Introduction
TheGreekWorld,theJews,andtheEastis the third and last volume in the series
of Fergus Millar’s collected essays,Rome,theGreekWorld,andtheEast. It stands
toThe Roman Near East, ..–..^1 as the second volume in the series
stands toThe Emperor in the Roman World, ..–..,^2 and, to a lesser
extent, as the first volume in the series stands toTheCrowdinRomeintheLate
Republic.^3
The two themes of the first volume,The Roman Republic and the Augustan
Revolution(), are the democratic nature of the Roman Republic and the
transition from Republic to Principate, and its focal point, the cradle of the
empire—the city of Rome and Italy. The second volume,Government,Society,
and Culture in the Roman Empire(), is about imperial Rome; it deals with
the empire as a system of government; only briefly and intermittently does
it touch on local cultures in the provinces. The present volume is a study-in-
depth of the impact of empire on the eastern part of the Empire. The ‘‘East’’
in the title is the Roman Near East, which eventually extended much further
east than it had in the early Empire. With the incorporation of great tracts
of the East, Rome ceased, also in the East, to be a Mediterranean empire.
Millar’s Roman Near East is that part of the Roman world populated
by Semitic-speaking and Semitic-writing peoples;^4 their encounter with
. Based on the Carl Newell Jackson Lectures (Harvard, ), and published by Harvard
University Press, , and in paperback, (henceforthRNE).
. Duckworth and Cornell University Press, , and a second edition with an after-
word, (henceforthERW).
. Based on the Jerome Lectures (Ann Arbor, Michigan, autumn , and the American
Academy in Rome, ) and published by Michigan University Press, .
. Egypt is absent from this volume as it is essentially absent fromRNE; cf. Millar’s epi-
logue in this volume (text to n. ). Nonetheless, observe the caveats in the prologue toRNE
against facile identification of language and ethnicity, and the assumption of a common
Semitic culture.
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