"Les bêtises des Grecs" : conflits et rivalités entre cités d'Asie et de Bithynie à l'époque romaine, 129 a.C.-235 p.C.

According to Dio Chrysostom, the constant rivalry of the cities of Asia Minor over rank and titles was mocked by the Romans, who referred to those quarrels as “Greek failings”. Modern historians, following this point of view, have generally interpreted rivalries of the imperial period as vain quarrels symptomatic of the decadence of the Greek city-state.

This book is an attempt to provide new insight by investigating through literary, epigraphic and numismatic evidence what was at stake, at both a material and symbolic level. It appears that some of the privileges granted to the cities, such as being capital of conventus or centre of the imperial cult, had major practical implications on the organisation of the province. At the same time, the use of titles established and expressed a symbolic hierarchy that was accepted by the Roman authorities as well as by the cities themselves. Eventually, it can be argued that this new kind of agon between cities partly replaced traditional territorial conflicts: though the weapons had changed (rhetorical art and diplomacy instead of warfare), the consequences of victory were much the same (new sources of revenues and means of domination). The old principles that had shaped intercivic relations for centuries of Greek history survived into the Roman world.