Download PDF | Andrew Harker - Loyalty and Dissidence in Roman Egypt_ The Case of the Acta Alexandrinorum-Cambridge University Press (2008).
264 Pages
The Acta Alexandrinorum are a fascinating collection of texts, dealing with relations between the Alexandrians and the Roman emperors in the first century ad. This was a turbulent time in the life of the capital city of the new province of Egypt, not least because of tensions between the Greek and Jewish sections of the population. Dr Harker has written the first in-depth study of these texts since their first edition half a century ago, and examines them in the context of other similar contemporary literary forms, both from Roman Egypt and the wider Roman Empire.
The study of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature, which, as this book demonstrates, was genuinely popular in Roman Egypt, offers a different and more complex perspective on provincial mentalities towards imperial Rome than that offered by the study of the mainstream elite literature of the Principate. It will be of interest to classicists and ancient historians, but also to those interested in Jewish and New Testament studies. andrew harker studied for his doctorate at King’s College London before lecturing at the University of London. He now teaches Classics in Hertfordshire.
Introduction
the acta alexandrinorum proper and acta related literature The vast majority of the many thousands of papyri that have been recovered from ancient Egypt are documents, but roughly a tenth are literary and ‘subliterary’ texts. Some of these contain works which had survived anyway, such as those of Homer and Thucydides, but others have yielded lost pieces of ancient literature, e.g. Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens. Among this latter group are a series of texts that have become known as the Acta Alexandrinorum or the Acts of the Pagan Martyrs.
The Acta Alexandrinorum tell the stories of the heroic deaths of Alexandrian Greek nobles. The favoured form of these stories is a record of their trial scene in the imperial court, usually presented as the official minutes (acta), with only a small amount of narrative.1 The Acta Alexandrinorum recycle the same archetypal story where a group of Alexandrian ambassadors travel to Rome and, on arrival, face a hostile emperor who has allied himself with their enemies, usually the Jewish community resident in Alexandria.
A bitter exchange of words follows between the emperor and the Alexandrians, who bravely defy the emperor on behalf of their beloved fatherland, and scornfully attribute his hostility towards them to his lack of high birth and culture. The stories usually end with at least some of the Alexandrians being led away to execution, recalling as they depart the long and glorious line of Alexandrians who have died before them in a similar fashion. The stories, which feature most of the emperors from Augustus to Caracalla, are written to evoke sympathy towards the Alexandrians and insist that they die as the innocent victims of imperial bias and cruelty. Some of the stories have an historical, and perhaps a documentary, basis and use historical personages, but all surviving examples have been fictionalised to some extent.
While the term Acta Alexandrinorum should be reserved solely for those texts which recycle this same essential story line (hereafter the Acta Alexandrinorum proper), in practice it has been extended to cover numerous other pieces of related ‘literary’ and ‘documentary’ texts. Thus the categorisation has been used of imperial letters to Alexandria, stories of secret meetings between Alexandrians and Roman prefects, rhetorical speeches delivered before emperors, accounts of imperial receptions in Alexandria, and accounts of Alexandrians prosecuting Roman prefects. These texts do not conform to my definition of the Acta Alexandrinorum, but are often extremely similar in theme and content.
For convenience, I will refer to them as the ‘Acta related literature’. I use the term ‘Acta Alexandrinorum literature’ to cover both categories. The Acta Alexandrinorum literature was read in Egypt from the Augustan period to the mid-third century ad. Most of the extant texts come from the late second–early third century ad, but this is unsurprising, as most surviving papyri come from this period anyway.2 Nonetheless, the fact that the older stories were being rewritten in this period and new stories were being composed would suggest that the literature was particularly popular in the Severan period, before disappearing entirely.
It had a broad appeal in Egypt. Examples of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature have been found both in urban centres, like Oxyrhynchus, Hermopolis Magna and Panopolis, and in villages, such as Karanis and Tebtunis, both of which are situated in the Fayum. The majority of the texts come from Oxyrhynchus and the villages of the Fayum. This is to be expected, however, as these sites have yielded the most papyri. Given this impressive geographical spread, it is reasonable to suppose that the Acta Alexandrinorum literature was known and read in Egypt wherever people could read.
the papyri of the acta alexandrinorum
The study of a literature preserved solely on papyrus, the ancient equivalent of paper, carries several intrinsic difficulties. Only a tiny proportion of the millions of papyri circulating in antiquity has survived. The surviving texts have been preserved in an uneven pattern and predominantly come from Egypt and the Near East where the climates are dry and anhydrous. Most of the papyri from Egypt come from relatively few sites, such as Behnesa, where the ancient metropolis of Oxyrhynchus once stood, and from the villages of the Fayum. Consequently texts from the coastal city of Alexandria, where the Acta Alexandrinorum literature presumably thrived, have not survived.
Not one example of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature has survived in its original entirety. At best several fragmentary columns survive; at worst, only a few lines or words, which serve only to show that the text was probably a piece of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature.3 Few papyri have survived the last two millennia undamaged. Most of the Oxyrhynchus papyri were recovered from rubbish heaps, which suggests that they were already damaged prior to being discarded. In the nineteenth century local inhabitants, realising the value of papyri, conducted their own excavations and dealers sometimes tore papyri in half in order to increase their profits. This practice has meant that fragments of the same text now belong to different collections, which hampers identification and study.
4 While some examples of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature were written onto new pieces of papyrus by practised scribes, others were scrawled onto the back of already used scraps of papyrus. Both can be difficult to read. Papyri are now usually published with a photograph, a transcription, a translation and a discussion, but this was not always the case. There are many examples, particularly in the case of older texts, where readings have been modified after further study.5
The poor physical state of the papyri leads to problems of reading and interpretation. Scholars supplement gaps in the texts, where possible. However, while formulaic, documentary texts can be restored with confidence, literary texts cannot. Over the last century many supplements have been proposed. In 1939 von Premerstein created over a hundred lines of continuous text from the badly damaged P.Giss.Univ. v 46, in which not a single line of text had survived.
The subsequent discovery of a new fragment of the same text, P.Yale inv. 1385, proved conclusively that von Premerstein’s restored version was deeply flawed.6 Due to the poor physical state of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature, supplements have to be used. My method has been to use only the generally accepted supplements in this study. But I have tried to avoid being overly cautious. In some cases the gist of the text seems retrievable from the remaining words, and I have discussed some potential supplements in chapters 2, 3 and Appendices i and iii.
Literary papyri can only be dated by the style of their handwriting unless there are internal indicators. However, because handwriting generally remains the same for a lifetime, there is a wide margin of error for the dating of the texts. I have followed the dates proposed by the editors. Even among the Acta Alexandrinorum literature, however, there are examples of texts that have been redated after further study.7 The exact provenance of many pieces of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature is unknown. Even when this is known it often reveals little about who owned the text. It was not until the controlled excavations at Karanis in the 1920s that an example of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature could be placed into its rightful context.
This was a fragment that belonged to a Hellenised Egyptian named Socrates, whose archive reveals a unique insight into the personality of a man who read this type of literature.8 Any attempt to produce a comprehensive study of the Acta Alexandrinorum literature will soon be out of date. There are many papyri awaiting publication and new excavations, despite the rising water table, are yielding more. Further examples will continue to be discovered. While Musurillo’s second edition of the Acta Alexandrinorum was in press (1961), for example, four new fragments were either identified or published,9 and many new fragments have been found since then.
alexandria and rome
By the time that Octavian conquered and annexed Egypt in 30 bc, Rome had long been involved in Alexandrian politics. Direct political contact had begun in 273 bc, when Ptolemy II received a formal grant of Roman amicitia. During the second century bc Rome began to interfere actively in Alexandrian and Egyptian affairs, and in the first century bc the Romans increasingly intervened in internal dynastic disputes between the Ptolemies. In 58 bc for example the Roman Senate reinstated Ptolemy XII Auletes against the wishes of the Alexandrians, who had expelled him.10
The encroaching influence of Rome became all the more obvious when regions of the Ptolemaic empire were annexed by the Romans and when Auletes left Egypt to Ptolemy XIII and Cleopatra VII, naming the Roman people as witnesses. Contemporary sources reveal the hostility towards Rome felt by the Alexandrians as the shadow of Rome fell across the last Hellenistic kingdom.
Octavian treated Alexandria with great respect, despite the support that the city had given to his rival Mark Antony. His rhetorical claim that he had spared Alexandria on account of its founder, Alexander the Great, the god Serapis and the intervention of his friend, Areius of Alexandria, belies the fact that he enhanced the city’s status, instituting and upholding many privileges.12 Alexandria became the seat of the Roman government in Egypt and was known as ‘Alexandria ad Aegypto’ rather than ‘in Aegypto’, emphasising its status. Alexandrian territory was not subject to taxation, and territory owned by Alexandrians in the Egyptian chora enjoyed a lower rate of taxation. Alexandrian citizens were exempt from the poll tax (laographia) which was levelled on all other inhabitants of the province and from liturgical duties in the chora.
The emperors upheld the importance and exclusivity of Alexandrian citizenship. A natural reading of Pliny’s letters to Trajan reveals that only Alexandrian citizens, not Egyptians, could receive Roman citizenship.13 Octavian treated Alexandria more like an allied city rather than a conquered one, ensuring that Alexandrian citizenship was important for status and cultural identity and was the goal of ambitious, Hellenised Egyptians. Many individual Alexandrians prospered under Roman rule and because of it, and many received the Roman citizenship or enjoyed a career in the imperial service.
Alexandrians such as Tiberius Claudius Balbillus, Tiberius Julius Alexander and Appian (the author) held important positions in the imperial court and administration, although no Alexandrians were senators at Rome before the time of Caracalla. The Roman emperors were not Greek but they proved to be no worse rulers than the Ptolemies had been.14 Nevertheless, the hostility which some Alexandrians felt towards the Romans in the Ptolemaic period was probably intensified by the abuses inflicted on the city by corrupt Roman administrators during the Principate.
Another major source of discontent was that Alexandria was also not allowed to convene a city council. Although Dio reports that Octavian ‘ordered the Alexandrians to conduct their government without councillors’, Octavian probably banned the reconvention of the council, rather than abolishing an existing council.15 The absence of the institution through which all other contemporary Greek poleis were run may have dented Alexandrian pride, but the city still administered her own affairs. The council of elders (gerousia) apparently numbering 173 and the gymnasium, which were social and honorific institutions, took on an overtly political role in the absence of a boule. 16
The Roman occupation of Alexandria aggravated the existing social tensions within the city. Although the Alexandrians petitioned various emperors during the Principate to reinstate their council, permission to do so was not granted until the Severan period.17 Many Alexandrians believed that a council would allow them to exercise a degree of control over the factional infighting between rival families, through the use of peer pressure. It would also prevent the most influential families from manipulating prefects into allowing them to monopolise offices, giving a wider access to the important magistracies and limiting the need for Roman intervention in civic affairs.
The Romans however considered that a council would instead encourage further feuding and public disorder.18 This inevitably heightened the tensions within the city, which were already strained due to the long history of poor relations between the Greeks and the large Jewish community resident in Alexandria.19 Alexandrian discontent manifested itself in the form of mob violence and rioting, and the populace was frequently stirred into action by nationalistic politicians who reminded the Alexandrians of their traditional enmity with Rome and the Jews.20 The Alexandrian populace had acquired a reputation for being disorderly and unruly subjects during the Ptolemaic period.21
The Alexandrians also acquired a reputation for mocking their rulers and were famed for the unflattering epithets that they bestowed upon them.22 The Alexandrian mob was probably no worse than those of other major cities, although the size and importance of Alexandria ensures that any unsavoury incidents there are magnified. The history of Roman Alexandria is littered with incidents of violence and uprisings within the city. The most serious of these involved fighting between the Alexandrian Greeks and Jews. Violence is attested in ad 38 and 41. 23 The Jews revolted three times against the Roman Empire, in ad 66–70, 115–17, 132–5, and the Alexandrian Jews were involved in the first two of these.24
The Alexandrian Jews sustained heavy casualties in ad 115–17, but were not wiped out unlike other Jewish communities in the chora. 25 Further Graeco-Jewish violence occurred in the early years of Hadrian’s reign.26 Roman military losses in Hadrianic Alexandria may be connected to this violence.27 Rioting is attested in ad 73, which, according to Dio Chrysostom, was quelled by a Roman named Conon, possibly a textual corruption for the Flavian prefect Colon.28 The prefect Munatius Felix was killed in an uprising shortly before ad 154. 29 Alexandria supported revolts against emperors in ad 69, 175 and throughout the third century.30 However, these were often initiated by ambitious generals, who were only too aware of the strategic importance of the city as the port of a major grain-producing province.
the controversy of the acta alexandrinorum For the first half of the twentieth century the Acta Alexandrinorum were at the heart of an intense and controversial academic debate, and held the fascination of successive generations of scholars. Since Ulrich Wilcken noticed that two papyri from collections in Paris and London were part of the same report of a meeting between an emperor, whom he believed to be Trajan, and a Jewish embassy, theories have been rapidly advanced concerning the form, authenticity and purpose of the Acta Alexandrinorum. 31
They have been seen as fragments of imperial records,32 biased political pamphlets,33 lost historical works,34 an anti-Jewish martyr literature eulogising Alexandrian gymnasiarchs,35 fiction based on imperial records,36 and a populist and sensational anti-Roman nationalistic literature.37 The last major work on the texts was by the Church historian Herbert Musurillo, who published and re-edited a collection of all known Acta Alexandrinorum in 1954 with some translations and a full commentary. In 1961 Musurillo’s Teubner edition was published, containing some textual corrections and an additional text, but no translations or commentary.
For Musurillo, the Acta Alexandrinorum were the product of the affronted pride of the Alexandrian aristocracy, originating in the Alexandrian clubs and gymnasium, written by the gymnasiarchal class indignant at Alexandria’s humbling under Roman rule, the chief grievance being that Alexandria was not allowed a boule. The Acta Alexandrinorum literature remains controversial and a reassessment of the literature is long overdue. I examine the origins of the literature, which I believe began as a reaction to Alexandrian embassies sent to Gaius and Claudius in the first century ad (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3 and Appendix iii, I survey the surviving fragments of the core group of texts and related literature, clarifying the historical background, where possible.
In Chapter 4, I examine the nature, form and purpose of the stories, compare them to other literary manifestations of dissent in Roman Egypt, and show that, rather than being a secret literature of dissent, the Acta Alexandrinorum literature was read by a broad readership as entertainment. In Chapter 5, I examine the literature in the context of other literary forms of ‘loyalty’ and ‘dissent’ from the wider Roman Empire.
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