| Aeschylus | Author of the Oresteia trilogy of plays |
| Sophocles | Author of the plays Oedipus rex and Antigone |
| Euripides | Author of Medea and other tragedies |
| Aristophanes | Satiric playwright |
| Herodotus | Historian of the Persian Wars |
| Thucydides | Historian of the Peloponnesian Wars |
| Thales of Miletus | Early philosopher who taught that everything is made of water |
| Pythagoras of Samos | Philosopher who focused on mathematics |
| Democritus of Abdera | Philosopher who helped originate atomic theory |
| Socrates | Philosopher who redirected philosophy from natural to moral issues |
| Plato | Philosopher who wrote the republic |
| Aristotle | Philosopher who focused on the study of nature |
| Zeno | Founder of the Stoic school of philosophy |
| Epicurus | Philosopher who strove for tranquillity |
| Philip II | King of Macedonia who established dominance over most of Greece |
| Alexander the Great | King of Macedonia who conquered Persia |
| Darius III | King of Persia defeated by Alexander the Great |
| Aristarchus | Astronomer who championed the heliocentric theory of the universe |
| Eratosthenes | Astronomer who calculated the earth's circumference |
| Ptolemy of Alexandria | Astronomer whose geocentric model of the universe was accepted for over 1500 years |
| Euclid | Geometer whose theorems are still taught |
| Archimedes | The greatest mathematician of antiquity |