Introduction

The forty-fifth book of Livy’s History narrates the collapse of the Hellenistic kingdoms as autonomous powers. One sequence of events has particular relevance here. In 179 BCE, Perseus of Macedon came to power. He was the elder son of Philip V, who had sought unsuccessfully throughout his reign to thwart Rome’s growing influence and increasing interference in peninsular Greece. Perseus himself accepted war with Rome as the price of his independence in 171 and lost it by 168 bce (Derow 1989: 303-19). The Roman Senate dispatched ten commissioners to advise Lucius Aemilius Paullus, the victor over Perseus, on the organization of Macedonia. Paullus invited ten citizens of each city in Macedon to present themselves at Amphipolis to hear the results of his deliberations. A herald ordered those assembled to be silent. Paullus, who was completely bilingual, then delivered his judgment in Latin while seated in his curule chair, his lictors and attendants in array before him; the praetor Gnaeus Octavius translated his pronouncements into Greek.

Paullus and the Roman Senate ordered the Macedonians to be free, to keep their cities and territories, to use their own laws and elect their own magistrates. They were, however, henceforth to pay a tax to Rome. Macedonia was to be divided into four districts; the boundaries of these districts deliberately cut across natural boundaries formed by rivers and mountains. Four cities were designated capitals of these districts; there each district was ordered to organize a council. Intermarriage and transactions in real estate between districts were forbidden; gold and silver mines were not to be worked; the Macedonians were not to cut timber for ships or import salt. Cities whose borders were threatened by barbarians were permitted to retain armed guards; presumably, all other cities were disarmed (Livy 45.29). Paullus followed the recitation of this formula Macedoniae, or ‘‘schedule’’ for Macedonia, by delivering leges, laws: but what Livy in fact narrates is an extraordinary series of decisions by which the governance of individual cities and the regional councils was handed over to pro-Roman forces, while anti-Roman aristocrats were ordered to take themselves and their sons to Italy, there to dwell in exile (Livy 45.31-2). The Macedonians accepted their freedom with mixed feelings: to those whose business dealings were disrupted it seemed as though Macedonia had been torn asunder, ‘‘like an animal being dismembered limb by limb.’’ ‘‘To such an extent were even the Macedonians ignorant how great Macedonia was, how easily it might be divided, and how selfsufficient each part could be’’ (Livy 45.30.1-2).

The paradoxical freedom of the Macedonians came to an end in 146 bce. It would be nice to know more about Macedonian perceptions of their autonomy before and after Macedonia’s organization as a province in that year (Derow 1989: 319-23). Yet even without that information, Livy’s exceptional narrative can serve as a point of departure, for the tensions visible at every level of society, government, and commerce in Macedonia were replicated across the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. It is on the management of an empire thus created that we focus our attention in this chapter.