Introduction

Within 500 years, from 323 BC (when Alexander’s death inaugurates the Hellenistic era), to the transition from Early to Middle Roman times ca. 200 AD, the changes the Aegean world underwent were out of all proportion to those of the preceding 500 years. At the start of this era, the Aegean was still a world of hundreds of city-states, of varying size and importance, plus larger confederacies and kingdoms focused in the more mountainous, less Mediterranean Northeast and Northwest of Greece. The premature disappearance of the invincible young King of Macedon in a distant part of his overstretched Asiatic empire (Color Plate 13.1a) could have precipitated its collapse, during which several powers in Greece might have reasserted their independence and prolonged the life of the autonomous polis (city-state).

This was not to be: historical parallels teach us that the flourishing of a host of tiny statelets is not unusual but generally occurs in the temporary absence of adjacent great powers, since the resources and cohesion of the former are generally doomed against the might of the latter. Within Greece this scenario had already been played out in Classical times, with sequent attempts at Aegean hegemony by Athens, Sparta, and Thebes. Alexander’s successor generals or “Diadochi” lost no time carving out more manageable dynastic kingdoms for themselves (Color Plate 13.1b), keeping as firm a grip as possible on the aspirations of the numerous Greek and non-Greek states, kingdoms, and tribes which had been conquered in the whirlwind Macedonian campaigns of the 330s and 320s. Despite losing the furthest eastern realms to resurgent native states and especially the Parthians, the Seleucid dynasty regrouped around the Levant from a base in Syria, the Ptolemies founded their dynasty in Egypt, and the Antigonids tried to control Greece from the traditional Macedonian homeland. True however to Greek tradition these Successor Kingdoms wasted resources fighting each other to extend their individual sway. A small but for the Aegean influential kingdom escaped from these power-blocs during the third century, that of the Attalid dynasty in Pergamon (Western Anatolia).

Nonetheless, the Aegean outside the state of Macedon was now a marginal region in a vaster Greek-dominated world in which innumerable local cultures were infused by “Hellenization” or central aspects of Greek lifestyle. Apart from a shared form of Greek language, the koine, this “New World” was tied by common ceramic styles, coins, domestic practices, and building types. In return, increased mobility led to a growing popularity, even in the Aegean, across the Hellenistic period (and enhanced further under Roman rule), for Eastern gods such as Isis, Sarapis, and Levantine forms of Aphrodite (Mikalson 2006).

The Complete Archaeology of Greece: From Hunter-Gatherers to the 20th Century AD, First Edition. John Bintliff. © 2012 John Bintliff. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Alexander’s unexpected death encouraged a large-scale revolt in Greece against Macedonian rule, but after Athens and other major southern cities were defeated and democratic constitutions annulled, the Macedonian successor kings sponsored the general installation of, or support for, rule by oligarchy or monarchy in the Aegean and the wider Greek world (Cartledge 1998). The city-state survived to manage its local affairs, but in foreign affairs poleis could at most maneuver beneath the favor or disfavor of the rival Hellenistic kingdoms, all of whom were active in the Aegean. Nonetheless for lengthy periods leagues of Greek states were established to try and counter the dominance of the dynastic kingdoms through equivalent merged resources, the most significant being the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues centered in their regions (van Wees 2000).

The organization of the Macedonian kingdom shows the contrasted nature of Hellenistic states from preceding city-states. An autocratic dynasty bonded its large territorial state through incorporating regional elites into the Royal Court and as elite cavalry. A large professional army led by full-time officers, who were rewarded with estates in conquered lands, mixed novel units (cavalry and light-armed troops) with a vastly more deadly version of the phalanx. All this was supported by economic resources in food surpluses and minerals far beyond the scale of Classical city-states (Osborne 2000). The immense wealth garnered during Alexander’s foreign conquests and the tributary demands made on dependent small states by the Hellenistic kingdoms, ensured the powerlessness of all but a few Aegean states; their financial and military capacity was no match for the Hellenistic superpowers. The progressive decline of the citizen hoplite-army occurred from the fourth century, with mercenaries widely employed both within and against the standing armies of the Hellenistic dynastic states. With city-states no longer reliant on the middle, hoplite citizen-class, inequalities in landholding caused decreasing concern and the era sees widespread evidence in historic sources and rural survey for the decline of the free peasant class and a displacement of control over the landscape toward wealthy landowners. This can also be tied to the visible differences now permitted between the urban houses of the rich and those of other citizens, and a relaxation on displaying wealth in tombs.

In the second century BC wars within and between these Hellenistic kingdoms provided an excuse for a new aggressive, expansive power, Republican Rome, to intervene in the politics of the Eastern Mediterranean. Over the following two centuries what now seems a relentless absorption of the Hellenistic world by Rome took place. Both ancient and modern historians see the sack of Corinth in 146 BC, with the abolition of the Macedonian state and the creation of the first Roman province in Greece covering the Northern Mainland, as the effective arrival of Rome as the lord of the Aegean. Like the Diadochoi before them, the Late Republican Roman conquerors benefited from gaining control over the stored-up wealth of the rest of the Mediterranean (Howgego 1992). This fed their irresistible colonial expansion, both in military terms, but also to the economic advantage of Italian settlers in new provinces such as the Aegean, where upper - and middle-class immigrants invested in estates, commerce, and industry, internationalizing the leading sectors of Greek life. Finally with the defeat of the last Ptolemy, Cleopatra at Actium (31 BC), and the complete dominance of the first Roman emperor, Octavian-Augustus, over the Eastern Mediterranean world, from Greece via Anatolia and Syro-Palestine to Egypt, the total suppression of Aegean autonomy both in internal and external affairs was enforced under Roman rule. Administrative authority at the city level was delegated by Rome to local elites under the watchful eye both of provincial governors and of the emperor and senate in Rome itself.

The second century BC had witnessed prolonged, diffuse warfare between Rome and various East Mediterranean powers of Hellenistic origin, in which vast territories and innumerable cities were laid waste. In the first century BC civil wars between Roman warlords exacerbated this: Marius and Sulla, Caesar and Pompey, the Triumvirate and Caesar’s assassins, finally Octavian and Mark Antony. Much of this took place in the East. Whilst therefore Roman expansion into Western Europe stimulated rapid prosperity in town and country, frequently the opposite was the case in the previously flourishing world of the Aegean city-states and ethnos states, and the Hellenized Eastern Mediterranean kingdoms. The historical and archaeological record for the Late

Hellenistic era (ca. 150—31 BC), is unsurprisingly disruptive at province and city level.

For the Late Hellenistic-Early Roman Imperial era (LH-ER), a developmental scenario for Rome’s Eastern Provinces is also appropriate to many (but not all) regions of Greece. It sees an early phase of often brutal disjunction resulting from the local impact of Rome (at varied moments regionally between the second century BC to first century AD), when destruction or limited growth, if not stagnation, are apparent in town and country. This is followed by stabilization and greater prosperity in Middle Roman Imperial times (second to fourth centuries AD).

By the first century AD all the Roman provinces benefited from internal imperial peace, the Pax Romana, whilst commercial networks prospered from growing income and demand in the recently acquired Western and North African provinces. Till the late second century AD we might expect Greece in this Early Roman era to still be recovering from the internal decline of Late Hellenistic times in many regions, and the violent disruptions of the same period associated with Roman impact.

As the Aegean settled into Roman Imperial rule, a reorientation of urban foci was soon evident. Instead of the many hundreds of city-states which had formed significant centripetal (local focus) tendencies for regional populations, a small number of key administrative centers dominated territories of a much larger scale (Alcock 1993).The creation ofnumerous Roman colonies, such as refounded Corinth and Patras, and a major new city in Northwest Greece at Nicopolis (designated a Roman colony although largely made up of displaced Greeks from a wider region around), were amongst this select set of towns. Other favored cities were Thessaloniki in Northeast Greece and Knossos and Gortyn on Crete (see Figure 13.2).

“Romanization” is a significant concept in assessing the character of Early Roman (ER) Greece. It brought major political change and the penetration of Roman tax-raising, economic systems, and cultural influences. There were also more direct local interventions: the founding of colonies of retired Roman soldiers or other Italians. In return, as the Roman poet Horace remarked, “Captured Greece subdued her fierce conqueror, and introduced the arts to rustic Latium” (Epistles 2.1.156). Greece “captured” Rome in cultural terms, since the Roman elite, including several emperors, cultivated a cultural persona based on idealized Classical-Hellenistic Greek art, architecture, and literature, and forms of social interaction such as luxurious social dining and palatial private homes. However, as far as the Aegean is concerned, what not long ago was seen as a positive advance when Greece joined the Roman Empire, is today viewed more critically in the light of the violent breakdown of society in very many cities in the early phase, and then the dramatic contrasts in wealth within and between the various Aegean regions during later centuries of Roman sway. Significantly, Roman admiration for Greece, “Philhellenism,” was insufficient to foster sympathetic treatment of the bulk of its people, Athens excepted: “general attitudes to Greeks and matters Greek had little impact on actual policy” (Briscoe 1986, 94). That Roman domination, although eventually bringing welcome peace to Mediterranean peoples, was also driven by the economic self-interest of the conquerors, underlies Pliny the Elder’s writing (Natural History 14.2): “Everyone is aware that as a result of the world being united under the majesty of the Roman empire life has improved thanks to trade and the sharings of peace.” A similar materialism, though likewise tinged with accurate realism of the advantages to the provinces of Roman technological improvements, appears from another first-century AD author Julius Frontinus, who comments that the Egyptians made useless pyramids, the Greeks much-admired but also useless monuments, whilst the Romans made innumerable and necessary aqueducts (Doukellis et al. 1995).

It seems likely that outside of the numerous Roman colonies in Greece, Roman power and culture in the period 200 BC to 100 AD were often unpopular amongst the general population, although the local elite cultivated influential Romans whether politicians, generals, traders or bankers. This phase however gave way by the second century AD to an acceptance of Rome as a master under whom many cities could flourish, helped by intermarriage having created a new international ruling-class in the Aegean. Not only Augustus in the first century BC, but later phil-hellene (Greece-loving) emperors of the second century AD such as Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, promoted Greek culture as a formative inheritance adopted by Roman civilization. Marcus Aurelius’ contemporary Pausanias wrote a travel-guide to Greece, where the Aegean becomes a past unity akin to a museum landscape (Elsner 1992). In response, Greek elites copied Roman custom in stressing an illustrious family-tree, through genuine or spurious connections to famous names from the Greek Classical era (Luraghi 2008). Significantly in the Early Empire it was only ambitious Greeks of status who adopted Latin names, in order to further their careers outside their immediate Aegean environment.