Ancient History is fascinating.\u00a0 Specifically reading about Europe from 600 B.C to 200 A.D. is fascinating.\u00a0 The Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls, the Macedonians, the Germans, the Goths, the Scythians even the Persians all interacting (meaning warring against each other) while trying to figure out how to pass from a barbaric tribal social structure into a larger more sophisticated society.\u00a0 And all this while competing against the more established states like Egypt, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia.<\/p>\n
Now some never achieved this.\u00a0 The Gauls and the Scythians ceased to exist as nations while still in the plundering raider stage.\u00a0 The Germans and the Goths had to wait for the downfall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. before they could advance.\u00a0 The Persians, Greeks, Macedonians and Romans all had their day.\u00a0 The Hellenistic civilization and its several kingdoms and empires had its heyday after Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in the late fourth century B.C. \u00a0Stretching from western India to Egypt this civilization lasted in various areas until the Parthians and Romans overtook it.\u00a0 The last piece to survive was Egypt which Augustus took charge of after the death of Marc Antony and Cleopatra VII in 30 B.C.\u00a0 Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemies whose progenitor was one of Alexander the Great\u2019s generals.\u00a0 So, all together the Hellenistic civilization Alexander founded lasted three hundred years.\u00a0 Of course, you could easily make the case that the Byzantine Empire was the extension of this Hellenistic civilization with a thin patina of Roman influence on its surface.\u00a0 And that shrinking \u201cempire\u201d managed to hang on in the city of Constantinople until 1453 A.D.<\/p>\n
The Romans had their run from about 600 B.C. to 476 A.D.\u00a0 And they did manage to leave their mark on Europe in a big way.\u00a0 The Romance languages are spoken by a big chunk of the world population and the influence of Roman concepts in law and politics is immense.\u00a0 So, these tribes from the dawn of real civilization in Europe had a great influence on us in the West.<\/p>\n
But in a real way their political institutions were all resounding failures at providing their people with good governance, stability or a satisfying life.\u00a0 Both the Greeks and the Romans attempted to create republics that provided the citizens with some say in their government.\u00a0 Athens was a democracy.\u00a0 Rome had popular elections (in a limited fashion) of their leaders.\u00a0 But in both cases these civilizations eventually regressed to some form of monarchy.\u00a0 The Hellenistic states had dynastic kings.\u00a0 Rome had its emperors that were sometimes dynastic but during the most successful eras successors were selected by the reigning Emperor based on merit.\u00a0 And in fact, since essentially the emperor was a military dictator, the legions were the ultimate arbiter of who was a successful emperor.\u00a0 So, Julius Caesar or a Trajan would be beloved by his conquering legions because they would be showered with the spoils of conquest.\u00a0 Whereas, an emperor without any military ability like Caligula or Commodus would end up assassinated by the Praetorian Guard in favor of someone more competent.\u00a0 Perhaps military competency was the basis for picking their head of state.\u00a0 A case could be made for that.<\/p>\n
So, the question has to be asked, have we progressed since the ancients?\u00a0 Is our government superior to the Greek and Roman states.\u00a0 Let\u2019s see what I think in Part 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ancient History is fascinating.\u00a0 Specifically reading about Europe from 600 B.C to 200 A.D. is fascinating.\u00a0 The Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls, the Macedonians, the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1263],"tags":[3752,1299,411,197,912,276],"class_list":["post-35674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","tag-european-history","tag-greece","tag-greek-history","tag-history","tag-roman-empire","tag-rome"],"yoast_head":"\n