Classical civilizations

The later cultures of Greece and Rome inspired Western thought as well. The political thinkers responsible for Greece's democratic city-state of Athens and Rome's early republican government influenced movements for democracy and self-government around the world, while both cultures made advances in architecture and engineering that are still seen today. The city of Athens was a high point of classical civilization, as it evolved from monarchy to a direct democracy of its enfranchised citizens and produced art and architecture based on the Golden Mean, the Greek ideal of balance, harmony, and order. Rome was equally impressive in its architecture, but it also spread its technologies across the most expansive, longest-lasting empire in history, technologies which included aqueducts, plumbing, and roads, via a network of trade and tribute that was in existence in some places as late as the 6th century C.E.

Athens’ Golden Age was brief, lasting about half a century, between the end of the Persian Wars and the beginning of the Peloponnesian Wars. Rome was founded around 753 BCE. It began as a monarchy, became a republic, and ended as an empire. Its "official" fall was in 476 C.E., when the German mercenary Odoacer deposed the emperor. Rome's decline came from within, from corrupt and incompetent emperors, and from without, under attack by Germanic tribes. Its empire finally became too far-flung.

A religion that was on the rise as Rome fell was Christianity. From a small, persecuted sect during the height of Rome's power to official state religion in the time of the Emperor Theodoric, Christianity gained even greater prominence under the Emperor Constantine, who recognized it as a cohesive force that might keep the Empire unified. When centers of Christian thought in North Africa such as Alexandria and Carthage, and in Antioch and Jerusalem, were conquered by Muslims, the Bishop of Rome—the pope—gained a new importance in Christendom, and the stage was set for a shifting alliance between royalty and the papacy that lasted for centuries.

Manual labor during this period was performed by slaves and draft animals for the most part. It was not until the Roman Empire began to break up that slavery (at least in the West) would subside into the social system known as feudalism.