Benjamin Isaac is Lessing Professor of Ancient History Emeritus in the Department of Classics at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of The Limits of Empire: the Roman Army in the East (1990) and The Origins of Racism in Classical Antiquity (2004). He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and of the American Philosophical Society, as well as being an Israel Prize Laureate.

• Introduction; 1. Roma Aeterna; 2. Roman victory displayed: symbols, allegories, and personificiations?; 3. Army and violence; 4. Innovation and war; 5. Core-periphery notions; 6. Names: ethnic, geographic and administrative; 7. Attitudes towards provincial intellectuals in the Roman Empire; 8. Proto-racism in Graeco-Roman antiquity; 9. The barbarian in Greek and Roman literature; 10. Romans and nomads in the fourth century; 11. A multi-cultural Mediterranean?; 12. Latin in cities of the Roman Near East; 13. Ancient antisemitism; 14. Roman religious policy and the Bar Kokhba war; 15. Jews, Christians and others in Palestine: the evidence from Eusebius; 16. Roman organization in the Arabah in the fourth century AD; 17. Hatra against Rome and Persia: from success to destruction.

'… there is much to be learned from this book about a large number of areas in which the reader may not have expertise and, in those where his or her interests lie, it can be seen that it provokes reflection and thought.' Scripta Classica Israelica