With this study of Roman thalassocracy, L. has presented a courageous book with a provocative premise: he aims to dispense with the still widely-held notion of the Roman Republic as primarily a land power (p. 19: ‘am Beispiel der Römischen Republik (zu) versuchen, das Wesen der antiken Thalassokratie in ihren Facetten zu beleuchten, um mit dem noch immer vorherrschenden Zerrbild des Imperium Romanum als Landmacht aufzuräumen’). In this, he is a priori justified, as previous scholarship has not yet adequately assessed the importance of sea power and naval engagement in the expansion of the Republic. That being said, there are already a number of preliminary studies whose main arguments L. briefly sketches in his introduction. One reason for the relative reluctance of historians of the Republic to engage with the question of sea power politics is that it is exceedingly difficult to show a coherent long-term strategy to have existed during the republican period, not least because of the diverging interests of the nobiles. Private interests of individual aristocrats – not of the state – often dominated both the construction and the use of Roman fleets. This repeatedly led to the loss of large numbers of ships and crews and to political, military and economic disasters, as has been shown recently by B. Linke in two important studies on Roman sea power: ‘Meer ohne Ordnung. Seerüstung und Piraterie in der Römischen Republik’, in N. Jaspert et al. (edd.), Seeraub im Mittelmeerraum (2013), pp. 265–80, and ‘Die Republik und das Meer. Seerüstung und römische Innenpolitik zur Zeit der Punischen Kriege’, in E. Baltrusch et al. (edd.), Seemacht, Seeherrschaft und die Antike (2016), pp. 163–88.

In his doctoral dissertation, L. attempts to put a renewed emphasis on the role of sea power in the history of Roman expansion from the conquest of the Italian peninsula to the annexation of Egypt in 30 b.c. In this, his view is decidedly sea-based. According to L., Rome at first concentrated on consolidating its grip on Mediterranean coastlines, with coloniae maritimae and socii navales securing the Italian littoral, while provinciae and socii served to assure control of coastlines beyond Italy proper. As the hinterland was of lesser importance, Rome was satisfied at first with the rule of reges socii et amici and only later attempted to occupy these territories. In this, though, L. misinterprets the individually different processes of provincialisation, which often were drawn out and also influenced by the limited capacities of Roman administration. In his chapters focusing on Roman expansion, L. makes use of an unusual stylistic element to recount the maritime history of the western (pp. 37–45) and eastern (pp. 46–66) Mediterranean: he takes the reader on a fictitious ‘journey’ of the provinces one by one. In doing so, he also provides information on merchant goods and merchants (among much else), but instead of informing his audience, this poorly structured approach often instead serves to confuse it. L.’s general appreciation of nautical conditions – essential for understanding and analysing the importance of individual disputed sea routes – is equally problematic. Sea power is less about the control of space than it is of sea routes and lanes of sea traffic, the domination of which is the first step in projecting sea power. Here, a consultation of the groundbreaking work by P. Arnaud, Les routes de la navigation antique. Itinéraires en Méditerranée (2005), which L. does not seem to know, would have been essential.

After this tour d'horizon of the Mediterranean, Black Sea and parts of the Atlantic, L. focuses on Roman naval command structures (pp. 93–164). This is certainly one of the strongest parts of the study. Beginning with the assumption of naval command by the consul C. Duilius, L. details the competencies and organisation of such naval commands, emphasising the Roman concept of the sea itself as a provincia. In a sizeable chapter he then focuses his attention on the naval aspects of the Roman civil wars of the first century b.c. (pp. 165–242). As he points out, sea power was intimately connected with military logistics during the years of the civil wars. The examples he adduces to illustrate this include Caesar's campaign against Pompey in Greece, though here his adherence to the by now outdated notion of a mare clausum leads him to wrong conclusions (see now P. Warnking, Der römische Seehandel in seiner Blütezeit. Rahmenbedingungen, Seerouten, Wirtschaftlichkeit [2015], pp. 131–4, for a discussion of recent scholarship). He is, however, certainly right in his interpretation of the battle of Actium: after the loss of Methone and Leukas and the separation of his communication lines, Mark Antony was forced to undertake an attempt at breaking out of the Actium gulf and to escape to the north African coast with the core of his army, his monetary funds and Cleopatra as his most important ally.

L. then retraces the evolution of the triumphus navalis from its first attestation in 260 b.c. until the end of the Republic; his observations (pp. 243–66) are noteworthy. The importance of templa, villae, columnae et rostrae as a symbolic expression of Roman maritime supremacy is more difficult to grasp. L. here meticulously collects the available evidence and assumes a culturally maritime orientation of the Roman elite (pp. 267–98). His treatment of economic factors in maritime history is, by contrast, much too cursory (pp. 299–328); a closer analysis of this important part of Roman control of the sea would have been necessary. The lex Claudia de nave senatorum is rightly regarded as a central regulatory law for the practice of maritime trade in republican times, and L. is also right in emphasising the importance of the fenus nauticum in relation to senatorial interests in maritime trade, but nowhere is his analysis exhaustive or systematic.

It is only in his conclusion that L. provides his definition of Roman thalassocracy. Falling back on Cicero's metaphor of the mare nostrum as a single, secure harbour (Cic. Prov. cons. 31), L. defines Roman sea power as encompassing the following aspects: (1) the immediate and intermediate control of Mediterranean coastlines; (2) the immediate and intermediate control of important islands; (3) fleets; (4) a coordinated effort to eradicate piracy; and (5) the elimination of naval competitors (p. 330). It is to L.’s credit that he has attempted and often succeeded in bringing republican Rome's naval history into greater focus. His study provides a number of observations and suggestions that deserve further attention. They are assembled around a central and provocative hypothesis which will no doubt be discussed in the larger context of the history of Rome as a naval power.