Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

The evidence we possess, nevertheless, shows that not all the ager publicus of Cyrene remained in the hands of its previous inhabitants. Pliny says explicitly that most of the silphium was destroyed by the publicani who had leased its tracts for grazing sheep.[1125] Cicero also speaks of the leasing of the same areas in 2 B.C.[1126] The silphium had till then, apparently, been paid as tax to the government, while a pasture-tax (ἐννόμιον) had been exacted from the Libyans; the southern areas were now opened to direct exploitation by the publicani, and the Libyans would have been driven from them. The destruction of the silphium, begun in the 3rd century by the Libyans themselves, was thus repeated in different circumstances. The end of the process is not known with any certainty; until recently it was accepted that the silphium was now destroyed completely, but this view has been challenged by Capelle.[1127] The expansion of the publicani over the southern Jebel at the expense of the Libyan tribes may nevertheless be seen as part of the background of the Roman campaigns between 20 B.C. and 2 B.C. But these phenomena also indicate an important general development, namely, the completion of the trend perceptible since the dissolution of the kingdom of Ptolemy Apion, and perhaps even since the 2nd century B.C., — namely, the abandonment of intensive agriculture for a pastoral economy combined with extensive arable, involving a renewed spread of the livestock branch.

Shortage of money may have induced the Roman Senate to use the country’s depressed and conflicted situation as a pretext for undertaking the government of Cyrenaica in its entirety in 75-74 B.C., and to include it within a province consisting of Crete and Cyrene.[1128] In 67 B.C., at any rate, on the epigraphical evidence already sketched above (p. 65), Cnaeus Lentulus Marcellinus was forced to take various steps to reform the situation, and even if his work was bound up with the campaign against the pirates, the phenomenon of piracy cannot be separated from the general social crisis of the time, nor is it chance that in a fragmentary inscription of the same year,[1129] apparently set up by a group of Roman businessmen to express their thanks to Marcellinus, robbers (κλοποί) are referred to. A fragment from Sallust speaks of a renewal of civil strife before 75 B.C.;[1130] a contemporary inscription[1131] shows that settlers were being settled near Ptolemais on surveyed plots which had been evacuated by their previous tenants.

It is not clear how soon the country recovered after 67. The country was certainly a Roman province by 63. Pompey, at all events, obtained large quantities of grain from Cyrenaica,[1132] but the city was taken by storm during the Civil War, and as late as the year 7 B.C. a small group of Roman citizens was in control of the country’s law courts, and retained its monopoly till Octavian took measures to end it. We do not know what the position was in other respects at Cyrene or in the other towns of the country. Things were not bad in all of them, since several important building-projects were in train at Cyrene in the ist century B.C., and we have seen evidence that the city then possessed wealthy citizens with ample resources. But internal tension also existed.

The basis of the dispute between the city and its Jewish community between the years 31-13 B.C. has been investigated (p. 183), and when the city’s nomophylakes set up a dedication to Ὁμονοία, or concord, under Augustus,[1133] this obviously hinted at a situation which was the opposite of unity. In A.D. 54, in Claudius’ reign, a special commissioner (legatus) was sent to Cyrenaica by the Emperor to enquire into the situation on the state lands, the agri publici,[1134] The commissioner, Acilius Strabo, found that part of these tracts had been abandoned by their tenants and had for some considerable time (diutina licentia) been occupied by the neighbouring tenants or landholders.[1135] Why had these tracts been vacated — the more so since they constituted a considerable part of the fertile lands of the country? Natural conditions dictated that the livestock rearing of the Roman publicani could not be restricted to the south of the country. Like all other members of the population engaged in this branch, they had to transfer their animals northward to the Plateau in the summer months, hence the lot of the agri publici on the Jebel resembled that of the agri publici in the south.[1136] The seasonal transhumance of the livestock placed the conductores pascuum in the role of the Libyans, and thus the alliance between the wealthy landowners of Cyrene and the Libyan tribes, renewed under Arataphila, was terminated or infringed; its final annulment was achieved by the Roman campaigns against the southern tribes between 20 B.C. and 2 B.C.

What was the effect of the publicani on the inhabitants of the ager publicus of the Plateau, we do not precisely know, and no direct echo of their situation has reached us. But it is hard to suppose that this meeting was to the advantage of the inhabitants, especially if the conductores charged with the division of the lands also collected the rents (vectigalia) from their tenants.[1137] It can be assumed with certainty that the stock-grazing publicani, keen for quick profits (cf. Pliny’s expression, maius lucrum sentientes), neither heeded the tenants’ plots nor respected their boundaries. It also suggests that they were not merely concerned in the collection of the scriptura or in the purchase of wool, but were directly involved in the grazing of the flocks. In this struggle, the publicani were the stronger,[1138] and we may believe that they were allied with the small group of Roman citizens who had seized control of the juries, and perverted the law to put Cyreneans to death. Augustus intervened in 7/6 B.C. to end this perversion of justice, also facilitating appeals on the part of the provincials against the administration’s acts of extortion. Whatever Augustus’ influence on the activity of most of the publican companies, however, the lessees of the state pastures continued to discharge their function.[1139] We have no information of developments in this sphere in Cyrenaica, but it is clear that the exploitation of the state lands by publicani came to an end in the first half of the 1st century A.D., when these tracts had been abandoned by their previous tenants. We can only conjecture the causes, but it is difficult to avoid the simple conclusion that the extensive pastoral economy based on seasonal transhumance had reached its peak in this period and had destroyed the economy of the original tenants of the ager publicus. When Acilius Strabo arrived to investigate the legal position of the state lands in 54, they were in the hands of entirely new holders, the Cyrenean proprietors whose property bordered on the agri publici.