War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History ed. by Philip de Souza (review)

REVIEWS 316 War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History, ed. Philip de Souza (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2008) xi + 247 pp. War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History is a series of essays arranged in chronological order on peacemaking in the ancient and medieval European and Mediterranean worlds. It is somewhat misleadingly titled since it is really about treaties. War itself is rarely addressed. In that it seeks to provide new insights into peacemaking, it will be of value to the specialist as well as the general reader, particularly those engaged in modern diplomatic and security studies . The first essay, “Making and breaking treaties in the Greek world” by P. J. Rhodes, offers a systematic look at war and peacemaking in ancient Greece from the Peloponnesian War until the rise of Macedon. When evidence is lacking, he clearly states so and avoids groundless conjecture. Rhodes focuses on ambiguities in treaties, in particular how participants tried to use ambiguous language in a treaty to justify actions that other states may have deemed to have been violations. His final section is on the ambiguous phrase echein ta heauton, “having what belongs to one by right,” which in many cases was interpreted as a state’s autonomy. In particular, the power players of ancient Greece (Athens and Sparta, but later Thebes and Macedon) tried to interpret this phrase for maximum benefit. Much of what Rhodes presents here is a careful analysis and summary of Thucydides, so there is little here that is new. Still, Rhodes careful attention to detail and citation of recent secondary literature provides a lucid summary of a period of ancient Greek history that has become popular beyond Greek history classes. Rhodes’s essay is followed by Eduard Rung’s “War, peace and diplomacy in Graeco-Persian relations from the sixth to the fourth century BC.” This essay is an ideal counterpoint to the first essay in the collection because it offers a contrast of how Greek states related to a much larger power rather than merely among themselves. The Persian king did not sign treaties. Ceremony and protocol required that he dictated them to others, even when he was forced to accept the reality of defeat. Rung traces developments from the earliest contacts to the rise of Macedon. He closes with a useful summary of how Greek ambassadors were selected, the size of embassies, the routes taken, ambassadorial reception, and the course of negotiations. The third essay in the collection, “Treaties, allies and the Roman Conquest of Italy” by J. W. Rich, does attempt to break new ground in its field. While the essay is a bit of a jump from the Greek world to the Roman world, with no consideration of the Hellenistic, it does offer an interesting contrast with the first essay, because it also examines how small, independent city-states relate to one another. However, Rich is examining how the Romans successfully built an empire by incorporating other states in the Italian peninsula into the Roman state. Rich rejects the widespread view that all of the Italian allies were bound by treaties. Instead, most of them were conquered and given an enactment of deditio, which bound them to Rome but in which Rome agreed to restore most of their local autonomy in exchange for submission to “Rome’s sway.” Rich’s careful analysis of the evidence, or lack thereof, is convincing. His deconstruction of the prevailing view that all the non-colonial Italian allies had treaties is thorough. This view became widespread only in the nineteenth-century, with REVIEWS 317 such scholars as Mommsen, Marquardt, and Beloch. Rich’s thesis depends largely on the fact that there is no evidence for this widespread view, and he carefully presents the case for his alternative thesis. His argument is well-supported and well-argued, and one might hope that he goes further with his investigation . The fourth article, “Parta victoriis pax: Roman emperors as peacemakers” by Philip de Souza, has the ambitious goal of discussing and analyzing the Roman emperor’s role as war-maker and peacemaker in the first four centuries of the Roman Empire. De Souza relies on basic primary sources like Cicero, Virgil...