CONCLUSION

That the age of Sulla was a turning point in the history of Rome's relations with the foreign people of its imperium did not escape contemporaries. Cicero comments in the De officiis :

As long as the imperium of the Roman people was maintained by conferring benefits rather than inflicting harm, our wars were waged either in behalf of our allies or to uphold our imperium , and their conclusion was either moderate or no harsher than necessary. The Senate was a haven of refuge for kings, cities, and tribes, while our magistrates and commanders sought the height of glory in one thing only, the protection of the provinces and allies by treating them fairly and responsibly. Therefore in those days we might more accurately be said to have exercised a guardianship [patrocinium ] over the whole world than imperium . Gradually, however, even before Sulla's time, we began to loosen the old standards of behavior and morality, and after his victory we gave them up altogether. For no act against the allies seems any longer to be unjust after such violence was perpetrated against our fellow citizens.^[1]

In this view, standards of behavior among citizens are inextricably linked with the treatment of the allies, and the shock of Sulla's bloody triumph in civil war marks a sharp change in the nature of the imperium —a change

[1] 2.26-27: Verum tamen quam diu imperium populi Romani beneficiis tenebatur, non iniuriis, bella aut pro sociis aut de imperio gerebantur, exitus erant bellorum aut mites aut necessarii, regum, populorum, nationum portus erat et refugium senatus, nostri autem magistratus imperatoresque ex hac una re maximam laudem capere studebant, si provincias, si socios aequitate et fide defendissent. itaque illud patrocinium orbis terrae verius quam imperium poterat nominari. sensim hanc consuetudinem et disciplinam Jam antea minuebamus, post veto Sullae victoriam penitus amisimus; desitum est enim videri quicquam in socios iniquum, cum exstitisset in cives tanta crudelitas .

that, to be sure, had been coming for some time, in Cicero's view—from a commitment to the protection of the allies to a habit of oppressing and exploiting them. Sallust presents much the same view in the Bellum Catilinae , with added pungency: after Sulla's victory, men concentrated on fleecing the allies of what had been left them after the age of conquest; the point of imperium was to do harm.^[2]

The historian is rightly skeptical of such rhetorical flourishes. And yet we should not be deaf even to the historical commonplaces of the generation that witnessed the collapse of the Republic. Cicero and Sallust both thought it evident that Sulla had introduced the "modern" age of empire. Worthy Romans both, they saw the change essentially in moral terms, and implicit in their comments is the usual Roman ancestor worship. But if we abandon the moralizing standpoint and the idealization of the earlier history of Roman imperialism, we are still left with a contemporary consciousness of the emergence in the Sullan age of a harshly exploitative conception of the imperium that represents a landmark in the development of the relationship between Rome and its allies.

The chief objective of this work was to trace, as far as is possible within the limits of our evidence, the development of the Roman imperium in the East as a historical process—a process often obscured by the tendency in traditional accounts to lay great stress on the typically ill-attested formal annexation of a series of territories. Not only does emphasis on the "creation" of individual "territorial" (as opposed to military—a distinction not found in the evidence) provinces systematically suppress the aspect of evolution; it also imposes a simplistic and artificial order on a highly complex reality. From the assumption that the aspect of process and development was fundamental followed a methodological principle that the assumptions and conceptions inherent in evidence later than the events described should not, without careful consideration, be allowed to distort the picture of an earlier age: thus, for example, Cicero's description of conditions in Cilicia in 51-50 ought not casually be employed to amplify, and thus very likely to distort, our much scantier evidence of the Roman presence in Asia Minor in the later second century. Nor, on the same principle, can post-Sullan evidence of the wealth of Roman revenues from the province of Asia allow us to conclude that the initial acquisition of the Asian revenues amounted

[2] 12.4-5: Verum illi [sc. nostri maiores ] delubra deorum pietare, domos suas gloria decorabant, neque victis quicquam praeter iniuriae licentiam eripiebant. at hi [sc. post Sullae victoriam : cf. 11.4] contra, ignavissumi homines, per summum scelus omnia ea sociis adimere, quae fortissumi viri victores reliquerant: proinde quasi iniuriam facere, id demum esset imperio uti .

to the discovery of an El Dorado for the res publica and its beneficiaries.

This study bridges the gap between two extremely valuable literary sources, Polybius and Cicero, and is consequently necessarily dependent on the random, particularistic evidence of inscriptions, and literary sources of considerably lower quality for the historian, especially Appian and Plutarch. Therefore conclusions cannot be other than tentative. Still, a coherent picture emerges that can serve as a preliminary hypothesis until further evidence surfaces to modify or subvert it.

Down to 148 B.C. —the age of the great wars that extended Roman supremacy over the East—the guiding principle of Roman hegemonial behavior had been the extension and maintenance of the imperium populi Romani , seen essentially as the power of the Roman people to command obedience from foreign kings and nations. The essence of the imperium lay not in legal forms such as treaty obligations, or in financial exploitation such as continual payment of tribute, or in military occupation—all these things might or might not accompany it—but simply in the capacity of the "metropole" to enforce its will upon the "periphery," to use modem terms. This concept of empire did not presume or demand active peacetime exploitation of those subject to this power but aimed simply at the preservation and reinforcement of power itself, upon which Roman security was ultimately based. Naturally, imperium of this type was not "abdicated" by Rome every time it withdrew from Greece in the first half of the second century. Mere military withdrawal, demanded above all by the limits of Roman manpower, did not mean relinquishing imperium when a legate bearing only a senatus consultum could make the Seleucid king stop his invasion of Egypt in its tracks, pledging on the spot to do "everything the Romans requested,"^[3] or when Philip V of Macedon could be forced by nothing more than verbal demands to relinquish his gains after the Antiochene-Aetolian War and be left with stern warning to "take care not to appear to do anything contrary to the Romans" (Polyb. 23.9.7). Before Cynoscephalae, Hellenistic kings had not been accustomed to obeying orders, and such conspicuous acts of submission to the imperium populi Romani , when performed by scions of the houses of Antigonus and Seleucus, had a symbolic power to which we must not be blind. Such public acts of submission were demanded precisely because they symbolically affirmed and reinforced the imperium , which would otherwise be quite abstract in the absence of any concrete and regular apparatus of domination such as military occupation or tribute payment—hence their extraordinary

importance in the history of Roman intervention in the early second century. The refusal of King Perseus in 172, and the Achaean League in 146, to make a clear gesture of acquiescence in the imperium populi Romani led directly to the catastrophic wars that followed, precisely because the imperium did not exist where it was unacknowledged. Without the formal and informal acknowledgment of Roman supremacy, how was one to say whether there was imperium at all?

The assignment of Macedonia provincia to a Roman praetor after 148 did not alter this fundamental emphasis upon command and obedience. A fault in Aemilius Paulus's settlement of 167 had been revealed by Philip Andriscus's meteoric usurpation: the weakness of the Thracian frontier endangered the status quo, and with it the Roman imperium , in the entire southern Balkan peninsula. That problem was dealt with by the important decision to maintain a small Roman army in Macedonia to guard that frontier. Otherwise, nothing had changed fundamentally—Macedonia had even paid a modest tribute since 167. Nor did the establishment of a Roman presence in Macedonia or the settlement of the Achaean War in 146 alter the relationship between the Hellenistic Aegean world and Rome in any important way. In Greece there is no good evidence for a strong Roman military or magisterial presence—the commander of the Macedonian army, preoccupied with grave military responsibilities and, to judge from the number of Roman defeats recorded, not always able to discharge them with ease, was almost certainly a rare visitor—or for the payment of tribute to Rome, evidence for which is overwhelmingly Sullan or post-Sullan. One cannot speak of Roman "administration" or "rule" of Greece after 146 even in the limited sense one might apply to contemporary Macedonia, where the Roman commander was doubtless chiefly concerned with matters of defense. Greece was no more sub imperio populi Romani than it had been before 146, a relationship manifested in the traditional manner, above all, by obedience to Roman requests, and senatorial hearings of Greek disputes. Perhaps the most potent symbol of Greek subjection to Roman power and of the potential cost of revolt were the ruins of Corinth astride the chief crossroads of Greece. They were to inspire many musings on past glories and modern degeneration.^[4]

The historian despises such intangibles at his peril. Symbolic expressions of the imperium remained crucial after 148 as reassuring, or galling, signs of Roman supremacy where the Realien of tribute, soldiers, or im-

[4] See especially the famous letter of Sulpicius Rufus to Cicero, Cic. Fam . 4.6. Cf. further p. 88 n. 136.

perial officials were absent. The symbolic importance of dead Corinth has just been mentioned. Appeals from the Greek cities of the mainland and Asia Minor to the Roman Senate for settlement of their various quarrels were symbolic of a different aspect. The Senate proved on the whole little concerned with the disputes themselves, without apparent exception passing all more complex matters on to other Greek bodies for resolution. Yet, despite their tediousness, the Senate readily gave an audience on such disputes, which came to it in the first instance in recognition of Rome's preeminent power and authority. The imperium populi Romani was reasserted each time such an embassy entered the Roman Senate, renewing its friendly relations and alliance, if one existed, and recounting all previous services to the Republic. A similarly chiefly symbolic link with the hegemonial power was forged by formal alliances, which appear in this period (after 148) with far greater frequency than before. While strictly equal in form, in practice these treaties were requested by the non-Roman party, not, it is clear, for their military value but for their implication of Roman favor and of a certain standing in the eyes of the Senate. An alliance could come in handy in future negotiations with Rome or disputes with other dries, while, conspicuously inscribed in a public place, it reminded citizens of the responsibilities of the special relationship with the leading power and flattered civic pride.

Roman acceptance of the legacy of Attalus, the details of which were implemented only toward 126 after victory in the war against Aristonicus, was indeed a step toward a new kind of empire, as was stressed some time ago by Badian.^[5] But it was a largely unconscious step, and its most important consequences lay for the most part over the horizon. It remains uncertain how much of western Asia Minor was made tributary after the defeat of Aristonicus, but the evidence of the freeing of many Greek dries at that time and of Sulla's great extension of tributary status among the Greek cities makes it most likely on balance that the massive exploitation of Asia, revealed above all in Cicero's speech for the Manilian law, is a Sullan and post-Sullan phenomenon. In like vein, Rome's military commitment to Asia Minor was minimal, and its refusal to undertake an effective role in seeing to the security of the Aegean well demonstrates how little the fundamental conception of the imperium had evolved.

Even now that a regular Roman military and magisterial presence was established in western Asia Minor as well as Macedonia the intrusiveness

[5] Roman Imperialism , esp. 48. Still, surely correctly, "it took a long time for the consequences to be felt" (p. 51).

of the proconsuls outside of the relatively circumscribed tributary areas was sharply limited in practice. In Macedonia the proconsul was kept very busy by the Thraco-Illyrian tribes on the frontier. The history of relations between Rome and Athens before the Mithridatic War demonstrates that here, where our evidence for a single city is richest, there is little reason to presume frequent intervention by Roman officials. In Asia Minor our evidence indicates that the Greek cities bordering Roman tributary lands fought, generally with support in the Roman Senate, a largely successful battle for maintenance of their judicial autonomy against sporadic intervention by proconsuls, which typically emerged from their legitimate role of providing jurisdiction for Romans in the province, and against incursions by the hated publicani .

None of this was altruism. The simple fact was that—as had been the case since Flamininus—Rome did not maintain a military garrison in the East that was sufficient to enforce oppression. The imperium populi Romani and the revenues that it brought in were safeguarded in the last resort—as before 148 or 129—by an impression of the inevitability of eventual Roman victory in any dash of arms, not by a present and effective coercive capacity. Therefore, as before, it was crucial to maintain that impression—hence Roman interventions, few but finally forceful, in the dynastic squabbles of Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Pontus early in the first century and the sending of consular armies to Macedonia toward the end of the second; hence also the attempts, particularly notable toward the turn of the second century, to advertise Roman solicitude for the welfare of its allies. To a very real degree, in the absence of a large complement of Roman troops in the East, the imperium populi Romani had to depend on its acceptance by the allies, as Posidonius and contemporary Romans like Q. Mucius Scaevola saw. This simple fact imposed limits on the degree of exploitation and oppression of provincials that might be accepted by the Senate.

The imperium populi Romani spread over Macedonia, Greece, and well into Asia Minor by the end of the second century, but that its meaning had not developed far beyond that implicit in Polybius is dear above all from Rome's relative indifference to the problem of piracy until it began to impinge upon Rome directly by cutting off the grain supply to the city. True, in 102 M. Antonius was sent on a special mission against the pirates, and a law published on the base of the column of Aemilius Paulus—the monument of Roman power in the Aegean world—advertised publicly the intention to protect Roman allies as well as Roman citizens and Latins. But after Antonius a generation passed before another Western fleet

moved east against the pirates. Before Sulla the Senate was careful to keep its commitment of manpower and resources in the East to a minimum.

The long struggle with Mithridates, together with the straitened circumstances of the res publica as it emerged from the devastation of civil war, brought important changes in the nature of Rome's Eastern imperium . The Pontic king in 89-87 swept the Romans out of Asia Minor and Macedonia, and together with the Athenians, caused considerable trouble in Greece. Although the blame for the massacre of Romans in 88 was fixed almost entirely upon Mithridates, it was only too evident that the minimal military presence of the past had been totally inadequate in view of the indifference or alienation of many of the Eastern allies. This was particularly true in view of the need, finally emphatically demonstrated in 89-88, to tighten the grip on Asian territory in order to ensure the security of its revenues and protect the investment of considerable Roman capital. And it was all the more so after Sulla had imposed tribute on many more Asian cities than before and introduced it in central Greece, increasing by an uncertain but certainly substantial figure the total Roman revenues from the East, and after Roman financiers had dispensed huge loans to the cities of Asia to cover the debt on Sulla's fine.

After Sulla's death there followed therefore an extraordinary Roman offensive on a variety of fronts in the East that lasted for a decade and a half and convincingly established Rome's military domination of the entire region. The powerful military presence not only protected current revenues but increased the demand for further revenues for its maintenance. Thus the post-Sullan Senate seized upon the Bithynian inheritance and began exploitation of Cyrenaica after neglecting its possibilities for two decades. Yet it seems that even now it would have stopped there, patching up the quarrel with Crete on the terms set by Antonius and following Lucullus's lead on Pontus, had not major decisions regarding the East been taken out of its hands by a series of tribunes—Lentulus Spinther (69), Gabinius (67), and Manilius (66)—who, relying on vast popular support for decisive measures to increase and safeguard state revenues and the grain supply, were far less willing than the Senate as a body to allow traditional limitations upon Eastern commitments to influence their plans. Cicero's emphasis upon Roman revenues in his speech for the Manilian law and Pompey's boast of their enormous increase in the placards carried in his triumph strike the keynote of the new age: the systematic exploitation by the Roman people of the material fruits of conquest, formerly checked by what we might call strategic or diplomatic considerations that were now made less pressing by a substantial military presence.

Pompey's campaigns, decisively dealing at last with the problem of piracy and dramatically increasing the public revenues, complete the process of transition from the old imperial attitudes that had been set in motion by the First Mithridatic War. The change came in the generation of Cicero, Pompey, and Caesar and thus was still fairly recent when in the last generation of the Republic adequate literary source material finally emerges (for us) and brings the historian into the light of day. As we noted in our opening remarks, the change did not escape contemporaries, although they, as Romans would, saw it in a different way.