The leading ancient world historian and author of Caesar presents “an engrossing account of how the Roman Empire grew and operated” (Kirkus). Renowned for his biographies of Julius Caesar and Augustus, Adrian Goldsworthy turns his attention to the Roman Empire as a whole during its height in the first and second centuries AD. Though this time is known as the Roman Peace, or Pax Romana, the Romans were fierce imperialists who took by force vast lands stretching from the Euphrates to the Atlantic coast. The Romans ruthlessly won peace not through coexistence but through dominance; millions died and were enslaved during the creation of their empire. Pax Romana examines how the Romans came to control so much of the world and asks whether traditionally favorable images of the Roman peace are true. Goldsworthy vividly recounts the rebellions of the conquered, examining why they broke out, why most failed, and how they became exceedingly rare. He reveals that hostility was just one reaction to the arrival of Rome and that from the outset, conquered peoples collaborated, formed alliances, and joined invaders, causing resistance movements to fade away.

Collects issues 1-4 of PAX ROMANA plus bonus materials! From the mind of comic book innovator Jonathan Hickman, comes the exhilarating time-traveling epic: PAX ROMANA. The creator of THE NIGHTLY NEWS brings his unique sensibility to science fiction and the result is a visually stunning look at a new history of the world. PAX ROMANA tells the tale of 5000 men sent on an impossible mission to change the past and save the future.

This book examines the language and the ideology of the Pax Romana, the Pax Britannica and the Pax Americana within the broader contexts of 'hegemony' and 'empire'. It addresses three main themes: a conceptual examination of the way in which hegemony has been justified; a linguistic study of how the notion of pax (usually translated as peace) has been used in ancient and modern times; and a study of the international orders created by Rome and Britain. Using an historiographical approach, the book draws upon texts from Greco-Roman antiquity, and sources from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries to show how the pax ideology has served as a justification for hegemonic foreign policy, and as an intellectual exercise in power projection. From Tacitus' condemnation of what he described as 'creating a wilderness and calling it peace', to debates about the establishment of a Pax Americana in post-Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the book shows not only how the governing elite in each of the three hegemonic orders prescribed to a loose interpretation of the pax ideology, but also how their internal disagreements and different conceptualisations of pax have affected the process of 'empire-building'. This book will be of interest to students of international history, empire, and International Relations in general.

What modern economics can tell us about ancient Rome The quality of life for ordinary Roman citizens at the height of the Roman Empire probably was better than that of any other large group of people living before the Industrial Revolution. The Roman Market Economy uses the tools of modern economics to show how trade, markets, and the Pax Romana were critical to ancient Rome's prosperity. Peter Temin, one of the world's foremost economic historians, argues that markets dominated the Roman economy. He traces how the Pax Romana encouraged trade around the Mediterranean, and how Roman law promoted commerce and banking. Temin shows that a reasonably vibrant market for wheat extended throughout the empire, and suggests that the Antonine Plague may have been responsible for turning the stable prices of the early empire into the persistent inflation of the late. He vividly describes how various markets operated in Roman times, from commodities and slaves to the buying and selling of land. Applying modern methods for evaluating economic growth to data culled from historical sources, Temin argues that Roman Italy in the second century was as prosperous as the Dutch Republic in its golden age of the seventeenth century. The Roman Market Economy reveals how economics can help us understand how the Roman Empire could have ruled seventy million people and endured for centuries.

In the faraway province of Aquitania, in the confines of the Roman Empire during the time of Augustus, a new city is terrorized by what appear to be a series of brutal murders of young Roman noblemen. There is a background of deep tension between the Roman colonizers and the inhabitants of the town of Lugdunum Convenarum. The Gauls have not been able to accept the strange ways of their masters, and the reign of Augustus—with its promise of universal peace—wants no accidents with the local population. An investigator arrives from Tolosa and begins to uncover the strange happenings in this backwater of the Empire at the foot of the Pyrenees.

The concept of Roman peace (pax) did not just denote the absence of war but formed part of a much greater discourse on how Rome conceptualized herself. This volume explores its changing meaning from Republic to Principate, arguing that it is fundamental to understanding the shifting balance of power and the creation of the Roman Empire.--Publisher description.

How providential, it is often argued, that Christianity began under the pax Romano, an unprecedented time of peace throughout the world! At what other time could the gospel have spread so quickly? Certainly the pax Romana was a time of peace, prosperity and justice for some - yet for others, the majority, it was a time of oppression, misery and suffering under the tyrant's whim. This latter dimension is not often brought out, so this new book plays an important role in redressing the balance. In it, Professor Wengst brings out what it was really like to live in the Roman empire. He is not so much concerned to offer a 'balanced' account as to show what it felt like from below, its effect on the nameless multitudes of whose immeasurable tears and sufferings, hopes and fears there is only indirect evidence. This serves as a prelude to a discussion of the experiences which Jesus and the early Christians had of Roman rule and the way in which they reacted to it. There is no mistaking the fact that the results of the study are not just a piece of past history, but are extraordinarily relevant to the modern world.