John Matthews - Empire of the Romans Vol 1

1. Part 1
2. Chapter 1
3. Chapter 4
4. Chapter 5
5. Chapter 6
6. Chapter 7
7. Chapter 8
8. Chapter 9
9. Chapter 11
10. Chapter 12
11. Chapter 13
12. Chapter 14
13. Chapter 15
14. Chapter 16
15. Chapter 17
16. Chapter 19
17. Chapter 20
18. Chapter 21
19. Chapter 22
20. Chapter 23
21. Chapter 24
22. Chapter 25
23. Chapter 26

VOLUME I
A HISTORY

From Julius Caesar to Justinian:
Six Hundred Years of Peace and War

JOHN MATTHEWS

This edition first published 2021
2021 John F. Matthews

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Name: Matthews, John (John Frederick), author.
Title: Empire of the Romans : from Julius Caesar to Justinian: six hundred years of peace and war / John Matthews.
Other titles: From Julius Caesar to Justinian: six hundred years of peace and war
Description: Hoboken, NJ : WileyBlackwell, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020026857 (print) | LCCN 2020026858 (ebook) | ISBN 9781444334562 (v.1 ; paperback) | ISBN 9781444334586 (v.2 ; paperback) | ISBN 9781119481546 (v.2 ; adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119481560 (v.2 ; epub) | ISBN 9781119610311 (v.1 ; adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119610359 (v.1 ; epub)
Subjects: LCSH: RomeHistoryEmpire, 30 B.C.284 A.D. | RomeCivilization. | RomeHistoryEmpire, 30 B.C.284 A.D.Sources. | RomeCivilizationSources.
Classification: LCC DG270 .M364 2020 (print) | LCC DG270 (ebook) | DDC 937/.06dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026857
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020026858

Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: Nigel Hicks/Getty Images

The appearance of yet another book on the Roman empire invites a few words of explanation. Many good books exist already, and keep appearing rightly so, for it is a very good subject, and an important one. The history of Rome makes up a substantial portion of the history of western culture, and its linguistic, cultural, and legal influences persist. The span of time from the legendary foundation of Rome in 753 BCE to the death of the emperor Justinian in 565 CE is not far short of that from the death of Justinian to the present day, an observation that has still more in its favour if one takes the date of the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE as the beginning of Greek, and so of GraecoRoman history (admittedly they took some time to converge). In some ways, this is a still more appropriate moment of definition, for it also marks the period of time in which the Greeks adopted the system of writing, the origin of our own, that would enable them to record their own history and in due course that of the Romans, under whom many of their finest writers lived. This book takes as its starting point an event that is as much a part of Greek as of Roman history, as recorded by a Greek author writing under the Roman empire, and moves on to the analyses offered by an earlier Greek historian on the Romans who were coming to dominate his world; and it ends with the descriptions given by the last Classical Greek historian, of Justinians attempts to restore that Roman world as it had once been. The Romans had their own historians, and their own ways of writing, but it is significant that a history of the Roman empire can be framed by the writings of Greek observers of it. The Greeks were there first and they were around for longer.

The Roman empire is also a time of which we have substantial knowledge not such as to stand comparison with the mountains of documentation for the history of the modern world, but nevertheless incorporating evidence of many different sorts, physical as well as literate, permitting the recreation of a world of great sophistication and variety. It is a world that encourages different conceptions among those who write about it and their public; and that this public ranges far beyond the academic is evident from published lists of current and new books.

One may still ask what are the points of difference that mark a new book on such a wellestablished subject. The first question, which faces the historian of any period, is that of range; where will it begin and end? As to the former, we should take for granted that any book on the Roman empire will acknowledge the political and social antecedents of the Republican period. We must however be careful. The end of nearly half a millennium of Republican government in the first century BCE does not signal the end of res publica in its broader sense; that array of political, social and legal institutions that belonged to the domain of public authority. However breached in the observance, the distinction between public authority and private power was one insisted upon by the founder of imperial government, after the end of the civil wars that destroyed the Republic. Augustus and his successors may have expressed themselves differently as to what they had done with res publica, but none of them would have claimed its abolition. As late as 533, in publishing his