Peter Jones

Ancient & modern | 14 July 2007

As globalisation of business and communications grows, to what extent will we see globalisation of values?

issue 14 July 2007

As globalisation of business and communications grows, to what extent will we see globalisation of values? The experience of the ancient world suggests it could be to quite a large extent.

Greek and Roman society was, at one level, notoriously conservative. With a social structure that privileged the (very) few at the top of the scale against all the rest, slave-labour, an education and religious system that looked to the past for its justification and continuation, and the absence of technological or economic advance, change was never going to be top of any agenda.

Yet Greeks and Romans never ceased to absorb foreign influences and turn them to their advantage. Greeks happily adopted Persian customs in fashion. The revolution in Greek art was driven by contact with the Near East, as too was much of their early literature from Homer onwards.

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