he made in 31 B.C. for his campaign against Octavian, and the contributions which his gigantic army required, exhausted the country’s resources so completely that a general famine was prevented only by Octavian’s prompt action after the battle of Actium in distributing supplies of grain and evacuating the land with all haste. The depopulation which resulted from the civil wars was partly remedied by the settlement of Italian colonists at Corinth and Patrae by Julius Caesar and Octavian; on the other hand, the foundation of Nicopolis (q.v.) by the latter merely had the effect of transferring the people from the country to the city.
(ii.) The Early Roman Empire (27 B.C.–A.D. 323).—Under the emperor Augustus Thessaly was incorporated with Macedonia; the rest of Greece was converted into the province of Achaea, under the control of a senatorial proconsul resident at Corinth. Many states, including Athens and Sparta, retained their rights as free and nominally independent cities. The provincials were encouraged to send delegates to a communal synod (κοινὸν τῶν Ἀχαίων) which met at Argos to consider the general interests of the country and to uphold national Hellenic sentiment; the Delphic amphictyony was revived and extended so as to represent in a similar fashion northern and central Greece.
Economic conditions did not greatly improve under the empire. Although new industries sprang up to meet the needs of Roman luxury, and Greek marble, textiles and table delicacies were in great demand, the only cities which regained a really flourishing trade were the Italian communities of Corinth and Patrae. Commerce Social conditions. languished in general, and the soil was mainly abandoned to pasturage. Though certain districts retained a measure of prosperity, e.g. Thessaly, Phocis, Elis, Argos and Laconia, huge tracts stood depopulated and many notable cities had sunk into ruins; Aetolia, Acarnania and Epirus never recovered from the effects of former wars and from the withdrawal of their surviving inhabitants into Nicopolis. Such wealth as remained was amassed in the hands of a few great landowners and capitalists; the middle class continued to dwindle, and large numbers of the people were reduced to earning a precarious subsistence, supplemented by frequent doles and largesses.
The social aspect of Greek life henceforward becomes its most attractive feature. After a long period of storm and stress, the European Hellenes had relapsed into a quiet and resigned frame of mind which stands in sharp contrast on the one hand with the energy and ability, and on the other with the vulgar intriguing of their Asiatic kinsmen. Seeing no future before them, the inhabitants were content to dwell in contemplation amid the glories of the past. National pride was fostered by the undisguised respect with which the leading Romans of the age treated Hellenic culture. And although this sentiment could degenerate into antiquarian pedantry and vanity, such as finds its climax in the diatribes of Apollonius of Tyana against the “barbarians,” it prevented the nation from sinking into some of the worst vices of the age. A healthy social tone repressed extravagant luxury and the ostentatious display of wealth, and good taste long checked the spread of gladiatorial contests beyond the Italian community of Corinth. The most widespread abuse of that period, the adulation and adoration of emperors, was indeed introduced into European Greece and formed an essential feature of the proceedings at the Delphic amphictyony, but it never absorbed the energies of the people in the same way as it did in Asia. In order to perpetuate their old culture, the Greeks continued to set great store by classical education, and in Athens they possessed an academic centre which gradually became the chief university of the Roman empire. The highest representatives of this type of old-world refinement are to be found in Dio Chrysostom and especially in Plutarch of Chaeroneia (q.v.).
The relations between European Greece and Rome were practically confined to the sphere of scholarship. The Hellenes had so far lost their warlike qualities that they supplied scarcely any recruits to the army. They retained too much local patriotism to crowd into the official careers of senators or imperial servants. Although in the 1st century A.D. the astute Greek man of affairs and the Graeculus esuriens of Juvenal abounded in Rome, both these classes were mainly derived from the less pure-blooded population beyond the Aegean.
The influx of Greek rhetoricians and professors into Italy during the 2nd and 3rd centuries was balanced by the large number of travellers who came to Greece to frequent its sanatoria, and especially to admire its works of art; the abundance in which these latter were preserved is strikingly attested in the extant record of Pausanias (about A.D. 170).
The experience of the Greeks under their earliest governors seems to have been unfortunate, for in A.D. 15 they petitioned Tiberius to transfer the administration to an imperial legate. This new arrangement was sanctioned, but only lasted till A.D. 44, when Claudius restored the province to the senate. The proconsuls of the later Roman administration. 1st and 2nd centuries were sometimes ill qualified for their posts, but cases of oppression are seldom recorded against them. The years 66 and 67 were marked by a visit of the emperor Nero, who made a prolonged tour through Greece in order to display his artistic accomplishments at the various national festivals. In return for the flattering reception accorded to him he bestowed freedom and exemption from tribute upon the country. But this favour was almost neutralized by the wholesale depredations which he committed among the chief collections of art. A scheme for cutting through the Corinthian isthmus and so reviving the Greek carrying trade was inaugurated in his presence, but soon abandoned.
As Nero’s grant of self-government brought about a recrudescence of misplaced ambition and party strife, Vespasian revoked the gift and turned Achaea again into a province, at the same time burdening it with increased taxes. In the 2nd century a succession of genuinely phil-Hellenic emperors made serious attempts to revive the nation’s prosperity. Important material benefits were conferred by Hadrian, who made a lengthy visit to Greece. Besides erecting useful public works in many cities, he relieved Achaea of its arrears of tribute and exempted it from various imposts. In order to check extravagance on the part of the free cities, he greatly extended the practice of placing them under the supervision of imperial functionaries known as correctores. Hadrian fostered national sentiment by establishing a new pan-Hellenic congress at Athens, while he gave recognition to the increasing ascendancy of Hellenic culture at Rome by his institution of the Athenaeum.
In the 3rd century the only political event of importance was the edict of Caracalla which threw open the Roman citizenship to large numbers of provincials. Its chief effect in Greece was to diminish the preponderance of the wealthy classes, who formerly had used their riches to purchase the franchise and so to secure exemption from taxation. The chief feature of this period is the renewal of the danger from foreign invasions. Already in 175 a tribe named Costoboci had penetrated into central Greece, but was there broken up by the local militia. In 253 a threatened attack was averted by the stubborn resistance of Thessalonica. In 267–268 the province was overrun by Gothic bands, which captured Athens and some other towns, but were finally repulsed by the Attic levies and exterminated with the help of a Roman fleet.
(iii.) The Late Roman Empire.—After the reorganization of the empire by Diocletian, Achaea occupied a prominent position in the “diocese” of Macedonia. Under Constantine I. it was included in the “prefecture” of Illyricum. It was subdivided into the “eparchies” of Hellas, Peloponnesus, Nicopolis and the islands, with headquarters at Thebes, Corinth, Nicopolis and Samos. Thessaly was incorporated with Macedonia. A complex hierarchy of imperial officials was now introduced and the system of taxation elaborated so as to yield a steady revenue to the central power. The levying of the land-tax was imposed upon the δεκάπρωτοι or “ten leading men,” who, like the Latin decuriones, were entrusted henceforth with the administration in most cities. The tendency to reduce all constitutions to the Roman municipal pattern became prevalent under the rulers of this period, and the greater number of them was stereotyped
