Teaching ancient history equips students with essential knowledge, perspective and skills for understanding the present and shaping the future. Despite its benefits, challenges such as students’ lack of conceptual knowledge and motivation persist. Recently, digital tools and socially assistive robots (SARs) have gained acceptance in education for their ability to improve cognitive and emotional outcomes. This study explores the integration of SARs with established teaching methods to enhance primary school students’ attitudes towards cultural heritage and knowledge acquisition in ancient history. Specifically, in a between-subject experimental setup the Nao robot was used as a tutor to teach Greek ancient history, in a) delivering the lecture accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation, or b) with contextual learning techniques dressed as the ancient politician Pericles, delivering the lecture using a combination of biographical method and “teacher-in-role”. 33 fourth-grade students participated in the study and the lecture took place in their real classroom on ecological design. Results showed that students taught by the simple Nao robot significantly gained more knowledge compared to before the lecture, but students in the role-playing condition did not show significant knowledge improvement. Both conditions resulted in statistically significant improvements in students’ attitudes towards history lessons. These findings suggest that Nao can effectively deliver knowledge and positively influence students’ attitudes without additional teaching techniques like role-playing.