The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

by Ober, Josiah

  Meanwhile, the fourth century saw a hastened pace of Hellenization, especially but not uniquely in Caria in southwestern Anatolia. Formerly “barbarian” towns increasingly took on the institutional and architectural forms of Greek poleis in a process whose importance for the expansion of Greek horizons has been emphasized by the historian John Ma. As more of western Anatolia became more Hellenized, in part as a result of choices made by the king’s semi-independent governors, the transaction costs incurred by Greeks engaged in diplomacy and exchange with those regions dropped accordingly. At the same time, as Ma emphasizes, residents of newly Hellenized towns benefited as their towns were drawn into a large and robust network of peer polities. Along with inland Sicily, fourth century Anatolia represented the expanding frontier of the Greek world: A considerable part of the growth of the total Greek population in this period (ch. 4) can be attributed to the adoption of Greek culture and institutions by Anatolian cities under Persian rule. The expansion of polis culture into Asia continued after the conquest of Persia by Alexander, but the process was well advanced before Alexander set foot on Asian soil.59

  The Anatolian Greek cities, old and new, were in a good position to profit from trade across an extensive zone of Persian imperial control. Not only did a number of Anatolian cities mint their own coinage in this period, but they also converged on a common weight standard. Unlike the harrowing history of Sicilian poleis in the fourth century, few of the Anatolian poleis were sacked; their populations were seldom killed, enslaved, or transported. The king controlled naval forces adequate to suppress pirates—and insofar as his tax revenues from the coastal cities depended on their financial solvency, he had an incentive to do so.60

  The king demanded the “traditional” payment of tribute, but the tax rate seems on the whole not to have been excessive. It remained true that, as an absolute monarch, the king could arbitrarily try to increase taxes to exorbitant rates. But he had even less incentive to attempt to do so than had the Athenians in the fifth century, before the crises of the 420s. The king’s incentives were affected by the costs of enforcement. By the later fourth century, almost all of the larger (over size 2) Greek cities of the Anatolian coast were protected by substantial fortified circuits—as at least some had not been in the mid-fifth century.61 While the Persian king’s army could certainly take any one of these walled cities by force, it would be expensive to do so. In general, therefore, well-fortified Greek cities found that they could negotiate reasonable taxation levels. As we will see (ch. 11), this dynamic continued well into the second century BCE.

  The negotiations between the king’s agents and a Greek city need not have been formal. We may perhaps imagine discussions as being carried on in an early version of the polite language of friendship and mutual accommodation that was later perfected by the Anatolian cities under the rule of Macedonian Seleucid kings—the dynasty that came to rule much of western Asia in the era after the death of Alexander the Great. In this way, as in others, the history of the Anatolian Greek cities under fourth century Persian rule pointed to the later history of much of Hellas under the rule of Macedonian monarchs.62

  10

  POLITICAL FALL, 359–334 BCE

  THE TERMINATION OF THE CLASSICAL ERA

  LOOKING AHEAD

  Warfare was rife in the half century after the Peloponnesian War. Yet, with the exception of Leuctra, where Sparta’s long run as a superpolis abruptly ended in 371 BCE, there were few truly decisive battles. That changed in the seventh decade of the fourth century, when a series of battlefield decisions remade the Greek world: In 338, at Chaeronea, Philip II of Macedon defeated a Greek alliance led by Athens and Thebes. His victory ended the era in which great and independent poleis dominated the Aegean world. Philip’s son, Alexander III “The Great,” then brought down the once-mighty Persian Empire in three battles in 334, 333, and 331. Having spent the next decade expanding and partially consolidating an empire that eventually stretched east to the Indus River, Alexander returned to Mesopotamia, where he died in Babylon in June 323. Revolts against Macedonian rule that broke out in Greece upon the news of the king’s death were quickly suppressed.

  The Hellenistic era of Greek history, from the death of Alexander to the Roman takeover in the second century BCE, was dominated by Macedonian dynasts and, in Sicily and south Italy, by their Greek imitators. A few city-states, notably Rhodes, remained fully independent and centrally important in Mediterranean affairs. Syracuse became the capital of a Sicilian kingdom. The Achaean and Aetolian federal leagues (ch. 9) periodically broke free of Macedonian royal control. But from the later fourth century into the early second century, many poleis paid tribute taxes to one or another of the Hellenistic kings. Some key cities, including Athens, Chalkis, and Corinth, periodically received Macedonian garrisons.

  The diminution of the role of great and independent Greek poleis in Mediterranean history in the late fourth century BCE is the political fall that had been averted by the successful fifth century resistance to Persia and Carthage.

  This chapter answers the question of why and how Philip and Alexander of Macedon succeeded in defeating a Greek coalition led by two great poleis, whereas Darius and Xerxes of Persia had failed in their earlier attempts. The political fall of Hellas in the later fourth century was precipitated, at least in part, by the Macedonian kings’ masterful appropriation of the by-now familiar instruments that had driven Hellas’ economic rise in the preceding centuries: specialization and expertise, developed as a result of the deep investments in human capital, along with competitive emulation of successful technological and institutional innovations. In the final chapter (ch. 11), we explore the relationship between the political fall and the robust persistence of economic growth, federalism, and democracy in a transformed ecology of city-states.

  THE “OPPORTUNISTS”

  The sudden rise of Macedon in the mid-fourth century was not the historical equivalent of a “crater of doom” meteor strike, terminating a thriving ecology at a stroke.1 Rather, Philip emerged as the most successful of a group of very effective, highly ambitious, and at least semi-Hellenized dynasts who ruled territories on the fringes of the Greek world in the early to mid-fourth century BCE. Several of these rulers posed serious problems (as well as employment opportunities) for certain of their Greek neighbors, and they shared some methods in common. John K. Davies of the University of Liverpool aptly dubbed the members of this informal club “the opportunists” because each of them borrowed opportunistically (that is, selectively, seeking their own advantage and that of their community) from Greek culture and institutions. Each made extensive use of Greek experts—notably including mercenary soldiers, commanders, and designers of military systems. “Opportunist” is not meant here as a derogatory term—we might just as well call the Hellenized dynasts of the fourth century “the entrepreneurs.” And of course they were hardly unique in their opportunistic borrowing: As we have seen, the emulation of institutions and technology among Greek states was a primary driver of the classical efflorescence.2

  Prominent dynasts on the margins of Hellas included Evagoras and Nicocles, rulers of Salamis on Cyprus; Jason and Alexander of Pherai (i414), each sometime master of Thessaly; Mausolus and Artemisia II of Caria; and Hermias of Atarneus (i803) in northwestern Anatolia, Aristotle’s father-in-law and patron. The opportunists’ club also included other ambitious and semi-independent governors of Anatolian provinces in the Persian Empire; the Thracian and Scythian rulers of new and emerging Black Sea states from which the Greek poleis imported great quantities of wheat; Tachos of Egypt, and other rebels who from time to time broke free of the Great King of Persia. At a further remove, but in the category of states beyond the Greek world that made effective and selective use of Greek expertise, were the Carthaginians and the Great King himself.

  The opportunists’ employment of Greek experts would threaten the Greek world (rather than the ambitions of specific Greek states) only if it put the overall ecology of indepe
ndent poleis at risk. As it turned out, the danger posed by most of the opportunists, even to individual Greek states, was episodic. The Great King had retaken the Anatolian poleis, and, for a time, major Aegean island states, including Samos and Rhodes. As we have seen (ch. 9), some poleis suffered under the Persians, but overall the Persian-ruled Anatolian Greeks did quite well in the fourth century. The Carthaginians were fought to a standstill by the tyrants of Sicily and then by Timoleon; Carthage ended up controlling about a third of Sicily, but no more. Jason and later Alexander of Pherai were assassinated before realizing their full potential as leaders of a united Thessaly. Mausolus died soon after launching his challenge to Athens in the Social War of 357–355; his successors were less threatening to Athenian interests.

  Philip of Macedon stood out among the fourth century opportunists. He shared their taste for selective features of Greek culture, and, like them, he employed Greek experts to his own ends. But he went his fellow dynasts one better in various ways. As a leader, Philip possessed many of the characteristics that Thucydides had so admired in Pericles: He was a subtle diplomat, a superb manager of men and money, a bold and astute military strategist. He had a focused and a far-sighted vision of what his state might accomplish and of what natural and human resources would be required in order for his vision to be fulfilled.

  Like Dionysius I of Syracuse, Philip made creative use of advances in military technology and actively pursued new technological advances. Like Epaminondas of Thebes, Philip saw the value of military training and experimented successfully with novel battlefield formations. Philip innovated in combining cavalry, light infantry, and heavy infantry. He employed both strategic pursuit of defeated enemies and strategic foundation of cities. Moreover, Philip was lucky, if not in his total life span (born in 382, he died in 336 at age 46), then both in his relatively long reign and in his heir. Unlike the other leading opportunists, Philip ruled for long enough (23 years: 359–336 BCE) both to expand and to consolidate his state. Moreover, upon Philip’s death, his son, at age 20, was ready to assume control. Alexander quickly proved to be his father’s equal as a ruler, diplomat, strategist, and field commander.3

  The Macedonian conquest of Greece was not inevitable. Philip’s career might have followed an arc similar to that of other opportunists: He suffered at least two life-threatening battlefield wounds before arriving on the plain of Chaeronea; either incident could have killed him before Alexander was ready to take over as Macedon’s ruler. Like Jason and Alexander of Pherai, Philip was assassinated by a trusted member of his inner circle. His death came two years after he had beaten the Greek allies at Chaeronea, but had an assassin struck a few years earlier, the Macedonian imperial state might have fallen apart before any decisive encounter with the great poleis of central Greece had taken place. If, upon coming to the throne in 336, Alexander had proven less than superbly competent, the effects of Philip’s victory at Chaeronea might have proved ephemeral.

  Philip did very well in the domain of leveraging Greek expertise—his choice of Aristotle as a tutor for his son is exemplary. Each of the earlier opportunists, however, had also been skilled in the domain of borrowing expertise, as they were in various other domains (strategy, management) relevant to hegemonic ambitions. Had one of the earlier opportunists been luckier in regard to his length of reign and heir, Philip might have been beaten to the punch; Macedon might have been absorbed into someone else’s empire. On the other hand, in counterfactual worlds in which one imagines that Philip died before consolidating the Macedonian state, or that his heir was not his equal, other opportunists could have emerged as existential threats to the Greek world—Darius III, as Great King of Persia, is among the plausible candidates.

  In sum, we ought not imagine that the political fall of Greece had to happen just when and just as it did—or that the loss of Greek independence was nothing more than a bizarre twist of fortune that sequentially placed two world-class military and organizational geniuses on the Macedonian throne. While the rapid rise of Macedon and the political fall of classical Greece could not have been predicted ex ante, they are certainly explicable ex post, when viewed against the wider context of the development of expertise relevant to empire-building and the mobility of that expertise in the late classical Greek world.4

  MACEDON BEFORE PHILIP

  Macedonia was a large and resource-rich region north and east of Thessaly and the Chalkidike Peninsula (map 9). It had long been connected culturally, economically, and politically to the mainland Greek world. But Macedonia also had historical and geographic connections with Epirus to the west, with tribal regions of inland Eurasia to the north, and with Thrace and Persian-ruled Anatolia to the east. Topographically, Lower Macedonia was centered on the fertile lowland plain formed by the Axios River in the south and east, while Upper Macedonia was an extensive zone of mountainous highlands extending west and north from Mt. Olympus. While Lower Macedonia lay within the Mediterranean climatic zone, Upper Macedonia lay outside it. Indeed, the Macedonian highlands may be generally defined as that part of the Greek peninsula lying outside the Mediterranean zone. As such, much of Macedonia was colder and wetter than the Mediterranean Greek world.

  MAP 9 Northern Aegean Greek world, mid-fourth to third century BCE.

  The history and culture of Upper Macedonia, especially, was nearly as foreign to the Greeks as that of Thrace or Scythia. Macedonia was rich in natural resources that were rare in the rest of Greece. Upper Macedonia was especially famous for its timber, producing in abundance the large trees essential for ship-building and for the ceiling elements of monumental buildings, including temples, stoas, shipsheds, and military towers. Poleis like Athens that regularly constructed warships and large public buildings had strong reasons to seek access to Macedonian resources.5

  The Inventory lists 17 poleis as having been established in the region of Macedonia by 323 BCE. I estimate the population of these poleis at 145,000, but the total population of Macedonia was certainly higher. Many Macedonians, especially residents of Upper Macedonia, lived in settlements not categorized as poleis. By the end of his reign in 336 BCE, Philip had created a Greater Macedonia that incorporated the coastal plain west of the Thermaic Gulf, the whole of the Chalkidike Peninsula, and much of coastal Thrace. Greater Macedonia was the core of an empire that, by 336, also included Thessaly, inland Thrace, Epirus, and the Greek mainland (map 9).

  Philip sent an expeditionary force to establish a beachhead in northwestern Anatolia shortly before his untimely death. This move made it abundantly clear that he intended to continue Macedon’s imperial expansion to the east, into regions controlled by Persia. Although we cannot say how much of the Persian Empire Philip imagined he might conquer, Alexander went after the entirety of the Great King’s domain—and more. By the time of Alexander’s death in 323 BCE, the king of Macedon ruled over the largest empire the Western world had ever seen. But none of that could have been foreseen when Philip came to the throne in 359 at age 23. Before Philip, the king of Macedon had not been a major player, even on the Greek scene—much less an existential threat to the greatest of the Greek poleis and to the Great King himself.

  As early as the Persian Wars of the early fifth century, the Greeks regarded the king of Macedon as within their orbit—if not exactly as one of themselves. Alexander I (who ruled ca. 498–454 BCE) was reputed to have brought the Greeks intelligence of the Persian advance early in the great Persian Wars of 481–478. By the end of the fifth century, the Macedonian court was sufficiently Hellenized to have become the “off-off Broadway” of Greek tragedy: Euripides ended his career by producing his plays for Macedonian audiences. Some elite Macedonian social customs were, however, still regarded as typically “barbarous” by the Greeks—notably the Macedonian symposium, at which heavily armed men downed mass quantities of undiluted wine (wine was always mixed with water in a proper Greek symposium). The impression of barbarism was not reduced when, as sometimes happened, drunken arguments escalated into murder
ous violence.

  Much of Macedonian society before Philip appears to have been essentially feudal. Macedonian nobles were in some ways reminiscent of Homeric heroes, glorying in hunting, feasting, and war. They were willing to follow a king into battle if he was a strong leader but limited in their loyalty to the weak Macedonian state. While most Macedonians practiced monogamy, as did the Greeks, the Macedonian king (at least as exemplified by Philip and Alexander) might take multiple wives, perhaps in imitation of the practice of Persian royalty. How culturally or linguistically “Hellenic” the general Macedonian population was in the age before Philip II, or even a generation after his death, remains controversial. It is in any event unlikely that most Greeks in the fourth century regarded most Macedonians as truly Greek—or for that matter that most Macedonian elites regarded the citizens of Greek city-states as their own social peers.6

  Unlike the polis-dwelling Greeks to their south, the Macedonians had long been at least nominally ruled by kings. The royal capital was, by the early fourth century, located at the town of Pella (i543: size 4) on the Axios River plain. Aigeai (i529: size 2), the former capital, was situated some 35 km to the southwest and remained an important ritual center. It was also the royal burial ground and the site of some extraordinary late fourth century tombs, one of which has been (somewhat dubiously) identified as that of Philip II. Macedonian kings were invariably drawn from the extended Argead lineage. In a familiar bit of specious and self-serving mythologizing (cf. the Athenian myth of Ion as founder of the Ionian ethnos: ch. 8), the Argead clan traced its ancestry to Herakles. The royal succession did not, however, necessarily pass from father to son. The succession seems to have been based on “necessary if insufficient” conditions of bloodline and competence. When there were multiple plausible heirs, the choice was presumably made by a coalition of powerful Macedonian elites. Kings were acclaimed, but not elected, by the Macedonian army.7