Introduction
In: Rome, Global Dreams, and the International Origins of an EmpireSearch for other papers by Sarah H. Davies in
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Abstract
The Roman Predicament
This section discusses the entanglement (or “predicament”) with which modern scholarship has thought about the Roman “empire” and Roman “imperialism.” Such scholarship has used terms that not only reflect contemporary definitions of empire and imperialism, but which also connect, ironically, with the Romans’ own imperial rhetoric, after the fact. This section then reviews the major stages in modern Roman imperialism studies, from Theodor Mommsen and defensive imperialism, to William Harris and offensive imperialism, to the cultural turn and Erich Gruen, and most recently to Arthur Eckstein’s international relations (IR) theoretical approach. The section concludes with a statement of the present study’s “normative constructivist” perspective.
An International “Middle Ground”
The current study learns from all of the previous contributions described above, and has its starting point in a desire to describe how Roman imperium came to take the form that it did by the Augustan period. In order to do so, it focuses on international-level interactions—and crucially, miscommunications and mistranslations—as the reified space within which political and ideological transformation took place during the third and second centuries BCE. As such, the current study deploys Richard White’s notion of a “middle ground” as a useful tool for thinking about this crucial period in the history of—and construction of—Rome as a transcendent empire, without end.
Global Dreams: An Overview
This section provides a general summary of the following five chapters and conclusion: