The city of Parma was most probably…
183 BCE
The city of Parma was most probably founded and named by the Etruscans, for a parma (circular shield) was a Latin borrowing, as were many Roman terms for particular arms, and Parmeal, Parmni and Parmnial are names that appear in Etruscan inscriptions.
Diodorus Siculus (XXII, 2,2; XXVIII, 2,1) reported that the Romans had changed their rectangular shields for round ones, imitating the Etruscans.
Whether the Etruscan encampment was so named because it was round, like a shield, or whether its situation was a shield against the Gauls to the north, is more a matter of choice.
The Roman colony is founded in 183 BCE, together with Modena.
Two thousand families are settled.
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The Romans, by unknown means, finally put themselves in a position to demand the surrender of Hannibal when Roman diplomat Titus Quinctius Flamininus is sent to the court of Prusias of Bithynia, to demand the surrender of the former Carthaginian diplomat and general Hannibal.
When Hannibal finds out that Prusias is about to agree to the Roman demands and thus betray him, and unable this time to escape, he poisons himself in the Bithynian village of Libyssa.
The year is uncertain but is probably 183.
Pontus gradually has asserted itself among the petty Hellenistic states of Anatolia in the third and early second centuries BCE; Pharnaces, fifth king of Pontus, the son of Mithridates III, who he succeeded on the throne, succeeds in reducing Antiochus, …
…the important city of Sinope, which has been long an object of ambition to the kings of Pontus, and annexes the city in 183 as the new Pontic capital.
The Rhodians send an embassy to Rome to complain of this aggression, but without effect.
About the same time, Pharnaces becomes involved in disputes with his neighbor, Eumenes II, king of Pergamon, which leads to repeated embassies from both monarchs to Rome, as well as to partial hostilities.
The independent-minded Philopoemen has for the past decade dominated Achaean policy In the Peloponnese, but in 183 when Messene rebels against the Achaean League, …
…the seventy-year-old general, intervening to try and control the rebellion, is taken in a skirmish and given and imprisoned.
He is then given poison to take so that he can die honorably. (Plutarch relates his life.)
The territory around Modena (Roman Mutina, Etruscan Muoina) was inhabited by the Villanovans in the Iron Age, and later by Ligurian tribes, Etruscans, and the Gaulish Boii (the settlement itself being Etruscan).
Although the exact date of its foundation is unknown, it is known that it was already in existence in the third century BCE, for in 218 BCE, during Hannibal's invasion of Italy, the Boii revolted and laid siege to the city.
Livy described it as a fortified citadel where Roman magistrates took shelter.
The outcome of the siege is not known, but the city was most likely abandoned after Hannibal's arrival.
Mutina is refounded as a Roman colony in 183 BCE, to be used as a military base by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.
Cato's Praecepta ad filium, a self-tutorial encyclopedia conceived to develop skills and knowledge in practical fields and published about 183 BCE, reflects Roman pragmatism.
Cato is also opposed to the spread of Hellenic culture, which he believes threatened to destroy the rugged simplicity of the conventional Roman type.
It is in the discharge of the censorship that this determination is most strongly exhibited, and hence that he derives the title (the Censor) by which he is most generally distinguished.
He revises with unsparing severity the lists of senators and knights, ejecting from either order the men whom he judges unworthy of it, either on moral grounds or from their want of the prescribed means.
One example of his rigid justice is the expulsion in 184 BCE of Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, Roman Consul in 192 and brother to the great Titus Quinctius Flamininus, the conquerer of Greece, for wanton cruelty.
Flamininus's removal from the Senate is a part of a bigger struggle between the party of the Scipios and their opponents led by Cato.
If he is not personally engaged in the prosecution of the Scipiones (Africanus and Asiaticus) for corruption, it is his spirit that animates the attack upon them.
Even Scipio Africanus, who refuses to reply to the charge, saying only, "Romans, this is the day on which I conquered Hannibal," and is absolved by acclamation, finds it necessary to retire, self-banished, to his villa at Liternum, where, ill and disillusioned, he dies in 183.
Cato's enmity dates from the African campaign when he had quarreled with Scipio for his lavish distribution of the spoil among the troops, and his general luxury and extravagance.
Pharnaces of Pontus, without waiting for the return of his ambassadors, decides in the spring of 181 to attack both Eumenes and Ariarathes IV of Cappadocia and therefore invades Galatia with a large force.
Eumenes, allied with Prusias II Cynegus, who had succeeded his father Prusias as king of Bithynia on the latter’s death in 182, leads an army to oppose him, however, hostilities are soon suspended following the arrival of Roman deputies, who have been appointed by the Roman Senate to inquire into the matters in dispute.
Negotiations take place at Pergamon but are inconclusive, with Pharnaces' demands being rejected by the Romans as unreasonable.
As a consequence, the war between Pontus and Pergamon and her allies is renewed.
Ptolemy V Epiphanes, Macedonian ruler of Hellenistic Egypt for the past twenty-four years, retains existing alliances in Greece, but the Egyptian kingdom has declined in power and influence and has lost most of its empire outside Egypt other than Cyprus and Cyrenaica.
An able eunuch has been sent to recruit Greek mercenaries; but whatever the King's plans may have been, he dies suddenly in about May 181, possibly by poison, leaving two sons and a daughter.
His six-year-old elder son succeeds to the throne as Ptolemy VI (called Ptolemy Philometeor); his mother Cleopatra, the daughter of Antiochus III and Laodice, who had married Ptolemy V in 193, serves effectively as regent.
The Book of Sirach, also known as the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach, is written in Hebrew by Ben Sirach, a Jew who had been living in Jerusalem, and who may have authored the work in Alexandria circa 180–175 BCE, where he is thought to have established a school.
The book, culminating in a long eulogy of the heroes of Israel, fuses traditional wisdom with the author’s esteem for Jewish law.
The book would later be included in the Septuagint; it is accepted as part of the biblical canon by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but not by most Protestants, and is listed in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.
Although it was not accepted into the Tanakh, the Jewish biblical canon, The Wisdom of Ben Sira is occasionally quoted in the Talmud and works of rabbinic literature.
The Greek Church Fathers also called it The All-Virtuous Wisdom, while the Latin Church Fathers, beginning with Cyprian, termed it Ecclesiasticus because it was frequently read in churches, leading to the title liber ecclesiasticus (Latin and Latinized Greek for "church book").
Today it is more frequently known as Ben Sira or simply Sirach. ("Ben Sirach" should be avoided because it is a mix of the Hebrew and Greek titles.)
Philopoemen's death leads to a change of leadership, as the pro-Roman Callicrates (regarded by Polybius as a sycophant) begins a policy of obeying Rome's every wish.