Xerxes and his successors succeeded in consolidating imperial control over Mesopotamia. There is, at least, no explicit record of Babylonian resistance to Achaemenid rule after the revolts in the early years of Xerxes’ reign (CAH iv 73–5, 133–5). Later political disturbances were not matters of provincial reaction, but struggles among members of the Achaemenid dynasty and the imperial aristocracy. Even these left few plain marks in Babylonian texts.

The available Babylonian texts are similar in kind to those from the early Achaemenid reigns, but there are fewer of them. They include few fragments of historiographic texts and royal inscriptions. Most are legal and administrative documents. Among about 1,100 published texts of these kinds from the last 150 years of the Achaemenids, a few are temple records, but most belonged to the private archives of Babylonians – in fact, nearly two thirds of them come from a single source, the Murashû archive (454–404 B.C.) – and, although they record contacts with agencies of the provincial government, they are not documents from the conduct of government as such. What they divulge is limited by the concerns of city-based businessmen. They are conservative in form, almost oblivious to political events, and often enigmatic in their allusions to contemporary institutions. They are a rich source of detail on local conditions, but an episodic source on the history of their times.

MAINLAND GREECE IN ALEXANDER'S REIGN

THE DOMINANCE OF THE CORINTHIAN LEAGUE, 336–330 B.C.

During Alexander's reign the Greek world was controlled by the political system established after Chaeronea, which modern scholars have conveniently labelled the Corinthian League. This was primarily an alliance under the leadership of the Macedonian king, in which all states which had individual treaties with Macedon were organized in a single structure, directed to the war against Persia. The corollary of alliance was peace. All contracting states committed themselves to a wide-ranging common peace, affirming freedom and autonomy for all and renouncing subversion of any participating government. The implementation of these two general aims was in the hands of a council (synedrion) to which all states in the alliance sent representatives. The council made general enactments about the war, prohibiting service under the Persian King, and it policed the common peace, with the ultimate power to declare war against any transgressor, a war in which all contracting states were obliged by oath to participate. It might even act as a court of arbitration, ruling on disputes between member states before they endangered the peace (Tod no. 179). But the executive power was vested in the hegemon, the Macedonian king whose monarchy all states were bound to uphold. Inevitably the system would be geared to Macedonian interests. Sympathetic regimes could expect the support of the synedrion, whereas, if a state antagonistic to the Macedonian king suffered a change of government, it was unlikely that complaints would be effectively voiced.

STYLE AND ICONOLOGY

Greek art in the fourth century B.C. is made up of two distinct strands – one, an external set of stylistic mannerisms derived from the art of the fifth century B.C. and the other, an inner spirit that anticipates the art of the hellenistic period – and it is these two strands, woven together, that give the monuments of the period their particular character.

Greek sculptors of the fourth century, for example, frequently adopted the elegant, calligraphic style of Attic art of the later fifth century as their point of departure. At other times they reached back beyond this style to the serene and balanced style of the Parthenon frieze or to the formal harmony of Polyclitus. These prototypical styles were further developed, naturally, in ways that make works of the fourth century recognizable and distinctive, but a sense of formal continuity with the past nevertheless always remains strong in them. On the basis of certain votive reliefs and grave stelae, in fact, it can even be argued that neoclassicism, that reverence at a distance for the art of the high Classical period as a moment of perfection which can only be emulated because it cannot be surpassed, had its origin in the fourth century. On the other hand, if one looks at the content of fourth-century sculpture, at the attitudes and feelings that it is used to express, one finds a new interest in the personal experience of the individual as an appropriate subject for the visual arts and, with it, a rejection of the more impersonal, group-oriented themes connected with the life of the polis that had been the concern of much of the art of the fifth century.

Thebes’ victory at Leuctra allowed it to attract allies and wield influence in many parts of the Greek world. It moved quickly from a position of relative weakness to become a leading power in Greek inter-state politics, acting in central Greece, Thessaly and Macedon, the Peloponnese, and – briefly – the Aegean. The available evidence of Theban activity in these various regions is very uneven. Information is richest on events in the Peloponnese, because Xenophon, who gives the fullest ancient account of the 360s, concentrates on Peloponnesian affairs to the neglect of other parts of Greece. Even on Peloponnesian affairs Xenophon is partisan in his judgments, both political and social, and also omits major events of the first importance, such as the liberation of Messenia. None the less his account, taken in conjunction with other available evidence, offers a quantity of information on Peloponnesian affairs that we do not possess for other areas. Much remains uncertain even in Peloponnesian history, but even more in the history of other Greek areas in these years.

The opportunities which opened up for Thebes in the aftermath of Leuctra were great and tempting, but not all predictable. In the Peloponnese Sparta had for long done what it could to prevent unwelcome change. Resentment had none the less developed among Peloponnesian states on a great number of issues; some of these were particular matters, such as Elis’ claim to Triphylia and Mantinea's desire to refound her urban centre, while others were wider, such as a wish to create an Arcadian federal state.

This book is a study of slavery in the central period of Roman history that pays particular attention to what it was like – or to what I think it was like – to be a Roman slave. By ‘central period’ I mean the four centuries from roughly 200 BC to roughly AD 200, though I wander freely beyond these chronological limits as I think appropriate. Edward Gibbon described the slave population of Rome as that ‘unhappy condition of men who have endured the weight, without sharing the benefits, of society’. My interest lies in emphasising the structural importance of slavery in Roman society and culture and in trying to recreate the realities of the slave experience. The results are not always edifying, but they are in my view essential to a proper understanding of Roman antiquity. I hope that readers will find them arresting and absorbing as well, even if a trace of the ‘unhappy’ must always remain.

In keeping with the aims of the series to which it belongs, the book is primarily intended for students who are examining Roman slavery for the first time. Accordingly I attempt to combine a reasonable amount of basic material and explanation with analysis and interpretation. If more advanced readers find the book useful so much the better. I must stress, however, that I have written for those whose interests are genuinely historical and wide-ranging, free that is to say from the conservatism that conventionally dominates the practice of ancient history.

When Cyprus and Phoenicia were incorporated into the Achaemenid empire during the later sixth century B.C. they already looked back upon long centuries of trading connexions and cultural exchanges. During the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. both areas, forming part of the Fifth Satrapy (Hdt. III.91.1), had a number of basic problems in common. Both were divided into a number of relatively small, half-independent political units. These polities were long-established monarchies: Salamis, Ceryneia, Lapethus, Soli, Marium, Tamassus, Citium, Idalium, Amathus, Curium and Paphos in Cyprus; Sidon, Tyre, Byblus and Aradus in Phoenicia.

One trend to be observed in the history of both Cyprus and Phoenicia during this period is a continuous conflict of interests between these kingdoms. Again and again local feuds arise from their attempts to extend their own territory at the cost of neighbouring states or to gain domination over the whole area. These conflicts are superseded for short periods by a common policy when the kingdoms unite in their aim to gain greater, if not absolute, independence from their Persian overlord. Such a tendency – which can be observed in all regions of the Achaemenid empire which had strong political and cultural traditions of their own – is more marked in Cyprus than in Phoenicia. The front-line position of the island during the wars between the Greek poleis and Persia more easily prompted attempts to shake off Achaemenid rule.

Cypriot kingdoms and Phoenician city states also confronted a number of similar social problems, not least the process of growing Hellenization with its consequences. Yet despite such common problems and tendencies the traditions and the development of Phoenicia and Cyprus are different to such a degree that it seems necessary to treat both areas separately during most of the period under review.

THE SUPREMACY OF SPARTA

The Peace of Antalcidas had humbled Sparta's enemies and left them impotent, at least for the time being. The breaking of the Theban hold over Boeotia was followed by the refoundation of Plataea (Paus. IX. I. 4), which probably took place at this time rather than after the seizure of the Cadmea, the citadel of Thebes, and it is likely that Thebes was forced into alliance with Sparta (Isoc. XIV.27, Plut. Pel. 4.5). This has been doubted, but the absence of any allusion to the alliance at the time of the Theban negotiations with Olynthus and the trial of Ismenias is not sufficient to prove that it did not exist.

The Corinthian War was over. Now, as she had in 421 and 404, Sparta turned her attention to the conduct of her friends in the war. Her aim (Xen. Hell. v.2.1) was to punish those of her allies who had favoured the enemy and make such disloyalty impossible for the future. The first victims of her displeasure were the perennially restive Mantineans, who had shown their unreliability in various ways. They had evaded military service under pretext of a sacred truce, shown little enthusiasm when they had served, rejoiced at Sparta's military failures and even supplied the Argives with corn. Therefore, in 385, Sparta issued an ultimatum. Mantinea must dismantle her fortifications: compliance would be accepted as retrospective proof of loyalty. The Mantineans refused, and so an expedition was mounted. Agesilaus was reluctant to command, allegedly because of Mantinea's services to his father, so Agesipolis led the Spartan army, even though his father Pausanias had been on good terms with the leaders of the Mantinean people (Xen. Hell. V.2.3).

To dream of being beheaded, of being turned to bronze, of blowing a sacred trumpet, of riding a horse through the city, of becoming a king, of flying – these were just a few of the dreams that Artemidorus took to signify that the slaves who dreamed them would at some future point in their lives be set free. There was always a good reason: beheading indicated the impending separation of slave and slaveowner; it was only the free who had bronze statues set up to them, only the free who possessed sacred trumpets and had the privilege of riding through the city on horseback; a king had to be free by definition, and to fly was to resemble a bird, a creature above which there could be no other. This was not all fancy. A slave known to Artemidorus was actually manumitted after dreaming that he had three penises, exchanging his single name for the three names of a Roman citizen. Artemidorus’ science was not to be doubted.

The interpretation of slaves’ dreams was predicated on the dual assumption that freedom was the greatest benefit that could be bestowed on the slave and that it was a benefit the slave unquestionably wanted to acquire. At one stage indeed (Onir. 2.3) Artemidorus speaks of slaves who longed for freedom.

In the middle of the first Century AD at Phrygian Hierapolis in the Roman province of Asia, a child was born who in adulthood and much further to the west was to achieve lasting fame as a philosopher. He spent a considerable portion of his life in Rome, commingling with members of the Roman elite and studying in the Flavian era with the eminent Musonius Rufus. Subsequently, when Domitian in the early nineties expelled philosophers from the city, he took up residence at Nicopolis in Epirus and there he attracted audiences of Roman officials, among others, who stopped to hear him as they journeyed to and from Rome's eastern provinces. About AD 108 the young L. Flavius Arrianus, a future consul, historian and redactor of the philosopher's teachings, was among the visitors and somewhat later the emperor Hadrian may well have made an appearance too. The child was Epictetus. Yet when he was born there could have been little anticipation of future celebrity or association with the powerful, for Epictetus was born a slave and owed both his early translation to Rome and his introduction there to philosophy to the accident of belonging to the freedman Epaphroditus, who in the reign of Nero was the emperor's secretary a libellis.

It was because of slavery that Epictetus became a philosopher – slavery brought Epictetus, that is to say, certain opportunities, perhaps even advantages he might otherwise have never known.

INTRODUCTION: TOPOGRAPHY AND SOURCES

Exposed on the extreme north-eastern rim of the classical Greek, and later of the hellenistic, world, was the Bosporan state, ruled from about 438 B.C. for 330 years by dynasts bearing Greek and Thracian names – Spartocus, Leucon, Satyrus, Paerisades. The ruler styled himself ‘archon of Bosporus and Theodosia’, and ‘king of the Sindi, Toreti, Dandarii and Psessi’, or sometimes ‘king of all the Maeotians’. From the early fourth century B.C. the state comprised the eastern portion of the Crimea (Kerch Peninsula) and the opposing part of the northern Caucasus (Taman Peninsula), separated by the sea current flowing through the then Cimmerian Bosporus (present-day Straits of Kerch). On the Asiatic side in Taman were once five islands in the delta of the Antikeites/Hypanis (now River Kuban); here the Sindi, agriculturally very productive, lay immediately inland of the Greek cities in the lower valley of the Hypanis. In the Kerch Peninsula a native population of sedentary Scythians, and perhaps some remaining Cimmerians left behind from their wanderings of the late eighth century B.C., exploited the area's noted fertility.

The main cities in the area were three in the Kerch Peninsula, Panticapaeum, Nymphaeum, Theodosia, which last was annexed to Bosporus some years after 390 B.C., and three on the islands and in the Kuban delta to the east of the straits, Phanagoria, Hermonassa, and Gorgippia, in the hinterland of which lay the Sindi who were incorporated in Bosporus between 400 and 375 B.C. A number of other small townships flourished by the Bosporus, situated near salt-water lakes or inlets (limans) or under rocky headlands – Porthmieus, Myrmecium, Tyritace, Cimmericum, Acra, Cytaea, and a lost Hermisium on the Crimean side.

Our concern is mainly with the area which today comprises Epirus and north-western Macedonia in Greece, Albania and the Yugoslav cantons of Metohija and Kosovo. Its geographical features have been described in Vol. III.I, 619–24. In ancient times it was inhabited by southern Illyrian tribes and north-western Greek tribes. Our knowledge of them for the period c. 540 to c. 360 B.C. is derived from some fragments of Hecataeus and some passages in Strabo and from the findings of archaeology, especially in Albania. For the subsequent period, 360–323 B.C., there is more literary evidence, and something like a consecutive story can be told. This chapter is therefore divided chronologically into two parts.

THE ILLYRIANS c. 540–360 B.C.

The lakeland area holds a most important place in the south-west Balkans economically and strategically. Three parallel ranges, running north and south, enclose Lakes Ochrid, Prespa, Little Prespa and until recently Malik (now artificially drained); and these lakes, being more than 800 m above sea level, are exceptionally rich in fish and eels. The lowlands afford excellent arable land and pasture, and the mountains are forested and abound in game. Silver was mined in antiquity by the Damastini to the east and the north east of Lake Ochrid. The economic wealth of the area is somewhat obscured today by the fact that it is divided between three countries – the former Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece. Strategically it stands at the main crossroads of the southern Balkans. Communications from north to south, running through this high corridor, are very easy because there are no considerable rivers or mountains to cross.

In 2 BC a law was passed at Rome which regulated the number of slaves a slaveowner was allowed to set free in his will. The lex Fufia Caninia was one element of what is customarily called the Augustan social legislation, a sequence of measures enacted in the principate of Augustus intended by and large to arrest a decline in civic responsibility that contemporaries perceived in the world around them. In this case the object was to oblige slaveowners to use their powers of manumission wisely and to set free only those slaves who had proved that they deserved freedom: indiscriminate and irresponsible manumission was to be avoided. A fragment of a Latin will found in Egypt (CPL 174) shows a slaveowner late in the central period about to give details on the slaves he proposed to set free. It begins: ‘Since I know that I am not permitted by will to manumit a greater number than provided by the lex Fufia Caninia …’ The law was followed, even in much later times and far removed places, and made an impact on society.

The point of immediate interest, however, is not the issue of setting slaves free but the scale of slaveownership that the authors of the lex Fufia understood to be typical of their society when they framed it.

The fifth century opened with the Persian Wars, which epitomized the superiority over the barbarian of the citizen-soldier, that ideal type which was to flourish in Periclean Athens, the newly dominant city state of Greece. As an institution and in terms of official ideology (as expressed in funeral orations, for example), this ideal was to remain unchallenged until the end of the classical period. In some respects it was even reinforced after the Peloponnesian War by the admission of thetes to the ranks of the hoplites and again, in the time of Lycurgus, by improvement in the military training of epheboi.

In fact, however, the situation was already changing, for although it is true that citizens continued to the last to mobilize without too much reluctance for decisive battles, at other times in the fourth century they were only too ready to entrust their overseas campaigns to mercenaries, to the despair of those who looked back with nostalgia to the days of Athenian greatness and ancestral tradition. The same process was at work, although in varying degrees, in the majority of cities, particularly those, like the Syracuse of Dionysius I and Pherae under Jason, where the power of the tyrant could in this way be increased. It applied even to Sparta, which witnessed a dangerous diminution in the number of its Equals – not to mention the Great King and his western satraps, who were always seeking ‘men of bronze’ to settle their differences for them and to intervene in Mediterranean affairs.

In the reign of Caligula a slave named Androcles was set free at Rome in rather unusual circumstances. The story is told by A. Gellius (5.14). Having been sentenced to death by exposure to wild animals in the amphitheatre (a standard penalty for slaves guilty of capital offences), Androcles was one of a group of prisoners who appeared in the Circus Maximus on a day when the emperor himself happened to be in the audience. Expectations of a fine spectacle were high owing to the exceptional size and ferocity of one of the waiting lions, but instead of a bloody battle between man and beast, the crowd witnessed an altogether different sight: for the ferocious lion recognised Androcles as an old companion and to the amazement of all turned the slave's terror to joy by refusing to attack him. By popular demand Androcles was delivered from his punishment, set free and given custody of the lion.

When summoned to account for the animal's extraordinary behaviour, Androcles informed the emperor that in Africa years before he had once removed a huge splinter from the lion's paw, having unwittingly taken refuge in the lion's lair while running away from his master, who was then serving as the province's governor. The grateful lion had subsequently shared his quarters with Androcles and helped him to survive, but Androcles was eventually captured by Roman troops and restored to his owner (now back in Rome), who had him condemned to death for having run away.