Columbia Encyclopedia

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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. ...

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. ...

Lethe

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

Pratinas

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

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...

Colchis

(Encyclopedia)Colchis kŏlˈkĭs [key], ancient country on the eastern shore of the Black Sea and in the Caucasus region. Centered about the fertile valley of the Phasis River (the modern Rion), Colchis corresponds...

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...

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...