Antigonus Gonatas, born about 319 and a grandson of Antipater through his mother Phila, had lived in Macedonia for seven years from 294 to 287, when his father was king of Macedonia and he himself the heir to the throne. The idea of returning to rule Macedonia had enormous appeal and he wasted no time in transporting his forces there, landing to a hero’s welcome from the Macedonians. All they needed was sound leadership and proper organization to be able to defeat the Galatians, and these Antigonus provided. Within a year, the fearsome Galatian threat had been dealt with: many Galatians were killed, most were forced out of Macedonia to look for new opportunities further east (where many of them eventually entered Asia Minor), and some thousands, impressed that Antigonus had shown himself able to beat them, took service with the new Macedonian king as mercenaries and helped to enhance his strength.
Gonatas found an enormous task in front of him: Macedonia lay prostrate from its years of Celtic occupation, and much of the work of Philip in building up Macedonia had been undone. He was not daunted. It turned out that, while he might be a mediocre general, Antigonus Gonatas had a genius for governance and organization. He took on the task of rebuilding Macedonia with relish, and over the course of his more than thirty-five years as king (he ruled until 239) won a devotion from the Macedonians second only to that they felt for Philip. There was one brief blip early on when the military adventurer Pyrrhus of Epirus, having been defeated by the Romans in an attempt to conquer Italy, invaded Macedonia in 275. He defeated Antigonus and took control of the kingdom, but promptly left again to pursue an opportunity in the Peloponnese. Gonatas rallied his forces, recovered control of Macedonia, and led his army south to finish off the nuisance Pyrrhus. The Epirote king died in street fighting in Argos in 272, and from then on Antigonus Gonatas’ rule over Macedonia was secure.
And so the former empire of Alexander settled down at last into a fixed new order. As had been essentially established in 315, there were three successor kingdoms. The Antigonid dynasty (the descendants of Antigonus the One-Eyed) ruled Macedonia and Thessaly and dominated southern Greece and much of the Balkan region. The former Persian Empire was now the Seleucid kingdom, ruled by the descendants of Seleucus Nicator. Egypt, finally, and some peripheral territories such as Palestine, Cyprus, and the Cyrenaica, were ruled by the descendants of Ptolemy Soter (the Savior), as he was known after his death. This was not an unfamiliar political geography: in the 350s, some eighty years earlier, the same three kingdoms had dominated the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia. The one great difference made by Alexander’s conquests was that all three kingdoms were now ruled by Macedonian dynasties, and in all three Greek was the dominant language and Greek urban civilization and culture were the dominant civilization and culture.
CHAPTER 7
The Hellenistic World and Hellenistic Civilization
THANKS TO THE CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER AND THE HERCULEAN efforts of his Successors, western Asia, north Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean region generally were home for some six hundred years—300 BCE to 300 CE—to the civilization known as Hellenistic. The Greek language was the common language spoken by the educated elites everywhere, from Samarkand to Sardis and from the Crimea to Assuan. Everywhere a person traveled, there were Greek cities where Greek was spoken and a familiar urban environment, with familiar amenities, services, and entertainments, was to be found. For two centuries this civilization was ruled over by Macedonian kings supported by Macedonian armies; then for four more centuries Roman governors ruled and Roman armies provided security, but the urban Hellenistic civilization remained the same throughout. How remarkable a feat it was to unite the very disparate peoples and cultures living from Iran to the Mediterranean and from the Black Sea to the Sudan into one great civilizational sphere with relative peace, order, and security, and a common language and culture superposed over the vast linguistic and cultural diversity, is not well enough acknowledged. It bears investigating what Hellenistic civilization was, and how it was imposed and maintained.
1. THE KINGS
Discussion of the kings of the Hellenistic world begins appropriately by quoting again the definition of kingship found in the Suda and already quoted above in Chapter 4. It clearly derives from an early Hellenistic source, and it neatly sets out the basic qualities expected of Hellenistic kings: competent military leadership and capable administration.
Basileia (kingship): it is not descent or legitimacy which makes a king; it is the ability to lead armies well and handle affairs competently. This is seen by the examples of Philip and of Alexander’s Successors.
The great kings of the kingdoms and dynasties described in the previous chapter stood at the apex of Hellenistic civilization for its first two centuries, until the advent of the Romans. It was no easy thing, being a Hellenistic king: one had to try to live up to the example of giants. Philip, Alexander, and the Successors—Antigonus, Seleucus, Ptolemy and the rest—strode across the imaginations of the people of the Hellenistic world, and the kings who succeeded them inevitably were measured against their achievements. Many of the Hellenistic kings failed this test, perhaps to some degree crushed by the burden of expectation. There were the incompetents, such as Seleucus II who liked to be called “Callinicus” (Glorious Victor) to hide his military failures; the pleasure-lovers, such as Ptolemy IV and Ptolemy VIII, the latter known to his detractors as “Physkon” (Pot-belly) as a result of his excesses; and the utter nonentities, such as Antiochus IX or Ptolemy X, scarcely remembered for anything at all. But there were also competent Hellenistic kings who strove to live up to the examples of the Macedonian founders and the responsibilities of their positions, and even a few who genuinely met the challenge and deserve to be remembered as great, in their own ways. Each of the great dynasties produced at least one, and they represent what the Hellenistic kings could be at their best.
Around the year 522 CE a Byzantine traveler and monk named Cosmas Indicopleustes (Cosmas the India-Voyager) visited the port of Adoulis on the coast of Eritrea in east Africa. There he saw and recorded a remarkable Greek inscription:
King Ptolemy the Great, son of king Ptolemy and queen Arsinoe, the Brother-Sister Gods, who were children of king Ptolemy and queen Berenice the Savior Gods, descended on his father’s side from Heracles son of Zeus and on his mother’s side from Dionysus son of Zeus, having succeeded his father as ruler of Egypt, Libya, Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Lycia, Caria, and the Cycladic islands, marched into Asia with a force of infantry and cavalry, a fleet, and elephants from the Cave-dwellers (Troglodytes) of Ethiopia, which his father and he were the first to hunt from these places and which they brought down to Egypt and trained for use in war. He secured control of all the land this side (i.e. west) of the Euphrates, as well as Cilicia, Pamphylia, Ionia, the Hellespont, and Thrace, and of all the forces in those regions and of the Indian elephants; and having brought under his control all the governors of these regions, he crossed the River Euphrates and subdued Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Susiane, Persis, Media and all the remaining territory as far as Bactria; and he sought out the sacred objects that had been removed from Egypt by the Persians and brought them back to Egypt along with other treasure from these regions; and he sent his forces across the canals … (Austin The Hellenistic World doc. 221 = Dittenberger OGIS no. 54).
20. Gold coin of Ptolemy III Euergetes
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image by Jastrow)
This is the self-representation of Ptolemy III, known as Euergetes (the Benefactor), and it tells a remarkable tale of this energetic and effective king. In the first place, it must be noted that much of what is claimed here is not true: it is essentially certain that Ptolemy III conquered no lands in Asia Minor or east of the Euphrates as here claimed. But that is to a certain degree beside the point. Ptolemy III was a conqueror like his grandfather the first Ptolemy: he did invade Syria as far as the Seleucid capital of Antioch, and add these lands to the Ptolemaic realm for a time. What is of interest here is the nature of the claims m
ade, the reason for them, and what they tell us of Ptolemy and his conception of himself as king. In the first place, he emphasizes descent: he was the third king of his line, after his father Ptolemy Philadelphus and his grandfather Ptolemy Soter. This descent was clearly crucial to him: it made him who he was, a “great king” in his own right. Interestingly he emphasizes his descent in the female line too: he references queen Arsinoe (who was not in fact his biological mother) and his grandmother queen Berenice. Besides this real descent, to emphasize his glorious genealogy, he alleges further descent: his grandfather was descended from Heracles, and his grandmother from Dionysus. It is the first of these fictitious descents that is significant: the claim to descent from Heracles establishes a connection to the old Macedonian royal line of the Argeads, who were supposed to be descended from Heracles. In other words, Ptolemy here claims that his grandfather was some sort of Argead, and that he himself thus descended from the old royal lineage of Macedonia. There is in fact a known story alleging that the first Ptolemy was an illegitimate son of the great Philip, which may be here hinted at.
Next notice the joint exploits of Ptolemy III and his father Ptolemy Philadelphus: together they invaded the land of the “Troglodytes” and were the first to capture and train African elephants there. The Troglodytai or Cave-dwellers of “Ethiopia” were described by Herodotus as a very strange people on the very edge of the known world: “the fastest people of any of whom we have found any report. They eat reptiles such as snakes and lizards, and speak a language different from any other, that sounds like bats screeching” (4.183). It has been suggested that the “bat-like” language refers to the distinctive clicking sounds in the old Khoisan languages of pre-Bantu Africa; and the inhabitants of east Africa are of course famously great runners to this day. Ptolemy is saying that he and his father went beyond the known world, which was the kind of thing done by heroes of Greek myth such as Heracles or Jason and the Argonauts. And in this case the claim is true: Ptolemy III really did penetrate well to the south of Egypt, as the inscription set up in Adulis itself proves, and the Ptolemies (or their hunters) really did capture and train African elephants. Most importantly, note the lands Ptolemy III here claimed to have conquered and the title he gave himself. The lands mentioned, all of Asia from the Hellespont to Bactria, are of course the lands conquered by Alexander; and Ptolemy calls himself “Megas” (the Great), the title given to Alexander alone among previous Greek or Macedonian leaders. Ptolemy III, that is to say, here deliberately and consciously presented himself as a second Alexander, who had conquered the same lands as Alexander had and deserved the same title. To cap the likening of himself to Alexander, there is the claim that he recovered sacred artifacts looted from Egypt by the Persians and returned them to Egypt: Alexander had famously recovered in Persia statues and other sacred objects looted from Athens by the Persians, and returned them to Greece.
The point of these claims, then, is to advertise that Ptolemy Euergetes was not just a descendant of kings, but a worthy one; not just a man who lived up to the examples of his immediate ancestors, but a king who could stand comparison to Alexander “the Great”; not just the heir to the Ptolemaic kingship, but the heir of the Argeads of old. That the claims made are exaggerated did not matter: few who read this, or other inscriptions like it that will doubtless have been set up around his kingdom, will have known enough or cared to quibble. It was that Ptolemy claimed to be and strove to be this kind of king that mattered. He did not take the role of king lightly, he did not give himself over to indulgence: he strove to be a worthy heir to the great rulers of the past, and presented himself as such. And he recognized in doing so that he was a king of Egyptians: Alexander might have returned sacred objects to Greece; Ptolemy here claimed to have restored sacred objects to his own people, the Egyptians. Ptolemy, that is, cultivated the good will of his Egyptian subjects, as well as emphasizing his Greek and Macedonian heritage. And that he won genuine good will by his efforts is attested by another famous inscription, the Canopus decree:
In the reign of Ptolemy the son of Ptolemy and Arsinoe the Brother-Sister Gods, in the ninth year (238 BCE) … [extensive further dating formulas omitted] … it was decreed: the high priests, the prophets, those who enter the holy of holies to dress the gods, the wing bearers, the sacred scribes, and the other priests who have assembled from the whole land … for the birthday and ascension day of the king … held a session on that day in the temple of the Benefactor Gods at Canopus and declared: since king Ptolemy son of Ptolemy and Arsinoe the Brother-Sister Gods, and queen Berenice his sister and wife, the Benefactor Gods, constantly confer many great benefits on the temples throughout the land and increase more and more the honors of the gods, and show constant care for Apis and Mnevis and all the other famous sacred animals in the land at great expense, and since the king from a campaign abroad brought back to Egypt the sacred statues that had been stolen out of the land by the Persians, and restored them to their proper temples from which they had been taken, and since he has maintained the land at peace by fighting in its defense against many nations and rulers, and since they have provided good governance to all those in the land … (Austin The Hellenistic World doc. 222 = Dittenberger OGIS no. 56)
The inscription continues at great length listing the good deeds of Ptolemy and his wife Berenice, praising them, and bestowing honors on them in gratitude. The point is that the priests of the native Egyptian gods acknowledged and honored Ptolemy III as a diligent and effective ruler, and specifically endorsed his claim to have repatriated sacred Egyptian objects. Ptolemy III was, as kings go, a good king who worked at being worthy of the position and earning the good will of his people, both Greek and Egyptian. However exaggerated his own propaganda may have been, it was based in some genuine reality, and reflected his real desire to be seen to be a worthy king.
In the early decades of the twentieth century there lived in the old Hellenistic city of Alexandria, then still a thriving metropolis under British rule, a remarkable Greek man. Outwardly he was nothing to attract much notice: during working hours he held a minor position in the British bureaucracy, fulfilling his duties neither negligently nor with much zeal. But outside working hours this man, Constantinos Cavafy, lived a rich life filled with amorous encounters and with imaginings of the long and glorious past of his people, the Greeks. He was a poet, and a great poet at that; his imagination lingered in the great era of Hellenistic civilization, and in a way he could be called the last Hellenistic poet, living two thousand years out of his true time. In one of his poems, he recreates a scene from the life of a Hellenistic king, the Macedonian ruler Philip V:
He’s lost his former dash, his pluck.
His wearied body, very nearly sick,
will henceforth be his chief concern. The days
that he has left, he’ll spend without a care. Or so says
Philip, at least. Tonight he’ll play at dice.
He has an urge to enjoy himself. Do place
lots of roses on the table. And what if
Antiochus at Magnesia has come to grief?
They say his glorious army lies mostly ruined.
Perhaps they’ve overstated: it can’t all be true.
Let’s hope not. For though they were the enemy, they were kin to us.
Still, one “let’s hope not” is enough. Perhaps too much.
Philip of course won’t postpone the celebration.
However much his life has become one great exhaustion
a boon remains: he hasn’t lost a single memory.
He remembers how they mourned in Syria, the agony
they felt, when Macedonia their motherland was smashed to bits.
Let the feast begin. Slaves: the music, the lights!
(C. P. Cavafy “The Battle of Magnesia” tr. D. Mendelsohn 2009)
Thus the poet imagines the scene when Philip V, Antigonid king of Macedonia, heard of the defeat of his contemporary Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire at the hands of the Roma
ns. These two kings, who came to the thrones of their respective kingdoms within a year of each other, shared an intertwined fate of near greatness and ultimate fall. In many ways, they were the best of the Hellenistic kings, and yet they had the bad luck to still be ruling when Roman power began to encroach into the Hellenistic world, and both ended their lives in defeat. These ultimate defeats should not detract from the near greatness they showed in their primes.
Philip was the grandson of Antigonus Gonatas, and became king of Macedonia when his cousin and predecessor Antigonus III Doson died unexpectedly in 221. Philip was then about seventeen years old, and ruled for some forty-two years until his own death in 179. Doson had been a very capable king, and had trained Philip well for the role. Philip’s reign falls naturally into two phases, pivoting around the year 197. In the early phase he was something of a military adventurer, trying to emulate Alexander but in truth more closely resembling Demetrius the Besieger’s occasional brilliance but fundamental inconsistency. Philip wanted Macedonia to be a great power again: he fought the Aetolian League in the Social War (220–217); the Romans in the First Macedonian War (216–206); the Ptolemaic Empire in a war (205–201) in which he sought to take over Ptolemaic possession in the Aegean islands and eastern coastal cities; and the Romans again in the Second Macedonian War (200–197). In these wars he displayed considerable military talent and scored some brilliant successes, but also put himself and his forces in positions of great difficulty at times, and suffered some serious setbacks. What remained clear throughout, however, was his desire to be seen as a king worthy of the title, worthy of succeeding to Philip II, Alexander, and Antigonus I, and his desire to keep Macedonia secure and strong. In this latter context, one must also mention repeated campaigning by Philip on Macedonia’s northern borders, keeping the Illyrians, Dardanians, and Thracians at bay as was the duty of every Macedonian king.
Before and After Alexander Page 29