73 Ancient People You Should Know

Parmenides (b 510 B.C.) was a Greek philosophy from Elea in Italy. He argued against the existence of a void, a theory used by later philosophers in the expression "nature abhors a vacuum," which stimulated experiments to disprove it. Parmenides argued that change and motion are only delusions.

Paul (or Saul) of Tarsus in Cilicia (d. A.D. 67) set the tone for Christianity, including emphasis on celibacy and theory of divine grace and salvation, as well as eliminating the circumcision requirement. It was Paul who called the New Testament euangelion, 'the gospel'.

Pericles (c. 495 - 429 B.C.) brought Athens to its peak, turning the Delian League into the empire of Athens, and so the era in which he lived is named the Age of Pericles. He helped the poor, set up colonies, built the long walls from Athens to the Piraeus, developed the Athenian navy, and built the Parthenon, the Odeon, the Propylaea, and the temple at Eleusis. The name of Pericles is also attached to the Peloponnesian War. During the war he ordered the people of Attica to leave their fields and come into the city to stay protected by the walls. Unfortunately, Pericles didn't foresee the affect of disease on the crowded conditions and so, along with many others, Pericles died of the plague near the start of the war.

Pindar is considered the Greatest Greek lyric poet. He wrote poetry that provides information on Greek mythology and on Olympic and other Panhellenic Games. Pindar was born c. 522 B.C. at Cynoscephalae, near Thebes.

Plato (428/7 - 347 B.C.) was one of the most famous philosophers of all time. A type of love (Platonic) is named for him. We know about the famous philosopher Socrates through Plato's dialogues. Plato is known as the father of idealism in philosophy. His ideas were elitist, with the philosopher king the ideal ruler. Plato is perhaps best known to college students for his parable of a cave, which appears in Plato's Republic.

Plutarch (c. A.D. 45-125) is an ancient Greek biographer who used material that is no longer available to us for his biographies. His two main works are called Parallel Lives and Moralia. The Parallel Lives compare a Greek and a Roman with a focus on how the character of the famous person influenced his life. Some of the 19 completely parallel lives are a stretch and many of the characters are ones we would consider mythological. Other parallel lives have lost one of their parallels.

The Romans made many copies of the Lives and Plutarch has been popular since. Shakespeare, for instance, closely used Plutarch in creating his tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra.

The Egyptian 19th Dynasty New Kingdom pharaoh Ramses II (Usermaatre Setepenre) (lived 1304-1237) is known as Ramses the Great and, in Greek, as Ozymandias. He ruled for about 66 years, according to Manetho. He is known for signing the first known peace treaty, with the Hittites, but he was also a great warrior, especially for fighting in the Battle of Kadesh. Ramses may have had 100 children, with several wives, including Nefertari. Ramses restored the religion of Egypt close to what it was before Akhenaten and the Amarna period. Ramses installed many monuments to his honor, including the complex at Abu Simbel and the Ramesseum, a mortuary temple. Ramses was buried in the Valley of the Kings in tomb KV47. His body is now in Cairo.

The dates of Sappho of Lesbos are not known. She is thought to have been born around 610 B.C. and to have died in about 570. Playing with the available meters, Sappho wrote moving lyric poetry, odes to the goddesses, especially Aphrodite (the subject of Sappho's complete surviving ode), and love poetry, including the wedding genre of epithalamia, using vernacular and epic vocabulary. There is a poetic meter named for her (Sapphic).

Sargon the Great (aka Sargon of Kish) ruled Sumer from about 2334-2279 B.C. or perhaps a quarter of a century later. Legend sometimes says he ruled the whole world. While the world is a stretch, his dynasty's empire was the whole of Mesopotamia, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Sargon realized it was important to have religious support, so he installed his daughter, Enheduanna, as priestess of the moon god Nanna. Enheduanna is the world's first known, named author.

Scipio Africanus or Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major won the Hannibalic War or Second Punic War for Rome by defeating Hannibal at Zama in 202 B.C. Scipio, who came from an ancient Roman patrician family, the Cornelii, was the father of Cornelia, the famous mother of the social reforming Gracchi. He came into conflict with Cato the Elder and was accused of corruption. Later, Scipio Africanus became a figure in the fictional "Dream of Scipio". In this surviving section of De re publica, by Cicero, the dead Punic War general tells his adoptive grandson, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus (185-129 B.C.), about the future of Rome and the constellations. Scipio Africanus' explanation worked its way into medieval cosmology.