ROMAN JUDAEA - (G.) Labbé L'affirmation de la puissance romaine en Judée (63 a.C.–136 p.C.). (Études Anciennes Série Latine 74.) Pp. 671. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012. Paper, €75. ISBN: 978-2-251-32888-1.

Abstract

Labbe (G.) L’affirmation de la puissance romaine en Judee (63 a.C.— 136 p.C.). (Etudes Anciennes Serie Latine 74.) Pp. 671. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012. Paper, €75. ISBN: 978-2-251-32888-1 The step by step expansion of Roman power in the East Mediterranean and the culture of the region have been richly described by Millar and Sartre (The Roman Near East: 31 B.C.--A.D. 337. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993; The Middle East under Rome. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2004). For the sources and account of developments in Roman Palestine, we have the still fundamental first volume of Schurer’s handbook, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, extensively revised by Vermes, Millar, and Black (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973, pp. 243– Yet, the progress in epigraphic, prosopographical, papyrological discoveries and in their interpretation amply justifies new synthetic studies of this vast, disputed field. Labbe’s massive, enormously impressive, and erudite book on the nature and evolution of the Roman military and administrative organization in Judaea provides one such study. Client kings and Roman officials in Judaea—their titles, functions, means and effectiveness—are presented and analyzed in exhaustive detail on the basis of all the available literary, epigraphic, papyrological, and numismatic evidence. The relevant interpretations found in the considerable modern literature—a little over sixteen hundred titles in the bibliography—are evenhandedly summarized, contextualized, and assessed. The book is organized into three main chronological parts and is further divided into nine chapters. The results of the analysis are summarized at the end of each of each chapter, collected again at the end of each of the three parts, and a general summary concludes the book (493–504). The work includes maps, lists of