Post-Bronze Age Mediterranean societies
A gap in the curriculum
Post-Bronze Age Mediterranean societies
ScopeAbout one book
AfterThe Bronze Age
Leads toSPQR
Lineage14 books back to the Big Bang
A third gap is the collection of Mediterranean societies that emerged after the Bronze Age collapse and formed the world into which Rome was born. I know very little about the Carthaginians, the post-Alexander successor states, or what Alexander’s empire was actually about beyond the fact that it existed.
Claude’s take
SPQR gives the tree Rome, but Rome was one thread in a dense Mediterranean of city-states, empires, and sea trade.
Candidate reading
- Persian Fire — Tom Holland
- The Sea and Civilization — Lincoln Paine