The Great Greeks

Famous Greek / Job / Defining Characteristics
Aeschylus / Writer of tragedies /
  • Wrote more than 80 plays
  • Oresteia – a trilogy – based on family of Agamemnon, a Mycenaean king who command the Greeks at troy

Sophocles / Writer of tragedies /
  • Wrote more than 100 plays
  • Oedipus the King
  • Antigone

Euripides / Writer of tragedies /
  • Wrote plays which only featured strong women
  • Medea

Aristophanes / Writer of comedies /
  • Wrote the first great comedies
  • The Birds
  • Lusistrata
Women of Athens forced husbands to end Persian Wars
Herodotus / The first historian /
  • Wrote the first history book about the Persian Wars

Thucydides / One of the greatest historians /
  • Believed if you study past you can understand the present because “history repeats”
  • “Learn from history or we are destined to repeat it”

Protagoras / A Sophist /
  • Questioned the existence of traditional Greek gods
  • Argued that there was no universal standards of right
  • “Man is the measure of all things”

Socrates / Philosopher /
  • Believed that absolute standards did exist for truth and justice
  • 399 BCE : brought to trial for corrupt teachings of neglecting the gods
  • Put to death by drinking hemlock

Plato / Philosopher /
  • Student of Socrates
  • Idea of a perfect society:
  • Not a democracy, three groups
Farmers and artisans, warriors, and ruling class
  • Smartest would rule and be the philosopher-king
  • Wrote conversation of Socrates : “The Republic”

Aristotle / Philosopher /
  • Student of Plato
  • Questioned nature of the world and human belief, thought, and knowledge
  • Invented a method for arguing according to rules and logic – scientific method basics
  • Alexander, King of Phillip II of Macedonia was his pupil

Hippocrates / Physician /
  • Father of western medicine
  • Greatly advanced medicine by studying and writing a book about the workings of the human body
  • Today, doctors take the “Hippocratic Oath”

Archimedes / Engineer /
  • Designed innovative machines, such as the lever and pump.
  • Discovered the formula for the parabola and an accurate approximation of Pi

Euclid / Mathematician /
  • Father of Geometry
  • Wrote, “Elements” which is still the basis for geometry textbooks

Pythagoras / Mathematician /
  • Wrote the Pythagorean Theorem - a2+b2=c2