The publicani were influential because so many of the men taking these contracts were equestrians, and from the late second century BC the wider equestrian order played more of a role in politics and especially in political trials. They were simply too important for most senators to risk offending. In Cicero’s day this influence was enhanced because some powerful aristocrats came to have an interest in the tax-collecting companies, even if as senators they could not directly take on such contracts. Crassus, nicknamed dives or ‘the rich’, championed the cause of the publicani wanting a rebate after buying the rights to collect taxes in Asia at too high a price.30
Senators were restricted by law from involvement in large-scale trade, for instance by being forbidden from owning a large merchant ship, but, as with the bar on bidding for public contracts, ways were found around this rule. There were many Romans active in the provinces, and all could try to win favour and support from the governor. There was no assurance that this would work, and in exceptional cases a man like Verres might even rob, imprison or execute them. Such acts flouted the laws protecting citizens, but if a governor chose to ignore them then there was no one to stop him. Verres later claimed that the men were rebels who had fought for the losing side in Rome’s recent civil war.31
Few governors took the risk of abusing fellow citizens to this extent, but their response to appeals depended a great deal on their assessment of the individual and most of all his connections and supporters. Cicero wrote many letters recommending acquaintances to other governors and received plenty on behalf of men active in Cilicia, and such letters are the commonest form of literature to survive from the Roman world. A man would only be in his province for a few years at most, but the favours traded there might help him throughout his career. In 51–50 BC Cicero sent several letters to Minucius Thermus, governor of Asia:
May I therefore request you in virtue of the very close connection between us and our many equal and mutual good offices to exert your benevolent influence on Marcus Anneius’ behalf . . .
I have long been on very familiar terms with Lucius Genucilius Curvus, a very worthy gentlemen who never forgets a service. I thoroughly recommend him to you . . . I hope you will accommodate him in all respects so far as your conscience and dignity will allow . . . for he will never ask you anything unbecoming to your character . . . Cluvius of Puteoli . . . is convinced that unless he settles some business which he has in your province during your period of office through my recommendations, he may as well give it up as lost . . .32
Sometimes existing associates appealed directly on their own behalf. Cicero had asked his young friend Caelius Rufus to write to him with the political news of Rome. Part-way through the year, Caelius was elected aedile, a magistrate whose responsibilities included staging games at Rome. If these pleased the crowds, then their votes helped a man win the higher magistracies, but inevitably spectacular games were expensive. Caelius asked Cicero to send him panthers to be displayed and hunted in the arena. This was normal and in fact Caelius’ colleague in the office, a man with no claim on Cicero as far as we know, also wrote on the off-chance of being given animals for his own games. In both cases the proconsul refused, although with Caelius he added humour to the refusal, claiming that the panthers were the only persecuted inhabitants in his entire province and so had fled abroad.33
Some recommendations were on behalf of provincials, but the majority were for Romans. A man named Scaptius came to Cicero for assistance in collecting money owed by the city of Salamis on Cyprus. He had a letter from Marcus Junius Brutus – later famous as one of the murderers of Julius Caesar, but at this time seen as a man to watch in the next generation of senators and senior magistrates. Atticus, a friend from Cicero’s youth who chose to remain an equestrian and not enter politics, but still managed to know practically everyone of importance, was especially keen for the orator to place Brutus in his debt. Scaptius asked for the army rank of prefect. Appius had granted this to him, along with command of a couple of troops of cavalry – perhaps fifty or sixty men. With these he had blockaded the city council of Salamis inside their chamber, refusing to let any of them out until five had starved to death. Yet even this brutality did not secure the money owed.
Cicero had made clear that he would not give army posts to anyone with business interests in Cilicia, although he was willing to grant the empty title to businessmen elsewhere. Scaptius’ request was refused and the cavalry were withdrawn from Cyprus, but Cicero promised to arbitrate in the matter. His edict stated that he would honour no loan contract requiring payment at more than the legal rate of 12 per cent compound interest. Scaptius was asking for 48 per cent – the difference was 106 to 200 talents – and this was a sum the Salaminians were incapable of paying. (An Attic talent weighted some 25.86 kg or just under 57 lbs and was valued at 24,000 sesterces or 6,000 denarii in Roman currency.) Yet as the negotiations progressed he revealed that it was not in fact his money, but that it was Brutus’ and Scaptius was merely his local agent. He also cited two senatorial decrees passed to allow the loan in the first place at the higher rate in spite of the law, measures clearly secured by Brutus and his friends. Cicero considered this outrageous and in no way invalidating the law or his decree, and felt that 12 per cent compound interest offered a handsome enough profit. He refused to oblige Brutus in spite of repeated demands, privately stating that, if he knew the truth of Scaptius’ activities, then his esteem for the up-and-coming man was much reduced. Yet in the end the longer-term importance of friendships at Rome trumped Cicero’s sense of right and wrong. He did not force Scaptius to accept payment at 12 per cent, and instead granted his request to let the matter lie. Brutus would try to get the 48 per cent with the aid of the next proconsul.34
Julius Caesar once said of Brutus that ‘whatever he wants, he wants badly’ and nowhere is that more clear than in this episode – a shock to anyone familiar only with Shakespeare’s ‘noblest Roman of them all’. His letters to Cicero were rude, in spite of the latter’s high rank and greater age. Brutus was also owed money by King Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia and King Deiotaurus of Galatia. In this case the rate was no more than the legal maximum of 12 per cent, but the latter was too impoverished to pay anything and the former was even more heavily in debt to Pompey and was incapable of paying either creditor back in full.35
Especially with the lurking Parthian threat, it was important not to weaken the loyalty or strength of the allied kingdoms any further. Soon after arriving in Cilicia Cicero had prevented an attempt to dethrone Ariobarzanes by exiling a powerful high priest before civil war broke out. The king was grateful to the proconsul, but it would make no sense to weaken his rule by dunning him too severely for money, since this might provoke more unrest in the kingdom. Cicero managed to get some money paid to Brutus’ agents, although only a fraction of the loan. Pompey fared less well in proportion to the sum involved, but was content with a part of the interest, and Ariobarzanes was not ruined. Brutus’ thanks was gruff, and it is hard to know whether he was simply too arrogant to accept that anyone else should be paid before his own claims were satisfied, or was so short of disposable funds that he was desperate for money. Loans to provincials could yield very high interest, but this came at considerable risk. Like Ariobarzanes they might well have a lot of other creditors and there were competing demands for assistance from the Roman governor. Moneylending in the provinces brought some people fabulous profits, but there were surely others who lost out or were even ruined when they were unable to make the debtors pay.36
As always, the better-connected had far more chance of getting what they wanted. It took an exceptional governor to ignore the pressures of pleasing other senators, especially men of status and influence. Cicero was deeply offended by Appius’ failure to meet him when he entered the province. Not only was this rude, he then discovered that his predecessor was still holding assizes, no doubt doing favours for friends and lining his pockets for one more month. This was wholly illegal, since only one
man at a time could hold imperium in a province, but no one could stop him. For all his private comments about Appius’ appalling extortion, Cicero was scrupulously polite in his letters to him, not saying anything about this and pretending that the talk of Appius still holding court could only be malicious gossip. His predecessor’s replies were offensive, complaining when Cicero reversed any of his decisions and when he stopped the communities from spending more money on sending delegations to Rome to praise Appius’ government of the province. This was something most governors expected, regardless of how well or badly they had treated the provincials, but it was an expensive burden on the cities. Cicero joked that Appius was like a doctor whose treatment was killing a patient and yet resented another physician coming along with a cure, but he continued to be scrupulously courteous in his letters to him and made no mention of his depredations in his despatches.37
Cicero would have to sit in the Senate alongside Appius and the other former consuls when he returned to Rome, and do business with Pompey, Brutus and all the others who had urged him to aid their friends. He did not go as far as openly to help any of them to extort more money than they were due from the provincials, nor did he compel the latter to pay more than they could afford. At one point he notes that when he looked into the cities’ finances he found widespread embezzlement by local magistrates. The matter was dealt with quietly, the men returning the stolen money and nothing more being said – raising the suspicion that the sums he discovered were merely the tip of the iceberg. However, this did do a good deal to restore the cities’ finances and so make it easier for them to afford to pay taxes and debts. For the moment the publicani and the creditors were satisfied – if with little grace in the case of Brutus.38
For all his disgust at Brutus’ greed and Scaptius’ brutality in trying to collect his money, Cicero did not make the scandal public, just as he did not openly talk of Appius’ abuses. Similarly, he said nothing publicly about the defeat suffered by Bibulus’ men near Mount Amanus, even though the latter was in due course granted a triumph for his campaign. This award was helped by the influence of Bibulus’ father-in-law, Cato the Younger. The latter had refused to vote for a thanksgiving to celebrate Cicero’s successful campaign in spite of a friendly request. Cato’s blunt explanation that he felt the proconsul’s just administration was more admirable than mere military success rang hollow given his subsequent backing of his relative. This was politics, a world of traded favours, old obligations, compromise and deals done in the hope of future advantage, and in that sense it would be familiar to the men and women in public life in many countries throughout history. Good administration of Cilicia was just one, and not the most important, of Cicero’s priorities, but his own reputation acted as a stronger check against giving in altogether to pressure from others.39
By Roman standards Cicero governed his province well. Helped by his experienced legates, he acted promptly to offer support to Syria against the threat of Parthian invasion. He was fortunate that a major attack did not come, for he was well aware that his army was small, the two legions under-strength and not in a high state of training or of good morale. Local allies, with the notable exception of the kingdom of Galatia, were too poor to muster any significant force. He also felt that they were unlikely to fight with spirit on behalf of Rome, given the conduct of governors like Appius and the constant demands from the publicani and Roman moneylenders. A detachment of Cicero’s army won a skirmish with Parthian raiders, and the concentration of his forces on the border presented a bold front, even if there were other reasons why the Parthians chose only to raid and not to invade – something they would only do in 41 BC. The campaign near Mount Amanus was a useful operation against communities prone to prey on more settled areas of the province. It was a display of force intended to intimidate and led to the burning of several villages, the full destruction of one walled town and the enslavement of its population and the surrender of others.
Cicero launched the expedition because he had an army at his disposal and nothing else to do with it. Had the Parthians arrived, then the campaign would not have been fought. Other governors may not have chosen to risk dangerous operations in the mountains, but most probably would have done the same thing as Cicero. It did not represent a concerted effort to suppress the peoples of the region and bring permanent peace and security to the province, and instead was a sporadic effort in that direction. Peace in the province and security for allies and provincial communities was an admirable aim and a properly just cause to wage war, which of course also brought the prospect of glory and plunder. Personal advantage combined with benefits for the Republic in a way that the Romans would have seen as entirely honourable and worthwhile. Cicero was able to secure Ariobarzanes on his throne without direct use of military force, refusing the king’s request for a few cohorts of legionaries to back him up. This occurred while the Parthian threat still loomed and the proconsul did not want to weaken his main army, so was a deliberate balancing of resources to the threats faced.40
The military side of Cicero’s role was discharged competently and successfully, and he was able to leave his province at the end of his twelve months before any fresh onslaught from the Parthians developed. The harvest in 51 BC was poor in the regions of Asia attached to Cilicia, raising the risk of famine, especially for the poorer inhabitants of the cities. Cicero used ‘his authority and powers of persuasion’ to ensure that any provincial or Roman businessman hoarding stocks of grain made sufficient available to the communities. He was proud that he did not need to bully or begin legal action to achieve this. Administratively the proconsul stuck to the terms of his edict, was fair and consistent in his judgements and made himself readily available, even if by holding the main assize at Laodicea he forced those from other regions to travel to him. It looks as if he went through the cases faster than he had anticipated and did not need to use all the days set aside for them. Cicero compromised his own standards to an extent, most notably by not resolving the situation of the Salaminians. He may also have taken gifts he considered acceptable and some of the other perks of his position, for it is likely that he profited from his term as proconsul, if only from a share in the sale of prisoners.41
Cicero was in Cilicia for just twelve months, before heading home and leaving his inexperienced quaestor in charge, waiting for a new proconsul to arrive. Cicero was not keen on doing this, but had no one more senior or trustworthy who was able and willing to take on the job. All in all, the inhabitants of his province had done better under his administration than under some of his predecessors, particularly Appius Claudius Pulcher. He had cost the provincials less than most governors, proved fair in his judgements and had maintained reasonable security, allowing them to get on with their lives. Banditry was still a problem and would remain so, and the inhabitants of the Amanus range were no more than contained for the moment. The provincials had been spared a major war with Parthia, and whatever their feelings towards the Romans and their eastern neighbours they will not have wanted campaigning armies fighting through their lands. For the moment rule by Rome was a fact of life, and they well knew that it could be far less pleasant than Cicero had made it.42
VI
PROVINCIALS AND KINGS
‘At the time I am dealing with, Comanus and his brother arrived on an embassy from the younger Ptomely and Menyllus of Alabanda from the elder one. They all entered the [Senate] house together, where they had a long and acrimonious dispute with each other; but when both Torquatus and Merula confirmed the statements of the younger brother and warmly supported him, the Senate decreed that Menyllus must leave Rome in five days, that their alliance with the older Ptolemy was at an end, and that legates should be sent to the younger brother to inform him of their decision.’ – Polybius, 140s BC.1
‘AT LEAST THEY THINK THEY HAVE SELF-GOVERNMENT’
In Cicero’s day there were more provinces and more Roman governors than in the second century BC, and the proconsuls and propraetors undert
ook a wider range of activities beyond their purely military role. Even so, their involvement in the everyday administration of their provinces was limited, while as in the past the dominance or hegemony of Rome was a distant presence, doing little to change life in a region. This was especially true of the eastern Mediterranean, where a succession of major military interventions did not result in a permanent presence until Macedonia was given a governor and a garrison in 146 BC. Usually this was a former praetor in command of a single legion which, supported by Latin and Italian allies, would not have numbered more than 10,000 men. When the province of Asia was established its garrison was as small or smaller. There were no other Roman soldiers anywhere in the Greek world except on the rare occasions when a major war erupted.2
The small size of Rome’s permanent military commitment to the eastern Mediterranean makes it abundantly clear that these were not armies of occupation. In the past, the kings of Macedonia had fought frequent campaigns on their northern frontier in response to raiding from the Thracian and other tribes living beyond them. Rome dissolved the kingdom after the defeat of Perseus, but the four regional administrations or merides they created in its stead lacked the ability and probably the resources to perform this defensive role effectively. In 149 BC a pretender to the Macedonian throne invaded at the head of an army of tribesmen, beating the local forces and then defeating and killing a Roman praetor sent against him. This Fourth Macedonian War spilled over into fighting in Greece and came at a time when Roman attention was focused on the final confrontation with Carthage.
It seems that the decision to send a governor and legion to Macedonia was intended to prevent a repeat of this crisis. Communications were improved by the construction of the Via Egnatia, which eventually stretched from the Adriatic to the Aegean coast. This was an asset should armies ever need to pass through the region for major campaigns further east, but it is more likely that its primary purpose was to allow the provincial garrison to move and be supplied in all seasons. Although the evidence is poor for the next half-century, it does look as if there were frequent campaigns against tribes like the Scordisci, and there were several Roman defeats as well as victories. Even at the end of the second century BC when Italy faced the menace of the migrating Cimbri and Teutones, the military presence in Macedonia was maintained in spite of a desperate need for soldiers elsewhere. For several years consuls were sent to the province – another indication of the importance placed on maintaining military dominance on the frontier. The Senate obviously considered this to be highly important, and not simply an opportunity for governors to go hunting for triumphs.3
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