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111-532: In classical and medieval literature , ultima Thule (Latin "farthest Thule") acquired a metaphorical meaning of any distant place located beyond the "borders of the known world". By the Late Middle Ages and the early modern period , the Greco-Roman Thule was often identified with the real Iceland or Greenland . Sometimes Ultima Thule was a Latin name for Greenland, when Thule

222-479: A School of Translators was set up in the border city of Toledo, Spain , to translate from Arabic into Latin. Along with the unavailability of Greek authors, there were other differences between the classical canon known today and the works valued in the Middle Ages. Catullus , for instance, was almost entirely unknown in the medieval period. The popularity of different authors also waxed and waned throughout

333-466: A Roman audience saw a play adapted from the Greek by Livius Andronicus. Andronicus also translated Homer's Odyssey into Saturnian verse. The poets Ennius, Accius, and Patruvius followed. Their work survives only in fragments; the earliest Latin authors whose work we have full examples of are the playwrights Plautus and Terence . Much of the best known and most highly thought of Latin literature comes from

444-409: A black throne reigns upright. I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule – From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime, Out of Space – out of Time. John Henry Wilbrandt Stuckenberg wrote on the subject in 1885: What is the mind’s ultima Thule ? What substance must be regarded as first, and therefore as the seed of the universe? What is the eternal Something, of which

555-461: A hundred years hermits sailing from our country, Ireland, have lived. But just as they were always deserted from the beginning of the world, so now because of the Northman pirates they are emptied of anchorites, and filled with countless sheep and very many diverse kinds of sea-birds. I have never found these islands mentioned in the authorities". The British surveyor Charles Vallancey (1731–1812)

666-521: A learned vocabulary of international application. Thus, Latin grew from a highly developed cultural product of the Golden and Silver eras of Latin literature to become the international lingua franca in matters diplomatic, scientific, philosophic and religious, until the 17th century. Long before this, Latin had evolved into the Romance languages and Ancient Greek into Modern Greek and its dialects . In

777-575: A missionary and trading post, which he named Thule (Inuit: Avannaa ) on Greenland. The Thule people , the predecessor of modern Inuit Greenlanders , were named after the Thule region. In 1953, Avannaa became Thule Air Base , operated by United States Air Force . The population was forced to resettle to New Thule (Qaanaaq), 110 kilometres (67 mi) to the north ( 76°31′50.21″N 68°42′36.13″W  /  76.5306139°N 68.7100361°W  / 76.5306139; -68.7100361 only 840 NM from

888-487: A mountain-top perhaps the sun would never have been hidden from them. In the middle of that moment of time it is midnight at the equator, and thus, on the contrary, I think that at the winter solstice and for a few days about it dawn appears only for the smallest space at Thule, when it is noon at the equator. Therefore those authors are wrong and give wrong information, who have written that the sea will be solid about Thule, and that day without night continues right through from

999-512: A sort of mixture of all three of the consistency of a jellyfish in which one can neither walk nor sail, holding everything together, so to speak." The first century BC Greek astronomer Geminus of Rhodes claimed that the name Thule went back to an archaic word for the polar night phenomenon – "the place where the sun goes to rest". Dionysius Periegetes in his De situ habitabilis orbis also touched upon this subject, as did Martianus Capella . Avienius in his Ora Maritima added that during

1110-550: A spacecraft and a planetary body. An official name for the body has since been assigned by the International Astronomical Union . In the metaphorical sense of a far-off land or an unattainable goal, Virgil coined the term Ultima Thule ( Georgics , 1. 30) meaning "farthermost Thule". Seneca the Younger writes of a day when new lands will be discovered past Thule. This was later quoted widely in

1221-520: A transcendent single deity. Different cities often worshipped the same deities, sometimes with epithets that distinguished them and specified their local nature. The earliest surviving philosophy from ancient Greece dates back to the 6th century BC, when according to Aristotle Thales of Miletus was considered to have been the first Greek philosopher. Other influential pre-Socratic philosophers include Pythagoras and Heraclitus . The most famous and significant figures in classical Athenian philosophy, from

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1332-603: A version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean region and Europe; thus Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western civilization. Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic ( c.  8th to 6th centuries BC), Classical ( c.  5th to 4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic ( c.  3rd century BC to 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and

1443-545: Is a Greek creation". Ancient philosophy was traditionally divided into three branches: logic, physics, and ethics. However, not all of the works of ancient philosophers fit neatly into one of these three branches. For instance, Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics have been traditionally classified in the West as "ethics", but in the Arabic world were grouped with logic; in reality, they do not fit neatly into either category. From

1554-473: Is a phonological similarity between Thule and the root tule- "of fire" in Estonian (and other Finnic languages ). A crater lake named Kaali on the island appears to have been formed by a meteor strike in prehistory. This meteor strike is often linked to Estonian folklore which has it that Saaremaa was a place where the sun at one point "went to rest". Nazi Germany leadership considered Iceland to be

1665-763: Is described by the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) as "dry in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity , and occasionally relieved by pleasing word-pictures." Except for the geographical parts of Pliny 's Historia naturalis (where Mela is cited as an important authority), the De situ orbis is the only formal treatise on the subject in Classical Latin . Little is known of Pomponius except his name and birthplace—the small town of Tingentera or Cingentera (identified as Iulia Traducta ) in southern Spain , on Algeciras Bay (Mela ii. 6, § 96; but

1776-497: Is one of the most influential works of twentieth-century literature. Pomponius Mela Pomponius Mela , who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest known Roman geographer . He was born at the end of the 1st century BC in Tingentera (now Algeciras ) and died c.  AD 45. His short work ( De situ orbis libri III. ) remained in use nearly to the year 1500. It occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print, and

1887-568: Is opposition to the teaching of Latin in Italy, it is nonetheless still compulsory in most secondary schools. The same may also be said in the case of France or Greece. Indeed, Ancient Greek is one of the compulsory subjects in Greek secondary education, whereas in France, Latin is one of the optional subjects that can be chosen in a majority of middle schools and high schools. Ancient Greek is also still being taught, but not as much as Latin . One of

1998-558: Is still seen as a foundational aspect of European culture. The legacy of the classical world is not confined to the influence of classical languages. The Roman Empire was taken as a model by later European empires, such as the Spanish and British empires . Classical art has been taken as a model in later periods – medieval Romanesque architecture and Enlightenment-era neoclassical literature were both influenced by classical models, to take but two examples, while James Joyce 's Ulysses

2109-585: Is the title of the 1929 novel by Henry Handel Richardson , set in colonial Australia . Classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity . In the Western world , classics traditionally refers to the study of Ancient Greek and Roman literature and their original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin . Classics may also include as secondary subjects Greco-Roman philosophy , history , archaeology , anthropology , art , mythology , and society. In Western civilization,

2220-445: Is very well regarded and remains at the heart of much of our art today. For example, ancient Greek architecture gave us the classical orders: Doric , Ionic , and Corinthian . The Parthenon is still the architectural symbol of the classical world. Greek sculpture is well known and we know the names of several ancient Greek artists: for example, Phidias . With philology, archaeology, and art history, scholars seek understanding of

2331-676: The Archaeological Institute of America in 1879), including many foreign archaeological institutes in Athens and Rome (the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in 1881, British School at Athens in 1886, American Academy in Rome in 1895, and British School at Rome in 1900). More recently, classical archaeology has taken little part in the theoretical changes in the rest of the discipline, largely ignoring

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2442-572: The Bay of Biscay more accurately than Eratosthenes or Strabo, his ideas of the British Isles and their position are also clearer than his predecessors. He is the first to name the Orcades or Orkney Islands , which he defines and locates pretty correctly. Of northern Europe his knowledge was imperfect, but he speaks of a great bay (" Codanus sinus ") to the north of Germany, among whose many islands

2553-760: The Geats ( Gautoi ) in present-day Sweden and the Sami people ( Scrithiphini ). He also writes that when the Herules returned, they passed the Warini and the Danes and then crossed the sea to Thule, where they settled beside the Geats. The Irish monk Dicuil in his "Liber De Mensura Orbis Terrae" (written circa 825) after quoting various classical sources describing Thule, says "It is now thirty years since clerics, who had lived on

2664-736: The North Pole ). The Scottish Gaelic for Iceland is Innis Tile , which literally means the "Isle of Thule". Thule lends its name to the 69th element in the periodic table , thulium . Ultima Thule is the name of a location in the Mammoth Cave system in Kentucky, United States. It was formerly the terminus of the known-explorable southeastern (upstream) end of the passage called "Main Cave", before discoveries made in 1908 by Ed Bishop and Max Kaemper showed an area accessible beyond it, now

2775-557: The Roman Empire destroyed most evidence (cultural artefacts) of earlier, conquered civilizations, such as that of the Etruscans . The English word philosophy comes from the Greek word φιλοσοφία, meaning "love of wisdom", probably coined by Pythagoras. Along with the word itself, the discipline of philosophy as we know it today has its roots in ancient Greek thought , and according to Martin West "philosophy as we understand it

2886-604: The Second Poem , Claudian writes of "Thule lying icebound beneath the pole-star". Jordanes in his Getica also wrote that Thule sat under the pole star . The "known world' of the Europeans came to be viewed as bounded in the east by India and in the west by Thule, as expressed in the Consolation of Philosophy (III, 203 = metrus V, v. 7) by Boethius . "For though the earth, as far as India's shore, tremble before

2997-766: The Straits of Gibraltar , and describes the countries adjoining the south coast of the Mediterranean ; then he moves round by Syria and Asia Minor to the Black Sea , and so returns to Spain along the north shore of the Euxine, Propontis , etc. After treating the Mediterranean islands, he next takes the ocean littoral —to west, north, east and south successively—from Spain and Gaul round to India, from India to Persia , Arabia and Ethiopia ; and so again works back to Spain. Like most classical geographers he conceives of

3108-617: The United Kingdom , albeit also claimed by Argentina (in Spanish Islas Tule del Sur ). The Southern Thule islands were occupied by Argentina in 1976. The occupation was not militarily contested by the British until the 1982 Falklands War , during which time British sovereignty was restored by a contingent of Royal Marines . Currently the three islands are uninhabited. In 1910, the explorer Knud Rasmussen established

3219-513: The late antique period . Late Latin survived long after the end of classical antiquity, and was finally replaced by written Romance languages around the 9th century AD. Along with literary forms of Latin, there existed various vernacular dialects, generally known as Vulgar Latin , in use throughout antiquity. These are mainly preserved in sources such as graffiti and the Vindolanda tablets . Latin literature seems to have started in 240 BC, when

3330-584: The 1960s at the University of Konstanz . Reception studies is concerned with how students of classical texts have understood and interpreted them. As such, reception studies is interested in a two-way interaction between reader and text, taking place within a historical context. Though the idea of an "aesthetics of reception" was first put forward by Hans Robert Jauss in 1967, the principles of reception theory go back much earlier than this. As early as 1920, T. S. Eliot wrote that "the past [is] altered by

3441-549: The 19th century, little new literature was still being written in Latin – a practice which had continued as late as the 18th century – and a command of Latin declined in importance. Correspondingly, classical education from the 19th century onwards began to increasingly de-emphasise the importance of the ability to write and speak Latin. In the United Kingdom this process took longer than elsewhere. Composition continued to be

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3552-666: The 20th century, the study of classics became less common. In England, for instance, Oxford and Cambridge universities stopped requiring students to have qualifications in Greek in 1920, and in Latin at the end of the 1950s. When the National Curriculum was introduced in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in 1988, it did not mention the classics. By 2003, only about 10% of state schools in Britain offered any classical subjects to their students at all. In 2016, AQA ,

3663-421: The 2nd century AD the word was used in literary criticism to describe writers of the highest quality. For example, Aulus Gellius , in his Attic Nights , contrasts "classicus" and " proletarius " writers. By the 6th century AD, the word had acquired a second meaning, referring to pupils at a school. Thus, the two modern meanings of the word, referring both to literature considered to be of the highest quality and

3774-796: The 5th to the 3rd centuries BC, are Socrates , his student Plato , and Aristotle , who studied at Plato's Academy before founding his own school, known as the Lyceum . Later Greek schools of philosophy, including the Cynics , Stoics , and Epicureans , continued to be influential after the Roman annexation of Greece, and into the post-Classical world. Greek philosophy dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including political philosophy, ethics , metaphysics , ontology , and logic , as well as disciplines which are not today thought of as part of philosophy, such as biology and rhetoric. The language of ancient Rome

3885-545: The Elder and father of Lucan . The general views of the De situ orbis mainly agree with those current among Greek writers from Eratosthenes to Strabo ; the latter was probably unknown to Mela. But Pomponius is unique among ancient geographers in that, after dividing the Earth into five zones, of which two only were habitable, he asserts the existence of antichthones , inhabiting the southern temperate zone inaccessible to

3996-651: The Elder published his Natural History in which he also cites Pytheas' claim (in Book II, Chapter 75) that Thule is a six-day sail north of Britain. Then, when discussing the islands around Britain, he writes: "The farthest of all, which are known and spoke of, is Thule; in which there be no nights at all, as we have declared, about mid-summer, namely when the Sun passes through the sign Cancer; and contrariwise no days in mid-winter: and each of these times they suppose, do last six months, all day, or all night." Finally, in refining

4107-657: The Hamburg Church , where they cite both ancient writers' use of Thule as well as new knowledge since the end of antiquity. All these authors also understood that other islands were situated to the north of Britain. Eustathius of Thessalonica , in his twelfth-century commentary on the Iliad , wrote that the inhabitants of Thule were at war with a tribe whose members dwarf-like, only 20 fingers in height. The American classical scholar Charles Anthon believed this legend may have been rooted in history (although exaggerated), if

4218-617: The Thule area and the birthplace of the ancient Aryan race , with senior Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler even sending an expedition team to Iceland in 1938 with hopes of finding a temple for Nordic godds like Thor and Odin . In 2010, scientists from the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science at Technische Universität Berlin claimed to have identified persistent errors in calculation that had occurred in attempts by modern geographers to superimpose geographic coordinate systems upon Ptolemaic maps. After correcting for these errors,

4329-477: The United States, philhellenism began to emerge in the 1830s, with a turn "from a love of Rome and a focus on classical grammar to a new focus on Greece and the totality of its society, art, and culture." The 19th century saw the influence of the classical world, and the value of a classical education , decline, especially in the United States, where the subject was often criticised for its elitism. By

4440-513: The ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine ("common") or Biblical Greek, and its late period mutates imperceptibly into Medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earlier form it closely resembles Classical Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classical and earlier periods included several regional dialects. Ancient Greek

4551-649: The base to the US Space Force , its name was changed to Pituffik Space Base on April 6, 2023. The Greek explorer Pytheas of the Greek city of Massalia (now Marseille , France) is the first to have written of Thule, after his travels between 330 and 320 BC. Pytheas mentioned going to Thule in his now lost work , On The Ocean Τὰ περὶ τοῦ Ὠκεανοῦ ( ta peri tou Okeanou ). L. Sprague de Camp wrote that "the city of Massalia... sent Pytheas to scout northern Europe to see where their trade-goods were coming from." Descriptions of some of his discoveries have survived in

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4662-482: The city of Rome was founded in 753 BC; in reality, there had been a settlement on the site since around 1000 BC, when the Palatine Hill was settled. The city was originally ruled by kings, first Roman, and then Etruscan – according to Roman tradition, the first Etruscan king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus, ruled from 616 BC. Over the course of the 6th century BC, the city expanded its influence over

4773-487: The classical period written in the classical languages of Latin and Greek. The roots of classical philology lie in the Renaissance , as humanist intellectuals attempted to return to the Latin of the classical period, especially of Cicero , and as scholars attempted to produce more accurate editions of ancient texts. Some of the principles of philology still used today were developed during this period; for instance,

4884-423: The classical period, with poets such as Virgil , Horace , and Ovid ; historians such as Julius Caesar and Tacitus ; orators such as Cicero ; and philosophers such as Seneca the Younger and Lucretius . Late Latin authors include many Christian writers such as Lactantius , Tertullian and Ambrose ; non-Christian authors, such as the historian Ammianus Marcellinus , are also preserved. According to legend,

4995-549: The context of Christopher Columbus ' voyages. The Roman poet Silius Italicus (AD 25 – 101) wrote that the people of Thule were painted blue: "the blue-painted native of Thule, when he fights, drives around the close-packed ranks in his scythe-bearing chariot", implying a link to the Picts (whose exonym is derived from the Latin pictus "painted"). Martial (AD 40 – 104) talks about "blue" and "painted Britons", just like Julius Caesar . Claudian (AD 370 – 404) also believed that

5106-514: The continent of Africa as surrounded by sea and not extending very far south. The editio princeps of Mela was published at Milan in 1471; the first critical edition was by Joachim Vadian (Wien, 1518), superseded by those of Johann Heinrich Voss (1658), Johann Friedrich Gronovius (1685 and 1696), A. Gronovius (1722 and 1728), and Tzschucke (1806–1807), in seven parts (Leipzig; the most elaborate of all); G. Paithey's (Berlin, 1867) for its text. The English translation by Arthur Golding (1585)

5217-459: The dominant classical skill in England until the 1870s, when new areas within the discipline began to increase in popularity. In the same decade came the first challenges to the requirement of Greek at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, though it would not be finally abolished for another 50 years. Though the influence of classics as the dominant mode of education in Europe and North America

5328-483: The dwarf or pygmy tribe were interpreted as being a smaller aboriginal tribe of Britain which the people on Thule had encountered. Petrarch , in the fourteenth century, wrote in his Epistolae familiares ("Familiar Letters") that Thule lay in the unknown regions of the far north-west. A madrigal by Thomas Weelkes , entitled Thule (1600), describes it with reference to the Icelandic volcano Hekla : Thule,

5439-530: The earliest to survive to us today, probably composed in the eighth century BC. These early epics were oral compositions, created without the use of writing. Around the same time that the Homeric epics were composed, the Greek alphabet was introduced; the earliest surviving inscriptions date from around 750 BC. European drama was invented in ancient Greece. Traditionally this was attributed to Thespis , around

5550-400: The eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes, along with a few fragments. Sixty years after the end of Aristophanes' career, the next author of comedies to have any substantial body of work survive is Menander , whose style is known as New Comedy . Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes , the nature of the world, and

5661-457: The end of the fifth century BC. Surviving Greek comedy begins later than tragedy; the earliest surviving work, Aristophanes ' Acharnians , comes from 425 BC. However, comedy dates back as early as 486 BC, when the Dionysia added a competition for comedy to the much earlier competition for tragedy. The comedy of the fifth century is known as Old Comedy , and it comes down to us solely in

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5772-640: The entirety of Latium . Around the end of the 6th century – traditionally in 510 BC – the kings of Rome were driven out, and the city became a republic. Around 387 BC, Rome was sacked by the Gauls following the Battle of the Allia . It soon recovered from this humiliating defeat, however, and in 381 the inhabitants of Tusculum in Latium were made Roman citizens. This was the first time Roman citizenship

5883-599: The fifth and fourth centuries BC, has traditionally been considered the height of Greek civilisation. The Classical period of Greek history is generally considered to have begun with the first and second Persian invasions of Greece at the start of the Greco-Persian wars, and to have ended with the death of Alexander the Great . Classical Greek culture had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried

5994-716: The fifth century AD Claudian , in his poem, On the Fourth Consulship of the Emperor Honorius , Book VIII , rhapsodizes on the conquests of the emperor Theodosius I , declaring that the Orcades "ran red with Saxon slaughter; Thule was warm with the blood of Picts ; ice-bound Hibernia [Ireland] wept for the heaps of slain Scots ". This implies that Thule was Scotland . But in Against Rufinias ,

6105-456: The first time after the reforms of the 1880s, though it did not become part of Oxford's Greats until much later. The second half of the 19th century saw Schliemann 's excavations of Troy and Mycenae ; the first excavations at Olympia and Delos ; and Arthur Evans ' work in Crete, particularly on Knossos . This period also saw the foundation of important archaeological associations (e.g.

6216-722: The folk of the northern temperate regions from the unbearable heat of the intervening torrid belt. On the divisions and boundaries of Europe , Asia and Africa , he repeats Eratosthenes; like all classical geographers from Alexander the Great (except Ptolemy ) he regards the Caspian Sea as an inlet of the Northern Ocean, corresponding to the Persian and Arabian ( Red Sea ) gulfs on the south. His Indian conceptions are inferior to those of some earlier Greek writers; he follows Eratosthenes in supposing that country to occupy

6327-580: The form of both popular public religion and cult practices. These different groups varied enough for it to be possible to speak of Greek religions or "cults" in the plural, though most of them shared similarities. Also, the Greek religion extended out of Greece and out to neighbouring islands. Many Greek people recognized the major gods and goddesses: Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, Dionysus, Hephaestus, Athena, Hermes, Demeter, Hestia and Hera; though philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to posit

6438-518: The history and culture of a civilization, through critical study of the extant literary and physical artefacts, in order to compose and establish a continual historic narrative of the Ancient World and its peoples. The task is difficult due to a dearth of physical evidence: for example, Sparta was a leading Greek city-state , yet little evidence of it survives to study, and what is available comes from Athens , Sparta's principal rival; likewise,

6549-413: The inhabitants of Thule were Picts. A work of prose fiction in Greek by Antonius Diogenes entitled The Wonders Beyond Thule appeared c. AD 150 or earlier. (Gerald N. Sandy, in the introduction to his translation of Photius ' ninth century summary of the work, notes that this Thule most closely matches Iceland.) Cleomedes referenced Pytheas' journey to Thule, but added no new information. Early in

6660-413: The island from the first of February to the first of August, told me that not only at the summer solstice, but in the days round about it, the sun setting in the evening hides itself as though behind a small hill in such a way that there was no darkness in that very small space of time, and a man could do whatever he wished as though the sun were there, even remove lice from his shirt, and if they had been on

6771-575: The island's location, he places it along the most northerly parallel of those he describes: "Last of all is the Scythian parallel, from the Rhiphean hills into Thule: wherein (as we said) it is day and night continually by turns (for six months)." The Roman historian Tacitus , in his book chronicling the life of his father-in-law, Agricola , describes how the Romans knew that Britain (in which Agricola

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6882-421: The largest army Rome had yet put into the field was wiped out, and one of the two consuls leading it was killed. However, Rome continued to fight, annexing much of Spain and eventually defeating Carthage, ending her position as a major power and securing Roman preeminence in the Western Mediterranean. The classical languages of the ancient Mediterranean world influenced every European language, imparting to each

6993-440: The largest exam board for A-Levels and GCSEs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, announced that it would be scrapping A-Level subjects in Classical Civilisation, Archaeology, and Art History. This left just one out of five exam boards in England which still offered Classical Civilisation as a subject. The decision was immediately denounced by archaeologists and historians, with Natalie Haynes of The Guardian stating that

7104-421: The last decade of the eighteenth century, scholars of ancient philosophy began to study the discipline historically. Previously, works on ancient philosophy had been unconcerned with chronological sequence and with reconstructing the reasoning of ancient thinkers; with what Wolfgang-Ranier Mann calls "New Philosophy", this changed. Another discipline within the classics is "reception studies", which developed in

7215-412: The laws you give, though Thule bow to your service on earth's farthest bounds, yet if thou canst not drive away black cares, if thou canst not put to flight complaints, then is no true power thine." In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville wrote in his Etymologies that: Ultima Thule ( Thyle ultima ) is an island of the Ocean in the northwestern region, beyond Britannia, taking its name from

7326-415: The location of the Violet City Entrance . The Violet City Lantern tour offered at the cave passes through Ultima Thule near the conclusion of the route. In March 2018, following a naming competition, the Kuiper belt object 486958 Arrokoth , a fly-by target of the NASA probe New Horizons , was nicknamed "Ultima Thule". The fly-by took place on 1 January 2019, and was the most distant encounter between

7437-423: The loss of the A-Level would deprive state school students, 93% of all students, the opportunity to study classics while making it once again the exclusive purview of wealthy private-school students. However, the study of classics has not declined as fast elsewhere in Europe. In 2009, a review of Meeting the Challenge , a collection of conference papers about the teaching of Latin in Europe, noted that though there

7548-401: The men who have seen Britain and Ireland do not mention Thule, though they speak of other islands, small ones, about Britain". Strabo adds the following in Book 5: "Now Pytheas of Massilia tells us that Thule, the most northerly of the Britannic Islands, is farthest north, and that there the circle of the summer tropic is the same as the Arctic Circle. But from the other writers I learn nothing on

7659-435: The middle of the sixth century BC, though the earliest surviving work of Greek drama is Aeschylus ' tragedy The Persians , which dates to 472 BC. Early Greek tragedy was performed by a chorus and two actors, but by the end of Aeschylus' life, a third actor had been introduced, either by him or by Sophocles . The last surviving Greek tragedies are the Bacchae of Euripides and Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus , both from

7770-446: The most notable characteristics of the modern study of classics is the diversity of the field. Although traditionally focused on ancient Greece and Rome, the study now encompasses the entire ancient Mediterranean world, thus expanding the studies to Northern Africa and parts of the Middle East . Philology is the study of language preserved in written sources; classical philology is thus concerned with understanding any texts from

7881-430: The name Thule and/or places reported by the Irish mariner Saint Brendan (in the 6th century) and other distant or mythical locations, such as Hy Brasil and Cockaigne . These scholars included works by Dicuil (see above), the Anglo-Saxon monk the Venerable Bede in De ratione temporum , the Landnámabók , by the anonymous Historia Norwegie , and by the German cleric Adam of Bremen in his Deeds of Bishops of

7992-416: The north of Britain which can be reached from the northern islands of Britain in a direct voyage of two days and nights with sails filled with a continuously favourable wind. A devout priest told me that in two summer days and the intervening night he sailed in a two-benched boat and entered one of them. There is another set of small islands, nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water; in these for nearly

8103-537: The observation that if a manuscript could be shown to be a copy of an earlier extant manuscript, then it provides no further evidence of the original text, was made as early as 1489 by Angelo Poliziano . Other philological tools took longer to be developed: the first statement, for instance, of the principle that a more difficult reading should be preferred over a simpler one, was in 1697 by Jean Le Clerc . The modern discipline of classical philology began in Germany at

8214-450: The original text than any existing manuscript, could be reconstructed. Classical archaeology is the oldest branch of archaeology, with its roots going back to J. J. Winckelmann 's work on Herculaneum in the 1760s. It was not until the last decades of the 19th century, however, that classical archaeology became part of the tradition of Western classical scholarship. It was included as part of Cambridge University's Classical Tripos for

8325-440: The origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece. Modern scholars refer to the myths and study them in an attempt to throw light on the religious and political institutions of ancient Greece and its civilization, and to gain understanding of the nature of myth-making itself. Greek religion encompassed the collection of beliefs and rituals practiced in ancient Greece in

8436-401: The people get their beverage, also, from them. As for the grain, he says, since they have no pure sunshine, they pound it out in large storehouses, after first gathering in the ears thither; for the threshing floors become useless because of this lack of sunshine and because of the rains". The mid-first century Roman geographer Pomponius Mela placed Thule north of Scythia . In AD 77, Pliny

8547-476: The period of cosmography, Doth vaunt of Hecla , whose sulphureous fire Doth melt the frozen clime and thaw the sky; Trinacrian Etna 's flames ascend not higher ... The English poet Ambrose Philips began, but did not complete, a poem concerning The Fable of Thule which he published in 1748. Thule is referred to in Goethe 's poem " Der König in Thule " (1774). The King and Kingdom of Thule referenced in

8658-521: The period: Lucretius , popular during the Carolingian Renaissance , was barely read in the twelfth century, while for Quintilian the reverse is true. The Renaissance led to the increasing study of both ancient literature and ancient history, as well as a revival of classical styles of Latin . From the 14th century, first in Italy and then increasingly across Europe, Renaissance Humanism , an intellectual movement that "advocated

8769-551: The plays of William Shakespeare were rewritten along neoclassical lines, and these "improved" versions were performed throughout the 18th century. In the United States, the nation's Founders were strongly influenced by the classics, and they looked in particular to the Roman Republic for their form of government. From the beginning of the 18th century, the study of Greek became increasingly important relative to that of Latin. In this period Johann Winckelmann 's claims for

8880-462: The poem have no historical basis, nor did Goethe claim such. Goethe's poem was famously set to music by Franz Schubert (D 367, 1816), Franz Liszt (S.531) and Robert Schumann (Op.67, No.1), and in the collection Ultima Thule (1880) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . Edgar Allan Poe 's poem " Dream-Land " (1844) begins with the following stanza: By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named Night, On

8991-436: The popularity of " New Archaeology ", which emphasized the development of general laws derived from studying material culture, in the 1960s. New Archaeology is still criticized by traditional minded scholars of classical archaeology despite a wide acceptance of its basic techniques. Some art historians focus their study on the development of art in the classical world. Indeed, the art and architecture of ancient Rome and Greece

9102-529: The present as much as the present is directed by the past"; Charles Martindale describes this as a "cardinal principle" for many versions of modern reception theory. Ancient Greece was the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period , beginning in the eighth century BC, to the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC. The Classical period , during

9213-685: The scientists claimed, Ptolemy's Thule could be mapped to the Norwegian island of Smøla . In 1775, during his second voyage, Captain Cook named an island in the high southern latitudes of the South Atlantic Ocean , Southern Thule . The name is now used for a group of three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands , one of which is called Thule Island . The island group became a British overseas territory of

9324-437: The sole and all-sufficient explanation of the universe. This affords the only thoroughly scientific system; and nowhere but in its legitimate conclusions can thought find suitable resting-place, the heart complete satisfaction, and life a perfect basis. Unless it accepts this system, philosophy will be but drift-wood, instead of the stream of thought whose current bears all truth. Materialism, thorough, consistent, and fearless, not

9435-688: The south-eastern angle of Asia, whence the coast trended northwards to Scythia, and then swept round westward to the Caspian Sea. As usual, he places the Riphean Mountains and the Hyperboreans near the Scythian Ocean. In western Europe his knowledge (as was natural in a Spanish subject of Imperial Rome) was somewhat in advance of the Greek geographers. He defines the western coast-line of Spain and Gaul and its indentation by

9546-617: The specialised science and technology vocabularies, the influence of Latin and Greek is notable. Ecclesiastical Latin , the Roman Catholic Church's official language, remains a living legacy of the classical world in the contemporary world. Latin had an impact far beyond the classical world. It continued to be the pre-eminent language for serious writings in Europe long after the fall of the Roman Empire. The modern Romance languages (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Galician, Catalan) all derive from Latin. Latin

9657-504: The standard texts used as part of a curriculum, were both derived from Roman use. In the Middle Ages , classics and education were tightly intertwined; according to Jan Ziolkowski, there is no era in history in which the link was tighter. Medieval education taught students to imitate earlier classical models, and Latin continued to be the language of scholarship and culture, despite the increasing difference between literary Latin and

9768-589: The study and imitation of classical antiquity", developed. Humanism saw a reform in education in Europe, introducing a wider range of Latin authors as well as bringing back the study of Greek language and literature to Western Europe. This reintroduction was initiated by Petrarch (1304–1374) and Boccaccio (1313–1375) who commissioned a Calabrian scholar to translate the Homeric poems . This humanist educational reform spread from Italy, in Catholic countries as it

9879-594: The study of the Ancient Greek and Roman classics was considered the foundation of the humanities , and they traditionally have been the cornerstone of an elite higher education. The word classics is derived from the Latin adjective classicus , meaning "belonging to the highest class of citizens." The word was originally used to describe the members of the Patricians , the highest class in ancient Rome . By

9990-676: The subject – neither that there exists a certain island by the name of Thule, nor whether the northern regions are inhabitable up to the point where the summer tropic becomes the Arctic Circle ." Strabo ultimately concludes, "Concerning Thule, our historical information is still more uncertain, on account of its outside position; for Thule, of all the countries that are named, is set farthest north." The inhabitants or people of Thule are described in most detail by Strabo (citing Pytheas): "the people (of Thule) live on millet and other herbs, and on fruits and roots; and where there are grain and honey,

10101-445: The summer on Thule night lasted only two hours, a clear reference to the midnight sun . Strabo , in his Geographica (c. AD 30), mentions Thule in describing Eratosthenes ' calculation of "the breadth of the inhabited world" and notes that Pytheas says it "is a six days' sail north of Britain, and is near the frozen sea". But he then doubts this claim, writing that Pytheas has "been found, upon scrutiny, to be an arch falsifier, but

10212-499: The sun, because there the sun makes its summer solstice, and there is no daylight beyond ( ultra ) this. Hence its sea is sluggish and frozen. Isidore distinguished this from the islands of Britannia, Thanet ( Tanatos ), the Orkney ( Orcades ), and Ireland ( Scotia or Hibernia ). Isidore was to have a large influence upon Bede , who was later to mention Thule. By the Late Middle Ages , scholars were linking Iceland and/or Greenland to

10323-418: The superiority of the Greek visual arts influenced a shift in aesthetic judgements, while in the literary sphere, G. E. Lessing "returned Homer to the centre of artistic achievement". In the United Kingdom, the study of Greek in schools began in the late 18th century. The poet Walter Savage Landor claimed to have been one of the first English schoolboys to write in Greek during his time at Rugby School . In

10434-489: The temporal is but a manifestation? Matter? Spirit? Matter and Spirit? Something behind both and from which they have sprung, neither Matter nor Spirit, but their Creator? Or is there in reality neither Matter nor Spirit, but only an agnostic Cause of the phenomena erroneously assigned by us to body and mind? After spending many years in profoundly investigating this problem, I have at last struck bottom. Unhesitatingly and unconditionally I adopt materialism, and declare it to be

10545-744: The text is here corrupt). The date of his writing may be approximately fixed by his allusion (iii. 6 § 49) to a proposed British expedition of the reigning emperor, almost certainly that of Claudius in AD 43. That this passage cannot refer to Julius Caesar is evidenced by several references to events of Augustus 's reign; especially to certain new names given to Spanish towns. Mela, like the two Senecas , Lucan , Martial , Quintilian , Trajan , Hadrian , were all part of Italic communities settled in various parts of Spain that eventually relocated in Rome. It has been conjectured that Pomponius Mela may have been related in some way to Marcus Annaeus Mela , son of Seneca

10656-514: The timid, reserved, and half-hearted kind, is the hope of the world. Kelly Miller , addressing the Hampton Alumni Association in 1899, explained that "Civilization may be defined as the sum total of those influences and agencies that make for knowledge and virtue. This is the goal, the ultima Thule, of all human strivings. The essential factors of civilization are knowledge, industry, culture, and virture." Ultima Thule

10767-415: The turn of the nineteenth century. It was during this period that scientific principles of philology began to be put together into a coherent whole, in order to provide a set of rules by which scholars could determine which manuscripts were most accurate. This "new philology", as it was known, centered around the construction of a genealogy of manuscripts, with which a hypothetical common ancestor, closer to

10878-743: The vernacular languages of Europe during the period. While Latin was hugely influential, according to thirteenth-century English philosopher Roger Bacon , "there are not four men in Latin Christendom who are acquainted with the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic grammars." Greek was rarely studied in the West, and Greek literature was known almost solely in Latin translation. The works of even major Greek authors such as Hesiod , whose names continued to be known by educated Europeans, along with most of Plato, were unavailable in Christian Europe. Some were rediscovered through Arabic translations;

10989-410: The vernal to the autumnal equinox, and that vice versa night continues uninterrupted from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, since these men voyaged at the natural time of great cold, and entered the island and remaining on it had day and night alternately except for the period of the solstice. But one day's sail north of that they did find the sea frozen over. There are many other islands in the ocean to

11100-401: The works of later, often skeptical, authors. Polybius in his work The Histories (c. 140 BC), Book XXXIV, cites Pytheas as one "who has led many people into error by saying that he traversed the whole of Britain on foot, giving the island a circumference of forty thousand stadia , and telling us also about Thule, those regions in which there was no longer any proper land nor sea nor air, but

11211-475: Was Iceland. Solinus (d. AD 400) in his Polyhistor , repeated these descriptions, noting that the people of Thule had a fertile land where they grew a good production of crop and fruits. In the writings of the historian Procopius , from the first half of the sixth century, Thule is a large island in the north inhabited by 25 tribes. It is believed that Procopius is really talking about a part of Scandinavia , since several tribes are easily identified, including

11322-451: Was Latin, a member of the Italic family of languages . The earliest surviving inscription in Latin comes from the 7th century BC, on a brooch from Palestrina . Latin from between this point and the early 1st century BC is known as Old Latin . Most surviving Latin literature is Classical Latin , from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century AD. Latin then evolved into Late Latin , in use during

11433-417: Was Roman commander) was an island rather than a continent, by circumnavigating it. Tacitus writes of a Roman ship visiting Orkney and claims the ship's crew even sighted Thule. However their orders were not to explore there, as winter was at hand. Some scholars believe that Tacitus was referring to Shetland . The third-century Latin grammarian Gaius Julius Solinus wrote in his Polyhistor that "Thyle, which

11544-707: Was adopted by the Jesuits , and in countries that became Protestant such as England, Germany, and the Low Countries, in order to ensure that future clerics were able to study the New Testament in the original language. The late 17th and 18th centuries are the period in Western European literary history which is most associated with the classical tradition, as writers consciously adapted classical models. Classical models were so highly prized that

11655-689: Was distant from Orkney by a voyage of five days and nights, was fruitful and abundant in the lasting yield of its crops". The 4th century Virgilian commentator Servius also believed that Thule sat close to Orkney: "Thule; an island in the Ocean between the northern and western zone, beyond Britain, near Orkney and Ireland; in this Thule, when the sun is in Cancer, it is said that there are perpetual days without nights..." Other late classical writers such as Orosius (384–420) describe Thule as being north and west of both Ireland and Britain, strongly suggesting that it

11766-583: Was extended in this way. Rome went on to expand its area of influence, until by 269 the entirety of the Italian peninsula was under Roman rule. Soon afterwards, in 264, the First Punic War began; it lasted until 241. The Second Punic War began in 218, and by the end of that year, the Carthaginian general Hannibal had invaded Italy. The war saw Rome's worst defeat to that point at Cannae ;

11877-460: Was in decline in the 19th century, the discipline was rapidly evolving in the same period. Classical scholarship was becoming more systematic and scientific , especially with the "new philology " created at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. Its scope was also broadening: it was during the 19th century that ancient history and classical archaeology began to be seen as part of classics, rather than separate disciplines. During

11988-555: Was one of many antiquarians to argue that Ireland was Thule, as he does in his book An essay on the antiquity of the Irish language . Scottish historian W.F. Skene identified Thule as Kintyre peninsula in 1876 based upon a description given by Solinus. Another hypothesis, first proposed by Lennart Meri in 1976, holds that the island of Saaremaa (which is often known by the exonym Ösel) in Estonia , could be Thule. That is, there

12099-569: Was one, "Codanovia", of pre-eminent size; this name reappears in Pliny the Elder 's work as Scatinavia . Codanovia and Scatinavia were both Latin renderings of the Proto-Germanic * Skaðinawio , the Germanic name for Scandinavia . Mela's descriptive method follows ocean coasts, in the manner of a periplus , probably because it was derived from the accounts of navigators. He begins at

12210-581: Was the language of Homer and of classical Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to the vocabulary of English and many other European languages, and has been a standard subject of study in Western educational institutions since the Renaissance. Latinized forms of Ancient Greek roots are used in many of the scientific names of species and in other scientific terminology. The earliest surviving works of Greek literature are epic poetry . Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey are

12321-399: Was used for Iceland. By the late 19th century, however, Thule was frequently identified with Norway. In 1910, the explorer Knud Rasmussen established a missionary and trading post in north-western Greenland, which he named "Thule" (later Qaanaaq ). Thule formerly gave its name to the northernmost United States Air Force base, Thule Air Base in northwest Greenland. With the transfer of

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