Rhetoric: Did you mean...?

The crusades of the 11th to 15th century CE have become one of the defining events of the Middle Ages in both Europe and the Middle East. The campaigns brought significant consequences wherever they occurred but also pushed changes within...

Besides the traditional option of private tuition, Elizabethan England (1558-1603 CE) offered formal education to those able to pay the necessary fees at preparatory schools, grammar schools, and universities. There was, however, no compulsory...

Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek hero Herakles, the most popular figure from ancient Greek mythology. Hercules was the son of Zeus, king of the gods, and the mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus, who was always chasing one woman or another...

Aztec society was hierarchical and divided into clearly defined classes. The nobility dominated the key positions in the military, state administration, judiciary, and priesthood. While traders could become extremely wealthy and powerful...

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...

The trial and execution of King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) was one of the most impactful events of the French Revolution (1789-99). In December 1792, the former king, now referred to as Citizen Louis Capet, was tried and found guilty...

The revolt of the gladiator Spartacus in 73-71 BCE remains the most successful slave revolt in the history of Rome. The rebellion is known as the Third Servile War and was the last of three major slave revolts which Rome suppressed. The story...

Emerging from a small sect of Judaism in the 1st century CE, early Christianity absorbed many of the shared religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions of the Greco-Roman world. In traditional histories of Western culture, the emergence...

Daily life in the Byzantine Empire, like almost everywhere else before or since, largely depended on one's birth and the social circumstances of one's parents. There were some opportunities for advancement based on education, the accumulation...

Achilles The hero of the Trojan War, leader of the Myrmidons, slayer of Hector and Greece's greatest warrior, who sadly came unstuck when Paris sent a flying arrow guided by Apollo, which caught him in his only weak spot, his heel. Adonis...