The Classical World

Events belonging to the world of the ancient Mediterranean, Near East and their immediate contemporaries, from the roughly eighth century BCE rise of the Greek city-states and comparable states elsewhere through the traditional 476 CE fall of the Western Roman Empire: a sacking of Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE, a British revolt against Roman rule in the first century, the wars that made Rome master of the western Mediterranean, a Macedonian king's conquests that spread Greek culture across three continents, and the empire's own western collapse that conventionally closes the period. Belongs here: an event dated within this atlas's Classical Antiquity era window, roughly 800 BCE to 476 CE. Does not belong here: an event from the centuries immediately following Rome's western collapse, grouped under The Late Antique World or The Post-Classical and Medieval World depending on its own date.