Author: WyattPitts

   When Alexander was ten years old, he found a great war horse he wanted. The horse wasn’t tamed, so his father said no. Alexander found a way to tame it and bought the horse, and named it Bucephalas. His school teacher was Aristotle and his favorite author was Homer. Alexander carried one of his books wherever he went.

   Alexander became king at age 20 in 336 B.C. Alexander wanted to take over all of the states, so he started with Greece. Next, he moved to Asia. There was a knot no one could untie and everyone wanted to untie it because whoever untied it became the next king of all Asia. Alexander untied this knot by slicing it in two with his sword. Then, he conquered Egypt. Alexander never lost a battle.

   Alexander died in 323 B.C. at the age of 32. His death may have been of a disease or injuries from war. Alexander was very successful with conquering all of the cities known in History and making himself a name. The name was The Great.

   Athens and Sparta were the two city-states that started the wars. The starting of the war was when Sparta wouldn’t let Athens help them with anything. The first war broke out in 495 B.C. and lasted 15 years. Sparta forced the Athenians to return to the lands it conquered was by attacking their main city Attica. The peace agreement at the end of the war was called the Thirty Year Peace treaty. Athens was the first one to break this in many ways. One of those ways was commanding the walls of Potidaea to be torn down.

   The second Peloponnesian War was called the Archidamia War. It began in 432 B.C. Te first step Sparta did was marching into Attica. It was hard to have whole battles because Sparta preferred land battles, but Athens preferred naval battles. In 430 B.C. a plague struck Athens and killed 30,000 men! At the end of this war, there was not a peace treaty.

   In the third Peloponnesian War, the Persians and some other cities helped Sparta fight Athens. Athens was likely to survive because its foes didn’t want to destroy quickly. In 406 B.C. Athens won a naval victory. The Spartans took off to conquer the Hellespont because it was where Athens got their grain, and without grain, Athens couldn’t eat.

   One day King Ahasuerus decided to have a festival. The festival was 180 days. One of those days, Ahasuerus called for Vashti, the queen, to show off all her beauty. She refused to come and because everyone had to obey the King, she could not be queen anymore.

   The King wanted a new queen so his people looked. There was a Jew named Hadassah. In Persian, that name is Esther. Her cousin, Mordecai, brought her to the king’s palace. It took her about a year to get ready. The king chose Esther as the new queen because of her beauty.

   Haman was a descendant of King Agag, so he hated all Jews. He asked the king if he could put the king’s seal on a decree to kill a group of people. The king said yes because he didn’t know which group. Mordecai saw the decree, told Esther to tell the king to take back the decree, and Esther agreed. She prayed because it was wrong to go to the king without being invited, but she went and asked the king to take back the decree. The king said yes and wrote a new decree. He killed Haman and his family, and Mordecai took his position.

   Nehemiah was a Jew. Nehemiah was alive when King Artaxerxes ruled. Nehemiah served King Artaxerxes as a cupbearer. A cupbearer tests the king’s drink to see if it is poison or not.

   One day, another Jew came to the temple and told Nehemiah about the wall of Jerusalem. Nehemiah was sad. The king asked him why. Nehemiah was afraid what the king’s answer might be, but he asked the king if he could go to Jerusalem and the king’s answer was yes!

   Nehemiah returned to his home and saw that it hadn’t been rebuilt. He gathered up all the people and rebuilt the wall in 52 days. They did it so quickly because they each worked on the section their home was at. While the wall was being rebuilt, other cities heard of it and tried to attack, but Nehemiah told everyone to defend their part of the wall and they defeated the other cities and were successful with rebuilding the wall. The wall stood until 70 A.D.

   Plato was a great Greek philosopher. His teacher was named Socrates. Socrates was also a philosopher. Plato owned an academy and called it Plato’s academy. His most famous work was called The Republic.

   Archimedes was the most famous Greek scientist and mathematician. Archimedes created a number system called exponents. He counted all the sand in our solar system and created pullies and levers.

   There were other philosophers that thought the world was flat, or everything was made of fire, or everything was made of water. They also thought the world was a cone or the earth was at the center of the solar system. Archimedes was my most favorite person to learn about.

   Perseus was a prince. His uncle was afraid Perseus would take the throne from him, so he put Perseus and his mother in a box and threw the box into the river. Later a fisherman found the box and saved Perseus and his mother.

   At the fisherman’s island, the king loved Perseus’s mother but hated Perseus. Some days the king tried to marry her, but Perseus always stopped him. Perseus wanted to stop him, so he went to kill Medusa.

   Medusa was a gorgon. A gorgon was a woman with a really beautiful face that was cursed by the gods and anyone who looked on its face turned to stone. Medusa was mortal so Perseus could kill her. The gods gave him a knapsack, a sword, darkness to hide in, winged sandals, and a polished shield. Perseus beheaded Medusa and went to the kingdom where the king was trying to marry his mother again. Perseus was mad, so he closed his eyes and pulled out Medusa’s head and every wicked person who looked on it turned to stone. Later the fisherman and Perseus’s mother got married and Perseus became king.

Sparta families were thought to make the State weaker. The only reason people could get married is so that the boys had to go to the military. The boys have to be at age 7 to go to the military. The only way to get food is to steal it, but if you get caught, you get a really bad consequence.

   Married couples could not be seen together, they could not eat together, and the woman could not be with their husband ever. Unwanted children in Sparta were either put outside to die or adopted by other families to be slaves.

   Life in Sparta sounds bad to me. I wouldn’t like to live in Sparta. Probably you too. If I lived in Sparta, I would not like to be in the military.

   Once there were twin baby princes named Romulus and Remus. Their uncle who was king did not want them to take over the kingdom, so he threw them into a river to drown. Once he left, a she-wolf found them and rescued them. She fed them like they were her cubs. Days later, a farmer and his wife found them and raised them until they grew up. When they were grown up, they found out they were princes. Once they found out, they were princes, they started looking for a place to build their cities. They each prayed to their gods to show them a sight. They each found a mountain and the next day they each came down and said they each saw a sign. They began to argue and in that argument, Romulus killed Remus. He went up his hill which was the Palatine hill and named his city Rome.

   A couple weeks after he finished Rome, he realized they didn’t have women and without women, Rome would not last long. He invited neighboring cities for a feast in honor of Neptune. When they were eating, Rome kidnapped the men’s daughters and married them. Once the men saw that they kidnapped their daughters, they called a fight. When they were about to start the fight, the woman ran between them and told them to stop for they were happy with their new husbands.