The use of rapeseed oil dates back to antiquity. Ancient (2000 to 1500 B.C.) writing from Greece, Rome, India, and China refer specifically to oilseed rape, its medicinal value, and its use as by Joseph Roetheli, Office of Agricultural Materials, CSRS, USDA, Washington, DC; Kenneth Carlson, Research Chemist, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, ARS, USDA, Peoria, IL; John Gard...

Thucydides is an important author for any discussion of the possibilities for an ancient Greek democratic peace. Though democratic peace did not, in fact, seem to function in classical Greece, a number of passages in Thucydides show that an affinity did exist among democratic factions and city-states in the context of hostile competition between democratic and oligarchic regimes. Thucydides rem...

I n ancient Greece, a group of traveling “wise men,’’ known as sophists, lectured on a large variety of subjects. Their presentations were spectacular and highly influential because they spoke beautifully. Socrates, on the other hand, tried to develop the minds of young people by asking a series of carefully conceived questions; he taught his students to think. Socrates considered the sophists ...

Recent work on Ancient Greece sheds light on the origins of money and its effects on economy and society. This review essay analyses such work and relates it to themes familiar to economists. It examines monetary functions in the heroic world and the effects of introducing coinage in Classical Athens. It attends to the role of the state in the development of money and to the form which money to...

Medical science is as old as human history and the need for disease treatment. Archivists, researchers and historians are collaborating in the project to preserve the documentary inheritance and make the medical science useful to the public. This research aims to identify and analyze the first registered sport injuries in the history of medicine. After a review of the literature, the Homeric ep...

Few people are familiar these days with the Table (or Tablet) of Cebes, a once renowned literary work of ancient Greece. In the past few centuries this pagan Pilgrim's Progress has only rarely appeared in print, and then usually tucked in at the end of Epictetus, to make a thin book a bit thicker. The obscurity in which it languishes does not, however, seem entirely unmerited, and to those who ...

THE word "neurone" in ancient Greece, in addition to signifying "nerve", also meant "a bow-string". The toughness of the optic nerve might be regarded as a vindication of this etymology. It is not uncommon to find the optic nerve reduced to a mere thread by a tumour or aneurysm at a time when vision is still intact. But the optic nerve is not, in fact, a nerve, but a tract of white matter. This...

The victors of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece were awarded crowns made of olive branches. In Antiquity, the symbolism of plants was related to myths, properties, aesthetic values, and civilization. Theophrastus first classifies and identifies plants, and gathers information about them, in his classic books (4th century BC). Symbolic plants are native to the Mediterranean region and they ex...

When in search of an explanation for the nature of philosophy, a good starting point is to inquire as to its origins. As is commonly known, Occidental philosophy originated in Ancient Greece as a substitute for mythological and religious explanations. Instead of accepting explanations of the foundations and origins of reality based on the anthropomorphic projections of mythology, the early Gree...

The male children of the ancient Spartans of Greece and the Sambia of New Guinea are exposed to programmed mental maltreatment and physically abusive practices. Through these exposures and societal narratives enforced by coercion and intimidation, aggressive warriors ready to fight to maintain their engrained desire to dominate or fulfill the military goals of the community are produced. Unfort...