Definitions

The War of the Third Coalition (1805-1806) was a major European conflict during the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). It was fought by an alliance of nations that included the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, Sweden, Naples, and Sicily, against...

Marcus Porcius Cato, better known as Cato the Censor or Cato the Elder (234-149 BCE), was an influential political figure of the Roman Republic. Serving as quaestor, aedile, praetor, consul, and censor, he championed Roman virtues and detested...

Callimachus of Cyrene (l. c. 310-c. 240 BCE) was a poet and scholar associated with the Library of Alexandria and best known for his Pinakes ("Tablets"), a bibliographic catalog of Greek literature, his poetry, and his literary aesthetic...

Roger I, also known as Roger Bosso (c. 1031-1101) was a Norman knight and adventurer best known for conquering The Emirate of Sicily during the 11th century. His lifelong efforts helped lay the foundations of a wealthy new Mediterranean state...

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a Hungarian composer of Romantic Music. Liszt first gained international fame as a piano virtuoso, an activity in which he was a pioneer, and then as a composer of piano works and symphonic poems, a form he created...

Ino is a princess of Thebes and the wife of King Athamas of Boeotia in Greek mythology. She helped to raise Dionysos, the god of wine, but the most famous myth associated with her is her descent into madness and the tragic fate of her family...

Henry Hudson (c. 1570-1611) was an English navigator and maritime explorer. He is known for his four voyages between 1607 and 1610 in search of a northwest passage via the Arctic Ocean to the Far East. The lure of a northwest passage became...

Pasiphaë ("all-shining") is the wife of King Minos of Crete and the mother of the fearsome Minotaur (half-bull, half-man creature) in Greek mythology. She is the daughter of the sun god Helios and Perse, an Oceanid. Like her sister Circe...

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was an English composer best known for his orchestral music and oratorios. Amongst Elgar's most-loved works are his Pomp and Circumstance marches which inspired the choral Land of Hope and Glory, a rousing patriotic...

Silphium (also known as laser) was an uncultivated plant that grew in Cyrene, North Africa (modern Shahhat, Libya) and became the cash crop of the region of Cyrenaica between c. 631 BCE and the 1st century CE when, according to Pliny the...