC, Roman involvement in the Greek east remained a matter of alliance-seeking, but this time in the face of major powers that could rival Rome. This had some important similarities to the events in Italy centuries earlier, with some major exceptions of outright military rule, the Roman Republic remained an alliance of independent city-states and kingdoms until it transitioned into the Roman Empire. It was not until the time of the Roman Empire that the entire Roman world was organized into provinces under explicit Roman control
8.
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
9.
Princeton University Art Museum
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The Princeton University Art Museum is the Princeton Universitys gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1882, it now houses over 92,000 works of art that range from antiquity to the contemporary period and its collections concentrate on the Mediterranean region, Western Europe, China, the United States, and Latin America. The Museum has a collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, including ceramics, marbles, bronzes. Medieval Europe is represented by sculpture, metalwork, and stained glass, the collection of Western European paintings includes examples from the early Renaissance through the nineteenth century, and there is a growing collection of twentieth-century and contemporary art. Photographic holdings are a strength, numbering over 27,000 works from the invention of daguerreotype in 1839 to the present. The Museum is also noted for its Asian art gallery, which includes a collection of Chinese calligraphy, painting, ancient bronze works, jade carvings. In addition to its collections, the Museum mounts regular temporary exhibitions featuring works from its own holdings as well as made from public. Admission is free and the Museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday,10,00 am to 5,00 pm, Thursday,10,00 am to 10,00 pm, and Sunday 1,00 to 5,00 pm. The portrait was a donation from Belcher himself, given shortly before the College moved in 1756 to the newly built Nassau Hall and it was joined by a portrait of King George II, who had issued the letters patent establishing the College. The two portraits hung in the prayer hall, and were displayed alongside various antiquities and objects of natural history. The creation of the Art Museum in a formal sense took place under the leadership of James McCosh. The Scottish McCosh brought with him from Europe new progressive academic disciplines, by 1882, McCosh charged William Cowper Prime, a Princeton alumnus and founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and George B. McClellan, the Civil War general and then Governor of New Jersey and they argued, The foundation of any system of education in Historic Art must obviously be in object study. A museum of art objects is so necessary to the system that without it we are of opinion it would be of utility to introduce the proposed department. ”The intention was to go beyond the fields of art and classics to include, “many other branches of the collegiate course. ”They anticipated, “large future growth, ” as the College could “look with confidence to her sons, in all parts of the world. The collections of the Museum were initially held in Nassau Hall, along with the natural history collection of professor Arnold Henry Guyot. A new purpose-built fireproof Romanesque Revival Museum was designed by A, page Brown and completed in 1890 on the site of the current museum. On completion of the building the Museum received the Trumball-Prime collection of pottery and porcelain from William Prime, early additions included the purchase of a large collection of Cypriot pottery from the Metropolitan Museum in 1890, and purchases of Etruscan, Roman, and South Italian pottery. Marquand established an endowment from his own resources to further purchases
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