Aristophanes was the most famous writer of Old Comedy plays in ancient Greece and his surviving works are the only examples of that style. His innovative and sometimes rough comedy could also hide more sophisticated digs at the political elite and deal with social issues such as cultural change and the role of women in society. Indeed, the plays of Aristophanes are not only a record of Greek theatre but also provide an invaluable insight into many of the political and social aspects of ancient Greece, from the practicalities of jury service to details of religious rituals in major festivals.

Aristophanes was a prolific and much acclaimed comic playwright of ancient Greece, sometimes referred to as the Father of Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete (along with up to with 1,000 brief fragments of other works), and are the only real examples we have of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy. Aristophanes’ works recreate the life of ancient Athens perhaps more convincingly than those of any other author, although his biting satire and ridicule of his contemporaries often came close to slander.

Aristophanes (c. 450-after 385 B.C.) was the greatest of the writers of the Old Comedy, which flourished in Athens in the 5th century B.C., and the only one with any complete plays surviving. He wrote at least 36 comedies, of which 11 are extant.

Euripides (c. 484-407 BCE) was one of the greatest authors of Greek tragedy. In 5th century BCE Athens his classic works such as Medeia cemented his reputation for clever dialogues, fine choral lyrics and a gritty realism in both his text and stage presentations. The writer of some 90 plays, Euripides was also famous for posing awkward questions, unsettling his audience with a thought-provoking treatment of common themes, and spicing up the story with thoroughly immoral characters. This is probably why Euripides won only a few festival competitions compared to his great tragedian rivals Aeschylus and Sophocles, although he was tremendously popular with the public. The popularity of Euripides' work has never diminished and his plays continue to be performed in theatres today.

Euripides was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Greece (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Largely due to an accident of history, eighteen of Euripides' ninety-five plays have survived in a complete form, along with fragments (some substantial) of many of his other plays. He is known primarily for having reshaped the formal structure of traditional Greek tragedy by showing strong female characters and intelligent slaves, and by satirizing many heroes of Greek mythology. He is considered to be the most socially critical of all the ancient Greek tragedians, and his plays seem quite modern in comparison with those of his contemporaries.

Euripides (480-406 B.C.) was a Greek playwright whom Aristotle called the most tragic of the Greek poets. He is certainly the most revolutionary Greek tragedian known in modern times.

nformation about Sophocles' life is at best sketchy and incomplete, but some important details survive. Most of what scholars know about the playwright comes from two sources: the Suda Lexicon, a tenth-century Greek dictionary, and the anonymous Sophocles: His Life and Works, an undated manuscript found in the thirteenth century.

Sophocles of Kolōnos (c. 496 - c. 406 BCE) was one of the most famous and celebrated writers of tragedy plays in ancient Greece and his surviving works, written throughout the 5th century BCE, include such classics as Oedipus the King, Antigone, and Women of Trachis. As with other Greek plays, Sophocles’ work is not only a record of Greek theatre but also provides an invaluable insight into many of the political and social aspects of ancient Greece, from family relations to details of Greek religion. In addition, Sophocles’ innovations in theatre presentation would provide the foundations for all future western dramatic performance, and his plays continue to be performed today in theatres around the world.

Sophocles (Sophokles) was the second of the three great ancient Greek tragedians (after Aeschylus and before Euripides) whose work has survived. Only seven of his 123 plays have survived in a complete form but, for almost fifty years, he was the most-awarded playwright in the Dionysia dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens. Sophocles was an important influence on the development of the drama, most importantly by adding a third actor (and thereby reducing the importance of the Chorus in the presentation of the plot) and by developing his characters to a greater extent than earlier playwrights such as Aeschylus.

The Greek tragedian Sophocles (496-406 B.C.) ranks foremost among Greek classical dramatists and has been called the poet of Greek humanism par excellence.

Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 - c. 230 BCE) was an ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer from Ionia who came up with a revolutionary astronomical hypothesis. He claimed the Sun, not the Earth, was the fixed centre of the universe, and that the Earth, along with the rest of the planets, revolved around the Sun. He also said that the stars were distant suns that remained unmoved and that the size of the universe was much larger than his contemporaries believed.

It’s funny, but not all of the scientists we talk about on this website are actually famous. Some of them, like Aristarchus, deserve to be… but they’re not.

Euclid of Alexandria (lived c. 300 BCE) systematized ancient Greek and Near Eastern mathematics and geometry. He wrote The Elements, the most widely used mathematics and geometry textbook in history. Older books sometimes confuse him with Euclid of Megara. Modern economics has been called "a series of footnotes to Adam Smith," who was the author of The Wealth of Nations (1776 CE). Likewise, much of Western mathematics has been a series of footnotes to Euclid, either developing his ideas or challenging them.

The Greek mathematician Euclid lived and flourished in Alexandria in Egypt around 300 BCE, during the reign of Ptolemy I. Almost nothing is known of his life, and no likeness or first-hand description of his physical appearance has survived antiquity, and so depictions of him (with a long flowing beard and cloth cap) in works of art are necessarily the products of the artist's imagination.

The famous Greek scientist and mathematician Euclid (300 BC) is best known as the author of the Elements, the oldest book consisting of geometrical theorems which is considered to be a standard for logical exposition.

Hippocrates made such an impression on medical history that his name is still very much associated with medicine today. All newly qualified doctors take what is called the ‘Hippocratic Oath’ and some see Hippocrates as the father of modern medicine even though he did most of his work some 430 years before the birth of Christ.

Pythagoras (ca. 571- ca. 497 BCE) was a Greek philosopher born on the island of Samos, off Asia Minor, where his ancestors had settled after leaving Phlius, a city in the northwest Peloponnese, after the civil war there in 380 BCE. While this 'fact’ of Pythagoras’ life is held to be true, it, like so much else written of the man, is impossible to verify. None of Pythagoras’ own writings remain and so much mythology grew up surrounding him, much of it by later writers who accepted, uncritically, what they read by others, that all one can say with certainty is that there was a figure in ancient Greece named Pythagoras and that this man founded a philosophical/religious order known as the Pythagoreans.

Pythagoras is someone most people have heard of, but he is an enigma. The trouble is trust. Can we trust what we read about him? Sadly, the answer is no. We can’t trust a lot of it, because if we did, we would have to believe he had god-like powers. We DO know about the beliefs of a religious-mathematical cult called the Pythagoreans. And we DO know that the Pythagoreans made great advances in mathematics.

One of the greatest ancient historians, Thucydides (c.460 B.C.–c.400 B.C.) chronicled nearly 30 years of war and tension between Athens and Sparta. His “History of the Peloponnesian War” set a standard for scope, concision and accuracy that makes it a defining text of the historical genre. Unlike his near-contemporary Herodotus (author of the other great ancient Greek history), Thucydides’ topic was his own time. He relied on the testimony of eyewitnesses and his own experiences as a general during the war. Though specific in detail, the questions he addressed were timeless: What makes nations go to war? How can politics elevate or poison a society? What is the measure of a great leader or a great democracy?

Thucydides (c. 460/455 - 399/398 BCE) was an Athenian general who wrote the contemporary History of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, which lasted from 431 BCE to 404 BCE. However, Thucydides' History was never finished, and as such, ends mid-sentence in the winter of 411 BCE. The History was divided into 13 separate books by later scholars, but is now, in its modern form, divided into eight books. Thucydides is quite often seen as the first historian to use 'modern' ideals with regards to his methodologies and ideologies, including the way that he uses eye witnesses as sources and cross-examines them, and the way that he uses speeches (a much-debated issue because of the problem of interpreting what Thucydides means when he describes how he goes about writing them, such as in (1.21) where it is not clear whether the speeches he quotes can be trusted as accurate accounts of what was said, or if they have been slightly fabricated by Thucydides to help with his themes). His work is meant as a “possession for all time” (1.22), rather than a piece designed to please the public (one of Thucydides’ many possible jabs at Herodotus and the other prose chroniclers of the day).

Thucydides wrote only one work, the remarkable History of the Peloponnesian War. His History is a painstaking description of the events of the war between Athens and Sparta, which he describes as the greatest and most terrible war known to him (I.I, I.23).

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. In the fifth century BC Thucydides wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War, an account of a conflict in which he had himself taken part. This work is now seen as one of the first great masterpieces of history writing, a book which influenced writers for centuries afterwards. Thucydides was arguably the first historian to make a conscious attempt to be objective, bringing a rational and impartial approach to his scholarship. Today his work is still widely studied at military colleges and in the field of international relations for the insight it brings to bear on complex political situations.

Anyte of Tegea (3rd century BCE) was one of the female poets listed by Antipater of Thessalonica as one of the Nine Earthly Muses (with others such as Sappho of Lesbos and Telesilla of Argos). Anyte was among the first poets of Greece to emphasize the natural world in her work (as opposed to supernatural subjects such as the gods) and to write the epigram. She was best known for her epitaphs, especially those for animals. These were not her only artistic contributions, however, and her poetry was so impressive that it was compared in ancient Greece to the works of Homer.

Gorgo was the queen of the Greek city-state of Sparta, daughter of the king Cleomenes (reigned 520-490 BCE), wife of King Leonidas (reigned 490-480 BCE), and mother of King Pleistarchus (reigned 480-458 BCE). Her birth and death dates are unknown but it is generally believed, based on inferences from Herodotus, that she was born in either 518 or 508 BCE, was already married to King Leonidas by 490 BCE, and survived his death at Thermopylae in 480 BCE. She was most likely still alive during the reign of her son Pleistarchus, but for how long and what role she played at his court are not known. She is a figure of note for her wisdom, cleverness, and the apparent authority she assumed in the lives of those around her. Both her father and her husband listened to her counsel, and she is one of the few women mentioned by Herodotus in his Histories.

The most remarkable thing about Gorgo, wife of King Leonidas I of Sparta, is that we know anything about her at all. Herodotus and other ancient Greek historians are far more likely to mention Persian queens than the wives of Greeks – not because Persian women were more powerful than their Greek counterparts, but because Persians had several wives, and so it was sometimes useful to record by which of them a certain Persian figure had been born. Since Greeks had only one legitimate wife, there was no need for such clarification when it came to prominent Greek citizens. Even the names of Spartan queens are rarely mentioned. We do not know, for example, the names of either Leonidas' mother or his stepmother, the "second wife" who caused all the trouble in the Agiad family in the second half of the 6th century BC.

Plato is one of the world's best known and most widely read and studied philosophers. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, and he wrote in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in ancient Greece. Though influenced primarily by Socrates, to the extent that Socrates is usually the main character in many of Plato's writings, he was also influenced by Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans.

The Athenian philosopher Plato (c.428-347 B.C.) is one of the most important figures of the Ancient Greek world and the entire history of Western thought. In his written dialogues he conveyed and expanded on the ideas and techniques of his teacher Socrates. The Academy he founded was by some accounts the world’s first university and in it he trained his greatest student, the equally influential philosopher Aristotle. Plato’s recurring fascination was the distinction between ideal forms and everyday experience, and how it played out both for individuals and for societies. In the “Republic,” his most famous work, he envisioned a civilization governed not by lowly appetites but by the pure wisdom of a philosopher-king.

Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE) is considered the pre-eminent Greek philosopher, known for his Dialogues and for founding his Academy north of Athens, traditionally considered the first university in the western world. Born Aristocles, son of Ariston of the deme Colytus, Plato had two older brothers (Adeimantus and Glaucon), who both feature famously in Plato's dialogue Republic, and a sister Potone. He is known by the nickname 'Plato' which, according to Diogenes Laertius, was given him by his wrestling coach because of his broad shoulders (in Greek 'Platon' means broad). His family was aristocratic and well-connected politically, and it seems Plato was expected to pursue a career in politics. His interests, however, tended more toward the arts and, in his youth, he wrote plays and, perhaps, poetry. When he was in his late teens or early twenties he heard Socrates teaching in the market and abandoned his plans to pursue a literary career as a playwright; he burned his early work and devoted himself to philosophy.

Viewed by many as the founding figure of Western philosophy, Socrates (469-399 B.C.) is at once the most exemplary and the strangest of the Greek philosophers. He grew up during the golden age of Pericles’ Athens, served with distinction as a soldier, but became best known as a questioner of everything and everyone. His style of teaching—immortalized as the Socratic Method—involved not conveying knowledge but rather asking question after clarifying question until his students arrived at their own understanding. He wrote nothing himself, so all that is known about him is filtered through the writings of a few contemporaries and followers, most of all, his student Plato. He was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death. Choosing not to flee, he spent his final days in the company of his friends before drinking the executioner’s cup of poisonous hemlock.

Although Socrates left no written records concerning himself, it is possible to reconstruct a fairly accurate account of his life from the writings of his Greek contemporaries. Aristophanes caricatured him in a work called The Clouds. Xenophon in his Memorabilia expressed high praise for Socrates, with special reference to the method that he advocated for selecting the rulers of a state. Plato, to whom we are most indebted for information about Socrates, made him the chief character in many of his famous dialogs It is generally assumed that in Plato's earlier dialogs, the speeches attributed to Socrates are historical in the sense that they reproduce what Socrates actually said in the conversations he held with fellow Athenians. In the later dialogs, there is reason to believe that, at least in some instances, Plato was setting forth his own ideas by putting them into the mouth of Socrates. To what extent this was done is something that cannot be known with certainty.

Socrates is one of the few individuals whom one could say has so-shaped the cultural and intellectual development of the world that, without him, history would be profoundly different. He is best known for his association with the Socratic method of question and answer, his claim that he was ignorant (or aware of his own absence of knowledge), and his claim that the unexamined life is not worth living, for human beings. He was the inspiration for Plato, the thinker widely held to be the founder of the Western philosophical tradition. Plato in turn served as the teacher of Aristotle, thus establishing the famous triad of ancient philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Unlike other philosophers of his time and ours, Socrates never wrote anything down but was committed to living simply and to interrogating the everyday views and popular opinions of those in his home city of Athens. At the age of 70, he was put to death at the hands of his fellow citizens on charges of impiety and corruption of the youth. His trial, along with the social and political context in which occurred, has warranted as much treatment from historians and classicists as his arguments and methods have from philosophers.

Socrates (469/470-399 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and is considered the father of western philosophy. Plato was his most famous student and would teach Aristotle who would then tutor Alexander the Great. By this progression, Greek philosophy, as first developed by Socrates, was spread throughout the known world during Alexander's conquests.

Hesiod (c. 700 BCE) in conjunction with Homer, is one of those almost legendary early Greek Epic poets. His works are not of comparable length to Homer's. Hesiod's poems are not epic because of their length, but because of their language.

Hesiod is often paired with his near contemporary Homer as one of the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived. He is considered the creator of didactic poetry (instructive and moralizing poetry), and his writings serve as a major source on Greek mythology (“Theogony”), farming techniques, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping (“Works and Days”).

Little can be said about Homer. Ancient Greek tradition, as well as a study of the language and style of the poems, indicates that he probably lived and wrote sometime in the eighth or ninth centuries B.C., but no more definite date can be determined. In ancient times, seven different cities claimed the honor of having been his birthplace. None of these assertions can be validated. However, Homer may have come from the island of Chios, on the western coast of Asia Minor — in earlier times, a family of the same name lived there and claimed him as an ancestor, and devoted themselves to the recitation of his works. Whether he came from Chios or not, it is highly probable that Homer was a native and resident of some part of Eastern Greece or Asia Minor, for the dialect he used in his works is that of the Asian Greeks.

Homer (c. 750 BCE) is perhaps the greatest of all epic poets and his legendary status was well established by the time of Classical Athens. He composed (not wrote, since the poems were created and transmitted orally, they were not written down until much later) two major works, the Iliad and the Odyssey; other works were attributed to Homer, but even in antiquity their authorship was disputed. In conjunction with Hesiod, Homer acts as a great pool of information for the Greeks about their gods. Homer is the earliest poet in Western culture whose works have survived intact.

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek epic poems “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”, widely thought to be the first extant works of Western literature. He is considered by many to be the earliest and most important of all the Greek writers, and the progenitor of the whole Western literary tradition. He was a poetic pioneer who stood at a pivotal point in the evolution of Greek society from pre-literate to literate, from a centuries old bardic tradition of oral verse to the then new technique of alphabetic writing.

Pindar was one of the most famous ancient Greek lyric poets, and perhaps the best known of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece. He was regarded in antiquity as the greatest of Greek poets and the esteem of the ancients may help explain why a good portion of his work was carefully preserved (most of the other Greek lyric poems come down to us only in fragments, but nearly a quarter of all Pindar's poems survive complete). He is particularly known for his epinicia (or victory odes) in honour of notable personages and winners of athletic games.

Credited with having established democracy in Athens, Cleisthenes' reforms at the end of the 6th Century BC made possible the Golden Age of Athenian civilization that would follow in the 5th Century BC. Born into one of the city's foremost political dynasties, he became the unlikely champion of the people when they rebelled against tyranny.

Draco was an aristocrat who in 7th century BCE Athens was handed the task of composing a new body of laws. We have no particular clues concerning his life and general biography and the only certainty is that, as an aristocrat and an educated man, he was in the right place at the right time in order to take his opportunity and legislate. During the infancy of the Athenian legal system Draco composed the city's first written law code with the aim of reducing arbitrary decisions of punishment and blood feuds between parties. Ultimately, though, the laws aided and legitimized the political power of the aristocracy and allowed them to consolidate their control of the land and poor. Famously harsh, the laws were ultimately replaced by Solon in 594 BCE.

Leonidas (c. 530-480 B.C.) was a king of the city-state of Sparta from about 490 B.C. until his death at the Battle of Thermopylae against the Persian army in 480 B.C. Although Leonidas lost the battle, his death at Thermopylae was seen as a heroic sacrifice because he sent most of his army away when he realized that the Persians had outmaneuvered him. Three hundred of his fellow Spartans stayed with him to fight and die. Almost everything that is known about Leonidas comes from the work of the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484-c. 425 B.C.).

The so-called golden age of Athenian culture flourished under the leadership of Pericles (495-429 B.C.), a brilliant general, orator, patron of the arts and politician—”the first citizen” of democratic Athens, according to the historian Thucydides. Pericles transformed his city’s alliances into an empire and graced its Acropolis with the famous Parthenon. His policies and strategies also set the stage for the devastating Peloponnesian War, which would embroil all Greece in the decades following his death.

Pericles (495–429 BCE, whose name means "surrounded by glory") was a prominent statesman, famous orator, and general (in Greek 'Strategos’) of Athens during the Golden Age of Athens. So profound was his influence that the period in which he led Athens has been called the 'Age of Pericles’.

For over 20 years, at Athens' height, the city was dominated by the aloof, 'Olympian' figure of Pericles. A magnificent orator with a reputation for scrupulous honesty, Pericles deepened and extended the reforms that Cleisthenes had set in motion some 50 years before.

Didymus the grammarian, in his reply to Asclepiades on Solon's tables of law, mentions a remark of one Philocles, in which it is stated that Solon's father was Euphorion, contrary to the opinion of all others who have written about Solon. For they all unite in saying that he was a son of Execestides, a man of moderate wealth and influence in the city, but a member of its foremost family, being descended from Codrus.

By the early 6th century B.C. social tensions in Athens had become acute, pitting the poorer citizens against rich and powerful landowners. Many citizens were reduced to the status of share croppers, and others had actually sold themselves into slavery to meet their debts. To resolve the crisis the Athenians appointed Solon as archon (magistrate) to serve as mediator and lawgiver. Plutarch and Aristotle describe in some detail the constitution devised by Solon, who then went into voluntary exile to avoid being pressured into amending this legislation.

Themistocles was an Athenian general and politician of superlative skill and foresight. He fought against the Persians at the Battle of Marathon while a young man, and distinguished himself as the savior of all Greece by persuading Athens to build a navy which went on to defeat Persia at Salamis in 480 bc.

In the case of Themistocles, his family was too obscure to further his reputation. His father was Neocles, — no very conspicuous man at Athens, — a Phrearrhian by deme, of the tribe Leontis; and on his mother's side he was an alien, as her epitaph testifies:— "Abrotonon was I, and a woman of Thrace, yet I brought forth that great light of the Greeks, — know! 'twas Themistocles." Phanias, however, writes that the mother of Themistocles was not a Thracian, but a Carian woman, and that her name was not Abrotonon, but Euterpe. And Neanthes actually adds the name of her city in Caria, — Halicarnassus.