Patronage has long been an important topic of interest to ancient historians. It remains unclear what patronage entailed, however, and how it worked. Is it a universal phenomenon embracing all, or most, relationships between unequals? Or is it an especially Roman practice? In previous discussions of patronage, one crucial body of evidence has been under-exploited: inscriptions from the Greek East that borrow the Latin term 'patron' and use it to honour their Roman officials. The fact that the Greeks borrow the term patron suggests that there was something uniquely Roman about the patron-client relationship. Moreover, this epigraphic evidence implies that patronage was not only a part of Rome's history, but had a history of its own. The rise and fall of city patrons in the Greek East is linked to the fundamental changes that took place during the fall of the Republic and the transition to the Principate. Senatorial patrons appear in the Greek inscriptions of the Roman province of Asia towards the end of the second century BC and are widely attested in the region and elsewhere for the following century. In the early principate, however, they become less common and soon more or less disappear. Eilers's discursive treatment of the origins, nature, and decline of this type of patronage, and its place in Roman practice as a whole, is supplemented by a reference catalogue of Roman patrons of Greek communities.

Situated on the shores of the Argolic Gulf, only a few miles away from the much later prehistoric sites of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Midea, Lerna is one of the key building blocks in our understanding of Greek archaeology. The first evidence from the site is Neolithic, and the latest settlement evidence is Mycenaean. However, the most important material from the site comes from the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C. when a remarkable large, rectangular building known as The House of the Tiles was built. Possibly never finished, with unpainted walls and doors that lead nowhere, the purpose and meaning of this building has provoked vigorous debate. Was it the house of a chief and the precursor of the later Mycenaean palaces? Or was it a communal storage facility, designed to store the elaborately sealed chests and jars found inside? No less mysterious than its use is its destruction: After a violent fire, a huge mound was built on top of the charred foundations, the area avoided by later house builders. This guide is illustrated with many plans and black and white photos.

The Roman Empire was based on law, and it was vital for rulers and ruled that laws should be understood. They were often given permanent form in stone or bronze. This book transcribes, translates, and fully illustrates with photographs, the inscription (more than 155 lines, in its damaged state) that carries the regulations drawn up over nearly two centuries for the customs dues of the rich province of Asia (western Turkey). The regulations, taken from Roman archives, were set up in Greek in Ephesus, and the book provides a rendering of the text back into Latin. The damaged text is hard to restore and to interpret. Six scholars offer line-by-line commentary, and five essays bring out its significance, from the Gracchi to Nero, for Rome's government and changing attitudes towards provincial subjects, for the historical geography of the Empire, for its economic history, and for the social life of Roman officials.