Roman philosophy – ancient Rome
A Roman man making a speech (Florence, about 50 BC) Thanks to VROMA for the image Romans meet Greek philosophy Roman men didn't begin studying philosophy until about 200 BC. At that time, [...]
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09, 2017
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09, 2017
Cicero – Stoicism – Roman philosophy
Cicero's philosophy: a bust of Cicero (Capitoline Museum, Rome) Who was Cicero? In the last years of the Roman Republic, great men like Julius Caesar and Pompey fought over which of [...]
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09, 2017
Latin Literature – the writers of ancient Rome
Latin literature: A Roman papyrus scroll from a library of Epicurean philosophy (Herculaneum, Italy) Where did Latin come from? The Roman Empire lasted for more than a thousand years, so there was [...]
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08, 2017
Stoics – Greek and Roman philosophy
Cicero, a Roman philosopher The Stoics were a group of philosophers who first began teaching their ideas in the Hellenistic period. Stoicism was founded by a man named Zeno, who lived from 335-263 [...]
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08, 2017
Ancient philosophy: ethics, fate, and science
Weighing the souls of the dead Philosophy means the love of wisdom. But what does that mean? It's hard to separate philosophy from religion. And it's also hard to draw a [...]
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08, 2017
History of friendship
Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fight a monster, on an Assyrian cylinder seal from the 600s BC Why were friends important? Friends were very important to people in the ancient [...]
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08, 2017
Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince – Florence
Niccolo Machiavelli When did Machiavelli live? Around 1500 AD, Machiavelli was working for the government in the city-state of Florence. Florence was smack in the middle of the Renaissance, which meant that everybody [...]
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08, 2017
European writing – books, poetry, Bibles
Reproduction of a press from Gutenberg's time The invention of the European printing press with moveable type in northern Europe in the late 1400s AD was no accident: publishers had set out to find [...]
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08, 2017
Boccaccio – Decameron – Medieval literature
Florence, Italy Who was Boccaccio? Most of the people who knew how to write in the early Middle Ages were monks. So most of them wrote about serious things like God and [...]
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07, 2017
Damon and Pythias – an ancient Greek friendship
Places Damon and Pythias might have been: The Greek theater at Syracuse in Sicily Best friends in Sicily According to the Greek story, Damon and Pythias grew up in Sicily, [...]
