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Classical antiquity Portal

Classical antiquity (also the classical era or classical period) is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

It is conventionally taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the decline of the Roman Empire (5th century). It ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity (AD 300-600), blending into the Early Middle Ages (AD 500-1000).

Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. "Classical antiquity" typically refers to an idealized vision of later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe\'s words, "the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome!"

The civilization of the ancient Greeks has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, art and architecture of the modern world, fueling the Renaissance in Western Europe and again resurgent during various neo-classical revivals in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Archaic period (8th to 6th centuries BC)

Further information: Iron Age Europe

The earliest period of Classical Antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse. The 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the later half of the 8th century. Homer is usually assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century, and his lifetime is often taken as marking the beginning of Classical Antiquity. In the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC.

Phoenicians

Main article: Phoenicia

The Phoenicians originally expanded from Levantine ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean. Carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had firmly established strongholds in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia, which brought about conflicts of interest with Etruria.

Greece

Main article: Archaic period in Greece

Greece according to the Iliad.

The Archaic period followed the Greek Dark Ages, and saw significant advancements in political theory, and the rise of democracy, philosophy, theatre, poetry, as well as the revitalisation of the written language (which had been lost during the Dark Ages). In pottery, the Archaic period sees the development of the Orientalizing style, which signals a shift from the Geometric Style of the later Dark Ages and the accumulation of influences derived from Phoenicia and Syria.

Pottery styles associated with the later part of the Archaic age are the black-figure pottery, which originated in Corinth during the 7th century BC and its successor, the red-figure style, developed by the Andokides Painter in about 530 BC.

Greek colonies

Main articles: Apoikiai and Magna Graecia

Greek influence in the mid 6th century BC.

Map of Phoenician and Greek colonies at about 550 BCE.

Iron Age Italy

The Etruscans had established political control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic and monarchial elite. The Etruscans apparently lost power in the area by the late 6th century BC, and at this point, the Italic tribes reinvented their government by creating a republic, with much greater restraints on the ability of rulers to exercise power.Ancient Rome and the Roman Empire by Michael Kerrigan. Dorling Kindersley, London: 2001. ISBN 0-7894-8153-7. page 12.

Roman Kingdom

Main article: Roman kingdom

According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, Romulus and Remus.Adkins, 1998. page 3. As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines.Myths and Legends- Rome, the Wolf, and Mars. Accessed 2007-3-8.

Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid 8th century BC, though settlements on the Palatine Hill may date back to the 10th century BC.[Matyszak, 2003. page 19.Duiker, 2001. page 129.

The seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Tarquinius was of Etruscan birth. It was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power Tarquinius removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, enraging the people of Rome. The people came to object to his rule when he allowed the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretia\'s kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus (ancestor to Marcus Brutus), summoned the Senate and had Tarquinius and the monarchy expelled from Rome in 510 BC. After Tarquinius\' expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC.

Classical Greece (5th to 4th centuries BC)

Main article: Classical Greece

Delian League ("Athenian Empire"), right before the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC.

The classical period of Ancient Greece, corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. (i.e. from the fall of the Athenian tyranny in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC).

In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras.

The Greco-Persian Wars (499-449 BC), concluded by the Peace of Callias resulted in the dominant position of Athens in the Delian League, which led to conflict with Sparta and the Peloponnesian League, resulting in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), ending in a Spartan victory.

Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony. But by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes, and Corinth, the latter two formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. Then the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive victory at Leuctra (371 BC). The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban hegemony. Thebes sought to maintain its position until finally eclipsed by the rising power of Macedon in 346 BC.

Under Philip II, (359–336 BC), Macedon expanded into the territory of the Paionians, Thracians, and Illyrians. Philip\'s son Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) managed to briefly extend Macedonian power not only over the central Greek city-states, but also to the Persian empire, including Egypt and lands as far east as the fringes of India. The classical period conventionally ends at the death of Alexander in 323 BC and the fragmentation of his empire, divided among the Diadochi.

Hellenistic period (330 to 146 BC)

Main article: Hellenistic period

Further information: Hellenistic philosophy and Hellenistic religion

Classical Greece entered the Hellenistic period with the rise of Macedon and the conquests of Alexander the Great. Greek becomes the lingua franca far beyond Greece itself, and Hellenistic culture interacts with the cultures of Persia, Central Asia, India and Egypt. Significant advances are made in the sciences (geography, astronomy, mathematics etc.), notably with the followers of Aristotle (Aristotelianism).

The Hellenistic period ended with the rise of the Roman Republic to a super-regional power in the 2nd century BC and the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC.

Roman Republic (5th to 1st centuries BC)

The Roman Forum was the central area around which ancient Rome developed.

The extent of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in 218 BC (dark red), 133 BC (light red), 44 BC (orange), AD 14 (yellow), after AD 14 (green), and maximum extension under Trajan 117 (light green).

Main article: Roman Republic

Further information: culture of ancient Rome

The republican period of Ancient Rome began with the overthrow of the Monarchy c.509 BC and lasted over 450 years until its subversion, through a series of civil wars, into the Principate form of government and the Imperial period. During the half millennium of the Republic, Rome rose from a regional power of the Latium to the dominant force in Italy and beyond. The unification of Italy under Roman hegemony was a gradual process, brought about in a series of conflicts of the 4th and 3rd centuries, the Samnite Wars, Latin War, and Pyrrhic War. Roman victory in the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars established Rome as a super-regional power by the 2nd century BC, followed up by the acquisition of Greece and Asia Minor. This tremendous increase of power was accompanied by economic instability and social unrest, leading to the Catiline conspiracy, the Social War and the First Triumvirate, and finally the transformation to the Roman Empire in the latter half of the 1st century BC.

Ancient Rome contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today.

Roman Empire (1st century BC to 5th century AD)

Main article: Roman Empire

The extent of the Roman Empire under Trajan 117

Determining the precise end of the Republic is a task of dispute by modern historians;The precise event which signaled the transition of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire is a matter of interpretation. Historians have proposed the appointment of Julius Caesar as perpetual dictator (44 BC), the Battle of Actium (2 September 31 BC), and the Roman Senate\'s grant of Octavian\'s extraordinary powers under the first settlement (January 16, 27 BC), as candidates for the defining pivotal event. Roman citizens of the time did not recognize that the Republic had ceased to exist. The early Julio-Claudian "Emperors" maintained that the res publica still existed, albeit under the protection of their extraordinary powers, and would eventually return to its full Republican form. The Roman state continued to call itself a res publica as long as it continued to use Latin as its official language.

Rome acquired imperial character de facto from the 130s BC with the acquisition of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyria, Greece and Iberia, and definitely with the addition of Iudaea, Asia and Gaul in the 1st century BC. At the time of the empire\'s maximal extension under Trajan (117 AD), Rome controlled the entire Mediterranean as well as Gaul, parts of Germania and Britannia, the Balkans, Dacia, Asia Minor, the Caucasus and Mesopotamia.

Culturally, the Roman Empire was significantly hellenized, but also saw the rise of syncratic "eastern" traditions, such as Mithraism, Gnosticism, and most notably Christianity. The empire began to decline in the crisis of the third century

Late Antiquity (4th to 6th centuries AD)

The Western and Eastern Roman Empires by 476

Main articles: Late Antiquity and Migration period

Late Antiquity sees the rise of Christianity under Constantine I, finally ousting Roman imperial cult with the Theodosian decrees of 393. Successive invasions of Germanic tribes finalize the decline of the Western Empire in the 5th century, while the Eastern Empire persists throughout the Middle Ages as the Byzantine Empire. Hellenistic philosophy is succeeded by continued developments in Neoplatonism and Epicureanism, with Neoplatonism in due course influencing the theology of the Church Fathers.

Many individuals have attempted to put a specific date on the symbolic "end" of antiquity with the most prominent dates being the deposing of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476, the closing of the last Platonic Academy by Justinian I in 529, or the invasion of Italy in 535 by the forces of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. This last act, ironically, resulted in damage or destruction to Rome and much of the Italian countryside, inorexorably and permanently altering the socioeconomic structure of classical Rome.

Some historians even place the symbolic end of antiquity at the death of Justinian I in 565, owing to the fact that Justinian was the last emperor to speak Latin and the last to use wholly Roman (as opposed to Greek) customs and rules for his court and government. Ultimately, though, it was a slow, complex, and graduated change in the socioeconomic structure in European history that led to the changeover between Classical Antiquity and Medieval society and no specific date can truly exemplify that.

Revivalism

Further information: Carolingian Renaissance, Ottonian Renaissance, Renaissance, Classical studies, and Classicism

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia\'s quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (October 2006)

In the 18th and 19th centuries reverence for classical antiquity was much greater in Western Europe and the United States than it is today. Respect for the ancients of Greece and Rome affected politics, philosophy, sculpture, literature, theatre, education, and even architecture and sexuality.

In politics, the presence of a Roman Emperor was felt to be desirable long after the empire fell. This tendency reached its peak when Charlemagne was crowned "Roman Emperor" in the year 800, an act which led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire. The notion that an emperor is a monarch who outranks a mere king dates from this period. In this political ideal, there would always be a Roman Empire, a state whose jurisdiction extended to the entire civilized western world.

Epic poetry in Latin continued to be written and circulated well into the nineteenth century. John Milton and even Arthur Rimbaud got their first poetic education in Latin. Genres like epic poetry, pastoral verse, and the endless use of characters and themes from Greek mythology left a deep mark on Western literature.

In architecture, there have been several Greek Revivals, which seem more inspired in retrospect by Roman architecture than Greek. Still, one needs only to look at Washington, DC to see a city filled with large marble buildings with façades made out to look like Roman temples, with columns constructed in the classical orders of architecture.

In philosophy, the efforts of St Thomas Aquinas were derived largely from the thought of Aristotle, despite the intervening change in religion from paganism to Christianity. Greek and Roman authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen formed the foundation of the practice of medicine even longer than Greek thought prevailed in philosophy. In the French theatre, tragedians such as Molière and Racine wrote plays on mythological or classical historical subjects and subjected them to the strict rules of the classical unities derived from Aristotle\'s Poetics. The desire to dance like a latter-day vision of how the ancient Greeks did it moved Isadora Duncan to create her brand of ballet.

The Renaissance discovery of Classical Antiquity is a book by Roberto Weiss on how the renaissance was partly caused by the rediscovery of classic antiquity.

"Classical antiquity", then, is the contemporary vision of Greek and Roman culture by their admirers from the more recent past. It remains a vision that many people in the twenty-first century continue to find compelling.

Subtopics

Geographical:

• Ancient Greece
• Hellenistic Greece
• Ancient Rome
• Dacia
• Roman Dacia
• Roman Britain
• Roman Iberia
• Ancient Macedonia
• Ancient Troy
• Gaul
• Ancient history of Cyprus
• Carthage
• The Balkans in classical antiquity
• Late Antiquity

Topical:

• Classical architecture
• Classical orders
• Classical education

Timeline

Main article: Timeline of Classical Antiquity

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 bar:title  
 from:start till:-510 width:14 color:gray1
 from:-510 till:-323 width:14 color:gray2
 from:-323 till:-146 width:14 color:gray3
 from:-146 till:300 width:14 color:gray4
 from:300 till:end width:14 color:gray5

 bar:asia
 from:start till:-609 shift:(10,-4) color:brown text:Neo-Assyrian Empire
 from:-559 till:-330 shift:(20,-4) color:brown text:"Persian Empire"
 from:-285 till:-150 shift:(20,-4) color:red text:"Seleucids"
 from:-133 till:392 shift:(20,-4)  color:orange  text:Roman Asia
 from:392 till:end shift:(20,-4) color:brown text:"Sassanids"

 bar:greece
 from:-750 till:-510 shift:(20,-4) color:red text:Archaic Greece
 from:-510 till:-323 shift:(20,-4) color:red text:Classical Greece
 from:-323 till:-146 shift:(15,-4) color:red text:Hellenistic Greece
 from:-146 till:300 shift:(20,-4) color:orange text:Roman Greece
 from:300 till:end shift:(20,-4) color:orange text:Eastern Empire

 bar:rome
 from:-753 till:-509 shift:(20,-4) color:orange text:Roman Kingdom
 from:-509 till:-31 shift:(20,-4) color:orange text:Roman Republic
 from:-31 till:286 shift:(20,-4) color:orange text:Roman Empire
 from:286 till:476 shift:(20,-4) color:orange text:Western Empire

 width:10
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 bar:lives
 from:-638 till:-558 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Solon
 from:-535 till:-475 shift:(10,-2) color:yellow text:Herodotus
 from:-470 till:-399 shift:(30,-2) color:yellow text:Socrates
 from:-384 till:-322 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Aristotle
 from:-287 till:-212 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Archimedes
 from:-190 till:-159 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Terence
 from:-102 till:-44 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Julius Cesar
 from:10 till:64 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Paul
 from:90 till:168 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Ptolemy
 from:205 till:270 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Plotinus
 from:347 till:420 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Jerome
 from:454 till:526 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Theoderic

 bar:lives2
 from:-700 till:-630 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Lycurgus
 from:-582 till:-496 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Pythagoras
 from:-495 till:-429 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Pericles
 from:-356 till:-323 shift:(0,-2) color:yellow text:Alexander
 from:-276 till:-194 shift:(10,-2) color:yellow text:Erathostenes
 from:-190 till:-120 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Hipparchus
 from:-70 till:-19 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Virgil
 from:23 till:79 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Pliny
 from:168 till:254 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Origen
 from:280 till:337 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Constantine
 from:354 till:430 shift:(28,-2) color:yellow text:Augustine
 from:480 till:525 shift:(20,-2) color:yellow text:Boethius

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 at:-776 text:First Olympiad
 at:-582 text:Pythian Games
 from:-499 till:-448 shift:(70,-4) align:center color:events text:Persian Wars
 from:-431 till:-404 shift:(70,-4) align:center color:events text:Peloponnesian War
 at:-390 text:sack of Rome
 from:-323 till:-180 shift:(140,-4) align:center color:events text:Wars of the Diadochi
 from:-264 till:-241 shift:(55,-4) align:center color:events text:First Punic War
 from:-218 till:-201 shift:(60,-4) align:center color:events text:Second Punic War
 from:-60 till:-53 shift:(48,-4) align:center color:events text:First Triumvirate
 at:-49 text:Caesar\'s civil war
 from:-27 till:-14 shift:(35,-4) align:center color:events text:Augustus
 at:69 text:Year of the Four Emperors
 from:96 till:180 shift:(102,-4) align:center color:events text:Five Good Emperors
 from:166 till:180 shift:(60,-4) align:center color:events text:Marcomannic Wars
 at:325 text:Nicaea
 from:376 till:382 shift:(36,-4) align:center color:events text:Gothic War
 at:393 text:Theodosian decrees
 at:455 text:sack of Rome

Notes

See also

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia