It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea at the Time … - Expected and Unexpected Consequences when Athens & Other Major Greek City States Leveraged Philip V to Draw Rome into the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract

The grand theme of the "liberation of Greece" is peculiar in the second and first centuries B.C. by being proclaimed more often by outsiders than by Greeks, and far more often by outsiders than by Athenians. The Athens that ultimately became wholly Roman after the disastrous hostage crisis provoked by Mithridatic forces on the Acropolis in the 80's started down that road by joining with a few other Greek city states to call in Roman aid against Philip V of Macedon in the 190's, and did so, arguably, believing it could leverage a projection of force by a war-weary Roman Republic to make itself again political master of the Greek mainland. To attract Roman aid against the raids of Philip V's Macedon, Athens and its allies had to make both a case that Macedon posed a genuine threat to the eastern Mediterranean (and to Rome, in the aftermath of its war against Hannibal, and Philip's apparent offer to support that war), and the case that it was a key strategic asset for Rome not only in defeating Philip, but also for stabilizing Greece. To play this hand effectively, Athens not only mobilized its legendary propaganda skills, but also worked public feeling hard in its own streets to make Rome feel welcome, and to make Roman intervention feel natural and attractive at home. By playing this hand, Athens also provoked reprisals from Philip, the damage to Athens' physical heritage foreshadowing more extreme destruction a century later when the city would be caught between the insurgents of Mithridates and the renegade Roman forces of Sulla. The Athenian public became, as a result, even more ready to 'be Roman.' At the time, the intent of Athenian politicians to create a specially protected micro-empire for the city on the Greek mainland appeared achievable, but the Roman response, as so often, moved in unexpected directions, and pulled Athens inexorably into the future empire of Rome. Athens’ secondary intention: to become the default educator of the whole ruling culture in Rome’s next generations (it believed it was reaching this goal with the Hellenistic east) would require secondary tactics – including a demonstration using a staged lawsuit in Rome. This study intends to examine the earliest stages of the piecemeal, and only partially intentional, first step of Romanizing in Athens – I addressed a later stage in my study of the Mithridatic hostage crisis on the Acropolis.