1.
Aion (deity)
–
Aion is a Hellenistic deity associated with time, the orb or circle encompassing the universe, and the zodiac. The time represented by Aion is unbounded, in contrast to Chronos as empirical time divided into past, present and he is thus a god of eternity, associated with mystery religions concerned with the afterlife, such as the mysteries of Cybele, Dionysus, Orpheus, and Mithras. In Latin the concept of the deity may appear as Aevum or Saeculum and he is typically in the company of an earth or mother goddess such as Tellus or Cybele, as on the Parabiago plate. Aion is usually identified as the nude or seminude youth within a circle representing the zodiac, examples include two Roman mosaics from Sentinum and Hippo Regius in Roman Africa, and the Parabiago plate. But because he represents time as a cycle, he may also be imagined as an old man, the imagery of the twining serpent is connected to the hoop or wheel through the ouroboros, a ring formed by a snake holding the tip of its tail in its mouth. The 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius notes that the image of a snake biting its tail represents the nature of the year. Martianus Capella identified Aion with Cronus, whose name caused him to be conflated with Chronos. Martianus presents Cronus-Aion as the consort of Rhea as identified with Physis and this deity is represented as the leontocephaline, the winged lion-headed male figure whose nude torso is entwined by a serpent. He typically holds a sceptre, keys, or a thunderbolt, the figure of Time played a considerable, though to us completely obscure, role in Mithraic theology. Aion is identified with Dionysus in Christian and Neoplatonic writers, euripides, however, calls Aion the son of Zeus. The Suda identifies Aion with Osiris, in Ptolemaic Alexandria, at the site of a dream oracle, the Hellenistic syncretic god Serapis was identified as Aion Plutonius. The epithet Plutonius marks functional aspects shared with Pluto, consort of Persephone, epiphanius says that at Alexandria Aions birth from Kore the Virgin was celebrated January 6, On this day and at this hour the Virgin gave birth to Aion. The date, which coincides with Epiphany, brought new years celebrations to a close, the Alexandrian Aion may be a form of Osiris-Dionysus, reborn annually. His image was marked with crosses on his hands, knees, Roman coins associate both Aion and Aeternitas with the phoenix as a symbol of rebirth and cyclical renewal. Aion was among the virtues and divine personifications that were part of late Hellenic discourse, aeon Interpretatio graeca Zurvanism Chronos Kákosy, László. AIΩN in der Literatur der Kaiserzeit, verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Suda On Line, entries naming Aion Views of the Aion mosaic at Munich Glyptothek Images of Aion in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
Aion (deity)
–
Mosaic floor depicting Aion and
Tellus in richly-patterned framing (
Glyptothek, Munich)
Aion (deity)
–
Drawing of the leontocephaline found at the mithraeum of C. Valerius Heracles and sons, dedicated 190 AD at Ostia Antica, Italy (CIMRM 312)
Aion (deity)
–
Detail from the Parabiago plate depicting Aion; Tellus (not shown) appears at the bottom of the plate, which centers on the chariot of Cybele
2.
Terra (mythology)
–
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Tellus Mater or Terra Mater is a goddess of the earth. Although Tellus and Terra are hardly distinguishable during the Imperial era, the scholar Varro lists Tellus as one of the di selecti, the twenty principal gods of Rome, and one of the twelve agricultural deities. She is regularly associated with Ceres in rituals pertaining to the earth, the attributes of Tellus were the cornucopia, or bunches of flowers or fruit. Her male complement was a sky god such as Caelus or a form of Jupiter, a male counterpart Tellumo or Tellurus is mentioned, though rarely. Her Greek counterpart is Gaia, and among the Etruscans she was Cel, the word tellus, telluris is also a Latin common noun for land, territory, earth, as is terra, earth, ground. In literary uses, particularly in poetry, it may be ambiguous as to whether the goddess and this article preserves the usage of the ancient sources regarding Tellus or Terra. The two words terra and tellus are thought to derive from the formulaic phrase tersa tellus, meaning dry land, the etymology of tellus is uncertain, it is perhaps related to Sanskrit talam, plain ground. The 4th-century AD Latin commentator Servius distinguishes between tellus and terra in usage, Terra, he says, is properly used of the elementum, earth as one of the four classical elements with air, water, and fire. Tellus is the goddess, whose name can be substituted for her functional sphere the earth, just as the name Vulcanus is used for fire, Ceres for produce, Tellus thus refers to the guardian deity of Earth and by extension the globe itself. Tellus may be an aspect of the numen called Dea Dia by the Arval priests, Varro identifies Terra Mater with Ceres, Not without cause was the Earth called Mater and Ceres. It was believed that those who cultivated her led a pious and useful life, ovid distinguishes between Tellus as the locus of growth, and Ceres as its causa. Mater, the Latin word for mother, is used as an honorific for goddesses, including Vesta. Mother therefore expresses the respect that one would owe a mother, though Tellus, the Temple of Tellus was the most prominent landmark of the Carinae, a fashionable neighborhood on the Oppian Hill. It was near homes belonging to Pompey and to the Cicero family, the temple was the result of a votum made in 268 BC by Publius Sempronius Sophus when an earthquake struck during a battle with the Picenes. Others say it was built by the Roman people and it occupied the former site of a house belonging to Spurius Cassius, which had been torn down when he was executed in 485 BC for attempting to make himself king. The temple constructed by Sophus more than two centuries later was most likely a rebuilding of the peoples, the anniversary of its dedication was December 13. A mysterious object called the magmentarium was stored in the temple, a statue of Quintus Cicero, set up by his brother Marcus, was among those that stood on the temple grounds. Cicero claims that the proximity of his property caused some Romans to assume he had a responsibility to maintain the temple
Terra (mythology)
–
Syncretic Tellus reclining with four children, probably the Seasons, accompanied by
Aion -
Uranus within a
zodiac wheel (
mosaic from
Sentinum, AD 200-250,
Glyptothek)
Terra (mythology)
–
Dedicatory inscription to Terra Mater fulfilling a vow (
votum), 1st century AD
Terra (mythology)
–
Detail from a
sarcophagus depicting a Mother Earth figure (3rd century AD)
Terra (mythology)
–
The attributes of the central figure on this panel of the Ara Pacis mark her as an earth and mother goddess, often identified as Tellus
3.
Gaia (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of the Earth and one of the Greek primordial deities. Gaia is the mother of all life, the primal Mother Earth goddess. She is the parent of Uranus, from whose sexual union she bore the Titans and the Giants. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra, the Greek word γαῖα is a collateral form of γῆ meaning Earth, a word of uncertain origin. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin, in Mycenean Greek Ma-ka also contains the root ga-. Gaia is the personification of the Earth and these are her offspring as related in various myths, some are related consistently, some are mentioned only in minor variants of myths, and others are related in variants that are considered to reflect a confusion of the subject or association. *Some said that those marked with a * were born from Uranus blood when Cronus castrated him, hesiods Theogony tells how, after Chaos, wide-bosomed Gaia arose to be the everlasting seat of the immortals who possess Olympus above, and the depths of Tartarus below. He then tells that Gaia brought forth her equal Uranus to cover her on every side, Gaia also bore the hills, and Pontus, without sweet union of love. After them was born Cronos the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, as each of the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires were born, Uranus hid them in a secret place within Gaia, causing her great pain. She created a grey flint sickle, and Cronus used the sickle to castrate his father Uranus as he approached Gaia to have sex with her. From Uranus spilled blood, Gaia produced the Erinyes, the Giants, from the testicles of Uranus in the sea came forth Aphrodite. By her son Pontus, Gaia bore the sea-deities Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia. Because Cronus had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overthrown by one of his children, but when Rhea was pregnant with her youngest child, Zeus, she sought help from Gaia and Uranus. When Zeus was born, Rhea gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling-clothes in his place, which Cronus swallowed, with the help of Gaias advice, Zeus defeated the Titans. But afterwards, Gaia, in union with Tartarus, bore the youngest of her sons Typhon, according to Hyginus, Earth, along with Heaven and Sea were the children of Aether and Day. According to Apollodorus, Gaia and Tartarus were the parents of Echidna, Zeus hid Elara, one of his lovers, from Hera by stowing her under the earth. His son by Elara, the giant Tityos, is sometimes said to be a son of Gaia. Gaia is believed by some sources to be the deity behind the Oracle at Delphi
Gaia (mythology)
–
Gaia, by
Anselm Feuerbach (1875)
Gaia (mythology)
–
Gaia hands her newborn, Erichthonius, to
Athena as Hephaestus watches - an Attic
red-figure stamnos, 470–460 BC
Gaia (mythology)
–
Aion and Gaia with four children, perhaps the personified seasons, mosaic from a Roman villa in
Sentinum, first half of the third century BC, (
Munich Glyptothek, Inv. W504)
4.
Mosaic
–
A mosaic is a piece of art or image made from the assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It is often used in art or as interior decoration. Most mosaics are made of small, flat, roughly square, pieces of stone or glass of different colors, some, especially floor mosaics, are made of small rounded pieces of stone, and called pebble mosaics. Others are made of other materials, mosaics have a long history, starting in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC. Pebble mosaics were made in Tiryns in Mycenean Greece, mosaics with patterns and pictures became widespread in classical times, Early Christian basilicas from the 4th century onwards were decorated with wall and ceiling mosaics. Mosaic fell out of fashion in the Renaissance, though artists like Raphael continued to practise the old technique, Roman and Byzantine influence led Jews to decorate 5th and 6th century synagogues in the Middle East with floor mosaics. Mosaic was widely used on buildings and palaces in early Islamic art, including Islams first great religious building, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Mosaic went out of fashion in the Islamic world after the 8th century, modern mosaics are made by professional artists, street artists, and as a popular craft. Many materials other than stone and ceramic tesserae may be employed, including shells, glass. The earliest known examples of made of different materials were found at a temple building in Abra, Mesopotamia. They consist of pieces of colored stones, shells and ivory, excavations at Susa and Chogha Zanbil show evidence of the first glazed tiles, dating from around 1500 BC. However, mosaic patterns were not used until the times of Sassanid Empire, mythological subjects, or scenes of hunting or other pursuits of the wealthy, were popular as the centrepieces of a larger geometric design, with strongly emphasized borders. Pliny the Elder mentions the artist Sosus of Pergamon by name, describing his mosaics of the left on a floor after a feast. Both of these themes were widely copied, most recorded names of Roman mosaic workers are Greek, suggesting they dominated high quality work across the empire, no doubt most ordinary craftsmen were slaves. Splendid mosaic floors are found in Roman villas across North Africa, in such as Carthage. The tiny tesserae allowed very fine detail, and an approach to the illusionism of painting, often small panels called emblemata were inserted into walls or as the highlights of larger floor-mosaics in coarser work. The normal technique was opus tessellatum, using larger tesserae, which was laid on site, there was a distinct native Italian style using black on a white background, which was no doubt cheaper than fully coloured work. In Rome, Nero and his architects used mosaics to cover surfaces of walls and ceilings in the Domus Aurea, built 64 AD
Mosaic
–
Irano-Roman floor mosaic detail from the palace of
Shapur I at
Bishapur.
Mosaic
–
Cone mosaic courtyard from
Uruk in
Mesopotamia 3000 BC
Mosaic
–
Ancient Greek mosaic of a deer hunt, in the House of the Abduction of Helen at
Pella, late 4th century BC
Mosaic
–
Roman mosaic of
Ulysses, from Carthage. Now in the
Bardo Museum,
Tunisia
5.
Sky
–
The sky is everything that lies above the surface of the Earth, including the atmosphere and outer space. In the field of astronomy, the sky is called the celestial sphere. This is viewed from Earths surface as a dome where the Sun, stars, planets. The celestial sphere is divided into regions called constellations. Usually, the sky is used informally as the point of view from the Earths surface, however. In some cases, such as in discussing the weather, the sky refers to only the lower, during daylight, the sky appears to be blue because air scatters blue sunlight more than it scatters red. At night, the sky appears to be a dark surface or region scattered with stars. During the day, the Sun can be seen in the sky obscured by clouds. In the night sky the Moon, planets and stars are visible in the sky, some of the natural phenomena seen in the sky are clouds, rainbows, and aurorae. Lightning and precipitation can also be seen in the sky during storms, birds, insects, aircraft, and kites are often considered to fly in the sky. Due to human activities, smog during the day and light pollution during the night are often seen above large cities. Except for light that directly from the sun, most of the light in the day sky is caused by scattering. The scattering due to molecule sized particles is greater in the forward and backward directions than it is in the lateral direction. Scattering is significant for light at all visible wavelengths but is stronger at the end of the visible spectrum, meaning that the scattered light is bluer than its source. The remaining sunlight, having lost some of its wavelength components. Scattering also occurs more strongly in clouds. Individual water droplets exposed to light will create a set of colored rings. If a cloud is thick enough, scattering from water droplets will wash out the set of colored rings
Sky
–
Crepuscular rays of light shining through clouds in the sky
Sky
–
The Crescent Moon remains visible just moments before Sunrise
Sky
–
Aurora borealis over Bear Lake, Alaska
Sky
–
The
Milky Way can be seen as a large band across the night sky, and is distorted into an arch in this 360° panorama.
6.
Titan (mythology)
–
In Greek mythology, the Titans and Titanesses were members of the second generation of divine beings, descending from the primordial deities and preceding the Olympian deities. Based on Mount Othrys, the Titans most famously included the first twelve children of the primordial Gaia and they were giant deities of incredible strength, who ruled during the legendary Golden Age, and also comprised the first pantheon of Greek deities. The first twelve Titans comprised the females Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea, and Themis and the males Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius, like Cronus overthrowing his father Uranus, the Titans were overthrown by Cronus children, in the Titanomachy. The Greeks may have borrowed this mytheme from the Ancient Near East, Greeks of the classical age knew of several poems about the war between the Olympians and Titans. The dominant one, and the one that has survived, was in the Theogony attributed to Hesiod. A lost epic, Titanomachia was mentioned in passing in an essay On Music that was attributed to Plutarch. The Titans also played a prominent role in the poems attributed to Orpheus, although only scraps of the Orphic narratives survive, they show interesting differences with the Hesiodic tradition. Sometimes the elders are supplanted, and sometimes the rebels lose and are either cast out of power entirely or incorporated into the pantheon, the Titanomachy lasted for ten years. The Titans were imprisoned in Tartarus after the war had ended, Tartarus is the deepest spot known in the Underworld, where the most evil beings would be cast into to be tortured for all eternity. Hesiod does not have the last word on the Titans, surviving fragments of poetry ascribed to Orpheus preserve some variations on the myth. In such text, Zeus does not simply set upon his father violently, instead, Rhea spreads out a banquet for Cronus so that he becomes drunk upon fermented honey. Rather than being consigned to Tartarus, Cronus is dragged—still drunk—to the cave of Nyx, another myth concerning the Titans that is not in Hesiod revolves around Dionysus. At some point in his reign, Zeus decides to give up the throne in favor of the infant Dionysus, who like the infant Zeus, is guarded by the Kouretes. The Titans decide to slay the child and claim the throne for themselves, they paint their faces white with gypsum, distract Dionysus with toys, then him and boil. Zeus, enraged, slays the Titans with his thunderbolt, Athena preserves the heart in a gypsum doll and this story is told by the poets Callimachus and Nonnus, who call this Dionysus Zagreus, and in a number of Orphic texts, which do not. Pindar, Plato, and Oppian refer offhandedly to the Titanic nature of humans, according to them, the body is the titanic part, while soul is the divine part of humans. Other early writers imply that humanity was born out of the malevolent blood shed by the Titans in their war against Zeus, Martin Litchfield West also asserts this in relation to shamanistic initiatory rites of early Greek religious practices. Beekes connects the word with τιτώ, burket, Walter, The Orientalizing Revolution, Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age, Harvard University Press,1995
Titan (mythology)
–
Rhea, a Titan daughter of the earth goddess
Gaia, was both sister and wife to
Cronus.
7.
Cyclops
–
A cyclops, in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the center of his forehead. The word cyclops literally means round-eyed or circle-eyed, other accounts were written by the playwright Euripides, poet Theocritus and Roman epic poet Virgil. In Hesiods Theogony, Zeus releases three cyclopes from the pit of Tartarus. They provide Zeus thunderbolt, Hades helmet of invisibility, and Poseidons trident, in a famous episode of Homers Odyssey, the hero Odysseus encounters the cyclops Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and Thoosa, who lives with his fellow cyclopes in a distant country. The connection between the two groups has been debated in antiquity and by modern scholars and it is upon Homers account that Euripides and Virgil based their accounts of the mythical creatures. Strabo describes another group of seven Lycian cyclopes, also known as Bellyhands because they earned from their handicraft and they had built the walls of Tiryns and perhaps the caverns and the labyrinths near Nauplia, which are called cyclopean. All the other sources of literature about the cyclopes describe the cyclops Polyphemus, various ancient Greek and Roman authors wrote about cyclopes. Hesiod described them as three brothers who were primordial giants. ”However others suggest that Homer’s Polyphemus may have had two eyes and it is pointed out that in the Odyssey when the actual blinding occurs there is a reference to plural brows and lids. It is also noted that the first artistic or graphic depiction of the episode appears on an amphora that was created by the Polyphemos Painter c. 680-650 B. C. and the artist shows the blinding stake has two prongs, as two eyes are being targeted. In the Theogony by Hesiod, the cyclopes – Brontes, Steropes and the bright Arges – were the sons of Uranus and Gaia and brothers of the Hekatonkheires. As such, they were blood-related to the Titan and Olympian gods and they were giants with a single eye in the middle of their forehead and a foul disposition. According to Hesiod, they were strong and stubborn, collectively they eventually became synonyms for brute strength and power, and their name was invoked in connection with massive masonry. They were often pictured at their forge, Uranus, fearing their strength, locked them in Tartarus. Cronus, another son of Uranus and Gaia, later freed the cyclopes, along with the Hekatonkhires, Cronus then placed them back in Tartarus, where they remained, guarded by the female monster Campe, until freed by Zeus. They fashioned thunderbolts for Zeus to use as weapons, and helped him overthrow Cronus, the lightning bolts, which became Zeus main weapons, were forged by all three cyclopes, in that Arges added brightness, Brontes added thunder, and Steropes added lightning. According to a hymn of Callimachus, they were Hephaestus helpers at the forge, the cyclopes were said to have built the cyclopean fortifications at Tiryns and Mycenae in the Peloponnese. The noises proceeding from the heart of volcanoes were attributed to their operations, Euripides only extant comedy is his play Cyclops, which takes place on the island of Sicily near the volcano Mount Etna
Cyclops
–
The Cyclops, gouache and oil by
Odilon Redon, undated (
Kröller-Müller Museum)
Cyclops
–
Polyphemus, by
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein, 1802 (Landesmuseum Oldenburg)
Cyclops
–
Statue of a Cyclops at the Natural History Museum in London
Cyclops
–
Syracuse,
Italy, -
Museo archeologico regionale Paolo Orsi - Elephas Falconeri
8.
Erinyes
–
In Greek mythology the Erinyes, also known as the Furies, were female chthonic deities of vengeance, they were sometimes referred to as infernal goddesses. A formulaic oath in the Iliad invokes them as the Erinyes, walter Burkert suggests they are an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath. They correspond to the Dirae in Roman mythology, the Roman writer Maurus Servius Honoratus wrote that they are called Eumenides in hell, Furiae on earth, and Dirae in heaven. According to variant accounts, they emerged from a more primordial level—from Nyx. Their number is usually left indeterminate, Virgil, probably working from an Alexandrian source, recognized three, Alecto or Alekto, Megaera, and Tisiphone or Tilphousia, all of whom appear in the Aeneid. Dante Alighieri followed Virgil in depicting the same three-character triptych of Erinyes, the word Erinys in the singular and as a theonym is first attested in Mycenaean Greek, written in Linear B, in the following forms,
Erinyes
–
Orestes at
Delphi flanked by
Athena and
Pylades among the Erinyes and
priestesses of the
oracle, perhaps including
Pythia behind the tripod - Paestan
red-figured bell-krater, c. 330 BC
Erinyes
–
The Remorse of
Orestes, where he is surrounded by the Erinyes, by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1862
9.
Giants (Greek mythology)
–
According to Hesiod, the Giants were the offspring of Gaia, born from the blood that fell when Uranus was castrated by his Titan son Cronus. Archaic and Classical representations show Gigantes as man-sized hoplites fully human in form, later representations show Gigantes with snakes for legs. In later traditions, the Giants were often confused with other opponents of the Olympians, particularly the Titans, the vanquished Giants were said to be buried under volcanoes and to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The name Gigantes is usually taken to imply earthborn, and Hesiods Theogony makes this explicit by having the Giants be the offspring of Gaia, According to Hesiod, Gaia mating with Uranus bore many children, the first generation of Titans, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers. But Uranus hated his children and, as soon as they were born, he imprisoned them inside of Gaia, and so Gaia made a sickle of adamant which she gave to Cronus, the youngest of her Titan sons, and hid him to wait in ambush. And when Uranus came to lie with Gaia, Cronus castrated his father, and the drops that gushed forth received. From these same drops of blood also came the Erinyes and the Meliai, there are three brief mentions of Gigantes in Homers Odyssey, though its not entirely clear that Homer and Hesiod understood the term to mean the same thing. Elsewhere in the Odyssey, Alcinous says that the Phaiakians, like the Cyclopes, and Odysseus describes the Laestrygonians as more like Giants than men. Pausanias, the 2nd century AD geographer, read these lines of the Odyssey to mean that, for Homer, the 6th–5th century BC lyric poet Bacchylides calls the Giants sons of the Earth. Later the term became a common epithet of the Giants. Hyginus has the Giants being the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, Homer describes the Giant king Eurymedon as great-hearted, and his people as insolent and froward. Hesiod calls the Giants strong and great which may or may not be a reference to their size, though a possible later addition, the Theogony also has the Giants born with gleaming armour, holding long spears in their hands. Other early sources characterize the Giants by their excesses, Pindar describes the excessive violence of the Giant Porphyrion as having provoked beyond all measure. Bacchylides calls the Giants arrogant, saying that they were destroyed by Hybris, Homers comparison of the Giants to the Laestrygonians is suggestive of similarities between the two races. Rocks huge as a man could lift, certainly possessed great strength, over time, descriptions of the Giants make them less human, more monstrous and more gigantic. According to Apollodorus the Giants had great size and strength, an appearance, with long hair and beards. Ovid makes them serpent-footed with a hundred arms, and Nonnus has them serpent-haired, the most important divine struggle in Greek mythology was the Gigantomachy, the battle fought between the Giants and the Olympian gods for supremacy of the cosmos. It is primarily for battle that the Giants are known
Giants (Greek mythology)
–
Poseidon (left) holding a trident, with the island
Nisyros on his shoulder, battling a Giant (probably
Polybotes),
red-figure cup c. 500–450 BC (
Cabinet des Medailles 573)
Giants (Greek mythology)
–
Athena (left) fighting the Giant
Enceladus (inscribed retrograde) on an
Attic red-figure dish, c. 550–500 BC (
Lourve CA3662).
Giants (Greek mythology)
–
Dionysos (left) with ivy crown, and
thyrsos attacking a Giant,
Attic red-figure pelike, c. 475–425 BC (
Louvre G434).
Giants (Greek mythology)
–
A depiction of the Gigantomachy showing a typical central group of Zeus, Heracles and Athena.
black-figure amphora in the style of the
Lysippides Painter, c. 530-520 BC (
British Museum B208).
10.
Hekatonkheires
–
Their name derives from the Greek ἑκατόν and χείρ, each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads. Hesiods Theogony reports that the three Hecatoncheires became the guards of the gates of Tartarus, the Hundred-Handed-Ones are giants of great storms and hurricanes. Other accounts make Briareos one of the assailants of Olympus, after his defeat, he was buried under Mount Aetna. According to Hesiod, the Hecatoncheires were children of Gaia and Uranus and they played no known part in cult. They were, Briareos Strong, also called Aegaeon, spelled in Latin as Briareus, gyges or Gyes, possibly Limb or Curved. Soon after they were born, their father Uranus threw them into the depths of Tartarus because he saw them as hideous monsters. The Hecatoncheires remained there, guarded by the dragon Campe, until Zeus rescued them, advised by Rhea that they would serve as allies against Cronus. During the War of the Titans, the Hecatoncheires fought against the Titans, throwing rocks as big as mountains, one hundred at a time, after this, the Hecatoncheires became the guards of Tartarus. Briareos became the son-in-law of Poseidon, who gave him Kymopoliea his daughter to wed, scholia on Apollonius of Rhodes represent Aegaeon as a son of Gaea and Pontos, the Sea, ruling the fabulous Aegaea in Euboea, an enemy of Poseidon and the inventor of warships. In Ovids Metamorphoses and in Philostratus Life of Apollonius of Tyana he is a marine deity, in the Iliad by Homer, translated by Butler, Achilles asks his mother to appeal to Zeus on account of a previous interaction with Briareus, or Aegaeon. In Gargantua and Pantagruel it is mentioned that a waiter needs as many hands as Briareus, the giant is also mentioned in Cervantes Don Quixote, in the famous episode of the windmills. Briareos is mentioned in Book I of John Miltons Paradise Lost alongside Typhon as an analogue to the fallen Satan, Briareos is mentioned in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding, in a conversation between Tom Jones and Mr. Partridge. In Don Juan, Byron makes a crude joke, musing whether enviable Briareus. Hadst all things multiplied in proportion, in the Magic, The Gathering expansion Theros, based on Greek mythology, there is a card named Hundred-Handed One, a reference to the Hecatonkheires. Kottos, styled as Cottus is mentioned in John Keats Hyperion as a deity in the aftermath of the Titanomachy. Asura Greek mythology in popular culture Hesiods Theogony, 147ff, bibliotheca I.1.1 Ovid, Fasti iv.593 Horace Carminae II.17.14, III.4.69 Karl Kerenyi, Gods of the Greeks, London, Thames and Hudson,1951
Hekatonkheires
–
Etching by Tommaso Piroli after a drawing of
John Flaxman.
11.
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, and her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus, as with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiods Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranuss genitals and threw them into the sea, according to Homers Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Plato, these two origins are said to be of hitherto separate entities, Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and was lover and surrogate mother of Adonis. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite, Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea and Cypris after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, roses, doves, sparrows and swans were sacred to her, the ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite had many names such as Acidalia and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite of transcendent principles, and a separate, common Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people, hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós sea-foam, interpreting the name as risen from the foam. Michael Janda, accepting this as genuine, claims the birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- very and *dʰei- to shine and it has been argued that etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodites attributes are entirely different from those of Eos or the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a demon that appears in Middle Babylonian. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni lord, an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις and this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, the lady. Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos, she who lives delicately, from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a characteristic of Greek obvious from the Macedonians. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, however, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, Cytherea
Aphrodite
–
Aphrodite Pudica (Roman copy of 2nd century AD),
National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Aphrodite
–
Petra tou Romiou ("The rock of the
Greek "), Aphrodite's legendary birthplace in
Paphos, Cyprus.
Aphrodite
–
The Birth of Venus by
Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485.
Aphrodite
–
Venus and Adonis by
Titian, circa 1554.
12.
Aether (mythology)
–
Aether /ˈiːθər/ or Aither, in ancient Greece, was one of the primordial deities. Aether is the personification of the upper air and he embodies the pure upper air that the gods breathe, as opposed to the normal air breathed by mortals. Like Tartarus and Erebus, Aether may have had shrines in ancient Greece, in Hesiods Theogony, Aether, was the son of Erebus and Nyx, and the brother of Hemera. The Roman mythographer Hyginus, says Aether was the son of Chaos, started his Fabulae with a strange hodgepodge of Greek and Roman cosmogonies and early genealogies. It begins as follows, Ex Caligine Chaos, Ex Chao et Caligine Nox Dies Erebus Aether. His genealogy looks like a derivation from Hesiod, but it starts with the un-Hesiodic and un-Roman Caligo, darkness probably did occur in a cosmogonic poem of Alcman, but it seems only fair to say that it was not prominent in Greek cosmogonies. Aristophanes states that Aether was the son of Erebus, however, Damascius says that Aether, Erebus and Chaos were siblings, and the offspring of Chronos. According to Epiphanius, the world began as an egg, encircled by Time. Together they constricted the egg, squeezing its matter with great force, after that, the atoms sorted themselves out. The lighter and finer ones floated above and became the Bright Air and the rarefied Wind, while the heavier and denser atoms sank and became the Earth, see also Platos Myth of Er. The fifth Orphic hymn to Aether describes the substance as the high-reigning, ever indestructible power of Zeus, the best element, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East. Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture, gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth, A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press,1996, Two volumes, ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9, ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3. Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell,1996, Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, London, William Heinemann Ltd.1914. Hammond, N. G. L. and H. H. Scullard, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Second Edition, Hyginus, Gaius Julius, The Myths of Hyginus. Edited and translated by Mary A. Grant, Lawrence, University of Kansas Press,1960, smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London
Aether (mythology)
–
Aether in battle with a lion-headed
Giant
13.
Hemera
–
In Greek mythology Hemera was the personification of day and one of the Greek primordial deities. She is the goddess of the daytime and, according to Hesiod, Hemera is remarked upon in Ciceros De Natura Deorum, where it is logically determined that Dies must be a god, if Uranus is a god. The poet Bacchylides states that Nyx and Chronos are the parents and she was the female counterpart of her brother and consort, Aether, but neither of them figured actively in myth or cult. Hyginus lists their children as Uranus, Gaia, and Thalassa, pausanias seems to confuse her with Eos when saying that she carried Cephalus away. Pausanias makes this identification with Eos upon looking at the tiling of the portico in Athens. He makes this identification again at Amyklai and at Olympia, upon looking at statues and illustrations where Eos is present
Hemera
–
Hemera (1881) by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau
14.
Nyx
–
Nyx is the Greek goddess of the night. A shadowy figure, Nyx stood at or near the beginning of creation and mothered other personified deities such as Hypnos and Thanatos and her appearances are sparse in surviving mythology, but reveal her as a figure of such exceptional power and beauty that she is feared by Zeus himself. In Hesiods Theogony, Nyx is born of Chaos, with Erebus, Nyx gives birth to Aether and Hemera. Later, on her own, Nyx gives birth to Moros, Ker, Thanatos, Hypnos, the Oneiroi, Momus, Oizys, the Hesperides, the Moirai, the Keres, Nemesis, Apate, Philotes, Geras, and Eris. In his description of Tartarus, Hesiod locates there the home of Nyx, Hesiod says further that Nyxs daughter Hemera left Tartarus just as Nyx entered it, continuing cyclicly, when Hemera returned, Nyx left. This mirrors the portrayal of Ratri in the Rigveda, where she works in close cooperation, at Iliad 14. 249–61, Hypnos, the minor deity of sleep, reminds Hera of an old favor after she asks him to put Zeus to sleep. He had once before put Zeus to sleep at the bidding of Hera, Zeus was furious and would have smitten Hypnos into the sea if he had not fled to Nyx, his mother, in fear. Homer goes on to say that Zeus, fearing to anger Nyx, held his fury at bay and he disturbed Zeus only a few times after that always fearing Zeus and running back to his mother, Nyx, who would have confronted Zeus with a maternal fury. Nyx took on a more important role in several fragmentary poems attributed to Orpheus. In them, Nyx, rather than Chaos, is the first principle from all creation emerges. Nyx occupies a cave or adyton, in which she gives oracles, cronus – who is chained within, asleep and drunk on honey – dreams and prophesies. Outside the cave, Adrasteia clashes cymbals and beats upon her tympanon, phanes – the strange, monstrous, hermaphrodite Orphic demiurge – was the child or father of Nyx. Nyx is also the first principle in the chorus of Aristophanes The Birds. Here she is also the mother of Eros, the theme of Nyxs cave or mansion, beyond the ocean or somewhere at the edge of the cosmos may be echoed in the philosophical poem of Parmenides. The classical scholar Walter Burkert has speculated that the house of the goddess to which the philosopher is transported is the palace of Nyx, in Greece, Nyx was only rarely the focus of cults. According to Pausanias, she had an oracle on the acropolis at Megara, more often, Nyx lurked in the background of other cults. Thus there was a statue called Nyx in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Spartans had a cult of Sleep and Death, conceived of as twins. Cult titles composed of compounds of nyx- are attested for several deities, most notably Dionysus Nyktelios nocturnal, in 1997, the International Astronomical Union approved the name Nyx for a mons feature on the planet Venus
Nyx
–
La Nuit by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1883)
Nyx
–
Nyx, as represented in the 10th-century
Paris Psalter at the side of the Prophet
Isaiah
Nyx
–
Roman-era bronze statuette of Nyx
velificans or
Selene (
Getty Villa)
15.
Caelus
–
Caelus or Coelus was a primal god of the sky in Roman myth and theology, iconography, and literature. The deitys name usually appears in masculine form when he is conceived of as a male generative force. The name of Caelus indicates that he was the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Uranus, varro couples him with Terra as pater and mater, and says that they are great deities in the theology of the mysteries at Samothrace. Caelus begins to appear regularly in Augustan art and in connection with the cult of Mithras during the Imperial era, vitruvius includes him among celestial gods whose temple-buildings should be built open to the sky. As a sky god, he identified with Jupiter, as indicated by an inscription that reads Optimus Maximus Caelus Aeternus Iup<pi>ter. According to Cicero and Hyginus, Caelus was the son of Aether, Caelus and Dies were in this tradition the parents of Mercury. With Trivia, Caelus was the father of the distinctively Roman god Janus, as well as of Saturn, Caelus was also the father of one of the three forms of Jupiter, the other two fathers being Aether and Saturn. In one tradition, Caelus was the father with Tellus of the Muses, Caelus substituted for Uranus in Latin versions of the myth of Saturn castrating his heavenly father, from whose severed genitals, cast upon the sea, the goddess Venus was born. For Macrobius, the severing marks off Chaos from fixed and measured Time as determined by the revolving Heavens, the semina rerum come from Caelum and are the elements which create the world. Varro says that the Greeks call Caelum Olympus, as a representation of space, Caelum is one of the components of the mundus, the world or cosmos, along with terra, mare, and aer. It is generally though not universally agreed that Caelus is depicted on the cuirass of the Augustus of Prima Porta, at the very top above the four horses of the Sun gods quadriga. He is a mature, bearded man who holds a cloak over his head so that it billows in the form of an arch and he is balanced and paired with the personification of Earth at the bottom of the cuirass. On an altar of the Lares now held by the Vatican, as Caelus Nocturnus, he was the god of the night-time, starry sky. In a passage from Plautus, Nocturnus is regarded as the opposite of Sol, in the Etruscan discipline of divination, Caelus Nocturnus was placed in the sunless north opposite Sol to represent the polar extremities of the axis. This alignment was fundamental to the drawing of a templum for the practice of augury, the name Caelus occurs in dedicatory inscriptions in connection to the cult of Mithras. The Mithraic deity Caelus is sometimes depicted allegorically as an eagle bending over the sphere of heaven marked with symbols of the planets or the zodiac, in a Mithraic context he is associated with Cautes and can appear as Caelus Aeternus. A form of Ahura-Mazda is invoked in Latin as Caelus Aeternus Iupiter, the walls of some mithrea feature allegorical depictions of the cosmos with Oceanus and Caelus. The mithraeum of Dieburg represents the world with Caelus, Oceanus
Caelus
–
Caelus appears at the top of the
cuirass of the
Augustus of Prima Porta, counterposed to Earth at the bottom
Caelus
–
Mithraic altar (3rd-century AD) showing Caelus flanked by allegories of the Seasons (
Museum Carnuntinum, Lower Austria)
16.
Greek language
–
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
Greek language
–
Idealized portrayal of
Homer
Greek language
–
regions where Greek is the official language
Greek language
–
Greek language road sign, A27 Motorway, Greece
17.
Heaven
–
According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter Heaven alive. Some believe in the possibility of a Heaven on Earth in a World to Come, another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, Heaven is considered as Svarga loka, and this cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, the modern English word heaven is derived from the earlier heven, this in turn was developed from the previous Old English form heofon. By about 1000, heofon was being used in reference to the Christianized place where God dwells, all of these have been derived from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *Hemina-. In Ancient Egyptian religion, belief in an afterlife is much more stressed than in ancient Judaism, Heaven was a physical place far above the Earth in a dark area of space where there were no stars, basically beyond the Universe. Their heart would finally be weighed with the feather of truth, almost nothing is known of Bronze Age Canaanite views of Heaven, and the archeological findings at Ugarit have not provided information. The 1st century Greek author Philo of Byblos may preserve elements of Iron Age Phoenician religion in his Sanchuniathon, in the Middle Hittite myths, Heaven is the abode of the gods. In the Song of Kumarbi, Alalu was king in Heaven for nine years before giving birth to his son, Anu was himself overthrown by his son, Kumarbi. The Baháí Faith regards the description of Heaven as a specific place as symbolic. The Baháí writings describe Heaven as a condition where closeness to God is defined as Heaven. For Baháís, entry into the life has the potential to bring great joy. Baháulláh likened death to the process of birth and he explains, The world beyond is as different from this world as this world is different from that of the child while still in the womb of its mother. Accordingly, Baháís view life as a stage, where one can develop. The key to progress is to follow the path outlined by the current Manifestation of God. Baháulláh wrote, Know thou, of a truth, that if the soul of man hath walked in the ways of God, it will, assuredly return, in Buddhism there are several Heavens, all of which are still part of samsara. Those who accumulate good karma may be reborn in one of them, however, their stay in Heaven is not eternal—eventually they will use up their good karma and will undergo rebirth into another realm, as a human, animal or other being. Because Heaven is temporary and part of samsara, Buddhists focus more on escaping the cycle of rebirth, Nirvana is not a heaven but a mental state
Heaven
–
Dante and
Beatrice gaze upon the highest heavens; from
Gustave Doré 's illustrations to the
Divine Comedy.
Heaven
–
Structure of Universe as per the Jain Scriptures.
Heaven
–
The
Assumption of the Virgin by
Francesco Botticini at the National Gallery London, shows three hierarchies and nine orders of angels, each with different characteristics.
18.
Greek mythology
–
It was a part of the religion in ancient Greece. Greek mythology is explicitly embodied in a collection of narratives. Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines. These accounts initially were disseminated in a tradition, today the Greek myths are known primarily from ancient Greek literature. The oldest known Greek literary sources, Homers epic poems Iliad and Odyssey, focus on the Trojan War, archaeological findings provide a principal source of detail about Greek mythology, with gods and heroes featured prominently in the decoration of many artifacts. Geometric designs on pottery of the eighth century BC depict scenes from the Trojan cycle as well as the adventures of Heracles, in the succeeding Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear, supplementing the existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has had an influence on the culture, arts. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in the themes, Greek mythology is known today primarily from Greek literature and representations on visual media dating from the Geometric period from c. Mythical narration plays an important role in every genre of Greek literature. Nevertheless, the only general mythographical handbook to survive from Greek antiquity was the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus and this work attempts to reconcile the contradictory tales of the poets and provides a grand summary of traditional Greek mythology and heroic legends. Apollodorus of Athens lived from c, 180–125 BC and wrote on many of these topics. His writings may have formed the basis for the collection, however the Library discusses events that occurred long after his death, among the earliest literary sources are Homers two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Other poets completed the cycle, but these later and lesser poems now are lost almost entirely. Despite their traditional name, the Homeric Hymns have no connection with Homer. They are choral hymns from the part of the so-called Lyric age. Hesiods Works and Days, a poem about farming life, also includes the myths of Prometheus, Pandora. The poet gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, lyrical poets often took their subjects from myth, but their treatment became gradually less narrative and more allusive. Greek lyric poets, including Pindar, Bacchylides and Simonides, and bucolic poets such as Theocritus and Bion, additionally, myth was central to classical Athenian drama
Greek mythology
–
Bust of
Zeus,
Otricoli (Sala Rotonda,
Museo Pio-Clementino,
Vatican).
Greek mythology
–
Greek Mythology
Greek mythology
–
Prometheus (1868 by
Gustave Moreau). The myth of Prometheus first was attested by
Hesiod and then constituted the basis for a tragic trilogy of plays, possibly by Aeschylus, consisting of
Prometheus Bound,
Prometheus Unbound, and
Prometheus Pyrphoros.
Greek mythology
–
The Roman poet
Virgil, here depicted in the fifth-century manuscript, the
Vergilius Romanus, preserved details of Greek mythology in many of his writings.
19.
Roman mythology
–
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Romes legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. Roman mythology may also refer to the study of these representations. The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements, the stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individuals personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to the community or Roman state. When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are concerned with ritual, augury. Romes early myths and legends also have a relationship with Etruscan religion. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovids Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, because ritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology. This perception is a product of Romanticism and the scholarship of the 19th century. From the Renaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly for European painting, the Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities, in Romes earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship. As T. P. Wiseman notes, The Roman stories still matter, as they mattered to Dante in 1300 and Shakespeare in 1600, what does it take to be a free citizen. Can a superpower still be a republic, how does well-meaning authority turn into murderous tyranny. Major sources for Roman myth include the Aeneid of Vergil and the first few books of Livys history as well as Dionysius s Roman Antiquities. Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, scenes from Roman myth also appear in Roman wall painting, coins, and sculpture, particularly reliefs. The Aeneid and Livys early history are the best extant sources for Romes founding myths, material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the ancestors of the Roman people. Rape of the Sabine women, explaining the importance of the Sabines in the formation of Roman culture, numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome who consorted with the nymph Egeria and established many of Romes legal and religious institutions. Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, whose mysterious origins were freely mythologized. The Tarpeian Rock, and why it was used for the execution of traitors, lucretia, whose self-sacrifice prompted the overthrow of the early Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Republic
Roman mythology
–
Romulus and Remus, the
Lupercal,
Father Tiber, and the
Palatine on a
relief from a pedestal dating to the reign of
Trajan (AD 98–117)
Roman mythology
–
In this wall painting from
Pompeii,
Venus looks on while the physician
Iapyx tends to the wound of her son,
Aeneas; the tearful boy is her grandson
Ascanius, also known as Iulus, legendary ancestor [
citation needed] of
Julius Caesar and the
Julio-Claudian dynasty
Roman mythology
–
Mucius Scaevola in the Presence of Lars Porsenna (early 1640s) by
Matthias Stom
Roman mythology
–
Capitoline Triad
20.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod was a Greek poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded as the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as a persona with an active role to play in his subject. Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs, modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. The dating of his life is an issue in scholarly circles. Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations, however, Hesiods extant work comprises didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three references in Works and Days, as well as some passages in his Theogony that support inferences made by scholars. Some scholars have seen Perses as a creation, a foil for the moralizing that Hesiod develops in Works and Days. Gregory Nagy, on the hand, sees both Persēs and Hēsiodos as fictitious names for poetical personae. The family association with Cyme might explain his familiarity with eastern myths, evident in his poems, however, while his poetry features some Aeolisms there are no words that are certainly Boeotian—he composed in the main literary dialect of the time, Ionian. Pausanias asserted that Boeotians showed him an old tablet made of lead on which the Works were engraved. If he did write or dictate, it was perhaps as an aid to memory or because he lacked confidence in his ability to produce poems extempore and it certainly wasnt in a quest for immortal fame since poets in his era had no such notions. However, some suspect the presence of large-scale changes in the text. Possibly he composed his verses during idle times on the farm and he was in fact a misogynist of the same calibre as the later poet, Semonides. He resembles Solon in his preoccupation with issues of good versus evil and how a just and he resembles Aristophanes in his rejection of the idealised hero of epic literature in favour of an idealised view of the farmer. Yet the fact that he could eulogise kings in Theogony and denounce them as corrupt in Works, two different—yet early—traditions record the site of Hesiods grave. This tradition follows a familiar ironic convention, the oracle that predicts accurately after all, the other tradition, first mentioned in an epigram by Chersias of Orchomenus written in the 7th century BC claims that Hesiod lies buried at Orchomenus, a town in Boeotia. Eventually they came to regard Hesiod too as their hearth-founder, later writers attempted to harmonize these two accounts. Greeks in the fifth and early 4th centuries BC considered their oldest poets to be Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod
Hesiod
–
The Dance of the Muses at Mount Helicon by
Bertel Thorvaldsen (1807). Hesiod cites inspiration from the
Muses while on Mount Helicon.
Hesiod
–
Hesiod and the
Muse, by
Gustave Moreau. Here he is presented with a
lyre, which contradicts the account given by Hesiod himself, in which the gift was a laurel staff.
Hesiod
–
Modern Mount Helicon—Hesiod once described his nearby hometown,
Ascra, as "cruel in winter, hard in summer, never pleasant."
Hesiod
–
16th-century manuscript of Theogony
21.
Classical times
–
It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer, and continues through the emergence of Christianity and it ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity, blending into the Early Middle Ages. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures, Classical antiquity may refer also to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poes words, the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome. The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy, society. The earliest period of classical antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse, the 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the first half of the 8th century. Homer is usually assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC, in the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from Canaan ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean, carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had firmly established strongholds in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia, which created conflicts of interest with Etruria. The Etruscans had established control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic. According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21,753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, Romulus and Remus. As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Superbus was of Etruscan birth and it was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, the people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretias kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus, summoned the Senate and had Superbus, after Superbus expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC. In fact the Latin word Rex meaning King became a dirty and hated throughout the Republic. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras. Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony, but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes and Corinth, the two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC
Classical times
–
The
Parthenon is one of the most iconic symbols of the classical era, exemplifying ancient Greek culture
22.
Ancient Greek pottery
–
The shards of pots discarded or buried in the 1st millennium BC are still the best guide available to understand the customary life and mind of the ancient Greeks. There were various specific regional varieties, such as the South Italian ancient Greek pottery, throughout these places, various types and shapes of vases were used. Some were highly decorative and meant for consumption and domestic beautification as much as serving a storage or other function. As the culture recovered Sub-Mycenaean pottery finally blended into the Protogeometric style, the rise of vase painting saw increasing decoration. Geometric art in Greek pottery was contiguous with the late Dark Age and early Archaic Greece, the pottery produced in Archaic and Classical Greece included at first black-figure pottery, yet other styles emerged such as red-figure pottery and the white ground technique. Styles such as West Slope Ware were characteristic of the subsequent Hellenistic period, interest in Greek art lagged behind the revival of classical scholarship during the Renaissance and revived in the academic circle round Nicholas Poussin in Rome in the 1630s. Though modest collections of vases recovered from ancient tombs in Italy were made in the 15th and 16th centuries these were regarded as Etruscan. It is possible that Lorenzo de Medici bought several Attic vases directly from Greece and it was Gerhard who first outlined the chronology we now use, namely, Orientalizing, Black Figure, Red Figure, Polychromatic. Where the 19th century was a period of discovery and the out of first principles the 20th century has been one of consolidation. Efforts to record and publish the totality of public collections of vases began with the creation of the Corpus vasorum antiquorum under Edmond Pottier, Beazley and others following him have also studied fragments of Greek pottery in institutional collections, and have attributed many painted pieces to individual artists. Scholars have called these fragments disjecta membra and in a number of instances have been able to identify fragments now in different collections that belong to the same vase, some vase shapes were especially associated with rituals, others with athletics and the gymnasium. Within each category the forms are roughly the same in scale and whether open or closed, some have a purely ritual function, for example white ground lekythoi contained the oil used as funerary offerings and appear to have been made solely with that object in mind. Many examples have a second cup inside them to give the impression of being full of oil. There was a market for Greek pottery since the 8th century BC. An idea of the extent of trade can be gleaned from plotting the find maps of these vases outside of Greece. Only the existence of a second hand market could account for the number of found in Etruscan tombs. South Italian wares came to dominate the trade in the Western Mediterranean as Athens declined in political importance during the Hellenistic period. The process of making a pot and firing it is fairly simple, the first thing a potter needs is clay
Ancient Greek pottery
–
Bilingual amphora by the Andokides Painter, c. 520 BC (Munich)
Ancient Greek pottery
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Protogeometric amphora, BM
Ancient Greek pottery
–
Boeotian Geometric Hydria lamp, Louvre
Ancient Greek pottery
–
Protocorinthian skyphos, c. 625 BC, Louvre
23.
Styx
–
In Greek mythology, Styx is a deity and a river that forms the boundary between Earth and the Underworld. The rivers Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, Lethe, and Cocytus all converge at the center of the underworld on a great marsh, according to Herodotus, the river Styx originates near Feneos. Styx is also a goddess with roots in Greek mythology as a daughter of Tethys, after whom the river is named. The deities of the Greek pantheon swore all their oaths upon the river Styx because, according to mythology, during the Titan war, Styx. After the war, Zeus declared that every oath must be sworn upon her, Zeus swore to give Semele whatever she wanted and was then obliged to follow through when he realized to his horror that her request would lead to her death. Helios similarly promised his son Phaëton whatever he desired, also resulting in the boys death, myths related to such early deities did not survive long enough to be included in historic records, but tantalizing references exist among those that have been discovered. According to some versions, Styx had miraculous powers and could make someone invulnerable, according to one tradition, Achilles was dipped in the waters of the river by his mother during his childhood, acquiring invulnerability, with exception of his heel, by which his mother held him. The only spot where Achilles was vulnerable was his heel, where he was struck and this is the source of the expression Achilles heel, a metaphor for a vulnerable spot. Styx was primarily a feature in the afterworld of classical Greek mythology, similar to the Christian area of Hell in texts such as The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. In ancient times believed that placing a coin in the mouth of the deceased would pay the toll for the ferry to cross the Acheron River. If someone could not pay the fee it was said that they would never be able to cross the river and this ritual was performed by the relatives. The variant spelling Stix was sometimes used in translations of Classical Greek before the twentieth century, by metonymy, the adjective stygian came to refer to anything dark, dismal, and murky. Styx was the name of the daughter of Tethys and Oceanus, in classical myths, her husband was Pallas and she gave birth to Zelus, Nike, Kratos, and Bia. In those myths, Styx supported Zeus in the Titanomachy, where she was said to be the first to rush to his aid, for this reason, her name was given the honor of being a binding oath for the deities. Knowledge of whether this was the reason for the tradition did not survive into historical records following the religious transition that led to the pantheon of the classical era. As of 2 July 2013, Styx officially became the name of one of Plutos moons, the other moons also have names from Greco-Roman mythology related to the underworld. Kormet Rasā Sanzu River Burial jar depicting a boatman with passenger Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Styx
Styx
–
Etching of G. Doré
24.
Homeric epic
–
Homer is the name ascribed by the ancient Greeks to the semi-legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of Greek literature. The Odyssey focuses on the home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Many accounts of Homers life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a bard from Ionia. The modern scholarly consensus is that these traditions do not have any historical value, the Homeric question - by whom, when, where and under what circumstances were the Iliad and Odyssey composed - continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion on the authorship question falls into two camps, one group holds that most of the Iliad and the Odyssey is the work of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the crystallization of a process of working and re-working by many contributors and it is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century B. C. Most researchers believe that the poems were transmitted orally. The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education, to Plato, the chronological period of Homer depends on the meaning to be assigned to the word Homer. Was Homer a single person, an imaginary person representing a group of poets and this information is often called the world of Homer. The Homeric period would in that cover a number of historical periods, especially the Mycenaean Age. Considered word-for-word, the texts as we know them are the product of the scholars of the last three centuries. Each edition of the Iliad or Odyssey is a different, as the editors rely on different manuscripts and fragments. The term accuracy reveals a belief in an original uniform text. The manuscripts of the work currently available date to no earlier than the 10th century. These are at the end of a missing thousand-year chain of copies made as each generation of manuscripts disintegrated or were lost or destroyed and these numerous manuscripts are so similar that a single original can be postulated. The time gap in the chain is bridged by the scholia, or notes, on the existing manuscripts, librarian of the Library of Alexandria, he had noticed a wide divergence in the works attributed to Homer, and was trying to restore a more authentic copy. He had collected several manuscripts, which he named, the Sinopic, the one he selected for correction was the koine, which Murray translates as the Vulgate. Aristarchus was known for his selection of material
Homeric epic
–
Idealized portrayal of Homer dating to the
Hellenistic period.
British Museum.
Homeric epic
–
Part of an 11th-century manuscript, "the Townley Homer". The writing on the top and right side are
scholia.
Homeric epic
–
Homer and His Guide, by
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905), portraying Homer on
Mount Ida, beset by dogs and guided by the goatherder Glaucus (as told in
Pseudo-Herodotus)
Homeric epic
–
Raphael 's inspired Homer on
Mount Parnassus.
25.
Proto-Greek
–
The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants, who spoke the predecessor of the Mycenaean language, entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic or the Bronze Age. The evolution of Proto-Greek could be considered within the context of an early Paleo-Balkan sprachbund that makes it difficult to delineate exact boundaries between individual languages, Proto-Greek is mostly placed in the Early Helladic period, i. e. towards the end of Neolithic Europe. Strengthening of word-initial y- to dy-, palatalization of consonants followed by -y-, producing various affricate consonants and palatal consonants, they later simplified, mostly losing their palatal character. Vocalization of laryngeals between consonants and initially before consonants to /e/, /a/, /o/ from *h₁, *h₂, other unique changes involving laryngeals, see below. Raising of /o/ to /u/ between a resonant and a labial, merging of sequences of velar + *w into the labiovelars, with compensatory lengthening of the consonant in some cases. For example, PIE *h₁éḱwos > PG *íkkʷos > Mycenaean i-qo /íkkʷos/, Attic híppos, dissimilation of aspirates caused an initial aspirated sound to lose its aspiration when a following aspirated consonant occurred in the same word. It also postdates the change of /s/ > /h/, as it affects /h/ as well, ékhō I have < *hekh- < PIE *seǵʰ-oh₂ and it postdates even the loss of aspiration before /j/ that accompanied second-stage palatalization, which postdates both of the previous changes. On the other hand, it predates the development of the first aorist passive marker -thē- since the aspirate in that marker has no effect on preceding aspirates, Greek is unique in reflecting the three different laryngeals with distinct vowels. Most Indo-European languages can be traced back to a variety of late Proto-Indo-European in which all three laryngeals had merged, but Greek clearly cannot. For that reason, Greek is extremely important in reconstructing PIE forms, Greek shows distinct reflexes of the laryngeals in various positions, Most famously, between consonants, where original vocalic *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ are reflected as /e/, /a/, /o/ respectively. Greek vocalized them, Greek érebos darkness < PIE *h₁regʷos vs. Gothic riqiz- darkness, Greek áent- wind < *awent- < PIE *h₂wéh₁n̥t- vs. English wind, the sequence *CRHC becomes CRēC, CRāC, CRōC from H = *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ respectively. Sometimes, CeReC, CaRaC, CoRoC are found instead, Greek thánatos death vs. Doric Greek thnātós mortal and it is sometimes suggested that the position of the accent was a factor in determining the outcome. The sequence *CiHC tends to become *CyēC, *CyāC, *CyōC from H = *h₁, *h₂, *h₃ respectively, sometimes, the outcome CīC is found, as in most other Indo-European languages, or the outcome CiaC in the case of *Cih₂C. *CRHC > *CReHC > CRēC/CRāC/CRōC, or, *CRHC > *CeRHeC > *CeReC/CeRaC/CeRoC > CeReC/CaRaC/CoRoC by assimilation, *CiHC > *CyeHC > CyēC/CyāC/CyōC, or, *Cih₂C > *Cih₂eC > *CiHaC > *CiyaC > CiaC, or, *CiHC remains without vowel insertion > CīC. A laryngeal adjacent to a vowel develops along the lines as other Indo-European languages, The sequence *CRHV passes through *CR̥HV. In the sequence *CHV, the colors a following short /e/, as expected. In a *VHV sequence, the laryngeal again colours any adjacent short /e/ and that change appears to be uniform across the Indo-European languages and was probably the first environment in which laryngeals were lost. Proto-Greek underwent palatalization of consonants before *y and this occurred in two separate stages
Proto-Greek
–
A reconstruction of the 3rd millennium BC "Proto-Greek area", by
Vladimir I. Georgiev.
26.
Sanskrit
–
Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
Sanskrit
–
Rigveda (
padapatha) manuscript in
Devanagari, early 19th century
Sanskrit
–
Devi Mahatmya palm-leaf manuscript in an early
Bhujimol script,
Bihar or
Nepal, 11th century
Sanskrit
–
A poem by the ancient Indian poet Vallana (ca. 900 – 1100 CE) on the side wall of a building at the Haagweg 14 in Leiden, Netherlands
Sanskrit
–
Kashmir Shaiva manuscript in the
Śāradā script (c. 17th century)
27.
Hittite language
–
Hittite, also known as Nesite and Neshite, is the extinct language once spoken by the Hittites, an Indo-European-speaking people who created an empire centred on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia. By the Late Bronze Age, Hittite had started losing ground to its close relative Luwian and it appears that in the 13th century BC, Luwian was the most widely spoken language in the Hittite capital of Hattusa. Hittite is the earliest-attested of the Indo-European languages and is the best-known of the Anatolian languages, Hittite is the modern name for the language, chosen after the identification of the Hatti kingdom with the Hittites mentioned in the Bible, although this identification was subsequently challenged. The terms Hattian or Hattic, by contrast, are used to refer to the people who preceded them. In multi-lingual texts found in Hittite locations, passages written in the Hittite language are preceded by the adverb nesili, in the of Neša, in one case, the label is Kanisumnili, in the of the people of Kaneš. Although the Hittite empire was composed of people from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. In spite of arguments over the appropriateness of the term, Hittite remains the most current term by convention. Knudtzon argued that Hittite was Indo-European, largely on the basis of the morphology, although he had no bilingual texts, he was able to give a partial interpretation to the two letters because of the formulaic nature of the diplomatic correspondence of the period. Based on a study of this material, Bedřich Hrozný succeeded in analyzing the language. He presented his argument that the language is Indo-European in a paper published in 1915, hroznýs argument for the Indo-European affiliation of Hittite was thoroughly modern, though poorly substantiated. He focused on the similarities in idiosyncratic aspects of the morphology, unlikely to occur independently by chance. These included the r/n alternation in some noun stems and vocalic ablaut and he also presented a set of regular sound correspondences. Sturtevant who authored the first scientifically acceptable Hittite grammar with a chrestomathy, the most up-to-date grammar of the Hittite language is currently Hoffner and Melchert 2008. Hittite is one of the Anatolian languages and it is known from cuneiform tablets and inscriptions erected by the Hittite kings. The script formerly known as Hieroglyphic Hittite is now termed Hieroglyphic Luwian, the Anatolian branch also includes Cuneiform Luwian, Hieroglyphic Luwian, Palaic, Lycian, Milyan, Lydian, Carian, Pisidian, and Sidetic. Hittite lacks some features of the other Indo-European languages, such as a distinction between masculine and feminine gender, subjunctive and optative moods, and aspect. Various hypotheses have been formulated to explain these contrasts, the parent, Indo-Hittite, lacked the features not present in Hittite, which Proto-Indo-European innovated. Other linguists, however, have taken the point of view, the Schwund Hypothesis, that Hittite came from a Proto-Indo-European possessing the full range of features
Hittite language
–
Hittite
Hittite language
–
Geography
28.
Proto-Indo-European language
–
Proto-Indo-European is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language and these methods supply all of the knowledge concerning PIE, since there is no written record of the language. PIE is estimated to have spoken as a single language around 3500 B. C. E. during the Neolithic Age. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe. Work has also gone into reconstructing their culture and religion, PIE had a complex system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes as well as ablaut and accent. PIE nominals and pronouns had a system of declension. The PIE phonology, particles, numerals, and copula are also well-reconstructed, today, the most widely-spoken daughter languages of PIE are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, French, and Marathi. There is no evidence of PIE. It has been reconstructed from its present-day descendants using the comparative method, the comparative method is based on the Neogrammarian rule that the Indo-European sound laws are applied without exception. The method compares languages and applies the laws to find a common ancestor. For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English, piede and foot, padre and father, pesce and fish. Since there is a consistent correspondence of the consonants that is far too frequent to be coincidental. Although his name is associated with this observation, he was not the first to make it. In many ways Jones work was less accurate than his predecessors, as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi. In 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated the set of correspondences to include other Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, and the full range of consonants involved. In 1816 Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit in which he investigated a common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833 he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, in 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what is now known as Grimms law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik. Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages, and showed that sound change affects an entire language systematically, august Schleichers A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages was an early attempt to reconstruct the proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language
–
Classification of Indo-European languages. Red: Extinct languages. White: categories or unattested proto-languages. Left half:
centum languages; right half:
satem languages
29.
Avestan language
–
The Yaz culture of Bactria-Margiana has been regarded as a likely archaeological reflection of the early Eastern Iranian culture described in the Avesta. Avestans status as a language has ensured its continuing use for new compositions long after the language had ceased to be a living language. It is closely related to Vedic Sanskrit, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan language, Avestan, which is associated with northeastern Iran, and Old Persian, which belongs to the southwest, together constitute what is called Old Iranian. The Old Iranian language group is a branch of the Indo-Iranian language group, Iranian languages are traditionally classified as eastern or western, and within this framework Avestan is classified as eastern. But this distinction is of limited meaning for Avestan, as the developments that later distinguish Eastern from Western Iranian had not yet occurred. Avestan does not display some typical Western Iranian innovations already visible in Old Persian, Old Avestan is closely related to Old Persian and also in some extent close in nature to Vedic Sanskrit. It is believed that it might be close to a dialect of Pashto as well. The Avestan language is attested in two forms, known as Old Avestan and Younger Avestan. Younger Avestan did not evolve from Old Avestan, the two not only in time, but are also different dialects. Every Avestan text, regardless of whether originally composed in Old or Younger Avestan, Karl Hoffmann traced the following stages for Avestan as found in the extant texts. In roughly chronological order, The natural language of the composers of the Gathas, the Yasna Haptanghaiti, the script used for writing Avestan developed during the 3rd or 4th century AD. By then the language had been extinct for centuries. As is still the case today, the liturgies were memorized by the priesthood, the script devised to render Avestan was natively known as Din dabireh religion writing. It has 53 distinct characters and is written right-to-left and these symbols, like those of all the Pahlavi scripts, are in turn based on Aramaic script symbols. Avestan also incorporates several letters from other writing systems, most notably the vowels, a few letters were free inventions, as were also the symbols used for punctuation. Also, the Avestan alphabet has one letter that has no corresponding sound in the Avestan language, Avestan script is alphabetic, and the large number of letters suggests that its design was due to the need to render the orally recited texts with high phonetic precision. The correct enunciation of the liturgies was considered necessary for the prayers to be effective, the Zoroastrians of India, who represent one of the largest surviving Zoroastrian communities worldwide, also transcribe Avestan in Brahmi-based scripts. Today, Avestan is most commonly typeset in Gujarati script, some Avestan letters with no corresponding symbol are synthesized with additional diacritical marks, for example, the /z/ in zaraϑuštra is written with j with a dot below
Avestan language
–
Yasna 28.1,
Ahunavaiti Gatha (Bodleian MS J2)
30.
PIE
–
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Pies are defined by their crusts, a filled pie, has pastry lining the baking dish, and the filling is placed on top of the pastry but left open. A top-crust pie has the filling in the bottom of the dish and is covered with a pastry or other covering before baking, a two-crust pie has the filling completely enclosed in the pastry shell. Shortcrust pastry is a kind of pastry used for pie crusts, but many things can be used, including baking powder biscuits, mashed potatoes. Pies can be a variety of sizes, ranging from bite-size to ones designed for multiple servings. The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys, however, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small ships, reducing the time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in early armies adopting the style of hunter-foraging, the introduction of the baking of processed cereals including the creation of flour, provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat brittle loaf of millet bread called dhourra cake. Early pies were in the form of flat, round or freeform crusty cakes called galettes consisting of a crust of ground oats, wheat, rye, sometime before 2000 BC, a recipe for chicken pie was written on a tablet in Sumer. Ancient Greeks are believed to have originated pie pastry, in the plays of Aristophanes, there are mentions of sweetmeats including small pastries filled with fruit. Nothing is known of the pastry used, but the Greeks certainly recognized the trade of pastry-cook as distinct from that of baker. The Romans made a plain pastry of flour, oil, and water to meats and fowls which were baked. A richer pastry, intended to be eaten, was used to make small pasties containing eggs or little birds which were among the items served at banquets. The 1st-century Roman cookbook Apicius makes various mentions of recipes which involve a pie case, by 160 BC, Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato, who wrote De Agri Cultura, notes the recipe for the most popular pie/cake called placenta. Also called libum by the Romans, it was more like a modern-day cheesecake on a pastry base, with the development of the Roman Empire and its efficient road transport, pie cooking spread throughout Europe. The Cornish pasty is an excellent adaptation of the pie to a working mans daily food needs, medieval cooks had restricted access to ovens due to their costs of construction and need for abundant supplies of fuel. Pies could be cooked over an open fire, while partnering with a baker allowed them to cook the filling inside their own locally defined casing. The earliest pie-like recipes refer to coffyns, with straight sealed sides, song birds at the time were a fine delicacy and protected by Royal Law
PIE
–
A slice of an
apple pie
PIE
–
A 19th-century pie crimper made of
ivory, in the collection of
The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
PIE
–
A slice of
pecan pie
PIE
–
Jeûne Genevois
plum pie
