Tempeldämmerung: Pagan Temple Destruction in the Context of the Institutionalized Incentive...

AARHUS UNIVERSITY

Tempeldämmerung Pagan Temple Destruction in the Context of the

Institutionalized Incentive Structure of Governors in the Eastern Provinces of the Later Roman Empire

P. M. Fritz 2013-09-04

Abstract: This works explores the institutionalized reasons for the decline of temples rather than the religious. I argue that the process of pagan temple destruction of the eastern provinces in the Later Roman Empire (c. late fourth and early fifth centuries) should not be understood as Götterdämmerung, a cataclysmic, sudden, and violent destruction of pagan shrines and temples, but rather what I call Tempeldämmerung, the gradual ruin of temples as provincial governors’ “benevolent light” of public funding no longer shined on these pagan temples — a fade into twilight. This work uses economic theory to analyze and explain the incentive structure that would have led a provincial governor to prioritize the funding of other public buildings over the temples, resulting in their collapse from lack of maintenance. Economic theory is well suited to a study of how a provincial governor in general would have governed since a governor had to manage an allocation of finite resources and in doing so, was engaged in exchanges with his subjects. A governor interacted with his local elite through a system of mutual benefaction. This involved an exchange of offering benefactions, which could be honorific or practical, both being desirable nonetheless. This work asks the question, “Was the fall of pagan temples a result of rational behavior on the part of these governors?”

The Religious Roots of Europe

P. M. Fritz Tempeldämmerung 1

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1

Dedication and Acknowledgements

2

Preface

3

Introduction

4

Chapter One Keine Götterdämmerung: The Nature of Pagan Temple Destruction

12

Chapter Two Incentive Structure Part One: The Governor, His Office, and Building Construction

20

Chapter Three Incentive Structure Part Two: The Governor, The Local Elite, and The Power of The Powerful Elite

31

Chapter Four Incentive Structure Part Three: The Governor, The “Market Will,” and The Power of the Lower Elite

40

Conclusion

58


Dedication and Acknowledgements

To My Teachers

I would like to dedicate this work to those who have taught me, to those whose

ideas I am fortunate enough to have echo in my own: To my parents, Mat and

Maryann, who taught me the value of hard work and great compassion through their

inspiring example. To Caren Rickett, who taught me the wonder of the Romans and the

joy of Latin. To John Hebert, who taught me just how fascinating history could be. To

Karin Uhlenhop, who taught me in her English class that writing was about crafting

sound and interesting arguments. To Patrick Coughlin and Peter Lenetz, who, among

many things, taught me the importance of making your studies interesting to

outsiders. To Diane Fruchtman, who taught me to be a better student, a better fencer,

and a better person. To Bert Harrill, who taught me to challenge myself. To David

Brakke, who taught me that context was key. To Ed Watts, who taught me to believe in

myself and whose advice and encouragement offered during a lovely afternoon in

Copenhagen breathed new life into this project. To Nicholas Marshall, who taught me

how to navigate the new world that I had entered in Scandinavia. To Jakob Engberg,

who taught me to be more cautious with my claims. To Samuel Rubenson and Antti

Marjanen, who offered valuable feedback upon hearing a brief outline of my

argument. To my professors and fellow students in the RRE, who taught me more

about ancient religions than I thought possible in such a short time. And to my loving

fiancée, Jane, who has helped me throughout this project in innumerable ways and

teaches me every day how to be better at being me. In the spirit of an underlying theme

of this work, I am grateful to those who have offered me the benefaction of their

wisdom and knowledge, and I hope to be able to offer them benefaction in return.


Preface

I would like to preface this work with a brief note on my footnotes and citations.

I have decided to supply full citations for all secondary sources that do not include

abbreviations in each footnote, mainly due to my own frustration in the research process

attempting to track down cited material. This will hopefully save the reader valuable

time since she or he will not have to search through the work for a full citation or

question if the “ibid” was misplaced. Citations will be obvious and readily available for

quick reference. I will ask the reader to spend much of this work reading footnotes, so

it is preferred if they are as clear as possible. Primary sources, unless otherwise stated,

will be translated by and presented as found in the secondary scholarship when there is

a reference in the footnote with the quote. They are translated from works with the

primary function of providing a translation of an ancient author otherwise and will be

listed under the ancient author in the bibliography. I keep the difference in spelling

conventions between translations by scholars using British or American standards in

translated quotes; however, I will be using American spelling conventions.


Introduction

Late Antiquity was a time of great change for The Roman Empire.

Relationships between subjects and superiors developed with the solidification of the

Dominate. The Later Roman Empire’s religious landscape transformed over just a few

centuries from being distinctly pagan1 into one in which Christianity dominated both its

people and its institutions — as temples fell and churches rose across the empire.2

Early work, like that of Friedrich Deichmann’s 1939 article “Frühchristliche Kirchen in

antiken Heiligtümern” as well as Garth Fowden’s “Bishops and Temples in The Eastern

Roman Empire,” characterized this religious change as a violent clash of religions

between Christians and pagans. Due to the Romantic notions of Christian triumphalism

such an understanding conjures,3 I have taken to calling this process of temple

destruction Götterdämmerung. More recent work, as will be discussed in chapter one of

this work, challenges this Romantic view and instead offers an explanation of the fall of

temples as being a slow more gradual process.4 However, even if temple destruction

was largely a slow process, there are still several questions to be examined. Should this

religious transformation be examined and understood solely on religious grounds or do

secular forces deserve examination in their own right? What role did the imperial, local,

and regional administrations have? What role did provincial governors have in their

collapse? And if they were significant players in their demise, why? These are some of

the questions that this work seeks to address and focuses on one in particular: Could

temple destruction in the Eastern Roman Empire of the late fourth and early fifth

1 I will use the term pagan, as opposed to Hellen or any other term, to describe the peoples (and their respective accompanying religious beliefs and practices), who were neither Christian nor Jewish. I believe this is a useful term because it is collective and describes this group in a negative sense, i.e. not being Christian nor Jewish. In a time when the imperial administration was led by Christians and dealt with religious matters set against others who were not Christian, this term is useful in examining this “negative group,” particularly since the treatment of Jews is outside this work. For a discussion of the term, see James J. O’Donnell “‘Paganus’: evolution and use”, Classical Folia 31 (1977): 163–69. 2 See Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization, C. 370-529 (Brill, 1993), vii-xi. 3 Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) lvf. 4 This issue is still debated, but this debate is more about the exact speed of temple destruction than it being primarily the result of violent religious conflict. See Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) xv-lxv.


centuries have been, at least in part, a natural result of rational choices made by

provincial governors?

Previous Scholarship

There are several secondary works that have been particularly helpful in

addressing these questions, and rather than leaving them in ruin, this work is built upon

their foundations and reshapes the walls of their insights. For the nature of temple

destruction: The collection of essays, The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism’,

edited by Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan provides excellent summaries of modern

scholarship and lists of relevant primary textual sources on the nature of the downfall of

pagan temples. While this work focuses on the archeological data, its contributors

employ interdisciplinary methodology and scholarship in their arguments for

understanding temple destruction as a slow process of gradual ruin. The collected

volume, From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography

in Late Antiquity edited by Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter,

primarily examines the textual evidence for the ruin of pagan temples, but uses

interdisciplinary methodologies as well in their examinations. Their work also

challenges older views of temple destruction as being principally the result of violent

religious clashes between pagans and Christians.

Several works have been useful in understanding the mechanics of how the

different levels of Roman administration, from local and provincial to imperial,

interacted with each other and their people. A. H. M. Jones’s two volume work, The

Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey,

provides, as its name implies, a broad historical picture of how the Roman

administrations functioned. Law and Empire in Late Antiquity by Jill Harries explains

how the Roman legal system worked, detailing the processes of how law was enforced

and practiced in late antiquity, and argues that Roman imperial law was highly

dependent on local factors for its implementation. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz’s

acuminous work, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman

Empire, investigates the inner-workings of large eastern cities of the Later Roman

Empire through an examination of fourth century Antioch. Peter Brown, in Power and


Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire, examines the power

dynamics between bishops and Roman authorities in the fourth and fifth century East.

While Brown depicts governors as being weaker than I would accept at times, this work

provides insight into the relationships between governmental officials and powerful

religious figures by emphasizing the great power local elites could have on their

governors. J. E. Lendon and Clifford Ando, in their respective works, Empire of

Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World and Imperial Ideology and

Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire, demonstrate the importance of honor culture

and ideology in the functioning of imperial administration. They argue that these forces

allowed the imperial machine to run, that government administrations relied on an

exchange of honor in the context of emperor-centric imperial ideology to motivate their

subjects.

Perhaps the most important secondary work for this study is The Governor and

His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire by Daniëlle Slootjes. This work explores how

governors and their provincial subjects interacted and communicated with each other.

She argues that this is best understood through a system of mutual benefaction, in which

the governor is a benefactor to his subjects by means of the powers of his office and his

subjects are benefactors to him through honorific and practical means. In light of this

mutual benefaction, Slootjes examines the resulting power dynamics and the

expectations that these groups had for one another. This work is particular productive

for my investigation because mutual benefaction implies an exchange and allocation of

desired services, which lends itself to an examination using economic theory.

Theory, Method, and Terms

The scope of this investigation is limited to the late fourth and early fifth century

in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. I will be examining trends and

consequently will not be addressing issues associated with the attempts of pagan revival

under Julian’s short reign. The principle theory that I will use in my examination of the

role of governors in temple destruction will be Rational Choice Theory from

Economics. Rational Choice Theory assumes that humans make choices in a “rational”

manner. It explains human behavior as the result of a cost/benefit analysis, in which the


agent (decision-maker) has made his or her decision thereupon, seeking to increase his

or her own personal advantage.5 The neoclassical idea of Homo Economicus, a

perfectly rational being that is able to calculate the costs and benefits of every decision

in order to maximize his personal advantage with expert precision, may be fine for some

macroeconomic analysis,6 but it ignores the fallibility of humans in determining what is

actually best for them.7 For a microeconomic analysis, such as examining the decisions

of a governor, a different understanding of rationality is required. Choices are rational,

not because they result in the “right” or “best” choice, but because they are the result of

a rational process. In other words, a choice is rational insofar as it is teleological, or

goal oriented. They will, of course, be subject to imperfect information8 and the goals

of the agent. This is where an application of neoclassical methodology typically fails in

an application to the past. In using Rational Choice Theory, one must not divorce the

availability of information to the agent, how that information was understood by the

agent, and the goals of the agent from the agent himself or herself from an analysis or

the conclusions will be will be highly problematic because they will be based on

assumed universal goals with little regard for the effects of culture on the agent.9 To

avoid this issue, I will place rational choices in their cultural context by examining the

goals of a late antique governor.

Central to an analysis of a rational choice is the concept of “incentives.” I will

use this term throughout this work, and I use it in the economic sense of the term. An

incentive is something that pushes an agent into making a particular choice. The power

of an incentive is tied to its consequences in relation to the goals of the agent. This can 5 For an overview of intellectual history in traditional economics and the role of rationality therein, see John Cassidy, How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 17-219. 6Tim Harford, The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World (New York: Random House, 2008), 10. 7 Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (New York: Harper, 2008). 8 For a discussion of the effects of imperfect information in rational choice theory in traditional economics, see John Cassidy, “Part Two: Reality-Based Economics” in How Markets Fail, 111-219. 9 This is my largest criticism of Rodney Stark’s work in The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997). For a critique of Stark’s methodology with regard to antiquity, cf. Gregory D. Alles, “Religious economies and rational choice” in Stausberg, Michael, ed. Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion (London: Routledge, 2009), 83-98; Jan N. Bremmer, Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (Createspace, 2010), 47. Steve Bruce also criticizes Stark’s used of rational choice theory, but his criticisms are rooted in a neoclassical understanding of rationality. See, Steve Bruce, Choice and Religion: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999).


be a subtle nudge or it can be a powerful shove. The agent may give little conscious

thought to them or be keenly aware of its effect on his or her path to achieve a goal. An

incentive rarely acts alone, but rather in the context of other incentives in an “incentive

structure.” Incentives can work alongside one another, increasing the power they have

on the agent towards a specific decision, or they can work against each other, resulting

in a net or aggregate incentive, in which the more powerful incentives push the agent

towards their decision. If they balance out, they can even neutralize each other.

I will also use the term market, or “the market.” Individuals exchange goods

and/or services in “markets.” “The market” is an abstraction of the collective choices of

the individuals competing with one another for a finite resource. Like incentive

structures, they are the result of aggregation.10 For example, one can speak of “market

forces,” which would be forces that result from collective choices of individuals

competing with one another for a finite resource. Resources need not be physical. If

one offers a service, which is valued, this produces a resource. It is finite insofar as

one’s ability to provide this service is limited, since time itself and energy to work are

not infinite.

This work focuses on the relationship between a “governor” and the “local elite”

in his province, which I divide into two groups, the “Power Elite” and the “Lower

Elite.” I will now briefly discuss how I use these terms, which are all etic. In line with

Daniëlle Slootjes’s work, I will use the term governor to describe the office that held

various titles for those who headed the civil administration of provinces, viz. praeses,

corrector, consularis, proconsul, and I have excluded vicars and prefects from this

examination since they represent an office of a different type and functioned very

differently.11 The “local elite” is a tricky term in itself and has not been used

consistently by scholars.12 While the Romans themselves divided their socio-political

groups by order rather than economics class, I will use the term “local elite” to refer to

those in their given province, who control enough financial resources that they could be

considered part of the “economic elite” of the Roman Empire. I use this economic 10 For a further discussion of economic terms, which are useful in the study of human behavior see, Gray S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 3-14. 11 For the position of this office in the imperial administration, see Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 1-45. 12 Daniëlle Slootjes, “Local Elites And Power In The Roman World: Modern Theories And Models” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 42, no. 2 (2011): 236ff.


distinction because “Women, merchants, members of the urban plebs, and even

illiterates could find themselves enrolled as curiales, as town councilors, provided that

they had money.”13 Money may not have offered social status, but it certainly could

cause social liability. Generally speaking, this group, as I will use them, refers to the

honestiores.14 I take this economic group, the local elite, and then divide them based on

their influence into the Powerful Elite and the Lower Elite. I call those who have the

ability to exert influence outside of their province in a manner that could offer

assistance or hindrance to a governor the Powerful Elite, and those local elites who did

not have this power will be called the Lower Elite. It is not very important for this

study in which order these elites exactly were, because this works defines groups by

their ability to do something. It is completely etic, arguing over who exactly fits into

these groups and which emic terms should be applied could be a topic for subsequent

work, but it is not a concern of the present one.

Crucial Sources in This Study

There are two primary sources that are used frequently enough in this study as to

warrant their mentioning in this introduction: The Codex Theodosianus and the works of

Libanius. The Codex Theodosianus is a collection of imperial law as found in the edicts

and general laws (leges) from 312 to its completion. It was ordered by the Emperor

Theodosius II in 429 and was completed in 438.15 These laws were organized

thematically, rather than chronologically. The provided dates with the specific laws in

this work are based on secondary scholarship and will have an accompanying reference.

These laws reflect the policies of the imperial administrations insofar as they were

13 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 27f. Cf. A. H. M. Jones, The later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 737-740; P. J. Sijpesteijn, “A Female Βονλεντής” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 24 (1987): 141-2. 14 The honestiores would have been comprised primarily of the honorati i.e. senators, viri clarissimi, equites, decuriones, augustales, milites and veterani” (Translation mine). Original: “Zu den honestiores hätten vor allem die honorati gehört, und zwar die senatores respektive viri clarissimi, equites, decuriones, augustales, milites und veterani,” Rolf Rilinger, Humiliores-honestiores: zu einer sozialen Dichotomie im Strafrecht der römischen Kaiserzeit (München: Oldenbourg, 1988), 24. 15 A. H. M. Jones, The later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 375f; For a more detailed examination of the background and compilation of the Codex Theodosianus, cf. Jill Harries and Ian Wood, eds. The Theodosian Code: Studies in the Imperial Law of Late Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 1993), 1-93, John Matthews, Laying Down the Law: A Study of the Theodosian Code (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).


recorded as laws. The enforcement of these laws across the provinces, as Jill Harries’s

work in Law and Empire in Late Antiquity illustrates, was subject to local and regional

conditions. Particularly useful for this study are the laws that pertain to governors and

local authorities in conducting their administrations (largely found in Book 15), as well

as laws regarding religion (largely found in Book 16).

The works of Libanius are useful in this study because he was a prolific writer of

orations and letters throughout his career in Antioch and frequently discussed topics of

religion and the administration of the provinces by governors. Libanius, born into a

respected family in 314, was a pagan philosopher in Antioch and wrote up until his

death in the last decade of the fourth century. He was well-connected throughout the

East, and addressed imperial officials frequently16 The translations of Libanius’s

writings used in this study come from both of A. F. Norman’s two volume works on

Libanius form the Loeb Classical Library and from Scott Bradbury’s Selected Letters of

Libanius unless otherwise stated.

Organization

This work is organized thematically in a manner that first addresses the nature of

temple destruction and subsequently examines the incentive structure of provincial

governors and places temple destruction in this context. The examination of a

governor’s incentive structures is divided into three parts, which focus on the different

agents in play, and culminates in my conclusion with a summary of how these incentive

structure helped facilitate the nature of temple destruction. In my first chapter, I will

outline how temple destruction is better understood as slow process of abandonment and

ruin, what I call Tempeldämmerung, rather than a swift and violent process

characterized by religious conflict between Christians and pagans, which I have taken to

call Götterdämmerung. The second chapter begins the analysis of the incentive

structure in which a Roman provincial governor operated. It examines who these

16 For more on the life and writings of Libanius, cf J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 1-39; A. F. Norman, Libanius: Autobiography and Selected Letters, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992), viif, 1-50; A. F. Norman, Libanius: Selected Works, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977), vii-lx; Scott Bradbury, Selected Letters of Libanius (Liverpool, University Press, 2004), xi, 1-23.


governors were, what their own motivations and goals would have been in the context

of their office and the honor culture of the Roman elite, and how this resulted in a

dependence on local elite and an incentive for a governor to prefer new construction

over the maintenance of existing buildings, such as temples. The third chapter

continues this analysis of the incentive structure of governors by turning to the local

elite and focuses on the Powerful Elite, those whose influence extended beyond the

borders of the province. It examines how the office of the governorship gave the local

elite access to the governor and how this access could result in increased influence for

the Powerful Elite over the governor because they were able to negotiate with him using

both a carrot and a stick by means of mutual benefaction and the threat of their

influence beyond the borders of the province against the governor. In the fourth

chapter, I will argue that the power of The Powerful Elite was balanced against the

collective power of the local elite, a group primarily comprised of the Lower Elite, those

whose influence could not typically extend beyond the province. I argue that these

Lower Elites were able to exert influence over the governor when their interests

overlapped and dominated the collective will (or “market will”) of the elites in general

due to their ability to control a sizable market share of the “market will.” My

conclusion will bring together these three parts of the governor's incentive structure,

summarizing how this incentive structure resulted in an overall incentive for governors

of the late fourth and early fifth century to neglect the maintenance of pagan temples in

favor of the construction of new buildings and the maintenance of other public

buildings, both of which were not pagan temples or shrines.


1

Keine Götterdämmerung:

The Nature of Pagan Temple Destruction

Before a discussion of the incentives structures of governors and their role in

pagan temple destruction can begin, some attention should be paid to the nature of the

destruction of these temples itself. As briefly mentioned in the introduction, pagan

temple destruction was largely regarded in early scholarship as a process that was a

result of a clash of religions in which Christians (through governmental assistance

and/or complicity destroyed) pagan temples, shrines, and ability to worship shortly after

Christian emperors took the throne. There are three main sources for an examination of

pagan temple destruction: legal, narrative, and archaeological. Most of our textual

sources, such as literary accounts and legal codes, which describe temple destruction,

come from Christian authors and all were preserved through a Christian tradition. Many

literary accounts17 tell sensational stories of religious conflict,18 and many of the legal

codes served the ideological interests of the emperor.19 The archaeological data has

improved significantly since Friedrich Deichmann argued for the widespread direct

conversion of pagan temples into churches,20 but still has several limitations, such as the

ability to provide a precise date for of the end of particular pagan practices therein.21

17 I include the letters and orations of Libanius in this category because they function in much the same way as other narrative accounts and reflect the same sort of agenda bias. Cf. Scott Bradbury, Selected letters of Libanius: From The Age of Constantius and Julian (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 1-23; Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 119; Peter Talloen and Lies Vercauteren, “The Fate of Temples in Late Antique Anatolia,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 351. 18 Vita Sinuthii by Besa and Libanius’s Oratio 30 will be breifly discussed in this section. For a more detailed lists of accounts see, Koen Demarsin, “‘Paganism’ in Late Antiquity: Thematic Studies” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 30-32. 19 Cf. Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 1-48; Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 214; J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 8f. 20 Friederich Deichmann, “Frühchristliche Kirchen in Antiken Heiligtümern” Jahrbuch des deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 54 (1939): 105-36. 21 Bryan Ward-Perkins, “The End of the Temples: An Archaeological Problem” in Spätantiker Staat und religiöser Konflikt imperiale und lokale Verwaltung und die Gewalt gegen Heiligtümer, ed. Johannes Hahn (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011.) 187-199.


There are more questions about the exact nature of pagan temple destruction than could

be addressed in volumes, but a growing trend in modern scholarship moves away from

the idea that temple destruction was primarily swift, violent, and an organized deliberate

policy of the empire. In this chapter, I will outline some of the historical and

archaeological work that challenges this view of Götterdämmerung and will provide a

short argument for the state of pagan temple destruction, which forms the basis and

context for the subsequent discussion of the incentive structure for governors that would

have contributed to Templedämmerung.

Laws

This situation presented by the legal sources is one of progressive but swift

abolition of pagan worship and destruction of temples, and is one that does not reflect

the “facts on the ground.” The imperial administrations passed several laws throughout

the fourth and fifth century that appear to limit or eliminate pagan worship, particularly

public worship like that of the temples.22 These laws, such as those in Book 16 of the

Codex Theodosianus become, at least in their rhetoric, increasingly harsh in their

limitations of pagan from Constantine thorough Theodosius II, which likely served the

ideological interests of the imperial administrations more than reflect even their own

realistic expectation of enforcement thereof.23 Laws described in literary sources

22 “Imperial laws from the early 4th to mid 5th c. famously give us a dramatic view of radical Christian ambition in Late Antiquity: first sacrifices were banned (Cod. Theod. 16.10.2 (A.D. 341)), under pain of death (16.10.6 (A.D. 356)); then temples were closed (16.10.4 (A.D. 346/54/56); cult was prohibited in private (16.10.12 (A.D. 392)); and finally a general destruction was ordered (16.10.24 (A.D. 435)), some twenty years after the death of Hypatia. It can be said that sometimes the laws are qualified and specific, with concessions to protect festivals (16.10.3 (A.D. 346/42), 16.10.8 (A.D. 382)), art works (16.10.15 (A.D. 399)) and architecture (16.10.18 (A.D. 399)), whilst a law of 423 (16.10.24) threatens property confiscation against molesters of ‘Jews and pagans who live quietly and do not violate law or order’. However, on other occasions, the laws are very severe and even ugly, to us today: they seek the comprehensive eradication of pagan rite, even forbidding the suspension of wreaths to penates, or the binding of trees with fillets (16.10.12 (A.D. 392)).” See, Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) xxxviff; Richard Bayliss, Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion, BAR International Series 1281 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004), xxii. 23 Johannes Hahn makes this point when he writes, “The contextual bend of these collected laws is sweepingly linear, virtually without contradiction. The course of action is initially against specific divinational and sacrificial practices, then further limitations for sacrifice generally, eventually the prohibition of temple visitation for cultic purposes, and finally their desecration and destruction. This very factor gives the claims of these texts a strongly normative character,” (Translation mine). Original: “Der inhaltliche Bogen der wiedergegebenen Gesetze — zunächst das Vorgehen gegen bestimmte


should also be approach laws with great suspicion, such as the anti-pagan legislation of

Constantine recounted by Eusebius.24 Accounts such as this are shaped by the author’s

agenda and ideological biases, which can be strong enough that one can safely assume

the author may have drastically alters events for his or her own narrative purposes.25

This is not to say that any such laws did not exist. The dating for the anti-pagan

legislation found in the Codex Theodosianus demonstrates that there were in fact many

laws that limited pagan worship, but simply existing on an imperial level does not

necessarily translate into laws in force across the empire.

Even when laws can accurately be described as being in effect on an imperial

level, these laws offer surprisingly little insight into their own enforcement and into the

continuation, or lack thereof, of pagan worship in temples. This is due to nature of the

Roman legal system, in which governors in late antiquity had phenomenal latitude in the

execution of Roman law. The enforcement of laws was highly subject to the provincial

governors and other local authorities that actually had to carry them out.26 This can be

seen, in part, by the resistance Augustine faced from the local authorities in the province

of Africa against pagans. When he sought legal action against a group of pagans, who

turned to violence after they were confronted by Christians seeking to end their

Divinations- und Opferpraktiken, dann weitergehende Einschränkungen für Opferhandlungen, schließlich das Verbot des Tempelbesuchs in kultischer Absicht und endlich auch deren Profanierung oder Zerstörung — ist weitgehend geradlinig, gewissermaßen widerspruchsfrei. Gerade dieser Umstand verleiht den Aussagen dieser Texte zugleich auch einen stark normativen Charakter,” Johannes Hahn, “Gesetze als Waffe? Die kaiserliche Religionspolitik und die Zerstörung der Tempel” in Spätantiker Staat und religiöser Konflikt imperiale und lokale Verwaltung und die Gewalt gegen Heiligtümer, ed. Johannes Hahn (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011.) 203. Legal texts cannot be separated from their political contexts; “Law is politics.” Cf. David Kairys, The Politics of Law (Pantheon, 1982) as found in Mark V. Tushnet, “Critical Legal Theory” in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, ed. Martin P. Golding and William A. Edmundson (Blackwell Pub., 2005), 80-9. This is an assumption of Critical Legal Theory. For an overview of the theory’s history and criticism, see these works. 24 Edward Watts points out an instance of this in his discussion of the anti-pagan laws under Constantine as chronicled by Eusebius in Vita Constantini. Eusebius so wants to paint Constantine as strongly pro-Christianity that he greatly exaggerates the enforcement and effects of Constantine’s banning of pagan sacrifices. See Edward Watts, “Roman Anti-Pagan Legislation in Theory and Practice: A working paper presented to the IU Law and Society Workshop” Lecture, (Indiana University) <http://www.law.indiana.edu/centers/lawsociety/doc/watts_pagan_legislation.pdf >, 8ff. 25 As Elizabeth A. Clark points out, many of our late antique texts “lie in a largely unknown and dubious relation to the ‘reality’ of the Church” and advocates for scholars to “read against the grain.” For a more detailed discussion, see Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Harvard UP, 2004), 169ff. 26 Cf. Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 77-98; Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 365ff; Béatrice Caseau, “Late Antique Paganism: Adaptation under Duress” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 117.


procession and pagan celebration of the Kalends in the town of Calama on the first of

June in 408, the town council refused to accept the claim due to the “very recent laws”

against pagan public practice.27 Some laws, like “the order to the prefect of the East in

435 to destroy the temples (Codex Theodosianus 16.10.25) [were] subject to the consent

of local magistrates, and so did not involve all temples.”28 The actual practice of

pagans does not seem to reflect the imperial legislation, and as a result, these sources

are more useful in demonstrating the autonomy of governors and other local authorities

and therefore the role of government in the temple destruction should be explored and

understood in this context.

Literary

Like the legal sources, literary sources, such as the letters of Libanius and the

narrative accounts of the lives of saints, appear to spin a tale of violent clashes between

pagans and Christians, in which Christian mobs enact God’s Will by smashing pagan

icons and burning temples to the ground or triumphantly converting pagan temples into

churches, but this type of pagan temple destruction cannot be described as the norm.

Shenoute recounts of “the time we burned the pagan temple in Atripe” and “burned that

place of idols with fire along with everything that was in it.”29 Accounts such as this in

which actual destruction of a temple takes place are rare compared to more common

27 Augustine, Epistula 91; While this example is outside the geographical boundaries of my investigation, it nevertheless is productive in demonstrating that even in the fifth century, the imperial administration, which had prohibited these forms of public worship for decades, was unable to uniformly end pagan worship with imperial legislation because they depended on the cooperation of local authorities in their enforcement. Cf. Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 88ff. 28 Peter Talloen and Lies Vercauteren, “The Fate of Temples in Late Antique Anatolia,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 351, note 24. Cf. Alison Frantz, “From Paganism to Christianity in the Temples of Athens” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 19 (1965): 185-205; H. R. Meier, “Alte Tempel—Neue Kulte. Zum Schutz obsoleter Sakralbauten in der Spätantike und zur Adaption alter Bauten an der christlichen Kult”, in Innovation in der Spätantike: Kolloquium Basel 6. und 7. Mai 1994, ed. B. Brenk, Spätantike-Frühes Christentum-Byzanz. Kunst im ersten Jahrtausend. Reihe B: Studien und Perspektiven vol. 1 (Wiesbaden 1996) 363–76. 29 Stephen Emmel provides the translation here of the Coptic text of Vita Sinuthii by Besa, Shenoute’s successor as abbot. Emmel argues that these two quotes are referring to the same event. See Stephen Emmel, “Shenoute and the Destruction of Temples in Egypt” in From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity, eds. Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 162ff.


accounts of targeting of pagan idols.30 This is even reflected in Shenoute’s accounts

about temple attacks, in which he roots attacking pagan temples on a the bases of them

being houses of idols and justifies his later destruction of idols in the home of private

pagan citizen as being an extension of this iconoclastic mission.31

In a speech to the Emperor Theodosius, Libanius writes that the temples are

being attacked by Christian mobs and that “utter desolation follows, with the stripping

of roofs, demolition of walls, the tearing down of statues and the overthrow of alters,

and the priests must keep quiet or die. After demolishing one, they scurry to another,

and to a third, and trophy is piled upon trophy, in contravention of the law.”32 Libanius

would seem that these Christian mobs have become a plague. If so, then one would

expect such rampant devastation of temples to be reflected in the archeological data, but

it is not.

Archeological

The archeological data on the pagan temples does not match the sensational

accounts of our literary sources as an indicator of what the typical process of temple

destruction actually was. Modern scholars increasingly interpret the archaeological data

as representing a slow process of temple destruction, and reoccupation.33 The data for

temple destruction also points towards significant regional variation, in which the

preservation and repair of temples for cultural heritage and the conversion of temples

30 Cf. David Frankfurter, “Iconoclasm and Christianization in Late Antique Egypt: Christian Treatments of Space and Image” in From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity, eds. Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 135-159; Troels Myrup Kristensen, “Embodied Images: Christian Response and Destruction in Late Antique Egypt” Journal of Late Antiquity 2.2 (2009): 224-50. Myrup Kristensen also provides extensive notes on recent scholarship which discusses this point. 31 Stephen Emmel argues this point, writing, “Shenoute refers to having smashed idols ‘in the temple that we burned along with everything inside it,’ which I take to be a reference to the temple in Atripe. Why does he make this reference? In order to establish the identity between the objects that he found in Gesios’s private chamber and the cultic objects that one used to find in a temple.” See Stephen Emmel, “Shenoute and the Destruction of Temples in Egypt” in From Temple to Church: Destruction and Renewal of Local Cultic Topography in Late Antiquity, eds. Johannes Hahn, Stephen Emmel, and Ulrich Gotter (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 178. 32 Libanius, Oratio 33.8. 33 For a more detailed summary and examination of the shift in archaeological scholarship towards this understanding of temple destruction, see Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) xv-lxv.


into churches were much more common in the West than in the East.34 However,

despite deliberate temple destruction being more common in the East, it was still not the

common fate of temples in these regions, and according to Luke Lavan’s survey of

modern archeological work, “it can be stated with confidence, that temples were neither

widely converted into churches nor widely demolished in Late Antiquity.”35 Temple

desecration, such as the destruction of pagan idols, was more common than complete

destruction, but even these cases are rare in the archeological record.36 Violent

destruction (and desecration) cannot be accurately described as the primary source for

the downfall of pagan temples in the late fourth and earth fifth century East despite the

evidence thereof reaching its peak during this time and in this region— as imperial laws

became harsh, literary accounts for temple destruction concentrate, and supporting

archaeological sources can be found.37 In other words, even though they reached their

peak in these regions and during this time, the actual instances of these events were not

common enough to explain how most temples ceased being pagan temples.

In cases where pagan temples are destroyed, it appears that they have been

abandoned before they were destroyed.38 Soon after their abandonment, temples were

used as quarries for their building materials — a process that could take some time but

temples nevertheless proved rather attractive sources for cheap material.39 “The

availability of cut stone for new building projects at these abandoned sites promoted

34 Cf. Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) xxxviff; Richard Bayliss, Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion, BAR International Series 1281 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004). 35 Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), xxiv. 36 Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), xxixff. 37 Cf. Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), xxiv; Richard Bayliss, Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion, BAR International Series 1281 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004), 16. 38 Cf. Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) xxxiiiff., xxxiv for a list of scholarly work specifically on temple abandonment. Richard Bayliss, Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion, BAR International Series 1281 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004), 58-64. 39 Peter Talloen and Lies Vercauteren, “The Fate of Temples in Late Antique Anatolia,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 355ff.


construction work and urban renewal, as we see from a law of 397 [Codex

Theodosianus 15.1.36] which permitted the reuse of the material from destroyed

temples for the restorations of roads, bridges and aqueducts.”40 Practical salvaging,

rather than religious conquest seems to be the explanation of physical destruction of

temples, a process that began almost immediately after pagans left their temples.

The conversion of temples into churches in the late fourth and early fifth century

also was not common enough to offer an explanation of the typical pagan temple

closing, but the archaeological evidence of these conversions are useful in shedding

some light on their use before their “religious conversion.” Peter Talloen and Lies

Vercauteren, building on the work of Richard Bayliss, outline two types of temple

conversion, “direct” and “indirect” conversion, which generally took place during

different periods. In the late fourth and early fifth century, “indirect conversion” was

more common, which was the construction of churches on the grounds of former pagan

temples, but “no standing material from the temple in question was reused.”41

Presumably, the materials from these temples were already scavenged. In the late fifth

and early sixth century, “direct conversion” was more common, in which “the standing

material from a temple was physically reshaped into a church.”42 This would suggest

that these temples were still being used and maintained for a longer period than the

temples, which were indirectly converted if temples generally were used for material

soon after their closing since these later temples, which were directly converted, had

more surviving material to be “physically reshaped into a church.” Perhaps, these

temples were still in pagan use well into the fifth century. It is impossible to say with

certainty, but it does seem plausible considering that “pagan worship certainly

continued throughout the 5th c. in many cities of the eastern Mediterranean”43 and “the

40 Peter Talloen and Lies Vercauteren, “The Fate of Temples in Late Antique Anatolia,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 358. 41 Peter Talloen and Lies Vercauteren, “The Fate of Temples in Late Antique Anatolia,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 363-368. 42 Peter Talloen and Lies Vercauteren, “The Fate of Temples in Late Antique Anatolia,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 368-372. 43 Peter Talloen, “From Pagan to Christian: Religious Iconography” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 602. For a list of relevant scholarship on the topic, see in Koen Demarsin, “‘Paganism’ in Late Antiquity: Thematic Studies” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 30-32.


tendency to list one’s many [pagan] priestly offices, including those in unofficial cults,

increases radically after the mid-fourth century.”44

Summary of the Nature of Temple Destruction

Modern scholarship is moving away from understanding the end of temples as a

violent clash of religious and towards an understanding of more gradual decay. Pagan

temples collapsed into ruin after their patrons had abandoned them. An exploration for

the reasons for this abandonment is beyond the scope of this work. While there were

cases in which force was used to end the pagan practices in temples, such as

government intervention or Christian violence, these rare cases were subject to local

circumstances — whether they be zealous governors and local authorities or small

groups of attacking Christians.45 Like the persecutions of Christians from the first

through third centuries, the nature of temple destruction can best be described as

decentralized. This does not mean that there were not systemic factors in play. I will

argue in the following chapters that there existed an incentive structure for governors

that contributed to the process of temple destruction results from their decay and lack of

funding.

44 Kimberly Diane Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), note 159. 45 Cf. Libanius, Oratio 30; J. F. Matthews, “A Pious Supporter of Theodosius 1: Maternus Cynegius” The Journal of Theological Studies 18 (1967): 484-509.


2

Incentive Structure Part One: The Governor, His Office, and Building Construction

If temple destruction is to be understood primarily as slow and a process of

abandonment and decay rather than one of forcible demolition and/or reoccupation, then

there arises the interesting question of what factors contributed to their ruin. While

there were many factors in the decline of pagan worship that have been and will

continue to be debated by scholars, the following three chapters will examine this

question through the prism of the incentive structure in the institution of the

governorship itself in the context of the late antique eastern provinces and the likely

effects thereof on the elite Romans who occupied the office. The first step in examining

the incentive structure, in which the governor operated, is to examine the type of men

who became governors themselves, their goals and motivations, their responsibilities as

a governor, and the limits of how they could operate within the office of governor. This

is because in order to make an argument for what their rational choices would be, one

must first understand the agent making the choices. What is rational for one person may

not be for another since rational choices are teleological, or goal oriented.

Who The Governors Were and What They Wanted

Governors would have been selected from a pool of elite from respected

families46 in the empire by emperors or prefects who were responsible for the

administration of much larger geographic areas such as “the East,” the modern

geographic boundaries of which included the eastern coast of Bulgaria and Romania

through Turkey, and down the Levant into Egypt and northeastern Libya.47 Governors

were likely to have previous experience governing, either through their local city

46 See Menander Rhetor 379.1-19. This specific passage will be examined in detail later in this section. 47 For a deeper examination of the offical relationships between governors and the imperial hierarchy, see Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 16-45.


councils or imperial administration.48 These elite members of the Roman administrative

body were highly career-minded and often saw a governorship as part of a larger career

in public office that many of whom hoped would not end with a single governorship.49

They would have been educated and were often described as men of παιδεία (paideia),

the education that formed and, in many ways, defined the governing members of the

elite in Greco-Roman culture.50 This concept is similar to the German idea of Bildung,

in which it was more than merely an education of facts or skills; it formed the individual

within the ideology and cultural norms of the society. Libanius describes these men as

those who “had been formed through παιδεία.”51 Peter Brown argues that this would

have provided a shared cultural background between many members of the local elite

and their governors in the eastern provinces, which allowed them to communicate more

clearly despite the cultural and linguistic diversity in the East.52

Governors would have had goals and motivation that were linked to the culture

and the ideology in which their minds developed. As members of the Roman elite, a

governor would be incorporated into the honor culture of the Roman Empire, and his

motivations are set within this context.53 It is difficult to make a motivational argument

48 Libanius’s criticism of the Governor Tisamenus as only having experience as an assessor to a military commander suggests that there was an expectation of more experience from their governors; Cf. Libanius, Oratio 33.4 with A. F. Norman, Libanius: Selected Works, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977), 196f, note b. 49 For many, however, their career in the imperial administration did end with the governorship as Roueché points out, but one should not confuse a low rate of advancement with a low desire to advance. Even those that did not serve again as governor or advance in the imperial hierarchy, would nevertheless be much more powerful in dealing with their new governor in their own province aided with the knowledge and connections that they cultivated as a governor themselves. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 30f. with Charlotte Roueché, “The Functions of the Governor in Late Antiquity: some observations,” Antiquite Tardive 6 (1998), 31-36. 50 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 3f, 34-45. 51 Cf. Libanius, Epistulae 994.2 with Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 4. 52 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 1-34. Cf. Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 58. However, not all members of the local elite would have been incorporated into paideia, as some may have been illiterate, but the Powerful Elite would have been part of this culture and ideology since they were well-connected in the empire. Cf. Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 37; Robert A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 3-6, 20-51. 53 Brown explains a governors’ desire to seek alliances as primarily the consequence of their ideology and culture, writing, “Governors did not seek alliances or respect vested interests out of fear of isolation or from an instinctive sense that the late Roman tax system worked best through collusion with the rich. They did so because their own high culture enabled them to see, in the local notables, men of paideia,


based largely on personal financial gain for a governor, at least during his governorship

itself. While they could still secure personal income from the widespread practice of

what modern readers from a western country would call corruption, the days of

governors filling their pockets by cruelly plundering a province for all it has to offer are

distant memories of the Principate and cannot be described as the norm during the

Dominate.54 This is not to say that practical benefits did not motivate these governors,55

but the honor culture of the Roman Empire is often key to these practical benefits as

personal connections with other elites often serve as the means to achieve them.

For an examination of the incentives influencing a governor’s rational choices,

motivations and goals outside of the purely fiscal ones ought to be identified. Honor

(and its accompanying auctoritas, a combination of personal influence, power, and

prestige) becomes the valuable currency that motivates these governors, and their social

status itself, their identity and title, was linked to the offices that they held.56 As J. E.

Lendon explains, “One of the central interests of surviving late-antique law, and late-

antique observers, was still the social rank signified by the holding of various offices.”57

One of the reasons that governors entered the office was for their own personal benefit

of increased honor. Honor extends into how the government functioned as well.

Hierarchical institutions require obedience and authority in order to prevent a descent

into chaos, and the functioning of authority and honor in the Roman Empire should not

their ‘natural’ friends and soul mates,” Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 30. This places too much importance on paideia and largely ignores the practical benefits of working with the local elites — or even the self-interested motivation to amass more honor. 54 Cf. Codex Theodosianus 8.15.5 of 366/370/373, 8.15.6 of 380 with Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 30f. and A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 393-401; Jill Harries argues that the reports of corruption should not be taken uncritically and assumed to be representative of rapid theft from the provinces due to the lack of explicit source material and the administrative checks placed on officials. See her chapter entitled “The Corrupt Judge” in her work Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 153-171. Christopher Kelly argues that fees for services, in the courts particularly, were necessary to prevent the overflow of cases. “For later Roman bureaucrats, forever faced with a queue of those needing services much longer than they could ever process, the detailed stipulation of prices for administrative services was an effective method of regulating demand,” Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 144. For his expanded discussion thereon, see his chapter entitled “Purchasing Power,” 138-185. 55 Some of these practical benefits will be discussed later in the following chapter. 56 Cf. J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 21ff, Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 56f. 57 J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 22.


be understood in the Weberian sense of “bureaucratic authority,” but rather individual

holders of an office relied on their “charismatic authority.” As J. E. Lendon puts it:

The marked perception [of those that interacted with government both from within and without], therefore, is not of subjects, officials, and emperor dealing with each other in terms of obedience. Rather, the subject paid “honour” to his rulers as individuals deserving of it in themselves, and, in turn, the rulers are seen to relate to their subjects by “honouring” them. Subject and official were linked by a great network of honouring, and obedience was an aspect of that honouring.58

The ability of one to govern, his authority itself, is tied to how others see him. A

subject’s cooperation (or obedience) is a result of a perceived right thereto, sprung forth

from the honor of he who governs. This system of honor payment was central to how

the empire functioned and was part of the larger system of mutual benefaction between

those that govern and those that are governed.

The Responsibilities of The Governors

The responsibilities of the governors concerned the civil administration of their

province, and they would ultimately be held responsible by the emperor and prefect for

the proper functionality of the cities and rural areas in his province. By Late Antiquity,

military responsibilities for a province were under the jurisdiction of a dux, and many

provinces did not even have their own a military presence but rather shared them with

other provinces.59 Despite a lack of military control, governors were nevertheless

responsible for maintaining peace within their province.60 There were two types of

official civil responsibilities of the governors. The first was their role as judge.61

Governors were expected to provide speedy decisions for both civil law and criminal

58 J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 23. 59 Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 2f, 18f.; A. H. M. Jones, The later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 97-104. 60 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 18. 61 For a discussion of the role of governor as a judge, cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 46-76 with Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 88-117.


law proceedings.62 The second was their role as the province’s “Chief Financial

Officer” of sorts. Governors were ultimately responsible for the collection of taxes,63

determining what projects were to be funded and executed with the revenues that were

to stay in the province,64 and they even had the ability to force local elites to finance

projects themselves.65 This means that governors not only had the ability to decide

which construction and maintenance projects would be funded but also to influence how

they would be funded.

Funds for building construction and maintenance could come from a few

different sources, namely private, imperial or local/provincial. Private benefaction to a

city, or civic euergetism, still occurred in Late Antiquity,66 but its scale is debated and

believed to have declined significantly beginning in the fourth century.67 The

boundaries between private and public benefaction during this time are blurred.68 The

nature of curial duties, which are what we should understand in a modern context as

governmental duties, frequently obligated elites to spend private money outside of

normal taxation, and a desire among the elite to avoid these duties supports the idea that

62 Libanius wrote to the emperor complaining about governors who had been neglecting this judicial duty and allowing prisoners to rot in jail while they awaited their trial. Cf. Libanius, Oriatio 45 and 33 with Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 68ff, 162ff. 63 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 31-39. 64 Cf. Codex Theodosianus 15.1.18 of 374, Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 79ff. They were even able to pool the resources from different cities within his province, effectively giving him a single large treasury for building construction and maintenance. Use of other cities’ taxes would, of course, have to be done tactfully. Cf. Codex Theodosianus 15.1.18 of 374; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 82f. 65 This took the form of single issue taxation that the governor had the ability of exempting particular elites from paying Libanius. Cf. Libanius, Epistula 1392; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 83f. 66 One example of civic euergetism in the late fourth century comes Libanius’s account of the disappointment and anger that the Governor Tisamenus about not being invited to a theatrical performance that was privately funded by a local elite. This governor and Libanius’s writings about him will be discussed more thoroughly in the next chapter. See Libanius, Oratio 33.26. 67 Cf. Wolfgang Liebeschuetz, “The End of the Ancient City”, in The City in Late Antiquity, ed. J. Rich (London: Routledge, 1992) 12-13; Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, The Fall of Rome, and The Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 53-71. 68This is because governmental coercion is frequently used to force private citizens to fund construction. In these cases, I would reject any description of them as not being publically funded. As governors become more responsible for decisions concerning building construction compared with town councils, building construction itself becomes more a result of his benefaction and therefore public. Cf. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 25-29.


they were not as voluntary (or private) as the elites themselves would want them to be.69

Imperial benefaction was also a common method of funding building construction and

maintenance.70 Local elites and governors could petition the imperial administration for

funds for specific projects in the province.71 However, private and imperial

benefactions were not the most common source of finance.

The funds for these renewal projects, as well as for new construction, were

principally collected from the local taxes (within the city and the surrounding

farmlands), about one third of which were to be used for building projects.72 Governors

were required by several laws to allot three fourths of their building fund to the repair

and renewal of public buildings before they were allowed to construct new buildings,

and even the language of Codex Theodosianus 15.1.20 of 380 places building

construction and renewal in the context of honor, stating that “if a judge (= governor)

should be sent to a province, he shall restore to their former state of splendor two thirds

of the works which have crumbled through neglect or old age, and he shall construct as

new a third thereof, if he wishes to provide for his own fame and glory.”73 The

implication being that if the governor does not follow this path, he ought not to receive

“fame and glory.” The constant need for the imperial government to reissue laws such

as this throughout the later fourth century and the need to compile these redundant laws

in the early fifth century in the Codex Theodosianus demonstrates that the erection of

new buildings was preferred by governors over the repair of existing buildings

throughout this period.74 This resistance towards funding the repair of public buildings

69 Cf. Libanius, Oratio 33 and 49; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 30, 89; A. H. M. Jones, The later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 536. 70 Frequently, the governor himself was able to secure these funds through his personal connections in imperial administrations, see Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 21. Cf. Codex Theodosianus 10.19.2; Libanius, Oratio 48.38, 50.16-23. 71 For a discussion of imperial patronage in the form of rescripts that could include court cases, curial duties, and building funds, see Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 26-31. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 21. 72 Cf. Codex Theodosianus 9.17.2 of 349, 15.1.18 of 374, 5.1.28 of 390, 5.1.32 of 395, 15.1.33 of 395, 15.1.34 of 396; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 79-82. 73 Codex Theodosianus 15.1.20 of 380, emphasis mine. Cf. Codex Theodosianus 15.1.14 of 365, 15.1.15 of 365, 15.1.16 of 365, 15.1.17 of 365, 15.1.21 of 380, 15.1.29 of 393; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 82. 74 This is because laws as issued to either communicate a message that supports the legislator, either practically or ideologically, or they exist to address a specific problem that existed. In this case, the


perfectly fits the incentives of the governor in the Roman honor culture of the elite

because it would mean more funding could be used to construct new buildings that

would add to his prestige.

Construction and maintenance in general would increase a governor’s prestige

primarily through honorific inscriptions. Governors were not able to erect explicitly

self-congratulatory inscriptions themselves.75 New buildings during the Dominate were

to be founded under the name of the emperor, but governors would create inscription to

the emperor that would include their own name.76 The other members of the Roman

elite would not have had much difficulty deciphering this code of responsible parties.

The governor would get his recognition. The connection between such monuments and

honor for the governor is clearly illustrated by laws that prevent governors from

erecting such a monument if the building was not completed during his term; it was to

bear the name of the governor during the time of completion.77 Inscriptions for renewal

projects existed as well, but “from a governor’s point of view, restoration seemed less

prestigious than the initiation of a brand new building project.”78 In the context of the

Roman honor culture, these laws incentivized governors to repair as few buildings as

possible and build new ones that could be completed within his term.

These responsibilities make a provincial governor, at least de jure, an

enormously powerful individual in the province. There were, however, many

limitations, both de jure and de facto, that were placed upon a governor in how he could

administrate his province, which made him highly dependent on the local elite to

effectively govern.

Limitations of Governors

One of the largest limitations of a governor was his position as a temporary

outsider in his new province. Incoming governors came to a province and were not

imperial administration would benefit from the governors following this law so as to maintain a stable infrastructure rather than ideologically benefit from merely uttering the law. See Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 80. 75 Codex Theodosianus 15.1.31 of 394. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 85. 76 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 85. 77 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 81. 78 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 81.


likely to have intimate knowledge of its inner-workings because, as imperial law

mandated, “No man was allowed to become governor of his province of his birth.”79

Nor were incoming governors permitted to bring a familiar administrative staff with

them to serve as a team of trusted advisors and administrators.80 Unlike a governor of

the Republic or much of the Principate, late antique governors under the Dominate were

not allowed to do so.81 A governors, therefore, entered his new provinces without an

established network of loyal advisors with whom he had a long-standing trusted

relationship that could have been possible if he either had the ability to bring his own

advisors or if he had himself been from the province.82 This means, as Daniëlle

Slootjes illustrates, that these governors were largely dependent on the current local

administration and the rest of the local elite.83 His access to independent — by which I

79 Codex Justinianus 1.41 of 610. Cf. Cassius Dio 72.31.1; Codex Theodosianus 8.8.4 of 386. Slootjes points out that these laws were not always followed and even gives accounts in which the laws were ignored. See Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 25-26. Other Scholars also debate just how often a governor would be placed in a “home province,” but even if this practice had occurred with slight frequency, it was still far from the norm. See J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Fall and Decline of the Roman City (Oxford, 2001), 279. As I am examining institutional and structural incentives, being able to say with relative certainty that most governors came from outside the province is sufficient for my argument. Individual instances of the contrary do not contradict a general trend, especially if they are, as in the case of Synesius of Cyrene’s attack against Andronicus of Berenice in 409, brought to our attention through an effort to have a governor removed by the Praetorian Prefect. If the law was toothless, such an appeal would be useless. Cf. Synesius, Epistle 73 as found in Augustine Fitzgerald, The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene, (London: Oxford University Press, 1926). 80 Governors were able to bring a few people for staff, who were also not officially allowed to be from the region, if they were particularly knowledgeable about the problems facing it, but frequently even these staff members were actually from the province. This means that even when governors were able to bring a few outside assistants, those assistants would have often been entrenched in the local political systems. Cf. Codex Theodosianus 12.1.22 of 336 and 12.1.31 of 341. As Slootjes points out and Roueché argues, these laws prohibiting special advisors to the governor against being from the province were likely not followed. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 28 with Charlotte Roueché, “The Functions of the Governor in Late Antiquity: some observations,” Antiquite Tardive 6 (1998), 31-36. 81 Codex Theodosianus 1.34.3 of 423. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 28; A. H. M. Jones, The later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964),503. While the laws of the Theodosian Code were assembled in the fifth century, which falls chronologically at the end of this examination, Jones argues that this practice stretches back to the later stages of the Principate and should therefore be accepted as representative of practices in the fourth century as well. Cf. A. H. M. Jones “The Roman civil service (clerical and sub-clerical grades),” The Journal of Roman Studies 39 (1949), 38–55; Bernhard Palme, “Die Officia der Statthalter in der Spätantike: Forschungsstand und Perspektiven,” Antiquité Tardive 7 (1999), 85–133. 82 Many governors came from provinces that were near their own, and while this could increase their preparedness for the post, they were still generally lacking an expertise in and a trusted network within their new province. See Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 26. 83 Brown also argues this, see Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 22.


mean relatively disinterested — advice and consequently his ability to make

independent decisions about the province were considerably hindered. A governor also

did not have much time to establish these networks on his own after reaching a

province. While there existed no de jure term limits, a governor would have been aware

of the de facto term limits of usually less than two years.84 Short terms like this for a

governor would have only decreased his ability to offer effective administration without

heavily leaning on and utilizing the preexisting local systems. Such dependence on the

established elites of a province in governing granted considerable influence to the elites

in the province over their governor.

Not only would the new governor not be familiar with the elites of the province

that he was entering, the local elite would not have been familiar with him either. In

Menander Rhetor’s surviving works, there is a rhetorical handbook to writing an arrival

speech for a new governor entering a city, and it demonstrates just how little a city’s

local elites frequently knew about their incipient ruler. Whenever a governor entered a

city in his province for the first time during his rule, the city would hold a celebration of

his arrival. This would typically include festivals, games, and speeches.85 An incoming

governor would expect to receive a speech praising him. These speeches were rather

formulaic, in line with the rigid rhetorical styles of the time, and this formulaic nature

reveals what problems a local elite might face in making a speech about someone he did

not know much about. Menander Rhetor writes:

In this type of speech, try always to abridge the encomium of the emperor, and not dwell on it, so as to avoid doubling your subject. If you have actions of the governor to relate, you should do so. If not, you should compose an elaborate description of his native city or nation, and give a geographical account of it, noting the most celebrated and commonly mentioned features of the country or city. (For example, say) that he is an Italian, and from what famous [country or] city, e.g. Rome, he comes. Consider also the actions of his family. If you are short of actions by the man you are praising, pursue the encomium on these lines, so as not to make the subject dry and barren. Then say: “I am sure that the son of such parents, competing with his ancestors, will be good and just to us;

84 For a discussion of the length of gubernatorial terms and reasons therefor, cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 26; A. H. M. Jones, The later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 377-383; Christopher Kelly, “Emperors, Government and Bureaucracy” in The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 13: The Late Empire, AD 337–425, ed. Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 153, 172. 85 For a further discussion on these arrival speeches and festivities, see Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 110-119.


for they were just men. He will therefore judge for us better than Aeacus, than Minas, than Rhadamanthus-nay, men of Hellas, I prophesy yet better than this…” (Menander Rhetor 379.1-19).

Menander Rhetor nearly assumes that the elite would not know much of the

accomplishments of the governor, and provides a way for the city nevertheless to be

able to praise the man without knowing much about him. He mentions not knowing the

governor twice. “If [the orator has] actions of the governor to relate, [the orator] should

do so. If not,” the orator should describe the land the governor came from instead of the

man himself. He then explains that the family of the governor should be mentioned “if

[the orator is] short of actions by the man [he] is praising, pursue the encomium on

these lines, so as not to make the subject dry and barren.” In other words, when the

orator cannot speak about the man, he speaks to the governor’s origins, which would

have been a rather general speech considering Rhetor does not even require much

knowledge about the family of the governor. The orators were to compare the family to

virtuous figures. This is so that the city can still praise the man without knowing much

about him. The assumed knowledge of the background and accomplishments of the

governor in crafting the only section (the encomium) of the speech that is actually about

the governor’s past is where he comes from and some vague deeds of his family that can

be quickly compared to well-known stories.86 That is rather minimalistic and illustrates

how deprived of information these local elites frequently were about their new

governors.

The family history and homeland of the governor were not even of inherent

importance in these speeches. They did not even serve as supplements for the accounts

of the actions of the governors, but rather they functioned merely as filler to mask the

city’s ignorance of the governor, which becomes apparent when compared with the

arrival speech of an established governor, who is new to the city but has been ruling the

province for some time. Menander Rhetor instructs “Divide the speech thus: brief

encomium of the emperor; then a similarly brief encomium of the governor’s ancestry

(if distinguished); then his actions, with a separate comparison for each virtue; then a

general comparison; and finally the epilogue.”87 Mentioning the governor’s family is

86 Cf. Himerius, Oratio 12; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 114f. 87 Menander Rhetor, 381.


only included if it was a distinguished family and therefore not inherently valuable. The

distinguished nature of his family brings it into the speech. The real topic of the speech

concerns the governors’ actions, and since he has been the governor in the province for

some time, the city would be familiar with those actions. Taken together, the structure

of arrival speeches for new and established governors visiting a city demonstrate

foreignness of many governors to their subjects, even among the local elite.

Summary

This chapter examined the first part of the incentive structure for governors by

providing an outline of the general governor in the late antique Roman East and his

motivations. Governors came from the elite throughout the empire and in doing so

shared a relatively common culture with many of their local elite subjects through

paideia and a shared honor culture, which facilitated communication and expressed

itself through mutual benefaction. Their goal would have been to increase their own

honor though their office. Their rational choices would have been made with this focus.

Since they came to provinces as outsiders, governors were completely dependent on the

local elite in achieving this goal. A governor had an incentive to repair fewer buildings

and construct new ones. This also creates strong incentive for governors to work with

the local elite. Governor, through their control of public funding for building

construction, would have had considerable leverage (or bargaining power) in their

dealing with the local elite, but the local elite were not absent of bargaining power of

their own. In the following two sections, I will examine how governors and the local

elite engaged with one another and used their bargaining power to benefit their own

interests.


3

Incentive Structure Part Two: The Governor, The Local Elite, and The Power of The Powerful Elite

In this chapter, I will examine how governors communicated and interacted with

the local elite of their province, how this favored the Powerful Elite, who were able to

use their influence outside the province in a carrot and stick approach, and how these

relationships contributed to the incentive structure of the governor to defund temples.

The relationship between governors and their subjects, as Daniëlle Slootjes so

convincingly argues in The Governor and his Subjects in the Later Roman Empire, is

productively characterized within the context of mutual benefaction. This concept

centers on the idea that the Roman Empire functioned through a system of exchanging

favors, or benefactions.88 Governors could offer benefaction to their province through

the construction and maintenance of important buildings for example, and in return, the

provincials could offer benefaction to the governor. A governor, who was believed to

have governed well by the elite in his province, could increase his honor through

inscriptions for specific achievements but also through honorific statues and inscriptions

erected after his term to his general success as a governor.89 These statues were

commonly erected in the province in which he governed, but could also be erected in his

home province. This was the case for Alexander, governor of Phrygia, whose

inscription accompanying his statue in the Anatolian town of Caria read, “A stone

image of the just Alexander. The mother of Phrygia sent here to the mother of Caria,

(as) undying mark of his divine rule; but all words fall short of the man’s good cheer.

With good fortune.”90 Benefaction such as this would have provided an incentive for

88 Slootjes uses this concept of mutual benefaction and the modes of communication between governors and their subjects to explore the expectations provincials had of their governors. See Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 1-15, 77-104. Cf. J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 22. 89 For a discussion of honorific statues and inscriptions in the context of mutual benefaction, see Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 128-153. 90 Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 135f.; Charlotte Roueché, and Joyce Maire Reynolds, Aphrodisias in late antiquity: the late Roman and Byzantine inscriptions including texts from the excavations at Aphrodisias conducted by Kenan T. Erim (London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1989).


governors to serve the interests of the elite in his province in order to receive

benefaction and increase his own honor and prestige.91

The Local Elite

However, not all elites were equal in their ability to benefit a governor. Some

had the ability to offer a governor benefaction unilaterally insofar as they were able to

use their own connections to provide benefaction. Consequently, I expand on Slootjes’s

concept of the local elites and divide these local elites into two groups: the Powerful

Elite and the Lower Elite. The Powerful Elite are those who are able to use their

connections outside of the province to influence the governor, and the Lower Elite are

simply the rest of the elite in a province, those who cannot use their connections outside

the province to influence the governor. The power or influence of the Powerful Elite is

an individualized power, and it relies on the personal relationships that an individual

Powerful Elite had. The Powerful Elite were able trade benefactions for a governor in

exchange for benefactions from him. As Libanius puts it, “How can one not grant as

many favors as possible, like seeds on the rich earth, to the sort of man who takes care

to recall a favor?”92 If governors played their cards right by governing well in both the

eyes of the emperor and local elite, they could cultivate these relationships to advance

their own career, both public and private. This meant maintaining all their roles as

benefactor and judge that were outlined in the previous chapter as they balanced the

competing interests both in the province itself and across the empire.

91 While the erection of a statue in the home province of a governor was rare, and perhaps provided a much stronger incentive for a governor, the more common forms of inscriptions on statues — which by late antiquity describe the governor and his achievements more poetically in general terms and might not even include his name — would nevertheless provide an individualized incentive for a governor because it would still honor him greatly. I argue that this is because the practical benefits of honor came from personal connections and these elites would not forget why they commissioned the statue and its accompanying inscription simply because it was not specific enough. Given the number of elites who would remember the man for whom the statue was erected, I doubt any governor would have realistically worried about having the memory of his achievements commemorated in his statue fading before the usefulness of the personal connections of the elite or that he might have worried that someone else would be able to take credit for his work. Since a governor would have no need to prove to the elite that a statue was for him, the change in the epigraphic evidence from a prose report with clear attribution in the early empire to the poetic and vague accounts of late antiquity does not eliminate the strong individualized incentive that statues provided for governors. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 129-153. 92 Libanius, Epistula 651 of 361. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 77f.


Governors recognized the importance of establishing relationships with the local

elites in effectively governing their province and took steps to secure connections and

foster trust with their elite subjects.93 One common method for an incoming governor

was the use of letters of introduction from someone the governor knew (or knew

through someone else)94 that would carry weight with the local elites, which “was part

of the traditions of the Roman upper classes and the system of patronage.”95 These

letters of introduction could be addressed to specific Powerful Elites within the

province,96or they could be aimed at entire communities.97 Such letters helped establish

a governor in the local political scene of his new province. They both illustrate the

dependence a governor has on these local elite and demonstrate the power one elite, like

Libanius, could have if his or her influence reached across provincial borders.

Not only did incoming governors seek means to open communication with local

elites, the local elites themselves had a variety of privileges that gave them opportunities

to communicate with governors, both de jure and de facto. As members of the elite

order of the honorati, some local elites had legal privileges that granted them specific

access to the governor.98 One such privilege was the right to join a governor while he

was hearing and deciding court cases.99 They were allowed not only to sit in on these

hearings, but they also joined the governor before and after in his place of residence

called praetorium, which was also where he conducted administration, held court, and

93 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 31-32. 94 Such as Libanius writing to the governor of Phoenicia asking him to write a letter of introduction for Auxentius. Cf. Libanius, Epistula 156 with Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 90f. 95 Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 88; Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 98; Hannah Cotton, Documentary Letters of Recommendation in Latin from the Roman Empire (Königstein: Anton Hain, 1981), 3f, 40ff. 96 As is the case with Eusebius, governor of Bithynia in 355, who had two letters from Libanius addressed to local elites in the province. Cf. Libanius, Epistulae 458 and 459 with Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 101. 97 As is the case with Maximus, who upon becoming prefect of Egypt entered with a letter introducing him and his abilities to the people of Egypt. Cf. Libanius, Epistula 1230 with Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 100. 98 For a discussion of the specific privileges of the honorati, see J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 187. 99 Not until 408 under new legislation from Emperor Honorius were they banned from sitting in on cases that pertained to themselves, but they could still join the governor for cases that did not directly concern them. See A. H. M. Jones, The later Roman Empire 284-602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), 536. Cf. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 187.


socialized with members of the elite.100 A governor was expected to entertain elite

members of his province and, in doing so, granted them access to him.101 Of course, not

all local elite would have had this privilege or the means of utilizing it. Those that lived

far from the governor may not have had the ability to travel easily for his company, but

given the smaller sizes of the provinces compared with the Principate, many more elites

would have been able to take advantage of this opportunity in late antiquity.102 This

type of access does not automatically grant an elite much influence, but rather would

provide Powerful Elites an opportunity to offer the governor an opportunity of his own

to trade benefactions. In other words, this access does not grant an elite power, but

rather a chance to use his or her power. Together with letters (and orations), these face-

to-face interactions were two modes of direct access, which the local elite had to

express their interests to a governor and attempt to incentivize him into acting

accordingly. Both of these modes rely on the power of the local elite to incentivize their

governor effectively. They would have to have something to exchange.

The Power of The Powerful Elites

The power of the Powerful Elites rests in their ability to offer something that a

governor would want, both in the positive sense (the carrot) of offering to do something

for his benefit and in the negative sense (the stick) of offering not to do something

against his interests. As discussed in the previous chapter, the goals of a governor were

rooted in his cultural context. Honor was the means, the currency, of success in the

Roman world, and forging relationships with Powerful Elites was vital to cultivating

honor. One example of how Powerful Elites could help/hurt a governor was through the

use of their connections in imperial administration. During his term, a governor was

vulnerable to Powerful Elite who had close connections with his superiors.103 All of his

decisions were subject to being overruled by a higher official, who, for obvious reasons,

100 Cf. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 188. 101 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 139. 102 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 25f. 103 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 47.


was more likely to take up an appeal from someone with whom he had a connection.104

Powerful Elites could also petition for a governor’s removal from office, as was the case

with Andronicus, governor of Libya Superior (part of the Diocese of Egypt) sometime

between 410-414.105 Synesius of Cyrene, bishop of Ptolemais, proved to be a powerful

enemy for Andronicus, whom he thought was a corrupt tyrant. Synesius first used his

religious connections to secure excommunication for the governor, a mark of grave

dishonor.106 Then, he used his connections through a friend, Troilus, to gain access to

the Praetorian Prefect of the East, Anthemius, and he was able to have Andronicus

removed from office.107 As Jill Harries states, “Whether Andronicus was in fact as

corrupt as he was painted is of less importance than Synesius’ demonstration of the

power of the influential provincial over a governor’s career and reputation.”108

Such vulnerability and dependence on the Powerful Elite was not limited to a

governor’s term. If the imperial administration believed that a governor abused his

office during his term, he could be subject to an imperial investigation that could result

in criminal charges or public dishonor through a revocation of title.109 Due to the nature

of Roman law being petitioned-based, meaning that someone has to press the

government for an investigation and bring criminal charges, a governor would be

investigated because an elite or elites, likely in his own province, petitioned the imperial

administration to do so.110 Consequently, governors had an incentive not to anger

Powerful Elites, lest his honor, freedom, or even his life may be in danger. Even in

cases that resulted in minor punishments, such as fines, the accompanying dishonor was

a punishment eo ipso.111 If a governor was unlucky enough to be the subject of such

proceedings, he could call on his allies to write letters in his defense. In a letter in 104 Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 55; 164f. 105 Date range based on the tenure of Synesius of Cyrene as bishop in Ptolemais. 106 Cf. Synesius, Epistulae 57 and 58; Thomas C. Oden, Early Libyan Christianity: Uncovering a North African Tradition (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011), 206-209. 107 Cf. Synesius, Epistulae 72 and 73; Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 170. 108 Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 171. 109 Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 61-73; Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 24f. 110 By the early fifth century, this petition-based system became standardized and the use of a formal libellus to launch an investigation came into effect. See Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 104ff. 111 Cf. Libanius, Epistula 21; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 96.


defense of Tryphonianus, governor of Libanius of Syria in 360, Libanius writes

sarcastically, “it is a fine reward for our governors if, after expending their energies and

reducing their private fortunes in the performance of their public duties, they get in

exchange outrage, condemnation, disgrace and danger.”112 Libanius’s use of general

terms here together with his (and other’s113) many letters of defense suggests that

investigations against governors were common enough occurrences for a governor to be

mindful of this possibility while in office.114 The ability to write letters for or against

governors directed to their superiors and have those superiors consider them would

provide the Powerful Elite bargaining power in their dealings with governors, who in

turn would have been incentivized to be mindful of their requests and interests.

Choosing Which Powerful Elite to Please

Because Powerful Elites could be such influential allies or enemies, governors

had to choose their alliances with individual Powerful Elites carefully and be wary of

the appearance of favoring some too heavily over others in his province. As mentioned

in the previous chapter, a governor had the ability to pull resources from different cities

within his province to fund construction projects, which would benefit interested parties

in one location at a cost to others in the cities from which their treasuries were taken.115

While allowing this practice, imperial legislation sought to limit it, stating, “We forbid

further progress of the presumptuous conduct of judges [governors] who, to the ruin of

the obscure towns, pretend that they are adorning the metropolitan or other very

splendid cities, and thus seek the material of statues, marble works, or columns that they

may transfer to them.”116 The need for this law suggests its practice, and a governor’s

112 Libanius, Epistula 163, as found in Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 102. Slootjes refers to Tryphonianus as Thryphonianus in her work. For more information on Tryphonianus, see “Tryphonianus 2” in A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris, The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971). 113 e.g. Basil of Caesarea’s defense of Helias, governor of Cappadocia c. 372, Basil, Epistula 96. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 102; Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 24f. 114 viz. Libanius, Epistulae 21, 83, 1350, and 1354. Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 101-104. 115 Cf. Codex Theodosianus 15.1.18 of 374; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 82f. 116 Cf. Codex Theodosianus 15.1.14 of 365; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 83, 96f.


want to use the resources of smaller towns to build in the capital is understandable. The

Powerful Elite with the most access to him would be located in the capital with him.117

Due to this law, a governor would have to be cautious about the degree to which he used

the treasuries of other cities so as not to upset Powerful Elites therein, lest he make

enemies. However, this would be a balancing act.118

In choosing whose interests to advance, a governor would have to weigh the

costs and benefits of benefaction for each group/individual. The interests of the local

elite would be competing for the governor’s benefaction, after all no one’s interests

completely align with another’s. A governor would have an incentive to align himself

with Powerful Elites in his province through benefaction in exchange for benefaction of

their own. Powerful Elites who had the ability to advance his career and/or increase his

honor most effectively would be the ones that a rational governor would choose to aid.

Due to the individualized power of the Powerful Elite, a governor would have an

incentive to prefer the interests of a Powerful Elite over those of a Lower Elite.

Choosing which Powerful Elites to aid, a governor would not only have to take into

consideration the potential for a return on their investment of benefaction from a

Powerful Elite and the risk of retribution from a begrudged Powerful Elite, but he would

also have to consider the opportunity costs119 of not being a benefactor to other

Powerful Elites. While the decision not to advance the interests of a particular Powerful

Elite may not have resulted in the creation of a political enemy who would actively seek

the ruin of the governor, not receiving the benefaction of a Powerful Elite is a cost in

and of itself, and in cases where a governor would have to choose between benefiting

one elite over another, all costs and benefits associated therewith would incentivize a

governor.

The decision of which projects were to be funded would have resulted in many

vested interests vying for the governor’s benefaction, and a politically savvy governor

would have been constantly mindful of which projects would please which groups or 117 As argued in the previous chapter concerning access to the governor in court cases and social events. 118 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 32. Cf. Libanius, Epistula 1411.2. 119 In economic theory, opportunity cost, a term coined by Friedrich von Wieser, is the cost associated with taking an action that rules out benefits from other options. In choosing one option, there is also a cost for not choosing an alternative, which could have benefits of its own but are no longer available. Cf. Gray S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 6f with Friedrich von Wieser, Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft. 2 ed. (Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1924).


Powerful Elites. Many elites had close access to the governor, even if they were not

part of his administrative and advisory staff.120 This ease of access among the elite is

often compared with the lack of access by the humiliores, or “humble commoners,”121

but it is also important to keep in mind that it meant that a wide variety of local elites

with competing interests would have been able to express their concerns to the governor

of late antiquity. Even if a governor were not aware of the consequences from the

selection of certain building projects, and therefore the non-selection of others, the elite

parties in his province, who stood to profit or to lose from a given project, would have

used the means of communication available to them to make their grievances known to

the governor. From a structural standpoint of incentives, this type of system favors the

power of a particularly influential individual, a Powerful Elite, with connections across

the empire who could aid the governor during and after his term, such as an influential

bishop, a respected pagan philosopher, or a connected statesman.

Comparative Advantage of Bishops

During the late fourth and early fifth centuries, bishops are becoming

increasingly attractive allies for governors. As “The Church” develops, its bishops

become more connected throughout the empire and gain more judicial authority, giving

them increased ability to offer exchanges of benefaction and more bargaining power in

their negotiations, making the opportunity costs of not aligning with a bishop quite

high.122 While it is impossible to say how pagan elites would feel about government

funding for Christian buildings due to their fragmented nature, it is not unreasonable to

assume that most bishops would have objected to funds being allotted for pagan

temples.123 Even if a bishop was not particularly well connected, he still might benefit

120 Cf. Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 52; Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 169. 121 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 1-34. 122 Cf. Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 191-211; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 39-45; J. E. Lendon, Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 90-95. 123 See Luke Lavan, “The End of the Temples: Towards a New Narrative” in The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism”, eds. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan, Late Antique Archaeology 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) xlix-lii.


from a rational group-selection bias of the governor, or “statistical discrimination.”124

This means that governors would be rational in giving more bishops opportunities to

exchange benefaction because bishops comprise a group that is statistically likely to be

able to be a strong ally for a governor. In other words, if a governor has the option of

offing benefaction to a bishop or a non-bishop, ceteris paribus, then he would be acting

rationally in his own interests by preferring the bishop because it would be more likely

that this bishop would be a stronger ally. This gives bishops a comparative advantage in

having their interests addressed by a governor compared to other Powerful Elites. If a

governor has an incentive to favor Powerful Elites particularly, as I have argued he

does, then the governor would be more incentivized to listen to the agenda of bishops,

including their anti-temple policies, than to many of the other elites.

However, this system also, and perhaps more significantly for this study, favors

the power of consensus in the province — that is among the elite. A governor had to be

careful not to anger too many and therefore would be wise to make decisions that would

please the majority of elites, even when these elites lack pan-imperial connections. It is

that power of consensus — the power of the market will — that I will examine in the

following chapter.

124 Statistical discrimination is rational choice of preferring a member of one easily identifiable group to another simply because of membership to a group that has a higher concentration of members who have the traits the agent desire — even if member to the group is actually arbitrary. The reason this can be rational is due to time as a resource and imperfect information. A proper assessment of someone takes time that may be more valuably spent on other things and is subject to imperfect (specifically asymmetrical) information. In scenarios in which there is a strong correlation — but not necessarily causal relationship — between desired traits and an easily identifiable label, then it is rational use this label as the testing mechanism rather than an investigation of the member. For a general discussion of this concept in economic theory, see Tim Harford, The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World (New York: Random House, 2008), 130-148. For a detailed account of how this incentive structure can result in racial bias in job markets, see Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha And Jamal? A Field Experiment On Labor Market Discrimination” American Economic Review 94, no. 4 (2004): 991-1013.


4

Incentive Structure Part Three: The Governor, The “Market Will,” and The Power of the Lower Elite

In addition to the incentive to please and satisfy particularly influential

individual Powerful Elites, governors had to ensure that the collective will of the elites

was addressed as well. This collective will not only included those Powerful Elites

discussed in previous chapter but also included a group of elites that I call the Lower

Elites. These are the elite members of Roman society whose power and influence do

not sufficiently extend beyond their province so as to fully take advantage of the

communication and leverage opportunities discussed in the previous section. Their

cooperation was vital to the functioning of the province and many could decide to

withdraw from the city into the countryside, crippling the governor’s ability to

administrate the city.125 While many would not have been powerful enough

individually to sufficiently incentivize a governor into aiding their interests,

collectively, they had great power, and a governor would need to placate their will to

ensure his tenure was a success.

The Market Will

The collective will of the elite functioned as a “market of interests” or the

“market will” in the governor’s overall incentive structure. These individual Lower

Elites, who were not powerful enough to exert strong influence on their own, were able

to exert influence when their interests overlapped with other elites. A mechanistic

analogy to how price, as a reflection of collective subjective value of individual agents,

functions in a pecuniary market may be useful in understanding how these individual

interests coalesced into a collective will of the elites, a group largely comprised of

125 Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 23f. Cf. John Chrysostom, Epistula 9.2f; Basil, Epistula 88; Libanius 1351.3; 1392.


Lower Elites due to the expansion of the town councils.126 In an ideal pecuniary

market, prices reflect the combination of how much each individual agent in the market

values a given service (or product).127 Some may value it more and would be willing to

pay a higher price for that service, and some may value it less and are not willing to buy

at the current prices. However, due to competition between buyers and between sellers,

the price of that service should reflect the aggregate value that each individual in the

market places on the service. This means that prices are able to signal the collective

subjective value of a service. When that aggregate value shifts, so does the price. In

large competitive markets, individual agents, even if they trade large volumes of a given

service compared with other participants in the market, represent a small share of the

market compared to its whole and are therefore not able to dominate the aggregate

subjective value or consequently control the price.128

The subjective value that each member of the elite placed on the decisions and

actions of his or her governor (his services) was also able to converge into an aggregate

value. Each elite, taking actions for his or her own interests, would create market

signals of the collective interests, which would have proven strong enough to

incentivize the governor to be mindful of these collective interests. This means that,

like participants in a pecuniary market, they need not be organized or even agree on

much to convey a collective value. When enough of these elites, potentially operating

completely independently of one another for varied reasons, had a shared interest, upon

which they were willing to act, a governor would have a strong incentive to take notice

and address their interest. The desires of the Powerful Elite would be folded into the

market. Since the Powerful Elite were relatively small in number compared to the

Lower Elite, their influence on the market would be mitigated. If I am going to argue

that such an incentive structure existed, there ought to have been a mechanism for the

“market will” of the elites to communicate their value of services to the governor, as 126 Libanius, Oratio 33. 127 Prices reflect many things, and humans obviously also place value on things that are outside of priced markets. However, this simplified explanation of price, from the Austrian School of Economics, is nonetheless useful. This is the Subjective Theory of Value and is nearly universally accepted by economists an explanation of how prices work in a free market. Cf. Gray S. Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 5ff. with Milton Friedman, Price Theory (1962; reprint, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2007), 7ff. 128 This is not to say that powerful individual agents cannot influence price since prices are determined by marginal utility. Therefore, nudges in the market can shift the price, but without significant market share, they are unable to control prices. They can merely nudge them, and in large markets it is much more difficult to obtain this share.


price is for pecuniary markets. There are, in fact, several of these mechanisms. The

communicative processes, discussed in the previous chapter which the Powerful Elite

were able to employ, would have been included in this market since they were also

means, with which the elite could express their interests to the governor. While there

are several options available to the Lower Elites in the “market of interests” to

communicate with their governor,129 there was also a particularly powerful signaling

and incentivizing mechanism that bundled interests together before they were even

communicated to the governor. This was the acclamations through the claque and

together with the other forms of communication available to the elites; they could

inform the governor about the “market will” of the elites in his province.

Acclamations and The Claque

By Late Antiquity, public chats or acclamations directed at Roman officials

developed into complex performances, which J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz characterizes as

being “a long, rhythmic piece [that] could not be done without preparation.”130 The

claque often supplied this leadership in these public cries, which either could be

expressions of support for the governor and/or the emperor or could be carriers of

grievances concerning the city and/or province.131 The claque, being comprised of

claqueurs, was a professional group of actors that would lead the populace in chanting a

unified message. Libanius describes this leadership as τέχνη (skill or trade),132 which

129 Many of the Lower Elites would have had access to the governor through the same mechanisms that the Powerful Elites possessed. This is because many of them would have belonged to an order, such as the decuriones and/or the honestiores. However, the impact of those modes of communication would not have carried that same weight for the Lower Elites because the power and ability to incentivize of these modes were derived by the power of the individual elite. The ability to sit with a governor during trial and socialize with him would not have been particularly useful if the governor did not have a strong incentive to listen to you, such as the ability to utilize connections with other elites and spur them into action for or against the governor. 130 J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 211. 131 “Acclamations were officially recognised as an occasion for making complaints” Cf. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 216 with Cassiodorus’s Variae 1.27 on the Senators of Rome’s need to tolerate public grievances at games but not on the streets. 132 Libanius, Oratio 56.2. Cf. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 212, note 2.


“no less than their role in the theatre, could be described as their profession.”133

Professional claqueurs organized predominantly in the theater, but were not restricted

thereto, “since the claque could infiltrate any crowd anywhere, outside [the governor’s]

residence or in his audience hall or even in church.”134

Whether the claque could be hired to express a political message in the

hippodrome in the late fifth and early fourth century is not generally agreed upon. Alan

Cameron argues that the claque was restricted to the theater during the late fourth

century and could not have been present in the hippodrome before the Blues and the

Greens, factions that represented both political interests as well as chariot teams,

absorbed the claques and extended their factions into the theatres themselves sometime

around the late fifth century.135 This argument rests predominantly on the lack of

ancient accounts from the time that specifically refer to the claque in the hippodrome,

textual evidence from centuries past during the Principate that demonstrate differences

between the ambiance of theaters and the circus, as well as the size of the hippodrome’s

audience. While I do not wish to discredit his argument full-stop, I would like to

illustrate how his findings should not be interpreted as contradictory to my own. First,

our recordings of explicit instances of the claque during this time are limited primarily

(but not exclusively) to Libanius and therefore should not be accepted as a holistic

account. Second, as Cameron argues himself, the nature of the claque and the circus

factions are changing rapidly during the late fourth and early fifth century.136 It would

be impertinent to assume that this transition was completely linear in its progression or

uniform across the provinces.

Third, he argues that “a well-distributed and organized claque of 400137 might

manage to dominate a theatre seating perhaps 5,000-10,000. But it would be lost in a

133 J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 212. 134 Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 240. Cf. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 217 with Johannes Flemming, ed. Akten Der Ephesinischen Synode Vom Jahre 449, Trans. Georg Hoffmann (Berlin: Weidmann, 1917), 15-21, 35-37. 135 Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 235ff. 136 Cameron uses the openness of the factions in leading chants as an explanation for how they functioned by the late fifth century. See, Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 244ff. 137 This number comes from Libanius’s account of one instance in which there were 400 claqueurs leading an audience in acclamation, Libanius, Oratio 41.9.


circus with a capacity of 100,000 and more, separated by a huge arena.”138 This claim

is in tension with his previous assumption that the later Roman claque manipulated the

audience in a similar manner of the modern claques. Explaining how the claque could

keep an audience silent, Cameron writes, “an audience accustomed (even if it does not

know it) to being led in its applause will hold back until that lead comes; if it is

withheld, the applause will be late and sparse; if it is deliberately begun early, or late,

the performance on stage will be wrecked.”139 If the audience were, in fact, so used to

being led in such a manner — even to the point that they remain silent when they would

normally cheer for their governor, then it is not inconceivable to imagine how a claque

could manipulate separate sections of the hippodrome with the same message, which

could spread throughout the entire audience. Perhaps, before the Blues and the Greens

were able to openly lead the audience, acclamations in the hippodrome were limited to

messages that were familiar to and resonated strongly with the audience. I am not and

cannot argue that the claques presence in the hippodrome was a daily occurrence, but

there is not the evidence to suggest that it could not be also present in the hippodrome.

Cameron, himself, partially admits this, writing, “I am not of course trying to suggest

either that circus demonstrations were never rigged or that the techniques of the claque

were never used in the circus. What I am arguing is that the claque was not an everyday

phenomenon of the circus as it undoubtedly was of the theatre.”140 Even if it were not

an everyday phenomenon in the hippodrome, the power of the claque likely could be

felt within its stands. It is difficult to explain how the complicated acclamations of this

time would function without leadership, without claqueurs — or at the very least others,

who are functionally equivalent thereto and could be similarly bought off to ensure a

specific acclamation, even if the potential acclamations there were limited to familiar

and inspirational ones.

Mitigation of Power of Powerful Elite Via Claque

138 Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 235f. 139 Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 239. 140 Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 237, emphasis his.


Governors, emperors, bishops, local elites, and anyone with the money could

hire these professional claqueurs to express a political message.141 While the Powerful

Elites, local and from outside the province, had access to the claque, their influence on

the governor through the claque would have been mitigated by how the claque

functioned. There are three primary factors that mitigated this individualised influence

and determined the interests that were communicated through acclamations by means of

the claque. One factor, which also is crucial for the operation of the claque as a delivery

mechanism for the “market will,” is the volume of acclamations. Governors received

acclamations with such frequency that the costs to one Powerful Elite of employing the

claque to proclaim a specific message with enough frequency to incentivize the

governor would be prohibitive, or at the very least, the marginal utility of using the

claque as a vehicle for this message would be significantly less compared to its costs to

this Powerful Elite, who has other means of communication available to the him or her

to incentivize the governor. These acclamations represent a “market of interests” and

communicate a “market will” because of their volume of occurrence and the divergent

interests represented therein. Individual Powerful Elites, who happen to be seeking to

advance an interest that goes against the general consensus, would find their message

drowned in the market. Recurring messages, often serving the interests of divergent

individuals, became powerful because, with their frequency, they communicate

collective interests. The governor is able to infer the collective will through

acclamations functioning as a “market of interest.” Like in other markets, individuals,

holding a relatively small market share, are not able to influence significantly the

collective value that it illiterates when that market has several competing interests.

Another factor that mitigated the influence of an individually Powerful Elite

through the claque was the need for the audience to participate in the delivery of this

message. The claque used the audience as a megaphone to amplify a message, and

there could not be a clear and unified message if only the claqueurs are chanting. If

modern opera claques functioned in a similar manner as their late antique Roman

cousins, as Alan Cameron argues, audiences were also skeptical and aware of claqueurs

and if the influence of the claque was too obvious, the audience would turn on the

141 The message, of course, is subject to the claque. See, Robert Browning, “The Riot of AD 387 in Antioch: the role of the theatrical claques in the Later Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952), 13-20.


claqueurs.142 This means that only interests that the populace believed aligned with

their own could be transmitted through acclamations and the claque, and consequently

limits how special the special interests of the elites that wished to employ the claque

could be. A third factor was the interests of the claque itself. As performers, the

claqueurs had a vested interest in ensuring their own patronage, both for their buildings

and in their performances.143 A specific instance of this will be discussed later in this

section, which demonstrates not only the willingness of the claque to manipulate the

crowd for its own means, but also demonstrate the power of claque generally.

Tisamenus and The Claque

A case study from Libanius’s work demonstrates how the claque could interact

with the governor and incentivize him into action. In a speech against the sitting

governor of Syria in 386, Tisamenus, Libanius petitions the emperor to have him

removed from office. Before becoming the governor (Consularis), Tisamenus joined a

group of actors, and according to Libanius, aspired to become their leader before

leaving for public service in the military.144 Libanius criticizes Tisamenus for many

acts of incompetence, but finds his connection to and patronage of the theater

particularly distasteful,145 writing, “he harkened after invitations to the hippodrome and

the theatre, invitations which anyone with any knowledge of administration regards as a

disaster and resents, though people like this fellow receive them with more pleasure

than do schoolboys learning their ABC.”146 Was Tisamenus’s love of the theater

merely a result of his pervious connection or did his experience with the theater offer

him insight into the political power of the claque?

142 Cf. Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 234; Joseph Wechsberg, Looking for a Bluebird (London: Penguin Books, 1948), viii-ix. 143 This is an example of an obvious and universal interest that every claque would have, but claques across the empire and even within the same city were not monolithic. They had interests that were not always aligned on every issue. For example, claques could be divided on the chariot teams that they supported. Cf. Libanius, Oratio 41.9; Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 221. 144 Libanius, Oratio 33.3. 145 Libanius’s disdain for actors and the theater was common and even reflected in imperial law. Cf. Codex Theodosianus 15.7, 1-8; A. F. Norman, Libanius: Selected Works, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977), 196, note a. 146 Libanius, Oratio 33.8.


Perhaps Tisamenus’s attention to these public events reflects a sensitivity to

their ability to increase his prestige or affront his honor. Complaining more generally

about the actions of governors in neglecting their judicial duties and letting prisoners rot

in jails so that they could attend shows at the theater and hippodrome, Libanius writes in

his speech to the emperor on the prisoners:

And even if I must grant money to be more precious than men’s lives, dancers, mimes, horses and drivers certainly are not. So what do our governors do — these aspirants to the title of “saviours”? They hurry to see first this show then that, sometimes by invitation, sometimes not, sometimes actually self invited, for obviously they are self invited when they personally ensure that the future hosts flock to their doors. And if they talk of the need to attend and the fear of unfortunate consequences if they do not, that is mere deception. The afternoon are free from such fear, and the need to attend applies to some days, not to every day. But off they go, every day alike, both morning and afternoon, without any disruption of the fiscal duties. Yet how much better and more human to assist unfortunate persons to the best of one’s ability than to hang around until nightfall in extravagant shows, and over dinner to discourse upon the clean starts of the tactics devised but the drivers against each other! How is it then that some of these duties are so neglected and others performed so enthusiastically? The governors are possessed of a pernicious notion that everything else is cheap and of no account, and that their sum of happiness consists in the cheers and acclamations they receive from the commons and the gratitude evinced towards them in return for the pleasure they provide the masses. So they reject the fair fame to be won from men of sense by the performance of their duty, and they distribute these favours whereby they think to attach themselves these idlers, these drones. Some inherit the practices of their predecessors, others even make addition of their own and, if they meet with the clamour of cranes, they are full of self-congratulations (Libanius, Oratio 45.20-22).

Governors sought out and happily accepted invitations and appearances at these public

events both because of the honor they would receive during them from acclamations

and because it would serve their own interests governing. As discussed previously,

acclamations were a powerful communicative tool that carried political consequences.

A governor would be right to be fearful of upsetting the claque. They reinforced the

rhetoric of imperial power147 and served as a messaging system for concerns in the

province. As Libanius acknowledges, governors were required to attend public

147 Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 65-69.


events,148 but not on this level of frequency. Libanius reveals that often these

acclamations were led by claqueurs, or as he so affectionately calls them, “these idlers,

these drones,”149 and that they carried real political power, which is reflected in

governors clearly prioritizing and subsidizing these events while neglecting their other

duties of office such as judicial hearings. Tisamenus would have been aware of this

power, not only as member of the ruling elite, but also from his firsthand experience

with the theater, the source of claqueurs.

The claque, through acclamations, could exert pressure on the governor to take

action. The claqueurs were not limited to being messengers for others, they could send

messages that would benefit themselves as well. Tisamenus, at least according to

Libanius, was particularly attuned to the messages he received from acclamations,

writing:

[Tisamenus] inherited from his predecessors a populace that knew its place and included it not to know its place, for he taught it how important it was to a governor for them to address some acclamations to him. The populace is convinced that it governs the governor and that, in consequences of its arrogance, it has under its thumb the person whom it has been set by law, and is beginning to upset many of the established institutions (Libanius, Oratio 33.11).

Libanius is bemoaning the influence that acclamations had on the decisions of the

governors. Tisamenus’s priorities were highly impacted by the expressed desires

therein. One of those expressed desires, rather predictably, was increased funding for

the theater. Libanius criticizes Tisamenus for his building projects at the expense of the

elites, “He claimed that he was enlarging the city with his masonry, but reduced the

status of the council, for everyone mocked and condemned the pointlessness of his

enthusiasm on this issue because of the non-existence of any to sponsor the beast

shows.”150 Tisamenus prioritized the construction of new entertainment buildings and

sponsored their shows, a request not surprisingly coming from the claque. This

particular instance may have originated among the claqueurs themselves and served

their own interests, but it nevertheless illustrates their power. 148 Cf. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 210 with Codex Theodosianus 15.5.2. 149 For an argument that Libanius is referring specifically to claqueurs, see J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 211ff. 150 Libanius, Oratio 33.14


Despite Libanius’s claims to the contrary, the consequences of ignoring or

shunning public events could be dire for a sitting governor. Upsetting the claque or the

masses carried risk to stability in the province151 or the risk of dishonor from the claque.

The claque not only had the power to lead the crowd in chantings, but also had the

ability to keep them silent, a powerful message of disapproval. Libanius recounts an

instance in which Tisamenus experienced this dishonor:

On one occasion in the theatre something or another occurred and kept the populace seated and silent. This fellow regarded that as a disaster, and showed his feelings in various ways, especially by his change of complexion. But he also had to acknowledge his discomfort verbally, so it seemed. As he was being escorted home by a group of people, not more than twenty at most — a number small enough to make anyone ashamed — and as they begun to utter some of the usual compliments which the better sort of governors used to stop, our fine fellow Tisamenus got down from his carriage and exclaimed, “Who has given you your tongues back then? You hadn’t got them in the theatre.” Such were the remarks with which he debased himself and showed that he regarded their earlier attitude as a dead loss, and this as a clear gain (Libanius, Oratio 33.12).

The “something or another ” that occurred was the claque keeping the audience

silent,152 and it would have been a clear message of disapproval towards Tisamenus,

who, like all governors, would have expected warm praise whenever he entered a

theater.153 Tisamenus, in particular, would have been keenly aware of how the theater

was kept silent due to his past with the theater. He would have known that it was due to

the claqueurs and that they were likely paid to deliver this dishonor by an elite or elites.

His reaction, combined with his extravagant patronage of the theater, suggests that he

attributed it, and rightly so, to the elites rather than the claque flexing its muscles for its

own political interests alone. He does not rebuke the public or take action against the

claqueurs, perhaps out of restraint but likely because he understood the game that was

being played. He waits to remark on the instance until he is being escorted home by

151 Several riots are linked to the claque inciting mob violence, such as the Riot of Antioch in 387. Cf. Robert Browning, “The Riot of AD 387 in Antioch: the role of the theatrical claques in the Later Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952), 13-20; Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 105-157. 152 Cf. Libanius, Oratio 41.3; Alan Cameron argues that the claque would be able to keep the audience silent because, by this time, they would have been used to being led in acclamations, and without being prompted, they would have remained silent, Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 239. 153 Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 105-128.


other elites.154 Again, he does not address the public on the street, but rather he

chastises these elites that accompanied him in public, asking them, “Who has given you

your tongues back then? You hadn’t got them in the theatre.” Tisamenus may not have

blamed one of the few who specifically traveled with him, but the direction of his

admonishment towards elites and not the populace suggests that he attributed fault with

one of or even several of the elites in general.

Use of Claque by Elites

Local elites, both Powerful and Lower, used the claque to exert pressure on the

governor. Immediately after Libanius’s criticism of the general problem of governors

circumventing their judicial duties to attend public shows in his speech to the emperor

on the prisoners, which was discussed at the beginning of this section, he suggests that

councillors, members of the local elites, use the claque for their own means:

So [the governors] reject the fair fame to be won from men of sense by the performance of their duty, and they distribute these favours whereby they think to attach themselves these idlers, these drones. Some inherit the practices of their predecessors, others even make addition of their own and, if they meet with the clamour of cranes, they are full of self-congratulations. Then those fellows rise to greatness, and humbled are the city councillors, who often escape the governors’ wrath by means of the assistance they provide (Libanius, Oratio 45.22).

This assistance is that they city councillors are providing is the use of the claque, or

conceivably clients of their own that were independent of the theater. Councillors had

the ability to manipulate the populace, through the paid services of the claquers, to

express public messages to the governor of approval or disapproval.155 This allowed

them to exert influence over the governor. If the services of the claque was truly for

hire, then it should not be assumed that only councillors or other explicitly mentioned

groups from the limited surviving literature had the ability to employ them for their own

means. Anyone with the money to spend and the motivation to do so, could use the

154 It is reasonable to assume in the context of honor culture and the patronage system of the Roman empire that it would be the local elites, who would accompany the governor to events such as these since elites would want to be seen with the governor as an expression of their status. 155 Cf. Libanius, Oratio 45.22; J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 212.


claque as a mechanism to communicate with the governor. Nor should it be assumed

that this was not a widespread capability during this time, that the power of the claque

was merely a unique consequence of Tisamenus’s understanding and sensitivity thereto.

As discussed previously, acclamations, including negative ones, were commonplace

throughout the Later Roman Empire, and Libanius’s discussion of their influence on

governors in general as well as “the claque [being] associated with practically every

public demonstration described by Libanius in the last decade of his life”156

demonstrates that their influence was present across the empire.

The Market Will Continued

Now, I will return to my economic analogy to explain how these factors resulted

in an incentive for a governor to satisfy the collective or “market” will of the Lower

Elites. There were hundreds of elites in a given province, each with their own interests

and their own wishes for the governor to act upon. Most of these elites would have had

the capability to express their interests, not only in the ways discussed in a previous

chapter, but through the claque as well. Their interests would have conflicted on many

occasions. The governor was constantly bombarded with competing requests from the

local elites. They functioned similar to “trade offers” in a financial market, but instead

of trading money for stocks, the local elites were offering the governor to trade

benefactions, such as placation or cooperation, for having their request met. The price

of a stock, because it is the result of relative aggregate value to all those in the

marketplace, is a clear signal of how every participant feels about its value in relation to

their own interests. Even if this price was not published or calculated, one could glean

how it was valued by observing the trade offers. That was what would be happening

with the governor. Whether he consciously was doing it or not, he would be constantly

observing trade offers. The difference, of course, being that he and he alone got to

decide which offers are to be accepted since he was the other party, but he nevertheless

was able to ascertain the collective will, which he had a strong incentive to satisfy so to

preserve functionality of government and peace in his province. This market process

156 Cf. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 213 with his appendix in the same work that catalogs the instances of the claque in Libanius writings, 278-280.


happened with all types of communication that the governor receives. However, the

claque was a particularly powerful form of communication because acclamations were a

constant presence in the life of the governor, and theycarried real consequences for him.

Unlike many other forms of communication with the governor that the elites used, the

claque was one that was relatively accessible and was one that, in itself, could only

convey messages , which were not too much in favor of an individual local elite since

they required the populace to cooperate in the communication of this message. The

result of all of this was that governors would have received messages representing

collective interests. This served as a balancing incentive against the individual

Powerful Elites in a province, such as pagan priests, whose special interests ran contrary

to the “market will.”

Rebuttal of a Few Potential Criticisms

A potential, and perhaps obvious, criticism of this argument that the local elite

had a mechanism for expressing their collective will, which would reflect their interests,

would point to Libanius’s account that the local elite were rather upset with Tisamenus

for the level of taxation he sought from them. My argument that these acclamations

predominantly served the interests of competing elites rather than the poor populace

seems to be in tension with the disgruntledness of the elites themselves. Libanius

writes, “[Tisamenus] finicks and fuses about shillings and pence and the last brass

farthing, with charges against some and demands upon others. And when I say others, I

mean the councilors, those few left of many, for people die in debt their sons are

reduced to beggary.”157 If Tisamenus is responding to the incentive structure that took

into account the collective will of the elite, why would he enact policies that may have

been against their interests as a group. It seems odd that the elite would send messages

to the governor that would encourage him to increase taxation or more forcibly seek its

collection. I will discuss three reasons why this criticism fails.

First, as discussed previously, the populace itself has to be motivated to

participate in the message being put forth by the claque. It is difficult to imagine that

many, if any, of the humiliores or “commoners” would care about taxation for building

157 Libanius, Oratio 33.13. Cf. Libanius, Oratio 33.16-17.


construction since they were not the ones footing the bill and only stood to benefit from

it.158 Only members of the elite paid taxes for building funds.159 Without their

participation in an acclamation, there would be no coherent acclamation even if the

claqueurs chose to offer one, and therefore the governor would not hear such complaints

by this means. This does not mean that the populace itself necessarily put forth the

agenda of the acclamation, but their cooperation therewith was necessary. Second,

complaints by some outspoken elites, such as Libanius, about high taxation do not eo

ipso mean that the majority of local elites did not feel that their taxation level was

justified or that their taxation level was in fact relatively high.160 Third, even if every

local elite was rather upset by the level of taxation he or she faced compared to the level

of benefit that he or she received therefrom, their “market will” still could have

incentivized the governor to spend more and tax more. This can be explained by the

concept of rational irrationality, which describes a situation in which each individual,

making rational choices for his or her own interests, produces an irrational outcome for

the group as a whole.161

158 They will, of course, be very interested in taxation once they start to become taxed heavily as was the case the year following this account and will be examined later in this chapter. 159 Poor did pay taxes, but several laws protected them from too much taxation and this taxation would not have been placed for the purposes of building construction. Therefore, they may have concern for taxation, but increased spending on building construction by the governor would not have had a direct connection to their taxation. For more on the governor and his role with taxation, see Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 31-39. 160 Obviously, whether these elites were too heavily taxed as a group is not nearly as important as their own perceived level of taxation since perception of reality is what motivates humans rather than reality ipso facto, and it is not an unfounded assumption to assume that one would rather pay less taxes given the option. My point here is that simply because a particularly wealthy elite, such as Libanius, reports that taxation was unjustly high, one should not assume that that was the general consensus among the elite. 161 Rational irrationality is an extrapolation of game theory, particularly the prisoner’s dilemma game. In a simplified version of Albert Tucker’s popular version of Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher’s game, there are two accomplices in a crime. They are both given the same deal and know that both are given the same deal, but they are not able to communicate with one another. The deal is as follows: If they both keep silent, they both will receive a one year sentence. If one turns on the other and confesses, that prisoner will be set free and the other will receive a three year sentence. If they both turn on each other and confess, they both receive a two year sentence. Acting perfectly rationally, they will turn on one another and will each receive two years rather than cooperating and receiving one year each. This is because the best option for the prisoner is to turn on his accomplice no matter what the other prisoner decides, constituting a “dominant strategy” within the game. If the other decides to cooperate, turning on him will result in walking away free, which is better than serving jail-time. If the other decides not to cooperate, turning on him will result in a two year sentence, which is better than a three year sentence. This means that the individual rational choice is to turn on the other, but this results in an irrational choice for both of them collectively. Rational irrationality describes this irrational outcome from rational choices and extrapolates it beyond game theory. For a further explanation of the prisoner’s dilemma and how it fits into the broader concept of rational irrationality, see John Cassidy, How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 139-150.


Thought Experiment for Rational Irrationality in Provincial Taxation

To illustrate how this was likely the case, I will offer a hypothetical example as a

thought experiment. I will assume the “best-case scenario” for the local elite and

demonstrate how their individualized interests could still lead to the irrational outcome

of their increased taxation. They have a governor in their province who is eager to

please and will listen to and act upon the wishes of the elites to the best of his ability.

Each elite asks for their own special pet projects, which may overlap but not always. To

fund all of these projects, the governor may need to increase taxation (or enforce tax

payment more strictly). With each new project, the marginal benefit therefrom will be

more to many individual elites than the marginal cost of additional taxation and/or the

opportunity costs from divergent and potential future projects that could benefit them

individually more but likely will not be funded due to a draining treasury.162 The

cost/benefit ratio of taxation to government-funded buildings would not have been

ubiquitous among the local elite. However, the elites who stand to benefit will fight for

a project while those that do not will not have sufficient motivation to unify in

opposition to a specific project simply because it would cost the treasury. Each elite

would have to balance the marginal costs/benefits of a currently proposed project not

only with the marginal costs/benefits of alternative projects, but with the likelihood that

those projects would receive support from the governor. On top of this is the risk

involved in opposing projects that are dear to other elites, particularly if they were

powerful.163 This results in an incentive structure in which many elites would be acting

in their own best interests to continue to pressure the governor for specific additional

projects while simultaneously not pressuring him against most projects purely on

financial grounds. A governor who wants to follow the collective will of his elites will

162 The alternative projects that each elite would rather have funded would likely be different for even the group of elites who stand to benefit from current project. This is because, while their interests may overlap at times, they would not always overlap, and their optimal projects would likely be different. 163 “In Antioch itself, retired imperial officials allied with leading notables, who owed their status to collaboration with the imperial government, in order to victimize their less fortunate colleagues on the town council” Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 19-20. Cf. Libanius, Oratio 48.41 with J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Antioch: City and Imperial Administration in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 174-192.


spend more and may find himself in a situation in which he has to increase taxes.164

With distributed costs and localized benefits, those that benefit will always have the

louder voice because they will have significantly more to gain than the others stand to

lose, and this will lead to irrational outcomes for each individual collectively. It is not

until the problem of taxation becomes serious enough for the elites and the general

population becomes concerned about taxation themselves that the “market will” will

signal to the governor that this is an issue that demands attention and action. Such a

situation arose in Antioch in the year after Tisamenus’s term as governor.

Acclamations and Riots

The darker side of acclamations and the manipulation thereof by the claque were

riots, which could break out when the populace was particularly dissatisfied — as they

were in Antioch in 387. Two new taxes were levied on the people of Antioch. The first

tax was an aurum coronarium against the curials, who were members of the elite, and

the second tax was a collatio lustralis, which had affected most of the population in

Antioch.165 These taxes together demonstrate a situation ripe for claque manipulation.

Many of the elite, both Powerful and Lower, would have been angry about this new

lump-sum tax and indeed were some of the first to protest.166 Initially the reaction was

disorganised. Libanius wrote that when the new taxations were read out at the

δικαστήριον (dikasterion), the place of court and residence of the governor,167 “near the

throne and in the gaze of the governor they broke out into disorderly cries.”168

Libanius’s characterization of these grievances as disorderly is consistent with his 164 This should be an all too familiar story to any reader in the European Union or the United States. This problem of rational irrationality is pervasive in modern fiscal politics of these countries. 165 The exact nature of these taxes have been debated. Robert Browning argues that these two types of taxes were the most likely and also provides a brief history of the scholarship thereon. See, Robert Browning, “The Riot of AD 387 in Antioch: the role of the theatrical claques in the Later Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952), 13-20. For a detailed discussion of aurum coronarium throughout Roman history, see Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 175-190. For a further discussion of the effects of collatio lustralis and the people it affected, see G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World: From the Archaic Age to the Arab Conquests (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 127f. 166 Cf. Libanius, Oratio 19.26 with Robert Browning, “The Riot of AD 387 in Antioch: the role of the theatrical claques in the Later Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952), 14. 167 Robert Browning, “The Riot of AD 387 in Antioch: the role of the theatrical claques in the Later Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952), 14. 168 Libanius, Oratio 22.5, emphasis mine.


contempt for the protesters expressed throughout the speech, but it also distinguishes it

from the orderly cries of an acclamation. The initial reaction was spontaneous and

without leadership and therefore could not take form as an acclamation, as would

follow. There would have been plenty of individuals wealthy enough to hire the claque

to lead acclamations against taxations and stir trouble. The claque would, of course,

need to believe that they could have the participation of the populace.169 With the

collatio lustralis, a taxation on merchants and tradesmen, the claqueurs would be rest

assured that they could depend on the support of the populace in protesting taxes. The

protests and acclamations quickly turned into rioting led by the claque and “the

adoption of their [the claqueurs] usual techniques” as the rioters turned to the imperial

statues and symbols to destroy them.170 This situation demonstrates how a governor

would be wise to fear the “market will.” If the populace was discontent enough, they

would riot, and they could do so as they were led by the claque. Elites could wield a

powerful political and communicative tool through the claque if the populace was on

their side.

Because the “market will” represents the aggregate value among the elite, the

interests expressed therein would be general and unlikely to include pleads for pagan

temple construction and maintenance as opposed to more universally desired buildings.

This does not mean that there would not have been any acclamations for temples, but

rather that the market will would not demand them to be supplied from the governor. It

does not matter if one is a pagan or a Christian or how important religion is to oneself;

everyone will care to some extent about practical buildings e.g. roads, gates, walls,

ports, bathhouses, and entertainment facilities. Pagan elites would care about protecting

their city from Persian attacks with sound walls just as much as Christian elites would,

and Christian elites, in turn, would care just as much about ensuring a steady flow of

commerce from a properly maintained infrastructure. As local elites continue to

demand more, the governor would comply with their “market will,” and when faced

with the problem of insufficient funds, the governor would have to prioritize projects

and the sources of funding for them. Because of this, special interest projects, like the

169 Cf. Alan Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 241-242; Robert Browning, “The Riot of AD 387 in Antioch: the role of the theatrical claques in the Later Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952), 18. 170 Cf. Libanius, Oratio 22.6-8; Robert Browning, “The Riot of AD 387 in Antioch: the role of the theatrical claques in the Later Empire,” The Journal of Roman Studies 42 (1952), 17.


funding of temples would be of lower priority. Governors would receive the message

from the “market will” that temples just were not that important to the elite collectively

compared to practical buildings.


Conclusion

A governor held great power in his control of the purse strings for building

construction and maintenance in his province. When he entered a province, his subjects

would welcome him, “With fortunate omens you have come from the emperor, brilliant

as a ray of the sun that appears to us on high. [. . .] When night and darkness covered the

world, you were seen like the sun, and at once dissolved all the difficulties.”171 Elites

within the province would all hope that his benevolent light of benefaction through

public finance would reach them. Fortunately for them, governors were completely

dependent on them for his time as their governor to be a success. This gave them

bargaining power with the governor. They competed against one another to bask in this

light, but a governor only had so much that he could offer. He had to choose which

groups would benefit from his benefaction.

What projects would a governor, who was seeking to maximize his honor,

prioritize given this incentive structure that favors both particularly Powerful Elites and

the “market will” of the elites, dominated by the Lower Elites? The answer to this

would be other buildings besides pagan temples. A governor sought to increase the

honor he received. This was because even the practical benefits from the benefactions

of his subjects and superiors, such as financial aid to his province from imperial

officials and letters of introduction from former subjects, are rooted in his honor. Honor

was the currency that was traded between subject and superior through mutual

benefaction in the Late Antique Eastern Roman Empire. A governor received increased

honor from the construction of new buildings compared to the maintenance of previous

ones, which provides an incentive for him favor new construction and neglect others.

Elites, who wished to have the buildings from which they benefited financed, would

have to offer sufficient benefaction to the governor to incentivize him to return the

benefaction. Resources of the province were finite and a governor would have to

prioritize which buildings would receive funding.

A Powerful Elite could offer benefaction unilaterally, insofar as he could do so

through his or her own agency, and could offer his or her own benefaction in exchange

171 Menander Rhetor, 378–379, as found in Daniëlle Slootjes, The Governor and His Subjects in the Later Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 1.


for a governor’s. The Powerful Elite held a comparative advantage over other elites

because their connections outside the province allowed them to offer benefactions that

are more appealing to a governor than a local elite that could not exert influence across

administrative boarders. This ability to go over a governor’s head and use their

influence with imperial officials and local elites in other provinces gave them increased

bargaining power in their negotiations. While these Powerful Elites could be of any

religion, bishops were becoming increasingly powerful as the network between bishops

in other provinces and imperial officials increased. Just as the Powerful Elite had a

comparative advantage over other elites, bishops had a comparative advantage over

other Powerful Elites. This would incentivize a governor to listen to their interests and

disincentivize him to fund temples.

A governor also had a strong incentive to take heed of the collective interests of

the elite, and this collective interest balanced some of the influence that Powerful Elites

could exert over a governor if their interests ran counter to the market will. A pagan

Powerful Elite would have to fight not only against powerful bishops, but the market

will as well. Funding for religious buildings would have been special interests

constructions due to religious diversity. This favors buildings with more general appeal

in the fight for finite resources. Christians were able to overcome this as the religious

demographics of the empire shifted in their favor and imperial benefaction and pressure

worked in their favor. The eastern provinces of the Roman Empire of the late fourth

and early fifth centuries, with this incentive structure for governors, saw the dawn of the

Christian Empire. Pagan temples, however, struggled to find benefactional light as they

faded into twilight.


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