In the Roman calendar the Ides were the middle of a
month: the 15th of March or May or July or October or the 13th
of any other month.
Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides
of March 44 BC, or on March 15, 44 BC.
Impressment Rather brusque but legal recruitment method of
the British Royal Navy, and one of the reasons the
War of 1812 was fought. The practice ceased after the
conclusion of the
Napoleonic Wars.
Today, in the United States, it's called kidnapping and
forced labor, and you get 20 to life.
Indo-European Indo-European dialects are dialects of a
foundation language which originated somewhere on the
southern border of Europe and Asia and spread eastwards and
south-eastwards into Asia and westwards into Europe. Or so
we read in The Celts: a history by Dáithí Ó hÓgáin
Lettre
de cachet
A letter from the King of France issuing a one-time
order. The order was final, no discussion, no appeal.
The lettre de cachet was authenticated with the
King's personal seal and not the seal of the state.
Lotharingia
Another word for
Lorraine. Named after king Lothair who was king of
Lotharingia 855 - 869.
M
Man-of-war
An armed
warship. Unless you talk about a Portuguese man-of-war, which is a
jellyfish. It gets rather tricky when you try to refer to a
Portuguese armed warship.
Mediatization
or Mediatisation. Annexation of smaller states. If you were a sovereign of a smaller
German state in the early 1800s, you had a good chance
to get legally mediatized, or mediatised.
Medising
If you were medising in ancient Greece, you were sympathetic to
Media and the Medes, or more to the point, you were in favor of the
ruling Persians, because in 550 BC,
Cyrus II the Great
had made Media part of the
Persian Empire.
The noun is medism.
Microhistory
Also spelled micro history. The study of
history on a very small scale; a certain subject-matter is singled
out. More info from
Microhistory.org.
The opposite is macro history which
treats history on a large scale, e.g. world history, the big
picture.
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages refer to a time period in European
history from around the 5th century to the 14th century.
Things related to the
Middle Ages are medieval,
which you can also spell mediaeval.
Part of the Middle Ages
were the Dark Ages,
the time roughly between the years 500 and 1000.
Mithra
Mithra was
an ancient warrior god of sun and light in Persia and India. In
India it was called Mitra. The god was in popular demand from
the 5th century B.C. until the 3rd century A.D. In Latin and Greek
it was called Mithras.
Interestingly, the Mithraists
celebrated the birth of Mithra on December 25.
Mithradates VI
Eupator was named after this god.
National Constituent Assembly
The National Assembly was renamed National Constituent
Assembly to emphasize the importance of a written
constitution (July 9, 1789 to until September 30, 1791).
Greco-Persian Wars
Also called the
Persian Wars, the Greco-Persian Wars were
fought for almost half a century from 492 to
449 BC. Greece won against enormous odds. Here
is more:
