Rome was founded as a tiny city-state on the Tiber, yet by the first century bc it ruled nearly the entire Mediterranean world. This broad-ranging reader on Roman imperialism brings together ancient documents in translation and a selection of the best recent scholarly essays, in order to introduce students to the major problems and controversies in studying this central aspect of Roman history.


This book examines diverse aspects of Roman imperialism, from the Romans' motivations in acquiring an empire and their ideological justifications for imperial domination, to the complex political, economic, and cultural interactions between the Romans, their allies, and the subjected peoples. An introduction surveys modern work on Roman imperialism within the framework of recent theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of empires in general.