Definitions

The Ecclesiazusae (aka Assemblywomen) is a comedy play written by Aristophanes, one of the great Greek comic playwrights. Written sometime between 393 and 391 BCE, it is, along with his play Wealth, one of only two he wrote after the Athenian...

Timbuktu (Timbuctoo) is a city in Mali, West Africa which was an important trade centre of the Mali Empire which flourished between the 13th and 15th centuries CE. The city, founded c. 1100 CE, gained wealth from access to and control of...

The Peace of Callias (aka Kallias) refers to a possible peace treaty made in the mid-5th century BCE between Athens and Persia following the Persian Wars. The existence of such a treaty is not agreed upon by all historians, and if it did...

The Old Norse word saga means 'story', 'tale' or 'history' and normally refers specifically to the epic prose narratives written mainly in Iceland between the 12th- and 15th centuries CE, covering the country's history as well as Scandinavia's...

De Officiis is a treatise written by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 – 43 BCE), Roman statesman and orator, in the form of a letter to his son just after the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE. Strongly influenced by stoicism, De Officiis is divided...

Medieval folklore is a body of work, originally transmitted orally, which was composed between the 5th and 15th centuries in Europe. Although folktales are a common attribute of every civilization, and such stories were being told by cultures...

Emperor Taizu (960-976 CE), formerly known as Zhao Kuangyin, was the founder of the Song (aka Sung) dynasty which ruled China from 960 to 1279 CE. Taizu settled for a territorially smaller but more unified and prosperous China than was seen...

The Jianwen Emperor (r. 1398-1402 CE) was the second ruler of the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE). Following a civil war and Jianwen's mysterious disappearance, his uncle took over the throne and ruled as the Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1424...

The Yongle Emperor (aka Chengzu or Yung Lo, r. 1403-1424 CE) was the third ruler of the Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 CE). Inheriting a stable state thanks to the work of his father, the Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368-1398 CE), Yongle made lasting...

The Hongwu Emperor (r. 1368-1398 CE) was the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644 CE) which took over from the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1276-1368 CE) as the rulers of China. Born a peasant with the name Zhu Yuanzhang, the future emperor led...