Neither the Macedonians nor the Romans ever treated the conquered Greeks as ordinary subjects. The sacred land of art and poetry was not ruled like Egypt or Gaul. There was a province iof Achaia, but never of Hellas. Such cities as Athens and Sparta were spared the humiliation of being placed under the fasces of a Roman governor and having to pay tribute to Rome. New Corinth, Caesar's Roman colony, the least Hellenic of the cities of Greece, became the seat of government. Nevertheless, the free communities had little more than a simulacrum of their ancient power. The Roman governor could always make his voice heard in their councils, and a rescript from him brooked no delay in obedience. The right of bringing a proposal before the Ecclesia no longer belonged to every citizen, but was confined to definite officials, and the conduct of business was ])laced in the hands of a single arpaTTiyds. The citizens were always liable to be called to account for their proceedings (cf. Ac 19*), while the sovereign power could at any moment cancel the constitu- tion of a free city, and take the olt'enders under its own direct administration. At the best, Hellenistic life was now sorely cramped by the limitation of its sphere ; ' high ambition lacked a corresponding aim, and therefore the low and degrading ambition flourished luxuriantly' (Mommsen, op. cit. i. 283). Shadowy assemblies still convened, engaged in grave debate, passed solemn resolutions, made appointments, and distributed honours. But political life of a serious kind was a thing of the past. Hellenism as described by such a writer as Plutarch already suggests ' a gilded halo hovering round decay' (Byron, The Giaour). 'The general eflect produced by the many pictures, allusions, references, illustrations which he takes from the Greek world of his times is that romantic adven- tures, great passions, monstrous crimes, were foreign to the small and shabby gentility of Roman Greece. The highest rewards he can set before the keenest ambitions are no better than if we should now fire our youths' imagination with the prospect of becoming parish beadles, vestrymen, or at most town councillors' (J. P. Mahatt'y, The Silver Age of the Greek World, 190p, p. 349). _
The twenty years' civil war, which ended in the transformation of the Roman Republic into an Empire, was calamitous to the Greeks, who seemed fated to be always on the losing side. They pre- ferred Pompey to Cpesar, Brutus to Antony, and they were compelled in the end to raise levies for
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Antony's campaign against Octavian. The three decisive battles of the war — Pliarsalus, Philippi, and Actium — were fought on the soil or the coast of Greece, and the contending armies almost bled the poor country to death. ]\iany of its cities fell into decay, vast tracts of arable land were turned into pasture or reverted to the state of Nature, and ' Greece remained desolate for all time to come ' (Momrasen, op. cit. i. 268). The dawn of the Chris- tian era saw the nadir of her fortunes, the hour in which she was most neglected and despised. Thinking that an improvement might be ett'ected by a change of administration, the Greeks peti- tioned Tiberius in A.D. 15 to transfer Achaia from the senatorial proconsul to an Imperial legate. This arrangement was sanctioned, and lasted till A.D. 44, when Claudius restored the province to the senate ; whence there was once more a proconsul (avdviraro^) in Corinth (Ac 18'^). Nero, who posed as a Philhellene, was accorded so flattering a reception during a progress through Greece that ne bestowed freedom and exemption from tribute upon all the Greeks ; but Vespasian found it necessary to re- store the provincial government in order to avoid civil war. Greece received its greatest Imperial benefactions in the beginning of the 2nd century.
' As Hadrian created a new Athens, so he created also a new Hellas. Under him the representatives of all the autonomous and non-autonomous towns of the province of Achaia were allowed to constitute themselves in Athens as united Greece, as the Panhellenes. The national union, often dreamed of and never attained in better times, was thereby created, and what youth had wished for old apre possessed in imperial fulness. It is true that the new Panhellenion did not obtain political pre- rogatives ; but there was no lack of what imperial favour and imperial sold could give. There arose in Athens the temple of the new Zeus Panhellenios, and brilliant popular festivals and ^ames were connected with this foundation, the carrying out of which pertained to the collegium of the Panhellenes, and primarily to the priest of Hadrian as the living god who founded them ' (Mommsen, op. cit. i. 266).
Even in the period of greatest depression Hellas still maintained her old pre-eminence in education, though for a time the universities of Rhodes, Alexandria, and Tarsus rivalled that of Athens. The life of studious ease was to be enjoyed in the cities of Greece as nowhere else, and Plutarch clieerfully turned back from the vulgar splendour of Imperial Rome to the quiet refinement of his native Chseroneia. In all that pertained to good taste and humanity the Hellenes continued to bear the palm. Gladiatorial shows were never popular in Greece, except in the Roman colony of Corinth, and Dio Chrysostom (i. 385) expressed his disgust and horror when these barbarities began on occasion to be seen even in Athens.