When westerners talk about "the ancient world", they are usually referring to the ancient Greeks and Romans. But there are several civilisations more "ancient" than either of them. The Chinese, for example, established an empire which lasted longer than Rome's and produced great art and literature. The reason for the special place of ancient Greece and Rome in the imaginations of Westerners is, of course, that we believe our own culture has grown directly out of theirs.
The Greeks set literary and aesthetic standards that still apply today. Where would Western literature be without Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, or history without Herodotus' The Histories, or philosophy and politics without the works of Plato and Aristotle? Rome, as the founder of an empire encompassing the Mediterranean and much beyond, was probably even more influential. By conquering and colonising southern Europe and most of the British Isles, Rome deeply influenced the linguistic, social, political, economic, and religious path of Europe's development.
The justifiable fascination with the Greeks and Romans has resulted in a wealth of wonderful sites on the Web - from online libraries of the Greek and Latin classics, to virtual tours of ancient places, to current information about ongoing archaeological digs.
Although there are several online libraries of Greek and Latin texts (in the original languages as well as in translation), the best one is the Internet Classics Archive at MIT (classics.mit.edu), which offers the full English text of more than 400 Greek, Roman and other classics. If you want more than just thebooks themselves, though, a visit to the Perseus Project(www.perseus.tufts.edu) won't go amiss. The project is Tufts University's ambitious effort to create a Web-based multimedia library of material relevant to the study of ancient Greece. It contains the major writings of over thirty authors, and key words throughout the texts are hyperlinked to definitions, maps, and images of vases, architecture, and coins - a definite plus for students.
Diotima: Materials for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World is one of the best classics sites on the Web (www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/Classics/gender.html). Maintained by a professor at the University of Kentucky, Diotima serves as an interdisciplinary resource for anyone interested in the exploration of women and gender in the ancient Mediterranean.
It includes translations of key passages about women in ancient writings, a searchable bibliography, and links to many online articles, book reviews, databases, and images. Diotima is beautifully presented and full of interesting and informative material. Sites like this prove that the quality of the content available on the Web has reached the point where students and scholars truly can learn and do valuable research without leaving their desktops.
There are several virtual tours of museum exhibits about the ancient world on the Web. Among the best is Odyssey Online, a journey to explore ancient Greek, Roman, near Eastern, and Egyptian cultures hosted by museums at two US universities. When the kids tire of the Barbie and video-gaming sites, the cool puzzles, games, and worksheets on Odyssey Online will certainly spark their interest in things ancient: (www.cc.emory.edu/CARLOS/ODYSSEY).The FORVM ROMANVM is an excellent educational Web site devoted to the history, culture, and inhabitants of the ancient marketplace of Rome from 100 BC to 100 AD.
Created by three Dutch students after an inspirational visit to the real thing, this site offers a nicely illustrated tour of the Roman Forum, with brief essays on a wide variety of lively topics (library.advanced.org/11402).
If your interests lean towards ancient archaeology, the Web offers a multitude of exciting sites devoted to ongoing excavations. The two most extensive listings of these sites are the Classics and Mediterranean Archaeology Server at the University of Michigan (rome.classics.lsa.umich.edu/) and Romarch, the ancient Roman art and archaeology site(www-personal.umich.edu/~pfoss/2romarch.html). Visiting either one will enable you to hop to any of the hundreds of classical archaeological Web sites out there.
Ireland has two notable classics Web sites, both maintained at UCD. The first is Classics ╔ireann (www.ucd.ie/~civilise/ClassicsEireann.html). A site started by a couple of UCD undergraduates in 1996, it contains articles about classical archaeology, literature, and history as well as a number of links to other sites about the ancient world. The second is Classics Ireland, the online version of the enjoyable journal of the Classical Association of Ireland(www.ucd.ie/~classics/ClassicsIreland.html). The journal offers articles and reviews covering a range of subjects, including history, ancient and modern poetry, archaeology, and even rock music.
The upcoming issue will feature an article about Herodotus and The English Patient, which will no doubt answer all our niggling questions about exactly which passages from The Histories Ralph Finnes read aloud to Kirstin Scott Thomas.
If you want a quick way into the classics world on the Web, you could not do better than to bookmark Electronic Resources for Classicists (www.tlg.uci.edu/~tlg).
This site, maintained by Maria C. Pantelia, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, offers hundreds of links to information gateways, databases and other classical resources.
My favourite classics Web site at the moment is The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (pharos.bu.edu/Egypt/Wonders). This site provides interesting and informative discussions about each of the wonders (how many can you name? - the Great Pyramid at Giza is the only one still in existence today) as well as a lengthy list of links to many other forgotten (or ignored) ancient, modern, and natural wonders.
This site is particularly interesting not because it tells us about the greatest accomplishments of the ancient world but because it reflects the determination of Europeans more than a thousand years later to absorb into their own identity the achievements of peoples they claimed as their ancestors. For despite what some people think, the list of "seven wonders" was not drawn up by the ancients. It was compiled in the Middle Ages - at a moment when the ancient civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean were dim memories and most of these impressive sights were long gone or in ruins. Thus the identification of the seven wonders of the ancient world can be seen as one of the moments in which Europeans began to create the story of their own past.
Ed Hatton: ed_hatton@hotmail.com