This book endeavors to put the historical narratives of various regions of the Mediterranean in tandem with each other for the course of the Hellenistic period – the Roman Republic, for certain, but also Greece, Asia Minor, Egypt, North Africa, and western Europe. With a task this enormous, one is reminded of the apocryphal Michelangelo and his thoughts on how to sculpt: what matters about the work is not what remains but what is chipped away. Limited space makes it impossible to go into detail about every aspect of a single civilization or culture. Rather I have favored episodes or trends that, in one way or another, brought one realm into contact with the next, or had a bearing on multiple regional contexts. Political and diplomatic histories tend to receive emphasis, although issues of social and cultural experience are present in every case, especially as they relate to the cosmopolitanism of this world.

In selecting texts to feature, I have eschewed ancient evidence that does not come from the time period covered by the chapter in which it appears. Thus for example, no primary source sidebar includes paragraphs by Livy, even though many influential stories of, say, the Roman monarchy were recounted by him, because he was writing hundreds of years later. While Polybius's researches are referenced on occasion, his own words do not appear until the chapter in which he himself was active. One fortuitous result has been the inclusion of a range of literary genres, including lyric poetry, comedy, epic, and personal letters. I have also made an attempt to incorporate several different modes of evidence, such as epigraphy and papyrology, to introduce the student to a variety of sources of information about antiquity. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. Artifacts, too, date to the period of their chapter. This makes for perhaps strange but ultimately useful placements, such as the portrait of Demosthenes, which occurs in Chapter 5 even though the man himself was dead by Chapter 4, for the likeness was said to have been created and promulgated generations later as an act of political memory. Nevertheless, no standard is absolute: on some occasions, especially in sculpture, we see Roman copies of Greek originals, which recent scholarship has problematized as imperfect evidence for Hellenic art. Similarly, the best we can do for Callisthenes, contemporary historian of Alexander the Great, is a paraphrase – albeit a close and extensive one – by a later Roman author.

Partial funding for this project was generously provided by the Mellon Foundation as part of a grant secured by Michael Wolfe, Dean of Social Sciences at Queens College, the City University of New York. Two New York City institutions were critical for the compilation of images – the American Numismatic Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The professional staff of the former, led by Peter van Alfen and including David Hill and Elena Stoyarik, gave indispensible assistance with the coins that appear herein, and the Metropolitan Museum's policies of open access have rendered its resources and treasures accessible to all. Wizard‐like logistical support for acquiring the pictures, maps, and their rights was provided by Kitty Bocking, and the whole project was shepherded ably by Janani Govindankutty, Vimali Joseph, and Haze Humbert of Wiley‐Blackwell, including enlisting the aid of two expertly critical anonymous reviewers. I am grateful, too, to colleagues whose conversations have illuminated several points (even if at times I myself remain in the dark, and through no fault of theirs) – Sulochana Asirvatham, Dee Clayman, Nick Cross, Penelope Davies, Josh Kinlaw, Myles McDonnell, Kat Moore, Josiah Osgood, Jennifer Roberts, Mark Wilson, and Liv Yarrow. The book is dedicated to Andrew Rich, who may not know the past of the Mediterranean Sea but certainly appreciates its present.