City-states and great thinkers
Ancient Greece gave the world ideas we still use today, and this word search gathers it. You'll be finding the rival city-states of ATHENS and SPARTA, the birth of DEMOCRACY, and the great philosophers — SOCRATES, PLATO and ARISTOTLE — who shaped how we think.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection from the list, so the ancient world changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a Hard-mode quest once the diagonals and backwards words appear.
Temples, soldiers and the games
Greek life was rich and varied, and the words are here. Climb the ACROPOLIS to the TEMPLE with its mighty COLUMN, watch a play at the THEATRE, gather at the AGORA marketplace, and consult the ORACLE. There's the HOPLITE soldier in his PHALANX, the swift CHARIOT and TRIREME warship, the OLIVE branch of peace, the TOGA, the first OLYMPIA games and the MARATHON run — all the pride of every Greek CITIZEN.
The ideas the Greeks gave us
So much of modern life traces back to these city-states. ATHENS invented DEMOCRACY — the word means 'rule by the people' — though only free adult men counted as a CITIZEN, so it was far from fair by today's standards. The THEATRE began here too, with the first plays, comedies and tragedies performed in vast stone amphitheatres; SOCRATES, PLATO and ARISTOTLE laid the foundations of science, logic and philosophy that schools still teach 2,400 years later.
The famous stories come from real events. The MARATHON race is named after a messenger said to have run about 26 miles from the battlefield of Marathon to ATHENS with news of victory — which is why a modern marathon is exactly that distance. The OLYMPIA games, held in honour of the gods, ran every four years for over a thousand years and are the direct ancestor of today's Olympics. Even rivalry was extreme: war-focused SPARTA raised its children as soldiers, while Athens prized art and ideas — a contrast that makes Ancient Greece such a rich classroom topic.
Great for an Ancient Greece topic
It pairs perfectly with a history topic on the Greeks, democracy and the first Olympics — Easy mode keeps the grid small with no diagonals or reverse words. Play online, print a PDF pack, or use our Make Your Own tool to build a grid from your own Greek words.