Tattooing is one of the oldest art forms on the planet, dating to prehistoric times and cave dwellers who often created tattoos as part of ritual practices linked to shamanism, protection, connection with their gods, and embuing them with magica powers. Early tattooing was used to symbolize the fertility of the earth and of womankind, preservation of life after death, the sacredness of...
The Temple of Hephaestus in central Athens, Greece, is the best-preserved ancient Greek temple in the world, but is far less well-known than its illustrious neighbour, the Parthenon. The temple is also known as the Hephaesteum or Hephaesteion. It is sometimes called the Theseum, due to a belief current in Byzantine times that the bones of the legendary Greek hero Theseus were buried there; in...
The theatre of Ancient Greece, or ancient Greek drama, is a theatrical culture that flourished in ancient Greece between 550 BC and 220 BC. The city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and military power during this period, was its centre, where it was institutionalized as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honored the god Dionysus. Tragedy (late 6th...
Thales of Miletus (ca. 635 BC-543 BC), also known as Thales the Milesian, was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition as well as the father of science. Life Thales lived in the city of Miletus, in Ionia, now western Turkey. According to Herodotus, he was of Phoenician descent. It was said that Thales...
Thales of Miletus is regarded by many as the father of science; he was the first Greek philosopher to seek to explain the physical world in terms of natural rather than supernatural causes. Science in Ancient Greece was based on logical thinking and mathematics. It was also based on technology and everyday life. The arts in Ancient Greece were sculptors and painters. The Greeks wanted to know...
Claudius Ptolemaeus, known in English as Ptolemy, was an ancient geographer, astronomer, and astrologer who probably lived and worked in Alexandria, off the coast of Egypt. Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, two of which have been of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. One is the astronomical treatise that is now known as the Almagest and the other is...
Claudius Ptolemaeus, known in English as Ptolemy, was an ancient geographer, astronomer, and astrologer who probably lived and worked in Alexandria, off the coast of Egypt. Ptolemy was the author of several scientific treatises, two of which have been of continuing importance to later Islamic and European science. One is the astronomical treatise that is now known as the Almagest and the other is...
Posidonius “of Rhodes” or, alternatively, “of Apameia” (ca. 135 BCE – 51 BCE), was a Greek Stoic philosopher, politician, astronomer, geographer, historian, and teacher. He was acclaimed as the greatest polymath of his age. Posidonius (also spelled Poseidonius), nicknamed “the Athlete”, was born to a Greek family in Apamea, a Roman city on the river...
Wars were very common in ancient Greece. The Greeks lived in little city-states, each one like a small town in the United States today, with no more than about 100,000 people in each city-state. These city-states – Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes – were always fighting each other over their borders. Often they would get together in leagues, a lot of city-states together, to fight as...
Hellenistic Poetry Poetry flourished in Alexandria in the third century BC. The chief Alexandrian poets were Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. Theocritus, who lived from about 310 to 250 BC, invented a new genre of poetryÑbucolic, a genre that the Roman Virgil would later imitate in his Eclogues. Callimachus, who lived at the same time as Theocritus, worked his entire adult life...