Chronology
The unambiguously attested treaties of alliance with Rome of known date and within our period are those with newly independent Elaea (probably) not long after the conclusion of the war with Aristonicus,[10] with Epidaurus about 112/111,[11] with Astypalaea, an island city in the Dodecanese, in 105,[12] and with Thyrreum in Acarnania in 94.[13] These were all places of minor to minimal significance on the military and diplomatic map of the Hellenistic East.
A number of other treaties of alliance between Rome and Greek states whose precise date is uncertain may well belong to the period covered in this study. A treaty with Cibyra in Phrygia has been dated as early as the period between the Antiochene and Third Macedonian wars (188-167), but a fairly wide interval around the middle of the century now seems to be most favored in the absence of any sure chronological indicators.[14] A treaty (surely of alliance) with Heraclea in Pontus is mentioned by the local historian Memnon in a brief summary of early relations with Rome.[15] While Memnon's placement of the alliance at the conclusion of his narrative of early friendly contacts between Heraclea and Roman generals in
[10] Syll 694, lines 15-16. That the war "against Aristonicus" (line 15) must be specified may imply some passage of time, but lines 19-22 give the distinct impression that Rome's recognition of the city's help in the war and approval of the alliance were more or less immediately consequent upon the war. Robert, BCH 108 (1984) 489-96 now supports Fabricius's original attribution of the decree to Elaea, where it was found (see also Rigsby, TAPA 118 [1988] 127-30), rather than Pergamum, where Robert had previously been inclined to put it (Etudes , 49 n. 3; REG 81 [1968] 503-4, no. 441). In favor of Pergamum, see also Wilhelm, JÖAI 17 (1914) 18; Magie, RRAM , 1045 n. 34; Baronowski, "Treaties," 304-5.
[11] IG IV[2] 1.63, lines 3-9; line 14 for date. Sherwin-White, RFPE , 67, dates the inscription half a century too early. Note that the date given in IG is based, erroneously, on an Achaean era beginning in 148.
[12] Sherk 16, lines 15-16.
[13] Syll 732, lines 1-2.
[14] For the earlier date, see especially Niese, GGMS , 3:61; Dittenberger, ad OGIS 762, n. 1; Magie, RRAM , 1122-23 n. 30, accepted still by Hammond, History of Macedonia , 3:605-6. Badian (Foreign Clientelae , 295), Baronowski ("Treaties," 264-66), Gruen (HWCR , 731-33), Sherwin-White (RFPE , 51), and Errington (Chiron 17 [1987] 107-12) urge a later date.
[15] FGrH 434 F 18.10, quoted below, n. 45; see F 26.2. Despite the specificity of this local scholar's notice, many have doubted its veracity: see Kienast, ZSS 85 (1968) 345 n. 49; Bernhardt, PrH 68-69 n. 373; Mattingly, in Ancient Bulgaria , 1:243.
Asia Minor during the Antiochene War has seemed to suggest a date shortly after 189, it is not unlikely that Memnon anticipates a considerably later event, stretching beyond the temporal limit of that book, in order to provide the fitting conclusion for his account of the development of relations with Rome from "friendship" (
Let us now cross the Hellespont to Europe. It is possible that Rome's alliance with Byzantium belongs shortly after the war with Philip Andriscus, presumably in the 140s.[18] A recently published inscription gives the text of a treaty of alliance with Maronea on the Thracian coast, which a growing consensus places shortly after 167.[19] The year 167 is, however, only a terminus post quem, based on the conjectured identification of the "Lucius" of line 8 of the inscription with Aemilius Paulus, conqueror of Macedon in 168.[20] Unfortunately, the arguments for connecting the treaty closely with that date depend on the assumption that Rome used treaties
[18] Above, p. 15, n. 25.
with minor states in this period as diplomatic and strategic weapons, a view that at the very least must be considered much too doubtful to be made a chronological criterion.[21] The letter-forms of the Maronea treaty suit the later second century as well as its middle.[22] At some point under the Republic, Callatis on the west coast of the Black Sea also obtained a treaty of alliance with Rome, part of which survives. Again, the evidence for a date is scant and highly problematic.[23] The conclusion of such a treaty is difficult to credit during Mithridates' domination of the west shore of the Black Sea from around the turn of the second century until M. Varro Lucullus's campaign of 72,[24] nor does that general's conquest of Callatis (Eutr. 6.10) seem an appropriate context for Rome's granting formally equal terms of alliance.[25] G. de Sanctis acutely noted that the treaty with Callatis was to be published in Rome in the Temple of Concordia rather than, as in other known cases, in the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol; but these are insufficient grounds for the conjecture that the treaty must have been concluded between the burning of the Temple of Jupiter in 83 and its restoration in 69.[26] Orthography seems to point to the second century,
[21] So especially Triantaphyllos and Stem (see n. 19). That the motives for concluding such alliances lay largely on the Greek side is in my view established by Dahlheim and Gruen: above, nn. 2-3.
[23] ILLRP 516. Cf. Baronowski, "Treaties," 75-82; CIL I , add. p. 915. The restorations of Passerini, Athenaeum n.s. 13 (1935) 57-72 = AE , 1933, p. 30, whether or not they reproduce exactly what was on the stone, certainly reflect reasonably the original content; cp. also those of St. Marin, Epigraphica 10 (1948) 104-14 = AE , 1950, no. 92.
[24] Cf. Salomone Gaggero, Pulpudeva 2 (1978) 294-305; McGing, FPME , 57-58, on Mithridates' control of the west shore of the Black Sea. For coins of Callatis declaring its Mithridatic allegiance, see B. Pick, Die antike Münzen Nord-Griechenlands: Dacien und Moesien 1 (Berlin 1898) 92.
[25] De Sanctis, RivFil n.s. 13 (1935) 424; St. Marin, Epigraphica 10 (1948) 123; Gruen, HWCR , 740-41. Pippidi suggests (in Polis and Imperium , 191) that cepit refers to Callatis's peaceful capitulation to Lucullus Varro, but Eutropius regularly uses deditio to denote surrender: see, among others, 4.20 and especially 4.17: [Scipio Africanus ] tum multas Hispaniae civitates partim cepit, partim in deditionem accepit . Lambrino, CRAI , 1933, 286-87, proposed 71, subsequently supported by de Sanctis (below) in a remarkable reversal. Other adherents of Lambrino's date: Degrassi, ad ILLRP 516; Pippidi, in Polis and Imperium , 187-96; Baronowski, "Treaties," 278-80. Contra: Gruen, HWCR , 740-41. St. Marin, pp. 103-30, argues for the 140s.
though the first is not excluded.[27] Recent conjectures have focused on the earlier period of Thrace-ward expansion by Rome, between 114 and 107.[28]
Arguments about the dates of these treaties often employ the unstated assumption that they should be related to the broad outline of Roman expansion. It is sobering to review with this notion in mind the dates of those treaties that are well fixed chronologically. Without the explicit evidence of date in the texts themselves, no one would have divined that Epidaurus and Astypalaea received treaties as late as the last two decades of the second century, or Thyrreum even after the turn of the century. The attempt to connect the known treaties to landmark dates in Roman intervention in the East is clearly misguided in the case of such insignificant powers, whose diplomatic aspirations are normally beneath the purview of ancient authors. The case of Elaea (probably 120s), as well as the much earlier precedent of Rhodes (ca. 164) and, likely rather later, Byzantium (140s?), does show that a not uncommon impetus for seeking alliance with Rome was the need to confirm good relations after a Roman war in the region. But to judge from the date of the treaties with Epidaurus, Astypalaea, and Thyrreum, this was dearly not the only likely occasion for a Hellenistic city to seek a treaty with the imperial center.
The treaties we have surveyed are with minor Hellenistic states, and are, with the exception of the case of Byzantium, known to us largely by chance—through the fortuitious survival of epigraphic documents, or (for Heraclea) due to the patriotic interest of a local historian. There is no strong evidence that Rome bound itself by means of a foedus to any minor Greek state before 148: the Achaean League (whose treaty with Rome was concluded in the late 190s or early 180s), the Aetolian League (bound in alliance to Rome by the peace treaty of 189), and Rhodes (granted a treaty ca. 164) were all noteworthy Hellenistic powers.[29] Moreover, the earliest
[27] St. Marin, Epigraphica 10 (1948) 116-118, 127; cf. Lambrino, CRAI , 1933, 282-83; Cagnat-Merlin, AE , 1933, p. 30. Pippidi, in Polis and Imperium , 187-96, refutes St. Marin's weaker arguments.
[28] Mattingly, in Ancient Bulgaria , 1:243-46; Gruen, HWCR , 740-41.
[29] Achaea: Polyb. 18.42.6-7; 23.4.12; Livy 35.50.1-2; 39.37.10. Aetolia: Polyb. 21.32.2-4; Livy 38.11.2-3. Rhodes: Polyb. 30.5, 30.31; cf. Livy Per. 46; Zonar. 9.24.6. On these alliances, see esp. Gruen, HWCR , 25-42; Baronowski, "Treaties," 165-244. Earlier relationships with lesser dries on the east coast of the Ionian Sea and in the Peloponnese were almost certainly not based on foedera : see Gruen, HWCR , 17-25, pace Hammond, History of Macedonia , 3:602; and Derow, ZPE 88 (1991) 261-70. The treaty with the Jews ca. 161 (Gruen, HWCR , 42-46; contra Sherwin-White, RFPE , 70-79) is too singular to serve as a good parallel for the alliances with minor Greek states.
of the four foedera with minor Greek states whose dates are certain belongs no earlier than the 120s. It seems therefore most likely that most if not all of the alliances surveyed above belong after the middle of the second century. A pattern is then discernible: Rome's policy evolved from the formation of a minimum of formal alliances in the early second century, and those with major powers, to indiscriminate indulgence of the applications of the most insignificant states at century's end.[30]