Volume editor's introduction

Summary

With the victory of the Caesarian faction the old Republican politics were dead, replaced by the cult of personality in the figure of the emperor. Men of ambition and talent looked in new directions for the realization of their hopes, and Caesar Augustus showed them the way: careers in service to the state in a variety of positions. The Empire was something totally new, a synthesis of the past but at the same time a new beginning, a melting-pot of nations and peoples. Its sheer mass can be overwhelming when one attempts to describe it from top to bottom, from its beginning to the final transformation. The literary sources, of course, remain the bedrock on which our knowledge of it stands: Tacitus, Dio Cassius, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Josephus, and others for the early Principate. Every student and historian must estimate their respective values and use their contents. Other writers like Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Fronto, Aelius Aristeides and many others add much of historical importance. Knowledge of Greek and Latin is vital for penetrating the spirit of the Greco-Roman world or unlocking the exact meaning of certain passages or phrases of the extant literature. Of course, all the major figures of that literature have been translated into English and most other European languages to make their information more readily available.