Curated category
Characters in the Divine Comedy
- Julius CaesarAround the 10th or the 11th of January 49 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar led a single legion, the Legio XIII Gemina, across a small river called the Rubicon, the…
- Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas was the youngest of nine children, and his family had a plan for him. His brothers would be soldiers. He would follow his uncle Sinibald…
- Alexander the GreatAlexander the Great was undefeated in battle, and by the age of 30 he had built one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern…
- PlatoPlato wrote that the safest general characterization of European philosophy is that it consists of a series of footnotes to him.
- AristotleAncient Greek scholars gave Aristotle a name reserved for one man: among medieval Muslim scholars he was "The First Teacher", and to Christians like Thomas…
- NoahNoah is a figure whose name appears in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, and the writings of the Bahai Faith, making him one of the few characters shared across…
- Adam and EveAdam and Eve are the first man and first woman in the creation myth of the Abrahamic religions. From them flows a startling claim.
- Dante AlighieriDante Alighieri began his most famous poem with a line of plain confusion: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita," or "Midway upon the journey of our life."…
- HoraceQuintus Horatius Flaccus, the poet the English-speaking world calls Horace, once described himself as a man who fled the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC without…
- AvicennaBy the age of ten, Avicenna had memorized the entire Quran. He was born around 980 in the village of Afshana in Transoxiana, into a Persian family, and his…
- VirgilVirgil stood on a pillar of bright tin-plated iron. That is how Geoffrey Chaucer placed him in The House of Fame, written between 1374 and 1385, granting the…
- Saint PeterSaint Peter began life as Shimon bar Yonah, a fisherman from Bethsaida. He died, according to tradition, crucified upside down on Vatican Hill under the…
- SatanSatan goes by many names. In Hebrew he is ha-satan, "the accuser". In Arabic, Iblis or Shaitan. In Latin, Diabolus, the slanderer.
- AugustusOn the 8th of May 44 BC, a teenager named Gaius Octavius accepted a dead man's will and, with it, the most dangerous inheritance in the Roman world.
- AeneasAeneas was twice pulled back from death by gods who would not let him die. In Homer's Iliad, Aphrodite and Apollo snatch him from a duel with Diomedes of…
- Judas IscariotJudas Iscariot was one of Jesus Christ's original Twelve Apostles, and his name has become, in many languages, a synonym for betrayer.
- HectorHector, prince of Troy, stands at the center of one of the oldest stories in Western literature. In Homer's Iliad, he leads the Trojan army against the…
- Frederick II, Holy Roman EmperorFrederick II was born in Jesi, near Ancona, on the 26th of December 1194, and the circumstances surrounding that birth were so extraordinary that rumors…
- Marcus Junius BrutusMarcus Junius Brutus died on the 23rd of October 42 BC, on a hillside near Philippi, by falling on his own sword. He had just lost two battles in quick…
- Seneca the YoungerSeneca the Younger spent his final hours in a warm bath, dictating last words to a scribe while friends gathered around him in his home.
- Paris (mythology)The name Paris appears in ancient texts as a figure of Luwian origin. A Hittite scribe recorded the name Parizitis, which scholars link to the Trojan prince.
- HippocratesHippocrates of Kos has been called the Father of Medicine for more than two thousand years, yet almost nothing concrete is known about what he actually…
- HomerHomer is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, yet no one can say for certain that he ever lived. He was possibly born around the 8th century…
- Justinian IJustinian I was born in 482 in Tauresium, in Dardania, near the city of Naissus, into a peasant family of either Thraco-Roman or Illyro-Roman origin.
- StatiusPublius Papinius Statius grew up in the Bay of Naples during the early years of the first century. His father, a native of Velia, moved to Rome and taught…
- AliAli ibn Abi Talib was born around 600 CE, by tradition possibly inside the Ka'ba in Mecca, the holiest site of Islam. He was the cousin and son-in-law of the…
- MuhammadMuhammad was born in Mecca around the year 570, into the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. His father died before he was born.
- SocratesSocrates wrote nothing down. Not a single text, not a stray fragment, survives in his own hand. Everything known about the ancient Greek philosopher from…
- Gaius Cassius LonginusGaius Cassius Longinus spent his life fighting against what he saw as tyranny, only to be remembered for the act that made him infamous: driving a blade into…
- CerberusCerberus, the hound of Hades, sits at one of the most consequential thresholds in all of Greek mythology: the gate between the living world and the realm of…
- TrajanTrajan was born Marcus Ulpius Traianus on the 18th of September in AD 53, in a modest Roman colony called Italica, in what is now the Andalusian province of…
- AverroesAverroes was born in Córdoba on the 14th of April 1126, into a family whose name was synonymous with legal authority. His grandfather had been the city's…
- Cato the YoungerCato the Younger stabbed himself in the abdomen in April 46 BC rather than accept a pardon from Julius Caesar. The details of that final night in the city of…
- AttilaAttila ruled the Huns from 434 until his death in early 453, and in those two decades he forced two Roman empires to their knees.
- SinonA young Greek warrior named Sinon stood before the stone walls of Troy, his hands bound and his eyes fixed on the massive wooden horse looming behind him.
- Pope Boniface VIIIPope Boniface VIII was born Benedetto Caetani in Anagni, a hilltop town southeast of Rome, and he died there too, in the most humiliating circumstances any…
- Simonides of CeosSimonides of Ceos lived from around 556 to 468 BC, and the Greeks credited him with something no poet before him had managed: convincing the world that an…