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

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-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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-

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.