Download Classical Civilizations of the West: Persia, Greece and Rome

Classical Civilizations of the West:
Persia, Greece and Rome
The Overview
Sterns World Civilizations Chapter 4
Plato The Republic (146 and 149)
Horace “Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria
Mori”(173)
World History and the West
 In the interest of being more global and less “Eurocentric”,
the text combines what had been three different “chapters” in
the traditional narrative: Persia, Greece and Rome
 In the west, the histories of Greece and Rome had been
romanticized (pun not intended) to the exclusion of other
places
 This text works to address this
 AP World History curriculum: only 20% Europe
 AP offers a European History course
Classical Persia
 Persia would emerge and reemerge throughout world
history- The latest reincarnation being the Islamic Republic of
Iran
 Classical Persia united under the religious of Zoroastrianism
 Classical Persia played a major rule in the rise of Judaism as
well as classical Greece
 Religious tolerance, effective and developed roads were the
hallmark of classical Persia
Classical Greece
 Greek history re-emerged after a Dark Age by the 8th Century BC-
Hellenic Greece
 Competing city-states (polises) experimented with various forms of
government
 Many ideas re-emerged in the early modern period of history (like
democracy)
 Wars would both unite and divide Greek polises
 Many Greek cities supported philosophers who would lay the
foundation for modern western science and mathematics
 Outsiders (Macedonians) united and expanded Greek culture
throughout the Middle East (Hellenistic Greece)
 Greek culture and lands would be absorbed into the Roman Empire by
the beginning of the Common Era
Classical Rome
 Rome grew from a city-state to a Mediterranean Empire
 Roman expansion would fuse Greek and Latin culture and spread
it- The cultural legacy is most pronounced in Europe today
 As a republic, Roman leaders struggled to maintain order and it
became an Empire at the dawn of the Common Era
 For nearly 200 years, Roman armies and Roman order would
dominate from Britain to Egypt and the Middle East
 Slavery would be a common feature in Greece and Rome