Mitchell Imperiasl Building in Eastern Roman Provinces

Department of the Classics, Harvard University
Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces Author(s): Stephen Mitchell Reviewed work(s): Source: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 91 (1987), pp. 333-365 Published by: Department of the Classics, Harvard University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/311413 . Accessed: 03/12/2012 03:05
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IMPERIALBUILDINGIN THE EASTERN ROMAN PROVINCES

MITCHELL STEPHEN
S I contemplatethe greatnessof your fortuneand 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 Trajaninviting him to supporta scheme to build a canal linking Lake Sapanca, in the territoryof Nicomedia, with the Sea of Marmara. He concluded by remarkingthat where the kings of Bithynia had failed, the emperor should succeed: "I am fired with enthusiasmby this very point, that what the kings had only begun, should be broughtto a successful 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
Particularacknowledgement is due to two earlier studies, which will be cited by short titles: MacMullen = Ramsay MacMullen, "Roman Imperial Building in the Provinces," HSCP 64 (1959) 207-235; Millar, ERW= Fergus Millar, The Emperorin the Roman World(London 1977). Withoutthe conceptualframeworkprovidedby this book it is difficult to imagine that the questions posed by this study could be answeredat all. There is a brief survey of the ideological implicationsof imperialbuilding in H. Kloft's Liberalitas Principis. Herkunft und Bedeutung. Studien zur Prinzipatsideologie and detailed discussion of Augustus' building (Cologne 1970) 115-120, and an important 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 emperortook responsibilityand those that were simply erectedduringhis principate. I Pliny Ep. 10.41.1 and 5. Trajan'sname would evidently have been linked with the finished product,as it was with the harborwhich Pliny saw under constructionat Centumcellae,Ep. 6.31.15 f. 2 See Vitr. 1.pr.2:cum vero adtenderemte non solum de vita communiomniumcuram publicaeque rei constitutionem habere, sed etiam de opportunitate publicorum aedificiorum,ut civitas per te non solum provinciis esset aucta, verumetiam ut maiestas imperii publicorumaedificiorumegregias 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 firmamentAnu, and for Ishtar the goddess of love.
" A
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stands at the center of the traditionsof munificenceand liberalitythat shaped aristocraticbehavior in the Graeco-Romanworld.3 Witness a single inscription, picked at random from hundreds, set up by the Actors' Guild at Smyrnafor a certain MarcusAureliusIulianus, twice and temple wardenof the emperors,and priest Asiarch, stephanephorus 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 favorabledispositiontowardstheir 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 providedgymnasia, for Byblus a wall, for Berytusand Tyre baths, colonnades, temples and marketplaces, 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 burntdown he rebuiltit with new splendorout of his own purse. What need be said of his gifts to Lycia or Samos, or of his liberality to the whole of Ionia, sufficientfor the needs of every locality? Even Athens and Sparta,Nicopolis and Mysian Pergamumare full of Herod's offerings, are they not? And the wide street in Syrian Antioch, once avoided because of the mud, did he not pave two and a quartermiles 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;betterstill the permanenceof a building might bring (xaivia `t61gvirYt;. Buildings were an everlastingreminderto 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 brillianceof copper; and the inner wall, it has no equal" (trans. N. Sandars,The Epic of Gilgamesh [Penguin]). 278-279. 3 P. Veyne, Le pain et le cirque (Paris 1976) passim, but in particular 4 IGR 4.1133; cf. the advice of Apollonius of Tyana,addressedprecisely to the people of Smyrna:"There is a kind of mutualcompetition for the common good, in which one man seeks to give betteradvice than another,or to hold office betterthan another,or go on an embassy, or erect finer buildings than when anotherman was commissioner;and this, I think, is beneficial strife, faction between citizens for the public good." (Philostr. VA4.8, translation by C. P. Jones.) 5 JosephusBJ 1.422 ff., translation by.G. A. Williamson. 6 C. Roueche,JRS 74 (1984) 192 no. 8; Aphrodisias,? early 6th cent. A.D.
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public buildings was a central partof 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,7throughhis successors,8 to Constantine, whose own capital matched Rome in magnificence,and beyond into the Byzantineage. Some of the greatest builderstook more than a passing interestin the activity itself. Hadrian is said to have tried his hand as an architectin person,9and an attractive conjecturesuggests that the most conspicuous Roman builderapart 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, 0 where he had been responsiblefor a veterancolony in 14 B.C. The most conspicuous examples of Imperial building activity are naturallyto be found at Rome itself. It is now clear that there was a specialized architecturaland constructionteam, a "Bauhiitte," working directly under imperial patronage,to produce the grandiose public works of the Flavio-Trajanicera, culminating in Hadrian's plans to restore and refurbishthe glories of the Augustancity."1 Imperialbuilding in Rome was an aspect, and an importantone, 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 scatteredand less simple to interpret. For imperialconstructionprojects are one of the complex of strandswhich
7 Suet. Aug. 28-29: ch. 29 and the Res Gestae 19-21 oblige with a detailedcatalogue of his constructions. 8 Suet. lul. 44; Aug. 28-29; Calig. 19.1-3 and 21 (but see the contrary, critical remarksof 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 MediterraneanWorld (Oxford 1982) 84-85. 11See 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).
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linked the rulers with their provincial subjects, and it is in this wider and differentcontext thatthey take on their significance.
MILITARY AND CIVILIAN BUILDING
It is convenient and conventional to distinguishbetween two types of imperial construction outside Rome. On the one hand there was buildingconcernedwith the administration, security,and defense of the in which some sense to reflect a centrally be Empire, may thought 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 The distinction stands alongside and complementslocal munificence.13 is worth maintaining,and this article is principallyconcerned 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 primarymilitary installationswere built as a result of the decisions of emperorsor their legates and reflected a central policy, although we know remarkablylittle about the financingof such projects, and the cost was certainly in some cases sustained by The major highways of the Empire were another local communities.14 but were largely built at local requirement, militaryand administrative expense,15or, to make the point more realistically, with compulsory
13Cf. L. Robert,Etudesanatoliennes(Paris 1938) 89 n. 2. 14 Cf., for instance, the use of civilian labor in the reconstruction of Hadrian'sWall
(RomanInscriptionsof Britain nos. 1672, 1673, 1843, 1962, 2022). See also MacMullen 220-221 with notes. zur rbmischenReichsstrassen(Bonn 1968) remainsby 15T. Pekary, Untersuchungen far the best treatmentof the question, although he hardly raises the issue of local labor, ratherthan 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 Maeanderwhere the people of Amyzon were responsiblefor road building. They cite earlierobservationsof L. Roberton road building inscriptions with a similar sense at Trajanoupolisin Thrace (Hellenica 1 [1940] 90-92), and in Macedonia (Opera Minora Selecta [Amsterdam1969] 1.298-300), and make the importantsuggestion that the organizationof responsibilities within a given region might be made in accordancewith the conventusdivisions of the province. Their concluding remarksare worth quoting in full: "Certes le pouvoir central se pr6occupait des grandes routes.... Le plan d'ensemble et les directives 6manaient de Rome, empereurou gouverneur. Mais l'on voit ici que la province d'Asie avait la responsibilit6 les taches." et c'est elle qui devait repartir
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local labor.16I take it that the substantialminority of road building by an army inscriptionswhich specify that constructionwas undertaken unit or units representexceptions to the general rule that civilian labor was normallyused.17 Inscriptionsfrequentlyshow that the emperortook responsibilityfor setting up fortified relay posts along these roads for the provision and accommodationof official travellers:Nero for tabernae et praetoria on the militaryroads of Thrace,18 Trajanand his legate for a taberna cum Hadrian,like Augustus porticibus on the via Sebaste in South Galatia,19 before him, for wells, fortlets, and staging posts on the desert road between the Nile and Coptos on the Red Sea,20and Marcus Aurelius We may note, however, that the task of for stabula, again in Thrace.21 puttingup buildings to house soldiers and officials on the move through the provinces, like all the other burdenswhich this entailed,22 could be undertakenat a local level, as, for instance, by a prominentcouple in the city of Arneai in Lycia who sometime between A.D. 112 and 117, perhaps in connection with the troop movements of Trajan'sParthian campaign, converted a gymnasium into a naop6otov,a rest house or mansio for official purposes.23 The labor of army personnel was naturallyused for large-scale provincial constructionwork 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 thecentral authorities or localcommunities actually paidcashto buildroads at anything liketheattested costsof road in very repair, theywouldhavebeenbankrupted shortorder.I hopeto discussthepointin moredetailin a book,currently in preparation, on thehistory of central Anatolia between andByzantine Hellenistic times. 17For suchunitsmentioned on milestones, see mostrecently T. Drew-Bear andW.
Eck, Chiron 6 (1976) 294-296. 18CIL 3.6123; Dessau, ILS 231. 19S. Mitchell,AS 28 (1978) 93-98; AE 1979, 620. 20IGR 2.1142, A.D.137; cf. Dessau, ILS 2453 for an Augustanprecedent. 21AE 1961, 318. 22 See the sketch in S. Mitchell, ed., Armies and Frontiers in Roman and Byzantine Anatolia (Oxford 1983) 131-150.
23IGR3.639. 24See the references collected 231 n. 73; cf. Dessau,ILS9370 and,a by MacMullen
recently published example, D. van Berchem, Rh. Mus. 40 (1983) 185-196: the vexilla-
tionsof fourlegionsandanauxiliary unitcombining to dig a canalnearSyrian Antioch in

A.D.75.
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only irrigation for the Nile and the drainage of marshy areas, but bridges, temples, porticos, and basilicas.25A list compiled from scattered epigraphic evidence to show military participationin 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 thatthey 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 When Ulpian defines the inspection of public buildings as unusual.27 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.28Trajan's resistance to Pliny's demands cracked when he was presented with the canal scheme, which was to be broughtto fruitionby a combinationof military expertise, namely a librator or architectus from the province of This was surely standard Moesia Inferior,and local labor.29 practice. A in the similar situationis envisaged recently published imperial letters in to from Coroneia Boeotia, relating the drainingand canalizationof Lake Copais. The emperor Hadrian instructed a team of military experts and engineers to supervise the project,and provided65,000 HS in funds, after receiving estimates of the cost of the work; the actual organizationand provision of the labor was to be carried out by the city.30The interventionof a militaryexpert 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 througha local mountainat the Numidiancity of Saldae. Not unexpectedly he brought in soldiers to rectify the mess, and the
26MacMullen214 ff., especially 216 and the table opposite 219. 27Ep. 10.17b, 39, 41, 61. 28Dig. 50.16.7.1. 29Ep. 10.41: hoc opus multasmanusposcit. At eae porro non desunt. Nam et in agris magna copia est hominum et maxima in civitate. Certaque spes omnes libentissime adgressuros opus omnibusfructuosum. But if they proved unwilling, surely a corvie would have been imposed, as for roadconstruction. 30 These documents, apparentlyfirst discovered in 1919, rediscovered in 1970, were finally publishedin 1982: J. M. Fossey, Euphrosyne11 (1982) 44-59. The relevantletter here is no. 7 on pages 48-49 (SEG 32.460). See also the observationsof L. Robert, Et. anat. 85; J. M. Fossey, ANRW2.7.1 (1979) 568 ff.
25 HA Probus 9.
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remedial excavation was carried out by competing teams of marines But soldiers were also used to take charge of and irregularauxiliaries.31 much more conventionalconstructions,like thefrumentariusof legio I Italica, stationedat Novae in Moesia Superior,who was given citizenship at Delphi in recognitionof his scrupuloussupervisionof the buildings erected thereby the emperorHadrian.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 purposewas precisely the securityand defence of the Empire,as was true, in general, with the constructionof city walls. In many cases it is clear that an emperortook direct responsibilityfor the fortification of provincial cities. Augustus is said to have providedwalls and gates for Nemausus33and Vienna34in Gallia Narbonensis, and a wall and towers for lader in Dalmatia,35all Roman colonies, although it is interestingto note that the last were restoredby a local inhabitantat a later date. In the eastern provinces there is no clear-cut evidence from the colonies. The circuit at Pisidian Antioch, however, constructedin a Roman ratherthan a Hellenistic building traditionfrom great blocks of ashlar with a mortaredrubblecore, dates to the first years of the surely? colony, an Augustan foundation, and can presumably be seen as an It is possible also that the unspecified opera imperial responsibility.36 carried out at the colony of Alexandreia Troas, iussu Augusti, by an auxiliaryunit, the cohors Apula, were also fortifications.37 Even when the emperor appearsto have been principallyresponsible 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
31CIL8.2728;Dessau, ILS5793;translated 215-216. by MacMullen 32L. Robert, Et.anat.88-89. 34E. Esperandieu, latines de la Gaule(place1929)no. 263. Inscriptions ILS5336;cf. CIL3.3117fromArca. 35CIL3.2907;Dessau, 36 See S. Mitchell andM. Waelkens, Pisidian theSiteandits Monuments, in Antioch, preparation. 37AE 1973,501.
33CIL 12.3151.
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received new fortifications under Tiberius, who was hailed there as but a local citizen paid for a stretchof i;0to watvoi7tEpt4odXou; ri(ota the curtainand for roofing the wall walk.38When Rome supposedthat there was a serious Parthianthreatto 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 More direct imperialintervention from Rome or the Syriangovernor.39 was simply an alternativeto this, as when in A.D.75 Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian undertookthe reinforcementof the walls of Harmozica in the client kingdom of Iberia on behalf of the local ruler and his son.40 A few years later,duringthe reign of Domitian,towers, surrounding and a triple gate were erected at Laodicea on the Lycus, and features,41 towers and a gate at its neighbor Hierapolis. The Laodicean text suggests that the finance, at least, came from an Imperialfreedman,Ti. Cl. despite the Aug. lib. Tryphon,apparentlyacting in a privatecapacity,42 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 responsiblefor the constructionat Hierapolis.44It is impossible to decide whether the initiative in either case lay with the Roman authoritiesor with local people. As the first signs of strainbegan to show themselves in the northern frontiers of the Empire in the second century with the Marcomannic wars of Marcus Aurelius' reign, the emperors,throughthe agency of their legates, took steps to build fortificationsfor the cities of the Danubian and Balkan provinces-along the great highway at Serdica
38IGBulg. 1 (2).57. 39G. W. Bowersock, "Syria underVespasian," JRS 63 (1973) 133-140. But the Flavian date suggested therefor the walls of Palmyrahas been called into question;see J. F. Matthews,JRS 74 (1984) 161 n. 13. 40IGR 3.133; cf. CIL 3, ad no. 6032. 41Whateveris meantby the expressionrax lEpi touigrtapyoug. 42MAMA6.2; 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 freedmanof Nerva decoratingthe caldariumof the gymnasiumat Tralles with marble. It is probably of the quarries. no coincidence thathe was a procurator 43W. Eck, Senatorenion Vespasianbis Hadrian (Munich 1970) 81 n. 21. 44Eck, Senatoren 77 ff., restoringportam et tu[rresfaciundas 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;&v01tnXo;].
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between A.D. 176 and 180,45at Philippopolis a few years earlier,46 at Callatison the Black Sea,47at Apulumin Dacia,48and at Salona in DalAn imperialinitiative, the use of militaryresources,or both, is matia.49 unquestionablein all these cases. This activity presages the far more widespread wall building of the middle and later third century. The Life of Gallienus recordsthat the emperorplaced two of his own architects, Cleodamus and Athenaeausof Byzantium, in charge of building The fortificationsfor the cities of Histriaand the West Pontic regions.50 process is perhaps illustrated and paralleled by an inscription from Dera'a in northernArabia indicatingthat 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 the source of funds Miletus,53and Prusias ad Hypium,54 Dorylaeum,52 and the origin of the initiative are obscure. At Sardis the proconsulof Asia received the credit,55 as also happenedat Ephesus.56 At Ancyra an set for a local in about citizen acephalous inscription, apparently up commends him for restored the A.D.260, having destroyedgymnasium of Polyeidus and for having completed the whole wall circuit from its foundationin a time of food shortageand barbarian other texts raids;57
45IGBulg. 4.1902; SEG 26.829. 46 IGBulg. 3.2.878; Dessau, ILS 5337. 47 See D. Adamesteanu,PrincetonEncyclopediaof Classical Sites, s.v. Kallatis. 48 CIL 3.1171, built by legio XIII. 49CIL 3.1979, 6734 (Dessau, ILS 2616-2617), built coh. I and II mill. Dalmatarum; by 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 providedEK tol LXEacCo1. 58ope;xq 52D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton 1950) 2.1566-1568, gives a welldocumented summary of all the evidence. For Dorylaeum see A. KOrte,Gittingische gelehrte Anzeigen 159 (1897) 391 ff.; Cox and Cameron,MAMA5.xii-xiii. 53Th. Wiegand,Milet 2.3 (Berlin 1935) 81 ff., 126-127. 54 W. Ameling, EpigraphicaAnatolica 3 (1984) 21 n. 10; Die Inschriftenvon Prusias 17. 55IGR 4.1510; L. Robert,Hellenica 4 (1948) 35-47; J. Keil, JOAI36 (1948) 121-134; C. Foss, Byzantineand TurkishSardis (Cambridge,Mass. 1976) 3. 56 J. Keil, JOAI 30 (1937) Beibl. 204 no. 10; 36 (1946) 128-129. 57IGR 3.206; E. Bosch, Quellen zur Geschichteder StadtAnkaraim Altertum(Ankara 1967) no. 289; this is almost certainly the careerof a local citizen, since he had carried out the civic office of boulographia.
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of about the same period name both local magistratesand provincial governors in connection with wall construction,but leave the ultimate The confusion is worse at Nicaea. responsibilityfor them uncertain.58 An inscriptionon the West Gate states thatthe emperorClaudiusGothicus, whose names and titles are given in the nominativecase, gave the The equivalent city walls in the governorshipof Velleius Macrinus.59 on the South Gate the walls that were dedicated to inscription implies the emperor,the senate, and the Roman people by the city.6 Whereas the first inscriptiontaken alone unequivocallysuggests direct imperial responsibilityand involvement,the second does not. The picturethatemerges is confusing, perhapspredictablyso for the third century, a time when, with an empire in crisis, ad hoc and disparateresponses might be expected both locally and in the central administrationfar 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 Trajanabout any majorbuilding project which he encounteredin the province, and it appears later to have been standardpractice to seek imperialpermissionfor any public building in the cities.61A rescriptof MarcusAureliusquite specifically indicates that imperial authorityhad to be sought and obtained by the For all that, private or provincial governor for any city fortification.62 local civic involvement is attested from Tiberius' time to the late Empire, and the evidence taken as a whole suggests that cooperation between the imperialauthoritiesand the local communitywas probably the norm, making it hard to offer any clear-cut generalizationsabout who was ultimatelyresponsibleeitherfor the initiativesor for financing them.63
58 Bosch, Ankarano. 290 [iti to) Seivo;] Toi Xajtup. 'ilyiovo;, &p?aJt~voI) [To?&Ser KE dptep1oavzog prZpoIo6T[t] TO6Ei'Xo;,no. 291 eTti ToI z oauvlwlp60avTzo; Epyov T MtvIK(0ou) Q~4 pevzioTO zfi 6oXtyEyovEv, zo Xplo ~pTz6Tatov Xacnxp. T nos. 292I)nartoI) and 293 (composite text) irni roi Xa~xpor6atlou A'plk. Atovuoiou 'ApyaXEvou . Xp?a(XIvov oKEAioZTUnlpoavxog....
vo;]
59IGR 3.39; IIznikno. 11. 60 IGR 3.40; IIznikno. 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 rescripsitpraesidemaditumconsulereprincipemdebere. Cf. Dig. 50.8.9.4. 63In contrast,MacMullen225 n. 24 only notes rareinstancesof the centralgovernment and municipalitiesjointly contributingto opera publica. See furtherbelow, nn. 89 and 141 and pages 362-364.

RESPONSIBILITYAND FINANCE
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The inscriptionsfrom the walls of Nicaea raise an importantproblem of method. The bulk of our informationabout imperialbuilding in the cities of the easternpartof the Empirecomes 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 monumentaltext cut above the original south doorway of the Augustan marketbuilding 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 responsiblefor erecting the building, and perhapsespecially for paying for it. It is fortunate,then, that a furthertext 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.64The famous and much discussed letter of the proconsulVinicius 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 Agrippaas consuls in 28 B.C.that sacredpropertywhich had fallen into private hands should be restored to its proper sacral ownership. Vinicase which had arisen in Cyme, cius, applying the ruling to a particular ordered that when the building had been restored to the god and appropriate compensationoffered to the interimowner, 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 responsibilitywas simply enshrinedin the general ruling made by himself and Agrippa. Two centurieslaterthe city of Philadell asked Caraphia in Lydia, through its spokesman Aur,'l; Iulianus, calla for the privilege of being allowed to erect a neocory temple in his honor, naturallyat local expense.66The emperor'sfavorable reply was carved on a stone model of the temple, and the architravecarried the
text 'AvTovEivo;g ' iK1rE. 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 Inschriftenvon Kyme,no. 13;AE 1979, 596. 66IGR 4.1619; furtherbibliographyin S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power. The Roman ImperialCult in Asia Minor (Cambridge1984) 259.
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because he had grantedpermissionfor the city to hold an imperialneocorate. These examples spell out the need for caution in interpretingtexts whose meaning on the surface seems plain. As ever the formalitiesof public inscriptionsmay conceal as much as they reveal. That said, one cannot reasonablydeny that most building inscriptionswhich point to imperialresponsibilityought to imply some level of financialcommitment on the emperors'part. Whatform this took is anothermatteraltogether. As Ramsay MacMullen put it, "the only method not chosen was the sending out of so many bags of actual cash to Smyrna, to Carthageor to any other beneficiary. With this one exception every was made to see that funds or credit were possible kind of arrangement "67 transferred.' of hardcash, we cannot do Even if we rule out the simple transport the same for raw materials. The emperorsowned 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 and from the forests of Lebanon to help building work at Ptolemais,68 we can surely assume that Hadrian would have done the same after those forests, or ratherfour species of tree to be found there, became imperial property.69Bricks bearing the stamp of army or imperial manufacturehave been found in public buildings,especially aqueducts, More important,as of cities close to the Rhine and Danube frontiers.70 far as the eastern cities were concerned, were the emperors' marble quarries. At the request of the sophist Antonius Polemo, Hadrianhad 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 granitequarriesof Egypt, to help build the gymnasium.71 Pausanias notes that Hadrianhad also sent Athens 100
67 MacMullen210. Perhapsthe anecdote in PhilostratusVS531 (Keil) about Smyrna's receiving ten million drachmaein a single day suggests that even outright cash grants were possible (I owe the point to AndrewSherwood). 68Meiggs, Trees and Timber (above, n. 10) 85-87; cf. a letter of Antiochus III to Sardis, giving permission to cut timber for rebuildingthe city, R. Merkelbach,Epigraphica Anatolica 7 (1986) 74. 69 For the inscriptionsrelatingto Hadrian'sLebanese forests see J. F. Breton,Inscriptions grecques et latines de Syrie 8.3 (Paris 1980); cf. AE 1981, 847. 70MacMullen231 nn. 79-80. 71IGR 4.1431; Millar, ERW 184; cf. Pliny NH 36.102 for columns of Phrygianmarble sent to Rome to be used in the basilica of Aemilius Paullus. On this subject see further M. Waelkens,AJA89 (1985) 641-653 and J. C. Fant,ibid. 655-662.
in theEastern Roman Provinces Building Imperial
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columns of Phrygianmarble for the temple of Hera and Zeus Panhellenios and 100 from Numidia for the gymnasium.72The principal imperial quarriesin Phrygia, which were administeredfrom 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 produceda range of good quality stone, includingexcellent white marbleand the much prized polychromepavonazzetto. 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 that that splendidsancmarble,and it is at least a plausibleconjecture74 on the had also benefited from a constructed grandest scale, tuary, direct imperial contributiontowards the cost of construction. Paving stone for the city of Alexandriain Egypt also came from imperialquarries, administeredby militarypersonnel, althoughthere is no means of knowing whether it came as an outrightimperialgift.75From the later Empire the Life of the emperor Tacitus indicates that he provided an additional 100 columns of Numidianmarble to the city of Ostia,76and 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 Greatbefore 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 emperorto remit a city's dues to the various Roman treasuries, thereby releasing local resources for constructionprojects. Tiberius gave the twelve cities of Asia which had been devastated by the earthquakeof A.D. 17 five years' exemption from what they owed to the aerariumor the fiscus,78and he later sponsored a senatus consultumwhich gave a three-yearremissionof tribute to Cibyra in Asia and Aegeae in Achaea, which had suffered from furtherearthquakesin A.D.31.79The city of PhrygianApameareceived five years' remission undersimilarcircumstancesfrom Claudiusin A.D.
72Pausanias1.18.9; see below, 359.
73 Cf. M. Waelkens, "Carribresde marbreen Phrygie," Bulletin des Muskes Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire [Brussels] 53 (1982) 33-39. 74Made by Dr. Waelkens. 75IGR 1.1138, A.D.83; cf. MacMullen231 n. 77. 76HA Tac. 10.5. 77Malalas,Chron. 280.20 ff.; cf. Millar,ERW 184 nn. 65 and 68. 78Tac. Ann. 2.47. 79Tac. Ann. 4.13.1.
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53.80 Two-and-a-half centuries later the town of Augustodunum in Gaul sent pleas to Constantinefor help in repairingpublic places and temples, and was granteda reductionin taxes and a remission of those owed over the previous five years.88The 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 grantedin response to a petition from the beneficiary. It was surely easier and more politic to ask for a remissionof debts thanfor an outrightimperialgrant. Such grants were, nonetheless, common enough. Tiberius gave 10,000,000 HS in addition to tax relief to the twelve earthquakestricken 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.82The 65,000 HS that Hadrian gave for the Lake Copais drainage scheme but AntoninusPius gave representsa far smaller scale of generosity,83 in A.D.139/40, 250,000 denarii,or 1,000,000 HS to CarianStratonicaea once again to compensate for earthquakedamage.84Simple financial grantsprobablylie behind the many building inscriptionsfrom all parts of the empire recordingthatthe emperorpaid, 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 aqueductat AlexandriaTroas, told in detail by Philostratus,shows Herodes Atticus, imperial legate charged
not for 80Ann. 12.58; for Byzantiumreceiving the same privilege, althoughapparently of its buildings, see Ann. 12.62. the restoration 81Pan. Min. 7 (6) 22.4; cf. 8 (5) passim; Millar,ERW424-425. 82Philostr.VS 1.25.531K. 83See above, n. 30. 84CIG 2721; M. (?etin Sahin, Die Inschriften von Stratonikaia 2.1 no. 1029; cf. Pausanias8.43.4, with the commentsof L. Robert,BCH 102 (1978) 401-402. 85See Millar, ERW 192 n. 20, and W. Eck, BJb. 184 (1984) 102 n. 23 for examples including roads, bridges, temples, and civic public buildings, indifferentlystraddlingthe civilian/militarydivide. 86CIL 3.3255 = Dessau, ILS 703 (cf. Millar, ERW 189), Constantinebuilding baths at Reims, fisci sui sumptu; CIL 11.3309 (Forum Clodii, Trajanic), quod aqu[am ... Maius), the proconsulof im]pensafisci s [ui duxit]; Inscr. Lat. de Tunisie 699 (Thuburbo the capitoliumpublico sumptufisci; and perhapsEck, Africa of A.D.166/7 reconstructing BJb. 184 (1984) 97 f. no. 1, Commodus restoringthe praetoriumat Colonia Agrippina [sumpt]u f[is]ci (?). Eck cites and discusses the parallels.
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with correctingthe affairs of the free cities of Asia, asking Hadrianon the city's behalf for three million drachmae, twelve million HS, to ensure a reliable water supply, on the groundsthat he had alreadybestowed on mere villages many times that sum. It is difficult not to identify these "villages" with the communities of northwest Asia Minor promoted by Hadrian to civic status-Hadrianeia, Hadrianoi, Hadrianutherae, 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 expenditurereached seven million drachmae wrote to the emperor and the procuratorsin Asia (ofi FrxtportE1.ovrtEg) complaining that the tributeof 500 cities was being spent on the water supply of a single one of them. Hadrianexpressed his personal disapproval to his legate, who undertook that he and his son, the famous Herodes Atticus, would present the city with a sum equivalent to any expenditureover the original three million.87If the episode was accurately recorded, one must surely conclude that a part at least of the direct taxation,imperialrents, or other dues levied from the province of Asia was simply being diverted to the project.88The procuratorsin Asia would surely not have had the composureor even the opportunity to question the emperor's right to distributehis financial resources as he chose, unless the money in questiondirectlyconcernedthem and lay within their administration. There may be a parallel provided by two inscriptionsfrom Pataraand Cadyandain Lycia, which credit Vespasian with having built bath houses, the first from common funds of the province and the civic treasuryof Patarathat had been set aside for the the second by money thathad been saved by the emperorfor purpose,89 the city.90In both instances the emperorappearsto have been diverting funds normally destined for imperial revenues to local building projects. Conceivably Vespasian's attentionmight have been drawnto the
87Philostr.VS 2.1.548K. 88Millar, ERW 199 suggests that the referenceto the tributeof 500 cities might have been a mere rhetoricalturnof phrase,and need have no implicationsfor the actualorigin of the money. 89 IGR 3.659 (TAM 2.1.396): 'K T v K[otv6)v] toi ouv[t]r[p]rl0V'vrt( Xpwrl oy'tqwv F0vo; rlvov K(xy dun6 ofiSg fqlrxp ov nt6Xog.Cf. MacMullen210. 90IGR 3.507 (TAM2.1.651); cf. IGR 3.508 (TAM2.1.652): t6v iK &vaToOivTv XpIrlrf no6Xt.Cf. MacMullen 225 n. 24. Perhaps also compare IGR 3.729 (TAM p6urwov 2.1.270) from Limyra.
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two cities by the mysteriouscircumstancesin which he is said to have taken away liberty from Lycia at the beginning of his reign, thereby imposing direct taxationon 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
redefinedthe territoryof EphesianArtemisto the advantageof the temple revenues, but was quite preparedto 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.94A recently published inscription from Aphrodisias in Caria shows Trajandedicatinga statueto the ancestralmotherAphroditeand to the people out of a bequest made to him by a local citizen. Laterthe people of Aphrodisiasre-erected the group at their own expense after an earthquake.95 Imperial funding may be well disguised. The holding of a civic magistracywas commonly the occasion for the office holder to provide funds for public projects. Emperorsor membersof their families were not infrequently appointed to municipal office, and this might have The first been the occasion for transferringfunds for local building.96 the Antioch involved at of Pisidian the majorbuilding program colony
91Suet. 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 unpublishedpaper by A. Balland, kindly shown to me by W. Eck, who argues that the "liberation" of Lycia simply amountedto its temporaryseparationfrom Pamphylia,effected by Galba. In that case the speculation aboutthe province's tax liability may be quite irrelevant. 92IEphesos 2.459; AE 1966, 425. 93IEphesos 7.2.3501-3502; cf. 3513. For Augustus and the temple of Artemis, see below, 354. 94Pliny Ep. 10.75. Perhapsthe testatorthoughtthat therewould be less risk of embezzlement if a provincialgovernor,ratherthanthe city, was the recipientof the bequest. 95J. M. Reynolds, Aphrodisias and Rome (London 1982) no. 55; SEG 30.1254. PerhapscompareCIL 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 templumei 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 responsiblefor the conversion? 96 W. Liebenam,Stddteverwaltung im r6mischeKaiserreiche (Leipzig 1900) 261-262; Kienast,Augustus(above, 333) 344-345.
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creation of a vast precinct in the center of the city devoted to the imperial cult. It was constructedbetween 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 towardsthe constructioncosts.97 These few examples where something can be said about the circumstances in which imperialbuilding in the cities was financedare far outnumberedby 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 imperialbuilding reflects not only the rulers' generosity, but also the diverse and numerous ways in which they were seen to take responsibilityfor provincialaffairs.
CRISIS, PETITION,AND RESPONSE
In 27 B.C.an ambassadorfrom the city of Tralles, which had been devastatedby an earthquake,came to Augustus, then on campaign in Spain, to ask for aid. The emperor dispatcheda 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 exhibited in the sixth century, when the episode was recalled by the Byzantine historian Agathias.98 When Mithridates VI passed through Phrygian Apamea, in ruins after an earlier earthquake,he gave 100 talents towards its restorationas Alexander the Great was alleged to have done before him.99The patternof naturaldisaster, petition, and imperial response recurs throughoutthe principate,and precedentshad been set long before. Tacitus remarks with some surprise that Laodicea on the Lycus managed to recover from the earthquakeof A.D.60 at its own expense, with no help from Rome,1' and many individualepisodes confirmthat Laodicea's recovery was exceptional. Augustus in the Res Gestae
97Mitchell 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 inlustribusAsiae urbibusLaodicea tremoreterrae prolapsa nullo a nobis remediopropriis opibus revaluit.
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cataloguedthe gifts (8op~at) he had made to provincialcities thathad suffered from earthquakeor fire.1'0A decree of Cos, found at Olympia'02and dating to 26 B.C.,hailed him as new founderof the city after a catastrophicearthquakethere.103 Suetonius remarkedthat the great disasterof A.D. 17, which had ruinedtwelve cities of Asia,'4 had been the only occasion when Tiberius showed liberalityto the provinces,'05 although the aid which he provided was substantialand was widely advertisedboth locally'06and in Italy.'07At Sardis,Tiberius' own contributions were matched by local benefactors,'08 and this too was a common pattern. Tiberiusgave tax relief to Cibyrain Asia and Aegeae in Achaea a few years later,109 but the full-scale restorationof the former did not occur until the beginning of Claudius' reign, when the first governorof the new province of Lycia, Q. Veranius, was honored there for having taken charge of the Sebasta erga, the imperialbuildings, in accordance with instructions confided to him by Claudius, But alongside this we may note that a certainQ. founderof the city.110 Veranius Troili f. Clu. Philagrusis also said to have provided a subNo stantial sum for the foundationof the city on his own account.111' doubt the governorVeraniushad encouragedprivategenerosity to supplement imperial funds, and Roman citizenship may well have been
101 19.7-9. 102lOlympia no. 53; R. Herzog, Koische Forschungen und Funde (Leipzig 1899)
141-150. See L. Robert,BCH 102 (1978) 401. 103 104 See TacitusAnn. 2.47, with Goodyear'snote for furtherreferences. 105 Suet. Tib. 48. But note the contrary indication of Velleius 2.130.1: quanta suo suorumquenomineexstruxitopera, with Woodman'snote. 106In Asia the relevant inscriptionsare as follows: Sardis, IGR 4.1514, cf. 1503 and 1523, and an unpublishedtext found recently, JHS Arch. Reports 1984/5, 82; also see n. 108; Cyme, Die Inschriftenvon Kyme nos. 20-21; Mostene, IGR 4.1351 (OGIS471); see L. Robert,Hellenica 2 (1946) 77-79; 6 (1948) 16-17. 107See 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, Cultureand History in the Ancient World,Studiesfor Bluma C. Trell (Detroit 1981) 85-101. of a temple 10oL. Robert,BCH 102 (1978) 405 (SEG 28.928), for the privaterestoration after this earthquake. For the rebuildingof Sardis, see G. M. A. Hanfmann,Sardisfrom Mass. 1983) 140-143. Prehistoric to RomanTimes(Cambridge, Lykien2 (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.
109Tac. Ann. 4.13. 110Petersenand van Luschan,Reisen in
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Philagrus'rewardfor his contribution. Claudiuswas again active after the earthquakewhich struck the central region of Aegean Turkey in A.D. 47. At Samos he repaired the temple of Liber Pater and was and Malalas makes him responsible for reshailed as vog; Kitrlg,112 This intervention also toration at Miletus, Ephesus, and Smyrna.113 the context in which for this seems to be promptedprivate generosity, of Asia and preCn. Vergilius Capito of Miletus, sometime procurator fect of Egypt, began his building programat Miletus, which produced the baths of Capito at the end of Claudius' reign, and, according to a seductive restoration,the scaena of the theater,dedicatedto 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 returnfor help which Lugdunumhad offered to Rome at the time of the great fire of A.D.64;115Vespasian intervened in response to petitions in Lycia;116 and Hadrianis said to have rebuilt Nicomedia and Nicaea in Bithynia after the earthquakeof A HadriA.D. 120-both took the title "Hadriane" in consequence.117 anic inscription from Nicaea set up for a certain Patrocleus, who had been an imperial procuratorand held high local office, states that he had been curatorof the constructionwork in accordancewith a rescript of the emperor,8"presumablyan allusion to the aftermathof the same earthquake. Rhodes, and Cos, roundingcities as far away as CarianStratonicaea,"19
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 Caesareafor a short period, acknowledging Claudius' restoration, see L. Robert,Arch. Ephem. 1977, 217-218. For Vergilius Capito at Miletus, see L. Robert, Hellenica 7 (1949) 206-238, esp. 114 209; for the baths of Capito, see A. von Gerkanand F. Krischen,Milet 1.9 (Berlin 1928) 23-49; the inscriptionsfrom the baths are published by A. Rehm, ibid. 158. The inscription from the scaena of the theater is published by P. Herrmannin W. Mtiller-Wiener, ed., Milet 1899-1980. Ergebnisse, Probleme und Perspektiven einer Ausgrabung (Tiibingen 1986) 175-189. Vergilius Capito's name was restoredwith splendid acumen by D. McCabe in a seminarat Princetonin 1984. '15Tac. Ann. 16.13.
1
In A.D. 139 another Koa?oKobg GE;Etog
struck Lycia and the sur-
102 (1978) 395 ff. II IGR 3.1545; Dessau, ILS 8867; S. Sahin, Die Inschriftenvon Nikaia 1.56.
119See n. 84.
116 See nn. 89-91. 117 Sources and discussion in L. Robert,BCH
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all of which received help in rebuilding from Antoninus Pius,120but this was also the occasion for enormous generosity throughoutLycia In A.D. 151/2, during by Opramoas,the millionaire of Rhodiapolis.121 the proconsulateof L. AntoniusAlbus, it was Mytilene's turnto suffer. The city respondedto the emperor'scontributionsto the reconstruction The plight by hailing Antoninus Pius as its benefactorand founder.122 of Smyrnain A.D.172 is still betterdocumented,by Philostratusand by the letter or monodia which Aelius Aristides sent to Marcus Aurelius, successfully urging him to contributeheavily towardsthe restorationof the smittencity.123
PULCHRUMET UTILE
Pliny's appeal to Trajanon behalf of his canal scheme had pleaded a combinationof splendorand utility to attractthe emperor'sattentionto it. On both counts there was a chance that Trajanmight respondfavorably, since both qualities traditionally provided opportunities for imperialgenerosity. featuresof Aqueducts were one of the most distinctive architectural 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 requiredhighly accuratesurveying and sophisticatedbuildingtechniquessuch as the use of pressurepipes, demandedconsiderableexpertise. Moreover, the point has been made that their location outside their cities did not make them a favorite choice for local aristocratsanxious to display their generosity to their fellow citizens. Small wonder, then, that they often received imperial subvention. Augustus built aqueductsat Ephesus, between A.D. 4 and 14,124and the canalized system from Schedia to Alexandriain Egypt in
120Robert,BCH 102 (1978) 401-402; D. Magie, RomanRule in Asia Minor 1.631-632; 2.1491-1492 n. 6; Pausanias8.43.4; AristidesOr. 24.3.59; 25.9 ff. (Keil); HA Ant. 9.1. 121 For Opramoas'restorationprogram,see TAM2.3.905 (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 benefactionsin T. R. S. Broughton,"Roman Asia Minor," in T. Frank, ed., An EconomicSurveyof AncientRome4 (Baltimore 1938) 780. 122 IGR4.90; 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,ERW423-424. 124Die Inschriftenvon 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.
Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces
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A.D. 10--11.125 Tiberius, through the agency of his legate, saw to the building of an aqueduct at Syrian Nicopolis,126while Claudius built at Namasba in Numidia,128 and perhaps at Kerexamples at Sardis,127 yneia in Cyprus.129There was a Neronian aqueduct at Soloi in and Vespasian seems to have been particularlyactive in Cyprus,130 improving the water supplies of Lycian cities, with an aqueduct at Patara'31 and baths at Pataraand 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.75.134Trajanprovided aqueductsfor colonies in the Baland at Sarmizegethusa.'36 kans, at lader in Dalmatia135 to the Historia According Augusta, Hadriangave 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 an tells us that Hadrian Magna inscription aquae aeternitati consuluit, but that the money was put up by a local citizen, Q. Servilius CanSome such collaborationbetween emperorand subject should didus.140 be perhaps envisaged at Cyrene in A.D. 165/6, where the city built hydrecdochiaout of public funds, underthe guidance of the provincial
125Dessau, ILS 9075.
126 CIL 3.6703.
127 CIL 3.409; IGR 4.1505; Sardis 7.1 (1932) no. 10. Perhapspart of the restorationof Sardisoccasioned by the earthquake ofA.D. 17; cf. Hanfmann(above, n. 108) 141-142. 128 to an aqua Claudiana. CIL 8.4440 (Dessau, ILS 5793), referring 129 T. B. Mitford,Opusc. Athen.6 (1950) 17 no. 9. 130 Ibid. 28 no. 15. See G. Moretti,RFIC 109 (1981) 264-268. '31J. Coulton,PCPS N.s.29 (1983) 9, cf. n. 28, citing an unpublishedtext. 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.
136CIL 3.1446.
HA Hadr. 20.5. 137 CIL 3.549; J. Travlos,A Pictorial Dictionary of AncientAthens (London 1971) 242, 138 built between A.D. 125 and 140. See, too, A. Kokkou, Arch. Delt. 25 (1970) 150-172. For Corinthand Argos see below, nn. 195-197. It also seems to be implied at Coroneia Ka'i iS0op. (cf. above, n. 30), SEG 32.460.1.10-11: Eo 8 314E1V KaTr 139 Die Inschriftenvon Nikaia 1, no. 55. 140 Dessau, ILS 5754; Reynolds and Ward-Perkins, Inscriptionsof Roman Tripolitania no. 358, cf. 359.
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proconsul, but in accordancewith the authorityand benefaction of the

divine emperors. 141
Hadrianicbuilding for public utility is also illustratedby the two horrea erected in Lycia in A.D. 129, the year in which he visited the both designed to store grain from province, at Patara,and at Myra,142 the Lycian hinterlandthat was destined for consumptionat Rome.143 They may be paralleledby the granarieswhich he built at Smyrna in response to the embassy of Polemo.'44We should comparenot only his interest in the drainageof Lake Copais in Greece, but his concern to clear the harborsof Ephesusand Trapezusin 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, recordedthat since many of the temples of the gods had been consumed by fire, or lay in ruins, Augustus had intervenedto restorethe temple of Diana itself, an ornament to the province on account of the magnificence of its workmanship, the antiquityof its cult, and the extent of its revenues.146 Individual texts show that Augustus restoredroads and watercourses,147 and built a wall around the Artemisium in 6/5 B.C.,148 as well as reestablishingthe boundariesof the temple lands and orderingthe paving of roads from its revenues.149 The magnificence of imperial contributions to the architectureof Ephesus is implied by a civic decree of Domitianic date which begins with the remarkthat the restorationof old buildings appearedto match the recent splendorsof imperial constructions,a reference perhapsto Augustanwork, or to the newly built Flavian temple of the imperialcult.150 Augustus was probablyequally
141 J. M. Reynolds, JRS 49 (1959) 98 f. no. 3; for an aqua Augusta at Cyrene, restored by a proconsulin the late Augustanor Tiberianperiod,see AE 1981 no. 858. 142CIL 3.12127; TAM 2.397 (Patara); CIL 3.6738; Dessau, ILS 5908 (Myra); cf. M. Worrle,in J. Borchhardt, Myra.Eine lykischeMetropolis(Tiibingen 1975) 67-68. 143 Cf. Borchhardt et al., Myra, 66-71 Taf. 36-41 for the Myrabuilding. Recent discussion in G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (Oxford 1971) 136 n. 41; A. Balland,Xanthos7.69 and 217. '44 Philostr. VS 1.25.531K. However, it seems that the Smyrnabuilding was for civic use, and can be paralleledby otherlarge granariesfound in Asian cities. 145 Cf. above, n. 30; Ephesus,SIG3839; Trapezus,Arrian,Periplus 1.16. 146 IEphesos 1.19b (Latintext). 147 IEphesos6.1523, cf. 1524. 148 IEphesos 6.1522 (CIL3.6070; 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 imperialcult. Cf. Price, Rituals and Power (above, n. 66) 255.
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active in another conspicuous center, Athens, although the direct evidence for his financial involvement is confined to one inscriptionfrom the architraveof the gate of Athena Archegetis in the Roman agora.151 Temple building or reconstructionwas a regularimperialactivity in the provinces, as it was at Rome or in Italy. A bilingual inscriptionset in bronze letters on the architravesuggests that Augustus had rebuilt the Hellenistic temple of Athena at Ilium, perhapsfulfilling the obligations of the Julianhouse to the city of its Trojanancestors.152 A text from the Letoon at Xanthos, dating to A.D.43, the year in which Claudiusannexed Lycia, seems to show that he himself erected a temple-like structure within the precinct there, which served the Nero is said to have had a bath house built in Egypt, imperial cult.153 he was also responsiblefor the stage anticipatinghis projectedvisit;154 of the theaterat Curiumin Cyprus155 and probablyfor the proscenium of the theaterat Iconium in Galatia.156 Later in the firstcenturyA.D.the was added A doubtful but probablyrelidonors.157 seating by private able source indicates that Vespasian built an "imperial hall" at Cyzicus. 58 Domitian restoredthe temple of Apollo at Delphi in A.D.84 sua and, presumablyin response to a petition, erected a portico impensa159 at Megalopolis in the Peloponnese after it had been burneddown.160 A from Latin text in also to seems show fragmentary Palaepaphos Cyprus
151IG 2/3.3175; see Kienast, Augustus(above, 333) 356-357 for discussion and further references. 152 P. Frisch,Die Inschriftenvon Ilion no. 84. 153 A. Balland,Xanthos7, no. 11. 154 Dio 62.18; A. C. Johnson, "Roman Egypt to the Reign of Diocletian," in T. Frank, ed., An EconomicSurveyof AncientRome2 (Baltimore 1935) 637. T. B. Mitford,The Inscriptionsof Kourion(Philadelphia1971) no. 107, A.D. 64/5. 155 156 IGR 3.262.1404; restoredby W. M. Ramsay,JHS 38 (1918) 169-170. The Neronian date is supportedby the fact that the procurator Pupius named in the building inscription is apparentlyidentical to the procurator L. Pupius Praesens, honored as benefactor and founderat Iconium, whose term of office fell at the end of Claudius' and the beginning of Nero's principate. See R. K. Sherk,ANRW2.7.2 (1980) 977-978. 157 IGR 3.1474. '58Schol. in Aristidem(1.391, 7 Dindorf), discussed by B. Keil, Hermes 32 (1897) 502 n. 1, and mentioninga pacallto; awrXi. 159 CIL 3.14203.24; Dessau, ILS 8905. CIL 3.13691; IG 5.2.457, A.D.93/4. CompareAntoninusPius repairingburnedbath 160 buildings at Narbo, Dessau, ILS 5685.
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that he undertookconstructionor restorationin the precinct of Aphrodite.161 Between A.D.98 and 100 Trajanbuilt, or rathercompleted, a bath and patronizedthe important buildingat Cyrene,162 sanctuaryof Apollo two then unfinished Hylates at Curium, where he founded (Krt~aev) exedrae, work which was supervisedand dedicatedby the proconsulin A.D. 101.163 In the same or the following year he built the gate of the sanctuarythat led to the city of Curium, and another adjacent strucAnotherLatin inscriptionfrom Curium,perhapsof the firstcenture.164 and Trajanwas tury A.D.,records an imperial gift of paving stone,165 for in the in 113-115.166 It is again responsible laying paving sanctuary to note this taken to interesting very specific, piecemeal approach supplement the existing, much more impressivebuildings at the sanctuary. We know that in A.D. 102 Trajanwas 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 undertookother building there. He may have had specific reasons for being gratefulto the place. The oracle at Didyma had apparentlypredicted his future elevation to the principate,perhapsduringhis father's term as proconsul of Asia in A.D. 79.167Such special connections might always be a cause for imperial intervention. When sudden death overtook Marcus Aurelius' wife Faustinaat the village of Halala in the northernfoothills of the Taurusmountainsin A.D.176, the emperorturnedthe little community into a Roman colony, Faustinopolis, and built a temple in Faustina'shonor.168 This evidence forms no observable pattern. We are faced with the random survival, principallyfrom inscriptions,of informationindicating that emperors erected buildings of all sorts in eastern provincial cities. They provided the emperor's subjects with furthertestimony to his ubiquitous power and the benefits which he could bring them.
161 CIL
162Reynolds,JRS 49 (1959) 95 f. no. 1. 163IKourionno. 108. 64 IKourionno. 109. 165IKourionno. 106.
3.12102, cf. Mitford,ANRW2.7.2 (1980) 1356.
166IKourion no. 11; cf. T. Drew-Bear and R. S. Bagnall, Chron. d'Egypte 49 (1974) 193-195. 167C. P. Jones, Chiron 5 (1975) 403-406; K. Tuchelt, Ist. Mitt. 30 (1980) 102-121; JHS Arch.Reports 1978/9, 73-74. 168HA M. Aurel. 26.4; for the site of Faustinopolis,see M. H. Ballance, AS 14 (1964) 139-145.
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However, the work that the emperorsfunded or patronizedwas not in principle distinguishablefrom other constructionsin the cities. Temples, bath houses, porticos, theaters,and even aqueductsmight as well be set up by privatebenefactors,or by the local civic authorities. There was no imperialpolicy to endow cities with structuresor facilities that they might not otherwise have enjoyed.
HADRIAN, ATHENS, AND ACHAEA
The sum total of the evidence for other imperialbuilding 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 confirmedby 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 The Life of Hadriannoted temples connected imperial construction.170 with the imperial cult in Narbonensisand Tarraconensis,171 as well as When he went to Asia he is said to have conbuildings at Athens.172 secrated temples devoted to his own cult,173 and he built innumerable aqueducts.174 In almost every city thathe visited he either put up buildings or sponsored games.175A host of cities took his name and were called Hadrianopolis,includinga partof Athens itself.176
169Dio 69.5.2-3. 170 69.10.1;R. Syme,Roman 1979)1.620-621citingA. Garcia Papers(Oxford y BelAeliaAugusta lido,Colonia Italica(1960). HAHadr.12.2. 171 172 13.6,see below. 173 19.1.
174 20.5.
19.2. Cf. Fronto Princ. hist. 8 (p. 195.13-14 van den Hoot) eius itinerummonumenta videas per plurimasAsiae atque Europae urbes sita. 176 20.4; cf. 20.13 on Hadrianutherae.
175
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The inscriptionssuggest that little exaggeration is involved. Cities of Asia by the dozen took a name or titles from him, and honoredhim as their ktistes.177 Specific texts show that in additionto the horrea at Lycia, aqueducts, and the restorationof Bithynian cities after earthquake damage which have already been discussed (above, 345), he built a stoa (?) at Apollonia on the Rhyndacus,178 restoredthe temple of and at erected a or some similar structureat Dionysus Teos,179 temple in to Philostratus he lavished ten milMetropolis Ionia.180 According lion drachmaein a single day on the city of Smyrna,which built with this bounty a grain market,the finest gymnasium in Asia, and a temBut even this was dwarfedby his gifts to Athens and to the other ple.181 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 Greeksthemselves to put up the Panhellenion and celebrate games there.182 It was not new or surprisingthat an make should to Athens. Hadrianwas neitherthe benefactions emperor first nor the last in a long series.183The 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.184It survived the depredations of Sulla, who carted off some of its columns to Rome;'85Augustus had planned to continue the work,186but completion had to wait for Hadrian between 124/5 and 131/2.187Pausanias provides the fullest details: Hadriandedicated 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.
179SEG 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 inscriptionto road building between Metropolis and Hypaepa,but it is puzzling, if that is so, that the text, with name and titles of Hadrianin the nominative, should be stele with a pediment,not on a normalmilestone. carvedon a rectangular 181 Philostr.VS 531K.
182 Dio 69.16.1-2.
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 Dicof tionary (above, n. 138) 505-520. The kings who built in Athens include Ariobarzanes Cappadociaand the emperorsAugustusand Claudius. 184Vitr. 7.15.17; IG 22.4099.
183 For Herod the 185 Pliny NH 36.45. 186 Suet. Aug. 60.
187Travlos,Pictorial
Dictionary402-411.
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and adorned the precinct with four statues of himself, two of Thasian marble and two of Egyptian granite.'88Pausanias also observes, in apparentconflict with Dio, that Hadrianalso built the temple of Hera and Zeus Panhellenios,with a new sanctuaryof all the gods, these with 100 columns of Phrygianmarble (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 gymnasiumnamed after Hadrianand built with a further The monuments, of 100 columns from the Numidian quarries.189 A fragmentaryletter preserves course, are still to be seen in Athens.190 some of the terms in which he presentedAthens with the gymnasium: "I give this gymnasiumfor your boys and young men, so that it may be an adornmentto the city . 1.."191An arch was constructedlinking the new Olympieion complex with the old classical city. The inscription on the east side, overlooking the new temple, told the passerbythat this gate led to the city of Hadrian,not thatof Theseus.192 Hadrian's treatmentof Athens goes far beyond that of any other emperorfor a provincialcity at any time duringthe principate. Ties of sentiment, religion, and an acute sense of the cultural significance of Athens motivated the gifts, and provide a rationalefor Hadrian'scommitment. The Panhellenic movement which he fostered and encouragedrequireda capital city and a central focus which his rebuilt Athens provided.193 But it is importantto note that his philhellenic endowments did not At Corinthhe built stop there. There were new buildings at Delphi.194 the aqueductfrom Stymphalus,and a bath house which was doubtless associated with it,195and restored the theater.196 This generosity was almost exactly duplicatedat Argos, where he endowed a new aqueduct
1881.18.6. 1891.18.9. 190 For the librarysee Travlos, op. cit. 244-252; M. A. Sisson, PBSR 11 (1929) 50-72; Arch.Delt. 24 (1969) 107 ff. Knithikis-Symbolidou, 191 IG 2/3 (ed. min.) 1102 (A.D. 131/2). For royal gifts to gymnasia, see L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta (Amsterdam1969) 2.738. 192IG 22.5185; Schol. Aristides, Panath. 3.201.32 (Dind.); M. Zahrnt,Chiron 9 (1979) 393-398. 193 See now A. J. Spawforthand Susan Walker,JRS 75 (1985) 78-104, especially 90 ff. 194 See above, n. 32. 195 Pausanias2.3.5; 8.22.3; W. Biers, Herperia47 (1978) 171-184. 196R. Stillwell, CorinthII: The Theatre (Princeton1952) 136-140.
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and nymphaeumand restored the theater which had burned down.197 He rebuiltthe temple of Poseidon Hippios at Mantineain the Peloponnese,198a temple of Apollo at Abai, and a colonnade at Hyampolis in Phocis,199to say nothing of the utilitarian scheme to drain Lake He made the corniche road from Corinth to Megara wide Copais.200 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 observersas to modernscholars.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 is not an anachronismcomes from confirmationthat this interpretation Pausanias' remark about Megara, that of all the cities of Greece not If construction even Hadrian'sendeavors sufficed to make it thrive.203 work and public buildingsare any clear measureof regional prosperity, then Achaea in the second centuryhad much for which to thankhim.
ANDECONOMIC REVIVAL CITYFOUNDATIONS
In A.D. 66 Tiridates, newly crowned king of Armenia by Nero, returnedto his domain with permissionto rebuildthe city of Artaxata, which had been destroyedby Domitius Corbuloeight years earlier. He and assortedartitook with him gifts to the value of 200,000,000 HS204 sans to help with the task, some hired by himself, others provided by the emperor. When he reachedthe Euphrates,Corbuloallowed him to
197See A. J. Spawforthand Susan Walker,JRS 76 (1986) 102. 198Pausanias8.10.2. 200 See above, n. 30.
199 Pausanias8.35.3, 4.
Das esp. 8; see U. Kahrstedt, wirtschaftlicheGesicht 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. 203Pausanias 1.36.3. Note also the phrase which begins one of the Hadrianicletters from Coroneia:ait6tq yi (SEG taTq n;heotCv npbq Enopifv XprtjgArmv o4LnpdPoTyTv 32.461; A.D.125). 204The figure is astonishingly high. Note also that Tiridates' entourageof more than 3000 persons, which had taken over nine months to travel to Rome for the coronation,at an alleged cost to the Roman treasuryof 800,000 HS per day, will have requireda further 220,000,000 HS (Dio 62.2.2). Hardlycredible.
201Pausanias1.42.5; cf. IG 7.70-74. 202C. P. Jones, Plutarch and Rome (Oxford 1971) 3-12,
in theEastern Roman Provinces Building Imperial
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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-provincialterritory,gives much cause for reflection. It highlights the scale of imperial generosity, which took the form both of financialand of practicalaid, and provides a rare fragmentof substantialinformationto supplementthe bare statement that a city took on a new dynastic name. It also offers a simple reminderthat the foundationor refoundationof a city was a majorand a fact generally taken for grantedand so passed expensive undertaking, over in silence both by the ancient sources and in moderndiscussions. 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, thatthe creationof 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 foundationand a means or spur to regional development. The evidence for direct financial commitment on the part of the emperors in the foundationor refoundation of cities which bore their names is disappointinglythin. It is clearest, perhaps, in the case of cities rebuilt after earthquakedamage, all or most of which took an imperial name or title to commemorate the fact.206The passage of Philostratuswhich describes Hadrian'srole 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'sletter to Stratonicaea /Hadrianopolis of A.D.127 includes an the house injunctionconcerning belonging to Ti. Cl. Socrates--either he should put it into good repair,or he should give it to one of the local inhabitantsso that it not be destroyed by the passage of time and by neglect.207This 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). 206Tralles, 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"afterA.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, perhapsof Claudiandate, CIL 10.1401; Dessau, ILS 6403 (Italy); Suet. Vesp. 8.5 (Rome); P. Garnsey in M. I. Finley, ed., Studies in Roman Property (Cambridge1976) 133-136.
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earthquakerestorationat 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 urbanstructuresin Mysia. Alongside the direct imperial subvention that presumably took place in the newly founded cities, there was Hadrianicbuilding at the Asclepieon of Pergamum,paid for at Cyzicus where the famous temple was paid for by privatedonors,208 by contributionsfrom all over Asia,209and at Aezani, cities which framedthe vast Mysian hinterlandwhere the new foundationslay. 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 probablynot try to read into these imperialbenefactionsa complex and consciously devised scheme of economic regeneration,but certainlyall parties must have been aware that regional prosperity was much enhancedby these majorinitiativesin public building. Anotherregion at anotherperiodmay be compared,the centralAnatolian province of Galatia,created by Augustus in 25 B.C. At the time of annexationthere was not a single communityin the whole area that could be described as a polis. This deficiency was put right over the next hundredyears, as a networkof cities, colonies, and theirterritories spread over the provincial map in a process of urbanizationthat was The archaeoessentially complete by the Flavian or Trajanicperiod.210 logical evidence for the area is still very inadequate,but what we know from the principalcities and colonies shows that these urbanfoundations were matchedby the erection of public and religious buildings of considerable splendor. A programof constructionwhich began under Augustus and continued throughto the Claudianperiod produced the temple of Rome and Augustus and a theaterat Ancyra, the first phase of the colonnaded street, which did double duty as a water course and ran throughthe center of the city, the imperialtemple complex at Pessinus, and the monumentaltemple and precinct of the imperialcult at It is hardto imagine how such ambitiousprograms PisidianAntioch.211
208C. Habicht,Alt. v. Perg. 8.3 (1976) 8-11; Le Glay, BCH 100 (1976) 347-351. 209IGR 4.140; Malalas, Chron. 279.3 f. indicates that Hadrianhimself helped with the cost. For an excellent summaryof the many problemsconcernedwith 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-
Roman in theEastern Provinces Building Imperial
363
of public building could have been possible without a deliberateinjection of imperial finance, and without importingthe skilled craftsmen and artisans that such sophisticated constructions required. Imperial interventionin the province duringthe Julio-Claudian period is directly is a possibility that and there attested by an inscriptionfrom Iconium were channeled into Antioch when members of the imperial funds the held there.212 On other hand the only imperial family magistracies direct evidence for the funding of the Ancyra and Pessinus imperial sanctuariessuggests that the provincialpriests of the imperialcult were expected to contribute, in the usual traditions of aristocratic munificence. Pylaemenes, son of the last Galatianking, 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.213In the precisely comparable case of Britain, Tacitus tells us that the high priests of the temple of the deified Claudius at Camulodunumwere forced to pour out all their wealth to maintainthe cult, one of the main causes of grievance that led to the uprising of Boudicca.214Once again it seems prudent to assume that JulioClaudianbuilding in the newly founded Galatiancities was subvented and local efforts, forced or by a combinationof imperialpump-priming spontaneous. Here as elsewhere the picture of imperialbuilding that emerges is a blurredand indistinctone. A subjectthat at first sight might seem easy to investigate, a simple matter of emperorspaying for the erection of public buildings, following a well-ordered and predictablepattern of aristocraticliberality,turnsout to be far more involved. The model by which we should interpretimperialgenerosity must be a complex one, correspondingto 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 Ancyraand Antioch have been discussed by Waelkens in EpigraphicaAnatolica 7 (1986) 37-73; see also S. Mitchell, "Galatia underTiberius," Chiron 16 (1986) 17-33. 212See above, 348 f. and n. 156. Malalas, Chron. 221.18 f. implies that Augustus was directly involved in constructionat Ancyra,but the passage is too confused to be accepted as reliableevidence. 213This inscriptionis most conveniently accessible in Bosch, Ankarano. 51, but there is a more accurateand reliabletext in M. Krenckerand M. Schede, Der Tempelin Ankara (Berlin 1936) 52 ff. 214Ann. 14.31.
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institutionsto which it gave rise, led to buildingprogramswhich inevitably encroachedupon the world of the subjectcities. 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 patternsof imperialpatronageof such constructionprogramswere dictatedby other aspects of the emperor's position in the Roman world. His ownership of importantsources of raw materials,especially marblequarries,gave him obvious opportunities for direct and practical supportof 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 prospectof interventionand patronage on a scale that was beyond even the richestprivateindividual. 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 financialaid after naturaldisasters. On the other hand ties of religious and culturalsentiment,or devotion to a particular place, lay behind acts of spontaneousgenerosity, which must still explain a sizable minorityof cases where emperorspaid for constructionin eastern cities. Whatever the origin of imperial interest in a place, both the practicalutility and the dignity and splendorof a projectcould serve as strongargumentsthatit be supported. We perhaps know least about an area of imperial building which may have been more importantthan any other, the actual contributions made to the newly founded or refoundedcities which sprinklethe 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 contributionsalso had a large role to play. The absence of evidence makes it hard to argue that the emperors, throughcash contributionsfor city foundationor civic building, were enacting a conscious and deliberatepolicy to regenerateand transform regions economically, although that may have been a frequent and predictableresultof 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 patternshave nonetheless emerged. It is hardly surprisingthat Augustus and Hadrianappearto have been
365
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 Tetrarchyhave hardly figured at all. From the last quarterof the second until the end of the thirdcentury, emperorsmade only minimal impact as patronsof civic building in the eastern cities. The point was clearly seen by MacMullen in his earlier study, and explored in detail against the shifting backgroundof the change from the high to the late empire: the militarizationof the Roman world, as it geared itself increasingly for war, not peace; a change from voluntaryto forced labor; a shift in the natureof military building and military communities,which came increasinglyto resemble their civilian counterparts.These themes need not be treatedagain 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 luxuryof imperialpatronageof 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 MarcusAurelius, may in fact be one of the clearest indicatorsof the transformation of the empire, which was in progress even before the beginning of the thirdcentury. taxation, imperialownershipof raw materiMilitaryadministration, als and land, the administrative pattern of provincial petition and imperialresponse, the foundationof cities, to say nothingof the decline of the empire itself, are some of the dominantthemes of imperialhistory. Together they helped to create the kaleidoscopic patternof relationships which bound the emperor to his subjects. Imperialbuilding 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 buildersshould appearso diverse and various.
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ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

in theEastern Roman Provinces Building Imperial

ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

In A.D. 139 another Koa?oKobg GE;Etog

struck Lycia and the sur-

116 See nn. 89-91. 117 Sources and discussion in L. Robert,BCH

Imperial Building in the Eastern Roman Provinces

proconsul, but in accordancewith the authorityand benefaction of the

ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

162Reynolds,JRS 49 (1959) 95 f. no. 1. 163IKourionno. 108. 64 IKourionno. 109. 165IKourionno. 106.

3.12102, cf. Mitford,ANRW2.7.2 (1980) 1356.

ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

in theEastern Roman Provinces Building Imperial

earthquakerestorationat Sardis, Cibyra, and Miletus in the mid-first

Roman in theEastern Provinces Building Imperial

ImperialBuilding in the EasternRomanProvinces

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