[184] Herodes was ἐξ ὑπάτων (Philostratus, Vit. Soph. i. 25, 5, p. 526), ἐτέλει ἐκ πατέρων ἐς τοὺς δισυπάτους (ib. ii. init. p. 545). Otherwise nothing is known of consulships of his ancestors; but certainly his grandfather Hipparchus was not a senator. Possibly the question is even only as to cognate ascendants. The family did not receive the Roman franchise under the Julii (comp. C. I. A. iii. 489), but only under the Claudii.
[185] The first Roman Olympionices, of whom we know, is Ti. Claudius Ti. f. Nero, beyond doubt the subsequent emperor, with the four–in–hand (Arch. Zeit. 1880, p. 53); this victory falls probably in Ol. 195 (A.D. 1), not in Ol. 99 (A.D. 17), as the list of Africanus states (Euseb. i. p. 214, Schöne). In this year the conqueror was rather his son Germanicus, likewise with the four–in–hand (Arch. Zeit. 1879, p. 36). Among the eponymous Olympionicae, the victors in the stadium, no Roman is found; this wounding of the Greek national feeling seems to have been avoided.
[186] An agonistic institute thus privileged is termed ἀγὼν ἱερός, certamen sacrum (that is, with pensioning: Dio, li. 1), or ἀγὼν εἰσελαστικός, certamen iselasticum (comp. among others, Plin. ad Trai. 118, 119; C. I. L. x. 515). The Xystarchia too is, at least in certain cases, conferred by the emperor (Dittenberger, Hermes, xii. 17 f.). Not without warrant these institutes called themselves “world–games” (ἀγὼν οἰκουμενικός).
[187] The emperor Gaius declines, in his letter to the diet of Achaia, the “great number” of statues adjudged to him, and contents himself with the four of Olympia, Nemea, Delphi, and the Isthmus (Keil, Inscr. Boeot. n. 31). The same diet resolves to set up a statue to the emperor Hadrian in each of its towns, of which the base of that set up at Abea in Messenia has been preserved (C. I. Gr. 1307). Imperial authorisation for such erections was required from the first.
[188] At the revision of the town–accounts of Byzantium, Pliny found that annually 12,000 sesterces (£125) were set down for the conveyance of new–year’s good wishes by a special deputation to the emperor, and 3000 sesterces (£32) for the same to the governor of Moesia. Pliny instructs the authorities to send these congratulations thenceforth only in writing, which Trajan approves (Ep. ad Trai. 43, 44).
[189] That the land–routes of Greece were specially unsafe, we do not learn; as to what was the nature of the insurrection in Achaia under Pius (Vita, 5, 4), we are quite in the dark. If the robber–chief generally—and not precisely the Greek one—plays a prominent part in the light literature of the epoch, this vehicle is common to the bad romance–writers of all ages. The Euboean desert of the more polished Dio was not a robber’s nest, but it was the wreck of a great landed estate, whose possessor had been condemned on account of his wealth by the emperor, and which thenceforth lay waste. Moreover it is here apparent—as indeed needs no proof, at least for those who are non–scholars—that this history is just as true as most which begin by stating that the narrator himself had it from the person concerned; if the confiscation were historical, the possession would have come to the exchequer, not to the town, which the narrator accordingly takes good care not to name.
[190] The naive description of Achaia by an Egyptian merchant of Constantius’s time may find a place here:—“The land of Achaia, Greece, and Laconia has much of learning, but is inadequate for other things needful; for it is a small and mountainous province, and cannot furnish much corn, but produces some oil and the Attic honey, and can be praised more on account of the schools and eloquence, but not so in most other respects. Of towns it has Corinth and Athens. Corinth has much commerce, and a fine building, the amphitheatre; but Athens has old pictures (historias antiquas), and a work worth mentioning, the citadel, where many statues stand and wonderfully set forth the war–deeds of the forefathers (ubi multis statuis stantibus mirabile est videre dicendum antiquorum bellum). Laconia is said alone to have the marble of Croceae to show, which people call the Lacedaemonian.” The barbarism of expression is to be set down to the account, not of the writer, but of the much later translator.
Λευκάδος ἀντί με Καῖσαρ, ἰδ’ Ἀμβρακίης ἐριβώλου,
Θυῤῥείου τε πέλειν, ἀντί τ’ Ἀνακτορίου,