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Article: Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate.(Review)
- Article from:
- Canadian Journal of History
- Article date:
- August 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Canadian Journal of History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate, by Susan P. Mattern. Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1999. xviii, 259 pp. $35.00 U.S. (cloth).
Twenty-five years ago, Edwin Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (Baltimore, 1976) triggered a paradigm shift in the study of imperial Rome. Luttwak argued that during the Principate the Romans consistently pursued a frontier policy that was strategically coherent:
Three distinct systems of imperial security can be identified over the
period. We may properly speak of systems, for they each integrated
diplomacy, military forces, road networks, and fortifications ...