Search Results: Mediterranean

The ancient Mediterranean was a busy place with trading ships sailing in all directions to connect cities and cultures. The Greeks were so keen on the rewards of trade and commerce that they colonized large parts of the coastal Mediterranean...

The Egyptians, Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans all prospered in the ancient Mediterranean thanks to their mastery of the sea which allowed them to fish, trade, win naval battles and establish new cities far from their own coastal waters. In...

The Mediterranean Sea was the economic focal point of the Roman Empire. Rome's armies first established an empire across these waters beginning back in the times of the Roman Republic. In 200 CE, the Mediterranean was still the channel that...

A map illustrating the late Bronze Age trade in the eastern Mediterranean seaboard as a region of increasing connectivity between the key players Pharaonic Egypt in the south, the Hittite Empire, Mesopotamia, and the Levant to the east, and...

Sometime around 330 BCE, Pytheas, a little-known Greek merchant, embarked on an astonishing voyage. It was a voyage that would take him far beyond the known boundaries of the Mediterranean, into lands thought to exist only in myth and legend...

Map of the western Mediterranean at the time of the First Punic War in 264 BCE.

The decline of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean and Near East has puzzled historians and archaeologists for centuries. While many have ascribed the collapse of several civilizations to the enigmatic Sea Peoples, Professor...

The history of the ancient world has always been told as a history of cities, from Homer's epic poems about events just before and just after the sack of Troy, through the prose histories of wars between Athens and Sparta, Rome and Carthage...

The Carthaginians, like their Phoenician forefathers, were highly successful traders who sailed the Mediterranean with their goods, and such was their success that Carthage became the richest city in the ancient world. Metals, foodstuffs...

With the appearance of the legionary, the Roman army was able to maintain a vast empire that totally embraced the Mediterranean Sea. Although the success of the army rested on the backs of the foot-soldiers and cavalry, there were others...