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Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean

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This book was one of the required texts for a course I took on ancient history. Egypt, Greece and Rome was the perfect text, because the book reads as a narrative; nothing in Charles Freeman's book is boring or dry. It covers Mesopotamia from 5000 BC up through the emergence of the Byzantine Empire in the fifth century AD. This book is the key to understanding ancient history, and I highly reccomend it.

Plus, there are a number of black and white and full-color plates, plus some in-text drawings and maps.

Charles Freeman's work, Egypt, Greece and Rome, is a long and ambitious work, intended as an undergraduate introductory text as well as a text for the layman. Works of this size and scope (over 600 pages of text and illustrations covering the Egyptian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman civilizations as well as some others) tend to leave the reader breathless as they jump from one important topic and time period to another. This is not the case with Freeman's work. He wisely juxtaposes the overviews of civilizations with interludes that highlight a small part of the civilization in greater detail.

For example, between Chapter 14 ("Religion in the Greek World") and Chapter 15 ("Athens: Democracy and Empire") is an interlude titled "The Classical Age in Art." This short section discusses the golden age of art in ancient Greece, and brings us to the modern age briefly as the art historian Johann Winckelmann is discussed in relation to his views on the age. ("Winckelmann claimed that the `sublimity' of Classical art was the result of the atmosphere of liberty and exuberance which followed the Persian Wars" 244.)

The text is very accessible, and has a generous bibliography at the end of each chapter in case one wants more. Recommended highly as an introduction to the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean.

This is a great intro book on ancient civilizations around the mediterranean. While the subtitle is Egypt, Greece & Rome, the author goes into other, older and more distant cultures as well. The chapters are short and leisurely - you get a good feel for each section without being buried in details.

I've owned this book for over a year now and still find it indispensable (I have highlighted and written in it to such an extent that I am probably the only person who can actually read my copy). Its span seems ridiculous for one book, even though it is pretty long (about 650 pages, plus an excellent 27 page time line), but it gives one a great understanding of the Mediterranean World's evolution, starting not only from Archaic Greece, the unification of Egypt and its First Dynasties, but from the earliest settlements, the earliest urban settlements, and earliest cities in the Ancient Near East, which of course set many precedents (if not THE precedent) for those civilizations after which the book is named. In fact, the initial chapter is an excellent, thorough -- yet still very nuanced and fascinating to read -- overview of the first cities and cultures that sprang up in that region, from the cities of Sumer and Uruk, to the Akkadians (and Sargon the Great, generally accepted as history's first emperor), the early Israelites, the Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and all the way to the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Conservative/orthodox views are presented alongside liberal views, and "revisionist" theories are -- refreshingly -- given equal credence as well. Many currently accepted consensuses about the Ancient World held by Classicists, Anthropologists, and Historians have traveled from (often laughable...) beginnings, and many of those evolutions are presented here in a way almost as interesting as the way in which the Roman Civil Wars are portrayed. If intrigued by a certain topic or period, the reader is constantly referred to the names of scholars and authors, both well-known and obscure, whose works they may also find interesting. While this is hardly revolutionary, it is VERY prevalent throughout this work. Hardly any alternative argument or contrary opinion pertaining to events is included without the person from which it originated.

If there is one strong point of this book that stands above the others, it is how accessible it is, while also being such a treasure of information. The sheer volume each chapter manages to say about its subject(s) without becoming a bland and simple chronology is simply amazing. One striking example of this accessibility is the treatment of the period that begins with the rise of Macedonia under Philip II, and ends after the conquests and death of Alexander. Despite the fact that this crucial topic in ancient history (which many have easily stretched out into often redundant works of several hundred pages) is mainly covered inside of 33 pages, it is one of the most informative and most evocatively written studies of the subject I have ever come across, and gives one plenty of insight into this moment in history. After reading it (and I had very little knowledge about Alexander's life at the time I bought this book, I'm ashamed to say), I felt as though I read a 300+ page piece: it is that concise and well written.

Do not be misled by the title and expect a strict format that dedicates one section to Egypt, one to Greece, and to for Rome. Though there are such sections, they are merely guidelines, and bits and pieces of each consistently creep into the others. The histories of all three (plus that of the Ancient Near East) are not presented as having occurred inside of a vacuum (as they too often are), but instead, as having developed alongside and with each other and other neighboring civilizations of the profoundly fluid Ancient Mediterranean World (perhaps the most concise chapter on anything that I have ever read is this book's short chapter on two of those lesser known, lesser appreciated cultures of the period, the Celts and Parthians, and what they contributed and took from surrounding cultures). There are wonderful profiles of the iconic figures from every conceivable aspect of the Ancient World: from the various schools of philosophy in Greece, the greatest minds of each, and their notable ideas; the great military leaders like Ramses II, Caesar, Pompey, Hannibal, Epaminondas, Pyrrhus, Philip, and Alexander; the most influential poets and playwrights, from Homer and Hesiod, Aeschylus and Aristophanes, to Catullus, Horace, and Virgil; the first men who seemed to have viewed history as a science, Herodotus, Thucydides, and much later, Polybius, who did explicitly think of both historiography, and what we might call political science, as sciences; and the political genius behind such larger than life figures as Cyrus the Great, Pericles, Cleisthenes, Cicero, Augustus, and Vespasian.

While the book typically does not delve into great detail when discussing important battles (e.g. how many troops on which side, nature of the terrain, strategies employed by the winners and losers, etc.), it seems insignificant given the attention and analytical thought given elsewhere (besides, one can often find great descriptions of famous battles on Wikipedia, in addition to just about every other history book).

In little over 600 pages, this book illustrates both Western and Near Eastern Civilization, from about 5000 BCE, the initial evolution of the settlement to the city state, the rise and fall of great empires long thought to be invincible, the dominance and demise of the Roman Republic, the dominance and demise of the Western Roman Empire, and the rise of Christianity and monotheism. This nearly perfect history begins its end with one of history's great turning points: the seventh-century war between the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius and the Sassanid Persian Shah Khusro II (and by proxy, the dominant monotheistic religions: the Orthodox Christianity of Constantinople and Zoroastrianism of Ctesiphon), in which Heraclius, against all odds, managed to save the Byzantine Empire, defeat the Sassanids, and retake critical territory in the Near East (most importantly Jerusalem, along with Christendom's most venerated relic, the True Cross, which he brought back to Constantinople after a triumph through the Holy City's streets).

As centuries of war between the Mediterranean's two superpowers finally seemed to be over, the Muslim armies of Arabia came, driven by their own monotheistic faith, and united by intense religious fervor. Soon Palestine and Syria were lost (this time, forever), and the Sassanid Empire fell after being soundly defeated by the Muslim forces; soon Alexandria too fell, followed by all other Roman/Byzantine lands in North Africa.

However, the book does not end on this note in order to provide a catastrophic ending to what we consider the picturesque, classic, ancient world. Instead, these events and their aftermath are used to reinforce and continue its main theme: the ever-fluid nature of the Ancient Mediterranean World. Greek culture proved to be profoundly important to the early Muslim armies and empires, the leaders of which -- especially early on -- depended on their new Greek neighbors to aid them in administering their new cities. Likewise, because non-Orthodox Christians in these cities faced persecution under Byzantine rule, in many cases they and the Jewish populations (who, obviously, also faced persecution) welcomed their new rulers; many cities, including Jerusalem, had willfully, even gladly, accepted Muslim rule without resistance (many Christians are said to have actually fought with the Muslim armies against the Byzantines). The Arab rulers, whose people had always been on the outskirts of the Ancient Mediterranean World, were now fully engaged, and -- like so many other empires and civilizations who took from and contributed to that very world -- within a century had done away with much of their old ways, particularly the Bedouin tradition of oral transmission and memorization, which grew from the necessities and limitations of desert life, and embraced the options and ideas which other cultures presented to them. There was an explosion of literacy among the previously-illiterate Arabs, and by the ninth-century, many sophisticated Greek works of medicine, philosophy, and mathematics, which had long been neglected by an increasingly scripture-centric Byzantine culture, were translated into Arabic, and thus spurred a renaissance among Muslim scholars. Soon, the Muslim world was the center of the sciences, where the ideas of Classical Greece thrived, and where the ideas of the great minds of antiquity were debated, built upon, and above all, revived in a manner "that was not possible in the Christian world." (p.648) Indeed, it is commonly accepted among historians that had the Muslim armies never conquered those Byzantine lands, many works of the ancient Greek philosophers and scientists, of which we are today so familiar, would likely not have survived.

This book gets my highest possible recommendation, simply for being a work of comparative history at its finest. Throw in the fantastic and informative maps (32 in all), beautiful plates (80 in all), its consistently nuanced tone, and a study of power politics in the ancient world that would make Polybius proud, and it becomes a must buy for anyone merely slightly interested in history. And again, this is a book which just about anybody can pick up and enjoy. The casual reader will take away from it not only a great amount of knowledge regarding the beginnings of each "civilization" of the ancient Mediterranean, but also new perspective into how much each owes -- to this day -- to each other.

I wanted to get a good birds eye overview of classic antiquity, get a sense of continuity and fill the gaps in my knowledge. After some failed attempts, I found this book. It exceeded my expectations. I read the book from cover to cover, but it can also be used as a great reference (the chapters are self-contained and make references to other chapters in the book when necessary).

Besides covering specifics periods, the book attempts to show the interrelations of the different processes and-the main theses of the author-how continuity rather than great "revolutions" shaped classical history. The book covers not only political and military history but also cultural history. Culture shapes the historical continuity process, and the examples are many; religious development and influence across the whole Mediterranean and the Near East; the influence of Greek philosophy in politics in the roman empire and in the theology of Christianity; and more.

Since the chapters cover specific topics (Freeman doesn't fall in the error of trying to write chronologically) the book is also very useful as a reference. Each chapter ends with a complete bibliographic essay with references of specific periods or topics.

Freeman's style is dynamic and engaging, and impressive achievement for the amount of history he covers in this book.

I've checked this book out from the local library three times. Now I've bought it.
While reading other books I get lost and have to return for verification to Freeman. Each time I open the pages it is a new wonderous journey. As a place for connecting the dots you won't find a better source.

Charles Freeman's "Egypt, Greece and Rome" traces the ancient world from Egypt in the fourth millennium B.C. through the end of the Roman Empire. It looks at the major political and military events of early Western Civilization, but also describes some of the major scientific, philosophical, and literary achievements of antiquity and even looks at the daily life and religions of people in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

As one might expect, the volume reminds the reader just how much of our civilization descends from the three civilizations studied, as when it mentions that half of common English words have a Greek or Latin origin. The book is only about 700 pages, but seemed to cover the most important topics of the thousands of years of ancient history adequately. There is also a useful timeline/date list at the back of the book. General readers looking for a good one-volume study of the ancient world would likely be well satisfied with this book.

This book actually starts with the history of the civilizations of the Ancient Near East from 5000 B.C. to 1200 B.C. The book is arranged chronologically and bounces from one geographic location or civilization during one period of time to another civilization in the same period. Then he will move on to a later period so there is good cross-reference between civilizations. It's really great having so much information covered in a single book and at the end of each chapter, he gives a bibliography of further reading you can do.

This book is an absolutely excellent introduction to The Ancients. Most of the concentration is given to Greek and Roman history but truly overall a magnificent first read to classical history (which is much missed in an engineering college!)

I liked the idea of a book that includes the three great Mediterranean civilizations. The book is not too detailed and serves well as a survey, especially for novices to the subject. The book could have had a little better editing for things such as punctuation (many commas were missing where they could have made reading more easier) and better use of the words "which" and "that."