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Diagoras Of Melos
Diagoras "the Atheist" of Melos ( el, Διαγόρας ὁ Μήλιος) was a Greek poet and sophist of the 5th century BC. Throughout antiquity, he was regarded as an atheist, but very little is known for certain about what he actually believed. Anecdotes about his life indicate that he spoke out against ancient Greek religion. He allegedly chopped up a wooden statue of Heracles and used it to roast his lentils and revealed the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Athenians accused him of '' asebeia'' ( impiety) and banished him from their city. He died in Corinth. Life Diagoras was the son of Telecleides or Teleclytus, and was born in the island of Melos, one of the Cyclades. According to the Suda, he was a disciple of Democritus after Democritus had paid 10,000 drachmas to free Diagoras from captivity following the cruel subjugation of Melos (416 BC); however no early sources mention an association with Democritus. The Suda also states that in his youth Diagoras had ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin, featuring thousands of islands. The country consists of nine traditional geographic regions, and has a population of approximately 10.4 million. Athens is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras. Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization, being the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simonides
Simonides of Ceos (; grc-gre, Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος; c. 556–468 BC) was a Greek lyric poet, born in Ioulis on Ceos. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of the nine lyric poets esteemed by them as worthy of critical study. Included on this list were Bacchylides, his nephew, and Pindar, reputedly a bitter rival, both of whom benefited from his innovative approach to lyric poetry. Simonides, however, was more involved than either in the major events and with the personalities of their times. Lessing, writing in the Enlightenment era, referred to him as "the Greek Voltaire." His general renown owes much to traditional accounts of his colourful life, as one of the wisest of men; as a greedy miser; as an inventor of a system of mnemonics; and the inventor of some letters of the Greek alphabet (). Such accounts include fanciful elements, yet he had a real influence on the sophistic enlightenment of the Classical era. His fame ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National God
A national god is a guardian divinity whose special concern is the safety and well-being of an ethnic group (''nation''), and of that group's leaders. This is contrasted with other guardian figures such as family gods responsible for the well-being of individual clans or professions, or personal gods who are responsible for the well-being of individuals. Ancient gods In antiquity (and to some extent continuing today), religion was a characteristic of regional culture, together with language, customs, traditions, etc. Many of these ethnic religions included national god(s) in their pantheons, such as * Amaterasu of the Japanese; * Amun, Amun-Ra and Horus for the Egyptians; * Apollo for the people of Troy; * Aramazd for Armenians * eponymous Assur for the Assyrians; * Ashtoret for the Sidonians; * the eponymous Athena-Mykene for the Athenians and Mycenaeans; * Baal for the Phoenicians; * Bathala of the Tagalogs; * Chemosh for the Moabites; * Dagon for Philistia; * Gaut for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diodorus Siculus
Diodorus Siculus, or Diodorus of Sicily ( grc-gre, Διόδωρος ; 1st century BC), was an ancient Greek historian. He is known for writing the monumental universal history '' Bibliotheca historica'', in forty books, fifteen of which survive intact, between 60 and 30 BC. The history is arranged in three parts. The first covers mythic history up to the destruction of Troy, arranged geographically, describing regions around the world from Egypt, India and Arabia to Europe. The second covers the time from the Trojan War to the death of Alexander the Great. The third covers the period to about 60 BC. ''Bibliotheca'', meaning 'library', acknowledges that he was drawing on the work of many other authors. Life According to his own work, he was born in Agyrium in Sicily (now called Agira). With one exception, antiquity affords no further information about his life and doings beyond his written works. Only Jerome, in his '' Chronicon'' under the "year of Abraham 1968" (49 BC), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristophanes
Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion ( la, Cydathenaeum), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries. Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play ''The Clouds'' as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates, although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher. Aristophanes' second play, ''T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Clouds
''The Clouds'' ( grc, Νεφέλαι ''Nephelai'') is a Greek comedy play written by the playwright Aristophanes. A lampooning of intellectual fashions in classical Athens, it was originally produced at the City Dionysia in 423BC and was not as well received as the author had hoped, coming last of the three plays competing at the festival that year. It was revised between 420 and 417BC and was thereafter circulated in manuscript form. No copy of the original production survives, and scholarly analysis indicates that the revised version is an incomplete form of Old Comedy. This incompleteness, however, is not obvious in translations and modern performances. Retrospectively, ''The Clouds'' can be considered the world's first extant "comedy of ideas" and is considered by literary critics to be among the finest examples of the genre. The play also, however, remains notorious for its caricature of Socrates and is mentioned in Plato's '' Apology'' as a contributor to the philosoph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polybius
Polybius (; grc-gre, Πολύβιος, ; ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , which covered the period of 264–146 BC and the Punic Wars in detail. Polybius is important for his analysis of the mixed constitution or the separation of powers in government, his in-depth discussion of checks and balances to limit power, and his introduction of "the people", which influenced Montesquieu's '' The Spirit of the Laws'', John Locke's '' Two Treatises of Government'', and the framers of the United States Constitution. The leading expert on Polybius for nearly a century was F. W. Walbank (1909–2008), who published studies related to him for 50 years, including a long commentary of his ''Histories'' and a biography. Early life Polybius was born around 200 BC in Megalopolis, Arcadia, when it was an active member of the Achaean League. The town was revived, along with other Achaean states, a century before he was born. Polybius' father, Lyc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum and the wider Aristotelian tradition. His writings cover many subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. It was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Little is known about his life. Aristotle was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legislation
Legislation is the process or result of enrolling, enacting, or promulgating laws by a legislature, parliament, or analogous governing body. Before an item of legislation becomes law it may be known as a bill, and may be broadly referred to as "legislation" while it remains under consideration to distinguish it from other business. Legislation can have many purposes: to regulate, to authorize, to outlaw, to provide (funds), to sanction, to grant, to declare, or to restrict. It may be contrasted with a non-legislative act by an executive or administrative body under the authority of a legislative act. Overview Legislation is usually proposed by a member of the legislature (e.g. a member of Congress or Parliament), or by the executive, whereupon it is debated by members of the legislature and is often amended before passage. Most large legislatures enact only a small fraction of the bills proposed in a given session. Whether a given bill will be proposed is generally a matt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claudius Aelianus
Claudius Aelianus ( grc, Κλαύδιος Αἰλιανός, Greek transliteration ''Kláudios Ailianós''; c. 175c. 235 AD), commonly Aelian (), born at Praeneste, was a Roman author and teacher of rhetoric who flourished under Septimius Severus and probably outlived Elagabalus, who died in 222. He spoke Greek so fluently that he was called "honey-tongued" ( ); Roman-born, he preferred Greek authors, and wrote in a slightly archaizing Greek himself. This cites: * ''Editio princeps'' of complete works by Gesner, 1556; Hercher, 1864-1866. * English translation of the ''Various History'' only by Fleming, 1576, and Stanley, 1665 * Translation of the ''Letters'' by Quillard (French), 1895 His two chief works are valuable for the numerous quotations from the works of earlier authors, which are otherwise lost, and for the surprising lore, which offers unexpected glimpses into the Greco-Roman world-view. It is also the only Greco-Roman work to mention Gilgamesh. ''De Natura Animal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mantineia
Mantineia (also Mantinea ; el, Μαντίνεια; also Koine Greek ''Antigoneia'') was a city in ancient Arcadia, Greece, which was the site of two significant battles in Classical Greek history. In modern times it is a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, of which it is a municipal unit. Its seat was the village of Nestani (pop. 486 in 2011). It is located in the northeastern part of Arcadia. The municipal unit has a land area of 205.393 km2 and a population of 2,114 inhabitants. Its largest other towns are Artemisio, Loukas, and Kapsas. History The city emerged from the amalgamation of several neighbouring villages around 500 BC. Its patron god was Poseidon. It was a large city with numerous temples. The fortifications originally were polygonal. The temple of Artemis Hymnia, just on the north of the city, is mentioned by Pausanias. Diotima, who influenced Socrates, suppo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicodorus Of Mantineia
Nicodorus (fl. 425 BC) was an ancient Greek statesman of Mantineia. He was a notable lawgiver in his hometown and praised for his work by the controversial sophist Diagoras of Melos. Diagoras, who was later condemned as an atheist by the Athenians, reportedly assisted Nicodorus in his legislation. Both men wrote a constitution for Mantineia which was described by Aristotle and Polybius as a rare example of democratic moderation and equilibrium. When the Spartan conqueror Cleomenes III Cleomenes III ( grc, Κλεομένης) was one of the two kings of Sparta from 235 to 222 BC. He was a member of the Agiad dynasty and succeeded his father, Leonidas II. He is known for his attempts to reform the Spartan state. From 229 to ... restored the ancient laws of the Mantineians in 226 BC, this probably referred to the constitution of Nicodorus.Plutarch, ''Cleomenes'', 35 (14). References Ancient Mantineans Ancient Greek law Place of birth unknown Place of death unknown Year ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
