![]() ![]() The book, for example, largely glosses Republican conquests, so that its first major discussion of the Roman army in action provocatively explores a massacre in a supposedly conquered province: the treacherous slaughter of surrendered Lusitanians by the forces of Ser. The Roman army is an ever-present institutional actor in his story, and the violence it precipitated an ever-present reality, but this is not a history of warfare. The dust jacket provided by the press, featuring a handsome Imperial helmet, certainly seeks to appeal to those book buyers with a taste for old-school military history. It could devolve into a ‘guts and glory’ military history narrating Rome’s conquests and imperial wars, with purple passages describing gladii carving through various aspects of human anatomy. It is worth highlighting at the start a few pitfalls into which such a work could easily descend. ![]() Adrian Goldsworthy’s Pax Romana represents a broad and reputable survey of the history of the Roman peace from roughly 150 BC to AD 235, with pax here seen not as a blissful moment of non-violence, but rather as a state of control established and continuously enforced by organized coercive force. ![]()
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