Elliott offers a fresh and surprising reinterpretation of Pauls letter to the Romans in the context of Roman imperial ideology, bringing to the text the latest insights from classical studies, rhetorical criticism, postcolonial criticism, and peoples history. By setting the letter alongside Roman texts (Cicero, Virgil, the Res Gestae of Augustus, Seneca, poets from the age of Nero, as well as later historians and satirists), Elliott provides a dramatic new reading of the letter as Pauls confrontation with the arrogance of empireand an emerging Christianity already tempted by the seductive ideology of imperial power.