Ab Urbe Condita - Muzio Scaevola

The sacrifice of Muzio Scaevola
Muzio is a noble soldier who sees besieged Rome in Republican times, the city does not want to suffer such a shame. There is a kind of "shame culture" similar to that of Homer.
Before he performs the act he warns senators not to be taken for a deserter (he want to leave the city to kill Porsenna the opponent's king) in the fateful moment, however, misses and kills the secretary of the king in place of the king. Before the court of the king, Scaevola threats Porsenna and to confirm the strength of soul he burns his hand. The king is impressed by the value of the soldier and lets him go.

John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats
Young poet (died at age 26 of tuberculosis) can compose in neoclassical style by combining the beauty ideal romantic thoughts.
 

Ode on a Grecian Urn

The urn is a distant past which is strange for us, but at the time (Greek) was normal. The urn has the power to stop time: its represantations are immutable. The boy who chases his love will never reach her but she can never escapes: it represented the highest point of desire, the characters do not grow old, and the feeling will always be. Romanticism is characterized by a striving for something that is not necessarily achieved (refer to the poetry of Provence). The music you listen to, vanish soon after, one imagines that continues as long as you want. The figures indicate a representation of that moment of perfection, however, is almost mystical. A form like this is beyond our reason: the only truth is beauty, and men do not need to know more.

About Sallust

Sallust

He was born in 86 BC from a family of commoners. Become a Senator after beeing part of other institutions but was sent off (do not know the precise reason). When Caesar arrived, he starts with this commander and get the governorship of North Africa, he is accused of corruption, but through the intervention of Caesar, the process is closed. Sallust resigned from all offices and buy a villa in central Rome to devote himself to literature and history.
Works: Bellum Catilinae, Bellum Iugurthinum, Historiae (incomplete).

Bellum Catilinae

The Roman historians wrote based mainly on the "Annales". But the work was developing monograph (which was about a small story), this is the kind of stories of Sallust.
Catilina is a young noble who tries a plot against the Senate but is discovered and exiled from Cicero, Catilina tries to raise an army to seize power but was defeated and killed in battle.

ideologies
Sallust said that the riches of the Punic wars have corrupted the customs of the Roman ruling class. They have lost the "Mos Maiorum".

lexicon
Also uses archaic forms, but in essence is simple.

The fall of Napoleon

1810: economic disaster, famine, manufacturing crisis, military failures, the collapse of domestic support for the too many taxes and conscription. 1813: defeat at Leipzig, 1814: Paris captured and Napoleon exiled to the island of Elba. Called Louis XVIII who signs pact with the European powers to return to the borders of 1792, He also gives a constitution to the people of France. 1815: Napoleon returns to France (100 days). Napoleon failed this time and June 18, 1815 was defeated for the last time at Waterloo and exiled to the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic by the British.

History of mathematics: Eratosthenes and Euclid

Eratosthenes
Born in 286 BC Cyrene he was a versatile researcher who also wrote plays. It says he was left to starve; wrote several works including "chronograph" that dated events by the Olympics. Explain the motion of celestial bodies through the armillary sphere, also deals with the tide, his geography is mathematical.
He also measured the circumference of the earth: consider Alexandria and Syene on the same longitude and Syene on the tropic. Through the zenith angle of the shadow in Syene and Alexandria with the proportions calculated the circumference of the earth (between Syene and Alexandria there are 5000 stadia, Egyptian unit of measurement).
Mesolabio: tool for finding cube roots. Sieve: you write all the numbers, you delete all the multiples to the root of the penultimate number, one is not a prime number.

Euclid
He was born circa 300 BC Alexandria, is sometimes confused with Euclid of Megara, however, was that before.
Elements: speaking of arithmetic, geometry, algebra (including geometric), Euclid's postulates, including about 650 theorems.
Demonstration of infinitude of prime numbers: it is assumed a maximum number larger, multiply all prime numbers and add a unit resulting in a prime number greater than he had set as a maximum. Among the theorems can remember the famous theorems of triangles and parallel lines.