When we see Rome as the spider at the center of a vast web of empire, we risk occluding a different sense of Europe as the marginalized, impoverished neighbor of the richer, more urbanized, and much more densely populated continents of Asia and Africa.

The history of swimming illustrates this second view, showing that Europeans, who had not been swimmers in the Bronze Age, probably learned to swim in the Iron Age from their Egyptian and Carthaginian neighbours. Elite Europeans, eagerly (though nervously) emulating these sophisticated Africans, reimagined swimming as a pastime for sophisticated, educated people. Caesar swims, but his troops don’t. Economic history bolsters this new view: Europe was never an equal economic partner for Asia and Africa.

Throughout antiquity, Europe bought manufactured glass, textiles, papyrus, and steel from Asia and Africa, and exported mainly raw materials like timber and silver.Europe probably also exported thousands of its own enslaved women to spin and weave in Asian textile workshops. These different perspectives help to move Classics past colonial Eurocentrism.