XII THE GREECE OF AUGUSTUS 253 on the other only went back some 250 years to the settlement of M. Acilius Glabrio in 191 B.C., and was decided, after careful examination of the boundaries, by a legate of Claudius.1 The whole impression produced by the life of Greece during the first two generations of this century is so curiously empty and vapid-idyllic is Hertzberg's strange epithet— that I can only cite as a parallel in our modern Europe the monks of Mount Athos, whom I found living the same sort of existence,-attending with care and ceremony to feasts and fasts, maintaining with rigid conservatism the old traditions of their religion, but lost to all newer and more living interests; employed in perpetual litigation about their boundaries, waiting anxiously in their retirement for some new thing as a subject of gossip; agreeable, hospitable, dignified, trivial—a fossil society feeding upon its traditions, petrified beyond the hope of renovation or healthy growth. Indeed, if I had not seen and studied this now unique society I should feel wholly at a loss to comprehend the picture of Greece which the many inscriptions and few authors of the period of Augustus have disclosed to us. It is hard to blame the policy of the emperors for this melancholy senility, though we may safely say that the enactments of Augustus were well adapted to maintain it; they were the enactments of a narrow and pedantic mind, unable to think out any large or serious remedies for the national decay, and yet, from a certain traditional respect for Greece, anxious to do what was possible to amuse and satisfy the Greeks. The tyrannical establishment of Nicopolis to commemorate his victory, with its Actian games,2 1 Op. cit. ii. 44, and CIG No. 1711. 2 The temple of Apollo at Actium had been the old sanctuary of the κοινόν of Acarnania. its amphictyony, its many privileges, was clearly an imitation of the old Hellenistic habit of copying Alexander, whom Augustus evidently considered his only rival in fame. The neighbouring Ætolia, Thessaly, and Acarnania were depopulated for this purpose, and their old kowά abolished, just as Tigranes had depopulated tracts of Asia Minor to fill his new capital Tigranocerta.1 For a generation or two this mushroom foundation outshone Athens, Argos, and the other venerable seats of Greek culture, and was rivalled only by the Roman Corinth and the hardly less Roman Patræ. The assembly or conclave of cities which met at Argos and passed shadowy resolutions and complimentary decrees, did perhaps less harm but no good. We cannot even imagine any serious Greeks satisfied with such a mockery of old republican institutions. For Augustus, though well instructed, like Julius Cæsar, in Greek letters, though he interlarded his epistles and his talk with Greek phrases,2 perhaps in imitation of Cicero, was, like Cæsar, a thorough Roman, who used the Greeks. for his service and his amusements, but never dreamt of them as his social equals.3 1 Above, p. 92, and BCH x. 166. 2 Cf. the specimens quoted by Suetonius (Tiberius, 21; Claudius, 4), and the general account of his Greek education in Octavian, 89. Ne Græcarum quidem disciplinarum leviore studio tenebatur. In quibus et ipsis præstabat largiter, magistro dicendi usus Apollodoro Pergameno, quem jam grandem natu Apolloniam quoque secum ab urbe juvenis aa hoc eduxerat, deinde eruditione etiam varia repletus per Arei philosophi filiorumque ejus Dionysi et Nicanoris contubernium; non tamen ut aut loqueretur expedite aut componere aliquid auderet, nam si quid res exigeret, Latine formabat vertendumque alii dabat. This last was the received practice of the Roman Senate, in their decrees concerning the Greek world, as I explained above. 3 I do not feel that this remark needs qualification from the story of Plutarch (Reip. gub. præc, 18), that he entered Alexandria holding the philosopher Areus by the hand, and telling the people that he spared XII HELLENISM OF THE EMPERORS 255 The same is true of Tiberius, whose very pedantic purism in rejecting every Greek word throughout all the solemn records of the Roman State shows clearly how inferior he thought his Greek associates. I do not think we need be misled in either case by such distinct outings in the life of each as the assumption of Greek habits by Augustus at Puteoli and Naples, in return for the compliments of Alexandrian sailors, or the life of Tiberius at Rhodes, which became more decidedly Greek the more he wished to avoid the notice and the jealousy of Augustus.1 It is hard to say anything certain about Caligula's notions, seeing that he was little better than a raving lunatic. But he seems to have felt that the worship of his own divinity and other ceremonies were better performed by Greeks, and so imported from the province of Asia choristers for this purpose.2 But after the dreadful interlude of Caligula's insanity we arrive with Claudius at quite a different condition of things. Claudius had lived most of his life in a private station, and was occupied, like every private gentleman of education at Rome, with Greek letters. He was too old to change his habits on the throne, and sat there as a literary, and therefore as the first the city for this his friend's sake. Nor do I lay the same stress that the Germans do upon the mission of Crinagoras, the Mytilenæan, and its success owing to this man's intimacy with the imperial household, for he was probably the Greek tutor of Marcellus, and apparently a person of consequence at home, perhaps because of this very position. Cf. Cichorius's tract, Rom und Mytilene, and Rubensohn's edition of the Epigrams of Crinagoras. 1 Suetonius says (Octav. 98) of Augustus: lege proposita, ut Romani Græco, Græci Romano habitu et sermone uterentur, and that he spent days with the ephebi of Capreæ. This passage by itself would assimilate Augustus as a Hellenist with Claudius and lead to serious mistakes. So also Tiber. 11, 12 on Tiberius's life at Rhodes. When in great fear of Augustus's displeasure, redegit se, deposito patrio habitu, ad pallium et crepidas. 2 Jos. Antiqq. xix. 1, § 14. Hellenistic, emperor. The favours he heaped upon Greece itself, the public use he made of Greek in the Senate house, the elevation of his Greek freedmen to the position of state ministers and privy councillors, speak plainly of this change; and if we remember how the fashion of the Roman court dominated the world, we shall date from this reign the first symptoms of recovery in Greece, the first steps towards that new and real fusion of Greek and Roman life which culminated in the removal of the seat of government from Rome to Byzantium. The Hellenism of Claudius was carried still further by Nero, whose hideous crimes and follies have almost all this foreign stamp about them. His exhibitions were Greek, his Neronia more Græco,1 his expedition to the Olympian and other games, his plundering of art treasures, every vagary and outrage of his almost incredible life, had this aspect. I think, therefore, the story told by Apollonius of Tyana2 that in his day he found a Roman governor at Corinth who knew no Greek and could not be understood by the people, so that his council sold justice and did what they liked, is either false or must be referred to some other reign. The pompous declaration of the freedom of all the Greeks at the Isthmian games of 67 A.D. seems to have been purely mischievous. The actual text has recently been discovered on an inscription at Acræphiæ in Boeotia, and published by M. Holleaux in the Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique for 1888. here give this curious text. I The emperor Cæsar says: 'Desiring to requite the most noble Hellas for her goodwill towards me, and her piety, I invite as many as possible from this province to be present at Corinth the 4th day before the Calends of December.' 1 Cf. the whole account in Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 14 sq. XII NERO'S SPEECH 257 When the multitude assembled in the ecclesia he addressed them at follows: 'With an unexpected gift, men of Hellas, do I favour you, even though nothing be surprising from my generosity -a gift such as ye would not even ask. Do ye now, all Greeks who inhabit Achæa and what was hitherto called Peloponnesus, receive liberty free of all tribute, a thing which not even in your most prosperous days did all of you enjoy, for ye were slaves either to foreigners or to one another. Would that I might have granted this gift when Hellas was in her strength, in order that many more might enjoy my favour; wherefore I owe Time a grudge, as it has forestalled me in taking from the greatness of this boon. But now not through pity but through goodwill do I benefit you, and requite your gods, whose good Providence I have experienced both by land and sea, in that they vouchsafed me to do so great a good work. For other rulers have freed cities: Nero has freed a whole province.'1 This harangue speaks plainly enough the vanity and folly of its author. There are traces, in the scanty evidence which remains, that local feuds and violences broke out immediately upon the recovery of this autonomy. Moreover it fostered even in respectable Greeks false hopes, and when the prudent Vespasian interfered, and restored the order. which was necessary to sound administration, he caused unreasonable discontent. The ostentatious clemency of Nero did not prevent his ruthlessly invading the sacred Altis of Olympia by building a palace for himself and a new entrance to the enclosure, as has been shown by recent excavations.2 1 Then follows an honorary decree, proposed by Epaminondas, to whom we shall presently revert. The text is quite complete, save that the name of Nero has been carefully erased in all but two places on the stone (cf. op. cit. p. 510 sq., and Appendix A for the Greek text). 2 Cf. Dörpfeld in MDI xiii. 331. S |