Ancient Greece nev­er exist­ed. Before you click away, fear­ing a tru­ly brazen attempt at his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism, let’s put that state­ment in con­text. Ancient Greece “was no state with an estab­lished bor­der or cap­i­tal, but rather a mul­ti­tude of dis­tinct and com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent cities.” So says the video above, “Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes,” which makes his­tor­i­cal cor­rec­tions — and often humor­ous ones — to that and a vari­ety of oth­er com­mon mis­per­cep­tions about per­haps the main civ­i­liza­tions to give rise to West­ern cul­ture as we know it.

“We might think we already know every­thing about Ancient Greece,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, actor Bri­an Cox. “The Parthenon, the 300 Spar­tans, and blind Home­r’s Ili­ad and Odyssey are famil­iar to all, yet there were far more than 300 Spar­tans, the Parthenon was actu­al­ly built as a kind of cen­tral bank, and no such uni­fied state as ancient Greece, with Athens as its cap­i­tal, ever exist­ed.”

Some of our unwar­rant­ed intel­lec­tu­al con­fi­dence about Ancient Greece sure­ly comes from the movies that draw on its his­to­ry and its sto­ries, such as the com­ic-book Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae drama­ti­za­tion 300 or, a cou­ple years ear­li­er, Troy, which deliv­ered Home­r’s Ili­ad in true Hol­ly­wood fash­ion — with Cox him­self as Agamem­non, com­man­der of the unit­ed Greek forces in the Tro­jan War.

That nine-year long siege, of course, fig­ures into “Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes” as one of its most impor­tant episodes. The oth­er chap­ters cov­er the Cre­to-Myce­naean era that pre­ced­ed Ancient Greece, the bar­bar­ian attacks that plunged the region into a 400-year dark age, the Archa­ic Peri­od that saw the begin­ning of Greece’s far-flung agri­cul­ture-dri­ven col­o­niza­tion, the rise of the famous Athens and Spar­ta, the Grae­co-Per­sian Wars (as seen, in a sense, in 300), the Gold­en Age of Athens (the age of the con­struc­tion of the Parthenon, with­out which “the Greek clas­sics would­n’t have exist­ed at all: no sculp­ture, dra­ma, phi­los­o­phy”), the Pelo­pon­nesian War, and the time of Alexan­der the Great.

Alexan­der the Great died young in 323 BC, and Ancient Greece as we con­ceive of it today is thought not to have sur­vived him. But in anoth­er sense, it not only sur­vived but thrived: the Romans con­quered Greece in 146 BC, but “Greek cul­ture was vic­to­ri­ous even here: spread by the Romans, it final­ly con­quered the world. Romans began to read The Ili­ad and Odyssey in Greek, fol­lowed by the Greek New Tes­ta­ment.” (You can find out much more about the Romans in the same cre­ators’ video “Ancient Rome in 20 Min­utes.”) When in 330 the Roman emper­or Con­stan­tine built his new cap­i­tal on the site of the Greek colony of Byzan­tium, he start­ed the Byzan­tine Empire, “which extend­ed the life of Greek cul­ture anoth­er thou­sand years.” This left a for­mi­da­ble cul­tur­al lega­cy of its own — includ­ing, as this Russ­ian-made video makes a spe­cial point of telling us, “the weird Russ­ian alpha­bet.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­tion to Ancient Greek His­to­ry: A Free Online Course from Yale

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

Ancient Greek Pun­ish­ments: The Retro Video Game

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course)

The Gold­en Age of Ancient Greece Gets Faith­ful­ly Recre­at­ed in the New Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Two thou­sand years ago, Rome was half the world. A thou­sand years before that, it was “a tiny trib­al set­tle­ment of the Latins by the riv­er Tiber.” So, what hap­pened? An awful lot. But nar­ra­tor Bri­an Cox makes the his­to­ry and longevi­ty of Ancient Rome seem sim­ple in 20 min­utes in the Arza­mas video above, which brings the same tal­ent for nar­ra­tive com­pres­sion as we saw in an ear­li­er video we fea­tured with Cox describ­ing the his­to­ry of Russ­ian Art.

This is a far more sprawl­ing sub­ject, but it’s one you can absorb in 20 min­utes, if you’re sat­is­fied with very broad out­lines. Or, like one YouTube com­menter, you can spend six hours, or more, paus­ing for read­ing and research after each morsel of infor­ma­tion Cox toss­es out. The sto­ry begins with trade—cultural and economic—between the Latins and the Etr­uscans to the north and Greeks to the south. Rome grows by adding pop­u­la­tions from all over the world, allow­ing migrants and refugees to become cit­i­zens.

Indeed, the great Roman epic, the Aeneid, relates its found­ing by refugees from Troy. From these begin­nings come mon­u­men­tal inno­va­tions in build­ing and engi­neer­ing, as well as an alpha­bet that spread around the world and a lan­guage that spawned dozens of oth­ers. The Roman numer­al sys­tem, an unwieldy way to do math­e­mat­ics, nonethe­less gave to the world the stateliest means of writ­ing num­bers. Rome gets the cred­it for these gifts to world civ­i­liza­tion, but they orig­i­nat­ed with the Etr­uscans, along with famed Roman mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline and style of gov­ern­ment.

After Tar­quin, the last Roman king, com­mit­ted one abuse too many, the Repub­lic began to form, as did new class divides. Plebs fought Patri­cians for expand­ed rights, Sen­a­tus Pop­u­lusque Romanus (SPQR)—the sen­ate and the peo­ple of Rome—expressed an ide­al of uni­ty and polit­i­cal equal­i­ty, of a sort. An age of impe­r­i­al war ensues, con­quered peo­ples are osten­si­bly made allies, not colo­nials, though they are also made slaves and sup­ply the legions with “a nev­er end­ing sup­ply of recruits.”

These sketch­es of major cam­paigns you may remem­ber from your World Civ class: The Punic Wars with Carthage, and their com­man­der Han­ni­bal, con­duct­ed under the mot­to of Cato, the sen­a­tor who beat the drums of war by repeat­ing Cartha­go delen­da est—Carthage must be destroyed. The con­quer­ing of Corinth and the absorp­tion of Alexander’s Hel­lenist empire into Rome.

The sto­ry of the Empire resem­bles that of so many oth­ers: tales of hubris, fero­cious bru­tal­i­ty, geno­cide, and end­less build­ing. But it is also a sto­ry of polit­i­cal genius, in which, grad­u­al­ly, those peo­ples brought under the ban­ners of Rome by force were giv­en cit­i­zen­ship and rights, ensur­ing their loy­al­ty. Rel­a­tive peace—within the bor­ders of Rome, at least—could not hold, and the Repub­lic implod­ed in civ­il wars and the ruina­tion of a slave econ­o­my and extreme inequal­i­ty.

The wealthy gob­bled up arable land. The tri­bunes of the peo­ple, the Grac­chi broth­ers, sug­gest­ed a redis­tri­b­u­tion scheme. The sen­a­tors respond­ed with force, killing thou­sands. Two mass-mur­der­ing con­quer­ing gen­er­als, Pom­pey and Julius Cae­sar, fought over Rome. Cae­sar crossed the Rubi­con with his legions to take the city, assum­ing the title Imper­a­tor, a move that cost him his life.

But his mur­der didn’t stop the march of Empire. Under his nephew Augus­tus, a dic­ta­tor who called him­self a sen­a­tor, Rome spread, flour­ished, and estab­lished a 200-year Pax Romana, a time of thriv­ing arts and cul­ture, pop­u­lar enter­tain­ments, and a well-fed pop­u­lace.

Augus­tus had learned from the Grac­chi what nei­ther the venal sen­a­to­r­i­al class nor so many sub­se­quent emper­ors could. In order to rule effec­tive­ly, you’ve got to have the peo­ple on your side, or have them so dis­tract­ed, at least, by bread and cir­cus­es, that they won’t both­er to revolt. Watch the full video to learn about the next few hun­dred years, and learn more about Ancient Rome at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

The Ups & Downs of Ancient Rome’s Economy–All 1,900 Years of It–Get Doc­u­ment­ed by Pol­lu­tion Traces Found in Greenland’s Ice

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness