Definitions

Brennus (c. 390 BCE) was the Gallic war chief of the Senones who sacked and occupied Rome in 390 BCE. Nothing is known of him outside of the accounts given of this event which immortalized him as coining the phrase, “Woe to the Vanquished”...

Michael IV the Paphlagonian was Byzantine emperor from 1034 to 1041 CE. He had an affair with Empress Zoe, then married her and was crowned emperor after the death of her first husband, Romanos III. He ran a competent regime that kept the...

The Second Crusade (1147-1149 CE) was a military campaign organised by the Pope and European nobles to recapture the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia which had fallen in 1144 CE to the Muslim Seljuk Turks. Despite an army of 60,000 and the presence...

A medieval Teutonic Knight was a member of the Catholic military Deutscher Orden or Teutonic Order, officially founded in March 1198 CE. The first mission of the Teutonic knights was to help retake Jerusalem from the Arabs in the Third Crusade...

Ptolemy XV Caesar “Theos Philopator Philometor” (“the Father-loving Mother-loving God”) (c. 47-30 BCE), better known by his unofficial nickname Caesarion or “Little Caesar” in Greek, was the oldest son of Cleopatra VII (69-30 BCE) and was...

John I Tzimiskes was Byzantine emperor from 969 to 976 CE. Although he took the throne by murdering his predecessor Nikephoros II Phokas, John was a popular emperor. A skilled general and a competent politician, he is known for expanding...

The First Crusade (1095-1102) was a military campaign by western European forces to recapture the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. Conceived by Pope Urban II following an appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I...

Nikephoros II Phokas was Byzantine emperor from 963 to 969 CE. Known as “White Death of the Saracens,” Nikephoros was a fearsome commander who conquered Crete, Cilicia, and much of Syria. While he is known as a great military commander, he...

Hippolytus is a tragedy written by Euripides (c. 484-407 BCE), one of the great Greek playwrights of the early 5th century BCE. As with many tragedies of the era, the central focus of Hippolytus is humanity's relationship with the gods. Hippolytus...

The Bacchae is a Greek tragedy written by the playwright Euripides (c. 484-406 BCE) in 407 BCE, which portrays Pentheus as an impious king, for the ruler of Thebes has denied the worship of Dionysus within his city walls. For Pentheus, the...