an exception than the rule. There, linen-workers were consciously excluded
from participation in the polis.Dio’s response (Or.34.21–23) indicates that
this was not a regular practice in most other cities. There certainly were occa-
sions when involvement by an association or a guild in certain activities was
perceived by either civic or Roman officials to be subversive. Examples of
such incidents in Asia Minor include the proconsul’s edict regarding the riots
of bakers in Ephesus (IEph215, mid-second century CE; cf. Acts 19 and,
further, below) and Pliny the Younger’s dealings with associations in the
cities of Bithynia-Pontus during his special appointment as governor there
in the early second century CE(Ep.10.33–34, 92–93, 96–97). In general,
however, these sporadic incidents have been overemphasized by many
scholars (see Harland 1999, 153–93). Ste. Croix, for example, discusses the
involvement of associations in lower-class forms of protest, such as strikes
and other disturbances, and the resulting Roman suspicion toward them;
he does not mention at all the sort of positive relations between such groups
and both civic and imperial officials which are so well attested in the
inscriptional evidence (1981, 273, 319–20). Paul J. Achtemeier correctly
looks to associations for understanding the social context of the Christian
groups addressed by 1 Peter, but wrongly oversimplifies his portrait of asso-
ciations in stating that they were a “constant problem to the governing
authorities” (1996, 25–26; cf. Balch 1981, 65–80).
The preceding evidence clearly shows that the members of many dif-
ferent types of associations, representing a spectrum of social-economic
levels within society, from the more prestigious occupations of Roman busi-
nessmen and silversmiths to the less desirable professions of dyers and
clothing cleaners, actively participated in the networks of civic life and, in
important ways, closely identified with the polisand its structures. So much,
then, for the widespread scholarly view that associations and guilds were
a replacement for the declining structures of the polis,and the equally
untenable view that they were a consistently subversive element in society,
removed from civic identity and involved primarily in negative relations with
imperial and civic authorities.
This attachment to the institutions of the polis,and the accompanying
sense of civic identity or pride, is evinced in various other ways as well,
besides involvement in civic networks of benefaction. Some of the princi-
pal social-cultural institutions of the polis,often built or renovated through
the benefactions of the wealthy, were marketplaces, baths, gymnasia, sta-
diums, and theatres. Here, too, there is clear evidence of active participa-
tion by inhabitants of the cities. The age-group organizations of girls or
boys (paides), youths (ephêboi), young men (neoi), and elders (gerousia) were
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