PART ONE
1
Macedonia Provincia
On the traditional view, a few years after the middle of the second century B.C. came two events that together constitute a turning point in the story of Rome's expansion in the East: in 148 or thereabouts Macedonia was converted into a Roman province, and in 146-145, after the Achaean War, much of Greece was appended to, or integrated with, the province of Macedonia.[1] What precisely this meant in practice is rarely spelled out for us.[2] But the consensus of scholars, with one notable exception to be discussed presently, is that some kind of formal state of subjection was now imposed, and Roman "direct rule" and administration of the now legally subject territories was installed.[3] Thus the years 148-146 emerge as the watershed in Rome's eastern expansion; and, indeed, it is customary to conclude discussions of Roman intervention in Greece and Macedonia at this date—not surprisingly, given the assumption that the "creation" of the province of Macedonia brought a fundamental change to Rome's involvement in the East, after which there remained only the necessary adjustments to
[1] It would be otiose to append a bibliography of those who have accepted and transmitted the traditional view on the status of Macedonia from 148; Niese, GGMS , 3:335-37, may be considered a fundamental statement; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 120-23, a recent restatement. For Greece, see chap. 2.
[2] See above, pp. 2-4.
[3] The phrase "direct rule" is typically used (along with "direct government," "direct control," " direct administration") to describe Roman provincial administration, contrasted implicitly or explicitly with "indirect methods of control," which implies no Roman presence at all. (Cf., for example, Harris, War and Imperialism , 162; Badian, Roman Imperialism , 8, 11; Will, Histoire politique , 421; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 122.) The distinction therefore differs from that between direct and indirect rule employed by students of modern imperialisms: cf. Doyle, Empires , 38.
the new dispensation. As signaled earlier, the premises on which this view rests, however, seem to me partly wrong, partly misguided. Renewed investigation of the controversy of the "status" of Macedonia and Greece after 146 is therefore necessary in order to dear the foundations for a new view. I hope to show that the intractability of this old controversy derives not from the facts themselves but from our own preconceptions, in particular an excessively rigid and legalistic understanding of the Roman concept of provincia .
Q. Metellus and the "Provincialization" of Macedonia
In 148 Q. Caecilius Metellus crushed the pretender to the Macedonian throne, Philip "Andriscus," who had managed in the previous year or two not only to establish his authority in Macedonia itself (where in 167 the Roman-imposed republican system had replaced the ancient monarchy) but even to make incursions into Thessaly. Metellus proceeded to pacify the area, removing another pretender in the process, and in 146 (probably) returned to Rome to a well-deserved triumph and the triumphal cognomen Macedonicus.[4] Was Macedonia now "converted" into a province? It had long been assumed that the presence of Roman commanders and troops in Macedonia after 148 made that conclusion inevitable, but Gruen has recently issued a strong challenge to the traditional view—without full argument for an alternative.[5]
Certainly we hear nothing of a lex provinciae or of the establishment of boundaries, or even of a senatorial commission to assist Metellus—a man of only praetorian rank—in organizing a province.[6] The idea of a
[4] On the triumph, see Degrassi, IIt XIII.1, p. 557. For Metellus's spoils and his temples in Rome, see Morgan, Hermes 99 (1971) 480-505. For the cognomina ex victis gentibus , see now Linderski, ZPE 80 (1990) 158-61.
[5] HWCR , 433-36, 524. Baronowski, Klio 70 (1988) 448-53, now defends the old view against Gruen. It should be noted that it remains somewhat unclear whether Gruen rejects the traditional conception of provincialization or argues only that, as traditionally understood, it did not occur in Macedonia in 148, or in Asia in 129-126.
[6] It is generally assumed (cf. Morgan, Historia 18 [1969] 423-25) that Metellus was given proconsular imperium ; this need not affect the argument and in any case lacks evidence. Against Jashemski's view (Origins , 45, 54, 63) that all praetorian commanders sent to Macedonia were given proconsular imperium , see appendix A. There is no evidence whatever that the decemviral commission sent to assist Mummius concerned itself with Macedonia, as Morgan suggests (pp. 442-46); yet Hackl, Senat und Magistratur , 43-44, supposes that such a commission was assisting Metellus even before the outbreak of the Achaean War. On the supposed numismatic evidence for a senatorial commission in Macedonia, see appendix B.
formal reorganization of Macedonia as a province at this time would have to rely on a few scraps of late and rather poor evidence. First, Florus, the epitomator of the second century A.D. , tells us that Metello ordinanti cum maxime †Macedoniae was ordered to punish Critolaus's abuse of the Roman ambassadors at Corinth (1.32.3). Whatever the correct reading of the corrupt passage, it does not imply the creation of a province, only the "settlement" or "pacification" of the area.[7] Florus also tells us that [sc. Metellus ] Macedoniam servitute multavit (1.30.5); similarly, Porphyry of Tyre, the polymath of the turn of the third century of our era, is paraphrased by Eusebius as saying that in 148 "the Macedonians were enslaved."[8] "Slavery" in such usage is hardly a precise legal term;[9] Florus indeed implies that the Macedonians' "enslavement" was merely the restoration of a prior condition thrown off by revolt.[10] It is not surprising if, from the distance of more than two centuries, the end of the last Macedonian war with Rome looked this way, but such facile statements will tell us nothing about Macedonia's legal status from 148.[11]
Indirect evidence for "provincialization" is no stronger. The significance of Porphyry's (or Eusebius's) statement that the Romans now made the Macedonians
[7] Cf. Morgan, Historia 18 (1969) 441-42. For statum ordinare , cp. Pliny Ep . 8.24.2, 24.7. The emendations proposed by Helmreich (Macedoniae <res >) and Halm (Macedoniae <statum >) are probably on the right track.
[9] Cp. Cato Orig . 5.3b Chassignet, quoted below, n. 64.
[10] Cf. Sed prior iugum excutit Macedo , 1.30.2.
[11] Contra Baronowski, Klio 70 (1988) 449, who adduces as well the equally wretched Festus (Brev. 7; compare how Baronowski elsewhere rates this source: in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 128).
[12] Eus. Chron . 1.239-40 Schoene.
[13] Gruen, HWCR , 428 n. 169. Against Gruen's argument for merely a temporary indemnity, see also Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 179 n. 194; Baronowski, Klio 70 (1988) 460.
[14] Cf. 30.37.5 (Carthage); 33.30.7-8 (Macedonia in 196); 37.45.14, 38.38.13 (Antiochus); 38.9.9 (Aetolians; apparently in order to avoid needless repetition Livy simply refers back to this passage at 38.11.8, although the terms were of course given in the senatus consultum: Polyb. 21.32.9).
have been told if a fixed term had been set to the payment. Moreover, Livy's word for the payment (tributum ) he never appears to use elsewhere for an indemnity, while, on the other hand, we are told that the Macedonians would pay half of what they had paid their kings (to the amount of about 100 talents annually);[15] since that was apparently a permanent obligation, so should this have been, unless the contrary had been explicitly stated. Probably Porphyry is simply confused by the anomalous situation and assumes the usual association of tribute with the beginning of a permanent Roman presence.[16] Not even the levying of tribute, then, was a novelty of 148, and its continuation implies "provincial status" no more than it had when first levied in 167. Furthermore, as has long been recognized, there is no reason to assume that the "Macedonian era" refers to the date of "provincialization"; rather, it surely celebrated Metellus's victory over Andriscus.[17] Finally, the possibility that some cities in Macedonia received or lost guarantees of "freedom" has no dear relevance for the matter of creating a province.[18]
On the other hand, we have some evidence, to be set beside the absence of signs of major reorganization by Metellus, that at the least major parts of L. Aemilius Paulus's settlement of Macedonia in 167 remained in force.[19] The Macedonian Merides, the four republics established in 167, certainly continued to exist in one form or another: it is likely that the first Meris continued its coinage at least into the later second century B.C. ; the first Meris probably appears as a territorial entity in Acts' chronicle of St. Paul's first mission to Macedonia ca. A.D. 49; and the first Meris (perhaps the fourth as well) is mentioned in an inscription from Beroea of Flavian date that testifies at least to the continuing significance of the Merides as political divisions of Macedonia.[20] It is likely also that the standing frontier
[15] Plut. Aem . 28.3, roughly corroborated by Polyb. 30.31.9 (cf. 31.7); cf. Livy 45.18.7, 29.4; Diod. 31.8.3-5.
[16] Cf. Morgan, Historia 18 (1969) 429 n. 40.
[17] Kubitschek, RE 1 (1894) 636. On the terminus of the Macedonian era (148/ 174) the fundamental studies are Tod, BSA 23 (1918-19) 206-17, BSA 24 (1919-21) 54-67, and in Studies Robinson , 2:382-97.
[18] On the theory that associates the civitas libera with the organization of provinces, cf. below, pp. 48-49.
[19] Larsen, in ESAR , 4:303; Papazoglou, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 305 (but see her Villes de Macédoine , 65-66); Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 121; its full significance was first noted by Gruen, HWCR , 434-35.
guard that Paulus had allowed the Macedonian republics to maintain in 167 was still being deployed after 148.[21]
It appears, therefore, that if we simply accept our evidence at face value, without importing preconceptions, based on hypothetical reconstructions of Roman practice, about what must or should have been, we should con-dude that in all probability no major reorganization of Macedonia followed the war with Andriscus. After all, it was unnecessary for Metellus to reorganize Macedonia: that had already been done quite effectively by Paulus in 167.[22] Metellus, of course, pacified the region and presumably imposed terms on the defeated according to their deserts in the usual manner. It is possible that some communities, distinguished by opportune assistance in the war, were exempted from the tribute levied since 167; conversely, others who had actively supported Andriscus may have been made tributary if they had not already been so, and the imposition of an indemnity would be fully in keeping with established Roman practice.[23] The details, however, are beyond recovery.[24] We have specific information only concerning the treatment of Byzantium—and, alas, it is contradictory. The usual view is that the Byzantines were punished in some way, and that an old alliance with Rome formed against Philip V was now abrogated, but the matter is hardly settled.[25]
[21] Syll 700, from Lete in 119 (lines 19-20): that the quaestor Annius's concern for the safety of the "garrisons in the exposed places" is singled out for special praise seems best understood if they were composed of native troops rather than Roman. For the frontier guard established in 167: Livy 45.29.14, with Hammond, History of Macedonia , 3:611-12. For regular Roman use of local allied forces, cf. below, p. 195 n. 49. In view of the constant threat to Macedonia's territorial integrity, it would have been strategically absurd to disperse the small Roman force (perhaps a legion) deep into the countryside to serve this function, one to which local militias were well suited.
[22] Cf. Larsen, in ESAR , 4:303; Papazoglou, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 305. Indeed, Livy's epitomator clumsily and misleadingly adopts the language of the Principate: Macedonia [sc. a Paulo ] in provinciae formam redacta (Per . 45).
[23] In 167 presumably only those who had paid tribute to the Macedonian kings will have been made tributary to Rome: Livy 45.18.7, 29.4; Diod. 31.8.3. For an indemnity added to the normal tribute, cf. (much later) Sulla's fine imposed on Asia: below, p. 266.
[24] The list of grants and withdrawals of "freedom" in 148 compiled by Bernhardt, "Imperium und Eleutheria," 89-90, is extrapolated from Pliny's enumeration of the cities of the Empire in the Augustan period and on highly questionable deductions from scanty other material rarely earlier than Cicero. It is therefore of very limited value: cf. Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 121 n. 135.
Such ad hoc arrangements may very well have been all the organization that was necessary; they hardly required the attention of a senatorial commission. It has been supposed by one scholar that a major reorganization must have followed the war because of the massive support he supposes Andriscus had won.[26] Leaving aside for the present the question of how extensive Andriscus's Macedonian support was, it was surely not some "reorganization" that would have improved matters in that case but the decision—which was the Senate's, not Metellus's—to maintain an army in Macedonia. This brings us to the next step of the argument.
Was Macedonia assigned regularly as a provincia by the Roman Senate to a commander from the time of Metellus's return to Rome in 146?[27] To think otherwise one would have to suppose that Roman troops and a commander were sent out only on occasion to Macedonia, perhaps in response to sporadic threats from the Thraco-Illyrian tribes. But if our extremely lacunose praetorian fasti for this period show enough Macedonian commanders to fill approximately three-quarters of the century from 148 to 49 B.C. ,[28] that is a "survival rate" no worse than (to take an instructive example) the Sicilian governors enjoyed. For Sicily in the period 148-49 inclusive, I count thirty Roman governors, three of whom are incerti to various degrees. Only thirty-seven years are thereby explicitly accounted for; a proportion of only about half that of the Macedonian imperatores . Even if we are to assume an average term of two years for Sicilian governors over the whole period (in fact, the terms increase from a norm of a single year in the second century to as much as three and four years in
[26] Morgan, Historia 18 (1969) 427-28. This assumption is of course necessary to support Morgan's argument that Metellus cannot have had time to organize the province, and therefore that the job was done by Mummius and the senatorial commission of 146/145.
[27] Doubted by Gruen, HWCR , 434, esp. n. 202, and now reaffirmed by Baronowski, Klio 70 (1988) 449-50.
[28] Gruen, HWCR , 434, n. 201, who refers to the lists compiled by Sarikakis, "ArconteV , and Papazoglou, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 310-11. Cf. also that of Geyer, RE 14 (1928) 764-65. All are to be used with caution.
the first),[29] the names known to us cannot account for more than three-quarters of the relevant years. The argumentum ex silentio is here disqualified by the extremely lacunose state of our evidence after the loss of the text of Livy, for we are dependent on the random survival of epigraphic documents (never a strong tradition in Macedonia) and the selectivity of Livy's excerptor, who of course mentions only major victories and defeats. Unless one can explain convincingly why new armies might be sent out individually only when we happen to hear of them it is surely better to conclude that magistrates were indeed sent out regularly to Macedonia in succession and that we simply do not know the names of a few (perhaps not many more than about eight) of them.
Other arguments lead in the same direction. The only substantial gap in the Macedonian fasti is between ca. 141 and ca. 119, where only two proconsuls can be placed with certainty. But at some time during that gap the via Egnatia was built,[30] surely a sign of a continuing military commitment. If "the Republic accepted responsibility for the defense of Macedonia and of Illyria," as Gruen concedes,[31] that task will have been impossible to discharge without a permanent military presence, in view of the ancient problem of the pressure exerted by the Thraco-Illyrian tribes on the Macedonian frontier and the proven instability of the Macedonian republics.[32] It is, I think, therefore beyond reasonable doubt that from 148 Roman commanders and their contingents of troops succeeded each other in Macedonia without interruption. These commanders must have been assigned Macedonia provincia , as was the normal practice both earlier and later, even if we have no dear testimony for official titulature at this time.[33]
[29] For the first century, note Verres 73-71; Vergilius Balbus 61-58.
[30] See appendix C.
[31] HWCR , 435.
[32] Cato's supposed sententia of 168 on the difficulty of defending Macedonia (SHA, Hadr . 5.3 = ORF Fr. 162 [p. 61]) is here relevant; cf. Harris, War and Imperialism , 144-45. For the northern frontier in the time of Philip V, see the brief comments of Walbank, Selected Papers , 193-94; Papazoglou, Central Balkan Tribes , 149-74 (Dardani), 279-83 (Scordisci). On the military activities of the proconsuls of Macedonia, and especially the connection between Thracian raids and the internal instability of Macedonia, cf. below, pp. 31-40.
Thus, while there is no evidence of a change in Macedonia's legal status in 148, no sign of major reorganization for Roman administration or "direct rule," or of basic structural changes, it seems beyond reasonable doubt that Roman commanders were assigned Macedonia provincia and sent out regularly to Macedonia after Metellus departed in 146. The apparent antinomy between the absence of formal structures for rule and the fact of a Roman presence raises an important question concerning not merely Macedonia but the very nature of the Roman imperium . How far is it justifiable to regard Macedonia from 148 as an annexed territory?
Provincia and Imperium
The study of Republican imperial structures is currently in a state of flux, as much recent research has cast doubt on or even overthrown central points of the received wisdom. As yet no synthesis of the progress made in the last two decades has appeared, and therefore a lengthy digression on the nature of mid-Republican provinciae and imperium is unavoidable here. The reader should not, however, mistake the discussion that follows for an attempt at the sort of comprehensive synthesis that is needed; I have tried to restrict myself to what is needed to set the context in which the changes of the 140s in Macedonia should be placed.
In discussions of Republican imperialism, we hear much of "annexation," "creating" or "organizing" provinces, indeed even of "converting" places into provinces. These phrases imply that areas were reduced to units of a recognized Roman empire by a specific act of organization. This is of course precisely what was envisioned by juristically minded scholars of the last century, who satisfied the overwhelming urge to reduce the chaos of historical reality to order by finding a neat, legal definition of provinciae: a legal enactment of the conquering Roman commander was postulated that served as the charter of the newly founded province; the pseudotechnical term lex provinciae was invented (there is no ancient authority, it seems) to denote it; and the concept passed into the standard handbooks, where it remains to this day, serving as the theoretical underpinning of the phrases mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.[34] But the lex
[34] See Marquardt, RStV , 1:500-502; Mommsen, RStR , 3A:727-28, 746-47; Arnold, RSPA , 26-29; Abbott and Johnson, Municipal Administration , 48-52; Stevenson, RPA , 68, 165; Meyer, RSS , 233; de Martino, Storia , 2:283-86; Bleicken, Verfassung , 212-13; Jolowicz, Historical Introduction , 69-70. Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 22-42 (cf. Lintott, GR n.s. 28 [1981] 58-61), has at last supplied a convenient antidote with which the following account agrees on many, though not all, points. See also Crawford, Storia di Roma , 2.1:91-121.
provinciae is a seriously misleading construct. The absence of ancient authority for the term itself is gravely troubling: at the very least, the ancients' lack of interest in such hypothetical provincial "charters" is likely to be significant. Of the only two ordinances claimed as leges provinciae about which we have substantial information—the lex Pompeia for Bithynia-Pontus to which Pliny refers in his letters to Trajan and the lex Rupilia for Sicily of 132 B.C. —neither can be shown to provide the legal foundation of the province as a whole. To judge from the evidence available to us, the first was concerned with the local constitutions of the cities that Pompey had established in the former kingdoms of Bithynia and Pontus, the latter with judicial arrangements for suits between citizens of different communities.[35] There is, then, not one "lex provinciae " that can be proved to perform the wide range of functions attributed to the institution. Rather, important recent work has shown that the construct of a lex provinciae conflates into one measure what was in reality the cumulative result over generations of enactments by a long series of magistrates and decrees of the Senate.[36] Moreover, not all provinces should be assumed to have had, at any point in this incremental process, a "comprehensive group of ordinances arranging [their] administration."[37] Further, the old notion that a lex provinciae imposed a distinct "subject status" upon those communities that were not "free" was exploded even earlier.[38] Nor is Roman
[35] Lex Pompeia data Bithynis Ponticisque: Pliny Ep . 10.79, 112, 114; cf. 115. Lex Rupilia: decreto, quod is de decem legatorum sententia statuit, quam illi legem Rupiliam vocant , Cic. Verr . 2.2.32 (cf. 34, 37, 38, 40, 42: for cases between citizens of different cities, the praetor appointed judges by lot; sortition within thirty days of institution of suit, 37; arrangements for suits between a community and a person, 59, probably; between citizens cases are to be judged under their own laws, 90). Other Rupilian leges besides judicial ones: see Cic. Verr . 2.2. 40; 125 (constitution of Heraclea). The alleged lex provinciae of Sicily came approximately a century after the island was "annexed" on the usual view!
[36] See Lintott, GR n.s. 28 (1981) 60-61; Hoyos, Antichthon 7 (1973) 49.
[37] Lintott, GR n.s. 28 (1981) 59. Crawford, Storia di Roma , 2.1:112-16, retains the concept of the lex provinciae but sees it as a novelty of the last decades of the Republic.
[38] By Kienast (ZSS 85 [1968] esp. 332-34), building on the work of Heuss (Völkerrechtliche Grundlage , 76-77), against Mommsen (RStR , 3A:726-20, 730-32). Dahlheim implausibly thinks of a status of perpetuated deditio as the norm in the provinces (Struktur und Entwicklung , 70, 109; cf. Gewalt und Herrschaft , 71-72). See Kienast, Augustus (Darmstadt 1982) 366 n. 1, for a response. The imperial jurist Gaius's doctrine that in eo (sc. provinciali ) solo dominium populi Romani est vel Caesaris (Inst . 2.7) is of no relevance here: see most recently Bleicken, Chiron 4 (1974) 359-414·
administration something that was simply put in place: recent studies of the early history of the Roman occupation of Sicily and Spain have demonstrated convincingly how gradually the administrative and judicial functions of Roman commanders in these provinciae developed from their originally essentially military duties.[39]
It seems dear, then, that provincial structures eventually emerged out of a long process of adaptation and experience and were not imposed at one blow by victorious Roman commanders. A conquering Roman general might indeed fix tributary obligations and make certain structural alterations in the pacified territory, but these acts in themselves did not amount to creating a province, as is clearly shown by the example of Paulus's settlement of Macedonia in 168/167, when the former kingdom underwent a drastic constitutional change and half of the traditional royal tribute was diverted to Rome. On the other hand, "for several provinces all that seems to have happened is that at some point the Senate recognized that the territory must henceforth be decreed as the province of a magistrate ... every year."[40] Talk of "annexation," "creating," and "organizing" provinces on any single occasion corresponds to nothing in our evidence of the second century B.C. ,[41] which helps to explain why we have no reliable explicit testimony to the "creation" of the provinces of Sicily, Sardinia, the Spains, Transalpine Gaul Cilicia, or Cyrene (to take a few prominent examples), and why the attempts to discern precisely when these provinces were "created" seem so many unconvincing exercises of scholarly ingenuity.[42] The basic working assumption was ill founded. It may be noted as
[39] Sicily: Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 12-73. Spain: Richardson, Hispaniae , 172-80 and passim. For the central role played by commanders in the field in the development of these provinciae , see, in addition, Eckstein, Senate and General , 103-232.
[40] Rich, LCM 10 (1985) 94.
[41] See Rich, LCM 10 (1985) 94, and Richardson, Hispaniae , 178-79. By the Principate the development of a strong notion of provincia as a unit of empire, and uniformity in the forms of administration, had led to both a recognizable provincial pattern and a distinct notion of annexation: hence the phrase redigere in provinciae formam , common in writers of the Principate. Already Caesar had used the phrase in provinciam redigere (BGall . 1.45.2, 7.77.16).
[42] For Sicily and Sardinia the assumption has traditionally been that the institution of additional praetorships in 227 implied the concurrent formal organization of provinces, but it is unclear why it implies more than recognition of the continuing need for an increased magisterial pool to cover expanded military commitments (see Harris, War and Imperialism , 136). For the same reason 197 has traditionally been accepted as the date of the organization of the Spains, with minority claims for 206/205 (see especially Harris, CAH 8 (1989) 121: "the first Roman annexation as that term is usually understood"; cf. War and Imperialism , 136 with n. 4) or even 133 (Bernhardt, Historia 24 [1975] 420; Sumner, CP 72 [1977] 129). Richardson, Hispaniae , 178-79, elegantly cuts the Gordian knot, as does also, for Cisalpine Gaul, Ausbüttel, Hermes 116 (1988) 117-22 (esp. 121). The dispute on the date of the annexation of Narbonese Gaul (for which see especially Badian, Mél. Piganiol , 901-3, and more recently Ebel, Transalpine Gaul , 75-95), and of Cilicia and Cyrene should similarly be laid to rest.
well that the Romans themselves stubbornly refused to make the distinction that we find so crucial between provincia as "permanent/formal/territorial province" and as "sphere of command."[43] Nor need the use of provincia even in a clearly geographical sense imply official demarcation or a more formal structure.[44]
The lack of evidence for a comprehensive structural reorganization in Macedonia in the 140s no longer looks therefore like a mere accident of our evidence. But more: we have seen that there was no specific act that answers to the idea of "annexation"; no benchmark that would allow one to say, "Now, and not before, this place belongs to the Roman Empire." The mere assignment of Macedonia to Roman commanders as a provincia ,
[43] A point effectively raised by Richardson, JRS 69 (1979) 159. Here Lintott is confounded by his belief in the formal demarcation of provinces: "A governor of Macedonia had opportunities for action outside Macedonia and indeed outside territory under direct Roman rule, which he could argue were part of his provincia in the sense of job, even if they were not part of his territorial provincia " (GR n.s. 28 [1981] 56). Lintott thus tries to evade the absurdity that arises from supposing that the proconsuls of Macedonia, Cilicia, and Syria in their normal course of activities continually left and reentered their provinces by postulating "a penumbra of responsibility outside the territory [magistrates] ruled directly" (p. 58). A far simpler hypothesis, given Lintott's own insightful arguments about the inconvenience of provincial boundaries, is that provinciae were strictly and formally demarcated only where it was necessary (1) to prevent commanders from stepping on each other's toes (e.g., division of the Spains in 197—in any case, not rigidly adhered to: Sumner, CP 72 [1977] 126-29; cf., however, Develin, Kilo 62 [1980] 355-68)—compare in this connection the lex Porcia of the end of the second century (Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 26-27)—and (2) for the functioning of maiestas laws at the regular points of entry and exit (cf. Cic. Fam . 3.5-6; cf. Lintott, GR n.s. 28 [1981] 54-55). Brunt rightly wonders whether provincial frontiers were regularly defined ("Laus Imperii," 324 n. 59). Lintott's trouble seems to stem from the notion that fines provinciae will have strictly distinguished "territory administered" (p. 55) from that not subject to "direct Roman rule" (p. 56); but that assumption is not defended and leads precisely to the bizarre results that Lintott describes.
even if in regular succession, was of course only a matter of Roman constitutional practice and did not affect the legal status of the area, any more than had previous assignments of Macedonia or even Graecia provincia during Rome's earlier wars in the East. The dear distinctions of the past between territory subject to Rome and the rest blur considerably. These preliminary conclusions raise a larger question of great importance for our understanding of the origins of Macedonia provincia . How did the Romans themselves define their empire in the second century?
Polybius is the sole contemporary source on second-century Rome that is available to us in any significant quantity; Livy cannot be considered a trustworthy guide to a conceptual world a century and a half before his time. Two central Polybian ideas about the nature of Rome's domination of the Mediterranean world stand out in sharp relief. The Romans had in 167 (with the defeat of Macedon and the abolition of the Macedonian kingship) completed the establishment of an arche over virtually the entire
Polybius is not, of course, Roman. Does it follow, as some have suggested, that he cannot be regarded as a useful guide to contemporary Roman perceptions of their supremacy?[47] A priori reflections are ultimately indecisive. It is not difficult to impugn some aspects of Polybius's view. It
[47] So Richardson, PBSR 47 (1979) 1-11; Gruen, HWCR , 278-79; cf. 343-51.
was perhaps all too easy for a young Achaean of the political class who came of age between the wars with Antiochus and with Perseus to attach inordinate significance to the matter of Roman orders, and in particular to what extent, and with what alacrity, they had to be obeyed. This was indeed the burning question of Greek leaders of the 180s and 170s[48] —and nothing may have seemed a more dramatic answer than the Roman deportation to Italy in 167 of all those who had seemed to be waiting on events rather than actively serving the interests of Rome.[49] Little wonder that from Polybius's perspective the matter was now dosed. But once the settlement and Rome's reprisals had passed, it was once again debatable whether its orders could be disobeyed or circumvented, and a study of Roman actions and Hellenic responses to them after 167 shows that at the least Polybius's view of the necessity to obey Rome is too starkly drawn.[50] But although this was an individual's fallible judgment of the factual situation, that does not diminish the significance of obedience to Roman commands as a basic and broadly understood criterion of empire. As for possible distorting effects of Polybius's Hellenic perspective, we must note that he was after all no ordinary Greek, unaware of Roman ways. During his detention in Rome, Polybius associated closely with prominent Romans for nearly two decades before returning to Greece, especially with P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the son of the conqueror of Macedon; and one of his main objectives, often explicit, is to explain the Romans to his Greek readership.[51] We should therefore need good reason to assume that Polybius so fundamentally misrepresents or misunderstands the Romans' own views about the nature of their arche , the very object of his lengthy and painstaking investigation. It is not enough simply to note that Polybius was capable of misunderstanding. We must be shown that such misunderstanding occurred.
[48] See especially Polyb. 24.8-13, in which the differing views of the Achaean statesmen Callicrates, Aristaenus, and Philopoemen are put on display and given great prominence. On Polybius's early education in Roman power, cf. now Eckstein, GRBS 26 (1985) esp. 277-82.
[49] Some 1,000 Achaeans alone, according to Paus. 7.10.11.
[50] Cf. especially Gruen, HWCR , 96-131, 192-98, 335-43, 517-20, 578-92, 660-71. See now Morgan, Historia 39 (1990) 37-76, for a vigorous attack on Polybius's "schematism"; but "perceptions" are hardly so easily distinguished from "realities," or so unimportant, as Morgan thinks.
[51] Cf. esp. Walbank, Polybius , 3-6. On Polybius's Roman associates, cf. now Dubuisson, Latin de Polybe , 260-62. Dubuisson is inclined to stress Polybius's Roman audience as well (pp. 266-67), but without diminishing the importance of the Greek.
One attempt to do so stresses the absence of Roman legal concepts such as imperium and provincia from Polybius's conception of the arche .[52] This line of argument would be valid only if we knew in advance that these concepts played a central role in Roman views of their empire in the middle of the second century, but that is precisely what is under investigation. Appeal to the ideas of Cicero, Strabo, Augustus, and others a century or more later will avail us not at all. Even Livy, who indeed gives much attention to the assignment of provinciae and grants of imperium , nowhere defines the imperium populi Romani as the sum of the provinciae . On the contrary, he can have a speaker say of L. Scipio, without a hint of paradox, that by his campaigns in Asia of 190/189 he had "extended the imperium populi Romani to the limits of the world" (38.60.5), although Livy knew well that not an inch of territory was "converted" into a province. Nor does he balk at having Cn. Manlius Vulso say in 187 that Greece and Asia were then under Rome's ius and dicio , and that the Taurus Mountains had become the finis imperii Romani (38.48.3-4). It will not do to assume that these statements (as well as similar ones that appear in Cicero) are mere oratorical fancies: if by the late Republic the imperium were sharply and strictly defined by reference to the provinces, such statements would simply be odd paradoxes rather than rhetorical extravagances.
Indeed, on the contrary, these statements illustrate well that even at the end of the Republic the imperium populi Romani was not inevitably linked with the provinciae .[53] After all, in the Augustan period allied kingdoms, whose legal status as socii et amici was no different from much of the Hellenistic world in the later second century, were regarded as part of the imperium .[54] In the Res gestae itself (26.1), Augustus unmistakably implies that there were peoples outside the provinciae who p [arerent imperio nos ]tro (cp. 30.2). If as late as the Augustan principate, when the military frontiers had roughly stabilized, the imperium was not strictly coextensive with the provinces, we should expect Roman conceptions of the imperium to be even more flexible nearly two centuries before, at a
[52] So Richardson, PBSR 47 (1979) 1-11.
[53] Cf. Lintott, GR n.s. 28 (1981) 64-66; Brunt, "Laus Imperii," 168-70; Harris, War and Imperialism , 105-6.
time when the permanent occupation of foreign territory overseas was far less extensive and the limits of Roman power still very much in flux.
An understanding of the imperium populi Romani begins with the phrase itself. It means fundamentally the "sway" or "supremacy" exercised by Rome over others; it does not mean "the Roman empire" in the way we use the term.[55] A Roman did not speak of a political community as "in the Roman empire" but as "under Roman sway" (sub imp trio populi Romani ) as a result of a Roman commander's action in "putting it under Roman sway" (subicere/subiungere imperio p. R .). What you do when you are "under Roman sway" (sub imperio p. R .) is "obey" it,[56] just as the citizen obeys the imperium of the consul, the son that of his father, the slave that of his master.[57] Imperium as "sway" is precisely the power to impose individual imperia or imperata , commands or orders.[58] Power and command are thus fundamentally linked in the Roman conception of imperium , a word that expressed above all the concrete relationship of power itself rather than an abstract concept of "empire" as formally and geographically defined. This brings us back to Polybius's stress on the significance of Roman commands and indifference toward concrete exploitation or possession of territory. His idea that the necessity to obey Romans defines and characterizes their arche fits too closely with the root meaning of imperium to be mere coincidence.[59] So natural was the link between obedience to any command and submission to the imperium that Livy can easily render Polybius's phrase
[55] Lintott, GR n.s. 28 (1981) 53. See now also Richardson, JRS 81 (1991) 1-9.
[56] E.g., orbem terrarum parere huic imperio coegit (sc. rei militaris virtus ) (Cic. Mur . 22). The verb parere (obey) is the natural complement in Roman contexts to imperium in this sense; cf. the passage from Augustus's Res gestae 26.1, quoted above.
[57] Cf. Plaut. Men . 1030: Nemp' iubes? Iubeo hercle, si quid imperi est in te mihi; Mil . 611: facilest imperium in bonis; Ter. Ad . 65-67 (in the context of father-son relations): errat longe mea quidem sententia, qui imperium credat gravius esse aut stabilius vi quod fit quam illud quod amicitia adiungitur .
[58] See OLD s.v. imperium .
[59] Noted in passing by Lintott, GR n.s. 28 (1981) 54.
[60] Polyb. 21.19.10 = Livy 37.53.4.
Hellenistic Greece as well as in Rome that the necessity to obey the victor's every command is the natural lot of those defeated in war.[61]
Although no conclusion can be absolutely decisive in view of the paucity of contemporary documentary evidence, those texts of Roman origin we do possess tend to confirm the essential identity of the Polybian and contemporary Roman conceptions of empire. In the Aetolian peace treaty with Rome, ratified in 189, the Aetolians committed themselves to preserve (?)
[63] Cic. Mur . 75: necesse enim fuisse ibi esse terrarum imperium, ubi ille esset .
[64] Orig . 5.3b Chassignet: Atque ego quidem arbitror Rhodienses noluisse nos ita depugnare, uti depugnatum est, neque regem Persen vinci. Sed non Rhodienses modo id noluere, sed multos populos atque multas nationes idem noluisse arbitror atque haud scio an partim eorum fuerint, qui non nostrae contumeliae causa id noluerint evenire; sed enim id metuere, si nemo esset homo, quem vereremur, quidquid luberet, faceremus , ne sub solo imperio nostro in servitute nostra essent. Libertatis suae causa in ea sententia fuisse arbitror (emphasis added).
Roman power in the region would leave the Rhodians sub solo imperio nostro , "under the sway of us alone,"[66] although there is clearly no suggestion that Rhodes might be made into a province. For him, as for Polybius, the imperium has no essential connection with provinces but consists in a practical relationship of power and domination that might extend well beyond the confines of Italy and even those areas in which commanders and Roman troops were present.[67] In light of these passages there is little temptation and less reason to suppose that Polybius has arbitrarily imposed an alien, Hellenic perspective when he reports Scipio Africanus's declaration in the 180s that the Romans enjoyed "control" (
Nor, I would add, was this exclusively an early phenomenon. A recent study of usage of the phrase has shown that before the first century B.C. an unambiguously "territorial" connotation of imperium populi Romani cannot be traced.[71] Notably, only in the late Republic do fines or termini of the imperium receive particular emphasis. Sulla was the first since the
[66] A phrase that suggests that one imperium need not even be exclusive of all others: a state can be dominated by more than one power (sub solo imperio nostro ). It is when a single imperium remains, with no remaining alternative to act as a balance, that servitus results.
[67] Gruen, however, seems to conclude from the usage of imperium in these passages that the Romans' "acknowledgment of empire" did not come until as late as the years between the Gracchi and Sulla (HWCR , 281; cf. 274).
[69] On which see especially Harris, War and Imperialism , 105-6; Lintott, GR n.s. 28 (1981) 54, 60-61.
[71] M. Awerbuch, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 25 (1981) esp. 171-84. Her adherence to a traditional conception of the nature of provinces (pp. 166-70) does not affect the validity of her observations. See now also Richardson, JRS 81 (1991) 5-7, who places the "full development" of a territorial connotation in the early Empire.
regal period to extend the boundaries of the pomerium , but the claim seems to have rested on territorial expansion in Italy rather than abroad.[72] Pompey made the proud claim, echoed by Cicero, that he had made the boundaries of the empire coextensive with those of the earth.[73] While it is true that in the prayer for the Secular Games of 17 B.C. the gods were called upon augere imperium , we do not know whether this phrase appeared in earlier versions, and in any case it is misleading to interpret this to mean "extend" rather than simply "increase": Cicero was quite happy in the Fifth Philippic (48) to include Flamininus among those who "increased the imperium of the Roman people" (populi Romani imperium auxerint ), although it was fifty years after Flamininus that Macedonia came to be assigned regularly as a provincia .[74] Even in the first century, then, the imperium was not regarded so much as a geographical expanse in which the Roman people exerted a dominant power but as that power itself; all the more so did this apply, we should suppose, in the second century.
These arguments do not commit one to the notion that all Romans had in mind a dear formulation of the nature of the imperium populi Romani , much less that they would all have agreed with Polybius's ideas of precisely when and how far Rome's supremacy was established. On the contrary, perhaps the most important result of the arguments above is precisely that
[72] Sen. Brev. vit . 13.8; Gell. NA 13.14.1-4; Tac. Ann . 12.23. Mommsen, RG , 2:355-56, who is often followed on this point (cf. Badian, Roman Imperialism , 34), guessed that Sulla's justification lay in a strictly formal extension of Italia . But the key point was surely the integration of virtually the entire peninsula into the ager Romanus as a result of the Social War: see now Sordi, CISA 13 (1987) 200-211. Note that only Tacitus speaks of extension of the imperium , while Seneca and Gellius both write of ager acquisitus or captus . Frei, MH 32 (1975) 75-76, justifiably speculates that the rule connecting extension of the pomerium with conquest may be an invention of the Claudian era. In a dialogue written in the late 50s but set in 129 B.C. , Cicero refers to monuments of generals on which was inscribed the boast of having extended the fines imperii (Rep . 3.24). But no examples of such inscriptions have yet been found. While it would be rash to discount a contemporary witness altogether (so Gruen, HWCR , 284-85), it is hardly safe to take the reference as secure testimony to second-century practice (so, apparently, Harris, War and Imperialism , 125), since Cicero could well have committed an unwitting (and for his purposes insignificant) anachronism on such a matter.
[73] Diod. 40.4; Cic. Cat . 3.26, Sest . 67, Balb . 13.
[74] Cf. Gruen, HWCR , 283, and Sherwin-White, JRS 70 (1980) 177, against Harris, War and Imperialism , 120-22. The haruspices on various occasions in the early second century predicted an extension of fines (see most recently Gruen, pp. 283-84); but imperium is not mentioned.
there was no neat, formal definition of empire for the Romans any more than there is for us.[75] The author of the Acilian extortion law of 123 or 122 has no pat phrase at hand to denote Roman-controlled territory and is forced to resort to a long circumlocution, in which provinciae and imperium nowhere appear, perhaps because these were insufficiently specific terms for inclusion in the law.[76]Imperium populi Romani was, of course, a phrase both concrete and not easily definable. The view of empire that I have argued was common to Polybius and to Romans in the second century focused on the actual capacity of the "metropole" to enforce its will upon the "periphery,"[77] rather than on legal structures (e.g., "provinces"). It was thus by its very nature nuanced and open to interpretation, unlike one that was formally or legally defined. It referred to norms of behavior and concrete means of control—the facts of power and the psychology of dependence—and thus was closely bound up with the real situation at any one time; but the "real" situation could change at any time, depending on precise circumstances. A Roman military presence could, of course, help to secure the imperium in any particular area; but as we have seen from Polybius and other texts, especially Cato, the imperium populi Romani prevailed no less where there were no Roman troops, as long as the dialogue of Roman command and indigenous obedience persisted. Senators in the middle of the second century B.C. will not have thought in terms of "annexations" or "organizing provinces."[78] The notion of the imperium as a spatial extent, geographically bounded, was little developed at this time. What counted was rather the maintenance and augmentation of Rome's power and supremacy—the imperium populi Romani in its original sense.
[75] Rightly stressed by Gruen, HWCR , 278-85 (cf. the comments of Devine, AJP 108 [1987] 785, and Rich, LCM 10 [1985] 95). Richardson's stress (JRS 81 [1991] 6) on the "co-existence of a pair of meanings" of the very concept imperium populi Romani is also apt. I differ from Gruen mainly in denying that the lack of a clear or official definition of a thing implies the absence of the thing. On definitions of empire, see above, p. 3.
[76] FIRA 7, line 1: [quoi socium no ]minisve Latini exterarumve nationum, quoive in arbitratu dicione potestate amicitiav [e populi Romani ]. Cf. Sherwin-White, JRS 70 (1980) 179; Gruen, HWCR , 281.
[77] Cf. Doyle's rather stricter, but similar definition, quoted in the Introduction, n. 5. Yoshimura's discussion of libertas and auctoritas (AJAH 9 [1984 (1988)] 1-22) similarly stresses the essential role of command and the evolution of "Machtverhältnisse" rather than legal concepts in the development of the Roman "empire."
[78] Harris, War and Imperialism , 105-6. See further on the Roman perception of empire, Crawford, Storia di Roma , 2.1:91-99.
The Military Nature of Macedonia Provincia
We may now return from our lengthy peregrinations to Macedonia. In Polybius's view Macedonia had been subject to the Roman arche since 168/167; and especially in view of the payment of tribute to Rome from that point, there is no good reason to doubt that the Senate wilt have regarded it as well as sub imperio populi Romani (cp. Cato on Rhodes at this time, quoted above). Although the Macedonians had been left "free" in 168/167, they had had no alternative to Roman domination after the elimination of the monarchy. From this standpoint, the change of the 140s—the continuing Roman presence—was not a fundamental alteration of the Roman relationship with Macedonia. Rather, it is likely to have been seen as a move that made more secure, rather than founded, the Roman imperium in the area. It was a radical departure in one sense only: in that, at a time of expanding military commitments elsewhere and de-dining enthusiasm for conscription (already in 151 there had been a domestic crisis over the levy), the Senate was for the first time prepared to maintain a legion east of the Adriatic.[79] Its purpose in doing so, and the significance of the change, are the next objects of our investigation.
It seems unlikely that the Senate ever made an explicit decision that henceforth, once and for all, Macedonia provincia would be assigned as a command and held under permanent occupation. Earlier parallels in Spain and Sicily show dearly that permanent occupation typically flowed gradually and insensibly out of the military demands of the moment: "To those who think in purely military terms ..., one danger is followed by another, and what has been won is not lightly abandoned."[80] The failed attempt of Scipio Africanus, consul in 194, to prevent the recall of Roman troops from Greece in view of the supposed danger presented by Antiochus, and to have Macedonia provincia assigned to one of the consuls (Livy 34.43), illustrates dearly the general rule that the issue of withdrawal or continued military presence was raised and resolved in a purely ad hoc manner precisely in the context of the senatorial determination of the consular provinces at the beginning of the year.[81] Immediate concerns of security were
[79] For the normal size of the army in Macedonia, cf. Brunt, Italian Manpower , 428-29. The consular commanders of 114-107 will of course have had two legions at least. 151: Polyb. 35.4.2-6; Livy Per . 48.
[80] Badian, Flamininus , 55.
[81] Cf. also the attempt of the consul of 187, M. Aemilius Lepidus, to have M. Fulvius Nobilior and Cn. Manlius Vulso replaced by himself and his colleague if the Senate wished to keep armies in Asia and Greece (Livy 38.42.8-13; cf. sec. 10: si exercitus in his terris esse placeat , and sec. 11: si eas provincias exercitibus obtinere opus esset ).
at issue in such discussions rather than long-term strategic policy.[82] Likewise, we should expect, Macedonia provincia was assigned to a commander when Metellus was relieved in 146 not because the Senate consciously resolved upon the permanent occupation of Macedonia but simply because it seemed necessary to do so in view of military concerns of the present; and the assignment of Macedonia to a new commander in 146 need not have been felt to be any more momentous a decision, committing Rome to permanent occupation of the country, than was the senatorial vote on Flamininus's recall in 194. Again we find nothing that reveals any consciousness of "annexation." It is not surprising, on the other hand, if eventually Romans came to regard Macedonia as "ours," as Appian makes Sulla say to Mithridates in a speech whose dramatic date is 85.[83] That would hardly be surprising after Roman troops and commanders had succeeded one another for some six decades. What Romans thought in the 140s is not so clear.
What was dear, however, and remains so to us, were the immediate military concerns of the Senate. The story properly begins, of course, with Andriscus himself, who, having seized power in Macedonia ca. 150 and taken the royal name Philip, gave Rome a shock not easily forgotten.[84] This "bolt-from-the-blue Philip" (
[82] On the absence of "policy" in the Roman Republic, see Astin, "Politics and Policies," and now Eckstein, Senate and General , xiii-xvi.
[84] On the war with Andriscus, see further especially Cardinali, RivFil 39 (1911) 1-20; de Sanctis, Storia , 4.3:123-27; and now Helliesen, Ancient Macedonia 4 (1986) 307-14.
to defend Thessaly, part of which indeed Andriscus already seems to have conquered.[86] Nasica's report to Rome finally induced the Senate to send an army under the praetor P. Iuventius Thalna—which, however, was crushed in 148 upon invading Macedonia, and its commander killed. The army escaped complete annihilation only by slipping away under cover of darkness, and Andriscus again invaded Thessaly.[87] The Romans had never suffered such a heavy defeat in all their campaigns against the great powers of the Hellenistic East. We need only recall what an effect the minor cavalry victory of Perseus at Callinicus in 171 had upon the Greeks to gain some appreciation of the likely psychological results of Andriscus's victory.[88] Polybius, already astounded at Andriscus's initial conquest of Macedonia, is completely nonplussed by this new event and, after devoting several pages to a discussion of how to explain utterly paradoxical occurrences, can do no more than call it a visitation from heaven.[89] Rome quickly saved face: in the very year of Iuventius's defeat, another praetor, Q. Caecilius Metellus, was sent out with a large army and was joined by a Pergamene fleet sent by Attalus II. Apparently aided by treachery in Andriscus's command, Metellus defeated the self-proclaimed king near Pydna.[90] It had in the end cost much and required a considerable effort to put down this Philip who had fallen from the skies. If Rome's initial reaction to Andriscus's capture of Macedonia suggests that the Senate was not rigidly committed to maintaining Paulus's arrangements of 168/167 in Macedonia, the sequel, including Thalna's disaster and the harassment of Thessaly, will have made dear not only that Macedonia was incapable of reliably defending itself but also that neglect of Macedonia could have grave repercussions in Greece as well.
[86] Zonar. 9.28.3-4. A Thessalian appeal for help from the Achaean League: Polyb. 36.10.5. Achaean troops and defense of Thessaly: Livy Per . 50 init . Broughtin, MRR , 3:72, now makes this Scipio Nasica the consul of 138 (Serapio) rather than his father; but the date must be 149, when Serapio was occupied with the collection of weapons from Carthage (cf. MRR , 1:459). Our Nasica must be the father (Corculum), cos. II in 155 and pontifex maximus (so MRR , 1:457, with wrong title and improbable date).
[89] 36.17.15. On this passage, important for Polybius's conception of chance and unreason, cf. Pédech, Méthode , 336-38.
[90] Zonar. 9.28.5-7; Livy Per . 50 fin. ; Strabo 13.4.2, C624. Other sources in MRR , 1:461. Treachery: Diod. 32.9b; Zonar. 9.28.7.
But if these broad considerations were not enough to ensure that the troops would not be entirely withdrawn with Metellus, continued instability, hardly to be separated from the old problem of fending off the Thracian, Gallic, and Illyrian tribes that nearly surrounded Macedonia, clinched the matter. Even while Metellus was still in Macedonia one Alexander, claiming to be yet another son of Perseus, collected an army and seized the area around the Nestus River, the ancient border with Thrace.[91] Metellus chased him into the land of the Dardani, but only a few years later another "Pseudophilip" or "Pseudoperseus" managed to gather a large army before being defeated and killed by the quaestor Tremellius Scrofa (whom the antiquarian Varro proudly claimed as an ancestor) under the auspices of the praetor Licinius Nerva.[92] And in 141 the Scordisci for the first time inflicted a defeat on Roman forces sufficiently memorable to be mentioned in the summaries of the contents of the books of Livy.[93]
Some scholars, impressed by Andriscus's success in 149-148 and the number of royal pretenders shortly after him, are inclined to understand these facts as evidence of a persistent and, from the Roman point of view, dangerous longing of Macedonians for their ancient monarchy.[94] Natu-
[91] Zonar. 9.28.8. For "Mestus," cf. Oberhummer, RE 17 (1936) 138-39. The boundary established by Philip II: Strabo 7, fr. 35. According to Strabo 7, fr. 47, in the time of Perseus and Andriscus the boundary stood as far east as the Hebrus; but Livy 45.29.5-6 implies that the Nestus formed the boundary for the most part, while Perseus had simply held some territory to its east that was made part of the first Meris in 167. See now Hammond, History of Macedonia , 3:611-12. On the history of the eastern frontier of Macedonia after 148, Loukopoulou, in Hatzopoulos and Loukopoulou, Two Studies , 63-100, gives the fullest discussion; cf. also Papazoglou, Villes de Macédoine , 78-82.
[92] Varro RR 2.4.1-2; Livy Per . 53. Eutropius (4.15) believes that the pretender's army consisted at first of slaves and eventually numbered 16,000. The first claim is probably tendentious (so Morgan, Historia 23 [1974] 194), but the victory was substantial, for Licinius earned salutation as imperator . The date should be 143 or 142, to judge from the sequence of Per . 53; Morgan (p. 198) urges the earlier date in order to leave room for another commander, D. Iunius Silanus (known only from his extortion trial in 140: Alexander, Trials , no. 7; cf. n. 93) in 142. Gruebner, CRRBM , 1:514-15, speculates that the late Republican coins of A. Licinius Nerva recall this victory, from which premise Morgan concludes, on the basis of the supposed Gallic shield, that the enemy mainly comprised Scordisci (pp. 194-95). Crawford, RRC , 469, doubts the association.
[93] Per. Oxy . 54. Morgan, Historia 23 (1974) 183-226, argues that the Roman commander was P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, cos. 138, rather than, as usually sup- posed (MRR , 1:477), D. Iunius Silanus. His case against Silanus is considerably stronger than the highly speculative one for Nasica.
[94] De Sanctis, Storia , 4.3:127; Danov, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 101-2; Gruen, HWCR , 433; Helliesen, Ancient Macedonia 4 (1986) 307-14.
rally, that some Macedonians in the 140s remained deeply attached to the greatness of the royal past is plausible enough, but perhaps too much practical significance has been attributed to it. A review of some features of the Andriscan war and its aftermath seems rather to imply that such nostalgic appeals to the glorious past had little concrete effect on the Macedonians; indeed, what has not been sufficiently emphasized is the damning association between the royal pretenders of the 140s and the Thracians, against whom the Macedonian kings had always had to defend their northern and eastern frontiers, and of whom, we are entitled to assume, Macedonians themselves, and certainly the Greeks of the coast, were still hardly fond.[95]
According to Zonaras, Andriscus had tried to stir up Macedonia once before the famous attempt of ca. 150, apparently without assistance from abroad—and failed.[96] In any case, on the better-attested occasion when he was successful, Andriscus did not rely solely on the propagandistic power of his royal claim: he gathered allies from the independent peoples and rulers hostile to Rome and invaded and seized Macedonia.[97] Zonaras's use of words implying hostile invasion is no accident: Andriscus's chief allies were clearly Thracians.[98] Thracians crowned him with the diadem, gave him his initial forces, invaded Macedonia with him, remained to give him support, took him in after his defeat by Metellus—and, when the game was over, handed him over to the Roman conqueror.[99] Nor were Andriscus
[95] On the long history of conflict between the Antigonid house and its Thracian neighbors, see conveniently Danov, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 72-92, who, however, plays down Thracian-Macedonian animosity and perceives a sentimental bond among the lower classes of both peoples. On the long antagonism between the Greek cities of the North Aegean and the Thracians, see Ehrhardt, Eos 76 (1988) 289-304.
[96] 9.28.2. Rejected without sufficient reason by Cardinali, RivFil 39 (1911) 7-8. There is no reason to assume that this earlier failure is a doublet of his subsequent initial defeat reported by Diodorus: on that occasion he fled to Thrace, on this one to Syria.
[98] Rightly noted by Bernhardt, PrH , 14.
and his Thracians given a warm reception. Our manuscript of the Constantinian Excerpts (= Diod. 32.15.7) evidently alludes to an initial defeat suffered by Andriscus and retreat to Thrace before he finally prevailed.[100] When Andriscus tried again, after a campaign of some three or four months the Macedonians east of the Strymon met him in battle and were defeated; even so, instead of swarming to the cause of the Macedonian monarchy, the Macedonians west of the Strymon, too, rudely forced their self-proclaimed monarch to defeat them in battle (Polyb. 36.10.4-5). No doubt along the way Andriscus managed to win some voluntary adherence,[101] but up to the point of his conquest of all Macedonia there is very little sign in our evidence of his popularity among Macedonians. Victory changes minds, of course, and although Andriscus seems to have been a harsh master, Polybius notes with regard to the defeat of Iuventius that the Macedonians fought very well against the Romans "for his kingship."[102] Although Andriscus had been established in Macedonia chiefly by force of arms, his invasion of the ancient vassal state Thessaly, and then the great victory over Thalna, can only have legitimized his power and resuscitated dreams of Macedonian greatness, which older men in 149-148 will still have recalled. By the time of Metellus's campaign Andriscus had managed to transform his bid for personal power into a Macedonian war of independence.[103] But we cannot lose sight of the fact that he had
[101] Livy's epitomator presents this as at least a partial explanation, but note the equal stress on force: contracto exercitu totam Macedoniam due voluntate incolentium aut armis occupavit (Per . 49). Derow's notion that the Macedonians offered "slight resistance" to Andriscus (CAH 8 [1989] 321) fails to take full account of the pretender's initial reception. Helliesen goes even farther in concluding that "the Macedonians seem to have accepted Andriscus as a genuine Antigonid" and that they gave him their "loyal support" (Ancient Macedonia 4 [1986] 314).
first been fought—and not merely once—as a Thracian-sponsored adventurer while his appeals to a royal lineage had fallen on deaf ears, and that without strong Thracian backing he would never have won Macedonia.
All of this surely makes the picture more complex and warns us against taking more seriously than the Macedonians themselves did the royal claims of the further pretenders mentioned above. The assumption of royal names by rebels as a claim to a kind of legitimacy is an interesting feature of the later second century B.C. , particularly noteworthy among the leaders of the slave revolts in Sicily,[104] but it says less about the degree of popular support than about the rebels' methods. Of more significance to Macedonians may have been the Thracian element that can be supposed to have formed the backbone of their bands. It is probably no mere chance that the man who collected a "band" (
[104] On whom see now Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion , 116-23, esp. 123: "The leaders of rebellion in antiquity turned to their advantage whatever established forms of authority and ceremonial were most appropriate or available at any point in time to enhance their own position and further thereby the cause of rebellion."
[105] Cf. above, n. 91, for the eastern boundary of the kingdom. Morgan, Historia 18 (1969) 430-33, dates this event early in 147. Note that according to Dio F 72.2 Macedonia was still not firmly under control at the time of L. Aurelius Orestes' mission to Achaea in 147 (p. 432 n. 55).
[106] Above, n. 92.
plunder (
These pretenders are not to be dissociated from their context: the old story of maintaining the integrity of Macedonia's frontiers on the north
[110] On this event cf. also Münzer, RE 2A (1923) 1509-10; Syme, Roman Papers , 2:607-8; Danov, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 113, associates this event with the Thracian invasion of 87.
and east against constant pressure. Their adventures are not safely regarded as explosions of popular discontent at the Roman presence. We are entitled to assume, even without good evidence, that Macedonians wished to be independent, that they often looked nostalgically to their glorious past, that they often resented the Romans. The question for us is whether such yearnings were likely to be translated into concrete action and thus presented a threat to Roman domination. There is room for much doubt there, particularly because there was an important convergence of Macedonian and Roman interests in the crucial matter of holding the frontiers against powerful external pressure, a matter of great importance to Macedonians of every type and class. The atrocities committed by the Thracian king Diegylis of the Caeni against Greeks and Hellenizers cannot have gone unmarked by the Greeks of the Macedonian coast.[111] All of this will have done much to legitimate the Roman presence.
An inscription set up in the summer of 119 at Lete near Salonica makes the point most vividly.[112] "Gauls"—Scordisci, evidently—had, surely that very summer, invaded the area around Argos on the Axius River.[113] The praetor Sex. Pompeius (grandfather of Magnus) advanced against them but fell in the battle. Pompeius's quaestor M. Annius brought up reinforcements, defeated the enemy, and gathered the exposed frontier garrisons into his camp.[114] But not many days later the "Gallic" horsemen returned, assisted now by a Thracian Maedic chieftain; they were defeated again by Annius, who wins special praise for not calling up a local (Macedonian) levy, and making do with the troops at his disposal.[115] For these deeds, and for his otherwise excellent behavior before and after the crisis, Lete voted to honor him with a laurel crown and an annual equestrian competition.[116] With all due allowance for honorific extravagance, the Lete inscription reminds us that Thracians were very likely less popular in Mac-
[111] Cf. especially Diod. 33.15; Hopp, Untersuchungen , 96-98; Loukopoulou, in Hatzopoulos and Loukopoulou, Two Studies , 68-69; Danov, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 102-3.
[112] Syll 700; cf. Robert, AntCl 35 (1966) 430-31; Wilhelm, Glotta 24 (1935) 133-44; photo of squeeze of final fifteen lines: BCH 57 (1933) pl. 18. Date: Cuntz, Hermes 53 (1918) 102-4; cf. the articles on the Macedonian calendar by Tod, BSA 23 (1918-19) 206-17, and 24 (1919-21) 54-67. Panemos was the ninth Macedonian month of a year starting around the autumn equinox: Tod, BSA 23 (1918-19) 209.
[113] Syll 700, lines 10-12. Cf. Papazoglou, Central Balkan Tribes , 292-93.
[114] Syll 700, lines 12-20.
[115] Syll 700, lines 20-31.
edonia than Romans, and that for many the choice between them will have been clear. Certainly our evidence, which tends to mention only the more significant victories or defeats, gives the impression that there was little letup in the pressure on the Macedonian frontier after 148.[117] We have already noted the series of pretenders in the 140s, and Rome's first defeat at the hands of the Scordisci in 141. In 135 or shortly thereafter M. Cosconius avenged this setback with a victory over the Scordisci "in Thrace" (Livy Per . 56). Perhaps it was in connection with this campaign that the city of Cyzicus in northwest Asia Minor, "beleaguered" most probably by Thracians, appealed to Cosconius for help.[118] After Cosconius we hear no more of victories or defeats until the catastrophe described by the Lete inscription, in which the praetor Sex. Pompeius was killed in action against the Scordisci in central Macedonia. The fasti triumphales are not extant for most of this period, but they do show that no one triumphed from Macedonia or Thrace from 129 until 111, and the space between the entries for 155 and 129 would not allow for much more than a triumph for Licinius Nerva and Cosconius.[119] Still, the via Egnatia , the purpose of which must have been above all to allow the Roman contingent in Macedonia a swift response to threats throughout the province, must have been built before 119;[120] so it is precisely in this period that the Romans were making a substantial commitment to the defense of Macedonia. And the Scordiscan invasion of 119 begins a protracted series of Balkan frontier wars, punctuated by severe Roman defeats as well as victories; between 114 and 111 this truculent people posed such a threat that consular commanders and
[117] On the military activities of the proconsuls of Macedonia in this period, cf. the brief survey in Papazoglou, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 308-17, and especially her Central Balkan Tribes , 286-311. A concise review in Harris, War and Imperialism , 272, add. note xx. Evans, AHB 5 (1991) 129-34, speculatively introduces a new proconsul to the fasti of Macedonia and a previously unknown Roman victory in 97-96.
[119] Degrassi, IIt XIII.1, pp. 558-59.
[120] Cf. appendix C.
armies were sent against them. Nevertheless, trouble continued down to the major Balkan offensives of the 70s, including one occasion in the later 80s when the Thracian Maedi took advantage of Sulla's virtual evacuation of the southern Balkans (stripping even the frontier of Macedonia, it seems) to burst into Greece; they even reached Delphi.[121] It seems little wonder then that the Macedonians, far from throwing off Rome's yoke (as did its free ally Athens), appear to have displayed signal loyalty when Mithridatic forces, with Thracian allies, invaded in 87.[122]
The proper conclusion from an examination of Roman activities in Macedonia from 148 is surely that a permanent Roman presence evolved in Macedonia not from a fixed resolve "to secure the final elimination of the recalcitrant" by imposing military occupation and "direct rule" but from the military demands of the defense of the Macedonian frontier.[123] That was not altruism. Andriscus had taught the lesson that the Roman supremacy in the southern Balkans established in 168/167 might be won or lost at the Macedonian frontier. Clearly, some more effective force than the local levies, which had failed to stave off Andriscus and his Thracian friends, was needed in order to protect Macedonia from the incursions that, as he and further pretenders showed, were a dangerous source of internal instability and could even cause trouble for Greece.[124] Rome had received tribute from Macedonia since 167; now, at a time when its manpower was spread more thinly than ever, Rome was forced to give in return some substantial assistance against external invaders and internal adventurers who might employ their support. On the other hand, the provincial garrison of perhaps one legion could hardly have been intended to police in the Roman interest the area behind the frontier, including Greece, as well as restrain the Scordisci and Thracians, with whom our evidence clearly shows its hands were full. It was not, in short, an army of occupation. The decision (explicit and conscious or not) to oversee the defense of the Macedonian frontier—the central innovation of the 140s—was, I suggest, for
[121] Papazoglou, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 316-17, and esp. Jul. Obs. 48, 53; Livy Per . 70, 74-76; Dio fr. 101.2. See chap. 10 and appendix I on the Thracian incursion of 84. Troops "from Macedonia" brought by Sulla to Italy: App. BC 1.79.
[122] Licinianus 35.76 Criniti. Thracians seized much Thasian land: Sherk 20, G; 21, lines 24-27. The Thasians' insistence on their uncompromising devotion to Rome's interest must of course be taken with more than a few grains of salt (Sherk 20, C).
[123] The quotation: Sherwin-White, JRS 67 (1977) 66.
[124] Even Harris, War and Imperialism , 146, admits in this case that "Rome was dearly compelled to act."
all its apparent novelty, an ad hoc reaction, an attempt to patch up Paulus's settlement by correcting the now-evident problem of the Macedonian republics' weakness. It was a conservative solution, keeping as much as possible unchanged, rather than a complete change of front revealing a new conception of the demands of empire in the East.
That is not to diminish the long-term significance of this innovation. Certainly Roman supremacy, hitherto represented at one remove by the payment of tribute, was now immediate and conspicuous, and at least the possibility of its being backed up with force was less distant. The quartering of even one legion, and the demands, legitimate and illegitimate, of its commander, were an unpleasant burden on those on whom they fell. Macedonians brought their first charge of extortion against a proconsul already in 140 and received the satisfaction of vengeance (the defendant, D. Iunius Silanus, killed himself) if not of restitution.[125] The presence of a Roman official would prove an irresistible magnet for appeals from Greeks (and presumably Macedonians as well, although the evidence is lacking) for the settlement of internal disputes, thus unconsciously encouraging the slow erosion of local authority. But that lay as yet in the future: as in Spain and Sicily, the military functions of the Roman commander will have been the primary ones, and Roman administration (such as it was) will have come gradually with time and habituation. In the 140s, points of continuity with the preceding period may have been as striking as any perceived discontinuities: Paulus's arrangements appear to have remained in force; the republics, including perhaps their frontier guard, persisted; tribute at half the royal rate continued to be handed over to the Romans. Macedonians had not changed "status," Macedonia had not been "converted into a province," and the imperium had not expanded.
[125] Cic. Fin . 1.24; Livy Per. Oxy . and Per . 54; Val. Max. 5.8.3. See Gruen, RPCC , 32-33; Alexander, Trials , no. 6.
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.
3
Mummius's Settlement of Greece
If the views presented in chapters 1-2 are sound, in order to assess properly the significance of the years 148-145 in the history of Roman power in the East we must focus our attention not on the dubious idea of "annexation" through the "creation" of provinces but on the specific, concrete realities of the settlement of the affairs of Macedonia and Greece. We have already surveyed what little there is to be known about the activities of Q. Caecilius Metellus in Macedonia; now we may turn to L. Mummius's settlement of Greece after the Achaean War, undistracted by the red herring of provincialization.[1] To what extent does the Mummian settlement represent a fundamental reorganization and restructuring of Greece's political forms? How far, on the other hand, does it follow in a now mature tradition of Roman settlements in the East, marked by the confiscation of booty, indemnifies, some territorial rearrangements, and a subsequent Roman withdrawal? As before, in pursuing these questions it is paramount to guard against straying beyond what our evidence actually tells us, or beyond the limits of its reliability, merely in order to hold on to cherished preconceptions or deeply ingrained interpretations.
Pausanias 7.16.9-10
The chief evidence for the arrangements of Mummius and the senatorial commission of ten is a passage from the survey of Achaean history in Pausanias's description of Greek antiquities, which dates to the second
[1] On the war itself, and its origins, cf. esp. Gruen, JHS 96 (1976) 46-69; Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 3-18; Bernhardt, PrH , 16-28; Fuks, JHS 90 (1970) 78-89 = Social Conflict , 270-81; Derow, CAH (1989) 319-23; Hackl, Senat und Magistratur , 33-50.
century A.D. Since so much of what follows begins from this text, it must be quoted in full:
Mummius destroyed the walls of the cities that had taken the opposing side in the war, disarming the inhabitants, even before the Romans sent out commissioners. When the men who were to advise him arrived, he thereupon set about putting down democracies and appointing the magistrates according to a criterion of wealth. Tribute was assessed upon Greece, and the wealthy were prevented from holding property outside their states. The leagues of each ethnic group—the Achaean, the Phocian, Boeotian, and those of other parts of Greece—had all equally been dissolved. But not many years thereafter the Romans took pity upon Greece: they restored the traditional ethnic leagues and the right to hold property abroad, and they remitted the fine that Mummius had imposed on some. (He had ordered the Boeotians to pay 100 talents to the Heracleans and Euboeans, and the Achaeans 200 to the Lacedaemonians.) The Greeks received these indulgences from the Romans, but a Roman commander has been sent out to them from that time down to the present. The Romans refer to him as the commander of Achaea rather than of Greece because they took hold of Greece by overcoming the Achaeans, who were at that time the leaders of the Hellenic world.[2]
When giving historical background, Pausanias is more likely to be transmitting his own broad but unspecialized knowledge than reporting original research or faithfully paraphrasing a written source. The controversy as to whether his source for Achaean history was Polybius or some other historian will not, therefore, settle the question of the authority of the passage as a whole, since on any particular point Pausanias may be
introducing other material from memory—perhaps faultily.[3] We have already noted that Pausanias is blatantly wrong about one thing: that Roman commanders were sent out regularly to Greece henceforth.[4] This error compromises the entire passage, or rather warns us that each item must be judged on its own merits, by reference to what corroborating evidence may be available. Nor is it enough that the account Pausanias gives is broadly "credible"[5] —what would be more "credible," did we not possess contrary evidence, than that Roman commanders were sent regularly to Greece after 146? In particular, since the misstep regarding the presence of Roman commanders shows that Pausanias supposed that Greece became a province at this time, we must be especially wary of any item that may be derived from the same line of thought.
Tribute
The most likely example of a hasty judgment by Pausanias is his assertion that "tribute was levied upon Greece," since this would be a natural assumption for a writer of the Principate who believed that Greece was now placed under Roman governors.[6] On the methodological principle just stated, without corroboration of this statement we should have to reserve judgment on the matter. It would be a very slender reed indeed if made to stand on its own. But, in fact, closer consideration in light of other evidence only weakens it.[7]
There is relatively copious evidence of the payment of tribute by various Greek states after the First Mithridatic War. The view, therefore, that no Greeks paid tribute before Achaea was assigned as a separate province from 27 B.C. is untenable.[8] The core issue is, however, whether tribute can be
[3] On the vexed question of Pausanias's source for his account of the Achaean War, see Walbank, HCP , 3:698, and Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 200-203. On Pausanias's impressive but fallible historical memory, see Habicht, Pausanias , 98-100.
[4] See p. 50.
[5] So Baronowski, Kilo 70 (1988) 458.
[7] On this old controversy the most important modem discussions are, in addition to Hill's (CP 41 [1946] 35-42), Accame, Dominio romano , 17-26; Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 67-69; and now Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 130-33, and Kilo 70 (1988) 455-56.
[8] See the concise survey of the evidence by Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 130-32, who is dearly right on this point against Hill. He fails, however, to see that Strabo 8.5.5, C365, does not imply a general tributary status before 86 (p. 133); we are simply not told when the Romans made the decision to distinguish the Lacedaemonians from others subject to tribute.
traced before the Mithridatic War, for otherwise it would be most plausible to associate its appearance with Sulla's punitive actions against those who had supported or succored the Pontic forces against Rome. But for the period before 86 B.C. the evidence held to attest to the levying of tribute is—in remarkable contrast to the following period—in very short supply. Indeed, in my view, there is none. Let us review it briefly.
In an inscription of 73 from Oropus concerning a dispute between that city and the Roman publicani over tributary status, two relevant passages from the current lex locationis (the statute regulating state contracts for the collection of revenue) are quoted. The first mentions grants of immunity given by the Senate or Roman commanders (note the plural number of these); the second, grants given by Sulla that were duly ratified by the Senate.[9] The assumption of one scholar that the first passage refers necessarily to pre-Sullan grants is quite unfounded; the plural number was presumably intended to cover all past and future cases at the time of the lex locationis , itself of indeterminate date, but not necessarily going back to Sulla.[10] These quotations from the lex locationis applicable to Boeotia in 73 B.C. therefore provide no evidence for tributary status before Sulla.
Nor can we draw important conclusions from the grant by a Roman magistrate of freedom from taxation and special contributions (
Some have tried to get around the problem of the lack of actual evidence for tribute by deduction from legal forms: so, it is argued, the title civitas libera or immunis allegedly held by some cities from 146 implies of itself a provincial tributary status in Greece with which it is implicitly contrasted.[13] I remain skeptical of such abstract deductions, particularly since
[9] Sherk 23, lines 35-42.
[10] Accame, Dominio romano , 18, for the view here disputed, tightly rejected by Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 126 n. 157.
[12] Cf. Poland, RE 5A (1934) 2488-96, for a convenient summary.
[13] Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 68-69; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 126; Bernhardt, Historia 26 (1977) 70-72. Generally speaking, civitates liberae were not subject to Roman taxation: see Dahlheim, pp. 255-61, supplemented by Bernhardt, Historia 29 (1980) 190-98.
the premises are quite uncertain.[14] That various communities held such titles in the middle of the first century B.C. and later—for that is the evidence on which the argument relies—tells us nothing about what was done in 146-145. On the other hand, what explicit evidence we have speaks quite unambiguously of the
In sum, no evidence corroborates Pausanias's bland assertion of the levying of tribute upon Greece in 146. There are, on the contrary, good reasons to believe that Roman tribute was imposed as a punishment upon parts of Greece immediately following the Mithridatic War. The argument must necessarily be one ex silentio , for it is not in the nature of things for
[14] Compare above, pp. 48-49.
[15] Above, p. 48 n. 23; cf. Sen. Ben . 5.16.6.
[16] Bernhardt, Historia 26 (1977) 62-73.
[17] Cf. Sherk 1, lines A 3, 5; B 3, 5; C 4 (Delphi); Sherk 34, lines 20-21 (Teos). Cf. Hill CP 41 (1946) 35-42; Gruen, HWCR , 525-26.
[18] Livy 45.29.4, 29.12, 30.1; Polyb. 36.17.13; SHA Hadr . 5.3 = Cato, ORF Fr. 162 (p. 61).
a nonevent to be documented by positive evidence. And yet there are stronger and weaker arguments from silence, and the fundamental criterion for distinguishing between them is whether our evidence would look substantially different if the proposition in question were indeed true. That is precisely my contention with regard to Mummius's alleged imposition of tribute.
The first solid evidence for Greek tribute comes as soon after the Mithridatic War as 78 and 73 respectively, at Carystus on Euboea and the area of Oropus in Boeotia.[19] Can this chronological coincidence be mere accident? Euboea was the major Pontic base during the war in Greece, and we know of at least one other punitive measure associated with its behavior in the war: Sulla's gift to Archelaus of 10,000 plethra of Euboean land, evidently confiscated after the battle of Orchomenus (Plut. Sull . 23.2). Boeotia, on the other hand, served mainly as a battlefield but still was too ready to favor whichever side was stronger in the immediate neighborhood. For this Sulla plundered the land and punished Thebes by assigning half of its territory to the Panhellenic sanctuaries as recompense for his appropriation of their treasures.[20] Of particular interest for the case of the environs of Oropus, the Boeotian towns along the Euripus, under the eye of the Pontic commander at Chalcis, seem to have remained on the wrong side to the end: Sulla ruthlessly destroyed Anthedon, Larymna, and Halae (Plut. Sull . 26.4), and Oropus probably escaped the same fate only by its association with Amphiaraus.[21] Given what we know of the campaigns in Greece in 87-86 the sudden appearance of evidence for the collection of tribute from Euboea and Boeotia so soon after the Mithridatic War hardly looks like a coincidence.
On the other hand, Carystus especially, and perhaps northeast Boeotia too, are not likely candidates for subjection to tribute in 146-145. Our evidence shows that among Euboeans, only Chalcis can be shown to have taken the side of Achaea and Thebes, while, on the other hand, most of the rest of the island, which had been plundered by the Thebans just before
[19] Sherk 22; Sherk 23. See Baronowski, in S YNEISF OPA McGill, 131, against Hill.
[20] App. Mith . 51, and regarding Thebes, 54 (cf. Plut. Sull . 19.6). For Thebes' punishment, cf. Paus. 9.7.4-6; Plut. Sull . 12.3-9; App. Mith . 54. Obviously not all of Boeotia had earned Sulla's wrath: cf. Thespiae (App. Mith . 29; cf. BCH 50 [1926] 437, no. 73) and Chaeronea (Plut. Sull . 16.8, 17.5-18.1, with the inscription recently discovered by Camp, Ierardi, McInerney, Morgan, and Umholtz, AJA 96 [1992] 445).
the war, took no part in the hostilities against Rome.[22] Thebes alone among Boeotian cities is conspicuous in our evidence on the Achaean side, and there is precious little evidence to support the view that the Boeotian towns along the Euripus rallied against Rome in 146.[23]
The payment of tribute by Euboeans outside of Chalcis and by northeast Boeotians makes best sense, then, as a result of the campaigns of the Mithridatic War. Now if any communities were assessed tribute for their behavior in the Achaean War, they should have been the member states of the Achaean League. Yet no literary or epigraphic evidence attests unambiguously to the payment of tribute by any community of the Peloponnese before the end of the Republic.[24] It is hard to believe that this too
[23] The opposite conclusion, however, is reached by Knoepfler, MH 48 (1991) 267-77, who argues for widespread Boeotian participation; for the northeast, he bases his conclusion upon the somewhat dubious evidence of Mummius's rededications at Aulis and Oropus. See Paus. 7.15.9-10, 16.9-10; cf. 14.6; Polyb. 38.14.1-2, 16.10. Livy Per . 52 (in auxilio Boeotos . . . habebant ) need not imply more than Thebans, particularly since the epitomator notes the punishment of Thebes alone among the Boeotian cities. Paus. 7.16.9-10 is indecisive, since in the same context he is probably using "Euboeans" generally, Chalcis having opposed Rome, while Cic. Verr . 2.1.55 (urbesque Achaiae Boeotiaeque multas ) is too vague to be of use.
[24] An inscription of 72 from Gytheum (Syll 748, lines 18-34) mentions apparently ad hoc exactions in preparation for M. Antonius Creticus's projected expedition against Crete. (On such exactions, cf. Gruen, HWCR , 525 n. 221, who believes that they imply the absence of a regular assessment of tribute.) The honors for the quaestor Ancharius (IvO 328) probably are to be associated with the same campaign. Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 73-74, guesses that Ancharius may have been involved in the collection of tribute. The attitude of the Peloponnese during the Mithridatic War was not of the sort, it seems, to have attracted punitive measures: cf. App. Mith . 29; Memnon, FGrH 434 F22.10; Plut. Luc . 2.2 (mistranslated in the Loeb ed.); with Accame, Dominio romano , 130.
is only coincidence, just as it strains credulity to assume it is only chance as well that almost immediately after the Mithridatic War significant evidence for the payment of tribute in Greece suddenly appears. The silence of our evidence is itself significant, for in no respect is our epigraphic and literary evidence for Roman provincial administration in general fuller than it is regarding the complaints and disputes to which tributary obligations gave rise: we need only compare Asia, where such complaints become quite prominent in our evidence within the first generation after the imposition of Roman tribute by M'. Aquillius.[25] And yet the dispute of 73 over whether Oropus was subject to Roman tribute or was exempt because its revenues belonged to a god (Amphiaraus) is the first such case known from Greece[26] —over seventy years after tribute was established in Greece on the usual hypothesis.
The exemption from tribute given Elatea in Phocis for its demonstration of loyalty in 86 against Taxilles's Pontic army is no hindrance to the view presented here that tribute was assessed upon Sulla's enemies in the Mithridatic War and not before.[27] It is indeed likely at this date that this right implies the levying of tribute elsewhere—but it does not tell us that Elatea had paid tribute previously. Equally plausibly, Elatea was rewarded for its recent loyalty by being explicitly exempted from the first assessment of tribute upon parts of Greece by Sulla after the defeat of the Mithridatic forces.[28] We might compare the exemptions given to communities in Illyricum at the same time as the imposition of Roman tribute there in 167 (Livy 45.26.13-14). Sulla's treatment of the cities of Asia certainly shows that he was in a rather vindictive—not to say avaricious—mood.[29]
Certainly, to judge from the perfectly regular pattern of the past, we should expect Rome to extract some sort of financial indemnity at the end of the Achaean War. (The "fines" levied by Mummius were paid not to
[25] Cf. chap. 5.
[26] On the terms of the debate, cf. Sherk 23, lines 24-29; and Cic. ND 3.49.
[27] Paus. 10.34.2, 34-4; cf. 1.20.6. Accame, Dominio romano , 22, indeed saw this; cf. Hill CP 41 (1946) 36-37.
[28] Unfortunately, little is known of the attitude of Phocian cities in the fighting, much of which took place on their soil. Cf. Plut. Sull . 16.8; FD III.4, 69 = SEG I. 175, with Daux, Delphes , 402-3. It is probably safe to assume that, like Boeotia, where the major battles took place, loyalty to Rome was less conspicuous than cultivation of the stronger party or more likely victor.
[29] See chap. 10.
Rome but to Greek victims of the Achaeans and Thebans.)[30] This consideration raises the possibility that Pausanias's statement rests on a misinterpretation of his source. In Polybius,
To sum up, the view that Greece was tributary from 146 hangs from one slender thread: Pausanias's assertion in a passage with one blatant error (the assignment of Achaia provincia to a commander from 146) that demonstrates a serious misapprehension of the status of Greece. Given this misunderstanding, and the ease with which a writer of the Principate might associate the presence of provincial governors and tributary obligations, Pausanias's statement about tribute is virtually devoid of authority. It is certainly not corroborated by documentary or other specific evidence. On the contrary, that evidence appears in places where the penalty of tribute would be no surprise as a result of the Mithridatic War but would be a rather awkward consequence of the Achaean; while the part of Greece most obviously culpable in Roman eyes after the Achaean War (the member states of the Achaean League itself) shows no sign of the payment of tribute until a century later. This argument from silence against the assessment of Roman tribute in 146-145 is, to my mind, stronger than Pausanias's bland statement.
Mummius and Greek Democracy
After the assessment of tribute, here rejected, the most weighty of the measures Pausanias attributes to Mummius is that of "putting down" (
[30] The Achaeans were to pay 200 talents to Sparta; the "Boeotians", 100 talents to Heraclea and the Euboeans. These were remitted "not many years" later (Paus. 7.16.9-10).
[31] Cf. Polyb. 1.63.3; 2.12.3; 3.15.10; 15.20.7; 18.44.7; 21.3.3, 11.9, 23.8.
standard of wealth.[32] Pausanias's statement is both sweeping and vague—what precise actions comprise "putting down" democracies?—and there is no consensus among modern scholars on the extent to which the constitutions of Greece were rearranged by Mummius and the commission of ten.[33] Again, in view of the diminished authority of this passage of Pausanias, this stark claim cannot be privileged in any way and must be corroborated, if we are to accept it, by other evidence.
It is clear enough that Mummius did make certain constitutional arrangements, although their scope and character is unclear from the scattered references we have that are of any specificity. Mummius gave the Achaeans laws, indeed a politeia , in 146-145.[34] Before the commission of ten departed, Polybius was instructed to take a judicial tour of the cities, settling disputes and helping people to gain familiarity with the new politeia and laws (39.5.2-3); we may conclude that these new regulations had a noticeable impact on citizens. "Laws" (
It is this last measure that Pausanias dearly associates most closely, by means of a
[32] 7.16.9, quoted on p. 58.
[33] For wide-ranging changes, cf. Colin, RG , 651-54 (who implies that Rome altered the government even of Athens, which had taken no part in the war); Deininger, Widerstand , 240-41; Niese, GGMS , 3:351; Larsen, in ESAR , 4:308; de Sanctis, Storia , 4.3:178. Ste. Croix, Class Struggle , 525, is cautious, but cp. p. 307. More recent studies have been more conservative in their assessment: Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 11-22; Bernhardt, PrH , 221-22; Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 65-67; and Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 124-25.
therefore demands our special attention. Certainly, in classical Greek political thought, the selection of magistrates in accordance with a property qualification was something associated with "oligarchy" or "timocracy" and was not consistent with "democracy",[37] Pausanias (or his source) was simply following an old tenet of classical political philosophy in interpreting this as an oligarchic change. But we are entitled to question whether in the actual circumstances of the middle of the second century B.C. a standard of wealth for the holding of political office amounted in fact to the suppression of democracy as it was then understood.
First, we should note that we have no second-century comment on the motivation behind such a measure, for which Flamininus's arrangements in Thessaly in 194 provided an important precedent. Livy, to be sure, has an explanation for Flamininus's selection of wealthy councillors and judges on that occasion: "He made stronger that portion of the population of the cities that benefited more from security and stability."[38] However, we cannot assume that this comment appeared in Polybius,[39] and it cannot safely be treated as anything other than Livy's own interpretation, nearly two centuries after the event. For all that, it is not in my view entirely wrong; I hope to show that it has been misinterpreted precisely because it has fit so well with the preconceptions of many modern scholars.
What practical effect would a census requirement for office have had in Greece in the middle of the second century? It must be emphasized that Pausanias speaks of a criterion of wealth only for selection of magistrates (
[37] See, for example Arist. Pol . 1278a, 1294b, 1306b; Xen. Mere . 4.6.12.
[38] Potentioremque earn partem civitatium fecit cui salva et tranquilla omnia esse magis expediebat , 34.51.6.
[39] On Livy's readiness to impose a class dimension upon what he found in his source, see the brief but insightful comments of Derow, Phoenix 26 (1972) 308; for other such Livian editorializing, cf. 42.30.1, 30.4; 35-34.3.
belonged to a relatively narrow, wealthy elite.[42] Even in Boeotia, in Polybius's view a land characterized by gross demagogy in his day (20.6.1-3), we do not hear of "the masses" holding public office but of the political leaders' pandering to their wishes.
On the other hand, any specific innovation ought to have had some real objective. It is possible that our preoccupation with class as a tool of analysis has obscured for us something that was quite clear to the contemporary observer. Polybius suggests that an endemic ailment of contemporary politics was the prevalence of bribery. When Flamininus chose to treat Philip V better than the Aetolians in particular had anticipated, Polybius comments: "Since by this time bribery and the notion that no one should do anything gratis were so prevalent in Greece—and quite current coin among the Aetolians—they could not believe that Flamininus's complete change of attitude toward Philip could have been brought about without a bribe."[43] Polybius was quite interested in the attitude of other societies toward graft and peculation and sees it as a revealing sign of a society's state of health;[44] it seems likely that it was precisely its flourishing state in Greece that made him particularly sensitive to this matter. It is of particular interest in this light to note that bribery, or at least allegations of it, played a prominent role on the Achaean side in the diplomatic prelude to the war with Rome. Menalcidas, the Achaean strategos , was said to have been offered a bribe of ten talents to assist the Oropians against the Athenians ca. 151/150;[45] Menalcidas supposedly promised to split the bribe with Callicrates in order to win his influential support, but then, after winning in this way the adherence of Callicrates, "a man who could never resist a bribe," he refused to pay him off. Menalcidas, now brought to trial by Callicrates for his conduct in office, gave Diaeus, the new strategos , three of the ten talents to save him. Diaeus (later to lead the Achaeans against Mummius, after Critolaus's death) was rivaled in greed only by Menalcidas, it was said.[46] Whether or not the scandalous stories told about the Achaean leadership were true, it seems clear that some thought it had been compromised by a weakness for "gifts." Diodorus, for what it is worth, adds that the Achaean strategoi during the crisis with Rome were themselves indebted (32.26.3). The selection of magistrates (and it is mag-
[42] Cf. Polyb. 28.7.7, with O'Neil, AncSoc 15-17 (1984-86) 41-43, and Walbank, HCP , 1:221-22.
[43] 18.34.7; Paton's translation in the Loeb edition, slightly modified.
[44] See 18.35 and especially 6.56.2-5.
[45] For the date, Walbank, HCP , 3:532.
[46] Paus. 7.11.7-12.8; cf. 16.6.
istrates alone who are mentioned by Pausanias) according to their wealth may well have been intended to exclude men who, though not precisely "poor" and surely not of the lower social class, were under some pressure of personal circumstances, not least because of debt, and might otherwise be thought to be ready to take advantage of their official position to compensate for the expenses of public life.[47] Polybius, at least, thought that political leaders' financial embarrassment could induce them to make damaging revisions to the laws (13.1.3). The possible danger from this source was especially great immediately after the recent war, which must have ruined not a few fortunes: aside from the devastations of defeat itself, the war effort in Achaea had included a moratorium on actions against debtors for the duration of the war and enforced contributions from the wealthy, and the ban on landholding abroad already noted will have been a further blow for some members of the social and political elite.[48] The inscription from Dyme discussed below gives a good indication of the volatility of the Achaean cities at this time. Men otherwise entitled by their former social and economic standing, but ruined in the recent war, might have caused considerable trouble if they had been permitted to hold public office before conditions had settled.[49]
A closer analysis of the circumstances of 146-145, therefore, strongly suggests that the selection of magistrates on the basis of wealth was intended above all to assure a smooth transition to the postwar order. Is there any reason to suppose that, as universally supposed, Mummius imposed a permanent property qualification for Greek (or Achaean) magistracies? Not if we take Pausanias precisely at his word. His Greek, strictly read, means not "he established property qualifications for magistracies" but "he appointed magistrates [
[47] See Polyb. 28.7.7 for the expense of getting oneself elected Achaean strategos and the expectation that one might try to do something about it while in office. Analogous if by no means equivalent expenditures would surely have been required of candidates for urban magistracies.
[48] On the war measures concerning debt and enforced contributions, see Polyb. 38.11.10, 15.3-6, 15.11, with Fuks, JHS 90 (1970) 79-84 = Social Conflict , 271-76.
[49] It is to be noted that debts were deducted from evaluations of property in the Roman census: Nicolet, World of the Citizen , 70-71.
property qualification was laid down rather than that such qualifications were used by Mummius in appointing new magistrates. The well-known parallel to Mummius's action, Flamininus's enrollment of councillors and judges "for the most part according to their wealth" in Thessaly in 194,[51] tends toward the contrary conclusion. Here unambiguously we hear only of a single instance of the appointment of officials according to a standard of wealth, not the imposition of a lasting property qualification.[52] Certainly, property valuations (
We have no direct evidence of any further constitutional tinkering by Mummius.[55] Some scholars have supposed that a tilt in the constitutional balance toward the power of the councils can be discerned from 146, and that this can be attributed to Mummius. The change in nomenclature of the councils of many central Greek cities from
[51] A censu maxime et senatum et iudices legit , Livy 34.51.6.
[52] Note especially a censu maxime , "for the most part according to wealth," a dear indication that even on this occasion a standard of wealth was not the sole consideration. Briscoe, Commentary , 127 (cf. Past and Present 36 [1967] 6, 10-11), goes far beyond the evidence in speaking of a "reorganization of Thessaly on a timocratic basis" and (especially) of a "restricted franchise": Livy speaks only of iudices and senatus . Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 71-72, Gruen, AJAH 1 (1976) 39, and Armstrong and Walsh, CP 81 (1986) 40, all of whom assume that Livy is speaking of a census qualification, justifiably doubt that it would have had much effect on the tenor of Thessalian politics, already dominated by an elite.
[53] Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 11-12; with the criticisms of Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 65-66 n. 8; Robert and Robert, REG 82 (1969) p. 433, no. 82.
[54] For a more blatantly partisan example of a temporary measure to ensure a quiet transition to peacetime, compare the requirement in the senatus consultum of 170 that all magistracies at Thisbe for the next ten years be tilled by those who joined the Romans in the war with Perseus before the siege of their city: Sherk 2, lines 20-24.
Mummius, since it demonstrably predates 146 in certain instances and seems to have spread over the whole of the second century in various parts of Greece; and the common assumption that the Romans had something to do with it is based on nothing more than a rough chronological coincidence.[56] In any case such a change in nomenclature has no clear relevance for the relative power of the institutions of government.[57] Study of the constitutional bodies mentioned in the epigraphic prescripts of local decrees is another indirect approach. J. Touloumakos noted the declining frequency with which after 146 the people (
[57] As supposed by Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 26.
[58] Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 31-32, 150; Bernhardt, PrH , 221-22, however, seems to discern the hand of Rome in this development.
[59] IG IV[2] 1. 63, line 9; 65, lines 14-15; 66, lines 47-48; V.1. 1432, lines 41-42 (on which see Wilhelm, JÖAI 17 [1914] 29-30; the date of the document is controversial; cf. appendix E); VII. 190, lines 29-30; SEG XI. 470, lines 1-2 (for the date, cf. above n. 56: quite possibly pre-146); XXII. 266, line 20. The honors for a Mantinean priestess in IG V.2.266 are not inappropriately voted by the board of priestesses (lines 29-32); mention of the executive officers and the council concerns only the publication of the stele (lines 41-42). Touloumakos's list of inscriptions that ostensibly demonstrate the decline of the powers of the demos ("Einfluß," 31 n. 3) must be used with great caution, not least because post-IG advances in the reading of the texts are not always noted.
decrees in which the people are not mentioned tend to be rather mundane and administrative in nature, therefore perhaps not requiring approval by the assembly. The early first-century publication of an oracle at Argos or the arrangements for a trip to Patrae by the Thurian
In Dyme in northwest Achaea a disturbance broke out ca. 144 which went as far as the destruction of the town's archives; in my view, the local authorities quickly brought the situation under control but appealed to the proconsul Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus, then in Patrae, to judge and punish those they presented to him as the culprits.[61] This affair has often been held to illustrate Pausanias's comment on the suppression of democracies, but in fact this incident is too obscure for us to tell even whether "democracy" was at issue here. We must beware of arguing in a circle here, for the fragmentary and tendentious evidence—Fabius's own letter describing his decision and punishment of the alleged conspirators—is short on specifics, and there is great danger of imposing prior assumptions to make the evidence say what we want it to. Whatever the true nature of the trouble, it does seem clear that Fabius accepted the appeal to his judicial authority with alacrity and decisively favored those he regarded as Rome's friends, just as had L. Aemilius Paulus after the war with Perseus in 167.[62] Further it must be stressed that this was an extraordinary situation, fully explained by the internal instability in Achaea and political demoralization
[60] Oracle: Syll 735, lines 19-20. Thurians to Patrae: SEG XI. 972 = ISE 51, probably, though not certainly, to be dated somewhat before 146 (cf. IvO 46, and Moretti ad ISE 51; Accame, Dominio romano , 142; contra: Guarducci, RivFil 60 [1932] 85 n.2; Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 19-20, n.1), in which case it is not evidence for the effects of Roman intervention in that year. Thurian grain commission: IG V.1. 1379, lines 11-29. Cf. Robert, BCH 52 (1928) 426-32. Roebuck, CP 40 (1945) 165 n. 112, suggests a date after 146, but this is quite uncertain.
[61] Sherk 43, formerly misdated to ca. 115. For full discussion, see my forthcoming article, "Q. Fabius Maximus and the Dyme Affair (Syll 684)," CQ 45 (1995).
[62] Livy 45.31.
in the immediate aftermath of the war while the Mummian settlement was still at a critical stage. As we have seen, after Fabius's appearance ca. 144 in the Peloponnese Roman commanders will have been a very rare sight indeed; it would be a mistake to conclude from this apparently exceptional event that the proconsul of Macedonia after 146 kept a sharp eye on internal affairs in the cities of Greece and was prepared to intervene decisively to eliminate any democratic stirrings.[63] Similarly the harsh actions taken by Paulus and the Roman commission in 167 did not set the conditions for continual meddling; indeed, the contrary seems most likely: these measures were intended to make such dose attention unnecessary.
A summary is in order. Mummius and the commission of ten gave the Achaeans certain laws and a politeia . Pausanias interprets the political effect of these arrangements as the suppression of democracy, citing specifically a qualification of wealth. It remains unclear whether a lasting property requirement was imposed for magistrates or whether this was the criterion Mummius used in 146 to appoint new magistrates; nor can we be sure what the intention behind it was, although I have suggested that, contrary to the usual view, the measure most probably is to be seen as one with no more than a temporary effect, and its purpose was to reinforce the settlement at its most critical time. No other evidence corroborates Pausanias's view of a decisive shift in the Greek states (or at least those defeated in 146) away from democracy as the concept had come to be known by the middle of the second century.
Indeed, much is to be said for the view recently presented that Pausanias's statement about democracy is in fact a contentious rejoinder from an anti-Roman source to the contemporary presentation of the war and its settlement in Roman official policy and by Polybius himself. Polybius's portrayal of Critolaus and his fellows as tyrants, and the references in the inscription from Dyme to the politeia and "freedom" "restored" by the Romans all suggest that, in the official interpretation, the Mummian settlement was a restoration of the traditional democracy after a highly disruptive wave of tyranny.[64] It is noteworthy in Polybius's account of the war that he is eager to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of a few irresponsible leaders; the reason is dear: the mass of people can thus be exculpated before the Romans.[65] There can be little doubt that this is pre-
[63] Cf. chap. 2.
[64] Acutely discerned by Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisrne , 186-209.
cisely the view that Polybius presented to Mummius and the commission of ten, who otherwise showed that they were willing to accept Polybius's interpretations of Achaean history.[66] If so, they ought not to have seen the demos as a threat to stability, but its irresponsible leaders. And it is certainly hard to accept the idea that Polybius, who was personally closely associated with the Roman settlement of 146-145, and whose thought even after 146 is dearly committed to the traditional Hellenic ideology of autonomy and independence,[67] had a hand in the suppression of his beloved native democracies. It seems likely that Pausanias's source seized upon Mummius's appointment of magistrates on the basis of wealth in 146-145 as a means to refute current official claims that the traditional democratic system was being restored.
The widespread notion that Rome actively sponsored timocracy and was hostile toward Greek democracy in the second century dies hard and will no doubt encourage resistance to the line of argument presented here. This is not the place for a full rebuttal and we must restrict ourselves to what may cast light on the situation in 146. First we must note that while there are dear precedents in 194 and 167 for the establishment by Roman conquerors of political structures where the defeat of an enemy had left a vacuum of public authority, there is no parallel whatever for Roman intervention against democracy as such; nor can any clear instance be cited of Roman activism in establishing the wealthy in power on a permanent basis as opposed to a onetime measure intended to provide a quiet transition to a new political order.[68] One does not find in Polybius or indeed in Livy (the author's editorial comments excluded) any evidence of Roman contempt or hostility toward the moderate form of democracy that was virtually universal in Greece at this time. It would be quite unjustifiable to retroject to 146, when Greek cultural superiority was still daunting, the anti-Greek and antidemocratic sentiments voiced in the middle of the next
[66] Cf. their acceptance of his arguments regarding the statues of the great Achaean proponent of independence from Rome, Philopoemen (39-3.3-9).
[67] Well noted by Musti, Polibio , esp. 87-88. Dubuisson's view that Polybius underwent a fundamental "romanisation de la vision du mond" (Latin de Polybe , 288 and passim) is unconvincing. See Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 289 n. 83 and 347-48.
[68] Briscoe, Past and Present 36 (1967) 5-6, fails to establish his point: what is needed, and is lacking, is evidence of specific Roman action to prop up the power of the wealthy as such. See also the cautious remarks of Bernhardt, PrH , 219-25, 268-70.
century, when Hellenic political weakness, after over a century of Roman domination, might indeed be an object of contempt to the rulers of the world.
Nor, on the other hand, does the old notion of Rome's "natural preference" for rule by the wealthy offer the key to understanding.[69] This is not the place to respond in detail to this hypothesis, which depends more on a priori assumptions about class solidarity than upon evidence of Roman actions and behavior. We might note at the outset that Mummius's ban on property holding abroad will have harmed only wealthy Greeks, as Pausanias himself explicitly notes;[70] so whatever preferences may have existed were readily subordinated in 146-145 to other concerns. In any case we have no evidence from the whole of the preceding period of Roman intervention in the East of any direct action taken in favor of wealthy Greeks against their poorer compatriots. The unsubtle but nevertheless in broad terms surely valid distinction that appears in our sources between the attitude of the general Greek populace toward Rome (unenthusiastic to hostile) and that of political leaders (often sharply divided between those who put a premium on cultivating Rome's friendship and those who resisted all infringement of local independence)[71] is based on differences not of class interest or ideology but of assessments of what was to be gained, publicly and privately, by a stand for or against Rome. The fundamental contrast is between a few leaders whose policy of appeasement of Rome was given credibility by the reality of Roman power, and everyone else—leaders such as Philopoemen, Archon, and Lycortas in Achaea as well as in most cases the majority of the populace—united in their devotion to independence and full national sovereignty. The question is not therefore why the poor did not love Rome but why a few political leaders did;[72] and the simple answer is that alliance with Rome's interests could translate into power for certain individuals among the political elite—provided only that the Romans made very dear that they were making a point of de-
[69] The phrase is Briscoe's (Past and Present 36 [1967] 19). The opening examples Briscoe gives for this "natural preference" do not in fact bear it out.
[71] Cf. especially Livy 35.33.1, 34.3; 42.5.2-6, 30.1; Polyb. 24.9.3-7.
[72] See now the judicious treatment by Bernhardt, PrH , 130-35, 254-62, 268-73, 282-83. But surely the view that the poor had nothing to lose (Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 125; cf. Bernhardt, p. 132) runs the risk of perpetuating an ancient stereotype; like Juvenal's Codrus, they stood to lose that totum nihil that they possessed.
manding adherence.[73] The Romans, for their part, tended to favor those Greeks who supported them, and showed no ideological consistency in doing so.[74] In the absence of any indication that Romans of the middle of the second century saw Greek democracy as a threat, or of any precedent for Roman intervention with the object of establishing the wealthy in a permanent position of power, skepticism about Pausanias's claim of the suppression of democracy tout court is warranted.
Mummius and the Greek Leagues
Nothing in Pausanias's description of the results of the Achaean War has generated so much controversy as his statement regarding the dissolution and the subsequent restoration of the Greek leagues.[75] Since this assertion immediately follows a list of actions taken by Mummius and the commissioners, scholars have always assumed that this sentence forms part of that list. It then becomes necessary to explain why Rome would have formally disbanded the leagues in 146-145 only to reform them "not many years later" (Paus. 7.16.10). Those who sense an a priori difficulty with a formal abolition of the leagues or interpret other evidence in such a way as to contradict Pausanias's assertion dismiss it as another example of Pausanian historical confusion.[76]
It is possible, however, that Pausanias has here been misread. The crucial verb is in the pluperfect tense and passive voice (
[74] Rightly noted by Briscoe, Past and Present 36 (1967) 3-20. For pro-Roman demagogues, cf. Charops of Epirus (esp. Polyb. 27.15; 32.5-6) and the Aetolian Lyciscus (esp. Polyb. 27.15.14; 28.4.6-7; 30. 11.6; 32.4.1; Livy 45.28.7).
[76] Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 20-24; Gruen, HWCR , 525. Contra Walbank, HCP , 3:734-35, and CR n.s. 26 (1976) 238.
had been dissolved.[77] Strictly speaking, Pausanias simply does not say that Mummius dissolved the leagues. It seems that Pausanias here has stepped back in time and is referring to an event that occurred not as part of, but before, the settlement.
If we are to seek some time before the formal settlement of the war in which to place the dissolution of these leagues, there can be none better than the concluding stage of the war itself. As far as one can reconstruct the story from Pausanias and Zonaras, our fullest sources, after the disastrous battle at the Isthmus the Achaean League simply collapsed: soldiers and commanders fled to their home cities, and the federal strategos Diaeus committed suicide.[78] Under such circumstances it is very difficult to imagine that the League was able to cohere sufficiently to surrender en bloc,[79] assuming Mummius was even inclined to accept anything but individual deditiones ; and it will have been in the interest of many member cities to attempt to distance themselves from the actions of the League. The Boeotian League, assuming that it existed in 146,[80] and the Phocian League, if at least part of it had joined the Boeotians, will have suffered the same fate as Metellus marched through the country.[81] It was by military action, and by accepting the surrender of individual cities, not by a formal ban, that Metellus and Mummius caused the collapse of the leagues.
A close historical and linguistic parallel without actual fighting, is provided by the "dissolution" of the Boeotian League in 172/271 as a direct result of the individual deditiones of the Boeotian cities to Q. Marcius
[79] Rightly stressed by Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 18, 22.
[80] Cf. below, n. 93.
Philippus (Polyb. 27.2.6-7) rather than a formal ban. Using precisely the word Pausanias applies to the Greek leagues in 146, Polybius writes that "The league of the Boeotians was dissolved [
The significant point in all of this for us is that Pausanias 7.16.9 is not good evidence for the formal abolition of the leagues by Mummius. If my interpretation is correct, he and the senatorial commission did not ban the leagues but did nothing to reconstitute them. The Achaean, Boeotian, and Phocian leagues were casualties of the war, not of the settlement; they were not the marked victims of a new senatorial hostility.
T. Schwertfeger has gone farther, rejecting Pausanias altogether and arguing not only that Mummius and the senatorial commission did not dissolve the leagues, but that they reconstituted at least the Achaean League already in 146-145. In his view, the future of the leagues was the crucial question of 146-145, so Mummius and the commission must have done something about it; and their solution can only have been to recon-
[83] It was Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 19-22, who first persuasively pointed out that the apparent collapse of the leagues would have made their formal disbanding by Mummius superfluous. I part company with him only in arguing that this is, in fact, what Pausanias implies. Contra: Walbank, HCP , 3:734-35, and CR n.s. 26 (1976) 238.
[84] IG IV[2] 1.28; Larsen, in ESAR , 4:308-9. Cp. Paulus's prohibition of commercium between the Macedonian republics in 167: Livy 45.29.10.
stitute the Achaean League, in view of the fact that its existence is attested later.[85]
Obviously, I hold no brief for Pausanias, but it must be said that the evidence for this view is disappointingly weak: both the inscription from Dyme and Polybius refer to a politeia "given" or "restored" by the Romans to the Achaeans, dearly already in 146-145 rather than a few years later; and an honorary inscription for Damon of Patrae, if dated to 122, used
[85] Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 23-24.
[87] See appendix F.
[89] Cf. the Thracian commander of a native contingent under Sulla: REG 32 (1919) 321-22. Robert and Robert, REG 89 (1976) pp. 470-71, no. 282, note that our Achaeans could even have been mercenaries.
[90] League: in addition to Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 24-25, see Ac-came, Dominio romano , 149-51; de Sanctis, Storia , 4.3: 174, 176 n. 20; Moretti, RivFil 93 (1965) 281. Cities: Walbank, HCP , 3:734-35, and esp. CR n.s. 26 (1976) 238; Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérìalisrne , 191 n. 235.
credit for establishing politeiai (in the plural).[91] Q. Fabius Maximus in the Dymaean inscription had good reason to exaggerate the subversiveness of the troublemakers who, he alleges, had tried to overthrow the politeia restored to the Achaeans (not just Dyme). The earliest certain testimony to the existence of the Achaean League after Mummius appears not before early in the first century B.C .[92] The evidence is therefore very unclear, but none of it conflicts with Pausanias's view that the leagues did not function for a few years after 146.
The evidence for the Boeotian League after the settlement of the Achaean War is equally unhelpful for assessing Pausanias. Indeed, it is controversial whether the Boeotian League as such was reconstituted after the Third Macedonian War and thus even existed in 146 as Pausanias appears to believe, but let us suppose that it did.[93] The first dear attestation of its existence after 146 comes in an inscription dated before 120 by one epigraphist but more usually toward the turn of the second century.[94] Only the evidence for the Phocian League provides some support for Pausanias's notion of a lapse for a short period after 146. The disappearance of the name of the Phocian federal strategos from Phocian manumissions at Delphi between ca. 146 and 128, where previously this official had been cited in the dating formula without exception, is suggestive.[95] Although this falls short of proof for the nonexistence of the Phocian League between those years (for even after 128 the strategos is no longer regularly cited in the dating formulae), it does suggest an interruption of some kind.[96]
[92] IvO 328, 333; and VI. Olympiabericht (1958) 214.
[93] See Etienne and Knoepfler, Hyettos , 342-47 (accepted by Walbank, HCP , 3:293, 435, 708; Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impériàlisme , 325 n. 198) against the existence of the League between 172/171 and 140; on the boiotarch Pytheas (Paus. 7.14.7) Knoepfler now takes a different view (MH 48 [1991] 268). Roesch concludes that the League was reconstituted after Pydna, though in a much looser form (EB , 406-8, 499-500). However that may be, politically it was impotent (Ferrary, p. 325 n. 198).
[95] Cf. Accame, Dominio romano , 201, and now especially Martin, "Greek Leagues," 148-53, 589. For the upper terminus, Daux, Delphes , 354 n. 3, is skeptical about 146, but his order of archons (CD , 55) supports this date.
[96] Contra: Daux, Delphes , 354 n. 3. Cf. Martin's chart, "Greek Leagues," 169.
Other documents mentioning the Phocian League or its officials are too loosely dated to offer any help.[97]
In sum, Pausanias's statement about the Greek leagues after the Achaean War cannot be decisively confirmed. On the other hand, it receives some small corroboration from the Phocian manumission lists at Delphi, and it is (in contrast to other points discussed above) not likely to be the result of some misapprehension of the status of Greece in 146 or polemical distortion by his source. It may therefore be provisionally accepted. The "restoration" of the leagues will probably have taken the form of a favorable senatorial response to an embassy sent to Rome for the purpose. At the same time, the right to own land abroad was restored—a fundamental element of league structure—and the fines imposed by Mummius were remitted (Paus. 7.16.10). The date of this act is irrecoverable, although it should precede 128 if the Phocian evidence has been read correctly.[98] It is tempting to associate the restoration of the leagues and the other signs of Roman "pity" mentioned by Pausanias with Polybius's visit to the Senate sometime after the Mummian settlement had taken root (Polyb. 39.8.1-2). The leagues, when reconstituted, may have been smaller or weaker or both, but this need not be attributed to Roman dictation.[99]
The central point, for our purposes, is that Pausanias, if accepted on the fate of the Greek leagues, does not imply that Mummius and the senatorial
[97] SEG I.149 and 151 (mid- and later second century: Martin, "Greek Leagues," 154-58), Syll 647 (probably mid-second century: cf. especially Pomtow in Syll ad loc., nn. 1, 13-15; Accame, Dominio romano , 204; Martin, "Greek Leagues," 164 n. 60), and possibly BCH 59 (1935) 96-97, with Daux's restoration of line 1.
[98] Walbank, HCP , 3:735, and CR n.s. 26 (1976) 238, following a hypothesis that goes back at least to Hermann, Abhandlungen , 351, suggests that the date Pausanias gives for the end of the Achaean War is in fact to be taken as the date of the revival of the leagues. That seems unwarranted. There is further trouble over which year in the 160th Olympiad (140-136) Pausanias means: the Athenian archon he names in the MSS is unknown and is emended in our texts (cf. esp. Dinsmoor, AAHA , 224).
commission formally abolished them. The prevalent view that the future of Greek leagues was a burning problem which Mummius and the Senate could not avoid confronting in 146,[100] and that consequently he set about abolishing some or reconstituting others because they were allegedly a useful means of controlling Greece,[101] blows the issue out of all proportion. The Greek federal states were hardly a source of worry to the Romans, given their proven inability to challenge Roman power—least of all now, when the strongest among them, the Achaean League, had been crushed, and the Boeotian and Phocian leagues had pathetically folded. Their fate could safely be left to the chastened Greeks themselves. Indeed, after "not many years" in abeyance, they reappeared: "Hellenic institutions, once the Romans retired, had a way of slipping back into place."[102]
Further Arrangements
To round out our discussion of political restructuring and formal arrangements of Mummius and the commission of ten, we may note that Mummius heard at least one interstate dispute, the old struggle over ownership of the Denthaliatis region contested by Messene and Sparta.[103] The land had been granted to Messene by Philip II and his decision confirmed by Antigonus Doson, but the Lacedaemonians, encouraged no doubt by Rome's recent support against the Achaean League, took advantage of Mummius's presence to resurrect their claim; they were, however, disappointed, for Mummius decided for the Messenians. It is true that Messene had not played an active role in the war, but this remains a noteworthy example of resistance to the temptation of unscrupulously rewarding Rome's loyal friends. The hearing of such disputes as part of a general settlement was a normal task of Roman victors, and we can prob-
[100] E.g., Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 23; Martin, "Greek Leagues," 583-85.
[101] This is often asserted but never proven. See, for example, Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 128-29, and Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 73-74, who suggests that the basic function of the Achaean League after 146 was to collect Roman tribute from its constituent cities. This depends of course on the dubious premise that Rome collected tribute from Achaea at all, and in any case lacks evidence. (On IvO 328 see Dahlheim, p. 129 n. 162.) There is no sign that irregular exactions were demanded from the League rather than from individual dries.
[102] Gruen, HWCR , 525. The words refer to the form of local government but are equally applicable to the leagues.
[103] Tac. Ann . 4.43; cf., however, Syll 683 of ca. 138 B.C ., where the absence of Mummius's supposed judgment is peculiar. See Dittenberger ad loc.; Accame, Dominio romano , 130.
ably assume that there were others in 146-145.[104] A fragmentary inscription from Nemea has been thought to imply that in 145 Mummius judged the dispute between Cleonae and Argos over the direction of the Nemean games, but the references in the text to laws and Mummius and the commission of ten may rather suggest that the dispute was negotiated not by Mummius himself but in accordance with regulations for such disputes established by him in consultation with the ten commissioners.[105]
After only six months in Greece, in the spring of 145 the commission of ten returned to Rome; Mummius presumably followed closely, bringing most if not all of his army home for a triumph in 145.[106] Greece was declared "free."[107] But this did not conclude the work to be done. We have always known that the commissioners instructed Polybius to travel through the cities, settling disputes and helping the transition to the new laws and politeia (39.5.2-3); we now know, however, that a Roman proconsul, Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus, had taken Mummius's place and was supervising the process of adjustment.[108] But soon after ca. 144 (when Servilianus is known to have been at Patrae) Roman troops, we must assume, withdrew from Greece yet again, as they had in 194, 187, and 167.
A very different picture of Mummius's settlement of the Achaean War begins to emerge from a painstaking analysis of the evidence for his acts of reorganization and restructuring. In chapter 2 we saw that there is no reason to posit the reduction of any part of Greece to a province; now we see also that it is most improbable that tribute was levied in Greece in 146-145, and that whatever constitutional modifications Mummius introduced are unlikely to have brought radical change in local governance in the long run. The settlement of Greece of 146-145 no longer appears to signal a break with past Roman behavior; indeed, the continuities are striking. As in the past, the Roman victor "gave laws" (leges dedit ) to the defeated peoples to govern their reconstruction, and then withdrew; some of the measures—the enrollment of officials according to a property valuation,
[104] Cp. Manlius Vulso in 188: Sherk 10A, lines 4-5; 10B, lines 6-7. Similarly (probably) Flamininus in 195/194: Livy 34.48.2.
[105] SEG XXIII.180, with Bradeen, Hesperia 35 (1966) 328-29. Cf. Polybius's drafting of laws on interstate jurisdiction: 39.5.5.
[106] Polyb. 39.5.1. Triumph: Degrassi, Ilt XIII.1, pp. 557-58.
[107] See chap. 2. If App. Mith . 58 (quoted above, p. 31, n. 83) is a reflection of what Sulla thought in 85, the status of Greece was by that time at least very dearly distinguishable from that of Macedonia.
[108] See Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impériàlisme , 186-90, and my "Q. Fabius Maximus and the Dyme Affair," CQ 45 (1995), for the new identification and date.
and provisions for interstate jurisdiction—recall precedents set by Flamininus.[109] Financial exploitation of victory in perpetuum was evidently a consideration secondary to others: Rome declined to extend its administrative and military responsibilities, even though they might have been made to pay for themselves through the levying of tribute.[110] None of this, of course, implied the abdication of imperium : quite the contrary, as I believe the most notorious Roman action—the destruction of Corinth—shows.
The Destruction of Corinth and Other Punitive Measures
Most of the Corinthians had already abandoned the dry when Mummius captured Corinth on the third day after the battle at the Isthmus.[111] After Mummius had performed the solemn ritual of devotio , designating the enemy dry and its population as a sacrifice to the gods of the underworld, Corinth was taken by storm and burned. Those who were unfortunate enough to have remained in the city were slaughtered or enslaved, and the dry was thoroughly plundered.[112] This treatment was fully in accordance with traditional Roman terroristic practice toward communities that refused surrender and thereby "forced" their capture by assault.[113] Such savage treatment of stiff-necked enemies encouraged surrender in the future and kept the troops happy, for in the middle of the second century, at a time when elsewhere, particularly in Spain, warfare was bitter and unprofitable, the need to satisfy the soldiers' hunger for booty was particularly strong.[114] When to these strong motives is added Mummius's own ambition (for the booty from Corinth was a splendid haul that contributed in no small degree to its conqueror's fame throughout the Roman
[109] See n. 35 and pp. 69-70.
[110] On the role of economic motives in Roman expansion, see Gruen, HWCR , 289-95, 308-14; Harris, War and Imperialism , 68-74, is less skeptical.
[111] Paus. 7.16.7; Zonar. 9.31.5 and Flor. 1.32.5 speak as if it was completely abandoned, Zonaras immediately contradicting himself on this point (31.6).
[112] On the capture, cf. especially Paus. 7.16.7-8; Zonar. 9.31.6-7; Oros. 5.3.5-7; Flor. 1.31.6-7; Justin 34.2.5; Pliny HN 34-3-6-7; cf. Polyb. 39.2. Münzer (RE 16 [1933] 1198), Accame (Dominio romano , 161), and Derow (CAH [1989] 323) make the burning of the city consequent on the later senatus consultum rather than an immediate result of its capture. Devotio : Macrob. Sat . 3.9.9-13.
[113] Cf. Polyb. 10.15.4-5; Harris, War and Imperialism , 50-53, and add. note IX, pp. 263-64.
[114] Cf. Harris, War and Imperialism , 41-53, 102-3.
world),[115] Corinth's damning role in the events that led to the war (it was there that Roman envoys had been mobbed and insulted in 147),[116] and the accident that it was the first place in the Romans' path to offer real resistance, we have a more than complete explanation for its treatment at the hands of Mummius and his troops.[117]
After Corinth was thus burned and looted, and its population enslaved or in flight, it is difficult to imagine what more was needed to destroy it physically. The question that remained after the smoke had cleared was above all whether it would be formally extinguished as well, or whether it would be permitted to be reconstituted. Similarly, in the Third Macedonian War, Haliartus in Boeotia had been thoroughly destroyed upon its capture by the Roman troops in 171, after which the Senate refused to allow its restoration as a community and handed over its territory to Athens.[118] Most Corinthians had fled,[119] apparently to the other towns of the Peloponnese; this was the stock out of which Corinth might again have been resettled.
A distinction should therefore probably be drawn, and some lapse of time be assumed, between the assault on the city, with the attendant sack and fire that must have inflicted enormous damage, and its formal extinction by subsequent senatorial decree, almost certainly brought to Greece by the ten commissioners after news had come of the conclusion of the war.[120] Although the ancient sources are not usually careful to draw such a distinction, with an interval of time between the two events, there is some support for it in our texts. The sequence in Zonaras (9.31.6) places the destruction of buildings and walls after the arrival of the ten commis-
[115] Harris, War and Imperialism , 76; Pietilä-Castrén, Arctos 12 (1978) 115-23; and now Gruen, Culture , 123-29. The booty of Corinth made a strong impression: see Pliny HN 33.149, 34.36 (not solely Corinthian); Cic. Verr . 2.1.55; and the Tituli Mummiani (below, n. 139). Little store should be set by the series of anecdotes about Mummius's lack of artistic refinement (Paus. 7.16.8; Pliny HN 35.24; Veil. Pat. 1.13.4).
[116] Paus. 7.14.1-3. The meeting of the Achaean League in early 146, which declared war on Sparta (Polyb. 38.12-13) and thus played a significant part in the development of the crisis with Rome, also took place at Corinth.
[117] See also Veyne, MEFRA 87 (1975) 819.
[118] Livy 42.63.11: diruta a fundamentis ; Polyb. 30.20.
[119] Above, n. 111.
[120] See Münzer, RE 16 (1933) 1198-99. Walbank, HCP , 3:728, and Hackl, Senat und Magistratur , 48, suppose unnecessarily that Mummius had been authorized in advance to destroy Corinth. Compare the destruction of "what was left of" Carthage according to the instructions brought by the decem legati: App. Pun . 135. Ex senatus consulto: Livy Per . 52; cf. Cic. Leg. Man . 11.
sioners, although they will presumably not have left Rome until news came that the war was over, hence not before the capture of Corinth; while Florus dearly distinguishes the sack of the city from its demolition (1.32.6). Roman precedent in the East was dearly to have decem legati bring with them senatorial regulations concerning the major issues of the settlement,[121] and we have already noted the parallel of Haliartus for a senatorial decision, subsequent to a city's capture and physical destruction at the hands of the troops, forbidding the reconstitution of a community.
But while the senatus consultum that decreed Corinth's fate is to be seen above all as a negative injunction forbidding the reconstitution of the city and thus extinguishing the state,[122] it is dear that it also put the final touches upon its physical destruction. Corinth's buildings—perhaps above all public buildings, an important expression of civic identity—and walls were to be demolished.'[123] Archaeological exploration does not appear to reveal methodical demolition so much as massive destruction, much of it perhaps the result of the capture of the city rather than of the subsequent decree; but the walls were certainly breached and thrown down in places.[124] In addition, the captive Corinthians (but not those of other states) were to be sold, and Corinth's territory confiscated as ager publicus (Zonar. 9.31). It was not an exaggeration to say that by this decision [Corinthum ] funditus sustulerunt .[125] Still, the land was not to go to waste. Confiscated by Rome, it was let out to possessores for a vectigal , and Sicyonians held the greater part of it.[126] The vectigal , though perhaps not a great source of revenue, will have been welcome. The idea that the land was cursed in
[121] Besides the obvious examples of the peace settlements of 196, 188, and 168, consider an earlier reprisal in the aftermath of war: Aemilius Paulus's plundering (including the destruction of fortifications) of seventy towns in Epirus in 167, permitted by the Senate, presumably by a senatus consultum brought by the decem legati (Livy 45.34.1-6; Plut. Aem . 29; Strabo 7.7.3, C322 = Polyb. 30.15). I thank E. S. Gruen for bringing this parallel to my attention.
[122] Cf. especially Cic. Leg. agr . 2.87-90.
[123] Zonar. 9.31; Oros. 5.3.6.
[126] Zonar. 9.31.6; Strabo 8.6.23, C381; Cic. Leg. agr . 1.5; FIRA 8, line 96; Paus. 2.2.2. Hill CP 41 (1946) 38, rightly stresses that Sicyon had possessio , not ownership, of most of the land.
addition is a misunderstanding of the ceremony of devotio and has perhaps been influenced by the romantic embellishments that have corrupted the modem tradition on the fate of Carthage.[127]
Already in ancient times there was speculation about why Rome annihilated Corinth in 146. The official justification seems to have been founded on the treatment of the Roman envoys in 147,[128] but explanations given distill into two complementary traditions: to deprive Greeks of a useful stronghold in war for the future, and to act as a deterrent by striking terror into other cities and subsequent generations.[129] We should note that no ancient source gives substance to the notion favored by an earlier generation of scholars that Corinth's fate was due to the jealousy of Roman capitalists established at Delos.[130] That view presumes too much about the amount of leverage exerted by Roman traders on the Senate in foreign affairs;[131] furthermore it ignores the copious epigraphic testimony of Delos that Romans were established in force in Delos only after the destruction of Corinth.[132] Indeed, it seems that Roman traders were well established in Corinth itself at this time.[133] Moreover, if, as argued above, Corinth suffered extensive physical destruction already at the time of its capture and sack, and the subsequent senatorial decree only added the finishing touches, there was no need of its formal extermination as a community in
[127] Curse: Colin, RG , 643; Lenschau, RE suppl. 4 (1924) 1033. Devotio prior to an assault will presumably not have interfered with subsequent possession or use of the land. Scipio's "consecration" of Carthage following its capture (Cic. Leg. agr . 1.5. 2.51) was apparently a different thing. On Carthage, see now Ridley, CP 81 (1986) 140-46.
[128] Livy Per . 52; Cic. Leg. Man . 11.
[130] Mommsen, RG , 2:50; Colin, RG , 643-44. Accepted by Feger, Hermes 80 (1952) 440-41; favored by Hill, RMC , 99-100; Harris, War and Imperialism , 98-99, is noncommittal. Contra: Hatzfeld, Trafiquants , 373; Rostovtzeff, SEHHW , 2:739-40; Gabba, Athenaeum 32 (1954) 66-68; Badian, Roman Imperialism , 20; de Sanctis, Storia , 4.3:157-60; Deininger, Widerstand , 239-40; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 126 n. 155; Walbank, HCP , 3:728-29; Will, Histoire politique , 395-96.
[131] On which see now Gruen, HWCR , 304-6, 308-14.
[132] See especially Hatzfeld, BCH 36 (1912) 104; Laidlaw, History of Delos , 202-3; Wilson, Emigration , 103-5, 114-15. Cf. Strabo 10.5.4, C486, a rather mud-died passage.
[133] Cf. Deininger, Widerstand , 239 n. 9; Wilson, Emigration , 96; Walbank, HCP , 3:729.
order to insure that the once-great emporium would be no threat to Delos for a very long time to come.
A number of parallels from past and contemporary practice give greatest credence to the "terroristic" or, if one prefers, the "deterrent" intention behind the destruction of Corinth. Polybius believed that the Romans used ruthlessness strategically. He notes, for example, that it was their habit, upon first capturing a city, to cut to pieces every living thing they met: "They do this, it seems to me, to inspire terror" (10.15.4-5). In Greece the Romans seem on the whole to have avoided such tactics until the war against Perseus, when they were rather liberally indulged. Haliartus was annihilated for its stubborn resistance, and Paulus brutally laid waste to Epirus, plundering some seventy towns and hauling away as slaves some quarter of a million Epirotes, to punish it for favoring the Macedonian king; both punishments were decreed by the Senate.[134]
On the other hand, the Senate renounced and did what it could to correct the savage treatment meted out by commanders in the field in the same war to Coronea and Abdera, ravaged despite (it seems) their surrender;[135] this reminds us that such actions were a matter of policy, not to be indulged in lightly or out of mere passion, and were regarded as harsh but just retribution for hostility to Rome. Outside of Greece, the Roman order in 149 to the Carthaginians to abandon their city, and its eradication when captured in the very year of the destruction of Corinth, 146, gave further examples. In the case of Carthage the punishment seemed so far out of proportion to the crime that some Greeks, Polybius indicates, resorted to the explanation that Rome was turning to a policy of destruction for its own sake (36.9.5-8); yet here too it seems a distinct lesson was being taught concerning the dire results of paying insufficient heed to Rome's demands. Corinth, too, surely was eliminated as a community above all for symbolic effect. The ruins of the ancient, prestigious, and hitherto rich city will have served as a lasting memento, standing beside the most-traveled routes in Greece, of what wrath disobedience to Roman commands could provoke. That the ruins of Corinth did attract considerable attention over the following century, before its Augustan refoundation, is dear from a host of references, including epigrams from the Palatine Anthology.[136]
[134] Haliartus: Polyb. 27.1.8, 5'3; 30'20'1-9; Livy 42.44, 46, 56, 63; Strabo 9.2.30, C411. Epirus: above, n. 121. Ziolkowsi, PBSR 54 (1986) 69-80, stresses the economic over the political motive for the mass enslavement of the Epirotes.
[135] Coronea: Livy 43.4.11; Zonar. 9.22.6. Abdera: Livy 43.4.8-11; Diod. 30.6.
[136] On Rome's "terroristic" policy, see further Diod. 3.2.2,4—not, however, to be taken as echoes of a lost passage of Polybius (Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impériôlisme , 334-39). Ruins: see the texts assembled by Wiseman, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 491-94, esp. Anth. Pal . 7.297, 493; 9.151, 284.
The ravages inflicted by Mummius and the Roman army were not entirely limited to Corinth. A considerable amount of booty certainly came from other towns in Achaea and Boeotia.[137] Some was given to Attalus's general Philopoemen.[138] The lion's share was doubtless sent back to Rome, thence to many towns of Italy and even the provinces.[139] Mummius's triumph was renowned for its bronzes and paintings—and actors.[140] But some of the booty at least stayed in Greece as dedications at the great Hellenic sanctuaries, especially Olympia, but also Delphi, Epidaurus, Isthmia, and even the smaller sanctuaries at Oropus, Thebes, Thespiae, Aulis, and Tegea.[141] The number of noteworthy locations where Mummius's dedications are found probably testifies to a grand tour not unlike Aemilius Paulus's triumphant procession through the major sites of Greece in 168/167, which had a dear propagandistic function.[142] But the integration of Rome into the Hellenistic community was not the only message being sent.[143] At the most public places in Greece, and at many of the minor centers as
[138] Paus. 7.16.8; cf. 16.1. See Habicht, Pausanias , 89-90; Hopp, Untersuchungen , 95-96. Pliny HN 35.24 refers to an abortive sale, not a gift, to Attalus.
[139] Strabo 8.6.23, C381; Cic. Orat . 232, Verr . 2.1.55, Off . 2.76; Livy Per . 52 and Per. Oxy . 53; Frontin. Str . 4.3.15; Vir. ill . 60; CIL I , 627-31 and 2930a for dedications by Mummius outside of Rome. Münzer, RE 16 (1933) 1199, for full citation of sources.
[140] See, among others, Pliny HN 37.12; Tac. Ann . 14.21; Hor. Epist . 2.1.193.
[141] Olympia: Paus. 5.10.5, 24.4, 24.8; Polyb. 39.6.1; IvO 278-81. Delphi: Polyb. 39.6.1. Epidaurus: IG IV[2] .1.306; W. Peek, Neue Inschriften , no. 47, pl. 13. Isthmia: Polyb. 39.6.1 (unless this alludes merely to repairing the damage caused by the battle); Dio Chrys. Or . 37.42. Elsewhere: IG VII.433, 2478, 2478a, 1807-8; BCH 83 (1959) 683; IG V.2.77. Cf. Philipp and Koenigs, MDAI(A) 94 (1979) 193-216; also Guarducci, RendPontAcc 13 (1937) 54-57.
[142] See Pietilä-Castrén, Arctos 12 (1978) 118, for the suggestion that Mummius "visited all the important cult-places of mainland Greece." On Paulus's tour, see Ferrary, Philhellénisme et impérialisme , 554-60.
[143] See Knoepfler, MH 48 (1991) 262, for the "inclusive" function of Mummius's dedications.
well, could be seen spoils from the cities that had opposed Rome in the Achaean War. The ruins of Corinth were not the only extant symbol of the defeat of 146.
In addition to the haul of booty some alleged ringleaders of the war were executed.[144] If Metellus had not already done so, Mummius now punished the Theban boiotarch Pytheas.[145] Otherwise we hear only of the execution of certain
For all that, it is a significant point that devastating reprisals were reserved by Mummius and the commission of ten for Corinth alone. Greeks had closely watched the development of the recent crisis with Carthage in 149, and Rome's harsh demand for the elimination of the city had been much discussed, with some passion.[148] Polybius movingly describes how after the initial Achaean defeat at Scarphea, people were nearly driven mad with terror; some fled aimlessly through the countryside; others even threw themselves off cliffs and down wells in utter desperation.[149] As their dash with Rome developed, the Achaean leadership had held back from
[144] Cf. Polyb. 39-4.3, with Walbank, HCP , 3:734. Such purges may be reflected in Zonar. 9.31.8; Diod. 32.26.2.
[145] Paus. 7.15.10; cp. Polyb. 38.16.10. This man's tide raises questions about the existence of the Boeotian League: see above, n. 93.
[146] Thebes: Accame, Dominio romano , 194-95. In addition to the texts there cited, see also Sherk 15, lines 21, 50; Syll 7041, col. IV, line 6, K /K ; 690, lines 5-22; 826B, lines 27-28; IG II 1132, line 62, Surrender to Mummius: Paus. 7.15.10. Archaeological investigation has not confirmed the alleged destruction: a destroyed house in Thebes after the late second century does not suffice; cf. F. Schober, RE 5A (1934) 1489-90, against Keramopoullos, Praktika 1930 (1932) 69-74, and ArchDelt 13 (1930-31 [1933]) 115-18.
[147] Accame, Dominio romano , 190, 195. Cf. Zonar. 9.31.6; Paus. 7.16.9, without names.
[149] 38.16.5-7. The scene is most likely set in central Greece, rather than the Peloponnese.
negotiations with Metellus because of their expectation that they would receive no pity from the Romans (Polyb. 38.17.7). But, luckily, in Polybius's retrospection, Greek resistance had collapsed so quickly that Rome's wrath was not allowed to peak: the phrase "had we not been destroyed quickly, we should never have been saved" was on everyone's lips.[150] Our survey of Mummius's punitive measures gives point to that assessment and shows it to be no mere apologia. Mummius had imposed indemnities on the defeated, helped himself to much booty, and punished some individuals for their alleged part in inciting the war; but Corinth had borne the brunt of Rome's rage, and the rest of Greece was spared the dire fate that it had feared. Most of those defeated in 146, not to speak of those Greeks uninvolved in the struggle, will have been much relieved by the moderation of their treatment at Mummius's hands.
Therefore when Polybius tells us that Mummius "was honored in every city and received appropriate thanks,"[151] he is not speaking as a Roman quisling.[152] We have epigraphic evidence of some of these honors, and it seems that something more than cringing flattery lies behind them. The city of Elis, which may have seceded from the Achaean League in the course of the war, honored Mummius in the most conspicuous way possible by setting up an inscribed statue group at Olympia.[153] The Argives raised an equestrian statue in Mummius's honor in their agora (SEG XXX. 365). We should recall that the Eleans and Argives were among the prizes won by the Achaean League in the wars of the first part of the century that it had fought as an ally of Rome, and had never played a distinguished role within the confederation since their more or less forced incorporation. The Romans had, indeed, demanded their separation from Achaea in 147, and those who wished to put the best construction on events may have regarded the collapse of the League as the recovery of Elean or Argive independence from Achaean domination. Unfortunately, we do not know the dedicator of the great statue group at Olympia of Mummius and the
[152] On Mummius's reputation in Greece, see Knoepfler, MH 48 (1991) 260-63.
[153] Inscription: IvO 319. For the most recent attempt at reconstructing the monument (as a battle scene), cf. Philipp and Koenigs, MDAI(A) 94 (1979) 197-98, 205-13. Possible secession: Walbank, HCP , 3:712. We should recall Mummius's dedication of twenty-one Achaean shields and a bronze statue of the god to Zeus at Elean-controlled Olympia (Paus. 5.10.5, 24.4; cf. 24.8).
decem legati .[154] Sparta or Heraclea may be good candidates, for Rome had won them their independence from the Achaean League, and they were now being paid fines by the Achaeans and Boeotians respectively.[155] Eretria on Euboea, which instituted a footrace in honor of Mummius, apparently also had good reason to be pleased with him.[156] Euboeans had been freed of Theban (and Chalcidian?) harassment and were to be paid a fine by their former tormentors (Paus. 7.16.10). Not a few Greeks, then, positively benefited from Rome's defeat of the Achaeans and their allies, and some of them, as we have just seen, made highly conspicuous public statements of their loyalty to Rome—if not in the war itself, at least in its aftermath. The visitor to the greatest Panhellenic gathering place, Olympia, will have observed in this one sanctuary at least two impressive monuments in honor of Mummius and the senatorial commission erected by Greeks and a number of smaller dedications by Mummius himself of the booty from Rome's enemies in 146. The juxtaposition of extravagant thanks from Rome's friends and the spoils of Rome's enemies virtually cried out Vergil's expression of the moral principle underlying Roman power: parcere subiectis et debellare superbos .
The distribution by Mummius of punishments—especially the exemplary punishment meted out to Corinth—and rewards needs to be set into a broader context for its full significance to be understood. I have argued above that what was essential in the Roman concept of the imperium was the power of the Roman people to command obedience. Our survey of the results of the Fourth Macedonian and Achaean wars has largely substantiated Gruen's thesis of Roman hesitancy (not from altruism, indeed) to take on abiding administrative and governmental commitments in the East, or to exploit the economic consequences of its power to fullest effect. That a small army remained behind in Macedonia after 148 was a military decision to shore up a now obvious weakness in Paulus's settlement, but not a radical about-face in Roman policy toward direct rule. In Greece, the
[154] IvO 320-24, whose inscriptions at least date much later than 146, probably to the first century B.C . Possibly the group was renovated then. See Philipp and Koenigs, MDAI(A) 94 (1979), 197; cf. 216.
[155] Paus. 7.16.10; cf. 7.14.7. Schwertfeger, Der achaiische Bund , 69, doubts that the Achaeans could have paid a fine of 200 talents in 146; it was remitted in any case, and how much was actually paid cannot be known. On the other hand, Sparta lost its case when it referred to Mummius its old dispute with Messenia over the Denthaliatis (see p. 82).
[156] SEG XXVI. 1034, with Knoepfler, MH 48 (1991) 252-80, who rightly rejects Picard's attempt (above, n.22) to make Pausanias say that the Euboeans as a group were hostile to Rome in 146.
settlement of 146-145 closely resembled its precedents; particularly worth stressing are the Roman military withdrawal and refusal to extract tribute. Yet we ought not to draw the conclusion from this behavior, which followed a now-traditional pattern, that Rome was indifferent toward the East. Rather, Rome's interest was to restore and maintain its hegemonial position—its imperium —in the East.
As we have seen, Polybius repeatedly stresses that the essence of this power was recognition of the necessity to obey Rome's orders: in his view, from 168 it was "agreed" (
The point, of course, about Rome's imperium had been made before: in Polybius's view the subordination of Greece to Roman power had already been accomplished in 168. His contemporary assessment of the significance of the Achaean War, insofar as it can be reconstructed from the patchy fragments that survive from this portion of the History , bears little resemblance to modern judgments that give it such prominence as a terminus in the story of Roman expansion in the Balkan peninsula.[159] In Polybius's
[157] Above, p. 23 n. 50.
[158] Paus. 7.14.1; el. Polyb. 38.9.
[159] E.g., Will, Histoire politique , 2:397; Niese, GGMS , 3:357-59; Colin, RG , 656-660; de Sanctis, Storia , 4.3:162; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 127; Badian, Foreign Clientelae , 113-14. Cf. Errington, Dawn of Empire , 241: "In Greece as a whole, the 'Achaean War' marks the point at which Rome finally and unambiguously decided to rule." Gruen, HWCR , 523-27, rejects the notion of direct rule but accepts nonetheless that 146 is a valid terminus.
view the Achaean and Andriscan wars together comprised a "common misfortune for all Greece,"[160] but it was temporally bounded on both sides: that is, the "misfortune" (
[160] In fact, as we have seen, by no means the whole, or most, of Greece was involved in the conflict, but a patriotic Achaean can be excused for rhetorical exaggeration on such a painful matter.
[162] Polyb. 38.18.12; Zonar. 9.31.8.
[164] See pp. 47-48.
The threads of the argument of these first three chapters may now be drawn together. The settlement of the wars in Macedonia and Greece marks no sharp break in Roman "policy" or practice in its Eastern imperium . The assignment of Macedonia provincia after Metellus's departure in 146 is not to be taken as a change of "status"; it was an ad hoc solution to the emasculation of Macedonia's defenses against the Balkan tribes in 168-167. On the other hand, no part of Greece was made formally subject to Rome and its commander in 146-145, and the presence henceforth of a Roman commander in Macedonia did not in itself affect Greece's legal status. The continuities with past Roman behavior are striking. In Macedonia, tribute had already been imposed in 168-167. In Greece, it appears in the current state of the evidence that tribute was not levied on the defeated states in 146-145; Hellas was once again "freed" and—so it appears—Roman troops withdrawn. While details of Mummius's constitutional arrangements remain obscure, it is improbable that they were particularly invasive and they surely did not extend outside the part of Greece defeated in 146; they do not deserve unique emphasis in the story of the evolution of Greek democracy, whose floruit had long passed anyway. Even the Achaean, Boeotian, and Phocian leagues, which had been crushed by the war, reconstituted themselves not very much later. Contemporaries are unlikely to have thought, as have modern scholars, that in 148—145 Rome had acquired territory for its "empire." Macedonia and Greece had for more than a generation been subject to the imperium of the Roman people in the only sense for which we have contemporary evidence: that they were obliged by the realities of power to obey Roman commands. And yet, in yielding the principle of obedience to Rome the Greeks only acknowledged its hegemonial position; they did not concede formal sovereignty, or effective sovereignty except in special cases. For the mere fact that Rome's orders had to be obeyed did not imply that such orders would be frequent or necessarily onerous. In the absence of major diplomatic or military crises, Roman commands might be as few and sporadic after 146 as they had been previously.
This is not to say that the presence of a Roman commander in Macedonia was not of great historical importance in the long run. Although he appears to have been an extremely rare sight in Greece itself, preoccupied as he was with the ancient problem of the defense of Macedonia's northern
frontier, Greeks would, by a sort of natural magnetism, find him a convenient recourse for the settlement of their various internal disputes—if they were prepared to make the trek to Macedonia, for he could not be expected to come south. Local legal and administrative structures must have been gradually but noticeably eroded over the generations by the tendency to resort to this useful source of power.[166] It is, furthermore, possible that the presence of a Roman legion in Macedonia, however burdened by frontier defense, had some deterrent effect on any stirrings of independence south of the Peneus. But it is noteworthy that it seems to have done little to prevent Achaea's break with Rome in 146, and there is no sign that it had much effect on the Athenians in 88-87. The greatest deterrents in Greece must have been a consciousness of Roman invincibility and memory of the exemplary punishment meted out to Corinth. But circumstances could change and memories could fade—and evidently did within sixty years.
4
The Origins of Asia Provincia
In the period of twelve years between Mummius's departure from Greece in 145 and the crisis of the Attalid succession in 133 the Roman Senate betrayed little concern with Eastern affairs apart from maintaining a military presence in Macedonia to preserve the peace there. It would be useful to know more about what occasioned the famous grand tour of P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus to the cities and kingdoms of the East (perhaps now to be dated 144/143); in the current state of our evidence the best indication comes from Polybius's mention of a brief to settle the affairs of the kingdoms by ensuring that they were in the hands of the best claimant to the throne.[1] The Seleudd and Ptolemaic dynasties were indeed in turmoil in the later 140;[2] but since no change of rulers can be traced to the Roman embassy, it seems that it satisfied itself with confirmation of the status quo. Indeed, the most important consequence of the embassy was in the sphere of public relations: the ambassadors renewed Roman friendship with kings and cities alike and won great goodwill toward Rome by their behavior, manifested by a host of embassies from the East praising the Romans for sending such men to them (Diod. 33.28b.4). It would not be too bold to conclude that such diplomatic courtesies, rather than active intervention, were the chief objective of the mission.[3]
[2] See conveniently now Habicht, CAH 8 (1989) 365-69, for the Seleucids; on the Ptolemies, Will, Histoire politique , 425-29.
[3] On the embassy, see especially Astin, Scipio Aemilianus , 127 with n. 3, 138, 177, and Knibbe, JÖAI 45 (1960) 35-38. Gruen, HWCR , 669-70, 714-15, argues against overestimating the extent of Roman intervention.
Rome's relations with Attalus II, king of Pergamum between 158 and 138, were dearly excellent. Attalus established Pergamene candidates upon the thrones of Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Syria (for a time) and reasserted Attalid hegemony across the Hellespont in eastern Thrace, all either with Rome's blessing or (in the case of Bithynia) without effective hindrance, ending in Roman recognition of Pergamum's success. If indeed at his accession to the throne he thought it wise "not to do anything without the Romans," he had soon won considerable freedom of action, as his invasion of Bithynia in 149, which overthrew Prusias II shows.[4] Timely assistance in the Roman wars with Andriscus and the Achaeans thereafter confirmed the dose ties between the two allies, freeing Attalus of any further worries about Roman suspicions that he may have entertained on his succession.[5] Attalus's masterful exploitation of his relationship with Rome was his greatest weapon in his revival of Pergamene power during the 140s.[6] There is no reason to think that Pergamene relations with Rome deteriorated under his successor and nephew, Attalus III (138-133).[7] The Roman intervention in Asia Minor after the death of Attalus III, leading to a permanent official presence thereafter, thus comes rather from out of the blue and cannot be regarded as anything but a quite sudden reversal of recent policy whose explanation must lie in the unfolding of the events that immediately followed the death of Attalus III. Unfortunately, many of the most important details of those events remain quite obscure to us, and subject to various interpretations. With a warning to the reader that there is little surrounding the Attalid legacy and the war with Aristonicus that
[4] The phrase is from the celebrated letter of Attalus to the priest at Pessinus, generally dated ca. 158, regarding intervention in Galatia: Welles 61, lines 9-10. Without sharing the perhaps extreme skepticism toward this inscription of Gruen, HWCR , 591 with n. 87, we can easily recognize that Attalus's ruminations do not exclude an active, largely independent policy but only stress the crucial importance of exploiting his dose ties to Rome. For the intervention in Bithynia, see especially App. Mith . 4-7; other sources and discussion in Habicht, RE 23 (1957) 1120-24, and Hopp, Untersuchungen , 86-92.
[5] Military assistance: Strabo 13.4.3, C624; Zonar. 9.28; Paus. 7.16.1, 16.8; Pliny HN 7.126. For Attalus's earlier fears, cf. the inscription cited in n. 4 above, lines 13-17.
[6] Gruen, HWCR , 584-92, against the traditional portrait of Attalus as one whom the Senate left no freedom in which to maneuver (recently restated by Habicht, CAH : 8 [1989] 373-76; cf. most fully Hopp, Untersuchungen , 59-106).
[7] For whom see most fully Hopp, Untersuchungen , 107-20, and, more recently, Gruen, HWCR , 592-93; Rigsby, TAPA 118 (1988) 123-27; Habicht, CAH 8 (1989) 376-78.
is not controversial and cannot be interpreted in more than one way, let us proceed.
Roman Intervention Against Aristonicus
Attalus Ill died most likely in the spring of 133,[8] having made the Roman people his heir not merely to his personal possessions and the royal treasury but to his kingdom.[9] Attalus had no progeny; but shortly or immediately after Attalus's death,[10] one Aristonicus, alleging to be an illegitimate son of Eumenes II, and thus Attalus's half brother, laid claim to the Pergamene throne, taking the royal name Eumenes (III).[11] It has recently been plausibly argued by a number of scholars that Aristonicus's support lay especially among the Greek and Macedonian veterans who had been settled by the Attalid kings in colonies in the interior of northwest Asia Minor and whose interest lay in the perpetuation of that monarchy.[12] It has gradually emerged that Aristonicus was no "social revolutionary"; this element in the tradition is probably merely a propagandistic interpretation of certain actions, such as recruitment of slaves, born out of desperate
[8] Chronology: succinctly, Gruen, HWCR , 595 n. 100. The most important evidence is the arrival of the news and the will in Rome before Ti. Gracchus's death in the summer of 133 (esp. Plut. Ti. Gracch . 13.1, 14.1; Livy Per . 58; for the season, App. BC 1.14) and the Ephesian ("Asian") era beginning in the year 134/133 (pace Sherwin-White, RFPE , 83 n. 17; cf. Rigsby, Phoenix 33 [1979] 41 with nn. 8-9, to whom also the recognition that the era is Ephesian rather than "provincial" is due).
[11] The royal name emerges from the identification of a series of cistophoric coinage as Aristonicus's: cf. Robinson, NC 14[6] (1954) 1-8; Kleiner and Noe, ECC , 103-6; Rubinsohn, RendIstLomb 107 (1973) 557-58, and Collins, AncW 4 (1981) 319-43, are unconvincing on Eutropius's possible use of the royal name at 4.18 and 4.20. I cannot accept the argument of Potter, ZPE 74 (1988) 293-95, that Aristonicus began his revolt by crossing from Thrace.
[12] Rubinsohn, RendIstLomb 107 (1973) 561-62; Collins, AncW 3 (1980) 83-87; Rigsby, TAPA 118 (1988) 124-25.
straits.[13] On the other hand, Aristonicus's most determined foes were the Greek cities of the coast.[14] Aristonicus was able to rally to his cause some cities that were traditionally subject to the Attalids—of whom we know specifically only of Phocaea and Leucae near Smyrna; for others he had to fight.[15] We happen to know, however, that Smyrna withstood Aristonicus's attack, and that Elaea, Pergamum's port, and Bargylia in Carla apparently escaped capture.[16] But these setbacks by no means compensated for a wave of victories, including the capture of Myndos, Samos, and Colophon, which began to legitimize Aristonicus's royal claim.[17] For a brief period in 132 Aristonicus seems to have won control of much of the Attalid kingdom and significant parts of Ionia.[18] The tide, however, quickly turned: the Ephesian fleet defeated Aristonicus off Cumae, forcing his retreat inland, chased by a newly cohesive alliance of cities now joined by the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia.[19] All this had happened (so it would seem from the sequence of events given in our best source, Strabo) before the arrival of the five Roman commissioners sent in response to the news of Attalus's death and the legacy, which cannot be before early 132.[20]
[13] Cf. Hopp, Untersuchungen , 135-37; concisely, Gruen, HWCR , 597 with nn. 1o4-6. Propaganda: Rigsby, TAPA 118 (1988) 125. The most recent champion of the "social-revolutionary" thesis is Delplace, Athenaeum 66 (1978) 20-53.
[14] Broughton, in ESAR , 4:507; Magie, RRAM , 149; Bernhardt, PrH , 28-33. Cf. Tac. Ann . 4.55.2.
[15] Flor. 1.35.4: urbis regibus parere consuetas partim facile sollicitat, paucas resistentis, Myndon, Samon, Colophona vi recepit . For Leucae and Phocaea, see Strabo 14.1.38, C646; Justin 37.1.1.
[17] Justin 36.4.7: cum multa secunda proelia adversus civitates, quae metu Romanorum tradere se eidem nolebant, fecisset iustusque rex iam videretur . The cities are named in Flor. 1.35.4, quoted in n. 15 above.
[18] Livy Per . 59: Asiam occupavit, cum testamento Attali regis legata populo Romano libera esse deberet . This will have been the basis for the tendentious complaint Appian puts in Sulla's mouth in 85 that for four years the cities of Asia had supported Aristonicus until forced to give up (Mith . 62). See Broughton, in ESAR , 4:507 n. 21. Cp. Tac. Ann . 4.55 (with Magie, RRAM , 1034-36, esp. n. 7). How Pergamum, originally hostile to Aristonicus, fared is not known: the evidence is collected by Adams, Historia 29 (1980) 308 n. 20, 309-10, who, however, was unaware of Jones's redating of IGRR IV, 292, to the aftermath of the First and Second Mithridatic wars. Note that at the time of the death in Pergamum of P. Scipio Nasica, a member of the senatorial commission, that city was not in Aristonicus's hands: Cic. Flac . 75; cf. Val. Max. 5.3.2e; ILS 8886.
[20] Below, n. 45.
The strong resistance of many Greek cities to Aristonicus is not difficult to explain. There are some indications—not, to be sure, quite decisive—that Attalus's will recognized many of the cities of his kingdom as "free," as he certainly did Pergamum, if that is the city that produced a famous text found in its theater.[21] Livy's epitomator had the impression that the will freed "Asia" (i.e., the former kingdom, soon to be Asia provincia; Per . 59). Ti. Gracchus's declaration that it was not the Senate's business but the people's (as heir)[22] to discuss the cities of Attalus's kingdom (Plut. Ti. Gracch . 14.2) strongly implies that some issue regarding their status had to be settled by the Romans, and the context of Gracchus's claim strongly suggests that it involved revenues of the populus Romanus , which would be lost if the cities were "freed." Taking the parallel of the procedure envisioned in the inscription just noted, in which the status of the city conferred by the will remained to be ratified by the Romans (line 7), it is most plausible that Gracchus was intending to have the assembly deride whether or not an Attalid provision for the cities' freedom was to be ratified. A new Ephesian era beginning in 134/133 has been plausibly explained as a reference to a grant of "freedom" in that year under Attalus's bequest, and certainly that city's signal resistance to Aristonicus, culminating in its naval victory off Cumae, which was the turning point of the war, must mean that it had something to lose were the Pergamene monarchy resumed.[23] Certainly, the freedom of the Asian cities from tribute at the beginning of Asia provincia is explicitly alluded to by Appian (BC 5.4).
Ephesus and Pergamum, then, had good reasons of their own to resist Aristonicus, which need not therefore be explained, as by Justin, with reference to fear of the Romans (36.4.7): as we shall see, the evidence does not favor the notion that the Senate had as yet taken a side on the issue.
[21] Pergamum: OGIS 338, lines 3-5. Rigsby, TAPA 118 (1988) 130-37, attempts to dissociate this text from its findspot, but see the rebuttal by P. Gauthier, REG 102 (1989) p. 406, no. 279.
[22] Cf. Braund, RFK , 132-33. Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 208 n.98, insists that the cities mentioned were only those given to Rome; but cf. OGIS 338, line 7, for a city that was free subject to Rome's ratification.
[23] Rigsby, Phoenix 33 (1979) 39-47; Adams, Historia 29 (1980) 311-14; Strabo 14.1.38, C646. In favor of a provision in Attalus's will for the freedom of many, most, or all of the Greek cities, cf. especially Vavrinek, Révolte , 17, 55-56; Sherwin-White, JRS 67 (1977) 67, and RFPE , 82; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 208; Cardinali, in Saggi Beloch , 227-78, 287; Liebmann-Frankfort, RIDA 13 (1966) 85; Carrata Thomes, Rivolta , 36; Hopp, Untersuchungen , 127-28, 130; Broughton, in ESAR , 4:507-9. The recent challenge to this position by Bernhardt, PrH , 285-94, is unpersuasive.
The ideals of freedom, autonomy, and "democracy" (as opposed to royal domination) were by no means dead,[24] and they had in any case a hard, practical manifestation: the renunciation of royal tribute. So much the more will cities not formerly subject to Attalus III, like Samos, Smyrna, and Colophon in Ionia, and Myndus in Caria, have viewed with alarm Aristonicus's energetic military expansionism.[25] For these cities, Aristonicus's legitimacy or lack of it was not the real issue; he was "breaking the peace" by invading their territory, as the citizens of Halicarnassus claimed in an extant text.[26] The significance of Aristonicus's attack on Ionia and Carla has never been sufficiently stressed: it was this that transformed the attempt of a perhaps questionable heir to win the Attalid kingdom into an offensive war against its neighbors. The parallel with Andriscus is striking: in both cases, dubious credentials to the throne were best overcome by offensive military adventures recalling the glory of earlier kings. It is probably no accident that at least two of the cities Aristonicus is known to have attacked, Smyrna and Colophon, were former Attalid dependencies not restored to Pergamum after the peace of 188:[27] like Andriscus in his invasion of Thessaly, Aristonicus hoped to justify his assumption of monarchic power by restoring the dynasty's former dependencies.
The Greek cities need not have waited for certain news from Rome of the will's ratification to have taken measures for their protection against Aristonicus. Already in 133, before the Roman reaction to the Attalid legacy was known, the Pergamene assembly decreed the extension of citizenship to resident aliens, soldiers, military colonists, and others.[28] Meanwhile, however, we must suppose, in light of prevailing second-century
[24] Cf., for example, the dedications by Asian communities to Rome on the Capitol in gratitude for their "freedom": esp. ILLRP 174, 176, 178a (+ add.). In general, see Bernhardt, PrH , 267-84 and passim. Appian, like Justin, anticipates in writing that in 133 Aristonicus was "fighting with the Romans for supremacy in Asia" (BC 1.18).
[25] Smyrna: Polyb. 21.46.6 (21.45.6 in the Loeb ed.). Colophon (Nova, at Notium): Polyb. 21.46.4 (21.45.4 Loeb ed; emended from Livy 38.39.8). Myndus: Livy 33.20.12.
[27] Cf. Polyb. 5.77.4-6, 21.46.2 (21.45.2 in the Loeb ed.), with Walbank, HCP , 3:167-68. On the status of these cities, see recently Allen, Attalid Kingdom , 39-57. Among them was also Cumae, off which the decisive battle of the war with Aristonicus was fought, possibly indicating that he had seized it as well.
[28] OGIS 338, lines 8-19, 32-36. Rigsby not only wishes to alter the provenance of this stone (above, n. 21) but assumes that it followed rather than preceded the war (TAPA 118 [1988] 130-31, esp. n. 32). This is unpersuasive in view of the stated motive of the grant: "It is [necessary] for the common safety" (lines 7-8).
practice, that a host of embassies descended upon Rome from those Greek dries of Asia Minor that wished to preserve or secure their independence, traditional or newly affirmed by the Attalid legacy; it is incredible that they would have allowed Aristonicus to threaten them without making an effort to enlist Rome on their side. As it happens, even in the very poor state of our evidence some details have survived of this diplomatic effort. Very shortly after Attalus's death, a Pergamene named Eudemus caused something of a sensation in the midst of the Gracchan crisis by bringing the will to Rome (Plut Ti. Gracch . 14.1-2). There can be little doubt about the purpose of this embassy: Eudemus's courting of Ti. Gracchus was an attempt to prod Rome toward acceptance and ratification of the will—for the Attalid inheritance would be very useful in the financing of Gracchus's plans.[29] Colophon, too, under attack by Aristonicus, cannot but have appealed to Rome; as it happens, a recently published inscription from Claros recalls two exceedingly important embassies to Rome undertaken around this time by one Menippus "on behalf of the city" (Colophon), in which he managed to preserve its "privileges."[30] Colophon's chief privilege was the freedom granted it by the Romans themselves in 188 (see n. 25); it was surely this privilege that was threatened in 133 by Aristonicus. It seems likely that the first of Menippus's embassies belongs to 133 and the second to the conclusion of the war, when Colophon's freedom must have been reaffirmed. Another great man of Colophon, Polemaeus, undertook an important embassy to Rome at a time of great danger by land and sea (thus most likely before Aristonicus was confined to the interior and well before Roman intervention); the friendships he won with important Romans he used to benefit his fellow citizens; he established relations of patronage between the chief men and Colophon.[31] Other such embassies
[29] On such attempts to win the patronage of prominent Romans for the benefit of the city, see now the important passages of two new inscriptions from Claros: Claros 1, Polemaeus, II, lines 24-31, and Menippus, III, lines 10-13. On haunting senators' houses, see Syll 656, lines 21-24; and Diod. 40.1.1. Like Stockton, Gracchi , 68, I am dubious about Badian's assumption (Foreign Clientelae , 174) that Eudemus approached Gracchus out of the obligations of clientship.
at the beginning of Aristonicus's rising may be alluded to as well in an inscription from Cyzicus and in a recently published decree from Gordos in Mysia.[32]
It is against this background of the progress of the crisis in Asia in 133-132 that Rome's response must be understood. It must be kept in mind that the question of the Attalid succession was surely quite uncertain in 133, especially viewed from Rome. Attalus III had died, and someone who claimed to be his half brother, and son of Eumenes II, had asserted his right to the throne. Who was to say that he was not the legitimate successor? Unlike the case of the Macedonian pretender Andriscus, our sources are by no means clear on this point; indeed only Velleius Paterculus (2.4.1) explicitly denies the claim of Aristonicus/Eumenes III.[33] It was perhaps hardly manifest that Attalus's will had indeed come into effect, for the only precedent, the will of Ptolemy VIII in 155, explicitly made the Roman people his heir only in the absence of other heirs, and Attalus's testament may well have had the same provision.[34] This would have made the execution of the will dependent on a judgment upon Aristonicus's royal credentials. In any case, it has been pointed out that royal wills instituting the Roman people as heir seem as a rule to have been produced by kings without successors, at least at the time of writing; the best explanation for them is the king's desire to arrange for a smooth and beneficial succession in the absence of direct heirs.[35] Certainly there is no known case of the Roman people inheriting in place of acknowledged heirs to a kingdom. Again, therefore, everything will have depended on whether Aristonicus would be judged the legitimate successor to the throne of the Attalids.
[34] SEG IX.7, lines 11-14. Because of this provision, Ptolemy's will was not in fact valid upon his death in 116.
[35] Braund, RFK , 152-53.
It seems probable that the claims of legality and equity were rather complex and perhaps impenetrable from Rome's distance. Where claims of justice clash, self-interest will often cast the deciding vote—yet even here, arguments did not lead all one way. Those cities granted freedom under the terms of Attalus's will, such as Pergamum at the least, will certainly have had no doubts about whether it had come into effect. To emphasize the point, Pergamum's ambassador Eudemus evidently brought to Rome some of the royal accoutrements.[36] In Rome, Ti. Gracchus dearly had political reasons to push for acceptance, but this in itself will have provoked opposition among senators, many of whom will have viewed with alarm the effects this windfall would have for the outcome of the struggle with the tribune. Had Rome not been served well by the Pergamene kings? Would it not send the wrong signal to uproot an allied kingdom on questionable claims of legality? Roman manpower was stretched to its limit already—indeed, this was on any account an important element of the crisis of 133. Could it stand the further strain of a new war in Asia Minor—for assertion of the validity of the will meant war with Aristonicus—and perhaps that of garrisoning western Asia Minor afterwards, while the slave war in Sicily was still raging and the long, harsh conflict in Spain was only just coming to a close? The acquisition of Attalid reserves and revenues may not have sufficiently balanced these counterarguments to intervention in Asia Minor. Pergamum (or another, nearby city) does not appear to have regarded Roman acceptance of the legacy as a sure thing.[37]
The evidence of the Roman response to the news of Attalus's death is so scarce and lacunose that it must be said in all fairness that it is not grossly inconsistent with diametrically opposed interpretations,[38] but, in balance, there seems little doubt that it is more harmonious with the view that the Senate acted with circumspection and hesitancy than the reverse. We hear of a proposal by Ti. Gracchus for the use of the money in the Attalid legacy to assist and outfit the beneficiaries of his lex agraria , as well as his announcement about settling the status of the cities in the assembly, but there is no good evidence that a law was actually passed on either of these matters, and it seems likely that any such usurpation of the
[36] He was alleged to have offered Ti. Gracchus a diadem and a robe (Plut. Ti. Gracch . 14.2). The accusation need not be believed, of course, for its premises to be accepted.
[38] Compare, only to select the most recent accounts, Harris, War and Imperialism , 147-49, with Sherwin-White, RFPE , 80-88, and Gruen, HWCR , 592-608.
Senate's prerogative concerning foreign affairs would have sparked contentions that would not have escaped notice in our evidence, inasmuch as the mere threat to decide about the cities had the effect it did.[39] A Greek translation of a senatus consultum found in Pergamum, which embodies or presupposes the Senate's ratification of the Attalid legacy, is often supposed to date to 133, which would imply that the Senate indeed moved with alacrity. But in fact this date is based simply on the once-unchallenged assumption that the Senate would have accepted the legacy as quickly as possible—a petitio principii for our purposes. Recent discussions of the date of the document make a convincing case against 133; indeed, a date rather closer to M'. Aquillius's return from the East in 126 is in my view most probable.[40] In any case, given the uncertainty of its precise date, the senatus consultum Popillianum cannot be used to show that the Senate had determined as early as 133 to take over the Attalid kingdom and maintain a permanent military presence in Asia Minor. Most likely, the issue of the Attalid legacy was simply buried in the strife and subsequent tension that engulfed the city in the latter half of 133.[41]
In January 132 Asia was not assigned as a provincia to either consul; the first priority for both consuls was dearly the inquest into the Gracchani, after which P. Rupilius left for operations against the rebels in Sicily.[42] In early 132, then, immediate military action against Aristonicus was not envisioned, and it is an open question whether hostilities with the claimant to the Attalid throne were seen as imminent.[43] The flight of Blossius, Ti. Gracchus's friend and adviser, to Aristonicus after the Gracchan inquest is not a dear sign of growing tension with Rome, for the refuge from Rome's power afforded by a Hellenistic king's court did not presuppose hostility.[44] However, it is dear that early in 132 the Senate began to
[39] Plut. Ti. Gracch . 14.2. Cf. Livy Per . 58; Vir. ill . 64.5.
[40] Sherk 11. Drew-Bear, Historia 21 (1972) 75-87, points out that Sherk 13 = Drew-Bear, NIP , 1, lines 1-5, preserves fragments of another copy of this senatus consultum ; cf. also NIP , 2 = SEG XXVIII.1208, lines 1-4. See appendix G for comments on the chronology and content of this inscription.
[41] Stockton, Gracchi , 154.
[42] Sources for the Gracchan inquest: Greenidge and Clay, 13. The province of P. Popillius Laenas is not strictly known, given the uncertainty over the identity of the dedicator of ILS 23 (cf. Broughton, MRR , 3:169), but Italy seems almost certain a priori. It is dear from Strabo 14.1.38, C646, Livy Per . 59, and Cic. Phil . 11.18 that a Roman army first went to Asia under P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, consul in 131.
[43] Gruen, HWCR , 600.
[44] Cp. Hannibal at Prusias's court in Bithynia. No weight can be put on Cicero's reference to Aristonicus and his followers in this context as hostes (quaestione nova perterritus in Asiam profugit, ad hostis se contulit, Amic . 37), for "enemies" of course they soon became. When Aristonicus's fortunes failed, Blossius killed himself rather than fall into Roman hands (Plut. Ti. Gracch . 20.4).
intervene diplomatically in the Asian crisis. After the Gracchan inquest five envoys were sent to Asia, among them P. Scipio Nasica, who had led the attack on Ti. Gracchus and was now allegedly an embarrassment in Rome.[45] By the time they arrived in Asia Minor much fighting had already occurred. Indeed, Aristonicus's offensive against the cities of the coast had been turned back after the battle off Cumae, and he had been driven into the interior; after the cities and kings had sent troops against him, but still before the Roman commission arrived, he had launched further raids (Strabo 14.1.38, C646). Unless we compress unduly the chronology of Aristonicus's campaigns we must assume that the Senate had already known about them at the time the embassy was dispatched. Thus the embassy makes best sense as a mission of investigation sent in response to the appeals of the Greek cities of the coast under attack from Aristonicus.[46] Clearly, in the face of Aristonicus's armed assertion of his claim to the Pergamene throne, mere legati without military forces will not have been sent to take over the inheritance or to "organize a province."[47] But after the arrival of the envoys in Asia Minor, the pace of senatorial reaction picks up, and at the beginning of 131 one of the provinces decreed for the consuls was Asia and the war against Aristonicus.[48] The vigorous contention over the command between them and then with P. Scipio Aemilianus, involving no less than two appeals to the people (Cic. Phil . 11.18), dearly reveals how attractive the command was. That is fully explained by the riches of the Attalids and the apparent imbalance of strength (the tide had already been turned, after all, by tiny Ephesus, and Aristonicus had been thrown back into the interior)—all the more reason for surprise that no action had been taken in 132, when one consul appears to have been free.
[45] Strabo 14.1.38, C646. For Nasica and the relative chronology, cf. Plut. Ti. Gracch . 21.3-4; also Val. Max. 5.3.2e; ILS 8886; Pliny HN 7.120; Vir. ill . 64.9; Cic. Flac . 75, Rep . 1.6. Plutarch (Ti. Gracch . 20.4) also makes Nasica a member of the consuls' consilium at the Gracchan inquest but has gotten the anecdote wrong (cf. Cic. Amic . 37; Val. Max. 4.7.1). See Schleußner, Chiron 6 (1976) 99-103, on the makeup of the embassy.
[46] Vavrinek, Révolte , 33; Gruen, HWCR , 601.
[47] So Schleußner, Chiron 6 (1976) 109-12, who multiplies implausible hypotheses (the envoys were sent out to organize the province ahead of the imperator , who possessed the actual legal power to perform this act, but when the revolt spread, the commander was never sent) to save a flawed initial assumption of a swift Roman response.
[48] Sources: Greenidge and Clay, 18.
The report of the senatorial commission to Asia Minor must have been decisive in tilting the Senate toward action to assert Rome's claim to the Attalid kingdom against Aristonicus.
What motivated the change? I have argued that Rome's initial slowness to act in 133-132 is to be explained by the complexity of the legal and political situation in Asia Minor as well as by the turmoil of the Gracchan crisis at home: the Senate needed to find its way dear in a maze of Hellenistic politics and determine where Roman interest lay. But by the time the envoys arrived in 132, the pace of events in Asia Minor had far outstripped Roman deliberation. As we have seen, they found Aristonicus driven inland and beset by a coalition of Greek cities and the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia (Strabo 14.1.38, C646).[49] Accepting Aristonicus as the legitimate Attalid heir was hardly now a viable option. On the other hand, the end of the Attalids left a vacuum in the configuration of power in Asia Minor that was already being filled by ambitious dynasts without Roman participation; Rome would hardly be able to control the outcome of the collapse of its oldest ally in Asia Minor, long a friendly bulwark of stability, without direct intervention and assertion of its imperium . As it happened, the conclusion of the Numantine War in Spain and the Sicilian revolt freed Roman military resources for use elsewhere. The will of At-talus lay ready to hand as a pretext for intervention; by accepting it Rome could once again pose as the champion of Greek freedom and the defender of its allies.[50] The Roman response to the Pergamene crisis of 133-131 is characterized not so much by belligerence, or a hesitation born of indifference, as opportunism and an abiding commitment to maintain its imperium .
[49] A critical problem in Gruen's reconstruction, according to which Rome intervened because, among other things, "Aristonicus proved more formidable than anticipated" (HWCR , 601). Nor is it dear why, if the Senate originally hoped "that the Greeks could somehow work out matters for themselves," it would have given up this hope now that Aristonicus had been turned back. In general, Gruen has difficulty explaining why Rome's apparent indifference so suddenly changed to grave concern. Sherwin-White, RFPE , 80-88, presents an even more puzzling thesis, according to which the Senate apparently accepted the legacy more or less immediately, the "revolt of Aristonicus removed any option," and annexation was decided upon—but nothing decisive was done for an inordinate amount of time.
[50] For explicit recognition of Priene, Magnesia, and Samos as socii , see Sherk 7, IIb, lines 40-44; Sherk 10, A, lines 1-2; B, lines 5, 8. Of course there will have been other societates . To what extent treaties underlay these alliances is uncertain and controversial, but I find no sign in the evidence that Rome saw a significant distinction between the moral obligations between socii without a formal treaty and those between foederati , as seems to be suggested by Gruen, HWCR , 13-95.
The Settlement of the War With Aristonicus
Aristonicus proved a tougher nut to crack than expected. P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, the consul of 131, actually fell in battle against the Pergamene pretender, while his successor, M. Perperna, died of illness at the moment of victory after capturing Aristonicus. A third consul, M'. Aquillius, had to complete operations with a campaign against holdouts in the interior after his arrival in 129.[51] If Strabo is to be taken strictly at his word (14.1.38, C646), it appears a commission of ten senators to arrange the settlement accompanied Aquillius to the provincia already in 129. Aquillius probably did not leave Asia Minor until early in 126, for he triumphed on 11 November of that year (Fasti triumph . an. DCXXVII).
Unfortunately, one of the most obscure and controversial features of the settlement over which Aquillius presided is the extent of the former Attalid realm and its revenues now claimed by Rome. Given the state of our evidence, no reconstruction can be decisive; but we can attempt to reach the conclusion that is most consistent with the evidence.
It is dear from our evidence for Aquillius's territorial arrangements after the war that he gave away a good portion of the prizes of victory to Rome's royal allies, who had provided generous assistance.[52] The sons of Ariarathes of Cappadocia, who had fallen in the war, were given Lycaonia and probably the Attalid holdings in Pamphylia and Pisidia as well.[53] Besides the Cappadocian kings, Mithridates V of Pontus was the greatest beneficiary of the settlement, receiving as his reward Greater Phrygia.[54] Although we hear nothing of rewards for Nicomedes of Bithynia and Pylaemenes of Paphlagonia, both of whom had certainly joined the alliance against Aristonicus, this may mean only that their gains were less spec-
[51] The main sources can be found in Greenidge and Clay, 17-20, 23. For an account of the war see especially Will, Histoire politique , 2:419-25. Cf. also the recent remarks on the war by Robert and Robert, Claros 1, 29-34, made in connection with publication of the new texts from Claros. A newly published inscription records that certain Ambracian troops from Buchetium had followed in Perperna's army to Asia: SEG XXXVI.555; cf. Merkelbach, ZPE 87 (1991) 132.
[52] P. Licinius Crassus infinita regum habuit auxilia , Eutr. 4.20.
[53] Eutr. 4.20; Justin 37.1.2, according to whom Lycia (MSS) too was granted them. Lycia, however, had not been part of the Attalid kingdom, nor is there any sign that Rome seized it in the war. The usual emendation therefore to "Cilicia" is probably correct, but as Sherwin-White points out (JRS 66 [1976] 3 n.7), this should be understood as the area of the provincia : i.e., Pamphylia and Pisidia.
[54] See pp. 240-42, for the subsequent "freeing" of Phrygia under Mithridates' son and heir, Mithridates VI Eupator.
tacular.[55] Aquillius's generosity immediately got him into trouble in Rome. A passage in Appian indicates that the Senate actually rejected his acta on the grounds that he had been bribed; specifically, he was alleged to have been bribed by Mithridates for Phrygia, but other, similar charges are suggested in our evidence.[56] Subsequently, a rogatio Aufeia of perhaps 124 would apparently have assigned some territory to Mithridates that was also claimed by Nicomedes.[57] Embassies from both kings arrived in Rome to strive for and against it. Gaius Gracchus spoke against the proposal, alleging that both kings were freely dispensing bribes; a preserved fragment of his speech suggests that a possible outcome of rejection of the proposal was the assertion of a Roman claim over the territory and its revenues.[58] Picking up on his elder brother's attempt to use the Asian revenues to support his project of land distribution, Gracchus stressed that they were a crucial resource both for government and for maintaining the "benefits" (commoda ) of the Roman people.[59] Among the commoda alluded to was surely above all the land distribution program itself, which
[55] Strabo 14.1.38, C646; Eutr. 4.20. See below on Nicomedes and the lex Aufeia .
[57] Greenidge and Clay, 29 = ORF pp. 187-88 = Gell. NA 11.10. On the date, see Badian, Foreign Clientelae , 183-84 n. 9. Magie, RRAM , 1043-44 n. 27, and Gruen, HWCR , 608 n. 147, express a healthy skepticism about whether Phrygia was at issue (so, for example, without argument, Stockton, Gracchi , 221) or indeed the entire Aquillian settlement (so Badian, Foreign Clientelae , 183-84). Sherwin-White, RFPE , 94, does not seem to take account of the fact that Roman revenues were also, if indirectly, at issue.
[58] Gell. NA 11.10: ego ipse qui aput vos verba facio uti vectigalia vestra augeatis quo facilius vestra commoda et rem publicam administrare possitis .
[59] Commoda commonly refers to pecuniary or otherwise economic benefits: cf. OLD s.v. commodum 4. The connection between the expected fruits of the Attalid inheritance and the Gracchan land program may partly explain why the populus entrusted the Gracchan land commissioner, P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus, with the war against Aristonicus, in preference not only to his colleague but also to Scipio Aemilianus, the conqueror of Carthage and now Numantia (Cic. Phil . 11.18). Crassus, appropriately enough, made a priority of taking possession of the Attalid inheritance—taking too little account, fatally, of Aristonicus (Justin 36.4.8). It was M. Perperna, not Aquillius, who won the credit for gaining control of the Attalid treasures and sending them to Rome: Justin 36.4.9.
was stalled by the early 120s.[60] Aquillius's diminution of the people's inheritance thus could be represented as a part of a conspiracy to cheat the plebs of its due.
It is hardly likely, in view of Aquillius's evident readiness to distribute portions of the winnings to those who had assisted Rome, that the Greek cities that formerly belonged to the Attalid kingdom but had resisted Aristonicus, and indeed had managed to turn him back before Roman help was sent, were now rewarded for their help by being forced to pay tribute to Rome. That would have been a perverse reversal of normal Roman practice, employed, for example, in Asia Minor in 188, which was to free of tributary obligations those communities that demonstrated their commitment to the Roman side while the issue was still in doubt—-certainly not to punish them. In the cases of Pergamum, Ephesus, and Colophon, we have direct evidence that their "freedom" was recognized.[61] Elaea received a treaty of alliance with Rome after the war, an honor hardly consistent with being reduced to tributary status; Tralles as well an Attalid possession since 188, seems to have been "free" in 98, a status that should go back to the conclusion of the war with Aristonicus.[62] These, as we saw above, were not the only cities to offer noteworthy resistance to Aristonicus,[63] and we must surely conclude that the number of cities "freed," or whose freedom was now confirmed, by Rome was rather larger than the number for which evidence happens to have survived. Perhaps, indeed, most of the Greek cities of the coast belonged to this category.[64]
[60] App. BC 1.19; Stockton, Gracchi , 88-93.
[62] Elaea: Syll 694. Tralles: Q. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus was in Tralles when he received news of his legal restoration (Val. Max. 4.1.13); this should mean that the city was "free," as also Mytilene before the First Mithridatic War and Smyrna after it, where P. Rutilius Rufus successively settled (Cic. Rab. Post . 27, Rep . 1.13, Brut . 85-89).
[64] Cf. Bernhardt, "Imperium und Eleutheria," 103-8, for a useful summary of the evidence; Magie, RRAM , 155-56, with 1045 n. 33, and Bernhardt (cf. also PrH , 285-94), however, take a more restrictive approach to the evidence than seems warranted. As noted in the text, the terms of Attalus's will need not have bound the Romans in the settlement. The newly published customs law from Ephesus (SEG XXXIX.180, lines 26-28) may provide corroboration: Engelmann and Knibbe, EA 14 (1989) 73.
As it happens, one text, a speech attributed by Appian to M. Antony in Ephesus in 42/41, explicitly says that originally the Romans had remitted the tribute formerly exacted by Attalus "until the emergence of demagogues among us [sc. Romans] made tribute necessary."[65] The passage is not without problems; in particular, what it implies about the origin of tribute from the Greek cities is difficult to understand. Gruen suggests that C. Gracchus, who certainly might be called a demagogue, not only instituted the sale of the Asian tax contracts by the censors in Rome, as is attested in other evidence, but also first imposed Roman tribute in Asia.[66] However, it would then be surprising that an innovation of such sweeping significance receives so little attention in our sources for C. Gracchus's tribunate.[67] Instead of rejecting the entire passage as a fabrication by Antony or an ill-informed guess by Appian, we might associate it with the evidence already examined for controversy over and revision of Aquillius's settlement. It may be that Aquillius had granted a blanket exemption from tribute to all the former cities of the Attalid kingdom, adhering, it seems likely, to the letter of the will, but that subsequently, in Rome, popular politicians associated with the Gracchan land reform had exploited resentment of such squandering of the populus's possessions and whittled these exemptions down to cover only those cities that had earned their freedom by their conspicuous assistance in the war.[68] But even this last category cannot have been small as we have seen, inasmuch as the Greek cities of the coast had offered Aristonicus resistance from the first, and only Phocaea and Leucae (by Smyrna) are known to have yielded to him without
[66] Gruen, HWCR , 606, 608.
[67] For the lex Sempronia de censoria locatione , see especially Cic. Verr . 2.3.12; Schol. Bob. 157 Stangl; Diod. 34/35.25; the marginalia to Fronto Ep. 125 N (Gracchus locabat Asiam ) seem to be the closest the evidence comes to suggesting such a feature of the law.
[68] Broughton, in ESAR , 4:509 n. 39, 511-12; Tibiletti, JRS 47 (1957) 137. Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 15 (1937) 282-83, Magie, RRAM , 1046-47 n. 36, and de Martino, PP 210 (1983) 180-81, reject the passage altogether.
a struggle.[69] In any case, of course, Antony/Appian's statement applies only to the Greek cities. Those areas that came into Rome's possession and were not exempted or given away to the allied kings are likely to have been made subject to Roman tribute already at the conclusion of the war. Hence Velleius's flat statement in his survey of Rome's conquests that "M. Perperna made Asia tributary after the capture of Aristonicus" is not entirely mistaken, although he is thinking in very rough categories here ("Asia") and throughout the passage, as here, he sloppily conflates military victory with the imposition of tribute and the establishment of provinces in a way that shows how little this writer of the early Principate understood Roman techniques of domination in the East in the second century.[70]
Large portions of the former Attalid kingdom, therefore, had been parceled out to allied kings (Phrygia, Lycaonia, probably Pamphylia and Pisidia), and many of the Greek cities will have received their "freedom" and exemption from a tributary obligation. It is important to recognize the limits of Roman control in other directions as well. Toward the south neither Lycia nor Caria had been part of the Attalid kingdom, nor is there any evidence that they came under Roman control in the war; there matters will have continued as before.[71] A second-century alliance between Plarasa/Aphrodisias, Cibyra, and Tabae explicitly guarded against actions hostile to Rome as well as to themselves; this is simply another example to be added to others of a "saving clause," useful in a time of predominant Roman might in the Greek world, which would allow an escape from treaty obligations if one's ally had serious trouble with Rome. It certainly does not imply any sort of formal "clientship" or Roman sponsorship of the alliance.[72] Cibyra, which enjoyed a treaty of alliance with Rome, remained
[69] See above, pp. 99-100. Phocaea is said to have been saved from destruction by the pleas of its colony, the loyal Massilians: Justin 37.1.1.
[70] 2.38.5: Macedoniam Paulus, Mummius Achaiam, Fulvius Nobilior subegit Aetoliam, Asiam L. Scipio . . . eripuit Antiocho sed beneficio senatus populique Romani mox ab Attalis possessam regibus M. Perpenna capto Aristonico fecit tributariam .
[71] Cf. Sherwin-White, RFPE , 89-90; cf. Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome , p. 2. It is unclear whether the war extended into Caria: this depends especially on the identity of the Stratonicea where Aristonicus was captured (Oros. 5.10.5; Eutr. 4.20.2), and whether actual operations in the area accompanied the Roman requests for troops and supplies in the region: cf. REA 21 (1919) 2-3 = Holleaux, Etudes , 2:180-81; JÖAI 11 (1908) p. 69, no. 6; Gell. NA 1.13.11; and esp. Magie, RRAM , 1038-39 n.14, 1042 n.21; and Robert, Villes , 252-71, against campaigns in Caria.
[72] Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome , no. 1, for the text; the "correction" of Hendriks, EA 3 (1983) 34, is unconvincing. Errington, Chiron 17 (1987) 99-118, dates the alliance shortly after 167. Cf. the treaties between Pharnaces of Pontus and Chersonesus, IPE I 402, lines 3-5, 25-28; Samos and Antiochea, MDAI(A) 72 (1957) pp. 242-44, no. 65, lines 5-6, 20-25. See also Gruen, HWCR , 180, for Hellenistic precedents.
under its own tyrants until captured by L. Murena in 83; nor is there good reason to think that Laodicea on the Lycus, not an Attalid possession or a theater of fighting, came under Roman control in the war with Aristonicus.[73] Aquillius oversaw the improvement of the major routes of communication both along the coast and inland, one up the Hermus into Lydia, an Attalid domain which must now have come under Roman control and the other up the Maeander to or toward Apamea.[74] It has been supposed that this road up the Maeander leading toward the major city of southern Phrygia clashes with our sources' statement that Phrygia Maior was given to Mithridates,[75] but that may be drawing lines too sharply. The difficulty of exerting control from the coast over the rough Anatolian inland, where on the upper Caicus Aristonicus had had his stronghold, had played an important role in the war just concluded. The significance of this problem seems not to have been lost on Aquillius, who had followed up Perperna's victory over Aristonicus himself at Stratonicea on the upper Caicus with an arduous campaign in the mountains and forests of Mysia Abbaitis.[76] If the roads up the Hermus and Maeander imply that Aquillius wanted to guard against a repeat of Aristonicus's performance based in central Lydia, eastern Caria, or southern Phrygia, this need not imply the assertion of a formal Roman claim equally to all those areas. The road to Apamea in any case may well have been built before Mithridates took occupation of Phrygia.
It appears, then, that the area of Asia Minor subject to Roman tribute was rather a patchwork of communities and regions concentrated chiefly in Mysia and Lydia, with some outposts on the Aegean, such as Phocaea and Leucae, interspersed with the autonomous Greek cities of the coast. Indeed, the two cities in which Roman commanders henceforth spent most of their time in peace—Ephesus and Pergamum—were both autonomous,
[73] As argued unpersuasively by Ameling, EA 12 (1988) 18, simply on the grounds that Cic. Flac . 68 may suggest that it was the center of a conventus in 62. For Cibyra, see p. 274.
[74] For the roads, cf. Sherwin-White, RFPE , 91; Magie, RRAM , 157, 1048-49 nn. 39-40; French, ANRW II.7.2 (1980) 698-729, gives a map and description (pp. 706-7) and texts of the milestones (p. 714).
[75] Sherwin-White, RFPE , 91.
[76] See Robert, Villes , 261-71, and now Robert and Robert, Claros 1, 31-34, on this part of the war.
and surely now, as well as later, major centers for his judicial activities.[77] The seemingly irresistible temptation to presuppose that a contiguous area was marked out with formal boundaries seems in this case particularly inappropriate, for if they meant anything—that is, if they defined a commander's imperium —they would only have gotten in the way of his executing his responsibilities in the region.[78]
A salutary sign of how the complexities of such a situation had to be worked out and defined by experience is now given by a newly published inscription from Claros. In it we hear that Roman officials had usurped some of Colophon's local jurisdiction, demanding bail from accused citizens for appearance before their court; Menippus of Colophon had gone on an embassy to the Senate at a date probably not far from 120 and succeeded in inducing it to draw an explicit distinction for the purpose of jurisdiction between the provincia and autonomous regions, to pronounce that a proconsul was not to judge or meddle at all outside the provincia , and to guarantee that all trials in which Colophonians were plaintiffs or defendants should be judged in Colophon.[79] All this would hardly have been necessary if a relatively recent lex provinciae had given a comprehensive structure to Roman administration in Asia Minor; certainly it is impossible to believe that Roman commanders had been explicitly forbidden to intervene outside the area directly subject to their control. More likely, Colophon had simply obtained recognition of its continued "freedom" at the close of the war with Aristonicus,[80] and the details of what precisely this meant beyond nonpayment of tribute were left for time to sort out. In view of this evidence it is surely difficult to suppose that Aquillius and the ten commissioners gave western Asia Minor a new ju-
[77] For the evidence, see Rigsby, TAPA 118 (1988) 137-41, who, however, makes the common but unwarranted assumption that a provincial "capital" was formally designated.
[78] See Lintott, GR n.s. 28 (1981) 55-57. For wide demarcations of the province, see Magie, RRAM , 154-55, and Liebmann-Frankfort, Frontière orientale , 143-44; Sherwin-White, RFPE , 89-90, is appropriately restrained.
[80] Cf. Claros 1, Menippus, I, lines 20-22.
dicial structure. Certainly the impression one gains from the senatus consultum Popillianum , which enjoins successive praetors to honor all regulations, grants, exemptions, or penalties laid down, given, or imposed by the Attalids, is that as much as possible of previous structures was left in place.[81] Much recent work has gone into the early history of the system of judicial assizes, held annually in the praetor's tour of the centers of districts called conventus or
Still, Aquillius and the ten commissioners will have had much to attend to within the area over which Rome now assumed control: a multitude of details had to be taken care of, such as the transformation of royal lands into Roman ager publicus ,[83] and arrangements for the collection of revenues from the old Attalid domains, including the inland peoples (
[81] Gruen, HWCR , 604-5.
[82] See chap. 5.
[84] SEG XXXIX, 1180, lines 67-72, secs. 28-30. See the comment of the original editors, H. Engelmann and D. Knibbe, at EA 14 (1989) 91. That tolls were levied by the Romans before the lex Sempronia de censoria locatione , as they confidently conclude, by no means follows: Attalus's toll stations will still have been standing in 123 or 122. Strictly speaking, the earliest "stratum" of this law could be C. Gracchus's: we know that he instituted new portoria (Vell. Pat. 2.6.3); but while Frank, in ESAR , 1.255, thought these were at least partly Asian, evidence has not hitherto emerged. For the adoption (and adaptation) of local tax structures, cf. the lex Hieronica in Sicily.
The new text from Ephesus has multiplied our information on the portoria (customs duties) of Asia, but it will be some time before this extraordinary document is fully understood. Nicolet has already done much to clarify the fiscal questions: CRAI , 1990, 675-98, and BCH 115 (1991) 465-80. On the Asian tithe on agricultural produce, see especially Broughton, in ESAR , 4:511-12, 535-43, 564, 573-74; Magie, RRAM , 159-65, 1046-49, 1054, 1116-18. Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 70-96, provides a convenient introduction to taxation in the provinces under the Republic.
So much seems traceable of the arrangements of Aquillius and the ten legates sent to assist him in the settlement of the Asian war. While Strabo, in a brief survey of Rome's entry into Asia Minor occasioned by his narrative's arrival at Leucae, makes Aquillius the author of the structure of Asia provincia as Strabo found it in his own day,[85] it would be unwise to extract from this cursory comment a more elaborate and sweeping settlement than our more detailed evidence suggests. The assertion, certainly, is not strictly accurate. As we have seen, some at least of Aquillius's arrangements seem to have been rejected by the Senate, and major features of the Asian settlement continued to be the subject of proposals and legislation such as the obscure rogatio Aufeia and the crucial lex Sempronia , which introduced censorial sale of the contracts for Asian revenues. Strabo is not only unaware of or unconcerned with these modifications and changes, but also ignores (to restrict ourselves to larger matters about which we happen to know) the major alteration of the tax-farming system by Caesar in 48 and the reduction of many cities to tributary status and more direct proconsular supervision under the Sullan settlement.[86] Still, in the broad terms that Strabo is here employing, the statement is doubtless generally correct, inasmuch as it was Aquillius and the ten legates who laid down the basis for Rome's future possession of what was left of the former Attalid kingdom after the grants to the kings and cities.
An important question must now be asked. Since so much of the former Attalid kingdom was not taken over by Rome for reasons of policy—Rome's traditional stance of patronage toward the Greek cities, and the imperative to reward allies in a crisis—how rich were Roman revenues from Asia after Aquillius, and before the catastrophe of the First Mithridatic War and the Sullan settlement? The evidence, derived above all from Cicero, for a staggering annual income from Asia has little relevance for
[86] Gruen, HWCR , 605 n. 135. On the traditional view that Caesar abolished censoria locatio for Asia, see now Engelmann and Knibbe, EA 14 (1989) 94, commenting on the Monumentum Ephesenum (SEG XXXIX, 1180), lines 72-73 (sec. 31).
the period before the catastrophe of the First Mithridatic War and the Sullan settlement, which reduced the number of "free" Greek cities to a handful and brought considerably more territory under Roman control.[87] Historians of Roman politics have usually not been sensitive to the possible extent of change over the six or so decades before the evidence of Cicero appears, and have continually presented Asia as an immediate bonanza.[88] But on closer analysis was it so?
The question is of course easier to ask than to answer. Ti. Gracchus, as we have seen, was eager to take over Attalus's riches and exploit them for the sake of his program of land redistribution; it seems likely, indeed, that popular expectations of a windfall played a role in the assignment of the war against Aristonicus to P. Licinius Crassus Mucianus in 131. That around this time the possibility of winning wealth in Asia as a publicanus was a subject of conversation in Rome is dearly implied by a fragment of the satirist Lucilius.[89] Around 124 C. Gracchus dearly articulates such hopes in his speech against the Aufeian law: revenues ought to be increased in order not only to finance government but to pay for the Roman people's privileges.[90] Aquillius, who had solid reasons of foreign policy for sacrificing so much, was nevertheless, and perhaps with some justice, suspected of having lined his pockets with bribes while giving away the people's property. Evidently, then, the Gracchani argued strongly for maximizing revenues and counterattacked sharply. Although Aquillius was acquitted
[87] Cf. Frank, in ESAR , 1:229; Broughton, in ESAR , 4:562-64 (citing Böttcher, "Einnahmen"), for an estimate of the revenues from Asia and the islands after Sulla of HS 60,000,000 in a good year.
[88] Cf., for example, Badian, Roman Imperialism , 48-49 (cf. Publicans , 63-64): "The amounts that began to come in after [Aquillius] left the province . . . proved nothing less than staggering"; Badian cites exclusively Ciceronian examples. See also Stockton, Gracchi , 154-55: "Even in 123, the sums involved were enormous"; Green, Alexander to Actium , 560: "The publicani had been bleeding Asia white at least since 123" (Cf. pp. 531, 556).
[89] Lines 671-72 Marx. See Raschke, JRS 69 (1979) 79-83, for a date "ca 131," although surely as late as 129 is possible. Cf. Gruen, HWCR , 607 n. 145; Magie, RRAM , 1054 n. 15.The senatus consultum de agro Pergameno (Sherk 12; cf. IGRR IV. 262; IEph 975 A-B; and SEG XXXIII.986) has now been persuasively redated to 101 rather than 129: see Magie, RRAM , 1055-56 n. 25; Mattingly, AJP 93 (1972) 412-23, and LCM 10 (1985) 119; de Martino, PP 210 (1983) 161-90; Gruen, HWCR , 606-7; Sherwin-White, RFPE , 96 n.9; Badian, LCM 11 (1986) 15-16; Petzl, ISmyrna II.1, pp. 58-60. Perelli's defense of the traditional date (RivFil 118 [1990] 249-52) fails to turn the tide.
of the extortion charge laid against him on his return before a jury of his peers—a blow that led directly to C. Gracchus's introduction of equestrian juries—the Senate did not accept Aquillius's settlement without modifications. Some tributary exemptions were very likely removed, among other things, as we have seen. But even so there is at least one indication that the usual view that the sums coming in from Asia Minor were nothing less than staggering is exaggerated. Neither of our main sources for the tribunates of C. Gracchus in 123-122, Appian and Plutarch, so much as mentions the lex Sempronia de censoria locatione , and yet it is accorded considerable weight in modern interpretations.[91] When Diodorus claims that Gaius "offered up the provinces [sic ] to the brazen greed of the publicani , thereby drawing forth from its subjects a just hatred of Roman domination,"[92] he must be thinking primarily of the introduction of equestrian juries, which he has just mentioned. Diodorus is notoriously hostile to C. Gracchus, and his source, Posidonius of Apamea, was particularly interested in the moral aspect of Rome's financial exploitation of its subjects, which was so rampant in his homeland in his own time;[93] it is by no means improbable that Posidonius or Diodorus has illegitimately traced back to its origin the excesses that would ultimately ensue from Gaius's legislation. It is in fact not until around 100—and then quite suddenly—that we hear of specific cases of overreaching by the publicani .[94] While the clustering of evidence at that time is surely at least partly due to a new alertness on the part of the Senate to the dangers of allowing the tax
[91] E.g., Stockton, Gracchi , 153-56. Badian, Roman Imperialism , 49, and Publicans , 63-64; Brunt, Fall , 151-54.
[93] Cf. esp. Diod. 36.3.1-2, 37.5-6, with Malitz, Historien des Poseidonios , 331-38, 372-77, 384-87, and 424-27. See the Roberts' comments at Claros 1, pp. 99, 102.
gatherers too much free rein, the complete absence of complaints about the publicani before then is noteworthy. While our evidence is quite sparse in general for relations between the Greek cities and Roman authorities in the generation after Aquillius, the new decrees from Claros now cast some light on this period: they provide a perhaps surprising picture of smooth and cordial relations ca. 120 between Colophon and a solicitous Senate that is ever ready to check the excesses of its officials in the province.[95] And it should be noted that the most significant point of conflict with Roman authorities is jurisdictional; none of the many embassies to Roman commanders and the Senate that Polemaeus and Menippus undertook on their city's behalf concerned encroachments of the publicani .
The Claros decrees therefore help to moderate our imaginative reconstruction of an army of Roman tax gatherers straining at the reins of senatorial government and finally unleashed by C. Gracchus. The transferral of the arrangements for tax contracts in Asia from the provincial commander's supervision to that of the censors in Rome was, to be sure, a boon to Roman financiers, but it is very hard to accept the view that it was above all a tactical ploy to win the support of the equestrian order. Not only would it be hard to explain Appian's and Plutarch's silence about such an important development in the Gracchan crisis, but one comes up against the hard fact that the equestrian order was not conspicuously supportive of Gaius and indeed eventually became hostile.[96] These reflections give further support to the far more attractive view that Gaius's main object in moving the farming of the tax contracts to Rome was to remove the new revenues from the hands of the proconsuls, who, whether because of corruption or for reasons of policy, might not extract the full sum to which the populus Romanus deemed itself entitled.[97]
One further point deserves attention. The military contingent regularly supplied to successive praetors of Asia Minor has been estimated at no
[96] Cf. Stockton, Gracchi , 191-92, citing Sail. Iug . 42.1.
[97] See Badian, Foreign Clientelae , 185, and especially Roman Imperialism , 46-49; Badian of course holds different views from mine about the revenues of Asia. Also Stockton, Gracchi , 155-56; Millar, JRS 76 (1986) 8.
more than a legion with its complement of Italian troops, if that much.[98] This will not have sufficed to do more than provide praetors with an appropriate escort and a policing capability. Asia provincia was not to be a theater for triumph hunting or for the flexing of military muscle. It offered no real possibilities for military gloria until the conflict with Mithridates,[99] and thus it was hardly an easy stepping-stone into the consulate: of the whole period after the departure of Aquillius in 126 until the war with Mithridates, we know of only four proconsuls of Asia who went on to the consulship.[100] (Admittedly we are not well informed on Asian proconsuls of the period; but C. Labeo, L. Piso, M. Hypsaeus, C. Egnatius, Cn. Aufidius, C. Billienus, L. Lucilius, and C. Cluvius made no mark in the rest of the evidence we have for Roman politics in this period,[101] and C. Caesar's chief distinction was, it seems, to have been the dictator's father.) The occupation of the core of the old Attalid kingdom therefore was not motivated by an atavistic militaristic impulse toward ever-greater control and conquest, nor even were Roman forces sufficient to suppress internal revolt
[98] Sherwin-White, RFPE , 91-92, 118-19 (one legion); Brunt, Italian Manpower , 429 (less).
[99] The provincia of Antonius in 102 and Sulla in 96 or 95 was Cilicia: see below, pp. 230 n. 27, 248 n. 107.
[101] Labeo, Piso, Hypsaeus: IPr 121, lines 21-24. Stumpf's recent identification of these men is the most plausible yet suggested; he would put their tenure of Asia in 122-121, ca. 115, and ca. 100, respectively (ZPE 61 [1985] 186-90). See Broughton, MRR , 3:114-15, for a review of earlier conjectures. I have included Egnatius on the strength of IPr 121, line 33; he may, of course, have only been a legate or quaestor (Sumner, GRBS 19 [1978] 151). Aufidius: IG XII.5. 722. Billienus: IDel 1854 (proconsul; legate in IDel 1710; see Broughton, MRR , 1:552 n. 3; 3:34-35). Billienus, at least, was thought worthy of the consulship: Cic. Brut . 175. Lucilius: IPr 111, lines 134-51 (cf. Sumner, p. 149). Cluvius: IDel 1679 (Broughton, MRR , 1:560). A M'. (?) Valerius Messala may have held Asia ca. 120 or later: cf. MRR , 3:213; Alexander, Trials , no. 29.
or fend off external invasion. The farthest outpost of Rome's eastern imperium was also among its weakest.
As in the events of 148-146 in Macedonia and Greece, Rome's response to the crisis of the Attalid kingdom and its result—an abiding Roman presence in Asia Minor—appear at first glance to manifest a new expansionism and a novel policy of exploiting the imperium to the fullest. Yet closer scrutiny demonstrates the superficiality of such a view. The Romans did not seek intervention in Asia Minor in 133 but found their leisurely deliberations overtaken by events; at last, in 132, not to intervene would have thrown the imperium itself into question. Having accepted the Attalid legacy, the Romans did not retire from Asia Minor, perhaps mindful of the likely consequences in a land replete with ambitious dynasts. But the forces they maintained in Asia provincia were obviously insufficient to fend off external invasion or even to suppress internal revolt. That Rome's farthest outpost was so weakly defended bespeaks indeed a remarkable confidence in the imperium . Just as in the southern Balkans, the imperium populi Romani was founded not on military occupation or legal structures but on an image of invincibility and the absence—for the time being—of rivals. Nor does the nature of Aquillius's arrangements in Asia, so far as they are known, suggest that Rome had given up its long tradition of hegemonial imperialism for a new policy of exploitation associated with the Gracchi and their followers. Aquillius relinquished to allied kings and the Greek cities much formerly Attalid territory and revenue, so much indeed that his settlement appears to have excited some opposition in the Senate as well as among the Gracchani. And yet, as Strabo says, his settlement remained largely intact. It is true that from 133 popular politicians began to assert the right of the Roman people to exploit imperial revenues to maintain its commoda . And yet such claims had little concrete effect on the broad outlines of the settlement of Asia provincia in the 120s, and even the innovation of C. Gracchus that was eventually to attract so much attention—the sale in Rome of the contracts for Asian revenue—took nearly a generation for its consequences to be acutely felt. The attitudes that underlay the origin of Asia provincia were rooted in the past, just as new forces were emerging whose impact lay in the future.