The Greek City in the Roman Period Greek name. It was also a symbol of the fact that in the endGraecia captadid
indeed imprison her captor.
As regards the first possibility, the signs of any real loss of cultural iden-
tity were indeed very few. Latin literature, for instance, seems to have gained
extraordinarily little currency in the Greek East; and there is no certain evi-
dence even of the translation of Virgil until Constantine included part of a
Greek version of theFourthEcloguein hisAddresstotheAssemblyoftheSaints.^72
Roman law, however, as taught in the schools of the Roman colony of Bery-
tus, did, from the third century onwards, act as a magnet for the youth of the
Greek cities.^73 Looking in the reverse direction, it is of real significance that
the history of Rome is largely ‘‘constituted’’ for us by Greek writers of the im-
perial period, Dionysius from Halicarnassus, Plutarch from Chaeronea, Ap-
pian from Alexandria, and Cassius Dio from Nicaea.^74 The latter three were
all Roman citizens, the middle two of equestrian rank and the last-named a
senator and consul.
None the less, the most interesting and significant new items of evidence,
or new studies of already-known evidence, of the last few years have tended
to show a reassertion of historic and mythological identity in the frame-
work of the collective life of the Greek city. But this cannot properly be
seen as a movement ‘‘against’’ Rome (and here again the contrast with the
two great Jewish revolts is fundamental). The most systematic of all these re-
assertions, indeed, the Panhellenion, was the work of the emperor Hadrian.^75
In more specifically local contexts, the symbolic and communal assertion
of a city’s identity will have been the work of its local governing class—
but in the cases known to us this was a class in which the Roman citizen-
ship, and even Roman office-holding, were already widespread. At Athens
indeed, there are clear indications that actual Roman office was not sought
as frequently as elsewhere. None the less, the Roman citizenship was com-
mon among the upper classes, and the resistance to the Herulian invasion
of the s was led by a member of a family which had long held the citi-
zenship, Herennius Dexippus.^76 Athens remained, even after the Herulian
. Constantine,Oratio ad Coetum Sanctorum–.
. See Millar (n. ), –.
. E. Gabba,Dionysius and the History of Archaic Rome(); C. P. Jones,Plutarch and
Rome(); F. Millar,AStudyofCassiusDio(). See in general E. Gabba, ‘‘The Historians
and Augustus,’’ in Millar and Segal (n. ), .
. See A. J. Spawforth and S. Walker, ‘‘The World of the Panhellenion I. Athens and
Eleusis,’’JRS (): ; ‘‘II. Three Dorian Cities,’’JRS (): .
. See G. M. Woloch,RomanCitizenshipandtheAthenianElite,..–(); F. Mil-
lar (n. ), .