This article will argue for the value of considering later Hellenistic poleis’ inscriptions as part of later Hellenistic literature. One of the main forms of self-expression of the Hellenistic polis was the honorific decree for a citizen or foreigner, approved by all citizens in assembly. Any such decree praised the honorand’s virtues and granted honours. From c. 150 BC onwards, as emphasised in the influential analyses of L. Robert and Ph. Gauthier, the language of many such decrees became much more expansive, rhetorical and interesting. Many later Hellenistic decrees even resemble short biographies, containing quite detailed and complex descriptions of individuals’ virtues and education.

This article will explore some of the many interesting overlaps between the approaches to virtue, praise and the common good in such decrees and in later Hellenistic literature, especially prose works on history, rhetoric and geography (Polybius, Posidonius, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Dionysius of Halicarnassus). The particular focus of the article will be the coexistence of, or even tension between, more civic and more cosmopolitan perspectives in both inscriptions and literature. Unsurprisingly, a more local, particularist civic perspective on events and virtues is dominant in poleis’ decrees: the traditional small-scale polis, and usually one particular polis, remains the principal political and cultural horizon. Many authors of lost works of local history and ethnography would doubtless have adopted the same perspective. Conversely, a more cosmopolitan, universalist perspective is dominant in the influential and wide-ranging literary works mentioned above: the Mediterranean is now an interconnected, even unified whole, with Rome and Roman power at its centre.[1]

Nevertheless, this article will argue that there are substantial and important traces of the influence of the opposite perspective in each of the genres. Civic rhetoric has some significant cosmopolitan, universalising tendencies. For example, it becomes much more common in the later Hellenistic period for cities to praise benefactors for the universalist virtue of philanthropia or ‘humanity’. Home citizens could even be praised for showing or promoting philanthropia and more universalising attitudes, alongside more traditional particularist ones, in their relations with their own fellow citizens. In an example particularly revealing of links between literature and civic rhetoric, the naturalised Prienian citizen Aulus Aurelius Zosimos was praised, not only for treating Priene as if it were his home polis, but also for arranging a tutor in literature (philologia) for the ephebes, so that their souls would be led towards virtue and ‘humane emotion’ (pathos anthropinon) (see I.Priene 112). Even outsiders who were not, like Zosimos, naturalised as citizens could be represented in decrees as members of an extended, more informal and open-ended quasi-civic community. Resident Romans, other foreigners and slaves could even be presented as on an equal footing with citizens in some contexts.[2]

For their part, influential cosmopolitan literary authors frequently reveal the influence of the traditional polis and its ideals on their language and thinking. Some betray a continuing patriotic loyalty to their home polis. Polybius’ attachment to Megalopolis is an interesting and paradoxical case, because Megalopolis was itself originally an artificial quasi-cosmopolitan construct. In addition, it is common for relevant literary authors to use the model of the polis to conceptualise and explain larger political and social units: for example, Polybius analyses the Achaian League as almost like a polis (2.37.7-11), while Diodorus’ preface praises those historians who can write the history of the world as if of one polis. Moreover, Diodorus’ whole preface reads very like a civic honorary decree, but with the oikoumene standing in for the honouring polis and universalising historians for the civic benefactors. In general, civic ethical language of praise offered very useful vocabulary and values for analysing important individuals and institutions in the new more cosmopolitan, Rome-centred world: for example, the virtues of Dionysius’ early Roman elite closely resemble those attributed in inscriptions to the great benefactors of the later Hellenistic cities. Taken together, the epigraphic and the literary sources reveal a shared ethical koine, based on notions of (for example) arete, philanthropia, prohairesis, protrope and paideia, which could be applied in contrasting particularist and universalist ways.

In addition to revealing the perhaps mainly unconscious hold of the traditional polis on their ethical and political thinking and language, some relevant literary authors also took an active continued interest in the small-polis world and its entanglement with wider Mediterranean affairs. This is particularly evident in the intricacy of Polybius’ narrative of Greek affairs (compare N. Wiater in this volume). Considering relevant literary texts together with some more cosmopolitan inscriptions helps to illuminate how later Hellenistic thinkers and writers, prefiguring developments in later Imperial Greek thought, conceptualised and represented the complexities of the new Graeco-Roman Mediterranean, and the interconnections between local and universal, polis and cosmopolis.

[1] Compare, for example, Clarke, K. (1999), Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the Roman World (Oxford).

[2] See Hamon, P. (2011), ‘Gleichheit, Ungleichheit und Euergetismus: die isotes in den kleinasiatischen Poleis der hellenistischen Zeit’, in Mann, Chr., and Scholz, P. (eds.) (2011), “Demokratie” im Hellenismus: Von der Herrschaft des Volkes zur Herrschaft der Honoratioren? (Berlin).