i
Faculty of Arts & Philosophy
Thierry Oppeneer
Democratic Elements in the Greek cities of
the Roman Empire
An investigation into the politics of the post-Classical city
in the writings of Dio of Prusa and Plutarch of Chaeronea
Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in History
2012
Promoter Prof. dr. Arjan Zuiderhoek
Department of History
Copromoter Prof. dr. Kristoffel Demoen
Department of Literature
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank prof. dr. Arjan Zuiderhoek whose knowledge of ancient politics has been of great
help in writing this thesis and prof. dr. Kristoffel Demoen for his help in understanding the complex
literary context of the ancient texts that will serve as the primary sources of this thesis. The
responsibility for all remaining errors rests of course entirely with me.
I would also like to thank my parents for giving me the opportunity to study history at Ghent
University and for their support during my entire education.
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Preface
Why should we study ancient politics? A first reason is the influence of the Greeks and the Romans on
modern political ideas and vocabulary. Many terms and concepts of western politics were developed
in antiquity. The Greeks were the first to think systematically about different types of government,
such as democracy, monarchy and oligarchy, and about important political concepts, such as
citizenship. The political questions asked by Plato, Aristotle and Cicero are of almost universal value
and inspire political debates even today. Besides the influence of the Greeks and the Romans on
modern politics, antiquity can be useful as a source for political exempla. Together the Greeks and the
Romans theorized about and practiced politics for more than a thousand years.
A second reason is that the ancient Greek cities, in contrast with other societies, could conceive a
form of politics in which there was room for the political participation of the entire citizen body. As
the title of this thesis already suggests I will be focusing on the democratic aspects of ancient politics.
The twentieth century has seen an unprecedented and worldwide growth in the number of
democracies. Many people in the United States and Europe have no doubts about the moral and
political superiority of democracy1 and recently even Islamic governments have found it impossible to
ignore the call for democracy. Yet seen from a historical perspective the current popularity of
democracy can be called relatively new. During the last 2500 years democracy was often described as
an inferior form of government and even today there are many countries in which a different type of
government is adopted. Less than a century ago the future of democracy in Europe was very dark. The
democracies of Europa had become a minority that was threatened with extinction by the power of
totalitarian regimes. After the Second World War communism became the dominant type of
government for half of Europe. Only after the fall of the Iron curtain democracys triumph seemed
universal.2 Many eastern European countries, however, still struggle in their attempt to become more
democratic.
Democracy has become a popular term and most governments see themselves as democratic. Non-
democratic governments often claim to be in a transition towards democracy and even dictators say
that their countries are democracies. According to Robert Dahl this has made democracy a term that
1 L.J. Samons II, Whats Wrong with Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2004, p. 3. 2 K.A. Raaflaub, Einleitung und Bilanz: Kleisthenes, Ephialtes und die Begriindung der Demokratie, in: Demokratia: Der Weg zur
Demokratie bei den Griechen, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995, p. 3.
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can mean anything, and therefore a term that means nothing.3 Until the middle of the nineteenth
century democracy had a different meaning than today. Democracy was only used to describe a type of
government like that of classical Athens, in which the people could vote directly on all important
decisions of state.4 In a modern state the people had to vote on representatives to make the decisions
for them. Modern democracies, like the United States, were therefore called republics, democratic
republics or representative democracies.5 Nowadays all these different types are called democracy.
So we can conclude that there is still much to be said on the subject of democracy, but is the
ancient concept of democracy still relevant today? It must be said that the ancient form of democracy
did not play a role of significance in the development of modern democracy, not on an institutional
level and not on the level of concepts and ideas.6 Ancient democracy is not important because of a
direct historical link between now and then. It can, however, be useful to reflect on the value and
desirability of democratic institutions and ideas and help us to think out of the box.
Over the last decades there has been a real revival in studies on ancient democracy. Most studies,
however, concentrate on the period of the fifth and fourth century B.C. and are limited to the Athenian
democracy. Relatively little attention has been given to the other democracies of the ancient world,
both those in the Classical period and those of the post-Classical period. There is of course a good
reason for this. The fact is that classical Athens is overrepresented in the sources. We are therefore
relatively well informed about the politics of Athens.7 Yet this is only an explanation and certainly not
a justification for the neglectance of other ancient democracies in modern scholarship. Moreover, other
reasons that are less excusable might have been more decisive. Modern scholarship has often
consciously overlooked the politics of post-Classical cities, because of their supposed irrelevance. The
neglectance of the Hellenistic and Roman cities was based on the value judgement that the Athenian
democracy, like other components of the Athenian society, was worth studying, because of its
superiority over other and later societies.
In this thesis I will study the politics and especially the democratic elements of the Greek cities in
the Roman Empire in the first two centuries A.D. In doing this I also hope to contribute in some way to
the current debates concerning democracy in the post-Classical period. For a long time the dominant
perspective has been one of the decline of the post-Classical city and the disappearance of democracy.
Here I will adopt a different perspective and argue that there were still democratic aspects in the
Graeco-Roman city.
3 R.A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, New Haven-Londen, Yale University Press, 1989, p. 2. 4 P. Liddel, Democracy Ancient and Modern, in: A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, Malden, Wiley-Blackwall,
2009, p. 143. 5 L.J. Samons II, Op. Cit., p. 1. 6 M.H. Hansen, The Tradition of Ancient Greek Democracy and its Importance for Modern Democracy, Kopenhagen, The Royal
Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, 2005, pp. 27, 28. 7 S. Carlsson, Hellenistic Democracies: freedom, independence and political procedure in some east Greek city-states, Stuttgart,
Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010, p. 14.
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List of Abbreviations
Ancient Authors and Texts
Aristot. = Aristotle
Pol. = Politics
Cic. = Cicero
Dio = Dio of Prusa
Or. = Oratio
Philost. = Flavius Philostratus
VS = Vitae Sophistarum
Plin. = Pliny the Younger
Plut. = Plutarch of Chaeronea
An sen. = An Seni Respublica Gerenda sit
Praec. = Praecepta Gerendae Reipublicae
Modern Works and Collections
GRBS = Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies.
Jones, GCAJ = A.H.M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian, Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1940, 393 p.
JHS = Journal of Hellenic Studies
JRS = Journal of Roman Studies
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Ober, MEDA = J. Ober, Mass and Elite in democratic Athens; rhetoric, ideology, and the power of the
people, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989, p.
Qua, Die Honoratiorenschicht = F. Qua, Die Honoratiorenschicht in den Stdten des griechischen
Ostens: Untersuchungen zur politischen und sozialen Entwicklung in hellenistischer und
rmischer Zeit. Stuttgart, Steiner, 1993, 451 p.
Ste. Croix, CSAGW = G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, Ithaca,
Cornell University Press, 1981, 732 p.
Swain, Dio Chrysostom = S. Swain ed., Dio Chrysostom; Politics, Letters and Philosophy, Oxford,
Oxford University Press, 2000, 308 p.
Van Nijf and Alston, PCGC = O. Van Nijf and R. Alston eds. Political Culture in the Greek City after
the Classical Age. Leuven, Peeters, 2011, 349 p.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 1
1.1 Research Question ................................................................................................................... 1 Dmokratia .............................................................................................................................. 2
1.2 Sources ..................................................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 6
1.3.1 Power .......................................................................................................................... 7 1.3.2 Literature ................................................................................................................... 10
1.4 Structure ................................................................................................................................. 13
Part 1 ..................................................................................................................................................... 15
The Decline of the Polis? ........................................................................................... 17 Chapter 1
1.1 Autonomy .............................................................................................................................. 19 1.1.1 The Impact of Roman Rule ....................................................................................... 20
1.2 Dmokratia ............................................................................................................................ 23 1.2.1 Magistrates and Liturgies .......................................................................................... 24 1.2.2 The Council ............................................................................................................... 27 1.2.3 The Assembly ........................................................................................................... 33
1.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 40
The Second Sophistic ................................................................................................. 41 Chapter 2
2.1 Second century literature: secondary literature? .................................................................... 42 2.2 The Concept of the Second Sophistic: origins and usefulness............................................... 43 2.3 Debate .................................................................................................................................... 45
2.3.1 The Second Sophistic: A Literary Phenomenon? ..................................................... 45 2.3.2 The Second Sophistic: A political phenomenon? ..................................................... 45 2.3.3 The Second Sophistic: A cultural phenomenon? ...................................................... 47 2.3.4 Towards a new perspective ....................................................................................... 48
2.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 51
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Part 2 ..................................................................................................................................................... 53
Dio, Plutarch and their Works ................................................................................. 55 Chapter 3
3.1 Dio of Prusa ........................................................................................................................... 55 3.1.1 Themes ...................................................................................................................... 56 3.1.2 Genre ......................................................................................................................... 57
3.2 Plutarch of Chaeronea ............................................................................................................ 59 3.2.1 Plutarchs Works ....................................................................................................... 60
Mass and Elite ............................................................................................................ 61 Chapter 4
4.1 The Institutional Perspective .................................................................................................. 61 4.1.1 The Magistrates ......................................................................................................... 62 4.1.2 The Assembly ............................................................................................................ 67
4.2 The Discourse Paradigm ........................................................................................................ 73 4.2.1 The Dmos from an Elite Perspective ....................................................................... 73 4.2.2 The Communication between Mass and Elite ........................................................... 85
4.3 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 92
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 93
Bibliography 95
Appendix ............................................................................................................................................. 103
Correspondence between Pliny and Trajan. ................................................................................... 103 Cicero Pro Flacco ........................................................................................................................... 106
IG XII,9 11 ..................................................................................................................................... 108
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Introduction
In this introduction I will introduce and clarify the subject of my thesis and the way in which I will be
approaching it. First I will describe and explain the research question this thesis tries to answer. Here I
will also say a few words on the terminology that will be used. After a short paragraph on the primary
sources of this thesis, follows a substantial paragraph on methodology. In it the most important
theories and paradigms that I have made use of in trying to answer the research question will be
summarized. The final part of this introduction will give an overview of the structure of this thesis.
1.1 Research Question
The subject of this thesis is the political life of the Greek cities, or poleis, of the Roman Empire from
around 50 to 150 A.D. The cities of this period are particularly known for the vast amount of
architectural remains and inscriptions. Because there were many poleis in the eastern part of the
empire, it is necessary to limit the scope of this thesis. I will be focusing on the cities that are
mentioned in the works of Plutarch of Chaeronea and Dio of Prusa. These cities are mostly located in
the Roman provinces of Asia and Bithynia-Pontus. The cities of the Roman East had a constitution
that was often highly similar. The political system consisted of magistrates (archontes), a council
(boul), and a popular assembly (ekklsia). The general view in modern scholarship is that by the
Roman imperial period the boul had become by far the most important institution of the city which
indicates that these cities had shifted to a more oligarchic and non-democratic society.1
The research question that forms the starting point for this thesis is as follows: Was there still any
room left for democratic elements in civic politics in the first two centuries A.D.?
1 F. Millar, The Greek City in the Roman Period, in: F. Millar, H.M. Cotton and G.M. Rogers eds. Rome, the Greek World and the
East, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2002, III + pp. 106, 118.
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Were the people of the post-Classical city still a force that should be taken into account by others, for
example members of the elite? In order to figure out whether this was the case or not, we will first
examine the functioning of the political institutions of the Graeco-Roman city. Were popular
assemblies still convened, did they possess real powers, and what was their relation with the council?
The other political institutions of the polis, such as the council and the magistrates, will also be taken
into consideration, but they will receive slightly less attention in this thesis. The next step in answering
the research question is an investigation of the relationship between mass and elite. Who was
dominant in the politics of the city? Before going into more detail on the methods I will be using to
find some answers to these questions, I will first say a few words on the important terms polis and
dmokratia.
The polis is an important concept that will appear frequently throughout this thesis and is therefore
in need of a definition. The Greek poleis of the Roman period cannot be called city-states, I will often
use city as a translation, but this does not fully cover the meaning of the word. Although he only based
it on archaic and classical evidence, M. H. Hansen has provided a useful definition for this thesis with
his Lex Hafniensis de Civitate: Polis used in the sense of town to denote a named urban centre is
applied not just to any urban centre but only to a town which was also the centre of a polis in the sense
of political community. Thus, the term polis has two different meanings: town and state; but even
when it is used in the sense of town its reference, its denotation, seems almost invariably to be what
the Greeks called polis in the sense of a koinonia politon politeias and what we call a city-state.
Throughout this thesis it is important to keep in mind that being a political community was one of the
most defining features of the polis even in Roman times. Although the Greek city in the Roman period
also became defined by its public buildings and architecture, it remained a political community. Much
more than the cities of today the post-Classical polis retained genuine value, juridically, politically
and psychologically for its citizens.2
1.1.1 Dmokratia
In order to answer the research question it is important to know what exactly is meant with democracy
or dmokratia. Most of the time I will be using the transliterations dmokratia and polis instead of
the modern words democracy and city-state. Leaving these concepts untranslated is meant to
prevent the easy pitfall of associating these concepts with their English equivalents which can be
anachronistic and misleading. Avoiding translation, however, would be concealing the problem of
what these concepts really mean under a mask of authenticity, if I did not specifically state what these
concepts did or did not mean.3 Therefore I will give a short introduction into the most important
concept of this thesis, democracy or dmokratia.
Dmokratia, literally meaning rule by the people, is the Greek concept for a form of state, in which
the power is in the hands of the dmos, the whole of the citizenry, and not in the hands of the few,
oligarchia, or in the hands of one person, monarchia. A democracy differs from oligarchy on two
2 M.I. Finley, The Ancient City: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and beyond, in: Comparative Studies in Society and
History, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Jul., 1977), p. 307. 3 T. Whitmarsh, Ancient History Through Ancient Literature, in: A, Erskine (ed). A Companion to Ancient History. Blackwell
Publishing, 2009, p. 80.
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important points. First, in a democracy all the men, who were born there, were citizens with rights,
who could take part in the popular assembly, the juries, and, sometimes with exception of the poorest,
the offices. Second, most of the power of state resided with the popular assembly, and not with any
other council, or the magistrates.4 This definition is fine as a short indication of the most important
elements of ancient democracy. There were, however, many different types of democracy in antiquity
and each of them had elements that were more or less democratic according to different criteria. In the
first chapter we will consider Aristotles definitions of the formation and functioning of democratic
institutions.
Here we will first look at a modern definition of democracy given by Robert Dahl and apply it to
ancient democracy. According to him the most important aspect of a democratic state is that the
citizens of that state view one another as basically equal in their competence to participate in
governing, or in other words, the members of a democratic state must consider themselves to be
political equals. Dahl distinguishes five criteria for judging whether a specific process is democratic or
not.5 Here I will take four of these criteria for democracy, apply them to the state and describe in what
way ancient dmokratia could have fulfilled them. In the following chapters I will then use these
modified criteria in assessing whether the Graeco-Roman cities were in fact democratic.
Each citizen of a democratic state must have the ability to participate actively in the decision
making process. This means that each citizen has an equal and effective opportunity to advocate his
opinion about the best policy to be adopted and that he can make his opinion known to the other
citizens.6 In the Athenian dmokratia the concepts of isegoria (the right to speak) and parrhesia
(freedom of speech) can be linked to this first criterion. Isegoria, found its most explicit application in
the ekklsia. After a specific measure was proposed the herald asked the question: Who wishes to
speak? It is at this moment each Athenian citizen could step unto the bema (speakers platform) to
make use of his right to speak. He could try to persuade the assembly to amend the proposal, in one
way or another, or to introduce a whole new proposal on the subject. In this way every man could have
a say in the policy of the polis.7 In order to fulfil this first criterion for democracy the Greek cities in
the Roman imperial period should still have fully functioning popular assemblies. Normal citizens
should have the opportunity to speak and the dmos should be able to amend or reject propositions
made by the council.
The second criterion of Dahl is that each citizen should have an equal and effective opportunity to
vote on the final decisions of the state, and that the vote of every citizen should be counted as equal.8
In Classical Athens the equal and effective opportunity to vote for each citizen meant that there was
state pay for attending the assembly or popular courts. In this way also the poorer citizens could
participate. Outside Athens, however, state pay for attendance of the political institutions seems rarely
to have existed. In order to fulfil this second criterion the poleis of the Roman Empire should have
popular courts and assemblies in which the citizens could still vote.
The third criterion states that each citizen should have an equal and effective opportunity for
exploring the issues that will be voted on. This means that they have access to information on the
4 H. Cancik and H. Schneider eds., Der Neue Pauly : Enzyklopdie der Antike, Stuttgart, Metzler, 1996-2007, pp. 452, 453. 5 R. A. Dahl, On Democracy, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 37, 38. 6 Ibidem, p. 37. 7 A. G. Woodhead, " and the Council of 500" in: Historia Zeitschrift fr Alte Geschichte, Franz Steiner Verlag, 16 (1967),
2, pp. 129,130. 8 R. A. Dahl, On Democracy, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998, p. 37.
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proposals under consideration, the possible alternatives, and their likely consequences.9 Again this
would require a fully functioning popular assembly in which the citizens could hear about different
proposals and the dmos as a whole should be able to amend or reject a proposal of the boul. Citizens
could also learn about proposals by debates in the other public arenas of the polis, such as the theatre
and agora (marketplace).
The final criterion is that citizens should decide on how a proposal is to be placed on the agenda. In
this way the decision making process is open to change.10 In a Classical dmokratia the agenda for the
popular assembly was usually decided by the council at least in part because of practical reasons. In
Athens the boul decided which proposals were placed on the agenda and were later to be voted on by
the ekklsia. These proposals were called probouleumata. The men who served on the council were
selected by lot from the whole citizen body. This process was repeated each year. In the Roman
period, however, the councils of the Greek cities had undergone some changes. Whether this fourth
criterion was fulfilled for these cities will be assessed below.
According to Dahl these four criteria are very demanding. A state in which all four of these criteria
were implemented to the fullest has therefore never existed in reality. Dahl sees his four criteria more
as tools for judging the democratic level of a particular political system and for improving democratic
governments. In the following chapters I will also use these criteria in this way. In the conclusion
these tools will be used to answer the question whether dmokratia in the Graeco-Roman polis still
existed or not.
Before going to the paragraph on methodology, however, one last aspect of dmokratia must be
taken into account. Since the middle of the last century a fifth criterion for democracy has been widely
accepted. The citizens or citizen body that I referred to in the four criteria above should include all
adult subjects of the state.11 This is a relatively new idea that was entirely absent from ancient politics.
A central feature of Greek politics was its severe restriction of access to citizenship. In the ancient
society women, slaves and outsiders were excluded from the citizen body and had no say in politics.
When talking about the power of the people or dmos, we must never forget that this was already an
exclusive part of the entire population. On the one hand this should prevent us from idealizing the
Greek dmokratia and confusing our modern ideas of democracy with those of the Greeks. This is one
of the examples why it is justified to use the transliteration dmokratia instead of the English
equivalent democracy. On the other hand this should not mean that every comparison between
ancient and modern democracy is impossible. Other political institutions or practices can still be
examples for modern times. After all it is not the task of historians to award or subtract credits
according to our own value-systems.12 The Greeks did not think of an inclusive vision on citizenship as
a precondition for the name dmokratia. It is for this reason that the fifth criterion for democracy will
not be applied in this thesis for an assessment of the democratic elements of the Greek cities in the
Roman Empire.
9 Ibidem, p. 37. 10 Ibidem, p. 38. 11 Ibidem, p. 38. 12 M.I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 9.
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1.2 Sources
The goal of this thesis is not only to give a status quaestionis on democratic elements in the politics of
the Graeco-Roman cities, but also to contribute in a small way to the existing research on the subject. I
will try to do this by analysing some literary sources. The works of two authors will be discussed after
the historical and literary context of the first chapters. The first author is Dio of Prusa, who lived from
ca. 45 to 115 A.D. Dio of Prusa is also known as Dio Chrysostom meaning Golden Mouthed, because
of the style and quality of his speeches. This is also the reason why his works were used as a model for
later generations and therefore the reason why his texts have survived the ages. He came from the
Bithynic town Prusa nowadays known as Bursa. His literary works consist of some eighty orations of
which at least two were spuria that are now attributed to Favorinus. His work contains valuable
information for historians specialized in the socio-political aspects of civic life in the cities of Asia
Minor. Besides that his orations can also be used to study Stoic and Cynic philosophies.13 The texts
that are most useful for our current purposes are the Orationes 7, and 31 50.
The second author under consideration is Plutarch of Chaeronea, who lived from ca. 45 to 120 A.D.
He spent most of his life in the relatively small city of Chaeronea situated in Boeotia at the centre of
Greece and comparatively close to Delphi.14 He is mostly known for his Parallel Lives in which he
compares a famous Greek with a famous Roman. The many other works of Plutarch are combined in
his Moralia. From these two will be discussed here, namely his Praecepta gerendae reipublicae
(Precepts of Statecraft) and his An seni respublica gerenda sit (Whether an old man should engage in
public affairs). In his Precepts of Statecraft Plutarch writes in reaction to a request for advice on
politics from Menemachus, a young politician who probably lived in Sardis. In his Old Men in Public
Affairs Plutarch tries to convince a certain Euphanes to stay engaged in public affairs in spite of his
old age.
These two ancient authors and their works are very different from each other. The Discourses of
Dio Chrysostom are sophistic speeches mostly on political related subjects, whereas the texts of his
contemporary Plutarch are essays of a more philosophical nature. Together these writers will be able, I
hope, to give a new perspective on the politics of the Greek cities of the Roman East. In Part two of
this thesis I will be giving more information about these authors and the specific nature of their works.
The translations of all the ancient writers I will be using throughout this thesis are those of the Loeb
Classical Library, unless stated otherwise. Before going to the explanation of the methodology of this
thesis, a final thing regarding the choice for source material must be said.
An important source of information for the Roman imperial period is epigraphy. According to
Fergus Millar it is in this period that the Greek cities provided the fullest expression of their own
communal identity, through the medium of inscriptions which made them more visible than ever
before.15 Although epigraphy as a source will not be entirely absent from this thesis, most attention will
be given to literary sources. Assessing both literary and epigraphic sources would be a too ambitious
project. I have therefore chosen not to use inscriptions as a source for my own investigation. Both
13 Swain, Dio Chrysostom, pp. 1-10. 14 C.P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971, pp. 3, 4. 15 F. Millar, The Greek City in the Roman Period, in: F. Millar, H.M. Cotton and G.M. Rogers eds. Rome, the Greek World and the
East, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2002, III + p. 106.
6
inscriptions and ancient texts have their own interpretational problems. In the last decades historians
have become aware of the fact that inscriptions are not undistorted reflections of the political and
social institutions of antiquity.16 Ramsay MacMullen has made some important remarks about the use
of epigraphy for studying the history of the Roman Empire. Historians tend to say that this or that
activity or behaviour was prominent, vital, declining or the like according to the frequency of
epigraphic attestation. That assumes, however, that the body of all inscriptions against which
attestation is measured does not itself rise or fall - a false assumption.17 So a rise in the number of
honorary inscriptions would not necessarily mean that there was also a growing tendency to honour
elite members of the city. This first problem, however, is not problematic if one is cautious about it.
What is more problematic is that inscriptions tend to give a static and stereotype image of the
internal relations of the polis. The image of the city we get from epigraphic sources is an idealized one
in which there is little or no room for conflict or discord.18 According to Simon Swain this is a
consequence of the heavily contextualized and public nature of epigraphy.19 For Giovanni Salmeri it is
all rather a matter of length. Whatever the reason for it may be, the static image inscriptions evoke is
not very useful for a study concentrating on the citys internal structures of power. The advantage of
using literature is that it gives more information about the functioning of the political institutions and
about the cooperation between them. Literary sources are more likely to reflect or give indications for
conflicts in and between these political bodies.20
1.3 Methodology
Without a theoretical frame any study of the politics and literature of the Greek cities in the Roman
imperial period would only be a summary of some common sense statements. When studying ancient
society or ancient literature a scholar inevitably brings his own prejudices, presuppositions and
opinions to the table. We always use modern conceptions in our interpretation of ancient texts and
society. The choice we have is not whether we want to hold certain opinions and presuppositions or
not whether we like it or not, we have already answered certain questions and thus accepted certain
prejudices before we read the first word on the page. The choice we do have is whether we want to be
aware of these prejudices, whether we want to be able to consciously examine the arguments for and
against a certain position. Political and literary methodologies help us to be conscious of our modern
conceptions about literature and politics. Keeping our own conceptions and perspectives in mind we
16 O. Van Nijf, The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East, Amsterdam, Gieben, 1997, p. 23. 17 R. MacMullen, The Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire, in: The American Journal of Philology, 103, (1982), 3, p. 244. 18 G. Salmeri, Reconstructing the political life and culture of the Greek cities of the Roman Empire, in: Van Nijf and Alston,
PCGC, pp. 200, 201. 19 S. Swain, Hellenism and Empire: language, classicism, and power in the Greek world AD 50-250, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1996, p. 71. 20 G. Salmeri, Reconstructing the political life and culture of the Greek cities of the Roman Empire, in: Van Nijf and Alston,
PCGC, p. 202.
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can then turn to the sources for ancient society.21 The theories that will be described and explained in
this paragraph are influenced by notions on power that can be associated with postmodernism and
New Historicism. First I will introduce the specific perspective on politics I will be using. After this I
will describe my approach to ancient literature.
1.3.1 Power
Central to any study of politics is the concept of power. A first intuitive idea of power is something
like A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise
do.22 In a dmokratia this would ideally mean that the dmos as a whole could get some parts of it, for
example a group of elite citizens, to do things they would not have done otherwise. This is of course
only a first idea of how power works. I will be using a more elaborate idea of power that is sometimes
called the discourse paradigm. This is an approach that has been developed as a response to the
dominance of the so-called coercion paradigm and its definition of power. The coercion paradigm
sees power as basically deriving from physical force. The state is the primary locus of power, because
it has, as the sovereign authority, the monopoly on both the internal and the external use of force.
Power is held by the sovereign state and can be studied by looking at its constitution and its political
institutions.23 This perspective on power has inspired many studies that have contributed a great deal
to our understanding of ancient politics. In this thesis, however, I will not be taking a constitutional or
institutional approach. The coercion paradigm is too restrictive in its notion of power, because it sees
power as repressive of and exterior to people.24 According to Moses Finley this leads to falling into the
constitutional-law trap25 Michel Foucault in his History of Sexuality puts it this way It is this image
we must break free of, that is, of the theoretical privilege of law and sovereignty, if we wish to analyse
power within the concrete and historical framework of its operation. We must construct an analytics of
power that no longer takes law as a model and a code.26
The Discourse Paradigm
An analytics of power is essential for every study on political systems. This power exists in the sense
of potestas and in the sense of auctoritas.27 As Josiah Ober in his study on the Athenian democracy
said it: Power is not simple; a proper explanation of the demos kratos will have to embrace not only
the more obvious elements of the franchise and the reality and threat of physical force but also
authority and legitimacy, ideology and communication,...28 It is this notion of power that will be the
starting point for my approach to politics.
21 T.A. Schmitz, Modern Literary Theory and Ancient Texts: an introduction, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 2007, pp. 6-9. Citation
from p. 9. 22 R.A. Dahl, The Concept of Power, in: Behavioural Science, 2 (1957), 3, pp. 202, 203. 23 J. Ober, The Athenian Revolution; essays on ancient Greek democracy and political theory, Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1996, pp. 88, 89. 24 Ober, MEDA, p. 22. 25 M. I. Finley, Op. Cit., p. 56. 26 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Vol. I: An Introduction, Translated by R. Hurley. Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1998. p. 90. 27 M.I. Finley, Op. Cit., p. 8. 28 Ober, MEDA, p. 19.
8
The discourse paradigm is based on Michel Foucaults view on power. Power is ubiquitous in all
human relationships, or in other words: power is everywhere.29 This means that power is not
centralized in a sovereign state, its constitution, or its institutions. Power is also productive, rather than
repressive, meaning that it is not a one-dimensional relationship of repression between the rulers and
the ruled. Central to Foucaults concept of power is discourse. Power is a complex matrix of
relations disseminated and indeed contested, through linguistic and symbolic relationships.30
Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders
it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it.31
When the concept of power of the discourse paradigm is combined with the concept of political
ideology it becomes clear in what way it influences the daily practices of politics. According to the
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, political ideology is a set of ideas, beliefs, values, and opinions,
exhibiting a recurring pattern, that competes deliberately as well as unintentionally over providing
plans of action for public policy making, in an attempt to justify, explain, contest, or change the social
and political arrangements and processes of a political community.32 There are various and
contradictory ways to interpret political ideology. I will follow a non-Marxist semantic approach. In
this view ideologies are inevitable as ubiquitous mapping devices of cultural symbols and political
concepts that constitute a crucial resource for understanding sociopolitical life and enable collective
choices to be made concerning the shaping of that life. The semantic perspective of this approach can
be made clear by the following example: the concept of liberty may be present in most ideologies, but
its meaning is determined from case to case by the proximate concepts that surround it, private
property or social welfare pulling it in different directions. In this way ideologies shape the
competition over the control of the correct and legitimate meanings of political words and ideas,
and by means of that control, over the high ground of politics.33
It is now clearer what power means in the discourse paradigm and what role discourse plays in it,
but can it also be used when studying antiquity? Josiah Ober makes use of the discourse paradigm
and the semantic approach to political ideology to study the Athenian democracy.34 In his book Mass
and Elite in Democratic Athens Ober tried to find the key to the success of the Athenians in
maintaining a democratic political system over a long period of time. Ober argues that the explanation
for this success can be found in ideology. He therefore started to reconstruct ideology by studying
ancient texts and formal rhetoric in particular. At the end of his book Ober comes to the conclusion
that the mediating and integrative power of communication between citizens especially between
ordinary and elite citizens in language whose vocabulary consisted of symbols developed and
deployed in public arenas: the peoples courts, the Assembly, the theatre, and the agora was the real
key to the success of the Athenians. In the democratic polis of Athens the people held the power,
because they controlled the symbolic universe. Networks of symbols were created in the reciprocal
communication between mass and elite. The vocabulary used in the rhetorical speeches was rich in
topoi that helped the Athenians to create a stable political system. According to Ober it was
29 T.A. Schmitz, Op. Cit., p. 145. 30 T. Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 18, 19. 31 M. Foucault, Op. Cit., p. 101. 32 M. Freeden, Ideology: political aspects, in: Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Elsevier, 2001, p. 7174. 33 M. Freeden, Art. Cit., pp. 7174-7177. 34 Ober, MEDA, passim. He later elaborated his theory in. The Athenian Revolution; essays on acnient Greek democracy and
political theory.
9
communication that assured the dmos of an ideological hegemony over those who were their social
and economic superiors.35
The emphasis on discourse and the idea that it not only transmits, but also produces power, is clear
in Obers work. He repeatedly argues that formal rhetoric consists of the symbolic communication that
can be used to reconstruct the ideology of the citizenry. According to Ober the Athenians had no need
for democratic theory, because its function was already fulfilled by democratic discourse. This
discourse was created by the invention of new words (e.g. Dmokratia, isonomia), transvaluation of
existing terms (isegoria, plethos), subversion and appropriation of the terminology and ideals of the
aristocrats (kalokagathia, arete), but above all by the elaboration of the vocabulary of rhetorical topoi
and images...36 Christian Meier even suggested that this democratic discourse was the result of a
Begriffsweltwandel, a transformation in the entire conceptional universe, only surpassed in
importance by the Enlightenment. Es gibt Epochen, in denen sich der gesamte Bestand der Begriffe
auf politisch-gesellschaftlichem Feld wandelt: Zentrale Begriffe werden neu gebildet. Wichtige
berkommene Begriffe verndern ihre Bedeutung grndlich oder geraten ins Abseits. Die gesamte
Begriffswelt wird unter neue Vorzeichen gestellt, gewinnt neue Funktionen und bleibt sich dann, bei
aller Vernderung im einzelnen, fr mehr oder weniger lange Zeit wieder gleich.37
In this thesis I will argue that the approach Ober takes, the essential role of power and ideology in
providing symbols for communication, and the study of language as a means to reconstruct this
ideology, can be used when studying the politics of the post-Classical poleis. The conclusions Ober
offers are plausible for fourth century Athens, but the democratic system of Athens was unique even in
its time and can certainly not be compared with the political systems of the Graeco-Roman polis.
There is no doubt that the ideological hegemony of the dmos, as Ober described it for Athens, was
extraordinary and the Greek cities in the Roman period did show a tendency towards hierarchy and
oligarchy. In this thesis, however, I will argue that this did not mean that there was no room for
democratic elements in the politics of the polis. The view of the polis in the Roman imperial period as
a society in which the dmos had lost all of its power relies heavily on the idea that power can be seen
as restricted and repressive. In this view power was located in the institution of the elite, the boul, and
lacked by the institution of the dmos, the ekklsia. Power is seen as a one-dimensional relation
between the elite and the dmos. And when the ekklsia or dmos is still mentioned in the terminology
of the polis this is explained away as mere rhetoric. However, when we accept the idea that power is
something that is everywhere and that it is productive rather than repressive these statements become
problematic. When we see power no longer as being possessed by some and lacked by others and we
accept the idea that power is not only transmitted through discourse, but is also produced by discourse,
it becomes possible for the dmos to play a role of importance in the post-Classical polis.
Again this is not to say that an institutional approach is worthless. After all the institutions of the
ekklsia, the boul and the dikastria (the popular courts) functioned as fora for the communication
between mass and elite.38 As we will see in chapter one it is often argued that these institutions
transformed or even disappeared after the Classical period. If this is true it would be very difficult to
see where the dmos would have been able to play a role of significance in the politics of the Graeco-
35 Ober, MEDA, pp. 35. 36 Ober, MEDA, pp. 35-42, 338, 339. 37 C. Meier, Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1980, pp. 275, 278. 38 Ober, MEDA, pp. 127-148.
10
Roman cities. It is therefore of the utmost importance to establish whether these institutions continued
to exist or not and to see if there were major changes in their functioning.
1.3.2 Literature
Discourse is an essential element in the construction of power relations and therefore an essential
element of studying politics. Ancient texts reflect the language that is used to construct the structures
of power and the relation between mass and elite. Compared to other sources ancient literature has also
other advantages. Ancient texts contain a lot of evidence; they can be read in modern editions of good
quality; they are often electronically searchable; most of them have decent translations and are
accompanied with commentaries and other interpretive media; and it is relatively easy to date them.
There are, of course, also serious problems that have to be faced when using ancient literature for
historical purposes. Historians handle these problems, according to Tim Whitmarsh, often without care
by ignoring a more literary perspective. One of the mistakes historians tend to make is taking all the
statements and narratives of ancient authors at face value which can cause naive and partial readings
of ancient texts. Whitmarsh sees historians also as vulnerable to the pitfall of focusing too much on
points of contact between the text and the contemporary world or even neglecting and explaining away
textual evidence that does not fit in the historians particular view on society. Whitmarsh is, however,
also harsh on literary students who fail to take the historical context of ancient literature into account
and only pay attention to aesthetic and formal aspects, such as allusion and narratology. Focusing too
much on a literary perspective can also bring with it a tendency to privilege an elite perspective and to
neglect realities. 39
According to Whitmarsh historians and scholars of literature have much to learn from each other.
Historians should take into account the issues of interpretation raised by literary texts and students of
literature should take the historical context of the literature they are examining into account. Scholars
should therefore try to combine knowledge about the historical context of ancient society and insights
that derive from modern literary theory. Whitmarsh calls this approach literary historicism.40 This
perspective is stimulated by postmodernism and the responses to some postmodern questions offered
by cultural history and New Historicism. In the following pages I will describe a few problems of
interpretation associated with ancient literature and in what way literary historicism combines
historical and literary knowledge. Issues of interpretation can be found on the three levels of
transmission, translation and meaning.
Transmission
The level of transmission deals with the fundamental problem of establishing a text and trying to find
the authors original words. Some of the difficulties associated with the level of transmission follow
from the fact that ancient texts were copied by hand. The texts that survived the centuries were copied
and recopied many times leaving many opportunities for errors. Besides this the people who copied
39 T. Whitmarsh, Ancient History Through Ancient Literature, in: A, Erskine (ed). A Companion to Ancient History. Blackwell
Publishing, 2009, pp. 77-86. 40 Ibidem.
11
these texts were Alexandrian, Byzantine and Baghdadi scribes who had their own criteria to determine
which texts they should copy. So it can be said that the surviving texts may well be unrepresentative of
the whole range of ancient literature. Although this should be kept in mind, these first issues with
transmission do not cause serious problems for the general understanding of a text.41
A second, and maybe more problematic, group of issues on the level of tranmission are raised by
the fact that many texts were originally designed for oral performance in public space. The polis
always remained a public-orientated community. This is why Aristotle described man as a political
animal or an animal of the polis.42 Contrary to contemporary literature, ancient texts were meant to
stimulate engagement, not contemplation. When transcribed into written form texts were altered in a
way which makes it hard to recover the oral and public context they were originally designed for.43
Although modern editions of ancient texts are maybe closer to the original than earlier copies, they
remain the products of the decisions of editors.44 Knowledge of the historical context, and more
specifically the public and rhetorical context, is therefore very important.
The strong relationship between literature and society is also stressed by certain developments in
literary theory. Romantic conceptions that see literature as the spontaneous outpourings of genius have
been challenged for some time now. The focus nowadays is more on the effects of texts in society than
on the origins of these texts. Roland Barthes calls this the shift from work, defined as the product of
an author, to text, the challenge to readers.45 Texts are no longer seen merely as reflections of history.
Texts actively participate by defining and popularizing certain perceptions of society. In this way
reality becomes a collection of perceptions of the world, instead of a static structure that can be seen
through the window of literature. Texts are not the evidence of society; they are the building-blocks of
society.46
Translation
The second issue with ancient literature is what Whitmarsh calls the translational challenge of an
alien cultural artifact. The translation of ancient literature is necessary, because it keeps the literature
alive by making it understandable to a modern reader. In doing so, however, a translation inevitably
introduces a certain distance from the ancient language itself. The Greek language causes some
additional problems. One of them is that there are many almost untranslatable abstractions in it that
only are understandable within their cultural context. More important for this thesis is that political
language is also hard to translate. This is why terms as basileus and polis are often left untranslated.
This avoids the misleading associations that modern translations cause, but can also, as stated above,
conceal the problem.47 So also on the level of translation context is extremely important to question our
modern interpretations of the cultural and political concepts of the Greeks.
41 T. Whitmarsh, Ancient History Through Ancient Literature, in: A, Erskine (ed). A Companion to Ancient History. Blackwell
Publishing, 2009, pp. 78-80. 42 Aristotle, Politics, 1253a. 43 T. Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004, pp. 4, 5. 44 T. Whitmarsh, Art. Cit., p. 80. 45 R. Barthes, The Rustle of Language, transl. R. Howard, Berkley, University of California Press, pp. 56-65. 46 T. Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004, p. 6. 47 T. Whitmarsh, Art. Cit., pp. 80, 81, 85. Citation from p. 85.
12
Meaning
Ancient literature is not only in need of a linguistic translation, it also needs to be culturally translated.
This consists of searching for the meaningof a text. Historians often use a rather out-dated form of
literary criticism in which texts are searched for signs that could indicate what the ideas and
motivations of the author had been. This approach is also known as the expressive-realist school and
can be defined as a combination of the Aristotelian view on art as mimsis, the imitation of reality, and
the Romantic idea that literature was the direct expression of the perceptions and emotions of a
person.48
Over the last decades this literary theory has been contested in various ways. Cultural products are
less searched for signs of the inner emotions of the author and more for different and conflicting
voices. According to reception theorists searching for the original meaning of a text is a waste of time.
There is no possibility of reaching a final interpretation. Reception theorists therefore analyse the
different interpretations of a text that add to the existing meanings of a text. Each interpretation of the
meaning of a text has more or less its own validity. Whitmarsh agrees that it is indeed hard to establish
anything in the interpretation of ancient texts beyond the banal and that our interpretations will always
have to be expressed in a language biased with modern cultural priorities. However, this does not
mean that we should stop using ancient literature for studying ancient societies. The correct response,
according to Whitmarsh, should be one of interpretative pluralism. This approach can be taken by
searching for the likely range of possible interpretations in a given historical context.49 New
Historicism is the name mostly given to scholars who approach literature in this way. Central to the
approach is the historicity of texts and the textuality of history.50 Literary texts are grounded in
political and socio-economic materiality, but are also active in the constitution of power and identity:51
The meaning of a text is never simple. Texts are written to provoke and to be debated over,
especially in a community that was as publicly orientated as the polis. This does not mean, however,
that each text can have an infinite range of meanings. The degree to which a text is open to multiple
interpretations differs from text to text. Poetry for example is more likely to contain different meanings
than forensic oratory;52 and the speeches from Dio Chrysostom contain more ambiguity than the more
philosophically orientated advices of Plutarch.
Applying this interpretative pluralism is not always easy. Especially in texts that deal with politics
there is much debate over the possible range of meanings. The reason for this is that ancient authors
rarely opposed the political system or the structures of power directly. However, the Greeks did
sometimes use figured speech as a rhetorical device that allowed the author to deliver two different
messages as one. In this way the author could please two different interpretative communities at the
same time. The literature of the Roman imperial period is often characterized as fond of using this
both-sidedness (to epamphoteron). The possible range of interpretations of the texts analysed in this
thesis should therefore include readings that are implicitly critical of the political system.53
48 C. Belsey, Critical Practice, London, Methuen, 1980, p. 11. 49 T. Whitmarsh, Art. Cit., pp. 81, 82. 50 L.A. Montrose, Professing the Renaissance: The Poetics and Politics of Culture, in: H.A. Veeser (ed.) The New Historicism,
New York, Routledge, 1989, p. 20. 51 T. Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004, pp. 29-33. 52 Ibidem, p. 6. 53 T. Whitmarsh, Art. Cit., pp. 83-85.
13
In this thesis I will try to reconstruct the original reception contexts of my primary sources in order
to create a map of possible readings. By doing this it should be possible to avoid the mistakes
historians see literary students making and vica versa. In chapter one I will focus on the political
context of the Graeco-Roman polis. In chapter two the literary context will be examined and in
chapters three and four the direct historical context of the works of our three authors will we
described. In this way a historical frame will be created after which a more literary approach can be
adopted. During all this it should be kept in mind that: literary texts are cultural products, no more or
less than material artifacts; but they are also (often) designed to generate multiple interpretations, and
for that reason they cannot be reduced to the status of epiphenomena of a cultural system.54
Literature and Power
Uptill now I have been silent on the biggest problem the use of ancient literature causes for this
inquiry into the democratic elements in the Graeco-Roman poleis. Ancient texts are always the
product of a select group of individuals often described with the acronym FAME (freeborn, adult,
male elites). Ancient literature is therefore biased in favour of elite perspectives. This is certainly
problematic for a study of the political system and the relations of power in society, because dominant
groups in society always try to present their power as stable and uncontested and tend to downplay the
voices that struggle against their dominance. As stated above this is, however, not how power works.
Power is not something that the elite possesses and the rest of the people lack. Power is a set of
relationships between unequal partners,55 or to cite Foucault once more: power is not something that
is is acquired, seized or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away; power is
exercised from innumerable points, in the interplay of non-egalitarian and mobile relations.56
The focus in my analysis of the specific texts in part two is therefore on the dialogue between elite
writers and the dmos and on power as a set of unequal relations between dmos and elite. In this way
I hope to adjust the dominant view of the Greek cities in the Roman imperial period as strong
oligarchies in which the dmos lost all of its powers.
1.4 Structure
I have divided my thesis in two main parts. The first part is primarily meant as a status quaestionis of
the political and literary context of the poleis in the Roman period. It will introduce the debates in
modern scholarship that are most important to the subject of this thesis. The first chapter deals with the
political context of the polis and will give an overview of the dominant views on the evolution of the
political institutions. In this chapter I will describe the dominant view on the political systems of the
Graeco-Roman cities and the evidence that supports this view. Here I will also question parts of this
54 T. Whitmarsh, Art. Cit., pp. 85, 86. Citations from p. 86. 55 T. Whitmarsh, Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004, p. 7. 56 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, New York: Vintage Books, 1990 (trans. Robert Hurley) p. 94.
14
view and discuss the possibility of an alternative view on politics in this period. The general focus will
always be on democracy and democratic elements. The second chapter is about the phenomenon of the
Second Sophistic, which is very important for the literary and cultural climate of the period, although
it also has consequences for the political context of the polis. In this chapter I will describe the
evolution of the debate on the Second Sophistic and how recent approaches influence how the
literature of the period is studied.
The purpose of part one as a whole is to contextualize the research that will be done in part two.
This is important for several reasons. Without an overview of the scholarship on the subject it would
be impossible to avoid making simple mistakes or doing research that has already been done by others.
It will also help to steer the analysis of part two in the most productive direction. In the conclusion I
will try to answer the research question by means of the information given in the first chapters and the
study of the literature in the second part.
Part 1
17
Chapter 1
The Decline of the Polis?
La cit grecque n'est pas morte Chrone, ni sous
Alexandre, ni dans le cours de toute l'poque hellnistique.
Louis Robert1
If we look at the polis from the perspective of world history our conclusion can only be that it was one
of the most successful forms of political organisation. The polis continued to be a primary locus for
politics for 1200 years. Of course there were significant changes during this long period and there has
been a lot of debate on the precise nature of these changes and their consequences. Onno van Nijf and
Richard Alston are right in saying that the final outcome the decline and fall of the ancient city is
perhaps clear, but that there is no general agreement about the pace and the route along which this
decline took place and that the level of disagreement is radical.2 In this chapter I will describe some
of the different views on the pace and route of this decline. Although there is indeed intense
discussion on the subject I will often speak of the theory of decline. The theory of decline is not a real
theory in the sense that it has been consciously developed as a heuristic device to help explain the
post-Classical society, but it has influenced the study of the post-Classical polis nevertheless. Before
going into more detail I will first argue what I mean by the theory of decline and why it is important
for this thesis.
For a long time the dominant view in historiography has been that changes in the fourth century
B.C. led to the failure of the Greek polis, followed by a steady degeneration of virtually every
political, social, cultural, and other facet of civic life in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.3 The
classical period was the golden age of the polis and the end of the classical period meant the beginning
of the degeneration of the polis. The decisive turning point for many scholars was in 338 B.C. at
Chaeronea when Phillip is said to have murdered the polis. For a time the only debate was whether
Philip had murdered a terminally ill patient, the polis as an evolutionary dead end and therefore
1 L. Robert, Thophane de Mytilne Constantinople, in: Comptes rendus de lAcadmie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, p. 42. 2 Van Nijf and Alston, PCGC, p. 4. 3 P. Harland, The Declining Polis? in: L.E. Vaage ed. Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity.
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006, p. 22.
18
doomed to extinction,4 or someone who was still very much alive. The outcome, however, was clear.5
The theory of decline emphasises the degeneration of almost every aspect of civic life, especially those
aspects that had contributed most to the grandeur of the classical polis, such as literature, autonomy
and democracy. The cause for these different declining aspects is the same: the advent of large scale
politics and the incorporation of the Greek cities first in the Hellenistic kingdoms and later and more
thoroughly in the Roman Empire.
In more recent years the politics of the post-Classical polis has been revived as a subject for
historical research. Before these recent studies could be written their authors had to overcome an
important prejudice, namely that the dmos acquiesced in the dominance of the elite and the Roman
authorities. This prejudice is, according to Giovanni Salmeri caused by the stereotype image that is
reflected in the enormous number of inscriptions. Yet in contrast with the epigraphic material, ancient
texts often show that politics in the institutions of the polis, both boul and ekklsia, are still very
much alive.6
Over the last decades there has been a shift in scholarship on the consequences of Hellenistic rule
for the Greek cities. The validity of some essential parts of the decline theory has been increasingly
contested from the early nineties onwards. One of the first scholars who seriously challenged the
theory of decline was Louis Robert. Nowadays it has almost become a new orthodoxy that the poleis
did not die at Chaeronea.7 However, it can be said that Actium has replaced Chaeronea as the
beginning of the end.8 It is true that Roman rule differed from that of the Hellenistic kings, certainly
from the Imperial period onwards. In this thesis I will argue, however, that the polis was still very
much alive in the first two centuries A.D. and that it continued to be a primary locus for politics. The
Greek cities of the Roman imperial period can no longer be seen as secondary societies.
In the two paragraphs of this chapter I will describe the main features of the theory of decline. The
focus will be on the political aspects of the decline theory and not on its cultural aspects. The first
paragraph will be on the external politics of the polis and the impact of Roman rule. The second
paragraph is about the decline perspective on the internal politics of the polis and its consequences for
democracy. I will begin each paragraph with a summary of the decline perspective on the subject at
hand. After this more recent contributions and authors with a different perspective will be discussed.
Important passages in the primary sources, both epigraphic and literary material, are mentioned in the
text and if needed can be found in more detail in the appendix.
4 W.G. Runciman, Doomed to extinction. The polis as an evolutionary dead end, in: O. Murray and S. Price, eds., The Greek city
from Homer to Alexander, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 347-368. 5 Van Nijf and Alston, PCGC, pp. 5-8. 6 G. Salmeri, Reconstructing the political life and culture of the Greek cities of the Roman Empire, in: Van Nijf and Alston,
PCGC, pp. 197-202. 7 Van Nijf and Alston, PCGC, pp. 5-8. 8 A. Heller, La cit grecque dpoque impriale : vers une socit dordres ? in: Annales HSS, mars-avril 2009, p. 342.
19
1.1 Autonomy
One of the premises of the theory of decline is that autonomy was essential for civic life in the polis.
Without autonomy a city could not be called a real polis. From this perspective the quality of the civic
life of a certain city is regarded as directly connected to the autonomy of that city. So when large scale
politics began to dominate the region this caused a serious problem for the civic life of the Greek
cities. The political aspects of the polis life began to degenerate in the Hellenistic period and continued
to do so under the rule of the Romans. According to the theory of decline the loss of autonomy was
disastrous for local politics. In this view, autonomy in its strict sense is the essential ingredient
without which the polis becomes an empty shell, causing a corresponding decay in other dimensions
of civic life.9
There have been several objections against this view on autonomy and the polis. First, the question
must be answered if autonomy was as important to the cities as is assumed in the theory of decline.
Second, it is hard to answer the question when the autonomy of the poleis had disappeared, if it ever
did disappear totally before the third century A.D. In describing the different ways in which scholars
have answered these questions it will become clear that the politics of the Graeco-Roman polis can
still be considered a serious subject of investigation.
We begin with the first question. Was autonomy essential for the Greek city? One of the scholars
who has studied the ancient city excessively is Mogens Herman Hansen. In one of his articles he
opposes the tendency among historians to see autonomy as a defining characteristic of the polis.
According to Hansen in the orthodox view on the Greek cities the concepts of autonomia and polis are
wrongly connected. The Greek word autonomia means literally living under one's own laws, but the
Greeks used the word more in the sense of being independent than only self-governing. When we
accept this definition of autonomia the cities in the Roman imperial period could certainly not be
called autonomous. Hansen, however, points to the fact that in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. many
poleis were dependencies and in the fourth century B.C. even most of them. The Greeks continued to
refer to these cities as poleis.10 So if the Greeks did not think of autonomia as a precondition for being
a polis and if autonomia could not be applied to all poleis even in the classical period, why should the
supposed loss of autonomy in the Hellenistic and Roman period necessarily lead to the disintegration
of the polis? For the larger poleis, such as Athens, Thebes and Sparta, the Hellenistic age did signify a
loss of power, but for many smaller poleis nothing much had changed. The smaller poleis may even
have benefitted from the fact that the Macedonians destroyed the supremacy of Thebes and Athens,
since they could no longer be the victims of the expansionist aggression of these larger poleis.11 It
would therefore be absurd to speak of the decline of the classical city according to the sole criterion of
international responsibilities.12
The second question, if and when autonomy disappeared, is even harder to answer. The
relationship between the cities and the Hellenistic kings has been described as being dominated by the
9 P. Harland, Art. Cit., p. 23. 10 M.H. Hansen, The Autonomous City-state. Ancient Fact or Modern Fiction in: Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis. M.H. Hansen
en K. Raaflaub eds. Historia-Einzelschriften 95, Stuttgart, Steiner, 1995, pp. 21-25, 43. 11 R. Strootman, Kings and Cities in the Hellenistic Age, in: Van Nijf and Alston, PCGC, p. 146. 12 M. Sartre, LOrient Romain: Provinces et socits provinciales en Mditerrane orientale dAuguste aux Svres (31 avant J.-C.
235 aprs J.-C.), Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1991, p. 121. Footnote 3.
20
latter. According to the theory of decline Hellenistic monarchs determined the fate and governed the
policies of the cities within their spheres. The political institutions of the cities therefore endured
only as hollow survivals. Although the discourse suggests otherwise the monarchs only posed as
advocates of liberty while keeping control and safeguarding their dominance. Seen from the
perspective of the theory of decline one could say that the poleis became the playthings of the great
powers. Eric S. Gruen disagrees with these conventional clichs, because they give a misleading
image of the nature of the relation between cities and kings. The many declarations in which
Hellenistic kings guaranteed autonomia, eleutheria and dmokratia cannot be explained away as mere
rhetoric or empty sloganeering. Seeing the subtle discourse between cities and kings as a faade is too
cynical. To prove his point Gruen refers to the occasion of the Isthmian Games of 196 B.C. in Corinth
on which the Roman general T. Quinctius Flaminus declared after beating Philip V in the Second
Macedonian war that the Greeks were to be free, subject to no tribute, and at liberty to govern
themselves according to their own ancestral laws. For the audience this discourse of autonomy was
very meaningful and their response was one of extreme joy.13 For Gruen this is a clear sign that these
declarations were more than just a faade.14 Moreover even if the declarations in which a polis was
guaranteed its autonomia, eleutheria and dmokratia and the freedom to govern themselves according
to ancestral laws can be seen as merely a faade, it remains true that these declarations were not
limited to the Hellenistic period. Such declarations were also made to the many cities in the classical
period that came to be in one way or another under the influence of the Persian and Athenian Empire
or the hegemony of the Spartans. It would therefore again be wrong to make too sharp a distinction
between classical and post-Classical cities.15
The relation between the cities and the Hellenistic kings was one of mutual benefits. The empires
of antiquity needed the cities as generators of surpluses for the many wars they fought. Besides that it
was extremely costly and time-consuming to besiege cities and success was never guaranteed. The
kings therefore preferred peaceful coalitions. Cities could gain protection from their enemies, grants of
autonomy and certain benefactions as trading privileges and exemptions from taxation. The Hellenistic
monarchs in turn gained the citys acknowledgment of their suzerainty, military aid and the pay of
tribute.16
1.1.1 The Impact of Roman Rule
When the Roman Republic conquered parts of the eastern Mediterranean the nature of their rule was
not very different. Polybius writing about the arche of the Romans did not mean the creation of
provinces and the subjection of the cities to tribute. He meant that everyone in practice must obey
Roman orders.17 The arche of the Romans was their right as military victors to decide whether or in
13 Pol. 18.46.5, 18.46.15; Livy 33..32.5, 33.33.5-7, 34.41.3, 39.37.10; Plut. Flam. 10.4, 12.2; App. Mac. 9.4. 14 E.S. Gruen, The Polis in the Hellenistic World, in: R.M. Rosen and J. Farrell eds. Nomodeiktes: Greek studies in honor of
Martin Ostwald, Michigan, Univeristy of Michigan Press, 1993, pp. 339-342. 15 Ibidem, pp. 339-342. 16 R. Strootman, Kings and Cities in the Hellenistic Age, in: Van Nijf and Alston, PCGC, pp. 142-146. 17 P.S. Derow, Polybius, Rome and the East, in: JRS 69 (1979), 1, p. 4.
21
what form a city or a kingdom might keep its independence.18 The Graeco-Roman poleis could
therefore hope to keep some form of independence. There was a whole range of privileged statuses or
favours the cities could acquire from the Romans. In what combination these rights normally existed is
difficult to tell, but we can distinguish the following most important grants. One of the possible rights
was libertas (freedom). This meant that the city was exempt from the jurisdiction, and the personal
visits, of the governor. Another right was immunitas, the exemption from taxation. A city could also
have the status of colonia, which automatically carried with it exemption from taxation, at least in the
early period of the Empire.19 An important factor for the status of a polis in the imperial period was the
role it had played in the civil wars prior to the formation of the principate. Although the poleis in the
Roman imperial period could not decide on big issues of peace and war, they were not necessarily
stripped of all of their powers.
Besides these formal grants there is another reason not to exaggerate the loss of autonomy. The
Roman authorities tended to avoid interfering in the affairs of the poleis. The Romans ruled their
empire in a rather passive and reactive way.20 This is not surprising taking into account the very low
number of Roman officials in the provinces. Both the province of Pontus and Bithynia (until the rule
of Marcus Aurelius) and the province of Asia were senatorial provinces and were therefore governed
by a senatorial governor. There was no large military force stationed in these provinces. In the
province of Asia there only was one proconsul, three legates and a quaestor. A small number
especially when contrasted with the large number of about 300 - 500 civic communities the province
of Asia contained.21 Garnsey and Saller therefore use the term government without bureaucracy in
describing the Empire. According to them the imperial rulings fell far short of a rash of general
enactments that drastically undermined the autonomy of local government institutions. The emperor
did not want a large bureaucracy or a systematical reorganisation of local governments.22
The province governor was in charge of defending his province and he judged the important
criminal and civil cases. When certain poleis had acquired the rights of libertas and immunitas they
could pretty much manage their own affairs. In order to do so they had, however, to avoid local
unrest.23 We can therefore conclude that the autonomy of the polis not totally disappeared. Certain
rights could be acquired by diplomacy to or from emperors. Besides that the polis kept on existing as a
political community whether it was truly autonomous or not.
According to P.J. Rhodes autonomy was in the Roman period very similar to autonomy under the
Hellenistic kings. Although the right kind of rgime sometimes was encouraged or required and
compliance with every command of the Romans had to be guaranteed, a city which did not provoke a
reaction of the authorities could pretty much govern itself. It is true that some inscriptions from the
principate suggest a position of greater subservience than in Hellenistic times. This portion of
evidence is, however, small in comparison to the rest that stays silent on the subject. For Rhodes the
conclusion must be that the Roman authorities could be, and sometimes were, involved in the internal
18 F. Millar, Polybius between Greece and Rome, in: F. Millar, H.M. Cotton and G.M. Rogers eds. Rome, the Greek World and the
East, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2002, III + p. 91. 19 F. Millar, The Greek City in the Roman Period, in: F. Millar, H.M. Cotton and G.M. Rogers eds. Rome, the Greek World and the
East, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2002, III + p. 113. 20 G.P. Burton, Proconsuls, Assizes and the Administration of Justice under the Empire, in: JRS 65 (1975), pp. 92106. 21 G.P. Burton, Provincial Procurators and the Public Provinces, in: Chiron 23, (1993), pp. 1328. 22 P. Garnsey and R. Saller, The Roman Empire : economy, society and culture, Berkely, University of California press, 1987, pp. 20
40. Citation from p. 38. 23 P.A. Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. 116 17.
22
affairs of the Greek states, and that as time passed this involvement tended to occur more frequently
and to penetrate deeper, but that this process was haphazard rather than systematic, and the Greek
states were not regularly reduced to a pretence of deciding freely what was in fact ordered by the
Romans.24
24 P.J. Rhodes and D.M. Lewis, The Decrees of the Greek States, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 545-547. Citation from 547.
23
1.2 Dmokratia
A second and for this thesis more important part of the theory of decline concerns the internal politics
of the Greek cities of the Roman period. In the classical period democracy meant that every citizen
could participate actively in politics through voting and participating in the ekklsia. One of the central
hypotheses of the decline theory is that this was no longer the case for the post-Classical poleis.
According to the theory of decline the roles of the ekklsia and the dmos diminished in the Hellenistic
period and with the advent of the Roman era democracy finally disappeared altogether. The death of
democracy caused the detachment of most citizens, especially those who were less well to do, from
civic identity and pride. In short the loss of democracy destroyed the relation of most of the citizens
with their polis and this damaged the civic life in the post-classical polis severely.25
The aim of this paragraph is to critically re-evaluate the evidence for and against the claim that
popular participation in the politics of the polis had disappeared by the Roman imperial period. First I
will recapture the different arguments that have been made in support of the decline of democracy.
The general view stated above is worked out at length by A. H. M. Jones26 and G. E. M. de Ste. Croix27.
Both authors stress the fact that Greek democracy degenerated after the classical period and that this
was a gradual process that started in the Hellenistic age and was completed somewhere in the Roman
period. After this I will go into more detail and consider some more recent attributions to the debate.
Jones account starts with the bright future of Greek democracy that seems to lie ahead at the start
of the Hellenistic period. Alexander established democracies in every city he conquered or liberated
from the Persians, whether they were tyrannies or oligarchies. In this way democracy became the
normal constitution of the Greek cities throughout the east. The kings who came to rule parts of the
empire after Alexander had died mostly followed his policy towards the cities. When Antipater and
Cassander tried to install oligarchies they became so unpopular that their adversaries could exploit the
situation. Jones puts it this way: Whatever devices the kings might invent to secure their control over
their cities, there was one which they could not use, the formal limitation of political power to a small
class. In the Hellenistic age democracy was the normal constitution for a Greek city and when the
Greek city spread over the former Persian Empire democracy rode along.28
This, ho