The role of women in ancient warfare differed from culture to culture. There have been various historical accounts of females participating in battle.
This article lists instances of women recorded as participating in ancient warfare, from the beginning of written records to approximately 500 CE. Contemporary archaeological research regularly provides better insight into the accuracy of ancient historical accounts.
Vitruvian Man (Italian: L'uomo vitruviano) is a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1490. Inspired by the Roman architect Vitruvius, it depicts a nude man in two overlapping standing positions, inscribed within a circle and a square. Art historian Carmen C. Bambach described it as "justly ranked among the all-time iconic images of Western civilization". While not the only drawing inspired by Vitruvius, Leonardo's work uniquely combines artistic vision with scientific inquiry and is often considered an archetypal representation of the High Renaissance.
The drawing illustrates Leonardo's study of ideal human proportions, derived from Vitruvius but refined through his own observations, contemporary works, and the treatise De pictura by Leon Battista Alberti. Created in Milan, the Vitruvian Man likely passed to his student Francesco Melzi, and later to Venanzio de Pagave, who encouraged engraver Carlo Giuseppe Gerli to publish an engraving of it, spreading the image widely. It was then owned by Giuseppe Bossi, before being acquired in 1822 by the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, where it remains. Because of its fragility, the drawing is rarely displayed. It was loaned to the Louvre in 2019 for the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death.
Late antiquity is a period of time that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the beginning of the Early Middle Ages, though the exact start and end dates are debated. Late antiquity represents a cultural sphere covering much of the Mediterranean world, including parts of Europe and the Near East.
Late antiquity was an era of massive political and religious transformation. Religiously, it marked the origins or ascendance of the three major monotheistic religions: Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, and Islam, as well as the period when both the Bible and the Quran were canonized. Politically, it marked the ends of the Western Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire (the last Persian empire of antiquity), as well as the beginning of the Arab conquests and the formation of the Rashidun Caliphate. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Empire became a militarized and Christianized society. Late antiquity was also an era of significant cultural innovation and transformation, marked by the emergence of public architecture like the Hagia Sophia, and the emergence of late antique literature and art.
The art of Europe, also known as Western art, encompasses the history of visual art in Europe. European prehistoric art started as mobile Upper Paleolithic rock and cave painting and petroglyph art and was characteristic of the period between the Paleolithic and the Iron Age. Written histories of European art often begin with the Aegean civilizations, dating from the 3rd millennium BC. However a consistent pattern of artistic development within Europe becomes clear only with Ancient Greek art, which was adopted and transformed by Rome and carried; with the Roman Empire, across much of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.
The influence of the art of the Classical period waxed and waned throughout the next two thousand years, seeming to slip into a distant memory in parts of the Medieval period, to re-emerge in the Renaissance, suffer a period of what some early art historians viewed as "decay" during the Baroque period, to reappear in a refined form in Neo-Classicism and to be reborn in Post-Modernism.
The Argonauts (/ˈɑːrɡənɔːt/ AR-gə-nawt; Ancient Greek: Ἀργοναῦται, romanized: Argonaûtai, lit. 'Argo sailors') were a band of heroes in Greek mythology, who in the years before the Trojan War (around 1300 BC) accompanied Jason to Colchis in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Their name comes from their ship, Argo, named after its builder, Argus. They were sometimes called Minyans, after a prehistoric tribe in the area.
Red-figure pottery (Ancient Greek: ἐρυθρόμορφα, romanized: erythrómorpha) is a style of ancient Greek pottery in which the background of the pottery is painted black while the figures and details are left in the natural red or orange color of the clay.
It developed in Athens around 520 BC and remained in use until the late 3rd century AD. It replaced the previously dominant style of black-figure pottery within a few decades. Its modern name is based on the figural depictions in red color on a black background, in contrast to the preceding black-figure style with black figures on a red background. The most important areas of production, apart from Attica, were in Southern Italy. The style was also adopted in other parts of Greece. Etruria became an important center of production outside the Greek World.
Greek tragedy (Ancient Greek: τραγῳδία, romanized: tragōidía) is one of the three principal theatrical genres from Ancient Greece and Greek-inhabited Anatolia, along with comedy and the satyr play. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy.
Greek tragedy is widely believed to be an extension of the ancient rites carried out in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine and theatre, and it greatly influenced the theatre of Ancient Rome and the Renaissance. Tragic plots were most often based upon myths from the oral traditions of archaic epics. In tragic theatre, however, these narratives were presented by actors. The most acclaimed Greek tragedians are Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These tragedians often explored many themes of human nature, mainly as a way of connecting with the audience but also as way of bringing the audience into the play.
Pandora's box is an artifact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of Pandora in Hesiod's c. 700 B.C. poem Works and Days. Hesiod related that curiosity led her to open a container left in the care of her husband, thus releasing curses upon mankind. Later depictions of the story have been varied, with some literary and artistic treatments focusing more on the contents than on Pandora herself.
The container mentioned in the original account was actually a large storage jar, but the word was later mistranslated. In modern times an idiom has grown from the story meaning "Any source of great and unexpected troubles", or alternatively "A present which seems valuable but which in reality is a curse".
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of animals, usually as part of a religious ritual or to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, and continue in some cultures or religions today. Human sacrifice, where it existed, was always much rarer.
All or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered; some cultures, like the Ancient Greeks ate most of the edible parts of the sacrifice in a feast, and burnt the rest as an offering. Others burnt the whole animal offering, called a holocaust. Usually, the best animal or best share of the animal is the one presented for offering.