Definitions

Sappho of Lesbos (l. c. 620-570 BCE) was a lyric poet whose work was so popular in ancient Greece that she was honored in statuary, coinage, and pottery centuries after her death. Little remains of her work, and these fragments...

The Holy Roman Empire officially lasted from 962 to 1806. It was one of Europe’s largest medieval and early modern states, but its power base was unstable and continually shifting. The Holy Roman Empire was not a unitary state...

Cochin, located on the southwest coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1503 to 1663. Known to the Portuguese as Cochim, it was one of several important cities on India’s Malabar Coast and a great trade centre for spices...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage...

Hipparchia of Maroneia (l. c. 350-280 BCE) was a Cynic philosopher who rejected her upper-class life to live her beliefs and share her values on the streets of ancient Athens. She was the wife of the Cynic Crates of Thebes...

Democritus (l. c. 460 - c. 370 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and younger contemporary of Socrates, born in Abdera (though other sources cite Miletus) who, with his teacher Leucippus (l. 5th century BCE), was the first to propose an...

The term agora (pronounced ah-go-RAH) is Greek for 'open place of assembly' and, early in the history of Greece, designated the area in a city where free-born citizens could gather to hear civic announcements, muster for military campaigns...

Aspasia of Miletus (l. c. 470-410/400 BCE) is best known as the consort of the great Athenian statesman Pericles. Her life story has always been given in the shadow of Pericles' fame, but she was a woman of great eloquence and...

Ra (also given as Re) is the sun god of ancient Egypt. He is one of the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon and was later merged with others such as Horus, becoming Ra-Horakhty (the morning sun), Amun (as noonday sun), and...

The Carolingian Dynasty (751-887) was a family of Frankish nobles who ruled Francia and its successor kingdoms in Western and Central Europe during the Early Middle Ages. The dynasty expanded from Francia as far as modern Italy...