Heroes: Did you mean...?

The Roman imperial cult was the practice of venerating Roman emperors and their families as having divine attributes, honoring their contributions to the spread of Roman religion and culture. It was instituted by the first Roman emperor Augustus...

Ignatius of Loyola (l. 1491-1556) was a Basque soldier who became a Catholic priest and theologian after a mystical experience convinced him he was called to the service of Christ. He founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) to defend the Church...

The Old Norse word saga means 'story', 'tale' or 'history' and normally refers specifically to the epic prose narratives written mainly in Iceland between the 12th- and 15th centuries CE, covering the country's history as well as Scandinavia's...

Thersites is a character in the Iliad who made a stand against Agamemnon and the enterprise of the Trojan War. Homer chose to add Thersites’ speech after Achilles’ infamous dispute with Agamemnon, probably to emphasize the struggles that...

Sarpedon is a figure from ancient Greek mythology, a Lycian prince who was one of the principal heroes during the Trojan War and fought on the side of Troy. According to Homer's Iliad, he was the son of Zeus by Laodameia and the cousin of...

During the 1st century CE, a sect of Jews in Jerusalem claimed that their teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, was the 'messiah' of Israel. 'Messiah' meant 'anointed one', or someone chosen by the God of Israel to lead when God would intervene in...

The involvement of France in the American War of Independence (1775-1783) was not only significant in the progress of the war itself but also as a critical moment for France. Whereas French intervention in the war would help turn the tide...

The Legend of Cutha (also known as the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin, Cutha Legend, and Kutha Legend) is a fictional work dated to the 17th century BCE belonging to the genre known as Mesopotamian naru literature. It features the Akkadian king...

The act of voluntary death was never condemned in antiquity. In fact, The English word "suicide" comes from the Latin for "self-slaying." The reason for a voluntary death had to be one that was honorable and necessary to remove any element...

Athens, Greece, with its famous Acropolis, has come to symbolize the whole of the country in the popular imagination, and not without cause. It not only has its iconic ruins and the famous port of Piraeus but, thanks to ancient writers, its...