The Greek City in the Roman Period Equally significant, the archive from Aphrodisias is one reflection of the
range of privileged statuses which emerged out of the conflicts of the late
republican period, when cities sought the favour of Rome, while Rome,
equally, used all possible diplomatic means to alleviate the effects of brutal
oppression and exaction by grants of alliances and favours. The cities of the
Greek world in the imperial period might therefore retain one or more of
the following rights. (It would be extremely difficult to state what combi-
nations of these rights were normal, or how common it was for one to be
enjoyed without the others.) The possibilities were: a treaty, as enjoyed by
Aphrodisias and also (for instance) by Tyre, as Ulpian’s well-known celebra-
tion of it recalls;^26 libertas(freedom), meaning, as the imperial documents
from Aphrodisias put it, that the city was ‘‘exempt from thetypos[formula]
of the province.’’ This certainly implied exemption from the jurisdiction,
and the personal visits, of the governor; but it does also seem, as is shown
in Hadrian’s letter to Aphrodisias, to have carried with it exemption (immu-
nitas) from Roman taxation. It is not, however, possible to assert that these
two latter rights could never be dissociated.^27
Finally, there was the status of Roman colony, which almost certainly, in
this early period, carried with it automatically exemption from all forms of
direct taxation, what the lawyers were later to labeltributum soli(land tax)
andtributum capitis(poll tax). At the moment of Actium, Roman colonisa-
tion was still a minor phenomenon in the Greek world. The known cases are
Tauromenium, probably in ..;^28 Corinth, re-founded in ..; Philippi,
madeacolonyin..; Cassandrea; Buthrotum; probably Dium; Lamp-
sacus; possibly Alexandria Troas and Parium; Apamea in Bithynia; briefly
Heraclea Pontica; and Sinope (see above).
There are many uncertainties in the list, which would be considerably
lengthened if we added the certainly Augustan colonies. The most notable of
these are, firstly, a group in Sicily; secondly, Berytus (see above); and, finally,
the important series in Pisidia and neighbouring regions.^29 We will look later
Invasions,’’JRS (): ( chapter of F. Millar,Rome, the GreekWorld, and the EastII:
Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire).
.Dig.,,.
. Reynolds,Aphrodisias and Rome, no. (Hadrian); (legal prevention of visits by
proconsul). For discussions of these complex questions, see R. Bernhardt,ImperiumundElu-
theria: Die römische Politik gegenüber den freien Städten des griechischen Ostens();Polis und
römische Herrschaft in der späten Republik, – vor Chr. (); and Ferrary (n. ).
. So Diodorus , , . See Wilson (n. ), – (suggesting that the actual colonisation
took place in ..).
. See still B. M. Levick,Roman Colonies in Southern Asia Minor(): Antiochia in