Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Rome, Global Dreams, and the International Origins of an Empire
ISBN: 9789004411906
Platform/Publisher: BRILL / BRILL
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Causation.; First philosophy.; Neoplatonism.; One (The One in philosophy);

In Rome, Global Dreams, and the International Origins of an Empire , Sarah Davies explores how the Roman Republic evolved, in ideological terms, into an "Empire without end." This work stands out within Roman imperialism studies by placing a distinct emphasis on the role of international-level norms and concepts in shaping Roman imperium. Using a combination of literary, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence, Davies highlights three major factors in this process. First is the development, in the third and second centuries BCE, of a self-aware international community with a cosmopolitan vision of a single, universalizing world-system. Second is the misalignment of Rome's polity and concomitant diplomatic practices with those of its Hellenistic contemporaries. And third is contemporary historiography, which inserted Rome into a cyclical (and cosmic) rise-and-fall of great power.