The Story of Greece and Rome

Starred review from September 24, 2018
This excellent survey by British historian Spawforth (Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution) spans the rise and fall of the Greco-Roman world, from the Aegean city-states that became Greece to the final days of the Roman Empire in the fifth century CE, which set the stage for current Western civilization. Through an interdisciplinary approach that includes history, anthropology, and literature, Spawforth traces the growth of Rome from a small part of the Italian peninsula to the multiethnic “Roman Peace” that extended from Hadrian’s Wall in the British Isles to what is now modern Turkey, with much cultural and religious detail along the way. For example, he makes clear how receptive both Greek and Roman civilizations were to foreign (i.e., “barbarian”) influences from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Carthage. In addition to straightforward historical narrative, Spawforth makes quite unexpected but relevant connections; in the first pages of a chapter about early Christianity, he refers—among other things—to a colleague’s obscure literary theory, Jonathan Haidt’s 21st-century research on moral psychology, a 1912 Japanese passage explaining emperor worship, and Catholics being blamed for the 1666 Great Fire of London. This conversational yet erudite history is a treat.