"In today's global civilization, the ancient Mediterranean world is just one part of a large and ever-changing kaleidoscope of information that educated readers need to absorb. This book focuses on four ideas from that world that, against all odds, are now essential components of modern life. From the ancient Near East, the idea emerged that there is one God, not many. After several notable failures, monotheism took hold among the ancient Hebrews and is now the cornerstone of Judeo-Christian-Muslim thought. Developments in Greece led thinkers to question the assumption that the state is just one big family, and resulted in the idea of what today we would call "inalienable rights." Romans for their own reasons came up with the third idea. They divorced citizenship from birthright altogether, effectively creating the category of naturalized citizenship. The final idea from the ancient Mediterranean also comes from Rome, but in an unexpected way. Its empire was anything but perfect, yet the centuries under Roman rule remain the longest period of peace and prosperity the Mediterranean region has ever known. It helps explain why the world remains fascinated by the question of the fall of Rome, and makes the prospect of a durable polyethnic and multifaceted world state the final idea to come out of the ancient Mediterranean world"-- Provided by publisher.
This book is a novel look at developments in Mediterranean antiquity that became essential components of the modern world. Instead of the usual fare, such as Greek democracy, Roman law, and barbarian invasions, it discusses the development of individual rights, naturalized citizenship, and governing a multi-ethnic state, as well as a topic often ignored: the development of monotheism. The book is concise and written to be accessible to both the general reader and students in introductory courses in world civilization and ancient civilization classes.
This book is about four cornerstones of modern thought that were put in place by people living in the ancient Mediterranean world. It covers approximately 2,000 years in time (from ca. 1000 BCE to 1000 CE) and spatially moves from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (roughly, modern Iraq), through Greece and Rome, to the new Germanic states growing in what is now western Europe.
The four ideas, as author H. A. Drake proposes, are monotheism, the idea that there is only one god, not many; individual rights, the idea that there is a limit to what the state can order us to do; naturalized citizenship, the idea that the full rights and privileges of citizenship can be extended to people who have no birthright to them; and creation of a standard by which to judge the performance of states. It is easy, now, to take these ideas for granted. For believers, it seems obvious that only a singular, omnipotent deity can account for the splendour of the universe. Similarly, the common notion that individuals can stand up for their rights, that citizenship can be freely given, or that governments ought to be held to a standard of justice for all, is often accompanied by the assumption that, at the time they were introduced, such ideas must have been immediately recognized as superior and gratefully accepted. The record is far more complicated, and that makes the story of their success far more interesting. By discussing these ideas in their historical context with clarity and wit, The Wisdom of the Ancients reminds readers how preposterous they were originally and how different our world would be if they had not taken hold.
