1.
Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868
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The Vatican Terence, or Codex Vaticanus Latinus 3868, is a 9th-century illuminated manuscript of the Latin comedies of Publius Terentius Afer, housed in the Vatican Library. According to art-historical analysis the manuscript was copied from a model of the 3rd century, the manuscript was made at Corvey in about the year 825 by a scribe named Hrodgarius. The illustrations were made by three artists, one of them was named Adelricus and it contains illustrations of 141 scenes. Bischoff dated the manuscript between 820–830 and it is an example of Carolingian art, but the illustrations follow an antique model. The text of the manuscript in English translation was edited by George Colman in 1768, the Latin text was edited by Christoph Stiegemann and Matthias Wemhoff. Since the end of the 19th century many scholars tried to estimate the age of the model from which Vaticanus 3868 was copied, according to Weitzmann the latter is a most faithful copy of a late classical original manuscript. On the basis of the data the original manuscript was dated to the 5th century by Weitzmann, Koehler. The artist was schooled in the Greco-Asiatic manner and this point of view dominated before World War II. In the 1960s another more detailed analysis was made. The pictures of masks were compared with three female masks dated between the years ca.242 – ca. The hairstyle of the Terence portrait is close to the one favoured by emperors between the years 238 and 249, suggesting that models from which the codex was copied were made in the 3rd century, dodwell, Charles R. Anglo-Saxon Gestures and the Roman Stage. Translated into English prose by M. H, morgan, with a new prologue by J. B. Greenough, and with the Vatican miniatures accurately reproduced for the first time Cambridge. The most ingenious and expressive work of art known from all of Late Antiquity 2004–2012 Jeremy Norman & Co. Inc
2.
English language
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English /ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ/ is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now the global lingua franca. Named after the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that migrated to England, English is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. It is the third most common language in the world, after Mandarin. It is the most widely learned second language and a language of the United Nations, of the European Union. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch, English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the century, are called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England, Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London and the King James Bible, and the start of the Great Vowel Shift. Through the worldwide influence of the British Empire, modern English spread around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries, English is an Indo-European language, and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. Most closely related to English are the Frisian languages, and English, Old Saxon and its descendent Low German languages are also closely related, and sometimes Low German, English, and Frisian are grouped together as the Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic languages. Modern English descends from Middle English, which in turn descends from Old English, particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other English languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian and Forth and Bargy dialects of Ireland. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares new language features with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, German and these shared innovations show that the languages have descended from a single common ancestor, which linguists call Proto-Germanic. Through Grimms law, the word for foot begins with /f/ in Germanic languages, English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as the palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic. The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon, in the fifth century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain and the Romans withdrew from Britain. England and English are named after the Angles, Old English was divided into four dialects, the Anglian dialects, Mercian and Northumbrian, and the Saxon dialects, Kentish and West Saxon. Through the educational reforms of King Alfred in the century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex. The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from the period of Old English were written using a runic script. By the sixth century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms and it included the runic letters wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ and thorn ⟨þ⟩, and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ð⟩, and ash ⟨æ⟩
3.
Playwright
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A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes plays. The term is not a variant spelling of playwrite, but something quite distinct, hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who has wrought words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form - someone who crafts plays. The homophone with write is in this case entirely coincidental, the term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and this view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term playwright later lost this negative connotation, the earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. These early plays were written for annual Athenian competitions among playwrights held around the 5th century BC, such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, the act of making and this is the source of the English word poet. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, the first play-writing manual, in this famous text, Aristotle established the principle of action or praxis as the basis for all drama. He then included a hierarchy of elements for the beginning with plot, character, thought, diction, music. The ends of drama were plot, character, and thought, the means of drama were language and music, since the myths, upon which Greek tragedy were based, were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was equated with choice as rather than psychology, so that character was determined by action, in tragedy, the notion of ethical choice determined the character of the individual. Thought had more to do and the imitation of an action that is serious, thus, he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist. It provides the basis for the play, a term still held as the sine qua non of dramaturgy. The Poetics, while very brief and highly condensed, is studied today. Perhaps the most Aristotelian of contemporary playwrights is David Mamet, who embraces the idea of character as agent of the action, and emphasizes causality in the structure of his plays. His recently revived, Speed-the-Plow, is quintessentially Aristotelian, in that it observes the unities and builds its plot through a causal stream of discoveries and reversals. The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action, place, and time
4.
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
5.
Berbers
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Berbers or Amazighen are an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. They are distributed in an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, historically, they spoke Berber languages, which together form the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. The majority of Berbers are predominantly Sunni Muslim, the Berber identity is usually wider than language and ethnicity, and encompasses the entire history and geography of North Africa. Berbers are not an entirely homogeneous ethnicity and they encompass a range of phenotypes, societies and ancestries, the unifying forces for the Berber people may be their shared language, or a collective identification with Berber heritage and history. There are some twenty-five to thirty million Berber speakers in North Africa, the number of ethnic Berbers is far greater, as a large part of the Berbers have acquired other languages over the course of many decades or centuries, and no longer speak Berber today. The majority of North Africas population is believed to be Berber in origin, Berbers call themselves some variant of the word i-Mazigh-en, possibly meaning free people or noble men. The name likely had its ancient parallel in the Roman and Greek names for Berbers, dihya or Kahina was a religious and military leader who led a fierce Berber resistance against the Arab-Muslim expansion in Northwest Africa. Kusaila was a leader of the Awraba tribe of the Berber people. A history by a Roman consul in Africa made the first reference of the barbarian to describe Numidia. The use of the term Berber spread in the following the arrival of the Vandals during their major invasions. The English term was introduced in the 19th century, replacing the earlier Barbary, for the historian Abraham Isaac Laredo the name Amazigh could be derived from the name of the ancestor Mezeg which is the translation of biblical ancestor Dedan son of Sheba in the Targum. According to Leo Africanus, Amazigh meant free man, though this has been disputed, further, it also has a cognate in the Tuareg word Amajegh, meaning noble. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines mentioned various tribes with similar names living in Greater Libya in the areas where Berbers were later found, later tribal names differ from the classical sources, but are probably still related to the modern Amazigh. The Meshwesh tribe among them represents the first thus identified from the field, all those names are similar and perhaps foreign renditions of the name used by the Berbers in general for themselves, Imazighen. The Maghreb region in northwestern Africa is believed to have been inhabited by Berbers from at least 10,000 BC, local cave paintings, which have been dated to twelve millennia before present, have been found in the Tassili nAjjer region of southern Algeria. Other rock art has been observed in Tadrart Acacus in the Libyan desert, a Neolithic society, marked by domestication and subsistence agriculture, developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean region of northern Africa between 6000 and 2000 BC. This type of life, richly depicted in the Tassili nAjjer cave paintings of southeastern Algeria, prehistorical Tifinagh scripts were also found in the Oran region. During the pre-Roman era, several independent states existed before the king Masinissa unified the people of Numidia
6.
Roman Senate
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The Roman Senate was a political institution in ancient Rome. It was one of the most enduring institutions in Roman history, during the days of the kingdom, it was little more than an advisory council to the king. The last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was following a coup détat led by Lucius Junius Brutus. During the early Republic, the Senate was politically weak, while the executive magistrates were quite powerful, since the transition from monarchy to constitutional rule was most likely gradual, it took several generations before the Senate was able to assert itself over the executive magistrates. By the middle Republic, the Senate had reached the apex of its republican power, the late Republic saw a decline in the Senates power, which began following the reforms of the tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. After the transition of the Republic into the Principate, the Senate lost much of its power as well as its prestige. Following the constitutional reforms of the Emperor Diocletian, the Senate became politically irrelevant, when the seat of government was transferred out of Rome, the Senate was reduced to a municipal body. This decline in status was reinforced when the emperor Constantine the Great created an additional senate in Constantinople, the Senate in Rome ultimately disappeared at some point after AD603, although the title senator was still used well into the Middle Ages as a largely meaningless honorific. However, the Eastern Senate survived in Constantinople, until the ancient institution finally vanished there c. 14th century, the senate was a political institution in the ancient Roman kingdom. The word senate derives from the Latin word senex, which means old man, the early Roman family was called a gens or clan, and each clan was an aggregation of families under a common living male patriarch, called a pater. When the early Roman gentes were aggregating to form a common community, over time, the patres came to recognize the need for a single leader, and so they elected a king, and vested in him their sovereign power. When the king died, that power naturally reverted to the patres. The senate is said to have created by Romes first king, Romulus. The descendants of those 100 men subsequently became the patrician class, Romes fifth king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, chose a further 100 senators. They were chosen from the leading families, and were accordingly called the patres minorum gentium. Romes seventh and final king, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, executed many of the men in the senate. During the years of the monarchy, the senates most important function was to new kings. While the king was elected by the people, it was actually the senate who chose each new king
7.
Manumission
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Manumission, from manumit /ˌmænjəˈmɪt/, is the act of a slave owner freeing his or her slaves. Different approaches developed, each specific to the time and place of a slave system. The motivations of slave owners in manumitting slaves were complex and varied, firstly, manumission may present itself as a sentimental and benevolent gesture. One typical scenario was the freeing in the masters will of a servant after long years of service. A trusted bailiff might be manumitted as a gesture of gratitude, for working as agricultural laborers or in workshops. Such feelings of benevolence may have been of value to slave owners themselves as it allowed them to focus on a component in the human traffic of slavery. In general, it was common for older slaves to be given freedom. Legislation under the early Roman Empire put limits on the number of slaves that could be freed in wills, freeing slaves could serve the pragmatic interests of the owner. The prospect of manumission worked as an incentive for slaves to be industrious, Roman slaves were paid a wage with which they could save up to, in effect, buy themselves. Manumission contracts found in abundance at Delphi specify in detail the prerequisites for liberation. Manumission was not always charitable or altruistic, in one of the stories in the Arabian Nights, in the Sir Richard Francis Burton translation, a slave owner threatens to free his slave for lying to him. The slave says, thou shall not manumit me, for I have no handicraft whereby to gain my living, greek slaves were generally not permitted to become citizens on being manumitted, being merely allowed to remain as a metic. Even in freedom, the ex-slave could be bound to some continuing duty to the master and were required to live nearby the former master. Breaches of these conditions could lead to beatings, prosecution at law, sometimes extra payments were specified by which a freed slave could liberate himself from these residual duties. But ex-slaves were able to own property outright, and their children were free of all constraint, under Roman law, a slave had no personhood and was protected under law mainly as his or her masters property. In ancient Rome, a slave who had been manumitted was a libertus, a freed slave customarily took his or her former owners family name, that is, the nomen of his or her masters gens. The former owner became his or her patron, as a client, the freed person retained certain obligations to his or her master, who in turn owed mutual favors. A freed slave could also acquire multiple patrons, a freed slave became a citizen
8.
Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
9.
Rome
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Rome is a special comune and the capital of Italy. Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region, with 2,873,598 residents in 1,285 km2, it is also the countrys largest and most populated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the center of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4.3 million residents, the city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio, along the shores of the Tiber. Romes history spans more than 2,500 years, while Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at only around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe. The citys early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans and it was first called The Eternal City by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy. Rome is also called the Caput Mundi, due to that, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance, and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, in 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic. Rome has the status of a global city, Rome ranked in 2014 as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy. Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, monuments and museums such as the Vatican Museums and the Colosseum are among the worlds most visited tourist destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. Rome hosted the 1960 Summer Olympics and is the seat of United Nations Food, however, it is a possibility that the name Romulus was actually derived from Rome itself. As early as the 4th century, there have been alternate theories proposed on the origin of the name Roma. There is archaeological evidence of occupation of the Rome area from approximately 14,000 years ago. Evidence of stone tools, pottery and stone weapons attest to about 10,000 years of human presence, several excavations support the view that Rome grew from pastoral settlements on the Palatine Hill built above the area of the future Roman Forum. Between the end of the age and the beginning of the Iron age. However, none of them had yet an urban quality, nowadays, there is a wide consensus that the city was gradually born through the aggregation of several villages around the largest one, placed above the Palatine. All these happenings, which according to the excavations took place more or less around the mid of the 8th century BC. Despite recent excavations at the Palatine hill, the view that Rome has been indeed founded with an act of will as the legend suggests in the middle of the 8th century BC remains a fringe hypothesis. Traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth
10.
Carthage
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Carthage was the centre or capital city of the ancient Carthaginian civilization, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now the Tunis Governorate in Tunisia. The city developed from a Phoenician colony into the capital of an empire dominating the Mediterranean Sea during the first millennium BC, the apocryphal queen Dido is regarded as the founder of the city, though her historicity has been questioned. According to accounts by Timaeus of Tauromenium, she purchased from a tribe the amount of land that could be covered by an oxhide. The ancient city was destroyed by the Roman Republic in the Third Punic War in 146 BC then re-developed as Roman Carthage, the Roman city was again occupied by the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, in 698. The archaeological site was first surveyed in 1830, by Danish consul Christian Tuxen Falbe, Excavations were performed in the second half of the 19th century by Charles Ernest Beulé and by Alfred Louis Delattre. The Carthage National Museum was founded in 1875 by Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, the open-air Carthage Paleo-Christian Museum has exhibits excavated under the auspices of UNESCO from 1975 to 1984. The Latin Carthāgō, Carthāginis is an n-stem, as reflected in the English adjective Carthaginian, the Latin adjective pūnicus, a variant of the word Phoenician, is reflected in English in some borrowings from Latin—notably the Punic Wars and the Punic language. The Modern Standard Arabic form قرطاج is an adoption of French Carthage, Carthage was built on a promontory with sea inlets to the north and the south. The citys location made it master of the Mediterraneans maritime trade, all ships crossing the sea had to pass between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia, where Carthage was built, affording it great power and influence. Two large, artificial harbors were built within the city, one for harboring the citys massive navy of 220 warships, a walled tower overlooked both harbors. The city had walls,37 km in length, longer than the walls of comparable cities. Most of the walls were located on the shore, thus could be less impressive, the 4.0 to 4.8 km of wall on the isthmus to the west were truly massive and were never penetrated. The city had a huge necropolis or burial ground, religious area, market places, council house, towers, and a theater, roughly in the middle of the city stood a high citadel called the Byrsa. Carthage was one of the largest cities of the Hellenistic period and was among the largest cities in preindustrial history. Whereas by AD14, Rome had at least 750,000 inhabitants and in the following century may have reached 1 million, according to the not always reliable history of Herodian, Carthage rivaled Alexandria for second place in the Roman empire. On top of Byrsa hill, the location of the Roman Forum, the neighborhood, with its houses, shops, and private spaces, is significant for what it reveals about daily life there over 2100 years ago. The remains have been preserved under embankments, the substructures of the later Roman forum, the housing blocks are separated by a grid of straight streets about 6 m wide, with a roadway consisting of clay, in situ stairs compensate for the slope of the hill. The habitat is typical, even stereotypical, in some places, the ground is covered with mosaics called punica pavement, sometimes using a characteristic red mortar
11.
Greek Italy
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The settlers who began arriving in the 8th century BC brought with them their Hellenic civilization, which was to leave a lasting imprint in Italy, such as in the culture of ancient Rome. Most notably the Roman poet Ovid referred to the south of Italy as Magna Graecia in his poem Fasti, according to Strabo, Magna Graecias colonization started already at the time of the Trojan War and lasted for several centuries. Also during that period, Greek colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea, Eastern Libya and they included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula. The Romans called the area of Sicily and the foot of Italy Magna Graecia since it was so densely inhabited by the Greeks, the ancient geographers differed on whether the term included Sicily or merely Apulia and Calabria, Strabo being the most prominent advocate of the wider definitions. With colonization, Greek culture was exported to Italy, in its dialects of the Ancient Greek language, its religious rites, an original Hellenic civilization soon developed, later interacting with the native Italic civilisations. Many of the new Hellenic cities became very rich and powerful, like Neapolis, Syracuse, Acragas Paestum, other cities in Magna Graecia included Tarentum, Epizephyrian Locri, Rhegium, Croton, Thurii, Elea, Nola, Ancona, Syessa, Bari and others. Following the Pyrrhic War in the 3rd century BC, Magna Graecia was absorbed into the Roman Republic, a remarkable example of the influence is the Griko-speaking minority that still exists today in the Italian regions of Calabria and Apulia. Griko is the name of a language combining ancient Doric, Byzantine Greek, there is a rich oral tradition and Griko folklore, limited now but once numerous, to around 30,000 people, most of them having become absorbed into the surrounding Italian element. Some scholars, such as Gerhard Rohlfs, argue that the origins of Griko may ultimately be traced to the colonies of Magna Graecia, one example is the Griko people, some of whom still maintain their Greek language and customs. For example, Greeks re-entered the region in the 16th and 17th century in reaction to the conquest of the Peloponnese by the Ottoman Empire, especially after the end of the Siege of Coron, large numbers of Greeks took refuge in the areas of Calabria, Salento and Sicily. Greeks from Coroni, the so-called Coronians, were nobles, who brought with them substantial movable property and they were granted special privileges and tax exemptions. Other Greeks who moved to Italy came from the Mani Peninsula of the Peloponnese, the Maniots were known for their proud military traditions and for their bloody vendettas, many of which still continue today. Another group of Maniot Greeks moved to Corsica, Ancient Greek dialects Greeks in Italy Italiotes Graia Graïke Graecus Griko people Griko language Hellenic civilization Names of the Greeks Cerchiai L. Jannelli L. Longo F. The Greek Cities of Magna Graecia and Sicily, in Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography. 21 June,2005,17,19 GMT18,19 UK, salentinian Peninsula, Greece and Greater Greece. Traditional Griko song performed by Ghetonia, traditional Griko song performed by amateur local group. Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Hellenic Heritage of Southern Italy, the Greeks in the West, genetic signatures of the Hellenic colonisation in southern Italy and Sicily
12.
Third Punic War
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The Third Punic War was the third and last of the Punic Wars fought between the former Phoenician colony of Carthage and the Roman Republic. The Punic Wars were named because of the Roman name for Carthaginians, Punici, the Third Punic War ended Carthages independent existence. Carthage, stripped of allies and territory, was suffering under a huge indemnity of 200 silver talents to be paid every year for 50 years, cicero put a similar statement in the mouth of Cato in his dialogue De Senectute. He was opposed by the senator Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, who favoured a different course that would not destroy Carthage, and who usually prevailed in the debates. Moreover, the retirement of the indemnity removed one of the incentives the Romans had to keep the peace with Carthage – there were no further payments that might be interrupted. The Romans had other reasons to conquer Carthage and her remaining territories, by the middle of the 2nd century BC, the population of the city of Rome was about 400,000 and rising. Feeding the growing populace was becoming a major challenge, the farmlands surrounding Carthage represented the most productive, most accessible and perhaps the most easily obtainable agricultural lands not yet under Roman control. In 151 BC Numidia launched another raid on Carthaginian soil, besieging the Punic town of Oroscopa. As a result, Carthage suffered a defeat and was charged with another fifty year debt to Numidia. ”In 149 BC. Even after this was done the allied Punic city of Utica defected to Rome, the consuls then demanded that Carthage hand over all weapons and armour. After those had been handed over, Rome additionally demanded that the Carthaginians move at least 16 kilometres inland, when the Carthaginians learned of this, they abandoned negotiations and the city was immediately besieged, beginning the Third Punic War. Censorius lost more than 500 men when they were surprised by the Carthaginian cavalry while collecting timber around the Lake of Tunis, a worse disaster fell upon the Romans when their fleet was set ablaze by fire ships which the Carthaginians released upwind. Manilius was replaced by consul Calpurnius Piso Caesonius in 149 after a defeat of the Roman army at Nepheris. Scipio Aemilianuss intervention saved four cohorts trapped in a ravine, Nepheris eventually fell to Scipio in the winter of 147-146. In the autumn of 148, Piso was beaten back while attempting to storm the city of Aspis, undeterred, he laid siege to the town of Hippagreta in the north, but his army was unable to defeat the Punics there before winter and had to retreat. When news of these setbacks reached Rome, he was replaced as consul by Scipio Aemilianus, the Carthaginians endured the siege, starting 149 BC to the spring of 146 BC, when Scipio Aemilianus successfully assaulted the city. Though the Punic citizens offered a strong resistance, they were pushed back by the overwhelming Roman military force. Many Carthaginians died from starvation during the part of the siege
13.
Tunisia
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Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia is the northernmost country in Africa, covering 165,000 square kilometres. Its northernmost point, Cape Angela, is the northernmost point on the African continent and it is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisias population was estimated to be just under 11 million in 2014, Tunisias name is derived from its capital city, Tunis, which is located on Tunisias northeast coast. Geographically, Tunisia contains the end of the Atlas Mountains. Much of the rest of the land is fertile soil. Tunisia is a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic and it is considered to be the only full democracy in the Arab World. It has a human development index. In addition, Tunisia is also a state of the United Nations. Close relations with Europe – in particular with France and with Italy – have been forged through economic cooperation, privatisation, in ancient times, Tunisia was primarily inhabited by Berbers. Phoenician immigration began in the 12th century BC, these immigrants founded Carthage, a major mercantile power and a military rival of the Roman Republic, Carthage was defeated by the Romans in 146 BC. The Romans, who would occupy Tunisia for most of the eight hundred years, introduced Christianity. After several attempts starting in 647, the Arabs conquered the whole of Tunisia by 697, the Ottomans held sway for over three hundred years. The French colonization of Tunisia occurred in 1881, Tunisia gained independence with Habib Bourguiba and declared the Tunisian Republic in 1957. In 2011, the Tunisian Revolution resulted in the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the country voted for parliament again on 26 October 2014, and for President on 23 November 2014. The word Tunisia is derived from Tunis, an urban hub. The present form of the name, with its Latinate suffix -ia, the French derivative Tunisie was adopted in some European languages with slight modifications, introducing a distinctive name to designate the country. Other languages remained untouched, such as the Russian Туни́с and Spanish Túnez, in this case, the same name is used for both country and city, as with the Arabic تونس, and only by context can one tell the difference. The name Tunis can be attributed to different origins and it is generally associated with the Berber root ⵜⵏⵙ, transcribed tns, which means to lay down or encampment
14.
Berber people
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Berbers or Amazighen are an ethnic group indigenous to North Africa. They are distributed in an area stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, historically, they spoke Berber languages, which together form the Berber branch of the Afro-Asiatic family. The majority of Berbers are predominantly Sunni Muslim, the Berber identity is usually wider than language and ethnicity, and encompasses the entire history and geography of North Africa. Berbers are not an entirely homogeneous ethnicity and they encompass a range of phenotypes, societies and ancestries, the unifying forces for the Berber people may be their shared language, or a collective identification with Berber heritage and history. There are some twenty-five to thirty million Berber speakers in North Africa, the number of ethnic Berbers is far greater, as a large part of the Berbers have acquired other languages over the course of many decades or centuries, and no longer speak Berber today. The majority of North Africas population is believed to be Berber in origin, Berbers call themselves some variant of the word i-Mazigh-en, possibly meaning free people or noble men. The name likely had its ancient parallel in the Roman and Greek names for Berbers, dihya or Kahina was a religious and military leader who led a fierce Berber resistance against the Arab-Muslim expansion in Northwest Africa. Kusaila was a leader of the Awraba tribe of the Berber people. A history by a Roman consul in Africa made the first reference of the barbarian to describe Numidia. The use of the term Berber spread in the following the arrival of the Vandals during their major invasions. The English term was introduced in the 19th century, replacing the earlier Barbary, for the historian Abraham Isaac Laredo the name Amazigh could be derived from the name of the ancestor Mezeg which is the translation of biblical ancestor Dedan son of Sheba in the Targum. According to Leo Africanus, Amazigh meant free man, though this has been disputed, further, it also has a cognate in the Tuareg word Amajegh, meaning noble. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines mentioned various tribes with similar names living in Greater Libya in the areas where Berbers were later found, later tribal names differ from the classical sources, but are probably still related to the modern Amazigh. The Meshwesh tribe among them represents the first thus identified from the field, all those names are similar and perhaps foreign renditions of the name used by the Berbers in general for themselves, Imazighen. The Maghreb region in northwestern Africa is believed to have been inhabited by Berbers from at least 10,000 BC, local cave paintings, which have been dated to twelve millennia before present, have been found in the Tassili nAjjer region of southern Algeria. Other rock art has been observed in Tadrart Acacus in the Libyan desert, a Neolithic society, marked by domestication and subsistence agriculture, developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean region of northern Africa between 6000 and 2000 BC. This type of life, richly depicted in the Tassili nAjjer cave paintings of southeastern Algeria, prehistorical Tifinagh scripts were also found in the Oran region. During the pre-Roman era, several independent states existed before the king Masinissa unified the people of Numidia
15.
Roman naming conventions
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The distinguishing feature of Roman nomenclature was the use of both personal names and regular surnames. Throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, other ancient civilizations distinguished individuals through the use of personal names. Consisting of two elements, or themes, these names allowed for hundreds or even thousands of possible combinations. But a markedly different system of nomenclature arose in Italy, where the name was joined by a hereditary surname. Over time, this binomial system expanded to include additional names, the most important of these names was the nomen gentilicium, or simply nomen, a hereditary surname that identified a person as a member of a distinct gens. This was preceded by the praenomen, or forename, a name that served to distinguish between the different members of a family. The origin of this system is lost in prehistory, but it appears to have been established in Latium. In written form, the nomen was usually followed by a filiation, indicating the name of an individuals father. Toward the end of the Roman Republic, this was followed by the name of a citizens voting tribe, lastly, these elements could be followed by additional surnames, or cognomina, which could be either personal or hereditary, or a combination of both. The Roman grammarians came to regard the combination of praenomen, nomen, even then, not all Roman citizens bore cognomina, and until the end of the Republic the cognomen was regarded as somewhat less than an official name. Naming conventions for women also varied from the concept of the tria nomina. By the end of the Republic, the majority of Roman women either did not have or did not use praenomina, most women were called by their nomen alone, or by a combination of nomen and cognomen. For a variety of reasons, the Roman nomenclature system broke down in the following the collapse of imperial authority in the west. The praenomen had already become scarce in written sources during the fourth century, over the course of the sixth century, as Roman institutions and social structures gradually fell away, the need to distinguish between nomina and cognomina likewise vanished. By the end of the century, the people of Italy. But many of the names that had originated as part of the tria nomina were adapted to this usage, as in other cultures, the early peoples of Italy probably used a single name, which later developed into the praenomen. Marcus Terentius Varro wrote that the earliest Italians used simple names, names of this type could be honorific or aspirational, or might refer to deities, physical peculiarities, or circumstances of birth. In this early period, the number of personal names must have quite large
16.
Hellenistic Greece
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During the Hellenistic period the importance of Greece proper within the Greek-speaking world declined sharply. The great centers of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt, cities such as Pergamon, Ephesus, Rhodes and Seleucia were also important, and increasing urbanization of the Eastern Mediterranean was characteristic of the time. The quests of Alexander had a number of consequences for the Greek city-states and it greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks, making the endless conflicts between the cities which had marked the 5th and 4th centuries BC seem petty and unimportant. It led to a steady emigration, particularly of the young and ambitious, the Greeks valued their local independence too much to consider actual unification, but they made several attempts to form federations through which they could hope to reassert their independence. Following Alexanders death a struggle for power broke out among his generals, which resulted in the break-up of his empire, Macedon fell to Cassander, son of Alexanders leading general Antipater, who after several years of warfare made himself master of most of the rest of Greece. He founded a new Macedonian capital at Thessaloniki and was generally a constructive ruler, Cassanders power was challenged by Antigonus, ruler of Anatolia, who promised the Greek cities that he would restore their freedom if they supported him. This led to successful revolts against Cassanders local rulers, in 307 BC, Antigonuss son Demetrius captured Athens and restored its democratic system, which had been suppressed by Alexander. But in 301 BC a coalition of Cassander and the other Hellenistic kings defeated Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus, after Cassanders death in 298 BC, however, Demetrius seized the Macedonian throne and gained control of most of Greece. He was defeated by a coalition of Greek rulers in 285 BC. Lysimachus was in turn defeated and killed in 280 BC, the Macedonian throne then passed to Demetriuss son Antigonus II, who also defeated an invasion of the Greek lands by the Gauls, who at this time were living in the Balkans. The battle against the Gauls united the Antigonids of Macedon and the Seleucids of Antioch, an alliance which was directed against the wealthiest Hellenistic power. Antigonus II ruled until his death in 239 BC, and his family retained the Macedonian throne until it was abolished by the Romans in 146 BC. Their control over the Greek city states was intermittent, however, since other rulers, particularly the Ptolemies, Sparta also remained independent, but generally refused to join any league. In 267 BC, Ptolemy II persuaded the Greek cities to revolt against Antigonus, in became the Chremonidian War. The cities were defeated and Athens lost her independence and her democratic institutions, the Aetolian League was restricted to the Peloponnese, but on being allowed to gain control of Thebes in 245 BC became a Macedonian ally. This marked the end of Athens as a actor, although it remained the largest, wealthiest and most cultivated city in Greece. In 255 BC, Antigonus defeated the Egyptian fleet at Cos and brought the Aegean islands, except Rhodes, in spite of their decreased political power and autonomy, the Greek city state or polis continued to be the basic form of political and social organization in Greece. Classical city states such as Athens and Ephesus grew and even thrived in this period, the Aetolians and the Achaeans developed strong federal states or leagues, which were governed by councils of city representatives and assemblies of league citizens
17.
Plautus
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Titus Maccius Plautus, commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety and he wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus. The word Plautine /ˈplɔːtaɪn/ refers to both Plautuss own works and works similar to or influenced by his, not much is known about Titus Maccius Plautus early life. It is believed that he was born in Sarsina, a town in Emilia Romagna in northern Italy. According to Morris Marples, Plautus worked as a stage-carpenter or scene-shifter in his early years and it is from this work, perhaps, that his love of the theater originated. His acting talent was discovered, and he adopted the names Maccius and Plautus. Tradition holds that he made enough money to go into the nautical business and he is then said to have worked as a manual laborer and to have studied Greek drama—particularly the New Comedy of Menander—in his leisure. His studies allowed him to produce his plays, which were released between c.205 and 184 BC, Plautus attained such a popularity that his name alone became a hallmark of theatrical success. Plautuss comedies are mostly adapted from Greek models for a Roman audience and he reworked the Greek texts to give them a flavour that would appeal to the local Roman audiences. They are the earliest surviving works in Latin literature. Plautuss epitaph read, postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, Comoedia luget, scaena est deserta, since Plautus is dead, Comedy mourns, Deserted is the stage, then Laughter, Jest and Wit, And Melodys countless numbers all together wept. Plautus wrote around 130 plays, of which 20 have survived intact, only short fragments, mostly quotations by later writers of antiquity, survive from 31 other plays. Despite this, the tradition of Plautus is poorer than that of any other ancient dramatist. The chief manuscript of Plautus is a palimpsest, in which Plautus plays had been scrubbed out to make way for Augustines Commentary on the Psalms, the monk who performed this was more successful in some places than others. Only the titles and various fragments of plays have survived. The historical context within which Plautus wrote can be seen, to some extent, in his comments on contemporary events, Plautus was a popular comedic playwright while Roman theatre was still in its infancy and still largely undeveloped. At the same time, the Roman Republic was expanding in power, Plautus was sometimes accused of teaching the public indifference and mockery of the gods. Any character in his plays could be compared to a god, whether to honour a character or to mock him, these references were demeaning to the gods
18.
Greek theatre
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The ancient Greek drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece from c.700 BC. Tragedy, comedy, and the play were the three dramatic genres to emerge there. Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies and allies in order to promote a cultural identity. The word τραγῳδία, from which the tragedy is derived, is a compound of two Greek words, τράγος or goat and ᾠδή meaning song, from ἀείδειν, to sing. This etymology indicates a link with the practices of the ancient Dionysian cults and it is impossible, however, to know with certainty how these fertility rituals became the basis for tragedy and comedy. The classical Greeks valued the power of word, and it was their main method of communication. Bahn and Bahn write, To Greeks the spoken word was a living thing, socrates himself believed that once something was written down, it lost its ability for change and growth. For these reasons, among others, oral storytelling flourished in Greece. Greek tragedy as we know it was created in Athens around the time of 532 BC, being a winner of the first theatrical contest held in Athens, he was the exarchon, or leader, of the dithyrambs performed in and around Attica, especially at the rural Dionysia. By Thespis time, the dithyramb had evolved far away from its cult roots, under the influence of heroic epic, Doric choral lyric and the innovations of the poet Arion, it had become a narrative, ballad-like genre. Thus, Thespiss true contribution to drama is unclear at best, the dramatic performances were important to the Athenians – this is made clear by the creation of a tragedy competition and festival in the City Dionysia. This was organized possibly to foster loyalty among the tribes of Attica, the festival was created roughly around 508 BC. While no drama texts exist from the sixth century BC, we do know the names of three competitors besides Thespis, Choerilus, Pratinas, and Phrynichus, each is credited with different innovations in the field. He won his first competition between 511 BC and 508 BC and he produced tragedies on themes and subjects later exploited in the golden age such as the Danaids, Phoenician Women and Alcestis. He was the first poet we know of to use a historical subject – his Fall of Miletus, produced in 493-2 and he is also thought to be the first to use female characters. This century is regarded as the Golden Age of Greek drama. The centre-piece of the annual Dionysia, which took place once in winter, each submitted three tragedies, plus a satyr play. Beginning in a first competition in 486 BC each playwright submitted a comedy, aristotle claimed that Aeschylus added the second actor, and that Sophocles introduced the third
19.
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
20.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
21.
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
22.
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
23.
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
24.
Manuscript
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A manuscript is any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some automated way. More recently, it is understood to be a written, typed, or word-processed copy of a work. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts, manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, explanatory figures or illustrations. Manuscripts may be in form, scrolls or in codex format. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations. The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS. ms or ms. for singular, and MSS. mss or mss. for plural are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural, by an old convention, it doubles the last letter of the abbreviation to express the plural, just as pp. means pages. Before the invention of printing in China or by moveable type in a printing press in Europe. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls or books, manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived, in India, the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the 19th century. Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, when Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium, each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud. Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Originally, all books were in manuscript form, in China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868, in the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive, private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the typewriter in the late 19th century. In the Philippines, for example, as early as 900AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus and this type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the document in the hot
25.
Mediaeval
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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
26.
Hroswitha of Gandersheim
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Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim was a 10th-century German secular canoness, dramatist and poet who lived at Gandersheim Abbey, established by the Ottonian dynasty. She wrote in Latin, and is considered by some to be the first person since antiquity to compose drama in the Latin West and she has been called the most remarkable woman of her time. Hrotsvithas name appears variously in the forms Hrosvite, Hroswitha, Hroswithe, Rhotswitha, Roswit and is modernized as Roswitha, the name is Old Saxon for strong honour, which she rather adventurously re-interpreted to mean a clarion voice. Hrotsvithas family lineage, at what time she entered the nunnery, there is no direct evidence concerning the dates of her birth, consecration, and death. Hrotsvitha’s biography largely depends on her own accounts or results of inferential reasoning, from the overall disposition of her works, scholars are sure she lived at Gandersheim, and they infer that she was born into the Saxon nobility. Due to the depth of her point of view in her writings, some scholars also infer that she may have personal experience with the love and renunciation that permeates her work. She studied under Rikkardis and Gerberga, a daughter of Duke Henry I of Bavaria and niece of Emperor Otto the Great, Hrotsvitha was noted for her great learning and was introduced to Roman writers by Gerberga. Hrotsvithas work shows familiarity not only with the Church fathers, but also with classical poets, including Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Plautus, several of her plays draw on the so-called apocryphal gospels. Her works form part of the Ottonian Renaissance, under Gerbergas leadership, the Ottonian house monastery of Gandersheim rivalled with the abbeys of Quedlinburg and Memleben for the favour of the emperor. Otto penned a history that one of Hrotsvithas poetical subjects, in her Carmen de Gestis Oddonis Imperatoris. Hrotsvitha believed that Ottos affinity for Italy arose from romances set there similar to the story of Jaufre Rudel, scholars have questioned the authenticity of Hrotsvithas works. Extensive studies attempting to detect the presence or lack of discrepancies or patterns among them can provide evidence of their authenticity. Thus, analysis of Hrotsvithas works are important to the discussion of what influence Hrotsvitha, especially as a woman, Hrosvitha divided her work into three books, A. Liber Primus 1. Verse dedication to the Abbess Gerberg 3, epistola eiusdem ad quosdam sapientes huius libri fautores 3. Poem on a Vision of St. John, another briefer poem in the Codex is not by Hrotsvitha C. Verse dedications to Otto I and Otto II3, Primordia Coenobii Gandeshemensis Hrothsvithas works fell under the categories of legends, comedies, and plays. Cardinal Gasquet said her works have a claim to an eminent place in literature, and do honor to her sex, to the age in which she lived. The Book of Legends is a collection of eight legends, all of which are written in Leonine hexameter—with the exception of Gongolph, which was written in rhymed distichs
27.
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
28.
Andria (comedy)
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Andria is a Roman comedy adapted by Terence from a Greek play by Menander. It was the first play by Terence to be presented publicly and it became the first of Terences plays to be performed post-antiquity, in Florence in 1476. It was adapted by Machiavelli, whose Andria was likewise the authors first venture into playwriting, Simo – Athenian nobleman, father of Pamphilus. Sosia – Simos freedman, party to Simos initial plans but is not seen after the first scene, Pamphilus – Simos son publicly betrothed to Philumena but privately promised to Glycerium. From pan and philos, a friend to all, Chremes – Athenian nobleman friend and peer of Simo, father of Philumena. Charinus – friend of Pamphilus, in love with Philumena, dromo – presumably also a slave of Simos, has two short lines and is undeveloped as a character. Crito – Andrian nobleman, an acquaintance of Chysis and Glycerium, Chrysis – an unseen character who dies before the start of the play, Glyceriums sister. She immigrated to Athens from Andros and after a time of eking out a living at the loom becomes a harlot, Glycerium – an unseen character, beloved of Pamphilus. Pamphilus has promised to marry Glycerium and his father had arranged for him to marry Philumena. However, following Pamphilus behaviour at Chrysis funeral, Chremes withdraws his permission for the union. Wishing to publicly shame his son for his dalliance with a woman of low birth, Simo pretends that not only will the match still go ahead but that it is scheduled for that same day. Pamphilus, on the advice of Davus, who has learnt of Simos scheme, Simo however then persuades Chremes to again accede to giving his daughter away. Davus faces the wrath of Pamphilus, Charinus and Simo. The situation is saved by the arrival of a stranger from Andros. He tells the protagonists that Glycerium was not Chrysis natural sister and she had been left in her familys care when her uncle Phania, while searching for his lost brother, was shipwrecked on Andros and died. Chremes reveals that Phania was his brother and therefore he is Glyceriums true father and he gives Glyceriums hand in marriage to Pamphilus which leaves Philumena free to marry Charinus and absolves Davus from fault. Terences attitude towards prologues in general is displayed in this his first play. In essence it is an anti-prologue, railing against the concept, Simo tells his freedman Sosia that the nuptials that he is preparing for Pamphilus are a sham
29.
Adelphoe
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Adelphoe is a play by Roman playwright Terence, adapted partly from plays by Menander and Diphilus. It was first performed in 160 BC at the games of Aemilius Paulus. Exploring the best form of child-rearing, the play inspired Molières The School for Husbands, adelphoe is often considered Terences masterpiece. Demea, father to Aeschinus and Ctesipho, decides to separate his children, demea is a strict authoritarian father, and Micio is permissive and democratic. Ctesipho falls in love and Aeschinus decides to steal the girl away, demea and Micio spar over who did a better job at raising their sons. At the end of the play, Micio marries Sostrata and Aeschinus marries Pamphila. com The play translated into English on Perseus Review in BMCR of 2010 translation by David Christenson
30.
Strasbourg
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Strasbourg is the capital and largest city of the Grand Est region of France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany in the region of Alsace. In 2014, the city proper had 276,170 inhabitants, Strasbourgs metropolitan area had a population of 773,347 in 2013, making it the ninth largest metro area in France and home to 13% of the Grand Est regions inhabitants. The transnational Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau had a population of 915,000 inhabitants in 2014, Strasbourg is the seat of several European institutions, such as the Council of Europe and the Eurocorps, as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. The city is also the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, Strasbourgs historic city centre, the Grande Île, was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honour was placed on an entire city centre. The largest Islamic place of worship in France, the Strasbourg Grand Mosque, was inaugurated by French Interior Minister Manuel Valls on 27 September 2012. Economically, Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as a hub of road, rail, the port of Strasbourg is the second largest on the Rhine after Duisburg, Germany. Before the 5th century, the city was known as Argantorati, a Celtic Gaulish name Latinized first as Argentorate, after the 5h century, the city became known by a completely different name Gallicized as Strasbourg. That name is of Germanic origin and means Town of roads, Strasbourg is situated on the eastern border of France with Germany. This border is formed by the River Rhine, which forms the eastern border of the modern city. The historic core of Strasbourg however lies on the Grande Île in the River Ill, which flows parallel to, and roughly 4 kilometres from. The natural courses of the two eventually join some distance downstream of Strasbourg, although several artificial waterways now connect them within the city. This section of the Rhine valley is an axis of north-south travel, with river traffic on the Rhine itself. The city is some 400 kilometres east of Paris, in spite of its position far inland, Strasbourgs climate is classified as Oceanic, with warm, relatively sunny summers and cold, overcast winters. Precipitation is elevated from mid-spring to the end of summer, but remains largely constant throughout the year, on average, snow falls 30 days per year. The highest temperature recorded was 38.5 °C in August 2003. The lowest temperature recorded was −23.4 °C in December 1938. Nonetheless, the disappearance of heavy industry on both banks of the Rhine, as well as effective measures of traffic regulation in and around the city have reduced air pollution
31.
Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
32.
St Albans Abbey
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St Albans Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban, and referred to locally as the Abbey, is a Church of England cathedral in St Albans, England. Much of its dates from Norman times. It ceased to be an abbey in the 16th century and became a cathedral in 1877, probably founded in the 8th century, the present building is Norman or Romanesque architecture of the 11th century, with Gothic and 19th-century additions. According to Bede, whose account of the life is the most elaborate, Alban lived in Verulamium. At that time Christians began to suffer cruel persecution, Alban met a Christian priest fleeing from persecutors, and sheltered him in his house for a number of days. Alban was so impressed with the faith and piety that he soon converted to Christianity. Eventually Roman soldiers came to seize the priest, but Alban put on his cloak, Alban was brought before a judge and was sentenced to beheading. It was at this place that his head was struck off, immediately one of the executioners delivered the fatal stroke, his eyes fell out and dropped to the ground alongside Albans head. In later legends, it is said that Albans head rolled downhill, St Albans Cathedral stands near the supposed site of Albans martyrdom and a well does exist at the bottom of the hill, Holywell Hill. However, the dates from the 19th century and the name of the street may derive from the Halywell river. The date of Albans execution is a matter of debate and is given as circa 250 — scholars suggest dates of 209,254 or 304. The tomb of St Amphibalus is in the Cathedral, a memoria over the execution point and holding the remains of Alban existed at the site from the mid-4th century, Bede mentions a church and Gildas a shrine. Bishop Germanus of Auxerre visited in 429 and took a portion of the apparently still bloody earth away, the style of this structure is unknown, the 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris claimed that the Saxons destroyed the building in 586. Offa II of Mercia, who ruled in the 8th century, is said to have founded the Benedictine abbey, all later religious structures are dated from the foundation of Offas abbey in 793. The abbey was built on Holmhurst Hill—now Holywell Hill—across the River Ver from the ruins of Verulamium, again there is no information to the form of the first abbey. The abbey was sacked by the Danes around 890 and, despite Pariss claims. There was an intention to rebuild the abbey in 1005 when Abbot Ealdred was licensed to remove building material from Verulamium, with the town resting on clay and chalk the only tough stone is flint. This was used with a mortar and then either plastered over or left bare
33.
Bodleian Library
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The Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 12 million items, it is the second largest library in Britain after the British Library, known to Oxford scholars as Bodley or the Bod, it operates principally as a reference library and, in general, documents may not be removed from the reading rooms. They do, however, participate in OLIS, the Bodleian Libraries online union catalogue, much of the librarys archives were digitized and put online for public access in 2015. Since the 19th century a number of stores have been built. Before being granted access to the library, new readers are required to agree to a formal declaration and this declaration was traditionally an oral oath, but is now usually made by signing a letter to a similar effect. Ceremonies in which readers recite the declaration are still performed for those who wish to take them, external readers are still required to recite the declaration orally prior to admission. The Bodleian Admissions Office has amassed a collection of translations of the declaration allowing those who are not native English speakers to recite it in their first language. Whilst the Bodleian Library, in its current incarnation, has a history dating back to 1602. The first purpose-built library known to have existed in Oxford was founded in the century under the will of Thomas Cobham. This small collection of chained books was situated above the side of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin on the High Street. A suitable room was built above the Divinity School. This room continues to be known as Duke Humfreys Library, after 1488, the university stopped spending money on the librarys upkeep and acquisitions, and manuscripts began to go unreturned to the library. The late sixteenth century saw the library go through a period of decline, the furniture was sold. During the reign of Edward VI, there was a purge of superstitious manuscripts, six of the Oxford University dons were tasked with helping Bodley in refitting the library in March 1658. Duke Humfrey’s Library was refitted, and Bodley donated a number of his own books to furnish it, the library was formally re-opened on 8 November 1602 under the name “Bodleian Library”. There were around two thousand books in the library at this time, with an ornate Benefactors Register displayed prominently, in 1605, Francis Bacon gave the library a copy of The Advancement of Learning and described the Bodleian as an Ark to save learning from deluge. At this time, there were few books written in English held in the library, Thomas James suggested that Bodley should ask the Stationers Company to provide a copy of all books printed to the Bodleian. In 1610, Bodley made an agreement with the Stationers Company in London to put a copy of every book registered with them in the library, the Bodleian collection grew so fast that the building was expanded between 1610–1612, and again in 1634–1637
34.
The 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
35.
Neoclassicism
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The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th, European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c.1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Baroque and Rococo styles. Each neo-classicism selects some models among the range of classics that are available to it. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity, the Rococo art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Woods The Ruins of Palmyra. While the movement is described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism. The case of the main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology, the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe, Neoclassicism in each art implies a particular canon of a classical model. In English, the term Neoclassicism is used primarily of the arts, the similar movement in English literature. This, which had been dominant for decades, was beginning to decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar, in music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and Neoclassicism is used of 20th-century developments. Ingress coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, much Neoclassical painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann. The work of artists, who could not easily be described as insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally Neoclassical style. Unlike Carstens unrealized schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were numerous and profitable and his main subject matter was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more stimulated by the ancient than the modern. Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with the success of Jacques-Louis Davids Oath of the Horatii at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal government, David managed to combine an idealist style with drama and forcefulness. David rapidly became the leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a politician with control of government patronage in art
36.
John Adams
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John Adams was an American patriot who served as the second President of the United States and the first Vice President. He was a lawyer, diplomat, statesman, political theorist, and, as a Founding Father and he was also a dedicated diarist and correspondent, particularly with his wife and closest advisor Abigail. He collaborated with his cousin, revolutionary leader Samuel Adams, Adams was a delegate from Massachusetts to the Continental Congress, where he played a leading role in persuading Congress to declare independence. He assisted Thomas Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence in 1776, as a diplomat in Europe, he helped negotiate the eventual peace treaty with Great Britain, and acquired vital governmental loans from Amsterdam bankers. Adams was the author of the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780 which influenced American political theory. Adamss credentials as a revolutionary secured for him two terms as President George Washingtons vice president and also his own election in 1796 as the second president. In his single term as president, he encountered fierce criticism from the Jeffersonian Republicans, as well as the dominant faction in his own Federalist Party, led by his rival Alexander Hamilton. Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts, and built up the army, the major accomplishment of his presidency was a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the face of Hamiltons opposition. Due to his strong posture on defense, Adams is often called the father of the American Navy and he was the first U. S. president to reside in the executive mansion, now known as the White House. In 1800, Adams lost re-election to Thomas Jefferson and retired to Massachusetts and he eventually resumed his friendship with Jefferson upon the latters own retirement by initiating a correspondence which lasted fourteen years. He and his wife established a family of politicians, diplomats, Adams was the father of John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States. He died on the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Modern historians in the aggregate have favorably ranked his administration, John Adams was born on October 30,1735 to John Adams Sr. and Susanna Boylston. He had two brothers, Peter and Elihu. Adams birthplace was then in Braintree, Massachusetts, and is preserved at Adams National Historical Park, Adams mother was from a leading medical family of present-day Brookline, Massachusetts. His father was a Congregationalist deacon, a farmer, a cordwainer, the Deacon also served as a selectman and supervised the building of schools and roads. Adams often praised his father and recalled their close relationship, though raised in modest surroundings, Adams felt an acute responsibility to live up to his familys heritage of reverence. Journalist Richard Brookhiser wrote that Adams Puritan ancestors believed they lived in the Bible, England under the Stuarts was Egypt, they were Israel fleeing
37.
John Quincy Adams
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John Quincy Adams was an American statesman who served as a diplomat, United States Senator, member of the House of Representatives, and was the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican and he was the son of President John Adams and Abigail Adams and thus contributed to the formation of the Adams political family. Adams shaped U. S. foreign policy using his ardently nationalist commitment to U. S. republican values, as a diplomat, Adams played an important role in negotiating key treaties, most notably the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. As Secretary of State, he negotiated with Britain over the United States northern border with Canada, negotiated with Spain the annexation of Florida, historians generally concur that he was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history. Adams was elected president in a close and controversial four-way contest in 1824, as president he sought to modernize the American economy and promote education. Adams enacted a part of his agenda and paid off much of the national debt, however he was stymied time and again by a Congress controlled by opponents, and his lack of patronage networks helped politicians sabotage him. He lost his 1828 bid for re-election to Andrew Jackson, after leaving office, he was elected as U. S. Representative from Massachusetts in 1830, serving for the last 17 years of his life with greater acclaim than he had achieved as president, animated by his growing revulsion against slavery, Adams became a leading opponent of the Slave Power. Adams predicted the Unions dissolution over slavery, and in such a case, historians have in the aggregate ranked Adams as the 21st most successful president. John Quincy Adams was born on July 11,1767, to John Adams and he was named for his mothers maternal grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, after whom Quincy, Massachusetts, is named. Young Adams was educated by private tutors – his cousin James Thaxter and his fathers law clerk and he soon began to exhibit his literary skills in 1779, when he initiated a diary which he kept until just before he died in 1848. The diary comprised an unprecedented fifty volumes, representing one of the most extensive, much of Adams youth was spent accompanying his father overseas. He accompanied his father on diplomatic missions to France from 1778 until 1779, Adams acquired an education at institutions such as Leiden University. He matriculated in Leiden on January 10,1781, for nearly three years, beginning at the age of 14, he accompanied Francis Dana as a secretary on a mission to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to obtain recognition of the new United States. He spent time in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark and, in 1804, during these years overseas, Adams became fluent in French and Dutch and became familiar with German and other European languages. Though Adams enjoyed Europe, he and his family decided he needed to return to the United States to complete his education and he entered Harvard College, graduated in 1787 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and was elected by Phi Beta Kappa. Adams, mainly with the influence of his father, had excelled in studies and reached fluency in Latin. Upon entering Harvard he had already translated Virgil, Horace, Plutarch, after graduating from Harvard, he studied law with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts from 1787 to 1789
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Sellar, William Young; Harrison, Ernest (1911). "Terence". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 640.
