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The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite unit of the Theban army comprised of 150 gay male couples totaling 300 men. They were formed under the leadership of Gorgidas but first achieved fame under the general Pelopidas. They remained invincible...

The social contract is an idea in philosophy that at some real or hypothetical point in the past, humans left the state of nature to join together and form societies by mutually agreeing which rights they would enjoy and how they would be...

Medieval European Manorialism (Manorial System) was the system where rural society was arranged around a manor house or castle on an estate. The smallest units of these estates were called manors. Free and unfree labourers here worked the...

The Avesta is the scripture of Zoroastrianism which developed from an oral tradition founded by the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra, Zartosht) sometime between c. 1500-1000 BCE. The title is generally accepted as meaning “praise”, though this...

The Ghent Altarpiece, otherwise known as The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, is a painted panel altarpiece created in 1432 for the Vijd Chapel in the church of St. John the Baptist, now St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium. The work is credited...

The hypaspists or hypaspistai were a distinct type of infantry soldier who served as a vital part of the Macedonian armies of both Phillip II of Macedon (r. 359 BCE - 336 BCE) and his son and heir Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE). The...

Tibetan sand mandalas are works of art created to encourage healing, peace, and purification generally as well as spiritual or psychological focus specifically for those creating and viewing it. A mandala (Sanskrit for "circle") is a geometric...

The Enuma Elish (also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation) is the Babylonian creation myth whose title is derived from the opening lines of the piece, "When on High". The myth tells the story of the great god Marduk's victory over the...

The Mandate of Heaven (Tianming), also known as Heaven's Mandate, was the divine source of authority and the right to rule of China's early kings and then emperors. The ancient god or divine force known as Heaven or Sky selected a particular...

The encomienda was a system where Spanish adventurers and settlers were granted the legal right to extract forced labour from indigenous tribal chiefs in the Americas colonies of the Spanish Empire. In return, the Europeans were expected...