Horizontal binding forces, state regulation and local civil society: the city of Rome and Western Asia Minor in the Late Republic

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Rene Pfeilschifter
• Subject Area: Ancient History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 517267346

The project investigates horizontal binding forces and self-governing groups in the city of Rome and in cities of western Asia Minor for their importance for the cohesion of local societies (c. 150 B.C. to the turn of the era). We aim to balance and correct the existing focus of scholars on vertical patronage relations and on sociopolitical elites. This is because top-down relations tended to lose strength during the late Republic and the capacity of state regulation did not increase significantly. The project therefore chooses a broader perspective: two case studies are conducted in the form of dissertations. The first one focuses on the center, the capital city, the second one on some cities in the periphery, namely in the province of Asia. The focus is less on the formal processes of ‘big politics’ than on the local society as a whole. It is striking that daily life in Rome continued, thanks to self-governing groups, and it did so rather smoothly, despite considerable fluctuations in state capacity, despite violent unrest, and despite an almost complete annihilation of senatorial elites by exile and assassination. In Asia, financial repression by the Roman masters, sometimes brutal interventions during the civil wars, and a major external war (against Mithridates) accompanied by an occupation that lasted several years all made a considerable impact on local orders. Nevertheless, even here the self-organizing processes seem to have continued in a somewhat satisfactory manner. Based on this observation, we suggest that the quality of governance constellations in larger cities of the Roman Empire not only depended on state regulation and the efforts of elites, but crucially on the functioning of a civil society avant la lettre. Thus, the project also contributes to the question of why Roman society, Roman statehood, and Roman rule over the Mediterranean survived the crisis and fall of the Republic. Self-governing groups had to endure in Rome and Asia under very unfavorable conditions. This very fact underlines the stabilizing power and resilience of the horizontal binding forces expressed in them.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants