Classical Antiquity

In many schools, teachers are expected to sweep across thousands of years of world history in a single academic year.

In this lesson, we will look at the six periods of world history. We will learn the defining characteristics of each and highlight the major themes associated with each period.

The categorization of the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time is called periodization. This is a list of such named time periods as defined in various fields of study. Major categorization systems include cosmological (time periods in the origin and evolution of the universe), geological (time periods in the origin and evolution of earth), anthropological (time periods in the origin and evolution of humans) and historical (written history).

A broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world.

Classical Greece was a 200-year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC. This Classical period saw the annexation of much of modern-day Greece by the Persian Empire,its subsequent independence, and it also had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundations of western civilization. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought (architecture, sculpture), scientific thought, theatre, literature, and philosophy derives from this period of Greek history.

Art of Classical Antiquity (1000 BCE - 450 CE): History of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art up to the Middle Ages.

What happens when verse from Ovid, history as written by Herodotus, satyr plays, the works of Thucydides, an Attic red-figure kylix, and tracts describing medicinal practice of the ancient world are gathered in one place and analyzed with scholarly verve? You have none other than Classical Antiquity--a journal that combines the pleasures, politics, intellectualism, cultural production, sciences, and linguistics of European traditions, centuries past.

"Even in a ruined state, the baths, aqueducts, and sanctuaries of the classical world provoked the people of the Middle Ages to reflect upon the grandeur of the past."

The Carthaginians controlled the western Mediterranean region until they were defeated by the Romans in the Punic Wars.

In the first half of the first millennium BCE, Greek city-states, most of which were maritime powers, began to look beyond Greece for land and resources, and so they founded colonies across the Mediterranean.

The Byzantine Empire, also called Byzantium, was the eastern half of the Roman Empire that continued on after the western half of the empire collapsed.

Find out more about the history of Hellenistic Greece, including videos, interesting articles, pictures, historical features and more. Get all the facts on History.

Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia.