6 - Claiming Roman Origins

Summary

Unlike in the West where the Roman municipal model was almost uniformly spread over the various provinces, Greek cities in the East during the Imperial period were very proud of their own centuries-old political traditions and consequently were reluctant to adopt Roman institutions. However, many cities celebrated the emperor as their ‘founder’ or were renamed after a Roman emperor, such as, for example, ‘Kaisareia’. Other cities deliberately chose pictures referring to Roman foundation practices to appear on their coins (e.g. the plowing scene) or took—formally or informally—the title of ‘koloneia’, normally reserved for communities which were part of the Roman State. This chapter aims at examining which cities were ready to comply with the Roman colonial model, why they did so, to what extent, and what the meaning of their claim for Roman origins was. It argues that the issue of the compliance of Greek cities with the Roman constitutional model of a colony was a way for them to negotiate their position within the Roman empire and was an aspect of cultural interaction.

Much of the discourse about the privileged relationship between Rome and the Greek world, in comparison with other nations and cultures, relied on the alleged kinship and the common origin the Romans were claiming to have with Greeks.¹ For this purpose, the Trojan myth, since it was first borrowed from the Greeks in the third century BCE, has been continuously reshaped and reinterpreted by the Romans, depending on the immediate context, in order to support the view of a Greek origin for themselves.² But what about the opposite phenomenon? Were there Greek cities explicitly claiming Roman origins? Although most Greeks proved to be quite reluctant to admit that Rome possessed any significant cultural achievement, the acknowledgment of the rise of Roman rule as a shifting point for the Greek world can be observed in various fields. One may mention, for instance, the spread in the Greek world, as early as the beginning of the second century BCE, of the worship of the goddess Roma, as well as of the Roman foundation myths and of the she-wolf iconography, as the consequence of Rome’s interference into the Hellenistic world;³ the deliberate reference made by various Greek cities to the alleged kinship between themselves and Rome in order to support requests of privileges in diplomatic intercourse with the Roman Republic;⁴ the celebration by the Greeks themselves of the new era inaugurated by Augustus through his victory at Actium which was supposed to bring happiness and wealth to the entire world according to Augustan ideology;⁵ the early launch in the province of Asia, and subsequently the diffusion throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, of the imperial cult as the expression of the loyalty of Greek cities to Roman power;⁶ finally, the enthusiastic – and to some extent paradoxical – assumption made by Aelius Aristides that Roman hegemony, by unifying the Greek world, would have allowed the Greeks to end internal struggles and to live in peace.⁷

In what follows, I will rather focus on the influence of the political and institutional model of a Roman colony on Greek cities and will assess the use which was made by some cities of colonial symbols and status in order to claim Roman origins. The progressive Hellenization of the political institutions of the Roman colonies which had been settled in the Greek-speaking provinces, due to the cultural influence of their Hellenic environment, is a well-known phenomenon.⁸ But did Roman colonies in the Greek East have conversely any influence on the surrounding Greek cities? Unlike in the West, there were few Roman colonies in those provinces (around thirty by the time of Augustus),⁹ and the Roman municipal model was not widespread in the eastern part of the empire (there were only two municipia of Roman citizens in the Greek East,¹⁰ contrasting with the numerous occupational associations gathering Roman businessmen in Greek cities from the second century BCE). On the whole, Greek cities did not introduce public offices borrowed from Roman colonies into their constitutions,¹¹ and the presence of some Roman colonies in the Greek-speaking provinces did not lead to a Latinization of the surrounding populations, not even at a regional level.¹² Still, some Greek cities adopted various elements specific to Roman colonies or put emphasis on their refoundation by Roman emperors. Having the rank of a Roman colony meant for a local community to be a part of the Roman res publica within the provinces. This chapter will examine which cities were ready to comply with the Roman colonial model, why they did so, to what extent, and what the meaning of their claim for Roman origins was. I will argue that the issue of the compliance of Greek cities with the Roman constitutional model of a colony was an aspect of cultural interaction.

1 Celebrating Roman (Re)foundation: Roman Colonial Iconography in Greek Coinage

Greek cities in the Imperial period were allowed to continue to mint bronze coins. While the obverse side of the coins typically showed the portrait of the reigning emperor (local communities were probably requested to do so, even if the so-called ‘pseudo-autonomous’ coins suggest that there could have been exceptions),¹³ Greek cities were very proud to display on the reverse symbols of their glorious past and their fame. In most cases, reverses depicted the main deities traditionally worshipped in the various cities as well as mythological themes, or referred to the sanctuaries or to the ceremonies and games for which the cities were known. This trend towards celebration of local patriotism in the coinage was so common and the competition between cities was so high that this practice also influenced the Roman colonies which had been settled in the Greek-speaking provinces. By the early third century CE, most of these colonies had replaced the usual Roman symbols which had been found so far in the coinage of every single Roman colony all over the empire with depictions referring to local cults and myths and in some cases showing indigenous deities.¹⁴

I would like to consider here the opposite phenomenon and to see why some Greek cities chose to show on the reverse sides of their coins Roman colonial symbols instead of local ones, and what the meaning of those depictions was. I will focus on the most distinctive of the Roman colonial symbols, which is the scene depicting the very foundation of the colony with the founder acting as a priest, leading two oxen and plowing the original furrow which would have delimited the sacred area of the new community. Since it represented the ceremony performed during the formal creation of the colony – repeating the rite performed by Romulus himself when he founded the city of Rome – this scene was very common in the coinage of most Roman colonies, in the West as in the East, since colonies were part of the Roman State abroad.¹⁵ Now, a similar depiction can be recognized on coins struck by the Carian city of Tralles under Augustus. The obverse side bears the portrait of Gaius Caesar, while the reverse shows a pair of oxen led by a man plowing.¹⁶ The city of Tralles had been striking coins showing bovines for centuries during the Hellenistic period, and this was still the case under Augustus and even in the second century CE.¹⁷ But those were humped bulls and they were depicted in a way which was similar to Near Eastern iconography.¹⁸ This time, however, the presence of a yoke of oxen led by a man clearly hinted at a Roman model.¹⁹ The same plowing scene can be seen on coins of the city of Thessalonica. In this case, the choice of such a depiction can be explained by the immediate context. At that time, in 48 BCE during the civil war with Caesar, Pompey was staying in Thessalonica. Ancient sources tell us how Pompey acquired land in the town to convert it into a portion of the Roman soil. Such a legal fiction enabled Pompey and the senators who had joined him in Thessalonica to take auspicia and to act in the name of the res publica as if they had been in Rome.²⁰ The presence of the plowing scene on these coins seems to have referred to that precise event, when foreign territory was transformed into a part of the land belonging to the Roman people, as was usually done for the creation of a Roman colony.

The context must have been completely different in the case of Tralles. We know that the city of Tralles was severely damaged by an earthquake in 27 BCE and that the emperor Augustus helped the city recover from the destruction through substantial support. It was argued by Thomas Broughton that Augustus seized the opportunity to send Roman colonists to Tralles and to give them lands taken from the territory of the city.²¹ The plowing scene on the coin would have referred to such settlements. This assumption is still the common view on this issue in scholarship.²² The problem is that we don’t have any other evidence for the presence of a group of Roman colonists in Tralles. Tralles was certainly not transformed into a Roman colony on this occasion. As far as we can infer from the epigraphic evidence, the city only had Greek institutions in the Imperial period. The possibility that Tralles could have been an example of a double community – that is, a Roman colony existing next to a Greek city which would have been preserved – ²³ should be ruled out, since the coins showing the plowing scene bear a legend in Greek and were struck by the Greek city alone. There was actually a community of Roman citizens in Tralles (οἱ ἐν Τράλλεσι κατοικοῦντες Ῥωμαῖοι), but, as in many cities of Asia Minor, those were gathered into a local association of Roman businessmen run by a curator or ‘chairman’.²⁴ The existence of this occupational association in Tralles, even if we consider that it could act as a corporate body along with local Greek institutions, is insufficient to explain why the city chose to have the plowing scene, typical of the colonial foundations, displayed on its coins.

This scene, I think, was intended to stress the symbolic refoundation of the city after the earthquake of 27 BCE. The role of the emperor had been so crucial for the recovery of the city that Tralles was renamed after Augustus.²⁵ As shown by inscriptions as well as by the legends on the coins struck by the city, the official name of Tralles for several decades after that was Kaisareia.²⁶ Augustus himself was celebrated as the ‘founder’ (ktistes) of Tralles, as shown by the dedication of a statue in his honor by the city.²⁷ This points to a wider phenomenon: the use of imperial epithets in order to name Greek cities and the celebration of Roman emperors as founders or refounders of Greek cities. As in the case of Tralles, several other cities also called Kaisareia, like Sardis and Philadelphia, had received help from Tiberius after the big earthquake of 17 CE in the Hermos Valley.²⁸ We also know of dozens of cities in Asia Minor which were using, at least for a while, denominations patterned after the names Julius, Kaisar, Sebastos or other imperial names.²⁹ But not all these cities had effectively been founded or even rebuilt by Roman authorities. The cases where an entirely new city was created by an emperor, like Nicopolis in Epirus thanks to the synoecism performed by Octavian after his victory at Actium,³⁰ were quite rare. Moreover, the honorific title ktistes – and in some cases even the deliberately archaizing title oikistes – were most of the time given to emperors, not because of their material support or because of their completion of a building program but because of their grant of legal privileges, such as tax immunity or the organization of new games.³¹

The use of an imperial epithet as an official title by a local community could not occur without the emperor’s permission. As in the case where Greek cities wanted to give him exceptional honors – like the dedication of a temple – the emperor’s consent was probably requested and ambassadors were sent to him for this purpose, as shown by the correspondence between the imperial power and local communities.³² This means that imperial names such as Kaisareia were not imposed upon Greek cities by the central power, but rather were sought by local communities because of the prestige linked to such denominations.³³ Some Greek cities in Asia Minor were then eager to ask for a name suggesting a Roman origin, thinking it was an appropriate way to show their loyalty to the emperor.

In the case of Tralles, the damages caused by the earthquake of 27 BCE had been so serious and the response of Augustus so prompt (seven senators of consular rank are said to have been sent to Tralles by the emperor to deal with the reconstruction of the city) that the intervention of the emperor was thought to have been a ‘second foundation of the city’ (δευτέρα κτίσις τῆς πόλεως), as shown by an inscription praising one of the ambassadors who were successfully sent from Tralles to Augustus (who was staying in Spain at that time) to ask for his help after the earthquake. The epigram following the dedication celebrates this man as if he had himself refounded the city.³⁴ This epigram was later seen and copied by the historian Agathias in the sixth century CE.³⁵ On this occasion, Agathias wrongly assumed Tralles had been peopled with ‘Romans’ (Ῥωμαῖοι) after the city was refounded thanks to the emperor’s support.³⁶ This was probably, more than five centuries after the event, the only satisfactory explanation he had been able to find for why Tralles changed its name for Kaisareia at that time. In fact, the measures taken by Augustus must have been so massive and decisive in Tralles that the city thought the best way to express its recognition was not only to adopt the name of the emperor but even to display on its coins the distinctive scene of the foundation of a city according to the Roman pattern, in order to show that Kaisareia was now a new city.

The reproduction of the plowing scene on pseudo-autonomous coins minted by Tralles in the late first century, as well as the depiction of the Roman she-wolf together with the twins on coins struck under Gordianus III might be regarded – as in the case of Ilium where the constant presence of the she-wolf on the local coinage was meant to celebrate the kinship between this city and Rome through the Trojan myth – as a further sign of the privileged links the city of Tralles maintained with Rome since its refoundation.³⁷ Paradoxically enough, the grant of the status of a free city to Samos by Augustus while the emperor was staying on the island in 20/19 BCE seems to have been commemorated in a similar way, by using the colonial metaphor as a symbol for a new start and a refoundation with the participation of Roman power: Augustus was on this occasion praised as the “benefactor, savior and founder” of the city and an “era of the colony” (ἔτος τῆς κολωνίας), replacing the “era of Caesar’s victory” referring to the battle of Actium in 31 BCE which had been used thus far, was introduced from that time on.³⁸

2 Using Roman Phraseology: ‘Colonists’ in Greek Cities from the Hellenistic Past to the Roman Model

As Gellius makes clear in the famous passage of his work where the author makes the distinction between a colonia and a municipium and where he describes the colonies as ‘little Romes’, the Latin word colonia was a technical term and referred to the communities of Roman citizens settled on provincial ground as a result of a decision of the Roman central authorities.³⁹ Unlike municipia, which had been pre-existing cities provided only afterwards with institutions patterned after the Roman model, colonies were from the beginning parts of the Roman State. Therefore, the term colonia could not be used in theory to describe a community which would not have been formally created and founded by Rome.

Now, the word kolones transliterated in Greek characters from the Latin coloni occurs among the official titles of two cities from Phrygia Paroreius in Central Anatolia, Apollonia and Neapolis. Several inscriptions mention the Ἀπολλωνιᾶται Λύκιοι Θρᾷκες κόλωνες from Apollonia, as well as the Νεαπολῖται Θρᾷκες κόλωνες from Neapolis.⁴⁰ The few other instances of the transliterated form of colonus in Greek (κόλων) we have in the epigraphical record all refer to citizens of Roman colonies in the East (including ‘honorary’ colonies).⁴¹ Yet some papyri register koloneiai as a category of lands in Egypt.⁴² In this specific context, the word koloneia might have been used by analogy with the formal Roman colonies involving land allotment to soldiers (if we consider that some of those lands in Egypt seem to have belonged to veterans of the Roman army), or more probably with another meaning of colonia in Latin, which can refer as well to land ownership and especially to imperial estates.⁴³ The fact that Neapolis was located in an area surrounded by several imperial estates,⁴⁴ however, does not imply that the term kolones in the official title of the city should in any way be related to the nearby presence of imperial peasants or coloni, whose internal organization was distinct from the Greek city.

In order to explain the presence of the term kolones in Apollonia and Neapolis, it was argued by Stephen Mitchell that Roman colonists had been settled in those cities.⁴⁵ Such evidence was considered one of the major arguments supporting the theory of the existence of the so-called ‘non-colonial colonies’, to use the expression coined by Thomas Broughton in an article published in 1935 I already referred to earlier.⁴⁶ According to this theory, there were in several places throughout the Roman Empire groups of Roman citizens which would have been settled by the Roman State on the territory of foreign communities without enjoying the formal status of a Roman colony, hence the oxymoron ‘non-colonial colonies’. The problem is that this expression doesn’t match any known category in Roman public law. Admittedly Roman citizens, personally or even collectively, could in some cases receive within the territory of foreign local communities land lots which had previously been acquired by the Roman people and declared ager publicus. Thanks to the testimony of Cicero,⁴⁷ this is known to have been the case, for instance, for Pamphylian Attaleia where the recipients of viritane allotments might then have organized in a corporate body known as συμπολιτευόμενοι Ῥωμαῖοι.⁴⁸ This was also the case, as suggested by Benjamin Isaac, in Emmaus near Jerusalem. This place was used by Vespasian to allot land to 800 veterans after the Jewish War.⁴⁹ But in none of these instances is it granted that those communities of Roman citizens were called coloniae, since they apparently did not form autonomous political entities such as ordinary colonies.⁵⁰

To turn to the specific case of Apollonia and Neapolis, neither of these cities were double communities, with a formal Roman colony coexisting with the Greek city, as Stephen Mitchell has very convincingly demonstrated for Iconium or Ninica and as it might well have been the case for further colonies, such as Sinope and Bithynian Apamea, as well as for Nicopolis in Epirus founded as a Greek city, but also maybe along with a Roman colony at the same time, by Octavian.⁵¹ The word kolones was part of the official title of both cities, and no distinction was made between the kolones, on one hand, and the local population (Apolloniatai/Neapolitai), on the other. We must infer from these expressions that the citizens of Apollonia and Neapolis were at the same time ‘Lykians/Thracians’ and ‘colonists’, or even better that they were described as ‘Thracian colonists’ (in addition to ‘Lykians’ in the case of Apollonia). Each one of these words, in expanding the city’s title, contributed to expressing the identity of the local population. The first two (Λύκιοι Θρᾷκες) were ethnics referring to the alleged origin of the inhabitants of Apollonia. The first settlers of Apollonia in Hellenistic times were thought to have been people who migrated from Lykia to Pisidia and Phrygia, as well as Thracian mercenaries engaged by Seleukid kings. This view is supported by the continued use of Thracian names among local onomastics in Phrygia Paroreius until the Imperial period.⁵² In calling themselves ‘Lykians’ and ‘Thracian colonists’, the citizens of Imperial Apollonia were consciously remembering the Hellenistic foundation of the city as a military colony. The city of Apollonia even struck coins with the portrait of Alexander the Great celebrated as the ‘founder’ (ktistes) of the city in Severan times, although this was a spurious claim, and a cult to Seleukid rulers was kept – or maybe even rather reactivated – during the Imperial period.⁵³ Such attention paid to the self-promotion of local identity and of civic pride, as well as to local memories, was very common through Greek cities in the Imperial period, and it even included in some cases the worshipping of Hellenistic rulers.⁵⁴ So, why use the Latin word kolones to refer to the military colonists sent to Apollonia by the Seleukids?

The word kolones was probably borrowed by the cities of Apollonia and Neapolis from the neighboring Roman colonies which were quite numerous in Pisidia.⁵⁵ Pisidian Antioch, which was by far the most influential of those colonies, had common borders with both cities and was linked to them through the Via Sebaste. The colony presented itself in Greek as ἡ Αντιοχέων κολώνων Καισαρέων πόλις, Caesarea being one of the other names of Antioch dating back to the time when the king of Galatia Amyntas probably renamed its capital in honor of Augustus.⁵⁶ The word kolones, used in its official titulature by the powerful colony of Antioch, must have seemed fashionable to the citizens of Apollonia and Neapolis. This can explain why they preferred this terminology to a word like katoikoi, which usually described soldiers settled on land by a king in the Hellenistic period.⁵⁷ A confirmation of such use of Roman colonial terminology as a reference standard can be found in the Near East. As has been recently pointed out by Maurice Sartre, the same word kolonia (or koloneitai referring to some people coming from a koloneia) in Greek characters occurs in inscriptions from Southern Syria.⁵⁸ One of these inscriptions was dated by the era of an unspecified kolonia. The area where these inscriptions were discovered is too far from known Roman colonies (either veteran colonies such as Berytus or ‘honorary’ colonies such as Bosra or Damascus) for us to consider that this word could refer to them. It is more probable that the koloniai referred to in this context corresponded to the military settlements founded by King Herod in order to control the region and to fight against brigands. It is well known how deeply influenced by the Roman model the Herodian kingdom was: Herod’s army was organized according to the Roman one, and the king renamed his capital Caesarea after the emperor.⁵⁹ It is not surprising that Herod would have taken the Latin technical term colonia to decribe the military colonies he was founding in his kingdom. Then, in using the word kolones next to the ethnics ‘Lykians’ or ‘Thracians’, the citizens of Apollonia and Neapolis were seeking to benefit at the same time from the glorious past of their Hellenistic military foundation and from the prestige specific to the most up-to-date Roman terminology as far as colonization was concerned.

3 Becoming a Part of the Roman State: The Promotion of Greek Cities to Colonial Rank

Some cities not only reused Roman colonial symbols and terminology, thus distorting the original meaning of the word, in order to take advantage of the fame linked to the privileged status of a Roman colony, but they even went further and officially bore the title of a colony. Those cities are usually known as ‘honorary colonies’ in scholarship. The so-called honorary colonies were foreign cities which had been granted the official title of Roman colony without necessarily being settled with veterans, as was the case with the military colonies founded during the second half of the first century BCE.

The transformation of a Greek city into a Roman colony was sometimes meant to punish local communities which had supported the defeated enemy of an imperator or resisted Rome, as shown by the cases of the colonies of Sinope, Buthrotum and, above all, of Aelia Capitolina in Jerusalem.⁶⁰ This was never the primary purpose of the creation of a colony, but Roman authorities were encouraged to choose as a place for founding a colony preferably a city which in the past had shown hostility toward them. For most ‘honorary colonies’, however, the grant of colonial status seems to have been a reward rather than a punishment. This is obvious, for instance, for the cities of Selinous in Cilicia and Halala in Cappadocia which were elevated to colonial rank and renamed Traianopolis and Faustinopolis respectively after Trajan and Marcus Aurelius’ wife who died there, as a tribute to the emperor’s and to the empress’ memory.⁶¹ The same can be said of the birthplace of the emperor Philip, a village of the province of Arabia, which became by decision of the emperor the colony of Philippopolis.⁶² Similarly, Benjamin Isaac has argued that Caesarea Maritima, the capital of the Herodian kingdom, could also have been granted by Vespasian the status of a Roman colony (with the subsequent grant of Roman citizenship to its inhabitants) to thank the local population for its support during the Jewish War.⁶³ The grant under Claudius of the colonial status to Caesarea of Mauretania (modern Cherchell in Algeria), the former capital of king Juba, is another example of early concession of colonial rank to a city which was named after the emperor Augustus by a loyal client king, presumably as a reward in this case too.⁶⁴

Most ‘honorary colonies’, however, were Near Eastern cities which were given colonial rank after the civil war Severus had won against Pescennius Niger. While Severus deprived the cities which had supported Niger of their privileges and turned them into villages, like Antioch or Byzantium, some cities which joined Severus were awarded colonial rank, such as Laodicea. In the same way, Heliopolis, which had belonged up to this point to the colony of Berytus, gained its autonomy from that colony because Berytus had supported Niger.⁶⁵ Some other cities were granted colonial rank in the newly conquered province of Mesopotamia, probably because of their support of Roman troops.⁶⁶ It seems then that some cities were actively searching for the official grant of colonial rank by the emperor. The perspective of a general grant of Roman citizenship to the local population and the hope of getting fiscal privileges through the additional concession of the ius Italicum that some Eastern colonies were actually enjoying must have been a strong stimulus for those cities to look for the colonial status.⁶⁷

The adoption of the colonial status typically required a Greek city to display the title of colonia officially and, since it was the original language of the political entity it was now part of, to use Latin for public purposes, especially for legends on coins.⁶⁸ The adoption of the Latin language had been for centuries one of the distinctive characteristics of the integration of a political entity into the Roman State, especially when local communities of Italy were granted the rank of municipium after the Social War.⁶⁹ Even if, unlike in first-century BCE Italy, the use of Latin does not prove to have been systematic in the cities made Roman colonies in Severan times, these were not just cosmetic changes. The conversion of a city into a Roman colony meant the disappearance of the previously existing political entity and the replacement of most Greek institutions by Roman offices and laws. Colonial by-laws patterned after the Roman model (such as the lex Ursonensis)⁷⁰ were probably still given in the Severan period to the cities accessing that status. Werner Eck has recently published copies of the colonial law from Ratiaria in Dacia dating to the reign of Trajan and of the municipal law from Troesmis in Lower Moesia issued under Marcus Aurelius, showing that Roman authorities continued to issue colonial and municipal by-laws matching the Roman norms (and, in that case, respectively the examples known from the lex Ursonensis and from the Flavian municipia in Spain) in the second century CE.⁷¹ Because they were now part of the Roman State, the ‘honorary colonies’ struck coins not only with legends in Latin, as mentioned earlier, but even with the typical iconography of colonial foundation, especially the plowing scene. Actually, the cities which had been elevated to colonial rank were from a legal point of view full colonies, and no distinction was made, for instance, by the jurist Ulpian between those cities which were given the ius coloniae and the military colonies settled in the second half of the first century BCE by Caesar or Augustus.⁷² Hence the expression ‘honorary colonies’, convenient as it can be, does not reflect any legal reality in Roman administrative practice.

Unlike in the case of Tralles, where we have seen that there is no reason to think a formal colony had been settled, the plowing scene on the coins of the so-called ‘honorary colonies’ should not be simply understood as a metaphor for the promotion of these Greek cities to the rank of Roman colony. Since these cities were effectively given a Roman constitution and integrated into the Roman State, it is perfectly possible and even probable that the creation of those colonies had formally been performed through the plowing ceremony delimiting the borders of the new community according to the Roman rite. What is more, Eduard Dąbrowa has suggested that the vexilla depicted on the coins of some of these colonies, mentioning even the numbers of the relevant legions, were certainly referring to the veterans who had actually been settled in these cities after they were granted colonial status. This must have been the case, for instance, in Tyre, in Sidon and in Damascus.⁷³ The settlement of veterans in the territory of some of these cities must have then led to a deep reorganization of land property. The meaning of vexilla for the cities which had been turned into Roman colonies significantly differed from the Roman legion banners which were depicted on the coinage of many other Greek cities through Asia Minor in the Imperial period. In that case, Roman military symbols were simply intended to celebrate the victories of the imperial armies, and they should not be regarded as a clue for any settlement of Roman soldiers on the territory of those cities.⁷⁴

We can infer from the evidence discussed previously that the promotion to the rank of colony was not simply a matter of honor and, in any case, this was never an insignificant event. Becoming a Roman colony meant a heavy price to be paid by the Greek cities willing to enjoy the prestige of what was considered by them a privileged status. The loss of their centuries-long autonomy was compensated for by the possibility of becoming a part of the hegemonic power. This was for a local community the ultimate stage of integration into the Roman Empire.

Conclusions: Rome – An Empire of Many Cities

Scholarship has so far put much emphasis on the reluctance of most Greeks to acknowledge various aspects of Roman rule, especially with regard to cultural issues. One can mention, for instance, the relatively small number of Greeks who were able to speak Latin fluently;⁷⁵ the fact that educated Greeks – such as the orators of the Second Sophistic – deliberately avoided using Latin technical terms in their works even when they were describing Roman institutions; the lack of interest of Greek intellectuals in Roman history – with the exception of Plutarch – even when they were supposed to praise the Roman Empire, as Aelius Aristides in his speech to Rome;⁷⁶ finally, the rather harsh judgment of educated Greeks on Roman rule, such as Dio Chrysostom’s qualifying it as a ‘slavery’.⁷⁷

Despite this, and even if most local communities of the Roman Empire were very jealous of their autonomy, we have seen in this paper that some Greek cities were willing to appropriate the symbolism of Roman colonies and to enjoy the prestige, and even the status, of being a part of the Roman State. If the use of Roman colonial symbols or terminology on coins and inscriptions remained a very limited phenomenon, in each instance due to very specific circumstances – the refoundation of the city after an earthquake thanks to the emperor in Tralles, the regional influence of the colony of Pisidian Antioch on the cities of Apollonia and Neapolis, and possibly the grant of freedom by Augustus in the case of Samos – the promotion of cities to the rank of Roman colony can be noticed on a broader scale, especially in the Severan period.

The appetite of Near Eastern cities and of some cities of Eastern Anatolia for the Roman colonial status sharply contrasts with the situation in Greece, where local communities were eager to keep their old privileges and considered the rank of free city the most enviable status. This also differed from the situation in Western Asia Minor, where cities preferred to compete for various honorific titles granted or confirmed by the emperors, such as neokoros and metropolis, or for becoming the capital of a judicial district or for organizing new games acknowledged by the emperor.⁷⁸ While some cities in the Imperial period tried to prove their antiquity and their Greekness by maintaining their centuries-long autonomy or joining the Panhellenion,⁷⁹ others were ready to give up their autonomy to adopt the Roman colonial pattern and chose to get fame from their formal integration into the Roman State. This contrast shows the wide diversity of situations prevailing in the Roman Empire with regard to political identities and local traditions.

The way each local community saw its own position and role within what was now a world empire explains why some cities were trying to obtain the grant of colonial status by Roman authorities, while others preferred to preserve their ancient rights or to acquire titles which did not imply the loss of their autonomy as a Greek city. This variety of perceptions might lead in some cases to paradoxical claims, like Samos introducing a ‘colonial era’ to celebrate the refoundation of the city by Augustus through the grant of the rank of a free city (if my interpretation of the word koloneia in this context is correct) or, conversely, like Corinth joining the Panhellenion – that is, the institution representing the pinnacle of Hellenism in the Imperial period – although it was a Roman colony.⁸⁰ Significant differences in the way Roman rule was perceived can also be seen between local communities enjoying the same status, such as free cities: the elite of the free city of Rhodes, for instance, had little interest for gladiatorial games and was very reluctant to be designated by Roman names even if it actually was enjoying Roman citizenship (this proves to have matched exactly the attitude towards Romanization recommended by Apollonius of Tyana),⁸¹ while in Aphrodisias the most powerful citizens competed for organizing gladiatorial shows and the reliefs of the Sebasteion celebrated the military victories of the emperor.⁸² The same applies for the Western part of the empire: Gellius, in the passage I have already mentioned, reports that the citizens of the municipium of Italica in Spain, as the birthplace of the emperor, asked Hadrian to concede them the rank of a colony in order to be fully part of the Roman State, but that the citizens of the colony of Praeneste, on the contrary, requested the emperor Tiberius to permit them to regain the status of municipium they had enjoyed until Sulla settled veterans there after the civil war against Marius and in a way punished the city by turning it into a veteran colony.⁸³

As we can see, the problem for the cities of knowing whether or not they should become a Roman colony, whether or not they should adopt Roman colonial symbols, was not only a technical matter of political institutions. The Greek cities, as local communities, had been challenged by the emergence of the hegemonic power of Rome. They had to renegotiate their relationship with Roman power continuously, as made clear by their correspondence with the imperial authorities in order to get confirmation of their privileges. Though not as widespread as in the Western provinces, the Roman colonial model – among the many other titles and statuses local communities could search for – was one of the elements of the debate. This was also a cultural issue: were the cities ready to cope with the cultural influence of Rome? Paradoxically enough, the adoption of Roman colonial symbols or of colonial rank by Greek cities was used to foster and to assert local identities and patriotism: in celebrating its ‘second foundation’ through the plowing scene which was characteristic of the creation of Roman colonies, the city of Tralles was implicitly referring to its antiquity and was showing the favor it got from the emperor as a city; in using at the same time as their official denomination ethnics referring to their Seleukid origins and a Latin word borrowed from Roman colonies, the cities of Apollonia and Neapolis were building for themselves a mixed identity, including Hellenistic memories and up-to-date terminology patterned after the Roman model; finally, in choosing themselves to apply for the rank of colony, some cities were showing that they could decide independently what their position within the Roman Empire should be. These were all strategies for local communities to put themselves forward and to position themselves in relation to Roman power, of course, but also to their peers because of the competition between them. One empire, many cities. In this respect, the Roman Empire, despite the unification of the Greek world under its rule, continued to be a multipolar world.