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Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity’s first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon’s accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great (356 - 323 BCE), the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30.

Poseidon is one of the most easily recognizable characters in all of ancient Greek mythology. His signature trident is iconic; one sight of it invariably floods the modern mind with images of aquatic chariots and daunting typhoons. But there is so much more to the character of Poseidon than maritime denizens and disasters, which shouldn't really come as a surprise.

There have been no shortage of great warrior societies in history, including the Romans, Mongols, Macedonians, and Vikings, and the list goes on. Yet one humble city in particular, nestled in a valley near the Eurotas River in the Greek region of the Peloponnese and once ridiculed as little more than a cluster of villages inhabited by uncouth shepherds, produced the most famous warrior elite the world has ever known.

Dominated to this day by the sprawling white marble complex of the Acropolis, Athens is a city which is immensely and rightly proud of its past. For a period of roughly three centuries, the polis of Athens stood, if not in a position of unchallenged supremacy among the cities of Hellas, then at the very least among its three most important polities. Its fledgling empire, though small by the standards later set by Alexander or the Romans, or even by those of its ancient enemy Persia, nonetheless, encompassed cities as far afield as Asia Minor and Southern Italy.

Tyranny in ancient Greece was not a phenomenon limited to any particular period. Tyrants could be found in power throughout Greece, ruling poleis from the 7th century BC right through to the 2nd century BC, when Roman domination effectively put an end to this form of government throughout the Hellenistic world. That said, the heyday of tyranny was undoubtedly the 7th and 6th centuries BC, and it is in this period, known as the Age of Tyrants, that large numbers of tyrannies arose, particularly in the Peloponnese.

For 2500 years, the Ancient Greeks have fascinated the West, who look to Greece as the creators of Western culture. Indeed, the Greeks revolutionized warfare, art, architecture, government, philosophy, and more. Of all the Greeks' accomplishments, many can be credited to the two most famous city-states of all: Athens and Sparta.