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

Lucius Acilius Strabo came as judge and arbitrator (disceptator),[1140] which means that a dispute over land ed rights had broken out between two sides. Strabo’s judgment that the land belonged to the Roman state aroused the anger of the Cyreneans, and they appealed to the Senate, who referred them to the Emperor Nero, who had meantime acceeded. The Emperor confirmed Strabo’s finding, but as a concession left the Cyreneans with the land. Thus, at least, Tacitus.[1141] It may be asked, however, who were the parties to this dispute: were they simply the Roman people versus the Cyrenean occupiers, or was there a third party? Tacitus’ use of the term disceptator, meaning arbitrator, to describe Acilius’ role, implies that he came to adjust a dispute between two claimants; had he merely represented the Roman people, he himself would have been an interested party, and the term disceptator would have been inappropriate. Tacitus, however, was a man of legal experience,[1142] and hence the term must be taken seriously. Ruggiero indeed,[1143] thought that the other party was constituted by the publicani, but this is unlikely, since they had apparently abandoned their concessions on the ager publicus a long time before. It is much more probable that the heirs of the previous tenants were the claimants who challenged the rights of the Cyrenean occupiers. Indeed, the most acceptable interpretation of an unclear account would be, that in the course of adjudicating their claim Acilius found that the state was the rightful owner, and left the State to assign the tenancies.[1144]

These settlers had been placed in a serious position by the separation of the agri Apionis from the rest of the country’s tracts in 96 B.C. Torn away from the administrative framework of the Ptolemaic state, which had till then ensured their rights, and furnished both legal and military protection, they remained defenseless before the oppression and profit-hunting of the con-ductores, and before the raids and trespassing of the Libyan tribes. If we read between the lines of Tacitus’ account, we see that most of them had been driven from their farms some years before the arrival of Strabo to investigate their claims. It would seem very probable that these years beheld the creation of a landless and embittered agrarian proletariat. We have already sought to show that from the beginning of Ptolemaic rule in the territory, most of the new agricultural settlers, whether Jews or gentiles, had settled on the Ptolemaic royal lands, impelled both by the juridical and by the economic situation. The consequences of their plight will be examined below. Nero’s decision, according to Tacitus, confirmed the state’s ownership of the areas in dispute, but left the Cyrenean squatters where they were, that is, as state tenants.[1145] If this was the case, then the former tenants remained landless.

Tacitus’ account, however, can be compared with three other sources drawn respectively from epigraphy, from archaeology and from the professional literature of the Roman state-surveyors. The surveyor Hyginus, who lived under Trajan (98-117), describing the surveying and dividing up of the agri Apionis of Cyrenaica as an eye-witness, writes: “And there are here boundary stones on which is inscribed the name of the Divine Vespasian, and these end with the words: these boundaries, seized by private individuals (Vespasian) restored to the Roman people.”[1146] Several of the said stones have actually been discovered, bearing inscriptions which witness the survey-work of Acilius Strabo and of an official who succeeded him, Quintus Paconius Agrippinus. Of the three known stones set up by Strabo,[1147] one is from Gasr Targhuna, one from Marazig in the eastern Jebel, and the third from an unknown provenance. The first of them was erected in A.D. 54 “56. Another belongs to Nero’s reign, and the third is undatable, as only part of it remains. Their bilingual texts end with the words: “... (Nero) restored to the Roman people the boundaries seized by private individuals”.[1148] It is harder to interpret the four known boundary stones bearing the name of Paconius Agrippinus,[1149] who came, like Acilius Strabo, as special imperial commissioner — this time for Vespasian (ἰδίος πρεσβευτής: legatus). All these stones were found at Cyrene, two on the north-east edge of the city, a third in the south-west of the Agora, and the fourth near the city’s northern wall. The first three are dated to 71 and their text resembles that of Strabo’s stones, showing that Hyginus’ version is inaccurate, although its contents corresponds to reality: but no private boundary trespassers are mentioned, and the property restored to the Roman people by the Emperor through the agency of his commissioner Agrippinus is called Πτυλυμαῖον. Opinions differ on the meaning of this word: Ferri[1150] identified the “Ptulu-maion” with the Temple of Zeus on the eastern hill of Cyrene; Rostovtzeff[1151] understood it as a temenos, probably a garden or grove; others have seen in these four stones evidence that the restoration of Apion’s lands to the state continued, interpreting the word “Ptulumaion” as “Ptolemy’s land”.[1152] Difficult as it is to decide, it may be said in favour of the last suggestion that the first two stones were incised by different masons,[1153] while the letter-style of all of them is more characteristic of field boundary-stones than of urban buildings or parks, and even more so the spelling of the word “Ptulumaion’, which is decidedly Libyan.[1154] It should further be remembered that the boundaries of ancient agricultural plots reach the very walls of Cyrene on all sides. A similar boundary-stone, dated in 72, was also set up opposite the west gate of Ptolemais, recording (in Latin and Greek) the restoration of a garden (κῆπος, hortus) to the Roman people by Vespasian through the agency of Paconius.[1155] The significance of these Flavian inscriptions, therefore, lies not so much in the extensiveness of the areas restored, as in the evidence they afford of the aim of Vespasian and his sons to restore as much as possible crown property to state ownership and thereby to recover its revenues. Important in this respect is the evidence of Hyginus.[1156] who states specifically that the boundary-stones he had seen were Vespasian’s, meaning that in Agrippinus’ time the systematic resurvey of the agri publici had begun. If indeed the grid was first laid out after the transfer of these areas to Rome in 96 B.C. — as Fabricius, for example, seems to have believed —[1157] then the boundaries were now set out afresh under the supervision of Paconius Agrippinus.