This book is a search for the unattainable, for the notion or notions that the Romans had of their empire as their power spread beyond the boundaries of the Italian peninsula in the third and second centuries BC down to the time, in the midst of the second century AD, when it seemed to have acquired a permanent hold over southern and western Europe and its attendant islands, Asia Minor and what we now call the Middle East, and the northern strip of the African continent. The problems with this search are twofold, one of which makes the process difficult and the second apparently impossible. Both must be stated at the outset, because it is these two factors which shape the process of this investigation and its possible outcome.

The first is the notion of ‘empire’ itself. The idea of what an empire consists of is simple. Michael Doyle states the matter with admirable concision: empires are relationships of political control over the effective sovereignty of other political societies. However, in actuality empires are immensely varied in the way that political control is achieved and exercised.