10 most difficult ancient Greece riddles

Throughout his conquests of Asia, Alexander the Great collected many plant and animal specimens for Aristotle’s research. This allowed Aristotle to develop in Athens the first zoo and botanical garden in existence.

Pedanius Dioscorides (40 – 90 AD) was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of De Materia Medica - a 5-volume Greek encyclopedia about herbal medicine and related medicinal substances (a pharmacopeia), that was widely read for more than 1,500 years. He was employed as a physician in the Roman army.

Although the Parthenon is architecturally a temple and is usually called so, it is not really one in the conventional sense of the word. It never hosted the cult of Athena Polias, patron of Athens. The Parthenon was actually used primarily as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire.

As the title suggests, the work is a historical account of the Peloponnesian War. It was written by Thucydides, an Athenian historian who also happened to serve as an Athenian general during the war. His account of the conflict is widely considered to be a classic, and regarded as one of the earliest scholarly works of history.

In Greek mythology, Danaids were the 50 daughters of Danaus. They were to marry the 50 sons of Danaus' twin brother Aegyptus, a mythical king of Egypt. All but one of them killed their husbands on their wedding night, and are condemned to spend eternity carrying water in a sieve or perforated device.

Thalia was the Muse who presided over comedy and idyllic poetry. She was portrayed as a young woman with a joyous air, crowned with ivy, wearing boots and holding a comic mask in her hand. Many of her statues also hold a bugle and a trumpet (both used to support the actors' voices in ancient comedy), or occasionally a shepherd’s staff or a wreath of ivy.

Arete of Cyrene (fl. 5th–4th century BC) was a Cyrenaic philosopher who lived in Cyrene, Libya. She was the daughter of Aristippus of Cyrene. Life and teachings Arete learned philosophy from her father, Aristippus, who had himself learned philosophy from Socrates.

The Olympic games were disbanded as "pagan rituals" shortly after Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire. Theodosius the Great dissolved the order of the Vestal Virgins in Rome and banned the Olympics in Ancient Greece.

Aristotle was born in the Macedonian city of Stagira, Chalkidice, on the northern periphery of Classical Greece. At the age of eighteen, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven.

The ancient Greeks believed that amethyst was a very strong antidote against drunkenness. They would wear jewelry decorated with the stone and drink from goblets carved out of large crystals in a bid to protect themselves from intoxication. There are several myths and legends that all have variations on the theme of amethyst gaining its color from the wine of the gods (in one story Bacchus himself pours wine over a white stone), both leading to the creation of amethyst. The stone, therefore, had an association with the power and protection of the gods.