title: Khosrow I

text: Mahbod, who had along with Siyawush acted as the diplomats of the negotiations, accused the latter of purposely sabotaging the negotiations. Further accusations were made towards Siyawush, which included the reverence of new deities and having his dead wife buried, which was a violation of Iranian laws. Siyawush was thus most likely a Mazdakite, the religious sect that Kavad originally supported but now had withdrawn his support from. Although Siyawush was a close friend of Kavad and had helped him escape from imprisonment, the latter did not try to prevent his execution, seemingly with the purpose of restricting Siyawush's immense authority as the head of the Sasanian army, a post which was disliked by the other nobles. Siyawush was executed, and his office was abolished. Despite the breakdown of the negotiations, it was not until 530 that full-scale warfare on the main eastern frontier broke out. In the intervening years, the two sides preferred to wage war by proxy, through Arab allies in the south and Huns in the north.


title: Khosrow I

text: Mazdak was the name of a chief representative of a religious and philosophical teaching called Mazdakism, which opposed violence, and called for the sharing of wealth, women and property, an archaic form of communism. Mazdakism not only consisted of theological and cosmological aspects, but also political and social impacts, which was to the disadvantage of the nobility and clergy. According to modern historians Touraj Daryaee and Matthew Canepa, sharing women was most likely an overstatement and defamation deriving from Mazdak's decree that loosened marriage rules to help the lower classes. Powerful families saw this as a tactic to weaken their lineage and advantages, which was most likely the case. Kavad used the movement as a political tool to curb the power of the nobility and clergy. With the nobility and clergy weakened, Kavad was able to make reforms with less difficulty. With the reforms roaring by the 520s, he no longer had use of Mazdak. As a result, he officially withdrew his support from the Mazdakites. A debate was arranged, where not only the Zoroastrian priesthood, but also the Christian and Jewish ones slandered Mazdak and his followers.


title: Khosrow I

text: According to the Shahnameh ("The Book of Kings"), written several centuries later by the medieval Persian poet Ferdowsi, Kavad had Mazdak and his supporters sent to Khosrow, who had his supporters killed by burying their heads in a walled orchard, with only their feet being visible. Khosrow then summoned Mazdak to look at his garden, saying the following; "You will find trees there that no-one has ever seen and no-one ever heard of even from the mouth of the ancient sages." Mazdak, seeing his followers corpses, screamed and passed out. He was afterwards executed by Khosrow, who had his feet fastened on a gallows, and had his men shoot arrows at him. The validity of the story is uncertain; Ferdowsi used much earlier reports of events to write the Shahnameh, and thus the story may report some form of contemporary memory.


title: Khosrow I

text: In 531, while the Iranian army was besieging Martyropolis, Kavad became ill and died. Khosrow succeeded him, but due to his domestic position being insecure, he wanted to make peace with the Byzantines, who themselves under Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) were perhaps already more focused on recovering the lost western half of the Roman Empire than in pursuing war against Iran. The Byzantine envoys Rufinus, Hermogenes, Alexander and Thomas found Khosrow in a more conciliatory disposition than his father, and an agreement was soon reached. Justinian would pay 110 "centenaria" (11,000 pounds) of gold, ostensibly as a contribution to the defence of the Caucasus passes against the barbarians living beyond, and the base of the "dux Mesopotamiae" would be withdrawn from the fortress of Dara to the city of Constantina. The two rulers would recognize once again each other as equal and pledged mutual assistance. Khosrow initially refused to hand back the two Lazic forts, while demanding the return of the two other forts the Byzantines had captured in Sasanian Armenia. Justinian at first agreed, but soon changed his mind, causing the agreement to be broken off. In summer 532, however, a new embassy by Hermogenes and Rufinus managed to persuade Khosrow for a full exchange of the occupied forts, as well as for allowing the exiled Iberian rebels to either remain in the Byzantine Empire or return safely to their homes.


title: Khosrow I

text: Sometime during the early reign of Khosrow, he had to deal with his eldest brother Kawus, who ruled as governor-king of the northern province of Padishkhwargar. Unlike Khosrow, he was a Mazdakite (or at least had strong Mazdakite sympathies), and thus had their support as the candidate for the throne. Kawus asserted to be the legitimate heir of the throne due to his older age. He was, however, defeated by Khosrow's forces and taken to Ctesiphon, where Khosrow summoned the priests and urged Kawus to make confessions and ask for forgiveness, so that he could be released. Kawus refused, preferring death, forcing Khosrow to have him killed. Khosrow reportedly "cursed the fortunes" for "forcing him to kill a brother like Kawus."


title: Khosrow I

text: Another danger to Khosrow's rule was that of his uncle Bawi, who along with other members of the Iranian aristocracy, became involved in a conspiracy in which they tried to overthrow Khosrow and make Kavad, the son of Khosrow's brother Jamasp, the shah of Iran. Upon learning of the plot, Khosrow executed all his brothers and their offspring, along with Bawi and the other aristocrats who were involved. Khosrow also ordered the execution of Kavad, who was still a child, and was away from the court, being raised by Adergoudounbades. Khosrow sent orders to kill Kavad, but Adergoudounbades disobeyed and brought him up in secret, until he was betrayed to the shah in 541 by his own son, Bahram. Khosrow had him executed, but Kavad, or someone claiming to be him, managed to flee to the Byzantine Empire.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow I represents the epitome of the philosopher king in the Sasanian Empire. Upon his ascent to the throne, Khosrow did not restore power to the feudal nobility or the magi, but centralized his government. Khosrow's reign is considered to be one of the most successful within the Sasanian Empire. The peace agreement between Rome and Iran in 531 gave Khosrow the chance to consolidate power and focus his attention on internal improvement. His reforms and military campaigns marked a renaissance of the Sasanian Empire, which spread philosophic beliefs as well as trade goods from the far east to the far west.


title: Khosrow I

text: The internal reforms under Khosrow were much more important than those on the exterior frontier. The subsequent reforms resulted in the rise of a bureaucratic state at the expense of the great noble families, strengthening the central government and the power of the Shahanshah. The army too was reorganized and tied to the central government rather than local nobility allowing greater organization, faster mobilization and a far greater cavalry corps. Reforms in taxation provided the empire with stability and a much stronger economy, allowing prolonged military campaigns as well as greater revenues for the bureaucracy.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow's tax reforms have been praised by several scholars, the most notable of whom is F. Altheim. The tax reforms, which were started under Kavad I and completely implemented by Khosrow, greatly strengthened the royal court. Prior to Khosrow and Kavad's reigns, a majority of the land was owned by seven Parthian families: Suren, Waraz, Karen, Ispahbudhan, Spandiyadh, Mihran and Zik. These great landowners enjoyed tax exemptions from the Sasanian empire, and were tax collectors within their local provincial areas.


title: Khosrow I

text: With the outbreak of the Mazdakite revolution, there was a great uprising of peasants and lower-class citizens who grabbed large portions of land under egalitarian values. As a result of this there was great confusion on land possession and ownership. Khosrow surveyed all the land within the empire indiscriminately and began to tax all land under a single program. Tax revenues that previously went to the local noble family now went to the central government treasury. The fixed tax that Khosrow implemented created a more stable form of income for the treasury.


title: Khosrow I

text: Because the tax did not vary, the treasury could easily estimate the year's revenue. Prior to Khosrow's tax reforms, taxes were collected based on the yield that the land had produced. The new system calculated and averaged taxation based on the water rights for each piece of property. Lands which grew date palms and olive trees used a slightly different method of taxation based on the amount of producing trees that the land contained. These tax reforms of Khosrow were the stepping stone which enabled subsequent reforms in the bureaucracy and the military to take place.


title: Khosrow I

text: The hallmark of Khosrow's bureaucratic reform was the creation of a new social class. Before, the Sasanian Empire consisted of only three social classes, magi, nobles and peasants/commoners. Khosrow added a fourth class to this hierarchy between the nobles and the peasants, called the deghans. The deghans were small land owning citizens of the Sasanian Empire and were considered lower nobility.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow promoted honest government officials based on trust and honesty, rather than corrupt nobles and magi. The small landowning deghans were favored over the high nobles because they tended to be more trustworthy and owed their loyalty to the Shah for their position in the bureaucracy. The rise of deghans became the backbone of the empire because they now held the majority of land and positions in local and provincial administration.


title: Khosrow I

text: The reduction of power of the great families improved the empire. This was because previously, each great family ruled a large chunk of land and had their own king. The name Shahanshah, meaning King of Kings, derived from the fact that there were many feudal kings in Sasanian Iran with the Shahanshah as the ruler of them all. Their fall meant their power was redirected to the central government and all taxes now went to the central government rather than to the local nobility.


title: Khosrow I

text: Major reforms to the military made the Iranian army capable of fighting sustained wars, battling on multiple fronts, and deploy itself faster. Prior to Khosrow's reign, much like other aspects of the empire, the military was dependent on the feudal lords of the great families to provide soldiers and cavalry. Each family would provide their own army and equipment when called by the Shahanshah. This system was replaced with the emergence of the lower deghan nobility class, who was paid and provided by the central government.


title: Khosrow I

text: The main force of the Sasanian army was the Aswaran cavalry. Previously only nobles could enlist into the Aswaran cavalry which was very limited and created shortages in well trained soldiers. Now that the dehqan class was considered nobility, they were able to join the cavalry force and boosted the number of cavalry force significantly.


title: Khosrow I

text: The military reform focused more on organization and training of troops. The cavalry was still the most important aspect of the Iranian military, with foot archers being less important, and mass peasant forces being on the bottom of the spectrum.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow made four military districts with a "spahbed", or general, in charge of each district. Before the reforms of Khosrow, the general of the Iranians ("Eran-spahbed") controlled the military of the entire empire. The four zones consisted of Mesopotamia in the west, the Caucasus region in the north, the Persian Gulf in the central and southwest region, and Central Asia in the east. This new quadripartition of the Empire not only created a more efficient military system but also "[administration] of a vast, multiregional, multicultural, and multiracial empire".


title: Khosrow I

text: During Khosrow's reign, a "list" for equipment for the cavalry ("aswaran") was written. The list comprised a helmet, a gorget, a chain mail shirt, a lamellar coat or cuirass, leg armour, gauntlets, sword, shield, two bows with spare strings, 30 arrows, axe or mace, and horse armour.


title: Khosrow I

text: Sasanian bullae showing the four spahbeds show that horses were still fully armoured during this period and heavy cavalry tactics were still used by the Sasanian cavalry. It is highly likely that the stirrup had been introduced to the Sasanian cavalry two centuries before Khosrow's reforms (and are mentioned in Bivar (1972)), and a "stirrupped" foot position can be seen on the Sasanian bullae and at Taq-e-Bostan.


title: Khosrow I

text: In 539 Khosrow had originally attempted to gain a "casus belli" against the Byzantines by trying to take advantage of a disagreement between his Lakhmid clients and the Byzantine clients Ghassanids, who both claimed ownership of the lands south of Palmyra, near the old "Strata Diocletiana". His attempt was, however, thwarted when the Byzantines successfully equivocated the problem. Subsequently, Khosrow accused Justinian of trying to bribe the Lakhmid ruler al-Mundhir III ibn al-Nu'man () through his diplomat Summus, and also that he had emboldened some Huns to make incursions into Iran. The Ghassanid ruler al-Harith ibn Jabalah () invaded Mundhir's territory and carried off rich booty. Khosrow complained to Justinian about this incident, and requested that the stolen riches be returned to him, including payment for the Arabs that had been killed during the attack. His request was, however, ignored. This incident, along with the support by an emissary from the Ostrogoth king Vitiges, and the Armenians living in Byzantine territory being dissatisfied with their rule, encouraged Khosrow to renew the war against the Byzantines. Justinian's ceaseless wars in North Africa and Italy must have contributed to Khosrow's aspirations as well. Justinian, informed of Khosrow's intention for war, tried to dissuade him, but to no avail.


title: Khosrow I

text: In May 540, Khosrow invaded the domains of the Byzantines; he avoided the fortress of Circesium, and instead approached Zenobia, where he made a lukewarm attempt to persuade the fortress to surrender, which proved unsuccessful. He then proceeded to Sura and killed its commander Arsaces in battle. Demoralized by the death of their commander, the residents sent their bishop to parley with Khosrow. Feigning to accept the plea of the bishop, Khosrow took advantage of the occasion and captured the city, which was shortly sacked. Germanus, the cousin of Justinian, sent the bishop of Beroea, Megas, to negotiate with Khosrow. Regardless, Khosrow continued his expedition, threatening the city of Hierapolis, whose custodians swiftly paid him of silver to leave the city untouched. After receiving additional pleas by Megas, Khosrow agreed to end his expedition in return for ten "centenaria". While Megas went back to Antioch to inform Germanus of Khosrow's demands, the latter approached Beroea, which he had sacked. In June, Khosrow reached Antioch, where he offered its citizens to not attack the city in return for ten "centenaria". His offer was rejected, and as a result he captured and sacked the city.


title: Khosrow I

text: Justinian sued for peace, and made a treaty with Khosrow that the Iranians would withdraw back to their domains in return for a payment of 50 "centenaria" plus 5 "centenaria" extra each year. Part of treaty also included that the Byzantine envoys were to be hostages of Khosrow as an assurance that the Byzantines would honor the agreement. However, before departing, Khosrow went to the port of Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, where he bathed in the Mediterranean Sea. He then told the envoys that he wished to visit the city of Apamea out of interest, which they reluctantly allowed him, with the condition that he would leave for his domains afterwards. There he held chariot races, where he made the Blue Faction—which was supported by Justinian—lose against the rival Greens. Khosrow extracted tribute from Apamea and other Byzantine towns, at which point Justinian called off his truce and prepared to send his commander Belisarius to move against the Sasanians.


title: Khosrow I

text: In spring 541, Khosrow brought his army north to Lazica on request of the Lazic king Gubazes II to repel the Byzantines from his territory. The fortress of Petra was afterwards captured by Khosrow's forces, and a protectorate was established over the country. At the same time, Belisarius arrived in Mesopotamia and began besieging the city of Nisibis. Although Belisarius had greatly outnumbered the city garrison, the city was too well fortified and he was forced to ravage the country around the Nisibis, subsequently getting recalled back west. After successful campaigns in Armenia, Khosrow was encouraged once again to attack Syria. Khosrow turned south towards Edessa and besieged the city. Edessa was now a much more important city than Antioch was, and the garrison which occupied the city was able to resist the siege. The Iranians were forced to retreat from Edessa, but were able to forge a five-year truce with the Byzantine Empire in 545. Three years into the five-year truce (548), rebellion against Sasanian control broke out in Lazica. In response, a Byzantine army was sent to support the people of Lazica, effectively ending the established truce and thus continuing the Lazic Wars.


title: Khosrow I

text: Sometime later, Khosrow, who was keen to wrest Dara from Byzantine control, and would do so even if he risked to break the truce they had made regarding Mesopotamia, tried to capture it by tricking them; he sent one of highest officials, Izadgushasp, as a diplomat to Constantinople, but in reality the latter would stop by Dara, and with the aid of his large crew, he would seize the city. However, this plan was prevented by a former adviser of Belisarius named George, who demanded that if Izadgushasp should enter the city he should have only twenty members of his crew with him. Izadgushasp then left the city and continued his journey to Constantinople, where he was amicably welcomed by Justinian, who gave him some gifts.


title: Khosrow I

text: In 549 the previous truce between Justinian and Khosrow was disregarded and full war broke out once again between Iranians and Romans. The last major decisive battle of the Lazic wars came in 556 when Byzantine general Martin defeated a massive Sasanian force led by an Iranian "nakhvaegan" (field marshal). Negotiations between Khosrow and Justinian opened in 556, leading to the Fifty-Year Peace Treaty in 562 in which Iranians would leave Lazica in return for an annual payment of gold.


title: Khosrow I

text: According to ancient historian Menander Protector, a minor official in Justinian's court, there were 12 points to the treaty, stated in the following passage:


title: Khosrow I

text: With a stable peace agreement with the Byzantines in the west, Khosrow was now able to focus his attention on the eastern Hephthalites and end their domination over Central Asia. Even with the growth of Iranian military power under Khosrow's reforms, the Sasanians were still uneasy at the prospect of attacking the Hephthalite on their own and began to seek allies. Their answer came in the form of Turkic incursions into Central Asia. The movement of Turkic people into Central Asia very quickly made them natural enemies and competitors to the Hephthalites.


title: Khosrow I

text: The Hephthalites were a strong military power but they lacked the organization to fight on multiple fronts. The Sasanians and the First Turkic Khaganate made an alliance and in 557 launched a two pronged attack on the Hephthalites, taking advantage of their disorganization and disunity. The Hephthalite Empire was destroyed after the battle of Gol-Zarriun, and broke into several minor kingdoms around the Oxus. The Hephthalite king Ghadfar and what was left of his men fled southward to Sasanian territory, where they took refuge. Meanwhile, the Turkic Khagan Sinjibu reached an agreement with the Hephthalite nobility, and appointed Faghanish, the ruler of Chaghaniyan, as the new Hephthalite king.


title: Khosrow I

text: This was much to the dislike of Khosrow, who considered the Turkic collaboration with the Hephthalites to pose a danger for his rule in the east, and thus marched towards the Sasanian-Turkic border in Gurgan. When he reached the place, he was met by a Turkic delegate of Sinjibu that presented him gifts. There Khosrow asserted his authority and military potency, and persuaded the Turks to make an alliance with him. The alliance contained a treaty that made it obligatory for Faghanish to be sent to the Sasanian court in Ctesiphon and gain the approval of Khosrow for his status as Hephthalite king. Faghanish and his kingdom of Chaghaniyan thus became a vassal of the Sasanian Empire, which set the Oxus as the eastern frontier the Sasanians and Turks. However, friendly relations between Turks and Sasanians quickly deteriorated after that. Both Turks and Iranians wanted to dominate the Silk Road and the trade industry between the west and the far east. In 562 Khosrow II defeated the Hephthalites once again, and then stopped the threat of the Turks.


title: Khosrow I

text: In 568 a Turkic embassy was sent to Byzantine to propose an alliance and two pronged attack on the Sasanian Empire. Fortunately for the Sasanians, nothing ever came from this proposal. Later in 569/570, Sinjibu attacked and pillaged Sasanian border lands, but a treaty was soon signed. Khosrow then sent a Mihranid named Mihransitad, to estimate the quality of the daughter of the Turkic Khagan. According to Armenian sources her name was Kayen, while Persian sources states that her name was Qaqim-khaqan. After Mihransitad's visit in Central Asia, Khosrow married Qaqim-khaqan. According to some sources, Hormizd IV, the successor of Khosrow, was the son of the Turkic princess. However, "Encyclopædia Iranica" states that the "marriage with the daughter of the Turkic khaqan is chronologically impossible", and says that Hormizd was born in 540, thirty years before Khosrow's marriage.


title: Khosrow I

text: In 522, before Khosrow's reign, a group of miaphysite Ethiopians led an attack on the dominant Himyarites of southern Arabia. The local Arab leader blunted the attack, and appealed to the Sasanians for aid, while the Ethiopians subsequently turned towards the Byzantines for help. The Ethiopians sent another force across the Red Sea, killed the Arab leader, and crowned an Ethiopian king of the region.


title: Khosrow I

text: In 531, Justinian suggested that the Ethiopians of Yemen end the Sasanians maritime trade with the Indians. The Ethiopians never met this request because an Ethiopian general named Abraha took control of the Yemenite throne and created an independent nation. After Abraha's death one of his sons, Ma'd-Karib, went into exile while his half-brother took the throne. After being denied by Justinian, Ma'd-Karib sought help from Khosrow, who sent a small fleet and army under commander Vahrez to depose the current king of Yemen. After capturing the capital city San'a'l, Ma'd-Karib's son, Saif enthroned.


title: Khosrow I

text: Justinian was ultimately responsible for Sasanian maritime presence in Yemen. By not providing the Yemenite Arabs support, Khosrow was able to help Ma'd-Karib and subsequently established Yemen as a principality of the Sasanian Empire.


title: Khosrow I

text: Justinian died in 565 and left Justin II to succeed the throne. In 555, the Sasanian governor of Armenia and a relative of Khosrow, Chihor-Vishnasp (also known as Suren), built a fire temple at the Armenian capital Dvin and put to death a popular and influential member of the Mamikonian family. This execution created tremendous civil unrest and led to a revolt and massacre of the governor including the capture of Dvin in 572. Justin II took advantage of this revolt and used it as an excuse to stop paying annual payments to Khosrow, effectively putting an end to the 51 year peace treaty that was established ten years earlier. Khosrow, who tried to avoid another war, sent a Christian diplomat named Sebokht to Constantinople in order to try to persuade Justin to change his mind. Justin, however, refused to listen to the diplomat, and prepared to help the Armenians, whom he considered his allies, in their war against Khosrow. A Byzantine army was sent into Sasanian territory and besieged Nisibis in the same year.


title: Khosrow I

text: Meanwhile, Khosrow sent an army under Golon Mihran to Armenia, but the latter was defeated in Taron by the Armenian rebel leader Vardan III Mamikonian, who captured his war elephants as war booty. Sometime later, however, Golon Mihran managed to seize Angl. During the same time, the Siunian prince Vahan asked for Khosrow's permission that he could move his court from Dvin to the capital of Paytakaran, a region in eastern Armenia. Furthermore, Vahan also requested that Paytakaran should be merged with the Adurbadagan province. Khosrow accepted, and did what he asked.


title: Khosrow I

text: In 573, Khosrow sent an army under Adarmahan to invade Syria, while he himself along with the three Mihranid military officers Izadgushasp, Fariburz and Bahram Chobin led an army towards Dara, where they captured the city after four months, while Adarmahan sacked several cities in Syria, which included Apamea. Justin reportedly lost his mind after these Byzantine disasters, and abdicated.


title: Khosrow I

text: He was succeeded by Tiberius, a high-ranking military officer in 578. Khosrow invaded Armenia once again feeling that he had the upper hand, and was initially successful. Soon after, the tables turned and the Byzantines gained a lot of local support. This made the Sasanians attempt another truce. However, sometime later, Khosrow, with an army consisting of 12,000 Iranian soldiers including a combined of Sabir-Arab soldiers numbering 8,000 sent by his allies, ravaged the places around Resaina and Constantia in Syria, thus turning the tables once more. During the same time, one of Khosrow's chief generals, Tamkhosrau, managed to trick Maurice by faking an invasion of Theodosiopolis, and then plundered the countryside of Martyropolis and Amida.


title: Khosrow I

text: However, the tables of the war quickly turned again when the newly appointed Byzantine supreme-commander Maurice entered the field and captured many Sasanian settlements. The revolt came to an end when Khosrow gave amnesty to Armenia and brought them back into the Sasanian empire. Peace negotiations were once again brought back up, but abruptly ended with the death of Khosrow in 579, who was succeeded by his son Hormizd IV.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow, like all other Sasanian rulers, was an adherent of Zoroastrianism. Since the 5th century, the Sasanian monarchs had been made aware of the significance of the religious minorities in the realm, and as a result tried to homogenize them into a structure of administration where according to legal principles, all would be treated straightforwardly as "mard / zan ī šahr", i.e. "man/woman citizen (of the Empire)." Jews and notably Christians had accepted the concept of Iran and considered themselves part of the nation. By the time of Khosrow, the leader of the Church of the East had the title of "Catholicos of Iran" ("Ērān Cathollicos").


title: Khosrow I

text: Sasanian monarchs only persecuted other religions when it was in their urgent political interests to do. This also applied to Khosrow, who, in the words of Eberhard Sauer, had to "walk a fine line". Khosrow himself used the church considerably, and was fond of its Patriarch, Aba I, whom he wanted to defend against the Zoroastrian priests. Nevertheless, Aba was accused of working with the Byzantines, which was a serious allegation due to the war that had begun in 540. Consequently, in 542, Aba was dismissed from his post, but was only exiled instead of being executed.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow even enjoyed good relations with Gregory, the Mihranid commander of the Iranian troops in the Caucasus, who had showily disowned Zoroastrianism in front of other troops massed at a feast in 518. This resulted in discontent amongst members of the court, who pressured Khosrow to deal with an apostate from such a powerful and influential family, stating that "It is a great dishonor for the religion of the Magians that such a great man from the lineage of the house of Mihran, who have always been servants of Ohrmazd, now becomes a servant of Christ." Khosrow was thus forced to have Gregory relieved and incarcerated, yet the Mihranids deemed Khosrow's choice insufficient. A son of Gregory's paternal uncle, Mihran, asked Khosrow to execute Gregory for "bringing dishonor to our lineage". The latter was in a good position to make such request, due to recently having defeated the Hephthalites in the east; Gregory was eventually executed.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow did however deal harshly and swiftly with people with of any belief or practice that ran contrary to Sasanian-mediated Zoroastrian orthodoxy. Aberrance in ceremony and principle exceeded apostasy as "a social and political evil in undermining the foundations of the imperial religion (Payne)." According to Khosrow's supposed autobiographical work of "Sirat Anushirwan", he had a party of nobles practicing unorthodoxy executed instantly when he found out about them. According to the book, Khosrow also had another group−supposedly Manichaeans−banished from Iran. This was due to the royal anxieties regarding the chance of religious rogues to upset the political structure, which had recently occurred during Kavad and Khosrow's reigns by the Mazdakites.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow is known to have ordered many public works projects during his long reign, such bridges, roads, dams and walls. To protect the frontiers of Iran, Khosrow had a sequence of walls built (and fortified) around his empire, much like the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall in Northern England. Instead of constructing it on one side of the empire, he had it on four. According to Middle Persian sources, Khosrow I ordered the construction of the Great Wall of Gorgan, which extended from the eastern coast of the Caspian Sea to block incursions by nomadic tribes, such as the Hephthalites. In the northwest, he had the Derbent Wall further fortified to protect the area from incursions by Alans, Turks, Sarirs, Khazars, and other northern neighbours.


title: Khosrow I

text: Another wall was constructed in the southwest, called the "war-i tāzigān" ("wall of the Arabs"). He may have also built another wall in the northeast−the Wall of Tammisha. Besides defense structures, Khosrow also had a large-scale canal system created in Asoristan, known in Islamic sources as the Nahrawan Canal. Out of all his constructions, his most memorable and noteworthy achievement was the palace he had made at Ctesiphon, known as the Taq-e Kasra. The palace, still standing till this day, albeit heavily ruined, portrays one of the empire's most remarkable architectural accomplishments.


title: Khosrow I

text: After the sack of Antioch in 540, Khosrow built a new city one "parasang" () south of Ctesiphon for the inhabitants he had captured. It was located on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and was officially named "Weh-andīōg-husraw" ("City Better than Antioch [has] Khosrow [built this]" or "Khosrow's Better Antioch"). The city reportedly had public baths and a hippodrome, and a street program modelled on Antioch. The Christian population was granted freedom of religion and burial. The city was known informally as Rumagan ("Town of the Greeks"), which later became ar-Rumiyya under the Caliphate. The remains of the city are most likely situated at the unexcavated place that is still till this day known as Bustan Kisra ("Gardens of Khosrow").


title: Khosrow I

text: The Sassanian revival took place under his rule, so Khosrow minted such inscriptions on his especial issue coinage as "Iranians have become fearless" ("ērān abē-bēm kard"), and "Iranians became strong" ("ērān abzonhēnēd").


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow I was admired, both in Iran and elsewhere, for his character, virtues, and knowledge of Greek philosophy. He was identified by some Romans as the true philosopher king.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow I was known to be a great patron of philosophy and knowledge. An entry in the Chronicle of Séert reads: Khosrow I is known for saying a philosophic quote that follows:


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow I accepted refugees coming from the Eastern Roman Empire when Justinian closed the neo-Platonist schools in Athens in 529. He was greatly interested in Indian philosophy, science, mathematics, and medicine. He sent multiple embassies and gifts to the Indian court and requested them to send back philosophers to teach in his court in return. Khosrow made many translations of texts from Greek, Sanskrit, and Syriac into Middle Persian. He received the title of "Plato's Philosopher King" by the Greek refugees that he allowed into his empire because of his great interest in Platonic philosophy. Nöldeke states that Khosrow I was "certainly one of the most efficient and best kings that the Iranians have ever had".


title: Khosrow I

text: A synthesis of Greek, Iranian, Indian, and Armenian learning traditions took place within the Sasanian Empire. One outcome of this synthesis created what is known as bimaristan, the first hospital that introduced a concept of segregating wards according to pathology. Greek pharmacology fused with Iranian and Indian traditions resulted in significant advances in medicine. According to historian Richard Frye, this great influx of knowledge created a renaissance during, and proceeding Khosrow's reign.


title: Khosrow I

text: Intellectual games such as chess and backgammon demonstrated and celebrated the diplomatic relationship between Khosrow and a "great king of India." The vizier of the Indian king invented chess as a cheerful, playful challenge to King Khosrow. It seems that the Indian ruler who sent the game of chess to Khosrow was the Maukhari King Śarvavarman of Kannauj, between the


title: Khosrow I

text: beginning of Śarvavarman's reign in 560/565 and the end of Khosrow's reign in 579. When the game was sent to Iran it came with a letter which read: "As your name is the King of Kings, all your emperorship over us connotes that your wise men should be wiser than ours. Either you send us an explanation of this game of chess or send revenue and tribute us." Khosrow's grand vizier successfully solved the riddle and figured out how to play chess. In response the wise vizier created the game backgammon and sent it to the Indian court with the same message. The Indian king was not able to solve the riddle and was forced to pay tribute.


title: Khosrow I

text: Khosrow I is known to have greatly expanded the Academy of Gondishapur, located in the city of Gundeshapur. As to the development of non-religious knowledge and research in Iran and apart from historical evidence given on such traditions in the preceding Iranian Empires, there are reports on systematic activities initiated by the Sasanian court as early as in the first decades of Sasanian rule. The Middle Persian encyclopaedia Denkard states that during the reign of Shapur I writings of this kind were collected and added to the Avesta. And an atmosphere of vivid reflection and discussion at the early Sasanian court in the third century AD is reflected in such accounts.


title: Khosrow I

text: The foundation of the Academy of Gondishapur introduced the studies of philosophy, medicine, physics, poetry, rhetoric, and astronomy into the Sasanian court. According to some historical accounts, this famous learning center was built in order to provide a place for incoming Greek refugees to study and share their knowledge. Gundeshapur became the focal point of the combination of Greek and Indian sciences along with Iranian and Syriac traditions. The cosmopolitan which was introduced by the institution of Gondishapur became a catalyst for modern studies.


title: Khosrow I

text: Although Khosrow's achievements were highly successful and helped centralize the empire, they did not last long after his death. The local officials and great noble families resented the fact that their power had been stripped away from them and began to quickly regain power after his death. Khosrow's reign had a major impact on Islamic culture and political life. Many of his policies and reforms were brought into the Islamic nation in their transformation from a decentralized confederation into a centralized empire.


title: Khosrow I

text: There are a considerable number of Islamic works that were inspired by the reign of Khosrow I, for example the "Kitab al-Taj" of Jahiz. The high number of Islamic texts referring to Khosrow's reign can make it hard to distinguish fact from fallacy.


title: Khosrow I

text: During his reign the Silk Road between ancient China, India and the western world was promoted and possibly even created. Richard Frye argues that Khosrow's rationale behind his numerous wars with the Byzantine empire as well as the eastern Hephthalites was to establish the Sasanian dominance on this trade route.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: Murmur of the Heart () is a 1971 French comedy-drama film written, produced and directed by Louis Malle. The film stars Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux and Daniel Gélin. Written as Malle's semi-autobiography, the film tells a coming of age story about a 14-year-old boy (Ferreux) growing up in bourgeois surroundings in post-World War II Dijon, France, with a complex relationship with his Italian mother (Massari).


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: The film was screened at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival and was a box office success in France. In the United States, it received positive reviews and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: Laurent Chevalier is a nearly 15-year-old boy living in Dijon in 1954 who loves jazz, always receives the highest grades in his class and who opposes the First Indochina War. He has an unloving father Charles, who is a gynecologist, an affectionate Italian mother, Clara, and two older brothers, Thomas and Marc. Thomas and Marc are notorious pranksters, while Laurent engages in taboos such as shoplifting and masturbation. Laurent also witnesses Clara meeting with a lover, and upset with the adultery, runs to tell Charles. Charles, busy with his practice, angrily turns him away.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: One night, Thomas and Marc take Laurent to a brothel, where Laurent loses his virginity to a prostitute, Freda, before they are disrupted by his drunken brothers. Upset, Laurent leaves on a scouting trip, where he catches scarlet fever and is left with a heart murmur. Laurent is bedridden and cared for and entertained by Clara and their maid Augusta. Laurent's teacher at his Catholic school suggests that Laurent's illness has matured him, so that he has made progress in his studies, and urges Clara to treat him more like an adult.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: As Laurent requires treatment at a sanatorium, he and Clara check into a hotel. Due to an error by Charles' secretary Solange, the hotel books both Clara and Laurent into a single room, and given that the hotel is completely full, no additional room is available. Laurent takes interest in two young girls at the hotel, Hélène and Daphne, and also spies on his mother in the bathtub. Though Laurent pursues Hélène, Hélène says she is not ready for sex; Laurent accuses her of being a lesbian. Clara temporarily leaves with her lover, but comes back distraught after their breakup, and is comforted by her son. After a night of heavy drinking on Bastille Day, Laurent and Clara have sex. Clara tells him afterwards that this incest will not be repeated, but that they should not look back on it with remorse. Afterwards, Laurent leaves their room, and after unsuccessfully trying to seduce Hélène, spends the night with Daphne.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: Director Louis Malle wrote "Murmur of the Heart" in part as an autobiography. As Malle said, "My passion for jazz, my curiosity about literature, the tyranny of my two elder brothers, how they introduced me to sex— this is pretty close to home." Malle also suffered from a heart murmur and shared a hotel room with his mother during treatment. Aside from this, the film is a work of fiction, and takes place later than Malle's true childhood. The humorous and earthy Italian mother is also a fictional character, based more on a friend's mother than his own. Malle asserted in interviews that the incest, in particular, is fictional. He claimed that in writing the script, he had no intention to include incest, but ended up doing so as he explored an intense mother-son relationship.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: Upon submitting his screenplay, the National Center of Cinematography raised objections to the perverse erotic scenes. Malle was surprised by the response. With the Censorship Board denying funding, the film was financed with the help of Mariane Film, a French subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Given his love of jazz, and the fact that Laurent steals a Charlie Parker album at the beginning of the film, Malle used Parker's music for the film score.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: Talking about the infamous incest scene, Lea Massari said, "We shot that scene last and it was a great concern throughout the entire shoot. On the last day Malle said to me, 'do what you want, if it comes out well we'll keep it, if not we'll do as I say.' I acted on instinct, loading the fact that the woman was drunk, and the scene stayed as is.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: In France, the film had 2,652,870 admissions. It was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1971 and also played at the New York Film Festival in October 1971.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: On its re-release in the United States in 1989, it grossed US$1,160,784. In Region 1, The Criterion Collection released the film on DVD in 2006, along with Malle's other films "Lacombe, Lucien" and "Au Revoir les Enfants".


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star review, comparing it favourably to "The 400 Blows" (1959), and writes that with the incest, Malle "takes the most highly charged subject matter you can imagine, and mutes it into simple affection." Judith Crist, writing for "New York", praised the "remarkable" performances from Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux and Daniel Gélin. Richard Schickel, writing for "Life", said he had a "strange enthusiasm" for the film, which he felt demonstrated "taste, charm and the most winning sentiment." "Variety" staff complimented Ferreux and Massari's performances. Roger Greenspun wrote a negative opinion in "The New York Times", claiming "it isn't very good" and "that it could probably have been made with as much distinction by any of those directors, all equally anonymous, who specialize in urban romantic comedy (or tragedy) of a sophistication that is supposed to be peculiarly French." John Simon wrote Murmur of the Heart treated incest charmingly but unsatisfactorily.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: In 1989, Desson Howe wrote in "The Washington Post" that the film maintained its "fresh intelligence and delicacy" and "Malle's world of sarcastic, upper-middle-class brats seems to be "Murmur"'s most enduring creation." In 1990, Richard Stengel gave the film an A− in "Entertainment Weekly", writing "Almost everything about this coming-of-age story rings true, and Malle avoids any heavy-handed explanations of family behavior." Critic Pauline Kael called Massari "superb." In his "2002 Movie & Video Guide", Leonard Maltin gives the film three and a half stars and calls it a "fresh, intelligent, affectionately comic tale."


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: US director Wes Anderson cited "Murmur of the Heart" as an influence, saying he loved the characters Laurent and Clara. Regarding the incest, he says, "The stuff between him and the mother feels more kind of romantic almost- but also taboo and scary in a way, which makes it even more seductive." US director Noah Baumbach also named the film as an influence. Rotten Tomatoes counted 16 favourable reviews out of 17 for a score of 94%.


title: Murmur of the Heart

text: "Murmur of the Heart" was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 1973 Academy Awards. It was also in competition, in the French part of the official selection, at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: FC Zorya Luhansk ( ) is a Ukrainian football team. Zorya Luhansk is based in the city of Luhansk, Ukraine. However, because of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the team play their games at Slavutych-Arena in Zaporizhzhia.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The modern club as a team of masters was established on 10 April 1964 by the Football Federation of the Soviet Union merging the October Revolution Plant (Luhanskteplovoz) sports club Zorya and the Luhansk regional branch of the "Trudovye Rezervy" sports society. In 1972, as Zaria Voroshilovgrad, the club became the first provincial Soviet club to win the Soviet Top League title. Today, the modern club considers its predecessor the football team of the Luhansk Steam Locomotive Plant (October Revolution Steam Locomotive Plant, today Luhanskteplovoz) that was established back in 1923.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The club is a flagman club in Luhansk Oblast and one of three Ukrainian football "teams of masters" that won the Soviet Top League. The name "Zorya" means "dawn" in Ukrainian.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The modern professional team of Zorya Luhansk, during its Soviet period known also as Zaria Voroshilovgrad/Lugansk and for a short period Zorya-MALS, was created in 1964 as the city's team of masters by merging the factory team with another team of masters "Trudovye Rezervy". Before 1964, the factory team played mostly in republican competitions of the Ukrainian SSR.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The first Luhansk team was created in the Russian Empire in 1908 when the workers of the Russischen Maschinenbaugesellschaft Hartmann (today "Luhansk Locomotive") created the "Society of Rational Recreations". The one of the disciplines was a game of kickball headed by the Czech specialist Henrich Drževikovski from Prague, who originally was an instructor of gymnastics of the factory's ministerial school. That team played its games and conducted its training on the empty lot near the factory where today the sport hall "Zorya" is located.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The first mention of games involving the Luhansk team dates back to 1911. In 1913 in Kostyantynivka the first regional football league of Donets basin was created. During World War I and the subsequent Soviet and German hostilities, the league was suspended until 1920, by which time the situation in the region had stabilized.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 1922 in the city of Luhansk was built a new stadium, possibly "on the personal order" of Vladimir Lenin and later named after him. In 1923 the workers of the Luhansk steam train factory of the October Revolution (hence – the club's logo with a locomotive) organized their football team ""Metalist"" which became the forerunner of today's Zorya. The following year there the championship of the newly created Luhansk okruha (district) was created. In the final game the collective city team of Luhansk was victorious against their rivals from the city of Snizhne, winning the title after extra time 1–0. In 1926, the All-Ukrainian Committee of the Mining Workers' council organized a team of Donbass miners, players from Kadiyevka, for a tour in Germany (Weimar Republic). There the Donbass team won four of their eight games. The following year an international game took place in Luhansk, in which the city team was challenged by their rivals from Austria. The Donbas players lost the game.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 1936 the football teams ""Metalist"" and ""Dynamo"" (KGB team) merged to form the united Luhansk city-team which the following year was named "Dzerzhynets". The name ""Dzerzhynets"" derives from the steam locomotive that was produced at the steam train factory "FD" – ""Felix Dzerzhinsky"". That year ""Dzerzhynets"" reached 3rd place in the Ukrainian second league.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 1937 ""Dzerzhynets"" won Ukrainian's second league and was promoted to the first. Moreover, it reached the 1/8 final of the Ukrainian Сup and the 1/16 final of the Soviet Cup. The team consisted of the following players: Klad'ko (coach), Grebenyuk, Svidyns'ky, Mazanov, Morozov, Krasyuk, Nosko, Movchan, Brovenko, Chernyavs'ky, Voloschenko, Lokotosh, Sytnikov, Evdokymov, Myroshnikov, Ischenko.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 1938 ""Dzerzhynets"" became champions of Ukraine after having won 9 games and drawn two. It was thus admitted to the Soviet First League.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: After World War II, the club was not revived right away. The city of Luhansk was represented by Dynamo Luhansk, while in 1949–1951 there was as well a team of tge Luhansk regional party administration "Trudovi Rezervy". In 1950 Dynamo Luhansk merged into Trudovi Rezervy. In 1951 the chief of Trudovi Rezervy's regional administration, Ivan Lomakin; went on trial and the team was liquidated.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 1948 "Dzerzhynets" was re-established in the lower leagues of the Ukrainian championship. Due to the liquidation of Trudovi Rezervy, Dzerzhynets was allowed to compete among the "mater teams" (Soviet terminology for their professional level). Few players from Trudovi Rezervy joined the factory team. In 1954, Dzerzhynets was transferred under the administration of the Republican Volunteer Society of "Avanhard" which continued its participation in competitions until 1959.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: Due to a bleak performance of "Avanhard" in 1957 in the city of Voroshilovhrad, it was revived as another club "Trudovi Rezervy" which this time comprised students from the Leningrad Technicum of Physical Culture and Sports (today College of Physical Culture and Sports of the Saint Petersburg State University).


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: After the liquidation of Avanhard in 1959, in 1960 in Luhansk the October Revolution (OR) Factory team. was established.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: During the already ongoing 1964 season and playing several rounds, on 10 April 1964 the Soviet Football Federation issued its decision about merger of two clubs "Trudovi Rezervy" and OR Factory team (SC Zorya) into FC Zorya Voroshilovhrad.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 1972 Zorya did not only win its only Soviet championship, but also represented, re-enforced with only three players from other clubs, the USSR at the Brazilian Independence Cup ("Taça Independência") mid-year. However, only Volodymyr Onyshchenko represented the club at the Final of the European Football Championship few weeks earlier.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 1992 the club was acquired by a Moscow Science-Production Association "MALS" and participated in the competition of the Ukrainian Top League.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In the season 2005–06 the team won first place in the Persha Liha, and had been promoted to the Vyscha Liha. Zorya was one of the original twenty teams to debut for the first season of the Ukrainian Premier League. The team played for five seasons until the 1995–96 season in which they finished eighteenth and were sent down to the Persha Liha. Zorya relegated to Druha Liha in 1996–97 season but she returned to Persha Liha in 2003–04 season.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In 2016 the team had advanced sufficiently in the standings that they were involved in the European wide play-offs in the UEFA Europa League. In the 2016-17 Europa League season, Zorya Luhansk played group matches against Feyenoord, Fenerbahçe, and Manchester United.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The clubs colours are black and white. In 2010 the club adopted own mascot, a black-white cat which after the club's relocation also moved to Zaporizhia.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The club's current badge was adopted after 2010 and was completely redesigned. In early 1990s the club's badge also carried the brand of local company "MALS". Earlier badges had a silhouette of an oncoming locomotive.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The oldest stadium in Luhansk is Lenin Stadium, built in 1922, and for long time was the main city stadium.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: In March 1951, the Voroshilov Stadium was opened in Luhansk, with a capacity of 7,447 seats. The stadium belonged to the Lokomotiv production association Luhanskteplovoz. In 1961 it was renamed "Avanhard". Since 1962 it became the home for Trudovi Rezervy and later Zorya. In 2000-2002, the stadium was sold and became the property of the city. In 2003, Avanhard was fully renovated.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: Following the Russian aggression against Ukraine, in 2014 Zorya relocated to Zaporizhia where it plays at Slavutych Arena.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: The reserve team of Zorya, Zorya Luhansk Reserves (Ukrainian: ФК «Зоря» Луганськ дубль) are playing in the Ukrainian Premier Reserve League.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: Since 1960 the football championship of the Ukrainian SSR among "teams of masters" was conducted as part of the Class B competitions which at first were second tier and later third tier until completely phased away. Afterwards, Ukrainian football competitions were adopted into one of zones of the Soviet Second League.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: Another all-Ukrainian football competitions among "collectives of physical culture" (KFK) were conducted since 1964 that were ongoing until 1991 and sometimes are confused for the actually championship mentioned before. Neither Trudovi rezervy or Zorya played in competitions among collectives of physical culture", but did play in football championship of Ukrainian SSR which until 1959 was not considered as a competition among teams of masters.


title: FC Zorya Luhansk

text: FC Zorya Luhansk spent 14 seasons in the Soviet top tier including the Class A Group One and the Top League (1967–1979). The club managed to become champions of the Soviet Union in 1972. Following dissolution of the Soviet Union, as Ukrainian club Zorya spent 20 seasons in the Ukrainian top tier including the Top League and the Premier League (1992–1996 and 2006–present).


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Gentoo Linux (pronounced ) is a Linux distribution built using the Portage package management system. Unlike a binary software distribution, the source code is compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for the specific type of computer. Precompiled binaries are available for some larger packages or those with no available source code.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Gentoo Linux was named after the gentoo penguin, the fastest swimming species of penguin. The name was chosen to reflect the potential speed improvements of machine-specific optimization, which is a major feature of Gentoo. Gentoo package management is designed to be modular, portable, easy to maintain, and flexible. Gentoo describes itself as a meta-distribution because of its adaptability, in that the majority of users have configurations and sets of installed programs which are unique to the system and the applications they use.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Gentoo Linux was initially created by Daniel Robbins as the "Enoch Linux" distribution. The goal was to create a distribution without precompiled binaries that was tuned to the hardware and only included required programs. At least one version of Enoch was distributed: version 0.75, in December 1999.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Daniel Robbins and the other contributors experimented with a fork of GCC known as EGCS, developed by Cygnus Solutions. At this point, "Enoch" was renamed "Gentoo" Linux (the gentoo species is the fastest-swimming penguin). The modifications to EGCS eventually became part of the official GCC (version 2.95), and other Linux distributions experienced similar speed increases.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: After problems with a bug on his own system, Robbins halted Gentoo development and switched to FreeBSD for several months, later saying, "I decided to add several FreeBSD features to make our autobuild system (now called Portage) a true next-generation ports system."


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Gentoo Linux 1.0 was released on March 31, 2002. In 2004, Robbins set up the non-profit Gentoo Foundation, transferred all copyrights and trademarks to it, and stepped down as chief architect of the project.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: The current board of trustees is composed of five members who were announced (following an election) on March 2, 2008. There is also a seven-member Gentoo Council that oversees the technical issues and policies of Gentoo. The Gentoo Council members are elected annually, for a period of one year, by the active Gentoo developers. When a member of the Council retires, the successor is voted into place by the existing Council members.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: The Gentoo Foundation is a domestic non-profit corporation, registered in the State of New Mexico. In late 2007, the Foundation's charter was revoked, but by May 2008 the State of New Mexico declared that the Gentoo Foundation, Inc. had returned to good standing and was free to do business.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Gentoo appeals to Linux users who want full control of the software that is installed and running on their computer. People who are prepared to invest the time required to configure and tune a Gentoo system can build very efficient desktops and servers. Gentoo encourages users to build a Linux kernel tailored to their particular hardware. It allows very fine control of which services are installed and running, including the option to choose between systemd or OpenRC as the default init system. Memory usage can also be reduced compared to other distributions by omitting unnecessary kernel features and services.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Gentoo's package repositories provide a large collection of software. Each package contains details of any dependencies, so only the minimum set of packages need to be installed. Optional features of individual packages, such as whether they require LDAP or Qt support, can be selected by the user and any resulting package requirements are automatically included in the set of dependencies.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: As Gentoo does not impose a standard look and feel, installed packages usually appear as their authors intended.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Portage is Gentoo's software distribution and package management system. The original design was based on the ports system used by the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) operating systems. The Gentoo repository contains over 19,000 packages ready for installation in a Gentoo system.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: A single invocation of portage's command can update the local copy of the Gentoo repository, search for a package, or download, compile, and install one or more packages and their dependencies. The built-in features can be set for individual packages, or globally, with so-called "USE flags".


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Pre-compiled binaries are provided for some applications with long build times, such as LibreOffice and Mozilla Firefox, but users lose the ability to customize optional features. There are configuration options to reduce compilation times, such as by enabling parallel compilation or using pipes instead of temporary files. Package compilation may also be distributed over multiple computers. Additionally, the user may be able to mount a large filesystem in memory to further speed up the process of building packages. Some approaches have drawbacks and are not enabled by default. When installing the same package on multiple computers with sufficiently similar hardware, the package may be compiled once and a binary package created for quick installation on the other computers.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: As Gentoo is a source-based distribution with a repository describing how to build the packages, adding instructions to build on different machine architectures is particularly easy.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Originally built on the IA-32 architecture, Gentoo has since been ported to many others. It is officially supported and considered stable on IA-32, x86-64, IA-64, PA-RISC, 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC, 64-bit SPARC, DEC Alpha, and both 32- and 64-bit ARM architectures. It is also officially supported but considered in-development state on MIPS, PS3 Cell Processor, System Z/s390. Official support for 32-bit SPARC hardware and SuperH have been dropped.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Portability towards other operating systems, such as those derived from BSD, including macOS, is under active development by the Gentoo/Alt project. The Gentoo/FreeBSD project already has a working guide based on FreeSBIE, while Gentoo/NetBSD, Gentoo/OpenBSD and Gentoo/DragonFly are being developed. There is also a project to get Portage working on OpenSolaris. There was an unofficial project to create a Gentoo port to GNU Hurd, but it has been inactive since 2006.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: It is also possible to install a Gentoo Prefix (provided by a project that maintains alternative installation methods for Gentoo) in a Cygwin environment on Windows, but this configuration is experimental.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Gentoo may be installed in several ways. The most common way is to use the Gentoo minimal CD with a stage3 tarball (explained below). As with many Linux distributions, Gentoo may be installed from almost any Linux environment, such as another Linux distribution's Live CD, Live USB, or Network Booting using the "Gentoo Alternative Install Guide". A normal install requires a connection to the Internet, but there is also a guide for a network-less install.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: On April 3, 2022, it was announced that there would be a new official image with a GUI, called the LiveGUI image. This can be installed onto installation media such as a USB drive or a dual-layer DVD. It includes a large selection of software, including the KDE Plasma desktop environment, image editors, office software, system administration, and installation tools.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Previously, Gentoo supported installation from stage1 and stage2 tarballs; however, the Gentoo Foundation no longer recommends them. Stage1 and stage2 are meant only for Gentoo developers.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Following the initial install steps, the Gentoo Linux install process in the Gentoo Handbook describes compiling a new Linux kernel. This process is generally not required by other Linux distributions. Although this is widely regarded as a complex task, Gentoo provides documentation and tools such as Genkernel to simplify the process. In addition, users may also use an existing kernel known to work on their system by simply copying it to the boot directory, or installing one of the provided pre-compiled kernel packages, and updating their bootloader. Support for installation is provided on the Gentoo forum, Reddit, and IRC.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: A Live USB of Gentoo Linux can be created manually, by using various tools, or with dd as described in the handbook.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Since October 2005, only the stage3 installations have been officially supported, due to the inherent complexities of bootstrapping from earlier stages (which requires resolving and then breaking numerous circular dependencies). Tarballs for stage1 and stage2 were distributed for some time after this, although the instructions for installing from these stages had been removed from the handbook and moved into the Gentoo FAQ. , only the supported stage3 tarballs are publicly available; stage1 and stage2 tarballs are only "officially" generated and used internally by Gentoo development teams. However, if so desired, a user may still rebuild the toolchain or reinstall the base system software during or after a normal stage3 installation, effectively simulating the old bootstrap process.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: From 2003 until 2008, the Gentoo Reference Platform (GRP) was a snapshot of prebuilt packages that users could quickly install during the Gentoo installation process, to give faster access to a fully functional Gentoo installation. These packages included KDE, X Window System, OpenOffice, GNOME, and Mozilla. Once the installation was complete, the packages installed as part of the GRP were intended to be replaced by the user with the same or newer versions built through Portage that would be built using the user's system configuration rather than the generic builds provided by the GRP. As of 2011, the GRP is discontinued, the final reference to it appearing in the 2008.0 handbook.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Like other Linux distributions, Gentoo systems have an codice_1 file, but this contains the version of the installed codice_2 package.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: In 2004, Gentoo began to version its Live media by year rather than numerically. This continued until 2008, when it was announced that the 2008.1 Live CD release had been cancelled in favour of weekly automated builds of both Stages 3 and Minimal CDs. On December 20, 2008, the first weekly builds were published. In 2009, a special Live DVD was created to celebrate the Gentoo 10-year anniversary.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: In 2009, a special Live DVD was released to celebrate Gentoo's tenth anniversary. Initially planned as a one-off, the Live DVD was updated to the latest package versions in 2011 due to its popularity among new users.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Although Gentoo does not have a concept of versioning the entire system, it does make use of "profiles", which define build configuration for all packages in the system. Major changes, such as changing the layout of how files are installed across the entire system, typically involve a profile upgrade and may require rebuilding all installed software. These profiles are versioned based on the year they were released, and include several variants for each release targeted towards different types of systems (such as servers and desktops). Profiles formerly tracked the versioning of install media, and switched to two-digit year naming after the discontinuation of versioned media. The following new profile versions have been released after 2008.0:


title: Gentoo Linux

text: Hardened Gentoo is a project designed to develop and designate a set of add-ons that are useful when a more security focused installation is required. Previously, the project included patches to produce a hardened kernel, but these were discontinued. Other parts of the hardened set, such as SELinux, and userspace hardening remain.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: In June 2018 the Gentoo GitHub code repository mirror used mainly by developers was hacked after an attacker gained access to an organization administrator's account via deducing the password. Gentoo promptly responded by containing the attack and improving security practices. No Gentoo cryptography keys or signed packages were compromised, and the repository was restored after five days.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: The gentoo penguin is thought to be the fastest underwater-swimming penguin. The name "Gentoo Linux" acknowledges both the Linux mascot a penguin called Tux and the project's aim to produce a high-performance operating system.


title: Gentoo Linux

text: The official Gentoo logo is a stylized 'g' resembling a silver magatama. Unofficial mascots include "Larry The Cow" and "Znurt the Flying Saucer".


title: Gentoo Linux

text: There are a number of independently developed variants of Gentoo Linux, including Chromium OS and Container Linux.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: Pauline Perpetua Sheen ( Quirke; born 8 July 1959) is an English actress who has played Sharon Theodopolopodous in the long-running comedy series "Birds of a Feather" (1988–1999, 2014–2017). For this role, she won the 1990 British Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. She was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for her role in the 1996 BBC miniseries "The Sculptress". Her other television credits include "Maisie Raine" (1998–1999), "Down to Earth" (2000–2003), "Emmerdale" (2010–2012) and "Broadchurch" (2013–2015).


title: Pauline Quirke

text: Quirke began her career as a child actress with an appearance in "Dixon of Dock Green." Another early role was that of an autistic teenager in the 1975 TV drama "Jenny Can't Work Any Faster".


title: Pauline Quirke

text: By 1976 she had her own TV show, "Pauline's Quirkes", on Thames Television, which featured pop music, teenage topics, and comedy sketches. This was also the first television show in which Quirke and Linda Robson appeared together regularly. In 1976 she played the lead role in the "Special Offer" episode of ATV's "Beasts", by Nigel Kneale, also starring Wensley Pithey and Martin Shaw. Quirke also had a small role in the movie "The Elephant Man" in 1980. Quirke played Veronica in "Shine on Harvey Moon" in 1982.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: Quirke's big break came in 1989, when she began playing the part of Sharon Theodopolopodous in the BBC sitcom "Birds of a Feather" with Linda Robson and Lesley Joseph. The series ran on the BBC from 1989 to 1998 and was resurrected on ITV between 2014 and 2017, with a final episode in December 2020 in which Quirke did not appear.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: From 1994 to 1999, Quirke appeared in a series of Surf adverts with Linda Robson, and the pair worked together on the BBC documentary series "Jobs for the Girls". In 1996, she starred in the BBC television adaptation of "The Sculptress" by Minette Walters, receiving much critical acclaim for her performance, including a British Academy TV Award nomination for Best Actress. When "Birds of a Feather" ended, Quirke began playing DI Maisie Raine in "Maisie Raine", a drama series for BBC One, which ran in 1998 and 1999.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: From 2000 to 2003, Quirke starred opposite Warren Clarke in the BBC series "Down to Earth". She made a return to comedy in 2000 when she starred with Neil Stuke, Robert Daws and Pippa Haywood in BBC sitcom "Office Gossip". After a start with over six million viewers, the show found its ratings dropped and it was cancelled after only one series. However, Quirke was nominated for "Most Popular Comedy Performer" at the National Television Awards for her role. In 2002, she starred alongside Nitin Ganatra in "Being April", a comedy drama for BBC One. Quirke appeared in "Carrie's War" in 2004 and in 2005, played a major role in "The Bill" as Cath Wilson, a woman wrongly convicted of murdering a child.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: In 2006, Quirke played Colleen McCabe in "The Thieving Headmistress" and in 2008, she appeared in an episode of "My Family" as Sharon the Bank Robber. Quirke has frequently been seen in the audience of "Strictly Come Dancing" and has appeared on its companion show "" more than once. She was a contestant on BBC's "Celebrity MasterChef" in June 2007, but was disqualified for creating a dish that was described by Loyd Grossman as "in no way resembling a meal".


title: Pauline Quirke

text: In 2009 and 2010, she played the lead role in the BBC daytime drama series "Missing" as DS Mary Jane "MJ" Croft, head of a Missing Persons Unit. In May 2010, it was announced that Quirke would be joining the rural soap opera "Emmerdale" as Hazel Rhodes, the mother of established character, Jackson Walsh. Quirke said, "I've never done anything like this before so it's something different for me and I'm very happy to be a part of it." On 16 May 2011, it was announced that Quirke had decided to quit "Emmerdale". Her character left on 25 January 2012.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: From 2013 to 2015, Quirke had a recurring role as Susan Wright in ITV drama series "Broadchurch", appearing in all eight episodes of the first series and returning to feature in two of the eight episodes of the second series. Her pet Labrador, Bailey, also appeared in the programme. She was a guest panellist on "Loose Women" on two occasions.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: In 2015, she played the role of Paula Winton in the ten-part comedy thriller "You, Me and the Apocalypse" for Sky1.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: Quirke decided not to be involved in the final episode of "Birds of a Feather" in December 2020, to concentrate on her Performing Arts Academies.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2022 Birthday Honours for services to young people, the entertainment industry and charity.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: Quirke has two children, Emily and Charlie (who stars as Travis in "Birds of a Feather") and is married to producer Steve Sheen who also worked on "Birds of a Feather" as an executive producer from 2014 until 2017. During an appearance on "The Paul O'Grady Show" in 2007, Quirke told of how she suffers from severe stage fright and nerves and she usually refuses to appear on live television shows.


title: Pauline Quirke

text: In 2007 The Pauline Quirke Academy of Performing Arts opened its doors at various locations across the UK. Quirke set this up as an extracurricular centre for young people who want to learn performing arts.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity (c. 1896–1916), these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface, which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. In the 1910s, the competing disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In December 1877, Thomas Edison and his team invented the phonograph using a thin sheet of tin foil wrapped around a hand-cranked, grooved metal cylinder. Tin foil was not a practical recording medium for either commercial or artistic purposes, and the crude hand-cranked phonograph was only marketed as a novelty, to little or no profit. Edison moved on to developing a practical incandescent electric light, and the next improvements to sound recording technology were made by others.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Following seven years of research and experimentation at their Volta Laboratory, Charles Sumner Tainter, Alexander Graham Bell, and Chichester Bell introduced wax as the recording medium, and engraving, rather than indenting, as the recording method. In 1887, their "Graphophone" system was being put to the test of practical use by official reporters of the US Congress, with commercial units later being produced by the Dictaphone Corporation. After this system was demonstrated to Edison's representatives, Edison quickly resumed work on the phonograph. He settled on a thicker all-wax cylinder, the surface of which could be repeatedly shaved down for reuse. Both the Graphophone and Edison's "Perfected Phonograph" were commercialized in 1888. Eventually, a patent-sharing agreement was signed and the wax-coated cardboard tubes were abandoned in favor of Edison's all-wax cylinders as an interchangeable standard format.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Beginning in 1889, prerecorded wax cylinders were marketed. These have professionally made recordings of songs, instrumental music or humorous monologues in their grooves. At first, the only customers for them were proprietors of nickelodeons—the first jukeboxes—installed in arcades and taverns, but within a few years, private owners of phonographs were increasingly buying them for home use. Unlike later, shorter-playing high-speed cylinders, early cylinder recordings were usually cut at a speed of about 120 rpm and can play for as long as three minutes. They were made of a relatively soft wax formulation and would wear out after they were played a few dozen times. The buyer could then use a mechanism which left their surfaces shaved smooth so new recordings could be made on them.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Cylinder machines of the late 1880s and the 1890s were usually sold with recording attachments. The ability to record as well as play back sound was an advantage of cylinder phonographs over the competition from cheaper disc record phonographs, which began to be mass-marketed at the end of the 1890s, as the disc system machines could be used only to play back prerecorded sound.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In the earliest stages of phonograph manufacturing, various incompatible, competing types of cylinder recordings were made. A standard system was decided upon by Edison Records, Columbia Phonograph, and other companies in the late 1880s. The standard cylinders are about long, in diameter, and play about two minutes of recorded material.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Over the years, the type of wax used in cylinders was improved and hardened, so that cylinders could be played with good quality over 100 times. In 1902, Edison Records launched a line of improved, hard wax cylinders marketed as "Edison Gold Moulded Records". The major development of this line of cylinders is that Edison had developed a process that allowed a mold to be made from a master cylinder, which then permitted the production of several hundred cylinders to be made from the mold. The process was labeled "Gold Moulded" because of the gold vapor that was given off by gold electrodes used in the process.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Originally, all cylinders sold needed to be recorded live on the softer brown wax, which wore out after as few as 20 plays. Later cylinders were reproduced either mechanically or by linking phonographs together with rubber tubes.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: The earliest soft wax cylinders were sold wrapped in thick cotton batting. Later, molded hard-wax cylinders were sold in boxes with a cotton lining. Celluloid cylinders were sold in unlined boxes. These protective boxes were normally kept and used to house the cylinders after purchase. Their general appearance allowed bandleader John Philip Sousa to deride their contents as "canned music", an epithet he borrowed from Mark Twain.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: On March 20, 1900, Thomas B. Lambert was granted a US patent (645,920) that described a process for mass-producing cylinders made from celluloid, an early hard plastic. ( of France was producing celluloid cylinders as early as 1893, but they were individually recorded rather than molded.) That same year, the Lambert Company of Chicago began selling cylinder records made of the material. They would not break if dropped and could be played thousands of times without wearing out. The color was changed to black in 1903, but brown and blue cylinders were also produced. The coloring was purportedly because the dyes reduced surface noise. Unlike wax, the hard, inflexible material could not be shaved and recorded over, but it had the advantage of being nearly permanent.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: This superior technology was licensed by the Indestructible Record Company in 1906 and Columbia Phonograph Company in 1908. The Edison Bell company in Europe had separately licensed the technology and were able to market Edison's titles in both wax (popular series) and celluloid (indestructible series).


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In late 1908, Edison had introduced wax cylinders that played for nominally 4 minutes (instead of the usual 2) under the "Amberol" brand. They were made from a harder (and more fragile) form of wax to withstand the smaller stylus used to play them. The longer playing time was achieved by reducing the groove size and placing them half as far apart. In 1912, the Edison company eventually acquired Lambert's patents to the celluloid technology, and almost immediately started production under a variation of their existing "Amberol" brand as "Edison Blue Amberol Records".


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Edison designed several phonograph types, both with internal and external horns for playing these improved cylinder records. The internal horn models were called "Amberolas". Edison marketed its "Fireside" model phonograph with a gearshift and a 'model K' reproducer with two different styli, which allowed it to play both two-minute and four-minute cylinders.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Cylinder records continued to compete with the growing disc record market into the 1910s, when discs won the commercial battle. In 1912, Columbia Records, which had been selling both discs and cylinders, dropped the cylinder format, while Edison introduced his Diamond Disc format, played with a diamond stylus. Beginning in 1915, new Edison cylinder issues consisted of re-recordings from Edison discs; they therefore had lower audio quality than the disc originals. Although his cylinders continued to be sold in steadily dwindling and eventually minuscule quantities, Edison continued to support the owners of cylinder phonographs by making new titles available in that format until the company ceased manufacturing all records and phonographs in November 1929.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Cylinder phonograph technology continued to be used for Dictaphone and Ediphone recordings for office use for decades.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In 1947, Dictaphone replaced wax cylinders with their Dictabelt technology, which cut a mechanical groove into a plastic belt instead of into a wax cylinder. This was later replaced by magnetic tape recording. However, cylinders for older style dictating machines continued to be available for some years, and it was not unusual to encounter cylinder dictating machines into the 1950s.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In the late 20th and early 21st century, new recordings have been made on cylinders for the novelty effect of using obsolete technology. Probably the most famous of these are by They Might Be Giants, who in 1996 recorded "I Can Hear You" and three other songs, performed without electricity, on an 1898 Edison wax recording studio phonograph at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, New Jersey. This song was released on "Factory Showroom" in 1996 and re-released on the 2002 compilation "". The other songs recorded were "James K. Polk", "Maybe I Know", and "The Edison Museum", the last a song about the site of the recording. These recordings were officially released online as MP3 files in 2001.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Small numbers of cylinders have been manufactured in the 21st century out of modern long-lasting materials. Two companies engaged in such enterprise are the Vulcan Cylinder Record Company of Sheffield, England, and the Wizard Cylinder Records Company in Baldwin, New York.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In 2010 the British steampunk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing released the track "Sewer", from their debut album, "Now That's What I Call Steampunk! Volume 1" on a wax cylinder in a limited edition of 40, of which only 30 were put on sale. The box set came with instructions on how to make your own cylinder player for less than £20. The BBC covered the release on Television on BBC Click, on BBC Online, and on Radio 5 Live.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In June 2017 the Cthulhu Breakfast Club podcast released a special limited wax cylinder edition of a show.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Because of the nature of the recording medium, playback of many cylinders can cause degradation of the recording. The replay of cylinders diminishes their fidelity and degrades their recorded signals. Additionally, when exposed to humidity, mold can penetrate a cylinder's surface and cause the recording to have surface noise. Currently, the only professional machines manufactured for the playback of cylinder recordings are the Archéophone player, designed by Henri Chamoux and the "Endpoint Cylinder and Dictabelt Machine" by Nicholas Bergh. The Archéophone is used by the Edison National Historic Site, Bowling Green State University (Bowling Green, Ohio), The Department of Special Collections, Donald C Davidson Library at The University of California, Santa Barbara, and many other libraries and archives, including the Endpoint by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: In an attempt to preserve the historic content of the recordings, cylinders can be read with a confocal microscope and converted to a digital audio format. The resulting sound clip in most cases sounds better than stylus playback from the original cylinder. Having an electronic version of the original recordings enables archivists to open access to the recordings to a wider audience. This technique also has the potential to allow for reconstruction of damaged or broken cylinders.


title: Phonograph cylinder

text: Audio/video recordings of a recording and playback demonstration at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park in West Orange, New Jersey.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar (; , ; ; ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable." His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning". Some scholars in the modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival Bacchylides; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet himself. His poetry, while admired by critics, still challenges the casual reader and his work is largely unread among the general public.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar was the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poet's role. His poetry illustrates the beliefs and values of Archaic Greece at the dawn of the Classical period. Like other poets of the Archaic Age, he has a profound sense of the vicissitudes of life, but he also articulates a passionate faith in what men can achieve by the grace of the gods, most famously expressed in the conclusion to one of his Victory Odes:


title: Pindar

text: Five ancient sources contain all the recorded details of Pindar's life. One of them is a short biography discovered in 1961 on an Egyptian papyrus dating from at least 200 AD (P.Oxy.2438). The other four are collections that weren't finalized until some 1600 years after his death:


title: Pindar

text: Although these sources are based on a much older literary tradition, going as far back as Chamaeleon of Heraclea in the 4th century BC, they are generally viewed with scepticism today: much of the material is clearly fanciful. Scholars both ancient and modern have turned to Pindar's own workhis victory odes in particularas a source of biographical information: some of the poems touch on historic events and can be accurately dated. The 1962 publication of Elroy Bundy's ground-breaking work "Studia Pindarica" led to a change in scholarly opinion—the Odes were no longer seen as expressions of Pindar's personal thoughts and feelings, but rather as public statements "dedicated to the single purpose of eulogizing men and communities." It has been claimed that biographical interpretations of the poems are due to a "fatal conjunction" of historicism and Romanticism. In other words, we know almost nothing about Pindar's life based on either traditional sources or his own poems. However, the pendulum of intellectual fashion has begun to change direction again, and cautious use of the poems for some biographical purposes is considered acceptable once more.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar was born circa 518 BC (the 65th Olympiad) in Cynoscephalae, a village in Boeotia, not far from Thebes. His father's name is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus, and his mother's name was Cleodice. It is told that he was stung on the mouth by a bee in his youth and this was the reason he became a poet of honey-like verses (an identical fate has been ascribed to other poets of the archaic period). Pindar was about twenty years old in 498 BC when he was commissioned by the ruling family in Thessaly to compose his first victory ode ("Pythian 10"). He studied the art of lyric poetry in Athens, where his tutor was Lasos of Hermione, and he is also said to have received some helpful criticism from Corinna.


title: Pindar

text: The early-to-middle years of Pindar's career coincided with the Greco-Persian Wars during the reigns of Darius and Xerxes. This period included the first Persian invasion of Greece, which ending at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, and second Persian invasion of Greece (480-479 BC). During the second invasion, when Pindar was almost forty years old, Thebes was occupied by Xerxes' general, Mardonius, who with many Theban aristocrats subsequently perished at the Battle of Plataea. It is possible that Pindar spent much of this time at Aegina. His choice of residence during the earlier invasion in 490 BC is not known, but he was able to attend the Pythian Games for that year, where he first met the Sicilian prince, Thrasybulus, nephew of Theron of Acragas. Thrasybulus had driven the winning chariot and he and Pindar were to form a lasting friendship, paving the way for his subsequent visit to Sicily.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar seems to have used his odes to advance his, and his friends', personal interests. In 462 BC he composed two odes in honour of Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, ("Pythians 4 and 5"), pleading for the return from exile of a friend, Demophilus. In the latter ode Pindar proudly mentions his own ancestry, which he shared with the king, as an Aegeid or descendant of Aegeus, the legendary king of Athens. The clan was influential in many parts of the Greek world, having intermarried with ruling families in Thebes, in Lacedaemonia, and in cities that claimed Lacedaemonian descent, such as Cyrene and Thera. The historian Herodotus considered the clan important enough to deserve mention ("Histories" IV.147). Membership of this clan possibly contributed to Pindar's success as a poet, and it informed his political views, which are marked by a conservative preference for oligarchic governments of the Doric kind.


title: Pindar

text: Pindar might not actually claim to be an Aegeid since his 'I' statements do not necessarily refer to himself. The Aegeid clan did however have a branch in Thebes, and his reference to 'my ancestors' in Pythian 5 could have been spoken on behalf of both Arcesilas and himselfhe may have used this ambivalence to establish a personal link with his patrons.


title: Pindar

text: He was possibly the Theban proxenos or consul for Aegina and/or Molossia, as indicated in another of his odes, Nemean 7, in which he glorifies Neoptolemus, a national hero of Aegina and Molossia. According to tradition, Neoptolemus died disgracefully in a fight with priests at the temple in Delphi over their share of some sacrificial meat. Pindar diplomatically glosses over this and concludes mysteriously with an earnest protestation of innocence"But shall my heart never admit that I with words none can redeem dishonoured Neoptolemus". Possibly he was responding to anger among Aeginetans and/or Molossians over his portrayal of Neoptolemus in an earlier poem, "Paean 6", which had been commissioned by the priests at Delphi and which depicted the hero's death in traditional terms, as divine retribution for his crimes.


title: Pindar

text: Some doubt this biographical interpretation of "Nemean 7" since it is largely based on marginal comments by scholiasts and Pindaric scholiasts are often unreliable. The fact that Pindar gave different versions of the myth may simply reflect the needs of different genres, and does not necessarily indicate a personal dilemma. "Nemean 7" in fact is the most controversial and obscure of Pindar's victory odes, and scholars ancient and modern have been ingenious and imaginative in their attempts to explain it, so far with no agreed success.


title: Pindar

text: In his first Pythian ode, composed in 470 BC in honour of the Sicilian tyrant Hieron, Pindar celebrated a series of victories by Greeks against foreign invaders: Athenian and Spartan-led victories against Persia at Salamis and Plataea, and victories by the western Greeks led by Theron of Acragas and Hieron against the Carthaginians and Etruscans at the battles of Himera and Cumae. Such celebrations were not appreciated by his fellow Thebans: they had sided with the Persians and had incurred many losses and privations as a result of their defeat. His praise of Athens with such epithets as "bulwark of Hellas" ("fragment 76") and "city of noble name and sunlit splendour" (Nemean 5) induced the authorities in Thebes to fine him 5,000 drachmae, to which the Athenians are said to have responded with a gift of 10,000 drachmae. According to another account, the Athenians even made him their proxenus or consul in Thebes. His association with the fabulously rich Hieron was another source of annoyance at home. It was probably in response to Theban sensitivities over this issue that he denounced the rule of tyrants (i.e. rulers like Hieron) in an ode composed shortly after a visit to Hieron's sumptuous court in 476–75 BC ("Pythian 11").


title: Pindar

text: Pindar's actual phrasing in "Pythian 11" was "I deplore the lot of tyrants" and though this was traditionally interpreted as an apology for his dealings with Sicilian tyrants like Hieron, an alternative date for the ode has led some scholars to conclude that it was in fact a covert reference to the tyrannical behaviour of the Athenians, although this interpretation is ruled out if we accept the earlier note about covert references. According to yet another interpretation Pindar is simply delivering a formulaic warning to the successful athlete to avoid hubris. It is highly unlikely that Pindar ever acted for Athenians as their proxenus or consul in Thebes.


title: Pindar

text: Lyric verse was conventionally accompanied by music and dance, and Pindar himself wrote the music and choreographed the dances for his victory odes. Sometimes he trained the performers at his home in Thebes, and sometimes he trained them at the venue where they performed. Commissions took him to all parts of the Greek worldto the Panhellenic festivals in mainland Greece (Olympia, Delphi, Corinth and Nemea), westwards to Sicily, eastwards to the seaboard of Asia Minor, north to Macedonia and Abdera ("Paean 2") and south to Cyrene on the African coast. Other poets at the same venues vied with him for the favours of patrons. His poetry sometimes reflects this rivalry. For example, "Olympian 2" and "Pythian 2", composed in honour of the Sicilian tyrants Theron and Hieron following his visit to their courts in 476–75 BC, refer respectively to "ravens" and an "ape", apparently signifying rivals who were engaged in a campaign of smears against himpossibly the poets Simonides and his nephew Bacchylides. Pindar's original treatment of narrative myth, often relating events in reverse chronological order, is said to have been a favourite target for criticism. Simonides was known to charge high fees for his work and Pindar is said to have alluded to this in "Isthmian 2", where he refers to the Muse as "a hireling journeyman". He appeared in many poetry competitions and was defeated five times by his compatriot, the poet Corinna, in revenge of which he called her "Boeotian sow" in one of his odes ("Olympian" 6. 89f.).


title: Pindar

text: It was assumed by ancient sources that Pindar's odes were performed by a chorus, but this has been challenged by some modern scholars, who argue that the odes were in fact performed solo. It is not known how commissions were arranged, nor if the poet travelled widely: even when poems include statements like "I have come" it is not certain that this was meant literally. Uncomplimentary references to Bacchylides and Simonides were found by scholiasts but there is no reason to accept their interpretation of the odes. In fact, some scholars have interpreted the allusions to fees in "Isthmian 2" as a request by Pindar for payment of fees owed to himself. His defeats by Corinna were probably invented by ancient commentators to account for the "Boeotian sow" remark, a phrase moreover that was completely misunderstood by scholiasts, since Pindar was scoffing at a reputation that all Boeotians had for stupidity.


title: Pindar

text: His fame as a poet drew Pindar into Greek politics. Athens, the most important city in Greece throughout his poetic career, was a rival of his home city, Thebes, and also of the island state Aegina, whose leading citizens commissioned about a quarter of his Victory Odes. There is no open condemnation of the Athenians in any of his poems but criticism is implied. For example, the victory ode mentioned above ("Pythian 8") describes the downfall of the giants Porphyrion and Typhon and this might be Pindar's way of covertly celebrating a recent defeat of Athens by Thebes at the Battle of Coronea (447 BC). The poem ends with a prayer for Aegina's freedom, long threatened by Athenian ambitions.


title: Pindar

text: Covert criticism of Athens (traditionally located in odes such as "Pythian" 8, "Nemean" 8 and "Isthmian" 7) is now dismissed as highly unlikely, even by scholars who allow some biographical and historical interpretations of the poems.


title: Pindar

text: One of his last odes ("Pythian 8") indicates that he lived near a shrine to the oracle Alcmaeon and that he stored some of his wealth there. In the same ode he says that he had recently received a prophecy from Alcmaeon during a journey to Delphi ("...he met me and proved the skills of prophecy that all his race inherit") but he does not reveal what the long-dead prophet said to him nor in what form he appeared. The ode was written to commemorate a victory by an athlete from Aegina.