The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
Читать онлайн книгу.
by oracular Delphi, is displayed not only in their literature, but in their government. Athens preserved a part of her dominion as well as her independence; she could still regard herself as a sovereign city.
Thus Greece fell politically into two parts: federate Greece and subject Greece. (1) First of the free federate states comes Athens, with the whole of Attica, and various other dependencies. On the mainland, she possessed Haliartos in Boeotia and the surrounding district; but, as in old days, most of her dominion was insular. Among the Cyclades, she had Ceos and Delos; in the northern Aegean, Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros. The island of Salamis was also recovered for her in the reign of Augustus, by the private liberality of a rich man, Julius Nicanor, whom the grateful Athenians named “the new Themistocles”. In spite of her privileged position, perhaps in consequence of it, Athens often gave the Roman government trouble; a revolt in the reign of Augustus is recorded. Next to Athens, in northern Greece, come three famous Boeotian towns, Thespiae, Tanagra, and Plataea; in Phocis likewise three, Delphi, Elatea, and Abae; in Locris, Amphissa. In the Peloponnesus, Sparta was permitted to retain her dominion over northern Laconia, while the inhabitants of the southern half of that country were formed into eighteen communities of “free Laconians”,Eleuthero-lacones. Dyme in Achaea was also a free city, and it is highly probable, though not certain, that Elis and Olympia belonged to the free communities. The Roman government interfered as little as possible with the affairs of these free states. Athens coined her own drachma; and obols, and the head of Caesar never appeared on her coins. But she and her fellows knew that their privileges might at any moment be withdrawn, as the example of the Thessalians taught them,
Patrae and Corinth, as Roman colonies, held a somewhat different position. Corinth, like Carthage, rose again under the auspices of Julius Caesar, as Colonia Julia (or Laus Julia), and rapidly recovered her prosperity, thanks to her geographical position. Patras, in Achaea, was founded by Augustus, who settled there a large number of Italian veterans and granted to the now town dominion over the Locrian haven Naupactus, which lay over against it on the opposite coast.
The rest of Greece (with the exception of the less developed districts in the west, Aetolia, Acarnania, Epirus) constituted the province of Achaia. The residence of the proconsul was at Corinth. The sense of national unity in these subject states was encouraged by Augustus. He revived the Achaean league, in an extended form, as the league of “Boeotians, Euboeans, Locrians, Phocians, and Dorians”, or briefly the league of the “Achaeans”. In later times it assumed the more pretentious name of the league of the Panhellenes. The assemblies of this association used to meet in Argos, which was thus in some measure recompensed for her exclusion from the list of free communities.
One important and singular state has still to be mentioned. On the northern lip of the mouth of the Ambracian gulf, near the scene of the great battle in which he won the lordship of the Roman world, Augustus founded a new city. Nicopolis, “the city of victory”, rose on the very spot where the main body of his army had been encamped. This foundation was not to be a Roman colony; it was to be a Greek city like Thessalonica, and it was founded, in the same way, bysynoecizing the small communities of the neighborhood. Nicopolis, like Athens and Sparta, was a free and sovereign state. Acarnania, the island of Leucas, the neighboring districts of Epirus, a part of Aetolia, were placed under her control. On the opposite promontory, a new temple of Apollo was built at Actium, and quinquennial games were instituted in honor of that god, on the model of the Olympian, and actually called “Olympian” as well as “Actian”. The cycle of four years was an “Actiad”.
Nicopolis and its dependencies belonged politically neither to Macedonia nor to Achaia; but they were more in touch with the southern than with the northern province. The great bond of union among the European Greeks, under Roman rule, was the Delphic Amphictyony, and in this assembly, as reorganized by Augustus, Nicopolis had a prominent place. The chief reform introduced by that Emperor was the extension of the institution to Macedonia and Nicopolis; but as many votes were assigned to the new city as to the whole of the Macedonian province. The functions of the Amphictyony were purely religious. It ordered the sacred festivals and administered the large income of the temple of Delphi. From a political point of view, it served the same purpose as the assembly of the three Gallic provinces which met at Lyons round the altar of Augustus; it helped to maintain a feeling of unity and a sense of common nationality.
SECT. II. — ASIA MINOR, KINGDOMS ON THE EUXINE, ISLANDS
ASIA AND BITHYNIA.—From the Greeks of the motherland we pass to the Greeks of Lesser Asia. Here Rome had never to struggle for dominion as in the other parts of the empire of Alexander the Great and his successors. The provinces of “Asia” and Bithynia dropped, as it were, into her arms. Asia was the kingdom of the Attalids of Pergamum, and was bequeathed to the Roman people by Attalus III; Bithynia became Roman in the same way by the testament of King Nicomedes. Both these provinces were assigned to the senate and governed by proconsuls. Asia extended from the shores of the Propontis to the borders of Lycia; eastward it included Phrygia, and on the west took in the islands along the coast. Bithynia was no longer confined to the original kingdom of Nicomedes. It had been increased on the east side by Pontus, after the overthrow of the empire of Mithradates by Pompey; and it stretched across the Bosphorus into Europe, so as to take in Byzantium.
In the kingdom of the Attalids little was left for the Romans to do in the way of Hellenisation. In the interior of the country there were many Hellenistic cities, and the growth of city-life required no fostering from the new mistress. The colonies of Parium, and Alexandria in the Troas, founded by Augustus, were for the purpose of settling veteran soldiers. It was otherwise in the kingdom of Nicomedes. Here Greek culture had not taken root so deeply or so widely; Bithynia was far less developed than Asia. Here accordingly there was room for Rome to step in and carry on the work of Hellenisation; and she gladly undertook the task. Pontus, which was under the governor of Bithynia, was more backward still. There were no Greek centres there, like Prusa and Nicaea in Bithynia; so that, the Hellenisation of that country practically began under the Empire. The two most important towns on the coast of Pontus, were Sinope, where a Roman colony had been planted, and Trapezus, which was the station of the Pontic fleet.
In Asia Minor, as in other parts of the Empire, Augustus promoted the institution of provincial councils. The deputies of the various cities met yearly in a centre, and the assembly could make known to the Roman governor the wishes of the province. But this institution took a special shape and color by its association with the worship of the Emperor. In 29 B.C. Caesar (not yet Augustus) authorized the diets of Asia and Bithynia to build temples to himself in Pergamum and Nicomedia. Hence the custom of paying divine honors to the Emperor during his lifetime spread throughout the provinces; in Italy and Rome such worship was not yielded to him till he was deified after death. This worship involved the existence of high priests, who in the Asiatic provinces became very important persons, and gave their name to the year. Whereas in European Greece the ancient public festivals—Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean,—still lived, and the new Actian feast was celebrated in honor of Apollo, in Asia the public feasts were connected with the cult of the Emperor. The president of the provincial diet, the Asiarch in Asia, the Bithyniarch in Bithynia, conducted the celebration of these festivals and defrayed the costs; so that those offices could only be held by rich men. There was no lack of wealthy folk in Asia, the province “of five hundred cities”. It had suffered a good deal from piracy and from the Mithradatic war; and Augustus, in order to restore prosperity, resorted to the measure of cancelling old debts. Rhodes was the only state that did not take advantage of this permission. But Asia soon recovered, and her bright cities enjoyed under the Empire tranquility and prosperity.
GALATIA AND PAMPHYLIA.—When the provinces were divided in 27 B.C.between the senate and the Emperor, Asia Minor was only in small part provincial. Besides Asia and Bithynia, only eastern Cilicia was subject to a Roman governor. The rest of the country consisted of dependent states, holding the same relation to Rome as Mauretania in the west. Chief among these “vassal” states was the kingdom of Galatia, then ruled by Amyntas. Celtic civilization held its own for a long time against Hellenism in this miniature Gaul, which was set down in a land of Hellenistic states, somewhat like Massilia, that miniature Greece, set down in a of Celtic cantons. The visitor who came from western Galatia (the Greek name of Gaul)