PublishedOxford University Press, April 2014 |
ISBN9780199656462 |
FormatHardcover, 320 pages |
Dimensions24.1cm × 16.2cm × 2.4cm |
The Romans first set military foot on Greek soil in 229 BCE; only sixty
or so years later it was all over, and shortly thereafter Greece became
one of the first provinces of the emerging Roman Empire. It was an
incredible journey - a swift, brutal, and determined conquest of the
land to whose art, philosophy, and culture the Romans owed so much. Rome
found the eastern Mediterranean divided, in an unstable balance of
power, between three great kingdoms - the three Hellenistic kingdoms
that had survived and flourished after the wars of Alexander the
Great's Successors: Macedon, Egypt, and Syria. Internal troubles took
Egypt more or less out of the picture, but the other two were reduced by
Rome. Having established itself, by its defeat of Carthage, as the sole
superpower in the western Mediterranean, Rome then systematically went
about doing the same in the east, until the entire Mediterranean was
under her control. Apart from the thrilling military action, the
story of the Roman conquest of Greece is central to the story of Rome
itself and the empire it created. As Robin Waterfield shows, the Romans
developed a highly sophisticated method of dominance by remote control
over the Greeks of the eastern Mediterranean - the cheap option of using
authority and diplomacy to keep order rather than standing armies. And
it is a story that raises a number of fascinating questions about Rome,
her empire, and her civilization. For instance, to what extent was the
Roman conquest a planned and deliberate policy? What was it about Roman
culture that gave it such a will for conquest? And what was the effect
on Roman intellectual and artistic culture, on their very identity, of
their entanglement with an older Greek civilization, which the Romans
themselves recognized as supreme?Readership: All those interested in the history of Classical Greece, the Roman Empire, and Classical Civilization.
