The Stubborn Assembly

We will not be talking about Rome.

It is the spring of 88 BC, in the cities of the Roman province of Asia. On a single appointed day, in towns from the Aegean to the Maeander, eighty thousand Italians are pulled from temples, market stalls, and senate-houses, and killed. The order had been in the hands of every regional governor for thirty days. Not one of them leaked it.

That is roughly the sort of thing we are here for.

The Stubborn Assembly is about the Hellenistic kingdoms that come after Alexander. Bactria. Pontus. Pergamon. The Seleucid east. Commagene. Characene. The Indo-Greek kings who ended up in the Punjab. Whatever your schoolbook skipped.

My main sources are Polybius, Appian, Strabo, Plutarch — and Justin, though Justin says many things, so I mostly use him where the better sources back him up.

Tuesday and Friday.

Welcome to the small but stubborn assembly.