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Urania Surinamensis
Urania ( ; grc, , Ouranía; modern Greek shortened name ''Ránia''; meaning "heavenly" or "of heaven") was, in Greek mythology, the muse of astronomy, and in later times, of Christian poetry. Urania is the goddess of astronomy and stars, her attributes being the globe and compass. The muse ''Urania'' is sometimes confounded with '' Aphrodite Urania'' ("heavenly Aphrodite") because of their similar name. Family Urania was the daughter of Zeus by Mnemosyne and also a great granddaughter of Uranus. Some accounts list her as the mother of the musician Linus by Apollo or Hermes or Amphimarus, son of Poseidon. Hymenaeus is also said to have been a son of Urania. Function and representation Urania is often associated with Universal Love. Sometimes identified as the eldest of the divine sisters, Urania inherited Zeus' majesty and power and the beauty and grace of her mother Mnemosyne. Urania dresses in a cloak embroidered with stars and keeps her eyes and atten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pompeii
Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried under of volcanic ash and pumice in the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Largely preserved under the ash, the excavated city offered a unique snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried, although much of the detailed evidence of the everyday life of its inhabitants was lost in the excavations. It was a wealthy town, with a population of ca. 11,000 in AD 79, enjoying many fine public buildings and luxurious private houses with lavish decorations, furnishings and works of art which were the main attractions for the early excavators. Organic remains, including wooden objects and human bodies, were interred in the ash. Over time, they decayed, leaving voids that archaeologists found could be used as moulds to make plaste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hymen (god)
Hymen ( grc, Ὑμήν), Hymenaios or Hymenaeus, in Hellenistic religion, is a god of marriage ceremonies, inspiring feasts and song. Related to the god's name, a ''hymenaios'' is a genre of Greek lyric poetry sung during the procession of the bride to the groom's house in which the god is addressed, in contrast to the ''Epithalamium'', which is sung at the nuptial threshold. He is one of the winged love gods, the Erotes. Hymen is the son of Apollo and one of the muses, Clio or Calliope or Urania or Terpsichore. Etymology Hymen's name is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *''syuh₁-men''-, "to sew together," hence, "joiner;" it is also recorded in Doric Greek as Ῡ̔μᾱ́ν (''Hyman''). The term ''hymen'' was also used for a thin skin or membrane, such as the hymen that covers the vaginal opening and was traditionally supposed to be broken by sexual intercourse following a woman's (first) marriage. So, the membrane's name was not directly connected to that of the g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pausanias (geographer)
Pausanias ( /pɔːˈseɪniəs/; grc-gre, Παυσανίας; c. 110 – c. 180) was a Greek traveler and geographer of the second century AD. He is famous for his ''Description of Greece'' (, ), a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from his firsthand observations. ''Description of Greece'' provides crucial information for making links between classical literature and modern archaeology. Biography Not much is known about Pausanias apart from what historians can piece together from his own writing. However, it is mostly certain that he was born c. 110 AD into a Greek family and was probably a native of Lydia in Asia Minor. From c. 150 until his death in 180, Pausanias travelled through the mainland of Greece, writing about various monuments, sacred spaces, and significant geographical sites along the way. In writing ''Description of Greece'', Pausanias sought to put together a lasting written account of "all things Greek", or ''panta ta hellenika''. Living in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaius Julius Hyginus
Gaius Julius Hyginus (; 64 BC – AD 17) was a Latin author, a pupil of the scholar Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was elected superintendent of the Palatine library by Augustus according to Suetonius' ''De Grammaticis'', 20. It is not clear whether Hyginus was a native of the Iberian Peninsula or of Alexandria. Suetonius remarks that Hyginus fell into great poverty in his old age and was supported by the historian Clodius Licinus. Hyginus was a voluminous author: his works included topographical and biographical treatises, commentaries on Helvius Cinna and the poems of Virgil, and disquisitions on agriculture and bee-keeping. All these are lost. Under the name of Hyginus there are extant what are probably two sets of school notes abbreviating his treatises on mythology; one is a collection of ''Fabulae'' ("stories"), the other a "Poetical Astronomy". ''Fabulae'' The ''Fabulae'' consists of some three hundred very brief and plainly, even crudely, to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linus (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Linus (Ancient Greek: Λῖνος ''Linos'' "flax") may refer to the following personages: ''Male'' * Linus, an Arcadian prince as one of the 50 sons of the impious King Lycaon either by the naiad Cyllene, NonacrisApollodorus, * Linus, the great musician son of Apollo. * Linus, son of Apollo and Psamathe. * Linus, a soldier in the army of the Seven against Thebes. He was killed by Hypseus at Thebes. ''Female'' *Linos, in some accounts, the nymph mother of Pelops by Atlas. Robert Graves. ''The Greek Myths, section 108 s.v. Tantalus'' Notes References * Apollodorus, ''The Library'' with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fasti (poem)
The ''Fasti'' ( la, Fāstī , "the Calendar"), sometimes translated as ''The Book of Days'' or ''On the Roman Calendar'', is a six-book Latin poem written by the Roman poet Ovid and published in AD 8. Ovid is believed to have left the ''Fasti'' incomplete when he was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in 8 AD. Written in elegiac couplets and drawing on conventions of Greek and Latin didactic poetry, the ''Fasti'' is structured as a series of eye-witness reports and interviews by the first-person ''vates'' ("poet-prophet" or "bard") with Roman deities, who explain the origins of Roman holidays and associated customs—often with multiple aetiologies. The poem is a significant, and in some cases unique, source of fact in studies of religion in ancient Rome; and the influential anthropologist and ritualist J.G. Frazer translated and annotated the work for the Loeb Classical Library series. Each book covers one month, January through June, of the Roman calendar, and was writ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian considered him the last of the Latin love elegists.Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93 Although Ovid enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, the emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis, a Dacian province on the Black Sea, where he remained a decade until his death. Overview A contemporary of the older poets Virgil and Horace, Ovid was the first major Roman poet to begin his career during Augustus's reign. Collectively, they are considered the three canonical poets of Latin literature. The Imperial scholar Quintilian described Ovid as the last of the Latin love elegists.Quint. ''Inst.'' 10.1.93 He enjoyed enormous popularity during his lifetime, but the emperor Augus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theogony
The ''Theogony'' (, , , i.e. "the genealogy or birth of the gods") is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1022 lines. Descriptions Hesiod's ''Theogony'' is a large-scale synthesis of a vast variety of local Greek traditions concerning the gods, organized as a narrative that tells how they came to be and how they established permanent control over the cosmos. It is the first known Greek mythical cosmogony. The initial state of the universe is chaos, a dark indefinite void considered a divine primordial condition from which everything else appeared. Theogonies are a part of Greek mythology which embodies the desire to articulate reality as a whole; this universalizing impulse was fundamental for the first later projects of speculative theorizing. Further, in the "Kings and Singers" passage (80–103) Hesiod appropriates to himself the authority u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual 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. Life The dating of Hesiod's life is a contested issue in scholarly circles (''see § Dating below''). Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several 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 explicit references in ''Works and Days'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uranus (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Uranus ( ), sometimes written Ouranos ( grc, Οὐρανός, , sky, ), is the personification of the sky and one of the Greek primordial deities. According to Hesiod, Uranus was the son and husband of Gaia (Earth), with whom he fathered the first generation of Titans. However, no cult addressed directly to Uranus survived into Classical times, and Uranus does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky, and Styx might be joined, however, in solemn invocation in Homeric epic. Uranus is associated with the Roman god Caelus and the Jewish god Yahweh. Etymology Most linguists trace the etymology of the name to a Proto-Greek form ''*Worsanós'' (), enlarged from *''ṷorsó-'' (also found in Greek ''()'' 'to urinate', Sanskrit ''varṣá'' 'rain', Hittite ''ṷarša-'' 'fog, mist').Robert S. P. Beekes, ''Etymological Dictionary of Greek'', vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 1128–1129. The basic Indo-European root is ''* ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aphrodite
Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols include myrtles, roses, doves, sparrows, and swans. The cult of Aphrodite was largely derived from that of the Phoenician goddess Astarte, a cognate of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar, whose cult was based on the Sumerian cult of Inanna. Aphrodite's main cult centers were Cythera, Cyprus, Corinth, and Athens. Her main festival was the Aphrodisia, which was celebrated annually in midsummer. In Laconia, Aphrodite was worshipped as a warrior goddess. She was also the patron goddess of prostitutes, an association which led early scholars to propose the concept of "sacred prostitution" in Greco-Roman culture, an idea which is now generally seen as erroneous. In Hesiod's ''Theogony'', Aphrodite is born off the coast of Cythera from the foam (, ) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aphrodite Urania
Aphrodite Urania ( grc, Ἀφροδίτη Οὐρανία, Aphrodítē Ouranía) was an epithet of the Greek goddess Aphrodite, signifying "heavenly" or "spiritual", to distinguish her from her more earthly aspect of Aphrodite Pandemos, "Aphrodite for all the people". The two were used (mostly in literature) to differentiate the more "celestial" love of body and soul from purely physical lust. Plato represented her as a daughter of the Greek god Uranus, conceived and born without a mother. According to Hesiod, she was born from the severed genitals of Uranus and emerged from the sea foam. Urania and Pandemos Aphrodite Pandemos was originally an extension of the idea of the goddess Aphrodite to family and city life to include the whole people, the political community. Hence the name was supposed to go back to the time of Theseus, the reputed author of the reorganization of Attica and its demes. Aphrodite Pandemos was held in equal regard with Urania; she was called σεμνή ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
