The Slow Suicide of the Roman Greeks

A History of Mankind (244)

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In the Roman East, Greek culture survived and even thrived, at least in some places.

The 3^rd century AD bibliography “Dinner-Table Philosophers” – a vast compendium of information on matters of dining with remarks on music, dance, games, courtesans, and luxury, written by the Greek grammarian Athenaeus – refers to nearly 800 Greek writers and 2,500 separate works, almost all of which are now gone without a trace. Many of those were older than the Roman empire, others more recent, but all were known to exist, read, performed and quoted.

Elections were still held in poleis, to the point that Plutarch in the 1^st century wrote a manual for young politicians with advice on containing the passions of the populace in assemblies. Poleis, as any other city, could become quagmires of mismanagement, sometimes literally: Pliny once complained to Trajan that Nicaea was trying to build a theater on soggy ground and spent ten million sesterces even as the whole thing sunk.

Plutarch’s contemporary Dio Chrysostom tried his hand at construction in his native Prusa (modern Bursa in Turkey), by replacing old commercial buildings with a fancy marble portico; even though he got a letter of endorsement and some funds from the emperor, the Roman governor was forced to shut down the local assembly because the popular protest against the works was so noisy and vehement¹.