son, Cassander. Th is so-called Lamian War can be seen as the
last event of the Classical Period of Greek history, the last act
of an independent city-state. Th e Athenians lost, the Macedo-
nians executed the most outspoken of the public orators, and
Athens was never again to act as an autonomous state.
Aft er Alexander’s death, his general Ptolemy acted quickly
to secure a kingdom for himself, taking control of Egypt and
resisting eff orts by his former colleague Perdiccas. Seleucus
seized the eastern parts of the former Persian Empire around
Babylon. Lysimachus took the territories north of the Aegean,
in Th race, and Antigonus (called “the One-Eyed”) took the
western territories of Asia Minor. Cassander succeeded his
father Antipater in control of Greece. By 311 b.c.e. this new
order had stabilized, and Greek-speaking Macedonians had
founded dynasties that would last until the rise of Rome.
Of these new dynasties, that of Ptolemy was the most
stable. Aff ecting the style of Egyptian rulers for millennia,
these Macedonian kings and queens reused the same names,
Ptolemy for men and Cleopatra—a traditional Macedonian
name (Alexander the Great had a sister and an aunt named
Cleopatra)—for women, and they tended to marry brothers
and sisters. Th e line lasted from 305 until 44 b.c.e., from Ptol-
emy I to Ptolemy XIV and his sister, Cleopatra VII, whose
alliances with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony make her the
most famous member of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. Under the
Ptolemies, Egypt became a center of culture and learning.
Th e city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander in 332 b.c.e.,
became the focus of learning for the western world, its library
boasting scholars like Euclid, the mathematician, and Aris-
tarchus, the great editor of the Homeric poems.
Pergamum (modern-day Bergama, Turkey), which came
to be ruled by the Macedonian dynasty of the Attalids in the
third century b.c.e., also vied with Alexandria as a cultural
center to the extent that the Ptolemies issued an embargo on
the export of papyrus to Pergamum. Faced with a lack of paper
for books, the scholars of Pergamum, then under the rule of
Eumenes, began using animal skins: this “Pergamum sheet,”
or pergamena charta in Latin, evolved into the word parch-
ment. Th e dynasties of Macedonian rulers made the Greek
language the universal tongue of politics and commerce in
the eastern Mediterranean world. Th is lasted long aft er the
Seleucid, Ptolemaic, and Antigonid dynasties had fallen from
power in the face of the expansion of Rome.
Th e patronage that the Ptolemies and Attalids showed
toward scholarship helped make Greek the language of cul-
ture and learning as well. Added to this was the continued
infl uence of Athens, which may have lost its political and mil-
itary empires aft er the fourth century b.c.e. but continued to
rule over an intellectual empire. Th e classical tragedies of Ae-
schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; the philosophy of Plato’s
Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum at Athens; the histories of
Herodotus and Th ucydides; the oratory of Lysias and Dem-
osthenes, all these continued to set the standard for literary
art well into the Roman Empire. Roman aristocrats sent their
sons to Athens to study and become cultured.
Th e combination of an Athenian cultural empire
with the political dynasties of the Macedonian successors
to Alexandria explains why Greek culture was so ubiqui-
tous throughout the Mediterranean world. Th e great Ro-
man Julius Caesar, in moments of stress, naturally spoke
Greek—upon crossing the Rubicon he exclaimed a line from
the Greek poet Menander, and his dying words, according
to the Roman historian Suetonius, were not “Et tu, Brute?”
(Latin for “You too, Brutus?”) but the words “Kai su, tekne?”
(Greek for “You too, child?”). Likewise, Saul, who became
the early Christian apostle Paul, a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia
(modern Turkey) and a Roman citizen, wrote fl uent Greek,
as did all the Jewish authors of the books of the Christian
New Testament.
Roman rule eventually absorbed these Greek dynasties
or reduced them to subordinate status as client-kingdoms.
But in the late third century c.e. the emperor Diocletian (r.
284–305 c.e.) split the Roman Empire into parts for more ef-
fi cient governance. By the fourth century c.e. the most active
site of Roman rule was in the emperor Constantine’s city of
Constantinople, formerly the city of Byzantium. By the sixth
century the Roman Empire had given way to a Byzantine Em-
pire that was more Greek in culture and spirit than it was
Roman—in 628 c.e. the Eastern Roman Empire offi cially
stopped using Latin terms for political offi ces, in favor of a
return to much older Greek terms. Th is last empire of the an-
cient Greek world would last until the Turks seized Constan-
tinople in 1453 c.e.ROME
BY KIRK H. BEETZ
THE FIRST KINGS (CA. 753–CA. 510 B.C.E.)
Th e earliest years of Rome’s existence are mysterious. Th e
names of kings and when they ruled are taken from Roman
historians of the fi rst century b.c.e., whose sources may have
been only oral tradition. According to the ancient Romans,
the city of Rome was founded in 753 b.c.e. by Romulus, who
was supposedly descended from Aenaeus, a refugee from the
Troja n Wa r.
Graves from the mid-800s b.c.e. have been found around
Palatine Hill, where Rome began as a village. Also on Palatine
Hill are the remains of a house dating from the 900s or 800s
b.c.e., showing that the area was inhabited before the tradi-
tional date given for the founding of Rome. Th e traditional
dates for Romulus’s reign are 753 to 717 b.c.e. Th e reign of the
next king, Numa Pompilius, was 715 to 673 b.c.e. He and his
successors were probably real people, and he is remembered
as a peaceful king. By the reign of Tullus Hostilius (r. 673–
642 b.c.e.), Rome was growing from a village to a small town.
Tullus Hostilius waged military campaigns to enlarge Rome’s
territory, and his successor Ancus Marcius (r. 642–617 b.c.e.)
continued to expand Rome’s lands until they stretched to the
mouth of the Tiber River in the west.empires and dynasties: Rome 413