Ancient Worlds: A Global History of Antiquity

487 Pages·2016·5.67 MB·English

by  Michael Scott

ALSO BY MICHAEL SCOTT
From Democrats to Kings: The Downfall of Athens to the Epic Rise of Alexander
the Great Delphi and Olympia: the Spatial Politics of Pan-Hellenism in the
Archaic and Classical Periods Space and Society in the Greek and Roman
Worlds
Delphi: A History of the Centre of the Ancient World

Copyright © 2016 by Michael Scott Published in the United States by Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus
Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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LCCN: 2016950968
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-465-09473-8 (EB) First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson in 2016
Hutchinson is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at
global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Alice and the bean
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
KHALIL GIBRAN, The Prophet (On Children)
Contents
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration
List of Maps
List of Plate Illustrations
Introduction
Part I: Politics in an Axial Age
1 Athenian Democracy and the Desire for People-Power
2 Rome, the Republic and the Perfection of Government
3 China, Confucius and the Quest for the Just Ruler
Part II: War and a World in Change
4 A New Generation Arises
5 Making Connections
6 Empires in East and West
Part III: Religious Change in a Connected World
7 Religious Innovation from Inside and Out
8 Enforcing, Mixing and Moulding Religion
9 Religion and Rule
Conclusion
Notes
Select Bibliography for Further Reading
Index
Acknowledgements
A book such as this is impossible without the support and encouragement of
others. From the inception of the idea my agent Patrick Walsh at Conville &
Walsh has offered tremendous (and humorous) support; and my editors at
Hutchinson, Sarah Rigby and Richard T. Kelly, alongside Jocasta Hamilton and
the rest of the fantastic Hutchinson team, have been indefatigable in their
encouragement, ideas, comments, suggestions and good humour. Thank you to
you all for believing in me and in this book.
I am grateful also to Mandy Greenfield for her copy-editing, and to Jeff
Edwards for drawing the maps.
To research such a vast expanse of history requires access to some of the
great library institutions in the UK and abroad. I have been privileged to work in
the British Library, London Library and Institute of Classical Studies Library in
London; the University Library and Classics Faculty Library in Cambridge; the
Sackler and Bodleian Libraries in Oxford; the University Library in Warwick;
the British School at Athens library in Greece; as well as the Green Library at
Stanford University in California. Thank you to all these institutions, and to their
wonderful staff, for making the research such a joy.
But a book of this kind also requires the ongoing support and input of
scholars from a vast array of specialist fields, who have kindly given their time
and energy to open up their worlds of study for me and help develop my ideas in
discussion, both in person and via email. It is without doubt one of the best
aspects of this profession, and particularly this project, to have the opportunity to
engage with such a broad range of fascinating and insightful people from across
the world, and I have been deeply heartened by the enthusiasm with which they
have responded in kind to this project. My thanks go to Prof. Robin Osborne;
Prof. Paul Cartledge; Dr John Patterson (Cambridge); Prof. Giorgio Riello and
the Global History and Culture Centre team (Warwick); Prof. Lee Dian Rainy
(Memorial University of Newfoundland); Prof. Jeffery Lerner (Wake Forest
University); Dr Christopher Baumer (Switzerland); Prof. Julia Shaw (UCL);
Prof. James Hegarty (Cardiff); Prof. Simon Payaslian (Boston University); Dr
Peter Frankopan (Oxford); and Prof. Ian Morris (Stanford). In particular, my
sincerest thanks also go to Prof. Walter Scheidel at Stanford for hosting me
during my visit and for his encouragement, insight and advice.
My rock during the writing of this book – and of many more years besides –
has been my wonderful family, and especially the woman I am now lucky
enough to call my wife, Alice. Her energy, loyalty and love give inspiration and
resolve, comfort and enjoyment in equal measure. Alice and I are now expecting
our first child. And so while this book is a history of ancient worlds for our
present global times, I also hope that it will be of use to our child, growing up in
a future which, while we cannot comprehend it, will without doubt be even more
globally interconnected.