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Talk:Invention

Artistic invention
This article is completely disproportionate. The "Artistic invention" section fills about 80% of the page. In particular the timelines are extremely partial and incomplete, and shouldn't be on this page at all. I suggest removing them entirely.Drilou (talk) 21:23, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

 * I have updated the text on the legal aspects (see below). I would not dare to remove the text on artistic, social and similar inventions but I agree that they are very confusing. I guess the word "innovation" is more appropriate here. Innovation is not a legal concept, but reflects a social process. Which is eactly what is meant here, I guess. Rbakels (talk) 20:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

 * A lot of this page is discontiguous and nonsensical, as others have pointed out here. Specifically the opening on "novelty" and not clearly separated out from other definitions of the word. This may be a better fit for multiple pages in a disambiguation (e.g. Invention (Arts), Invention (Cultural). In any case, I've added a contradicts template until this gets resolved.

Dissent and editing
I see that there is a ton of dissent on this page about small tiny changes. However, the article has been tagged for copy editing for over a year. It has also been tagged for a lack of continuity and because it is confusing. It seems to me that there are two competing themes on the page -- invention as a technical term used in technical/engineering applications and invention used in the more creative broad sense. These things can be discussed on the same page, but I think some kind of acknowledgement of this left brain/right brain split might help everyone happy.

so I am going to try and do a major copy-edit and re-organize the article to bring about these changes. I understand that there may be some discussion or disagreement about this, but I am hopeful everyone will like what I have done to make the article tighter and more readable. Comments are welcome! Gofigure41 04:57, 26 May 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gofigure41 (talk • contribs)

White inventors
What would be a good list of White inventors or Ethnic European inventors to put in here or link to another article about it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.53.219.2 (talk) 16:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello. Please could you explain this comment. Why would one want a list of "white inventors" or "ethnic european" inventors? This sounds like white supremacy to me and I object to any such list. Harriett Potter (talk) 08:08, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Invention From A Lawyer View
This article is a lot of BS written from the POV of patent lawyers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.228.46.47 (talk) 22:30, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Inventions are not inherently novel
The article makes a typical mistake by associating inventions with novelty. This is both legally and conceptually incorrect. For the grant of patents, statutes require that applications refer tot subject-matter that is 1) an invention 2) novel 3) non-obvious 4) useful, or susceptible of industrial application. These are cumulative (independent) requirements. Patents are said to protect inventions, but none of the inventions protected by patents is novel, since the grant requires prublication that makes the invention part of the state of the art - whilst novelty is defined with respect to the state of the art.

In common parlance, we do not say that the steam engine, the light bulb or the transistor is a "former" invention. No, they are still called inventions, despite being perhaps centuries old. Rbakels (talk) 16:47, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

 * After dinner, I thought that the lemma must be updated, so I did that. I wrote a PhD on the invention concept, so I am more than aware that it is utterly confusing, even ignoring the alleged "social" and "cultural" inventions. There is a tendency, especially in the US, to consider all valuable knowledge potentially an invention. so it deserves to be mentioned that an invention ins basically a trick. Yesterdays trick is still a trick, so novelty is mot part of the equation. But mere facts are no tricks. Water boils at 100 centigrade, but that is not something you can do.

I guess strict Wikipedians may be tempted to remove my text, but I'd suggest them to think twice. Rbakels (talk) 20:35, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

 * My text was actually removed, and I received almost rude comments on my talk page. I was blamed for having a "US-centric" view, but I am a European, and if anything, I may rather be blamed for having a European-centric view - which is that inventions do not just involve valuable knowledge, but actions that can be executed. The famous German textbook by Kraßer refers to a "Lehre zum Handeln", a teaching how to act. I was blamed for using the word "trick" as a popular designation for explanation for lay people. A "trick" can be executed.

 * I am aware that the word "invention" may be used in different meanings, but I guess that for most people the legal invention concept is most important, and it is actually close to common parlance. As I explained above, inventions are not inherently novel, nor advanced. We still speak about the invention of fire, thousands of years ago, not about the "former invention". Patents are said to protect inventions, not "former inventions".

 * Could anybody help me to resolve this issue? I have no time to waste in edit wars. Rbakels (talk) 10:16, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

 * I would have reverted any edit that described an invention as a trick. What we need is WP:Reliable sources since this is what Wikipedia reports. WP:Original research does not have a place here, but if your viewpoint has been put forward in independent publications, then it deserves at least a paragraph.  The first two paragraphs of the current article require references.  The OED defines invention as "The original contrivance or production of a new method or means of doing something, of an art, kind of instrument, etc. previously unknown".  I don't know whether that helps.   D b f i r s   12:04, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

 * I expect from an encyclopedia an explanation which gives a concise explanation to laymen. I did not say that some sources say that inventions are tricks, it it juust a summary in my language of an explanation that would require many more words. I know that in legal texts possibly every word should have a footnote, but this is an explanation for laymen. Yes, I know that Wikipedia forbids "original research", but does it forbid original language for clarification purposes?
 * I am not sure, but perhaps the comment is that the word "trick" is substantially wrong too. The essential element of a "trick" is that it can be executed, and that matches the statement in the standard German textbook by Kraßer and Ann that says that an invention is "eine Lehre zum Handeln", a teaching that says how to act. That excludes mere facts. Don't blame me for using a German text. I am not German, but Germany happens to be the center of European patent law.
 * Is it because of the resistance against the word "trick" that my entore contribution was thrown away, with really rude comments? The present text is almost a literary essay about the "essence" of the invention, but the word "invention" is primarily a "technical" legal concept. An unexpected aspect of the legal "invention" concept is that it implies neither novelty nor non-obviousness (advancement) - but that is also true in common parlance. Thousands of years ago our ancestors made the invention of fire. It is still considered an invention, thousands of years later.
 * A final comment on the prohibition of "original research" is that some (authoritative) sources claim that it is impossible to give a good (legal) definition of the invention concept. Could one imagine that an encyclopedia says: this is a legal concept but we don't tell you what it means since lawyers say that it is impossible to define it? There is at least a colloquial definition, which may not answer all questions in court cases, but certainly help laymen to get the answer they were looking for when they consultend WikiPedia. Or is WikiPedia aiming at satisfying professionals? That would require dozens of pages of text. For that purpose, I would refer to the Benkard-Bruchhausen handbook - but that is in German again (which incidentally is a foreign language for me as well). Anyway, the present "essay" does not satisfy the needs of lawyers either.
 * I find it highly disappointing that a single critic can throw my carefully drafted text away. If Wikipedia depends on voluteers, they should not be discourageed let alone offended. Rbakels (talk) 00:25, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

 * The OED definition is not helpful. I makes the usual mistake of confusing the invention concept with novelty. As I said, both in law and in commonparlance inventions are not inherently new. We talk about the fire, the wheel and the steam engine as inventions, not "former inventions".

I am afraid there is a methodological issue here. In some academic disciplines, the approach is to have as many ctations as possible, and choosing one is probably objectionable because it may be considered "original research". But is an encyclopedia really an academic reference book? It seems to me that an encyclopedia should inform (educated?) laymen about the essence of a topic. This requires explanations that may not have references - but still are no "original research". A teacher must find creative explanations that clarify complex topics to laymen - but an explanation is no "original research". The topic "invention" is particularly cumbersome since the meaning of this concept is controversial. Whilst a strictly academic approach may require a comprehensive overview of existing conceptions, such an approach will be utterly confusing for laymen looking for a basic explanation. The purpose of Wikipedia is to make knowledge available in as many languages as possible - which confirms that an academic reference book is not the prime purpose. Rbakels (talk) 12:07, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

The OED defines invention as "The original contrivance or production of a new method or means of doing something, of an art, kind of instrument, etc. previously unknown". I don't know whether that helps.

The word "trick" may have a derogatory meaning in English. For me, it was a nice and concise way to explain to a laymen the idea of an invention. 1) tricks end inventions are knowledge 2) both can be executed by any "person skilled in the art" - there is not another invention needed for that purpose. This is not "orginal research" but a summary of the German Kraßer/Ann textbook. They refer to "Lehre zum Handeln" = a teaching how to act. Which (among other things) excludes mere facts, and mere ideas. Of course this is a summary for education purposes. For a full explanation, read my 263 page PhD thesis.

I started this comment by the remark tha an invention is not inherently new or "non-obvious", both legally and in common parlance. We stil refer to the invention of the steam engine, not the former invention of the steam engine. So the convention concept itself has nothing to do with "advanced". Rbakels (talk) 06:50, 3 January 2018 (UTC) Rbakels (talk) 06:50, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Animal-inspired inventions
FYI: I am a newcomer and this is my first wikipedia edit, as prompted by an online MOOC on social media.

I think animals do not generally get the credit they deserve when it comes to their importance in human lives. Recently, David Attenborough said that our natural world is under assault. This is likely do to the under-appreciation of animals. Animals serve as inspiration. They also generate technologies/advances themselves (spider silk, antibiotics on platypus). Let's honor our natural world and its animals. A reference to this article would be a start: http://mentalfloss.com/article/22702/10-technologies-we-stole-animal-kingdom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.245.32.26 (talk) 21:20, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Gadgets

 * 1) invent

 * 1) inventing

 * 1) eventingsf

 * 1) www.eventsingsf@#inventingsf

 * 1) makkemak@markblumeschmidts — Preceding unsigned comment added by Makkemak5 (talk • contribs) 15:34, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Inventor is a short stub describing "a person who creates or discovers [...] an invention." Since these are clearly closely related topics, and since Invention is the more elaborated article, I think that Inventor should be merged into it. Opinions? Cnilep (talk) 03:41, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Contradicts
You added the template contradicts, but did not specify which other articles 'Invention' contradicts, nor how. Could you (or other editors who see the contradiction(s)) please comment here about what problems you see? Thank you, Cnilep (talk) 03:53, 9 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I removed the template, as it was not clear what, if anything, contradicted other information on Wikipedia, and there did not appear to be any action forthcoming. Cnilep (talk) 10:23, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

MathMathematics
Hei 2405:204:A095:D424:3856:EFB6:E65D:48AB (talk) 14:54, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Invented (album) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:32, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Invention


text:
Phocas

Phocas (Focas; Φωκάς; 547 –5 October 610) was Byzantine emperor from 602 to 610. Initially a middle-ranking officer in the Eastern Roman army, Phocas rose to prominence as a spokesman for dissatisfied soldiers in their disputes with the court of the Emperor Maurice. When the army revolted in 602, Phocas emerged as the natural leader of the mutiny. The revolt proved to be successful and led to the capture of Constantinople and the overthrow of Maurice on 23 November 602 with Phocas declaring himself emperor on the same day.

Phocas deeply mistrusted the uncooperative elite of Constantinople, to whom he was a usurper and a provincial boor. He, therefore, attempted to base his regime on relatives installed in high military and administrative positions. He immediately faced challenges in domestic and foreign affairs, and responded with little success. He dealt with domestic opposition with increasing ruthlessness that alienated ever wider circles, including some of his own household. At the same time, the Empire was threatened on multiple frontiers. Avars and Slavs renewed their destructive raids on the Balkans, and the Sasanian Empire launched a massive invasion of the eastern provinces. Finally, the Exarch of Africa, Heraclius the Elder, rebelled against Phocas and gained wide support throughout the empire. Phocas attempted to use border troops to crush the rebellion, but this only resulted in allowing invaders to break into the heartlands of the Empire. Heraclius the Elder's son, Heraclius, took Constantinople on 5 October 610, executed Phocas the same day, and declared himself emperor.

Surviving sources are universally extremely hostile to Phocas. He is described as an incompetent tyrant and usurper who brutally purged any real or perceived opposition and left the Empire wide open to foreign aggression. The veracity of these sources is difficult to ascertain since emperors of the Heraclian dynasty who succeeded Phocas had a vested interest in tarnishing his reputation.

Early life
Phocas was probably born in 547, as he was said to be aged 55 when he became emperor. He and his family were likely of Thraco-Roman or Cappadocian origin. The life of Phocas before his usurpation of the Byzantine Empire's throne is obscure, but it is known that he served as a low-ranking officer under Emperor Maurice.

Usurpation
In 602, the Byzantine army rebelled against Emperor Maurice, largely due to exhaustion and outrage over orders to continue campaigning north of the Danube in winter as well as previous cuts in wages. The army declared Phocas, by then a centurion, to be the new emperor, raising him on a shield (the traditional method of declaring emperors). On 23 November 602, Phocas was crowned by the patriarch Cyriacus in the church of St John the Baptist at the Hebdomon. He entered Constantinople two days later, on 25 November.

Maurice fled the city with his sons, Theodosius and Tiberius, but they were soon after captured and executed. Maurice's wife and daughters were put in the monastery of Nea Metanoia and later killed.

Foreign conflict
Despite the executions of the previous emperor and his dynastic successors, Phocas remained in a precarious position, which led him to devote his energy to purging enemies and destroying conspiracies. Because of this focus, and the local resistance he faced all throughout the Byzantine Empire, he was unable to confront foreign attacks on the empire's frontiers. The Avars and Slavs launched numerous raids into the Balkan provinces of the Byzantine Empire, and the Sassanian Empire launched an invasion of the eastern provinces of the empire.

The Avars were able to take all land in the Balkans north of Thessalonica. The populations of Christian cities were slaughtered or captured. The Byzantines transferred most of their forces to the eastern front due to the threat from the Persians.

The Sassanid Persians had formerly been at peace with Maurice as a result of a treaty they made with him in 591. After Phocas usurped and killed Maurice, the Persians invaded the empire in 603. The Sassanids rapidly occupied the eastern provinces, leading the Magister militum per Orientem, Narses, to defect to their side. Phocas swiftly dealt with him, by inviting him to Constantinople under the promise of safe conduct, then having him burnt alive when he arrived. By 607, the Sassanids had occupied Mesopotamia, Syria, and much of Asia Minor, as far as the Bosphorus.

By the time his reign ended in 610, the Persians had already crossed the Euphrates and taken Zenobia. Contemporary accounts describe the Persians as being very brutal to the occupied population. The 'miracle of St Demetrios' described the carnage:

"[T]he devil raised the whirlwind of hatred in all the East, Cilicia, Asia, Palestine and all the lands from there to Constantinople: the factions, no longer content simply to spill blood in public places, attacked homes, slaughtered women, children, the aged, and the young who were sick; those whose youth and frailty impeded their escape from the massacre, [saw] their friends, acquaintances, and parents pillaged, and after all that, even set on fire so that the most wretched inhabitant was not able to escape."

Administration

Phocas was unable to control either the state or the army effectively. Due to his distrust of the bulk of Constantinople's elite, with whom he had had no connection before becoming emperor, frequently filling senior military positions with his relatives. He installed: his brother Domentziolus as Magister officiorum in 603; his nephew Domentziolus as Magister militum per Orientem in 604, giving him command over the eastern provinces; and his brother Comentiolus as Magister militum per Orientem around 610. All three remained loyal to Phocas until they were killed by Heraclius. Of the three known male blood-relatives of Phocas, all three were appointed to senior posts, two in military positions and one in an administrative position. Phocas also appointed Priscus, who was his son-in-law by way of his marriage to Phocas' daughter Domentzia, as Comes excubitorum, the captain of the Excubitors, in 603.

Italian policy
When Phocas was emperor, Byzantine Italy was under continual attack from Lombards, but the Byzantine government spent few resources to aid Italy due to troubles elsewhere. In the entirety of Phocas' reign, the only public structure built with taxes in the city of Rome was a statue of Phocas completed in 608.

When Phocas usurped Maurice, Gregory the Great was bishop of Rome and he praised Phocas as a restorer of liberty. Gregory referred to him as a pious and clement lord, and compared his wife (the new Empress) Leontia to Marcian's consort Pulcheria (whom the Council of Chalcedon called the new Helena). In May 603, portraits of the imperial couple arrived in Rome and were ordered by the pope to be placed in the oratory of St. Caesarius in the imperial palace on the Palatine.

Imperial approval was needed at that time to appoint a new pope, but the approval was delayed by a year upon the death of Pope Sabinian in 606, as Phocas was occupied with killing internal enemies that threatened his rule. He finally gave approval in 607 and Boniface III became pope. Phocas declared Rome "the head of all churches". Shortly afterwards, Phocas had a gilded statue of himself erected on a monumental column in the Roman Forum, known as the Column of Phocas.

Downfall

Despite being appointed as Comes excubitorum, Priscus was not loyal to Phocas, and in 608 he appealed to Heraclius the Elder, the Exarch of Carthage, to rebel against Phocas. Heraclius the Elder agreed, and began to prepare to invade, by cutting off the supply of grain to Constantinople and assembling a large army and navy. Heraclius the Elder launched his invasion in 609, with his nephew, Nicetas, marching troops overland to the capital, and his son, Heraclius, leading a naval invasion of Thessalonica, before marching to Constantinople. Heraclius arrived outside Constantinople on 3 October 610, and seized the city on 5 October. Heraclius was declared emperor on the same day, and swiftly had Phocas executed.

Legacy
Phocas is generally depicted as a villain by Byzantines and modern historians alike, but some of the earliest sources available about Phocas' reign were written during the reign of Heraclius. The writings that survive are not reliably neutral and the writers would have good reason to demonize him in order to strengthen the rule of Heraclius.

In the cultural sphere, the reign of Phocas is marked by the change of Imperial fashion set by Constantine the Great ((r. 306 – 337)). Constantine and all his successors, except Julian the Apostate ((r. 361 – 363)), were beardless. Phocas again introduced the wearing of the beard. This fashion lasted until the end of the Byzantine Empire.

On 19 February 607, Emperor Phocas appointed Boniface III as the new bishop of Rome, then Phocas issued an imperial decree by the Roman government, recognizing Boniface III as the "Head of all Churches" and "Universal Bishop". Phocas transferred the title of "Universal Bishop" from the Diocese of Constantinople to the Diocese of Rome. Boniface sought and obtained a decree from Phocas in which he restated that "the See of Blessed Peter the Apostle should be the head of all the Churches" and ensured that the title of "Universal Bishop" belonged exclusively to the Bishop of Rome. This act effectively ended the attempt by Patriarch Cyriacus of Constantinople to establish himself as "Universal Bishop".

In calling the Pope the "head of all churches", Phocas' decree has been important in discussions about papal primacy and papal supremacy. Some Protestant historicist commentators have seen the decree of Phocas (usually taken to be in 606) as having eschatological significance. For example, in his Horae Apocalypticae, Edward Bishop Elliott took the 1260 days of Revelation 11:3 to be the period between 606 and the Unification of Italy in 1866.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Phocas


text:
Elizabeth of Russia

Elizabeth or Elizaveta Petrovna (Елизаве́та Петро́вна; 29 December 1709 – 5 January 1762) was Empress of Russia from 1741 until her death in 1762. She remains one of the most popular Russian monarchs because of her decision not to execute a single person during her reign, her numerous construction projects, and her strong opposition to Prussian policies.

The second-eldest daughter of Tsar Peter the Great ((r. 1682 – 1725)), Elizabeth lived through the confused successions of her father's descendants following her half-brother Alexei's death in 1718. The throne first passed to her mother Catherine I of Russia ((r. 1725 – 1727)), then to her nephew Peter II, who died in 1730 and was succeeded by Elizabeth's first cousin Anna ((r. 1730 – 1740)). After the brief rule of Anna's infant great-nephew, Ivan VI, Elizabeth seized the throne with the military's support and declared her own nephew, the future Peter III, her heir.

During her reign Elizabeth continued the policies of her father and brought about a remarkable Age of Enlightenment in Russia. Her domestic policies allowed the nobles to gain dominance in local government while shortening their terms of service to the state. She encouraged Mikhail Lomonosov's foundation of the University of Moscow, the highest-ranking Russian educational institution. Her court became one of the most splendid in all Europe, especially regarding architecture: she modernised Russia's roads, encouraged Ivan Shuvalov's foundation of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and financed grandiose Baroque projects of her favourite architect, Bartolomeo Rastrelli, particularly in Peterhof Palace. The Winter Palace and the Smolny Cathedral in Saint Petersburg are among the chief monuments of her reign.

Elizabeth led the Russian Empire during the two major European conflicts of her time: the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). She and diplomat Aleksey Bestuzhev-Ryumin solved the first event by forming an alliance with Austria and France, but indirectly caused the second. Russian troops enjoyed several victories against Prussia and briefly occupied Berlin, but when Frederick the Great was finally considering surrender in January 1762, the Russian Empress died. She was the last agnatic member of the House of Romanov to reign over the Russian Empire.

Childhood and teenage years
Elizabeth was born at Kolomenskoye, near Moscow, Russia, on 18 December 1709 (O.S.). Her parents were Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia and Catherine. Catherine was the daughter of Samuel Skowroński, a subject of Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Although no documentary record exists, her parents were said to have married secretly at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Saint Petersburg at some point between 23 October and 1 December 1707. Their official marriage was at Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 9 February 1712. On this day, the two children previously born to the couple (Anna and Elizabeth) were legitimised by their father and given the title of Tsarevna ("princess") on 6 March 1711. Of the twelve children born to Peter and Catherine (five sons and seven daughters), only the sisters survived to adulthood. They had one older surviving sibling, crown prince Alexei Petrovich, who was Peter's son by his first wife, noblewoman Eudoxia Lopukhina.

As a child, Elizabeth was the favourite of her father, whom she resembled both physically and temperamentally. Even though he adored his daughter, Peter did not devote time or attention to her education; having both a son and grandson from his first marriage to a noblewoman, he did not anticipate that a daughter born to his former maid might one day inherit the Russian throne, which had until that point never been occupied by a woman; as such, it was left to Catherine to raise the girls, a task met with considerable difficulty due to her own lack of education. Despite this, Elizabeth was still considered to be a bright girl, if not brilliant, and had a French governess who gave lessons of mathematics, arts, languages, and sports. She grew interested in architecture, became fluent in Italian, German, and French, and became an excellent dancer and rider. Like her father, she was physically active and loved horseriding, hunting, sledging, skating, and gardening.

From her earliest years, Elizabeth was recognised as a vivacious young woman, and was regarded as the leading beauty of the Russian Empire. The wife of the British ambassador described Grand Duchess Elizabeth as "fair, with light brown hair, large sprightly blue eyes, fine teeth and a pretty mouth. She is inclinable to be fat, but is very genteel and dances better than anyone I ever saw. She speaks German, French and Italian, is extremely gay, and talks to everyone..."

Marriage plans
With much of his fame resting on his effective efforts to modernise Russia, Tsar Peter desired to see his children married into the royal houses of Europe, something which his immediate predecessors had consciously tended to avoid. Peter's son Aleksei Petrovich, born of his first marriage to a Russian noblewoman, had no problem securing a bride from the ancient house of Brunswick-Lüneburg. However, the Tsar experienced difficulties in arranging similar marriages for the daughters born of his second wife. When Peter offered either of his daughters in marriage to the future Louis XV, the Bourbons of France snubbed him due to the girls' post-facto legitimisation.

In 1724, Peter betrothed his daughters to two young princes, first cousins to each other, who hailed from the tiny north German principality of Holstein-Gottorp and whose family was undergoing a period of political and economic turmoil. Anna Petrovna (aged 16) was to marry Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, who was then living in exile in Russia as Peter's guest after having failed in his attempt to succeed his maternal uncle as King of Sweden and whose patrimony was at that time under Danish occupation. Despite all this, the prince was of impeccable birth and well-connected to many royal houses; it was a respectable and politically useful alliance. In the same year, Elizabeth was betrothed to marry Charles Frederick's first cousin, Charles Augustus of Holstein-Gottorp, the eldest son of Christian Augustus, Prince of Eutin. Anna Petrovna's wedding took place in 1725 as planned, even though her father had died (8 February 1725) a few weeks before the nuptials. In Elizabeth's case, however, her fiancé died on 31 May 1727, before her wedding could be celebrated. This came as a double blow to Elizabeth, because her mother (who had ascended to the throne as Catherine I) had died just two weeks previously, on 17 May 1727.

By the end of May 1727, 17-year-old Elizabeth had lost her fiancé and both of her parents. Furthermore, her half-nephew Peter II had ascended the throne. Her marriage prospects continued to fail to improve three years later, when her nephew died and was succeeded on the throne by Elizabeth's first cousin Anna, daughter of Ivan V. There was little love lost between the cousins and no prospect of either any Russian nobleman or any foreign prince seeking Elizabeth's hand in marriage. Nor could she marry a commoner because it would cost her royal status, property rights and claim to the throne. The fact that Elizabeth was something of a beauty did not improve marriage prospects, but instead earned her resentment. When the Empress Anna asked the Chinese minister in Saint Petersburg to identify the most beautiful woman at her court, he pointed to Elizabeth, much to Anna's displeasure.

Elizabeth's response to the lack of marriage prospects was to take Alexander Shubin, a sergeant in the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment, as her lover. When Empress Anna found out about this, she banished him to Siberia. After consoling herself, Elizabeth turned to coachmen and footmen for her sexual pleasure. She eventually found a long-term companion in Alexei Razumovsky, a kind-hearted Ukrainian Cossack with a good bass voice. Razumovsky had been brought from his village to Saint Petersburg by a nobleman to sing for a church choir, but the Grand Duchess purchased the talented serf from the nobleman for her own choir. A simple-minded man, Razumovsky never showed interest in affairs of state during all the years of his relationship with Elizabeth, which spanned from the days of her obscurity to the height of her power. As the couple was devoted to each other, there is reason to believe that they might even have married in a secret ceremony. In 1742, the Holy Roman Emperor made Razumovsky a count of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1756, Elizabeth made him a prince and field marshal.

Imperial coup

While Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov remained in power (until September 1727), the government of Elizabeth's adolescent nephew Peter II (reigned 1727–1730) treated her with liberality and distinction. However, the Dolgorukovs, an ancient boyar family, deeply resented Menshikov. With Peter II's attachment to Prince Ivan Dolgorukov and two of their family members on the Supreme State Council, they had the leverage for a successful coup. Menshikov was arrested, stripped of all his honours and properties, and exiled to northern Siberia, where he died in November 1729. The Dolgorukovs hated the memory of Peter the Great and practically banished his daughter from Court.

During the reign of her cousin Anna (1730–1740), Elizabeth was gathering support in the background. Being the daughter of Peter the Great, she enjoyed much support from the Russian Guards regiments. She often visited the elite Guards regiments, marking special events with the officers and acting as godmother to their children. After the death of Empress Anna, the regency of Anna Leopoldovna for the infant Ivan VI was marked by high taxes and economic problems. The French ambassador in Saint Petersburg, the Marquis de La Chétardie was deeply involved in planning a coup to depose the regent, whose foreign policy was opposed to the interests of France, and bribed numerous officers in the Imperial Guard to support Elizabeth's coup. The French adventurer Jean Armand de Lestocq helped her actions according to the advice of the marquis de La Chétardie and the Swedish ambassador, who were particularly interested in toppling the regime of Anna Leopoldovna.

On the night of 25 November 1741 (O.S.), Elizabeth seized power with the help of the Preobrazhensky Life Guards Regiment. Arriving at the regimental headquarters wearing a warrior's metal breastplate over her dress and grasping a silver cross, she challenged them: "Whom do you want to serve: me, your natural sovereign, or those who have stolen my inheritance?" Won over, the regiment marched to the Winter Palace and arrested the infant Emperor, his parents, and their own lieutenant-colonel, Count Burkhard Christoph von Munnich. It was a daring coup and, amazingly, succeeded without bloodshed. Elizabeth had vowed that if she became Empress, she would not sign a single death sentence, an extraordinary promise at the time but one that she kept throughout her life.

Despite Elizabeth's promise, there was still cruelty in her regime. Although she initially thought of allowing the young tsar and his mother to leave Russia, she imprisoned them later in a Shlisselburg Fortress, worried that they would stir up trouble for her in other parts of Europe. Fearing a coup on Ivan's favour, Elizabeth set about destroying all papers, coins or anything else depicting or mentioning Ivan. She had issued an order that if any attempt were made for the adult Ivan to escape, he was to be eliminated. Catherine the Great upheld the order, and when an attempt was made, he was killed and secretly buried within the fortress.

Another case was Countess Natalia Lopukhina. The circumstances of Elizabeth's birth would later be used by her political opponents to challenge her right to the throne on grounds of illegitimacy. When Countess Lopukhina's son, Ivan Lopukhin, complained of Elizabeth in a tavern, he implicated his mother, himself and others in a plot to reinstate Ivan VI as tsar. Ivan Lopukhin was overheard and tortured for information. All the conspirators were sentenced to death. The female conspirators had their sentences commuted to having their tongues removed and being publicly flogged. The men were broken on the wheel.

Reign
Elizabeth crowned herself Empress in the Dormition Cathedral on 25 April 1742 (O.S.), which would become standard for all emperors of Russia until 1896. At the age of thirty-three, with relatively little political experience, she found herself at the head of a great empire at one of the most critical periods of its existence. Her proclamation explained that the preceding reigns had led Russia to ruin: "The Russian people have been groaning under the enemies of the Christian faith, but she has delivered them from the degrading foreign oppression."

Russia had been under the domination of German advisers, so Elizabeth exiled the most unpopular of them, including Andrey Osterman and Burkhard Christoph von Münnich. She passed down several pieces of legislation that undid much of the work her father had done to limit the power of the church.

With all her shortcomings (documents often waited months for her signature), Elizabeth had inherited her father's genius for government. Her usually keen judgement and her diplomatic tact again and again recalled Peter the Great. What sometimes appeared as irresolution and procrastination was most often a wise suspension of judgement under exceptionally difficult circumstances. From the Russian point of view, her greatness as a stateswoman consisted of her steady appreciation of national interests and her determination to promote them against all obstacles.

Educational reforms
Despite the substantial changes made by Peter the Great, he had not exercised a really formative influence on the intellectual attitudes of the ruling classes as a whole. Although Elizabeth lacked the early education necessary to flourish as an intellectual (once finding the reading of secular literature to be "injurious to health"), she was clever enough to know its benefits and made considerable groundwork for her eventual successor, Catherine the Great. She made education freely available to all social classes (except for serfs), encouraged establishment of the first university in Russia founded in Moscow by Mikhail Lomonosov, and helped to finance the establishment of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.

Internal peace
A gifted diplomat, Elizabeth hated bloodshed and conflict and went to great lengths to alter the Russian system of punishment, even outlawing capital punishment. According to historian Robert Nisbet Bain, it was one of her "chief glories that, so far as she was able, she put a stop to that mischievous contention of rival ambitions at Court, which had disgraced the reigns of Peter II, Anna and Ivan VI and enabled foreign powers to freely interfere in the domestic affairs of Russia."

Construction projects

Elizabeth enjoyed and excelled in architecture, overseeing and financing many construction projects during her reign. One of the many projects from the Italian architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli was the reconstruction of Peterhof Palace, adding several wings between 1745 and 1755. Her most famous creations were the Smolny Convent and the Winter Palace, though she died before its completion. The Palace is said to contain 1,500 rooms, 1,786 doors, and 1,945 windows, including bureaucratic offices and the Imperial Family's living quarters arranged in two enfilades, from the top of the Jordan Staircase. Regarding the Smolny Convent, historian Robert Nisbet Bain stated that "No other Russian sovereign ever erected so many churches."

The expedited completion of buildings became a matter of importance to the Empress and work continued throughout the year, even in winter's severest months. 859,555 rubles had been allocated to the project, a sum raised by a tax on state-owned taverns, but work temporarily ceased due to lack of resources. Ultimately, taxes were increased on salt and alcohol to completely fund the extra costs. However, Elizabeth's incredible extravagance ended up greatly benefiting the country's infrastructure. Needing goods shipped from all over the world, numerous roads in all Russia were modernised at her orders.

Selection of an heir
As an unmarried and childless empress, it was imperative for Elizabeth to find a legitimate heir to secure the Romanov dynasty. She chose her nephew, Peter of Holstein-Gottorp. The young Peter had lost his mother shortly after he was born, and his father at the age of eleven. Elizabeth invited her young nephew to Saint Petersburg, where he was received into the Russian Orthodox Church and proclaimed the heir to the throne on 7 November 1742. Keen to see the dynasty secured, Elizabeth immediately gave Peter the best Russian tutors and settled on Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst as a bride for her heir. Incidentally, Sophie's mother, Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp, was a sister of Elizabeth's own fiancé, who had died before the wedding. On her conversion to the Russian Orthodox Church, Sophie was given the name Catherine in memory of Elizabeth's mother. The marriage took place on 21 August 1745. Nine years later a son, the future Paul I, was born on 20 September 1754.

There is considerable speculation as to the actual paternity of Paul. It is suggested that he was not Peter's son at all but that his mother had engaged in an affair, to which Elizabeth had consented, with a young officer, Sergei Vasilievich Saltykov, who would have been Paul's biological father. Peter never gave any indication that he believed Paul to have been fathered by anyone but himself but took no interest in parenthood. Elizabeth most certainly took an active interest and acted as if she were his mother, instead of Catherine. Shortly after Paul's birth the Empress ordered the midwife to take the baby and to follow her, and Catherine did not see her child for another month, for a short churching ceremony. Six months later, Elizabeth let Catherine see the child again. The child had, in effect, become a ward of the state and, in a larger sense, the property of the state.

Foreign policy
Elizabeth abolished the cabinet council system that had been used under Anna, and reconstituted the Senate as it had been under Peter the Great, with the chiefs of the departments of state (none of them German) attending. Her first task after this was to address the war with Sweden. On 23 January 1743, direct negotiations between the two powers were opened at Åbo. In the Treaty of Åbo, on 7 August 1743 (O.S.), Sweden ceded to Russia all of southern Finland east of the Kymmene River, which became the boundary between the two states. The treaty also gave Russia the fortresses of Villmanstrand and Fredrikshamn.

Bestuzhev
The concessions to Russia can be credited to the diplomatic ability of the new vice chancellor, Aleksey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, who had Elizabeth's support. She placed Bestuzhev at the head of foreign affairs immediately after her accession. He represented the anti-Franco-Prussian side of her council, and his objective was an alliance with England and Austria. At that time, it was probably advantageous to Russia. Both the Lopukhina affair and other attempts of Frederick the Great and Louis XV to get rid of Bestuzhev failed. Instead, they put the Russian court into the centre of a tangle of intrigue during the earlier years of Elizabeth's reign. Ultimately, the minister's strong support from the Empress prevailed.

Bestuzhev had many achievements. His effective diplomacy and 30,000 troops sent to the Rhine accelerated the peace negotiations, leading to the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (18 October 1748). He extricated his country from the Swedish imbroglio and reconciled his imperial mistress with the courts of Vienna and London. He enabled Russia to assert herself effectually in Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Sweden and isolated the King of Prussia by forcing him into hostile alliances. All this would have been impossible without the steady support of Elizabeth who trusted him completely in spite of the Chancellor's many enemies, most of whom were her personal friends.

However, on 14 February 1758, Bestuzhev was removed from office. The future Catherine II recorded, "He was relieved of all his decorations and rank, without a soul being able to reveal for what crimes or transgressions the first gentleman of the Empire was so despoiled, and sent back to his house as a prisoner." No specific crime was ever pinned on Bestuzhev. Instead, it was inferred that he had attempted to sow discord between the Empress and her heir and his consort. Enemies of the pro-Austrian Bestuzhev were his rivals; the Shuvalov family, Vice-Chancellor Mikhail Vorontsov, and the French ambassador.

Seven Years' War
The great event of Elizabeth's later years was the Seven Years' War. Elizabeth regarded the Convention of Westminster (16 January 1756) in which Great Britain and Prussia agreed to unite their forces to oppose the entry of or the passage through Germany of troops of every foreign power, as utterly subversive of the previous conventions between Great Britain and Russia. Elizabeth sided against Prussia over a personal dislike of Frederick the Great. She wanted him reduced within proper limits so that he might no longer be an alleged danger to the empire. Elizabeth acceded to the Second Treaty of Versailles, thus entering into an alliance with France and Austria against Prussia. On 17 May 1757, the Imperial Russian Army, 85,000 strong, advanced against Königsberg.

The serious illness of the Empress, which began with a fainting-fit at Tsarskoe Selo (19 September 1757), the fall of Bestuzhev (21 February 1758) and the cabals and intrigues of the various foreign powers at Saint Petersburg, did not interfere with the progress of the war. The crushing defeat of Kunersdorf (12 August 1759) at last brought Frederick to the verge of ruin. From that day, he despaired of success, but he was saved for the moment by the jealousies of the Russian and Austrian commanders, which ruined the military plans of the allies.

From the end of 1759 to the end of 1761, the eagerness of the Russian Empress was the one constraining political force that held together the heterogeneous, incessantly jarring elements of the anti-Prussian combination. From the Russian point of view, her greatness as a stateswoman consisted of her steady appreciation of Russian interests and her determination to promote them against all obstacles. She insisted throughout that the King of Prussia must be reduced to the rank of a Prince-Elector.

Frederick himself was quite aware of his danger. "I'm at the end of my resources," he wrote at the beginning of 1760. "The continuance of this war means for me utter ruin. Things may drag on perhaps till July, but then a catastrophe must come." On 21 May 1760, a fresh convention was signed between Russia and Austria, a secret clause of which, never communicated to the court of Versailles, guaranteed East Prussia to Russia as an indemnity for war expenses. The failure of the campaign of 1760, wielded by the inept Count Buturlin, induced the court of Versailles on the evening of 22 January 1761 to present to the court of Saint Petersburg a dispatch to the effect that the king of France, by reason of the condition of his dominions, absolutely desired peace. The Russian empress's reply was delivered to the two ambassadors on 12 February. It was inspired by the most uncompromising hostility towards the king of Prussia. Elizabeth would not consent to any pacific overtures until the original object of the league had been accomplished.

Simultaneously, Elizabeth had conveyed to Louis XV a confidential letter in which she proposed the signature of a new treaty of alliance of a more comprehensive and explicit nature than the preceding treaties between the two powers without the knowledge of Austria. Elizabeth's object in the mysterious negotiation seems to have been to reconcile France and Great Britain, in return for which signal service France was to throw all her forces into the attack on Prussia. This project, which lacked neither ability nor audacity, foundered upon Louis XV's invincible jealousy of the growth of Russian influence in Eastern Europe and his fear of offending the Porte. It was finally arranged by the allies that their envoys at Paris should fix the date for the assembling of a peace congress and that in the meantime, the war against Prussia should be vigorously prosecuted. In 1760 a Russian flying column briefly occupied Berlin. Russian victories placed Prussia in serious danger.

The campaign of 1761 was almost as abortive as the campaign of 1760. Frederick acted on the defensive with consummate skill, and the capture of the Prussian fortress of Kolberg on Christmas Day 1761, by Rumyantsev, was the sole Russian success. Frederick, however, was now at the last gasp. On 6 January 1762, he wrote to Count Karl-Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein, "We ought now to think of preserving for my nephew, by way of negotiation, whatever fragments of my territory we can save from the avidity of my enemies." A fortnight later, he wrote to Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, "The sky begins to clear. Courage, my dear fellow. I have received the news of a great event." The Miracle of the House of Brandenburg that snatched him from destruction was the death of the Russian empress, on 5 January 1762 (N.S.).

Siberia
In 1742, the imperial government at Saint Petersburg ordered a Russian military expedition to conquer the Chukchi and Koryaks, but the expedition failed and its commander, Major Dmitry Pavlutsky, was killed in 1747. On 12 March 1747, a party of 500 Chukchi warriors raided the Russian stockade of Anadyrsk. By 1750, it had become clear the Chukchi would be difficult to conquer. The Empress then changed her tactical approach and established a formal peace with them.

Court
Elizabeth's court was one of the most splendid in all Europe. As historian Mikhail Shcherbatov stated, the court was "arrayed in cloth of gold, her nobles satisfied with only the most luxurious garments, the most expensive foods, the rarest drinks, that largest number of servants and they applied this standard of lavishness to their dress as well". A great number of silver and gold objects were produced, the most the country had seen thus far in its history. It was common to order over a thousand bottles of French champagnes and wines to be served at one event and to serve pineapples at all receptions, despite the difficulty of procuring the fruit in such quantities.

French plays quickly became the most popular and often were performed twice a week. In tandem, music became very important. Many attribute its popularity to Elizabeth's supposed husband, the "Emperor of the Night", Alexei Razumovsky, who reportedly relished music. Elizabeth spared no expense in importing leading musical talents from Germany, France, and Italy. She reportedly owned 15,000 dresses, several thousand pairs of shoes and a seemingly unlimited number of stockings.

Attractive in her youth and vain as an adult, Elizabeth passed various decrees intended to make herself stand out: she issued an edict against anyone wearing the same hairstyle, dress, or accessory as the Empress. One woman accidentally wore the same item as the Empress and was lashed across the face for it. Another law required French fabric salesmen to sell to the Empress first, and those who disregarded that law were arrested. One famous story exemplifying her vanity is that once Elizabeth got a bit of powder in her hair and was unable to remove it except by cutting a patch of her hair. She made all of the court ladies cut patches out of their hair too, which they did "with tears in their eyes". This aggressive vanity became a tenet of the court throughout her reign, particularly as she grew older. According to historian Tamara Talbot Rice, "Later in life her outbursts of anger were directed either against people who were thought to have endangered Russia's security or against women whose beauty rivalled her own".

Despite her volatile and often violent reactions to others regarding her appearance, Elizabeth was ebullient in most other matters, particularly when it came to court entertainment. It was reported that she threw two balls a week; one would be a large event with an average of 800 guests in attendance, most of whom were the nation's leading merchants, members of the lower nobility and guards stationed in and around the city of the event. The other ball was a much smaller affair reserved for her closest friends and members of the highest echelons of nobility. The smaller gatherings began as masked balls, but evolved into the famous metamorphoses balls by 1744. At these metamorphoses balls, guests were expected to dress as the opposite sex, with Elizabeth often dressing up as Cossack or carpenter in honour of her father. Costumes not permitted at the event were those of pilgrims and harlequins, which she considered profane and indecent respectively. Most courtiers thoroughly disliked the balls, as most guests by decree looked ridiculous, but Elizabeth adored them; as Catherine the Great's advisor Potemkin posited, this was because she was "the only woman who looked truly fine and completely a man.... As she was tall and possessed a powerful body, male attire suited her". Kazimierz Waliszewski noted that Elizabeth had beautiful legs, and loved to wear male attire because of the tight trousers. Though the balls were by far her most personally beloved and lavish events, Elizabeth often threw children's birthday parties and wedding receptions for those affiliated with her Court, going so far as to provide dowries for each of her ladies-in-waiting.

Death
In the late 1750s, Elizabeth's health started to decline. She suffered a series of dizzy spells and refused to take the medication she had been prescribed. The Empress forbade the word "death" in her presence until she suffered a stroke on 24 December 1761 (O.S.). Knowing that she was dying, Elizabeth used her last remaining strength to make her confession, to recite with her confessor the prayer for the dying, and to say farewell to the few people who wished to be with her, including Peter and Catherine and Counts Alexei and Kirill Razumovsky. The Empress died the next day, Orthodox Christmas, 1761. For her lying in state, she was dressed in a shimmering silver dress. It was said that she was beautiful in death as she had been in life. She was buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 3 February 1762 (O.S.) six weeks after her lying in state.

title: Elizabeth of Russia


text:
Capi

Capi or CAPI may refer to:

Computing

 * Common Application Programmer's Interface, LispWorks Common Lisp GUI toolkit
 * Common ISDN Application Programming Interface, Common ISDN API
 * Computer-assisted personal interviewing, a surveying technique that uses a computer based questionnaire
 * Microsoft Cryptographic Application Programming Interface, an interface to a library of functions software developers can call upon for security and cryptography services
 * Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface, a bus technology introduced in IBM's POWER8.

People

 * Capi (footballer, born 1977), Jesús Capitán Prado, Spanish football midfielder
 * Capi (footballer, born 1979), Jesús Tablado Feito, Spanish football forward
 * Capi (footballer, born 1981), Manuel Borja Calvar Simón, Spanish football defender

Other uses

 * Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants, a service for immigrants in the US not eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
 * Capi, daily newspaper from Nagaland, India

title: Capi


text:
Commodus

Commodus (31 August 161 – 31 December 192) was a Roman emperor who ruled from 177 until his assassination in 192. For the first three years of his reign he was co-emperor with his father Marcus Aurelius. Commodus' sole rule, starting with the death of Marcus in 180, is commonly thought to mark the end of a golden age of peace and prosperity in the history of the Roman Empire (the Pax Romana).

Commodus accompanied his father during the Marcomannic Wars in 172 and on a tour of the Eastern provinces in 176. The following year, he became the youngest emperor and consul up to that point, at the age of 16. His solo reign saw less military conflict than that of Marcus Aurelius, but internal intrigues and conspiracies abounded, goading Commodus to an increasingly dictatorial style of leadership. This culminated in his creating a deific personality cult, including his performances as a gladiator in the Colosseum. Throughout his reign, Commodus entrusted the management of affairs to his palace chamberlain and praetorian prefects, namely Saoterus, Perennis and Cleander.

Commodus was assassinated by the wrestler Narcissus in 192, ending the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. He was succeeded by Pertinax, the first claimant in the tumultuous Year of the Five Emperors.

Early life
Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus was born on 31 August AD161 in Lanuvium, near Rome. He was the son of the reigning emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and Aurelius' first cousin, Faustina the Younger, the youngest daughter of Emperor Antoninus Pius, who had died only a few months before. Commodus had an elder twin brother, Titus Aurelius Fulvus Antoninus, who died in 165. On 12 October 166, Commodus was made Caesar together with his younger brother, Marcus Annius Verus. The latter died in 169 having failed to recover from an operation, which left Commodus as Marcus Aurelius' sole surviving son.

He was looked after by his father's physician, Galen, who treated many of Commodus' common illnesses. Commodus received extensive tutoring by a multitude of teachers with a focus on intellectual education. Among his teachers, Onesicrates, Antistius Capella, Titus Aius Sanctus, and Pitholaus are mentioned.

Commodus is known to have been at Carnuntum, the headquarters of Marcus Aurelius during the Marcomannic Wars, in 172. It is presumed that there, on 15 October 172, he was given the victory title Germanicus, in the presence of the army. The title suggests Commodus was present at his father's victory over the Marcomanni. On 20 January 175, Commodus entered the College of Pontiffs, the starting point of a career in public life.

In April 175, Avidius Cassius, Governor of Syria, declared himself emperor following rumours that Marcus Aurelius had died. Having been accepted as emperor by Syria, Palestina and Egypt, Cassius carried on his rebellion even after it had become obvious Marcus was still alive. During the preparations for the campaign against Cassius, Commodus assumed his toga virilis on the Danubian front on 7 July 175, thus formally entering adulthood. Cassius, however, was killed by one of his centurions before the campaign against him could begin. Commodus subsequently accompanied his father on a lengthy trip to the Eastern provinces, during which he visited Antioch. The Emperor and his son then travelled to Athens, where they were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. They then returned to Rome in the autumn of 176.

Marcus Aurelius was the first emperor since Vespasian to have a legitimate biological son, though he himself was the fifth in the line of the so-called Five Good Emperors, also known as the Adoptive Emperors, each of whom had adopted his successor. On 27 November 176, Marcus Aurelius bestowed the title of Imperator on Commodus. Modern authors often use this date as the beginning of his reign, but the exact chronology of events is uncertain. Commodus is first mentioned as Augustus (emperor) on 17 June 177, but he reckoned his reign back to his salutation in 176. For instance, he assumed the tribunicia potestas (tribunician power) around February 177, but starting form April he started to backdate this event to November 176. He was the first (and until 337, the only) emperor "born in the purple," meaning during his father's reign.

On 23 December 176, the two imperatores celebrated a joint triumph. On 1 January 177, Commodus became consul for the first time, which made him, aged 15, the youngest consul up to that time (the minimum age for the consulship was around 30). He subsequently married Bruttia Crispina before accompanying his father to the Danubian front once more in 178. Marcus Aurelius died there on 17 March 180, leaving the 18-year-old Commodus as sole emperor.

Sole reign (180–192)
Upon his ascension, Commodus devalued the Roman currency. He reduced the weight of the denarius from 96 per Roman pound to 105 per Roman pound (3.85 grams to 3.35 grams). He also reduced the silver purity from 79 percent to 76 percent – the silver weight dropping from 2.57 grams to 2.34 grams. In 186, he further reduced the purity and silver weight to 74 percent and 2.22 grams respectively, being 108 to the Roman pound. His reduction of the denarius during his rule was the largest since the empire's first devaluation during Nero's reign.

Whereas the reign of Marcus Aurelius had been marked by almost continuous warfare, Commodus' rule was comparatively peaceful in the military sense, but was also characterised by political strife and the increasingly arbitrary and capricious behaviour of the emperor himself. In the view of Cassius Dio, his accession marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust".

Despite his notoriety, and considering the importance of his reign, Commodus' years in power are not well chronicled. The principal surviving literary sources are Herodian, Cassius Dio (a contemporary and sometimes first-hand observer and Senator during Commodus' reign, whose reports for this period survive only as fragments and abbreviations), and the Historia Augusta (untrustworthy because of its character as a work of literature rather than of history, with elements of fiction embedded within its biographies; in the case of Commodus, it probably embroiders what the author found in reasonably good contemporary sources).

Commodus remained with the Danube armies for only a short time before negotiating a peace treaty with the Danubian tribes. He then returned to Rome and celebrated a triumph for the conclusion of the wars on 22 October 180. Unlike the preceding emperors Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, he seems to have had little interest in the business of administration. He tended throughout his reign to leave the practical running of the state to a succession of favourites, beginning with Saoterus, a freedman from Nicomedia who had become his chamberlain.

Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs led to a series of conspiracies and attempted coups, which in turn eventually provoked Commodus to take charge of affairs, which he did in an increasingly dictatorial manner. Nevertheless, though the senatorial order came to hate and fear him, the evidence suggests he remained popular with the army and the common people for much of his reign, not least because of his lavish shows of largesse (recorded on his coinage) and because he staged and took part in spectacular gladiatorial combats. He was not an inspired combatant. He killed animals by bow, standing above the arena. When he fought fellow gladiators, they would purposely submit. During this period Rome's economy declined.

One of the ways he paid for his donatives (imperial handouts) and mass entertainments was to tax the senatorial order. On many inscriptions, the traditional order of the two nominal powers of the state, the Senate and People (Senatus Populusque Romanus) was provocatively reversed (Populus Senatusque...).

Conspiracies of 182

At the outset of his reign, Commodus, aged 18, inherited many of his father's senior advisers, notably Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus (the second husband of Commodus' eldest sister Lucilla), his father-in-law Gaius Bruttius Praesens, Titus Fundanius Vitrasius Pollio, and Aufidius Victorinus the Prefect of the City of Rome. He also had four surviving sisters, all of them with husbands who were potential rivals. Lucilla was over ten years his senior and held the rank of Augusta as the widow of her first husband, Lucius Verus.

The first crisis of the reign came in 182, when Lucilla engineered a conspiracy against her brother. Her motive is alleged to have been the envy of the Empress Crispina. Lucilla's husband, Pompeianus, was not involved, but two men alleged to have been her lovers, Marcus Ummidius Quadratus Annianus (the consul of 167, also her first cousin) and Appius Claudius Quintianus, attempted to murder Commodus as he entered a theater. They bungled the job and were seized by the emperor's bodyguard.

Quadratus and Quintianus were executed. Lucilla was exiled to Capri and later killed. Pompeianus retired from public life. One of the two praetorian prefects, Publius Tarrutenius Paternus, had actually been involved in the conspiracy but his involvement was not discovered until later. In the meantime, he and his colleague, Sextus Tigidius Perennis, were able to arrange for the murder of Saoterus, the hated chamberlain.

Commodus took the loss of Saoterus badly, and Perennis now seized the chance to advance himself by implicating Paternus in a second conspiracy, one apparently led by Publius Salvius Julianus, the son of the jurist Salvius Julianus and betrothed to Paternus' daughter. Salvius and Paternus were executed along with a number of other prominent consulars and senators. Didius Julianus, the future emperor and a relative of Salvius Julianus, was dismissed from the governorship of Germania Inferior.

Cleander
After the murder of the powerful Saoterus, Perennis took over the reins of government and Commodus found a new chamberlain and favourite in Cleander, a Phrygian freedman who had married one of the emperor's mistresses, Demostratia. Cleander was in fact the person who had murdered Saoterus. After these attempts on his life, Commodus spent much of his time outside Rome, mostly on the family estates at Lanuvium. As he was physically strong, his chief interest was sport: he took part in horse racing, chariot racing, and combat with beasts and men, mostly in private but occasionally in public.

Dacia and Britain
Commodus was inaugurated in 183 as consul with Aufidius Victorinus as colleague and assumed the title Pius. War broke out in Dacia: few details are available, but it appears two future contenders for the throne, Clodius Albinus and Pescennius Niger, both distinguished themselves in the campaign. Also, in Britain in 184, the governor Ulpius Marcellus re-advanced the Roman frontier northward to the Antonine Wall, but the legionaries revolted against his harsh discipline and acclaimed another legate, Priscus, as emperor.

Priscus refused to accept their acclamation, and Perennis had all the legionary legates in Britain cashiered. On 15 October 184, at the Capitoline Games, a Cynic philosopher publicly denounced Perennis before Commodus. His tale was considered false and he was immediately put to death. According to Cassius Dio, Perennis, though ruthless and ambitious, was not personally corrupt and was a generally good administrator.

However, the following year a detachment of soldiers from Britain (they had been drafted to Italy to suppress brigands) also denounced Perennis to the emperor as plotting to make his own son emperor (they had been enabled to do so by Cleander, who was seeking to dispose of his rival), and Commodus gave them permission to execute him as well as his wife and sons. The fall of Perennis brought a new spate of executions: Aufidius Victorinus committed suicide. Ulpius Marcellus was replaced as governor of Britain by Pertinax. Brought to Rome and tried for treason, Marcellus narrowly escaped death.

Cleander's zenith and fall (185–190)
Cleander proceeded to concentrate power in his own hands and to enrich himself by taking responsibility for all public offices. He sold (and bestowed entry to) Senate seats, army commands, governorships, and increasingly, suffect consulships, to the highest bidder. Unrest rose throughout the empire, with large numbers of army deserters causing trouble in Gaul and Germany. Pescennius Niger dealt with the deserters in Gaul in a military campaign. The revolt in Brittany was put down by two legions brought over from Britain.

In 187, one of the leaders of the deserters, Maternus, came from Gaul intending to assassinate Commodus at the Festival of the Great Goddess in March but was betrayed and executed. In the same year Pertinax unmasked a conspiracy by two enemies of Cleander, Antistius Burrus (one of Commodus' brothers-in-law) and Arrius Antoninus. As a result, Commodus appeared more rarely in public, preferring to live on his estates.

Early in 188, Cleander disposed of the current praetorian prefect, Atilius Aebutianus, and took over supreme command of the Praetorian Guard at the new rank of a pugione ("dagger-bearer"), with two praetorian prefects subordinate to him. Now at the zenith of his power, Cleander continued to sell public offices as his private business. The climax came in the year 190, which had 25 suffect consuls—a record in the 1,000-year history of the Roman consulship—all appointed by Cleander (they included the future Emperor Septimius Severus).

In the spring of 190, Rome was afflicted by a food shortage, for which the praefectus annonae Papirius Dionysius, the official actually in charge of the grain supply, contrived to lay the blame on Cleander. At the end of June, a mob demonstrated against Cleander during a horse race in the Circus Maximus: he sent the Praetorian Guard to put down the disturbances, but Pertinax, who was now City Prefect of Rome, dispatched the Vigiles Urbani to oppose them. Cleander fled to Commodus, who was at Laurentum in the house of the Quinctilii, for protection, but the mob followed him calling for his head.

At the urging of his mistress Marcia, Commodus had Cleander beheaded and his son killed. Other victims at this time were the praetorian prefect Julius Julianus, Commodus' cousin Annia Fundania Faustina, and his brother-in-law Mamertinus. Papirius Dionysius was executed, too. In AD 191, Commodus took more of the reins of power, though he continued to rule through a cabal consisting of Marcia, his new chamberlain Eclectus, and the new praetorian prefect Quintus Aemilius Laetus.

Megalomania (190–192)
In opposition to the Senate, in his pronouncements and iconography, Commodus had always stressed his unique status as a source of god-like power, liberality, and physical prowess. Innumerable statues around the empire were set up portraying him in the guise of Hercules, reinforcing the image of him as a demigod, a physical giant, a protector, and a warrior who fought against men and beasts (see and  below). Moreover, as Hercules, he could claim to be the son of Jupiter, the supreme god of the Roman pantheon. These tendencies now increased to megalomaniacal proportions. Far from celebrating his descent from Marcus Aurelius, the actual source of his power, he stressed his own personal uniqueness as the bringer of a new order, seeking to re-cast the empire in his own image.

During 191, the city of Rome was extensively damaged by a fire that raged for several days, during which many public buildings including the Temple of Pax, the Temple of Vesta, and parts of the imperial palace were destroyed.

Perhaps seeing this as an opportunity, early in 192 Commodus, declaring himself the new Romulus, ritually re-founded Rome, renaming the city Colonia Lucia Annia Commodiana. All the months of the year were renamed to correspond exactly with his (now twelve) names: Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus, Exsuperatorius, Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, and Pius. The legions were renamed Commodianae, the fleet which imported grain from Africa was termed Alexandria Commodiana Togata, the Senate was entitled the Commodian Fortunate Senate, his palace and the Roman people themselves were all given the name Commodianus, and the day on which these reforms were decreed was to be called Dies Commodianus.

Thus, he presented himself as the fountainhead of the Empire, Roman life, and religion. He also had the head of the Colossus of Nero adjacent to the Colosseum replaced with his own portrait, gave it a club, placed a bronze lion at its feet to make it look like Hercules Romanus, and added an inscription boasting of being "the only left-handed fighter to conquer twelve times one thousand men".

Assassination (192)
In November 192, Commodus held Plebeian Games, in which he shot hundreds of animals with arrows and javelins every morning, and fought as a gladiator every afternoon, winning all the fights. In December, he announced his intention to inaugurate the year 193 as both consul and gladiator on 1 January.

When Marcia found a list of people Commodus intended to have executed, she discovered that she, the prefect Laetus, and Eclectus were on it. The three of them plotted to assassinate the emperor. On 31 December, Marcia poisoned Commodus' food, but he vomited up the poison, so the conspirators sent his wrestling partner Narcissus to strangle him in his bath.

Upon his death, the Senate declared him a public enemy (a de facto damnatio memoriae) and restored the original name of the city of Rome and its institutions. Statues of Commodus were demolished. His body was buried in the Mausoleum of Hadrian.

Commodus' death marked the end of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. Commodus was succeeded by Pertinax, whose reign was short; he became the first claimant to be usurped during the Year of the Five Emperors.

In 195, the emperor Septimius Severus, trying to gain favour with the family of Marcus Aurelius, rehabilitated Commodus' memory and had the Senate deify him.

Character and motivations
Cassius Dio, a first-hand witness, describes him as "not naturally wicked but, on the contrary, as guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together with his cowardice, made him the slave of his companions, and it was through them that he at first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was led on into lustful and cruel habits, which soon became second nature."

His recorded actions do tend to show a rejection of his father's policies, his father's advisers, and especially his father's austere lifestyle, and an alienation from the surviving members of his family. It seems likely that he was raised in an atmosphere of Stoic asceticism, which he rejected entirely upon his accession to sole rule.

After repeated attempts on Commodus' life, Roman citizens were often killed for making him angry. One such notable event was the attempted extermination of the house of the Quinctilii. Condianus and Maximus were executed on the pretext that while they were not implicated in any plots, their wealth and talent would make them unhappy with the current state of affairs. Another event, as recorded by the historian Aelius Lampridius, took place at the Roman baths at Terme Taurine, where the emperor had an attendant thrown into an oven after he had found his bathwater to be lukewarm.

Changes of name
His original name was Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus. On his father's death in 180, Commodus changed this to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Commodus, before changing back to his birth name in 191.

Later that year he adopted as his full style Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus Augustus Herculeus Romanus Exsuperatorius Amazonius Invictus Felix Pius (the order of some of these titles varies in the sources). "Exsuperatorius" (the supreme) was a title given to Jupiter, and "Amazonius" identified him again with Hercules.

An inscribed altar from Dura-Europos on the Euphrates shows that Commodus' titles and the renaming of the months were disseminated to the farthest reaches of the Empire; moreover, that even auxiliary military units received the title Commodiana, and that he claimed two additional titles: Pacator Orbis (pacifier of the world) and Dominus Noster (Our Lord). The latter eventually would be used as a conventional title by Roman emperors, starting about a century later, but Commodus seems to have been the first to assume it.

Commodus and Hercules

Disdaining the more philosophic inclinations of his father, Commodus was extremely proud of his physical prowess. The historian Herodian, a contemporary, described Commodus as an extremely handsome man. As mentioned above, he ordered many statues to be made showing him dressed as Hercules with a lion's hide and a club. He thought of himself as the reincarnation of Hercules, frequently emulating the legendary hero's feats by appearing in the arena to fight a variety of wild animals. He was left-handed and very proud of the fact. Cassius Dio and the writers of the Augustan History say that Commodus was a skilled archer, who could shoot the heads off ostriches in full gallop, and kill a panther as it attacked a victim in the arena.

Commodus the gladiator
Commodus also had a passion for gladiatorial combat, which he took so far as to take to the arena himself, dressed as a secutor. The Romans found Commodus' gladiatorial combat to be scandalous and disgraceful. According to Herodian, spectators of Commodus thought it unbecoming of an emperor to take up arms in the amphitheater for sport when he could be campaigning against barbarians among other opponents of Rome. The consensus was that it was below his office to participate as a gladiator. Popular rumors spread alleging he was not actually the son of Marcus Aurelius, but of a gladiator his mother Faustina had taken as a lover at the coastal resort of Caieta.

In the arena, Commodus' opponents always submitted to the emperor; as a result he never lost. Commodus never killed his gladiatorial adversaries, instead accepting their surrenders. His victories were often welcomed by his bested opponents, as bearing scars dealt by the hand of an emperor was considered a mark of fortitude. Cassius Dio claimed that citizens of Rome who lacked feet (either through accident or illness) were taken to the arena, where they were tethered together for Commodus to club to death while pretending they were giants. Dio also wrote that it was Commodus' custom to privately use deadly weapons to fight, murdering and maiming his opponents. For each appearance in the arena, he charged the city of Rome a million sesterces, straining the Roman economy.

Commodus was also known for fighting exotic animals in the arena, often to the horror and disgust of the Roman populace. According to Cassius Dio, Commodus once killed 100 lions in a single day. Later, he decapitated a running ostrich with a specially designed dart and afterward carried his sword and the bleeding head of the dead bird over to the Senators' seating area, and motioned to suggest that they were to be next. Dio notes that the targeted senators actually found this more ridiculous than frightening, and chewed on laurel leaves to conceal their laughter. On other occasions, Commodus killed three elephants on the floor of the arena by himself, and a giraffe.

In popular culture

 * An evil and highly narcissistic Commodus is portrayed by Canadian actor Christopher Plummer in the classic epic film The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), directed by Anthony Mann. This film depicts all of this emperor's reign, from the death of Marcus Aurelius until his death while fighting against the fictional hero Livius.
 * In the Best Picture winner Gladiator (2000), a fictionalized Commodus serves as the main antagonist of the film. He is played by Joaquin Phoenix, who received a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 73rd Academy Awards.
 * A character in the 2013 video game Ryse: Son of Rome is named Commodus and is one of the main antagonists of the game. The son of Emperor Nero, he shares several traits with the historic Commodus.
 * Commodus is a minor antagonist in the 2005 video game Colosseum: Road to Freedom. The player can fight Commodus in the game, who dresses as the god Hercules. The game takes liberties with the events surrounding his death, with the player being the one who actually kills him rather than the wrestler Narcissus.
 * Commodus appears in the Horrible Histories song "Evil Emperors", alongside Caligula, Elagabalus and Nero, a parody of "Bad".
 * The 2017 docu-drama mini-series Roman Empire: Reign of Blood retells his story. In this version, Narcissus kills Commodus in a duel after learning that the Emperor's arena opponents had been armed only with edgeless swords. At first, Narcissus strangles Commodus, but ultimately kills him by piercing his heart with a blunt sword. Aaron Jakubenko portrays Commodus in the series.
 * Commodus appears as one of the antagonists in the popular young adult fiction novel series The Trials of Apollo. He is revealed as having become a minor god after his death and has survived into modern times, along with two other Roman emperors, Caligula and Nero. He was murdered by the god Apollo, who was his lover but disguised himself as Narcissus to kill him and end his tyranny. In modern times, he tries to get revenge on Apollo, who has been cast out of Olympus by Zeus as a mortal until he rights his wrongs. During a final battle, Commodus is severely injured by Frank Zhang, the demigod son of Mars, and then finished off by Apollo with a scream of power that burns Commodus to ashes. Throughout the series, it's revealed that Nero, Commodus and Caligula had been acting in the background of the two previous series Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus, supplying the forces of Kronos, Gaea and Octavian with financial support and resources, including the Princess Andromeda cruise ship that was featured heavily in Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

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Ulugh Beg

Mīrzā Muhammad Tarāghāy bin Shāhrukh (میرزا محمد تراغای بن شاهرخ; ), better known as Ulugh Beg (Uluğ Bey; 22 March 1394 – 27 October 1449), was a Timurid sultan, as well as an astronomer and mathematician.

Ulugh Beg was notable for his work in astronomy-related mathematics, such as trigonometry and spherical geometry, as well as his general interests in the arts and intellectual activities. It is thought that he spoke five languages: Arabic, Persian, Chaghatai Turkic, Mongolian, and a small amount of Chinese. During his rule (first as a governor, then outright) the Timurid Empire achieved the cultural peak of the Timurid Renaissance through his attention and patronage. Samarkand was captured and given to Ulugh Beg by his father Shah Rukh.

He built the great Ulugh Beg Observatory in Samarkand between 1424 and 1429. It was considered by scholars to have been one of the finest observatories in the Islamic world at the time and the largest in Central Asia. Ulugh Beg was subsequently recognized as the most important observational astronomer from the 15th century by many scholars. He also built the Ulugh Beg Madrasah (1417–1420) in Samarkand and Bukhara, transforming the cities into cultural centers of learning in Central Asia.

However, Ulugh Beg's scientific expertise was not matched by his skills in governance. During his short reign, he failed to establish his power and authority. As a result, other rulers, including his family, took advantage of his lack of control, and he was subsequently overthrown and assassinated.

Early life
He was a grandson of the great conqueror and king, Timur (Tamerlane) (1336–1405), and the oldest son of Shah Rukh, both of whom came from the Turkicized Barlas tribe of Transoxiana (now Uzbekistan). His mother was a noblewoman named Gawhar Shad, daughter of a member of the representative Turkic tribal aristocracy, Ghiyasuddin Tarkhan.

Ulugh Beg was born in Sultaniyeh during his grandfather's invasion of Persia. He was given the name Mīrzā Muhammad Tāraghay. Ulugh Beg, the name he most commonly known by, was not truly a personal name, but rather a moniker, which can be loosely translated as "Great Ruler" (compare modern Turkish ulu, "great", and bey, "chief") and is the Turkic equivalent of Timur's Perso-Arabic title Amīr-e Kabīr.

As a child he wandered through a substantial part of the Middle East and India as his grandfather expanded his conquests in those areas. After Timur's death, Shah Rukh moved the empire's capital to Herat (in modern Afghanistan). Sixteen-year-old Ulugh Beg subsequently became the governor of the former capital of Samarkand in 1409. In 1411, he was named the sovereign ruler of the whole of Mavarannahr.

Science
The teenage ruler set out to turn the city into an intellectual center for the empire. Between 1417 and 1420, he built a madrasa ("university" or "institute") on Registan Square in Samarkand (currently in Uzbekistan), and he invited numerous Islamic astronomers and mathematicians to study there. The madrasa building still survives. Ulugh Beg's most famous pupil in astronomy was Ali Qushchi (died in 1474). Qadi Zada al-Rumi was the most notable teacher at Ulugh Beg's madrasa and Jamshid al-Kashi, an astronomer, later came to join the staff.

Astronomy
Astronomy piqued Ulugh Beg's interest when he visited the Maragheh Observatory at a young age. This observatory, located in Maragheh, Iran, is where the well-known astronomer Nasir al-Din al-Tusi practised.

In 1428, Ulugh Beg built an enormous observatory, similar to Tycho Brahe's later Uraniborg as well as Taqi al-Din's observatory in Constantinople. Lacking telescopes to work with, he increased his accuracy by increasing the length of his sextant; the so-called Fakhri sextant had a radius of about 36 m and the optical separability of 180" (seconds of arc). The Fakhri sextant was the largest instrument at the observatory in Samarkand (an image of the sextant is on the side of this article). There were many other astronomical instruments located at the observatory, but the Fakhri sextant is the most well-known instrument there. The purpose of the Fakhri sextant was to measure the transit altitudes of the stars. This was a measurement of the maximum altitude above the horizon of the stars. It was only possible to use this device to measure the declination of celestial objects. The image, which can be found in this article, shows the remaining portion of the instrument, which consists of the underground, lower portion of the instrument that was not destroyed. The observatory built by Ulugh Beg was the most pervasive and well-known observatory throughout the Islamic world.

With the instruments located in the observatory in Samarkand, Ulugh Beg composed a star catalogue consisting of 1018 stars, which is eleven fewer stars than are present in the star catalogue of Ptolemy. Ulugh Beg utilized dimensions from al-Sufi and based his star catalogue on a new analysis that was autonomous from the data used by Ptolemy. Throughout his life as an astronomer, Ulugh Beg came to realize that there were multiple mistakes in the work and subsequent data of Ptolemy that had been in use for many years.

Using it, he compiled the 1437 Zij-i-Sultani of 994 stars, generally considered the greatest star catalogue between those of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe, a work that stands alongside Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars. The serious errors which he found in previous Arabian star catalogues (many of which had simply updated Ptolemy's work, adding the effect of precession to the longitudes) induced him to redetermine the positions of 992 fixed stars, to which he added 27 stars from Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi's catalogue Book of Fixed Stars from the year 964, which were too far south for observation from Samarkand. This catalogue, one of the most original of the Middle Ages, was first edited by Thomas Hyde at Oxford in 1665 under the title Jadāvil-i Mavāzi' S̱avābit, sive, Tabulae Long. ac Lat. Stellarum Fixarum ex Observatione Ulugh Beighi and reprinted in 1767 by G. Sharpe. More recent editions are those by Francis Baily in 1843 in Vol. XIII of the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, and by Edward Ball Knobel in Ulugh Beg's Catalogue of Stars, Revised from all Persian Manuscripts Existing in Great Britain, with a Vocabulary of Persian and Arabic Words (1917).

In 1437, Ulugh Beg determined the length of the sidereal year as 365.2570370...d = 365d 6h 10m 8s (an error of +58 seconds). In his measurements over the course of many years he used a 50 m high gnomon. This value was improved by 28 seconds in 1525 by Nicolaus Copernicus, who appealed to the estimation of Thabit ibn Qurra (826–901), which had an error of +2 seconds. However, Ulugh Beg later measured another more precise value of the tropical year as 365d 5h 49m 15s, which has an error of +25 seconds, making it more accurate than Copernicus's estimate which had an error of +30 seconds. Ulugh Beg also determined the Earth's axial tilt as 23°30'17" in the sexagesimal system of degrees, minutes and seconds of arc, which in decimal notation converts to 23.5047°.

Mathematics
In mathematics, Ulugh Beg wrote accurate trigonometric tables of sine and tangent values correct to at least eight decimal places.

Foreign relations
Once Ulugh Beg became governor of Samarqand, he fostered diplomatic relations with the Yongle emperor of the Ming dynasty. In 1416, Ming envoys Chen Cheng and Lu An presented silk and silver stuffs to Ulugh Beg on behalf of the Yongle emperor. In 1419, The Timurid sent his own emissaries, Sultan-Shah and Muhammad Bakhshi, to the Ming court. Ulugh Beg's emissaries came across Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh and other envoys representing Shah Rukh, Prince Baysunghur, and other Timurid authorities in Beijing; however, they stayed at separate hostelries. Ghiyāth al-dīn Naqqāsh even saw the Yongle emperor riding a black horse with feet which had been gifted by Ulugh Beg.

In 1439, the Zhengtong emperor ordered an artist to produce a painting of a black horse with white feet and a white forehead that had been sent by Ulugh Beg. Six years later, the Ming emperor sent a letter to Ulugh Beg in order to express his gratitude for all the "tribute" from Samarqand. The emperor sent "vessels made of gold and jade, a spear with a dragon's head, a fine horse with saddle, and variegated gold-embroidered silk stuffs" to Ulugh Beg, as well as silk stuffs and garments for the Timurid prince's family.

War of succession and death
In 1447, upon learning of the death of his father Shah Rukh, Ulugh Beg went to Balkh. Here, he heard that Ala al-Dawla, the son of his late brother Baysunghur, had claimed the rulership of the Timurid Empire in Herat. Consequently, Ulugh Beg marched against Ala al-Dawla and met him in battle at Murghab. He defeated his nephew and advanced toward Herat, massacring its people in 1448. However, Abul-Qasim Babur Mirza, Ala al-Dawla's brother, came to the latter's aid and defeated Ulugh Beg.

Ulugh Beg retreated to Balkh where he found that its governor, his oldest son Abdal-Latif Mirza, had rebelled against him. Another civil war ensued. Abdal-Latif recruited troops to meet his father's army on the banks of the Amu Darya river. However, Ulugh Beg was forced to retreat to Samarkand before any fighting took place, having heard news of turmoil in the city. Abdal-Latif soon reached Samarkand and Ulugh Beg involuntarily surrendered to his son. Abd-al-Latif released his father from custody, allowing him to make pilgrimage to Mecca. However, he ensured Ulugh Beg never reached his destination, having him, as well as his brother Abdal-Aziz assassinated in 1449.

Eventually, Ulugh Beg's reputation was rehabilitated by his nephew, Abdallah Mirza (1450–1451), who placed his remains at Timur's feet in the Gur-e-Amir in Samarkand, where they were found by Soviet archaeologists in 1941.

Marriages

Ulugh Beg had thirteen wives:

 * Aka Begi Begum, daughter of Muhammad Sultan Mirza bin Jahangir Mirza and Khan Sultan Khanika, mother of Habiba Sultan known as Khanzada Begum and another Khanzada Begum;
 * Sultan Badi al-mulk Begum, daughter of Khalil Sultan bin Miran Shah and Shad Malik Agha;
 * Aqi Sultan Khanika, daughter of Sultan Mahmud Khan Ogeday;
 * Husn Nigar Khanika, daughter of Shams-i-Jahan Khan Chaghatay;
 * Shukr Bīka Khanika, daughter of Darwīsh Khan of the Golden Horde;
 * Rukaiya Sultan Agha, an Arlat lady, and mother of Abdal-Latif Mirza, Ak Bash Begum and Sultan Bakht Begum;
 * Mihr Sultan Agha, daughter of Tukal bin Sarbuka;
 * Sa'adat Bakht Agha, daughter of Bayan Kukaltash, mother of Qutlugh Turkhan Agha;
 * Daulat Sultan Agha, daughter of Khawand Sa'id;
 * Bakhti Bi Agha, daughter of Aka Sufi Uzbek;
 * Daulat Bakht Agha, daughter of Sheikh Muhammad Barlas;
 * Sultanim Agha, mother of Abdul Hamid Mirza and Abdul Jabrar Mirza;
 * Sultan Malik Agha, daughter of Nasir-al-Din, mother of Ubaydullah Mirza, Abdullah Mirza and another Abdullah Mirza;

Legacy

 * The crater, Ulugh Beigh, on the Moon, was named after him by the German astronomer Johann Heinrich von Mädler on his 1830 map of the Moon.
 * 2439 Ulugbek, a main-belt asteroid which was discovered on 21 August 1977 by N. Chernykh at Nauchnyj, was named after him.
 * The dinosaur Ulughbegsaurus was named after him in 2021.

Exhumation
Soviet anthropologist Mikhail M. Gerasimov reconstructed the face of Ulugh Beg. Like his grandfather Timurlane, Ulugh Beg is close to the Mongoloid type with slightly Europoid features. His father Shah Rukh had predominantly Caucasoid features, with no obvious Mongoloid feature.

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Severus

Severus is the name of various historical and fictional figures, including:

 * Emperors of the Roman empire
 * Septimius Severus (145–211), Roman emperor from 193 to 211 (rarely known as Severus I.)
 * Severus Caracalla (188–217), Roman emperor from 198 to 217
 * Severus Alexander (208–235), Roman emperor from 222 to 235
 * Valerius Severus, Roman emperor in the tetrarchy from 306 to 307 (rarely known as Severus II.)
 * Libius Severus, Roman emperor from 461 to 465 (rarely known as Severus III.)

 * Other individuals
 * Quintus Varius Severus, Roman politician from the late Republic
 * Aulus Caecina Severus, Roman general and politician
 * Claudius Severus, leader of the Helvetii in 69
 * Cornelius Severus, Roman epic poet in Augustan age
 * Sextus Julius Severus, 2nd-century Roman general
 * Severus (Encratite), founder of the gnostic sect Severian Encratites
 * Gaius Claudius Severus, Roman senator and consul in 112
 * Gnaeus Claudius Severus Arabianus, Roman philosopher, senator and consul in 146, son of Gaius Claudius Severus
 * Gnaeus Claudius Severus, Roman philosopher, senator and consul in 167 and 173, son of Arabianus
 * Gaius Septimius Severus Aper, Roman Aristocrat
 * Tiberius Claudius Severus Proculus, Roman senator and consul in 200
 * Marcus Julius Philippus Severus Augustus (238–249), Roman co-emperor (247–249) with his father Philip the Arab
 * Severus of Barcelona (died c. 304), a legendary Bishop of Barcelona
 * Severus of Ravenna (c. 308–c. 348), bishop of Ravenna
 * Sulpicius Severus (c. 363–c. 425), a Christian writer and native of Aquitania in modern-day France
 * Severus of Reims, bishop of Reims from 394 to 400
 * Severus of Naples (died 409), a bishop of Naples during the 4th and 5th centuries
 * Severus, the first known Bishop of Vence in 439 and perhaps as early as 419
 * Severus of Vienne (died c. 455), a missionary in France
 * Severus of Antioch or Saint Severus the Great (465–538), a Greek monk and theologian, and Patriarch of Antioch
 * Severus of Menorca, 5th-century AD Christian bishop of Menorca
 * Severus II bar Masqeh (died 681), Patriarch of Antioch
 * Severus of Avranches (died c. 690), a French peasant who became Bishop of Avranches
 * Severus Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (died 987), Coptic bishop and historian

 * Fictional characters
 * Severus Snape, character in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
 * Captain Severus, character in Ultramarines: A Warhammer 40,000 Movie

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Bow

Bow most often refers to:

 * Bow and arrow, a weapon
 * Bowing, bending the upper body as a social gesture
 * An ornamental knot made of ribbon

Bow may also refer to:

 * Bow (watercraft), the foremost part of a ship or boat
 * Bow (position), the rower seated in the bow of a racing shell

Knots

 * Bow knot, a shoelace knot or a rosette
 * Bow tie, a type of necktie
 * Pussy bow, a style of neckwear

Music

 * Bow (music), used to play a stringed instrument
 * Musical bow, a musical instrument resembling an archer's bow
 * EBow, electronic device for playing the electric guitar
 * Bows (band), a band from the UK
 * B.O.W. (born 1970), Finnish rapper

Porcelain

 * Bow porcelain factory

England

 * Bow, Devon, a village in mid Devon
 * Bow, a hamlet in the parish of Ashprington in South Devon
 * Bow, London, a district
 * Bow, Oxfordshire, a hamlet

United States

 * Bow, Kentucky
 * Bow, New Hampshire
 * Bow, Washington

Canada

 * The Bow (skyscraper), Calgary, Alberta
 * Bow River, Alberta

Other

 * Bow (name), including a list of people with the surname or given name
 * Bow and warp of semiconductor wafers and substrates
 * Rema language (ISO-639: bow), Papuan language spoken in New Guinea

title: Bow