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Scott offers a book (in some ways, the work might better be described as three loosely interconnected monographs) vast in scope, although not particularly detailed, and selective perhaps to the point of being idiosyncratic. He examines three different periods; the sixth and fifth centuries b.c.e.; the third and second centuries b.c.e.; and the fourth century c.e., focusing on the connections among the Mediterranean world, Central and Southeast Asia, and the Far East, and on the central role played by the Silk Road and Bactria in promoting these connections.
In section 1, Scott links the development of the nascent popular movements towards more inclusive government in Rome and Athens. He adduces as evidence the Roman embassy to Athens and the Greek states of southern Italy to study Athenian law in order to facilitate Rome’s first efforts at codified law, the Twelve Tables. Scott considers the contact important, but he rightly highlights the serious differences between the respective paths chosen by the Athenians and the Romans. Rome chose order through a regulated governmental structure in which each group played a part, although Republican Rome would never have adapted the far-reaching bureaucratic structure of China (that nightmare scenario awaited the Romans of the late empire). Such arrangements differed...