The following tale is related by Aelian in his treatise On Animals (X.48). In very ancient times the region of Emathia in northern Greece had a king name named Lycaon. This king’s son was named Macedon; and it is from this name that the word for the country called Macedonia has come about.
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We turn now to the wisdom of those who are able to extricate themselves from the ensnaring brambles of theological thickets. The scholar and theologian Abd Al Rahman Ibn Al Jawzi, or more commonly Ibn Al Jawzi (ابن الجوزي), was born in Baghdad around 1115, and died there in 1201.
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The rhetorician Libanius, who lived from about A.D. 314 to 392, wrote a letter of consolation to the emperor Julian after the city of Nicomedia was devastated by an earthquake in A.D. 358. The letter contains the following sentence:
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We find a stirring anecdote in the history of Valerius Maximus that does not appear in any other ancient source. There was once a centurion named Mevius who fought for Octavian (who would eventually become Caesar Augustus) during the civil war between him and Antony. Of Mevius we know very little; even his full name has eluded history.
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Sybaris was an ancient city of Magna Graecia in southern Italy. Its ruins are located in the modern Italian province of Calabria. The historians tell us that it was founded around the year 720 B.C., and that it persisted as a community until around 440 B.C.
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Gavan Daws, in his Prisoners of the Japanese, recounts many harrowing stories of suffering and survival in the Asian prison camps of the Second World War. I recall one anecdote.
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Homer tells us: “He shall have dread hereafter when some god shall come against him in battle; for hard are the gods to look upon when they appear in manifest presence.” (Iliad XX.130—131).
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The advent of extreme circumstances either activates the latent abilities of the brave man, or smothers the spirit of the timid soul. Of the many historical examples that verify this, we will discuss one that is unlikely to be familiar to most readers.
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The words and syntax of a speaker are as revelatory of identity as a fingerprint, a ballistics test, and a DNA sample are to a criminologist. The critical inquiries of the scholar, or the practiced eye of the native speaker, will as readily deduce the origin of a written text from an examination of its lexicon and constructions, as might a forensics scientist derive a wealth of information from a study of a fragment of bone, a scrap of tissue, or a tuft of hair. While this truth has not often been appreciated, it remains one that has been consistently demonstrated. We will discuss three examples that illustrate our proposition.
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So much has been written on the subject of self-confidence that a few more observations are unlikely to draw an objection. It seems to me that self-confidence rests on four pillars: (1) one must accurately and honestly assess one’s value; (2) self-confidence should never veer into the territory of arrogance or insolence; (3) self-confidence must be buttressed by demonstrated experience; and (4) while all can improve in self-confidence, it is essentially a character trait that comes easier to some than to others.
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Quintus Curtius 
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