Greeks had first settled round the coasts of Sicily during the colonising period and in 480 they had united to

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Alcibiades was the nephew of Pericles. As well as being rich and handsome, he was amusing, clever, insolent and unreliable.

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Socrates was short, ugly and brave. He served as a hoplite in the Peloponnesian war and on one occasion saved

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Lorenzo de’ Medici was far from handsome. His skin was sallow, his eyes had a short-sighted squint and his nose

Read More Florence in the Golden Age 1469 -1498

Milan’s most important business street had no displays of velvet cloaks, bright bolts of silk, or cloth-of-gold. It was a

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One day in the fifteenth century, the Turkish potentate of Babylonia decided to send gifts to the greatest ruler in

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Notre-Dame, Palace of the Virgin, with its clusters of columns, its soaring arches, its superb stone carvings and its matchless

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Richard I, the Lion Heart, fails to capture Jerusalem from the Saracens. The birth of the New Byzantium The first

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Fall of Constantinople begins – the crusaders from the West had taken an oath to free the Holy Land from

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