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The History Channel - Encyclopedia Category: History and Culture > History Date & country: 02/12/2007, UK Words: 25833

Caecus, Appius Claudius
(lived 4th-3rd century BC) Roman politician, the most famous member of the Appii Claudii, one of the great patrician families of the Republic. As censor 312 BC and consul 307 and 296 BC, he was responsible for reforms giving...

Caedmon
(lived c. 660-670) Earliest known English Christian poet. According to the Northumbrian historian Bede, when Caedmon was a cowherd at the monastery of Whitby, he was commanded to sing by a stranger in a dream, and on...

Caeiro, Alberto
Assumed name, or `heteronym`, of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. ...

Caernarfon
Administrative centre of Gwynedd, north Wales, situated on the southwest shore of the Menai Strait; population (2001) 9,700. Formerly the Roman station of Segontium, it is now a market town, port,...

Caerwent
Village in Monmouthshire, south Wales, 10 km/6 mi west of Chepstow; population (2001) 1,700. Formerly the Roman town of Venta Silurum, which covered 18 ha/44 acres, it was built while a fortress was...

Caesar
Family name of Julius Caesar and later an imperial title. Julius Caesar's grand-nephew and adopted son Octavius became Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (the future emperor Augustus). From his day...

Caesar Line
In World War II, last German line of defence in Italy before Rome, extending from the west coast near Ostia, over the Alban Hills south of Rome, via Valmontone to Avezzano - about half-way...

Caesar, Gaius
(20 BC-AD 4) Son of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, daughter of the emperor Augustus. Augustus, in his search for a successor, adopted Gaius and his brother, Lucius, when Agrippa died 12 BC and hence they...

Caesar, Gaius Julius
(100-44 BC) Roman general and dictator, considered Rome's most successful military commander. He formed with Pompey the Great and Marcus Licinius Crassus (the Elder) the First Triumvirate in 60 BC. He conquered...

Caesar, Lucius
(17 BC-AD 2) Younger son of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Julia, daughter of the emperor Augustus. On the death of Agrippa, he was adopted by Augustus, with his brother Gaius Caesar. ...

Caesarea
Ancient city in Palestine (now Qisarya). It was built by Herod the Great 22-12 BC, and named in honour of the Roman emperor Augustus. The constructions included an...

Caesarion
Nickname of Ptolemy XV, son of Cleopatra. ...

caesarism
Political system similar to Bonapartism, involving dictatorship by an individual supported by the army or a popular movement. The outward trappings of democracy are maintained but manipulated. The...

Caffyn, Matthew
(1628-1714) English Arminian Baptist minister. He was expelled from Oxford University for his beliefs, and became minister at Horsham, in Sussex, England, where he was five times imprisoned for unlicensed...

Cagot
Member of a group of peoples living in the Basque provinces of the western Pyrenees; in Béarn, southwestern France; Gascony; and Brittany. There is no evidence that they ever...

Cahan, Abraham
(1860-1951) Russian-born US editor and writer who emigrated to the USA in 1882. He wrote realistic novels of Jewish immigrant life, written variously in English and Yiddish; the best known of his works in...

Cai Yuanpei (or Ts'ai Yüan-p'ei)
(1863-1940) Chinese educator, scholar, and politician. In 1911 he became the first minister of education of the new Chinese Republic, presiding over the creation of a new school system. He resigned in 1912 but...

Cain
In the Old Testament, the first-born son of Adam and Eve. Motivated by jealousy, he murdered his brother Abel because the latter's sacrifice was more acceptable to God than his own. ...

Cain, James M(allahan)
(1892-1977) US novelist. He wrote a series of popular novels in the taut, economical idiom of `hard-boiled` fiction, derived in the main from Ernest Hemingway. Written with compelling power, his major...

Caine, Thomas Henry Hall
(1853-1931) English novelist. He published The Shadow of a Crime (1885); subsequent novels include A Son of Hagar (1887), The Deemster (1887), The Manxman (1894), The Eternal City (1901), The Master of Man...

cairn
In archaeology, a barrow or burial mound made entirely or partly of stones. Cairns are usually erected to cover a chamber or pit and have a surrounding ditch. They are found only in regions with a...

Cairnes, John Elliot
(1823-1875) Irish political economist. He was one of the last classical economists (see classical economics). In 1856 he...

Caitanya
(1486-1533) Principal leader in Bengal of the bhakti movement which revitalized medieval Hinduism. He inspired a mass movement...

Cajun
Member of a French-speaking community of Louisiana, USA, descended from French Canadians. In the 18th century these people were driven to Louisiana from Nova Scotia (then known as Acadia, from...

Calabresi, Guido
(1932) Italian-born US legal scholar. He was an expert in liability law, including medical malpractice and property. He is the author of The Costs of Accidents (1970), Tragic Choices (1978), and Ideals,...

Calabria, Battle of
World War II naval action between Allied and Italian forces 9 April 1940. Australian and British naval forces escorting a convoy to Alexandria clashed in the Mediterranean Sea with an Italian fleet,...

Calahorra
Town in the autonomous community of La Rioja, northern Spain; population (1991) 18,600. Products include wine, olive oil, and cattle. Its ancient Roman name...

Calamis
Greek sculptor who worked in Athens. He is known to have made statues of Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hermes, as well as part of a chariot group commissioned by Hiero, King of Syracuse. No surviving...

Calamity Jane
(c. 1852-1903) US heroine of Deadwood, South Dakota. She worked as a teamster, transporting supplies to the mining camps, adopted male dress and, as an excellent shot, promised `calamity` to any aggressor....

Calamy, Benjamin
(1642-1686) English prebendary of St Paul's. Calamy was educated at St Paul's and at Cambridge University. He became chaplain-in-ordinary to the king, Charles II (c. 1677). His Discourse about a Doubting...

Calamy, Edmund
(1600-1666) English clergyman. He became chaplain to the Bishop of Ely. Later he left the Anglican for the Presbyterian Church, becoming in 1639 minister of St Mary, Aldermanbury, London. Here he officiated for...

Calas, Jean
(1698-1762) French Protestant, executed in 1762 for allegedly murdering his son to prevent his conversion to Catholicism. His widow escaped to Switzerland and, aided by...

Calatrava, Santiago
(1951) Spanish architect and engineer. He is noted for his highly expressive and elegant structural solutions. He established his international reputation through his innovative bridge projects, for...

Calcar, Jan Steven van
(1499-c. 1550) German painter and woodcut designer. Perhaps first trained in the Netherlands, he moved to Venice 1536, where he became a disciple - or, at least, fell under the influence - of Titian. He...

Calchas
In Greek mythology, a visionary and interpreter of omens for the Greek expedition against Caldecott, Randolph
(1846-1886) English artist and illustrator. He illustrated books for children, including John Gilpin, and became an illustrator for the magazine Punch during the 1870s. After working in a bank from 1861 to...

Calder, Alexander (Stirling)
(1898-1976) US abstract sculptor. He invented mobiles, sculptures consisting of flat, brightly coloured shapes, suspended from wires and rods and moved by motors or currents of air. Although he was not the...

Calderini, Domizio
(1446-1478) Italian humanist commentator on classical texts. He was appointed to teach rhetoric and Greek at the University of Rome in 1470, and became a papal secretary to Sixtus IV in 1471. His commentary on...

Calderón de la Barca, Pedro
(1600-1681) Spanish dramatist and poet. After the death of Lope de Vega in 1635, he was considered to be the leading Spanish dramatist. Most celebrated of the 118 plays is the philosophical La vida es...

Calderón Sol, Armando
(1948) El Salvadorean right-wing politician, president from 1994. He was elected to serve as mayor of San Salvador 1988-94 and chair of the right-wing National Republican Alliance (ARENA) in 1990...

Caldwell, Erskine Preston
(1903-1987) US novelist. He achieved great popular success with Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933). These were vivid, bawdy depictions of poverty-stricken Southern sharecroppers in the...

Caledonia
Roman term for the Scottish Highlands, inhabited by the Caledoni. The tribes of the area remained outside Roman control - they were defeated but not conquered...

calendar
Division of the year into months, weeks, and days and the method of ordering the years. From year one, an assumed date of the birth of Jesus, dates are calculated backwards (BC`before Christ` or...

Calenius, Walter
(died 1151) English archdeacon of Oxford (1115-38). ...

Caley, George
(1770-1829) English botanist and explorer in Australia whose many excursions resulted in a detailed knowledge of the country surrounding the settlement of Sydney. ...

Calhoun, John C(aldwell)
(1782-1850) US politician; vice-president 1825-29 under John Quincy Adams and 1829-32 under Andrew Jackson. Throughout his vice-presidency, he was a defender of strong states' rights against an...

Califano, Joseph A(nthony), Jr
(1931) US lawyer and cabinet member. A Wall Street lawyer, he worked in the Defense Department 1961-65. As President Lyndon Johnson's special assistant 1965-69, Califano designed his anti-poverty...

California gold rush
In US history, the influx of prospectors to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, following the discovery of gold in the American River by US surveyor James Marshall in January 1848. Within two...

California Joe
US frontiersman and scout; see Moses Embree Milner. ...

Caligula
(AD 12-41) Roman emperor (AD 37-41), son of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, and successor to Tiberius. Caligula was a cruel tyrant and was assassinated by an officer of his guard. He appears to have been...

caliph
Title of civic and religious heads of the world of Islam. The first caliph was Abu Bakr. Nominally elective, the office became hereditary, held by the Umayyad dynasty 661-750 and then by the...

Calixtus II (or Callistus II)
(died 1124) Pope 1119-24. He was formerly the archbishop of Vienne, France. During the first year of his pontificate, Calixtus was opposed by the antipope Gregory VIII. He was also in dispute with the Holy...

Calixtus, Georg
(1586-1656) German Protestant theologian. From 1613 as professor of theology at Helmstedt University, he was engaged in controversy with the Catholics. His study of the first centuries inclined him to advocate...

Calkins, (Earnest) Elmo
(1868-1964) US advertising executive and author. He was founding president of Calkins and Holden, New York City (1902-31), regarded as the first modern agency for producing integrated advertising campaigns...

call
In finance, a demand for money, especially instalments of part-paid securities. ...

Callaghan, (Leonard) James
(1912-2005) British Labour politician, prime minister and party leader 1976-79. He became prime minister in April 1976 after the unexpected retirement of Harold Wilson and he headed a minority government,...

Callaghan, Daniel J
(1890-1942) US rear admiral. After serving as a naval aide to President Franklin D Roosevelt, Callaghan was given command of a cruiser, and then became chief of staff to the naval commander, South Pacific. He...

Callaghan, Morley Edward
(1903-1990) Canadian novelist and short-story writer. His realistic novels include Such Is My Beloved (1934), More Joy in Heaven (1937), and Close to the Sun Again (1977). Deeply influenced both by the...

Callahan, Daniel
(1930) US philosopher and medical ethicist. His particular concerns are reflected in the title of the over 30 books he has written or edited, including Ethics in Hard Times (1982), Setting Limits: Medical...

Callejas Romero, Rafael Leonardo
(1943) Honduran right-wing politician, president 1990-94. He won the November 1989 presidential election, and his party, the right-wing National Party of Honduras (PNH), also won the concurrent...

Calles, Plutarco Elías
(1877-1945) Mexican political leader, president 1924-28. His administration saw the construction of new roads and irrigation works, as well as land reforms. In 1928 he retired to become a landowner and...

Calley, William L(aws), Jr
(1943) US soldier. In 1968, he led a platoon into the hamlet of My Lai, South Vietnam, and supervised his men as they massacred some 500 elderly men, women, and children. In 1971 he was convicted of the...

Callicrates
(lived 5th century BC) Athenian architect. With Ictinus, he designed the Parthenon 447-438 on the Acropolis. ...

Callicratidas
(lived 5th century BC) Spartan admiral. He commanded the fleet that the Athenian admiral Conon defeated at Arginusae 406 BC. ...

calligraphy
Art of handwriting, regarded in China and Japan as the greatest of the visual arts, and playing a large part in Islamic art because the depiction of the human and animal form is forbidden. Chinese...

Callimachus
(c. 310-c. 240 BC) Greek poet, critic, and scholar. Born in Cyrene, he taught in Alexandria, Egypt, where he is reputed to have been head of the great library. As a scholar he numbered among his pupils Aristophanes of...

Callimachus
Greek sculptor. Working in Athens, he was one of the most important followers of Phidias; his work (as described by his contemporaries) was typical of the refined, mannered sculpture of the second...

Calliope
In Greek mythology, the Muse of epic poetry, and regarded as the most important of all the Muses. Her symbols were a stylus and tablet. She is sometimes represented as the mother of Orpheus, the...

Callisthenes
(c. 360-328 BC) Greek historian, nephew of the philosopher Aristotle. He accompanied Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, to Asia and wrote an account of the expedition, a...

Callisto
In Greek mythology, a nymph beloved by Zeus who was changed into a bear by his jealous wife Hera. ...

Callistratus
(lived 4th century BC) Athenian general and orator. In 361 he was condemned to death for having advised a temporary occupation of Oropus by the Thebans, who subsequently refused to evacuate the place. He escaped to...

Callot, Jacques
(c. 1592-1635) French engraver and painter. He was influenced by Mannerism. His series of etchings Great Miseries of War (1633), prompted by his own experience of the Thirty Years' War, are arrestingly composed...

Calman, Mel
(1931-1994) English cartoonist, designer, and writer. He produced cartoons for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, and also designed book jackets and advertising campaigns. In 1970 he founded the...

Calovius, Abraham
(1612-1686) German Lutheran theologian. He was the most ardent upholder of Lutheranism in the 17th century. He strenuously resisted Catholics, Calvinists, and Socinians, and was particularly opposed to the...

Calpe
Name of Gibraltar in ancient Phoenician and Carthaginian times. ...

Calpurnia
(lived 1st century BC) Roman third wife of Julius Caesar (married 59 BC), daughter of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul 58 BC). Calpurnia tried to dissuade Caesar from attending the Senate on the day he was assassinated;...

calumet
Another term for peace pipe. ...

Calvaert, Denis
(1540-1619) Flemish painter. He established a school in Bologna, Italy, in rivalry with that of the Carracci. Domenichino, Guido Reni, and Francesco Albani were for a time his pupils. ...

Calvary
In the New Testament, the site of Jesus' crucifixion at Jerusalem. Two chief locations are suggested: the site where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre now stands, and the hill...

Calverley, Charles Stuart
(1831-1884) English poet and parodist. He translated the Idylls of the Greek poet Theocritus into English verse, but is best remembered for the parodies contained in Fly Leaves (1872). Calverley was born in...

Calvert, Leonard
(1606-1647) English-born American colonial governor. The son of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, he arrived in Maryland with the first colonists in 1634 and served as the first governor of Maryland...

Calvin (or Cauvin or Chauvin), John
(1509-1564) French-born Swiss Protestant church reformer and theologian. He was a leader of the Reformation in Geneva and set up a strict religious community there. His theological system is known as...

Calvinism
Christian doctrine as interpreted by John Calvin and adopted in Scotland, parts of Switzerland, and the Netherlands; by the Puritans in England and New England, USA; and by the subsequent...

Calvino, Italo
(1923-1985) Italian writer and journalist. His imaginative, lyrical fantasies and allegories have made him one of the great 20th-century Italian writers. His novels include Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno/The...

Calvo, Carlos
(1824-1906) Argentine diplomat and writer. He wrote many seminal works on international law, the most well known being Derecho internacional teórico y práctico de Europa y América/Theoretical and Practical...

Calypso
In Greek legend, a sea nymph; daughter...

Cam (or Cão), Diogo
(lived 15th century) Portuguese navigator who continued the explorations of the African coast begun by Prince Henry of Portugal. In 1482 he became the first European to reach the mouth of the Congo River, and afterwards...

Cambiaso, Luca
(1527-1585) Genoese painter. He travelled widely in Italy and absorbed a variety of Renaissance influences. In 1583 he went with Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527-1596) and Federigo Zuccaro to Spain, where they were...

Cambodia
Country in southeast Asia, bounded north and northwest by Thailand, north by Laos, east and southeast by Vietnam, and southwest by the Gulf of Thailand. Government Under the 1993 constitution, which...

Cambon, Pierre Paul
(1843-1924) French diplomat who was ambassador to London during the years leading to the outbreak of World War I, and a major figure in the creation of the Anglo-French entente during 1903-04. ...

Cambrai, Battles of
Two battles in World War I at Cambrai in northeastern France as British forces attempted to retake the town from the occupying Germans, eventually succeeding on 5 October 1918. First Battle 20-27...

Cambrai, League of
An alliance formed at Cambrai in northern France in December 1508 by European powers hostile to Venice. The stated aim of Emperor Maximilian I, Louis XII of France, and Ferdinand II of Aragon was to...

Cambridge Platonists
Group of 17th-century English philosophers and Puritan theologians, centred on Cambridge University. In opposing the materialism of their contemporary Thomas Hobbes, they drew on the ideas of ...

Cambridge School
An approach to economics usually associated with economists at the University of Cambridge, England, in the post-war period, based on the ideas of John Maynard Keynes who was professor of...

Cambridge, Richard Owen
(1717-1802) English poet. He wrote the Scribleriad (1751), satirizing false poetical taste, and published imitations of Horace. He lived as a country gentleman in Gloucestershire and afterwards in Twickenham,...

Cambuskenneth
Ruined abbey on the River Forth near Stirling, Scotland, founded in 1147 by David I. The first Scots parliament met here in 1326. The remains of James III and his queen, Margaret of Denmark, were...

Cambyses
(lived 6th century BC) King of Persia (529-522 BC). Succeeding his father Cyrus, he assassinated his brother Smerdis and conquered Egypt in 525 BC. There he outraged many of the local religious customs and was said to...

Camden Town Group
School of British painters (1911-13), based in Camden, London, led by Walter Sickert. The work of Spencer Gore (1878-1914) and Harold Gilman (1876-1919) is typical of the group, rendering...

Camden, Battle of
The greatest British victory in the American Revolution 16 August 1780, near Camden, South Carolina. The Americans had sent an army to South Carolina to attack the British headquarters at Camden....

Camden, William
(1551-1623) English antiquary. He published his topographical survey Britannia in 1586 and his Annales, a history of Elizabeth's reign to 1588, in 1615. He was headmaster of Westminster School from 1593. The...