Boris
Dreyer
City elites and the administration of
the Attalid kingdom since Apameia
For
events following the period after 146 B.C., also and
especially with regard to the Greek cities of Asia Minor
until the province of Asia was established around 126, we
must rely on other, primarily epigraphic sources. The
same applies for the structure of the Attalid kingdom in
Asia Minor. Research activities in this connection are
currently focused on the relationship of the Greek
cities, and their political and social elites, to the
administration and central gov&endash;ernment of the
kingdom. This is also the object of my own research,
roughly outlined below.
Fortunately,
the amount of epigraphical source material for the period
between 188 and 133 B.C. has increased significantly over
the past few years. These provide additional detail about
efforts to integrate non-Greek sections of the
population, about the structure of command and control,
and about the geographical extension of the provinces,
for example. More is also learned about the policies and
rôle of the small cities at the various
administrative levels of the kingdom, from the royal
farmers, through the provincial capitals to the centers
of court activity. What is particularly striking,
however, is the sheer density of new findings from the
time of the crisis and decline of the Attalid Kingdom,
especially after the death of the last childless king:
These epigraphical findings shed light not only on the
Aristonikos campaign, but also on the political thinking
of the Greek cities, of the usurper Aristonikos and
&endash; last but not least &endash; of the Romans, in
particular the Senate, until establishment of the
province under the leadership of Aquilius (129-126 B.C.)
These
new sources thus provide us with new details about the
structure of government and public administration in the
"old" central areas of the kingdom, as well as in regions
gained in the peace of 188. We are also given new
information about the position of the non-autonomous
cities and their political and social elites. With
sophisticated methodological procedures it is possible to
derive a relatively complex picture, provided the
argumentation is done conclusively: In addition to the
actual sources dating from the period after the peace of
Apamea and before the death of Attalos III, one can also
draw conclusions about conditions during the period of
the Attalid predecessors, the Seleucids, and their heirs,
the Romans, if the thesis of continuity &endash; already
proven in many respects &endash; is accepted. A next step
(in future research) will be to compare the results of
these analyses with current knowledge about the structure
of government and the rôle of cities in other
Macedonian/Hellenistic kingdoms, especially in Macedonia
and Egypt, in order to complete the picture.