How are Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome Related?

According to the German historian Theodor Mommsen, the Greeks and the Romans both had cultural and linguistic roots in what is now eastern Europe. He did extensive studies on their languages and concluded that they were both offshoots of a common branch of Indo-European. Greek civilization began much earlier than Roman. The Greeks had two […]

Quora Question: Why Did The Romans Not Destroy Greece the Way Destroyed Carthage?

The Romans had a lot more respect for the Greeks than they had for the Carthaginians. They had fought two long and bitter wars with Carthage and regarded them as enemies. There was no such animus in the Roman attitude toward the Greeks. The Greek language was prestigious and a Roman was not considered educated […]

Book Review: Battling the Gods by Tim Whitmarsh.

Battling the Gods by Tim Whitmarsh Battling the Gods explores the ancient origins of atheism. Most of the book deals with ancient Greece. Most other civilizations of the ancient world were decidedly not fertile grounds for nurturing atheists, but the culture of ancient Greece bred philosophy, and some of the strains of Greek philosophy allowed […]

What Ancient Rome owed to Greece.

This was a Quora question that I responded to. How does the phrase “the conqueror became the conquered one” relate to Rome’s imperial expansion into the Hellenistic world? Robin Levin, works at Writers and Authors (2012-present)   This was the sentiment of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, commonly known as Horace, who lived from 65 B.C. to […]

The Athenian Empire-A Guest Post. By Van Bryan in Classical Wisdom Weekly

I found this account of the history of the Athenian empire very interesting and asked permission from the author to share it with readers. “You might remember two weeks ago we had something of a chat about a rather interesting bit of history. How is it that an alliance of cities with the unobjectionable goal […]