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De Conviviis Barbaris
or (Latin for "On banquets of barbarians" or "On barbarian guests") is an epigram preserved in the (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Codex Parisinus Latinus, 10318) of the Latin Anthology, copied in Italy 800 AD. It is noted for containing a few words in a Germanic language that historians believe to be Gothic or Vandalic: in either case, this makes it a rare attestation of medieval East Germanic. Origins and language The poem's date of composition is unknown, but postulated to be penned between the sixth and eighth century AD. Although the text states that it is referring to Goths ''per se'', several features mark the Germanic words as Vandalic, and it is likely that the text simply uses the term 'Gothic' loosely: correspondingly, Procopius refers to the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepids as "Gothic nations" and opines that they "are all of the Arian faith, and have one language called Gothic". Text Translation of the Germanic words in the epigram is disputed, bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gepids
The Gepids, ( la, Gepidae, Gipedae, grc, Γήπαιδες) were an East Germanic tribe who lived in the area of modern Romania, Hungary and Serbia, roughly between the Tisza, Sava and Carpathian Mountains. They were said to share the religion and language of the Goths and Vandals. They are first mentioned by Roman sources in the third century. In the fourth century, they were among the peoples incorporated into the Hunnic Empire, within which they formed an important part. After the death of Attila, the Gepids under their leader Ardaric, led an alliance of other peoples who had been in the empire, and defeated the sons of Attila and their remaining allies at the Battle of Nedao in 454. The Gepids and their allies subsequently founded kingdoms on the Middle Danube, bordering on the Roman Empire. The Gepid Kingdom was one of the most important and long-lasting of these, centered on Sirmium, and sometimes referred to as Gepidia. It covered a large part of the former Roman provinc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vandals
The Vandals were a Germanic peoples, Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal Kingdom, Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The Vandals migrated to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula rivers in the second century BC and settled in Silesia from around 120 BC. They are associated with the Przeworsk culture and were possibly the same people as the Lugii. Expanding into Roman Dacia, Dacia during the Marcomannic Wars and to Pannonia during the Crisis of the Third Century, the Vandals were confined to Pannonia by the Goths around 330 AD, where they received permission to settle from Constantine the Great. Around 400, raids by the Huns from the east forced many Germanic tribes to migrate west into the territory of the Roman Empire and, fearing that they might be targeted next, the Vandals were also pushed westwards, Crossing of the Rhine, crossing the Rhine in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scansion
Scansion ( , rhymes with ''mansion''; verb: ''to scan''), or a system of scansion, is the method or practice of determining and (usually) graphically representing the metrical pattern of a line of verse. In classical poetry, these patterns are quantitative based on the different ''lengths'' of each syllable. In English poetry, they are based on the different levels of ''stress'' placed on each syllable. In both cases, the meter often has a regular foot. Over the years, many systems have been established to mark the scansion of a poem. Overview Systems of scansion, and the assumptions (often tacit or even subconscious) that underlie them, are so numerous and contradictory that it is often difficult to tell whether differences in scansion indicate opposed metrical theories, conflicting understandings of a line's linguistic character, divergent practical goals, or whether they merely constitute a trivial argument over who has the "better ear" for verse. There is even a debate am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It was the standard epic metre in classical Greek and Latin literature, such as in the ''Iliad'', ''Odyssey'' and ''Aeneid''. Its use in other genres of composition include Horace's satires, Ovid's ''Metamorphoses,'' and the Hymns of Orpheus. According to Greek mythology, hexameter was invented by Phemonoe, daughter of Apollo and the first Pythia of Delphi.Pliny the Elder, 7.57 __TOC__ Classical Hexameter In classical hexameter, the six feet follow these rules: * A foot can be made up of two long syllables (– –), a spondee; or a long and two short syllables, a dactyl (– υ υ). * The first four feet can contain either one of them. * The fifth is almost always a dactyl, and last must be a spondee. A short syllable (υ) is a syllabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bacchus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Romans called him Bacchus ( or ; grc, Βάκχος ) for a frenzy he is said to induce called ''bakkheia''. As Dionysus Eleutherios ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. His ''thyrsus'', a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In Orphic religion, he was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calliope
In Greek mythology, Calliope ( ; grc, Καλλιόπη, Kalliópē, beautiful-voiced) is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Hesiod and Ovid called her the "Chief of all Muses". Mythology Calliope had two famous sons, OrpheusHoopes And Evslin,''The Greek Gods''. , , 1995, page 77. "His father was a Thracian king; his mother the muse Calliope. For a while, he lived on Parnassus with his mother and his eight beautiful aunts and there met Apollo who was courting the laughing muse Thalia. Apollo was taken with Orpheus, gave him his little golden lyre, and taught him to play. And his mother taught him to make verses for singing." and Linus, by either Apollo or King Oeagrus of Thrace. She taught Orpheus verses for singing. According to Hesiod, she was also the wisest of the Muses, as well as the most assertive. Calliope married Oeagrus in Pimpleia, a town near Mount Olympus. She is said to have defeated the daughters ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arianism
Arianism ( grc-x-koine, Ἀρειανισμός, ) is a Christological doctrine first attributed to Arius (), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt. Arian theology holds that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was begotten by God the Father with the difference that the Son of God did not always exist but was begotten within time by God the Father, therefore Jesus was not coeternal with God the Father. Arius's trinitarian theology, later given an extreme form by Aetius and his disciple Eunomius and called anomoean ("dissimilar"), asserts a total dissimilarity between the Son and the Father. Arianism holds that the Son is distinct from the Father and therefore subordinate to him. The term ''Arian'' is derived from the name Arius; it was not what the followers of Arius's teachings called themselves, but rather a term used by outsiders. The nature of Arius's teachings and his supporters were opposed to the theological doctrines held by Homoousian Christians, regard ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Visigoths
The Visigoths (; la, Visigothi, Wisigothi, Vesi, Visi, Wesi, Wisi) were an early Germanic people who, along with the Ostrogoths, constituted the two major political entities of the Goths within the Roman Empire in late antiquity, or what is known as the Migration Period. The Visigoths emerged from earlier Gothic groups, including a large group of Thervingi, who had moved into the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had played a major role in defeating the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and the Visigoths varied, with the two groups making treaties when convenient, and warring with one another when not. Under their first leader, Alaric I, the Visigoths invaded Italy and sacked Rome in August 410. Afterwards, they began settling down, first in southern Gaul and eventually in Hispania, where they founded the Visigothic Kingdom and maintained a presence from the 5th to the 8th centuries AD. The Visigoths first settled in southern Gaul as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epigram
An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, and sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word is derived from the Greek "inscription" from "to write on, to inscribe", and the literary device has been employed for over two millennia. The presence of wit or sarcasm tends to distinguish non-poetic epigrams from aphorisms and adages, which tend to lack those qualities. Ancient Greek The Greek tradition of epigrams began as poems inscribed on votive offerings at sanctuariesincluding statues of athletesand on funerary monuments, for example "Go tell it to the Spartans, passersby...". These original epigrams did the same job as a short prose text might have done, but in verse. Epigram became a literary genre in the Hellenistic period, probably developing out of scholarly collections of inscriptional epigrams. Though modern epigrams are usually thought of as very short, Greek literary epigram was not always as short as later examples, and the divide between "ep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goths
The Goths ( got, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰, translit=''Gutþiuda''; la, Gothi, grc-gre, Γότθοι, Gótthoi) were a Germanic people who played a major role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of medieval Europe. In his book '' Getica'' (c. 551), the historian Jordanes writes that the Goths originated in southern Scandinavia, but the accuracy of this account is unclear. A people called the ''Gutones''possibly early Gothsare documented living near the lower Vistula River in the 1st century, where they are associated with the archaeological Wielbark culture. From the 2nd century, the Wielbark culture expanded southwards towards the Black Sea in what has been associated with Gothic migration, and by the late 3rd century it contributed to the formation of the Chernyakhov culture. By the 4th century at the latest, several Gothic groups were distinguishable, among whom the Thervingi and Greuthungi were the most powerful. During this time, Wulfila bega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Procopius
Procopius of Caesarea ( grc-gre, Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; la, Procopius Caesariensis; – after 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman general Belisarius in Emperor Justinian's wars, Procopius became the principal Roman historian of the 6th century, writing the ''History of the Wars'', the ''Buildings'', and the ''Secret History''. Life Apart from his own writings the main source for Procopius's life was an entry in the ''Suda'',Suda pi.2479. See under 'Procopius' oSuda On Line a Byzantine Greek encyclopaedia written sometime after 975 which discusses his early life. He was a native of Caesarea in the province of ''Palaestina Prima''. He would have received a conventional upper class education in the Greek classics and rhetoric, perhaps at the famous school at Gaza. He may have attended law school, possibly at Berytus (present-day Beirut) or Constantinople (now Istanbul), a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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