Surveiller le territoire des cités d’Asie mineure aux époques hellénistique et impériale : aspects administratifs, financiers et fiscaux

Abstract

Drawing on the publication of a dozen of new inscriptions during the past fifteen years, the article examines the administrative, financial and fiscal implications of patrolling the countryside (phylake tes choras) in Greek cities of Asia Minor during the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods. Due to the lack of permanent institutions dealing with the policing of their rural territories and because of cash shortage, Hellenistic cities, and sometimes kings themselves, were forced to find various and complex solutions to set up and fund such a service. These included the granting of tax exemptions to inhabitants of rural settlements policing the countryside, the hiring under contract of private persons who would take care of patrolling in exchange for payment, or the leasing of the service by contractors who would be allowed to collect taxes in order to refund themselves. Thanks to a recently published inscription from Thessaly as well as a passage from Polyaenus’ Stratagems, the paper reassesses the provisions related to this issue included in the alliance treaty between Miletos and Herakleia and raises the question as to the extent to which guards were actually involved with tax collection. During the Imperial period, officials known as paraphylakes were appointed by cities throughout the provinces of Asia Minor to deal with public security in the countryside. Newly published evidence from various cities of Asia Minor, in particular from Phrygian Hierapolis, sheds new light on the funding of patrolling, on the economic duties of paraphylakes, as well as on the impact on rural communities of the benefactions, as well as of the abuses, of these officials. The paper argues that, although they were active in the countryside, paraphylakes were not responsible for the collection of taxes, contrary to dekaprotoi, who emerged about the same time during the first century CE. Even if Roman provincial administration relied on these two offices as far as law enforcement and tax collection at the local level were concerned, they were not created by Roman power and should rather be seen as another proof of the autonomy Greek cities enjoyed under imperial rule.