The Hellenistic World and Rome
the emperor travelled, that presence might become real; but our evidence,
however biased, is enough to show that a real, concrete connection between
city and emperors was maintained far more intensively by the constant traf-
fic in embassies, whether on diplomatic missions or in pursuit of requests or
disputes, to bring city decrees before the emperor, address him in person,
and bring back a letter in Greek in reply.^62 As we see in the case of a letter
of Caracalla of.., even an imperial letter to an individual, referring
to the obligations to hispatris(home city) on the part of another individual,
might be ‘‘read out in the theatre,’’ in this case that of Philadelphia in Asia.^63
The purpose of doing that was of course to publicise it before the citizens,
meeting in the theatre, ‘‘where it is their custom to take counsel,’’ as Tacitus
wrote of the Antiochenes in Syria.^64 When aroused, the citizens might even
gather spontaneously in the theatre, as Acts represents theEphesioidoing
when provoked by Paul’s teaching.^65 But these allusions reflect a much more
important truth about what we call, in some ways misleadingly, a ‘‘Greek
city.’’ A Greek city was not essentially a ‘‘place’’ or an urban centre; it was a
community of individuals. The point is made with great clarity, but without
further development, in an important chapter by Joyce Reynolds on ‘‘Cities’’
in the context of the administration of the Empire.^66 Thus when an emperor
wrote, as we would say, ‘‘to Pergamon,’’ that was not in fact how he expressed
himself: his letters would go to ‘‘thearchontes,boulē,anddēmosof thePer-
gamēnoi’’ (to the magistrates, council, and people of the Pergamenians); or,
if ‘‘to Aphrodisias,’’ ‘‘to thearchontes,boulē,anddēmosof theAphrodisieis’’ (to
the magistrates, council, and people of the Aphrodisians). The point is not a
trivial one, for we consistently mistranslate, and therefore misconceive, the
nature of the communal attachments which gave people their identity, in the
. This traffic in embassies is a central theme of myThe Emperor in the Roman World,
..–..(; reissued with afterword, ). For imperial letters, see the posthu-
mously published corpus by J. H. Oliver,GreekConstitutionsoftheEarlyRomanEmperorsfrom
Inscriptions and Papyri().
.IGRI, no. ; Dittenberger,Syll.^3 , no. ; Abbott and Johnson,Municipal Admin-
istration, no. .
. Tacitus,Hist.,.
.Acts:. It is worth noting the valuable survey by G. H. R. Horsley, ‘‘The Inscrip-
tions of Ephesos and the New Testament,’’Novum Testamentum (): .
. J. Reynolds, ‘‘Cities,’’ in D. C. Braund, ed.,The Administration of the Roman Empire
(Exeter Studies in History , ), : ‘‘They were, strictly speaking, ‘peoples’ (populi,
demoi), properly designated by an ethnic rather than a place name (Carthaginiensesrather
thanCarthago,Pergamenoirather thanPergamon).’’