This is a collection in English translation of Greek and Latin sources for the study of Greek and Roman history, sources which are mainly inscriptions and papyri. They do not include the major authors such as Polybius and Livy. Where those authors have provided us with the broad outline of the Roman presence in the Greek world, this collection allows the student and reader to penetrate beneath what they have to tell us and to see details otherwise unreported. Much of this documentary material having never before been translated into English, it has been all too often neglected in colleges and universities at all levels. The theme of the present collection is the Roman presence in the Greek East, the nature of the Roman hegemony, the diplomatic moves on both sides, and the reaction of the Greeks, during the period from the last decades of the third century BC to the death of Augustus in AD 14. It includes such materials as treaties of alliance and friendship, honorary decrees, official letters of Roman governors, decrees of the Roman senate, dedications of statues, Roman laws, reports of embassies, religious cults, legal decisions, loyalty oaths to Rome, athletic contests, calendars, and minutes of an audience in Rome given by the emperor. Brief commentary and notes accompany the translations, making this book a collection to be welcomed by students and teachers of ancient history.
