Ancient history is the history of the Mediterranean civilisations of Greece and Rome, which are regarded as classical, and in a broader sense also of the entire ancient Mediterranean region, including its peripheral areas in the Near East and Western and North-Western Europe.

Ancient History in Oldenburg is interested in the totality of historical events in antiquity and its dynamics, through which the initially politically, culturally, linguistically and economically fragmented Mediterranean basin grew into an oikumene: the area of domination and experience of the Roman world, which laid the foundations of modern Europe.

Ancient History in Oldenburg specifically seeks universal historical approaches to ancient history that teach us to see the "next foreign" (Uvo Hölscher) as an era of experimentation and diversity, without knowledge of which all European history would remain incomprehensible.