Author’s Prologue
Forsomeonewhoclaimstobeahistorianoftheancientworld,tolookboth
backonwhathehimselfhaswrittenandforwardtowhatmightbewritten
byothers is salutaryand stimulating, but also disturbing. Fora start,what
weconventionallycall‘‘theancientworld,’’namelytheMediterraneanand
the areas which were in contact with it, from the second millennium..
to (perhaps) the reign of Justinian or the early Islamic conquests,was not
‘‘theworld’’ at all, but onlya modest part of it. Central Asia, Afghanistan,
the Indian sub-continent, and Sri Lanka do indeed come into the story.
ButthenorthernpartoftheEurasianlandmassonlydoessoveryobscurely
andindirectly,whileChina,Japan,south-eastAsia,andtheearlyhistoryof
humanhabitationinAustraliaandsub-SaharanAfrica,asintheAmericas,
areentirelyoutsidewhatismeantby‘‘theancientworld’’inthissense.
More clearly still, Graeco-Roman history, far from being ‘‘ancient,’’ is,
comparativelyspeaking,thestudyofaveryrecentphaseofhumanhistory.
Humans evolved several million years ago (perhaps some million years)
andhadspreadfromAfricaintosouth-eastAsiabyaroundamillionyears
agoandintoEuropehalfamillionyearsago.Onpresentcalculations,almost
allpartsoftheworldwherehumansnowlive,exceptsomePacificislands,
hadbeenpopulatedbyhumansbeforetheemergenceofthefirstwritingin
the Greek language (though not yet in the Greek alphabet) in the second
millennium..Ifwethinkinthecategoriesoftimeandspace,byfarthe
largerpartofthe‘‘ancienthistory’’ofhumansispre-history,illuminatedby
nowrittentexts,anddiscerniblenowonlythroughitsphysicalremains.
To realise how recent and how close, in every sense, to ourselves, the
Graeco-Roman‘‘ancientworld’’is,isbothdisconcertingandencouraging.
Disconcerting,becausethestudyofthat‘‘ancientworld’’isrevealedasaparo-
chialpursuit,inwhichthedangeristhateverythingfromthestructureof
thelanguagesinvolved,tothetwomainalphabets,toliteraryforms,archi-
tecture,politicalformationsorphilosophicalideas,willseemtooreadilyac-