Walbank F.W., Astin A.E., Frederiksen M.W., Ogilvie R.M. The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 7, Part 1: The Hellenistic World
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PIRACY AND ITS RAMIFICATIONS 287
recruiting them
for
particular campaigns,
184
by retaining their leaders as
admirals
and
commanders,
185
or by
striking such treaties with
piratically-inclined communities
as
siphoned
off
their surplus
man-
power
186
or as
made
it a
casus belli
for
them
to
continue their
depredations.
187
In
this
way
the
relationship between
the
military
powers which needed
and
could
pay
mercenaries
and the
communities
which nurtured pirates was not so much adversative as symbiotic.
It
has
indeed been said that
a
pirate
is
an
unemployed mercenary,
but
it is
equally true that
the
more competent
the
pirate,
the
more
he is
worth
employing.
It
is scarcely surprising that the monarchies (Egypt perhaps
excepted) took no high moral tone towards the pirates whose skills they
needed.
The second important aspect
of
piracy concerns the customs and
the
assumptions about
its
legitimacy which underpinned
it.
Since
the
practice
of
piracy requires
a
base,
a
command structure,
and an
initial
investment
in
ship-building (time
and
resources)
and
supplies,
it
presupposes either
the
absence
of
effective state authority
or its
active
connivance. Either way relationships are political,
not
purely criminal,
and reflect
a
context
of
inter-communal custom
the
reverse
of
ours,
whereby the right
of
seizure
(ovXdv)
held good between the members of
two communities unless outlawed by specific agreement. In this context,
the basic structure
of
auAav-procedure
is
triangular,
viz,
that [a],
a
citizen
of
State
A,
injured
by
[b
1
],
a
citizen
of
State
B,
could forcibly
exact recompense from
a
second citizen
of
State
B,
[b
2
],
who could
in
turn recover
it by
legal process
in
B from
[b
1
]
(as
[a]
could not, having
no status and
no
access
to
legal process
in
B).
188
In
theory, indeed, such
seizure should
be
reprisal
for an
injury already suffered,
but the
boundary between reprisal
and
unprovoked attack was thin enough
at
the best
of
times
and
could easily
be
crossed,
as
Queen Teuta
of
the
Illyrians did when challenged by the Coruncanii, by claiming that' so far
as concerned private activities
it
was not customary
for
Ulyrian rulers
to
preclude their subjects from augmenting their fortunes
at
sea'.
189
The effect
of
such a custom being
to
discourage movement
on
lawful
as much
as on
unlawful occasions, Greek 'international
law'
from
the
184
E.g.
by
Demetrius against Rhodes
in
305 (Diod. xx.82.4 and 83.1) and against Cassander
in
502 (Diod. xx.110.4).
18S
Ormerod 1924, 123: (H
158).
188
E.g. Eumenes II's treaty with
30
Cretan cities (SIG 627
=
/Civ.
179,
with
Bull.
epig.
1958,406),
or Antigonus' treaties with Hierapytna
(1C
m.iii.i =
SVA 502) and
Eleutherna
<JC
n.z\i.io =
SVA
501).
Cf. in
general Ducrey 1970,
645ff.:
(E 121).
187
The classic case
is
Rhodes' treaty
of
205/4 with Hierapytna
(SIC
581= /Cm.iii.3
= SVA
5
j
1,
§x, with Brule 1978, 5
iff.:
(H 29));
cf.
also
her
treaty
off.
203 with Olous
(SVA
552, with Brule
1978,
54
ff.).
188
On av\f)jau\av in general see Dareste
I889:(H
4i);Gernet 1917, 264?.:
(H
78); Wilhelm 1911,
195-200: (B 173); Latte 1931: (11 126); Gauthier 1972,
2O9ff.:
(H 74); Garlan 1978: (H
72).
189
Polyb. 11.8.8, trans.
M.
Chambers.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
288 8 CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FEATURES
archaic period onwards witnessed various attempts
to
obviate the need
to invoke
the
right
of
seizure,
(i)
For
example, specific outstanding
rights against a foreign city or individual (B
or
[b
1
])
might be taken over
by State
A, as the
Chalcedonians
did for
urgent fiscal purposes:
190
or
their activation might
be
made subject
to
State
A's
consent
and
to
specific procedures,
as in
the
late third-century agreement between
Stymphalus and Aegira:
191
or, the inverse case, a citizen of a community
vulnerable
to
such rights (State B) might take
it
upon himself to settle
them,
as
Timagoras
of
Cyrene seems
to
have done
in
the
late fourth
century.
192
(ii)
Alternatively,
the
evolution
of
proxeny-procedures
allowed State
A to
appoint
in
B
a
citizen,
[I?
3
],
who
could serve
as
sponsor in
B
in legal process for
[a]
or his fellow-citizens and who would
himself have protected access
to
the courts
of
A.
If
we leave aside here
the purely political role ofproxenoi,
it
was probably this latter privilege
of access which came
to
be the more important aspect and which led
to
the proliferation
of
such grants
in
the
Hellenistic period.
193
(iii)
Or,
thirdly,
A
and
B
might agree
symbola
with each other,
viz.
bilateral
judicial conventions envisaging access by citizens of A to the courts (or
a
court)
of
B
(and vice versa) and specifying procedures, the composition
of the court, etc.,
in
some detail.
194
(iv) Fourthly,
a
claim
or
grant
of
asylia
might
be
made. These took
various forms,
195
not all of which can be linked with the threat of piracy.
However,
it
is
convenient
to
set the
various types
out
here, partly
for
convenience
and
partly because
the
uses
of
asylia
as
a
social institution
and
as a
diplomatic technique well illustrated
how
verbally similar
phenomena
may
derive from very different economic
or
political
contexts, fears, needs and ambitions. Freedom from ov\r) attached in the
first and foremost instance to a god and
to
his/her shrine,
196
and even
in
the Hellenistic period recognitions are occasionally couched
in
terms of
the god rather than
of
the physical space
of
the shrine.
197
Claims
for
the
190
[Arist.]
Oec.
11.1347b
2off.
with
Van
Groningen
ad
lac.
and
Gauthier 1972, 211—12:
(H 74).
191
IG
v.2.357
=
SEC xi.
1105 =SVA
567,
11.
89-93,
with Gauthier
1972,
2388".
and
295!.:
(H
74)-
192
Oliverio et
al.
1961-2,
273 no.
103: (B
I 16), with
Bull,
epig,
1964, 56) and
Gauthier 1972,
213:
(" 74).
193
E.g. the
list
of
proxeny-grants made
by
Aetolia (Benecke 1934, 3iff.:(D 103))
in
the
third
and
early second centuries includes citizens
of
nearly
all the
major islands
and
seaboard states (Corinth
and Athens being interesting exceptions).
Cf.
also
n.
324
below.
194
Gauthier
1972:
(H
74)
and
Ziegler 1975:
(H
234)
are
now the
starting points
of
discussion.
i» See especially Schlesinger
1933:
(H
201),
and
also Gauthier 1972,222-6,242-4, 282-4:
(H
74);
Bravo
1974,
156—9: (B
54);
Ziegler
1975,
167?.: (H 254); Gawantka
197;, 115ff-:
(H
76);
Walbank
1981,
I4sff.: (A
63).
196
Hence
of
course
the
importance
of
altar
and
sanctuary
for
suppliants
or for
runaway slaves.
This form
of
asylia
is not our
concern here, socially important though slave sanctuary
was (cf. Tac.
Ann.
in.63).
197
E.g.
0G1S
333
=
RC 68, 1.
i;SIG
781, 11.
10-11.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PIRACY AND ITS RAMIFICATIONS 289
explicit recognition
of
the
inviolability
of a
particular shrine, hitherto
sparse, became more frequent from
the mid
third century
B.C.
Thenceforward, stimulated either
by
convenient epiphanies
of
the deity
in question,
by
emulation
of
neighbours,
or by the
ostentatious
benevolence
of a
sovereign, many cities claimed asylia
for a
prominent
shrine
of
theirs
and
went
on
later,
if
such claims were widely conceded,
to make wider claims
on
behalf
of
their city
and
territory
as
well. Cities
whose claims evoked widespread recognition
198
included Smyrna from
246 onwards,
Cos
from
242,
Magnesia-on-the-Maeander from 207/6,
Teos from
204/3,
an
d
Miletus.
It is
probably
not
chance that
the
best
documented claims
are
those made
by the
coastal cities
of
Asia Minor,
for
the
waning
of
Ptolemaic seapower,
and
their exposed position
in a
region accessible
and
attractive
to all
four major monarchies must have
presented both
an
urgent need
for
protection
and the
opportunity
to
extract
it by
playing
one
power against another.
Inevitably most recognitions were formulaic (though flowery
and
elaborate
on
occasion),
but did not
thereby lack substance. Aetolia's
recognition
of
Magnesia's asylia
is
business-like
and
explicit:
that
the
friendship towards them should
be
preserved,
and
that their city
and
land should
be
holy
and
free from pillage
(aovXov),
as
their envoys proclaim:
and that
it
should
be
permitted
to
no one
of
Aetolians
or of
those dwelling
in
Aetolia, whencesoever they may start as base,
to
carry
off
anyone (/x^Seva) from
the land
of
the Magnesians, neither
by
land
nor
by
sea:
if
anyone should carry
off,
the
(Aetolian) general
in
office shall recover
the
visible goods,
and
as for
invisible goods,
the
synedroi
are empowered
to
impose such penalty
as
they
see
fit,
as against persons damaging
the
common weal,
to
exact
the
penalties
and
return them
to
those
who
are
suffering injustice.
199
The force
of
such recognitions emerges also from what
we can
occasionally detect,
the
refusal
to
accord them. Most of the documents
in
the Magnesia dossier grant
the
city's requests without further
ado,
but
the letters
of
Antiochus
III and
Attalus
I, and the
decree
of
Chalcis
drafted
on
Philip
V's
instructions, omit
all
reference
to
the
asylia
of
city
and land, thereby fuelling
the
reasonable presumption that
the
kings
concerned
did not
want
to tie
their hands.
200
Complementary
to
such recognitions
of the
inviolability
of a
place
were those
of
the inviolability
of
persons. Such grants sometimes stood
by themselves,
201
but
since they were better adapted
to the
needs
of
198
Full list
and
documentation
in
Schlesinger
1933,
71-84:
(H 201).
198
IC
tx
2
.i.4,
11.
14—2j.
Other Aetolian asy/ia-dtcrees
are
closely similar (Benecke
1934,
17-31:
(D 105)).
200
Respectively
/.
Magnesia
18
(
=
OCIS 231
=
RC 51);
34
(
=
OCIS
zSz = RC
34);
47
(
=
S1C
561).
RC
p.
147; Walbank 1981, 147:
(A
63).
201
E.g. SIG
357, where Epidaurus' grant of
asylia
to the
Astypalaeans
as the
former's colonists
is
linked only with ateleia.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
290
8
CULTURAL, SOCIAL
AND
ECONOMIC FEATURES
travellers they were frequently linked
via the
formula
'the
right
of
sailing in and out inviolably and without formal treaty' with the grant of
proxenos-stztus,
as in the
innumerable such decrees from Delphi
and
elsewhere, whether they were given to individuals
or
to groups such as
mercenaries
or
the
technitai
of
Dionysus (see below p. 319). One should
not overestimate their importance,
for
they tended
to be
granted
by
communities such as Delphi with little will
or
capacity
for
mischief,
but
that is not true
of
a
further form, the bilateral treaty between two states
which protected each other's nationals from
syle
'by
land
or by
sea,
in
war
or in
peace'.
202
A
community thus protected
was
in a
strong
position.
Plainly, piracy
was not the
only precipitator
of
these diplomatic
developments,
for
fear
of
royal encroachment
and
local ambitions
for
the prestige
of
a
city's shrine and festivals also played some part. Yet the
threat of piracy may well have been primary, as one more of the ways
in
which war and violence, together with the institutions they called into
being, were basic determining factors
of
Hellenistic experience. Like
formal
war, too,
piracy
was
used
in an
entirely rational fashion.
We
should
not be
seduced
by
Polybius' rude remarks about Aetolians and
Cretans
203
into supposing that their public policy was
the
product
of
remoteness, primitiveness,
or
collective boorishness. Much more
simply,
it
was
in
their interest
to
raise their nuisance value
by
allowing
the age-old system
of
seizure
to
run its course.
If
it yielded
no
reaction
from
the
victim (state
or
person), then Aetolians
and
Cretans were
the
wealthier by whatever proceeds their booty would fetch:
if
it did yield a
reaction, then
the
koinon
was
that much better placed
to
make
an
advantageous treaty. The growth
of
the Aetolian League
is
testimony
enough
to the
force
of
that logic.
V. CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
Piracy,
and the
reactions
to it,
provide
a
specific example
of
how
the
phrase ' Hellenistic Society' is a convenient but misleading label for
a
set
of developing
and
ad
hoc
solutions
to the
very various immediate
or
longer-term needs and problems which had to be solved (or lived with)
within certain boundary conditions by governments and individuals.
204
202
E.g.
IG
ix
2
.1.\)(> =
SVA
542 >etolia and Tricca
in
Thessaly, after 206).
203
E.g. on Aetolians:
11.3.3,
4.6,
.•.)-$
passim;
iv.3.1 and 5, 7.8, 16.4,
18.11,
67.4, 65.1?.; v.9 and
11;
ix.34, 35.6, 38.6; xviii.34;
On
Cretans: iv.8, 11; vi.46-7; vm.16.4-5: xxxm. 16.4-5.
204
This is not the place for lengthy methodological disquisitions, but choices must be explicit. In
these last and most general sections, which
of
course owe much
to
the lively debate
of
the last
twenty years about Hellenistic society, I am deliberately adopting an empirical mode of analysis.
I
do so partly in order to avoid both the dangerous and largely futile language
of
'East and West',
'heyday and decline',
or
'crisis
of
the polis' and historicist analysis
of
Hellenistic society as
'
the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY 29 I
Three
of
these boundary conditions need
to be
singled out. First and
foremost, personal monarchy
had
shown itself repeatedly
by
300
and
often thereafter to be the only effective way of controlling large tracts of
territory and revenue. Only
qua
monarch could one be a major power in
contemporary Greek military conditions. Even
the
federal states were
paper tigers, while the single
polis
as
a
power unit able
to
hold
its
own
with the other eastern Mediterranean powers was dead: Sellasia proved
it once again in 222 (as if it had not been clear since 500), and even at her
peak of influence and prosperity Rhodes never acted alone.
205
Secondly,
the monarchies were competitive, territorially unstable,
and
given
to
mutual spoiling. These characteristics
had
their roots
in an
idea-
structure
of
monarchy which
is
explained elsewhere
in
this volume:
206
here we are concerned rather with what stems from them, such as
the
competition
for
soldiers, diplomats, client-scholars
and
primary
re-
sources of productive land, or the ingenious opportunism of cities (and
would-be cities) everywhere in extracting concessions
of
status, or gifts
of money, buildings and works of art from their suzerain
or
potentially
suzerain kings. Thirdly, and obviously, no area or aspect of social life
—
especially indeed
in
the territories newly conquered and vulnerable
to
Greek culture
—
developed without reference
to the
past.
On the
contrary, there
is
increasing awareness that notwithstanding
the
innovations
of
kings and colonists, the types of settlement and land use,
the forms of landowning and dependent labour, the patterns of cult, and
the various ways {polis, temple-state, canton, principality,
etc.) of
structuring politico-administrative space
—
all themselves interlocking
and reacting upon each other
-
represented far more of
a
continuity with
the Achaemenid
or
local past than
was
once acknowledged. What
follows here
is
therefore inevitably
in
part subdivided
by
region, since
each region's experience and previous circumstances differed. However,
no attempt
is
made
to
treat
the
several regions
and
kingdoms
in the
detail
to be
found
in the
relevant special chapters:
the
emphasis will
instead be on common themes, especially on the changing and growing
role
of
po/is-stylc
administrative ordering throughout much
of the
Hellenistic world.
That continuity
is
naturally most easily visible
in
mainland Greece
and
the
Aegean. Here
one can be
confident that
the
pattern
of
major
urban settlement changed very little. Synoecism
had
largely
run its
linking member between slave-owning society and feudalism' (e.g. Jahne 1978, 140:
(H
no)), and
partly because we are dealing with institutions and practices created by decisions made through time
within
a
framework
of
needs, ambitions,
and
possibilities.
205
Her action against the Ptolemaic fleet
at
Ephesus (Polyaen.
v.
18)
belongs somehow within
the 'Second Syrian War' (Will 1979,
1.235ff.:
(A
67)), while
her
action against Byzantium
in 219
involved allied ships (Polyb. iv.50.5)
and the
co-operation
of
Prusias
I of
Bithynia.
^ See ch. 5.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
8 CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FEATURES
course,
207
and the
only major town-foundation
of
note, that
of
Demetrias
in
Thessaly
by
Poliorcetes soon after 294,
208
did no
more
in
effect than replace
the
existing urban centre
of
Pagasae.
So too the
restoration
of
Thebes
in
316 (Diod. xix.53—4) merely restored the
status
quo.
The only lasting change, indeed, was the obliteration
of
Corinth
in
146.
Smaller-scale change,
in
towns
or
countryside,
is
harder
to
assess,
since literary evidence tells
us
little which
is
reliable,
209
while
the
archaeological evidence
for
Hellenistic Greece
has yet to be
assembled
and assessed.
210
However,
the raw
data from
one
area which
has
been
seriously surveyed, Messenia, recording
96
habitation
or
burial sites
from
the
classical period,
94
Hellenistic
and 85
Roman,
211
suggest
a
stable population
and
settlement pattern
and
hardly confirm Strabo's
comment
on its
depopulation
in his
time.
212
Whether such imputed stability
of
population
and
settlement
(if
verified by future research) reflected stability in landownership and land
use
is
harder
to
assess,
for
the evidence points both ways.
On the one
hand, as noted above (p. 268), the reduced need
for
citizen-soldiers had
lowered
one
social barrier against
the
accumulation
of
land,
and
consistently enough documents from
all
corners
of
the
Greek world
attest not merely the existence of
a
small group of wealthy ruling families
- as in Demetrias,
213
Larissa,
214
or notoriously pre-revolutionary Sparta,
with
its
hundred
or
so
possessors
of
land
and
kkros
215
—
but
also
the
existence
of
single individuals with predominant economic status vis-a-
vis his
or
her (or another) city and fellow-citizens, in a position to give or
to lend money to the city, to pay its debts, to build its walls, or to ransom
its citizens from slavery.
216
True,
the
fact that
the
most spectacularly
wealthy
of
these men are found
in
the cities
of
Pontus and western Asia
Minor, and towards the end of our period rather than its beginning, may
207
Cf.
however
the
synoecism
of
the
Acarnanians
to
Stratus
and
Sauria
in
314,
described
by
Diodorus (xix.67.4)
in
terms which imply actual relocation
of
residence.
208
Stahelin
et
a/.
1934: (B 206);
Meyer
1962,
246°.:
(H 141).
209
For
Polyb. xxxvi.17
see
above,
p. 268.
210
See L.
Gallo, 'Popolosita
e
scarsita
di
popolazione. Contributo allo studio
di un
topos',
Annali
di
Pisa
3
10(1980) 1233-70.
211
Data counted
off
from W. A. McDonald
and
G. R. Rapp (eds.), The
Minnesota Messenia
Expedition: Reconstructing
a
Bronze
Age
Environment (Minneapolis, 1972), maps
8.17
and
8.18;
uncertain sites
excluded.
212
Strabo
vm.4.11.
C362.
His
note
ibid,
on the
similar depopulation
of
Laconia appears
to
be
merely
an
unsafe inference from
the
contrast between
the 30
7r6Ai^vai
of
his
own
(i.e.
Augustan)
time
and the
epithet fKaTO/iiToXiS (elsewhere only
of
Crete,
//.
11.6.649
and
Strabo
x.4.1;
.C479-480).
213
Stahelin
1929, 203:
(B 164).
214
Stahelin
1924, 95: (D 86); pp.
268-9 above.
216
Plut. Agis
5.6 (n. 64,
above).
216
Numerous examples
in
Maier 1959:
(j
226),
ISE
1-11, Austin 1981,
and
elsewhere.
See
also
Tarn
and
Griffith 1952, 108-9: (A 59), and Rostovtzeff 1953,11.805
w
'
tn
m.
1521
n.
75,
and
11.819!?.
with in.1527
n.
98: (A 52).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY 293
suggest that
a
different process
was
also under
way,
namely
the
attachment
to
Greek
or
hellenized cities
of
the great estates
of
western
Asia Minor as they escaped from royal control (see below), but much
of
the evidence predates that emancipation and must be explained within a
mainland frame
of
reference. Again, institutions and public offices were
on occasion reordered
so as
to
reflect
the
tenure
of
such preponderant
wealth
in a
few
hands.
The
most notable such change
was
probably
Demetrius
of
Phalerum's abolition between 316 and 307 of
the
100 or so
festival liturgies
at
Athens. Instead
a
single person,
the
agonothetes,
henceforth
ran
each festival,
on
the
understanding that
he
held
the
position once only, had public funds
to
spend,
but
was also expected
to
contribute lavishly himself
in
a
way
that
few
fourth-century
choregoi
could have sustained.
217
So too when
in
Athens and elsewhere
the
state
came
to
intervene more directly
in
education (see
p.
308, below),
the
liturgical
and
administrative responsibilities
for
the
gymnasion
and the
epheboi
were concentrated
in
the
person
of
the gymnasiarch
{kosmetes
at
Athens
and
certain other places), whose personal outlay could
be
considerable.
Furthermore, we can detect another major component
of
change and
concentration,
the
mutual counter-pressures
of
debtors
and
creditors.
Cases known in detail usually involve a public body as the debtor,
218
and
from them we can imagine the pressures which creditors could bring
to
bear upon individuals. There is indeed enough evidence of tension from
the later fourth century
and the
Hellenistic period
to
suggest that
the
comparatively marginal role played (apart from bottomry loans)
by
interest-bearing debt
in
classical Athens cannot
be
predicated
of
Hellenistic Greece
in
general.
219
However, since Athens significantly
remained free
of
such tensions until Athenion's regime
in
88,
220
and
since concentrations
of
such tensions
can be
seen
e.g.
in the
Aegean
islands in the mid third century
221
and in Central and Northern Greece in
the 180s
and
170s,
222
explanations need
to be
place-
and
time-specific
rather than general. Moreover, such explanations
as
extravagance,
wastefulness and love
of
pleasure,
223
offered
by the
literary sources,
do
less than justice
to
hints that debtors tended
to be
cultivators,
224
for
217
Ferguson
1911,
5
iff-: (D 89).
218
E.g.
the
debts contracted
by
Orchomenus (Hennig
1977: (D 80)).
219
See
the
data collected
in
Asheri
1969: (H
J);
for
Athens
see
Finley
1953: (H 60).
220
Posidonius, FGrH 87F36, with Candiloro
1965, 145ff.:
(H 34), but
since Mithridates*
propaganda
was
directed mainly
at
Asia Minor
we
should
not
infer much about Athens from
it.
221
Asheri 1969, 47ft".:
(H
j)
(examples from Carthaea, Naxos, Samos
and
Syros):
add
Amorgos
in
the 220s
(/G
xii.7.221-3).
222
See
Asheri
1969, 6iff.: (H
5).
223
Polyb.
xx.6
(Boeotia before
192, but see
Hennig 1977:
(D
80);
Agatharchides, FGrH
86F
16
(Arycanda
in
Lycia
in
197),
with Schmitt
1964,
285B".:
(E 51).
224
As at
Abydus ([Arist.]
Oec.
11.134933),
and
imprimis
in
the
great debt moratorium
law of
Ephesus after
297,
where creditors
are
TOKICTTOI
or
Savtiorai and debtors yeuipyoi
(SIG
364,11.
2, 11,
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
294 8 CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FEATURES
whom foreclosure meant partial
or
(more likely) complete loss of land
225
in
the
absence
of
systems
of
collateral security:
a
consequence which
underlay
the
repeated coupling
of
agitation
for
remission
of
debts
(xpecbv anoKonrj)
with that
for the
redistribution
of
land
(y^s
avaSaa-
fj,6s)-
226
An
increased alienability
of
land
(de
jure
or
de
facto) must
therefore
be
predicated, together perhaps with the breakdown
of
such
prejudice against interest-bearing loans
as may
once have existed.
227
Even
so,
however,
a
gap
in
explanation remains, which only further
detailed investigation will bridge.
At
present the best that can be offered
is
to
note that
the
areas
of
north Greece most affected
in the
180s
and
170s were also those most affected
by
Roman abstraction
of
booty
or
reparations
in the
190s.
228
The hypothesis
of
liquidity crisis, specific
to
area and period, would not only explain that correlation but would also
explain why
the
worst tension between agrarian debtors
and
creditors
occurred
in
just that region
of
Greece
—
Laconia
—
where
the
use and
availability of coinage had made least headway by the 240s. It would also
account
for the
occasions where partial
or
total remission
of
interest
rates was reckoned
to
be enough
to
resolve the immediate crisis,
229
and
could also explain why foreign judges, called
in to
resolve a 'difference'
(8ia<f>opd)
or a
'disturbance' (japaxf)), were repeatedly able
to
restore
'unity
of
spirit'
(6fj.6voia)
simply
by
processing equitably suits
and
contracted matters (av/ujSoAcua) which had been caught
in a
general seize-
up of legal process (a/cpiaio) and had hence contributed to immobilizing
such moneys
as
might otherwise have circulated.
230
All
the
same,
the
scale
of
these movements,
and of
the social unrest
they created, should
not
be exaggerated,
as it
sometimes has been.
For
example, evidence
of
the
continued wide spread
of
property-holding
26,
34,
with
Asheri
1969,
44S. and
io8ff.: (H
5)) but
implicit
in
any
system
of
securing
debts
upon
real
property.
225
Apart
from
the
marginal
use
of
collateral security
via the
apotimema-system
(see
above
p. 261)
in
fourth-century Athens
in
pupillary
and
dotal
contexts,
Greek
laws
on
security
remained anchored
to
the
concept
of
substitution
(of
the
property
pledged,
as a
unit,
for the
debt):
otherwise
e.g.
the
special procedures
created
at
Ephesus
in the
290s would have
been
unnecessary:
see
Finley
1952,
46-7
and
io7ff.:
(H 59).
226
See
Asheri
1966
and
Asheri
1969:
(H 4-5).
227
Finley
1953,
257-8:
(H 60).
*»
Larsen,
ESAR
iv.313-25.
229
E.g.
at
Ephesus
for
certain debts
(SIC
364,11.
1
yff.),
or at
Olbia,
where
at
one
point
the
demos
hoped
to
arrange
a
moratorium
on
interest
(enifirfvievaai,
SIG
495,1.
180,
with
Asheri
1969,
54—5:
(H
!))•
230
For this nexus
of
vocabulary see e.g. OGIS 43
=
Austin 268, with Holleaux, liluJes in.27-37,
and Sherwin-White 1978,
9off.:
(D
146)
(Naxos
c.
280);
IG
xi.4.1052 (Syros
c.
250-240);
IG
XII.5.1065
(Carthaea on Ceos,c.
280);
with Asheri 1969,47ff.nos.xxni, xxiv, and xxvi:(H 5). For the
role of foreign judges see n. 3;
5
below. This is not to deny that axpioia was on occasion a deliberate
suspension
of
court proceedings, adopted
in
debtors' interests
so
that creditors would have
no
legal judgements
in
their favour which they could proceed
to
enforce. This allegedly in Boeotia
in
the late third century (Polyb.
xx.6.1:
Heracleides Criticus
1.15—16
(Geographigraeci
minores
(Paris,
1885)
1.103),
with Hennig 1977: (D 80)
and
Walbank 1979, in.72: (B 37)).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
CHANGE AND CONTINUITY 295
comes readily
to
hand. Festival-financing
via the
choregia
continued
in
many places, and the gymnasiarchy itself was often split so
as
to share the
expense.
At
Athens various subscription lists and records
of
voluntary
contributions (en-iSoaeis)
for
various purposes continue through
the
Hellenistic period
to
suggest that
a
broad-based propertied class
continued there much
as
before. Similar lists
and
records elsewhere,
whether
for
fortification-building
231
or for
other public purposes,
232
indicate
a
comparable picture,
to be set
against that
of
the overmaster-
ingly wealthy individual. Again, though
it is
true that the pressures
of
debt did from time to time explode in revolution and tyranny,
233
equally
salient
are the
efforts
of
kings
or of
neighbouring cities
to
reduce
the
pressures:
it
could well
be
argued that
the
kings performed
no
more
helpful function than this vis-a-vis
the
cities they supervised,
and
that
the violence
at
Cassandreia
and
Sparta
was due
respectively
to
the
temporary absence
of
any
effective Macedonian king
and to the
independence and remoteness
of
Sparta from Macedonian supervisory
power.
In
any case, the appeal
of
the Spartan revolution did
not
spread
beyond the Peloponnese, and that of Nabis not beyond Laconia. So
too
the shambles of public affairs in Boeotia, described with such misleading
parti pris
by
Polybius, dissolves
on
examination into
the
mildly
redistributive measures
of
a
populist and unbellicose regime.
234
Again,
the most strikingly violent surviving literary tract
of
the period against
the extremes of wealth and poverty, Cercidas' fourth Meliamb, probably
implies much less socially than it appears to do, having been written by a
well-off politician whose presumed Cynic leanings did
not
prevent him
from easing the rapprochement between Aratus and Antigonus Doson
against Cleomenes.
235
Tyranny
did
indeed reassert itself as
a
mode
of
government
in
Greece from
the
late fourth century onwards,
but
it is
essential
to
separate those few tyrants whose rise reflected serious social
tensions from those whose position approximated more
to
that
of
231
See
Maier
1961,
57
ff.:
0
227).
232
For
examples
see
Kuenzi 1923, 676".:
(H
ii4);SEG
1367
(Samos, temple); Wilhelm 1932:
(H
241) (corn supply); Robert
1933,
473-85:
(B
135),
and
Robert
1935,
421-;:
(B
137)
(libraries);
Bequignon
193;,
}6—51:
(B
49),
with Tod,
JHS
57
(1937)
189
(Crannon); Bequignon 1935: (B
184)
(Pharsalus, stoa
and
buildings); Vanseveren
1937,
3216F.:
(B 169)
(Chios); Accame
1938,
228-9:
(B
41) (religious purposes); Pugliese Carratelli 1939-40,
164S.
nos.
19-21:
(E
141)
(Rhodes);
Rostovtzeff
1953,
in.1463
n.
22: (A 52);
Maier
1961,
18 n. 40 on p.
19:
(j
227);
and
many more.
233
To the
Spartan revolutions
add
some others, such
as
those
of
Apollodorus
at
Cassandreia
between 280 and 276 (references in Fuks 1974,
71
n.
23: (H
69)),
or
Molpagoras
at
Cius
(c.
203-202:
Polyb.
xv.21), which may have been equally violent.
234
Polyb.
xx.6
with Feyel
1942,
273-83:
(D 79),
and
Hennig
1977: (D 80).
235
Text
in
Powell 1925, 2036?.:
(B
28), with
D.
R.
Dudley
A
History of Cynicism from Diogenes
to the
Sixth Century
A.D.
(London,
1937)
74-84,
and
other references
ap.
Walbank 1957,1.247-8: (B
37),
Polyb. 11.48?. That
the
attitudes
and
values expressed
c.
190 B.C.
(Eissfeldt
1965, 597: (B 10))
by
Jesus
Ben
Sira
in
Scclesiasticus
(see
Tcherikover
1959,
142—51:
(A 61))
bear some resemblance
to
those
of
Cercidas
is
hardly surprising.
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2(}6
8
CULTURAL, SOCIAL
AND
ECONOMIC FEATURES
strategos
of
a
major king,
236
or
from those like Lydiades
of
Megalopolis
or
the
successive tyrants
of
Argos, whose government seems
to
have
been stable
and
conducted without outrage. (Indeed,
the
need
for re-
election apart,
the
difference
in
power
and
accountability between
a
strategos
of Achaea
or
Aetolia and many of the so-called tyrants was often
subtle).
237
All in
all, there
is
little justification
for
describing
the
social
conditions
of
Hellenistic Greece
in
the
apocalyptic terms which have
sometimes been used.
VI.
ROYAL POLICIES AND REGIONAL DIVERSITIES
The three boundary conditions noted above
(p.
291) —the
predominance
of monarchy,
its
competitive characteristics,
and
continuity with
the
past
—
affected
the
wider canvas
of
the
Hellenistic world with equal
force.
We
must begin with
the
kings,
and
with
the
close interaction
between
the
position
and
role
of
the
king
on
the one
hand
and
the
pattern
of
land settlement
and
land tenure
on the
other.
It is
commonplace
to
observe that Ptolemies and Seleucids, and Antigonids
in relation to land outside Macedonia, regarded their territories as spear-
won land,
238
theirs
by
right
of
conquest
and
inheritance
in an
interpretation far-reaching enough
to
allow inheritance
by
will.
239
In
this sense
the
land was the king's
as
beneficial landowner,
and
taxation
on land
was
paid
to
him as
rent
to a
landlord.
In
theory, therefore,
absolute proprietorship bestowed absolute property-power,
and
the
concentration
of
financial
resources which it thereby permitted and their
redistribution
to
courts, armies, cities, temples
and
artists,
not
only
largely account
for the
patterns
of
Hellenistic patronage
but
also made
any ruler
who
cared
to
use his
opportunities into
a
power capable
by
itself
of
transforming economy
and
society. However, three qualifi-
cations must
be
borne
in
mind. First, such
a
theory
was not new
to
Alexander
or his
successors.
The
Achaemenids
had
acted
on the
same
principle in assigning lands to members
of
the royal family, to courtiers,
to refugees such
as
Themistocles
or to
uprooted
or
transplanted
238
Especially those
in
third-
and
second-century Asia Minor,
for
whom
see
Bikerman
1938,
i66ff.:
(E
6),
Rostovtzeff 195}, in.1425
n.
230: (A 52),
and
Crampa 1969,
86ff.:
(B
60).
237
Cf.
for example
SIG
5
98E,
Dicaearchus' letter as Aetolian
strategos
to Magnesia, which but
for
its casual reference
to
synedroi
could easily have been written
by an
Attalid.
238
SoptKTTjTos
yq,
Diod. xvm.43.1 (Alexander), xix.105.4 (general), xx.76.7 (Antigonus),
xxi.1.5 (twice: general), xxi.2.2 (general), xxn.1.3 (Decius
the
Campanian
at
Rhegium).
See
Schmitthenner 1968:
(1
64) and
J.
Hornblower 1981,
53: (B
21),
but
the concept was
not
confined
to
the successor generation: Antiochus
III
reckoned that Lysimachus' kingdom was
his by
right
of
conquest after Corupedium (Polyb. xvm.51.4),
and
Antiochus
IV
claimed Coele-Syria
and
Palestine after Panium
in
the
same
way
(Polyb. xxvm. 1.4).
Cf.
Bikerman 1938, 15: (E
6).
239
As by
Ptolemy VIII
to
Rome conditionally
in
IJ;
(SEC
ix.7),
and
by
Attalus
III
in
133.
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