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Oedipus the King (429-420 BCE), also known as Oedipus Rex or Oedipus Tyrannos ('Tyrannos' signifies that the throne was not gained through an inheritance) is the most famous surviving play written by the 5th-century BCE poet and dramatist...

Sir Thomas Malory (c. 1415-1471 CE) was an English knight during the War of the Roses (1455-1487 CE) best known for his highly influential work of medieval literature, Le Morte D'Arthur regarded as the first novel in English, the first in...

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is an eyewitness account of ancient travel to Africa and India via the Red Sea written by an unknown Greek-speaking Egyptian author in the 1st century CE. In this detailed account, the conditions of the...

The Donation of Constantine (Donatio Constantini or the Donatio) is a medieval forgery dated to the 8th century purporting to be an original 4th-century document in which the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306-337) granted supreme...

Omar Khayyam (also given as Umar Khayyam, l. 1048-1131 CE) was a Persian polymath, astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher but is best known in the West as a poet, the author of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His famous work has been embraced...

Harriet Jacobs (l. c. 1813-1897) was a former slave, abolitionist, and author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), her autobiography, describing her life as a slave in North Carolina, her flight to freedom in the North, and her...

The Pillow Book (Makura no Soshi) is a personalised account of life at the Japanese court by Sei Shonagon which she completed c. 1002 CE during the Heian Period. The book is full of humorous observations (okashi) written in the style of a...

The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle (Livländische Reimchronik) is an anonymous account of the Livonian Crusade written in Middle High German, covering the years between 1143 and 1290. It is one of the chief written sources concerning the Livonian...

Chrocus (Crocus) was a king of the Alemanni who invaded Roman Gaul c. 256 CE until he was defeated by the Roman legions at Arles and then executed. Conversely, he was a king of the Alemanni who served Rome and supported Constantine the Great...

Women in the Middle Ages were frequently characterized as second-class citizens by the Church and the patriarchal aristocracy. Women's status was somewhat elevated in the High and Late Middle Ages by the cult of the Virgin Mary and courtly...