By slipping into the cosmopolitan structures and dynamics of the Persian Empire, Alexander certainly privileged continuity over rupture. Accordingly, the conquest strengthened exchanges with the Greek world and the processes of cultural transfer already underway. What is troubling, however, is the way in which an epic confrontation between a “civilizing” Hellenism and a “primitive and barbarian” East is staged in the narratives of conquest (Bonnet 2014). To legitimize the conquest, this narrative amplifies the break with the past. Arrian, Diodorus, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, and Justin, despite their diversity, all furnish a Greek memory of the event, and the silence of Phoenician sources deprives us of any comparison. Furthermore, these accounts are largely posterior to the event. They fall more under the genre of heroic history, of myths associated with the sometimes revered, sometimes criticized figure of Alexander the Conqueror, founder of an empire that was as ephemeral as it was memorable (Briant 2012). One element of continuity, however, is emphasized by these sources: that of the atavistic conflict between Greeks and Persians that Herodotus had already noted (Hdt. 1.1–2). Alexander therefore comes in Achilles’s footsteps to avenge a Greece humiliated by Darius I and Xerxes, to put an end to the unending wars.
On the other hand, the ancient historiography on Alexander mobilizes all the clichés about barbaric otherness and the benefits of paideia to present as a cultural mission what was actually a military conquest. While the kings of Arados, Byblos, and Sidon were sufficiently wise and farsighted to welcome Alexander as a liberator and spontaneously grant him power, the king of Tyre, supported by the entire population, gave free rein to the hubris that characterizes barbarians. The siege of Tyre lasted seven long months of unprecedented ferocity. It was a grandiose occasion for the Greek sources to highlight all that differentiated the local people, who had thrown themselves into a senseless resistance doomed to failure, from the Greeks, noble and clever, led by Alexander and assisted by the gods themselves (Herakles, Apollo), as if in Tyre the epic battle of Troy were playing out again. The narrative processes of Greek and Latin sources all sought to magnify the contributions of Alexander, the civilizing king. Even the somewhat fragile solidarity between Tyre and Carthage, which wanted to help its mother-city, is presented in a negative light, as if this East–West axis across the Mediterranean was and would always be a threat to Hellenism and its “natural” universalizing destiny. The conquest narratives thus construct a memory of the “Hellenization” of the Phoenician cities, sometimes spontaneous and redemptive, sometimes forced, but always legitimate. They pay little attention to the singularity of the Phoenician case, rightly emphasized by Fergus Millar (Millar 1983). In the panorama of the new Greco-Macedonian Empire, Phoenicia was indeed an exception. No Greek settlement was established there (Cohen 2006), in contrast to Syria, while the diasporic dimension of Tyre meant that the city had long been integrated into the Mediterranean-wide network of connectivity. For these reasons, the concept of “Hellenization” appears doubly inadequate to describe the dynamics specific to the Hellenistic period in Phoenicia. What happened there was something more complex, more fluid, and more creative than the simple adoption of Greek culture.
The Change in Governing Frameworks
When we speak of “Hellenization,” we tend to focus on the cultural aspects, while the changes above all affected politics. Highlighting the “civilizing” benefits in the conquest narratives is a strategy that poorly masks Alexander’s imperialism. The idea was to impose the power of the Greeks on the Phoenicians as a replacement for the Persians. Local people shifted from one tribute system to another, which was an essential element of continuity. Freedom, lauded by Isocrates, the herald of paideia, was reserved for the Greeks and was hardly suited to the conquered populations of barbarians! Did Alexander, heir to the structures of the Achaemenid Empire, plan to “Hellenize” the system? Would the Phoenician kingdoms turn into poleis or city-states with representative bodies such as a council and an assembly? The issue is complex (Apicella and Briquel-Chatonnet 2015) and also obscured by the incomplete source material. Local royalty governed for some time after the conquest, as evidenced by certain inscriptions and coins. While at Arados and Tyre the kings remained in place (although the latter was given a special supervisor, Philotas: Quintus Curtius 4.5.9), in Sidon, Alexander replaced the king with Abdalonymus, the gardener of royal descent who had previously been cut off from power (Bonnet 2014). Everywhere, kings pledged allegiance to Alexander and simultaneously had their privileges reduced. In the space of one or two generations (the first quarter of the third century), the kings had disappeared (Eddy 1961). Yet even before the arrival of Alexander, the Phoenician kings surrounded themselves with councils (of elders, prominent people) and/or civic assemblies, although there is little extant information to provide more detail.
The transition from an absolute monarchy to a sort of “constitutional” one had to be done gradually under the leadership of the Greeks, as well as that of local elites who held offices and thereby served as efficient relays for Greco-Macedonian, then Ptolemaic and Seleucid domination. Inscriptions also show the functions of rab (“great one”) and shofet (“judge, governor”), unknown in the Persian period, but well attested in the Carthaginian sphere in the group of magistrates known as suffetes, who were at the forefront of the political and social scene. Faced with the disappearance of the monarchical model, which up to then had ordered society and its institutions, Phoenician communities found inspiration in Carthage for rethinking their internal organization and balance of power. The Greek model of the polis thus helped to transform Phoenician kingdoms: there were now assemblies, agoranomi, agonothetes, gymnasiarchs, ephebes, officials in charge of coinage, and so on. Without fully assimilating the Greek model, the Phoenician cities nevertheless experimented with new, more collegial forms of governance.
Changes in the practices of minting coinage provide evidence for this. As master of the entire region, Alexander seized the regal prerogative of minting coinage. Until the last years of the fourth century bce, workshops in Phoenician cities produced gold Alexander coins, with the name of Alexander fully spelled out in Greek. The coins also have typical Greek symbols: Athena and Nike on the gold coins to signify the victory of Hellenism, Herakles and Zeus on the silver coins, and Herakles on bronze copies, echoing Alexander’s alleged kinship with that civilizing hero. Yet these first series also mention, in Greek or Phoenician or both, the name of the local kings under whose authority the coin was issued. In its own way, therefore, coinage developed a new “language of power” (Lorber 2015). When Phoenicia came under Ptolemaic control in 301 bce (except for Tyre in 294), Ptolemy introduced a coin with his likeness, as in Egypt. The higher powers entrusted to protect the new dynasty took on the appearance of deified Alexander, represented as the son of Zeus-Ammon. The message evokes a kind of political, cultural, and religious synthesis that the Ptolemies sought to promote all the way to Phoenicia.
The monetary policy of the Seleucids followed a different logic, progressively facilitating the autonomy of Phoenician cities. The Phoenician alphabet was given the honor of dating the coins (except Tyre, which used the Greek), while the image of the tutelary deity Tyche translated the idea of the city’s power and pride into the Greek language. From 168 bce, six Phoenician cities (Tripoli, Byblos, Berytos [i.e., Phoenician Laodicea], Sidon, Tyre and Ptolemais) launched a quasi-municipal bronze coin, with Antiochus IV on the obverse and the name of the Phoenician city on the reverse. These coins reveal a thirst for identity and a desire to exhibit the legendary glories of the past (on coins, see also chapter 25, this volume). This evolution culminated with the right to asylia in Tyre in 141 bce and Sidon twenty years later. Around 125 bce at Tyre, the royal Seleucid portrait was replaced by the bust of Herakles, who, although Greek in appearance, at the same time refers to the prestigious Baal of Tyre, Melqart.
We can see, then, in different places and times and in different circumstances, that Phoenician (or rather, Tyrian and Sidonia
n) elements and Greek elements were combined to produce messages that reflect a search for balance between dominance and autonomy, between tradition and openness, and between local and global.
Cults and the Dynamics of Mediation
Cultic practices, which are also largely embedded with politics, are a privileged field for mediations and multicultural arrangements (Bonnet 2014). Polytheistic systems are open but also voluntarily cumulative. This means that while each community (Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Arados, etc.) had its own pantheon, rituals, and representation of the gods, the deities of others could still be accommodated when their power was likely to provide additional protection. For example, from a very early time, Phoenicians adopted Egyptian deities such as Hathor, Isis, Osiris, and Amon, which they identified with their own gods for the sake of ritual efficacy. In this area, as in those mentioned earlier, the Phoenicians did not wait for the Hellenistic period to familiarize themselves with the religious worlds of their neighbors. For instance, from the beginning of the first millennium bce, the island of Cyprus in particular was a vast, cross-cultural experimental space in which Cypriot, Phoenician, and Greek gods were all appropriated (on Cyprus, see chapter 31, this volume).
The numerous exchange networks that brought the Mediterranean to life provided a great many opportunities to experiment with combinations or contextual equivalences, which were always contingent and empirical—nothing was dogmatic or fixed. Using names of the gods, epikleses, ritual forms, images, offices, and modes of operating and/or associating, people fashioned creative, sometimes surprising, solutions in response to the changes in the religious landscape. In fact, after Alexander’s conquest, on the Phoenician coast as well as inland but to different degrees, Greeks and Phoenicians, residents and passing visitors, traders, farmers, fishermen, women, intellectuals, and artisans lived together and also shared a territory inhabited by divine entities. The concept of “Hellenism” seems to suggest a distancing from, a decline in, or an effacing of the Phoenician gods in favor of their Greek counterparts. Is this what we find in practice?
Let us take the example of Melqart, the Baal of Tyre. The accounts of the conquest of Tyre reveal a vigorous appropriation of his cult by Alexander (Bonnet 2014). It is true that the “King of the City” (mlk qrt) was the centerpiece of the legitimation of dynastic power. The Greek hero Herakles, an alleged ancestor of Alexander, seems to have completely overwhelmed the Phoenician god, as Herodotus (Hdt. 2.44) had already suggested in the fifth century. Yet had Melqart really disappeared, strangled like the Nemean lion through the power of Herakles? The answer is no: several sources show that Melqart remained truly present in the Tyrian religious landscape of the Hellenistic period. First, in Tyrian anthroponomy references to Melqart persist, particularly among the local elite (e.g., Louvre inscription AO 1441). From the Tyrian inland, moreover, there is a marble statue base bearing five lines of Phoenician dating from 100 bce (Gubel et al. 2002, no. 123). The statue was an offering for the sanctuary of Melqart and was placed “at [the feet of Lo]rd Melqart in the sanctuary [of the Lord] forever; may he bless us!” Thus, even before the Roman conquest, Melqart was still revered in Phoenician as the Baal of the Tyrians.
The persistence of his cult and his importance as a tutelary god are also attested by the bronze coin-shaped tesserae mentioning the consecration of Tyre in 141 bce under his patronage (Abou Diwan and Sawaya 2011). Produced up to 60 bce, these tesserae have an inscription combining Phoenician and Greek: LMLQRT BṢR/HYRW’SLS, “To/for Melqart in Tyr / hiera (holy) and asylos (inviolable)” (figures 8.1–8.2). In the linguistic métissage here, the god as guarantor of inviolability is designated in Phoenician (Melqart), while the Greek label “holy and inviolable” is transcribed phonetically in Phoenician characters, with the coordinating conjunction kai translated into Phoenician by w. Even in a context where the Greek institutional influence was strong, the link between Tyre and Melqart was maintained and was necessarily expressed in Phoenician, which Strabo in the late first century bce or early first century ce understood in his own way by saying that “the Tyrians worship Herakles most highly” (Geogr. 16.2.22–23). The Greek institutional framework thus ends up giving voice to Phoenician traditions and “micro-identities” (Whitmarsh 2010). A weight in the Louvre (AO 4602) dated from the third century bce, with its legend LMLQRT/ŠT 10/BṢR (“belonging to Melqart, year 10, in Tyre”) confirms the central role of this god in the economic life of the city. The presence of a vertical club on another weight, associated with the image of a palm tree (phoinix), which evokes the Greek name of Phoenicia, Phoinike, invites us to move beyond Phoenician versus Greek dichotomies. There was clearly a middle ground for devising creative and unpredictable compromises.
Figures 8.1 and 8.2 Coin-shaped tessera in bronze (two sides), from Tyre, from the year 55 (72/1 av. J.-C.). Obverse: [L]EN / LMLQRT / BṢR. Reverse: [H]YR W ‘/ ŠLŠ. 29.05 mm; 14.40 g. (BnF, fonds H. Seyrig 1975.25).
Source: Public.
The trend was both to “de-barbarize” local deities, to break them out of local contexts and incorporate them into international networks, and to read them through the polyvalent lens of interpretatio, as well as to exalt their power rooted in a given land. At the same time, the Greek gods—Apollo, Pan, Aphrodite, and so on—were welcomed and bridges were built through the entire arsenal of multi-perspectiveness. What one observes, ultimately, is an extremely inventive koine—linguistic figurative, cultic, and onomastic—that historians must explain as such without deconstructing it. As pointed out, “more is different” is the way to understand these phenomena and to emphasize the fact that things are more than the sum of their parts. Phoenicians employed negotiations, ruses, diversions, a good dose of pragmatism and creativity, shared knowledge, and a strong sense of personal and collective interests. The “New Deal” of Hellenistic Phoenicia was the fruit of all these dynamics.
Strategies of the Elites
In what part of society do we find the drivers of these subtle shifts? Who is changing the scenery, cutting down or hampering the resistance, creating systems of alliance, fostering transfers? The sparse documentation shows that the elites—political, economic, and intellectual—who had much to lose and everything to gain in this “New Deal,” were certainly involved, even more so because of the decline and disappearance of the royalty. The nobles who had thus lost their status, along with clever bankers, bold entrepreneurs, and generous benefactors, all showed real familiarity and even kinship with Greek culture. It contributed to their prestige and influence, as did displaying their Phoenician family roots and their attachment to ancestral gods. In this, it is legitimate to speak of hybridity to describe the culture of Hellenistic Phoenicia, since it was in no way a choice between two cultures. Rather, the cultures were combined in varying degrees depending on the contexts, by developing a capacity for cultural mimesis that promoted integration, the key to success.
These “passeurs” between local culture and Greek culture were particularly dynamic in working with networks and movements of various kinds. An inscription about Diotimos, a Sidonian honored by his city for winning the chariot race in the Nemean Games in Argos around 200 bce, is one of the rare sources that opens a window onto the world of these political and cultural mediators, initiators of a new Phoenicia (Bonnet 2014). Called “judge,” a Greek term that probably refers to the Phoenician shofet, or a senior magistrate, Diotimos was celebrated in an epigram in verse, in the vein of Pindar: “the first among the citizens, you brought from Hellas in the noble house of the Agenorids the glory won in an equestrian victory.” It was not only Sidon praising him, but also “Thebes, the holy city of Kadmos” (Rüpke 2013: 50).
By embroidering the legendary fabric connecting Phoenicia to Greece through Kadmos, the epigram shows that at the game of emulation, that typically Greek agon, Phoenicians could equal and even surpass their masters. By highlighting Agenorid and Kadmian roots, this text also subtly reminded Greeks exercising their guardianship over the Phoenicians that the former
were beholden to the later for the phoinikeia grammata, the very foundation of their culture, and that the latter could still prove their superiority, even in Greek lands. The relative loss of political autonomy was compensated for by calling on Phoenicia’s ancient and brilliant cultural heritage, and by adopting typically Greek forms of sociability that were likely to promote, in return, local identities.
Ultimately, we see refined and diverse strategies charged with cultural hybridization, which allowed Phoenicians to appropriate the Greek symbolic fabric without abandoning their own culture. Greek culture, probably perceived as modern, prestigious, and cosmopolitan, was a source of distinction for elites. These elites also found, in concepts of Phoenician ancestrality and kinship, the means for weaving several threads of belonging and affiliation together to build a polyphonic social imaginary. We find an illuminating testimony of the new cultural landscape of Hellenistic Phoenicia in the verses from the poetic collection The Garland (preserved in the Palatine Anthology), by Meleager of Gadara (100 bce), who lived much of his life in Tyre. After having “set up his throne at the borders of culture” (AP 12.257), the poet fancies himself carving an eloquent text on his tomb (AP 7.417): “If I am a Syrian (Syros), what is the marvel (thauma)? One fatherland, stranger, is the Kosmos we inhabit. One Chaos bore all mortals” (cited by Andrade 2014: 306). Within Hellenistic Phoenicia, identities were blurred just as the boundaries that previously separated here from there, and same from different (e.g., the work of Philo of Byblos, a Phoenician writer in Roman times writing in Greek on Phoenician topics; see chapter 18, this volume).
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