P. A. BRUNT + ENGLAND + The Romanization of the Local Ruling Classes in the Roman Empire In his Panegyric on Rome Aelius Aristides claimed that the Roman empire was the first that rested on consent and not on force. No troops were needed to hold down the cities, because the most powerful of the local citizens, men to whom Rome had granted equality of rights, kept each of them Joyal. It was for this class in Asia that Aristides spoke; he was himself the son of a landowner who had received the Roman citizenship’. Of course in the West the citizenship was far more widely diffused. Only there did many whole communities possess it, and there too more indi- viduals could win it as a reward for military service, since over two thirds of the Roman army were raised and stationed in the western provinces *. As. a consequence, in the west there were far more provincial citizens of low social status. My concern here is, however, with members of the local ruling classes, men of good family and property. They too more often secured Roman rights in the west, where there were numerous commu- nities of Latin status, not found at all in eastern provinces ; in these cities the magnates could obtain the citizenship by serving as local magistrates, or sometimes as councillors, quite automatically. Yet in the east individual grants had also become more and more common. The distinction, though important, is one of degree. Everywhere it was the Roman policy to win over, and to enfranchise, the local leaders 3, 1 Aristides XXVI 22 f. (Persia) ; 43—57, esp. 52 (Athens and Sparta) ; 57—67 (Rome). In 39 and 65 f. he claims that Rome maintained equality and protected the poor, which was flagrantly false, ef. n. 21 ; naturally he had no sympathy with or understanding of the masses ; for his own background ct. C. A. Behr, Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales, Amsterdam, 1968, ch. 1. 2 Distribution of legions : Ritterling, RE XII 1362 ff. Recruitment : G. Forni, It Reclu- tamento delle Legioni de Augusto a Diocleziano, Milan, 1953, with revisions in H. Temporini (ed.), Aufstieg u. Niedergang der rém. Welt, Berlin, 1974, 11 339 ff. From Hadrian’s time, when local recruitment for the legions had become normal, not more than one third of the legions were stationed in the east. G. L. Cheesman, Ausilia in the Roman Army, Oxford, 1914, shows that of auxiliary units whose names reveal their original ethnic composition only one quarter were raised in the east (including Thrace) and that the same proportion holds for units whose station is known in the early 2nd century ; I assume that evidence not known when he wrote cannot have significantly changed these ratios. * See A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship ®, Oxford, 1973, Part Il and the important new discussions in Part III. He amply refutes the strange notion of C. Saumagne, Le droit latin ef les cités rom. sous l'émpire, Paris, 1965, that provincial municipia were always Latin. But, despite p. 350, F. Vittinghoff, Rom. Koldnisation u. Biirgerrechispolilik: Abh. Akad. Mainz, 1951, 29; 43 ff. was patently right that Latinity was not normally a stage in a community’s progress to Roman citizenship, which most Latin cities did not obtain earlier than other subjects under: the ‘Constitutio Antoniniana’; it was its essential function to reward the local upper class. On viritane grants in the east see Sherwin-White 310 f. A com- plete collection of evidence is wanting. a1-e. 115162 P. A. Brunt Enfranchisement implied, in some sense, Romanization. This took a cultural form where Latin was the language of government and education. The elder Pliny conceived it as the mission of Italy to unite and also to civilize mankind, giving them a common speech. More cynically, in des- cribing how Agricola promoted the adoption of Roman ways in Britain, Tacitus suggests that the amenities of a civilized life might accustom warlike tribes to docile submission *, Whatever its purposes, the government could do no more than encourage a process which, with no system of public education, it lacked the means to impose. Provincials Romanized them- selves. In some regions Italian settlers or Latinized veterans supplied them with models to imitate. Everywhere knowledge of Latin must have made it easier for them to influence Roman officials, and to take part in trade beyond their own region. Assimilation might win favours. Thus Gades in 61 BC invited Caesar to revise her laws and, in Cicero’s words, ‘to remove a kind of ingrained barbarity from her customs and institutions’ ; it was perhaps partly on this account, and not only for the services that. Balbus and his fellow-citizens later rendered to Caesar, that Gades became the first provincial city to obtain Roman status 5. But imitation of Rome need not have been prompted only by material considerations. Just as the literature and arts of Greece had long exercised a powerful attraction on less developed peoples, the Romans among them, so now Rome opened to many of her subjects a new world of thought and beauty and enjoyment. This was surely one reason why in western towns letters and arts, the buildings and the social life they sheltered, as well as the names of gods and men, and laws and institutions, assumed a Roman dress. (No motives of imperial pride restrained the subjects, as it had once restrained the Romans, from submerging their own languages and traditions in those of the superior culture). Once the conquered had recognized that further resistance was futile, they could gradually come to see that assimilation had its own rewards and charms. By contrast, where Greek was already the language of culture, of government, and of inter-regional trade, the Romans carried further the process of Hellenization®. Although they brought with them their own laws which, eventually, modified by Greek legal practices, were to be codified for the Byzantine empire 7, and although their love of gladiatorial games and beast hunts found too ready a reception among Greeks 8, in general what was specifically Latin in the common civilization of the empire made little impact in the east. There Greek remained the language in which Rome communicated with her subjects, and Greeks rarely learn- ed Latin, except for the few who entered the army or imperial adminis- * Pliny, NH III 391. Tac. Agr. 21, cf. Hist. IV 64. 3, Italian writers in general say nothing of Romanization. ® Cic. Bald. 43, ef. Brunt, Italian Manpower, Oxford, 1971, p. 602. ° A.HLM. Jones, The Greek City, Oxford, 1940, ch. Il and XXI, and The Later Romar Empire, Oxford, 1964, ch. XXIV. 7 L, Mittels, Reichsrecht u. Volksrecht, Leipzig, 1891: further bibliography in D. Norr, Imperium u. Polis in der hohen Principatszeit®, Munich, 1969, to which add R. Taubenschlag, The Law of Greco-Roman Egypt... .2, Warsaw, 1955, Egypt naturally provides the most copious. evidence. ® L. Robert, Les Gladiateurs dans U’Orient Grec, Amsterdam, 1971 (reprint).Local Ruling Classes in the Roman Empire 163 tration ; of its literary merits they were usually content to be ignorant *. The form of the local institutions was rarely changed 1°. Yet this phil- Hellenism, as well as the material benefits that Rome’s protection assured, must surely have helped to win the political attachment of her Hellenic subjects, or at least of those who were politically conscious and articulate. It was a long process. Lucian is the first Greek writer to refer to Roman troops as ‘our soldiers’ “, and after his time Greeks continued to treat the Romans as aliens, however benevolent !*. Still, in the end, they were to call themselves Rhomaioi. Romanization in sentiment triumphed at last. No doubt the cultural difference of the Greek world explains why Roman citizenship was for long less widely extended there. Yet here too it was not denied to the local magnates: why? Characteristically the Ro- mans never explicitly formulated any criteria by which it was bestowed. But Mareus Aurelius declared that it was a reward due only ‘maximis meritis’ 18, Service to Rome was the primary consideration. The enfran- chisement of provincial soldiers is only the most conspicuous illustration of this principle “. But hardly any class of men rendered more important services to the Roman state than those charged with local government. While most Roman troops were defending the frontiers, it was largely their task to preserve internal order. No large administrative bureaucracy ever existed under the Principate, except in Egypt, and the local magnates were even left to collect the direct property tax, the main source of im- perial revenues ®. The empire could hardly have survived without their loyalty or acquiescence. Cicero had commended his brother as proconsul of Asia for ensuring that the cities were administered by the optimates 16, This was a traditional and enduring maxim of Roman government, which Dio incorporates in Maecenas’ advice to Augustus.'? In the west the charters of Roman ® Plut. Dem. 2 1. is striking, especially in view of his residence in Rome, and close connexions with Romans, ef. C. P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome, Oxford, 1971, esp. ch. IX; he concedes that Latin literature had merits, but he had no leisure to master the language to the extent required for their appreciation. Only the transfer of government to the east in the fourth century led to a temporary vogue for Latin in court and governmental circles there, cf. A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy, Oxiord, 1974, 104 f., which was deplored by Liba- nius and never spread to cultivated Greek Churchmen (see G. Bardy, La question des langues dans V’église ane., Paris, 1948). In the ninth century the emperor Michael II could call Latin ‘a barbarous Scythian tongue’ (P. Charanis, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 1959, 23 ff.). 10 Jones, op. eit. in n. 6, ch. XI. 4 J. Palm, Rom, Romertum uw. Imperium in der gr. Lit. der Kaiserzeit, Lund, 1959, 54 £. ¥ D. Norr, op. cit. in n. 7, 94 ff. However, he was wrong to accept the suggestion that Byzantium fought against ‘the Romans’ under Severus : that was merely Severan propaganda, treating all adherents of Pescennius Niger as ‘hostes’. %8 Tabula Banasitana, cf. W. Seston and M, Euzennat, CRAJ, 1971, 468 ff; A. N. Sher- win-White, JRS 1973, 86 ff. 44 Cic., Balb. 22—4. Cf. also the grants to the Anauni and Volubilis, printed in e.g. Riccobono, FIRA®, nos. 70-f., and the regulations governing manumission of slaves in the Principate and the promotion of Junian Latins to full citizenship, on which see Sherwin-White, op. cit. in n, 3, 322 ff., ef. my Italian Manpower, 239 ff. For adoption of Roman culture as a secondary criterion for enfranchisement the case of Emporiae (Livy XXXIV 9) is particularly instructive. 16 Jones (n. 9) pp. 164 ff. Pre-Severan evidence is scanty, but before c. 200 the central government had no better means of collecting tribuium with its own officials than afterwards. 3 Ad Qu. fr. I 1. Cf. de Rep. 1139; Flace. 15-18 for Cicero’s own sentiments. ¥ Gf. Dio LIT 30, and see also nn. 1; 18-21; 35,164 P. A. Brunt and Latin towns, models for less privileged communities, themselves embodied the essentially oligarchic practice of the Roman Republie ®. In Gaul, where Caesar had found his most determined opponents among magnates like Dumnorix and Vereingetorix who appealed to the masses 2, the aristocracy retained control, and it is significant that they were mostly true to Rome when a few nobles under Tiberius raised a sort of jacquerie in revolt *°, Assemblies long continued to elect the magistrates, but their choice was limited to men of property. They could not legally initiate policy, and Rome could be expected to stamp on sedition. Roman offi- cials were indeed also supposed to prevent the oppression of the people by the ‘potentiores’. But the officials had the same social and economic interests and attitudes as the local oligarchs. In the second century at latest the humiliores were being subjected under Roman criminal law to treatment once reserved for slaves. Later, in the interest partly of the landowners, the peasants were to be bound to the soil like serfs. The masses could not look to Rome for effective protection against their local masters #4, Of course, in many or most subject communities oligarchic rule was no novelty and wherever it had existed previously the oligarchs would seem to have been the losers, when Roman conquest terminated local sovereignty. Hence in the early Stages of Roman expansion some aristo- crats took the lead in resistance. But in fact true independence had been rare in the past : most communities had been controlled by kings, or by some other neighbouring state, and had at best been left to manage their internal affairs. Liberty in this sense the local oligarchs retained, or acquired, under Roman rule, if only because governors, even when entitled to intervene in the cities at their discretion, seldom had leisure or staff ** The Roman principle that the magistrates should be ‘quasi ministri’ of the senate (Cie. Sest. 137) is written into the Spanish charters, see esp. Lex Ursonensis CXXIX ; Lex Mala- citana LXV. ** Dumnorix, BG. 1 3, ef. 17 f.; Indutiomarus, V 3; Vereingetorix, VII 4 ; perhaps Am- biorix, ef. V 27. See generally II 1 on opposition to Rome by over-mighty nobles, who could mobilise private armies, partly by demagogic appeals, ef. Posid. FHG no. 89, F. 1 sometimes stresses the presence of needy vagabonds ete. in hostile armies, III 17; V55; VII 4; VIII 30. Naturally, among some peoples there was more or less united resistance to the Roman fenguest; Caesar put to death the whole Venetie‘senate’, III 16. He could also appoint kings, IV 21; V 25; or confer power and wealth on his own plebeian partisans, BC Til 39. 2. *° Julian, Hist. dela Gaule, IV, Paris, 1920, 332 ff. Tac. Ann. IIT 40—46, esp. 40, 23 42,21, cf. Hist, 11 61. Trwones: The Greek City, ch. XI. Dio Chrys. XLVIII shows how at Prusa a proconsul under Trajan suppressed the assembly, probably for rioting, and that it had no power, when restored, to punish magistrates it distrusted ; hence there was danger of renewed disorder, Alth. ough Plutareh’s Praecepla Retp. Ger. is mainly related to contemporary problems (Jones, 0.6. in n. 0, ch. XID), I cannot believe that Rome would have permitted confiscation of private Properly, or even any substantial distribution of public lands or funds (818), ef. $1G? 684; dema- Sogic proposals of this kind, as his examples indicate, belonged to the past. Protection of the masses: Ulp., Dig. I 18, 6, 2; Dio LII 37; ef. Cic., de offic. II 85; and see n. 1. Humiltores: P. J. Gamsey, Social Status and Legal Privitege in the Romar Empire, Oxford, 1970, with my remarks in JRS 1972, 166 ff. Colonate : see e.g. Jones, (n. 9) ch. XIV; M. I, Finley, The Ancient Economy, London, 1973, ch. III.Local Ruling Classes in the Roman Empire 165 for continuous and systematic interference **. Only in the second century did the central government begin to attempt a closer supervision. Though this must have been resented by the local magnates, they had by then long come to accept Roman domination as inevitable, and precisely in this period they began to enjoy not only the benefits of peace and security for their possessions and privileges, but also increasing opportunities for sharing in the imperial administration itself ?*. Rich and educated men, who knew most of the world about them, could see that a single commune was too weak by itself to challenge Rome. At the same time co-operation with fellow-subjects was impeded by the persistence of old jealousies and rivalries . Even within one province or region there was little or no consciousness of a common nationality, which in modern times has militated against the growth of loyalty to an imperial power 5, Among all the subject peoples religion did not operate as a divisive force except for the Jews; the subjects accepted the gods of Rome, at least in name, and Rome gave many of their own deities the franchise of the imperial city. Few peoples possessed a literature to keep proud me- mories of the past alive. Of course in this respect the Greeks as well as the Jews are exceptions. But the Greek traditions enshrined the ideal not of the political unity of a nation, but of the freedom and autonomy of each polis, great or small; (it may indeed be said that if even a Greek city had succeeded in unifying the Greeks politically, that would in itself have destroyed the basis of Greek achievement). Under Roman rule most Greek poleis possessed as much, or as little, freedom and autonomy as in earlier times. The Jews did indeed remain less tractable, perhaps because the Scriptures and memories of the Maccabees held out hopes of divine aid, by which they might triumph over the Gentiles. Yet even in Judaea upper class Jews seem mostly to have opposed revolt, or to have sought to sabotage it, not only because (as Josephus makes king Agrippa urge) in their judgement it was certain to fail, and it was folly to ‘kick against the pricks’, but because Rome guaranteed the social order ; the revolt of 66 was almost as much directed against native 22 Thus Pliny in Bithynia-Pontus, a large area, with poor communications, was assisted by one legate (ep. X 25), his cohors amicorum (84, 2, cf. V1 22), the officers of more than one cohort (21 ; 106 f.) — for stationarii cf. 74. 77 £. — who could be used for civil administra- tion (86b) — in Egypt also in judicial business, e.g. Mitteis, Chr. 84; 90; P. Oxy. XII p. 1492; in addition there were the procurator and his freedman assistant (27 f.; 83 f.) and the prae- fectus orae Ponticae (21 {.; 86a), and the clerical officials described by A. H. M. Jones, Studies in Roman Government and Law, Oxford 1960 ch. X, cf. now G. Boulvert, Esclaves et Affranchis Impériaux, Naples, 1970. 3 Cf. M. Hammond, JRS 1957, 77 (for the senate); A. Stein, Der rém. Ritterstand, Muhich, 1927, 412 ff.; H. G. Pflaum, Les procurateurs équestres, Paris, 1950, 170—94. T collected some examples in Historia, 1961, 213 f., ef. Norr (n. 12) 48—50. The institution of concilia or koina in the Principate shows that it was not then Rome's policy to ‘divide and rule’. 5 Cf. H. Dessau, Gesch. der rém. Kaiserzeit, Berlin, 1930, I] 1, 448 f. 460 ff. on Spain, and Spanish Latin authors; 482 ff. on Gaul. Gallic nationalism was in my view nascent in Caesar’s time but did not persist as an-anti-Roman factor in the Principate, cf. Latomus 1959, 531 ff., esp. Part I; ibid. 1960, 497 f. Cf. Sherwin-White, 0.c. in n. 3, 446 ff.; also R. Mac- Mullen, Enemies of the Roman Order, Cambridge (Mass.), 1967, ch. VI, and against theories that heresies disguised nationalist movements in Africa, Egypt and Syria, see Jones (n. 9), ch. XV.166 P. A. Brunt Jandlords and usurers as against the heathen rulers. At least most of the high priests and rulers incurred the hatred of religious Zealots because they were too prone to favour peace and submission **. Outside Judaea, with no religious sentiment to countervail material interests, men of rank and wealth were still less likely to resist an empire that maintained peace, peace which brought most benefits to those with most to lose, and secured them in their property and local dominance; the Roman legal system too favoured the beati possidentes ”. At a council of Gallic notables in 70 Iulius Auspex, ‘e primoribus Remorum’, expatiated convincingly on the overwhelming power of Rome and the blessings of peace. Moreover it was not the poor who went to schools and learned the tricks of rhetoric ; indeed it seems clear that among the lower class, and especially the peasants, centuries passed before Latin or Greek supplanted the native languages, and in some areas, even in Spain, they never did 2°, At least in the west, the few with means and leisure for education learned from their Latin classics that it was by divine providence that Rome ruled the civilized world : ‘his ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono ; imperium sine fine dedi’ *, We can only surmise how much this teaching reinforced their loyalty ; certainly the Romans did not bring with them, like British or French imperialists, ideas of liberty, equality and national sovereignty that were subversive of their own dominion »°, And Roman ideas undoubt- edly permeate the works of writers born in Spain or Gaul, like Seneca or Quintilian, the late panegyrists or Rutilius Namatianus. Without the leadership and organization which the local magnates could alone, or best, provide, rebellions were rare. Continuous resistance did not keep the embers of disloyalty burning. Time and habit promoted the acceptance of Roman rule. Aristides’ ancestors had already been sub- jects for nearly twice as long as British rule endured in large parts of India. The Roman citizenship, which symbolized, rewarded and fortified the loyalty of the magnates, also prepared the way for the final step in Romanization : their admission to a share in imperial government, which removed the distinction between rulers and subjects. It was the easier for Rome to offer this concession and for the magnates to accept it, * See e.g. Jos., BJ [1 338; IV 414; VII 254—62 and my article in Klio (forthcoming). On absence of vernacular literature, ef. Excursus I. H. Kreissig, Die sozialen Zusammenhdnge des judiischen Krieges, Berlin, 1970, 90 ff. questions the testimony of Jos. c. Ap. II 204 to the frequency of literacy among the Jews, but stresses oral tradition. Still, this was more easily preserved, when supported by Scriptures. (Jesus ‘the carpenter’ would not be a counter- instance to Kreissig, if ‘carpenter’ stands for ‘scholar’, G. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, London, 1973, 21 £.) #7 Peace; see e.g. Dessau (n. 25) 452 1. (Spain); 497 ff. (Gaul), ef. Tac., Hist. IV 69: Tulius Auspex e primoribus Remorum, vim Romanam (NB) pacisque bona dissertans ; OGIS 458 and SEG IV 490 (Asia). Legal system: F. Schulz, Classical Roman Law, Oxford, 1951, 544 f. on locatio — conductio, 203 ff. on elaboration of law of succession and 26 f. on addietio for debt; Garnsey, 0.c. in n. 21. * Plut., Sert. 14; Tae., Ann. III 43,1; Agr. 21,2. Cf. Jullian, Hist, de la Gaule VI 140 ff.; VIII 265. * Dessau (n. 25) I 509. For knowledge of Virgil in even the least Romanized provinces cl. S. Frere, Britannia, London, 1967, 313 f. and 338; Méesy, RE Suppl. IX (Pannonia) 768; JRS 1968, 60 ff. (Egypt). 20 | developed this theme in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1965, 267 ff, esp. 281 ff.Local Ruling Classes in the Roman Empire 167 because in education and economic interests provincial magnates closely resembled the old Italian ruling class. I have never been able to discover that the promotion of leading provincials had any effect on Roman policy, or on the ideas of emperors, senators or Equites. They were appa- rently uncritical of the established order ; the right of the city of Rome to be fed and amused at the cost of provincial taxpayers was never impaired, and Italy was allowed to retain immunity from the heaviest taxes until Diocletian *. Indeed in the reign of the first provincial emperor public money was first provided for the poor of all Italy, and of Italy alone ; and provincial senators were required to invest in Italian land, so that they might regard Italy as their real patria. Some provincial families, like those of Pius and Marcus Aurelius, obviously became naturalized there. Still, in so far as provincials involved in the central government retained con- nexions with their original homes, this must have served to attach their peoples still more firmly to Rome. By the time that the eternal city cele- brated its millennium under an Arab Caesar, its dominion had virtually ceased to be foreign to the men of rank and property. To a Severan jurist Rome was ‘communis nostra patria’. The concept was not alien to Aris- tides *?. rd Of course it had a much earlier origin. Cicero had contended that every Italian had two fatherlands, the municipality of his birth and Rome, the ‘communis patria’ of all alike. This may remind us that the Romani- zation of the provinces had its counterpart and model in that of Italy. It was with Italian arms that Rome had conquered the empire she now maintained with provincial troops. The peoples of Italy had been only less diverse ethnically and linguistically than her subjects overseas, and some had fought no less strenuously for their independence. Yet in Italy too Rome had ultimately won the consent of her subjects, and by methods which determined the tradition that the emperors were to follow. Like almost everything that was most valuable in the Roman achievement, the secret of imperial success was discovered in the Republic, before the spirit of innovation at Rome had been depressed, or destroyed. The peoples of Italy had also been governed by domi nobiles, who generally received, and reciprocated, Roman support. Naturally this generalization admits of exceptions which do not disprove it; aristocrats were occasionally popular leaders, and anti-Roman *. But the protection 31 Victor, Caes. 29.31, ef. Jones, LRE I 64. 82 Dig. XXVIL 1, 6, 11, ef. Cic., Leg. 115: Aristides, XXVI 61. cf. Ne 7) 99 ff. 33 Much of Part II is founded on my article in JRS 1965, 90 ff. The criticisms of Sher- win- White (n. 3) ch. V and other later works (especially the valuable contribution of W. V. Harris, Rome in Etruria and Umbria, Oxford, 1971, chapters V & VI) would not lead me to alter it, except in details or phrasing. *4 A. J. Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy, Oxford, 1958, 149 f. See Excursus II.168 P. A. Brunt Rome gave to the lords of Volsinii against their serfs in 265 BC %, and the refusal of Campanian Equites on two occasions to join anti-Roman move- ments °°, are surely typical of the connexions between Rome and local magnates, which were cemented by relations of hospitium and even inter- marriage between great Roman and Italian houses 37, The latter were left to manage their own local affairs ; in my judgement this was true before 90 BC no less of towns that already possessed Roman citizenship than of those which still lacked it 38, The franchise itself was occasionally granted to these domi nobiles, and already by Gaius Gracchus’ time it went automatically to the magis- trates of Latin towns ®°. Before the Hannibalic war Rome had incorporated many entire communities in her own citizen body #. But even such mass enfranchisements were probably of most advantage to the local magnates. Their wealth made it easier for them to visit Rome and vote, and it also gave weight to the votes cast at elections in the timocratice assembly of the centuries. No doubt they could procure all sorts of favours in return for their electoral support. Some could rise to high offices themselves. Within at most two generations after the enfranchisement of his town, a Tuseulan became consul in 322 BC and founded the dynasty of the Fulvii“. This phenomenon was certainly not unique, and perhaps com- moner than we can ever detect ; the origin of most new consular and prae- torian families is unknown. Probably there would have been little asto- nishing in Marius’ career if he had advanced no further than the praetorship 4. Cicero traced Rome’s liberality with the citizenship back to the rape of the Sabine women and the synoecism of Romans and Sabines under Romulus. He claimed that since that time Rome had never intermitted a practice, which was the chief source of her power (Balb. 31). He chose to forget the narrow and exclusive policy followed for over a century before the Social War. But he could well have argued that that war, the gravest crisis Rome had faced since Hannibal, fortified his case. It was brought on because Rome had departed from her own tradition. However, that tradition worked for Rome’s advantage, precisely because of the aristocratic structure of society and political institutions. Tacitus makes Claudius contrast the readiness of Rome to enfranchise her subjects with the illiberality of Sparta and Athens, who were ruined because ‘victos pro alienigenis arcebant’ (Ann. XI 25). Now in the last crisis of the Pelo- ponnesian war Athens did bestow her citizenship on the loyal Samians * Harris 0c. 82-4; 91 f.; 115—8. 3° Livy VIII 11,16; XXIIE 31,10; XXIV 47,12. 3? Toynbee 1 326—343, cf. Wiseman (n. 42) ch. 3. 88 Italian Manpower App. III. °° Brunt, JRS 1965 p. 90. *® Toynbee I ch. IIT provides the clearest full account of this, and in general of Rome's organization of Italy before 90. oy Mlunzer RE VII 237 1., cf. Toynbee I 126; 196 f. Other Tusculans in office at Rome, ibid. 324 f. Only a few ‘inguilini’, like the Perpernas, can be detected by their non-Latin names, However, K. J. Beloch, Rom. Gesch., Berlin, 1926, 338 ff. was in my view justified in criticising some of Miinzer’s speculations on the origin of particular noble plebeian families. S See e.g. Harris, Appendix 1; T. P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Society, Oxtord, 1971 ch. 2.Local Ruling Classes in the Roman Empire 169 (1@ TI? 1). But what benefit could the Samians really have received? ‘At Athens all major decisions were taken by an assembly in which majo- rities rested simply on counting by heads; a few Samian visitors would have been overwhelmed by the mass of poor citizens from the city and the Piraeus. By contrast the Roman citizenship gave influence and the pros- pect of political advancement to those who controlled their home towns. In 90 the Italians demanded the citizenship and rebelled when it was refused. Rome’s allies, unlike those of Athens, did not desire to free themselves from foreign dominion, but to share in the political rights of a state they were ready to acknowledge as their own. Even the bitterness of a bloody war did not prevent fusion with the old citizens, once their objective was attained. Naturally, it was the ‘principes’ who had demanded the franchise in 90, and the chief beneficiaries were the ‘boni et locupletes’ from all over Italy. Claudius said that it was the wish of Augustus and Tiberius that they should be admitted to the senate ; many had been there even before Caesar’s dictatorship 4%. . This political assimilation corresponded to a cultural Romanization, the progress of which it is hard to trace but which again must have owed much to Roman settlement and to service in a Latin speaking army, and which culminated in the first century BC not only in the adoption of Roman laws and institutions but in the virtual disapperance from the literary or epigraphic records of all languages but Latin. Of course it is the upper classes who have left us these records ; we do not know when Virgil’s humbler countrymen in Mantua began to speak his tongue“. From first to last Roman society and politics were aristocratic. The Princeps himself was most secure when he ruled with the consent of the upper orders. At every stage in Rome’s history the aristocrats who ruled at Rome found it most natural to support men like themselves elsewhere. Community of interests and sentiments made it easier to admit them to their own circle. It was only the oligarchic institutions of the Roman Republic that made the extension of the citizenship a suitable instrument for winning the consent of the Italians by giving substantial political rights to the domi nobiles, and it was the well-tried success of this policy that suggested to the autocrats its further extension; they built on Republican experience. In this way they fostered and rewarded the growth of an empire-wide loyalty to Rome, if only among themen who were the natural leaders of provincial subjects. We can never know how deeply that loyalty penetrated the masses. They do not speak to us on parchment or stone. The eloquence of an Aristides illustrates what men of rank and education thought : for the rest we have to make dubious infe- rences from the actions of Illyrian peasants whose valour saved the empire 42 TLS 212, IT 1 ff. Cf. Wiseman (n. 42) passim, esp. Appendix I. Many of Wiseman’s conclusions on the origo of senatorial families are highly speculative, but it is improbable that after Sulla doubled the senate, its lower ranks in particular were not largely composed of municipales ; for Caesar’s senate, still further enlarged, cf. Cic. Phil. III 15. 44 For the general reasons given in Excursus I we must be wary of assuming that verna- cular languages did not continue in common use long after they disappear from written records.170 P. A. Brunt in the third century “ or of Bagaudae who sided with barbarians and helped to disrupt it “. Yet perhaps the former fought primarily for pay, and the latter in blind discontent with their miseries; Rome may have meant little to both, whether for good or ill. And Rome would be remembered not for what these inarticulate peasants thought of her, but for what the privileged few said in reiterated laudations. EXCURSUS I Vernacular Languages Surveys of the persistence of vernacular languages in the empire are to be found in Jones, Later Roman Empire, 991—7; R. Macmullen, AJP 1966, 1 ff., cf. Bardy, o.c. in n. 9, esp. on COPTIC and SYRIAC (cf. F. Millar, JRS 1971, 5—-8). For AFRICA see F. Millar, JRS 1968, 126 ff. (with extensive bibliography, not merely relating to that region), ef. P. Brown, ib. 85 ff.; note CLL VIII 8500 (Sitifis) for Greek and Latin as ‘utraque lingua’. For ANATOLIA and THRACE P. Charanis, 0.c. in n. 9 adds something to K. Holl, Hermes, 1908, 240—54. For GAUL see O, Jullian, Hist. de la Gaule, VI ch. IL; VIII 265 ff.; PM. Duval, La vie quotidienne en Gaule, Paris, 1952, 46 ff.; G. Dottin, La langue gauloise, Paris, 1918, collected the evidence for Celtic and the Gallic inscriptions. On BRITAIN see K. Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain, Edinburgh, 1953, cf. 8. Frere Britannia, 1967, 305, 311—14. For SPAIN See A. Garcia y Bellido, in Temporini (n. 2) I 1, 462 ff. As for the DANUBIAN PROVINCES, in the absence of positive evidence for vernacular languages in Upper Moesia and Pannonia, the illiteracy or absolute unintelligibility of Latin in many inscriptions, even when set up by curiales in urban centres, and the fact that 80% of the Latin in- scriptions come from the most urbanized 8% of the area of Upper Moesia, speak volumes (cf. A. Méesy, Gesellschaft w. Romanisation in der rém. Provinz Moesia Sup., Amsterdam, 1970, 199 ff., cf. RE Suppl. TX 766—70 on Pannonia). Evidence is meagre for various reasons. (1) Even ancient ethnograph- ers display little interest in barbarous tongues, cf. J. Sofer, W. St. 1952, 138 ff. ; Garcia y Bellido, op. cit., Part II Cf. the neglect of Latin by Greek writers, and of Italic languages by Roman (and note Gell. XI 7,4). Most Latin allusions to Punic come from Augustine (Millar, JRS 1968, 130); and he shows a perhaps unusual pride in a region’s past (Brown, 0.c.); Jullian, VIII 383, cites parallels for regional ‘patriotism’. (2) Most ver- naculars had no written literature. Even Coptic and Syriac only became literary tongues, for religious purposes, after AD 200, though Syriac is a 45 See A. Alféldi, St. zur Gesch. du Wellkrise des 3 Jahrhunderts nach Christus, Darmstadt, 1967, 228 ff. (not free of learned phantasy). Of special interest is the reverence professed for Roman traditions in Coll. VI 4 and XV 3 by Diocletian and Maximian, ef. Galerius’ edict in Lact. de Mort. Persec. 34. These emperors were all, it is said, of humble ‘Illyrian’ origin. But are the ideas, any more than the bombastic style, of their pronouncements, those of Myrian peasants ? 46 E. A, Thompson, in M. I. Finley (ed.), St. in Ane. Society, London, 1974, ch. XIV, and in JRS 1956, 65 ff. On brigands cf. R. MacMullen, cited in n. 25 ch. VI and Appendix B.Local Ruling Classes in the Roman Empire V1 branch of Aramaic in which parts of the OT were written, and Jones puts its rise, or renascence, too late. The lays of Celtic bards were soon for- gotten in Gaul (cf. H. Dessau, Gesch. der rim. Kaiserzeit, Berlin, 1930, IL 2, 484), though apparently not in Britain (Jackson, 0.c. 116 f.). Many peoples only learned to write with the advent of Greeks or Romans, and the languages of their masters as well as their alphabets may soon have conquered the few who became literate; even when they continued to speak in the vernacular, they did not choose to write it. (3) Inscriptions were not put up by the very poor, or the illiterate peasants ; even fune- rary monuments were not cheap (cf. R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire, Cambridge, 1974, 79 f.; 129 £.). Moreover, they do not necessarily reflect the language actually in common use, see Jackson o.¢. 99 f., Jullian VI 111 n. 1; we could not tell from inscriptions that Getic was common in Tomi in Ovid’s time (Zristia V7, 51; 12, 58; Ex Ponto IV 13, 17 ff., ete.) or Syriac round Antioch as late as the fourth century. In the absence or dearth of explicit testimony to vernacular lan- guages, onomastic evidence is important, despite the doubts of Jullian, VI 112. Thus in Gaul itself Celtic names round Trier become commoner, the further one goes from the centre; and we know from Jerome (cf. esp. J. Sofer, W. St. 1937, 148 ff.) that Celtic was still spoken there in his day. It is significant that with the renascence of Coptic Egyptian peasants are less apt to take Greek names or ‘aliases’. See for exemplary use of such evidence in tracing the diffusion of Latin G. Alfoldy, Noriewm, London, 1974, 133—5; 139, 193 f. Cf. also for instance, R. Thouvenot, Essai sur la province rom. de Bétique, Paris, 1940, 185—8. The survival of vernacular tongues in Anatolia, sometimes almost 1000 years after the people had been first subjected to Hellenization, the emergence after the Roman period of Albanian, Vlach, Basque, the various descendants of British (Welsh, Cornish and Breton), and (pace Millar) Berber, and the earlier revival as written languages of Syriac and Coptic, prove beyond doubt that the impression we get from lite- rature and inscriptions that Greek and Latin were wholly dominant is false. If Celtic held out so long near Trier, which was in a frontier zone where the presence of a Latin speaking army should have had some effect, and which had latterly been a great imperial centre, we must suppose a fortiori that it was the common speech in most of the hinterland. In Spain too a vernacular language was still in use near the Romanized east coast as late as the fourth, or more probably the sixth, century (Garcia y Bellido, op. cit., Part VIL.) It is a reasonable assumption that it was in the towns (not very numerous in the north) that Latin or Greek made most progress among the masses. Onomastie evidence often supports this. Thus the scraps of Latin scrawled by artisans in Britain do not show that it was intelligible to the peasants. The dialect of Coptic that was to prevail was that of Upper Egypt, where Greek settlement had been thinnest and the native language had doubtless always remained most common. In Africa ‘Punic’ was spoken in the country, but was evidently unfamiliar to many in an urban congregation of Augustine’s time. It was indeed long before the Church evangelized the peasantry. Holl observed that translation into vulgar tongues was never initiated by the Church itself, but where it occurred,172 P. A. Brunt e.g. in Syriac, Coptic and Gothic, was the work of bi-lingual individuals. Why individuals conceived the idea of producing translations in some vernaculars and not in others, and how the Gospel was ultimately con- veyed to the peasants in (say) Gaul, if they knew little or no Latin and the preachers little or no Celtic, are questions to which I have found no answer. But perhaps in Gaul and Spain, once Latin had become thelan- guage of salvation as well as that of landlords and tax-collectors, it had a new and decisive appeal to the masses. Even among the upper classes some must have remained able to converse in the local vernacular, at least with their tenants, servants, ete. In some places Latin or Greek may not have been the ordinary vehicle of communication at any level. Much of the evidence is late, but naturally probative, a fortiori, for earlier times. Ausonius’ father, a distinguished doctor in the prosperous town of Bordeaux, was not fluent in Latin (Aus., Epic. in patr. 9). Ulpian allows the use of Punic, Gallic, Syriac or other languages for certain legal transactions under Roman law (Millar, JRS 1968, 130 £.); these were of chief interest to men of property. Some Churchmen who wrote in Syriac or Coptic were men of Hellenic culture. Jackson shows the influence of a correct: Latin learned by the upper classes in British schools on the development of the British language. It is obvious that small men in the towns had still greater need to communicate with the peasants who came in to market. On the other hand, in so far as the upper classes and the urban populations had little of the native tongues, the villages might easily have become linguistically isolated from each other, since peasants do not travel far or often, and dialectical differences could have been accentuated, until only Greek or Latin as the lingua franca remained as a general mode of communication within a region, ef. W. M. Calder, JHS 1911, 164, commenting on neo-Phrygian inscrip- tions of the empire and adducing the conditions among Greek speakers in the villages of Turkey at the time. This would have tended, in the very long run, to promote the triumph of Greek or Latin. It would also have meant that local languages did not provide a unifying regional factor, which could have supported ‘nationalism’ against Rome. EXCURSUS II Rome and Oligarchies in Italy and Greece B. Badian, Foreign Clientelae, Oxford, 1958, 147 f. pointed out that Livy’s generalization, that everywhere the local senates favoured Rome in the Hannibalic war, whereas the plebs was in conflict with the best people (XXIV 2), does not fit his own account of events at Locri, Arpi and Tarentum; he might have added evidence that principes in Etruria were suspected or convicted for disloyalty (XXVII 24, 2; XXIX 36, 10—12; XXX 26,12), but ef. Harris (n. 33), ch. IV, esp. 131 ff. But as Latin has no definite or indefinite article, ‘principes’ in such texts (cf. XXL 30, 8, on Locri, XXIV, 47, 6 on Arpi) can’mean some, not all, ‘principes’ : it is made clear that at Locri they belonged to one faction, and could be described as ‘levissimus quisque’ (KXIV 1, 7; XXIX 6, 5); in any oligarchic state, as at Rome itself and Capua (¥xt 2, 2), someLocal Ruling Classes in the Roman Empire 173 aristocrats might woo the plebs. The blame for the revolt at Arpi was laid exclusively on one wealthy man, perhaps a would-be tyrannus (XXIV 453; 47, 10). On the other hand at Capua 70 principes senatus were executed for a revolt they had failed to prevent (KXVI 16, 6), cf. the treatment Cleon proposed for the plebs at Mytilene. Badian seems to be right on Tarentum, but one exception does not invalidate a rule. Recently, J. Deininger, Der politische Widerstand gegen Rom in Griechenland, Berlin, 1971, has protested against the common view that in second century Greece oligarchs favoured Rome and democrats were for resistance. He points out that democratic institutions were ubiqui- tous, though the actual government was in the hands of ‘principes’, and that the ‘principes’ themselves were commonly divided. He acknowledges, however, that the anti-Roman ‘principes’ usually had popular support, and cites numerous instances of this; in the last stages of resistance, the Achaean war and the Athenian revolt of 88, it was the masses who formed its mainstay, led by a very few members of the ruling class. Livy’s gene- ralizations about the anti-Roman attitude of the plebs at the time of the second and third Macedonian wars (XXXV 34, 3; XLII 30, 1) are thus amply justified, even though the ‘principes’ (as Livy admits in the second passage) were not all of one mind. It remains more significant than Dei- ninger allows that Flamininus imposed timocratic arrangements in Thes- saly in 194, and that Rome took similar measures more generally in and after 146 (for which see A. Fuks, JHS 1970, 78 ff.). The upper classes were more likely to be conscious of Rome’s overwhelming might, and were probably averse to the financial sacrifices that war made necessary, as in 147/6 among the Achaeans. Deininger also forgets that in every Greek democracy, the Athens of Pericles, Cleon and Demosthenes not’ excluded, the politewomenoi were inevitably men of some affluence. In fourth” century Athens no one avowed oligarchie sympathies before the Lamian war. But ‘principes’ like Phocion were very ready to accept power under an undemocratic regime imposed by Antipater. So were ‘principes’ in Thessaly in 194 and in Achaea in 146. It is no great distortion to call those upper-class politicians democrats who had the support of the masses, and those oligarchs who were ready to override the sentiments of the people, and if occasion offered, to take office under an oligarchie régime, esta- blished by a foreign conqueror, which at least guaranteed peace and the preservation of their material interests. Cf. also J. Briscoe, St. in Anc. Soe, (ed. M. I. Finley), London, 1974, ch. III.