Sun Tzu
c. 544 BC – 496 BC · 48 years · State of Wu (Suzhou) · Asia
General of the State of Wu traditionally credited with The Art of War, the most influential treatise on strategy.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 6th century BC
Portrait: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Contemporaries around the world
Europe
- Pythagoras — Greek philosopher and mathematician, 26 years older
- Leonidas I — king of Sparta, 4 years younger
- Themistocles — Athenian statesman and admiral, 20 years younger
Middle East
- Cyrus the Great — founder of the Achaemenid Empire, 56 years older
- Darius the Great — King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, 6 years older
- Xerxes I — king of the Achaemenid Empire, 26 years younger
- Heraclitus — Greek philosopher, 9 years younger
Asia
- Gautama Buddha — founder of Buddhism, 19 years older
- Confucius — Chinese philosopher, 7 years older
- Mahavira — spiritual teacher of Jainism, 55 years older
The world in their lifetime
- 539 BC Fall of Babylon to Cyrus — aged 5, Middle East
- c. 509 BC Founding of the Roman Republic — aged 35, Europe
- 508 BC Cleisthenes' reforms and the birth of democracy — aged 36, Europe