 
# READING COMPANION TO BOOK 1 OF

## The Seculary of a Wandering Jew

by

## Paulo Barata

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Paulo Barata on Smashwords

ISBN: 9781301258857

Reading Companion to the The Seculary of a Wandering Jew - Book 1 - ENVY

Copyright 2013 by Paulo Jorge Barata Santos

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

# Table of Contents

Preface

Timeline

Personae

The Family

The Messianics/Christians

The Judaeans

The Romans

The Pagans

The Gods

Places and Geography

Units of Measurement

Judaean Nomenclature

Greco-Roman Nomenclature

# Preface

The various chronicles/books that make up the heptalogy of the Seculary of a Wandering Jew cover the history of the last 2000 years of Western Civilization.

More than a work of Historical Fiction, the books portray real protagonists of each period, placed within the context of the epoch and in the various geographies.

Book 1 - ENVY / Years 33 to 93 - The Apostolic Age and the Jewish Diaspora

Book 2 - LUST / Years 303 to 347 (out in 2013) - The End of Paganism and the Emergence of Christianity

To be started:

Book 3 - PRIDE / XI Century - The Crusades and the Kingdom of Jerusalem / Islam

Book 4 - WRATH / XIV Century - The Black Death and the Creation of Europe

Book 5 - GLUTTONY / XVI Century - Indulgences and Reformism

Book 6 - GREED / XVII / XVIII Centuries - Colonialism / Enlightenment

Book 7 - SLOTH / XX Century - Closure / Science / Materialism / Atheism

The objective of this Reading Companion is to facilitate the reader with the numerous personae and places where the stories develop.

By following the Historical Timeline, one can grasp the more important events that marked the period. The Lists of Characters, Geographies and Nomenclatures are expanded into the Glossary and provide further insights into each epoch.

As further chronicles are finished, each additional Book will be added to this Reading Companion.

January 2013

Version 1.1

# HISTORICAL TIMELINE

### Year 33

In this year, Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus, the Second Roman Emperor, ruled the whole of the Roman Empire, stretching from the south of the River Rhine to the Levant in the East and Egypt in Africa. In keeping with the illusion of Republican ideals, the two elected Consuls of the year were Servius Sulpicius Galba and Lucius Cornelius Felix.

A financial crisis hit Rome, due to poorly chosen fiscal policies. Land values plummet, and credit is increased. These actions lead to a lack of cash, a crisis of confidence, and much land speculation. The primary victims are senators, knights and the wealthy. Many aristocratic families are ruined.

In Judaea, one of the many Provinces of the Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate was the representative of the Empire ruling as Prefect (praefectus).

In Jerusalem, the Holy City of Judaism, the civil and religious administration of the city was entrusted to the Great Sanhedrin (Assembly), formally ruled by a Nasi (Gamaliel ben Hillel) and a High Priest (Joseph ben Caiaphas).

According to most scholars, it was in this year when Yeshua ben Joseph came to Jerusalem, was arrested and crucified by order of Pontius Pilate.

### Year 36

A great uprising in Samaria is suppressed by Pontius Pilate after leading his troops from Caesarea. Lucius Vitellius, the governor of Roman Syria, had to intervene to curb Pilate's violence.

Pilate was ordered back to Rome after harshly suppressing a Samaritan uprising, arriving just after the death of Tiberius, which occurred on 16 March in 37 AD. He was replaced by Marcellus.

Eventually Pilate was banished to Gaul where it is reputed he committed suicide.

### Year 37

In Jerusalem, Joseph Caiaphas, the High Priest, is replaced by Jonathan ben Annas, his brother-in-law and son of the powerful Annas ben Seth.

On March 16, the 77 year-old Emperor Tiberius dies and two days later, his nephew Caligula, 24 years-old, is proclaimed the new Roman Emperor.

The governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, visits Jerusalem and is triumphantly acclaimed by the people. His visit is interrupted due to the death of Tiberius.

It is also the probable year of the conversion of the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus to Christianity after a vision.

### Year 38

Naevius Sutorius Macro, commander of the Roman Praetorian Guard and a former protégé of Caligula is executed by order of the Emperor.

The Emperor's uncle, Claudius, marries Valeria Messalina.

A deputation is sent to Caligula from Alexandria to complain about the Judaeans, and a riot breaks out in this same city during a visit by Agrippa. The mob wanted to place statues of Caligula in every synagogue.

### Year 39

Agrippa successfully accuses Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, of conspiracy against Caligula. Antipas is exiled and Agrippa receives his territory.

Caligula orders that a statue of himself be placed in the Temple in Jerusalem. The governor of Syria, Publius Petronius, who is responsible for erecting the statue, faces mass demonstrations by Jews of the region and manages to delay construction of the statue until the death of Caligula in 41.

Philo leads a Jewish delegation to Rome to protest the anti-Jewish conditions in Alexandria.

### Year 40

Caligula starts on a campaign to conquer Britain, which fails miserably. He declares himself victorious regardless.

During a state visit to Rome, king Ptolemy of Mauretania, is murdered by Caligula. Noricum and Mauretania are incorporated into the Roman Empire.

Caligula reforms the _principatus_ into a Hellenistic Autocracy. He distributes honors carelessly, declares himself a god and orders that all the heads of the Greek deity statues be replaced by his. He also appoints his horse, Incitatus, a senator.

Philo teaches that all men are born free.

An early Christian church is erected at Corinth (most probable date).

### Year 41

Caligula, known for his eccentricity and cruel despotism, is assassinated by his disgruntled Praetorian Guards. Claudius succeeds his nephew Caligula as Emperor.

Claudius names Agrippa I as Roman client king of Judea, restoring the province to its status as a client kingdom. The Emperor restores religious freedom to Jews throughout the empire, but prohibits Jews in Rome from proselytizing

The disciples of Jesus form communities after the Diaspora, especially in Damascus and Antioch. For the first time they are called Christians.

### Years 42-43

Claudius begins construction of Portus, close to the existing harbor of Ostia.

The Emperor orders an invasion of Britain, beginning the conquest of the island, and annexes Lycia in Asia Minor, combining it with Pamphylia as a Roman province. The Romans now have complete control of the Mediterranean.

Roman London (Londinium) was established.

Mark the Evangelist becomes the first Pope of Alexandria, thus establishing the Christian Church in Africa.

### Year 44

The emperor Claudius returns from his British campaign in triumph, the southeast part of Britannia now held by the Roman Empire, but the war will rage for another decade and a half.

James the Greater, apostle, is executed by the sword on command of Agrippa.

King Agrippa I of Judaea dies.

Rome takes over the province once again and a new Procurator for Judaea is appointed, Cuspius Faddus.

### Year 45

The emperor Claudius expels the Jews from Rome.

Paul of Tarsus begins his missionary travels, according to one traditional dating scheme.

Cuspius Fadus, Procurator of Judea, suppresses the revolt of Theudas who is decapitated.

### Year 46

Rhoemetalces III, Roman client king of the Odrysian Kingdom, is assassinated in an anti-Roman revolt. Claudius suppresses the revolt and annexes the kingdom into the Empire as the province of Thracia.

A census shows that there are more than 6,000,000 Roman citizens.

Rome and its northeast border are reunited by the Danube Road.

### Years 47-48

The emperor Claudius invests Agrippa II with the office of superintendent of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Paul starts his evangelistic work.

Ventidius Cumanus is appointed Procurator of Judaea.

Probable date of the Apostolic Council in Jerusalem. Paul of Tarsus begins his first mission (approximate date).

### Years 49-50

Emperor Claudius marries his niece Agrippina the Younger (approximate date). Claudius adopts Nero.

Seneca the Younger becomes Nero's tutor.

Gamaliel ben Hillel dies.

Paul's Epistle to the Galatians is probably written. Christianity spreads into Europe, especially at Rome and at Philippi.

The Epistle to the Romans is written.

Roman emperor Claudius appoints Agrippa II governor of Chalcis.

### Year 51

While Jewish pilgrims were gathered in Jerusalem for the Pesach feast, a Roman legionnaire caused chaos by exposing himself to the Jews in the courtyard while calling out insults. Some of the Jews began to retaliate by hurling stones at the soldiers. Finding himself unable to calm the angry crowd, Cumanus called for fully armed reinforcements. In the ensuing stampede, according to Josephus' estimates, between twenty and thirty thousand people were crushed to death.

In Judea a Roman soldier seized and burned a Torah-scroll. Procurator Cumanus had the culprit beheaded, calming down the Jews and delaying for two decades the outbreak of their revolt.

After the murder of some Galileans, Judaeans under the leadership of two Zealots invaded Samaria and began a massacre. Cumanus led his troops against the militants, killing many and taking others prisoner. After hearing a case against Cumanus, Quadratus sent him, along with several Jewish and Samaritan leaders to plead their cases in Rome before the Emperor. Claudius decided in favor of the Jewish side. The Samaritan leaders were executed and Cumanus was sent into exile.

Paul of Tarsus begins his second mission (approximate date). In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul supports the separation of Christianity and Judaism.

### Year 52

Emperor Claudius attempts to control the Fucine Lake by digging a 5,6 km tunnel through Monte Salviano, requiring 30,000 workers and eleven years.

In Rome a law prohibits the execution of old and crippled slaves.

Saint Thomas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, is believed to have landed in Kerala, India to preach the Gospel

Marcus Antonius Felix succeeds Ventidius Cumanus as the Roman procurator of Judaea Province.

### Year 53

Roman emperor Claudius removes Agrippa II from the tetrarchy of Chalcis.

Nero marries Claudia Octavia, Claudius's daughter. The Emperor accepts Nero as his successor, to the detriment of Britannicus, his son by his first wife, Valeria Messalina.

### Year 54

Claudius is poisoned by his fourth wife Agrippina the Younger at the age of 63 after a 14 year reign. His step-son and adoptive son Nero becomes Emperor.

Violence erupts in Caesarea regarding the a local ordinance restricting the civil rights of Jews, creating clashes between Jews and pagans. The Roman garrison, made up of Syrians, takes the side of the pagans. The Jews, armed with clubs and swords, meet in the marketplace. The Procurator of Judea, Antonius Felix, orders his troops to charge. The violence continues and Felix asks Nero to arbitrate. Nero, sides with the pagans and relegates the Jews to second-class citizens. This decision does nothing but increase the Jews' anger.

Judaea is returned piecemeal to Agrippa I's son Marcus Julius Agrippa between 48 and 54.

Paul of Tarsus begins his third mission.

### Years 55-57

Agrippina the Younger is expelled from the imperial palace by her son Nero, who installs her in Villa Antonia in Misenum.

Britannicus, son of Claudius is killed by supporters of Nero.

War between Rome and Parthia breaks out due to the invasion of Armenia by Vologases I, who had replaced the Roman supported ruler with his brother Tiridates of Parthia.

The apostle Paul writes his First and Second Epistle to the Corinthians and his Epistle to the Romans (probable date).

### Year 58

Paul of Tarsus is arrested in Jerusalem, and is imprisoned in Caesarea. He then invokes his Roman citizenship and is sent to Rome to be judged.

Marcus Antonius Felix is replaced by Porcius Festus.

St. Paul writes his Epistle to the Romans.

### Years 59-61

Emperor Nero orders the murder of his mother Julia Augusta Agrippina. He tries to kill her through a planned shipwreck, but when she survives has her executed and frames it as a suicide.

Paul of Tarsus journeys to Rome, but is shipwrecked at Malta.

Porcius Festus dies and is replaced by Lucceius Albinus.

### Year 62

After the death of Sextus Afranius Burrus and the disgrace of Seneca, Nero, free from their influence, becomes a megalomaniacal artist fascinated by Hellenism and the Orient. From this time onward his rule becomes highly abusive.

A great earthquake damages cities in Campania, including Pompey. A violent storm destroys 200 ships in the port of Portus.

James, first Bishop of Jerusalem, is stoned to death in Jerusalem.

Paul of Tarsus is imprisoned in Rome (approximate date).

Aulus Persius Flaccus, Roman poet and satirist dies.

### Years 63-64

Pompey the city at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, is heavily damaged by a strong earthquake. Fearing an eruption of the volcano, many of the 20,000 inhabitants leave their homes in a panicked flight.

A fire begins in the merchant area of Rome and soon burns completely out of control. The fire destroys close to one-half of the city and it is officially blamed on the Christians, a small but growing religious movement. Nero is accused of being the arsonist by popular rumor.

In Rome, persecution of early Christians begins under Roman Emperor Nero. Peter the Apostle is possibly among those executed.

Seneca proclaims the equality of all men, including slaves.

Lucceius Albinus is replaced by Gessius Florus as Procurator of Judaea.

Deaths of Paul the Apostle (earliest date) and Peter the Apostle (earliest date)

### Year 65

After a stage performance in which he appears and shocks the senatorial class considerably, Nero engages in a series of reprisals against Seneca, Tigellinus, pro-republican senators, and anyone else he distrusts.

Nero kills his pregnant wife, Poppea Sabina, with a kick to the stomach.

The Gospel of Matthew is probably written between 60 and this year.

Paul of Tarsus ordains Timothy as bishop of Ephesus (traditional date).

The first Christian community in Africa is founded by Mark, a disciple of Peter. Mark begins to write his gospel.

### Year 66

The Jewish Revolt (66 - 70 AD) commences against the Roman Empire. The Zealots lay siege on Jerusalem and annihilate the Roman garrison (a cohort of Legio III). The Sicarii capture the fortress of Masada overlooking the Dead Sea.

Cestius Gallus, legate of Syria, marches into Judea and leads a Roman army of 28,000 soldiers to put down the Jewish rebellion. Gallus succeeds in conquering Beit She'arim "the new city", but is unable to take the Temple in Jerusalem. He retreats to the coast, but is surrounded at Beth-Horon and nearly wiped out by the Zealots. He finally manages to arrive in Caesarea, with six thousand men and numerous standards, including the eagle of Legio XII.

The First Epistle to Timothy is written (approximate date).

### Years 67-69

Vespasian arrives in Ptolemais, along with Legio X Fretensis and Legio V Macedonica to put down the Jewish Revolt. He is joined by his son Titus, who brings Legio XV Apollinaris from Alexandria. By late spring the Roman army numbers more than 60,000 soldiers, including auxiliaries and troops of king Agrippa II.

Jewish leaders at Jerusalem are divided through a power struggle, a brutal civil war erupts, the Zealots and the Sicarii execute anyone who tries to leave the city.

Siege of Jotapata and massacre of its 40,000 Jewish inhabitants. The historian Josephus, leader of the rebels in Galilee, is captured by the Romans. Vespasian is wounded in the foot by an arrow fired from the city wall. Fall of the Jewish fortress of Gamla in the Golan to the Romans and massacre of its inhabitants.

In 68 Emperor Nero commits suicide four miles outside Rome. He is deserted by the Praetorian Guard and then stabs himself in the throat. The Roman Senate declares Nero as a persona non grata. In the line of succession, Galba follows Nero.

The year 69 is the Year of the Four Emperors: After Nero's death, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian succeed each other as emperor during the year.

Galba and his adopted son Piso are murdered by the Praetorian Guard on the Roman Forum. Otho seizes power in Rome, proclaims himself emperor, and reigns for three months before committing suicide. After the Battle of Bedriacum, Vitellius becomes emperor. A few months later, Vitellius is captured and murdered by the Gemonian stairs. Vespasian becomes emperor.

The Flavian dynasty starts.

Vespasian lays siege to Jerusalem, the city is captured the following year by his son Titus.

Sardinia becomes a Roman province.

Possible martyrdom of apostles Peter and Paul in Rome. Linus succeeds Peter as the second Bishop of Rome (in Catholic reckoning).

### Year 70

Panic strikes Rome as adverse winds delay grain shipments from Africa and Egypt, producing a bread shortage. Ships laden with wheat from North Africa sail 300 miles to Rome's port of Ostia in 3 days, and the 1,000 mile voyage from Alexandria averages 13 days. The vessels often carry 1,000 tons each to provide the city with 8,000 tons per week it normally consumes.

Vespasian arrives in Ostia from Alexandria as the new Emperor.

Titus surrounds the Jewish capital, with three legions (V Macedonica, XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris) on the western side and a fourth (X Fretensis) on the Mount of Olives to the east. He puts pressure on the food and water supplies of the inhabitants by allowing pilgrims to enter the city to celebrate Passover and then refusing them egress.

The Romans open a full-scale assault on Jerusalem, concentrating their attack on the city's Third Wall (HaHoma HaShlishit) to the northwest. The Wall collapses and the Jews withdraw from Bezetha to the Second Wall, where the defenses are unorganized.

The Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. The Jewish defenders retreats to the First Wall. The Romans built a circumvolution, all trees within fifteen kilometers of the city are cut down.

Titus storms the Fortress of Antonia north of the Temple Mount. The Romans are drawn into street fighting with the Zealots. Titus destroys the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Roman troops are stationed in Jerusalem and the Jewish high priesthood and the Sanhedrin are abolished.

Following this event, the Jewish religious leadership moves from Jerusalem to Jamnia, and this date is mourned annually as the Jewish fast of Tisha B'Av.

A few days later, Titus assaults the Temple Mount and destroys Herod's Palace in the Upper City of Jerusalem. Jewish resistance ends on September 26.

Annexation of the island of Samothrace by the Roman Empire under Vespasian.

### Year 71

Titus is awarded a triumph, accompanied by Vespasian and his brother Domitian. In the parade are Jewish prisoners and treasures of the Temple of Jerusalem, including the Menorah and the Pentateuch. The leader of the Zealots, Simon Bar Giora, is executed.

Titus is made Prefect of the Praetorian Guard and receives pro-consular command and also tribunician power, all of which indicates that Vespasian will follow the hereditary tradition of succession.

Herodium, Jewish fortress south of Jerusalem, is conquered and destroyed by Legio X Fretensis on their way to Masada.

### Years 72-73

The Romans lay siege to Masada, a desert fortress held by Jewish victims of the Sicarii.

Vespasian starts the building of the Colosseum; the amphitheater is used for gladiatorial games and public spectacles, such as sea battles, re-enactments of famous battles, and dramas of Classical mythology.

In 73, the Roman governor Lucius Flavius Silva lays siege to Masada, the last outpost of the Jewish rebels following the end in 70 of the First Jewish-Roman War (Jewish Revolt). The Roman army (Legio X Fretensis) surrounds the mountain fortress with a 7-mile long siege wall and built a rampart of stones and beaten earth against the western approach. After the citadel is conquered, 960 Zealots under the leadership of Eleazar ben Ya'ir commit mass suicide when defeat becomes imminent.

### Years 74-79

In 75, the Temple of Peace, also known as the Forum of Vespasian, is built in Rome. The temple celebrates the conquest of Jerusalem (in 70) and houses the Menorah from Herod's Temple.

In 76, Pope Anacletus I succeeds Pope Linus as the third pope (according to the official Vatican list).

In 79 Vespasian dies of fever from diarrhea, his last words on his deathbed are: "I think I'm turning into a god" Titus succeeds his father as Roman emperor.

Mount Vesuvius erupts, destroying Pompey, Herculaneum, Stabiae and Oplontis. The Roman fleet based at Misenum, commanded by Pliny the Elder, evacuates refugees but he dies after inhaling volcanic fumes.

Emperor Titus dedicates the famous Roman Colosseum.

### Year 81

Domitian succeeds his brother Titus as emperor. Domitian is not a soldier like his two predecessors, and his administration is directed towards the reinforcement of a monarchy. By taking the title of Dominus ("lord"), he scandalizes the senatorial aristocracy. Romanization progresses in the provinces, and life in the cities is greatly improved. Many provincials - Spanish, Gallic, and African - become Senators.

The Arch of Titus is constructed.

### Years 82-93

Roman emperor Domitian fights the Chatti, a Germanic tribe. His victory allows the construction of fortifications (Limes) along the Rhine-frontier.

Through his election as consul for ten years and Censor for life, Domitian openly subordinates the republican aspect of the state to the monarchical.

In 88, Pope Clement I succeeds Pope Anacletus I as the fourth pope.

In 90, drafting of The Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles.

In 93, Emperor Domitian persecutes the Christians.

# PERSONAE

## The Family

**Ahasver***

Narrator

Isaac*

Brother of Ahasver

Rebecca*

Wife of Isaac

Ruth*

Wife of Ahasver, proselyte

Simon*

Son of Isaac

Simon (father)*

Father of Ahasver and Isaac

Daniel*

Son of Ahasver

## The Messianics / Christians

Abiram*

Head of the Messianics in Arimathea

Barnabas

Missionary and companion to Saul

Barnabas, born Joseph, was an early Christian, one of the earliest Christian disciples in Jerusalem. According to Acts 4:36 Barnabas was a Cypriot Jew. Named an apostle, he and Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers.

They traveled together making more converts (c 45-47), and participated in the Council of Jerusalem (c 50). Barnabas and Paul successfully evangelized among the "God-fearing" gentiles who attended synagogues in various Hellenized cities of Anatolia.

Although the date, place, and circumstances of his death are historically unverifiable, Christian tradition holds that Barnabas was martyred at Salamis, Cyprus, in 61 AD. He is traditionally identified as the founder of the Cypriot Orthodox Church.

**Cephas**

Simon Peter, apostle, first bishop of Rome

Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader and one of the twelve apostles of Jesus. Peter is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and is venerated as a saint. The son of John or of Jonah or Jona, he was from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee or Gaulanitis. His brother Andrew was also an apostle. Peter is venerated in multiple churches and is regarded as the first pope by the Catholic Church.

After working to establish the church of Antioch and presiding for seven years as the leader of the city's Christian community, he preached, or his epistle was preached in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia Minor and Bithynia to scattered communities of believers: Jews, Hebrew Christians and the gentiles. He then went to Rome where in the second year of Claudius, it is claimed, he overthrew Simon Magus and held the Sacerdotal Chair for 25 years.

Peter wrote two general epistles. The Gospel of Mark is also ascribed to him (as Mark was his disciple and interpreter). Several other books bearing his name' the Acts of Peter, Gospel of Peter, Preaching of Peter, Apocalypse of Peter, and Judgment of Peter' are rejected by the Catholic Church as apocryphal.

According to New Testament accounts, Peter was one of twelve apostles chosen by Jesus from his first disciples. Originally a fisherman, he was assigned a leadership role by Jesus and was with Jesus during events witnessed by only a few apostles, such as the Transfiguration.

Peter is said to have been crucified under Emperor Nero. It is traditionally held that he was crucified upside down at his own request, since he saw himself unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus Christ.

Ephraim*

Miracle worker in Jaffa

Hermione

Daughter of Philip, the Evangelist

Hila

Daughter of Philip, the Evangelist

**James**

James, the Just, apostle, first bishop of Jerusalem

He is called James the brother of the Lord by Paul, James the brother of the Lord, surnamed the Just by Hegesippus and others, "James the Righteous", "James of Jerusalem", "James Adelphotheos", and so on.

James became the leader of the Christian movement in Jerusalem in the decades after Jesus' death, but like the rest of the early Christians, information about his life is scarce and ambiguous. Apart from a handful of references in the Gospels, the main sources for his life are the Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline epistles, the historian Josephus, and St. Jerome who also quotes the early Christian chronicler Hegesippus.

The Epistle of James in the New Testament is traditionally attributed to him, and he is a principal author of the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15. Hegesippus in his fifth book of his Commentaries, writing of James, says "After the apostles, James the brother of the Lord surnamed the Just was made head of the Church at Jerusalem."

As a consequence of the doctrine of perpetual virginity, which does not allow that Mary had children after Jesus, Jerome considered that the term "brother" of the Lord should be read "cousin", and concluded that James "the brother of the Lord," is therefore James, son of Alphaeus, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, as well as James, the son of Mary Cleophas.

Paul lists James with Cephas (better known as Peter) and John as the three "pillars" of the Church and who will minister to the "circumcised" (in general Jews and Jewish Proselytes) in Jerusalem, while Paul and his fellows will minister to the "uncircumcised".

When Paul arrives in Jerusalem to deliver the money he raised for the faithful there, it is to James that he speaks.

**James ben Zebedee**

James, the Greater, apostle, martyr

One of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was a son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of John the Apostle. He is also called James the Greater to distinguish him from James, son of Alphaeus, who is also known as James the Less.

James is described as one of the first disciples to join Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels state that James and John were with their father by the seashore when Jesus called them to follow him.

James was one of only three apostles whom Jesus selected to bear witness to his Transfiguration. The Acts of the Apostles records that Herod had James executed by sword.

He is the only apostle whose martyrdom is recorded in the New Testament. He is, thus, traditionally believed to be the first of the 12 apostles martyred for his faith.

**Linus**

Second bishop of Rome

Pope Saint Linus (died c. 76) was, according to several early sources, Bishop of the Diocese of Rome after Saint Peter. This would make Linus the second Pope. According to other early sources Pope Clement I was the Pope after Peter. Linus is the only person specifically mentioned in the New Testament, other than Peter, considered by the Catholic Church to have held the position of Pope.

Philip

Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven deacons

Philip the Evangelist appears several times in the Acts of the Apostles. He was one of the Seven Deacons chosen to care for the poor of the Christian community in Jerusalem.

After the martyrdom of Saint Stephen he went to "the city of Samaria", where he preached with much success, Simon Magus being one of his converts. He preached and performed miracles in Samaria, and met and baptized an Ethiopian man, a eunuch, in Gaza, traditionally marking the start of the Ethiopian Church.

Later, he lived in Caesarea Maritima with his four daughters who prophesied, where he was visited by Paul.

A late tradition describes him as settling at Tralles in Anatolia, where he became the bishop of that church.

Philip*

Head of the Messianics in Tiberias

Saul

_Paul of Tarsus, disciple and missionary_

Paul the Apostle (c. AD 5 - c. AD 67) is the most influential early Christian missionary and leader of the first generation of Christians. Among the many other apostles and missionaries involved in the spread of the Christian faith, Paul is often considered to be one of the two most important people in the history of Christianity, and one of the greatest religious leaders of all time

A Greek-speaking Jew, he grew up in Jerusalem where he studied "at the feet of Gamaliel", a famous rabbi and leading authority in the Sanhedrin. For the first half of his life, Paul was a member of the Pharisees, a Jewish faction that promoted strict orthodoxy and formalism. Before his conversion he zealously persecuted the newly-forming Christian church, trying to destroy it.

While traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus on a mission the resurrected Jesus appeared to him in a great light. He was struck blind, but after three days his sight was restored by Ananias of Damascus.

Paul's conversion dramatically changed the course of his life. He began to preach that Jesus of Nazareth is the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God. Through his missionary activities and writings he eventually transformed religious belief and philosophy around the Mediterranean Basin. His leadership, influence and legacy led to the formation of communities dominated by Gentile groups that worshiped the God of Israel, adhered to the "Judaic moral code", but relaxed or abandoned the ritual and dietary teachings of the Law of Moses, that these laws and rituals were symbolic precursors of Christ.

Thirteen epistles in the New Testament are traditionally attributed to Paul. More than half of the book of Acts is devoted to describing his pioneering activities. Augustine of Hippo developed Paul's idea that salvation is based on faith and not "works of the law".

Paul was compelled to struggle to validate his own worth and authority. His contemporaries probably did not hold him in esteem as high as they held Peter and James. Along with Simon Peter and James the Just he was one of the most prominent early Christian leaders.

The Bible does not record Paul's death. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul writes about anticipating his death. Writing around 110, Ignatius noted that Paul had been martyred. He probably died in Rome c. A.D. 62-64.

Silas

Missionary and companion to Saul

Saint Silas or Saint Silvanus was a leading member of the Early Christian community, who later accompanied Paul on parts of his first and second missionary journeys.

He was with Paul in Philippi when they were imprisoned, but were freed when an earthquake broke their chains and opened the prison door. He is thus sometimes depicted carrying broken chains.

Simeon

Second bishop of Jerusalem

Saint Simeon of Jerusalem, son of Clopas, was a Jewish Christian leader and according to most Christian traditions the second Bishop of Jerusalem (62-107).

According to a universal tradition the first bishop of Jerusalem was Saint James the Just, the "brother of the Lord," who according to Eusebius said that he was appointed bishop by the Apostles Peter, St. James, and John.

According to Eusebius, James was killed at the instigation of the high priest, Ananus, in about the year 63. Eusebius relates that Simeon was elected by the community at Jerusalem chosen to succeed James.

Stephen

One of the seven deacons, protomartyr

Saint Stephen, the protomartyr of Christianity, is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

According to The Acts of the Apostles, Stephen was among seven men of the early church at Jerusalem appointed to serve as deacon. However, after a dispute with the members of a synagogue, he is denounced for blasphemy against God and Moses and speaking against the Temple and the Law. Stephen is tried before the Sanhedrin. His defense is presented as accusing the Jews of persecuting the prophets who had spoken out against the sins of the nation:

While on trial, he experienced a theophany in which he saw both God the Father and God the Son.

He is condemned and stoned to death by an infuriated mob, which is encouraged by Saul of Tarsus, later to be known as Saint Paul the Apostle. After his own conversion to Christianity, Paul makes reference to witnessing Stephen's martyrdom in his writings.

Thadeus*

Head of the Messianics in Jericho

Timon*

Head of the Messianics in Jaffa

**Yeshua ben Joseph**

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ

Jesus (7 BC to 30/36 AD), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, is the central figure of Christianity, whom the teachings of most Christian denominations hold to be the Son of God and is regarded as a major Prophet in Islam.

Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed. While the quest for the historical Jesus has produced little agreement on the historicity of gospel narratives and their theological assertions of his divinity, most scholars agree that Jesus was a Jewish teacher from Galilee in Roman Judaea, was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate. Scholars have offered various portraits of the historical Jesus, which at times share a number of overlapping attributes, such as the leader of an apocalyptic movement, Messiah, a charismatic healer, a sage and philosopher, or a social reformer who preached of the "Kingdom of God" as a means for personal and egalitarian social transformation.

Christians hold Jesus to be the awaited Messiah of the Old Testament and refer to him as Jesus Christ or simply as Christ, a name that is also used secularly. Most Christians believe that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, performed miracles, founded the Church, died sacrificially by crucifixion to achieve atonement, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, from which he will return. The majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, and the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.

Zacheus*

Head of the Messianics in Caesarea

## The Judaeans

Abraham*

Member of the Judaean council in Caesarea

Adina*

A servant of Ahasver

Agrippa

_Herod Agrippa I, nephew of Antipas, king of Judaea_

(10 BC - 44)

King of the Jews from 41 to 44.

The grandson of Herod the Great and son of Aristobulus IV and Berenice. He was born Marcus Julius Agrippa, so named in honor of Roman statesman Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. He is the king named Herod in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Bible. He was, according to Josephus, known in his time as "Agrippa the Great".

After the murder of his father, young Agrippa was sent by Herod the Great to the imperial court in Rome. There, Tiberius conceived a great affection for him, and had him educated alongside his son Drusus, who also befriended him, and future emperor Claudius. On the death of Drusus, Agrippa, who had been recklessly extravagant and was deeply in debt, was obliged to leave Rome, fleeing to the fortress of Malatha in Idumaea.

Following Tiberius' death and the ascension of Agrippa's friend Caligula, Agrippa was set free and made governor first of the territories of Batanaea and Trachonitis that his cousin Herod II had held, then of the tetrarchy of Lysanias, with the title of "king". Caligula also presented him with a golden chain of a weight equal to the iron one he had worn in prison. In 39, Agrippa returned to Rome, and brought about the banishment of his uncle, Herod Antipas, whose tetrarchy over Galilee and Perea he then was granted.

On the assassination of Caligula in 41, Agrippa's advice helped to secure Claudius' accession as emperor. As a reward for his assistance, Claudius gave Agrippa dominion over Judea and Samaria. Thus Agrippa became one of the most powerful princes of the east; the territory he possessed exceeded that which was held by his grandfather Herod the Great.

Agrippa returned to Judaea and governed it to the satisfaction of the Jews. His zeal, private and public, for Judaism is recorded by Josephus and the rabbis.

At the risk of his own life, or at least of his liberty, he interceded with Caligula on behalf of the Jews, when that emperor was attempting to set up his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem shortly before his death in 41.

After Passover in 44, Agrippa went to Caesarea, where he had games performed in honor of Claudius. In the midst of his elation Agrippa he experienced heart pains and a pain in his abdomen, and died after five days

Ammon*

Employee of Ahasver in Tiberias

Ananias

Ananias ben Nebedeus, High Priest

Ananias son of Nedebaios (Ananias ben Nebedeus in the Book of Acts), was a high priest who presided during the trial of Paul at Jerusalem and Caesarea.

He officiated as high priest from about AD 47 to 52. Quadratus, governor of Syria, accused him of being responsible for acts of violence.

He was sent to Rome for trial (AD 52), but was acquitted by the emperor Claudius. Being a friend of the Romans, he was murdered by the people at the beginning of the First Jewish-Roman War.

**Annas**

Annas ben Seth, High Priest

Annas, son of Seth (23/22 BC' death date unknown, probably around 40 CE), was appointed by the Roman legate Quirinius as the first High Priest of the newly formed Roman province of Judaea in 6 AD; just after the Romans had deposed Archelaus, Ethnarch of Judaea, thereby putting Judaea directly under Roman rule.

Annas officially served as High Priest for ten years (6 - 15 AD), when at the age of 36 he was deposed by the procurator Gratus 'for imposing and executing capital sentences which had been forbidden by the imperial government.' Yet while having been officially removed from office, he remained as one of the nation's most influential political and social individuals, aided greatly by the use of his five sons and his son-in-law as puppet High Priests.

His death is unrecorded, but his son Annas the Younger, also known as Ananus ben Ananus was assassinated in 66 AD for advocating peace with Rome.

**Antipas**

Herod Antipas, son of Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee

Herod Antipater (born before 20 BCE - died after 39 CE), known by the nickname Antipas, was a 1st-century CE ruler of Galilee and Perea, who bore the title of tetrarch ("ruler of a quarter"). He is best known today for accounts in the New Testament of his role in events that led to the executions of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth.

After being named to the throne by Caesar Augustus upon the death of his father, Herod the Great, in 4 BCE, and subsequent Ethnarch rule by his brother, Herod Archaleus, Antipas ruled them as a client state of the Roman Empire. He was responsible for building projects at Sepphoris and Betharamphtha, and more important for the construction of his capital Tiberias on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Named in honor of his patron, the emperor Tiberius, the city later became a center of rabbinic learning.

In 39 CE Antipas was accused by his nephew Agrippa I of conspiracy against the new Roman emperor Caligula, who sent him into exile in Gaul. Accompanied there by Herodias, he died at an unknown date.

Asher*

Employee of Ahasver

Boethus

Wealthy priestly family

**Caiaphas**

Joseph Caiaphas, High Priest

Joseph, son of Caiaphas, was the Roman-appointed Jewish high priest who is said to have organized the plot to kill Jesus. Caiaphas is also said to have been involved in the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus.

According to the Gospel, Caiaphas was the major antagonist of Jesus. The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus is considered the most reliable literary source for Caiaphas. His works contain information on the dates for Caiaphas's tenure of the high priesthood, along with reports on other high priests, and also help to establish a coherent description of the responsibilities of the high-priestly office. According to Josephus, Caiaphas was appointed in AD 18 by the Roman prefect who preceded Pontius Pilate, Valerius Gratus.

After Pontius' recall Caiaphas was removed by the new governor, Vitellius, and was succeeded by Jonathan, who was the son of Anan and perhaps a brother-in-law of Caiaphas.

Drusilla

Daughter of Agrippa, second wife of Felix

Drusilla (born 38, died 25 August 79 AD) was a daughter of Herod Agrippa I and thus sister to Berenice, Marianne and Herod Agrippa II.

She was six years of age at the time of her father's death at Caesarea in 44. Her father had betrothed her to Gaius Julius Archelaus Antiochus Epiphanes, first son of King Antiochus IV of Commagene, with a stipulation from her father that Epiphanes should embrace the Jewish religion. The prince in the end refused to abide by his promise to do so, and the marriage had still not been contracted on her father's death.

Once Drusilla's brother, Herod Agrippa II, had been assigned the tetrarchy of Herod Philip I in around 49/50, he broke off her engagement to Epiphanes and gave her in marriage to Gaius Julius Azizus, Priest King of Emesa, who, in order to obtain her hand, consented to be circumcised.

It appears that it was shortly after her first marriage was contracted that Antonius Felix, the Roman procurator of Judaea, met Drusilla, probably at her brother's court. Felix was struck by the great beauty of Drusilla, and determined to make her his (second) wife.

She was about twenty-two years of age when she appeared at Felix's side, during St. Paul's captivity at Caesarea.

Felix and Drusilla had a son named Marcus Antonius Agrippa and a daughter Antonia Clementiana. Their son perished together with his mother Drusilla, along with noted Roman historian Pliny the Elder plus most of the populations of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the AD 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Eloy*

Friend of Ahasver, potter

**Gamaliel**

Friend of Joseph, Nasi of the Sanhedrin

Gamaliel the Elder or Rabban Gamaliel I, was a leading authority in the Sanhedrin in the mid-1st century CE. He was son of Simeon ben Hillel, and grandson of the great Jewish teacher Hillel the Elder, and died twenty years before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (70 CE). He fathered a son, whom he called Simeon, after his father, and a daughter. The name Gamaliel is the Greek form of the Hebrew name meaning reward of God.

In the Christian tradition, Gamaliel is celebrated as a Pharisee doctor of Jewish Law. Acts of the Apostles speaks of Gamaliel as a man of great respect who spoke in favor of arrested Christian apostles and the Jewish Law teacher of Paul the Apostle.

In the Talmud, Gamaliel is described as bearing the titles Nasi and Rabban (our master), as the president of the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem; although some dispute this, it is not doubted that he held a senior position in the highest court in Jerusalem. Gamaliel holds a reputation in the Mishnah for being one of the greatest teachers in all the annals of Judaism.

Herod

Herod the Great, king of Judaea

Herod, also known as Herod the Great (born 73 or 74 BC, died 4 BC in Jericho), was a Roman client king of Judea. His epithet of "the Great" is widely disputed as he is described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis."

Herod was born around 74 BC in the south (Idumea was the most southern region). He was the second son of Antipater the Idumaean, a high-ranked official under Ethnarch Hyrcanus II, and Cypros, a Nabatean. Herod was practicing Judaism, as many Edomites and Nabateans had been commingled with the Jews and adopted their customs. These "Judaized" Edomites were not considered Jewish by the dominant Pharisaic tradition, so even though Herod may have considered himself of the Jewish faith, he was not considered Jewish by the observant and nationalist Jews of Judea. A loyal supporter of Hyrcanus II, Antipater appointed Herod governor of Galilee at 25, and his elder brother, Phasael, governor of Jerusalem. He enjoyed the backing of Rome but his brutality was condemned by the Sanhedrin.

Two years later Antigonus, Hyrcanus' nephew, took the throne from his uncle with the help of the Parthians. Herod fled to Rome to plead with the Romans to restore him to power. There he was elected "King of the Jews" by the Roman Senate. Herod went back to Judaea to win his kingdom from Antigonus and at the same time he married the teenage niece of Antigonus, Mariamne (known as Mariamne I), in an attempt to secure a claim to the throne and gain some Jewish favor.

Three years later, Herod and the Romans finally captured Jerusalem and executed Antigonus. Herod took the role as sole ruler of Judea and the title of king for himself, ushering in the Herodian Dynasty and ending the Hasmonean Dynasty. According to Josephus, he ruled for 37 years, 34 years of them after capturing Jerusalem.

Herod's most famous and ambitious project was the expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. In the eighteenth year of his reign (20–19 BC), Herod rebuilt the Temple on "a more magnificent scale". Although work on out-buildings and courts continued another eighty years.

Some of Herod's other achievements include the development of water supplies for Jerusalem, building fortresses such as Masada and Herodium, and founding new cities such as Caesarea Maritima

Most scholars have agreed that Herod died at the end of March or early April in 4 BC. Evidence for the 4 BC date is provided by the fact that Herod's sons, between whom his kingdom was divided, dated their rule from 4 BC.

**Herod Agrippa**

Herod Agrippa II, son of Agrippa I, Tetrarch of Lysanias

(27 - 100)

King of the Jews from 41 to 44.

Son of Agrippa I, and like him originally named Marcus Julius Agrippa, was the seventh and last king of the family of Herod the Great.

Agrippa was educated at the court of the emperor Claudius, and at the time of his father's death was only seventeen years old. Claudius therefore kept him at Rome, and sent Cuspius Fadus as procurator of the Roman province of Judaea. On the death of Herod of Chalcis (in 48), his small principality was given to Agrippa, with the right of superintending the Temple in Jerusalem and appointing its high priest.

In 53, he was made governor over the tetrarchy of Philip and Lysanias.

In 55, Nero added the cities of Tiberias and Taricheae in Galilee, and Julias, with fourteen villages near it, in Perinea. Agrippa expended large sums in beautifying Jerusalem and other cities, especially Berytus. His partiality for the latter rendered him unpopular amongst his own subjects, and the capricious manner in which he appointed and deposed the high priests made him disliked by the Jews. In 66 the Jews expelled him and Berenice from Jerusalem.

According to Photius, Agrippa died, childless, before 93/94. He was the last prince of the house of the Herodes.

It was before him and his sister Berenice that, according to the New Testament, Paul the Apostle pleaded his cause at Caesarea Maritima, possibly in 59.

Hevel*

Employee of Ahasver in Jaffa, proselyte

Hillel

Family of Gamaliel

Jeremiah*

Companion of Ahasver, member of the Sanhedrin

**Jonathan**

Jonathan ben Annas, son of Annas , High Priest

Son of Annas ben Seth, was High Priest of Judaea in 36-37 and in 44. Murdered by the sicarii (under the instigation of Marcus Antonius Felix, some rumored) in 57.

Joseph

Joseph of Arimathea, benefactor of Ahasver, proselyte

Joseph of Arimathea was, according to the Gospels, the man who donated his own prepared tomb for the burial of Jesus after Jesus' Crucifixion. He is mentioned in all four Gospels.

A native of Arimathea, in Judea, Joseph was apparently a man of wealth' and probably a member of the Sanhedrin, one of the rabbinical courts that existed in eastern Mediterranean. According to Mark, Joseph was an "honorable counselor who was searching for the kingdom of God (this use of counselor is generally associated with the Sanhedrin).

Menahem*

Friend of Isaac, scribe

Mordechai*

Tutor of Yeshua (son of Ahasver), proselyte

Nicodemus

Friend of Joseph of Arimathea, proselyte

**Philo Judaeus**

Hellenistic philosopher

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 B.C.E. - 50 C.E.), also called Philo Judaeus, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt during the Roman Empire.

Philo used philosophical allegory to attempt to fuse and harmonize Greek philosophy with Jewish philosophy. His method followed the practices of both Jewish exegesis and Stoic philosophy. His allegorical exegesis was important for several Christian Church Fathers, but he has barely any reception history within Judaism. He believed that literal interpretations of the Hebrew Bible would stifle mankind's view and perception of a God too complex and marvelous to be understood in literal human terms.[citation needed]

Some scholars hold that his concept of the Logos as God's creative principle influenced early Christology. Other scholars, however, deny direct influence but say both Philo and Early Christianity borrow from a common source.

The few biographical details known about Philo are found in his own works, especially in Legatio ad Gaium [embassy to Gaius], and in Josephus. The only event in his life that can be decisively dated is his participation in the embassy to Rome in 40 C.E. He represented the Alexandrian Jews before Roman Emperor Caligula because of civil strife between the Alexandrian Jewish and Greek communities.

Pinchas*

Friend of Simon (father)

Simeon

Son of Gamaliel, Nasi of the Sanhedrin

**Theudas**

Pseudo-Messiah

Theudas was a Jewish rebel of the 1st century AD. His name, if a Greek compound, may mean "gift of God", although other scholars believe its etymology is Semitic and might mean "flowing with water".

At some point between 44 and 46 AD, Theudas led his followers in a short-lived revolt. Theudas, persuaded a great part of the people to take their effects with them, and follow him to the Jordan river; for he told them he was a prophet, and that he would, by his own command, divide the river, and afford them an easy passage over it. Many were deluded by his words. However, Fadus did not permit them to make any advantage of his wild attempt, but sent a troop of horsemen out against them. After falling upon them unexpectedly, they slew many of them, and took many of them alive. They also took Theudas alive, cut off his head, and carried it to Jerusalem.

Some writers are of the opinion that he may have said he was the Messiah. The movement was dispersed, and was never heard of again.

Theophilus

Theophilus ben Annas, son of Annas, High Priest

Yehuda of Gamala

Rebellious leader, pseudo-messiah

Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Judaea Province around 6 CE. The revolt was crushed brutally by the Romans.

Josephus states that Judas, along with Zadok the Pharisee founded the "fourth sect", of 1st century Judaism (the first three are the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes). Josephus blames this sect, usually identified with the later Zealots, a group of theocratic-nationalists who preached that God alone was the ruler of Israel and later urged that no taxes should be paid to Rome, for the Great Jewish Revolt and for the destruction of Herod's Temple.

Josephus does not relate the death of Judas, although he does report that Judas' sons James and Simon were executed by procurator Tiberius Julius Alexander in about 46 CE.

Judas is mentioned in the New Testament Book of Acts of the Apostles. The author has Gamaliel, a member of the Sanhedrin, refer to him as an example of a failed Messianic leader.

## The Romans

**Augustus**

Adoptive son of Julius Caesar, first emperor

(23 September 63 BC - 19 August 14)

1st Roman Emperor. Ruled from 27 BC to 14.

Augustus was the founder of the Roman Empire and its first Emperor, ruling from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.

Born into an old, wealthy equestrian branch of the plebeian Octavii family, in 44 BC, Augustus was adopted posthumously by his maternal great-uncle Gaius Julius Caesar following Caesar's assassination. Together with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, he formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat the assassins of Caesar. Following their victory at Phillipi, the Triumvirate divided the Roman Republic among themselves and ruled as military dictators. The Triumvirate was eventually torn apart under the competing ambitions of its members: Lepidus was driven into exile and stripped of his position, and Antony committed suicide following his defeat at the Battle of Actium by Augustus in 31 BC.

After the demise of the Second Triumvirate, Augustus restored the outward facade of the free Republic, with governmental power vested in the Roman Senate, the executive magistrates, and the legislative assemblies. In reality, however, he retained his autocratic power over the Republic as a military dictator. By law, Augustus held a collection of powers granted to him for life by the Senate, including supreme military command, and those of tribune and censor. It took several years for Augustus to develop the framework within which a formally republican state could be led under his sole rule. He rejected monarchical titles, and instead called himself Princeps Civitatis ("First Citizen"). The resulting constitutional framework became known as the Principate, the first phase of the Roman Empire.

The reign of Augustus initiated an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana (The Roman Peace). Despite continuous wars or imperial expansion on the Empire's frontiers and one year-long civil war over the imperial succession, the Mediterranean world remained at peace for more than two centuries. Augustus dramatically enlarged the Empire, annexing Egypt, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Noricum, and Raetia, expanded possessions in Africa, expanded into Germania, and completed the conquest of Hispania. Beyond the frontiers, he secured the Empire with a buffer region of client states, and made peace with the Parthian Empire through diplomacy. He reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads with an official courier system, established a standing army, established the Praetorian Guard, created official police and fire-fighting services for Rome, and rebuilt much of the city during his reign.

Augustus died in 14 AD at the age of 75. He may have died from natural causes, although there were unconfirmed rumors that his wife Livia poisoned him.

**Aulus Persius**

Poet and satirist

Aulus Persius Flaccus (Volterra, 34 - 62), was a Roman poet and satirist of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and satires, he shows a stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for the abuses of his contemporaries. His works, which became very popular in the Middle Ages, were published after his death by his friend and mentor the stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus.

The first satire censures the literary tastes of the day as a reflection of the decadence of the national morals. The remaining satires handle in order (2) the question as to what we may justly ask of the gods (cf. Plato's second Alcibiades), (3) the importance of having a definite aim in life, (4) the necessity of self-knowledge for public men (cf. Plato's first Alcibiades), (5) the Stoic doctrine of liberty (introduced by generous allusions to Cornutus' teaching), and (6) the proper use of money.

Celer

Tribune

**Cestius Gallus**

Governor of Roman Syria

Gaius Cestius Gallus (d. 67 AD) was the son of a consul in ancient Rome and himself a suffect consul in 42. He was legate of Syria from 63 or 65.

He marched into Judaea in 66 in an attempt to restore calm at the outset of the Great Jewish Revolt. He succeeded in conquering Beit She'arim "the new city" also called Bezetha, in the Jezreel Valley, seat of the Great Sanhedrin (Jewish supreme religious court) at the time, but was unable to take The Temple Mount.

During his withdrawal to the coast his army was ambushed near Beth Horon, and only succeeded in making good his escape to Antioch by sacrificing the greater part of his army and a large amount of war material.

Soon after his return Gallus died (before the spring of 67), and was succeeded in the governorship by Licinius Mucianus.

Emperor Nero appointed General Vespasian, the future Emperor, instead to crush the rebellion.

Cicero

Politician, philosopher and writer

Marcus Tullius Cicero (January 3, 106 BC - December 7, 43 BC) was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.

His influence on the Latin language was so immense that the subsequent history of prose in not only Latin but European languages up to the 19th century was said to be either a reaction against or a return to his style.

**Claudius**

Nephew of Tiberius, emperor

(1 August 10 BC - 13 October 54)

4th Roman Emperor. Ruled from 41 to 54.

A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he was the son of Drusus and Antonia Minor. He was born at Lugdunum in Gaul and was the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy. Because he was afflicted with a limp and slight deafness due to sickness at a young age, his family ostracized him and excluded him from public office.

Claudius' infirmity probably saved him from the fate of many other nobles during the purges of Tiberius and Caligula's reigns; potential enemies did not see him as a serious threat. His survival led to his being declared Emperor by the Praetorian Guard after Caligula's assassination, at which point he was the last adult male of his family.

Despite his lack of experience, Claudius proved to be an able and efficient administrator. He was also an ambitious builder, constructing many new roads, aqueducts, and canals across the Empire. During his reign the Empire conquered Thrace, Noricum, Pamphylia, Lycia and Judaea, and began theconquest of Britain. Having a personal interest in law, he presided at public trials, and issued up to twenty edicts a day.

He was seen as vulnerable throughout his reign, particularly by the nobility. Claudius was constantly forced to shore up his position; this resulted in the deaths of many senators. These events damaged his reputation among the ancient writers, though more recent historians have revised this opinion. Many authors contend that he was murdered by his own wife. After his death in 54, his grand-nephew and adopted son Nero succeeded him as Emperor.

**Cuspius Fadus**

Procurator of Judaea

Cuspius Fadus was an Ancient Roman eques and procurator of Judaea Province in 44 AD.

After the death of King Agrippa, in 44 AD, he was appointed procurator by Claudius. During his administration, peace was restored in the country, and the only disturbance was created by one Theudas, who came forward with the claim of being a prophet. But he and his followers were put to death by the command of Cuspius Fadus.

**Domitian**

Son of Vespasian, emperor

(24 October 51 - 18 September 96)

Roman Emperor from 81 to 96. Domitian was the third and last emperor of the Flavian dynasty.

Domitian's youth and early career were largely spent in the shadow of his brother Titus, who gained military renown during the First Jewish-Roman War. While Titus held a great many offices under the rule of his father, Domitian was left with honors but no responsibilities. Vespasian died in 79 and was succeeded by Titus, whose own reign came to an unexpected end when he was struck by a fatal illness in 81. The following day Domitian was declared Emperor by the Praetorian Guard.

As Emperor, Domitian strengthened the economy by revaluing the Roman coinage, expanded the border defenses of the Empire, and initiated a massive building program to restore the damaged city of Rome. Significant wars were fought in Britain, where his general Agricola attempted to conquer Caledonia (Scotland), and in Dacia, where Domitian was unable to procure a decisive victory against king Decebalus.

Domitian's government exhibited totalitarian characteristics; he saw himself as the new Augustus, an enlightened despot destined to guide the Roman Empire into a new era of brilliance. Religious, military, and cultural propaganda fostered a cult of personality, and by nominating himself perpetual censor, he sought to control public and private morals. As a consequence, Domitian was popular with the people and army but considered a tyrant by members of the Roman Senate. According to Suetonius, he was the first Roman Emperor who had demanded to be addressed as dominus et deus (master and god).

Domitian's reign came to an end in 96 when he was assassinated by court officials. The same day he was succeeded by his advisor Nerva. After his death, Domitian's memory was condemned to oblivion by the Roman Senate.

Drusilla

Cousin of Claudius, first wife of Marcus Antonius Felix

Drusilla of Mauretania (38-79) was a Princess of Mauretania, North Africa and may have been the great grandchild of Ptolemaic Greek Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Roman Triumvir Mark Antony.

Drusilla was most probably born in Caesaria (modern Cherchell Algeria), the capital of the Roman Client Kingdom of Mauretania in the Roman Empire. She was named in honor of her father's second maternal cousin Julia Drusilla, one of the sisters of the Roman Emperor Caligula who died around the time of her birth and is also the namesake of her paternal aunt Drusilla.

Her father was executed while visiting Rome in 40. Mauretania was annexed by Rome and later became two Roman provinces. Drusilla was probably raised in the Imperial Family in Rome. Around 53, the Roman Emperor Claudius arranged for her to marry Marcus Antonius Felix, a Greek Freedman who was the Roman Governor of Judea. Between the years 54 until 56, Felix divorced Drusilla as he fell in love and married the Herodian Princess Drusilla.

In 56 Drusilla married as her second husband; her distant relative the Emesene Priest King, Sohaemus, who ruled from 54 until his death in 73. Drusilla and Sohaemus had a son Gaius Julius Alexio also known as Alexio II, who later succeeded his father as Emesene Priest King.

**Flavius Silva**

General and Legate of Judaea

Lucius Flavius Silva Nonius Bassus was a late-1st century Roman general, governor of the province of Judaea and consul.

History remembers Silva as the Roman commander who led his army, composed mainly of the Legio X Fretensis, in 73 AD up to Masada and laid siege to its near-impenetrable mountain fortress occupied by a group of Jewish rebels called the Sicarii.

The end of the siege in 74 AD culminated with Silva's forces breaching the defenses of the Masada plateau and the mass suicide of the Sicarii who preferred death to defeat or capture.

Silva's actions are documented by 1st century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus; the remains of a 1st century Roman victory arch identified in Jerusalem in 2005; and of course the extensive earthworks at the Masada site, a monument to the high-water mark of Roman siege warfare.

Gaius A. Pollio

Roman Consul, patron of Virgil and Horatio

Gaius Asinius Pollio (Teate Marrucinorum - currently Chieti in Abruzzi 75 BC - AD 4) was a Roman soldier, politician, orator, poet, playwright, literary critic and historian, whose lost contemporary history provided much of the material for the historians Appian and Plutarch.

Pollio was most famously a patron of Virgil and a friend of Horace and had poems dedicated to him by both men.

**Gaius Caligula**

Nephew of Claudius, emperor

(31 August 12 - 24 January 41)

3rd Roman Emperor. Ruled from 37 to 41.

Caligula was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Caligula's father Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was a very successful general and one of Rome's most beloved public figures. The young Gaius earned the nickname Caligula (meaning "little soldier's boot", the diminutive form of caliga, n. hob-nailed military boot) from his father's soldiers while accompanying him during his campaigns in Germania.

When Tiberius died on 16 March 37 AD, his estate and the titles of the Principate were left to Caligula and Tiberius's own grandson, Gemellus, who were to serve as joint heirs. Backed by Macro, Caligula had Tiberius' will nullified with regards to Gemellus on grounds of insanity.

There are few surviving sources on Caligula's reign, although he is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first two years of his rule. After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, extravagance, and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant. While the reliability of these sources has increasingly been called into question, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor (as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate). He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and notoriously luxurious dwellings for himself.

In early 41 AD, Caligula became the first Roman emperor to be assassinated, the result of a conspiracy involving officers of the Praetorian Guard, as well as members of the Roman Senate and of the imperial court. The conspirators' attempt to use the opportunity to restore the Roman Republic was thwarted: on the same day the Praetorian Guard declared Caligula's uncle Claudius emperor in his place.

**Gaius Quadratus**

Governor of Roman Syria

Gaius Ummidius Durmius Quadratus (c. 12 BCE-c. 60 CE) was the Roman governor of Syria from c. 50 until his death.

The procurator of Judaea, Ventidius Cumanus, was accused of partiality to the Samaritans, who were at variance with the Galileans, and both parties appealed to Quadratus. The governor went to Samaria in 52 and suppressed the disturbance. The Samaritan and Galilean insurgents were crucified; five Galileans whom the Samaritans pointed out as instigators of the movement were executed in Lydda; the high priest Ananias and Anan, the governor of the Temple, were sent in chains to Rome; and the leaders of the Samaritans, the procurator Cumanus, and the military tribune Celer were also sent to plead their cause before the emperor.

In fear of further disturbances, Quadratus hurried to Jerusalem; finding the city peacefully celebrating the Feast of Passover, he returned to Antioch.

Gaius Rufinus*

Tribune

**Gessius Florus**

Procurator of Judaea

Gessius Florus was the Roman procurator of Judaea from 64 until 66. Florus was appointed to replace Lucceius Albinus as procurator by the Emperor Nero due to his wife's friendship with Nero's wife Poppaea. He was noted for his public greed and injustice to the Jewish population, and is credited by Josephus as being the primary cause of the Great Jewish Revolt

Upon taking office in Caesarea, Florus began a practice of favoring the local Greek population of the city over the Jewish population. The local Greek population noticed Florus' policies and took advantage of the circumstances to denigrate the local Jewish population.

Florus further angered the Jewish population of his province by having seventeen talents removed from the treasury of the Temple in Jerusalem, claiming the money was for the Emperor. In response to this action, the city fell into unrest and some of the Jewish population began to openly mock Florus by passing a basket around to collect money as if Florus was poor. Florus reacted to the unrest by sending soldiers into Jerusalem the next day to raid the city and arrest a number of the city leaders. The arrested individuals were whipped and crucified despite many of them being Roman citizens.

After the outbreak of the Great Jewish Revolt, Florus was replaced as procurator by Marcus Antonius Julianus.

Helvidius Priscus

Quaestor and senator

Helvidius Priscus, Stoic philosopher and statesman, lived during the reigns of Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian.

He was distinguished for his ardent and courageous republicanism. Although he repeatedly offended his rulers, he held several high offices. During Nero's reign he was quaestor of Achaea and tribune of the plebs (AD 56); he restored peace and order in Armenia, and gained the respect and confidence of the provincials. His declared sympathy with Brutus and Cassius occasioned his banishment in 66.

As praetor elect he ventured to oppose Vitellius in the senate, and as praetor (70) he maintained, in opposition to Vespasian, that the management of the finances ought to be left to the discretion of the senate; he proposed that the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, which had been destroyed in the Vitelline/Flavian civil war, should be restored at the public expense; he saluted Vespasian by his private name, and did not recognize him as emperor in his praetorian edicts.

At length he was banished a second time, and shortly afterwards was executed by Vespasian's order.

Horace

Writer and poet

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (8 December 65 BC - 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.

His career coincided with Rome's momentous change from Republic to Empire. An officer in the republican army defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, he was befriended by Octavian's right-hand man in civil affairs, Maecenas, and became a spokesman for the new regime. For some commentators, his association with the regime was a delicate balance in which he maintained a strong measure of independence (he was "a master of the graceful sidestep").

Julius Caesar

General, dictator of Rome

Gaius Julius Caesar (July 100 BC - 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general, statesman, Consul and notable author of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.

In 60 BC, Caesar, Crassus and Pompey formed a political alliance that was to dominate Roman politics for several years. Their attempts to amass power through populist tactics were opposed by the conservative elite within the Roman Senate, among them Cato the Younger with the frequent support of Cicero. Caesar's conquest of Gaul, completed by 51 BC, extended Rome's territory to the English Channel and the Rhine.

With the Gallic Wars concluded, the Senate ordered Caesar to lay down his military command and return to Rome. Caesar refused, and marked his defiance in 49 BC by crossing the Rubicon with a legion to march into the city itself. Civil war resulted, from which he emerged as the unrivaled leader of Rome.

After assuming control of government, Caesar began a program of social and governmental reforms, including the creation of the Julian calendar. He centralized the bureaucracy of the Republic and was eventually proclaimed "dictator in perpetuity". But the underlying political conflicts had not been resolved, and on the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC, Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus.

A new series of civil wars broke out, and the constitutional government of the Republic was never restored. Caesar's adopted heir Octavian, later known as Augustus, rose to sole power, and the era of the Roman Empire began.

**Lucceius Albinus**

Procurator of Judaea

Lucceius Albinus was the Roman Procurator of Judaea from 62 until 64 AD and the governor of Mauretania from 64 until 69 AD.

Appointed procurator by the Emperor Nero following the death of his predecessor, Porcius Festus, Albinus faced his first challenge while traveling from Alexandria to his new position in Judea. The Jewish High Priest Ananus ben Ananus used the opportunity created by Festus' death to convene the Sanhedrin and have James, the brother of Jesus, sentenced to death by stoning for violation of religious law.

A delegation sent by citizens upset over the perceived breach of justice met Albinus before he reached Judea, and Albinus responded with a letter informing Ananus that it was illegal to convene the Sanhedrin without Albinus' permission and threatening to punish the priest. Ananus was deposed by Agrippa II before Albinus' arrival.

Immediately upon his arrival in Jerusalem, Albinus began an effort to remove the sicarii from the region. Josephus also records that Albinus became the friend of a High Priest named Ananus due to the priest's gift-giving.

When Albinus learned that he was to be succeeded by Gessius Florus, he emptied the prisons by executing prisoners charged with more serious offenses and allowing the remaining prison population to pay for their release.

Lucilius Bassus

General and governor of Judaea

Lucilius Bassus was a Roman legatus appointed by Emperor Vespasian to the Judaea Province in 71 AD.

Assigned to finish off the last remnants of the Great Jewish Revolt in the province, he led the legion Legio X Fretensis, destroying the Jewish strongholds Herodium and Machaerus on their march to the siege of Masada.

After the war was over, Bassus fell ill and died.

Before his appointment to Judaea, Bassus was prefect of the fleet stationed at Ravenna. He betrayed Vitellius by siding with Vespasian during the Year of the Four Emperors.

**Lucius Vitelius**

Governor of Roman Syria

Lucius Vitellius the Elder (before 5 BC - 51) was the youngest of four sons of quaestor Publius Vitellius.

Under Emperor Tiberius, he was Consul in 34 and Governor of Syria in 35. He deposed Pontius Pilate in 36 after complaints from the people in Samaria.

He supported Emperor Caligula, and was a favorite of Emperor Claudius' wife Empress Valeria Messalina. During Claudius' reign, he was Consul twice in 43 and 47, and governed Rome while the Roman Emperor was absent on his invasion of Britain.

Around the time that Claudius married Agrippina the Younger in 48 or 49, Vitellius served as a Censor.

Lucretius

Philosopher and writer

Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BC - ca. 55 BC) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the beliefs of Epicureanism.

Virtually nothing is known about the life of Lucretius. Jerome tells how he was driven mad by a love potion and wrote his poetry between fits of insanity, eventually committing suicide in middle age.

**Marcellus**

Prefect of Judaea

**Marcus Antonius Felix**

Procurator of Judaea

Marcus Antonius Felix was the Roman procurator of Judaea Province 52-58, in succession to Ventidius Cumanus.

Felix was the younger brother of the Greek freedman Marcus Antonius Pallas. Pallas served as a secretary of the treasury during the reign of the Emperor Claudius. Felix was a Greek freedman either of Claudius, or for Claudius's mother Antonia. According to Tacitus, Pallas and Felix descended from the Greek Kings of Arcadia. Felix became the procurator by the petition of his brother.

Felix's cruelty and licentiousness, coupled with his accessibility to bribes, led to a great increase of crime in Judaea. The period of his rule was marked by internal feuds and disturbances, which he put down with severity.

After Paul the Apostle was arrested in Jerusalem and rescued from a plot against his life, the local Roman chiliarch Claudius Lysias transferred him to Caesarea, where he stood trial before Felix. When Felix was succeeded as procurator, having already detained Paul for two years, he left him imprisoned as a favor to the Jews.

On returning to Rome, Felix was accused of using a dispute between the Jews and Syrians of Caesarea as a pretext to slay and plunder the inhabitants, but through the intercession of his brother, the freedman Pallas, who had great influence with the Emperor Nero, he escaped unpunished.

Marcus C. Nerva

Senator, emperor

(8 November 30 - 27 January 98)

Roman Emperor from 96 to 98

Nerva became Emperor at the age of sixty-five, after a lifetime of imperial service under Nero and the rulers of the Flavian dynasty. Under Nero, he was a member of the imperial entourage and played a vital part in exposing the Pisonian conspiracy of 65. Later, as a loyalist to the Flavians, he attained consulships in 71 and 90 during the reigns of Vespasian and Domitian respectively.

On 18 September 96, Domitian was assassinated in a palace conspiracy involving members of the Praetorian Guard and several of his freedmen. On the same day, Nerva was declared emperor by the Roman Senate. This was the first time the Senate elected a Roman Emperor. As the new ruler of the Roman Empire, he vowed to restore liberties which had been curtailed during the autocratic government of Domitian.

Nerva's brief reign was marred by financial difficulties and his inability to assert his authority over the Roman army. A revolt by the Praetorian Guard in October 97 essentially forced him to adopt an heir. After some deliberation Nerva adopted Trajan, a young and popular general, as his successor. After barely fifteen months in office, Nerva died of natural causes on 27 January 98. Upon his death he was succeeded and deified by Trajan.

Marcus V. Corvinus

Brother of Messalina, consul

Marullus

Prefect of Judaea

**Nero**

Step-son of Claudius, emperor

(15 December 37 - 9 June 68)

5th Roman Emperor. Ruled from 54 to 68.

During his reign, Nero focused much of his attention on diplomacy, trade, and enhancing the cultural life of the Empire. He ordered theaters built and promoted athletic games. During his reign, general Corbulo conducted a successful war and negotiated peace with the Parthian Empire. His general Suetonius Paulinus crushed a revolt in Britain and also annexed the Bosporan Kingdom to the Empire, beginning the First Roman-Jewish War.

In 64, most of Rome was destroyed in the Great Fire of Rome, which many Romans believed Nero himself had started in order to clear land for his planned palatial complex, the Domus Aurea. In 68, the rebellion of Vindex in Gaul and later the acclamation of Galba in Hispania drove Nero from the throne. Facing assassination, he committed suicide on 9 June 68 (the first Roman emperor to do so).

His death ended the Julio-Claudian Dynasty, sparking a brief period of civil wars known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Nero's rule is often associated with tyranny and extravagance. He is known for many executions, including those of his mother and the probable murder by poison of his stepbrother, Britannicus.

He is infamously known as an early persecutor of Christians.

Ovid

Writer and poet

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC - AD 17/18), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of poetry, the Heroides, Amores and Ars Amatoria, and of the Metamorphoses, a mythological hexameter poem.

He is also well known for the Fasti, about the Roman calendar, and the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, two collections of poems written in exile on the Black Sea. Ovid was also the author of several smaller pieces, the Remedia Amoris, the Medicamina Faciei Femineae, and the long curse-poem Ibis. He also wrote a lost tragedy, Medea. He is considered a master of the elegiac couplet, and is traditionally ranked alongside Virgil and Horace as one of the three canonic poets of Latin literature.

Pallas

Brother of Marcus Antonius Felix, secretary of Emperor Claudius

Marcus Antonius Pallas (c. 1 - 63) was a prominent Greek freedman and secretary during the reigns of the Roman Emperors Claudius and Nero. His younger brother was Marcus Antonius Felix, a procurator of Judaea Province.

Pallas was originally a slave of Antonia Minor, a daughter of Mark Antony and niece of Emperor Augustus. Antonia probably manumitted Pallas between the years of 31 and 37, when he would have passed the minimum age for freedom. When Antonia died in 37, he became the client of her son, Claudius, as tradition dictated at the death of a former master and patron.

As a freedman, Pallas rose to great heights in the imperial government. From the beginning of Claudius' reign, the senate was openly hostile to him, which forced him to centralize powers. The daily maintenance of the empire was too much for one man, so Claudius divided it up amongst his trusted freedmen. Pallas was made secretary of the treasury.

When his brother Felix was recalled to Rome to stand trial for maladministration, Pallas could not prevent him from being banished, though he was at the height of his career. Nor could he prevent his fellow freedman-administrator Polybius from being executed for treason.

In the second half of Claudius' reign, Pallas chose to support Agrippina the Younger as a new empress after the fall of Empress Messalina.

When Nero succeeded Claudius, Pallas retained his position in the treasury for a time.

In 55, Nero dismissed Pallas from service, tired of having to deal with any allies of Agrippina. He further accused Pallas of conspiring to overthrow him. Seneca, who was prominent in Nero's circle, came to Pallas' defense at the trial and got him acquitted.

Pallas did not elude Nero's wrath forever, and was killed on Nero's orders in 63.

**Pontius Pilate**

Prefect of Judaea

Pontius Pilatus, known in the English-speaking world as Pontius Pilate, was the fifth Prefect of the Roman province of Judaea, from AD 26 - 36. He is best known as the judge at Jesus' trial and the man who authorized the crucifixion of Jesus. As prefect, he served under Emperor Tiberius.

Little is known of Pilate. There is an old tradition linking the birthplace of Pilate with the small village of Bisenti, Samnite territory, in today's Abruzzo region of Central Italy. There are alleged ruins of a Roman house known as "The House of Pilate in Bisenti". Other places in Spain and Germany have also made similar claims about Pilate. Eusebius, quoting early apocryphal accounts, stated that Pilate suffered misfortune in the reign of Caligula, was exiled to Gaul and eventually committed suicide there in Vienne. The 10th century historian Agapius of Hierapolis, in his Universal History, says that Pilate committed suicide during the first year of Caligula's reign, in AD 37/38.

**Poppaea Sabina**

Wife of Nero

Poppaea Sabina (after AD 63 known as Poppaea Augusta Sabina) (30 - 65) and sometimes referred to as Poppaea Sabina the Younger to differentiate her from her mother of the same name, was a Roman Empress as the second wife of the Emperor Nero. Prior to this she was the wife of the future Emperor Otho. The historians of antiquity describe her as a beautiful woman who used intrigues to become empress.

The cause and timing of Poppaea's death is uncertain. According to Suetonius, while she was awaiting the birth of her second child in the summer of 65, she quarreled fiercely with Nero over his spending too much time at the races. In a fit of rage, Nero kicked her in the abdomen, so causing her death.

**Porcius Festus**

Procurator of Judaea

Porcius Festus was procurator of Judaea from about AD 59 to 62, succeeding Antonius Felix. His exact time in office is not known.

Festus inherited all of the problems of his predecessor in regard to the Roman practice of creating civic privileges for Jews. Only one other issue bedeviled his administration, the controversy between Agrippa II and the priests in Jerusalem regarding the wall erected at the temple to break the view of the new wing of Agrippa's palace.

During his administration, Jewish hostility to Rome was greatly inflamed by the civic privileges issue. Feelings were aroused which played an important part in the closely following Jewish War of AD 66.

In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul had his final hearing before Festus.

Publius C. Thrasea

Father in law of Priscus, senator,

**Publius Petronius**

Governor of Roman Syria

Publius Petronius was appointed by Caligula, as Governor (Legate) of Syria in AD 39, probably arriving in the country late in the year.

As Governor of all Syria, Petronius was assisted by lesser officials in charge of various areas. The Prefect of Judea at this time was Marcellus who had arrived only a year earlier, and at about the same time as Petronius' appointment Herod Agrippa I had Galilee and Peraea added to his domains.

Sometime in the winter of AD 39/40 the Greek population of Jamnia in Judea erected an altar to the imperial cult (worship of the emperor) and the resident Jews promptly tore it down, resulting in serious communal rioting. The destruction of an altar for his own worship was apparently taken as a personal insult by Caligula who instructed Petronius that the temple at Jerusalem should be converted into an imperial shrine with an enormous statue of the emperor in the guise of the Romans' supreme god Jupiter.

This proposal struck at the very heart of the religion of the Jews who were an important element of the population and business sector of most cities throughout the empire. Petronius had already made a preliminary study of Jewish philosophy and so was aware of the troubles that were brewing.

He ordered the construction of the statue in Sidon but told the sculptors to be in no hurry while he sought to negotiate with the Jews. He marched his two legions to Ptolomais on the border of Galilee where he was met with a massive demonstration. Leaving his army, he went on to Tiberias, capital of Galilee, where he met a high profile delegation which made it clear that they were being asked to accept the impossible.

Petronius withdrew his forces and bought more time while he wrote to Caligula with an appeal to change his mind in view of the dangerous course that events were taking. In the meanwhile, Agrippa, arrived back in Rome and persuaded Caligula to rescind the order in exchange for Jewish promises not to interfere with the imperial cult outside of Jerusalem.

Silvius Pulanus*

Secretary of Marcus Antonius Felix

**Tiberius**

Step-son of Augustus, emperor

(16 November 42 BC - 16 March 37)

2nd Roman Emperor. Ruled from 14 to 37.

Tiberius was born in Rome to Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia Drusilla. In 39 BC, his mother divorced his biological father and remarried Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus shortly thereafter, while still pregnant with Tiberius Nero's son. Shortly thereafter in 38 BC his brother, Nero Claudius Drusus, was born.

Tiberius was one of Rome's greatest generals, conquering Pannonia, Dalmatia, Raetia, and temporarily Germania; laying the foundations for the northern frontier.

Tiberius married Augustus' daughter Julia the Elder and later was adopted by Augustus, by which act he officially became a Julian, bearing the name Tiberius Julius Caesar.

Augustus died in AD 14, at the age of 75. He was buried with all due ceremony and, as had been arranged beforehand, deified, his will read, and Tiberius confirmed as his sole surviving heir.

In AD 22, he shared his tribunician authority with his son Drusus, and began making yearly excursions to Campania that reportedly became longer and longer every year. In AD 23, Drusus mysteriously died, and Tiberius seems to have made no effort to elevate a replacement. The death of Drusus elevated Sejanus, who became more and more visible as Tiberius began to withdraw from Rome altogether. Finally, with Tiberius's withdrawal in AD 26, Sejanus was left in charge of the entire state mechanism and the city of Rome.

While Sejanus's Praetorians controlled the imperial post, and therefore the information that Tiberius received from Rome and the information Rome received from Tiberius, the presence of Livia seems to have checked his overt power for a time. Her death in AD 29 changed all that.

Sejanus began a series of purge trials of Senators and wealthy equestrians in the city of Rome, removing those capable of opposing his power as well as extending the imperial (and his own) treasury.

The affair with Sejanus and the final years of treason trials permanently damaged Tiberius' image and reputation. After Sejanus's fall, Tiberius' withdrawal from Rome was complete; the empire continued to run under the inertia of the bureaucracy established by Augustus, rather than through the leadership of the Princeps.

Little was done to either secure or indicate how his succession was to take place. Two of the candidates were either Caligula, the sole surviving son of Germanicus, or his own grandson, Tiberius Gemellus. However, only a half-hearted attempt at the end of Tiberius' life was made to make Caligula a quaestor, and thus give him some credibility as a possible successor, while Gemellus himself was still only a teenager and thus completely unsuitable for some years to come.

Tiberius died in Misenum on 16 March AD 37, at the age of 77. In his will, Tiberius had left his powers jointly to Caligula and Tiberius Gemellus.

**Titus**

Son of Vespasian, general, emperor

(30 December 39 - 13 September 81)

Roman Emperor from 79 to 81.

A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, thus becoming the first Roman Emperor to come to the throne after his own father.

Prior to becoming Emperor, Titus gained renown as a military commander, serving under his father in Judaea during the First Jewish-Roman War. The campaign came to a brief halt with the death of emperor Nero in 68, launching Vespasian's bid for the imperial power during the Year of the Four Emperors.

When Vespasian was declared Emperor on 1 July 69, Titus was left in charge of ending the Jewish rebellion. In 70, he successfully laid siege to and destroyed the city and Temple of Jerusalem. For this achievement Titus was awarded a triumph; the Arch of Titus commemorates his victory to this day.

Under the rule of his father, Titus gained notoriety in Rome serving as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and for carrying on a controversial relationship with the Jewish queen Berenice. Despite concerns over his character, Titus ruled to great acclaim following the death of Vespasian in 79, and was considered a good emperor.

As emperor, he is best known for completing the Colosseum and for his generosity in relieving the suffering caused by two disasters, the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 and a fire in Rome in 80. After barely two years in office, Titus died of a fever on 13 September 81. He was deified by the Roman Senate and succeeded by his younger brother Domitian.

**Valeria Messalina**

Wife of Claudius

Valeria Messalina, (c. 17/20 - 48) was a Roman empress as the third wife of the Emperor Claudius. She was also a paternal cousin of the Emperor Nero, second cousin of the Emperor Caligula, and great-grandniece of the Emperor Augustus. A powerful and influential woman with a reputation for promiscuity, she conspired against her husband and was executed when the plot was discovered.

**Ventidius Cumanus**

Procurator of Judaea

Ventidius Cumanus (fl. 1st century AD) was the Roman procurator of Iudaea Province from AD 48 to c. AD 52.

Cumanus' time in office was marked by disputes between his troops and the Jewish population, and his failure to respond to an anti-Jewish murder in Samaritan territory led to violent conflict between Jews and Samaritans. Following an investigation by the governor of Syria, Gaius Ummidius Durmius Quadratus, Cumanus was sent to Rome for a hearing before the Emperor Claudius, who held him responsible for the violence and sentenced him to exile.

**Vespasian**

General, emperor

(17 November 9 - 23 June 79)

Roman Emperor from AD 69 to AD 79.

Vespasian was the founder of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for a quarter century. Vespasian was descended from a family of Equestrians, who rose into the senatorial rank under the Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Although he attained the standard succession of public offices, holding the consulship in AD 51, Vespasian became more reputed as a successful military commander, participating in the Roman invasion of Britain in 43, and subjugating Judaea during the Jewish rebellion of AD 66.

While Vespasian was preparing to besiege the city of Jerusalem during the latter campaign, emperor Nero committed suicide, plunging the empire into a year of civil war known as the Year of the Four Emperors. After the emperors Galba and Otho perished in quick succession, Vitellius became Emperor in April AD 69. In response, the armies in Egypt and Judaea declared Vespasian emperor on 1 July.

In his bid for imperial power, Vespasian joined forces with Mucianus, the governor of Syria, and Primus, a general in Pannonia. Primus and Mucianus led the Flavian forces against Vitellius, while Vespasian gained control of Egypt. On 20 December, Vitellius was defeated, and the following day Vespasian was declared Emperor by the Roman Senate.

Little information survives about the government during the ten years Vespasian was emperor. His reign is best known for financial reforms following the demise of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the successful campaign against Judaea, and several ambitious construction projects, such as the Colosseum. Upon his death in 79, he was succeeded by his eldest son Titus, thus becoming the first Roman Emperor to be directly succeeded by his own son.

Vibius Marcus

Governor of Roman Syria

Virgil

Writer and poet

Publius Vergilius Maro (October 15, 70 BC - September 21, 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues (or Bucolics), the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him.

Virgil is traditionally ranked as one of Rome's greatest poets. His Aeneid has been considered the national epic of ancient Rome from the time of its composition to the present day. Modeled after Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Aeneid follows the Trojan refugee Aeneas as he struggles to fulfill his destiny and arrive on the shores of Italy - Roman mythology the founding act of Rome.

Virgil's work has had wide and deep influence on Western literature, most notably the Divine Comedy of Dante, in which Virgil appears as Dante's guide through hell and purgatory.

According to the tradition, Virgil traveled to Greece around 19 BC in order to revise the Aeneid. After meeting Augustus in Athens and deciding to return home, Virgil caught a fever while visiting a town near Megara. After crossing to Italy by ship, weakened with disease, Virgil died in Brundisium harbor on September 21, 19 BC.

## The Pagans

Adad*

Syrian, friend of Ahasver, merchant, proselyte

Aeschylus

Greek, playwright

Aeschylus (c. 525/524 BC - c. 456/455 BC) was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy: our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict amongst them, whereas previously characters had interacted only with the chorus.

Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived into modern times, and there is a longstanding debate about his authorship of one of these plays, Prometheus Bound. He was probably the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy and his Oresteia is the only ancient example of the form to have survived.

He was a deep, religious thinker. Few poets have ever presented evil in such stark and tragic terms yet he had an exalted view of Zeus, whom he celebrated with a grand simplicity reminiscent of the Psalms, and a faith in progress or the healing power of time.

Aga

Mythical king of Kish

Akakios*

Greek, innkeeper in Ostia

Alexander*

Greek, son of Ioanis

Antiphanes

Greek, writer

Antiphanes (about 408 to 334 BCE) is regarded as the most important writer of the Middle Attic comedy with the exception of Alexis.

He was apparently a foreigner (perhaps from Cius, on the Propontis, Smyrna or Rhodes) who settled in Athens, where he began to write about 387. He was extremely prolific: more than 200 of the 365 (or 260) comedies attributed to him are known to us from the titles and considerable fragments preserved in Athenaeus. They chiefly deal with matters connected with the table, but contain many striking sentiments. About 130 titles of his plays are known.

Apollonius of Tyana

Greek, orator and philosopher

Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15 - 100 CE) was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor.

Little is known about him with certainty. Being a 1st-century orator and philosopher around the time of Christ, he was compared with Jesus of Nazareth by Christians in the 4th century and by various popular writers in modern times.

By far the most detailed source is the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a lengthy, novelistic biography written by the sophist Philostratus at the request of empress Julia Domna.

Philostratus describes Apollonius as a wandering teacher of philosophy and miracle worker who was mainly active in Greece and Asia Minor but also traveled to Italy, Spain and North Africa and even to Mesopotamia, India, and Ethiopia. In particular, he tells lengthy stories of Apollonius entering the city of Rome in disregard of Emperor Nero's ban on philosophers, and later on being summoned, as a defendant, to the court of Domitian, where he defied the Emperor in blunt terms. He had allegedly been accused of conspiring against the Emperor, performing human sacrifice, and predicting a plague by means of magic. Philostratus implies that upon his death, Apollonius of Tyana underwent heavenly assumption.

Aristarchus*

Greek, theologian, member of the museum of Alexandria

Aristophanes

Greek, playwright

Aristophanes (ca. 446 BC - ca. 386 BC), was a comic playwright of ancient Athens.

Eleven of his 40 plays survive virtually complete. These, together with fragments of some of his other plays, provide the only real examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy, and they are used to define the genre.

Also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy, Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play The Clouds as slander contributing to the trial and execution of Socrates although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher.

Archimedes

Greek, mathematician and astronomer

Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC - c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name.

Archimedes is generally considered to be the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time.

Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed.

Charon

Mythical ferryman of the souls in Hades

In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead.

A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually anobolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years.

Demetria*

Greek, courtesan

Epicurus

Greek, philosopher

Epicurus (341 BC - 270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and letters of Epicurus's 300 written works remain. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy derives from later followers and commentators.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by ataraxia' "peace and freedom from fear" and aponia' "the absence of pain" and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends.

He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods do not reward or punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

Erastus*

Greek, secretary of Lucius Vitelius

Euripides

Greek, playwright

Euripides (c. 480 - 406 BC) was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived complete and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays

Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

He was also unique among the writers of ancient Athens for the sympathy he demonstrated towards all victims of society, including women. His conservative male audiences were frequently shocked by the 'heresies' he put into the mouths of characters, such as these words of his heroine Medea.

His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism, both of them being frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes.

Whereas Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence, Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia.

Gilgamesh

Mythical king of Sumer

Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq (Early Dynastic II, first dynasty of Uruk), placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of Nippur.

Gilgamesh is the central character in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the greatest surviving work of early Mesopotamian literature. In the epic his father was Lugalbanda and his mother was Ninsun (whom some call Rimat Ninsun), a goddess.

In Mesopotamian mythology, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman strength who built the city walls of Uruk to defend his people from external threats, and travelled to meet the sage Utnapishtim, who had survived the Great Deluge. He is usually described as two-thirds god and one third man.

Homer

Greek, writer

In the Western classical tradition, Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest of ancient Greek epic poets. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.

When he lived is unknown. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived 400 years before Herodotus' own time, which would place him at around 850 BC, while other ancient sources claim that he lived much nearer to the supposed time of the Trojan War, in the early 12th century BC. Modern researchers appear to place Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC.

The formative influence played by the Homeric epics in shaping Greek culture was widely recognized, and Homer was described as the teacher of Greece. Homer's works, which are about fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulated throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds.

Ioanis*

Greek, secretary of Ahasver

Isidora*

Greek, courtesan

Laertus*

Greek, sculptor

Menander

Greek, playwright

Menander (ca. 341/42 - ca. 290 BC) was a Greek dramatist and the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. He was the author of more than a hundred comedies, and took the prize at the Lenaia festival eight times.

One of the most popular writers of antiquity, his work was lost in the Middle Ages and is known in modernity in highly fragmentary form, much of which was discovered in the 20th century. Only one play, Dyskolos, has survived in its entirety.

Nikolaus*

Greek, librarian

Plato

Greek, philosopher

Plato (424/423 BC - 348/347 BC) was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science.

Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts. Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics. Plato is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

Protagoras

Greek, philosopher

Protagoras (ca. 490 BC - 420 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of theosophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue.

He is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that "man is the measure of all things". This idea was revolutionary for the time and contrasted with other philosophical doctrines that claimed the universe was based on something objective, outside the human influence.

Socrates

Greek, philosopher

Socrates (c. 469 BC - 399 BC) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.

Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who also lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand.

It is Plato's Socrates that also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains strong in providing a foundation for much western philosophy that followed.

Sophocles

Greek, playwright

Sophocles (c. 497/6 BC - winter 406/5 BC) is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides. According to the Suda, a 10th century encyclopedia, Sophocles wrote 123 plays during the course of his life, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King, Electra, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus.

For almost 50 years, Sophocles was the most-fêted playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens that took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in around 30 competitions, won perhaps 24, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won 14 competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles, while Euripides won only 4 competitions.

The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Antigone: they are generally known as the Theban plays, although each play was actually a part of a different tetralogy, the other members of which are now lost.

Sophocles influenced the development of the drama, most importantly by adding a third actor, thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot. He also developed his characters to a greater extent than earlier playwrights such as Aeschylus.

## The Gods

Ahura Mazda

Supreme deity of Indo-Persian mythology

Ahura Mazda (also known as Athura Mazda, Athuramazda, Aramazd, Ohrmazd, Ahuramazda, Hourmazd, Hormazd, Hurmuz, and Azzandara) is the Avestan name for a divinity of the Old Iranian religion who was proclaimed the uncreated God by Zoroaster, the founder of Zoroastrianism.

Ahura Mazda is described as the highest deity of worship in Zoroastrianism, along with being the first and most frequently invoked deity in the Yasna. The word Ahura means light and Mazda means wisdom. Thus Ahura Mazda is the lord of light and wisdom.

Aphrodite

Goddess of Greek mythology (beauty and love)

Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. Her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus.

According to Hesiod's Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranus's genitals and threw them into the sea, and she arose from the sea foam (aphros). Thus Aphrodite is of a generation older than Zeus.

Because of her beauty, other gods feared that their rivalry over her would interrupt the peace among them and lead to war, so Zeus married her to Hephaestus, who, because of his ugliness and deformity, was not seen as a threat. Aphrodite had many lovers' both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and later was both Adonis's lover and his surrogate mother. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite.

Apollo

God of Greek mythology (light and truth)

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in ancient Greek and Roman religion, Greek and Roman mythology, and Greco-Roman Neopaganism. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis.

As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god' the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague.

In Hellenistic times, especially during the 3rd century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, Titan god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, Titan goddess of the moon.

Astarte

Goddess of Phoenician mythology

Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times. It is one of a number of names associated with the chief goddess or female divinity of those peoples.

Astarte was connected with fertility, sexuality, and war. Her symbols were the lion, the horse, the sphinx, the dove, and a star within a circle indicating the planet Venus. Pictorial representations often show her naked. She has been known as the deified evening star.

Ashtoreth is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as a foreign, non-Judahite goddess, the principal goddess of the Sidonians or Phoenicians, representing the productive power of nature. In later Jewish mythology, she became a female demon of lust.

Baal

God of Phoenician mythology

Baal, also rendered Ba øal, is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian. A Baalist or Baalite means a worshipper of Baal.

"Ba øal" can refer to any god and even to human officials. In some texts it is used for Hadad, a god of the rain, thunder, fertility and agriculture, and the lord of Heaven. Since only priests were allowed to utter his divine name, Hadad, Ba-al was commonly used. Nevertheless, few if any Biblical uses of "Ba øal" refer to Hadad, the lord over the assembly of gods on the holy mount of Heaven, but rather refer to any number of local spirit-deities worshipped as cult images, each called be-al and regarded in the Hebrew Bible in that context as a "false god".

Chronos

Primeval god of Greek mythology (time)

Chronos is the personification of Time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature.

Chronos was imagined as a god, serpentine in form, with three heads' those of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky.

He was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaics as a man turning the Zodiac Wheel. Chronos, however, might also be contrasted with the deity Aion as Eternal Time.

Chronos is usually portrayed through an old, wise man with a long, grey beard, such as "Father Time". Some of the current English words whose etymological root is khronos/chronos include chronology, chronometer, chronic, anachronism, and chronicle.

Dionysus

God of Greek mythology (wine and excesses)

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. Dionysus was the last god to be accepted into Mt. Olympus. He was the youngest and the only one to have a mortal mother. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. He is an example of a dying god.

He was also known as Bacchus, the name adopted by the Romans and the frenzy he induces, bakkheia.

In Greek mythology, he is presented as a son of Zeus and the mortal Semele, thus semi-divine or heroic: and as son of Zeus and Persephone or Demeter, thus both fully divine, part-chthonic and possibly identical with Iacchus of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Februus

God of Roman mythology (purification)

Hades

God of Greek mythology (underworld)

Hades, meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. In Greek mythology, Hades is the oldest male child of Cronus and Rhea. According to myth, he and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated the Titans and claimed ruler ship over the cosmos, ruling the underworld, air, and sea, respectively; the solid earth, long the province of Gaia, was available to all three concurrently.

Hades was also called "Plouton", a name which the Romans Latinized as Pluto. The Romans would associate Hades/Pluto with their own chthonic gods, Dis Pater and Orcus. The corresponding Etruscan god was Aita. Symbols associated with him are the Helm of Darkness, the bident and the three-headed dog, Cerberus.

The term hades in Christian theology (and in New Testament Greek) is parallel to Hebrew sheol, and refers to the abode of the dead. The Christian concept of hell is more akin to and communicated by the Greek concept of Tartarus, a deep, gloomy part of hades used as a dungeon of torment and suffering.

Helios

God of Greek mythology (light and sun)

Helios was the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology. Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia (Hesiod) or Euryphaessa (Homeric Hymn) and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn. The names of these three were also the common Greek words for Sun, Moon and dawn.

Helios was imagined as a handsome god crowned with the shining aureole of the Sun, who drove the chariot of the sun across the sky each day to earth-circling Oceanus and through the world-ocean returned to the East at night.

As time passed, Helios was increasingly identified with the god of light, Apollo. However, in spite of their syncretism, they were also often viewed as two distinct gods (Helios was a Titan, whereas Apollo was an Olympian). The equivalent of Helios in Roman mythology was Sol, specifically Sol Invictus.

Isis

Goddess of Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology

Isis is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.

She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the patroness of nature and magic. She was the friend of slaves, sinners, artisans, and the downtrodden, and she listened to the prayers of the wealthy, maidens, aristocrats, and rulers.

Isis is often depicted as the mother of Horus, the hawk-headed god of war and protection (although in some traditions Horus's mother was Hathor). Isis is also known as protector of the dead and goddess of children.

Jupiter

Supreme deity of Roman mythology

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus is the "Father of Gods and men" who rules the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father rules the family. He is the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.

Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he is married to Hera, although, at the oracle of Dodona, his consort is Dione: according to the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione. He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.

For the Greeks, he was the King of the Gods, who oversaw the universe. In Hesiod's Theogony Zeus assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods.

His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the Ancient Near East, such as the scepter.

Marduk

God of Babylonian mythology

Marduk was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi (18th century BCE), started to slowly rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium BCE.

Mithra

God of Persian and Roman mythology

Mithra is the Zoroastrian divinity of covenant and oath. In addition to being the divinity of contracts, Mithra is also a judicial figure, an all-seeing protector of Truth, and the guardian of cattle, the harvest and of The Waters.

The Romans attributed their Mithraic Mysteries to Persian or Zoroastrian sources relating to Mithra.

The Mithraic Mysteries were a mystery religion practiced in the Roman Empire from about the 1st to 4th centuries AD. Writers of the Roman Empire period referred to this mystery religion by phrases which can be Anglicized as Mysteries of Mithras or Mysteries of the Persians; modern historians refer to it as Mithraism. The mysteries were popular in the Roman military.

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation, with ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake". They met in underground temples (called mithraea), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its center in Rome.

The Romans themselves regarded the mysteries as having Persian or Zoroastrian sources.

Mithraism has sometimes been viewed as a rival of early Christianity.

Nix

Goddess of Greek mythology (of the night)

Osiris

God of Egyptian mythology

Osiris was an Egyptian god, usually identified as the god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned man with a pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive crown with two large ostrich feathers at either side, and holding a symbolic crook and flail.

Osiris was at times considered the oldest son of the Earth god Geb, and the sky goddess Nut, as well as being brother and husband of Isis, with Horus being considered his posthumously begotten son. As ruler of the dead, Osiris was also sometimes called "king of the living", since the Ancient Egyptians considered the blessed dead "the living ones".

Through the hope of new life after death, Osiris began to be associated with the cycles observed in nature, in particular vegetation and the annual flooding of the Nile, through his links with Orion and Sirius at the start of the new year. Osiris was widely worshipped as Lord of the Dead until the suppression of the Egyptian religion during the Christian era.

Saturn

God of Greek mythology (agriculture)

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Saturn was a god of agriculture, liberation, and time. His reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace. He was thus a god of wealth, and the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum housed the state treasury. In December, he was celebrated at what is perhaps the most famous of the Roman festivals, the Saturnalia, a time of feasting, role reversals, free speech, gift-giving and revelry. Saturn the planet and Saturday are both named after the god.

The Romans identified Saturn with the Greek Cronus, whose myths were adapted for Latin literature and Roman art. In particular, Cronus's role in the genealogy of the Greek gods was transferred to Saturn.

Serapis

God of Egyptian and Greco-Roman mythology

Serapis or Sarapis is a Greco-Egyptian god.

Serapis was devised during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm. The god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography from a great many cults, signifying both abundance and resurrection.

His cult was spread as a matter of deliberate policy by the Ptolemaic kings, who also built a splendid Serapeum in Alexandria. Serapis continued to increase in popularity during the Roman period, often replacing Osiris as the consort of Isis in non-Egyptian temples.

The Lord

Only God of the Judaeans and the Christians

God is often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of humans and the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience (infinite knowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power), omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, and eternal and necessary existence.

God has also been conceived as being incorporeal (immaterial), a personal being, the source of all moral obligation, and the "greatest conceivable existent". These attributes were supported to varying degrees by the early Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologian philosophers. Many notable medieval philosophers and modern philosophers have developed arguments for and against the existence of God.

There are many names for God, and different names are attached to different cultural ideas about who God is and what attributes he possesses.

In the Hebrew Bible "I Am that I Am", and the "Tetragrammaton" YHVH are used as names of God, while Yahweh, and Jehovah are sometimes used in Christianity as vocalizations of YHVH.

In Arabic, the name Allah ("the God") is used, and because of the predominance of Islam among Arab speakers, the name "Allah" has connotations with Islamic faith and culture. Muslims regard a multitude of titular names for God, while in Judaism it is common to refer to God by the titular names Elohim or Adonai.

In Hinduism, Brahman is often considered a monistic deity.

Other religions have names for God, for instance, Baha in the Bahá'í Faith, Waheguru in Sikhism, and Ahura Mazda in Zoroastrianism.

Titans

Primeval gods of Greek mythology

In Greek mythology, the Titans were a primeval race of powerful deities, descendants of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Heaven), that ruled during the legendary Golden Age. They were immortal huge beings of incredible strength and stamina and were also the first pantheon of Greco-Roman gods and goddesses.

In the first generation of twelve Titans, the males were Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Cronus, Crius and Iapetus and the females - the Titanesses - were Mnemosyne, Tethys, Theia, Phoebe, Rhea and Themis. The second generation of Titans consisted of Hyperion's children Eos, Helios, and Selene; Coeus's daughters Leto and Asteria; Iapetus's sons Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus, Calypso and Menoetius; Oceanus' daughter Metis; and Crius's sons Astraeus, Pallas, and Perses.

The Titans were overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Olympians, in the Titanomachy ("War of the Titans"). This represented a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks may have borrowed from the Ancient Near East.

Uadjit

Goddess of Egyptian mythology

Wadjet. known to the Greek world as Uto or Buto among other names, was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep (Buto), which became part of the city that the Egyptians named Per-Wadjet, House of Wadjet, and the Greeks called Buto, a city that was an important site in the Predynastic era of Ancient Egypt and the cultural developments of the Paleolithic.

She was said to be the patron and protector of Lower Egypt and upon unification with Upper Egypt, the joint protector and patron of all of Egypt with the "goddess" of Upper Egypt. The image of Wadjet with the sun disk is called the uraeus, and it was the emblem on the crown of the rulers of Lower Egypt. She was also the protector of kings and of women in childbirth.

As the patron goddess, she was associated with the land and depicted as a snake-headed woman or a snake' usually an Egyptian cobra, a venomous snake common to the region; sometimes she was depicted as a woman with two snake heads and, at other times, a snake with a woman's head.

Her oracle was in the renowned temple in Per-Wadjet that was dedicated to her worship and gave the city its name. This oracle may have been the source for the oracular tradition that spread to Greece from Egypt.

(*) Fictional Characters

# Places and Geography of Book 1

Achaea

Region in the northern Peloponnese

Geographically, Achaea was (and is) the northernmost region of the Peloponnese, occupying the coastal strip north of Arcadia. Its approximate boundaries were to the south the mountain range of Erymanthus, to the south-east the range of Cyllene, to the east Sicyon, and to the west the Larissos river. Apart from the plain around Dyme, to the west, Achaea was generally a mountainous region.

Both Herodotus and Pausanias recount the legend that the Achaean tribe was forced out of their lands in the Argolis by the Dorians, during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese. Consequently, the Achaeans forced the Aegialians (now known as the Ionians) out of their land. The Ionians took temporary refuge in Athens, and Aegialus became known as Achaea.

Under the Romans, Achaea was a province covering much of central and southern Greece. This is the Achaea referenced in the New Testament.

**Alexandria**

City in Egypt

Alexandria was founded around a small pharaonic town c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great. It remained Egypt's capital for nearly a thousand years, until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641.

Ancient Alexandria was best known for the Lighthouse of Alexandria (Pharos), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; its library (the largest in the ancient world); and the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa.

Alexandria was not only a center of Hellenism, but was also home to the largest urban Jewish community in the world. The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced there. The early Ptolemies kept it in order and fostered the development of its museum into the leading Hellenistic center of learning (Library of Alexandria), but were careful to maintain the distinction of its population's three largest ethnicities: Greek, Jewish, and Egyptian. From this division arose much of the later turbulence, which began to manifest itself under Ptolemy Philopater who reigned from 221-204 BC.

The city passed formally under Roman jurisdiction in 80 BC, according to the will of Ptolemy Alexander, but only after it had been under Roman influence for more than a hundred years. It was besieged by the Ptolemies in 47 BC during Julius Caesar intervention in the civil war between king Ptolemy XIII and his advisers, and the fabled queen Cleopatra VII. It was finally captured by Octavian, future emperor Augustus on 1 August 30 BC, with the name of the month later being changed to August to commemorate his victory.

Antaradus

City in Roman Syria

**Antioch**

City in Roman Syria (Antakya/Turkey)

Antioch on the Orontes was an ancient city on the eastern side of the Orontes River. It is near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey.

Founded near the end of the 4th century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's generals, Antioch's geographic, military and economic location, particularly the spice trade, the Silk Road, and the Persian Royal Road, benefited its occupants, and eventually it rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East.

As a result of its longevity and historical industriousness, Antioch was called a cradle of Christianity. Once a great metropolis of half a million people, it declined to insignificance during the Middle Ages because of repeated earthquakes, the Crusaders' invasions, and a change in trade routes.

The Roman emperors favored the city from the first, seeing it as a more suitable capital for the eastern part of the empire than Alexandria could be, because of the isolated position of Egypt. To a certain extent they tried to make it an eastern Rome. A great temple to Jupiter Capitolinus rose on Silpius, probably at the insistence of Octavian, whose cause the city had espoused. A forum of Roman type was laid out. Tiberius built two long colonnades on the south towards Silpius.

Agrippa and Tiberius enlarged the theatre, and Trajan finished their work. Antoninus Pius paved the great east to west artery with granite. A circus, other colonnades and great numbers of baths were built, and new aqueducts to supply them bore the names of Caesars, the finest being the work of Hadrian. The Roman client, King Herod (most likely the great builder Herod the Great), erected a long stoa on the east, and Agrippa (c.63 BC -12 BC) encouraged the growth of a new suburb south of this.

Antioch was a chief center of early Christianity. The city had a large population of Jewish origin in a quarter called the Kerateion, and so attracted the earliest missionaries. Evangelized, among others, by Peter himself, according to the tradition upon which the Antiochene patriarchate still rests its claim for primacy, and certainly later by Barnabas and Paul during Paul's first missionary journey.

Its converts were the first to be called Christians.

Antium

City in Italy (Anzio/Italy)

Antium in ancient times was the capital of the Volsci people until it was conquered by the Romans.

With the latter expansion of Rome it was just far enough away to be insulated from the riots and tumults of Rome. Leading Romans built magnificent seaside villas at Antium. The Julian and Claudian emperors frequently visited it: Gaius Maecenas had a villa at Antium; both Emperor Caligula and Nero were born in Antium; the latter founded a colony of veterans and built a new harbor, the projecting moles of which still exist.

Of the villas, the most famous was the Villa of Nero at Antium which cannot be certainly identified, but is generally placed at the so-called Arco Muto, where remains of a theatre (discovered in 1712 and covered up again) also exist. It extended along the coast of the Capo d'Anzio some 800 meters of seafront. Nero razed the former villa on the site, to rebuild on its foundations a villa on a more imperial scale, which was used by each Emperor in turn, up to the Severans.

Of the famous temple of Fortune no remains are known.

Apollonia

Port on the north African coast (Libya)

Apollonia in Cyrenaica was founded by Greek colonists and became a significant commercial center in the southern Mediterranean. It served as the harbor of Cyrene, 20 km (12 mi) to the southwest. The Greek geographer and mathematician Eratosthenes was born there.

Apollonia was one of the five towns of the Libyan Pentapolis. The early foundation levels of the city of Apollonia are below sea level due to submergence in earthquakes, while the upper strata of the latest Byzantine Christian periods are several meters above sea level, built upon the accumulated deposits of previous periods.

The ruins of Apollonia are sited by the modern town of Susa. The Apollonia (Susa) Museum houses many artifacts found on the ancient site, Appolonia appears to have been hit by the tsunami caused by the Crete earthquake of 21 July 365 AD.

Arimathea

Town in Judaea

Arimathea, according to the Gospel of Luke, was "a city of Judaea".

It was reportedly the home town of Joseph of Arimathea, who appears in all four Gospel accounts of the Passion for having donated his new tomb outside Jerusalem to receive the body of Jesus. Apart from the Bible, there is no record of a place called Arimathea existing.

Arwad

City in Roman Syria

Arwad located in the Mediterranean Sea, is the only inhabited island in Syria. The town of Arwad takes up the entire island. It is located 3 kilometers (1.9 mi) from Tartus, Syria's second largest port. Today, it is mainly a fishing town.

When Alexander the Great invaded Syria in 332 BC, Arvad submitted without a struggle under her king Strato, who sent his navy to aid Alexander in the reduction of Tyre. It seems to have received the favor of the Seleucid kings of Syria, and enjoyed the right of asylum for political refugees.

It is mentioned in a rescript from Rome about 138 BC, in connection with other cities and rulers of the East, to show favor to the Jews. This was after Rome had begun to interfere in the affairs of Judaea and Syria, and indicates that Arvad was still of considerable importance at that time.

Babylon

Al Hillah, Iraq

Babylon was an Akkadian city-state (founded in 1894 BC by an Amorite dynasty) of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babylon Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers (55 mi) south of Baghdad.

All that remains of the original ancient famed city of Babylon today is a large mound, or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris in the fertile Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city itself was built upon the Euphrates, and divided in equal parts along its left and right banks, with steep embankments to contain the river's seasonal floods.

Babylon was at first a small town which had sprung up by the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. The town flourished and attained independence with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Claiming to be the successor of the ancient city of Eridu, Babylon eclipsed Nippur as the "holy city" of Mesopotamia around the time of Hammurabi, upon his death Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination.

Babylon again became the seat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 608 to 539 BC which was founded by Chaldeans and whose last king was an Assyrian. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of Babylon it came under the rules of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman and Sassanid empires.

Berytus

City in Roman Syria (Beirut/Lebanon)

Beirut's history goes back more than 5,000 years. Its antiquity is indicated by its name, derived from the Canaanite be'erot ("wells"), referring to the underground water table that is still tapped by the local inhabitants for general use.

The oldest settlement was on an island in the river that progressively silted up. The city was known in antiquity as Berytus.

In 14 BC, during the reign of Herod the Great, Berytus became a colonia and was named Colonia Iulia Augusta Felix Berytus. Its law school was widely known; two of Rome's most famous jurists, Papinian and Ulpian, both natives of Phoenicia, taught there under the Severan emperors.

When Justinian assembled his Pandects in the 6th century, a large part of the corpus of laws was derived from these two jurists, and in 533 Justinian recognized the school as one of the three official law schools of the empire.

Bethany

Town in Judaea

Bruttium

Region in the south of Italy (Calabria/Italy)

Calabria was first settled by Italic Oscan-speaking tribes. Two of these tribes were the Oenotrians (roughly translated into the "vine-cultivators") and the Itali. Greek contact with the latter resulted in Calabria taking the name of the tribe and was the first region to be called Italy (Italia). Greeks settled heavily along the coast at an early date and several of their settlements, including the first Italian city called Rhaegion (Reggio di Calabria), and the next ones Sybaris, Kroton (Crotone), a settlement where the mathematician Pythagoras later resided, and Locri, were numbered among the leading cities of Magna Graecia during the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

The Greeks were conquered by the 3rd century BC by roving Oscan tribes from the north, including a branch of the Samnites called the Lucanians and an offshoot of the Lucanians called the Bruttii. The Bruttii conquered the Greek cities, established their sovereignty over present day Calabria and founded new cities, including their own capital, Cosenza (known as Consentia in the ancient times).

The Romans conquered the area in the 3rd century BC after the fierce Bruttian resistance, possibly the fiercest resistance the Romans had to face from another Italic people. At the beginning of the Roman Empire the region would form the Augustan Regio III Lucania et Bruttii of Roman Italy.

Buto

City in Egypt (Tell el-Farina/Egypt)

Buto (Tell al-Fara'in (Pharaohs' Mound) near the city of Desouk was an ancient city located 95 km east of Alexandria in the Nile Delta of Egypt. The city stood on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile, near its mouth, and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake.

Buto originally was two cities, Pe and Dep, which merged into one city that the Egyptians named Per-Wadjet. The goddess Wadjet was its local goddess, often represented as a cobra, and she was considered the patron deity of Lower Egypt. Her oracle was located in her renowned temple in that city.

Her image formed the royal crown, the Uraeus, worn by the rulers of Lower Egypt. It encircled their heads and the cobra flare and head extended from their foreheads.

The city was an important site in the Predynastic era of Ancient Egypt that includes the cultural developments of ten thousand years from the Paleolithic to 3100 BC.

Being called Buto by the Greeks during Ptolemaic Egypt, it was the capital town, or according to Herodian, merely the principal village of the Nile Delta.

The Greek historians record that the town was celebrated for its monolithic temple and oracle of the goddess Wadjet, whom the Greeks identified with Leto or Latona. A yearly feast was held there in honor of the goddess.

Byblos

City in Roman Syria (Lebanon)

Byblos (Greek) or Gebal (Phoenician) is located on the Mediterranean coast of present-day Lebanon, about 26 miles (42 kilometers) north of Beirut.

The name Byblos is Greek; papyrus received its early Greek name (byblos, byblinos) from its being exported to the Aegean through Byblos. Hence the English word Bible is derived from byblos as "the (papyrus) book." The city's Canaanite/Phoenician name "GB'L" derived from "gb", meaning well or origin, and El the supreme god of Byblos' pantheon. The present-day city is now known by the Arabic name Jubayl, a direct descendant of the Canaanite name.

Hellenistic rule came with the arrival of Alexander the Great in the area in 332 BC. Coinage was in use, and there is abundant evidence of continued trade with other Mediterranean countries.

During the Greco-Roman period, the city, though smaller than its neighbors such as Tyre and Sidon, was a center for the cult of Adonis. In the 3rd century, a small but impressive theater was constructed.

With the rise of Christianity, a bishopric was established in Byblos, and the town grew rapidly.

Caelian Hill

One of the seven hills of Rome

The Caelian Hill (Latin Collis Caelius) is one of the famous Seven Hills of Rome. Under reign of Tullus Hostilius, the entire population of Alba Longa was forcibly resettled on the Caelian Hill. According to a tradition recounted by Titus Livy, the hill received its name from Caelius Vibenna, either because he established a settlement there or because his friend Servius Tullius wished to honor him after his death.

In Republican-era Rome the Caelian Hill was a fashionable residential district and the site of residences of the wealthy. Archeological work under the Baths of Caracalla have uncovered the remains of lavish villas complete with murals and mosaics.

**Caesarea Maritima**

City in Judaea (Caesarea/Israel)

Caesarea Maritima was built by Herod the Great about 25 - 13 BCE. The city has been populated through the late Roman and Byzantine era. Its ruins lie on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, about halfway between the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa, on the site of Pyrgos Stratonos ("Straton's Tower").

Caesarea Maritima was named in honor of Augustus Caesar. The city became the seat of the Roman prefect soon after its foundation. Caesarea was the "administrative capital" beginning in 6 CE. This city is the location of the 1961 discovery of the Pilate Stone, the only archaeological item that mentions the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, by whose order Jesus was crucified.

The emperor Vespasian raised its status to that of a colonia. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Caesarea was the provincial capital of the Judaea Province, before the change of name to Syria Palaestina in 134 CE.

Cafarnaum

Town in Galilee

Capri

Island in Italy, close to Naples

Cedron Valley

Valley on the eastern side of Jerusalem

The Kidron Valley is the valley on the eastern side of The Old City of Jerusalem which features significantly in the Bible. An ephemeral stream flows through it with occasional flash floods in the rainy winter months.

The Kidron Valley runs along the eastern wall of The Old City of Jerusalem, separating the Temple Mount from the Mount of Olives. It then continues east through the Judean Desert, towards the Dead Sea, descending 4000 feet along its 20 mile course. The settlement Kedar, located on a ridge above the valley, is named after it. The neighborhood of Wadi Al-Joz bears the valley's Arabic name.

Cilicia

Roman Province in Asia Minor (Turkey)

In antiquity, Cilicia was the south coastal region of Asia Minor, south of the central Anatolian plateau. It existed as a political entity from Hittite times into the Byzantine empire. Cilicia extends inland from the southeastern coast of modern Turkey, due north and northeast of the island of Cyprus.

It was annexed to the Roman Empire in 64 BC by Pompey, as a consequence of his military presence in the east, after pursuing victory in the Third Mithridatic War. It was subdivided by Diocletian in around 297, and it remained under Roman, and subsequently Byzantine, rule for several centuries, until falling to the Islamic conquests.

Ctesiphon

City in Persia (Iraq)

Ctesiphon, one of the imperial capitals of the Arsacid Dynasty, and the summer capital of Sassanid Iran, under whom it was officially called "Iran-khwarah" (the Glory of Iran). It was one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia.

Ctesiphon is located approximately at Al-Mada'in, 20 miles (32 km) southeast of the modern city of Baghdad, Iraq, along the river Tigris. Ctesiphon measured 30 square kilometers (cf. the 13.7 square kilometers of 4th century imperial Rome). The only visible remains are the great arch Taq-i Kisra (the literal meaning: arch of Khosrau) located in what is now the Iraqi town of Salman Pak.

Because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the Roman Empire in their eastern wars. The city was captured by Rome five times in its history - three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon in 117 as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius captured Ctesiphon in 164 during another Parthian war, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery.

Cynosure

Dog-Tail constellation / Polar star

Cyprus

Roman Province / Island in the Mediterranean

**Damascus**

City in Roman Syria

According to the 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, Damascus, was founded by Uz, the son of Aram. Elsewhere, he stated:

Nicolaus of Damascus, in the fourth book of his History, says thus: "Abraham reigned at Damascus, being a foreigner, who came with an army out of the land above Babylon, called the land of the Chaldeans: but, after a long time, he got him up, and removed from that country also, with his people, and went into the land then called the land of Canaan, but now the land of Judea, and this when his posterity were become a multitude; as to which posterity of his, we relate their history in another work.

Damascus was conquered by Alexander the Great. After the death of Alexander in 323 BC, Damascus became the site of a struggle between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. The control of the city passed frequently from one empire to the other. Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander's generals, made Antioch the capital of his vast empire, which led to the decline of Damascus' importance.

In 64 BC, the Roman general Pompey annexed the western part of Syria. The Romans occupied Damascus and subsequently incorporated it into the league of ten cities known as the Decapolis because it was considered such an important center of Greco-Roman culture.

According to the New Testament, Saint Paul was on the road to Damascus when he received a vision of Jesus, and as a result accepted Him as the Messiah.

Delphi

City in Greece, site of the Oracle of Apollo

Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.

In Greek mythology, Delphi was the site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python, a dragon who lived there and protected the navel of the Earth.

Apollo's sacred precinct in Delphi was a PanHellenic sanctuary, where every four years, starting in 776 BC athletes from all over the Greek world competed in the Pythian Games, one of the four PanHellenic games, precursors of the Modern Olympics. The victors at Delphi were presented with a laurel crown (stephanos) which was ceremonially cut from a tree by a boy who re-enacted the slaying of the Python.

Delphi would have been a renowned city whether or not it hosted these games; it had other attractions that led to it being labeled the "omphalos" (navel) of the earth, in other words, the center of the world.

Domus Tiberiana

One of the imperial residences on the Palatine

Dor

Town close to Caesarea

Dor is a village in northern Israel. Located near Zikhron Ya'akov.

The village was established by immigrants from Greece, who were later joined by immigrants from Iraq. It was named after the ancient Phoenician city of Dor, which inhabited by the tribe of Manasseh in the Israelite period.

The city is mentioned in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua and Chronicles. It was renamed Tantura after the Arab conquest.

The ancient city of Dor was situated on the excavated mount north of today's village, overlooking Kibbutz Nahsholim.

Emmaus

Town in Judaea

Emmaus (meaning "warm spring") was an ancient town located approximately 7 miles (11km) northwest of present day Jerusalem.

Many sites have been suggested for the biblical Emmaus, among them Emmaus Nicopolis (ca. 160 stadia from Jerusalem), Kiryat Anavim (66 stadia from Jerusalem on the carriage road to Jaffa), Coloniya (36 stadia on the carriage road to Jaffa), el-Kubeibeh (63 stadia, on the Roman road to Lydda), Artas (60 stadia from Jerusalem) and Khurbet al-Khamasa (86 stadia on the Roman road to Eleutheropolis). The oldest identification that is currently known is Emmaus Nicopolis.

The New Testament reports that Jesus appeared before two of his followers in Emmaus after his resurrection.

**Ephesus**

City in Asia Minor (Turkey)

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor in Izmir Province, Turkey.

It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era. In the Roman period, Ephesus had a population of more than 250,000 in the 1st century BC, which also made it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world.

The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Emperor Constantine I rebuilt much of the city and erected new public baths. Following the Edict of Thessalonica from emperor Theodosius I, the temple was destroyed in 401 AD by a mob led by St. John Chrysostom

The town was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD. The city's importance as a commercial center declined as the harbor was slowly silted up by the Cayster River.

Ephesus was one of the seven churches of Asia that are cited in the Book of Revelation. The Gospel of John may have been written here. The city was the site of several 5th century Christian Councils, see Council of Ephesus. It is also the site of a large gladiators' graveyard.

Galatia

Roman Province in Asia Minor (Turkey)

Galatia was the name of a province of the Roman Empire in Anatolia (modern central Turkey). It was established by the first emperor, Augustus (sole rule 30 BC - 14 AD), in 25 BC, covering most of formerly independent Celtic Galatia, with its capital at Ancyra.

**Galilee**

Region in Palestine (part of Israel)

Galilee is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District and Haifa District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee, Lower Galilee, and Western Galilee, extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the ridges of Mount Carmel and Mount Gilboa north of Jenin and Tulkarm to the south, and from the Jordan Rift Valley to the east across the plains of the Jezreel Valley and Acre to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Coastal Plain in the west.

The Galilee region was presumably the home of Jesus during at least 30 years of his life. The first three Gospels of the New Testament are mainly an account of Jesus' public ministry in this province, particularly in the towns of Nazareth and Capernaum. Galilee is also cited as the place where Jesus cured a blind man.

**Gaul**

Roman Province (France)

Roman Gaul consisted of an area of provincial rule in the Roman Empire, in modern day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and western Germany. Roman control of the area lasted for more than 500 years.

The Roman Republic began its takeover of Celtic Gaul in 121 BC, when it conquered and annexed the southern reaches of the area. Julius Caesar completed the task by defeating the Celtic tribes in the Gallic Wars of 58-51 BC and the Romanization that ensued was quickest in the cities; Latin was spoken by a majority of Gauls in the third century AD but with some remains of the Gallic language.

The last vestige of Roman rule was effaced by the Franks at the Battle of Soissons (486); displacing the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in 507, the Franks brought most of Gaul, except Septimania in the south, under the rule of the Merovingians, the first kings of France.

The city of Lugdunum (now Lyon) had long been the capital of the Gaul.

Gennesaret

Sea of Galilee

The Sea of Galilee, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias), is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately 53 km (33 mi) in circumference, about 21 km (13 mi) long, and 13 km (8.1 mi) wide. The lake has a total area of 166 km2 (64 sq. mi), and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m (141 feet). At 211.315 meters (693.2 ft) below sea level, it is the lowest freshwater lake on Earth and the second-lowest lake overall (after the Dead Sea, a saltwater lake). The lake is fed partly by underground springs although its main source is the Jordan River which flows through it from north to south.

The Sea of Galilee lies on the ancient Via Maris, which linked Egypt with the northern empires. The Greeks, Hasmoneans, and Romans founded flourishing towns and settlements on the land-locked lake including Gadara, Hippos and Tiberias.

Much of the ministry of Jesus occurred on the shores of Lake Galilee. In those days, there was a continuous ribbon development of settlements and villages around the lake and plenty of trade and ferrying by boat.

Hellespont

Strait that links the Aegean to the sea of Marmara

The Dardanelles, formerly known as Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus.

The strait is 61 kilometers (38 mi) long but only 1.2 to 6 kilometers (0.75 to 3.7 mi) wide, averaging 55 meters (180 ft) deep with a maximum depth of 103 meters (338 ft). Water flows in both directions along the strait, from the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean via a surface current and in the opposite direction via an undercurrent.

Like the Bosphorus, it separates Europe (the Gallipoli peninsula) from the mainland of Asia. The strait is an international waterway, and together with the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

**Herculaneum**

City in Italy (close to Naples)

Herculaneum (in modern Italian Ercolano) was an ancient Roman town destroyed by volcanic pyroclastic flows in 79 A.D., located in the Italian region of Campania in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.

It is most famous for having been lost, along with Pompeii, Stabiae, Boscoreal and Oplontis, in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 which buried it in superheated pyroclastic material. It is also famous as one of the few ancient cities that can now be seen in almost its original splendor, because unlike Pompeii, its burial was so deep as to ensure building's upper levels remained intact, and the hotter ash preserved wooden household objects (beds, doors etc.) and even food. Moreover Herculaneum was a wealthier town than Pompeii with an extraordinary density of fine houses, with far more lavish use of colored marble cladding.

**Herodium**

Fortress south of Jerusalem

Herodium or Herodion is a truncated cone-shaped hill, located 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) south of Jerusalem, near the city of Bethlehem. Herod the Great built a fortress and palace on the top of Herodium, and may have been buried there. Herodium is 758 meters (2,487 ft) above sea level.

The Herodium was conquered and destroyed by the Romans in 71 CE

Hispania

Roman Province (Iberian Peninsula)

Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula.

Roman armies invaded Hispania in 218 BC and used it as a training ground for officers and as a proving ground for tactics during campaigns against the Carthaginians, the Iberians, the Lusitanians, the Gallaecians and other Celts. It was not until 19 BC that the Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 BC - AD 14) was able to complete the conquest. Until then, much of Hispania remained autonomous.

Romanization proceeded quickly in some regions where we have references to the togati, and very slowly in others, after the time of Augustus, and Hispania was divided into three separately governed provinces (nine provinces by the 4th century). Some of the peninsula's population were admitted into the Roman aristocratic class and they participated in governing Hispania and the Roman Empire, although there was a native aristocracy class who ruled each local tribe.

The Romans improved existing cities, such as Lisbon (Olissipo) and Tarragona (Tarraco), established Zaragoza (Caesaraugusta), Mérida (Augusta Emerita), and Valencia (Valentia), and reduced other native cities to mere villages. The peninsula's economy expanded under Roman tutelage. Hispania served as a granary and a major source of metals for the Roman market.

The Romanized Iberian populations and the Iberian-born descendants of Roman soldiers and colonists had all achieved the status of full Roman citizenship by the end of the 1st century. The emperors Trajan (r. 98 - 117), Hadrian (r. 117 - 138), and Marcus Aurelius (r. 161 - 180) were of Hispanic origin.

Idumea

Province in Roman Arabia (Jordan)

Edom is a Semitic inhabited historical region of the Southern Levant located south of Judaea and the Dead Sea. It is mentioned in biblical records as a 1st millennium BC Iron Age kingdom of Edom, and in classical antiquity the cognate name Idumea was used to refer to a smaller area in the same region.

The name Edom means "red" in Hebrew, and was given to Esau, the eldest son of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac, once he ate the "red pottage", which the Bible used in irony at the fact he was born "red all over". The Torah, Tanakh and New Testament thus describe the Edomites as descendants of Esau.

Antipater the Idumaean, the progenitor of the Herodian Dynasty that ruled Judaea after the Roman conquest, was of Edomite origin. Under Herod the Great Idumaea was ruled for him by a series of governors, among whom were his brother Joseph ben Antipater and his brother-in-law Costobarus. Immediately before the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, 20,000 Idumaeans, under the leadership of John, Simeon, Phinehas, and Jacob, appeared before Jerusalem to fight on behalf of the Zealots who were besieged in the Temple.

Jaffa

City in Judaea (part of Tel-Aviv/Israel)

Tel Yafo (Jaffa Hill) rises to a height of 40 meters (130 ft) and offers a commanding view of the coastline; hence its strategic importance in military history. The accumulation of debris and landfill over the centuries made the hill even higher. Archaeological evidence shows that Jaffa was inhabited some 7,500 years BCE. Jaffa's natural harbor has been in use since the Bronze Age.

Jaffa is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as the territorial border of the Tribe of Dan, hence the modern term "Gush Dan" for the center of the coastal plain. Many descendants of Dan lived along the coast and earned their living from ship making and sailing.

After the Canaanite and Philistine domination, King David and his son King Solomon conquered Jaffa and used its port to bring the cedars used in the construction of the First Temple from Tyre. The city remained often in Jewish hands even after the split of the Kingdom of Israel. In 701 BCE, in the days of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded the region from Jaffa.

After a period of Babylonian occupation, under Persian rule, Jaffa was governed by Phoenicians from Tyre. Then it knew the presence of Alexander the Great's troops and later became a Seleucid Hellenized port until it was taken over by the Maccabean rebels and the refounded Jewish kingdom.

During the Roman repression of the Jewish Revolt, Jaffa was captured and burned by Cestius Gallus. The Roman Jewish historian Josephus writes that 8,400 inhabitants were massacred. Pirates operating from the rebuilt port incurred the wrath of Vespasian, who razed the city and erected a citadel in its place, installing a Roman garrison there.

The New Testament account of St. Peter's resurrection of the widow Tabitha takes place in Jaffa.

Jericho

City in Judaea

Jericho is a Palestinian city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank.

Jericho is described in the Old Testament as the "City of Palm Trees." Copious springs in and around the city attracted human habitation for thousands of years. It is known in Judeo-Christian tradition as the place of the Israelites' return from bondage in Egypt, led by Joshua, the successor to Moses.

The city came to be ruled by the Hasmoneans, following the success of the Maccabean Revolt, and remained such until the Roman influence over the area brought Herod to claim the Hasmenean throne of Judea.

Herod's rule oversaw the construction of a hippodrome-theatre to entertain his guests and new aqueducts to irrigate the area below the cliffs and reach his winter palace built at the site of Tulul al-Alaiq. After the construction of its palaces the city had functioned not only as an agricultural center and as a crossroad but as a winter resort for Jerusalem's aristocracy.

The Christian Gospels state that Jesus passed through Jericho where he healed one or two blind beggars and inspired a local chief tax-collector named Zacchaeus to repent of his dishonest practices. The road between Jerusalem and Jericho is the setting for the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

After the fall of Jerusalem to Vespasian's armies in the Great Revolt of Judea in 70 CE, Jericho declined rapidly, and by 100 CE it was but a small Roman garrison town.

**Jerusalem**

City in Judaea

Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world. It is located in the Judaean Mountains, between the Mediterranean Sea and the northern edge of the Dead Sea.

During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times. The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE.

Jerusalem has been the holiest city in Jewish tradition since, according to the Hebrew Bible, King David of Israel first established it as the capital of the united Kingdom of Israel in c. 1000 BCE, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple in the city.

In Christian tradition, Jerusalem has been a holy city since, according to the New Testament, Jesus was crucified there, possibly in c. 33 CE, and 300 years later Saint Helena identified the pilgrimage sites of Jesus' life.

In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city. In Islamic tradition in 610 CE it became the first Qibla, the focal point for Muslim prayer, and Muhammad made his Night Journey there ten years later, according to the Quran.

**Judaea**

Roman Province (Israel)

Judea, sometimes spelled in its original Latin forms of Judaea or Iudaea to distinguish it from Judea proper, is a term used by historians to refer to the Roman province that incorporated the geographical regions of Judea, Samaria, and Idumea, and which extended over parts of the former regions of the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Israel. It was named after Herod Archelaus's Tetrarchy of Judea, of which it was an expansion, the latter name deriving from the Kingdom of Judah of the 6th century BCE.

Laodicea

City in Roman Syria (Latakia/Syria)

Latakia is the principal port city of Syria, as well as the capital of the Latakia Governorate.

Though the site has been inhabited since the second millennium BC, the modern-day city was first founded in the 4th century BC under the rule of the Seleucid empire. Latakia was subsequently ruled by the Romans, then the Ummayads and Abbasids in the 8th - 10th centuries.

In 64 BC, the Roman legate Pompey formally abolished the Seleucid Empire and created the new Roman province of Syria. During the struggle for power between Augustus Caesar and Marcus Antonius, the latter managed to win temporary support from Laodicea during his brief governorship of Syria through the remission of certain taxes and the promise of autonomy.

Following the defeat of Marcus Antonius, the Romans modified Laodicea's name, changing it to Laodicea-ad-Mare, and the city flourished again as an entrepôt for East-West trade, second only to Antioch. This commerce was systemized with the construction of the Via Maris, a coastal road that ran south from Antioch to Damascus and Beirut via Laodicea.

In the first century BC, Herod the Great, king of Judaea, furnished the city with an aqueduct, the remains of which stand to the east of the town.

**Lycia**

Roman Protectorate in Asia Minor (Turkey)

Lycia was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Mutüla on the southern coast of Turkey, and Burdur Province inland. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group.

In 43 AD, the emperor Claudius annexed Lycia to the Roman Empire as a province and by the time of Vespasian, it was united with Pamphylia as a Roman province. The heir of Augustus, Gaius Caesar, was killed there in 4 AD.

Mar Nostrum

Mediterranean Sea

**Masada**

Herodian Fortress, close to the Dead Sea

Masada is an ancient fortification in the Southern District of Israel, on top of an isolated rock plateau (akin to a mesa) on the eastern edge of the Judaean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea.

Herod the Great built palaces for himself on the mountain and fortified Masada between 37 and 31 BCE. The Siege of Masada by troops of the Roman Empire towards the end of the First Jewish-Roman War ended in the mass suicide of the 960 Jewish rebels and their families holed up there.

Megiddo

Hill and town in Judaea

Megiddo is a hill in modern Israel near Kibbutz Megiddo, about 30km south-east of Haifa, known for its historical, geographical, and theological importance, especially under its Greek name Armageddon.

Megiddo was a site of great importance in the ancient world. It guarded the western branch of a narrow pass and trade route connecting Egypt and Assyria. Because of its strategic location, Megiddo was the site of several historical battles. The site was inhabited from approximately 7000 BC to 586 BC (the same time as the destruction of the First Israelite Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians, and subsequent fall of Israelite rule and exile). Since this time it has remained uninhabited, preserving ruins pre-dating 586 BC without settlements ever disturbing them.

Megiddo is mentioned in Ancient Egyptian writings because one of Egypt's mighty kings, Thutmose III, waged war upon the city in 1478 BC. The battle is described in detail in the hieroglyphics found on the walls of his temple in Upper Egypt.

Mentioned in the Bible as "Derekh HaYam" or "Way of the Sea," it became an important military artery of the Roman Empire and was known as the Via Maris.

Messana

City in the island of Sicily (Messina)

Founded by Greek colonists in the 8th century BC, Messina was originally called Zancle, meaning "scythe" because of the shape of its natural harbor.. A commune of its province, located at the southern entrance of the Strait of Messina, is to this day called 'Scaletta Zanclea'.

In 264 BC, Roman troops were deployed to Sicily, the first time a Roman army acted outside the Italian Peninsula. At the end of the First Punic War it was a free city allied with Rome. In Roman times Messina, then known as Messana, had an important pharos (lighthouse). Messana was the base of Sextus Pompeius, during his war against Octavian.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city was successively ruled by Goths from 476, then by the Byzantine Empire in 535, by the Arabs in 842, and in 1061 by the Norman brothers Robert Guiscard and Roger Guiscard (later count Roger I of Sicily).

Messina was most likely the harbor at which the Black Death entered Europe: the plague was brought by Genoese ships coming from Caffa in the Crimea. In 1548 St. Ignatius founded there the first Jesuit college of the world, which later gave birth to the Studium Generale (the current University of Messina).

Mount Gerizim

A mountain close to the city of Shechem (Nablus)

Mount Silpius

High hill close to Antioch

Mount Tabor

High hill in Galilee

Mount Zion

Hill within the city walls of Jerusalem

Museum

An institution dedicated to learning

Nazareth

City in Galilee

Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Nazareth is known as "the Arab capital of Israel"; the population is made up predominantly of Arab citizens of Israel, almost all of whom are either Muslim (69%) or Christian (30.9%).

Archaeological research has revealed that there was a funerary and cult center at Kfar HaHoresh, about two miles (3 km) from current Nazareth, dating back roughly 9000 years to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic era.

According to the Gospel of Luke, Nazareth was the home village of Mary and also the site of the Annunciation (when Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that she would have Jesus as her son). In the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph and Mary resettled in Nazareth after returning from the flight from Bethlehem to Egypt. The differences and possible contradictions between these two accounts of the nativity of Jesus are part of the Synoptic Problem. According to the Bible, Nazareth was also where Jesus grew up from some point in his childhood. However, some modern scholars argue that Nazareth was also the birthplace of Jesus.

Neapolis

City in Italy (Naples)

The Naples area has been inhabited since the Neolithic period. The earliest Greek settlements were established in the Naples region in the 2nd millennium BC. Sailors from the Greek island of Rhodes established a small commercial port on the island of Megaride in the 9th century BC. In the 8th century BC, a larger settlement called Parthenope was founded by settlers from Cumae as part of Italy's Magna Graecia region of Greek colonization.

In the 6th century BC, after the decline of Parthenope, the new urban zone of Neapolis was founded, eventually becoming one of the foremost cities of Magna Graecia.

The new city grew rapidly due to the influence of the powerful Greek city-state of Syracuse, and became an ally of the Roman Republic against Carthage; the strong walls surrounding Neapolis stopped the invading forces of the Carthaginian general Hannibal from entering. During the Samnite Wars, the city, now a bustling center of trade, was captured by the Samnites; however, the Romans soon captured the city from them and made it a Roman colony.

During the Roman era, the people of Naples maintained their Greek language and customs, while the city was expanded with elegant Roman villas, aqueducts, and public baths. Landmarks such as the Temple of Dioscures were built, and many powerful emperors chose to holiday in the city, including Claudius and Tiberius. Naples became a major Roman cultural center; Virgil, the author of Rome's national epic, the Aeneid, received part of his education in the city, and later resided in its environs.

It was during this period that Christianity first arrived in Naples; the apostles Peter and Paul are said to have preached in the city.

**Ostia**

City and main harbor in Italy

Ostia may have been Rome's first colonia. An inscription says that Ostia was founded by Ancus Marcius, the semi-legendary fourth king of Rome, in the 7th century BC. The most ancient buildings currently visible are from the 3rd century BC, notably the Castrum (military camp); of a slightly later date is the Capitolium (temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva).

In 68 BC, the town was sacked by pirates. During the sack, the port was set on fire, the consular war fleet was destroyed, and two prominent senators were kidnapped. Pompey the Great raised an army and destroyed the pirates. The town was then re-built, and provided with protective walls by the statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.

The town was further developed during the first century AD under the influence of Tiberius, who ordered the building of the town's first Forum. The town was also soon enriched by the construction of a new harbor on the northern mouths of the Tiber.

Ostia itself was provided with all the services a town of the time could require; in particular, a famous lighthouse. Ostia contained the Ostia Synagogue, the earliest synagogue yet identified in Europe

Paestum

City in Italy (Campania/Italy)

Paestum is the classical Roman name of a major Greco-Roman city in the Campania region of Italy. It is located in the north of Cilento, near the coast about 85 km SE of Naples in the province of Salerno.

Founded around the end of the 7th century BC by colonists from the Greek city of Sybaris, and originally known as Poseidonia. It is not until the end of the fifth century BC that the city is mentioned, when according to Strabo the city was conquered by the Lucani. Later became the Roman city of Paestum in 273 BC after the Greco-Italian Poseidonians sided with the loser, Pyrrhus, in war against Rome during the first quarter of the third century BC.

During the invasion of Italy by Hannibal the city remained faithful to Rome and afterwards was granted special favors such as the minting of its coinage. The city continued to prosper during the Roman imperial period, but started to go into decline between the 4th and 7th centuries. It was abandoned during the Middle Ages.

Palatine Hill

One of the seven hills of Rome

The Palatine Hill (Latin: Collis Palatium or Mons Palatinus) is the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome and is one of the most ancient parts of the city. It stands 40 meters above the Forum Romanum, looking down upon it on one side, and upon the Circus Maximus on the other.

It is the etymological origin of the word "palace" and its cognates in other languages (Italian "Palazzo", French "Palais" etc.).

Many affluent Romans of the Republican period (c.509 BC - 44 BC) had their residences there. During the Empire (27 BC - 476 AD) several emperors resided there; in fact, the ruins of the palaces of Augustus (27 BC -14 AD), Tiberius (14 - 37) and Domitian (81 - 96) can still be seen. Augustus also built a temple to Apollo here, beside his own palace.

**Pamphylia**

Roman territory in Asia Minor (Turkey)

In ancient geography, Pamphylia was the region in the south of Asia Minor, between Lycia and Cilicia, extending from the Mediterranean to Mount Taurus (modern day Antalya province, Turkey). It was bounded on the north by Pisidia and was therefore a country of small extent, having a coast-line of only about 75 miles with a breadth of about 30 miles. Under the Roman administration the term Pamphylia was extended so as to include Pisidia and the whole tract up to the frontiers of Phrygia and Lycaonia.

Patras

City in Achaea (in Greece)

Patras is Greece's third largest urban area and the regional capital of West Greece, located in northern Peloponnese, 215 km (134 mi) west of Athens. The city is built at the foothills of Mount Panachaikon, overlooking the Gulf of Patras.

The first traces of settlement in Patras date to as early as the 3rd millennium BC, in the area of modern Aroe. Patras flourished for the first time during the Post-Helladic or Mycenean period. Ancient Patras was formed by the unification of three Mycenaean villages located in modern Aroe; namely Antheia (from mythological Antheia) and Mesatis.

After 280 BC and prior to the Roman occupation of Greece, Patras played a significant role in the foundation of the second "Achaean League", along with the cities of Dyme, Triteia and Pharai. Later on, and following the Roman occupation of Greece in 146 BC, Patras played a key role, and Augustus founded a Roman colony in its area. In addition, Patras has been a Christian center since the early days of Christianity, and it is the city where St. Andrew was crucified.

**Perea**

Territory east of the Jordan river (Jordan)

Perea ("the country beyond" in Greek), a portion of the kingdom of Herod the Great occupying the eastern side of the Jordan River valley, from about one third the way down from the Sea of Galilee to about one third the way down the eastern shore of the Dead Sea; it did not extend too far inland. Traditionally its limits have been considered to be the eastern bank of the Jordan River between the rivers Arnon (Wadi Mujib) and Hieromax (Yarmouk River).

Perga

City in Pamphylia

Perga was an ancient Greek city in Anatolia and the capital of Pamphylia, now in Antalya province on the southwestern Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

Perga was founded around 1000 BC and is nearly 20 kilometers (12 mi) inland. It was sited inland as a defensive measure in order to avoid the pirate bands that terrorized this stretch of the Mediterranean.

In 546 BC, the Achaemenid Persians defeated the local powers and gained control of the region. In 333 BC, the armies of Alexander the Great arrived in Perga during his war of conquest against the Persians. Alexander's was followed by the Diadochi empire of the Seleucids. Perga's most celebrated ancient inhabitant, the mathematician Apollonius (c.262 BC - c.190 BC), lived and worked there.

Roman rule began in 188 BC, and most of the surviving ruins today date from this period. From the beginning of the Imperial era, work projects were carried out in Perga, and in the second and third centuries A.D., it grew into one of the most beautiful cities, not just in Pamphylia, but in all of Anatolia.

In 46 A.D., according to the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul journeyed to Perga, from there continued on to Antiocheia in Pisidia, then returned to Perga where he delivered a sermon.

Persepolis

City in Persia (in Iran)

Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire (ca. 550 - 330 BCE). Persepolis is situated 70 km northeast of the modern city of Shiraz in the Fars Province of modern Iran.

Archaeological evidence shows that the earliest remains of Persepolis date from around 515 BC. Cyrus the Great (Ka´rosh) chose the site of Persepolis, and Darius the Great (Daryush) built the terrace and the great palaces.

Darius ordered the construction of the Apadana Palace and the Council Hall (the Tripylon or three-gated hall), the main imperial Treasury and its surroundings. These were completed during the reign of his son, King Xerxes the Great (Khashayar). Further construction of the buildings on the terrace continued until the downfall of the Achaemenid dynasty.

Pharos

Islet in Alexandria, site of the famous lighthouse

The Lighthouse of Alexandria, sometimes called the Pharos of Alexandria, was a lofty tower built by the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 280 and 247 BC on the coastal island of Pharos at Alexandria, Egypt for the purpose of guiding sailors into the port.

With a height variously estimated at somewhere between 393 and 450 ft (120 and 140 m), it was one of the tallest man-made structures on Earth for many centuries, and was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Badly damaged by three earthquakes between 956 and 1323, it then became an abandoned ruin.

The lighthouse was constructed in the 3rd century BC.

After Alexander the Great died of a fever at age 32, the first Ptolemy (Ptolemy I Soter) announced himself king in 305 BC, and commissioned its construction shortly thereafter. The building was finished during the reign of his son, the second Ptolemy (Ptolemy II Philadelphus). It took 12 years to complete, at a total cost of 800 talents, and served as a prototype for all later lighthouses in the world. The light was produced by a furnace at the top and the tower was built mostly with solid blocks of limestone.

Pillars of Hercules

Promontories that flank the strait of Gibraltar

The Pillars of Hercules was the phrase that was applied in Antiquity to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The northern Pillar is the Rock of Gibraltar (now part of the British overseas territory of Gibraltar). A corresponding North African peak not being predominant, the identity of the southern Pillar has been disputed through history, with the two most likely candidates being Monte Hacho in Ceuta and Jebel Musa in Morocco.

According to some Roman sources, while on his way to the garden of the Hesperides on the island of Erytheia, Hercules had to cross the mountain that was once Atlas. Instead of climbing the great mountain, Hercules used his superhuman strength to smash through it. By doing so, he connected the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and formed the Strait of Gibraltar.

**Pompey**

City in Italy (close to Naples)

The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was partially destroyed and buried under 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) of ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

By the 1st century AD, Pompeii was one of a number of towns located near the base of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius. The area had a substantial population which grew prosperous from the region's renowned agricultural fertility. Many of Pompeii's neighboring communities, most famously Herculaneum, also suffered damage or destruction during the 79 eruption. The eruption occurred on August 24, just one day after Vulcanalia, the festival of the Roman god of fire, including that from volcanoes.

Porta Capena

One of the gates of Rome in the Servian Wall

The Porta Capena was a gate in the Servian Wall near the Caelian Hill, in Rome, Italy according to Roman tradition the sacred grove where Numa Pompilius and the nymph Egeria used to meet.

It was one of the main entries to the city of Rome, since it opened on the Appian Way. The origin of the name is unknown, although it may refer to the fact that the road leads to Capua, an important city in Campania, south of Rome.

According to 1st century AD writer Juvenal, the Porta Capena was frequented by beggars. In particular, he says that it was a common place for Jewish beggars.

Portus

_Ancient harbor close to the city of Ostia_

Portus was a large artificial harbor of Ancient Rome. Sited on the north bank of the mouth of the Tiber, on the Tyrrhenian coast.

Claudius constructed the first harbor on the Portus site, 4 km (2.5 mi) north of Ostia, enclosing an area of 69 hectares (170 acres), with two long curving moles projecting into the sea, and an artificial island, bearing a lighthouse, in the center of the space between them. The harbor thus opened directly to the sea on the north-west and communicated with the Tiber by a channel on the south-east. The object was to obtain protection from the prevalent south-west wind, to which the river mouth was exposed. Though Claudius, in the inscription which he caused to be erected in A.D. 46, boasted that he had freed the city of Rome from the danger of inundation, his work was only partially successful.

Nero gave the harbor the name of "Portus Augusti".

Rhegium

City in Italy (Reggio di Calabria)

Reggio di Calabria is located on the "toe" of the Italian peninsula and is separated from the island of Sicily by the Strait of Messina. It is situated on the slopes of the Aspromonte, a long, craggy mountain range that runs up through the center of the region.

As an independent city Rhegium was an important ally and "socia navalis" of Rome. During the Imperial age it became one of the most important and flourishing cities of southern Italy when it was the seat of the "Corrector", the Governor of "Regio II Lucania et Bruttii" (province of Lucany and Brutium).

It was devastated by several major earthquakes and associated tsunami during the Roman Empire when it was called "Rhegium Julium" and was a noble Roman city. Rhegium boasted in imperial times, no less than eight thermal baths, one of which is still visible today. During all this time however, Reggio maintained its Greek customs and language.

The Apostle, St. Paul passed through Rhegium in his final voyage to Rome.

**Rome**

Capital of the Roman Empire

is the capital of Italy and also of Lazio (Latin: Latium). The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy. Rome is referred to as "The Eternal City", a notion expressed by ancient Roman poets and writers.

Rome's history spans more than two and a half thousand years, since its founding in 753 BC, with the union of rural villages. It was the capital city of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, which was the dominant power in Western Europe and the lands bordering the Mediterranean for over seven hundred years from the 1st century BC until the 7th century AD and the city is regarded as one of the birthplaces of western civilization.

Since the 1st century AD Rome has been the seat of the Papacy and, after the end of Byzantine domination, in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. In 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian Republic.

**Samaria**

Region in the northern part of the West Bank

Samaria or the Shomron is a mountainous region in northern Palestine, roughly corresponding to the northern West Bank. The name derives from the ancient city Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel.

The region known as Samaria was captured by the Israelites from the Canaanites and was assigned to the Tribe of Joseph. After the death of King Solomon (c.931 BC), the northern tribes, including those of Samaria, separated from the southern tribes and established the separate kingdom of Israel. Initially its capital was at Tirzah until the time of king Omri (c.884 BC), who built the city Shomeron (Samaria) and established it as its capital.

The region fell to the Assyrians in c.722 BC, and much of its population was carried into captivity. In AD 6 the region became part of the Roman province of Judaea.

Samos

Greek island in the Aegean

Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese, and off the coast of Asia Minor, from which it is separated by the 1.6 kilometers (0.99 mi)-wide Mycale Strait.

In ancient times Samos was a particularly rich and powerful city-state. It is home to Pythagoreion and the Heraion of Samos, also the Eupalinian aqueduct, a marvel of ancient engineering.

Samos is the birthplace of the Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras, after whom the Pythagorean theorem is named, the philosopher Epicurus, and the astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, the first known individual to propose that the Earth revolves around the sun. Samian wine was well known in antiquity, and is still produced on the island.

Sea of Reeds

Red Sea (Egypt)

Sea of Salt

Dead Sea (Jordan/Israel)

Seleucia Pieria

City in Roman Syria (Samandag)

Seleucia Pieria was built by Seleucus I Nicator in ca. 300 BC. It lay near the mouth of the Orontes not far from Mount Casius, and functioned as the commercial and naval seaport of Antioch on the Orontes (now Antakya).

Its first colonists were the Greeks of Antigonia and some Jews. Seleucia was of great importance in the struggle between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies; it was captured by Ptolemy Euergetes in 246. As the Ptolemies (Lagids) and Seleucids fought over the city, it changed hands several times until 219 BC, when the Seleucid Antiochus III the Great recaptured it. Then it obtained its freedom and kept it even to the end of the Roman occupation.

As the port of Antioch of Syria, "Seleucia on sea" - so called to distinguish it from other cities of the same name - is notable as the point of embarkation from which the Apostle Paul [in AD 45] set forth on the first of his great missionary journeys.

Sepphoris

City in Galilee, close to Nazareth

Tzippori (also known as Sepphoris) is located in the central Galilee region, 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) north-northwest of Nazareth.

Interest on the part of Biblical archaeologists is related to the belief in Christian tradition that the parents of the Virgin Mary, Anna and Joachim, were natives of Tzippori, at the time a Hellenized town.

Tzippori once served as a center of Jewish religious and spiritual life in the Galilee; remains of a 6th-century synagogue have been uncovered in the lower section of the site. In the 7th century, the town came under the rule of the Arab caliphates like much of the rest of Palestine.

Serapeum

Temple to the god Serapis in Alexandria

The Serapeum of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt was a temple built by Ptolemy III (reigned 246 - 222 BCE) and dedicated to Serapis, the syncretic Hellenistic-Egyptian god who was made the protector of Alexandria.

By all detailed accounts, the Serapeum was the largest and most magnificent of all temples in the Greek quarter of Alexandria. Besides the image of the god, the temple precinct housed an offshoot collection of the great Library of Alexandria. The geographer Strabo tells that this stood in the west of the city.

The Serapeum in Alexandria was destroyed by a Christian crowd or Roman soldiers in 391. Nothing now remains above ground.

Sidon

City in Roman Syria

Sidon is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located on the Mediterranean coast, about 40 km (25 mi) north of Tyre and 40 km (25 mi) south of Beirut.

Like other Phoenician city-states, Sidon suffered from a succession of conquerors. At the end of the Persian era in 351 BC, it was invaded by the emperor Artaxerxes III and then by Alexander the Great in 333 BC when the Hellenistic era of Sidon began. Under the successors of Alexander, it enjoyed relative autonomy and organized games and competitions in which the greatest athletes of the region participated.

When Sidon fell under Roman domination, it continued to mint its own silver coins. The Romans also built a theater and other major monuments in the city. In the reign of Elagabalus a Roman colonia was established there, and it was given the name of Colonia Aurelia Pia Sidon. During the Byzantine period, when the great earthquake of AD 551 destroyed most of the cities of Phoenicia, Beirut's School of Law took refuge in Sidon. The town continued quietly for the next century, until it was conquered by the Arabs in AD 636.

Syracuse

City in the island of Sicily

Syracuse is a historic city in Sicily, the capital of the province of Syracuse. This 2,700-year-old city played a key role in ancient times, when it was one of the major powers of the Mediterranean world. Syracuse is located in the southeast corner of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Syracuse next to the Ionian Sea.

The city was founded by Ancient Greek Corinthians and became a very powerful city-state. Syracuse was allied with Sparta and Corinth, exerting influence over the entire Magna Grecia area of which it was the most important city. Once described by Cicero as "the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all", it later became part of the Roman Republic and Byzantine Empire.

Though declining slowly by the years, Syracuse maintained the status of capital of the Roman government of Sicily and seat of the praetor. It remained an important port for trade between the Eastern and the Western parts of the Empire.

Christianity spread in the city through the efforts of Paul of Tarsus and Saint Marziano, the first bishop of the city, who made it one of the main centres of proselytism in the West. In the age of persecutions massive catacombs were carved, whose size is second only to those of Rome.

Tiber

River in Italy, crosses Rome

The Tiber is the third-longest river in Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing 406 kilometers (252 mi) through Umbria and Lazio to the Tyrrhenian Sea. The river has achieved lasting fame as the main watercourse of the city of Rome, founded on its eastern banks.

The river rises at Mount Fumaiolo in central Italy and flows in a generally southerly direction past Perugia and Rome to meet the sea at Ostia. Popularly called flavus ("the blond"), in reference to the yellowish color of its water, the Tiber has heavily advanced at the mouth by about 3 km since Roman times, leaving the ancient port of Ostia Antica 6 km inland.

Tiberias

City in Galilee

Tiberias is a city on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. Tiberias was founded sometime around 20 CE in Herodian Tetrarchy of Galilee and Peraea by the Roman Jewish client king Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great.

Herod Antipas made it the capital of his realm in the Galilee. Tiberias had a Jewish majority, living alongside a heterogeneous population. It was named in honor of the Roman Emperor Tiberius.

In the days of Antipas, the more religious (as opposed to Hellenized) Jews refused to settle there; the presence of a cemetery rendered the site ritually unclean. Antipas settled many non-Jews there from rural Galilee and other parts of his domains in order to populate his new capital, and built a palace on the acropolis. The prestige of Tiberias was so great that the sea of Galilee soon came to be named the sea of Tiberias; however, what would now be called Jewish zealots continued to call it 'Yam Ha-Kinerett', its traditional name. The city was governed by a city council of 600 with a committee of 10 until 44 CE when a Roman Procurator was set over the city after the death of Agrippa I.

In 61 CE Agrippa II annexed the city to his kingdom whose capital was Caesarea Phillippi. During the First Jewish-Roman War Josephus Flavius took control of the city and destroyed Herod's palace, but was able to stop the city from being pillaged by his Jewish army. Where most other cities in the Province of Judaea were razed, Tiberias was spared because its inhabitants remained loyal to Rome.

It became a mixed city after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE; with Judaea subdued, the southern Jewish population migrated to Galilee.

**Thrace**

Region between the Danube and the Black Sea

The Odrysian kingdom of Thrace became a Roman client kingdom c. 20 BC, while the Greek city-states on the Black Sea coast came under Roman control, first as civitates foederatae ("allied" cities with internal autonomy). After the death of the Thracian king Rhoemetalces III in 46 AD and an unsuccessful anti-Roman revolt, the kingdom was annexed as the Roman province of Thracia.

The new province encompassed not only the lands of the former Odrysian realm, but also the north-eastern portion of the province of Macedonia as well as the islands of Thasos, Samothrace and Imbros in the Aegean Sea. To the north, Thracia bordered the province of Moesia Inferior; initially, the provincial boundary ran at a line north of the Haeumus Mountains, including the cities of Nicopolis ad Istrum and Marcianopolis in Thracia.

Troy

Mythical city-state in Asia Minor

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, south of the southwest end of the Dardanelles / Hellespont and northwest of Mount Ida.

It is best known for being the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle and especially in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer.

A new city called Ilium was founded on the site in the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. It flourished until the establishment of Constantinople and declined gradually during the Byzantine era.

Tyre

City in Roman Syria

Tyre juts out from the coast of the Mediterranean and is located about 80 km (50 mi) south of Beirut. The name of the city means "rock" after the rocky formation on which the town was originally built.

The commerce of the ancient world was gathered into the warehouses of Tyre. The city was particularly known for the production of a rare and extraordinarily expensive sort of purple dye, produced from the murex shellfish, known as Tyrian purple. This color was, in many cultures of ancient times, reserved for the use of royalty, or at least nobility.

Ezekiel states that God caused Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Tyre because its residents gloated over the fall of Jerusalem. The Tyrians held off Nebuchadnezzar's siege for thirteen years, resupplying the walled island city through its two harbors. In 332 BC, the city was conquered by Alexander the Great, after a siege of seven months in which he built the causeway from the mainland to within a hundred meters of the island, where the sea floor sloped abruptly downwards. The presence of the causeway affected local sea currents causing sediment accumulation, which made the land connection permanent to this day and transformed the erstwhile Tyre island into a peninsula.

In 126 BC, Tyre regained its independence (from the Seleucids) and was allowed to keep much of its independence when the area became a Roman province in 64 BC.

Tyre continued to maintain much of its commercial importance until the Christian era.

Via Maris

Trade route linking Egypt to Syria and Babylon

Via Maris ("the Way of the Sea") is the modern name for an ancient trade route, dating from the early Bronze Age, linking Egypt with the northern empires of Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia - modern day Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Its earlier name was "Way of the Philistines", a reference to a passageway through the Philistine Plain (which today consists of Israel's southern coastal plain and the Gaza Strip). From the Philistine Plain, the Way continues north through the Sharon. At Dor (near modern Hadera) the Way branches into two Ways \- one running along the Mediterranean coast, and the other following an inland route through Megiddo, the Jezreel Valley, the Sea of Galilee and Dan.

Together with the King's Highway, the Via Maris was one of the major trade routes connecting Egypt and the Levant with Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The Via Maris was crossed by other trading routes, so that one could travel from Africa to Europe or from Asia to Africa.

Via Ostiense

Road that linked Ostia to Rome

The Via Ostiensis was an important road in ancient Rome. It ran west 30 km from the city of Rome to its important sea port of Ostia Antica, from which it took its name.

The road began near the Forum Boarium, ran between the Aventine and the Tiber River along its left (eastern) bank, and left the city's Servian Walls through the Porta Trigemina.

In the late Roman Empire, trade suffered under an economic crisis, and Ostia declined as an important port. With the accompanying growth of importance of the Via Portuensis from the time of Constantine onwards, that of the Via Ostiensis correspondingly decreased.

Zion

Mount in Jerusalem

Zion is a place name often used as a synonym for Jerusalem. It commonly referred to a specific mountain near Jerusalem (Mount Zion), on which stood a Jebusite fortress of the same name that was conquered by David and was named the City of David. The term Tzion came to designate the area of Jerusalem where the fortress stood, and later became a metonym for Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem and generally, the World to Come.

# Units of Measurement

Aureus

Monetary unit, of Roman origin, eqv. 25 denarii

The aureus ("golden") was a gold coin of ancient Rome valued at 25 silver denarii.

The aureus was regularly issued from the 1st century BC to the beginning of the 4th century AD, when it was replaced by the solidus. The aureus is about the same size as the denarius, but is heavier due to the higher density of gold.

Denarius

Monetary unit, of Roman origin, eqv. 4 sestertii

In the Roman currency system, the denarius was a small silver coin first minted in 211 BC.

It was the most common coin produced for circulation but was slowly debased until its replacement by the antoninianus. The word denarius is derived from the Latin denare "containing ten", as its value was 10 asses.

Drachma

Monetary unit, of Greek origin

Drachma, was an ancient Greek currency unit found in many Greek city states from Classical times on, as well as in many of Alexander's successor states and South-West Asian kingdoms during the Hellenistic era.

After Alexander the Great's conquests, the name drachma was used in many of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Middle East, including the Ptolemaic kingdom in Alexandria.

Gold/Silver Talent

Monetary unit, eqv. a 58,9 kg of gold/silver

League

Unit of distance, eqv. 2,22 km

Mina

Monetary unit, of Greek origin, eqv. a 50 shekels

Sestertius

Monetary unit, of Roman origin

Shekel

Monetary unit, of Babylonian origin

Shekel, is any of several ancient units of weight or of currency. The earliest shekels were a unit of weight, used as other units such as grams and troy ounces for trading before the advent of coins. Coins were invented by the early Anatolian traders who stamped their marks to avoid weighing each time used. Early coins were money stamped with an official seal to certify their weight.

The shekel was common among western Semitic peoples. Moabites, Edomites and Phoenicians used the shekel, the latter as coins and weights. Punic coinage was based on the shekel, a heritage from Canaanite ancestors.

Silver Tyrian shekels were the medium of payment for the Temple tax in Jerusalem, and have been suggested as a possible coin used as the "30 pieces of silver" in the New Testament.

Stadium

Unit of distance, eqv. 185 m

Talent

Unit of mass, eqv. weight of water in an amphora

Tyrian Shekel

Monetary unit, only coinage accept in the Temple

# Judaean Nomenclature

Ben

Son

Essenes

Religious group

The Essenes were a sect of Second Temple Judaism that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests. Being much fewer in number than the Pharisees and the Sadducees (the other two major sects at the time), the Essenes lived in various cities but congregated in communal life dedicated to asceticism, voluntary poverty, daily immersion, and abstinence from worldly pleasures, including (for some groups) celibacy. Many separate but related religious groups of that era shared similar mystic, eschatological, messianic, and ascetic beliefs. These groups are collectively referred to by various scholars as the "Essenes." Josephus records that Essenes existed in large numbers, and thousands lived throughout Roman Judæa.

Dybbuk

Possessing spirit

Hasmonean

Dynasty of Judaea, suppressed by the romans

Kashrut

Dietary laws

Kohanim

Priests

Kohen is the Hebrew word for priest. Jewish Kohanim are traditionally believed and halachically required to be of direct patrilineal descent from the Biblical Aaron.

During the existence of the Temple in Jerusalem, Kohanim performed the daily and holiday (Yom Tov) duties of sacrificial offerings.

Korban

Temple treasure

The term offering as found in the Hebrew Bible in relation to the worship of Ancient Israel, whether for an animal or other offering.

Other terms include animal sacrifice (zevah) traditionally peace offering and olah, traditionally "burnt offering."

Mosaic Law

Set of rules and commands written by Moses

The Mosaic Covenant or Sinaitic Covenant refers to the biblical covenant between God and the Children of Israel and their proselytes. The establishment and stipulations of the Mosaic Covenant are recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, which are collectively called the Torah and sometimes referred to as the Law of Moses or Mosaic Law.

Messianics

Religious group, followers of Jesus Christ

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament. "Christian" derives from the Koine Greek word Christ, a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term Messiah.

Central to the Christian faith is the gospel, the teaching that humans have hope for salvation through the message and work of Jesus, and particularly, his atoning death on the cross and resurrection. Christians also believe Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.

Most Christians believe in the doctrine of the Trinity ("tri-unity"), a description of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This includes the vast majority of churches in Christianity.

**Nasi**

President of the Sanhedrin

A Hebrew title meaning prince in Biblical Hebrew, Prince (of the Sanhedrin) in Mishnaic Hebrew, or president in Modern Hebrew.

During the Second Commonwealth (c. 530 BCE - 70 CE), the nasi was the highest-ranking member and president of the Sanhedrin or Assembly, including when it sat as a criminal court. The position was created in c. 191 BCE when the Sanhedrin lost confidence in the ability of the High Priest to serve as its head. The Romans recognized the nasi as Patriarch of the Jews, and required all Jews to pay him a tax for the upkeep of that office, which ranked highly in the Roman official hierarchy.

Nazarene

Denomination for Christians or Essenes

In Acts, Paul of Tarsus is called, "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazoreans," thus identifying Nazorean with Christian. Although both "Christianios" (by Gentiles) and "Nazarenes" (by Jews) appear to have been current in the 1st century, and both are recorded in the New Testament, the Gentile name "Christian" appears to have won out against "Nazarene" in usage among Christians themselves after the 1st century.

Around 331 Eusebius records that from the name Nazareth, Christ was called a Nazoraean, and that in earlier centuries Christians, were once called Nazarenes.

Nisan

Month of April

**Pesach**

Religious festival (Passover)

Passover is a Jewish festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, which is in spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and is celebrated for seven or eight days. It is one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays.

Pharisees

Religious group

The Pharisees were at various times a political party, a social movement, and a school of thought among Jews during the Second Temple period beginning under the Hasmonean dynasty (140 \- 37 BCE).

Conflicts between the Pharisees and the Sadducees took place in the context of much broader and longstanding social and religious conflicts among Jews dating back to the Babylonian captivity and exacerbated by the Roman conquest. One conflict was class, between the wealthy and the poor, as the Sadducees included mainly the priestly and aristocratic families. Another conflict was cultural, between those who favored Hellenization and those who resisted it. A third was juridico-religious, between those who emphasized the importance of the Second Temple with its cultic rites and services, and those who emphasized the importance of other Mosaic laws and prophetic values. A fourth point of conflict, specifically religious, involved different interpretations of the Torah and how to apply it to current Jewish life, with the Sadducees recognizing only the Written Torah and rejecting doctrines such as the Oral Torah and the Resurrection of the Dead.

Josephus, himself a Pharisee, claimed that the Pharisees received the backing and goodwill of the common people, apparently in contrast to the more elite Sadducees. Pharisees claimed prophetic or Mosaic authority for their interpretation of Jewish laws, while the Sadducees represented the authority of the priestly privileges and prerogatives established since the days of Solomon

Rabban

Doctor of the Mosaic Law, sage

Jewish title awarded to the most learned doctors of the Mosaic Law, meaning "Our Master".

Saducees

Religious group

The Sadducees were a sect or group of Jews that were active in Judea during the Second Temple period, starting from the second century BCE through the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

The sect was identified by Josephus with the upper social and economic echelon of Judean society. As a whole, the sect fulfilled various political, social, and religious roles, including maintaining the Temple. The sect is believed to have become extinct sometime after the destruction of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, but it has been speculated that the later Karaites may have had some roots or connections with old Sadducee views.

**Sanhedrin**

Supreme Council

The Great Sanhedrin was made up of a Chief/Prince/Leader called Nasi (at some times this position may have been held by the High Priest), a vice chief justice (Av Beit Din), and sixty-nine general members.

In the Second Temple period, the Great Sanhedrin met in the Hall of Hewn Stones in the Temple in Jerusalem. The court convened every day except festivals and Shabbat.

Seder

Ritual feast

The Passover Seder, is a Jewish ritual feast that marks the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover/Pesach. It is conducted on the evenings of the 14th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. This corresponds to late March or April in the Gregorian calendar.

The Seder is a ritual performed by a community or by multiple generations of a family, involving a retelling of the story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt.

Shabbat

Day of rest

Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest and seventh day of the week, on which they remember the traditional creation of the heavens and the earth in six days and the Exodus of the Hebrews, and look forward to a future Messianic Age.

Shabbat observance entails refraining from work activities, often with great rigor, and engaging in restful activities to honor the day. The longstanding traditional Jewish position is that unbroken seventh-day Shabbat originated among the Jewish people, as their first and most sacred institution, though some suggest an obscure later, naturalistic origin.

According to halakha, Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night.

Sheol

The land of the dead, the land of nothingness

She'ol, translated as "grave", "pit", or "abode of the dead", is the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible's underworld, a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from God.

Sicarii

_Radical group, sect of assassins_

Sicarii is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, (probably) to an extremist splinter group of the Jewish Zealots, who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judaea.

The Sicarii carried sicae, or small daggers, concealed in their cloaks, hence their name. At public gatherings, they pulled out these daggers to attack Romans or Roman sympathizers, Herodians and wealthy Jews comfortable with Roman rule, lamenting ostentatiously after the deed to blend into the crowd to escape detection. Literally, Sicarii meant "dagger-men".

Victims of the Sicarii included Jonathan the High Priest, though it is possible that his murder was orchestrated by the Roman governor Felix.

At the beginning of the Jewish Revolt of 66 CE, the Sicarii gained access to Jerusalem and committed a series of atrocities, in order to force the population to war. In one account, given in the Talmud, they destroyed the city's food supply so that the people would be forced to fight against the Roman siege instead of negotiating peace.

After the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, the sicarii became the dominant revolutionary Jewish party, scattered abroad. Josephus particularly associates them with the mass suicide at Masada.

**Torah**

The five books of Moses, sacred book

Torah ("Instruction", "Teaching") is a central concept in the Jewish tradition. It has a range of meanings: it can most specifically mean the first five books of the Tanakh, it can mean this, plus the rabbinic commentaries on it, it can mean the continued narrative from Genesis to the end of the Tanakh, it can even mean the totality of Jewish teaching and practice.

Common to all these meanings, Torah consists of the foundational narrative of the Jewish people: their call into being by their God, their trials and tribulations, and their covenant with their God which involves following a way of life (halakha) embodied in a set of religious

obligations and civil laws.

In its most specific meaning, it consists of the first five books of the Tanakh written in Biblical Hebrew.

**Zealots**

Religious radical group

Zealotry was originally a political movement in 1st century Second Temple Judaism which sought to incite the people of Judaea Province to rebel against the Roman Empire and expel it from the Holy Land by force of arms, most notably during the Great Jewish Revolt (66-70).

Josephus states that there were three main Jewish sects at this time, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The Zealots were a "fourth sect", founded by Judas of Galilee (also called Judas of Gamala) and Zadok the Pharisee in the year 6 against Quirinius' tax reform.

The Zealots had the leading role in the Jewish Revolt of 66. They succeeded in taking over Jerusalem, and held it until 70, when the son of Roman Emperor Vespasian, Titus, retook the city and destroyed Herod's Temple during the destruction of Jerusalem.

Zealots who engaged in violence against other Jews were called the Sicarii They raided Jewish habitations and killed Jews they considered apostate and collaborators, while also urging Jews to fight Romans and other Jews for the cause. Josephus paints a very bleak picture of their activities as they instituted what he characterized as a murderous "reign of terror" prior to the Jewish Temple's destruction.

# Greco-Roman Nomenclature

Acropolis

Highest point in predominantly Greek cities

An acropolis is a settlement, especially a citadel, built upon an area of elevated ground' frequently a hill with precipitous sides, chosen for purposes of defense. In many parts of the world, acropoleis became the nuclei of large cities of classical antiquity, such as ancient Rome, which in more recent times grew up on the surrounding lower ground, such as modern Rome.

The word acropolis literally in Greek means "city on the extremity" and though associated primarily with the Greek cities Athens, Argos, Thebes, and Corinth (with its Acrocorinth), may be applied generically to all such citadels, including Rome, Jerusalem, Celtic Bratislava, many in Asia Minor, or even Castle Rock in Edinburgh.

The most famous example is the Acropolis of Athens, which, by reason of its historical associations and the several famous buildings erected upon it (most notably the Parthenon), is known without qualification as the Acropolis. Although originating in the mainland of Greece, use of the acropolis model quickly spread to Greek colonies such as the Dorian Lato on Crete during the Archaic Period.

Addenda

Plural of Annex

Agora

Public square in predominantly Greek cities

The agora was a central spot in ancient Greek city-states. The literal meaning of the word is "gathering place" or "assembly". The agora was the center of athletic, artistic, spiritual and political life of the city.

The Ancient Agora of Athens was the best-known example, birthplace of democracy.

Ambrosia

Mythical food/drink of the Greek gods

Ambrosia is very closely related to the gods' other form of sustenance, nectar. The two terms may not have originally been distinguished; though in Homer's poems nectar is usually the drink and ambrosia the food of the gods; it was with ambrosia Hera "cleansed all defilement from her lovely flesh", and with ambrosia Athena prepared Penelope in her sleep, so that when she appeared for the final time before her suitors, the effects of years had been stripped away and they were inflamed with passion at the sight of her.

The consumption of ambrosia was typically reserved for divine beings. Upon his assumption into immortality on Olympus, Heracles is given ambrosia by Athena, while the hero Tydeus is denied the same thing when the goddess discovers him eating human brains. In one version of the myth of Tantalus, part of Tantalus' crime is that after tasting ambrosia himself, he attempts to steal some away to give to other mortals. Those who consume ambrosia typically had not blood in their veins, but ichor.

Acheron

River in the underworld of Greek mythology

In ancient Greek mythology, Acheron was known as the river of pain, and was one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld. In the Homeric poems the Acheron was described as a river of Hades, into which Cocytus and Phlegethon both flowed.

The Roman poet Virgil called it the principal river of Tartarus, from which the Styx and Cocytus both sprang. The newly-dead would be ferried across the Acheron by Charon in order to enter the Underworld.

The Suda describes the river as "a place of healing, not a place of punishment, cleansing and purging the sins of humans."

Basilica

Edifice reserved for assemblies

The Latin word basilica, has three distinct applications in modern English. The word was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town.

By extension it was applied to Christian buildings of the same form and continues to be used in an architectural sense to describe those buildings with a central nave and aisles.

Later, the term came to refer specifically to a large and important church that has been given special ceremonial rights by the Pope.

Bireme / Trireme

A ship of Greek origin, with 2 or 3 decks of oars

A trireme was an ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.

The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar. The early trireme was a development of the penteconter, an ancient warship with a single row of 25 oars on each side, and of the bireme, a warship with two banks of oars, probably of Phoenician origin.

As a ship it was fast and agile, and became the dominant warship in the Mediterranean from the 7th to the 4th centuries BC, when they were largely superseded by the larger quadriremes and quinqueremes. Triremes played a vital role in the Persian Wars, the creation of the Athenian maritime empire, and its downfall in the Peloponnesian War.

Cardo

Urban street - north to south orientation

The cardo was a north/south-oriented street in Roman cities, military camps, and coloniae. The cardo, an integral component of city planning, was lined with shops and vendors, and served as a hub of economic life. The main cardo was called cardo maximus.

Most Roman cities also had a Decumanus Maximus, an east-west street that served as a secondary main street. Due to varying geography, in some cities the decumanus is the main street and the cardo is secondary, but in general the cardo maximus served as the primary road. The Forum was normally located at the intersection of the Decumanus and the Cardo.

Castrum

Military camp or edifice

The Latin word castra, with its singular castrum, was used by the ancient Romans to mean buildings or plots of land reserved to or constructed for use as a military defensive position.

In classical Latin the word castra always means "great legionary encampment", both "marching", "temporary" ones and the "fortified permanent" ones, while the diminutive form castellum was used for the smaller forts, which were usually, but not always, occupied by the auxiliary units and used as logistic bases for the legions.

Chatti

_Germanic tribe_

The Chatti (also Chatthi or Catti) were an ancient Germanic tribe whose homeland was near the upper Weser. They settled in central and northern Hesse and southern Lower Saxony, along the upper reaches of the Weser River and in the valleys and mountains of the Eder, Fulda and Weser River regions, a district approximately corresponding to Hesse-Kassel, though probably somewhat more extensive.

**Consul**

Supreme magistrate of Rome

Consul (Latin plural consules) was the highest elected office of the Roman Republic and an appointive office under the Empire. The title was also used in other city-states and also revived in modern states, notably in the First French Republic.

**Christians**

Religious group, followers of Jesus Christ

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament. "Christian" derives from the Koine Greek word Christ, a translation of the Biblical Hebrew term Messiah.

Central to the Christian faith is the gospel, the teaching that humans have hope for salvation through the message and work of Jesus, and particularly, his atoning death on the cross and resurrection. Christians also believe Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.

Most Christians believe in the doctrine of the Trinity ("tri-unity"), a description of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This includes the vast majority of churches in Christianity.

Christ

Messiah / The Anointed One

In Jewish eschatology, the term came to refer to a future Jewish King from the Davidic line, who will be "anointed" with holy oil and rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age.

Traditional and current Orthodox thought have mainly held that the Messiah will be the anointed one, descended from his father through the Davidic line of King David via Solomon, who will gather the Jews back into the Land of Israel, usher in an era of peace, build the Third Temple, have a male heir and re-institute the Sanhedrin, among other things. Jewish tradition alludes to two redeemers, both are called Mashiach and are involved in ushering in the Messianic age: Mashiah ben David and Mashiach ben Joseph. In general, the term Messiah unqualified always refers to Mashiach ben David (Messiah the descendant of David and Salomon) of the tribe of Judah. He will be the final redeemer who shall rule in the Messianic age.

Curia Julia

Assembly building of the roman senate

Curia Julia is the third named Curia, or Senate House, in the ancient city of Rome. It was built in 44 BC when Julius Caesar replaced Faustus Cornelius Sulla's reconstructed Curia Cornelia, which itself had replaced the Curia Hostilia.

Caesar did this in order to redesign both spaces within the Comitium and Forum Romanum. The alterations within the Comitium reduced the prominence of the senate and cleared the original space. The work, however, was interrupted by Caesar's assassination at the Theatre of Pompey where the Senate had been meeting temporarily while the work was completed. The project was eventually finished by Caesar's successor Augustus in 29 BC.

Decumanus

Urban street - east to west orientation

In Roman city planning, a decumanus was an east-west-oriented road in a Roman city, castra (military camp), or colonia. The main decumanus was the Decumanus Maximus, which normally connected the Porta Praetoria (in a military camp, closest to the enemy) to the Porta Decumana (away from the enemy).

Sacred Disease

Epilepsy

Dominus

Roman salutation, lord, master

Domus/Villa/Insulae

Residential house

In ancient Rome, the domus was the type of house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras.

It comes from the Ancient Greek word domi meaning structure since it was the standard type of housing in Ancient Greece. It could be found in almost all the major cities throughout the Roman territories.

Along with a domus in the city, many of the richest families of ancient Rome also owned a separate country house known as a villa. While many chose to live primarily, or even exclusively, in their villas, these homes were generally much grander in scale and on larger acres of land due to more space outside the walled and fortified city.

The elite classes of Roman society constructed their residences with elaborate marble decorations, inlaid marble paneling, door jambs and columns as well as expensive paintings and frescoes.

Many poor and lower middle class Romans lived in crowded, dirty and mostly rundown rental apartments, known as insulae. These multi-level apartment blocks were built as high and tightly together as possible and held far less status and convenience than the private homes of the prosperous.

Ecclesis

A place for assemblies, church, temple

The first house church is recorded in Acts 1:13, where the disciples of Jesus met together in the "Upper Room" of a house, traditionally believed to be where the Cenacle is today.

For the first three centuries of the church, known as Early Christianity, Christians typically met in homes, if only because intermittent persecution (before the Edict of Milan in 313) did not allow the erection of public church buildings.

Erratum

Corrective text of a published work

Forum

Public square in predominantly roman cities

A forum (Latin, "place outdoors") was a public square in a Roman municipium, or any civitas, reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls.

Many forums were constructed at remote locations along a road by the magistrate responsible for the road, in which case the forum was the only settlement at the site and had its own name, such as Forum Popili or Forum Livi.

In addition to its standard function as a marketplace, a forum was a gathering place of great social significance, and often the scene of diverse activities, including political discussions and debates, rendezvous, meetings, et cetera. In that case it supplemented the function of a conciliabulum.

Every Italian city had a forum. Forums were the first feature of any civitas whether Latin, Italic, Etruscan, Greek, Celtic or some other.

Hades

The underworld in Greek mythology

Insula

Residential building with multiple floors

Iseum

A temple in honor of the goddess Isis

Khaire

Greek salutation

Koine

Greek dialect in the antiquity

Legate

General / Governor of a roman province

A legatus (often Anglicized as legate) was a general in the Roman army, equivalent to a modern general officer. Being of senatorial rank, his immediate superior was the dux, and he outranked all military tribunes.

Legates received large shares of the army's booty at the end of a successful campaign, which made the position a lucrative one, so it could often attract even distinguished consuls.

There were two main positions; the legatus legionis was an ex-praetor given command of one of Rome's elite legions, while the legatus propraetor was an ex-consul, who was given the governorship of a Roman province with the magisterial powers of a praetor, which in some cases gave him command of four or more legions.

Ludi

Plays and theatrical games

Ludi (Latin plural) were public games held for the benefit and entertainment of the Roman people. Ludi were held in conjunction with, or sometimes as the major feature of Roman religious festivals, and were also presented as part of the cult of state.

The earliest ludi were horse races in the circus (ludi circenses). Animal exhibitions with mock hunts (venationes) and theatrical performances (ludi scaenici) also became part of the festivals.

Days on which ludi were held were public holidays, and no business could be conducted - "remarkably," it has been noted, "considering that in the Imperial era more than 135 days might be spent at these entertainments" during the year. Although their entertainment value may have overshadowed religious sentiment at any given moment, even in late antiquity the ludi were understood as part of the worship of the traditional gods, and the Church Fathers thus advised Christians not to participate in the festivities.

Mega Khaire

Greek salutation

Mithraeum

Temple in honor of the god Mithra

A Mithraeum (or the plural Mithraea) is a place of worship for the followers of the mystery religion of Mithraism.

The Mithraeum was either an adapted natural cave or cavern, or a building imitating a cave. When possible, the Mithraeum was constructed within or below an existing building, such as the Mithraeum found beneath Basilica of San Clemente in Rome.

While a majority of Mithraea are underground, some feature open holes in the ceiling to allow some light in, perhaps to relate to the connection of the universe and the passing of time.

Many mithraea that follow this basic plan are scattered over much of the Roman Empire's former territory, particularly where the legions were stationed along the frontiers (such as Britain). Others may be recognized by their characteristic layout, even though converted as crypts beneath Christian churches.

Murmillones

Roman gladiators, used shield and sword

The murmillo (also sometimes spelled mirmillo or myrmillo, pl. murmillones) was a type of gladiator during the Roman Imperial age.

The murmillo-class gladiator was adopted in the early Imperial period to replace the earlier Gallus, named after the warriors of Gaul. As the Gauls inhabiting Italy had become well-integrated with the Romans by the time of the reign of Augustus, it became undesirable to portray them as enemy outsiders; the Gallus-class gladiator thus had to be retired.

Olympus

Mythical residence of the Greco-Roman gods

In Greek mythology Mount Olympus was regarded as the "home" of the Twelve Olympian gods of the ancient Greek world. It formed itself after the gods defeated the Titans in the Titan War, and soon the palace was inhabited by the gods. It is the setting of many Greek mythical stories.

Oracle

Prophetic prediction

In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination.

The word oracle comes from the Latin verb orare "to speak" and properly refers to the priest or priestess uttering the prediction. In extended use, oracle may also refer to the site of the oracle, and to the oracular utterances themselves.

Oracles were thought to be portals through which the gods spoke directly to people. In this sense they were different from seers who interpreted signs sent by the gods through bird signs, animal entrails, and other various methods.

The most important oracles of Greek antiquity were Pythia, priestess to Apollo at Delphi, and the oracle of Dione and Zeus at Dodona in Epirus.

Other temples of Apollo were located at Didyma on the coast of Asia Minor, at Corinth and Bassae in the Peloponnese, and at the islands of Delos and Aegina in the Aegean Sea.

Only the Delphic Oracle was a male; all others were female. The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state.

Palatine

Designation of the Imperial palaces of Rome

Parthians

Persians

Patera

Father

Patrician

Roman aristocrat

The term patrician (Latin: patricius) originally referred to a group of elite families in ancient Rome, including both their natural and adopted members.

In the late Roman Empire, the class was broadened to include high council officials, and after the fall of the Western Empire it remained a high honorary title in the Byzantine Empire.

The distinction between patricians and plebeians in Ancient Rome was based purely on birth. Although modern writers often portray patricians as rich and powerful families who managed to secure power over the less-fortunate plebeian families, most historians argue that this is an over-simplification. As civil rights for plebeians increased during the middle and late Roman Republic, many plebeian families had attained wealth and power while some traditionally patrician families had fallen into poverty and obscurity.

The prestige and meaning of the status gradually degraded, and by the end of the 3rd-century crisis, patrician status, as it had been known in the Republic, ceased to have meaning in everyday life.

Pax romana

Period of relative peace in the roman empire

Pythia

Priestess of the temple of Apollo in Delphi

The Pythia, commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, beneath the Castalian Spring.

The Pythia was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BCE, although it may have been present in some form in Late Mycenaean times, from 1,400 BCE and was abandoned, and there is evidence that Apollo took over the shrine from an earlier dedication to Gaia. The last recorded response was given during CE 393, when the emperor Theodosius I ordered pagan temples to cease operation.

During this period the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks.

The name 'Pythia' derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. The Greeks derived this place name from the verb, pythein ("to rot"), which refers to the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after she was slain by Apollo. The usual theory has been that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies preserved in Greek literature.

Prefect

_High roman official, responsible for military and civil rule_

Praefectus, often with a further qualification, was the formal title of many, fairly low to high-ranking, military or civil officials in the Roman Empire, whose authority was not embodied in their person (as it was with elected Magistrates) but conferred by delegation from a higher authority. They did have some authority in their prefecture such as controlling prisons and in civil administration.

Praetor

Roman magistrate, responsible for judiciary affairs

Praetor was a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to men acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army; or, an elected magistratus (magistrate), assigned various duties (which varied at different periods in Rome's history).

The functions of the magistracy, the praetura (praetorship), are described by the adjective: the praetoria potestas (praetorian power), the praetorium imperium (praetorian authority), and the praetorium ius (praetorian law), the legal precedents established by the praetores (praetors).

Praetorium, as a substantive, denoted the location from which the praetor exercised his authority, either the headquarters of his castra, the courthouse (tribunal) of his judiciary, or the city hall of his provincial governorship.

Pretorium

Government seat of a roman Prefect/Procurator

The Latin term praetorium or pretorium originally signified a general's tent within a Roman castra, castellum, or encampment. It derived from the name of one of the chief Roman magistrates, the praetor.

In the New Testament, praetorium refers to the palace of Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator of Judea. According to the New Testament, this is where Jesus Christ was tried and condemned to death. The Bible refers to the Praetorium as the "common hall," the "governor's house," the "judgment hall," "Pilate's house," and the "palace."

Princeps

Title of a member of the imperial family

Princeps (in this sense usually translated as "First Citizen") was an official title of a Roman Emperor as the title determining the leader in Ancient Rome at the beginning of the Roman Empire. It created the principate Roman imperial system.

This usage of "princeps" derived from the position of Princeps Senatus, the "first among equals" of the Senate. The princeps senatus (plural principes senatus) was the first member by precedence of the Roman Senate.

It was first given as a special title to Caesar Augustus in 27 BC, who saw that use of the titles rex (king) or dictator would create resentment amongst senators and other influential men, who had earlier demonstrated their disapproval by supporting the assassination of Julius Caesar. While Augustus had political and military supremacy, he needed the assistance of his fellow Romans to manage the Empire.

Procurator

_High roman official, responsible for military and civil rule_

Procurator was the title of various officials of the Roman Empire, posts mostly filled by men of the equestrian order.

A procurator Augusti, could be the governor of the smaller imperial provinces. The same title was held by the fiscal procurators, who assisted governors of the senatorial provinces (known as a legatus Augusti pro praetore, who were always senators. In addition, procurator was the title given to various other officials in Rome and Italy.

Publican

Tax collector at the service of Rome

In antiquity, publicans were public contractors, in which role they often supplied the Roman legions and military, managed the collection of port duties, and oversaw public building projects. In addition, they served as tax collectors for the Republic (and later the Roman Empire), bidding on contracts for the collection of various types of taxes.

The right to collect taxes for a particular region would be auctioned every few years for a value that (in theory) approximated the tax available for collection in that region. The payment to Rome was treated as a loan and the publicani would receive interest on their payment at the end of the collection period. In addition, any excess (over their bid) tax collected would be pure profit. The principal risk was that the tax collected would be less than the sum bid.

Quaestor

Senate supervisor for judicial and fiscal affairs

A quaestor was a type of public official in the "cursus honorum" system who supervised financial affairs. In the Roman Republic a quaestor was an elected official, but in the Roman Empire, quaestors came to be simply appointed.

In the Roman Republic, quastores were elected officials who supervised the treasury and financial affairs of the state, its armies and its officers. The quaestors tasked with financial supervision were also called quaestores aerarii, because they oversaw the aerarium or public treasury in the Temple of Saturn.

The office of quaestor was adopted as the first official post of the cursus honorum. By achieving election as quaestor, a Roman man would earn the right to sit in the Senate and begin to progress along the standard sequence of offices that made up a career in public service.

During the reforms of Sulla in 81 BC, the minimum age for a quaestorship was set at 30 for patricians and at 32 for plebeians, and election to the quaestorship gave automatic membership in the Senate. Before that, the censors revised the rolls of the Senate less regularly than the annual induction of quaestors created. The number of quaestors was also raised to 20.

Retiarii

Roman gladiators, used a net and a trident

A retiarius (plural retiarii; literally, "net-man" or "net-fighter" in Latin) was a Roman gladiator who fought with equipment styled on that of a fisherman: a weighted net (rete, hence the name), a three-pointed trident (fuscina or tridens), and a dagger (pugio).

The retiarius was lightly armored, wearing an arm guard (manica) and a shoulder guard (galerus). Typically, his clothing consisted only of a loincloth (subligaculum) held in place by a wide belt, or of a short tunic with light padding. He wore no head protection or footwear.

Rostra

Platform in a forum for official speeches

The rostra was a large platform built in the city of Rome that stood during the republican and imperial periods.

Speakers would stand on the rostra and face the north side of the comitium towards the senate house and deliver orations to those assembled in between. It is often referred to as a suggestus or tribunal, the first form of which dates back to the Roman Kingdom, the Volcanal.

It derives its name from the six rostra (plural of rostrum, a warship's ram) which were captured during the victory at Antium in 338 BC and mounted to its side. Originally, the term meant a single structure located within the Comitium space near the Forum and usually associated with the Senate Curia. It began to be referred to as the Rostra Vetera ("Elder Rostra") in the imperial age to distinguish it from other later platforms designed for similar purposes which took the name "Rostra" along with its builder's name or the person it honored.

Salve

Roman salutation, singular

Salvete

Roman salutation, plural

Septuagint

Greek translation of the Pentateuch

Sophos

Scholar / wise man

Speculatores

Messengers and agents of the Imperial guard

Speculatores and Exploratores were the scouts and reconnaissance element of the Roman army. In both the legions and in the praetorian camp, speculatores were initially scouts but became bodyguards, couriers, law-enforcers, and sometimes executioners.

Exploratores were tasked to keep watch on enemy movements in the field. Both occupations could require the wearing of 'plain clothes' and may therefore be deemed spies (Occulta speculator/speculatrix).

To a certain extent (but only to an extent) speculatores may be deemed 'internal security' and exploratores 'external security.' However, the Roman Empire lasted a very long time and various espionage units, including the infamous frumentarii created by Hadrian to suppress internal dissent, and later the agentes in rebus, came and went throughout its history.

Stabulum

Inn

Taberna

Public place for the serving of drinks

A taberna (plural tabernae) was a single room shop covered by a barrel vault within great indoor markets of ancient Rome. Each taberna had a window above it to let light into a wooden attic for storage and had a wide doorway. A famous example is the Markets of Trajan in Rome, built in the early 1st century by Apollodorus of Damascus

A taberna was a "retail unit" within the Roman empire and furthermore was where many economic activities and many service industries were provided, including the sale of cooked food, wine and bread.

Tabernae revolutionized the Roman economy because they were the first permanent retail structures within cities, which signified persistent growth and expansion within the economy. Moreover, tabernae were utilized as lucrative measures to gain upward social mobility for the freedmen class. Although the occupation of a merchant was not highly regarded in Roman culture, it still pervaded the freedman class as means to establish financial stability and eventually some influence within local governments.

Tartarus

Mythical place in the Greek underworld

In classic mythology, below Uranus (sky), Gaia (earth), and Pontus (sea) is Tartarus, or Tartaros.

It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld. In the Gorgias, Plato (c. 400 BC) wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus.

Like other primal entities (such as the earth and time), Tartarus is also a primordial force or deity.

Tartarus was used as a prison for the worst of villains, including Cronus and the other Titans who were thrown in by Zeus. Uranus also threw his own children into Tartarus because he feared they might overthrow him. These mishaps included the "hundred-handed-ones", the "cyclops" and the "giants".

Thermopolium

Public place for the serving of food and meals

In ancient Rome, a thermopolium (plural thermopolia) was a commercial establishment where it was possible to purchase ready-to-eat food. The forerunner of today's restaurant, the items served at the thermopolia are sometimes compared to modern fast-food. These places were mainly used by the poor or those who simply could not afford a private kitchen, sometimes leading them to be scorned by the upper class.

A typical thermopolium would consist of a small room with a distinctive masonry counter in the front. Embedded in this counter were earthenware jars (called dolia) used to store dried food like nuts (hot food would have required the dolia to be cleaned out after use, and because they are embedded in the counter, it is believed that they were not used to store hot food, but rather dried food where cleaning wouldn't be necessary). Fancier thermopolia would also be decorated with frescoes.

Thracian

Roman gladiator, use curved sword and shin guards

The Thraex (pl. thraeces), or Thracian, was a type of Roman gladiator, armed in the Thracian style with small rectangular shield called a parmula (about 60 x 65 cm) and a very short sword with a slightly curved blade called a sica (like a small version of the Dacian falx), intended to maim an opponent's unarmoured back. His other armor included armored greaves (necessitated by the smallness of the shield), a protector for his sword arm and shoulder, a protective belt above a loin cloth, and a helmet with a side plume, visor and high crest.

He and the hoplomachus, with his Greek equipment, were usually pitted against the murmillo, armed like a legionary, mimicking the opposition between Roman soldiers and their various enemies.

Triclinium

Dining-room in Greco-Roman residences

A triclinium (plural: triclinia) is a formal dining room in a Roman building. The word is adopted from the Greek tri-, "three", and klin, a sort of "couch" or rather chaise longue. Each couch was wide enough to accommodate three diners who reclined on their left side on cushions while some household slaves served multiple courses rushed out of the culina, or kitchen, and others entertained guests with music, song, or dance.

In Roman-era dwellings, particularly wealthy ones, triclinia were common. Used to entertain company, the hosts and guest would recline on pillows while feasting.

Dining was the defining ritual in Roman domestic life, lasting from late afternoon through late at night. Typically, 9-20 guests were invited, arranged in a prescribed seating order to emphasize divisions in status and relative closeness to the dominus. As static, privileged space, dining rooms received extremely elaborate decoration, with complex perspective scenes and central paintings (or, here, mosaics). Dionysus, Venus, and still lifes of food were popular, for obvious reasons.

Middle class and elite Roman houses usually had at least two triclinia; it's not unusual to find four or more. Here, the triclinium maius (big dining room) would be used for larger dinner parties, which would typically include many clients of the owner.

Vale

Roman salutation

Villa

Residence of a wealthy roman

Vox populi

The voice of the people

Ziggurat

Ancient temple in Babylon

Ziggurats were massive structures built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.

Ziggurats were built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, Akkadians, and Assyrians for local religions.

Each ziggurat was part of a temple complex which included other buildings. The earliest ziggurats began near the end of the Early Dynastic Period. The latest Mesopotamian ziggurats date from the 6th century BC.

Built in receding tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform, the ziggurat was a pyramidal structure with a flat top. The number of tiers ranged from two to seven. It is assumed that they had shrines at the top, but there is no archaeological evidence for this. Access to the shrine would have been by a series of ramps on one side of the ziggurat or by a spiral ramp from base to summit.

The Mesopotamian ziggurats were not places for public worship or ceremonies. They were believed to be dwelling places for the gods and each city had its own patron god. Only priests were permitted on the ziggurat or in the rooms at its base, and it was their responsibility to care for the gods and attend to their needs. The priests were very powerful members of Sumerian society.
