Alexander the Great (Photo Credit: The Great Courses)
Assignment Details
Hellenistic Age Presentation
Pick one of the names below to which who can identify: Your choice with be verified in class. Be able to present within a 2-3 minute time frame. Include visuals, eye contact (expressiveness), clarity and organization (time), content (information), bibliography (source), and summary of presentations. Be sure to send the assignment to me as a power point presentation (john.bernatavitz@
Names for Presentation
1. Arrian - Wrote Anabasis (“Campaign”) of Alexander in the 2nd Century BC
2. Eratosthenes - Wrote manuscripts on mathematics, etc. Calculated circumference of the earth
3. Hipparchus - Created 360 divisions of latitude and longitude; held geocentric theory
4. Bessus - Satrap of Bactria who killed Darius III of Persia and became successor to the Persian throne
5. Philotas - Childhood friend and son of Parmenio who Alexander had killed
6. Theophrastos - Student of Aristotle who founded the study of botany and classified plants
7. Porus - Indian king of Punjab whom Alexander left to govern his own kingdom
8. Plutarch - Wrote essays on Alexander which give us detail on Alexander’s personality
9. Ptolemy - governor of Egypt by Alexandria; encourage migration to Egypt
10. Seleucus - Governor of Babylon after Alexander’s death; lost provinces to Indian emperor
11. Antigonus - Governor of Phrygia (Macedonia) in Asia Minor after Alexander’s death
12. Zenodotus - Librarian who first studied the manuscripts of the Iliad and the Odyssey
13. Callimachus - Librarian of Alexandria who advocated the epigrammatic style with emotion
14. Theocritus - From Syracuse; lived 314-250 BC; wrote idylls
15. Bucephalus - Alexander’s horse who died in India and whom Alexander mourned
16. Apollonius - Wrote in the epic style; thus, feuded with Callimachus; wrote Argonautica
17. Polybius - Taken to Rome as a hostage; wrote a history of Rome(2nd Punic War-146 BC)
18. Menander - Outstanding writer of the “new” comedy which dealt with social issues
19. Euclid - Most famous mathematician of the age (“father of scientific geometry”)
20. Archimedes - Inventor and theoretician who developed methods for measuring surface area and volume; calculated pi
21. Aristarchus of Samos - Proposed the heliocentric theory of the universe; educated in Aristotle’s school
22. Epicurus - Hellenistic philosopher who taught that pleasure is derived from satisfaction of wants; political passivity; fear as an obstacle
23. Diogenes - Hellenistic philosopher who taught that happiness results from being self-sufficient; limit one’s desires and live in natural state; mistrusted social conventions
24. Zeno - Hellenistic philosopher who taught that the universe is governed by laws which are superior to the laws of any human society; people as equals
25. Pyrrho of Elis - Hellenistic philosopher who denied the possibility of finding truth arguing that everything is discerned through the senses which are totally unreliable