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MEN, WOMEN, GODS AND GODDESSES YOU SHOULD KNOW:  In one or two sentences, describe what is significant about the following people (or immortals):
Homer- A blind poet of Greece who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Odysseus- The hero in the Odyssey who got lost multiple times trying to find his way home.
Zeus- Father of Gods and men who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father
Athena- The patron goddess of Athens and also wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill.
Pisistratus- A tyrant, who ruled in Athens during the most part of the period between 561 and 527 BC.
Cleisthenes- Is credited with reforming the constitution of ancient Athens and setting it on a democratic footing in 508/7 BC.
Darius (the Great)- Was king of Persia the first time they tried to attack Athens, but lost horribly.
Xerxes- Darius’s son who took power and immediately tried to take over Athens again, but got beat in the Straits of Salamis.
Pheidippides- An Athenian who at the battle of marathon ran from Athens all the way to Sparta, 150 miles, in two days.
Themistocles- An Athenian politician and general. He was one of a new breed of non-aristocratic politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy.
Pericles- The most prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.
Aristophanes- Was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his 40 plays survive virtually complete.
Socrates- A classical Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers.
Plato- A philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens.
Aristotle- Was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.
Alexander the Great- A king of Macedon, a state in northern ancient Greece, and a military genius Born in Pella in 356 BC.