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Agamemnon, in Greek legend, king of Mycenae or Argos. He was the son (or grandson) of Atreus, king of Mycenae, and his wife Aërope and was the brother of Menelaus. After Atreus was murdered by his nephew Aegisthus (son of Thyestes), Agamemnon and Menelaus took refuge with Tyndareus, king of Sparta, whose daughters, Clytemnestra and Helen, they respectively married. By Clytemnestra, Agamemnon had a son, and three daughters
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Tyrant, Greek tyrannos, a cruel and oppressive ruler or, in ancient Greece, a ruler who seized power unconstitutionally or inherited such power. In the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, monarchy was the usual form of government in the Greek states. The aristocratic regimes that replaced monarchy were by the 7th century BCE themselves unpopular. Thus, the opportunity arose for ambitious men to seize power in the name of the oppressed.
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The Olympic Games, which originated in ancient Greece as many as 3,000 years ago, were revived in the late 19th century and have become the world’s preeminent sporting competition. From the 8th century B.C. to the 4th century A.D., the Games were held every four years in Olympia, located in the western Peloponnese peninsula, in honor of the god Zeus. The first modern Olympics took place in 1896 in Athens, and featured 280 participants from 13 nations, competing in 43 events.
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Draconian laws, traditional Athenian law code allegedly introduced by Draco c. 621 BCE. Aristotle, the chief source for knowledge of Draco, claims that his were the first written Athenian laws and that Draco established a constitution enfranchising hoplites, the lower class soldiers. The Draconian laws were most noteworthy for their harshness; they were said to be written in blood, rather than ink. Death was prescribed for almost all criminal offenses.
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In the year 507 B.C., the Athenian leader Cleisthenes introduced a system of political reforms that he called demokratia, or “rule by the people” (from demos, “the people,” and kratos, or “power”). It was the first known democracy in the world. This system was comprised of three separate institutions: the ekklesia, a sovereign governing body that wrote laws and dictated foreign policy; the boule, a council of representatives from the ten Athenian.
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In the 5th century bc, the Persian empire fought the city-states of Greece in one of the most profoundly symbolic struggles in history. Their wars would determine the viability of a new direction in Western culture, for even as Greece stood poised to embark on an unprecedented voyage of the mind, Persia threatened to prevent the Hellenes from ever achieving their destiny. Persia represented the old ways.
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The Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. was part of the first Persian invasion of Greece. The battle was fought on the Marathon plain of northeastern Attica and marked the first blows of the Greco-Persian War.
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Darius I, byname Darius the Great, (born 550 BC—died 486), king of Persia in 522–486 BC, one of the greatest rulers of the Achaemenid dynasty, who was noted for his administrative genius and for his great building projects. Darius attempted several times to conquer Greece; his fleet was destroyed by a storm in 492, and the Athenians defeated his army at Marathon in 490.
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The invasion began in spring 480 BC, when the Persian army crossed the Hellespont and marched through Thrace and Macedon to Thessaly. The Persian advance was blocked at the pass of Thermopylae by a small Allied force under King Leonidas I of Sparta; simultaneously, the Persian fleet was blocked by an Allied fleet at the straits of Artemisium.
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Viewed by many as the founding figure of Western philosophy. He became best known as a questioner of everything and everyone. His style of teaching—immortalized as the Socratic method—involved not conveying knowledge, but rather asking question after clarifying question until his students arrived at their own understanding. He wrote nothing himself, so all that is known about him is filtered through the writings of a few contemporaries and followers, most notably his student Plato.
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Xerxes I, Old Persian Khshayarsha, byname Xerxes the Great, (born c. 519 BCE—died 465, Persepolis, Iran), Persian king (486–465 BCE), the son and successor of Darius I. He is best known for his massive invasion of Greece from across the Hellespont (480 BCE), a campaign marked by the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea. His ultimate defeat spelled the beginning of the decline of the Achaemenian Empire.
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Parthenon, temple that dominates the hill of the Acropolis at Athens. It was built in the mid-5th century BCE and dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena Parthenos (“Athena the Virgin”). The temple is generally considered to be the culmination of the development of the Doric order, the simplest of the three Classical Greek architectural orders.
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It was a war between Athens and Sparta, 431–404 b.c., that resulted in the transfer of hegemony in Greece from Athens to Sparta.
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Pericles, (born c. 495 BCE, Athens—died 429, Athens), Athenian statesman largely responsible for the full development, in the later 5th century BCE, of both the Athenian democracy and the Athenian empire, making Athens the political and cultural focus of Greece. His achievements included the construction of the Acropolis, begun in 447.
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Academy, Greek Academeia, Latin Academia, in ancient Greece, the academy, or college, of philosophy in the northwestern outskirts of Athens where Plato acquired property about 387 BCE and used to teach. At the site there had been an olive grove, a park, and a gymnasium sacred to the legendary Attic hero Academus (or Hecademus).
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In 359 BCE, King Philip II of Macedon set his eye on expanding his empire, uniting Greece, and conquering the Persians. He used the Macedonian might to unite the city-states of Greece into a “common peace” and to secure power for himself, and later for his son Alexander the Great. Alexander would go on to expand the League of Corinth and to conquer the imposing Persian empire.
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Alexander the Great was an ancient Macedonian ruler and one of history’s greatest military minds who, as King of Macedonia and Persia, established the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen. By turns charismatic and ruthless, brilliant and power hungry, diplomatic and bloodthirsty, Alexander inspired such loyalty in his men they’d follow him anywhere and, if necessary, die in the process.
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Plato, (born 428/427 BCE, Athens, Greece—died 348/347, Athens), ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE), teacher of Aristotle (384–322 BCE), and founder of the Academy, best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.
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Battle of Chaeronea, (August 338 BCE), battle in Boeotia, central Greece, in which Philip II of Macedonia defeated a coalition of Greek city-states led by Thebes and Athens. The victory, partly credited to Philip’s 18-year-old son Alexander the Great, cemented the Macedonian hegemony in Greece and ended effective military resistance to Philip in the region.
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Aristotle, Greek Aristoteles, (born 384 BCE, Stagira, Chalcidice, Greece—died 322, Chalcis, Euboea), ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the greatest intellectual figures of Western history. He was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that became the framework and vehicle for both Christian Scholasticism and medieval Islamic philosophy.
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The catapult was an ancient siege machine that could hurl heavy objects or shoot arrows with great force and for considerable distances. ... The Greek Dionysius the Elder of Syracuse, who was looking to develop a new type of weapon, invented the catapult about 400 BCE.
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The first Persian invasion of Greece, during the Persian Wars, began in 492 BC, and ended with the decisive Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.
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Philip II, (born May 21, 1527, Valladolid, Spain—died September 13, 1598, El Escorial), king of the Spaniards (1556–98) and king of the Portuguese (as Philip I, 1580–98), champion of the Roman Catholic Counter-Reformation. During his reign the Spanish empire attained its greatest power, extent, and influence, though he failed to suppress the revolt of the Netherlands (beginning in 1566) and lost the “Invincible Armada” in the attempted invasion of England (1588).
