The Treatment of Athens After Its Fall
We need not concern ourselves with the military operations during the siege of Athens and Piraeus,[75] and so can move on to Sulla's treatment of the vanquished city.
When Athens was taken, around midnight on 1 March 86, the soldiers were given license to slaughter and plunder according to the usual Roman manner of treating recalcitrant cities.[76] The immense slaughter was halted the next day in response to the supplications of a Medias (Medeus?) and Calliphon, along with "the senators" in Sulla's entourage.[77] The free adult males who survived were then left their freedom (i.e., not enslaved) but lost the right to vote in legislation or elections (App. Mith . 38): the city, then, was to be left in the hands of the exiles from Athenion and Aristion, now restored.[78] Interestingly, Appian explicitly tells us that the disability of the "rebels" was not transferred to their children—as would be those of Sulla's enemies in Rome.[79] Sulla then left C. Scribonius Curio to blockade the Acropolis, where Aristion and his accomplices had taken refuge, while he himself returned to attack the Piraeus and then moved on to Boeotia for the Chaeronea campaign. Around the same time as Sulla's victory at Chaeronea, Aristion and his men gave themselves up to Curio;
[73] For popular enthusiasm for the underdog, cp. Polyb. 27.9-10 on the Greek reaction to King Perseus's victory at Callinicus in 171.
[74] Cf. Bernhardt, PrH , 45-49.
[75] Cf. especially App. Mith . 30-40; Plut. Sull . 13-14.
[76] App. Mith . 38; Plut. Sull . 14.3-4; for the date, 14.6.
[78] Exiles: n. 66. One may compare Marcellus's settlement of Syracuse in 211: see the recent discussion by Eckstein, Senate and General , 163-64.
[79] Cf., from nearly a century before, the disabilities imposed on those who had not remained in the Roman friendship at Thisbae, valid for the limited term of ten years: Sherk 2, lines 20-24.
Sulla then returned to Athens to mete out punishment to the ringleaders of the rebellion and to attend to the final settlement.[80]
The principes seditionis et noxios Sulla immediately put to death, according to Licinianus (35.61 Criniti); this group is specified by Appian as Aristion, his bodyguards, and "those who had held office, or had done anything whatsoever, contrary to the regulations set down for them previously, when Greece was conquered by the Romans."[81] This should not mean that all who had held office during the period of Athens's revolt were executed.[82] At least the pretense was maintained that those punished were those who were culpable for the "revolt."
Following his description of the punishment of the "rebels," Appian tells us that Sulla imposed laws for the Athenians that were similar to those that the Romans had previously defined for them.[83] This statement is almost certainly to be linked with that which comes immediately before it, referring to an earlier Roman settlement at the time of the Roman "conquest of Greece"; if so, it must be regarded as part of the same corrupt tradition which sought to aggravate the Athenians' offense and to enlist the sanction of tradition for Sulla's arrangements.[84] However that may be, the central question for us is that of the nature of the Sullan regulations of Athenian affairs and especially of the degree to which they represent a marked alteration in the character of Athenian institutions. Unfortunately, here even recent scholarship has been most reluctant to give up the old approach of Ferguson, which traces every perceived alteration in Athenian institutions in this period to the usually invisible hand of Rome. Appian's brief and not terribly informative statement that Sulla "gave laws" (
[80] Plut. Sull . 14.7; App. Mith . 39; Licinianus 35.61 Criniti; Paus. 1.20.6 (confusing the capture of the Acropolis with the fall of Athens).
[82] Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 114.
[83] Mith . 39. Greek text in n.16 above.
from bare epigraphic formulae to haunt us in the pages of the standard works.[85] But on closer scrutiny it becomes a very shadowy thing indeed.
The "Sullan constitution" depends on the supposed character and the conjectured dates of two inscriptions: one that recounts the honors voted for the ephebes and the
But the dates alone of these inscriptions are far from secure; and in the absence of any explicit connection with Sulla, chronology is crucial. The first inscription (IG II2 .1039) is regularly set in 79/78: games called Sylleia are mentioned (line 57), which are thought to have ceased after Sulla's death in 78, and since a fragmentary archon list excludes the years 86/85 to 81/80 for the archon named in the decree (Apollodorus), he is placed in 80/79, with the honors voted, therefore, in the following year.[88] But the assumption that Athens could not have celebrated Sylleia after Sulla's death is an insecure foundation for weighty conclusions.[89] While the prec-
[85] Cf. Ferguson, Klio 9 (1909) 323-30, and Hellenistic Athens , 455-57; Geagan, Athenian Constitution , passim: "Sulla's new constitution" (p. 1), "the reforms of Sulla" (p. 61; cf. 90), "the abrupt change when Sulla imposed his new constitution on Athens" (p. 17) (cf. also ANRW II.7.1 [1979] 373-74). Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 115-16, Meritt and Traill, Athenian Councillors , 16-17, and Mellor, Goddess Roma , 103, are all willing to follow in Ferguson's and Geagan's tracks here. Reinmuth, AJP 90 (1969) 475-78, rightly takes Geagan to task for the notion of "abruptness." See also the cautious remarks of Rawson, Athenaeum 63 (1985) 59-63. Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 89-96 (cf. 100-101), without disputing the evidence adduced, denies concrete institutional changes. (But note that an inscription Touloumakos uses against the traditional view, IG II .1036 [p. 94], is now regularly dated in 108/107 [cf. Dinsmoor, AAHA , 243-44; Meritt, Historia 26 (1977) 187], not ca. 80, as given in IG II .)
[86] IG II .1039; M. Mitsos's improved text in SEG XXII.110.
[87] ASAtene 3-5[2] (1941-43) 84.
[88] Notopoulos, Hesperia 18 (1949) 24. The archon list: Hesperia suppl. 8 (1949) 117.
[89] The assumption is made by, among others, W. Gurlitt, Über Pausanias (Graz 1890) 245; Kirchner, ad IG II . 1039; Ferguson, Klio 9 (1909) 323; Accame, Dominio romano , 172; Raubitschek, in Studies Johnson , 49-50; Pelekides, L'ephébie attique , 236-39. So also Dinsmoor, AAHA , 291, citing Nep. Att . 4.2, which mentions only Sulla's return trip through Athens in 84 (the munera that Sulla transferred to Atticus are hardly games). Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 93, is rightly skeptical, though without questioning the traditional date of the inscription. Since Raubitschek's work appeared in 1951 another inscription mentioning the Sylleia has appeared: SEG XIII.279.
edent of Corinth was before the eyes of Athens and all Hellas, Sulla had stopped short of destroying the dry. The Athenians set up a statue in his honor.[90] Are we to imagine that it would have been cast down, or the Sylleia cancelled or renamed, while Sulla's henchmen (including, for example, C. Scribonius Curio himself, cos. 76) were very much in control in Rome and passing through Athens continually? Setting aside the Sylleia, we should note that IG II2 .1039 resembles closely IG II2 .1043, a decree of the boule honoring the ephebes of 38/37, according to which the hoplite general and the herald of the Areopagus were to announce the crown (lines 54-55). Even if, on grounds of letterforms,[91] one would not want to move IG II2 .1039 to such a late date, the lacunae in our archon lists would allow a date for Apollodorus as late as 65/64 or even 64/63.[92] Indeed, it has recently been plausibly argued that we should identify the Cappadocian princes who appear on the inscription (IG II2 .1039, lines 99-100) with the known sons of Ariobarzanes II who bore the same names: that would favor a late date for the inscription, since Ariobarzanes II acceded to the throne no earlier than 64.[93]
That leaves the honors voted to the
[91] Cf. photographs in ArchEph , 1964, pls. 9-12.
[92] Cf. now Meritt's list (rather optimistic about the extent of our knowledge) in Historia 26 (1977) 189-90. Oinophilos (64/63) is hardly secure.
[93] Mattingly, Chiron 9 (1979) 166-67, who persuasively argues for dating the accession of Ariobarzanes II in spring 64. Mattingly's date for the inscription is 64/63. On the sons of Ariobarzanes II, see Sullivan, Near Eastern Royalty , 177-82. Contra Mattingly, however, see Baslez, in Delo e l'Italia , 65 n. 107.
[94] Dinsmoor, AAHA , 248-50. Cf. Dow, in Studies Shear , 125; Meritt, Historia 26 (1977) 189. Cf. Geagan, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 376.
selected, and the apparent succession of tribes is a jumble. But, working from the premise that the tribal sequence was followed in the first century for priests of Asclepius,[95] and from the further hypothesis that a break in the cycle took place in 87/86—necessitated by apparently contradictory evidence in the very same inscription![96] —Menandrus of Erechtheis (I), priest in the archonship of Aeschines (and thus in the year of the inscription whose date concerns us), would date to 75/74. But this seems only a tissue of seductive suppositions; the date of honors to the
We cannot, then, be more precise about these inscriptions' dates than that they belong very roughly to the middle of the first century, probably in the second quarter; but this rather weakens the link with Sulla. Of what significance then is the apparent fact that the boule is able around mid-century to vote certain honors on its own initiative? Must this imply Sullan constitutional tinkering, or the ascendancy of an "oligarchy" without actual institutional changes?[97] It might be only symptomatic of a flux in honorific practices and therefore offer no evidence for constitutional revisions. The degree of inconsistency of honorary practices in the first century is indeed noteworthy but need not be taken as evidence for abrupt swings between "democracy" and "oligarchy."[98] One interpreter of these documents rightly acknowledges that "the necessity for and the exact nature of the approval or disapproval of the non-decreeing corporation or corporations remains elusive," and notes, for example, that the demos
[96] Cf. Dinsmoor, AAHA , 249-50. The only "evidence" for this break is the suggestive coincidence that if a regular tribal sequence is supposed for the first century, the year of the fall of Athens coincides with the tenure of a priest from tribe I (Erechtheis).
[97] So Reinmuth, AJP 90 (1969) 475-77; Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 94, 100-101, who employs the dangerous phrase (after Cic. Brut . 306, presumably) "die Herrschaft der Optimaten."
[98] Note the brief return of the generals and treasurer as publishing authorities for ephebic honors in the 40s: IG II .1040-42. IG II .1040 has been redated to ca. 43/42 (Reinmuth, Hesperia 34 [1964] 255-72); 1041 to 45/44 (Stamires, Hesperia 26 [1957] 251 and n. 66, with Dinsmoor, AAHA , 292). Geagan carries on the tradition of Ferguson, regarding this revival as evidence of "an important alteration in the Athenian constitution" (Athenian Constitution , 21) in a "reactionary period" (p. 85).
bestowed a crown upon the ephebes'
The prominence of the hoplite general and the herald of the Areopagus in our first document (IG II2 .1039) is often noted, but the importance of these officials is evident well before Sulla, and they need not be characteristically "oligarchical."[103] Athenion made himself hoplite general, and the herald of the Areopagus was apparently a prominent official under his regime in 88/87,[104] but no one has suggested that Athenion instituted an "oligarchical" regime.
The "Sullan constitution" is an elaborate modern construction that needs more support than our evidence offers. Rather than emerging from
[99] Reinmuth, AJP 90 (1969) 476-77; see IG II .1039 = SEG XXII.110, lines 70-72, col. II. Cf. Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 94.
[100] Cf. Dow, Prytaneis , esp. 25-27; Geagan, Athenian Constitution , 92-103; Meritt and Traill, Athenian Councillors , 16-17.
[101] Prytaneis , 25.
[102] Cf. IG II .1040-43 (see above, n. 98), 1960-61, and the later lists, 1962-2291. Cf. Pelekides, L'ephébie attique , 279-81, and for the ephebic decrees of the first century in general, pp. 197-209.
[103] Ferguson, Kilo 4 (1904) 7-8; Tracy, HSCP 83 (1979) 227-28; Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 82, 84.
[104] Ath. 5.213e-f = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F36 = F253 Edelstein-Kidd; IG II .1714 (dated to 88/87 by Dow, Hesperia 3 [1934] 144-45). See further p. 206 n. 49.
the evidence, it has been forcibly extracted by scholars guided by a conception of Athenian political history in the first century as a series of repeated oligarchic and democratic revolutions, each one fostered or overthrown by Romans. That view, already weakened elsewhere, especially in the decades before the Mithridatic War, does not deserve such allegiance.
The Sulla imposed certain regulations upon Athens as part of a settlement is of course dear enough from Appian's statement that he "imposed laws (or terms)" (
Sulla's regulations included the renewal of Athens's "freedom and autonomy."[109] Presumably it will not therefore have paid a tribute to Rome, and we hear nothing of an indemnity. Formally, Athens's relationship with Rome had not changed. Of Athens's island possessions, Delos remained under its control as well, apparently, as Scyros, Lemnos, and Imbros;[110]
[107] HSCP 83 (1979) 219.
[109] Plut. Comp. Sull. Lys . 5; Strabo 9.1.20, C398; Livy Per . 81.
[110] Cf. Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens , 454 n. 2 (the inscriptions he rites, however, are not securely dated); for Delos, see Ferrary, in Insula sacra , 39-44. The lex Gabinia Calpurnia de insula Delo of 58 (IDel 1511) reveals that Roman vectigalia had by then been levied on Delos (lines 21-23), perhaps, though not certainly, by Sulla. (See Accame, Dominio romano , 184; Nicolet, in Insula sacra , 81-100, and CRAI , 1980, 266-67, citing lines 27-29; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 306 n. 44, on the other hand, believes the innovation was a consequence of the pirate wars but preceded Pompey.) The vectigalia were, likely enough, various duties on transportation of goods, including, surely, the portorium : Accame, Dominio romano , 183-85; Moreau, in Delo e l'Italia , 95-97. Nicolet would now associate the custodia frumenti publici (line 23) with the portorium: BCH 115 (1991) 473-80; cf. CRAI , 1980, 260-87.
Salamis, however, may have been made independent.[111] Athens's "new style" silver coinage continued, probably without interruption.[112] The formal settlement of the war, in contrast to the hideous slaughter that marked the city's capture, was extraordinarily lenient.
I have argued that Rome took no special interest in Athenian internal political affairs through the period covered in this survey, that is, from the Achaean War through the immediate aftermath of Sulla's capture of the city. The attempt to extract dramatic changes in Athens's constitution from often dubious evidence, and to trace each supposed alteration thus discerned to Rome or a pro-Roman party, has at least properly been rejected for the period before the Mithridatic War; the still-prevailing tendency to do the same for the period after Aristion deserves equal skepticism. When Sulla captured Athens, he demonstrated the usual Roman barbarity toward resolute enemies, and, in the subsequent settlement, the equally typical Roman concern to punish individuals on whom blame for hostilities could be fixed. But there is no reliable evidence that he attempted, by constitutional tinkering, to change the nature of Athens's political system.
Athens, like a host of other great Greek poleis in the Aegean world, was caught up in the maelstrom of war and indeed made its own contribution to the development of the crisis. At least from the time of the
[111] So Graindor, Athènes , 8-10. But Graindor's inferences that Salamis was returned to Athens in the time of Augustus (Strabo 9.1.10, C394; Dio Chrys. Or . 31.116 does not stand independently), and thus that it was taken from Athens by Sulla, are hardly compelling. I can only suppose that Day's odd notion that in 86 the Athenians had to sell Salamis (Economic History , 127, 149, 178, citing Graindor and Strabo), repeated recently by Geagan (ANRW II.7.1 [1979] 374), is a kind of transposition of Dio's (perhaps only rhetorical) assertion that Julius Nicanor bought Salamis for the Athenians. For opposing views on Nicanor's date and Salamis's fate, see Jones, Phoenix 32 (1978) 222-28, and Kapetanopoulos, Hellenika 33 (1981) 217-37.
[112] I accept Lewis's "low" chronology for the "new style" coinage (NC 2 [1962] 276-300) against Thompson (New Style Coinage , passim, and NC 2 [1962] 301-33). An important recent discussion (with Thompson's imprimatur) proposes a "compromise" theory, accepting Lewis's bottom terminus: Mørkholm, ANSMN 29 (1984) 29-42. Habicht, Chiron 6 (1976) 137-38, argues against a break in the sequence of issues for a few years after Sulla.
ascendancy of Aristion, a declared enemy of Rome, it inevitably attracted Roman attention in consequence. But before this stage was reached Rome lay very much in the background, a presence directly manifested only in the parade of Roman officials, many of them with intellectual pretensions, on their way to other points east. The Senate showed Athens conspicuous honor in its decisions, especially, for example, in the decree of 112 in favor of the Athenian guild of Dionysiac artists, which was seen worthy of publication on the side of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi. Thracian and Macedonian wars were only distant rumblings far to the north; the proconsuls of Macedonia are not known to have set foot in Athens in this period. Whatever was the nature of the Senate's involvement in Athens's internal crisis directly preceding the Mithridatic War, it hardly suffices to alter the picture greatly. To be sure, Athenian politics were a minor matter in comparison with the Italian revolt or the restoration of the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia. The Republic simply did not possess the necessary administrative capacity to maintain dose control of the internal affairs of communities around the Mediterranean.
Athens, of course, was a special case within Rome's Eastern imperium , as a "free city" but also a revered cultural capital. It would be absurd to extrapolate from Athens's case to that of other communities, even other "free cities" of considerable prestige, such as those on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. Even so, Athens's treatment by Rome prompts reflection. On the traditional view, Rome's ostensibly meddling and domineering behavior toward Athens could be viewed as particularly noteworthy precisely in view of this polis's clearly privileged position. Now it appears that, on the whole, Rome's hand lay remarkably lightly on Athens—in striking contrast to the behavior of the Hellenistic kings, whose regard for the "freedom and autonomy" of the Greek cities was generally more rhetorical than real. The political life of the Athenian polis does not appear to have been dominated or determined by attitudes toward Rome except when war supervened, making a derision between Rome and its enemy necessary; and at that point the deriding factor seems to have been nothing more profound than the presence of a strong Pontic army and fleet under Archelaus. The persistence of traditional principles of local self-interest and political autonomy even at this stage in the life of the Greek polis is indeed striking.[113] The establishment of a permanent Roman presence in the Greek East should not conceal the abiding continuities of Hellenistic political behavior.
[113] Cf. Bernhardt, PrH , esp. 124-39, 267-84.