4 - Collective identities

Summary

Introduction

The Greek polis was famously – and controversially – described by the sociologist W. G. Runciman as an ‘evolutionary dead-end’ (Runciman 1990). The Greek world in the fourth century BC comprised perhaps as many as a thousand tiny self-contained citizen-states (Hansen and Nielsen 2004: 53–4). As we saw in Chapter 3, the rise of the great Macedonian superstates (and later of Rome) had less of an impact than one might expect on the civic life and corporate identities of the Greek poleis. In many respects, life went on much as before; the largest Greek city-states – notably Rhodes and Syracuse – could even still pursue imperialist agendas of their own. Nonetheless, as Runciman rightly saw, the Greek cities’ intense ideological commitment to autonomy and independence made it difficult for them to adapt to the changed conditions of the Hellenistic oikoumenē. Mutual suspicion and micro-nationalism left the Greek poleis helplessly divided in the face of Macedonian and Roman power.

That said, the Hellenistic period did see sustained efforts by the Greek city-states to overcome their long-standing political and social disunity. Inter-polis diplomacy flourished, often couched in the language of mythological kinship (syngeneia) (Erskine 2002). New networks of social relations emerged, vividly attested by the hundreds of inscribed decrees honouring foreign judges or recognizing the asylia (‘inviolability’) of far-off cities (Ma 2003b). Perhaps most important of all, new or revived leagues of city-states emerged in various parts of the Greek world (Mackil 2013), most notably the second-century Achaean League, which brought almost a hundred different Peloponnesian towns together under a single federal umbrella.

As Fergus Millar has written, coinage in the ancient world was ‘the most deliberate of all symbols of public identity’ (Millar 1993: 230; cf. Howgego 2005). For this reason, coinage is a superb category of evidence for these new, distinctively Hellenistic patterns of cross-polis social and political relations. Just as the modern Euro embodies the federal ideals of a Europe determined on ‘ever closer union’ (in the words of the 1958 Treaty of Rome), so the common coinages of the Achaean or Lycian League are poignant testimony to the Greek cities’ attempts (unsuccessful though they would ultimately be) to build new solidarities in a newly globalized world of Eurasian empires.