6533b826fe1ef96bd1284eee

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Coinage and images of the imperial family: local identity and Roman rule

subject

description

In his speech “About harmony between the cities”, Publius Aelius Aristides, the famous orator of the mid-2nd c. A.D., admonishes the three most eminent cities of Asia — Pergamum, Ephesus and Smyrna — to put an end to their rivalries. He regards as useless their envy and struggle to be first among the cities in the province of Asia. He cautions against such rivalries, which could lead to an unwanted intervention by Roman authorities. He continues (Or. 23 [Keil = 42 Dindorf] 62): Is there a child or an old man so much out of mind that he would ignore that this is our present situation and that this is thank heaven the ruling law: one city, the first and greatest, has the whole world under one authority and rule, and one family (oikos) gives the laws, and governors come to us year by year, and it is up to them to decide what is best in little and great things.1 Aristides speaks of Rome (one city), and of several governors, but not of the emperor. Instead, he uses the word oikos, meaning house or family. This oikos is the centre of power, the lawgiver, the entity that sets the rules. This is rhetoric that visualises power as something concrete: city – house – man / Rome – oikos – governor. For someone living in one of the provinces, direct contact with the Roman authority was mostly with the governor and his staff, if not the army. The well-educated listener to or reader of Aristides’ speech was probably one of those who could get an appointment with the governor rather easily: the speech addressed the wealthy and influential elites of the three cities mentioned. Some of the members of the elite knew the governors in person; and it was the actual governor residing in the province who represented Roman power — not the distant emperor, not the far-off city of Rome. In Aristides’ speech, the choice of oikos over ‘emperor’ is mainly a rhetorical device: it does not provide a clue to how Aristides understood the potential, influence and power of members of this oikos, the imperial family.