Introduction

1That the Rhodians in Hellenistic and Roman times owned possessions on the mainland opposite their island has been known to scholars ever since the literary sources on Rhodian history were first collected in the seventeenth century2. A more concrete picture of how this part of the Rhodian state was organized, however, only began to emerge when in the late nineteenth century the increasing number of inscriptions published provided scholars interested in this topic with documentary evidence that had not been available to their predecessors3. The first to attempt a synthesis of this new material was the Dutch scholar Hendrik van Gelder4. His magnificent Geschichte der alten Rhodier has served as a point of reference for generations of scholars ever since it first came out in 1900 and more than a hundred years after its publication is still worth reading, as everybody working on Rhodian history will gratefully acknowledge. Though mostly consulted as a complete collection of all the evidence then known, both literary and epigraphic, it has also had a lasting influence on the general concepts informing research on Rhodian history.

2When we look at the way van Gelder described the structure and development of the Rhodian possessions in Karia we find that in many ways he anticipated the course that subsequent research has taken right up to the present. According to van Gelder, Rhodian territory on the mainland was until the death of Alexander the Great fairly small, consisting of the Karian Chersonasos and, perhaps, some adjoining stretches of land in central Karia that in his opinion were officially called Peraia. Van Gelder already saw that these localities were fully integrated into the Rhodian state, forming demes that were distributed among the old cities of Rhodes. He also realized that the Rhodians did not apply this method of full political integration to the possessions they acquired later in both Karia and Lykia; according to him, these were regarded and treated as subject territory5. He was convinced that the switch from the use of Rhodian demotics to the ethnic Rhodios could serve as a guide to establish the borderline between these structurally different parts of the Rhodian Peraia, and he regarded people who in inscriptions from this area are called Rhodioi as Rhodian citizens, eager to differentiate themselves from the ‘worthless and underprivileged natives’6. In what follows my aim is to summarize how these notions relate to what we have learned from the research done on this topic since van Gelder wrote. But before I do this I should like briefly to look at what seems to be the present state of knowledge on the integrated Peraia.

The Integrated Peraia

3Van Gelder’s view that parts of the Peraia were included in the Rhodian deme-system has been confirmed by all subsequent research, as also his belief that this zone was limited to the Chersonasos and the districts directly adjoining. The communities situated in this region were distributed among six Rhodian demes, and some of their members can be shown actively to have participated in communal life on the island of Rhodes where in Hellenistic times they held both political magistracies and priesthoods; in some cases they even rose to the prominence of being the eponymous magistrate of one of the three old poleis out of which the state of Rhodes had been formed in 408/77. But the Chersonasos had not always been Rhodian territory: as van Gelder clearly saw, the region had until the fifth century BC been divided between several Greek city-states. Amos, Bybassos, Kryassos, Loryma, Syrna, Tymnos are all called poleis in Stephanus of Byzantium, who in several cases refers to sources that are either pre-Hellenistic or could have drawn on local information8. Furthermore, the region acquired a peculiar mythology that set it apart from the island of Rhodes, focusing on the immigration of Greeks into lands inhabited by Karians9. That, during the fifth century, these Greek foundations were united by some kind of federation seems virtually certain: not only were they assessed together and subsumed under the name of Cheronnesioi in the ‘Athenian Tribute Lists’10, they also struck a common coinage that on the obverse shows the head or forepart of a lion, and on the reverse the forepart of an ox11. And the formulaic language used in Rhodian inscriptions to describe the area of competence for magistrates in charge of the Peraia shows that for administrative purposes this unity was to survive for centuries after the Chersonasos had been incorporated into the Rhodian state. From the examples listed below (fig. 1), it becomes evident that the region of Chersonasos continued in official Rhodian parlance from Hellenistic times down to the third century AD to be singled out as a separate area that Rhodian magistrates were charged to supervise.

4Furthermore, there are indications that the Chersonasioi continued in Hellenistic times to share a sense of belonging to the region they dwelt in. There was a koinon of the Chersonasioi, the existence of which can be documented from the early second century BC down to the Imperial period12. Although the activities of this koinon are poorly known, it seems undeniable that it gave expression to a common identity of the people dwelling in the Loryma peninsula. This regional identity is also reflected by the fact that on Rhodes Chersonasitas was sometimes used as a kind of ethnic to denote one’s affiliation with this part of the Rhodian state13. And there were religious ties, too, that bound the Chersonasioi together: Diodorus relates that the sanctuary of Hemithea at Kastabos was ‘held in special honour by the inhabitants of the place and of neighbouring regions’ and that ‘even people from afar came to it in their devotion and honoured it with costly sacrifices and notable dedications’ 14. This account is manifestly based on local sources trying to magnify the sanctuary’s glory and therefore needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. The basic contention, however, that the sanctuary was revered by all Chersonasioi does not seem exaggerated, and may be true already for the time before the sanctuary was adorned by a temple made of stone sometime around 300 BC15. It is possible, then, that the sanctuary had become the focus of regional identity already in the Classical period. In this case, one would like to know whether it somehow contributed to the cultural assimilation between Greek immigrants and native Karians that must have preceded the latter group’s admission into the body politic of the Rhodian state; but for lack of evidence this question must, like so many others, remain unanswered.

5Van Gelder was also right in believing that the process, whereby the Chersonasos became Rhodian territory, must have begun before the political unification of the island; this seems beyond reasonable doubt for Kameiros and may be true for the two other poleis of Rhodes as well. Although van Gelder was excessively sceptical in refusing to accept the testimony of Pseudo-Skylax as evidence for Rhodian territory on the mainland16, he rightly insisted that the well-known decree of Kameiros referring to ktoinai of the Kamireis both on the island and on the mainland constitutes proof of an early expansion of Kameiros to the Chersonasos17. His argument that the Kameireis would not have exported this institution after the synoikismos had deprived it of its political function still seems decisive to me. The ktoinai on the Chersonasos must, then, originate in a period when Kameiros still was an independent polis, and, proceeding from this premise, we are entitled to conclude that the Kamirean demes of Tymnos, Thyssanous and Tlos, where this institution is found, did already belong to Kameiros before the unified state of Rhodes was founded18. This makes sense in geographical terms, too, since these demes lie on the southern tip of the Chersonasos.

6We are still very much in the dark as to developments in the fourth century. Common sense would suggest that Rhodian expansion did not advance very far beyond the Chersonasos proper as long as the satraps of Karia were in full control of what was going on in their area, and Rhodian administrative terminology indicates that Apeiros and Physkos were successively added to the territory acquired earlier; otherwise it would be hard to explain why these regions were consistently distinguished from the Chersonasos when describing the area of competence of Rhodian magistrates. We also happen to know that Kedreai was still a polis at the end of the Peloponnesian war19, and that Kallipolis retained this status well into the second century BC and probably even longer, thus forming an enclave surrounded by Rhodian territory20. It does, however, seem fairly certain that by the end the fourth century the whole peninsula from Loryma in the south to Physkos in the northeast was Rhodian territory: Aischines is said to have bought an estate in Amos when in exile in Rhodes sometime during the reign of Alexander21, and Physkos appears as a deme of Lindos in the great subscription for the cultstatue of Athana, dated to around 32522. According to Winfried Held, the fortifications in the harbour of Loryma were erected shortly after the great siege had ended in 30423, and at the beginning of the third century, or so it seems, the first Rhodian epistatas to be in charge of this place made a dedication to Artemis24. At Bybassos, amphoras were stamped in Rhodian style from the second quarter of the third century onwards25. The degree to which communities in the Peraia had by the late fourth century come to participate in the political development of the Rhodian state can also be gauged by the fact that the Thyssanountioi started electing priests of Asklepios for one year only26 at roughly the same time when this new method of filling priesthoods was introduced in Lindos, where around 325 BC the priesthood of Poteidan Hippios was turned into an elective office to be filled on a yearly basis27.

The Subject Peraia I: Development

7As we have seen, the notion that parts of central Karia during the Hellenistic period became subject to direct control by Rhodian authorities without being integrated into the Rhodian deme-system was already familiar to van Gelder, half a century before Peter Fraser and George Bean coined the term ‘Subject Peraea’28. This concept has, I believe, stood the test of time quite successfully, though it has recently been challenged by Vincent Gabrielsen who argues that there never was a category of political communities that had formally lost their independence to Rhodes and belonged to a unified zone of direct Rhodian rule in central Karia29. According to Gabrielsen even small towns like Idyma30, no matter whether they were called polis or koinon, always retained the status of an independent state whose relations to Rhodes were based on a treaty of alliance specifying mutual rights and obligations. This revisionist interpretation undoubtedly has the merit of highlighting the fact that the zone of direct Rhodian rule in central Karia never formed a homogenous whole, but it does not on inspection seem to fit the evidence very well.

8Apart from the fact that it does violence to Livy’s account of how the Rhodians in 197 reconquered places in the Peraia31, and also to the way this recapture is represented in contemporary inscriptions (the well-known Nikagoras dossier32 – I will return to this point later), it also fails to offer a satisfactory explanation for the fact that in Idyma we find magistrates whose titles like stratagos ek panton or epistates are well attested for the Rhodian state33, but would be extraordinary if they had been appointed by the Idymioi – all the more so, as in one case at least the restoration of the ethnic Rhodios seems unavoidable34. Furthermore, evidence that was unknown to Gabrielsen shows that many political communities in the subject Peraia did formally recognize the suzerainty of Rhodes by dating documents according to the Rhodian eponym; this sign of formal subjection is now in evidence at Hyllarima and Panamara, the Laodikeis, the Leukoideis, the Londeis and the Tarmianoi35. Last but not least, the theory that the relations between Rhodes and the communities traditionally regarded as being part of the subject Peraia were based on formal equality does not account for the fact that the zone of strong Rhodian influence in central Karia is coextensive with a zone in which political communities do not normally call themselves polis but bear the name of koinon. These terms cannot in my view be understood as interchangeable, since in the Hellenistic period the status of polis was both coveted and clearly defined, as the well-known dossier from Tyriaion can remind us36. It does not come as a surprise, then, that some of the communities that were called koinon when Rhodian influence was strong can be shown to have held the title of polis either before the expansion of Rhodian influence in central Karia began or after they had freed themselves from direct Rhodian control. This pattern could only be guessed at when Gabrielsen wrote but has become quite clear with the recent publication of Les hautes terres de Carie (2001) and I shall return to it later. For the moment I should like to conclude that the notion of a subject Peraia still seems meaningful and valid.

9When van Gelder’s book came out in 1900, the map of central Karia in Hellenistic and Roman times was almost a blank. There were few securely located places between Stratonikeia in the north, Keramos in the west and Kaunos in the east, and detailed information on these sites was very hard to come by. Thanks to the efforts of the Bordeaux team led by Pierre Debord this state of affairs has changed dramatically over the last fifteen years. We now know dozens of toponyms, and many sites have been explored. Nevertheless, the question when and how the Rhodians acquired these places still seems open. For geographical reasons, much depends here on the date when Stratonikeia fell under Rhodian rule, since possession of Stratonikeia would seem to presuppose that the Rhodians had already gained a foothold in central Karia. Unfortunately, however, this date cannot be established with certainty since the only piece of direct evidence for this is a short and ambiguous phrase in a speech that Polybios puts into the mouth of a Rhodian ambassador addressing the Roman senate37. It has been discussed many times, and the interpretations differ widely.

10As the transmitted text stands, the Rhodians had received Stratonikeia from Seleukid kings named Antiochos and Seleukos, ἐν μεγάλῃ χάριτι παρ’Ἀντιόχου καὶ Σελεύκου. Van Gelder proposed to identify the two kings with Antiochos Hierax and Seleukos II, and his proposal still has its adherents, myself included38. Others have opted for a non-contemporary pair of kings identifying Seleukos with Seleukos II and Antiochos with Antiochos III39. Both these solutions have in common that they put the beginnings of Rhodian rule over Stratonikeia at around 240. There are still others, however, who adopt the view that the Rhodians only got hold of Stratonikeia in 197. This result can be reached in two different ways: either by emending the Greek text from παρ’Ἀντιόχου καὶ Σελεύκου to παρ’ Ἀντιόχου τοῦ Σελεύκου, as first proposed by Niebuhr in 1822 and again by Debord in 200140, or by identifying Seleukos with Seleukos the co-regent of Antiochos III41. To re-write the only source one has would only be acceptable if there were compelling reasons to do so which clearly is not the case here. Furthermore, we have evidence both literary and epigraphic that implies that when the Rhodians in 197 fought the troops of Philip V in the territory of Stratonikeia they only tried to reconquer what had previously been theirs. Even this has been contested, but not in my view with good reasons. Livy’s account, which is ultimately based on a Rhodian source is very clear on this point, if one considers the text as a whole, and further confirmation for this interpretation can be found in the Nikagoras dossier. These inscriptions give credit to Nikagoras for having reconquered several places in the subject Peraia – Pisye, Idyma and Kyllandos – during the war against Philip V. The verb ἀνακτᾶσθαι is as explicit as one could wish, and in view of the fact that these inscriptions were dedications in Rhodian sanctuaries the idea that Nikagoras reconquered these places for anybody else but the Rhodians seems rather far-fetched. Riet van Bremen has of late added a new argument to the debate that I find very persuasive42. She has made the acute observation that at the negotiations with Philip V held at Nikaia in 198 the Rhodians demanded that the king withdraw his troops from the Peraia, Iasos, Bargylia and Euromos without explicitly naming Stratonikeia, and that the conditions ultimately accepted after the battle of Kynoskephalai were phrased in exactly the same terms43. This omission is hard to explain unless the city was regarded as part of the Peraia. So Philip’s Karian expedition is in my view a likely terminus ante quem.

11The discovery of the inscription from Pisye that refers to the construction of shipsheds funded by the plethos of the Pisyetai and the Pladaseis united with the Pisyetai raised the hope that the debate on when and how the Rhodians gained a foothold in central Karia might finally lead to a certain result. But, alas, its fragmentary state of preservation prevents us from forming a secure judgement on its precise meaning and historical significance44. To be sure, the list of subscribers recorded in this text adds greatly to our knowledge of the topography and political organization of this region in the early Hellenistic period, yielding a rich harvest of previously unattested ethnics that belong to communities forming part of the plethos of the Pisyetai and the Pladaseis united with the Pisyetai. From the prescript we also learn that sometime between 275 and 225 the Pisyetai and the Pladaseis united with the Pisyetai were in some way under the control of a stronger power. We cannot, however, decide on the identity of this stronger power since the prescript is so badly damaged that it admits of very different interpretations; everything depends on the way one restores the missing right half of the text. The Rhodians surely are one attractive possibility, but so is a Seleukid or Ptolemaic king45. Since it seems impossible to decide the question on epigraphical grounds, the implications of this new inscription for the development of the Rhodian Peraia are contradictory: either the Rhodians were at the time still effectively barred from crossing over to the coast opposite the Chersonesos, or they had already managed to get hold of a harbour that allowed them access to the interior and were in the process of turning it into a naval base. I hardly need to point out that because the date of the new inscription floats between 275 and 225 both interpretations are compatible with dating the acquisition of Stratonikeia in around 240.

The Subject Peraia II: Structure

12As far as the early history and development of the subject Peraia is concerned, we can hardly claim to be any wiser than was van Gelder back in 1900. Real progress, however, has in my opinion been made concerning its organization and structure. Louis Robert in the 1930s toured even this remote part of Karia, then published some important inscriptions he had found on his way and continued throughout his life to have a keen interest in all Karian matters46. Shortly after World War Two, George Bean surveyed the area again and discovered some new sites and inscriptions47. But the real landmark in this field of study is the publication of Les hautes terres de Carie in 200148. This meticulously researched corpus of inscriptions makes accessible a wealth of previously unknown evidence and suggests new lines of interpretation. In what follows I will try to summarize what seem to me to be the major historical issues that this new body of evidence raises.

13First, it has become clear that the term koinon covers an even wider spectrum of institutional phenomena than had hitherto been realized: in addition to the well-known use of the word to denote either a ‘league’ composed of city-states or a private ‘association’ formed by individuals49, the term can now be seen to have been applied to two related, but distinct institutions of a public nature that were not composed of city-states: on the one hand a village-based local community with a decision-making body and magistrates of its own, and on the other a much larger corporation consisting of several koina of the kind just mentioned. We thus get a two-tier structure in which several smaller koina unite to form a koinon of a second order. The subscription-list from Pisye shows that the koinon of the Pisyetai and the Pladaseis united with the Pisyetai comprised no less than nine koina50, and if the subscription-list from Akçaova does indeed belong to the koinon of the Tarmianoi, then this koinon too was composed of several koina, in this case at least five51.

14The evidence now available also gives some insights into the institutional structure of these koina of the first order: some at least passed honorific decrees modelled on the formulaic language used by polis-institutions in a primary assembly, appointed magistrates whose responsibilities were functionally divided and controlled funds of their own52. In the koinon of the Leukoideis, for example, we find a collective body of komarchai, an unspecified priesthood, the office of neokoros, and an oinotamias who presumably was in charge of the funds reserved for buying wine53. The Laodikeis had three archontes and one secretary (grammateus)54, and the same offices may have existed among the Tarmianoi55. If the koinon of the Lagnokeis is to be ranged among the category of communal koina – in which case it had presumably preceded the polis of Kys – then we are allowed to add a brabeutes and epimenioi to the list of magistrates to be found in this type of community56. Although we can hardly claim to understand how these institutions worked, the lack of uniformity in nomenclature suggests that in some cases at least they were taken over from pre-existing communities.

15Secondly, we now have much more information on the geographical and chronological distribution of local communities that our sources term koinon. Pierre Debord has listed no less than 20 communities located in the subject Peraia that in more or less official parlance were called koinon, and another four so called that lay in the integrated Peraia57. Due to the fact that the exact location of some of the toponyms remains uncertain, it is not at the moment possible exactly to chart the area in which the term occurs. But even if the koinon of the Laodikeis really were to be identified with the homonymous city on the Lykos – which I regard as very unlikely58 – it would still be true that the occurrence of the term as applied to local communities is restricted to the zone where Rhodian influence in the Hellenistic and Roman period was stronger than anywhere else.

16Whether the Rhodians invented the institution denoted by this term seems on present evidence impossible to decide. They could equally well have taken over an institution that owed its existence to royal initiative. The first attested example is said to be an unpublished inscription from Xystis dated to the twelfth year of Ptolemy II, thus demonstrating the existence of a local koinon under Ptolemaic rule59. Inscriptions from the period when Panamara was controlled by Philip V prove that the institution also existed within the Antigonid sphere of influence60. If the origins of the institution remain obscure to us, its distribution reveals a pattern that seems significant: the great majority of attested cases is located in an area where Rhodian influence was paramount from the later third century BC down to the third century AD. To assume that there is a causal link between the two sets of phenomena seems plausible, even if this assumption cannot be proved.

17Thirdly, the fact that this part of Karia was in Hellenistic times a land almost without poleis (Stratonikeia and Kallipolis being the exceptions) can now be shown to be due neither to a lack of resources that would have made political centralization on the polis-model impracticable nor to the wish of the local population to preserve an old Karian tradition of living in villages. The survey undertaken by the Bordeaux team has brought out very clearly the agricultural potential of the plains around Muğla, Pisye and Thera61, and the newly-discovered lists from Sekköy leave no doubt that already by the time of Maussollos many communities whose inhabitants were of Karian stock aspired to the status of polis. The diffusion of the polis as a way of organizing public life had in this region already begun before Alexander’s soldiers ever set foot on Karian soil. There is no denying that this process was promoted by the will of the satrap of Karia. Nevertheless it could not have come about without the active cooperation of the local elites who had to be willing to adopt a Greek model of political organization. This openness towards Greek culture is also reflected in the widespread adoption of Greek names in the period under discussion62. Indeed, it has now become possible considerably to expand the list of communities that had either been called polis before they were attested as a koinon, and/or reappear as a polis after they had been reduced to the status of koinon.

18Thus we do know that while Hyllarima in the Harpasos valley styled itself a polis in a decree dated under Pleistarchos in the late fourth century, it was called koinon in a decree of Halikarnassos from the first half of the second century, but again polis in a Rhodian honorific inscription from the early first century63. In this case it seems obvious that the community had against its will been downgraded to being a mere koinon. That something of the kind must have happened to the mysterious community called Laodikeia – which as a koinon issued a decree in the years after 168 – seems vouched for by its dynastic name and the number and titles of its magistrates, even if we cannot at the moment determine its exact location64. Idyma issued coins of its own in the second half of the fifth century and paid tribute to Athens; it is called a polis in Stephanus of Byzantium65. By the second century, however, it had come to be called a koinon, and an unpublished inscription is said to attest this status already in the third66. The Plataseis are registered in the ‘Athenian Tribute Lists’, they appear among the Karian poleis mediating or witnessing the settlement between Mylasa and Kindya recorded in the Sekköy inscriptions, and they still style themselves polis in a decree passed in 319/1867; between 275 and 225, however, they had entered into some sort of sympolity with Pisye that from the second century BC onwards is consistently attested as a koinon68. The Koloneis likewise figure as a polis in the Sekköy-lists, but between 275 and 225 had become one of the constituent parts of the plethos of the Pisyetai and the Pladaseis united with the Pisyetai69. The town of Thera was called a koinon in the first century BC70, though it had been a polis at the beginning of the second – and could boast of a theatre and an agora71. Finally, the koinon of the Lagnokeis may be a case in point, if indeed it is to interpreted as a political community out of which later on the polis of Kys was formed72.

19Although the sources never throw light on the exact circumstances under which a community that had formerly styled itself polis came to be called a koinon, it seems beyond doubt that this terminological change indicates a loss of both prestige and status. The world of Greek city-states was highly status-conscious and did not enter into diplomatic and cultural relations based on equality with communities that lacked the title of polis. A koinon like Idyma would not, for example, be visited by theoroi announcing the Pythian Games, as the polis of Kallipolis was in the late third century BC73. Losing the status of polis meant being excluded from the diplomatic and cultural network that in the Hellenistic period united Greek poleis from Spain to Afghanistan. A fortiori, communities that had to be content with the status of koinon were thus unable to form something like a foreign policy of their own. Their right and capacity to wage war and entertain diplomatic relations with independent powers had been appropriated by the superior power to which they were subject, and by the early second century BC at the latest this superior power must have been the Rhodians. In support of this interpretation one can point to the fact that over the second and first centuries BC no less than six koina can be shown to have acknowledged the suzerainty of Rhodes by dating documents according to the Rhodian eponym74.

20If this reconstruction is correct, it is easy to see why the Rhodians were interested in reducing to the status of koinon communities that aspired to be recognized as poleis, but had not yet become fully integrated into the network of Greek city-states, and why they were no less interested in preventing others from ever reaching this prestigious status: the status of koinon was for the Rhodians quite simply a means of establishing direct control over communities that, while enjoying a considerable amount of autonomy, had no claim to be treated like an independent state and thus were ready to answer to the commands of Rhodian officials sent to supervise their affairs. The assumption that the extraction of resources in the form of tribute and soldiers was thought to be easier when dealing with koina than with allied poleis seems reasonable, even if the evidence for this is, again, rather tenuous75.

21Fourthly, in the light of the evidence we now have at our disposal the question of who the Rhodioi attested in the Peraia were needs to be reconsidered. Until the publication of Les hautes terres de Carie there was a universal consensus that the ethnic Rhodios was used to advertise the status of Rhodian citizens who for some reason had come to dwell outside their place of origin. This assumption has now been called into doubt by the Bordeaux team; they argue that in many cases at least these Rhodioi were members of the local elites who owed their status to individual grants of citizenship that did not extend to the communities they lived in76. Unlike all other holders of Rhodian citizenship, however, these Rhodioi from the Peraia would not have been enrolled into one of the Rhodian demes. This is an intriguing hypothesis that completely transforms our view of how the Rhodians integrated the ‘uplands of Karia’ into their state. If in the Peraia the status of being a Rhodios meant being a Rhodian citizen without regular access to Rhodian institutions that were based on the deme-system, its principal effect would have been to raise the persons on whom it was bestowed above the ordinary members of their communities and to form a sort of special relationship between them and the Rhodian state. Granting the status of Rhodios would then have been instrumental in forming close, but individual ties of allegiance with members of the local elites who were actively supporting Rhodian rule – a means of domination by partial integration. One has to turn to Rome in order to a find a close parallel for this sort of policy77.

22A hypothesis of such far-reaching implications clearly deserves to be looked at closely. What is the evidence on which the case for regarding the Rhodioi of the Peraia as naturalized Karians rests? First of all, the number of Rhodioi mentioned in the epigraphical record has risen steeply: inscriptions relating to Rhodioi now make up almost two-thirds of all the texts known from this region, if one discounts Roman milestones, pre-Hellenistic inscriptions and incomprehensible fragments78. It goes without saying that this observation is not decisive either way, since the massive presence of Rhodioi in this region is clearly compatible with the idea of their having come there from Rhodes for reasons either public or private – as officers, as traders or as moneylenders, to mention just a few of the possibilities. There are, however, clear indications that many of these Rhodioi belonged to families that had been living in the Peraia for generations and were deeply rooted in the area. One of the most conspicuous traces these Rhodioi have left are the monuments, mostly but not always funerary, they erected for members of their families; in two cases no less than three generations appear together on one single monument (fig. 2). These people obviously were not just temporary residents of the communities they lived in; they must have been permanently domiciled where they chose to commemorate their dead in a way that marked them out as groups of Rhodioi living among people they regarded as foreign or inferior (or both)79.

23The impression that the status of being a Rhodios in the subject Peraia normally went with prestige and power is confirmed by the observation that many Rhodioi were honoured as benefactors by individuals living in the area, by a private association (fig. 3) and also by communal koina (fig. 4).

24Particularly striking is the fact that five out of six known cases of people being accorded the honour of a public funeral by local communities in the Peraia concern Rhodioi80. It may be relevant here, too, that in a list from Stratonikeia referring to donations made to the cult of Demeter nine out of 25 donors whose ethnics are preserved are Rhodioi81. Since the services rendered by Rhodioi to local communities are never specified, one can only speculate as to the reasons for their being treated as benefactors; a link with activity as a Rhodian officer in the Peraia is discernible in two cases only82. In any case, it seems undeniable that these honours imply some kind of superiority vis-à-vis the communities the Rhodioi lived in.

25Though the Rhodioi of the subject Peraia advertised their belonging to a privileged group they did not stay away from communal life. Active participation in communal life can be demonstrated in several cases. Among the Leukoideis, for example, we find a Rhodios, Sopatros son of Theon, being honoured with a gilded crown because as a virtuous man he had like his ancestors (dia progonon) proved himself useful to the community and had several times acted as representative (egdikos) of the koinon in law-suits; the inscription is dated to the first quarter of the first century BC83. Between 50 BC and 50 AD the same koinon honoured aRhodios, Euphranor son of Antimachos, for having held several local offices including that of komarches, and for having regulated all affairs of the koinon84. An inscription from Muğla that was carved sometime between 150 and 76 BC records a dedication made by a Rhodios, Nikolaos son of Leon, who had acted as ephebarchos and gymnasiarchos for the koinon of the Tarmianoi.

26Furthermore, some degree of integration into the local communities is also indicated by the fact that we find women whose ethnic is derived from the name of a koinon to have been either wife85 or mother to Rhodioi86, even if it is impossible to decide how common intermarriage between Rhodioi and non-Rhodioi was.

27The evidence reviewed so far demonstrates that the Rhodioi of the subject Peraia were people of power and prestige who in general were deeply rooted in the region they dwelled in. What can we infer about the way they had acquired their status of Rhodioi? The case for regarding them as naturalized Rhodians who stemmed from the communitites they lived in rests on a small body of evidence: the crucial piece is a newly discovered family monument from Yeniköy that is dated to the first century BC; among the dedicants appears a lady named Panarista who was married to a Rhodios and had children and grandchildren that were Rhodioi just as their father and grandfather had been, though she herself sports the Rhodian demotic Ladarmia87. This is the first time ever for a Rhodian demotic to appear alongside the ethnic Rhodios (though we already knew a tombstone found on the site of Idyma that calls the deceased by the demotic derived from Kedreai and not by the ethnic Rhodia88) and it clearly needs explaining. Why was Panarista not designated as Rhodia when her husband, her children and her grandchildren were styled Rhodioi? The explanation offered by the Bordeaux team is that Panarista was a Rhodian by birth while her husband was a naturalized Karian and as such had not been assigned to one of the Rhodian demes. And because this status of being a Rhodian citizen without deme-membership was inherited in the male line, their children and grandchildren held the same status as their father. Once this premise is accepted, one can argue that the son and the two grandsons of the lady belonging to the koinon of Leukoideis – her name was Artemis – were all Rhodioi precisely because her husband – whose status is unfortunately not stated – was a Rhodios from the subject Peraia89.

28Suggestive as this chain of reasoning is, it clearly is anything but compelling. Whatever the status of Artemis’ husband, her son might have been granted Rhodian citizenship on Rhodes and married a Rhodian wife, in which case their children would have been born as citizens. Furthermore, the unproved premise that the status of Rhodios was inheritable in the male line runs counter to what we know about the Rhodians’ restrictive policy towards the offspring from mixed marriages90. Panarista’s case admittedly lends weight to the asumption that not all Rhodioi were members of Rhodian demes, but as yet it is unique, and therefore hardly a secure basis for generalizations. In addition, there are three examples that cannot easily be squared with the assumption that the Rhodioi residing in the subject Peraia did not enjoy full citizen rights on Rhodes. The first possible counter-example is provided by a dedication set up between 84 and 50 BC by the koinon of the Tarmianoi in honour of a Rhodios, Chrysippos son of Apollonidas, who had been in charge of two places somewhere near Kaunos and had also done service in the Rhodian navy91. If this man really was a Rhodios from the Peraia, as Alain Bresson is inclined to believe, and as such not a member of the Rhodian deme-system, then it would be hard to explain how he had risen to the rank of a Rhodian military commander. This problem vanishes once we drop the premise that Chrysippos stemmed from the area where he was honoured: he may well have earned the Tarmianoi’s gratitude when serving as hagemon sent out from Rhodes to the Peraia. This seems all the more likely as the Rhodios Sosikrates son of Sosinikos, who sometime between 100 and 61 BC was honoured by a typically Rhodian shield-inscription, was very likely a Rhodian by birth, too. Sosikrates is praised for the benevolence and justice that as an epistates he showed to the Tarmianoi, and he can be identified as a contributor to a subscription-list from the city of Rhodes92. The hypothesis of a peculiar status being granted to Rhodioi in the Peraia can only be saved at the cost of positing a double use of the term Rhodios, one for full Rhodian citizens dwelling outside Rhodian territory and one for naturalized foreigners who had to be content with an inferior type of franchise.

29The third counter-example comes from a family monument raised at Thera in honour of a Rhodios who had done service in the first Mithridatic War, Phanias son of Philippos. First among the dedicants who without exception are called Rhodios appears his father93. This man, however, would seem to be identical with the homonymous damiourgos of Kameiros attested around 83 BC94; he must therefore have been eligible for an office with cultic functions that was filled through a system of rotation based on membership in demes and tribes95. The question to ask, then, is how he could have reached this prestigious position if being a Rhodios meant having no regular access to the institutions that framed civic life in the old cities of Rhodes. An easy way out is to assume that Phanias too was a Rhodian citizen by birth – though in that case it remains a mystery why his family chose to honour him in the subject Peraia, unless, perhaps, it was here that he died fighting Mithridates. If, on the other hand, Phanias was a Rhodios in the sense defined by the Bordeaux team, one would have to imagine that this status meant a sort of potential citizenship that could only be exercised after a formal decree had been passed by one of the three old poleis of Rhodes, in this case, Kameiros. We know that collective grants of isopoliteia worked exactly this way, and the parallel might go some way to explaining how the idea of granting some sort of potential citizenship to individuals might have sprung up in the first place96. In the absence of any positive evidence, however, this is no more than a guess.

Conclusion

30To sum up: the case for regarding the Rhodioi of the Peraia as naturalized Karians whose franchise was somehow limited cannot on present evidence be either proved or disproved. In view of the fact, however, that this hypothesis introduces a concept that has no close parallels in the Greek world, the burden of proof surely lies with those who wish to defend it. For this reason, I think that the traditional model should be preferred until one day at least a second example of a Rhodian demotic being used alongside the designation as Rhodios within one and the same family turns up. If we retain van Gelder’s notion that the Rhodioi in the Peraia were as a rule Rhodians from Rhodes, a different explanation is needed of how they had attained such a degree of prominence and power and why they had come there in the first place. We will then have to think in terms of more or less formal imperialism: as the rise of the Rhodioi in the Peraia was roughly contemporary with the extension of Rhodian military control to this area, the idea that they reaped the fruits of empire seems reasonable even if the details are completely lost to us. One might speculate that one of the motives behind the Rhodian policy of not allowing city-states to exist within this area was the wish to ease the acquistion of landed property by Rhodians who wanted to set up house in the fertile valleys around Pisye, Muğla and Thera, and in general to loosen or even remove the limitations that poleis were apt to set on the economic and financial activities of foreigners97.

31In the hundred years or so since Hendrik van Gelder wrote his magnum opus, our knowledge of the historical topography of ‘the uplands of Karia’ has been improved greatly and a mass of details on matters related to institutions and social life has been brought to light. Van Gelder surely would have been the first to acknowledge this enormous progress. If, however, we try to make sense of the evidence in historical terms, looking for structural patterns and causal explanations, we are hard put substantially to improve on him, as too much still remains uncertain or quite simply unknown. This conclusion may sound overly sceptical to some, and I hope that future research will prove them right. My experience has been that interpreting the evidence we have on the structure and development of the Rhodian Peraia is like putting together a puzzle of which the most important parts have yet to be recovered.