Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Phocylides

(Encyclopedia)Phocylides fəsĭlˈĭdēz [key], fl. 6th cent. b.c., Greek poet, b. Miletus. His gnomic (aphoristic) verses exist in fragments. ...

Balak

(Encyclopedia)Balak bāˈlăk [key], in the Bible, king of Moab who hired Balaam to curse Israel. Balac is a Greek form. ...

Lethe

(Encyclopedia)Lethe lēˈthē [key], in Greek mythology, river of forgetfulness in Hades. The dead drank from Lethe upon their arrival in the underworld. ...

Hyperboreans

(Encyclopedia)Hyperboreans hīˌpərbôrˈēənz, –bôrēˈənz [key], in Greek mythology, people dwelling in a state of perfect bliss in the Far North who were Apollo worshipers. ...

Pratinas

(Encyclopedia)Pratinas prătˈĭnəs [key], fl. c.500 b.c., Greek dithyrambic poet of Phlius, said to have introduced the satyr play into Athens. ...

Locris

(Encyclopedia)Locris lōˈkrĭs [key], region of central Greece. The state was probably in existence before the arrival of the Phocians. The rise of Doris and Phocis split the original region into western and easte...

Müller, Karl Otfried

(Encyclopedia)Müller, Karl Otfried mülˈər [key], 1797–1840, German classical scholar and archaeologist. He was professor of classics at the Univ. of Göttingen (1819–39), lecturing on art history, literatu...

Epirus, despotate of

(Encyclopedia)Epirus, despotate of. When, in 1204, the army of the Fourth Crusade set up the Latin Empire of Constantinople on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire, an independent Greek state emerged in Epirus under M...

Eleatic school

(Encyclopedia)Eleatic school ēlēătˈĭk [key], Greek pre-Socratic philosophical school at Elea, a Greek colony in Lucania, Italy. The group was founded in the early 5th cent. b.c. by Parmenides, its greatest thi...

elegy

(Encyclopedia)elegy, in Greek and Roman poetry, a poem written in elegiac verse (i.e., couplets consisting of a hexameter line followed by a pentameter line). The form dates back to 7th cent. b.c. in Greece and poe...