Provincial Revolts in the Early Roman Empire

The author's particular concern in this chapter is to map the difference between normative explanations of revolt employed today, and those used by ancients. Neither, he argues, are really sufficient. His dominant modes of investigating the early Roman Empire seek to explain its stability and longevity: explanations often entail a teleological view of revolts as both anomalous and doomed to failure. They are frequently schematic and leave little space for ancient motivations. Ancient accounts by contrast do focus on the morality, motivations and agency of individuals: that mode of explanation turns out to be pragmatic and well thought through, but was also poor at predicting revolts or understanding their underlying causes. The third and final section of the chapter explores the relationship between ancient understandings of revolts and their actual incidence. Keywords:early Roman Empire; Provincial Revolts