Pericles, closely followed by Alexander the Sort of Okay-ish.
Zoroaster
Julius Caesar for me too.
My first thought was G. Julius Caesar as well, and am not surprised that it’s lots of other people’s.
First thought was The Buddha, then assuming you meant Western history, Julius Caesar.
Ramses.
But I should have said Alcibiades. What an asshole. If he were fictional no one would believe his life story.
la la la page down tot he bottom without reading
Sun Tzu
First thought was Alexander, followed by Mary, mother of Jesus.
My first three:
Buddha
Gilgamesh
Homer
Augustus Caesar was my first thought but he straddled the BCE/CE line.
Alexander was my second thought and the first is you want pure BCE.
My first thought was Jesus of Nazareth, considering that he was likely born in about 5 BCE (in March, probably).
My second thought was Julius Caesar.
I assumed the OP meant people who actually existed…
I think being able to lay your hands on some has got to be proof they exist more then someone or even multiple someone’s telling you they exist. While with Otzi we know that body existed we don’t know anything about his existence. At least with Tut we have both a body that people claimed at the time matched the story on the walls.
I’m not sure we could tell the difference between a created character and a real person that far back. Let’s say Alex the great was made up by his council of advisers and in each battle that he “fought” in a different person filled in the role. How would we know the difference? Now admittedly with Tut it could have been a random corpse stuffed in that chamber but pulling a time capsule hoax seems less likely then needing a strong leader and creating him to give your people strength and courage.
Kushim.
The first recorded name on a cuniform tablet, circa 3200BC.
Eve. Don’t know much about her, though.
David of Bible fame. I love the Psalms.
Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Maybe ultimately we couldn’t, but here’s how I see it: At some point it becomes a matter of Occam’s razor. Alex was an A-list celebrity who took part in major, well-documented historical events. A ton of people would have to have been in on such a hypothetical scam, and most of them would have had no reason to. (And BTW, if you had a fake Alexander, would you really kill him off at age 32?) For anyone who’s not into wearing very large tin foil hats, it just makes more sense to treat it as history.
Anyway, having fake Alexanders actually running around is *really *out there. A more usual problem with this kind of thing is separating history from legend, or from fiction. At the end of the day, it comes down to considering the reliability of the sources. For someone like Alexander, who basically had the press following him around, the sources are pretty darned solid.
So, I certainly do think that we can tell the difference. For, say, Caesar, that goes quintuple. One of the many reasons why Caesar is topping the charts as most famous historical figure BC, is the sheer amount of stuff we have on him, and on the Late Republic in general. That includes some running commentary from people on the ground, which is a rare treat indeed (special shout-out to Cicero).
But it depends on who you’re talking about, and where and when they lived. At the same time that you have Alex beating the crap out of the Persian Empire, there are events in early Roman history (back then, Rome was still fighting the Samnite Wars) that are considered partly or wholly legendary. If you go back a bit earlier still, to before 400 BC, things can get really murky for the Romans. For instance, Corolianus (famous from Shakespeare’s play about him) is considered a legendary figure.
And it’s not really simply a matter of how far back you go, it’s a bit messier than that. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Augustan History, a collection of biographies of Roman Emperors. It’s notorious for giving historians headaches, as parts of it are clearly pure fiction, and it’s completely unclear who wrote it, when, and what exactly they were smoking. Happy fun times all round when that’s your main source for an emperor.
Or, for that matter, two words: King Arthur.
Too late for edit: The Augustan History and King Arthur are obviously AD, so not strictly pertinent to the thread. But, you know, just to illustrate the principle. Oh, y’all know what I mean.
Ramses II, for some reason. Possibly because I couldn’t remember if Caesar lived just BCE, or just after!
Buddha