Alexander the Great became king of Macedonia at only 20 years old after the assassination of his father, Philip II of Macedon, and within a decade he had conquered one of the largest empires the ancient world had ever seen. As a teenager, Alexander was taught by the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle, who educated him…

Socrates was born around 470/469 BCE in Athens, right as the city was becoming a major political and cultural powerhouse after the Persian Wars. His father, Sophroniscus, was a stonemason, which likely meant Socrates grew up in a working-class household rather than among the aristocracy. His mother, Phaenarete, was a midwife. Socrates later compared his…

Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher. He lived in ancient Greece and is considered one of the founders of Western philosophy. His ideas shaped how people think about truth, knowledge, politics, and reality even today. He was born around 427 BCE in Athens. Athens was the intellectual and political center of Greece at the time….

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, a small Greek town in what is now northern Greece, which is why he is sometimes called “Aristotle of Stagira.” His father, Nicomachus, was a court physician to the Macedonian king, which gave Aristotle early exposure to biology and anatomy. Aristotle joined Plato’s Academy in Athens at…

Homer’s existence is uncertain. Some scholars believe he may represent a poetic tradition or school rather than a single historical person. He is traditionally credited with two of the greatest epic poems in Western literature, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Homer may have lived sometime between the 12th and 8th centuries BCE, but the exact…