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  3. The Cambridge Ancient History
  • Cited by 16
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2008
Print publication year:
2000
Online ISBN:
9781139054393
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521263351
Subjects:
Ancient History, Classical Studies
Collection:
Cambridge Histories - Ancient History & Classics
Series:
The Cambridge Ancient History
Information

Book description

Volume XI of the second edition of The Cambridge Ancient History covers the history of the Roman empire in the period from AD 70 to 192, from Vespasian to the Antonines. The volume begins with the political and military history of the period. Developments in the structure of the empire are then examined, including the organisation and personnel of the central government and province-based institutions and practices. A series of provincial studies follows, and the society, economy and culture of the empire as a whole are reviewed in a group of thematic chapters. This edition is entirely rewritten from the 1936 edition. There is much more extensive discussion of social, economic and cultural issues, reflecting trends in modern scholarship, and the increase of archaeological evidence and development of new approaches to it. New documentary evidence, from texts on stone, wood and papyrus, has advanced knowledge in every chapter.

Reviews

‘… an enormous enterprise, into which immense academic energy has been poured … The volume thus offers a vast panorama survey of many aspects of the period … conspicuously strong in examining the history of the various separate regions of the Empire … volume XI is perhaps the most successful of all the Roman volumes in CAH2 published so far … excellent sections in government and the working of the Imperial system, with a notably original contribution by Brent Shaw on ‘Rebel and Outsiders.’

Source: English Historical Review

‘… the CAH has its firmly established place in the libraries, and vol. XI will provide useful guidance for many decades to come in the hands of whoever acquires it.’

Source: ARCTOS

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Contents

Page 1 of 2

Contents
  • 1 - The Flavians
    pp 1-83
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Tacitus with justice describes the rise of Titus Flavius Vespasianus to the position of princeps as the work of fortune. Vespasian might appear more fortunate than Augustus in that he did not have to devise a new political system. The main lines of Flavian ideology were, however, clear from the start. Vespasian already had a military reputation behind him when he became princeps. Coins issued under Titus showed Vespasian handing over to his son the government of the world, symbolized by a globe and rudder, with the appropriate legend 'PROVIDENTIA AUGUSTI'. Titus' coins had celebrated the consecration of his father and the vote of a carpentum to his mother: on coins of Domitian it is probably she who appears as Diva Domitilla with her deified husband on the reverse. Domitian, in fact, had conferred on himself the title that most accurately conveyed the character of his rule: he was Censor Perpetuus.
  • 2 - Nerva to Hadrian
    pp 84-131
  • View abstract

    Summary

    M. Cocceius Nerva's celebration of Divus Augustus on coins was to show his desire for continuity with the Julio-Claudians, and he was eventually buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus with those emperors. Nerva's regime promised stability through continuity of the acceptable aspects of Domitian's rule. The reign of Trajan, rather than the brief episode of Nerva, must be held the effective beginning of that period 'during which', said Gibbon, 'the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous'. The growing 'paternalism' demonstrated by the Flavians continued under Trajan. Short of adoption, Trajan could have indicated his wishes clearly by advancing Hadrian's career rapidly. Trajan made even the shrewd and sceptical Tacitus feel that Rome was again fulfilling her destiny under an emperor who advanced her boundaries to the Indian Ocean. Under the Flavians, Nerva and Trajan, the Principate had finally produced what the empire needed: the tenacious Agricola, the diligent Frontinus, the conscientious Pliny.
  • 3 - Hadrian to the Antonines
    pp 132-194
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Hadrian's position as emperor was apparently far from secure. Hadrian is said to have played a personal role in the temple's design, one of many examples of his vaunted omniscience. Only Antoninus Pius' insistence that failure to deify would involve the annulling of Hadrian's acts, including his own adoption, enabled him to overcome. In 143 or 144 the young orator from Hadriani in Mysia, Aelius Aristides, delivered at Rome his famous speech in praise of the empire, which has largely contributed to the favourable verdict of posterity on the Antonine era. With Pius' death Marcus lacked only the name Augustus and the position of pontifex maximus, having held imperium and tribunician power for nearly fourteen years: there was no doubt that he was emperor. Out of respect for Pius, Marcus assumed the name Antoninus, while Lucius gave up the name Commodus, which he had borne from birth, and took instead Marcus' name M. Annius Verus.
  • 4 - The emperor and his advisers
    pp 195-213
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The bulk of our sources, whether historiographic, juristic or epigraphic, give the impression that the Roman emperor was all-powerful and always busy. There are only a few contemporary sources from the first and second centuries which give any real insight into the composition of the emperor's circle of advisers. Juvenal's fourth Satire contains the only depiction, however distorted, by a literary source of a specific meeting of the consilium and its individual members, in this instance a meeting early in Domitian's reign. According to Juvenal, Domitian was staying at his estate in the Alban hills south-east of Rome, when a fisherman presented him with an extraordinary present: the largest barbel ever to have been caught. Juvenal has not invented the bringing together of senators and equestrians in an advisory body for appearances' sake. It is clear that during the second century, the membership of the emperor's consilium began to become regularized.
  • 5 - Emperor, Senate and magistrates
    pp 214-237
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The relationship between emperor and Senate was always the result of the tension between what the majority of senators thought the emperor should be, and what he really was, or could become: princeps or dominus. Vespasian, for instance, had been a senator for more than thirty years. In Britain the reason for the appointment of a iuridicus was probably the predominantly military duties of the consular legates, at least under Vespasian and Domitian. Only in Italy were things changed to any significant degree, first by Hadrian and later by Marcus Aurelius. Despite the establishment of the eleven regiones by Augustus, Italy had no real territorial subdivisions. Hence it also had no officials who could take on the duties of regional governors, and as a result all the inhabitants of the cities of Italy had recourse only to the magistrates of Rome when they sought judgement on matters outside the competence of the municipal magistrates.
  • 6 - The growth of administrative posts
    pp 238-265
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the light of the problematic nature of the sources and of previous research, any portrayal of the development of administrative posts can only be tentative. In the period from Augustus to the end of Nero's reign, four principal areas developed within the part of the administration entrusted to equestrians, imperial freedmen and slaves: offices around the emperor; positions which were mainly connected with the city of Rome; offices whose responsibilities extended beyond the city of Rome itself; and numerous other administrative posts in Italy. At the start of the reign of Vespasian, one can distinguish with relative certainty about seventy areas of work, with widely differing importance and scope, which were concerned with the administration of the empire alongside the areas entrusted to members of the Senate. While the number of administrative departments in the provinces had increased considerably, from the time of Vespasian onwards, there were only a few new offices created at the heart of the empire.
  • 7 - Provincial administration and finance
    pp 266-292
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The basic system of provincial administration had been established by Augustus, and was only slightly modified by his successors. The emperors after Vespasian also made no changes to the Augustan system. Besides the provinces which were under the direct control of the emperor and governed by senatorial legates or equestrian praesidial procurators, there remained the provinces of the Roman people. The transformation of provinces, which had initially been governed by equestrians, represents the most notable change in provincial administration, though this was not a fundamental change. At the end of the reign of Nero, there were twelve such equestrian governorships, although by the time of Marcus Aurelius this figure had gradually been halved. From the Flavian period onwards and with increasing regularity from the beginning of the second century, it seems that it was necessary to consult the governor before proceeding with large building projects, particularly when they were to be financed using the city's funds.
  • 8 - Frontiers
    pp 293-319
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The quest for natural or moral frontiers was nothing more than a political motive for imperialism. It is in this historiographic tradition that the author begins to examine Roman frontiers, also. Greek frontiers were more cultural than physical, the divisions between measured and unmeasurable space. With the emperor Augustus, Roman concepts of space and geographic measurement took on a new dimension. After Augustus it is often argued that, apart from Roman Britain, there was no substantial territorial addition to the Roman empire in the West until Trajan's annexation of Dacia in the early second century. Although, the Romans never abandoned the ideology of expansion, yet de facto it is evident that they did stop, even if sometimes it is not easy to see exactly where. Analogies of more modern frontiers suggest that while geographic 'natural' features, such as mountains and rivers, may have political and juridical convenience, they are rarely suitable as military lines.
  • 9 - The army
    pp 320-343
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The effectiveness of the Roman army of the later first and second centuries AD was as great as it had ever been and was never to be surpassed. The legions in the later first and second centuries were essentially large bodies of highly disciplined and well-equipped infantry, trained primarily to engage the enemy in formal 'set-piece' battles. The extraordinary success of the Roman army can be ascribed to a number of factors, not least of which will have been the military qualities of the emperor and his legates and the spirit that they instilled into the men under their command so that under an emperor like Hadrian, who shared the rigours of camp life with his men, military discipline became very much the order of the day. The significance of the army to the empire and particularly to those frontier provinces in which it was based was not, however, limited to its military role, whether offensive or defensive.
  • 10 - Local and provincial institutions and government
    pp 344-360
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Government and administration today are somewhat different concepts, the one meaning more or less policy-making, the other the implementation of government decisions. There is no such difference in Roman political thinking and vocabulary, but in the world of facts there is something not exactly similar but going in the same direction. Administration was made easier for those responsible because its aims were fairly restricted: economy and transport, culture, education and science, social relations and welfare were not targets of state intervention. Day-to-day administration was probably not very different between the various types of province. The governor's main job was always to keep the peace of the province against the ubiquitous robbers: curare, ut pacata atque quieta provincia sit quam regit. Another important job of the governor, to ensure that taxes were paid, involved deciding beforehand how many people there were and how much they had to pay.
  • 11 - Rebels and outsiders
    pp 361-404
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Formal status, more precisely the degrees of generosity in the dispensation of citizenship to the various peoples of the empire, offers only one measurement of membership in that larger city, the patria communis, that the empire pretended to be. The spread of citizenship, and of Roman-style urban communities with which citizenship was correlated, was an uneven process. The extension of citizenship and urban developments of Roman-type in the western Mediterranean was marked by considerable successes in the plains regions of the general geographic area. As with all historical portraits of the 'barbarian', the negative side of the Roman image of the foreigner was rooted in the proven inferiority of the external society. Surrounded by the twin worlds of ethnicity and rusticity were the urban centres that constituted the core of Roman society. Each town and village, depending on the wider regional and ethnic context in which it was embedded, had its own spectrum of unacceptable persons, of social outcasts.
  • 12 - Rome and Italy
    pp 405-443
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Augustus had started the process of making Rome, as a matter of policy, a worthy capital of the world. Travelling to Rome, city of wonders in a land of wonders, was a special experience. In the world of thinking, speaking and writing, Rome was the centre too, the norm and exemplar of Antonine cities. The architecture of Rome was the greatest of its wonders. The cities of Italy in the Augustan period had functioned as channels of horizontal and vertical social mobility. In the Antonine period, moreover, there was more to economic life than landowning. The nature of production in Italy in this period constitutes one of the most problematic sets of questions in ancient economic history. In the Flavian and Trajanic period, the evidence suggests a burgeoning of the cash-crop based, villa-centred, agrarian economy which had characterized the rural landscape of large parts of Italy since the middle Republic.
  • 13 - Spain
    pp 444-461
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The period of two generations following the civil wars of AD 68-9 was in many respects the zenith in the history of Roman Spain. The system of provincial government which secured the administrative framework for political, economic, social and cultural development was, on the whole, the same as that established under Augustus. The urban evolution of Roman Spain reached its zenith under the Flavian dynasty and in the early second century. More important than the number of cities which can be counted, hypothetical and incomplete as it is, are the general characteristics of the Flavian urbanization. Economic development, urbanization and social differentiation show that the Roman social order extended throughout the Iberian Peninsula. To be sure, the Antonine period saw important changes in the economic, social, political and cultural life of Roman Spain; but these had already begun under Hadrian and Antoninus Pius and were clearly internal in origin.
  • 14 - Gaul
    pp 462-495
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The spread of Latin played an important part in changing Roman attitudes to the Gauls. The Gallic provinces were romanized by the end of the second century AD To begin with, romanization took various forms. In Narbonensis, colonization had an immediate impact, in particular by compelling dispossessed local populations to bring new areas under cultivation. The study of terra sigillata was for a long time the main means through which the economic life of Roman Gaul was studied. For a hundred years, histories of Gaul and studies of the area have concentrated on institutional and administrative developments, seeking to establish the exact boundaries of provinces and civitates, to work out precisely how they operated, and to piece together their prosopographies. Gallo-Roman sculpture ought to have been the object of great works of synthesis, or so one might think on the basis of the great number of pieces of sculpted stone which are gathered for the most part in Esperandieu's Recueil.
  • 15 - Roman Germany
    pp 496-513
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter describes Roman Germany as the two forward zones which Augustus established on the Rhine for action against the tribes between the Weser and the Elbe. The end of the first century and the beginning of the second are characterized by the army acting as a major economic factor. The high liquidity of the soldiers was vital for the prosperity of the north-east Gallic economic zone at this time. In general the fact that Gaul was a common economic zone was emphasized by its 2.5 per cent tax collected at the border posts on the roads to Spain, Italy, Britain and Noricum, in other words right around Gaul and the Rhine provinces. During the first century all religious phenomena were conditioned by Roman/Mediterranean traditions. One can say that the period after the Batavian revolt and up to the third century is the period of Pax Romana, the great period of imperial peace, on the Rhine.
  • 16 - Africa
    pp 514-546
  • View abstract

    Summary

    On the frontiers the work of the emperors in the second century continued that of the Flavians. The unimportance of Africa as a military theatre in this period is shown by the fact that the standing army for the whole of the Maghreb never contained more than one legion, the Third Augustan Legion, which moved its base from the older part of Proconsularis to that part called Numidia. The control and organization of the tribal territories was clearly a major concern, which began with the Flavians and continued under Trajan and Hadrian. In Trajan's rule and under his successors there was more than one occasion when the corn supply to Rome needed emergency measures, as, for instance, once when Egypt's contribution failed. Production of olive oil was the most important growth area in the Roman African economy, and recent studies have radically revised older minimalist views of this boom.
  • 17 - Cyrenaica
    pp 547-558
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The account of geographical and social conditions in Cyrenaica, its Augustan organization and Julio-Claudian development given in CAH X2 619-40 is taken for granted. As early as the second century BC so it is currently proposed, a series of sculptured reliefs found a little outside the walls of Cyrene presented Libyan religious ideas in a form strongly hellenized, but in many features patently non-Greek; and examples of the series were being produced also in the Roman period. By the time of Marcus Aurelius, Cyrene too seems restored to vigour. The new Roman influences were balanced by a new strengthening of the Greek tradition. Cyrenaica, in fact, by the end of the second century was showing a vitality which can fairly be reckoned as consonant with her natural resources, and a culture which is a striking combination of Greek, Roman and Libyan elements.
  • 18 - Britain
    pp 559-576
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Almost the entire period between the accessions of Vespasian and Septimius Severus was dominated by military affairs in Britain. At the beginning of the period of the survey the cities of Britain were recovering from the aftermath of the Boudican rebellion. The three certainly known to have been destroyed, Colchester, London and Verulamium, have each produced evidence of slow recovery with delays in their redevelopment of a decade or more. With one or two exceptions the area where one can identify early villa development is in the south-east. Elsewhere the aristocracy, whether native or immigrant and presumed to be associated with the urban developments of the Flavian period and the second century, is much less visible architecturally in the countryside. By the end of the second century the military and civilian structures of Roman Britain were firmly established. After the decision to abandon the Antonine Wall, the frontier arrangements in the north remained essentially unchanged.
  • 19 - The Danube provinces
    pp 577-603
  • View abstract

    Summary

    The Danube provinces of the Roman empire were dominated by the presence of the army. Three generations after the reign of Hadrian saw the Illyriciani of the Danube lands a dominant group in the power struggles of the empire. By setting a limit to the Roman empire in that quarter Hadrian had begun a frontier policy that resulted in the massively fortified perimeters of the later empire. At the end of the Antonine period the government of the Danube provinces required the services of ten Roman senators, all but the proconsul in Macedonia serving in peacetime a term of around three years. By the middle decades of the second century there had developed in the Danube provinces a Latin-speaking Roman provincial culture to which local native traditions appear to have contributed little. This was based on the growing settlements along the river and was bound up with the influence of locally recruited legions and auxilia.
  • 20 - Greece and Asia Minor
    pp 604-634
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Greece, Asia Minor and the islands came off lightly in the civil wars of 68-70. The Flavians were ready to promote urbanization and restoration. Vespasian's unification of eastern Asia Minor into the northern section of a great command imposed strains. When Trajan himself began campaigning in the East he brought it to an end. Hadrian on his travels did not neglect military matters but in Greece and even in Asia Minor, in spite of the very large number of milestones bearing his name, they were not his primary interest. The literary sources for Hadrian's tours are inadequate and honours were showered on him whether he acted in person or at some distance. But the dates of his visits to Athens as emperor are virtually certain, with the first becoming the beginning of a new era for the city: 124-5, 128-9 and 131-2. The Panhellenion is the most significant benefaction of Hadrian to Athens and the most difficult to interpret.
  • 21 - Syria and Arabia
    pp 635-663
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses the four main aspects of the history of Roman provinces: the process of provincialization; the organization of the indigenous societies; the spread of the civic model and the urbanization of the region; and the success of the artisan class. In the south, on the boundary between the provinces of Syria and Arabia, the Hauran was no less rich, though less completely explored. On a general level, the cities of Syria and Arabia, like those of Asia Minor, were eager for the adornment which characterized the Antonine era. Syria and Arabia held an advantageous position in commerce between the empire and the countries to the East, which classical authors occasionally call simply Indica, although this covers central Asia, China and the Arabian peninsula as much as the Indian subcontinent. Syria, which had ended up by incorporating all the client states west of the Euphrates, was counted among the richest provinces of the eastern Mediterranean.
  • 22 - Judaea
    pp 664-678
  • View abstract

    Summary

    Nearly all the main pillars of the structure of Judaean society were destroyed in AD 70. Jerusalem, the Temple and the priesthood were in ruins. Pagan writers wrote little about Judaea except when the province appeared a military threat to the empire; when at peace the region was neither strategically nor economically significant. This chapter discusses the nature of Jewish society in Palestine in the fifty years between AD 70 and the outbreak of the Bar Kochba War. It is likely that all Jews hoped, in vain, for the rapid rebuilding of the sanctuary in Jerusalem. Evidence for Jewish settlement in the countryside of Egypt and Cyrene comes to an abrupt halt, although a few Jews were attested again in Egypt from the late third century. In place of the great heterogeneity of the era before AD 70, rabbinic Jews began a process of religious self-definition parallel to the contemporary development within Christianity.
  • 23 - The land
    pp 679-709
  • View abstract

    Summary

    In the Graeco-Roman world land was the source of subsistence and of wealth. Land was looked to primarily for food. This chapter begins with an assessment of the food-producing capacities of the territories making up the Roman empire and the manner in which they were tapped, against the background of the opportunities offered and constraints imposed by the physical environment. Consideration is given to developments in the agrarian economy in our period; expansion of the area under cultivation and the issue of technological progress; patterns of land-holding and methods of managing and working the land; and, finally, agricultural productivity. The period of the Principate witnessed the expansion of agriculture, especially in the provinces of the West. Crop performance and productivity levels, were governed by a number of variables. For convenience two groups of four are divided: on the one hand, weather, seed quality, soil and technology: on the other, the supply of land, labour and seed-corn, and proprietorial attitudes.
  • 24 - Trade
    pp 710-740
  • View abstract

    Summary

    This chapter discusses all forms of market exchange including everything from local trade in which very little transport of goods might be involved to trade over long distances, both inside and outside the Roman empire. It talks about what is now known about patterns of trade in various commodities, about the social and institutional mechanisms by which trade was conducted, and about the role of governments. The main geographical patterns of long-distance trade were determined by the location of these markets and of the centres of production or supply. Many merchants avoided specialization, and for this reason among others it is artificial to discuss Roman trade commodity by commodity. It remains true that reasons of technology and of social structure prevented the Romans from replacing their agrarian economy, in which the mass of the population lived not much above subsistence level, with a more dynamic system.

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