GOVERNMENT WITHOUT BUREAUCRACY 43Constantine an upgrading from village to city ( ILS 6099). This was a lapsed
city; as evidence of its former status, it was urged that it had once elected
annual magistrates, had a council and a full complement of ordinary citizens;
and that it still had baths, statues and aqueducts. It was also thought
worthwhile to inform Constantine that Orcistus was a Christian community.
But the crucial point to establish was that a city on the site would be a
practical proposition. The emperor was informed that there was a plentiful
water supply, and that the community stood at the meeting- point of four
roads. The distance from the neighbouring cities is given precisely, perhaps
with a view to showing that there was room in the region for another city
with a territory of reasonable size. Orcistus was a dependency of one of
those cities, Nacola, and judged its rule oppressive. It was standard practice
for a city to exact fi nancial contributions, services and manpower for its
own benefi t from the communities under its control.^24 As Strabo wrote of
Nimes (Nemausus) in Gaul: ‘It has subject to its authority twenty- four
villages that are exceptional in their supply of strong men, of stock like its
own, and contribute towards its expenses’ (186). Here we catch a glimpse of
the way cities went about providing the imperial government with its
revenue.
A second inscription from Galatia concerns the town of Tymandus, which
petitioned an unknown emperor for the status of city ( ILS 6090). We do not
have the petition itself, but an imperial letter to an offi cial. This states
explicitly that it was the assurance of the Tymandeni that they could provide
a suffi cient number of local councillors that decided the issue in their favour.
A third inscription, dated to AD 158, shows Antoninus Pius in
correspondence with a newly established city in the Strymon valley in
Macedonia ( IGBulg. IV 2263). The city was permitted to strengthen its
fi nancial base in two ways, by imposing a poll tax on free citizens in its
territory, and by expanding its local council, or boulê , of 80 men, all liable
to an entry- fee. A council of 80 reasonably wealthy men suggests a relatively
substantial population base, and is something of a surprise in a remote
Thracian village. Pius had presumably supplemented the existing population
by drafting both rich and poor from nearby settlements, to create a
community better endowed in population and resources than any pre-
existing one. Nine villages contributed residents to Pizos on the Thracian
sector of the via Egnatia when it was established by Septimius Severus and
Caracalla in AD 202 ( IGBulg. III/2 1690). In rather different circumstances
Augustus had herded Achaeans into Patrae and Aetolians into Nicopolis
(Pausanias 7.18.7–8,10.38.4). Roman city- foundation from early days had
a strongly coercive aspect.
That is not to say that communities such as those established in Macedonia
and Thrace were invariably successful. No inscription from the site of the
city in the Strymon is known after AD 238. It may be that our anonymous
city soon after this date slipped back into its previous condition as an
anonymous village. Some cities in rural areas of provinces such as Moesia