Old means primitive; recent means developed. While this may be true of history overall, it is by no means true that the tenth century is an exact midpoint in terms of progress between Jesus in the first century and our generation in the twenty-first. In many ways the first century, when Greco-Roman society was at its height, was more civilized than the Middle or Dark Ages. In fact, we know more about the Roman emperor Augustus than about the eleventh-century English king Harold, even though the latter