2
The Status of Greece after the Achaean War
Not only does the more flexible view of Macedonia provincia presented in the previous chapter best fit the evidence for the conclusion of the war with Andriscus, but it also gives us the key to a novel and quite simple solution of the vexed old question of the formal status of Greece after the Achaean War of 146.
In 146 L. Mummius took command of the war against the Achaeans, crushed the forces of the Achaean League at the Isthmus, captured and sacked Corinth, and received the surrender of the Achaean cities. Thebes and parts of Boeotia had sided with the League; they had yielded without a fight to Q. Caecilius Metellus on his lightning march south from Macedonia in the first stage of the war. Mummius settled the affairs of Greece with the help of a decemviral commission in six months of 146-145 and returned to celebrate a brilliant triumph Achaia capta Corinto deleto .[1]
"Provincialization"?
The traditional emphasis on the notion of "annexation" has engendered a long controversy, dating back to the nineteenth century, over whether Mummius now "converted" Greece into a province. For more than a generation the view of Accame has held the field: part of Greece, consisting specifically of the states that fought Rome in the Achaean War, was formally annexed in 146-145 to the Macedonian province.[2] There are, how-
[1] ILS 20, on a temple of Hercules Victor dedicated by the commander. On Mummius's triumph and the temple, see now Pietilä-Castrén, Magnificentia publica , 139-44.
[2] Dominio romano , 1-15. A selective list of those who have given their assent to Accame's conclusion includes Walbank (JRS 37 [1947] 206), de Sanctis (Storia , 4.3:171), Badian (Roman Imperialism , 21), Dahlheim (Gewalt und Herrschaft , 124 n. 145), Ferrary (in RCMM , 2:771-72, and Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 199-209, modifying Accame's view in details but accepting his overall conclusion), Harris (War and Imperialism , 146 and n. 1), Lintott (GR n.s. 28 [1981] 56 and Imperium Romanum 10, 24), and Will (Histoire politique , 2:396-400).
ever, authoritative dissenters.[3] Extended discussion is again required. A good deal of negative argumentation will unfortunately be necessary in order first to clear the ground.
The foundation of the prevailing view has been a letter from a Roman magistrate, dating to the second half of the second century, which grants privileges (freedom from taxation, billeting, and special levies) to the Isthmian-Nemean guild of Dionysiac artists.[4] It has been supposed that lines 2-3 of the inscription, as restored by G. Klaffenbach (
[3] Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 70-72, and Gruen, HWCR , 524, with swift rebuttals respectively from Bernhardt, Historia 26 (1977) 62-73, and Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 125-34, and Klio 70 (1988) 448-60.
[4] Sherk 44. For fuller discussion and a text, see appendix D. See especially Accame, Dominio romano , 2-7, who gives the inscription the central place in his solution.
[6] See Bertrand, Ktema 7 (1982) 167-75, and appendix D. Baronowski, in his recent defense of Accame's construction, fails to take account of Bertrand's demolition of Klaffenbach's restoration.
magistrate of certain traditional privileges of the Dionysiac artists no more implies the assertion of a kind of Roman sovereignty over Thebes, where the inscription was found, or elsewhere in Greece than previous grants by Hellenistic kings or other political authorities of the same or similar privileges.[8] The inscription is dearly too fragmentary to be of any independent value in determining the status of Greece from 146.[9]
Of considerably more weight is a passage from Cicero's Verrine Orations (2.1.55) that refers briefly to Mummius's victory in Greece in terms that suggested to Accame the creation of a province (or provincial appendage) in Greece. But in his eagerness to seize upon nuggets of evidence Accame has ignored the context, which is crucial. The entire passage must be quoted.
You villain, what sort of knavery and madness is this? You entered those friendly and allied cities with the powers and rank of an envoy, but even had you forcibly invaded them as a general at the head of an army, even so, any statuary or works of art that you might take away from them you were surely bound to transport, not to your own town house or the suburban estates of your friends, but to a public place in Romel Need I quote the example of Marcus Marcellus, who captured Syracuse, that treasury of art? Of Lucius Scipio, who conducted the war in Asia and overthrew that mighty monarch Antiochus? Of Flamininus, who conquered King Philip and Macedonia? Of Lucius Paulus, whose energy and bravery overcame King Perseus? Of Lucius Mummius, who destroyed the rich and beautiful city of Corinth, full of art treasures of every kind, and brought so many dries of Achaea and Boeotia under the sway of the Roman People? The houses of these men overflowed with public esteem and moral excellence while they were empty of statues and paintings; and indeed we still see the whole city, and the temples of the gods, and every part of Italy adorned with the dedications and memorials they brought us.[10]
[8] See pp. 152-53.
[9] As Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 206 n. 284, appears to see, following Bertrand, Ktema 7 (1982) 167-75, although still adhering to Accame's position (see especially p. 200 n. 261).
[10] Cic. Verr . 2.1.54-55 (the translation is a modified version of Greenwood's rendering in the Loeb edition): Quae, malum, est ista tanta audacia atque amentia! Quas enim sociorum atque amicorum urbis adisti legationis iure et nomine, si in eas vi cum exercitu imperioque invasisses, tamen, opinor, quae signa atque ornamenta ex iis urbibus sustulisses, haec non in tuam domum neque in suburbana amicorum, sed Romam in publicum deportasses. Quid ego de M. Marcello loquar, qui Syracusas, urbem ornatissimam, cepit? quid de L. Scipione, qui bellum in Asia gessit Antiochumque, regem potissimum, vicit? quid de Flaminino, qui regem Philippum et Macedoniam subegit? quid de L. Paulo, qui regem Persen vi ac virtute superavit? quid de L. Mummio, qui urbem pulcherrimam atque ornatissimam Corinthum, plenissimam rerum omnium, sustulit, urbisque Achaiae Boeotiaeque multas sub imperium populi Romani dicionemque subiunxit? Quorum domus cure honore ac virtute florerent, signis et tabulis pictis erant vacuae; at veto urbem totam templaque deorum omnisque Italiae partis illorum donis ac monumentis exornatas videmus .
It is immediately manifest that Cicero's point is to emphasize the dastardly Verres' audacity, not merely in (allegedly) robbing art treasures from the coast of Asia Minor but especially in keeping them for his private delectation rather than setting them up in public. It was, by contrast, the practice of the great conquerors of the past, Cicero tells us, to donate to the enjoyment of the Roman people, the gods, even all Italy, the booty they had won legitimately in warfare. (A marvelous sleight of hand: the invidious comparison of Verres with conquerors not only characterizes his acquisitions as plunder but allows Cicero to blame him for not setting them up in public!) Cicero recalls a series of great and very rich victories: Marcellus's capture of Syracuse, urbs ornatissima ; Scipio's victory over that rex potissimus , Antiochus; Flamininus's "conquest" of King Philip and Macedonia; Paulus's victory over Perseus. So too, when he comes to Mummius, Cicero lays great stress on the wealth of Corinth, urbem pulcherrimam atque ornatissimam . . . plenissimam rerum omnium . He is not, obviously, speaking of the extension, much less the organization of the Roman Empire; his subject is military conquest and the consequent capture of booty.
This should immediately warn us against assuming that urbisque Achaiae Boeotiaeque multas sub imperium populi Romani dicionemque subiunxit refers to a legal act such as the "creation" of a province—a notion that we have already seen ought not to be applied to the second century—rather than the mere fact of conquest and the cities' subjection thereby to Roman power Oust as Polybius wrote of the defeat of Perseus as the act that made the
[11] Cp. the Ciceronian parallels Font . 12 and Leg. Man . 35, neither of which suggests imposition of "provincial status." For the meaning of the various forms of the phrase sub imperium (or dicionem ) alicuius venire/redigere/recipere/subicere/accipere see Cic. Leg. agr . 2.98; Caes. BGall . 5.29.4; cp. Tac. Ann . 1.1.1: cuncta discordiis civilibus fessa nomine principis sub imperium accepit . For sub imperio alicuius esse cf. Caes. BGall . 1.31.7; 5.24.4, 5.39.1; 6.10.1; 7.75.2; Livy 5.27.12; 8.19.2; 36.2.2; 38.38.3, 54.3; 40.53.5.
no more implies the imposition of some formal structure of subjection than his claim two sentences previously that Flamininus Macedoniam subegit . Rather, the point of the phrase is the factual subjection of one party to the other, not necessarily absolute or formally defined, typically following upon defeat, conquest, or surrender.
It is therefore illegitimate to import the notion of the conversion of "many cities of Achaea and Boeotia" into a part of a "province." Had Cicero meant in provinciam redegit he could have used the phrase, which was current at least from his time.[12] It is conquest that is relevant to the general theme of winning rich booty through victory, not some putative creation of a province. His choice of phrase is apt for his purposes, since he both stresses thereby the power of discretion (imperium ) over the possessions of the cities and reminds the audience that this power was, after all that of the Roman people, whom Mummius indeed honored with his many public dedications.[13] The passage from Cicero's Verrines provides no more support for Accame's view on the formal status of Greece than the Theban inscription. Nor does, incidentally, Polybius's statement (38.3.11) that the Greeks, by foolishly precipitating the Achaean War, received the fasces into their cities. This on the face of it should refer to their surrender to Metellus, Mummius, and Roman arms rather than to reduction to a putative "provincial status."[14]
The occasional intervention of the Roman commander in Macedonia in Greek affairs after 146 has generally been thought a strong argument that part of Greece at least was a province.[15] But that hypothesis is an unnecessary step. We shall shortly consider a few of the more striking examples of the proconsular role in Greek affairs, but for now it suffices to note that appeals to the imperator in Macedonia for arbitration or mediation in disputes such as that between the Isthmian-Nemean and the Athenian guilds of Dionysiac artists in the 110s no more prove that either party was formally subject to Roman jurisdiction than does any of the innumerable appeals of this sort before 146.[16] Earlier Roman commanders in Greece had
[12] See p. 20 n. 41.
[13] See p. 89.
[14] Contra Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 126—following Accame.
[15] Cf. Accame, Dominio romano , 9-10, followed by Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 126-27. Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 205-9, lays greatest weight on this factor as a validation of Accame's view.
[16] Cf. Gruen, HWCR , 105-11, for a survey of earlier cases. For this case, see discussion below, pp. 150-52.
not shied away from such activity. That earlier proconsul assigned Macedonia, T. Quinctius Flamininus, spent the winter of 195-194 in Elatea, Phocis, engaged in jurisdiction. In 191 the consul M'. Acilius Glabrio granted an appeal from the Achaeans to allow the resettlement of Elatea, while in 189-188 the Senate delegated the consul M. Fulvius Nobilior, then on Cephallenia, to seek out and punish the murderers of some Delphian envoys.[17] This last case also shows that a commander with imperium had no need of some underlying legal structure of a province to take drastic punitive action. In 167 L. Aemilius Paulus held a judicial investigation into an Aetolian massacre, and shortly thereafter, conducting further hearings, he executed two Greek political leaders, but no provincial status formally authorized him to do so.[18] He and Fulvius were acting by virtue of their imperium , and it mattered not at all that Paulus's provincia was Macedonia, not Greece. If such cases before 146 do not imply the formal underpinning of "provincialization," later ones—induding Q. Fabius Maximus's judicial intervention in the affairs of Dyme ca. 144, in which he sentenced two men to death—should not either.[19]
We do not need to perform legalistic gymnastics, postulating the formal attachment of Greece to the province of Macedonia, to explain the facts known to us. The apparent contradiction between the influence of Roman commanders in Greek affairs and the absence of a formal structure for it is one created solely by an overly rigid idea of provincia and dissolves upon closer analysis. Previous proconsuls assigned Macedonia provincia —from Sulpicius Galba in 211 through Flamininus and the successive commanders in the war with Perseus—had operated in Greece without affecting the legal status of Greek cities;[20] this practice will not have changed in 146.
The last of what passes for positive evidence of Greece's "provincial status" is the so-called Achaean Era used by some former member states
[17] Flamininus: Livy 34.48.2. Acilius Glabrio: ISE I, 55. Fulvius Nobilior: Sherk 38.
[18] Livy 45.31.1-2 (cf. 45.28.6-7), 45.31.9-15 (cf. Polyb. 30.11.5).
[19] Sherk 43. See chap. 5 and my "Q. Fabius Maximus and the Dyme Affair (Syll 684)," CQ 45 (1995) forthcoming.
[20] Livy 26.22.1; 27.7.15 (Sulpicius); 32.8.4, 28.3, 28.9; 33.25.11, 43.6; 34.43.8 (Flamininus); 42.31.1, 32.1-5, 48.4; 43.5.1, 6.10, 6.14, 12.1, 15.3; 44.17.7, 19.1 (war with Perseus). Indeed, Greece itself was assigned as a provincia in 213-211 (Livy 24.44.5; 25.3.6; 26.1.12), 208 (27.22.10), 191-190 (36.1.6, 2.1; 37.1.7-9, 2.2) without changing its "status." So too "Asia," assigned as a provincia in 189-188 (37.50.1-3, 50.8; 38.35.3).
of the Achaean League, of which the year 1 was 145/144.[21] Although our evidence never explicitly reveals the significance of the terminus, such eras have often been assumed to commemorate provincial annexations. We have already seen how dubious the notion of "annexation" is in middle Republican Rome, but the most damaging point is that the termini of eras can be shown on other occasions to be associated with some great event in a city's life: what was once regarded as an "Asian era," for example—restricted oddly to Ephesus—has now been persuasively connected not with the establishment of a province in Asia but with the end of the Attalid monarchy and the recovery of "freedom" in Ephesus.[22] The "Achaean Era" thus has no certain connection with annexation and may simply have recalled the "freedom" granted by the Romans in the Mummian settlement.[23] Obviously, too little is known about this era for it to be used as historical evidence in itself.
Accame's main arguments are thus exhausted. Additional points made recently by his defenders need not detain us long. The notion that a provincial "status" in Greece can be deduced in syllogistic fashion simply from the tide civitas libera apparently held by Sicyon in 60 B.C. (Cic. Att . 1.19.9) can be dismissed.[24] No evidence suggests that such "freedom" implied the existence of a bordering province; insofar as it implied a guarantee of non-interference from Roman authorities—not always rigorously observed in practice, and probably not made an explicit feature of the guarantee until the late Republic[25] —it was not an empty title anywhere within a Roman
[21] Cf. the list of documents in Dinsmoor, AAHA 236-37; Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 127.
[22] Rigsby, Phoenix 33 (1979) 39-47. Other examples of eras beginning with "freedom" from royal control cited by Baronowski, Klio 70 (1988) 452-53.
[24] Bernhardt, Historia 26 (1977) 71-73.
[25] See the valuable discussion of Peppe, Sulla giurisdizione , 35-114, esp. 148: "Fino al 60 a.C. non appare essere mai esistita una norma generale, nemmeno consuetudinaria, che escludesse esplicitamente la iurisdictio del governatore provinciale nei confronti dei populi liberi o—in termini più generali—li sottraesse al suo imperium. " One need not agree with all of the details of Peppe's argument to accept the larger point that the rights of liberi populi were explicitly elaborated slowly, in response to specific historical circumstance. See now also Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 63, and Ferrary, CRAI , 1991, 574-77. Mommsen, of course, presumed legal precision from the beginning (RStR , 3:689; also de Martino, Storia , 2:324 n. 31).
magistrate's potential reach. One might compare the senatus consultum of 169 that specifically instructed Greek communities not to respond to the demands of Roman magistrates unless specially authorized by a decree of the Senate (Polyb. 28.16.2; Livy 43.17.2); this hardly implies that previously they had been formally obliged to do so. But there is no need to pursue this line of argument farther into the controversial question of the nature of the populus liber and its probable evolution, for in any case there is no evidence that Sicyon received this title in 146-145. Nor is one tempted to put any weight on Tacitus's ablative absolute possessa Achaia Asiaque in one sentence, unencumbered by details, of a sweeping survey of the theatrical arts in Rome from the Etruscans to A.D. 60.[26] As we have already seen in Cicero, Mummius was of course often thought of later as the conqueror of Greece (cf. Verg. Aen . 6.836-37), and it is no surprise that Tacitus, from a distance of two and a half centuries, thinks of Greece as possessa henceforth; but we shall not try to extract formal structures from such a broad conception.[27]
Finally, whether any part of Greece was assessed tribute in 146-145, as Pausanias thinks (7.16.9), is a controversial and vexed question, full discussion of which must be left for the next chapter. In my view it is highly improbable. But, in any case, the levying of tribute is not a sufficient condition of "provincialization," as Macedonia between 167 and 148 and, much later, Judaea show.[28]
Greece and the Proconsul in Macedonia
The traditional view of the status of Greece after 146 therefore has no great claim to our credence. Old notions of "provincialization" and talk of
[26] Tac. Ann . 14.21.2, adduced by Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 127.
[27] Vir. ill . 73.6, also brought into this connection by Baronowski (in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 127), is quite irrelevant. The colony apparently planned by Saturninus in "Achaia" will have been on the confiscated land of Corinth, now ager publicus . That would have no bearing on the question of provincialization.
[28] Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 72, rightly dissociates tribute from provincial status. But against his view that the commander in Macedonia nevertheless had a formal fight and responsibility to oversee Greece, Ferrary rightly objects: "C'est négliger les réalités institutionnelles romaines" (Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 205). On Judaea, see Sherwin-White, RFPE , 214-18, and Braund, RFK , 65.
"annexation" have obscured rather than illuminated historical realities. The apparent contradiction between official freedom and Roman intervention derives simply from the clumsy tools of analysis we have been taught to wield. A new view that assumes less a priori and ventures less widely beyond the limits of our evidence may be considered. We have already had reason to doubt that the presence of a Roman commander in his provincia was typically founded upon a new legal structure, imposed at a specific time of "annexation," and I hope to have shown that there is no good reason to believe that Macedonia provincia was legally defined as a formal entity in the 140s. That conclusion opens up a new approach to the question of the "status" of Greece. The signs of the "conversion" of part of Greece into a "province" have been lacking for the same reason that they have been absent in so many other areas to which Rome's power spread. The question of the "status" of Greece is a nonquestion. Romans of the second century did not think in those terms. As we have already seen, Rome's supremacy was much less clearly defined than has been thought; the reality of the situation was, as usual, complex, and perhaps not always consistent or perfectly clear.
To start with a certainty, it is clear that Graecia or Achaia was not assigned regularly as a provincia until 27 B.C. (with the exception of a brief period ca. 81, and another possible exception in 46-44). Therefore, as has long been known, Pausanias's and Strabo's belief that governors were henceforth sent out to Greece is a gross anachronism.[29] Officially Greece was again "freed" in 146 as it had been in 196.[30] The debate over what precisely the nature of this "freedom" was seems tiresome and fruitless:[31] it was a useful slogan precisely because of its flexibility. It is clear that the Roman commander in Macedonia was the most convenient representative for Greeks to approach when Rome's intervention in some Greek affair was desired;[32] likewise, he was the Senate's administrative deputy, carrying
[29] Against assignment of Graecia/Achaia, see Plut. Cim . 2.1; cf. MRR . Graecia was assigned exceptionally ca. 81 (see pp. 273-74), and perhaps 46-44 (Cic. Fam . 6.6.10; 7.30.3). During this last period the two men commonly regarded as "governors" may have been only legati of Caesar, without the formal assignment of a provincia . It is certainly artificial to assume an otherwise unattested "organization" of Greece as a province in 46-44 (so Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund, 77; Gruen, HWCR , 524). Contra: Paus. 7.16.10; Strabo 8.6.23, C381; so too Festus Brev . 7.
[30] See texts quoted in n. 23. Diod. 32.26.2 and x Macc. 8:10 present (in a highly rhetorical tone) not the official terminology or status but what they regard as the real situation.
[31] Bernhardt, Historia 26 (1977) 62-73. On Ferrary's recent interpretation, see n. 23 above.
[32] See, for instance, Sherk 43, lines 4-6 (Dyme); Sherk 15, lines 32-38, 59-60 (cf. Syll 704, F, lines 7-8; 704, I) (Dionysiac artists); Plut. Cim . 2 (Orchomenus vs. Chaeronea).
out its instructions in matters involving mainland Greeks, and settling the minor aspects of matters whose crucial issues were resolved in the Senate.[33] Finally, the commander in Macedonia might be expected to face any serious threat to Roman interests that appeared in Greece itself, as did Metellus at the outbreak of the Achaean War and C. Sentius at the time of Mithridates' invasion of Greece,[34] and it is dear that Romans assigned Macedonia provincia were in no way legally excluded from operating in Greece.[35] As before, Greeks could be formally free, and at the same time sporadically appeal and defer to the authority of the Roman commanders who happened to be near. The greater frequency of Roman magisterial intervention in Greece after 148 is due to the simple fact that whereas previously Roman commanders had been present for relatively short periods of time during the prosecution of the various wars, now one was continuously no farther away than Macedonia. Rome's sheer power made its representative and agent, the proconsul of Macedonia, the most authoritative and powerful figure in the vicinity, to whom difficult disputes would naturally be referred. It is not formal structures that account for this but pragmatic calculations of interest. So, about 135, when the city of Cyzicus in northwest Asia Minor wanted Roman help against some enemy, presumably Thracians, it turned to the proconsul of Macedonia (IGRR IV. 134). But no one has yet argued that northwest Asia Minor was actually part of the province of Macedonia; rather, M. Cosconius was dearly the man to see about this problem because he might be able to help.
It is normally supposed that, whatever the formal structures or lack of them, successive Roman commanders assigned Macedonia provincia "oversaw" Greece in addition to their duties in Macedonia itself. But did Greeks in fact conduct their affairs "under the watchful eye of the proconsul of Macedonia"?[36]
[34] For the latter, cf. Plut. Sull . 11.4; App. Mith . 29. For the specific assignment of military responsibilities in Greece in addition to Macedonia provincia , cf. Cic. Phil . 10.26: utique Q. Caepio Brutus pro consule provinciam Macedoniam, Illyricum cunctamque Graeciam tueatur .
[35] See above, n. 20. So, too, in southern Illyria: besides the later evidence of Cic. Pis . 83, 86, 96, note that for Livy a Roman commander assigned Macedonia provincia entered his province simply by crossing the Strait of Otranto (23.38.11; 30.42.5 [cf. 31.3.4-6]; 31.3.2, 14.2; 32.3.2; 35.23.5; 36.1.8; 42.27.4, 32.5, 34-5, 36.2-8.
[36] Larsen, Greek Federal States , 499. The Macedonian proconsul's "brief" for Greece is generally accepted, despite varying points of view on the structures involved: e.g., Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 127-28; Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 72; Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 207; Derow, CAH (1989) 323. For more detail in the cases involving some form of proconsular jurisdiction, cf. chap. 5.
We ought first to note how little evidence we have for even the presence of the proconsul of Macedonia in Greece during the period under our purview. We cannot presume that the presence of Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus in the Peloponnese, overseeing the Mummian settlement ca. 144,[37] was anything but extraordinary, as was the situation. He is, however, the last Roman magistrate (other than those passing to and from Asia Minor) whose presence in Greece is explicitly documented before the Mithridatic War, nearly six decades later. Other evidence that might be adduced for the presence of the proconsul of Macedonia is negligible. An inscription from Messenia that reveals a Roman praetor (?
[37] See chap. 3 and my forthcoming "Q. Fabius Maximus and the Dyme Affair," CQ 45 (1995). Whether Fabius was formally assigned Macedonia or Graecia (Achaia?) or both is uncertain and matters little for our purposes.
[38] IG V.1.1432/33, dated by Wilhelm, JÖAI 17 (1914) 71-103, toward the end of the second century B.C. but almost certainly to be placed considerably later. See appendix E.
[39] IG II 4100 (Syll 701), 4201. It is sometimes supposed on this evidence alone that Pompeius Strabo was proconsul of Macedonia: Papazoglou, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 310; Broughton, MRR , 3:166. Note the absence of official titulature. On Pompey's visits to Athens, see Plut. Pomp . 27.3, 42.5-6. For another such "family monument," cf. Tuchelt, Frühe Denkmäler , 154. The letter-forms of Sextus's inscription hardly look as if they belong to the last quarter of the second century.
[40] Syll 710 A, C. We have, however, explicit evidence only for the presence of his brother: Syll 710 D (cf. Frontin. Str . 2.4.3). For Paulus, Livy 45.27.5-28.11; Polyb. 30.10-12. Cf. pp. 224-25 for Minucius's Thracian offensive.
Paulus's visit to the south, however, Minucius's putative tour would have had an exceptional symbolic and propagandistic purpose and should not be taken to illustrate the norm for proconsuls in Macedonia. And that is all.
Two known cases corroborate the argument from silence. In 118, the complaint of the Athenian guild of Dionysiac artists about their brethren of the Isthmian-Nemean group had to be presented to the proconsul Cn. Cornelius Sisenna at Pella in Macedonia, and there too the parties were subsequently summoned for his mediation. The agreement reached there quickly fell apart upon the return to Greece of the representatives of the two parties, but the commanders in Macedonia played no further role until the matter was finally brought before the Senate in 112. The Scordiscan wars, which began in earnest in 114, make such neglect easily understandable from that point, but the previous history of the case strongly implies that the Roman imperator was not expected to stir from Macedonia for assizes. By contrast, in the law on the praetorian provinces of ca. 100, future proconsuls are ordered to spend no less than sixty days a year in the part of Thrace recently conquered and now made one of their responsibilities.[41] The implication of Plutarch's reference to a hearing before the proconsul of Macedonia concerning a charge against his home city of Chaeronea, probably in the 70s, is the same: "The trial was held before the commander of Macedonia; for the Romans did not yet send out commanders to Greece."[42] Plutarch surely is not making a rather trivial point about the titulature of the Roman official; the contemporary reader, at a time when the proconsuls of Macedonia certainly did not have jurisdiction in Greece, by then another province altogether, will have understood him to mean that the hearing was in Macedonia itself. Since Plutarch is dearly being careful about details here and is uniquely well informed, as the story is about his home polis, we can exclude the possibility that he is fuddled or unintentionally ambiguous, and draw the obvious conclusion, which accords with all our other evidence, that the Roman commander in Macedonia stayed there as a rule.
It is possible, to be sure, to intervene at a distance. But the evidence we have of his involvement in Greek matters does not imply that the procon-
[41] On the artists' dispute, see pp. 150-52. Law on the praetorian provinces: JRS 64 (1974) 204, IV, lines 18-21.
sul kept a very dose watch over Greece—that is, after the departure of Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus, whose presence ca. 144 is explained (as noted above) by the extraordinary situation. In numerous cases, some of which have already been mentioned, proconsular arbitration or mediation was requested by one of the parties in a dispute between Greeks, but we cannot suppose that these cases were normally of any great interest in themselves to Rome. The proconsul Sisenna, and after him the Senate itself, need not have been particularly eager to hear the tedious and convoluted story of the squabble between the Athenian and the Isthmian-Nemean guilds of Dionysiac artists—unless for comic relief. The dispute lasted years, and we have no guarantee that the senatorial decree of 112 B.C. preserved for us even brought the sorry affair to its conclusion. Even when (in the other case referred to above) Chaeronea was accused before the proconsul of Macedonia of conniving at the murder of a Roman officer, it was only because Chaeronea's neighbor Orchomenus had hired a Roman lawyer to reopen the case that L. Lucullus, while passing through, had previously satisfied himself was dosed.[43] It appears that the proconsul of Macedonia acted as something of a magnet for Greeks who sought to outmaneuver their opponents by enlisting the prestige and power of Rome on their side. Not that he played the game as vigorously as was hoped: Sisenna allowed the settlement he had negotiated of the artists' dispute to be flouted, and the proconsul before whom Chaeronea was denounced dismissed the case brought by Orchomenus's hired patronus after corresponding directly with Lucullus.
We do well also to note occasions when the failure of the commander in Macedonia to play a role in Greek affairs is conspicuous. When Q. Caecilius Metellus, aedile designate, traveled to Thessaly probably around 130 to arrange for a large shipment of grain to Rome, it was a personal matter—a reward for the beneficia conferred by his family—in which the Roman proconsul of Macedonia is not even mentioned.[44] That the Roman
[43] See chap. 10 for the case of Chaeronea; chap. 5 for others.
commander in Macedonia filled no police function in Greece is shown by the Attic slave revolts ca. 130 and ca. 100 (if indeed there were two).[45] The "first" was put down by local Athenian forces (Oros. 5.9.5). In Posidonius's account of the "second" revolt, we are told that many thousands of slaves (
[45] Neither Orosius nor Posidonius says that there were two Attic revolts. This may be a doublet, therefore, the confusion arising from the two Sicilian revolts, with one of which each source gives a synchronism. S. V. Tracy's date for the "second" revolt, ca. 100/99 (HSCP 83 [1979] 232-35), is more convincing than the traditional date, 104-100 (on which cf. Lauffer, Bergwerksklaven , 227-47), which assumes too much precision from Athenaeus's rough synchronism.
[46] Posidonius ap. Ath. 6.272e-f = FGrH 87 F 35 = Edelstein and Kidd F 262 = Greenidge and Clay, 90.
[47] Lauffer speculated that M. Antonius helped to put down the slaves at some point on his campaign against the Cilician pirates in 102-100 (Bergwerksklaven , 227-47). There is no evidence or reason to support this hypothesis. Depending on the chronology, Antonius may not even have been in eastern waters any longer. In any case his military activities concentrated on Pamphylia and Cilicia (Livy Per . 68; Jul. Obs. 44, where Cilicia is obviously to be read for Sicilia ), and regarding Athens, we know only that Antonius stayed in Athens for some days' respite from the weather (Cic. De or . 1.82), then went on directly to Side while his legate Hirrus rested the fleet at Athens "because of the season" (ILLRP 342).
[48] See chap. 8 for the argument that Athenion, despite rhetoric sympathetic to Mithridates, did not openly break with Rome or side with the Pontic king.
Finally, it is noteworthy that we hear of no charge of extortion brought by mainland Greeks until immediately after the First Mithridatic War.[50] It is hardly likely that it took seventy years of magisterial intrusion in their affairs for Greeks to make use of this tool. The absence of Greek extortion charges is a further sign to be set beside others that the proconsul in Macedonia did not make a habit of meddling in Greece.
It is, therefore, improbable that the proconsul in Macedonia kept a close eye on Greece. He was a far-off and unfamiliar figure for the inhabitants of the Greek mainland—at least for those who did not have anything to gain by traveling to Macedonia in order to call his attention to some flagrant injustice being perpetrated by their fellow Greeks. His job was to see to the defense of Macedonia, and to judge from our evidence—in which heavy Roman defeats appear nearly as often as victories[51] —this task will have kept him and his legion more than busy enough without having to keep Greece under heel as well. Indeed, as Braetius Sura's late arrival with inadequate forces in 87 shows, if Greeks decided to cause trouble for Rome, there was little the commander in Macedonia, with the Balkan tribes on his flank and back, could do. The Roman commander in Macedonia did not enforce quietude in Greece but presumed it.
The solution presented here to the old puzzle of the status of Greece is quite simple. There was no change of formal status. Traditionally Roman commanders assigned Macedonia provincia had been free to take action in or affecting Illyria and Greece; this was no different after 148, or 146. This freedom had not involved, nor did it now involve, the official subordination of any Greek community to the Macedonian proconsul's imperium ; the idea of "provincialization" or "annexation" of Greece is even less apt than it is for Macedonia. The Roman commander in Macedonia, preoccupied with protecting the northern frontier of his provincia , did not control police, or supervise Greece; his occasional involvement in Hellenic affairs, as a rule without stirring from Macedonia and in response to Greek appeals, is simply a development of a phenomenon well established before 146.
[50] The trial of Cn. Dolabella in 77: Alexander, Trials , no. 140. The accusers of D. Iunius Silanus Manlianus in 140 were evidently Macedonians (legati Macedonum : Livy Per . 54; Alexander, Trials , no. 7). The identity of the plaintiffs against C. Porcius Cato in 113 (Alexander, no. 45) is unknown.
[51] Cf. chap. 1.