Woolf, Greg Metropolis. Aufstieg und Niedergang antiker Städte

The first cities of the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Tartessians and Lycians once arose from a Mediterranean world of villages. Tiny cities became the seed of the states and empires of antiquity. How might their inhabitants have felt in relation to the temples of the gods, what was life like in peasant, slave or soldier towns? What were the driving forces behind their rise? And what made even the most powerful cities so fragile?

Alth historian Greg Woolf, a member of the British Academy, is able to keep the major lines of development of the metropolises in view. Richly illustrated, the book brings to life the abandoned remains of our urban ancestors, spurred on by the question of what must be the secret of metropolises that are as liveable as they are survivable. The greatest ancient metropolises became powerhouses of society, not only in the political sphere, no, also in art and literature. Athens and Corinth, Syracuse and Marseilles, Alexandria and Ephesus, Persepolis and Carthage, Rome and Byzantium all tell of the birth of metropolises. Then, halfway through the first post-Christian millennium, they withered, leaving behind ruins - and occupying us to this day.