Pervading Empire addresses the issue of diversity within the Roman Empire and promotes interpretations that go beyond general and often abstract theoretical framings. The baseline of the volume is the notion that reality is created by the endless and multi-directional relations of different human and inhuman actors, and that the sorts and modes of correlations create specific phenomena.

The volume offers a variety of theoretically and methodologically well-informed geographical, chronological and thematic case studies, written by established and emerging specialists in the field of Roman Studies, on a range of different research questions such as the integration in the Roman world, inter-cultural perceptions, (mis)communications, transfers and exchanges, transformations of social structures and landscape, patterns of consumption and related identities and the dynamics in the sphere of religion among others. Thereby, Pervading Empire demonstrates the complex and fluctuating nature of the Roman world and emphasizes the fertility of such approaches within Roman Studies.