The Military Nature of Macedonia Provincia
We may now return from our lengthy peregrinations to Macedonia. In Polybius's view Macedonia had been subject to the Roman arche since 168/167; and especially in view of the payment of tribute to Rome from that point, there is no good reason to doubt that the Senate wilt have regarded it as well as sub imperio populi Romani (cp. Cato on Rhodes at this time, quoted above). Although the Macedonians had been left "free" in 168/167, they had had no alternative to Roman domination after the elimination of the monarchy. From this standpoint, the change of the 140s—the continuing Roman presence—was not a fundamental alteration of the Roman relationship with Macedonia. Rather, it is likely to have been seen as a move that made more secure, rather than founded, the Roman imperium in the area. It was a radical departure in one sense only: in that, at a time of expanding military commitments elsewhere and de-dining enthusiasm for conscription (already in 151 there had been a domestic crisis over the levy), the Senate was for the first time prepared to maintain a legion east of the Adriatic.[79] Its purpose in doing so, and the significance of the change, are the next objects of our investigation.
It seems unlikely that the Senate ever made an explicit decision that henceforth, once and for all, Macedonia provincia would be assigned as a command and held under permanent occupation. Earlier parallels in Spain and Sicily show dearly that permanent occupation typically flowed gradually and insensibly out of the military demands of the moment: "To those who think in purely military terms ..., one danger is followed by another, and what has been won is not lightly abandoned."[80] The failed attempt of Scipio Africanus, consul in 194, to prevent the recall of Roman troops from Greece in view of the supposed danger presented by Antiochus, and to have Macedonia provincia assigned to one of the consuls (Livy 34.43), illustrates dearly the general rule that the issue of withdrawal or continued military presence was raised and resolved in a purely ad hoc manner precisely in the context of the senatorial determination of the consular provinces at the beginning of the year.[81] Immediate concerns of security were
at issue in such discussions rather than long-term strategic policy.[82] Likewise, we should expect, Macedonia provincia was assigned to a commander when Metellus was relieved in 146 not because the Senate consciously resolved upon the permanent occupation of Macedonia but simply because it seemed necessary to do so in view of military concerns of the present; and the assignment of Macedonia to a new commander in 146 need not have been felt to be any more momentous a decision, committing Rome to permanent occupation of the country, than was the senatorial vote on Flamininus's recall in 194. Again we find nothing that reveals any consciousness of "annexation." It is not surprising, on the other hand, if eventually Romans came to regard Macedonia as "ours," as Appian makes Sulla say to Mithridates in a speech whose dramatic date is 85.[83] That would hardly be surprising after Roman troops and commanders had succeeded one another for some six decades. What Romans thought in the 140s is not so clear.
What was dear, however, and remains so to us, were the immediate military concerns of the Senate. The story properly begins, of course, with Andriscus himself, who, having seized power in Macedonia ca. 150 and taken the royal name Philip, gave Rome a shock not easily forgotten.[84] This "bolt-from-the-blue Philip" (
), who claimed to be a son of King Perseus but whose origins were quite obscure, "held not merely Macedonians but also Romans in contempt," and far from suffering for his audacity (at first) he actually managed to conquer Macedonia. Most Greeks could not believe the news until the Thessalians began to call for help from Achaea—ir was an amazing and almost incomprehensible event.[85] The instability of the four Macedonian republics in the face of this ostensibly minor threat was indeed remarkable; and yet the Romans, preoccupied by the trouble with Carthage, at first took little notice. P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica was sent to Greece to settle things by diplomacy; but Nasica soon turned to mustering troops from the allies, mainly Achaeans,
to defend Thessaly, part of which indeed Andriscus already seems to have conquered.[86] Nasica's report to Rome finally induced the Senate to send an army under the praetor P. Iuventius Thalna—which, however, was crushed in 148 upon invading Macedonia, and its commander killed. The army escaped complete annihilation only by slipping away under cover of darkness, and Andriscus again invaded Thessaly.[87] The Romans had never suffered such a heavy defeat in all their campaigns against the great powers of the Hellenistic East. We need only recall what an effect the minor cavalry victory of Perseus at Callinicus in 171 had upon the Greeks to gain some appreciation of the likely psychological results of Andriscus's victory.[88] Polybius, already astounded at Andriscus's initial conquest of Macedonia, is completely nonplussed by this new event and, after devoting several pages to a discussion of how to explain utterly paradoxical occurrences, can do no more than call it a visitation from heaven.[89] Rome quickly saved face: in the very year of Iuventius's defeat, another praetor, Q. Caecilius Metellus, was sent out with a large army and was joined by a Pergamene fleet sent by Attalus II. Apparently aided by treachery in Andriscus's command, Metellus defeated the self-proclaimed king near Pydna.[90] It had in the end cost much and required a considerable effort to put down this Philip who had fallen from the skies. If Rome's initial reaction to Andriscus's capture of Macedonia suggests that the Senate was not rigidly committed to maintaining Paulus's arrangements of 168/167 in Macedonia, the sequel, including Thalna's disaster and the harassment of Thessaly, will have made dear not only that Macedonia was incapable of reliably defending itself but also that neglect of Macedonia could have grave repercussions in Greece as well.
But if these broad considerations were not enough to ensure that the troops would not be entirely withdrawn with Metellus, continued instability, hardly to be separated from the old problem of fending off the Thracian, Gallic, and Illyrian tribes that nearly surrounded Macedonia, clinched the matter. Even while Metellus was still in Macedonia one Alexander, claiming to be yet another son of Perseus, collected an army and seized the area around the Nestus River, the ancient border with Thrace.[91] Metellus chased him into the land of the Dardani, but only a few years later another "Pseudophilip" or "Pseudoperseus" managed to gather a large army before being defeated and killed by the quaestor Tremellius Scrofa (whom the antiquarian Varro proudly claimed as an ancestor) under the auspices of the praetor Licinius Nerva.[92] And in 141 the Scordisci for the first time inflicted a defeat on Roman forces sufficiently memorable to be mentioned in the summaries of the contents of the books of Livy.[93]
Some scholars, impressed by Andriscus's success in 149-148 and the number of royal pretenders shortly after him, are inclined to understand these facts as evidence of a persistent and, from the Roman point of view, dangerous longing of Macedonians for their ancient monarchy.[94] Natu-
rally, that some Macedonians in the 140s remained deeply attached to the greatness of the royal past is plausible enough, but perhaps too much practical significance has been attributed to it. A review of some features of the Andriscan war and its aftermath seems rather to imply that such nostalgic appeals to the glorious past had little concrete effect on the Macedonians; indeed, what has not been sufficiently emphasized is the damning association between the royal pretenders of the 140s and the Thracians, against whom the Macedonian kings had always had to defend their northern and eastern frontiers, and of whom, we are entitled to assume, Macedonians themselves, and certainly the Greeks of the coast, were still hardly fond.[95]
According to Zonaras, Andriscus had tried to stir up Macedonia once before the famous attempt of ca. 150, apparently without assistance from abroad—and failed.[96] In any case, on the better-attested occasion when he was successful, Andriscus did not rely solely on the propagandistic power of his royal claim: he gathered allies from the independent peoples and rulers hostile to Rome and invaded and seized Macedonia.[97] Zonaras's use of words implying hostile invasion is no accident: Andriscus's chief allies were clearly Thracians.[98] Thracians crowned him with the diadem, gave him his initial forces, invaded Macedonia with him, remained to give him support, took him in after his defeat by Metellus—and, when the game was over, handed him over to the Roman conqueror.[99] Nor were Andriscus
and his Thracians given a warm reception. Our manuscript of the Constantinian Excerpts (= Diod. 32.15.7) evidently alludes to an initial defeat suffered by Andriscus and retreat to Thrace before he finally prevailed.[100] When Andriscus tried again, after a campaign of some three or four months the Macedonians east of the Strymon met him in battle and were defeated; even so, instead of swarming to the cause of the Macedonian monarchy, the Macedonians west of the Strymon, too, rudely forced their self-proclaimed monarch to defeat them in battle (Polyb. 36.10.4-5). No doubt along the way Andriscus managed to win some voluntary adherence,[101] but up to the point of his conquest of all Macedonia there is very little sign in our evidence of his popularity among Macedonians. Victory changes minds, of course, and although Andriscus seems to have been a harsh master, Polybius notes with regard to the defeat of Iuventius that the Macedonians fought very well against the Romans "for his kingship."[102] Although Andriscus had been established in Macedonia chiefly by force of arms, his invasion of the ancient vassal state Thessaly, and then the great victory over Thalna, can only have legitimized his power and resuscitated dreams of Macedonian greatness, which older men in 149-148 will still have recalled. By the time of Metellus's campaign Andriscus had managed to transform his bid for personal power into a Macedonian war of independence.[103] But we cannot lose sight of the fact that he had
first been fought—and not merely once—as a Thracian-sponsored adventurer while his appeals to a royal lineage had fallen on deaf ears, and that without strong Thracian backing he would never have won Macedonia.
All of this surely makes the picture more complex and warns us against taking more seriously than the Macedonians themselves did the royal claims of the further pretenders mentioned above. The assumption of royal names by rebels as a claim to a kind of legitimacy is an interesting feature of the later second century B.C. , particularly noteworthy among the leaders of the slave revolts in Sicily,[104] but it says less about the degree of popular support than about the rebels' methods. Of more significance to Macedonians may have been the Thracian element that can be supposed to have formed the backbone of their bands. It is probably no mere chance that the man who collected a "band" (
) and claimed to be a further son of Perseus while Metellus was still in Macedonia seized the Thracian frontier area around the Nestus River.[105] In the light of what we have seen of Andriscus's Thracian backing, "Alexander's" band may well have been a Thracian raiding party. The "Pseudophilip" or "Pseudoperseus" who appeared in substantial force ca. 143-142 is said to have gathered a considerable army of some 16,000 after beginning with a force of slaves;[106] how much of this is true, and how much of his army was actually Macedonian rather than Thracian, we simply do not know. But a curious story in Diodorus (37.5a, ultimately from Posidonius?) from half a century later warns us not to take royal claims too seriously, and incidentally reveals again an intriguing Thracian connection. Around 90, a certain young man named Euphenes proclaimed himself king of the Macedonians and called upon "many" () to revolt from the Romans and to restore the "ancestral monarchy."[107] But the "many" who joined him simply had hopes for
plunder (
).[108] Euphenes' father, Execestus, who some claimed had brought about his son's action by disinheriting him, informed the Roman commander, C. Sentius, of the young man's "madness" (), but at the same time arranged for a Thracian king, one Cotys, to summon Euphenes, whose friend he was, and to persuade him to give up his project. After a few days Euphenes was returned to his father, who was thus cleared of allegations of complicity.[109] Euphenes' call for the restoration of the monarchy and his royal claim is here the natural ploy of an adventurer, while his support is explicitly attributed to the potential for profit, presumably from raiding, rather than to monarchic propaganda. That Diodorus or his source is right about this is suggested by the behavior of the Roman commander. Draconian measures were not called for; Euphenes was handed over to his father, not to Sentius. We hear of no punishment of Euphenes, which would have considerably altered the picture Diodorus presents of Execestus's success in wriggling out of a difficult situation. Perhaps Sentius agreed with Execestus's characterization of his son's action as mere . Far from illustrating the Macedonians' profound loyalty to the monarchy, this story suggests that a call for its restoration was not necessarily something that had to be taken too seriously by the Roman commander. If we knew as much about "Alexander" and "Perseus" (or "Philip") as we do about Euphenes, we should probably be less inclined to speak of the continuing appeal of monarchic propaganda. We may note also the tantalizing connection between the family of Execestus and the Thracian Cotys: it would seem that the event, like that of 147, took place near the frontier with Thrace; and we may perhaps surmise that Euphenes hoped that his summons from Cotys would result in Thracian assistance, such as Andriscus had received from Teres and Barsabas in 150-149 (Diod. 32.15.5-7).[110]
These pretenders are not to be dissociated from their context: the old story of maintaining the integrity of Macedonia's frontiers on the north
and east against constant pressure. Their adventures are not safely regarded as explosions of popular discontent at the Roman presence. We are entitled to assume, even without good evidence, that Macedonians wished to be independent, that they often looked nostalgically to their glorious past, that they often resented the Romans. The question for us is whether such yearnings were likely to be translated into concrete action and thus presented a threat to Roman domination. There is room for much doubt there, particularly because there was an important convergence of Macedonian and Roman interests in the crucial matter of holding the frontiers against powerful external pressure, a matter of great importance to Macedonians of every type and class. The atrocities committed by the Thracian king Diegylis of the Caeni against Greeks and Hellenizers cannot have gone unmarked by the Greeks of the Macedonian coast.[111] All of this will have done much to legitimate the Roman presence.
An inscription set up in the summer of 119 at Lete near Salonica makes the point most vividly.[112] "Gauls"—Scordisci, evidently—had, surely that very summer, invaded the area around Argos on the Axius River.[113] The praetor Sex. Pompeius (grandfather of Magnus) advanced against them but fell in the battle. Pompeius's quaestor M. Annius brought up reinforcements, defeated the enemy, and gathered the exposed frontier garrisons into his camp.[114] But not many days later the "Gallic" horsemen returned, assisted now by a Thracian Maedic chieftain; they were defeated again by Annius, who wins special praise for not calling up a local (Macedonian) levy, and making do with the troops at his disposal.[115] For these deeds, and for his otherwise excellent behavior before and after the crisis, Lete voted to honor him with a laurel crown and an annual equestrian competition.[116] With all due allowance for honorific extravagance, the Lete inscription reminds us that Thracians were very likely less popular in Mac-
edonia than Romans, and that for many the choice between them will have been clear. Certainly our evidence, which tends to mention only the more significant victories or defeats, gives the impression that there was little letup in the pressure on the Macedonian frontier after 148.[117] We have already noted the series of pretenders in the 140s, and Rome's first defeat at the hands of the Scordisci in 141. In 135 or shortly thereafter M. Cosconius avenged this setback with a victory over the Scordisci "in Thrace" (Livy Per . 56). Perhaps it was in connection with this campaign that the city of Cyzicus in northwest Asia Minor, "beleaguered" most probably by Thracians, appealed to Cosconius for help.[118] After Cosconius we hear no more of victories or defeats until the catastrophe described by the Lete inscription, in which the praetor Sex. Pompeius was killed in action against the Scordisci in central Macedonia. The fasti triumphales are not extant for most of this period, but they do show that no one triumphed from Macedonia or Thrace from 129 until 111, and the space between the entries for 155 and 129 would not allow for much more than a triumph for Licinius Nerva and Cosconius.[119] Still, the via Egnatia , the purpose of which must have been above all to allow the Roman contingent in Macedonia a swift response to threats throughout the province, must have been built before 119;[120] so it is precisely in this period that the Romans were making a substantial commitment to the defense of Macedonia. And the Scordiscan invasion of 119 begins a protracted series of Balkan frontier wars, punctuated by severe Roman defeats as well as victories; between 114 and 111 this truculent people posed such a threat that consular commanders and
armies were sent against them. Nevertheless, trouble continued down to the major Balkan offensives of the 70s, including one occasion in the later 80s when the Thracian Maedi took advantage of Sulla's virtual evacuation of the southern Balkans (stripping even the frontier of Macedonia, it seems) to burst into Greece; they even reached Delphi.[121] It seems little wonder then that the Macedonians, far from throwing off Rome's yoke (as did its free ally Athens), appear to have displayed signal loyalty when Mithridatic forces, with Thracian allies, invaded in 87.[122]
The proper conclusion from an examination of Roman activities in Macedonia from 148 is surely that a permanent Roman presence evolved in Macedonia not from a fixed resolve "to secure the final elimination of the recalcitrant" by imposing military occupation and "direct rule" but from the military demands of the defense of the Macedonian frontier.[123] That was not altruism. Andriscus had taught the lesson that the Roman supremacy in the southern Balkans established in 168/167 might be won or lost at the Macedonian frontier. Clearly, some more effective force than the local levies, which had failed to stave off Andriscus and his Thracian friends, was needed in order to protect Macedonia from the incursions that, as he and further pretenders showed, were a dangerous source of internal instability and could even cause trouble for Greece.[124] Rome had received tribute from Macedonia since 167; now, at a time when its manpower was spread more thinly than ever, Rome was forced to give in return some substantial assistance against external invaders and internal adventurers who might employ their support. On the other hand, the provincial garrison of perhaps one legion could hardly have been intended to police in the Roman interest the area behind the frontier, including Greece, as well as restrain the Scordisci and Thracians, with whom our evidence clearly shows its hands were full. It was not, in short, an army of occupation. The decision (explicit and conscious or not) to oversee the defense of the Macedonian frontier—the central innovation of the 140s—was, I suggest, for
all its apparent novelty, an ad hoc reaction, an attempt to patch up Paulus's settlement by correcting the now-evident problem of the Macedonian republics' weakness. It was a conservative solution, keeping as much as possible unchanged, rather than a complete change of front revealing a new conception of the demands of empire in the East.
That is not to diminish the long-term significance of this innovation. Certainly Roman supremacy, hitherto represented at one remove by the payment of tribute, was now immediate and conspicuous, and at least the possibility of its being backed up with force was less distant. The quartering of even one legion, and the demands, legitimate and illegitimate, of its commander, were an unpleasant burden on those on whom they fell. Macedonians brought their first charge of extortion against a proconsul already in 140 and received the satisfaction of vengeance (the defendant, D. Iunius Silanus, killed himself) if not of restitution.[125] The presence of a Roman official would prove an irresistible magnet for appeals from Greeks (and presumably Macedonians as well, although the evidence is lacking) for the settlement of internal disputes, thus unconsciously encouraging the slow erosion of local authority. But that lay as yet in the future: as in Spain and Sicily, the military functions of the Roman commander will have been the primary ones, and Roman administration (such as it was) will have come gradually with time and habituation. In the 140s, points of continuity with the preceding period may have been as striking as any perceived discontinuities: Paulus's arrangements appear to have remained in force; the republics, including perhaps their frontier guard, persisted; tribute at half the royal rate continued to be handed over to the Romans. Macedonians had not changed "status," Macedonia had not been "converted into a province," and the imperium had not expanded.