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Atalanta is a figure from Greek mythology famed as a huntress, wrestler, and runner. The heroine was a key participant in the Calydonian boar hunt, striking the first wound in this fearsome beast with her bow...

Esarhaddon (r. 681-669 BCE) was the third king of the Sargonid Dynasty of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He was the youngest son of King Sennacherib (r. 705-681 BCE), and his mother was not the queen but a secondary wife, Zakutu (also known...

Tantalus is a figure from Greek mythology who was the rich but wicked king of Sipylus. For attempting to serve his own son at a feast with the gods, he was punished by Zeus to forever go thirsty and...

Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE), better known to most modern readers as Virgil, was one of the greatest poets of the early Roman Empire. His best-known work, the Aeneid, told of a Trojan prince, Aeneas, who escaped the burning of Troy...

The religion of the Etruscans, the civilization which flourished from the 8th to 3rd century BCE in central Italy, has, like many other features of the culture, long been overshadowed by that of its Greek contemporaries and Roman...

Lucius Septimius Severus was Roman emperor from April 193 to February 211 CE. He was of Libyan descent from Lepcis Magna and came from a locally prominent Punic family who had a history of rising to senatorial as well as consular...

Nanshe (also known as Nanse, Nazi) is the Sumerian goddess of social justice and divination, whose popularity eventually transcended her original boundaries of southern Mesopotamia toward all points...

Lucius Verus was Roman emperor from 161 to 169 CE. Lucius Verus was Marcus Aurelius' adopted brother and co-emperor, a man whose time on the throne is overshadowed by the reign of the last of the Five Good Emperors. In the final...

Heka is the god of magic and medicine in ancient Egypt and is also the personification of magic itself. He is probably the most important god in Egyptian mythology but is often overlooked because his presence was so pervasive as to make...

The Kingdom of Mitanni, known to the people of the land, and the Assyrians, as Hanigalbat and to the Egyptians as Naharin and Metani, once stretched from present-day northern Iraq, down through Syria and into Turkey and was among the...