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-
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
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
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
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
in the 110s. This affair is considered in some detail elsewhere.[25] For our purposes now it suffices to stress that it was the Athenian artists who initiated the appeal to the Roman proconsul Sisenna in 118, not in any sense to "settle
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
or ; hence receptions by the ephebes (akin to the inspection of an honor guard for visiting foreign dignitaries today)[31] and a podium, spe-
cially constructed for the Roman
.[32] If the excavators' identification is correct, the podium has been uncovered, and "there is nothing to indicate that it ever had more than occasional use."[33] There is no need to imagine, with Accame, that Roman officials had been granted a formal ius contionem habendi , "con grave detrimento della sovranità di quello Stato."[34] The Roman generals and officials on their way to Asia Minor were merely in transit and had no official business in Athens. L. Gellius, who in vain tried to reconcile the feuding philosophical schools on his way to or from Asia Minor ca. 93, is no exception.[35] Magisterial misconduct was always possible but must not be taken as the rule.[36] L. Crassus, on his return from his quaestorship in Asia, arrived two days late for the Mysteries; he therefore requested that they be repeated, but the Athenians refused, so the orator angrily cut short his visit to the cultural capital of Greece (Cic. De or . 3.75)—a fine example both of Roman arrogance and of Athenian pride. On the whole, however, courtesy was probably maintained on both sides. Athens excited the curiosity of Romans and consequently saw a lot of them, some of whom later interceded with Sulla to spare the city after its capture in 86.[37]
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
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]