Province of Achaia

The renewed regulation of the affairs of Greece was entrusted to a commission of ten senators in concert with the consul Mummius, who left behind him on the whole a blessed memory in the conquered country.  Doubtless it was, to say the least, a foolish thing in him to assume the name of “Achaicus” on account of his feats of war and victory, and to build in the fulness of his gratitude a temple to Hercules Victor; but, as he had not been reared in aristocratic luxury and aristocratic corruption but was a “new man” and comparatively without means, he showed himself an upright and indulgent administrator.  The statement, that none of the Achaeans perished but Diaeus and none of the Boeotians but Pytheas, is a rhetorical exaggeration:  in Chalcis especially sad outrages occurred; but yet on the whole moderation was observed in the infliction of penalties.  Mummius rejected the proposal to throw down the statues of Philopoemen, the founder of the Achaean patriotic party; the fines imposed on the communities were destined not for the Roman exchequer, but for the injured Greek cities, and were mostly remitted afterwards; and the property of those traitors who had parents or children was not sold on public account, but handed over to their relatives.  The works of art alone were carried away from Corinth, Thespiae, and other cities and were erected partly in the capital, partly in the country towns of Italy:(22) several pieces were also presented to the Isthmian, Delphic, and Olympic temples.  In the definitive organization of the country also moderation was in general displayed.  It is true that, as was implied in the very introduction of the provincial constitution,(23) the special confederacies, and the Achaean in particular, were as such dissolved; the communities were isolated; and intercourse between them was hampered by the rule that no one might acquire landed property simultaneously in two communities.  Moreover, as Flamininus had already attempted,(24) the democratic constitutions of the towns were altogether set aside, and the government in each community was placed in the hands of a council composed of the wealthy.  A fixed land-tax to be paid to Rome was imposed on each community; and they were all subordinated to the governor of Macedonia in such a manner that the latter, as supreme military chief, exercised a superintendence over administration and justice, and could, for example, personally assume the decision of the more important criminal processes.  Yet the Greek communities retained “freedom,” that is, a formal sovereignty—­reduced, doubtless, by the Roman hegemony to a name—­which involved the property of the soil and the right to a distinct administration and jurisdiction of their own.(25) Some years later not only were the old confederacies again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive restriction on the alienation of landed property was removed.

Destruction of Corinth