The
life and death of ancient cities
a natural history
Woolf, Greg
creator
author.
text
bibliography
nyu
Oxford
Oxford University Press
c2020
2020
monographic
eng
xviii, 499 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm.
"This book offer a new account of the ancient cities of the Mediterranean world. We are used to thinking of Athens and Rome and Alexandria as great models of urbanism, and of the ancient world itself as a world of cities. In fact cities came late to this corner of Eurasia and were almost always tiny compared to those of neighbouring regions. Greg Woolf sets the slow growth of ancient cities in the context of our species great urban adventure which began six thousand years ago. He asks why, if as a species we are pre-adapted to live in cities, the Greeks and Romans, and Phoenicians and Etruscans and all their neighbours came so late to urban life. Answering this question involves probing questions of human evolution, of Mediterranean ecology, and of ancient imperialisms. Ancient cities emerged from a mixture of accident and entrepreneurship, from local projects of state building and the whims of kings and generals. The handful of ancient mega-cities will built and sustained at enormous cost and against the ecological odds and collapse as soon as imperial powers lost the will or power to keep them going"--
Part 1. An urban animal -- To the city -- Urban apes -- Settling down -- Uruk -- First cities -- Cities of bronze -- Part 2. An urban Mediterranean -- The first Mediterranean cities -- Mariners and chieftains -- Western pioneers -- A Greek lake -- Networking the Mediterranean -- Cities, states and kings -- Part 3. Imperial urbanisms -- City and empire -- Europe awakes -- Cities of marble -- Founding new cities -- Ruling through cities -- The ecology of Roman urbanism -- Part 4. De-urbanization -- The megalopoleis -- Postclassical -- Afterword: Mediterranean antiquity, an urban episode.
Greg Woolf.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
mm-----
Cities and towns, Ancient
Mediterranean Region
Urbanization
Mediterranean Region
History
To 1500
Imperialism
Social aspects
Mediterranean Region
History
To 1500
HT114 .W66 2020
307.760937
9780199946129
0199946124
9780199664733
0199664730
2019042392
DLC
200108
20230106204621.0
408908
eng