HANDOUTS: Ch 5—The Classical Period in a Nutshell (600 B.C.E to 600 C. E)

Name______Date______Period______

The Classical Period in a Nutshell

The end of the classical era (around 500 C.E. or so) is defined by the changes in Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean, not the whole world. Because these were the centers of great empires, their collapse had significance beyond the boundaries of their civilizations—affecting sub-Saharan Africa, northern Europe and parts of Asia.

This packet is designed to help you review the characteristics of the classical empires, discern the reasons for their decline and analyze their impact on the world. You will ultimately determine the answer for the following questions:

  1. Why did these civilizations decline?
  2. Why did different regions see different patterns of decline, and with different results?
  3. What was the significance of these developments?

Let’s start by taking a look back…

I. WHAT IS AN EMPIRE?

At one level, empires are simply states, political systems that exercise coercive power. The term, however, is normally reserved for larger and more aggressive states, those that conquer, rule, and extract resources from other states and peoples. Thus empires have generally encompassed a considerable variety of peoples and cultures within a single political system, and they have often been associated with political and cultural oppression. No clear line divides empires and small multiethnic states, and the distinction between them is arbitrary and subjective. Frequently, empires have given political expression to a civilization or culture, as in the Chinese and Persian empires. Civilizations have also flourished without a single all-encompassing state or empire, as in the competing city-states of Mesopotamia, Greece, and the Maya or the many rival states of post-Roman Europe. In such cases, civilizations were expressed in elements of a common culture rather than in a unified political system.

II. HOW DID EMPIRES RULE OVER SUCH LARGE TERRITORIES?

The key to this answer lies in two areas:

  1. Territorial expansion
  2. Efforts to integrate diverse peoples

The Eurasian empires of the classical era—those of Persia, Greece under Alexander the Great, Rome, China during the Qin and Han dynasties, India during the Mauryan and Gupta dynasties—shared a set of common problems. Would they seek to impose the culture of the imperial heartland on their varied subjects? Would they rule conquered people directly or through established local authorities? How could they extract the wealth of empire in the form of taxes, tribute, and labor while maintaining order in conquered territories? And, no matter how impressive they were at their peak, they all sooner or later collapsed, providing a useful reminder to their descendants of the fleeting nature of all human creation.

But empires were important. The majority of humankind before the twentieth century have lived out their lives in empires, where they were often governed by rulers culturally different from themselves. These imperial states brought together people of quite different traditions and religions and so stimulated the exchange of ideas, cultures, and values.

III. EXPANSION

Let’s start with territorial expansion:

Label the furthest extent of the following empires on the map: Greece under Alexander (pg. 81), Persia (use an outside source), Rome (pg. 82), Qin and Han China (pg. 42), Maurya and Gupta India (pgs. 62-63). Be careful as you plan because you will have overlap and will need to label accordingly. Use lines, dots or other symbols as necessary and provide a key. MAP IS ON ITS SIDE TO GIVE YOU MORE ROOM TO LABEL.

IV. INTEGRATION

Provide specific historical examples of the ways in which each empire INTEGRATED diverse peoples into its society. Use your book, readings and outside sources.

GREECE:______

GREECE UNDER ALEXANDER: ______

ROME: ______

______

MAURYA INDIA:______

______

GUPTA INDIA:______

______

QIN CHINA:______

HAN CHINA:______

V. COLLAPSE (pgs. 106-111)

What causes the collapse of these once-mighty structures? In China, the Han dynasty empire came to an end in 220 c.e.; the traditional date for the final disintegration of the Roman Empire is 476 c.e., although a process of decline had been under way for several centuries. In the Roman case, however, only the western half of the empire collapsed, while the eastern part, subsequently known as the Byzantine Empire, maintained the tradition of imperial Rome for another thousand years.

Despite this difference, a number of common factors have been associated with the end of these imperial states:

EXTERNAL FACTORS: At one level, they simply got too big, too overextended, and too expensive to be sustained by the available resources, and no fundamental technological breakthrough was available to enlarge these resources. Furthermore, the growth of large landowning families with huge estates enabled them to avoid paying taxes, turned free peasants into impoverished tenant farmers, and diminished the authority of the central government. In China, such conditions led to a major peasant revolt, known as the Yellow Turban Rebellion, in 184 c.e.

INTERNAL FACTORS:Rivalry among elite factions created instability in both empires and eroded imperial authority. In China, persistent tension between castrated court officials (eunuchs) loyal to the emperor and Confucian-educated scholar-bureaucrats weakened the state. In the Roman Empire between 235 and 284 c.e., some twenty-six individuals claimed the title of Roman emperor, only one of whom died of natural causes. In addition, epidemic disease ravaged both societies. The population of the Roman Empire declined by 25 percent in the two centuries following 250 c.e., a demographic disaster that meant diminished production, less revenue for the state, and fewer men available for the defense of the empire’s long frontiers.

DON’T FORGET THE NOMADS!

To these mounting internal problems was added a growing threat from nomadic or semi-agricultural peoples occupying the frontier regions of both empires. The Chinese had long developed various ways of dealing with the Xiongnu and other nomadic people to the north—building the Great Wall to keep them out, offering them trading opportunities at border markets, buying them off with lavish gifts, contracting marriage alliances with nomadic leaders, and conducting periodic military campaigns against them. But as the Han dynasty weakened in the second and third centuries c.e., such peoples more easily breached the frontier defenses and set up a succession of “barbarian states” in north China. Culturally, however, many of these foreign rulers gradually became Chinese, encouraging intermarriage, adopting Chinese dress, and setting up their courts in Chinese fashion.

A weakening Roman Empire likewise faced serious problems from Germanic-speaking peoples living on its northern frontier. Growing numbers of these people began to enter the empire in the fourth century c.e.—some as mercenaries in Roman armies and others as refugees fleeing the invasions of the ferocious Huns, who were penetrating Europe from Central Asia. Once inside the declining empire, various Germanic groups established their own kingdoms, at first controlling Roman emperors and then displacing them altogether by 476 c.e. Unlike the nomadic groups in China, who largely assimilated Chinese culture, Germanic kingdoms in Europe developed their own ethnic identity—Visigoths, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and others—even as they drew on Roman law and adopted Roman Christianity. Far more than in China, the fall of the Roman Empire produced a new culture, blending Latin and Germanic elements, which provided the foundation for the hybrid civilization that would arise in Western Europe.

The collapse of empire meant more than the disappearance of centralized government and endemic conflict. In both China and post-Roman Europe, it also meant the decline of urban life, a contracting population, less area under cultivation, diminishing international trade, and vast insecurity for ordinary people. It must have seemed that civilization itself was unraveling.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? CHINA VS. WESTERN EUROPE

The most significant difference between the collapse of empire in China and that in the Mediterranean basin lay in what happened next. In China, after about 350 years of disunion, disorder, frequent warfare, and political chaos, a Chinese imperial state, similar to that of the Han dynasty, was reassembled under the Sui (589–618 c.e.), Tang (618–907), and Song (960–1279) dynasties. Once again, a single emperor ruled; a bureaucracy selected by examinations governed; and the ideas of Confucius informed the political system. Such a Chinese empire persisted into the early twentieth century, establishing one of the most continuous political traditions of any civilization in world history.

The story line of European history following the end of the Roman Empire was very different indeed. No large-scale, centralized, imperial authority encompassing all of Western Europe has ever been successfully reestablished there for any length of time. The memory of Roman imperial unity certainly persisted, and many tried unsuccessfully to re-create it. But most of Western Europe dissolved into a highly decentralized political system involving kings with little authority, nobles, knights and vassals, various city-states in Italy, and small territories ruled by princes, bishops, or the pope. From this point on, Europe would be a civilization without an encompassing imperial state.

VI. THE NEW RELIGIOUS MAP (pgs. 111-117)

Between 200 and 600 C.E., many of the world’s major religions arose. The collapse of Rome, plagues spreading across Eurasia and the uncertainity of the future meant that many more people turned to religion as a source of comfort. Two things seem clear about this period:

  • Buddhism and Christianity rapidly expanded out from their points of origin.
  • The changes that religions brought had wide cultural, social and political implications.

MONOTHEISM: ZOROASTRIANISM & JUDAISM

Click here to answer this question.During the glory years of the powerful Persian Empire, a new religion arose to challenge the polytheism of earlier times. Tradition dates its Persian prophet, Zarathustra (Zoroaster to the Greeks), to the sixth or seventh century b.c.e., although some scholars place him hundreds of years earlier. Whenever he actually lived, his ideas took hold in Persia and received a degree of state support during the Achaemenid dynasty (558–330 b.c.e.). Appalled by the endemic violence of recurring cattle raids, Zarathustra recast the traditional Persian polytheism into a vision of a single unique god, Ahura Mazda, who ruled the world and was the source of all truth, light, and goodness. This benevolent deity was engaged in a cosmic struggle with the forces of evil, embodied in an equivalent supernatural figure, Angra Mainyu. Ultimately this struggle would be decided in favor of Ahura Mazda, aided by the arrival of a final savior who would restore the world to its earlier purity and peace. At a day of judgment, those who had aligned with Ahura Mazda would be granted new resurrected bodies and rewarded with eternal life in Paradise. Those who had sided with evil and the “Lie” were condemned to everlasting punishment. Zoroastrian teaching thus placed great emphasis on the free will of humankind and the necessity for each individual to choose between good and evil.

The Zoroastrian faith achieved widespread support within the Persian heartland, although it also found adherents in other parts of the empire, such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. Because it never became an active missionary religion, it did not spread widely beyond the region. Alexander the Great’s invasion of the Persian Empire was disastrous for Zoroastrianism, as temples were plundered, priests slaughtered, and sacred writings burned. The arrival of Islam led to the final decline of Zoroastrianism in Persia.

Like Buddhism, the Zoroastrian faith vanished from its place of origin, but unlike Buddhism, it did not spread beyond Persia in a recognizable form. Some elements of the Zoroastrian belief system, however, did become incorporated into other religious traditions. The presence of many Jews in the Persian Empire meant that they surely became aware of Zoroastrian ideas. Many of those ideas—including the conflict of God and an evil counterpart (Satan); the notion of a last judgment and resurrected bodies; and a belief in the final defeat of evil, the arrival of a savior (Messiah), and the remaking of the world at the end of time—found a place in an evolving Judaism. Some of these teachings, especially the concepts of heaven and hell, later became prominent in those enormously influential successors to Judaism—Christianity and Islam.

Judaism

While Zoroastrianism emerged in the greatest empire of its time, Judaism, the Middle East’s other ancient monotheistic tradition, was born among one of the region’s smaller peoples—the Hebrews. Their traditions, recorded in the Old Testament, tell of an early migration from Mesopotamia to Palestine under the leadership of Abraham. Those same traditions report that a portion of these people later fled to Egypt, where they were first enslaved and then miraculously escaped to rejoin their kinfolk in Palestine. There, around 1000 b.c.e., they established a small state, which soon split into two parts—a northern kingdom called Israel and a southern state called Judah.

In a region politically dominated by the large empires of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, these tiny Hebrew communities lived a precarious existence. Israel was conquered by Assyria in 722 b.c.e., and many of its inhabitants were deported to distant regions, where they assimilated into the local culture. In 586 b.c.e., the kingdom of Judah likewise came under Babylonian control, and its elite class was shipped off to exile. In Babylon, these people, now calling themselves Jews, retained their cultural identity and later were able to return to their homeland. A large part of that identity lay in their unique religious ideas. It was in creating that religious tradition, rather than in building a powerful empire, that this small people cast a long shadow in world history.

From their unique historical experience of exodus from Egypt and exile in Babylon, the Jews evolved over many centuries a distinctive conception of God. Unlike the peoples of Mesopotamia, India, Greece, and elsewhere—all of whom populated the invisible realm with numerous gods and goddesses—the Jews found in their God, whom they called Yahweh, a powerful and jealous deity, who demanded their exclusive loyalty. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”—this was the first of the Ten Commandments. It was a difficult requirement, for as the Jews turned from a pastoral life to agriculture, many of them were continually attracted by the fertility gods of neighboring peoples. Their neighbors’ goddesses also were attractive, offering a kind of spiritual support that the primarily masculine Yahweh could not. This was not quite monotheism, for the repeated demands of the Hebrew prophets to turn away from other gods show that those deities remained real for many Jews.

Over time, however, Yahweh triumphed. The Jews came to understand their relationship to him as a contract or a covenant. In return for their sole devotion and obedience, Yahweh would consider the Jews his chosen people, favoring them in battle, causing them to grow in numbers, and bringing them prosperity and blessing.

Unlike the bickering, arbitrary, polytheistic gods of Mesopotamia or ancient Greece, which were associated with the forces of nature and behaved in quite human fashion, Yahweh was increasingly seen as a lofty, transcendent deity of utter holiness and purity, set far above the world of nature, which he had created. But unlike the impersonal conceptions of ultimate reality found in Daoism and Hinduism, Yahweh was encountered as a divine person with whom people could actively communicate. He also acted within the historical process, bringing the Jews out of Egypt or using foreign empires to punish them for their disobedience.

Furthermore, Yahweh was transformed from a god of war, who ordered his people to “utterly destroy” the original inhabitants of the Promised Land, to a god of social justice and compassion for the poor and the marginalized, especially in the passionate pronouncements of Jewish prophets such as Amos and Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah describes Yahweh as rejecting the empty rituals of his chosen but sinful people: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord… Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean,…cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice; correct oppression; defend the fatherless; plead for the widow.”10

Here was a distinctive conception of the divine—singular, transcendent, personal, separate from nature, engaged in history, and demanding social justice and moral righteousness above sacrifices and rituals. This set of ideas sustained a separate Jewish identity in both ancient and modern times, and it was this understanding of God that provided the foundation on which both Christianity and Islam were built.

CIVILIZATIONS DECLINE; RELIGIONS RISE

The decline of the classical empires contributed several ingredients to the spread of what turned out to be the great world religions. Previously, most religion had been regional. Buddhism, spreading through India at various points in the classical period, could embrace a whole subcontinent. As Hinduism evolved from the Brahman religion, it did the same and also spread to a few other areas of Indian commercial influence in Southeast Asia. Christianity showed an ability to win a growing minority in the Roman Empire and at a few points beyond its borders, in the Middle East and North Africa.