Adrian Goldsworthy

PAX ROMANA

War, peace and conquest in the Roman world

528pp. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 25 [pounds sterling].

978 0 297 86428 8

The Roman Empire was nasty, brutish and very successful. For Adrian Goldsworthy, that success is best explained by the effective and efficient use of violence. "The Romans were very good at winning wars, and whatever else we say about them we cannot doubt this basic truth." Roman peace was the product of unbridled force and permanent and threatening occupation. The proposition is a familiar one: the importance of the army has been an insistent theme of Goldsworthy's ten books on Roman history. Pax Romana is perhaps less admiring than some of these previous accounts. This, too, is well-trodden ground. Some educated Romans recognized that those beaten into submission might lament the destruction of their own culture and independence. The historian Tacitus (writing at the end...