Preface
Fergus Millar, Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of
Oxford emeritus, is one of the most influential ancient historians of the
twentiethcentury.SincethepublicationofA Studyof Cassius DiobyOxford
University Press in 1964, Millar has published eight books, including two
monumentalstudies,The Emperor in the RomanWorld(Duckworth,1977)and
TheRomanNearEast,31b.c.–a.d. 337 (Harvard,1993).Thesebookshavetrans-
formedthestudyofancienthistory.
In his studyof the role of the emperor in the Roman world Millarar-
guedthatthereignofAugustusinauguratedalmostthreecenturiesofrela-
tivelypassiveandinertgovernment,inwhichthecentralpowerpursuedfew
policiesandwaslargelycontenttorespondtopressuresanddemandsfrom
below. After more than twenty years of scholarly reaction,The Emperor in
the Roman Worldis now the dominant scholarly model of how the Roman
Empireworkedinpractice.
Reviewers immediately hailed Millar’s magisterial study of the Roman
Near East as a ‘‘grand book on a grand topic’’ (TLS, 15 April 1994). In this
grandbook,displayinganunrivaledmasteryofancientliterary,epigraphic,
papyrological,andarchaeologicalsourcesinGreek,Latin,Hebrew,Aramaic,
and other Semitic languages, Millar made the indigenous peoples of the
RomanNearEast,especiallytheJews,centraltoourunderstandingofhow
and why the three great religions of the book, Rabbinic Judaism, Chris-
tianity,andIslam,evolvedinaculturalcontextthatwasneither‘‘eastern’’nor
‘‘western.’’TherecanbenodoubtthatThe Roman Near East, 31b.c.–a.d. 337
willbethestandardworkonthesubjectforalongtimetocome.
More recently, Millar has published two books,The Crowd in Rome in
the Late Republic(Michigan,1998)andThe Roman Republic in Political Thought
(NewEngland,2002),onthepoliticsoftheRomanRepublicandhowthose
politicshavebeenunderstoodormisunderstoodbypoliticalthinkersfrom
theancientworldtothepresent.Thesebookshavechallengedwidelyheld
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