Historical context.

Pre-Keynesian macroeconomics.

Macroeconomics is the study of the factors applying to an economy as a whole, such as the overall price level, the interest rate, and the level of employment (or equivalently, of income/output measured in real terms).  The classical tradition of partial equilibrium theory had been to split the economy into separate markets, each of whose equilibrium conditions could be stated as a single equation determining a single variable. The theoretical apparatus

Precursors of Keynesianism.

Although Keynes's work was crystallized and given impetus by the advent of the Great Depression, it was part of a long-running debate within economics over the existence and nature of general gluts. A number of the policies Keynes advocated to address the Great Depression (notably government deficit spending at times of low private investment or consumption), and many of the theoretical ideas he proposed (effective demand, the multiplier, the paradox of thrift), had been advanced by various authors in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Keynes's unique contribution was to provide a "general theory" of these, which proved acceptable to the economic establishment.  An intellectual precursor of Keynesian economics

Keynes's early writings.

In 1923 Keynes published his first contribution to economic theory, "A Tract on Monetary Reform", whose point of view is classical but incorporates ideas that later played a part in the "General Theory". In particular, looking at the hyperinflation in European economies, he drew attention to the opportunity cost of holding money (identified with inflation rather than interest) and its influence on the velocity of circulation.  In 1930 he published "A Treatise on Money", intended as a comprehensive treatment of its subject "which would confirm his stature as

Development of "The General Theory".

At the time that Keynes's wrote the General Theory, it had been a tenet of mainstream economic thought that the economy would automatically revert to a state of general equilibrium: it had been assumed that, because the needs of consumers are always greater than the capacity of the producers to satisfy those needs, everything that is produced would eventually be consumed once the appropriate price was found for it. This perception is reflected in Say's law and in the writing of David Ricardo, which states that individuals produce so that they can either consume what they have manufactured or sell their output so that they can buy someone else's output. This argument rests upon the assumption that if a surplus of goods or services exists, they would naturally drop in price to the point where they would be consumed.  Given the backdrop of high and persistent unemployment during the Great Depression, Keynes argued that there was no

Origins of the multiplier.

The Liberal Party fought the 1929 General Election on a promise to "reduce levels of unemployment to normal within one year by utilising the stagnant labour force in vast schemes of national development". David Lloyd George launched his campaign in March with a policy document, "We can cure unemployment," which tentatively claimed that, "Public works would lead to a second round of spending as the workers spent their wages." Two months later Keynes, then nearing completion of his "Treatise on money", and Hubert Henderson collaborated on a political pamphlet seeking to "provide academically respectable economic arguments" for Lloyd George's policies. It was titled "Can Lloyd George do it?" and endorsed the claim that "greater trade activity would make for greater trade activity... with a cumulative effect". This became the mechanism of the "ratio" published by Richard Kahn in his 1931 paper "The relation of home investment to

Public policy debates.

As the 1929 election approached "Keynes was becoming a strong public advocate of capital development" as a public measure to alleviate unemployment. Winston Churchill, the Conservative Chancellor, took the opposite view: It is the orthodox Treasury dogma, steadfastly held... [that] very little additional employment and no permanent additional employment can, in fact, be created by State borrowing and State expenditure. Keynes pounced on a chink in the Treasury view. Cross-examining Sir Richard Hopkins, a Second Secretary in the Treasury, before the Macmillan Committee on Finance and Industry in 1930 he referred to the "first proposition" that "schemes of capital development are of no use for reducing unemployment" and asked whether "it would be a misunderstanding of the Treasury view to say that they hold to the first proposition". Hopkins responded that "The first proposition goes much too far. The first proposition would ascribe to us an absolute

The "General Theory".

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) set forward the ideas that became the basis for Keynesian economics in his main work, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" (1936). It was written during the Great Depression, when unemployment rose to 25% in the United States and as high as 33% in some countries. It is almost wholly theoretical, enlivened by occasional passages of satire and social commentary. The book had a profound impact on economic thought, and ever since it was published there has been debate over its meaning.

Keynes and classical economics.

Keynes begins the "General Theory" with a summary of the classical theory of employment, which he encapsulates in his formulation of Say's Law as the dictum "Supply creates its own demand".  Under the classical theory, the wage rate is determined by the marginal productivity of labour, and as many people are employed as are willing to work at that rate. Unemployment may arise through friction or may be "voluntary," in the sense that it arises from a refusal to accept employment owing to "legislation or social practices... or mere human obstinacy", but "...the classical postulates do not

Keynesian unemployment.

Saving and investment.

Saving is that part of income not devoted to consumption, and consumption is that part of expenditure not allocated to investment, i.e., to durable goods. Hence saving encompasses hoarding (the accumulation of income as cash) and the purchase of durable goods. The existence of net hoarding, or of a demand to hoard, is not admitted by the simplified liquidity preference model of the "General Theory".  Once he rejects the classical theory that unemployment is due to excessive wages, Keynes proposes an alternative based on the relationship between saving and investment. In his view, unemployment arises whenever entrepreneurs' incentive to invest fails to keep pace with society's propensity

Liquidity preference.

Keynes viewed the money supply as one of the main determinants of the state of the real economy. The significance he attributed to it is one of the innovative features of his work, and was influential on the politically hostile monetarist school.  Money supply comes into play through the "liquidity preference" function, which

Keynes’s economic model.

Money supply, saving and investment combine to determine the level of income as illustrated in the diagram, where the top graph shows money supply (on the vertical axis) against interest rate. "M̂" determines the ruling interest rate "r̂" through the liquidity preference function. The rate of interest determines the level of investment "Î" through the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital, shown as a blue curve in the lower graph. The

Wage rigidity.

Keynes rejects the classical explanation of unemployment based on wage rigidity, but it is not clear what effect the wage rate has on unemployment in his system. He treats wages of all workers as proportional to a single rate set by collective bargaining, and chooses his units so that this rate never appears separately in his discussion. It is present implicitly in those quantities he expresses in wage units, while being absent from those he expresses in money terms. It is therefore difficult to see whether, and in what way, his results differ for a different wage rate, nor is it entirely clear what he thought about the matter.

Remedies for unemployment.

Monetary remedies.

An increase in the money supply, according to Keynes's theory, leads to a drop in the

Fiscal remedies.

Keynes' name is associated with fiscal, rather than monetary, measures but they receive only passing (and often satirical) reference in the "General Theory". He mentions "increased public works" as an example of something that brings employment through the "multiplier", but this is before he develops the relevant theory, and he does not follow up when he gets to the theory.  Later in the same chapter he tells us that: Ancient Egypt was doubly fortunate, and doubtless owed to this its fabled wealth, in that it possessed two activities, namely, pyramid-building as well as the search

Keynesian models and concepts.

Aggregate demand.

Keynes' view of saving and investment was his most important departure from the classical outlook. It can be illustrated using the "Keynesian cross" devised by Paul Samuelson. The horizontal axis denotes total income and the purple curve shows "C" ("Y" ), the propensity to consume, whose complement "S" ("Y" ) is the propensity to save: the sum of these two functions is equal to total income, which is shown by the broken line at 45°.  The horizontal blue line "I" ("r" ) is the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital whose value is independent of "Y". Keynes interprets this as the demand for investment and denotes the sum of demands for consumption and investment as "aggregate demand", plotted as a separate curve. Aggregate demand must equal total

The Keynesian multiplier.

Keynes introduces his discussion of the multiplier in Chapter 10 with a reference to Kahn's earlier paper (see below). He designates Kahn's multiplier the "employment multiplier" in distinction to his own "investment multiplier" and says that the two are only "a little different". Kahn's multiplier has consequently been understood by much of the Keynesian literature as playing a major role in Keynes's own theory, an interpretation encouraged by the difficulty of understanding Keynes's presentation. Kahn's multiplier gives the title ("The multiplier model")

The liquidity trap.

The liquidity trap is a phenomenon that may impede the effectiveness of monetary policies in reducing unemployment.  Economists generally think the rate of interest will not fall below a certain limit, often seen as zero or a slightly negative number. Keynes suggested that the limit might be appreciably greater than zero but did not attach much practical significance to it. The term "liquidity trap" was coined by Dennis Robertson in his comments on the "General Theory", but it was John Hicks in "Mr. Keynes and the Classics" who recognised the significance of a slightly different concept.  If the economy is in a position such

The IS–LM model.

Hicks showed how to analyze Keynes' system when liquidity preference is a function of income as well as of the rate of interest. Keynes's admission of income as an influence on the demand for money is a step back in the direction of classical theory, and Hicks takes a further step in the same direction by generalizing the propensity to save to take both "Y" and "r" as arguments. Less classically he extends this generalization to the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital.  The IS-LM model uses two equations to express Keynes' model. The first, now written "I" ("Y", "r" ) = "S" ("Y","r" ), expresses the principle of effective demand. We may construct

Keynesian economic policies.

Active fiscal policy.

Keynes argued that the solution to the Great Depression was to stimulate the country ("incentive to invest") through some combination of two approaches:  If the interest rate at which businesses and consumers can borrow decreases, investments that were previously uneconomic become profitable, and large consumer sales normally financed through debt (such as houses, automobiles, and, historically, even appliances like refrigerators) become more affordable. A principal function of central banks in countries that have them is to influence this interest rate through a variety of mechanisms collectively called "monetary policy". This is how monetary policy that reduces interest rates is thought to stimulate economic activity, i.e., "grow the economy"—and why it is called "expansionary" monetary policy.  Expansionary fiscal policy consists of increasing net public spending, which the

Views on trade imbalance.

In the last few years of his life, John Maynard Keynes was much preoccupied with the question of balance in international trade. He was the leader of the British delegation to the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference in 1944 that established the Bretton Woods system of international currency management. He was the principal author of a proposal – the so-called Keynes Plan – for an International Clearing Union. The two governing principles of the plan were that the problem of settling outstanding balances should be solved by 'creating' additional 'international money', and that debtor and creditor

Postwar Keynesianism.

Keynes's ideas became widely accepted after World War II, and until the early 1970s, Keynesian economics provided the main inspiration for economic policy makers in Western industrialized countries. Governments prepared high quality economic statistics on an ongoing basis and tried to base their policies on the Keynesian theory that had become the norm. In the early era of social liberalism and social democracy, most western capitalist countries enjoyed low, stable unemployment and modest inflation, an era called the Golden Age of Capitalism.  In terms of policy, the twin tools of post-war Keynesian economics were fiscal policy and monetary policy. While these are credited to Keynes, others, such as economic historian David Colander, argue that they are, rather, due to the interpretation of Keynes by Abba Lerner in his theory of functional finance, and should instead be called "Lernerian" rather than "Keynesian".  Through the 1950s, moderate degrees of government demand leading industrial development, and use of fiscal and monetary counter-cyclical policies continued, and reached a peak in the "go go" 1960s, where it seemed to many Keynesians that prosperity was now permanent. In 1971, Republican US President Richard Nixon even proclaimed "I am now a Keynesian in economics."  Beginning in the late 1960s, a new classical macroeconomics movement arose, critical of Keynesian assumptions (see sticky prices), and seemed, especially in the 1970s, to explain certain phenomena better. It was characterized by explicit and rigorous adherence to microfoundations, as well as use of increasingly sophisticated mathematical modelling.  With the oil shock of 1973, and the economic problems of the 1970s, Keynesian economics began to fall out of favour. During this time, many economies experienced high and rising unemployment, coupled with high and rising inflation, contradicting the Phillips curve's prediction. This stagflation meant that the simultaneous application of expansionary (anti-recession) and contractionary (anti-inflation) policies appeared necessary. This dilemma led to the end of the Keynesian near-consensus of the 1960s, and the rise throughout the 1970s of ideas based upon more classical analysis, including monetarism, supply-side economics, and new classical economics.  However, by the late 1980s, certain failures of the new classical models, both theoretical (see Real business cycle theory) and empirical (see the "Volcker recession") hastened the emergence of New Keynesian economics, a school that sought to unite the most realistic aspects of Keynesian and neo-classical assumptions and place them on more rigorous theoretical foundation than ever before.  One line of thinking, utilized also as a critique of the notably high unemployment and potentially disappointing GNP growth rates associated with the new classical models by the mid-1980s, was to emphasize low unemployment and maximal economic growth at the cost of somewhat higher inflation (its consequences kept in check by indexing and other methods, and its overall rate kept lower and steadier by such potential policies as Martin Weitzman's share economy).

Other schools of macroeconomic thought.

The Keynesian schools of economics are situated alongside a number of other schools that have the same perspectives on what the economic issues are, but differ on what causes them and how to best resolve them. Today, most of these schools of thought have been subsumed into modern macroeconomic theory.

Stockholm School.

The Stockholm school rose to prominence at about the same time that Keynes published his General Theory and shared a common concern in

Monetarism.

There was debate between monetarists and Keynesians in the 1960s over the role of government in stabilizing the economy. Both monetarists and Keynesians agree that issues such as business cycles, unemployment, and deflation are caused by inadequate demand. However, they had fundamentally different perspectives on the capacity of the economy to find its own equilibrium, and the degree of government intervention that would be appropriate. Keynesians emphasized the

Marxian economics.

Some Marxist economists criticized Keynesian economics. For example, in his 1946 appraisal Paul Sweezy—while admitting that there was much in the "General Theory"'s analysis of effective demand that Marxists could draw on—described Keynes as a prisoner of his neoclassical upbringing. Sweezy argued that Keynes had never been able to view the capitalist system as a totality. He argued that Keynes regarded the class struggle carelessly, and overlooked the class role of the capitalist state, which

Public choice.

James M. Buchanan criticized Keynesian economics on the grounds that governments would in practice be unlikely to implement theoretically optimal policies. The implicit assumption underlying the Keynesian fiscal revolution, according to Buchanan, was that economic policy would be made by wise men, acting without regard to political pressures or opportunities, and guided by disinterested economic technocrats. He argued that this was an unrealistic assumption about political, bureaucratic and electoral behaviour. Buchanan blamed Keynesian economics for what he considered a decline in America's fiscal discipline. Buchanan argued that deficit spending would evolve into a permanent disconnect between spending and revenue, precisely because it brings short-term gains, so, ending up institutionalizing irresponsibility in the federal government, the largest and most central institution in our society. Martin Feldstein argues that the legacy of Keynesian economics–the misdiagnosis of unemployment, the fear of saving, and the unjustified government intervention–affected the fundamental ideas of policy makers. Milton Friedman thought that Keynes's political bequest was harmful for two reasons. First, he thought whatever the economic analysis, benevolent dictatorship is likely sooner or

New classical.

Another influential school of thought was based on the Lucas critique of Keynesian economics. This called for greater consistency with microeconomic theory and rationality, and in particular emphasized the idea of rational expectations. Lucas and others argued that Keynesian economics required remarkably foolish and short-sighted behaviour from people, which totally contradicted the economic understanding of their behaviour at a micro level. New classical economics introduced a set of macroeconomic theories that were based on optimizing microeconomic behaviour. These models have been developed into the real business-cycle theory, which

Keynesian economics ( ; sometimes Keynesianism, named for the economist John Maynard Keynes) are various macroeconomic theories about how in the short run – and especially during recessions – economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy). In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy; instead, it is influenced by a host of factors and sometimes behaves erratically, affecting production, employment, and inflation.

凯恩斯经济学(英语:Keynesian economics),或凯恩斯主义(英语:Keynesianism),凯恩斯理论(英语:Keynesian theory),是根据英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的著作《就业、利息和货币通论》的思想基础上的经济理论,主张国家采用扩张性的经济政策,通过增加总需求促进经济增长。


Name and etymology.

Name.

The Dacians were known as "Geta" (plural "Getae") in Ancient Greek writings, and as "Dacus" (plural "Daci") or "Getae" in Roman documents, but also as "Dagae" and "Gaete" as depicted on the late Roman map "Tabula Peutingeriana". It was Herodotus who first used the ethnonym "Getae" in his "Histories". In Greek and Latin, in the writings of Julius Caesar, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder, the people became known as 'the Dacians'. Getae and Dacians were interchangeable terms, or used with some confusion by the Greeks. Latin poets often used the name "Getae". Vergil called them "Getae" four times, and "Daci" once, Lucian "Getae" three times and "Daci" twice, Horace named them "Getae" twice and "Daci" five times, while Juvenal one time "Getae" and two times "Daci". In AD 113, Hadrian used the poetic term "Getae" for the Dacians. Modern historians prefer to use the name "Geto-Dacians". Strabo describes the Getae and Dacians as distinct but cognate tribes. This distinction refers to the regions they occupied. Strabo and Pliny the Elder also state that Getae and Dacians spoke the same language.  By contrast,

Etymology.

The name "Daci", or "Dacians" is a collective ethnonym. Dio Cassius reported that the Dacians themselves used that name, and the Romans so called them, while the Greeks called them Getae. Opinions on the origins of the name "Daci" are divided. Some scholars consider it to originate in the Indo-European *"dha-k"-, with the stem *"dhe"- "to put, to place", while others think that the name "Daci" originates in *daca – "knife, dagger" or in a word similar to "dáos," meaning "wolf" in the related language of the Phrygians.""  One hypothesis is that the name "Getae" originates in the Indo-European *guet- 'to utter, to talk'. Another hypothesis is that "Getae" and "Daci" are Iranian names of two Iranian-speaking Scythian groups that had been assimilated into the larger Thracian-speaking population of the later "Dacia". They might be related to Masagetae and Dahae people who used to live in central Asia in 6th century BC.

Early history of etymological approaches.

In the 1st century AD, Strabo suggested that its stem formed a name previously borne by slaves: Greek Daos, Latin Davus (-k- is a known suffix in Indo-European ethnic names). In the 18th century, Grimm proposed the Gothic "dags" or "day" that would give the meaning of

Modern theories.

Since the 19th century, many scholars have proposed an etymological link between the endonym of the Dacians and wolves. However, according to Romanian historian and archaeologist Alexandru Vulpe, the Dacian etymology explained by "daos" ("wolf") has little plausibility, as the transformation of "daos" into "dakos" is phonetically improbable and the "Draco" standard was not unique to Dacians. He thus dismisses it as folk etymology.  Another etymology, linked to the Proto-Indo-European language roots "*dhe-" meaning "to set, place" and "dheua" → "dava" ("settlement") and "dhe-k" → "daci" is supported by Romanian historian Ioan I. Russu (1967).

Mythological theories.

Mircea Eliade attempted, in his book "From Zalmoxis to Genghis

Origins and ethnogenesis.

Evidence of proto-Thracians or proto-Dacians in the prehistoric period depends on the remains of material culture. It is generally proposed that a proto-Dacian or proto-Thracian people developed from a mixture of indigenous peoples and Indo-Europeans from the time of Proto-Indo-European expansion in the Early Bronze Age (3,300–3,000 BC) when the latter, around 1500 BC, conquered the indigenous peoples. The indigenous people were Danubian farmers, and the invading people of the BC 3rd millennium were Kurgan warrior-herders from the Ukrainian and Russian steppes.  Indo-Europeanization was complete by the beginning of the Bronze Age. The people of that time are best described as proto-Thracians, which

Identity and distribution.

North of the Danube, Dacians occupied a larger territory than Ptolemaic Dacia, stretching between Bohemia in the west and the Dnieper cataracts in the east, and up to the Pripyat, Vistula, and Oder rivers in the north and northwest. In BC 53, Julius Caesar stated that the Dacian territory was on the eastern border of the Hercynian forest. According to Strabo's "Geographica", written around AD 20, the Getes (Geto-Dacians) bordered the Suevi who lived in the Hercynian Forest, which is somewhere in the vicinity of the river Duria, the present-day Vah (Waag). Dacians lived on both sides of the Danube. According to Strabo, Moesians also lived on both sides of the Danube. According to Agrippa, Dacia was limited by the Baltic Ocean in the North and by the Vistula in the West. The names of the people and settlements confirm Dacia's borders as described by Agrippa. Dacian people also lived south of the Danube.

Linguistic affiliation.

The Dacians and Getae were always considered as Thracians by the ancients (Dio Cassius, Trogus Pompeius, Appian, Strabo and Pliny the Elder), and were both said to speak the same Thracian language. The linguistic affiliation of Dacian is uncertain, since the ancient Indo-European language in question became extinct (?) and left very limited traces (?), usually in the form of place names, plant names and personal names. Thraco-Dacian (or Thracian and Daco-Mysian) seems to belong to the eastern (satem) group of Indo-European languages. There are two contradictory theories: some scholars (such as Tomaschek 1883; Russu 1967; Solta 1980; Crossland 1982; Vraciu 1980) consider Dacian to be a Thracian language

Tribes.

An extensive account of the native tribes in Dacia can be found in the ninth tabula of Europe of Ptolemy's Geography. The Geography was probably written in the period AD 140–150, but the sources were often earlier; for example, Roman Britain is shown before the building of Hadrian's Wall in the AD 120s. Ptolemy's Geography also contains a physical map probably designed before the Roman conquest, and containing no detailed nomenclature. There are references to the Tabula Peutingeriana, but it appears that the Dacian map of the Tabula was completed after the final triumph of Roman nationality. Ptolemy's list includes no fewer than twelve tribes with Geto-Dacian names.  The fifteen tribes of Dacia as named by Ptolemy, starting from the northernmost ones, are as follows. First, the Anartes, the Teurisci and the Coertoboci/Costoboci. To the south of them are the Buredeense (Buri/Burs), the Cotense/Cotini and then the Albocense, the Potulatense and the Sense, while the southernmost were the Saldense, the Ciaginsi and the Piephigi. To the south of them were Predasense/Predavenses, the Rhadacense/Rhatacenses, the Caucoense (Cauci) and Biephi. Twelve out of these fifteen tribes listed by Ptolemy are ethnic Dacians, and three are Celt Anarti, Teurisci, and Cotense. There are also previous brief mentions of other Getae or Dacian tribes on the left and right banks of the Danube, or even in Transylvania, to be added to the list of Ptolemy. Among these other tribes are the Trixae, Crobidae and Appuli.  Some peoples inhabiting the region generally described in Roman times as "Dacia" were not ethnic Dacians. The true Dacians were a people of Thracian descent. German elements (Daco-Germans), Celtic elements (Daco-Celtic) and Iranian elements (Daco-Sarmatian) occupied territories in the north-west and north-east of Dacia. This region covered roughly the same area as modern Romania plus Bessarabia (Republic of Moldova) and eastern Galicia (south-west Ukraine), although Ptolemy places Moldavia and Bessarabia in "Sarmatia Europaea", rather than "Dacia". After the Dacian Wars (AD 101-6), the Romans occupied only about half of the wider Dacian region. The Roman province of Dacia covered just western Wallachia as far as the "Limes Transalutanus" (East of the river "Aluta", or Olt) and Transylvania,

Physical characteristics.

Dacians are represented in the statues surmounting the Arch of Constantine and on Trajan's Column. The artist of the Column took some care to depict, in his opinion, a variety of Dacian people—from high-ranking men, women, and children to the near-savage. Although the artist looked to models in Hellenistic art for some body types and compositions, he does not represent the Dacians as generic barbarians.  Classical authors applied a generalized stereotype when describing the "barbarians"Celts, Scythians, Thraciansinhabiting the regions to the north of the Greek world.

History.

Early history.

In the absence of historical records written by the Dacians (and Thracians) themselves, analysis of their origins depends largely on the remains of material culture. On the whole, the Bronze Age witnessed the evolution of the ethnic groups which emerged during the Eneolithic period, and eventually the syncretism of both autochthonous and Indo-European elements from the steppes and the Pontic regions. Various groups of Thracians had not separated out by 1200 BC, but there are strong similarities between the ceramic types found at Troy and the ceramic types from the Carpathian area. About the year 1000 BC, the Carpatho-Danubian countries were inhabited by a northern branch of the Thracians. At the time of the arrival of the Scythians (c. 700 BC), the Carpatho-Danubian

Relations with Thracians.

Since the writings of Herodotus in the 5th century BC, Getae/Dacians are acknowledged as belonging to the Thracian sphere of influence. Despite this, they are distinguished from other Thracians by particularities of religion and custom. Geto-Dacians and Thracians were kin people but they were not the same. The differences from the southern Thracians or from the neighbouring Scythians were probably faint, as several ancient authors make confusions of identification with both groups.

Relations with Celts.

Geto-Dacians inhabited both sides of the Tisa River before the rise of the Celtic Boii, and again after the latter were defeated by the Dacians under king Burebista. During the second half of the 4th century BC, Celtic cultural influence appears in the archaeological records of the middle Danube, Alpine region, and north-western Balkans, where it was part of the Middle La Tène material culture. This material appears in north-western and central Dacia, and is reflected especially in burials. The Dacians absorbed the Celtic influence from the northwest in the early third century BC. Archaeological investigation of this period has highlighted several Celtic warrior graves with military equipment. It suggests the forceful penetration of a military Celtic elite within the region of Dacia, now known as Transylvania, that is bounded on the east by the Carpathian range. The archaeological sites of the third and second centuries BC in Transylvania revealed a pattern of co-existence and fusion between the bearers of La Tène culture and indigenous Dacians. These were domestic dwellings with a mixture of Celtic and Dacian pottery, and several graves in the Celtic style containing vessels of Dacian type. There are some seventy

Relations with Greeks.

Greek and Roman chroniclers record the defeat and capture of the Macedonian general Lysimachus in the 3rd

Relations with Persians.

Herodotus says: "before Darius reached the Danube, the first people he subdued were the Getae, who believed that they never die". It is possible that the Persian expedition and the subsequent occupation may

Relations with Scythians.

Agathyrsi Transylvania.

The Scythians' arrival in the Carpathian mountains is dated to 700 BC. The Agathyrsi of Transylvania had been mentioned by Herodotus (fifth century BC), who regarded them as not a Scythian people, but closely related to them. In other respects, their customs were close to those of the Thracians. The Agathyrsi were completely denationalized at the time of Herodotus and absorbed by the native Thracians.  The opinion that the Agathyrsi were almost certainly Thracians results also from the writings preserved by Stephen of Byzantium, who explains that the Greeks called the Trausi the Agathyrsi, and we know that the Trausi lived in the Rhodope Mountains. Certain details from their way of life, such as tattooing, also suggest that the Agathyrsi were Thracians. Their place was later taken by the Dacians. That the Dacians were of Thracian stock is not in doubt, and it is safe to assume that this new name also encompassed the Agathyrsi, and perhaps other neighbouring Thracian people as well, as a result of some political upheaval.

Relations with Germanic tribes.

The Goths, a confederation of east German peoples, arrived in the southern Ukraine no later than 230. During the next decade, a large section of them moved down the Black Sea coast and occupied much of the territory north of the lower Danube. The Goths' advance towards the area north of the Black Sea involved competing with the indigenous population of Dacian-speaking Carpi, as well as indigenous Iranian-speaking Sarmatians and Roman garrison forces. The Carpi, often called "Free Dacians", continued to dominate the anti-Roman coalition made up of themselves, Taifali, Astringi, Vandals, Peucini, and Goths until 248, when the Goths assumed the hegemony of the loose coalition. The first lands taken over by the Thervingi Goths were in Moldavia, and only during the fourth century did they move in strength down into the Danubian plain. The Carpi found themselves squeezed between the advancing Goths

Dacian kingdoms.

Dacian polities arose as confederacies that included the Getae, the Daci, the Buri, and the Carpi (cf. Bichir 1976, Shchukin 1989), united only periodically by the leadership of Dacian kings such as Burebista and Decebal. This union was both military-political and ideological-religious on ethnic basis. The following are some of the attested Dacian kingdoms:  The kingdom of Cothelas, one of the Getae, covered an area near the Black Sea, between northern Thrace and the Danube, today Bulgaria, in the 4th century BC. The kingdom of Rubobostes controlled a region in

The kingdom of Burebista.

The Dacian kingdom reached its maximum extent under king Burebista (ruled 82 – 44 BC). The capital of the kingdom was possibly the city of Argedava, also called Sargedava in some historical writings, situated close to the river Danube. The kingdom of Burebista extended south of the Danube, in what is today Bulgaria, and the Greeks believed their king was the greatest of all Thracians. During his reign, Burebista transferred the Geto-Dacians' capital from Argedava

The kingdom of Decebalus 87 – 106.

By the year AD 100, more than 400,000 square kilometres were dominated by the Dacians, who numbered two million. Decebalus was the last king of the Dacians, and despite his fierce resistance against the Romans was defeated, and committed suicide rather than being marched through Rome in a triumph as a captured enemy leader.

Conflict with Rome.

Burebista's Dacian state was powerful enough to threaten Rome, and Caesar contemplated campaigning against the Dacians. Despite this, the formidable Dacian power under Burebista lasted only until his death in 44 BC. The subsequent division of Dacia continued for about a century until the reign of Scorilo. This was a period of only occasional attacks on the Roman Empire's border, with some local significance.  The unifying actions of the last Dacian king Decebalus (ruled 87–106 AD) were seen as dangerous by Rome. Despite the fact that the Dacian army could

Roman rule.

Only about half part of Dacia then became a Roman province, with a newly built capital at Ulpia Traiana Sarmizegetusa, 40 km away from the site of Old Sarmisegetuza Regia, which was razed to the ground. The name of the Dacians' homeland, Dacia, became the name of a Roman province, and the name Dacians was used to designate the people in the region. "Roman Dacia", also "Dacia Traiana" or "Dacia Felix", was a province of the Roman Empire from 106 to 271 or 275 AD. Its territory consisted of eastern and southeastern Transylvania, and the regions of Banat and Oltenia (located in modern Romania). Dacia was organised from the beginning as an imperial province, and remained so throughout the Roman occupation. It was one of the empire's Latin provinces; official epigraphs attest that the language of administration was Latin. Historian estimates of the population of Roman Dacia range from 650,000 to 1,200,000.  Dacians that remained outside the Roman Empire after the Dacian wars of AD 101–106 had been

After the Aurelian Retreat.

Roman Dacia was never a uniformly or fully Romanized area. Post-Aurelianic Dacia fell into three divisions: the area along the river, usually under some type of Roman administration even if in a highly localized form; the zone beyond this area, from which Roman military personnel had withdrawn, leaving a sizable population behind that was generally Romanized; and finally what is now the northern parts of Moldavia, Crisana, and Maramures, which were never occupied by the Romans. These last areas were always peripheral to the Roman province, not militarily occupied but nonetheless influenced by Rome as part of the Roman economic sphere. Here lived the free, unoccupied Carpi,

Society.

Dacians were divided into two classes: the aristocracy ("tarabostes") and the common people ("comati"). Only the aristocracy had the right to cover their heads, and wore a felt hat. The common people, who comprised the rank and file of the army, the peasants and artisans, might have been called "capillati" in Latin. Their appearance and clothing can be seen on Trajan's Column.

Occupations.

The chief occupations of the Dacians were agriculture, apiculture, viticulture, livestock, ceramics and metalworking. They also worked the gold and silver mines of Transylvania. At Pecica, Arad, a Dacian workshop was discovered, along with equipment for minting coins and evidence of bronze, silver, and iron-working that suggests a broad spectrum of smithing. Evidence for the mass production of iron is found on many Dacian sites, indicating guild-like specialization. Dacian ceramic manufacturing traditions continue from

Currency.

The first coins produced by the Geto-Dacians were imitations of silver coins of the Macedonian kings Philip II and Alexander the Great. Early in the 1st century BC, the Dacians replaced these with silver denarii of the Roman Republic,

Construction.

Dacians had developed the murus dacicus (double-skinned ashlar-masonry with rubble fill and tie beams) characteristic to their complexes of fortified cities, like their capital Sarmisegetuza Regia in what is today Hunedoara County, Romania. This type of wall has been discovered not only in the Dacian citadel of the Orastie mountains, but also in those

Material culture.

According to archaeological findings, the cradle of the Dacian culture is considered to be north of the Danube towards the Carpathian mountains, in the historical Romanian province of Muntenia. It is identified as an evolution of the Iron Age Basarabi culture. The earlier Iron Age Basarabi evidence in the northern lower Danube area connects to the iron-using Ferigile-Birsesti group. This is an archaeological manifestation of the historical Getae who, along with the Agathyrsae, are one of a number of tribal formations recorded by Herodotus. In archaeology, "free Dacians" are attested by the Puchov culture (in which there are Celtic elements) and Lipiţa culture to the east of the Carpathians. The Lipiţa culture has a Dacian/North Thracian origin. This North Thracian population was dominated by strong Celtic influences, or had simply absorbed Celtic ethnic components. Lipiţa culture has been linked to the Dacian tribe of Costoboci.  Specific Dacian material culture includes: wheel-turned pottery that is generally plain but with distinctive elite wares, massive silver dress fibulae, precious metal plate, ashlar masonry, fortifications, upland sanctuaries with horseshoe-shaped precincts, and decorated clay heart altars at settlement sites. Among many discovered artifacts, the Dacian bracelets stand out, depicting their cultural and aesthetic sense. There are difficulties correlating funerary monuments chronologically with Dacian settlements; a small number of burials are known, along with cremation pits, and isolated rich burials as at Cugir. Dacian burial ritual continued under Roman occupation and into the post-Roman period.

Language.

The Dacians are generally considered to have been Thracian speakers, representing a cultural continuity from earlier Iron Age communities. Some historians and linguists consider Dacian language to be a dialect of or the same language as Thracian. The vocalism and consonantism differentiate the Dacian and Thracian languages. Others consider that Dacian and Illyrian form regional varieties (dialects) of a common language. (Thracians inhabited modern southern Bulgaria and northern Greece. Illyrians lived in modern Albania,

Symbols.

The Dacians knew about writing. Permanent contacts with the Graeco-Roman world had brought the use of the Greek and later the Latin alphabet. It is also certainly not the case that writing with Greek and Latin letters and knowledge of Greek and Latin were known in all the settlements scattered throughout Dacia,

Religion.

Dacian religion was considered by the classic sources as a key source of authority, suggesting to some that Dacia was a predominantly theocratic state led by priest-kings. However, the layout of the Dacian capital Sarmizegethusa indicates the possibility of co-rulership, with a separate high king and high priest. Ancient sources recorded the names of several Dacian high priests (Deceneus, Comosicus and Vezina) and various orders of priests: "god-worshipers", "smoke-walkers" and "founders". Both Hellenistic and Oriental influences are discernible in the religious background, alongside chthonic and solar motifs.  According to Herodotus' account of the story of Zalmoxis or Zamolxis, the Getae (speaking the same language as the Dacians and the Thracians, according to Strabo) believed in the immortality of the soul, and regarded death as merely a change of country. Their chief priest held a prominent position as the representative of the supreme deity, Zalmoxis, who is called also Gebeleizis by some among them. Strabo wrote about the high priest of King Burebista Deceneus: "a man who not only had wandered through Egypt, but also had thoroughly learned

Pottery.

Fragments of pottery with different "inscriptions" with Latin and Greek letters incised before and after firing have been discovered in the settlement at Ocnita – Valcea. An inscription carries the word Basileus (Βασιλεύς in Greek, meaning "king") and seems to have

Clothing and science.

The typical dress of Dacians, both men and women, can

Warfare.

The history of Dacian warfare spans from c. 10th century BC up to the 2nd century AD in the region typically referred to by Ancient Greek and Latin historians as Dacia. It concerns the armed conflicts of the Dacian tribes and their kingdoms in the Balkans. Apart from conflicts between Dacians and neighboring nations and tribes, numerous wars were recorded among Dacian tribes as well.

Weapons.

The weapon most associated with the Dacian forces that fought against Trajan's army during his invasions of Dacia was the falx, a single-edged scythe-like weapon. The falx was able to

Notable individuals.

This is a list of several

Trivia.

"The ducks come from the trucks" – Romanian language pun about

In Romanian nationalism.

Study of the Dacians, their culture, society and religion is not purely a subject of ancient history, but has present day implications in the context of Romanian nationalism. Positions taken on the vexed question of the Origin of the Romanians and to what degree are present-day Romanians descended from the Dacians might have contemporary political implications. For example, The government of Nicolae Ceaușescu claimed an uninterrupted continuity of a Dacian-Romanian state, from King Burebista to Ceaușescu himself. The Ceaușescu government conspicuously commemorated the supposed 2,050th anniversary of the founding of the "unified and centralized" country that was to become Romania, on which occasion the historical film "Burebista" was produced.

The Dacians (; ; ) were a Thracian people who were the ancient inhabitants of the cultural region of Dacia, located in the area near the Carpathian Mountains and west of the Black Sea. This area includes mainly the present-day countries of Romania and Moldova, as well as parts of Ukraine, Eastern Serbia, Northern Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and Southern Poland. The Dacians spoke the Dacian language, a sub-group of Thracian, but were somewhat culturally influenced by the neighbouring Scythians and by the Celtic invaders of the 4th century BC.

达契亚人是自公元前约1000年时开始居住在达契亚地区(现在的罗马尼亚)的色雷斯系的民族。公元前4世纪时,达契亚人曾受到凯尔特人的侵略。公元前70年时,达契亚人有了自己的国家。106年时,达契亚被并入罗马帝国,这一地区开始罗马化。罗马帝国撤离之后,众多民族入侵达契亚地区,达契亚人的文化也被消灭。现在的罗马尼亚人被认为是达契亚人和罗马人混血产生的民族。


Title.

The title in the original manuscript is ""Hymnus""—a Latin word meaning "song of praise", and one which is widely used in languages other than English (e.g. French or German) to mean "anthem". The phonetic transcription "Himnusz" replaced the original Latin spelling over time, and as the poem gained widespread acceptance as the "de facto" anthem of Hungary, so too the word "himnusz" took on the meaning "national anthem" for other countries as well.

History.

Although Kölcsey completed the poem on 22 January 1823, it was only published first in 1829 in Károly Kisfaludy's "Aurora", without the subtitle, despite it being part of the manuscript. It subsequently appeared in a collection of Kölcsey's works in 1832, this time with the subtitle. A competition for composers to make the poem suitable to be sung by the public was staged in 1844 and won by Erkel's entry. His version was first performed in the National Theatre (where he was conductor) in July 1844, then in front of a larger audience on 10 August 1844, at the inaugural voyage of the steamship Széchenyi. By the end of the 1850s it became customary to sing Himnusz at special occasions either alongside Vörösmarty's Szózat or on its own.  In the early 1900s, various members of the Hungarian Parliament proposed making the status of Himnusz as the national anthem of Hungary within Austria-Hungary official, but their efforts never got enough traction for such a law to be passed. Later, in the 1950s, Rákosi made plans to have the anthem replaced by one more suited to the Communist ideology, but the poet and composer he had in mind for the task, Illyés and Kodály, both refused. It wasn't until 1989 that Erkel's musical adaptation of Himnusz finally gained official recognition as Hungary's national anthem, by being mentioned as such in the Constitution of Hungary.

Official uses.

The public radio station Kossuth Rádió plays Himnusz at ten minutes past midnight each day at the close of transmissions in the AM band, as do the state TV channels at the end of the day's broadcasts. Himnusz is also traditionally played on Hungarian television at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve.

Alternate anthems.

"Szózat" (), which starts with the words "Hazádnak rendületlenül légy híve, óh magyar" (To your homeland be faithful steadfastly, O Hungarian) enjoys a social status nearly equal to that of "Himnusz", even though only "Himnusz" is mentioned in the Constitution of Hungary. Traditionally, Himnusz is sung at the beginning of ceremonies, and Szózat at the end (although the Himnusz, resembling a Protestant Chorale, is substantially easier to sing than the difficult rhythm of the Szózat, which is often only played from recording).  Recognition is also given to the "Rákóczi March", a short wordless piece (composer unknown, but sometimes attributed to János Bihari and Franz Liszt) which is often used on state military occasions; and the poem "Nemzeti dal" written by Sándor Petőfi.  Another popular song is the "Székely Himnusz" (), an unofficial ethnic anthem of the Hungarian-speaking Szekler living in Eastern Transylvania, the Székely Land (now part of Romania) and in the rest of the world.

Lyrics.

Two English versions are given below; both are free translations of the Hungarian words. As Hungarian is a genderless language, masculine pronouns in the English translations are in fact addressed to all Hungarians regardless of gender.

Himnusz sculpture.

On May 7, 2006, a sculpture was inaugurated for Himnusz at Szarvas Square, Budakeszi, a small town close to Budapest. It was created by Mária V. Majzik, an artist with the Hungarian Heritage Award, depicting the full text of the poem in a circle, centered around a two metres high bronze figure of God, with 21 bronze bells in seven arches between eight pieces of stone, each four and a half metres high. The musical form of the poem can be played on the bells. The cost of its construction, 40 million forints (roughly 200,000 USD), was collected through public subscription.

"Himnusz" (;, ) is the national anthem of Hungary. The words were written by Ferenc Kölcsey, a nationally renowned poet, in 1823, and its currently official musical setting was composed by the romantic composer Ferenc Erkel in 1844, although other less-known musical versions exist. The poem bore the subtitle ""A magyar nép zivataros századaiból"" ("From the stormy centuries of the Hungarian nation"); it is often argued that this subtitle – by emphasising past rather than contemporary national troubles – was added expressly to enable the poem to pass Habsburg censorship. The full meaning of the poem's text is evident only to those well acquainted with Hungarian history. The first stanza is sung at official ceremonies and as well in common. It was "de facto" used as hymn of the Kingdom of Hungary from its composition in 1844, and was officially adopted as national anthem of the Third Hungarian Republic in 1989.

匈牙利国歌,原名《赞美歌》(Himnusz),名称来自"Isten, áldd meg a magyart",意为「上帝保佑匈牙利人」,为匈牙利的官方国歌;在1844年被采用。费伦茨·克尔契(Ferenc Kölcsey)作词,艾凯尔·费伦茨(Ferenc Erkel)作曲。官方的标题为「圣歌,来自匈牙利民族的风雨世纪」(Hymnus, a magyar nép zivataros századaiból).


Volcano.

Mount Stromboli has been in almost continuous eruption for the past 2,000–5,000 years. A pattern of eruption is maintained in which explosions occur at the summit craters, with mild to moderate eruptions of incandescent volcanic bombs, a type of tephra, at intervals ranging from minutes to hours. This Strombolian eruption, as it is known, is also observed at other volcanoes worldwide. Eruptions from the summit craters typically result in a few short, mild, but energetic bursts, ranging up to a few hundred meters in height, containing ash, incandescent lava fragments and stone blocks. Stromboli's activity is almost exclusively explosive, but lava flows do occur at times when volcanic activity is high: an effusive eruption occurred in 2002, the first in 17 years, and again in 2003, 2007, and 2013–14. Volcanic gas emissions from this volcano are measured by a multi-component gas analyzer system, which detects pre-eruptive degassing of rising magma, improving prediction of volcanic activity.  On 3 July 2019, two major explosive events occurred at around 4:46 PM local time, alongside 20 additional minor explosive events identified by Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology. A hiker near the volcano's summit was killed after being struck by flying debris when the eruption began.  On 28 August 2019, at 10:16 AM local time, an explosive eruption sent a pyroclastic flow down the volcano’s northern flank and into the sea, where it continued for several hundred meters before collapsing. The resulting ash column reached a height of 2km.

Settlements.

The two villages San Bartolo and San Vincenzo lie in the northeast while the smaller village Ginostra lies in the southwest. Administratively, they are one of the "" of Lipari, Messina.  In the early 1900s a few thousand people inhabited the island, but after several waves of emigration the population has numbered a few hundred since the mid-1950s.

Stromboli (, ; ; ) is a small island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the north coast of Sicily, containing Mount Stromboli, one of the three active volcanoes in Italy. It is one of the eight Aeolian Islands, a volcanic arc north of Sicily. Strabo writes that people believed that this is where Aeolus lived.

斯通波利岛(),是位于意大利半岛西边第勒尼安海的一座火山岛,属于意大利三大活跃火山中的一座。它与西西里岛北部的埃奥利群岛形成一火山岛弧,此区域为全球地震最频繁的地区之一。


Biography.

Lamb was born in Los Angeles, California, United States and attended Los Angeles High School. First admitted in 1930, he received a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1934. For theoretical work on scattering of neutrons by a crystal, guided by J. Robert Oppenheimer, he received the Ph.D. in physics in 1938. Because of limited computational methods available at the time, this research narrowly missed revealing the Mössbauer Effect, 19 years before its recognition by Mössbauer. He worked on nuclear theory, laser physics, and verifying quantum mechanics.  Lamb was a physics professor at Stanford from 1951 to 1956. Lamb was the Wykeham Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford from 1956 to 1962, and also taught at Yale, Columbia and the University of Arizona. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1963.  Lamb is remembered as a "rare theorist turned experimentalist" by D. Kaiser.

Quantum physics.

In addition to his crucial and famous contribution to quantum electrodynamics via the Lamb shift, in the latter part of his career he paid increasing attention to the field of quantum measurements. In one of his writings Lamb stated that "most people who use quantum mechanics have little need to know much about the interpretation of the subject." Lamb was also openly critical of many of the interpretational trends on quantum mechanics.

Personal.

In 1939 Lamb married his first wife, Ursula Schaefer, a German student, who became a distinguished historian of Latin America. After her death in 1996 he married physicist Bruria Kaufman in 1996, whom he later divorced. In 2008 he married Elsie Wattson.  Lamb died on May 15, 2008, at the age of 94, due to complications of a gallstone disorder.

Willis Eugene Lamb Jr. (; July 12, 1913 – May 15, 2008) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955 "for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum." The Nobel Committee that year awarded half the prize to Lamb and the other half to Polykarp Kusch, who won "for his precision determination of the magnetic moment of the electron." Lamb was able to determine precisely a surprising shift in electron energies in a hydrogen atom (see Lamb shift). Lamb was a professor at the University of Arizona College of Optical Sciences.

威利斯·兰姆(英语:Willis Lamb, Junior,1913年-7月12日-2008年-5月15日),美国物理学家,生于洛杉矶,1955年获诺贝尔物理学奖。


Terminology.

A crossbowman or crossbow-maker is sometimes called an "arbalist" or "arbalest".  "Arrow", "bolt" and "quarrel" are all suitable terms for crossbow projectiles.  The "lath", also called the "prod", is the bow of the crossbow. According to W.F. Peterson, the "prod" came into usage in the 19th century as a result of mistranslating "rodd" in a 16th-century list of crossbow effects.  The "stock" is the wooden body on which the bow is mounted, although the medieval "tiller" is also used.  The "lock" refers to the release mechanism, including the string, sears, trigger lever, and housing.

Construction.

A crossbow is essentially a bow mounted on an elongated frame (called a tiller or stock) with a built-in mechanism that holds the drawn bow string, as well as a trigger mechanism that allows the string to be released.

Chinese vertical trigger lock.

The Chinese trigger mechanism was a vertical lever composed of four bronze pieces secured together by two bronze rods.

European rolling nut lock.

The earliest European designs featured a transverse slot in the top surface of the frame, down into which the string was placed. To shoot this design, a vertical rod is thrust up through a hole in the bottom of the notch, forcing the string out. This rod is usually attached perpendicular to a rear-facing lever called a "tickler". A later design implemented a rolling cylindrical pawl called a "nut" to retain the string. This nut has a perpendicular centre slot for the bolt, and an intersecting axial slot for the string, along with a lower face or slot against which the internal trigger sits. They often also have some form of strengthening internal "sear" or trigger face, usually of metal. These "roller nuts" were either free-floating in their close-fitting hole across the stock, tied in with a binding of sinew or other strong cording; or mounted on a metal axle or pins. Removable or integral plates of wood, ivory, or metal on the sides of the stock kept the nut in place laterally. Nuts were made of antler, bone, or metal. Bows could be kept taut and ready to shoot for some time with little physical straining, allowing crossbowmen to aim better without fatiguing.

Bow.

Chinese crossbow bows were made of composite material from the start.  European crossbows from the 10th to 12th centuries used wood for the bow, also called the "prod" or "lath", which tended to be ash or yew.  Composite bows started appearing in Europe during the 13th century and could be made from layers of different material, often wood, horn, and sinew glued together and bound with animal tendon. These composite bows made of several layers are much stronger and more efficient in releasing energy than simple wooden bows.  As steel became more widely available in Europe around the 14th century, steel prods came into use.  Traditionally, the prod was often lashed to the stock with rope, whipcord, or other strong cording. This cording is called the "bridle".

Spanning mechanism.

The Chinese used winches for large mounted crossbows. Winches may have been used for hand held crossbows during the Han dynasty but there is only one known depiction of it. The "Wujing Zongyao" mentions types of crossbows using winch mechanisms, but it's not known if these were handheld crossbows or mounted crossbows.  During the medieval period, both Chinese and European crossbows used stirrups as well as belt hooks. In the 13th century European crossbows started using winches, and from the 14th century an assortment of spanning mechanisms such as winch pulleys, cord pulleys, gaffles (such as gaffe levers, goat's foot levers, and rarer internal lever-action mechanisms), cranequins, and even screws.

Variants.

The smallest crossbows are pistol crossbows. Others are simple long stocks with the crossbow mounted on them. These could be shot from under the arm. The next step in development was stocks of the shape that would later be used for firearms, which allowed better aiming. The arbalest was a heavy crossbow that required special systems for pulling the sinew via windlasses. For siege warfare, the size of crossbows was further increased to hurl large projectiles, such as rocks, at fortifications. The required crossbows needed a massive base frame and powerful windlass devices.

Projectiles.

The arrow-like projectiles of a crossbow are called crossbow bolts. These are usually much shorter than arrows, but can be several times heavier. There is an optimum weight for bolts to achieve maximum kinetic energy, which varies depending on the strength and characteristics of the crossbow, but most could pass through common mail. Crossbow bolts can be fitted with a variety of heads, some with sickle-shaped heads to cut rope or rigging; but the most common today is a four-sided point called a quarrel. A highly specialized type of bolt is employed to collect blubber biopsy samples used in biology research.  Even relatively small differences in arrow weight can have a considerable impact on its drop and, conversely, its flight trajectory.

Accessories.

The ancient Chinese crossbow often included a metal (i.e. bronze or steel) grid serving as iron sights. Modern crossbow sights often use similar technology to modern firearm sights, such as red dot sights and telescopic sights. Many crossbow scopes feature multiple crosshairs to compensate for the significant effects of gravity over different ranges. In most cases, a newly bought crossbow will need to be sighted for accurate shooting.  A major cause of the sound of shooting a crossbow is vibration of various components. Crossbow silencers are multiple components placed on high vibration parts, such as the string and limbs, to dampen vibration and suppress the sound of loosing the bolt.

History.

East Asia.

In terms of archaeological evidence, crossbow locks made of cast bronze have been found in China dating to around 650 BC. They have also been found in Tombs 3 and 12 at Qufu, Shandong, previously the capital of Lu, and date to 6th century BC. Bronze crossbow bolts dating from the mid-5th century BC have been found at a Chu burial site in Yutaishan, Jiangling County, Hubei Province. Other early finds of crossbows were discovered in Tomb 138 at Saobatang, Hunan Province, and date to mid-4th century BC. It is possible that these early crossbows used spherical pellets for ammunition. A Western-Han mathematician and music theorist, Jing Fang (78-37 BC), compared the moon to the shape of a round crossbow bullet. The "Zhuangzi" also mentions crossbow bullets.  The earliest Chinese documents mentioning a crossbow were texts from the 4th to 3rd centuries BC attributed to the followers of Mozi. This source refers to the use of a giant crossbow between the 6th and 5th centuries BC, corresponding to the late Spring and Autumn Period. Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" (first appearance dated between 500 BC to 300 BC) refers to the characteristics and use of crossbows in chapters 5 and 12 respectively, and compares a drawn crossbow to "might". The "Huainanzi" advises its readers not to use crossbows in marshland where the surface is soft and it is hard to arm the crossbow with the foot. The "Records of the Grand Historian", completed in 94 BC, mentions that Sun Bin defeated Pang Juan by ambushing him with a body of crossbowmen at the Battle of Maling in 342 BC. The "Book of Han", finished 111 AD, lists two military treatises on crossbows.  Handheld crossbows with complex bronze trigger mechanisms have also been found with the Terracotta Army in the tomb of Qin Shihuang (r. 221–210 BC) that are similar to specimens from the subsequent Han Dynasty (202 BC–220 AD), while crossbowmen described in the Qin and Han Dynasty learned drill formations, some were even mounted as charioteers and cavalry units, and Han Dynasty writers attributed the success of numerous battles against the Xiongnu and Western Regions states to massed crossbow volleys. The bronze triggers were designed in such a way that they were able to store a large amount of energy within the bow when drawn, but was easily shot with little resistance and recoil when the trigger were pulled. The trigger nut also had a long vertical spine that could be used like a primitive rear sight for elevation adjustment, which allowed precision shooting over longer distances. The Qin/Han-era crossbow was also an early example of modular design, as the bronze trigger components were also mass-produced with relative high precision so they are interchangeable between different crossbows. The trigger mechanism from one crossbow can be installed into another simply by dropping into a tiller slot of the same specifications and secured with dowel pins.  It is clear from surviving inventory lists in Gansu and Xinjiang that the crossbow was greatly favored by the Han dynasty. For example, in one batch of slips there are only two mentions of bows, but thirty mentions of crossbows. Crossbows were mass-produced in state armories with designs improving as time went on, such as the use of a mulberry wood stock and brass; a crossbow in 1068 could pierce a tree at 140 paces. Crossbows were used in numbers as large as 50,000 starting from the Qin dynasty and upwards of several hundred thousand during the Han. According to one authority, the crossbow had become "nothing less than the standard weapon of the Han armies", by the second century BC. Han soldiers were required to pull a crossbow with a draw weight equivalent of to qualify as a crossbowman.  After the Han dynasty, the crossbow lost favor until it experienced a mild resurgence during the Tang dynasty, under which the ideal expeditionary army of 20,000 included 2,200 archers and 2,000 crossbowmen. Li Jing and Li Quan prescribed 20 percent of the infantry to be armed with crossbows.  During the Song dynasty, the crossbow received a huge upsurge in military usage. The crossbow overshadowed the bow 2 to 1. During this time period, a stirrup was added for ease of loading. The government attempted to restrict the spread of crossbows and sought ways to keep armour and crossbows out of civilian homes. Despite the ban on certain types of crossbows, the weapon experienced an upsurge in civilian usage as both a hunting weapon and pastime. The "romantic young people from rich families, and others who had nothing particular to do" formed crossbow shooting clubs as a way to pass time.  During the late Ming dynasty, no crossbows were mentioned to have been produced in the three-year period from 1619 to 1622. With 21,188,366 taels, the Ming manufactured 25,134 cannons, 8,252 small guns, 6,425 muskets, 4,090 culverins, 98,547 polearms and swords, 26,214 great "horse decapitator" swords, 42,800 bows, 1,000 great axes, 2,284,000 arrows, 180,000 fire arrows, 64,000 bow strings, and hundreds of transport carts.  Military crossbows were armed by treading, or basically placing the feet on the bow stave and drawing it using one's arms and back muscles. During the Song dynasty, stirrups were added for ease of drawing and to mitigate damage to the bow. Alternatively the bow could also be drawn by a belt claw attached to the waist, but this was done lying down, as was the case for all large crossbows. Winch-drawing was used for the large mounted crossbows as seen below, but evidence for its use in Chinese hand-crossbows is scant.  Other sorts of crossbows also existed, such as the repeating crossbow, multi-shot crossbow, larger field artillery crossbows, and repeating multi-shot crossbow.

Southeast Asia.

In Vietnamese historical legend, general Thục Phán, who ruled over the ancient kingdom of Âu Lạc from 257 to 207 BC, is said to have owed his power to a magic crossbow, capable of shooting thousands of bolts at once.  The native Montagnards of Vietnam's Central Highlands were also known to have used crossbows, as both a tool for hunting, and later, an effective weapon against the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Montagnard fighters armed with crossbows proved a highly valuable asset to the US Special Forces operating in Vietnam, and it was not uncommon for the Green Berets to integrate Montagnard crossbowmen into their strike teams.  Crossbow technology for crossbows with more than one prod was transferred from the Chinese to Champa, which Champa used in its invasion of the Khmer Empire's Angkor in 1177. When the Chams sacked Angkor they used the Chinese siege crossbow. Crossbows and archery while mounted were instructed to the Cham by a Chinese in 1171.

Ancient Greece.

The earliest crossbow-like weapons in Europe probably emerged around the late 5th century BC when the "gastraphetes", an ancient Greek crossbow, appeared. The device was described by the Greek author Heron of Alexandria in his "Belopoeica" ("On Catapult-making"), which draws on an earlier account of his compatriot engineer Ctesibius (fl. 285–222 BC). According to Heron, the gastraphetes was the forerunner of the later catapult, which places its invention some unknown time prior to 399 BC. The gastraphetes was a crossbow mounted on a stock divided into a lower and upper section. The lower was a case fixed to the bow while the upper was a slider which had the same dimensions as the case. Meaning "belly-bow", it was called as such because the concave withdrawal rest at one end of the stock was placed against the stomach of the operator, which he could press to withdraw the slider before attaching a string to the trigger and loading the bolt; this could thus store more energy than regular Greek bows. It was used in the Siege of Motya in 397 BC. This was a key Carthaginian stronghold in Sicily, as described in the 1st century AD by Heron of Alexandria in his book "Belopoeica".  Other arrow shooting machines such as the larger ballista and smaller "Scorpio" also existed starting from around 338 BC, but these are torsion catapults and not considered crossbows. Arrow-shooting machines ("katapeltai") are briefly mentioned by Aeneas Tacticus in his treatise on siegecraft written around 350 BC. An Athenian inventory from 330–329 BC includes catapults bolts with heads and flights. Arrow-shooting machines in action are reported from Philip II's siege of Perinthos in Thrace in 340 BC. At the same time, Greek fortifications began to feature high towers with shuttered windows in the top, presumably to house anti-personnel arrow shooters, as in Aigosthena.

Ancient Rome.

The late 4th century author Vegetius provides the only contemporary account of ancient Roman crossbows. In his "De Re Militaris", he describes "arcubalistarii" (crossbowmen) working together with archers and artillerymen. However it is disputed if arcuballistas were even crossbows or just more torsion powered weapons. The idea that the arcuballista was a crossbow is based on the fact that Vegetius refers to it and the "manuballista", which was torsion powered, separately. Therefore, if the arcuballista was not like the manuballista, it may have been a crossbow. Some suggest it was the other way around and manuballistas were crossbows. The etymology is not clear and their definitions obscure. According to Vegetius, these were well-known devices, and hence he did not describe them in depth.  Arrian's earlier "Ars Tactica", written around 136 AD, does mention'missiles shot not from a bow but from a machine' and that this machine was used on horseback while in full gallop. It is presumed that this was a crossbow.  The only pictorial evidence of Roman arcuballistas comes from sculptural reliefs in Roman Gaul depicting them in hunting scenes. These are aesthetically similar to both the Greek and Chinese crossbows, but it's not clear what kind of release mechanism they used. Archaeological evidence suggests they were based on the rolling nut mechanism of medieval Europe.

Medieval Europe.

References to the crossbow are basically nonexistent in Europe from the 5th century until the 10th century. There is however a depiction of a crossbow as a hunting weapon on four Pictish stones from early medieval Scotland (6th to 9th centuries): St. Vigeans no. 1, Glenferness, Shandwick, and Meigle.  The crossbow reappeared again in 947 as a French weapon during the siege of Senlis and again in 984 at the siege of Verdun. They were used at the battle of Hastings in 1066 and by the 12th century it had become a common battlefield weapon. The earliest extant European crossbow remains to date were found at Lake Paladru and has been dated to the 11th century.  The crossbow superseded hand bows in many European armies during the 12th century, except in England, where the longbow was more popular. Later crossbows (sometimes referred to as arbalests), utilizing all-steel prods, were able to achieve power close (and sometime superior) to longbows, but were more expensive to produce and slower to reload because they required the aid of mechanical devices such as the cranequin or windlass to draw back their extremely heavy bows. Usually these could only shoot two bolts per minute versus twelve or more with a skilled archer, often necessitating the use of a pavise to protect the operator from enemy fire. Along with polearm weapons made from farming equipment, the crossbow was also a weapon of choice for insurgent peasants such as the Taborites. Genoese crossbowmen were famous mercenaries hired throughout medieval Europe, while the crossbow also played an important role in anti-personnel defense of ships. Crossbows were eventually replaced in warfare by gunpowder weapons, although early guns had slower rates of fire and much worse accuracy than contemporary crossbows. The Battle of Cerignola in 1503 was largely won by Spain through the use of matchlock firearms, marking the first time a major battle was won through the use of firearms. Later, similar competing tactics would feature harquebusiers or musketeers in formation with pikemen, pitted against cavalry firing pistols or carbines. While the military crossbow had largely been supplanted by firearms on the battlefield by 1525, the sporting crossbow in various forms remained a popular hunting weapon in Europe until the eighteenth century.

Islamic world.

There are no references to crossbows in Islamic texts earlier than the 14th century. Arabs in general were averse to the crossbow and considered it a foreign weapon. They called it "qaus al-rijl" (foot-drawn bow), "qaus al-zanbūrak" (bolt bow) and "qaus al-faranjīyah" (Frankish bow). Although Muslims did have crossbows, there seems to be a split between eastern and western types. Muslims in Spain used the typical European trigger while eastern Muslim crossbows had a more complex trigger mechanism.  Mamluk cavalry used crossbows.

Elsewhere.

In Western Africa and Central Africa, crossbows served as a scouting weapon and for hunting, with African slaves bringing this technology to natives in America. In the US South, the crossbow was used for hunting and warfare when firearms or gunpowder were unavailable because of economic hardships or isolation. In the North of Northern America, light hunting crossbows were traditionally used by the Inuit. These are technologically similar to the African derived crossbows, but have a different route of influence.  Spanish conquistadors continued to use crossbows in the Americas long after they were replaced in European battlefields by firearms. Only in the 1570s did firearms became completely dominant among the Spanish in the Americas.  The French and the British used a Sauterelle (French for grasshopper) in World War I. It was lighter and more portable than the Leach Trench Catapult, but less powerful. It weighed and could throw an F1 grenade or Mills bomb. The Sauterelle replaced the Leach Catapult in British service and was in turn replaced in 1916 by the 2-inch Medium Trench Mortar and Stokes mortar.

Modern use.

Hunting, leisure and science.

Crossbows are used for shooting sports and bowhunting in modern archery and for blubber biopsy samples in scientific research. In some countries such as Canada or the United Kingdom, they may be less heavily regulated than firearms, and thus more popular for hunting; some jurisdictions have bow and/or crossbow only seasons.

Modern military and paramilitary use.

In modern times, crossbows are no longer used for war, but there are still some applications. For example, in the Americas, the Peruvian army (Ejército) equips some soldiers with crossbows and rope, to establish a zip-line in difficult terrain. In Brazil the CIGS (Jungle Warfare Training Center) also trains soldiers in the use of crossbows. In the United States of America, SAA International Ltd manufacture a crossbow-launched version of the U.S. Army type classified Launched Grapnel Hook (LGH), among other mine countermeasure solutions designed for the middle-eastern theatre. It has been successfully evaluated in Cambodia and Bosnia. It is used to probe for and detonate tripwire initiated mines and booby traps at up to. The concept is similar to the LGH device originally only fired from a rifle, as a plastic retrieval line is attached. Reusable up to 20 times, the line can be reeled back in without exposing oneself. The device is of particular use in tactical situations where noise discipline is important.  In Europe, British-based Barnett International supplied crossbows to Serbian forces which according to "The Guardian" were later used "in ambushes and as a counter-sniper weapon", against the Kosovo Liberation Army during the Kosovo War in the areas of Pec and Djakovica, south west of Kosovo. Whitehall launched an investigation, though the department of trade and industry established that not being "on the military list" crossbows were not covered by such export regulations. Paul Beaver of Jane's defence publications commented that, "They are not only a silent killer, they also have a psychological effect". On 15 February 2008, Serbian Minister of Defence Dragan Sutanovac was pictured testing a Barnett crossbow during a public exercise of the Serbian army's Special Forces in Nis, south of capital Belgrade. Special forces in both Greece and Turkey also continue to employ the crossbow. Spain's Green Berets still use the crossbow as well.  In Asia, some Chinese armed forces use crossbows, including the special force Snow Leopard Commando Unit of the People's Armed Police and the People's Liberation Army. One justification for this comes in the crossbow's ability to stop persons carrying explosives without risk of causing detonation. During the Xinjiang riots of July 2009, crossbows were used alongside modern military hardware to quell protests. The Indian Navy's Marine Commando Force were equipped until the late 1980s with crossbows supplied with cyanide-tipped bolts, as an alternative to suppressed handguns.

Comparison to conventional bows.

With a crossbow, archers could release a draw force far in excess of what they could have handled with a bow. Furthermore, the crossbow could hold the tension for a long time, whereas even the strongest longbowman could only hold a drawn bow for a short period of time. The ease of use of a crossbow allows it to be used effectively with little training, while other types of bows take far more skill to shoot accurately. The disadvantage is the greater weight and clumsiness to reload compared to a bow, as well as the slower rate of shooting and the lower efficiency of the acceleration system, but there would be reduced elastic hysteresis, making the crossbow a more accurate weapon.  Crossbows have a much smaller draw length than bows. This means that for the same energy to be imparted to the arrow (or bolt), the crossbow has to have a much higher draw weight.  A direct comparison between a fast hand-drawn replica crossbow and a longbow show a 6:10 rate of shooting or a 4:9 rate within 30 seconds and comparable weapons.

Legal issues.

Today, the crossbow often has a complicated legal status due to the possibility of lethal use and its similarities to both firearms and archery weapons. While some jurisdictions regard crossbows the same as firearms, many others do not require any sort of license to own a crossbow. The legality of using a crossbow for hunting varies widely around the world, and even within different jurisdictions of some federal countries.

A crossbow is a ranged weapon using an elastic launching device similar to a bow; it consists of a bow-like assembly called a "prod", mounted horizontally on a main frame called a "tiller", which is hand-held in a similar fashion to the stock of a long gun. Crossbows shoot arrow-like projectiles called "bolts" or "quarrels". A person who shoots crossbow is called a "crossbowman" or an "arbalist" (after the arbalest, an European crossbow variant used during the 12th century).

弩,又称弩弓,现亦称十字弓(英语:crossbow),是一种与弓十分相似的射击兵器。弩的结构主要由弩臂(弩身)、弩弓(弩翼)、弓弦和弩机等部分组成。因不需要在拉弦时同时瞄准,所以对使用者的体能要求也比较低,装填时间比弓长很多,但是一般来说它比弓的射程更远、杀伤力更强,而且命中率更高,在古代是一种大威力的远距离杀伤武器。强弩的射程可达六百米,床弩的射程更达一千多米。按张弦的方法不同,可分为臂张弩、蹶张弩和腰张弩等,欧洲人更是使用各种拉弦器来上弦。


Characteristics of a good pharmacy.

The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy recommends that consumers choose a pharmacy at which they can have a consulting relationship with the pharmacist. Anyone using drugs benefits when they have easier access to a pharmacist. Being timely includes both processing the request quickly and having drug stock available to fill the prescription. Some consumers need drugs delivered to their home, perhaps by mail, and may select a pharmacy which offers that service. Different pharmacies may charge different prices for the same drugs, so shopping for lower prices may identify a pharmacy offering better value. In addition to fulfilling prescriptions, a pharmacy might offer preventive healthcare services like vaccinations. Up-to-date technology at a pharmacy can assist a patient with prescription reminders and alerts about potential negative drug interactions, thereby reducing medical errors.

Duties.

The International Pharmaceutical Federation has declared their vision of a community-based pharmacist:

Responsibilities.

Community-based pharmacists' responsibilities include: checking and dispensing of prescription drugs, providing advice on drug selection and usage to doctors and other health professionals and counseling patients in health promotion, disease prevention and the proper use of medicines.  In most countries regulations govern how dispensaries may operate, with specific requirements for storage conditions, equipment and record keeping.

Clinical roles.

It is becoming more common for pharmacists to take on extended roles that provide more clinical care directly to patients as part of a primary care team. There are around 11,400 community pharmacies in England. Many are open for extended hours in the evenings and weekends and they are accessible without appointment.

United Kingdom.

In the English NHS there are 438 million visits nationally to community pharmacies a year for health related reasons. More than 1 billion prescription items were dispensed in 2012. More than £14 billion is spent on prescribed drugs annually. Under the 2005 NHS Community Pharmacy contract all community pharmacists in England and Wales provide:  Widely available Advanced Services:  Enhanced Services which are not available unless locally commissioned:

Support staff.

To help pharmacists be able to take on extended roles, it is common for them to work as part of a team that can include pharmacy technicians, dispensing assistants and counter assistants.

Ownership.

In parts of mainland Europe, the pharmacist is required to own the pharmacy of which she or he is the licensee. Under this arrangement, a pharmacist can be the operator of only a single outlet. In the UK, 60% of all community pharmacies are owned by companies that own multiple pharmacies.  In the United States, more than 25% of independent owners have ownership in two or more pharmacies.  Most of New Zealand's community pharmacies are owner-operated. In Australia, pharmacists recognise the need to integrate professional pharmacy services into the health system to meet the changing health care needs of the population.

Society and culture.

A survey conducted by PrescribeWellness found that almost half of Americans older than 40 years-old value pharmacies that offer preventative care services, and would be willing to transfer their prescriptions to pharmacies that offer those services. Patients also value pharmacies where they can receive medical advice concerning their prescription medications, how those medications may interact with each other, and receive over-the-counter drug recommendations for the management of common ailments. In a survey of over 1,000 U.S. adults older than 40 years-old conducted by Propeller Insights, 67% of patients responded that they would prefer that their pharmacist discuss new prescriptions with them, rather than their physician, because they viewed their pharmacist as "better at explaining side effects and has more time to spend with them."

A pharmacy (also called "drugstore" in American English or "community pharmacy" or "chemist's" in Commonwealth English) is a retail shop which provides prescription drugs, among other products. At the pharmacy, a pharmacist oversees the fulfillment of medical prescriptions and is available to give advice on their offerings of over-the-counter drugs. A typical pharmacy would be in the commercial area of a community.

西药房,又名药房、药妆店,是售卖西药的商店,相对于中药店、药材铺,后者由中医师或中药师主理,而西药房则由药剂师主理。在香港,-{只}-有那些有药剂师驻店及领有药房牌照的药店才可以称为药房。