Conclusion

The members of the local elite in this period are notable for their twin attachment to Rome and to their homeland. Firmly rooted in the reality of their times, they fully accepted Roman authority, whose benefits they recognized. The political integration of the elites via the civitas into the imperial system, and the promotion of various of its members to the equestrian and senatorial orders, are the counterpart at the individual level of the changes that took place in the social structure and the conduct of affairs of cities that justify, in the eyes of some scholars, the claim that political Romanization, with an aristocratic coloring, existed. The members of the local elite now completely ensured the functioning of traditional social and political institutions, particularly in the area of cultural and agonistic life, in the form of banquets, festivals, and games. They were appointed as mediators to function between their city and the Roman administration - in the words of Renoirte (1951), “agents de liaison” between two worlds - in the domain of both cultural life and political realities.

Benefactors attempted to perpetuate the influence of their families by establishing perpetual foundations, to anticipate and administer distribution of food or the holding of banquets. These habits were particularly common in Asia Minor and the Aegean world. The recognition by their fellow citizens is expressed in honorific decrees that maintain the civic memory of benefactions performed by the families of the elite by means of the continuity of the political duties assumed by the euergetes (benefactor), and by their continuing and increasing social role. It is the sign of an eternal familial faithfulness, reflected in the notion of “ancestral benefaction.” Civic honors and distinctions awarded in the past or in the present legitimated the rank of the family, its power, and its high social status in general. A euergetes was not merely a social or political personage. He was the model of a civic ethic whose constituent elements are to be deciphered through the eulogies, public laudatory speeches, that the city delivered on the members of its elite who belonged to a long tradition of civic values.

FURTHER READING

There is a very rich literature about elites under the Roman empire; the topic has been extremely fashionable for some decades. But the most profitable reading is the literature of imperial times, especially speeches or writings of famous orators and moralists (Dio of Prusa, Aristeides, and Plutarch), members of the upper provincial class. These sources can be supplemented by modern studies dealing with particular aspects; for instance, the cultural environment of this period and the intellectuals (Borg 2004 b; Desideri 1978; C. Jones 1978; Renoirte 1951; Salmeri 2000; Sterz 1994; Swain 1996; Tobin 1997), the imperial cult (Burrell 2004; Herz 1997; Lozano 2002; Price 1984) and policy (Meyer-Zwiffelhoffer 1999; Millar 1992), the social and political behavior of elites (S. Jameson 1966; Quass 1993; Strubbe 2003; Veyne 1992), and finally the bonds or rivalries between cities for primacy (Curty 1995; Hauken 1998; C. Jones 1999; Merkelbach 1978; Robert 1977).