CHAPTER THREE

FACING THE CONSEQUENCES: THE ELITES OF ASIA MINOR

It is significant that the richest documentary evidence for the Asian elites and their political choices in this period comes from cities that kept supporting Rome even in her most difficult hour. In fact, the highest output of sources is from , the region whose loyalty to Rome was the staunchest in the whole of Asia Minor. As I shall try to show in more detail in the third part, religion played a very important part in the interaction between Sulla and elites in the Greek East. This becomes apparent in the relations between Sulla and Boeotia, which also involved the Panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi, and it is perhaps even clearer in his dealings with some cities of Caria, a region that kept a consistent loyalty towards Rome during the war and that was duly rewarded for it. That special relationship dated back to the Hellenistic age, and was mainly determined by the protection from the influence of Rhodes, which Rome had guaranteed to Caria from 167BC.1 enjoyed an especially privileged status, powerfully dem- onstrated by the episode of the Delphic response received by Sulla at the end of the war, and of course by the magnificent epigraphic dossier published by J.M. Reynolds.2 It was in the Augustan age, with the decisive intervention of the local notable Zoilus, that Aphrodisias’ impressive urban development took place. However, in the early 80s the city could already afford to send envoys to Sulla and/or to Delphi so that the oracle implicitly referred to its shrine of Aphrodite.3 The inscriptional evidence shows that Aphrodisias was a city in its own right throughout the first century BC, playing a consistently important func- tion in the regional context of Caria. In fact, it is a distinct possibility

1 Errington 1987, 103–114. 2 App. b. c. 1.97.453; Reynolds 1982. 3 On the development of Aphrodisias at the end of the first century BC, see Ratté 2002, 7–14. It may be significant that Strab. 12.8.13 =C576 still calls it a polisma—not quite a polis?—several decades after the Sullan age; however, the text has a lacuna. chapter 3 – the elites of asia minor 51 that the sympoliteia of Aphrodisias and Plarasa attested epigraphically dates back to the first half of the second century BC, following the lib- eration of the region from the influence of Rhodes.4 The position of Aphrodisias, albeit very significant, was not isolated. There is at least one similar situation, whereby the allegiance to Rome involved both a city and a neighbouring sanctuary. The loyalty to Rome of in Caria was rewarded with an impressive series of privileges, acknowledged first by Sulla himself in 85/84BC, before leaving Asia for Italy, and then ratified by a senatusconsultum in 81BC.5 This document is made of several parts, going backwards in time. It is opened by a letter of Sulla to the city, restating the merits of the communities in the fight against Mithridates and the gratitude of the Romans, and followed by the text of the senatusconsultum, listing all the eleven clauses of privileges that Rome acknowledged to Stratonicea. Among them, there was the confirmation of the asylia of the temple of Hekate at . The declaration occupies just one line (l. 113), but the citizens of Stratonicea must have viewed it as a very important aspect of their new status. Indeed, the sanctuary was becoming a central aspect of the city’s identity, as much as was the case with Aphrodisias. The awareness of its importance has perhaps prompted unilateral and somehow schematic interpretations of the evidence. The northern frieze of the temple, for instance, has long been viewed as a powerful symbol of the renewed alliance between Stratonicea and Rome following the Mithridatic War.6 Its central scene, portraying a warrior and an Amazon shaking hands, has been seen as the most explicit symbol of the new strategic situa- tion as the Stratoniceans saw it. In a recent paper, still unpublished, R. van Bremen has suggested a persuasive re-interpretation of the frieze, mainly based on a comparative discussion of its iconography with contemporary evidence from Asia Minor.7 According to her recon- struction, the frieze appears to be dated not earlier than the last quarter of the second century BC, and it must be explained by a development

4 Reynolds 1982,no.1:seeErrington1987, revising Reynolds’ conclusions about the chronology, and Savalli-Lestrade 2005, 16–17. 5 The reference edition is RDGE 18;cf.IvStrat 505. A new fragment, providing the text of the middle section of l. 15–27, is published in Sahìn¸ 2002, 3. 6 See Schober 1933, 31–41 and Junghölter 1989, 12–120 for a discussion of the whole frieze. About the possible interpretation of the monument, cf. Schober 1933, 72–76; Tuchelt 1979, 39–44;Junghölter1989, 138–157. 7 Van Bremen forthcoming.