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The Bastarnae were an ancient people who between 200 BC and 300 AD inhabited the region between the Carpathian Mountains and the river Dnieper, to the north and east of ancient Dacia. The Peucini, described as a branch of the Bastarnae by Greco-Roman writers, occupied the region north of the Danube Delta.
Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes. Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs about twenty-five times independently via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. Legless lizards resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal.
Gaius Plinius Secundus, called Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, a naturalist and natural philosopher, a naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.
In Greek mythology, the Rod of Asclepius, also known as the Staff of Aesculapius and as the asklepian, is a serpent-entwined rod wielded by the Greek god Asclepius, a deity associated with healing and medicine. The symbol has continued to be used in modern times, where it is associated with medicine and health care, yet frequently confused with the staff of the god Hermes, the caduceus. Theories have been proposed about the Greek origin of the symbol and its implications.
Gulf of Sidra, after the oil port of Sidra, or Gulf of Sirte, after the city of Sirte, is a body of water in the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya. Historically it has been also known as the Great Sirte or Greater Syrtis.
The Garamantes are a civilisation and tribe mentioned by Herodotus. They are thought to correspond to Iron Age Berber tribes in the southwest of ancient Libya.
The Getae or Gets were several Thracian tribes that once inhabited the regions to either side of the Lower Danube, in what is today northern Bulgaria and southern Romania. Both the singular form Get and plural Getae may be derived from a Greek exonym: the area was the hinterland of Greek colonies on the Black Sea coast, bringing the Getae into contact with the ancient Greeks from an early date. Although it is believed that the Getae were related to their westward neighbours, the Dacians, several scholars, especially in the Romanian historiography, posit that the Getae and the Dacians were the same people.
Snake charming is the practice of appearing to hypnotize a snake by playing and waving around an instrument called a pungi. A typical performance may also include handling the snakes or performing other seemingly dangerous acts, as well as other street performance staples, like juggling and sleight of hand. The practice was historically the profession of some tribesmen in India but this is no longer the case.. Snakecharmer performances still happen in other poor Asian nations such as Pakistan. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and south-east Asian nations like Thailand, and Malaysia are also home to performers, as are the North African countries of Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia.
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The Machlyes were an ancient Libyan tribe. According to Herodotus, their young women held a ritual battle with sticks and stones annually with neighboring Auseans.
The death of Cleopatra VII, the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, occurred on either 10 or 12 August, 30 BC, in Alexandria, when she was 39 years old. According to popular belief, Cleopatra committed suicide by allowing an asp to bite her. According to Greek and Roman historians, Cleopatra poisoned herself using either a toxic ointment or sharp implement such as a hairpin. Primary source accounts are derived mainly from the works of the ancient Roman historians Strabo, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio. Modern scholars debate the validity of ancient reports involving snakebites as the cause of death and if she was murdered or not. Some academics hypothesize that her Roman political rival Octavian forced her to commit suicide in the manner of her choosing. The location of Cleopatra's tomb is unknown. It was recorded that Octavian allowed for her and her husband, the Roman politician and general Mark Antony, who stabbed himself with a sword, to be buried together properly.
White Aethiopians is a term found in ancient Roman literature, which may have referred to various non-"Negro" and light-complexioned populations inhabiting the Aethiopia region of antiquity. The exonym is used by Pliny the Elder, and is also mentioned by Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy and Orosius. These authorities do not, however, agree on the geographical location of the White Aethiopians.
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Salmydessus or Salmydessos, also Halmydessus or Halmydessos (Ἁλμυδισσὸς), was a coast-town of ancient Thrace, on the Euxine, about 60 miles (97 km) northwest from the entrance of the Bosporus. The eastern offshoots of the Haemus here come very close to the shore, which they divide from the valley of the Hebrus. The people of Salmydessus were thus cut off from communication with the less barbarous portions of Thrace, and became notorious for their savage and inhuman character, which harmonised well with that of their country, the coast of which was extremely dangerous. Aeschylus, who incorrectly places the down in Asia Minor, describes Salmydessus as "the rugged jaw of the sea, hostile to sailors, step-mother of ships;" and Xenophon informs us, that in his time its people carried on the business of wreckers in a very systematic manner, the coast being marked out into portions by means of posts erected along it, and those to whom each portion was assigned having the exclusive right to plunder all vessels and persons cast upon it. This plan, he says, was adopted to prevent the bloodshed which had frequently been occasioned among themselves by their previous practice of indiscriminate plunder. Strabo describes this portion of the coast of the Euxine as "desert, rocky, destitute of harbours, and completely exposed to the north winds;" while Xenophon characterises the sea adjoining it as "full of shoals." The earlier writers appear to speak of Salmydessus as a district only, but in later authors, as Apollodorus, Pliny the Elder, and Pomponius Mela, it is mentioned as a town.
References
Notes
- 1 2 3 Cook, Stanley Arthur (1911). . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica . 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 676–682.
- ↑ John C. Murphy, Secrets of the Snake Charmer ISBN 1450221262, 9781450221269 iUniversity 2010, p. 8
Further reading
- Smith, Richard L. (December 2003). "What Happened to the Ancient Libyans?". Journal of World History . 14 (4): 459–500. doi:10.1353/jwh.2003.0060.