THE WORLD OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY

TOPIC 1
THE EMERGENCE OF GREECE:
FROM BRONZE TO IRON

Throughout the ancient world of the Mediterranean, the

period around 1000 B.C. saw a major change in ways of life.
Iron replaced bronze as the chief material for the
manufacture of tools and weapons, and the new technology
revolutionised societies at many different levels. In a small
corner of south-eastern Europe, the mainland and islands
of Greece, the break with the past had special significance
for the future of Western history.
In the preceding Bronze Age, the Minoans on the
island of Crete and the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece had
developed rich and sophisticated cultures and established
commercial contacts in many parts of the Mediterranean.
With the violent disturbances which brought the Bronze
Age to an end around 1000 B.C., their culture disappeared,
only to be rediscovered by archaeologists in the 19th and
20th centuries.
Thus the first Greek communities of the Iron Age
began afresh to organise their societies and establish an
artistic tradition. The development of independent
settlements, each known as a "polis," or city-state,
determined the competitive and often hostile nature of the
Greeks' relations with one another.
 The first great cultural achievements in the Western
tradition – the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems
attributed to Homer and set in the Bronze Age – also date
to the beginnings of Greek history and even reflect the
earlier Mycenaean period.
The initial growth of Greek culture took place on home
territory. By 700 B.C., however, the Greeks were on the
move. Greek traders had discovered the rich markets of
western Asia and Egypt and settlers were beginning to
establish colonies throughout the Mediterranean. In the
process, they spread their ideas and artistic styles and,
equally importantly, absorbed the influences of the peoples
with whom they came into contact. At the same time,
attitudes to religion and philosophy began to evolve as the
Greeks became the first people in the ancient world to ask
theoretical questions about the nature of the universe and
human existence.
The first period of widespread artistic production and
trade saw the development of a style known as
Orientalising, as Greek artists adopted Eastern ideas in
their painting and sculpture – and later in their
architecture. By the beginning of the following Archaic Age,
they had used what they had learned to create a
specifically Greek approach to art and ideas that borrowed
from other cultures to form the foundation of western
style.
CONCLUSION
The collapse of Bronze Age culture in Greece saw the
disappearance of almost 2000 years' achievements. The
Greeks of the early Iron Age, limited to their own rocky
terrain, and cut-off from the outside world, had to begin to
construct a civilisation anew. With the momentum of their
colonising movement, driven by economic and social
pressures, the Greeks were ready to build on outside
influences to create their own unique intellectual and
artistic achievement. If the isolation of the first two and a
half centuries of their history seems a slow beginning for
so dynamic a culture, the speed with which they absorbed
a bewildering assortment of outside ideas and influences is
equally striking. The 100 years from 700 to 600 B.C. were
sufficient for the Greeks to find their own identity.
The following centuries carried Greek political and
intellectual experiments and developments further from
their early Iron Age beginnings. Yet in one respect, at least,
they retained a link with their origins and with their Bronze
Age predecessors. From childhood, Greeks of later times
read and learned by heart the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Through all the hectic and often violent events of their
later history, the Greeks never lost their reverence for
Homer and his world.

Significant Dates
From Bronze to Iron in the Greek World (all dates B.C.)
3000-2500: Culture flourishes in the Cyclades
2500-1950: Early Minoan Period
1950—1550: Middle Minoan Period
1625:Earthquake on Thera
1600: First settlement at Mycenae
1450: Knossos attacked and occupied
1400-1200 Mycenaean power at its hight
1250??: Mycenaean campaign against Troy
1200-1100: Destruction and partial occupation of Mycenae
1000-750: Early Iron Age in Greece
800: Beginnings of Greek colonisation
800-700: Greeks begin to use alphabet

TOPIC 2
THE GREEKS IN THE ARCHAIC ERA

The Archaic period (600-480 B.C.) was a period of

political, economic, and cultural development which saw
the collapse of the old aristocratic order in most of the
Greek city-states. Many of the new rulers were disgruntled
or ambitious aristocrats and rose to power by playing on
the unrest of the middle class: they were known as "
tyrants".
At Athens, programs of social and political reform at
the beginning and end of the 6th century B.C, introduced
respectively by Solon and Cleisthenes, broadened the base
of government. In the period between them, mid-century
Athens was ruled by the benign tyrant Pisistratus, under
whom the city flourished economically and culturally.
By the latter part of the 6th century B.C., the
Athenians' chief rivals in the Greek world were the
Spartans, who enforced their rigid political conservatism
with austere military discipline. Sparta's conquest of the
surrounding territory, and enslavement of many of the
local inhabitants, enriched the city's citizens, or
"Spartiates". By the early 5th century B.C., Sparta had
become the symbol of conservatism in Greece and the
natural opponent of the progressive Athenians and their
allies.
At the end of the Archaic period , in 490 B.C., the
threat of open hostility between the two camps temporarily
subsided in the face of external danger from the leading
power of the day, the mighty Persian Empire. The Persians
first came into contact with the Greek cities of the eastern
Mediterranean as Persian imperial conquest spread
westward in the 6th century B.C. Persian governors
absorbed the Greeks into their empire, took over the rule
of the Greek cities, and imposed taxes on their citizens.
In 499 B.C. these Greek cities revolted against their
Persian overlords. The Persians crushed the rebellion, but
not before the Athenians had sent help to their fellow
Greeks. Darius, the Persian king, launched an expedition
against mainland Greece in 490 B.C. The decisive victory of
the Athenians at the Battle of Marathon drove the Persian
forces from Greece, and at the same time reinforced
Athenian prestige as the leading city of Greece.
Ten years later, Athens and Sparta inflicted an even
more crushing defeat on the vast military expedition
assembled and led by Xerxes, Darius' son and successor.
With the end of the Persian threat, and the appearance – at
least - of unity among the leading Greek city-states, the
following years of the 5th century B.C. inaugurated the high
point of Greek culture, the Classical Age.

CONCLUSION
As the Greeks well knew, the relative unity with which they
had withstood the Persians was the result of the extreme
danger the invaders represented. Even then, the unity was
incomplete: among the bravest contingents fighting at
Palatae was that sent by the Greek city of Thebes, but the
Thebans fought for, not against, the Persians.
By the end of the wars, it was clear that only the
desperately forged alliance between Athens and Sparta had
guaranteed success. As a result of the hostilities, both
cities had built up their armaments and troop numbers,
Sparta on land and Athens at sea. Both Athens and Sparta
could claim vastly increased prestige in the Greek world
and the right to exercise moral leadership. Could they put
aside past hostilities and resentments and coexist
peacefully? In the immediate celebration of their victories
and the outburst of creative ferment at Athens, everything
seemed possible, and the optimism of the Greeks' triumph
inspired the achievements of the succeeding Classical Age.
Yet less than 50 years later, Athens and Sparta were locked
in mortal combat, and within a century the conflict between
the warring Greek city-states was so violent that the Great
King of the Persians was able to step in and impose a peace
of his own devising, without fighting a single battle.

Significant Dates
The Archaic Age (all dates B.C.)
650-620: Messenian revolt against Sparta
620: Law code of Darco introduced at Athens
594: Reforms of Solon
546: Pisistratus becomes tyrant of Athens
514: Assassination of Hipparchus
507: Reforms of Cleisthenes
499: Ionians revolt against Persians
490: Darius defeated at Battle of Marathon
480: Xerxes defeated at Battle of Salamis
479: Greek victory at Palatae ends Persian Wars in Greece.

TOPIC 3
THE GREEK WORLD IN CONFLICT:
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH

With the defeat of the Persians in 479 B.C., the

victorious alliance between Athens and Sparta began to
crumble and the Greek world returned to its divisive ways.
While the Spartans withdrew again into isolation, the
Athenians remained diplomatically active. Their arguments
convinced a number of Greek city-states to join with them
in a league to defend Greece from any future threat of
aggression by Persia. By 454 B.C., when the Athenians
moved the league's treasury from its original neutral
location on the island of Delos to Athens itself, the free
association of independent city-states had turned into an
Athenian Empire.
Over the following two decades, under the leadership
of their most famous statesman, Pericles, the Athenians
reinforced their domination of the Greek world. The sight of
the growing power of Athens, made visible in the city's
magnificent new buildings, awoke old suspicions and
rancour. Fear of Athenian imperialistic designs drove those
cities not yet under her control to form an alliance led by
Sparta. Outright war, setting the Spartans and their new
allies against the Athenian Empire, seemed increasingly
inevitable.
The war came in 431 B.C. The Peloponnesian War
dragged on until 404 B.C., when it ended in the
ignominious defeat of Athens. One of the main causes of
Athens' eventual collapse was a disastrous campaign the
Athenians waged against the city-states of Sicily between
415 and 413 B.C., during a lull in the main fighting. Its utter
failure left Athens weakened and demoralised, although
the remaining ten years of war saw some further Athenian
victories.
In the generation following the end of the war, the
Spartans maintained a brutal if uncertain control over
Greek affairs, under the watchful eye of the Great King of
Persia. In 371 B.C. Thebes briefly succeeded in challenging
Spartan supremacy, but rivalry between Thebes, Sparta,
and Athens continued to destabilise the Greek world.
In the end, the ruler of Macedon, a kingdom to the
north of Greece, stepped in to fill the vacuum. Philip of
Macedon, who became king in 359 B.C., first cajoled and
then used open force to take control of Greek affairs. By
the time of his death in 336 B.C., he had defeated a
combined Theban and Athenian army and united the chief
Greek city-states in the League of Corinth. Only the
Spartans stubbornly held out.
Alexander, Philip's son and successor, paused only
long enough to enforce Macedonian domination in Greece
before launching a triumphant campaign eastward against
Persia. With their political independence gone, the Greeks
became absorbed into the multinational Macedonian
Empire that Alexander built. In the process, however, Greek
culture and ideas became increasingly influential in the
Mediterranean world, as Alexander's conquest spread them
abroad.

CONCLUSION
The political, economic, and social divisions that beset
ancient Greece came to a head in the war between Athens
and Sparta. The resulting defeat of Athens was the first
step in a process that led to the disintegration of an
autonomous Greek civilisation at the hands of the
Macedonians.
By the end of Philip's reign, the history of an
independent Greece was at an end. The Greeks first
became subordinate allies of the kingdom of Macedon, and
then became part of the vast Macedonian Empire which
Alexander built in the few years before he died. In the
course of time, Greece took its place as one of the
provinces of the Macedonians' eventual successors, the
Romans. The Greeks never regained complete control over
their own affairs or political destiny, yet in one way their
influence increased with their defeat. The impact of the
Greek intellectual and cultural achievement became
diffused throughout the territories of its conquerors, to
form the foundation of Western civilisation.

Significant Dates
Greece in the Classical and Late Classical Periods (all dates
B.C.)
478: Formation of Delian League
454: Treasury of Delian League moved to Athens
431-404: Peloponnesian War
430-427: Plague in Athens
429: Death of Pericles
421: Peace of Nicias
415-413: Sicilian Expedition
404: Fall of Athens; rule of "The Thirty"
399: Trial of Socrates
387: The King's Peace
359: Philip becomes king of Macedon
338: Battle of Chaernonea
336: Assassination of Philip and accession of Alexander

TOPIC 4
THE CLASSICAL VISION

Alongside the political upheavals of the 5th and 4th

centuries B.C., there occurred in Greece a series of artistic
and intellectual developments which permanently shaped
Western culture. The Greeks' striving for order and balance
left its mark on literature and the visual arts, and their
pursuit of self-knowledge opened up new ways of thinking
about human existence, among them history and
philosophy.
At the theatre festivals of Athens, tragic dramatists
produced cycles of plays that used myths to explore human
behaviour, both individual and collective. Meanwhile, comic
playwrights wrote satires, often bitter ones, on
contemporary events, including the Peloponnesian War.
Greek painters and sculptors continued to explore
ways of depicting the human form realistically, working
along lines already laid out in the preceding Archaic period.
By the High Classical period, artists were able to achieve a
balance between realism and idealism that has remained
"classic" ever since. In the Late Classical 4th century B.C.,
the heroic calm of High Classical art gave way to greater
interest in the emotional states of individuals.
Pericles' plans to make Athens the cultural centre of
the Greek world included an ambitious building program to
reconstruct the temples on the Athenian Acropolis, which
the Persians had destroyed in 480 B.C. The structures built
there during the second half of the 5th century include the
Parthenon, and represent the high point of Greek
architectural achievement, and one of the supreme
moments in the history of Western art.
Writers and thinkers of the Classical Age laid the
foundations for three areas of intellectual inquiry: history,
science, and philosophy. The historians Herodotus and
Thucydides, in their very different ways, chronicled the
chief events of their own age. Even before the 5th century
B.C. and the time of Socrates, thinkers had begun to study
the physical nature of the world. In doing so, they asked
questions that anticipated the enquiries of modern science.
The teachings of Socrates, which he expounded at
Athens in the late 5th century B.C., formed the inspiration
for the works written by Plato in the 4th century B.C. Plato's
successor, Aristotle, sought not so much to speculate about
universals as to order and classify the visible world.
Between them, Plato and Aristotle laid the foundations of
Western philosophy.

CONCLUSION
To some extent the greatness of Classical Greek thinkers
and artists lies in the fact that they were often the first in
their fields – the first to write history, create naturalistic
statues, invent tragedy and comedy. Yet the Greeks were
no mere pioneers, discovering ideas that later figures
would perfect. Greek dramas are revived in the modern
theatre and on television because they provide experiences
as intense as any later works in the Western theatrical
tradition. The style of Greek architecture continues to
influence architects at the end of the 20th century, in the
Post-modern movement. Furthermore, a resurgence of
interest in Classical art – in the form of Neo-classical
revivals – has recurred constantly in the history of Western
culture, from the Augustan era of 1st-century B.C. Rome, to
the 19th century in Paris.
The reason for the perpetual appeal of Greek art and
ideas is not difficult to understand. The Greeks of the
Classical Period consciously set out to create works that
would transcend the limitations of their own time and make
universal statements. Pericles' building plan for the
Acropolis, like Thucydides History, was deliberately
intended to be a "possession for future generations." It is
some measure of the degree to which the Greeks achieved
their goal that, two and a half thousand years later, their
works continue to inspire admiration and awe.

TOPIC 5
THE LIFE AND COMMERCE OF CLASSICAL GREECE

For all the urban character of their civilisation, the

Greek city-states depended for their prosperity on
agricultural production. The possession of land was a mark
of social status, and farmers learned to cultivate crops
suitable for the extremes of summer heat and winter cold.
They planted wheat and barley on the plains, and
cultivated olives and vines on the hillsides.
Although the colonisers of the 8th and 7th centuries
B.C. did not leave home with the intention of setting up
trading centres, by the time of the Classical period Greek
colonies throughout the Mediterranean served as the basis
for a complex commercial network. As production increased
in mainland Greece, and individual cities began to compete
for business at home and abroad, trade rivalry provoked
disputes between the leading commercial powers. The
long-standing financial competition between Athens and
Corinth was the immediate cause of the Peloponnesian war.
In the rich world of Greek mythology and religion,
male and female figures – both human and divine – play an
equal role. The reality of life in Classical Greece, however,
was very different. At Athens, the primary duty of a woman
was to marry and produce future citizens. Only men could
vote, serve on juries, or hold public office. Women whose
family income allowed them the possession of slaves spent
most of their lives at home, where they had their own part
of the house. Poorer women, who needed to go out to do
their shopping or washing, were more likely to spend time
socialising with other women as they performed their
chores.
Slavery was common at Athens, although only rich
citizens owned large numbers, using them as labour in
factories and mines. The average Athenian family had a
domestic servant, or perhaps an assistant for workshop or
farm. Slaves sometimes rose to become managers of
businesses. They were able to acquire personal savings,
and could win liberation for loyal service. Some who did so
had their own slaves, whom in turn they set free.

CONCLUSION
Like all ancient cultures – and many modern ones – Greek
society in general, and Athenian in particular, was
hierarchical. The only residents who enjoyed all the
benefits of life at Athens were male citizens. Foreign
residents, who were numerous, were given the same
obligations to pay taxes and do military service. They could
not own land or houses, however, but had to rent them.
The fate of slaves at Athens depended on that of their
employers. For many poor citizens, life must have seemed
not much more free than for the slaves in domestic
employment alongside whom they worked. The only entire
category of Athenian resident to suffer from serious
underprivilege – and, of course, it was a vast one – was that
of female citizens.
Socrates praised the democratic nature of public life
at Athens, with its Assembly made up of "laundryman,
shoemakers, carpenters, smiths, peasants, and
shopkeepers." When Socrates' wife, Xanthippe, came to
visit him in prison before his execution, to see him for the
last time, the philosopher told his friends to take her away,
before settling down to spend his last hours surrounded by
his male friends. The gulf between husband and wife was
far greater than that between the aristocratic Pericles and
the laundrymen and peasants, sitting and debating
together in the Assembly.

TOPIC 6
ALEXANDER AND THE HELLENISTIC AGE

The century following the accession of Alexander in

336 B.C. marked one of the major turning points in western
history. Within a hectic few years, the young Macedonian
king invaded Asia, conquered the most powerful empire in
the ancient world, that of the Persians, and put together a
kingdom stretching from Greece to India.
 With Alexander's premature death, his conquests split
into a series of warring successor states, whose rulers –
Alexander's former generals – struggled for power. Three
ruling dynasties emerged from the conflict: the European
Antigonids, the Asian Seleucids, and the Ptolemies of
Egypt.
The foundation of the culture that developed in these
states, known as Hellenistic, was Greek. Yet although it
shared a common language, Greek, and a single basic
intellectual tradition, that of 5th century B.C. Athens, the
Hellenistic world was truly international. It was strongly
influenced by Achaemenian (Persian) and Egyptian culture,
and provided the basis for the growth of the Roman Empire
in western Asia and the eventual spread of Christianity.
The economic and social basis of the Hellenistic
kingdoms remained agriculture, but the city, modelled on
the Greek city-state, became of increasing importance.
(The term "Hellenistic" is used to refer to the history and
culture of the peoples "Hellenised," that is, brought under
Greek influence, by Alexander's conquests.) The growth of
urban centres such as Alexandria and Antioch reinforced, in
fact, the importance of agriculture and food production
while spreading the Greek concept of civilisation. At the
same time, trade and industry flourished, particularly in
Asia.
The impact of non-Greek religious ideas from western
Asia and Egypt on traditional Classical patterns of thought
stimulated new forms of religious experience. Some of
these, like the worship of state rulers, arose for political
reasons. Others represented a wide range of philosophical
responses to a changing world. Two schools of philosophy,
the Stoic and the Epicurean, found different solutions to
the significance of the divine in human affairs. Other
people turned instead to "mystery cults," which promised
secret revelations.
The wealthy capitals of the Hellenistic kingdoms –
Alexandria, Pergamum, and others – became centres of
research in the pure and applied sciences. There were
major breakthroughs in astronomy, medicine, and
mathematics, while the search for more efficient weapons
and defence systems led to progress in engineering.
In all respects, the Hellenistic Age marked the
diffusion on three continents of the cultural legacy of
Classical Greece, a process that was to continue with the
rise of Rome.

CONCLUSION
Alexander dreamed of the "unity of empire." Far from
becoming unified, the lands and peoples he conquered
spent the century after his death in a state of constant
tension and rivalry. Hellenistic kings fought offensive and
defensive wars against one another, while ever on guard
against internal threats. Only the coming of the Romans
succeeded in finally imposing unity by absorbing
Alexander's conquests into an empire spreading west to
the Atlantic.
Yet in other respects the Hellenistic Age did create
achievements worthy of Alexander's dream. Greek ideas
about politics, economics, and the nature of the universe
travelled from a small, isolated country to a stage
spanning half the known world. In the process they came
into contact with the older, more varied cultures of Asia.
The two never really "fused": the Greeks, like later
imperialists, were far too certain of their own superiority
for that to have been possible. Yet the result was an
immense enrichment for both sides, with Greek-style city-
states within reach of the borders of India, and temples to
Asian gods on the islands of Rhodes and Delos.
For the first time in history, an international culture
circulated in a multiethnic world. A common language,
political system, and currency were shared by a series of
independent states each of which preserved its own special
characteristics and ethnic mixture. For all the inevitable
conflict between the Hellenistic kingdoms – in some ways,
in fact, because of their rivalry – scientists and intellectuals
continued to make progress, and laid many of the bases of
Western civilisation. With the rise of Rome, their
achievements were to reach an even wider stage.

Significant Dates
Alexander and the Hellenistic Kingdoms (all dates B.C.)
336: Accession of Alexander
332: Foundation of Alexandria in Egypt
331: Alexander defeats Persians
326: Alexander reaches India
323: Death of Alexander; Ptolemy becomes ruler in Egypt
306: Seleucus becomes ruler of Seleucid kingdom
276: Antigonus becomes king of Macedon
250: Publication of Septuagint
223-187: Reign of Antiochus the Great

TOPIC 7
THE RISE OF ROME

In the early centuries of Rome's history, a number of

distinct peoples were established in Italy, of whom the
most important were the Etruscans. Technologically
advanced and successful in commerce, the Etruscans
spread throughout central Italy, and conquered Rome itself
at the end of the 7th century B.C.
The city of Rome had been founded a century and a
half earlier as an amalgamation of several villages on the
hills around the river Tiber. The period of Etruscan
occupation brought the Romans in contact with a new level
of culture. The Etruscans carried out important engineering
and construction projects, taught the Romans new
technologies, and introduced the alphabet.
After a century of Etruscan rule, the Romans were
sufficiently advanced to drive out their conquerors and
begin their own climb to power. They replaced the system
of government by kings, which went back to the foundation
of the city, with a republic, based on a careful balance of
the two chief social groups, the aristocratic patricians, and
the plebs, or people. The process of devising a constitution
went hand in hand with the creation of a law code.
By the end of the 5th century B.C., the Romans had
become the dominant power in the region as leaders of the
Latin League, and were ready to take on the rest of Italy. In
a series of campaigns against the Etruscans and other
independent peoples in Italy, they gradually assumed
control of the peninsula.
In the mid-3rd century B.C., Rome began to move
against the leading power in the western Mediterranean,
Carthage (the Phoenician colony in North Africa). The first
of the two wars between the Romans and the
Carthaginians, known as the Punic Wars, left Rome in
control of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia. The Second Punic
War began with the invasion of Italy by a Carthaginian
army led by Hannibal, but the attack petered out. The end
of the war, in 202 B.C., brought Roman victory and the
collapse of Carthaginian power. The Romans' domination
now extended throughout the western Mediterranean.
The chief powers of the eastern Mediterranean were
the three largest of the Hellenistic kingdoms created after
the death of Alexander: Syria, Macedon, and Egypt. The
first of these to fall victim to Roman expansion was
Macedon, which became a Roman province in 148 B.C. Two
years later it was the turn of the rest of Greece.
The Roman conquest of the rest of Alexander's former
empire was as much by diplomacy as by military force. An
alternation of Roman threats and alliances weakened the
resistance of the Syrian and Egyptian rulers. Syria
fragmented into a series of tiny kingdoms, while Egypt was
subservient to Rome long before its "official" conquest in
31 B.C.
By the end of the Republic, the Romans were masters
of the Mediterranean world. At Rome itself, however, the
price of success abroad was increasing political turmoil,
and the last century of Republican history (133-31 B.C.)
brought internal collapse.

CONCLUSION
The Romans were right to see Carthage as their most
formidable enemy. The struggle to defeat the
Carthaginians was by far the toughest in their history, and
their victory radically changed the political landscape in
the ancient world. Even before the Roman success in the
East, the balance of power between East and West was
shifting.
 By contrast with their ferocious wars with Carthage,
Roman supremacy in the East seems to have come about
with comparative ease. One reason was that the Romans,
tried by defeat and near disaster, had learned the rewards
of dogged persistence. Another was that the naked
brutality of the destruction of Carthage and Corinth
brought horrified condemnation from Rome's
contemporaries, but taught a lesson that was all to
obvious. It was suicide to resist Roman determination, and
after 146 B.C. no one did.

Significant Dates
The Rise of Rome (all dates B.C.)
753: Traditional date of foundation of Rome
616-510: Traditional dates of Etruscan rule at Rome
509: Roman Republic inaugurated
493: Treaty with Latin League
451: Law of the Twelve Tables
405-396: Romans besiege Veii
390: Gallic invasion of Italy
304: Romans sign treaty with Samnites
279: Pyrrhus defeats Romans
264-241: First Punic War
218-202: Second Punic War
146: Destruction of Carthage; Roman conquest of Greece

TOPIC 8
ROMANS OF THE REPUBLIC
 By the mid-2nd century B.C. virtually the entire
Mediterranean world was to some degree subject to Roman
influence. With the growth of their territory, the Romans
devised ways of organising and administering the subject
provinces outside Italy. As in the slow evolution of their
own political system, Rome's ruling classes worked out
their approaches to provincial governors and their duties –
to taxation, and the ever-present problems of bribery and
corruption – by trial and error.
Meanwhile, at Rome itself, the years following the
Punic Wars saw radical changes in economic patterns as
large estates, or latifundia, replaced small farms, and
industry and commerce began to provide the principal
source of wealth. As banking, insurance, and investment
programs spread, the rise of a new business class changed
old established patterns of social relations.
One of the areas affected by shifting class lines was
the family. By the late Republic, as money was no longer
concentrated in the hands of the patricians, birth was no
longer the prime factor in the choice of a marriage partner.
With the general improvement in the standards of living,
girls from the families of businessmen received a better
education, and well-to-do women began to lead relatively
independent lives, although their progress aroused
criticism and misogyny. A number were distinguished
authors while others were famous for their oratory.
The chief intellectual influence on the late Republic
was Greece. Even before the sack of Corinth in 146 B.C.,
the Romans looked to the Greeks for guidance in art and
philosophy. By the 1st century B.C. educated Roman women
and men regarded Greek culture as superior to their own.
Traditional Roman religion continued to serve the interests
of the state, while Hellenistic philosophical systems such as
Stoicism and Epicureanism provided more individual
enlightenment. Large numbers of urban masses, impressed
neither by philosophy nor by the rituals of power, turned to
dramatic and emotional cults introduced from Asia.
The same Greek influences came to dominate Roman
literature of the period. Plautus and Terence based their
comic plays on Greek originals. The epic poetry of Lucretius
set out to expound Epicureanism to a Roman audience. One
field in which Roman writers found their own authentic
voice was that of intimate, personal love poetry, through
which writers like Catullus analysed the nature of love. At
the very end of the Republic, the great orator Cicero,
although openly acknowledging the influence of the Greek
statesman Demosthenes, composed (and generally
delivered) some of the most powerful and eloquent
speeches in the Western tradition.

CONCLUSION
In the years following the Punic Wars, the Romans of the
Republic lived through external growth and internal
upheaval. Social and economic patterns that had lasted for
centuries shifted beyond recovery. It took two centuries for
Rome to become the dominating power in Italy, a region
out of the mainstream of Mediterranean politics and
culture. With the passing of only a few more years, the
Romans ruled the Mediterranean world, the successors to
Alexander the Great.
In developing their system of external rule, Roman
administrators had to work out a way of transforming
violent conquest into firm and effective rule. In many cases,
the Romans' outbursts of arrogant brutality – as at
Carthage and Corinth – provoked widespread indignation.
Internally, the acquisition of empire imposed strains
on the fabric of life and politics at Rome itself which led to
violent change. In 133 B.C., the year in which Attalus, the
prudent king of Pergamum, willed his kingdom to the
Roman people, the first ominous signals appeared of the
impending collapse of the Republic.

TOPIC 9
THE COLLAPSE OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

The first serious attempt to deal with the underlying

political and economic problems of late Republican Rome
came in the tribunates of the Gracchus brothers. First
Tiberius Gracchus, and then Gaius, tried to help the popular
cause by introducing land reform measures, while Gaius
also moved to establish a political alliance with the middle-
class equites. Both brothers died violent deaths at the
hands of their political opponents.
By the beginning of the 1st century B.C., wars in Africa
and Central Europe, a slave revolt in Sicily, and an uprising
in Italy itself brought two rival generals to power at Rome.
The first, Marius, claimed to represent the popular interest.
His eventually successful rival, the arch-conservative Sulla,
reformed the state along archaic lines, before unexpectedly
resigning all his powers and retiring to private life.
With the political situation at Rome ever worsening,
the stage was set for the disastrous conflict between
Pompey, champion of the Senate, and Julius Caesar, backed
by the popular Party. In 49 B.C., after years of successful
campaigning in Gaul, Caesar led his victorious troops in a
march on Rome, while Pompey and his supporters fled to
Greece. The result was the Civil War, the first in the
Republic's 500-year history.
The following year Caesar defeated Pompey's forces in
pitched battle. After a brief period in Egypt, where his
liaison with Cleopatra produced a son, Caesar returned to
Rome and became dictator. The reform program he began
to carry out addressed three separate areas: relief of
economic decline and debt to Rome, planning for the
welfare of the provinces, and reconstruction of effective
central government.
When Caesar fell victim to the blows of a band of
idealistic republican conspirators in 44 B.C., he had already
made important steps in the first two of these fields.
Rome's internal political order, however, remained on the
point of collapse. Mark Antony, Caesar's deputy, took
immediate command of the situation but his supremacy
came under almost immediate challenge: Octavian,
Caesar's young great nephew and adopted heir, arrived in
Rome to claim his inheritance.
Antony and Octavian formed an uneasy alliance to
pursue and defeat the conspirators responsible for Caesar's
murder. Thereafter, the last ten years of the Republic saw
the return of civil war between the two. Antony's flight to
Egypt to seek the help of Cleopatra provided Octavian with
a powerful propaganda weapon. In 31 B.C. Octavian’s army
and navy, fighting for Italy against the "traitor" and his
Egyptian queen, decisively overcame their enemies' joint
forces at Actium. The Republic was shattered, and the
Roman state lay at Octavian's command.
CONCLUSION
At the age of 32, Octavian was the ruler of a world numbed
by a century of conflict and three bloody civil wars. The
conspirators had been right that the republic was in its
death throes, but fatally wrong in thinking that the removal
of Julius Caesar could prevent the inevitable. Those who
killed Caesar and those who avenged his death were all
members of the Roman elite locked in a struggle for
supreme power.
The rise of the business classes, the stubborn refusal
of the Senate to recognise that conditions were changed,
the growing role of the urban mob, all these were factors in
making Rome no longer governable by the alteration of
rival aristocratic politicians. Caesar was the only statesman
who might have been able to break the cycle of political
rivalry and bloodletting, but he died before he could devise
a solution. Octavian's task was a formidable one: to create
a system of authoritarian rule capable of being faithful to
Rome's past while guaranteeing future stability.

TOPIC 10
THE EMPIRE: FROM AUGUSTUS TO MARCUS AURELIUS

Having taken control of the state in 31 B.C., Octavian

claimed that he was restoring the Republic in 27 B.C., when
the Senate granted him the name Augustus. In fact,
however, he consolidated his hold on the Roman world and
reinforced the rule of one man, governing through his
control of the civil service and official appointments.
Augustus' revolution affected virtually all aspects of
Roman life: political, economic, social, and cultural. By the
time of his death, the Empire was at peace and the
authority of its ruler unchallenged. One of the problems
which Augustus left unsolved – one that was to cause
constantly recurring conflict during the following centuries
of imperial rule – was that of succession. Augustus finally
left the government of the Empire to Tiberius, his stepson.
When, after a generally constructive but unpopular
reign, Tiberius died in A.D. 37, he left no successor, and the
Senate stepped in to appoint Gaius – better known by his
nickname Caligula – who was a young relative of Augustus.
At the end of Caligula's disastrous rule, it fell to the
imperial guard to impose their choice by force: Claudius,
Caligula's uncle. In spite of Claudius' extensive
achievements, the principle of succession according to
membership in Augustus' Julio-Claudian family finally
collapsed with the reign of Caligula's nephew, the
deservedly notorious Nero.
With Nero's downfall in A.D. 68, the power to create
new emperors passed to the strongest force available, in
this case the army. In the space of a few months – the Year
of the Four Emperors – successive military contingents
imposed their candidates. The figure who eventually
emerged was Vespasian, whose ten years in office marked
a welcome respite from the confusion and violence of the
preceding generation. Once again, however, for all the
positive achievements of his reign, Vespasian failed to
resolve the crucial constitutional problem inherent in the
imperial system. If his elder son, Titus, proved the merits
of family succession, his younger son, Domitian, confirmed
its dangers in a long and turbulent reign.
Domitian had no son, and the Senate chose his
successor, Nerva, on merit. Nerva, who was also childless,
nominated his own successor and legitimised his choice by
adopting him. His four successors, none of whom produced
a son, followed the same system. This led to a century of
peace and stability in which the Empire reached its
maximum size and general prosperity was widespread. The
arts, which had enjoyed a Golden Age under Augustus,
flourished again in a period known as the Silver Age.

CONCLUSION
The 18th-century English historian Edward Gibbon, in an oft-
cited passage, described the years from the death of
Domitian to the accession of Commodus as "the period in
the history of the world during which the condition of the
human race was most happy and prosperous." So
sweeping a claim is difficult to justify. For all the welfare
legislation and building projects, increasing prosperity and
generally efficient provincial government , widespread
poverty existed in many parts of Empire - not least in the
urban slums of Rome itself.
Yet on the whole the adoptive emperors did provide
an extended period of tranquillity. Their own sense of duty
to the state inspired wealthy citizens to spend money on
public projects. It is no chance that the 2nd century A.D. saw
the construction of libraries in many provincial cities,
accompanied by the spread of education. Rome probably
remained free of epidemic disease until the end of the 2nd
century A.D., and produced enough food to avoid major
famines until the last two decades of the century .
The emperor remained an autocratic ruler. For all the
polite gestures which Trajan or Hadrian made toward the
senate, they made their own decisions. Yet by comparison
with the repressive regimes of many of the later emperors,
they shine as dedicated servants of the state. Gibbon's
judgement may exaggerate, but it contains a germ of truth.

Significant Dates
The Julio-Claudean Emperors
31 B.C.: Octavian wins Battle of Actium
27 B.C.: Octavian takes name of Augustus
23 B.C.-A.D. 14: Establishment of Principate and reign of
Augustus
A.D.: 14-37: Reign of Tiberius
A.D. 37-41: Reign of Caligula
A.D. 41-54: Reign of Claudius
A.D. 54-68: Reign of Nero
A.D.68-69: Year of the Four Emperors

The Flavians and their Successors (all dates A.D.)

69-79: Reign of Vespasian
79-81: Reign of Titus
81-96: Reign of Domitian
96-98: Reign of Nerva
98-117: Reign of Trajan
117-138: Reign of Hadrian
138-161: Reign of Antiochus Pius
161-180: Reign of Marcus Aurelius
180-192: Reign of Commodus
 TOPIC 11
POLITICS AND THE ARTS: ROMAN IMPERIAL CULTURE

The cultural program of the Augustan Age played a

central role in conveying the political significance of the
emperor's reforms. Through his advisor on cultural affairs,
Maecenas, Augustus used the visual arts and literature to
spell out his main themes: the return of peace, the
importance of Rome's agricultural origins, the Romans'
sense of destiny as world rulers.
The historian Livy provided an official account of
Rome's early history. The chief poets of the regime,
including above all Vergil and Horace, composed works
expressing a sense of renewal in keeping the spirit of the
times, while the sculptors of the great Altar of Peace
combined myth and historical reality to provide visible
proof of the Augustan achievement. The effect of such
sustained cultural energy was to produce a Golden Age in
the arts.
The art of the portrait bust was first developed in the
late Republic, as a means of reflecting the values of the
Republican elite. It became an important element in the
official art of the Empire. Augustus maintained an iron
control over the use of imperial images. Under his
successors, sculptors often succeeded in conveying more
complex statements about the ruling classes. In the 2nd
century A.D., Hadrian used the style of High Classical Greek
art to recreate – in stone at least – a return to the idealising
world of Periclean Athens.
Hadrian also made an important impact on Roman
architecture, an artistic field in which Roman genius for
adaptation and control found its highest expression. At
Rome itself, and throughout the Empire, architects
produced buildings to satisfy the needs of large sectors of
the population, not just a ruling elite. Theatres, stadiums,
public baths, forum complexes – each type of structure took
the same basic form throughout the Empire.
In this way urban planning and design reinforced the
sense of a supranational Roman identity, which
transcended the enormous differences between the Roman
provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa. At the same time,
domestic architects provided comfortable houses in styles
suitable to local climates. The best preserved dwellings are
those at Pompeii.
The literature of the late 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., a
period known as the Silver Age, is less elevated but more
varied than that of the Augustan period. Pliny the Elder
combined a wide range of topics in his Natural History.
Growing interest in theories of education finds its reflection
in the writings of Quintilian. Many writers turned to satire
to express their anger at the confusion of the times.
Above all, the Silver Age produced one of the greatest
historians of antiquity, Tacitus. In his own inimitable style,
biting, ironic, pessimistic, he provides unforgettable
portraits of the figures dominating the tumultuous years he
lived through.

CONCLUSION
The comedy of Petronius, the savage indignation of
Juvenal, and the profundity of Tacitus's moral judgement
reveal the darker side of the splendour of empire, one very
distant from the self-conscious pride of the art and
literature of the Augustan age. Both viewpoints are
complementary. As Virgil hints, the peace which Augustus
brought came at a price. It was inevitable that the sense of
relief that permeates the art of the Golden Age would turn
to restlessness as the defects of Augustus' political reforms
became increasingly glaring after his death.
Both the official character of Augustan art and the
growing hostility of tone in sculpture and Silver Age
literature have in common one important factor. From the
beginning of the Empire, artists were politically "engaged,"
using their art either in support of or against the regime.
Even in the art of ancient Greece, there were few creative
figures who dealt with the events of their own times in so
direct and down-to-earth a way. For the dramatists,
sculptors, and painters of Classical Athens, art was a
means of exploring the universal questions of human
existence. With the exception of one or two plays by
Aristophanes, their works referred to contemporary events
only indirectly.
For better or worse, the links binding art and politics
in imperial Rome were unbreakable. With the decline and
eventual fall of the Empire, the arts shifted to safer, more
solid ground at the service of church and state. Only
centuries later, at the end of the 18th century, on the eve of
the French revolution, did artists once again take up an
active political and social role.

TOPIC 12
DAILY LIFE IN THE ROMAN WORLD

The aim of the Roman state was to strengthen the

sense of Roman unity throughout the Empire by promoting
its way of life. A single universal legal system was in
operation. The law functioned by the use of past decisions
to create precedents in the light of which new cases were
tried. The prime source of law was the emperor, who
ratified earlier decisions and served as the final court of
appeal. Other factors in encouraging trust in the central
authority included efficient municipal government and the
role of the army.
The day-to-day running of the state was in the hands
of the imperial bureaucracy. Under the Julio-Claudeans,
many of the most powerful administrators were not Roman
citizens but freedmen. By the reign of Trajan, as
resentment grew at the influence wielded by these
freedmen, members of the class of equites began to serve
as bureau chiefs, both at Rome and in the provinces.
Toward the end of the Empire, the state bureaucracy would
be dominated by the military.
The first century of the Empire saw the rise of
commerce at the expense of agriculture, especially in Italy,
where farming continued to decline. Trade became
decentralised, with the great cities of Asia and North Africa
offering stiff competition to Italian manufacturers. By the
3rd century A.D., with imperial rule in a state of military
anarchy, and Germanic raids on many of the chief trade
routes, the economy went into serious decline. The result
was a further weakening of state regulation.
The family remained the basis of social life. From the
time of Augustus successive emperors tried in vain to
produce a rise in the birth rate. In spite of incentives to
encourage large families and penalties for the childless,
Roman men and women of the upper classes continued to
use contraception to avoid pregnancies, and families
remained small, especially in Italy.
 The chief family of the state was that of the emperor,
who was "father of his native land." The women in the
imperial family also received honours. Livia, wife of
Augustus, was worshipped as divine during her lifetime,
and cities in Asia raised temples to her. After Augustus'
death she received the title "Augusta." Women continued
to enjoy far more personal freedom than in the Republic,
although they still played little visible part in politics. The
empress of the Flavian dynasty maintained an influential
salon at court, while in the early 3rd century A.D. the
women of the Severan family exercised considerable
political power.
One of the functions of the state was to protect the
interests of citizens, freedmen, and freedwomen. Slaves
and gladiators, two under-classes that played an important
role in Roman life, received varying treatment. Slaves could
win their freedom and then integrate fully into society.
Gladiators, who were often condemned criminals, were
expendable once they had provided entertainment in the
stadium.

CONCLUSION
In the earliest period of its history Rome was a monarchy,
ruled by kings, and in the following centuries the great
aristocratic families tracing their origins back to those of
the city acquired immense prestige. Yet even in the last
two centuries of the republic, self-made men and their
descendants were among the leading players in Roman
politics and society. The noble birth of the brothers
Gracchus was a handicap rather than an advantage in their
attempt to promote reform. By the time of the Empire
social origins were by no means the only conditioning
factor in a Roman's life.
One important factor in this change was the growing
importance of personal wealth. The businessmen who made
fortunes in Rome's various wars could buy, generally for
their sons and daughters, the respectability which their
birth denied them. Under the Empire, few cared about
having exclusive origins except those who had nothing else
to care about. A vulgar nouveau riche like Trimalcchio
would cause some raised eyebrows and sniggers, but
guests would still go to his banquets.
Yet perhaps the most significant of all Roman
attitudes to social status and behaviour was their sense of
practicality. The Romans themselves claimed to be doers
rather than thinkers, and the best architects or generals or
emperors were not necessarily the highest born. The
essentially pragmatic quality of Roman attitudes to birth
emerged in the invention of the system of adoptive
emperors: the first requirement was talent, then adoption
could take care of the family connections. It also
determined the status of women and slaves in Roman
society. Both categories operated under significant
restrictions many of which, in practice, they could work
around. For many Romans, ability could often carry its
owners beyond their official standing.

TOPIC 13
CHRISTIANITY AND THE CRISIS OF EMPIRE

With the spread of Christianity in the later centuries of

the Roman Empire, the history of the ancient world entered
its final stages. Christian teachings originated in Palestine,
among the Jews living there under Roman rule.
The Romans' contacts with the Jews extended back
into Republican times: the first Jewish community at Rome
dated to the 2nd century B.C. The Roman Republic's
benevolent policy towards the Jews in Italy was confirmed
by Julius Caesar.
Christianity was born in Jerusalem, capital of a Roman
province. The Roman community became the western
centre of the new religion. The first Christians spoke
Aramaic, and many of the early converts spoke Greek, the
language of the New Testament, but after A.D. 200 the
number of Latin converts began to rise. In spite of periods
of persecution by the state, the church continued to grow
in influence, and in A.D. 313 the Emperor Constantine
legalised the practice of Christianity.
The period marked by the rise of Christianity saw the
Roman world slip into serious decline as a series of military
emperor-despots did little to halt increasing economic
collapse. Only the successful military campaigns of Aurelian
and the sweeping reforms of Dioclitian at the end of the 3rd
century A.D., followed by Constantine's own reign in the 4th
century A.D., managed to bring temporary relief.
When Constantine founded a new eastern capital for
the Empire at Byzantium, thereafter known as
Canstantinople, he intended it to be a Christian city. He
himself accepted baptism only on his deathbed, but by the
end of the 4th century A.D., Christianity was the official
religion of the state.
With the shift of power to the eastern Mediterranean,
western Europe became vulnerable to a century-long wave
of invasions by Germanic tribes on the move from the
steppe lands of Eurasia. First the Visigoths under Alaric,
then the Vandals and Huns overran Italy, Gaul, and Spain.
The effect of the Germanic victories was to complete the
long process of decline in the west. While the eastern half
of the Empire continued to flourish economically and
culturally under the unifying rule of the Byzantine
emperors, the West fragmented into a series of kingdoms,
with continuing economic deterioration and population
shrinkage.
The debate on the reasons for the decline and fall of
the Roman Empire began with the writings of St.
Augustine, active at the beginning of the 5th century A.D.
Among the factors cited by his many successors have been
climate changes, illness, errors of individual rulers, the
triumph of Christianity. Most modern observers would
probably hold that no single cause or set of causes can
explain a process that took centuries to work to a
conclusion. A pattern of civilisation that had lasted well
over 1000 years slowly broke down.

CONCLUSION
The final collapse of Rome left a triple legacy. In the East,
for 1000 years the Byzantine Empire continued to operate
under Constantine's system. The emperor controlled the
secular policy of the state while simultaneously
maintaining supreme religious authority. In the West, the
former Roman provinces fragmented into a series of
kingdoms which still form the basis of the states of modern
Europe. In the southern region of the Mediterranean, a
century after the fall of Rome, Muhammad was born. The
religion he founded, Islam, helped to create an empire
stretching by the 8th century A.D. from Spain to India. The
fall of the Roman Empire was a transition, not an end.

Significant Dates
The End of the Roman Empire
(all dates A.D.)
c.30: Crucifixion of Jesus
70: Titus sacks Jerusalem
132-135: Jewish Revolt
270-275: Reign of Aurelian
284-305: Reign of Diocletian
306-337: Reign of Constantine
312: Battle of Milvian Bridge
313: Edict of Milan
325: Council of Nicaea
330: Inauguration of Constantinople
410: Sack of Rome by Visigoths
451: Defeat of Attila
476: Last Western emperor deposed.

OVERALL CONCLUSION

If the developments of the ancient world laid the

bases for the growth of civilisation, the specific forms
which Western culture has taken owe their existence to the
two chief peoples of Classical Antiquity, the Greeks and the
Romans.
The Greeks themselves, for all the originality of their
contribution, did not exist in a void, and many of the ideas
which they developed and which became fundamental to
Western civilisation perhaps originated elsewhere in the
Mediterranean world. In particular, scholars have begun to
explore the role which Egypt – and perhaps other African
cultures – may have played in the formation of the Greek
tradition.

Civilisation began to develop in the eastern

Mediterranean as early as 3000 B.C., and the first two
important cultures to appear were those of the Minoans of
Bronze Age Crete, and the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece.
The Bronze Age came to an end around 1100 B.C., and the
links between the Greeks of the early Iron Age, around
1000 B.C., and their Bronze Age predecessors are still not
clear.
The early stages of the development of Greek
civilisation saw a pattern that was maintained throughout
Greek history: the formation of small, independent city-
states. During the three centuries from 1000 B.C. to around
700 B.C., the Greeks laid the foundations of later cultural
developments. This period of internal growth led to a
century of expansion abroad, throughout the
Mediterranean world, during which Greek city-states
established colonies from Italy to Egypt to Asia Minor.
The result was contact with other cultures, in
particular those of Egypt and western Asia, which
revolutionised the economy and intellectual life of the
Greek city-states. During this period, in many of them,
individual strong leaders (known as tyrants) replaced the
former aristocratic ruling class. By the time Greece was
faced with the threat of invasion by the mighty Persian
Empire, shortly after 500 B.C., the two leading cities in the
Greek world were Sparta, a conservative military oligarchy,
and Athens, which had moved from aristocratic rule to a
form of democracy.
 With the Persians finally repulsed, the 5th century B.C.
saw the high point of Classical culture, while at the same
time the Athenians and Spartans, together with their
respective allies, prepared for confrontation. By the end of
the century, the Peloponnesian War was over, leaving
Athens defeated, and over the following decades city-
states fought for leadership before unity finally came,
imposed by rule under Philip of Macedon. The brief if
spectacular reign of Philip's son, Alexander the Great,
carried Greek culture throughout the territories of Asia that
he conquered. In the succeeding Hellenistic period,
Alexander's conquests fell into three separate kingdoms:
Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Asia, and Antigonid Europe.
The Greeks, for all their intellectual achievements,
never managed to create political unity. The Romans, their
eventual conquerors and successors in the Classical world,
built an empire which spread the culture of Classical
Antiquity throughout much of Europe and North Africa, and
large parts of Asia. Founded in the mid-8th century B.C.,
Rome fell under the domination of the Etruscans before
emerging as an independent republic around 500 B.C. After
a period of consolidation, during which aristocratic
patricians and the mass of the population - the plebeians –
hammered out a series of political compromises, the
Romans began to expand outside Italy.
The first conquests of the Romans were in the western
Mediterranean, where they faced off against the
Carthaginians. Roman power subsequently spread east,
absorbing Greece, Egypt, and much of western Asia.
External expansion, adding to internal strains, eventually
led to the collapse of republican political institutions and to
civil war.
 After a century of political violence, rule by the
leading families and personalities of the republic would be
replaced by a system of monarchy. Octavian, the adopted
son of Julius Caesar, became the first emperor under the
name Augustus. The last five centuries of Roman
domination brought a renewed period of consolidation,
followed by a long, slow decline. By the time Roman power
disappeared in the West, a new set of religious and
philosophical beliefs had become established: Christianity.
The eastern part of the Roman world continued to exist in
the form of the Byzantine Empire.
The Greek contribution to the Western tradition laid
the foundations for how we think – and talk – about many of
the issues that continue to dominate our lives: politics,
human relations, the economy, the arts and sciences. First
under Alexander, and then for centuries under the Romans,
Greek ideas circulated on three continents. The Romans
themselves created a multiethnic empire which brought
extended periods of peace to the Mediterranean world,
while devising a legal system which remained one of their
most durable achievements, and, with the acceptance and
spread of Christianity, established the other great tradition
of Western culture. From the Western perspective, the
world of Classical Antiquity is fundamental in
understanding our past