SYRIA AND the EAST (Russian version of the Cambridge Ancient History chapter) * This publication aims to introduce readers to the Russian original of the first part of the fifth chapter of the seventh volume of the Cambridge Ancient History, written by the outstanding Russian historian M. I. Rostovtsev (and translated into English by E. Minns) .1 It is a natural continuation of the publication of Yu. N. Litvinenko, who published the Russian original of the opening part of another Rostovtsev chapter of the same volume - the chapter devoted to Ptolemaic Egypt 2 . For this reason, the authors do not need to address a number of issues that have already been covered by Y. N. Litvinenko, such as the need to publish the original text, the circumstances of its discovery in the archives, etc. 3 Our commentary will deal only with some questions of a more general nature : the place of this work in Rostovtsev's scientific biography, the peculiarity of his conception of the history of the Seleucid state and the Hellenistic East in general, and finally, the fate of the ideas expressed by him in the historiography of later times. There is probably no reason to doubt that the pinnacle of Rostovtsev's scientific work is his three-volume Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, published in 1941.4 It is naturally very interesting for us to trace how the historian gradually developed the concepts that were then so forcefully expressed in his monumental work. It is clear that these two chapters (Ptolemaic Egypt and Syria and the East) should be considered as an important stage in the creation of a three-volume book. In any case, this relationship is established on the basis of not only logical conclusions, but also evidence belonging to Rostovtsev himself: in a letter to A. A. Vasiliev dated December 1, 1925, he directly connects these works .5 It is necessary to point out that if Rostovtsev was specifically engaged in Ptolemaic (and Roman) Egypt for many years, then the h ... Read more