Adolf Hitler had a terrible impact on the history of the 20th century. But how did he become the dictator who plunged the world into catastrophe with a devastating war and the Holocaust? Aimless life A look at his curriculum vitae reveals how Hitler wandered aimlessly through childhood and adolesc
Unlike what happens with Herodotus and Thucydides, we have more information about Xenophons biography thanks to the references to his life contained in his works and to the writings of Diogenes Laertius. Xenophon was born in Athens in 430 BC. During the Peloponnesian War, in the bosom of a wealthy f
We can pin Polybius date of birth to around 210-200 BC. in Megalopolis, a city located in the Greek region of Arcadia and capital of the Achaean League, of which his father, Licortas, was an outstanding leader. We know little about his youth, although it seems that, as a member of a family of the lo
Gaius Sallust Crispus was a direct witness to the transformation of the small Roman republic into the vast empire we remember today. He saw how the republican constitution collapsed by not being able to articulate a system adapted to the conquests that were taking place. The hegemony of the Senate g
Livy is a rare bird in the world of Latin historiography. Unlike what happens with other great Roman historians such as Tacitus, Cato or Sallust, Tito Livio did not hold any public office nor did he have an active role in Roman political life, but instead dedicated his entire life to completing the
Despite being an influential man in Rome at the end of the first century AD, we do not have much biographical material about the life of Tacitus. Even his name is subject to controversy, although in recent decades this seems to have been resolved with the discovery of what some have wanted to recogn
Biography was a widely used genre in classical historiography. Xenophon dedicated an entire work to the Spartan king Agesilaus, Tacitus did the same with his father-in-law Julius Agricola, and Suetonius wrote his famous Lives of the Twelve Caesars . In addition, it was common to find detailed desc
Eusebius of Caesarea, or Eusebius of Palestine as he is also known, lived through a troubled period that ended with the consolidation of Christianity as the predominant religion in the Roman Empire. The last years of the third century AD. and the first from the 4th century AD. they signify the end o
On the life of Paulo Orosio we have very little reliable data, except for a short period of time , his biography is built on conjecture and speculation, which explains the divergence of opinions on the same facts. His place of birth is already subject to controversy (while some place it in Tarragon
The data we have on the life of Gregory of Tours appears mostly collected throughout the works of the. Born in the year 538 or 539 AD. in Auvergne, what is now Clermont-Ferrand, his father belonged to a Gallic senatorial family. Despite the fall of the Roman Empire, these families (from which provin
Classifying Alfonso X as a historian is a controversial decision, even more so when it is evident that it was not the monarch himself who wrote the works attributed to him. However, such is the importance that the General Estoria and the Estoria de España they had on medieval historiography that for
In the fourteenth century, the Arab civilization entered a period of recession and decline. From east to west its former glory fades. In Al-Andalus, the Reconquest was slowly but inexorably recovering the most important cities in the south of the Peninsula and after the Almohad defeat in Las Navas d
Francesco Guicciardini was born on March 6, 1483 in Florence, into an old Florentine family that kept close links with the Medici and with the intellectual circles of the city. The data we know about his youth come from the Italian historians own pen who collected them in the work Ricordanze . In
The discovery of the Indies was not narrated by historians but by the conquerors themselves who, either through their correspondence, or Through more elaborate writings, they made known to the world the adventures that led a handful of men to discover and colonize an entire continent. Bernal Díaz de
We have abundant documentation on the life of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet due to the important role he played at the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, in which he became the tutor of the Dauphin. Bossuet was born on September 27, 1627, in Dijon, into a well-connected, bourgeois family. His father moved
Giambattista Vicos recognition as one of historys leading philosophers has come in the last two centuries. During his life, the fame and prestige that he enjoys today were repeatedly denied him and only in his native Naples did he gain some relevance, although not enough to leave behind his miserabl
Rarely in modern historiography has a historian been as identified with one of his works as Edward Gibbon with his History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire . This magnum opus , whose influence, from its first publication, was spectacular, forever modified the perception that society had o
Within Voltaires multiple facets, his role as historian stands out. His historical works, beyond the facts or events that they collect, are permeated by his philosophical ideas, which increases the interest in analyzing them. Although with current criteria we could not consider the French thinker as
Johann Gottfried Herder was born in the small Prussian town of Mohrugen on August 25, 1744, to a very humble family origin. His father was a bell ringer, sacristan and doorman at a girls school. It would be the village priest who initiated him in basic studies and put him in contact with the works o
There are few historians in modern historiography who have been more influential than Leopold von Ranke. Such was the revolution caused by his works and the treatment given to the sources that some scholars have set in 1824, with the publication of History of the Latin and Germanic peoples from 149
In the previous episode we had discussed that according to Prithviraj Raso, there were 21 battles between Prithviraj Chauhan and Muhammad Ghori in which the armies of King Prithviraj Chauhan were victorious. The Hammir epic describes the defeat of Gauri seven times by Prithviraj. The Prithviraj Prab
Born in 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev studied law at the University of Moscow, first joined the Communist Youth and then the Communist Party in 1950. He rose through the ranks as a party official before being elected secretary of the central committee ( 1978) and elected to the Politburo. Gorbachev was el
Vasari, son of a Tuscan potter, was a pupil of the painter Andrea del Sarto; he notably met the great Michelangelo, who influenced his painting. He works for the Medici, the Farnese... He is known for the speed of his execution. He has great architectural qualities, we owe him the magnificent loggia
Short biography - Of Belgian origin, René Magritte (1898-1967) was a complete artist, in turn surrealist painter, engraver, sculptor, photographer and filmmaker. He was part of this generation of young people who revolted after the dead of the First World War and to evacuate this feeling of oppress