WHO’S WHO IN ANCIENT GREECE?

SOLON c630–c560 BC

One of the innovations the ancient Greeks are most famed for is democracy – a political system of ruling by the people as opposed to by a monarch or dictator – and its grandfather is considered to be the Athenian magistrate Solon.

Born in the late seventh century BC, Solon was chosen to become a governor or archon of Athens. Through his economic reforms, he freed those who had been forced into debt-slavery for not being able to pay their creditors, and encouraged people to take up trades to avoid poverty. Thanks to Solon, all Athenian male citizens could also attend the general assembly for the first time, and rule was taken from being solely in the hands of the city-state’s aristocratic families.

Many of the lawmaker’s reforms failed initially, as Athens was temporarily ruled by the tyrant Peisistratos a few years after Solon left the city. His efforts, however, would lay the foundations for the reforms brought in by Cleisthenes a few decades later, which formally established democracy in Athens.

HIPPOCRATES c460–c375 BC

Unusually for the ancient world, physician and philosopher Hippocrates believed that illnesses had rational rather than supernatural explanations. At the time, the