Ancient History & Mythology
6 articles in this category
Democracy, philosophy, theater, the Olympic Games, scientific medicine, historical writing: ancient Greece invented or fundamentally shaped them all. But its most enduring gift may be something more intangible: the habit of asking why.
Ancient Greek medicine traveled a remarkable journey in just two centuries, from temple healing and divine intervention to the systematic observation of the body and the first articulation of a secular, scientific approach to disease.
Sparta was the most feared military power in ancient Greece, a state that sacrificed almost everything to the pursuit of perfect soldiers. The reality was both more impressive and more disturbing than the legend.
In thirteen years of campaigning, Alexander III of Macedon conquered an empire stretching from Greece to the borders of India. In doing so, he created a new world culture that fused Greek and Eastern traditions in ways that shaped the next thousand years of history.
The ancient Olympic Games were not primarily a sporting event. They were a religious festival in honor of Zeus, held every four years for over a thousand years. Understanding them requires abandoning almost everything we think we know about sport.
In 507 BCE, the Athenians invented something the world had never seen before: a system of government in which ordinary citizens made political decisions. It was radical, flawed, world-changing, and nothing like modern democracy.