Richard Alston - Aspects of Roman History 31 BC-AD 117

Aspects of Roman History

This new edition of Aspects of Roman History 31 bcad 117 provides an easily accessible guide to the history of the early Roman Empire. Taking the reader through the major political events of the crucial first 150 years of Roman imperial history, from the Empire's foundation under Augustus to the height of its power under Trajan, the book examines the emperors and key events that shaped Rome's institutions and political form. Blending social and economic history with political history, Richard Alston's revised edition leads students through important issues, introducing sources, exploring techniques by which those sources might be read, and encouraging students to develop their historical judgment.

This book includes:

chapters on each of the emperors in this period, exploring the successes and failures of each reign, and how these shaped the Empire;

sections on social and economic history, including the core issues of slavery, social mobility, economic development and change, gender relations, the rise of new religions, and cultural change in the Empire;

an expanded timeframe, providing more information on the foundation of the imperial system under Augustus and the issues relating to Augustan Rome;

a glossary and further reading section, broken down by chapter.

This expanded and revised edition of Aspects of Roman History, covering an additional 45 years of history from Actium to the death of Augustus, provides an invaluable introduction to Roman imperial history, surveying the way in which the Roman Empire changed the world and offering critical perspectives on how we might understand that transformation. It is an important resource for any student of this crucial and formative period in Roman history.

Richard Alston is Professor of Roman History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has been teaching Roman history for two decades. He is the author of several books on Roman imperial history, including Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History (Routledge), and The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt (Routledge). He has edited six books on subjects as diverse as slavery, the Greek city, and the borderlands of the Roman Empire. He has researched and published more than thirty articles on Roman history covering the period from about 150 BC to about AD 750. He is noted for his work on the Roman city, historiography and cultural history, the reception of Classical political ideals in modernity, and economic and social history.

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Aspects of Roman History
31 BC-AD 117

Second edition

Richard Alston

Second edition published 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX 14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

2014 Richard Alston

The right of Richard Alston to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

First edition published by Routledge 1998

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Alston, Richard, 1965
[Aspects of Roman history, AD 14-117]
Aspects of Roman history, 31 BC-AD 117/ Richard Alston.
Second edition.
pages cm. (Aspects of classical civilisation)
Revised edition of Aspects of Roman history, AD 14-117. London ; New
York : Routledge, 1998.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. RomeHistoryEmpire, 30 B.C.-284 A.D. 2. RomePolitics and
government30 B.C.-284 A.D.Historiography. 3. EmperorsRome
Biography. 4. RomeHistory, Military30 B.C.-476 A.D. I. Title.
DG276.A44 2013
937'.07dc23
2013018603

ISBN: 978-0-415-61120-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-61121-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-87166-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Garamond and Gill Sans
by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby

For Efrossini, Sam, Josh, Vasilis, and Stefanos

Contents

This book has been written with modest aims. It updates and revises a text produced 15 years ago which had a narrower focus of ad 14117. That book was written as a guide for students and focused very much on a school syllabus. With the continued decline in the teaching of Ancient History in schools, it seemed sensible to focus the text more closely for an undergraduate audience. The change in the audience has led to certain changes in style and content. The aim of the first version of the book was to introduce students to debates and provide them with a guide to ways of approaching the complex history of a century of imperial rule. Now, the market for the attention of students is more competitive. As historians, we need to explain why the periods of history we are writing about are sufficiently interesting that they might be worth studying. We now need to convince our students that what we study matters.

At first, I thought that this rewrite would be a minor issue, changing a few things here and there, adding a couple of chapters on Augustus. Yet, as I rewrote, more and more seemed to need to be changed. In part, this is because my views have changed somewhat in the last 15 years. But the changes have also been designed in part to make the text less descriptive since it seems less necessary to explain what happened, but more necessary to worry about why it happened. I have made a deliberate effort to make the chapters more questioning and more controversial. I want the reader to come away from the chapters wanting to know more and perhaps filled with doubt. Was this really the way the Empire worked? Was the Principate truly an exercise in the politics of paradox? Was the Roman Empire really so nasty? It may be that the reader will come away annoyed and wanting to debate these issues, and in that case my job is done.

There is also now more focus on the historical traditions. The ancient sources we read came out of certain traditions of thought and historical analysis. They had a certain way of understanding the world. This ideology shapes our knowledge of the period from Augustus to Trajan. We have, I think, to approach the historians with a focus not on whether they were right or wrong (for that often cannot be resolved), but on how they thought about political life. Contemporary historians have started to focus much more on political ideologies and the mentalities of politics in the Imperial period. The issues are no longer who stabbed whom and what were the immediate causes of that stabbing, but why Roman politics was so brutal generally and repeatedly. If it seems unsurprising that the Roman political class gathered themselves to rid Rome of Caligula, it is more interesting and puzzling that they suffered Claudius and Domitian for so long, and that many were so willing to acquiesce in or even to aid the murders of so many of their fellow political leaders. The shift in focus from the business of politics to the ideology of political life means, I think, that Roman politics seems stranger than it did 15 years ago. It is less easy to understand and to imagine, but as a consequence it is more rewarding and interesting.