The study under review is a revised version of B.'s doctoral thesis, submitted in 2019 to the University of Leipzig. It aims to illustrate the underlying motives and socio-political contexts as well as the different stages of refugee movements to the Roman empire from the mid-republican to the middle imperial period. In order to narrow down this topic, and due to the available source material, B. focuses on the figure of the political refugee or expatriate and especially on rulers and members of the elite from regions neighbouring the northern and eastern borders of the imperium. For B. this rather narrow group of persons (57 examples, many of which are known only from short passages or cannot be placed in a more comprehensive historical context) constitutes a distinct segment of Rome's ‘international’ relations that has not been investigated independently so far. At the same time, according to B., an analysis of this segment can serve to illustrate certain principles and fundamental mechanisms of Roman foreign policy (pp. 306–7).

The book is divided into five chapters and an appendix. In the introduction B. expounds the topic and guiding questions as well as some central terms employed throughout the text. In order to define the objects of study, B. outlines a set of characteristics, which link the cases he has included in his list: all persons discussed are members of some kind of elite in their country, region or entity of origin; their flight is forced, without alternative and not based on any kind of legal procedure (pp. 30–1). The explicit exclusion of persons fleeing to the empire as exiles because of a formal sentence of relegation is somewhat questionable (see also p. 76). Three of B.'s four categories also apply to this group, and the question what distinguishes their cases from the ones discussed in the study is not answered exhaustively (particularly as people like Ornospades, whom Tacitus explicitly calls an exul, or Apelles, Onesimos and Archelaos, who were convicted for actual or alleged crimes such as murder or conspiracy, are included [p. 187]). In the second chapter B. demarcates his notion of flight and exile from ancient as well as modern concepts and terminology (ἀσυλία, ἱκεσία, exilium) and gives a short overview of the different kinds of relation between Rome or individual Romans and foreigners in general and foreign elites in particular during the republican and the imperial periods. The next section delineates the development of Rome and the imperium as a destination for political refugees from the second century bce to the second century ce. B. collects all the evidence from the literary sources and discusses each case with its relevant pertaining questions (pp. 70–171). Subsequently, in Chapter 4 the collected material is assessed systematically. B. investigates the temporal and geographical distribution of the known cases of political refugees (pp. 171–83), the reasons for and the course of their escape (pp. 183–208), the conditions of their stay in the empire (pp. 208–31) and their scope of action (pp. 231–48) as well as subsequent fate (pp. 249–86). The last chapter summarises the results of the study. The appendix consists of a bibliography and two helpful indexes for cited source passages and individuals.

The strength of the study lies in the meticulous collection and systematic presentation of the (primarily literary) evidence. Each of the sections of the fourth chapter begins with a tabular overview concisely summarising the information detailed in the following paragraphs, which, in connection with the index of individuals and the extensive references to primary sources in the footnotes, makes the material highly accessible. As B. acknowledges repeatedly, his conclusions confirm or complement current notions of Roman foreign policy rather than adding new insights. That expatriates turned to the people or institutions they expected to react favourably to their concerns, for example, is as unsurprising as the fact that the senate gradually yielded this position first to the powerful generals of the late republican period and then to the emperors, and that this affected the conditions and challenges refugees had to face. Equally uncontroversial is the observation that Roman authorities assessed the expatriates according to their usefulness with regard to Roman interests and handled individual cases correspondingly. That the considerations regarding motives, expectations and strategies of the refugees remain on a rather generic level is due to the nature of the evidence and the fact that the sources present them from an exclusively Roman perspective, as B. emphasises frequently.

This methodological problem, however, could have been turned into a starting point for a more detailed investigation of two questions that are repeatedly indicated in the course of the study but not pursued systematically. First, the role of the expatriates in Roman politics, especially in Republican times. B. demonstrates that the case study of Ptolemy XII illustrates the opportunities resulting from tensions within the Roman elite. It might have been productive to use the affairs revolving not only around Ptolemy XII but also other expatriates, in order to explore in greater detail the potentially diverging interests of different individuals or groups underlying the specific ways in which Roman authorities dealt with the cases of political refugees. Maybe better: A study thus centring on the phenomenon of flight and exile might yield valuable insights into Roman domestic politics. A second highly interesting point that B. only touches lightly is the question how and to what purpose the figure of the political refugee or expatriate is employed in literary, especially historiographic, texts. As. B. outlines briefly for the case of the Numidian ruler Adherbal, the speech that Sallust puts in the king's mouth is highly topical and serves to illustrate the shortcomings of Roman society rather than being a testimony for the genuine expectations and strategies of an expatriate facing the Roman senate. As Adherbal's case is not the only one in which the figure of the political refugee is employed in a literary text in order to convey specific messages that transcend the immediate context (Marbod, for example), it might be promising to examine this phenomenon more comprehensively.

Unfortunately, it has to be underlined that the merits of the study are curtailed by extremely careless copyediting. Numerous typographical and grammatical errors as well as inaccuracies such as references in the footnotes that are not included in the bibliography (e.g. Meißner [2007], Dreyer [2007], Meister [2020]), inconsistent spelling of names or repetitions (quotes on pp. 79 and 88) could have been avoided by a more thorough preparation of the manuscript. Nonetheless, B.'s collection and analysis of the material certainly provides a helpful basis for further engagement with this interesting topic.