Georgy Kantor

Lycia et Pamphylia: A Social and Institutional History

The project which I am proposing to undertake is a social and institutional history of the Roman province of Lycia and Pamphylia, from the process of establishment of Roman rule in the region in the late Republic and the Julio-Claudian period to the coming of Christianity and the separation of the constituent parts of the province in the early fourth century AD. The project aims at utilising different kinds of evidence – documentary, archaeological, numismatic, literary.

Several factors combine to make such a study worthwhile. The isolated nature of the region, separated as it is by mountain ranges from the rest of Anatolia, and the fact that, with a very brief interruption, it has been a single administrative unit for more than two centuries, from the principate of Claudius to at least AD 312, allow us to treat it as a meaningful object of regional history. But below this unity there were striking distinctions between its different parts. In the course of my doctoral work on Roman and local law in the provinces of Asia Minor, I have found preliminary evidence to indicate that the ways in which Pamphylia and Lycia were governed by Rome were different in many crucial aspects. My project will thus provide an opportunity to study two models of Roman rule within one province, and it is at this level that we can best understand how Roman imperial structures worked and contribute to the ongoing discussion (re-opened by recent works of S. Dmitriev and C. Brélaz) on the modes of interaction between the Roman Empire and communities of Asia Minor and the degree of administrative uniformity imposed by Rome. There are still important things to say on the political system of the Lycian League, unique in many ways for the ancient world, and famously used as a model of ‘representative democracy’ by Montesquieu and The Federalist Papers. Complex interplay of local identities, institutional frameworks and local networks of influence in the double province provides a fascinating object of study. Rapidly growing archaeological data and important papyrological evidence on the trade with Egypt provide foundation for a study of a regional economy within wider Mediterranean and Anatolian trade networks. Its results will be a contribution to the important debate on the role of trade in Roman imperial economy on the example of an under-studied region.

The main aim will be to establish varying degrees of inclusion of Lycia-Pamphylia in the wider social and economic structures of the Roman Empire and the ways in which general trends got modified by local patterns of development in the constituent parts of the province. The

1 results of this project should be of interest not only for the history of Roman Asia Minor, but also for the wider fields of Roman social, economic and institutional history.

In the past fifteen or so years our knowledge of this region in the Roman period has been transformed by a series of remarkable finds, some of which I have already dealt with in my earlier research, albeit from a different perspective. Among the more important epigraphic publications are an almost completely preserved treaty of the Lycian League with Julius Caesar and fragments of an earlier treaty; a monument in honour of the emperor Claudius with an official story of the annexation and a complete list of Lycian roads with distances; a new edition of Caunian inscriptions, showing Caunus to be part of Lycia-Pamphylia and throwing new light on the customs system of the province. The ongoing surveys and excavations (e.g. Canadian at Xanthus, German at Patara and Cyaneae, Austrian at Andriace and Limyra, Turkish at Arycanda, American at Aperlae) have provided a wealth of new archaeological evidence. Among recent highlights are the excavation of the meeting-place of the Lycian League at Patara and the discovery of facilities for the production of purple-dye at Andriace and Aperlae, providing information on one of the more lucrative local industries. Local coinage, through the work of H.A. Troxell (The Coinage of the Lycian League, New York 1982) and the Roman Provincial Coinage volumes, is also known as never before. Due to the pace of new discoveries, even in recent works, such as R. Behrwald’s study of the Lycian league (Der lykische Bund, Bonn 2000) or Der Golf von Fethiye of W. Tietz (Bonn 2003), much is already obsolete. More is forthcoming (including a highly significant lex portorii, prepared for publication by B. Takmer).

The last works of historical synthesis in English belong to the 1970s and are of rather limited scope, namely chapters in the 2nd ed. of A.H.M. Jones’s The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces, rev. by G.E. Bean (Oxford 1971), and more popular archaeological guidebooks by Bean himself (The Lycian Turkey and Turkey’s Southern Shore). A new synthesis should be attempted now. The lavishly illustrated short introduction for the Orbis Provinciarum series by H. Brandt and F. Kolb (Lycia et Pamphylia: eine römische Provinz im Südwesten Kleinasien, Mainz 2006), is very competently done by leading specialists in the region; nevertheless, the need for a survey on a larger scale and in a broader historical context remains. The unpublished Oxford thesis of G. Williamson (1999) is a significant contribution to the study of cultural identities in Lycia from the dynastic age to the Roman period, but even in his particular field there remains some scope for a study differing in its main focus, by covering Pamphylia, and concentrating more closely on the Roman age.

2 Methodologically, a regional approach to Roman history is a fast-developing field. It is in this ‘from the bottom up’ way that a contribution to the wider questions of the Roman model of empire and of the development of the interconnected Mediterranean economy in the Roman imperial period period can now be made. I shall be building my work on two important traditions of the twentieth-century classical scholarship in particular: attempts at writing a ‘total history’ of Asia Minor in the Hellenistic and Roman period based on the combination of documentary, numismatic and archaeological evidence, associated above all with the name of Louis Robert, and the tradition of institutional history based on close reading of ancient sources, exemplified by such scholars as E.J. Bickerman and A.H.M. Jones.

My earlier research in the history of Asia Minor in the Roman period in which documents from Lycia-Pamphylia were extensively used, my preliminary familiarity with the region (which I have visited on the British Institure of Ankara research grant in August 2006) and my training in the use of numismatic, archaeological and in particular documentary sources make me competent to undertake this project.

Oxford provides an excellent base for this kind of research. The Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents and the flourishing Epigraphy Workshop based there provide unique opportunities for discussion of the new documentary material, particularly given that Oxford now effectively serves as a base for the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, with which I am collaborating as an assistant editor for vol. LVI. The work on the vol. VB of the Lexicon of the Greek Personal Names, which will deal with the region, is also based in Oxford, as is the Roman Provincial Coinage vol. 4 project. The Institure of Archaeology keeps the important archive of the late Martin Harrison. Research interests of many current and emeriti members of the Oxford faculty are connected with history, epigraphy and archaeology of Asia Minor (C. Crowther, B. Levick, S. Price, J. Ma, R. Lane Fox, P. Thonemann, C. Kuhn, R.R.R. Smith, C. Draycott), problems of regional history (N. Purcell, J. Prag, J.C. Quinn, P. Thonemann), Roman institutional and economic history (A.K. Bowman, A. Wilson, N. Purcell, B. Levick, F. Millar, S. Treggiari, C. Howgego). This should provide excellent opportunities for testing research ideas in discussion.

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