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Provincial Monarchs as an Eastern Arcanum Imperii: ‘Client Kingship’, the Augustan Revolution and the Flavians
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2021
Abstract
This paper re-examines the role of ‘client kings’ in the Roman east in the early Principate. Contrary to previous emphasis on continuity with the republican past, it proposes that Octavian-Augustus enacted a set of measures that fundamentally changed the relations of certain eastern monarchs with the imperial centre. These ‘provincial monarchs’ became a new elite of Roman administrators, personally loyal to the domus Augusta and distinct from ‘client kings’ earlier and elsewhere. This Augustan systemisation complemented the provincial division of 27 b.c.e., creating a ‘divide and rule’ dynamic between provincial monarchs and imperial legates which was expedient to the Julio-Claudians. This model is then used to challenge the view that the Flavians systematically ‘provincialised’ the east as part of a reorganisation of the frontier. It raises the alternative possibility that provincial monarchy gradually died out, following the Flavians’ realisation that its continued maintenance was detrimental to their public image in Rome.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Footnotes
Parts of the argument below were presented at Columbia University's Classical Studies Research Seminar in February 2019 and at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in Lincoln, NE, in April 2019. I would like to thank the participants on both occasions for fruitful discussion. I am very grateful to John Ma, Seth Schwartz and Brent Shaw for reading earlier drafts of this paper and offering excellent suggestions. This article was greatly improved thanks to the learned and careful comments of the editor, Peter Thonemann, and the Journal's three anonymous readers. Any remaining faults are my own.
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