Cilicia

While Rome's main military effort in the East toward the end of the second century was indubitably centered upon Macedonia and Thrace, near the turn of the century and virtually contemporaneous with the last offensive push under T. Didius in Thrace came a naval expedition against the pirates of Cilicia whose significance for the story of the development of Rome's hegemonial presence surpasses its immediate results.^[18] The measures that the Romans henceforth took—without great success until Pompey's massive campaign in 67-66 under the terms of the lex Gabinia —mark the assumption, however halting at first, of a much-expanded responsibility for maintaining security in the Greek world.

According to Strabo (14.5.2, C668-69), Scipio Aemilianus's famous embassy to the East, as well as other, subsequent embassies, already took note of the problem of piracy off Cilicia, which was flourishing due to the col-

lapse of the Seleucid monarchy and the strong Roman demand for slaves channeled through the nearby market on Delos. The Seleucid pretender Diodotus Tryphon encouraged the Cilician pirates' raids on his rival's base in Syria, while Cyprus, Egypt, and even Rhodes smiled upon the fomenters of trouble for the Seleucid house.^[19]

Whether Rome made any concrete moves to reduce the anarchy in Cilicia is unknown but probably unlikely. That Antiochus VIII Grypos honored the proconsul Cn. Papirius Carbo at Delos ca. 116 may suggest no more than the currying of Roman favor in the internecine Seleucid struggle.^[20] It is possible that Roman efforts at peacemaking in Crete ca. 114 as well as ca. 142 were at least partly incited by the traditional association between the spread of piracy and instability on Crete, in many ways a natural extension of Cilician waters, but that would have been a highly indirect approach to the problem at best.^[21] Even on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, where the problem seems already to have become severe, the "free" cities that lined the coast appear to have been left to their own devices. Toward the end of the second century, for example, when some Ephesians were seized by pirates, the Astypalaeans intercepted the ships and saved the unlucky captives. The inscription that describes this event says nothing at all of Roman intervention.^[22] There is no evidence, in short, for even a minimal attempt by Roman proconsuls to see to the security of the coast such as we glimpse occasionally after the First Mithridatic War.

Rome's long hesitation to take any significant measures against the pirates is sometimes explained as a result of its reliance on the slave trade whose demand they met.^[23] Not only does this presume a rather crude economic determinism; it also assumes that piracy was all to Rome's benefit. In fact it must have been a considerable threat to the agents of the

publicani and the negotiatores : in the famous lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis of ca. 100 the security of Romans, Italians, and Latins on the seas is given precedence.^[24] But the question should be turned on its head. Rome had since 154 certainly enjoyed no surfeit of manpower and since 114 had seen its resources so stretched to meet the pressures exerted nearly simultaneously by the Cimbri and Teutones to the north, Jugurtha in Numidia, and the Scordisci and other Thracians in Macedonia that in 109, 107 and 104 it had appealed for military assistance in Numidia and Gaul from its allies abroad.^[25] It can hardly have been eager, or indeed able, to take on new security commitments. To blame the Romans for not acting earlier is to presuppose that they had acknowledged a duty to ensure the general security of their Eastern allies,^[26] but we have no evidence that suggests that contemporaries recognized this as an obligation before Antonius's expedition against the pirates. Prima facie, it was not Rome but the recognized sovereigns of Cilicia, the Seleucid monarchy, who bore the direct and obvious responsibility for controlling piracy based in its waters. Our surprise at the slowness of Roman reaction to the growth in piracy is based upon the traditional, exaggerated notion of Roman "rule" in the East. The defense of the Thracian frontier had been taken over by Rome after the disaster of Andriscus's coup showed that it was the linchpin of Paulus's settlement; no military functions had been assumed in Asia; and the assumption of administrative and governmental functions had been kept to the minimum. That the Senate did nothing about piracy before the end of the second century is only further confirmation of the limits of its role in the East.

The Senate was finally induced to act in 102, when M. Antonius was assigned after his praetorship a special command against the pirates in Cilicia.^[27] Antonius's fleet was at least in considerable part collected west of

the Isthmus of Corinth, for he had his fleet hauled across the Isthmus rather than brave the dangerous capes of the Peloponnese late in the sailing season. This we know from a boastful epigram that Antonius's legate Hirrus, temporarily in charge of the operation, erected near the site of ancient Corinth in order to assure his glory—among those who read Latin.^[28] The collection of a fleet from west of the Aegean (likely assisted by Corcyra and the Greek and Illyrian cities and towns of the Adriatic coast) instead of relying on the considerable naval resources of the cities of the Asian coast and islands, especially Rhodes, shows that the Senate had decided to mount quite an extraordinary effort. While details of the campaign are lacking, it was evidently a success in the short run at least, and Antonius earned a triumph and the consulship for 99.^[29]

What explains this shift from prior Roman indifference toward piracy in the East? It has been suggested that hordes of captives from the victories over the Cimbri and Teutones made Rome less reliant on the Eastern slave trade, which could now be put down with no damage to Roman interests. Chronology provides sufficient refutation: Antonius was sent out probably before the victory at Aquae Sextiae (102) and certainly before the decisive battle at Vercellae (101).^[30] I should connect the campaign against Cilicia with other evidence we have already reviewed that indicates a nascent sense of imperial responsibility in the East. Nicomedes' rebuff to Marius's plea for military assistance against the Germans in 104 (Diod. 36.3.1), I have argued in chapter 5, demonstrated the tenuousness of Rome's im-

perium in the East at the very moment that support from her Eastern allies was for the first time urgently needed. From this point through Mucius Scaevola's command in Asia ca. 98-97 a number of discrete pieces of evidence strongly suggest that the lesson was taken to heart and a real attempt was made by the Senate and its agents to restore Rome's good name in the East and thus shore up its hegemony.^[31] Antonius's expedition against the pirates belongs in this context and was perhaps the most conspicuous of such measures.

The concentration of Roman attention on Cilician piracy specifically is not difficult to explain. Among the pirates' chief activities was, as noted above, the enslavement of seafarers and coastal dwellers to supply the burgeoning slave market at Delos; but the affair of Nicomedes in 104 had brought home not only the dangers of allowing the publicani to wreak havoc but also the resentment caused by Rome's toleration of the enslavement of free allied peoples. The Senate had decreed their manumission, although on Sicily at least the decree proved impracticable (Diod. 36.3). Nicomedes had complained about seizure by the publicani , and we have already reviewed evidence of stricter senatorial and proconsular supervision of their activities from this point; but the other leading practitioners of wrongful enslavement must have been the Cilician pirates. The devolution of state authority in the area had continued unchecked and evidently increased ca. 104, when the sporadic dynastic war between the Seleucid brothers, Antiochus VIII Grypos and Antiochus IX Cyzicenus, broke out with renewed intensity; according to Trogus (Prol . 39), the fighting took place in Cilicia as well as Syria.^[32] At around the same time, the Ptolemaic naval command on Cyprus, which might have exerted some control over the growth of piracy in those waters, disappears from our evidence during a tumultuous period on the island.^[33] Although Lycaonia and Pamphylia (?) were granted to Cappadocia for its help in the war against Aristonicus, it seems unlikely that its kings ever exerted any authority on the coast, and in any case now chaos had descended upon Cappadocia as well. As political instability became endemic the pirates became more aggressive than ever.^[34] Rhodes, long the guardian of maritime security in the southern

Aegean but no longer strong enough to face the problem alone, will have been urging Rome to take some action. An embassy from Rhodes was in Rome at the time of the passage of the lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis a few years later, and the (unfortunately somewhat vague) provisions mentioned there certainly suggest that the island republic had been cooperating closely with Rome against the problem of piracy.^[35]

The Senate's acceptance of the need to take serious action against Cilician piracy is an important novelty in Rome's attitudes toward its Eastern imperium . But we must not overstate the case, for, notoriously, Rome was not yet prepared to commit itself on a scale and to a duration sufficient to put paid to the problem; that step was not taken until the lex Gabinia over three decades later. It is important that no immediate successor was apparently sent out, for at the date of the law on the praetorian provinces ca. 100 the only commanders abroad who were required to swear to the law were the proconsuls of Asia and Macedonia.^[36] Evidently Rome evac-

uated the Pamphylian-Cilician coast as quickly as it had come and had allowed the pirates to regroup. The lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis , a Roman law translated into Greek of which large but only partly overlapping fragments were found originally at Delphi, inscribed on the plinth of the monument of Aemilius Paulus, and quite recently as well at Cnidus, affords a glimpse of subsequent Roman measures, but it will require extended discussion for us to assess them.^[37]

The lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis appears to have taken the important step of assigning a praetor (probably of 99) again to "Cilicia"—probably, as often, in fact Pamphylia and Pisidia. The consul is to announce by letters to various cities that "Cilicia has been made a praetorian province in accordance with this law" in order that Romans, Italian allies, Latins, and friends of Rome abroad might sail in safety.^[38] The praetor assigned "Cilicia" is to assure that Roman citizens, Italian allies, Latins, and foreign peoples in Rome's friendship "may be able to sail safely and gain justice."^[39] There is no need to conjure up the familiar images of "organizing provinces" or "imposing Roman rule," of which nothing is said in the preserved portions of the law.^[40] There is certainly nothing in the preserved

portion of the law to suggest that any tribute was to be levied. The authors of the law are careful to state that the assignment of a praetor to Cilicia is to have no effect on the sovereignty of allied kings and peoples over communities subject to them;^[41] thus Seleucid and Cappadocian claims to the south coast of Asia Minor are not to be invalidated. Further, the authors of the law took care to repeat clauses of the lex Porcia that forbade operations outside a provincia .^[42] These provisions probably effectively prevented the praetor of Cilicia for 99 from pursuing the pirates too deeply into Seleucid waters—for example, to their stronghold Coracesium, whose capture was left to another age, when Romans acted with less circumspection. As for the fundamental source of the problem, the pirate nests in harbors of Cilicia proper to the east, which remained under Seleucid suzerainty, the authors of the law contented themselves with a diplomatic half-measure of highly dubious prospects, given the disintegration of governmental authority from the Orontes to the Nile: the consul first elected was to write letters to the Lagid and Seleucid rivals to request that they dose their harbors to pirates and cooperate with the Roman efforts.^[43] The Cilician praetor was evidently to perform a police function along the southwest coast of Asia Minor; the inland rough country of Lycaonia, on the other hand, was to remain within the Asian proconsul's sphere of operation.^[44]

The lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis shows that Rome did not wash its hands of the problem of Cilician piracy after Antonius's expedition: Cilicia was again assigned as a provincia for 99 (probably), and polite noises were made about eliciting cooperation from the Eastern kings. The end of the Scordiscan-Thracian wars and return to a defensive posture in Macedonia and Thrace mandated in the law might roughly balance accounts and preclude the commitment of substantial new resources to the East.^[45] But the limitations of these measures should be given equal attention. Only two years after Antonius's glorious victory the pirates were again a problem that needed attention; and no one can now have believed that Cilician piracy could be eradicated without full military assistance from the kings of Syria and Cyprus (which in turn would presuppose the arrangement of peace between the Seleucid rivals), and active campaigning against the strongholds along the coast east of Pamphylia. Instead the half-measure was taken of sending another praetor to "Cilicia," whose freedom of action was apparently restricted in just the area (eastward) where it was most needed, ostensibly out of respect for friendly and allied kings. While it is not unlikely that Cilicia provincia continued to be assigned at least sporadically after 100,^[46] it is probably significant that no further naval campaigns are recorded in our evidence before the Mithridatic War; on the contrary, only land operations are reported for the two "Cilician" praetors known before the war.^[47] It appears that Rome was simply not yet ready to commit sufficient resources to deal with a problem whose dimensions it was just now beginning to comprehend.

The lack of a decisive response to Cilician piracy remains conspicuous, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the problem did not touch Roman interests very directly or acutely. It is worth considering whether the step of assigning a praetor to "Cilicia" in 100 was not taken above all simply for reasons of hegemonial prestige. That a Roman law is virtually the whole of our evidence may have distorted the picture by directing our attention almost exclusively to Rome. A Rhodian embassy was in Rome at the time of the drafting and passage of the law, which also provides for a senatorial audience extra ordinem for any future embassies from Rhodes. The consul's letters to the kings were to be given to the Rhodian envoys in Rome to convey to them.^[48] These indications, taken together, suggest

that the Rhodians were in the midst of a diplomatic campaign to organize a common effort against the pirates, of which the next step, after the mission to Rome, would be the dispatch of embassies to the Eastern kings armed with consular letters bearing Rome's imprimatur for the Rhodian initiative. The assignment of Cilicia provincia in 100 was of more concrete assistance, although, as we have noted, it is unclear in the state of our evidence how long Roman vigilance on the coasts persisted.

The evidence is consistent, then, with the hypothesis that Rome's interest in the campaign against Cilician piracy was not direct but derived chiefly from the need, in order to maintain its imperium , not to neglect the demands put upon it from its ally, Rhodes, and other cities of the coast and islands for the sake of their own security. To this end publicity of Roman solicitude for its allies' welfare was nearly as important as concrete action: hence the consul's letters, making the point that the Roman people's concern for the safety on the seas not only of Romans and Italians but also of foreign amici had induced Rome to assign Cilicia to a praetor;^[49] hence also copies of the law are to be sent out by the proconsul of Asia to a host of cities and communities to be inscribed on bronze or stone or copied onto whitened boards and to be posted prominently either in a religious precinct or in the marketplace in such a way that they can be read from the ground^[50] —an extraordinary effort to publicize in Greek cities what was, after all, a Roman law that was not legally binding upon noncitizens and did not mandate in its preserved portions action from anyone other than Roman officials.^[51] That the intent was above all to publicize rather than to enforce is clearly suggested by the inscribing of the law as well on the most conspicuous Roman monument in the East, that of L. Aemilius Paulus at Delphi—a sanctuary that had little to do with the campaign against piracy but much to do with Hellenic public opinion.^[52]

The publication of the law in Greek cities gave those under Rome's imperium concrete and explicit knowledge of what, according to Roman law, proconsuls were permitted to do or were responsible for doing.^[53]

Much remains puzzling about the lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis . Who its authors were, why it takes the form of a law rather than a senatus consultum , and what role it played if any in the political crisis of 100 are questions that cannot be convincingly answered with the evidence at our disposal.^[54] It is certainly dangerous to impute to it a markedly popularis character.^[55] There is no suggestion in the law that a "great command" is being prepared for Marius or anyone else.^[56] The Cilician command, which was after all merely praetorian, need not have been "greater" than Antonius's, and the Macedonian was positively to be downgraded. Traditionally, Saturninus and his friends are presumed to have been the authors of the law, because of its allegedly "antisenatorial" tone, and especially the oath of obedience required of magistrates^[57] —hence the suggestion that, despite the publication of the law in the cities of the East, something not merely called for in the law but confirmed by the survival of our Delphi and Cnidus copies, the law was annulled with the rest of Saturninus's legislation.^[58] But Saturninus's sanctio for his agrarian law was much stricter than this one, for it demanded an oath from all senators, not merely magistrates and officials—an argument against, rather than for, his sponsorship.^[59] It was not, surely, uniquely popularis to assign a

praetor to Cilicia and to arrange for the succession of the proconsul in Macedonia,^[60] or to give the force of law to instructions to provincial commanders that would normally have been contained in a senatus consultum ,^[61] we will not set much store by the absence of senatorial legati for the settlement of the Caenic Chersonese.^[62] If anything, the impression of solicitude for the welfare of the allies that the law conveys is far more characteristic of adherents to the traditional norms, such as Q. Mucius Scaevola, than of the popularis chiefs, who had since Ti. Gracchus openly advocated the use of the Empire's resources for the benefit of the Roman people; Saturninus in this very year proposed sending out Roman colonies to Macedonia and "Achaia" (presumably Corinth).^[63] Conceivably the measures called for in the law were embodied in legislation rather than, as might be expected, a senatus consultum not because they contradicted the will of the Senate but because they were so comprehensive, and because a legal sanction for their enforcement seemed desirable. Saturninus, certainly, was not likely to veto a law before the assembly—usually an anti-popularis last resort, with unpleasant suggestions of suppressing the will of the people.^[64] But this is of course only speculation.

Whoever the law's authors, however, and whatever its place in the domestic upheaval of 100, the lex de Cilicia Macedoniaque provinciis is invaluable evidence of a developing ideology of empire.^[65] A theme that runs through the law is Rome's concern for the security and rights of its

allies in the imperium . Not only Roman citizens, Italian allies, and Latins are to sail safely on the seas and enjoy their tights, but also the foreign peoples in the friendship of the Roman people; for this very purpose a praetor has been assigned "Cilicia."^[66] Rome will lend its good offices to help win the crucial cooperation of the Eastern kings.^[67] Roman magistrates in the provinces are reminded of the provisions of a recent law that forbade their or their staff's straying outside their provinces except for mere passage through or in the Roman public interest;^[68] the proconsul of Macedonia is to supervise the legitimate collection of Roman revenues and is to protect the territorial integrity and rights of Rome's friends and allies.^[69] The copy at Delphi ends with an impressive series of provisions to ensure that Roman magistrates obey the law.^[70] This positive image of empire was proclaimed from copies posted in markets and sanctuaries of various Eastern titles, but most strikingly at the "center of the world," on the very plinth of L. Aemilius Paulus's spectacular monument of his victory over Perseus. We have already noted how at Delphi only a few years previously the Roman victory over a new Gallic menace had been celebrated; now, on the very monument of the victory that gave Rome its Eastern imperium , was inscribed a text that not only advertised the successful pacification of the northern frontier but also expressed explicitly and implicitly the principles of Rome's benevolent patronage of its "friends and allies" in the East. It was opportune to attempt to restore a Hellenic consensus on Rome's right to power after Minucius Rufus, Didius, and Antonius had restored the Roman name in the East, closing an unpleasant chapter marked by inauspicious defeat at the opening of the Scordiscan war, demoralization inflicted by the German invasions, and an embarrassingly long and checkered struggle against Jugurtha in Numidia.