Dictionary
OCTAETERES	66.04%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A period of eight years. (See CALENDAR.)
VETERANI	36.45%
[A Latin word properly meaning old soldiers.] During the later Republican period and under the Empire the term was applied to those who at the end of their time of service retired from the legion. They were kept with the army under the standard, under which they were taken to the military colonies appointed for them, and again served there for an indefinite period. (Cp.VEXILLARII.)
VASES	33.96%
Vases of Greek origin, may be classified under four heads, with several subdivisions in each: (I) archaic vases, (II) those with black figures, (III) those with red figures, and (IV) those of the decadence.
NONIUS MARCELLUS	31.04%
A Latin scholar, born at Thubursicum in Africa, who composed in the beginning of the 4th century A.D. a manual of miscellaneous information on points of lexicography, grammar, and antiquities, bearing the title of De Compendiosa Doctrina. It consisted originally of twenty books, one of which is lost. It is evidently founded on the works of earlier scholars, and in some parts exhibits verbal coincidences with Aulus Gellius. Though not showing the least genius or critical acumen, the work is of great importance owing to its numerous quotations from lost authors, especially of the archaic period. [See Prof. Nettleship's Lectures and Essays, pp. 277-331.]
PRYTANEIA	27.64%
Any public office held by rotation for given periods; e.g. in Herodotus, vi 110, the chief command for the day, held by each of the ten generals in turn.
CALIGA	20.66%
A boot with large nails in the sole, worn in ancient Italy by huntsmen, waggoners, and peasants, and, during the imperial period, common soldiers.
AUREUS	19.83%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Roman coin of the imperial period, originally weighing 1/40 of a Roman pound, and worth from the time of Julius Caesar to Nero, 25 denarii, or 100 sestertii; from 23 to 20 shillings. (See COINAGE.)
CONCORDIA	18.95%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 The Latin personification of concord or harmony, especially among Roman citizens. Shrines were repeatedly erected to Concordia during the republican period after the cessation of civil dissensions. The earliest was dedicated by Camillus in 367 B.C. The goddess Concordia was also invoked, together with Janus, Salus, and Pax, at the family festival of the Caristia, on the 30th March, and, with Venus and Fortuna, by married women on the 1st of April (see MANES). During the imperial period Concordia Augusta was worshipped as the protectress of harmony, especially of matrimonial agreement; in the emperor's household.
PROBUS	18.00%
A famous Roman scholar and critic, born at Berytus in Syria. He flourished in the second half of the 1st century A.D. He devoted almost all attention to the archaic and classical literature of Rome, which had been previously neglected, and to the critical revision of the most important Roman poets, as Lucretius, Vergil, and Horace, after the manner of the Alexandrine scholars. Some of his criticisms on Vergil may possibly be preserved to us in a commentary to the Eclogues and Georgics, which bears his name. From a commentary, or criticism, on Persius we have his biography of that poet; and from his work De Notis we have an extract containing the abbreviations used for legal terms. Other grammatical writings bearing his name are the work of a grammarian of the 4th century.
GAMES	17.81%
DARICUS	16.70%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A gold Persian coin, bearing the stamp of a crowned archer, current in Greece down to the Macedonian period. It was equal in value to the Attic gold stater, i.e. according to the present value of gold, 24 shillings. [See COINAGE, fig. 3.]
PHANOCLES	15.91%
A Greek elegiac poet of the Alexandrine period. He celebrated in erotic elegies the loves of beautiful boys. A considerable fragment remaining describes the love of Orpheus for Calais, the beautiful son of Boreas, and his death ensuing there from. The language is simple and spirited, and the versification melodions.
GELLIUS	15.46%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 Aulus. A Roman writer of the age of the Antonines, about 130-170 A.D. After receiving his education in rhetoric at Rome, he went to Athens, in his thirtieth year or thereabouts, to study philosophy. Here he saw much of Herodes Atticus. Besides studying philosophy, he spent the long winter nights in wide and various reading, which he took up again with ardour after his return to Italy. From the material thus collected he composed the twenty books of his Noctes Atticoe, written in remembrance of his days at Athens. One book, the eighth, is lost, and only the headings of the chapters remain. The remaining nineteen are a series of excerpts, loosely strung together, from all kinds of Greek and Latin authors, especially the ante-classical writers. They also contain a mass of information, and a number of opinions orally delivered by contemporary scholars. The whole forms a valuable storehouse of notes on questions of historical, antiquarian, and literary interest. Gellius' style is sober, and, like that of an admirer of Fronto (see FRONTO), full of archaic expressions.
SCULPTURE	15.42%
ARISTOCLES	15.38%
(1) A Greek artist, and like his brother Canadchus, a sculptor in bronze at Sicyon. He flourished about 480 B.C.; and founded a school at Sicyon that lasted for a long time. (2) There was an Athenian sculptor of the same name and of the same period, author of a relief known as The Athenian Hoplite, one of our oldest monuments of Attic art. (See cut under HOPLITES).
PAGANALIA	15.07%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 In Italy, a movable festival of the old village communities (see PAGUS), celebrated after the winter-sowing in January, on two days separated by an interval of a week. On this occasion a pregnant sow was sacrificed to Tellus or to Ceres, who at a later period was worshipped together with Tellus.
PRYTANEIA	15.00%
The period of thirty-five or thirty-six days, i.e. about one-tenth of the year, during which each of the ten phyloe presided in turn over the Council and ecclesia. The order was determined by lot. The presiding tribe was represented by its epistates, who was appointed by lot to preside for the day, and could not hold this office more than once in each year (Aristotle, On Constitution of Athens, 44).]
EUNAPIUS	14.58%
A Greek rhetorician, born at Sardis in 347 A.D. In 405 he wrote biographies of twenty-three older and contemporary philosophers and sophists. In spite of its bad style and its superficiality, this book is our chief authority for the history of the Neo-Platonism of that age. We have also several fragments of his continuation of the chronicle of Herennius Dexippus. This continuation, in fourteen books, covered the period from 268 to 404 A.D., and was much used by Zosimus.
GORTYN	14.27%
[An archaic Greek inscription discovered in 1884 by Halbherr, in the bed of a mill-stream at Hagios Deka in Crete, the site of the Greek city of Gortyn. After many difficulties, the whole of it was copied and published at the end of the year. It was found to be inscribed in 12 columns on the inside wall of a circular building about 100 feet in diameter, which was probably a theatre, and covers a space of about 30 feet in length, to a height of between 5 and 6 feet from the ground. The lines are written alternately from left to right and from right to left. Two fragments of it had been discovered before, one of them being in the Louvre at Paris, and with the addition of these fragments the inscription was found to be practically complete. It contains a collection of laws regulating the private relations of the inhabitants of Gortyn. These laws deal chiefly with such subjects as Inheritance, Adoption, Heiresses, Marriage and Divorce, and incidentally afford much information on the slave system, the tenure of land and property, the organization of the courts, and other matters of interest. Its chief value is perhaps as throwing light upon the laws of the earlier Athenian legislators. The inscription is probably to be dated a few years before 400 B.C.]- C. A. M.Pond.
OLYMPIAD	13.92%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A period of four years from one celebration of the Olympian games (see OLYMPIAN GAMES) to another. The Olympiads were counted from the victory of Corcebus (776 B.C.); the last, the 283rd, ended 394 A.D., with the abolition of the Olympian games. This method of reckoning never passed into everyday life, but is of importance, inasmuch as, through the historian Timaeus, about 240 B.C., it became the one generally used by the Greek historians.
DIODORUS	13.88%
surnamed Siculus, or the Sicilian. A Greek historian, native of Agyrion, in Sicily, who lived in the times of Julius Caeesar and Augustus. After thirty years preparation, based upon the results yielded by long travels in Asia and Europe, and the use of the plentiful materials supplied by residence in Rome, he wrote his Bibliotheca, an Universal History in 40 books, extending over a period of some 1,100 years, from the oldest time to 60 B.C. In the first six books he treated the primitive history and mythology of the Egyptians, the natives of Asia, and Africa, slid the Hellenes. The next eleven embraced the period from the Trojan war to the death of Alexander the Great. The remaining 23 brought the history down to the beginning of Caesar's struggle with Gaul. We still possess books 1-5 and 11-20 (from the Persian War under Xerxes to 302 B.C.), besides fragments, partly considerable, of the other books. In the early books his treatment is ethnographical; but from the seventh book onwards, in the strictly historical part of his work, he writes like an annalist narrating all the events of one year at a time, with emphasis on the more important ones. It is obvious that this proceeding must rob the history of all its inner connection. He has other weaknesses. He is incapable of seizing the individual characteristics either of nations or of individuals, and contents himself with giving anecdotes and unconnected details. He follows his authorities blindly, without any attempt to criticize their statements. Then his work falls far short of the ideal which he himself sets up in his introduction. But it is none the less of great value as being one of the main authorities for many parts of ancient history, especially that affecting Sicily. In his style Diodorus aims at clearness and simplicity.
HELLANICUS	13.79%
One of the Greek logographi or chroniclers, born at Mytilene in Lesbos about 480 B.C. He is said to have lived till the age of 85, and to have gone on writing until after B.C. 406. In the course of his long life he composed a series of works on genealogy, chorography, and chronology. He was the first writer who attempted to introduce a systematic chronological arrangement into the traditional periods of Greek, and especially Athenian, history and mythology. His theories of the ancient Attic chronology were accepted down to the time of Eratosthenes.
VEXILLARII	13.78%
Roman veterans who, at the end of their period of service, retired from the legion, but were kept together under a standard (vexillum) up to the time of their final dismissal. They formed, by the side of the legion, a select corps like the evocati of earlier times. They were exempt from ordinary service, and only bound to take part in actual fighting. [They may be briefly described as the oldest class of veterani, and the last to be summoned to take the field.]
AGES	13.08%
The age of gold, in which Kronos or Saturnus was king. During this period mankind enjoyed perpetual youth, joy, and peace undisturbed, reaping in their fulness the fruits which the earth spontaneously brought forth. Death came upon them like a soft slumber; and after it they became good daemones, watching men like guardians in their deeds of justice and injustice, and hovering round them with gifts of wealth.
NEOCORI	12.48%
The Greek term for certain officials subordinate to the priests, on whom devolved the cleaning and keeping in repair of the temple to which they were attached. In important temples, especially in Asia, the office of a neocorus was considered a distinction by which even the greatest personages felt honoured. In the imperial period of Rome, whole cities, in which temples of the emperors existed, styled themselves their neocori. [Ephesus is described in Acts, xix 35 as the neocorus, or "temple-keeper," of Artemis.]