On the edge of the empire: northern Mesopotamia in the Roman period By Rocco Palermo. 288 pp. London and New York, Routledge, 2019.

Abstract

While the Roman presence in Mesopotamia has not been a principal focus of many near eastern archaeologists, the topic has not actually been neglected and the past few decades have seen a steady stream of monographs on related subjects-Fergus Millar's The Roman Near East (1993), for example, Warwick Ball's Rome in the East (2000), Kevin Butcher's Roman Syria and the Near East (2003), and Peter Edwell's Between Rome and Persia: The Middle Euphrates, Mesopotamia and Palmyra under Roman Control (2008). While each of these works has constituted a major step forward, until now there has been no modern study of Roman activities in Mesopotamia specifically, whether considered as a region or as the formal province of the empire. It is against this background that Rocco Palermo has set himself the task of remedying this deficit in this ground-breaking new work. Research into this subject is not easy-the material is patchy, damaged, and scattered, and bringing it together and presenting it in a commentated synthesis is a muchneeded and hugely welcome contribution to the field.The work opens with a consideration of some of the key theoretical issues pertinent to the study of empires-analysis of the interplay between the ideological, political, military, and economic forces governing empires, and how these shaped the interactions of governor and governed, core and periphery, the periphery and the world beyond the limes. This necessitates an evaluation of what is actually meant by hegemony, and how it can be imposed. The resourcing and fielding of a military presence is only possible with the imposition of a bureaucracy, but what was the nature and extent of this bureaucracy, how far did it permeate into the society, what was the balance between coercion, incentive, and interest?Chapter 2 starts from a different point of the spectrum, looking at the geography and climate of the region, working out from this to consider how these factors shaped, or indeed determined, the historical trajectory. The role of water is paramount and was clearly a decisive factor channelling and constraining the physical manifestation of Roman rule to a far greater degree than in many other parts of the empire. On to this must also be laid an understanding of how the millennia of migrations, incursions, and invasions have turned Mesopotamia not just into a melting pot, nor even just a palimpsest, but a region whose cultural, ethnic, and religious characteristics make it a tinderbox.Chapter 3 moves on to an overview of how the history of Roman intervention in Mesopotamia has been understood to date. This is based not just on the traditional historical sources but also on the evidence from inscriptions, coins, and archaeology. The