Herod, also known as Herod I or Herod the Great, was a Roman client king of Israel. He was (descended from converts to Judaism) serving as a servant first. Described as A madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis. He is com...

Cleopatra was the last active pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, briefly survived as pharaoh by her son Caesarion. After her reign, Egypt became a province of the recently established Roman Empire. Cleopatra was a member of the Ptolemaic dynast...

Strabo was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher. Strabo is mostly famous for his 17-volume work Geographica, which presented a descriptive history of people and places from different regions of the world known to his era. Although...

Mary of Nazareth often referred to by Christians as the Virgin Mary or Saint Mary, was a Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, identified in the New Testament as the mother of Jesus Christ. Muslims also refer to her as the Virgin Mary or Sye...

Mary Magdalene is described, both in the canonical New Testament and in the New Testament apocrypha, as a devoted disciple of Jesus. She is considered by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican churches to be a saint, with a feas...

Bartholomew was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He has been identified with Nathanael, who appears in the Gospel according to John as being introduced to Christ by Philip (who would also become an apostle), although some modern comment...

John the Apostle was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Christian tradition identifies him as the author of several New Testament works: the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the Book of Revelation. Many modern scholars believe th...

Paul the Apostle commonly known as Saint Paul and also known by his Hebrew name Saul of Tarsus, was an apostle (although not one of the Twelve Apostles) who taught the gospel of Christ to the first-century world. Paul is generally considere...

John the Baptist (late 1st century BC – c. AD 30) was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure in Christianity, Islam (known as Yahya ibn Zakariyya), the Bahá'í Faith, and Mandaeism. John is described as having the unique pract...

Jesus (c. 4 BC – AD 30 / 33), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus of Galilee, is the central figure of Christianity, whom the teachings of most Christian denominations hold to be the Son of God. Christianity regards Jesus as the...

Heron of Alexandria was an ancient Greek mathematician who was a resident of a Roman province (Ptolemaic Egypt); he was also an engineer who was active in his hometown of Alexandria. He is considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity a...

Titus Flavius Josephus was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry. He initially fought against the Romans during...

Claudius Ptolemy was a Greco-Egyptian writer of Alexandria, known as a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt...

Hegesippus was a Christian chronicler of the early Church and wrote against heresies. His works are lost, save some passages quoted by Eusebius, who tells us that he wrote Hypomnemata (Memoirs) in five books, in the simplest style concernin...

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece, a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsth...