States, empires, and their rulers are surely not the whole story of the human past, although historians have sometimes treated them as though they were. But they are important because their actions shaped the lives of many millions of people. The city-states of ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the emerging Chinese empire of the Qin dynasty, and the Indian empire of the Mauryan dynasty — these were among the impressive political structures of the second-wave era in Eurasia. Rulers in each of these region sought to establish or maintain their authority by mobilizing and promoting a variety of ideas that gave legitimacy to their regimes.

The sources in this collection explore how rulers sought to advertise and strengthen their legitimacy and authority. Keep in mind that each of the sources represents an idealized image of political authority rather than an “objective” discussion of how these political systems actually operated. They reflect how rulers, with the help of their advisers, expressed their values and their self-image even as they created mythologies and rituals that endured far longer than those who generated these texts and works of art and propaganda.