The Odyssey of Western Civilization: Episode 3

Episode 3: The Ancient Mediterranean
Hosted by Victor Davis Hanson

The Mediterranean Sea functioned as antiquity’s superhighway, connecting Asia, Africa and Europe in ways that allowed for a dynamic exchange of goods and ideas. Blessed with relatively calm weather and with numerous islands to serve as way stations, the sea was readily navigable. First Athens and then Carthage built maritime empires, but it was Rome that finally turned the Mediterranean into mare nostrum – “our sea.” By the first century A.D., the Romans’ dominance of the Mediterranean allowed them to create an integrated empire state that stretched some 2,400 miles from Spain to the Levant. Ep 3/8