Thank you for your answer.
We should only say Jerusalem and Athens. Twin pillars sound much better in a marketing sense :D
Though obviously in many cases Rome refined some of the earlier Greek thinking, as I am sure a guy called Cicero would have to agree to.
But, it was largely a refinement... Or did Rome bring something fundamentally new to the mix?
Sadly I know too little of China.
I have read Spengler’s “Untergang des Abendlandes”, but it does get a bit convoluted. It’s a loooong history they do have there.
I learned about Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome in school, as well as Mesopotamia and Egypt, and the three ancient cities also centered what I have taught in a “core” course in college. Rome was important too—for carrying on Greek thought, and for the rule of law. And until the fall of Byzantium, the Eastern Empire thought of itself as Roman as well as Greek.