Part 17

The political treatise of the wise and kindly Plutarch[8] is one which cannot be read without sadness. To a Greek, a Bœotian, living in a land which had once been so great and which was so utterly fallen, the contrast between what had been and what was came more keenly home than it could come to his Asiatic contemporary. The cities of Diôn’s native Bithynia had never been so great in the past, and they were far more prosperous in the present, than the cities for whose would-be statesmen and orators the sage of Chairôneia had to give rules. But in both writers we find things looked at from the same general point of view. Local independence is assumed as the state of things which exists at least in theory. We read page after page of both Plutarch and Diôn without any hint that the commonwealths of which they were speaking had any superior beyond their own walls. Both write in a way in which no one would write for the instruction of a newly-chosen town-councillor in a modern state. It is for parliaments, not for town-councils, that the whole language is fitted. But ever and anon we come to some passage which shows us that the parliaments with which we are dealing are parliaments working in fetters, parliaments which can practically do nothing without the approval of a foreign superior. In our own land we find the nearest parallel in ecclesiastical bodies, and the likeness is increased by the fact that the range within which the Greek assemblies of that day were most active was that which concerned religious worship and that large class of subjects which in Greek ideas were connected with religious worship. A Convocation organized like a Parliament, carrying on its debates as freely as a Parliament, but whose acts go for nothing unless they have the licence of the Crown beforehand and the consent of the Crown afterwards, a Convocation which, without ever being suppressed, without ever having its formal meetings interrupted, could be practically suspended for a hundred and fifty years, has far more likeness to one of these Greek assemblies than can be found in a local body whose powers are narrowly defined, but which can freely exercise such powers as it has. We have another parallel in the Chapter electing its Bishop, electing him freely according to all outward look, but whose choice not only needs the approval of the Crown, but is actually dictated beforehand by the Crown, under heavy penalties if that dictation is not obeyed.[9] We read several chapters of Plutarch which might have been written for any Greek commonwealth in days before either the later or the former Philip. Presently the mention of certain demagogues who corrupted the people by shows of gladiators is a sign that the Roman has entered into the Greek world.[10] But, for anything in that or in several following chapters, the commonwealths so corrupted might have been as independent as when earlier demagogues were said to have corrupted their countrymen by allurements of other kinds. We go on further, and the full truth comes out. The Greek commonwealths of Plutarch’s day had no longer anything to do with wars, with alliances, with putting down of tyrants, and some might think that in such a state of things there was no room for statesmanship left. Plutarch thought otherwise; there were still public trials at home; there were embassies to be sent to the Emperor; there were dealings with Roman governors, possibly with bad governors. These things needed some qualifications; energy, daring, discretion, were all needed by those who had to plead for the weak before the powerful.[11] The chosen magistrate was not to despise his office because he had not so free a field as the magistrates of old times; but he was never to forget the difference between him and them. Periklês might say that he was called to rule among freemen, among Greeks, among Athenians. The magistrate of Plutarch’s day was to remember that he ruled with a ruler over him; that his city was in subjection to the proconsuls of Rome, to the procurators of Cæsar.[12] War was impossible; of freedom they had as much as their masters left to them, as much perhaps as was good for them[13] when Greece was so weak, when there was no power left in her which the slightest bidding of a proconsul could not upset.[14] In such times public men must be careful to give no offence, no occasion, to dangerous neighbours; they must above all avoid such occasion as was given by disputes at home or with other cities. At the same time, while fully understanding their dependent position, they must avoid base cringing and flattery; they must not make the governor yet more of a master than he is disposed to be by calling him in on all occasions;[15] and it will be wise to make some powerful Roman their friend.[16] They will do well to study the records of old Greece, but only for examples suited to the actual state of things; tall talk about Marathôn and Plataia and Eurymedôn should be left to the rhetoric of the schools; but peaceful examples from earlier times, examples of courtesy, humanity, and good faith, were as instructive then as they ever had been.[17]

[8] His Πολιτικὰ Παραγγέλματα, commonly quoted as _Reipublicæ Gerendæ Præcepta_.

[9] A still closer parallel might have been found up to the present reign, as long as the Deans of the churches of the Old Foundation were chosen by the Chapters. By long-standing custom a nominee of the Crown was always chosen, though there was not, as in the case of the election of Bishops, any legal obligation so to do.

[10] C. 5. ἢ τοῦ βαλανείου διδόντες ἢ πυῤῥίχας τινας ἢ μονομάχων θεάματα παρασκευάζοντες ἀεὶ δημαγωγοῦσι, μᾶλλον δὲ δημοκοποῦσι.

[11] C. 10.

[12] C. 17. ἀρχόμενος ἄρχεις, ὑποτεταγμένης πόλεως ἀνθυπάτοις, ἐπιτρόποις Καίσαρος.

[13] C. 32. ἐλευθερίας δὲ ὅσον οἱ κρατοῦντες νέμουσι τοῖς δήμοις μέτεστι, καὶ τὸ πλέον ἴσως οὐκ ἄμεινον.

[14] C. 32. ποία δύναμις ἣν μικρὸν ἀνθυπάτου διάταγμα κατέλυσεν ἣ μετέστησεν εἰς ἄλλο.

[15] C. 19. οἱ πάντι δόγματι καὶ συνεδρίῳ καὶ χάριτι καὶ διοικήσει προσάγοντες ἡγεμονικὴν κρίσιν ἀναγκάζουσι ἑαυτῶν μᾶλλον ἢ βούλονται δεσπότας εἶναι τοὺς ἡγουμένους.

[16] C. 18.

[17] C. 17.

The precepts of Plutarch are perfectly general. He draws no distinction between the different classes of cities, according to the greater or less degree of independence which they still formally kept. For in truth they were all practically in the same case; all had, in his own phrase, the shoe of the Roman over their heads.[18] The provincial town could act freely in many things, if the governor did not choose to meddle; the independent ally could not act freely in any thing, if the governor did choose to meddle. We find things on the whole the same when we turn from the philosopher giving wise precepts in his study to the orator actually haranguing the assemblies whose duties Plutarch so carefully lays down. Diôn Chrysostom is a rhetorician by profession, and he has the faults of his profession; but there is much that is attractive about the man and his writings, and he gives us several instructive pictures of Greek life in his own day. His orations on subjects of theoretical politics, on kingship, aristocracy, democracy, and the like, sound a little unpractical under the universal rule of Rome; but we must remember that it mattered a good deal whether the reigning prince was Domitian or Trajan. We gain real additions to our knowledge from the picture of the Euboian hunter, possessed of the civic franchise but who had never been in the city, and we learn better what an Euboian city was like in Diôn’s day.[19] More interesting still is his picture of the Greek city of Olbia or Borysthenês, still clinging to its Greek speech and manners amid the constant attacks of dangerous barbarian neighbours.[20] Of more importance for our purpose is his oration to the Rhodians, an oration of good advice, but of course largely mingled with panegyric on his hearers and their city. This is a document of deep interest, if read by the light of the history of that illustrious island in the second century before Christ. Rhodes is throughout addressed as a free commonwealth, as a democracy;[21] it is the one Greek state besides Athens which keeps its freedom;[22] it is the only one which still cherishes the glory of the Hellenic name.[23] The relations of the state to Rome are nowhere dwelled upon after the manner of Plutarch; Emperors are several times casually mentioned, but not as masters;[24] the point of connexion between Rhodes and Rome of which the orator is most inclined to speak is the part played by the Rhodians in the Roman civil war.[25] He knows of no break between the mighty Rhodes of an earlier day and the still flourishing democracy which he harangues. Some of his sayings could hardly have been approved by Plutarch; they are too much in the Marathôn and Eurymedôn style; but they could not, even as flourishes, have been addressed to a people who were not free, at least in theory, however precarious might be the tenure by which their freedom was held.

[18] _Ibid._ ὁρῶτα τοὺς καλτίους ἐπάνω τῆς κεφαλῆς.

[19] Oration vii. Εὐβοϊκὸς ἢ Κυνηγός.

[20] Oration xxxvi. Βορυσθενικός.

[21] Oration xxxi. vol. i. p. 364, Dindorf. ταῦτα ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ καὶ παρ' ὑμῖν, οἱ μέγιστον φρονεῖτε ἐπὶ τῷ νομίμως καὶ δικαίως διοικεῖν τὰ παρ' ἑαυτοῖς.

[22] _Ibid._ p. 380. τοῖς μὲν γὰρ [Ῥοδίοις] μόνον ὑπάρχειν τὴν ἐλευθερίαν δίχα Ἀθηναίων.

[23] _Ibid._ p. 350. τῆς λοιπῆς Ἑλλάδος τρόπον τίνὰ ἐσβεσμένης μόνους ἐφ' αὑτοῖς διαφυλάξαι τὸ κοινὸν ἀξίωμα τῶν Ἑλλήνων εἰς τὸν νῦν παρόντα χρόνον. So p. 398; μόνοι καταλείπεσθε τῶν Ἑλλήνων οἷς ἂν καὶ παραινέσαι τις καὶ περὶ ᾧ ἔστιν ἔτι λυπηθῆναι δοκούντων ἁμαρτάνειν.

[24] _Ibid._ pp. 359, 380, 381, 387, 393.

[25] _Ibid._ pp. 367, 383.

Less interesting in themselves than any of these, but perhaps in a certain way more instructive, are the speeches which Diôn makes in his own city of Prusa and in other towns of his native province. He had to preach peace and concord both to rival cities and to rival parties in the same city, and also to plead his own cause against his own enemies.[26] The assemblies which he addresses are always assumed to be self-acting bodies; references to the existence of Rome come in only casually, and Diôn does not often copy the plain-speaking of Plutarch.[27] But the speeches of the Greek orator put on a tenfold interest when we come to compare them with the memorable correspondence which is luckily preserved to us between a Roman Emperor and a proconsul of Bithynia in Diôn’s own day. The letters which passed between Trajan and Pliny seem at first sight to describe a wholly different state of things from that which appears in the speeches of Diôn. If we compare the two, we shall see that they set before us two opposite sides of the same state of things. From the two together we shall get a clear notion of the state of the various cities of Bithynia, and of the different relations in which, like those of any other province, they stood to the ruling power. Speeches and letters together illustrate the show of freedom which existed in perhaps every case, the reality of freedom which existed in some cases, and at the same time the precarious tenure by which both the shadow and the reality were held. We see the ordinary provincial town, still keeping the style of “res publica,” passing “psephismata,” sending “legati” to the Emperor and the neighbouring governors, playing in short at being a commonwealth, but not venturing to do any local act of the least importance without consulting the Emperor’s representative. Diôn brings out one side, Trajan and Pliny bring out the other side; that is all. Diôn makes a speech to the people of Nikomêdeia, exhorting them to peace and harmony with the people of Nikaia. Many passages would have been in place in the mouth of a mediator between Athens and Sparta five hundred years earlier. There is no direct mention of any superior authority as bearing rule over both; the orator indeed tells his hearers that after all they cannot make war on their enemies,[28] and warns them lest by their dissensions they make the Greek name ridiculous among the Romans.[29] We are for the moment amazed when we turn from this picture of two seemingly independent commonwealths to the letters which show how the Emperor and his representative had to be consulted by Nikomêdeia, Nikaia, and every other city, about the smallest municipal regulations, about every kind of local improvement.[30] It is an odd comment on the dissensions between city and city of which Diôn speaks, when Trajan, remembering how Nikomêdeia and other cities had been torn by seditions, will not allow the creation of a company of firemen, lest it be turned to some dangerous political purpose.[31] We again feel sure that Pliny, in his zeal, meddled in many matters which a worse proconsul would have left alone, and that, in his desire to do right, he referred many things to the Emperor which such a proconsul would have settled for himself in a high-handed way. Reading speeches and letters together, we better understand both. We are dealing with commonwealths, but with commonwealths acting in fetters. They do everything for themselves by votes of their own assemblies. But those votes need a licence beforehand, a confirmation afterwards, or both the one and the other, from the overruling power that stands without.[32]

[26] See the forty-third and forty-fourth orations.

[27] Once perhaps in the home orations, xliv. (vol. ii. p. 117); εὖ γὰρ ἴστε ὅτι τὴν μὲν λεγομένην ἐλευθερίαν, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦθ', ὃ παρὰ τῶν κρατούντων καὶ δυναμένων γίγνεται ἐνιότε οὐ δυνατὸν κτήσασθαι.

[28] Oration xxxviii. Πρὸς Νικομηδεῖς περὶ ὁμονοίας τῆς πρὸς Νικαιεῖς. vol. ii. pp. 74, 75, 76.

[29] _Ibid._ p. 80.

[30] Epp. Plini et Trajani, 31, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, 41, 48, 49, 70, 71, 74, 81, 90.

[31] Ep. 34. “Tibi quidem secundum exempla complurium in mentem venit posse collegium fabrorum apud Nicomedenses constitui. Sed meminerimus provinciam istam et præcipue eas civitates ejusmodi factionibus esse vexatas. Quodcumque nomen ex quacumque causa dederimus iis qui in idem contracti fuerint ... hetæriæque fient.”

[32] In Ep. 81 there are references to Diôn himself. He was a Roman citizen.

Both Nikomêdeia and Nikaia, and Diôn’s own city of Prusa, were only ordinary provincial towns with no special privilege. But there were spots in Bithynia which were more highly favoured. Here, as elsewhere, the Roman colony, the free and allied city, were locally in the province, but not of it. It is plain that even cities of this rank were used to a good deal of meddling on the part of the Roman officers; but they resented such treatment and appealed to their privileges. Apameia was no provincial town, but a Roman colony. Diôn, who claimed to be one of its citizens, made a speech before its senate, in which he sets forth the dignity of its colonial character.[33] Pliny, more busy than other proconsuls, claimed to look over the accounts of the colony. The colonists told him that he was welcome to do so, that it was their common wish that he should do so. But he should remember that it was a thing which no proconsul had ever asked before; their ancient privileges gave them the right of managing their own commonwealth as they thought good. Pliny asks for and receives a statement of their case in writing. He thinks much of the paper irrelevant; but he sends it to the Emperor to be guided by his judgement. In all this correspondence one somehow thinks of the correspondence of Augustine and Gregory; the superior is so clearly the wiser man of the two. Trajan writes back that the straightforward dealing of the men of Apameia is to be respected; the proconsul is to tell them that it is by the Emperor’s special request that he asks to look at their accounts; he is to do so without any prejudice to their privileges for the future.[34] We here see plainly enough the difference inherent in the position of a Roman colony as distinguished from that of an ordinary town of the province. Still an Emperor and a proconsul less scrupulous than Trajan and Pliny might have made short work of the liberties of Apameia. Under the men with whom the colonists had actually to deal, those liberties, when once established by sufficient evidence, were safe.

[33] Oration xli. vol. ii. pp. 103, 105.

[34] Plin. et Traj. Epist. 47, 48 (56, 57). The claim of the colony is “habuisse privilegium et vetustissimum morem arbitrio suo rem publicam administrare.” The Emperor’s answer is, “Remuneranda est igitur probitas eorum, et jam nunc sciant quod inspecturus es ex mea voluntate salvis, quæ habent privilegiis esse facturum.”

But within the geographical limits of Bithynia there was something yet higher than a Roman colony. Amisos was an independent state surrounded by Roman territory. The city had in past times seen many settlers and many masters; it was at last delivered from its oppressors by Augustus Cæsar, and it became a free ally of Rome, bound to Rome only by the terms of its treaty.[35] We know not what those terms were; they may, like treaties with Gades and Aitôlia, have formally bound Amisos to respect the majesty of Rome, or they may not. That difference mattered little to a commonwealth whose geographical position compelled it in any case practically to respect that majesty. But it mattered greatly that, within its own walls, Amisos was by right perfectly free, governed by its own laws, which might or might not agree with the laws of Rome. Still it is plain that its treaty rights could not always secure the commonwealth from the meddling of Roman proconsuls. And it again marks the difference between the servant and the master that Pliny speaks of the liberties of Amisos as existing by the indulgence of Trajan, while Trajan himself grounds them directly on the faith of treaties. The proconsul asks if an _eranos_, a benefit club, is to be allowed in Amisos. Such a question marks the way in which the rights even of a perfectly free city were liable to be interfered with. Trajan, as we have seen in the case of the Nikomêdeian firemen, had a great dislike to unions and societies of any kind which might possibly be turned to political ends. No _eranos_ is to be allowed in any city that is subject to the laws of Rome. But at Amisos, a city ruled by its own laws, Pliny is not to interfere with the establishment of such a body. The way in which the great Emperor speaks is remarkable. The might of Cæsar stands disarmed before the majesty of treaties. Trajan carries out a certain policy wherever he has the legal right to do so; where he has no such right, he forbears. Yet his words seem to imply that even he, the just Emperor, might have interfered with the rights of the free commonwealth, had he seen really good cause for doing so.[36] What other Emperors and other proconsuls did, with or without cause, it is easy to guess.

[35] See its own citizen Strabo, xii. 3 (iii. 24 Tauchnitz). The Dictator Cæsar delivered it from Pharnakês; Antonius παρέδωκε βασιλεῦσι, εἶτ' ἠλευθερώθη πάλιν μετὰ τὰ Ἀκτιακὰ ὑπὸ Καίσαρος τοῦ Σεβάστου καὶ νῦν εὖ συνέστηκεν. Pliny (92 or 93) says, “Amisenorum civitas libera et fœderata beneficio indulgentiæ tuæ legibus suis utitur.” Trajan answers, “Si legibus istorum quibus de officio fœderis utuntur concessum est eranon habere,” &c. “In cæteris civitatibus, quæ nostro jure obstrictæ sunt, res hujusmodi prohibenda est.” There is another mention of Amisos in Letter 110, which reads rather like sharp practice on the part of the free and allied city, its _boule_ and _ecclesia_.

[36] “Possumus quo minus habeant non impedire, eo facilius si tali conlatione non ad turbas et ad inlicitos cœtus, sed ad sustinendam tenuiorum inopam utuntur.”

It is not at all wonderful if most of the business done by the assemblies of these commonwealths had to do with religious and social matters, and again with formal and trifling matters, with votes of honours, statues, and the like. As Diôn several times tells them implicitly, as Plutarch tells them more directly, the decision of greater matters had passed into other hands. The point is that these cities still kept the form of commonwealths, commonwealths that must have passed most of their lives in fear and trembling, but still commonwealths, even if in fetters, not mere municipalities, such as we are used to in our own day. In Eastern Europe and Western Asia this state of things is the direct and necessary consequence of the events of the Polybian age. The history of the Roman power in Western Europe is a wholly distinct subject. There Rome did not enslave or destroy, but created. The towns of the West looked forward, while the Greek commonwealths looked backward. The gradual extinction of these last was the necessary consequence of later changes, of changes which followed on the centralizing and despotic tendencies of the later Empire. Much of local independence had vanished between Strabo’s day and Pliny’s; the Lykian League itself was a thing of the past when Trajan respected the privileges of Amisos. How late any traces of freedom lingered we need not here inquire. My present object is to show the long abiding effects of the peculiar process by which the Roman dominion was definitely formed in that great determining period of the world’s history which is marked by the second century before Christ.

INDEX.

A.

_Abyssinia_, Christianity of, 67.

_Achaia_, dealings of Rome with, 218.

_Ælfred_, his view of early Greek history, 18.

_Africa_, Saracen conquest of, 133.

_Agamemnôn_, his imperial position, 18, 19.

_Agathoklês_, two sides of, 33.

_Akarnania_, its position in Homeric times, 19; becomes Greek, 24.

_Akragas_, its time of greatness, 25.

Ἀλαμανῶν ῥήξ, title of, 107.

_Alans_, their history and settlement, 87, 88; 122.

_Alaric_, his career, 78.

_Albanians_, their origin, 119.

Ἀλβανοί, opposed to Ῥωμαῖοι, 141.

_Alexander_, founder of the modern Greek nation, 16; his work in the East, 17; his dealings with the Greek cities, 179.

_Alexander of Epeiros_, 17; his designs, 34.

_Alexandria_, its relation to older Greek cities, 23.

_Alexios Komnênos_, compared with Henry the Fourth, 162.

_Allies_, Roman, their relations to Rome, 82, 83; 218-220; their slow incorporation, 84, 85; 219-221.

_Ambrakia_, its beginnings, 24.

_Amisos_, dealings of Trajan and Pliny with, 237, 238.

_Amphiktyonic Council_, nullity of, 178, 179; its reform by Augustus, 225.

_Andorra_, relations of, 217.

_Angles_, first mentioned, 64.

_Antalkidas_, Peace of, 28.

_Antioch_, its relation to older Greek cities, 23.

_Antoninus Caracalla_, effects of his edict, 42.

_Apameia_, dealings of Trajan and Pliny with, 236, 237.

_Aquæ Sextiæ_, battle of, 44; 60.

_Aquitaine_, position of cities in, 192; its relations to France, 195; its separation from Burgundy, 196.

_Arles_, capital of Southern Gaul, 85.

_Arminius_, his historic position, 64.

_Arnold_, Thomas, point chosen by for the ending of his History, 104.

_Asia Minor_, its historic position, 19.

_Athens_, her history mistaken for that of Greece, 21; remains specially pagan, 74; her relations to Rome, 84, 85; her position under Trajan, 232.

_Aurelian_, his dealings with the Goths, 77.

_Austria_, the Frankish, effect of the rise of its Mayors, 91.

_Austrian Emperors_, their relations to the Popes, 183.

_Austrian Empire_, 151-152.

_Avignon_, Popes at, 157.

B.

_Bajazet_, Keiser of Roum, 145.

_Barbarians_, conversion of, 67.

_Basil the Macedonian_, his controversy with Lewis the Second, 108.

_Basil the Second_, Emperor, 132, 133.

Βασιλεύς, title of, 108.

_Basques_, Iberian elements preserved by, 93.

_Belisarius_, Roman consul, 125.

_Beneventum_, battle of, 45.