Gilgamesh.
Alexander the Great (mostly because of that recent thread about evidence for the existence of historical figures)
Alexander the Great was my first thought as well, though Caesar was second.
another vote for Alexander the Great. First name that popped into my head.
I thought first of King Wu of Zhou, who is dated with some certainty back to 1046 BCE.
My first thought was Solomon.
Not someone I often think about; no idea why his name leaped to mind.
I first thought of Octavian/Augustus. Granted, he died AD, but he was born BC. 23 September 63 BC – 19 August 14 AD, specifically.
Ramses I
I thought of the Buddha first.
My first thought was Archimedes, probably because I recently had cause to look up exactly when he lived. Yeah, Jules and Big Alex and so on were historically important, too, but one seldom talks about them when teaching science.
Yeah, Alexander here too. The Oliver Stone movie was on TV a while back.
I’m part of your not so large landslide. Mudslide? mud trickle?
Julius Caesar
Brutus
Vertimourix
Pompey
Cleopatra
King Tut …can’t spell the name without looking up
Caesar .
Sorry.
My first thought was “one of those Greek dudes” My mind settled on Aristotle though Plato and Archimedes and Homer were right there. I thought of several other Greeks as well.
My second thought was that that could not be what the OP was thinking about because each of names would occur to many people so that if any of those choices was in the OP’s mind, he’d not have predicted a landslide.
I eliminated Old Testament characters for the same reason. Why Moses and not Abraham.
Only then is when Julius Caesar occurred to me. He was the one I figured had to be considered a landslide winner, but not even close to first for me.
Homer but mostly from having read translations of a lot of his writings.
Ozymandias for some reason. You did say whatever popped into my head first.
Moses.
I’m a little surprised nobody else thought of him–he’s such an incredibly influential figure.
My first thought was Hillel the Elder.
My next several were also Jewish figures.
Ramesses was my first non-Jew, and then several other Egyptians. I also thought of Confucius before I got to the Greeks, and then I thought of Sappho first.
Sorry.
I did. I thought of all the people in the Torah, but there’s no archeological evidence for any of them. I only actually jotted down people we know existed.