The Classical Age is usually defined as the era between 8th Century B.C. and 6th Century A.D. The Mediterranean, known then as the inner sea, and the people who lived on its shores, serves as the fulcrum for the study of this time period. The Phoenicians, Persians, Etruscans, Gauls, Celts, Goths and others play critical roles but it is the Greek and Roman civilizations which dominate. For the purpose of this post I consider the age to have begun with the origin of the Greek myths and to have ended with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, since it marked the final end of the Byzantine Empire, the last remnants of the Romans, and an interesting fusion of Roman and Greek culture.

For centuries, the West has been enamored with Ancient Greece and Rome, and I confess to being similarly fascinated.  Not only did the political philosophies of that time and place form the inspiration of our current republic, but it is a time in history (a term itself derived from the ancient Herodotus) in which the actions of men rise out of the mists of myth and legend.  Zeus, Athena, and the other gods are joined by Achilles and Hector of Homer’s Iliad, and later by the Persians, Spartans, Legionnaires, power mad Roman Emperors and stoic philosophers.  However, fundamentally, I find immersing myself in the world of the ancients as a means to study the human condition absent the prejudice and immediacy of the present.  The below is a small sample to begin that journey.

Alexander the Great by Robert Lane Fox

“No man, and only one hero, had been called invincible before him, and then only by a poet”

Few, if any, of the Ancients had such a powerful draw in their own era as Alexander the Great. Dead by the age of 32, he had already conquered the known world, reaching at his furthest, deep into India. Julius Caesar is said to have cried at a monument to Alexander for not yet having accomplished as much at the same age. Robert Lane Fox’s book does an incredible job explaining all the complexity and contradictions of Alexander. The relationship between Alexander and his great father Philip of Macedon (whose murder remains a mystery till today). Fox captures Alexander’s physical courage and strategic vision, his apparent desire for cultural fusion with the people he conquered, as well as his rages and his drinking bouts. Parsing through the limited original scholarship from the era and combining it with modern archaeological discoveries, Fox captures the essence of the man without losing the romance which draws one to the story of Alexander all these years later.

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland

” To the cheers and boos of spectators, charioteer and nobleman alike would make their drive for glory, knowing that the risk of failure was precisely what gave value to success.”

Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (SPQR), the Senate and People of Rome-this clarion call still rings today. The symbol of Rome’s greatness is displayed on every manhole cover in modern Rome and on many a tattooed arm of American soldiers in our most recent wars. It, like all slogans, means many things to many people. However, at its core, it is a compact between the citizens of Rome and the city’s political elites. It is a hint that in spite of Rome’s long reign as an Empire with Emperors it rose to glory first as a republic.

How then did the Roman Republic end? The HBO series Rome is an excellent dramatization of the destructive civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey that led to the end of the Republic. Tom Holland takes a slightly different take in his excellent and accessible book. He describes the increasingly fierce competition between Roman elites for political power in the years before the Civil War. In addition, one gets a sense of the growing income inequality – fueled paradoxically by Rome’s military conquests and the explosion of a slave based economy – and the subsequent popular mobilization of the underclass to redress such inequality. Legal machinations and back room deals are used to thwart reforms and ultimately lead to war. Of all the great histories of the Classical age I have read, this is the most timely, compact, and dramatic rendering of a civilization disturbingly close to our own.

The History of the Byzantine Empire: From its Glory to its Downfall by Charles Oman

“When a State contains masses of men who devote their whole energies to a repulsively selfish attempt to save their own individual souls, while letting the world around them slide on as best it may, then the body politic is diseased.”

I have repeatedly been drawn to histories written in the last century of even earlier ancient times; thanks -in part-to the easy availability of older historical narratives as e-books online.  As I read and have begun to write history myself, I have found that modern historians, especially popular ones, rarely have different primary sources but do write with the burden of seeing the world through our modern lens and prejudice.  I am not immune to seeing dangerous parallels between our times and, for example, the decline of the Roman Republic (see above). However, it is useful to remember that English historians writing in the late nineteenth century-arguably the height of British power-also saw parallels between ancient calamity and a possible future for their society.

One day, in the course of my life, I will complete the multi-year epic that is Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  In the meantime, I continue to seek out other, more manageable, works on the Roman Empire, Medieval ages, etc. A great example of which is The History of the Byzantine Empire by Charles Oman.  Oman was a lecturer at Oxford University in the late nineteen hundreds.  However, this work is no dry old academic text. In this book published in 1892, he colorfully tells the story of the Byzantine Empire from the decision of the Roman Emperor Constantine to make the city on the Bosphorus his capital, then called Constantinople, to the final collapse of his Greek Successors overrun by the Ottoman Forces of Mehmet the Second in 1453.  With always interesting, and occasionally biting commentary, he describes the rise of the Eastern Roman Empire, its gradual adoption of Greek vice Latin culture, its increasing reliance on foreign mercenaries, its inexorable slow decline hastened by marauding Western European crusaders, and its final collapse at the hands of a new, more dynamic and combative force.

Roland Minez is a co-founder of Pushing Horizons.

Disclaimer: All views expressed are that of the author.