Roman impact in Greece was an arbitrary mix of pillage and embellishment. Athens (Walker and Cameron 1989, Hoff and Rotroff 1997) provides a good example for the latter (following Text Box).
Figure 13.4 The gridplan of the Roman colony of Corinth was set within the pre-Roman city-walls. Also marked is the acropolis (far southwest) and the former Long Walls (to the north running to the coast), together with the Roman agricultural land-division for the colonists around the city.
R. Etienne et al., Archeologie historique de la Grece antique. Paris 2000, Planche XIV3.
A manifestation that Athens and other famed cities whose glory lay in the pre-Roman past could now count on income from admiring cultured benefactors, students, and tourists emanating from Italy, is the travel-guide prepared by the Romanized Greek Pausanias in the late second century AD (Elsner 1992, Arafat 1996, Alcock et al. 2001). For some 30 years he toured the Aegean to “present all things Greek” to the
Educated Roman, with an emphasis on artistic and architectural sights. This agenda became the main strength (and ultimately limitation) of the sub-discipline of Classical Archaeology during its development in the period 1750-1960.
Between 167 and 88 BC the Cycladic island of Delos, gifted to Athens by the Romans but as a free port to assist its own merchants, became one of the
The Roman Embellishment of Athens
In the second century AD, Roman elite culture particularly enthused over its debt to Greek civilization (the “Second Sophistic” movement; Spawforth and Walker 1985, 1986). Emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius cultivated a Greek appearance and sponsorship of the arts. Hadrian instituted a league ofGreek Cities, the Panhellenion, with claims to ancient prestige, and being an ardent fan of Athens made that city its base, perhaps in a large basilica near the Roman Agora (Hurwit 1999). He also improved Athenian grain and water supplies, and further reoriented the old, disorganized Classical town toward the growing number of Roman public monuments surrounding the new Roman Agora, where he constructed a library and “university” complex.
East of the Roman Agora Hadrian built a “New Town,”marking the transition with a still-surviving arch: on the “Old Town” side was inscribed “Here begins the City of Theseus” (legendary King of Athens) and on the “New Town” side “Here begins the City of Hadrian.” The most spectacular monument in Hadrian’s New Town was the Temple of Olympian Zeus (Olympeion), a gigantic structure which had been begun in Archaic times and fitfully worked on in the intervening centuries.
A more controversial figure later in the same century was the Greek millionaire Herodes Atticus (Tobin 1997, Welch 1998). Originating from Marathon in the Attic countryside he grew up in Rome, rising to senator then consul, eventually becoming an intimate of the philhellene Marcus Aurelius. Accused of embezzling a bequest of his father to the people of Athens, he replied with vast and expensive public monuments. Their success is measurable through their reuse today for similar events by Athens’ citizens and visitors: on the south slope of the Acropolis a great odeion or concert hall (venue for the modern Athens Festival, west of the Theater of Dionysos), and in the east of the “New Town” a stadium rebuilt in marble for the Panathenaic Games (restored for the first modern
Olympic Games in 1896). Herodes Atticus was also busy self-promoting in other high-profile venues: he refurbished the Delphi stadium in stone, whilst a large architectural setting (exedra) at Olympia displayed sculpture representing members of his and the Imperial family.
Clearly Roman gifts to Athens’ townscape reflect its new status as progenitor of Rome’s own cultural sophistication: lecture-halls, odeia, gymnasia, and libraries (Camp 2001). For intellectuals outside the circle of the Roman dynasts, Greece could also offer a prestigious platform to display claims to cultural achievement. The great Roman orator Cicero wrote that he was planning some monument near the Academy: “I am very fond of the city of Athens. I should like it to have some memorial of myself” (Camp 2001).
Athens was understandably slavish to powerful Romans (Hurwit 1999). Flattery for Nero led to a long inscription on the Parthenon exterior. A staggering 94 altars are known from Athens dedicated to the “god” Hadrian. Athens’ enthusiasm for cultivating Roman favor was however poorly matched to her impoverished resources, prompting widespread recycling of older statue-dedications and inscriptions, described by one commentator as “all expense spared.” A monument to her Hellenistic Attalid patron Eumenes of Pergamon, standing at the Acropolis entrance-gates, was briefly rededicated to Antony and Cleopatra, then again to their naval vanquisher Agrippa. More remarkably, the Erechtheion was rededicated to Julia Domna, the emperor Septimius Severus’ wife, whilst statues of the “god” Hadrian and Julia Domna were added to Athena’s statue in the Parthenon.
The “wandering temple” reflects another aspect of Roman impact in Greece. In Attica and other Southern Greek regions, survey and excavation indicate widespread rural depopulation of lesser nucleations and smaller estate-centers in LH-ER times (Lohmann 1993, 2005). This probably led to the running-down or even abandonment of their associated temples. During the Early Roman era a fifth-century BC Ares temple from the rural Pallene deme was dismantled and re-erected in
Athens’ ancient Agora, whilst temple architecture from elsewhere in Attica was removed to the capital. Walker (1997) however, challenges the standard view that the deliberate infill of the Athenian Agora was a political statement, replacing democratic opportunities by: “otium [leisure] in the Odeion, nostalgia in the reconstructed fifth-century temple, and flattery in the shrines and statues to an alien ruling elite.” She suggests rather that Roman novelties to the ancient urban fabric are products of the “classical revival” encouraged by Augustus, a reaffirmation of Rome’s cultural roots in the city most associated with its inspiration in Classical Greece.
Most prosperous commercial centers in the Mediterranean. It represents an early intimation of the way Roman power would remove old boundaries to human migration and the circulation of goods, as well as the key role played in the future Empire by entrepreneurial bankers and traders (van Berchem 1991, Etienne et al. 2000). Italians were perhaps dominant in Delian business, followed by Athenians and then various Eastern communities, whilst freedmen and even slaves were very active in finance and commerce for wealthy patrons. So cosmopolitan is this society that neither Hellenization nor Romanization adequately encompass it. Symbolic for all these developments is the Agora of the Italians: the largest complex on the island, more than 5000 m2, it possessed statues of Roman magistrates, a public bathhouse, and vast open and porticoed spaces for social and economic interaction. It has little room for traditional religious structures but appears to be devoted to the new god of international business.
Another example of outstanding Early Roman urban development is the city of Thessaloniki (Grammenos 2003) (Figure 13.5). Major rebuilding in modern Greece’s second city has allowed large-scale excavations to reveal a monumental Early Imperial city center. As so often, unpredictable politics in the late Roman Republic played their part: Thessaloniki backed the right side in the first-century BC Civil Wars and became the favored regional center for Roman rule at the expense of the older Macedonian capital of nearby Pella, which consequently declined rapidly. Wealthy Roman businessmen and landowners moved in and the town was already highly prosperous by the time of Augustus. Then followed a major building boom in the second century AD in which the vast new Forum was constructed (Velenis 1990—1995). By this time inscriptions indicate that local and Roman elites were well integrated into a dominant urban class. A general trend for Greek cities to allow their fortification walls to fall down or their stones to be recycled is recorded already in the first century BC for Thessaloniki by Cicero. Fortunately the city authorities rebuilt them in the less secure conditions of the Middle Empire, in time to withstand devastating barbarian raids into Greece by the Heruli tribe during the late third century AD. Athens was less successful, parts of the city including the Stoa of Attalus being sacked in 267 AD; sources however claim there was a spirited defense of the city by a local militia led by the philosopher Dexippos which finally drove off the invaders (Gregory 1992).
Argos in the Peloponnese exhibits typical ER developments (Pierart and Touchais 1996). Although becoming a minor regional center in the shadow of more prosperous and favored cities such as Sparta and Corinth, its small oligarchy of rich families is largely responsible for new buildings in the agora, an odeion (theater/concert hall) and new temples. Statues of the elite naturally deck the town, whilst one local worthy even acquired hero status and was buried with gold finery in a mausoleum in the agora. At Sparta, the local dynast Julius Eurycles, a favorite of Augustus, was probably responsible for the marble theater constructed ca. 30—20 BC: a grandiose design recalling Classical predecessors and the Dorian heritage of the city, it nonetheless introduced state-of-the-art Italian-style mobile stage machinery (Waywell et al. 1998). On Crete the Romans, probably to spite hostile Knossos which was made into a colony, elevated the minor town of Gortyn to become the island’s capital (Francis and Harrison 2003). In Early Roman times the Hellenistic town continued but a Roman-style
Figure 13.5 Development of Thessaloniki from a secondary center within the Macedonian Hellenistic state, to the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia.
D. V Grammenos (ed.), “Roman Thessaloniki." Thessaloniki, Archaeological Museum Publications, 2003, 124.
Figure 13.6 Argos: Roman bath complex.
M. Pierart and G. Touchais, Argos. Une ville grecque de 6000 ans. Paris 1996, 79.
Extension grew up outside it, fitted with an amphitheater, circus, and praetorium (governor’s residence).
Beneath the glitter and apparent prosperity of the major Romanized towns we can glimpse a major shift in wealth and influence toward Italian entrepreneurs ofboth aristocratic (senatorial) and wealthy commoner origin (equites), as well as to their clients amongst their peers in the Aegean cities. On Crete for example, sluggish in development during the Archaic to Hellenistic centuries, prosopographical study (using names to create collective biographies from inscriptions), evidences a flood of Italian and other immigrants to the island, who develop the economy to an international scale and promote key centers such as Gortyn (Baldwin Bowsky 1999). Such changes are associated with a widening gulf between richer and poorer citizens, evidenced by contrasted living standards and house sizes in towns, as well as the already-noted dominance in the countryside of larger estate-centers and villages (where perhaps tenants and wage-laborers rather than independent smallholders resided). For the wealthy, the “globalization” of commerce was aided by the Pax Romana: this brought security, a vast maritime traffic subsidized by the Empire, and at least from the second century AD a major system of long-distance roads (Rizakis 1996). Also positively, elite women appear in many cities to have gained even further influence on civic life than during Hellenistic times, doubtless tied to Roman customs impacting on the provinces. In Roman society women were given greater respect and allowed more freedoms than in traditional Greek society (see further Chapter 14). We find from inscriptions at many cities of the Roman East that females of wealthy families are allowed to hold varied public offices well beyond their older association with female cult-centers. These included becoming gymnasiarchs (gymnasium-managers), or the officials responsible for public revenues. As a result honorific statues and dedicatory inscriptions to elite women begin to form a significant part of the Roman “city of images”(van Bremen 1983, Lefkowitz 1983).
Because of the traumas of the Late Republic there is often little urban construction then in the Aegean except in new foundations, but recovery spreads in the following two centuries of the Early Empire. A pride in Greek traditions may explain why many cities continued to employ cut stone for public buildings and made little use of Roman concrete and brick (Tomlinson 1995), while traditional Greek athletic and cultural festivals remained extremely popular into the third century AD, with Romans eager to participate (Spawforth 1989). The Roman elite and emperors also left prominent constructions in famous sanctuaries. It is rather from the second century and especially during the Middle Imperial era of the third to fourth centuries that Italian innovative materials come into general use and Greek cities introduce more Roman building types, marking as seen earlier a wider process of Greco-Roman integration (Woolf 1994b). Roman games featuring gladiators and beast fights now became widely popular, causing modifications to existing stadia and theaters or calling for purpose-made constructions (Welch 1998). Theaters were built or rebuilt in lavish stone in the Roman style from the second century AD, with semicircular orchestras, a podium stage, and increasingly elaborate stone back-scenery ornamented with statues (where donors, gods, and emperors were promoted) (Tomlinson 1995). Aqueducts are a clear improvement to urban life which the Romans introduced on a scale without previous parallel (Etienne et al. 2000). The grandest is Corinth’s, running 100 km from the Central Peloponnese, but Nicopolis’ was more than 70 km and Athens’ 20 km. Crossing many former independent states most aqueducts remind us of the dissolution of borders, whilst the flourishing of public baths in Athens and elsewhere (Figure 13.6) both stimulated the (usually imperial) gift of aqueducts and shows the partial Romanization of Greek society.
World History
