their city walls, which were designed to guard only Athens
and its port of Piraeus. In addition, one of the key incidents
of the later part of the war was the Spartans’ seizure of De-
celea, at the northern edge of Athenian territory, and their
construction of a fortress there, in eff ect giving them partial
control of their enemy’s borders. Border controls could be
tight enough to cut off the fl ow of goods in case of wartime
embargo: Characters in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata complain
that the war has deprived them of access to such luxuries as
eels from nearby Boiotia.
As for external borders, population pressures, political
upheaval, and the generally poor quality of soil in mainland
Greece led to the frequent founding of colonies, starting in
approximately 750 b.c.e. and continuing for more than two
centuries. As a result, Greek frontiers were constantly shift -
ing, and Greek speakers shared borders with virtually all the
peoples of the Mediterranean: Lydians, Medes, and Persians
(among many others) in Asia Minor; Scythians along the
Black Sea; Etruscans and various Latin peoples (including Ro-
mans) in Italy; Carthaginians and Sicels in Sicily; and Gauls
in the south of France. Alexander’s conquests expanded the
Greek world still further, bringing Greeks into contact with
lands as distant as Afghanistan and India.
Frontiers had a strong hold on the Greek popular imagi-
nation. Border areas and hinterlands were where the norms of
human culture were subject to reversal and where the “other-
ness” of strangers could extend to the barbaric and the mon-
strous. Various cities, including Crete and Sparta, had rituals
that involved sending young men out to the frontiers of the
polis to take part in rites of passage, which could involve be-
haviors (thieving, deception, ritualized pederasty) that were
normally excluded from the city itself.
Th e best-known example of the strange fascination of
frontier regions is the array of odd and semihuman peoples
encountered by Odysseus during his wanderings, ranging
from the relatively normal (but socially inept) Phaeacians to
the monstrous and cannibalistic Cyclops Polyphemus. Yet
peoples less fantastic than these were widely believed to exist
just beyond the frontiers of the known world. Among these
were the Amazons, an all-female tribe who were everything
that Greek women were not supposed to be: independent, no-
madic, sexually and militarily aggressive. Always located on
the very edge of the known Greek world, the Amazons were
an embodiment of the notion that the edge of this world was
the edge of civilization itself. In fact, the supposed location of
the Amazons moved eastward, starting from Asia Minor and
winding up in the Caucasus Mountains: As the border of the
known world moved, the Amazons moved with it.
ROME
BY TOM STREISSGUTH
Th e Roman Empire, the largest realm of ancient history, be-
gan as a village spread across the hills near the Tiber River
in central Italy. Th e Romans established a republic aft er
deposing their last king, Tarquin, around 509 b.c.e. Upon
turning back an invasion from the north by the Celts in 390
b.c.e., the Romans began the conquest of the Italian penin-
sula. Th ey expanded their control north to the Po River and
south to the Greek colonies along the Mediterranean. Th e
Roman frontiers, as well as private estates and city limits,
were marked by boundary stones sacred to the god Termi-
nus. An elaborate ceremony accompanied the placement of
these stones. During the annual festival of Terminalia, at
the end of the Roman year on February 23, the stones were
cleaned, and the blood of sacrifi ces poured on them to re-
new their protective powers.
During the third and second centuries b.c.e., the grow-
ing republic clashed with Carthage, a North African empire,
in the Punic Wars. Aft er the last of these confl icts ended in
146 b.c.e., the Romans established their fi rst overseas colo-
nies in Sicily, Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, and Numidia (modern
Tunisia). Roman armies then subdued Macedonia, southern
Greece, Asia Minor, and the rest of North Africa, the province
of Asia (Syria), and Gaul (France) in the fi rst century c.e.
With the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, at the Battle
of Alesia in 52 b.c.e., Rome’s frontier extended to the Eng-
lish Channel and the Rhine River, which served as natural
barriers against the Germanic tribes to the east and north.
Th e Roman provincial governors allowed local commerce
and culture to continue without interference, using these ter-
ritories as sources of revenue and buff ers against the barbar-
ian tribes beyond. To encourage cooperation in the frontier
territories, Rome held out the promise of citizenship to all
outsiders who served in the Roman armies.
Under the fi rst Roman emperor, Augustus, who reigned
from 27 b.c.e. to 14 c.e., Rome expanded to the Sahara in
North Africa, the forests of Germany, the Atlantic coast of
Gaul and Hispania (Spain), the Danube River in the north-
east, and the Red and Black seas in the east. Th e defeat of a
Roman legion in Germany’s Teutoburg Forest in 9 c.e. per-
suaded Augustus to end any further expansion of the empire
and station his legions behind these natural frontiers.
Rome reached its greatest extent during the second cen-
tury c.e., when the emperor Trajan conquered Dacia, pushing
the northern frontier of Rome beyond the Danube. Trajan’s
successor Hadrian strengthened the frontiers with forts,
walls, and earthen ramparts in Britain and along the Rhine.
A network of roads, originally built to carry the legions into
enemy territory, extended to the empire’s farthest limits. Th e
vast network of roads—more than 50,000 miles—symbolized
a superior civilization, highly skilled in engineering and ca-
pable of mustering armies of laborers to meet its needs. Local
subjects were taxed to maintain the roads and levied to build
them when the legions fi rst arrived. Th e roads allowed the
fast movement of armies as well as trading caravans, mes-
sengers, and private mail carried between the capital and the
major cities out to the frontiers.
Roman fortifi cations were strategically placed along
the frontiers. Th ey were laid out in a quadrilateral, withborders and frontiers: Rome 147