When studying classical history, there is a tendency to think of the entire Mediterranean has been largely the same. In particular, westerners often think of Greeks and Romans as more less the same people, if with a different language and slightly different philosophy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, there were similarities. In addition, both cultures had been deeply influenced by the other cultures around them. In particular, the traditions of the Persian Empire had a strong influence on the Greeks (who conquered them under Alexander the great) and the Romans, who had to fight their descendants.
In their beginnings, the Greeks and Romans began in small cities. In Greece, the rise of the city-states began around 800 BC and reached its zenith under the leadership of Pericles of Athens in the fifth century BC. The next major event in the region came under Alexander the Great, who united the name various warring city-states and conquered the Persian Empire. The resulting civilization is referred to as Hellenism. On the other hand, Rome’s ascendancy from a small insignificant village to a power that would dominate the Mediterranean in Europe began following the decline of Hellenism. Rome built its empire by conquering smaller regional powers and less advanced cultures. It also conquered the Greeks, absorbing much of their customs, culture and even part of their mythology and history into their own (Long, 2008, p. 58).
The government and politics of Greece and Rome was varied and complex. While there were some democratic elements at certain times, both the Greeks and Romans often tended to have fairly autocratic forms of governance. Politics was extremely important to the Mediterranean people’s as a whole, and nowhere more so than in Greece. Greece, and its various Colonies in mainland Asia, invented the concept of democracy. Many of the Greek ideas about government were absorbed by the Romans, at least until the rise of the Empire. In the classical period, political theories largely devoted themselves to ideas about ethical behavior and the duty of the citizen to the state. Rhetoric and oratory were highly prized skills, particularly in leaders and philosophers.
While the governments of the Greeks and Romans did have official religions of the state, generally speaking they were fairly tolerant of other faiths, even incorporating some of the local gods and goddesses into their own beliefs. One of the notable exceptions to this starts by the Roman Empire can be seen in their reaction to early Christianity, in which loyalty to the state took a second place to loyalty to the god they worshiped. The Romans took this very seriously, which led to the persecution of the early Christians. This last point emphasizes the degree to which Mediterranean cultures focused on while tied to the state and uniform obedience to the aristocrats who ruled that state.
An interesting point about the great civilizations of this time, including that of the Mediterranean, is that they all have an interest in empires, were primarily agricultural and were committed to the development of science and knowledge. Like the others, the Greeks and Romans made it clear that there were clear social divisions between the elites and the masses that they ruled (Wood, 2002, p. 69). To a certain extent, this included limitations on upward social mobility. In Rome, slaves had little (but not no) chance of changing their status and rising in Roman society. On the other hand, in the later part of the Empire, it was not uncommon for a lowly soldier to rise through the ranks to become ruler of the Empire.
As mentioned before, it was under the Roman rule that Christianity first entered the world. The Romans and the Greeks never created a major world religion that spread to others and influenced philosophical thinking about religion and faith. Their gods were less interested in redemption or complex after life issues than they were in interacting with and directly regulating humans in this life. Research has demonstrated that Mediterranean gods are derived from older Indo-European mythologies brought in the region by invaders. Roman and Greek gods were anthropomorphic, and often resembled humans in their behavior as well (Neyrey, 2005, p. 466).
As mentioned before, Roman and Greek society was built primarily on the back of farmers. While some of these farmers were self sufficient, providing food for themselves and their families, there were also enormous commercial agricultural enterprises which helped feed the Roman Empire. In the later part of the empire, the population of Rome had grown far beyond the self sufficiency point, and it was necessary to import grain from North Africa in order to feed them. This encourage trade in the Mediterranean, which was already thriving because of the need to bring in materials such as wood from Asia or tin from Britain.
Slavery was common throughout the Roman Empire, and it was no different in ancient Greece. Despite Greek devotion to the ideas and philosophies of democracy, they seem to find nothing incongruous in speaking about democracy while surrounded by slaves. Much of the wealth of the powerful Roman senators grew out of their ownership of large farms are operated by armies of slaves. There were some Roman philosophers and politicians who denounced that slavery, but they were few and far between. It was only later with the rise of Christianity that slavery finally came to an end in the Roman Empire.
References
Long, A. A. (2008). The concept of the cosmopolitan in Greek & Roman thought. Daedalus, 137(3), 50-58.
Neyrey, J. H. (2005). God, Benefactor and Patron: The Major Cultural Model for Interpreting the Deity in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Journal For The Study Of The New Testament, 27(4), 465-492.
Wood, E. (2002). Landlords and Peasants, Masters and Slaves: Class Relations in Greek and Roman Antiquity. Historical Materialism, 10(3), 17-69.
