SUPPLYING THE ROMAN EMPIRE 125as indeed the Oenoanda inscription suggests. Graeco-Roman euergetism
was essentially the same as its Hellenistic predecessor. Its ideology was civic,
not humanitarian – very few euergetists would have described what they
were doing as poor relief.^34 The attitude of its exponents, the rich, was (still)
ambivalent: they were producers and occasionally traders as well as
benefactors.
Two indicators of change can be taken together. The rich, as just
stated, were in a position to indulge in profi teering as well as benefaction,
and this gives the food supply system, such as it was, a fragile look. Our
impression is that speculation in essential goods was less under the control
of local government in the Roman than in the Hellenistic world. It is not
coincidental that subsistence crises were frequently resolved from the
outside, typically by the intervention of Roman offi cials. A provincial
governor was praised at Aelium Coela in the Thracian Chersonese for
having ‘looked after the interests of everybody with zeal during a very severe
shortage of foodstuffs’. At Pisidian Antioch in the province of Cappadocia,
the governor Antistius Rusticus was called in by the local magistrates and
councillors to relieve a grain crisis in AD 92–3. He issued an edict compelling
those with grain stocks to release that which was surplus to their own
subsistence needs at a price of one denarius, presumably well below the
market rate. A second- century proconsul of Asia exerted his authority over
bakers, whose failure to supply bread had led to civil disturbances in
Ephesos. The emperor Hadrian promulgated a law at Athens designed to
prevent local traders from causing artifi cial shortages of olive oil by sending
it abroad.^35
Civic councils in these instances were powerless to resolve crises
and unable to control profi teers, who might have included some of their
own members. However, the intervention of Roman offi cials in such
circumstances, though it brought short- term benefi ts, had long- term
negative consequences. The morale, initiative and authority of local
government was undermined, and the tendency to dysfunctioning aggravated.
On the other side, the imperial power may be credited with having
made possible and even inspired the extraordinary outburst of civic
munifi cence that marked the second and early third centuries all over the
empire. But there can be no doubt that of the two phenomena, the spirit of
euergetism, and the sapping of local initiative and authority, the latter would
be the more enduring.
Conclusion
The cities of the Roman world were apparently able to cope with the
periodic food shortages that they suffered, although there was a tendency,
perhaps a growing tendency, to lean on the authority and charity of the
imperial power. This was an ominous development.