検索キーワード： 制作 "Charles River Editors" 古代

On his deathbed, some historians claim that when he was pressed to name a successor, Alexander the Great muttered that his empire should go "to the strongest". Other sources claim that he passed his signet ring to his general Perdiccas, thereby naming him successor, but whatever his choices were or may have been, they were ignored.

The story of Jason and his crew of Argonauts is one of the best-known and most beloved myths of all time. Blockbuster movies have been made about it, and legendary explorer and historian Tim Severin even constructed a replica of the Argo in 1984 and succeeded in sailing it to Colchis (modern-day Georgia). In the ancient world too, this myth was told and retold time and again.

In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs over the dunes. For nearly 5,000 years, the sands of the Iraqi desert have held the remains of the oldest known civilization: the Sumerians. When American archaeologists discovered a collection of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the late 19th century, they were confronted with a language and a people who were at the time only scarcely known to even the most knowledgeable scholars of ancient Mesopotamia.

Dominated to this day by the sprawling white marble complex of the Acropolis, Athens is a city which is immensely and rightly proud of its past. For a period of roughly three centuries, the polis of Athens stood, if not in a position of unchallenged supremacy among the cities of Hellas, then at the very least among its three most important polities.

Attempting to cover all the forms the "Goddess of Love" encapsulates is no small affair. The roles she played in romance, marriage, procreation, and all of the other desires of humanity were myriad, but the aim of this book is to paint a slightly different, perhaps more esoteric version of Aphrodite from the usual image of her in mythology books.

Although the armies of the ancient Greek, or "Hellenic", city-states (poleis, singular polis) included both cavalry (hippeis) and light infantry (psiloi, peltastes, gymnetes), their mainstay was undoubtedly the heavy infantry known today as hoplites. Armed to the teeth with their distinctive round shield (aspis or hoplon), high-crested helmet (corys) and long spear (dory), the hoplites were some of the most efficient soldiers of their time.

Many ancient civilizations have influenced and inspired people in the 21st century. The Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate the West today. But of all the world's civilizations, none have intrigued people more than the Mayans, whose culture, astronomy, language, and mysterious disappearance all continue to captivate people.

The center of political and commercial interaction in the Ancient Greek polis was the agora. The word essentially means a gathering place or an open space, and in all Greek city states, the agora was central to all aspects of daily life and commerce. As the agora developed as a civic space, particularly from the sixth century BCE onward in Athens, the architectural splendor of the buildings associated with it became an ever more obvious demonstration of the power and glory of Athenian democracy.

Perhaps the most famous epic poem ever written, the Iliad has been read for nearly 3000 years, making it also one of the oldest written works in the Western world. Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the Trojan War, the poem has made characters like Paris, Helen, Achilles, Hector, and Ajax instantly recognizable. The Iliad and the Odyssey influenced Virgil, whose Aeneid is clearly modeled after them, and every other great poet since.

There have been no shortage of great warrior societies in history, including the Romans, Mongols, Macedonians, and Vikings, the list goes on. Yet one humble city in particular, nestled in a valley near the Eurotas River in the Greek region of the Peloponnese and once ridiculed as little more than a cluster of villages inhabited by uncouth shepherds, produced the most famous warrior elite the world has ever known.

In the year 570 CE, a child by the name of Muhammad is born in the Arabian city of Mecca. Sixty-two years later, he dies, and upon his death, the faith that he founded, Islam ("obedience to the one God"), dominates the western half of the Arabian Peninsula. By the end of the first millennium CE, four centuries after the death of Muhammad, Islam has grown to dominate western Asia, north and east Africa, the Levant, and the Iberian Peninsula.

The ancient world was full of many fantastic cities and places, and like today's major cities, the great ancient cities were hubs of trade, religion, and science. Among the many cities of the ancient world, Rome and Athens may come to mind first, but the city of Babylon in the land of Mesopotamia was already an ancient, venerated city when the others were still inconsequential settlements

What was the role - if any - of the land itself in shaping Greek (and particularly Athenian) attitudes toward themselves and their way of life? Did the land play any significant part at all in forming Greeks and Athenians? To answer these questions, it is essential to examine the impact of climate and landscape in the region known as Attica on the creation of Greek culture.

Herod is one of the more well-known characters of the Bible, as even those with a limited knowledge of the Bible will recognize the name and maybe have some idea of who Herod was. One of the most popular stories, known even to non-Christians, is Herod's slaying of the Innocents, a gruesome part of the Christmas story.

Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5000 years later.

In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs over the dunes. For nearly 5000 years, the sands of the Iraqi desert have held the remains of the oldest known civilization: the Sumerians. When American archaeologists discovered a collection of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the late 19th century, they were confronted with a language and a people who were at the time only scarcely known to even the most knowledgeable scholars of ancient Mesopotamia.

When scholars study the history of the ancient Near East, several wars that had extremely brutal consequences (at least by modern standards) often stand out. Forced removal of entire populations, sieges that decimated entire cities, and wanton destruction of property were all tactics used by the various peoples of the ancient Near East against each other, but the Assyrians were the first people to make war a science.

Poseidon is one of the most easily recognizable characters in all of ancient Greek mythology. His signature trident is iconic; one sight of it invariably floods the modern mind with images of aquatic chariots and daunting typhoons. But there is so much more to the character of Poseidon than maritime denizens and disasters, which shouldn't really come as a surprise.

Most commonly known as the antagonists of the pantheon of gods led by Zeus, the Titans embody "unrest" and "transience" for the modern listener, but for reasons less than the obvious. History, after all, is the story of the winners, and the world of the ancient Greeks was a world of a very real, highly querulous pantheon that it behooved ancient writers to glorify in their works.

Lying in the middle of a plain in modern-day Iran is a forgotten ancient city, Persepolis. Built two and a half thousand years ago, it was known in its day as the richest city under the sun. Persepolis was the capital of Persia, the largest empire the world had ever seen, but after its destruction, it was largely forgotten for nearly 2,000 years, and the lives and achievements of those who built it were almost entirely erased from history.