Romans and Barbarians: Four Views From the Empire's Edge

From 27 B.C. to A.D. 117, the Roman dreams of boundless empire began to falter. The very size of their conquests made them hard to manage, and the caesars also had to accept the scale and intractabililty of the problems posed by the barbarians. The period covered by the book is one of great change and the opening of a new era. For the once mighty Romans this was a time when power was passing; for the barbarians it was the late Iron Age: a time of transition when internal stresses and fear of Roman aggression were creating dangerous shifts in the tribal equilibrium. Romans and Barbarians presents a vivid picture of two contrasting worlds; of history and prehistory, cheek-by-jowl, mutually uncomprehending, yet strangely unable to do without each other.