Graeco-Roman

"Ab Urbe condita" (related with Anno Urbis conditae: AUC or a.u.c.) is Latin for "from the founding of the City (Rome)", [Literally translated as "From the city having been founded".] traditionally set in 753 BC. It was used to identify the Roman year by a few Roman historians. Modern historians use it much more frequently than the Romans themselves did; the dominant method of identifying Roman years was to name the two consuls who held office that year. Before the advent of the modern critical edition of historical Roman works, AUC was indiscriminately added to them by earlier editors, making it appear more widely used than it actually was.Fact|date=July 2008 The regnal year of the emperor was also used to identify years, especially in the Byzantine Empire after Justinian required its use in 537. Examples of usage are principally found in German authors, for example Mommsen's "History of Rome". ignificance From Emperor Claudius onwards, Varr...

The camp described by Polybius is such as would be formed at the close of an ordinary day's  p246 march by a regular consular army consisting of two Roman legions with the full contingent of Socii. Each legion is calculated at 4200 infantry and 300 cavalry, the Socii  furnished an equal number of infantry and twice as many cavalry, so that the whole force would amount to 16,800 foot and 1800 horse. Choice of the Ground.— Although, as stated above, the general outline, the defences, and the internal economy of a camp were altogether independent of the nature of the ground, yet great importance was attached to the choice of a fitting situation which should admit of being readily laid out in the required form, which should afford no facilities for attack or annoyance, which should be convenient for procuring wood, water, and forage, and which the army might enter and quit without danger of surprise. Skill in the selection of such a spot (capere locum castris) was ever considered ...

CASTRA. It is well known that Roman armies never halted for a single night without forming a regular entrenchment, termed castra, capable of receiving within its limits the whole body of fighting men, their beasts of burden, and the baggage. So essential was this operation considered, that even when preparing for an immediate engagement, or when actually assailed by a hostile force, it was never omitted, but a portion of the soldiers were employed in constructing the necessary works, while the remainder were standing to their arms or resisting the enemy; and so completely was it recognised as a part of the ordinary duties of each march, that pervenire ad locum tertiis . . . quartis . . . septuagesimis castris are the established phrases for expressing the number of days occupied in passing from one point to another. Whenever circumstances rendered it expedient for a force to occupy the same ground for any length of time, then the encampment was distinguished as castra stativa (Liv. XXV...

Ovid was one of the greatest Roman poets and a leading figure in Roman society until the emperor Augustus banished him in A.D. 8. Traditional Roman values included military duty hard work, and civic service. Before Ovid, love had been considered a kind of destructive illness that threatened one’s personality. Ovid turned those ideas upside down as he celebrated love in his poetry as the more important and positive force in human nature. Ovid's Life and Times. Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) was born in 43 B.C. in the town of Sulmo, about 100 miles east of Rome. He received the standard education for a person of his class, studying rhetoric* in Rome as he prepared for a career in public service. After his formal training, Ovid, like most educated young men, studied philosophy* in Athens and toured the lands of the eastern Mediterranean before returning to Rome. He held several minor government offices, a career he soon abandoned to spend his time visiting booksellers’ shops and becoming...

At the foundation of a colony and the assignation of lands the auspicia were taken, for which purpose the presence of the augur was necessary. But the business of the augur did not extend beyond the religious part of the ceremony: the division and measurement of the land were made by professional measurers. These were the Finitores mentioned in the early writers (Cic. c. Rullum, II.13; Plautus, Poenulus, Prolog. 49), who in the later periods were called Mensores and Agrimensores. The business of a Finitor could only be done by a free man, and the honourable nature of his office is indicated by the rule that there was no bargain for his services, but he received his pay in the form of a gift. These Finitores appear also to have acted as judices, under the name of arbitri, in those disputes about boundaries which were purely of a technical, not a legal, character. Under the empire the observance of the auspices in the fixing of camps and the establishment of military colonies was less re...

MISPLACED TRUST It was a time when civilization in the West was divided between two cultures. The largest was the Persian centralized empire, which was based on having an all-powerful ruler with little regard for the individual. The other culture was much more dynamic, but smaller and poorer; it was the emerging democracy of Greece. In spite of the fact that there were places in ancient Greece with dictatorial and oppressive city-states, such as Sparta, individual heroism was honored. It is a divide we still see today in the different values found in Iran, Iraq, and the other nations that are descended from ancient despots, and Western cultures that are descended from the Greek traditions. In 480 BCE, things had not gone all that well for Xerxes, ruler of the Persian empire, particularly in regard to his invasion of Greece. His object was to revenge his father’s loss at Marathon and to incorporate the impudent and pugnacious Greek city-states into the Persian empire. The free city-stat...

Demosthenes the General was one of the most important military commanders of the Peloponnesian War. During the first few years of the war he fought several battles near the gulf of Corinth, including the invasion of Aetolia and the battle of Olpae. In 425 B.C.his fleet, which was on its way to Sicily, landed on Pylos, an Island off the Peloponnesian mainland. Sparta's fleet landed on nearby Sphacteria, and prepared to take the Athenian stronghold, but was repulsed. Meanwhile another fleet from Athens came and destroyed the Spartan fleet, leaving over 400 Spartans stranded on Sphacteria. Demosthenes, assisted by Cleon, was sent to capture them. The campaign was a success, the Spartans uncharacteristically surrendered, and were all sent to Athens to be hostages. Demosthenes was in favor of Peace with Sparta, and helped negotiate the Peace of Nicias in 421. Unfortunately the peace did not last, and within a year, he was responsible for evacuating the Athenian army after their loss at ...

The battle of Pylos (425 BC) was the first part of a two-part battle most famous the surrender of a force of Spartan hoplites trapped on the island of Sphacteria (Great Peloponnesian War). The occupation of Pylos wasn't the result of an official Athenian policy. In 425 BC the city if Messina on Sicily had revolted against Athens, and in response the Athenians decided to send a fleet to Sicily. Demosthenes was not one of the generals appointed to command this fleet, but he was allowed to accompany the fleet and suggest operations that they could carry out while sailing around the Peloponnese. Demosthenes already had a plan in mind when he joined the fleet. He wanted to occupy the rocky headland of Pylos in the south-west of the Peloponnese, fortify it and use it as a base to raid Spartan territory. The headland was forty-five miles to the west of Sparta in territory that had once belonged to the Messenia, a city that had been Sparta's great local rival two centuries earlier befo...

THULE, the Greek and Roman name for the most northerly known land in the north Atlantic. The first to use the name was the Greek navigator Pytheas (about 300 B.C. probably). He calls it the most northerly of the British Isles and says that he reached it after six days' sail from Britain: it was inhabited, but produced little; corn grew there sparingly and ripened ill; in summer the nights were long and bright. This account of his travels is lost save for fragments, and the few surviving fragments do not determine where his Thule was, but Miillenhoff is probably right in thinking it was the Shetlands. The Faeroes, Iceland and Norway have also been suggested, but are for various reasons much less likely. After Pytheas, the name is used loosely for the farthest north. Thus Agricola's fleet in A.D. 84 sailing up the east coast of Scotland is said to have espied but not to have reached Thule ("dispecta est Thule") but the phrase is merely literary. The actual point meant m...

PYTHEAS, of Marseilles (Massilia), a celebrated Greek navigator and geographer, from whom the Greeks apparently derived their earliest definite information concerning western Europe, and especially the British Islands. He was probably contemporary with Alexander the Great; he certainly wrote before Dicaearchus, a pupil of Aristotle who died about 285 B.C. His work is lost, and we are left almost wholly in the dark as to its form and character, but the various titles under which it is quoted (e.g. Fijs rEpl050s, or 7rEpi Tou 'S21ceavou) point to a geographical treatise, in which Pytheas had embodied the results of his observations, rather than to a continuous narrative of his voyage. Some modern writers have supposed Pytheas to have been sent out, at public expense, in command of an expedition organized by the republic of Massilia; but there is no ancient authority for this, and Polybius, who had unquestionably seen the original work, expressly states that he had undertaken the voya...