Ancient Worlds-Richard Miles (epub) torrent

Ancient Worlds - The Search for the Origins of Western Civilization


By Richard Miles

Published by Penguin Group in 2011

English


Across the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Nile Delta, awe-inspiring, monstrous ruins are scattered across the landscape - vast palaces, temples, fortresses, shattered statues of ancient gods, carvings praising the eternal power of long-forgotten dynasties. These ruins - the remainder of thousands of years of human civilization - are both inspirational in their grandeur, and terrible in that their once teeming centres of population were all ultimately destroyed and abandoned.

In this major book, Richard Miles recreates these extraordinary cities, ranging from the Euphrates to the Roman Empire, to understand the roots of human civilization. His challenge is to make us understand that the cities which define culture, religion and economic success and which are humanity's greatest invention, have always had a cruel edge to them, building systems that have provided both amazing opportunities and back-breaking hardship.

Richard Miles is the author of Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization. He teaches classics at the University of Sydney and was previously a Newton Trust Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics and Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. He has written widely on Punic, Roman and Vandal North Africa and has directed archaeological excavations in Carthage and Rome. Ancient Worlds was written to accompany his highly acclaimed six-part television series of the same name, first shown on BBC2