title: Operation Achse

text: Only 197,000 Italian soldiers continued the war alongside the Germans. Some 94,000, mostly fascists, chose this option right away. The rest, some 103,000 men, chose during their detention to support the Italian Social Republic to escape the harsh circumstances in the German labor camps. Between 600,000 and 650,000 remained in German labor camps, where between 37,000 and 50,000 of them perished. Between 20,000 and 30,000 Italian soldiers had been killed during the fighting in September 1943, and 13,000 more had perished in the sinking of POW ships in the Aegean.


title: Operation Achse

text: Oflag 64/Z in Schokken, Poland became the camp where most Italian general officers captured by German troops during Operation Achse were gathered. By November 1943, the Italian military internee population of Oflag 64/Z included three army generals, twenty-two army corps generals, forty-six division generals, eighty-four brigadier generals, one fleet admiral, four vice admirals, two rear admirals, one air fleet general, two air division generals, three air brigade generals, and a general of the MVSN. Among the most prominent Italian generals held in Oflag 64/Z were Italo Gariboldi (former commander of the Eighth Army), Ezio Rosi (former commander of Army Group East), Carlo Geloso (former commander of Italian occupation forces in Greece), Carlo Vecchiarelli (former commander of the 9th Army), Lorenzo Dalmazzo (former commander of the 11th Army) and Sebastiano Visconti Prasca (notable for having commanded the Italian invasion force in the early stages of the Greco-Italian War).


title: Operation Achse

text: Considered "traitors" due to their refusal to swear allegiance to the Italian Social Republic, the generals were mistreated and underfed; five of them (Alberto de Agazio, Umberto di Giorgio, Davide Dusmet, Armellini Chiappi and Rodolfo Torresan) died during captivity at the camp, whereas Admirals Inigo Campioni and Luigi Mascherpa were handed over to RSI authorities, tried and executed for having opposed the German takeover in the Dodecanese. About a dozen generals eventually accepted to join the Italian Social Republic and were repatriated, whereas a group of others, who had not formally joined but were seen as more favourable to the German cause, were transferred to Vittel internment camp, where they enjoyed better treatment. Another group, considered as particularly anti-German, was transferred to Stalag XX-A in Toruń, where they received a harsher treatment. Most remained in Schokken till late January 1945, when they were transferred westwards with a forced march through the snow; during the march, six generals (Carlo Spatocco, Alberto Trionfi, Alessandro Vaccaneo, Ugo Ferrero, Emanuele Balbo Bertone, and Giuseppe Andreoli) were shot by the SS for being unable to keep pace with the other prisoners. Another two, Francesco Antonio Arena and Alberto Briganti, managed to escape and hid in a Polish farm, but were found by Soviet soldiers and shot after being mistaken for German collaborators, with Arena dying and Briganti miraculously surviving. The other generals were liberated by the advancing Red Army a few days later and repatriated in the autumn of 1945.


title: Bull-baiting

text: Crowds in London during the Royal Entry of James VI and I in March 1604 were entertained by bull-baiting. During the time of Queen Anne, bull-baiting was practised in London at Hockley-in-the-Hole, twice a week – and was also reasonably common in provincial towns, for instance at Birmingham's Bull Ring. At Tutbury, a bull was tied to an iron stake so that it could move within a radius of about 30 feet. The object of the sport was for the dogs to immobilize the bull.


title: Bull-baiting

text: Before the event started, the bull's nose was blown full of pepper to enrage it before the baiting. The bull was often placed in a hole in the ground. A variant of bull-baiting was "pinning the bull", where specially-trained dogs would set upon the bull one at a time, a successful attack resulting in the dog fastening his teeth strongly in the bull's snout. The extinct Old English Bulldog was specially bred for this sport.


title: Bull-baiting

text: Bull-baiting was not only practiced as a form of recreation; there was a long-held belief that baiting improved the meat quality and tenderness when consumed. By the early nineteenth century, the sport began to die out, both because the baiting caused a public nuisance and because of new concerns about animal cruelty.


title: Bull-baiting

text: A Bill for the suppression of the practice was introduced into the House of Commons in 1800 by Sir William Pulteney. The Bill was defeated by a one-vote margin. A second Bill was introduced in 1802 by John Dent, but was defeated by thirteen votes. Bull baiting was still taking place, a newspaper reported in 1818 that a bull being taken from the stake to a stable had killed a man at Bilston Wake. Bulls were excluded from the protections afforded to other cattle in the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822. Bull-baiting was not finally outlawed until parliament passed the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835, which forbade the keeping of any house, pit, or other place for baiting or fighting any bull, bear, dog, or other animal.


title: Bull-baiting

text: In Dublin, bull-baiting took place near the Cornmarket and in Smithfield. On St Stephen's Day 1789, a riot followed a bull-bait: soldiers fired on the crowd and four were killed.


title: Bull-baiting

text: In Wexford, the activity arrived in 1621, brought by the Guild of Butchers; bulls were baited twice a year and their hides presented to the Mayor. The area where bull-baiting took place is still called the Bullring.


title: Bull-baiting

text: In Kilkenny it took place at the site called The Ring, first in 1609, and commonly on the feast-day of John the Baptist (December 27). The last recorded bull-bait was in 1837, after they had become illegal under an 1835 Act.


title: Bull-baiting

text: In the 19th century, and during Spanish Colonial Rule, bulls used to be pitted against bears in California and Mexico. Kingsley (1920) said that the bulls that fought the bears, at least while California was part of the United States, were not domesticated Hereford bulls, but Spanish Fighting Bulls, whose weight, agility, speed, sharp horns and hot temper were said to be dangerous to both bears and humans, and Wistar (1937) said that those bulls were fearless. In a case of the bull winning, victory could come early, when the bull used its strength to gore the bear to death with its horns, or toss the bear into the air.


title: Bull-baiting

text: Bull-baiting dogs, including Old English Bulldogs, Bullenbeissers, Spanish Bulldogs, Ca de Bous and bull and terriers, were bred to bait animals, mainly bulls and bears. During bull-baiting, the dog would attempt to flatten itself to the ground, creeping as close to the bull as possible, then darting out and attempting to bite the bull in the nose or head area. The bull would often be tethered by a collar and rope, which were staked into the ground. As the dog darted at the bull, the bull would attempt to catch the dog with his head and horns, and throw the dog into the air.


title: Bull-baiting

text: In 1835, the Cruelty to Animals Act was passed in Parliament that outlawed "Blood Sport" in the United Kingdom. The bulldog's work was suddenly over and the bulldog rapidly started dying out. Around 1865, dog fanciers began developing dog clubs which eventually culminated into conformation shows. Many fanciers utilized various remnants of the dog utilized for "Blood Sport" to resurrect the "Bull" dog and ultimately developed today's modern English bulldog.


title: Bull-baiting

text: Washington Irving, in his book, "The Adventures of Captain Bonneville", wrote that a bear was baited, and likewise, a wild, fierce bull, before they were brought by vaqueros to an arena in a small amphitheatre in Monterey, California, to fight each other. He called the fight "a favorite, though barbarous sport." In this case, he said that the bear used its sharp claws against the nose of the bull, before catching its tongue, after being repeatedly gored by the bull. Then the bull overturned it "with a desperate effort," and then 'dispatched' it rather easily.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: Arthur William "Big Boy" Crudup (August 24, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American Delta blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known, outside blues circles, for his songs "That's All Right" (1946), "My Baby Left Me" and "So Glad You're Mine", later recorded by Elvis Presley and other artists.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: Crudup was born on August 24, 1905, in Union Grove, Forest, Mississippi, to a family of migrant workers traveling through the South and Midwest. The family returned to Mississippi in 1926, where he sang gospel music. He had lessons with a local bluesman, whose name was Papa Harvey, and later he was able to play in dance halls and cafes around Forest. Around 1940 he went to Chicago.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: He began his career as a blues singer around Clarksdale, Mississippi. As a member of the Harmonizing Four, he visited Chicago in 1939. He stayed in Chicago to work as a solo musician but barely made a living as a street singer. The record producer Lester Melrose allegedly found him while Crudup was living in a packing crate, introduced him to Hudson Whittaker, better known as Tampa Red, and signed him to a recording contract with RCA Victor's Bluebird label.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: He recorded with RCA in the late 1940s and with Ace Records, Checker Records and Trumpet Records in the early 1950s. He toured black clubs in the South, sometimes playing with Sonny Boy Williamson II and Elmore James. He also recorded under the names "Elmer James" and "Percy Lee Crudup". His songs "Mean Old 'Frisco Blues", "Who's Been Foolin' You" and "That's All Right" were popular in the South. These and his other songs "Rock Me Mama", "So Glad You're Mine", and "My Baby Left Me" have been recorded by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Slade, Elton John and Rod Stewart.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: Crudup stopped recording in the 1950s because of disputes over royalties. He said, "I realised I was making everybody rich, and here I was poor". His last Chicago session was in 1951. His 1952–54 recording sessions for Victor were held at radio station WGST, in Atlanta, Georgia. He returned to recording, for Fire Records and Delmark Records, and touring in 1965. Sometimes labeled "The Father of Rock and Roll", he accepted this title with some bemusement.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: In 1968, the blues promoter Dick Waterman began fighting for Crudup's royalties and reached an agreement in which Crudup would be paid $60,000. However, Hill and Range Songs, from which he was supposed to get the royalties, refused to sign the legal papers at the last minute, because the company thought it could not lose more money in legal action. In the early 1970s, two Virginia activists, Celia Santiago and Margaret Carter, assisted Crudup in an attempt to gain royalties he felt he were due, with little success. By 1971, he had collected over $10,000 in overdue royalties through the intervention of the Songwriters Guild of America (then called the American Guild Of Authors And Composers).


title: Arthur Crudup

text: On a 1970 trip to the United Kingdom, Crudup recorded "Roebuck Man" with local musicians. His last professional engagements were with Bonnie Raitt. Recognizing his fortunes would not change, Crudup said in 1970, "I was born poor, I live poor, and I am going to die poor."


title: Arthur Crudup

text: Crudup died of complications of heart disease and diabetes in the Nassawadox hospital in Northampton County, Virginia, in March 1974. on March 28, 1974, four years after the failed royalty settlement.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: There was some confusion about the date of death because of his use of several names, including those of his siblings.


title: Arthur Crudup

text: Crudup has been honored with a marker on the Mississippi Blues Trail, placed at Forest. Elvis Presley acknowledged Crudup's importance to rock and roll when he said, "If I had any ambition, it was to be as good as Arthur Crudup".


title: Arthur Crudup

text: One of the experts who consider Crudup's "That's All Right" to be the "first rock and roll song" is Southeastern Louisiana University rock historian Joseph Burns. He adds that "this song could contain the first ever guitar solo break". Another source is equally definitive, stating that the recording "stands as a convincing front-runner for rock ‘n’ roll’s ground zero".


title: Arthur Crudup

text: An 2004 article in "The Guardian" argues that rather than Presley's version being one of the first records of rock and roll, it was simply one of "the first white artists' interpretations of a sound already well-established by black musicians almost a decade before [...] a raucous, driving, unnamed variant of rhythm and blues".


title: Arthur Crudup

text: The Blues Hall of Fame stated that Crudup "became known as 'The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll' after Elvis Presley recorded three of his songs" but adds that "Crudup was a classic victim of music industry exploitation, and despite the commercial success of his music, was never able to even support his family from his music". The Hall quotes Presley as having said, "Down in Tupelo, Mississippi, I used to hear old Arthur Crudup bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place I could feel all old Arthur felt, I’d be a music man like nobody ever saw".


title: Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe

text: Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe, Ltd. (HBSE, formerly Great Marlborough Productions, Ltd. and previously known as Cartoon Network Studios Europe, Ltd. and Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe, Ltd.) is a British animation studio based in London and owned by the Warner Bros. Television Studios UK division of Warner Bros. International Television Production, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery International. It is the EMEA arm of Cartoon Network Studios.


title: Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe

text: On April 7, 2021, it was announced that the studio had re-branded as Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe, paying tribute to the original American studio, founded by the Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning animation team William Hanna and Joseph Barbera on July 7, 1957.


title: Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe

text: The Hanna-Barbera name had previously been revived on some Warner Bros. Animation series and films based on the classic franchises, including from the fifth to eigth "Scooby-Doo" direct-to-video animated films, "", "Wacky Races" and "Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs". The first projects to be greenlit under the new name were a new series and a movie relating to "The Amazing World of Gumball".


title: String quartet

text: The term string quartet can refer to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two violinists, a violist, and a cellist.


title: String quartet

text: The string quartet was developed into its present form by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, whose works in the 1750s established the ensemble as a group of four more-or-less equal partners. Since Haydn the string quartet has been considered a prestigious form; writing for four instruments with broadly similar characteristics both constrains and tests a composer. String quartet composition flourished in the Classical era, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert each wrote a number of them. Many Romantic and early-twentieth-century composers composed string quartets, including Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, Leoš Janáček and Claude Debussy. There was a slight lull in string quartet composition later in the 19th century, but it received a resurgence in the 20th century, with the Second Viennese School, Béla Bartók, Dmitri Shostakovich, Milton Babbitt and Elliott Carter producing highly regarded examples of the genre, and it remains an important and refined musical form.


title: String quartet

text: The standard structure for a string quartet as established in the Classical era is four movements, with the first movement in sonata form, allegro, in the tonic key; a slow movement in a related key and a minuet and trio follow; and the fourth movement is often in rondo form or sonata rondo form, in the tonic key.


title: String quartet

text: Some string quartet ensembles play together for many years and become established and promoted as an entity in a similar way to an instrumental soloist or an orchestra.


title: String quartet

text: The early history of the string quartet is in many ways the history of the development of the genre by the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn. There had been examples of divertimenti for two solo violins, viola and cello by the Viennese composers Georg Christoph Wagenseil and Ignaz Holzbauer; and there had long been a tradition of performing orchestral works one instrument to a part. The British musicologist David Wyn Jones cites the widespread practice of four players, one to a part, playing works written for string orchestra, such as divertimenti and serenades, there being no separate (fifth) contrabass part in string scoring before the 19th century. However, these composers showed no interest in exploring the development of the string quartet as a medium.


title: String quartet

text: The origins of the string quartet can be further traced back to the Baroque trio sonata, in which two solo instruments performed with a continuo section consisting of a bass instrument (such as the cello) and keyboard. A very early example is a four-part sonata for string ensemble by the Italian composer Gregorio Allegri that might be considered an important prototype. By the early 18th century, composers were often adding a third soloist; and moreover it became common to omit the keyboard part, letting the cello support the bass line alone. Thus when Alessandro Scarlatti wrote a set of six works entitled (Sonata for four instruments: two violins, viola, and cello without harpsichord), this was a natural evolution from the existing tradition.


title: String quartet

text: Haydn is responsible for the string quartet in its now accepted form. Although he did not invent the combination of two violins, viola and cello, previous occurrences in chamber music were more likely due to circumstance rather than conscious design. The string quartet enjoyed no recognized status as an ensemble in the way that two violins with basso continuo – the so-called 'trio sonata' – had for more than a hundred years. Even the composition of Haydn's earliest string quartets owed more to chance than artistic imperative. During the 1750s, when the young composer was still working mainly as a teacher and violinist in Vienna, he would occasionally be invited to spend time at the nearby castle at Weinzierl of the music-loving Austrian nobleman Karl Joseph Weber, Edler von Fürnberg. There he would play chamber music in an "ad hoc" ensemble consisting of Fürnberg's steward, a priest and a local cellist, and when the Baron asked for some new music for the group to play, Haydn's first string quartets were born. It is not clear whether any of these works ended up in the two sets published in the mid-1760s and known as Haydn's Opp.1 and 2 ('Op.0' is a quartet included in some early editions of Op.1, and only rediscovered in the 1930s), but it seems reasonable to assume that they were at least similar in character.


title: String quartet

text: The following purely chance circumstance had led him to try his luck at the composition of quartets. A Baron Fürnberg had a place in Weinzierl, several stages from Vienna, and he invited from time to time his pastor, his manager, Haydn, and Albrechtsberger (a brother of the celebrated contrapuntist Albrechtsberger) in order to have a little music. Fürnberg requested Haydn to compose something that could be performed by these four amateurs. Haydn, then eighteen years old, took up this proposal, and so originated his first quartet which, immediately it appeared, received such general approval that Haydn took courage to work further in this form.


title: String quartet

text: Haydn went on to write nine other quartets around this time. These works were published as his Op. 1 and Op. 2; one quartet went unpublished, and some of the early "quartets" are actually symphonies missing their wind parts. They have five movements and take the form: fast movement, minuet and trio I, slow movement, minuet and trio II, and fast finale. As Ludwig Finscher notes, they draw stylistically on the Austrian divertimento tradition.


title: String quartet

text: After these early efforts Haydn did not return to the string quartet for several years, but when he did so, it was to make a significant step in the genre's development. The intervening years saw Haydn begin his employment as Kapellmeister to the Esterhazy princes, for whom he was required to compose numerous symphonies and dozens of trios for violin, viola and the curious bass instrument called the baryton (played by Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy himself). The opportunities for experiment which both these genres offered Haydn perhaps helped him in the pursuit of the more advanced quartet style found in the eighteen works published in the early 1770s as Opp.9, 17 and 20. These are written in a form that became established as standard both for Haydn and for other composers. Clearly composed as sets, these quartets feature a four-movement layout having broadly conceived, moderately paced first movements and, in increasing measure, a democratic and conversational interplay of parts, close-knit thematic development, and skilful though often self-effacing use of counterpoint. The convincing realizations of the progressive aims of the Op.20 set of 1772, in particular, makes them the first major peak in the history of the string quartet. Certainly they offered to their own time state-of-the art models to follow for the best part of a decade; the teenage Mozart, in his early quartets, was among the composers moved to imitate many of their characteristics, right down to the vital fugues with which Haydn sought to bring greater architectural weight to the finales of nos. 2, 5 and 6.


title: String quartet

text: After Op.20 it becomes harder to point to similar major jumps in the string quartet's development in Haydn's hands, though not due to any lack of invention or application on the composer's part. As Donald Tovey put it: "with Op.20 the historical development of Haydn's quartets reaches its goal; and further progress is not progress in any historical sense, but simply the difference between one masterpiece and the next."


title: String quartet

text: That Haydn's string quartets were already "classics" that defined the genre by 1801 can be judged by Ignaz Pleyel's publication in Paris of a "complete" series that year, and the quartet's evolution as vehicle for public performance can be judged by Pleyel's ten-volume set of miniature scores intended for hearers rather than players - early examples of this genre of music publishing. Since Haydn's day the string quartet has been prestigious and considered one of the true tests of a composer's art. This may be partly because the palette of sound is more restricted than with orchestral music, forcing the music to stand more on its own rather than relying on tonal color; or from the inherently contrapuntal tendency in music written for four equal instruments.


title: String quartet

text: Quartet composition flourished in the Classical era. Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert each composed a number of quartets: "Beethoven in particular is credited with developing the genre in an experimental and dynamic fashion, especially in his later series of quartets written in the 1820s up until his death. Their forms and ideas inspired and continue to inspire musicians and composers, such as Richard Wagner and Béla Bartók." Schubert's last musical wish was to hear Beethoven's Quartet in C minor, Op. 131, which he did on 14 November 1828, just five days before his death. Upon listening to an earlier performance of this quartet, Schubert had remarked, "After this, what is left for us to write?" Wagner, when reflecting on Op. 131's first movement, said that it "reveals the most melancholy sentiment expressed in music". Of the late quartets, Beethoven cited his own favorite as Op. 131, which he saw as his most perfect single work.


title: String quartet

text: Mendelssohn's six string quartets span the full range of his career, from 1828 to 1847; Schumann's three string quartets were all written in 1842 and dedicated to Mendelssohn, whose quartets Schumann had been studying in preparation, along with those of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Several Romantic-era composers wrote only one quartet, while Antonín Dvořák wrote 14. In the modern era, the string quartet played a key role in the development of Arnold Schoenberg (who was the first to add a soprano in his String Quartet No. 2), Béla Bartók, and Dmitri Shostakovich especially. After the Second World War, some composers, such as Olivier Messiaen questioned the relevance of the string quartet and avoided writing them. However, from the 1960s onwards, many composers have shown a renewed interest in the genre. During his tenure as Master of the Queen's Music, Peter Maxwell Davies produced a set of ten entitled the Naxos Quartets (to a commission from Naxos Records) from 2001 to 2007. Margaret Jones Wiles composed over 50 string quartets. David Matthews has written eleven, and Robin Holloway both five quartets and six "quartettini".


title: String quartet

text: A composition for four players of stringed instruments may be in any form. Quartets written in the classical period usually have four movements with a large-scale structure similar to that of a symphony:


title: String quartet

text: The relative positions of the slow movement and minuet are flexible. For example, in Mozart's six quartets dedicated to Haydn, three have a minuet followed by a slow movement and three have the slow movement before the minuet.


title: String quartet

text: Substantial modifications to the typical structure were already present in Beethoven's late quartets, and despite some notable examples to the contrary, composers writing in the twentieth century increasingly abandoned this structure. Bartók's fourth and fifth string quartets, written in the 1930s, are five-movement works, symmetrical around a central movement. Shostakovich's final quartet, written in the 1970s, comprises six slow movements.


title: String quartet

text: Further expansions have also produced works such as the String octet by Mendelssohn, consisting of the equivalent of two string quartets. Notably, Schoenberg included a soprano in the last two movements of his second string quartet, composed in 1908. Adding a voice has since been done by Milhaud, Ginastera, Ferneyhough, Davies, İlhan Mimaroğlu and many others. Another variation on the traditional string quartet is the electric string quartet with players performing on electric instruments.


title: String quartet

text: Whereas individual string players often group together to make ad hoc string quartets, others continue to play together for many years in ensembles which may be named after the first violinist (e.g. the Takács Quartet), a composer (e.g. the Borodin Quartet) or a location (e.g. the Budapest Quartet). Established quartets may undergo changes in membership whilst retaining their original name.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) is one of eight extant species of porpoise. It is one of the smallest species of cetacean. As its name implies, it stays close to coastal areas or river estuaries, and as such, is the most familiar porpoise to whale watchers. This porpoise often ventures up rivers, and has been seen hundreds of kilometres from the sea. The harbour porpoise may be polytypic, with geographically distinct populations representing distinct races: "P. p. phocoena" in the North Atlantic and West Africa, "P. p. relicta" in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, an unnamed population in the northwestern Pacific and "P. p. vomerina" in the northeastern Pacific.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The English word porpoise comes from the French (Old French , 12th century), which is from Medieval Latin , which is a compound of "porcus" (pig) and (fish). The old word is probably a loan-translation of a Germanic word, compare Danish "marsvin" and Middle Dutch "mereswijn" (sea swine). Classical Latin had a similar name, "porculus marinus". The species' taxonomic name, "Phocoena phocoena", is the Latinized form of the Greek φώκαινα, "phōkaina", "big seal", as described by Aristotle; this from φώκη, "phōkē", "seal".


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The species is sometimes known as the common porpoise in texts originating in the United Kingdom. In parts of Atlantic Canada it is known colloquially as the puffing pig, and in Norway ‘nise’, derived from an Old Norse word for sneeze; both of which refer to the sound made when porpoises surface to breathe.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The harbour porpoise is a little smaller than the other porpoises, at about long at birth, weighing 6.4–10 kg. Adults of both sexes grow to . The females are heavier, with a maximum weight of around compared with the males' . The body is robust, and the animal is at its maximum girth just in front of its triangular dorsal fin. The beak is poorly demarcated. The flippers, dorsal fin, tail fin and back are a dark grey. The sides are a slightly speckled, lighter grey. The underside is much whiter, though there are usually grey stripes running along the throat from the underside of the body.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Many anomalously white coloured individuals have been confirmed, mostly in the North Atlantic, but also notably around Turkish and British coasts, and in the Wadden Sea, Bay of Fundy and around the coast of Cornwall.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Although conjoined twins are rarely seen in wild mammals, the first known case of a two-headed harbour porpoise was documented in May 2017 when Dutch fishermen in the North Sea caught them by chance. A study published by the online journal of the Natural History Museum Rotterdam points out that conjoined twins in whales and dolphins are extremely rare.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The harbour porpoise species is widespread in cooler coastal waters of the North Atlantic, North Pacific and the Black Sea. In the Atlantic, harbour porpoises may be present in a curved band of water running from the coast of West Africa to the coasts of Portugal, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and the eastern seaboard of the United States. The population in the Baltic Sea is limited in winter due to sea freezing, and is most common in the southwest parts of the sea. There is another band in the Pacific Ocean running from the Sea of Japan, Vladivostok, the Bering Strait, Alaska, British Columbia, and California.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The populations in these regions are not continuous and are classified as separate subspecies with "P. p. phocoena" in the North Atlantic and West Africa, "P. p. relicta" in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, an unnamed population in the northwest Pacific and "P. p. vomerina" in the northeast Pacific.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Concerning the North Atlantic, an international workshop co-organised by the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission and the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research reviewed the status of the species in 2018. It concluded that the harbour porpoise population structure is more complex than previously thought, with at least three genetically distinct subspecies in the North Atlantic. Given the structure of the harbour porpoise population, the workshop delineated 18 assessment areas for the North Atlantic.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The harbour porpoise has a global population of at least 700,000. In 2016, a comprehensive survey of the Atlantic region in Europe, from Gibraltar to Vestfjorden in Norway, found that the population was about 467,000 harbour porpoises, making it the most abundant cetacean in the region, together with the common dolphin. Based on surveys in 1994, 2005 and 2016, the harbour porpoise population in this region is stable. The highest densities are in the southwestern North Sea and oceans of mainland Denmark; the latter region alone is home to about 107,000-300,000 harbour porpoises. The entire North Sea population is about 335,000. In the Western Atlantic it is estimated that there are about 33,000 harbour porpoises along the mid-southwestern coast of Greenland (where increasing temperatures have aided them), 75,000 between the Gulf of Maine and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and 27,000 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Pacific population off mainland United States is about 73,000 and off Alaska 89,000. After sharp declines in the 20th century, populations have rebounded in the inland waters of Washington state. In contrast, some subpopulations are seriously threatened. For example, there are less than 12,000 in the Black Sea, and only about 500 remaining in the Baltic Sea proper, representing a sharp decrease since the mid-1900s.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Harbour porpoises prefer temperate and subarctic waters. They inhabit fjords, bays, estuaries and harbours, hence their name. They feed mostly on small pelagic schooling fish, particularly herring, pollack, hake, sardine, cod, capelin, and sprat. They will, however, eat squid and crustaceans in certain places. This species tends to feed close to the sea bottom, at least for waters less than deep. However, when hunting sprat, porpoise may stay closer to the surface. When in deeper waters, porpoises may forage for mid-water fish, such as pearlsides. A study published in 2016 showed that porpoises off the coast of Denmark were hunting 200 fish per hour during the day and up to 550 per hour at night, catching 90% of the fish they targeted. Almost all the fish they ate were very small, between long.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Harbour porpoises tend to be solitary foragers, but they do sometimes hunt in packs and herd fish together. Young porpoises need to consume about 7% to 8% of their body weight each day to survive, which is approximately 15 pounds or 7 kilograms of fish. Significant predators of harbour porpoises include white sharks and killer whales (orcas). Researchers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have also discovered that the local bottlenose dolphins attack and kill harbour porpoises without eating them due to competition for a decreasing food supply. An alternative explanation is that the adult dolphins exhibit infanticidal behaviour and mistake the porpoises for juvenile dolphins which they are believed to kill. Grey seals are also known to attack harbour porpoises by biting off chunks of fat as a high energy source.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Some studies suggest porpoises are relatively sedentary and usually do not leave a certain area for long. Nevertheless, they have been recorded to move from onshore to offshore waters along coast. Dives of by harbour porpoises have been recorded. Dives can last five minutes but typically last one minute.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The social life of harbour porpoises is not well understood. They are generally seen as a solitary species. Most of the time, porpoises are either alone or in groups of no more than five animals. Porpoises mate promiscuously. Males produce large amounts of sperm, perhaps for sperm competition. Females become sexually mature by their third or fourth year and can calve each year for several consecutive years, being pregnant and lactating at the same time. The gestation of the porpoise is typically 10–11 months. Most births occur in late spring and summer. Calves are weaned after 8–12 months. Their average life-span is 8–13 years, although individuals have reached 20. In a study of 239 dead harbour porpoises in the Gulf of Maine–Bay of Fundy, the vast majority were less than 12 years old and the oldest was 17.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Harbour porpoises were traditionally hunted for food, as well as for their blubber, which was used for lighting fuel. Among others, hunting occurred in the Black Sea, off Normandy, in the Bay of Biscay, off Flanders, in the Little Belt strait, off Iceland, western Norway, in Puget Sound, Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The drive hunt in the Little Belt strait is the best documented example. Thousands of porpoises were caught there until the end of the 19th century, and again in smaller scale during the world wars. Currently, however, this species is not subject to commercial hunting, but it is hunted for food and sold locally in Greenland. In prehistoric times, this animal was hunted by the Alby People of the east coast of Öland, Sweden.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The main threat to porpoises is static fishing techniques such as gill and tangle nets. Bycatch in bottom-set gill nets is considered the main anthropogenic mortality factor for harbour porpoises worldwide. Several thousand die each year in incidental bycatch, which has been reported from the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, off California, and along the east coast of the United States and Canada. Bottom-set gill nets are anchored to the sea floor and are up to in length. It is unknown why porpoises become entangled in gill nets, since several studies indicate they are able to detect these nets using their echolocation. Porpoise-scaring devices, so-called pingers, have been developed to keep porpoises out of nets and numerous studies have demonstrated they are very effective at reducing entanglement. However, concern has been raised over the noise pollution created by the pingers and whether their efficiency will diminish over time due to porpoises habituating to the sounds.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Mortality resulting from trawling bycatch seems to be less of an issue, probably because porpoises are not inclined to feed inside trawls, as dolphins are known to do.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Overfishing may reduce preferred prey availability for porpoises. Overfishing resulting in the collapse of herring in the North Sea caused porpoises to hunt for other prey species. Reduction of prey may result from climate change, or overfishing, or both.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Noise from ship traffic and oil platforms is thought to affect the distribution of toothed whales, like the harbour porpoise, that use echolocation for communication and prey detection. The construction of thousands of offshore wind turbines, planned in different areas of North Sea, is known to cause displacement of porpoises from the construction site, particularly if steel monopile foundations are installed by percussive piling, where reactions can occur at distances of more than . Noise levels from operating wind turbines are low and unlikely to affect porpoises, even at close range.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Marine top predators like porpoises and seals accumulate pollutants such as heavy metals, PCBs and pesticides in their fat tissue. Porpoises have a coastal distribution that potentially brings them close to sources of pollution. Porpoises may not experience any toxic effects until they draw on their fat reserves, such as in periods of food shortage, migration or reproduction.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: An increase in the temperature of the sea water is likely to affect the distribution of porpoises and their prey, but has not been shown to occur. Reduced stocks of sand eel along the east coast of Scotland, a pattern linked to climate change, appears to be the main reason for the increase in malnutrition in porpoises in the area.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: Overall, the harbour porpoise is not considered threatened and the total population is in the hundreds of thousands.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: The harbour porpoise populations of the North Sea, Baltic Sea, western North Atlantic, Black Sea and North West Africa are protected under Appendix II of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). In 2013, the two Baltic Sea subpopulations were listed as vulnerable and critically endangered respectively by HELCOM. Although the species overall is considered to be of Least Concern by the IUCN, they consider the Baltic Sea and Western African populations critically endangered, and the subspecies "P. p. relicta" of the Black Sea endangered.


title: Harbour porpoise

text: In addition, the harbour porpoise is covered by the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas (ASCOBANS), the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans in the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Contiguous Atlantic Area (ACCOBAMS) and the Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Conservation of the Manatee and Small Cetaceans of Western Africa and Macaronesia (Western African Aquatic Mammals MoU).


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: The Winter of Our Discontent is John Steinbeck's last novel, published in 1961. The title comes from the first two lines of William Shakespeare's "Richard III: "Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun [or son] of York"". Steinbeck's only work to take place on the East Coast, the setting is based on Sag Harbor, New York.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: The story mainly concerns Ethan Allen Hawley of New Baytown, New York, a former member of Long Island's aristocratic class. Ethan's late father lost the family fortune, and thus Ethan works as a grocery store clerk in the store his family once owned. His wife Mary and their children resent their mediocre social and economic status, and do not value the honesty and integrity that Ethan struggles to maintain amidst a corrupt society. These external factors and his own psychological turmoil lead Ethan to try to overcome his inherent integrity in order to reclaim his former status and wealth.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: Ethan's decision to gain wealth and power is influenced by criticisms and advice from people he knows. His acquaintance Margie urges him to accept bribes; the bank manager (whose ancestors Ethan blames for his family's misfortunes) urges him to be more ruthless. Ethan's friend Joey, a bank teller, even gives Ethan a lesson on how to rob a bank and get away with it.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: On discovering that the current store owner, Italian immigrant Alfio Marullo, may be an illegal immigrant, Ethan makes an anonymous tip to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. After Marullo is taken into custody, he transfers ownership of the store to Ethan through the actions of the very government agent that caught him. Marullo gives Ethan the store because he believes Ethan is honest and deserving. Ethan also considers, plans, and mentally rehearses a bank robbery, failing to perform it only because of external circumstances. Eventually, he manages to become powerful in the town by taking possession of a strip of land needed by local businessmen to build an airport; he gets the land from Danny Taylor, the town drunkard and Ethan's childhood best friend, by a will made by Danny and slipped under the door of the store. The will was drawn without any spoken agreement some time after Ethan gave Danny money for the purpose of sending Danny to receive treatment for alcoholism. Danny assures him that drunks are liars and that he will just drink the money away, and this is indeed confirmed when Danny is found dead with empty bottles of whiskey and sleeping pills.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: In this manner, Ethan becomes able to control the covert dealings of the corrupt town businessmen and politicians, but he is confident that he will not be corrupted himself. He considers that while he had to kill enemy soldiers in the war, he was never a murderer thereafter.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: Ethan learns that his son won honorable mention in a nationwide essay contest by plagiarizing classic American authors and orators, but when Ethan confronts him, the son denies having any guilty feelings, maintaining that everyone cheats and lies. Perhaps after seeing his own moral decay in his son's actions, and experiencing the guilt of Marullo's deportation and the death of Danny, Ethan resolves to commit suicide. His daughter, intuitively understanding his intent, slips a family talisman into his pocket during a long embrace. When Ethan decides to commit the act, he reaches into his pocket to find razorblades and instead finds the talisman. As the tide comes into the alcove in which he has sequestered himself, he struggles to get out in order to return the talisman to his daughter.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: Edward Weeks of the "Atlantic Monthly" immediately reviewed the book as a Steinbeck classic: "His dialogue is full of life, the entrapment of Ethan is ingenious, and the morality in this novel marks Mr. Steinbeck's return to the mood and the concern with which he wrote "The Grapes of Wrath"". The Swedish Academy agreed and awarded Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. The presentation speech by Secretary Anders Österling remarked specifically on five books from 1935 to 1939 and continued thus:


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: In this brief presentation it is not possible to dwell at any length on individual works which Steinbeck later produced. If at times the critics have seemed to note certain signs of flagging powers, of repetitions that might point to a decrease in vitality, Steinbeck belied their fears most emphatically with The "Winter of Our Discontent" (1961), a novel published last year. Here he attained the same standard which he set in "The Grapes of Wrath". Again he holds his position as an independent expounder of the truth with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American, be it good or bad.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: Saul Bellow also lauded the book, saying: "John Steinbeck returns to the high standards of "The Grapes of Wrath" and to the social themes that made his early work so impressive, and so powerful." However, many reviewers in America were disappointed. A few years later Peter Lisca called "Winter" "undeniable evidence of the aesthetic and philosophical failure of the [Steinbeck's] later fiction".


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: In letters to friends before and after its publication, Steinbeck stated that he wrote the novel to address the moral degeneration of American culture during the 1950s and 1960s. American criticism of his moralism started to change during the 1970s after the Watergate scandal; here is how Reloy Garcia describes his reassessment of the work when asked to update his original Study Guide to "Winter": "The book I then so impetuously criticized as somewhat thin, now strikes me as a deeply penetrating study of the American condition. I did not realize, at the time, that we had a condition," and he attributes this change of heart to "our own enriched experience".


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: In 1983 Carol Ann Kasparek condemned the character of Ethan for his implausibility, and still called Steinbeck’s treatment of American moral decay superficial, although she went on to approve the story's mythic elements.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: Professor of literature and Steinbeck scholar Stephen K. George wrote, "With these authors <nowiki>[</nowiki>Saul Bellow, Brent Weeks, and Ruth Stiles Gannett<nowiki>]</nowiki> I would contend that, given its multi-layered complexity, intriguing artistry, and clear moral purpose, "The Winter of Our Discontent" ranks in the upper echelon of Steinbeck’s fiction, alongside "Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, East of Eden," and, of course, "The Grapes of Wrath"".


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: The novel was the last that Steinbeck completed before his death in 1968. "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights" and the screenplay for "Zapata" were both published posthumously in unfinished forms.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: Steinbeck makes use of an unusual structural device in "Winter", switching between three different styles of narrative points of view. The novel is presented in two halves, Part One and Part Two, and each half starts with two chapters written in third person narration. After these two chapters in each half, the point of view changes to first person, narrated by the protagonist, Ethan Hawley. The four chapters in third person narrative are mostly presented from the point of view of Ethan, but not in first person, a technique known as free indirect discourse, or free indirect speech. There are two exceptions to this: the first is an interlude at the start of chapter twelve where the point of view switches to that of Margie: "when a more intimate view is needed of the seductress Margie Young-Hunt . . . the third person narrative reappears." The second exception is the interlude at the start of chapter eleven which is presented by the author as an omniscient narrator, before the chapter reverts to Ethan's point of view. The three different narrative styles are therefore: omniscient narrator (Chapter 11 part); free indirect discourse from multiple points of view (Chapters 1,2,11,12); and first person narrative from a single point of view (the rest of the book).


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: A major theme found in "The Winter of Our Discontent" is the effect of societal pressure. At the beginning of the novel, Ethan Hawley is unhappy with his job as a grocery store clerk, but it is the complaints from his wife and kids about their social and economic status that drive his character to change his beliefs about wealth and power. He is also influenced by close acquaintances who encourage him to accept bribes and speak in ways indicating that money is the most important thing in their lives. For example, Ethan’s banker friend Joey Morphy exemplifies how important money is by saying “your only entrance is money” (144), and “we all bow down to the Great God Currency” (132). This man’s life revolved around money and making more of it. Later in the novel, Ethan plans out a bank robbery and would have acted on it had it not been for a last minute distraction. In the land situation with Danny, Ethan plays the role of the kind friend, but ultimately receives the important piece of land that other men were competing for as well. His greed and lust for power catch up with Ethan at the end of the novel when he realizes his own son plagiarized for the “Why I Love America” contest. But the son's purpose in entering the contest was not to show love for his country, but rather to gain materialistic rewards from it like a watch and trip, in addition to appearing on TV (Chapters 5, 11, 21). Ethan is guilty for his actions and as a result, becomes suicidal.


title: The Winter of Our Discontent

text: The novel was made into a television movie for the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" in 1983, featuring Donald Sutherland, Teri Garr, and Tuesday Weld.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: Ben 10: Race Against Time (also known as Ben 10: The Movie) is a 2007 superhero film based on the animated television series "Ben 10", created by Man of Action.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: The working title was "Ben 10 in the Hands of Armageddon". Directed by Alex Winter, it premiered on November 21, 2007, in the United States as a Cartoon Network original film.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: The story opens in an alternate Bellwood as a mysterious black figure appears on the town’s main street and immediately starts destroying things around him. Ten-year-old Benjamin Kirby Tennyson, in the form of the pyronite Heatblast, confronts and obliterates him after a short battle.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: The next day, Ben goes back to school, and has trouble adjusting to normal life again. After a bad day, he gets bullied by Cash, and J.T., and two girls he had tried to flirt with earlier, resulting in transforming into Grey Matter, which he attempted to transform into Four Arms by getting his revenge on the four bullies by causing chaos at the diner into a little food fight where Ms. Dalton works. Later, he and his ten-year-old first cousin Gwendolyn Catherine Tennyson come across the same villain Ben defeated earlier. Max Tennyson identifies him as Eon, a member of a time-controlling alien species from an unknown dimension known as the Chronians, whom the Plumbers captured almost two centuries ago. When he arrived, he was half dead and brought a device with him called the Hands of Armageddon, which would open a gateway to his home dimension and unleash his race upon Earth if activated. They travel to the containment facility where Eon is supposed to be kept in suspended animation, only to find it empty and his guard aged to near-death. The guard tells Max not to let Eon find the hardware store, where the Hands were kept. Before he dies, the Plumber warns Ben that Eon is after him.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: Traveling back to Bellwood, Max takes his grandchildren Ben and Gwen to the location of the Hands of Armageddon, guarded by the few remaining Plumbers. Eon follows them and breaks into the facility, but cannot activate the device. When Ben attempts to use the Omnitrix, it malfunctions, glowing bright purple and giving Ben an intense burning pain. Eon attempts to kidnap Ben, claiming it to be a rescue, but Ben escapes. Eon manages to corner Ben, explaining that his race learned to control time itself, but trapped themselves by misusing their power. He claims that his fate is intertwined with Ben's. Eon is scared off by an elderly Plumber before he can elaborate. Grandpa Max decides it would be best for Ben to leave Bellwood so that Eon won't find him, but Ben bravely refuses and they both come to a deal where Ben will be monitored daily by a disguised Plumber. When Ben goes to the school gym to be alone, Principal White attempts to calm Ben's fears just when Eon freezes then reverses time as he throws White out of the way. Eon then tries to show Ben his future by disabling the Omnitrix immense power. However, Ben sets off the fire alarm, strikes Eon in the side, and breaks out of his grasp. This time, Ben is able to become Diamondhead and fights him off. Later that night, Ben decides to lure Eon into a trap by purposefully leaving himself open, but this backfires and he is captured along with Gwen and Max.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: At the Plumber facility storing the Hands of Armageddon, Eon explains some of the background of the Omnitrix: Ben can only remain in his alien forms for ten minutes at a time, a fail-safe to prevent them from overwhelming his human self and personality with the form's own. He also reveals that he is an evil version of Ben from an alternate timeline, which Max admits he never wanted Ben to find out. Eon knows how to deactivate the fail safe, and in doing so, can turn Ben into a mindless Chronian under his control alone. This is because the Hands need the energy of a young Chronian, which is why he had abducted Ben. Eon presses the Omnitrix that is glowing bright purple and turns Ben into a younger evil clone of him. Meanwhile, Principal White has gotten out of the nurse's office and finds the imprisoned Plumbers. When trying to find the key to that room, they point to the button near the door, which freed them all. Gwen and Max manage to free themselves. While Max tries to disable the Hands of Armageddon at the cost of his own life, Gwen reaches to Ben inside young Eon. Ben successfully overcomes Eon and turns back to normal, and with the help of the other Plumbers, manages to save Max and disables the time rift, sending Eon's race back to their own dimension.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: Just when it seems like they've won, time stops for everyone but Ben. The older Eon reappears, angered at Ben's victory. After Ben points out that the Hands and Eon's world is gone, Eon throws Ben across the room in fury. Ben transforms into Wildmutt and fights him off, eventually knocking him into the Hands of Armageddon, destroying both the Hands and Eon. Time then resumes, and Gwen takes Wildmutt to a talent show that the school is having, where they perform a magic trick and win second place. After the show, Grandpa Max recommends that it is time to give the Omnitrix a much-needed rest for a while and he, Ben and Gwen go for pizza. Ben admits that he will miss it. Suddenly, in space, an alien armada assembles, hinting that Ben and Max's longtime archenemy Vilgax has returned.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: "Ben 10: Race Against Time" featured CGI effects and characters, including four of the aliens from the TV series: Diamondhead, Grey Matter, Heatblast, and Wildmutt. Winter stated at the 2007 upfront presentation that he wanted "Ben 10: Race Against Time" "to look like "X-Men"," an epic adventure that is "more cinematic than cartoony" and appeal to all ages. Winter also promised the film will feature "no Jar Jar." In a behind-the-scenes video played on Cartoon Network's video service, Winter describes the film as "everything you've ever seen in "Ben 10" come to life." It was filmed using Panavision Remote Systems.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: During development, there is going to be 5h 7m in the movie, rather than 1h 7m where some unused aliens are going to be used in the early film. However in the final film. The running time 5h 7m was reduced to 1h 7m for unknown reasons, which 1h 7m was not present in the early film.


title: Ben 10: Race Against Time

text: The film received generally positive reviews from critics, but was panned by audiences. Brian Lowry of "Variety" called the film "breezy, brisk, and surprisingly fun", and complimented the film's "clever casting". Emily Ashby of "Common Sense Media" awarded the film 3 out of 5 stars, whilst David Cornelius of "DVD Talk" called the film "thrilling" and "energetic".


title: Tim Pierce

text: Tim Pierce (born 1959 in Albuquerque) is an American session guitarist. He has worked for artists such as Joe Cocker, Crowded House, Goo Goo Dolls, Michael Jackson, Beth Hart, Roger Waters, Alice Cooper, Johnny Hallyday, Phil Collins, and the Cheetah Girls.


title: Tim Pierce

text: Pierce's parents were not musicians, although, unbeknownst to Pierce, his father used to play the trumpet in his youth. He first tasted mainstream success in the early 1980s, when he began recording with Rick Springfield, who was emerging as one of rock's biggest stars with his hit "Jessie's Girl". In addition to playing on the studio recordings that followed, he also joined Springfield's touring band throughout the 1980s and appears in several of Springfield's music videos from the era.


title: Tim Pierce

text: He has played on many hit songs including contributing second-guitar parts on Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over", mandolins and slide guitar on Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris", a rhythm guitar part during the bridge of Michael Jackson's "Black or White", which was inspired by the work of Mötley Crüe, and almost all guitar parts on the original recording of "Runaway" by Bon Jovi.


title: Tim Pierce

text: In the 2010s, Pierce started a YouTube channel, on which he offers guitar tips from his years in the music industry.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The vocabulary of ancient Roman religion was highly specialized. Its study affords important information about the religion, traditions and beliefs of the ancient Romans. This legacy is conspicuous in European cultural history in its influence on later juridical and religious vocabulary in Europe, particularly of the Western Church. This glossary provides explanations of concepts as they were expressed in Latin pertaining to religious practices and beliefs, with links to articles on major topics such as priesthoods, forms of divination, and rituals.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: For theonyms, or the names and epithets of gods, see List of Roman deities. For public religious holidays, see Roman festivals. For temples see the List of Ancient Roman temples. Individual landmarks of religious topography in ancient Rome are not included in this list; see Roman temple.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The verb "abominari" ("to avert an omen", from "ab-", "away, off," and "ominari", "to pronounce on an omen") was a term of augury for an action that rejects or averts an unfavourable omen indicated by a "signum", "sign". The noun is "abominatio", from which English "abomination" derives. At the taking of formally solicited auspices ("auspicia impetrativa"), the observer was required to acknowledge any potentially bad sign occurring within the "templum" he was observing, regardless of the interpretation. He might, however, take certain actions in order to ignore the "signa", including avoiding the sight of them, and interpreting them as favourable. The latter tactic required promptness, wit and skill based on discipline and learning. Thus the omen had no validity apart from the observation of it.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "aedes" was the dwelling place of a god. It was thus a structure that housed the deity's image, distinguished from the "templum" or sacred district. "Aedes" is one of several Latin words that can be translated as "shrine" or "temple"; see also "delubrum" and "fanum". For instance, the Temple of Vesta, as it is called in English, was in Latin an "aedes". See also the diminutive "aedicula", a small shrine.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: In his work "On Architecture", Vitruvius always uses the word "templum" in the technical sense of a space defined through augury, with "aedes" the usual word for the building itself. The design of a deity's "aedes", he writes, should be appropriate to the characteristics of the deity. For a celestial deity such as Jupiter, Coelus, Sol or Luna, the building should be open to the sky; an "aedes" for a god embodying "virtus" (valour), such as Minerva, Mars, or Hercules, should be Doric and without frills; the Corinthian order is suited for goddesses such as Venus, Flora, Proserpina and the Lymphae; and the Ionic is a middle ground between the two for Juno, Diana, and Father Liber. Thus in theory, though not always in practice, architectural aesthetics had a theological dimension.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The word "aedilis" (aedile), a public official, is related by etymology; among the duties of the aediles was the overseeing of public works, including the building and maintenance of temples. The temple "(aedes)" of Flora, for instance, was built in 241 BC by two aediles acting on Sibylline oracles. The plebeian aediles had their headquarters at the "aedes" of Ceres.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: In religious usage, "ager" (territory, country, land, region) was terrestrial space defined for the purposes of augury in relation to "auspicia". There were five kinds of "ager": "Romanus, Gabinus, peregrinus, hosticus" and "incertus". The "ager Romanus" originally included the urban space outside the pomerium and the surrounding countryside. According to Varro, the "ager Gabinus" pertained to the special circumstances of the "oppidum" of Gabii, which was the first to sign a sacred treaty "(pax)" with Rome. The "ager peregrinus" was other territory that had been brought under treaty "(pacatus)". "Ager hosticus" meant foreign territory; "incertus", "uncertain" or "undetermined," that is, not falling into one of the four defined categories. The powers and actions of magistrates were based on and constrained by the nature of the "ager" on which they stood, and "ager" in more general usage meant a territory as defined legally or politically. The "ager Romanus" could not be extended outside Italy "(terra Italia)".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The focal point of sacrifice was the altar ("ara", plural "arae"). Most altars throughout the city of Rome and in the countryside would have been simple, open-air structures; they may have been located within a sacred precinct ("templum"), but often without an "aedes" housing a cult image. An altar that received food offerings might also be called a "mensa", "table."


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Perhaps the best-known Roman altar is the elaborate and Greek-influenced Ara Pacis, which has been called "the most representative work of Augustan art." Other major public altars included the Ara Maxima.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A tree "(arbor)" was categorized as "felix" if it was under the protection of the heavenly gods "(di superi)". The adjective "felix" here means not only literally "fruitful" but more broadly "auspicious". Macrobius lists "arbores felices" (plural) as the oak (four species thereof), the birch, the hazelnut, the sorbus, the white fig, the pear, the apple, the grape, the plum, the cornus and the lotus. The oak was sacred to Jupiter, and twigs of oak were used by the Vestals to ignite the sacred fire in March every year. Also among the "felices" were the olive tree, a twig of which was affixed to the hat of the Flamen Dialis, and the laurel and the poplar, which crowned the Salian priests.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Arbores infelices" were those under the protection of chthonic gods or those gods who had the power of turning away misfortune ("avertentium"). As listed by Tarquitius Priscus in his lost "ostentarium" on trees, these were buckthorn, red cornel, fern, black fig, "those that bear a black berry and black fruit," holly, woodland pear, butcher's broom, briar, and brambles."


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The verb "attrectare" ("to touch, handle, lay hands on") referred in specialized religious usage to touching sacred objects while performing cultic actions. "Attrectare" had a positive meaning only in reference to the actions of the "sacerdotes populi Romani" ("priests of the Roman people"). It had the negative meaning of "contaminate" (= "contaminare)" or pollute when referring to the handling of sacred objects by those not authorized, ordained, or ritually purified.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: An augur (Latin plural "augures") was an official and priest who solicited and interpreted the will of the gods regarding a proposed action. The augur ritually defined a "templum", or sacred space, declared the purpose of his consultation, offered sacrifice, and observed the signs that were sent in return, particularly the actions and flight of birds. If the augur received unfavourable signs, he could suspend, postpone or cancel the undertaking ("obnuntiatio"). "Taking the auspices" was an important part of all major official business, including inaugurations, senatorial debates, legislation, elections and war, and was held to be an ancient prerogative of Regal and patrician magistrates. Under the Republic, this right was extended to other magistrates. After 300 BC, plebeians could become augurs.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The solicitation of formal auspices required the marking out of ritual space ("auguraculum") from within which the augurs observed the "templum", including the construction of an augural tent or hut ("tabernaculum"). There were three such sites in Rome: on the citadel ("arx"), on the Quirinal Hill, and on the Palatine Hill. Festus said that originally the "auguraculum" was in fact the "arx". It faced east, situating the north on the augur's left or lucky side. A magistrate who was serving as a military commander also took daily auspices, and thus a part of camp-building while on campaign was the creation of a "tabernaculum augurale". This augural tent was the center of religious and legal proceedings within the camp.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Augurium" (plural "auguria") is an abstract noun that pertains to the augur. It seems to mean variously: the "sacral investiture" of the augur; the ritual acts and actions of the augurs; augural law "(ius augurale)"; and recorded signs whose meaning had already been established. The word is rooted in the IE stem "*aug-", "to increase," and possibly an archaic Latin neuter noun "*augus", meaning "that which is full of mystic force." As the sign that manifests the divine will, the "augurium" for a magistrate was valid for a year; a priest's, for his lifetime; for a temple, it was perpetual.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The distinction between "augurium" and "auspicium" is often unclear. "Auspicia" is the observation of birds as signs of divine will, a practice held to have been established by Romulus, first king of Rome, while the institution of augury was attributed to his successor Numa. For Servius, an "augurium" is the same thing as "auspicia impetrativa", a body of signs sought through prescribed ritual means. Some scholars think "auspicia" would belong more broadly to the magistracies and the "patres" while the "augurium" would be limited to the "rex sacrorum" and the major priesthoods.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Ancient sources record three "auguria": the "augurium salutis" in which every year the gods were asked whether it was "fas" (permissible, right) to ask for the safety of the Roman people (August 5); the "augurium canarium", a dog sacrifice to promote the maturation of grain crops, held in the presence of the pontiffs as well as the augurs; and the "vernisera auguria" mentioned by Festus, which should have been a springtime propitiary rite held at the time of the harvest ("auguria messalia").


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "auspex", plural "auspices", is a diviner who reads omens from the observed flight of birds ("avi-", from "avis", "bird", with "-spex", "observer", from "spicere"). See "auspicia" following and auspice.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "auspicia" ("au-" = "avis", "bird"; "-spic-", "watch") were originally signs derived from observing the flight of birds within the "templum" of the sky. Auspices are taken by an augur. Originally they were the prerogative of the patricians, but the college of augurs was opened to plebeians in 300 BC. Only magistrates were in possession of the "auspicia publica", with the right and duty to take the auspices pertaining to the Roman state. Favorable auspices marked a time or location as auspicious, and were required for important ceremonies or events, including elections, military campaigns and pitched battles.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: According to Festus, there were five kinds of "auspicia" to which augurs paid heed: "ex caelo", celestial signs such as thunder and lightning; "ex avibus", signs offered by birds; "ex tripudiis", signs produced by the actions of certain sacred chickens; "ex quadrupedibus", signs from the behavior of four-legged animals; and "ex diris", threatening portents. In official state augury at Rome, only the auspicia "ex caelo" and "ex avibus" were employed.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The taking of the auspices required ritual silence "(silentium)". Watching for auspices was called "spectio" or "servare de caelo". The appearance of expected signs resulted in "nuntiatio", or if they were unfavourable "obnuntiatio". If unfavourable auspices were observed, the business at hand was stopped by the official observer, who declared "alio die" ("on another day").


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The practice of observing bird omens was common to many ancient peoples predating and contemporaneous with Rome, including the Greeks, Celts, and Germans.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Auspicia impetrativa" were signs that were solicited under highly regulated ritual conditions (see "spectio" and "servare de caelo") within the "templum". The type of auspices required for convening public assemblies were "impetrativa", and magistrates had the "right and duty" to seek these omens actively. These auspices could only be sought from an "auguraculum", a ritually constructed augural tent or "tabernacle" ("tabernaculum"). Contrast "auspicia oblativa".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The right of observing the "greater auspices" was conferred on a Roman magistrate holding "imperium", perhaps by a "Lex curiata de imperio", although scholars are not agreed on the finer points of law. A censor had "auspicia maxima". It is also thought that the "flamines maiores" were distinguished from the "minores" by their right to take the "auspicia maiora"; see Flamen.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Signs that occurred without deliberately being sought through formal augural procedure were "auspicia oblativa". These unsolicited signs were regarded as sent by a deity or deities to express either approval or disapproval for a particular undertaking. The prodigy ("prodigium") was one form of unfavourable "oblativa". Contrast "auspicia impetrativa".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Private and domestic religion was linked to divine signs as state religion was. It was customary in patrician families to take the auspices for any matter of consequence such as marriages, travel, and important business. The scant information about "auspicia privata" in ancient authors suggests that the taking of private auspices was not different in essence from that of public auspices: absolute silence was required, and the person taking the auspices could ignore unfavourable or disruptive events by feigning not to have perceived them. In matters pertaining to the family or individual, both lightning and "exta" (entrails) might yield signs for "privati", private citizens not authorized to take official auspices. Among his other duties, the Pontifex Maximus advised "privati" as well as the official priests about prodigies and their forestalling.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: In pontifical usage, the verb "averruncare", "to avert," denotes a ritual action aimed at averting a misfortune intimated by an omen. Bad omens "(portentaque prodigiaque mala)" are to be burnt, using trees that are in the tutelage of underworld or "averting" gods (see "arbores infelices" above). Varro says that the god who presides over the action of averting is Averruncus.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A "just war" was a war considered justifiable by the principles of fetial law "(ius fetiale)". Because war could bring about religious pollution, it was in itself "nefas", "wrong," and could incur the wrath of gods unless "iustum", "just". The requirements for a just war were both formal and substantive. As a formal matter, the war had to be declared according to the procedures of the "ius fetiale". On substantive grounds, a war required a "just cause," which might include "rerum repetitio", retaliation against another people for pillaging, or a breach of or unilateral recession from a treaty; or necessity, as in the case of repelling an invasion. See also "Jus ad bellum".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The English word "ceremony" derives from the Latin "caerimonia" or "caeremonia", a word of obscure etymology first found in literature and inscriptions from the time of Cicero (mid-1st century BC), but thought to be of much greater antiquity. Its meaning varied over time. Cicero used "caerimonia" at least 40 times, in three or four different senses: "inviolability" or "sanctity", a usage also of Tacitus; "punctilious veneration", in company with "cura" (carefulness, concern); more commonly in the plural "caerimoniae", to mean "ritual prescriptions" or "ritual acts." The plural form is endorsed by Roman grammarians.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Hendrik Wagenvoort maintained that "caerimoniae" were originally the secret ritual instructions laid down by Numa, which are described as "statae et sollemnes", "established and solemn." These were interpreted and supervised by the College of Pontiffs, flamens, "rex sacrorum" and the Vestals. Later, "caerimoniae" might refer also to other rituals, including foreign cults. These prescribed rites "unite the inner subject with the external religious object", binding human and divine realms. The historian Valerius Maximus makes clear that the "caerimoniae" require those performing them to attain a particular mental-spiritual state ("animus", "intention"), and emphasizes the importance of "caerimoniae" in the dedication and first sentence of his work. In Valerius's version of the Gallic siege of Rome, the Vestals and the Flamen Quirinalis rescue Rome's sacred objects ("sacra") by taking them to Caere; thus preserved, the rites take their name from the place. Although this etymology makes a meaningful narrative connection for Valerius, it is unlikely to be correct in terms of modern scientific linguistics. An Etruscan origin has sometimes been proposed. Wagenvoort thought that "caerimonia" derived from "caerus", "dark" in the sense of "hidden", hence meaning "darknesses, secrets."


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: In his "Etymologiae", Isidore of Seville says that the Greek equivalent is "orgia", but derives the word from "carendo", "lacking", and says that some think "caerimoniae" should be used of Jewish observances, specifically the dietary law that requires abstaining from or "lacking" certain foods.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "calatores" were assistants who carried out day-to-day business on behalf of the senior priests of the state such as the "flamines maiores". A "calator" was a public slave. Festus derives the word from the Greek verb "kalein", "to call."


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: At the traditional public rituals of ancient Rome, officiants prayed, sacrificed, offered libations, and practiced augury "capite velato", "with the head covered" by a fold of the toga drawn up from the back. This covering of the head is a distinctive feature of Roman rite in contrast with Etruscan practice or "ritus graecus", "Greek rite." In Roman art, the covered head is a symbol of "pietas" and the individual's status as a pontifex, augur or other priest.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: It has been argued that the Roman expression of piety "capite velato" influenced Paul's prohibition against Christians praying with covered heads: "Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head."


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: In classical Latin, "carmen" usually means "song, poem, ode." In magico-religious usage, a "carmen" (plural "carmina") is a chant, hymn, spell, or charm. In essence "a verbal utterance sung for ritualistic purposes", the "carmen" is characterized by formulaic expression, redundancy, and rhythm. Fragments from two archaic priestly hymns are preserved, the "Carmen Arvale" of the Arval Brethren and the "Carmina Saliaria" of the Salii. The "Carmen Saeculare" of Horace, though self-consciously literary in technique, was also a hymn, performed by a chorus at the Saecular Games of 17 BC and expressing the Apollonian ideology of Augustus.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A "carmen malum" or "maleficum" is a potentially harmful magic spell. A fragment of the Twelve Tables reading "si malum carmen incantassit" ("if anyone should chant an evil spell") shows that it was a concern of the law to suppress malevolent magic. A "carmen sepulchrale" is a spell that evokes the dead from their tombs; a "carmen veneficum", a "poisonous" charm. In magic, the word "carmen" comes to mean also the object on which a spell is inscribed, hence a charm in the physical sense.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Castus" is an adjective meaning morally pure or guiltless (English "chaste"), hence pious or ritually pure in a religious sense. "Castitas" is the abstract noun. Various etymologies have been proposed, among them two IE stems: *"k'(e)stos" meaning "he who conforms to the prescriptions of rite"; or *"kas-", from which derives the verb "careo," "I defice, am deprived of, have none..." i.e. "vitia". In Roman religion, the purity of ritual and those who perform it is paramount: one who is correctly cleansed and "castus" in religious preparation and performance is likely to please the gods. Ritual error is a pollutant; it vitiates the performance and risks the gods' anger. "Castus" and "castitas" are attributes of the "sacerdos" (priest), but substances and objects can also be ritually "castus".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "cinctus Gabinus" ("belting from Gabii") was a way of wearing the toga thought to have originated in the nearby town of Gabii. A priest or officiant wearing it wore his toga bound around the waist in a way that left both hands free to perform ritual tasks, as the wearing of the toga usually did not. The cincture accompanied the veiling or covering of the head "(capite velato)" with a cowl-like fold of the toga. Like the conical, helmet-like headgear worn by priests such as the Salii, the Gabinian cincture was originally associated with warriors, and was worn for a solemn declaration of war. It was also part of Etruscan priestly dress.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Clavum figere" ("to nail in, to fasten or fix the nail") was an expression that referred to the fixing or "sealing" of fate. A nail was one of the attributes of the goddess Necessitas and of the Etruscan goddess Athrpa (Greek Atropos). According to Livy, every year in the temple of Nortia, the Etruscan counterpart of Fortuna, a nail was driven in to mark the time. In Rome, the senior magistrate on the Ides of September drove a nail called the "clavus annalis" ("year-nail") into the wall of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The ceremony occurred on the "dies natalis" ("birthday" or anniversary of dedication) of the temple, when a banquet for Jupiter "(Epulum Jovis)" was also held. The nail-driving ceremony, however, took place in a "templum" devoted to Minerva, on the right side of the "aedes" of Jupiter, because the concept of "number" was invented by Minerva and the ritual predated the common use of written letters.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The importance of this ritual is lost in obscurity, but in the early Republic it is associated with the appointment of a "dictator clavi figendi causa", "dictator for the purpose of driving the nail," one of whom was appointed for the years 363, 331, 313, and 263 BC. Livy attributes this practice to "religio", religious scruple or obligation. It may be that in addition to an annual ritual, there was a "fixing" during times of pestilence or civil discord that served as a "piaculum". Livy says that in 363, a plague had been ravaging Rome for two years. It was recalled that a plague had once been broken when a dictator drove a ritual nail, and the senate appointed one for that purpose. The ritual of "driving the nail" was among those revived and reformed by Augustus, who in 1 AD transferred it to the new Temple of Mars Ultor. Henceforth a censor fixed the nail at the end of his term.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A "collegium" ("joined by law"), plural "collegia", was any association with a legal personality. The priestly colleges oversaw religious traditions, and until 300 BC only patricians were eligible for membership. When plebeians began to be admitted, the size of the colleges was expanded. By the Late Republic, three "collegia" wielded greater authority than the others, with a fourth coming to prominence during the reign of Augustus. The four great religious corporations ("quattuor amplissima collegia") were:


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: In Roman society, a "collegium" might also be a trade guild or neighborhood association; see Collegium (ancient Rome).


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "comitia calata" ("calate assemblies") were non-voting assemblies "(comitia)" called for religious purposes. The verb "calare", originally meaning "to call," was a technical term of pontifical usage, found also in "calendae" (Calends) and "calator". According to Aulus Gellius, these "comitia" were held in the presence of the college of pontiffs in order to inaugurate the "rex" (the king in the Regal Period or the "rex sacrorum" in the Republic) or the "flamines". The pontifex maximus auspiciated and presided; assemblies over which annually elected magistrates presided are never "calata", nor are meetings for secular purposes or other elections even with a pontiff presiding.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "comitia calata" were organized by "curiae" or "centuriae". The people were summoned to "comitia calata" to witness the reading of wills, or the oath by which "sacra" were renounced ("detestatio sacrorum"). They took no active role and were only present to observe as witnesses.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Mommsen thought the calendar abbreviation "QRCF", given once as "Q. Rex C. F." and taken as "Quando Rex Comitiavit Fas", designated a day when it was religiously permissible for the "rex" to "call" for a "comitium", hence the "comitia calata".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "Commentaries of the Augurs" were written collections probably of the "decreta" and "responsa" of the college of augurs. Some scholarship, however, maintains that the "commentarii" were precisely "not" the "decreta" and "responsa". The commentaries are to be distinguished from the augurs' "libri reconditi", texts not for public use. The books are mentioned by Cicero, Festus, and Servius Danielis. Livy includes several examples of the augurs' "decreta" and "responsa" in his history, presumably taken from the "commentarii".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "Commentaries of the Pontiffs" contained a record of decrees and official proceedings of the College of Pontiffs. Priestly literature was one of the earliest written forms of Latin prose, and included rosters, acts ("acta"), and chronicles kept by the various "collegia", as well as religious procedure. It was often "occultum genus litterarum", an arcane form of literature to which by definition only priests had access. The "commentarii", however, may have been available for public consultation, at least by senators, because the rulings on points of law might be cited as precedent. The public nature of the "commentarii" is asserted by Jerzy Linderski in contrast to "libri reconditi", the secret priestly books.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "commentarii" survive only through quotation or references in ancient authors. These records are not readily distinguishable from the "libri pontificales"; some scholars maintain that the terms "commentarii" and "libri" for the pontifical writings are interchangeable. Those who make a distinction hold that the "libri" were the secret archive containing rules and precepts of the "ius sacrum" (holy law), texts of spoken formulae, and instructions on how to perform ritual acts, while the "commentarii" were the "responsa" (opinions and arguments) and "decreta" (binding explications of doctrine) that were available for consultation. Whether or not the terms can be used to distinguish two types of material, the priestly documents would have been divided into those reserved for internal use by the priests themselves, and those that served as reference works on matters external to the college. Collectively, these titles would have comprised all matters of pontifical law, ritual, and cult maintenance, along with prayer formularies and temple statutes. See also "libri pontificales" and "libri augurales".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Coniectura" is the reasoned but speculative interpretation of signs presented unexpectedly, that is, of "novae res", "novel information." These "new signs" are omens or portents not previously observed, or not observed under the particular set of circumstances at hand. "Coniectura" is thus the kind of interpretation used for "ostenta" and "portenta" as constituting one branch of the "Etruscan discipline"; contrast "observatio" as applied to the interpretation of "fulgura" (thunder and lightning) and "exta" (entrails). It was considered an "ars", a "method" or "art" as distinguished from "disciplina", a formal body of teachings which required study or training.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The origin of the Latin word "coniectura" suggests the process of making connections, from the verb "conicio", participle "coniectum" ("con-", "with, together", and "iacio", "throw, put"). "Coniectura" was also a rhetorical term applied to forms of argumentation, including court cases. The English word "conjecture" derives from "coniectura".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Consecratio" was the ritual act that resulted in the creation of an "aedes", a shrine that housed a cult image, or an "ara", an altar. Jerzy Linderski insists that the "consecratio" should be distinguished from the "inauguratio", that is, the ritual by which the augurs established a sacred place ("locus") or "templum" (sacred precinct). The consecration was performed by a pontiff reciting a formula from the "libri pontificales", the pontifical books. One component of consecration was the "dedicatio", or dedication, a form of "ius publicum" (public law) carried out by a magistrate representing the will of the Roman people. The pontiff was responsible for the consecration proper.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Cicero defined "religio" as "cultus deorum", "the cultivation of the gods." The "cultivation" necessary to maintain a specific deity was that god's "cultus," "cult," and required "the knowledge of giving the gods their due" "(scientia colendorum deorum)". The noun "cultus" originates from the past participle of the verb "colo, colere, colui, cultus", "to tend, take care of, cultivate," originally meaning "to dwell in, inhabit" and thus "to tend, cultivate land "(ager)"; to practice agriculture," an activity fundamental to Roman identity even when Rome as a political center had become fully urbanized. "Cultus" is often translated as "cult", without the negative connotations the word may have in English, or with the Anglo-Saxon word "worship", but it implies the necessity of active maintenance beyond passive adoration. "Cultus" was expected to matter to the gods as a demonstration of respect, honor, and reverence; it was an aspect of the contractual nature of Roman religion (see "do ut des"). St. Augustine echoes Cicero's formulation when he declares that ""religio" is nothing other than the "cultus" of God."


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Decreta" (plural) were the binding explications of doctrine issued by the official priests on questions of religious practice and interpretation. They were preserved in written form and archived. Compare "responsum".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A "delubrum" was a shrine. Varro says it was a building that housed the image of a "deus", "god", and emphasizes the human role in dedicating the statue. According to Varro, the "delubrum" was the oldest form of an "aedes", a structure that housed a god. It is an ambiguous term for both the building and the surrounding area "ubi aqua currit" ("where water runs"), according to the etymology of the antiquarian Cincius. Festus gives the etymology of "delubrum" as "fustem delibratum", "stripped stake," that is, a tree deprived of its bark "(liber)" by a lightning bolt, as such trees in archaic times were venerated as gods. The meaning of the term later extended to denote the shrine built to house the stake. Compare "aedes", "fanum", and "templum".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Isidore connected the "delubrum" with the verb "diluere", "to wash", describing it as a "spring-shrine", sometimes with annexed pool, where people would wash before entering, thus comparable to a Christian baptismal font.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: When a person passed from one "gens" to another, as for instance by adoption, he renounced the religious duties "(sacra)" he had previously held in order to assume those of the family he was entering. The ritual procedure of "detestatio sacrorum" was enacted before a calate assembly.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: "Deus", "god"; "dea", "goddess", plural "deae"; "di" or "dii", "gods", plural, or "deities", of mixed gender. The Greek equivalent is "theos", which the Romans translated with "deus". Servius says that "deus" or "dea" is a "generic term" "(generale nomen)" for all gods. In his lost work "Antiquitates rerum divinarum", assumed to have been based on pontifical doctrine, Varro classified "dii" as "certi, incerti, praecipui" or "selecti", i.e. "deities whose function could be ascertained", those whose function was unknown or indeterminate, main or selected gods. Compare "divus". For etymological discussion, see Deus and Dyeus. See also List of Roman deities.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "devotio" was an extreme form of "votum" in which a Roman general vowed to sacrifice his own life in battle along with the enemy to chthonic deities in exchange for a victory. The most extended description of the ritual is given by Livy, regarding the self-sacrifice of Decius Mus. The English word "devotion" derives from the Latin. For another "votum" that might be made in the field by a general, see "evocatio".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A Roman emperor's "dies imperii" was the date on which he assumed "imperium", that is, the anniversary of his accession as emperor. The date was observed annually with renewed oaths of loyalty and "vota pro salute imperatoris", vows and offerings for the wellbeing "(salus)" of the emperor. Observances resembled those on January 3, which had replaced the traditional vows made for the "salus" of the republic after the transition to one-man rule under Augustus. The "dies imperii" was a recognition that succession during the Empire might take place irregularly through the death or overthrow of an emperor, in contrast to the annual magistracies of the Republic when the year was designated by the names of consuls serving their one-year term.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "dies Augusti" or "dies Augustus" was more generally any anniversary pertaining to the imperial family, such as birthdays or weddings, appearing on official calendars as part of Imperial cult. References to a "dies Caesaris" are also found, but it is unclear whether or how it differed from the "dies Augusti".


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: Nero observed his dies imperii/"decennalia" - the 10-year anniversary of being emperor on October 13, 64 AD.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The "dies lustricus" ("day of purification") was a rite carried out for the newborn on the eighth day of life for girls and the ninth day for boys. Little is known of the ritual procedure, but the child must have received its name on that day; funerary inscriptions for infants who died before their "dies lustricus" are nameless. The youngest person found commemorated on a Roman tombstone by name was a male infant nine days old (or 10 days in Roman inclusive counting). Because of the rate of infant mortality, perhaps as high as 40 percent, the newborn in its first few days of life was held as in a liminal phase, vulnerable to malignant forces (see List of Roman birth and childhood deities). Socially, the child did not exist. The "dies lustricus" may have been when the child received the "bulla", the protective amulet that was put aside when a boy passed into adulthood.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A "dies natalis" was a birthday ("natal day"; see also "dies lustricus" above) or more generally the anniversary of a founding event. The Romans celebrated an individual's birthday annually, in contrast to the Greek practice of marking the date each month with a simple libation. The Roman "dies natalis" was connected with the cult owed to the Genius. A public figure might schedule a major event on his birthday: Pompeius Magnus ("Pompey the Great") waited seven months after he returned from his military campaigns in the East before he staged his triumph, so he could celebrate it on his birthday. The coincidence of birthdays and anniversaries could have a positive or negative significance: news of Decimus Brutus's victory at Mutina was announced at Rome on his birthday, while Caesar's assassin Cassius suffered defeat at Philippi on his birthday and committed suicide. Birthdays were one of the dates on which the dead were commemorated.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The date when a temple was founded, or when it was rededicated after a major renovation or rebuilding, was also a "dies natalis", and might be felt as the "birthday" of the deity it housed as well. The date of such ceremonies was therefore chosen by the pontiffs with regard to its position on the religious calendar. The "birthday" or foundation date of Rome was celebrated April 21, the day of the Parilia, an archaic pastoral festival. As part of a flurry of religious reforms and restorations in the period from 38 BC to 17 AD, no fewer than fourteen temples had their "dies natalis" moved to another date, sometimes with the clear purpose of aligning them with new Imperial theology after the collapse of the Republic.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: The birthdays of emperors were observed with public ceremonies as an aspect of Imperial cult. The "Feriale Duranum", a military calendar of religious observances, features a large number of imperial birthdays. Augustus shared his birthday (September 23) with the anniversary of the Temple of Apollo in the Campus Martius, and elaborated on his connection with Apollo in developing his special religious status.


title: Glossary of ancient Roman religion

text: A birthday commemoration was also called a "natalicium," which could take the form of a poem. Early Christian poets such as Paulinus of Nola adopted the "natalicium" poem for commemorating saints. The day on which Christian martyrs died is regarded as their "dies natalis"; see Calendar of saints.