Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam

by Eric H. Cline , Mark W. Graham

• ISBN13: 9780521717809
• ISBN10: 0521717809
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-06-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Eric H. Cline is Associate Professor and the Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at George Washington University. The author of more than eighty articles, his most recent books include Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction (2009) and From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible (2008). Mark W. Graham is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and contributed chapters to several books, including Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition (2000) and Encyclopedia of the Empires of the World (2011). Most recently, he authored News and Frontier Consciousness in the Late Roman Empire (2006).

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
Introduction: What Is an (Ancient) Empire?	p. 1
Definition of Empire	p. 3
Empire, Response, and Resistance	p. 7
Empires, Ancient and Modern	p. 8
Questions, Questions, Questions	p. 9
Prelude to the Age of Ancient Empires	p. 10
The Dawn of Empire	p. 11
Between Amarna and Qadesh: Realpolitik Bronze Age Style	p. 23
Collapse of the International System	p. 29
The Rise of the Age of Ancient Empires	p. 33
The Levels of Historical Time and the Rise of the Age of Ancient Empires	p. 34
Climate Change and the Birth of a New Age	p. 36
The Neo-Assyrian Revival	p. 37
The Logic of Assyrian Domination	p. 42
The Demise of Assyrian Domination	p. 52
Dealing with Empires: Varieties of Responses	p. 55
Secondary State Formation: Urartu	p. 56
Coalition and Collapse: Syria and Its Neighbors	p. 62
Revival of East-West Trade: The Phoenicians/Canaanites	p. 66
Conflict and Covenant: Israel and Judah	p. 72
Beyond the Near East: The Neo-Babylonian and Early Achaemenid Persian Empires	p. 80
The Rise (and Fall) of the Neo-Babylonian Empire	p. 81
Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Neo-Babylonian Rulership in Action	p. 84
Interlude: The People of the Book	p. 89
The Enigmatic Nabonidus and the Persian Takeover	p. 90
The Rise of a Multiculturalist Empire: The Achaemenid Persians	p. 92
The Pragmatics of a Multicultural Empire	p. 98
Responding to Empire	p. 101
The Crucible of History: East Meets West	p. 103
The Greek Expansion and the Birth of the Polis	p. 108
The Ionian Intellectual Revolution and the Limits of Persian Tolerance	p. 112
The Crucible of History	p. 116
The Greco-Persian War	p. 118
Postlude: East, West, and Orientalism	p. 124
Democracy and Empire between Athens and Alexander	p. 126
A Golden Age (at Athens)	p. 128
Can a Democracy Run an Empire? The Peloponnesian War	p. 134
The Empire Strikes Back: Alexander the Great	p. 142
ôSpear-Wonö Empires: The Hellenistic Synthesis	p. 149
Alexander's ôFuneral Gamesö	p. 150
The Hellenistic IEMP Synthesis	p. 153
Empire and the City	p. 159
The Individual in the Hellenistic World	p. 162
Resistance and Revolt: Mauryans and Maccabees	p. 166
The Western Mediterranean and the Rise of Rome	p. 173
The Western Mediterranean Setting	p. 176
Roman Beginnings: Inside and Outside	p. 181
The Roots of Roman Imperialism	p. 189
Imperium Sine Fine: Roman Imperialism and the End of the Old Order	p. 199
Rome versus Carthage	p. 200
Symploké Rome and the Hellenistic East	p. 204
The Late Republic and the End of the Old Order	p. 210
The New Political Order: The Foundations of the Principate	p. 221
Mr. IEMP: Octavian/Augustus	p. 222
Pax Romana	p. 232
Into the Arena: A Microcosm of Imperial Society in the Principate	p. 235
ôBarbariansö through Roman Eyes: The Romans Encounter ôthe Otherö	p. 239
Ruling and Resisting the Roman Empire	p. 244
Power and the Provinces	p. 246
The Imperial Cult and Roman Rule	p. 254
Resisting Roman Rule	p. 258
Imperial Crisis and Recovery	p. 267
The ôThird-Century Crisisö	p. 268
The Rise of Christianity	p. 277
The Dominate: Cosmos Restored	p. 283
Universal Empires and Their Peripheries in Late Antiquity	p. 294
Roman Political and Religious Universalism	p. 295
Renovatio: Byzantium, the New Rome	p. 301
The Rise of the Sasanid Persian Empire	p. 306
Politics, Resistance, and Heterodoxies at the Peripheries of the Empires	p. 311
The Formation of the Islamic World Empire	p. 319
The Clash of Empires and the End of the (Ancient) World	p. 322
The Arabs and the Rise of Islam	p. 326
The Umayyads: The First Islamic (and the Last Ancient) Empire	p. 332
Notes	p. 341
Further Reading	p. 347
Index	p. 357
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