Antiquity

Antiquity (noun) and ancient (adjective of antiquity, or obsolete noun for an old person) may refer to:

  • any period before the Middle Ages (476-1453), but still within the period of human history or prehistory. The term is most often used of Classical antiquity, the classical civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
  • "Ancient history" generally, and may be used of any historical period before the Middle Ages
    • Ancient Near East
    • Late Antiquity is used of the period between classical antiquity and the Middle Ages
    • African Antiquity
    • Ancient Iran (Persia)
    • Ancient China
    • Ancient Egypt
    • Ancient Greece
    • Ancient India (disambiguation)
    • Ancient Japan
    • Ancient Rome
    • Ancient languages
    • Ancient music
  • Antiquities, the term—almost always in the plural in modern usage, referring to objects or artefacts surviving from ancient cultures.
as a proper name
  • Antiquity (journal) is a quarterly journal of archaeological research
  • Ancients (art group), a group of English artists in the 1820s and 30s
  • Ancient (band), a melodic black metal band from Norway
  • Ancient (company), a Japanese software developer

in popular culture:

  • Antiquities (Magic: The Gathering) an expansion to the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game
  • Ancient (Stargate), a race who built the Stargates in the Stargate universe
  • Ancient (Traveller), a mysterious race that once dominated the galaxy in the Traveller role-playing game
  • Ancients (Eternal Darkness), a god-like race in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
  • Ancients (Legacy of Kain), a race in the Legacy of Kain games
  • Ancients, an advanced species in the FreeSpace space simulation computer game series
  • Ancients, a race in the Farscape TV series
  • Ancients or Cetra in Final Fantasy VII
  • The Ancients, a race of highly-advanced worldcrafters in the Might and Magic universe

Famous quotes containing the word antiquity:

    “We gladly put antiquity above our age but not posterity. Only a father doesn’t begrudge his son’s talent.”
    —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)

    “The convent, which belongs to the West as it does to the East, to antiquity as it does to the present time, to Buddhism and Muhammadanism as it does to Christianity, is one of the optical devices whereby man gains a glimpse of infinity.”
    —Victor Hugo (1802–1885)

    “What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)