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Hippeis
''Hippeis'' ( grc, ἱππεῖς, singular ἱππεύς, ''hippeus'') is a Greek term for cavalry. In ancient Athenian society, after the political reforms of Solon, the ''hippeus'' was the second highest of the four social classes. It was composed of men who had at least 300 medimnoi or their equivalent as yearly income. According to the Timocratic Constitution the average citizen had a yearly income of less than 200 medimnoi. This gave the men who made 300 medimnoi the ability to purchase and maintain a war horse during their service to the state. Its counterparts were the Roman ''equites'' (equestrians) and medieval knights. Early formations In Sparta, the ''hippeus'' was the royal guard of honour. It consisted of 300 Spartan youths under the age of thirty. They would serve as heavily armed infantry soldiers in the King's bodyguard. The Athenian cavalry was formed after the Greco-Persian War in the 5th century BC; it originally consisted of 300 men and then increas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solonian Constitution
The Solonian constitution was created by Solon in the early 6th century BC. At the time of Solon the Athenian State was almost falling to pieces in consequence of dissensions between the parties into which the population was divided. Solon wanted to revise or abolish the older laws of Draco. He promulgated a code of laws embracing the whole of public and private life, the salutary effects of which lasted long after the end of his constitution. Under Solon's reforms, all debts were abolished and all debt-slaves were freed. The status of the ''hectemoroi'' (the "one-sixth workers"), who farmed in an early form of serfdom, was also abolished. These reforms were known as the '' Seisachtheia''. Solon's constitution reduced the power of the old aristocracy by making wealth rather than birth a criterion for holding political positions, a system called ''timokratia'' ( timocracy). Citizens were also divided based on their land production: pentacosiomedimnoi, hippeis, zeugitae, and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sacred Band Of Thebes
The Sacred Band of Thebes (Ancient Greek: , ''Hierós Lókhos'') was a troop of select soldiers, consisting of 150 pairs of male lovers which formed the elite force of the Theban army in the 4th century BC, ending Spartan domination. Its predominance began with its crucial role in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. It was annihilated by Philip II of Macedon in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. Formation The earliest surviving record of the Sacred Band by name was in 324 BC, in the oration ''Against Demosthenes'' by the Athenian logographer Dinarchus. He mentions the Sacred Band as being led by the general Pelopidas and, alongside Epaminondas who commanded the army of Thebes (Boeotia), were responsible for the defeat of the Spartans at the decisive Battle of Leuctra (371 BC). Plutarch (46–120 AD), a native of the village of Chaeronea, is the source of the most substantial surviving account of the Sacred Band. He records that the Sacred Band was originally formed by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greco-Persian War
The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to control the independent-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them. This would prove to be the source of much trouble for the Greeks and Persians alike. In 499 BC, the tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, embarked on an expedition to conquer the island of Naxos, with Persian support; however, the expedition was a debacle and, preempting his dismissal, Aristagoras incited all of Hellenic Asia Minor into rebellion against the Persians. This was the beginning of the Ionian Revolt, which would last until 493 BC, progressively drawing more regions of Asia Minor into the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Horse
The first evidence of horses in warfare dates from Eurasia between 4000 and 3000 BC. A Sumerian illustration of warfare from 2500 BC depicts some type of equine pulling wagons. By 1600 BC, improved harness and chariot designs made chariot warfare common throughout the Ancient Near East, and the earliest written training manual for war horses was a guide for training chariot horses written about 1350 BC. As formal cavalry tactics replaced the chariot, so did new training methods, and by 360 BC, the Greek cavalry officer Xenophon had written an extensive treatise on horsemanship. The effectiveness of horses in battle was also revolutionized by improvements in technology, such as the invention of the saddle, the stirrup, and the horse collar. Many different types and sizes of horse were used in war, depending on the form of warfare. The type used varied with whether the horse was being ridden or driven, and whether they were being used for reconnaissan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalry
Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from "cheval" meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who Horses in warfare, fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry in the roles of reconnaissance, Screening (tactical), screening, and skirmisher, skirmishing in many armies, or as heavy cavalry for decisive shock attacks in other armies. An individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations depending on era and tactics, such as cavalryman, Equestrianism, horseman, trooper (rank), trooper, cataphract, knight, hussar, uhlan, mamluk, cuirassier, lancer, dragoon, or horse archer. The designation of ''cavalry'' was not usually given to any Military animal, military forces that used other animals for mounts, such as Camel cavalry, camels or War elephant, elephants. Infantry who moved on horseback, but dismounted to fight on foot, were known in the early 17th to the early 18t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timocracy
A timocracy (from Greek τιμή ''timē'', "honor, worth" and -κρατία ''-kratia'', "rule") in Aristotle's ''Politics'' is a state where only property owners may participate in government. More advanced forms of timocracy, where power derives entirely from wealth with no regard for social or civic responsibility, may shift in their form and become a plutocracy where the wealthy rule. Greece Solon introduced the ideas of ''timokratia'' as a graded oligarchy in his Solonian Constitution for Athens in the early 6th century BC. His was the first known deliberately implemented form of timocracy, allocating political rights and economic responsibility depending on membership of one of four tiers of the population. Solon defined these tiers by measuring how many bushels of produce each man could produce in a year, namely: * Pentacosiomedimnoi – "Men of the 500 bushel", those who produced 500 bushels of produce per year, could serve as generals in the army * Hippeis &ndas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boule (ancient Greece)
In cities of ancient Greece, the boule ( el, βουλή, ''boulē''; plural βουλαί, ''boulai'') was a council of over 500 citizens (βουλευταί, ''bouleutai'') appointed to run daily affairs of the city. Originally a council of nobles advising a king, ''boulai'' evolved according to the constitution of the city: In oligarchies boule positions might have been hereditary, while in democracies members were typically chosen by lot and served for one year. Little is known about the workings of many ''boulai'', except in the case of Athens, for which extensive material has survived. Athenian boule The original council of Athens was the Areopagus. It consisted of ex- archons and was aristocratic in character. Solonian boule The Athenian boule under Solon heard appeals from the most important decisions of the courts. Those in the poorest class could not serve on the boule of 400. The higher governmental posts, archons (magistrates), were reserved for citizens of the top ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mail (armor)
Chain mail (properly called mail or maille but usually called chain mail or chainmail) is a type of armour consisting of small metal rings linked together in a pattern to form a mesh. It was in common military use between the 3rd century BC and the 16th century AD in Europe, and longer in Asia and North Africa. A coat of this armour is often called a hauberk, and sometimes a byrnie. History The earliest examples of surviving mail were found in the Carpathian Basin at a burial in Horný Jatov, Slovakia dated at 3rd century BC, and in a chieftain's burial located in Ciumești, Romania. Its invention is commonly credited to the Celts, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Talent (weight)
The talent was a unit of weight that was introduced in Mesopotamia at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and was normalized at the end of the 3rd millennium during the Akkadian-Sumer phase, divided into 60 minas or 3,600 shekels. In classical antiquity, the talent ( la, talentum, from Ancient Greek: , ''talanton'' "scale, balance, sum") was the heaviest of common weight units for commercial transactions. An Attic weight talent was approximately John William Humphrey, John Peter Oleson, Andrew Neil Sherwood, ''Greek and Roman technology'', p. 487. (approximately the mass of water of an amphora), and a Babylonian talent was .Herodotus, Robin Waterfield and Carolyn Dewald, ''The Histories'' (1998), p. 593. Ancient Israel adopted the Babylonian weight talent, but later revised it.III. Measures of W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mora (military Unit)
A ''mora'' (Greek: ,. plural ''morae'') was an ancient Spartan military unit of about a tenth of the Spartan army, at approx. 600 men by modern estimates, although Xenophon places it at 6,000. This can be reconciled by the nature of the Spartan army with an organisation based on year classes, with only the younger troops being mobilised for all but the gravest emergencies. Either way, it was the largest tactical unit in Sparta, if not all Greece, and was often the only force sent out on campaign. A ''mora'' was composed typically of hoplites, men armed with spears, swords and the heavy aspis shield and armoured in a cuirass, greaves and a helmet. This equipment changed over time, with more or less armour being used over different eras. Around 227 BC, Cleomenes III re-equipped some ''morai'' with the Macedonian '' sarissa'' and trained them to fight in the Macedonian pike phalanx. The unit was led by a Polemarch, the third (or arguably second) highest rank in Spartan hie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orient Méditerranéen De L'Empire Romain - Mosaïque Byzantine -5
The Orient is a term for the East in relation to Europe, traditionally comprising anything belonging to the Eastern world. It is the antonym of ''Occident'', the Western World. In English, it is largely a metonym for, and coterminous with, the continent of Asia, loosely classified into the Western Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, and sometimes including the Caucasus. Originally, the term ''Orient'' was used to designate only the Near East, and later its meaning evolved and expanded, designating also the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, or the Far East. The term ''oriental'' is often used to describe objects from the Orient; however in the United States it is considered an outdated and often offensive term by some, especially when used to refer to people of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent. Etymology The term "Orient" derives from the Latin word ''oriens'' meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < ''orior'' " rise"). The use of the w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heracles
Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through Amphitryon, Heracles receives the epithet Alcides, as "of the line of Alcaeus", father of Amphitryon. Amphitryon's own, mortal son was Iphicles. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus, and similarly a half-brother of Dionysus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
