Rome as the last universal empire in the ideological discourse of the 2nd century BCE

Beginning with a reassessment of passages from Polybius and other 2nd-century BCE sources, this study aims to show that the concept of a universal empire was an important issue in Roman, philo-Roman, and anti-Roman propagandistic discourse during Rome’s oversea wars. In addition, it will show that the incorporation of Rome into the scheme of translatio imperii (the succession of universal empires) belongs to this same ideological environment. This is in contrast to the prevailing view in scholarship which argues that this theme was only codified later, in a late-republican or even early-imperial tradition.