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History Of Elephants In Europe

History of elephants in Europe

The history of elephants in Europe dates back to the ice ages, when mammoths (various species of prehistoric elephant) roamed the northern parts of the Earth, from Europe to North America. There was also the dwarf elephant of Cyprus (Palaeoloxodon cypriotes) Sicily-Malta (Palaeoloxodon falconeri) and mainland (Palaeoloxodon antiquus). However, these became extinct several thousand years ago, and subsequently the presence of elephants in Europe is only due to importation of these animals. As exotic and expensive animals, they were often exchanged as presents between European rulers, who exhibited them as luxury pets. Historical accounts of elephants in Europe include:
- The 20 elephants in Pyrrhus's, king of Epirus, army that landed his army at Tarentum in 280 BC for the first Battle of Heraclea, recorded in Plutarch's Lives, Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Livy. Coins of Tarentum after this battle also featured elephants.
- The 37 elephants in Hannibal's army that crossed the Rhône in October/November 218 BC during the Second Punic War, recorded by Livy.
- The first historically recorded elephant in northern Europe was the animal brought by emperor Claudius, during the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, to the British capital of Colchester.
- Abul-Abbas, the Asian elephant given to Charlemagne by Haroun al-Raschid in 797 or 802. The animal died in 810, of pneumonia.
- 810 Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor captured an elephant in the Holy Land and used it in the capture of Cremona in 1214.
- The elephant given by Louis IX of France to Henry III of England, for his menagerie in the Tower of London in 1255 (see: Sandwich Kent). Drawn from life by the historian Matthew Paris for his Chronica Majora, it was the first elephant to be seen in England since Claudius' war elephant. It is supposed to have died in 1257 from drinking too much red wine. It is carved on a contemporary miserichord in Exeter Cathedral. This animal may be the inspiration for the heraldic device 'Elephant and Castle,' the arms of the Cutlers' Company of London, a guild founded in the 13th Century responsible for making scissors, knives and the like. Its heraldry survived in an 18th century pub sign that in turn gave its name to a largely modern district in South London.
- In the 1470s, King Christian I of Denmark founded a chivalric order, the Order of the Elephant, and had it confirmed by Pope Sixtus IV. The order is named for the battle elephants which symbolized the Christian Crusades. Today, it continues to be awarded under statutes established by king Christian V in 1693, amended in 1958 to permit the admission of women to the order.
- The elephant given by Afonso V of Portugal to René d'Anjou about 1477.
- The merchants of Cyprus presented Ercole d'Este with an elephant in 1497.
- Suleyman the Elephant was a present from the Portuguese king John III to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. The animal arrived in Valladolid in 1551, was then shipped to Genoa, and travelled overland to Hall, sailing from there on 22 January 1552 with Maximilian on the Inn to Vienna, festively entering the city on 7 May 1552. A wave of "elephant enthusiasms" followed, and Suleyman was a popular subject for artists and poets. The animal had his portrait drawn by the German artists Hans Burgkmair the Elder, Albrecht Altdorfer and Albrecht Dürer. Suleyman installed in the menagerie of Schloß Kaiser-Ebersdorf, but died in December 1553. Maximillian had a commemorative medal by sculptor Michael Fuchs issued. His front right foot and part of a shoulder-blade were given to the mayor of Vienna, Sebastian Huetstocker, and the bones were fashioned into a chair that currently resides at the Kremsmunster abbey. The rest of the body was stuffed and exhibited in Kaiserebersdorf until Maximillian, as Emperor, presented it as a gift to Albrecht V in Munich. After standing more than 100 years in the Old Academy, the body was transferred to the Bavarian national museum in 1928. The mummy deteriorated during World War II.
- Hanno, or Annone, was a white elephant presented by king Manuel I of Portugal to Pope Leo X on the occasion of his coronation in 1514. He died, probably of an intestinal obstruction misdiagnosed as angina, with Pope Leo at his side in 1518. His story is told in Silvio Bedini's The Pope's Elephant (Nashville: Sanders 1998). At the Villa Madama, in the garden facing the loggia, the Elephant Fountain designed by Giovanni da Udine depicts "Annone", whose tomb was designed by Raphael himself.

See also


- War elephant
- List of historical elephants

External links


- [http://www.caslon.com.au/logo.htm Anecdotes of elephants as royal European status gifts.]
- [http://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/Tour/Tour12.html http://www.exeter-cathedral.org.uk/Tour/Tour12.html]

Reference

"They Called him Suleyman: The Adventurous Journey of an Elephant from the Forests of Kerala to the Capital of Vienna in the middle of the sixteenth Century", Karl Saurer & Elena M.Hinshaw-Fischli, collected in Maritime Malabar and The Europeans, edited by K. S. Mathew, Hope India Publications: Gurgaon, 2003 ISBN 8178710293 Category:Elephants Elephants

Ice age

An ice age is a period of long-term downturn in the temperature of Earth's climate, resulting in an expansion of the continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers ("glaciation"). Glaciologically, ice age is often used to mean a period of ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in an ice age (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist). More colloquially, when speaking of the last few million years, ice age is used to refer to colder periods with extensive ice sheets over the North American and European continents: in this sense, the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. This article will use the term ice age in the former, glaciological, sense; and use the term 'glacial periods' for colder periods during ice ages and 'interglacial' for the warmer periods. During the last few million years, there have been many glacial periods, occurring initially at 40,000-year frequency but more recently at 100,000-year frequencies. These are the best studied. There have been four major ice ages in the further past.

Origin of ice age theory

The idea that, in the past, glaciers had been far more extensive was folk knowledge in some alpine regions of Europe (Imbrie and Imbrie, p25, quote a woodcutter telling de Charpentier of the former extent of the Swiss Grimsel glacier). No single person invented the idea [http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/histgeol/agassiz/glacial.htm]. Between 1825 and 1833, Jean de Charpentier assembled evidence in support of this idea. In 1836 Charpentier convinced Louis Agassiz of the theory, and Agassiz published it in his book Étude sur les glaciers of 1840. At this early stage of knowledge, what were being studied were the glacial periods within the past few hundred thousand years, during the current ice age. The far earlier ice ages' very existence was unsuspected.

Major ice ages

There have been at least four major ice ages in the Earth's past. The earliest hypothesized ice age is believed to have occurred around 2.7 to 2.3 billion (109) years ago during the early Proterozoic Age. :Main article: Snowball Earth. The earliest well-documented ice age, and probably the most severe of the last 1 billion years, occurred from 800 to 600 million years ago (the Cryogenian period) and it has been suggested that it produced a Snowball Earth in which permanent sea ice extended to or very near the equator. It has been suggested that the end of this ice age was responsible for the subsequent Cambrian Explosion, though this theory is recent and controversial. A minor ice age occurred from 460 to 430 million years ago, during the Late Ordovician Period. There were extensive polar ice caps at intervals from 350 to 260 million years ago, during the Carboniferous and early Permian Periods. early Permian The present ice age began 40 million years ago with the growth of an ice sheet in Antarctica, but intensified during the Pleistocene (starting around 3 million years ago) with the spread of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. Since then, the world has seen cycles of glaciation with ice sheets advancing and retreating on 40,000 and 100,000 year time scales. The last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago. The timing of ice ages throughout geologic history is in part controlled by the position of the continental plates on the surface of the Earth. When landmasses are concentrated near the polar regions, there is an increased chance for snow and ice to accumulate. Small changes in solar energy can tip the balance between summers in which the winter snow mass completely melts and summers in which the winter snow persists until the following winter. Due to the positions of Greenland, Antarctica, and the northern portions of Europe, Asia, and North America in polar regions, the Earth today is considered prone to ice age glaciations. Evidence for ice ages comes in various forms, including rock scouring and scratching, glacial moraines, drumlins, valley cutting, and the deposition of till or tillites and glacial erratics. Successive glaciations tend to distort and erase the geological evidence, making it difficult to interpret. It took some time for the current theory to be worked out. Analyses of ice cores and ocean sediment cores unambiguously show the record of glacials and interglacials over the past few million years.

Interglacials

glacial erratic In between ice ages, there are multi-million year periods of more temperate climate, but also within the ice ages (or at least within the last one), temperate and severe periods occur. The colder periods are called 'glacial periods', the warmer periods 'interglacials', such as the Eemian interglacial era. We are in an interglacial period now, the last retreat ending about 10,000 years ago. There appears to be a folk wisdom that "the typical interglacial period lasts ~12,000 years" but this is hard to substantiate from the evidence of ice core records. For example, an article in Nature [http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v429/n6992/abs/nature02599_fs.html] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years. Nonetheless, fear of a new glacial period starting soon does exist (See: global cooling). However, many now believe that anthropogenic (manmade) forcing from increased "greenhouse gases" would outweigh any Milankovitch (orbital) forcing; and some recent considerations of the orbital forcing have even argued that in the absence of human perturbations the present interglacial could potentially last 50,000 years.

Causes of ice ages

The cause of ice ages remains controversial for both the large-scale ice age periods and the smaller ebb and flow of glacial/interglacial periods within an ice age. The general consensus is that it is a combination of up to three different factors: atmospheric composition (particularly the fraction of CO2 and methane), changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun known as Milankovitch cycles (and possibly the Sun's orbit around the galaxy), and the arrangement of the continents. The first of these three factors is probably responsible for much of the change, especially for the first ice age. The "Snowball Earth" hypothesis maintains that the severe freezing in the late Proterozoic was both caused and ended by changes in CO2 levels in the atmosphere. However, the other two factors do matter. An abundance of land within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles appears to be a necessity for an ice age, probably because the landmasses provide space on which snow and ice can accumulate during cooler times and thus trigger positive feedback processes like albedo changes. The Earth's orbit does not have a great effect on the long-term causation of ice ages, but does seem to dictate the pattern of multiple freezings and thawings that take place within the current ice age. The complex pattern of changes in Earth's orbit and the change of albedo may influence the occurrence of glacial and interglacial phases — this was first explained by the theory of Milutin Milankovic. The present ice ages are the most studied and best understood, particularly the last 400,000 years, since this is the period covered by ice cores that record atmospheric composition and proxies for temperature and ice volume. Within this period, the match of glacial/interglacial frequencies to the Milankovic orbital forcing periods is so good that orbital forcing is the generally accepted explanation. The combined effects of the changing distance to the sun, the precession of the Earth's axis, and the changing tilt of the Earth's axis can change and significantly redistribute the sunlight received by the Earth. Of particular importance are changes in the tilt of the Earth's axis, which impact the intensity of seasons. For example, the amount of solar influx in July at 65 degrees north latitude is calculated to vary by as much as 25% (from 400 W/m2 to 500 W/m2, see graph at [http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/insolation_graph.html]). It is widely believed that ice sheets advance when summers become too mild to melt all of the accumulated snowfall from the previous winter. Some workers believe that the strength of the orbital forcing appears to be too small to trigger glaciations, but feedback mechanisms like CO2 may explain this mismatch. While Milankovic forcing predicts that cyclic changes in the Earth's orbital parameters can be expressed in the glaciation record, additional explanations are necessary to explain which cycles are observed to be most important in the timing of glacial/interglacial periods. In particular, during the last 800 thousand years, the dominant inter/glacial oscillation has been 100 thousand years, which corresponds to changes in Earth's eccentricity and orbital inclination, and yet is by far the weakest of the three frequencies predicted by Milankovic. During the period 3.0 — 0.8 million years ago, the dominant pattern of glaciation corresponded to the 41 thousand year period of changes in Earth's obliquity (tilt of the axis). The reasons for preferring one frequency to another are poorly understood and an active area of current research, but the answer probably relates to some form of resonance in the Earth's climate system. The "traditional" Milankovitch explanation struggles to explain the dominance of the 100,000-year cycle over the last 8 cycles. Richard A. Muller and Gordon J. MacDonald [http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/16/8329] [http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/glacialmain.htm] [http://muller.lbl.gov/papers/sciencespectra.htm] and others have pointed out that those calculations are for a two-dimensional orbit of Earth but the three-dimensional orbit also has a 100 thousand year cycle of orbital inclination. They proposed that these variations in orbital inclination lead to variations in insolation, as the earth moves in and out of known dust bands in the solar system. Although this is a different mechanism to the traditional view, the "predicted" periods over the last 400,000 years are nearly the same. The Muller and MacDonald theory, in turn, has been challenged by Rial [http://pangea.stanford.edu/Oceans/GES290/Rial1999.pdf]. Another worker, Ruddiman has suggested a plausible model that explains the 100,000 cycle by the modulating effect of eccentricity (weak 100,000 year cycle) on precession (23,000 year cycle) combined with greenhouse gas feedbacks in the 41,000 and 23,000-year cycles. Yet another theory has been advanced by Peter Huybers who argued that the 41,000-year cycle has always been dominant, but that the Earth has entered a mode of climate behavior where only the 2nd or 3rd cycle triggers an ice age. This would imply that the 100,000-year periodicity is really an illusion created by averaging together cycles lasting 80 and 120 thousand years. This theory is consistent with the existing uncertainties in dating, but not widely accepted at present (Nature 434, 2005, [http://web.mit.edu/~phuybers/www/Doc/Obliquity_HuybersWunsch.pdf]).

Recent glacial and interglacial phases

Richard A. Muller See Timeline of glaciation.

Glaciation in North America

The Wisconsinan glaciation has had a considerable effect on the landscape of the Northern Hemisphere. In North America, the Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes were carved by ice's deepening of old valleys. The old Teays River drainage system was radically altered and largely reshaped into the Ohio River drainage system. Other rivers were dammed and diverted to new channels, such as the Niagara, which formed a dramatic waterfall and gorge, when the waterflow encountered a limestone escarpment. Another similar waterfall near Syracuse, New York is now dry. Long Island was formed from glacial till, and the watersheds of Canada were so severely disrupted that they are still sorting themselves out — the plethora of lakes on the Canadian Shield in northern Canada can be almost entirely attributed to the action of the ice. As the ice retreated and the rock dust dried, winds carried the material hundreds of miles, forming beds of loess many dozens of feet thick in the Missouri Valley. Isostatic rebound continues to reshape the Great Lakes and other areas formerly under the weight of the ice sheets. The Driftless Zone, around the junction of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, was not covered by glaciers.

Reference


- Imbrie, John and Katherine Palmer Imbrie. Ice ages: Solving the Mystery. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979, 1986 (reprint). ISBN 089490020X; ISBN 0894900153; ISBN 0674440757.

See also


- Geology
- Timeline of glaciation
- Cryogenian period
- Glacial erratic
- Glacial striations
- Glacier
- Little Ice Age
- Genesee River: Glacial Geology — Relief maps of some glacial landforms and drainage alterations in western NY.

External links


- [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ice/ Cracking the Ice Age] from PBS
- http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/samson/climate_patterns/ Category:Glaciology Category:History of climate ms:Zaman air batu ja:氷河期

Mammoth

:This article is about the extinct mammal. For the town with this name, see Mammoth, Arizona.

Mammuthus columbi Columbian mammoth
Mammuthus exilis Pygmy mammoth
Mammuthus jeffersonii Jeffersonian mammoth
Mammuthus meridionalis
Mammuthus primigenius Wooly mammoth
A mammoth (from Russian мамонт) is any of a number of an extinct genus of elephant, often with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived during the Pleistocene epoch from 1.6 million years ago to around 10,000 years ago.

Evolutionary history

Mammoth remains have been found in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They are believed to have originally evolved in North Africa about 4.8 million years ago, where bones of Mammuthus africanavus have been found in Chad, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. Despite their African ancestry they are in fact more closely related to the modern Indian elephant than the African elephant is to either. The common ancestor of mammoths and Asian elephants split from the line of African elephants about 7.3 million years ago. In due course the African mammoth migrated north to Europe and gave rise to a new species, the southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis). This eventually spread across Europe and Asia and across the now-submerged Bering Land Bridge into North America. Around 700,000 years ago, the warm climate of the time deteriorated markedly and the savannah plains of Europe, Asia and North America gave way to colder and less fertile steppes. The southern mammoth declined, being replaced across most of its range by the cold-adapted steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii). This in turn gave rise around 300,000 years ago to the woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primogenius), which was better able to cope with the extreme cold of the Ice Ages. The woollies were a spectacularly successful species; they ranged from Spain to North America and are thought to have existed in huge numbers. The Russian researcher Sergei Zimov estimates that during the last Ice Age, parts of Siberia may have had an average population density of sixty animals per hundred square kilometres - equivalent to African elephants today.

Extinction

Most mammoths died out at the end of the last Ice Age. However, the dwarf mammoths of Wrangel Island became extinct only around 2700 BCE. Whether the mammoth died out for climatic reasons or due to overhunting by humans is debated. A third theory suggests that mammoths may have fallen victim to an infectious disease. A definitive explanation has yet to be agreed upon, and it is very possible that a combination of factors was responsible rather than any one single cause. There have been occasional claims that the mammoth is not actually extinct, and that isolated herds might survive in the vast and sparsely inhabited tundra of Siberia or Alaska. However, no verified evidence has been produced to support these claims.

Size

It is a common misconception that mammoths were much larger than modern elephants, an error that has led to "mammoth" being used as an adjective meaning "very big". Certainly, the largest known species, the Imperial Mammoth of California, reached heights of at least 4 meters (13 feet) at the shoulder. Mammoths would probably weigh in the region of 6-8 tons. [http://rbcm1.rbcm.gov.bc.ca/hhistory/mammoth/mammothstory.html]. However, most species of mammoth were only about as large as a modern Indian elephant, and fossils of a species of dwarf mammoth have been found on Wrangel Island off the east coast of Siberia.

Adaptations

Mammoths had a number of adaptations to the cold, most famously the thick layer of shaggy hair, up to 50 cm (20 in) long, for which the woolly mammoth is named. They also had far smaller ears than modern elephants; the largest mammoth ear found so far was only a foot (30 cm) long, compared to six feet (1.8 m) for an African elephant. They had a flap of hairy skin which covered the anus, keeping out the cold. Their teeth were also adapted to their diet of coarse tundra grasses, with more plates and a higher crown than their southern relatives. Their skin was no thicker than that of present-day elephants, but unlike elephants they had numerous sebaceous glands in their skin which secreted greasy fat into their hair, improving its insulating qualities. They had a layer of fat up to 8 cm (3 in) thick under the skin which, like the blubber of whales, helped to keep them warm. Mammoths had extremely long tusks - up to 16 feet (5 m) long - which were markedly curved, to a much greater extent than those of elephants. It is not clear whether the tusks were a specific adaptation to their environment, but it has been suggested that mammoths may have used their tusks as shovels to clear snow from the ground and reach the vegetation buried below.

Preserved remains

Preserved frozen remains of woolly mammoths have been found in the northern parts of Siberia. However, the popular notion that these bodies were 'flash frozen' and perfectly preserved is a myth propogated by pseudoscientists such as Immanuel Velikovsky. Preservation is a rare occurrence, essentially requiring the animal to have been buried rapidly in liquid or semi-solids such as silt, mud and icy water which then froze. This may have occurred in a number of ways. Mammoths may have been trapped in bogs or quicksands and either died of starvation or exposure, or drowning if they sank under the surface. They may have fallen through frozen ice into small ponds or potholes, entombing them. Many are certainly known to have been killed in rivers, perhaps through being swept away by river floods; in one location, by the Berelekh River in Yakutia in Siberia, more than 9,000 bones from at least 156 individual mammoths have been found in a single spot, apparently having been swept there by the current. To date, thirty-nine preserved bodies have been found, but only four of them are complete. In most cases the flesh shows signs of decay before its freezing and later desiccation. Stories abound about frozen mammoth corpses that were still edible once defrosted, but the original sources (e.g. William R. Farrand's article in Science 133 [March 17, 1961]:729-735) indicate that the corpses were in fact terribly decayed, and the stench so unbearable that only the dogs accompanying the finders showed any interest in the flesh. In addition to frozen corpses, large amounts of mammoth ivory have been found in Siberia. Mammoth tusks have been an article of trade for at least 2,000 years. They have been and are still a highly prized commodity. Güyük, the 13th century Khan of the Mongols, is reputed to have sat on a throne made from mammoth ivory, and even today it is in great demand as a replacement for the now-banned export of elephant ivory. Since there is a known case in which an Indian elephant and an African elephant have produced a live (though sickly) offspring, it has been theorised that if mammoths were still alive today, they would be able to interbreed with Indian elephants. This has led to the idea that perhaps a mammoth-like beast could be recreated by taking genetic material from a frozen mammoth and combining it with that from a modern Indian elephant. Scientists hope to retrieve the preserved reproductive organs of a frozen mammoth and revive its sperm cells. However, not enough genetic material has been found in frozen mammoths for this to be attempted.

Origins of the name

The name "mammoth" comes via Russian from the Tatar language. It may have its origins in the Tatar word mamma, "earth", alluding to the long-held belief that mammoths lived underground and made burrows. The 17th century traveller Eberhard Ysbrant Ides recorded that the Evenk, Yakut and Ostyak peoples of Siberia believed that the mammoths "continually, or at least by reason of the very hard frosts, mostly live under ground, where they go backwards and forwards." Exposure to the air was enough to kill them, explaining why they were never seen alive.

See also


- Mastodon

External links


- "[http://rbcm1.rbcm.gov.bc.ca/hhistory/mammoth/mammothstory.html The Mammoth Story]" by Grant Keddie - an article on the Royal British Columbia Museum website
- [http://www.mammothsite.com Mammoth Site] of Hot Springs, South Dakota
- [http://fax.libs.uga.edu/E98xP4xM5/ The Lenape Stone or The Indian and the Mammoth], by H. C. Mercer, 1885. (searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & [http://fax.libs.uga.edu/E98xP4xM5/1f/lenape_stone.pdf layered PDF] format)

Further reading


- Lister, Adrian; Bahn, Paul. Mammoths. London: MacMillan, 1994 (ISBN 0025729853).
- Martin, Paul S. Twilight of the mammoths: Ice Age extinctions and the rewilding of America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005 (ISBN 0520231414).
- Stone, Richard. Mammonths: The resurrection of an Ice Age giant. London: Fourth Estate, 2001 (ISBN 1-84115-518-7) Category:Pleistocene mammals Category:Prehistoric mammals Category:Pleistocene extinctions ja:マンモス



North America

North America is a continent in the northern hemisphere bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific Ocean. It covers an area of 24,497,994 km² (9,458,728 sq mi), or about 4.8% of the Earth's surface. As of July 2002, its population was estimated at more than 514,600,000. It is the third largest continent in area, after Asia and Africa, and is fourth in population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. Both North and South America are named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a previously undiscovered (by Europeans) New World. North America occupies the northern portion of the landmass generally referred to as the New World, the Western Hemisphere, the Americas, or simply America. North America's only land connection is to South America at the narrow Isthmus of Panama. (For geopolitical reasons, all of Panama – including the segment east of the Panama Canal in the isthmus – is often considered a part of North America alone.) According to some authorities, North America begins not at the Isthmus of Panama but at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, with the intervening region called Central America and resting on the Caribbean Plate. Most, however, tend to see Central America as a region of North America, considering it too small to be a continent on its own. Greenland, although a part of North America geographically, is not considered to be part of the continent politically.

Physical features

Greenland, plutonic, metamorphic rock types of North America. ]] Plate tectonics recognizes the vast majority of North America as being the surface of the North American Plate. Parts of California and western Mexico are known for being the edge of the Pacific Plate, with the two plates meeting along the San Andreas fault. The continent can be divided into four great regions (each of which contains many sub-regions): the Great Plains stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian Arctic; the geologically young, mountainous west, including the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, California and Alaska; the raised but relatively flat plateau of the Canadian Shield in the northeast; and the varied eastern region, which includes the Appalachian Mountains, the coastal plain along the Atlantic seaboard, and the Florida peninsula. Mexico, with its long plateaus and cordilleras, falls largely in the western region, although the eastern coastal plain does extend south along the Gulf. The western mountains are split in the middle, into the main range of the Rockies and the coast ranges in California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia with the Great Basin – a lower area containing smaller ranges and low-lying deserts – in between. The highest peak is Denali in Alaska. Since 1931, Rugby, North Dakota, has officially been recognized as being at the geographic center of North America. The location is marked by a 4.5 metre (15 foot) field stone obelisk. Image:North america terrain 2003 map.jpg|North America bedrock and terrain. Image:North america basement rocks.png|North American cratons and basement rocks. Image:North America Tectonic Elements.jpg|Tectonic elements of North America Image:North america craton nps.gif|North American craton.

Territories and regions

craton On the main continent landmass, there are three large and relatively populous countries:
- Canada - many large islands off the shore of North America belong to Canada, including Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands on the west, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island on the east, and the Canadian Arctic islands (including Ellesmere Island, Baffin Island, and Victoria Island) in the north
- Mexico - the Revillagigedo archipelago and numerous smaller islands off its coast belong to Mexico
- The United States - the 48 contiguous states and Alaska are part of North America, while the state of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean is not; the Aleutian Islands south of Alaska also belong to the U.S. At the southern end of the continent, in a relatively small area known as Central America, are the countries of:
- Belize
- Costa Rica
- El Salvador
- Guatemala
- Honduras
- Nicaragua
- Panama 1 At the southeastern end of the continent lies a chain of islands territories called the Antilles, the Caribbean or the West Indies, which include the countries:
- Antigua and Barbuda
- Bahamas
- Barbados
- Cuba
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- Grenada
- Haiti
- Jamaica
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Trinidad and Tobago 1 And the dependencies:
- Anguilla (British overseas territory)
- Aruba 2 (part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands)
- Cayman Islands (British overseas territory)
- Guadeloupe (French région d'outre-mer)
- Martinique (French région d'outre-mer)
- Montserrat (British overseas territory)
- Navassa Island (U.S. territory)
- Netherlands Antilles 1 (part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands)
- Puerto Rico (U.S. commonwealth)
- Turks and Caicos Islands (British overseas territory)
- British Virgin Islands (British overseas territory)
- U.S. Virgin Islands (territory of the USA) Lying in the Atlantic Ocean but considered part of the continent are the dependencies:
- Bermuda, a British overseas territory found about 1,072 km (670 mi.) southeast of New York City
- Greenland, the largest island in the world and a self-governing dependency of Denmark, which is located in the far north of the continent to the east of Nunavut.
- Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French collectivité d'outre-mer off the south coast of Newfoundland, is the last of France's once vast possessions in America north of the Caribbean. 1 These states and dependencies have territory both in North and South America.
2 These dependencies lie in South America, but are considered North American because of cultural and historical reasons.
See here for details.

Usage

The United States, Canada, and the other English-speaking nations of the Americas (Belize, Guyana, and the Anglophone Caribbean) are sometimes grouped under the term Anglo-America, while the remaining nations of North and South America are grouped under the term Latin America. Alternatively, Northern America is used to refer to Canada and the U.S. together (plus Greenland and Bermuda), while Central America is mainland North America south of the United States. The West Indies generally include all islands in the Caribbean Sea. In this respect, Latin America generally includes Central America and South America and, sometimes, the West Indies. The term Middle America is sometimes used to refer to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean collectively. The term "North America" may mean different things to different people. The term in common usage is often taken to mean "the United States and Canada, only" by some people of the United States and Canada, excluding Mexico and the countries of Central America, unless the context makes it clear that they are to be included (such as with specific reference to Mexico, when talking about NAFTA). For example, guides to wild flora and fauna published by the National Audubon Society for "North America" frequently include only species found in Canada and the U.S. This may be attributed to the fact that culturally and economically, the U.S. and Canada are more alike to each other than they are to the rest of North America. Mexicans, however, are acutely aware that Mexico is a part of North America and object to this usage. Central Americans, however, are generally content to be called Central Americans – largely because of their shared history, which includes several attempts at supranational integration in the region and in which Mexico, their much larger northern neighbor, was never involved.

Political divisions and regions

Notes:
1 Continental regions as per UN categorisations/map.
2 Depending on definitions, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, Panama, and Trinidad and Tobago have territory in one or both of North and South America.
3 Due to ongoing activity of the Soufriere Hills volcano beginning 1995, much of Plymouth, Montserrat's de jure capital, was destroyed and government offices relocated to Brades.

See also


- Discoverer of the Americas
- Economy of North America
- European colonization of the Americas
- History of North America
- Birds of North America

External links


- http://www.america-norte.com/america-norte-mapa.htm Category:Continents Category:North America zh-min-nan:Pak Bí-chiu ko:북아메리카 ja:北アメリカ simple:North America th:ทวีปอเมริกาเหนือ

Epirus

The name Epirus may refer to:

Geographical


- Epirus (region) - an historical and geographical region of the southwestern Balkans

Political


- Epirus (Greece) - a periphery (province) of Greece

Historical


- Despotate of Epirus - one of the successor states of the Byzantine Empire
- Epirus vetus or Epirus nova - provinces of the Roman Empire ja:イピロス

Tarentum

Taranto is a coastal city in Apulia, southern Italy. It is the capital of Province of Taranto and is an important military and commercial port. It is the third largest continental city of southern Italy: according to the 2001 census, it has population of 201,349. Its coordinates are . Its altitude is 15 metres above sea level, with a surface area of 217 km². The postal code is 74100, the phone prefix is 099, and the fiscal code is L049. Taranto is an important commercial and military port. It has well-developed steel and iron foundries, oil refineries, chemical works, some shipyards for building warships, and food-processing factories. Taranto history dates back to the 8th century BC when it was founded as a Greek colony. The ancient city was situated on a peninsula, protected by a helm; the modern city has been built over the ancient Greek necropolis. The islets of S. Pietro and S. Paolo (St. Peter and St. Paul) protect the bay, called Mar Grande (Big Sea), where the commercial port is located. Another bay, called Mar Piccolo (Little Sea), is formed by the old city, and there fishing is flourishing; Mar Piccolo is a military port with a strategic importance; at the end of the 19th century, a channel was excavated to allow the military ships to enter Mar Piccolo harbour, and the ancient Greek city become an island. In addition, the islets and the coast are strongly fortified. fishing Because of the presence of these two bays, Taranto is also called “the city of the two seas”. The Greek colonists called the city Taras (), from the name of the mythical eponymous hero Taras, while the Romans, who connected the city to Rome with an extension of the Appian way, called it Tarentum. Taranto is also famous for the British attack on the Regia Marina base during the World War II, known as the Battle (or Night) of Taranto. =History of Taranto=

The Greek period

Foundation and splendour

Battle (or Night) of Taranto Taranto was founded in 708 BC by Spartan immigrants. It is the only Spartan colony, and its origin is peculiar: the founders are parthenii, sons of unmarried Spartan women and perioikoi (free men, but not citizens of Sparta); these unions were decided by the Spartans to increase the number of soldiers (only the citizens of Sparta could become soldiers) during the bloody Messenian wars, but later they were nullified, and the sons were forced to leave. Phalanthus, the parthenian leader, went to Delphi to consult the oracle: the puzzling answer designed the harbour of Taranto as the new home of the exiles. The parthenii arrived in Apulia, and founded the city, naming it Taras after the son of the Greek sea god, Poseidon, and of a local nymph, Satyrion. According to other sources, Heracles founded the city. Another tradition indicates Taras as the founder of the city; the symbol of the Greek city (as well as of the modern city) is Taras riding a dolphin. Taranto increased its power, becoming a commercial power and a sovereign city of Magna Graecia, ruling over the Greek colonies in southern Italy. In its beginning, Taranto was a monarchy, probably modelled on the one ruling over Sparta; according to Herodotus (iii 136), around 492 BC king Aristophilides ruled over the city. The expansion of Taranto was limited to the coast because of the resistance of the populations of inner Apulia. In 472 BC, Taranto signed an alliance with Rhegion, to counter the Messapii, Peuceti, and Lucanians, but the joint armies of the Tarentines and Rhegines were defeated near Kailìa (modern Ceglie), in what Herodotus (vii 160) claims to be the greatest slaughter of Greeks in his knowledge, with 3,000 Reggians and uncountable Tarentines killed. In 466 BC, Taranto was again defeated by the Iapyges; according to Aristotle (Politica, [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0058&layout=&loc=5.1303a v 1303a]), there were so many aristocrats killed, that the democratic party was able to get the power, to remove the monarchy, inaugurate a democracy, and the expel the Pythagoreans. However, the rise of the democratic party did not weaken the bonds of Taranto and her mother-city Sparta. In fact, Taranto supported the Peloponnesian side against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, refused anchorage and water to Athens in 415 BC, and even sent ships to help the Peloponnesians, after the Athenian disaster in Sicily. On the other side, Athens supported the Messapians, in order to counter Taranto power. In 432 BC, after several years of war, Taranto signed a peace treaty with the Greek colony of Thurii; both cities contributed to the foundation of the colony of Heraclea, which rapidly fell under Taranto's control. In 367 BC Carthage and the Etruscans signed a pact to counter Taranto's power in southern Italy. Under the rule of its greatest statesman, strategist and army commander-in-chief, the philosopher and mathematician Archytas, Taranto reached its peak power and wealth; it was the most important city of the Magna Graecia, the main commercial port of southern Italy, it produced and exported goods to and from motherland Greece, it had the biggest army and the largest fleet in southern Italy. However, with the death of Architas in 347 BC, the city started a slow, but ineluctable decline; the first sign of the decreased power was its inability to field an army, since the Tarentines preferred to use their large wealth to hire mercenaries, rather than leave their lucrative trades. In 343 BC Taranto appealed for aid against the barbarians to its mother city Sparta, in the face of aggression by the Brutian League. In 342 BC, Archidamus III, king of Sparta, arrived in Italy with an army and a fleet to fight the Lucanians and their allies. In 338 BC, during the Battle of Manduria, the Spartan and Tarentine armies were defeated in front of the walls of Manduria (nowadays in province of Taranto), and Archidamus was killed. In 333 BC, still troubled by its Italic neighbours, the Tarentines called the Epirotic king Alexander Molossus to fight the Bruttii, Samnites, and Lucanians, but he was later (331 BC) defeated and killed in the battle of Pandosia (near Cosenza). In 320 BC, a peace treaty was signed between Taranto and the Samnites. In 304 BC, Taranto was attacked by the Lucanians, and asked for the help of Agathocles tyrant of Syracuse, king of Sicily. Agathocles arrived in southern Italy, took control of Bruttium (present-day Calabria), but was later called back in Syracuse. In 303 BC-302 BC Cleonymus of Sparta established an alliance with Taranto against the Lucanians, and fought against them.

Wars against Rome

First contrasts

In the beginning of the 3rd century BC, Rome's increasing power started to frighten Taranto, especially for the mastery of the sea and the control over the Greek colonies in Magna Graecia. After the surrender of the Samnites in 290 BC, the Romans founded many colonies in Apulia and Lucania. Furthermore, some of the city-states in Magna Graecia, such as Rhegion, Croton and Locri, asked Rome for military help because of the wars that they were having with their neighbours; also Thurii, which was located on the Gulf of Taranto and under Tarentine rule, asked Rome for help in 282 BC, after having been attacked by Lucanians. This situation inevitably led to a conflict between Taranto and Rome, since Taranto felt Rome was interfering in the affairs of the Greek colonies in southern Italy, which the Tarentines considered under their dominion. Two political parties were present at the time within Taranto. The democrats, led by Philocharis or Ainesias, were dominant; they were against Rome, because they knew that if the Romans entered Taranto, the Greeks would have lost their independence. The second faction in Taranto were the aristocrats, led by Agis; they had lost their power when Taranto had become a democracy, and did not oppose surrendering to Rome as it would increase their own influence on the city, by reducing the power of the democrats. However, the aristocrats did not want to surrender openly to Rome and become unpopular with the population. At that time, Taranto had the most powerful naval forces in Italy, and hastened to come to an agreement with Rome that stated that Roman ships could not enter into the Gulf of Taranto. In 282 BC, Rome sent a fleet under admiral Lucius Valerius, carrying troops to garrison Thurii, but ten ships were caught by a tempest, and arrived in the sea in front of Taranto, during a holy day (the festival of Dionysus). The angered Tarentines, considering it a hostile act openly in conflict with the pact, which forbade the gulf of Taranto to Roman ships, responded by attacking the Roman fleet: the Tarentine navy sunk four Roman ships, and captured a fifth (Cassius Dio, Roman History, [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/9
- .html#39.4 xxxxix.4]). According to some historians, Tarentine aristocrats had been asked by the Roman commanders Publius Cornelius and Lucius Valerius to arrest and execute, during the arrival of the Roman fleet, the democrats and their followers, which would allow the aristocrats to lead the city, and sign an alliance with Rome. The army and fleet of Taranto moved to Thurii and helped the democrats there exile the aristocrats. The Roman garrison placed in Thurii withdrew.

The Pyrrhic War

Pyrrhic War Romans sent diplomats to Taranto, but the talks were broken off by the Tarentines: the Roman ambassador, Postumius, was insulted and mocked by Philonides, a member of the popular party. The Senate declared war on Taranto, and the Tarentines decided to call for help from Pyrrus, king of Epirus. In 281 BC, Roman legions, under the command of Lucius Aemilius Barbula, entered Taranto and plundered it. Taranto, with Samnite and Salentinian reinforcements, then lost a battle against the Romans. After the battle, the Greeks chose Agis to sign a truce and begin diplomatic talks. These talks were also broken off when 3000 soldiers from Epirus under the command of Cineas entered the town. The Roman consul withdrew and suffered losses from attacks by the Greek ships (Zoronas [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/9
- .html#8.2 viii.2]). Pyrrhus decided to help Taranto because he was in debt to them - they had earlier helped him conquer the island of Corcyra. He also knew that he could count on help from the Samnites, Lucanians, Bruttii, and some Illyrian tribes. His ultimate goal was to conquer Macedon, but did not have enough money to recruit soldiers. He planned to help Taranto, then go to Sicily and attack Carthage. After winning a war against Carthage and capturing south Italy, he would have enough money to organise a strong army and capture Macedon. Before he left Epirus, he borrowed some phalanxes from the Macedonian king, and demanded ships and money from the Syrian king and from Antigonus II Gonatas of Antioch. The Egyptian king also promised to send 9000 soldiers and 50 war elephants. These forces had to defend Epirus while Pyrrhus was gone. He recruited soldiers in Greece as well, as the Greek cities wanted to avoid a war with Epirus, even though they were unconcerned with the Greek colonies in Italy. In the spring of 280 BC, Pyrrhus landed without losses in Italy. He had 20,000 hoplites, 500 peltasts, 2,000 archers, 3,000 elite cavalry from Thessaly, and 20 war elephants. After hearing of Pyrrhus' arrival in Italy, the Romans mobilized eight legions with auxiliaries, totalling about 80 000 soldiers, and divided into 4 armies. Valerius Levinus marched to Taranto, with an army of 30,000 legionnaires and auxiliaries. Pyrrhus moved from Taranto to meet its allies, but met with the Roman army, and decided to fight it next to Heraclea. The battle of Heraclea was won by Pyrrhus, but the casualties were very high. Upon his arrival in Italy, Pyrrhus thought that the Roman army would have been easily defeated by his Macedonian phalanx. However, Roman legions proved to be stronger than expected. Furthermore, Rome was able to raise a large number of legions, while Pyrrhus was far from home, and had only a handful of veterans with him. Pyrrhus moved towards Rome, with the intention of rallying the peoples ruled by the Romans and conquering the city, but he had no success in this, and was forced to return to Apulia. In 279 BC, Pyrrhus defeated another Roman army in the battle of Asculum (modern Ascoli Satriano, Foggia), again with many casualties. Most of the men Pyrrhus had brought over from Epirus were disabled or dead, including nearly all of his officers and friends. Recruiting would be impossible, and his allies were unreliable. The Romans, on the other hand, quickly replaced their losses with fresh men, and with every defeat, the Romans were becoming more determined to win. At the same time, Pyrrhus received a proposal from the Sicilian Greek colonies of Syracuse, Leontini, and Agrigentum, to lead them in a war against the Carthaginians, and left Italy for Sicily, suspending the war against Rome, and leaving a garrison in Taranto. The Tarentines called back Pyrrhus in 276 BC, and the king gladly returned from his Sicilian adventure. The war against Rome revamped, but this time Pyrrhus and the Tarentines were defeated by the Romans in the battle of Beneventum. After six years, Pyrrhus returned to Epirus, with only 8,500 men: only a garrison was left in Taranto, under the command of Pyrrhus' vice-commander Milon. The Romans conquered the city in 272 BC, by treachery of the Epiriotic soldiers, and demolished the defensive walls of the city.

Second Punic War

272 BC During the Second Punic War, the Romans heavily garrisoned the city for fear that it might go over to Hannibal. However, a group of Tarentine hostages held at Rome were caught trying to escape and thrown from the Tarpeian Rock as traitors; probably because of this, anti-Roman feeling in the city increased greatly. Two members of the pro-Carthage faction in the city enabled Hannibal to enter the city in 212 BC, although he was not able to capture the citadel of the city which was defended by Roman troops. Because of Hannibal's failure to capture the citadel, he was not able to use Tarentum as a major port and staging area for the invasion of Italy. The army was forced to portage boats across the city in order to sail from the bay. The city supported his war against Rome, but in 209 BC the commander of the garrison betrayed the city to the Romans. Thirty thousand of the Greek inhabitants were sold as slaves and many works of art were carried off to Rome.

Roman and Byzantine periods

Roman Republic and Empire

209 BC In 122 BC a Roman colony was founded next to Taranto, according to the law proposed by Gaius Sempronius Gracchus. The colony was named Neptunia, after the Roman sea god Neptune, worshipped by the Tarentines. The Roman colony was separate from the Greek city, and populated by Roman colons, but it was later unified to the main centre when Taranto become a municipium, in 89 BC. In 38 BC Mark Antony, Octavianus and Lepidus signed the Treaty of Tarentum, extending the second triumvirate until 33 BC. Tarentum had a municipal law, Lex municipii Tarenti [http://web.upmf-grenoble.fr/Haiti/Cours/Ak/tarent.html]; a partial copy inscribed on bronze plates was discovered in 1894 by Luigi Viola, and is now at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Naples. During the late Republic and all the Roman Empire, Taranto was a simple provincial city (Prefecture of Italy, Diocese of Italia suburbicaria, Apulia et Calabria province). Emperor Trajan tried to counter the reduction of the population giving the Tarentine lands to his veterans, but this initiative failed. Taranto followed the story of Italy during the late Empire, with Visigoth attacks and Ostrogoth domination.

Byzantine, Longobard, Arab, and Norman dominations

Byzantine and Longobard dominations

In the wake of the Gothic wars, Taranto became part of Byzantine Empire in 540, and was ruled by them until the Lombards of the Duchy of Benevento captured it in 662. In spring 663, basileus Constans II arrived at Taranto with a fleet and an army, and defeated the Longobards: it was the first time a Byzantine Emperor arrived in Italy with an army. Next, he conquered Apulia, and went to Rome to meet Pope Vitalian. After the Emperor got back to Byzantium, a new war between the Byzantines and the Duchy of Beneventum started, and lasted for years. Duke Grimoaldus conquered the northern Apulia, his son Romoaldus, in 686, took Taranto and Brindisi from the imperial army. In 700s, Berbers started to raid Taranto and southern Italy; their menace lasted up to the 11th century.

Arab domination

The first years of the 9th century were characterized by the internal fights that weakened the Longobard power. In 840, a Longobard prince, who was held prisoner in Taranto, was freed by his partisans, brought to Benevento, and made duke. At the same time, the Saracens took control of Taranto, exploiting the weak Longobard control. Taranto became an Arab stronghold and privileged harbour for forty years. It was from here that ships loaded with prisoners sailed to the Arab ports, where the prisoners were sold in the slave market. In the same 840, an Arab fleet left Taranto, defeated in the gulf of Taranto a Venetian fleet of 60 ships, summoned by the emperor Theophilus, and entered the Adriatic sea, sacking the coastal cities. In 850, four Saracen columns departed from Taranto and Bari to sack Campania, Apulia, Calabria and Abruzzi. In 854, Taranto was again the base for an Arab raid, led by Abbas-ibn-Faid, which sacked the Longobard province of Salerno. Two Arab fleets arrived to Taranto, in 871 and later in 875, carrying the troops which sacked Campania and Apulia. The situation of southern Italy worried Emperor Basil the Macedonian, who decided to fight the Arabs and take the harbour of Taranto from them. In 880, two Byzantine armies, led by generals Procopius and Leo Apostyppes, and a fleet, commanded by the admiral Nasar took Taranto from the Arabs, ending a forty years dominion. Among the first actions taken by the Byzantine ruler Apostyppes was the enslavement and deportation of the Latin-Longobard original inhabitants - who had almost completely converted to Islam - and the import of Greek colons, in order to increase the population. Taranto became one of the most important cities in the Thema Longobardia, the Byzantine possession in southern Italy.

Second Byzantine domination

The city suffered from other Saracen raids, such as in 922. On 15 august 927, the Saracens, led by the Slavic Sabir, conquered and destroyed the city, enslaving and deporting to Africa all the survivors. Taranto had no inhabitants, until the Byzantine conquest in 967. The Byzantine emperor Nicephorus II Phocas understood the importance of a strong military presence and harbour in southern Italy, and rebuilt the city. He added several military fortifications, and made Taranto a stronghold of Byzantine resistance against the uprising Norman power in south Italy. However, the weakness of the Byzantine local government exposed Taranto to other Saracen raids. In 977, it was attacked by Saracens led by Abn'l-Kàsim, who took many prisoners and sacked the city, burning some parts of Taranto. In 982, emperor Otto II started his war against Saracens from Taranto, but he was defeated by Abn'l-Kàsim in the battle of Stilo (Calabria).

Norman conquest

The 11th century was characterized by a bloody struggle between Normans and Byzantines for the rule over the Tarentine and Bariot lands. In May 1060, Robert Guiscard conquered the city, but in October Taranto was re-occupied by the Byzantine army. After three years, in 1063, the Norman count Geoffrey, son of Petron I, entered in Taranto, but he was obliged to flee from it on the arrival of the Byzantine admiral Michael Maurikas. Taranto was finally conquered by the Normans: the sons of Petron elected the first Norman archbishop, Drogo, in 1071, and prepared a fleet to conquer Durazzo. A short account of Norman conquest of Apulia is the [http://www.storiaonline.org/normanni/breve.htm BREVE CHRONICON NORTHMANNICUM].

Principality of Taranto (1088-1465)

Taranto became the capital of a Norman principality, whose first ruler was Robert Guiscard's son, Bohemond of Taranto, who obtained it as result of succession dispute: his father repudiated his first wife, Bohemond's mother, and had Roger Borsa, his son by his second wife Sikelgaita, succeed him as Duke of Apulia. Bohemond was compensated with Taranto and lands that covered almost all of the heel of Apulia. The principality of Taranto, during its 377 years of history, was sometimes a powerful and almost independent feudal fief of the Kingdom of Sicily (and later of Naples), sometimes only a title, often given to the heir to the crown or to the husband of a reigning queen. The princes of Taranto were: Hauteville (Altavilla) dynasty:
- 1088 - Bohemond I (1054-1111), later Bohemond I prince of Antioch;
- 1111 - Bohemond II (1108, 1130), also prince of Antioch;
- 1128 - King Roger II (1093-1154), duke of Apulia, king of Sicily, unifier of Southern Italy;
- 1132 - Tancred, son of Roger II, prince of Bari, received the principality from his father;
- 1138 - William I, later king of Sicily, son of Roger II, became prince of Taranto with the death of his brother Tancred;
- 1144 - Simon, son of Roger II, became prince of Taranto when his brother William became prince of Capua and Duke of Apulia;
- 1157 - William II, later king of Sicily;
- 1189 - King Tancred of Sicily
- 1194 - William III, king of Sicily (deposed), Count of Lecce; 1194 - King Henry, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Sicily; 1198 - Robert; Brienne dynasty:
- 1200 - Guy Walter III of Brienne, husband of (Albinia, Elvira) Mary of Lecce of Altavilla, daughter of King Tancred of Sicily (Tancred of Hauteville, Count of Lecce); Hohenstaufen (Svevia) dynasty:
- 1205 - King Frederick;
- 1250 - Manfred of Sicily, son of Frederick II, later also king; Anjou (Angiò) dynasty:
- 1266 - King Charles I (1227-1285), defeated Manfred and was created King of Sicily by the pope;
- 1285 - King Charles II (1248-1309), son of Charles I, king of Naples;
- 1294 - Philip I (1278-1332), son of Charles II, and titular Latin Emperor;
- 1332 - Robert of Taranto (1299-1364), son of Philip I;
- 1346 - Louis of Taranto (1308-1362), son of Philip I, simultaneously king-consort of Naples;
- 1364 - Philip II (1329-1374), son of Philip I, and titular Latin Emperor;
  - 1356 - Philip III, son of Philip II, died in his youth, the title returned to his father; Baux (Del Balzo) dynasty:
- 1374 - James of Baux, nephew of Philip II, and titular Latin Emperor; Welf or Brunswick (Este del Guelfo) dynasty:
- 1383 - Otto (1320-1398), widower of Joan I of Naples; Orsini-Del Balzo dynasty:
- 1393 - Raimondo del Balzo Orsini, also known as Raimondello, husband of Mary of Enghien, the Brienne heiress;
- 1406 - Ladislas of Durazzo, king of Naples, second husband of Mary of Enghien;
- 1414 - James of Bourbon of La Marche, husband of Joan II of Naples and briefly king-consort
- 1420 - Giovanni Antonio del Balzo Orsini, son of Mary and Raimondello;
- 1463 - Isabella of Clermont, niece of Giovanni Antonio; 1465 - Ferdinand I of Naples, also known as King Ferrante, united the Principality of Taranto to the Kingdom of Naples, at the death of his wife, Isabella of Taranto (Clermont). The principality ended, but the kings of Naples continued giving the title of Prince of Taranto to their sons, firstly to the future Alfonso II of Naples, Duke of Calabria, eldest son of Isabella.

From Renaissance to unification

In March 1502, the Spanish fleet of Ferdinand II of Aragon, allied to Louis XII of France, seized the port of Taranto, and conquered the city. 1570 – Admiral Giovanni Andrea Doria set his fleet of 49 galleys in Mar Grande to repair and supply his ships. Among the people on the fleet there was Miguel de Cervantes. The fleet later united to the other parts of the Christian League, and defeated the Turkish fleet at Lepanto: also some Tarentine nobles took part to the battle. 1647 – The insurrection of Masaniello in Naples reached also Taranto. 1714 – After the Treaty of Rastatt, Spain was obliged to handle the Kingdom of Naples to Austria. 1746 – Taranto had 11,526 inhabitants. All of them were packed in the small island, among a high number of religious institutes and churches. 1765 – Francesco Antonio Calo', a Tarentine nobleman, started with two statues the Misteries of the Holy Week celebrations. They are today the most important and attended event of Taranto. 1799 – Between 8 February and 8 March Taranto joined the Parthenopaean Republic. 1801-15 – After the defeat of Ferdinand IV of Naples at Monteregio and the subsequent Peace of Florence, the French general Nicolas Soult occupied with 13,000 soldiers the provinces of Bari, Lecce and the harbour of Taranto. Napoleon wanted to build a stronghold to keep under pression the British base of Malta. On 23 April 1801, 6,000 French soldiers of the Armée d'observation du midi entered in Taranto (20.000 inhabitants at the time) and fortified it in order to obtain "a sort of Gibitrair" (Napoleon). On 25 March 1802, France and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Amiens, which required France to leave South Italy, but after UK declaration of war against France, the Armée d'observation du midi returned to Taranto, under the command of general Laurent Gouvion de Saint Cyr, on 23 May 1803. Among the French officers in Taranto, there is also the novelist Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, artillery general and fortification expert, who died in Taranto on 5 September 1803. On 15 February, Joseph Bonaparte became King of Naples, and on 3 May visited the fortifications of Taranto. The presence of the French troops, and the military related works gave several advantages to Tarentine economy. With the fall of Napoleon and the defeat of Joachim Murat at the battle of Tolentino, Southern Italy, and Taranto, returned under Bourbons rule, forming the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. 1860 – On 9 September, Taranto become part of the temporary government founded by Giuseppe Garibaldi after his conquest of Two Sicilies. In the following year, the whole Southern Italy is annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia, which became the Kingdom of Italy. In this years Taranto has 27,000 inhabitants. 1866 – Between May and June, the newly formed Regia Marina — the Kingdom of Italy navy resulted from the unification of Sardinian, Neapolitan-Sicilian, Tuscan and Pontificial navies — was collected in Taranto harbour, in occasion of the imminent war declaration against Austria (Third Independece War). On 21 June, one day late to allow Admiral Carlo di Persano to receive Tarentine honorary citizenship, the fleet left for the Adriatic Sea. After the defeat of the Italian fleet at Lissa, Persano was put under trial for incompetence and cowardice, and his easy days in Taranto indicated as part of his bad behaviour.

Modern times

During World War I, Taranto was base for Regia Marina warships. On 2 August 1916, Leonardo da Vinci, a Conte di Cavour class battleship, sank after a sabotage; the bust of the Italian artist is still present in Villa Peripato. On the night of 11 November 1940, during World War II, the Italian ships, which were at anchor in Mar Grande and Mar Piccolo, were severely damaged by British naval forces (see Battle of Taranto). British forces landed near the port on September 9, 1943 as part of the Allied invasion (Operation Slapstick). = Historical figures = Here is a list of historical figures, who have had a relationship with the city. Not all of them were actually born in Taranto.
- Archytas of Tarentum (428 BC - 347 BC), philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, strategist and commander-in-chief of the army of Taranto;
- Philolaus (c. 480 BC – c. 405 BC), mathematician and philosopher.
- Aristoxenus, peripatetic philosopher, and writer on music and rhythm;
- Leonidas of Tarentum, poet;
- Livius Andronicus, poet;
- Titus Quinctius Flamininus (c. 228 BC - 174 BC), propraetor of Tarentum;
- Pacuvius, tragic poet, died in Tarentum in 130 BC;
- Cataldus, archibishop of Taranto, saint, and patronus;
- Gil Cardinal Albornoz, archibishop of Taranto in 1644;
- Giovanni Paisiello (1741 - 1816), composer;
- Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741 - 1803), Napoleonic army general and novelist, died in Taranto;
- Etienne-Jacques-Joseph-Alexandre MacDonald (1765 - 1840), duke of Taranto and marshal of France; =Miscellanea=
- Star of David: "A David's shield has recently been noted on a Jewish tombstone at Tarentum, in southern Italy, which may date as early as the third century of the common era."
- Tarentum was included in the hit PC game Rome: Total War as the governing settlement for Apulia as well as the capital of the Roman Faction of Brutii =External links=
- [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=taranto,italy&ll=40.472603,17.233601&spn=0.055447,0.084715&t=k&hl=en Satellite map, Google Maps]
- [http://www.filonidetaranto.com/ Culture centre Filonide]
- [http://www.tarantoturismo.it/ Tourism in Taranto ] Category:Roman sites of Apulia Category:Ancient Roman enemies and allies Category:Coastal cities Category:Colonies of Magna Graecia Category:Dorian colonies Category:Ancient Spartans Category:Towns in Puglia ja:ターラント

280 BC

Centuries: 4th century BC - 3rd century BC - 2nd century BC Decades: 330s BC 320s BC 310s BC 300s BC 290s BC - 280s BC - 270s BC 260s BC 250s BC 240s BC 230s BC 285 BC 284 BC 283 BC 282 BC 281 BC 280 BC 279 BC 278 BC 277 BC 276 BC 275 BC ---- Events
- Battle of Heraclea (or Battle of the Siris River): The Greeks, led by Pyrrhus of Epirus, defeat with severe casualties a Roman army under Publius Valerius Laevinus, this was the first time these cultures meet in battle, Pyrrhus's judicious use of his elephants played a huge part in his victory. He was reputed to have said:"One more such victory and I am defeated."
- Aristarchus uses the size of the Earth's shadow on the Moon to estimate that the Moon's radius is one-third that of the Earth.
- Achaean League refounded. Births
- Philon of Byzantium
- Li Si (approximate date) Deaths
- Herophilus Category:280s BC

Plutarch

Mestrius Plutarchus (ca. 46- 127) was a Greek historian, biographer, and essayist. Born in the small town of Chaeronea, in the Greek region known as Boeotia, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, Plutarch travelled widely in the Mediterranean world, including twice to Rome. Due to his parents' wealth, after 67, Plutarchus was able to study philosophy, rhetoric, and mathematics at the Academy of Athens. He had a number of influential friends, including Soscius Senecio and Fundanus, both important Senators, to whom some of his later writings were dedicated. He lived most of his life at Chaeronea, and was initiated into the mysteries of the Greek god Apollo. However, his duties as the senior of the two priests of Apollo at the Oracle of Delphi (where he was responsible for interpreting the auguries of the Pythia or priestess/oracle) apparently occupied little of his time - he led an active social and civic life and produced an incredible body of writing, much of which is still extant.

Work as magistrate and ambassador

In addition to his duties as a priest of the Delphic temple, Plutarch was also a magistrate in Chaeronea and he represented his home on various missions to foreign countries during his early adult years. His friend Lucius Mestrius Florus, a Roman consul, sponsored Plutarch as a Roman citizen and, according to the 10th century historian George Syncellus, late in life, the Emperor Hadrian appointed him procurator of Achaea - a position that entitled him to wear the vestments and ornaments of a consul himself. (The Suda, a medieval Greek encyclopedia, states that Hadrian's predecessor Trajan made Plutarch procurator of Illyria, but most historians consider that unlikely, since Illyria was not a procuratorial province, and Plutarch probably did not speak Illyrian).

Parallel Lives

His best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans, arranged as dyads to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings. The surviving Lives contain twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair containing one Greek Life and one Roman Life, as well as four unpaired single Lives. As he explains in the first paragraph of his Life of Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with writing histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of character — good or bad — on the lives and destinies of famous men. Some of the more interesting Lives — for instance, those of Heracles and Philip II of Macedon — no longer exist, and many of the remaining Lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae, or have been tampered with by later writers.

Life of Alexander

His Life of Alexander is one of the five surviving tertiary sources about the Macedonian conqueror and it includes anecdotes and descriptions of incidents that appear in no other source. Likewise, his portrait of Numa Pompilius, an early Roman king, also contains unique information about the early Roman calendar.

Other works

The Moralia

The remainder of his surviving work is collected under the title of the Moralia (loosely translated as Customs and Mores). It is an eclectic collection of seventy-eight essays and transcribed speeches, which includes On the Fortune or the Virtue of Alexander the Great - an important adjunct to his Life of the great general, On the Worship of Isis and Osiris (a crucial source of information on Egyptian religious rites), and On the Malice of Herodotus (which may, like the orations on Alexander's accomplishments, have been a rhetorical exercise), wherein Plutarch criticizes what he sees as systematic bias in the Herodotus's work, along with more philosophical treatises, such as On the Decline of the Oracles, On the Delays of the Divine Vengeance, On Peace of Mind and lighter fare, such as Odysseus and Gryllus, a humorous dialogue between Homer's Ulysses and one of Circe's enchanted pigs. The Moralia was composed first, while writing the Lives occupied much of the last two decades of Plutarch's own life. Some editions of the Moralia include several works now known to be pseudepigrapha: among these are the Lives of the Ten Orators (biographies of the Ten Orators of ancient Athens, based on Caecilius of Calacte), The Doctrines of the Philosophers, and On Music. One "pseudo-Plutarch" is held responsible for all of these works, though their authorship is of course unknown. Though the thoughts and opinions recorded are not Plutarch's and come from a slightly later era, they are all classical in origin and have value to the historian.

Quaestiones

A pair of interesting minor works is the Questions, one on obscure details of Roman habits and cult, one on Greek ones.

Plutarch's influence

Plutarch's writings had enormous influence on English and French literature. In his plays, Shakespeare paraphrased parts of Thomas North's translation of selected Lives, and occasionally quoted from them verbatim. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists were greatly influenced by the Moralia (Emerson wrote a glowing introduction to the five volume 19th century edition of his Moralia). Boswell quoted Plutarch's line about writing lives, rather than biographies in the introduction to his own Life of Samuel Johnson. His other admirers include Ben Jonson, John Dryden, Alexander Hamilton, John Milton, and Sir Francis Bacon, as well as such disparate figures as Cotton Mather, Robert Browning and Montaigne (whose own Essays draw deeply on Plutarch's Moralia for their inspiration and ideas).

Quotes

"Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life." "It is a desirable thing to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors." "The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled." "But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy."

See also


- Other surviving classical histories of Alexander mentioned in Alexander_the_Great#Ancient_sources

External links


-
  - A [http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/3/14033/14033-h/14033-h.htm#LIFE_OF_PLUTARCH biography of Plutarch] is included in: , 18th century English translation under the editorship of Dryden (further edited by Arthur Hugh Clough).
- [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/home.html Plutarch page at LacusCurtius] (20th century English translation of most of the Lives, On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander, On the Fortune of the Romans, Roman Questions, and other excerpts of the Moralia)
- [http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/plutarch/plutarch.htm Plutarch of Chaeronea] by Jona Lendering at Livius.Org
- [http://www.usu.edu/history/ploutarchos/index.htm The International Plutarch Society]

References


- Plutarch's "Lives" by Alan Wardman ISBN 0236176226
- Plutarch's "Lives: exploring virtue and vice" by Timothy E. Duff (Oxford UP: 2002 pb) ISBN 0199252742.
- "The Echo of Greece" by Edith Hamilton. The Norton Library, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. 1957. p. 194. ISBN 0393002314. (Quote) Category:45 births Category:120 deaths Category:Ancient Greeks Category:Essayists Category:Roman era biographers Category:Vegetarians ja:プルタルコス

Polybius

Polybius (ca 203 BC - 120 BC, Greek Πολυβιος) was a Greek historian of the Mediterranean world famous for his book called The Histories or The Rise of the Roman Empire, covering the period of 220 BC to 146 BC.

Personal experiences

As the former tutor of Scipio Aemilianus , the famous adopted grandson of the famous general Scipio Africanus, Polybius remained on terms of the most cordial friendship and remained a counselor to the man who defeated the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War. The younger Scipio eventually invaded Carthage and forced them to surrender unconditionally. Polybius was a member of the governing class, with first-hand opportunities to gain deep insight into military and political affairs. His political career was devoted largely towards maintaining the independence of the Achaean League. As the chief representative of the policy of neutrality during the war of the Romans against Perseus of Macedonia, he attracted the suspicion of the Romans, and was one of the 1000 noble Achaeans who in 166 BC were transported to Rome as hostages, and detained there for seventeen years. In Rome, by virtue of his high culture, he was admitted to the most distinguished houses, in particular to that of Aemilius Paulus, the conqueror in the First Macedonian War, who entrusted him with the education of his sons, Fabius and the younger Scipio. Through Scipio's intercession in 150 BC, Polybius obtained leave to return home,