UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines the public honors granted to elite individuals by cities of Italy and North Africa during the High Roman Empire and what they reveal about the internal politics and external policies of these cities. Focusing on two main honors, the title of patron and the honorific statue, the dissertation makes two broad claims. The first concerns why and how cities decreed these two honors. I argue that cities were highly strategic in their interactions with local and imperial elites. More specifically, the functions of these two honors were more clearly defined than previously recognized; and these honors did not operate independently from one another, but rather as a complementary pair to help advance cities’ interests. The second claim concerns the internal politics of cities. I argue that the cities under study possessed a more vibrant public life than previously thought, both in terms of intra-elite negotiation and popular participation in politics. Chapter 1 explores why and how cities coopted patrons. It argues that they did so in two main contexts. More often, cities coopted high-ranking individuals with whom they had limited prior dealings to put themselves in a position to elicit future favors. But sometimes cities also admitted individuals to the patronal rank as a reward for their past contributions. This second scenario applied only to individuals of comparatively lower rank and was a way for cities to capitalize on their reputation to reward and attract benefactions. Chapter 2 examines why and how cities decreed honorific statues. It argues that cities did so only for specific reasons, especially for concrete benefactions. By contrast, contrary to the common assumption, cities did not decree statues merely on the basis of high rank or civic virtue. The chapter then discusses the title of patron and the honorific statue in tandem, demonstrating that these two honors had distinct yet complementary spheres of operation: thanks to patronage, cities had access to a wide reserve of high-ranking individuals as potential benefactors, whereas they used honorific statues to reward actual benefactors, who were fewer in number and more local in origin. Chapter 3 focuses on negotiations between cities and benefactors in the politics of benefaction. It demonstrates that at least some honorific statues resulted from prior agreements between cities and honorands, or even from honorands’ requests for statues as prerequisites for their gifts. Chapter 4 investigates the roles of common citizens in overall politics, and especially in the politics of benefaction. It argues that, contrary to the common assumption, Italian and North African cities did not have popular assemblies other than annual electoral assemblies and that, as a result, common citizens in these cities had no constitutional power other than to elect their own magistrates. By contrast, common citizens frequently exercised informal power in one important realm of municipal politics: the granting of honorific statues. They wielded this power by demanding, by acclamation at public spectacles, the honoring of individuals. For such demands to result in statues, they needed to be ratified by city councils, which also had the option to deny or to satisfy them only partially. The chapter concludes by examining a second form of popular participation: public subscription for honorific statues. It demonstrates that these events often took place in public and in the presence of the honorands themselves, and that subscribers participated in order to endear themselves to the honorands. The Conclusion raises three issues that the dissertation does not directly address but invites us to reexamine: the relationship between cities and the emperor; regional differences in honorific practice and political culture; and the abrupt change in honorific practice from the end of the third century onwards.