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By the time that the Romans began to make their presence felt in the Greek east, the original elan of the hellenistic kingdoms had already begun to weaken. Despite the achievements of Antiochus III and the impression created by his eastern march into central Asia (see p. 123) the Seleucid monarchy was under pressure from the Parthians in the east and from a series of internal revolts, and in Egypt the power of the Greek ruling caste was gradually being eroded to the advantage of the native priesthood. The importance of these factors as elements in the disintegration of the hellenistic state system is however minimal in view of the decisive effects of the Roman intrusion. This began with the First Illyrian War in 229 and within a few decades subordinated all the hellenistic centres; of power to the dictates of the Roman Senate. The character of the Romans and the values and organization of their state set them apart from the Greeks and indeed from all the other peoples of the hellenistic world. Rome was a highly militarized state in which the values of the ruling aristocracy were closely linked to military achievement. Repute, gloria, was the reward of virtus, manly courage, expressed in service to the patria by the holding of high office and the waging of war. Claims to have success recognized by the award of a ceremonial triumphal procession were measured in terms of booty won and enemy slain.

Some of the earliest known Roman inscriptions commemorate the military achievements of Roman consuls.

Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, Gnaeus' begotten son, a valiant man and wise, whose fine form matched his bravery

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most closely, was aedile, consul and censor among you; he took Taurasia and Cisauna, in Samnium; he subdued all the land of Lucania and brought away hostages (CIL i, 2, i = Remains of Old Latin, iv, 2).

This verse epitaph on a Scipio who was consul in 298 exemplifies the values of a warlike and aristocratic society.

The Illyrian wars were not Rome's first contact with the Greek world. From the sixth century onwards the Latin city had been subjected to Greek influence through the Greeks in Campania and also, indirectly, through Etruria, though the Romans seem always to have had the ability to take what they needed from the Greeks, often changing its character in the process. The word triumphus for example was an early borrowing from the Greek thriambos, a hymn to Dionysus,' but the triumph was an institution peculiarly Roman. There were Greek vases in sixthcentury Rome and by the fifth century the Dioscuri were being worshipped at nearby Lavinium. The Greeks too were not without knowledge of Rome. In the fifth century Hellanicus of Lesbos recorded a version of the founding of Rome by Aeneas (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, i, 72, 2); and a century later Theopompus, Aristotle, Heracleides Ponticus and Theophrastus all knew of Rome's existence; indeed Heracleides asserted falsely that Rome was a Greek city. Nor was this knowledge surprising, since by the end of the fourth century the Romans had already expanded into central and southern Italy. The Samnite Wars (to which Scipio Barbatus' epitaph refers) brought them up against old-established Greek settlements around the toe, heel and instep of Italy and from z8o to 275 they were involved in a war against Pyrrhus of Epirus, a Greek condottiere of the generation following Alexander and related to him, who had brought his army to Italy to fight for Tarentum. The failure of Pyrrhus to stem the Roman advance led to Roman control of all the southern and central part of the Italian peninsula and from now onwards the hellenistic world had to take serious note of the Romans.

In 264 they clashed with Carthage over the control of Messana

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on the Sicilian Straits. The sequel was the long First Punic War (264-241) against the main non-Greek state in the Mediterranean. It ended with Rome as a naval power and in possession of Sicily. It suited the Romans not to annex the whole island. Hiero II, the king of Syracuse, was confirmed as ruler of a large area in the east of the island and remained a loyal client prince until his death in 215. The western half of the Greek world - Sicily and southern Italy - was now squarely within the Roman sphere of control and the Greeks of the eastern Mediterranean were well aware of what was happening. There were of course regular trading links beiween east and west, as the many Rhodian vase handles found in southern Italy and dating from around 300 indicate. A 'Roman'ship picked up Aratus of Sicyon in Greek waters in 252 (Plutarch, Aratus, 12) - perhaps it was really from southern Italy, for Italians soon learnt to exploit the name of Rome - and a Roman figuies as proxenos on an Aetolian list of 263 (IG, ix', i, 7a, 1. 51). In particular there appear to have been links between the Roman west and the Ptolemies. Hiero's taxation system, for instance, which was later taken over by Rome (our knowledge of it rests mainly on Cicero's famous orations against Verres, a corrupt governor of Sicily), exhibits many parallels with the Revenue Laws of Ptolemy II (see pp. 110-111). The relations between the two kingdoms were close and although the Revenue Laws lay down a sixth as the proportion of the products of vineyards and gardens to be paid to the government and Hiero's system a tithe, there is mention of a tithe in two places in the Revenue Laws (P. Rev. Laws, cols. 24 and 8o) and a tithe is also mentioned on an inscription of Telmessus, dated to 240, when it was Ptolemaic. It is now known, moreover, that the cities and rulers which granted asylia to the temple of Asclepios in Cos in 242 included Naples and Elea in Italy and Camarina and Phintias in Sicily (Abh. Berlin. Akad. (195 2), 1). There can be little doubt that the approach by the sacred delegates of Cos had the approbation of Rome, and Cos will have been within the Ptolemaic sphere of interest at this time.

Roman forces first crossed the Adriatic in 229 in a police action against the Illyrians.

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This is a matter not to be lightly passed over but deserving the serious attention of those who wish to pin a true view of the formation and growth of the Roman dominions (Polybius, ii, 2,2).

The conflict arose out of Illyrian piracy. The Romans confronted the Illyrian queen Teuta with an ultimatum which was almost bound to lead to war even had the Illyrians not murdered one of the Roman envoys. A successful campaign left Rome with a group of friendly states closely linked to her - Corcyra, Apollonia, Epidamnus, Issa, and the Parthini and the Atintani on the Illyrian mainland (Polybius, ii, 12,4-8). Thus by 220 and the start of the war with Hannibal the Romans had already made their first modest contact with the Greek world east of the Adriatic and established friendly relations with some of the leading states of Greece proper. In 219, simultaneously with the events in Spain which precipitated the Second Punic War, the Romans sent over a fresh expeditionary force against Demetrius of Pharos, a local Illyrian dynast who had become a friend of Rome in 229, but had since kicked over the traces by sailing south on piratical expeditions in defiance of the treaty made with Teuta. Demetrius was expelled and the Romans took over Pharos and strengthened their grip on Illyria.

II

Polybius chose the year 220 as the starting point for his main narrative of the events which led the Romans from the disasters of the first years of the Hannibalic War to control over 'the whole inhabited world in almost fifty-three years' (see p. 16). We can trace four broad stages in their advance in the east: (a) and (b), the two wars against Philip V of Macedonia (211-05 and 200-197); (c) the war against the Aetolians and Antiochus III of Syria (192-88) and (d) the war against Perseus of Macedonia (172-68). Roman motives in fighting these wars have been and still are extremely controversial; they are not however relevant to our

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present enquiry, which is directed rather towards tracing the stages of Roman penetration and assessing its effect on the cities and monarchies it encountered.

The First Macedonian War broke out when Philip V, in the hope of securing territory in Illyria, made a treaty with Hannibal, who after three remarkable victories at Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae, had reached an apparently dominant position in his war against Rome in Italy (summer 215). The threat which that war extended to the states east of the Adriatic had not gone unnoticed by intelligent Greeks. Since 220 a war had been in progress between two coalitions centring on the Aetolian League and the Achaean League (with Philip V and the Macedonians) respectively. At a conference called at Naupactus to end this war in 217 Agelaus of Naupactus, an Aetolian, made a striking plea to close the ranks.

It is evident even to those of us who give but scanty attention to affairs of state that whether the Carthaginians beat the Romans or the Romans the Carthaginians in this war, it is not in the least likely that the -victors will be content with the sovereignty of Italy and Sicily, but they are sure to come here and extend their ambitions and their forces beyond the bounds of justice ... If once you wait for these clouds that loom in the west to settle on Greece, I very much fear lest we may all of us find these truces and wars and games at which we now play so rudely interrupted that we shall be fair to pray to the gods to give us still the power of fighting with each other and making peace when we will, the power in a word of deciding our differences for ourselves (Polybius, v, 104, A).

It has been argued that Agelaus' speech was made up by Polybius, writing when the implicit 'prophecy' had already become reality but the arguments are on the whole stronger for accepting the genuineness of Agelaus' intervention, for it is rather improbable that Polybius would have chosen one of the hated Actolians as a mouthpiece for his own views.

Philip's interest in Rome about this time receives interesting

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confirmation from the letter which he wrote to Larissa two years after the Peace of Naupactus, and in which he quotes the Romans as a precedent for a liberal policy towards recruiting new citizens (see pp. 150-0. Once the war with Aetolia was off his hands he was free to turn his attention to Illyria and the conflict with Rome. The treaty which he made in 215 with Hannibal had limited aims and was mainly designed to secure his position in Illyria, as the following clauses show:

As soon as the gods have given us victory in the war against the Romans and their allies, if the Romans ask us to come to terms of peace, we (sc. Hannibal and the Carthaginians) will make such a peace as will comprise you too and on the following conditions: that the Romans may never make war upon you, that the Romans shall no longer be masters of Corcyra, Apollonia, Epidamnus, Pharos, Dimale, the Parthini or the Atintani (Polybius, vii, 9, 12-13).

Incidentally, these clauses also show that neither Philip nor Hannibal envisaged that the war would see the extinction of Rome.

Faced by the embarrassment of an additional war in Greece the Romans in 211 made a treaty with the Aetolians, some clauses of which have been preserved in a fragmentary inscription found at Thyrrheum in Acarnania.

. . against all these ... the magistrates of the Aetolians shall take such action as he Q) would have done. And if the Romans shall seize any. cities of these peoples by force, as far as the Roman people is concerned it shall be permitted to the Aetolian people to possess these cities and their territory; but whatever the Romans seize other thin the city and its territory, the Romans shall have this. But if the Romans and the Aetolians take any of these cities together, as far as the Roman people is concerned the Aetolians may keep the cities and their territory; but whatever they take other than the city, both shall possess it jointly. If any of these cities go over to or

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join the Romans or the Aetolians, as far as the Romans are concerned the Aetolians shall be allowed to take over these men, cities and lands into their confederation ... autonomous ... for the Romans ... peace (SVA, 536).

This compact and the nature of the war which followed it aroused great resentment among the Achaeans and Philip's other allies, for while it showed the Romans to be uninterested in annexing territory, itmnderlined their zest for loot and plunder, including human plunder. The savagery with which they waged war in Greece (they sacked the Achaean city of Dyme and enslaved its population (Livy, xxxii, 22, 10)) won them much ill will which it subsequently required a determined propaganda campaign to eradicate.

The First Macedonian War ended in 205 with the Peace of Phoenice, made after the Aetolians had already concluded a separate peace with Philip, but it was not to last. In 200 a Roman commander was again in the Balkan peninsula and this time Philip was attacked within the frontiers of Macedonia. The Second Macedonian War (200-197) was noteworthy for the Roman exploitation of the theme of Greek liberty (for its earlier use by Antigonus I and its subsequent use as a slogan see pp. 51-2, 93). At various crucial points in the war 'freeing the Greeks' was put forward as a prerequisite for any settlement and the Roman victory Of 197 was followed by the declaration of Greek freedom, already quoted on p. 08. The reality was different. The war had in fact placed a considerable constraint upon the independence of the leading Greek states, the Aetolian and Achaean Leagues. In addition the dominant position of the Romans was already affecting cities as far away as Asia Minor, who now began to look to the Senate to solve their problems.

This is well illustrated by an inscription of 106 from Lampsacus on the Asian side of the Hellespont, which records a decree honouring a citizen, Hegesias, who had undertaken a dangerous mission which everyone else had declined.

Having been elected and judged worthy by the people he

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thought nothing of the dangers involved in being abroad but counting his own affairs of less importance than the advantage of the city, he went abroad into Greece and along with his fellow-envoys met the Roman commander in charge of the fleet, Lucius (sc. L. Quinctius Flamininus, brother of the general) and explained to him at length that the people (sc. of Lampsacus) being kinsmen and friends of the Roman people had sent them to him and that in company with his fellow envoys he urged and begged him, since the Romans were our kinsmen, to take thought for our city, so that whatever seemed advantageous to its people might be brought about, for it behoved them (sc. the Romans) always to protect the interests of our city owing to our kinship with them and owing to the fact that the people of Massalia, who are friends and allies of the Roman people, are our brothers. And when they had received a suitable answer from him (sc. L. Flarnininus) they dispatched this in its entirety to the city; as a result of which the people were in better heart. For in this he (sc. L. Flarnininus) made clear that he acknowledged our relationship and kinship with the Romans and promised that if he established friendship or exchanged oaths with any party he would include our city in these. and would maintain our democracy, autonomy and peace and would do whatever might advantage us, and that if anyone tried to injure us he would not allow it, but would prevent it ... And [Hegesias] having, along with -his fellbw-envoys met the treasurer in charge of the fleet (sc. the quaestor attached to L. Flamininus) and having persuaded him to be of continuing assistance, received from him too a letter to our people, and knowing this to be advantageous incorporated it in the official dossier . . . (here a line is missing) . . . and [wishing to accomplish everything] concerning which he had the decrees, he sailed to Massalia, a long and dangerous voyage, and there coming before the Six Hundred (sc. the Council in that city) he requested and brought it about [that he received envoys] to Join him in his embassy from Massalia to Rome; and judging it useful they asked for and received from the Six Hundred a

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helpful letter on our behalf to the people of the Galatian Tolistoagii. And having arrived in Rome with his fellowenvoys and those sent from Massalia and having had an interview with the Senate along with them, he heard (sc. the Massaliotes), declaring their goodwill and kind disposition towards us and renewing their existing friendship with us and explaining to them (sc. the Senate) that they are brothers of our people and that their goodwill arises out of their kinship. And he (sc. Hegesias) also made clear about [the situation] and the matters concerning which the people sent this embassy and together with his fellow-envoys he urged them to take thought for the safety of their other friends and kinsmen and to protect our own city because 0; f our kinship and the existing ties of goodwill between us and the letter of introduction which we had from the Massaliotes, which merited a reply advantageous to the people; and upon the envoys urging that they might be included in the treaty which the Romans made with the king (sc. Philip V), the Senate included us in the treaty with the king, as they also write, and concerning all other matters the Senate referred them to the Roman consul, Titus (sc. T. Quinctius Flarnininus, in fact proconsul at this time) and the ten ... And on reaching Corinth with ... and Apollodorus he met the general and the ten and having spoken to them about the people and having urged them with great zeal to take care on our behalf and to contribute to our preserving our democracy and autonomy (there is an anacoluthon here); concerning which he received a ... decree and letters to the kings (probably Eumenes of Pergamum and Prusias of Bithynia) (Syll., 591).

The prolixity and repetitiveness of this inscription may reflect the incompetence of those drafting it, but it also gives some idea of the tedious harangues to which Roman commanders, legates and Senate began to be subjected from now on. It also throws light - and it is for this reason that it seemed worthwhile quoting it at length - on the steps which a Greek city in Asia thought it advisable to take in 197/6 on the eve of the Roman peace with

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Philip to obtain the goodwill of the Romans. The reason is not far to seek. Though nowhere mentioned in the surviving part of the inscription, the danger Lampsacus feared came from Antiochus III, who at that very time was proceeding against Smyrna and Lampsacus. Hegesias' embassy, which took him to Greece, Massalia, Rome and back to Greece to Flamininus and the ten commissioners (sent to supervise the peace), must have begun in 197. But from Livy we learn that in 106, when Antiochus was attempting to compel all the cities of Asia Minor to accept his suzerainty,

Smyrna and Lampsacus asserted their freedom and there was the danger that, if they were conceded what they claimed, other cities in Aeolis and Ionia would follow the lead of Smyrna, and others on the Hellespont that of Lampsacus (xxxiii, 38, 3 ff.).

Already in 197 Lampsacus in her dilemma had turned to Rome. The Lampsacenes were regarded as akin to the people of Ilium and they in turn claimed kinship with the Romans because of the foundation of Rome by Trojan Aeneas. The Massaliotes were 'brothers' of the Lampsacenes since both cities were colonies of Phocaea. There is no evidence, as some scholars have thought, that Lampsacus was in danger from the Galatian Tolistoagii. Hegesias merely used the occasion of his visit to Massalia to obtain a letter from this great city, which stood in an area surrounded by Gaulish peoples, and was influential also with the Gauls of Asia Minor, to smooth relations with the latter, perhaps with a view to hiring mercenaries (though that is speculation). This inscription thus illuminates very clearly not only the manner in which Rome was being drawn into the affairs of Asia, but also the elaborate network of relationships which the Romans had to take into account in their new diplomacy.

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III

The war with Philip left the Aetolians hostile and disgruntled. They regarded Cynoscephalae as largely their victory, yet the Romans brusquely rejected their claims to several cities in Thessaly which had belonged to Philip. At the same time the advance of Antiochus III to the Hellespont was affecting- his relations with Rome. The two currents converged and in 192 the Aetolians rashly resolved 'that Antiochus should be summoned to liberate Greece and to arbitrate between the Aetolians and the Romans' (Livy, xxxv, 33, 8). This meant war; and the war as usual ended in a resounding victory for Rome. The Aetolian defeat reinforced Roman influence in Greece proper (though the Romans still made no annexations) and the settlement in Asia banished the Seleucids from all districts west of the Taurus range. But in the liberated areas the much publicized principle of Greek freedom was no longer upheld. The general principles behind the Roman settlement were these:

All autonomous towns which formerly paid tribute to Antiochus but had now remained faithful to Rome were freed from tribute; all which had paid contributions to Attalus (the king of Pergamum) were to pay the same sum as tribute to Eumenes (his successor); any which had abandoned the Roman alliance and joined Antiochus in the war were to pay to Eumenes whatever tribute Antiochus had imposed on them (Polybius, xxi, 46, 2-3).

These Roman arrangements established the Attalid dynasty as the dominant power in Asia Minor. They included a long list of special dispositions, rewarding Rhodes as well as Pergamum. Henceforth all territorial and political problems in Asia Minor, as well as in Greece, were referred to the Romans, who tended to resolve them not in the spirit of arbitrators (as the Greeks expected) but, somewhat naturally, in the light of Roman selfinterest.

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Diplomacy now required almost annual embassies to Rome. These were no doubt often exasperating to the Romans, but they also laid a great burden on the Greeks and indeed involved them in learning a whole complicated system of patronage and canvassing support at Rome. A decree of Abdera (06) honouring two ambassadors to Rome illustrates the point.

Undertaking an embassy to Rome on the people's behalf they endured hardship to body and spirit alike, interviewing and winning over the leading Romans by patience day after day and enlisting our country's patrons to give her help on behalf of our people, and by a juxtaposition of the facts and by daily attendance in their atria (viz. the halls of Roman houses where clients attended for the morning salutation) they won over those who looked to and gave their protection to our opponent (sc. Cotys, king of Thrace, who was laying claim to certain territories) (Syll., 656; cf. P. Herrmann, ZPE, 7 (1971), 72-7 for new readings).

This inscription gives some idea of the work which might fall to a Greek embassy charged with an important mission to Rome, even before the actual senatorial hearing took place.

IV

During the war with Antiochus Philip had fought as a Roman ally, expecting territorial rewards. From the end of that war down to his death in 179 relations between Rome and Macedonia became increasingly sour as decision after decision in territorial disputes went against the king (see p. 98). His successor Perseus (179-168) was disliked by the Romans from the start - they had backed his younger brother Demetrius for the succession but Philip had executed him for treason - and regarded with suspicion because he tried to recover influence and win goodwill in Greece. In 172 the Senate decided to eliminate him and after a war which perhaps proved harder than they had expected

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Perseus was defeated at Pydna in southern Macedonia and dethroned (168); he later died in an Italian prison. The same summer, and immediately following their victory at Pydna, the Senate delivered a diplomatic blow to Antiochus IV of Syria, who had invaded Egypt. He had just crossed a branch of the Nile at Eleusis, when he was met by the Roman envoy, C. Popilius Laenas.

Upon Antiochus greeting him from a distance and then holding out his hand, Popilius handed to the king a copy of the Senate's decree, which he had by him, and told him to read it first; he did not; or so it seems to me, think it proper to make the conventional sign of friendship before he knew whether the intentions of the man he was greeting were friendly or hostile. When the king, after reading it, said he would like to communicate with his Friends about this intelligence, Popilius acted in a manner which was felt to be offensive and exceedingly arrogant. He was carrying a stick cut from a vine (probably as a mark of office) and with this he drew a circle round Antiochus and told him he must remain inside this circle until he gave his decision about the contents of the letter. The king was astonished at this authoritarian procedure but after a few minutes' hesitation said he would do all that the Romans demanded; whereupon Popilius and his suite all grasped him by the band and greeted him warmly. The contents of the letter were that he was to put an immediate end to his war with Ptolemy (Polybius, xxix, 27, 1-7).

The brusque and abrasive gesture of this Roman noble towards the king of Syria was deliberate and was intended to demonstrate where power now lay. As Polybius makes clear, the year of Pydna put an end to real independence throughout the Greek east and this was especially true in Greece proper where the Achaean League had been punished for its- supposed lukewarm loyalty by drastic action as soon as the war was over. One thousand leading politicans from Achaea alone - Polybius

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was one of them - were sent to Rome for personal investigation and kept in Italy for sixteen years-, of the numbers similarly deported from other states we are not informed. Macedonia itself was divided into four independent republics but after a revolt by a pretender in 149 it was reduced to a Roman province. In 146 the Achaeans were confronted with an ultimatum, the acceptance of which would have torn the League apart. They therefore resorted to a vain revolt, which was quickly put down. Corinth, where Roman envoys had been insulted, was razed to the ground by decree of the Senate.

By now (146) Roman domination was unchallengeable. But, as this brief sketch has shown, from the time of her first incursion east of the Adriatic Rome had exercised a disturbing influence on the whole hellenistic world. Though there is no evidence that the hellenistic states ever, formally or informally, recognized the principle of a balance of power, in fact such a balance had existed because no great state was in a position to destroy any of the other great states. Cities of course could be and were wiped out (as Mantinea was at the hands of the Achaeans and Macedonians in 223) but that had always been true and merely reflects the vulnerability of small states. In fact the greater hellenistic powers seem not to have envisaged the total destruction of their adversaries; for example, the treaty between Philip V and Hannibal (see pp. 23 1 -:z) presupposed Roman survival after her hoped-for defeat, and one reason for Polybius' intense indignation against Philip V and Antiochus III for their alleged compact to plunder the dominions of the boy-king Ptolemy V was his exaggerated belief that it was intended 'to divide up the kingdom and be the destruction of the orphaned child' (Polybius, XV, 20, 6).

In the third century cities could play off one power against another but once the Romans arrived on the scene, everyone looked more and more to them. Within the cities and confederations - and even to some extent within the kingdoms, if we consider how the Romans encouraged Demetrius, Philip V's second son, to aim at the throne - pro-Roman parties grew up, and the Romans themselves welcomed and exploited the fact. In

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the winter of 170/69 C. Popilius and Cn. Octavius were sent down into central and southern Greece from Thessaly by the consul and

visiting the Peloponnesian cities attempted to convince the inhabitants of the leniency and kindness of the Senate, quoting the recent decrees (sc. which restricted the right of Roman magistrates to impose orders without senatorial instructions); they also indicated in their speeches that they knew who were those in each city who were hanging back more then they should as well as those who were rushing forward to help (Polybius, xxviii, 3, 3-4).

Neutrality was no longer enough and so, as the danger increased, fierce struggles developed between the supporters and opponents of Rome. At Rhodes, for instance,

there was acute civil discord, Agathagetus, Philophron, Rodophon and Theaedetus resting all their hopes on Rome, while Deinon and Polyaratus relied on Perseus and the Macedonians (Polybius, xxviii, 2, 3).

Rhodes was one of several states where (as Polybius indicates: xxx, ") politicians who had chosen the wrong side discovered that the penalty for their mistake was death - either at the hands of Rome or their own citizens, or else by suicide. In his speech to the Senate, defending Rhodes against the charge of having supported Perseus, Astymedes declares that:

had the whole people been responsible for our error and estrangement from you, you might possibly with some show of justice maintain that displeasure and refuse forgiveness, but if, as you know well, the authors of this folly were quite few in number and have all been put to death by the state itself, why do you refuse to be reconciled to men who were in no way to blame- (Polybius, xxx, 3 1, 13-15).

In fact the Rhodians were spared the disaster of a Roman

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punitive campaign but by making Delos a free port the Senate reduced Rhodian revenue substantially. Henceforth the power of Rhodes was broken, her ability to police the seas declined and piracy once more flourished in the eastern Mediterranean.

V

The effect of Roman domination on the cities of mainland Greece and the Aegean was to split them into factions and after 168 to deprive them of their main leaders by carrying these off to Italy. The monarchies were also affected, but in a different way. The extent to which Rome interfered in the day-to-day affairs of the kingdoms should not be exaggerated. There was a margin for independent action, and that at some times more than others, but independence always involved risks., We possess an interesting dossier of inscriptions, dating to the years 163-156 from Pessinus in Galatia, which contains several letters from King Attalus II of Pergamum to Attis, the high priest of the temple of Cybele at Pessinus. One of these describes a discussion at Attalus' court which had led him to abandon a military enterprise evidently planned in conjunction with the priest (the inscription is unfortunately obscure on the details of this project).

King Attalus to priest Attis, greeting. If you are well, it is as I wish; I myself am in good health. When we came to Pergamum and I assembled not only Athenaeus [Attalus' brother] and Sosander [the priest of Dionysus Kathegemon in Pergamum] and Menogenes [an eminent statesman under Eumenes and Attalus], but many others also of my kinsfolk [an honorific expression], and when I laid before them what we discussed at Apamea and told them our decision, there was a very long discussion, and at first all inclined to the same opinion with us, but Chlorus vehemently held forth the Roman power and counselled us in no way to do anything without them. In this at first few concurred, but afterwards, as day after day we kept considering, it appealed

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more and more, and to launch an undertaking without them began to seem fraught with great danger; if we were successful, the attempt promised to bring us envy and detraction and baneful suspicion - that which they felt also towards my brother [Eumenes II; see below] - while if we failed we should meet certain destruction. For they would not, it seemed to us, regard our disaster with any sympathy but would rather be delighted to see it, because we had undertaken such projects without them. As things are now, however if - which God forbid - we were defeated in any matters, having acted entirely with their approval, we should receive help and might recover our losses, with the gods' favour. I decided therefore to send men to Rome on every occasion to make regular reports on cases where we are in doubt, while we ourselves make thorough preparation so that if need be we can defend ourselves (Welles, R.C., no. 61).

This revealing letter - it was probably not engraved on marble until long after it could carry any political implications or do any political damage - shows the dilemma of a hellenistic king contemplating independent action; but it also shows that even after his brother Eumenes had fallen into disfavour at Rome for being reputedly uncertain in his sympathies during the Third Macedonian War (a point mentioned in the letter) and after the humbling of Antiochus IV at Pelusium, it did not automatically occur to Attalus to refer every item of foreign policy to the Senate. Some kings went out of their way to adopt a humble pose when dealing with the Senate. Polybius singles out Prusias II of Bithynia as given to this kind of behaviour and describes events of 167/6:

In the first place when some Roman legates had come to his court (sc. perhaps in 172), he went to meet them with his head shorn, and wearing a white cap and a toga and shoes, exactly the costume worn at Rome by slaves recently manumitted or liberti as the Romans call them. 'In me', he said, 'you see your libertus who wishes to endear himself and imitate

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everything Roman'; it would be difficult to find a more humiliating observation . . . On the present occasion, on entering the senate-house (sc. at Rome) he stood in the doorway facing the members and putting both his hands on the ground bowed his head to the ground in adoration of the threshold and the seated senators, with the words, 'Hail, saviour gods!', thus making it impossible for anyone after him to surpass him in unmanliness, effeminacy and servility. And on entering he conducted himself during his interview in a similar manner, doing things that it would be improper even to mention. As he showed himself to be utterly contemptible, for that very reason he received a favourable answer (Polybius, xxx, 18, 3-7).

In contrast to Prusias' warm reception was the treatment accorded the same winter to Eumenes, who, as we have just seen, had fallen out of favour. Embarrassed at his proposal to come to Rome and defend himself the Senate,

affecting to be displeased by visits of kings in general, issued a decree that no king should present himself to them; and next, when they heard that Eumenes had arrived in Italy at Brundisium, they dispatched the quaestor bearing this decree and with orders to tell Eumenes to inform him if he stood in need of any service: if there was nothing he required, he was to order him to leave Italy as soon as possible (Polybius, xxx, ig, 6-8).

These passages illustrate the reduction of the hellenistic kingdoms and their kings to a condition of ineffective and humiliating dependence on the Senate.

VI

Roman domination was also economically disastrous to the Greek east. The succession of wars fought there had been immensely profitable to the Romans. In an analysis of the figures

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for indemnities imposed and booty carried in the triumphs of Roman generals from Greece alone in the wars down to 167, J. A. 0. Larsen in T. Frank's Economic Survey of Ancient Rome., Vol. IV, p. 323, calculates that Rome profited from those wars to the extent of nearly 73,250,000 denarii (a Roman pound of silver was worth 84 denarii) and the indemnity imposed on Antiochus (Polybius, xxi, 17, 4-5) together with the booty exhibited in L. Scipio's triumph (Livy, xxxvii, 59, 3-5) would add a further 85,000,000. After 167 the policy of exacting tribute, already practised in Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia, was extended to the Greek world. Livy reports that

it was decided to divide Macedonia into four regions, each with its own council, and that it should pay to the Roman people half the tribute which it had been wont to pay to the kings (Livy, xlv, 18, 7).

In Illyria likewise

tax equivalent to half what they had paid to the king was imposed on the people of Scodra, the Dassarenses, the Selepitani and the rest of the Illyrians. Illyria was then divided into three parts (Livy, XIV, 26, 14-15).

This halving of the tribute is not to be interpreted as either an act of generosity or a lack of interest in wealth; it is a fair assumption that the Romans had assessed the size of burden the two exhausted areas could support. Furthermore, the Macedonian silver mines, closed down on the abolition of the monarchy, were according to Cassiodorus reopened in 158. He says that in that year mines were discovered in Macedonia, but this has generally been interpreted to refer to their reopening and it has been plausibly suggested that this reopening coincides with the resumption of minting silver coins at Rome in 157 (M. H. Crawford, Economic History Review (1977), P. 45).
After 146, according to Pausanias (vii, 16, 9), 'tribute was imposed on Greece'. This can only have been true of those cities

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which were involved in the Achaean War but these were now attached administratively to the province of Macedonia, and had to pay taxes to Rome. Hence in the second half of the second century and even more in the first, a regular stream of tribute was reaching Rome from Greece and Asia Minor. Much of this later returned to the same area in the form of loans to help the unfortunate provincial communities to meet the demands of Roman tax-collectors, as payment for land which increasingly Romans were now acquiring in the east, and to pay for luxuries sent by the east to Rome - including slaves. This process was intensified in the first century, when there were more Roman provinces, but it was already operating in the second century and was a factor in the progressive impoverishment of the hellenistic world in terms of wealth and population which lasted down to the setting up of the Roman principate. It was exacerbated by the private greed of Roman officials, members of a class for which, as Polybius noted (XXXi, 25, 6-7), conspicuous expenditure and extravagance had become a way of life since the fall of the Macedonian kingdom. Scipio Aemilianus, he tells us, was wholly exceptional in his integrity.

When he became master of Carthage (sc. in 146), which was considered the wealthiest city in the world, he took absolutely nothing from it to add to his own fortune, either by purchase or by any other means of acquisition, and this although he was not particularly well off, but only moderately so for a Roman (xviii, 35, 9).

Usually, however, Roman governors regarded the spoils of office as essential to maintain their status and finance their further careers, all of which added to the burden of the Greek east.

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Our discussion of the effects of the impact of Rome on the hellenistic world has already brought us to the other side of the picture - the effect contact with Greece had upon the Romans themselves. The evil side of this relationship we have just seen; the Romans, especially the more old-fashioned, and the Greek Polybius, no doubt echoing his patron, Scipio Aemilianus, accorded it due prominence. But there was another, more positive and, in the long run, more important side. We have not the space here, and it would take us beyond the scope of this study, to look in detail at the manner in which contact with Greece affected all aspects of Roman life from the third century onward. Soldiers returning from eastern campaigns and Greeks coming to Rome as hostages, envoys, detainees, traders, professional men or slaves familiarized the Romans with the Greek language and Greek ways. Doctors and philosophers brought Greek skills and a Greek pattern of education; Romans of the old school like Cato resisted both, but half-heartedly and ineffectively. The plunder of cities such as Syracuse or Corinth brought Greek works of art to Rome and whetted the appetites of Roman nobles for more. Private houses became more luxurious and Rome a more agreeable city to live in, at least for the rich, with amenities comparable to those of the great Hellenistic centres.

The third century also saw the beginnings of Roman literature, again under the influence of Greece. Livius Andronicus (c. 284-204), the earliest Roman poet, was himself a Greek from Tarentum who taught a in an k and made a verse translation of Homer's Odyssey. Q Ennius (239-i6q), a larger and more influential figure, came from Calabria, where he was in contact with the Greek philosophical schools of southern Italy; his Annals were a great epic of the Roman past. It was primarily the need to present the Roman past (and to defend Roman policy in the present) to the Greek world that conjured up the beginnings of Roman history-writing and its earliest

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practitioners, Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus and Posturnius Aloinus, were Roman statesmen, writing not in Latin but in Greek. Even Cato, whose Origines was the first work in Latin prose and initiated Roman history in the native tongue, was more influenced by Greek models than its author's reputed contempt for all things Greek would lead us to expect.

Another aspect of hellenization was the growth of a native theatre. The versatile Ennius wrote plays derived from Sophocles and looking back to the Trojan cycle. Naevius wrote tragedies, historical plays based on Roman subjects, and comedies (as well as an epic on the Punic War). But the most important writers for the Roman stage at this time (or indeed at all) were T. Maccius Plautus (C. 254-184) and P. Terentius Afer (c. 195-159). We have many plays by both Plautus and Terence and until the recent discovery of some original plays on papyrus we had to depend on them for any notion of the work of the great Athenian comic writer Menander; now it has become easier to appreciate the extent to which both Roman playwrights in different ways exploited and adapted their hellenistic originals to produce something new and Roman. Indeed it was part of the Roman genius not merely to copy but to transform.

The culture of Greece, both the older classical authors and writers of the contemporary hellenistic world, gave the writers of Rome models and the stimulus to create an indigenous Roman literature. It is impossible to imagine Roman masterpieces of the late republic and early empire without the hellenic element; Cicero, Sallust, Horace, Virgil, Catullus and Ovid, all are the products of a tradition going back to Greek origins, but none the less Roman for that. For about three centuries, from the time of Flamininus onwards, most educated Romans were bilingual and open to the full impact of hellenistic culture. Roman philosophy was a part of Greek philosophy, Roman art was developed from Greek forerunners. At a much earlier date the Italian gods and the numina, the impersonal forces which dominated the external world of Roman religion, had been personalized and frequently identified with Greek gods with similar characteristics and from the early-second century onwards cult began to be instituted for

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Roman generals like Flamininus, thus paving the way for the assumption of divinity by Roman emperors. The Romans fashioned their early history so that it dovetailed into the Trojan cycle and Rome itself, like so many of the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, welcomed an influx of eastern deities from Syria and Asia Minor. Eventually; with the setting up of the empire, the whole Mediterranean was to coalesce into a single cultural continuum in which many aspects of the hellenistic world lived on, adapted to the provincial organization imposed from Rome. In particular, when the monarchies had gone, the cities continued to be the vital units of civilized life throughout the east and they remained so until the increasing centralization and dead weight of bureaucracy crushed all initiative out of them in the third and fourth centuries AD.

VIII

The hellenistic age left many problems unsolved: what age does not? The relationship between the kings and the cities, first raised under Alexander, remained a matter for perpetual, shifting compromises. Nor did any kingdom overcome the conflict of interest between those who lived in the cities, the members of the ruling groups and those serving in the army and the bureaucracy on the one hand and, on the other, the workers on the land, whether these were free men or serfs. The evil of slavery of course still remained, though it was less important in the vast spaces of Seleucid Asia or in Egypt than it was where the Greek market economy had penetrated. The clash between Greeks and the indigenous peoples, though, as we have seen, it is not a simple story, continued to embarrass all the monarchies except Macedonia (though we cannot trace it equally well in all). In particular the secular poverty of the peasantry was an intractable problem, for which there was no solution in the absence of any substantial improvement in the techniques of production. In this field, as we saw, the only startling progress came in military science. Whether in due course some of these

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problems might have been solved, we cannot tell. Probably not, for the main achievements of the hellenistic age seem to have occurred in the third century, when the ruling caste was still socially mobile and the new kingdoms still showed flexibility and offered a career open to talent (see pp. 75 ff.). The earlier kings surrounded themselves with men chosen freely from all parts for their ability and adaptability. By the second century the Egyptian record - it is the only one we can read in detail - has substituted a career bureaucracy with a multiplicity of honorific and often meaningless distinctive titles which go with certain posts. Probably then the creative force was already spent when the Romans arrived.

But we are naturally less interested in the hellenistic world for its failures than for its achievements and for the contribution which it made to the cultural history of later times. It was an age of scholarship in which the great research institutes of Alexandria worked over and transmitted the texts of the classical writers. It was an age too in which men's horizons were widened physically by the voyages of such explorers as Pytheas and Megasthenes, and intellectually by the scientific achievements of an Eratosthenes or an Archimedes. If the literature it produced would not be reckoned by many to be among the world's greatest, Theocritus and Callimachus exerted a considerable influence both at Rome and later, and along with Herondas are still read with pleasure. Its architecture and its fine planned cities stand as forerunners of those of the Renaissance and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its art too, often violent and sometimes sentimental, captures our attention and it has had a powerful influence on the development of taste.

Though the flame of rational enquiry had begun to burn low and we can detect a growth in the attraction of mystery religions and eastern cults, it remained a time singularly free from obscurantism and censorship, one in which men could easily move around and find a home elsewhere if they ran into trouble. Normally, however, they were free to speculate and publish their beliefs and their discoveries. Its main schools of thought, Stoicism, Epicureanism and Cynicism, have all been influential

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in the history of philosophy and represent patterns of belief to which men still subscribe today and if the cults and religious doctrines of the age have vanished, the cultural continuum of the hellenistic world and its fringes was later to be the cradle of two world religions.

Though it was an era of warfare, for about a century (down to the destruction of Mantinea in 223) hellenistic war was shorn of at least some of its horrors. If the sacking of cities and the enslavement of their inhabitants increased after that date, the Romans must take much of the blame. In the field of political experimentation hellenistic Greece took a new step in developing the concept of federal government, which-was to be not without significance for later political theory and affords proof, if proof were needed, of the continuing intellectual vitality and creativity of the Greek people. The kingdoms and the cities too during these three centuries developed a system of diplomatic interchange which was taken over by the Romans and so through the practices of the empire was transmitted to later times. The hellenistic world possessed no universal legal system, but the codes of the various states largely overlapped and tended more and more to approximate to each other, as we can deduce from the increasing use of foreign judges (see pp. 143 T.). The flexibility of Roman law as it developed through the edicts of the praetor peregrinus and the provincial governors and the notion that the resultant ius gentium was to be identified with the law of nature postulated by the Stoics would probably have proved barren, had not Roman governors found a degree of legal uniformity already existing in the cities and states which fell within their provinces. Here too, if indirectly, we can trace a legacy from the hellenistic world. So, once again, we return to Rome, the destroyer and at the same time the heir of this fertile age of Greek civilization. For it is through Rome that so much of this legacy has come down to western Europe and its offshoots and, no less potently and even more directly, to the Byzantine and orthodox world of eastern Europe.