The chlamys (Ancient Greek: χλαμύς, gen.: χλαμύδος; also known as the ephaptis [ἐφαπτίς]) was an ancient Greek piece of clothing, a type of cloak.

The chlamys was made from a seamless rectangle of woolen material about the size of a blanket, usually bordered. It was normally pinned with a fibula at the right shoulder. Originally it was wrapped around the waist like a loincloth, but by the end of the 5th century BC it was worn over the elbows. It could be worn over another item of clothing, but was often the sole item of clothing for young soldiers and messengers, at least in Greek art. As such, the chlamys is the characteristic garment of Hermes (Roman Mercury), the messenger god usually depicted as a young man.

The chlamys was typical Greek military attire from the 5th to the 3rd century BCE. As worn by soldiers, it could be wrapped around the arm and used as a light shield in combat.

The chlamys continued into the Byzantine period, when it was often much larger and worn sideways. It was held on with a clasp at the shoulder, and nearly reached the ground at front and back.

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.

Gorky was born in Nizhny Novgorod and became an orphan at the age of nine. In 1880, at the age of twelve, he ran away from home in an effort to find his grandmother. Gorky was brought up by his grandmother. Her death deeply affected him, and after an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs and accumulating impressions used later in his writing.

As a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида (Jehudiel Khlamida). The name is suggestive of "cloak-and-dagger" by the similarity to the Greek chlamys, "cloak"). He began using the pseudonym Gorky (literally "bitter") in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ (The Caucasus). The name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorky's first book Очерки и рассказы (Essays and Stories) in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success and his career as a writer began. Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice (though he worked hard on style and form) than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalization, but also their inward spark of humanity.

Michael II (Greek: Μιχαήλ Β', Mikhaēl II), surnamed the Amorian (ὁ ἐξ Ἀμορίου) or the Stammerer (ὁ Τραυλός or ὁ Ψελλός), reigned as Byzantine Emperor from December 820 to his death on 2 October 829, and the first ruler of the Phrygian or Amorian dynasty.

Born in Amorium, Michael began his career as a soldier, rising to high ranks due to the favour of his old colleague, Leo V the Armenian (r. 813–820). Nevertheless, Michael masterminded a conspiracy which overthrew and murdered Leo in Christmas 820. Immediately Michael faced the long revolt of Thomas the Slav, which almost cost him his throne and which was not completely suppressed until spring 824. The later years of Michael's reign were marked by two major military disasters with long-term effects, the beginning of the Muslim conquest of Sicily, and the fall of Crete to the Saracens. Domestically, Michael supported and strengthened the resumption of official iconoclasm, which had begun under Leo V.

Michael was born in 770 in Amorium in Phrygia, into a family of professional peasant-soldiers who received for their military service land from government. His family belonged to the Judeo-Christian sect of the Athinganoi, whose members were Cappadocians who adopted Jewish rituals. The Athinganoi were numerous in Anatolia and together with the Greeks and Armenians formed the backbone of the Byzantine army of that era.