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
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" (
) to "alliance" ().[16] An equally wide chronological range must be considered possible for the preserved treaty between Rome and Methymna on Lesbos, often placed either somewhere between 167 and 154 or around 129 and the conclusion of the war with Aristonicus.[17]
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
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,
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
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]