Essays
Essay 1 (deadline: Monday 22 November, 12.00 noon):
1. Did the Romans consider the Parthians and Sasanians a threat, and was there a strategy of defence along the eastern frontier?
Bibliography
Apart from the general works listed in the module bibliography, the following will be useful:
Dignas, B, Winter, E, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals (Cambridge, 2007).
Edwell, P, Between Rome and Persia: The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Palmyra under Roman Control (London, 2008).
Ferrill, A, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy (Lantham, 1991).
Isaac, B, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (2nd ed., Oxford, 1992).
Kennedy, D, ‘Parthia and Rome: Eastern Perspectives’, in D. Kennedy (ed.), The Roman Army in the East (Ann Arbor, 1996), 67-90.
Luttwak, E N, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1976).
Potter, D S, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395 (London, 2004).
Wheeler, E L ‘Methodological Limits and the Mirage of Roman Strategy, Part I’, Journal of Military History 57.1 (1993), 7-41, ‘Part II’, JMS 57.2 (1993), 215-240 ( (available on JSTOR).
You may also find the following relevant:
Potter, D S, ‘Alexander Severus and Ardashir’, Mesopotamia 22 (1987), 147-157 (not in the library, unfortunately).
Isaac, B ‘The meaning of the terms limes and limitanei’, Journal of Roman Studies 78 (1988), 125-147.
Whittaker, C R, The Frontiers of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1994).
2. What were the motives behind Zenobia’s rebellion against the emperor Aurelian? Can the rebellion be characterised as anti-Roman?
Bibliography
Apart from the general works listed in the module bibliography, the following will be useful:
Cambridge Ancient History, vol 12 (various essays).
Dodgeon, M H, Lieu, S N C, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, AD 226-363: A Documentary History (London, 1991).
Edwell, P, Between Rome and Persia: The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Palmyra under Roman Control (London, 2008).
Graf, D ‘Zenobia and the Arabs’, in D H French, C S Lightfoot, The Eastern Frontier of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1988), 143-167.
Millar, F ‘Paul of Samosata, Zenobia and Aurelian: The Church, Local Culture and Political Allegiance in Third-Century Syria’, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), 1-17.
Potter, D S, The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180-395 (London, 2004).
Stoneman, R., Palmyra and its Empire: Zenobia’s Revolt against Rome (Ann Arbor, 1994).
Watson, A, Aurelian and the Third Century (London, 1999).
3. The so-called ‘client kingdoms’ of the Near East have been seen as essential to a Roman strategy of pacification and urbanisation in the region. Once these goals had been achieved, the kingdoms could be abolished and direct Roman rule imposed. Is this a judicious assessment of the function of allied rulers?
Bibliography
Apart from the general works listed in the module bibliography, the following will be useful:
Braund, D., Rome and the Friendly King (London, 1983).
Freeman, P ‘The Annexation of Arabia and Imperial Grand Strategy’, in D L Kennedy, D Braund (eds), The Roman Army in the East (Ann Arbor, 1996), 91-118.
Luttwak, E N, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1976).
Roller, D W The Building Program of Herod the Great (Berkeley, 1998).
Sherwin-White, A N, Roman Foreign Policy in the East, 168 BC – AD 1 (Norman, 1981).
Sullivan, R, Near Eastern Royalty and Rome, 100-30 BC (Toronto, 1990).
Essay 2 (deadline: Wednesday 16 February, 12.00 noon)
1. Can any of the Near Eastern cities be considered true ‘caravan cities’?
Bibliography
Ball, p. 76, 123-139.
Bowersock, G W, Roman Arabia, Cambridge,
Bowersock, G W, ‘Social and Economic History of Syria under the Roman Empire’, in J-M Dentzer, W Orthmann (eds), Archéologie et histoire de la Syrie, II, Saarbrücken, 1989, pp. 63-80.
Butcher, pp. 184-186.
Millar, pp. 330-332.
F Millar, ‘Caravan Cities: The Roman Near East and Long-Distance Trade by Land’, Rome, the Greek World, and the East, vol iii, Chapel Hill, 2006: 275-299 (copies in file in Classics office).
Raschke, D G, ‘New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.9, 1976, pp. 604-1361 (class mark is DG 210.A8).
Rostovtzeff, M I, Caravan Cities,
Sartre, ch. 8, esp. pp. 267-271.
Young, G, Rome’s Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, London, 2001.
2. Did ‘Hellenisation’ lead to the obliteration of indigenous culture in Roman Syria?
Bibliography
Butcher, chapter 8
Sartre, chapter 9
Millar, chapter 13 (but most of part II of the book, chapters 6-13, is also relevant)
F Millar, ‘The Phoenician Cities: a Case Study of Hellenisation’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 1983: 55-71 = F Millar, Rome, the Greek World, and the East, vol iii, Chapel Hill, 2006: 32-50 (copies in file in Classics office).
F Millar, ‘Ethnic Identity in the Roman Near East, AD 325-450: Language, Religion, Culture’, Rome, the Greek World, and the East, vol iii, Chapel Hill, 2006: 378-405 (copies in file in Classics office).
N Pollard, ‘Colonial and Cultural Identities in Parthian and Roman Dura-Europos’, in R Alston, S N C Lieu (eds.), Aspects of the Roman East, Turnhout, 2007: 81-101.
G Woolf, ‘Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 40 (1994): 116-143.
A Schmidt-Colinet, ‘Aspects of “Romanization”: The Tomb Architecture of Palmyra and its Decoration’, in S E Alcock, The Early Roman Empire in the East, Oxford, 1997: 157-177.
K M Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge, 1999.
3. In what ways can Christianity be said to have had a destabilising effect on politics and society in Syria during the fourth to seventh centuries?
Bibliography
P. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 80-101.
Butcher, chapter 9
G. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth. Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Princeton, 1993.
W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, Cambridge, 1972.
D.S. Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch: A Study of Early Christian Thought in the East, Cambridge, 1982.
A. Vööbus, A History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, 2 vols, Louvain, 1958-1960.
