Dear Classical Wisdom Member,
3,400 years ago, the world was already globalized. Rife with international alliances, political spin, proxy wars, elite marriages, trade disputes, and the timeless human habit of complaining to whoever sits at the top...
You see, dear reader, we’ve been looking into the past of the past. After all, the Classical age of Greece and Rome did not emerge from a historical vacuum, but rose from the long shadow of the Bronze Age...
The trade routes, diplomatic norms, mythic frameworks, and political experiments of the Late Bronze Age formed the deep foundation on which later Classical societies built. Homer’s epics echo Bronze Age values and conflicts; Greek diplomacy mirrors earlier systems of alliance and gift exchange; Roman imperial administration inherits a world already shaped by multinational power blocs and contested frontiers.
The Bronze Age is not a prelude to skip, but the first act of the Classical story itself...and yet with a history so historic, it would surely be difficult to know what happened? How can we discover the details of this ancient globalized world?
Enter the Amarna Letters: hundreds of clay tablets exchanged between the great powers of the Late Bronze Age: Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittites... as well as their far more anxious vassal states. These are not dusty relics of abstraction, but primary sources from the Bronze Age.
In them we can discover a fascinating and eerily familiar world. After all, the Late Bronze Age was a “small world network,” where no kingdom was more than a few degrees of separation from another...much like our own hyper-connected age. Stability depended on trade routes, mutual trust, and gift-giving diplomacy. When those systems worked, prosperity flourished. Gold flowed “like dust,” royal families intermarried across borders, and cultural exchange thrived.
Yet beneath the surface, cracks were already forming... Petty kings squabbled like siblings under the watchful eye of a distracted superpower. Proxy conflicts simmered. Truth bent easily in letters sent hundreds of miles away.
And when the system later collapsed, the shockwaves were catastrophic. Understanding how it functioned at its height helps explain not only its fall, but our own vulnerabilities today...
This month’s podcast with Professors is with Eric H. Cline, professor of Classics and Anthropology at George Washington University. He is one of today’s most compelling interpreters of the ancient past, known widely for 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed and After 1177 BC. We discuss his latest work, Love, War, and Diplomacy, which turns the spotlight onto a moment when the ancient world was thriving—politically entangled, economically prosperous, and deeply interconnected.
Listen above to discover politics, power, and crisis in the Bronze Age...
Members: You can enjoy the full transcript above as well as the audio only version below.
All the best,
Anya Leonard
Founder and Director
Classical Wisdom
P.S. If you are fascinated by the Bronze Age, make sure to check out the details of our 2026 voyage, The Sea of Homer. Traverse the wine-dark seas, discover ancient Mycenaean sites, and explore Homer’s landscapes...all while enjoying the lectures and insights of Emily Wilson, a distinguished professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania and an award-winning translator of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad.
