Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- hellenistic:hellenistic-period:hellenistic_period_page [2013/10/06 10:38] – [Nausiphanes of Teos] fredmond
+++ hellenistic:hellenistic-period:hellenistic_period_page [2014/01/15 12:01] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
@@ Line 62: / Line 62: @@
 ===== Polybius =====
+Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, __The Histories__, which covered the period of 264–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece. Polybius is also renowned for his ideas concerning the separation of powers in government, later used in Montesquieu's __The Spirit of the Laws__ and in the drafting of the United States Constitution. Polybius was born in Arcadia around 200 BC. He was the son of Lycortas, a Greek politician who became Cavalry Commander of the Achaean League. His father's opposition to Roman control of Macedonia resulted in his imprisonment. Polybius was then deported to Rome, where Lucius Aemilius Paulus employed him to tutor his two sons. Polybius had the opportunity to return to Macedonia in 152 BC; he elected to stay, however, in Rome, as by that time he had placed his allegiance in the Roman Republic. He became a close friend of the Roman military commander Scipio Aemilianus, accompanying the general to Hispania and Africa. Polybius's __The Histories__ provides a detailed account of Rome's ascent to empire and included his eyewitness account of the Sack of Carthage in 146 BC. Polybius held that historians should only chronicle events whose participants the historian was able to interview, and was among the first to champion the notion of having factual integrity in historical writing, while avoiding bias.
 [[hellenistic:polybius|Polybius Page]]
 ===== Theocritus =====
+Creator of ancient Greek bucolic poetry, flourished in the 3rd century BC. (A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art and music that depicts such life in an idealized manner, typically for urban audiences. A pastoral is a work of this genre. An alternative word for pastoral as a genre, both in adjectival and noun form, is bucolic, from the Greek βουκόλος, meaning a cowherd.) Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems (Idylls) commonly attributed to him have little claim to authenticity. It is clear that at a very early date two collections were made: one consisting of poems whose authorship was doubtful yet formed a corpus of bucolic poetry, the other a strict collection of those works considered to have been composed by Theocritus himself. Theocritus was from Sicily, as he refers to Polyphemus, the cyclops in the __Odyssey__, as his "countryman." He also probably lived in Alexandria for a while, where he wrote about everyday life, notably Pharmakeutria. It is also speculated that Theocritus was born in Syracuse, lived on the island of Kos, and lived in Egypt during the time of Ptolemy II.
 [[hellenistic:theocritus|Theocritus Page]]