A Brief Biography of Eratosthenes

The primary text, On the Murder of Eratosthenes, chronicles the speech of Euphiletus, an Athenian man, in his defense for killing Eratosthenes of Oe in Attica, after discovering him in an act of adultery with his wife. The speech begins by providing an early narration of the marriage of Euphiletus and his wife. According to Euphiletus, he kept a watchful eye on his wife, until he gradually relinquished control having gained trust in her--a fatal flaw. Whilst attending his mother’s funeral with his wife (one of the few public events attended by Athenian women), she is glimpsed by Eratosthenes; who then seduces her, and continues out his affair with her. After several suspicious events, Euphiletus, finally confronts a servant-girl who after being threatened reveals the affair. Having learned of Eratosthenes presence in his home one night, Euphiletus slips out of his house, collects his friends, and returns home, where he murders Euphiletus. Overall, Euphiletus’ testimony is an insightful document that not only illuminates Athenian law, but also the inner workings of private Greek life, and the lives of those often forgotten--women.

what career he wants to do. Since he’s been finishing up college him and Linda have

FUTTER, DYLAN. “Socrates Human Wisdom.” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 52.1 (2013): 61-79. Humanities International Complete. Print.

Action from necessity is a constantly recurring theme in Thucydides’ The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. A sentiment used to explain the growth of the Athenian Empire which some Athenians espoused to an assembly at Sparta best quantifies necessity, “. . . we were necessarily compelled at first to advance the hegemony to where it is—especially by fear, and then by honor, and later by benefit.” (Selected Passages 1.75.3). This claim, referred to as the Athenian Thesis, is used to advance the two following implications: all states act with the motivations of fear, honor and interest and no one can condemn a state for doing so. The Athenian Thesis influences the way many of the Athenian elite structure their patterns of reasoning in both noticeable and subtle ways.

Later generations told many anecdotes about this man, who was reckoned among the seven sages, but it is difficult to verify the reliability of these stories. He may have traveled to Egypt, where many Greeks and Carian’s were welcome as merchants and mercenaries, but on the other hand, it was expected that a wise man made a long voyage to gain knowledge, and this story may have been invented to prove that the sage of Miletus was a wise man indeed. (Similar stories are told about Solon and Pythagoras.) It is not even certain whether Thales is the author of published texts. The three titles that are attributed to him may be later inventions, or three names of one and the same poem: Nautical astronomy, on the solstice, and on the equinox. What seems certain, however, is that Thales predicted the solar eclipse of 28 May 585, which was remembered (according to the Greek researcher Herodotus of Halicarnassus note) because the Lydian king Alyattes and the Median leader Cyaxares were fighting a battle on that day. However, it must be noted that "predicting" merely meant that Thales announced that it was possible that an eclipse could take place during a particular new moon, because by then, not even Babylonian astronomers were able to predict this impressive phenomenon more accurately. Still, even establishing a possibility was a great leap forward for Greek science. According to a famous story told by Herodotus of Halicarnassus, in c.547 BCE, Thales also changed the course of the river Hales in order to facilitate the crossing of an army of the Lydian king Croesus. Note if this story is true, Thales must have died after this year. Another, perhaps more reliable bit of information is that Thales did geometrical research, which enabled him to measure the seize of the pyramids of Egypt or the distance to a ship at sea. He also proved that a circle is bisected by its diameter, that the angles of the base of an isosceles

Thessalonians is based on two different letters that was written to the Christian community in Thessalonica. The purpose of the first letter was to clear up some of the misunderstandings about the return of Christ. The second letters purpose was to still clear up some of the misunderstandings about the Day of the Lord for they thought the day had already come.

In “The Handbook”, Epictetus provides a way of life a stoic should follow to be a good member of the society, which is a life detached from things one cannot change and focused instead on things that can be improved. For instance, he asked people to care none about the way others would judge them as he quoted “If anyone tells you that such a person speaks ill of you, don't make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: "He does not know my other faults, else he would not have mentioned only these."” Through this quote, Epictetus wanted all stoics to know all their faults better than anyone else can say about them. Hence, the person would not be disturbed by the way the society view him or her as well as would be able to control and fix

As people age, they begin to wonder what is the meaning of life, particularly their own life. It is a natural curiosity and has been thought about for several centuries. Philosophers claim to know, or at least be fairly aware of, what the meaning of life is. Three that come to mind are Rene Descartes, Epictetus, and Plato; these three philosophers have lived through different time periods and differ greatly in theories. Descartes had no true theory but used skepticism to establish his philosophy, Epictetus was a Stoic, and Plato was a Platonist. One, Descartes, lived questioning anything and everything to only be sure of two existences, another, Epictetus, lived perhaps too happily since he believed that everything that occurred in life was a part of God’s plan, but one lived in the middle of these two philosophers. This philosopher was Plato, he was not too skeptical of life nor was he too engulfed in “God’s plan,” instead he was rational about life and searched for the deeper meaning to his own being. For this reason, his theories are far more well thought-out and reasonable than those of Descartes and Epictetus.

The true essence of human nature is seen during times of great hardships as can be seen comparing Pericles' Funeral Oration and the plague in Thucydides', The History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides accounts for many different aspects of justice, power, and human nature through his text. The order, the style of his writing, choice of words, and relations of what he believes actually happened, allows the reader to make different inferences about the message he's trying to convey. The juxtaposition of the two stories portrays many different characteristics to investigate and analyze.

"The Clouds" by Aristophanes - Relevant in Today's World "The Clouds" by Aristophanes, is a play centrally concerned with education. Aristophanes employs satire to illustrate his conservative beliefs. It is intended to show readers that in the tendency to philosophical subtleties lies the neglection of the real needs of the Athenians. According to Aristophanes, philosophical speculation only acts to shake the established foundations of accepted religion, gods, and ideals of morality.

Ignorance: the condition of being uninformed or uneducated; this basic definition is crucial to understanding one of the most controversial figures in ancient Athenian society: the philosopher Socrates. The man’s entire life was devoted to proving the fact that no one actually knew what they thought they did; that everyone lived in ignorance. This viewpoint earned Socrates many enemies, so many that even a renowned playwright, Aristophanes, decided to exploit the situation. He wrote his critiquing play of Socrates called The Clouds; a scathing criticism that the philosopher would partially attribute to his future indictment on charges of impiety and corrupting the

The phrase “Socratic method” gets tossed around quite a bit during the course of a liberal arts education. One way of describing this method is teaching by means of asking. The thought is that by asking questions, a teacher may trigger some thought in the student’s mind which comes about more organically and effectively than by the means of traditional lecture. Employing the Socratic method allows a teacher to guide a student’s train of thought toward a particular goal, and use of the method requires on the part of the teacher both a keen understanding of psychology and a clear idea as to where the line of questioning is intended to lead. The latter part of that statement becomes

Eratosthenes also came up with the sieve system for finding prime numbers before computers. Make a list of all the integers less than or equal to the number that are greater than one. Cross out the multiples of all prime numbers less than or equal to the square root of number, then the numbers that are left are the prime

Ancient Greece forged many of the contributions seen in western civilizations. One of the most influential contributions is literature. Those contributions where very important then and still are today.

“Prime numbers are fascinating because there is no pattern or formula to predict them. The larger they get, the more difficult they are to find because the list of possible numbers they cannot be divided by grows” (Berry, 2015, para. 1). However, using the Sieve of Eratosthenes teachers can teach students a method to help them find prime numbers. I used this method to find all of the prime numbers less than 100. I had a chart from two to one-hundred and use the Sieve of Eratosthenes to find the prime numbers less than one-hundred. Beckmann (2014) describes using the Sieve of Eratosthenes as: