Your votes determine who will move on to the Round of 32. Voting closes at 3:30pm CST on Friday, March 17 in order to allow us time to create the next survey which will open at 12:01 am March 18th.

You may vote for whomever you choose, and we encourage you to pick a few upsets. Correctly predicting the upset is what makes for a winning bracket! You can also influence the voting heavily by asking friends and family to vote for your picks. All you need is a unique email each time a vote is entered.*

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West: Hispania
* Augustus' reported last words were, "I found Rome of clay; I leave it to you of marble." By speculating and arguing about the "Boundless," Anaximander was the first metaphysician.
* Heraclitus, a critic of his predecessors, was the first Western philosopher to go beyond physical theory in search of the moral and metaphysical. Thales was esteemed in his times as an original thinker and one who broke with tradition.
* Legend surrounds what we are told about Pythagoras, presenting him as a mathematical genius and a mystic. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations is revered as a literary monument on Stoic philosophy.
* All Plato's works are dialogues from which he is purposefully detached. Zeno was the first person to show that the concept of infinity is problematical.
* Nero exhausted Rome's treasury rebuilding the city around his Golden House and commissioned a giant statue of himself at its center. Pompey, an exceptional militarist, fought in Africa and Spain and cleared the Mediterranean of pirates.
* Alexander overthrew the Persian Empire, carried Macedonian arms to India, and laid the foundations for the Hellenistic. While Constantine was on campaign, Maximian rebelled, declared the emperor dead, and assumed the role of emperor.
* Though Claudius was hampered by a limp, trembling, a speech defect, and continual illness, he was deified on death. Mark Antony took charge of Caesar's will and papers and gave a stirring eulogy for the fallen leader.
* Though none of his works remain extant, Socrates is credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy. Gaius Marius was the man who organized the army into the most effective fighting machine on earth.
Midwest: Carthage
* Homer, many scholars believe, may have been illiterate. Plutarch spent the last 30 years of his life as a priest at Delphi.
* Lucan's De bello civili continuously alludes to the Aeneid so that he might construct his work as an "anti-Aeneid." Cicero built an immediate reputation at 25 when he conducted his first case, successfully, in defense of sex.
* While in Athens, Horace joined the army of Brutus as a tribunus. Terence's works remained prominent in the European curriculum until the 19th century.
* Hesiod, one of the oldest known Greek poets, once won a tripod for a song at a funeral. Lucretius is praised for his innate ability to ally philosophy with poetry.
* Caesar is often depicted wearing a garland to cover his receding hair line. Nothing is known of Euclid's life aside from some useless inferences from antiquity.
* Vergil wanted to have the Aeneid burned upon his death. Meleager's works were mostly erotic and were addressed to both boys and girls.
* Thucydides caught the plague late in the 5th century but recovered. Lucian was known to the philosopher Galen for writing fabricated sayings and expressions to expose the ignorance of contemporary sophists and grammarians.
* Carmen and error led to Ovid's banishment to an island on the Black Sea. Appian, due to his interest in administration and finance, provides more social and economic details than most of his contemporary historians.
East: Alexandria
* Homer says of Zeus, "He then lowered his glowing countenance, and the ambrosial locks swayed on his immortal head, till vast Olympus reeled." Hestia, the first to be swallowed by Cronus and the last to be given back.
* Zeus once told Ares, "To me you are the most hateful of all the gods of Olympus." Apollo became the god of the sun, light, truth, music, and medicine, played a golden lyre, and shot arrows from a silver bow.
* Empedocles wrote of Aphrodite: "She sows and gives that love from which all we upon this earth are born." One Homeric Hymn describes Hermes as the "luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods, the giver of grace and good things."
* Women were understandably reluctant to receive Hades's addresses, as he was huge and sulfurous. Though fierce and brave in war, Athena was interested only in wars to defend the state and home.
* Humble, hardworking Hephaestus was generally represented as a sturdy, muscular man with a shortened, lame leg. An Orphic Hymn describes Demeter as "great nurse, all-giving, blessed and divine, lover of peace and nourisher of the corn.
* Poseidon ruled the vast sea, living on the ocean floor in a palace made of coral and jewels. Dionysus had a dual nature reflecting the powers of wine, bringing joy and ease from sorrow but also inspiring brutal, unthinking rage.
* Though goddess of the moon, Artemis was chiefly goddess of the wilderness, the hunt, and wild animals. Persephone represents the annual cycle of vegetation, with the fields remaining barren during the third of the year she spends in Hades.
* One poet wrote "Hera is the illustrious one whom all the blessed ones throughout high Olympus hold in awe and honor." Eros, a rotund, mischievous child equipped with a bow and arrow, inflicts the wound of love upon mortals and deities.
Central: Athens
* In art, Asclepius, the god of healing, is depicted carrying a staff with a snake coiled around it, called a caduceus. Janus was the guardian of doorways and gates, as well as the god of beginnings and endings.
* If anyone violated the moral order or did anything to excess, those affected thereby could call upon Nemesis for revenge. Eos, goddess of Dawn, is described by Homer as :rosy-fingered" and "saffron-robed," and is generally depicted as winged
* On the Acropolis at Athens, Nike was the personification of victory under the aegis of Athena. "Panic" is named for Pan, god of shepherds and flocks, for the feeling of overwhelming terror he produced in travelers crossing his lonely path.
* Hera bribed Hypnos to lull Zeus to sleep so that the Greeks could gain an upper hand over the Trojans. The goddess of the moon Selene once put a shepherd into an eternal sleep that preserved his youth and beauty and watched him every night.
* Iris was the personification of the rainbow and the link between the divine and human. The most handsome of all mortals, Ganymede was spirited up to Olympus to be Zeus's cupbearer.
* Homer refers to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, as plural. According to Ovid, Prometheus was the creator of the human race.
* Eris, goddess of Strife, is the instigator of the judgment of Paris and thus of the Trojan War. Hesiod praises Hecate, the goddess of sorcery, as powerful and a source of many blessings.
* Helius, the sun-god with an ability to see everything, was the first to see Hades abduct Persephone and Ares's affair with Aphrodite. The goddess Hebe, whose name means "youth," has the power to rejuvenate.