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Therapeutae
The Therapeutae were a religious sect which existed in Alexandria and other parts of the ancient Greek world. The primary source concerning the Therapeutae is the ''De vita contemplativa'' ("The Contemplative Life"), traditionally ascribed to the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE – 50 CE). The author appears to have been personally acquainted with them. The author describes the Therapeutae as "philosophers" (cf. I.2) and mentions a group that lived on a low hill by the Lake Mareotis close to Alexandria in circumstances resembling lavrite life (cf. III.22). They were "the best" of a kind given to "perfect goodness" that "exists in many places in the inhabited world" (cf. III.21). The author was unsure of the origin of the name and derives the name Therapeutae/Therapeutides from Greek θεραπεύω in the sense of "cure" or "worship" (cf. I.2). Philo's description of the doctrines and practices of the Therapeutae leaves great ambiguity about what religion th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Mareotis
Lake Mariout ( ar, بحيرة مريوط ', , also spelled Maryut or Mariut), is a brackish lake in northern Egypt near the city of Alexandria. The lake area covered and had a navigable canal at the beginning of the 20th century, but at the beginning of the 21st century, it covers only about . Etymology The name of Lake Mariout derives from the Hellenized name of Mareotis ( grc, Μαρεῶτις) or Marea, which was named in the Ptolemic Period. Overview In antiquity, the lake was much larger than it is now, extending further to the south and west and occupying around . It had no mouth connecting it to the Mediterranean, being fed with Nile water via a number of canals. By the twelfth century the lake had dwindled to a collection of salt lakes and salt flats and it had dried up by the Late Middle Ages. At least 250 years ago, the lake was fresh water, and much of it would dry up during the period just before the Nile flooded again. A storm in 1770 breached the sea wal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moses
Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu ( Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important prophet in Judaism and one of the most important prophets in Christianity, Islam, the Druze faith, the Baháʼí Faith and other Abrahamic religions. According to both the Bible and the Quran, Moses was the leader of the Israelites and lawgiver to whom the authorship, or "acquisition from heaven", of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible) is attributed. According to the Book of Exodus, Moses was born in a time when his people, the Israelites, an enslaved minority, were increasing in population and, as a result, the Egyptian Pharaoh worried that they might ally themselves with Egypt's enemies. Moses' Hebrew mother, Jochebed, secretly hid him when Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the populati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chrysippus
Chrysippus of Soli (; grc-gre, Χρύσιππος ὁ Σολεύς, ; ) was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was a native of Soli, Cilicia, but moved to Athens as a young man, where he became a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes. When Cleanthes died, around 230 BC, Chrysippus became the third head of the Stoic school. A prolific writer, Chrysippus expanded the fundamental doctrines of Cleanthes' mentor Zeno of Citium, the founder and first head of the school, which earned him the title of the Second Founder of Stoicism. Chrysippus excelled in logic, the theory of knowledge, ethics, and physics. He created an original system of propositional logic in order to better understand the workings of the universe and role of humanity within it. He adhered to a deterministic view of fate, but nevertheless sought a role for personal freedom in thought and action. Ethics, he thought, depended on understanding the nature of the universe, and he taught a therapy of extirpating th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of '' De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances (a pharmacopeia), that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. For almost two millennia Dioscorides was regarded as the most prominent writer on plants and plant drugs. Life A native of Anazarbus, Cilicia, Asia Minor, Dioscorides likely studied medicine nearby at the school in Tarsus, which had a pharmacological emphasis, and he dedicated his medical books to Laecanius Arius, a medical practitioner there. Though he writes he lived a "soldier's life" or "soldier-like life", his pharmacopeia refers almost solely to plants found in the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean, making it likely that he served in campaigns, or travelled in a civilian capacity, less ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Politicus (Plato)
The ''Statesman'' ( grc-gre, Πολιτικός, ''Politikós''; Latin: ''Politicus''), also known by its Latin title, ''Politicus'', is a Socratic dialogue written by Plato. The text depicts a conversation among Socrates, the mathematician Theodorus, another person named Socrates (referred to as "Socrates the Younger"), and an unnamed philosopher from Elea referred to as "the Stranger" (, ''xénos''). It is ostensibly an attempt to arrive at a definition of "statesman," as opposed to "sophist" or "philosopher" and is presented as following the action of the ''Sophist''. The ''Sophist'' had begun with the question of whether the sophist, statesman, and philosopher were one or three, leading the Eleatic Stranger to argue that they were three but that this could only be ascertained through full accounts of each (''Sophist'' 217b). But though Plato has his characters give accounts of the sophist and statesman in their respective dialogues, it is most likely that he never wrote a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Politica (Aristotle)
''Politics'' ( el, Πολιτικά, ''Politiká'') is a work of political philosophy by Aristotle, a 4th-century BC Greek philosopher. The end of the ''Nicomachean Ethics'' declared that the inquiry into ethics necessarily follows into politics, and the two works are frequently considered to be parts of a larger treatise—or perhaps connected lectures—dealing with the "philosophy of human affairs". The title of ''Politics'' literally means "the things concerning the πόλις : polis", and is the origin of the modern English word politics. Overview Structure Aristotle's ''Politics'' is divided into eight books, which are each further divided into chapters. Citations of this work, as with the rest of the works of Aristotle, are often made by referring to the Bekker section numbers. ''Politics'' spans the Bekker sections 1252a to 1342b. Book I In the first book, Aristotle discusses the city (πόλις : '' polis'') or "political community" (κοινωνία πολι� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Menander
Menander (; grc-gre, Μένανδρος ''Menandros''; c. 342/41 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He wrote 108 comedies and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times. His record at the City Dionysia is unknown. He was one of the most popular writers in antiquity, but his work was lost during the Middle Ages and is now known in highly fragmentary form, much of which was discovered in the 20th century. Only one play, ''Dyskolos'', has survived almost complete. Life and work Menander was the son of well-to-do parents; his father Diopeithes is identified by some with the Athenian general and governor of the Thracian Chersonese known from the speech of Demosthenes ''De Chersoneso''. He presumably derived his taste for comic drama from his uncle Alexis. He was the friend, associate, and perhaps pupil of Theophrastus, and was on intimate terms with the Athenian dictator Demetrius of Phalerum. He also enjoy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strabo
Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called " Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could see things at great distance as if they were nearby was also called "Strabo". (; el, Στράβων ''Strábōn''; 64 or 63 BC 24 AD) was a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian who lived in Asia Minor during the transitional period of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Life Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus (in present-day Turkey) in around 64BC. His family had been involved in politics since at least the reign of Mithridates V. Strabo was related to Dorylaeus on his mother's side. Several other family members, including his paternal grandfather had served Mithridates VI during the Mithridatic Wars. As the war drew to a close, Strabo's grandfather had turned several Pon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hellenica
''Hellenica'' ( grc, Ἑλληνικά) simply means writings on Greek (Hellenic) subjects. Several histories of 4th-century Greece, written in the mould of Thucydides or straying from it, have borne the conventional Latin title ''Hellenica''. The surviving ''Hellenica'' is an important work of the Ancient Greek writer Xenophon and one of the principal sources for the last seven years of the Peloponnesian War not covered by Thucydides, as well as the war's aftermath. Xenophon's ''Hellenica'' Many consider this a very personal work, written by Xenophon in retirement on his Spartan estate, intended primarily for circulation among his friends, for people who knew the main protagonists and events, often because they had participated in them. Xenophon's account starts in 411 BC, the year where Thucydides breaks off, and ends in 362 BC, the year of the Battle of Mantineia. There is virtually no transition between the two works, to the extent that the opening words of ''Hellenica'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallel Lives
Plutarch's ''Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans'', commonly called ''Parallel Lives'' or ''Plutarch's Lives'', is a series of 48 biographies of famous men, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably written at the beginning of the second century AD. The surviving ''Parallel Lives'' ( Greek: Βίοι Παράλληλοι, ''Bíoi Parállēloi'') comprises 23 pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of one Greek and one Roman of similar destiny, such as Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, or Demosthenes and Cicero. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a source of information about the individuals described, but also about the times in which they lived. Motivation ''Parallel Lives'' was Plutarch's second set of biographical works, following the Lives of the Roman Emperors from Augustus to Vitellius. Of these, only the Lives of Galba and Otho survive. As he explains in the first paragraph of his ''Life of Alexander'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Definitiones
The ''Definitions'' ( grc-gre, Ὅροι ''Horoi''; la, Definitiones) is a dictionary of 184 philosophical terms sometimes included in the corpus of Plato's works. Plato is generally not regarded as the editor of all of ''Definitions''. Some ancient scholars attributed ''Definitions'' to Speusippus.John Madison Cooper, D. S. Hutchinson (1997), ''Plato – Complete Works''. Hackett Publishing. pp. 1677–1687. In modern scholarship, ''Definitions'' is thought to have little philosophical value. Given the sophistication of Plato's and Aristotle's efforts in the area of definition, this collection seems to be an elementary text produced by second-rate philosophical study. Its early date, however, does give it some importance as a source for the history of ancient Platonism. Content ''Definitions'' is a list of 184 terms important in early Platonism together with one or more brief definitions. Though not in alphabetical or any other simple order, it is possible to discern some fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
