ROMAN CONQUESTS: Egypt & Judaea

Egypt was the last of the Macedonian Successor states to be swallowed up by Roman expansion. Besides being neighbours, Egypt and Judaea were deeply involved in the final paroxysms of the Roman civil wars which destroyed the Republic, as participants, exploiters and eventually victims. The responses of the two were however different, the Egyptian submitting with scarcely a murmur, the Jews of Judaea fiercely and repeatedly resisting. It was already clear in 64 BC that Rome was capable of conquering the land from the Taurist Mountains to the deserts of Egypt probably in a single campaign but instead it took 170 years to complete the task. Chapters here include Judaea: Pompey's Conquest, Gabinus, The Emergence of Antipater and Kleopatra, The Arabian Expedition, The Jewish Rebellions and the Desert Frontier. The Ptolemaic rulers had allied themselves to Rome while their rivals went down fighting. However, Cleopatra's famous love affair with Marc Antony ensured she was on the wrong side of the Roman civil war between him and Octavian (later to become Caesar Augustus). After the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium, Octavian swiftly brought it under direct Roman control, though it took several campaigns to fully subjugate the whole country. These campaigns have previously been largely neglected. Judaea was a constant source of trouble for the Romans, as it had been for the Seleucids, the previous overlords of the region. The Romans at first were content to rule through client kings like the infamous Herod but were increasingly sucked in to direct military involvement to suppress religiously-inspired revolts. This book gives a clear narrative of the course of these campaigns, explaining how the Roman war machine coped with formidable new foes and the challenges of unfamiliar terrain and climate. Specially-commissioned colour plates by the renowned Graham Sumner bring the main troop types vividly to life in meticulously-researched detail. 18 illus, 7 maps including Herod's Kingdom and Alexandria and Genealogy of the family of Herod. Paperback, 206 pages.