67 Ancient People You Should Know

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.

Aeschylus (c.525 - 456 B.C.) was the first great tragic poet. He introduced dialogue, the characteristic tragic boot (cothurnus) and mask. he established other conventions, like the performance of violent acts offstage. Before he became a tragic poet, Aeschylus, who wrote a tragedy about the Persians, fought in the Persian War in the battles at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea.

Sophocles (c. 496-406 B.C.), the second of the great tragic poets, wrote over 100 tragedies. Of these, there are fragments for more than 80, but only seven complete tragedies:

• Oedipus Tyrannus
• Oedipus at Colonus
• Antigone
• Electra
• Trachiniae
• Ajax
• Philoctetes

His contributions to the field of tragedy include introducing a third actor to the drama. He is well-remembered for his tragedies about Oedipus of Freud's complex-fame.

Euripides (c. 484 - 407/406) was the third of the three great Greek tragic poets. He won his first first prize in 442. Despite winning only limited acclaim during his lifetime, Euripides was the most popular of the three great tragedians for generations after his death. Euripides added intrigue and the love-drama to Greek tragedy. His surviving tragedies are:

• Orestes
• Phoenician Woman
• Trojan Women
• Ion
• Iphigenia
• Hecuba
• Heracleidae
• Helen
• Suppliant Women
• Bacchae
• Cyclops
• Medea
• Electra
• Alcestis
• Andromache

Aristophanes (c. 448-385 B.C.) is the only representative of Old Comedy whose work we have in complete form. Aristophanes wrote political satire and his humor is often coarse. His sex-strike and anti-war comedy, Lysistrata, continues to be performed today in connection with war protests. Aristophanes presents a contemporary picture of Socrates, as a sophist in the Clouds, that is at odds with Plato's Socrates.

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.

Caligula or Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (A.D. 12 - 41) followed Tiberius to be the third Roman emperor. He was adored at his accession, but after an illness, his behavior changed. Caligula is remembered as sexually perverted, cruel, insane, extravagant, and desperate for funds. Caligula had himself worshiped as a god while still alive, instead of after death as had been done before. Several assassination attempts are thought to have been made before the successful conspiracy of the Praetorian Guard, on January 24, 41.

Titus Flavius Domitianus or Domitian (October 24 A.D. 51 - September 8, 96) was the last of the Flavian emperors. Domitian and the Senate had a mutually hostile relationship, so although Domitian may have balanced the economy and done other good works, including re-building the fire-damaged city of Rome, he is remembered as one of the worst Roman emperors, since his biographers were mainly of the senatorial class. He strangled the Senate's power and executed some of its members. His reputation among Christians and Jews was tainted by his persecution.

Following Domitian's assassination, the Senate decreed damnatio memoriae for him, meaning that his name was removed from records and coins minted for him were re-melted.

Akhenaten or Amenhotep IV (d. c. 1336 B.C.) was an 18th dynasty pharaoh of Egypt, son of Amenhotep III and his Chief Queen Tiye, and the husband of the beautiful Nefertiti. He is best known as the heretic king who tried to change the religion of the Egyptians. Akhenaten established a new capital at Amarna to go along with his new religion that focused on the god Aten, whence the pharaoh's preferred name. Following his death much of what Akhenaten had had constructed was destroyed deliberately. Shortly afterwards, his successors returned to the old Amun god. Some count Akhenaten as the first monotheist.

Artifact identifies King Tut's father says that Zahi Hawass has found evidence that Tutankhamen was the son of Akhenaten.

Boudicca was queen of the Iceni, in ancient Britain. Her husband was the Roman client-king Prasutagus. When he died, the Romans assumed control of his area of eastern Britain. Boudicca conspired with other neighboring leaders to rebel against Roman interference. In 60 A.D., she led her allies first against the Roman colony of Camulodunum (Colchester), destroyed it, and killed thousands living there, and afterwards, in London and Verulamium (St. Albans). After her massacre of the urban Romans she met their armed forces, and, inevitably, defeat and death, perhaps by suicide.