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 (

) and from mandatory contributions () to the Dionysian artists, a Roman magistrate infringed to some extent the sovereignty of a community.^[102] On the other hand, in doing so he was merely assuming a traditional Hellenistic function previously performed by the kings and the Amphictyonic Council, and one necessary for the continued celebration of the musical and dramatic contests that were so central to Hellenic culture. The Amphictyonic Council, it should be noted, continued to be a guarantor of the privileges of the Athenian guild of artists along with the Romans well after the establishment of a permanent Roman presence in Macedonia; still, for all the Amphictyony's prestige, Rome's power gave its Senate's and magistrates' decisions primacy and

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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]