Socrates was the first major Greek philosopher | Philosophers |
Socrates was executed for “corrupting the young” with his ideas | |
Plato was the first to mention Atlantis | |
Aristotle was a student of Plato, but his ideas were more practical | |
Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander the Great | |
Zeus was king of the gods and father to many. Most by different mothers | Gods |
Zeus' wife was Hera. She was also his sister! | |
Zeus and his siblings overthrew the Titans. The Titans were their parents | |
The Romans adopted many Greek gods but gave them new names | |
The gods were thought to dwell atop Mount Olympus | |
There were about 1500 city-states in Ancient Greece | City States |
The Greek word for a city was “polis.” It's related to "police" and "politics" | |
The two most powerful cities were Athens and Sparta | |
Athens was one of the first states to have a democratic government | |
Spartan boys were trained as warriors from the age of 7 | |
After 4,000 years of effort, it was the Greeks who found the value of Pi | Discoveries |
The Greeks knew Earth orbited the Sun back in the 3rd Century BCE | |
They knew it was round even earlier - in the 6th Century BCE | |
And they discovered its circumference in 240 BCE | |
They also measured the size and distance of the Sun and Moon | |
Odysseus' homeward journey after the Trojan War took 10 years | Heroes |
The Argonauts were so named because they sailed the ship "Argo" | |
Theseus killed the minotaur and is credited with founding democracy | |
Perseus, great-grandfather of Heracles, killed the gorgon Medusa | |
Heracles was the most famous hero. His 12 labours are legendary | |
The Greeks loved their stories. They recited poems and had theatres | Culture |
The Greeks performed plays wearing masks | |
There were 3 types of play: tragedy, comedy and satyr | |
Myths were told orally for centuries before they were written down | |
The most famous of all Greek poets was Homer. He was allegedly blind | |
The Greeks and Persians fought a 50 year war in the 5th Century BCE | Persian Wars |
We know what happened because of the Greek historian, Herodotus | |
The Battle of Marathon was part of that war. The race is named after it | |
The film "300" is based on the Battle of Thermopylae | |
The wars ended in 448 BCE with no clear winner | |
The Sirens lured sailors to their deaths. They were half woman, half bird | Monsters |
Harpies were flying monsters described as beautiful and hideous | |
The Hydra had several heads. If one was cut off a new one grew! | |
Cyclopes were one-eyed giants. One of them was blinded by Odysseus | |
Cerberus was a three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to Hades | |
Alexander fought many battles but he never lost a single one | Alexander the Great |
Many of the cities Alexander conquered are named after him | |
Alexander conquered the largest empire the world had ever seen | |
We don't know how Alexander died. He may have been poisoned | |
Alexander’s body was preserved in a vat of honey | |
The Greeks invented the water wheel in the 3rd Century BCE | Inventions |
Named after Mt Olympus, the Olympic Games are a Greek invention | |
Hippocrates, "the father of medicine" was the first to study illnesses | |
Arched bridges were a Greek invention. The oldest surviving is in Greece | |
The first spiral staircase was in a Greek temple in Sicily | |