The Renaissance, which begins in the 1400s in Machiavelli’s home city of Florence, is literally a “rebirth,” a rediscovery of the ancient Greek and Roman cultures that underpin European society. Scholars find and translate ancient texts; explorers unearth the ruins of old cities; musicians and painters revive lost ways of performing and painting.

As a rebirth, the Renaissance is also a look backward, to a fabled golden age that seems grander and more civilized than more recent eras. Writers like Machiavelli and Montaigne laud the virtues of Rome and Greece and compare their own times unfavorably to that glorious past.

The Renaissance is also the first stirring of a new age in European civilization, a process that takes the old techniques and styles and builds on them, growing in complexity and sophistication right down to the present day. Western civilization is built largely on the Renaissance, which, in turn, is built on the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman intellectual and artistic achievements.

Today we are used to the idea that we have transcended the ancients, with our highly developed science, art, and commerce. The ancients produce fine statuary and mosaic murals; we have mile-wide artworks by Christo and worldwide broadcasts of concerts and motion pictures.