Roman Landholding in Asia Minor Author(s): Thomas Robert ...

Vol. lxv]
Roman Landholding in Asia Minor
The state of our sources does not permit an alternative
explanation to be offered with certainty but some elements
may be suggested which should receive greater emphasis.
First, there is a difference in development ascertainable be-
tween the provinces occupied under the republic, when the
crown lands apparently did not become public land of Rome,
and those occupied under the empire, when they could pass
directly into imperial possession. Second, any explanation
must allow for the slow appearance of the imperial holdings
before the third century. It is only slowly and cumulatively
that the effects of imperial inheritances and confiscations would
appear. Augustus received 1,400,000,000 HS in legacies in
the last twenty years of his life.151 Many of his successors
were not as ready as Tiberius 152 to refuse them, and under
many of them it was but prudent for a wealthy and influential
man to remember the emperor in his will. The concentration
of property in imperial hands after two centuries must have
been very great. Confiscations added no less, moderately at
first, but increasingly under Nero and Domitian. Under
Commodus and the Severi, when leading provincials had
reached positions of prominence, they were enormous. It is
significant that our evidence for so many of the large imperial
estates in Asia Minor dates from the late second and early
third centuries. In explaining their growth we must grant
to the processes of inheritance and confiscation greater im-
portance than we have done in the past.
239
151 See note 74.
152 Cass. Dio LVII, 17, 8; Ta(. Ann. II, 48, and il general cf. Hirschfeld, Kl.
Schr. 521-526. On the policy of the Severi cf. Rostovtzeff, S.E.H. 459-461,
and literature cited there.