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Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman ProvincesAuthor(s):
Stephen MitchellReviewed work(s):Source: Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology, Vol. 91 (1987), pp. 333-365Published by:
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IMPERIAL BUILDING IN THE EASTERN ROMAN PROVINCES
STEPHEN MITCHELL
" A S I contemplate the greatness of your fortune and your
spirit, it seems entirely appropriate to point out to you
construction
works that are worthy of your eternal renown and your glory, and
which will be as useful as they are splendid." So Pliny began his
letter to Trajan inviting him to support a scheme to build a canal
linking Lake Sapanca, in the territory of Nicomedia, with the Sea
of Marmara. He concluded by remarking that where the kings of
Bithynia had failed, the emperor should succeed: "I am fired with
enthusiasm by this very point, that what the kings had only begun,
should be brought to a suc- cessful end by yourself."' It has
always been an essential part of a king's role to put up public or
sacred buildings for the benefit of his community.2 More
specifically, public building is an activity which
Particular acknowledgement is due to two earlier studies, which
will be cited by short titles: MacMullen = Ramsay MacMullen, "Roman
Imperial Building in the Pro- vinces," HSCP 64 (1959) 207-235;
Millar, ERW = Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London
1977). Without the conceptual framework provided by this book it is
difficult to imagine that the questions posed by this study could
be answered at all. There is a brief survey of the ideological
implications of imperial building in H. Kloft's Liberalitas
Principis. Herkunft und Bedeutung. Studien zur Prinzipatsideologie
(Cologne 1970) 115-120, and an important and detailed discussion of
Augustus' building program in Rome, Italy, and the provinces by D.
Kienast, Augustus. Prinzeps und Monarch (Darmstadt 1982) 336-365.
However, Kienast, like many scholars who have touched on this
theme, does not always distinguish clearly enough buildings for
which the emperor took responsibility and those that were simply
erected during his principate.
I Pliny Ep. 10.41.1 and 5. Trajan's name would evidently have
been linked with the finished product, as it was with the harbor
which Pliny saw under construction at Cen- tumcellae, Ep. 6.31.15
f.
2 See Vitr. 1.pr.2: cum vero adtenderem te non solum de vita
communi omnium curam publicaeque rei constitutionem habere, sed
etiam de opportunitate publicorum aedificiorum, ut civitas per te
non solum provinciis esset aucta, verum etiam ut maiestas imperii
publicorum aedificiorum egregias haberet auctoritates ... So it was
in the days of Gilgamesh, lord of Uruk: "In Uruk he built walls, a
great rampart, and the temple of blessed Eannu, for the god of the
firmament Anu, and for Ishtar the goddess of love.
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334 Stephen Mitchell
stands at the center of the traditions of munificence and
liberality that shaped aristocratic behavior in the Graeco-Roman
world.3 Witness a single inscription, picked at random from
hundreds, set up by the Actors' Guild at Smyrna for a certain
Marcus Aurelius Iulianus, twice Asiarch, stephanephorus and temple
warden of the emperors, and priest of Bacchus, on account of his
reverence for the god, his good will in every respect towards his
native city, the greatness of the buildings which he was erecting
there, and his favorable disposition towards their association.4
Better still, consider the extraordinary passage in Josephus'
Jewish War, which -lists the building projects of Herod the Great:
"For Tripolis, Damascus, and Ptolemais he provided gymnasia, for
Byblus a wall, for Berytus and Tyre baths, colonnades, temples and
market places, for Sidon and Damascus theatres, for coastal
Laodicea an aqueduct, and for Ascalon baths, magnificent fountains
and cloistered quadrangles ... to Rhodes he over and over again
gave money for naval construction, and when the temple of Apollo
was burnt down he rebuilt it with new splendor out of his own
purse. What need be said of his gifts to Lycia or Samos, or of his
liberality to the whole of Ionia, sufficient for the needs of every
locality? Even Athens and Sparta, Nicopolis and Mysian Pergamum are
full of Herod's offer- ings, are they not? And the wide street in
Syrian Antioch, once avoided because of the mud, did he not pave
two and a quarter miles of it with polished marble, and to keep the
rain off furnish it with colon- nades from end to end?"5
The motivation for this form of liberality is rarely made
explicit. Public utility was combined with prestige for the
benefactor; better still the permanence of a building might bring
(xaivia `t61gvirYt;. Build- ings were an everlasting reminder to
offset the donor's own mortality.6 None of this even needed to be
said, for the whole process of erecting
Look at it still today: the outer wall where the cornice runs,
it shines with the brilliance of copper; and the inner wall, it has
no equal" (trans. N. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh [Penguin]).
3 P. Veyne, Le pain et le cirque (Paris 1976) passim, but in
particular 278-279. 4 IGR 4.1133; cf. the advice of Apollonius of
Tyana, addressed precisely to the people
of Smyrna: "There is a kind of mutual competition for the common
good, in which one man seeks to give better advice than another, or
to hold office better than another, or go on an embassy, or erect
finer buildings than when another man was commissioner; and this, I
think, is beneficial strife, faction between citizens for the
public good." (Philostr. VA 4.8, translation by C. P. Jones.)
5 Josephus BJ 1.422 ff., translation by.G. A. Williamson. 6 C.
Roueche, JRS 74 (1984) 192 no. 8; Aphrodisias, ? early 6th cent.
A.D.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 335
public buildings was a central part of civic beneficence, and
imposed a tradition of behavior, and a pattern of expectation, from
which no Roman emperor, even had he wished, could distance himself.
None tried to do so.
The building enterprises of the emperors are a commonplace of
imperial biography from Augustus, who prided himself that he had
found Rome a city of brick and left it one of marble,7 through his
suc- cessors,8 to Constantine, whose own capital matched Rome in
magnificence, and beyond into the Byzantine age. Some of the
greatest builders took more than a passing interest in the activity
itself. Hadrian is said to have tried his hand as an architect in
person,9 and an attrac- tive conjecture suggests that the most
conspicuous Roman builder apart from the emperors themselves,
Marcus Agrippa, may have done the same by helping to design the
immense roof spans of the Odeon which he erected in Athens, and the
temple of Zeus at Heliopolis in Syria, where he had been
responsible for a veteran colony in 14 B.C. 0
The most conspicuous examples of Imperial building activity are
naturally to be found at Rome itself. It is now clear that there
was a specialized architectural and construction team, a
"Bauhiitte," work- ing directly under imperial patronage, to
produce the grandiose public works of the Flavio-Trajanic era,
culminating in Hadrian's plans to restore and refurbish the glories
of the Augustan city."1 Imperial build- ing in Rome was an aspect,
and an important one, of the emperors' relationship with the
capital city and its people.12 The role of the emperors as builders
in the rest of Italy and in the provinces is hardly less clear and
important. If the fact has received less attention, it is only
because the evidence is scattered and less simple to interpret. For
imperial construction projects are one of the complex of strands
which
7 Suet. Aug. 28-29: ch. 29 and the Res Gestae 19-21 oblige with
a detailed catalogue of his constructions.
8 Suet. lul. 44; Aug. 28-29; Calig. 19.1-3 and 21 (but see the
contrary, critical remarks of Josephus AJ 19.205); Claud. 20; Ner.
31; Vesp. 8.5-9; Tit. 7.3; Dom. 5; HA Hadr. 19.9 ff.; Ant. 8.2-4;
Sev. 23.1-2; Caracallus 9.4 ff.; Heliogab. 17.8-9; Alex. Sev. 24.3
and 27.7 ff.; Gordiani Tres 32.5 ff.; Gallieni Duo 18.2 ff.; Aurel.
45.2 ff.; Probus 9.3 ff. For Trajan, see Pliny Pan. 51.3.
9 HA Hadr. 19.13; Dio 69.4.2-3. 10 R. Meiggs, Trees and Timber
in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford 1982)
84-85. 11 See recently W. D. Heilmeyer, Korinthische
Normalkapitelle (Heidelberg 1970)
176-177. For Hadrian, see D. Kienast, Chiron 10 (1980) 391-412.
12 Surprisingly, it is neglected by Z. Yavetz, Plebs and Princeps
(Oxford 1969).
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336 Stephen Mitchell
linked the rulers with their provincial subjects, and it is in
this wider and different context that they take on their
significance.
MILITARY AND CIVILIAN BUILDING
It is convenient and conventional to distinguish between two
types of imperial construction outside Rome. On the one hand there
was building concerned with the administration, security, and
defense of the Empire, which may be thought in some sense to
reflect a centrally planned policy; on the other there was
building, sponsored or encouraged by the emperors in provincial
cities, of temples, bath houses, theaters, porticos, and the rest,
where imperial generosity stands alongside and complements local
munificence.13 The distinction is worth maintaining, and this
article is principally concerned with the second category of
construction, but the two are not as distinct as they may at first
appear. No one will dispute that legionary fortresses, smaller
forts, and other primary military installations were built as a
result of the decisions of emperors or their legates and reflected
a cen- tral policy, although we know remarkably little about the
financing of such projects, and the cost was certainly in some
cases sustained by local communities.14 The major highways of the
Empire were another military and administrative requirement, but
were largely built at local expense,15 or, to make the point more
realistically, with compulsory
13 Cf. L. Robert, Etudes anatoliennes (Paris 1938) 89 n. 2. 14
Cf., for instance, the use of civilian labor in the reconstruction
of Hadrian's Wall
(Roman Inscriptions of Britain nos. 1672, 1673, 1843, 1962,
2022). See also MacMullen 220-221 with notes.
15 T. Pekary, Untersuchungen zur rbmischen Reichsstrassen (Bonn
1968) remains by far the best treatment of the question, although
he hardly raises the issue of local labor, rather than local
finance, being used for road construction. See too J. and L.
Robert, Fouilles d'Amyzon (Paris 1983) 30-32 on precisely this
subject, in connection with an inscription found near Magnesia on
the Maeander where the people of Amyzon were responsible for road
building. They cite earlier observations of L. Robert on road
build- ing inscriptions with a similar sense at Trajanoupolis in
Thrace (Hellenica 1 [1940] 90-92), and in Macedonia (Opera Minora
Selecta [Amsterdam 1969] 1.298-300), and make the important
suggestion that the organization of responsibilities within a given
region might be made in accordance with the conventus divisions of
the province. Their concluding remarks are worth quoting in full:
"Certes le pouvoir central se pr6occupait des grandes routes.... Le
plan d'ensemble et les directives 6manaient de Rome, empereur ou
gouverneur. Mais l'on voit ici que la province d'Asie avait la
responsibilit6 et c'est elle qui devait repartir les taches."
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 337
local labor.16 I take it that the substantial minority of road
building inscriptions which specify that construction was
undertaken by an army unit or units represent exceptions to the
general rule that civilian labor was normally used.17
Inscriptions frequently show that the emperor took
responsibility for setting up fortified relay posts along these
roads for the provision and accommodation of official travellers:
Nero for tabernae et praetoria on the military roads of Thrace,18
Trajan and his legate for a taberna cum porticibus on the via
Sebaste in South Galatia,19 Hadrian, like Augustus before him, for
wells, fortlets, and staging posts on the desert road between the
Nile and Coptos on the Red Sea,20 and Marcus Aurelius for stabula,
again in Thrace.21 We may note, however, that the task of putting
up buildings to house soldiers and officials on the move through
the provinces, like all the other burdens which this entailed,22
could be undertaken at a local level, as, for instance, by a
prominent couple in the city of Arneai in Lycia who sometime
between A.D. 112 and 117, perhaps in connection with the troop
movements of Trajan's Parthian campaign, converted a gymnasium into
a naop6otov, a rest house or mansio for official purposes.23
The labor of army personnel was naturally used for large-scale
pro- vincial construction work with military overtones, such as
canal build- ing,24 but the principle of putting soldiers to work
if there was no fighting to be done led to their involvement in
nonmilitary projects also. The Life of Probus asserts that the
results of his soldiers' con- struction schemes could be seen in
many Egyptian communities-not
16 If either the central authorities or local communities
actually paid cash to build roads at anything like the attested
costs of road repair, they would have been bankrupted in very short
order. I hope to discuss the point in more detail in a book,
currently in preparation, on the history of central Anatolia
between Hellenistic and Byzantine times.
17 For such units mentioned on milestones, see most recently T.
Drew-Bear and W. Eck, Chiron 6 (1976) 294-296.
18 CIL 3.6123; Dessau, ILS 231. 19 S. Mitchell, AS 28 (1978)
93-98; AE 1979, 620. 20 IGR 2.1142, A.D. 137; cf. Dessau, ILS 2453
for an Augustan precedent. 21 AE 1961, 318. 22 See the sketch in S.
Mitchell, ed., Armies and Frontiers in Roman and Byzantine
Anatolia (Oxford 1983) 131-150. 23 IGR 3.639. 24 See the
references collected by MacMullen 231 n. 73; cf. Dessau, ILS 9370
and, a
recently published example, D. van Berchem, Rh. Mus. 40 (1983)
185-196: the vexilla- tions of four legions and an auxiliary unit
combining to dig a canal near Syrian Antioch in A.D. 75.
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338 Stephen Mitchell
only irrigation for the Nile and the drainage of marshy areas,
but bridges, temples, porticos, and basilicas.25 A list compiled
from scat- tered epigraphic evidence to show military participation
in civic con- struction shows that soldiers were almost as likely
to have been employed building a temple or a bath house as city
walls, towers, or gates, with the proviso that they were generally
involved in large-scale, not small-scale construction.26
Military expertise was even more prized than military muscle.
Pliny's repeated requests for skilled architects to help in the
task of assessing the building projects in Bithynian cities were in
no way unusual.27 When Ulpian defines the inspection of public
buildings as one of a provincial governor's tasks, he indicates
that they should, where necessary, use ministeria militaria to
evaluate and assist in the completion of projects under
construction.28 Trajan's resistance to Pliny's demands cracked when
he was presented with the canal scheme, which was to be brought to
fruition by a combination of mili- tary expertise, namely a
librator or architectus from the province of Moesia Inferior, and
local labor.29 This was surely standard practice. A similar
situation is envisaged in the recently published imperial letters
from Coroneia in Boeotia, relating to the draining and canalization
of Lake Copais. The emperor Hadrian instructed a team of military
experts and engineers to supervise the project, and provided 65,000
HS in funds, after receiving estimates of the cost of the work; the
actual organization and provision of the labor was to be carried
out by the city.30 The intervention of a military expert in
essentially civilian works is, of course, best exemplified by the
famous letter of the evocatus Augusti who sorted out the
engineering problems of a badly surveyed water conduit through a
local mountain at the Numidian city of Saldae. Not unexpectedly he
brought in soldiers to rectify the mess, and the
25 HA Probus 9. 26 MacMullen 214 ff., especially 216 and the
table opposite 219. 27 Ep. 10.17b, 39, 41, 61. 28 Dig. 50.16.7.1.
29 Ep. 10.41: hoc opus multas manus poscit. At eae porro non
desunt. Nam et in agris
magna copia est hominum et maxima in civitate. Certaque spes
omnes libentissime adgressuros opus omnibus fructuosum. But if they
proved unwilling, surely a corvie would have been imposed, as for
road construction.
30 These documents, apparently first discovered in 1919,
rediscovered in 1970, were finally published in 1982: J. M. Fossey,
Euphrosyne 11 (1982) 44-59. The relevant letter here is no. 7 on
pages 48-49 (SEG 32.460). See also the observations of L. Robert,
Et. anat. 85; J. M. Fossey, ANRW 2.7.1 (1979) 568 ff.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 339
remedial excavation was carried out by competing teams of
marines and irregular auxiliaries.31 But soldiers were also used to
take charge of much more conventional constructions, like the
frumentarius of legio I Italica, stationed at Novae in Moesia
Superior, who was given citizen- ship at Delphi in recognition of
his scrupulous supervision of the build- ings erected there by the
emperor Hadrian.32
CITY WALLS
Civilian labor and sometimes even civilian initiative, then, had
a role to play in building that was essentially military in
character, and soldiers and military experts were often prominent
in civic building. The ambiguity is most obvious in the case of
construction in cities whose purpose was precisely the security and
defence of the Empire, as was true, in general, with the
construction of city walls. In many cases it is clear that an
emperor took direct responsibility for the fortification of
provincial cities. Augustus is said to have provided walls and
gates for Nemausus33 and Vienna34 in Gallia Narbonensis, and a wall
and towers for lader in Dalmatia,35 all Roman colonies, although it
is interesting to note that the last were restored by a local
inhabitant at a later date. In the eastern provinces there is no
clear-cut evidence from the colonies. The circuit at Pisidian
Antioch, however, constructed in a Roman rather than a Hellenistic
building tradition from great blocks of ashlar with a mortared
rubble core,
surely? dates to the first years of the colony, an Augustan
foundation, and can presumably be seen as an imperial
responsibility.36 It is possible also that the unspecified opera
carried out at the colony of Alexandreia Troas, iussu Augusti, by
an auxiliary unit, the cohors Apula, were also
fortifications.37
Even when the emperor appears to have been principally responsi-
ble for wall building there was room for private contributions. The
cities of the west coast of the Black Sea were, as Ovid knew, still
vulnerable to barbarian threats in the early Empire, and
Odessus
31 CIL 8.2728; Dessau, ILS 5793; translated by MacMullen
215-216. 32 L. Robert, Et. anat. 88-89. 33 CIL 12.3151. 34 E.
Esperandieu, Inscriptions latines de la Gaule (place 1929) no. 263.
35 CIL 3.2907; Dessau, ILS 5336; cf. CIL 3.3117 from Arca. 36 See
S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch, the Site and its
Monuments, in
preparation. 37 AE 1973, 501.
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340 Stephen Mitchell
received new fortifications under Tiberius, who was hailed there
as ri(ota i;0 to watvoi 7tEpt4odXou; but a local citizen paid for a
stretch of
the curtain and for roofing the wall walk.38 When Rome supposed
that there was a serious Parthian threat to Syria in the 70s A.D.,
defensive precautions included building walls at Gerasa, certainly
at local expense, even though the city was presumably acting under
orders from Rome or the Syrian governor.39 More direct imperial
intervention was simply an alternative to this, as when in A.D. 75
Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian undertook the reinforcement of the
walls of Harmozica in the client kingdom of Iberia on behalf of the
local ruler and his son.40
A few years later, during the reign of Domitian, towers,
surrounding features,41 and a triple gate were erected at Laodicea
on the Lycus, and towers and a gate at its neighbor Hierapolis. The
Laodicean text sug- gests that the finance, at least, came from an
Imperial freedman, Ti. Cl. Aug. lib. Tryphon, apparently acting in
a private capacity,42 despite the fact that the dedication of the
finished work was made by Sex. Iulius Frontinus, proconsul of Asia
in A.D. 86/7.43 The proconsul himself seems to have been solely
responsible for the construction at Hierapo- lis.44 It is
impossible to decide whether the initiative in either case lay with
the Roman authorities or with local people.
As the first signs of strain began to show themselves in the
northern frontiers of the Empire in the second century with the
Marcomannic wars of Marcus Aurelius' reign, the emperors, through
the agency of their legates, took steps to build fortifications for
the cities of the Danu- bian and Balkan provinces-along the great
highway at Serdica
38 IGBulg. 1 (2).57. 39 G. W. Bowersock, "Syria under
Vespasian," JRS 63 (1973) 133-140. But the Fla-
vian date suggested there for the walls of Palmyra has been
called into question; see J. F. Matthews, JRS 74 (1984) 161 n.
13.
40 IGR 3.133; cf. CIL 3, ad no. 6032. 41 Whatever is meant by
the expression rax lEpi touig rtapyoug. 42 MAMA 6.2; for other
public building by imperial freedmen in the East, cf. IGR
4.228, a temple for Artemis Sebaste Baiiane in the eastern
Troad; IGR 3.578 (TAM 2.1.178), cf. 579, a stoa at Sidyma in Lycia;
and CIL 3.7146, showing a freedman of Nerva decorating the
caldarium of the gymnasium at Tralles with marble. It is probably
no coincidence that he was a procurator of the quarries.
43 W. Eck, Senatoren ion Vespasian bis Hadrian (Munich 1970) 81
n. 21. 44 Eck, Senatoren 77 ff., restoring portam et tu [rres
faciundas cu]ravit Sex. lul[i]us
Fronv[tinus procos ..i.], ilv . nA7lv K(Xit ToU; t[pYOUg
Extorl']oEv Y`og ['Io]1A1to Opov[Tivo; &v01 tnXo;].
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 341
between A.D. 176 and 180,45 at Philippopolis a few years
earlier,46 at Callatis on the Black Sea,47 at Apulum in Dacia,48
and at Salona in Dal- matia.49 An imperial initiative, the use of
military resources, or both, is unquestionable in all these cases.
This activity presages the far more widespread wall building of the
middle and later third century. The Life of Gallienus records that
the emperor placed two of his own archi- tects, Cleodamus and
Athenaeaus of Byzantium, in charge of building fortifications for
the cities of Histria and the West Pontic regions.50 The process is
perhaps illustrated and paralleled by an inscription from Dera'a in
northern Arabia indicating that walls were built there in A.D.
262/3 with money provided by Gallienus and with the aid of a Roman
strator and a Roman architect.5' Asia Minor was vulnerable at this
period to Gothic raiders and other enemies, as is reflected by
widespread, often hasty wall building. In many cases, as at
Dorylaeum,52 Miletus,53 and Prusias ad Hypium,54 the source of
funds and the origin of the initiative are obscure. At Sardis the
proconsul of Asia received the credit,55 as also happened at
Ephesus.56 At Ancyra an acephalous inscription, apparently set up
for a local citizen in about A.D. 260, commends him for having
restored the destroyed gymnasium of Polyeidus and for having
completed the whole wall circuit from its foundation in a time of
food shortage and barbarian raids;57 other texts
45 IGBulg. 4.1902; SEG 26.829. 46 IGBulg. 3.2.878; Dessau, ILS
5337. 47 See D. Adamesteanu, Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical
Sites, s.v. Kallatis. 48 CIL 3.1171, built by legio XIII. 49 CIL
3.1979, 6734 (Dessau, ILS 2616-2617), built by coh. I and II mill.
Dalmatarum;
CIL 3.1980 (Dessau, ILS 2287), vexillations of two legions
raised by M. Aurelius; cf. Dessau ad loc. See J. Wilkes, Dalmatia
(London 1969) 116-117, 225.
50 HA Gallienus 13. 5' IGR 3.1287, cf. 1286; cf. H.-G. Pflaum,
Syria 29 (1952) 307 ff.; Millar, ERW 192 n.
20, 421 n. 8. The money was provided EK 58ope;xq tol LXEacCo1.
52 D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950) 2.1566-1568,
gives a well- documented summary of all the evidence. For Dorylaeum
see A. KOrte, Gittingische gelehrte Anzeigen 159 (1897) 391 ff.;
Cox and Cameron, MAMA 5.xii-xiii.
53 Th. Wiegand, Milet 2.3 (Berlin 1935) 81 ff., 126-127. 54 W.
Ameling, Epigraphica Anatolica 3 (1984) 21 n. 10; Die Inschriften
von Prusias
17. 55 IGR 4.1510; L. Robert, Hellenica 4 (1948) 35-47; J. Keil,
JOAI 36 (1948) 121-134;
C. Foss, Byzantine and Turkish Sardis (Cambridge, Mass. 1976) 3.
56 J. Keil, JOAI 30 (1937) Beibl. 204 no. 10; 36 (1946) 128-129. 57
IGR 3.206; E. Bosch, Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Ankara im
Altertum (Ankara
1967) no. 289; this is almost certainly the career of a local
citizen, since he had carried out the civic office of
boulographia.
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342 Stephen Mitchell
of about the same period name both local magistrates and
provincial governors in connection with wall construction, but
leave the ultimate responsibility for them uncertain.58 The
confusion is worse at Nicaea. An inscription on the West Gate
states that the emperor Claudius Goth- icus, whose names and titles
are given in the nominative case, gave the city walls in the
governorship of Velleius Macrinus.59 The equivalent inscription on
the South Gate implies that the walls were dedicated to the
emperor, the senate, and the Roman people by the city.6 Whereas the
first inscription taken alone unequivocally suggests direct
imperial responsibility and involvement, the second does not.
The picture that emerges is confusing, perhaps predictably so
for the third century, a time when, with an empire in crisis, ad
hoc and disparate responses might be expected both locally and in
the central administration far more than at earlier periods. Wall
building was always an activity of direct concern to emperors and
their legates. Pliny, after all, was obliged to consult Trajan
about any major building project which he encountered in the
province, and it appears later to have been standard practice to
seek imperial permission for any public building in the cities.61 A
rescript of Marcus Aurelius quite specifically indicates that
imperial authority had to be sought and obtained by the provincial
governor for any city fortification.62 For all that, private or
local civic involvement is attested from Tiberius' time to the late
Empire, and the evidence taken as a whole suggests that cooperation
between the imperial authorities and the local community was
probably the norm, making it hard to offer any clear-cut
generalizations about who was ultimately responsible either for the
initiatives or for financing them.63
58 Bosch, Ankara no. 290 [iti to) Seivo;] Toi Xajtup. 'ilyiovo;,
&p?aJt~voI) [To? &Se- vo;]
oauvlwlp60avTzo; KE dptep1oavzog z r prZpoIo6T[t] TO6 Ei'Xo;,
no. 291 eTti ToI
Xacnxp. I)nartoI) MtvIK(0ou) Q~4 pevzioTO zo Xplo ~pTz6Tatov
Epyov zfi T 6oXt yEyovEv,
nos. 292 and 293 (composite text) irni A'plk. Atovuoiou
'ApyaXEvou roi T Xa~xpor6atlou Xp?a(XIvov .
oKEAioZTUnlpoavxog....
59 IGR 3.39; IIznik no. 1 1. 60 IGR 3.40; IIznik no. 12. 61 Dig.
50.10.3.1. 62 Dig. 50.10.6: de operibus, quae in muris vel portis
vel rebus publicis fiunt, aut si
muri exstruantur, divus Marcus rescripsit praesidem aditum
consulere principem debere. Cf. Dig. 50.8.9.4.
63 In contrast, MacMullen 225 n. 24 only notes rare instances of
the central government and municipalities jointly contributing to
opera publica. See further below, nn. 89 and 141 and pages
362-364.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 343
RESPONSIBILITY AND FINANCE
The inscriptions from the walls of Nicaea raise an important
prob- lem of method. The bulk of our information about imperial
building in the cities of the eastern part of the Empire comes from
inscriptions, but it is essential to keep in mind both how little
they may actually tell us and how misleading they can be. For
instance, the monumental text cut above the original south doorway
of the Augustan market building at Lepcis Magna, dating to 8 B.C.,
reads simply: [Imp. Caesar divi f. Augustus] cos. XI imp. XIIII
trib. pot. XV pont. m[axi]mus. If this alone survived one would
naturally take it that Augustus had been responsible for erecting
the building, and perhaps especially for paying for it. It is
fortunate, then, that a further text from the same facade has
survived to show that Annobal Imilchonis f. Tapapius Rufus sufes
flamen praefectus sacrorum de sua pequ[nia] faciun[dum coe]ravit
idem[que] de[d]icavit.64 The famous and much discussed letter of
the proconsul Vinicius to the people of Cyme in Asia, dated to the
20s B.C., gives further cause for concern. It had been ruled by
Augustus and Agrippa as consuls in 28 B.C. that sacred property
which had fallen into private hands should be restored to its
proper sacral ownership. Vini- cius, applying the ruling to a
particular case which had arisen in Cyme, ordered that when the
building had been restored to the god and appropriate compensation
offered to the interim owner, a new inscrip- tion should be carved:
Imp. Caesar deivei f. Augustus restituit.65 Augustus, of course,
would have had nothing to do with the specific case at Cyme; still
less would he have given money towards the res- toration. His
responsibility was simply enshrined in the general ruling made by
himself and Agrippa. Two centuries later the city of Philadel- phia
in Lydia, through its spokesman Aur,'l; l Iulianus, asked Cara-
calla for the privilege of being allowed to erect a neocory temple
in his honor, naturally at local expense.66 The emperor's favorable
reply was carved on a stone model of the temple, and the architrave
carried the text 'AvTovEivo;g ' iK1 rE. The text makes Caracalla a
ktistes simply
64 J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward-Perkins, The Inscriptions of
Roman Tripolitania (London 1952) no. 319.
65 R. K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East (Baltimore
1969) no. 61; H. Engelmann, Die Inschriften von Kyme, no. 13; AE
1979, 596. 66 IGR 4.1619; further bibliography in S. R. F. Price,
Rituals and Power. The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge
1984) 259.
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344 Stephen Mitchell
because he had granted permission for the city to hold an
imperial neo- corate.
These examples spell out the need for caution in interpreting
texts whose meaning on the surface seems plain. As ever the
formalities of public inscriptions may conceal as much as they
reveal. That said, one cannot reasonably deny that most building
inscriptions which point to imperial responsibility ought to imply
some level of financial commit- ment on the emperors' part. What
form this took is another matter alto- gether. As Ramsay MacMullen
put it, "the only method not chosen was the sending out of so many
bags of actual cash to Smyrna, to Carthage or to any other
beneficiary. With this one exception every possible kind of
arrangement was made to see that funds or credit were transferred.'
"67
Even if we rule out the simple transport of hard cash, we cannot
do the same for raw materials. The emperors owned many of the major
sources of building materials in the Empire: quarries, brick kilns,
forests, and mines. Antiochus III had seen to the dispatch of
timber from the forests of Lebanon to help building work at
Ptolemais,68 and we can surely assume that Hadrian would have done
the same after those forests, or rather four species of tree to be
found there, became imperial property.69 Bricks bearing the stamp
of army or imperial manufacture have been found in public
buildings, especially aqueducts, of cities close to the Rhine and
Danube frontiers.70 More important, as far as the eastern cities
were concerned, were the emperors' marble quarries. At the request
of the sophist Antonius Polemo, Hadrian had supplied Smyrna with
120 columns from the Synnadic quarries in Phrygia, twenty from
those of Henschir Schemtu in Numidia, and six from Mons
Porphyrites, the granite quarries of Egypt, to help build the
gymnasium.71 Pausanias notes that Hadrian had also sent Athens
100
67 MacMullen 210. Perhaps the anecdote in Philostratus VS 531
(Keil) about Smyrna's receiving ten million drachmae in a single
day suggests that even outright cash grants were possible (I owe
the point to Andrew Sherwood).
68 Meiggs, Trees and Timber (above, n. 10) 85-87; cf. a letter
of Antiochus III to Sardis, giving permission to cut timber for
rebuilding the city, R. Merkelbach, Epigra- phica Anatolica 7
(1986) 74.
69 For the inscriptions relating to Hadrian's Lebanese forests
see J. F. Breton, Inscrip- tions grecques et latines de Syrie 8.3
(Paris 1980); cf. AE 1981, 847.
70 MacMullen 231 nn. 79-80. 71 IGR 4.1431; Millar, ERW 184; cf.
Pliny NH 36.102 for columns of Phrygian marble
sent to Rome to be used in the basilica of Aemilius Paullus. On
this subject see further M. Waelkens, AJA 89 (1985) 641-653 and J.
C. Fant, ibid. 655-662.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 345
columns of Phrygian marble for the temple of Hera and Zeus
Panhel- lenios and 100 from Numidia for the gymnasium.72 The
principal imperial quarries in Phrygia, which were administered
from the assize center at Synnada, lay near Docimeion, and there
was an important subsidiary branch in the upper Tembris valley,
south of Cotiaeum.73 Both produced a range of good quality stone,
including excellent white marble and the much prized polychrome
pavonazzetto. The cella walls of the Hadrianic/Antonine temple of
Zeus at Aezani, less than twenty miles from the Tembris valley
quarries, are made of white Docimian marble, and it is at least a
plausible conjecture74 that that splendid sanc- tuary, constructed
on the grandest scale, had also benefited from a direct imperial
contribution towards the cost of construction. Paving stone for the
city of Alexandria in Egypt also came from imperial quar- ries,
administered by military personnel, although there is no means of
knowing whether it came as an outright imperial gift.75 From the
later Empire the Life of the emperor Tacitus indicates that he
provided an additional 100 columns of Numidian marble to the city
of Ostia,76 and Malalas states that Antoninus Pius gave stone from
the Thebais in Egypt at his own expense to pave the streets of
Syrian Antioch, like Herod the Great before him.77
Direct or indirect financial aid was doubtless much more common
than the provision of material. The simplest method, to judge from
the few explicit sources, was for the emperor to remit a city's
dues to the various Roman treasuries, thereby releasing local
resources for con- struction projects. Tiberius gave the twelve
cities of Asia which had been devastated by the earthquake of A.D.
17 five years' exemption from what they owed to the aerarium or the
fiscus,78 and he later spon- sored a senatus consultum which gave a
three-year remission of tribute to Cibyra in Asia and Aegeae in
Achaea, which had suffered from further earthquakes in A.D. 31.79
The city of Phrygian Apamea received five years' remission under
similar circumstances from Claudius in A.D.
72 Pausanias 1.18.9; see below, 359. 73 Cf. M. Waelkens,
"Carribres de marbre en Phrygie," Bulletin des Muskes Royaux
d'Art et d'Histoire [Brussels] 53 (1982) 33-39. 74 Made by Dr.
Waelkens. 75 IGR 1.1138, A.D. 83; cf. MacMullen 231 n. 77. 76 HA
Tac. 10.5. 77 Malalas, Chron. 280.20 ff.; cf. Millar, ERW 184 nn.
65 and 68. 78 Tac. Ann. 2.47. 79 Tac. Ann. 4.13.1.
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346 Stephen Mitchell
53.80 Two-and-a-half centuries later the town of Augustodunum in
Gaul sent pleas to Constantine for help in repairing public places
and temples, and was granted a reduction in taxes and a remission
of those owed over the previous five years.88 The convenience of
the system was its prime recommendation; to subvent local building
the emperor needed to do precisely nothing except desist from
collecting taxes. Another point may have commended it: all the
cases of imperial liberality in this form known to us were granted
in response to a peti- tion from the beneficiary. It was surely
easier and more politic to ask for a remission of debts than for an
outright imperial grant.
Such grants were, nonetheless, common enough. Tiberius gave
10,000,000 HS in addition to tax relief to the twelve earthquake-
stricken cities of Asia, and Hadrian gave the same sum to Smyrna
alone, in response to the petition from Antonius Polemo, which had
already earned the city its 126 columns of imperial marble.82 The
65,000 HS that Hadrian gave for the Lake Copais drainage scheme
represents a far smaller scale of generosity,83 but Antoninus Pius
gave 250,000 denarii, or 1,000,000 HS to Carian Stratonicaea in
A.D. 139/40, once again to compensate for earthquake damage.84
Simple financial grants probably lie behind the many building
inscriptions from all parts of the empire recording that the
emperor paid, or helped to pay pecunia sua, or impensa sua,85 or,
more specifically, sumptu fisci, or impensa fisci.86
There were other more complicated modes of imperial largesse.
The story of the building of the aqueduct at Alexandria Troas, told
in detail by Philostratus, shows Herodes Atticus, imperial legate
charged
80 Ann. 12.58; for Byzantium receiving the same privilege,
although apparently not for the restoration of its buildings, see
Ann. 12.62.
81 Pan. Min. 7 (6) 22.4; cf. 8 (5) passim; Millar, ERW 424-425.
82 Philostr. VS 1.25.531K. 83 See above, n. 30. 84 CIG 2721; M.
(?etin Sahin, Die Inschriften von Stratonikaia 2.1 no. 1029;
cf.
Pausanias 8.43.4, with the comments of L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978)
401-402. 85 See Millar, ERW 192 n. 20, and W. Eck, BJb. 184 (1984)
102 n. 23 for examples
including roads, bridges, temples, and civic public buildings,
indifferently straddling the civilian/military divide.
86 CIL 3.3255 = Dessau, ILS 703 (cf. Millar, ERW 189),
Constantine building baths at Reims, fisci sui sumptu; CIL 11.3309
(Forum Clodii, Trajanic), quod aqu[am ... im]pensa fisci s [ui
duxit]; Inscr. Lat. de Tunisie 699 (Thuburbo Maius), the proconsul
of Africa of A.D. 166/7 reconstructing the capitolium publico
sumptu fisci; and perhaps Eck, BJb. 184 (1984) 97 f. no. 1,
Commodus restoring the praetorium at Colonia Agrippina [sumpt]u
f[is]ci (?). Eck cites and discusses the parallels.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 347
with correcting the affairs of the free cities of Asia, asking
Hadrian on the city's behalf for three million drachmae, twelve
million HS, to ensure a reliable water supply, on the grounds that
he had already bes- towed on mere villages many times that sum. It
is difficult not to iden- tify these "villages" with the
communities of northwest Asia Minor promoted by Hadrian to civic
status-Hadrianeia, Hadrianoi, Hadri- anutherae, and
Stratonicaea-Hadrianopolis-although we have no direct evidence of
imperial funding for these new foundations. Herodes Atticus secured
the emperor's approval and himself took charge of the work until
expenditure reached seven million drachmae and the procurators in
Asia (ofi FrxtportE1.ovrtEg) wrote to the emperor complaining that
the tribute of 500 cities was being spent on the water supply of a
single one of them. Hadrian expressed his personal disap- proval to
his legate, who undertook that he and his son, the famous Herodes
Atticus, would present the city with a sum equivalent to any
expenditure over the original three million.87 If the episode was
accu- rately recorded, one must surely conclude that a part at
least of the direct taxation, imperial rents, or other dues levied
from the province of Asia was simply being diverted to the
project.88 The procurators in Asia would surely not have had the
composure or even the opportunity to question the emperor's right
to distribute his financial resources as he chose, unless the money
in question directly concerned them and lay within their
administration. There may be a parallel provided by two
inscriptions from Patara and Cadyanda in Lycia, which credit Vespa-
sian with having built bath houses, the first from common funds of
the province and the civic treasury of Patara that had been set
aside for the purpose,89 the second by money that had been saved by
the emperor for the city.90 In both instances the emperor appears
to have been diverting funds normally destined for imperial
revenues to local building pro- jects. Conceivably Vespasian's
attention might have been drawn to the
87 Philostr. VS 2.1.548K. 88 Millar, ERW 199 suggests that the
reference to the tribute of 500 cities might have
been a mere rhetorical turn of phrase, and need have no
implications for the actual origin of the money.
89 IGR 3.659 (TAM 2.1.396): 'K T v ouv[t]r[p]rl0V'vrt( Xpwrl
oy'tqwv K[otv6)v] toi
F0vo; rlvov
K(xy dun6 ofiSg fqlrxp ov nt6Xog. Cf. MacMullen 210. 90 IGR
3.507 (TAM 2.1.651); cf. IGR 3.508 (TAM 2.1.652): iK t6v
&vaToOivTv XpIrl-
p6urwov rf no6Xt. Cf. MacMullen 225 n. 24. Perhaps also compare
IGR 3.729 (TAM 2.1.270) from Limyra.
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348 Stephen Mitchell
two cities by the mysterious circumstances in which he is said
to have taken away liberty from Lycia at the beginning of his
reign, thereby imposing direct taxation on most of the
province.91
Another instance where the emperor received credit for having
diverted revenues to subvent building occurred at Ephesus, under
Augustus, where street paving was laid [iud]icio Augusti ex
reditibus agrorum sacrorum, quos is Dianae dedit.92 Augustus had in
fact redefined the territory of Ephesian Artemis to the advantage
of the tem- ple revenues, but was quite prepared to spend these
additional funds locally as he saw fit.93
Local bequests also left a mark. Pliny records the case of
lulius Longus of Pontus, who had left money to a provincial
governor, indi- cating that it should be used for public buildings
or to establish games.94 A recently published inscription from
Aphrodisias in Caria shows Trajan dedicating a statue to the
ancestral mother Aphrodite and to the people out of a bequest made
to him by a local citizen. Later the people of Aphrodisias
re-erected the group at their own expense after an
earthquake.95
Imperial funding may be well disguised. The holding of a civic
magistracy was commonly the occasion for the office holder to
provide funds for public projects. Emperors or members of their
families were not infrequently appointed to municipal office, and
this might have been the occasion for transferring funds for local
building.96 The first major building program at the colony of
Pisidian Antioch involved the
91 Suet. Vesp. 8; see the discussions of W. Eck, ZPE 6 (1970) 65
ff.; Chiron 12 (1982) 285 n. 16. The question is discussed in an
unpublished paper by A. Balland, kindly shown to me by W. Eck, who
argues that the "liberation" of Lycia simply amounted to its
temporary separation from Pamphylia, effected by Galba. In that
case the speculation about the province's tax liability may be
quite irrelevant.
92 IEphesos 2.459; AE 1966, 425. 93 IEphesos 7.2.3501-3502; cf.
3513. For Augustus and the temple of Artemis, see
below, 354. 94 Pliny Ep. 10.75. Perhaps the testator thought
that there would be less risk of embez-
zlement if a provincial governor, rather than the city, was the
recipient of the bequest. 95 J. M. Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome
(London 1982) no. 55; SEG 30.1254.
Perhaps compare CIL 9.5746 = Dessau, ILS 5675. Note also Pliny
Ep. 10.70.2 (referring to Prusa): Est autem huius domus talis
condicio: legaverat eam Claudius Polyaenus Claudio Caesari,
iussitque in peristylio templum ei fieri, reliqua ex domo locari.
The house, when it was converted into a temple, would by that time
have belonged to the emperor. Who would have been deemed
responsible for the conversion?
96 W. Liebenam, Stddteverwaltung im r6mische Kaiserreiche
(Leipzig 1900) 261-262; Kienast, Augustus (above, 333) 344-345.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 349
creation of a vast precinct in the center of the city devoted to
the imperial cult. It was constructed between the reign of Augustus
and A.D. 50, and it is a striking coincidence that during this
period three members of the imperial family and two Augustan
generals held honorary duovirates in the colony; they may well have
contributed towards the construction costs.97
These few examples where something can be said about the cir-
cumstances in which imperial building in the cities was financed
are far outnumbered by the cases where nothing at all is known. But
the variety of guises in which imperial intervention and
involvement becomes apparent is an indication in itself of the
complexity of the relationship between the emperors and their
subject cities. The evi- dence for imperial building reflects not
only the rulers' generosity, but also the diverse and numerous ways
in which they were seen to take responsibility for provincial
affairs.
CRISIS, PETITION, AND RESPONSE
In 27 B.C. an ambassador from the city of Tralles, which had
been devastated by an earthquake, came to Augustus, then on
campaign in Spain, to ask for aid. The emperor dispatched a
commission of seven consulares, who made haste to the city and
provided large sums of money, from which Tralles was rebuilt in the
form which it still exhi- bited in the sixth century, when the
episode was recalled by the Byzan- tine historian Agathias.98 When
Mithridates VI passed through Phrygian Apamea, in ruins after an
earlier earthquake, he gave 100 talents towards its restoration as
Alexander the Great was alleged to have done before him.99 The
pattern of natural disaster, petition, and imperial response recurs
throughout the principate, and precedents had been set long
before.
Tacitus remarks with some surprise that Laodicea on the Lycus
managed to recover from the earthquake of A.D. 60 at its own
expense, with no help from Rome,1' and many individual episodes
confirm that Laodicea's recovery was exceptional. Augustus in the
Res Gestae
97 Mitchell and Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch (above, n. 36)
chapter 1. 98 Agathias Hist. 2.17; cf. Strabo 12.8.18.578,
indicating that Laodicea on the Lycus also benefited.
99 Strabo 12.8.18.578. 100 Ann. 14.27: eodem anno ex inlustribus
Asiae urbibus Laodicea tremore terrae pro-
lapsa nullo a nobis remedio propriis opibus revaluit.
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350 Stephen Mitchell
catalogued the gifts (8op~at) he had made to provincial cities
that had suffered from earthquake or fire.1'0 A decree of Cos,
found at Olym- pia'02 and dating to 26 B.C., hailed him as new
founder of the city after a catastrophic earthquake there.103
Suetonius remarked that the great disaster of A.D. 17, which had
ruined twelve cities of Asia,'4 had been the only occasion when
Tiberius showed liberality to the provinces,'05 although the aid
which he provided was substantial and was widely advertised both
locally'06 and in Italy.'07 At Sardis, Tiberius' own con-
tributions were matched by local benefactors,'08 and this too was a
common pattern. Tiberius gave tax relief to Cibyra in Asia and
Aegeae in Achaea a few years later,109 but the full-scale
restoration of the former did not occur until the beginning of
Claudius' reign, when the first governor of the new province of
Lycia, Q. Veranius, was honored there for having taken charge of
the Sebasta erga, the imperial build- ings, in accordance with
instructions confided to him by Claudius, founder of the city.110
But alongside this we may note that a certain Q. Veranius Troili f.
Clu. Philagrus is also said to have provided a sub- stantial sum
for the foundation of the city on his own account.111' No doubt the
governor Veranius had encouraged private generosity to sup- plement
imperial funds, and Roman citizenship may well have been
101 19.7-9. 102 lOlympia no. 53; R. Herzog, Koische Forschungen
und Funde (Leipzig 1899)
141-150. 103 See L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 401. 104 See Tacitus
Ann. 2.47, with Goodyear's note for further references. 105 Suet.
Tib. 48. But note the contrary indication of Velleius 2.130.1:
quanta suo
suorumque nomine exstruxit opera, with Woodman's note. 106 In
Asia the relevant inscriptions are as follows: Sardis, IGR 4.1514,
cf. 1503 and
1523, and an unpublished text found recently, JHS Arch. Reports
1984/5, 82; also see n. 108; Cyme, Die Inschriften von Kyme nos.
20-21; Mostene, IGR 4.1351 (OGIS 471); see L. Robert, Hellenica 2
(1946) 77-79; 6 (1948) 16-17.
107 See the coins, RIC 1, 105 no. 19: CIVITATIBUS ASIAE
RESTITUTIS; CIL 10.1624 (Dessau, ILS 156), Puteoli, with the
comments of C. C. Vermeule, "The Basis from Puteoli," in Coins,
Culture and History in the Ancient World, Studies for Bluma C.
Trell (Detroit 1981) 85-101.
10o L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 405 (SEG 28.928), for the private
restoration of a temple after this earthquake. For the rebuilding
of Sardis, see G. M. A. Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman
Times (Cambridge, Mass. 1983) 140-143.
109 Tac. Ann. 4.13. 110 Petersen and van Luschan, Reisen in
Lykien 2 (Vienna 1889) 189 n. 25; IGR 4.902.
For Q. Veranius at Cibyra, see L. Robert, Et. anat. 89;
Hellenica 3 (1946) 21 n. 1; J. Noll6, ZPE 48 (1982) 267-282.
Ill IGR 4.914.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 351
Philagrus' reward for his contribution. Claudius was again
active after the earthquake which struck the central region of
Aegean Turkey in A.D. 47. At Samos he repaired the temple of Liber
Pater and was hailed as vog; Kitrlg,112
and Malalas makes him responsible for res- toration at Miletus,
Ephesus, and Smyrna.113 This intervention also prompted private
generosity, for this seems to be the context in which Cn. Vergilius
Capito of Miletus, sometime procurator of Asia and pre- fect of
Egypt, began his building program at Miletus, which produced the
baths of Capito at the end of Claudius' reign, and, according to a
seductive restoration, the scaena of the theater, dedicated to
Nero.114
Nero had given Lugdunum in Gaul a sum of 4,000,000 HS to rebuild
after a fire in A.D. 66, in return for help which Lugdunum had
offered to Rome at the time of the great fire of A.D. 64;115
Vespasian intervened in response to petitions in Lycia;116 and
Hadrian is said to have rebuilt Nicomedia and Nicaea in Bithynia
after the earthquake of A.D. 120-both took the title "Hadriane" in
consequence.117 A Hadri- anic inscription from Nicaea set up for a
certain Patrocleus, who had been an imperial procurator and held
high local office, states that he had been curator of the
construction work in accordance with a rescript of the emperor,8"
presumably an allusion to the aftermath of the same earthquake.
In A.D. 139 another Koa?oKobg GE;Etog struck Lycia and the sur-
rounding cities as far away as Carian Stratonicaea,"19 Rhodes, and
Cos,
1 2 Ath. Mitt. 1912, 217 nos. 19 and 20; M. Sagel, Inscriptiones
Latinae in Graecia Repertae (Faenza 1979) 19 ff. no. 11; IGR
4.1711; and a newly published Greek text, H. Freis, ZPE 58 (1985)
189-193.
113 Malalas, Chron. 246, 11 f.; C. Habicht, Gittingische
gelehrte Anzeigen 213 (1960) 163. Miletus probably took the title
Caesarea for a short period, acknowledging Clau- dius' restoration,
see L. Robert, Arch. Ephem. 1977, 217-218.
114 For Vergilius Capito at Miletus, see L. Robert, Hellenica 7
(1949) 206-238, esp. 209; for the baths of Capito, see A. von
Gerkan and F. Krischen, Milet 1.9 (Berlin 1928) 23-49; the
inscriptions from the baths are published by A. Rehm, ibid. 158.
The inscrip- tion from the scaena of the theater is published by P.
Herrmann in W. Mtiller-Wiener, ed., Milet 1899-1980. Ergebnisse,
Probleme und Perspektiven einer Ausgrabung (Tiibingen 1986)
175-189. Vergilius Capito's name was restored with splendid acumen
by D. McCabe in a seminar at Princeton in 1984.
'15 Tac. Ann. 16.13. 116 See nn. 89-91. 117 Sources and
discussion in L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 395 ff. I I IGR 3.1545;
Dessau, ILS 8867; S. Sahin, Die Inschriften von Nikaia 1.56. 119
See n. 84.
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352 Stephen Mitchell
all of which received help in rebuilding from Antoninus Pius,120
but this was also the occasion for enormous generosity throughout
Lycia by Opramoas, the millionaire of Rhodiapolis.121 In A.D.
151/2, during the proconsulate of L. Antonius Albus, it was
Mytilene's turn to suffer. The city responded to the emperor's
contributions to the reconstruction by hailing Antoninus Pius as
its benefactor and founder.122 The plight of Smyrna in A.D. 172 is
still better documented, by Philostratus and by the letter or
monodia which Aelius Aristides sent to Marcus Aurelius,
successfully urging him to contribute heavily towards the
restoration of the smitten city.123
PULCHRUM ET UTILE
Pliny's appeal to Trajan on behalf of his canal scheme had
pleaded a combination of splendor and utility to attract the
emperor's attention to it. On both counts there was a chance that
Trajan might respond favor- ably, since both qualities
traditionally provided opportunities for imperial generosity.
Aqueducts were one of the most distinctive architectural
features of Roman cities, whether in the eastern or western parts
of the Empire. They were expensive to build, as Hadrian discovered
at Alexandria Troas, and their construction, which required highly
accurate surveying and sophisticated building techniques such as
the use of pressure pipes, demanded considerable expertise.
Moreover, the point has been made that their location outside their
cities did not make them a favorite choice for local aristocrats
anxious to display their generosity to their fellow citizens. Small
wonder, then, that they often received imperial subvention.
Augustus built aqueducts at Ephesus, between A.D. 4 and 14,124 and
the canalized system from Schedia to Alexandria in Egypt in
120 Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 401-402; D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia
Minor 1.631-632; 2.1491-1492 n. 6; Pausanias 8.43.4; Aristides Or.
24.3.59; 25.9 ff. (Keil); HA Ant. 9.1.
121 For Opramoas' restoration program, see TAM 2.3.905 (IGR
3.739), 11.20 f.; 12.28 and 43; 13.48; 17.27 f.; 18.85 f.; A.
Balland, Xanthos 7, nos. 66 and 67. There is a con- venient list of
his benefactions in T. R. S. Broughton, "Roman Asia Minor," in T.
Frank, ed., An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome 4 (Baltimore 1938)
780.
122 IGR 4.90; IG 12.11.215. Cf. Aristides Or. 49.38 ff. (Keil).
123 Dio 71.32.3; Philostr. VS 2.9; Aristides Or. 19 (Keil). Cf.
Millar, ERW 423-424. 124 Die Inschriften von Ephesos 2, no. 401
(the aqua lulia), 402 (the aqua Thrassitica);
cf. W. Alzinger, Augusteische Architektur in Ephesos (Vienna
1974) 23; RE Suppl. 12.1604.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 353
A.D. 10--11.125 Tiberius, through the agency of his legate, saw
to the building of an aqueduct at Syrian Nicopolis,126 while
Claudius built examples at Sardis,127 at Namasba in Numidia,128 and
perhaps at Ker- yneia in Cyprus.129 There was a Neronian aqueduct
at Soloi in Cyprus,130 and Vespasian seems to have been
particularly active in improving the water supplies of Lycian
cities, with an aqueduct at Patara'31 and baths at Patara and
Cadyanda.132 Coulton notes that the Patara aqueduct, the aqueduct
and a bath house at Oenoanda, and another bath house at Simena, all
share the same distinctive style of polygonal masonry, which may
help to date them to the same period.133 Although there is no
evidence that it is an imperial foundation, one should also note
the aqueduct at Balbura, dedicated to Vespasian and Titus in A.D.
75.134 Trajan provided aqueducts for colonies in the Bal- kans, at
lader in Dalmatia135 and at Sarmizegethusa.'36
According to the Historia Augusta, Hadrian gave his name to
innu- merable aqueducts.137 Perhaps not, but Hadrianic work is
known for certain at Athens, Argos, Corinth,138 and at Nicaea.139
At Lepcis Magna an inscription tells us that Hadrian aquae
aeternitati consuluit, but that the money was put up by a local
citizen, Q. Servilius Can- didus.140 Some such collaboration
between emperor and subject should perhaps be envisaged at Cyrene
in A.D. 165/6, where the city built hydrecdochia out of public
funds, under the guidance of the provincial
125 Dessau, ILS 9075. 126 CIL 3.6703. 127 CIL 3.409; IGR 4.1505;
Sardis 7.1 (1932) no. 10. Perhaps part of the restoration of
Sardis occasioned by the earthquake ofA.D. 17; cf. Hanfmann
(above, n. 108) 141-142. 128 CIL 8.4440 (Dessau, ILS 5793),
referring to an aqua Claudiana. 129 T. B. Mitford, Opusc. Athen. 6
(1950) 17 no. 9. 130 Ibid. 28 no. 15. See G. Moretti, RFIC 109
(1981) 264-268. '31 J. Coulton, PCPS N.s. 29 (1983) 9, cf. n. 28,
citing an unpublished text. 132 Above, nn. 89-90. 133 Coulton, loc.
cit. 134 IGR 3.466; C. Naour, Anc. Society 9 (1978) 165-170 n. 1
(SEG 28.1218). 135 CIL 3.2902. 136 CIL 3.1446. 137 HA Hadr. 20.5.
138 CIL 3.549; J. Travlos, A Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens
(London 1971) 242,
built between A.D. 125 and 140. See, too, A. Kokkou, Arch. Delt.
25 (1970) 150-172. For Corinth and Argos see below, nn. 195-197. It
also seems to be implied at Coroneia (cf. above, n. 30), SEG
32.460.1.10-11:
KaTr Eo 8 314E1V Ka'i iS0op.
139 Die Inschriften von Nikaia 1, no. 55. 140 Dessau, ILS 5754;
Reynolds and Ward-Perkins, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania
no. 358, cf. 359.
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354 Stephen Mitchell
proconsul, but in accordance with the authority and benefaction
of the divine emperors. 141
Hadrianic building for public utility is also illustrated by the
two horrea erected in Lycia in A.D. 129, the year in which he
visited the province, at Patara, and at Myra,142 both designed to
store grain from the Lycian hinterland that was destined for
consumption at Rome.143 They may be paralleled by the granaries
which he built at Smyrna in response to the embassy of Polemo.'44
We should compare not only his interest in the drainage of Lake
Copais in Greece, but his concern to clear the harbors of Ephesus
and Trapezus in Pontus.145
Imperial prestige, at least, was no less well served by other,
more decorative forms of building. The edict of Paullus Fabius
Persicus, issued at Ephesus under Claudius in A.D. 47, recorded
that since many of the temples of the gods had been consumed by
fire, or lay in ruins, Augustus had intervened to restore the
temple of Diana itself, an orna- ment to the province on account of
the magnificence of its workman- ship, the antiquity of its cult,
and the extent of its revenues.146 Indivi- dual texts show that
Augustus restored roads and water courses,147 and built a wall
around the Artemisium in 6/5 B.C.,148 as well as re- establishing
the boundaries of the temple lands and ordering the paving of roads
from its revenues.149 The magnificence of imperial contribu- tions
to the architecture of Ephesus is implied by a civic decree of
Domitianic date which begins with the remark that the restoration
of old buildings appeared to match the recent splendors of imperial
con- structions, a reference perhaps to Augustan work, or to the
newly built Flavian temple of the imperial cult.150 Augustus was
probably equally
141 J. M. Reynolds, JRS 49 (1959) 98 f. no. 3; for an aqua
Augusta at Cyrene, restored by a proconsul in the late Augustan or
Tiberian period, see AE 1981 no. 858.
142 CIL 3.12127; TAM 2.397 (Patara); CIL 3.6738; Dessau, ILS
5908 (Myra); cf. M. Worrle, in J. Borchhardt, Myra. Eine lykische
Metropolis (Tiibingen 1975) 67-68.
143 Cf. Borchhardt et al., Myra, 66-71 Taf. 36-41 for the Myra
building. Recent discus- sion in G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and
Store Buildings (Oxford 1971) 136 n. 41; A. Balland, Xanthos 7.69
and 217.
'44 Philostr. VS 1.25.531K. However, it seems that the Smyrna
building was for civic use, and can be paralleled by other large
granaries found in Asian cities.
145 Cf. above, n. 30; Ephesus, SIG3 839; Trapezus, Arrian,
Periplus 1.16. 146 IEphesos 1.19b (Latin text). 147 IEphesos
6.1523, cf. 1524. 148 IEphesos 6.1522 (CIL 3.6070; 7118; Dessau,
ILS 97). 149 See above, nn. 92-93. 150 IEphesos 2.449 (SEG
26.1245); cf. L. Robert, Rev. Phil. 52 (1977) 13-14, possibly
referring, however, not to Augustan buildings but to the
Domitianic temple of the imperial cult. Cf. Price, Rituals and
Power (above, n. 66) 255.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 355
active in another conspicuous center, Athens, although the
direct evi- dence for his financial involvement is confined to one
inscription from the architrave of the gate of Athena Archegetis in
the Roman agora.151
Temple building or reconstruction was a regular imperial
activity in the provinces, as it was at Rome or in Italy. A
bilingual inscription set in bronze letters on the architrave
suggests that Augustus had rebuilt the Hellenistic temple of Athena
at Ilium, perhaps fulfilling the obliga- tions of the Julian house
to the city of its Trojan ancestors.152
A text from the Letoon at Xanthos, dating to A.D. 43, the year
in which Claudius annexed Lycia, seems to show that he himself
erected a temple-like structure within the precinct there, which
served the imperial cult.153 Nero is said to have had a bath house
built in Egypt, anticipating his projected visit;154 he was also
responsible for the stage of the theater at Curium in Cyprus155 and
probably for the proscenium of the theater at Iconium in
Galatia.156 Later in the first century A.D. the seating was added
by private donors.157 A doubtful but probably reli- able source
indicates that Vespasian built an "imperial hall" at Cyz- icus. 58
Domitian restored the temple of Apollo at Delphi in A.D. 84 sua
impensa159 and, presumably in response to a petition, erected a
portico at Megalopolis in the Peloponnese after it had been burned
down.160 A fragmentary Latin text from Palaepaphos in Cyprus also
seems to show
151 IG 2/3.3175; see Kienast, Augustus (above, 333) 356-357 for
discussion and further references.
152 P. Frisch, Die Inschriften von Ilion no. 84. 153 A. Balland,
Xanthos 7, no. 11. 154 Dio 62.18; A. C. Johnson, "Roman Egypt to
the Reign of Diocletian," in T. Frank,
ed., An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome 2 (Baltimore 1935) 637.
155 T. B. Mitford, The Inscriptions of Kourion (Philadelphia 1971 )
no. 107, A.D. 64/5. 156 IGR 3.262.1404; restored by W. M. Ramsay,
JHS 38 (1918) 169-170. The Neronian
date is supported by the fact that the procurator Pupius named
in the building inscription is apparently identical to the
procurator L. Pupius Praesens, honored as benefactor and founder at
Iconium, whose term of office fell at the end of Claudius' and the
beginning of Nero's principate. See R. K. Sherk, ANRW 2.7.2 (1980)
977-978.
157 IGR 3.1474. '58 Schol. in Aristidem (1.391, 7 Dindorf),
discussed by B. Keil, Hermes 32 (1897) 502
n. 1, and mentioning a pacallto; awrXi. 159 CIL 3.14203.24;
Dessau, ILS 8905. 160 CIL 3.13691; IG 5.2.457, A.D. 93/4. Compare
Antoninus Pius repairing burned bath
buildings at Narbo, Dessau, ILS 5685.
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356 Stephen Mitchell
that he undertook construction or restoration in the precinct of
Aphro- dite.161
Between A.D. 98 and 100 Trajan built, or rather completed, a
bath building at Cyrene,162 and patronized the important sanctuary
of Apollo Hylates at Curium, where he founded (Krt~aev) two then
unfinished exedrae, work which was supervised and dedicated by the
proconsul in A.D. 101.163 In the same or the following year he
built the gate of the sanctuary that led to the city of Curium, and
another adjacent struc- ture.164 Another Latin inscription from
Curium, perhaps of the first cen- tury A.D., records an imperial
gift of paving stone,165 and Trajan was again responsible for
laying paving in the sanctuary in 113-115.166 It is interesting to
note this very specific, piecemeal approach taken to sup- plement
the existing, much more impressive buildings at the sanctuary. We
know that in A.D. 102 Trajan was responsible for benefactions at
Miletus: he paid for the repaving of the sacred way which joined
the city to the shrine of Apollo at Didyma, and possibly undertook
other building there. He may have had specific reasons for being
grateful to the place. The oracle at Didyma had apparently
predicted his future elevation to the principate, perhaps during
his father's term as procon- sul of Asia in A.D. 79.167 Such
special connections might always be a cause for imperial
intervention. When sudden death overtook Marcus Aurelius' wife
Faustina at the village of Halala in the northern foothills of the
Taurus mountains in A.D. 176, the emperor turned the little com-
munity into a Roman colony, Faustinopolis, and built a temple in
Faustina's honor.168
This evidence forms no observable pattern. We are faced with the
random survival, principally from inscriptions, of information
indicat- ing that emperors erected buildings of all sorts in
eastern provincial cities. They provided the emperor's subjects
with further testimony to his ubiquitous power and the benefits
which he could bring them.
161 CIL 3.12102, cf. Mitford, ANRW 2.7.2 (1980) 1356. 162
Reynolds, JRS 49 (1959) 95 f. no. 1. 163 IKourion no. 108. 64
IKourion no. 109.
165 IKourion no. 106. 166IKourion no. 11; cf. T. Drew-Bear and
R. S. Bagnall, Chron. d'Egypte 49 (1974)
193-195. 167 C. P. Jones, Chiron 5 (1975) 403-406; K. Tuchelt,
Ist. Mitt. 30 (1980) 102-121;
JHS Arch. Reports 1978/9, 73-74. 168 HA M. Aurel. 26.4; for the
site of Faustinopolis, see M. H. Ballance, AS 14 (1964)
139-145.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 357
However, the work that the emperors funded or patronized was not
in principle distinguishable from other constructions in the
cities. Tem- ples, bath houses, porticos, theaters, and even
aqueducts might as well be set up by private benefactors, or by the
local civic authorities. There was no imperial policy to endow
cities with structures or facilities that they might not otherwise
have enjoyed.
HADRIAN, ATHENS, AND ACHAEA
The sum total of the evidence for other imperial building in
eastern cities pales into insignificance when set alongside the
surviving tes- timony to Hadrian's apparently spontaneous
generosity. This is emphasized by the principal literary sources
for his principate, and confirmed by inscriptions.
He did not, Dio tells us, wait to be asked, but gave generously
towards any need, helping both allied and subject cities with
unsparing generosity. He visited many of them in person, more than
any other emperor, and gave aid to almost all. Some received a
water supply, others harbors, grain, public buildings, cash, or
privileges.169 In partic- ular, Dio observes that he conferred
great honor and benefits on his home town Italica in Baetica, and
archaeology confirms that the place was transformed from a modest
provincial town by a wealth of imperial construction.170 The Life
of Hadrian noted temples connected with the imperial cult in
Narbonensis and Tarraconensis,171 as well as buildings at
Athens.172 When he went to Asia he is said to have con- secrated
temples devoted to his own cult,173 and he built innumerable
aqueducts.174 In almost every city that he visited he either put up
build- ings or sponsored games.175 A host of cities took his name
and were called Hadrianopolis, including a part of Athens
itself.176
169 Dio 69.5.2-3. 170 69.10.1; R. Syme, Roman Papers (Oxford
1979) 1.620-621 citing A. Garcia y Bel-
lido, Colonia Aelia Augusta Italica (1960). 171 HA Hadr. 12.2.
172 13.6, see below. 173 19.1. 174 20.5. 175 19.2. Cf. Fronto
Princ. hist. 8 (p. 195.13-14 van den Hoot) eius itinerum monu-
menta videas per plurimas Asiae atque Europae urbes sita. 176
20.4; cf. 20.13 on Hadrianutherae.
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358 Stephen Mitchell
The inscriptions suggest that little exaggeration is involved.
Cities of Asia by the dozen took a name or titles from him, and
honored him as their ktistes.177 Specific texts show that in
addition to the horrea at Lycia, aqueducts, and the restoration of
Bithynian cities after earth- quake damage which have already been
discussed (above, 345), he built a stoa (?) at Apollonia on the
Rhyndacus,178 restored the temple of Dionysus at Teos,179 and
erected a temple or some similar structure at Metropolis in
Ionia.180 According to Philostratus he lavished ten mil- lion
drachmae in a single day on the city of Smyrna, which built with
this bounty a grain market, the finest gymnasium in Asia, and a
tem- ple.181 But even this was dwarfed by his gifts to Athens and
to the other cities of Achaea. According to Dio he gave money, an
annual supply of corn, and the island of Cephallenia to Athens. He
also built the Olympieion, and caused the Greeks themselves to put
up the Panhellen- ion and celebrate games there.182 It was not new
or surprising that an emperor should make benefactions to Athens.
Hadrian was neither the first nor the last in a long series.183 The
Olympieon itself had been begun by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, built to
a design by a Roman archi- tect, Cossutius, but by his death in 165
B.C. only the east end had reached the level of the cornice.184 It
survived the depredations of Sulla, who carted off some of its
columns to Rome;'85 Augustus had planned to continue the work,186
but completion had to wait for Hadrian between 124/5 and 131/2.187
Pausanias provides the fullest details: Hadrian dedicated the
temple and the splendid statue of Zeus,
177 See the lists compiled by M. Le Glay, BCH 100 (1976)
357-364. 178 IGR 4.121. 179 SEG 2.588; BCH 00 (1925) 309 no. 4; L.
Robert, Hellenica 3 (1946) 86-89 (ITeos
[McCabe] 76). 180 IEphesos 7.1.3433; J. Keil and A. von
Premerstein, Dritte Reise 111 no. 174 refer
this inscription to road building between Metropolis and
Hypaepa, but it is puzzling, if that is so, that the text, with
name and titles of Hadrian in the nominative, should be carved on a
rectangular stele with a pediment, not on a normal milestone.
181 Philostr. VS 531K. 182 Dio 69.16.1-2. 183 For Herod the
Great, see above, n. 5. M. Agrippa had built an ambitious
covered
theater, the Odeon, Pausanias 1.18.6; Hesperia 19 (1950) 31-161;
Travlos, Pictorial Dic- tionary (above, n. 138) 505-520. The kings
who built in Athens include Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia and the
emperors Augustus and Claudius.
184 Vitr. 7.15.17; IG 22.4099. 185 Pliny NH 36.45. 186 Suet.
Aug. 60. 187 Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary 402-411.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 359
and adorned the precinct with four statues of himself, two of
Thasian marble and two of Egyptian granite.'88 Pausanias also
observes, in apparent conflict with Dio, that Hadrian also built
the temple of Hera and Zeus Panhellenios, with a new sanctuary of
all the gods, these with 100 columns of Phrygian marble (see above,
344). Then there was his library, with colonnades and stoas, whose
chambers had gilded roofs and were adorned with statues and
inscriptions, to say nothing of the books, and the gymnasium named
after Hadrian and built with a further 100 columns from the
Numidian quarries.189 The monuments, of course, are still to be
seen in Athens.190 A fragmentary letter preserves some of the terms
in which he presented Athens with the gymnasium: "I give this
gymnasium for your boys and young men, so that it may be an
adornment to the city . 1.." 191 An arch was constructed linking
the new Olympieion complex with the old classical city. The
inscription on the east side, overlooking the new temple, told the
passerby that this gate led to the city of Hadrian, not that of
Theseus.192
Hadrian's treatment of Athens goes far beyond that of any other
emperor for a provincial city at any time during the principate.
Ties of sentiment, religion, and an acute sense of the cultural
significance of Athens motivated the gifts, and provide a rationale
for Hadrian's com- mitment. The Panhellenic movement which he
fostered and encouraged required a capital city and a central focus
which his rebuilt Athens provided.193
But it is important to note that his philhellenic endowments did
not stop there. There were new buildings at Delphi.194 At Corinth
he built the aqueduct from Stymphalus, and a bath house which was
doubtless associated with it,195 and restored the theater.196 This
generosity was almost exactly duplicated at Argos, where he endowed
a new aqueduct
188 1.18.6. 189 1.18.9. 190 For the library see Travlos, op.
cit. 244-252; M. A. Sisson, PBSR 11 (1929) 50-72;
Knithikis-Symbolidou, Arch. Delt. 24 (1969) 107 ff. 191 IG 2/3
(ed. min.) 1102 (A.D. 131/2). For royal gifts to gymnasia, see L.
Robert,
Opera Minora Selecta (Amsterdam 1969) 2.738. 192 IG 22.5185;
Schol. Aristides, Panath. 3.201.32 (Dind.); M. Zahrnt, Chiron 9
(1979)
393-398. 193 See now A. J. Spawforth and Susan Walker, JRS 75
(1985) 78-104, especially 90 ff. 194 See above, n. 32. 195
Pausanias 2.3.5; 8.22.3; W. Biers, Herperia 47 (1978) 171-184. 196
R. Stillwell, Corinth II: The Theatre (Princeton 1952) 136-140.
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360 Stephen Mitchell
and nymphaeum and restored the theater which had burned down.197
He rebuilt the temple of Poseidon Hippios at Mantinea in the
Pelopon- nese,198 a temple of Apollo at Abai, and a colonnade at
Hyampolis in Phocis,199 to say nothing of the utilitarian scheme to
drain Lake Copais.200 He made the corniche road from Corinth to
Megara wide enough for two wagons to pass one another, and rebuilt
the Megarian temple of Apollo in white marble, replacing the
existing one of brick.201 Achaea, notoriously, had been in decline
in the early imperial period, a fact as evident to ancient
observers as to modern scholars.202 It is surely correct to see
Hadrian's efforts as a genuine, almost a planned attempt to restore
the province to its former glory. Some confirmation that this
interpretation is not an anachronism comes from Pausanias' remark
about Megara, that of all the cities of Greece not even Hadrian's
endeavors sufficed to make it thrive.203 If construction work and
public buildings are any clear measure of regional prosperity, then
Achaea in the second century had much for which to thank him.
CITY FOUNDATIONS AND ECONOMIC REVIVAL
In A.D. 66 Tiridates, newly crowned king of Armenia by Nero,
returned to his domain with permission to rebuild the city of
Artaxata, which had been destroyed by Domitius Corbulo eight years
earlier. He took with him gifts to the value of 200,000,000 HS204
and assorted arti- sans to help with the task, some hired by
himself, others provided by the emperor. When he reached the
Euphrates, Corbulo allowed him to
197 See A. J. Spawforth and Susan Walker, JRS 76 (1986) 102. 198
Pausanias 8.10.2. 199 Pausanias 8.35.3, 4. 200 See above, n. 30.
201 Pausanias 1.42.5; cf. IG 7.70-74. 202 C. P. Jones, Plutarch and
Rome (Oxford 1971) 3-12, esp. 8; see U. Kahrstedt, Das
wirtschaftliche Gesicht Griechenlands in der Kaiserzeit (Berne
1954) passim; J. A. O. Larsen, "Roman Greece," in T. Frank, ed., An
Economic Survey of Ancient Rome 4 (1938) 465-483.
203 Pausanias 1.36.3. Note also the phrase which begins one of
the Hadrianic letters from Coroneia: ait6tq yi o4LnpdPoTyTv taTq
n;heotCv npbq Enopifv XprtjgArmv (SEG 32.461; A.D. 125).
204 The figure is astonishingly high. Note also that Tiridates'
entourage of more than 3000 persons, which had taken over nine
months to travel to Rome for the coronation, at an alleged cost to
the Roman treasury of 800,000 HS per day, will have required a
further 220,000,000 HS (Dio 62.2.2). Hardly credible.
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 361
take only the latter group beyond the imperial frontier, but
with them he rebuilt his capital, and called it Neronia.205 This
episode, although concerned with a client king in extra-provincial
territory, gives much cause for reflection. It highlights the scale
of imperial generosity, which took the form both of financial and
of practical aid, and provides a rare fragment of substantial
information to supplement the bare state- ment that a city took on
a new dynastic name. It also offers a simple reminder that the
foundation or refoundation of a city was a major and expensive
undertaking, a fact generally taken for granted and so passed over
in silence both by the ancient sources and in modern
discussions.
This is not the place to begin a large-scale discussion of a
compli- cated subject which goes well beyond the scope of this
article. It goes without saying, however, that the creation of new
cities had widespread and profound implications for the economic
development of the pro- vinces, and it is legitimate to ask whether
the emperors saw imperial building as an essential component of
city foundation and a means or spur to regional development. The
evidence for direct financial com- mitment on the part of the
emperors in the foundation or refoundation of cities which bore
their names is disappointingly thin. It is clearest, perhaps, in
the case of cities rebuilt after earthquake damage, all or most of
which took an imperial name or title to commemorate the fact.206
The passage of Philostratus which describes Hadrian's role in
building the aqueduct at Alexandria Troas may, if rightly
interpreted above (346), indicate that he spent large sums on the
creation of his new Mysian cities. But the only direct evidence
from the region also implies a subtler and less direct approach to
civic development. Hadrian's letter to Stratonicaea /Hadrianopolis
of A.D. 127 includes an injunction concerning the house belonging
to Ti. Cl. Socrates--either he should put it into good repair, or
he should give it to one of the local inhabitants so that it not be
destroyed by the passage of time and by neglect.207 This hints at a
more complex process, involving imperial, local civic, and private
initiatives working together, and tends to confirm the picture
which has already emerged from the testimony for
205 Dio 62.6.5-6; 7.2 (epitomized). 206 Tralles, Cibyra, and the
twelve cities of Asia ruined in A.D. 17 all took the name
Caesareia; Nicaea and Nicomedia both took the title "Hadriane"
after A.D. 120.
207 IGR 4.1156; reedited by L. Robert, Hellenica 6 (1948) 81-84
no. 26. For the same idea, cf. the SC Hosidianum, perhaps of
Claudian date, CIL 10.1401; Dessau, ILS 6403 (Italy); Suet. Vesp.
8.5 (Rome); P. Garnsey in M. I. Finley, ed., Studies in Roman Pro-
perty (Cambridge 1976) 133-136.
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362 Stephen Mitchell
earthquake restoration at Sardis, Cibyra, and Miletus in the
mid-first century A.D. (above, 350-351).
The same point can be made about any wider policy on Hadrian's
part to create urban structures in Mysia. Alongside the direct
imperial subvention that presumably took place in the newly founded
cities, there was Hadrianic building at the Asclepieon of Pergamum,
paid for by private donors,208 at Cyzicus where the famous temple
was paid for by contributions from all over Asia,209 and at Aezani,
cities which framed the vast Mysian hinterland where the new
foundations lay. Not only within the confines of a single city, but
also on a broad regional scale, imperial building did not take
place in a vacuum. Private and civic munificence provided a
necessary complement to it. We should probably not try to read into
these imperial benefactions a complex and consciously devised
scheme of economic regeneration, but certainly all parties must
have been aware that regional prosperity was much enhanced by these
major initiatives in public building.
Another region at another period may be compared, the central
Ana- tolian province of Galatia, created by Augustus in 25 B.C. At
the time of annexation there was not a single community in the
whole area that could be described as a polis. This deficiency was
put right over the next hundred years, as a network of cities,
colonies, and their territories spread over the provincial map in a
process of urbanization that was essentially complete by the
Flavian or Trajanic period.210 The archaeo- logical evidence for
the area is still very inadequate, but what we know from the
principal cities and colonies shows that these urban founda- tions
were matched by the erection of public and religious buildings of
considerable splendor. A program of construction which began under
Augustus and continued through to the Claudian period produced the
temple of Rome and Augustus and a theater at Ancyra, the first
phase of the colonnaded street, which did double duty as a water
course and ran through the center of the city, the imperial temple
complex at Pes- sinus, and the monumental temple and precinct of
the imperial cult at Pisidian Antioch.211 It is hard to imagine how
such ambitious programs
208 C. Habicht, Alt. v. Perg. 8.3 (1976) 8-11; Le Glay, BCH 100
(1976) 347-351. 209 IGR 4.140; Malalas, Chron. 279.3 f. indicates
that Hadrian himself helped with the
cost. For an excellent summary of the many problems concerned
with this building, see Price, Rituals and Power (above, n. 66)
251.
210 To be discussed in the book referred to in n. 16. 211 See
the summary of recent work at all these sites in JHS Arch. Reports
1984/5,
98-100. For Antioch, see S. Mitchell, AS 33 (1983) 8 and 34
(1984) 9; Pessinus, M. Waelkens, Fouilles de Pessinonte 1 (1984)
140. The Pessinus evidence and the com-
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Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 363
of public building could have been possible without a deliberate
injec- tion of imperial finance, and without importing the skilled
craftsmen and artisans that such sophisticated constructions
required. Imperial intervention in the province during the
Julio-Claudian period is directly attested by an inscription from
Iconium and there is a possibility that imperial funds were
channeled into Antioch when members of the imperial family held
magistracies there.212 On the other hand the only direct evidence
for the funding of the Ancyra and Pessinus imperial sanctuaries
suggests that the provincial priests of the imperial cult were
expected to contribute, in the usual traditions of aristocratic
munificence. Pylaemenes, son of the last Galatian king, Amyntas,
pro- vided the site where horse racing and a panegyris took place,
and where the Sebasteion itself was built, while two of his
successors were credited with paying for imperial statues at Ancyra
and Pessinus respectively.213 In the precisely comparable case of
Britain, Tacitus tells us that the high priests of the temple of
the deified Claudius at Camulodunum were forced to pour out all
their wealth to maintain the cult, one of the main causes of
grievance that led to the uprising of Boudicca.214 Once again it
seems prudent to assume that Julio- Claudian building in the newly
founded Galatian cities was subvented by a combination of imperial
pump-priming and local efforts, forced or spontaneous.
Here as elsewhere the picture of imperial building th