Tribute
The most likely example of a hasty judgment by Pausanias is his assertion that "tribute was levied upon Greece," since this would be a natural assumption for a writer of the Principate who believed that Greece was now placed under Roman governors.[6] On the methodological principle just stated, without corroboration of this statement we should have to reserve judgment on the matter. It would be a very slender reed indeed if made to stand on its own. But, in fact, closer consideration in light of other evidence only weakens it.[7]
There is relatively copious evidence of the payment of tribute by various Greek states after the First Mithridatic War. The view, therefore, that no Greeks paid tribute before Achaea was assigned as a separate province from 27 B.C. is untenable.[8] The core issue is, however, whether tribute can be
traced before the Mithridatic War, for otherwise it would be most plausible to associate its appearance with Sulla's punitive actions against those who had supported or succored the Pontic forces against Rome. But for the period before 86 B.C. the evidence held to attest to the levying of tribute is—in remarkable contrast to the following period—in very short supply. Indeed, in my view, there is none. Let us review it briefly.
In an inscription of 73 from Oropus concerning a dispute between that city and the Roman publicani over tributary status, two relevant passages from the current lex locationis (the statute regulating state contracts for the collection of revenue) are quoted. The first mentions grants of immunity given by the Senate or Roman commanders (note the plural number of these); the second, grants given by Sulla that were duly ratified by the Senate.[9] The assumption of one scholar that the first passage refers necessarily to pre-Sullan grants is quite unfounded; the plural number was presumably intended to cover all past and future cases at the time of the lex locationis , itself of indeterminate date, but not necessarily going back to Sulla.[10] These quotations from the lex locationis applicable to Boeotia in 73 B.C. therefore provide no evidence for tributary status before Sulla.
Nor can we draw important conclusions from the grant by a Roman magistrate of freedom from taxation and special contributions (
and ) to the Isthmian-Nemean guild of Dionysiac artists from some date in the latter half of the second century.[11] Exemption from local taxes and liturgies was at least as pressing a concern to the artists as any putative Roman levies, and their exemption from these by Rome stands in a long Hellenic tradition. It no more implies Roman assumption of effective sovereignty than do like grants of the past conferred by Hellenistic kings or indeed the Amphictyonic Council.[12]
Some have tried to get around the problem of the lack of actual evidence for tribute by deduction from legal forms: so, it is argued, the title civitas libera or immunis allegedly held by some cities from 146 implies of itself a provincial tributary status in Greece with which it is implicitly contrasted.[13] I remain skeptical of such abstract deductions, particularly since
the premises are quite uncertain.[14] That various communities held such titles in the middle of the first century B.C. and later—for that is the evidence on which the argument relies—tells us nothing about what was done in 146-145. On the other hand, what explicit evidence we have speaks quite unambiguously of the
or libertas of Achaea, even of Greece as a whole.[15] The straightforward interpretation of the evidence is then modified to fit the hypothesis: this is a different kind of freedom, merely an informal concept, fully compatible with "provincial status" and the payment of tribute.[16] This is arbitrary use of extremely weak evidence. Certainly, the notion that formal guarantees of "freedom" or exemption from tribute draws an implicit contrast with an otherwise prevailing tributary status can hardly be reduced to a formal rule. In the first century B.C. , when Roman tribute had become rather pervasive, such a contrast is indeed clearly implied; but at an earlier stage it cannot be presumed to exist. Roman guarantees of "freedom," "autonomy," and "exemption from tribute" (, and ) are known long before there was any question of Roman taxation in the East;[17] while, on the other hand, the Macedonians, subject to tribute from 167, notoriously enjoyed official libertas and .[18] Without any direct evidence of the payment of tribute we cannot conclude that anywhere in the second century B.C. "freedom" was by definition a release from an otherwise general obligation to pay tribute. Therefore, even if guarantees of libertas and immunitas could be traced to 146, this would no more prove the existence of a tributary status than the positively attested "freedom" of the Greeks demonstrates its contrary. Tribute cannot be conjured up in this way.
In sum, no evidence corroborates Pausanias's bland assertion of the levying of tribute upon Greece in 146. There are, on the contrary, good reasons to believe that Roman tribute was imposed as a punishment upon parts of Greece immediately following the Mithridatic War. The argument must necessarily be one ex silentio , for it is not in the nature of things for
a nonevent to be documented by positive evidence. And yet there are stronger and weaker arguments from silence, and the fundamental criterion for distinguishing between them is whether our evidence would look substantially different if the proposition in question were indeed true. That is precisely my contention with regard to Mummius's alleged imposition of tribute.
The first solid evidence for Greek tribute comes as soon after the Mithridatic War as 78 and 73 respectively, at Carystus on Euboea and the area of Oropus in Boeotia.[19] Can this chronological coincidence be mere accident? Euboea was the major Pontic base during the war in Greece, and we know of at least one other punitive measure associated with its behavior in the war: Sulla's gift to Archelaus of 10,000 plethra of Euboean land, evidently confiscated after the battle of Orchomenus (Plut. Sull . 23.2). Boeotia, on the other hand, served mainly as a battlefield but still was too ready to favor whichever side was stronger in the immediate neighborhood. For this Sulla plundered the land and punished Thebes by assigning half of its territory to the Panhellenic sanctuaries as recompense for his appropriation of their treasures.[20] Of particular interest for the case of the environs of Oropus, the Boeotian towns along the Euripus, under the eye of the Pontic commander at Chalcis, seem to have remained on the wrong side to the end: Sulla ruthlessly destroyed Anthedon, Larymna, and Halae (Plut. Sull . 26.4), and Oropus probably escaped the same fate only by its association with Amphiaraus.[21] Given what we know of the campaigns in Greece in 87-86 the sudden appearance of evidence for the collection of tribute from Euboea and Boeotia so soon after the Mithridatic War hardly looks like a coincidence.
On the other hand, Carystus especially, and perhaps northeast Boeotia too, are not likely candidates for subjection to tribute in 146-145. Our evidence shows that among Euboeans, only Chalcis can be shown to have taken the side of Achaea and Thebes, while, on the other hand, most of the rest of the island, which had been plundered by the Thebans just before
the war, took no part in the hostilities against Rome.[22] Thebes alone among Boeotian cities is conspicuous in our evidence on the Achaean side, and there is precious little evidence to support the view that the Boeotian towns along the Euripus rallied against Rome in 146.[23]
The payment of tribute by Euboeans outside of Chalcis and by northeast Boeotians makes best sense, then, as a result of the campaigns of the Mithridatic War. Now if any communities were assessed tribute for their behavior in the Achaean War, they should have been the member states of the Achaean League. Yet no literary or epigraphic evidence attests unambiguously to the payment of tribute by any community of the Peloponnese before the end of the Republic.[24] It is hard to believe that this too
is only coincidence, just as it strains credulity to assume it is only chance as well that almost immediately after the Mithridatic War significant evidence for the payment of tribute in Greece suddenly appears. The silence of our evidence is itself significant, for in no respect is our epigraphic and literary evidence for Roman provincial administration in general fuller than it is regarding the complaints and disputes to which tributary obligations gave rise: we need only compare Asia, where such complaints become quite prominent in our evidence within the first generation after the imposition of Roman tribute by M'. Aquillius.[25] And yet the dispute of 73 over whether Oropus was subject to Roman tribute or was exempt because its revenues belonged to a god (Amphiaraus) is the first such case known from Greece[26] —over seventy years after tribute was established in Greece on the usual hypothesis.
The exemption from tribute given Elatea in Phocis for its demonstration of loyalty in 86 against Taxilles's Pontic army is no hindrance to the view presented here that tribute was assessed upon Sulla's enemies in the Mithridatic War and not before.[27] It is indeed likely at this date that this right implies the levying of tribute elsewhere—but it does not tell us that Elatea had paid tribute previously. Equally plausibly, Elatea was rewarded for its recent loyalty by being explicitly exempted from the first assessment of tribute upon parts of Greece by Sulla after the defeat of the Mithridatic forces.[28] We might compare the exemptions given to communities in Illyricum at the same time as the imposition of Roman tribute there in 167 (Livy 45.26.13-14). Sulla's treatment of the cities of Asia certainly shows that he was in a rather vindictive—not to say avaricious—mood.[29]
Certainly, to judge from the perfectly regular pattern of the past, we should expect Rome to extract some sort of financial indemnity at the end of the Achaean War. (The "fines" levied by Mummius were paid not to
Rome but to Greek victims of the Achaeans and Thebans.)[30] This consideration raises the possibility that Pausanias's statement rests on a misinterpretation of his source. In Polybius,
regularly denotes a fixed, regular, but temporary payment (indemnity) as well as a permanent one (tribute).[31] Whether or not Polybius was Pausanias's source, immediately or at one or more removes, this ambiguity in second-century usage could well have caused someone in the chain of transmission, unfamiliar with past Roman practice of demanding fixed-term indemnities and perhaps misled, like Pausanias, by the assumption of the provincial status of Greece, to misunderstand a reference to a temporary series of payments as one to permanent tribute, so familiar later. This can of course only be speculation, but it shows how easily one could account for an error by Pausanias.
To sum up, the view that Greece was tributary from 146 hangs from one slender thread: Pausanias's assertion in a passage with one blatant error (the assignment of Achaia provincia to a commander from 146) that demonstrates a serious misapprehension of the status of Greece. Given this misunderstanding, and the ease with which a writer of the Principate might associate the presence of provincial governors and tributary obligations, Pausanias's statement about tribute is virtually devoid of authority. It is certainly not corroborated by documentary or other specific evidence. On the contrary, that evidence appears in places where the penalty of tribute would be no surprise as a result of the Mithridatic War but would be a rather awkward consequence of the Achaean; while the part of Greece most obviously culpable in Roman eyes after the Achaean War (the member states of the Achaean League itself) shows no sign of the payment of tribute until a century later. This argument from silence against the assessment of Roman tribute in 146-145 is, to my mind, stronger than Pausanias's bland statement.