BMCR 2009.07.05: Eckstein on Lafond, La memoire des cites dans la Peloponnese d'epoque romaine (IIe siecle av. J-C-IIIe siecle apres J.-C.). Collection Histoire

Yves Lafond, La me/moire des cite/s dans la Pe/loponne\se d'e/poque
romaine (IIe sie\cle av. J-C-IIIe sie\cle apre\s J.-C.). Collection
Histoire.  Rennes:  Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006.  Pp. 385.
ISBN 978-2-7535-0304-5.  EUR 22.00.

Reviewed by Arthur Eckstein, University of Maryland ([email protected])
Word count:  3079 words
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The question of the decline or perseverance of the polis in the
Hellenistic and Roman periods has become a perennial issue in ancient
studies. In the age of very large hegemonic units (the Hellenistic
monarchies, followed by the Roman Empire) individual city-states lost
their military importance, as well as a most important aspect of their
autonomy, namely, control over their foreign relations. The latter
development was even more true under the Romans than previously under
the competing Hellenistic kings. But a question remains regarding the
extent to which a vibrant internal political and intellectual life
continued in Greek city-states even under Roman domination, and what
the self-concept of these cities was--i.e., how strong was the
self-concept of their citizenry and their leaders as part of a living
community. Lafond tackles one part of this problem in this new book.

In an epoch in which cities could not be envisaged except as integrated
into a larger empire, Lafond offers reflections on the society and
culture of the Greek city of the Peloponnese and its self-image. Lafond
seeks to depict, via an investigation of the discourses and practices
of which we have (limited) evidence, the consciousness which civic
communities could have of themselves and to depict a consciousness of
the civic (and moral) values which they, or rather their elites, sought
to promote in public. In terms of literary texts, the study is based on
Pausanias (on whose work Lafond has written a scholarly commentary),
plus local rhetoric from orators such as Dio of Prusa. The other pillar
of the study is epigraphical; numerous inscriptions are available from
the Peloponnese into the late first century A.D., although from the
early second century the inscriptions that Lafond chooses to focus on
are limited to the Argolid and Laconia (it is interesting that we learn
in passing that the Achaean League continued to exist into the second
century A.D., complete with an annually-elected strategos). The period
covered in the study is from the beginning of Roman hegemony into the
third century A.D. Lafond's approach allows an author such as Pausanias
to be employed both as a witness to contemporary practices and as our
interpreter for those aristocrats who, in the cities, appeared as the
repositories of collective memory.

Notions of memory certainly helped to shape a still-vibrant identity
among the cities studied by Lafond. An excellent example is the
occasional struggle over boundaries between neighboring poleis. Thus,
in a dispute of very long-standing between Sparta and Messene over the
frontier region of Dentheliatis (the area of modern Kalamata), the
region was given to Sparta under the Triumvirate, but Antony gave the
region back to Messene, while (perhaps in a natural reaction) Octavian
returned it to Sparta after Actium, but then the Roman Senate in A.D.
25 under Tiberius returned the region (definitively) to Messene (pp.
144-145). The dispute, and the embassies to the Romans it evoked, is a
testimony to the continuing vigor of polis identity; the arguments of
the embassies must have been based on (versions of) local history, and
of course the dispute involved the working out of an enmity between the
Lakonians and Messenians which all involved knew stretched back
hundreds of years, and included the famous Spartan enslavement of the
Messenians in the Archaic and Classical periods. In an earlier age,
(say, the mid-third century B.C.) there might well have been a
full-scale war over the Dentheliatis, but now the dispute was handled
via embassies of complaint to the Romans, and in that sense the dispute
demonstrates not only the vigor of the polis but also the efficacy of
the pax Romana at work. Another example of both these phenomena: the
rivalry between Athens and Sparta, which had riven the Classical age,
continued to find expression under Roman rule, but was in part reduced
now to regular contests in oratory at Plataea over their respective
achievements against the Persians in the fifth century (p. 191).

Identity and memory also helped during this period to define the
relationship of cities to the phenomenon of the euergetism exercised by
their powerful local elites. These notions, evident or implied on
surviving inscriptions, allow us to analyze how the collective memory
of poleis in the Roman period constructed itself via official and
private elogia of the euergetist local aristocracies. These wealthy
families were now completely preponderant in the political and social
life of the cities, their influence everywhere, replacing strongly
democratic structures even in the places where those structures had
previously existed. But the elite needed legitimacy and (even) popular
support: they gained it through benefactions, and ensured that the
memory of those benefactions endured in the public space.

The many inscriptions which praise euergetism are prominently concerned
with aristocratic support of traditional religious institutions and
practices; equally prominent is the financial support of traditional
educational institutions (pp. 67-68). Given the political conditions of
Roman domination, which restricted foreign relations, it is noteworthy
that praise of the benefactor as a "hero", which (as before) continues
to occur in these inscriptions, has taken on a new meaning. There is a
striking slippage of vocabulary, a transformation of the "heroic" from
the staunch military defense of the polis and its interests--still to
be seen in late second century B.C. inscriptions--into"heroic" support
of cultural life.[[1]]

Lafond concludes, and this is hardly controversial, that the widespread
praise lavished on aristocratic benefactors, praise for their
"greatness of soul", their "generosity", their "love of humanity", even
their philoponia, far from being mere cliche/s, reflects the real civic
ideology of the aristocracy itself. These are sincere and self-defining
gestures of identity, and probably are a reflection as well of broader
public opinion (and memory) in the cities about euergetist aristocrats
(pp. 72-73). Meanwhile the link of the local aristocrats to the ruling
power is shown by the fact that almost all the men and women praised as
benefactors of the city in Lafond's inscriptions are Roman citizens.
Hence the evocatively-named C. Julius Demosthenes, a benefactor of the
little town of Oinoanda, or T. Julius Agesilaus at Sparta.

Yet there are striking omissions in the book. The historical memory on
which Lafond concentrates is either to be found in the mythological
past--e.g., the legends of the Heraclidae, or the mythological
genealogies of the local aristocratic families--or in the very recent
past (the benefactions bestowed on the polis by members of the local
elite). But Greek cities even in the Roman period spent considerable
funds on large processions celebrating their power and their famous
victories of the Classical era, and discussion of this is mostly
missing from Lafond. In the age of Plutarch (ca. 110 A.D.), for
instance, the Athenians still annually celebrated the anniversaries of
the victories at Marathon (490 B.C.), Salamis (480), Plataea (479),
Mantineia (418) and Naxos (376) with large ceremonial processions and
sacrifices (Plut. Mor. 349F); clearly these were important moments of
public memory and collective identity. Plataea itself celebrated the
anniversary of the great victory of 479 over the Persians every year
for at least 600 years (Plut.Arist. 21.3-5). To be sure, these are
celebrations of history in poleis outside Lafond's Peloponnese, but
they establish a general cultural framework in which we know the
Peloponnesian poleis themselves partook. Thus the marble stele and the
inscribed golden shield which the Spartans erected at Olympia to
celebrate their victory over the Athenians at Tanagra in 457 B.C. was
still visible at Olympia 600 years later; Pausanias tells us (5.10.4)
that the golden shield stood in the great temple of Zeus Olympios,
along with the accompanying stele. This surely must have evoked pride
in Spartan visitors to the shrine (one wonders what visiting Athenians
thought), but Lafond does not mention it. The only exception to the
absence of the great events of the fifth century B.C. from the book is
Lafond's interesting discussion of the cult-celebration of Leonidas
(the hero of Thermopylae) at Sparta in the second century A.D.; and
here Lafond makes the good point that the annual ceremonies honoring
Leonidas were not merely the province of the Spartan elite, but
involved--as inscriptions show--the enthusiastic participation of
ordinary people, the demos (p. 192). This surely was true of the
commemorations at Athens and Plataea as well.

Similarly, regarding the dramatic historical events of the Hellenistic
period, and turning to Argos (a city of great interest to Lafond), we
know from Pausanias again that the shield of King Pyrrhus of Epirus,
taken off his dead body following the failed Epirote attempt to seize
the city in 272 B.C., was still on display in the Argive shrine of
Demeter in Pausanias' time 400 years later (2.21.4). One cannot imagine
a better site to evoke civic memory and pride than this--yet it is
unmentioned by Lafond. Similar are the commemorations of Hellenistic
victories at Megalopolis in Arcadia: there, in the center of the city,
were four bronze statues and a marble altar in honor of the Achaean
general Philopoemen (a native of Megalopolis) for his great victories
of the 180's B.C., victories which engineered the conquest of the
entire Peloponnese for the Achaean League (Syll. 624). The historian
Polybius of Megalopolis strove successfully to prevent the Romans from
taking these statues away to Italy after the Achaean defeat of 146
(Polyb. 39.3), an action which reveals their political importance. The
statues remained in Megalopolis and elsewhere with (Polybius claims)
the deep support of the populace (39.3.1). In Pausanias' time a copy of
the Philopoemen statue, with its accompanying historical explanaton of
his great deeds, was still set up at nearby Tegea (8. 49.1 and 52.6);
there was a statue of Philopoemen at Corinth as well, and a famous
statue at Delphi, and Plutarch of course wrote an entire biography of
the general. Yet Philopoemen does not even appear in Lafond's index.
Similarly, in a world where in the second century A.D. the Achaean
League still existed and held annual elections, the statues of Aratus
(fl. 230 B.C.)--the true founder of the League-- preserved for his home
city of Sicyon by Polybius in 146 (39.3.10) must have helped foster a
proud civic identity among the Sicyonians; but neither Aratus nor
Sicyon are mentioned by Lafond.

In the Roman imperial period, probably the most politically
controversial arena of memory would have been that stretching from the
late third to the late first century B.C., the period when the Greek
states came under Roman domination in the first place and then were
ravaged in the course of Roman civil wars. Pausanias, on whom Lafond is
an expert, would have been a good source on the memories here:
Pausanias provides much information on the monuments he saw in the
central Peloponnese erected to the historian Polybius himself,
monuments still preserved in Pausanias' own day, which proclaimed that
Polybius' intervention with the Romans had saved Achaea (8.30.8-9,
37.2, 48.8). Still extant is a famous statue and inscription honoring
Polybius from Elis (Inscr. Olymp. 302). Yet Polybius was a
controversial figure in his time, with many political enemies in
Achaea; he accused some of his enemies of scandalous collaboration with
and sycophancy towards the Romans, while he in turn is sometimes viewed
by modern scholars as a collaborator and comprador intellectual.[[2]]
Yet Lafond has nothing to say about the monuments to Polybius at
Megalopolis and other cities in the Peloponnese--nothing to say about
Polybius at all--though surely these monuments were important sites of
memory, all the more important because of their overt political biases.
The only Polybius in the book is the historian's evident descendant the
Roman citizen T. Flavius Polybius of Megalopolis (and this intriguing
magnate only appears as one name in a list of names, with no discussion
of the implications). Again, both Pausanias and Plutarch well
understood the catastrophe inflicted upon the Greeks by the Roman civil
wars of the first century B.C.: Pausanias recounts Sulla's exactions in
European Greece in the 80s. (9.7.6), while Plutarch records the bitter
memories of his great-grandfather (Ant. 62 and 68) concerning the
enormous and economically disastrous requisitions demanded in Greece by
Antony to support his armed forces during the War of Actium.[[3]]
Clearly there was a vivid memory of those dramatic times even in the
second century A.D.; the collapse of Antony was, for instance, a major
event in the history of the polis of Anticyra in Phocis and saved it
from starvation (Plut. Ant. 68). But there is little mention of such
material here.

Then there was the physical presence of Romans in a city, which is
found reflected as a political memory in official Peloponnesian
inscriptions celebrating the civic virtues and benefactions of these
Romans. But aside from the Roman colonia at Corinth (see below), the
actual references to Romans living in the Peloponnese even in the first
and second centuries A.D. are not very numerous. Lafond shows that
there were, however, rich Romans living especially in Elis and Messene
in the western Peloponnese, assimilated into the local elite and
engaged in traditional euergetism--the support of (Greek) religious
cult and (Greek) education. In addition, inscriptions officially
memorialized the benefactions of special Roman officials, true
outsiders, who intervened temporarily in the political life of a city
for (allegedly) its own good. These were usually imperial financial
administrators (curator; epimelete^s), whose purpose was to get the
town accounts in good order; but occasionally, as after the disruptions
caused by the civil wars of 68/69 A.D., they appear as general
political overseers (corrector; epanorthote^s). Further,--and this is
not surprising--we have inscriptions memorializing the benefactions of
the Roman proconsular governors of the province of Achaea (as southern
Greece came to be termed after 27 B.C.); but these men are distant
figures. One striking element that inscriptions which commemorate the
benefactions of the governors do reveal is that at least two of these
Roman governors were in fact Greeks: Tib. Claudius Frontinus Niceratos,
and C. Julius Eurycles (pp. 129-130). Beyond the memorializing of this
level of government, there are also numerous inscriptions recording the
subvention of the imperial cult, or of festivals denominated the
Kaisareia or the Rhomaia (pp. 296-315). Yet festivals specifically
honoring Rome often became merged with traditional ones, such as the
Sebasteia at Argos, which came to be celebrated conjointly with the
traditional Nemea.  It is possible to see in other cases an enduring
(or resurgent) Hellenism. Sometimes a Roman religious connection was
intentionally forged with strong local traditions right from the
beginning. Thus there was no separate Rhomaia or Sebasteia at
Megalopolis, but the traditional festival honoring Zeus Lykaios and
celebrated annually on the summit of the great mountain that overlooks
the city became the Lykaia Kaisareia under Augustus--and so it remained
for the next two centuries. Though the festival eventually came down
from the mountain and was celebrated in the agora of the city, those
local aristocrats who provided funds for the Lykaia Kaisareia (wherever
it was held) were acknowledging not merely Zeus Lykaios but a
connection to the emperor--and they were being careful to memorialize
their political and financial support of the connection.

There is much of value in this book, and much evidence of deep learning
and research. Few scholars know more about the Peloponnese in the
Imperial period than Lafond. Hence besides the discussion of the
memorials to actual Romans in the Peloponnese, there is an interesting
discussion of how the communities of Corinth and Patras, which became
Roman coloniae under Caesar and Augustus respectively, gradually came
to acknowledge or even emphasize their Greek pasts. Patras was always
actually ethnically Greek, whatever its legal status; but the new
Colonia Laus Iulia Corinthiensis established in 44 B.C., was settled by
thousands of Romans and Italians, demobilized Caesarian veterans. Yet
even at Corinth we find over time an increasing re-Hellenization of the
city. A useful example of the process is the increasing primacy at
"Roman" Corinth given to the cult of the Greek hero Palaimon (the Boy
on the Dolphin); hence the dedicatory inscription for the refurbished
cult site of Palaimon by P. Licinius Priscus Iuventianus, ca. 150 A.D.,
an action supporting the local cult worship of a Greek hero taken by a
man with a Roman name, a stalwart benefactor of the city--but the
inscription commemorating it is in Greek (IG IV 203: pp. 290-291). As
for Patras, where the colonia was established after Actium by the
synoecism of several small Greek towns, in Pausanias' description of
the cult of Artemis Laphria in the city we have not memory but rather
its suppression: for Pausanias either does not know or does not care
about what an earlier Latin inscription from the city reveals, that the
cult of Artemis Laphria at Patras was linked with the cult of Augustus
himself (CIL III 510: p. 295). By Pausanias' time, this connection had
evidently become so minor as to disappear. Again, there is an
interesting discussion of how the emphasis on civic virtues such as
generosity and traditional piety among the local elites in the imperial
age, as opposed to the military and soldierly virtues we find
memorialized in earlier periods, led to the appearance and the honoring
(and hence to the public memory) of more and more female aristocrats on
inscriptions. The numerous aristocratic women honored on inscriptions
constitutes a sharp change even from the late Hellenistic period (pp.
249-253).

All to the good--yet one still wishes that Lafond had tackled some of
the more dramatic memories that existed in the Peloponnese in the first
and second centuries A.D. However powerful the local euergistic elite
was in, say, Megalopolis, however much it strove to preserve the memory
of its recent benefactions, and however much it funded the Lykaia
Kaisareia and hence indirectly supported the connection to Rome (see
above), the annual ceremonies honoring the glorious memory of the
conquering general Philopoemen (or the statues and inscriptions
honoring the saving benefactions of the historian Polybius) must have
been very significant in terms of preserving the local civic identity
of the city--an identity different from the connection to Rome. One
imagines the same was true with the Shield of Pyrrhus, memorializing
the military victory of 272 B.C. which saved Argos from Epirote (and
royal) domination, and which was lovingly preserved at Argos.
Discussion of these more obvious aspects of civic identity would have
rounded out Lafond's study. Finally, the book is written in a turgid
and (one must say) "deconstructionist" French, and its always
convoluted sentences can run a paragraph long. This is unnecessary and
detracts from the study; Lafond needed a better editor for this
interesting book.


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Notes:


1.   See B. Dreyer and H. Engelmann, Die Inschriften von Metropolis I:
Die Dekrete fuer Apollonios: Staedtische Politik under den Attaliden
und im Konflikt zwischen Aristonikos und Rom (IGSK 63:1) (Bonn, 2003).

2.   For discussion of the conflict, see A. M. Eckstein, Moral Vision
in the Histories of Polybius (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995), Chapter
VII.

3.   See the important observations of F. Millar, "The Mediterranean
and the Roman Revolution: Politics, War, and the Economy," in H. M.
Cotton and G. M. Rogers, eds., Rome, the Greek World and the East, vol.
1: The Roman Republic and the Roman Revolution, by F. Millar (Chapel
Hill, 2002), pp. 232-237.