Briefly Noted

At Empire’s Edge: Exploring Rome’s Egyptian Frontier

Robert B. Jackson (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2002) 383 PP., $37.50

The desert “lurks on the edge of every Egyptian horizon,” writes author Robert Jackson, who takes us on a journey from the Siwa Oasis, near the Libyan border, to the Sudan. Along the way, we explore the crumbling ruins of Roman temples, forts, quarries and aqueducts. The graffiti, ostraca and inscriptions uncovered at these sites convey a vivid sense of what life must have been like for Romans living at the empire’s arid edge.

Epirus Vetus: The Archaeology of a Late Antique Province

William Bowden (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 2003) 256 PP., $62

Ancient ruins still dot Epirus Vetus, the Roman province located at the border between modern Greece and Albania. By the fifth century B.C., once the Romans had lost control of Epirus Vetus, the region experienced a severe decline—with rich families no longer opting to build their villas there and public buildings lapsing into a state of disrepair.