Search Results: Justin pollard

Saint Justin Martyr, fresco by Theophanes the Cretan, 1545 and 1546. Stavronikita Monastery, Mount Athos, Greece.

New Testament is the name for the second half of the Christian Bible, compiled from the 2nd century CE, after the separation of Christianity from Judaism. The Christian Bible retained books of the Jewish scriptures, the Old Testament, as...

After Julius Caesar’s (100-44 BCE) conquest of Gaul, Roman legions pushed the borders of the Roman Empire’s frontier to the banks of the Rhine River. Augustus (r. 27 BCE - 14 CE) divided the newly acquired region into three provinces: Gallia...

The Roman army underwent dramatic changes in Late Antiquity. Civil war and external conflicts led to the creation of new legions while existing legions were either split or disbanded. Although there was an increase in the number of legions...

During the Year of the Four Emperors (69 CE), the fight between Vitellius and Vespasian would ultimately bring about the demise of four legions, the XV Primigenia, I Germanica, IIII Macedonica, and XVI Gallia. All four of these legions had...

Flavius Belisarius (l. 505-565 CE) was born in Illyria (the western part of the Balkan Peninsula) to poor parents and rose to become one of the greatest generals, if not the greatest, of the Byzantine Empire. Belisarius is listed among the...

Kosrau I (r. 531-579 CE) was the greatest king of the Sassanian Empire (224-651 CE) in virtually every aspect of his reign. He reformed the military, the Persian government, expanded his territories, engaged in large-scale building projects...

The Thirty Tyrants (οἱ τριάκοντα τύραννοι) is a term first used by Polycrates in a speech praising Thrasybulus (Arist. Rhet. 1401a) to describe the brief 8-month oligarchy which governed Athens after the Peloponnesian War – roughly late-summer...

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...

Justinian I reigned as emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 527 to 565 CE. Born around 482 CE in Tauresium, a village in Illyria, his uncle Emperor Justin I was an imperial bodyguard who reached the throne on the death of Anastasius in 518...