READING 7.2.5 GRECO- ROMAN CIVILISATION Macquarie University Big History School: Core

Lexile® measure: 1100L MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY BIG HISTORY SCHOOL: CORE - READING 7.2.5. CIVILISATION: GRECO-ROMAN - 1100L 2

Greco-Roman civilisation lasted in the Mediterranean region for thousands of years. They have left behind a huge legacy in Europe, Africa, and the wider world even to this day. Ancient Greece and Rome serve as classic examples of agrarian civilisations. GRECO- ROMAN CIVILISATION By David Baker

KEY FEATURES: AGRARIAN SURPLUS: The first agriculture to emerge in Europe was in Greece around 9000 years ago, or roughly 7000 BCE. It only really began to take hold in Greece around 6300 BCE. By 5000 BCE, agriculture had spread to Italy. And by 4000 BCE, there were early farming communities across the continent of Europe. The cultures that are recognisably Greek began around 3000 BCE. The first agrarian civilisation to transition from early farming in the Greek peninsula was Mycenaean Greece starting 1600 BCE. It had cities, writing, organised religion, and a clear division of labour. Italy meanwhile had gone through waves of migration of early agrarian peoples from 2500 BCE to 800 BCE. Even the Greeks began establishing colonies in the south of the Italian peninsula. The forerunners of ancient Rome were the Etruscans who inhabited the region and built up a complex agrarian civilisation. The date usually assigned to the establishment of the city-state of Rome is 753 BCE. Greco-Roman agriculture consisted of olives, grapes, grains, and fruits. MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY BIG HISTORY SCHOOL: CORE - READING 7.2.5. CIVILISATION: GRECO-ROMAN - 1100L 3

ORGANISED RELIGION: The pantheon of the Greeks were gods and WARFARE: One of the key sources of both Greek and Roman success goddesses that looked remarkably human. Including many recognisable were their military tactics. The Greeks had their highly effective phalanx human faults. The Romans meanwhile did not initially have gods that formations. The Roman legions had numerous formations of their own resembled humans, but were instead a spirit that exerted a certain that proved even more effective. The benefits of both formations was to amount of magical force. But when contact between the Greeks have tightly packed soldiers who could both defend each other and cluster and Romans increased, the Romans adopted many of the Greek on the battlefield. When a soldier was either exhausted or killed, another personifications of their own gods. As this relationship continued to build, soldier could immediately take their place. Greco-Roman foot soldiers much of the Greco-Roman pantheon became very similar, differing only were also aided by cavalry which could roam the battlefield and break-up by the names assigned to the gods. The religion was administered by a enemy formations, not to mention run down men as they tried to flee. priesthood that had a lot of political power. In fact, there was very little MONUMENTAL ARCHITECTURE: Both the Greeks and Romans are well division between church and state. Even political ceremonies and votes known for their many displays of monumental architecture. Architecture were considered to have a religious or spiritual character. was used to enforce both their authority and to assert their culture in RULER/CENTRAL GOVERNMENT: The Greco-Roman culture foreign lands. These pieces of architecture could take the form of great experimented with a variety of forms of government. For instance, the statues or pillars, temples or public buildings. One of the most famous city-state of Athens was for a time a direct democracy. Rather than Greek displays of monumental architecture is the Parthenon at the electing representatives, adult male citizens of Athens could vote directly Acropolis in Athens. It is a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena. One on the institution of new laws. The Romans had overthrown their king of the most iconic Roman pieces of architecture is the Colosseum in Rome in the 6th century BCE and established a republic where they elected itself, a place where emperors staged many spectacles to crowds of tens of representatives to a Senate. Athenian democracy was at first threatened thousands of people. by Spartan conquest and was later extinguished by the conquest of RISE & FALL: Phillip II, father of Alexander the Great. The Roman Senate meanwhile was undermined by various dictators over the years, including Julius From 336 to 323 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered much of the known Caesar. His adopted son, Augustus, instituted direct rule of an emperor, world, laying low the Persian Empire, and marched as far east as modern making the Senate impotent. Over the following centuries, the position of Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush. When Alexander died in 323 BCE, his emperor became sacralised into a royal one. empire was split between his generals. In Greece itself, things declined greatly and there was a long stretch of warfare between cities in the DIVISION OF LABOUR & SOCIAL HIERARCHY: Greco-Roman society peninsula. Taking advantage of this division, the Romans conquered had a full division of labour. While the majority of the population were Greece in 146 BCE. engaged in farming, there was a multitude of professions. Everything from bureaucrats, to soldiers, to poets and philosophers, to scribes, As for Rome itself, they conquered much of the Italian peninsula between architects, doctors, and priests. The hierarchy of Greco-Roman society 500 and 300 BCE. Between 264 and 149 BCE, Rome fought a brutal was composed of very wealthy aristocrats who owned vast estates and series of wars against Carthage ultimately resulting in the destruction slaves. Further down the hierarchy were citizens of various kinds, below of Carthage itself. This made Rome the masters of the Western them the “freedmen” of slave backgrounds. At the bottom of society was a Mediterranean. Egypt, Mesopotamia, France, Britain, and large parts huge number of slaves – reaching a peak of 30 or 40% of the population. of Eastern Europe were also conquered by Rome as the centuries went by. Rome’s power was at its height in the 2nd century CE. However, in the WRITING: Both Greece and Rome had systems of writing. The Mycenaean 200s and 300s CE, Rome had difficulty keeping their empire together as form of writing was lost in the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE. a series of civil wars, break-ups, and invasions weakened them. This state Subsequently Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet. The Greeks of decay was taken advantage of by the Germanic invasions. After slowly developed many versions of this alphabet over the years. The Romans are losing piece after piece of territory to the Germanic tribes, the Western said to have adopted their Latin alphabet by modifying one from a Greek Roman Empire fell in 476 CE, The Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine colony in southern Italy. Greco-Roman writings captured much of their Empire) remained until of the fall Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 CE. history, although many of them were lost for many centuries until they began to be rediscovered in monasteries or translated from Arabic copies in the Renaissance period. MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY BIG HISTORY SCHOOL: CORE - READING 7.2.5. CIVILISATION: GRECO-ROMAN - 1100L 4

REFERNCES Baker, David. Winter is Coming: The Birth and Death of Humanity and the Universe. (in press) Christian, David. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Christian, David and Cynthia Stokes Brown and Craig Benjamin. Big History: Between Nothing and Everything. New York: McGraw Hill, 2014. Earle, Timothy. How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Gates, Charles. Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. 2nd edition. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011. McNeill, J.R. and William H. McNeill. The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History. New York: W.W. Norton, 2003.

IMAGE CREDITS ‘Remains of the Pheonician City, Roman Temple, Roman Architecture’ Credit: UNESCO/ Dominique Roger, http://en.unesco.org/mediabank/10765/ Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 IGO (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/). ‘Augustus of Prima Porta’ Credit: Till Niermann/Vatican Museums https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue-Augustus.jpg

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