A!!! CIRCE ,THE GODNESS OF .....THE NEWS

  Alessandro13   In 84 AD, the Roman legions, commanded by the governor of Britain Gnaeus Julius Agricola, marched towards the north of the island to put an end once and for all to the resistance of the Caledonians The Romans, followed by the fleet, arrived near the “Mons Graupius” (located in Scotland) where the enemy awaited them. Tacitus tells us that the rebels were led by Calgacus, “the most distinguished for valor and nobility among the various leaders,” who launched into a speech full of pathos to encourage his men: “Whenever I think of the situation in which we find ourselves, I nourish the great hope that this day will be the beginning of freedom for all of Britain. For for all of you who are here and who do not know what servitude means, there is no other land beyond this and not even the sea is safe, since the Roman fleet looms over us. But after us there are no more tribes, but only rocks and waves and an even worse scourge, the Romans, against whose arrogance not ...

  ~ 413  BC D ESTRUCTION   OF   THE  A THENIAN   ARMY   AT  S YRACUSE Gylippus was a Spartan general of the 5th century  B . C . He was the son of Cleandridas, who had been expelled from Sparta for accepting Athenian bribes (446  B . C .) and had settled at Thurii. His mother was probably a helot, for Gylippus is said to have been, like Lysander and Callicratidas, a mothax (see Helot). When Alcibiades urged the Spartans to send a general to lead the Syracusan resistance against the Athenian expedition, Gylippus was appointed, and his arrival was undoubtedly the turning point of the struggle(414-413). Though at first his long hair, his threadbare cloak and his staff furnished the subject of many a jest, and his harsh and overbearing manner caused grave discontent, yet the rapidity and decisiveness of his movements, won the sympathy and respect of the Syracusans. Diodorus probably following Timaeus, represents him as inducing the Syra...

  Misplaced Aggression: The Athenian Defeat at Syracuse Seeking an advantage over its longtime Spartan reals, Athens launched an invasion of Sicily, only to have it falter outside the walls of Syracuse. This article appears in:  October 2007 By Barry Porter By the spring of 415 bc, a peace treaty between the warring city-states of Athens and Sparta had held firm for six years. The savage and unrelenting Peloponnesian War had come to the point where both sides realized that neither was in a position to vanquish the other. Peace seemed the logical choice—at least until the rivals could replenish their armed forces and come up with a new battle plan. That spring, Athens took a decisive step in that direction. The Athenian Invasion of Syracuse The year before, two cities on the island of Sicily had sent ambassadors to Athens to ask for help with their troublesome neighbor, Syracuse. Athens had intervened in the past to block Syracuse’s various expansions, but these attempts had be...

   HISTORY & CULTURE Finally, we can put a face on a Denisovan. The "Dragon Man" skull was discovered in Harbin, China in 1933 by a local laborer, but remained hidden away until 2018. A new analysis now finds its very likely to be a Denisovan. Photograph by Xijun Ni By Tim Vernimmen June 18, 2025 In the summer of 2021, a team of five Chinese researchers  stirred up some controversy  by suggesting that an unusual skull unearthed in northeastern China belonged to a previously unknown species they thereby officially described as  Homo  longi , nicknamed “Dragon Man.” (Both names were inspired by the Long Jiang Dragon River region where it was found.) Soon afterwards, the team was contacted by paleogeneticist  Qiaomei Fu  of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, who asked if she could try and get DNA from the skull.   Back in 2010, she’d been the first to investigate the DNA from a tiny finger bone fo...