What Were the Responses in the Greek East to Roman Domination?

Roman Empire in Greece & the East

The gradual "Romanization" of the Hellenistic world is attested to solidly by material culture: architectural, archeological and numismatic evidence abounds to show that the Romans would have a real and substantial presence in those eastern areas which had once been the dominions of Alexander the Great. But in order to assess the Hellenistic response to this Romanization, we need to look beyond the material artifacts to a certain degree. I am inclined to agree with Greg Woolf that to a certain extent this is a distraction from the real rhetorical and psychological process whereby Romanization was effected: as Woolf notes, "to explain why some Roman material culture was nevertheless adopted by some Greeks it is necessary to invoke a second factor, namely the very marginal role played by material culture in Greek self-definition" (Woolf 1994: 128). I would suggest that the historical facts necessitate an approach which is largely rhetorical in character. Certainly the Romans were fully aware of the symbolic nature of their acquisition of those areas which had once, briefly, been united under the Hellenic imperial rule of Alexander of Macedon -- several of the Julio-Claudian emperors would make highly public (and gestural) pilgrimages to the tomb of Alexander, and the story, presumably apocryphal, told by Strabo among others that the Roman emperor Augustus would accidentally break off the embalmed nose of Alexander the Great's corpse says much about the Roman consciousness of their illustrious precursor, and perhaps also about the eastern response to a new Roman reality within the recollected glory of the creation of Hellenistic culture in Alexander's wake. I will look at three rhetorical strategies for accommodating the Hellenistic world to Roman rule -- strategies which I would loosely term as historical, religious and ideological (while maintaining the awareness that, obviously, there is significant overlap between each of these three basic areas. I will look at the rhetorical strategy which seeks to historically contextualize Roman rule within legends and myths of origin; the way in which religions were used to "Romanize" the east, particularly the cults of worship surrounding the Roman emperor; and finally the way in which education and political life would serve as the means whereby the Romanization could occur. I hope to show that in each of these cases, the overall rhetorical maneuvering can be taken to represent the deep ambiguity of Hellenistic cultural response to the rise of Rome, showing that the overall Greek response was aware of a privileged but potentially vulnerable role within Rome's imperial system .

The facts of history would offer the Hellenistic world a number of intriguing examples which would inevitably be associated in the general consciousness with Rome's establishment, and later extension, of an empire. The first is perhaps the largest and most ironic -- namely the origin of many southern Italian cities as trading colonies by the Greeks long before Rome itself was a city of any real size or significance. The Greek outposts in Sicily and at Neapolis, or present day Naples, would have been a major fact of life for Rome at the earliest. For one example of a specific fact of the Greek mythic past intruding into the Roman reality lies in the legendary mystic philosopher Pythagoras. Pythagoras supposedly traveled from the Aegean (on the island of Samos) ultimately to settle in one of the Greek colonial outposts in Italy, Croton. Legend connected this Pythagorean settlement with the origins of the Roman state under the kingship of Numa. By the time of the Roman empire, this legend needed to be maintained in spite of the facts: Salmeri notes that Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Cicero would all reject as "anachronistic" this "tradition of Numa as a pupil of Pythagoras" (Salmeri 2000: 87). But there is a larger rhetorical purpose here, which begins by calling attention to the linkage between the cultural golden age of Athens in the 5th century B.C.E. And the origin of Rome: Pythagoras was a significant influence on Socrates and Plato alike, and the notion that he would establish some sort of religious phalanstery at Croton suggests that perhaps Rome's Republic would have its origin somehow in Plato's Republic. But these worries about history may indicate a larger ideological unease. Preston thinks that "the rejection of Numa's debt to Pythagoras is used as a symbol of a wider rejection of foreign influences on Roman culture," and notes that Ovid's Metamorphoses -- which will climax in a speech by Pythagoras before unveiling the newly-deified Julius Caesar -- also "explicitly" retains the link between Numa and Pythagoras to make a large spiritual claim for Roman authority if not autochthony, not necessarily intended to be "identified with Numa's political policies" (Preston 2001: 103). It would seem that the invocation of a classical Greek connection with Roman origins here is ambiguous in its result. Such ambiguities about other aspects of Rome's history would also play out uneasily in the Hellenistic imagination: in particular, the mythic origin of Rome as a people in the flight of Aeneas from Troy, most notably depicted in the explicitly imperial Aeneid of Vergil. Obviously the chief imperial meaning of invoking Troy as part of Rome's history lies in Troy's utter destruction, paralleled by Rome's treatment of Carthage. But to assert Trojan origins is to assert an identity contrary to the hard-won Hellenistic group identity in which the loose affiliation of Greek city-states who would legendarily join to besiege a city in Asia Minor becomes a sort of trope for the mutual alignment of the Greek-speaking areas of the eastern Mediterranean even as their political and imperial identities grew decadent. If Trojan might seem to us like another way of saying "non-Greek" (but also non-barbarian) then Preston notes that "the myth of the Trojan origin of Rome" would put but to open-ended ideological use "in Hellenistic Greece...both to justify enmity towards the Romans and to claim ancient ties of friendship." She adds "the assertion that the Romans were of Trojan origin did not dictate a single attitude towards them. Instead the myth could be reinterpreted in a number of ways to suit contemporary political demands" (Preston 2001: 99)

Of course the perennial popularity of legends and myths of origin in political discourse is easily explained by the way in which they can be readily adapted to serve any ideological purpose. It is a different rhetorical approach to assess them historically -- which requires a reduction to, rather than an embellishment of, the truth. The historical approach is exemplified by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who would address the question of Roman origins from a Hellenistic standpoint in the Roman Antiquities. After a cursory examination of the legend of Romulus -- who gave his name to the city -- Dionysius concludes (somewhat shockingly to our own ears):

. Hence, from now on let the reader forever renounce the views of those who make Rome a retreat of barbarians, fugitive and vagabonds, and let him confidently affirm it to be a Greek city, -- which will be easy when he shows that it is at once the most hospitable and friendly of all cities, and when he bears in mind that the Aborigines were Oenotrians, and these in turn Arcadians, and remembers those who joined with them in their settlement, the Pelasgians who were Argives by descent and came into Italy from Thessaly; and recalls, moreover, the arrival of Evander and the Arcadians, who settled round the Palatine hill, after the Aborigines had granted the place to them; and also the Peloponnesians, who, coming along with Hercules, settled upon the Saturnian hill; and, last of all, those who left the Troad and were intermixed with the earlier settlers. For one will find no nation that is more ancient or more Greek than these. (Rom. Ant. 89.1-2).

Dionysius' project here has "often been characterized as highly conciliatory, not to say flattering" towards the Romans, but Preston notes the way in which it also silently elides the issue of native Roman culture: by reducing Latin to "a dialect of Greek," for example, Preston thinks that "for Dionysius, there is no Roman culture" (Preston 2001: 100). Yet at the same time, Preston concedes that there may be an element of flattery and admiration in this rhetorical straegy as well: she notes that for Plutarch over a century later, it will still remain true that "the highest compliment a Roman may earn is to be called 'Greek,' which is assimilated to meaning 'civilized'." (Preston 2001: 101). This willingness to redefine Romans as Greeks might represent, to a certain degree, the way in which Rome's own cultural privileging of the Greek language and literature would permit Rome to view Greeks with a certain element of exceptionalism. Moreover, from the Greek standpoint, the entry into Roman imperial ambitions came late, and as somewhat of an afterthought: since Rome's initial territorial expansion was into areas that had been outside the boundaries of Alexander's Hellenistic world (the former Carthaginian territories of Spain, and the Gaul subdued by Julius Caesar) they allowed for the imposition of Roman rule without too much questioning over the legacy of prior imperial rule. The different approach Rome took in Asia Minor rather than Gaul is indicated, as Salmeri notes, by the fact that Gallia "Narbonenensis sent its men to the Senate well ahead of Asia, although the latter had been created a province some years before Narbonensis" (Salmeri 2000: 56). But it was also, in Salmeri's view, not a deliberate slight: instead, the different ruling strategies that were pursued in the Hellenistic east when Rome "realized that the system of government adopted in Spain and Gaul would not do for an area like Asia Minor which was marked by robust development and urbanization" (Salmeri 2000: 55). The context of Hellenistic interaction between city-states -- rather than large tribal areas like Gaul -- means that perhaps Dionysius is attempting to define Rome as just another Greek city-state in order to maintain the internal Hellenistic paradigm for government.

Interestingly we can read Plutarch's own rhetorical approach in the Precepts of Statecraft as to some extent mimicking Dionysius' earlier writing. Plutarch will rely on an example in which the linkage between the Caesars and Alexander himself is made explicit, and seems calculated to flatter:

And Caesar,81 when he took Alexandria, drove into the city holding Areius by the hand and conversing with him only of all his friends, then said to the Alexandrians, who were expecting the most extreme measures and were begging for mercy, that he pardoned them on account of the greatness of their city and for the sake of its founder Alexander, "and thirdly," said he, "as a favour to my friend here." Is there any comparison between such a favour and the procuratorships and governorships of provinces from which many talents may be gained and in pursuit of which most public men grow old haunting the doors of other men's houses82 and leaving their own affairs uncared for? (Praecepta 18)

Plutarch has recourse to Caesar's example in what is a discussion about imperial policies of preferment and advancement, which may hinge upon a despotism tempered only by philhellenic sentiments. Woolf notes the "notoriously philellenic" public stances taken by various Roman emperors, including (perhaps most notoriously) the vexed question of Nero's various Greek adventures, which have led to contradictory assertions of its significance either "as mania or as policy" (Woolf 1994: 133). Yet later emperors such as Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were more unambiguous in their strategies than Nero: "by intervening to preserve what was good about Greece, through beneficia and law," these emperors would paradoxically "show themselves as more Roman, not less" (Woolf 1994: 135). Dio Chrysostom exemplifies the twofold nature of the cultural encounter, when he addresses the subject of his own banishment by the Roman emperor upon the reversal of the decree of banishment by his successor. Dio takes for granted the notion that there are different rhetorical worlds which are also different levels of acculturation between Rome and the east:

Now to my hearers I used to say practically the same things as Socrates did, things old-fashioned and trite though they were, and when they refused to leave me in peace even on reaching Rome itself, I did not venture to speak any word of my own, fearing lest I be laughed at and regarded as a fool, since I was well aware how completely old-fashioned and ignorant I was; and I said to myself: "Come now, if I, copying the words of another, use such derogatory words about things which are highly regarded at Rome here, and tell them that not one of these things is a good, if I speak of luxury and intemperance, and tell them that what they need is a thorough and sound education, perhaps they will not laugh at me for uttering such sentiments nor declare that I am a fool. (Or. 13:29.)

Just as Dio invokes Socrates here, Plutarch overall is keen to place the Roman imperial rulers within the context of larger legendary figures, both Greek and Roman, in such a way that exempts them from criticism: the Precepts are filled with historical-cum-anecdotal maunderings such as "Why, the Athenians blamed Cimon for wine-drinking, and the Romans, having nothing else to say, blamed Scipio for sleeping; and the enemies of Pompey the Great, observing that he scratched his head with one finger, reviled him for it" (Praecepta 4). To some degree this allows Roman history a greater respectability by employing the same "parallel lives" method that Plutarch would use in his perennially-popular moralistic biographical sketches. But it does seem like Plutarch puts the Roman emperor in a place that lies beyond outright skepticism.

The role of the emperor was, of course, expanded into an ideologically religious one by making him the subject of a cult. To some extent the introduction of a Roman "imperial cult" dedicated to ritual worship of the Roman emperor or his family was another way in which Roman models would be assimilated to existing Hellenistic reality. Price notes that the imperial cult took the place of existinc "Hellenistic royal cults" although the actual element of deification was a Roman refinement: Hellenistic decrees will "describe the political benefactions of the king," but only the Roman "decrees make explicit and elaborate comparisons between actions fo the emperor and those of the gods" (Price 1984: 55). Price also notes that in the Hellenistic period "royal cults were city cults" but that the Roman imperial cult included this element but was extended to larger practice "organized by the provincial assemblies" (Price 1984: 56). Religion was simply a part of Roman imperial policy, and although Roman religion was overall extremely flexible and welcoming towards foreign importations, they expected the same out of territories added to the empire. In the Greek east, religious practice was likewise adjusted, and Woolf notes that "the cultic life of the city" was subject to imperial "corrections," or reforms to religious practice dictated as part of imperial policy "sponsored by Rome, and most on lines approved of by Romans" (Woolf 1994: 123). The priests of the imperial cult "came from the local elite and were generally among the most prominent figures in the city," Price notes, and their priesthood included privilege in the political assemblies as well (Price 1984: 62-3). (The political meaning, and uneasiness about it, may be the reason why -- in Preston's analysis -- Plutarch is nervous about discussing the imperial cult, and "seems almost deliberately to bypass" the topic [Preston 2001: 110].) As for how it operated as a religious institution, Woolf sees the process more as one of syncretism, and warns that it would be "a mistake to treat the imperial cult as a unitary phenomenon, rather than as the product of countless recognitions of the emperor and insertions of him into existing contexts" (Woolf 1994: 127). Price offers an example of such syncretism where "a foundation at Ephesus gives the idea of the way that the emperor was added to the traditional cult of Artemis" (Price 1984: 104).

But priesthood -- and the introduction to the Roman cursus honorum as a gateway to social and economic advancement -- were only a few of the social benefits that could be gained by a conciliatory relation on the part of the Greek east to their new Roman overlords. The benefits offered by Roman citizenship were to some degree ambiguous, and Salmeri notes that "the Lycian Opramoas, one of the wealthiest inhabitants of the Empire known to us, brought such benefits to his countrymen as only an emperor normally could, yet he does not seem to have acquired Roman citizenship" (Salmeri 2000: 59). But overall, citizenship was a positive goal held out as a reward to the Hellenic world, despite the persistence of negative stereotypes about the Greek east within Rome itself. Woolf notes that "Roman characterization of imperial Greeks was cast in typically moral terms," and Greeks were used to "exemplify volubilitas, ineptia, arrogantia, impudentia, and levitas" -- all vices which could be interpreted as explaining the fact that the Helllenistic world had failed in its maintenance of imperium. (Woolf 1994: 121). But overall we are addressing the issue of social control, and there is no reason why condescension and a desire to pacify cannot exist simultaneously in the treatment of a subaltern population. Salmeri does not give much weight to Woolf's analysis, which he thinks fails "to give much weight to the significant changes that centuries of Roman control, in areas such as Asia Minor, eventually brought about in the conduct of city politics and in the making and advancement of the ruling class" (Salmeri 2000: 53). But of course there could be no "making" of a ruling class without a system of education, and here the Greek model of paideia had been adopted and institutionalized by the Romans, and included therefore a sort of reverence for the Greek language, culture, and associated Greece with cultural improvement. (Plutarch as well as Suetonius record that Julius Caesar spoke his final words -- contrary to the popular myth promulgated by Shakespeare -- in Greek.) Preston, in an analysis of Plutarch, places heavy emphasis on the educational system: "wealth provided the means for the acquisition and display of paideia," she notes, and cites Maud Gleason with evident approval in the claim that Hellenistic education "could be said to have given the Greek elite cultural, and thence political, authority" (Preston 2001: 90). But it was Hellenistic culture that provided the Roman students with their textbooks, so to speak, and it was Hellenistic models that were required for Rome to begin producing a written culture of its own. (To some degree, every major Roman poet would begin by following classical or Alexandrian Greek models -- so that Vergil's debt to Theocritus is as palpable and indeed authorially-signposted as Catullus' debt to Callimachus -- and the reading of Greek poetry was a central practice in the educational and rhetorical system of the Second Sophistic period of Plutarch and Dio.) Preston puts the point nicely: