The Provinces of the Roman Empire 63

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 63

That the emperor Hadrian, among other Egyptising caprices,

gave to the nomes as well as to his Antinoopolis for once the right

of coining, which was thereupon done subsequently on a couple of

occasions, makes no alteration in the rule.

 

[207] This figure is given by the so-called Epitome of Victor, c.

1, for the time of Augustus. After this payment was transferred to

Constantinople there went thither under Justinian (_Ed._ xiii. c. 8)

annually 8,000,000 artabae (for these are to be understood, according

to c. 6, as meant), or 26-2/3 millions of Roman bushels (Hultsch,

_Metrol._ p. 628), to which falls further to be added the similar

payment to the town of Alexandria, introduced by Diocletian. To the

shipmasters for the freight to Constantinople 8000 solidi = £5000 were

annually paid from the state-chest.

 

[208] At least Cleopatra on a distribution of grain in Alexandria

excluded the Jews (Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 5), and all the more,

consequently, the Egyptians.

 

[209] The edict of Alexander (_C. I. Gr._ 4957), l. 33 ff., exempts the

ἐνγενεῖς Ἀλεξανδρεῖς dwelling ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ (not ἐν τῇ πόλει) on account

of their business from the λειτουργίαι χωρικαί.

 

[210] “There subsist,” says the Alexandrian Jew Philo (_in Flacc._ 10),

“as respects corporal chastisement (τῶν μαστίγων), distinctions in our

city according to the rank of those to be chastised; the Egyptians are

chastised with different scourges and by others, but the Alexandrians

with canes (σπάθαις; σπάθη is the stem of the palm-leaf), and by the

Alexandrian cane-bearers” (σπαθηφόροι, perhaps _bacillarius_). He

afterwards complains bitterly that the elders of his community, if they

were to be scourged at all, should not have been provided at least

with decorous burgess-lashes (ταῖς ἐλευθεριωτέραις καὶ πολιτικωτέραις

μάστιξιν).

 

[211] Josephus, _contra Ap._ ii. 4, μόνοις Αἰγυπτίοις οἱ κύριοι νῦν

Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς οἰκουμένης μεταλαμβάνειν ἡστινοσοῦν πολιτείας ἀπειρήκασιν.

6, _Aegyptiis neque regum quisquam videtur ius civitatis fuisse

largitus neque nunc quilibet imperatorum_ (comp. _Eph. epigr._

v. p. 13). The same upbraids his adversary (ii. 3, 4) that he, a

native Egyptian, had denied his home and given himself out as an

Alexandrian.--Individual exceptions are not thereby excluded.

 

[212] Alexandrian science, too, protested in the sense of the

king against this proposition (Plutarch, _de fort. Alex._ i. 6);

Eratosthenes designated civilisation as not peculiar to the Hellenes

alone, and not to be denied to all barbarians, _e.g._ not to the

Indians, the Arians, the Romans, the Carthaginians; men were rather

to be divided into “good” and “bad” (Strabo, i. _fin._ p. 66). But of

this theory no practical application was made to the Egyptian race even

under the Lagids.

 

[213] Admission to the equestrian positions was at least rendered

difficult: _non est ex albo iudex patre Aegyptio_ (_C. I. L._ iv. 1943;

comp. _Staatsrecht_, ii. 919, note 2; _Eph. epigr._ v. p. 13, note 2).

Yet we meet early with individual Alexandrians in equestrian offices,

like Tiberius Julius Alexander (p. 246, note).

 

[214] If the words of Pliny (_H. N._ v. 31, 128) are accurate, that

the island of Pharos before the harbour of Alexandria was a _colonia

Caesaris dictatoris_ (comp. iv. 574), the dictator has here too, like

Alexander, gone beyond the thought of Aristotle. But there can be no

doubt as to the point, that after the annexation of Egypt there never

was a Roman colony there.

 

[215] The titles of Augustus run with the Egyptian priests to the

following effect: “The beautiful boy, lovely through worthiness to

be loved, the prince of princes, elect of Ptah and Nun the father

of the gods, king of upper Egypt and king of lower Egypt, lord of

the two lands, Autokrator, son of the sun, lord of diadems, Kaisar,

ever living, beloved by Ptah and Isis;” in this case the proper

names “Autokrator, Kaisar,” are retained from the Greek. The title

of Augustus occurs first in the case of Tiberius in an Egyptian

translation (_nti χu_), and with the retention of the Greek Σεβαστός

under Domitian. The title of the fair, lovely boy, which in better

times was wont to be given only to the children proclaimed as

joint-rulers, afterwards became stereotyped, and is found employed,

as for Caesarion and Augustus, so also for Tiberius, Claudius, Titus,

Domitian. It is more important that in deviation from the older title,

as it is found, _e.g._ in Greek on the inscription of Rosetta (_C. I.

Gr._ 4697), in the case of the Caesars from Augustus onward the title

“prince of princes” is appended, by which beyond doubt it was intended

to express their position of great-king, which the earlier kings had

not.

 

[216] If people knew, king Seleucus was wont to say (Plutarch, _An

seni_, 11), what a burden it was to write and to read so many letters,

they would not take up the diadem if it lay at their feet.

 

[217] That he wore other insignia than the officers generally

(Hirschfeld, _Verw. Gesch._ p. 271), it is hardly allowable to infer

from _vita Hadr._ 4.

 

[218] Thus Tiberius Julius Alexander, an Alexandrian Jew, held this

governorship in the last years of Nero (p. 204); certainly he belonged

to a very rich family of rank, allied by marriage even with the

imperial house, and he had distinguished himself in the Parthian war

as chief of the staff of Corbulo--a position which he soon afterwards

took up once more in the Jewish war of Titus. He must have been

one of the ablest officers of this epoch. To him is dedicated the

pseudo-Aristotelian treatise περὶ κοσμοῦ (p. 168), evidently composed

by another Alexandrian Jew (Bernays, _Gesammelte Abhandl._ ii. 278).

 

[219] Unmistakably the _iuridicus Aegypti_ (_C. I. L._ x. 6976; also

_missus in Aegyptum ad iurisdictionem_, _Bull. dell’ Inst._ 1856, p.

142; _iuridicus Alexandreae_, _C._ vi. 1564, viii. 8925, 8934; _Dig._

i. 20, 2), and the _idiologus ad Aegyptum_ (_C._ x. 4862; _procurator

ducenarius Alexandriae idiulogu_, _Eph. cp._ v. p. 30, and _C. I.

Gr._ 3751; ὁ γνώμων τοῦ ἰδίου λόγου, _C. I. Gr._ 4957, v. 44, comp.

v. 39), are modelled on the assistants associated with the legates

of the imperial provinces for the administration of justice (_legati

iuridici_) and the finances (_procuratores provinciae_; _Staatsrecht_

1^2, p. 223, note 5). That they were appointed for the whole land,

and were subordinate to the _praefectus Aegypti_, is stated by Strabo

expressly (xvii. 1, 12, p. 797), and this assumption is required by

the frequent mention of Egypt in their style and title as well as by

the turn in the edict _C. I. Gr._ 4957, v. 39. But their jurisdiction

was not exclusive; “many processes,” says Strabo, “are decided by

the official administering justice” (that he assigned guardians, we

learn from _Dig._ i. 20, 2), and according to the same it devolved

on the Idiologus in particular to confiscate for the exchequer the

_bona vacantia et caduca_.--This does not exclude the view that the

Roman _iuridicus_ came in place of the older court of thirty with the

ἀρχιδικαστής at its head (Diodorus, i. 75), who was Egyptian, and may

not be confounded with the Alexandrian ἀρχιδικαστής, had moreover

perhaps been set aside already before the Roman period, and that the

Idiologus originated out of the subsistence in Egypt of a claim of the

king on heritages, such as did not occur to the same extent in the rest

of the empire, which latter view Lumbroso (_Recherches_, p. 285) has

made very probable.

 

[220] The ἐξηγητής, according to Strabo, xvii. 1, 12, p. 797, the

first civic official in Alexandria under the Ptolemies as under the

Romans, and entitled to wear the purple, is certainly identical

with the year-priest in the testament of Alexander appearing in

the Alexander-romance very well instructed in such matters (iii.

33, p. 149, Müller). As the Exegetes has, along with his title,

doubtless to be taken in a religious sense, the ἐπιμέλεια τῶν τῇ

πόλει χρησίμων, that priest of the romance is ἐπιμελιστὴς τῆς πόλεως.

The romance-writer will not have invented the payment with a talent

and the hereditary character any more than the purple and the golden

chaplet; the hereditary element, in reference to which Lumbroso

(_l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani_, p. 152) recalls the ἐξηγητὴς

ἔναρχος of the Alexandrian inscriptions (_C. I. Gr._ 4688, 4976 c.),

is presumably to be conceived to the effect that a certain circle of

persons was called by hereditary right, and out of these the governor

appointed the year-priest. This priest of Alexander (as well as of

the following Egyptian kings, according to the stone of Canopus and

that of Rosetta, _C. I. Gr._ 4697), was under the earlier Lagids the

eponym for Alexandrian documents, while later as under the Romans

the kings’ names come in for that purpose. Not different from him

probably was the “chief priest of Alexandria and all Egypt,” of an

inscription of the city of Rome from Hadrian’s time (_C. I. Gr._

5900: ἀρχιερεῖ Ἀλεξανδρείας καὶ Αἰγύπτου πάσης Λευκίῳ Ἰουλίῳ Οὐηστίνῳ

καὶ ἐπιστάτῃ τοῦ Μουσείου καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν Ῥώμῃ βιβλιοθηκῶν Ῥωμαικῶν

τε καὶ Ἑλληνικῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς παιδείας Ἀδριανοῦ, ἐπιστολεῖ τοῦ αὐτοῦ

αὐτοκράτορος); the proper title, ἐξηγητής was avoided out of Egypt,

because it usually denoted the sexton. If the chief priesthood, as the

tenor of the inscription suggests, is to be assumed as having been

at that time permanent, the transition from the annual tenure to the

at least titular, and not seldom also real, tenure for life repeats

itself, as is well known, in the _sacerdotia_ of the provinces, to

which this Alexandrian one did not indeed belong, but the place of

which it represented in Egypt (p. 238). That the priesthood and the

presidency of the Museum are two distinct offices is shown by the

inscription itself. We learn the same from the inscription of a royal

chief physician of a good Lagid period, who is withal as well exegete

as president of the Museum (Χρύσερμον Ἡρακλείτου Ἀλεξανδρέα τὸν συγγενῆ

βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου καὶ ἐξηγητὴν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἰατρῶν καὶ ἐπιστάτην τοῦ

Μουσείου). But the two monuments at the same time suggest that the post

of first official of Alexandria and the presidency of the Museum were

frequently committed to the same man, although in the Roman time the

former was conferred by the prefect, the latter by the emperor.

 

[221] Not to be confounded with the similar office which Philo (in

_Flacc._ 16) mentions and Lucian (_Apolog._ 12) held; this was not an

urban office, but a subaltern’s post in the praefecture of Egypt, in

Latin _a commentariis_ or _ab actis_.

 

[222] This is the _procurator Neaspoleos et mausolei Alexandriae_ (_C.

I. L._ viii. 8934; Henzen, 6929). Officials of a like kind and of like

rank, but whose functions are not quite clear, are the _procurator ad

Mercurium Alexandreae_ (_C. I. L._ x. 3847), and the _procurator

Alexandreae Pelusii_ (_C._ vi. 1024). The Pharos also is placed under

an imperial freedman (_C._ vi. 8582).

 

[223] The alliance of the Palmyrenes and the Blemyes is pointed to by

the notice of the _vita Firmi_, c. 3, and by the statement, according

to Zosimus, i. 71, that Ptolemais fell away to the Blemyes (comp.

Eusebius, _Hist. Eccl._ vii. 32). Aurelian only negotiated with these

(_Vita_, 34, 41); it was Probus who first drove them again out of Egypt

(Zosimus, _l.c._; _Vita_, 17).

 

[224] We still possess letters of this sort, addressed by the bishop

of the city, at that time Dionysius († 265), to the members of the

church shut off in the hostile half of the town (Eusebius, _Hist.

Eccl._ vii. 21, 22, comp. 32). When it is therein said: “one gets more

easily from the West to the East than from Alexandria to Alexandria,”

and ἡ μεσαιτάτη τῆς πόλεως ὁδός, consequently the street furnished

with colonnades, running from the Lochias point right through the town

(comp. Lumbroso, _l’Egitto al tempo dei Greci e Romani_, 1882, p. 137)

is compared with the desert between Egypt and the promised land, it

appears almost as if Severus Antoninus had carried out his threat of

drawing a wall across the town and occupying it in a military fashion

(Dio, lxxvii. 23). The razing of the walls after the overthrow of the

revolt (Ammianus, xxii. 16, 15) would then have to be referred to this

very building.

 

[225] The alleged Egyptian tyrants, Aemilianus, Firmus, Saturninus, are

at least not attested as such. The so-called description of the life

of the second is nothing else than the sadly disfigured catastrophe of Prucheion.