The Destruction of Corinth and Other Punitive Measures
Most of the Corinthians had already abandoned the dry when Mummius captured Corinth on the third day after the battle at the Isthmus.[111] After Mummius had performed the solemn ritual of devotio , designating the enemy dry and its population as a sacrifice to the gods of the underworld, Corinth was taken by storm and burned. Those who were unfortunate enough to have remained in the city were slaughtered or enslaved, and the dry was thoroughly plundered.[112] This treatment was fully in accordance with traditional Roman terroristic practice toward communities that refused surrender and thereby "forced" their capture by assault.[113] Such savage treatment of stiff-necked enemies encouraged surrender in the future and kept the troops happy, for in the middle of the second century, at a time when elsewhere, particularly in Spain, warfare was bitter and unprofitable, the need to satisfy the soldiers' hunger for booty was particularly strong.[114] When to these strong motives is added Mummius's own ambition (for the booty from Corinth was a splendid haul that contributed in no small degree to its conqueror's fame throughout the Roman
world),[115] Corinth's damning role in the events that led to the war (it was there that Roman envoys had been mobbed and insulted in 147),[116] and the accident that it was the first place in the Romans' path to offer real resistance, we have a more than complete explanation for its treatment at the hands of Mummius and his troops.[117]
After Corinth was thus burned and looted, and its population enslaved or in flight, it is difficult to imagine what more was needed to destroy it physically. The question that remained after the smoke had cleared was above all whether it would be formally extinguished as well, or whether it would be permitted to be reconstituted. Similarly, in the Third Macedonian War, Haliartus in Boeotia had been thoroughly destroyed upon its capture by the Roman troops in 171, after which the Senate refused to allow its restoration as a community and handed over its territory to Athens.[118] Most Corinthians had fled,[119] apparently to the other towns of the Peloponnese; this was the stock out of which Corinth might again have been resettled.
A distinction should therefore probably be drawn, and some lapse of time be assumed, between the assault on the city, with the attendant sack and fire that must have inflicted enormous damage, and its formal extinction by subsequent senatorial decree, almost certainly brought to Greece by the ten commissioners after news had come of the conclusion of the war.[120] Although the ancient sources are not usually careful to draw such a distinction, with an interval of time between the two events, there is some support for it in our texts. The sequence in Zonaras (9.31.6) places the destruction of buildings and walls after the arrival of the ten commis-
sioners, although they will presumably not have left Rome until news came that the war was over, hence not before the capture of Corinth; while Florus dearly distinguishes the sack of the city from its demolition (1.32.6). Roman precedent in the East was dearly to have decem legati bring with them senatorial regulations concerning the major issues of the settlement,[121] and we have already noted the parallel of Haliartus for a senatorial decision, subsequent to a city's capture and physical destruction at the hands of the troops, forbidding the reconstitution of a community.
But while the senatus consultum that decreed Corinth's fate is to be seen above all as a negative injunction forbidding the reconstitution of the city and thus extinguishing the state,[122] it is dear that it also put the final touches upon its physical destruction. Corinth's buildings—perhaps above all public buildings, an important expression of civic identity—and walls were to be demolished.'[123] Archaeological exploration does not appear to reveal methodical demolition so much as massive destruction, much of it perhaps the result of the capture of the city rather than of the subsequent decree; but the walls were certainly breached and thrown down in places.[124] In addition, the captive Corinthians (but not those of other states) were to be sold, and Corinth's territory confiscated as ager publicus (Zonar. 9.31). It was not an exaggeration to say that by this decision [Corinthum ] funditus sustulerunt .[125] Still, the land was not to go to waste. Confiscated by Rome, it was let out to possessores for a vectigal , and Sicyonians held the greater part of it.[126] The vectigal , though perhaps not a great source of revenue, will have been welcome. The idea that the land was cursed in
addition is a misunderstanding of the ceremony of devotio and has perhaps been influenced by the romantic embellishments that have corrupted the modem tradition on the fate of Carthage.[127]
Already in ancient times there was speculation about why Rome annihilated Corinth in 146. The official justification seems to have been founded on the treatment of the Roman envoys in 147,[128] but explanations given distill into two complementary traditions: to deprive Greeks of a useful stronghold in war for the future, and to act as a deterrent by striking terror into other cities and subsequent generations.[129] We should note that no ancient source gives substance to the notion favored by an earlier generation of scholars that Corinth's fate was due to the jealousy of Roman capitalists established at Delos.[130] That view presumes too much about the amount of leverage exerted by Roman traders on the Senate in foreign affairs;[131] furthermore it ignores the copious epigraphic testimony of Delos that Romans were established in force in Delos only after the destruction of Corinth.[132] Indeed, it seems that Roman traders were well established in Corinth itself at this time.[133] Moreover, if, as argued above, Corinth suffered extensive physical destruction already at the time of its capture and sack, and the subsequent senatorial decree only added the finishing touches, there was no need of its formal extermination as a community in
order to insure that the once-great emporium would be no threat to Delos for a very long time to come.
A number of parallels from past and contemporary practice give greatest credence to the "terroristic" or, if one prefers, the "deterrent" intention behind the destruction of Corinth. Polybius believed that the Romans used ruthlessness strategically. He notes, for example, that it was their habit, upon first capturing a city, to cut to pieces every living thing they met: "They do this, it seems to me, to inspire terror" (10.15.4-5). In Greece the Romans seem on the whole to have avoided such tactics until the war against Perseus, when they were rather liberally indulged. Haliartus was annihilated for its stubborn resistance, and Paulus brutally laid waste to Epirus, plundering some seventy towns and hauling away as slaves some quarter of a million Epirotes, to punish it for favoring the Macedonian king; both punishments were decreed by the Senate.[134]
On the other hand, the Senate renounced and did what it could to correct the savage treatment meted out by commanders in the field in the same war to Coronea and Abdera, ravaged despite (it seems) their surrender;[135] this reminds us that such actions were a matter of policy, not to be indulged in lightly or out of mere passion, and were regarded as harsh but just retribution for hostility to Rome. Outside of Greece, the Roman order in 149 to the Carthaginians to abandon their city, and its eradication when captured in the very year of the destruction of Corinth, 146, gave further examples. In the case of Carthage the punishment seemed so far out of proportion to the crime that some Greeks, Polybius indicates, resorted to the explanation that Rome was turning to a policy of destruction for its own sake (36.9.5-8); yet here too it seems a distinct lesson was being taught concerning the dire results of paying insufficient heed to Rome's demands. Corinth, too, surely was eliminated as a community above all for symbolic effect. The ruins of the ancient, prestigious, and hitherto rich city will have served as a lasting memento, standing beside the most-traveled routes in Greece, of what wrath disobedience to Roman commands could provoke. That the ruins of Corinth did attract considerable attention over the following century, before its Augustan refoundation, is dear from a host of references, including epigrams from the Palatine Anthology.[136]
The ravages inflicted by Mummius and the Roman army were not entirely limited to Corinth. A considerable amount of booty certainly came from other towns in Achaea and Boeotia.[137] Some was given to Attalus's general Philopoemen.[138] The lion's share was doubtless sent back to Rome, thence to many towns of Italy and even the provinces.[139] Mummius's triumph was renowned for its bronzes and paintings—and actors.[140] But some of the booty at least stayed in Greece as dedications at the great Hellenic sanctuaries, especially Olympia, but also Delphi, Epidaurus, Isthmia, and even the smaller sanctuaries at Oropus, Thebes, Thespiae, Aulis, and Tegea.[141] The number of noteworthy locations where Mummius's dedications are found probably testifies to a grand tour not unlike Aemilius Paulus's triumphant procession through the major sites of Greece in 168/167, which had a dear propagandistic function.[142] But the integration of Rome into the Hellenistic community was not the only message being sent.[143] At the most public places in Greece, and at many of the minor centers as
well, could be seen spoils from the cities that had opposed Rome in the Achaean War. The ruins of Corinth were not the only extant symbol of the defeat of 146.
In addition to the haul of booty some alleged ringleaders of the war were executed.[144] If Metellus had not already done so, Mummius now punished the Theban boiotarch Pytheas.[145] Otherwise we hear only of the execution of certain
(knights) of Chalcis (Polyb. 39.6.4-5), in Polybius's view Mummius's most notorious excess, which he was inclined to blame on his advisers ("friends"). According to Livy's epitomator alone both Thebes and Chalcis were destroyed (Per . 52), but this is improbable: Metellus, to whom the Thebans had surrendered, had thought them worthy of mild treatment, and Thebes continued to be a major Boeotian city in the subsequent years.[146] If the worst excess of Mummius was the execution of some Chalcidian , he could hardly have annihilated their city. Perhaps the walls of Thebes and Chalcis were broken up.[147] Chalcis was, after all, another of the old "fetters of Greece."
For all that, it is a significant point that devastating reprisals were reserved by Mummius and the commission of ten for Corinth alone. Greeks had closely watched the development of the recent crisis with Carthage in 149, and Rome's harsh demand for the elimination of the city had been much discussed, with some passion.[148] Polybius movingly describes how after the initial Achaean defeat at Scarphea, people were nearly driven mad with terror; some fled aimlessly through the countryside; others even threw themselves off cliffs and down wells in utter desperation.[149] As their dash with Rome developed, the Achaean leadership had held back from
negotiations with Metellus because of their expectation that they would receive no pity from the Romans (Polyb. 38.17.7). But, luckily, in Polybius's retrospection, Greek resistance had collapsed so quickly that Rome's wrath was not allowed to peak: the phrase "had we not been destroyed quickly, we should never have been saved" was on everyone's lips.[150] Our survey of Mummius's punitive measures gives point to that assessment and shows it to be no mere apologia. Mummius had imposed indemnities on the defeated, helped himself to much booty, and punished some individuals for their alleged part in inciting the war; but Corinth had borne the brunt of Rome's rage, and the rest of Greece was spared the dire fate that it had feared. Most of those defeated in 146, not to speak of those Greeks uninvolved in the struggle, will have been much relieved by the moderation of their treatment at Mummius's hands.
Therefore when Polybius tells us that Mummius "was honored in every city and received appropriate thanks,"[151] he is not speaking as a Roman quisling.[152] We have epigraphic evidence of some of these honors, and it seems that something more than cringing flattery lies behind them. The city of Elis, which may have seceded from the Achaean League in the course of the war, honored Mummius in the most conspicuous way possible by setting up an inscribed statue group at Olympia.[153] The Argives raised an equestrian statue in Mummius's honor in their agora (SEG XXX. 365). We should recall that the Eleans and Argives were among the prizes won by the Achaean League in the wars of the first part of the century that it had fought as an ally of Rome, and had never played a distinguished role within the confederation since their more or less forced incorporation. The Romans had, indeed, demanded their separation from Achaea in 147, and those who wished to put the best construction on events may have regarded the collapse of the League as the recovery of Elean or Argive independence from Achaean domination. Unfortunately, we do not know the dedicator of the great statue group at Olympia of Mummius and the
decem legati .[154] Sparta or Heraclea may be good candidates, for Rome had won them their independence from the Achaean League, and they were now being paid fines by the Achaeans and Boeotians respectively.[155] Eretria on Euboea, which instituted a footrace in honor of Mummius, apparently also had good reason to be pleased with him.[156] Euboeans had been freed of Theban (and Chalcidian?) harassment and were to be paid a fine by their former tormentors (Paus. 7.16.10). Not a few Greeks, then, positively benefited from Rome's defeat of the Achaeans and their allies, and some of them, as we have just seen, made highly conspicuous public statements of their loyalty to Rome—if not in the war itself, at least in its aftermath. The visitor to the greatest Panhellenic gathering place, Olympia, will have observed in this one sanctuary at least two impressive monuments in honor of Mummius and the senatorial commission erected by Greeks and a number of smaller dedications by Mummius himself of the booty from Rome's enemies in 146. The juxtaposition of extravagant thanks from Rome's friends and the spoils of Rome's enemies virtually cried out Vergil's expression of the moral principle underlying Roman power: parcere subiectis et debellare superbos .
The distribution by Mummius of punishments—especially the exemplary punishment meted out to Corinth—and rewards needs to be set into a broader context for its full significance to be understood. I have argued above that what was essential in the Roman concept of the imperium was the power of the Roman people to command obedience. Our survey of the results of the Fourth Macedonian and Achaean wars has largely substantiated Gruen's thesis of Roman hesitancy (not from altruism, indeed) to take on abiding administrative and governmental commitments in the East, or to exploit the economic consequences of its power to fullest effect. That a small army remained behind in Macedonia after 148 was a military decision to shore up a now obvious weakness in Paulus's settlement, but not a radical about-face in Roman policy toward direct rule. In Greece, the
settlement of 146-145 closely resembled its precedents; particularly worth stressing are the Roman military withdrawal and refusal to extract tribute. Yet we ought not to draw the conclusion from this behavior, which followed a now-traditional pattern, that Rome was indifferent toward the East. Rather, Rome's interest was to restore and maintain its hegemonial position—its imperium —in the East.
As we have seen, Polybius repeatedly stresses that the essence of this power was recognition of the necessity to obey Rome's orders: in his view, from 168 it was "agreed" (
) that this necessity obtained for all 0.4.3). As Gruen has shown, examples are not lacking of occasions after 168 (there are, indeed, occasions after 146) when Roman requests or orders were flouted with impunity.[157] Greeks hardly had to reckon with the threat of military force to back up most such demands, often of marginal interest to Rome, and could often weigh the chances of a reaction and go about their business. But since the imperium populi Romani was itself defined by obedience to Roman commands, rejection of an order of some importance might be interpreted as a direct challenge to the Roman imperium that had apparently safely been established since the war with Perseus. The violent response to the senatorial demand in 147 to allow Lacedaemon, Corinth, Argos, Heraclea, and Orchomenus to be detached was one such challenge to the imperium populi Romani ,[158] and the vote for war against Sparta in the spring of 146, despite repeated Roman warnings, was a second; both took place at Corinth. The full significance of the destruction of Corinth now becomes clearer: it asserted, with dreadful finality, the imperium of the Roman people in the very heart of Greece, and the fearful consequences of defiance. But Rome was ill prepared, especially under current manpower constraints, to maintain a direct presence in Greece—hence the resort to exemplary punishment at Corinth in 146.
The point, of course, about Rome's imperium had been made before: in Polybius's view the subordination of Greece to Roman power had already been accomplished in 168. His contemporary assessment of the significance of the Achaean War, insofar as it can be reconstructed from the patchy fragments that survive from this portion of the History , bears little resemblance to modern judgments that give it such prominence as a terminus in the story of Roman expansion in the Balkan peninsula.[159] In Polybius's
view the Achaean and Andriscan wars together comprised a "common misfortune for all Greece,"[160] but it was temporally bounded on both sides: that is, the "misfortune" (
) began and ended with the wars themselves.[161] The settlement of the Achaean war, on the other hand, was a relative blessing, if any weight is to be given to the idea that the Greeks were saved by the very speed of their defeat.[162] As we have seen, Mummius's settlement, with the dramatic exception of Corinth, was marked by lenience; Greece might have had a proconsul and a legion as permanent residents and have paid tribute as well. From the broader perspective of the history of the expansion of Roman power, it is clear enough that Polybius saw the Achaean and Andriscan wars as red-letter dates: they represent for him the final stage of the period of "disturbance and disruption,"[163] and they therefore served (along with the Third Punic War) as a suitable conclusion for his work. But there was no guarantee, despite Corinth, that there would not again be "disturbance and disruption." It is not obvious that for Polybius, our only contemporary source, the Achaean and Andriscan wars mark a genuine turning point in the development of Rome's imperium in the East. We have seen that the so-called Achaean Era is of dubious significance and may, indeed, be associated with the "freeing" of the Greeks in 146.[164] It is doubtful therefore whether we should impute to contemporaries the view of later sources, distorted by long hindsight, that Mummius's victory represents the final subjugation of Greece to Rome.[165]
The threads of the argument of these first three chapters may now be drawn together. The settlement of the wars in Macedonia and Greece marks no sharp break in Roman "policy" or practice in its Eastern imperium . The assignment of Macedonia provincia after Metellus's departure in 146 is not to be taken as a change of "status"; it was an ad hoc solution to the emasculation of Macedonia's defenses against the Balkan tribes in 168-167. On the other hand, no part of Greece was made formally subject to Rome and its commander in 146-145, and the presence henceforth of a Roman commander in Macedonia did not in itself affect Greece's legal status. The continuities with past Roman behavior are striking. In Macedonia, tribute had already been imposed in 168-167. In Greece, it appears in the current state of the evidence that tribute was not levied on the defeated states in 146-145; Hellas was once again "freed" and—so it appears—Roman troops withdrawn. While details of Mummius's constitutional arrangements remain obscure, it is improbable that they were particularly invasive and they surely did not extend outside the part of Greece defeated in 146; they do not deserve unique emphasis in the story of the evolution of Greek democracy, whose floruit had long passed anyway. Even the Achaean, Boeotian, and Phocian leagues, which had been crushed by the war, reconstituted themselves not very much later. Contemporaries are unlikely to have thought, as have modern scholars, that in 148—145 Rome had acquired territory for its "empire." Macedonia and Greece had for more than a generation been subject to the imperium of the Roman people in the only sense for which we have contemporary evidence: that they were obliged by the realities of power to obey Roman commands. And yet, in yielding the principle of obedience to Rome the Greeks only acknowledged its hegemonial position; they did not concede formal sovereignty, or effective sovereignty except in special cases. For the mere fact that Rome's orders had to be obeyed did not imply that such orders would be frequent or necessarily onerous. In the absence of major diplomatic or military crises, Roman commands might be as few and sporadic after 146 as they had been previously.
This is not to say that the presence of a Roman commander in Macedonia was not of great historical importance in the long run. Although he appears to have been an extremely rare sight in Greece itself, preoccupied as he was with the ancient problem of the defense of Macedonia's northern
frontier, Greeks would, by a sort of natural magnetism, find him a convenient recourse for the settlement of their various internal disputes—if they were prepared to make the trek to Macedonia, for he could not be expected to come south. Local legal and administrative structures must have been gradually but noticeably eroded over the generations by the tendency to resort to this useful source of power.[166] It is, furthermore, possible that the presence of a Roman legion in Macedonia, however burdened by frontier defense, had some deterrent effect on any stirrings of independence south of the Peneus. But it is noteworthy that it seems to have done little to prevent Achaea's break with Rome in 146, and there is no sign that it had much effect on the Athenians in 88-87. The greatest deterrents in Greece must have been a consciousness of Roman invincibility and memory of the exemplary punishment meted out to Corinth. But circumstances could change and memories could fade—and evidently did within sixty years.