The Brief History of Western Civilization Introduction

Art as well as literature reflected the basic character of Hellenic civilization. The Greeks were essentially materialists who conceived of the world in physical terms. Plato and the followers of the mystic religions were exceptions, but few other Greeks believed in a universe of spiritual realities. It would be natural therefore to find that the material emblems of architecture and sculpture exemplified best the ideals the Greeks maintained.

Above all, Greek art symbolized humanism – the glorification of man as the most important creature in the universe. Though much of the sculpture depicted gods, and also goddesses, this did not detract in the slightest from its humanistic quality. The Greek deities existed for the benefit of man; in glorifying them he thus glorified himself. Both architecture and sculpture embodied the ideals of balance, harmony, order, and moderation. Anarchy and excess were abhorrent to the mind of the Greek. Consequently, Greek art exhibited qualities of simplicity and dignified restraint – free from decorate extravagance and restrictive conventions. Moreover, Greek art was an expression of the national life. Its purpose was not merely aesthetic but political: to symbolize the pride of the people in their city and to enhance their consciousness of unity. The Parthenon at Athens, for example, was the temple of Athena, the protecting goddess who presided over the corporate life of the state.

The art of the Greeks had its distinguished characteristics. Like the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, it was universal. It included few portraits either in sculpture or in painting. The human being depicted were generally types, not individuals. Greek art differed from that of most latter peoples in its ethical purpose. It was not art for the sake of mere decoration or for the expression of the artist’s own ideas, but a medium for the ennoblement of humanity. It was supposed to exemplify qualities of living essentially artistic in themselves. The Athenian, at least, drew no sharp distinction between the ethical and aesthetic spheres; the beautiful and the good were really identical. True morality, therefore, consisted in rational living, in the avoidance of grossness, sensual excesses, and other forms of conduct aesthetically offensive. Finally, although the utmost attention was given to the depiction of beautiful bodies, this had little to do with fidelity to nature. The Greek was not interested in interpreting nature for its own sake, but in expressing human ideals.

The history of Greek art can be divided into three periods. The first covered the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. During the greater part of this so-called archaic period sculpture was dominated by Egyptian influence. Toward the end, however, these conventions were thrown aside. The second period, which occupied the fifth century B. C., witnessed the full perfection of both architecture and sculpture. The art of this time was completely idealistic. During the fourth century B. C., the last period of Greek art, architecture lost some of its balance and simplicity, and sculpture assumed new characteristics. It came to reflect more clearly the reactions of the individual artist, to incorporate more realism, and to lose some of its quality as an expression of civic pride. For all its artistic excellence, Greek temple architecture was extremely simple.

According to the prevailing opinion among his contemporaries, Greek sculpture attained its height in the work of Phidias (c. 500-c.432 B. C.). His masterpieces were the statue of Athena in the Parthenon and the statue of Zeus in the Temple of Olympian Zeus. In addition, he designed the Parthenon reliefs. The main qualities of his work are grandeur of conception, patriotism, proportion, dignity, and restraint. Nearly all of his figures are idealized representations of deities and mythological creatures in human form. The second most renowned fifth-century sculptor was Myron, noted for his statue of the discus thrower and for his glorification of other athletic types. The names of three great sculptors in the fourth century B. c. have come down to us. The most gifted was Praxiteles, renowned for his portrayal of humanized deities with slender, graceful bodies and countenances of philosophic repose. His older contemporary, Scopas, gained distinction as an emotional sculptor. One of his most successful creations was the statue of a religious ecstatic, a worshiper of Dionysus. At the end of the century Lysippus pioneered in sculptural realism and individualism. He was the first great master of the realistic portrait as a study of personal character.

The population of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. comprised three groups: the citizens, the metics, and the slaves. The citizens, who numbered at the most about 40,000, included only those males born of citizen parents. The metics, who probably did not exceed a total of 35,000, were resident aliens, chiefly non-Athenian Greeks. Save for the fact that they had no political privileges and generally were not permitted to own land, male metics had equal opportunities with citizens. The slaves in Athens were never a majority of the population. Their maximum number did not exceed 100,000.

Life in Athens stands out in sharp contrast to that in most other civilizations. One of its leading features was the great amount of social and economic equality that prevailed among most of the male citizens. This substantial equality was enforced in part by the system of liturgies. A second outstanding characteristic of Athenian life was its lack of comforts and luxuries. Part of this was a result of the low income of the mass of the people. Part of it may have been a consequence also of the mild climate, which allowed for a life of simplicity. But whatever the cause, the fact remains that, in comparison with modern standards, the Athenians made do with the barest essentials. What each citizen really wanted was a small farm or business that would provide him with a reasonable income and at the same time allow him an abundance of leisure for politics, for gossip in the marketplace, and for intellectual or artistic activities if he had the talent to enjoy them.

In spite of the expansion of trade, Athenian economic organization never became very complex. Agriculture and commerce were by far the most important enterprises. Industry was not highly developed.

Religion underwent some notable changes in the Golden Age of the fifth and fourth centuries B. C. The polytheism and anthropomorphism of earlier times were largely supplanted by a belief in one God as the creator and sustainer of the moral law. Other significant consequences flowed from the mystery cults. These new forms of religion first became popular in the sixth century B. C. because of the craving for an emotional faith to make up for the disappointments of life. One was the Orphic cult, which revolved around the myth of the death and resurrection of Dionysus. Another, the Eleusinian cult, had as its central theme the abduction of Persephone by Demeter, the great Earth Mother. Both of these cults had as their original purpose worship of the life-giving powers of nature, but in time they came to express a much deeper significance. They communicated to their followers the ideas of vicarious atonement, salvation in an afterlife, and ecstatic union with the divine. Although entirely inconsistent with the spirit of the ancient religion, they made a powerful appeal to certain classes and were largely responsible for the spread of the belief in personal immorality. The more thoughtful Greeks, however, seem to have persisted in their adherence to the worldly, optimistic, and mechanical faith of their ancestors and to have shown little concern about sin or a desire for salvation in a life to come.

In Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B. C., though marriage was still an important institution for the procreation of children, there is reason to believe that family life had declined. Men of the more prosperous classes, at least, spent the greater part of their time away from their families. Wives were relegated to an inferior position and required to remain secluded in their homes. Their place as social and intellectual companions for their husbands was taken by alien women, the hetaerae, many of whom were highly cultured natives of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor. Marriage itself assumed the character of a political and economic arrangement devoid of romantic elements. Man married wives so as to ensure that at least some of their children would be legitimate and in order to obtain property in the form of a dowry. But husbands did not consider their wives as their equals and did not appear in public with them or encourage their participation in any form of social or intellectual activity.

No historian would deny that the achievement of the Greeks was one of the most remarkable in the history of the world. With no great expanse of fertile soil or abundance of mineral resources, they succeeded in developing a higher and more varied civilization. With only a limited cultural inheritance from the past to build upon, they produced intellectual and artistic achievements which have served ever since as models of attainment for the culture of the West. It may be argued as well that the Greeks achieved a more leisured and rational mode of living than most other peoples.

It is necessary to be on guard, however, against uncritical adulation of the ancient Greeks. We must not assume that all were as cultured and free as the citizens of Athens and of the Ionian states across the Aegean. Further, Athenian civilization itself surely had its defects. It permitted some exploitation of the weak, especially of the slaves. It was based upon a principle of racial exclusiveness which reckoned every man a foreigner whose parents were not both Athenians, and consequently denied political rights to the majority of the inhabitants. It was also characterized by the overt repression of the female members of the society. Finally, the attitude of its citizens was not always tolerant and just. Socrates was put to death for his opinions. It must be conceded, however, that the record of the Athenians for tolerance was better than that of most other peoples.

Nor is it true that the Greek influence has been as great as is often supposed. No well-informed student could accept the sentimental verdict of Shelley: “We are all Greeks; our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their roots in Greece.” Our laws do not really have their roots in Greece but chiefly in roman sources. Much of our poetry is undoubtedly Greek in inspiration, but such is not the case with most of our prose literature. Our religion is no more than partly Greek; except as it was influenced by Plato and the Romans, it reflects primarily the spirit of the Hebrews. Even our arts derive from other sources almost as much as from Greece. Actually, modern civilization has been the result of the convergence of numerous influences coming from many different periods and places.

Nonetheless, the Greek adventure was of profound significance for the history of the world because the Greeks were the founders of numerous ideals commonly thought of as being central to the dignity and progress of humanity. This can be seen with particular clarity by a comparison of cultural traits characteristic of Mesopotamia and Egypt with those of the Greeks. The civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt were dominated by absolutism, supernaturalism, and the subjection of the individual to the group. It is noteworthy that the Greek word for freedom – eleutheria – cannot be translated into any ancient Near Eastern language, not even Hebrew. The typical political regime of western Asia was that of an absolute monarch supported by a powerful priesthood. Culture served mainly as an instrument to magnify the power of the state and to enhance the prestige of rulers and priests. In contrast, the civilization of Greece, notably in its Athenian form, was founded upon ideals of freedom, optimism, secularism, rationalism, the glorification of both body and mind, and a high regard for the dignity and worth of the individual. The Greeks also had an extraordinary respect for the rule of law. In contrast to western Asian peoples, they kept their priests in the background, have any control over the sphere of morality. The culture of the Greeks was the first to be based upon the primacy of intellect – upon the supremacy of the spirit of free inquiry. There was no subject they feared to investigate, or any question they regarded as beyond the province of reason. To an extent never before realized, mind was supreme over faith, logic and science over superstition.

The supreme tragedy of the Greeks was, of course, their failure to solve the problem of political conflict. To a large degree, this conflict was the product of social and cultural dissimilarities. Because of different geographic and economic conditions the Greek city-states developed at an uneven pace. Some went forward rapidly to high levels of cultural superiority, while others lagged behind and made little or no intellectual progress. Though some of the more advanced thinkers attempted to propagate the notion that the Greeks were one people who should reserve their contempt for non-Greeks, or “barbarians,” the conception never became part of a national ethos. Not even the danger of Asian conquest sufficed to dispel the distrust and antagonism of Greeks for one another. Thus the war that finally broke out between Athens and Sparta sealed the doom of Hellenic civilization even though Greece remained undefeated by foreigners.

Of course Rome would not have been able to play this role had it not followed its own peculiar course of development. This was marked by the tension between two different cultural outlooks. On the one hand Romans throughout most of their history tended to be conservative: they revered their old agricultural traditions, household gods, and ruggedly warlike ways. But they also strove to be builders and could not resist the attractions of Greek culture. For a few centuries their greatness was based on a synthesis of these different traits: respect for tradition, order, and military prowess, together with Greek urbanization and cultivation of the mind. The synthesis could not last forever, but as long as it did the glory that was Greece was replaced by the grandeur that was Rome.

The geographical character of the Italian peninsula contributed significantly to the course of Roman history. The extensive coastline is broken by few good harbors. The amount of fertile land is greater than that of Greece. As a result, the Romans remained a predominantly agrarian people through the greater part of their history. They seldom enjoyed the intellectual stimulus which comes from extensive trading with other areas. In addition, the Italian peninsula was more open to invasion than was Greece. The Alps posed no effective barrier to the influx of peoples from central Europe. Domination of the territory by force was therefore more common than peaceful intermingling of immigrants with original settlers. The Romans became absorbed in military pursuits almost from the moment of their settlement on Italian soil.

Archeological evidence indicates that between about 2000 and 1000 B. C. Italy was settled by waves of immigrants of the Indo-European language group, who arrived in the peninsula by way of the Alps. A subgroup of these Indo-Europeans were ancestors of the Romans.

Probably during the eighth century B. C. two other nations of immigrants occupied different portions of the Italian peninsula: the Etruscans and the Greeks. The Greeks settled mainly along the southern and southwestern shores of Italy and the island of Sicily, as well as along the southern coast of Gaul. Greek civilization in Italy and Sicily was as advanced as in Greece itself. From the Greeks the Romans derived their alphabet, a number of their religious concepts, and much of their art and mythology.

The founders of Rome itself were Italic peoples who lived in the area south of the Tiber River. By reason of its strategic location, Rome came to exercise an effective suzerainty over several of the most important neighboring cities. One conquest followed another until, by the sixth century B. C., Rome came to dominate most of the surrounding area.

At first Roman government aimed far more at establishing stability than at creating liberty. The original Roman state was essentially an application of the idea of the patriarchal family to the whole community. But the authority of the king was limited by the ancient constitution, which he was powerless to change without the consent of the chief men of the realm. Although his accession to office had to be confirmed by the people, he could not be deposed, and there was no one who could really challenge the exercise of his powers. In addition to the kingship, the Roman government of this time included an assembly and a senate. The former was composed of all the male citizens of military age. As one of the chief sources of sovereign power, this body could veto any proposal for a change in the law which the king might make. Moreover, it determined whether aggressive war should be declared. But it was essentially a ratifying body with no right to initiate legislation or recommend changes of policy. The Senate, or council of elders, comprised in its membership the heads of the various clans which formed the community. The rulers of the clans embodied the sovereign power of the state. The king was only one of their number to whom they had delegated the active exercise of their authority. In ordinary times the chief function of the Senate was to examine royal proposals which had been ratified by the assembly and to veto them if they violated rights established by ancient custom. This extremely conservative attitude of the ruling classes persisted until the end of Roman history. Toward the end of the sixth century B. C., the monarchy was overthrown and replaced by a republic.

The period from the end of the Punic Wars in 146 B. C. to about 30 B. C. was one of the most turbulent in the history of Rome. It was between these years that the nation reaped the full harvest of the seeds of violence sown during the wars of conquest. Bitter class conflicts, assassinations, desperate struggles between rival dictators, wars, and insurrections were the all too common occurrences of this time. Even the slaves contributed to the general disorder.

The first stage in the conflict between the classes of citizens began with the ascendancy of the two Gracchi brothers. The Gracchan turbulence had broad significance . It demonstrated, first of all, that the Roman Republic had outgrown its constitution. Over the years the assembly had gained powers almost equal to those of the Senate. Instead of working out a peaceful accommodation to these changes, both sides resorted to violence. By so doing they paved the way for the destruction of the Republic. The Romans had shown a remarkable capacity for organizing an empire and for adapting the Greek idea of a city-state to a large territory, but the narrow conservatism of their upper classes was a fatal hindrance to the health of the state. Regarding all reform as evil, they failed to understand the reasons for internal discord and seemed to think that repression was its only remedy.

After the downfall of the Gracchi, two military leaders who had won fame in foreign wars successively made themselves rulers of the state. The first was Marius, who was elevated to the consulship by the masses in 107 B. C. and reelected six times thereafter. He was no statesman and accomplished nothing for his followers. Sulla, another victorious commander, appointed dictator in 82 B. C. for an limited term, ruthlessly proceeded to exterminate his opponents and to elevate the powers of the Senate. After three years of rule Sulla decided to exchange the pomp of power for the pleasures of the senses and retired to a life of luxury and ease on his country estate. It was not to be expected that the actions of Sulla would stand unchallenged after he had relinquished his office. Several new leaders now emerged to espouse the cause of the people. The most famous of them was Julius Caesar (100-44 B. C.). For a time he pooled his energies and resources in a plot to gain control of the government. Caesar devoted his talents to a series of brilliant forays against Gauls, adding to the Roman state the territory of modern Belgium, Germany west of the Rhine, and France. In 49 B. C. Caesar crossed the Rubicon River into Italy and marched on Rome.

Caesar then intervened in Egyptian politics at the court of Cleopatra. Then he conducted another military campaign in Asia Minor in which victory was so swift that he could report “ I came, I saw, I conquered”. After that Caesar returned to Rome. There was now no one who dared to challenge his power. In 46 B. C. he became dictator for ten years, and two years later for life. In addition, he assumed nearly every other title that could augment his power. He obtained from the Senate full authority to make war and peace and to control the revenues of the state. For all practical purposes he was above the law, and the other agents of the government were merely his servants. At any rate, it was on such a charge that he was assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 B. C. by a group of conspirators, under the leadership of Brutus and Cassius, who hoped to rid Rome of the dictatorship.

Although Caesar used to be revered historians as a superhuman hero, he is now often dismissed as insignificant. Certainly he did not “save Rome” and was not the greatest statesman of all time, for he treated the Republic with contempt and made the problem of governing more difficult for those who came after him. Yet some of the measures he took as dictator did have lasting effects. With the aid of a Greek astronomer he revised the calendar so as to make a year last for 365 (with an extra day added every fourth year). This “Julian” calendar – subject to adjustments made by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 – is still with us. Caesar took an important step toward eliminating the distinction between Italians and provincials. He also helped relieve economic inequities by settling many of his veterans and some of the urban poor on unused lands. Vastly more important than these reforms, however, was Caesar’s farsighted resolve, made before he seized power, to invest his efforts in the West. Caesar was the first great leader to recognize the potential significance of northwestern Europe. He brought Rome great agricultural wealth and helped bring urban life and culture to what was then the Wild West. Western European civilization, later to be anchored in just those regions that Caesar conquered, might not have been the same without him.

During the last two centuries of republican history Rome came under the influence of Hellenistic civilization. The result was a flowering of intellectual activity and a further impetus to social change beyond what the Punic Wars had produced. However, several of the components of the Hellenistic pattern of culture were never adopted by the Romans. The science of the Hellenistic Age, for example, was largely ignored, and the same was true of some of its art.

One of the most notable effects of Hellenistic influence was the adoption of Epicureanism and, above all, Stoicism by numerous Romans of the upper classes. The most renowned of the Roman exponents of Epicureanism was Lucretius ( 98-55 B. C.), author of a book-length philosophical poem entitled On the Nature of Things. In writing this work Lucretius was moved to explain the universe in such a way as to remove all fear of the supernatural, which he regarded as the chief obstacle to peace of mind. Worlds and all things in them, he taught, are the results of fortuitous combinations of atoms. Though he admitted the existence of the gods, he conceived of them as living in eternal peace, neither creating nor governing the universe. Everything is a product of mechanical evolution, including human beings, and their habits, institutions, and beliefs. Since mind is indissolubly linked with matter, death means utter extinction; consequently, no part of the human personality can survive to be rewarded or punished in an afterlife. Lucretius’s conception of the good life was simple: what one needs, he asserted, is not enjoyment but “peace and a pure heart.” He also was an extraordinarily fine poet. In fact his musical cadences, sustained majesty of expression, and infectious enthusiasm earn him a rank among the greatest poets who ever lived.

Stoicism was introduced into Rome about 140 B. C. and soon came to include among its converts numerous influential leaders of public life. The greatest of these was Cicero (106-43 B. C.), the “father of Roman eloquence.” Although Cicero adopted doctrines from number of philosophers, including both Plato and Aristotle, he derived more of his ideas from the Stoics than from any other source. Cicero’s ethical philosophy was based on the Stoic premises that virtue is sufficient for happiness and that tranquility of mind is the highest good. He conceived of the ideal human being as one who has been guided by reason to an indifference toward sorrow and pain. Where Cicero diverged from the Greek Stoics was in his greater approval of the active, political life. To this degree he still spoke for the older Roman tradition of service to the state. Cicero never claimed to be an original philosopher but rather conceived his goal to be that of bringing the best of Greek philosophy to the West. He wrote in a rich and elegant Latin prose style that has never been surpassed. Cicero’s prose immediately became a standard for composition and has remained so until the present century. Thus even though not a truly great thinker Cicero was the most influential Latin transmitter of ancient thought to the medieval and modern western European worlds.

Lucretius and Cicero were the two leading exponents of Greek thought but not the only two fine writers of the later Roman Republic. It now became the fashion among the upper classes to learn Greek and to strive to reproduce in Latin some of the more popular forms of Greek literature. Some results of enduring literary merit were the ribald comedies of Plautus (257?-184 B. C.), the passionate love poems of Catullus (84?-54? B. C.), and the crisp military memoirs of Julius Caesar.

The conquest of the Hellenistic world accelerated the process of social change which the Punic Wars had begun. The effects were most clearly evident in the growth of luxury, in a widened cleavage between classes, and in a further increase in slavery. The Italian people, numbering about eight million at the end of the Republic, had come to be divided into four main social orders: the senatorial aristocracy, the equestrians, the common citizens, and the slaves. The senatorial aristocrats numbered 300 citizens and their families. The equestrian order was made up of propertied aristocrats who were not in the Senate. Originally this class had been composed of those citizens with incomes sufficient to enable them to serve in the cavalry at their own expense, but the term equestrian came to be applied to all outside of the senatorial class who possessed property in substantial amount. By far the largest number of the citizens were mere commoners. It is, nevertheless, a sad commentary on Roman civilization that nearly all of the productive labor in the country was done by slaves.

The religious beliefs of the Romans were altered in various ways in the last two centuries of the Republic – again mainly because of the extension of Roman power over most of the Hellenistic states. First of all, the upper classes tended to abandon the traditional religion for the philosophies of Stoicism and, to a lesser degree, Epicureanism. But many of the common people also found worship of the ancient gods no longer satisfying because it was too formal and mechanical and demanded too much in the way of duty and self-sacrifice to meet their needs. Furthermore, Italy had attracted a stream of immigrants from the East, most of whom had a religious background totally different from that of the Romans. The result was the spread of Eastern mystery cults, which satisfied the craving for a more emotional religion and offered the reward of immortality to the wretched and downtrodden of the earth. From Egypt came the cult of Osiris, while from Phrygia in Asia Minor was introduced the worship of the Great Mother. In the last century B. C. the Persian cult of Mithraism, which came to surpass all the others in popularity, gained a foothold in Italy.