Ancient Greece and Rome: an Overview
ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME: AN OVERVIEW DR LEWIS WEBB, CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY / ANTIKENS KULTUR OCH SAMHÄLLSLIV UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Structure Introduction Civilization? Why study Ancient Greece and Rome? Primary sources Secondary sources Ancient Greece Ancient Rome UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Civilization? What is civilization? ‘Civilization’ often equated with ‘society’. Culturally-bound concept. Always contested and argued over. Often used to hierarchise and judge societies, e.g. one civilization is judged more ‘civilized’ than another. Arrogant, paternalistic, Euro-centric view: Kenneth Clark, 1969, Civilisation: https://youtu.be/JxEJn7dWY60?t=213 ‘I think I can recognise it when I see it ’. Oxford English Dictionary s.v. civilisation (3 a-c): 1. The state or condition of being civilized; human cultural, social, and intellectual development when considered to be advanced and progressive in nature. Also in extended use. 2. The culture, society, and way of life of a particular country, region, epoch, or group. 3. A particular culture, society, and way of life as characteristic of a community of people; (also) a civilized society. UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG Civilization? Even in antiquity, Greek and Roman communities contrasted their own societies with others, deeming their own to be more civilized and others ‘barbaric’, for example Greek communities and the Persians, and Romans and the Celtic and Germanic communíties. Ancient Greek: βάρβαρος (barbaros) – non-Greek, foreign. Latin: barbarus – non-Greek, non-Roman, foreign, strange; civis – citizen; civitas – citizenship, community, polity; civilis – citizen-like, civil, polite, urbane. Prof. Mary Beard (Cambridge) in Civilisations: How do we look (2018): “I am even more concerned than [Kenneth] Clark with the discontents and debates around the idea of civilisation, and with how that rather fragile concept is justified and defended.
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