Search Results: Epitome

Map of Great Britain by Matthew Paris (c. 1199-1259), made c. 1250. From the manuscript Epitome of Chronicles, BL Cotton MS Claudius D VI, fol. 12v. (British Library)

Chrocus (Crocus) was a king of the Alemanni who invaded Roman Gaul c. 256 CE until he was defeated by the Roman legions at Arles and then executed. Conversely, he was a king of the Alemanni who served Rome and supported Constantine the Great...

The rarity of the appearance of Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms in ancient literature is one of the reasons why those states are so little-known today. Indo-Greek literature did exist, but none has been found that speaks about the...

Decebalus (c. 87-106 CE) was the king of Dacia (roughly modern-day Romania and Moldova) who fought two wars with Rome under Trajan (in 101-102 CE and 105-106 CE) in defense of his kingdom. Trajan (r. 98-117 CE) was renewing a conflict...

In the wake of the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the intellectual collapse of Athens, Byzantine scholars engaged in preserving the Classical Greek language and its literature. Thus they became the guardians of a vanished culture...

The samurai (also bushi) were a class of warriors that arose in the 10th century in Japan and which performed military service until the 19th century. Elite and highly-trained soldiers adept at using both the bow and sword, the samurai were...

Enlil (also known as Ellil and Nunamnir) was the Sumerian god of the air in the Mesopotamian Pantheon but was more powerful than any other elemental deities and eventually was worshiped as King of the Gods. He is featured in a number of important...

The Bar Kochba Revolt (132–136 CE) was the third and final war between the Jewish people and the Roman Empire. It followed a long period of tension and violence, marked by the first Jewish uprising of 66-70 CE, which ended with the destruction...

The Cimbri were a tribe who lived in northern Jutland during the Roman era. Their ethnicity is enigmatic; scholars generally believe that the Cimbri were Germans, though others maintain that they were Celts. The late 2nd-century BCE migration...

Civilization (from the Latin civis=citizen and civitas=city) is a term applied to any society which has developed a writing system, government, production of surplus food, division of labor, and urbanization. The term is difficult to define...