It is important to distinguish at the outset between the original Romans – a small and unimportant people inhabiting a town called ‘Rome’, about 25 miles up the Tiber river from the sea, in a hilly volcanic region known as Latium (whence their language, Latin) – and the other (obviously) non-Roman tribes of Italy living elsewhere. This small town would come to rule much of the known world as far east as modern Iran, and have trade links with India and China.

Among these were the Etruscans, who in the eighth century BC were by far the most powerful people in Italy; their territory spread from Salerno (south of Rome) northwards almost as far as the Alps. The Romans called these people Tusci or Etrusci (compare their region of ‘Etruria’). They had rich commercial and cultural links with the Greeks, who had already planted colonies in the south of Italy and Sicily from the eighth century BC onwards. There was clearly Etruscan political and cultural (especially religious) influence in early Rome – the name Roma is of Etruscan origin – and Rome’s early kings (from Rome’s foundation in 753 BC) probably had Etruscan associations.

The republic (res publica ‘public property, affairs, business’) developed slowly over hundreds of years: it began (Romans believed) with top Roman tribal leaders (patricians, once consultants to the king, now forming the Senate), advising the new, top elected officials (magistratûs – consuls, etc.). The historian Livy suggested that they were not in tune with the interests of the plebs (the ordinary people), but over time full political integration was achieved: plebs had their own assemblies making laws for all Romans, could be appointed to all the executive posts, and so on.

But it did not all go smoothly. In 390 BC Rome was sacked by the Gauls (from modern France), who had an enclave in north-eastern Italy at this time. (This much-feared tribe continued to strike fear into Romans whenever they went on the move in this region.) The Italian Samnite peoples also took a great deal of bringing to heel.

Nevertheless it was during this period that Rome developed not just a powerful citizen army but also impressive diplomatic skills in learning how to defeat peoples and then bring them onside politically, commercially and socially.

Carthage was a settlement founded by Phoenicians in the ninth century BC. The wars are called ‘Punic’, because Punici was the best Romans could do with Phoinikes, the Greek for ‘Phoenicians’. The first war was fought over possession of Sicily and won by Rome in 241 BC, Sicily becoming its first province.

It was during this war that Romans learned military mastery of the sea against a far more experienced maritime opponent. When the first Punic War broke out, Romans had very little experience of fighting at sea, particularly against Carthage’s huge oared quinqueremes, with five decks of oars either side. One of these enemy vessels ran aground and fell into Roman hands, so the Romans used this as a model to build a fleet of 100 quinqueremes and twenty triremes (three decks of oars) in an incredible sixty days (later they built a fleet of 220 ships in forty-five days!). The rowers trained on benches set out on dry land to resemble the deck. Unable to match the Carthaginians for skill, they developed a tactic of ramming the enemy ships, locking the two together with a spiked gangway rammed down into the enemy ship, allowing Roman soldiers to pour over the gangway and fight a land battle at sea.

The second Punic War began in 218 BC when the Carthaginian general Hannibal, bent on revenge, established a base in Spain and famously took his army, complete with elephants, over the Alps and down into Italy from the north. His aim was to destroy Roman power by encouraging the Italian tribes to shake off the yoke of Rome. But he could not drive home his initial stunning successes at battles like Trasimene (217 BC) and Cannae (216 BC). The Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio ‘Africanus’ then took the battle first to Spain and in 205 BC to Africa. Hannibal was forced to return to north Africa and was defeated at Zama in 202 BC. In 197 BC, Spain was divided into two Roman provinces.

Rome looked back on the defeat of Hannibal as its ‘finest hour’. It also learned the lesson of Hannibal. It had fielded massive citizen armies to keep Hannibal at bay, and it maintained those armies from now on as it began its rise to absolute dominance in the Mediterranean. It now turned its attention to the western Balkan area (229–219) BC, which had been interfering with Roman shipping in the Adriatic: providentially, for this area would prove useful in the ensuing war against Macedon (northern Greece), whose king, Philip V, realizing the power of Rome on his doorstep, had been an enthusiastic supporter of Hannibal. The Roman emperor Trajan would complete the job in the Balkans AD 109.

Here one point is worth making: Rome had a reputation for utter ruthlessness in battle, and that was the key to its success. But there was nothing pathological about it. Every enemy it met brought exactly the same mentality into battle. The Romans’ success was down to the experience of their army, the sheer numbers they could call on and the loyalty of their allied states, who knew a winner when they saw one. Inflict a massive defeat on Rome, and you would guarantee a massive response.

Our narrative now turns to early Greece.

Then in the eighth century BC migration from the Greek mainland spread Greek speakers westwards: first to Corcyra (Corfu), then on to the south of Italy starting around Naples and down to Sicily (where, as we have seen, Carthage already had a foothold). Land shortage or a desire to set up trading posts or find better agricultural land might have been among the reasons. Later, this whole area was known as Magna Graecia (‘Great Greece’). In about 700 BC the poet Homer composed his mighty epics of a Trojan War (Iliad) and Odysseus’ return to his homeland after it (Odyssey), both looking back to that ‘palace’ civilization half a millennium earlier, though with what historical accuracy it is very hard to tell.

About 630 BC Greeks migrated to Cyrene in North Africa, and from 600 BC onwards to Marseille (Massilia) in modern France and Emporiae (‘Tradersville’) in north-eastern Spain. Slightly later, existing Greek settlements in Asia Minor sent out settlements north to Byzantium and on through the Dardanelles strait into the Black Sea (Crimea in the north and Trebizond in the south). So by 580 BC, there were Greek speakers all round the Mediterranean and Black Sea, ‘like frogs around a pond’, in Plato’s vivid phrase.

It cannot be insignificant that the great civilizations of the Near East exerted a strong influence on the thinking of these Eastern Greeks. Indeed, in the eighth century BC the Greeks developed from the Phoenicians (inhabiting roughly modern Lebanon) the world’s first vowel and consonant alphabet, from which the Latin alphabet, and so the English alphabet and most of the world’s alphabets, are derived. This enabled the Homeric epics to be written down and the West’s first lyric poetry – Sappho, in particular – to be recorded: a moment of enormous significance.

Further, there are literary as well as philosophical connections between Greece and the East at this time (see M.L. West’s monumental work on the subject, The East Face of Helicon). The associations between the epic of the ancient Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh (c. 2600 BC) and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are well documented. One of Sappho’s most famous poems is the one in which she listed the physical symptoms she experienced when she looked at a certain woman: