Price Jonathan J., Finkelberg Margalit (eds.) Rome: An Empire of Many Nations. New Perspectives on Ethnic Diversity and Cultural Identity

Cambridge University Press, 2021. — 424 p.The center of gravity in Roman studies has shifted far from the upper echelons of government and administration in Rome or the Emperor's court to the provinces and the individual. The multi-disciplinary studies presented in this volume reflect the turn in Roman history to the identities of ethnic groups and even single individuals who lived in Rome's vast multinational empire. The purpose is less to discover another element in the Roman Empire's "success" in governance than to illuminate the variety of individual experience in its own terms. The chapters here, reflecting a wide spectrum of professional expertise, range across the many cultures, languages, religions and literatures of the Roman Empire, with a special focus on the Jews as a test-case for the larger issues. Jonathan J. Price is the Fred and Helen Lessing Professor of Ancient History at Tel Aviv University, and the author of many studies on Greek and Roman historiography and Jewish history and epigraphy of the Roman period.