Quotes from Roderick Beaton

Modern science begins with Heraclitus of Ephesus.

the way to truth was through the exercise of reason and rational judgement.

Objects recovered have been identified as 'Egyptian, Nubian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Cypriot, Mycenaean, Italian, Balkan, and Baltic

The Athenians had failed in the fifth century BCE; now it was to be the turn of the Spartans.

Athens and the Greek peninsula marked the western limit of the three great Hellenistic kingdoms

which has given Greeks their preeminent place in the modern world of shipping today

tempted by Hannibal's offer to ensure the 'liberty of the Hellenes

Victory over Athens simply replaced a much-resented Athenian empire with a Spartan one that would soon be resented

the Greek city-states of Sicily had been fighting off their rivals, the Carthaginians

and as a result shared the fate of Syracuse.

Carthage, in modern Tunisia, had grown from its origins as a Phoenician settlement

to become the most powerful state in the region.

the Antigonid kingdom of Macedonia also made an alliance with Hannibal.

This had the effect of bringing the Roman legions into the southern

The new Great King was Artaxerxes II. But his claim was contested by his brother Cyrus

Sicily had been effectively divided between the Greeks in the east of the island and the Carthaginians in the west.

By the time Justinian died in 565, aged over eighty

Archimedes of Syracuse, a friend and kinsman of the ruling dynasty

the first scientists and the first mathematicians.

to back the man they knew, Cyrus, for the throne of Persia.

But then Cyrus was killed in a battle on the banks of the Euphrates in 401 BCE.

They found themselves up against the new satraps sent to the region by the victorious Artaxerxes.

the 'decline and fall of the Roman empire' began with the death of Marcus

From Antioch, the crusaders went on their way to Jerusalem to seize the city and massacre everyone in it on 15 July 1099.