Famous Greeks

Aesop

-A greek slave
-About 550 B.C.
-Made up his famous fables
-Fables involved animals talking and acting like people

Achilles

-warrior hero
-son of the Thetis, a nereid, and Peleus, the king of the Myrmidons
-described having a large chest, a fine mouth, and powerfully formed arms and legs
-very fierce in battle
-Thetis tried to make him immortal by dipping him in the river Styx

Zeus

-King of the gods
-ruled the sky and threw lightning bolts
-god of the sky, rain, and lightning
-Hera’s husband

Homer

-c. 750 B.C.E
-Epic poems included the Iliad and the Odyssey
-Historians don’t know if he was a real person or if he wrote the poems alone or not.
-Many people was guessed about his personal life
Created different style of poetry

Sophocles

-a general and a writer of plays
-used 3 actors in his stories instead of 1 or 2
-most famous plays were Odiepus Rex and Antigone

Euripides

-One of the best 3 writers of tragedy plays
-Tried to take drama beyond heroes and gods; characters more “down-to-earth”.
-Took interest in real-life situations, especially war. Showed war as cruel.

Aristophanes

-son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion
-a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens
-writers of the original Greek comedy

Aeschylus

-ancient Greek tragedian
-Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays
-most famous work is Prometheus Boun

Pythagoras

-an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism
-political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia
-influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general

Socrates

-Greek philosopher from Athens
-credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought
-He taught that people should care less about their bodies and possessions and more about their souls

Plato

-Greek philosopher born in Athens
-born during the Classical period in Ancient Greece
-founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent.

Aristotle

-Greek philosopher and polymath
-Taught by Plato
-founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy within the Lyceum and the wider Aristotelian tradition

Herodotus

-Greek historian and geographer
-from the Greek city of Halicarnassus
-He is known for having written the Histories

Thucydides

-Athenian historian and general.
-History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC
-father of both scientific history and political realism.

Philip II

-the king of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia
-ruled from 359 BC until his death in 336 BC
-member of the Argead dynasty, founders of the ancient kingdom, and the father of Alexander the Great

Alexander the Great

-a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon
-succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20
-spent most of his ruling years conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Western Asia and Egypt

Demosthenes

-a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens
orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary ------Athenian intellectual prowess
-provide insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC

Apollonius of Rhodes

-ancient Greek author
-best known for the Argonautica, an epic poem about Jason and the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece
-created the only full-scale epic surviving from the seven centuries that separate Virgil's Aeneid from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey

Theocritus

-Greek poet from Sicily
-creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry
-poems were termed eidyllia (“idylls”), a diminutive of eidos, which may mean little poems

Epicurus

-Greek philosopher and sage who founded Epicureanism
-born on the Greek island of Samos to Athenian parents
-Epicurus' ethics is a form of egoistic hedonism; i.e., he says that the only thing that is intrinsically valuable is one's own pleasure

Zeno

-pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of Magna Graecia
-member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides
-best known for his paradoxes, which Bertrand Russell described as "immeasurably subtle and profound"

Aristarchus

- ancient Greek grammarian remembered for his commentary on the Iliad and Odyssey
-ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician
- presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe

Eratosthenes

-Greek polymath: a mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist
-a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria
-measured Earth's circumference mathematically using two surface points to make the calculation

Archimedes

-Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor
-from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily
-regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity

Euclid

-ancient Greek mathematician active as a geometer and logician
-Considered the "father of geometry"
-chiefly known for the Elements treatise, which established the foundations of geometry that largely dominated the field until the early 19th century

Hipparchus

-Hipparchus was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician
-considered the founder of trigonometry
-most famous for his incidental discovery of the precession of the equinoxes

Hippocrates

-Greek physician of the classical period
-considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine
-introduced numerous medical terms universally used by physicians, including symptom, diagnosis, therapy, trauma and sepsis

Hypatia

-Hypatia was a neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician
-lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire
-prominent thinker in Alexandria where she taught philosophy and astronomy

Poseidon

-god of the sea (and of water generally), earthquakes, and horses
-distinguished from Pontus, the personification of the sea and the oldest Greek divinity of the waters
-The name Poseidon means either “husband of the earth” or “lord of the earth”

Hades

- god of the underworld
-son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea
-he presided over hidden wealth

Athena

-goddess of battle strategy, and wisdom
-always accompanied by her owl and the goddess of victory, Nike
-she wore a breastplate made out of goatskin called the Aegis
-daughter of zeus

Hera

-The goddess of women, marriage, and childbirth
-Hera was both sister and wife of Zeus
-had power over the skies and could bless the people with clear skies or curse them with storms