| Illustrations | p. xi |
| Acknowledgments | p. xvii |
| Introduction: What Is an (Ancient) Empire? | p. 1 |
| Definition of Empire | p. 3 |
| Empire, Response, and Resistance | p. 7 |
| Empires, Ancient and Modern | p. 8 |
| Questions, Questions, Questions | p. 9 |
| Prelude to the Age of Ancient Empires | p. 10 |
| The Dawn of Empire | p. 11 |
| Between Amarna and Qadesh: Realpolitik Bronze Age Style | p. 23 |
| Collapse of the International System | p. 29 |
| The Rise of the Age of Ancient Empires | p. 33 |
| The Levels of Historical Time and the Rise of the Age of Ancient Empires | p. 34 |
| Climate Change and the Birth of a New Age | p. 36 |
| The Neo-Assyrian Revival | p. 37 |
| The Logic of Assyrian Domination | p. 42 |
| The Demise of Assyrian Domination | p. 52 |
| Dealing with Empires: Varieties of Responses | p. 55 |
| Secondary State Formation: Urartu | p. 56 |
| Coalition and Collapse: Syria and Its Neighbors | p. 62 |
| Revival of EastùWest Trade: The Phoenicians/Canaanites | p. 66 |
| Conflict and Covenant: Israel and Judah | p. 72 |
| Beyond the Near East: The Neo-Babylonian and Early Achaemenid Persian Empires | p. 80 |
| The Rise (and Fall) of the Neo-Babylonian Empire | p. 81 |
| Looking Back and Looking Ahead: Neo-Babylonian Rulership in Action | p. 84 |
| Interlude: The People of the Book | p. 89 |
| The Enigmatic Nabonidus and the Persian Takeover | p. 90 |
| The Rise of a Multiculturalist Empire: The Achaemenid Persians | p. 92 |
| The Pragmatics of a Multicultural Empire | p. 98 |
| Responding to Empire | p. 101 |
| The Crucible of History: East Meets West | p. 103 |
| The Greek Expansion and the Birth oj the Polis | p. 108 |
| The Ionian Intellectual Revolution and the Limits of Persian Tolerance | p. 112 |
| The Crucible oj History | p. 116 |
| The Greco-Persian War | p. 118 |
| Postlude: East, West, and Orientalism | p. 124 |
| Democracy and Empire between Athens and Alexander | p. 126 |
| A Golden Age (at Athens) | p. 128 |
| Can a Democracy Run an Empire? The Peloponnesian War | p. 134 |
| The Empire Strikes Back: Alexander the Great | p. 142 |
| "Spear-Won" Empires: The Hellenistic Synthesis | p. 149 |
| Alexander's "Funeral Games" | p. 150 |
| The Hellenistic IEMP Synthesis | p. 153 |
| Empire and the City | p. 159 |
| The Individual in the Hellenistic World | p. 162 |
| Resistance and Revolt: Mauryans and Maccabees | p. 166 |
| The Western Mediterranean and the Rise of Rome | p. 173 |
| The Western Mediterranean Setting | p. 176 |
| Roman Beginnings: Inside and Outside | p. 181 |
| The Roots of Roman Imperialism | p. 189 |
| Imperium Sine Fine Roman Imperialism and the End of the Old Order | p. 199 |
| Rome versus Carthage | p. 200 |
| Symploké: Rome and the Hellenistic East | p. 204 |
| The Late Republic and the End of the Old Order | p. 210 |
| The New Political Order: The Foundations of the Principate | p. 221 |
| Mr. IEMP: Octavian/Augustus | p. 222 |
| PaxRomana | p. 232 |
| Into the Arena: A Microcosm of Imperial Society in the Principate | p. 235 |
| "Barbarians" through Roman Eyes: The Romans Encounter "the Other" | p. 239 |
| Ruling and Resisting the Roman Empire | p. 244 |
| Power and the Provinces | p. 246 |
| The Imperial Cult and Roman Rule | p. 254 |
| Resisting Roman Rule | p. 258 |
| Imperial Crisis and Recovery | p. 267 |
| The "Third-Century Crisis" | p. 268 |
| The Rise of Christianity | p. 277 |
| The Dominate: Cosmos Restored | p. 283 |
| Universal Empires and Their Peripheries in Late Antiquity | p. 294 |
| Roman Political and Religious Universalism | p. 295 |
| Renovatio: Byzantium, the New Rome | p. 301 |
| The Rise of the Sasanid Persian Empire | p. 306 |
| Politics Resistance; and Heterodoxies at the Peripheries of the Empires | p. 311 |
| The Formation of the Islamic World Empire | p. 319 |
| The Clash of Empires and the End of the (Ancient) World | p. 322 |
| The Arabs and the Rise of Islam | p. 326 |
| The Umayyads: The First Islamic (and the Last Ancient) Empire | p. 332 |
| Notes | p. 341 |
| Further Reading | p. 347 |
| Index | p. 357 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
