50 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Amisus, that would normally have escaped such intervention. There is
nothing to suggest that these occasions were anything but unusual.^38
But Pliny’s treatment of the ordinary subject cities was equally untypical.
The more conscientious governors in all periods would have made it their
business to check municipal accounts. It was always within their discretionary
authority to do so. More than one and a half centuries earlier Cicero had
carefully investigated the accounts of the cities of Cilicia.^39 But neither
Cicero nor the standard proconsul of the period of the Principate, including
Pliny’s predecessors in Bithynia, would have received instructions as Pliny
had to investigate city accounts systematically throughout the province, and
to make this his chief concern. Moreover, no rule was ever enacted to the
effect that cities should regularly submit their accounts to governors.
The power of the cities to regulate their own fi nances was restricted by
imperial directive in at least two respects. No city was to levy new taxes
without special permission of the emperor ( Cod.Iust. 4.62.1), and no new
public buildings were to be erected at public expense without the emperor’s
licence (e.g. Digest 50.10.3 pr-1). The fi rst regulation was probably issued
early in the empire, perhaps in the reign of Augustus, as is implied in a reply
of the emperor Vespasian to the city of Sabora in the south Spanish province
of Baetica that requested a new site and amendments to local tax
arrangements. Vespasian confi rmed those taxes that were conceded by
Augustus, but ordered the community to approach the proconsul if it wished
to impose new ones, ‘for I cannot make any decision if I have no advice on
this matter’ ( ILS 6092). The second rule can be seen evolving in the late fi rst
and early second centuries. Already before Pliny arrived in his province it
had become regular and perhaps compulsory to sound out the proconsul
before embarking on a building project (Dio Chrysostom, Or. 40.6, 45.5–6).
In the reign of Antoninus Pius, a generation after Pliny’s legateship, a rule
was formulated making imperial permission a prerequisite.
The interest of the Roman authorities encompassed not only the vetting
of building projects but also their completion. At Claudiopolis in Bithynia,
Pliny had to exact entry- fees from some newly admitted city councillors so
that a massive bath- project could get off the ground ( Ep. 10.39). But a
project might be held up because of the withholding of contributions pledged
voluntarily, as in the case of the redevelopment scheme at Prusa sponsored
by Dio Chrysostom the philosopher/politician a few years before the arrival
of Pliny (Dio Chrysostom, Or. 47.13–16,19). Here the legal position was less
clear, because private rather than public funds were in question, until Trajan
ruled that pledges of expenditure made by private individuals in favour of
their cities had to be fulfi lled, if not by themselves, then by their heirs ( Digest
50.12.14). Thereafter, an ambitious politician who sought to buy his way to
offi ce with a pledge of some bounty would have to make good his promise.
Two inscriptions of the early 160s from Cuicul in north Africa show
unfulfi lled pledges of a statue, and of a hall with statue and columns, being
honoured by order of a legate of Numidia.^40 Such rulings, and others on