Roman Empire

In dealing with her often refractory Jewish subjects, writes E. Mary Smallwood, Rome followed a policy of toleration and protection but insisted that the Jews must “repay toleration with toleration.”

E. Mary Smallwood asserts that when trouble broke out between rulers and subjects, the fault did not always lie with the Roman administration.

After the sack of Rome by the Goths in the year 410, the Roman world experienced some of the unease that afflicts Western civilization today; S.G.F. Brandon describes how the late Roman world found assuagement in the writings of Saint Augustine.

By the year 129 B.C., writes D.R. Dudley, the Stoic philosophy was firmly established among the ruling classes of Rome in a form cut to suit the Roman virtues.

S. Usher introduces Sallust, himself a disillusioned politician, who envisaged no future greatness for Rome until a single man of vision should have restored the old Republican sense of obligation—the individual's obligation to the state, and the state’s obligation to the world at large.

James Shiel introduces Jerome, a charming letter-writer and worldly-wise mentor of fashionable proselytes, a learned theologian and fiery controversialist. He lived through a critical period in the history of Western civilization, when the Church established its authority and Rome was sacked by a barbarian foe.

Gnosticism was one of those developments of religious thought that, although finally rejected by Christians as heretical, played a major part in the formation of Christian theology during the first three centuries of the Church’s life, writes S.G.F. Brandon.

In the year AD 60, Boudicca, a woman of the royal house of the Iceni led a fierce British revolt against the Roman occupation, during which Londinium was reduced to ashes.

The importance of these much-debated scrolls is here interpreted by Cecil Rothin the light of the events that took place during the first-century Jewish Revolt against the power of Rome.

By his very ruthlessness, Julius Caesar made himself indispensable to the State he had largely been responsible for disrupting. Peter Green assesses the Caesarian legend he left behind him, as well as its malign influence upon later ages.