The institution of hostages in Roman political practice at the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the Empire

Abstract

The relevance of the research topic is due to the fact that even at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century the term “hostages”, meaning persons unlawfully held to achieve some goal (military, political, economic, etc.), has by no means disappeared from the political vocabulary. Of course, between the political institution of hostages, which became widespread in the ancient world and was an important element of the diplomatic practice of that epoch, and hostages, who in modern times were repeatedly captured and forcibly held by terrorists and extremists of all stripes, who did not stop at killing or causing grave harm to the health of the captured people, a huge distance has passed. The purpose of this study is to identify the features of the institution of hostage in antiquity using the example of ancient Rome. Having analyzed the sources, the author came to the conclusion: if during the epoch of the Republic there were very few episodes associated with the stay of royal hostages in Rome and there was no wellthought-out policy in this direction in principle, then with the establishment of the Empire its founder, Augustus, began to pursue a political course aimed at creating an entire system of client states dependent on Rome, led by monarchs who, living in Rome as hostages, were raised, educated and subjected to Romanization in order to subsequently serve the emperor as loyal vassals and conductors of Roman influence in the periphery. For a number of reasons, this policy was not successful, and Augustus’ successors gradually abandoned it.

Keywords

• roman empire
• client kings
• vassal kingdoms
• augustus
• “soft power”
• queen erato
• queen muse
• archelaus i philopator
• phraates iv
• herod i the great