If you’re unfamiliar with the Greek alphabet and wondering what you missed since I’m already up to Z, let me assure you that you haven’t missed a thing. Z, or ζ (zeta), is only the sixth letter in the Greek alphabet.

Our sixth Great Greek came from a Greek colony in Italy known as Elea. He was born around 490 BCE and went by the name of Zeno.

Zeno was a student of Parmenides, a highly influential philosopher and priest of Apollo who is probably best known today for the dialogue by Plato by that same name in which Zeno also features. None of Zeno’s own work survives into our time, but he has been referenced by numerous ancient writers and through those quotations and paraphrases we know him.

Some quotations of Zeno belong to the earliest known examples of a tradition of formal logic known today as reductio ad absurdum. His teacher Parmenides is supposedly the one invented this type of logical argument. Zeno clearly liked this sort of exercise, for what he is probably most known for today are his paradoxes.

Perhaps you are familiar with the puzzling anecdote about Achilles and the tortoise or the flying arrow that never moves towards its target? Those are likely the two best known Zeno’s paradoxes. Zeno argued that in a footrace in which Achilles raced a tortoise, Achilles would never be able to catch up with the tortoise if he gave it a head start. How so? Because for Achilles to reach the tortoise, he would first have to reach the point where the tortoise started from. Even if the tortoise moved much slower than Achilles, it has still moved some space from there by the time Achilles gets to its starting point. By the time Achilles gets to this new starting point for the tortoise, the tortoise will have moved again. So, while we know from reality that Achilles will eventually overtake the tortoise on account of simply moving faster, logic dictates that there is an infinite number of these points which Achilles much reach before he catches up to the tortoise. Thus, Achilles will lose the race.

That’s it for ζ. Until it’s time for η, feel free to nominate ancient great Greeks of any letter of the alphabet following ζ in the comments section.

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About the author: E P Wohlfart is a twenty-something freelance writer with a Classical Archaeology degree, a laptop and a maxed-out library card. Aside from administrating PastPresenters.com, which she started in 2008, she works with several historical publications and is a regular contributor at Suite101.