Roman Domination
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In the reign of Augustus, we are told in the Gospel According to Mark, "there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed." The author of the Gospel was presumably aware that the Principate did not literally cover the world. Augustus, his successors, their advisors and associates, and the Roman people of the time were certainly aware of it. Yet the famous Gospel expression aptly conveyed a sense that, nearly without exception, the Roman system included within its orbit all of the world that really mattered. Once Cleopatra clasped the asp to her bosom, the last of the powers that had previously contested the Mediterranean basin was subjected to Roman rule; all that remained were client states under Roman domination. On its various frontiers, the empire might trail off into the lands of forest tribes, or mountain tribes, or desert tribes that resisted Roman rule. But none of these was "a foreign power" in the modern sense, or in the comparable sense that Romans of an earlier period would have regarded Carthage, or Ptolemaic Egypt, or the other Hellenistic states. Only one such organized, dynastic foreign power existed that lay outside the orbit of Roman domination, yet impinged on the Roman world and thus posed a potential threat: the Arsacid state of Parthia. While Parthia was by no means a power on a scale comparable to Rome itself, it was qualitatively different in order from any other independent power that existed on the edge of th
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s court, and was received in friendship by his uncle Mithradates. While at Mithradates' court, he set to work subverting the Armenian nobles. Then, pretending to a reconciliation with his father Farsman, he went back to Iberia--only to return, this time at the head of an army. Mithradates fled into the Roman garrison fortress at Gorniae.
The Romans now found themelves involved directly in this exercise of Caucasian family values. Gorniae was under the command of a prefect of auxiliaries, Caelius Pollio, whose second-in-command was a chief centurion named Casperius. According to Tacitus, the fortress was well-garrisoned and well-positioned, and as he notes, "natives are totally ignorant of that branch of military art which we understand so thoroughly, siege-equipment and tactics. Rhadamistus' attempts to take Gorniae by assault failed, so he turned to bribery directed at Caelius Pollio.
This had more effect. Caelius' second-in-command Casperius protested, but to no avail, and eventually the centurion arranged a truce and left the fortress, "intending to deter Pharasmanes [Farsman] from war, or, failing that, to report the Armenian situation to the imperial governor of Syria." Under pressure from Caelius, Mithradat
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Approximate Word count = 3235
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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