Thoughts and offcuts
Why I am going to write here
As you may know, I am slowly writing my next book, The Arena. The book is about conflict in the Middle East between the fall of Nineveh (612 BC) and the present day. So it’s a big sweep.
I want to use this space as a way to give you an insight into how I am writing, what I am thinking about, what I have read. Possibly also to post paragraphs or ideas that don’t make it into the first draft but which I think are interesting. And to work through in my own mind how I am going to tackle different parts of this massive story.
Today I am trying to work out how to write about the Romans. You could define this era as everything from about 190 BC — when the Romans invaded Asia Minor to cut the Seleukid king Antiochos Megas down to size — to the end of the “last great war of antiquity” between Rome and Persia, which ended in 628 AD.* Too much, in other words, for one chapter. So I am grappling with how to break it down.
Today’s task entails trying to work out how Rome became embroiled in the Middle East. I think that is the first chapter, possibly of three on this era. There are lots of factors at play: domestic Roman politics including the somewhat unclear role of the emerging business class, the publicani, and their effect abroad; the Roman corn dole, an early welfare policy that was highly expensive and needed to be paid for; the implosion of the Seleukids (a significant factor in this being that one Seleukid queen, Cleopatra Thea, had nine children by three different kings, and they all fought for the succession); linked to this, piracy, which threatened Rome’s grain supplies; Mithridates VI of Pontus (Adrienne Mayor’s book about him is an excellent biography of an ancient gadfly); Parthia lurking in the background; Sulla’s example - a man who used the East to gain power in Rome; Pompey and his imitator Crassus; Crassus’s humiliating defeat as a spur for further Roman intervention and a more aggressive Parthian approach; the role of the Ptolemies (in Egypt) and Herod (in Judea) — both expert lobbyists in Rome. And the way that the political disintegration of the Roman Republic and events in the Middle East fed off each other.
Two contemporary resonances that interest me: the way that the publicani became too big to fail and began to drive policy when it appeared that their investment in the colony of Asia (the former kingdom of Pergamom, bequeathed by its king Attalus to Rome) appeared at risk when Mithridates invaded in 89 BC; the parallel between contemporary Israeli lobbying in Washington and ancient Jewish lobbying in Rome, particularly in regard to the threat posed by Parthia.
Does this sound of interest?
*James Howard-Johnston’s book, “The Last Great War of Antiquity” is very good on this final episode.
James- I thoroughly enjoyed this string of thought. Particularly as you walked us through: “Parthia lurking in the background; Sulla’s example - a man who used the East to gain power in Rome; Pompey and his imitator Crassus; Crassus’s humiliating defeat as a spur for further Roman intervention and a more aggressive Parthian approach; the role of the Ptolemies (in Egypt) and Herod (in Judea).” I love the interesting history of all these figures and it’s really fantastic to be able to see them lined up in one thought. I appreciate it.