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.