73 Ancient People You Should Know

Jesus is the central figure of Christianity. For believers, he is the Messiah, the son of God and the Virgin Mary, who lived as a Galilean Jew, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was resurrected. For many non-believers, Jesus is a source of wisdom. Some non-Christians believe he worked healing and other miracles. At its start, the new messianic religion was considered one of the mystery cults.

Some dispute the fact of Jesus' existence.

Julius Caesar (July 12/13, 102/100 B.C. - March 15, 44 B.C.) may have been the greatest man of all times. By age 39/40, Caesar had been a widower, divorce, governor (propraetor) of Further Spain, captured by pirates, hailed imperator by adoring troops, quaestor, aedile, consul, and elected pontifex maximus. He formed the Triumvirate, enjoyed military victories in Gaul, became dictator for life, and started a civil war. When Julius Caesar was assassinated, his death set the Roman world in turmoil. Like Alexander who began a new historical era, Julius Caesar, the last great leader of the Roman Republic, set in motion the creation of the Roman Empire.

Roman Emperor Justinian I or Justinian the Great (Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus) (482/483 - 565) is known for his reorganization of the government of the Roman Empire and his codification of the laws, the Codex Justinianus, in A.D. 534. Some call Justinian "the last Roman," which is why this Byzantine emperor makes it to this list of important ancient people that otherwise ends in A.D. 476. Under Justinian the Hagia Sophia Church was built and a plague devastated the Byzantine Empire.

Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 98-55 B.C.) was a Roman Epicurean epic poet who wrote De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). De rerum natura is an epic, written in 6 books, which explains life and the world in terms of Epicurean principles and the theory of Atomism. Lucretius had a significant influence on western science and has inspired modern philosophers, including Gassendi, Bergson, Spencer, Whitehead, and Teilhard de Chardin, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Mithridates VI (114- 63 B.C.) or Mithridates Eupator is the king who caused Rome so much trouble during the time of Sulla and Marius. Pontus had been awarded the title of friend of Rome, but because Mithridates kept making incursions on his neighbors, the friendship was strained. Despite the great military competence of Sulla and Marius, and their personal confidence in their ability to check the Eastern despot, it was neither Sulla nor Marius who put an end to the Mithridatic problem. Instead, it was Pompey the Great who earned his honorific in the process.

Moses was an early leader of the Hebrews and probably the most important figure in Judaism. He was raised in the court of the Pharaoh in Egypt, but then led the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Moses is said to have talked with God, who gave him tablets inscribed with laws or commandments referred to as the 10 Commandments.

Moses' story is told in the Biblical book Exodus and is short on archaeological corroboration.

Nebuchanezzar II was the most important Chaldean king. He ruled from 605-562 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar is best remembered for turning Judah into a province of the Babylonian empire, sending the Jews into the Babylonian captivity, and destroying Jerusalem. He is also associated with his hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

We know her as the New Kingdom Egyptian queen who wore a tall blue crown, lots of colored jewelry, and held up a neck like a swan -- as she appears on a bust in a Berlin museum. She was married to an equally memorable pharaoh, Akhenaten, the heretic king who moved the royal family to Amarna, and was related to the boy king Tutankhamen, known mostly for his sarcophagus. Nefertiti never served as pharaoh, but she assisted her husband in the governing of Egypt, and may have been co-regent.

Nero was the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors, the most important family of Rome that produced the first five emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero). Nero is famed for watching while Rome burned and then using the devastated area for his own luxurious palace and blaming the conflagration on the Christians, whom he then persecuted.

Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 17) was a prolific Roman poet whose writing influenced Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton. As those men knew, to understand the corpus of Greco-Roman mythology requires familiarity with Ovid's Metamorphoses.