Definitions

Amphipolis, located on a plain in northern Macedonia near Mt. Pangaion and the river Strymon, was an Athenian colony founded c. 437 BCE on the older Thracian site of Ennea Hodoi. Thucydides relates that the Athenian general Hagnon so named...

The Vandals were a Germanic tribe who are first mentioned in Roman history in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder (77 CE). The Roman historian Tacitus also mentions them in his Germania (c. 98 CE), though he also refers to them as the...

Totila (birth name, Baduila-Badua r. 541-552 CE) was the last great king of the Ostrogoths in Italy. He was the nephew of the Gothic king Ildibad who was succeeded by Eraric the Rugian (d. 541 CE). The Goths of Italy felt that Eraric was...

Persis (in Greek, derivated from Persian pars) is the ancient name of the approximate area of modern Fars in Central Iran, as well as a state of the Hellenistic and Imperial periods in this same province. Its name is derived from the Persians...

Clovis I (or Chlodovech, 466-511/513 CE), king of the Franks, is considered the founding father of the Merovingian Dynasty, which would continue for over 200 years. Clovis became king at the age of 15, and by the time of his death 30 years...

The four-room house, also referred to as “Israelite house” and “pillared courtyard house,” emerged in the central highlands of Canaan during the late 13th -early 12th centuries BCE in response to environmental and socio-economic needs. The...

A belief in an afterlife was central to every major civilization of the ancient world and this encouraged the recognition of the reality of ghosts as the spirits of the departed who, for one reason or another, either returned from the realm...

Fritigern (also Fritigernus, died c. 380 CE) was a Visigothic king best known as the victor of the decisive Battle of Adrianople in 378 CE, which decimated the Roman army and haunted Roman military commanders for decades afterwards. He was...

Xibalba (Shee-bal-ba) was the name the K'iche Maya gave to the underworld. For the Yucatec Maya the underworld was known as Metnal. The name Xibalba translates as 'Place of Fright', which indicates the terror the place had in the Maya imagination...

Athanaric (died c. 381 CE) was a king of the Thervingi Goths (better known as the Visigoths) and, according to some sources, the first and greatest king. He was of the noble Balts family of the Thervingi tribe and a relative of the later...