Hipparchus (ca. 190 BC – ca. 120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He was born in Nicaea (now Iznik, Turkey) and probably died on the island of Rhodes. He is known to have been active at least from 147 BC to 127 BC. Hipparchus is considered the greatest astronomical observer, and by some the greatest astronomer of antiquity. He was the first Greek to develop...
The Gordian Knot is a legend of Phrygian Gordium associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem (disentangling an “impossible” knot) solved easily by cheating or “thinking outside the box” (“cutting the Gordian knot”). The myth it refers to is associated in legend with Alexander the Great. According to a Phrygian...
In Greek mythology, Elysium was a section of the Underworld (the spelling Elysium is a Latinization of the Greek word Elysion). “Elysium is an obscure and mysterious name that evolved from a designation of a place or person struck by lightning, enelysion, enelysios. The Elysian fields were the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. Two passages in Homer established...
The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece. They consisted of the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries. These were ceremonies for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times these were held to be the ones of greatest importance. The Lesser Mysteries were held...
The Moon is an astronomical body that orbits planet Earth and is Earth’s only permanent natural satellite. It is the fifth-largest natural satellite in the Solar System, and the largest among planetary satellites relative to the size of the planet that it orbits (its primary). The Moon is after Jupiter’s satellite Io the second-densest satellite in the Solar System among those whose...
Greece consists of a large mainland at the southern end of the Balkans; the Peloponnesus peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth); and numerous islands (around 3,000), including Crete, Rhodes, Kos, Euboea and the Dodecanese and Cycladic groups of the Aegean Sea as well as the Ionian sea islands. Greece has more than 15,000 kilometres of coastline and a land...
The Derveni papyrus is an ancient Greek papyrus scroll which was found in 1962. It is a philosophical treatise that is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic poem, a theogony concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras, in the second half of the fifth century B.C., making it “the most important new piece of evidence about Greek philosophy and...
Demosthenes (384 BC 322 BC) is generally considered the greatest of the Attic orators, and thus the greatest of all Ancient Greek orators. His writings provide an insight into the life and culture of Athens at this period of time. Born the son of a wealthy sword-maker, Demosthenes was orphaned at the age of seven. His father left him well-provided-for, but his legal guardians defrauded him and...
A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body travelling through space. Meteoroids are significantly smaller than asteroids, and range in size from small grains to 1 meter-wide objects. Most are fragments from comets or asteroids, while others are collision impact debris ejected from bodies such as the Moon or Mars. The visible streak of light from space debris is the result of heat as it enters...
Religion The ancient Greeks were a deeply religious people. They worshipped many gods whom they believed appeared in human form and yet were endowed with superhuman strength and ageless beauty. The Iliad and the Odyssey, our earliest surviving examples of Greek literature, record men’s interactions with various gods and goddesses whose characters and appearances underwent little change in...