Megara is a historic town and a municipality in West Attica, Greece. It lies in the northern section of the Isthmus of Corinth opposite the island of Salamis, which belonged to Megara in archaic times, before being taken by Athens. Megara was one of the four districts of Attica, embodied in the four mythic sons of King Pandion II, of whom Nisos was the ruler of Megara. Megara was also a trade port, its people using their ships and wealth as a way to gain leverage on armies of neighboring poleis. Megara specialized in the exportation of wool and other animal products including livestock such as horses. It possessed two harbors, Pagae to the west on the Corinthian Gulf, and Nisaea to the east on the Saronic Gulf of the Aegean Sea.
Pythagoras of Samos, often known mononymously as Pythagoras, was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, the West in general. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend; modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton in southern Italy, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle.
Ionia was an ancient region encompassing the central part of the western coast of Anatolia. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionians who had settled in the region before the archaic period.
Heraclea Pontica, known in Byzantine and later times as Pontoheraclea, was an ancient city on the coast of Bithynia in Asia Minor, at the mouth of the river Lycus. It was founded by the Greek city-state of Megara in approximately 560–558 BC and was named after Heracles who the Greeks believed entered the underworld at a cave on the adjoining Archerusian cape. The site is now the location of the modern city Karadeniz Ereğli, in the Zonguldak Province of Turkey.
The sibyls were prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece.
Lamia, in ancient Greek mythology, was a child-eating monster and, in later tradition, was regarded as a type of night-haunting spirit or "daimon".
Sifnos is an island municipality in the Cyclades island group in Greece. The main town, near the center, known as Apollonia, is home of the island's folklore museum and library. The town's name is thought to come from an ancient temple of Apollo on the site of the church of Panayia Yeraniofora. The second-largest town is Artemonas, thought to be named after an ancient temple of Apollo's sister Artemis, located at the site of the church of Panayia Kokhi. The village of Kastro, was the capital of the island during ancient times until 1836. It is built on top of a high cliff on the island's east shore and today has extensive medieval remains and is the location of the island's archeological museum. The port settlement, on the west coast of the island is known as Kamares.
The Delphic Sibyl was a woman who was a prophet associated with early religious practices in Ancient Greece and is said to have been venerated from before the Trojan Wars as an important oracle. At that time Delphi was a place of worship for Gaia, the mother goddess connected with fertility rituals that are thought to have existed throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. As needed to maintain the religious tradition, the role of sibyl would pass to another priestess at each site.
The Libyan Sibyl was the prophetic priestess presiding over the Oracle of Zeus-Ammon at Siwa Oasis in the Libyan Desert.
Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the 1.6-kilometre-wide (1.0 mi) Mycale Strait. It is also a separate regional unit of the North Aegean region.
Greek wrestling, also known as Ancient Greek wrestling and Pále (πάλη), was the most popular organized sport in Ancient Greece. A point was scored when one player touched the ground with his back, hip or shoulder, or conceding defeat due to a submission-hold or was forced out of the wrestling-area. Three points had to be scored to win the match.
A xoanon was a wooden cult image of Archaic Greece. Classical Greeks associated such cult objects, whether aniconic or effigy, with the legendary Daedalus. Many such cult images were preserved into historical times, though none are known to have survived to the modern day, except as copies in stone or marble. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias described numerous xoana in his Description of Greece, notably the image of Hera in her temple at Samos. "The statue of the Samian Hera, as Aethilos [sic] says, was a wooden beam at first, but afterwards, when Prokles was ruler, it was humanized in form". In Pausanias' travels he never mentions seeing a xoanon of a "mortal man".
Cynosarges was a famous temple of Heracles, public gymnasium, and surrounding grove located just outside the walls of Ancient Athens on the southern bank of the Ilissos river and near the Diomeian gate. The modern suburb of Kynosargous is named after it.
Leo the Mathematician, the Grammarian or the Philosopher was a Byzantine philosopher and logician associated with the Macedonian Renaissance and the end of the Second Byzantine Iconoclasm. His only preserved writings are some notes contained in manuscripts of Plato's dialogues. He has been called a "true Renaissance man" and "the cleverest man in Byzantium in the 9th century". He was archbishop of Thessalonica and later became the head of the Magnaura School of philosophy in Constantinople, where he taught Aristotelian logic.
The Principality of Samos was an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire from 1834 to 1912. The island of Samos had participated in the Greek War of Independence since 1821 and successfully resisted several Turkish and Egyptian attempts to occupy it, but it was not included with the boundaries of the newly independent Greek state. Instead, beginning in 1834 the island was granted self-government as a semi-independent state.
Heraeum or Heraion, also known as Heraion Teichos was a Greek city in ancient Thrace, located on the Propontis, a little to the east of Bisanthe. The city was a Samian colony and founded around 600 BC. In some of the Itineraries, the place is called Hiereum or Ereon.
The Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony near Naples, Italy. The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many sibyls throughout the ancient world. Because of the importance of the Cumaean Sibyl in the legends of early Rome as codified in Virgil's Aeneid VI, and because of her proximity to Rome, the Cumaean Sibyl became the most famous among the Romans. The Erythraean Sibyl from modern-day Turkey was famed among Greeks, as was the oldest Hellenic oracle, the Sibyl of Dodona, dating to the second millennium BC according to Herodotus, favored in the east.
Marpessos was a settlement in the middle Skamander valley of the Troad region of Anatolia. The settlement's name is also spelled Μαρμησσός, Μαρμισσός, Μερμησσός in ancient sources. It was known in Classical antiquity primarily as the birthplace of the Hellespontine Sibyl Herophile. Its site has been located at Dam Dere approximately 2 km SE of the village of Zerdalilik in the Bayramiç district of Çanakkale Province in Turkey. Despite the similarity of its name and its location on Mount Ida, the settlement is apparently unrelated to the mythological figure Marpessa and her husband Idas. It should likewise not be confused with the Mount Marpessa on Paros.
Annaea or Annaia or Anaea or Anaia (Ἀναία), was a town of ancient Ionia. Stephanus of Byzantium placed it in Caria, opposite Samos. Pausanias also puts it on the mainland across from Samos and says it was fortified by the people of that island after being displaced by Androklos of Ephesos. After ten years of mustering forces at Anaia, they were able to launch a force back across and reclaim Samos. Ephorus says that it was named after Anaea, an Amazon who was buried there. If Anaea was opposite Samos, it was in Ionia, which did not extend south of the Maeander River. Thucydides suggests it was on or near the coast, and in or near the valley of the Maeander, and that it was a naval station, close enough Samos to annoy the Samians. Some Samian exiles lived there during the Peloponnesian War.
The Geomori were a group of wealthy aristocrats who ruled Samos as an oligarchy in the seventh or sixth century BC. They remained an important political group on Samos into the fifth century BC.
