From about the 9th to 5th centuries BCE, the population of Greece grew unprecedently large, expanding from about 800,000 people to as many as 13 million. About a quarter million of these lived in Athens. The average size of urban households during this period grew considerably, a fact that suggests that food was suddenly available in excesses sufficient to keep larger families healthy and alive much more effectively than just a millennium earlier. Bigger families meant bigger armies and larger communities that would eventually grow into the metropolises of Classical Greece.

This incredible stretch of time is called Classical Antiquity; the age in which Western civilization first realized its potential and place in the world. The era brought on big changes for all the people of the Mediterranean. Thanks to new agricultural methods, seafaring technology, and trade, great civilizations sprang up around the sea, building large urban centers full of artists, merchants, political thinkers, scientists, and philosophers. As Greco-Roman culture grew, the relationships each city and realm had with one another also developed and changed.

In Classical Antiquity: A Captivating Guide to Ancient Greece and Rome and How These Civilizations Influenced Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, you will discover topics such as

• A Blind Poet from Ionia
• Pythagoras
• Athens, Greece
• The Greek Pantheon
• The Expulsion of the Persians
• Slavery
• The Golden Age of Athens
• Pericles at War
• The Socratic Method
• Plato
• Alexander the Great
• The Hellenistic Period
• From Greece to Rome
• The Roman Republic
• The Borrowed Gods of Rome
• The Classical Romans
• The Gladiators
• Julius Caesar, Part 1
• Julius Caesar, Part 2
• The Roman Empire
• The City of Pompeii
• Antonine and Cyprian Plagues
• Britannia and Londinium
• Remnants of Classical Antiquity
• And much, much more