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Pindar's First Pythian Ode
Pindar, Pindar's ''First Pythian Ode'' is an ancient Greek epinicion praising Hiero I of Syracuse, Hiero of Syracuse for a victory in the Pythian Games. The poem's occasion is Hiero's victory in the chariot race of 470 BC, corresponding to the foundation of the city of Aetna (city), Aetna which is also praised by the poet. Hiero of Syracuse Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, Sicily, Syracuse, had been the recipient of Pindar's First Olympian Ode in 476 BC. His victory in the Pythian games comes in the wake of a number of significant military accomplishments: his defeat of the Carthaginians at the Battle of Himera (480 BC), Battle of Himera and of the Etruscans in the naval Battle of Cumae. Both events are alluded to in the poem. Special attention, however, is afforded to Hiero's foundation of the city of Aetna. He had founded the settlement near Mount Etna for his son Deinomenes the Younger to rule and proclaimed himself one of its citizens upon winning the chariot race at Delphi. Typh ...
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Pindar
Pindar (; grc-gre, Πίνδαρος , ; la, Pindarus; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable." His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning". Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival Bacchylides; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet hims ...
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Battle Of Cumae
The Battle of Cumae is the name given to at least two battles between Cumae and the Etruscans: * In 524 BC an invading army of Umbrians, Daunians, Etruscans, and others were defeated by the Greeks of Cumae. * The naval battle in 474 BC was between the combined navies of Syracuse and Cumae against the Etruscans. The Greek-colonised city of Cumae in southern Italy was founded in 8th century BC in an area towards the southern Etruscan border. By 504 the southern Etruscans were defeated by the Cumaeans, but they still maintained a powerful force. In 474 they were able to raise a fleet to launch a direct attack on Cumae. In the naval battle, after he was called on for military assistance, Hiero I of Syracuse allied with naval forces from the maritime Greek cities of southern Italy to defend against Etruscan expansion into southern Italy. In 474, they met and defeated the Etruscan fleet at Cumae in the Bay of Naples. After their defeat, the Etruscans lost much of their political ...
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Panhellenic Games
Panhellenic Games is the collective term for four separate sports festivals held in ancient Greece. The four Games were: Description The Olympiad was one of the ways the Greeks measured time. The Olympic Games were used as a starting point, year one of the cycle; the Nemean and Isthmian Games were both held (in different months) in year two, followed by the Pythian Games in year three, and then the Nemean and Isthmian Games again in year four. The cycle then repeated itself with the Olympic Games. They were structured this way so that individual athletes could participate in all of the games. (Note that the dial on the Antikythera mechanism seems to show that the Nemean and Isthmian Games did not occur in the same years.) Participants could come from all over the Greek world, including the various Greek colonies from Asia Minor to Iberia. However, participants probably had to be fairly wealthy in order to pay for training, transportation, lodging, and other expenses. Neither wom ...
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Ecphrasis
The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Thus, "an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art." In ancient times, it might refer more broadly to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word comes from the Greek ἐκ ''ek'' and φράσις ''phrásis'', 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and the verb ἐκφράζειν ''ekphrázein'', 'to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name'. The works of art described, or evoked, may be real or imagined; sometimes it is now hard to tell. Ancient ekphrastic writing can be useful evidence for art historians, especially where paintings are concerned, as virtually no original Greco-Roman examples survive. Ekphrasis has been cons ...
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Types Of Volcanic Eruptions
Several types of volcanic eruptions—during which lava, tephra (ash, lapilli, volcanic bombs and volcanic blocks), and assorted gases are expelled from a volcanic vent or fissure—have been distinguished by volcanologists. These are often named after famous volcanoes where that type of behavior has been observed. Some volcanoes may exhibit only one characteristic type of eruption during a period of activity, while others may display an entire sequence of types all in one eruptive series. There are three different types of eruptions: * Magmatic eruptions are the most well-observed type of eruption. They involve the decompression of gas within magma that propels it forward. * Phreatic eruptions are driven by the superheating of steam due to the close proximity of magma. This type exhibits no magmatic release, instead causing the granulation of existing rock. * Phreatomagmatic eruptions are driven by the direct interaction of magma and water, as opposed to phreatic ...
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Zeus
Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label=genitive Boeotian Aeolic and Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label=genitive el, Δίας, ''Días'' () is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter.''Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia'', The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215. His mythology and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of Indo-European deities such as Jupiter, Perkūnas, Perun, Indra, Dyaus, and Zojz. Entry: "Dyaus" Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus's stomach. In most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Eileithyia, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, by whom ...
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Typhon
Typhon (; grc, Τυφῶν, Typhôn, ), also Typhoeus (; grc, Τυφωεύς, Typhōeús, label=none), Typhaon ( grc, Τυφάων, Typháōn, label=none) or Typhos ( grc, Τυφώς, Typhṓs, label=none), was a monstrous serpentine giant and one of the deadliest creatures in Greek mythology. According to Hesiod, Typhon was the son of Gaia and Tartarus. However, one source has Typhon as the son of Hera alone, while another makes Typhon the offspring of Cronus. Typhon and his mate Echidna were the progenitors of many famous monsters. Typhon attempted to overthrow Zeus for the supremacy of the cosmos. The two fought a cataclysmic battle, which Zeus finally won with the aid of his thunderbolts. Defeated, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, or buried underneath Mount Etna, or in later accounts, the island of Ischia. Typhon mythology is part of the Greek succession myth, which explained how Zeus came to rule the gods. Typhon's story is also connected with that of Python (the se ...
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Encomion
''Encomium'' is a Latin word deriving from the Ancient Greek ''enkomion'' (), meaning "the praise of a person or thing." Another Latin equivalent is ''laudatio'', a speech in praise of someone or something. Originally was the song sung by the chorus at the κῶμος, or festal procession, held at the great national games in honour of the victor, either on the day of his victory or on its anniversary. The word came afterwards to denote any song written in celebration of distinguished persons, and in later times any spoken or written panegyric whatever. ''Encomium'' also refers to several distinct aspects of rhetoric: * A general category of oratory * A method within rhetorical pedagogy * A figure of speech praising a person or thing, but occurring on a smaller scale than an entire speech * The eighth exercise in the progymnasmata series * A literary genre that included five elements: prologue, birth and upbringing, acts of the person's life, comparisons used to praise the subj ...
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Delphi
Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The oracle had origins in prehistory and it became international in character and also fostered sentiments of Greek nationality, even though the nation of Greece was centuries away from realization. The ancient Greeks considered the centre of the world to be in Delphi, marked by the stone monument known as the omphalos (navel). The sacred precinct of Ge or Gaia was in the region of Phocis, but its management had been taken away from the Phocians, who were trying to extort money from its visitors, and had been placed in the hands of an amphictyony, or committee of persons chosen mainly from Central Greece. According to the Suda, Delphi took its name from the Delphyne, the she-serpent ('' drakaina'') who lived there and was killed by the god Apo ...
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Deinomenes The Younger
Deinomenes was the father of Hieron I, Gelo (or Gelon), Thrasyboulos, and Polyzelos. The historian Herodotus writes that his ancestors came from the island of Telos in the Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi (Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans an ... and were the founders of the city of Gela in southern Sicily. Deinomenes consulted an oracle about the fates of his children, and was told that Gelo, Hieron and Thrasyboulos were all destined to become tyrants. 5th-century BC Greek people Ancient Geloans Year of birth unknown {{AncientGreece-bio-stub ...
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Mount Etna
Mount Etna, or simply Etna ( it, Etna or ; scn, Muncibbeḍḍu or ; la, Aetna; grc, Αἴτνα and ), is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy, in the Metropolitan City of Catania, between the cities of Messina and Catania. It lies above the convergent plate margin between the African Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is one of the tallest active volcanoes in Europe, and the tallest peak in Italy south of the Alps with a current height (July 2021) of , though this varies with summit eruptions. Over a six-month period in 2021, Etna erupted so much volcanic material that its height increased by approximately , and the southeastern crater is now the tallest part of the volcano. Etna covers an area of with a basal circumference of . This makes it by far the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. Only Mount Teide on Tenerife in the Canary Islands surpasses it i ...
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Etruscans
The Etruscan civilization () was developed by a people of Etruria in ancient Italy with a common language and culture who formed a federation of city-states. After conquering adjacent lands, its territory covered, at its greatest extent, roughly what is now Tuscany, western Umbria, and northern Lazio, as well as what are now the Po Valley, Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy, southern Veneto, and western Campania. The earliest evidence of a culture that is identifiably Etruscan dates from about 900BC. This is the period of the Iron Age Villanovan culture, considered to be the earliest phase of Etruscan civilization, which itself developed from the previous late Bronze Age Proto-Villanovan culture in the same region. Etruscan civilization endured until it was assimilated into Roman society. Assimilation began in the late 4thcenturyBC as a result of the Roman–Etruscan Wars; it accelerated with the grant of Roman citizenship in 90 BC, and became complete in 27 BC, wh ...
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