Pax Romana

by Adrian Goldsworthy

  In 146 BC the Romans razed Carthage to the ground. A small African province was created and directly administered, but most of the territory to the west was given to an enlarged kingdom of Numidia. Within a generation we hear of substantial Italian trading communities permanently resident in at least two Numidian cities, Cirta and Vaga. Similar groups tend to be more visible in the Greek world, which had a much stronger tradition of setting up inscriptions. A monument found in a small town on Sicily’s northern coast was erected in 193 BC to honour the provincial governor by men describing themselves as Italicei. Italians appear in many other Greek cities. Around 174 BC the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes paid to complete the construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus – or Olympieion – in Athens. This sort of gesture to shared Hellenic culture was common for the Successor kings who ruled fragments of Alexander the Great’s conquests. Yet in this case the contract to do the work was given to a Roman, a certain Cossutius, who was subsequently honoured by the Athenians and so presumably did the job satisfactorily.17

  Probably the largest concentration of Romans and Italians was on Delos, placed under Athenian jurisdiction and declared a free port by Rome in 166 BC in the aftermath of the Third Macedonian War. In spite of its small size, the island was well placed and had long acted as a major entrepôt for goods going east and west. The Romans were relative latecomers to the communities of foreign merchants established at Delos, but their numbers grew rapidly. Among other things they constructed a complex known as the Agora of the Italians, where a rectangle of double-storied porticoes surrounded an extremely large open and unpaved courtyard.

  In the years after it was made a tariff-free port, Delos became the greatest centre of the slave trade in the eastern Mediterranean. The numbers of human beings trafficked through the little island were enormous, even if Strabo’s claim that it could process no fewer than 10,000 people in a single day is an exaggeration. Most of the Romans who went to Delos came for the slave trade, although the identification of the Agora of the Italians as a slave market is uncertain, largely because we do not yet know what such a building should look like. Other trades were conducted there as well, and we hear of Romans dealing in olive oil, but it was the buying and selling of human beings that dominated, continuing even after a failed rebellion by slaves in the port in 130 BC.

  The profits of overseas expansion allowed Rome’s rich to invest in grand rural estates which required a steady supply of servile manpower as a labour force, a demand that could not always be met by war captives. At the same time Rome’s expansion destroyed or crippled the great powers of the Hellenistic world, making it harder for them to maintain navies capable of controlling piracy. Rhodes had played an important role in this, but it lost out commercially to the free port of Delos and was less able to fund an effective fleet after 166 BC. Piracy flourished in the eastern Mediterranean, and the pirates took captives whom they sold as slaves, many of them passing through Delos. If the Romans were aware of this then they were not inclined to do anything about it.18

  There is no sign that being Roman or Italian gave the traders at Delos any advantage over men from other nations. They were more directly connected to the big market for slaves in Italy, but otherwise did business on the same terms as everyone else. Over time, there as elsewhere it became more and more common for men from Italy to be referred to as Romans rather than Italians. In part this reflected the growing numbers of citizens, but until the aftermath of the Social War most Italians continued to lack the franchise. To outsiders it was probably easy to lump all of them together with the City that controlled Italy, ruled several provinces, and had become the most formidable power in the entire Mediterranean world. For similar reasons, non-citizen Italians may have chosen to present themselves as Romans and felt it advantageous in business. Roman dress was distinctive, from the style of shoe to the shape of the tunic and most of all the toga, instead of the various types of cloak favoured in Greece. Even when men settled in communities and took part in local festivals, joining with Greeks and other foreigners to fund dedications in the temples or to thank local officials, most still dressed in these immediately recognisable fashions, setting themselves apart. At whatever distance, they proclaimed themselves as belonging to the great power, both out of pride and in the hope that they would be treated with more respect and care as a result. After the Social War virtually all Italians were Romans in the legal sense, as were the freed slaves they often employed in their businesses.19

  Whenever a region was turned into a province, the number of Romans active in the area increased dramatically. Apart from the traders already in Gaul, many more followed Julius Caesar’s legions, with merchants, investors and money lenders operating on a small or very large scale. Some sold directly to the soldiers – we hear of the men caught at their stalls outside the walls of a winter camp by one surprise attack – while others were there to buy up the spoils of warfare, such as plunder and captives, and still more because they sensed new opportunities opening up. There were clearly far more Romans doing business in Gaul by the end of Caesar’s spell as governor. In the great revolt of 53–52 BC these men became targets of the rebels and there were several massacres of Roman civilians. Opportunity was mixed with risks, especially in newly won territory or beyond the provinces.20

  In spite of the long tradition of establishing citizen and Latin colonies in Italy, the Romans were slow to do this in conquered territory overseas. Even so, communities with less prestigious legal rights were set up. Scipio Africanus settled a large number of convalescent soldiers at Italica (modern Santiponce) after he had driven the Carthaginians from Spain in the Second Punic War. It is hard to know how many soldiers took their discharge – or indeed deserted – to settle in a province where they had served. This probably became more common the longer a man spent there and by the end of the second century BC, when most legionaries were recruited from among the poorest rather than from men of property with farms and families drawing them home. In 171 BC representatives from a group of some 4,000 people claiming to be offspring of Roman soldiers and local women came from Spain to petition the Senate for a settlement of their own. Citizens were not permitted to marry non-citizens, which made their children both illegitimate and foreign, but the Senate was sympathetic. They were settled at Carteia (near Algeciras in the far south), and the community was granted Latin rights – something not otherwise done outside Italy under the Republic.21

  The first overseas colony for citizens was founded at Carthage in 122 BC, but soon lost its formal status when the man who had introduced the law to create it was killed in a bout of political violence. However, some settlers had already gone out and been allocated farms, and these families remained even though the community was no longer a colony. In 118 BC Narbo (modern Narbonne) was founded in Transalpine Gaul just three years after the creation of that province. The first settlers were former soldiers, and this was also true of the community set up at Aquae Sextiae (Aix-en-Provence) a few years earlier. In each case the original population was soon swollen by others who visited or chose to live in the area.22

  In 69 BC the orator Cicero claimed that Transalpine ‘. . . Gaul is packed with traders, crammed with Roman citizens. No Gaul ever does business independently of a citizen of Rome; not a coin changes hands in Gaul without the transaction being recorded in the books of Roman citizens.’ He lists several groups active in the area as well as the colonists – businessmen/bankers (negotiatores), tax-collecting companies (publicani), farmers (aratores) and ranchers (pecuari). Although Cicero exaggerated the ubiquity of Roman businessmen in the province, it is clear from other sources that there were a lot of them. Some Romans preceded the arrival of the legions, sometimes by decades or even longer periods. Many more followed the army, hoping to profit through business of many sorts and on a wide range of scales.23

  ROMAN AND NATIVE

  Gallic rebels slaughtered Roman traders and businessmen in 53–52 BC. The civilians were vulnerable, had wealth and po
ssessions worth stealing and were symbols of the Roman conquest. In one case some were enslaved instead of killed, and we do not know whether this was to protect their lives or meant to humiliate them. Cicero claims that Narbo was besieged in the 70s BC, which suggests that even a generation or more after the creation of a province there was sometimes a risk to Romans in the area. One of the purposes of colonies and the informal settlements of citizens in the provinces was to act as garrisons, much as earlier ones had done during the conquest of Italy. More than once we hear of forces being raised from Roman citizens working in a province.24

  Even traders operating outside the provinces occasionally took on a military significance. In 112 BC a struggle between rival members of the Numidian royal family erupted into civil war. Jugurtha chased his half-brother Adherbal into the city of Cirta and besieged him there, but found it difficult to capture the place because of the resistance of the community of traders – a ‘multitude of toga-wearers’, as they were called by the historian Sallust. For more than four months the city repulsed all attempts to take it, until the Italians persuaded Adherbal to surrender and trust to the fair arbitration and power of Rome. Sallust says that they were confident of good treatment for themselves because they were Romans. Jugurtha showed no such restraint, torturing his half-brother to death and executing everyone who had fought against him, Italians and Romans included. It took considerable agitation on the part of a popular politician at Rome to force the Senate to act and send an army against Jugurtha. Even so the war proved a long one, and a few years later another community of traders was slaughtered in the town of Vaga.25

  The largest and most infamous massacre of Roman civilians took place in Asia in 88 BC at the orders of King Mithridates VI of Pontus. An ambitious, capable and ruthless man, Mithridates was one of the last great Successor monarchs in the Hellenistic world and was eager to enlarge his realm. This, combined with the unusually provocative and corrupt behaviour of a Roman governor of Asia and his senior subordinate, swiftly led to war. The Romans were unprepared, reliant mainly on local allies, and were quickly beaten, allowing Mithridates’ armies to advance into Asia. The Senate decided to send one of the year’s consuls and several legions to deal with the king, but then rivalry for the command led to Rome’s first civil war and those same legions marched on Rome itself. For the moment the Romans seemed very weak, while Mithridates was strong.

  The king then sent a secret message to all the civic leaders and local governors or satraps throughout Asia, instructing that on a given day:

  They should set upon all the Romans and Italians in their towns, and upon their wives and children and their freedmen of Italian birth, kill them and throw their bodies out unburied, and share their goods with King Mithridates. He threatened to punish any who should bury the dead or conceal the living, and proclaimed rewards to informers and to those who should kill persons in hiding. To slaves who killed or betrayed their masters he offered freedom, to debtors . . . the remission of half their debt.26

  It was claimed that 80,000 died in the ensuing bloodbath. At Ephesus some of the Romans sought sanctuary in the great Temple of Artemis, only to be dragged away from statues of the goddess and slaughtered. At Pergamum their attackers were only a little more squeamish, shooting down with arrows those who clasped the images of Aesculapius, the god of healing, rather than touching them. At Adramyttium fugitives ran out into the sea only to be pursued and killed, the children with them being drowned. In another city it was claimed that the infants were slaughtered first, then the mothers and finally the men. The people of Tralles hired a foreign thug and his band to do the killing for them, who had no scruples about chopping off hands if any of the victims tried to cling to a statue of a god in the hope of sanctuary.

  Some Romans changed their distinctive costume and dressed as Greeks in an effort to escape the slaughter – perhaps especially Italians only recently granted the franchise. Few were successful. A former senator named Publius Rutilius Rufus, exiled after being condemned for corruption and extorting money from the provincials while serving in the Asian province, did the same thing and survived. His conviction was considered a great injustice, proved by the fact that he went into exile in the very province where he was supposed to have committed his crimes and was welcomed by the provincials. This goodwill no doubt helped his survival. On the island of Cos, Romans took refuge in another temple to the god of healing and this time were protected by the locals.27

  No doubt stories grew in the telling, as did the alleged scale of the massacre. Cicero, the source closest in time to the event, does not give a number for the dead, and modern scholars usually assume that it is grossly exaggerated. The same is true of the 20,000 said to have died in Greece and islands including Delos when Mithridates invaded a little later. Whatever the true figure, the total of deaths was clearly considerable, on a far bigger scale that any other massacre of Roman civilians. It is testament to the substantial number of people living and working outside Italy, especially in the provinces. Some would also see it as clear evidence that Rome in general, and these Roman businessmen in particular, were widely loathed by the provincial population, who readily turned on them at the first opportunity.28

  As we have seen, Romans dressed distinctively, and in some places formed large communities. Such groups did not always hold themselves apart from locals and other foreigners, as joint dedications make clear, but they could also be high-handed. Cicero tells a story of a senator named Caius Verres, who was serving as a legatus (or governor’s senior representative) in Asia in 79 BC, almost a decade after the massacre. The Roman became obsessed with the unmarried daughter of a local notable, in spite of never having seen the girl, and tried to use force to have her brought to him. His host resisted, and was soon supported by a crowd of townsfolk who drove Verres and his followers out, killing a lictor and injuring several of his attendants. The next day they gathered to lynch the legatus, until Romans resident in the place managed to persuade their neighbours to disperse. Up to this point their conduct was reasonable, but later some of them took part in a trumped-up prosecution of the father for assaulting a representative of Rome. The man and his son were found guilty and both executed.29

  Such gross miscarriages of justice were rare – and as we shall see, Verres was subsequently brought before a Roman court for many more abuses committed while he governed Sicily. A more common cause of ill-feeling was the activity of the publicani, the private companies who secured the rights to collect taxes in the provinces, and of the negotiatores, the bankers/moneylenders, both sometimes inclined to go to extreme lengths to extract payment from individuals and communities. We shall look at them in more detail in the next chapter, when we consider the Romans’ system of administering the provinces, but even other Romans often saw them as greedy.30

  Yet it is not quite so simple. In 88 BC Mithridates’ troops overran Asia Minor, which had become a province of Rome almost half a century earlier in 133 BC. The massacre of the Romans was not the spontaneous reaction of an oppressed population now free to act because of the arrival of liberators. At Ephesus statues of Romans were thrown down, but there was no killing until the order came from the king. There and elsewhere the slaughter was carried out only after specific instructions to the leaders of communities. Some of these were newly installed tyrants or factions supported by the king and eager to justify his trust in them. The rest were faced with a stark choice of obedience or punishment. In the past they had been occupied by the Romans and now they were occupied by the army of Pontus, and in neither case did any one community have a realistic chance of resisting the might of the conqueror in the long run. Rome appeared on the verge of collapse as several years of fighting with the Italian allies was followed by civil war. The legions might never return, for Mithridates was powerful and he could no more be ignored by the peoples of Asia Minor than Ariovistus and Caesar’s arrival could be ignored by the tribes of Gaul. It was surely better to obey and turn against a distinct and clearly visibl
e community of foreigners than to face the anger of the openly ruthless invader. The chance to share in the profits of this mass murder were an added attraction.

  Mithridates had in the past and would again in the future negotiate with and make peace with Rome. His orders for the pogrom in Asia Minor were not out of sheer loathing for Romans or a desire to eradicate the Roman Republic. He allegedly ordered the gruesome execution of a senator captured in the early stages of the fighting – the man was killed by having molten gold poured down his throat – but this was to highlight the man’s greed and corruption, which had done much to start the war. Another distinguished Roman prisoner was humiliated by being led publicly as a captive. The massacre throughout Asia was a cynical but logical act. It brought a haul of plunder to help fund the war, but more importantly committed the communities to Mithridates’ cause, for they were bound to fear terrible retribution if the Romans did return. We should also remember how long a band of Roman traders had helped the city of Cirta to resist a siege. Especially if they were aided by locals, some of these Romans might have held out against him. Capturing towns by siege was time-consuming and usually costly in lives and money. Killing the Romans removed this risk.31

  We do not know how far the wider population joined in the slaughter. It is possible that plenty of people resented the Romans or had old scores to settle and were willing to take part, but equally possible that the killing was mainly done by the partisans of the newly installed leaders or men commanded by civic leaders. Most people may simply have stood by, glad that they were not the targets of this appalling violence and too frightened to intervene. Perhaps few were inclined to take risks to protect Roman neighbours or refugees who had come to their community. When Mithridates was beaten, the returning Romans punished some communities, mainly by imposing heavy levies on them. It did not take long for traders and businessmen to return. The locals may have resented them, but it did not stop them borrowing money or doing business with them. There was no repeat of the bloodbath of 88 BC.