The Hellenistic World and Rome
he had taken the opportunity to represent the interests not only of the king,
but also of his city. As its benefactor, in a way which was becoming a prime
function of the communal institutions of the Greek city, he was to be hon-
oured with a crown each year at the Dionysia and with a statue at the most
conspicuous point in the market-place (agora).^17
The story could be paralleled many times over in the complex, disturbed,
and violent relations of the cities of the Black Sea region with local kings
and dynasts, with Mithridates, and with the Romans. But if we are to think
of what the ‘‘Roman peace’’ brought by Augustus really meant, one essential
starting point is the whole succession of ‘‘local histories’’ offered by theGeog-
raphyof Strabo. For obvious reasons of local knowledge and sympathy these
gain an added force when they relate to northern Asia Minor: not only his
wonderful evocation of his own city, Amaseia in Pontus (), but also the
brief vignette of the rise of Gordioucome to be the city of ‘‘Iuliopolis’’ (),
or his account of Sinope in the later Hellenistic and Republican period:
The city itself is beautifully walled, and is also splendidly adorned with
gymnasium and market-place and colonnades. But although it was such
a city, still it was twice captured, first by Pharnaces, who unexpect-
edly attacked it all of a sudden, and later by Lucullus and by the tyrant
who was garrisoned within it, being besieged both inside and outside
at the same time; for, since Bacchides, who had been set up by the king
as commander of the garrison, was always suspecting treason from the
people inside, and was causing many outrages and murders, he made
the people, who were unable either nobly to defend themselves or to
submit by compromise, lose all heart for either course. At any rate,
the city was captured; and though Lucullus kept intact the rest of the
city’s adornments, he took away the globe of Billarus and the work
of Sthenis, the statue of Autolycus, whom they regarded as founder of
their city and honoured as god. The city had also an oracle of Auto-
lycus. He is thought to have been one of those who went on the voyage
with Jason and to have taken possession of this place. Then later the
Milesians, seeing the natural advantages of the place and the weakness
of its inhabitants, appropriated it to themselves and sent forth colonists
to it. But at present it has received also a colony of Romans; and a part
of the city and the territory belong to these.^18.Syll.^3 ,no.IGRI, no. G. Mihailov,IG Bulg.I^2 (), no. . English
translation in R. K. Sherk,Rome and the Greek East to the Death of Augustus(), no. .
. Strabo,Geog. , , (), Loeb trans. (with minor emendations).