L’ Achaïe à l’époque républicaine (146–27 av.J.-C.): une province introuvable?

Abstract

This article aims to determine whether or not Greece was a prouincia from its conquest by Mummius in 146 BCE to the provincial reform of Augustus in 27 BCE, and if so, to clarify its name and how it was administered. In doing so, it revisits an old question by showing that the Romans created a prouincia in 146 to which they gave the name of Graecia and where they did not routinely send (pro)magistrates, apart from periods of crisis like at the time of Sulla. As part of a group of more individualized prouinciae, Graecia possessed an administrative identity already in the Republican period, characterized in particular by the existence of a specific era and a territory whose main contours can be reconstructed. It was monitored from afar by the (pro)magistrate appointed to the neighboring province of Macedonia. A decisive development took place in 46 BCE on the initiative of Caesar, when it was ruled for the first time by a promagistrate, Ser. Sulpicius Rufus, who resided there permanently. The Augustan reform of 27 BCE completed the transformation of Graecia into a permanent province. It was assigned the official name of Achaia, taken from the name borne by the koinon, which had become the most representative body of the Greeks. It was the koinon that gave the province its name during the imperial period, not the other way around. The article is supplemented with a new edition of the inscription IG VII 2413–2414, kept in Thebes, which bears two letters from L. Mummius addressed to the Dionysian technitai (146/145 or 145/144 BCE).