67 Ancient People You Should Know

Cleopatra (January 69 - August 12, 30 B.C.) was the last pharaoh of Egypt to rule during the Hellenistic era. After her death, Rome controlled Egypt. Cleopatra is known for her affairs with Caesar and Mark Antony, by whom she had respectively, one and three children, and her suicide by snake bite after her husband Antony took his own life. She was engaged in battle (with Mark Antony) against the winning Roman side headed by Octavian (Augustus) at Actium.

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.

Thracian born, Spartacus (c. 109 B.C.-71 B.C.) was trained in a gladiator school and led a slave revolt that was ultimately doomed. Through Spartacus' military ingenuity, his men evaded Roman forces led by Clodius and then Mummius, but Crassus and Pompey got the best of him. Spartacus' army of disaffected gladiators and slaves were defeated. Their bodies were strung up on crosses along the Appian Way.

Attila the Hun was born around 406 A.D. and died 453. Called the Scourge of God by the Romans, Attila was the fierce king and general of the barbarian group known as the Huns who struck fear in the hearts of the Romans as he plundered everything in his path, invaded the Eastern Empire, and then crossed the Rhine into Gaul. Attila successfully led his forces to invade the Eastern Roman Empire in 441. In 451, on the Plains of Chalons, Attila suffered a setback against the Romans and Visigoths, but he made progress and was on the verge of sacking Rome when in 452 the pope dissuaded Attila from sacking Rome.

The Hun Empire extended from the Steppes of Eurasia through most of modern Germany and south into Thermopylae.

Alaric was king of the Visigoths from 394 - 410 A.D. In that last year, Alaric took his troops near Ravenna to negotiate with Emperor Honorius, but he was attacked by a Gothic general, Sarus. Alaric took this as a token of Honorius' bad faith, so he marched on Rome. This was the major sack of Rome mentioned in all the history books. Alaric and his men sacked the city for 3 days, ending on August 27. Along with their plunder, the Goths took Honorius' sister, Galla Placidia, when they left. The Goths still didn't have a home and before they acquired one, Alaric died of a fever very soon after the sacking.

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.

The Achaemenid Persian King Xerxes (520 - 465 B.C.) was the grandson of Cyrus and the son of Darius. Herodotus states that when a storm damaged the bridge Xerxes had had built across the Hellespont, Xerxes got mad, and ordered the water be lashed and otherwise punished. In antiquity, bodies of water were conceived of as gods (see Iliad XXI), so while Xerxes may have been deluded in thinking himself strong enough to scathe the water, it is not as insane as it sounds: The Roman Emperor Caligula who, unlike Xerxes, is generally considered to have been mad, ordered Roman troops to gather seashells as spoils of the sea. Xerxes fought against the Greeks in the Persian Wars, winning a victory at Thermopylae and suffering defeat at Salamis.