Craftsmen Associations in Roman Lydia — a Tale of Two Cities?*
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CRAFTSMEN ASSOCIATIONS IN ROMAN LYDIA — A TALE OF TWO CITIES?* Abstract: Through a detailed presentation and study of the epigraphic testimonia of craftsmen associations from Roman Lydia, and taking into account the methodological caveats, I have tried to demonstrate that the dilemma ‘professional’ or ‘social’ for these groups is a pseudo-dilemma. Craftsmen associations performed a variety of func- tions, including economic albeit to be understood in a different light. The variety of their functions depended largely on the wider socio- economic context in which they were operating. Craftsmen associa- tions in the polis of Thyateira were called to operate in a competitive socio-political environment, while in Saittai similar associations seem to be limited to acts of solidarity among their members. In 1838 in Didymoteichon, a small town of northeastern Greece, the local association of goldsmiths dedicated an icon of the Virgin Mary; the dedication, at the bottom of the icon, reads ISTORJQJ J PAROUSA EIKWN SUNDROMJS KAI DAPANJS TOU EULOGJMENOU ISNAFIOU TWN KOUIMTHJDWN 1838 This icon was painted with the help and at the expense of the blessed association of goldsmiths 1838)1. What can this painting reveal about the raison d’être of this association? Not much, the dedication of an icon is nothing more than a display of piety by the association. Almost ten centuries earlier in a collection of regulations (excerpted from ecclesiastical and civil sources) called “Collection of Judgments”, written in Syriac sometime in the late ninth century AD, chapter 48, enti- tled “Concerning the ordering and regulation of associations of the crafts called <N>”, prescribes: If, while we are drinking wine, one of us insults his companion, he shall pay a fine of 10 staters. And if the person who is insulted and hurt fails to keep his patience but instead starts to cause a disturbance, insulting and hitting his companion, he too shall pay a fine of 10 staters. * I wish to thank the participants in the ESSHC 2010 conference as well as A. Tataki and H. Malay who have read and commented on earlier drafts of the paper. All remaining infelicities are my responsibility. 1 See Syndika-Laourda & Georgiadou-Kountoura (2004) 33 and pl. 1. Ancient Society 41, 257-290. doi: 10.2143/AS.41.0.2129572 © 2011 by Ancient Society. All rights reserved. 94571_AncientSociety_41_11.indd 257 21/10/11 11:14 258 I. ARNAOUTOGLOU The original, a blueprint of the rules of a craftsmen association, is attrib- uted to the Christian (Nestorian) bishop of Basra (in modern Iraq) Gabriel2. Typically for pre-modern associations, it deals in 32 para- graphs not with the internal organization of the group, but with solidarity in cases of illness, death, or poverty, exclusive authority of the associa- tion to decide its members’ disputes among themselves, contributions to feasts, a clause on joining the group, and appointment of the chief offi- cial. The preface suggests that the raison d’être of this craftsmen asso- ciation was sociability3: In the month N of the year N according to the numbering of the Greeks, all of us whose names are written below, who practice such and such a craft and live in the town N, like the rest of the populace living in this town practicing various crafts, who hold one another in honour and are obedient to one another on days of rejoicing or of grief, we too for a long time have been holding this association. The above examples raise a number of methodological questions, two of which I think are important: The term professional association, itself closer to the Roman artes liberales, obscures the picture of these groups. Instead, I shall use the term craftsmen association. This term underlines the exercise of a craft, of a particular téxnj. Historians, in order to integrate associations into their interpretations, tend to focus on the most obvious aspects of an association’s activity and thereupon to theorize about the association’s raison d’être. In fact, 2 See Kaufhold (1976) 172-186 Fr. 48. English translation in Brock (2009). Kaufhold (1976) 100-101 did not express any hypothesis about the date and the origin of this part of the collection. This model regulation of associational affairs appears once more in the 11th century, again in a Nestorian source. However, the content of some rulings strongly recalls Roman precedents of the first and second centuries AD. Brock (2009) has brought forward some interesting comparisons with the regulation of ˆIóbakxoi from the second half of the 2nd century AD in Athens (IG II2 1368), to which I would add SEG XXXI 122 from second-century AD Attica, IG IX (1)2 670 from second-century AD Lokris, the mid- first-century AD regulations on papyri, P. Mich. V 243-245, the mid to late-first-century BC P. Lond. 2710 (in HThR 29 (1936) 40-41)) and SB III 6704 (Aphrodito, AD 538). The lack of any similar document from late antiquity need not discourage any effort for a further comparative study, either with late antique and Byzantine material or with the early medieval western European confraternities and guilds. 3 Certainly behind some of the clauses may lie economic considerations such as start- ing a business and joining the association (§19) or the duty of the chairman to provide the tools of the trade to any member in need (§30), but these do not seem to be of any par- ticular concern to the group. 94571_AncientSociety_41_11.indd 258 21/10/11 11:14 CRAFTSMEN ASSOCIATIONS IN ROMAN LYDIA 259 such an approach is trapped between the discourse and the epigraphic output of associations and it confuses three different things: (a) forma- tion, (b) purpose and (c) functions. In particular, (a) The formation of a group involves geo-economic and social varia- bles, such as the size of the polis, its place in the regional and empire-wide division of labour, its proximity to trade routes and in the case of religious associations, the closeness to a prominent sanc- tuary. (b) The purpose, or the raison d’être, of an association is elusive for most non-public ancient associations, since it requires a statement of intention by the group, something completely absent from the ancient associative experience. (c) Functions do not always or necessarily reflect the purpose of the group. An association usually exercised more than one function, which may (or may not) serve to satisfy its main purpose. Some functions serve the double purpose of the preservation of the group by forging solidarity links among members and the reproduction of the associative spirit (feasts, provision of burial, participation in funerals, offerings on different occasions). I would argue that the raison d’être of craftsmen association in Graeco- Roman antiquity cannot be ascertained on the basis of their functions or interpreted in terms ‘social v. economic’; instead, such associations should be considered as structures for the administration of whatever is considered by their membership as common affairs. Some of their activities can be termed economic or social4. Our sources, for reasons I think easy to guess, present only parts of that activity. This ‘bias’ is due to the reigning epigraphic habit of the era5. Therefore, the testimonia, products of that habit, reveal only part of an association’s activity. They are usually those regarded as worth commemorating on stone and they reveal the values cherished by associations and their members. From that total of epigraphic output only a part has survived. In theorizing, therefore, about associations one should take into account the limits of 4 For a different definition as networks see Öhler (2005) 80. 5 See an elucidating depiction of the epigraphic habit in funerary monuments from Roman Lydia, Broux & Clarysse (2009) 30. Epigraphic habit in Roman Lydia, MacMullen (1982) 233-246 and MacMullen (1986) 237-238. An overview of the epigra- phy of the region in Petzl (1999) 473-488. 94571_AncientSociety_41_11.indd 259 21/10/11 11:14 260 I. ARNAOUTOGLOU our epigraphic sources, especially as literary evidence is difficult to come by6. In order to test the above, I suggest to review the evidence from Roman Lydia, an area with an above-average concentration of tes- timonies for craftsmen associations. GEOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT In Roman times (i.e. post 133 BC) two centres of craftsmen activity emerge in Lydian territory, Thyateira and Saittai. (fig. 1). Thyateira (modern Akhisar in Turkey) lies in NW Lydia near the border with Mysia, on the road to Pergamon, and was renowned in antiquity for its indigo dye. It was colonized in 281 BC by Macedonian settlers, while Roman traders were established in the beginning of the imperial period7. In the second century AD it was considered a mjtrópoliv according to Ptolemy 5.2.16. It had all the institutional trappings of a polis, council, assembly, magistrates and from AD 215 it was the seat of a juridical conventus. Saittai (Sidaskale in modern Icikler, Turkey), in the inland area between the rivers Hermos and Lykos, was known only from its coinage; the inscriptions filled a considerable gap in our information, since they testify to the existence of a polis with institutions like council and magistrates8. NUMBER CRUNCHING I have taken into account information from 65 inscriptions (see Appen- dix 1). In 40 of these there is a clear designation of the corporate nature of craftsmen organization, although a wide variety of terms was used (see below). In 25 cases there is reference to craftsmen as professional 6 Literary evidence for associations include the passage from Pauline Acts 19.23-41 in Ephesos, Pliny’s Letters for Nikomedeia (10.33-34) and Amisos (10.92) and Artemidoros of Daldis, ˆOneirokritikón 2.12.161 and 4.44.7 for symbiosis current in Lydia.