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2. Alexander the Great (336–323) (#ulink_651215ab-8d89-590a-aab9-44923b0953f9)
I
When Alexander succeeded his father Philip II as king of Macedonia in 336, he found it a country radically changed from what it had been when Philip assumed the crown twenty-three years earlier. Hitherto a backward frontier kingdom on the fringe of Greece proper, Philip had transformed Macedonia into a powerful military state with a tried army and well-chosen frontiers, dominating Greece through the League of Corinth (see p. 13) and all set for the invasion of Persia. The cultural level of the population had also risen. In a speech which Arrian (Anabasis, vii, 9, 2) puts into his mouth, Alexander described Philip’s transformation of the Macedonian people in these terms:
Philip found you vagabonds and poor, most of you clothed in sheepskins, pasturing a few sheep on the mountains and putting up a poor fight in defence of these against the Illyrians, Triballians and Thracians on your borders. He gave you cloaks to wear instead of sheepskins and brought you down out of the mountains into the plains, making you a match in battle for the barbarians who were your neighbours, so that now you trusted in your own courage rather than in strongholds. He turned you into city-dwellers and civilized you by the gift of good laws and customs.
When one has disallowed the rhetoric, this passage fairly describes the conversion of a pastoral people into settled farmers and town-dwellers, wearing woven clothing and enjoying the benefits of an ordered life. The population had also expanded. It has been calculated by G. T. Griffith on the basis of recorded troop figures that Philip’s economic policy brought about an increase of over 25 per cent in the numbers of men available for the army between 334, when Alexander mobilized 27, 000 Macedonians for his Persian expedition and for service in Greece (with some 3000 men already in Asia and perhaps 20, 000 old and young for home defence), and 323, when the figures reached about 50, 000 (including a margin for casualties meanwhile sustained in Asia).
Philip’s army had won him control over Greece, but he could not afford to leave it idle. No sooner had he established peace there than he planned to invade Persia. The idea was not new. Ten years earlier the Athenian publicist Isocrates had addressed a speech to Philip urging this very course.
I am going to advise you to become the leader both of Greek unity and of the expedition against the barbarians; it is advantageous to employ persuasion with Greeks and a useful thing to use force against barbarians. That is more or less the essence of the whole matter (Isocrates, Philip, 10).
Isocrates continues a little later in the same speech:
What opinion do you imagine everyone will form of you if you try to destroy the whole Persian kingdom or, failing that, to annex as much territory as you can, and to seize Asia, as some are urging you, from Cilicia to Sinope, and if as well you found cities in this region and settle in them there those men who are now wandering around through lack of their everyday needs, and doing outrage to whomsoever they fall in with? (Isocrates, ibid., 120).
It is likely that Philip saw Asia as a source of wealth and new lands in which to settle the many exiles and dispossessed people who were at this time a general threat to both Greece and Macedonia, given that there were states with sufficient wealth to hire them as mercenaries. Whether the territorial limits suggested by Isocrates formed part of Philip’s original plan we cannot tell. Isocrates later admitted that his advice merely chimed in with Philip’s own inclinations, and perhaps what matters most is that such ideas were in the air. Philip, however, saw his enterprise in a much more obviously Macedonian context than Isocrates had envisaged. When in 336 Philip was assassinated, an advance force of 10, 000 men was already across the Hellespont. Thus on his accession Alexander found the Persian War half-begun but it had his wholehearted approval, for by it he hoped to win personal glory – and also to strengthen his position vis-à-vis the senior advisers whom Philip had left him (for he was only twenty). His first two years (336–4) were spent securing his northern frontiers in Thrace and Illyria and suppressing a revolt in Greece. Then in spring 334 he crossed over into Asia with a modest force of about 37, 000 men, of whom 5000 were cavalry. There were 12, 600 Greeks (7600 sent by the League and 5000 mercenaries), about 7000 tribal levies from the Balkans, nearly 2000 light-armed and cavalry scouts from Thrace and Paeonia and the remaining 15–16, 000 were Macedonians and Thessalians. Europe he left in the charge of his general Antipater with an army of 12, 000 infantry and 1500 cavalry – about as many Macedonians as he took with him (Diodorus, xviii, 17, 3 and 5). His finances were shaky and on arriving in Asia he planned to live off the country.
Alexander’s army was to prove especially effective because of its balanced combination of arms. A great burden lay on the light-armed Cretan and Macedonian archers, Thracians and Agrianian javelin-men. But the striking force was the cavalry and, should the cavalry-charge leave the issue still undecided, the infantry phalanx, 9000 strong, armed with 15–18 foot spears and shields, and the 3000 hypaspists of the royal battalions would deal the final blow. The army was accompanied by surveyors, engineers, architects, scientists, court officials and historians. From the start Alexander seems to have envisaged an operation with no clear limits.
After a romantic visit to Troy he won his first battle at the river Granicus near the Sea of Marmara, and as a gesture sent 300 suits of armour from the spoils as a dedication to Athena at Athens by ‘Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks (except the Spartans) from the barbarians who inhabit Asia’ (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 16, 7). His intention, underlined by the omission of all reference to the Macedonians, was clearly to emphasize the ‘panhellenic’ aspect of the campaign. At Dium in Macedonia on the other hand he set up brazen statues of twenty-five Macedonians who fell in the first encounter (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 16, 4). The victory gave access to western Asia Minor and by the spring of 333 Alexander was master of the western seaboard, most of Caria, Lycia and Pisidia, and could press ahead through Gordium (where tradition told of his loosing – or cutting – the famous Gordian knot, a feat which could only by performed by the man who was to rule Asia) to Ancyra and thence into Cilicia. In autumn 333 he encountered Darius himself at Issus (near Iskenderun) and by a second great victory laid open the route into Syria. There Tyre held out for seven months, but Alexander did not relax the siege, and meanwhile received peace proposals from Darius, whose family had fallen into his hands at Issus. Darius offered him a ransom of 10, 000 talents for his family, the cession of all lands west of the Euphrates and a marriage alliance (Arrian, Anabasis, ii, 25, 1) but Alexander’s ambitions had now clearly expanded and he rejected the offer. By the winter of 332 all Syria and Palestine was in his hands and he was in Egypt, where he founded a new city, Alexandria, before making a journey through the desert to consult the famous oracle of Amon at Siwah. His strategic object at this time seems to have been to seize the whole sea-coast and so protect his base in Greece and Macedonia from any possible naval attack. For he had already taken a bold step: he had ‘decided to disband his navy both from lack of money at the time and also seeing that his fleet was not capable of an action against the Persian navy’ (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 20, 1). Perhaps too he mistrusted the Greeks who manned it. In fact, the death of Darius’ admiral Memnon in 333 had deprived the Persian fleet of most of its bite, and on land a Persian counter-attack in Asia Minor in winter 333/2 had been defeated.
In the summer of 331 Alexander once again met Darius’ army, this time at Gaugamela beyond the Tigris, not far from Nineveh. It was the decisive battle of the war and again Alexander was victorious, pursuing the retreating forces for thirty-five miles and then quickly advancing to occupy Babylon. Seizing the royal treasures, which amounted to 50, 000 gold talents, he advanced further into Persia proper, where he took Persepolis and Pasargadae. The burning of Xerxes’ palace at Persepolis was perhaps intended as a symbolic end to the war of revenge, the panhellenic war; such at least is Arrian’s view (Anabasis, iii, 18, 11), though other writers explain the incident, less probably, as arising out of a drunken escapade, inspired by a courtesan. At any rate, ‘on reaching Ecbatana Alexander sent back to the sea the Thessalian cavalry and the rest of the allies, paying each the agreed pay in full and himself making a largess of 2000 talents’ (Arrian, Anabasis, iii, 19, 5). Henceforth Alexander was to be waging a personal war. Placing the treasure under the control of Harpalus and leaving Parmenion, one of Philip’s generals, to control communications, he now pressed on at high speed after Darius. But Darius had been deposed by a usurper, Bessus, and Alexander found him stabbed and dying near Shahrud. Nothing now stood in the way of his claim to be the Great King, and a dedication of arms and bulls’ skulls at Lindus, probably in 330, was accompanied by the record:
King Alexander having defeated Darius in battle and become lord of Asia sacrificed to Lindian Athena in accordance with a prophecy in the priesthood of Theogenes, son of Pistocrates (Timachidas, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 532, c. 38).
The wording shows that Alexander’s new pretensions were now conveyed to the Greeks at home.
Crossing the Elburz mountains the king now advanced into Hyrcania, which lay to the south of the Caspian Sea, and after a short westward diversion towards the region of Amol, he accepted the surrender of Darius’ Greek mercenaries. He then marched east through Aria and Drangiana where at Phradah he found an excuse to eliminate the now irksome Parmenion. Parmenion’s son, Philotas, the commander of the élite Companion cavalry, was here accused of plotting against Alexander’s life and having been found guilty by the Macedonians was executed. At once a secret messenger was dispatched to Media to ensure the assassination of his father:
possibly because. . . Parmenion was already a grave danger, if he survived when his own son had been put to death, being so highly thought of both by Alexander himself and throughout all the army (Arrian, Anabasis, iii, 26, 4).
In the winter of 330/29 Alexander continued from Phradah along the Helmand into the Paropamisadae, where he founded Alexandria-by-the-Caucasus before crossing the Hindu Kush northwards into Bactria in pursuit of Bessus, who fled beyond the Oxus. There Bessus was deposed by the Sogdian leader Spitamenes and was taken prisoner by the Macedonian general Ptolemy; he was flogged, mutilated and in due course executed at Ecbatana. As Great King, Alexander thus in true Persian fashion avenged Darius, his predecessor.
Meanwhile he had crossed the Jaxartes to attack and defeat the Scythians with the aid of catapults and had founded Alexandria Eschate, ‘the farthest’, on the site of modern Leninabad in Tadzhikistan but it took him till autumn 328 to crush the national rising led by Spitamenes. A marriage with Roxane, the daughter of a Sogdian baron, Oxyartes, helped to reconcile his opponents in those outlying areas. His stay thereabouts was marked by incidents within his own camp which indicated a growth in royal absolutism and will be considered below (pp. 38–9).
In summer 327 Alexander recrossed the Hindu Kush and took his forces in two divisions over separate passes into India, and the following spring after some remarkable feats of warfare, including the capture of the almost impregnable pinnacle of Aornus (Pir-Sar), he crossed the Indus at Attock. The ruler of this area near the Jhelum and Chenab, the powerful prince Taxiles, now offered him elephants and troops in return for help against his rival Porus and on the left bank of the Hydaspes (modern Jhelum) Alexander won his last great victory against Porus, who now became his nominal ally. How much of India beyond the Punjab was known to Alexander is uncertain but he would have marched yet further east had not his troops mutinied. Reluctantly he agreed to return. On the Jhelum he built a fleet of 800 to 1000 ships and proceeded downstream to the Indus and so to the Indian Ocean, fighting and massacring as he went. At Patala, at the head of the delta, he built docks and a harbour and explored the two arms of the river. Then at last in October 325 he set off with part of his forces through Gedrosia (mod. Baluchistan) while the fleet under Nearchus sailed along the coast. An officer, Craterus, had already been sent with the baggage and siege train, the elephants and the sick and wounded, via Kandahar and the Helmand valley, whence he was to join Alexander on the river Minab in Carmania. Here eventually Alexander’s forces were reunited after he had suffered appalling losses in Gedrosia.
Both while he was in India and after his return to Mesopotamia Alexander carried out a drastic policy of dismissing and even executing many of his satraps.
Alexander is said to have grown at this time more ready to listen to any accusations, as if they were wholly reliable and to punish severely those who were convicted of slight errors because he felt they might, in the same frame of mind, commit heavier crimes (Arrian, Anabasis, vii, 4, 3).
Whether in fact this campaign is to be regarded as a somewhat severe but justifiable disciplining of errant governors or a reign of terror inflicted by a despot is a matter on which historians disagree but Arrian’s comments are the more telling in that he usually judges the king favourably. The Persian satraps in Paropamisadae, Carmania, Susiana and Persis are all known to have perished and at least three generals had already been brought from Media to Carmania, there convicted of extortion and executed. It was in this context that on his arrival at Susa, Alexander discovered that Harpalus, his treasurer, had fled with 6000 mercenaries and 5000 talents to Athens. He was later arrested, but escaped to Crete, where he was murdered.
Alexander’s stay in Susa was marked by a great feast held to celebrate the conquest of the Persian empire and also to encourage a new policy – that of fusing Macedonians and Persians into a master race. Alexander, his friend Hephaestion, and 80 officers all took Persian wives (almost all of whom were discarded after Alexander’s death). This policy led to several acts which aroused bitter resentment among the Macedonians, for instance the arrival of 30, 000 Asian youths who had been given a Macedonian military training, and the incorporation of orientals from Bactria, Sogdiana and Arachosia into the Companion cavalry. These and other steps designed to iron out the distinctions between conquerors and conquered came to a head at Opis in 324, when all but the royal bodyguard mutinied. Whereupon Alexander – for, says Arrian (Anabasis, vii, 8, 3) ‘he had grown worse-tempered at that time and oriental subservience had made him less disposed than before to the Macedonians’ – had the thirteen ringleaders executed and dismissed the rest. The opposition collapsed, and a vast banquet was held to celebrate the reconciliation. At this ‘Alexander’ prayed for all sorts of blessings and especially for harmony and fellowship in the empire between Macedonians and Persians’ (Arrian, Anabasis vii, 11, 9), indicating very clearly his concept of a joint condominium of the two peoples (though not of others too, as some scholars have thought). The same year Alexander sent two requests to Greece. First a decree was brought by Nicanor of Stagira to Europe and proclaimed at Olympia, requiring the Greek cities to receive back all exiles and their families (except for the Thebans). The second, a sequel to Hephaestion’s death at Ecbatana, was a request that he be honoured as a hero and (perhaps at the same time) that Alexander himself should be accorded divine honours. What these demands implied will be discussed below.
The following spring (323) Alexander received embassies from various parts of the Mediterranean world at Babylon, and busied himself with plans for exploration (which included the Caspian) but in June he suddenly fell ill after a prolonged banquet and drinking bout and on 13 June he died at Babylon, in his thirty-third year, after a reign of twelve years and eight months.
II
Alexander’s career has necessarily been sketched only in outline; it gives rise to many problems which cannot be considered here. It is however of special interest to consider to what extent his actions foreshadow and point forward to institutions and attitudes characteristic of the hellenistic world of which he was in some sense the initiator. The rest of this chapter will be devoted to some such aspects of Alexander’s life.
(a) First, the change in Alexander’s attitude towards Persia and his attempt to transform his army from a primarily Macedonian force, which still exercised the residual powers of the Macedonian people, into a cosmopolitan international force owing loyalty only to himself, in many ways anticipates the military foundation on which the personal monarchies of the hellenistic age rested. By 323 ‘King Alexander’ was the personal ruler of a vast spear-won empire which had little to do with Macedonia. His successors likewise were to carve out kingdoms for themselves with the help of armies bound to them only by personal bonds.
(b) Similarly, there was an increase in Alexander’s autocracy foreshadowing that of the hellenistic kings. In distancing himself from Macedonia and its national traditions Alexander had moreover necessarily assumed an autocratic power. The growth of this can be traced in a series of events which aroused the army’s hostility and often involved the elimination of his opponents. The first such incident occurred in 330 at Phradah, when Philotas’ execution was used as a pretext to have Parmenion assassinated. The next was at Maracanda (Samarkand) in 328, when Alexander murdered Black Cleitus, one of the Companions – the group constituting the king’s intimate advisers – and a leading cavalry officer, after provocation in a drunken brawl. Alexander subsequently reacted with a theatrical display of remorse but was persuaded by the philosopher Anaxarchus that the king stood above the law (Plutarch, Alexander, 52, 4).
In order that he might feel less shame for the murder, the Macedonians decreed that Cleitus had been justly put to death (Curtius, viii, 2, 12).
In the hellenistic monarchies (except Macedonia) the king’s decrees normally had the force of law and the king could do no wrong.
The third incident took place the next year at Bactra (mod. Balkh) and was the result of Alexander’s policy of surrounding himself with Persians as well as Macedonians. The presence of both at court led inevitably to difficulties, since the two peoples had very different traditions concerning the relationship between king and subject. To Macedonians the king was the first among his peers, to Persians he was the master and they were his slaves and the outward sign of this was an act of obeisance ( proskynesis), which a Macedonian or Greek was prepared to perform only to a god. Its exact character is controversial: some believe it to have involved physical prostration, others argue that it consisted merely in the blowing of a kiss from the upright, bowed or prostrate position. Whatever its precise form it was repulsive to Greeks and Macedonians when performed before a man, and when at Bactra in 327 Alexander tried to persuade the Macedonians to follow the Persians in according him this gesture, the Greek Callisthenes opposed him. There are two versions of what happened. According to the first, there was a debate between Anaxarchus and Callisthenes on Alexander’s proposal, in which the latter ‘while irritating Alexander exceedingly, found favour with the Macedonians’ (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 12, 1), and the whole plan was dropped. According to the second, Alexander sent round a loving-cup, which each was to take, offer proskynesis, and finally receive a kiss from the king; Callisthenes omitted the proskynesis and was denied the kiss (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 12, 3–5). Whatever the truth of the details – both versions could be true – the incident led to Callisthenes’ destruction, for he was soon afterwards accused of being privy to a murder-conspiracy by some of the royal pages.
Aristobulus declares that they [sc. the conspirators] said that it was Callisthenes who had urged them to the plot; and Ptolemy agrees. But most authorities do not say so, but rather that through his dislike for Callisthenes . . . Alexander easily believed the worst about him (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 14, 1).
Callisthenes was tortured and executed; the sources disagree only on the details. The whole incident smacks of the tyrant’s court.
(c) Alexander’s authoritarianism revealed itself, as that of his successors was also to do, in his relations with the Greeks. The expedition, as planned by Philip, had as its excuse the avenging of the wrongs suffered by the Greeks at the hands of the Persians. At the outset Alexander had been at pains to emphasize the panhellenic aspects of the war (see p. 31 for the panoplies sent to Athens after Granicus) but unfortunately our evidence is not sufficiently clear to allow us to say what status was accorded by Alexander to the ‘liberated’ Greek cities of Asia Minor. According to Arrian
he ordered the oligarchies everywhere to be dissolved, democracies to be set up, each city to receive back its own laws and to cease paying the taxes they had paid to the Persians (Anabasis, i, 18, 2).
But an inscription from Priene (Tod, 185) shows Alexander interfering extensively in the city’s affairs and although the Prieneans are declared ‘free and autonomous’ and released from the payment of ‘contributions’ – the word used, syntaxis, suggests that these were payments made hitherto to Alexander for the prosecution of the war rather than tribute paid to Persia – it is not clear just what ‘free and autonomous’ meant to the king. Some scholars have argued that the Greek cities of Asia Minor became members of the League of Corinth. This seems to have been true of the cities of the Aegean islands for an inscription from Chios, dealing with Alexander’s restoration of exiles there (probably in 332), declares that ‘of those who betrayed the city to the barbarians. . . all still remaining there shall be deported and tried before the Council of the Greeks’ (Tod, 192), which suggests Chian membership of the League of Corinth. But there is no firm evidence to determine whether the same was also true of the cities of Asia Minor. In practice they certainly had to do what Alexander ordered, like Ephesus where he restored the democracy but ‘gave orders to contribute to the temple of Artemis such taxes as they had paid to the Persians’ (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 17, 10).
This, however, also applied to the cities of the League, as the events of 324 clearly show. Faced with a problem of rootless men in Asia – unemployed mercenaries, political exiles, and settlers who (like 3000 from Bactria) had abandoned their new colonies and were on their way back to Greece – Alexander published an edict authorizing their return. According to Diodorus (xviii, 8, 4) he stated in this that ‘we have written to Antipater (who was in charge in Europe) about this, that he shall use compulsion against any cities that are unwilling to take back their exiles’. To ensure the maximum publicity for this decree, which, as an inscription from Mytilene (Tod, 201) shows, applied to Asia and Europe alike, Nicanor, Aristotle’s adopted son, was sent to Olympia to have read out to the Greeks assembled for the games a statement that ‘all exiles were to return to their countries, excepting those guilty of sacrilege and murder’ (Diodorus, xvii, 109, 1). A Samian inscription (Syll., 312) shows that Alexander had already previously made a similar announcement to the army. Though Diodorus says that the decree was welcomed, it certainly caused complications and even chaos over property, confiscated and sold, in every city (as inscriptions make clear) and it can hardly have pleased Antipater. It is a measure of Alexander’s disregard for the rights of the cities that he could take such a step without consulting them. In this, as in so much else, his actions were arbitrary and authoritarian. Traditional Greek rights were disregarded.
(d) Both Alexander and, later on, the hellenistic kings reinforced their autocratic power with claims to divinity. About the same time as he ordered the return of the exiles Alexander published a further demand in Greece, which met with a mixed reception. According to Aelian ( Varia historia, ii, 19), ‘Alexander sent instructions to the Greeks to vote him a god’ and this is borne out by other sources, none of which, however, mentions the exact context in which this request was sent. However, according to the Athenian orator Hypereides (Funeral Speech, 6, 21, delivered 323), the Athenians had been forced
to see sacrifices accorded to men, the statues, altars and temples of the gods disregarded, while those of men were sedulously cared for, and the servants of these men honoured as heroes.
The reference must be to the worship of Alexander and to the heroic honours which he had accorded to his dead friend Hephaestion. In the spring of 323 Alexander was visited at Babylon by embassies from Greece ‘wreathed in the manner of sacred envoys arriving to honour some god’ (Arrian, Anabasis, vii, 23, 2). In view of this evidence and a number of other passages, often ironical like the report of Damis’ motion at Sparta – ‘if Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god’ (Plutarch, Moralia, 219E) – it seems likely that the request was sent about the same time as the demand for the restoration of exiles, though there is little to be said for Tarn’s view in Alexander the Great, Vol. II, pp. 370–3, that ‘his divinity was intended by Alexander to give a political sanction to the latter request, which no existing powers authorized him to make’.
The request for divine honours seems more likely to have been a final step in the direction in which Alexander’s thoughts had been moving for some time. His father Philip had been honoured at Eresus on Lesbos by the erection of altars to Zeus Philippios (Tod, 191, 11. 5–6), a statue to him stood in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 17, 11) – though this need not necessarily imply a cult – and at Aegae in Macedonia for ‘because of the greatness of his rule he had counted himself alongside the twelve gods’ (Diodorus, xvi, 95, 1). Recently an inscription has been found which attests the existence of a cult to him at Philippi. As for Alexander himself, he had been recognized as a Pharaoh, and so as a divine being (see p. 217), and early in 331 he had visited the oracle of Amon at Siwah in the Libyan desert, where, Callisthenes reported, ‘the priest told the king that he, Alexander, was the son of Zeus’ (Strabo, xvii, 1, 43), a statement generally interpreted to mean that the priest greeted Alexander as ‘son of Amon’. Shortly afterwards, and quite independently, the oracles at Didyma and Erythrae put out the same story ‘concerning Alexander’s descent from Zeus’ (Strabo, ibid.). To Greeks and Macedonians it was common practice to identify foreign gods with their own and Callisthenes called Amon Zeus, just as Pindar had done in his hymn to Amon, where he addressed him as ‘Amon, lord of Olympus’, and in a Pythian ode (4, 16) where he speaks of Zeus Amon. That Alexander encouraged the connection with Zeus, as his son or (like Philip) identified with him, can be seen from a silver decadrachm issued later to celebrate his victory over Porus, which depicts Alexander on horseback charging Porus on an elephant and on the reverse shows a figure of Zeus, wearing a strange amalgam of dress and wielding a thunderbolt in his right hand, which has also been identified with Alexander.
A further stage in the advance towards deification can be traced in the scheme, already discussed above (pp. 38–9), to introduce proskynesis at Bactra. In order to raise the topic, Anaxarchus, the amenable philosopher from Abdera, asserted that
it would be far more just to consider Alexander as a god than Dionysus and Heracles;. . . there could be no doubt that when Alexander had passed away men would honour him as a god; how much more just was it then that they should so honour him in his lifetime rather than when he was dead, and the honours would be no use to him (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 10, 6–7).
But however attractive to Alexander, this argument went down badly with the Macedonians, as we have seen, and the plan to introduce proskynesis had to be shelved, largely in the light of Callisthenes’ speech in opposition. The final stage came with the request of 323, as a result of which several Greek cults of Alexander appeared – at Athens, probably at Sparta, and perhaps elsewhere. But Alexander’s death followed soon afterwards and any cults established seem to have been shortlived, at any rate on the Greek mainland. Cults established in Asia Minor, like the festival of the Alexandreia attested in an inscription found on the island of Thasos, seem often to date from his original campaigns of 334/3 and not to be a response to the message of 323. In their case the cult was often accompanied by the setting-up of a new dating era (as in Priene and Miletus), both being a spontaneous expression of gratitude for ‘liberation’. But the Greeks of the mainland needed no liberator and there cults were instituted only in response to pressure and soon disappeared. The difference is noteworthy. It is the Asian tradition which serves to throw light on the character of hellenistic ruler-cult during the next two centuries (see pp. 212 ff).
(e) Finally we must consider Alexander’s cities. Throughout the lands covered by his march he founded Alexandrias, not seventy, as Plutarch (On Alexander’s Fortune, 1, 5, p.328e) alleged, but a substantial number, perhaps about a score in all, mainly east of the Tigris, where hitherto urban centres were rare. Most of these foundations are merely names in lists, official names moreover, which were not always those by which they were later known. They were intended to serve a variety of purposes, some to guard strategic points, passes or fords, others to supervise wider areas; they presupposed an adequate territory to maintain the colonists and, preferably, a local population who could be pressed into agricultural work. Some were later to develop into centres of commerce, while others withered and perished. It seems certain that the bulk of the settlers were Greek mercenaries. This can be deduced from calculations based on recorded troop movements and is confirmed by remarks in our sources. To take the latter first, Diodorus reports that the Greeks whom Alexander had settled in the upper satrapies (especially Bactria)
were sick for Greek training and the Greek way of life and having been relegated to the frontiers of the kingdom they put up with this from fear so long as Alexander was alive, but when he died they revolted (xviii, 7, 1).
They were in fact 23, 000 in number and had come out East to make their fortunes – their fate was to be disarmed by the Macedonians and massacred for plunder. The picture of reluctant settlers is confirmed from a speech which Arrian put into the mouth of the Macedonian Coenus when the troops in the Punjab mutinied rather than march further east. After mentioning the sending home of the Thessalians from Bactria, he continues:
Of the rest of the Greeks some have been settled in the cities which you have founded, and they do not all remain there willingly; others including Macedonians, sharing in your toils and dangers, have in part perished in battle, while some have become invalids from wounds and have been left scattered here and there throughout Asia (Arrian, Anabasis, v, 27, 5).
Firm numbers elude us but Griffith has calculated (The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World, pp. 20 ff.) that in the course of his expedition Alexander received at least 60, 000 (and more probably 65, 000) fresh mercenaries, and that he left behind him as garrisons or settlers a minimum of 36, 000, which together with the numbers not recorded and casualties from battle or sickness must have reached a total equal to that of the new recruits. Eventually, at Babylon,
having sent home the older of his soldiers to their native land (Diodorus (xvii, 109, 1) puts their numbers at 10, 000) he ordered 13, 000 infantry and 2000 horse to be selected for retention in Asia, thinking that Asia could be held by an army of moderate size, because he had distributed garrisons in many places and had filled the newly founded cities with colonists eager to maintain things as they were (Curtius, x, 2, 8).
The Bactrian revolt shows how far Alexander had miscalculated the temper of these settlers.
Not all, however, broke loose. And though many of the cities (like Bactra) must have incorporated a strong native element, they maintained their Greek organization and later under the Seleucids they were reinforced by the establishment of new settlements. The character of these will be considered below (pp. 130 ff.). Here we may conclude this brief consideration of Alexander’s programme, which foreshadowed the many later foundations of his hellenistic successors, by noting that his first Alexandria, that founded on the Nile in spring 331, and his only settlement west of the Tigris, survived to become one of the most famous centres of the Roman empire and indeed of later times.
3. The Formation of the Kingdoms (323–276) (#ulink_800ebdc8-3f34-5890-a0ae-8d795c1d84a9)
On his death Alexander left an empire stretching from the Adriatic to the Punjab and from Tadzhikistan to Libya. But much of it was loosely held and parts of northern Asia Minor had never come under Macedonian control at all. Whether, had he lived longer, Alexander could have organized and co-ordinated this inchoate area effectively is a moot question. Without him even the survival as a whole seemed unlikely. The history of the next fifty years – from 323 until 276 – is of a struggle between Alexander’s generals and their sons and successors to take what they could for themselves. For a time that could have meant the whole. But the assumption of the royal title by several of the contestants from 306 onwards and the defeat and death of Antigonus at Ipsus in 301 marked two decisive steps in the process of dissolution. This proces can be traced in detail since the period down to 301 is well documented, with Hieronymus’ solid account standing behind our extant sources, especially Diodorus, whose narrative is intact down to that date.
I
Of those who were at Babylon when Alexander died the most important were Perdiccas, the senior cavalry officer and probably, since the death of Alexander’s favourite, Hephaestion, ‘chiliarch’ (in effect vizier), Meleager, the senior phalanx-leader, Ptolemy and Leonnatus (both related to the royal house), Lysimachus, Aristonous and Peucestas (who was satrap of Persis and Susiana). Others who were to play a major part later on were Seleucus, the commander of the hypaspists (a crack guards’ regiment), Eumenes of Cardia, Alexander’s secretary and the only Greek among the leading Macedonians, and Cassander, the son of Antipater. Antipater had been left by Alexander as regent in Macedonia, and Craterus, who had been sent to replace him, had already reached Cilicia. Finally there was Antigonus Monophthalmus, the One-eyed, a man (like Antipater) of the older generation, satrap of Phrygia. The struggle broke out at once and was to last in various forms until c. 270. Because the contestants, apart from Eumenes, were Macedonians, Macedonia was to play a special role in the conflict. It is perhaps not mere chance that it was the last major division of the empire to acquire a stable dynasty.
The twenty years we are now considering fall into two periods. The first, from 323 to 320, represents Perdiccas’ attempt to devise a compromise settlement which could claim legitimacy while leaving power in his hands. It ended in his violent death. The second period is longer; it covers the years from 320 to 301 and is dominated by Antigonus’ efforts to bring the whole empire, or as much of it as possible, under his control. Details are complicated. The scene shifts from Asia to Europe and back again to Asia where at Ipsus in 301 a coalition of his enemies brought about Antigonus’ defeat and death. After 301 the struggle continued with Demetrius Poliorcetes, Antigonus’ son, attempting to revive his father’s empire from a base in Greece and Macedonia but a coalition between Lysimachus and a new contestant, Pyrrhus of Epirus, brought about his fall and he died in captivity. In effect Ipsus had confirmed the existence of separate dynasties in Egypt (Ptolemy), Babylonia and northern Syria (Seleucus) and northern Anatolia and Thrace (Lysimachus). Only the fate of the homeland, Macedonia, remained undecided. Between 288 and 282 Lysimachus made a determined attempt to annex it, first in alliance with Pyrrhus and then alone but in 282 he was defeated by Seleucus at Corupedium, where he fell fighting, and after a period of near anarchy, with Gaulish invasions and rapid dynastic changes, Macedonia too at last obtained a permanent ruler in Demetrius’ son, Antigonus Gonatas.
The main territorial divisions of Alexander’s former empire were now established and were to survive with only minor changes for the next two centuries. In the present chapter we shall look briefly at the course of events which ended in this division of territories and power, and the dissolution of Alexander’s world-empire into a group of rival kingdoms and a de facto (though never properly recognized) balance of power.
Alexander’s death nearly precipitated civil war over the succession between the cavalry and the infantry sections of his army. Perdiccas proposed waiting for the birth of the unborn child of Alexander and Roxane and (if it was a boy) making it king but the phalanx led by Meleager put forward Philip II’s feebleminded bastard Arrhidaeus and thanks to Eumenes a compromise was made, appointing the two jointly. They were in due course recognized as Philip III and Alexander IV, but from the outset both were pawns in a struggle for power. Perdiccas now summoned a council of friends to assign commands. The army agreed
that Antipater should be general in Europe, Craterus ‘protector’ (prostates) of Arrhidaeus’s basileia, Perdiccas chiliarch over the chiliarchy which Hephaestion had commanded (which meant charge over the whole basileia) and Meleager Perdiccas’ subordinate (Arrian, Events after Alexander, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 156, F i, 3).
Craterus’ position in this settlement is far from clear, since basileia can mean either ‘kingdom’ or ‘kingship’ (it has the former meaning in the parenthesis on Perdiccas’ command), and the post of prostates can be interpreted in several ways. Other sources, moreover, have slightly different versions; for example, Q. Curtius (x, 7, 8–9) has Perdiccas and Leonnatus designated guardians of Roxane’s child without any mention of Arrhidaeus. On the whole it seems likely that Perdiccas’ position as ‘chiliarch’ put him above Craterus (who was absent from Babylon) but in any case Perdiccas very soon had Meleager murdered, after which Craterus’ powers seem limited to sharing Macedonia with Antipater. So perhaps his post as prostates was a temporary concession to the phalanx and Meleager.
Perdiccas was now clearly on top – though, as Arrian remarks, ‘everyone was suspicious of him and he of them’ (Events after Alexander, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 156, F i, 5). Of the rest Ptolemy received Egypt, and soon afterwards embellished his position there by cunningly sidetracking to that province the cortège containing Alexander’s embalmed body. Antigonus was given all western Asia Minor (including Greater Phrygia, Lycia and Pamphylia), Lysimachus received Thrace (which was separated from Macedonia), Leonnatus Hellespontine Phrygia (but he soon died) and Eumenes was sent to expel a local dynast Ariarathes from Cappadocia and Paphlagonia. Of these men Ptolemy, Antigonus, Eumenes and Lysimachus were to prove the most tenacious over the next decades and to play the greatest part in the conflict. Perdiccas was soon eliminated. While Craterus and Antipater collaborated under the command of the latter to suppress a Greek revolt (the so-called Lamian War ended in a crushing blow to the Greeks and especially Athens), Perdiccas took control of the kings and alienated Antipater by jilting his daughter in order to marry Alexander’s sister Cleopatra. A coalition of Antipater, Craterus, Antigonus, Lysimachus and Ptolemy was formed against him and only his murder in Egypt in 320 averted war. The first stage in the struggle was over and at a meeting of the coalition at Triparadeisus in north Syria (320) Antipater was made guardian of the kings (for Craterus had died operating against Eumenes) and removed the court to Macedonia. ‘Antigonus’, Diodorus tells us (xviii, 40, 1), ‘was declared general of Asia and assembled his forces from winter quarters to defeat Eumenes.’ The tide suggests a division of the empire with Antipater, who was general in Europe and an old man; he had never had much interest in Asia. Already therefore the attempt to maintain the empire in one set of hands had suffered a serious setback. Macedonia, Asia and Egypt were under separate control. Though the dynasties controlling the first two were later to change, the pattern of the hellenistic world was already beginning to emerge.
II
The next twenty years (320–301) are dominated by Antigonus. It was widely believed – Polybius (v, 102, 1) quotes the fact, not very appropriately, in connection with Philip V of whom it was not true – that the house of Antigonus had always aimed at universal dominion. We cannot be quite sure what was in Antigonus’ mind, but the sources certainly insist that he was never prepared to settle for less than the whole empire. The years down to 316 were devoted to hounding down and eliminating Eumenes. In 319 this was within Antigonus’ grasp but when he heard that Antipater had died having appointed one of Philip II’s officers, Polyperchon, as regent, he came to terms with Eumenes and joined Lysimachus, Ptolemy and Antipater’s son Cassander in a new alliance against Polyperchon. The latter, despite a proclamation ‘liberating the cities of Greece and dissolving the oligarchies set up by Antipater’ (Diodorus, xviii, 55, 2), failed to win support in Greece, where his move was seen as a propaganda exercise, and very soon Cassander’s forces were in the Piraeus and Athens under the control of his protégé, the Aristotelian philosopher, Demetrius of Phalerum. Meanwhile in Macedonia Philip III’s wife Eurydice declared for Cassander. When Polyperchon replied by inviting Alexander’s mother Olympias back from Epirus, she engineered the death of Philip III and Eurydice but was in turn tried and executed by the forces of Cassander, who invaded Macedonia. The legitimate house was now represented only by Alexander IV. Over in Asia Antigonus soon resumed the war against Eumenes, who scored some successes in Asia Minor, Phoenicia and Babylonia until in 316/15 he was betrayed by his troops to Antigonus, who had him tried and executed. This victory enabled Antigonus to extend his power into Iran and this made him the avowed enemy of the rest.
In the settlement of Triparadeisus Babylonia had been assigned to Seleucus. In 315 Antigonus, now back from a visit to the east and master of all the lands from Asia Minor to Iran, expelled him and he took refuge with Ptolemy. Largely at his instigation Ptolemy, Cassander and Lysimachus now served an ultimatum on Antigonus, demanding that he surrender most of his gains, restore Babylonia to Seleucus and share Eumenes’ treasure with them (Diodorus, xix, 57, 1). Antigonus can hardly have been expected to comply, nor did he. Instead he continued with his conquests, seizing southern Syria, Bithynia and Caria and he made a prudent alliance with Polyperchon. Moreover at Tyre in 314 he issued a proclamation that precipitated a thirteen years war with Cassander.
Calling together an assembly of his soldiers and those living there, he issued a decree declaring Cassander an enemy unless he destroyed the recently founded cities of Thessalonica and Cassandreia and, releasing from his custody the king (i.e. Alexander IV) and his mother Roxane, handed them over to the Macedonians and in short showed himself obedient to Antigonus, who had been constituted general and had taken over the control of the kingdom. All the Greeks too were to be free, without garrisons and self-governing (eleutherous, aphrouretous, autonomous) (Diodorus, xix, 61, 1–3).
Largely intended as propaganda this proclamation was to have far-reaching repercussions, for its last clause raised an issue which had already been put forward by Polyperchon in 319 as a weapon against Cassander (see p. 50) and was later to re-echo through the politics of the hellenistic age, until eventually the Romans took it up and adapted it to their own ends. We shall be considering it further in Chapter 7. Here we need note only that the significance was immediately evident to Ptolemy who
hearing of the resolution passed by the Macedonians with Antigonus concerning the freedom of the Greeks, himself wrote a similar declaration, being anxious that the Greeks should know that he was no less solicitous for their autonomy than was Antigonus (Diodorus, xix, 62, 1).
For Antigonus, however, it remained a cardinal principle of his Greek policy for the rest of his life and it was probably at this time and in accordance with this programme that he promoted the foundation of the League of Island Cities – the Nesiotes – in the Aegean, our knowledge of which is derived solely from inscriptions. Some scholars have attributed the foundation of this league to the Ptolemies, in 308 or even as late as 287. But a League inscription (IG, xi, 4, 103 6=Durr bach, Choix, 13) records the celebration in Delos in alternate years of festivals entitled Antigoneia and Demetrieia, and it seems likely (a) that these are federal festivals and (b) that the Demetrius and Antigonus whom they commemorate are Antigonus I and Demetrius I. If that is so, though it later fell under the Ptolemies, the League will have originated now as an instrument of Antigonid policy. The separation of Delos from Athens struck a blow at a city now under Cassander’s control.
Reacting to an invasion of Caria by Cassander (313), Antigonus now crossed the Taurus, sent various officers to intrigue in the Peloponnese and himself took action against Lysimachus in Thrace, where he intervened to assist Callatis and other Pontic cities which were in revolt (312). The same year he had an abortive meeting with Cassander on the Hellespont (Diodorus xix, 75, 6). But meanwhile Ptolemy had attacked Demetrius, whom his father had left to defend Palestine, and routed him at Gaza. Seleucus thereupon seized the chance to recover Babylon with forces provided by Ptolemy and Antigonus had to abandon fighting in the north in order to restore the situation in Syria. Both Antigonus and Ptolemy were by now ready for peace and this was agreed in 311 on the basis of the status quo. According to Diodorus (xix, 105, 1),
Cassander, Ptolemy and Lysimachus made peace with Antigonus and subscribed to a treaty, the terms of which were that Cassander should be general of Europe until Alexander, Roxane’s son, should come of age, Lysimachus should be lord of Thrace, and Ptolemy of Egypt and the cities bordering Egypt in Africa and Arabia; Antigonus should be in charge of all Asia and the Greeks should live according to their own laws. But they did not abide by this contract for long, but each one of them put forward plausible excuses for trying to acquire more territory.
The treaty of 311 was a setback to Antigonus’ ambitions but in a letter to the Greek cities, a copy of which was found at Scepsis (mod. Kurşunla Tepe), he represents it as a success and refers to the freedom of the Greeks as his main concern.
What zeal we have shown in these matters will, I think, be evident to you and to all others from the settlement itself. After the arrangements with Cassander and Lysimachus had been completed . . . Ptolemy sent envoys to us asking that a truce be made with him also and that he be included in the same treaty. We saw that it was no small thing to give up part of an ambition for which we had taken no little trouble and incurred much expense, and that too when an agreement had been reached with Cassander and Lysimachus and when the remaining task was easier. Nevertheless, because we thought that after a settlement had been reached with him the matter of Polyperchon might be arranged more quickly as no one would then be in alliance with him, because of our relationship to him [what this was is uncertain] and still more because we saw that you and our other allies were burdened by the war and its expenses, we thought it was well to yield and make the truce with him also. . . Know then that peace is made. We have provided in the treaty that all the Greeks are to swear to aid each other in preserving their freedom and autonomy, thinking that while we lived on all human calculations these would be protected, but that afterwards freedom would remain more certainly secure for all the Greeks if both they and the men in power are bound by oaths (Welles, R. C., no. I, II. 24–61 =SVA, 428= Austin, 31).
In this letter Antigonus not surprisingly makes no reference to Demetrius’ defeat at Gaza. It is of interest in that it provides evidence that Polyperchon was still active in the Peloponnese and also shows that Antigonus, now 71, is beginning to consider what is to happen after his death. More immediately, however, the swearing of oaths would enable him to call on Greek help if in the future he could plausibly allege a breach of the treaty.
By that treaty the unity of the empire had suffered a perhaps fatal blow, for by implication it recognized the existence of four independent powers – not to mention Seleucus and Polyperchon, who were both excluded from it. Shortly afterwards Cassander took the callous but logic step of assassinating Alexander IV and Roxane.
Cassander, Lysimachus and likewise Antigonus were now freed from their fear in regard to the king. For since no one now survived to inherit the kingdom, each one who was exercising rule over peoples or cities began to cherish hopes of sovereignty and to hold the territory under him as if it were a spear-won kingdom (Diodorus, xix, 105, 3–4).
Antigonus regarded the peace as a breathing-space before his next move. The events of the ten years which followed are complicated because, despite the general alignment against Antigonus, his rivals intrigued against each other and even made temporary arrangements with the common enemy. There is some evidence that the period opened with an unsuccessful attempt by Antigonus to recover the eastern satrapies, but that after being defeated by Seleucus he made a treaty with him giving him Iran and leaving him free to fight Chandragupta in India. That struggle ended about 303 with Seleucus ceding at least Gandhara and eastern Arachosia and Gedrosia. ‘Seleucus gave them to Sandracottus (Chandragupta) on terms of intermarriage and receiving in exchange five hundred elephants’ (Strabo, xv, 2, 9). These elephants were to prove a notable addition to hellenistic warfare. Meanwhile Ptolemy seized Cyprus and it was probably now that he contracted an alliance with the powerful, independent maritime city of Rhodes. Control of the Aegean was a bone of contention between Ptolemy and Antigonus, each of whom posed as the guardian of Greek liberty but when Cassander patched up a peace with Polyperchon (the price was the murder of Heracles, an alleged bastard of Alexander whom Polyperchon was using to rally support), Ptolemy and Antigonus drew together in circumstances which remain obscure. The agreement did not last. Faced with the alliance of Cassander and Polyperchon the Greek cities appealed to Ptolemy, who invaded the Peloponnese in 308 but then, having obtained little solid support, soon made peace with Cassander (though his garrisons remained installed at Corinth and other Greek cities). In 307, while Cassander was in Epirus, Demetrius sailed to Athens, expelled Demetrius of Phalerum, and set up a democracy and in 306 Antigonus sent him against Cyprus, where he won a resounding victory over the Ptolemaic governor and then over Ptolemy himself. Cyprus passed into Antigonid hands but a further sequel to this victory was even more significant.
For the first time the multitude saluted Antigonus and Demetrius as kings. Antigonus accordingly was immediately crowned by his friends, and Demetrius received a diadem from his father with a letter in which he was addressed as king. The followers of Ptolemy in Egypt on their part also, when this was reported, gave him the title of king so that they might not appear to be downcast because of their defeat. And in this way their emulation carried the practice among the other successors. For Lysimachus began to wear a diadem, and Seleucus also in his encounters with Greeks; for already before this he had dealt with the barbarians as a king. Cassander, however, although the others addressed him as a king in their letters and addresses, wrote his own letters in the same form as he had done previously (Plutarch, Demetrius, 18, 1–2).
Antigonus’ assumption of kingship was in 306, that of Ptolemy shortly afterwards in 305/4, and that of Seleucus, as we know from cuneiform texts, likewise in 305/4. A cuneiform tablet containing a Babylonian king list of the hellenistic period (see p. 26) adds to our information about this. Lines 6–7 (obv.) read:
Year 7 (Seleucid era), which is [his] first year, Seleucus [ruled as] king. He reigned 25 years. Year 31 (Seleucid era), month 6, Se[leucus] the king was killed in the land [of the] Khani.
This text, besides giving the date of Seleucus’ death (between 25 August and 24 September 281) also makes clear that his first regnal year (305/4) was the seventh year of the Seleucid era, which therefore began in 312/11 (in fact in October 312 in the Greek reckoning and in April 311 in the Babylonian). The document proves that Plutarch’s statement that Seleucus had already previously dealt with barbarians as a king is not literally true nor should his statement about Cassander be taken to imply that he refrained from using the royal title generally, since he is called ‘King Cassander’ on coins, and an inscription from Cassandreia recording what is probably the confirmation of a grant of land begins:
The king of the Macedonians Cassander gives to Perdiccas son of Coenus the land in Sinaia and that at Trapezus which was occupied by his grandfather Polemocrates and his father in the reign of Philip (II) etc. (Syll., 332).
This sudden spate of royal titles marked yet a further step in the break-up of the empire – though just what each king took his title to mean we can only speculate. It is unlikely that each general was staking out a claim to the whole empire – unless this was perhaps Antigonus’ idea. More likely, as the passage from Diodorus quoted on p. 54 suggests, they were exploiting the death of Alexander IV to claim kingship within their own particular territories – though not kingship of those territories. Ptolemy was already king of Egypt to the native population but he never calls himself king of Egypt in any Greek document. And of what kingdom – if any – was Antigonus king? The later career of Demetrius, who was for several years a king without a kingdom, is some indication that these monarchies were felt to be personal, and not closely linked with the lands where the king ruled. They constituted recognition of a claim based on high military achievement by men who through their efforts controlled ‘peoples or cities’. The exception was Macedonia and in the inscription quoted above in which Cassander calls himself ‘king of the Macedonians’, his purpose in doing so is perhaps to assert a unique position not open to any of his rivals (rather than simply to affirm his authority to validate a land-grant within the kingdom of Macedonia, as has been suggested).
Demetrius followed up his victory in Cyprus with the famous attack on Rhodes which brought him his title of Poliorcetes, the Besieger (305). This attack was a further provocation to Ptolemy, the close friend of Rhodes. The siege lasted a year and was celebrated for the siege-engines which Demetrius deployed, though unsuccessfully, in order to reduce the city. It ended in a compromise peace (304), in which the Rhodians gave 100 hostages and agreed to be ‘allies of Antigonus and Demetrius, except in a war against Ptolemy’ (Plutarch, Demetrius, 22, 4). In 304/3 Demetrius seized the Isthmus of Corinth and in 302, in preparation for war on Cassander, he resurrected the Hellenic League of Philip and Alexander ‘thinking that autonomy for the Greeks would bring him great renown’ (Diodorus, xx, 102, 1). An inscription found at Epidaurus (SVA, 446) contains the constitutive act setting up the League. In it provision was made for regular meetings of the Council and for Antigonus and Demetrius as leaders to exercise an even closer control than Philip and Alexander had done over their League of Corinth. The Epidaurus inscription is extremely fragmentary, but the information it contains can be supplemented from a Delphic inscription containing a letter written by Adeimantus of Lampsacus to Demetrius and an Athenian decree honouring Adeimantus (Moretti, i, 9; ii, 72). These inscriptions show that so long as the war with Cassander lasted, Demetrius appointed the presidium of the League personally and also that Adeimantus, known hitherto mainly as a flatterer of the king and friend of philosophers, played an important role as Demetrius’ representative at the council of the League and perhaps in proposing the institution of a festival in honour of the two kings.
The League however was not destined to last long, for in 301 a coalition consisting of Cassander, Lysimachus and Seleucus (who brought with him his 500 elephants) forced the combined armies of Antigonus and Demetrius (whom his father had summoned from Europe) to battle at Ipsus in Phrygia, and there inflicted a decisive defeat; Antigonus perished and Demetrius fled. In the sharing of spoils Lysimachus took most of Asia Minor as far as Taurus and Ptolemy, who had been campaigning separately in Palestine, took all the area as far north as the river Eleutherus (Nahr al-Kabir) as well as parts of Lycia and Pisidia. Ipsus marked the end of any pretence that there was still a single empire and despite the fact that Lysimachus’ kingdom straddled the straits, Asia and Europe now went different ways.
III
Between 301 and 286 Demetrius tried to restore his fortunes in Greece and for a time held Macedonia (after Cassander’s death) in spite of pressure from Pyrrhus. But from 289 onwards his position deteriorated. He lost his Aegean possessions and Athens to Ptolemy and was expelled from Macedonia by the combined forces of Lysimachus and Pyrrhus. In 285 Seleucus took him prisoner and he died of drink two years later. This episode left the possession of Macedonia still undecided. After the expulsion of Demetrius Lysimachus had first divided it with Pyrrhus and then, in 285, had contrived to annex the whole. But nemesis now overtook him. He was persuaded by his third wife, Arsinoe, to put his son Agathocles to death (to the advantage of Arsinoe’s children). Agathocles’ window Lysandra and her brother Ptolemy Ceraunus – they were half-brother and half-sister to Arsinoe, all three being children of Ptolemy – therefore incited Seleucus to challenge Lysimachus. In 282 Seleucus invaded Asia Minor and early in 281 at Corupedium Lysimachus was defeated and killed. But on crossing into Europe Seleucus, now redundant, was assassinated by his ally Ceraunus, who seized the throne of Macedonia.
Two years later (279), weakened by Lysimachus’ defeat, the country was overrun by an army of Gaulish marauders, part of a large-scale migration. Another group established a kingdom in Thrace, others reached Delphi but were destroyed by the Aetolians, and yet further bands crossed over into Asia Minor and settled in what was henceforth to be known as Galatia. What happened subsequently in Macedonia is obscure. A series of weak reigns with anarchic conditions gave Antigonus Gonatas, Demetrius’ son, who had managed to hold on to the strong-points at Corinth, Chalcis and Demetrias (his father’s foundation in the Pagasean Gulf), the opportunity for which he was looking. In 276, after winning a much publicized victory over the Gauls at Lysimacheia in 277, he established himself as king in Macedonia and Thessaly. Thus the dynasty founded by Antigonus the One-eyed gained possession of the last unpre-empted territory, the homeland of Macedonia.
Lysimacheia confirmed the result of Ipsus. The hellenistic world of territorial states was now in being, with the Antigonids in Macedonia, the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in the area covered by Syria, Mesopotamia and Iran. In each monarchy the sons or (in the case of Macedonia) the grandson of Alexander’s successors were on the throne – Antiochus I, Ptolemy II and Antigonus II – and the dynastic principle was firmly established. Politically Alexander’s empire had fragmented but in many ways the new kingdoms had much in common. Before looking at the separate kingdoms, therefore, we shall in the next chapter consider to what extent the hellenistic world constituted a homogeneous whole, and how far the coexistence of Greeks and Macedonians alongside the indigenous populations created problems for both peoples.
4. The Hellenistic World:A Homogeneous Culture? (#ulink_9c32d40c-df95-51c5-8465-9f339736b57b)
I
Towards the middle of the third century the inhabitants of a Greek city lying at the site of Ai Khanum beside the river Oxus (mod. Amu Darya) on the northern frontier of Afghanistan (its name is unknown) erected in a shrine in the middle of the city a pillar inscribed with a list of some 140 moral maxims copied from a similar pillar which stood near the shrine of Apollo at Delphi, over 3000 miles away. An adjoining verse inscription reads:
These wise words of famous men of old are consecrated in holy Pytho. Thence Clearchus took them, copying them with care, to set them shining from afar in the sacred enclosure of Cineas (Robert, CRAI (1968), 422 = Austin, 192).
Cineas – his name suggests that he was probably a Thessalian – will have been the city’s founder to whom the shrine was dedicated, and Clearchus has been identified by Robert as the Aristotelian philosopher, Clearchus of Soli, a man with an interest both in Delphi and in the religion and philosophy of the Indian gymnosophists, the Persian magi and the Jewish priests. If this Clearchus was indeeed he, we have here our first indication that he made a journey to the far east and there found distant Greek communities ready to hear him lecture and, at his prompting, to inscribe an authenticated copy of Delphic wisdom in the shrine of the city’s founder. To set up Delphic maxims, often in a gymnasium, was a common practice. Examples are known from Thera (IG, xii 3, 1020) and Miletopolis in Mysia (Syll., 1268). The list at Ai Khanum is fragmentary and in fact only five maxims now survive, but comparable lists elsewhere enabled the French epigraphist, Louis Robert, to reconstitute the whole collection – a striking illustration of how an inscription, of which the greater part is lost, can occasionally be restored with virtual certainty. An interesting feature of the Ai Khanum inscription is that despite the remoteness of this city the lettering is not at all crude or provincial. It is of the highest quality and in the best tradition of the Greek lapicide’s craft, worthy of the kingdom of Bactria, which also produced some of the finest Greek coins of the hellenistic period.
This inscription was discovered in 1966, and nearby, in the gymnasium of Ai Khanum, was another, containing a dedication by two brothers, ‘Triballus and Strato, sons of Strato, to Hermes and Heracles’ (Robert, CRAI (1968), 422), who were the patron gods of the gymnasium. Subsequent excavation has revealed the full plan of the gymnasium itself, which incidentally contained a sundial of a type known, but not hitherto found. There was also a theatre holding 5000 spectators and, dating from about 150, a large administrative centre of palatial proportions, in which were found storing vessels labelled in Greek, a mosaic 5.7 metres square and, most remarkable of all, from what was evidently its library, imprinted on fine earth formed from decomposed wall-bricks, the traces of a still partially legible text from a now perished piece of papyrus, which was evidently a page in a philosophical work which appears to have been written by a member of the Aristotelian school (of which Clearchus himself was a member). These finds confirm the picture of a city in which, despite its later isolation, Greek traditions continued strong right down to the time of its destruction by the nomads of the steppes in the second half of the second century.
But Ai Khanum was not the first site to furnish epigraphical evidence for a strong hellenic presence in Bactria, for only a few years earlier two Greek inscriptions, one with an Aramaic counterpart, had been found at Kandahar (see Schlumberger, CRAI (1964), 126–40). These contained fragments of the moralizing edicts of the Mauryan king Asoka and they too were elegantly carved and in an excellent Greek, which betrayed an intimate knowledge of the vocabulary of Greek philosophy and considerable skill in adapting it to render the thoughts of a Buddhist convert. Anxious to convey his lessons to those living in what now formed part of his dominions, Asoka used Aramaic, the official language of the Persian empire, and of course Greek. More recently a further Greek inscription has been found in Kandahar and more can be expected.
This use of Greek, in the popular cosmopolitan form called the koine, the ‘common tongue’, is characteristic of the whole vast area covered by Alexander’s conquests. It pays no heed to the later frontiers and serves to bind the whole into a single cultural continuum. Its prevalence is the result not merely of political domination, but also of a great movement of colonization which began under Alexander and continued in full spate until about 250, after which it slackened off. Ai Khanum has provided clear evidence of this, for a study of the traces of habitation in a wide area around this city has shown it to be virtually unpopulated under the Achaemenid kings, but with a dense population in hellenistic times.
II
Under Alexander the agents of colonization were largely mercenaries whom he left behind to hold strategic points. Conditions were rough and lacking in civilized amenity and so (as we saw, p. 44) provoked revolt. But the finds on the Oxus and at Kandahar are not the only evidence that by the mid-third century or even earlier conditions had improved. The growth in the number of colonists had brought with it a deepening of Greek civilization, not least in Bactria, and we can occasionally trace the process. A decree passed by the assembly of Antioch-in-Persis, recognizing the international character of the festival of Artemis Leucophryene at Magnesia-on-the-Maeander, recalls the kinship existing between the two peoples, for when Antiochus I (281–261) was anxious to reinforce the population of Antioch, the Magnesians had responded to his invitation by sending ‘men sufficient in number and outstanding in merit for the purpose’ (OGIS, 233, 1. 18). A generation later the bond was still remembered. As in the great European emigration to the United States in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries many went out in groups but others would have gone individually to try their fortune in new lands. The new cities of the east contained a mixture of Greeks from all parts, a motley throng from every sort of environment and social class, from the main centres of civilization and from the fringe areas.
