title: Gallienus

text: In 268, at some time before or soon after the battle of Naissus, the authority of Gallienus was challenged by Aureolus, commander of the cavalry stationed in Mediolanum (Milan), who was supposed to keep an eye on Postumus. Instead, he acted as deputy to Postumus until the very last days of his revolt, when he seems to have claimed the throne for himself. The decisive battle took place at what is now Pontirolo Nuovo near Milan; Aureolus was clearly defeated and driven back to Milan. Gallienus laid siege to the city but was murdered during the siege. There are differing accounts of the murder, but the sources agree that most of Gallienus' officials wanted him dead. According to the Historia Augusta, an unreliable source compiled long after the events it describes, a conspiracy was led by the commander of the guard Aurelius Heraclianus and Lucius Aurelius Marcianus. Marcianus's role in the conspiracy is not confirmed by any other ancient source.


title: Gallienus

text: Cecropius, commander of the Dalmatians, spread the word that the forces of Aureolus were leaving the city, and Gallienus left his tent without his bodyguard, only to be struck down by Cecropius. One version has Claudius selected as emperor by the conspirators, another chosen by Gallienus on his death bed; the "Historia Augusta" was concerned to substantiate the descent of the Constantinian dynasty from Claudius, and this may explain its accounts, which do not involve Claudius in the murder. The other sources (Zosimus i.40 and Zonaras xii.25) report that the conspiracy was organized by Heraclianus, Claudius, and Aurelian.


title: Gallienus

text: According to Aurelius Victor and Zonaras, on hearing the news that Gallienus was dead, the Senate in Rome ordered the execution of his family (including his brother Valerianus and son Marinianus) and their supporters, just before receiving a message from Claudius to spare their lives and deify his predecessor. The tomb of Gallienus is thought to be located to the south of Rome, at the IXth mile of the Via Appia.


title: Gallienus

text: Gallienus was not treated favorably by ancient historians. The Historia Augusta describes him as a lover of luxury, who dressed in purple, sprinkled gold dust in his hair, and built castles of apples. Emperor Julian's The Caesars presents Gallienus "with the dress and languishing gait of a woman", which is possibly connected with coins portraying the emperor with unusual iconography and bearing the legend "Gallienae Augustae". This animosity within the sources was partly due to the secession of Gaul and Palmyra and his inability to win them back; at the time of Gallienus' death, Palmyra was still nominally loyal to Rome, but, under the leadership of Odaenathus, was independent in nearly every other respect. Palmyra would formally secede after Odaenathus' death and the ascension of his widow Zenobia. It was not until the reign of Aurelian several years later that the breakaway provinces were truly brought back into the Roman fold. According to modern scholar Pat Southern, some historians now see Gallienus in a more positive light. Gallienus produced some useful reforms.


title: Gallienus

text: About 40 rare gold coins of Gallienus have been discovered as part of the Lava Treasure in Corsica, France, in the 1980s.


title: Gallienus

text: He contributed to military history as the first to commission primarily cavalry units, the Comitatenses, that could be dispatched anywhere in the Empire in short order. This reform arguably created a precedent for the future emperors Diocletian and Constantine I. The biographer Aurelius Victor reports that Gallienus forbade senators from becoming military commanders. This policy undermined senatorial power, as more reliable equestrian commanders rose to prominence. In Southern's view, these reforms and the decline in senatorial influence not only helped Aurelian to salvage the Empire, but they also make Gallienus one of the emperors most responsible for the creation of the Dominate, along with Septimius Severus, Diocletian, and Constantine I.


title: Gallienus

text: The capture of Valerian in the year 259 forced Gallienus to issue the first official declaration of tolerance with regard to the Christians, restoring their places of worship and cemeteries, therefore implying a recognition of the property of the Church. However, the edict did not turn Christianity into an official religion.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The economy of Spain is a highly developed social market economy. It is the world's sixteenth-largest by nominal GDP and the sixth-largest in Europe. Spain is a member of the European Union and the eurozone, as well as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Trade Organization. In 2021, Spain was the twentieth-largest exporter in the world and the sixteenth-largest importer. Spain is listed 27th in the United Nations Human Development Index and 37th in GDP per capita by the World Bank. According to "The Economist" in 2005, Spain had the world's 10th highest quality of life. Some of the main areas of economic activity are the automotive industry, medical technology, chemicals, shipbuilding, tourism, and the textile industry.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Following the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the Spanish economy plunged into recession, entering a cycle of negative macroeconomic performance. Compared to the EU's and US's average, the Spanish economy entered recession later (the economy was still growing by 2008), but it stayed there longer. The economic boom of the 2000s was reversed, leaving over a quarter of Spain's workforce unemployed by 2012. In aggregated terms, the Spanish GDP contracted by almost 9% during the 2009–2013 period. The economic situation started improving by 2013–2014. By then, the country managed to reverse the record trade deficit which had built up during the boom years. It attained a trade surplus in 2013, after three decades of running a trade deficit. The surplus kept strengthening during 2014 and 2015.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2015, the Spanish GDP grew by 3.2%, a rate not seen since 2007, the last year before the world financial crisis struck. This growth rate was the highest among the larger EU economies that year. In just two years (2014–2015), the Spanish economy recovered 85% of the GDP lost during the 2009–2013 recession. This success led some international analysts to refer to Spain's current recovery as "the showcase for structural reform efforts". Strong GDP growth was registered also in 2016, with the country growing twice as fast as the eurozone average. In this regard, the Spanish economy was forecast to remain the best-performing major economy in the eurozone in 2017. Spain's unemployment rate fell substantially from 2013 to 2017. The real unemployment rate is much lower, as there is an estimation of millions of people working in the grey market, people who count as unemployed or inactive yet still perform jobs. Although estimates of the hidden economy vary, the real Spanish GDP may be around 20% bigger as it is estimated that the underground economy of Spain moves annually 190 billion Euros (US$224 billion). Among high income European countries, only Italy and Greece are estimated to have larger underground economies than Spain. Thus Spain may have higher purchasing power as well as a smaller gini coefficient than shown in official numbers. In 2012, the Spanish government officially requested a credit from the European Stability Mechanism to restructure its banking sector in the face of a financial crisis. The ESM approved up to €100 billion in assistance, although, in the end, Spain only drew €41.3 billion. The ESM programme for Spain ended with the full repayment of the credit drawn, eighteen months later.


title: Economy of Spain

text: During the first decades of the twentieth century, Spain experienced an accelerated growth of its industrial labor force and urban population; the economy became less agrarian as the process of urbanization spread after 1910. The largest sector was still agriculture but saw declines, along with fishing, relative to the share of active population engaged in the activity. The fastest growing sector at that time was services.


title: Economy of Spain

text: At the second half of the 1990s, the conservative government of former prime minister Jose María Aznar had worked successfully to gain admission to the group of countries joining the euro in 1999.


title: Economy of Spain

text: By 2007, Spain had achieved a GDP per capita of 105% of European Union's average due to its own economic development and the EU enlargements to 28 members, which placed it slightly ahead of Italy (103%). Three regions were included in the leading EU group exceeding 125% of the GDP per capita average level: the Basque Country , Madrid, and Navarre. According to calculations by the German newspaper "Die Welt" in 2008, Spain's economy had been on course to overtake countries like Germany in per capita income by 2011. in October 2006, Unemployment stood at 7.6% which compared favorably to many other European countries, and especially with the early 1990s when it stood at over 20%. In the past,Spain's economy had included high inflation and it has always had a large underground economy.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The turn to growth during the 1997-2007 period produced a real estate bubble fed by historically low interest rates, massive rates of foreign investment (during that period Spain had become a favorite of other European investment banks) and an immense surge in immigration. At its peak in 2007, construction had expanded to 15% of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the country and 12% of total employment. During that time Spain capital inflows –including short term speculative investment– financed a large trade deficit.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The downside of the real estate boom was a corresponding rise in the levels of private debt, both of households and of businesses; as prospective homeowners had struggled to meet asking prices, the average level of household debt tripled in less than a decade. This placed especially great pressure upon lower to middle income groups; by 2005 the median ratio of indebtedness to income had grown to 125%, due primarily to expensive boom time mortgages that now often exceed the value of the property.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Noticeable progress continued until early 2008, when the global financial crisis burst Spain's property bubble.


title: Economy of Spain

text: A European Commission forecast had predicted Spain would enter the world's late 2000s recession by the end of 2008. At the time, Spain's Economy Minister was quoted saying, "Spain is facing its deepest recession in half a century". Spain's government forecast the unemployment rate would rise to 16% in 2009. The ESADE business school predicted 20%. By 2017, Spain's GDP per capita had fallen back to 95% of the European Union's average.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Spain had continued on the path of economic growth when the ruling party changed in 2004, maintaining robust GDP growth during the first term of prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, even though some problems in the Spanish economy were becoming evident. According to the "Financial Times", Spain's rapidly growing trade deficit, had reached 10% of the country's GDP by the summer of 2008, the "loss of competitiveness against its main trading partners" and, also, as a part of the latter, an inflation rate which had been traditionally higher than the one of its European partners, back then especially affected by house price increases of 150% from 1998 and a growing family indebtedness (115%) chiefly related to the Spanish Real Estate boom and rocketing oil prices.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In April 2008, the Spanish government official GDP growth forecast was 2.3% but was revised down by the Spanish Ministry of Economy to 1.6. Studies by most independent forecasters estimated that the rate had actually dropped to 0.8% instead, below the strong 3% plus GDP annual growth rates during the 1997–2007 decade. During the third quarter of 2008 the national GDP contracted for the first time in 15 years. In February 2009, it was confirmed that Spain, along other European economies, had officially entered recession.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In July 2009, the IMF worsened the estimates for Spain's 2009 contraction, to minus 4% of GDP for the year (close to the European average of minus 4.6%.) It estimated a further 0.8% contraction of the Spanish economy for 2010.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2011, the deficit reached a high of 8.5%. For 2016 the deficit objective of the government was around 4%, falling to 2.9% for 2017. The European Commission has demanded 3.9% for 2016 and 2.5% for 2017.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The adoption of the Euro in 2002 had driven down long-term interest rates, prompting a surge in mortgage lending that jumped more than fourfold from 2000 to its 2010 apex. The growth in the Spanish property market, which had begun in 1997, accelerated and within a few years had developed into a property bubble, financed largely by regional banks, known as "Cajas", which are regional savings banks under the oversight of regional governments, and fed by the historically low interest rates and a massive growth of immigration. Fueling this trend, the Spanish economy was being credited for having avoided the virtual zero growth rate of some of its largest partners in the EU in the months previous to the global Great Recession.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Over the five years ending 2005, Spain's economy had created more than half of all the new jobs in the European Union . At the top of its property boom, Spain was building more houses than Germany, France and the U.K. combined. Home prices soared by 71% between 2003 and 2008, in tandem with the credit explosion.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The bubble imploded in 2008, causing the collapse of Spain's large property related and construction sectors, causing mass layoffs, and a collapsing domestic demand for goods and services. Unemployment shot up.


title: Economy of Spain

text: At first, Spain's banks and financial services avoided the early crisis of their international counterparts. However, as the recession deepened and property prices slid, the growing bad debts of the smaller regional savings banks, the ""cajas"", forced the intervention of Spain's central bank and government through a stabilization and consolidation program, taking over or consolidating regional ""cajas"" and finally receiving a bank bailout from the European Central Bank in 2012 aimed specifically for the banking business and ""cajas"" in particular.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In the first weeks of 2010, renewed anxiety about the excessive levels of debt in some EU countries and, more generally, about the health of the euro has spread from Ireland and Greece to Portugal, and to a lesser extent in Spain.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Many economists recommended a battery of policies to control the surging public debt caused by the recessionary collapse of tax revenues, combining drastic austerity measures with higher taxes. Some senior German policy makers went as far as to say that emergency bailouts should include harsh penalties to EU aid recipients such as Greece. It has been noted that the Spanish government budget was in surplus in the years immediately before the global financial crisis and that its debt was not considered excessive.


title: Economy of Spain

text: At the beginning of 2010, Spain's public debt as a percentage of GDP was still less than those of Britain, France or Germany. However, commentators pointed out that Spain's recovery was fragile, that the public debt was growing quickly, that troubled regional banks may need large bailouts, growth prospects were poor and therefore limiting revenue and that the central government has limited control over the spending of the regional governments. Under the structure of shared governmental responsibilities that has evolved since 1975, much responsibility for spending had been given back to the regions. The central government found itself in the difficult position of trying to gain support for unpopular spending cuts from the recalcitrant regional governments.


title: Economy of Spain

text: On 23 May 2010, the government announced further austerity measures, consolidating the ambitious plans announced in January.


title: Economy of Spain

text: As of September 2011, Spanish banks hold a record high of €142 billion of Spanish national bonds. December 2011 bond auctions are "very likely to be covered" according to JPMorgan Chase.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Till Q2 2012, Spanish banks were allowed to report real estate related assets in higher non-market price by regulators. Investors who bought into such banks must be aware. Spanish houses cannot be sold at land book value after being vacant over a period of years.


title: Economy of Spain

text: After having completed large improvements over the second half of the 1990s and during the 2000s, Spain attained in 2007 its record low unemployment rate, at about 8%, with a few regions on the brink of full employment. Then Spain suffered a severe setback from October 2008, when it saw its unemployment rate surge to 1996 levels. During the period October 2007 – October 2008 the unemployment surge exceeded that of past economic crises, including that of 1993. In particular, during the month of October 2008, Spain suffered its worst unemployment rise ever recorded.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Even though the sheer size of Spain's underground economy masks to some extent the real situation, employment has been a long term weakness of the Spanish economy. By 2014 the structural unemployment rate was estimated at 18%.


title: Economy of Spain

text: By July 2009, it had shed 1.2 million jobs in one year. The oversized building and housing related industries were contributing greatly to the rising unemployment numbers. From 2009 thousands of established immigrants began to leave, although some did maintain residency in Spain due to poor conditions in their country of origin. In all, by early 2013 Spain reached an unprecedented unemployment record at about 27%.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In May 2012 a radical labor reform made for a more flexible labor market, facilitating layoffs with a view to enhancing corporate's confidence.


title: Economy of Spain

text: During the early 1990s, Spain experienced a period of economic crisis as a result of a larger, Europe-wide economic episode that led to a rise in unemployment rates. Many young adults in Spain found themselves trapped in a cycle of temporary jobs, which resulted in the creation of a secondary class of workers through reduced wages, job stability and advancement opportunities. As a result, many Spaniards, predominantly unmarried young adults, emigrated to other countries in order to pursue job opportunities and raise their standard of life, which left only a small amount of young adults living below the poverty line in Spain. Spain experienced another economic crisis during the 2000s, which also prompted a rise in Spanish citizens emigrating to neighboring countries with more job stability and better economic standings.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Youth unemployment remains a concern in Spain, prompting suggestions of labor market programs and job-search assistance like matching youth skills with businesses. This would improve Spain's weakened youth labor market, and their school to work transition as youth have found it difficult to find long-term employment.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The labor market reform started a trend of setting successive positive employment records. By the second quarter of 2014, the Spanish economy had reversed its negative trend and started creating jobs for the first time since 2008.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The second quarter reversal had been sudden and extraordinary considering that the number of jobs created set an absolute positive record since such quarterly employment statistics are maintained in 1964. Labor reform did seem to play an important role; one piece of evidence cited was that Spain had started creating jobs at lower rates of GDP growth than before: in previous cycles, employment rose when growth hit 2%, this time the gain came during a year when GDP had expanded by just 1.2%.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Greater than expected GDP growth paved the way for further declines in the unemployment rate. Since 2014 Spain has been registering steady annual fall in the official jobless figure. During 2016, unemployment in Spain experienced the steepest fall on record to date. By the end of that year, Spain had recovered 1.7m of the more than 3.5m jobs lost over the course of the recession. By Q4 2016 Spanish unemployment had fallen to 18.6%, the lowest rate in seven years. In April 2017 the country recorded its biggest drop in jobless claimants for a single month in the entire historical series to date. Job creation kept speeding up; in this regard, May 2017 was the best May to date in terms of social security affiliations since this record was started in 2001 and during that month jobless claims fell to the lowest figure since June 2009.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In the second quarter 2017, unemployment fell to 17%, below 4 million for the first time since 2008, with the country experiencing its steepest quarterly decline in unemployment on record to date (series starts in 1964). In 2018, at 14.6% the unemployment rate did not exceed the 15% threshold for the first time since 2008 when the crisis began.


title: Economy of Spain

text: As of 2017, trade unions, left, and center-left parties have criticized and wanted the labor reform to be revoked, on grounds that it tilts the balance of power too far towards employers. Besides, most new contracts are temporary.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2019, Pedro Sánchez's socialist government increased the minimum wage by 22% in an attempt to boost hiring and encourage spending. Members of the opposition argued that this increase from €858 to €1050 a month would negatively affect 1.2 million workers due to their employers being unable to cover the aforementioned raise.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Capital contributions from the EU, which had contributed significantly to the economic empowerment of Spain since joining the EEC, have decreased considerably since 1990 due to the economic standardization in relation to other countries and the effects of the EU's enlargement. On the one hand, agricultural funds from the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (CAP) are now spread across more countries.


title: Economy of Spain

text: On the other hand, with 2004's and 2007's enlargement of the European Union, less developed countries joined the EU, lowering the average income per capita (or GDP per capita), so that Spanish regions which were considered to be relatively less developed, became in the European average or even above it. Spain has gradually become a net contributor of funds for less developed countries of the Union as opposed to receiving funds.


title: Economy of Spain

text: During the economic downturn, Spain significantly reduced imports, increased exports and kept attracting growing numbers of tourists; as a result, after three decades of running a trade deficit the country attained in 2013 a trade surplus which has strengthened during 2014 and 2015.


title: Economy of Spain

text: With a 3.2% increase in 2015, the Spanish GDP growth was the highest among larger EU economies that year. In just two years (2014–2015) the Spanish economy had recovered 85% of the GDP lost during the 2009-2013 recession, which got some international analysts to refer to Spain's current recovery as "the showcase for structural reform efforts".


title: Economy of Spain

text: By Q2 2016 the Spanish economy had been accumulating 12 consecutive quarters of growth, managing to consistently outperform the rest of the Euro area. Such growth had continued, with the Spanish economy outperforming expectations and growing 3.2 per cent in 2016, almost twice as fast as the Euro zone average. One of the main drivers of economic recovery was international trade, in turn sparked by dramatic gains in labor productivity. Exports have shot up, from around 25% (2008) to 33% of GDP (2016) on the back of an internal devaluation (the country's wage bill halved in the 2008-2016 period), a search for new markets and a recent mild recovery of the European economy.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The Spanish economy was forecast to remain the best-performing major economy in the Euro zone in 2017 and in the second quarter of 2017 Spain had recovered all the GDP lost during the economic crisis, exceeding for the first time the output level that had been reached in 2008.


title: Economy of Spain

text: By 2017, following several months of prices picking up, homeowners who had been renting during the economic slump had started to put their properties back on the sales market. In this regard, home sales are expected to return in 2017 to pre-crisis (2008) level. In all, the Spanish real estate market was experiencing a new boom, this time in the rental sector. Out of 50 provinces and compared to May 2007, the National Statistics Institute has recorded higher rent levels in 48 provinces, with the 10 most populated accumulating rent inflation between 5% and 15% since 2007. The phenomenon is most visible in big cities such as Barcelona or Madrid, which are seeing new record average prices, partially fueled by short-term rentals to tourists.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2021 (plus IMF estimates for "2022–2027" in italics). Inflation below 5% is in green.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Spanish private commercial banks played a central role in Spain's economic development, benefiting from their role as the state's creditor in the 19th century, from their ability to monetize public debt, and from state-sanctioned oligopolistic arrangements that lasted from the beginning of the 20th century until the late 1980s, when European rules forced a liberalization of the sector. It has been argued that the favorable treatment received by the main Spanish commercial banks and their close relationship to the Bank of Spain ("Banco de España") following the end of the Franco regime allowed for a public-private partnership to restructure the large commercial banks into two large banks (Santander and BBVA) with the purpose of preparing the private institutions for international competition and external expansion once the European banking market was integrated in 1992 Alongside this financial mercantilism benefiting the commercial banking sector, Spanish regulators also allowed for the vast expansion of not for profit savings banks sponsored by regional governments who became heavily exposed to the housing mortgage and real estate development sectors during the Spanish economic boom of 1999–2007.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Prior to 2010, the Spanish banking system had been credited as one of the most solid of all western banking systems in coping with the ongoing worldwide liquidity crisis, thanks to the country's conservative banking rules and practices. Banks were required to have high capital provisions and to demand various guarantees and securities from intending borrowers. This allowed the banks, particularly the geographically and industrially diversified large banks like BBVA and Santander, to weather the real estate deflation better than expected. Indeed, Spain's large commercial banks have been able to capitalize on their strong position to buy up distressed banking assets elsewhere in Europe and in the United States.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Nevertheless, with the unprecedented crisis of the country's real estate sector, smaller local savings banks ("Cajas"), had been delaying the registering of bad loans, especially those backed by houses and land, to avoid declaring losses. In June 2009 the Spanish government set its banking bailout and reconstruction fund, the "Fondo de reestructuración ordenada bancaria" (FROB), known in English as Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring. In the event, State intervention of local savings banks due to default risk was less than feared. On 22 May 2010, the "Banco de España" took over "CajaSur", as part of a national program to put the country's smaller banks on a firm financial basis. In December 2011, the Spanish central bank, Banco de España (equivalent of the US Federal Reserve), forcibly took over "Caja Mediterraneo", also known as CAM, (a regional savings bank) to prevent its financial collapse.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The international accounting firm, PriceWaterhouseCooper, estimated an imbalance between CAM's assets and debts of €3,500 million, not counting the industrial corporation. The troubled situation reached its peak with the partial nationalization of Bankia in May 2012. By then it was becoming clear that the mounting real estate losses of the savings banks were undermining confidence in the country's government bonds, thus aggravating a sovereign debt crisis.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In early June 2012, Spain requested European funding of €41 billion "to recapitalize Spanish banks that need it". It was not a sovereign bailout in that the funds were used only for the restructuring of the banking sector a full-fledged bailout for an economy the size of the Spanish would have reached ten or twelve times that amount).


title: Economy of Spain

text: As of 2017 the cost of restructuring Spain's bankrupt savings banks were estimated to have been €60.7 billion, of which nearly €41.8 billion was put up by the state through the FROB and the rest by the banking sector. The total cost will not be fully understood until those lenders still controlled by the State (Bankia and BMN) are newly privatized. In this regard, by early 2017 the Spanish government was considering a merger of both banks before privatizing the combined bank to recoup an estimated 400 million euros of their bailout costs. During the course of this transformation, most regional savings banks such as the CAM, Catalunya Banc, Banco de Valencia, Novagalicia Banco, Unnim Banc or Cajasur have since been absorbed by the bigger, more international, Spanish banks, which imposed better management practices.


title: Economy of Spain

text: As of 2022, Spanish banks have halved their number of branches to about 20,000 in the decade since the financial crisis and the subsequent international bailout in 2012. The remaining banks have reduced retail opening hours and pushed online banking. A retired urologist with Parkinson's disease gathered more than 600,000 signatures in an online petition "I'm Old, Not an Idiot" asking banks and other institutions to serve all citizens, and not discriminate the oldest and most vulnerable members.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Due to the lack of own resources, Spain has to import all of its fossil fuels. Besides, until the 2008 crisis, Spain's recent performance had shown an inflationary tendency and an inflationary gap compared to other EMU countries, affecting the country's overall productivity. Moreover, when Spain joined the euro zone, it lost the recourse of resorting to competitive devaluations, risking a permanent and cumulative loss of competitive due to inflation. In a scenario of record oil prices by the mid 2000s this meant much added pressure to the inflation rate. In June 2008 the inflation rate reached a 13-year high at 5.00%.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Then, with the dramatic decrease of oil prices in the second half of 2008 plus the manifest bursting of the real estate bubble, concerns quickly shifted over to the risk of deflation, as Spain recorded in January 2009 its lowest inflation rate in 40 years, followed shortly afterwards, in March 2009 by a negative inflation rate for the first time since the gathering of these statistics started. During the 2009−early 2016 period, apart from temporary minor oil shocks, the Spanish economy has generally oscillated between slightly negative to near-zero inflation rates. Analysts reckoned that this was not synonymous with deflation, due to the fact that GDP had been growing since 2014, domestic consumption had rebounded as well and, especially, because core inflation remained slightly positive.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2017, moderate inflation between 1-2%, still below the ECB's target, returned as the impact of cheaper fuel prices faded and economic recovery took hold.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Since the 1990s some Spanish companies have gained multinational status, often expanding their activities in culturally close Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. Spain is the second biggest foreign investor in Latin America, after the United States. Spanish companies have also expanded into Asia, especially China and India. This early global expansion gave Spanish companies a competitive advantage over some of Spain's competitors and European neighbors. Another contribution to the success of Spanish firms may have to do with booming interest toward Spanish language and culture in Asia and Africa, but also a corporate culture that learned to take risks in unstable markets.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Spanish companies invested in fields like biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, or renewable energy (Iberdrola is the world's largest renewable energy operator), technology companies like Telefónica, Abengoa, Mondragon Corporation, Movistar, Gamesa, Hisdesat, Indra, train manufacturers like CAF and Talgo, global corporations such as the textile company Inditex, petroleum companies like Repsol and infrastructure firms. Six of the ten biggest international construction firms specialising in transport are Spanish, lincluding Ferrovial, Acciona, ACS, OHL and FCC.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Spain is equipped with a solid banking system as well, including two global systemically important banks, Banco Santander and BBVA.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In the 2012–13 edition of the Global Competitiveness Report Spain was listed 10th in the world in terms of first-class infrastructure. It is the 5th EU country with best infrastructure and ahead of countries like Japan or the United States. In particular, the country is a leader in the field of high-speed rail, having developed the second longest network in the world (only behind China) and leading high-speed projects with Spanish technology around the world.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The Spanish infrastructure concession companies, lead 262 transport infrastructure worldwide, representing 36% of the total, according to the latest rankings compiled by the publication Public Works Financing. The top three global occupy Spanish companies: ACS, Global Vía and Abertis, according to the ranking of companies by number of concessions for roads, railways, airports and ports in construction or operation in October 2012. Considering the investment, the first world infrastructure concessionaire is Ferrovial-Cintra, with 72,000 million euros, followed closely by ACS, with 70,200 million. Among the top ten in the world are also the Spanish Sacyr (21,500 million), FCC and Global Vía (with 19,400 million) and OHL (17,870 million).


title: Economy of Spain

text: During 2013 Spanish civil engineering companies signed contracts around the world for a total of 40 billion euros, setting a new record for the national industry.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The port of Valencia in Spain is the busiest seaport in the Mediterranean basin, 5th busiest in Europe and 30th busiest in the world. There are four other Spanish ports in the ranking of the top 125 busiest world seaports (Algeciras, Barcelona, Las Palmas, and Bilbao); as a result, Spain is tied with Japan in the third position of countries leading this ranking.


title: Economy of Spain

text: During the boom years, Spain had built up a trade deficit eventually amounting a record equivalent to 10% of GDP (2007) and the external debt ballooned to the equivalent of 170% of GDP, one of the highest among Western economies. Then, during the economic downturn, Spain reduced significantly imports due to domestic consumption shrinking while – despite the global slowdown – it has been increasing exports and kept attracting growing numbers of tourists. Spanish exports grew by 4.2% in 2013, the highest rate in the European Union. As a result, after three decades of running a trade deficit Spain attained in 2013 a trade surplus. Export growth was driven by capital goods and the automotive sector and the forecast was to reach a surplus equivalent to 2.5% of GDP in 2014.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Despite slightly declining exports from fellow EU countries in the same period, Spanish exports continued to grow and in the first half of 2016 the country beat its own record to date exporting goods for 128,041 million euros; from the total, almost 67% were exported to other EU countries. During this same period, from the 70 members of the World Trade Organization (whose combined economies amount to 90% of global GDP), Spain was the country whose exports had grown the most.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2016, exports of goods hit historical highs despite a global slowdown in trade, making up for 33% of the total GDP (by comparison, exports represent 12% of GDP in the United States, 18% in Japan, 22% in China or 45% in Germany).


title: Economy of Spain

text: In all, by 2017 foreign sales have been rising every year since 2010, with a degree of unplanned import substitution -a rather unusual feat for Spain when in an expansive phase- which points to structural competitive gains. According to the most recent 2017 data, about 65% of the country's exports go to other EU members.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The Spanish benchmark stock market index is the IBEX 35, which as of 2016 is led by banking (including Banco Santander and BBVA), clothing (Inditex), telecommunications (Telefónica) and energy (Iberdrola).


title: Economy of Spain

text: Traditionally until 2008, most exports and imports from Spain were held with the countries of the European Union: France, Germany, Italy, UK and Portugal.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In recent years foreign trade has taken refuge outside the European Union. Spain's main customers are Latin America, Asia (Japan, China, India), Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Egypt) and the United States. Principal trading partners in Asia are Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan. In Africa, countries producing oil (Nigeria, Algeria, Libya) are important partners, as well as Morocco. Latin American countries are very important trading partners, like Argentina, Mexico, Cuba (tourism), Colombia, Brazil, Chile (food products) and Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina (petroleum).


title: Economy of Spain

text: After the crisis that began in 2008 and the fall of the domestic market, Spain (since 2010) it has turned outwards widely increasing the export supply and export amounts. It has diversified its traditional destinations and has grown significantly in product sales of medium and high technology, including highly competitive markets like the US and Asia.


title: Economy of Spain

text: During the last four decades Spain's foreign tourist industry has grown into the second-biggest in the world. A 2015 survey by the World Economic Forum proclaimed the country's tourism industry as the world's most competitive. The 2017 survey repeated this finding.


title: Economy of Spain

text: By 2018 the country was the second most visited country in the world, overtaking the US and not far behind France. With 83.7 million visitors, the country broke in 2019 its own tourism record for the tenth year in a row.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The size of the business has gone from approximately €40 billion in 2006 to about €77 billion in 2016. In 2015 the total value of foreign and domestic tourism came to nearly 5% of the country's GDP and provided employment for about 2 million people.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The automotive industry is one of the largest employers in the country. In 2015 Spain was the 8th largest automobile producer country in the world and the 2nd largest car manufacturer in Europe after Germany.


title: Economy of Spain

text: By 2016, the automotive industry was generating 8.7 percent of Spain's gross domestic product, employing about nine percent of the manufacturing industry. By 2008 the automobile industry was the 2nd most exported industry while in 2015 about 80% of the total production was for export.


title: Economy of Spain

text: German companies poured €4.8 billion into Spain in 2015, making the country the second-largest destination for German foreign direct investment behind only the U.S. The lion's share of that investment —€4 billion— went to the country's auto industry.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2008, Spanish electricity consumption was an average of 6,523 kWh/person. Spanish electricity usage constituted 88% of the EU15 average (EU15: 7,409 kWh/person), and 73% of the OECD average (8,991 kWh/person).


title: Economy of Spain

text: Spain is one of the world leaders in renewable energies, both as a producer of renewable energy itself and as an exporter of such technology. In 2013 it became the first country ever in the world to have wind power as its main source of energy.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Agribusiness has been another segment growing aggressively over the last few years. At slightly over 40 billion euros, in 2015 agribusiness exports accounted for 3% of GDP and over 15% of the total Spanish exports.


title: Economy of Spain

text: The boom was shaped during the 2004-2014 period, when Spain's agribusiness exports grew by 95% led by pork, wine and olive oil. By 2012 Spain was by far the biggest producer of olive oil in the world, accounting for 50% of the total production worldwide. By 2013 the country became the world's leading producer of wine; in 2014 and 2015 Spain was the world's biggest wine exporter. However, poor marketing and low margins remain an issue, as shown by the fact that the main importers of Spanish olive oil and wine (Italy and France, respectively) buy bulk Spanish produce which is then bottled and sold under Italian or French labels, often for a significant markup.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Spain is the largest producer and exporter in the EU of citrus fruit (oranges, lemons and small citrus fruits), peaches and apricots. It is also the largest producer and exporter of strawberries in the EU.


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2020, the food distribution sector was dominated by Mercadona (24.5% market share), followed by Carrefour (8.4%), Lidl (6.1%), DIA (5.8), Eroski (4.8), Auchan (3.4%), regional distributors (14.3%) and other (32.7%).


title: Economy of Spain

text: In 2019, the country was the 7th largest producer of gypsum and the 10th world's largest producer of potash, in addition to being the 15th largest world producer of salt.


title: Economy of Spain

text: Between 1985 and 2018 around 23,201 deals have been announced where Spanish companies participated either as the acquirer or the target. These deals cumulate to an overall value of 1,935 bil. USD (1,571.8 bil. EUR).


title: Croesus

text: Croesus ( ; Lydian: ; Phrygian: ; ; Latin: ; reigned: c. 585 – c. 546 BC) was the king of Lydia, who reigned from 585 BC until his defeat by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 547 or 546 BC.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus was renowned for his wealth; Herodotus and Pausanias noted that his gifts were preserved at Delphi. The fall of Croesus had a profound effect on the Greeks, providing a fixed point in their calendar. "By the fifth century at least," J. A. S. Evans has remarked, "Croesus had become a figure of myth, who stood outside the conventional restraints of chronology."


title: Croesus

text: The name of Croesus was not attested in contemporary inscriptions in the Lydian language. In 2019, D. Sasseville and K. Euler published a research of Lydian coins apparently minted during his rule, where the name of the ruler was rendered as "Qλdãns".


title: Croesus

text: The name comes from the Latin transliteration of the Greek , which was itself the ancient Hellenic adaptation of the Lydian name . is a compound term consisting of the proper name , of a glide () and of the Lydian term , meaning "master, lord, noble". According to J. M. Kearns, Croesus's real personal name would have been , while would have been a honorific name meaning "The noble Karoś".


title: Croesus

text: Croesus was born in 620 BC to the king Alyattes of Lydia and one of his queens, a Carian noblewoman whose name is still unknown. Croesus had at least one full sister, Aryenis, as well as a step-brother named Pantaleon, born from a Ionian Greek wife of Alyattes.


title: Croesus

text: Under his father's reign, Croesus had been a governor of Adramyttium, which Alyattes had rebuilt as a centre of operations for military actions against the Cimmerians, a nomadic people from the Pontic steppe who had invaded Western Asia, and attacked Lydia over the course of several invasions during which they killed Alyattes's great-grandfather Gyges, and possibly his grandfather Ardys and his father Sadyattes. As governor of Adramyttium, Croesus had to provide his father with Ionian Greek mercenaries for a military campaign in Caria.


title: Croesus

text: During Croesus's tenure as governor of Adramyttium itself, a rivalry had developed between him and his step-brother Pantaleon, who might have been intended by Alyattes to be his successor. Following Alyattes's death in 585 BC, this rivalry became an open succession struggle out of which Croesus emerged victorious.


title: Croesus

text: Once Croesus's position as king was secure, he immediately launched a military campaign against the Ionian city of Ephesus. The ruling dynasty of Ephesus had engaged with friendly relations with Lydia consolidated by diplomatic marriages from the reign of Gyges until that of Alyattes: the Ephesian tyrant Pindar, who had previously supported Pantaleon in the Lydian succession struggle, was the son of a daughter of Alyattes, and was thus a nephew of Croesus. After Pindar rejected an envoy by Croesus demanding Ephesus to submit to Lydia, the Lydian king started to pressure the city and demanded that Pindar leave it and go into exile. After Pindar accepted these terms, Croesus annexed Ephesus into the Lydian Empire. Once Ephesus was under Lydian rule, Croesus provided patronage for the reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis, to which he offered a large number of marble columns as dedication to the goddess.


title: Croesus

text: Meanwhile the Ionian city of Miletus had been willingly sending tribute to Lydia in exchange of being spared from Lydian attacks because the overthrow of the city's last tyrants, Thoas and Damasenor, and the replacement of the tyranny by a system of magistrates had annulated the relations of friendship initiated by Alyattes and the former Milesian tyrant Thrasybulus.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus continued his attacks against the other Greek cities of the western coast of Asia Minor until he had subjugated all of mainland Ionia, Aeolis, and Doris, but he abandoned his plans of annexing the Greek city-states on the islands and he instead concluded treaties of friendship with them, which might have helped him participate in the lucrative trade the Aegean Greeks carried out with Egypt at Naucratis.


title: Croesus

text: The Lydians had already conquered Phrygia under the rule of Alyattes, who took advantage of the weakening of the various polities all across Anatolia by the Cimmerian raids and used the lack of a centralised Phrygian state and the traditionally friendly relations between the Lydian and Phrygian elites to extend Lydian rule eastwards to Phrygia. Lydian presence in Phrygia is archaeologically attested by the existence of a Lydian citadel in the Phrygian capital of Gordion, as well as Lydian architectural remains in northwest Phrygia, such as in Dascylium, and in the Phrygian Highlands at Midas City. Lydian troops might have been stationed in the aforementioned locations as well as in Hacıtuğrul, Afyonkarahisar, and Konya, which would have provided to the Lydian kingdom access to the produce and roads of Phrygia. The presence of a Lydian ivory plaque at Kerkenes Daǧ suggests that Alyattes's control of Phrygia might have extended to the east of the Halys River to include the city of Pteria, with the possibility that he may have rebuilt this city and placed a Phrygian ruler there: Pteria's strategic location would have been useful in protecting the Lydian Empire from attacks from the east, and its proximity to the Royal Road would have made of the city an important centre from which caravans could be protected. Phrygia under Lydian rule would continue to be administered by its local elites, such as the ruler of Midas City who held Phrygian royal titles such as (king) and (commander of the armies), but were under the authority of the Lydian kings of Sardis and had a Lydian diplomatic presence at their court, following the framework of the traditional vassalage treaties used since the period of the Hittite and Assyrian empires, and according to which the Lydian king imposed on the vassal rulers a "treaty of vassalage" which allowed the local Phrygian rulers to remain in power, in exchange of which the Phrygian vassals had the duty to provide military support and sometimes offer rich tribute to the Lydian kingdom.


title: Croesus

text: This situation continued under the rule of Croesus, with one inscription attesting of the presence of Croesus's son Atys at the court of one local ruler of Midas City himself named Midas. At Midas City, Atys held the position of priest of the sacred fire of the mother goddess Aryastin, and through him Croesus provided patronage to the building of the religious monument in the city now known as the Midas Monument.


title: Croesus

text: The presence of Atys at the court of this Midas might have inspired the legend recounted by Herodotus, according to which Croesus had a dream in which Atys was killed by an iron spear, after which he prevented his son from leading military activities, but Atys nevertheless found death while hunting a wild boar which was ravaging Lydia, during which he was accidentally hit by the spear thrown by the Phrygian prince Adrastus, who had previously exiled himself to Lydia after accidentally killing his own brother.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus also brought Caria, whose various city-states had since Gyges been allied to the Mermnad dynasty, and from where Croesus's own mother originated, under the direct control of the Lydian Empire.


title: Croesus

text: Thus, according to Herodotus, Croesus ruled over all the peoples to the west of the Halys River - the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, Mariandyni, Chalybes, Paphlagonians, Thyni and Bithyni Thracians, Carians, Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, and Pamphylians. However information only about the relations between the Lydians and the Phrygians is attested in both literary and archaeological sources, and there is no available data concerning relations between the other mentioned peoples and the Lydian kings; moreover, given this was the situation detailed by Herodotus under the reign of Croesus, it is very likely that a number of these populations had already been conquered under Alyattes. The only populations Herodotus claimed were independent of the Lydian Empire were the Lycians, who lived in a mountainous country which would not have been accessible to the Lydian armies, and the Cilicians, who had already been conquered by Neo-Babylonian Empire. Modern estimates nevertheless suggest that it is not impossible that the Lydians might have subjected Lycia, given that the Lycian coast would have been important for the Lydians because it was close to a trade route connecting the Aegean region, the Levant, and Cyprus. Modern studies also consider doubtful the Graeco-Roman historians' traditional account of the Halys River as having been set as the border between the Lydian and the Median kingdom, which appears to have been a retroactive narrative construction based on symbolic role assigned by Greeks to the Halys as the separation between Lower Asia and Upper Asia as well as on the Halys being a later provincial border within the Achaemenid Empire. The eastern border of the kingdom of Croesus would thus have instead been further to the east of the Halys, at an undetermined point in eastern Anatolia.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus continued the friendly relations with the Medes concluded by his father Alyattes and the Median king Cyaxares after five years of war in 585 BC, shortly before both their respective deaths that same year. As part of the peace treaty ending the war between Media and Lydia, Croesus's sister Aryenis had married Cyaxares's son and successor Astyages, who thus became Croesus's brother-in-law, while a daughter of Cyaxares might have been married to Croesus. Croesus continued these good relations with the Medes after he succeeded Alyattes and Astyages succeeded Cyaxares.


title: Croesus

text: Under Croesus's rule, Lydia continued its good relations started by Gyges with the Saite Egyptian kingdom, then ruled by the pharaoh Amasis II. Both Croesus and Amasis had common interests in fostering trade relations at Naucratis with the Greeks, including with the Milesians who were under Lydian authority. These trade relations also functioned as an access point for Greek mercenaries serving the Saite pharaohs.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus also established trade and diplomatic relations with the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nabonidus, which ensured the transition of Lydian products towards Babylonian markets.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus also continued the good relations between Lydia and the sanctuary of the god Apollo in Delphi on continental Greece first established by his great-great-grandfather Gyges and maintained by his father Alyattes, and just like his ancestors, Croesus offered the sanctuary rich presents in dedication, including a lion made of gold and weighing ten talents. In exchange for the offerings of Croesus to the sanctuary of Apollo, the Lydians obtained precedence in consulting its oracle, were exempt from taxes, were allowed to sit at the first rank, and were granted the permission the become Delphian priests. These exchanges of gifts for privileges in turn meant that strong relations of hospitality existed between Lydia and Delphi due to which the Delphians had the duty to welcome, protect, and ensure the well-being of Lydian ambassadors.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus further increased his contacts with the Greeks on the European continent by establishing relations with the city-state of Sparta, to whom he provided the gold they needed to gild a statue of the god Apollo after the oracle of Delphi told them they would obtain this gold from Croesus.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus is credited with issuing the first true gold coins with a standardised purity for general circulation, the Croeseid (following on from his father Alyattes who invented minting with electrum coins). Indeed, the invention of coinage had passed into Greek society through Hermodike II. Hermodike II, the daughter of an Agamemnon of Cyme, claimed descent from the original Agamemnon who conquered Troy. She was likely one of Alyettes’ wives, so may have been Croesus’ mother, because the bull imagery on the croeseid symbolises the Hellenic Zeus—see Europa (consort of Zeus). Zeus, through Hercules, was the divine forefather of his family line.


title: Croesus

text: Moreover, the first coins were quite crude and made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow alloy of gold and silver. The composition of these first coins was similar to alluvial deposits found in the silt of the Pactolus river (made famous by Midas), which ran through the Lydian capital, Sardis. Later coins, including some in the British Museum, were made from gold purified by heating with common salt to remove the silver.


title: Croesus

text: In Greek and Persian cultures the name of Croesus became a synonym for a wealthy man. He inherited great wealth from his father Alyattes, who had become associated with the Midas myth because Lydian precious metals came from the river Pactolus, in which King Midas supposedly washed away his ability to turn all he touched into gold. In reality, Alyattes' tax revenues may have been the real 'Midas touch' financing his and Croesus' conquests. Croesus' wealth remained proverbial beyond classical antiquity: in English, expressions such as "rich as Croesus" or "richer than Croesus" are used to indicate great wealth to this day. The earliest known such usage in English was John Gower's in "Confessio amantis" (1390):


title: Croesus

text: According to Herodotus, Croesus encountered the Greek sage Solon and showed him his enormous wealth. Croesus, secure in his own wealth and happiness, asked Solon who the happiest man in the world was, and was disappointed by Solon's response that three had been happier than Croesus: Tellus, who died fighting for his country, and the brothers Kleobis and Biton who died peacefully in their sleep after their mother prayed for their perfect happiness because they had demonstrated filial piety by drawing her to a festival in an oxcart themselves.


title: Croesus

text: Solon goes on to explain that Croesus cannot be the happiest man because the fickleness of fortune means that the happiness of a man's life cannot be judged until after his death. Sure enough, Croesus' hubristic happiness was reversed by the tragic deaths of his accidentally killed son and, according to Ctesias, his wife's suicide at the fall of Sardis, not to mention his defeat at the hands of the Persians.


title: Croesus

text: The interview is in the nature of a philosophical disquisition on the subject "Which man is happy?" It is legendary rather than historical. Thus, the "happiness" of Croesus is presented as a moralistic "exemplum" of the fickleness of Tyche, a theme that gathered strength from the fourth century, revealing its late date. The story was later retold and elaborated by Ausonius in "The Masque of the Seven Sages", in the "Suda" (entry "Μᾶλλον ὁ Φρύξ," which adds Aesop and the Seven Sages of Greece), and by Tolstoy in his short story "Croesus and Fate".


title: Croesus

text: In 550 BC, Croesus's brother-in-law, the Median king Astyages, was overthrown by his own grandson, the Persian king Cyrus the Great. In a likely legendary event recounted by Herodotus, Croesus responded by consulting the oracle of Delphi, who told him that he would "destroy a great empire" should he attack Cyrus. This answer of the Delphian oracle remains one of the famous oracular statements from Delphi. Likely legendary were also the responses of the oracles of Delphi and Amphiaraus telling Croesus to ally with the strongest of all Greeks, whom Croesus found out to be the state to which he had previously offered the gold which they had used for the gilding of a statue of the god Apollo, Sparta, shortly after its victory over its fellow Greek city-state of Argos in 547 BC. The claim of Herodotus that Croesus, Amasis, and Nabonidus formed a defensive alliance against Cyrus of Persia appears to have been a retroactive exaggeration of the existing diplomatic and trade relations between Lydia, Egypt, and Babylon.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus first attacked Pteria, the capital of a Phrygian state vassal to the Lydians which might have attempted to rebel against Lydian suzerainty and instead declare its allegiance to the new Persian Empire of Cyrus. Cyrus retaliated by intervening in Cappadocia and attacking the Lydians at Pteria in a battle in which Croesus was defeated. After this first battle, Croesus burnt down Pteria to prevent Cyrus from using its strategic location and returned to Sardis. However, Cyrus followed Croesus and defeated the Lydian army again at Thymbra before besieging and capturing the Lydian capital of Sardis, thus bringing an end to the rule of the Mermnad dynasty and to the Lydian Empire. Lydia would never regain its independence and would remain a part of various successive empires.


title: Croesus

text: Although the dates for the battles of Pteria and Thymbra and of end of the Lydian empire have been traditionally fixed to 547 BC, more recent estimates suggest that Herodotus's account being unreliable chronologically concerning the fall of Lydia means that there are currently no ways of dating the fall of Sardis; theoretically, it may even have taken place after the fall of Babylon in 539 BC.


title: Croesus

text: Croesus's fate after the Persian conquest of Lydia is uncertain: Herodotus, the poet Bacchylides and Nicolaus of Damascus claimed that Croesus either tried to commit suicide on a pyre or was condemned by the Persians to be burnt at the stake until a thunderstorm's rain water extinguished the fire after either his or his son's prayers to the god Apollo (or after Cyrus heard Croesus calling the name of Solon). In most versions of the story, Cyrus kept Croesus as his advisor, although Bacchylides claimed that the god Zeus carried Croesus away to Hyperborea. Xenophon similarly claimed that Cyrus kept Croesus as his advisor while Ctesias claimed that Cyrus appointed Croesus as the governor of the city of Barene in Media.


title: Croesus

text: A passage from the Nabonidus Chronicle was long held to have referred to a military campaign of Cyrus against a country whose name has been largely erased except for the first cuneiform character which had been interpreted as Lu, extrapolated to be the first syllable of an Akkadian name for Lydia. This passage in the Nabonidus Chronicle would thus have referred to a campaign by Cyrus against Lydia around 547 BC during which "marched against the country, killed its king, took his possessions, and put there a garrison of his own". However, the verb used in the Nabonidus Chronicle could be used both in the sense "to kill" and "to destroy as a military power", making any precise deduction of the fate of Croesus from it impossible. More recent studies have moreover concluded that the non-erased character was Ú/U₂, making untenable the interpretation of the text as talking of a campaign against Lydia, and instead suggesting that the campaign was against Urartu.


title: Croesus

text: The scholar Max Mallowan argued that there is no evidence that Cyrus the Great killed Croesus, in particular rejected the account of burning on a pyre, and interpreted Bacchylides' narration as Croesus attempting suicide and then being saved by Cyrus.


title: Croesus

text: The historian Kevin Leloux instead maintained the reading of the Nabonidus Chronicle as referring to a campaign of Cyrus against Lydia to argue that Croesus was indeed executed by Cyrus. According to him, the story of Croesus and the pyre would have been imagined by the Greeks based on the fires started during the Persian capture of Sardis throughout the lower city, where the buildings were made largely of wood.


title: Croesus

text: In 2003, Stephanie West has argued that the historical Croesus did in fact die on the pyre, and that the stories of him as a wise advisor to the courts of Cyrus and Cambyses are purely legendary, showing similarities to the sayings of Ahiqar. A similar conclusion is drawn in a recent article that makes a case for the proposal that the Lydian word Qλdãnś, both meaning 'king' and the name of a god, and pronounced /kʷɾʲ'ðãns/ with four consecutive Lydian sounds unfamiliar to ancient Greeks, could correspond to Greek , or . If the identification is correct it might have the interesting historical consequence that king Croesus chose suicide at the stake and was subsequently deified.


title: Croesus

text: After defeating Croesus, Cyrus adopted the use of gold coinage as the main currency of his kingdom. The use of croesid coins under the Persian Empire would continue under Cyrus, and would end only after Darius the Great replaced them by the Persian daric. These late croesid coins bearing "bull and lion" images used under Cyrus differed from previous Mermnad croesids in that they were lighter and their weight was closer to those of the early golden darics and silver sigloi.


title: Croesus

text: According to the Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi (c. 410–490s AD), who wrote a monumental "History of Armenia", the Armenian king Artaxias I accomplished many military deeds, which include the capture of Croesus and the conquest of the Lydian kingdom (2.12–13) References to Croesus' legendary power and wealth, often as a symbol of human vanity, are numerous in literature.


title: Croesus

text: Another literary example is "Croesus and Fate", a short story by Leo Tolstoy that is a retelling of the account of Croesus as told by Herodotus and Plutarch.


title: Croesus

text: "Crœsus, King of Lydia", is a tragedy in five parts by Alfred Bate Richards, first published in 1845.


title: Antonine Plague

text: The "Antonine Plague" of 165 to 180 AD, also known as the Plague of Galen (after Galen, the physician who described it), was the first known pandemic impacting the Roman Empire, possibly contracted and spread by soldiers who were returning from campaign in the Near East. Scholars generally believe the plague was smallpox, although measles has also been suggested. The plague may have claimed the life of the Roman emperor Lucius Verus in 169 AD, who was co-regnant with Marcus Aurelius. These two emperors had risen to the throne by virtue of being adopted by the previous emperor, Antoninus Pius, and as a result, their family name, Antoninus, has become associated with the pandemic.


title: Antonine Plague

text: Ancient sources agree that the plague likely appeared during the Roman siege of the Mesopotamian city of Seleucia in the winter of 165–166. Ammianus Marcellinus reported that the plague spread to Gaul and to the legions along the Rhine. Eutropius stated that a large proportion of the empire's population died from this outbreak. According to the contemporary Roman historian Cassius Dio, the disease broke out again nine years later in 189 AD and caused up to 2,000 deaths a day in the city of Rome, one quarter of those who were affected. The total death count has been estimated at 5–10 million, roughly 10 percent of the population of the empire. The disease was particularly deadly in the cities and in the Roman army.


title: Antonine Plague

text: The Antonine plague occurred during the last years of what is called the Pax Romana, the high point in the influence, territorial control, and population of the Roman Empire. Historians differ in their opinions of the impact of the plague on the empire in the increasingly troubled eras after its appearance.


title: Antonine Plague

text: Epidemics were common in the ancient world, but the Antonine plague was the first known pandemic of the Roman Empire. The Antonine plague spread throughout the Roman Empire, and perhaps other areas, including China, and infected many millions of people. The pandemic erupted during the last years of what is often considered the "golden age" of Rome during the reign of co-emperor Marcus Aurelius. The Roman Empire at that time had a population estimated at 75 million people, about one-fourth of all mankind. Historians generally agree that the population of the Roman Empire peaked at about the time that the Antonine Plague appeared and, thereafter, population declined.


title: Antonine Plague

text: The economic prosperity of the Roman Empire notwithstanding, the conditions were propitious for a pandemic. The population was unhealthy. About 20 percent of the population—a large percentage by ancient standards—lived in one of hundreds of cities; Rome, with a population estimated at one million, being the largest. The cities were a "demographic sink" even in the best of times. The death rate exceeded the birth rate and a constant in-migration of new residents was necessary to maintain the urban population. As perhaps more than one-half of children died before reaching adulthood, the average life expectancy at birth was only in the mid-twenties. Dense urban populations and poor sanitation contributed to the dangers of disease. The connectivity by land and sea between the vast territories of the Roman Empire made the transfer of infectious diseases from one region to another easier and more rapid than it was in smaller, more geographically-confined societies. Epidemics of infectious diseases in the empire were common with nine recorded between 43 BCE and 148 CE. The rich were not immune to the unhealthy conditions. Only two of emperor Marcus Aurelius's fourteen children are known to have reached adulthood.


title: Antonine Plague

text: A good indicator of nutrition and the disease burden is the average height of the population. The conclusion of the study of thousands of skeletons is that the average Roman was shorter in stature than the people of pre-Roman societies of Italy and the post-Roman societies of the Middle Ages. The view of historian Kyle Harper is that "not for the last time in history, a precocious leap forward in social development brought biological reverses."


title: Antonine Plague

text: The traditional Roman view attributed the cause of the Antonine plague to the violation by the Roman army of a temple in the city of Seleucia and carried back to the Roman Empire by soldiers. However, the first documented case of the plague was in Smyrna in 165 where the orator Aelius Aristides almost died from the disease. From the east the plague spread westward reaching Rome in 166 and nearly every corner of the empire by 172. The co-emperor Lucius Verus died from the plague in 169 and it ravaged the Roman army.


title: Antonine Plague

text: The plague endured until about 180 and another epidemic, possibly related, is reported by Dio Cassius to have struck the city of Rome in 189. Two thousand people in the city often died on a single day. Whether this new epidemic, or reoccurrence of the Antonine plague, impacted the empire outside the city of Rome is unknown.


title: Antonine Plague

text: In 166, during the epidemic, the Greek physician and writer Galen travelled from Rome to his home in Asia Minor and returned to Rome in 168, when he was summoned by the two Augusti, the co-emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. He was present at the outbreak among troops stationed at Aquileia in the winter of 168/69. Galen briefly recorded observations and a description of the epidemic in the treatise "Methodus Medendi" ("Method of Treatment"), and he scattered other references to it among his voluminous writings. He described the plague as "great" and of long duration, and mentioned fever, diarrhea, and pharyngitis as well as a skin eruption, sometimes dry and sometimes pustular, that appeared on the ninth day of the illness. The information that was provided by Galen does not unambiguously identify the nature of the disease, but scholars have generally preferred to diagnose it as smallpox.


title: Antonine Plague

text: The historian William H. McNeill asserts that the Antonine Plague and the later Plague of Cyprian (251–c. 270) were outbreaks of two different diseases, one of smallpox and one of measles but not necessarily in that order. The severe devastation to the European population from the two plagues may indicate that people had no previous exposure to either disease, which brought immunity to survivors. Other historians believe that both outbreaks involved smallpox. The latter view is bolstered by molecular estimates that place the evolution of measles sometime after 1000 AD. However, Galen's description of the Antonine Plague is not completely consistent with smallpox.


title: Antonine Plague

text: Historians differ in their assessment of the impact of the Antonine Plague on Rome. To some, the plague was the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. To others it was a minor event, documented by Galen and other writers but little more deadly than other epidemics which frequently ravaged parts of the empire. Estimates of the fatalities from the pandemic range from 2 percent to 33 percent of the Roman Empire's population with deaths between 1.5 million people and 25 million people. Most estimates coalesce around a fatality rate of about 10 percent (7.5 million people) with death rates of up to 15 percent in the cities and the army. If the pandemic was indeed smallpox, the number of those infected who died would probably have been about 30 percent of the population, as the survival rate from smallpox is often around 75 percent, or three out of four people infected.


title: Antonine Plague

text: The traditional view was expressed by Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776–1831) who concluded that "as the reign of Marcus Aurelius forms a turning point in so many things, and above all in literature and art, I have no doubt that this crisis was brought about by that plague... The ancient world never recovered from the blow inflicted on it by the plague which visited it in the reign of Marcus Aurelius." More recently, scholar Kyle Harper said something similar: the pandemic "in any account of Rome's destiny ... merit[s] a place squarely in the forefront."


title: Antonine Plague

text: To the contrary, a team of six historians questioned the "extreme" position of Harper and others on this plague "by ignoring scholarship that suggests it had a less than catastrophic outcome," but the historians affirmed that "we do not doubt that disease and climate had some of the impact Harper describes."


title: Antonine Plague

text: Some historians have hypothesised that the epidemic resulted in a surge in the popularity of the cult of Asclepius, the god of medicine; epigraphic evidence, however, suggests no such increase of the cult's popularity occurred.


title: Antonine Plague

text: The ancient chroniclers portray the plague as a disaster for the Roman army with the army "reduced almost to extinction." This came in 166 at the beginning at the Marcomannic Wars in which Germanic tribes were invading Roman territory south of the middle Danube River in what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and south to Italy. The impact of the plague forced Marcus Aurelius to recruit and train additional soldiers from among "gladiators, slaves, and bandits." After a delay of two years, in 169 the emperor launched an attack against the Germanic tribes. In 171 the Roman army had driven the invaders out of Roman territory. The war would continue sporadically until 180 when Marcus Aurelius died, possibly of the plague. The plague may also have impacted the Germanic tribes.


title: Antonine Plague

text: Although Ge Hong was the first writer of traditional Chinese medicine who accurately described the symptoms of smallpox, the historian Rafe de Crespigny mused that the plagues afflicting the Eastern Han Empire during the reigns of Emperor Huan of Han (r. 146–168) and Emperor Ling of Han (r. 168–189) – with outbreaks in 151, 161, 171, 173, 179, 182, and 185 – were perhaps connected to the Antonine plague on the western end of Eurasia. De Crespigny suggests that the plagues led to the rise of the cult faith healing millenarian movement led by Zhang Jue (d. 184), who instigated the disastrous Yellow Turban Rebellion (184–205). He also stated that "it may be only chance" that the outbreak of the Antonine plague in 166 coincides with the Roman embassy of "Daqin" (the Roman Empire) landing in Jiaozhi (northern Vietnam) and visiting the Han court of Emperor Huan, claiming to represent "Andun" (; a transliteration of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus or his predecessor Antoninus Pius).


title: Antonine Plague

text: Raoul McLaughlin wrote that the Roman subjects visiting the Han Chinese court in 166 could have ushered in a new era of Roman Far East trade, but it was a "harbinger of something much more ominous" instead. McLaughlin surmised that the origins of the plague lay in Central Asia, from some unknown and isolated population group, which then spread to the Chinese and the Roman worlds. The plague caused "irreparable" damage to the Roman maritime trade in the Indian Ocean as proven by the archaeological record spanning from Egypt to India as well as significantly decreased Roman commercial activity in Southeast Asia. However, as evidenced by the 3rd-century "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea" and the 6th-century "Christian Topography" by Cosmas Indicopleustes, Roman maritime trade into the Indian Ocean, particularly in the silk and spice trades, certainly did not cease but continued until the loss of Egypt to the Muslim Rashidun Caliphate.


title: Lithuanians

text: Lithuanians () are a Baltic ethnic group. They are native to Lithuania, where they number around 2,378,118 people. Another million or two make up the Lithuanian diaspora, largely found in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Russia, and Canada. Their native language is Lithuanian, one of only two surviving members of the Baltic language family along with Latvian. According to the census conducted in 2021, 84.6% of the population of Lithuania identified themselves as Lithuanians, 6.5% as Poles, 5.0% as Russians, 1.0% as Belarusians, and 1.1% as members of other ethnic groups. Most Lithuanians belong to the Catholic Church, while the Lietuvininkai who lived in the northern part of East Prussia prior to World War II, were mostly Lutherans.


title: Lithuanians

text: The territory of the Balts, including modern Lithuania, was once inhabited by several Baltic tribal entities (Aukštaitians, Sudovians, Old Lithuanians, Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians, Samogitians, Skalvians, Old Prussians ("Nadruvians")), as attested by ancient sources and dating from prehistoric times. Over the centuries, and especially under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, some of these tribes consolidated into the Lithuanian nation, mainly as a defence against the marauding Teutonic Order and Eastern Slavs. The Lithuanian state was formed in the High Middle Ages, with different historians dating this variously between the 11th and mid-13th centuries. Mindaugas, Lithuania's only crowned king and its first baptised ruler, is generally considered Lithuania's founder. The Lithuanians are the only branch of Baltic people that managed to create a state entity before the modern era. During the Late Middle Ages, Lithuania was ravaged by the Lithuanian Crusade, which ended only by the Treaty of Melno in 1422. In fact, the crusade persisted after the definite Christianization of Lithuania in 1387, when Europe's last pagan people were baptised. Simultaneously, the Lithuanian state reached its apogee under the rule of Vytautas the Great (1392–1430), when it ruled the lands between the Baltic and Black seas. Thereafter, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania continued existing until 1795, however, since the Union of Lublin in 1569, it maintained its independence in the bi-confederal Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.


title: Lithuanians

text: There is a current argument that the Lithuanian language was considered non-prestigious enough by some elements in Lithuanian society, meaning that the number of Lithuanian language-speakers decreased with Polonization in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as a Germanisation of Prussia. The subsequent imperial Russian occupation from 1795 until 1915, with some interpositions such as the French invasion of Russia in 1812, the Uprisings of 1831 and 1863, accelerated this process of Slavicization. While under Russian occupation, Lithuanians endured Russification, which included the 40-year-long ban on public speaking and writing in Lithuanian (see, e.g., Knygnešiai, the actions against the Catholic Church). In such a context, the Lithuanian National Revival began in the 19th century. Some believed at the time that the Lithuanian nation as such, along with its language, would become extinct within a few generations.


title: Lithuanians

text: Some of the Polish- and Belarusian-speaking persons from the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania expressed their affiliation with the modern Lithuanian nation in the early 20th century, including Michał Pius Römer, Stanisław Narutowicz, Oscar Milosz and Tadas Ivanauskas


title: Lithuanians

text: In February 1918, while World War I was ongoing, the re-establishment of an independent Lithuanian state was declared, 122 years after it was destroyed. In the aftermath of World War I, Lithuanians militarily defended their country's independence from Poland, Whites and Soviet Russia during the Lithuanian Wars of Independence. However, a third of Lithuania's lands, namely the Vilnius Region, as well as its declared capital, fell under Polish occupation during the Interwar. A standardised Lithuanian language was approved. In the lead-up to the World War II, the Klaipėda Region was occupied by Nazi Germany after the 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania.


title: Lithuanians

text: The territory inhabited by the ethnic Lithuanians has shrunk over centuries; once Lithuanians made up a majority of the population not only in what is now Lithuania, but also in northwestern Belarus, in large areas of the territory of the modern Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, and in some parts of modern Latvia and Poland.


title: Lithuanians

text: In 1940, Lithuania was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union, and forced to join it as the Lithuanian SSR. The Germans and their allies attacked the USSR in June 1941, and from 1941 to 1944, Lithuania was occupied by Germany. The Germans retreated in 1944, and Lithuania fell under Soviet rule once again. The long-standing communities of Lithuanians in the Kaliningrad Oblast ("Lithuania Minor") were almost destroyed as a result.


title: Lithuanians

text: The Lithuanian nation as such remained primarily in Lithuania, few villages in northeastern Poland, southern Latvia and also in the diaspora of emigrants. Some indigenous Lithuanians still remain in Belarus and the Kaliningrad Oblast, but their number is small compared to what they used to be. Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, and was recognized by most countries in 1991. It became a member of the European Union on May 1, 2004.


title: Lithuanians

text: Among the Baltic states, Lithuania has the most homogeneous population. According to the census conducted in 2001, 83.45% of the population identified themselves as ethnic Lithuanians, 6.74% as Poles, 6.31% as Russians, 1.23% as Belarusians, and 2.27% as members of other ethnic groups such as Ukrainians, Jews, Germans, Tatars, Latvians, Romani, Estonians, Crimean Karaites etc.


title: Lithuanians

text: Poles are mostly concentrated in the Vilnius County. Especially large Polish communities are located in the Vilnius District Municipality and the Šalčininkai District Municipality. This concentration allows Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania, an ethnic minority-based political party, to exert political influence. Due to the excessive pro-Pole political agenda, the party is known to cause friction between Lithuanians and Poles. However, it has only held 1 or 2 seats in the parliament of Lithuania for the past decade. Thus, it is more active in local politics by having a majority in a few minor municipality councils.


title: Lithuanians

text: Russians, even though they are almost as numerous as Poles, are much more evenly scattered and do not have a strong political party. The most prominent community lives in the Visaginas Municipality (52%). Most of them are workers who moved from Russia to work at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. A number of ethnic Russians left Lithuania after the declaration of independence in 1990.


title: Lithuanians

text: In the past, the ethnic composition of Lithuania has varied dramatically. The most prominent change was the extermination of the Jewish population during the Holocaust. Before World War II, about 7.5% of the population was Jewish; they were concentrated in cities and towns and had a significant influence on crafts and business. They were called Litvaks and had a strong culture. The population of Vilnius, which was sometimes nicknamed the northern Jerusalem, was about 30% Jewish. Almost all its Jews were killed during the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, some 75,000 alone between the years 1941 – 1942, while others later immigrated to the United States and Israel. Now there are about 3,200 Jews living in Lithuania.


title: Lithuanians

text: Apart from the various religious and ethnic groups currently residing in Lithuania, Lithuanians themselves retain and differentiate between their regional identities; there are 5 historic regional groups: "Žemaičiai", "Suvalkiečiai", "Aukštaičiai", "Dzūkai" and "Prūsai", the last of which is virtually extinct. City dwellers are usually considered just Lithuanians, especially ones from large cities such as Vilnius or Kaunas.


title: Lithuanians

text: The four groups are delineated according to certain region-specific traditions, dialects, and historical divisions. There are some stereotypes used in jokes about these subgroups, for example, Sudovians are supposedly frugal while Samogitians are stubborn.


title: Lithuanians

text: Since the late Neolithic period the native inhabitants of the Lithuanian territory have not been replaced by migrations from outside, so there is a high probability that the inhabitants of present-day Lithuania have preserved the genetic composition of their forebears relatively undisturbed by the major demographic movements, although without being actually isolated from them. The Lithuanian population appears to be relatively homogeneous, without apparent genetic differences among ethnic subgroups.


title: Lithuanians

text: A 2004 analysis of mtDNA in a Lithuanian population revealed that Lithuanians are close to both Indo-European and Uralic-speaking populations of Northern Europe. Y-chromosome SNP haplogroup analysis showed Lithuanians to be closest to fellow Balts (Latvians), Estonians, Belarusians and Finnish people. This is the result of Iron Age. Autosomal SNP analysis situates Lithuanians most proximal to Latvians, followed by the westernmost East Slavs, furthermore, all Slavic peoples and Germans are situated more proximal to Lithuanians than Finns and northern Russians.


title: Lithuanians

text: Lithuanian Ashkenazi Jews also have interesting genetics, since they display a number of unique genetic characteristics; the utility of these variations has been the subject of debate. One variation, which is implicated in familial hypercholesterolemia, has been dated to the 14th century, corresponding to the establishment of Ashkenazi settlements in response to the invitation extended by Vytautas the Great in 1388.


title: Lithuanians

text: At the end of the 19th century, the average height of males was and the average height of females was . By the end of the 20th century, heights averaged for males and for females.


title: Lithuanians

text: Lithuanian settlement extends into adjacent countries that are now outside the modern Lithuanian state. A small Lithuanian community exists in the vicinity of Puńsk and Sejny in the Suwałki area of Poland, an area associated with the Lithuanian writer and cleric Antanas Baranauskas.


title: Lithuanians

text: Although most of the Lithuanian inhabitants in the region of Lithuania Minor that formed part of East Prussia were expelled when the area was annexed by the Soviet Union as the Kaliningrad Oblast, small groups of Lithuanians subsequently settled that area as it was repopulated with new Soviet citizens. Small groups of Lithuanians are still present in Belarus within the Grodno and Vitebsk regions.


title: Lithuanians

text: Apart from the traditional communities in Lithuania and its neighboring countries, Lithuanians have emigrated to other continents during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.


title: Lithuanians

text: The Lithuanian national sport is usually considered to be basketball ("krepšinis"), which is popular among Lithuanians in Lithuania as well as in the diasporic communities. Basketball came to Lithuania through the Lithuanian-American community in the 1930s. Lithuanian basketball teams were bronze medal winners in the 1992, 1996, and 2000 Summer Olympics.


title: Lithuanians

text: Joninės (also known as Rasos) is a traditional national holiday, celebrated on the summer solstice. It has pagan origins. Užgavėnės (Shrove Tuesday) takes place on the day before Ash Wednesday, and is meant to urge the retreat of winter. There are also national traditions for Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas.


title: Lithuanians

text: Lithuanian cuisine has much in common with other European cuisines and features the products suited to its cool and moist northern climate: barley, potatoes, rye, beets, greens, and mushrooms are locally grown, and dairy products are one of its specialties. Nevertheless, it has its own distinguishing features, which were formed by a variety of influences during the country's rich history.


title: Lithuanians

text: Since shared similarities in history and heritage, Lithuanians, Jews and Poles have developed many similar dishes and beverages: dumplings ( "koldūnai"), doughnuts ("spurgos"), and crepes ("lietiniai blynai"). German traditions also influenced Lithuanian cuisine, introducing pork and potato dishes, such as potato pudding (kugelis) and potato sausages (vėdarai), as well as the baroque tree cake known as šakotis. Traditional dishes of Lithuanian Tatars and Lithuanian Karaites like Kibinai and čeburekai, that are similar to pasty, are popular in Lithuania.


title: Lithuanians

text: For Lithuanian Americans both traditional Lithuanian dishes of virtinukai (cabbage and noodles) and balandėliai (rolled cabbage) are growing increasingly more popular.


title: Lithuanians

text: There are also regional cuisine dishes, e.g. traditional kastinys in Žemaitija, Western Lithuania, Skilandis in Western and Central Lithuania, Kindziukas in Eastern and Southern Lithuania (Dzūkija).


title: Lithuanians

text: Cepelinai, a stuffed potato creation, is the most popular national dish. It is popular among Lithuanians all over the world. Other national foods include dark rye bread, cold beet soup (šaltibarščiai), and kugelis (a baked potato pudding). Some of these foods are also common in neighboring countries. Lithuanian cuisine is generally unknown outside Lithuanian communities. Most Lithuanian restaurants outside Lithuania are located in cities with a heavy Lithuanian presence.


title: Lithuanians

text: Lithuanians in the early 20th century were among the thinnest people in the developed countries of the world. In Lithuanian cuisine there is some emphasis on attractive presentation of freshly prepared foods.


title: Lithuanians

text: Locally brewed beer ("alus"), vodka ("degtinė"), and kvass ("gira") are popular drinks in Lithuania. Lithuanian traditional beer of Northern Lithuania, Biržai, Pasvalys regions is well appreciated in Lithuania and abroad. Starka is a part of the Lithuanian heritage, still produced in Lithuania.


title: Lithuanians

text: Among Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is conservative in some aspects of its grammar and phonology, retaining archaic features otherwise found only in ancient languages such as Sanskrit (particularly its early form, Vedic Sanskrit) or Ancient Greek. For this reason, it is an important source for the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation (with the earliest texts dating only to c. 1500).


title: Lithuanians

text: The Proto-Balto-Slavic language branched off directly from Proto-Indo-European, then sub-branched into Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic. Proto-Baltic branched off into Proto-West Baltic and Proto-East Baltic. Baltic languages passed through a Proto-Balto-Slavic stage, from which Baltic languages retain numerous exclusive and non-exclusive lexical, morphological, phonological and accentual isoglosses in common with the Slavic languages, which represent their closest living Indo-European relatives. Moreover, with Lithuanian being so archaic in phonology, Slavic words can often be deduced from Lithuanian by regular sound laws; for example, Lith. "vilkas" and Polish wilk ← PBSl. *wilkás (cf. PSl. *vьlkъ) ← PIE *wĺ̥kʷos, all meaning "wolf".


title: Lithuanians

text: When the ban against printing the Lithuanian language was lifted in 1904, various European literary movements such as Symbolism, impressionism, and expressionism each in turn influenced the work of Lithuanian writers. The first period of Lithuanian independence (1918–40) gave them the opportunity to examine themselves and their characters more deeply, as their primary concerns were no longer political. An outstanding figure of the early 20th century was Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius, a novelist and dramatist. His many works include "Dainavos šalies senų žmonių padavimai" (Old Folks Tales of Dainava, 1912) and the historical dramas "Šarūnas" (1911), "Skirgaila" (1925), and "Mindaugo mirtis" (The Death of Mindaugas, 1935). Petras Vaičiūnas was another popular playwright, producing one play each year during the 1920s and 1930s. Vincas Mykolaitis-Putinas wrote lyric poetry, plays, and novels, including the novel "Altorių šešėly" (In the Shadows of the Altars, 3 vol., 1933), a remarkably powerful autobiographical novel.


title: Lithuanians

text: "Keturi vėjai" movement started with publication of "The Prophet of the Four Winds" by talented poet Kazys Binkis (1893—1942). It was rebellion against traditional poetry. The theoretical basis of "Keturi vėjai" initially was futurism which arrived through Russia from the West and later cubism, dadaism, surrealism, unanimism, and German expressionism. The most influensive futurist for Lithuanian writers was Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.


title: Lithuanians

text: Oskaras Milašius (1877–1939) is a paradoxical and interesting phenomenon in Lithuanian culture. He never lived in Lithuania but was born and spent his childhood in Cereja (near Mogilev, Belarus) and graduated from Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. His longing for his fatherland was more metaphysical. Having to choose between two conflicting countries — Lithuania and Poland — he preferred Lithuania which for him was an idea even more than a fatherland. In 1920 when France recognized the independence of Lithuania, he was appointed officially as Chargé d'Affaires for Lithuania. He published: 1928, a collection of 26 Lithuanian songs; 1930, "Lithuanian Tales and Stories"; 1933, "Lithuanian Tales"; 1937, "The origin of the Lithuanian Nation".


title: Lithuanians

text: Since the Christianization of parts of Lithuania proper in 1387 and of Samogitia in 1413, the majority of Lithuanians have been members of the Roman Catholic Church. According to the 2001 census, 79% of Lithuanians are Roman Catholic. Approximately 4.9% of the population are Eastern Orthodox, mainly the Russian minority. Under Article 26 of the Constitution of Lithuania, persons can freely practice a religion of their choosing.


title: Lithuanians

text: Catholicism played a significant role in Lithuanian anti-communist resistance under the Soviet Union. Several Catholic priests were leaders of the anti-communist movements, and thousands of Latin rite crosses were placed on the Hill of Crosses near Šiauliai, despite its being bulldozed in 1961.


title: Lithuanians

text: Lithuanian folk music is based around songs ("dainos"), which include romantic and wedding songs, as well as work songs and archaic war songs. These songs used to be performed either in groups or alone, and in parallel chords or unison. Duophonic songs are common in the renowned sutartinės tradition of Aukštaitija. Another style of Lithuanian folk music is called rateliai, a kind of round dance. Instrumentation includes kanklės, a kind of zither that accompanies sutartinės, rateliai, waltzes, quadrilles and polkas, and fiddles, (including a bass fiddle called the "basetle") and a kind of whistle called the Lamzdeliai "lumzdelis"; recent importations, beginning in the late 19th century, including the concertina, accordion and bandoneon. Sutartinė can be accompanied by "skudučiai", a form of panpipes played by a group of people, as well as wooden trumpets ("ragai" and "dandytės"). Kanklės is an extremely important folk instrument, which differs in the number of strings and performance techniques across the country. Other traditional instruments include "švilpas" whistle, drums and "tabalas" (a percussion instrument like a gong), "sekminių ragelis" (bagpipe) and the "pūslinė", a musical bow made from a pig's bladder filled with dried peas.


title: Redditch

text: Redditch is a town, and local government district, in north-east Worcestershire, England, approximately south of Birmingham. The district has a population of 85,000 as of 2019. In the 19th century, it became the international centre for the needle and fishing tackle industry. At one point, 90% of the world's needles were manufactured in the town and its neighbourhoods.


title: Redditch

text: The first recorded mention of Redditch ("Red-Ditch", thought to be a reference to the red clay of the nearby River Arrow) is in 1348, the year of the outbreak of the Black Death. During the Middle Ages, it became a centre of needle-making and later prominent industries were fish-hooks, fishing tackle, motorcycles and springs, the last of which was notably undertaken by Herbert Terry and Sons. Redditch was designated a new town on 10 April 1964, and the population increased dramatically from 32,000 to around 77,000. Housing developments such as Church Hill, Matchborough, Winyates, Lodge Park, and Woodrow were created to accommodate a large overspill from the industrially expanding Birmingham. Redditch was built as a "flagship" town using new methods and new town planning: all the main roads (mostly new dual carriageways as well as a ring road for the town centre) were banked to reduce noise to the new housing estates, and the whole of Redditch was landscaped.


title: Redditch

text: By the 21st century, needle-making and other traditional industries had been replaced by modern light industry and services, with Redditch also functioning as a dormitory town for Birmingham. The automotive retailer Halfords and engineering company GKN both have their headquarters in Redditch. Manufacturer of precious metal contacts, Samuel Taylor Ltd, has manufacturing plants within the town. Following the redevelopment of the flagship Kingfisher Shopping Centre in 2002, Redditch is undergoing an economic and cultural renaissance.


title: Redditch

text: The town is home to several historical sites. The National Needle Museum and the ruins of Bordesley Abbey are located in the Abbey Ward district, and the remains of a medieval moated settlement called Moons Moat are within the Church Hill estate.