ABSTRACT
We now turn to the Romans, whose great civilization was the last to dominate the Mediterranean region in ancient times. From modest beginnings at a fording point on the Tiber River in central Italy, the city of Rome eventually controlled a huge territory stretching from Britain to North Arabia, from the Danube River to Morocco. Admiring and assimilating Greek and Etruscan culture in particular, the Romans created their own social and artistic synthesis, an outlook that would profoundly influence the Mediterranean world and Europe well after the demise of pagan antiquity, through the Middle Ages to the present day.
