Hellenistic and Roman Sparta by Cartledge Paul

Author:Cartledge, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2011-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

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An attempt is made in this second section to characterize the chief preoccupations of local government at Roman Sparta. Before doing so the question of the extent and frequency of Rome’s routine interventions in the city’s internal politics needs addressing. Once Rome established a permanent administrative presence in Greece, for the first time in 46 BC and regularly from 27 BC, the Roman governor became a figure of great potential influence in Spartan affairs, as the Spartans themselves acknowledged in 46 BC in their attempt, through the good offices of Cicero, to secure the goodwill of Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (chapter 7). It is doubtless only the paucity of our evidence which leaves as the sole attested instance of proconsular intervention at Sparta before the third century the story in Philostratus, if it can be believed, of the anonymous governor who brought to Nero’s attention alleged abuses by Sparta of her free status (VA.iv.33).

None the less, day-to-day interference was probably less frequent than might be imagined. This follows partly from general considerations concerning the remoteness of Roman provincial administration, but partly from Sparta’s privileged standing as a free city. First attested only under Augustus, when it came to be shared with the Eleutherolacones, this status had effectively obtained since 146 BC, when Sparta, as a friendly non-belligerent, had been left by Rome with her newly regained ‘independence’ intact (chapter 7). Inscriptions show that by the first century BC the privileges of free cities were regulated in considerable detail by Rome through treaties and senatorial decrees; no such formal agreement is attested in Sparta’s case, although it remains possible that one was negotiated at some stage in the first century BC. The fiscal and judicial privileges of free status are returned to below; here we need only recall that Sparta would thereby have been excluded from the ‘plan’ of the province of Achaia and placed outside the routine jurisdiction of the proconsul. Formal scruple over Sparta’s status can be detected as late as the reign of Marcus, who in about 174 required a judge hearing Spartan litigants in civil suits to hold court, not at Sparta itself, but in some nearby city—presumably one technically within the province. Such scruple (if only in small matters) was to some extent underpinned by Roman respect for Sparta’s past, a factor emerging in Cicero’s letter to the governor Sulpicius Rufus and the younger Pliny’s to the corrector Maximus under Trajan (see below) as the basis for a plea of special forbearance in Rome’s administrative dealings with the city.

The routine Roman interference for which there is increasing evidence in the second century was—at least partly—generated by the Spartans themselves. Imperial interventions, although irregular, were now not infrequent, as emerges from the evidence for Spartan embassies to the emperor or his representative. Their business is usually unstated: one certainly, the two-man embassy sent to congratulate L.Caesar in Pannonia following his adoption by Hadrian in 136, was ceremonial; but references to ‘successful’ embassies, including the

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