Rome's Great Eastern War: Lucullus, Pompey and the Conquest of the East, 74–62 BC

by Gareth C. Sampson

Despite Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean, by the turn of the first century BC, Rome’s influence barely stretched into the East. In the century since Rome’s defeat of the Seleucid Empire in the 180s BC, the East was dominated by the rise of new empires: Parthia, Armenia and Pontus, each vying to recreate the glories of the Persian Empire. By the 80s BC, the Pontic Empire of Mithridates had grown so bold that it invaded and annexed the whole of Rome’s eastern empire and occupied Greece itself. As Rome emerged from the devastating effects of the First Civil War, a new breed of general emerged, eager to re-assert Roman military dominance and carve out a fresh empire in the east, treading in the footsteps of Alexander. This work analyses the military campaigns and battles between a revitalized Rome and the various powers of the eastern Mediterranean hinterland, which ultimately heralded a new phase in Roman imperial expansion and reshaped the ancient East.

Genres: History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2021

Reviews

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the other Roman war and politics books of the author, quite informative as it focuses on less well known episodes of the corresponding period, noting how usually books tend to focus on the main events (Caesar vs Pompey, Anthony vs Augustus, Sulla vs Marius and his followers or Sulla, Lucullus, Pompey vs Mithridates, Anthony's invasion of Parthia etc) but ignore the other happenings which actually were quite important in various ways; also very readable and engaging with lots of quotations from the original sources

[Jeff Clay · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are so many great stories in this relatively thin volume and clearly the author has done his research, but his plodding writing style and continual and unnecessary injection of quotes from ancient sources make this literary and historical journey more of a slog than it needs to be.