A few more to add to our midweek update:

From the Baltimore Sun (the Odyssey ref is obvious, but I don't recall any in the Iliad):

Since Homer's time (and we don't mean Simpson), dogs have served, quietly and dependably, as literary kibble.

There were dogs (with fairly meaty roles) in both The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Vincent Rosivach glosses:

Iliad 1.4 et alibi: dogs tearing apart dead bodies left unburied.

Respondeo:

Of course ... I totally forgot about the carrion-eating doggies ... (I think I need to reread the Iliad at some point this summer)

From the Sporting News:

While doping has been around since the Ancient Greeks started the original Olympics, it is not accepted.

From The Business:

AS SO often the case, it all started with the ancient Greeks. When Thales the Milesian, a philosopher and astronomer, foresaw a bumper olive crop, he put down deposits on all the oil presses available for hire. The harvest turned out to be as good as he forecast, allowing him to charge local olive farmers a fortune to sublet the presses; he proved that philosophers can indeed be kings.

It was 540 BC, if Aristotle’s account is to be believed, and Thales had signed the first derivatives contract (in fact, a call option on the use of oil presses).

From the Journal Star comes a regular claim:

However, historical accounts of famous people eating ice cream have been documented. Alexander the Great ate snow and ice flavored with honey and nectar, and Emperor Nero ate snow flavored with fruits and juices during the Roman Empire.

From NC Times:

But I remembered an ancient Greek saying, "Iron itself draws a man to it," and I know there's probably someone out there who might make me mad enough to use it in a weak moment.

From Village Soup:

Cave paintings in the Pyrenees from 15,000 BC depict therapeutic touch, and the first written record of massage was over 3000 years ago in China and India. Throughout the centuries that followed, physicians of the day regularly used massage, exercise, and bathing as means to a healthy life. Hippocrates, the father of medicine believed that all physicians should understand and be trained in massage. Homer spoke of its use, and Julius Caesar used daily massage for the relief of neuralgia and prevention of epileptic attacks. Sports massage for athletes began in the earliest Olympics. Massage has a solid history to be sure.