1. Greg Woolf, Rome: An Empire's Story (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 31. Open book review.
2. Punicus, from which the wars were named, is Latin for Carthage.
3. Aetolia was an ancient region of central Greece and situated north of the gulfs of Corinth and Patras (see Map).
4. This story is told by Livy. The news of Antiochus Epiphanes' humiliation at the hands of the Romans in this incident sent the Jews in Judea into presumptious celebration and an attempt to oust Menalaus, Antiochus's nominee for the high-priest. Antiochus saw this a open revolt and ordered a far-reaching programme of political and religious changes in Judea that would spark the Maccabean Revolt and lead to the emergence of an independent Jewish state for the next hundred years.
5. Greg Woolf, p. .70.
6. The Collins Atlas of Military History (London: HarperCollins, 2006, in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institute), 21.
7. J. R. Seeley, Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883), 8; cited in Stephen P. Kershaw, A Brief History of the Roman Empire (London: Robinson, 2013), 2.
8. I am mainly dependent on Stephen Kershaw, A Brief History of the Roman Empire here.
9. This was the law to which Paul appealed when the magistrate in Philippi wanted to release him after having him arrested and flogged; the magistrate had acted illegally by flogging a Roman citizen. See Acts 16:37.