Funerary statue of Kroisos

Still vigorous and successful in the second and third centuries AD, by the sixth the Classical world had ceased to exist. Its collapse was not only the result of external pressures and internal decline; it was also deliberately brought to an end in the name of a cultural revolution. Economic and military problems did admittedly lead to a fatal weakening of the Empire...

We readily think of our minds and bodies in terms of the chemical and the electrical, the hidden elements and energies of which we believe our world ultimately to be composed. The early Greeks often thought of themselves in terms of the more substantial materials they saw around them...