Tag Info

I'll answer just the part about the Roman Republic, if that's alight for now. The Roman Republic is probably best described as a pseudo-democracy of sorts. Its creation and initial set-up actually pre-dated Athenian democracy by a single year, though even until its dying days it was more of a "democracy for the privileged" than anything. Hence, ...

All the mathematical works of Hypatia of Alexandria for example were lost. From the secondary sources we do have, she was an amazing mathematician. Her death could be argued as the end of the classical times and the decent into the Dark Ages...

I have dealt with this question in my article, "Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art," in American Journal of Archaeology 1989, which can be accessed either through JSTOR or through Academia.com, under my name. I am also editing a multi-author book, Nudity as a Costume in the Ancient Mediterranean, where I take up the subject of Greek nudity again. The ...

Computer? The Antikythera mechanism device for computing eclipses. Nothing much like it appears in history until Charles Babbage created his machines in the 1800's. The following BBC special further explores the device. Probing the secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism (Preview) The Antikythera Mechanism as it is known, is regarded as the ...

Democracies were not necessarily more stable than other forms of government. Polybius describes a cycle of three forms of government - monarchy, then aristocracy, then democracy, then back to monarchy again (of course, this was not always the case in practice). The important point to note is that each first degenerates into an inferior form (tyranny, ...

As all the other answers indicate, there are thousands of such examples. Here are a few more. The Aeolipile was essentially a steam engine invented at the latest around 1st century CE which was when Hero of Alexandria described it. It has also been mentioned in works possibly dating back to 200 BCE. The aeolipile consists of a vessel, usually a "simple" ...

Latitude can be calculated from observations of stellar objects (typically using something like an astrolabe) and a bit of math. The Greeks could do this as early as 150BC, but only on dry land. The Mariner's Astrolabe wasn't invented until around 1300 CE. Nobody had a good way to determinte longitude in realtime aboard a ship before the invention of the ...

E.g. Parts 1 and 2 of Volume 2 in Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China series contain relevant information. Chapter (c) (2) in Volume 2, Part 1 is titled The Mohists, the lever and the balance and mentions the steelyard as e.g. in use in the 11th century CE. This device for measuring weights uses two arms of unequal length, and as such would ...

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has a great page on this exact topic. The key ideas why there is so much male nudity are two-fold: the Greek reverence for athletic competitions, and the athletic male as the pinnacle of those athletic competitions. Because the Greeks felt that sport was such an important part of what was good about humanity, ...

Aristachus of Samos (310 BCE - ca. 230 BCE, and thus many centuries before Copernicus) held the view that the Earth revolved around the Sun. This is also mentioned in footnote 24 (chapter titled Copernican Revolutions) in John D. Barrow's The Book of Universes (2011).

examples of lost knowledge I'm aware of: How to build pyramids and transport such huge heavy stones 4500 years ago in Egypt. Later pyramids were smaller and of lower quality. They didn't manage to build such pyramids again. Decline of Mayan civilization and their writing, astronomical and mathematical knowledge Stonehenge. Later generations had no clue ...

Greeks came not on the empty space. There was older, Minoan and even more old civilizations on this place before them. I think, the very important influence was from the Crete civilization, that was very original. Look at their pictures. Of course, there was also infuence from barbarians. All waves of greek population were barbarians themselves sometime. ...

The Roman Forum was initially constructed in the 8th century BC (as a temple to Vesta), started hosting games sometime around the 4th century BC, and was continually rebuilt and upgraded until about 29 BC. So it can be fairly said that it was (somewhat organically) designed to service the entertainment needs of the capital of the Roman empire, home to ...

I'm going to embrace your assumption that by "use" of the forum, we're referring to political discussion. (people doubtless "used" the forum for whatever function they found appropriate at the time). Others may challenge this assumption; I have no doubt that the Roman Forum was used for a variety of religious and public functions even when it was no longer ...

Actually, I don't think there was any Jewish theatre at all at the time. I don't have an academic source at hand but this webpage seems to sum up things pretty well. Look especially in the section "Changing Attitudes under Hellenism".

There is yet another reason why the male nude was common in Greece. The Greeks were obsessed with perfect proportions in all of their art, for they saw these proportions as a sign of the divine cosmos. Perhaps the most notable of these monuments is the Parthenon and it's Golden Mean ratios, a temple dedicated to Athena, which very clearly links perfect ...