by David Potter
The conduct of the emperors from Vespasian to Marcus was a reaction against the inward-looking, domus-dominated administrative style of the Julio-Claudians. Imperial freedmen who occupied publicly prominent positions under Claudius and Nero were not so evident in the second century AD, but they had not vanished entirely. Vespasian, after all, lived with a freedwoman who had grown up in the palace, while the man who stabbed Domitian was Stephanus, the freedman in charge of intimate access to the emperor, or cubicularius. One of the cases that Pliny heard with Trajan concerned one Ulpius Eurythemus, an imperial freedman who held a procuratorship. He was charged with helping an equestrian procurator named Sempronius Senecio forge the will of a senator. Having laid the charge, the heirs then claimed they were afraid to appear, leading Trajan to exclaim that just as he was not Nero, neither was Eurythemus a Polyclitus. Even so, the case was still postponed and eventually dropped. The link between Senecio and Eurythemus reveals that influential freedmen socialized with equestrians, while the cubicularius was effectively on a level with the praetorian prefects, the most senior equestrian officials in the realm.
Where did such people come from? There is some evidence to suggest that ‘imperial freedman’ could be a voluntary career choice for people outside the élite. A papyrus letter from Egypt mentions a man who decided to go to Rome to become a freedman of Caesar, while a cubicularius of Hadrian named Aelius Alcibiades was honoured by his home city in western Turkey as a benefactor. At the end of the second century, the immensely powerful freed-woman Marcia, mistress of Marcus’ son Commodus, and one of the effective heads of government in his last years, also gave substantial sums to her homeland. She had begun her career as a freedwoman of Marcus Aurelius’ daughter. Strictly speaking, to become a freedman or freedwoman a person had first to be a slave, and thus should not have a ‘home city’ at all (being regarded merely as a chattel of their master). Yet the persistent suggestion from the time of Augustus onwards is that some freedmen and women had actually endured only very short periods of slavery, possibly facilitated by terms in the Roman law of slavery that permitted ‘self-sale’, and that, in some cases, they had willingly taken that condition upon themselves, as palace staff recruited servants with the necessary skills to participate in government. These aptitudes may have been sexual, cultural or fiscal. The key point was that freedmen brought to Roman government an indispensable range of experiences and skills quite different from those of senators or equestrians.
Even Pliny had to admit that it was right for Trajan to have influential freedmen so long as they shared the essential values of the governing class: a frugal lifestyle and a willingness to work hard. Yet behind this praise of hard work lies a veiled but potent threat. The emperor who shared the values of his subjects would live long and prosper. The emperor who did not would inevitably fall victim to those around him.
Civic Pride:
Caesars and Their Cities
(AD 68–180)
‘When were there so many cities on land or throughout the sea, and when have they been so adorned?’ So asked Aelius Aristides (AD 117–181), a prominent Greek orator from western Turkey, in a eulogy on Rome delivered in the reign of Antoninus Pius. Aristides’ praise of cities as markers of prosperity reflects not only his decidedly urban outlook, but also that of the Roman government. Another Greek writing at the same time, the historian Appian of Alexandria (c. AD 95–c. 165), obliquely made the same point when noting that the emperor was wont to refuse applications by barbarians to be taken under Roman rule on the grounds that they would not be viable to govern. By definition, barbarians were people who did not live in cities.
At first glance, this emphasis on cities might seem odd in an empire in which more than three-quarters of the population lived on the land. Yet almost all the land farmed by these people – if not owned by the emperor or the res publica – was attached to cities. From an administrative point of view, then, a Roman province was a collection of civic territories interspersed with tracts of imperial or public land.
Cities and civilization
The cities in a province fell, broadly speaking, into two categories: stipendiary and free. Stipendiary cities were liable to tribute, while free cities had an independent relationship with the Roman state. The precise nature of this relationship varied according to the history of the region; some free cities had stood by Rome during a past crisis and been rewarded with a special treaty, while others had been settled by Roman citizens. As coloniae of Rome, these latter cities were exempt from tribute payments. The vast majority of such colonies had arisen through the resettlement of veterans from the civil wars of the first century BC. The intention was that they would serve as centres of Latin culture and as sources of manpower when it was necessary to recall former soldiers to active service in times of emergency. In Rome’s western provinces there also existed many urban centres known as municipia; these were places that had been granted civic constitutions from Rome, and whose typical inhabitants, though of provincial descent, enjoyed partial Roman citizenship. Moreover, if elected to a civic magistracy, provincial people were granted full rights of citizenship. Though inferior in status to the coloniae, the municipia demonstrated the Roman state’s interest in rewarding provincials who abandoned ‘barbarism’ for the ideals of Roman civilization. In the eastern holdings of the empire, where the Romans were willing to accept that the values of Greek civic life were sufficiently like their own, there was no such deliberate attempt to transplant Latin culture. It remains one of the unique features of the Roman imperial system that the culture of a conquered people could be so thoroughly assimilated into that of the conqueror.
The job of the governor was to make annual tours of his province in order to settle legal disputes and ensure that the cities were being properly administered. Since it was usually impractical for him to visit every city, provinces were divided into judicial districts, or conventus, each containing a principal city where the governor conducted his business for a few weeks each year. There was considerable profit to be made from a governor’s visit, with people coming from far and wide for an audience with him, and consequently cities vied fiercely with one another for the honour of being recognized as a provincial centre. This competition ordinarily took the form of expenditure on civic amenities such as theatres, market places, fountains and – in the western provinces – amphitheatres for staging gladiatorial combat. Prior to the reign of Hadrian, and only in the eastern provinces, a single city would be recognized as the metropolis – literally ‘mother city’ – of the province. After Hadrian, other cities were also granted the same status, thus generating further competition between the larger cities.
The imperial cult
Many further privileges accrued to a city once it had been given the status of metropolis. For example, such cities automatically became the site of the provincial assembly, an organ of local government that was independent of the governor. In this capacity, the metropolis was the place to which all the stipendiary cities of the province sent representatives to celebrate the annual festival of the emperor. Thus, to honour a city by designating it a metropolis was to make it the regional centre of the imperial cult. The imperial cult acted as the focal point for direct expressions of loyalty to the emperor. In the eastern provinces, the cult developed out of earlier votive traditions that became widespread around the time of the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. At first, these devotions were merely a way of expressing gratitude to individuals – not just rulers – who had rendered their city extraordinary services. However, over time, between the death of Alexander and the rise of Roman hegemony in the region, the use of divine honours became increasingly restricted to kings. Yet with the advent of Roman rule in the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor, the use of divine honours once more expanded to encompass private individuals, including a number of Roman governors.
Romans had a very ambivalent attitude towards ruler cult. Although, like the Greeks, they were quite at ease with rhetorical com
parisons of mortals to gods, they strongly resisted the notion that any living Roman should be revered as a god by his peers. In philosophical terms, while most Romans believed that certain gods had once been mortal, they were adamant that they only assumed divine form after their deaths. This is why the divine honours that the senate voted Julius Caesar during his lifetime caused such grave offence, whereas the erection of a temple for the Divine Julius in the wake of the comet that appeared after his death was completely uncontroversial.
Augustus was largely instrumental in creating the cult of the divine Julius, yet he understood clearly that, no matter how many temples were erected or festivals founded in his own honour in the provinces, no ruler cult would exist for him in Rome while he was still alive. But at the same time he realized that the ruler cult was a useful tool for provincial organization, and therefore agreed that the assembly of the three provinces of Gaul could offer sacrifices on his behalf (this observance was standard in all ruler cults, and distinguished the rites for rulers from those of the immortal gods, to whom the sacrifices were offered). Later, he permitted the culturally Greek cities of Asia Minor to set up temples to him.
When Augustus died, the symbolic ascent of his soul to the heavens was staged at his funeral. The decision to create a cult in his honour was widely regarded as an act of approbation, a popular way of passing favourable judgement on his reign. Thus, the imperial cult and power politics became inextricably intertwined; when Tiberius, for example, refused to allow a cult to be established for himself in Spain, Tacitus commented that this showed a lack of ambition on his part. Likewise, Hadrian’s deification was not a foregone conclusion; the senate and the people evidently regarded it as a subject of legitimate political debate. Finally, Antoninus Pius forced the decision through. Romans took the view that the emperor should be aware that his posthumous reputation depended upon the goodwill of his subjects.
The understanding of the imperial cult at Rome was quite distinct from the way it operated in the provinces. In Rome, the formulae of deification were retrospective, whereas in the provinces they tended to be prospective. There, emperors received divine honours as soon as they ascended the throne, and every year without fail provincial assemblies would send a delegation to the emperor to inform him of the honours they had bestowed upon him. However, these delegations were far from being sycophantic acts of obeisance. Rather, the imperial cult provided a highly practical opportunity for provincials to engage with the distant power that controlled their lives. While in the capital, provincial delegates could forge useful political contacts, advance their careers and even air complaints against the governor.
The city and the countryside
The imperial cult bound the cities of the provinces together, and in turn bound the provinces to the emperor. As tangible proof of the positive effect of government and the cultural benefits of civilization, cities also played a vital role in conveying such values to the vast mass of people who lived in the countryside. Even in the most rural areas, peasants who did not live directly on estates owned by the emperor or aristocrats – and even many who did – congregated in villages that tried, to the best of their ability, to equip themselves with all the amenities of urban life. These villages put up public baths, assembly buildings, fountains and market places, in the hope that they might one day attain civic status. Settlements arose on the fringes of the Arabian desert, calling themselves ‘mother villages’ to distinguish themselves from lesser spots by imitating the titulature of cities.
In a number of settlements, some inhabitants attained a level of personal prosperity well above that of subsistence farmers – so great, in fact, that it could sometimes put their lives in danger. Some wealthy villagers only appear in the historical record because they were kidnapped and held to ransom. Their abductors were Roman soldiers working for imperial procurators who were seeking to feather their own nests by stealing from people whose oppression they reckoned the emperor would never notice. In many cases they may well have been right; but in other instances we know that the villagers were able to organize themselves, find a patron and persuade the emperor to address their grievances.
To his rural-dwelling subjects, the emperor was not a hated figure of oppression who was deemed responsible for imposing the rents or taxes that they had to pay, appointing the officials who tormented them or commanding the army whose soldiers terrorized them. On the contrary, he was an abstract symbol of justice who was commonly supposed to listen to even the most lowly plaintiff. Cassius Dio relates a famous incident in which Hadrian rebuffed an old woman who had come to him to complain of an injustice. To his claim that he did not have time to listen to her, she tartly responded, ‘Then cease to be ruler.’ Suitably chastened, the emperor reportedly stopped in his tracks and asked her to present her complaint. This story, which recurs in different forms throughout Classical Antiquity, is probably apocryphal, but it does eloquently bear out Plutarch’s observation that ‘nothing so befits a ruler as the work of justice’.
Other popular tales attest to how widespread the notion was of the emperor as a beneficent figure who could right all wrongs. For example, two Roman authors tell the story of a man who was magically transformed into an ass by a slave-girl with whom he was having an affair. When he is goaded and beaten, he cries out to Caesar to help him. Though clearly intended for comic effect, this story still reflects an attitude towards the imperial office that was widely held. And so, when a Jew named Paul of Tarsus – the future St Paul – who had been arrested in Jerusalem for preaching Christianity, protested that he should have his case heard by the emperor in person rather than by his representative in Judea, nobody found this at all preposterous, and he was duly packed off to Rome. The story of Paul as St Luke tells it in the Acts of the Apostles stresses the point that no matter was so insignificant that the emperor might not find out about it.
The crowd who gathered at the headquarters of the procurator of Judea in Jerusalem during the Passover season of AD 36 were voicing the same idea when they goaded Pontius Pilate into executing Jesus of Galilee on a charge of treason; the mob called out to Pilate that he would be no ‘friend of Caesar’ if he did not carry out the sentence. It evidently struck the author of the Gospel of St John as wholly plausible for a Roman magistrate to be swayed by the threat that a complaint of official misconduct involving a person of no significance whatsoever to the emperor – Jesus was not a Roman citizen – might lead to censure.
The imperial taxation system
The quaint notion that the emperor cared about every matter, however trivial, may well have its origins in the omnipresence of certain institutions of imperial rule. Foremost among these was the all-embracing Roman system of taxation, which made its presence felt in everyone’s lives. All the inhabitants of the empire who were not Roman citizens were subject to a tax on their persons and a tax on their property, known as the tribute. On the other hand, citizenship made a person liable to certain taxes from which non-citizens were exempt, such as an inheritance tax that Augustus instituted in AD 6 to fund the resettlement of demobilized legionaries.
The imperial tax system was the single most obvious symbol of Roman control. The instrument that officials charged with tax collection used to assess how the tax burden should fall was the census. This exercise required every man to declare the number of people in his household, including the slaves he kept, and his riches. The most famous census in Roman history was that conducted by the Roman governor of Syria and Judea, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, in AD 6, which the Gospel of St Luke in the New Testament associates with the birth of Christ (‘… a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed’). New acquisitions of territory were always accompanied by a census, and the process was repeated on various schedules throughout the empire. In most of the empire these reassessments fell once a decade, in Syria once every 12 years, while in Egypt, they recurred every 14 years.
Once the assessment was complete, collection in the provinces wa
s delegated to local officials – municipal councillors known as curiales. This cut the cost of administration even if it did not eliminate controversy. The registers of people’s liabilities were not always regarded as fair, and disputes were frequent. To assist them in their collection duties, the curiales maintained gangs of enforcers, and if these thugs failed to persuade recalcitrant taxpayers to pay up, the officials were empowered to second troops from the governor. It was a system that depended on the threat of violence, a threat that loomed large over the great majority of the empire’s population. Little wonder, then, that they were given to imagining that somewhere above it all there resided a beneficent emperor who could intervene to save them.
Ultimately, however, the Roman tax system was self-regulating; peasants who were too harshly treated would simply flee the land, thereby reducing the revenue stream to the empire. Moreover, local officials whose enforcement methods were excessively high-handed were precisely those who were likely to be embezzling potential income from the state. This is why it was so important for senior officials to develop an understanding of what went on at the local level, and to have first-hand knowledge of the conflicts that could, if unchecked, tear a community apart. The key role that they performed was to balance the interests of the local administrative class upon which they depended for day-to-day government and the interests of the governed.