Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam
Cambridge University Press, 8/25/2011
EAN 9780521889117, ISBN10: 0521889111
Hardcover, 376 pages, 25.4 x 18 x 2.3 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Ancient Empires is a relatively brief yet comprehensive and even-handed overview of the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean and Europe, including the Greco-Roman world, Late Antiquity and the early Muslim period. Taking a focused and thematic approach, it aims to provoke a discussion of an explicit set of themes supplemented by the reading of ancient sources. By focusing on empires and imperialism as well as modes of response and resistance, it is relevant to current discussions about order, justice and freedom. The book concludes that some of the ancient world's most enduring ideas, value systems and institutions were formulated by peoples who were resisting the great empires. It analyzes the central, if problematic, connection between political and ideological power in both empire formation and resistance. The intricate interrelations among ideological, economic, military and political power are explored for every empire and resisting group.
Introduction
what is an (ancient) empire?
1. Prelude to the Age of Ancient Empires
2. The rise of the Age of Ancient Empires
3. Dealing with empires
varieties of responses
4. Beyond the Near East
the Neo-Babylonian and early Achaemenid Persian empires
5. The crucible of history
east meets west
6. Democracy and empire between Athens and Alexander
7. 'Spear-won' empires
the Hellenistic synthesis
8. The western Mediterranean and the rise of Rome
9. Imperium sine fine
Roman imperialism and the end of the old order
10. The new political order
the foundations of the principate
11. Ruling and resisting the Roman Empire
12. Imperial crisis and recovery
13. Universal empires and their peripheries in Late Antiquity
14. The formation of the Islamic world empire.