Images

A 17th century illustration of François L’Olonais (1630-1668), the infamous French buccaneer who terrorized the Spanish Main. (From an early edition of The Buccaneers of America by Alexander Exquemelin)

A number of cannons at the 16-17th-century fortress of Cartagena, Colombia. Cartagena was one of the principal treasure ports of the Spanish Main and its mighty fortress was sufficient to deter the buccaneers.

An early 20th-century illustration by Howard Pyle showing a buccaneer. The buccaneers terrorized the Spanish Main from 1620 to 1697. (From Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates: Fiction, Fact & Fancy Concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of the Spanish...

An early 20th-century illustration by Howard Pyle showing buccaneers obliging prisoners to reveal the whereabouts of their valuables in Cartagena. The buccaneers terrorized the Spanish Main from 1620 to 1697. (From Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates...

Illustration from the Russian folktale The Frog Princess, by Ivan Bilibin, 1899.

Illustration from the Russian folk tale The Frog Princess, by Ivan Bilibin, 1930.

Amerigo Vespucci’s transatlantic voyages (1499–1502) took place during the height of the European Age of Exploration, when Spanish and Portuguese navigators were competing to chart new routes across the Atlantic. Vespucci, a Florentine navigator...

Silver bust of the Greco-Egyptian deity Serapis, Roman, 2nd century CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Eusebius' Preparation for the Gospel, edited by Franciscus Vigerus, published by Michael Sonnius, Sebastian Cramoisy & Charles Morel, Paris, 1628.

Codex Vaticanus, which may contain Constantine I’s original Bible. Photo taken in Warsaw in 2015.