The Hellenistic World and Rome
at the very significant process, characteristic of the established Empire, by
which emperors came to grant the title of colony to Greek cities, without
the settlement of actual colonists; for even this involved a transformation of
the formal structure and constitution of each city, and (in theory at least) the
public use of Latin.^30
The ‘‘real’’ colonisation of the Caesarian, Triumviral, and Augustan period
(the only major period of colonisation outside Italy in Roman history) should
be stressed, however, for it combined with two other very well-known pro-
cesses to produce marked changes in what we understand as ‘‘the Greek
city’’: these are of course the widespread private emigration to the provinces
by Roman citizens from Italy, and their settlement in Greek cities; and the
steadily increasing scale of the granting of Roman citizenship to individuals,
and hence to their descendants, in the Greek cities. It is not necessary here to
accumulate references to modern studies of these two processes; but it may
be noted simply that our knowledge of both, as regards the imperial period,
is very largely a function of the sudden explosion of the ‘‘epigraphic habit,’’
referred to above.
Taken all together, however, these processes, along with others to which
we will come, meant that ‘‘the Greek city’’ of the imperial period would be
more correctly described as ‘‘Graeco-Roman’’: that is, as a fusion or mélange
of languages and constitutions, types of public entertainment, architectural
forms, and religious institutions. The role of colonisation within this pro-
cess of fusion has perhaps not been sufficiently stressed, so an example will
be given from a series of second-century inscriptions from the colony of
Cremna in Pisidia. In principle of course, colonies were supposed to use Latin
in their public life. An important Augustan inscription from the colony of
Alexandria Troas indeed shows this rule in operation. It honours C. Fabricius
Tuscus,duovir(one of the two annual magistrates) andaugur(priest) in the
colony, who apart from a long list of military functions had been ‘‘prefect...
in charge of public works carried out in the colony by order of Augustus’’
(praef(ectus)...operum quae in colonia iussu Augusti facta sunt); the inscription
was put upd(ecreto) d(ecurionum)(by a decree of the senators).^31
Elsewhere, however, and no doubt in Alexandria Troas too with the pas-
sage of time, Greek tended to reassert itself, while still being deployed to
express those new and distinctive institutions which had been created by the
Pisidia, Cremna, Olbasa, Comama, Lystra, Parlais. For the background, see S. Mitchell,
‘‘The Hellenization of Pisidia,’’Mediterranean Archaeology (): .
. Text to nn. – below.
.AE,no.I. K. Alexandria Troas, no. .