Non Graecos minus barbaros

Many publications have focused on the status of Hellenic culture under the Roman Republic, but the relations between Romans and the Greeks with whom they had professional contacts or who were otherwise in their close entourage remain largely unexplored, including the degree of consideration or contempt that Romans felt for such Greeks. The purpose of this book is to illuminate and analyse the personal relationships that Romans established with Greeks, first of all with those who lived in Magna Graecia, on the very soil of Italy. Later, when they began to fight and defeat Hellenistic monarchs, did the Romans distinguish between classical Hellenism and contemporary Greeks in order to appear as the worthy successors of the former without having to compromise with the latter? Did they make a difference between Greeks from continental Greece, from Italy and from the Greek East? What sort of relations did the Roman aristocracy in particular maintain with Greeks? Did social status play a part in those interactions? These questions will receive some answers in this first volume, which deals with the period between the capture of Tarentum in 272 BC and the fall of the Roman Republic late in the 1st century BC.