Greece and the Proconsul in Macedonia
The traditional view of the status of Greece after 146 therefore has no great claim to our credence. Old notions of "provincialization" and talk of
"annexation" have obscured rather than illuminated historical realities. The apparent contradiction between official freedom and Roman intervention derives simply from the clumsy tools of analysis we have been taught to wield. A new view that assumes less a priori and ventures less widely beyond the limits of our evidence may be considered. We have already had reason to doubt that the presence of a Roman commander in his provincia was typically founded upon a new legal structure, imposed at a specific time of "annexation," and I hope to have shown that there is no good reason to believe that Macedonia provincia was legally defined as a formal entity in the 140s. That conclusion opens up a new approach to the question of the "status" of Greece. The signs of the "conversion" of part of Greece into a "province" have been lacking for the same reason that they have been absent in so many other areas to which Rome's power spread. The question of the "status" of Greece is a nonquestion. Romans of the second century did not think in those terms. As we have already seen, Rome's supremacy was much less clearly defined than has been thought; the reality of the situation was, as usual, complex, and perhaps not always consistent or perfectly clear.
To start with a certainty, it is clear that Graecia or Achaia was not assigned regularly as a provincia until 27 B.C. (with the exception of a brief period ca. 81, and another possible exception in 46-44). Therefore, as has long been known, Pausanias's and Strabo's belief that governors were henceforth sent out to Greece is a gross anachronism.[29] Officially Greece was again "freed" in 146 as it had been in 196.[30] The debate over what precisely the nature of this "freedom" was seems tiresome and fruitless:[31] it was a useful slogan precisely because of its flexibility. It is clear that the Roman commander in Macedonia was the most convenient representative for Greeks to approach when Rome's intervention in some Greek affair was desired;[32] likewise, he was the Senate's administrative deputy, carrying
out its instructions in matters involving mainland Greeks, and settling the minor aspects of matters whose crucial issues were resolved in the Senate.[33] Finally, the commander in Macedonia might be expected to face any serious threat to Roman interests that appeared in Greece itself, as did Metellus at the outbreak of the Achaean War and C. Sentius at the time of Mithridates' invasion of Greece,[34] and it is dear that Romans assigned Macedonia provincia were in no way legally excluded from operating in Greece.[35] As before, Greeks could be formally free, and at the same time sporadically appeal and defer to the authority of the Roman commanders who happened to be near. The greater frequency of Roman magisterial intervention in Greece after 148 is due to the simple fact that whereas previously Roman commanders had been present for relatively short periods of time during the prosecution of the various wars, now one was continuously no farther away than Macedonia. Rome's sheer power made its representative and agent, the proconsul of Macedonia, the most authoritative and powerful figure in the vicinity, to whom difficult disputes would naturally be referred. It is not formal structures that account for this but pragmatic calculations of interest. So, about 135, when the city of Cyzicus in northwest Asia Minor wanted Roman help against some enemy, presumably Thracians, it turned to the proconsul of Macedonia (IGRR IV. 134). But no one has yet argued that northwest Asia Minor was actually part of the province of Macedonia; rather, M. Cosconius was dearly the man to see about this problem because he might be able to help.
It is normally supposed that, whatever the formal structures or lack of them, successive Roman commanders assigned Macedonia provincia "oversaw" Greece in addition to their duties in Macedonia itself. But did Greeks in fact conduct their affairs "under the watchful eye of the proconsul of Macedonia"?[36]
We ought first to note how little evidence we have for even the presence of the proconsul of Macedonia in Greece during the period under our purview. We cannot presume that the presence of Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus in the Peloponnese, overseeing the Mummian settlement ca. 144,[37] was anything but extraordinary, as was the situation. He is, however, the last Roman magistrate (other than those passing to and from Asia Minor) whose presence in Greece is explicitly documented before the Mithridatic War, nearly six decades later. Other evidence that might be adduced for the presence of the proconsul of Macedonia is negligible. An inscription from Messenia that reveals a Roman praetor (?
) levying in person a special monetary exaction has recently been shown not to date, as was previously thought, toward the end of the second century, but certainly much later, surely indeed well after the Mithridatic wars.[38] In Athens, a statue of Sex. Pompeius was at some time erected on the Acropolis. While it has been assumed that the statue belongs to the time of his tenure of Macedonia (which ended with his death in battle in 119), it is no less possible that it was set up, as presumably was that of his son Cn. Pompeius Strabo (who is not known ever to have been near Athens—or Macedonia), during the ascendancy of their grandson and son respectively, Pompey the Great, perhaps for one of his two visits to Athens in 67 and 62.[39] M. Minucius Rufus may well have visited Delphi, presumably, in view of his victories over the Scordisci and stabilization of the northern frontier, on a sight-seeing and thanksgiving tour, like that enjoyed by Aemilius Paulus in 168, before returning home ca. 107.[40] Like
Paulus's visit to the south, however, Minucius's putative tour would have had an exceptional symbolic and propagandistic purpose and should not be taken to illustrate the norm for proconsuls in Macedonia. And that is all.
Two known cases corroborate the argument from silence. In 118, the complaint of the Athenian guild of Dionysiac artists about their brethren of the Isthmian-Nemean group had to be presented to the proconsul Cn. Cornelius Sisenna at Pella in Macedonia, and there too the parties were subsequently summoned for his mediation. The agreement reached there quickly fell apart upon the return to Greece of the representatives of the two parties, but the commanders in Macedonia played no further role until the matter was finally brought before the Senate in 112. The Scordiscan wars, which began in earnest in 114, make such neglect easily understandable from that point, but the previous history of the case strongly implies that the Roman imperator was not expected to stir from Macedonia for assizes. By contrast, in the law on the praetorian provinces of ca. 100, future proconsuls are ordered to spend no less than sixty days a year in the part of Thrace recently conquered and now made one of their responsibilities.[41] The implication of Plutarch's reference to a hearing before the proconsul of Macedonia concerning a charge against his home city of Chaeronea, probably in the 70s, is the same: "The trial was held before the commander of Macedonia; for the Romans did not yet send out commanders to Greece."[42] Plutarch surely is not making a rather trivial point about the titulature of the Roman official; the contemporary reader, at a time when the proconsuls of Macedonia certainly did not have jurisdiction in Greece, by then another province altogether, will have understood him to mean that the hearing was in Macedonia itself. Since Plutarch is dearly being careful about details here and is uniquely well informed, as the story is about his home polis, we can exclude the possibility that he is fuddled or unintentionally ambiguous, and draw the obvious conclusion, which accords with all our other evidence, that the Roman commander in Macedonia stayed there as a rule.
It is possible, to be sure, to intervene at a distance. But the evidence we have of his involvement in Greek matters does not imply that the procon-
sul kept a very dose watch over Greece—that is, after the departure of Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus, whose presence ca. 144 is explained (as noted above) by the extraordinary situation. In numerous cases, some of which have already been mentioned, proconsular arbitration or mediation was requested by one of the parties in a dispute between Greeks, but we cannot suppose that these cases were normally of any great interest in themselves to Rome. The proconsul Sisenna, and after him the Senate itself, need not have been particularly eager to hear the tedious and convoluted story of the squabble between the Athenian and the Isthmian-Nemean guilds of Dionysiac artists—unless for comic relief. The dispute lasted years, and we have no guarantee that the senatorial decree of 112 B.C. preserved for us even brought the sorry affair to its conclusion. Even when (in the other case referred to above) Chaeronea was accused before the proconsul of Macedonia of conniving at the murder of a Roman officer, it was only because Chaeronea's neighbor Orchomenus had hired a Roman lawyer to reopen the case that L. Lucullus, while passing through, had previously satisfied himself was dosed.[43] It appears that the proconsul of Macedonia acted as something of a magnet for Greeks who sought to outmaneuver their opponents by enlisting the prestige and power of Rome on their side. Not that he played the game as vigorously as was hoped: Sisenna allowed the settlement he had negotiated of the artists' dispute to be flouted, and the proconsul before whom Chaeronea was denounced dismissed the case brought by Orchomenus's hired patronus after corresponding directly with Lucullus.
We do well also to note occasions when the failure of the commander in Macedonia to play a role in Greek affairs is conspicuous. When Q. Caecilius Metellus, aedile designate, traveled to Thessaly probably around 130 to arrange for a large shipment of grain to Rome, it was a personal matter—a reward for the beneficia conferred by his family—in which the Roman proconsul of Macedonia is not even mentioned.[44] That the Roman
commander in Macedonia filled no police function in Greece is shown by the Attic slave revolts ca. 130 and ca. 100 (if indeed there were two).[45] The "first" was put down by local Athenian forces (Oros. 5.9.5). In Posidonius's account of the "second" revolt, we are told that many thousands of slaves (
) from the mines seized the acropolis at Sounion and for a long time () plundered Attica.[46] But despite the severity of the crisis—apparently the greatest outbreak of violence in Greece itself between the Achaean and Mithridatic wars—Rome did not intervene.[47] Indeed, when, in the early stage of the First Mithridatic War, Athenion and his followers seized control of Athens, began to tyrannize the citizens, and gave no reassuring signals of loyalty to Rome in the contest already raging in Asia,[48] the commander in Macedonia did nothing. Not until well after Aristion brought Athens over to the Mithridatic camp, Archelaus had established a Pontic beachhead at Athens, and they were together soliciting allies in Greece was the legate Braetius Sura sent with a small force against them.[49] There is no indication that the Athenians' decisions were much influenced by the presence of Roman troops in Macedonia. The Roman proconsul in Macedonia hardly policed Greece.
Finally, it is noteworthy that we hear of no charge of extortion brought by mainland Greeks until immediately after the First Mithridatic War.[50] It is hardly likely that it took seventy years of magisterial intrusion in their affairs for Greeks to make use of this tool. The absence of Greek extortion charges is a further sign to be set beside others that the proconsul in Macedonia did not make a habit of meddling in Greece.
It is, therefore, improbable that the proconsul in Macedonia kept a close eye on Greece. He was a far-off and unfamiliar figure for the inhabitants of the Greek mainland—at least for those who did not have anything to gain by traveling to Macedonia in order to call his attention to some flagrant injustice being perpetrated by their fellow Greeks. His job was to see to the defense of Macedonia, and to judge from our evidence—in which heavy Roman defeats appear nearly as often as victories[51] —this task will have kept him and his legion more than busy enough without having to keep Greece under heel as well. Indeed, as Braetius Sura's late arrival with inadequate forces in 87 shows, if Greeks decided to cause trouble for Rome, there was little the commander in Macedonia, with the Balkan tribes on his flank and back, could do. The Roman commander in Macedonia did not enforce quietude in Greece but presumed it.
The solution presented here to the old puzzle of the status of Greece is quite simple. There was no change of formal status. Traditionally Roman commanders assigned Macedonia provincia had been free to take action in or affecting Illyria and Greece; this was no different after 148, or 146. This freedom had not involved, nor did it now involve, the official subordination of any Greek community to the Macedonian proconsul's imperium ; the idea of "provincialization" or "annexation" of Greece is even less apt than it is for Macedonia. The Roman commander in Macedonia, preoccupied with protecting the northern frontier of his provincia , did not control police, or supervise Greece; his occasional involvement in Hellenic affairs, as a rule without stirring from Macedonia and in response to Greek appeals, is simply a development of a phenomenon well established before 146.