B.C. – Ancient Empires

The Great Wall of China is probably the world’s most stupendous monument to human ingenuity, human industry and purportedly is the only one of man’s works that could be seen from the moon. Finding his country a patchwork of desperate states, Shih-huang-ti, the first Emperor of China, imposed upon it unity and coherence. Centralized administration demanded swift communications, so a vast network of roads and canals was thrown across the country. Weights and measures were standardized and the same writing script introduced throughout the land. Unity, however, was of little use without security and to protect his new empire from …

The Chinese grew a new empire in the east, after the death of Alexander the Great. The empire of Cyrus and Xerxes was vast. The empire left by Alexander on his death was even larger and it did not outlast its founder. The most obvious reasons for its immediate breakup were the lack of overall homogeneity, the variety of individual characteristics and political traditions in the area it covered and the Virtual impossibility of establishing a strong central authority to hold it together. The theme of empire is a recurrent one throughout this volume: Xerxes, Alexander, Hannibal, Shih-huang-ti and lastly …

Alexander the Great succeeded to the throne upon the assassination of Philip of Macedonia, in northern Greece. This succession, both as king and as leader to the League of Corinth, was his twenty-year-old son Alexander. In addition to the throne, young Alexander inherited his father’s mission to take revenge on the Persians on their own ground. The fulfilling of that mission and its consequences constitute one of the most glittering pages in the history of the ancient world. Alexander may not have wanted to fuse the traditions of East and West in the empire he created, but he gave Hellenism …

Classical Greece was a period during which the finest products of Greek civilization were achieved, has been defined as beginning after the victory over the Persians. Its end is marked by the appearance of Macedonian soldiers in Greece and the capitulation of the Greek cities to their semi-Greek conquerors from the north. This was the first stage in the vast program of military expansion under the Macedonian king, Alexander, which ended with his death. Macedonian expansion changed the whole face of the East: in the West events were less momentous, though in the same year as the battle of Salamis …

A victorious Athens was thanks to Themistocles, whose farsighted proposal that the Athenians should fight the Persians at sea rather than land, paved the way for the defeat of King Xerxes. Greece was threatened by the advance of the Persians, but even in the face of such a threat, the Greeks were unable to unite as a nation. The basis of Greek life was the “polis” or city-state and the concept of nationhood was completely foreign to this system. Eventually, however, a Hellenic league of Greek cities was formed, led by Athens and Sparta. In 480 the Persians were defeated …

With the collapse of Crete, the Mediterranean focus moves to Greece. The destruction of Knossos in 1450 B.C. precipitated the end of a brilliant period in Cretan civilization. The focus of power, subsequently lay on the Greek mainland, in the great fortress-cities of Mycenae and Tiryns. These cities were remembered in Homeric legend, in the poems of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Confirmation as fact of what scholars had credited merely as legend was provided by the excavation of the site of Homer’s “Mycenae rich in gold” by the German merchant-turned-archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, in 1876. His discoveries there brought to …

For several years the Sea Peoples from the north had been drawing closer and closer to Egypt. Syria and Libya fell to them and under the leadership of Mernera of Libya they began to prepare for an assault on Egypt itself. Merneptah, son of Ramses II, decided to take the initiative and attack first. His strategy was justfied by his resounding victory, but the Sea Peoples learned a lesson and devised a new tactic. They began to infiltrate the country in families and groups. Unknown to the Egyptian administration, a new onslaught of Sea Peoples was about to occur. Happily …