Auguste et l’Asie Mineure

“If you require twice the level of taxation, the give us two harvests.” This scathing riposte of Hybreas of Mylasa to Mark Antony illustrates the image of an Asia bled dry by the administration of the Roman Republic, its greedy publican, its avaricious magistrates and most of all by the pressures of armies during the civil wars. The Anatolian peninsula, without paying as heavy a level of tribute as Macedonia and Achaean suffered much from the conflicts that pitted the Republicans against Caesareans and then against the triumvirs. Conversely, the principate of Augustus is often seen as an era of peace and prosperity, because it imposed stable protection, a reorganized administration and a new context for civic life. On the occasion of the 2000th anniversary of the death of Augustus, it seemed necessary to attempt to take stock of the advances in research across various academic disciplines to appreciate better the historical impact of this “saeculum aureum” (“golden age”) in Asia Minor. To this end, the decision was taken to insist on a thorough-going double perspective: that of the emperor, who wished to assert his power in a region dominated for a long period by his now defeated rivals, and that of the provincials, who were keen to understand the direction that Roman policy was taking. It seemed to us equally fruitful to contrast the perspective that historians, epigraphists, archaeologists and numismatists have taken with regard to the evidence provided by their respective sources.