Mummius and Greek Democracy
After the assessment of tribute, here rejected, the most weighty of the measures Pausanias attributes to Mummius is that of "putting down" (
) democracies and the selection of magistrates according to a
standard of wealth.[32] Pausanias's statement is both sweeping and vague—what precise actions comprise "putting down" democracies?—and there is no consensus among modern scholars on the extent to which the constitutions of Greece were rearranged by Mummius and the commission of ten.[33] Again, in view of the diminished authority of this passage of Pausanias, this stark claim cannot be privileged in any way and must be corroborated, if we are to accept it, by other evidence.
It is clear enough that Mummius did make certain constitutional arrangements, although their scope and character is unclear from the scattered references we have that are of any specificity. Mummius gave the Achaeans laws, indeed a politeia , in 146-145.[34] Before the commission of ten departed, Polybius was instructed to take a judicial tour of the cities, settling disputes and helping people to gain familiarity with the new politeia and laws (39.5.2-3); we may conclude that these new regulations had a noticeable impact on citizens. "Laws" (
) apparently laid down by Mummius and the commission are mentioned in an inscription from Nemea; they seem to have regulated interstate justice.[35] Pausanias himself mentions two Mummian regulations of the internal affairs of the Greek cities: according to him, the right of landownership outside one's home city was also abolished, though only temporarily,[36] also—at least on the usual interpretation of 7.16.9—a property qualification was imposed for the holding of magistracies.
It is this last measure that Pausanias dearly associates most closely, by means of a
parataxis, with the alleged "abolition" of democracy. It
therefore demands our special attention. Certainly, in classical Greek political thought, the selection of magistrates in accordance with a property qualification was something associated with "oligarchy" or "timocracy" and was not consistent with "democracy",[37] Pausanias (or his source) was simply following an old tenet of classical political philosophy in interpreting this as an oligarchic change. But we are entitled to question whether in the actual circumstances of the middle of the second century B.C. a standard of wealth for the holding of political office amounted in fact to the suppression of democracy as it was then understood.
First, we should note that we have no second-century comment on the motivation behind such a measure, for which Flamininus's arrangements in Thessaly in 194 provided an important precedent. Livy, to be sure, has an explanation for Flamininus's selection of wealthy councillors and judges on that occasion: "He made stronger that portion of the population of the cities that benefited more from security and stability."[38] However, we cannot assume that this comment appeared in Polybius,[39] and it cannot safely be treated as anything other than Livy's own interpretation, nearly two centuries after the event. For all that, it is not in my view entirely wrong; I hope to show that it has been misinterpreted precisely because it has fit so well with the preconceptions of many modern scholars.
What practical effect would a census requirement for office have had in Greece in the middle of the second century? It must be emphasized that Pausanias speaks of a criterion of wealth only for selection of magistrates (
), not for the possession of the basic rights of citizenship, nor is anything said of participation in the council.[40] But political office had in Hellenistic Greece long been the preserve of a class that no qualification of wealth is likely to have excluded.[41] The officials of the Achaean League, to take one example for which we have relatively good information, had
belonged to a relatively narrow, wealthy elite.[42] Even in Boeotia, in Polybius's view a land characterized by gross demagogy in his day (20.6.1-3), we do not hear of "the masses" holding public office but of the political leaders' pandering to their wishes.
On the other hand, any specific innovation ought to have had some real objective. It is possible that our preoccupation with class as a tool of analysis has obscured for us something that was quite clear to the contemporary observer. Polybius suggests that an endemic ailment of contemporary politics was the prevalence of bribery. When Flamininus chose to treat Philip V better than the Aetolians in particular had anticipated, Polybius comments: "Since by this time bribery and the notion that no one should do anything gratis were so prevalent in Greece—and quite current coin among the Aetolians—they could not believe that Flamininus's complete change of attitude toward Philip could have been brought about without a bribe."[43] Polybius was quite interested in the attitude of other societies toward graft and peculation and sees it as a revealing sign of a society's state of health;[44] it seems likely that it was precisely its flourishing state in Greece that made him particularly sensitive to this matter. It is of particular interest in this light to note that bribery, or at least allegations of it, played a prominent role on the Achaean side in the diplomatic prelude to the war with Rome. Menalcidas, the Achaean strategos , was said to have been offered a bribe of ten talents to assist the Oropians against the Athenians ca. 151/150;[45] Menalcidas supposedly promised to split the bribe with Callicrates in order to win his influential support, but then, after winning in this way the adherence of Callicrates, "a man who could never resist a bribe," he refused to pay him off. Menalcidas, now brought to trial by Callicrates for his conduct in office, gave Diaeus, the new strategos , three of the ten talents to save him. Diaeus (later to lead the Achaeans against Mummius, after Critolaus's death) was rivaled in greed only by Menalcidas, it was said.[46] Whether or not the scandalous stories told about the Achaean leadership were true, it seems clear that some thought it had been compromised by a weakness for "gifts." Diodorus, for what it is worth, adds that the Achaean strategoi during the crisis with Rome were themselves indebted (32.26.3). The selection of magistrates (and it is mag-
istrates alone who are mentioned by Pausanias) according to their wealth may well have been intended to exclude men who, though not precisely "poor" and surely not of the lower social class, were under some pressure of personal circumstances, not least because of debt, and might otherwise be thought to be ready to take advantage of their official position to compensate for the expenses of public life.[47] Polybius, at least, thought that political leaders' financial embarrassment could induce them to make damaging revisions to the laws (13.1.3). The possible danger from this source was especially great immediately after the recent war, which must have ruined not a few fortunes: aside from the devastations of defeat itself, the war effort in Achaea had included a moratorium on actions against debtors for the duration of the war and enforced contributions from the wealthy, and the ban on landholding abroad already noted will have been a further blow for some members of the social and political elite.[48] The inscription from Dyme discussed below gives a good indication of the volatility of the Achaean cities at this time. Men otherwise entitled by their former social and economic standing, but ruined in the recent war, might have caused considerable trouble if they had been permitted to hold public office before conditions had settled.[49]
A closer analysis of the circumstances of 146-145, therefore, strongly suggests that the selection of magistrates on the basis of wealth was intended above all to assure a smooth transition to the postwar order. Is there any reason to suppose that, as universally supposed, Mummius imposed a permanent property qualification for Greek (or Achaean) magistracies? Not if we take Pausanias precisely at his word. His Greek, strictly read, means not "he established property qualifications for magistracies" but "he appointed magistrates [
] in accordance with property qualifications";[50] that is, there is no dear implication that a permanent
property qualification was laid down rather than that such qualifications were used by Mummius in appointing new magistrates. The well-known parallel to Mummius's action, Flamininus's enrollment of councillors and judges "for the most part according to their wealth" in Thessaly in 194,[51] tends toward the contrary conclusion. Here unambiguously we hear only of a single instance of the appointment of officials according to a standard of wealth, not the imposition of a lasting property qualification.[52] Certainly, property valuations (
) fail to make an appearance in our sources for the political makeup of the states of Greece after 146;[53] this could be due to the nature of our evidence, but equally they may simply not have been employed after reconstruction. The point of Mummius's appointment of magistrates according to a criterion of wealth was therefore, as it must have been for Flamininus, most likely to ensure that the new dispensation got off to a smooth start, under the leadership of those whose personal circumstances were not such as to induce them to radical measures to recoup losses in the recent war, rather than to effect a lasting political change.[54]
We have no direct evidence of any further constitutional tinkering by Mummius.[55] Some scholars have supposed that a tilt in the constitutional balance toward the power of the councils can be discerned from 146, and that this can be attributed to Mummius. The change in nomenclature of the councils of many central Greek cities from
to , largely in the course of the second century B.C. , cannot be attributed to
Mummius, since it demonstrably predates 146 in certain instances and seems to have spread over the whole of the second century in various parts of Greece; and the common assumption that the Romans had something to do with it is based on nothing more than a rough chronological coincidence.[56] In any case such a change in nomenclature has no clear relevance for the relative power of the institutions of government.[57] Study of the constitutional bodies mentioned in the epigraphic prescripts of local decrees is another indirect approach. J. Touloumakos noted the declining frequency with which after 146 the people (
) is mentioned, while the magistrates () and councillors () continue to appear. From this material one might conclude that the council became more powerful relative to the assembly in many Greek cities after about the middle of the second century, but it would rash to assume that Mummius's arrangements of 246 had any direct connection with this trend, which is part of a larger development spreading over the whole Hellenistic period, receiving at most indirect encouragement from the Romans.[58] Indeed, when we examine the epigraphic evidence in more detail, taking care to distinguish between kinds of decrees, and considering the sometimes tendentious dates of certain documents with appropriate caution, the picture becomes less simple. The demos as a rule continued to decree major honors,[59] and those
decrees in which the people are not mentioned tend to be rather mundane and administrative in nature, therefore perhaps not requiring approval by the assembly. The early first-century publication of an oracle at Argos or the arrangements for a trip to Patrae by the Thurian
and for the settlement of a land dispute, both without mention of the demos as a sanctioning body, are hardly clear symptoms of the decline of democracy, much less Roman influence; nor is the second- or first-century inscription from Thuria that reveals the supervision by of the activities of a grain commission.[60] The evidence of epigraphic prescripts is a very blunt instrument with which to isolate a development that would presumably have taken place above all in the spirit of the thing rather than its outward form, but it nevertheless deserves some notice that no clear changes in constitutional form are discernible in the evidence.
In Dyme in northwest Achaea a disturbance broke out ca. 144 which went as far as the destruction of the town's archives; in my view, the local authorities quickly brought the situation under control but appealed to the proconsul Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus, then in Patrae, to judge and punish those they presented to him as the culprits.[61] This affair has often been held to illustrate Pausanias's comment on the suppression of democracies, but in fact this incident is too obscure for us to tell even whether "democracy" was at issue here. We must beware of arguing in a circle here, for the fragmentary and tendentious evidence—Fabius's own letter describing his decision and punishment of the alleged conspirators—is short on specifics, and there is great danger of imposing prior assumptions to make the evidence say what we want it to. Whatever the true nature of the trouble, it does seem clear that Fabius accepted the appeal to his judicial authority with alacrity and decisively favored those he regarded as Rome's friends, just as had L. Aemilius Paulus after the war with Perseus in 167.[62] Further it must be stressed that this was an extraordinary situation, fully explained by the internal instability in Achaea and political demoralization
in the immediate aftermath of the war while the Mummian settlement was still at a critical stage. As we have seen, after Fabius's appearance ca. 144 in the Peloponnese Roman commanders will have been a very rare sight indeed; it would be a mistake to conclude from this apparently exceptional event that the proconsul of Macedonia after 146 kept a sharp eye on internal affairs in the cities of Greece and was prepared to intervene decisively to eliminate any democratic stirrings.[63] Similarly the harsh actions taken by Paulus and the Roman commission in 167 did not set the conditions for continual meddling; indeed, the contrary seems most likely: these measures were intended to make such dose attention unnecessary.
A summary is in order. Mummius and the commission of ten gave the Achaeans certain laws and a politeia . Pausanias interprets the political effect of these arrangements as the suppression of democracy, citing specifically a qualification of wealth. It remains unclear whether a lasting property requirement was imposed for magistrates or whether this was the criterion Mummius used in 146 to appoint new magistrates; nor can we be sure what the intention behind it was, although I have suggested that, contrary to the usual view, the measure most probably is to be seen as one with no more than a temporary effect, and its purpose was to reinforce the settlement at its most critical time. No other evidence corroborates Pausanias's view of a decisive shift in the Greek states (or at least those defeated in 146) away from democracy as the concept had come to be known by the middle of the second century.
Indeed, much is to be said for the view recently presented that Pausanias's statement about democracy is in fact a contentious rejoinder from an anti-Roman source to the contemporary presentation of the war and its settlement in Roman official policy and by Polybius himself. Polybius's portrayal of Critolaus and his fellows as tyrants, and the references in the inscription from Dyme to the politeia and "freedom" "restored" by the Romans all suggest that, in the official interpretation, the Mummian settlement was a restoration of the traditional democracy after a highly disruptive wave of tyranny.[64] It is noteworthy in Polybius's account of the war that he is eager to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of a few irresponsible leaders; the reason is dear: the mass of people can thus be exculpated before the Romans.[65] There can be little doubt that this is pre-
cisely the view that Polybius presented to Mummius and the commission of ten, who otherwise showed that they were willing to accept Polybius's interpretations of Achaean history.[66] If so, they ought not to have seen the demos as a threat to stability, but its irresponsible leaders. And it is certainly hard to accept the idea that Polybius, who was personally closely associated with the Roman settlement of 146-145, and whose thought even after 146 is dearly committed to the traditional Hellenic ideology of autonomy and independence,[67] had a hand in the suppression of his beloved native democracies. It seems likely that Pausanias's source seized upon Mummius's appointment of magistrates on the basis of wealth in 146-145 as a means to refute current official claims that the traditional democratic system was being restored.
The widespread notion that Rome actively sponsored timocracy and was hostile toward Greek democracy in the second century dies hard and will no doubt encourage resistance to the line of argument presented here. This is not the place for a full rebuttal and we must restrict ourselves to what may cast light on the situation in 146. First we must note that while there are dear precedents in 194 and 167 for the establishment by Roman conquerors of political structures where the defeat of an enemy had left a vacuum of public authority, there is no parallel whatever for Roman intervention against democracy as such; nor can any clear instance be cited of Roman activism in establishing the wealthy in power on a permanent basis as opposed to a onetime measure intended to provide a quiet transition to a new political order.[68] One does not find in Polybius or indeed in Livy (the author's editorial comments excluded) any evidence of Roman contempt or hostility toward the moderate form of democracy that was virtually universal in Greece at this time. It would be quite unjustifiable to retroject to 146, when Greek cultural superiority was still daunting, the anti-Greek and antidemocratic sentiments voiced in the middle of the next
century, when Hellenic political weakness, after over a century of Roman domination, might indeed be an object of contempt to the rulers of the world.
Nor, on the other hand, does the old notion of Rome's "natural preference" for rule by the wealthy offer the key to understanding.[69] This is not the place to respond in detail to this hypothesis, which depends more on a priori assumptions about class solidarity than upon evidence of Roman actions and behavior. We might note at the outset that Mummius's ban on property holding abroad will have harmed only wealthy Greeks, as Pausanias himself explicitly notes;[70] so whatever preferences may have existed were readily subordinated in 146-145 to other concerns. In any case we have no evidence from the whole of the preceding period of Roman intervention in the East of any direct action taken in favor of wealthy Greeks against their poorer compatriots. The unsubtle but nevertheless in broad terms surely valid distinction that appears in our sources between the attitude of the general Greek populace toward Rome (unenthusiastic to hostile) and that of political leaders (often sharply divided between those who put a premium on cultivating Rome's friendship and those who resisted all infringement of local independence)[71] is based on differences not of class interest or ideology but of assessments of what was to be gained, publicly and privately, by a stand for or against Rome. The fundamental contrast is between a few leaders whose policy of appeasement of Rome was given credibility by the reality of Roman power, and everyone else—leaders such as Philopoemen, Archon, and Lycortas in Achaea as well as in most cases the majority of the populace—united in their devotion to independence and full national sovereignty. The question is not therefore why the poor did not love Rome but why a few political leaders did;[72] and the simple answer is that alliance with Rome's interests could translate into power for certain individuals among the political elite—provided only that the Romans made very dear that they were making a point of de-
manding adherence.[73] The Romans, for their part, tended to favor those Greeks who supported them, and showed no ideological consistency in doing so.[74] In the absence of any indication that Romans of the middle of the second century saw Greek democracy as a threat, or of any precedent for Roman intervention with the object of establishing the wealthy in a permanent position of power, skepticism about Pausanias's claim of the suppression of democracy tout court is warranted.