PART TWO
5
Proconsular Administration in the East, 148-89
Thanks to Cicero's long pamphlet on the excesses of C. Verres in Sicily in 73-71 and his own copious letters from Cilicia during his own service as provincial governor (51-50) we are apt to think that we have a fairly good idea of what Roman provincial administration was like in the late Republic. The governor was a king in his province, Roman citizen and provincial alike cowered before his crowded tribunals, and even when peace reigned his time was fully occupied with long judicial tours of the major centers of his province to transact the endless business that came before his court. This is fairly intrusive administration, and here, certainly, we are entitled to speak of Roman "rule." Unfortunately, there has long been the tendency to assume that this is the way it had always been, virtually from the moment an area was first assigned as a provincia ; for example, reconstructions of the administration of Asia from the beginning of the Roman presence in the 120s are typically built upon Ciceronian evidence of roughly half a century later, and little if any attempt is made to give due account to development over time. Yet the Ciceronian evidence all derives from the period after the catastrophic First Mithridatic War, which had an effect upon the Roman presence in Asia that would be hard to overestimate. Furthermore, both Cilicia and Sicily had special characteristics that it would be unwise to extrapolate to Greece, Macedonia, and western Asia Minor: Cilicia, outside the Aegean heartland of Hellenistic civilization, had none of the traditional ties of friendship and alliance with Rome of which many of the great poleis of Greece and Ionia could boast; and although Rome gained a foothold here before the First Mithridatic War, for the most part Cilicia was a recent acquisition, won during the burst of eastern imperial expansion in the 70s and 60s. The structures of provincial administration in Cilicia are the product of this phase and cannot be
supposed to have been characteristic of the Roman presence in Asia Minor in the second century or early first. Sicily, on the other hand, had been Roman for dose on two centuries by the time its treatment by Verres was attacked by Cicero. Not only had most of the island been under Roman domination for over a century and a half before the publication of the Verrines , but it was acquired under circumstances very different from those of Macedonia or Asia Minor. Again we must beware of the tendency to transfer Verres' Sicily to Metellus's Macedonia or Aquillius's Asia; equally, we should be open to the likelihood that the methods and activities of Rome's earlier proconsuls[1] in the East bore more resemblances to those of its commanders in the field during the wars of the first half of the second century than to those of Verres or Cicero in the middle of the first century.
My purpose in this chapter is not to attempt a survey of provincial administration before the First Mithridatic War: quite simply, the evidence is insufficient for that before the age of Cicero. Rather, my purpose is to ascertain just how far the evidence allows us to say that Rome administered the areas assigned to its magistrates as provinciae . How intrusive and systematic was Roman "rule" in the East before the dash with Mithridates? Indeed, to what extent did Rome "rule" at all?
Judicial Intervention
Aside from the praetor's military duties in a provincia , which officially consisted not only in pursuing the interests of the Republic but also in maintaining the territorial integrity and security of the friends and allies of the Roman people,[2] provincial "administration" consisted above all in jurisdiction. In Asia in the 50s, for example, the absence of any military component of the job meant that the praetor's chief administrative task was jurisdiction.[3] Jurisdiction, therefore, will be the chief object of our attention in this chapter, by reason of both its prominence among a proconsul's duties and, to be sure, its relative prominence in our scattered evidence.
[1] Roman commanders in the East were normally of praetorian rank and sent out during their year as praetor or immediately afterwards, when technically they would be proconsuls. See appendix A below. I shall use "proconsul" and "praetor" indifferently to denote these officials.
[2] JRS 64 (1974) 204, IV, lines 21-25.
[3] Cic. QFr . 1.1.20: ac mihi quidem videtur non sane magna varietas esse negotiorum in administranda Asia, sed ea tota iuris dictione maxime sustineri .
A Roman commander had comprehensive judicial powers that flowed out of his imperium: imperium gave coercitio , that is, the power to initiate and execute judicial proceedings of both a criminal and a civil nature.[4] A passage from the Greek copy of a Roman law recently discovered at Cnidos both confirms this doctrine and, for the first time in our evidence, specifies these powers: a commander who has resigned or been relieved of his duty has the power to initiate judicial proceedings of all types; to judge, give sentence, and punish; to refer the case to external judges, including foreigners; to authorize the seizure of property for compensation (apparently); and to manumit slaves, just as he had while holding his magistracy, until he reaches the city of Rome.[5] Arrival at the city of Rome terminates these powers precisely because only there does the commander lose his imperium . It is obvious, then, but must nevertheless be stressed, that a praetor's judicial powers, inasmuch as they were founded on his imperium , did not depend on positive legal acts, such as the leges provinciae , that are regularly postulated. Put simply, no formal rules were required to establish a provincial commander's judicial authority in his provincia .
Whether a provincial commander enjoyed full criminal jurisdiction over Roman citizens is a controversial matter, but the balance of evidence seems to indicate that he did, although he was in practice limited here by customary respect for the person of Roman citizens and the pressures of expediency.[6] The provincial commander had equally sweeping powers, as imperator , over foreign peoples, although here he had to take into account
[4] Mommsen, RStR , 1:116-61. On the jurisdiction of provincial commanders, see now the convenient summary by Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 54-69. On their criminal jurisdiction specifically, see Garnsey, JRS 58 (1968) 51-59, esp. 55-59.
[6] Cf. Greenidge, Legal Procedure , 411-14, and Garnsey, JRS 58 (1968) 55-58, against a formal right of appeal (provocatio ) for Roman citizens in the provinces. But see now Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 68-69.
any privileges or guarantees recognized by the Roman Senate and People.[7] Thus, as we have seen, when Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus put to death two men he had found guilty of firing the archives of the city of Dyme in Achaea in 144, this in no way suggests that this part of the Peloponnese had been reduced to the status of a "province," or that the proconsuls of Macedonia exercised some formal Spruchrecht over it, any more than do the executions ordered by L. Aemilius Paulus after the war with Perseus in 167 or M. Fulvius Nobilior's hunt for the murderers of some Delphian ambassadors in 189/188.[8]
On the other hand, an illuminating example of how vigorously a "free" city might defend its judicial autonomy has now come to light in the recently published inscriptions from Claros in honor of Polemaeus and Menippus of Colophon, dating not much after 120. Menippus especially had exerted himself on behalf of his city's judicial autonomy: when the proconsuls of Asia had begun to usurp judicial authority over citizens of Colophon and in particular forced a Colophonian accused before them to give bail to them, Menippus had undertaken an embassy to Rome (his fourth) and obtained from the Senate a decree that freed the inhabitants of the city from the requirement to give bail to the proconsuls, indeed exempting them from their power altogether, inasmuch as the provincia was now distinguished from the autonomous area.[9] Later a Colophonian was accused of murdering a Roman and summoned by order of the consuls to a trial in Rome; Menippus took a fifth trip to Rome and secured the quashing of the prospective trial on the grounds that the Senate had decreed that Colophonian plaintiffs and defendants were entitled to a trial at home even in cases involving Romans.[10] The decree honoring Menippus
[7] See Bernhardt, PrH , 227-36, for a good survey of local judicial functions and their relationship with Roman authorities. See Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 54-69, for the view from the other side.
[8] See chap. 2.
[9] Claros 1, Menippus, I, lines 23-27, 37-40. Cp. the provision in the lex Hieronica of Sicily ne quis extra suum forum vadimonium promittere cogatur (Cic. Verr . 2.3.38), and Greenidge, Legal Procedure , 116-17. On the Claros inscriptions, see now Ferrary, CRAI , 1991, 557-77.
celebrates this success as an act by which he "maintained the force of the laws regarding every kind of charge even in cases involving the Romans themselves";[11] that is, Menippus did not even allow a charge of murdering a Roman—very likely in Colophonian territory itself, for the city itself was under suspicion, as the text tells us[12] —to lead to the diminution of Colophon's judicial autonomy. Another great man of the city, Polemaeus, was able to prevail upon a proconsul to set aside his conviction of a Colophonian on an unknown charge before his own tribunal in contravention of the rule that Colophonians be tried in their own city; Polemaeus, like Menippus, is said thus to have "preserved the integrity of the laws."[13] On another, rather obscure occasion Menippus managed to obtain from the Senate an explicit statement that the proconsul had no fights, judicial or otherwise, outside the province (i.e., in Colophon)—"a fine response most befitting the democracy."[14]
This precious evidence conveys very dearly the ideological framework of the struggle now to be carried on by "free" poleis for the integrity of their laws against proconsular intervention and meddling. But the very recurrence of such instances shows that this objective required constant vigilance and repeated efforts. The judicial autonomy of a "free" city was not something simply granted but continually won and rewon; the actual fights of a city would be defined by its success in this struggle. We can justifiably assume that not all "free" cities enjoyed the success of Colophon.[15] Much depended on the availability, wealth, and rhetorical capacity of local great men like Menippus and Polemaeus, who were able to prove themselves worthy of the friendship of Roman senators and, by establishing relations of patronage between leading Romans and their city, trans-
[12] Claros 1, Menippus, I, lines 29-30, 47. Cf. especially the comments of Ferrary communicated by J. Robert at p. 87 n. 161. Ferrary now suggests that the Roman complaint concerned the execution of a Roman rather than his murder: CRAI , 1991, 567-70.
[15] Cf. Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 62-63, and Ferrary, CRAI , 1991, 574-77.
ferred to their fellow citizens the profit derived from this friendship.[16] Cicero happens to mention in the context of Verres' alleged depredations in Asia Minor an incident that took place at Ephesus, a "free" city before the Mithridatic wars, probably in the 90s, which provides a contrary example of a less successful outcome. A Roman quaestor, M. Aurelius Scaurus, was forcibly barred from entering the shrine of Artemis to recover a slave who had sought sanctuary there; a leading citizen of Ephesus, one Pericles, was regarded as responsible for this insulting treatment and summoned to Rome, apparently by means of a letter from the consuls.[17] We do not hear of a Menippus coming to Pericles' rescue in this case, and it would have been embarrassing for Cicero, here concerned to contrast Verres' actions with the appropriate procedure that he should have followed, to bring up a case that gave no satisfaction to the accuser. On the other hand, to judge from the evidence of the Claros inscriptions the Roman Senate tended to be rather an ally than an adversary in this struggle (as also in the friction with the publicani , to be considered later): the corporate body, far removed from the province itself, was not so subject to the pressures or temptations offered by friends and other interested parties as was the lonely proconsul on the spot.
A praetor faced no such limits on his powers when dealing with unprivileged communities, civitates stipendiariae . But we must not deduce the constant or pervasive use of a wide-ranging legal power from its mere existence, any more than the social historian assumes that the notorious patria potestas implies that Roman fathers regularly put their children
[17] Cic. Verr . 2.1.85. For the date: Sumner, Orators , 81-82; Badian, Klio 66 (1984) 298-99; Broughton, MRR , 3:32.
to death. In actual practice, then, to what extent were the judicial powers of Roman commanders actually exercised over provincials and local authorities?
It has long been recognized that under normal circumstances local judiciaries maintained their autonomy; even had he wished to, the proconsul, before whom personally judicial business came as a rule, simply had a limited capacity to meddle, and for the most part he had neither the time nor the inclination to usurp functions of local government that were performed quite satisfactorily by the cities themselves.[18] This is, admittedly, an a priori argument, although a strong one, and it has been held that it is contradicted by one important piece of evidence that dates to Cicero's proconsulship in Cilicia but may have relevance to Roman Asia Minor before the Mithridatic wars. Cicero writes to Atticus from Cilicia that he has taken over and included in his provincial edict a provision of the edict of Q. Mucius Scaevola Pontifex, commander in Asia ca. 98-97, that suits between Greeks should be held according to their own laws, that is, without reference to the proconsular tribunal.[19] If this was an innovation in practice by Scaevola rather than simply in the provincial edict of Asia, the implication would seem to be that before Scaevola the proconsuls in Asia Minor had actually usurped all functions of jurisdiction in their provinces except those of the "free cities," or, alternatively, that all local jurisdiction was "precarious," wholly dependent on its protection in the governor's edict.[20] In Cilicia in 51-50 the ruling was regarded by the delighted dries as tantamount to autonomy;[21] how far this was true for Scaevola's Asia is unclear. But, rather than leaping to the conclusion that before Scaevola pro-
[18] Cf., for example, Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht , 91-94; Chapot, Province romaine , 124-26; Accame, Dominio romano , 36-42. For minimal delegation of judicial business to the quaestor or legate(s), see Marshall Phoenix 20 (1966) 231 with n. 3; in general, Greenidge, Legal Procedure , 129-32.
[20] Cf. Magie, RRAM , 171, probably influenced by the passage to be considered; this seems also to be the understanding of Badian, Athenaeum 34 (1956) 114, and Publicans , 89, who goes so far as to infer that disputes between Greeks had not been heard according to Hellenic legal custom. Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 58-62, concludes that governors had wide-ranging formal powers of jurisdiction in the cities, limited only by practical considerations. For "precariousness," cf. especially Jones, Greek City , 122; Cities , 61. Contra: esp. Marshall ANRW II.13 (1980) 656-58; and (without full analysis) Bernhardt, PrH , 232-33.
consuls of Asia had been buried under all the judicial business of their province—and that it was now swept away with a mere stroke of the pen—we should regard this clause of Scaevola's edict as a guarantee only: namely, that the praetor would not intervene in cases that did not involve Romans. This hypothesis brings with it the inference that former commanders had indeed been known to do just this on occasion at least. If so, it would not be difficult to excogitate likely scenarios that would lead to this result. Bribery or friendship might induce a praetor to offer his own court as a refuge for those who doubted the outcome of a local trial or indeed despaired of the endemic delays. Evidence from the period of the Mithridatic wars (78) shows that noncitizen friends of Rome might well find it in their interest to resort to the praetor's court;[22] there is no reason to suppose that this possibility had never been raised or exploited before. Certainly the eagerness of those Greeks who could boast of long friendship with Rome to seek advantage by taking their disputes before Roman authorities for mediation or arbitration was not a recent phenomenon.[23] A proconsul might feel particularly well justified in considering such a case when the plaintiff and defendant were from different cities, which, in the absence of a federal league or a judicial compact between the cities concerned, might have no other fixed framework for resolution: the lex Rupilia in Sicily gave the praetor the power to appoint judges for such cases, while if both parties belonged to one city, jurisdiction remained local (Cic. Verr . 2.2.32).
In this context we might speculate for a moment, although it may be of only marginal relevance for our period, upon the puzzling question of what Cicero's use of this clause had to do with the use of "foreign judges" (peregrini iudices ), which he presents as the result greeted most enthusiastically by the Greeks in his province.[24] Whether these "foreign judges" are judges summoned from abroad to settle local suits (
[22] Sherk 22, lines 7-9 (Latin), 18-20 (Greek). Cf. the identical privilege given during the triumviral period to Seleucus of Rhosus, along with Roman citizenship: Sherk 58, lines 53-59. Cf. Marshall, AJP 89 (1968) 39-55; Bernhardt, PrH , 248-50.
[23] See chap. 6.
[24] Att . 6.1.15: Graeci vero exsultant quod peregrinis iudicibus utuntur .
published in 1974, may offer a third possibility, for it refers explicitly to a praetor's right to institute
[27] FIRA 68 = SEG IX.8, lines 62-71.
[29] Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 656.
suggestion offered above is on the right track, this Prienean may have been a "foreign judge" (peregrinus iudex ) nominated by the proconsul to hear a case involving non-Romans.
The role of proconsuls as arbitrators or mediators of international disputes between Greek communities or societies will be considered below. To anticipate somewhat we may simply note at this point that the arbitral role of proconsuls was minor in comparison with that of the Senate.[31]
So far we have considered mainly the limitations, either formal or practical, upon a proconsul's degree of judicial intervention in the affairs of the local communities. To gain a proper perspective on his judicial activity, and to understand why such limitations were allowed or even welcomed, we need to invert the question: that is, why should a proconsul have intervened at all in local jurisdiction? We have already given a hint in this direction by mentioning the likelihood that some provincials will have had something to gain by applying to the praetor's court rather than to their local judiciaries. Far more so will this incentive have worked to attract to the praetor's court Roman citizens resident or conducting business in the provinces.
In Cicero's time, certainly, a basic judicial duty of a provincial commander was to provide a court of justice for Romans in the provinces (Cic. Att . 5.21.6; cf. QFr . 1.1.20). Indeed, a glance at Cicero's letters from Cilicia, supplemented by his speech for Murena and other letters to provincial commanders urging them to bring their influence to bear in behalf of friends doing business in their province, gives the clear impression that this was indeed a proconsul's primary judicial responsibility.[32] A significant example is provided by Cicero's reference in a letter to Atticus to his sending of a member of his staff to conduct jurisdiction in his place in Cyprus, a part of his provincia : had he altogether neglected Cyprus "the few Roman citizens who do business there" might have claimed that they were denied justice (Att . 5.21.6).[33] Cicero could hardly have written these words if he had had judicial responsibilities in Cyprus beyond the provision of justice for Roman citizens alone. There is reason to believe that this had always been the case: as a rule, from which Fabius Maximus's trial of three Dymaeans (Sherk 43) in exceptional circumstances is the sole apparent
[31] Below, pp. 149-52 and chap. 6.
[32] Cf. too the parts of his edict, on which see Greenidge, Legal Procedure , 120-21; W. W. Buckland, "L'edictum provinciale" RevHistDroit ser. 4, 13 (1934) 81-96.; Marshall, AJP 85 (1964) 185-91.
[33] Q. Volusium . . . misi in Cyprum ut ibi pauculos dies esset ne cives Romani pauci qui illic negotiantur ius sibi dictum negarent etc .
deviation, known examples of Roman judicial intervention in Eastern communities involve Roman citizens.[34] Even matters well within the competency of the local courts, if they concerned Romans, will have occasionally been brought by an interested party before the proconsul. Romans were expected to obey the local laws,[35] but they naturally might seek to override them by an appeal to a friendly proconsul when difficulties arose; and the proconsul's readiness to intervene depended more on his personal inclinations than on any set procedure.[36] Badian has aptly commented:
It is dear that even the most elementary principles of protection and justice for the provincial depended on the whim (and probity) of the governor. . . . It is not often recognized how unsystematic and how dependent on the character and purposes of the individual the whole of provincial administration under the Republic really was.[37]
It is not necessary to surmise that locals were barred from bringing disputes with others before the proconsul's court (some such activity is surely implied by the clause of Scaevola's edict examined above) to accept as a sound hypothesis that, as for Cicero later, the proconsul's central judicial duty was to provide justice for Roman citizens in the provinces whether among themselves or against provincials. The proconsul was, indeed, a combination of praetor urbanus and peregrinus in Rome itself—from which officials his edict was largely derived.
The provision of justice for Roman citizens will have required some structure as their numbers in the provinces increased, for as Cicero's reference to jurisdiction in Cyprus shows, the proconsul had to make himself broadly available lest there be complaints at Rome of his neglect of judicial duties. This is surely the origin of the assize system (best attested in Asia
[34] In addition to cases involving the publicani (discussed below), dear examples are provided by the Colophonian murder suspect of Claros 1, Menippus, L lines 40-48; Pericles of Ephesus's summons before the Senate (above); and the affair of Damon of Chaeronea (see pp. 280-82). Unfortunately it is not explicit whether the proconsul found a certain Colophonian guilty of the murder of a Roman (Polemaeus, II, lines 51-58), or whether the cases usurped by the proconsuls that are mentioned elsewhere involved Romans (Menippus, I, lines 23-27, 37-40).
[36] Cf. Marshall, GRBS 10 (1969) 269-70.
[37] Publicans , 79.
Minor): the division of a province into districts called conventus , the center of each of which the proconsul would visit in succession to conduct local jurisdiction in the course of a judicial tour.[38] Its creation or development into a form like that in which we finally encounter it is variously dated. It certainly existed in a developed form by the time of Cicero, but we have no evidence for how much earlier its origin may be. Although some scholars have attempted on weak grounds to place its genesis quite early, even as early as Aquillius, and to attribute its institution to individuals, it is surely best to assume a process of evolution more or less in step with the increase in the number of Romans in Asia Minor that made such judicial tours necessary.[39] There were many thousands of Roman citizens in Asia Minor by the end of the 90s, who will have provided the proconsul with plenty of judicial business at his assizes.[40] But the extraordinary expansion of Roman revenues from Asia Minor after the First Mithridatic War and the debt crisis that accompanied it must have caused a quantum leap in the number of Romans resident or doing business there and in the amount of judicial work they generated.[41] The maturation, if not the genesis, of the system of assizes in Asia Minor should probably be placed after 84. Very likely the practice of judicial "tours" was also followed in Macedonia during the winters between the campaigning seasons, although we should imagine far fewer Roman residents or businessmen there than in Asia Minor, inasmuch as publicani apparently did not collect the Macedonian fixed tribute (stipendium ), in contrast to the arrangement in Asia. If so, however, it is evident that the proconsul did not normally travel into Greece for this purpose even shortly after the First Mithridatic War.[42]
[38] See especially Marshall, Phoenix 20 (1966) 231-46, for a lively and informative introduction to the practice. Cf. Magie, RRAM , 1059-60 n. 41; Habicht, JRS 65 (1975) 64-91; and SEG XXXIX.1180, lines 88-96, with Engelmann and Knibbe, EA 14 (1989) 106-9, for new epigraphic evidence.
[39] See now Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 56. Magie, RRAM , 1059-60 n. 41, and Habicht, JRS 65 (1975) 68, accept the assumption of Mommsen that the assize system was put in place by Aquillius. Ameling believes that Aquillius merely gave formal recognition to preexisting Attalid districts (EA 12 [1988] 9-18). See also Mileta, Klio 72 (1990) 427-44. Badian would make Scaevola the author of the system: Publicans , 89, 147 n. 34.
[40] On the number of Italians massacred in Asia on Mithridates' order, see p. 155 n. 118. App. Mith . 28 reports a further mass slaughter on Delos.
[41] See chap. 10.
Taken as a whole, then, our evidence strongly implies that proconsular jurisdiction was largely a matter of providing a court of justice for Roman citizens: this much was required of the proconsul, but he hardly had time for much else besides, and he was unable to exert dose supervision over details where he was not present. It is a reasonable and economic hypothesis that where a proconsul is seen to have intervened in local jurisdiction it was for the most part in response either to appeals from interested parties (mostly Romans, sometimes Greeks) who saw some advantage in applying to his court. Much, however, ultimately depended on the proconsul's whim, and the arbitrary exertion of power, whether or not for the sake of personal gain, will probably not have been too unusual under such circumstances. The proconsul's judicial authority, which was based above all on his coercive power, had no explicit limitations except those he chose to adhere to in his edict when he chose to exercise it in communities that did not possess special privileges or guarantees from the Roman Senate and People. On the other hand, infringing upon the judicial sovereignty of "free" cities might lead to some embarrassment if a local citizen of the means and authority of Menippus of Colophon was at hand to bring the matter to the attention of the Senate, which for its part appears to have been a consistent defender of the rights of the "free" cities.
It is important to keep in mind that most of the Greek cities of western Asia Minor, as well as those of mainland Greece, appear at this rime to have been "free" (see chap. 4). Before the First Mithridatic War, too, the presence of Roman residents and traders, who provided the chief incentives and opportunities for proconsular intervention in local judiciaries, was on a far smaller scale than after. Our evidence, even if it were more copious, is not of the type to allow us to gauge the degree of Roman intrusion into local judicial structures, but the hypothesis toward which it points is that outside of coastal Macedonia and the interior core of the old Attalid kingdom (i.e., Mysia and Lydia) proconsular intervention can have been only sporadic at this time and of limited lasting effect. The "free" cities of western Asia Minor were in an anomalous position, for the proconsuls of Asia clearly spent much time in their midst (especially in Pergamum and Ephesus), and this must have exposed them, as we have seen in the case of Colophon, to repeated, though not necessarily systematic or extensive, infringements of their judicial autonomy. Yet once again Colophon's fight for its judicial sovereignty, and epigraphic evidence of the continuation of international diplomatic exchanges,[43] show that the Greek poleis did not
[43] IPr 109, lines 47-60, 103-6, 172-75, and IPr 121, lines 24-33, reveal numerous embassies in the last quarter of the second century and later to various cities and the Seleucid and Cappadocian courts. (Cf. IPr 108, lines 152-69, for further embassies, some of which may date to the same period.) See also Claros 1, Menippus, I, lines 16-27, with p. 69 and n. 27; Claros 1, Polemaeus, IV, lines 17-20.
simply yield themselves to the imperium Romanum upon the establishment of a permanent Roman presence in Asia Minor.
Proconsuls and Publicani
Perhaps the most delicate administrative duty performed by the praetors of Asia, and one that at times must have absorbed much of their attention in lieu of military campaigning, was that of restraining the publicani in the interests of the allies, and hence of the state.
C. Gracchus's two tribunates were ultimately of profound significance for the Roman presence in Asia Minor. His law providing for the sale of contracts for collection of the Asian revenues before the censors in Rome, although probably intended to limit proconsuls' opportunities for peculation and bribery, opened up a brilliant opportunity to Roman tax companies. This alone need not have had a pernicious effect had not, at the same time, the court for cases of extortion in the provinces (quaestio rerum repetundarum ) been transferred to equestrian rather than senatorial jurors. The intention, again, was probably to introduce stricter supervision of the financial administration of provincial governors,[44] but the possibility existed of collusion between equestrian jurors and the publicani of the same order because of their personal links and perhaps common sympathies. If so, the system established by C. Gracchus might merely supervise proconsuls in the interest of the tax contractors themselves or, more realistically, encourage collaboration between the two parties, for the possibility existed that a proconsul would pay for any transgressions in his province against the business activities of the publicani in the extortion court upon his return.
It is important, however, not to exaggerate this factor and to impute to C. Gracchus motives that were probably foreign to him. Although it is always possible that the survival of privileged or random pieces of evidence has distorted the picture, what we have clearly suggests that it was only around the turn of the second century that the tension between the search for increased profits on the part of the publicani and the interests of Senate
[44] See especially App. BC 1.22. Cf. Badian, Roman Imperialism , 48-49. See now Sherwin-White, JRS 72 (1982) 18-31.
and proconsul alike to maintain good relations with the "friends and allies of the Roman People" reached a crisis point. It is possible that our view of provincial government has been distorted by taking as the norm the clash between the publicani and Q. Mucius Scaevola's legate P. Rutilius Rufus, who was ultimately convicted by the extortion court after his return from Asia, rather than as evidence for new stresses upon the imperium .
Although Q. Mucius Scaevola Augur (cos. 117) was prosecuted for extortion probably in 119, we have no evidence that his brush with the repetundae court was due to difficulties encountered with the publicani , and the equestrian jurors acquitted him despite ostensibly damning evidence.[45] However, in 104, when Marius requested troops from Nicomedes III of Bithynia in accordance with a senatorial decree calling for military assistance from abroad, the king excused himself on the grounds that "most of the Bithynians had been seized by the publicani and were enslaved in the provinces."[46] The Senate responded with a decree that provided that no allied free man was to be a slave in a province,[47] and that the governors should see to their manumission. It is an attractive conjecture that the 800 Bithynians, Thessalians, and Acarnanians who later turn up among the forces of Nerva's successor in Sicily are the 800 slaves whom Nerva freed before calling a halt to the process (Diod. 36.3.2, 8.1), since it strains the imagination that there had been time to summon troops from those nations, and it would explain the anomaly otherwise of employing Bithynian, Thessalian, and Acarnanian assistance in a slave war. Before we consider the basis of Nicomedes' charge we must take note of just how extraordinary it was for the Roman government to call upon its Eastern allies for military assistance in the West.[48] In Rome's darkest hour since the Second Punic War the Senate hoped it could count on the goodwill of its Eastern allies—and in the case of Bithynia at least it was disappointed. Not only that, but the Senate's attempt to rectify the situation by forbid-
[45] For the date of his praetorship and proconsulship in Asia, see Broughton, MRR , 1:523-24. On the trial, see Cic. Brut . 102, De or . 2.281. Lucilius 55-94 Marx (cf. Cic. Fin . 1.9) satirized the confrontation between Scaevola and his prosecutor Albucius. Cf. Gruen, RPCC , 115; Alexander, Trials , no. 32.
[46] Diod. 36.3.1. Datable by the subsequent reference to Licinius Nerva in Sicily: Broughton, MRR , 1:559.
ding the enslavement of allies and calling for the manumission of those already enslaved led to a new slave war in Sicily that took four years to put down. The appeal to Nicomedes and its troubling results will have made clear that Rome's hold on the East, resting as it did not on direct coercion but on resignation to Rome's supremacy, was tenuous enough as it was, and that perceived injustices, in particular ill-treatment by the tax contractors, might shake it to its roots. Senators with forethought will have noted that there was a direct link between restraint of the publicani and the security of the imperium in the East.
What exactly the publicani had been up to in Bithynia is not easy to divine. Suggestions of scholars that they were engaged in a Bithynian slave trade "of demographically significant size" or that the Bithynians had come to be seized because Nicomedes had defaulted on a loan borrowed from Romans on security of his subjects' persons are unconvincing.[49] Ultimately, of course, the Bithynians must have been traded as slaves in order to arrive in Sicily, but the question is how and indeed whether—for the claim may not be true—the publicani seized them in the first place. Both Nicomedes' complaint and the Senate's reaction are hard to reconcile with the view that this was no more than the legitimate consequence of default on loans. Indeed, nothing is said at all of loans (the experience of Nicomedes' son a decade later, under much straitened circumstances, is of dubious relevance),[50] and were they at issue we should expect rather a ban on lending money on the security of the person of free allies. We do know, however, that at least later publicani had the nasty habit of seizing the person of those who could not pay taxes allegedly owed,[51] although in such cases they were legally entitled only to the seizure of some property to initiate an action.[52] We also know that they were known to encroach upon
[49] Slave trade: Rostovtzeff, SEHHW , 782-83, 1514 n. 49; Harris, War and Imperialism , 82 (quoted), with n. 2. See also Glew, ANSMN 32 (1987) 36-42. Loan: Badian, Publicans , 88. Engelmann and Knibbe, EA 14 (1989) 161, combine hypotheses and suppose that the publicani enjoyed a royal concession on the slave trade in Bithynia in return for loans.
[50] App. Mith . 11 and below, chap. 9.
territory in which they did not have an indisputable legal right to collect taxes, such as that of the "free cities" or sacred lands, concerning which indeed a number of cases just around this time are known. It is most likely that the Bithynians had been seized by publicani in just such disputed territory along the edges of Nicomedes' kingdom. But we must be wary of gauging the extent of this activity from Nicomedes' patently self-interested exaggeration of the number of its victims.
Around the turn of the second century the publicani had laid claim to the revenues of two lakes south of Ephesus that produced large revenues (from fish?)[53] for the patron goddess Artemis; "the kings" (presumably the Attalids, at least) had taken over these revenues, but the Romans themselves had restored them to Artemis, probably as part of the settlement of the war with Aristonicus.[54] The native geographer Artemidorus led an embassy to Rome which was successful in urging the restoration of the revenues to Artemis. And in another case involving an important "free city" of Asia Minor before 101,[55] the publicani had encroached upon Pergamene land (and probably that of its sanctuaries) to such an extent that an embassy was sent to Rome, and the urban praetor headed an inquiry into the boundaries of Pergamene territory with an unusually large consilium .[56] Although the case concerned Pergamene land alone, it would seem, epigraphic copies of the senatorial decree have been found at Adramyttium, Smyrna, and Ephesus; this has led one scholar to propose that in 101 the urban praetor was to undertake the gargantuan job of defining the borders of all the tax-exempt states of Asia.[57] That is unwarranted: the embassy that prompted the investigation is from Pergamum alone (line 7), and it is perfectly plausible to suppose that the derision was now or
[53] Knibbe, ANRW II.7.2 (1980) 751. Cf. Nicolet, L'ordre équestre , 1:351-52; Rostovtzeff, SEHHW , 644.
[54] Strabo 14.1.26, C642. Date: Artemidorus's floruit, according to Martian of Heraclea, was Olympiad 169 = 104-100 (GGM 1.566; cf. Berger, RE 2 [1896] 1329-30). Note the Artemidorus, son of Artemidorus, in the treaty between Ephesus and Sardis discussed below: OGIS 437 (Sherk 47), lines 49-50, 94-95.
[55] For the date of the senatus consultum Pergamenum , see above, p. 118 n. 89.
[56] Sherk 12 (cf. Sherk 54). On the size of the consilium , cf. de Martino, PP 210 (1983) 172-76.
[57] For the Smyrna copy, see n. 56 above. Copies: IGRR IV. 262 (Adramyttium); IEph 975 A-B (Ephesus) (cf. Petzl, EA 6 [1985] 70-71). A Pergamene copy must have existed but has not yet been found. The suggestion belongs to de Martino, PP 210 (1983) esp. 173-74, 184; cf. his restoration of lines 7-8 (pp. 189-90).
later published in the major cities of western Asia Minor for maximum visibility.[58] We do not strictly know whether the praetor's decision amounted to a victory for Pergamum.[59] But the affair is further evidence of encroachment by the tax gatherers on disputable lands around the turn of the century and of the Senate's readiness to hear the complaints of its "free" ally, Pergamum, against them.
A provision of the approximately contemporary lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis , which expressed, as we shall see further below (chap. 9), a positive image of Rome's solicitude for the communities under its imperium , should perhaps be considered in this context. Among a series of regulations concerning the settlement of the Caenic Chersonese, recently conquered by T. Didius, we read that the proconsul is to "do as seems best to him to ensure that the public revenues in that land are collected in accordance with the law by those who are entitled to collect them."[60] The two points of emphasis in this injunction are that only those who are authorized are to collect revenues, and they are to do so according to law. The point is surely to emphasize the proconsuls' role as supervisors of the collection of revenues, in particular to block illegal exactions such as those of which Pergamum, Ephesus, and doubtless others had so recently complained.[61] This is not, then, a command "to organize the taxation of the new territory, an interesting indication . . . of Roman priorities,"[62] but a pledge, quite in keeping with other evidence we have
[58] The Smyrna copy was published apparently in conjunction with Julius Caesar's re-"freeing" of Pergamum around mid-century (cf. Sherk, p. 64, and no. 54). The Adramyttium copy, however, probably dates earlier (Petzl, ad ISmyrna 589). On the publication of important decisions in all major cities of the province (the conventus iuridici ) see Sherk 52. On the problem of the copies at Adramyttium and Smyrna, see Passerini, Athenaeum 15 (1937) 274-75, 283; Segrè, Athenaeum 16 (1938) 119-27; Tibiletti, JRS 57 (1957) 138; Mattingly, AJP 93 (1972) 415; Robert, in Anatolian Studies Buckler , 228 n. 3; Petzl, ISmyrna II.1, p. 54.
[59] Contra Badian, Publicans , 60, and Nicolet, L'ordre équestre , 1:350, who seem to think that a Pergamene text is extant.
[62] Hassall, Crawford, and Reynolds, JRS 64 (1974) 213; so too Ferrary, in RCMM , 2:781.
surveyed from this period, to enforce the legitimate collection of tribute. In a similar vein, the very next clause orders the Macedonian proconsul to remain in the Caenic Chersonese for at least two months each year before he is succeeded, and "to ensure, as far he is able, that the friends and allies of the Roman People are not thrust from their borders, that no one hinders, or nothing unjust befalls them."[63] The proposer of this law was quite in accord with the efforts of the Senate which we have just examined in attempting to counteract the "justified hatred of their hegemony" that Diodorus (34/35.25), probably quoting Posidonius, claimed had been unleashed by C. Gracchus but was only now, in the aftermath of the Bithynian debacle and the crisis of the Teutonic and Cimbric invasions, making an impact.[64]
Only three to four years after the decision on the Pergamene land, either during his praetorship in 98 or immediately ex praetura in 97,[65] Q. Mucius Scaevola Pontifex arrived to take up command of Asia provincia and to set in motion a chain of events that was dearly epochal in the history of Rome's presence in the region. Although our evidence is as usual very fragmentary, consisting above all in some extracts from Diodorus in the Constantinian Excerpts (37.5-6), it will repay our closer investigation.
Diodorus, who is here almost certainly following Posidonius, a contemporary and native of Asia Minor, describes the situation before Scaevola's arrival in dark terms: the publicani had filled the province with their crimes, for they had as allies those in Rome who staffed the standing public courts (i.e., in particular, the extortion court which every returning proconsul might face).[66] The lawlessness of the tax contractors, abetted by their manipulation of judicial process, had caused widespread misery and
[63] JRS 64 (1974) 204, IV, lines 18-25. Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 53-54, sees a strictly military rationale for this requirement. For the difficult section that follows, and assessment of the arguments of Martin, ZPE 35 (1979) 153-60, we must await publication of the new readings.
[65] On the date of Scaevola's command, see now my discussion in CP 84 (1989) 305-12, supplementing the arguments of Balsdon, CR 51 (1937) 8-10, and Marshall, Athenaeum 54 (1976) 117-30, against Badian, Athenaeum 34 (1956) 204-23.
engendered hatred for Rome's supremacy.[67] Above all, according to Diodorus, by meting out strict justice to the publicani and not forcing the provincials to pay his expenses and those of his staff, Scaevola managed to relieve the suffering province, assuage hostility, and, indeed, recapture the goodwill of the allies toward Rome.[68] For his behavior, Diodorus notes, he was honored like a god by those he had benefited, and received many rewards for his achievement from his fellow citizens (37.6). Diodorus is here corroborated by other testimony: the cities of Asia instituted a festival in his honor called the Mucieia and—clearly aiming for maximum publicity—erected a statue of Scaevola at the greatest Panhellenic center, Olympia, which bore an inscription attesting to his lofty character, his justice and probity, and awarding him the title, redolent with Hellenistic tradition, of "savior and benefactor."[69] The Roman Senate for its part formally commended him on his administration, and Scaevola won an abiding reputation for iustitia, abstinentia , and innocentia that conferred no small authority upon him in his consulship of 95.[70]
Some details Diodorus provides about Scaevola's behavior in the province deserve special attention. That he brought with him as legatus not a young man on the make but "the finest of his friends," the senior consular and legal expert P. Rutilius Rufus (cos. 105), to act as his special adviser is specially noted as a laudable and wise action.[71] Scaevola's reliance on his own funds rather than being a parasite upon the provincial communities
[70] Cic. Att . 5.17.5, 6.1.15, Verr . 2.2.27; Val. Max. 8.15.6. For his refusal of a provincia as consul and his obstruction of his friend L. Licinius Crassus's plea for a triumph, both of which express Scaevola's strong disapproval of the personal exploitation of provincial postings, cf. Asc. 14-15 Clark, and my discussion in CP 84 (1989) 306-9.
[71] 37.5.1, 8.1; cf. CP 84 (1989) 310-11.
is noted as an exception from the practice of earlier proconsuls. A striking illustration of this is provided now by the Claros inscriptions, which stress the public service of both Polemaeus and Menippus in paying for the entertainment of Roman authorities, thereby saving Colophon a considerable expense. By an amusing coincidence, Scaevola's own homonymous cousin, Q. Scaevola Augur, and his staff are specifically mentioned—with some impatience—as having arrived in the city "more than once."[72] On the other hand, a warning against presenting Scaevola Pontifex in simplistic, encomiastic terms is provided by Cicero's admission that Scaevola too had requisitioned grain for the maintenance of his troops, a practice often mentioned as a major burden upon provincial communities.[73]
But Diodorus gives most attention to Scaevola's strict and incorruptible administration of justice against the tax contractors (37.5.2-4). This passage gives a clear sense of the attention the proconsul of Asia had to devote to jurisdiction involving the publicani .[74] Not only did he spare provincials from unjust charges by the publicani ; he even checked their offenses by offering a fair hearing for complaints against them and forcing them to pay financial damages and even to submit to capital punishment. In one famous instance Scaevola crucified a slave who was a leading agent of the publicani and had already arranged with his owners to escape extreme punishment through manumission. With this treatment he "put the publicani into the hands of their victims"—a magnificent reversal.[75] This phrase may be only metaphorical. However, in view of the tax contractors' habit of seizing the persons of alleged defaulters, we are entitled to wonder whether this phrase and that which immediately follows suggest that Scaevola handed over the condemned to the provincials for punishment.[76] This
[73] Verr . 2.3.209: frumentum cellae nomine imperaverunt . Cf. Neesen, Untersuchungen , 105, with 245 n. 105,4, and now Lintott, Imperium Romanum , 93-94.
[74] One of the major divisions of Cicero's provincial edict comprised omnia de publicanis (Att . 6.1.15). Interestingly, a regulation of A.D. 5 transferred complaints—at least involving the portorium —to the praetor peregrinus in Rome (SEG XXXIX. 1180, clause 49).
was an extraordinary way of treating Romans and their agents in their own imperium: as Diodorus implies, it was one thing to discourage unjust suits from the publicani against alleged defaulters, quite another to exact penalties from Roman purses and persons on behalf of provincial communities. Executions, particularly if performed upon citizens as well as the slave singled out for mention because of the extreme form his punishment took, will have been particularly unpopular in Rome not only, we may suppose, among the tax gatherers. All those with business interests in the provinces—not only equestrian negotiatores but also senators—will have been displeased at the prospect that the opportunities for personal gain that the imperium provided the ruling people, Romans and Italians, might be sacrificed by self-righteous magistrates in favor of the provincials' interest.[77] If Scaevola executed citizens as well as slaves, this violation of custom, though not of law, will have exacerbated odium against him.[78] The anger of the equestrian order against Scaevola and his legate Rutilius, therefore, is fully explicable in this instance without accepting Diodorus's or Posidonius's notion of a dose alliance between publicani and equestrian judges.[79] Scaevola himself was too powerful a target; but the message was gotten across sufficiently by the condemnation of Rutilius, whose stunning isolation at his trial bespeaks the absence of strong senatorial support not only for himself but for the line he and his commander had taken in Asia Minor.[80] Rutilius's conviction for extortion, of course, had a special piquancy, inasmuch as it was a standing accusation of hypocrisy.
If my reading of the evidence we have reviewed thus far is broadly correct, it emerges that around the turn of the second century, and most probably as a direct result of the crisis of the Teutonic and Cimbric invasions, influential members of the Senate became alert to the fact that the imperium in the East was dangerously unstable above all because of the aggressive behavior of the tax contractors. Scattered literary and epigraphic evidence shows that the Senate now gave a favorable ear to the complaints of the communities of Asia Minor against the publicani , and finally we
[77] On capital punishment of Romans, see above, n. 6. Senators: the princeps senatus himself, M. Aemilius Scaurus, had a reputation, obscure to be sure, for shady dealing in the provinces: Pliny HN 36.116; Sall. Iug . 15.4.
[78] Cf. above, n. 4, on governors' criminal jurisdiction.
[79] Cic. Fam . 1.9.26, Planc . 33; cf. Livy, Per . 70; Vell. Pat. 2.13.2; Val. Max. 2.10.5, 6.4.4; Dio Fr. 97.1.
[80] See my treatment in Phoenix 44 (1990) 122-39, where the date ca. 94 for the trial, rather than the traditional 92, is also suggested. The chronological point does not affect the present argument. Sources for the trial: Alexander, Trials , no. 94.
see that Scaevola applied new principles of benevolent administration quite forcefully during his tenure of Asia provincia . But such conscientious governance was not uncontroversial in Rome and Italy, from which vantage point it will have seemed to many an odd perversion of the privileges of empire; and certainly Scaevola's harsh retribution upon the wretched tax contractors will have made further enemies. Rutilius's conviction served notice that he and his commander had gone too far, but we should not conclude that the publicani were once again given an entirely free rein.
Inscriptions from Priene suggest instead that the lesson Asian praetors learned from the hostility that greeted Scaevola and Rutilius was to evade responsibility and pass complaints on to the Senate with relief. During the tenure of Asia by C. Iulius Caesar toward the end of the 90s the publicani attempted to lay claim to the revenues of the saltworks at Priene, which belonged to Athena Polias.[81] An embassy was sent to Rome to complain to the Senate, but in the meantime the publicani insisted that they should be allowed to continue to collect the revenues therefrom until the Senate's decision was known. An ambassador of Priene named Crates managed to persuade Caesar to restrain the publicani until the Senate's decision was known; the publicani asserted their claims again;[82] Crates undertook another embassy to Caesar, probably with the same result. The dispute continued upon the arrival at Ephesus of the next praetor, one Lucius Lucilius, son of Lucius, whom the publicani again tried to influence; but Crates again persuaded the Roman commander to leave the revenues to Priene until the Senate should decide about them.[83] We must suppose that Priene had to wait a considerable length of time for the Senate to rule on its case: when we last hear of the case under Lucilius, the Senate's decision is still not known. A parallel example is instructive: not much less than a year must have passed between the senatus consultum of 74, requesting a con-
[83] Caesar seems to have been at Pergamum when approached (line 15); Lucilius's presence at Ephesus (line 139) probably implies that he had just arrived at the main port of entry for Asia and implies nothing about a "residence" or "provincial capital."
sular decision on the revenues of Oropus, and the decision itself on 14 October 73—and to this must be added travel time and doubtless lengthy preliminaries in Rome to the senatorial audience itself.[84] But Crates' tireless exertions on his city's behalf seem to have been no less successful than those of Menippus of Colophon which we have reviewed above, for this honorific inscription's stress upon them should bespeak success. It is therefore most probable that Priene was able to stall the tax contractors until a favorable decision was handed down by the Senate.
Rutilius's condemnation, then, had not transformed the Asian praetors into mere allies and agents of the publicani , and the Senate remained ready to support the rights of the Greek communities against encroachment. The Greek cities, too, remained vigilant; one Prienean active around the turn of the century is honored for having served on embassies to no less than three probably consecutive praetors, as well as a quaestor—and King Seleucus VI.[85] Probably, as in the other Prienean honorary inscriptions, the embassies to Roman officials chiefly involved disputes with the publicani —the main source of friction for the Greek cities around the turn of the century, in contrast (so it would appear from the Claros inscriptions) to the early days of the province.
Proconsular Supervision of Local Affairs
A kind of "police function" exercised by Roman proconsuls in the East is easy to presume, but here too some caution against sweeping conclusions is necessary. As we have just seen, at least ca. 100 the proconsul of Macedonia held an explicit brief to defend the rights and boundaries of Rome's "friends and allies" of the newly conquered region of the Caenic Chersonese, and perhaps this can be extended over the entire area of his assignment or provincia . But this must have applied above all to Macedonia itself, and as we saw (chaps. 1-3), we should not suppose that he performed such a function in Greece itself, occupied as he was with the defense of the Balkan frontier. The only evidence for the exercise of such a function by the proconsul of Macedonia—the intervention of Q. Fabius Maximus at Dyme—involves an outbreak of stasis during the settlement immediately after the Achaean War and cannot be considered to be representative of a norm; on the other hand, the Attic slave wars, one of them quite severe,
[84] Cf. Sherk 23, lines 1-6. For long solicitation of individual senators before a senatorial hearing, cf. Syll 656, lines 19-27; FD III.4.43, lines 7-10.
[85] IPr 121, lines 21-24; Seleucus: line 32. For the date of these commanders' tenure of Asia, see p. 121 n. 101.
were contained (so it appears from our evidence) without Roman intervention. A proconsul's involvement in such matters was perhaps dependent above all upon his proximity: thus, in the Dyme incident, the councillors led by Cyllanius readily appealed to Fabius because he happened to be nearby at Patrae;[86] similarly, presumably, the regular presence of the proconsul of Asia in the Greek cities of the Aegean coast led the Senate, upon appeal from Colophon, to give him and his successors the responsibility of suppressing armed raids upon part of that city's agricultural land.[87] Despite the presence of a Roman magistrate in Asia Minor, open friction between or within the "free" cities was then evidently not entirely at an end, as a few other such instances also show, in particular a conflict, seemingly violent, between Sardis and Ephesus mediated by a Roman proconsul not far from the turn of the century.[88]
This case is an important example of an attempt at mediation by a Roman proconsul, and the diplomatic forms he employs are particularly worthy of note. Had he intervened too forcefully he might have received a rebuke from the Senate, as appears to have happened to the proconsul who meddled in the quarrel between Colophon and Metropolis somewhat earlier.[89] Instead, expressing his concern over the animosity between the two cities, he sent a Greek—indeed, an Athenian—to invite each side to accept the proconsul's offer to help bring about a settlement.[90] Both cities
[86] Sherk 43, lines 4-11.
[88] OGIS 437 (Sherk 47), lines 34-37 and esp. 66-73, prohibiting future warfare or hostile action between the cities. Note also that the agreement itself (lines 58-96) does not refer to any specific matter under dispute (e.g., territory) but takes the form of a treaty laying down rules for future relations between the two cities. Compare the secession of Heracleotis from Ephesus around the turn of the second century (Strabo 14.1.26, C642); as recently as the 140s there had been fighting between Priene and Magnesia (Syll 679, IV, lines 65-90) and as late as the middle of the first century Caunus seceded from Rhodes (Strabo 14.2.3, C652; Cic. QFr . 1.1.33; see Bernhardt, PrH , 200-202). The specific prohibition of warfare between Sardis and Ephesus in their treaty noted above ought therefore not to be seen as "more a concession to old treaty formulas than a statement of possibility" (Sherk, p. 259; similarly, Dittenberger, OGIS 437 n. 19; Bernhardt, PrH , 212). Rigsby, TAPA 118 (1988) 141-44, may be right to dissociate this treaty from Q. Scaevola Pontifex, but, as he concedes, it is hard to accept an Attalid date in view of the mention of priests of Roma at the two cities.
[89] Claros 1, Menippus, I, lines 50-54, and II, lines 1-7, which seem to belong together. Cf. Robert and Robert, pp. 88-91; but my understanding of this affair differs somewhat from theirs.
accepted the initiative and sent ambassadors to negotiate; from that point on, however, the proconsul fades into the background, because it appears to have been not he but Pergamum, a third city of appropriate status for such an honor, that actually mediated the treaty.[91] It would seem that the proconsul referred the matter to Pergamum and confined himself to informing the Sardians and Ephesians by letter of the eventual results.[92] The provisions laid down in the treaty for arbitration of future alleged breaches leave no place for either the Senate or Rome's proconsul: rather, within thirty days of any complaint both cities are to send envoys to Pergamum; within five more days Pergamum would conduct a lottery to determine the actual arbitrating city, from among those agreed upon by both parties; and within sixty further days both cities would send representatives to the arbitrating city, which would judge them.[93] The compact is entirely Hellenic in character and bears no mark of any basic alteration in political structures since the coming of the Romans; the delicacy with which the proconsul dealt with the Sardian-Ephesian conflict, and his apparent respect for the forms of international diplomacy among autonomous states, are striking.[94]
Another example of mediation, this time from Macedonia and Greece, illustrates further the limits of proconsular involvement in international disputes. In 118 the Athenian "guild" of Dionysian artists went to Macedonia to complain to the proconsul Cn. Cornelius Sisenna of their treatment at the hands of their Isthmian-Nemean colleagues.[95] Representatives
[91] OGIS 437 (Sherk 47), lines 75-76 (cf. 79, 83), for a third city as "mediator of the treaty"; that this was Pergamum is almost certain from the publication there of our text, the third copy of the treaty demanded in line 88.
[93] OGIS 437 (Sherk 47), lines 73-84.
[94] By contrast, compare Eumenes II's rather imperious intervention in the dispute between Teos and the Dionysian artists: Welles, 53, with Allen, Attalid Kingdom , 103-4.
of the Isthmian-Nemeans were not present, so Sisenna wrote to the Isthmian-Nemean
[96] Sherk 25, lines 32-38, 58-60; cf. the fragmentary copies of the settlement (Syll 704 I ). The date emerges from Syll 704K , with Daux, Delphes , 363. A roughly contemporary composite document containing decrees of the Delphic Amphictyony, of the Athenian demos, and a letter from the former to the latter (IG II .1134; cf. FD III.2.69), alludes to the affair several times but provides no concrete information, despite Klaffenbach's unwarranted restoration in lines 70-71 of an explicit reference to the meeting with Sisenna. It does, however, show that the Athenian state was already involved peripherally in the dispute ca. 120. The best discussion of the intricate affair is Daux, Delphes , 356-72; cf. the summary in Sherk, pp. 90-93. The attempt of Klaffenbach, Hermes 51 (1916) 475-77, and Pomtow, Syll 704K , nn. 43-44, to create a second hearing before Fabius Maximus is based entirely on their mistaken assumption that the Macedonian era began in 146 and the old, now untenable view that Fabius Maximus Eburnus was the proconsul named in Sherk 43.
[98] Sherk 15, line 38.
much trouble for the Isthmian-Nemeans.[99] In short, the agreement mediated by Sisenna was immediately repudiated by the Isthmian-Nemean "guild" and subsequently ignored for nearly six years, until the Athenian state became involved and took up the matter with the Senate. Far from illustrating the "subject status" of certain Greeks,[100] this affair dearly illustrates the minimal interest the proconsul of Macedonia took in "ruling" Greeks: Sisenna accepted the Attic group's request to mediate, but neither he nor his successors cared to play the role of enforcer not only of an agreement over which he presided but even of senatorial decisions. As we shall see in the next chapter, the forms of international diplomacy continued to be maintained by the practice of reserving disputes between communities for the Senate's attention.
Proconsular Grants of Privileges
Before concluding this survey, we should take some notice of the grants by Roman magistrates in the East of privileges, particularly those of the "guilds" of the artists of Dionysus. What is said here can be only tentative, for the imminent publication of an epigraphic dossier from Argos on the privileges of the Isthmian-Nemean "guild" will multiply our information for this practice, regarding which we have, thus far, only two short texts.[101] We can, therefore, be brief.
It is dear that by granting privileges such as (typically) immunity from taxation (
[99] Sherk 15, esp. lines 39-46; cf. 18-23.
[100] So Accame, Dominio romano , 9.
[101] Sherk 44 (examined above, pp. 43-44, from a different standpoint); Sherk 49.
[102] Cf. the measured remarks of Bernhardt, PrH , 243-45.
attracted disputants to its tribunal.[103] In this case, certainly, traditional Hellenic legal structures were not overturned but rather persisted with a new orientation toward the new locus of power and authority.
The first known example of a Roman grant of tax-exempt status not to Dionysiac artists but to Greeks who had performed particular service to Rome belongs immediately after the First Mithridatic War.[104] The origins of this practice belong to that era, when loyalty to Rome's hegemony had first become an issue of grave importance.[105]
The Massacre of 88
The behavior of Roman magistrates in the provinces was not uncommonly marked by arbitrariness, brutality, venality, and other types of corruption.[106] Of that there is no doubt; but these sins had not been entirely unknown in the world of the Hellenistic kings. There is perhaps a tendency to stress overmuch the effects of Roman misgovernment particularly in Asia Minor before the Mithridatic War. For example, to quote one scholar, "it is not difficult to understand why the peoples of Asia massacred some eighty thousand Roman citizens in one day at the bidding of Mithridates Eupator; it is less clear why such horrors were not repeated"[107] —or, we are left to wonder, why they had been so long in coming. The notorious bloodbath of 88, in which thousands of Romans and Italians, regardless of
[103] Cf. IG II .1132, lines 40-94, of ca. 134 (Daux, Delphes , 141-44, 357). Priority of Roman decisions: lines 93-94; cp. IG II .1134, lines 104-5. The dispute between the Isthmian-Nemean and Athenian "guilds" of Dionysiac artists discussed above and in chapter 6 is an important case of Roman arbitration of such claims. On the privileges in general, see Pickard-Cambridge, Dramatic Festivals , 279-302, and Poland, RE 5A (1934) 2489-90; but Poland goes too far in suggesting that all such grants had now to be cleared by Rome. For royal protection of the artists' privileges, cf., among others, Welles, 53 (Eumenes II's settlement of disputes between the Ionian-Hellespontine "guild" and Teos).
[104] See Sherk 22 (a senatorial decree, 78 B.C. ); Sherk 23, lines 50-51 (73 B.C. ).
[105] See further Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 305-13; Bernhardt, PrH , 248-53 (chiefly concerned, however, with the grant of citizenship).
[106] See above all, Badian, Publicans , esp. 82-118.
[107] Bowersock, Augustus , 1. The number Bowersock gives is quite untrustworthy (below, n. 118), nor was the atrocity limited, among Italians, to Roman citizens. Magie, RRAM , 176, and Green, Alexander to Actium , 560-61, similarly trace its cause ultimately to Roman rapacity. See also Amiotti, Aevum 54 (1980) 132-39, who finds its roots in Hellenic hatred of Roman and Italian exploitation. Bernhardt, PrH , 36-38, 49-58, rightly stresses immediate military and political circumstances as determinants of the Asiatic Greeks' behavior toward the Romans in their midst.
age, sex, or status, were slaughtered by the Greeks of Asia Minor,[108] is not uncommonly understood as a harsh but in some sense authentic verdict upon Roman imperial conduct in Asia Minor. The massacre is worth our closer attention in connection with this discussion of the impact of proconsuls and publicani on local communities, and of Greek attitudes toward their activities.
The brutality of the massacre makes it easy to interpret the event as a spontaneous outburst that gave vent to hatred pent up over a generation. Although universally noted in passing (as in the quotation above), insufficient weight has been given to the fact that the massacre was carried out in accordance with an order of Mithridates, who had by that time already established his presence in Ionia,[109] or to Mithridates' care to lay down severe penalties against those who disobeyed the order and promise of rewards for those who carried it out.[110] Appian himself regarded the "fear of Mithridates"—a phrase rarely noted by modem commentators—as a major motive for Greek obedience to the order, although he also believed that the manner in which it was carried out proved that the Greeks' hatred of the Romans was even greater than that fear.[111]
Yet surprisingly little blame is assigned by our near-contemporary source, Cicero, to the Greek cities that had carried out the massacre. In the speech for the Manilian law the responsibility appears to be Mithridates' alone; Greek complicity is not mentioned even where the orator wishes to stress the hatred aroused in the Eastern provinces by the rapacity of Roman officials.[112] Nor does Cicero ever recall the event as an exemplum of the disastrous results of corrupt administration in the long advisory letter to his brother Quintus on the governance of Asia.[113] Cicero chooses to take explicit note of the guilt of the Asiatic Greeks on only one occasion, in order to undermine the authority of the testimony of the city of Tralles against his client, L. Valerius Flaccus, in a case of extortion.[114] In Plutarch's
[108] Date: Cic. Leg. Man . 7. Sherwin-White's attempt to date the massacre to the winter of 89/88 is mistaken (RFPE , 124): Cicero is clearly counting inclusively (annum iam tertium et vicesimum regnat).
[109] App. Mith . 21-22.
[110] App. Mith . 21-22: a portion of the victims' property; rewards for informers and killers of those in hiding—for slaves, their freedom; for debtors, half the debt. Cf. Vell. Pat. 2.18.2: ingenti cure pollicitatione praemiorum interimi iusserat .
[112] Leg. Man . 7, 11, 65-67.
[113] QFr . 1.1, esp. 32-35.
[114] Flac . 60-61. As it happens, it was in Tralles that the citizens had hired a Paphlagonian executioner in order to avoid direct involvement in the murders: App. Mith . 23; Dio fr. 101.
account of the settlement of the war, Sulla's soldiers were displeased at the lenient treatment of the man (Mithridates) who had caused the massacre of so many Romans; Greeks are given no share of responsibility for the act (Sull . 24.4). In Appian's version of Sulla's settlement of Asia after the defeat of Mithridates, the Roman general assigns culpability for the atrocity above all to Mithridates and certain individuals in the towns, whom he put to death; the cities in general he blames only for obeying and carrying out the order—sufficient justification in any case, in his view, for the levying of a devastating fine that helped to resolve his financial difficulties.[115] Sulla punished the Ephesians particularly severely—not for throwing themselves into the bloody work with special enthusiasm, although we are told that suppliants were dragged from the Artemision to be killed, but for having previously overthrown Roman statues, thus expressing their adherence to the Pontic cause at the time of Mithridates' invasion of Ionia.[116] Similarly, it is the Mytilenaeans who are singled out by Velleius for their "treachery"—not indeed for their role in the slaughter but for a previous act, apparently immediately following the Pontic invasion of Asia: their handing over to Mithridates, as a gesture of goodwill and adherence to his cause, the Roman refugees to their city, among them Aquillius himself.[117] The lack of strong evidence for abiding Roman outrage against the Greeks of Asia Minor for the massacre of some thousands of Italians and Roman citizens implies just the reverse of Appian's judgment[118] : that their complicity in the crime was recognized at the time
[118] For the numbers involved, see especially Wilson, Emigration , 125-26, and Brunt, Italian Manpower , 224-27. Cic. Leg. Man . 11 speaks of thousands of victims; Memnon (FGrH 434 F 22.9) and Plutarch (Sull . 24.4) give specific and contradictory numbers: 80,000 (so too Val. Max. 9.2 ext. 3) and 150,000 respectively. Who counted?
to have been due after all more to the "fear of Mithridates" than to "hatred of the Romans."[119]
Further considerations point in the same direction. Mithridates, having already taken control of Ionia and preparing for the expedition against Rhodes, set a date one month in advance for the carrying out of his order throughout Asia.[120] Before that fixed day no conspicuous case is recorded of violent attacks on Romans in the cities of Asia; the worst we hear of is the betrayal of Romans to Mithridates by the Mytilenaeans and Laodiceans upon his first arrival in the west.[121] Many Romans and Italian—even the austere Stoic exile P. Rutilius Rufus—who had hitherto advertised their association with the ruling power by wearing the toga quickly shed this badge of hegemony when western Asia Minor fell under the control of Mithridates and his partisans.[122] Those who made this concession to discretion seem to have escaped immediate reprisals, and in the intervening time large numbers of Romans were allowed to escape to Rhodes, no doubt in more than one case with the active help of local notables such as Chaeremon of Nysa.[123] What was the purpose of the secrecy of the order and its execution on a single day if not to catch the victims unawares?[124] It is difficult to reconcile the view of the massacre as a passionate outburst against Roman rule with the fact that no such act is known to have been perpetrated upon Romans and Italians when the defenses of the province first collapsed or even when Mithridates first established himself in Ionia. The evidence is incompatible with the view that the Asian Greeks chafed to avenge themselves upon their Roman masters at the earliest opportu-
[119] Chios's reward of "freedom" after the war (App. Mith . 61; Sherk 70, lines 11-18), although it is unlikely that it stood aside from the massacre (disobedience of Mithridates' order is not among his grievances at App. Mith . 46-47, and note the Chians' enjoyment of property formerly owned by Romans), may be a further sign that Rome placed the blame for the slaughter squarely on Mithridates.
[120] App. Mith . 21-22; Memnon, FGrH 434 F 22.9; Cic. Leg. Man . 7, 11. Memnon, probably wrongly, puts the date even later than does Appian: after the Rhodians repelled Mithridates' naval attack.
[121] Laodicea on Lycus: App. Mith . 20.
[122] Ath. 5.213b = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F36, p. 246 = F 253.82-84 Edelstein-Kidd; Cic. Rab. Post . 27. Cicero dearly dates Rutilius's change of clothing to Mytilene's capitulation. It is worth noting that not even Rutilius's great reputation among the Greeks for his scrupulous administration as Scaevola's legate (cf. Val. Max. 2.10.5) sufficiently protected him—a further sign that the Greek treatment of Romans had less to do with resentment at past injustices than with the immediate military realities.
[123] Chaeremon: Welles 74, lines 2-3. For Rhodes as Roman refuge, cf. App. Mith . 24 (the proconsul C. Cassius).
nity. That is not to suggest that any great love was lost between the two peoples; the brutality of the slaughter that Appian recounts at Ephesus, Pergamum, Adramyttium, Caunus, and Tralles suggests no surfeit of scruple in at least those places.[125] Rather, my point is simply to emphasize that when the massacre came, it was a deliberate act of policy in accordance with an order given by a third party rather than a spontaneous expression of latent but bitter hostility.[126]
It is presumably because of the modern tradition of emphasizing Greek emotion rather than Mithridatic initiative in considering this event that so little attention has been paid to the Pontic king's purpose in issuing the order. The fact that the order was given during preparations early in 88 for the expedition against Rhodes and not before,[127] when the province first had fallen into Mithridates' hands, must be kept in mind. This would suggest that it was motivated by some development since the initial victory over Roman and allied forces. Possibly the order is to be linked directly with the campaign against Rhodes: it might be useful to prevent the Italian contingent on the island from being reinforced with men and resources. On the other hand, now that Mithridates was running up against the first strong resistance to his march, the Italian populations in the Greek cities might encourage defection from the cause after the passing of the first flush of Pontic triumph and the return of sober reflection on the chances of a Roman victory in the end, very likely induced by news of the passing of the Italian crisis.[128] Therefore, I suggest, Mithridates determined to secure his hold on the rest of the Greek cities of western Asia Minor and remove all possibility for time-serving prevarication by demanding of them an act that would place them irrevocably in the control of his partisans and preclude all rational hopes for accommodation with Rome in the near future. If that was Mithridates' purpose, he was on the whole successful. The massacre did not, of course, prove an ironclad guarantee against revolt, as subsequently the inevitability of Mithridates' defeat sank in, and the king resorted to increasingly repressive measures against the wretched cities. The Greeks who had participated in the slaughter of 88
[125] Mith . 23; also Dio fr. 101 for Tralles. Cos could claim, apparently exceptionally, to have saved Romans (Tac. Ann . 4.14).
[126] See also McGing, FPME , 113-18, against the old view (Rostovtzeff, SEHHW , 938; Magie, RRAM , 216-17) that the killings were perpetrated and supported chiefly by a truculent and vengeful "rabble."
[127] See above, n. 120.
[128] Cf. Diod. 37.2.11. Ath. 5.213c = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F 36, p. 246 = F 253.89-92 Edelstein-Kidd, for an appeal by the Italian confederation, whose fortunes were failing, to Mithridates in 88, apparently shortly before the massacre.
might revolt, but they could expect no reward from Rome for doing so. That did not stop Ephesus from trying to restore its link with the now-victorious Romans in late 86 or 85, when the city professed in a public decree its undying loyalty to Rome, tactfully leaving out all mention of the massacre. This shameless revision of history, however, seems to have fallen on deaf ears, and Sulla ultimately punished the Ephesians along with the others, indeed with special severity for Ephesus's early adherence to Mithridates.[129]
It has recently been argued persuasively, against previous orthodoxy, that the initial adherence to Mithridates of the Greek cities of Asia Minor and, subsequently, of parts of Greece was due on the whole less to anti-Roman sentiment than to calculation of local and individual interest under the conditions of the moment.[130] I would suggest a similar interpretation of the massacre of 88. It would be naive to ignore the role of Mithridates and to take it as a clear expression of the attitude of the Asiatic Greeks to Roman hegemony and administration. Appian's view that it revealed the hatred of the Greeks for Rome even more than it did their fear of Mithridates is a debatable interpretation in view of the attribution of overwhelming culpability in our sources to Mithridates (with the easily explained exception of Cicero's Pro Flacco ), whereas Greek complicity is not even noted with regularity. But certainly the timing of the massacre and the lack of prior incidents indicate that it was not the work of a populace driven half-mad by Roman oppression, waiting only for the official nod to wreak its vengeance, but a deliberate act, the initiative for which came from Mithridates and his agents for strategic purposes of their own.
Conclusions regarding the impact of a proconsular presence upon the communities of the East must remain tentative, given the nature of the evidence. Yet certain patterns seem clear and allow the formulation of a number of working hypotheses. Above all, I have tried to show that the impact the presence of successive proconsuls made upon the communities of the East depended above all on various concrete factors—for instance, the presence or absence of Roman officials and semiofficials such as the publicani in a community, the presence of a significant community of
[129] Syll 742 and App. Mith . 48, with McGing, FPME , 126-30, for the revolt of Ephesus, Tralles, and some other cities; App. Mith . 61 for Ephesus's punishment by Sulla.
[130] Bernhardt, PrH , 33-64, with sober examination of individual cases: "Beinahe überall waren die Städte lediglich Mitläufer. Von einer 'nationalistischen' Bewegung der 'Asiaten' gegen die Römer ist nichts zu erkennen" (63).
Roman citizens, the military duties of the proconsul, and the specific privileges enjoyed by cities and their readiness to defend them—rather than on comprehensive legal schemata such as leges provinciae , if they even existed in the form often imagined.
By taking such factors into consideration we arrive at a substantially different picture of "provincial administration," depending on where we look. There can be little argument about the degree to which Rome's proconsuls assumed supreme administrative authority over the unprivileged, tributary communities of Macedonia, Mysia, and Lydia, although the proconsul of Macedonia's military tasks must have diminished his direct supervision, and it is worth recalling that the Macedonian republics were apparently not abolished (see chap. 1). It is probably no accident that these were all parts of former kingdoms that were not, on the whole, structured around the polis, a useful locus of self-government. However, outside these core areas of the Eastern provinciae the proconsuls' responsibilities and rights were sharply reduced. We have already noted that although the proconsul of Macedonia was not formally barred from involvement in Greece, particularly when Roman interest demanded it, his primary and normally fairly onerous duties of defending the Balkan frontier must have made him a rare sight indeed south of Macedonia and the line of the via Egnatia . Evidence of Greek appeals to Roman arbitration, to be surveyed in the next chapter, tell the same story: as a rule, with few exceptions, Greek appeals for the settlement of internal disputes went before the Senate, and proconsuls seem typically to have been left only the minor details of the settlement or simply to have passed on the Senate's instructions to foreign authorities (see chap. 6). The limited role of proconsuls of Macedonia in mainland Greece is a sign that there the norms of international diplomacy were still observed. The proconsul of Asia seems to have played a similar role with regard to the "free" Greek cities of Asia Minor. Here, however, certain factors conspired to make Roman encroachment a more persistent and problematic phenomenon. Unlike the proconsul of Macedonia, the Roman commander of Asia had no significant military duties to distract him, while, on the other hand, the substantial numbers of Roman citizens in the provincia and the activities of the publicani meant that much of his business inevitably involved dashes of rights between Romans and provincials. Furthermore, he was quite regularly present in the "free" states themselves, which, as we have seen, will have been at the very least burdensome upon local finances. On the other hand, most Greek cities of the coast that had paid tribute to the Attalid kings were now free of that drain of resources and affront to local pride, and Rome's proconsul may
have given no more offense to local autonomy than the Pergamene
[131] See Allen, Attalid Kingdom , 104-9.
6
Roman Arbitration of Greek Disputes after 148
The role of the Senate in hearing interstate disputes from the Greek world was already well established before 148. Since the Peace of Apamea in 188, a host of Greek states had beaten a path to the Senate in Rome in the attempt to resolve international disputes to their advantage, and an important recent survey of such cases largely before our period has rightly stressed that, far from demonstrating Roman zeal to intervene and decide Greek affairs during the first half of the second century, this phenomenon illustrates above all eagerness on the part of Greeks to exploit Rome's power to their own advantage.[1] Do the norms that prevailed before the establishment of a permanent Roman presence in Macedonia and Asia Minor—in particular, initiative from the Greek side, a readiness on the part of the Senate to pass the actual working out of a settlement to Greek third parties, and the absence both of any special Roman interest in enforcing the terms of settlements thus reached and any compulsion to appeal to Rome—continue in our period? Does it appear that the Senate began to exploit its role as arbiter to impose its will or further its power in the East? How much, in short, did the assignment of new Eastern provinciae
[1] Gruen, HWCR , 96-131. See now also Eckstein, Historia 37 (1988) 414-44, mainly, however, concerned with the attitude of the Romans toward mediation of their own quarrels with other powers. To the cases of third-party intervention in Rome's own disputes in our period cited by Eckstein (pp. 424-26) might be added Massilia's successful assuaging of Roman anger against its mother city, Phocaea, slated by the Senate for destruction after its defection to Aristonicus (Justin 37.1.1). The standard work on Roman interstate arbitration, E. de Ruggiero's L'arbitrato pubblico in relazione col privato presso i Romani (1893), is now quite antiquated and shows its age in its schematic division of cases into "international," "federal," and "administrative" types. See the criticisms of Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 643-44, who provides what must in the meantime stand in its place.
actually change Roman attitudes or policy in this respect? A survey of cases involving Rome as arbitrator or mediator after the establishment of a permanent presence in Macedonia in the 140s, or in Asia Minor in the 120s, may cast further light on the nature of Rome's hegemony in the East before the Mithridatic wars.
The Character of Senatorial Arbitration
It is clear that there was no diminution in our period of the "wearisome procession of embassies" from the Greek world demanding senatorial arbitration of interstate disputes.[2] As usual, most of those known to us concern territory: we have epigraphic record of such disputes between the Narthacians and Melitaeans of Thessaly,[3] and between Magnesia and Priene, both around 140,[4] between the Messenians and Lacedaemonians ca. 138,[5] between Samos and Priene in 135,[6] between Hierapytna and Itanus in Crete in 140 and again in 112,[7] between Lato in Crete and one of its neighbors, probably around the same time,[8] and between Thronium and Scarphea in Locris around the turn of the century.[9] The referral to the Senate of the land dispute between the Athamanians and Ambraciots may
[2] The characterization is Gruen's, HWCR , 129.
[6] Sherk 10B. Sherk 10A very likely represents an earlier (perhaps not much earlier) recourse to the Senate: cf. Hiller, IPr , p. 46; Sherk, p. 57. Cf. also IPr 43.
[7] ICr III.4.9-10 (Sherk 14 = ICr III.4.10). For the date of the earlier appeal, see Sherk 14, lines 22-23; Guarducci, ICr III, p. 9.
[9] FD III.4, 42, lines 5-6, inscribed on the monument of Aemilius Paulus. It is tempting to associate this dispute with that judged probably by the Athenians (Colin, FD III.4, pp. 58, 59 n. 1) over the vote in the Amphictyony, apparently around the same time (FD III.4.38-41): see on that case Daux, Delphes , 335-41.
well also belong after 148,[10] while that between a Thracian king Cotys and the Greek city of Abdera probably dates to the latter half of the second century.[11] A case about which we are particularly well informed, however, concerned not land but the privileges of the Athenian and Isthmian-Nemean "guilds" of Dionysiac artists; this long quarrel came up at least once before the proconsul of Macedonia and at least twice before the Senate.[12] We also have record of the referral to the Senate of further disputes between Priene and Miletus in the 90s, at least one of which concerned access to Priene up the increasingly silted-up mouth of the Maeander;[13] of a proconsul's initiative in bringing a conflict between Sardis and Ephesus to mediation, at an uncertain date;[14] and of an appeal to the Senate probably in the 120s by those Delphians who had been expelled from their city for bringing charges of pilfering Apollo's property before the Amphictyonic Council.[15] To round out the picture we should not forget at least two, and perhaps more, requests by Nicomedes III of Bithynia and Mithridates VI Eupator for Roman settlement of their persistent struggle over the Cappadocian succession, an affair treated fully in chapter 9.
A few preliminary observations can be made before we examine some of the cases in detail. First, even with our limited sample it is dear that, just as before 148, appeals for Roman arbitration came above all from Greek poleis and native kings, all of them "friends and allies of the Roman
[10] Sherk 4. For the date, see Mattingly, NC 9[7] (1969) 103-4; Broughton, MRR , 3:84-85; contra Holleaux, Etudes , 5:388-95. It should, however, be noted that the identification of the witness Cn. Egnatius C.f. with the proconsul of Macedonia of uncertain date (builder of the via Egnatia ) stir leaves open a fairly wide chronological range.
[11] On the date of Syll 656, see Chiranky, Athenaeum 60 (1982) 470-81, esp. 474-78. The senatorial decree regarding the complaint of the priest of Serapis on Delos against the Delians and the Athenian governor may also belong in our period: cf. Mattingly, NC 9[7] (1969) 104.
[12] Sherk 15. On the involvement of the proconsuls of Macedonia, see chap. 5.
[13] IPr 111, lines 124-33, 143-51; cf. IPr 120, lines 19, 23-14(?), 25-26. The case mentioned in lines 143-51 is probably distinct. See Hiller, RE 15 (1931) 1612, and IPr , p. xix; Tod, International Arbitration , 45-46.
[14] Sherk 47. See chap. 5.
[15] FD III. 4.43; see further p. 182 with n. 90. There are some other cases of uncertain relevance. A further land dispute involving Tricca in Thessaly (Sherk 8) may fall within our period, but Roman involvement is uncertain. IG IX.2.520 testifies to a land dispute between Pteleum and Larisa Cremaste in Thessaly heard in the Senate; the date, however, is probably in the first quarter of the second century: see especially Habicht, Chiron 13 (1983) 24, 29-31, with Kramolisch, Demetrias II , 90-91. Roman involvement is wholly uncertain, though sometimes supposed, in the disputes attested by IPr 27 = Welles 46 and BCH 5 (1881) 102 (cf. Tod, International Arbitration , 45, 47).
people." The virtual absence of appeals from the Macedonian heartland and Mysia and Lydia in Asia Minor, formerly core regions of the Antigonid and Attalid kingdoms, is not to be explained by proconsular usurpation of rights previously enjoyed by local inhabitants, but by these regions' lack of a tradition of autonomous foreign policy. Disputes in these areas will probably have been typically settled quietly by the proconsul with little chance of leaving a lasting record. On the other hand, it is worth notice that at a time when a Roman proconsul was available in Macedonia, and after 131 in Asia Minor as well, the forms of international diplomacy continued to be observed not merely for the great poleis of Greece and Ionia but also in treating the troubles of such minor states as Narthacium and Melitaea in Thessaly, the Athamanian and Ambracian nations in north-central Greece, Thronium and Scarphea in Locris, and Hierapytna, Itanus, and Lato in Crete—not to mention the contentions, as complex as they were tiresome, of the Dionysiac artists.
A stele conveying the Senate's decisions, prominently published by the victorious party in its market or major sanctuary, stood not only as a vindication of its rights but as an impressive reminder of a direct and effectual relationship to Rome, the center of power, for Narthacium as well as a city with as conspicuous and illustrious a history as, for example, Priene. Not only Athenians but even the ambassadors from a Thessalian backwater might be addressed honorably in the senatorial decree as "fine and good friends from a people fine and good, our friend and ally."[16] The symbolic importance of such public texts is nicely illustrated by the decision of the Athenians, who had dearly made their effective championing of the rights of their "guild" of Dionysiac artists against the Isthmian-Nemeans a point of pride, to adorn the south wall of the Athenian Treasury with a copy of the senatorial decree in their favor, a highly conspicuous location, where it was (and remains) visible to all coming up the Sacred Way to the Temple of Apollo.[17] Prominent publication at Delphi was of course important merely for the protection of the rights of the Athenian artists; but it was also a projection of Athens's prestige and its links with the hegemon. It would be somewhat myopic to neglect the symbolic dimension of such an ostensibly pragmatic measure.
[16] Sherk 9, lines 14-18, 36-41 (Narthacians and Melitaeans); Sherk 7, lines 40-44 (Magnesians and Prieneans); Sherk 10, A, lines 2-3; B, lines 5, 8 (Prieneans and Samians); Sherk 15, lines 8-9, 54-55 (Athenians). Cf. for the use of the formula in the context of a request for an alliance: Sherk 16, lines 3-4.
[17] See Colin, ad FD III.2, 70a, for its location. For Athens's intervention in the Dionysian dispute, see below.
The role of the Senate bulks far larger than that of proconsuls in our evidence. The great majority of our documented cases came before the Senate rather than before proconsuls. This is in part no doubt because it was senatorial decrees that tended to be published by the participants, rather than letters of proconsuls; in general, proconsuls, who dearly (as we shall see) did play some part in interstate arbitration, generally merit only peripheral mention, buried in senatus consulta , honorific texts, or other documents of various types.[18] The emphasis on the Senate is doubtless also connected with the ideological dimension of the publication of such texts that we have just noted: senatorial decrees will have suggested international diplomacy, while proconsular letters smacked of external intervention. Yet it seems dear enough that while proconsuls might well make efforts at mediation, as a rule they must have passed disputes between states on to other tribunals, above all the Senate, for consideration and usually executed only minor administrative details in connection with them.[19] A proconsul who intervened too forcefully in the local disputes of "free" cities risked censure from the Senate:[20] there was a danger not only of infringing the privileges of "friends and allies" but also of intruding upon the Senate's prerogative in foreign relations. The emphasis on the Senate as arbiter is therefore surely not merely an illusion created by the self-image of Eastern states. The persistence of the forms of international diplomacy—the proper province of the Senate—long after the arrival of Roman proconsuls in the East is a noteworthy sign of continuity across the traditional dividing line of 148 (or 131).
There is no reason to believe that communities were under any compulsion, legal or moral, to bring their disputes before the Senate.[21] When
[18] Cf. IPr 111, lines 147-48; 124, lines 6-7 (proconsuls of Asia mentioned in connection with Prienean disputes with Magnesia and Miletus); FD III.2.142, line 6 (proconsul of Macedonia associated with land demarcation among Delphi, Phlygonium, and Ambryssus).
[20] Cf. Claros 1, Menippus, I, line 50-II, line 7.
[21] Tod, International Arbitration , 75, 181-82, and Raeder, L'arbitrage international , 163, 203, 268 (for whom Roman arbitration falls into the category of "obligatoire" rather than "compromissoire"), underrate the element of choice. Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 642-43, presents a balanced view.
Rhodes and Stratonicea agreed to bring their quarrel to arbitration, one Posidonius of Bargylia persuaded the parties to refer it to his home city rather than to Rome.[22] Other evidence as well suggests that international arbitration by Greeks without Roman involvement was by no means unusual,[23] and those cases that actually came before the Senate may well have been only a small minority of the total. The possibility of gaining the sanction of Rome's imperium for possession of disputed territory or some other advantage was surely incentive enough to attract appellants—especially those who hoped to turn cordial relations with Rome to their advantage. It is no accident that parties who could boast of being Rome's "friends and allies" commonly "renewed" the relationship pointedly at the beginning of their speeches in the Senate.[24]
A certain amount of one-upmanship in respect of Roman friendship was surely at play on not a few occasions. We noted in chapter 5 the collapse of the agreement mediated by Cn. Cornelius Sisenna between the quarreling rival "guilds" of Dionysiac artists. Now, however, the Athenian polis itself became directly involved on behalf of the Attic artists and took the case to the Roman Senate. There Athens, which enjoyed considerable goodwill in Rome after almost a century of excellent relations, won its point and thus demonstrated its importance in a matter touching its honor.[25] On the other hand, the tables could be turned, as the case of Abdera and Cotys of Thrace shows. Cotys had appealed to the Senate for possession of some territory that Abdera claimed as well, sending his own son among the envoys to make his plea—an impressive mark of respect, it would seem, whose possible effect on the senators troubled the Abderites.[26] The Abderites hoped to improve their chances by enlisting some friends from Teos in Ionia, Abdera's mother city, who could exploit their
[22] Holleaux, Etudes , 2:194-95 = REA 21 (1919) 16.
[23] Unfortunately a collection of the material after 338 has not been undertaken since Tod's survey of 1914; but see his list of cases known at the time in International Arbitration, 7-52, and his comments at pp. 96-98. Also Raeder, L'arbitrage international , 103-42, 160-64.
[24] Sherk 9, lines 19, 42; Sherk 10, A, line 3; Sherk 14, line 3; Sherk 15, line 9.
[25] Sherk 15. On Athens's relations with Rome, see also chap. 8.
home city's store of goodwill in Rome.[27] These adroit diplomats set about their business with zeal: they "endured both mental and bodily hardship in meeting with the leading men of the Romans and winning them over with their daily perseverance [?]; and when they had caused the patrons of their dry to assist our people, they made friends of those who favored and urged the interests of our opponent through their exposition of the situation and by daily visits at their atria."[28] We can probably conclude that Abdera won its case from the extent of Abderite gratitude evinced in the subsequent honorific decree for the foreign envoys.[29]
Both of these cases well illustrate what we could otherwise guess, that those who appealed to Roman arbitration will have been those who believed they would gain an advantage over their opponents thereby, while, on the other hand, there had traditionally been considerable pressure for the other party to go along with an offer to submit to arbitration.[30] While there is no evidence for the common assumption that only formally "free" cities or peoples had the legal right to appeal to the Senate,[31] it is dear that
[27] Teos had supported Antiochus III in his war against Rome and thus was assigned to Eumenes at Apamea (P. Herrmann, Anadolu 9 [1965 (1967)] 29-160), but we must suppose in view of this inscription that Teos was now very much in Rome's good graces, as in the parallel examples of Massilia's intercession on behalf of Lampsacus and Phocaea on two earlier occasions in the century (Syll[3] 591; Justin 37.1.1). This supports Chiranky's "late" date for the inscription, for the best explanation of Teos's return to Roman favor is resistance to Aristonicus—which also would imply that it then recovered the "freedom" it lost in 188.
[29] Pace Robert, BCH 59 (1935) 513, who noted that the decree is not explicit about the result of the embassy, and reserved judgment about the case's outcome. But it is noteworthy as well that nothing at all is said about the hearing before the Senate. Probably the result is not explicitly mentioned because the Teans, as the inscription suggests, played a role only in winning friends for the Abderites before the senatorial hearing. In any case Condurachi, Latomus 29 (1970) 585-86, and Chiranky, Athenaeum 60 (1982) 471, are excessively skeptical in concluding that Abdera lost the case.
[30] Cf. Tod, International Arbitration , 71-75.
[31] So Mommsen, RStR , 3:741-42; Accame, Dominio romano , 35-36, 63; Bernhardt, "Imperium und Eleutheria," 99; but cf. now PrH , 208-9, 240, on the lack of a discernible difference in diplomatic relations with Rome between civitates liberae and stipendiariae .
in practice that would have been the rule, for these were precisely the communities that enjoyed the most friendly relations with Rome. The Abderite inscription also gives a unique glimpse at the preliminary work foreign envoys had to undertake—especially those who were at some disadvantage—in order to lay the ground for a favorable hearing on the derisive day. Haunting the atria of the great in Rome, showing up at every salutatio , was an exhausting business, demanding considerable energy and persistence. One might indeed have to go through this ordeal merely to get a hearing before the Senate, as did, for example, those Delphian exiles who came to Rome to complain of unjust treatment by the Amphictyonic Council ca. 120.[32]
As we have seen, a proconsul might pass disputes on to the curia , and Roman envoys might encourage appeals to the Senate in a similar fashion. For example, Roman embassies were sent to Crete in ca. 142 and ca. 114 to settle wars on the island, the continual result of the rivalries of Gortyn and Cnossus.[33] The embassies investigated disputes on the spot, attempted to compose differences, confirmed some previous accords, and sent the Hierapytnians and Iranians—whose conflict was only one dimension of the wider conflict—-on to Rome to plead their case before the Senate.[34] We know that probably around the same time as the Hieraptynian-Itanian appeal to the Senate of 112 a similar case between Lato and a neighbor was sent ex senatus consulto to Miletus for settlement, and it is tempting to imagine the same procedure behind many of the other settlements and territorial delimitations that seem to duster around 111,[35] although, obviously, Cretans were able to patch up quarrels on their own as well, and there is no sign that the major participants, Gortyn and Cnossus (which had embarked on a peacemaking initiative of its own, it seems), submitted their differences to Roman arbitration.[36] But of course, certainly in the latter case and most probably in the former, the sending of the Roman
[34] Cf. ICr III. 4.9, lines 49-50; REA 44 (1942) 34-36, line 63.
[36] Cf. from the period immediately preceding the later Roman embassy, REA 44 (1942) 34-36; ICr I.16. 3-4.
embassy to Crete was itself brought on by appeals from involved parties to the Senate for a settlement.[37] The picture of initiative from below thus remains valid.
Some broad patterns in the Senate's handling of these appeals are apparent. It seems without exception that where prior decisions by other competent authorities existed the Senate saw its function merely as upholding or choosing one of them.[38] Obviously, in some cases these would be prior Roman decisions or the results of procedures laid down by Romans. Thus, for example, the issue that Athens brought before the Senate in championing the rights of its "guild" of Dionysiac artists against the Isthmian-Nemeans was above all whether the Senate would give its sanction to the agreement reached as a result of arbitration by the proconsul Cn. Cornelius Sisenna but afterwards ignored by the Isthmian-Nemeans; it did.[39] Similarly Demetrius of Rhenea, priest of Serapis at Delos, appears to have convinced the Senate that the Athenians were acting contrary to a previous senatus consultum —perhaps an earlier ruling affecting the case, or the decree that granted the island to Athens after the war with Perseus.[40] It was of course only natural for an appellant who sought the renewed validation of a former Roman ruling to turn to the Senate, which doubtless explains the recurrence of this feature in our evidence. But even an arbitral decision reached in accordance with an earlier senatorial decree was not necessarily sacred, as the reopening of the case involving Hierapytna and Itanus on Crete a generation after an earlier settlement demonstrates.[41] Other cases show that what might seem at first glance to be a prejudicial preference for Roman arrangements was in fact above all a reluctance to overturn the rulings of the legitimate, competent authorities. In the dispute between Melitaea and Narthacium, among the numerous rulings cited in their favor by both parties,[42] the Senate simply declared that the decisions reached under the laws of Flamininus should be upheld, "for it is difficult to overturn what has been judged in accordance with [the] laws."[43]
[37] See the Hierapytnian complaints of 112 in Sherk 14, lines 10-11, mentioning senatorial audiences in 115 and 114.
[38] Cf. Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 649-50; Gruen, HWCR , 106-7.
[39] Sherk 15, lines 16-19,, 51-53, 56-61.
[40] Sherk 5, lines 32-36. Cf. G. de Sanctis, Atti della Reale Accademia di Torino , 1919, 279. The decree mentioned in line 36 cannot be the present one (cf. the similar phraseology of Sherk 10B, lines 11-12). Date: see n. 11 above.
[41] Sherk 14, of 112. See below, pp. 177-80.
[42] Sherk 9, lines 25-30, 48-59.
Inasmuch as the laws given by Flamininus are "the laws of the Thessalians, which they use to this day,"[44] this derision cannot be reduced to simple partisanship for a prior Roman arrangement: a decision reached in accordance with the laws of the land was not to be set aside in favor of what had been decided by other arbitral procedures. On the other hand, not much later, in the quarrel between Priene and Samos, the Senate upheld a Rhodian arbitral judgment for Priene in preference to a term of the settlement laid down by their own proconsul Cn. Manlius Vulso under the advisement of the commission of ten senators. The words with which the Senate did so closely echo the previous case: "It is difficult for us to alter what the Rhodian people, with the consent of both parties, has decided, and the delimitation it has made."[45] The "difficulty" to which the Senate alludes in the formula it repeats in these last two decrees is thus dearly that of overturning any authoritative, legitimate decision, not a Roman arrangement as such. The result of the Priene-Samos case is particularly important, for here the Senate regards a judgment according to Greek arbitral practices—the stress on the mutual consent of the parties is particularly noteworthy—as of higher authority than the decision of a Roman imperator . There could hardly be a better example of the Senate's respect for and encouragement of the Hellenic tradition of international arbitration.[46]
A further feature of the pattern is that, as a rule, when the Senate could not simply confirm the validity of an earlier ruling, it typically passed the case on to a third party, after laying down the broad principle on which it was to be judged. So the dispute between Hierapytna and Itanus was twice referred by the Senate to Magnesia on the Maeander, after ruling that the land was to be held on the same terms as it was before the war of ca. 144-141.[47] The dispute between Magnesia and Priene was referred to Mylasa,
[44] Sherk 9, lines 50-51. Against the notion that the senatus consultum referred to a decision by Flamininus himself (so Larsen, Greek Federal States , 288) cf. Accame, Dominio romano , 222, 224, and Gruen, HWCR , 104 n. 38. Accame's view that the laws of Flamininus mentioned concerned intercity arbitration is most probable.
[46] This evidence strengthens Gruen's case that Rome "promote[d] the idea of Hellenic arbitration" (HWCR , 110).
with the instructions that the land was to be awarded to whichever city held it when it established friendly relations with Rome,[48] as was that between the Messenians and Lacedaemonians, with the instructions that the land was to be held as it was when Mummius was in Achaea.[49] We do not know how the questions were framed when the dispute between the Athamanians and Ambraciots was referred to Corcyra, when that between Lato in Crete and a neighbor was passed on to Miletus, or when those between Miletus and Priene were judged by Erythrae and Sardis.[50]
The dearest evidence of how these arbitral dries were chosen is given in the decree regarding Priene and Magnesia: in the first place an arbitrator from among "free" communities is to be chosen by mutual consent of the parties, and only if agreement is impossible is the praetor allowed to impose an arbitrator of his own choice.[51] Although this procedure is not spelled out for us in other decrees, we can probably assume that it was standard, consistent as it was with the norms of Greek international arbitration. On the whole it is dear that arbitrating cities were usually drawn from relatively near the disputants (for example, the Athamanians and Ambraciots were judged by Corcyra, and perhaps Locrian disputes went to Athens), although the referral of cases from the Peloponnese and Crete to Mylasa, Miletus, and Magnesia on the Maeander seems to indicate a distinct preference for the poleis of western Asia Minor even after the war with Aristonicus.[52] We may suppose that the choice of a city to arbitrate an international dispute conferred no small honor upon it; and the inscrip-
[48] Mylasa: Syll 679, I, whence Sherk 7 = Syll 679, II, line 35; lines 53-55 for the instructions; Mylasa was also to judge Prienean allegations of Magnesian crimes: lines 55-63.
[51] Sherk 7, lines 47-51. Note that reference to being "given" an arbitrator (Sherk 14, lines 22-23) does not imply that the praetor imposed his choice: Sherk 7, lines 47-48.
[52] Indeed, the use of Magnesia, Miletus, Erythrae, and Sardis as arbitrators is prima facie evidence that they possessed the status of "free" cities in accordance with the procedure cited in the decree regarding Priene and Magnesia (above, n. 51).
tion published at Magnesia that describes its dutiful and painstaking investigation into the claims of Hierapytna and Itanus leaves little doubt that a case of international arbitration was a source of no small civic pride in an age when other means of acting on the world's stage were largely lost in the past.
This factor doubtless helps, although it is not sufficient, to explain the Senate's practice of delegating derision in this way after framing the terms of the dispute in a kind of formula, which was a major departure from the former practice of Greek international arbitration. The procedure of course resembles that employed for property disputes in Roman civil law, with its division between the definition of the issue at law before the praetor (in iure ) and the judgment of the facts before a judge (apud iudicem ) in accordance with the formula laid down by the praetor.[53] Senators may well have modeled the procedure on a familiar parallel, but the analogy is, after all, only an analogy. No interdictum uti possidetis assuring the praetor's protection of legitimate possession of property underlay the process; the Senate possessed no imperium or other coercive right with which to execute sentence, nor, as we shall see, the general inclination to do so. In short, the similarity of the procedure to that of the civil law does not imply that senators saw themselves as some correlate to the praetor, dispensing and executing justice in a community embracing the
Yet a significant peculiarity of the Senate's behavior remains in its practice of framing the issue for the arbitrating city beforehand rather than passing on the case as a whole. It is too much to say that this amounts to usurpation of the true power of decision, on the grounds that the arbitrator judged only matters of fact, while the "point of equity at issue" had already been decided by the Senate; on that view, the Senate does no more than preserve forms in delegating the remainder of the case to a third
[53] Cf. especially Partsch, "Die Schriftsformel," 3-52; Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 15 (1937) 26-56; Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 648-50.
party.[54] Scholars have not been sufficiently appreciative of the amount of leeway given the arbitrating city by the senatorial quasi formula. Typically the formula specified a temporal terminus at which the arbitrating city was to determine the legal status of the land (see below); the arbitrators' job was, however, not the simple one of determining who de facto controlled the land at the date specified, usually only a few years before, although in one case as much as half a century, but who had the legal right to it at that time.[55] That the arbitrators judged more than a simple question of fact is most clearly demonstrated by Magnesia's settlement of the Hierapytna/ Itanus dispute—the only case in which we possess a fairly comprehensive account of the arguments and evidence that had weight with the arbitrators. Their interpretation of the injunction to establish in what manner the land was held before ca. 144 required establishing all matters not only of fact but also of law,[56] and awarding judgment not simply to the factual possessor at that time but to its rightful owner.[57] The point of the Senate's terminus of ca. 144 was simply to annul the legal effect of subsequent developments, including the events and issue of the war itself; for since even military conquest was conceded to be a legitimate basis of ownership, any decision of legality necessarily depended on the temporal limit chosen.[58] By establishing as the terminus the beginning of the mid-century war in Crete, the effect of the quasi formula was simply to deny the relevance to the case of Hierapytna's occupation of the land in question as a result of or after that war (hence the request to remove Hierapytnian structures from the disputed land). The senatorial formula did not in fact clinch the verdict in advance, and the scope of Magnesia's responsibilities—which its representatives took up with the greatest seriousness—was not greatly narrowed. Magnesia itself, when its own dispute with Priene was heard by the Senate ca. 140 and was passed on for arbitration to Mylasa, had certainly treated the second stage of the case as the derisive one, for
[54] So, for example, Tod, International Arbitration , 82; cf. 107-8; more moderately, but in a similar vein, Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 648, from whom comes the phrase quoted.
[55] A few years before: Sparta/Messene; Magnesia's first decision on Hierapytna and Itanus. The reopening of that case nearly thirty years later is dearly exceptional. The terminus used in the case of Magnesia versus Priene ca. 140, however, must have been ca. 190 (below, pp. 173-76).
[57] Cf. especially ICr III.4.9, lines 55-69, 102-30, 133-37.
[58] ICr III.4.9, line 134. Cf. Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 15 (1937) 38.
in its inscribed dossier of documents relating to the case it is the advocates before the Mylasan tribunal, not the ambassadors to the Senate, who are selected for special civic commendation.[59]
Nor do the quasi formulae we possess seem to be intended to bias the outcome heavily in favor of Rome's friends, as some have thought; on this interpretation, international arbitration under the Romans was a sham, for success or failure depended in fact on the degree of obsequiousness manifested toward the hegemonic power.[60] We must be careful here. As we have seen, the very act of appealing to Roman arbitration implied a hope or expectation of thus gaining an advantage over the opposition, and "renewals" of alliances and congratulation for victory are unmistakable signs of efforts to curry favor by stressing past friendly relations and current loyal feeling.[61] One would not want to dispute that "a guarantee of the integrity of territorial possessions is a normal feature of Rome's concept of amicitia at the state level,"[62] especially now that we know that ca. 100 explicit instructions were given to proconsuls of Macedonia to prevent "friends and allies of the Roman people" from being driven from their borders.[63] A hegemonial power that refuses to help its friends is likely to have a short history. But our question is a more limited one: did the Senate exploit its practice of framing the issue to be resolved in a way designed to reduce the question to one of loyalty to Rome rather than justice?
At first glance the appearance of instances in which the point of entry into Rome's friendship is made or suggested as the temporal terminus lends plausibility to this view. But too much has been made of this principle, which is actually adopted by the Senate in only one known case: the Senate's quasi formula regarding Magnesia and Priene ca. 140 ordains that the arbitrating state is to "award the land to whichever of these cities is found to have held this land when it entered into friendship with the Roman people."[64] The Melitaeans and Narthacians made hay with this idea around the same time before the Senate, both of them claiming to have
[59] Syll 679, lines 1-32, 91-105.
[60] Cf. especially Colin, RG , 511-12; Abbott and Johnson, Municipal Administration , 154-55; Raeder, L'arbitrage international , 253, 375. Cf. Marshall ANRW II.13 (1980) 648; Walbank, HCP , 3:168.
[61] See above, n. 16, and for congratulations, Sherk 14, line 3; from a later period (81), Sherk 18, lines 28-29.
[62] Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 650.
[63] JRS 64 (1974) 204, IV, lines 21-24. Cf. Sherk 7, lines 53-55; 9, lines 21-22, 46-48; 24B, lines 4-7; 28B, lines 13-15. Sherk 70, lines 15-16, does not explicitly mention territory.
[64] Sherk 7, lines 53-55.
possessed the disputed territory when they entered into friendship with Rome—and yet not a word is wasted on this particular matter by the Senate in its ruling, which chose instead to uphold an earlier arbitral decision according to the laws of the Thessalian League.[65] Nor did the Senate make anything of the entry into Roman friendship in the Messenian-Lacedaemonian case or in the case of Hierapytna and Itanus.[66] There is no sign, or reason to believe, that the quasi formula of Magnesia vs. Priene was more than exceptional, perhaps chosen faute de mieux . Only a few years later, during Priene's territorial dispute with Samos, the Senate was able instead to uphold a prior Rhodian judgment—over a specific grant of the proconsul and senatorial commission who arranged the settlement of Asia in 188.
Further, it is hard to accept that this formula was designed to bias the case in the favor of the more loyal ally. Neither Magnesia nor Priene lacks signs of Roman favor toward mid-century: Magnesia had been given its "freedom" in 188 as an exception to the principle that governed the settlement, for it had still been in Antiochus's hands at the time of the crucial battle, while Priene had received at least strong verbal support from the Senate in the Prieneans' recent quarrel with King Ariarathes of Cappadocia.[67] Inasmuch as there is no evidence for the notion that senators thought that either Magnesia or Priene might deserve admonishment for a lack of zeal toward Rome, this appears to be a singularly poor choice to make a special example of rewarding loyalty and punishing the reverse. Besides, the formula of course did not reward loyalty as a "friend and ally of the Roman people," that is, since the establishment of friendly ties, for it took into consideration as the decisive terminus only the moment at which amicitia et societas was concluded. In fact, despite Priene's apparently excellent relations with Rome, it lost the case to Magnesia; yet far from being discouraged thereby Priene came to the Senate only a few years later for arbitration of its quarrel with Samos.[68] Priene, at least, did not understand the formula as a blatant profession of bias that reduced Roman arbitration to a sham.
The formula in the dispute between Priene and Magnesia was evidently less sinister to participants than it may appear to us, and an explanation
[65] Sherk 9, lines 21-22, 46-48, 63-67.
[66] Syll 683, lines 53-55, 63-65; Sherk 14, lines 20-22, for the formula of 140; lines 56-58 and 63-67 (cf. ICr III.4.9, lines 51-54) for that of 112.
[67] Magnesia: Syll 679, line 54; Tac. Ann. 3.62, with Walbank, HCP , 3:167. Priene: Sherk 6, correcting the picture presented by Polyb. 33.6.8.
[68] Sherk 10.
might be sought without assuming gross bias. The other two known formulae have in common with this one that they establish a terminus after which no further act—most obviously, subsequent occupation (hence the attested provisions for evacuation by the current occupier)—is allowed to have bearing on the case. Some such terminus had to be chosen.[69] We saw that the formula offered for the case of Hierapytna and Itanus called for the status quo ante bellum . That given Miletus for arbitration of the claims of Messene and Sparta is likewise aimed at confirming the legal status quo at the time of Mummius's presence in Achaea. The framing of the present formula similarly was designed to restore the legal status quo at a time in the past, but in this case the time chosen was the moment of entry into Rome's friendship; in effect, the principle "froze" rights to the land at the point of the confusion of amicitia and did not permit a "friend and ally" to lose the good legal title that it had held at that moment. This is presumably a manifestation of the principle noted already that Roman "friends and allies" were entitled to protection of their territorial integrity—a distinct potential advantage of Roman friendship. But of course those who resorted to Roman arbitration were, as a rule, Rome's friends. Were this formula employed in a case involving a party that was not Rome's friend and ally, imputation of bias might be apt, but in this case neither Magnesia nor Priene, "friends and allies" both, is likely to have disagreed with the principle that underlay it.
The Roman novelty of dividing into two parts those cases in which a prior decision by a legitimate authority did not lie ready to hand, limiting the Senate to the establishment of a legal terminus while leaving the investigation of actual rights and facts to Greek cities, is not, therefore, to be explained as a devious procedure designed to reward friends and harm enemies while maintaining some of the forms of traditional Greek international arbitration. On the other hand, it is not to be denied that to frame the legal question in senatorial quasi formulae was not to take an entirely passive role: had the senators' object been simply to dear the floor of such ostensibly minor business, why did they not simply pass entire cases on to arbitrators without even this much intervention? The division of responsibility with Greek arbitrators, and the readiness wherever possible to hold to a prior ruling, suggest that the Senate above all wished to avoid involvement in the tedious details of international disputes; it could, however, with minimal trouble and administrative involvement, maintain a conspicuous "superarbitral" role that allowed it to act the beneficent pa-
[69] Rightly, Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 15 (1937) 38.
tron of its "friends and allies" and dispense honors to "free" cities by leaving them the decisive role in settling interstate disputes, one which, it seems, they eagerly played, inasmuch as it confirmed their status in the Hellenic community.
Itanus vs. Hierapytna: A Case Study
A more comprehensive examination of the affair of Itanus and Hierapytna in eastern Crete, a case that has been singled out as an illustration of the Senate's irresponsible handling of international disputes,[70] will give a further basis for judgment of Roman involvement in Greek arbitration. The general outline of events is as follows. In the later 140s a war involving much of Crete flared up, in the course of which the Hierapytnians and Itanians first disputed control of land adjoining the Dictaeum, along with some islands. A senatorial embassy to the island put an end to the war, and Itanus and Hierapytna appealed to the Senate concerning the disputed land; the Senate passed the case on to Magnesia on the Maeander, prescribing that the land should be held on the same terms as it had been immediately before the outbreak of the war. Magnesia awarded the land to Itanus. Yet nearly thirty years later, in 112, after another general war on Crete, Hierapytna and Itanus again appealed to the Senate for determination of ownership tights to the land, and again the Senate referred the case to Magnesia, defining the issue in precisely the same way: the rights to the land were to be those that obtained immediately before the outbreak of the war of the 140s.[71] On the face of it, it might seem indefensible that the Senate allowed the case to be reopened at all after the Magnesian tribunal had settled it nearly thirty years before. Further, the Senate's order to the Hierapytnians to remove all buildings that they had built on the disputed land has been regarded as troublingly prejudicial.[72]
As for the first point, one scholar has rightly noted that Itanus attacked the Hierapytnians "after . . . the Magnesian tribunal had rendered its [first] decision. . . . The Romans could not go further than attempt to stop
[70] Cary, JRS 16 (1926) 198-200; Sherk, p. 85. In fairness it should be noted that both Cary's and Passerini's (Athenaeum n.s. 15 [1937] 42-48) discussions were rendered obsolete in large part by Guarducci's revision of the stone (ICr III.4.10).
[71] See Sherk's convenient summary, pp. 83-84. The story emerges from ICr III.4.9, lines 37-58, and Sherk 14, lines 1-55.
[72] The order: Sherk 14, lines 69-71, 81-82, 93-97. Both charges made by Sherk, p. 85.
the war and bring about a reconciliation."[73] For their part, the Hierapytnians never seem to have complied with the Magnesian decision; instead of evacuating the land, they built on it;[74] presumably it was this action that incited the Itanians to attempt to seize the land by force, causing the Hierapytnians' appeals to the Senate in 115 and 114 and the dispatch of a senatorial commission of investigation under one Q. Fabius.[75] The matter was complex, then, and it is not unlikely that another hearing was justifiable. In the badly damaged portion of the senatus consultum that must have contained the rationale for the reopening of the case we can make out only the fragmentary sentence "[They] were neither present at the decision nor . . ."[76] Perhaps further arguments and evidence presented to Fabius on the spot in Crete suggested that the validity of the Magnesian decision was vitiated in some way. Certainly it cannot be maintained that the case was reopened merely out of favor for the Hierapytnians.[77] The second hearing may have been initiated by the appeal of the Hierapytnians; but to pass the case on to the same tribunal that had rejected their claims before, with the very formula under which they had been defeated previously, was no way to favor them. As we shall see in a moment, the Magnesians on the contrary convinced themselves that Rome was hostile to the Hierapytnians. Although many crucial details escape us, then, our evidence hardly supports condemnation of the Senate for permitting the case to be reopened.
In favor of the second point—that the Senate prejudiced the case by ordering, at Itanus's request, all buildings to be removed from the land under dispute—we note that the Magnesian judges themselves took this as a sign that the Romans were hostile to the claims of the Hierapytnians, who had built on the land and whose constructions now had to be removed.[78] But was the Magnesians' assumption correct? A parallel exists,
[73] Gray, CR n.s. 22 (1972) 88. For the Hierapytnians' allegation of Itanian aggression, see Sherk 14, lines 7-13.
[74] ICr III.4.9, lines 85-87; Sherk 14, lines 89-97 (cf. 69-71).
[75] Sherk 14, lines 7-13, for the appeals. Fabius's commission of investigation examined the disputed land neighboring the Dictaeum (ICr III.4.9, lines 74-81; Sherk 14, lines 68-71), perhaps heard the claims on the spot (Sherk 14, lines 13-20?) (and, incidentally, confirmed the Cnossian settlement between Lato and Olus, adding a further ruling: REA 44 [1942] 36), and was back in Rome to assist in the drafting of the senatus consultum of 112 (ICr III.4.9, lines 74-81; Sherk 14, lines 68-71; perhaps lines 13, 32-34, 49-50).
[77] So van Effenterre, La Crète , 272 n. 3.
[78] ICr III.4.9, lines 86-88. Probably not dwellings, as Passerini saw (Athenaeum n.s. 15 [1937] 43), but buildings of religious function connected with the Dictaeum.
already noted: in the territorial dispute between Magnesia and Priene, the Magnesians appear to have been required to evacuate the land in question and indeed to hand it over provisionally to their opponents before the consideration of its legal status was considered by Mylasa.[79] That case the Magnesians won.[80] Evidently on that occasion the case was not thereby prejudiced. It seems more plausible that the intention of such a preliminary order to evacuate the land was precisely to remove the prejudicial effect on the case of continued occupation by one party. The Hierapytnians will have built the buildings after the terminus stated in the formula, for it was only in the war of mid-century that they had occupied the land.[81] Since the legality of that occupation was precisely what was being questioned, the buildings that they constructed, which might have prejudiced the issue, were to be removed in order to return the land to the status quo ante bellum of ca. 144.
The Magnesians may have had reasons of their own for discerning Roman partisanship here. For example, in a different aspect of the case the arbitrators are eager to seize upon a highly dubious indication of Rome's attitude toward the outcome. They note that in the senatus consultum in whose drafting Fabius, the Roman envoy who had actually visited the site, had assisted, the land is not positively affirmed to be sacred; moreover, the Senate in its formula had laid down that the victorious party should "be allowed to hold, occupy, and exploit" it, but since the word "exploit" was not appropriate to sacred land (the Magnesians surmise) Fabius must have rejected the Hierapytnian argument that the land belonged to the Dictaeum, which they controlled.[82] This is worse than "un cavillo";[83] it is a gross distortion of the intent of a quite open-ended formula. In both cases the Magnesian tribunal found prejudice in the very scrupulousness of the wording of the decree. It should be noted that far from condemning these
[79] Sherk 7, lines 44-46, 51-53. Noted by Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 15 (1937) 38-39.
[80] Syll 679, I, line 12.
[81] ICr III.4.9, lines 47-49. Cf. the demand made to Philip V in 185 that he withdraw his garrisons from Aenus and Maronea ut omnia in integro manerent pending a final decision (Livy 39.29.2).
[83] Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 15 (1937) 45. Tod, however (International Arbitration , 145-47), accepts the Magnesians' contentions and excuses them.
supposed signs of Rome's bias, the Magnesians in both cases use them to support their ruling once again in Itanus's favor. An explanation for their zeal to invoke Roman support of their decision lies ready to hand: the city's honor was at stake. The validity of Magnesia's former ruling was now, after the passage of a generation, being challenged by the reopening of the case and the demand for its reexamination under the very same terms as before. Although there is no reason to think that the problem had lain with Magnesia, there will have been a strong inclination for the present Magnesian arbitrators to prove that their city had been right the first time in ruling for Itanus. Indeed, it appears that the second time around the Magnesians did not even bother to visit the disputed territory; they were apparently quite satisfied to divine whether or not the land at issue was sacred from guesses about the attitude of Fabius based upon the wording of the senatus consultum .[84] It is Magnesia rather than the Roman Senate that is most exposed to the charge of bias in the case of 112. In short, Hierapytna vs. Itanus does not by any means bear out the charges brought by critics of the Senate's handling of international arbitration, for whom it has been the readiest target.
For the period before ours a general senatorial reluctance actively to enforce Roman decisions on international disputes has been persuasively delineated.[85] The evidence from our period suggests no change in this respect even though now Roman decisions might have been enforced more easily, inasmuch as a proconsul was present in Macedonia and (after 131) in Asia Minor. The apparently blithe indifference that the Isthmian-Nemean
[85] Cf. Gruen, HWCR , 119-26.
[86] Sherk 15.
combine the view of Rome as ever threatening force as a sanction with awareness of the actual case-history of her patient and politely formal reception of a stream of requests for arbitral services."[87] Once again the fine but important distinction between "the power to compel and the actual exercise of compulsion" must not be ignored or blurred.[88] The spectacle of hosts of foreign embassies beating the path to the curia and to the atria of Roman principes for consideration of this or that minor dispute was a constant affirmation of the imperium populi Romani . Likewise, by taking on the preliminary hearing of the case and playing a conspicuous prior role in either upholding past rulings or laying down a formula that bound arbitrators to whom the case was then passed, the Senate symbolically confirmed its primacy of decision while passing the tedious details to others. But the full enforcement of senatorial decisions or those of its agents or delegated powers was beyond Rome's administrative resources, and a major effort toward that objective was only worthwhile if Rome's imperium , its power to compel obedience in general was at risk and a point had to be made. In our period that situation arose only in the mid-90s, as Mithridates VI Eupator's aggressive foreign policy awoke the Senate from its apparent complacency regarding the security of its Eastern imperium and King Ariobarzanes was provided with an escort to take up the throne of Cappadocia which the Senate had conferred on him.[89] That story is traced elsewhere; it is noted here only as the sole instance in which Rome acted decisively to implement a mediatory or arbitral decision reached by the Senate.
While I have argued that on the whole criticisms of the Senate's record in international arbitration between the Achaean and Mithridatic wars do not convince, a less benign aspect of senatorial adjudication—not, strictly speaking, arbitration—must be noted in order to balance the scale. As in the previous period, when (to choose a conspicuous example) the Senate never scrupled to hear complaints from disaffected elements within the Achaean League and thus to intervene in its internal affairs, the Senate after 148 did not have a religious regard for the sovereignty of its Hellenic allies. We have already noted that the Senate around 120 gave an audience to some exiles from Delphi who had been expelled from the city because of their allegations before the Amphictyonic Council of crimes against the sanctuary, as also to a counterembassy from their opponents. The patres
[87] Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 643.
[88] The quotation: Tod, International Arbitration , 75.
[89] See chap. 9.
passed a decree favoring the exiles, which an unnamed proconsul of Macedonia conveyed to the Amphictyonic Council, urging it to judge accusations about pilfering the sacred treasures.[90] The Council immediately reversed itself and voted honors for the reinstated exiles, which were inscribed, perhaps pointedly, on the monument of Aemilius Paulus.[91] In another case (which may not, however, belong to our period), the Senate decreed that Demetrius, the priest of Serapis at Delos, ought not to be prevented by Athenian officials from caring for that sanctuary.[92] There is no sign that Athenians had been present to argue against Demetrius's allegations, and it is hard not to see this as a troubling infringement of Athenian sovereignty even if it was the Senate to which Athens owed its possession of the island.[93] While in this case the Senate seems to have maintained the language of mere recommendation ("As far as we are concerned [Demetrius] is permitted to care for [the sanctuary], just as before")[94] and the Athenians seem to have debated for some time whether or not to adhere to the Senate's decision,[95] there seems little doubt that the Roman decree had considerable, perhaps decisive influence, as it clearly had in the Delphic Amphictyony in the other case. Such meddling by the Senate was, to judge from our evidence, rare indeed, but when it occurred it was even more difficult to check than that of troublesome proconsuls.
This study reinforces the more recent line of interpretation according to which Rome's assumption of a role in Greek international arbitration is seen not as something forced upon unwilling subjects but rather initiated by the appellants who were adapting to the changing focus of power in the Hellenistic world.[96] The genesis of a permanent Roman presence in the East from 148 and the assignment of a second provincia in Asia Minor
[90] FD III.4.43 with 276 (= Sherk 42); cf. 279, lines 16-17; 284, line 1. Daux's date for the settlement of the affair is ca. 125 (Delphes , 139, 622-23), but a new inscription published by D. Mulliez (BCH 107 [1983] 429-34) may indicate that Euclidas's archonship belongs a few years later.
[91] Curiously, the text (FD III.4.43) breaks off suddenly and was never completed. Were there further surprising reversals?
[92] Sherk 5. See n. 11 above.
[93] The case might be compared in principle if not in scale to the Senate's meddling with Rhodes's possession of Caria in the 160s after it had been given Rhodes in 188.
[96] Cf. Magie, RRAM , 114; Marshall, ANRW II.13 (1980) 642-43, 645; Gruen, HWCR , 105-11, and the summation at 129-30.
from 131 do not appear to mark a watershed in Rome's handling of Greek international disputes. Despite the presence of two proconsuls in the East and at least the potential mechanism for replacing the system of Greek international arbitration with a fundamentally new imperial structure, the old Hellenistic norms persisted. As before, initiative came from the Greeks themselves; the choice to resort to the Senate was free, and the alternative of arbitration among Greeks without Roman involvement remained open; hearings took place before the Senate in the context of diplomatic relations between sovereign, foreign powers; the Senate often delegated decision to other Greek states and is not known (outside the context of direct confrontation with a major foreign power, namely, Mithridates of Pontus) to have insisted upon enforcement of a decision reached by it or by a delegated arbitral tribunal. Criticisms of the Senate's handling of the Greek practice of international arbitration do not succeed in showing that it exploited the practice to serve its interests or undermined it through indifference or arrogance. The prominence of the Senate in international arbitration in the later second century, then, was established and assured by a consensus of interest among all parties. Appellants reinforced and renewed their ties to the center of power and attempted to exploit this connection to their advantage, cities to whom arbitration might be delegated gained honor thereby and enjoyed diplomatic prominence, and senators and the Senate as a body received continual confirmation of their hegemonial position in the
7
Treaties of Alliance
A number of treaties (foedera ) of alliance between Rome and various states of the East are attested through the second and into the first century B.C. It is in the nature of the evidence that very few of the attested compacts can be dated with full confidence to the latter half of the second century or early first. Because of the chronological uncertainty, widely divergent views are currently held about when association based on a formal treaty with Rome became a widespread phenomenon.[1] If it is a feature of the period that concerns us rather than of the earlier stage, during which the Roman imperium was first extended over Greece and the Aegean, then we must ask what the significance of such treaties was at a time when their ostensible purpose—to provide the framework of a military alliance against threats to Roman imperial security—seems largely obsolete. Recent treatments have stressed the symbolic character of the alliances in our period. For Dahlheim, a treaty was "the visible proof of Rome's good will" and satisfaction with a community's behavior, although he would allow it some concrete significance as a guarantee of local sovereignty.[2] Gruen goes farther: the treaties of this period had "a purely honorific character, signaling Roman benevolence, and couched in a formal phraseology whose effect
[1] Gruen, HWCR , 13-53, 731-44, sees 167 as the turning point, before which Rome eschewed formal alliances, in contrast to its established practice in Italy, and after which it accepted Greek applications for treaties precisely because they would no longer restrict Roman options. Sherwin-White, RFPE , 58-70, Hammond, History of Macedonia , 3:601-10, and Derow, ZPE 88 (1991) 261-70, argue that there were many more treaties, and these considerably earlier than Gruen allows. See further Ferrary, in Trattati , 217-35.
[2] Gewalt und Herrschaft , 178-86 (quotation from p. 180).
was symbolic rather than concrete."[3] The emphasis on symbolism is surely correct, but the nature of the message deserves closer scrutiny than it has thus far received.
It is necessary to state at the outset of this discussion that I accept the view that mere reference to "alliance and friendship" (
[3] HWCR , 50. Ferrary, in Trattati , 225: "une fonction plus symbolique que réelle."
[4] Horn, Foederati , 10-12; Heuss, Völkerrechtliche Grundlage , 26-27 n. 1; Kienast, ZSS 85 (1968) 330-67; Dahlheim, Struktur und Entwicktung , esp. 163-70, 226-29. See also Gruen, HWCR , 13-95.
[6] Sherk 9, lines 19, 42; 15, line 9; 26, B, lines 16-17.
[8] Sherk 9, line 60; 12, line 4; 15, lines 55-56; 18, line 69; 20, D, line 2; 26, B, line 20.
Chronology
The unambiguously attested treaties of alliance with Rome of known date and within our period are those with newly independent Elaea (probably) not long after the conclusion of the war with Aristonicus,[10] with Epidaurus about 112/111,[11] with Astypalaea, an island city in the Dodecanese, in 105,[12] and with Thyrreum in Acarnania in 94.[13] These were all places of minor to minimal significance on the military and diplomatic map of the Hellenistic East.
A number of other treaties of alliance between Rome and Greek states whose precise date is uncertain may well belong to the period covered in this study. A treaty with Cibyra in Phrygia has been dated as early as the period between the Antiochene and Third Macedonian wars (188-167), but a fairly wide interval around the middle of the century now seems to be most favored in the absence of any sure chronological indicators.[14] A treaty (surely of alliance) with Heraclea in Pontus is mentioned by the local historian Memnon in a brief summary of early relations with Rome.[15] While Memnon's placement of the alliance at the conclusion of his narrative of early friendly contacts between Heraclea and Roman generals in
[10] Syll 694, lines 15-16. That the war "against Aristonicus" (line 15) must be specified may imply some passage of time, but lines 19-22 give the distinct impression that Rome's recognition of the city's help in the war and approval of the alliance were more or less immediately consequent upon the war. Robert, BCH 108 (1984) 489-96 now supports Fabricius's original attribution of the decree to Elaea, where it was found (see also Rigsby, TAPA 118 [1988] 127-30), rather than Pergamum, where Robert had previously been inclined to put it (Etudes , 49 n. 3; REG 81 [1968] 503-4, no. 441). In favor of Pergamum, see also Wilhelm, JÖAI 17 (1914) 18; Magie, RRAM , 1045 n. 34; Baronowski, "Treaties," 304-5.
[11] IG IV[2] 1.63, lines 3-9; line 14 for date. Sherwin-White, RFPE , 67, dates the inscription half a century too early. Note that the date given in IG is based, erroneously, on an Achaean era beginning in 148.
[12] Sherk 16, lines 15-16.
[13] Syll 732, lines 1-2.
[14] For the earlier date, see especially Niese, GGMS , 3:61; Dittenberger, ad OGIS 762, n. 1; Magie, RRAM , 1122-23 n. 30, accepted still by Hammond, History of Macedonia , 3:605-6. Badian (Foreign Clientelae , 295), Baronowski ("Treaties," 264-66), Gruen (HWCR , 731-33), Sherwin-White (RFPE , 51), and Errington (Chiron 17 [1987] 107-12) urge a later date.
[15] FGrH 434 F 18.10, quoted below, n. 45; see F 26.2. Despite the specificity of this local scholar's notice, many have doubted its veracity: see Kienast, ZSS 85 (1968) 345 n. 49; Bernhardt, PrH 68-69 n. 373; Mattingly, in Ancient Bulgaria , 1:243.
Asia Minor during the Antiochene War has seemed to suggest a date shortly after 189, it is not unlikely that Memnon anticipates a considerably later event, stretching beyond the temporal limit of that book, in order to provide the fitting conclusion for his account of the development of relations with Rome from "friendship" (
Let us now cross the Hellespont to Europe. It is possible that Rome's alliance with Byzantium belongs shortly after the war with Philip Andriscus, presumably in the 140s.[18] A recently published inscription gives the text of a treaty of alliance with Maronea on the Thracian coast, which a growing consensus places shortly after 167.[19] The year 167 is, however, only a terminus post quem, based on the conjectured identification of the "Lucius" of line 8 of the inscription with Aemilius Paulus, conqueror of Macedon in 168.[20] Unfortunately, the arguments for connecting the treaty closely with that date depend on the assumption that Rome used treaties
[18] Above, p. 15, n. 25.
with minor states in this period as diplomatic and strategic weapons, a view that at the very least must be considered much too doubtful to be made a chronological criterion.[21] The letter-forms of the Maronea treaty suit the later second century as well as its middle.[22] At some point under the Republic, Callatis on the west coast of the Black Sea also obtained a treaty of alliance with Rome, part of which survives. Again, the evidence for a date is scant and highly problematic.[23] The conclusion of such a treaty is difficult to credit during Mithridates' domination of the west shore of the Black Sea from around the turn of the second century until M. Varro Lucullus's campaign of 72,[24] nor does that general's conquest of Callatis (Eutr. 6.10) seem an appropriate context for Rome's granting formally equal terms of alliance.[25] G. de Sanctis acutely noted that the treaty with Callatis was to be published in Rome in the Temple of Concordia rather than, as in other known cases, in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol; but these are insufficient grounds for the conjecture that the treaty must have been concluded between the burning of the Temple of Jupiter in 83 and its restoration in 69.[26] Orthography seems to point to the second century,
[21] So especially Triantaphyllos and Stem (see n. 19). That the motives for concluding such alliances lay largely on the Greek side is in my view established by Dahlheim and Gruen: above, nn. 2-3.
[23] ILLRP 516. Cf. Baronowski, "Treaties," 75-82; CIL I , add. p. 915. The restorations of Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 13 (1935) 57-72 = AE , 1933, p. 30, whether or not they reproduce exactly what was on the stone, certainly reflect reasonably the original content; cp. also those of St. Marin, Epigraphica 10 (1948) 104-14 = AE , 1950, no. 92.
[24] Cf. Salomone Gaggero, Pulpudeva 2 (1978) 294-305; McGing, FPME , 57-58, on Mithridates' control of the west shore of the Black Sea. For coins of Callatis declaring its Mithridatic allegiance, see B. Pick, Die antike Münzen Nord-Griechenlands: Dacien und Moesien 1 (Berlin 1898) 92.
[25] De Sanctis, RivFil n.s. 13 (1935) 424; St. Marin, Epigraphica 10 (1948) 123; Gruen, HWCR , 740-41. Pippidi suggests (in Polis and Imperium , 191) that cepit refers to Callatis's peaceful capitulation to Lucullus Varro, but Eutropius regularly uses deditio to denote surrender: see, among others, 4.20 and especially 4.17: [Scipio Africanus ] tum multas Hispaniae civitates partim cepit, partim in deditionem accepit . Lambrino, CRAI , 1933, 286-87, proposed 71, subsequently supported by de Sanctis (below) in a remarkable reversal. Other adherents of Lambrino's date: Degrassi, ad ILLRP 516; Pippidi, in Polis and Imperium , 187-96; Baronowski, "Treaties," 278-80. Contra: Gruen, HWCR , 740-41. St. Marin, pp. 103-30, argues for the 140s.
though the first is not excluded.[27] Recent conjectures have focused on the earlier period of Thrace-ward expansion by Rome, between 114 and 107.[28]
Arguments about the dates of these treaties often employ the unstated assumption that they should be related to the broad outline of Roman expansion. It is sobering to review with this notion in mind the dates of those treaties that are well fixed chronologically. Without the explicit evidence of date in the texts themselves, no one would have divined that Epidaurus and Astypalaea received treaties as late as the last two decades of the second century, or Thyrreum even after the turn of the century. The attempt to connect the known treaties to landmark dates in Roman intervention in the East is clearly misguided in the case of such insignificant powers, whose diplomatic aspirations are normally beneath the purview of ancient authors. The case of Elaea (probably 120s), as well as the much earlier precedent of Rhodes (ca. 164) and, likely rather later, Byzantium (140s?), does show that a not uncommon impetus for seeking alliance with Rome was the need to confirm good relations after a Roman war in the region. But to judge from the date of the treaties with Epidaurus, Astypalaea, and Thyrreum, this was dearly not the only likely occasion for a Hellenistic city to seek a treaty with the imperial center.
The treaties we have surveyed are with minor Hellenistic states, and are, with the exception of the case of Byzantium, known to us largely by chance—through the fortuitious survival of epigraphic documents, or (for Heraclea) due to the patriotic interest of a local historian. There is no strong evidence that Rome bound itself by means of a foedus to any minor Greek state before 148: the Achaean League (whose treaty with Rome was concluded in the late 190s or early 180s), the Aetolian League (bound in alliance to Rome by the peace treaty of 189), and Rhodes (granted a treaty ca. 164) were all noteworthy Hellenistic powers.[29] Moreover, the earliest
[27] St. Marin, Epigraphica 10 (1948) 116-118, 127; cf. Lambrino, CRAI , 1933, 282-83; Cagnat-Merlin, AE , 1933, p. 30. Pippidi, in Polis and Imperium , 187-96, refutes St. Marin's weaker arguments.
[28] Mattingly, in Ancient Bulgaria , 1:243-46; Gruen, HWCR , 740-41.
[29] Achaea: Polyb. 18.42.6-7; 23.4.12; Livy 35.50.1-2; 39.37.10. Aetolia: Polyb. 21.32.2-4; Livy 38.11.2-3. Rhodes: Polyb. 30.5, 30.31; cf. Livy Per. 46; Zonar. 9.24.6. On these alliances, see esp. Gruen, HWCR , 25-42; Baronowski, "Treaties," 165-244. Earlier relationships with lesser dries on the east coast of the Ionian Sea and in the Peloponnese were almost certainly not based on foedera : see Gruen, HWCR , 17-25, pace Hammond, History of Macedonia , 3:602; and Derow, ZPE 88 (1991) 261-70. The treaty with the Jews ca. 161 (Gruen, HWCR , 42-46; contra Sherwin-White, RFPE , 70-79) is too singular to serve as a good parallel for the alliances with minor Greek states.
of the four foedera with minor Greek states whose dates are certain belongs no earlier than the 120s. It seems therefore most likely that most if not all of the alliances surveyed above belong after the middle of the second century. A pattern is then discernible: Rome's policy evolved from the formation of a minimum of formal alliances in the early second century, and those with major powers, to indiscriminate indulgence of the applications of the most insignificant states at century's end.[30]
The Nature of the Alliances
What is immediately striking about the treaties of which texts are extant is that they are virtually identical.[31] The treaty proper typically begins with a declaration of permanent "friendship and alliance" (
[30] My conclusions are thus largely in agreement with those of E. S. Gruen: see n. 1 above.
[31] See, for detailed analysis of the form of the treaties, Täubler, Imperium Romanum , 44-66; a convenient summary in Baronowski, "Treaties," 109-21. In what follows I shall provide only the name of the party allied with Rome in each particular treaty. For ease of reference, I collect here the full citations of the treaties: Maronea: SEG XXXV.823, with Stern, BCH 111 (1987) 501-4; Cibyra: OGIS 762; Methymna: Syll 693; Astypalaea: Sherk 16; Callatis: ILLRP 516; Thyrreum: Syll 732.
[33] Astypalaea, lines 29-40; Maronea, lines 12-30; Methymna, lines 1-10; Callatis, lines 1-5 (Pippidi, in Polis and Imperium , 191-92, rightly upholds Passerini's restoration of line 4, against Lambrino and Marin: a prohibition against assisting enemies with money, not a command to assist each other with money).
of the treaty with the agreement of both parties.[35] Finally, arrangement is made for the publication of the alliance: one copy is to be set up in Rome on the Capitol, usually in the Temple of Jupiter; others in local places.[36]
The standardization of the form of these treaties suggests that the terms themselves were not a matter for discussion or negotiation. But it is equally clear that the initiative for the conclusion of the treaties came from the Greek side. Embassies from the Greek cities went to Rome to request a treaty;[37] Rome simply "accepts" them into its friendship and alliance as a reward for loyalty and faithful service. This is well illustrated by a passage in a decree of Elaea.
Since our People, from the beginning preserving their goodwill and friendship with the Romans, have given many other exhibitions of their friendly policy in the most pressing crises, and likewise in the war against Aristonikos have applied themselves with all enthusiasm and have undergone great dangers both on land and on sea, in consequence of which the People of the Romans came to know the friendly policy of our People, accepted our goodwill and have received our People into friendship and alliance.[38]
[35] Maronea, lines 36-41; Cibyra, lines 6-12; Astypalaea, lines 45-48; Methymna, lines 17-20; Callatis, lines 9-12.
[36] Astypalaea, lines 48-50; Maronea, lines 41-43; Cibyra, lines 12-15; Callatis, lines 13-14; cf. Syll 694, lines 23-31; IG IV[2] . 1.63, lines 6-9. Missing from the Methymna document (see line 20); perhaps provision for local publication did not appear in the Latin version at Callatis (Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 13 [1935] 60, against St. Marin, Epigraphica 10 [1948] 114).
The individual Greek states set great store by these treaties. Embassies undertaken by citizens in order to request alliance with Rome are mentioned in honorific inscriptions as major benefactions to the city.[39] Archelochus of Epidaurus was honored by his city with a bronze statue in the most conspicuous part of the Asclepieum, tax exemption, and front-row seating in all civic contests for the success of his embassy to Rome to request an alliance.[40] The Elaean decree expresses this aspect so well that it is once again worth quoting in extenso:
The stephanophoros and the priests and priestesses and the magistrates on behalf of the citizens are to open the temples of the gods, offer frankincense, and pray: "For the good luck and safety of our People and of the Romans and of the Association of the Artists of Dionysos Our Leader (we pray that) for all time there will remain with us the friendship and alliance with the Romans." And there is to be presented a sacrifice, as fine as possible, to Demeter and Kore, the presiding goddesses of our city, and likewise to Roma and to all the other gods and goddesses. And the day is to be holy, and there is to be an exemption for the children from their studies, and for the household slaves from their work. And there is to be celebrated, after the sacrifice, a parade for the boys and young men, under the direction of the supervisor of the boys' education and the gymnasiarch.[41]
Why were these treaties of such great import for the cities that requested them? It is difficult to say whether the political leaders of the Greek cities in the later second or early first century expected that a treaty with Rome would assure greater security against external enemies than merely informal recognition as amici et socii . It is not impossible. There is no sign as yet of consciousness of a pax Romana ; piracy was growing, sporadic outbreaks of violence between neighbors still occurred, Thracians and other Danube tribes were still making devastating incursions into Macedonia and even Greece, and perhaps some Asian cities sensed that relations with the dynasts might not always be benign. The destruction or collapse of the great powers of the old Greek heartland along the Aegean shore left Rome as the obvious choice of protector. Under such circumstances it was only natural for the minor Greek states to attempt to provide for their future security by linking their fortunes to Rome. The oaths sworn for mutual defense may well have imparted a sense of security to the minor
[39] Cf. the inscriptions cited in n. 37.
[40] IG IV[2] . 1.63, lines 9-18.
[41] Trans. by Sherk (RGEDA , p. 46) of syll 694, lines 40-58.
states of Hellas.[42] Whether in fact these treaties availed them at all, or provided greater protection than mere recognition without a treaty as an amicus et socius , is however open to question. If they did not, this would explain the diminished frequency of treaties after the convulsion of the Mithridatic wars.
But defense can be only part of the story. The dearest example of the nonmilitary context of an alliance between Rome and an Eastern community is that of Rhodes ca. 164. For the Rhodians, a treaty of alliance is regarded as significant, not as an assurance of security against the military designs of a third party but above all as a mark of favor and an official and public recognition of friendship.[43] This "honorific" quality of the old form of the mutual defense treaty emerges from the special stress often laid in our texts on the publication of the treaties in Rome and in the home city. In the honorary inscription for Archelochus of Epidaurus to which we have already several times referred it was not enough to say that the embassy succeeded in its object of concluding friendship and alliance with Rome; details of publication must be added:
Friendship and alliance with the Romans were concluded for the city of Epidaurus, and (since) of the decree passed and handed over to the (Roman) treasury and of the alliance put up on a bronze plaque in the Capitolium—of (both) these (documents) copies have been delivered by him to our public archives—it has been decreed by the synedroi and the People to praise Archelochos (son) of Aristophantes.[44]
And we may note, in Memnon's mention of the alliance with Heraclea, his striking emphasis not only on publication but on the alliance's suggestion of equality in the relationship between the two cities:
And at last there came a treaty for the Romans and Heracleotes, stipulating that they be not only friends of each other but allies, against and in defence of whomever either party requested. And two bronze tablets carrying the pact, which was equal and identical, were nailed up, one in Rome in the Temple of Zeus [Jupiter] on the Capitol, the other in Heraclea, likewise in the Temple of Zeus.[45]
It emerges clearly that treaties of alliance forged a special link between minor states and the center of power, Rome—a link more tangible and more visible than mere enrollment on a formula amicorum .[46] A formal treaty of alliance was something one could point to "in the most conspicuous place" (
What of Rome? Did the treaties have any particular significance for the hegemon? Given that the initiative came from Greeks, and that the treaties were sufficiently motivated by purely Greek concerns, we need not accept the often unexpressed assumption that they were in any sense instruments of Roman policy, a means of control, or of extending influence. Roman commanders made extensive use of local auxiliaries in military campaigns
[46] Rightly, Williamson, ClAnt 6 (1987) 182-83. Less plausibly, she seems to imply also that the alliances were published in Greek cities according to Roman instructions (pp. 171-72, 182) which aimed at the dissemination of "symbols of Rome and of Roman presence" (p. 182). For Baronowski, Phoenix 44 (1990) 367-68, such "transparent shows" salved Greeks' wounded pride. On the formula amicorum , see Kienast, ZSS 85 (1968) 343-48; Sherwin-White, RFPE , 65-66; but contra: Gruen, HWCR , 89 n. 202.
[47] Cf. above, n. 6.
[48] Cf. Tac. Ann . 4.55, 12.62.
in Macedonia and Asia Minor during our period,[49] and these requests seem to have been understood within a framework of
The large number of treaties with insignificant states that have been preserved for us by mere chance certainly suggests that a very large number eventually possessed treaties. But even by the Ciceronian age this class can hardly have been coextensive with that of "friends and allies," since the civitates foederatae were evidently a considerably smaller class than
[49] See, for example, Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome , nos. 2-3; Holleaux, Etudes , 2:180-81 = REA 21 (1919) 2; App. Mith . 17, 19, 30, 41; Plut. Sull . 5.3, 16.8, 17.5-18.1; Memnon, FGrH 434 F 26.2. A new inscription reveals the participation of Epirots in the army of M. Perperna fighting Aristonicus in 130: SEG XXXVI.555, with Merkelbach, ZPE 87 (1991) 132. Cf. Sherwin-White, RFPE , 91-92, 118-19. Auxiliaries from the East might be used far from home, even in the West: SEG XV.254 (see below, appendix F, on the date of this document); App. BC 1.79; Diod. 36.3.1; Sherk 22; Tac. Ann . 4.56; Memnon, FGrH 434 F 21 (requested, though not provided). The Acarnanians, Thessalians, and Bithynians who fought in the second Simian slave war (Diod. 36.8.1; cf. 36.3.1), however, may only have been the emancipated slaves.
even that of liberae .[52] Rome did not found its empire in the East upon the treaty relationship.
A final point needs to be made. Even those bound by a treaty seem to have been remarkably free to refuse assistance to Rome, as is shown by a noteworthy incident involving Heraclea Pontica. According to Memnon, Mithridates and L. Murena, preparing to dash in the so-called Second Mithridatic War, each sent embassies to Heraclea requesting military assistance against the other. Heraclea considered Rome's power terrible, Memnon writes, but feared Mithridates' proximity; so the city responded to both embassies that with the outbreak of a war of such magnitude they would hardly be able to protect their own territory, much less assist one or the other.[53] Heraclea was able officially to refuse compliance with a Roman request for aid—and apparently did not suffer for it, for when Bithynia was taken over by Rome, Heraclea was apparently at first left free. The city was made to pay tribute eventually only because it had rendered active aid to Mithridates' navy when it sailed the Bithynian coast early in 73.[54]
Rome concluded treaties of alliance with a host of minor states in the Greek East during the period 148-81, if we may judge from the number of known examples attested only by the chance survival of inscriptions. Around the turn of the century towns as insignificant as Thyrreum and Astypalaea had mutual defense pacts with Rome on formally equal terms. Gruen has rightly stressed Hellenic initiative in this process; Rome's role was more or less to hand out bronze tablets. The alliances were hardly instruments of Roman control, as were those that bound the states of Italy to Rome before the Social War. There is indeed evidence of some sense of mutual obligations between Rome and its amici et socii , but it does not appear that these obligations were based on formal treaties rather than on the loose, unregulated relationship of "friendship and alliance."
Greeks may well have expected some concrete benefits from their treaties with Rome: greater security, perhaps, and more influence at the center of power. But an equally important function of treaties was surely to ex-
[52] Cf. Mommsen, RStR , 3:655-58; Horn, Foederati , 8-9.
[53] FGrH 434 F26.2. Bernhardt, "Imperium und Eleutheria," 126 n. 191, concluded from this answer that Heraclea had lost its treaty with Rome during the First Mithridatic War. But had it caused any such offense to Rome in that war it would most likely have been made tributary, which we know it was not. Cf. Baronowski, "Treaties," 260-61; Janke, "Untersuchungen," 79-80.
[54] Memnon, FGrH 434 F27.5. For discussion, see chap. 11.
press a dose connection to Rome in familiar and flattering terms. Mere enrollment in a formula amicorum was little distinction; a treaty of alliance on equal terms, posted in the Capitolium at Rome and in the most conspicuous place or places at home, was a dramatic expression of a special relationship to the caput imperii .
Rome's apparent lack of interest in use of the treaty of alliance as an instrument of control on the one hand, and at the same time its disinclination to discourage Greek efforts to employ the treaty of alliance to define their relationship with Rome, present a further illustration of Rome's unwillingness to revolutionize the institutions of the Hellenic world. Ostensibly equal alliances of Greek character were by no means incompatible with Rome's imperium , in view of the real disparity of power; indeed, as symbols of loyalty to Rome and of Roman favor they served well to advertise and affirm that imperium .
8
Rome and Athens from the Achaean War to Sulla
Because of the great epigraphic harvest from Athens, the many visits of Roman senators, and Athens's fateful alliance with Pontus in the Mithridatic War, we have more information about this city around the turn of the second century than about any other, and it is possible to trace, albeit sketchily, its relationship with Rome over a significant period of time. Athens was, of course, a special case, a cultural capital that enjoyed excellent relations with Rome during the age of confrontation with Macedon, Aetolia, and Antiochus. But even in the case of Athens, which, in contrast to much of the rest of Greece, has never in recent history been thought to have been subject to the control of the Roman proconsul in Macedonia, many influential scholars have seen frequent and forceful intervention by Rome in the city's internal affairs. That might be difficult to reconcile with the interpretation presented in chapters 2 and 3 of the absence of a direct Roman military, administrative, or fiscal presence in Greece, and of Rome's general indifference to the local affairs of the mainland. An examination of the relationship between Athens and Rome between the war with Andriscus and Sulla's settlement of Athens during the First Mithridatic War will not only test the thesis presented above but will also cast light on Rome's attitude or policy toward the privileged "free" cities under its de facto domination, that is, sub imperio populi Romani .
Between Mummius and Mithridates
Early in this century W. S. Ferguson developed a picture of Athens under Roman domination in the late second and early first century that has remained influential.[1] In Ferguson's interpretation, though Athens was out-
[1] See, in addition to Hellenistic Athens , esp. 365-68, 379-84, 415-59, his preliminary studies in Klio 4 (1904) 1-17, and 9 (1909) 323-30, and later considerations in Tribal Cycles , 147-55.
wardly independent, in fact the Roman yoke bore heavily upon it, with a constant stream of Roman officials to be flattered and entertained and repeated intervention in Athenian affairs by the proconsul of Macedonia.[2] A clique of Athenian "nouveaux riches" with Delian commercial connections, propped up by the "notorious" "partiality of the Romans for an aristocratic government in their dependencies,"[3] seized control of the government in an "oligarchical revolution" toward the end of the second century. The "democratic party" remained disaffected, and the state was divided into pro- and anti-Roman parties. With the ascendancy of Mithridates, the anti-Roman party gained the upper hand and threw in its lot with the Pontic king. Athens made its bid "to rid the world of the pascha rule of the proconsuls and the shameless avarice of the Roman corporations."[4] When the war was lost, Sulla imposed a new "oligarchic" constitution on Athens. And indeed Ferguson discerned, through subtle changes in epigraphic formulae and administrative procedures described in inscriptions, further constitutional crises and "revolutions" throughout the first century as Athens swung between "oligarchy" and its traditional democracy, upheavals in which one might "detect the will, if not the hand, of Rome."[5]
Ferguson's thrilling account was so compelling that it began only relatively recently to be challenged in basic points. Badian's "honorable burial" of Ferguson's oligarchic revolution of 103/102 "amid the graves of its relatives among nineteenth-century interpretations," and his interpretation of the crisis of the 90s and 80s as a conflict among aristocrats in which attitudes toward Rome played only a secondary role, constitute a fundamental reorientation whose full implications have probably not yet been entirely worked out.[6] S. V. Tracy's analysis of the Athenian political scene around the turn of the second century, too, has discouraged easy generalizations about democratic collapse.[7] But other aspects of Ferguson's interpretation, such as the "Sullan constitution" and the constitutional upheavals of the first century, remain more or less unchallenged.[8] It is time
[2] Klio 4 (1904) 12; cf. Hellenistic Athens , 417-18.
[3] Hellenistic Athens , 427.
[4] Hellenistic Athens , 457.
[5] Tribal Cycles , 153.
[6] AJAH 1 (1976) 105-28; the quotation is from p. 106. Cf. also Candiloro, StudClassOrient 14 (1965) 142-45.
[7] HSCP 83 (1979) 213-35.
[8] Cf., for example, quite in Ferguson's tradition, Geagan, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 374-76, and Athenian Constitution , passim. On the "Sullan constitution," cf. the authors cited below in n. 85.
for a broad reassessment. Were, in fact, Athenian politics toward the end of the second century and beginning of the first determined by attitudes toward Rome? Did Rome meddle in Athenian affairs directly or indirectly? Were Romans responsible, directly or indirectly, for revolutions or constitutional alterations?
A brief survey of the scarce evidence regarding Athens's relationship with Rome since the Third Macedonian War will help to set the stage. Athens was a major beneficiary of the Roman war with Perseus; in response to its request, the Senate granted Athens control of Haliartus, Delos, and Lemnos.[9] In the aftermath of Rome's grant of Delos to Athens, the Senate twice derided in favor of Delian appellants against apparently harsh or arbitrary actions of the Athenian authorities.[10] But Roman involvement in these cases, if somewhat deleterious to Athenian sovereignty, was hardly gratuitous, inasmuch as in both cases an earlier senatus consultum , perhaps the original decree that gave Delos to Athens, was at issue.[11] In any case, the diplomatic norms proper to independent states were observed: the Senate decreed that as far as it was concerned Demetrius of Rhenea should continue to care for the Serapium. That alone did not settle the matter for the Athenians, however, for the matter was extensively discussed in the council before the Roman request was accepted.[12] Early in the 150s, Athens's aggression against its tiny but important neighbor Oropus led to arbitration by Sicyon and a large fine of 500 talents. Disinclined to pay, Athens resorted to the Roman Senate, which in response to a spectacular Athenian embassy composed of the heads of the great philosophical schools lowered the fine to the manageable figure of 100 talents.[13] Two other arbitration cases that the Senate probably passed
[9] Polyb. 30.20. Athens probably received Imbros and Scyros at the same time: see Walbank, HCP , 3:443. Haliartus had been stormed and destroyed by C. Lucretius in 171 (Livy 42.63.3-11; Strabo 9.2.30, C411). The Senate may have felt justified in determining the fate of Delos (and conceivably the other islands as well) because it had served as a Macedonian base (P. Meloni, Perseo e la fine della monarchia macedone [Rome 1953] 353 n. 2).
[10] Sherk 5. Polyb. 32.7, with Walbank, HCP , 3:525-26.
[11] Sherk 5, lines 35-37; Walbank, HCP , 3:526.
[13] Paus. 7.11.4-8; cf. Syll 675. For the famous embassy of the philosophers of 156/155, see Plut. Cat. mai . 22; Polyb. 33.2; other sources in Walbank, HCP , 3:543-44, who also gives a concise review of the dispute at 532.
on to be heard by Athens are further signs of favor.[14] A treaty of alliance between Athens and Rome probably belongs in the second century—but whether before or after 146 is quite unknown.[15]
Athens played no role in the Achaean War of 146. Appian, however, believed that Rome had imposed laws or regulations on Athens "when the Romans previously [i.e., before Sulla] captured Greece."[16] This certainly did not happen in 196, for we have relatively copious evidence on the Roman settlement of the Macedonian War.[17] The only other time when Rome could be said to have "captured Greece" was in the Achaean War.[18] Pausanias, of course, claimed quite sweepingly that Mummius "was putting down democracies" when the senatorial commission arrived (7.16.9), and this might be adduced in support. But as we have seen (in chap. 3), that passage is too problematic to lend support to another equally problematic passage; and for Mummius to have intervened to alter the laws of a city that had remained friendly before and during the war lacks a parallel and is so out of keeping with normal Roman practice that we would need better evidence to accept it than Appian's isolated and vague allusions here. Nor is Appian corroborated by the attempt to extract from archon lists or tribal cycles an alteration in the constitution in 146/145, the evidence for which is so poor that it cannot sustain itself, much less support Appian.[19]
In Appian's context (Sulla's punishment of Athenian "rebels," and the restoration of the status quo) it is not altogether surprising that the notion has crept in that Aristion and his followers had breached certain specific
[14] Thronium vs. Scarphea, and Delphi vs. Ambryssus and the Phlygones: see chap. 6.
[15] Tac, Ann . 2.53. See Bernhardt, "Imperium und Eleutheria," 86, 102-3 (ca. 167); Baronowski, "Treaties," 303-4 (146-88?); Gruen, HWCR , 24 with n. 61, 738 n. 40 (non liquet ). Athens was formally recognized as "free" before 88: see below, n. 109; cf. Pliny HN 4.24.
[17] Cf. Polyb. 18.44-48; Livy 33.30-35.
[18] This fact is decisive against Ferguson's attempt to relate the reference to his "oligarchic revolution" in Athens near the end of the century (Klio 4 [1904] 16-17; Hellenistic Athens , 428 n.2; Tribal Cycles , 150-54). For the alleged "oligarchic revolution," see below.
[19] Dinsmoor, AAHA , 233-34. The evidence is the conjectured beginning terminus of an archon list inscribed under the Principate (Syll 733), and a supposed interruption and recommencement of the tribal cycle of prytany secretaries in 145/ 144. Contra: already Ferguson, Tribal Cycles , 154-55.
terms regulating their relationship with Rome, which simply had to be reinstated. Such a notion would have helped to justify Sulla's punishment of the more conspicuous of Aristion's followers, who could thus be branded as lawbreakers, and also would have provided a convenient precedent for his own settlement. This may therefore be no more than a tendentious fabrication—by Sulla himself, perhaps, or by others who had no sympathy with the regime of Aristion, such as Posidonius.[20] Certainly if Appian is indeed thinking of a prior Roman settlement of Athenian affairs, his view simply cannot be accepted in the current state of the evidence.[21] It is of course vaguely possible that the reference is to the alliance, whose date we have seen is controversial or even to the less rigid obligations of amicitia ; but that might have been very simply stated, without periphrasis. Perhaps indeed "the terms laid down by the Romans when they conquered Greece" simply refers to "freedom" granted the Greeks, a breach of which could be and was alleged by Romans when the beneficiaries acted in ways they did not like.[22]
Ferguson once argued that in the wake of the Delian slave insurrection ca. 130 the Italians of Delos unilaterally dissolved the Athenian cleruchy and instituted a cosmopolitan community in which they enjoyed full rights; but this is now long since a dead issue.[23] The Roman governor of Macedonia has, however, been a harder specter to exorcise. Ferguson de-dared that "again and again the Macedonian governor and the Roman senate had been called upon in the last half of the second century to settle Athenian affairs,"[24] but the only example he rites is Roman arbitration of the dispute between the Isthmian-Nemean and Athenian
[20] Sulla's memoirs: Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 116. Appian's relationship to Posidonius: Malitz, Historien des Poseidonios , 59, 327.
[21] Bertrand, in RCMM , 2:802; Bernhardt, PrH , 42.
[23] Klio 7 (1907) 234-40; Hellenistic Athens , 379-83. See Hatzfeld, BCH 36 (1912) 190-96; cp. Laidlaw, History of Delos , 190-95; Wilson, Emigration , 113-15.
[24] Klio 4 (1904) 12.
[25] See above, pp. 150-52.
Athenian affairs" but very much for their own purposes: to vindicate their rights against the alleged misconduct of the Isthmian-Nemean guild. When Sisenna's arbitral decision in their favor proved to be ineffectual, the Athenian state took an interest in the case for reasons of prestige and took the matter to the highest level. Having won a favorable decree from the Roman Senate on behalf of the Athenian guild, the Athenians proudly published it on the south wall of their treasury at Delphi astride the Sacred Way.[26] Roman intervention, such as it was here, was entirely in Athens's favor.
Other evidence gives no indication of any special interest taken by Roman officials in the internal affairs of Athens. We have noted already the absence of good evidence even for the presence of the proconsuls of Macedonia in Greece between the Achaean and Mithridatic wars. The only trace they have left in Athens in this period is a statue of Sex. Pompeius which was erected at some point on the Acropolis (IG II2 .4100). It has been asserted that the statue belongs to the time of Pompeius's proconsulship ca. 119,[27] but it may have been erected two generations later, along with the statue of Sextus's son Cn. Pompeius Strabo, to honor their grandson and son respectively, Pompey the Great.[28] Athens was far away from the northern frontier where the proconsuls of Macedonia spent most of their time, and their comings and goings will have been along the via Egnatia to Dyrrachium or Apollonia. Of course, the proconsuls assigned to Asia and Cilicia typically passed through Athens, for sight-seeing initiation into the Mysteries, edifying conversation, or merely to await better weather for the crossing to Asia.[29] Antonius's legate Hirrus put the fleet into winter quarters there in 102.[30] The Athenians were eager to show due honor to the stream of Roman officials—their
[26] Sherk 15.
[27] Groebe, MDAI(A) 34 (1909) 403-6, whose date is followed by the editors of Syll and IG II . For his death in Macedonia, attested by the inscription from Lete, above, p. 38.
[28] Above, p. 52 with n. 39.
[29] Cf. Scaevola the Augur ca. 120 (Cic. Fin . 1.8-9); Antonius ca. 102 (Cic. De or . 1.82, 2.3); the orator Crassus (Cic. De or . 1.45, 3.75) in the last decade of the second century; L. Gellius in 93 (Cic. Leg . 1.53). So too Cicero later: Att . 5.10-11, Fam . 2.8 (cf. Tusc . 5.22). Sulla returned through Athens: Nep. Art . 4.2; Plut. Sull . 26; Pompey stopped there twice (see p. 52, n. 39).
[30] ILLRP 342, lines 5-6. For the date, below, p. 229, n. 27.
cially constructed for the Roman
Ferguson's Roman-backed "oligarchic revolution" in the last decade of the second century, supposedly sparked or encouraged by the opportune presence of M. Antonius on his way to Cilicia, has by now been effectively cleared away.[38] The main premise of Ferguson's view—that the archonship
[32] Ath. 5.212f = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F36, p. 245, lines 16-17 = F253 Edelstein-Kidd, lines 64-65.
[33] H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora , vol. 14, The Agora of Athens (Princeton 1972) 51-52.
[35] Cic. Leg . 1.53; see Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 126 n. 46; Broughton, MRR , 3:99.
[36] Alleged, naturally, against Verres: Cic. Verr . 2.1.45.
[37] Plut. Sull . 14.5; Memnon, FGrH 434 F22.11. See below, n. 77.
[38] Ferguson, Klio 4 (1904) 1-17; full sketch of socioeconomic background in Hellenistic Athens , 418-27; refinements in Tribal Cycles , 147-55. After the article of 1904 Ferguson allowed a broader interval for the date (Hellenistic Athens , 427 n. 4 [still associating it, however, with Antonius's visit]; Tribal Cycles , 147-50). Refutation from Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 105-6; Tracy, HSCP 83 (1979) 220-25. Cf. also Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 86-87 with n. 1.
became elective and reiterated tenure tolerated—eventually evoked doubts in its own creator.[39] A careful recent study by Tracy concludes that the Athenian government around 100 was working smoothly in the traditional way. Although the Delian connections of the leading men of Athens at this time are clear, Tracy concludes that "the prosperity accruing from the commerce on Delos seems to have been fairly widespread and not limited to only a few very wealthy families."[40] However that may be, the hypothesis of Roman intervention in the internal concerns of Athens at this time is quite without foundation in the evidence. We do know a little about M. Antonius's visit to Athens ca. 102: he passed many days there in polite conversation about matters of philosophical and rhetorical import while the sea was too rough for the crossing to Cilicia; while the fleet remained for the winter, Antonius did not lose more time and moved on to Side.[41] One scholar's notion that Antonius took the time to suppress an Attic slave war is fanciful.[42] All our information about Antonius's military operations refers to the southern coast of Asia Minor, and in any case the slave revolt probably belongs somewhat later.[43]
The Path to Conflict
Against this background of Roman noninterference in Athenian affairs (or the absence of evidence for such interference) the steps toward conflict between Athens and Rome at the beginning of the Mithridatic War stand out as an aberration rather than the culmination of a long process. In view of the attention that Athens's political crisis at the end of the 90s has recently received there is no need for me to rehearse well-known facts.[44]
[39] Cf. especially Tribal Cycles , 147, where, however, the "revolution" remains a "crisis" of ca. 103 (p. 152); and AJP 59 (1938) 234.
[40] HSCP 83 (1979) 230; cf. 219-20, 229-31.
[41] Cic. De or . 1.82: tamen cum pro consule in Ciliciam proficiscens venissem Athenas, compluris tum ibi dies sum propter navigandi difficultatem commoratus; sed, cum cotidie mecum haberem homines doctissimos . . . pro se quisque ut poterat de officio et de ratione oratoris disputabat. ILLRP 342, lines 5-6.
[42] Lauffer, Bergwerksklaven , 239.
[43] See p. 55 with nn. 45-47.
[44] Cf. Accame, Dominio romano , 165-70; Deininger, Widerstand , 248-55; Candiloro, StudClassOrient 14 (1965) 134-76; Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 105-28; Habicht, Chiron 6 (1976) 127-42; Bernhardt, PrH , 39-49; Malitz, Historien des Poseidonios , 340-59. See also Desideri, Athenaeum 51 (1973) 249-54.
For our purposes the chief issue is the extent to which Rome directly, by intervention, or indirectly, as a potential ally or enemy of certain factions, played a role in the troubles of the Athenian state around the end of the 90s and the beginning of the 80s.
By the end of the 90s, it is apparent, Athens was experiencing grave political difficulties. From 91/90 to 89/88 Medeus held an unprecedented succession of three eponymous archonships.[45] Some further information is added by the long fragment of Posidonius referring to the Athenian envoy Athenion's embassy to Mithridates' court and his reception in Athens upon his return in 88. Athenion wrote back from Mithridates' court in 89-88 that he had gained such influence over the king that the Athenians would be able "not only to live in harmony, once freed from the debts that were accumulating, but also to restore the democracy and obtain great gifts, both private and public."[46] When he returned in 88 he exhorted the Athenians "not to put up with the anarchia that the Roman Senate had made to prevail until it should deride how we ought to be governed."[47] and spoke of dosed sanctuaries, "parched" gymnasia (i.e., without oil), no assembly in the theater, silent law courts, and the Pnyx "taken" from the demos: even the voice of Dionysus was absent, the Eleusinian temple (
The triple archonship of Medeus is intriguing; but it is not dear why, if he was a kind of tyrant, as is often supposed,[48] he should have chosen as his instrument the eponymous archonship—hardly the most powerful office—rather than the hoplite generalship, as would Athenion, or even the position of herald of the Areopagus, an office already gaining in importance by the end of the second century.[49] Athenion, in his list of civic problems, nowhere complains of a tyranny, Medeus's or anyone else's.
[45] IG II .1713, lines 9-11.
[48] Esp. Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 107-8, 113; Bernhardt, PrH , 40; Keaveney, Sulla , 79; cf. Ferguson, Klio 4 (1904) 13.
[49] On the herald of the Areopagus, cf. Tracy, HSCP 83 (1979) 227-28; Ferguson, Kilo 4 (1904) 7-8, and Hellenistic Athens , 429 n. 2, 455-56; Geagan, Athenian Constitution , 57-60.
And if Medeus had been tyrant in 89/88, how did Athenion manage to be sent to Mithridates—with public authority, it appears[50] —or to be welcomed back with such enthusiasm?[51]
The debts that were accumulating are represented as preventing civic concord (
What we hear most about, however, is anarchia , which appears to describe a virtual paralysis of political life and civic amenities. This is not, of course, anarchia merely in the technical sense of the lack of an eponymous archon, although there do not seem to have been any incumbent officials at the time of Athenion's return, since he does not have to turn anyone out of office when he and his associates are elected.[55] Perhaps officials were simply not being elected any more (anarchia in a very broad sense). Medeus's repeated tenure of the eponymous archonship may represent a pre-liminary stage in this breakdown: possibly he remained in office because no successor was chosen. In this context, Athenion's expression of hope
[50] Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 110.
[51] Badian evades the difficulty by postulating Medeus's removal before Athenion's departure (AJAH 1 [1976] 108, 110).
[53] Ath. 5.212d = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F 36, pp. 244-45 = F 253 Edelstein-Kidd, lines 50-51. Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 107-8, rejects the simplistic notion of "a broad mass of Athenians hopelessly indebted to a small upper class." Bernhardt, PrH , 44-45, concurs but still gives too much weight to what may be only a caricature, based on the conventions of rhetorical invective (on which see Kidd, Posidonius , 865-66, 870).
[54] So Ferguson, Klio 4 (1904) 14 n. 2.
for reinstating (
Rome's role in all of this is, unfortunately, quite obscure. The talk of parched gymnasia, dosed temples, and the abeyance of the Mysteries—matters with which Rome can have had little to do—suggests troubles far beyond the narrowly constitutional. The only evidence that links Rome to Athens's political troubles is Athenion's complaint that the Roman Senate was maintaining the anarchia until it could decide how the Athenians should be governed. This may mean no more than that the Athenians had
[56] It is hard to credit therefore Kidd's view, accepting Posidonius far too literally, that "national religious processions and celebrations like the Eleusinian mysteries, and freedom of speech and criticism were banned" (Posidonius , 877). Athenion's hysterical rantings need not be more than Posidonian slander.
[58] For a similar view, see Candiloro, StudClassOrient 14 (1965) 148-49, who nevertheless sees Roman intervention behind the "dosed temples" and "parched gymnasia" (pp. 153-54, 170). See Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 106-8, 112-14, for a vigorous assault on the simplistic view, heavily influenced by Posidonius's hostile rhetoric, that Athenion led a party of "radical democrats."
appealed to the Roman Senate for settlement of a political crisis,[59] and that typical Roman dilatoriness in considering the matter, aggravated by the distractions of more important matters such as the Italian war, created a strong popular consensus for taking the matter out of the hands of the Romans and offering it to the solicitous king of Pontus. There is no suggestion that this might provoke Roman reprisals. Athens was not entirely in the shadow of Rome; as a "free city" it was certainly capable of taking its own political decisions.
The popular reception of Athenion's rhetoric, and his election as hoplite general, might easily be supposed to have constituted a sharp break with Rome. Clearly this was the impression Posidonius attempted to convey.[60] But we should think twice. Early in 88, before Pontic forces had put in an appearance not only in Greece or Macedonia but even in the Cyclades, was a most curious time to provoke war. Even Posidonius does not make Athenion call for War against Rome on his return from Mithridates but only dwell with relish on the collapse of Roman power in Asia and the ascendancy of Mithridates.[61] This, on the face of it, is not so much a call to arms as an argument for turning away from Rome and toward the Pontic king for the resolution of Athens's political problems. Scholars have noted with surprise how favorably Athenion was welcomed in 88 by the Dionysiac artists, the beneficiaries of Roman decisions: a sign, therefore, of the depth and breadth of Athenian hostility to Rome by this time?[62] —or perhaps an indication that Athenion had not come to represent hostility to Rome. Posidonius indeed admits that Athenion professed to favor Rome in repeated assemblies; but for Posidonius it was all, of course, a pretense.[63] It is most probable that Athenion was temporizing.[64] Having done nothing
[59] Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 108, compares the appeal of Halaesa in Sicily a little earlier (Cic. Verr . 2.2.129). Sicily, perhaps, had a greater claim to Rome's attention. The Saguntine request for Roman arbitration of internal stasis before the Hannibalic War may be a more distant parallel (Polyb. 3.30.2).
[60] Kidd, Posidonius , 879-80—too ready, however, to accept Posidonius's slanted presentation. So too Malitz, Historien des Poseidonios , 351.
[61] Ath. 5.213 a-d = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F36, pp. 245-46 = F253 Edelstein-Kidd, lines 72-103.
[62] Kidd, Posidonius , 872; Malitz, Historien des Poseidonios , 348.
irremediable against Rome, but keeping his options open with regard to Mithridates, Athenion probably hoped to emerge on good, or at least passable, terms with whoever prevailed in the extraordinary contest developing in the Aegean world.
A direct collision with Romans came about only when a certain Apellicon was sent out to take over the treasures of Apollo at Delos, perhaps in order above all to finance the restocking of Athens's dwindling grain reserves.[65] That Apellicon had actually expected to encounter hostile action from Romans seems unlikely in view of his failure to take basic military precautions (unless that is only more Posidonian invective). The Athenian authorities had a plausible claim to the Delian treasures and may have had no reason to expect Roman interference; Delos resisted, however, and Apellicon was forced to lay siege. While the large number of Italian resident negotiatores is not to be forgotten, we should also recall that Athenion had made and expelled enemies. Not all of them will have fled to Rome, and those with important Delian connections may have sought to defend them.[66]
Even after the disaster Apellicon suffered at the hands of a Roman prefect, Athens's position in the larger struggle seems to have remained for a time uncertain.[67] Athenion now drops out of sight;[68] it may be that
[66] Athenion's exiles: Ath. 5.214a-d = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F36, p. 247 = F253 Edelstein-Kidd lines 117-45. Flight of Athenian "optimates " to Rome: Cic. Brut . 306.
the failure of Apellicon and the shock of the sudden armed dash with Rome brought about his downfall. Next we hear that Mithridates' general Archelaus, having conquered Delos and other strongholds, handed them over to the Athenians and by this act brought them over to side with the king.[69] This alone shows that the city had not yet openly sided with Mithridates. But both Pausanias and Plutarch go farther: Pausanias says that Aristion, whom Archelaus had sent on to Athens with 2,000 Pontic soldiers and the sacred treasures of Delos, was the one who "persuaded" the Athenians to choose Mithridates over Rome, while Plutarch goes so far as to say that Aristion as tyrant "forced" them to do so.[70] At any rate, it was only with the arrival of Aristion and his Pontic troops that Athens committed itself irreversibly to Mithridates and against Rome.[71] Even in 87, after Aristion's arrival in Athens, Piraeus seems to have been briefly open to the Roman legate Braetius Sura.[72]
The most probable conclusion therefore is that it was the imbalance of power brought about by the crumbling of Rome's position in the East and Mithridates' continued success, not to mention the appearance of Pontic troops while Romans were nowhere to be found, that induced the Athenians finally to make a firm choice, not surprisingly for what seemed at the time the stronger side. But that choice, late as it was, ought not to obscure the signs that Athenian politics were not dominated in 88 by a radical faction bent upon war with Rome in alliance with Mithridates. Athenion and his friends were fishing in dangerous waters, it is true. They played upon resentment at the arrogance of Roman power and popular wonder at the unexpected reversal of fortune it had suffered, and struck a
[68] Whether Athenion and Aristion are one or two persons has recently again become a matter of controversy: Kidd, Posidonius , 884-87, and Bugh, Phoenix 46 (1992) 108-23, seem to me correct to distinguish them, against Malitz, Historien des Poseidonios , 341-43, and Baslez, in Delo e l'Italia , 57, on their identity. Bugh argues plausibly, however, that the Posidonius extract in Athenaeus conflates the two at points.
[69] App. Mith . 28.
[71] Bernhardt, PrH , 47-48.
[72] Piraeus: App. Mith . 29. But see Janke, "Untersuchungen," 53-54, and Badian, "Lucius Sulla," 70 n. 46, who argue plausibly that Appian is mistaken.
sufficiently favorable attitude toward Mithridates to allow Athens to emerge unscathed if the Pontic king proved victorious. But that was nothing new and hardly committed them to an anti-Roman course.[73] Even in 88 Athenian politics were not dominated by attitudes toward Rome but by the traditional imperative of the polis to preserve its independence and freedom of action.[74]
The Treatment of Athens After Its Fall
We need not concern ourselves with the military operations during the siege of Athens and Piraeus,[75] and so can move on to Sulla's treatment of the vanquished city.
When Athens was taken, around midnight on 1 March 86, the soldiers were given license to slaughter and plunder according to the usual Roman manner of treating recalcitrant cities.[76] The immense slaughter was halted the next day in response to the supplications of a Medias (Medeus?) and Calliphon, along with "the senators" in Sulla's entourage.[77] The free adult males who survived were then left their freedom (i.e., not enslaved) but lost the right to vote in legislation or elections (App. Mith . 38): the city, then, was to be left in the hands of the exiles from Athenion and Aristion, now restored.[78] Interestingly, Appian explicitly tells us that the disability of the "rebels" was not transferred to their children—as would be those of Sulla's enemies in Rome.[79] Sulla then left C. Scribonius Curio to blockade the Acropolis, where Aristion and his accomplices had taken refuge, while he himself returned to attack the Piraeus and then moved on to Boeotia for the Chaeronea campaign. Around the same time as Sulla's victory at Chaeronea, Aristion and his men gave themselves up to Curio;
[73] For popular enthusiasm for the underdog, cp. Polyb. 27.9-10 on the Greek reaction to King Perseus's victory at Callinicus in 171.
[74] Cf. Bernhardt, PrH , 45-49.
[75] Cf. especially App. Mith . 30-40; Plut. Sull . 13-14.
[76] App. Mith . 38; Plut. Sull . 14.3-4; for the date, 14.6.
[78] Exiles: n. 66. One may compare Marcellus's settlement of Syracuse in 211: see the recent discussion by Eckstein, Senate and General , 163-64.
[79] Cf., from nearly a century before, the disabilities imposed on those who had not remained in the Roman friendship at Thisbae, valid for the limited term of ten years: Sherk 2, lines 20-24.
Sulla then returned to Athens to mete out punishment to the ringleaders of the rebellion and to attend to the final settlement.[80]
The principes seditionis et noxios Sulla immediately put to death, according to Licinianus (35.61 Criniti); this group is specified by Appian as Aristion, his bodyguards, and "those who had held office, or had done anything whatsoever, contrary to the regulations set down for them previously, when Greece was conquered by the Romans."[81] This should not mean that all who had held office during the period of Athens's revolt were executed.[82] At least the pretense was maintained that those punished were those who were culpable for the "revolt."
Following his description of the punishment of the "rebels," Appian tells us that Sulla imposed laws for the Athenians that were similar to those that the Romans had previously defined for them.[83] This statement is almost certainly to be linked with that which comes immediately before it, referring to an earlier Roman settlement at the time of the Roman "conquest of Greece"; if so, it must be regarded as part of the same corrupt tradition which sought to aggravate the Athenians' offense and to enlist the sanction of tradition for Sulla's arrangements.[84] However that may be, the central question for us is that of the nature of the Sullan regulations of Athenian affairs and especially of the degree to which they represent a marked alteration in the character of Athenian institutions. Unfortunately, here even recent scholarship has been most reluctant to give up the old approach of Ferguson, which traces every perceived alteration in Athenian institutions in this period to the usually invisible hand of Rome. Appian's brief and not terribly informative statement that Sulla "gave laws" (
[80] Plut. Sull . 14.7; App. Mith . 39; Licinianus 35.61 Criniti; Paus. 1.20.6 (confusing the capture of the Acropolis with the fall of Athens).
[82] Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 114.
[83] Mith . 39. Greek text in n.16 above.
from bare epigraphic formulae to haunt us in the pages of the standard works.[85] But on closer scrutiny it becomes a very shadowy thing indeed.
The "Sullan constitution" depends on the supposed character and the conjectured dates of two inscriptions: one that recounts the honors voted for the ephebes and the
But the dates alone of these inscriptions are far from secure; and in the absence of any explicit connection with Sulla, chronology is crucial. The first inscription (IG II2 .1039) is regularly set in 79/78: games called Sylleia are mentioned (line 57), which are thought to have ceased after Sulla's death in 78, and since a fragmentary archon list excludes the years 86/85 to 81/80 for the archon named in the decree (Apollodorus), he is placed in 80/79, with the honors voted, therefore, in the following year.[88] But the assumption that Athens could not have celebrated Sylleia after Sulla's death is an insecure foundation for weighty conclusions.[89] While the prec-
[85] Cf. Ferguson, Klio 9 (1909) 323-30, and Hellenistic Athens , 455-57; Geagan, Athenian Constitution , passim: "Sulla's new constitution" (p. 1), "the reforms of Sulla" (p. 61; cf. 90), "the abrupt change when Sulla imposed his new constitution on Athens" (p. 17) (cf. also ANRW II.7.1 [1979] 373-74). Badian, AJAH 1 (1976) 115-16, Meritt and Traill, Athenian Councillors , 16-17, and Mellor, Goddess Roma , 103, are all willing to follow in Ferguson's and Geagan's tracks here. Reinmuth, AJP 90 (1969) 475-78, rightly takes Geagan to task for the notion of "abruptness." See also the cautious remarks of Rawson, Athenaeum 63 (1985) 59-63. Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 89-96 (cf. 100-101), without disputing the evidence adduced, denies concrete institutional changes. (But note that an inscription Touloumakos uses against the traditional view, IG II .1036 [p. 94], is now regularly dated in 108/107 [cf. Dinsmoor, AAHA , 243-44; Meritt, Historia 26 (1977) 187], not ca. 80, as given in IG II .)
[86] IG II .1039; M. Mitsos's improved text in SEG XXII.110.
[87] ASAtene 3-5[2] (1941-43) 84.
[88] Notopoulos, Hesperia 18 (1949) 24. The archon list: Hesperia suppl. 8 (1949) 117.
[89] The assumption is made by, among others, W. Gurlitt, Über Pausanias (Graz 1890) 245; Kirchner, ad IG II . 1039; Ferguson, Klio 9 (1909) 323; Accame, Dominio romano , 172; Raubitschek, in Studies Johnson , 49-50; Pelekides, L'ephébie attique , 236-39. So also Dinsmoor, AAHA , 291, citing Nep. Att . 4.2, which mentions only Sulla's return trip through Athens in 84 (the munera that Sulla transferred to Atticus are hardly games). Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 93, is rightly skeptical, though without questioning the traditional date of the inscription. Since Raubitschek's work appeared in 1951 another inscription mentioning the Sylleia has appeared: SEG XIII.279.
edent of Corinth was before the eyes of Athens and all Hellas, Sulla had stopped short of destroying the dry. The Athenians set up a statue in his honor.[90] Are we to imagine that it would have been cast down, or the Sylleia cancelled or renamed, while Sulla's henchmen (including, for example, C. Scribonius Curio himself, cos. 76) were very much in control in Rome and passing through Athens continually? Setting aside the Sylleia, we should note that IG II2 .1039 resembles closely IG II2 .1043, a decree of the boule honoring the ephebes of 38/37, according to which the hoplite general and the herald of the Areopagus were to announce the crown (lines 54-55). Even if, on grounds of letterforms,[91] one would not want to move IG II2 .1039 to such a late date, the lacunae in our archon lists would allow a date for Apollodorus as late as 65/64 or even 64/63.[92] Indeed, it has recently been plausibly argued that we should identify the Cappadocian princes who appear on the inscription (IG II2 .1039, lines 99-100) with the known sons of Ariobarzanes II who bore the same names: that would favor a late date for the inscription, since Ariobarzanes II acceded to the throne no earlier than 64.[93]
That leaves the honors voted to the
[91] Cf. photographs in ArchEph , 1964, pls. 9-12.
[92] Cf. now Meritt's list (rather optimistic about the extent of our knowledge) in Historia 26 (1977) 189-90. Oinophilos (64/63) is hardly secure.
[93] Mattingly, Chiron 9 (1979) 166-67, who persuasively argues for dating the accession of Ariobarzanes II in spring 64. Mattingly's date for the inscription is 64/63. On the sons of Ariobarzanes II, see Sullivan, Near Eastern Royalty , 177-82. Contra Mattingly, however, see Baslez, in Delo e l'Italia , 65 n. 107.
[94] Dinsmoor, AAHA , 248-50. Cf. Dow, in Studies Shear , 125; Meritt, Historia 26 (1977) 189. Cf. Geagan, ANRW II.7.1 (1979) 376.
selected, and the apparent succession of tribes is a jumble. But, working from the premise that the tribal sequence was followed in the first century for priests of Asclepius,[95] and from the further hypothesis that a break in the cycle took place in 87/86—necessitated by apparently contradictory evidence in the very same inscription![96] —Menandrus of Erechtheis (I), priest in the archonship of Aeschines (and thus in the year of the inscription whose date concerns us), would date to 75/74. But this seems only a tissue of seductive suppositions; the date of honors to the
We cannot, then, be more precise about these inscriptions' dates than that they belong very roughly to the middle of the first century, probably in the second quarter; but this rather weakens the link with Sulla. Of what significance then is the apparent fact that the boule is able around mid-century to vote certain honors on its own initiative? Must this imply Sullan constitutional tinkering, or the ascendancy of an "oligarchy" without actual institutional changes?[97] It might be only symptomatic of a flux in honorific practices and therefore offer no evidence for constitutional revisions. The degree of inconsistency of honorary practices in the first century is indeed noteworthy but need not be taken as evidence for abrupt swings between "democracy" and "oligarchy."[98] One interpreter of these documents rightly acknowledges that "the necessity for and the exact nature of the approval or disapproval of the non-decreeing corporation or corporations remains elusive," and notes, for example, that the demos
[96] Cf. Dinsmoor, AAHA , 249-50. The only "evidence" for this break is the suggestive coincidence that if a regular tribal sequence is supposed for the first century, the year of the fall of Athens coincides with the tenure of a priest from tribe I (Erechtheis).
[97] So Reinmuth, AJP 90 (1969) 475-77; Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 94, 100-101, who employs the dangerous phrase (after Cic. Brut . 306, presumably) "die Herrschaft der Optimaten."
[98] Note the brief return of the generals and treasurer as publishing authorities for ephebic honors in the 40s: IG II .1040-42. IG II .1040 has been redated to ca. 43/42 (Reinmuth, Hesperia 34 [1964] 255-72); 1041 to 45/44 (Stamires, Hesperia 26 [1957] 251 and n. 66, with Dinsmoor, AAHA , 292). Geagan carries on the tradition of Ferguson, regarding this revival as evidence of "an important alteration in the Athenian constitution" (Athenian Constitution , 21) in a "reactionary period" (p. 85).
bestowed a crown upon the ephebes'
The prominence of the hoplite general and the herald of the Areopagus in our first document (IG II2 .1039) is often noted, but the importance of these officials is evident well before Sulla, and they need not be characteristically "oligarchical."[103] Athenion made himself hoplite general, and the herald of the Areopagus was apparently a prominent official under his regime in 88/87,[104] but no one has suggested that Athenion instituted an "oligarchical" regime.
The "Sullan constitution" is an elaborate modern construction that needs more support than our evidence offers. Rather than emerging from
[99] Reinmuth, AJP 90 (1969) 476-77; see IG II .1039 = SEG XXII.110, lines 70-72, col. II. Cf. Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 94.
[100] Cf. Dow, Prytaneis , esp. 25-27; Geagan, Athenian Constitution , 92-103; Meritt and Traill, Athenian Councillors , 16-17.
[101] Prytaneis , 25.
[102] Cf. IG II .1040-43 (see above, n. 98), 1960-61, and the later lists, 1962-2291. Cf. Pelekides, L'ephébie attique , 279-81, and for the ephebic decrees of the first century in general, pp. 197-209.
[103] Ferguson, Kilo 4 (1904) 7-8; Tracy, HSCP 83 (1979) 227-28; Touloumakos, "Einfluß," 82, 84.
[104] Ath. 5.213e-f = Posidonius, FGrH 87 F36 = F253 Edelstein-Kidd; IG II .1714 (dated to 88/87 by Dow, Hesperia 3 [1934] 144-45). See further p. 206 n. 49.
the evidence, it has been forcibly extracted by scholars guided by a conception of Athenian political history in the first century as a series of repeated oligarchic and democratic revolutions, each one fostered or overthrown by Romans. That view, already weakened elsewhere, especially in the decades before the Mithridatic War, does not deserve such allegiance.
The Sulla imposed certain regulations upon Athens as part of a settlement is of course dear enough from Appian's statement that he "imposed laws (or terms)" (
Sulla's regulations included the renewal of Athens's "freedom and autonomy."[109] Presumably it will not therefore have paid a tribute to Rome, and we hear nothing of an indemnity. Formally, Athens's relationship with Rome had not changed. Of Athens's island possessions, Delos remained under its control as well, apparently, as Scyros, Lemnos, and Imbros;[110]
[107] HSCP 83 (1979) 219.
[109] Plut. Comp. Sull. Lys . 5; Strabo 9.1.20, C398; Livy Per . 81.
[110] Cf. Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens , 454 n. 2 (the inscriptions he rites, however, are not securely dated); for Delos, see Ferrary, in Insula sacra , 39-44. The lex Gabinia Calpurnia de insula Delo of 58 (IDel 1511) reveals that Roman vectigalia had by then been levied on Delos (lines 21-23), perhaps, though not certainly, by Sulla. (See Accame, Dominio romano , 184; Nicolet, in Insula sacra , 81-100, and CRAI , 1980, 266-67, citing lines 27-29; Dahlheim, Gewalt und Herrschaft , 306 n. 44, on the other hand, believes the innovation was a consequence of the pirate wars but preceded Pompey.) The vectigalia were, likely enough, various duties on transportation of goods, including, surely, the portorium : Accame, Dominio romano , 183-85; Moreau, in Delo e l'Italia , 95-97. Nicolet would now associate the custodia frumenti publici (line 23) with the portorium: BCH 115 (1991) 473-80; cf. CRAI , 1980, 260-87.
Salamis, however, may have been made independent.[111] Athens's "new style" silver coinage continued, probably without interruption.[112] The formal settlement of the war, in contrast to the hideous slaughter that marked the city's capture, was extraordinarily lenient.
I have argued that Rome took no special interest in Athenian internal political affairs through the period covered in this survey, that is, from the Achaean War through the immediate aftermath of Sulla's capture of the city. The attempt to extract dramatic changes in Athens's constitution from often dubious evidence, and to trace each supposed alteration thus discerned to Rome or a pro-Roman party, has at least properly been rejected for the period before the Mithridatic War; the still-prevailing tendency to do the same for the period after Aristion deserves equal skepticism. When Sulla captured Athens, he demonstrated the usual Roman barbarity toward resolute enemies, and, in the subsequent settlement, the equally typical Roman concern to punish individuals on whom blame for hostilities could be fixed. But there is no reliable evidence that he attempted, by constitutional tinkering, to change the nature of Athens's political system.
Athens, like a host of other great Greek poleis in the Aegean world, was caught up in the maelstrom of war and indeed made its own contribution to the development of the crisis. At least from the time of the
[111] So Graindor, Athènes , 8-10. But Graindor's inferences that Salamis was returned to Athens in the time of Augustus (Strabo 9.1.10, C394; Dio Chrys. Or . 31.116 does not stand independently), and thus that it was taken from Athens by Sulla, are hardly compelling. I can only suppose that Day's odd notion that in 86 the Athenians had to sell Salamis (Economic History , 127, 149, 178, citing Graindor and Strabo), repeated recently by Geagan (ANRW II.7.1 [1979] 374), is a kind of transposition of Dio's (perhaps only rhetorical) assertion that Julius Nicanor bought Salamis for the Athenians. For opposing views on Nicanor's date and Salamis's fate, see Jones, Phoenix 32 (1978) 222-28, and Kapetanopoulos, Hellenika 33 (1981) 217-37.
[112] I accept Lewis's "low" chronology for the "new style" coinage (NC 2 [1962] 276-300) against Thompson (New Style Coinage , passim, and NC 2 [1962] 301-33). An important recent discussion (with Thompson's imprimatur) proposes a "compromise" theory, accepting Lewis's bottom terminus: Mørkholm, ANSMN 29 (1984) 29-42. Habicht, Chiron 6 (1976) 137-38, argues against a break in the sequence of issues for a few years after Sulla.
ascendancy of Aristion, a declared enemy of Rome, it inevitably attracted Roman attention in consequence. But before this stage was reached Rome lay very much in the background, a presence directly manifested only in the parade of Roman officials, many of them with intellectual pretensions, on their way to other points east. The Senate showed Athens conspicuous honor in its decisions, especially, for example, in the decree of 112 in favor of the Athenian guild of Dionysiac artists, which was seen worthy of publication on the side of the Athenian Treasury at Delphi. Thracian and Macedonian wars were only distant rumblings far to the north; the proconsuls of Macedonia are not known to have set foot in Athens in this period. Whatever was the nature of the Senate's involvement in Athens's internal crisis directly preceding the Mithridatic War, it hardly suffices to alter the picture greatly. To be sure, Athenian politics were a minor matter in comparison with the Italian revolt or the restoration of the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia. The Republic simply did not possess the necessary administrative capacity to maintain dose control of the internal affairs of communities around the Mediterranean.
Athens, of course, was a special case within Rome's Eastern imperium , as a "free city" but also a revered cultural capital. It would be absurd to extrapolate from Athens's case to that of other communities, even other "free cities" of considerable prestige, such as those on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. Even so, Athens's treatment by Rome prompts reflection. On the traditional view, Rome's ostensibly meddling and domineering behavior toward Athens could be viewed as particularly noteworthy precisely in view of this polis's clearly privileged position. Now it appears that, on the whole, Rome's hand lay remarkably lightly on Athens—in striking contrast to the behavior of the Hellenistic kings, whose regard for the "freedom and autonomy" of the Greek cities was generally more rhetorical than real. The political life of the Athenian polis does not appear to have been dominated or determined by attitudes toward Rome except when war supervened, making a derision between Rome and its enemy necessary; and at that point the deriding factor seems to have been nothing more profound than the presence of a strong Pontic army and fleet under Archelaus. The persistence of traditional principles of local self-interest and political autonomy even at this stage in the life of the Greek polis is indeed striking.[113] The establishment of a permanent Roman presence in the Greek East should not conceal the abiding continuities of Hellenistic political behavior.
[113] Cf. Bernhardt, PrH , esp. 124-39, 267-84.