to deal with the ringleaders of a revolutionary movement: two of them have been condemned to death
and a third sent to stand trial in Rome.
Certainly Greek communities, from whatever motives, paid Rome every sort of honour. In early years
her fides, the good faith to which communities were to entrust themselves, was much celebrated. From
the early second century cults were founded to the goddess Roma (Rhome in Greek significantly means
power); the poetess Melinno's hymn to Rome perhaps dates from this period. Cults were also set up to
individuals, starting with Flamininus; Plutarch describes the ceremonies in his name still carried out in
Euboea in his own day. The honour was gradually devalued: even Cicero was voted temples, which he
refused in an attempt to keep the cities' expenditure within bounds. No wonder Roman statesmen began
to feel themselves the equals of Hellenistic kings. Lesser honours-titles, statues-abounded, even for
prominent negotiatores, such as the Cloatii who lent to and protected-or ran-the little town of Gytheum
near Sparta in the early first century.
Even in the dark days of the Mithridatic War, when many places slaughtered the blood-sucking
negotiatores, a few cities of Greece and Asia stayed loyal, if sometimes from traditional enmity to
rebellious neighbours. Thus the Assembly at Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, where Rome honoured the
shrine of Aphrodite, voted to go with every available man to help a Roman general, for 'without the
protection of the Romans we do not even wish to live'. But the first century was a terrible time for many
Greek cities. They suffered in the fighting against Mithridates, and Sulla exacted large sums to punish
disloyalty and finance civil war. Piracy got out of hand, till Pompey suppressed it; so it seems did the
publicani, till Caesar restricted their powers in Asia at least. Communities, like individuals, fell
hopelessly in debt to Roman money-lenders. Cicero says in a speech of 66 (of course with an ulterior
motive) 'it is hard to express, citizens, how loathed we are by foreign nations.' It was greed he blamed.
The poverty of many cities is visible archaeologically; there was little new building. The East had not
fully recovered when renewed civil wars broke out. Pompey and Caesar, Brutus and Cassius, Antony
and Octavian, all financed their campaigns from Rome's subjects. When Judaea could not pay what
Cassius demanded, he sold four towns and many officials into slavery; as Antony observed, this was
unauthorised by the laws of war. Cassius also besieged the free city of Rhodes, so long a friend of
Rome, and carried off all its wealth except the chariot of its patron god the Sun. An even older friend of
Rome's, Massilia, had been taken by Caesar, for supporting Pompey.
And yet, through it all, many members of the upper class saw private and public advantage in-or no
alternative to-supporting Rome. They cultivated ties with important Romans, whether in Rome
themselves as ambassadors (a second-century inscription thanks a group of these for going round to the
morning receptions of great nobles) or when putting up Roman governors on their way to, or on circuit
in, the provinces. By the end of the Republic foreign amici had even begun to wield power in Rome as
advisers to the great dynasts; Theophanes of Mytilene was an intimate of Pompey's, and L. Cornelius
Balbus of Gades was Caesar's trusted agent. Though it had for long occasionally been granted as a
reward for service in war, citizenship was first given on a larger scale by Caesar, in whose time the rule
that Roman citizenship could not be combined with that of another state seems to have lapsed. The way