Empire by Invitation: Greek Political Strategies and Roman Imperial Interventions in the Second Century B.C.E.

Abstract

Greek politicians in the second century b.c.e. increasingly turned to Roman authorities in order to defeat their political opposition. Charges of demagoguery and socio-economic revolution became commonplace in these political struggles in the presence of Roman authority. This evidence provides a key to understanding a famous inscription dating to 144/143 b.c.e. (Syll. 684), which records a letter from the Roman praetorian proconsul to Macedonia, relaying his ruling on recent civil unrest in Achaean Dyme. More importantly, Greek appeals to Roman power, such as we find in Syll. 684, support a model of second-century Roman imperial expansion in Greece focusing on the imperial periphery rather than the imperial metropole.