ABSTRACT
Classical Greece and Rome have all too often been hailed as the cradle of (at least) Western civilization, and have no less frequently been credited with many a ‘rst’ in a very wide range of elds that runs from democracy and concrete to sewage works and drama. It would thus hardly seem far-fetched to highlight the Classical Mediterranean as a key moment in world history that saw globalization make a rst appearance. Both the ‘small Greek world’ of Archaic to Classical-period colonial settlements and the Roman political-military unication of the regions surrounding the mare nostrum would seem obvious candidates for this role, if not as rst appearances, then at least as critical moments in the deep history of globalization (Malkin 2011; Pitts and Versluys 2015).
