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Parmenides & the Path of Truth
Parmenides (l. c. 485 BCE) lived and taught in Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy and is known as the founder of the Monist School (though it may have been founded by Xenophanes of Colophon, l. c. 570-478 BCE) which claimed all of reality...

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The Life and Thought of Zeno of Citium in Diogenes Laertius
Zeno of Citium (c. 336 – 265 BCE) was the founder of the Stoic School of philosophy in Athens, which taught that the Logos (Universal Reason) was the greatest good in life and living in accordance with reason was the meaning of life. He was...

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Coyote Tales of the Shasta Nation
The Coyote tales come from the Shasta people who originally inhabited the regions of modern-day northern California and southern Oregon. Coyote is a popular trickster figure among many Native peoples of North America, including the Shasta...

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The Bear Man
The Bear Man is a Pawnee legend exemplifying the Native American understanding of the natural world and serving as an origin tale for the Bear Dance, which was performed to awaken the bears in spring from their winter hibernation and also...

Definition
Athena
Athena was the goddess of wisdom, war, and the crafts. She was the favourite daughter of Zeus and was, perhaps, the wisest, most courageous, and certainly the most resourceful of the Olympian gods. Zeus was told that his son would take his...

Definition
Greek Alphabet
The Greek Alphabet developed from the Phoenician script at some point around the 8th century BCE. The earlier Mycenaean Linear B script, used primarily for lists and inventories, had been lost during the Greek Dark Age, and the technology...

Definition
Ramesses II
Ramesses II (r. 1279-1213 BCE, alternative spellings: Ramses, Rameses) was known to the Egyptians as Userma'atre'setepenre, which means 'Keeper of Harmony and Balance, Strong in Right, Elect of Ra'. He is also known also as Ozymandias and...

Definition
Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk best known as the hero of The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2150-1400 BCE) the great Babylonian poem that predates Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by 1500 years and, therefore, stands as the oldest piece of epic...

Definition
Ashoka the Great
Ashoka the Great (r. 268-232 BCE) was the third king of the Mauryan Empire (322-185 BCE) best known for his renunciation of war, development of the concept of dhamma (pious social conduct), and promotion of Buddhism as well as his effective...

Definition
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546) was a German priest, monk, and theologian who became the central figure of the religious and cultural movement known as the Protestant Reformation. Even though earlier reformers had expressed Luther's views, his...