Greece Articles

As a coastal city and hub of the Ancient Greek world, Athens was frequently visited by sailors and merchants who docked their ships for business and respite. The presence of these visitors to the city sparked a need for entertainment, and that need was fulfilled by the emergence of prostitution in the Archaic Period (800 - 500 B.C.). Prostitution continued... [continue reading]

Protagoras of Abdera (ca. 490-ca.420 BCE) is most famous for his claim that "Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not"(DK 80B1) usually rendered simply as "Man is the Measure of All Things". In maintaining this stance he pre-figures the existential relativism of writers like... [continue reading]

In ancient Greece the continued existence of the dead depended on their constant remembrance by the living. The after-life, for the ancient Greeks, consisted of a grey and dreary world in the time of Homer (8th century BCE) and, most famously, we have the scene from Homer's Odyssey in which Odysseus meets the spirit of the great warrior Achilles in the nether-world... [continue reading]

Chaeronea is the site of the famous Battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE) Phillip II of Macedon’s decisive defeat of the Greek city-states. At Chaeronea in Boeotia (north of Corinth) Phillip and his allies from Thessaly, Epirus, Aetolia, Northern Phocis and Locrian defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes. Phillip commanded the right wing while... [continue reading]

What, exactly, this mystic ritual was, no one knows; but why the ancient Greeks participated in it can be understood by the testimonials of the initiated. The Eleusinian Mysteries, held each year at Eleusis, Greece, fourteen miles northwest of Athens, were so important to the Greeks that, until the arrival of the Romans, The Sacred Way (the road from Athens... [continue reading]

Today, traveling an hour by ferry from Piraeus, the port of Athens, the first remnant of Aegina’s great past a visitor will see is the lonely pillar of Apollo rising from the trees on the hill of Kolona. Once a splendid complex of three buildings (the Temple of Apollo itself rose on eleven large pillars and six smaller ones) and a cemetery (in which... [continue reading]

Phoenician is a Canaanite language closely related to Hebrew. Very little is known about the Canaanite language, except what can be gathered from the El-Amarna letters written by Canaanite kings to Pharaohs Amenhopis III (1402-1364 BC) and Akhenaton (1364-1347 BC). It appears that Phoenician language, culture, and writing was strongly influenced by Egypt (which... [continue reading]

The imposing archaeological site of Delphi sits over 1800 feet up on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus, about 6 miles inland from the Corinthian Gulf, central Greece. The ancient temple complex of Delphi, which dates back at least 2700 years, was known throughout ancient Greece and beyond as the home of the celebrated oracle of Apollo, the Greek... [continue reading]

In the ancient world, there were many temples dedicated to Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. But there was only one temple to Zeus that housed one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Temple of Zeus at Olympia was home to one of greatest sculptural achievements of ancient history. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia represented the pinnacle of Classical sculptural... [continue reading]

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, also known as the Artemesium, was constructed in the mid 6th century BC. It was located in Ephesus (modern Turkey), and was considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Antipater of Sidon included it on his definitive list of monuments, partly because of its size and grandeur, but also because of its location... [continue reading]