Classical History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Classical History’
A Roman commander facing court martial took refuge in politics, and for ten years London was an imperial capital.
Roman Britain was no backwater: it was prosperous and civilised, and its people were critical of Rome’s bungled wars in the East and porous borders in Europe. In fact, her people felt ready to govern themselves, making Britannia a good place to start for would-be Emperors.
The martyr St Euphemia played a vital role in preventing the message of Christmas from being watered down.
In 314, the Roman Empiror Costantine lifted all restrictions on Christianity, but intellectuals still held the philosophy of Plato in awe. Sometimes the Greek view of the Divine – remote, impersonal, unsullied by contact with Creation – tempted Christian clergy to back-peddle on the much more characterful God of Israel, who will dare all for love.
The ancient Greek King knew victory had cost his army more than it could afford to lose.
In 279 BC, forty-two years after his illustrious predecessor Alexander the Great died, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus and Macedonia, halted the advance of the Roman Republic at Asculum (Ascoli Satriano) in Apulia, southern Italy. The cost to his army was so great that he famously declared that another such victory would utterly ruin him - a ‘Pyrrhic victory’ indeed.
Cicero warns those who seek power through civic unrest that they will never be the beneficiaries of it.
In 63 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) accused Lucius Sergius Catilina of scheming to overthrow the Republic. In exposing the plot, he warned the Senate against five kinds of political troublemaker, including those who stir up ill-feeling and violence at home, hoping to be the beneficiaries of it.
The mother of the Roman Emperor goes to Jerusalem on a quest close to her heart.
In AD 326 Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, went to the Holy Land to search for the cross on which Jesus Christ had been crucified. The story is told in one of the oldest pieces of English literature, the epic Anglo-Saxon poem ‘Helen’ by Cynewulf.
The Persian King felt that a lord of his majesty should not have to take any nonsense from an overgrown river.
In 483 BC, Xerxes I (r. 486-465 BC) rallied all Persia for a second attempted conquest of Greece, after the failure of Darius I at Marathon seven years earlier. He planned his route meticulously, throwing two bridges across the Hellespont, the narrow stretch of water between the mainland of Asia Minor and the Gallipoli peninsula in what is now Turkey, but it was not a straightforward business.