Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

My last question comes from Abdelrahman Wael asks, Hey Gary, love the show. I have two questions: why do you make more episodes on ancient Rome than on ancient Greece, and who do you think was more influential in the history of human civilization?

There are more episodes about Rome than Greece simply because there is more writing that has been preserved, and there is more drama and stories that come from Rome. Rome was a unified empire with powerful rules that lasted centuries. Greece was, save for the very short period of Macedonian rule, a collection of city-states.

Rome was heavily influenced by Greece, but that was mostly cultural. Most wealthy Romans had Greek tutors for their children. Most of the influence that ancient Greece had on the world was through and because of the Romans who they influenced.

Also, Christianity arose during the Roman period, and that alone had a lasting legacy that we often forget. Latin was the lingua franca for centuries in Europe in a way that Greek never was.