BLACK SEA STUDIES
5
THE DANISH NATIONAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION’S CENTRE FOR BLACK SEA STUDIES
Edited by Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen
ROME AND THE BLACK SEA REGION
Domination, Romanisation, Resistance
Figures and Tables
Jakob Munk Højte:
From Kingdom to Province
Fig. 1. Satellite image of the Sinop Promontory
Fig. 2. The number and size of loci in different areas of the Sinop Promontory in the Hellenistic (top) and Roman (bottom) periods (from Doonan 2004, 156-157)
Fig. 3. Grave stele for Iulia Galatia erected by Antiochos in the year 174 of the local era (AD 171/72), now in Amasya Museum (author’s photo)
Fig. 4. Ethnic composition of the names in the dated inscriptions from Amaseia (based on French 1996)
Table 1. Chronological distribution of the dated inscriptions from Amaseia (based on French 1996)
Table 2. Chronological distribution of the dated inscriptions from Amastris (based on Marek 1993, 157-187)
Table 3. Chronological distribution of the inscriptions from inner Paphlagonia: Neoklaudiopolis, Hadrianopolis, Pompeiopolis, and Germanikopolis (based on Leschhorn 1993, 481-484)
Liviu Petculescu:
The Roman Army as a Factor of Romanisation
Fig. 1. The Roman Dobrudja (first-third centuries AD), after Bărbulescu 2001 with modifications
Fig. 2. The roads of Roman Dobrudja (second-fourth centuries AD), after Bărbulescu 2001
Jesper Majbom Madsen:
Intellectual Resistance to Roman Hegemony and its Representativity
Fig. 1. The sarcophagus of G. Cassius Chrestus in Nikaia (author’s photo)
Fig. 2. The Rascanii family from Apameia. Bursa Museum (author’s photo)
Thomas Corsten:
The Rôle and Status of the Indigenous Population in Bithynia
Fig. 1. Map of Roman Bithynia
Anne Marie Carstens:
Cultural Contact and Cultural Change
Fig. 1. Alabaster vase from the Maussolleion excavations (British Museum, ANE 132114)
Fig. 2. Cylinder seal from Tomb 813 at Sardis (Dusinberre 1997, fig. 3)
Fig. 3. Daskyleion bullae depicting a bear hunt (Kaptan 1996, Pl. 26:7)
Jørgen Christian Meyer:
What have the Romans done for us?
Fig. 1. Tetradrachm of the Bar Kokhba revolt, AD 133/4 (University of Aarhus)
Fig. 2. Antoninianus of Zenobia, AD 271-272 (© Copyright Andreas Pangerl, www.romancoins.info)
Introduction
Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen
Domination
In 89 BC, Roman legionaries intervened in the Black Sea region to curb the ambitions of Mithridates VI of Pontos. Over the next two centuries, the Roman presence on the Black Sea coast was slowly, but steadily increased. The annexation of Pontus and Bithynia as a Roman province (63 BC), the transformation of the Bosporan Kingdom into a client power (42 BC) and the establishment of Roman garrisons in the Crimea (AD 64) mark stages in this protracted process. The campaigns of Trajan in Dacia and Armenia (AD 105-114) represent the last great effort of Rome to bring the Pontic area under her sway, and the Periplus of Arrian (AD 130) a stock-taking of Roman domination at its greatest extent, when Rome controlled, directly or indirectly, more than two-thirds of the Black Sea shoreline. Unlike the Mediterranean, the Black Sea never became a Roman lake. Even at the height of Roman power, political control was enforced through a variety of mechanisms, from outright annexation to alliances with native rulers, the details of which have not always found their way into the historical record.
The range of different political and diplomatic instruments used by Rome in the Pontic region reflect her underlying reluctance to undertake a permanent annexation by military means. With large numbers of regular soldiers already committed to the defence of the Rhine, the Danube and Syria, Rome had no need for yet another frontier in the Pontos, nor a limes in the Caucasus. They also, however, reflect the variety of political, geographical and demographical realities that faced Rome on her first encounters with the Black Sea region – where the nomads of the north Pontic steppe zone and the mountain pastoralists of Anatolia coexisted with the Greek-speaking citizens of the coastal cities, ancient Milesian colonies whose inhabitants took pride in their urbanity and civic heritage.
The advent of Rome brought immediate and tangible changes in local power relations, taxation, local administration, to take a few examples. Over time, it entailed innumerable minor and major changes that were not limited to the sphere of economy and politics, nor to the districts under Roman rule. The new order of things came to permeate social life, religion, lifestyle, architecture, language and patterns of consumption.
Romanisation
At least since the time of Theodor Mommsen, Romanisierung or ‘Romanisation’ has been used as a convenient catch-all term to describe these changes. Though the term has remained in use for over a century, its content and implications have changed. The historiography of Roman expansion and its consequences offer striking proof of Benedotte Croce’s dictum that in the last analysis “all history is contemporary history”. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Roman expansion in Italy was viewed as a “natural” historical progress analogous to the formation of modern European nation-states; Roman expansion outside Italy as the “natural” domination of a higher race analogous to the formation of the European overseas empires; and Romanisation as the “natural attraction of a higher form of life” (Rostovtzeff 1927). For “Roman”, read Russian, Dutch, British or French; for “barbarian”, read Algerian, Indian, Indonesian, Cossack or African.
To most thinkers of the early twentieth century, even the more profound ones, imperialism was if not justified, at least compensated by the advantages in terms of law, order, morals and religion imposed by the new masters on their willing or unwilling subjects. Continued European domination under “mandated” colonial administration, not self-government, was the League of Nations’ gift to the liberated territories of the vanquished German and Ottoman Empires. The former subjects of the Austrian Empire, on the other hand, were allowed to govern themselves; but then of course they were Europeans.
As with European expansion, the justification of Roman expansion was rarely called into question, and Romanisation was seen to justify Roman dominance