Download or read book Conceiving the Empire written by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-11-13 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in Conceiving the Empire explore the mental images, ideas, and symbolical representations of `empire' which developed in the two most powerful political entities of antiquity: China and Rome. While the central focus is on historiography, other related fields are also explored: geography and cartography, epigraphy, art and architecture, and, more generally, political thought and the history of ideas. Written by a collaborative team of experts in Sinology and Classical Studies, the volume focuses the attention of the emerging discipline of East-West cross-cultural studies on an essential feature of the ancient Mediterranean and Chinese worlds: the emergence of `empire' and the enduring influence of the `imperial' order.