The story of ancient cities from the end of the Bronze Age to the beginning of the Middle Ages: a tale of war and politics, pestilence and famine, triumph and tragedy, by turns both fabulous and squalid.

Greg Woolf has been Professor of Classics and Director of the Institute of Classical Studies since January 2015 before which he was Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews (since 1998) and held fellowships at various Cambridge and Oxford Colleges. He has degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Max Weber College, Erfurt and he is a member of the Academia Europaea. He has held visiting appointments in Brasil, France, Germany, Italy and Spain and lectured around the world. He has published on Roman imperialism, on ancient literacy, on libraries, encyclopaedias and ancient ethnography and more recently on religious history and the archaeology of the Roman world.

• List of Illustrations


• Preface


• Acknowledgements
  


• PART 1: AN URBAN ANIMAL


• 1: To the City


• 2: Urban Apes


• 3: Settling Down


• 4: Uruk


• 5: First Cities


• 6: Cities of Bronze
  


• PART 11: AN URBAN MEDITERRANEAN


• 7: The First Mediterranean Cities


• 8: Mariners and Chieftains


• 9: Western Pioneers


• 10: A Greek Lake


• 11: Networking the Mediterranean


• 12: Cities, States, and Kings
  


• PART 111: IMPERIAL URBANISMS


• 13: City and Empire


• 14: Europe Awakes


• 15: Cities of Marble


• 16: Founding New Cities


• 17: Ruling Through Cities


• 18: The Ecology of Roman Urbanism
  


• PART IV: DE-URBANIZATION


• 19: The Megalopoleis


• 20: Postclassical
  


• Afterword


• Further Reading


• Timeline


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index