Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Golding, Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Golding, Arthur, c.1536–c.1605, English translator. He translated many Latin classics, including Caesar's Gallic War and Ovid's Metamorphoses. A Calvinist, Golding tried to infuse the Metamorphoses ...

Agabus

(Encyclopedia)Agabus ăgˈəbəs [key], in the New Testament, prophet who foretold the famine in the time of Claudius Caesar and the imprisonment of Paul. ...

Cinna, d. 44 b.c., Roman tribune

(Encyclopedia)Cinna (Caius Helvius Cinna), d. 44 b.c., Roman tribune. At the funeral of Julius Caesar the mob mistook him for Lucius Cornelius Cinna and killed him. He was probably the minor poet Cinna, a friend of...

Cicero, Roman orator

(Encyclopedia)Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) sĭsˈərō [key] or Tully, 106 b.c.–43 b.c., greatest Roman orator, famous also as a politician and a philosopher. To the modern reader probably the most interesti...

Pharsalus

(Encyclopedia)Pharsalus färˈsäləs [key], ancient city, Thessaly, Greece. Near there in 48 b.c., Julius Caesar decisively defeated Pompey, who had a much larger force. Lucan's Bellum Civile (often called Pharsal...

Ptolemy XIII

(Encyclopedia)Ptolemy XIII, 61?–47 b.c., king of ancient Egypt (51–47 b.c.), of the Macedonian dynasty; son of Ptolemy XII. On the death of his father he was under the guardianship of Pompey. He was completely ...

Catiline

(Encyclopedia)Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina) kătˈĭlīn [key], c.108 b.c.–62 b.c., Roman politician and conspirator. At first a conservative and a partisan of Sulla, he was praetor in 68 b.c. and governor o...

Leggett, Sir Anthony James

(Encyclopedia)Leggett, Sir Anthony James, 1938–, British physicist, Ph.D. Oxford, 1964. He was a professor at Sussex Univ., England, from 1967 to 1983, when he joined the faculty at the Univ. of Illinois at Urban...

Keith, James Francis Edward

(Encyclopedia)Keith, James Francis Edward, 1696–1758, Scottish field marshal of Prussia; brother of George Keith, 10th earl marischal [marshal] of Scotland. He participated in the Jacobite uprising of 1715 and in...

Monboddo, James Burnett, Lord

(Encyclopedia)Monboddo, James Burnett, Lord, 1714–99, English writer, b. Scotland. A pioneer in anthropology, he wrote Of the Origin and Progress of Language (6 vol., 1774–92), in which he anticipated Darwin an...