I'm currently reading The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan. He has referenced a couple times works that we know existed, but are now lost (I want to say one was Homer's Margites). There is also some speculation that Herodotus wrote a now lost book about the Assyrians. We know of their existence because later authors have referenced it, or the authors themselves have referred to them in other works. I'm curious about what other known authors from antiquity have works that we know existed but have been lost to time.

As a conglomerate of kingdoms and dynasties, when did China start being referred to by outsiders (or insiders) as a single entity, and when/why did it gain the moniker "China"?

I did search, but the only other threat on this question did not have any very substantive answers.

In American history class in American public schools I learned that America occupied and pacified The Philippines after the Spanish-American war and committed atrocities when it did, but the whole thing was rushed and I never got much of any sort of detail. What specifically did occupying forces do while there, and how does it compare to other case studies of colonialist atrocities?

I'm just wondering if we have a sense of what exactly ancient Greeks thought was 'Europe' and what was not. Did they see it as a culture or just a geographical continent? To what extend did it include areas more distant from Greece such as Britain, Scandinavia (/Thule), Russia, and so on? Was Greek Anatolia Asian or European?

I would think it has to do with getting more land for more factories, but were there other reasons?

In the original, Roman sense of the word, a dictator was a Consul who had been granted emergency powers to deal with a time of crisis (typically war). Today, the term is associated with an authoritarian, personality-driven style of leadership.

My question is less about that transition and more about the perception of the word itself. At what point did the term "dictator" become pejorative? And why did this change occur?

More specific to my area of interest, would it be considered an insult in during WW1? Would citizens in nations that passed legislation like the War Measures Act consider that dictatorial, in the Classical sense?

I am questioning this for a couple of reasons:

A soldier coming back from Vietnam would have been on a military flight vs. commercial; so civilians wouldn't be there when they landed.

A battle hardened soldier who was just coming back from Vietnam would have literally killed a punk kid spitting on them.

If they were flying back home from their base, they would have traveled in their civilian clothes.

Basically what the question states, or alternatively if the answer is different when were the most former Presidents alive at the same time?

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Some people see Guevara and Castro as something like folk heros and the leaders of the people, but many others think they were ruthless and committed many atrocities. What's the background behind why there is so much debate on this figures?

My understanding is that, originally, the laeti were roman citizens that were brought back by the roman army from the Barbarians that enslaved them. Then, they were given lands as coloni. But after that, laeti are considered Barbarians (laeti gentiles) that got the same status than the previous roman laeti. What I don't understand is what happened to the previous laeti, and why the Barbarians got this status.

I'm not asking about the time delay, but about those specific dates - why March 4, not March 3 or March 5? Why January 20, not January 19 or January 21?

I know armies would have squads in their armies, but when did fighting cease to be large standing battles and come down more to skirmishes and a more guerilla-esque style of waging war?

I've always wondered why these deaths are omitted. To me they seem just as important as those that are included. Also why aren't these 25 million deaths attributed to Hitler?

I've been told that the Renaissance came about after the ancient texts of Greece were brought back from the Middle East and Byzantium, and that helped spark the Renaissance. That the Islamic world preserved works by Aristotle and other Greek philosophers. However, Saint Augustine and others were inspired by people like Plato and their philosophy, and he was very influential in Catholic doctrine. So how were they not known to Medieval Europe, or was it just the church that knew about them?