Daily Life: Did you mean...?

Public bathhouses (balnea and large imperial thermae) were a defining feature of urban life across the Roman Empire (27 BCE–476 CE in the West). Building on earlier bathing traditions in the Greek world, the Romans expanded the concept into...

Plato of Athens (424 or 423 to 347 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher whose work is considered so important that he may be called the inventor of philosophy as we understand the term today. Some people would want to reserve that honor...

Egyptian religion was a combination of beliefs and practices which, in the modern day, would include Egyptian mythology, science, medicine, psychiatry, magic, spiritualism, herbology, as well as the modern understanding of 'religion' as belief...

The only sources for the life of Jesus of Nazareth are in the canonical gospels (or the gospels that were included in the authorised version of the New Testament). We have no contemporary, eyewitness testimony from the time that he lived...

Whether there was a king, a consul, or an emperor that stood supreme over Rome and its territories, the one constant throughout Roman history was the family. Like many earlier societies, the family was the fundamental social unit in the eternal...

Semiramis is the semi-divine Warrior-Queen of Assyria, whose reign is most clearly documented by the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (l. 90-30 BCE) in his great work Bibliotheca Historica ("Historical Library") written over thirty years...

The Sioux stories known as Iktomi tales concern the trickster figure Iktomi (also known as Unktomi) who appears, variously, as a hero, sage, villain, clown, inept buffoon – or in other roles – but always serves to illustrate some important...

Crates of Thebes (l. c. 360-280 BCE) was one of the most important Cynic philosophers of ancient Greece. He was born to a wealthy family in Thebes but gave away his inheritance after realizing the futility of material possessions and the...

Daily life in ancient Egypt was lived with an awareness of the gods and the understanding that they had given the people the gift of the most perfect place on earth. Ancient Egyptians worked at their jobs and performed community service for...

Protecting strategically important coastlines, passes, and roadways, castles were an essential part of medieval warfare. With such key features as a tower keep, fortified gatehouses, curtain walls with crenellations and a surrounding moat...