Decree: Did you mean...?

Colonel Tye (c. 1753-1780) was an African-American Loyalist leader who commanded one of the most effective guerilla forces of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Born into slavery, he escaped in 1775 and joined the British cause...

Ptolemaic police, or phylakitai, were responsible for law enforcement throughout Ptolemaic Egypt. The existence of a professional police force made Egypt different from ancient societies like the Roman Empire, which had no police. In addition...

The ruins of the agora in Cyrene, modern Libya.

The long-term goal of the Bolsheviks, who took power by force in Russia in November 1917, was a fairer society where workers and peasants were not exploited by wealthy capitalists. The more immediate consequences, though, of the Bolshevik...

Female gladiators in ancient Rome – referred to by modern-day scholars as gladiatrix – may have been uncommon but they did exist. Evidence suggests that a number of women participated in the public games of Rome even though this practice...

The cataclysmic end of the Roman Empire in the West has tended to mask the underlying features of continuity. The map of Europe in the year 500 would have been unrecognizable to anyone living a hundred years earlier. Gone was the solid boundary...

Egypt is a country in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea, and is home to one of the oldest civilizations on Earth. The name "Egypt" comes from the Greek Aegyptos, which was the Greek pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian name Hwt-Ka-Ptah...

The Bolshevik Revolution occurred on 7 November 1917 (old calendar 25 October) and established a new republic: Soviet Russia. The Bolsheviks were radical socialists led by Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924), whose goal was a fairer society where...

The Second Triumvirate was a political association of convenience between three of Rome's most powerful figures: Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian in the 1st century BCE. Following the assassination of Julius Caesar the three vowed revenge...

The Rosetta Stone is an incomplete grey and pink granodiorite stela dating from 196 BCE which presents a priestly decree concerning King Ptolemy V of Egypt. The text is in three different versions: Hieroglyphic, Demotic and Greek, a fact...