In school we learn about the Mesopotamians, then the Egyptians, then the Greeks, and so on. Unless these groups went to war with one another, we may be left to believe that the great civilizations of the Old World formed and existed in isolation. Their distinctive, readily recognizable artifacts can in fact confirm this misleading impression, but critical scholarship reveals a much more complex, dynamic picture of ancient cultures. There is probably no better example so sharply contrasting the picture of insular cultures than the Mediterranean basin during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, when different empires, peoples, and cultures […]
