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  1. Home
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  3. The Cambridge Ancient History
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
1996
Online ISBN:
9781139054386
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521264303
Subjects:
Ancient History, Classical Studies
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Ancient History & Classics
Series:
The Cambridge Ancient History
Information

Book description

The period described in Volume 10 of the second edition of The Cambridge Ancient History begins in the year after the death of Julius Caesar and ends in the year after the fall of Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian emperors. Its main theme is the transformation of the political configuration of the state and the establishment of the Roman Empire. Chapters 1-6 supply a political narrative history of the period. In chapters 7-12 the institutions of government are described and analysed. Chapters 13–14 offer a survey of the Roman world in this period region by region, and chapters 15–21 deal with the most important social and cultural developments of the era (the city of Rome, the structure of society, art, literature, and law). Central to the period is the achievement of the first emperor, Augustus.

Reviews

‘… authoritative … written with scholarship and care by leading figures working in the field … behind each paragraph stands a vast array of scholarship as displayed in the extensive bibliographies. The CAH offers certainties in a scholarly world that is increasingly obsessed with ambiguities’.

Source: The Classical Review

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Contents

Page 2 of 2

Contents
  • 13g - Raetia
    pp 535-544
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In 15 BC Rome's interests in the central Alps and the Alpine foothills were only indirect. The central Alpine region apparently had no provincial governor before Claudius and still seems not fully to have been a province at that time. The central Alpine foothills and the mountains would hardly have been controlled at all during the reign of Tiberius by Roman occupying forces-the closest military force was the legion which was stationed in the fortress of Vindonissa/Windisch after AD 16/17. Nor do one knows of any new settlements in the Augustan - Tiberian period in the Inn valley, the upper Adige valley, the eastern part of the later province of Raetia, or along the Danube. In the early imperial period the centre of Raetia lay in Suebia. It was probably Claudius who abandoned Rome's reservations with regard to the Alpine region, assuming that one would refuse to credit Caligula with a degree of practicality and astuteness.
  • 13h - The Danubian and Balkan provinces
    pp 545-585
  • View abstract

    Summary

    What is reported of the activities of Roman commanders in the Balkans implies a control of the lower Danube that may have been extended through use of the fleet to the Black Sea. Sirmium near the mouth of the Sava, the key to the middle Danube, was saved by the Balkan army and the Thracian cavalry under Rhoemetalces, while in the west the army of Illyricum held fast at Siscia. The indigenous peoples of the Danube lands at the time of the Roman conquest fall into four groups, whose languages all belonged to the Indo-European family. These were Celts in the north west, Illyrians in the west, and Dacians and Thracians in the east, respectively north and south of the Danube. Long before the time of Caesar, Roman merchants and settlers had reached Macedonia and Illyricum but the formal institution of Roman colonies in both areas began only in the aftermath of civil war between Caesar and Pompey.
  • 13i - Roman Africa: Augustus to Vespasian
    pp 586-618
    • By C. R. Whittaker, Fellow of Churchill College, and formerly Lecturer in Classics in the University of Cambridge
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Africa's land and food continued to excite Roman interest. It is hard to believe that the war between Tacfarinas and Rome, which eventually developed in AD 17 and lasted until AD 24 was a serious threat to Roman power in Africa. The emperor Gaius has been credited with two important changes in north Africa: the separation of the army under its legatus from the province of Africa; and the ending of the independent status of Mauretania. Cruel execution of Africans was a reputation gained by Nero's last legionary legate in AD 68. Colonies, communities and corn were the informing principles of Roman imperialism in Africa. The social and political benefits of the Augustan system for the elite had already become apparent in the Julio-Claudian period. Under Tiberius a citizen of Musti, L. Iulius Crassus, reached equestrian status and under Vespasian the first known African consuls, Q. Aurelius Pactumeius Fronto of Cirta and his brother Clemens, were created.
  • 13j - Cyrene
    pp 619-640
    • By Joyce Reynolds, Fellow of Newnham College, and Emeritus Reader in Roman Historical Epigraphy in the University of Cambridge, J. A. Lloyd, Lecturer in Archaeology in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Wolf son College
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Ancient accounts of the country are schematic and principally concerned with the Cyrene area but they show some appreciation of the configuration and its effects. The ancient sources encourage belief that the Cyrenaicans were all Greeks or Greco-Romans; but the indigenous Libyan population was large and a significant element in regional history. In the early second century BC, there had been four Greek cities, Cyrene, Ptolemais, Teuchira and Berenice. Between the early second century and 67 BC a fifth, Apollonia was created through promotion of Cyrene's main port; and since Hellenistic royal creations were normally given dynastic names it is possible that this was due to Roman intervention. After the Marmaric War, reconstruction in the cities was taken in hand quickly. Among dedications, the city's large marble altar for the cult of Gaius and Lucius Caesar in the agora is a notable, and surely costly, demonstration of the point.
  • 14a - Greece (including Crete and Cyprus) and Asia Minor from 43 B.C. TO A.D. 69
    pp 641-675
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The differences between the three regions, mainland Greece and the islands, western Asia Minor, and the Anatolian plateau, remained clear and are only lightly masked by the Greek terminology and nomenclature that literacy and public life were imposing. The islands of Crete and Cyprus were allowed to survive for longer outside direct control, Cyprus until P. Clodius Pulcher passed a bill for its annexation in 58 BC Crete in part at least until the end of the Republic. Mainland Greece, Crete and the Cyclades in political terms were well able to govern themselves; economically the mainland at least was an area in decline and depopulation, unlikely to make much contribution to the cost of running it and very unlikely to present any threat to security. In Asia Minor as in Greece Augustus encouraged the development of city life, more by way of innovation here than in restoration; even in the province of Asia it was lacking in remoter, inland districts.
  • 14b - Egypt
    pp 676-702
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The history of Egypt in the decade after Actium well illustrates the major features of the Augustan frontier strategy. In describing the details of the business handled by means of the bureaucratic structures, it is convenient to make a conventional division between the military, financial and judicial administration but it should be emphasized that there are in practice very few rigid lines of demarcation; the application of law and the administration of justice, in particular, pervades every area of bureaucratic activity in a way which modern notions of administration and jurisdiction tend to obfuscate. An attempt at a brief description of Egyptian economic and social institutions and practices under the early Roman Empire has to proceed from a somewhat conjectural base. The fact that official terminology marked out the great city of Alexandria as separate from the Egyptian chora indicates the justification for giving it special attention.
  • 14c - Syria
    pp 703-736
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter talks about the history of Syria, which in the two and half centuries after Pompey's settlement is dominated by three major themes. The first is the establishment and development of a Roman province, and the influence and consequences of its role as the major military province of the East. Second, the character and role of the client states, their evolution, then disappearance. Third, the gradual emergence and flowering under the influence of the pax romana of a prosperous, more unified culture, essentially Semitic in character but with a Greco-Roman influence clear to some extent in each of its many facets. Trade had recovered and shrewd Syrian merchants could fully exploit their safe access to Mediterranean markets. The contrast with the last generation of Seleucid rule and of the last days of the Republic was only too clear.
  • 14d - Judaea
    pp 737-781
    • By Martin Goodman, Reader in Jewish Studies, University of Oxford, and Fellow of Wolf son College
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Herod to some extent presented himself as a Jewish monarch, and for some Romans his family were seen as representative of Jewry. But his rule over Judaea was inaugurated in 40 B. C and preserved until c. 4 B. C almost entirely at the behest of Rome. Herod was granted the throne of Judaea and Samaria by the triumvirs with the support of the Senate in autumn 40 BC Apart from the brief period (AD 41-4) when Agrippa I reigned, the same kind of Roman administration remained in force until AD 66, when a great rebellion led first to the establishment of an independent Jewish state and then to the fall of that state in an orgy of violence. The most important factor in the development of, and growth of tensions within, Judaean society in the first centuries B. C and AD was the economic role of the Jerusalem Temple.
  • 15 - Rome and its development under Augustus and his successors
    pp 782-811
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In order to understand the preferences of the age one must return to the ideological background to Augustus' dealing with the city of Rome. Building had been a prominent part of the self-presentation of the Roman elite since time immemorial, and Augustus needed to excel at all the activities which conferred auctoritas; so he could not but display his power in this way, could not refrain from adding his monumenta to the accumulated record of the great men of the past which could be read in the architecture of Rome. Rome's periphery had undergone various evolutions with the changes in the nature and size of the population and the availability of wealth and food. The dialogue of public religion is the matrix which held together the highly disparate elements of Roman society. The institution effect of the Principate was to increase the privileges of the part of the population which was present in the vicinity of the city of Rome.
  • 16 - The place of religion: Rome in the early Empire
    pp 812-847
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Roman religion had always been closely linked with the city of Rome and its boundaries. Roman mythology, according to the traditional view, never existed: only under the influence of Greece in the last centuries BC did the gods acquire some kind of mythology. The Augustan period is conventionally viewed as one of restoration or renovation of traditional cults plus the addition of ruler cult. There were major changes in Rome in the Augustan period, which affected senatorial priesthoods and state temples; at the lower level, the ward cults; and the Secular Games. There were also rituals which focused more directly on the emperor himself, especially after his death. These are normally described as 'the imperial cult', and placed in a separate category from the 'restoration of religion'. The city of Rome also has to be located in the context of the empire. The social and physical context of the changes in Rome in the Augustan period merits discussion.
  • 17 - The origins and spread of Christianity
    pp 848-872
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Pentecostal scene in Jerusalem, as depicted in Acts 2:9ff, has Peter preaching to Jews who have gathered in Jerusalem from the Diaspora. Antioch is depicted by Paul as well as by the author of Acts as the fons et origo of 'Gentile Christianity': here the process of Christian self-identification is declared to have its beginning. Some sort of control over the estimate of the social spread of Christianity in the generation between the thirties and the sixties might be sought in the onomastics of the Pauline connexion, from an examination of the sixty-six named individuals in the genuinely Pauline documents or of the full register of some ninety-seven names if one includes in the tally the pastorals as well. All known is that Claudius 'expelled from Rome Jews who were causing continual disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus'. Tacitus is the original source to connect the fire of Rome under Nero with Christians.
  • 18 - Social status and social legislation
    pp 873-904
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Roman social patterns and life must be seen against the mosaic of the empire. Economic distinctions modify the pattern imposed by constitutional function or legal status. The most striking fact about society is the gap between rich and poor. The two themes of Romans who reflected on the twenty years after the murder of Caesar were social disruption and moral decay. Contemporary analysis of social problems focused on morality. Imperial liberti provide a striking illustration of the difference the Principate made to Roman society. The Principate brought improved roads, made safer from brigands, sea-lanes at risk from weather rather than pirates. Society changed between 44 BC and AD 69. Some developments, such as the improved right of succession given to women, seem to have happened because views of the family continued to move further away from patriarchy and emphasis on agnatic relationships. The social structure of the ruling elite survived the Julio-Claudian period, but its membership and tone were transformed.
  • 19 - Literature and society
    pp 905-929
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The 'Roman revolution' of Augustus owed much of its success to the extent to which change was concealed under the cover of 'restoration of the Republic', and insistence on precedent was emphasized at almost every stage under the early Principate. The social position of literature at Rome, never as fully integrated into the life of the city as it had been at Athens during the fifth and fourth centuries, changed markedly after Actium, when oratory lost its preeminence with its divorce from a genuine political function. Literature became more the property of an elite, as Horace repeatedly emphasizes. Of the major writers of the last generation of the Republic, Cicero, Varro and Catallus had no need of literary patronage; the position of Lucretius and his possible dependence on C. Memmius remains mysterious. In a world where political comment was perilous and profitless and speech-making had no real political function, the development of rhetoric was at once natural and paradoxical.
  • 20 - Roman art, 43 B.C. to A.D. 69
    pp 930-958
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The two greatest historians of Roman art in our century, G. Rodenwaldt and R. Bianchi Bandinelli, spoke rightly of the essentially bipolar nature of art at Rome. In decorative painting Tiberian Classicism carries on the Augustan heritage in order to achieve an air of matestas and gravitas in individual reception areas. Basically the reign of Tiberius was a pedestrian repetition of the pattern laid down by the Principate of Augustus. On the whole art in the Tiberian age followed in the path traced by Augustus, but it accentuates the traits of formal stiffness and the progressive loss of organic unity and ideological coherence of the Augustan model. To the eternal formal bipolarity between Classicism and the baroque, within which was played out the Augustan experience of official, programmatic art and its crisis in the age of Claudius and Nero, there corresponds the no less eternal bipolarity of mentalities and idioms between 'art of the centre of power' and 'plebeian art'.
  • 21 - Early classical private law
    pp 959-978
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter concentrates on the jurists and the Roman judicial system during the Julio-Claudian and Flavian eras. The establishment of the Augustan Principate did not at first lead, as might have been expected, to a diminution of juristic independence and influence. Iulius Caesar, during his dictatorship, allegedly contemplated a complete codification of Roman private law; his attempts at legal reform, though never carried out, thus looked mainly to substantive law. Augustus' thoughtful procedural reforms set the stage for classical Roman jurisprudence. The Proculians, like Labeo, normally prefer close objective interpretations of fixed texts, while the Sabinians allow interpretation based on the author's presumed 'subjective' intent. Although classical private law is chiefly a juristic creation, the Roman state did not surrender its power to create new legal norms through statute. The Flavian jurists in general maintained the standard school distinctions, with little major innovation in substance or method.

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