Classical Antiquity
- 606 BCE-586 BCE: The Babylonians destroy Jerusalem. King Nebuchadnezzar burns the Solomon's Temple.
- Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and created the Persian Empire (6th century BCE)
- 537 BCE: Cyrus allows the Israelites to return from the Babylonian captivity and rebuild the Temple.
- 515 BCE: The Second Temple is built.
- Sparta and Athens fought the Peloponnesian War
- Alexander the Great conquered Persia (330s BCE)
- Hellenic Greek culture spread through the Mediterranean
- The Roman Republic rose and fell
- Beginning of Christianity (1st century CE) and Islam (7th century CE)
- Jewish-Roman Wars and Jewish diaspora. In 135, Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Iudaea Province into Syria Palaestina.
- The Olympic Games observed until 393
- The Library of Alexandria, largest library in the world, burned
- Rise and fall of the Roman Empire
Read more about this topic: Timeline Of Middle Eastern History
Famous quotes containing the words classical and/or antiquity:
“Et in Arcadia ego.
[I too am in Arcadia.]”
—Anonymous, Anonymous.
Tomb inscription, appearing in classical paintings by Guercino and Poussin, among others. The words probably mean that even the most ideal earthly lives are mortal. Arcadia, a mountainous region in the central Peloponnese, Greece, was the rustic abode of Pan, depicted in literature and art as a land of innocence and ease, and was the title of Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral romance (1590)
“We do not associate the idea of antiquity with the ocean, nor wonder how it looked a thousand years ago, as we do of the land, for it was equally wild and unfathomable always. The Indians have left no traces on its surface, but it is the same to the civilized man and the savage. The aspect of the shore only has changed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)