TLDR - From my reading so far about ancient Rome and ancient Greece and also from my own personal perspective of the two civilisations so far, I feel that they are over-advertised and over-glorified when their lesser-known and less-glorified characteristics are often neglected and ommitted

I have been a fan of history for quite a while and lately I have been reading and researching about history with a more diligent approach and ever since then, I learned so many things about history from a multitude of different perspectives, some of which involved perspectives and details that I never thought about or occurred to me before. And even to this day, no matter how much detail we managed to obtain, there is still so much more out there that are still left to be discovered.

Two civilisations in particular that caught my attention were ancient Rome and ancient Greece. I am not exactly sure why bit there is a certain "magic" towards these civilisations. But the more I read and learn about the way of how ancient Rome (and even Byzantine Empire which I have a more fascination to than the ancient Western Roman empire) and ancient Greece operated, the more I learn how complicated history is with different cultures coming into conflict with bleach other even up with so many different perspectives and conclusions, which is something that I like to keep in mind whenever I read about history.

I want to say that I am not actually implying that ancient Greece and ancient Rome are not what one would define as "great" or "glorious" because there are some things that would definetely attract any person to what these ancient civilisations were regardless of how they are interpreted as in history books or fictional works. There is a certain "magic" or awe towards these civilisations and I too have my own appreciation and sometimes even romanticism and gratitude to these civilisations and how their achievements and legacies were kept intact and eventually been passed on through generations or even adapted to even more refined technologies and methodologies like astronomy, mathematics, art, philosophy and so on.

But I sometimes feel like these two civilisations are often way over-glorified or over-adveritised, or at least the popular conception of ancient Greece and ancient Rome are over-saturated which gives the impression that other civilisations were petty or miniscule in comparison or that these civilisations did not have their own flaws and even horrors.

One thing that stood out to me in particular when I found out that the Persian Empire was not as horrificly imperialistic and authoritarian as I was told it was, especially when I saw the film 300 long ago when I was younger. Therefore, after I learned about this, I decided to look into the Persian empire, from its history, system of government, mythology and so on, and was amazed and filled with awe. Something that impressed me was how the Persian Empire had its own version of road construction even before the Roman Empire and its system of government and bureacracy was very structured and had its own benefits such as religious tolerance and women's rights (or at least we view them with a positive view from the perspective of the 21st Century) and this was mostly found during the reign of Cyrus whom I remember that I was taught that he was a ruthless leader. What suprises me the most was when I learned that Alexander wanted to implement the Persian's governmental structure in his empire when he managed to conquer the entire Persian empire even though the Hellenistic empire was short lived.

On the other hand, when I learned more about the Greeks and its own customs and social structures, while I still have my own sense of awe and do feel the presence of the ancient Greek "magic" when I read about them, I am surprised on how the ancient and less "glorious" customs of ancient Greece are often neglected or not that well-known. One tiny thing that really impressed me on how modern views of Greek mythology had later changed our perspectives of the gods like I was led to believe that Zeus are a moral god (and I am assuming this was done becuase of film and TV reinforcing that belief) much like Jupiter was viewed as but was more of an angry god and filled with wrath and lust. Or that Hades was more of just another Olympian God than an evil one like I was thought to believe.

Something in particular about ancient Greece is Athens - it is seen as the birthplace of democracy but Athenian version of democracy was more limited and did not include women, slaves or even blacks as racism also existed during that time (even though the Hellenisitc empire of Alexander eventually integrated with other civilisations with other ethnicities like ancient Egypt which had inhabitants with darker skin colour) and the pseudo-science of scientific racism was also used to justify or rationalise that mentality. Even Athens had its own form of "imperialism" especially during the Peloponnesian War against the city-state of Sparta which is ironic and I also learned how the glorification of Sparta is also over-exaggarated as it was a eugenic city-state and the Spartans were a leisure-class and Sparta's social structure was a strict monarchy with plenty of slaves doing the hard work while Spartans focused more on military work or leisure. I also learned that the Spartans were not that unique or exemplary when it came to military structure or strategy and mostly got its glory and fame after the Battle of Thermopylae.

Even the Roman Empire has its own versions of not-so-well-known drawbacks even though I still admire the Roman Empire to this day and even one example in particular of how the Roman Empire was once over-glorified is Edward Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" which completely omits the Eastern side of the Roman Empire that managed to persevere for another 1000 years even though it was not the same type of Roman Empire as it once was before.

Apart that the conflict between the corrupt Roman Republic and the more ambitious and possbly tyrannical Caesar is still one of the most well-known debates as to there is no clear answer on how was the hero or the villian of the story, many people throughout history often glorified the Roman Empire and wanted to mimic it or copy it with meticulous precision, whether it is its symbology like the Aquila and the American Eagle, the fasces and its influence on fascism and the fasces symbol is also found in the US Capitol, the ideology and structure of Republicanism, the attempt to make the Roman Empire a thing again after its collapse (at least, the Western side of the Roman Empire as the Eastern side was still intact for another 1000 years) such the Holy Roman Empire, the German Empire where the Emperor's title was the Kaiser (a German interpretation of Caesar) and the Russian Empire with the king/emperor's title was known as the Tzar (the Russian version of the word "Caesar").

Many times I was told on how effective the Romans were in their military strategy and while that was indeed true, most of its military glory was found during the late-Roman Republic and early-to-mid Roman Empire era and most of its structure was more complicated to handle as when the Roman Republic became an empire, there were conflicts on who had the authority to be emperor (like even Nero's mother killed her own husband so that Nero would be emperor even though she still wanted to have a say on his choices or when the successive emperors of Rome durign the period of the four Emperors were supposedly killed); there was a difficult time during Roman History called the Crisis of the Third Century where the Roman Empire had to battle against conflict enemies and sometimes had gone through internal struggles where the Emperors were killed by their own legionnaires (but the same time, the Roman Empire managed to persevere a bit longer with the formation of the Roman Tetrarchy even though still had problems)

I could think of many more but I also even realise how these two civilisations were not that grandiose in terms of glory and achievement and even other civilisations had their own "glorious achievements" or structures that make them revered and worth reading about such as ancient Egypt, ancient China (despite that ancient China had also its own recurring pattern of constant reformations and overthrowing its own kingdoms and empires), the Celtic people, the Slavics, the Jews, the Muslims, the Byzantine Empire, the Mali Empire and so on.