Aeschylus -
was born in the city of Eleusis, near Athens,
in 525 BC and died in 456 BC. He was a Greek dramatist, the earliest of
the city's great tragic poets. As the predecessor of Sophocles and
Euripides, he is the founder of Greek tragedy.
He fought successfully against the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC, at
Salam�s in 480 BC, and possibly at Plataea in the following year. He made
at least two trips, perhaps three, to Sicily, where on his final visit he
died at Gela. A monument was later erected there in his memory.
It was a major step for drama when Aeschylus introduced the second actor.
He also attempted to involve the chorus directly in the action of the
play. Aeschylus is said to have written about 90 plays. His tragedies,
first performed about 500 BC, were presented as trilogies, or groups of
three, usually bound together by a common theme, and each trilogy was
followed by a satyr drama (low comedy involving a mythological hero, with
a chorus of satyrs). The titles of 79 of his plays are known, but only 7
have survived.
Euripides - was
born in 480 BC and died in 406 BC. Euripides was the youngest of the three
principal fifth-century tragic poets. His work, which was quite popular in
his own time, exerted great influence on Roman drama. In more recent times
he has influenced English and German drama, and most conspicuously such
French dramatists as Pierre Corneille and Jean-Baptiste Racine.
His plays began to be performed in the Attic drama festivals in 454 BC,
but it was not until 442 BC that he won first prize. This distinction,
despite his prolific talent, fell to him again only four times. Aside from
his writings, his chief interests were philosophy and science.
Euripides represented the new moral, social, and political movements that
were taking place in Athens towards the end of the 5th century BC. It was
a period of enormous intellectual discovery, in which "wisdom" ranked as
the highest earthly accomplishment. Anaxagoras had just proven that air
was an element, and that the sun was not a divinity but matter. New truths
were being established in all departments of knowledge, and Euripides,
reacting to them, brought a new kind of consciousness to the writing of
tragedy. His interest lay in the thought and experience of the ordinary
individual rather than in the experiences of legendary figures of the
heroic past.
Sophocles -
was born about 496 BC in Colonus Hippius (now part of Athens), he was to
become one of the great playwrights of the golden age. The son of a
wealthy merchant, he would enjoy all the comforts of a thriving Greek
empire. Sophocles was provided with the best traditional aristocratic
education. He studied all of the arts. By the age of sixteen, he was
already known for his beauty and grace and was chosen to lead a choir of
boys at a celebration of the victory of Salamis in 480 BC. In 468 BC, at
the age of 28, he defeated Aeschylus, whose pre-eminence as a tragic poet
had long been undisputed, in a dramatic competition.
In 441 BC he was in turn defeated in one of the annual Athenian dramatic
competitions by Euripides. From 468 BC, however, Sophocles won first prize
about 20 times and many second prizes. His life, which ended in 406 BC at
about the age of 90, coincided with the period of Athenian greatness. He
was not politically active or militarily inclined, but the Athenians twice
elected him to high military office.
Sophocles wrote more than 100 plays of which seven complete tragedies and
fragments of 80 or 90 others are preserved. He was the first to add a
third actor. He also abolished the trilogic form. Sophocles chose to make
each tragedy a complete entity in itself--as a result, he had to pack all
of his action into the shorter form, and this clearly offered greater
dramatic possibilities. Sophocles also effected a transformation in the
spirit and significance of a tragedy; thereafter, although religion and
morality were still major dramatic themes, the plights, decisions and
fates of individuals became the chief interest of Greek tragedy.
Alexander
the Great - one of the greatest
military genius in history, Alexander the Great was born in 356 B.C. in
Pella, Macedonia, the son of Philip of Macedon, who was an excellent
general and organizer. His mother was Olympias, princess of Epirus.
He conquered much of what was then the civilized world, governed by his
divine ambition of the world conquest and creation of universal world
monarchy. He was the first great conqueror which has reached, Greece,
Egypt , Asia Minor, and Asia till Afghanistan and India. He is famous for
having created ethnic fusion between the Macedonians and the Persians.
From victory to victory, from triumph to triumph Alexander created empire
wich had marked history and brought him eternal glory.
Archimedes -
Born in 287 B.C., in Syracuse, a Greek seaport
colony in Sicily, Archimedes was the son of Phidias, an astronomer.
Archimedes was schooled at Euclid's school in Alexandria, Egypt, which was
one of the biggest cities of the time.
In pure mathematics he anticipated many of the discoveries of modern
science, such as the integral calculus, through his studies of the areas
and volumes of curved solid figures and the areas of plane figures. He
also proved that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds the volume of a
cylinder that circumscribes the sphere.
Archimedes spent the major part of his life in Sicily, in and around
Syracuse. He did not hold any public office but devoted his entire
lifetime to research and experiment.
Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier after snapping at him ``Don't
disturb my circles,'' a reference to a geometric figure he had outlined on
the sand.
Several of his works on mathematics and mechanics survive, including
Floating Bodies, The Sand Reckoner, Measurement of the Circle, Spirals,
and Sphere and Cylinder.