The peace and tranquility prevailing in the second century, and the renaissance of Hellenism in the eastern part of the empire, offered cities new opportunities to widen their contacts and offered to the civic elites a new arena for a great deal of activity. Indeed, now cultural exchanges between cities on both sides of the Aegean sea increase, whilst old institutions, such as that of foreign judges, are revived. There is great mobility on the part of athletes and artists, who take part in games and competitions, which constantly increase in number. Likewise, sophists travel more to other cities and give public demonstrations of their knowledge or talent, both during large panhellenic gatherings and at every local festival. Some of them spend long periods in various cities and occasionally offer them their services or make benefactions, in return for which they are granted honors and even hold the eponymous magistracy. The real reasons for such visits are not always clear. In some cases, antiquarian interests may have stimulated such travels by lettered Greeks, the best examples of such being Pausanias, Charax, and Lucian.
Other literary-minded members of the civic elite seek to investigate ancestral bonds between their city and the metropolitan cities of Hellenism. The habit of searching for ancestral links with certain renowned cities, such as Sparta, Argos, and Athens, goes back to Hellenistic times, a period that enjoyed works on genealogy, the origins of cities, and intercity ties of kinship. From the second century, however, this tendency assumes enormous dimensions. The activity of Publius Anteios Antiochus, the historian and orator of Aigeai, in Cilicia, illustrates this phenomenon. A letter from the Argives, addressed to the council and people of the Aegaeans of Cilicia, indicates that Antiochus succeeded in getting recognition of the eugeneia of his homeland in Cilicia with the Argives, subsequent to his prolonged stay in Argos. The authorities of Argos address a letter to those of Aigeai, communicating the text of an honorific decree containing the account of Antiochus concerning Perseus and the parentage between the two cities, which Argos is ready to accept (SEG 41, 1992, 283). The activity of Antiochus on behalf of his city, when viewed in the context of the Panhellenion, is clearly intended to prove its Greek origins and thus to distinguish it from its neighbor and rival, Tarsus, which also claimed an Argive origin.
If certain candidate cities were not genuine Greek foundations, then it was the job of “mythographers, orators and local poets” to create such ties. They attempted to link their town to the most prestigious Greek communities, whose fame continued to be considerable under the empire. This is the case of Sparta, whose ties with the Ptolemies, during the days of their thalassocracy in the third century bc, and whose later high standing with Rome, may have enhanced the prestige of a Spartan ancestry and pushed many cities, as Cibyra for example, to establish a syngeneia (kinship) link with Sparta. On the other side, thanks to the initiative of local notables, cities try to create between them bonds of friendship and understanding, sometimes celebrated by honorific coins. It was probably the personal initiative of Aelius Heracleides, a member of the Smyrnaean elite, that was responsible for the striking of the homonoia coinage, in the reign of Commodus, celebrating the relations of Smyrna with Athens and with Sparta, and likewise that of Antonius Polemon between Smyrna and Laodicea.
The creation of the Panhellenion, in the second century ad, was the most important manifestation of this spirit of Greek values and cultural tradition. Membership of this league offered both an incentive and a prestigious outlet for the philotimia of upper-class Greeks, who were unsparing of their efforts in their attempts to reach their goals. Thus the visit and the activity in Sparta, Athens, and Platea of Tiberius Claudius Andragathos Attalos of Synnada are clearly to be connected to the desire on the part of his city to lodge its candidature with the Panhellenion. Andragathos and his brother Claudius Piso Tertullinus, members of the aristocracy of Synnada under Hadrian and Pius, were probably the ambassadors who brought (ad 140-1) the decree of Synnada found at Athens (JG 22.1075 with IG 3.55).
World History
