entering the city with a large entourage, he announces his greetings to the gods dwelling in Rome, to the Senate, and to the Roman people; he congratulates them on their victory over King Perseus and King Genthius and on the extension of their empire; when the praetor offers to call a senate session for him on that very day, if he should like, Prusias asks for a two-day interval, during which time he might visit the temples of the gods, the city, and his friends and guest-friends; Lucius Cornelius Scipio the quaestor is assigned to him as an escort; a house is rented for him and his suite; on the third day following, he approaches the Senate, offers congratulations on the victory, recites his services in the war, and requests permission to fulfil a vow of ten full-grown victims at Rome in the Capitol and one at Praeneste to Fortune

he Rhodians had suffered severe economic sanctions from Rome after their offer to negotiate in 168;

he met them with his head shorn, and wearing a white cap and a toga and shoes, exactly the costume worn at Rome by slaves recently manumitted or lib

. Whether or not this last possibility is so, we may still conclude that the annalistic notice of the Bithynian embassy is based on an actual report of that embassy, and that the original report has been truncated on purpose to conceal the Senate's response.

but a consequenc

We should notice here a rhetorical schematization: whereas the Bithynians are humble when they offer to negotiate, the Rhodians are arrogant in making their offer and unfavorably receiv

Will these same grounds apply in the case of the Bithynian embassy of 16

ryton’s wifemight, as we saw, present herself as Greek in her dealings with thosearound her, but her daughters, more normally known by their Egyptiannames, preferred to function in Egyptian.72

Inheritance then becomes an even more complex matter, and thearchives of Egyptian families, often covering many generations, allowus to identify the multifarious nature of family property and to traceits dispersal and concentration over time and the role of different fam-ily members in this process

In Egyptian demotic, for instance,words existed for “parents-in-law” (/smand/sm.t), which was not thecase in Greek.

Slave-holding,it seems clear, was part of “going Greek,”59joining language, food,dress, the legal system employed, and family structure as a clear ethnicdenominator

he Greek military settlers of Ptolemaic Egypt were, on the demo-graphic evidence of the tax registers, among the better off in terms of thesize and diversity of their households

Wet-nurses also occur in more Greek(5.5percent) than Egyptian households, particularly in the homes ofcleruchs. In Smyrna, nurses were shown on gravestones as larger in sizethan servants, reflecting their somewhat higher status.5

Non-kin dependants are found mostly in Greek families. The con-trast with Egyptian households is striking, and Aristotle’s definition of ahousehold as one containing slaves is found to be peculiarly Greek

he firstfeature to stress is the different picture found in Greek and Egyptianhouseholds, households, that is, differentiated according to the name ofthe household head. These were differences primarily of size. Overalltwo-adult households were the most common form, accounting for38percent of all households; for Egyptians, they formed46.5percent,but for Greeks, only24.5percent of households. Of Egyptians,

Alexandria and the Delta, where the moister climate means that papyrihave not survived (except occasionally in carbonised form), remainuncharted territory, but from Middle Egypt in the third and secondcenturiesb.c.,we now have reasonably clear information on settlementand household patterns.5

Guaranteeing autonomy and democracy,he now requested asylum status for the temple of Aphrodite Stratonikis(his grandmother as Aphrodite); he addressed this demand to the “kings,dynasts, cities, and peoples (ethnˆe)” of the area. In turn, the local officials(stratˆegoi) contacted the settlers (katoikoi) in Magnesia, the cavalry in thefield, and the (foot)-soldiers, offering them friendship (ll.11–14). It laterbecomes clear that both cavalry and infantry were numbered among thesettlers in this new city foundation (ll.43–45).46

Milesians might now contract a marriage with citizens of suchstates without prejudice to their children’s status. Groups of individualswere also granted citizen status, like the Cretan mercenaries in234/3and229/8 b.c., some of whom came with their families and somewithout,34or the bastards registered as new citizens of Mileto

Perhaps not surprisingly in the changing fortunes of the period,family was sometimes more important to an army man than was his com-mander. Successful rulers exploited this fact. In January316at Gabienein Persis, Antigonos captured the baggage-train (aposkeuˆe) of Eumenes,including the soldiers’ children, wives, and other relations. Eumenes’phalanx, in response to this capture, deserted their previous commander,joining up instead with Antigonos.43

agreement ofsympoliteia

Rules differed according to city; the Athenian two-parentrule for citizenship applicable for a limited period from the mid-fifthcenturyb.c.lay at one end of the spectrum, though even here there wereexceptions and, over time, the rules were relaxed.2

Elsewhere, citizenship was for sale29or grants of citizenship might bemade to specific groups (of Greeks), with the aim of increasing the citi-zen body.30Sometimes, it was simply the right to marry (epigamia) withGreeks from elsewhere that was granted, so ensuring the legitimacy offuture children, but often this was linked to a range of different rights,involving political rights, access to land, legal procedures, contracts,market privileges, and so on.31

Queens, too, might actively promote a family ideology, asin the case of Laodike just mentioned; on a later occasion, the samequeen provided dowries for the daughters of poor citizens in Iasos.23Phila, wife of Demetrios Poliorketes, did the same for the daughters andsisters of needy soldiers.24

affection for children is here on display, and this royal emphasis on famil-ial tenderness was reflected lower down the social scale. The sympatheticdepiction of children on tombstones, their half-size epitaphs in Smyrna,and the record of their toys and the lives that they led are all featuresof the period in which royal practice may have set or mirrored thetrend.22

And, as within the royal family, the use of familyterms of address was standard in the bureaucracy. Not all “brothers”should be understood as such

which in the case of the Ptolemiesin Egypt, from the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos and Arsinoe II,offspring of Ptolemy I and Berenike I, involved the regular marriage offull brother and sister as king and queen

New Comedy presents the same problems of typicality as does OldComedy6; the Greek Anthology, like the recently discovered poems ofPoseidippos,7contains many epigrams of a private nature, but the typ-icality of these will always be debated. Inscriptions on stone (especiallythose with scenes as well as words), both public and private, as earlier,also provide unparalleled information and insights on particular indi-viduals, usually those enjoying a reasonable level of wealth, and on thepractices and values of different communities.8Epitaphs, in particular,both literary examples and those inscribed on stone, form a challengingdataset

In this chapter, the term “family” is used for those members of ahousehold who are related, whereas a “household” includes other non-family household members

he record of her mother too is regular Koan practice.

V ́erilhac and Vial (1998)60–1. For the (new) responsible role of the partnersthemselves in this marriage, see M ́el`eze-Modrzejewski (1999)266

Greek (unlike Egyptian) women were held to be legallyincapable

n the world that followedAlexander, however, with the movement of people and the setting upof the different Hellenistic kingdoms, life was changed for many. Sowhen Herakleides married Demetria, still known by the ethnic labelsof their home of origin, they were in no position to pass on citizenstatus to any children. It is their status as free persons that they stress

The contract itself is from the island of Elephantine, close by Aswan onthe southern border of Egypt. Indeed, the findspot of the text and thevaried origins of the witnesses suggest that this was a forced marriage,that father and son-in-law served together in the garrison stationedon Elephantine

Antigonus responded to this development by sending his nephew, Polemaios, with an army to bring an end to the Bithynian operations.34

Decrees honoring this Nicomedes from numerous Greek cit-ies were gathered by the Coans and published as a collection.27 Many of the dedications seem to have originated in the period when Antigonus was most active in the Aegean, after 315. The decrees of the Samians and the Athenians emphasize Nicomedes’ valuable services to ambas-sadors sent by the cities to Antigonus.

As it happens, the only famous individual to bear the name was the daughter of Ptolemy I Soter and Eurydice.2

Nicomedes would have been less than fi fty years old when he died.

Nicomedes belongs in fairly exclusive company, the top two percent of Greek names based on rate of recurrence.

Also, there is no evidence that any of the Bithynian rulers ever adopted an heir

Foreign names were given to Athenians (1) through xenia between an Athenian and a non-Athenian family; (2) as the result of marriage with a foreign woman (during the periods when this was permitted at Athens); (3) by naming “after a king or another foreign celebrity”; and (4) by naturalization. Reviewing Habicht’s discussion, Stephen Lambert added an additional route by which foreign names entered Athenian nomenclature: (5) adoption

Social conservatism may have infl uenced the choice of names in the royal house, but that is probably not a full explanation for the custom.

The statue of Zeus in the temple at Nicomedeia, considered one of the great works of Hellenistic art, was created in the middle of the third century by a sculptor thought by Reinach to have had the Thracian name Doidalses.6

Bithynian rulers typically gave their children Thracian names

were Thracian

Greek name

The number of anatomical votives, gener- ally thought to be offered either in connection with a request, or in thanks, for cure of the particular part of the anatomy in question, found in sanctuaries of Asklepios increases very substantially, ‘from the fourth century onwards’ (van Straten 1981: 149)

Poisons and their antidotes were, of course, a particular preoccupation within ruling circles, and royal patronage undoubtedly played a role in the rise, and shape, of Hellenistic pharmacology.

and left it dominated by compound drugs, often involving lengthy lists of ingredients

ollas of Bithynia

about the human being in sickness and health, and an original (though less dramatic- ally so) therapeutic package to accompany them. He argued that the human body (like the rest of the cosmos) was constructed out of fundamental (but frangible) particles which percolated through the body in various passages or pores.

Asklepiades of Prusias in Bithynia, arrived in Rome in the later part of the second century BC, and seems to have been remarkably successful there in his promulgation both of innovative theories

polemics

Both factors, as well as the continuing drive to innovate, to differentiate oneself from other physicians and their ideas in the continuing competition for patients and pupils that characterized classical medicine, suggested that this kind of anatomy be rejected, and contributed to the demise of human dissection (see esp. von Staden 1992 for this latter point). It is harder to see any more directly imperialist motivation in this move, in this epistemological division of the medical landscape, prefigured as it was by differences in the Hippocratic Corpus.

ery roughly speaking, the empiricists were called ‘empiricists’ since they took the view that knowledge is just a matter of a certain kind of complex experience (in Greek empeira), whereas the rationalists were so called since they assumed that mere experience, however complex, does not amount to knowledge, that knowledge crucially involves the use of reason (logos in Greek, ratio in Latin), for example to provide the appropriate kind of justification for our belief. (Frede 1990: 225

t should be added immediately that, whether or not this was the case, the anatomy of Herophilos and Erasistratos was not an anatomy of difference. There is no indica- tion that they dissected, as some of their nineteenth-century successors did (e.g. Stepan 1982), in order to distinguish between varieties of human being, to provide interior confirmation and meanings for a racial hierarchy.

epistemological divisions

‘On the uterus, growing out sideways, one from each part, are the didymoi (literally “twins” but here “testicles”), and they differ only a little from those ofmales’ (Gal. Sem. 2.1.15: CMG 5.3.1 146.224

irst there is the moral and practical support offered by the early Ptolemies - in the shape of ‘condemned men, provided alive by the kings from prison’ (Celsus Med. pr.234) to cut open and inspect while still breathing - as part of their attempt to establish Alexandria as a centre of cultural achievement

The somatic interior invited capture: to be able to claim mastery over it was a goal in itself, the achievement of which would both bring glory to those responsible and give strength to the medical art more generally.

For the undertaking of systematic human dissection for the first time was a radical one, and did entail breaking with traditions of a rather stronger, more socially and religiously entrenched, variety than those which shaped the medical community as such.

his, and the general failure of these developments to deliver any obvious therapeutic results, has all been a considerable disappointment to many modern commentators, particularly those most committed to the inherently, and intensely, revelatory powers

Herophilos remained committed to a very traditional understanding of health (which is always in accordance with nature) and disease (which is the contrary condition); one that was based on age-old notions of balance and imbalance, manifested in the humoural mixture of the body. This is, furthermore, a conception which operates at a very general level of somatic organization, not a more anatomically specific one. It is about the fluids - the humours - that pervade the whole body rather than being tied to any specific location or organ

As Galen, the great physician of the Roman imperial era whose copious (but far from disinterested) writings provide much of the evidence for earlier medical theories and practices

Erasistratos confmed blood (considered in ancient medical thought to perform a nourishing role) to the veins,

somati

cornea’ (‘horn-like’, from keratoeides, Rufus Onom. 12-13) and ‘retina’ (‘net-like’, from ampbiblestroeidex Rubs Onom. 153), for two of the four tunics of the eye which Herophilos was the first to iden*

he rather loosely conceived, and imaginative, approach to the human interior which characterizes the writings of the Hippocratic Corpus, had up till now been supplemented and steadied only by the comparative anatomy of Aristotle, and others who dissected animals.

The medical development which dominates most discussions of scientific endeavours in the Hellenistic period is, of course, the introduction (and conclusion) of the practice of systematic human dissection (and vivisection) in early third-century Alexandria

Barbarian

This is, after all, the age of mathematicians such as Euklid and Archimedes of Syracuse (whose mechanical interests also overlapped with those of men such as Ktesibos of Alexandria), and of Aristarchos of Samos with his heliocentric model of the cosmos.

Colonial knowledge both enabled conquest and was produced by it’, states historical anthropologist Nicholas Dirks, ‘in certain ways knowledge was what colonialism was all about’ (1996: ix). The point is, in a sense, an obvious one. Successfd conquerors need not just military strength and organization, together with some political skills, but also intelligence. Conquest itself is a learning process, both for the victors and the vanquished, and this feeds into the system of domination which is then established and consolidated. The management of knowledge - its continued but controlled generation, its rightll ordering, differ- ential possession, and ongoing productivity - counts amongst the most vital tech- nologies of colonial rule. It may also become a site of resistance

heliocentric

The classification is, therefore, expressed in terms of ethnicity or civilization, but underlying this there is a much more fundamental difference which, in the eye ofany beholder, situated political communities in two diametrically opposed camps.

Here it is crucial to differentiate between three types of publicly issued permits for violent seizure: (a) those not limited to a particular occasion or target, of which the ‘custom’ of the Cretans and the Aitolians mentioned above are examples; (b) those issued by warring states against their enemy during a particular armed conflict (Polyb. 4.36.6: ‘The Spartans declared the right of seizure against the Achaians’); and (c) the proclamations of reprisals (yle, rhyia), carried out, at any time, by a community or individuals against another community or some of its citizens with a view to exacting retribution for wrongs allegedly perpet- rated by the target (Polyb. 4.53.2: ‘The Knossians proclaimed reprisals against the Rhodians’; pace Ducrey 1968: 181-2, ‘unspecified seizure’ and ‘reprisals’ are clearly distinguished in e.g. IG 9 l2 1,179.20-1).

The other advance is a radical shift in the basic explanatory tenet, that is the answer to the question: what made people resort to acts which our sources describe as piratical

One is an increasing acknowledgement of the fact that ‘pirate’ and ‘piracy’, or rather their principal Greek equivalents, leistes and leisteia, were subjective terms, consistently applied, especially fiom the fourth century on- wards, as pejorative labels on enemies and their acts.

The reality behind all this apparent care may well be that all the slaves were sold, while the Ephesians were allowed to return home only after ransom had been forwarded fiom Ephesos; that they meanwhile had a pleasant stay in Astypalaia is not refuted by this view (IG 12.3. Suppl. 1286).

Yet, the rich flow of high-quality slaves from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean reported by Polybios (4.38) only makes sense in the light of Strabo’s later remarks about the piratical activities of the Heniochoi, Zygoi and Achaei: that ‘they are sometimes assisted by those who hold power in the Bosporos, the latter supplying them with landings and a market and the means of disposing their loot’ (11.2.12). In short, naval powers were prepared to exploit piracy in order to cultivate their own interests. The ‘policeman of the seas’ was not really interested in the elimination of piracy.

Whoever wielded power was expected to offer protection. A long succession of these eminent ‘policemen of the seas’ is paraded in our record.

Secondly, the suppression of piracy was generally used by the maritime hgemon as a mere pretext for pursuing his own political objectives, that is, first and foremost to legitimize his right to rule and to increase his own power (de Souza 1999: 241-2). To this should be added that when politically or economically opportune he might choose to look the other way.

the Phokian Ameinias (hired by Antigonos Gonatas), the Illyrians Agron and Demetrios of Pharos (employed by Demetrios I1 and Antigonos Doson respectively), their compatriot Skerdilaidas (in the service of Philip V), and the Aitolian Dikaiarchos, who having served Philip V shifted his allegiance to Egypt, where Ptolemaic favour materialized in the grant of a lucrative concession placing him in a key-post within the Egyptian slave market

The archpirate who put his flotilla and brilliant tactical skills at the service of the kings is a common figure in Hellenistic naval operations (Launey 1949: 34-35,180-95; Ducrey 1968: 178)

But these should not get all of our attention at the expense of their far more numerous, though less well-known, colleagues: for instance, the archpirate Nikandros, who in 190 operated in Antiochos 111’s fleet, or one Timokles, who served under Demetrios Poliorketes during the siege of Rhodes (Livy 37.11.16; App. S’. 24; Diod. 20.97)

thalamcracy

The elusive middleman, using the open market as an intermediate point, was sometimes the pirate’s close collaborator, sometimes his competitor

Roman captives in Achaia went for 500 drachmas and in Delphi for 300 to 600 drachmas each (Livy 34.50; Hatzfeld 1913). Earlier, in 254, the Romans themselves released the 14,000 inhabitants of Sicilian Panormos who could afford the 2000 drachma ransom; the remaining 13,000 were sold as slaves (Diod. 23.18)

In economic terms, ‘freedom-selling’ was far more lucrative for the simple reason that humans could fetch a much higher price if sold back to their own - or to themselves - than as slaves in the open market

What all these instances attest is the ‘domestic’ branch of the market, a branch also used by rulers and city-states for converting their war captives into cash; this is one of the elements making piracy and warfare parts of a single historical structure

Shortly afterwards two among the citizen captives persuaded the gang-leader, in return for ransom, to release the free persons and some of the freedmen and slaves, while they themselves volunteered to stay as hostages until the agreed sum of money had been paid. Thus, even though some loss was suffered (i.e. a number of freedmen and slaves were excluded from the bargain), the worst was avoided, thanks to the courageous initiative of the two citizens, who were recompensed accordingly by the city with rewards of honour ( S1G3 521

The cause of all this was that the Romans became wealthy after the destruction of Carthage and Corinth and used many slaves. The pirates, seeing what easy profit there was, bloomed forth in large numbers, operating as both pirates and slave-traders.

Subsequent scholarship agrees that the difference from previous periods was above all a quantita- tive one: its intensity having increased (at times dramatically) in Hellenistic times, predatory activity came to play a markedly greater role in the slave-trade than it had before (Pohl 1993: 33-6, but see de Souza 1999: 59-64).

The cause of all this was that the Romans became wealthy after the destruction of Carthage and Corinth and used many slaves. The pirates, seeing what easy profit there was, bloomed forth in large numbers, operating as both pirates and slave-traders.

That all these slave markets, small and great, were also fed by the pirates themselves, often directly - note Strabo’s switch from ‘pirate’ to ‘merchant’, when the captor enters the harbour - is thus incontestable.

hey were easily caught and not too far away there was the market of Delos; large and wealthy, it could have a turnover of ten thousand slaves a day.

His chosen element enabled him to prey over an area that was both much larger and far richer in catch, that is, the high seas as well as the Mediterranean and Black Sea littorals; in addition, his unequally greater ease of movement, besides minimizing the risk of capture, afforded him the advantage of hitting, within a given time, many more targets than his landward counterpart could hope for; moreover, even though he plied the seas by ship, his operations were often amphibious. It seems therefore defensible to regard the maritime leistes as historically and economically the more significant of the two, a fact also accentuated by the substantial investment of precisely that agent in the technological improvement of his ‘hunting equipment’, the light, fast-sailing galley; an investment that put him in ‘the vanguard of military progress’ (Davies 1984: 286)

To fall into captivity in connection with warfare was one of them. To be suddenly seized by someone exercising the customary right of reprisal (syle, rhysia) was another. A third one was to be snatched by a band of brigands or pirates

Already in the fourth century, Aristotle had thrown a good measure of his intellectual weight into demonstrating the primacy of this business as a perfectly rational and justified component of economic life: man-hunters, he explained, are those who live from ‘booty-seizure’ (Leisteia), a profession as natural as animal- hunting and fishing; man-hunting, moreover, is a sub-category of warfare, which itself is by nature an art of acquisition (ktetike techne) practised against ‘such people who, even though naturally created for subjection, do not submit to it voluntarily’ (Pol. 1256a36-b27)

Still, whatever its specific mode, the act of appropriation itself was but the prelude to a further operation, whereby the ‘catch’ entered for good the domain of profit-generating transactions. For like any other commodity that of human captives was part and parcel (and a very large one at that) of the wider economic life, with an established supply/demand system, points of distribution and sale, a host of purveyors, shippers, dealers and buyers and price- setting routines - all in all, a mar&et in humans, and, of course, the same system also expedited the movement, or rather the recycling, of captives already possessing the status of slaves.

‘protection’.

When it occurred, such a horren- dous change in a person’s legal status was almost unexceptionally accompanied by the no less ruinous act of physical dislocation to a far-off place