page_title: Greco-Roman world
hierarchical_section_title: Greco-Roman world
context_page_description: The term "Greco-Roman world", as understood by modern scholars and writers, refers to geographical regions and countries that culturally and so historically were directly and intimately influenced by the language, culture, government and religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans. A better-known term is classical civilisation. In exact terms the area refers to the "Mediterranean world", the extensive tracts of land centred on the Mediterranean and Black Sea Basins, the "swimming pool and spa" of the Greeks and the Romans in which those peoples' cultural perceptions, ideas and sensitivities were dominant.
  That process was aided by the universal adoption of Greek as the language of intellectual culture and commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and of Latin as the languages of public management and forensic advocacy, especially in the Western Mediterranean.
context_section_description: The term "Greco-Roman world" (also "Greco-Roman culture" /ˌɡrikoʊˈroʊmən/ or /ˌɡrɛkoʊˈroʊmən/; spelled Graeco-Roman in Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, refers to geographical regions and countries that culturally and so historically were directly and intimately influenced by the language, culture, government and religion of the ancient Greeks and Romans. A better-known term is classical civilisation. In exact terms the area refers to the "Mediterranean world", the extensive tracts of land centred on the Mediterranean and Black Sea Basins, the "swimming pool and spa" of the Greeks and the Romans in which those peoples' cultural perceptions, ideas and sensitivities were dominant.
  That process was aided by the universal adoption of Greek as the language of intellectual culture and commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and of Latin as the languages of public management and forensic advocacy, especially in the Western Mediterranean.
  Greek and Latin never became the native languages of the rural peasants, the great majority of the empire's population, but those were the languages of the urban and cosmopolitan elites and the empire's lingua franca, even if only as corrupt or multifarious dialects to those who lived within the large territories and populations outside the Macedonian settlements and the Roman colonies. All Roman citizens of note and accomplishment, regardless of their ethnic extractions, spoke and wrote in Greek or Latin, such as the Roman jurist and imperial chancellor Ulpian, who was of Phoenician origin; the mathematician and geographer Claudius Ptolemy, who was of Greco-Egyptian origin; and the famous post-Constantinian thinkers John Chrysostom and Augustine, who were of Syrian and Berber origins respectively. Also, the historian Josephus Flavius was of Jewish origin but spoke and wrote in Greek.
caption: Roman Theatre of Mérida, Spain.
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