mitchell imperiasl building in eastern roman provinces

Department of the Classics, Harvard University

Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman ProvincesAuthor(s): Stephen MitchellReviewed work(s):Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 91 (1987), pp. 333-365Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311413 .

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IMPERIAL BUILDING IN THE EASTERN ROMAN PROVINCES

STEPHEN MITCHELL

" A S I contemplate the greatness of your fortune and your spirit, it seems entirely appropriate to point out to you construction

works that are worthy of your eternal renown and your glory, and which will be as useful as they are splendid." So Pliny began his letter to Trajan inviting him to support a scheme to build a canal linking Lake Sapanca, in the territory of Nicomedia, with the Sea of Marmara. He concluded by remarking that where the kings of Bithynia had failed, the emperor should succeed: "I am fired with enthusiasm by this very point, that what the kings had only begun, should be brought to a suc- cessful end by yourself."' It has always been an essential part of a king's role to put up public or sacred buildings for the benefit of his community.2 More specifically, public building is an activity which

Particular acknowledgement is due to two earlier studies, which will be cited by short titles: MacMullen = Ramsay MacMullen, "Roman Imperial Building in the Pro- vinces," HSCP 64 (1959) 207-235; Millar, ERW = Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London 1977). Without the conceptual framework provided by this book it is difficult to imagine that the questions posed by this study could be answered at all. There is a brief survey of the ideological implications of imperial building in H. Kloft's Liberalitas Principis. Herkunft und Bedeutung. Studien zur Prinzipatsideologie (Cologne 1970) 115-120, and an important and detailed discussion of Augustus' building program in Rome, Italy, and the provinces by D. Kienast, Augustus. Prinzeps und Monarch (Darmstadt 1982) 336-365. However, Kienast, like many scholars who have touched on this theme, does not always distinguish clearly enough buildings for which the emperor took responsibility and those that were simply erected during his principate.

I Pliny Ep. 10.41.1 and 5. Trajan's name would evidently have been linked with the finished product, as it was with the harbor which Pliny saw under construction at Cen- tumcellae, Ep. 6.31.15 f.

2 See Vitr. 1.pr.2: cum vero adtenderem te non solum de vita communi omnium curam publicaeque rei constitutionem habere, sed etiam de opportunitate publicorum aedificiorum, ut civitas per te non solum provinciis esset aucta, verum etiam ut maiestas imperii publicorum aedificiorum egregias haberet auctoritates ... So it was in the days of Gilgamesh, lord of Uruk: "In Uruk he built walls, a great rampart, and the temple of blessed Eannu, for the god of the firmament Anu, and for Ishtar the goddess of love.



334 Stephen Mitchell

stands at the center of the traditions of munificence and liberality that shaped aristocratic behavior in the Graeco-Roman world.3 Witness a single inscription, picked at random from hundreds, set up by the Actors' Guild at Smyrna for a certain Marcus Aurelius Iulianus, twice Asiarch, stephanephorus and temple warden of the emperors, and priest of Bacchus, on account of his reverence for the god, his good will in every respect towards his native city, the greatness of the buildings which he was erecting there, and his favorable disposition towards their association.4 Better still, consider the extraordinary passage in Josephus' Jewish War, which -lists the building projects of Herod the Great: "For Tripolis, Damascus, and Ptolemais he provided gymnasia, for Byblus a wall, for Berytus and Tyre baths, colonnades, temples and market places, for Sidon and Damascus theatres, for coastal Laodicea an aqueduct, and for Ascalon baths, magnificent fountains and cloistered quadrangles ... to Rhodes he over and over again gave money for naval construction, and when the temple of Apollo was burnt down he rebuilt it with new splendor out of his own purse. What need be said of his gifts to Lycia or Samos, or of his liberality to the whole of Ionia, sufficient for the needs of every locality? Even Athens and Sparta, Nicopolis and Mysian Pergamum are full of Herod's offer-

ings, are they not? And the wide street in Syrian Antioch, once avoided because of the mud, did he not pave two and a quarter miles of it with polished marble, and to keep the rain off furnish it with colonnades from end to end?"5

The motivation for this form of liberality is rarely made explicit. Public utility was combined with prestige for the benefactor; better still the permanence of a building might bring (xaivia `t61gvirYt;. Build-

ings were an everlasting reminder to offset the donor's own mortality.6 None of this even needed to be said, for the whole process of erecting

Look at it still today: the outer wall where the cornice runs, it shines with the brilliance of

copper; and the inner wall, it has no equal" (trans. N. Sandars, The Epic of Gilgamesh [Penguin]).

3 P. Veyne, Le pain et le cirque (Paris 1976) passim, but in particular 278-279. 4 IGR 4.1133; cf. the advice of Apollonius of Tyana, addressed precisely to the people

of Smyrna: "There is a kind of mutual competition for the common good, in which one man seeks to give better advice than another, or to hold office better than another, or go on an embassy, or erect finer buildings than when another man was commissioner; and this, I think, is beneficial strife, faction between citizens for the public good." (Philostr. VA 4.8, translation by C. P. Jones.)

5 Josephus BJ 1.422 ff., translation by.G. A. Williamson. 6 C. Roueche, JRS 74 (1984) 192 no. 8; Aphrodisias, ? early 6th cent. A.D.



Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces 335

public buildings was a central part of civic beneficence, and imposed a tradition of behavior, and a pattern of expectation, from which no Roman emperor, even had he wished, could distance himself. None tried to do so.

The building enterprises of the emperors are a commonplace of imperial biography from Augustus, who prided himself that he had found Rome a city of brick and left it one of marble,7 through his successors,8 to Constantine, whose own capital matched Rome in magnificence, and beyond into the Byzantine age. Some of the greatest builders took more than a passing interest in the activity itself. Hadrian is said to have tried his hand as an architect in person,9 and an attrac- tive conjecture suggests that the most conspicuous Roman builder apart from the emperors themselves, Marcus Agrippa, may have done the same by helping to design the immense roof spans of the Odeon which he erected in Athens, and the temple of Zeus at Heliopolis in Syria, where he had been responsible for a veteran colony in 14 B.C. 0

The most conspicuous examples of Imperial building activity are naturally to be found at Rome itself. It is now clear that there was a specialized architectural and construction team, a "Bauhiitte," working directly under imperial patronage, to produce the grandiose public works of the Flavio-Trajanic era, culminating in Hadrian's plans to restore and refurbish the glories of the Augustan city."1 Imperial building in Rome was an aspect, and an important one, of the emperors' relationship with the capital city and its people.12 The role of the emperors as builders in the rest of Italy and in the provinces is hardly less clear and important. If the fact has received less attention, it is only because the evidence is scattered and less simple to interpret. For imperial construction projects are one of the complex of strands which

7 Suet. Aug. 28-29: ch. 29 and the Res Gestae 19-21 oblige with a detailed catalogue of his constructions.

8 Suet. lul. 44; Aug. 28-29; Calig. 19.1-3 and 21 (but see the contrary, critical remarks of Josephus AJ 19.205); Claud. 20; Ner. 31; Vesp. 8.5-9; Tit. 7.3; Dom. 5; HA Hadr. 19.9 ff.; Ant. 8.2-4; Sev. 23.1-2; Caracallus 9.4 ff.; Heliogab. 17.8-9; Alex. Sev. 24.3 and 27.7 ff.; Gordiani Tres 32.5 ff.; Gallieni Duo 18.2 ff.; Aurel. 45.2 ff.; Probus 9.3 ff. For Trajan, see Pliny Pan. 51.3.

9 HA Hadr. 19.13; Dio 69.4.2-3. 10 R. Meiggs, Trees and Timber in the Ancient Mediterranean World (Oxford 1982)

84-85. 11 See recently W. D. Heilmeyer, Korinthische Normalkapitelle (Heidelberg 1970)

176-177. For Hadrian, see D. Kienast, Chiron 10 (1980) 391-412. 12 Surprisingly, it is neglected by Z. Yavetz, Plebs and Princeps (Oxford 1969).




linked the rulers with their provincial subjects, and it is in this wider and different context that they take on their significance.

MILITARY AND CIVILIAN BUILDING

It is convenient and conventional to distinguish between two types of imperial construction outside Rome. On the one hand there was building concerned with the administration, security, and defense of the Empire, which may be thought in some sense to reflect a centrally planned policy; on the other there was building, sponsored or encouraged by the emperors in provincial cities, of temples, bath houses, theaters, porticos, and the rest, where imperial generosity stands alongside and complements local munificence.13 The distinction is worth maintaining, and this article is principally concerned with the second category of construction, but the two are not as distinct as they may at first appear. No one will dispute that legionary fortresses, smaller forts, and other primary military installations were built as a result of the decisions of emperors or their legates and reflected a central policy, although we know remarkably little about the financing of such projects, and the cost was certainly in some cases sustained by local communities.14 The major highways of the Empire were another military and administrative requirement, but were largely built at local expense,15 or, to make the point more realistically, with compulsory

13 Cf. L. Robert, Etudes anatoliennes (Paris 1938) 89 n. 2. 14 Cf., for instance, the use of civilian labor in the reconstruction of Hadrian's Wall

(Roman Inscriptions of Britain nos. 1672, 1673, 1843, 1962, 2022). See also MacMullen 220-221 with notes.

15 T. Pekary, Untersuchungen zur rbmischen Reichsstrassen (Bonn 1968) remains by far the best treatment of the question, although he hardly raises the issue of local labor, rather than local finance, being used for road construction. See too J. and L. Robert, Fouilles d'Amyzon (Paris 1983) 30-32 on precisely this subject, in connection with an

inscription found near Magnesia on the Maeander where the people of Amyzon were

responsible for road building. They cite earlier observations of L. Robert on road build-

ing inscriptions with a similar sense at Trajanoupolis in Thrace (Hellenica 1 [1940] 90-92), and in Macedonia (Opera Minora Selecta [Amsterdam 1969] 1.298-300), and make the important suggestion that the organization of responsibilities within a given region might be made in accordance with the conventus divisions of the province. Their

concluding remarks are worth quoting in full: "Certes le pouvoir central se pr6occupait des grandes routes.... Le plan d'ensemble et les directives 6manaient de Rome, empereur ou gouverneur. Mais l'on voit ici que la province d'Asie avait la responsibilit6 et c'est elle qui devait repartir les taches."




local labor.16 I take it that the substantial minority of road building inscriptions which specify that construction was undertaken by an army unit or units represent exceptions to the general rule that civilian labor was normally used.17

Inscriptions frequently show that the emperor took responsibility for setting up fortified relay posts along these roads for the provision and accommodation of official travellers: Nero for tabernae et praetoria on the military roads of Thrace,18 Trajan and his legate for a taberna cum porticibus on the via Sebaste in South Galatia,19 Hadrian, like Augustus before him, for wells, fortlets, and staging posts on the desert road between the Nile and Coptos on the Red Sea,20 and Marcus Aurelius for stabula, again in Thrace.21 We may note, however, that the task of putting up buildings to house soldiers and officials on the move through the provinces, like all the other burdens which this entailed,22 could be undertaken at a local level, as, for instance, by a prominent couple in the city of Arneai in Lycia who sometime between A.D. 112 and 117, perhaps in connection with the troop movements of Trajan's Parthian campaign, converted a gymnasium into a naop6otov, a rest house or mansio for official purposes.23

The labor of army personnel was naturally used for large-scale provincial construction work with military overtones, such as canal building,24 but the principle of putting soldiers to work if there was no fighting to be done led to their involvement in nonmilitary projects also. The Life of Probus asserts that the results of his soldiers' construction schemes could be seen in many Egyptian communities-not

16 If either the central authorities or local communities actually paid cash to build roads at anything like the attested costs of road repair, they would have been bankrupted in very short order. I hope to discuss the point in more detail in a book, currently in preparation, on the history of central Anatolia between Hellenistic and Byzantine times.

17 For such units mentioned on milestones, see most recently T. Drew-Bear and W. Eck, Chiron 6 (1976) 294-296.

18 CIL 3.6123; Dessau, ILS 231. 19 S. Mitchell, AS 28 (1978) 93-98; AE 1979, 620. 20 IGR 2.1142, A.D. 137; cf. Dessau, ILS 2453 for an Augustan precedent. 21 AE 1961, 318. 22 See the sketch in S. Mitchell, ed., Armies and Frontiers in Roman and Byzantine

Anatolia (Oxford 1983) 131-150. 23 IGR 3.639. 24 See the references collected by MacMullen 231 n. 73; cf. Dessau, ILS 9370 and, a

recently published example, D. van Berchem, Rh. Mus. 40 (1983) 185-196: the vexillations of four legions and an auxiliary unit combining to dig a canal near Syrian Antioch in A.D. 75.




only irrigation for the Nile and the drainage of marshy areas, but bridges, temples, porticos, and basilicas.25 A list compiled from scattered epigraphic evidence to show military participation in civic construction shows that soldiers were almost as likely to have been employed building a temple or a bath house as city walls, towers, or gates, with the proviso that they were generally involved in large-scale, not small-scale construction.26

Military expertise was even more prized than military muscle. Pliny's repeated requests for skilled architects to help in the task of assessing the building projects in Bithynian cities were in no way unusual.27 When Ulpian defines the inspection of public buildings as one of a provincial governor's tasks, he indicates that they should, where necessary, use ministeria militaria to evaluate and assist in the completion of projects under construction.28 Trajan's resistance to Pliny's demands cracked when he was presented with the canal scheme, which was to be brought to fruition by a combination of military expertise, namely a librator or architectus from the province of Moesia Inferior, and local labor.29 This was surely standard practice. A similar situation is envisaged in the recently published imperial letters from Coroneia in Boeotia, relating to the draining and canalization of Lake Copais. The emperor Hadrian instructed a team of military experts and engineers to supervise the project, and provided 65,000 HS in funds, after receiving estimates of the cost of the work; the actual organization and provision of the labor was to be carried out by the city.30 The intervention of a military expert in essentially civilian works is, of course, best exemplified by the famous letter of the evocatus Augusti who sorted out the engineering problems of a badly surveyed water conduit through a local mountain at the Numidian city of Saldae. Not unexpectedly he brought in soldiers to rectify the mess, and the

25 HA Probus 9. 26 MacMullen 214 ff., especially 216 and the table opposite 219. 27 Ep. 10.17b, 39, 41, 61. 28 Dig. 50.16.7.1. 29 Ep. 10.41: hoc opus multas manus poscit. At eae porro non desunt. Nam et in agris

magna copia est hominum et maxima in civitate. Certaque spes omnes libentissime

adgressuros opus omnibus fructuosum. But if they proved unwilling, surely a corvie would have been imposed, as for road construction.

30 These documents, apparently first discovered in 1919, rediscovered in 1970, were

finally published in 1982: J. M. Fossey, Euphrosyne 11 (1982) 44-59. The relevant letter here is no. 7 on pages 48-49 (SEG 32.460). See also the observations of L. Robert, Et. anat. 85; J. M. Fossey, ANRW 2.7.1 (1979) 568 ff.




remedial excavation was carried out by competing teams of marines and irregular auxiliaries.31 But soldiers were also used to take charge of much more conventional constructions, like the frumentarius of legio I Italica, stationed at Novae in Moesia Superior, who was given citizenship at Delphi in recognition of his scrupulous supervision of the buildings erected there by the emperor Hadrian.32

CITY WALLS

Civilian labor and sometimes even civilian initiative, then, had a role to play in building that was essentially military in character, and soldiers and military experts were often prominent in civic building. The ambiguity is most obvious in the case of construction in cities whose purpose was precisely the security and defence of the Empire, as was true, in general, with the construction of city walls. In many cases it is clear that an emperor took direct responsibility for the fortification of provincial cities. Augustus is said to have provided walls and gates for Nemausus33 and Vienna34 in Gallia Narbonensis, and a wall and towers for lader in Dalmatia,35 all Roman colonies, although it is interesting to note that the last were restored by a local inhabitant at a later date. In the eastern provinces there is no clear-cut evidence from the colonies. The circuit at Pisidian Antioch, however, constructed in a Roman rather than a Hellenistic building tradition from great blocks of ashlar with a mortared rubble core,

surely? dates to the first years of the

colony, an Augustan foundation, and can presumably be seen as an imperial responsibility.36 It is possible also that the unspecified opera carried out at the colony of Alexandreia Troas, iussu Augusti, by an auxiliary unit, the cohors Apula, were also fortifications.37

Even when the emperor appears to have been principally responsible for wall building there was room for private contributions. The cities of the west coast of the Black Sea were, as Ovid knew, still vulnerable to barbarian threats in the early Empire, and Odessus

31 CIL 8.2728; Dessau, ILS 5793; translated by MacMullen 215-216. 32 L. Robert, Et. anat. 88-89. 33 CIL 12.3151. 34 E. Esperandieu, Inscriptions latines de la Gaule (place 1929) no. 263. 35 CIL 3.2907; Dessau, ILS 5336; cf. CIL 3.3117 from Arca. 36 See S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch, the Site and its Monuments, in

preparation. 37 AE 1973, 501.




received new fortifications under Tiberius, who was hailed there as

ri(ota i;0 to watvoi 7tEpt4odXou; but a local citizen paid for a stretch of the curtain and for roofing the wall walk.38 When Rome supposed that there was a serious Parthian threat to Syria in the 70s A.D., defensive precautions included building walls at Gerasa, certainly at local expense, even though the city was presumably acting under orders from Rome or the Syrian governor.39 More direct imperial intervention was simply an alternative to this, as when in A.D. 75 Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian undertook the reinforcement of the walls of Harmozica in the client kingdom of Iberia on behalf of the local ruler and his son.40

A few years later, during the reign of Domitian, towers, surrounding features,41 and a triple gate were erected at Laodicea on the Lycus, and towers and a gate at its neighbor Hierapolis. The Laodicean text suggests that the finance, at least, came from an Imperial freedman, Ti. Cl. Aug. lib. Tryphon, apparently acting in a private capacity,42 despite the fact that the dedication of the finished work was made by Sex. Iulius Frontinus, proconsul of Asia in A.D. 86/7.43 The proconsul himself seems to have been solely responsible for the construction at Hierapo- lis.44 It is impossible to decide whether the initiative in either case lay with the Roman authorities or with local people.

As the first signs of strain began to show themselves in the northern frontiers of the Empire in the second century with the Marcomannic wars of Marcus Aurelius' reign, the emperors, through the agency of their legates, took steps to build fortifications for the cities of the Danu- bian and Balkan provinces-along the great highway at Serdica

38 IGBulg. 1 (2).57. 39 G. W. Bowersock, "Syria under Vespasian," JRS 63 (1973) 133-140. But the Fla-

vian date suggested there for the walls of Palmyra has been called into question; see J. F. Matthews, JRS 74 (1984) 161 n. 13.

40 IGR 3.133; cf. CIL 3, ad no. 6032. 41 Whatever is meant by the expression rax lEpi touig rtapyoug. 42 MAMA 6.2; for other public building by imperial freedmen in the East, cf. IGR

4.228, a temple for Artemis Sebaste Baiiane in the eastern Troad; IGR 3.578 (TAM 2.1.178), cf. 579, a stoa at Sidyma in Lycia; and CIL 3.7146, showing a freedman of Nerva decorating the caldarium of the gymnasium at Tralles with marble. It is probably no coincidence that he was a procurator of the quarries.

43 W. Eck, Senatoren ion Vespasian bis Hadrian (Munich 1970) 81 n. 21.

44 Eck, Senatoren 77 ff., restoring portam et tu [rres faciundas cu]ravit Sex. lul[i]us Fronv[tinus procos ..i.], ilv . nA7lv K(Xit ToU; t[pYOUg Extorl']oEv Y`og ['Io]1A1to Opov[Tivo; &v01 tnXo;].




between A.D. 176 and 180,45 at Philippopolis a few years earlier,46 at Callatis on the Black Sea,47 at Apulum in Dacia,48 and at Salona in Dal- matia.49 An imperial initiative, the use of military resources, or both, is unquestionable in all these cases. This activity presages the far more widespread wall building of the middle and later third century. The Life of Gallienus records that the emperor placed two of his own architects, Cleodamus and Athenaeaus of Byzantium, in charge of building fortifications for the cities of Histria and the West Pontic regions.50 The process is perhaps illustrated and paralleled by an inscription from Dera'a in northern Arabia indicating that walls were built there in A.D. 262/3 with money provided by Gallienus and with the aid of a Roman strator and a Roman architect.5' Asia Minor was vulnerable at this period to Gothic raiders and other enemies, as is reflected by widespread, often hasty wall building. In many cases, as at Dorylaeum,52 Miletus,53 and Prusias ad Hypium,54 the source of funds and the origin of the initiative are obscure. At Sardis the proconsul of Asia received the credit,55 as also happened at Ephesus.56 At Ancyra an acephalous inscription, apparently set up for a local citizen in about A.D. 260, commends him for having restored the destroyed gymnasium of Polyeidus and for having completed the whole wall circuit from its foundation in a time of food shortage and barbarian raids;57 other texts

45 IGBulg. 4.1902; SEG 26.829. 46 IGBulg. 3.2.878; Dessau, ILS 5337. 47 See D. Adamesteanu, Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, s.v. Kallatis. 48 CIL 3.1171, built by legio XIII. 49 CIL 3.1979, 6734 (Dessau, ILS 2616-2617), built by coh. I and II mill. Dalmatarum;

CIL 3.1980 (Dessau, ILS 2287), vexillations of two legions raised by M. Aurelius; cf. Dessau ad loc. See J. Wilkes, Dalmatia (London 1969) 116-117, 225.

50 HA Gallienus 13. 5' IGR 3.1287, cf. 1286; cf. H.-G. Pflaum, Syria 29 (1952) 307 ff.; Millar, ERW 192 n.

20, 421 n. 8. The money was provided EK 58ope•;xq tol LXEacCo1.

52 D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950) 2.1566-1568, gives a well- documented summary of all the evidence. For Dorylaeum see A. KOrte, Gittingische gelehrte Anzeigen 159 (1897) 391 ff.; Cox and Cameron, MAMA 5.xii-xiii.

53 Th. Wiegand, Milet 2.3 (Berlin 1935) 81 ff., 126-127. 54 W. Ameling, Epigraphica Anatolica 3 (1984) 21 n. 10; Die Inschriften von Prusias

17. 55 IGR 4.1510; L. Robert, Hellenica 4 (1948) 35-47; J. Keil, JOAI 36 (1948) 121-134;

C. Foss, Byzantine and Turkish Sardis (Cambridge, Mass. 1976) 3. 56 J. Keil, JOAI 30 (1937) Beibl. 204 no. 10; 36 (1946) 128-129. 57 IGR 3.206; E. Bosch, Quellen zur Geschichte der Stadt Ankara im Altertum (Ankara

1967) no. 289; this is almost certainly the career of a local citizen, since he had carried out the civic office of boulographia.




of about the same period name both local magistrates and provincial governors in connection with wall construction, but leave the ultimate responsibility for them uncertain.58 The confusion is worse at Nicaea. An inscription on the West Gate states that the emperor Claudius Goth- icus, whose names and titles are given in the nominative case, gave the city walls in the governorship of Velleius Macrinus.59 The equivalent inscription on the South Gate implies that the walls were dedicated to the emperor, the senate, and the Roman people by the city.6 Whereas the first inscription taken alone unequivocally suggests direct imperial responsibility and involvement, the second does not.

The picture that emerges is confusing, perhaps predictably so for the third century, a time when, with an empire in crisis, ad hoc and disparate responses might be expected both locally and in the central administration far more than at earlier periods. Wall building was always an activity of direct concern to emperors and their legates. Pliny, after all, was obliged to consult Trajan about any major building project which he encountered in the province, and it appears later to have been standard practice to seek imperial permission for any public building in the cities.61 A rescript of Marcus Aurelius quite specifically indicates that imperial authority had to be sought and obtained by the provincial governor for any city fortification.62 For all that, private or local civic involvement is attested from Tiberius' time to the late Empire, and the evidence taken as a whole suggests that cooperation between the imperial authorities and the local community was probably the norm, making it hard to offer any clear-cut generalizations about who was ultimately responsible either for the initiatives or for financing them.63

58 Bosch, Ankara no. 290 [iti to) Seivo;] Toi Xajtup. 'ilyiovo;, &p?aJt~voI) [To? &Se- vo;]

oauvlw•lp60avTzo; KE dptep1oavzog z r prZpoIo6T[t] TO6 Ei'Xo;, no. 291 eTti ToI

Xacnxp. I)nart•oI) MtvIK(0ou) Q~4 pevzioTO zo Xplo ~pTz6Tatov Epyov zfi T 6oXt yEyovEv,

nos. 292 and 293 (composite text) irni A'pl•k. Atovuoiou 'ApyaXEvou roi T •Xa~xpor6atlou Xp?a(XIvov . oKEAioZTUnlpoavxog....

59 IGR 3.39; IIznik no. 1 1. 60 IGR 3.40; IIznik no. 12. 61 Dig. 50.10.3.1. 62 Dig. 50.10.6: de operibus, quae in muris vel portis vel rebus publicis fiunt, aut si

muri exstruantur, divus Marcus rescripsit praesidem aditum consulere principem debere. Cf. Dig. 50.8.9.4.

63 In contrast, MacMullen 225 n. 24 only notes rare instances of the central government and municipalities jointly contributing to opera publica. See further below, nn. 89 and 141 and pages 362-364.




RESPONSIBILITY AND FINANCE

The inscriptions from the walls of Nicaea raise an important prob- lem of method. The bulk of our information about imperial building in the cities of the eastern part of the Empire comes from inscriptions, but it is essential to keep in mind both how little they may actually tell us and how misleading they can be. For instance, the monumental text cut above the original south doorway of the Augustan market building at Lepcis Magna, dating to 8 B.C., reads simply: [Imp. Caesar divi f. Augustus] cos. XI imp. XIIII trib. pot. XV pont. m[axi]mus. If this alone survived one would naturally take it that Augustus had been

responsible for erecting the building, and perhaps especially for paying for it. It is fortunate, then, that a further text from the same facade has survived to show that Annobal Imilchonis f. Tapapius Rufus sufes flamen praefectus sacrorum de sua pequ[nia] faciun[dum coe]ravit idem[que] de[d]icavit.64 The famous and much discussed letter of the proconsul Vinicius to the people of Cyme in Asia, dated to the 20s B.C., gives further cause for concern. It had been ruled by Augustus and Agrippa as consuls in 28 B.C. that sacred property which had fallen into private hands should be restored to its proper sacral ownership. Vini- cius, applying the ruling to a particular case which had arisen in Cyme, ordered that when the building had been restored to the god and appropriate compensation offered to the interim owner, a new inscription should be carved: Imp. Caesar deivei f. Augustus restituit.65

Augustus, of course, would have had nothing to do with the specific case at Cyme; still less would he have given money towards the restoration. His responsibility was simply enshrined in the general ruling made by himself and Agrippa. Two centuries later the city of Philadel- phia in Lydia, through its spokesman Aur,'l; l Iulianus, asked Cara- calla for the privilege of being allowed to erect a neocory temple in his honor, naturally at local expense.66 The emperor's favorable reply was carved on a stone model of the temple, and the architrave carried the text 'AvTovEivo;g ' iK1 rE. The text makes Caracalla a ktistes simply

64 J. M. Reynolds and J. B. Ward-Perkins, The Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania (London 1952) no. 319.

65 R. K. Sherk, Roman Documents from the Greek East (Baltimore 1969) no. 61; H. Engelmann, Die Inschriften von Kyme, no. 13; AE 1979, 596.

66 IGR 4.1619; further bibliography in S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power. The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge 1984) 259.




because he had granted permission for the city to hold an imperial neo- corate.

These examples spell out the need for caution in interpreting texts whose meaning on the surface seems plain. As ever the formalities of public inscriptions may conceal as much as they reveal. That said, one cannot reasonably deny that most building inscriptions which point to imperial responsibility ought to imply some level of financial commit- ment on the emperors' part. What form this took is another matter alto- gether. As Ramsay MacMullen put it, "the only method not chosen was the sending out of so many bags of actual cash to Smyrna, to Carthage or to any other beneficiary. With this one exception every possible kind of arrangement was made to see that funds or credit were transferred.' "67

Even if we rule out the simple transport of hard cash, we cannot do the same for raw materials. The emperors owned many of the major sources of building materials in the Empire: quarries, brick kilns, forests, and mines. Antiochus III had seen to the dispatch of timber from the forests of Lebanon to help building work at Ptolemais,68 and we can surely assume that Hadrian would have done the same after those forests, or rather four species of tree to be found there, became imperial property.69 Bricks bearing the stamp of army or imperial manufacture have been found in public buildings, especially aqueducts, of cities close to the Rhine and Danube frontiers.70 More important, as far as the eastern cities were concerned, were the emperors' marble quarries. At the request of the sophist Antonius Polemo, Hadrian had supplied Smyrna with 120 columns from the Synnadic quarries in Phrygia, twenty from those of Henschir Schemtu in Numidia, and six from Mons Porphyrites, the granite quarries of Egypt, to help build the gymnasium.71 Pausanias notes that Hadrian had also sent Athens 100

67 MacMullen 210. Perhaps the anecdote in Philostratus VS 531 (Keil) about Smyrna's receiving ten million drachmae in a single day suggests that even outright cash grants were possible (I owe the point to Andrew Sherwood).

68 Meiggs, Trees and Timber (above, n. 10) 85-87; cf. a letter of Antiochus III to Sardis, giving permission to cut timber for rebuilding the city, R. Merkelbach, Epigra- phica Anatolica 7 (1986) 74.

69 For the inscriptions relating to Hadrian's Lebanese forests see J. F. Breton, Inscrip- tions grecques et latines de Syrie 8.3 (Paris 1980); cf. AE 1981, 847.

70 MacMullen 231 nn. 79-80. 71 IGR 4.1431; Millar, ERW 184; cf. Pliny NH 36.102 for columns of Phrygian marble

sent to Rome to be used in the basilica of Aemilius Paullus. On this subject see further M. Waelkens, AJA 89 (1985) 641-653 and J. C. Fant, ibid. 655-662.




columns of Phrygian marble for the temple of Hera and Zeus Panhel- lenios and 100 from Numidia for the gymnasium.72 The principal imperial quarries in Phrygia, which were administered from the assize center at Synnada, lay near Docimeion, and there was an important subsidiary branch in the upper Tembris valley, south of Cotiaeum.73 Both produced a range of good quality stone, including excellent white marble and the much prized polychrome pavonazzetto. The cella walls of the Hadrianic/Antonine temple of Zeus at Aezani, less than twenty miles from the Tembris valley quarries, are made of white Docimian marble, and it is at least a plausible conjecture74 that that splendid sanctuary, constructed on the grandest scale, had also benefited from a direct imperial contribution towards the cost of construction. Paving stone for the city of Alexandria in Egypt also came from imperial quarries, administered by military personnel, although there is no means of knowing whether it came as an outright imperial gift.75 From the later Empire the Life of the emperor Tacitus indicates that he provided an additional 100 columns of Numidian marble to the city of Ostia,76 and Malalas states that Antoninus Pius gave stone from the Thebais in Egypt at his own expense to pave the streets of Syrian Antioch, like Herod the Great before him.77

Direct or indirect financial aid was doubtless much more common than the provision of material. The simplest method, to judge from the few explicit sources, was for the emperor to remit a city's dues to the various Roman treasuries, thereby releasing local resources for construction projects. Tiberius gave the twelve cities of Asia which had been devastated by the earthquake of A.D. 17 five years' exemption from what they owed to the aerarium or the fiscus,78 and he later sponsored a senatus consultum which gave a three-year remission of tribute to Cibyra in Asia and Aegeae in Achaea, which had suffered from further earthquakes in A.D. 31.79 The city of Phrygian Apamea received five years' remission under similar circumstances from Claudius in A.D.

72 Pausanias 1.18.9; see below, 359. 73 Cf. M. Waelkens, "Carribres de marbre en Phrygie," Bulletin des Muskes Royaux

d'Art et d'Histoire [Brussels] 53 (1982) 33-39. 74 Made by Dr. Waelkens. 75 IGR 1.1138, A.D. 83; cf. MacMullen 231 n. 77. 76 HA Tac. 10.5. 77 Malalas, Chron. 280.20 ff.; cf. Millar, ERW 184 nn. 65 and 68. 78 Tac. Ann. 2.47. 79 Tac. Ann. 4.13.1.




53.80 Two-and-a-half centuries later the town of Augustodunum in Gaul sent pleas to Constantine for help in repairing public places and temples, and was granted a reduction in taxes and a remission of those owed over the previous five years.88 The convenience of the system was its prime recommendation; to subvent local building the emperor needed to do precisely nothing except desist from collecting taxes. Another point may have commended it: all the cases of imperial liberality in this form known to us were granted in response to a petition from the beneficiary. It was surely easier and more politic to ask for a remission of debts than for an outright imperial grant.

Such grants were, nonetheless, common enough. Tiberius gave 10,000,000 HS in addition to tax relief to the twelve earthquake- stricken cities of Asia, and Hadrian gave the same sum to Smyrna alone, in response to the petition from Antonius Polemo, which had already earned the city its 126 columns of imperial marble.82 The 65,000 HS that Hadrian gave for the Lake Copais drainage scheme represents a far smaller scale of generosity,83 but Antoninus Pius gave 250,000 denarii, or 1,000,000 HS to Carian Stratonicaea in A.D. 139/40, once again to compensate for earthquake damage.84 Simple financial grants probably lie behind the many building inscriptions from all parts of the empire recording that the emperor paid, or helped to pay pecunia sua, or impensa sua,85 or, more specifically, sumptu fisci, or impensa fisci.86

There were other more complicated modes of imperial largesse. The story of the building of the aqueduct at Alexandria Troas, told in detail by Philostratus, shows Herodes Atticus, imperial legate charged

80 Ann. 12.58; for Byzantium receiving the same privilege, although apparently not for the restoration of its buildings, see Ann. 12.62.

81 Pan. Min. 7 (6) 22.4; cf. 8 (5) passim; Millar, ERW 424-425. 82 Philostr. VS 1.25.531K. 83 See above, n. 30. 84 CIG 2721; M. (?etin Sahin, Die Inschriften von Stratonikaia 2.1 no. 1029; cf.

Pausanias 8.43.4, with the comments of L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 401-402. 85 See Millar, ERW 192 n. 20, and W. Eck, BJb. 184 (1984) 102 n. 23 for examples

including roads, bridges, temples, and civic public buildings, indifferently straddling the

civilian/military divide. 86 CIL 3.3255 = Dessau, ILS 703 (cf. Millar, ERW 189), Constantine building baths at

Reims, fisci sui sumptu; CIL 11.3309 (Forum Clodii, Trajanic), quod aqu[am ... im]pensa fisci s [ui duxit]; Inscr. Lat. de Tunisie 699 (Thuburbo Maius), the proconsul of Africa of A.D. 166/7 reconstructing the capitolium publico sumptu fisci; and perhaps Eck, BJb. 184 (1984) 97 f. no. 1, Commodus restoring the praetorium at Colonia Agrippina [sumpt]u f[is]ci (?). Eck cites and discusses the parallels.




with correcting the affairs of the free cities of Asia, asking Hadrian on the city's behalf for three million drachmae, twelve million HS, to ensure a reliable water supply, on the grounds that he had already bes- towed on mere villages many times that sum. It is difficult not to iden- tify these "villages" with the communities of northwest Asia Minor promoted by Hadrian to civic status-Hadrianeia, Hadrianoi, Hadri- anutherae, and Stratonicaea-Hadrianopolis-although we have no direct evidence of imperial funding for these new foundations. Herodes Atticus secured the emperor's approval and himself took charge of the work until expenditure reached seven million drachmae and the procurators in Asia (ofi

FrxtportE1.ovrtEg) wrote to the emperor

complaining that the tribute of 500 cities was being spent on the water supply of a single one of them. Hadrian expressed his personal disap- proval to his legate, who undertook that he and his son, the famous Herodes Atticus, would present the city with a sum equivalent to any expenditure over the original three million.87 If the episode was accu- rately recorded, one must surely conclude that a part at least of the direct taxation, imperial rents, or other dues levied from the province of Asia was simply being diverted to the project.88 The procurators in Asia would surely not have had the composure or even the opportunity to question the emperor's right to distribute his financial resources as he chose, unless the money in question directly concerned them and lay within their administration. There may be a parallel provided by two inscriptions from Patara and Cadyanda in Lycia, which credit Vespa- sian with having built bath houses, the first from common funds of the province and the civic treasury of Patara that had been set aside for the purpose,89 the second by money that had been saved by the emperor for the city.90 In both instances the emperor appears to have been diverting funds normally destined for imperial revenues to local building projects. Conceivably Vespasian's attention might have been drawn to the

87 Philostr. VS 2.1.548K. 88 Millar, ERW 199 suggests that the reference to the tribute of 500 cities might have

been a mere rhetorical turn of phrase, and need have no implications for the actual origin of the money.

89 IGR 3.659 (TAM 2.1.396): 'K T v ouv[t]r[p]rl0V'vrt( Xpwrl oy'tqwv

K[otv6)v] toi

F0vo; rlv•ov K(xy dun6 ofiSg fqlrxp ov nt6Xog. Cf. MacMullen 210.

90 IGR 3.507 (TAM 2.1.651); cf. IGR 3.508 (TAM 2.1.652): iK t6v &vaToOivTv XpIrl- p6urwov rf no6Xt. Cf. MacMullen 225 n. 24. Perhaps also compare IGR 3.729 (TAM 2.1.270) from Limyra.




two cities by the mysterious circumstances in which he is said to have taken away liberty from Lycia at the beginning of his reign, thereby imposing direct taxation on most of the province.91

Another instance where the emperor received credit for having diverted revenues to subvent building occurred at Ephesus, under Augustus, where street paving was laid [iud]icio Augusti ex reditibus

agrorum sacrorum, quos is Dianae dedit.92 Augustus had in fact redefined the territory of Ephesian Artemis to the advantage of the temple revenues, but was quite prepared to spend these additional funds locally as he saw fit.93

Local bequests also left a mark. Pliny records the case of lulius Longus of Pontus, who had left money to a provincial governor, indicating that it should be used for public buildings or to establish games.94 A recently published inscription from Aphrodisias in Caria shows Trajan dedicating a statue to the ancestral mother Aphrodite and to the people out of a bequest made to him by a local citizen. Later the people of Aphrodisias re-erected the group at their own expense after an earthquake.95

Imperial funding may be well disguised. The holding of a civic magistracy was commonly the occasion for the office holder to provide funds for public projects. Emperors or members of their families were not infrequently appointed to municipal office, and this might have been the occasion for transferring funds for local building.96 The first major building program at the colony of Pisidian Antioch involved the

91 Suet. Vesp. 8; see the discussions of W. Eck, ZPE 6 (1970) 65 ff.; Chiron 12 (1982) 285 n. 16. The question is discussed in an unpublished paper by A. Balland, kindly shown to me by W. Eck, who argues that the "liberation" of Lycia simply amounted to its temporary separation from Pamphylia, effected by Galba. In that case the speculation about the province's tax liability may be quite irrelevant.

92 IEphesos 2.459; AE 1966, 425. 93 IEphesos 7.2.3501-3502; cf. 3513. For Augustus and the temple of Artemis, see

below, 354. 94 Pliny Ep. 10.75. Perhaps the testator thought that there would be less risk of embez-

zlement if a provincial governor, rather than the city, was the recipient of the bequest. 95 J. M. Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome (London 1982) no. 55; SEG 30.1254.

Perhaps compare CIL 9.5746 = Dessau, ILS 5675. Note also Pliny Ep. 10.70.2 (referring to Prusa): Est autem huius domus talis condicio: legaverat eam Claudius Polyaenus Claudio Caesari, iussitque in peristylio templum ei fieri, reliqua ex domo locari. The house, when it was converted into a temple, would by that time have belonged to the

emperor. Who would have been deemed responsible for the conversion? 96 W. Liebenam, Stddteverwaltung im r6mische Kaiserreiche (Leipzig 1900) 261-262;

Kienast, Augustus (above, 333) 344-345.




creation of a vast precinct in the center of the city devoted to the imperial cult. It was constructed between the reign of Augustus and A.D. 50, and it is a striking coincidence that during this period three members of the imperial family and two Augustan generals held honorary duovirates in the colony; they may well have contributed towards the construction costs.97

These few examples where something can be said about the circumstances in which imperial building in the cities was financed are far outnumbered by the cases where nothing at all is known. But the variety of guises in which imperial intervention and involvement becomes apparent is an indication in itself of the complexity of the relationship between the emperors and their subject cities. The evidence for imperial building reflects not only the rulers' generosity, but also the diverse and numerous ways in which they were seen to take responsibility for provincial affairs.

CRISIS, PETITION, AND RESPONSE

In 27 B.C. an ambassador from the city of Tralles, which had been devastated by an earthquake, came to Augustus, then on campaign in Spain, to ask for aid. The emperor dispatched a commission of seven consulares, who made haste to the city and provided large sums of money, from which Tralles was rebuilt in the form which it still exhi- bited in the sixth century, when the episode was recalled by the Byzan- tine historian Agathias.98 When Mithridates VI passed through Phrygian Apamea, in ruins after an earlier earthquake, he gave 100 talents towards its restoration as Alexander the Great was alleged to have done before him.99 The pattern of natural disaster, petition, and imperial response recurs throughout the principate, and precedents had been set long before.

Tacitus remarks with some surprise that Laodicea on the Lycus managed to recover from the earthquake of A.D. 60 at its own expense, with no help from Rome,1' and many individual episodes confirm that Laodicea's recovery was exceptional. Augustus in the Res Gestae

97 Mitchell and Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch (above, n. 36) chapter 1. 98 Agathias Hist. 2.17; cf. Strabo 12.8.18.578, indicating that Laodicea on the Lycus

also benefited. 99 Strabo 12.8.18.578.

100 Ann. 14.27: eodem anno ex inlustribus Asiae urbibus Laodicea tremore terrae pro- lapsa nullo a nobis remedio propriis opibus revaluit.




catalogued the gifts (8op~at) he had made to provincial cities that had suffered from earthquake or fire.1'0 A decree of Cos, found at Olym- pia'02 and dating to 26 B.C., hailed him as new founder of the city after a catastrophic earthquake there.103 Suetonius remarked that the great disaster of A.D. 17, which had ruined twelve cities of Asia,'4 had been the only occasion when Tiberius showed liberality to the provinces,'05 although the aid which he provided was substantial and was widely advertised both locally'06 and in Italy.'07 At Sardis, Tiberius' own contributions were matched by local benefactors,'08 and this too was a common pattern. Tiberius gave tax relief to Cibyra in Asia and Aegeae in Achaea a few years later,109 but the full-scale restoration of the former did not occur until the beginning of Claudius' reign, when the first governor of the new province of Lycia, Q. Veranius, was honored there for having taken charge of the Sebasta erga, the imperial buildings, in accordance with instructions confided to him by Claudius, founder of the city.110 But alongside this we may note that a certain Q. Veranius Troili f. Clu. Philagrus is also said to have provided a substantial sum for the foundation of the city on his own account.111' No doubt the governor Veranius had encouraged private generosity to supplement imperial funds, and Roman citizenship may well have been

101 19.7-9. 102 lOlympia no. 53; R. Herzog, Koische Forschungen und Funde (Leipzig 1899)

141-150. 103 See L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 401. 104 See Tacitus Ann. 2.47, with Goodyear's note for further references. 105 Suet. Tib. 48. But note the contrary indication of Velleius 2.130.1: quanta suo

suorumque nomine exstruxit opera, with Woodman's note. 106 In Asia the relevant inscriptions are as follows: Sardis, IGR 4.1514, cf. 1503 and

1523, and an unpublished text found recently, JHS Arch. Reports 1984/5, 82; also see n. 108; Cyme, Die Inschriften von Kyme nos. 20-21; Mostene, IGR 4.1351 (OGIS 471); see L. Robert, Hellenica 2 (1946) 77-79; 6 (1948) 16-17.

107 See the coins, RIC 1, 105 no. 19: CIVITATIBUS ASIAE RESTITUTIS; CIL 10.1624 (Dessau, ILS 156), Puteoli, with the comments of C. C. Vermeule, "The Basis from Puteoli," in Coins, Culture and History in the Ancient World, Studies for Bluma C. Trell (Detroit 1981) 85-101.

10o L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 405 (SEG 28.928), for the private restoration of a temple after this earthquake. For the rebuilding of Sardis, see G. M. A. Hanfmann, Sardis from Prehistoric to Roman Times (Cambridge, Mass. 1983) 140-143.

109 Tac. Ann. 4.13. 110 Petersen and van Luschan, Reisen in Lykien 2 (Vienna 1889) 189 n. 25; IGR 4.902.

For Q. Veranius at Cibyra, see L. Robert, Et. anat. 89; Hellenica 3 (1946) 21 n. 1; J. Noll6, ZPE 48 (1982) 267-282.

Ill IGR 4.914.




Philagrus' reward for his contribution. Claudius was again active after the earthquake which struck the central region of Aegean Turkey in A.D. 47. At Samos he repaired the temple of Liber Pater and was hailed as vog; K•itrlg,112

and Malalas makes him responsible for restoration at Miletus, Ephesus, and Smyrna.113 This intervention also prompted private generosity, for this seems to be the context in which Cn. Vergilius Capito of Miletus, sometime procurator of Asia and pre- fect of Egypt, began his building program at Miletus, which produced the baths of Capito at the end of Claudius' reign, and, according to a seductive restoration, the scaena of the theater, dedicated to Nero.114

Nero had given Lugdunum in Gaul a sum of 4,000,000 HS to rebuild after a fire in A.D. 66, in return for help which Lugdunum had offered to Rome at the time of the great fire of A.D. 64;115 Vespasian intervened in response to petitions in Lycia;116 and Hadrian is said to have rebuilt Nicomedia and Nicaea in Bithynia after the earthquake of A.D. 120-both took the title "Hadriane" in consequence.117 A Hadri- anic inscription from Nicaea set up for a certain Patrocleus, who had been an imperial procurator and held high local office, states that he had been curator of the construction work in accordance with a rescript of the emperor,8" presumably an allusion to the aftermath of the same earthquake.

In A.D. 139 another Koa?oKobg GE;Etog struck Lycia and the sur-

rounding cities as far away as Carian Stratonicaea,"19 Rhodes, and Cos,

1 2 Ath. Mitt. 1912, 217 nos. 19 and 20; M. Sagel, Inscriptiones Latinae in Graecia Repertae (Faenza 1979) 19 ff. no. 11; IGR 4.1711; and a newly published Greek text, H. Freis, ZPE 58 (1985) 189-193.

113 Malalas, Chron. 246, 11 f.; C. Habicht, Gittingische gelehrte Anzeigen 213 (1960) 163. Miletus probably took the title Caesarea for a short period, acknowledging Clau- dius' restoration, see L. Robert, Arch. Ephem. 1977, 217-218.

114 For Vergilius Capito at Miletus, see L. Robert, Hellenica 7 (1949) 206-238, esp. 209; for the baths of Capito, see A. von Gerkan and F. Krischen, Milet 1.9 (Berlin 1928) 23-49; the inscriptions from the baths are published by A. Rehm, ibid. 158. The inscription from the scaena of the theater is published by P. Herrmann in W. Mtiller-Wiener, ed., Milet 1899-1980. Ergebnisse, Probleme und Perspektiven einer Ausgrabung (Tiibingen 1986) 175-189. Vergilius Capito's name was restored with splendid acumen by D. McCabe in a seminar at Princeton in 1984.

'15 Tac. Ann. 16.13. 116 See nn. 89-91. 117 Sources and discussion in L. Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 395 ff. I I IGR 3.1545; Dessau, ILS 8867; S. Sahin, Die Inschriften von Nikaia 1.56. 119 See n. 84.




all of which received help in rebuilding from Antoninus Pius,120 but this was also the occasion for enormous generosity throughout Lycia by Opramoas, the millionaire of Rhodiapolis.121 In A.D. 151/2, during the proconsulate of L. Antonius Albus, it was Mytilene's turn to suffer. The city responded to the emperor's contributions to the reconstruction by hailing Antoninus Pius as its benefactor and founder.122 The plight of Smyrna in A.D. 172 is still better documented, by Philostratus and by the letter or monodia which Aelius Aristides sent to Marcus Aurelius, successfully urging him to contribute heavily towards the restoration of the smitten city.123

PULCHRUM ET UTILE

Pliny's appeal to Trajan on behalf of his canal scheme had pleaded a combination of splendor and utility to attract the emperor's attention to it. On both counts there was a chance that Trajan might respond favor- ably, since both qualities traditionally provided opportunities for imperial generosity.

Aqueducts were one of the most distinctive architectural features of Roman cities, whether in the eastern or western parts of the Empire. They were expensive to build, as Hadrian discovered at Alexandria Troas, and their construction, which required highly accurate surveying and sophisticated building techniques such as the use of pressure pipes, demanded considerable expertise. Moreover, the point has been made that their location outside their cities did not make them a favorite choice for local aristocrats anxious to display their generosity to their fellow citizens. Small wonder, then, that they often received imperial subvention. Augustus built aqueducts at Ephesus, between A.D. 4 and 14,124 and the canalized system from Schedia to Alexandria in Egypt in

120 Robert, BCH 102 (1978) 401-402; D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor 1.631-632; 2.1491-1492 n. 6; Pausanias 8.43.4; Aristides Or. 24.3.59; 25.9 ff. (Keil); HA Ant. 9.1.

121 For Opramoas' restoration program, see TAM 2.3.905 (IGR 3.739), 11.20 f.; 12.28 and 43; 13.48; 17.27 f.; 18.85 f.; A. Balland, Xanthos 7, nos. 66 and 67. There is a convenient list of his benefactions in T. R. S. Broughton, "Roman Asia Minor," in T. Frank, ed., An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome 4 (Baltimore 1938) 780.

122 IGR 4.90; IG 12.11.215. Cf. Aristides Or. 49.38 ff. (Keil). 123 Dio 71.32.3; Philostr. VS 2.9; Aristides Or. 19 (Keil). Cf. Millar, ERW 423-424. 124 Die Inschriften von Ephesos 2, no. 401 (the aqua lulia), 402 (the aqua Thrassitica);

cf. W. Alzinger, Augusteische Architektur in Ephesos (Vienna 1974) 23; RE Suppl. 12.1604.




A.D. 10--11.125 Tiberius, through the agency of his legate, saw to the building of an aqueduct at Syrian Nicopolis,126 while Claudius built examples at Sardis,127 at Namasba in Numidia,128 and perhaps at Ker- yneia in Cyprus.129 There was a Neronian aqueduct at Soloi in Cyprus,130 and Vespasian seems to have been particularly active in improving the water supplies of Lycian cities, with an aqueduct at Patara'31 and baths at Patara and Cadyanda.132 Coulton notes that the Patara aqueduct, the aqueduct and a bath house at Oenoanda, and another bath house at Simena, all share the same distinctive style of polygonal masonry, which may help to date them to the same period.133 Although there is no evidence that it is an imperial foundation, one should also note the aqueduct at Balbura, dedicated to Vespasian and Titus in A.D. 75.134 Trajan provided aqueducts for colonies in the Bal- kans, at lader in Dalmatia135 and at Sarmizegethusa.'36

According to the Historia Augusta, Hadrian gave his name to innumerable aqueducts.137 Perhaps not, but Hadrianic work is known for certain at Athens, Argos, Corinth,138 and at Nicaea.139 At Lepcis Magna an inscription tells us that Hadrian aquae aeternitati consuluit, but that the money was put up by a local citizen, Q. Servilius Can- didus.140 Some such collaboration between emperor and subject should perhaps be envisaged at Cyrene in A.D. 165/6, where the city built hydrecdochia out of public funds, under the guidance of the provincial

125 Dessau, ILS 9075. 126 CIL 3.6703. 127 CIL 3.409; IGR 4.1505; Sardis 7.1 (1932) no. 10. Perhaps part of the restoration of

Sardis occasioned by the earthquake ofA.D. 17; cf. Hanfmann (above, n. 108) 141-142. 128 CIL 8.4440 (Dessau, ILS 5793), referring to an aqua Claudiana. 129 T. B. Mitford, Opusc. Athen. 6 (1950) 17 no. 9. 130 Ibid. 28 no. 15. See G. Moretti, RFIC 109 (1981) 264-268. '31 J. Coulton, PCPS N.s. 29 (1983) 9, cf. n. 28, citing an unpublished text. 132 Above, nn. 89-90. 133 Coulton, loc. cit. 134 IGR 3.466; C. Naour, Anc. Society 9 (1978) 165-170 n. 1 (SEG 28.1218). 135 CIL 3.2902. 136 CIL 3.1446. 137 HA Hadr. 20.5. 138 CIL 3.549; J. Travlos, A Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Athens (London 1971) 242,

built between A.D. 125 and 140. See, too, A. Kokkou, Arch. Delt. 25 (1970) 150-172. For Corinth and Argos see below, nn. 195-197. It also seems to be implied at Coroneia (cf. above, n. 30), SEG 32.460.1.10-11:

KaT•r• Eo 8 314E1V Ka'i iS0op. 139 Die Inschriften von Nikaia 1, no. 55. 140 Dessau, ILS 5754; Reynolds and Ward-Perkins, Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania

no. 358, cf. 359.




proconsul, but in accordance with the authority and benefaction of the divine emperors. 141

Hadrianic building for public utility is also illustrated by the two horrea erected in Lycia in A.D. 129, the year in which he visited the province, at Patara, and at Myra,142 both designed to store grain from the Lycian hinterland that was destined for consumption at Rome.143

They may be paralleled by the granaries which he built at Smyrna in response to the embassy of Polemo.'44 We should compare not only his interest in the drainage of Lake Copais in Greece, but his concern to clear the harbors of Ephesus and Trapezus in Pontus.145

Imperial prestige, at least, was no less well served by other, more decorative forms of building. The edict of Paullus Fabius Persicus, issued at Ephesus under Claudius in A.D. 47, recorded that since many of the temples of the gods had been consumed by fire, or lay in ruins, Augustus had intervened to restore the temple of Diana itself, an orna- ment to the province on account of the magnificence of its workman- ship, the antiquity of its cult, and the extent of its revenues.146 Indivi- dual texts show that Augustus restored roads and water courses,147 and built a wall around the Artemisium in 6/5 B.C.,148 as well as re- establishing the boundaries of the temple lands and ordering the paving of roads from its revenues.149 The magnificence of imperial contributions to the architecture of Ephesus is implied by a civic decree of Domitianic date which begins with the remark that the restoration of old buildings appeared to match the recent splendors of imperial constructions, a reference perhaps to Augustan work, or to the newly built Flavian temple of the imperial cult.150 Augustus was probably equally

141 J. M. Reynolds, JRS 49 (1959) 98 f. no. 3; for an aqua Augusta at Cyrene, restored by a proconsul in the late Augustan or Tiberian period, see AE 1981 no. 858.

142 CIL 3.12127; TAM 2.397 (Patara); CIL 3.6738; Dessau, ILS 5908 (Myra); cf. M. Worrle, in J. Borchhardt, Myra. Eine lykische Metropolis (Tiibingen 1975) 67-68.

143 Cf. Borchhardt et al., Myra, 66-71 Taf. 36-41 for the Myra building. Recent discussion in G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (Oxford 1971) 136 n. 41; A. Balland, Xanthos 7.69 and 217.

'44 Philostr. VS 1.25.531K. However, it seems that the Smyrna building was for civic use, and can be paralleled by other large granaries found in Asian cities.

145 Cf. above, n. 30; Ephesus, SIG3 839; Trapezus, Arrian, Periplus 1.16. 146 IEphesos 1.19b (Latin text). 147 IEphesos 6.1523, cf. 1524. 148 IEphesos 6.1522 (CIL 3.6070; 7118; Dessau, ILS 97). 149 See above, nn. 92-93. 150 IEphesos 2.449 (SEG 26.1245); cf. L. Robert, Rev. Phil. 52 (1977) 13-14, possibly

referring, however, not to Augustan buildings but to the Domitianic temple of the imperial cult. Cf. Price, Rituals and Power (above, n. 66) 255.




active in another conspicuous center, Athens, although the direct evidence for his financial involvement is confined to one inscription from the architrave of the gate of Athena Archegetis in the Roman agora.151

Temple building or reconstruction was a regular imperial activity in the provinces, as it was at Rome or in Italy. A bilingual inscription set in bronze letters on the architrave suggests that Augustus had rebuilt the Hellenistic temple of Athena at Ilium, perhaps fulfilling the obliga- tions of the Julian house to the city of its Trojan ancestors.152

A text from the Letoon at Xanthos, dating to A.D. 43, the year in which Claudius annexed Lycia, seems to show that he himself erected a temple-like structure within the precinct there, which served the imperial cult.153 Nero is said to have had a bath house built in Egypt, anticipating his projected visit;154 he was also responsible for the stage of the theater at Curium in Cyprus155 and probably for the proscenium of the theater at Iconium in Galatia.156 Later in the first century A.D. the seating was added by private donors.157 A doubtful but probably reliable source indicates that Vespasian built an "imperial hall" at Cyz- icus. 58 Domitian restored the temple of Apollo at Delphi in A.D. 84 sua impensa159 and, presumably in response to a petition, erected a portico at Megalopolis in the Peloponnese after it had been burned down.160 A fragmentary Latin text from Palaepaphos in Cyprus also seems to show

151 IG 2/3.3175; see Kienast, Augustus (above, 333) 356-357 for discussion and further references.

152 P. Frisch, Die Inschriften von Ilion no. 84. 153 A. Balland, Xanthos 7, no. 11. 154 Dio 62.18; A. C. Johnson, "Roman Egypt to the Reign of Diocletian," in T. Frank,

ed., An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome 2 (Baltimore 1935) 637. 155 T. B. Mitford, The Inscriptions of Kourion (Philadelphia 1971 ) no. 107, A.D. 64/5. 156 IGR 3.262.1404; restored by W. M. Ramsay, JHS 38 (1918) 169-170. The Neronian

date is supported by the fact that the procurator Pupius named in the building inscription is apparently identical to the procurator L. Pupius Praesens, honored as benefactor and founder at Iconium, whose term of office fell at the end of Claudius' and the beginning of Nero's principate. See R. K. Sherk, ANRW 2.7.2 (1980) 977-978.

157 IGR 3.1474. '58 Schol. in Aristidem (1.391, 7 Dindorf), discussed by B. Keil, Hermes 32 (1897) 502

n. 1, and mentioning a pacallto; aw•rXi. 159 CIL 3.14203.24; Dessau, ILS 8905. 160 CIL 3.13691; IG 5.2.457, A.D. 93/4. Compare Antoninus Pius repairing burned bath

buildings at Narbo, Dessau, ILS 5685.




that he undertook construction or restoration in the precinct of Aphro- dite.161

Between A.D. 98 and 100 Trajan built, or rather completed, a bath building at Cyrene,162 and patronized the important sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Curium, where he founded

(K•rt~aev) two then unfinished

exedrae, work which was supervised and dedicated by the proconsul in A.D. 101.163 In the same or the following year he built the gate of the sanctuary that led to the city of Curium, and another adjacent structure.164 Another Latin inscription from Curium, perhaps of the first century A.D., records an imperial gift of paving stone,165 and Trajan was again responsible for laying paving in the sanctuary in 113-115.166 It is interesting to note this very specific, piecemeal approach taken to supplement the existing, much more impressive buildings at the sanctuary. We know that in A.D. 102 Trajan was responsible for benefactions at Miletus: he paid for the repaving of the sacred way which joined the city to the shrine of Apollo at Didyma, and possibly undertook other building there. He may have had specific reasons for being grateful to the place. The oracle at Didyma had apparently predicted his future elevation to the principate, perhaps during his father's term as proconsul of Asia in A.D. 79.167 Such special connections might always be a cause for imperial intervention. When sudden death overtook Marcus Aurelius' wife Faustina at the village of Halala in the northern foothills of the Taurus mountains in A.D. 176, the emperor turned the little community into a Roman colony, Faustinopolis, and built a temple in Faustina's honor.168

This evidence forms no observable pattern. We are faced with the random survival, principally from inscriptions, of information indicating that emperors erected buildings of all sorts in eastern provincial cities. They provided the emperor's subjects with further testimony to his ubiquitous power and the benefits which he could bring them.

161 CIL 3.12102, cf. Mitford, ANRW 2.7.2 (1980) 1356. 162 Reynolds, JRS 49 (1959) 95 f. no. 1. 163 IKourion no. 108. 64 IKourion no. 109.

165 IKourion no. 106. 166IKourion no. 11; cf. T. Drew-Bear and R. S. Bagnall, Chron. d'Egypte 49 (1974)

193-195. 167 C. P. Jones, Chiron 5 (1975) 403-406; K. Tuchelt, Ist. Mitt. 30 (1980) 102-121;

JHS Arch. Reports 1978/9, 73-74. 168 HA M. Aurel. 26.4; for the site of Faustinopolis, see M. H. Ballance, AS 14 (1964)

139-145.




However, the work that the emperors funded or patronized was not in

principle distinguishable from other constructions in the cities. Tem- ples, bath houses, porticos, theaters, and even aqueducts might as well be set up by private benefactors, or by the local civic authorities. There was no imperial policy to endow cities with structures or facilities that they might not otherwise have enjoyed.

HADRIAN, ATHENS, AND ACHAEA

The sum total of the evidence for other imperial building in eastern cities pales into insignificance when set alongside the surviving testimony to Hadrian's apparently spontaneous generosity. This is emphasized by the principal literary sources for his principate, and confirmed by inscriptions.

He did not, Dio tells us, wait to be asked, but gave generously towards any need, helping both allied and subject cities with unsparing generosity. He visited many of them in person, more than any other emperor, and gave aid to almost all. Some received a water supply, others harbors, grain, public buildings, cash, or privileges.169 In particular, Dio observes that he conferred great honor and benefits on his home town Italica in Baetica, and archaeology confirms that the place was transformed from a modest provincial town by a wealth of imperial construction.170 The Life of Hadrian noted temples connected with the imperial cult in Narbonensis and Tarraconensis,171 as well as buildings at Athens.172 When he went to Asia he is said to have con- secrated temples devoted to his own cult,173 and he built innumerable aqueducts.174 In almost every city that he visited he either put up buildings or sponsored games.175 A host of cities took his name and were called Hadrianopolis, including a part of Athens itself.176

169 Dio 69.5.2-3. 170 69.10.1; R. Syme, Roman Papers (Oxford 1979) 1.620-621 citing A. Garcia y Bel-

lido, Colonia Aelia Augusta Italica (1960). 171 HA Hadr. 12.2. 172 13.6, see below. 173 19.1. 174 20.5. 175 19.2. Cf. Fronto Princ. hist. 8 (p. 195.13-14 van den Hoot) eius itinerum monu-

menta videas per plurimas Asiae atque Europae urbes sita. 176 20.4; cf. 20.13 on Hadrianutherae.




The inscriptions suggest that little exaggeration is involved. Cities of Asia by the dozen took a name or titles from him, and honored him as their ktistes.177 Specific texts show that in addition to the horrea at Lycia, aqueducts, and the restoration of Bithynian cities after earthquake damage which have already been discussed (above, 345), he built a stoa (?) at Apollonia on the Rhyndacus,178 restored the temple of Dionysus at Teos,179 and erected a temple or some similar structure at Metropolis in Ionia.180 According to Philostratus he lavished ten million drachmae in a single day on the city of Smyrna, which built with this bounty a grain market, the finest gymnasium in Asia, and a temple.181 But even this was dwarfed by his gifts to Athens and to the other cities of Achaea. According to Dio he gave money, an annual supply of corn, and the island of Cephallenia to Athens. He also built the Olympieion, and caused the Greeks themselves to put up the Panhellen- ion and celebrate games there.182 It was not new or surprising that an emperor should make benefactions to Athens. Hadrian was neither the first nor the last in a long series.183 The Olympieon itself had been begun by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, built to a design by a Roman architect, Cossutius, but by his death in 165 B.C. only the east end had reached the level of the cornice.184 It survived the depredations of Sulla, who carted off some of its columns to Rome;'85 Augustus had planned to continue the work,186 but completion had to wait for Hadrian between 124/5 and 131/2.187 Pausanias provides the fullest details: Hadrian dedicated the temple and the splendid statue of Zeus,

177 See the lists compiled by M. Le Glay, BCH 100 (1976) 357-364. 178 IGR 4.121. 179 SEG 2.588; BCH 00 (1925) 309 no. 4; L. Robert, Hellenica 3 (1946) 86-89 (ITeos

[McCabe] 76). 180 IEphesos 7.1.3433; J. Keil and A. von Premerstein, Dritte Reise 111 no. 174 refer

this inscription to road building between Metropolis and Hypaepa, but it is puzzling, if that is so, that the text, with name and titles of Hadrian in the nominative, should be carved on a rectangular stele with a pediment, not on a normal milestone.

181 Philostr. VS 531K. 182 Dio 69.16.1-2. 183 For Herod the Great, see above, n. 5. M. Agrippa had built an ambitious covered

theater, the Odeon, Pausanias 1.18.6; Hesperia 19 (1950) 31-161; Travlos, Pictorial Dic-

tionary (above, n. 138) 505-520. The kings who built in Athens include Ariobarzanes of

Cappadocia and the emperors Augustus and Claudius. 184 Vitr. 7.15.17; IG 22.4099. 185 Pliny NH 36.45. 186 Suet. Aug. 60. 187 Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary 402-411.




and adorned the precinct with four statues of himself, two of Thasian marble and two of Egyptian granite.'88 Pausanias also observes, in apparent conflict with Dio, that Hadrian also built the temple of Hera and Zeus Panhellenios, with a new sanctuary of all the gods, these with 100 columns of Phrygian marble (see above, 344). Then there was his library, with colonnades and stoas, whose chambers had gilded roofs and were adorned with statues and inscriptions, to say nothing of the books, and the gymnasium named after Hadrian and built with a further 100 columns from the Numidian quarries.189 The monuments, of course, are still to be seen in Athens.190 A fragmentary letter preserves some of the terms in which he presented Athens with the gymnasium: "I give this gymnasium for your boys and young men, so that it may be an adornment to the city . 1.." 191 An arch was constructed linking the new Olympieion complex with the old classical city. The inscription on the east side, overlooking the new temple, told the passerby that this gate led to the city of Hadrian, not that of Theseus.192

Hadrian's treatment of Athens goes far beyond that of any other emperor for a provincial city at any time during the principate. Ties of sentiment, religion, and an acute sense of the cultural significance of Athens motivated the gifts, and provide a rationale for Hadrian's com- mitment. The Panhellenic movement which he fostered and encouraged required a capital city and a central focus which his rebuilt Athens provided.193

But it is important to note that his philhellenic endowments did not stop there. There were new buildings at Delphi.194 At Corinth he built the aqueduct from Stymphalus, and a bath house which was doubtless associated with it,195 and restored the theater.196 This generosity was almost exactly duplicated at Argos, where he endowed a new aqueduct

188 1.18.6. 189 1.18.9. 190 For the library see Travlos, op. cit. 244-252; M. A. Sisson, PBSR 11 (1929) 50-72;

Knithikis-Symbolidou, Arch. Delt. 24 (1969) 107 ff. 191 IG 2/3 (ed. min.) 1102 (A.D. 131/2). For royal gifts to gymnasia, see L. Robert,

Opera Minora Selecta (Amsterdam 1969) 2.738. 192 IG 22.5185; Schol. Aristides, Panath. 3.201.32 (Dind.); M. Zahrnt, Chiron 9 (1979)

393-398. 193 See now A. J. Spawforth and Susan Walker, JRS 75 (1985) 78-104, especially 90 ff. 194 See above, n. 32. 195 Pausanias 2.3.5; 8.22.3; W. Biers, Herperia 47 (1978) 171-184. 196 R. Stillwell, Corinth II: The Theatre (Princeton 1952) 136-140.




and nymphaeum and restored the theater which had burned down.197 He rebuilt the temple of Poseidon Hippios at Mantinea in the Pelopon- nese,198 a temple of Apollo at Abai, and a colonnade at Hyampolis in Phocis,199 to say nothing of the utilitarian scheme to drain Lake Copais.200 He made the corniche road from Corinth to Megara wide enough for two wagons to pass one another, and rebuilt the Megarian temple of Apollo in white marble, replacing the existing one of brick.201 Achaea, notoriously, had been in decline in the early imperial period, a fact as evident to ancient observers as to modern scholars.202 It is surely correct to see Hadrian's efforts as a genuine, almost a planned attempt to restore the province to its former glory. Some confirmation that this interpretation is not an anachronism comes from Pausanias' remark about Megara, that of all the cities of Greece not even Hadrian's endeavors sufficed to make it thrive.203 If construction work and public buildings are any clear measure of regional prosperity, then Achaea in the second century had much for which to thank him.

CITY FOUNDATIONS AND ECONOMIC REVIVAL

In A.D. 66 Tiridates, newly crowned king of Armenia by Nero, returned to his domain with permission to rebuild the city of Artaxata, which had been destroyed by Domitius Corbulo eight years earlier. He took with him gifts to the value of 200,000,000 HS204 and assorted artisans to help with the task, some hired by himself, others provided by the emperor. When he reached the Euphrates, Corbulo allowed him to

197 See A. J. Spawforth and Susan Walker, JRS 76 (1986) 102. 198 Pausanias 8.10.2. 199 Pausanias 8.35.3, 4. 200 See above, n. 30. 201 Pausanias 1.42.5; cf. IG 7.70-74. 202 C. P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome (Oxford 1971) 3-12, esp. 8; see U. Kahrstedt, Das

wirtschaftliche Gesicht Griechenlands in der Kaiserzeit (Berne 1954) passim; J. A. O. Larsen, "Roman Greece," in T. Frank, ed., An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome 4

(1938) 465-483. 203 Pausanias 1.36.3. Note also the phrase which begins one of the Hadrianic letters

from Coroneia: ait6tq yi o4LnpdPoTyTv taTq n;heotCv npbq Enopifv XprtjgArmv

(SEG 32.461; A.D. 125).

204 The figure is astonishingly high. Note also that Tiridates' entourage of more than 3000 persons, which had taken over nine months to travel to Rome for the coronation, at an alleged cost to the Roman treasury of 800,000 HS per day, will have required a further 220,000,000 HS (Dio 62.2.2). Hardly credible.




take only the latter group beyond the imperial frontier, but with them he rebuilt his capital, and called it Neronia.205 This episode, although concerned with a client king in extra-provincial territory, gives much cause for reflection. It highlights the scale of imperial generosity, which took the form both of financial and of practical aid, and provides a rare fragment of substantial information to supplement the bare state- ment that a city took on a new dynastic name. It also offers a simple reminder that the foundation or refoundation of a city was a major and expensive undertaking, a fact generally taken for granted and so passed over in silence both by the ancient sources and in modern discussions.

This is not the place to begin a large-scale discussion of a complicated subject which goes well beyond the scope of this article. It goes without saying, however, that the creation of new cities had widespread and profound implications for the economic development of the provinces, and it is legitimate to ask whether the emperors saw imperial building as an essential component of city foundation and a means or spur to regional development. The evidence for direct financial com- mitment on the part of the emperors in the foundation or refoundation of cities which bore their names is disappointingly thin. It is clearest, perhaps, in the case of cities rebuilt after earthquake damage, all or most of which took an imperial name or title to commemorate the fact.206 The passage of Philostratus which describes Hadrian's role in building the aqueduct at Alexandria Troas may, if rightly interpreted above (346), indicate that he spent large sums on the creation of his new Mysian cities. But the only direct evidence from the region also implies a subtler and less direct approach to civic development. Hadrian's letter to Stratonicaea /Hadrianopolis of A.D. 127 includes an injunction concerning the house belonging to Ti. Cl. Socrates--either he should put it into good repair, or he should give it to one of the local inhabitants so that it not be destroyed by the passage of time and by neglect.207 This hints at a more complex process, involving imperial, local civic, and private initiatives working together, and tends to confirm the picture which has already emerged from the testimony for

205 Dio 62.6.5-6; 7.2 (epitomized). 206 Tralles, Cibyra, and the twelve cities of Asia ruined in A.D. 17 all took the name

Caesareia; Nicaea and Nicomedia both took the title "Hadriane" after A.D. 120. 207 IGR 4.1156; reedited by L. Robert, Hellenica 6 (1948) 81-84 no. 26. For the same

idea, cf. the SC Hosidianum, perhaps of Claudian date, CIL 10.1401; Dessau, ILS 6403 (Italy); Suet. Vesp. 8.5 (Rome); P. Garnsey in M. I. Finley, ed., Studies in Roman Pro- perty (Cambridge 1976) 133-136.




earthquake restoration at Sardis, Cibyra, and Miletus in the mid-first century A.D. (above, 350-351).

The same point can be made about any wider policy on Hadrian's part to create urban structures in Mysia. Alongside the direct imperial subvention that presumably took place in the newly founded cities, there was Hadrianic building at the Asclepieon of Pergamum, paid for by private donors,208 at Cyzicus where the famous temple was paid for by contributions from all over Asia,209 and at Aezani, cities which framed the vast Mysian hinterland where the new foundations lay. Not only within the confines of a single city, but also on a broad regional scale, imperial building did not take place in a vacuum. Private and civic munificence provided a necessary complement to it. We should probably not try to read into these imperial benefactions a complex and consciously devised scheme of economic regeneration, but certainly all parties must have been aware that regional prosperity was much enhanced by these major initiatives in public building.

Another region at another period may be compared, the central Ana- tolian province of Galatia, created by Augustus in 25 B.C. At the time of annexation there was not a single community in the whole area that could be described as a polis. This deficiency was put right over the next hundred years, as a network of cities, colonies, and their territories spread over the provincial map in a process of urbanization that was essentially complete by the Flavian or Trajanic period.210 The archaeo- logical evidence for the area is still very inadequate, but what we know from the principal cities and colonies shows that these urban foundations were matched by the erection of public and religious buildings of considerable splendor. A program of construction which began under Augustus and continued through to the Claudian period produced the temple of Rome and Augustus and a theater at Ancyra, the first phase of the colonnaded street, which did double duty as a water course and ran through the center of the city, the imperial temple complex at Pes- sinus, and the monumental temple and precinct of the imperial cult at Pisidian Antioch.211 It is hard to imagine how such ambitious programs

208 C. Habicht, Alt. v. Perg. 8.3 (1976) 8-11; Le Glay, BCH 100 (1976) 347-351. 209 IGR 4.140; Malalas, Chron. 279.3 f. indicates that Hadrian himself helped with the

cost. For an excellent summary of the many problems concerned with this building, see Price, Rituals and Power (above, n. 66) 251.

210 To be discussed in the book referred to in n. 16. 211 See the summary of recent work at all these sites in JHS Arch. Reports 1984/5,

98-100. For Antioch, see S. Mitchell, AS 33 (1983) 8 and 34 (1984) 9; Pessinus, M. Waelkens, Fouilles de Pessinonte 1 (1984) 140. The Pessinus evidence and the com-




of public building could have been possible without a deliberate injec- tion of imperial finance, and without importing the skilled craftsmen and artisans that such sophisticated constructions required. Imperial intervention in the province during the Julio-Claudian period is directly attested by an inscription from Iconium and there is a possibility that imperial funds were channeled into Antioch when members of the imperial family held magistracies there.212 On the other hand the only direct evidence for the funding of the Ancyra and Pessinus imperial sanctuaries suggests that the provincial priests of the imperial cult were expected to contribute, in the usual traditions of aristocratic munificence. Pylaemenes, son of the last Galatian king, Amyntas, provided the site where horse racing and a panegyris took place, and where the Sebasteion itself was built, while two of his successors were credited with paying for imperial statues at Ancyra and Pessinus respectively.213 In the precisely comparable case of Britain, Tacitus tells us that the high priests of the temple of the deified Claudius at Camulodunum were forced to pour out all their wealth to maintain the cult, one of the main causes of grievance that led to the uprising of Boudicca.214 Once again it seems prudent to assume that Julio- Claudian building in the newly founded Galatian cities was subvented by a combination of imperial pump-priming and local efforts, forced or spontaneous.

Here as elsewhere the picture of imperial building that emerges is a blurred and indistinct one. A subject that at first sight might seem easy to investigate, a simple matter of emperors paying for the erection of public buildings, following a well-ordered and predictable pattern of aristocratic liberality, turns out to be far more involved. The model by which we should interpret imperial generosity must be a complex one, corresponding to the complicated role that the emperor played in the life of his subjects. At a simple level, the military and administrative requirements of governing the empire, and the structures and

parisons with Ancyra and Antioch have been discussed by Waelkens in Epigraphica Ana- tolica 7 (1986) 37-73; see also S. Mitchell, "Galatia under Tiberius," Chiron 16 (1986) 17-33. 212 See above, 348 f. and n. 156. Malalas, Chron. 221.18 f. implies that Augustus was

directly involved in construction at Ancyra, but the passage is too confused to be accepted as reliable evidence.

213 This inscription is most conveniently accessible in Bosch, Ankara no. 51, but there is a more accurate and reliable text in M. Krencker and M. Schede, Der Tempel in Ankara (Berlin 1936) 52 ff.

214 Ann. 14.31.




institutions to which it gave rise, led to building programs which inevit- ably encroached upon the world of the subject cities. These might contribute labor or finance for military undertakings, or in return might benefit from military expertise and manpower for strictly civic constructions. Aside from this, the patterns of imperial patronage of such construction programs were dictated by other aspects of the emperor's position in the Roman world. His ownership of important sources of raw materials, especially marble quarries, gave him obvious opportunities for direct and practical support of building projects; his de facto control of revenue raising made it possible for him to subsidize construction simply by offering tax exemption to communities; and of course his wealth opened up the prospect of intervention and patronage on a scale that was beyond even the richest private individual.

The dynamics and shape of imperial administration, according to which the emperor usually adopted a passive role of responding to requests and petitions, had a crucial effect on the nature of imperial building in the provinces, in particular in the matter of answering appeals for financial aid after natural disasters. On the other hand ties of religious and cultural sentiment, or devotion to a particular place, lay behind acts of spontaneous generosity, which must still explain a siz- able minority of cases where emperors paid for construction in eastern cities. Whatever the origin of imperial interest in a place, both the practical utility and the dignity and splendor of a project could serve as strong arguments that it be supported.

We perhaps know least about an area of imperial building which may have been more important than any other, the actual contributions made to the newly founded or refounded cities which sprinkle the map of the eastern Roman empire. The little available evidence suggests that money might have been provided from central funds for this purpose, but this by no means need always have been the case. In any event here, as with other major imperial grants to cities after natural disasters, private or civic contributions also had a large role to play. The absence of evidence makes it hard to argue that the emperors, through cash contributions for city foundation or civic building, were enacting a conscious and deliberate policy to regenerate and transform regions economically, although that may have been a frequent and predictable result of their actions.

This study has viewed imperial building as a whole, without taking account of changes between one period and another, or between one emperor and his successor. Some patterns have nonetheless emerged. It is hardly surprising that Augustus and Hadrian appear to have been




more active in this field than any other emperors; that accords with their reputation, derived from ancient accounts of their principates. Tiberius' parsimony in provincial matters is also confirmed by the extreme meagerness of epigraphic or other reports of his building activity. But one point above all needs to be underlined. In the roster of emperors from Augustus to Constantine, the names of Commodus and his successors up to the time of the Tetrarchy have hardly figured at all. From the last quarter of the second until the end of the third century, emperors made only minimal impact as patrons of civic building in the eastern cities. The point was clearly seen by MacMullen in his earlier study, and explored in detail against the shifting background of the change from the high to the late empire: the militarization of the Roman world, as it geared itself increasingly for war, not peace; a change from voluntary to forced labor; a shift in the nature of military building and military communities, which came increasingly to resem- ble their civilian counterparts. These themes need not be treated again here, but one should be given its full emphasis, namely, the increasing cost to the state budget of these developments. The cash needed to pay and maintain armies, extracted from an increasingly restive civilian population, left little scope for the luxury of imperial patronage of civilian building projects. The decline of imperial building in the provinces, noticeable with the death of Hadrian, and leading to an almost total cessation after Marcus Aurelius, may in fact be one of the clearest indicators of the transformation of the empire, which was in progress even before the beginning of the third century.

Military administration, taxation, imperial ownership of raw materials and land, the administrative pattern of provincial petition and imperial response, the foundation of cities, to say nothing of the decline of the empire itself, are some of the dominant themes of imperial history. Together they helped to create the kaleidoscopic pattern of rela- tionships which bound the emperor to his subjects. Imperial building has to be considered in relation to all of them. It is scarcely a matter for surprise, therefore, that the motives, modes, and results of the emperors' activities as builders should appear so diverse and various.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SWANSEA



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