The most powerful king in the last generation of Greek heroes was Agamemnon, ruler of Argos. It was he who ruled over all the Greek troops in the Trojan War, quarreled and put up with Achilles in the Iliad, and then defeated and ruined Troy. But his fate was terrible, and the fate of his son Orestes - still ...

: A philosophical text about the nature of love and its forms, presented in the form of a conversation between the ancient Greeks who praise the god Eros. The central place is occupied by the ideas of Socrates about the beautiful, the essence of which is good. Apollodorus and his friend Apollodorus, at the request of a friend, when meeting with him, talks about a feast at Agathon, ...

With titan Prometheus, the benefactor of mankind, we have already met in Hesiod's poem Theogony. There he is a clever cunning who arranges the distribution of sacrificial bovine meat between people and gods so that the best part goes to people. And then, when the angry Zeus does not want people to be able to cook ...

This comedy in translation has another name - "The Hater." Its main character, the peasant Knemon, at the end of his life was astounded in people and literally hated the whole world. However, he was probably a scruff from birth. For his wife left him precisely for a bad temper. Knemon lives in a village in ...

The action takes place in the village near Athens. Outset: quarrel between two slaves - Dawa and Sirisk. Recently, in the thickets, Dove found an abandoned baby, and in his diapers - various trinkets and jewelry left in such cases by an unhappy (or careless) mother. But Syriek, his wife recently had a baby ...

This is a tragedy about rock and freedom: not the freedom of a person to do what he wants, but to take responsibility even for what he did not want. In the city of Thebes ruled King Laius and Queen Jocasta. King Laius received a terrible prediction from the Delphic oracle: “If you give birth ...

Comparative Biographies consists of 23 pairs of biographies: one Greek, one Roman, beginning with the legendary kings Theseus and Romulus and ending with Caesar and Anthony, which Plutarch had heard of from living witnesses. For historians, this is a precious source of information; but Plutarch did not write for historians. He wanted ...

The text of the comedy was preserved only fragmentarily, but philologists reconstructed it. The action takes place on the street of Corinth. There are two houses on the stage. One belongs to the commander of the mercenaries, the chiliarch Polemon, the second to the parents of the young man Moskhion. Goddess Ignorance tells the traditional (familiar ...

The myths of most peoples are myths primarily about the gods. The myths of Ancient Greece are an exception: in the greater and better part they are told not about gods, but about heroes. Heroes are the sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of gods from mortal women; they accomplished feats, cleared the earth of monsters, punished the villains and comforted ...

The comedy Mir, like The Riders, Lysistratus, and Acharnians, is Aristophanes' protest against the protracted Peloponnesian War. The play voiced the names of the main, according to the author, perpetrators of the bloodshed: Hyperbol - the son of a lampman, a demagogue who took power in the council; Cleon - a demagogue, radical ...

In the Phoenician city of Sidon, the author meets a young man who tells him an unusual story of his love. The young man of Tyr, Clitofont, was already preparing to marry Kadligon, the daughter of his father from his second marriage. But from the city of Byzantium his uncle Sostratus sailed. And Clitofon is in love ...

The action of the first surviving Greek novels dates back to the 5th century. BC e. - the time of the highest power of the Persian kingdom, the Peloponnesian conflict, the Greco-Persian wars and many other historical events. The beautiful Kalliroya, daughter of the famous Syracuse strategist Germocrat (historical person), ...

A native of Phenicia from the city of Emessa (Hellenized and mainly with the Greek population), Heliodorus was ordained. It is known: the local synod, believing that Ethiopica corrupts young people, demanded that Heliodor burn his book publicly or refuse to worship. And Heliodor chose ...

The name "Lysistrata" means "Destroyer of War." Aristophanes gave such a name to the heroine of his fantastic play about how women, with their female means, achieved what men could not — put an end to the great war. The war was between Athens and Sparta, it lasted ten years, it is against it ...

The name "Hercules" means "Glory to the goddess Hera." The goddess Hera was the heavenly queen, the wife of the supreme Zeus the Thunderer. And Hercules was the last of the earthly sons of Zeus: Zeus descended to many mortal women, but after Alcmene, mother of Hercules, he was no longer to anyone. Hercules had to save the gods of the Olympians ...

Colon is a place north of Athens. There was a sacred grove of goddesses Eumenes, the terrible guardians of the truth - those about whom Aeschylus wrote in Oresteia. Among this grove stood an altar in honor of the hero of Oedipus: it was believed that this Theban hero was buried here and guards this land. How was the Theban dust ...

The Trojan War began. The Trojan prince Paris seduced and abducted Elena, the wife of the Spartan king Menelaus. The Greeks gathered on them with a huge army, at the head of it stood the Argos king Agamemnon, brother Menelaus and the husband of Clytemnestra - Elena's sister. The army stood in Aulis - on the Greek coast, facing ...

Ancient Greeks called Tavrida modern Crimea. Tauris lived there - a Scythian tribe that honored the virgin goddess and made her human sacrifices, which in Greece had long gone out of custom. The Greeks believed that this virgin goddess was none other than their Artemis hunter. They had a myth, with the eyeballs and with ...

In mythical Greece, there were two of the strongest kingdoms: Thebes in Middle Greece and Argos in Southern Greece. There was once a king in Thebes by the name of Laius. He received a prophecy: "Do not give birth to a son - you will destroy the kingdom!" Laius did not obey and gave birth to a son named Oedipus. He wanted to destroy the baby; but Oedipus escaped, grew up on ...

I. Diogenes and Polydeuv To the assembled once again return to the land Polydeuco Diogenes gives instructions. He should convey to the cynic Menippus (who ridicules all the empty-bellied philosophers-debaters) that in the kingdom of the dead he will have even more reasons for fun and ridicule, because there are tyrants, rich people and ...