Sword: Did you mean...?

The Philistines populated the coastal regions of Canaan from the 12th century BCE to their disappearance in 604 BCE. The word "Philistine" derives from the Hebrew ha-Plištim for the combination of several tribes of Syria and Judea...

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...

The Battle of Guilford Court House (15 March 1781) was one of the last major engagements of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Fought near Greensboro, North Carolina, it was a pyrrhic victory for the British...

At the Battle of Teutoburg Forest (aka Battle of Varus), c. 9 CE, a combined force of Germans annihilated a Roman army consisting of three legions including three squadrons of cavalry and six cohorts of auxiliary troops...

The Shield of Heracles (also known as The Shield of Herakles and, in the original, Aspis Herakleous) is a poem of 480 hexameter lines written by an unknown Greek poet in the style of Hesiod (lived 8th century...

As a youngster, David (the later king of Israel), slew Goliath, a giant, who was the champion of Israel’s enemy, the Philistines. "David and Goliath" became a metaphor for an underdog who nevertheless is victorious over a more...

English medieval knights wore metal armour of iron or steel to protect themselves from archers and the long swords of opponents. From the 9th century CE, chain mail suits gave protection and freedom of movement...

The poem called The Lay of Greybeard (Old Norse: Hárbarðsljóð) is one story from Norse mythology that relates an intriguing verbal fight between two of its essential gods, Thor and Odin. The poem consists of 60 stanzas...

The poem Lokasenna belongs to the Poetic Edda, a bulk of Old Norse poetry written down in Iceland in the 1200s but based on linguistic features dating back as far as the 900s. In this invaluable resource for Norse mythology, Lokasenna...

Society in the Kingdom of France in the period of the Ancien Regime was broken up into three separate estates, or social classes: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. These classes and their accompanying...