La procédure législative à Pergame au Ier siècle au J.-C. : à propos de la chronologie relative des décrets en l'honneur de Diodoros Pasparos

Abstract

The decrees in honour of Diodoros Pasparos of Pergamon, which are full of information on the relations between a great benefactor and his city, have often attracted the attention of scholars. In evoking the exceptional honours accorded to Diodoros, it has rightly been stressed that these texts reveal significant features of the late Hellenistic period. It may also be noted that their very number testifies to the ostentation with which the Pergamon citizens wished to praise Diodoros. However, the relative chronology of these decrees and their mutual association have not been convincingly established. The classification proposed in the present article on the one hand enables a better understanding of the activities of the gymnasiarch Diodoros, and on the other, sheds light on the legislative procedures in force in the city of Pergamon in the first half of the 1st. c. BC. It is now established that it functioned as a democratic city and that the legislative procedure in force was the same as in the Attalid period. The role played by the strategoi did not deprive the individual citizens of the right to initiate legislation, but this initiative had always to pass through the intermediary of the strategoi, who were in charge of bringing forward for discussion (and doubtless also of drawing up) the drafts of the decrees.