Tacitus, Annals IV.55-56

Date: 114 CE to 116 CE

Centuries: 2nd CE

Languages: Latin

Category: Roman

Literary Genre: History

Reference: IV.55-56

Title: Annals

Commentary:

Having fulfilled a governorship in a consular province, either in Upper or Lower Germania (approximately between 101 and 104 CE), Tacitus went back to Rome and started to write the Histories dealing with the period 69-96 CE. This work was most likely completed around 110 CE (Sage, “Tacitus’,” p. 863; for a presentation of Tacitus’s life see Livy, History of Rome XLIII.6). But it remains possible that the temple was erected to thank the Romans for the benefits they granted to the city (see Derow, “From the Illyrian Wars,” p. 64; Knoepfler, “Les Rômaia,” p. 1266). Whatever the reasons for the building of this temple to Rome, it is noteworthy that Smyrna did not build this temple to manifest its admiration for Rome – an idea which may be implied in Tacitus’s text –, but more as a reward for Rome’s assistance or benefaction (see Burrell, Neokoroi, p. 39). Furthermore, two centuries after the construction of this temple to Roma, the Romans had kept the memory of the fact that the earliest cult paid to Roma in the East was in Smyrna and they used it as an argument to justify why this city should be preferred. Finally, the fact that Smyrna did not have a temple that suited its status among the most prosperous, prestigious and powerful cities of the province of Asia must have been a decisive factor that motivated the choice (see Heller, “Les bêtises,” p. 214).

In conclusion, this text of Tacitus in which he describes the competition between these eleven civic communities of the province of Asia to obtain the right to establish a temple to the living emperor Tiberius shows how the granting of this right could cause an intense competition between these communities. Because of Tiberius’s reluctance to receive divine honours, this temple to the emperor, his mother and the Senate was the only one which was authorized to be built in a province during Tiberius’s lifetime; a situation that made the grant all the more prestigious. By becoming for the first time a neokoros city, that is a city that possessed a provincial temple of the cult of the Roman emperor (note however that Smyrna started to use the title of neokoros around the end of the first century CE, perhaps under the reign of Domitian, see Burrell, Neokoroi, p. 41), Smyrna asserted its preeminent status which at that time, in the province of Asia, was only shared by Pergamum. If the antiquity, prestige, prosperity of the city, but also its past commitments for Rome, had been essential conditions for the grant of this privilege to Smyrna, the choice of the Senate and of the emperor must have been also largely motivated by the “cultic availability” of the city. As rightly justified by Anna Heller, by building an imperial temple in an area that did not have a major temple, the Roman power made sure that the new imperial cult would have a broader audience and success; moreover, it also helped to maintain the necessary balance between the most important Greek cities of the province of Asia (Heller, “Les bêtises,” p. 214-215).