The book cover such a wide time--from about 4000 BC until the Islamic invasions of Syria and Spain in the seventh century--and a wide area--all of the Mediterranean civilizations--that there can be little unity of theme to it. It falls in five major areas: the ancient Near East, Egypt, Greece, the Hellenistic city-states, and Rome, which really ought to be subdivided into the rise of the Roman republic and the establishment and eventual decline of the Roman empire. But really, while the book covers the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, the Israelite, the Gauls, the Germans, etc., etc., the emphasis of the book is in the title--Egypt, Greece, and Rome, with well over half of the book devoted to Rome.
The book is really about the rise of city culture in the different Mediterranean civilizations. Cities in the Tigris-Euphrates valley center on the control of water and the creation of surplus grain. With the incipient cities of the ancient near east--Uruk, Ur, Eridu--by about 3000 BC, also come the first kings that we know of, although it is interesting to note that these kings often shared power with the merchant classes as trading became widespread. Egypt was a bit different in its development as abundance was created by the natural cycle of flooding of the Nile river, and the Pharaoh became a symbol of the cosmic harmony that enabled this cycle. The infamous Sargon subjugated a large portion of the Tigris-Euphrates valley in establishing the first known empire in about 2300 BC, and the even more famous Hamurabi promulgated his law code some 500 years later. But something brought these civilizations to a screeching halt about 1100 BC or so--volcanic eruptions?, new methods of warfare?, the sea people? Freeman doesn't go into any depth for the reasons for the decline. Out of the ruins of this "Dark Age" appear the neo-Assyrians, the Israelites, and a bit later, the Greeks. Egypt appears to get back on track, and the Babylonians appear again as power players. Soon enough, new bad boys--at least to the Greeks, Egyptians and Babylonians--take over the Near East, the Persians.
For me, things take off with the late archaic culture of the Greek peoples who begin populating first the eastern Mediterranean with colonies that eventually spread across north Africa and as far west as Spain as well as across the Black Sea. Then begins the "power to the people" movement that eventually led to the rise and spread of democracy. Freeman characterizes Greek cities as a place where people could hammer out the rules of living together--the rise of politics. This was "the dawning of a new age, that of the city state, where justice can perhaps be made a reality," and the city becomes a place of communal bonding contrasted to earlier cities which served more to glorify the ruler. In Athens, especially, this came about with the reforms of Salon as order threatened to break down under the increasing debts owed by the lower classes to the aristocrats. This was also a time when wealth and opportunity were spread to a lot more people with the massive migrations of Greeks throughout the Mediterranean world. Aristocrats were becoming more and more dependent on the citizens to serve as soldiers, first with the small land owners becoming hoplites and later with even poorer citizens needed to row the triremes of the Athenian navies.
This need to hammer out disputes in the public forums also led to the "incentive to find first principles from which debate could begin." The ability to speak and argue in public forums put an increasing premium on the facility of reasoning, especially in the cities of the Ionian coast, probably the richest cities in the Greek world at the time, and led to searching for the underlying forces of the universe. "This attempt to give a single, rational account of the natural order can be seen as a key movement in the evolution of western culture, and eventually the first formulations of philosophy. "The archaic age deserves to be seen as one where a particular attitude of mind took root, perhaps, as been suggested, because of the intensity of life in the polis. It involved the search for an understanding of the physical world free of restraints imposed by those cultures which still lived in the shadow of threatening gods." At the same time, a revival of aristocratic values in the face of threats from the Persian empire--arete, glory, manliness, and valor--become important in the defense of liberty. Now man and his freedom become the measure of all things.
This could not last. Hubris, or overweening pride, brought about the fall of the Athenian empire, and the rise of Macedonia put a demise to the independence of the Greek polis. At the same time, however, Alexander and his armies spread Greek culture and city life, along with the development and glorification of the individual, throughout the region. Alexander's tutor, Aristotle, suggests "that there is an underlying purpose to nature, that of the fulfillment of every living being through the correct use of the attributes it possesses....the highest state that all human beings should aim for, is eudaemonia, happiness."
Macedonia also established a new political system for the polis, however, the monarchy. The army and the nobility owed loyalty to the king, not to the city or the state, and the divine right of kings became the norm in the Hellenistic empires. Alexander's legacy was "a form of monarchy, based on absolute power, an aura of divinity, and conspicuous consumption," a legacy later picked up by the Roman emperors and eventually most of the rulers of Europe until the French revolution.
Then come the Romans. To tell the truth, I'm beginning to lose steam on them. They are the baddest bullies of the ancient world--in a world full of bullies--and probably most responsible for who we have become. There are just times when I find myself pulling for Hannibal or the Gauls or Philip, knowing the outcome in advance. There's the dreadful certainty of a militaristic group first conquering Latium, then the Etruscans, the Samnites, the Carthaginians, Asia Minor, Greece, and Egypt: from Britain to Mesopotamia and essentially all points in between. And somewhere along the way the Romans decide to take on each other. When the Gracchi brothers try to reform the practices of the aristocracy seeking to hoard the new found wealth of the republic, violence takes over the politics of the city leading first to Sulla, then Pompey, Julius Caesar, and Augustus, who establishes a military dictatorship. Short intervals of peace and order give way to more civil wars and military dictatorships, interspersed with emperors who border on the criminally insane--Caligula, Nero, Commodus, Caracalla, etc--with the famed Roman legions running amok on occasion. Eventually the price of keeping the empire was just too great--over 70% of the state's resources went to the military. By the time that Constantine pulled out of Rome in 325, a general "systems collapse" appears to have begun, at least in the west.
When you get down to it, the development of western civilization in the Mediterranean basin really seems to be about the rich wanting to continually line their own pockets. Greed drives the world, whether its Sargon demanding tribute from the conquered cities of Sumer or Roman emperors plundering the continents for lavish shows of consumption and wealth. The same greed also drives the development of the best and the brightest--the sudden influx of wealth built the glories of Athens and Rome. But maybe its also when the wealth and glory and power begin to recede that the impulse to look inward and individual growth takes over. Or, maybe, the politics of scarcity lead just to meanness and strife. In any case, it seems to be where our civilization is headed these days.
Author: Freeman, Charles
Date Published: 2004
Length: 736 pp
electronic print
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