Roman Republican and Imperial colonies were established by diverse agents reacting to contemporary problems. By removing anachronistic interpretations, Roman colonies cease to seem like ‘little Romes’ and demonstrate a complex role in the spread of Roman imperialism and culture.

"The Romans founded colonies throughout Italy and the provinces from the early Republic through the high Empire. Far from being mere 'bulwarks of empire,' these colonies were established by diverse groups or magistrates for a range of reasons that responded to the cultural and political problems faced by the contemporary Roman state and populace. This project traces the diachronic changes in colonial foundation practices by contextualizing the literary, epigraphic, archaeological, and numismatic evidence with the overall perspective that evidence from one period of colonization should not be used analogistically to explain gaps in the evidence for a different period. The Roman colonies were not necessarily 'little Romes,' either structurally, juridically, or religiously, and therefore their role in the spread of Roman culture or the exercise of Roman imperialism was more complex than is sometimes acknowledged"--Back cover

Research on the nature of cultural change in the Roman Empire has traditionally been divided between the Western and Eastern provinces. Papers in this volume aim to reunite the provinces by approaching the question of cultural change across the Empire through a range of material culture and historical sources focusing on the first 100 years of the foundation of a colony.

The Roman empire extended over three continents, and all its lands came to share a common culture, bequeathing a legacy vigorous even today. A Companion to Roman Imperialism, written by a distinguished body of scholars, explores the extraordinary phenomenon of Rome’s rise to empire to reveal the impact which this had on her subject peoples and on the Romans themselves. The Companion analyses how Rome’s internal affairs and international relations reacted on each other, sometimes with violent results, why some lands were annexed but others ignored or given up, and the ways in which Rome’s population and power élite evolved as former subjects, east and west, themselves became Romans and made their powerful contributions to Roman history and culture. Contributors are Eric Adler, Richard Alston, Lea Beness, Paul Burton, Brian Campbell, Arthur Eckstein, Peter Edwell, Tom Hillard, Richard Hingley, Benjamin Isaac, José Luis López Castro, J. Majbom Madsen, Susan Mattern, Sophie Mills, David Potter, Jonathan Prag, Steven Rutledge, Maurice Sartre, John Serrati, Tom Stevenson, Martin Stone, and James Thorne.

Roman tradition preserved in the first book of Livy presents a very circumstantial account of the several battles by which Rome supposedly razed the Latin cities one after another until she was supreme mistress of the Tiber valley. Needless to say, if the Latin tribe had lived in such civil discord as legend assumes, it would quickly have succumbed to the inroads of the mountain tribes, which were eagerly watching for opportunities to raid. Of course legend had to account somehow for the abandoned shrines and old place names scattered over Latium, and being unable to comprehend the slower processes of civilization, it took a more picturesque route, attached a rumor of war to a hero's name, and made the villages disappear in fire and blood.

This Elibron Classics title is a reprint of the original edition published by Humphrey Milford; Oxford University Press in London; Edinburgh, Glasgow, New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Bombay, 1914.