Epilogue
the story, or stories, which participants or later ancient narrators offer us, we
cannot begin to ask whether we can offer something better, and if so, on
what basis.
It is not claimed that the programme suggested here is somehow superior
to, or must necessarily be adopted in place of, the established framework of
‘‘ancient world’’ studies, which takes Greek and Roman history (and Greek
and Latin) as its basis. It is simply an alternative, which offers a different per-
spective. Abandoning the long-established ‘‘classical’’ perspective would of
course bring huge concomitant losses—Rome and Italy would be seen only
as a receptor of Greek culture on the one hand and as the source of an external
dominating military power on the other, paralleling Persia and Parthia from
the East—but with incomparably greater and more profound influence. And
the whole story of the Romanisation of western and central Europe and the
spread there of Latin and of Roman identity would emerge as (from this per-
spective) a distant and marginal process. The peoples who ‘‘faced the Ocean,’’
to adopt the title of Barry Cunliffe’s major work, would not find their history
explored here.
Conclusion
So what is sketched here is not proposed astheancient history for the future,
but simply asan‘‘ancient history’’ among others, and one with necessarily
indistinct and indeterminate boundaries. Behind it lies a more fundamental
methodological principle: that in all the areas, and in all the different lan-
guages involved, we have the chance no longer to operate within frameworks
derived from texts preserved in medieval manuscripts, but can start (or seri-
ously attempt to start) from material generated in the ancient world itself:
written material (manuscripts, papyrus or parchment documents, inscrip-
tions, graffiti); images, buildings, and architectural fragments; manufactured
objects, household equipment, decorations, tools; quite large numbers of
cities and villages which are still accessible, of which some hardly even re-
quire excavation; whole landscapes on which the impact of ancient society
is still traceable. The pursuit of this objective, unattainable as it actually is, is
the most important way in which we might ‘‘re-draw the map.’’ The second
proposal, namely an alternative avenue of approach to the ancient world,
one identified not as ‘‘Latin and Greek,’’ but as ‘‘Greek and Hebrew,’’ is in fact
less radical, and could indeed be seen as positively traditional, in allowing
our approach to be shaped by the two determining elements of ‘‘Western’’
culture. But the parallelism is not just a matter of ‘‘us’’ or of ‘‘now,’’ for it is
present in the evidence from the ancient world itself. If it is modern criti-