[146 BCE – 330 CE] Greece under Roman Rule

Our story begins in the year 146 BCE, a year of fire and finality for the Greece of old. The last embers of independent Greek power, held by a defiant coalition known as the Achaean League, were ruthlessly extinguished. On the isthmus connecting the Peloponnese to the mainland stood the magnificent city of Corinth—a jewel of commerce, art, and ancient liberty. It was here that the Roman general Lucius Mummius made his terrifying statement. After a decisive battle, his legions stormed the city. What followed was not merely a conquest, but an annihilation. The men were massacred, the women and children sold into slavery. Priceless statues and artworks, treasures accumulated over centuries, were either systematically plundered for villas in Italy or carelessly destroyed. The city itself was set ablaze, its flames a funeral pyre for Hellenic freedom, visible for miles. With Corinth's fall, the Roman shadow that had been creeping over Greece for half a century finally fell completely. The land of Aristotle and Pericles was no more a collection of proud, squabbling city-states; it was now a territory to be administered, its destiny held in the iron fist of Rome. Initially absorbed into the province of Macedonia, it would soon be formally organized as the province of Achaea, a name that belied its subservient status.

The new order was a study in contradictions. While Roman soldiers patrolled the land and a Roman proconsul issued decrees from his seat of power, the conquerors held a deep, almost reverential awe for the culture they had just subjugated. Wealthy Romans sent their sons to Athens to study philosophy, just as one might attend a prestigious university today. They hired Greek tutors, copied Greek sculptures, and translated Greek literature. Yet, this cultural admiration did not soften the political reality. The administration was efficient and demanding. Taxes, once paid to local city governments, now flowed towards Rome, often collected by private contractors known as 'publicani', whose rapacious methods could beggar entire communities. While certain venerable cities like Athens and Sparta were declared 'free cities' ('civitates liberae'), exempt from direct provincial governance as a sign of respect, this freedom was a gift that could be rescinded at the whim of the Senate or, later, the Emperor. Roman law was superimposed over local customs, and the final arbiter of justice was not a council of Greek elders, but a Roman magistrate.

Following decades of turmoil, which saw Greece serve as the bloody stage for Roman civil wars—most notably the final clash between Octavian and the duo of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE—a fragile peace finally descended. Under the first emperor, Augustus, the long era of the 'Pax Romana' (Roman Peace) began. For the average person, this meant a newfound stability. The constant threat of war between city-states vanished. Piracy, once rampant, was suppressed by the mighty Roman navy, allowing trade to flourish once more. In a marketplace in Patras, or in the new Corinth rebuilt by Julius Caesar as a bustling Roman colony, the air would be thick with the smells of olive oil, wine, and fish, mingling with the aroma of incense from a nearby temple dedicated to both Greek and Roman gods. The dominant language was still Koine Greek, the common tongue of the East, but the clipped, authoritative sound of Latin would be heard from soldiers in their segmented armor, merchants finalizing deals, and officials reading imperial edicts. A man might wear the traditional Greek 'himation', a simple draped cloak, while walking past an official clad in the formal, cumbersome Roman toga.

This peace, however, was a Roman peace, and its violation brought swift and terrible consequences. In 86 BCE, when Athens dared to side against Rome during the Mithridatic Wars, the Roman general Sulla besieged the city. He cut down the sacred groves of Plato’s Academy to build siege engines and, upon breaching the walls, unleashed a massacre so brutal it was said the blood flowed through the city gates into the suburbs. It was a chilling reminder that cultural reverence was secondary to political obedience. Yet, this harshness existed alongside a genuine love for Hellenic culture, most famously embodied by the Emperor Hadrian, who reigned from 117 to 138 CE. Hadrian, a passionate Philhellene ('lover of Greece'), toured the province extensively. In Athens, he funded a staggering building program. He finally completed the colossal Temple of Olympian Zeus, a project started nearly 640 years earlier, its 104 massive Corinthian columns dwarfing the nearby Acropolis. He built a grand library, an aqueduct, and the monumental arch that still stands today, one side inscribed "This is Athens, the ancient city of Theseus," and the other, "This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus." His reign marked a golden age for Roman Greece, an era of prosperity, patronage, and architectural splendor.

The Romans were, above all, master builders, and their presence was etched into the very landscape of Greece. While they respected and preserved the sacred sites of old, they also built alongside them, creating a hybrid environment of old and new. The most vital project was the Via Egnatia, a paved Roman road that stretched for over 1,120 kilometers (700 miles) from the Adriatic coast to Byzantium, forming a crucial military and commercial artery that passed through northern Greece. Cities were gifted with new forums, or Roman agoras, distinct from their Greek predecessors with their rectangular shapes and grand basilicas used for law courts and business. Aqueducts, marvels of engineering, snaked across valleys to bring fresh water to burgeoning urban centers like Nikopolis. Public bathhouses, a cornerstone of Roman social life, became common, offering spaces for hygiene, exercise, and socializing that were foreign to the classical Greek tradition. In Corinth, the rebuilt city was a perfect Roman grid, its forum dominated by temples dedicated not only to Apollo but to the deified Roman emperors—a constant, visible reminder of who was in charge.

The intermingling of peoples and ideas created a vibrant, complex Greco-Roman culture. The intellectual elite was thoroughly bilingual. A man like Plutarch (c. 46 – c. 119 CE), from the small town of Chaeronea, could serve as a priest at the ancient Oracle of Delphi while also being a Roman citizen who wrote his famous 'Parallel Lives' in Greek, comparing the great figures of Greece and Rome and, in doing so, arguing for their equal standing. The Greek gods had long been identified with their Roman counterparts—Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars, Artemis with Diana. The great athletic contests, like the Olympic and Isthmian Games, continued with renewed vigor, now funded and even participated in by wealthy Romans and emperors. The infamous Emperor Nero scandalously competed in a special edition of the games in 67 CE, where he, of course, won every event he entered, a farce that nonetheless demonstrated how deeply embedded these Greek traditions had become in the Roman consciousness. In 212 CE, the Emperor Caracalla extended Roman citizenship to all free men within the empire's borders, legally erasing the distinction between conqueror and conquered, though social and cultural differences certainly remained.

This world, seemingly stable and eternal, began to fray at the edges during the Crisis of the Third Century. The empire was wracked by civil war, economic collapse, and relentless barbarian invasions. In 267 CE, a Germanic tribe, the Heruli, sailed down the Aegean and sacked Athens, a shock that prompted the Greeks to hastily rebuild their ancient city walls for the first time in centuries. The Pax Romana was broken. But a far more profound transformation was already underway, one that began not with armies, but with an idea. Itinerant preachers, followers of a crucified Nazarene, had been traveling the Roman roads for generations. The Apostle Paul himself had debated with philosophers on the Areopagus in Athens and established fledgling Christian communities in Corinth, Philippi, and Thessalonica. This new faith, with its message of salvation and equality before a single God, was slowly but surely winning hearts and minds. The final act of this era came in 330 CE. The Emperor Constantine the Great, who had embraced Christianity, made a monumental decision. He relocated the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to a new city built on the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium. He called it 'Nova Roma', New Rome, but it would forever be known as Constantinople. This act did not end Roman Greece, but transformed it. Its focus now shifted from a distant Latin-speaking capital in the west to a new, vibrant Greek-speaking Roman capital at its doorstep. The classical age was over, and the long, thousand-year story of the Byzantine Empire was about to begin.