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Gaius Marius was pivotal to many of the ways in which we know Rome today. His impact on Rome is noted in Plutarch’s The Life of Marius, from his time served as General to his time served as Statesman. His blessed life began as a child with a legend - that he found a clutch of eagles containing seven chicks, and therefore Jupiter was assuring his seven elections to senate. Though, all the war and political unrest that ensued his six elections followed him only 17 days into his seventh election - when he died of Pleurisy.

Learn the advantages of calisthenics exercises compared to other workouts, and get some of the best exercises to help you achieve the most impactful results. Learn everything you need to know to safely get started in the right direction, and discover the crucial mistakes you must avoid when performing these exercises.

This sermon by St. John Chrysostom points out the error of scrutinizing the sins of others with great exactitude while we let our own pass. He argues that we ought to do the contrary, to keep our own faults unforgotten but never even to admit a thought of those of others. He argues that God would be more inclined to forgive their sins if people did that.

The Analects or Selected Sayings is an ancient Chinese text comprising sayings and wisdom teachings attributed to Confucius and his contemporaries, as well as fragmentary dialogues between the philosopher and his students. The Analects has been one of the most influential books in China for the last two millennia, and continues to contribute to Chinese and East Asian culture and thought.

John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, wrote this homily against prevalent heresies of his time. Marcionism was an early Christian dualist belief system that originated in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope around the year 144, while Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a spiritual world of light and a material world of darkness.

The Gospel of Barnabas is not to be confused with the Epistle of Barnabas or with the Acts of Barnabas. The book depicts the life of Jesus and claims to be written by the biblical Barnabas who is one of the 12 apostles. Barnabas is about the same length as the four canonical gospels put together, with the bulk being devoted to an account of Jesus' ministry. The text of this Gospel is pseudepigraphical, but some scholars suggest that it may contain remnants of an earlier, apocryphal work from the Gnostic, Ebionite, or Diatessaronic traditions.

Publius Cornelius Tacitus (c. 56 to c. 120 AD) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire, and considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians. Five works ascribed to Tacitus have survived. The surviving portions of his two major works, the Annals and the Histories span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus, in 14 AD, to the years of the First Jewish-Roman War, in 70 AD.

The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill is a play in eight scenes, published in 1921. It chronicles the fall of Brutus Jones, who has escaped from prison and exchanged the US for an unnamed Caribbean island. With the aid of Henry Smithers, a Cockney adventurer, Jones persuades the illiterate, uneducated and superstitious islanders that he’s a powerful magician, whereupon they crown him emperor. As his secret foreign bank account grows, Jones abuses and exploits his subjects.

The Roman statesman Sulla had the nickname “Felix” - meaning “lucky.” Yet his accomplishments were more a matter of brute force than good fortune. He put an end to a civil war, declared himself dictator, and used his power to bring Rome back to its former value system, purging thousands of Roman enemies along the way. Plutarch’s biography of Sulla shows how one man’s use of force to obtain political power influenced many who came after him, most notably Julius Caesar.

De Vita Caesarum ("About the Life of the Caesars"), commonly known as The Twelve Caesars, is a set of 12 biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. The work was considered highly significant in antiquity and remains a primary source on Roman history. It examines the critical period of the Principate from the end of the Republic to the reign of Domitian.

The Phaedrus by Plato, is a dialogue between Plato's protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues. It was probably written around 370 BC, at about the same time as Plato's Republic and Symposium. Ostensibly about love, the discussion in the dialogue focuses on the art of rhetoric and how it ought to be practiced. The dialogue appears in the direct words of Socrates and Phaedrus, without an introduction.

This moving treatise was composed when St. Chrysostom was in exile, probably shortly before his death. It was sent with a letter to his friend the deaconess Olympias in Constantinople. A portion of this treatise reflects the thoughts of Plato in the 10th book of The Republic to prove the immortality of the soul.

English barrister and historical, travel and legal writer C.G. Addison wrote his history of the Knights Templar in 1842. The Knights Templar were a Catholic order active between 1119 and 1312. Growing rapidly in power and notable for charitable causes as well as their fighting skills during the crusades, they are perhaps best known for developing financial methods that were an early form of banking.

St. John Chrysostom’s treatise on humility, hope, and prayer. “Nothing is more powerful than prayer when fervent and genuine,” claims Chrysostom, asserting that it both disperses present dangers and rescues from penalties.

The deaconess Olympias, to whom 17 of Chrysostom's extant letters are addressed, was born about 368 to a pagan family of high rank. After the death of her father Seleucus, she was brought up under the guardianship of her uncle Procopius who was a devout Christian.

Nathan the Wise, a play published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1779, is a fervent plea for religious tolerance. It was first performed in 1783 at the Döbbelinsches Theatre in Berlin. The narrative is set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade and describes how the wise Jewish merchant Nathan, the enlightened sultan Saladin, and a Templar Knight bridge the differences between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Its major themes are friendship, tolerance, the relativism of God, a rejection of miracles and a need for communication.

First published in 1918, My Antonia is the final book of Willa Cather’s "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. This is a coming-of-age story about the orphaned boy Jim Burden growing up on his grandparents' farm in Nebraska and his lifelong friendship with Ántonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter of an immigrant family from Bohemia.

The Secret Adversary, which is the first novel in the series that follows Tommy and Tuppence, chronicles the pair's quest to find a mysterious woman who goes by the name of Jane Finn. Earlier in 1915, Jane Finn had been given a secret document while aboard the Lusitania, which was sunk due to a torpedo hit. That document was a treaty, and Jane was entrusted by the stranger who gave it to her to deliver it to the American Embassy located in London. Years later, the document has still never been delivered....

Renaissance politics unfolded against a background of warring city states in Northern and Central Italy. Humanism, which developed at the same time, was a pervasive program to revive the culture, literary legacy, and moral philosophy of classical antiquity. Some important centers of humanism were Florence, Naples, Rome, Venice, and Genoa.

Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (1857-1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on autosuggestion. Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion is the famous work in which he explains how we can access a great healing power within us.