CLCV 224 - Important dates, ancient authors and their works, and other ancient names

1452

Pope Nicholas V issues Discovery Doctrine – justified European colonization and enslavement of non-Christians.

1619:

First African slaves brought to Jamestown, Virginia.

1807

Slave trade abolished in England / Transatlantic slave trade made illegal.

1831

Nat Turner Rebellion – major slave uprising in Virginia.

1835

Oberlin College admits Black students (first U.S. college to do so).

1841

Amistad trial – enslaved Africans win freedom in U.S. Supreme Court.

1852

Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

1862

Morrill Act – establishes land-grant colleges.

1863

Emancipation Proclamation frees enslaved people in Confederate states.

1865

Ku Klux Klan founded during Reconstruction.

1895

Atlanta Compromise – Booker T. Washington advocates vocational education.

1915

The Birth of a Nation – racist film glorifying the KKK.

1954

Brown v. Board of Education – ends school segregation.

1963

Birmingham Campaign / MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

1968

Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.

Herodotus 

The Persian War; “Father of History”; recorded early ethnographic accounts.

Tacitus

Germania; Roman view of “barbarian” tribes.

Homer

Iliad; epic of war and heroism.

Columella

De Re Rustica; agricultural treatise describing slavery in farming.

Plutarch

Life of Julius Caesar; moral biography emphasizing leadership.

Diodorus of Sicily

Library; ancient world history including Africa and Egypt.

Strabo

Geography; ancient geographical knowledge of the world.

Aristotle

Politics; ideas of natural slavery and hierarchy.

Ovid

Metamorphoses; mythological transformations; source for Atalanta, Medea, Niobe.

Vergil

Aeneid; Roman epic connecting myth and empire.

Horace

Odes, Epistles; Roman poetry celebrating order and patronage.

Catullus

Lyric Poems; personal and emotional Latin poetry

Justinian

Digest; codification of Roman law.

Xenophon

Ways and Means; economics and labor management in ancient Athens.

Juvenal

Satires; critique of Roman society.

Solon 

Athenian lawmaker who instituted seisachtheia (debt relief).

Aesop

writer of moral fables.

Terence

African-born Roman playwright; first Black writer in Latin literature.

Epictetus

Stoic philosopher, formerly enslaved.

Cato the Elder

Roman senator emphasizing simplicity and farming.

Maecenas

patron of the arts under Augustus.

Niobe

mythic figure punished for hubris.

Hannibal

Carthaginian general who fought Rome in the Punic Wars.

Jugurtha

Numidian king who resisted Rome.

Massinissa

Numidian ally of Rome.

Sophonisba

Carthaginian noblewoman; symbol of virtue and tragedy.

Maciste

Early film Strongman is a symbol of racialized heroism.

Medea

mythic sorceress; represents female power and revenge.

Atalanta

mythic runner; Du Bois used her as an allegory in The Souls of Black Folk.

Socrates

philosopher of ethics and self-knowledge.

Heraclitus

philosopher of change (“You cannot step into the same river twice”).