2 - Europe in the classical period
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
Summary
By the mid-fifth century B.C. the long ordeal of the Persian Wars was over, and Athens, triumphant leader of a league of Greek city-states, was building a civilization which has been the envy of posterity. The great Athenian dramatists were writing, and work had begun on Athens's crown and glory, the buildings erected on the steep Acropolis overlooking the city. At the same time colonies established by Greek cities in southern Italy and Sicily were in their different ways following where those of the Aegean had led. At this time Rome was a small town spread over a group of low hills beside the Tiber in central Italy. Only a short distance to the north the Etruscan league of cities had created a civilization similar in some ways to that of the Greeks in the Aegean. Rome had once been part of this loose Etruscan federation, and its independence was at this time far from secure.
Beyond the Alps the La Tène civilization had been spread by the Celts, armed with iron weapons and war chariots, through much of central Europe. They were pressing into western Europe, the Spanish peninsula, and the British Isles. Beyond them to the north and northeast, a Bronze Age culture still survived, and in the Baltic and Scandinavian regions and on the outermost fringes of the British Isles, Stone Age peoples were beginning to learn the rudiments of agriculture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- An Historical Geography of Europe , pp. 27 - 68Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990