Helen of Troy, was daughter of Zeus and Leda, wife of king Menelaus of Sparta and sister of Castor, Polydeuces and Clytemnestra. Her abduction by Paris brought about the Trojan War. Helen was described as having "the face that launched a th...

Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle. King of Ithaca, husband of Penelope, father of Telema...

In the Western classical tradition, Homer is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest of Greek epic poets. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influenc...

Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. He is remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic, and moral decline in archaic Athens. His reforms failed in the short term, yet he is often credited...

Thales of Miletus was a Greek mathematician, astronomer and pre-Socratic philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. He was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regarded him as the first philosopher in the Gree...

Aesop was an Ancient Greek fabulist or story teller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gat...

Cleisthenes was an ancient Athenian lawgiver credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508 BC. For these accomplishments, historians refer to him as "the father of Athenian democrac...

Pythagoras of Samos was an Ionian Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. Most of the information about Pythagoras was written down centuries after he lived, so very little reliable inf...

Leonidas I ("son of the lion") was a warrior king of the Greek city-state of Sparta, and the 17th of the Agiad line; a dynasty which claimed descent from the mythological demigod Heracles and Cadmus. He was son of King Anaxandridas II. He s...

Athenian statesman and general. He was one of the 10 generals who commanded the Athenians at the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) and in the next year became chief archon. In 483 he was ostracized because he opposed the naval policy of Themist...

Themistocles (Greek: "Glory of the Law"), was an Athenian politician and general. He was one of a new breed of politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy, along with his great rival Aristides. As a polit...

Pericles was an influential and important leader of Athens during the Athenian Golden Age (specifically, between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars). The period from 461 BC to 379 BC is sometimes known as "The Age of Pericles". He was respo...

Born in 495 B.C. about a mile northwest of Athens, Sophocles was to become one of the great playwrights of the golden age. The son of a wealthy merchant, he would enjoy all the comforts of a thriving Greek empire. He studied all of the arts...

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greek historian who lived in the 5th century BC in Halicarnassus, Caria; Bodrum in modern Turkey. He is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture. He was the first historian known to collect his...

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Pla...