The Rosetta Stone is a granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic scrip...

Hipparchus was the most important Greek astronomers of his time. He very accurately cataloged over 1,000 stars and invented the mathematical science of trigonometry. Ptolemy was a great admirer of Hipparchus's research and recorded some of...

Gaius Lucilius, the earliest Roman satirist, of whose writings only fragments remain, was a Roman citizen of the equestrian class, born at Suessa Aurunca in Campania. The dates assigned by Jerome for his birth and death are 148 BC and 103 B...

Emperor Wu of Han was the seventh emperor of the Han dynasty of China, ruling from 141–87 BC. He is one of the most famous emperors of ancient China. Emperor Wu's reign lasted 54 years — a record that was not broken until the reign of th...

Zhang Qian (d. 113 BC) was a Chinese official and diplomat who served as an imperial envoy to the world outside of China in the 2nd century BC, during the time of the Han dynasty. He was the first official diplomat to bring back reliable in...

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from the Antikythera wreck. Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its...

The Dead Sea scrolls consist of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the Qumran Wadi near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the no...

In the 3d century B.C. Rome challenged Carthage’s control of the W Mediterranean in the Punic Wars (so called after the Roman name for the Carthaginians, Poeni, i.e., Phoenicians). The First Punic War (264–241) cost Carthage all re...

Sima Qian was a Chinese historian of the early Han dynasty (206 BC – AD 220). He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his Records of the Grand Historian, a general history of China in the Jizhuanti style covering more than...

Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, known commonly as Sulla, was a Roman general and statesman. He had the distinction of holding the office of consul twice, as well as reviving the dictatorship. Sulla was a skillful general, achieving numerous s...

Posidonius of Apameia or of Rhodes was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian and teacher native to Apamea, Syria. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age. None of his vast body of work can be...

Mithridates VI or Mithradates VI, also known as Mithridates the Great (Megas) and Eupator Dionysius, was king of Pontus and Armenia Minor in northern Anatolia (now in Turkey) from about 119 to 63 BC. Mithridates was a king of Persian origi...

Marcus Licinius Crassus was a Roman general and politician who commanded Sulla's decisive victory at Colline gate, suppressed the slave revolt led by Spartacus and entered into a secret pact, known as the First Triumvirate, with Gnaeus Pomp...

Spartacus was a Thracian gladiator who, along with Crixus, Gannicus, Castus, and Oenomaus, was one of the escaped slave leaders in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about him beyond th...

Pompey (the Great), was a distinguished and ambitious Roman military leader, provincial administrator and politician of the 1st century BC, the period of the Late Republic. Hailing from an Italian provincial background, Pompey first disting...