How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)

by David Goldman

Why did these civilizations die? A too-simple answer is conquest by other peoples, or the ravages of famine and disease. The foot soldiers of invading tribes wielding the new iron swords and javelin-throwers, according to one theory, learned to defeat the expensively maintained chariot-and-archer armies of Bronze Age cities. But the peoples of the ancient world did not understand the matter so simply. The Hebrew Bible, the epics of Homer, and the tragedies of Athens’ sixth-century golden age, each in their own way, offer a different explanation: these ancient civilizations destroyed themselves from within before the conquerors came. The invading Hellenes replaced the people who had built the palace at Mycenae, but they kept their stories. What we now call Western literature began in morality plays at a religious festival, which also offered a public lesson in statecraft. Half a millennium later the tragic playwrights of classical Athens still retold the errors of the kings of Mycenae.