1
Macedonia Provincia
On the traditional view, a few years after the middle of the second century B.C. came two events that together constitute a turning point in the story of Rome's expansion in the East: in 148 or thereabouts Macedonia was converted into a Roman province, and in 146-145, after the Achaean War, much of Greece was appended to, or integrated with, the province of Macedonia.[1] What precisely this meant in practice is rarely spelled out for us.[2] But the consensus of scholars, with one notable exception to be discussed presently, is that some kind of formal state of subjection was now imposed, and Roman "direct rule" and administration of the now legally subject territories was installed.[3] Thus the years 148-146 emerge as the watershed in Rome's eastern expansion; and, indeed, it is customary to conclude discussions of Roman intervention in Greece and Macedonia at this date—not surprisingly, given the assumption that the "creation" of the province of Macedonia brought a fundamental change to Rome's involvement in the East, after which there remained only the necessary adjustments to
the new dispensation. As signaled earlier, the premises on which this view rests, however, seem to me partly wrong, partly misguided. Renewed investigation of the controversy of the "status" of Macedonia and Greece after 146 is therefore necessary in order to dear the foundations for a new view. I hope to show that the intractability of this old controversy derives not from the facts themselves but from our own preconceptions, in particular an excessively rigid and legalistic understanding of the Roman concept of provincia .
Q. Metellus and the "Provincialization" of Macedonia
In 148 Q. Caecilius Metellus crushed the pretender to the Macedonian throne, Philip "Andriscus," who had managed in the previous year or two not only to establish his authority in Macedonia itself (where in 167 the Roman-imposed republican system had replaced the ancient monarchy) but even to make incursions into Thessaly. Metellus proceeded to pacify the area, removing another pretender in the process, and in 146 (probably) returned to Rome to a well-deserved triumph and the triumphal cognomen Macedonicus.[4] Was Macedonia now "converted" into a province? It had long been assumed that the presence of Roman commanders and troops in Macedonia after 148 made that conclusion inevitable, but Gruen has recently issued a strong challenge to the traditional view—without full argument for an alternative.[5]
Certainly we hear nothing of a lex provinciae or of the establishment of boundaries, or even of a senatorial commission to assist Metellus—a man of only praetorian rank—in organizing a province.[6] The idea of a
formal reorganization of Macedonia as a province at this time would have to rely on a few scraps of late and rather poor evidence. First, Florus, the epitomator of the second century A.D. , tells us that Metello ordinanti cum maxime †Macedoniae was ordered to punish Critolaus's abuse of the Roman ambassadors at Corinth (1.32.3). Whatever the correct reading of the corrupt passage, it does not imply the creation of a province, only the "settlement" or "pacification" of the area.[7] Florus also tells us that [sc. Metellus ] Macedoniam servitute multavit (1.30.5); similarly, Porphyry of Tyre, the polymath of the turn of the third century of our era, is paraphrased by Eusebius as saying that in 148 "the Macedonians were enslaved."[8] "Slavery" in such usage is hardly a precise legal term;[9] Florus indeed implies that the Macedonians' "enslavement" was merely the restoration of a prior condition thrown off by revolt.[10] It is not surprising if, from the distance of more than two centuries, the end of the last Macedonian war with Rome looked this way, but such facile statements will tell us nothing about Macedonia's legal status from 148.[11]
Indirect evidence for "provincialization" is no stronger. The significance of Porphyry's (or Eusebius's) statement that the Romans now made the Macedonians
(normally "tributary") is obscure, since it is reasonably certain that the Macedonians had paid tribute to Rome since Paulus's settlement of 167.[12] Although it is true that no source explicitly affirms that a permanent levy had been imposed in 167,[13] on other occasions when a term is set to a payment Livy is explicit,[14] and in a detailed survey of Paulus's terms such as he gives us (45.18, 45.29.4-14) we should likely
have been told if a fixed term had been set to the payment. Moreover, Livy's word for the payment (tributum ) he never appears to use elsewhere for an indemnity, while, on the other hand, we are told that the Macedonians would pay half of what they had paid their kings (to the amount of about 100 talents annually);[15] since that was apparently a permanent obligation, so should this have been, unless the contrary had been explicitly stated. Probably Porphyry is simply confused by the anomalous situation and assumes the usual association of tribute with the beginning of a permanent Roman presence.[16] Not even the levying of tribute, then, was a novelty of 148, and its continuation implies "provincial status" no more than it had when first levied in 167. Furthermore, as has long been recognized, there is no reason to assume that the "Macedonian era" refers to the date of "provincialization"; rather, it surely celebrated Metellus's victory over Andriscus.[17] Finally, the possibility that some cities in Macedonia received or lost guarantees of "freedom" has no dear relevance for the matter of creating a province.[18]
On the other hand, we have some evidence, to be set beside the absence of signs of major reorganization by Metellus, that at the least major parts of L. Aemilius Paulus's settlement of Macedonia in 167 remained in force.[19] The Macedonian Merides, the four republics established in 167, certainly continued to exist in one form or another: it is likely that the first Meris continued its coinage at least into the later second century B.C. ; the first Meris probably appears as a territorial entity in Acts' chronicle of St. Paul's first mission to Macedonia ca. A.D. 49; and the first Meris (perhaps the fourth as well) is mentioned in an inscription from Beroea of Flavian date that testifies at least to the continuing significance of the Merides as political divisions of Macedonia.[20] It is likely also that the standing frontier
guard that Paulus had allowed the Macedonian republics to maintain in 167 was still being deployed after 148.[21]
It appears, therefore, that if we simply accept our evidence at face value, without importing preconceptions, based on hypothetical reconstructions of Roman practice, about what must or should have been, we should con-dude that in all probability no major reorganization of Macedonia followed the war with Andriscus. After all, it was unnecessary for Metellus to reorganize Macedonia: that had already been done quite effectively by Paulus in 167.[22] Metellus, of course, pacified the region and presumably imposed terms on the defeated according to their deserts in the usual manner. It is possible that some communities, distinguished by opportune assistance in the war, were exempted from the tribute levied since 167; conversely, others who had actively supported Andriscus may have been made tributary if they had not already been so, and the imposition of an indemnity would be fully in keeping with established Roman practice.[23] The details, however, are beyond recovery.[24] We have specific information only concerning the treatment of Byzantium—and, alas, it is contradictory. The usual view is that the Byzantines were punished in some way, and that an old alliance with Rome formed against Philip V was now abrogated, but the matter is hardly settled.[25]
Such ad hoc arrangements may very well have been all the organization that was necessary; they hardly required the attention of a senatorial commission. It has been supposed by one scholar that a major reorganization must have followed the war because of the massive support he supposes Andriscus had won.[26] Leaving aside for the present the question of how extensive Andriscus's Macedonian support was, it was surely not some "reorganization" that would have improved matters in that case but the decision—which was the Senate's, not Metellus's—to maintain an army in Macedonia. This brings us to the next step of the argument.
Was Macedonia assigned regularly as a provincia by the Roman Senate to a commander from the time of Metellus's return to Rome in 146?[27] To think otherwise one would have to suppose that Roman troops and a commander were sent out only on occasion to Macedonia, perhaps in response to sporadic threats from the Thraco-Illyrian tribes. But if our extremely lacunose praetorian fasti for this period show enough Macedonian commanders to fill approximately three-quarters of the century from 148 to 49 B.C. ,[28] that is a "survival rate" no worse than (to take an instructive example) the Sicilian governors enjoyed. For Sicily in the period 148-49 inclusive, I count thirty Roman governors, three of whom are incerti to various degrees. Only thirty-seven years are thereby explicitly accounted for; a proportion of only about half that of the Macedonian imperatores . Even if we are to assume an average term of two years for Sicilian governors over the whole period (in fact, the terms increase from a norm of a single year in the second century to as much as three and four years in
the first),[29] the names known to us cannot account for more than three-quarters of the relevant years. The argumentum ex silentio is here disqualified by the extremely lacunose state of our evidence after the loss of the text of Livy, for we are dependent on the random survival of epigraphic documents (never a strong tradition in Macedonia) and the selectivity of Livy's excerptor, who of course mentions only major victories and defeats. Unless one can explain convincingly why new armies might be sent out individually only when we happen to hear of them it is surely better to conclude that magistrates were indeed sent out regularly to Macedonia in succession and that we simply do not know the names of a few (perhaps not many more than about eight) of them.
Other arguments lead in the same direction. The only substantial gap in the Macedonian fasti is between ca. 141 and ca. 119, where only two proconsuls can be placed with certainty. But at some time during that gap the via Egnatia was built,[30] surely a sign of a continuing military commitment. If "the Republic accepted responsibility for the defense of Macedonia and of Illyria," as Gruen concedes,[31] that task will have been impossible to discharge without a permanent military presence, in view of the ancient problem of the pressure exerted by the Thraco-Illyrian tribes on the Macedonian frontier and the proven instability of the Macedonian republics.[32] It is, I think, therefore beyond reasonable doubt that from 148 Roman commanders and their contingents of troops succeeded each other in Macedonia without interruption. These commanders must have been assigned Macedonia provincia , as was the normal practice both earlier and later, even if we have no dear testimony for official titulature at this time.[33]
Thus, while there is no evidence of a change in Macedonia's legal status in 148, no sign of major reorganization for Roman administration or "direct rule," or of basic structural changes, it seems beyond reasonable doubt that Roman commanders were assigned Macedonia provincia and sent out regularly to Macedonia after Metellus departed in 146. The apparent antinomy between the absence of formal structures for rule and the fact of a Roman presence raises an important question concerning not merely Macedonia but the very nature of the Roman imperium . How far is it justifiable to regard Macedonia from 148 as an annexed territory?
Provincia and Imperium
The study of Republican imperial structures is currently in a state of flux, as much recent research has cast doubt on or even overthrown central points of the received wisdom. As yet no synthesis of the progress made in the last two decades has appeared, and therefore a lengthy digression on the nature of mid-Republican provinciae and imperium is unavoidable here. The reader should not, however, mistake the discussion that follows for an attempt at the sort of comprehensive synthesis that is needed; I have tried to restrict myself to what is needed to set the context in which the changes of the 140s in Macedonia should be placed.
In discussions of Republican imperialism, we hear much of "annexation," "creating" or "organizing" provinces, indeed even of "converting" places into provinces. These phrases imply that areas were reduced to units of a recognized Roman empire by a specific act of organization. This is of course precisely what was envisioned by juristically minded scholars of the last century, who satisfied the overwhelming urge to reduce the chaos of historical reality to order by finding a neat, legal definition of provinciae: a legal enactment of the conquering Roman commander was postulated that served as the charter of the newly founded province; the pseudotechnical term lex provinciae was invented (there is no ancient authority, it seems) to denote it; and the concept passed into the standard handbooks, where it remains to this day, serving as the theoretical underpinning of the phrases mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.[34] But the lex
provinciae is a seriously misleading construct. The absence of ancient authority for the term itself is gravely troubling: at the very least, the ancients' lack of interest in such hypothetical provincial "charters" is likely to be significant. Of the only two ordinances claimed as leges provinciae about which we have substantial information—the lex Pompeia for Bithynia-Pontus to which Pliny refers in his letters to Trajan and the lex Rupilia for Sicily of 132 B.C. —neither can be shown to provide the legal foundation of the province as a whole. To judge from the evidence available to us, the first was concerned with the local constitutions of the cities that Pompey had established in the former kingdoms of Bithynia and Pontus, the latter with judicial arrangements for suits between citizens of different communities.[35] There is, then, not one "lex provinciae " that can be proved to perform the wide range of functions attributed to the institution. Rather, important recent work has shown that the construct of a lex provinciae conflates into one measure what was in reality the cumulative result over generations of enactments by a long series of magistrates and decrees of the Senate.[36] Moreover, not all provinces should be assumed to have had, at any point in this incremental process, a "comprehensive group of ordinances arranging [their] administration."[37] Further, the old notion that a lex provinciae imposed a distinct "subject status" upon those communities that were not "free" was exploded even earlier.[38] Nor is Roman
administration something that was simply put in place: recent studies of the early history of the Roman occupation of Sicily and Spain have demonstrated convincingly how gradually the administrative and judicial functions of Roman commanders in these provinciae developed from their originally essentially military duties.[39]
It seems dear, then, that provincial structures eventually emerged out of a long process of adaptation and experience and were not imposed at one blow by victorious Roman commanders. A conquering Roman general might indeed fix tributary obligations and make certain structural alterations in the pacified territory, but these acts in themselves did not amount to creating a province, as is clearly shown by the example of Paulus's settlement of Macedonia in 168/167, when the former kingdom underwent a drastic constitutional change and half of the traditional royal tribute was diverted to Rome. On the other hand, "for several provinces all that seems to have happened is that at some point the Senate recognized that the territory must henceforth be decreed as the province of a magistrate ... every year."[40] Talk of "annexation," "creating," and "organizing" provinces on any single occasion corresponds to nothing in our evidence of the second century B.C. ,[41] which helps to explain why we have no reliable explicit testimony to the "creation" of the provinces of Sicily, Sardinia, the Spains, Transalpine Gaul Cilicia, or Cyrene (to take a few prominent examples), and why the attempts to discern precisely when these provinces were "created" seem so many unconvincing exercises of scholarly ingenuity.[42] The basic working assumption was ill founded. It may be noted as
well that the Romans themselves stubbornly refused to make the distinction that we find so crucial between provincia as "permanent/formal/territorial province" and as "sphere of command."[43] Nor need the use of provincia even in a clearly geographical sense imply official demarcation or a more formal structure.[44]
The lack of evidence for a comprehensive structural reorganization in Macedonia in the 140s no longer looks therefore like a mere accident of our evidence. But more: we have seen that there was no specific act that answers to the idea of "annexation"; no benchmark that would allow one to say, "Now, and not before, this place belongs to the Roman Empire." The mere assignment of Macedonia to Roman commanders as a provincia ,
even if in regular succession, was of course only a matter of Roman constitutional practice and did not affect the legal status of the area, any more than had previous assignments of Macedonia or even Graecia provincia during Rome's earlier wars in the East. The dear distinctions of the past between territory subject to Rome and the rest blur considerably. These preliminary conclusions raise a larger question of great importance for our understanding of the origins of Macedonia provincia . How did the Romans themselves define their empire in the second century?
Polybius is the sole contemporary source on second-century Rome that is available to us in any significant quantity; Livy cannot be considered a trustworthy guide to a conceptual world a century and a half before his time. Two central Polybian ideas about the nature of Rome's domination of the Mediterranean world stand out in sharp relief. The Romans had in 167 (with the defeat of Macedon and the abolition of the Macedonian kingship) completed the establishment of an arche over virtually the entire
.[45] This arche from 168/167 consists in one thing above all: the Romans' capacity to command obedience.[46] Polybius repeats the theme of obedience to Roman commands so often and gives it so much significance that it is dear that he sees it as the central, defining criterion of Rome's hegemony. It is significant for us that his criterion is not a matter of territorial occupation, legal structures, or fiscal exploitation, but of plain power, specifically the capacity to command obedience.
Polybius is not, of course, Roman. Does it follow, as some have suggested, that he cannot be regarded as a useful guide to contemporary Roman perceptions of their supremacy?[47] A priori reflections are ultimately indecisive. It is not difficult to impugn some aspects of Polybius's view. It
was perhaps all too easy for a young Achaean of the political class who came of age between the wars with Antiochus and with Perseus to attach inordinate significance to the matter of Roman orders, and in particular to what extent, and with what alacrity, they had to be obeyed. This was indeed the burning question of Greek leaders of the 180s and 170s[48] —and nothing may have seemed a more dramatic answer than the Roman deportation to Italy in 167 of all those who had seemed to be waiting on events rather than actively serving the interests of Rome.[49] Little wonder that from Polybius's perspective the matter was now dosed. But once the settlement and Rome's reprisals had passed, it was once again debatable whether its orders could be disobeyed or circumvented, and a study of Roman actions and Hellenic responses to them after 167 shows that at the least Polybius's view of the necessity to obey Rome is too starkly drawn.[50] But although this was an individual's fallible judgment of the factual situation, that does not diminish the significance of obedience to Roman commands as a basic and broadly understood criterion of empire. As for possible distorting effects of Polybius's Hellenic perspective, we must note that he was after all no ordinary Greek, unaware of Roman ways. During his detention in Rome, Polybius associated closely with prominent Romans for nearly two decades before returning to Greece, especially with P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the son of the conqueror of Macedon; and one of his main objectives, often explicit, is to explain the Romans to his Greek readership.[51] We should therefore need good reason to assume that Polybius so fundamentally misrepresents or misunderstands the Romans' own views about the nature of their arche , the very object of his lengthy and painstaking investigation. It is not enough simply to note that Polybius was capable of misunderstanding. We must be shown that such misunderstanding occurred.
One attempt to do so stresses the absence of Roman legal concepts such as imperium and provincia from Polybius's conception of the arche .[52] This line of argument would be valid only if we knew in advance that these concepts played a central role in Roman views of their empire in the middle of the second century, but that is precisely what is under investigation. Appeal to the ideas of Cicero, Strabo, Augustus, and others a century or more later will avail us not at all. Even Livy, who indeed gives much attention to the assignment of provinciae and grants of imperium , nowhere defines the imperium populi Romani as the sum of the provinciae . On the contrary, he can have a speaker say of L. Scipio, without a hint of paradox, that by his campaigns in Asia of 190/189 he had "extended the imperium populi Romani to the limits of the world" (38.60.5), although Livy knew well that not an inch of territory was "converted" into a province. Nor does he balk at having Cn. Manlius Vulso say in 187 that Greece and Asia were then under Rome's ius and dicio , and that the Taurus Mountains had become the finis imperii Romani (38.48.3-4). It will not do to assume that these statements (as well as similar ones that appear in Cicero) are mere oratorical fancies: if by the late Republic the imperium were sharply and strictly defined by reference to the provinces, such statements would simply be odd paradoxes rather than rhetorical extravagances.
Indeed, on the contrary, these statements illustrate well that even at the end of the Republic the imperium populi Romani was not inevitably linked with the provinciae .[53] After all, in the Augustan period allied kingdoms, whose legal status as socii et amici was no different from much of the Hellenistic world in the later second century, were regarded as part of the imperium .[54] In the Res gestae itself (26.1), Augustus unmistakably implies that there were peoples outside the provinciae who p [arerent imperio nos ]tro (cp. 30.2). If as late as the Augustan principate, when the military frontiers had roughly stabilized, the imperium was not strictly coextensive with the provinces, we should expect Roman conceptions of the imperium to be even more flexible nearly two centuries before, at a
time when the permanent occupation of foreign territory overseas was far less extensive and the limits of Roman power still very much in flux.
An understanding of the imperium populi Romani begins with the phrase itself. It means fundamentally the "sway" or "supremacy" exercised by Rome over others; it does not mean "the Roman empire" in the way we use the term.[55] A Roman did not speak of a political community as "in the Roman empire" but as "under Roman sway" (sub imp trio populi Romani ) as a result of a Roman commander's action in "putting it under Roman sway" (subicere/subiungere imperio p. R .). What you do when you are "under Roman sway" (sub imperio p. R .) is "obey" it,[56] just as the citizen obeys the imperium of the consul, the son that of his father, the slave that of his master.[57] Imperium as "sway" is precisely the power to impose individual imperia or imperata , commands or orders.[58] Power and command are thus fundamentally linked in the Roman conception of imperium , a word that expressed above all the concrete relationship of power itself rather than an abstract concept of "empire" as formally and geographically defined. This brings us back to Polybius's stress on the significance of Roman commands and indifference toward concrete exploitation or possession of territory. His idea that the necessity to obey Romans defines and characterizes their arche fits too closely with the root meaning of imperium to be mere coincidence.[59] So natural was the link between obedience to any command and submission to the imperium that Livy can easily render Polybius's phrase
as subiectos imperio .[60] Polybius's view of the centrality of the pattern of obedience and command in the concept of empire is entirely consistent with Roman terminology. Indeed, there seems to be nothing peculiarly Roman about this conception of empire, which Polybius is just as ready to apply to the Macedonian arche in Greece. It was recognized in
Hellenistic Greece as well as in Rome that the necessity to obey the victor's every command is the natural lot of those defeated in war.[61]
Although no conclusion can be absolutely decisive in view of the paucity of contemporary documentary evidence, those texts of Roman origin we do possess tend to confirm the essential identity of the Polybian and contemporary Roman conceptions of empire. In the Aetolian peace treaty with Rome, ratified in 189, the Aetolians committed themselves to preserve (?)
, in Polybius's translation; Livy's retranslation into Latin, imperium maiestatemque populi Romani ... conservato , is probably on the mark.[62] The meaning of imperium here is obviously "sway" or "supremacy," the power to command that Polybius so emphasized. At the other end of the century, a fragment of the funeral eulogy for Scipio Aemilianus delivered in 129 shows the currency of the same conception.[63] But far the most revealing passage is a fragment of Cato's speech in behalf of the Rhodians in 167.[64] Cato's view that the Rhodians and many others favored Perseus libertatis causa , in the hope that the only check to Roman domination not be overthrown, corresponds closely with Polybius's comment that one class of statesmen on whom Rome's suspicion fell in the Third Macedonian War was composed of "those who did not look with pleasure upon the struggle for universal power being brought to a final decision and the arbitrament over the entire civilized world falling to one power."[65] This should reassure us that Polybius has not misled us about the recognized significance of the struggle with Perseus; Cato and Polybius speak with one voice here. But more important is the identity of the conception of arche/imperium in the two passages. For Cato, merely the removal of the only counterbalance to
Roman power in the region would leave the Rhodians sub solo imperio nostro , "under the sway of us alone,"[66] although there is clearly no suggestion that Rhodes might be made into a province. For him, as for Polybius, the imperium has no essential connection with provinces but consists in a practical relationship of power and domination that might extend well beyond the confines of Italy and even those areas in which commanders and Roman troops were present.[67] In light of these passages there is little temptation and less reason to suppose that Polybius has arbitrarily imposed an alien, Hellenic perspective when he reports Scipio Africanus's declaration in the 180s that the Romans enjoyed "control" (
) over Asia Minor, North Africa (Carthage), and Spain without differentiation, although only Spain was a provincial assignment.[68] Again, this statement presumes a notion of empire extending well beyond the provinciae .[69] The few relevant texts we have of Roman origin (in varying degrees) from the second century are perfectly in harmony with Polybius's central ideas that the Roman arche was rooted in an actual relationship of power rather than in formal notions, and that it extended well beyond provincial boundaries.[70]
Nor, I would add, was this exclusively an early phenomenon. A recent study of usage of the phrase has shown that before the first century B.C. an unambiguously "territorial" connotation of imperium populi Romani cannot be traced.[71] Notably, only in the late Republic do fines or termini of the imperium receive particular emphasis. Sulla was the first since the
regal period to extend the boundaries of the pomerium , but the claim seems to have rested on territorial expansion in Italy rather than abroad.[72] Pompey made the proud claim, echoed by Cicero, that he had made the boundaries of the empire coextensive with those of the earth.[73] While it is true that in the prayer for the Secular Games of 17 B.C. the gods were called upon augere imperium , we do not know whether this phrase appeared in earlier versions, and in any case it is misleading to interpret this to mean "extend" rather than simply "increase": Cicero was quite happy in the Fifth Philippic (48) to include Flamininus among those who "increased the imperium of the Roman people" (populi Romani imperium auxerint ), although it was fifty years after Flamininus that Macedonia came to be assigned regularly as a provincia .[74] Even in the first century, then, the imperium was not regarded so much as a geographical expanse in which the Roman people exerted a dominant power but as that power itself; all the more so did this apply, we should suppose, in the second century.
These arguments do not commit one to the notion that all Romans had in mind a dear formulation of the nature of the imperium populi Romani , much less that they would all have agreed with Polybius's ideas of precisely when and how far Rome's supremacy was established. On the contrary, perhaps the most important result of the arguments above is precisely that
there was no neat, formal definition of empire for the Romans any more than there is for us.[75] The author of the Acilian extortion law of 123 or 122 has no pat phrase at hand to denote Roman-controlled territory and is forced to resort to a long circumlocution, in which provinciae and imperium nowhere appear, perhaps because these were insufficiently specific terms for inclusion in the law.[76]Imperium populi Romani was, of course, a phrase both concrete and not easily definable. The view of empire that I have argued was common to Polybius and to Romans in the second century focused on the actual capacity of the "metropole" to enforce its will upon the "periphery,"[77] rather than on legal structures (e.g., "provinces"). It was thus by its very nature nuanced and open to interpretation, unlike one that was formally or legally defined. It referred to norms of behavior and concrete means of control—the facts of power and the psychology of dependence—and thus was closely bound up with the real situation at any one time; but the "real" situation could change at any time, depending on precise circumstances. A Roman military presence could, of course, help to secure the imperium in any particular area; but as we have seen from Polybius and other texts, especially Cato, the imperium populi Romani prevailed no less where there were no Roman troops, as long as the dialogue of Roman command and indigenous obedience persisted. Senators in the middle of the second century B.C. will not have thought in terms of "annexations" or "organizing provinces."[78] The notion of the imperium as a spatial extent, geographically bounded, was little developed at this time. What counted was rather the maintenance and augmentation of Rome's power and supremacy—the imperium populi Romani in its original sense.
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.