Empire and Ideology in the Graeco-Roman World

Benjamin Isaac is Lessing Professor of Ancient History Emeritus in the Department of Classics at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of The Limits of Empire: the Roman Army in the East (1990) and The Origins of Racism in Classical Antiquity (2004). He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the American Philosophical Society, as well as being an Israel Prize Laureate.

Introduction; 1. Roma Aeterna; 2. Roman victory displayed: symbols, allegories, and personificiations?; 3. Army and violence; 4. Innovation and war; 5. Core-periphery notions; 6. Names: ethnic, geographic and administrative; 7. Attitudes towards provincial intellectuals in the Roman Empire; 8. Proto-racism in Graeco-Roman antiquity; 9. The barbarian in Greek and Roman literature; 10. Romans and nomads in the fourth century; 11. A multi-cultural Mediterranean?; 12. Latin in cities of the Roman Near East; 13. Ancient antisemitism; 14. Roman religious policy and the Bar Kokhba war; 15. Jews, Christians and others in Palestine: the evidence from Eusebius; 16. Roman organization in the Arabah in the fourth century AD; 17. Hatra against Rome and Persia: from success to destruction.