than an illegitimate son. Besides, it was only necessary to go back a
generation or two to attach the line of Ptolemy to that of the ancient
"Zeus-born" kings of Macedon. The wife of Lagos had belonged, in fact,
to the royal family, as the Ptolemies took good care to observe.

The Ptolemaic empire was, accordingly, based on three concurrent
theories, one for the native Egyptians, one for the Greek city-states
and one for the Macedonians.

Appian of Alexandria,[90] writing about two hundred years after the
death of Cleopatra, cites the royal registers as authority for his
report that Philadelphus kept, for land operations 200,000 foot, 40,000
cavalry, and arms for 300,000 men; in addition, 300 war elephants and
2000 war chariots; for naval warfare, 2000 transports, 1500 battleships
with three to five banks of rowers, and oars and rigging for twice that
number. He had also, according to the same authority, 800 royal barges
with gilt poops and beaks, and in his treasury a reserve of 740,000
Egyptian talents, or $890,000,000.

That the reserve as given amounts to three times the value of the gold
and silver in the United States treasury shows that the enumeration
belongs only in the history yet to be written of the absurdities of
statistics. More credible estimates of the Egyptian army place it at
80,800 under the second Ptolemy and (exclusive of natives, who then
numbered 26,000) 49,700 under the fourth Ptolemy.[91] These are very
large totals. It will help to solve many questions of Ptolemaic policy
to observe where the soldiers came from.

But first we may notice that they could not come from the natives; for
their most important duty was to hold them in subjection. There were so
many people to keep down! Alexandria itself had a large native quarter.
The other two Greek cities in the land were but alien flecks in the
midst of a great multitude. Up and down the valley lay the native
hamlets, to the number of 33,333 according to Theocritus, teeming with
the seven million people whom Egypt then sustained. Alexander the
Great may have dreamed of Hellenizing these masses; Ptolemy, however,
had no such thought, as is shown conclusively by the fact that under
his dynasty and, indeed, for at least two centuries after its fall,
Naucratis, and probably also Ptolemais, forbade by law marriages
between their citizens and the natives.[92]

The sole landowner in Egypt was the king. The entire valley of the Nile
was literally his personal estate.

Except for certain portions "set apart" for particular purposes, which
we shall examine in a moment, the arable land surrounding the countless
native villages was in the possession of tenants of the crown, who
paid to the king about seven bushels of grain per acre as rent and
sowed their land according to royal orders with seed provided by him;
who might be dispossessed at any time, but could neither abandon their
plots (at least in seeding- and harvest-time) nor their villages
(except for short periods), at their own volition; who had numerous
services in connection with "geometry," irrigation, transport, post,
and similar matters to perform, and might be moved or forced en masse
to redeem and cultivate dry or marsh land situated near their hovels;
who paid a poll-tax and a house-tax to the king, and one sixth of
the yield of their vineyards and orchards, when they had any, to the
temple authorities whom the king appointed; who bought their beer, oil,
fish, honey, cloth, soda, bricks, wood, paper, and almost every other
article of common use either exclusively from the king, who was the
sole producer and seller, or in certain cases from private dealers,
who, however, paid so much for their license that they could not
undersell the king. Watchmen were everywhere in the fields to see that
the king was not defrauded. Gendarmes patrolled the country to guard
the roads and deserts, to prevent smuggling and "moonshining." Scribes
and bankers were in every village to keep account of all changes in
families and in leases; to visé every payment. Every village had its
storehouse of records, of grain, of money. And on the Nile went to and
fro the royal transports which carried the surpluses to Alexandria,
and the products of the royal factories to the local depots from which
they were sold. The king of Egypt was, accordingly, by far the greatest
merchant and manufacturer in the whole world. Even in far distant Delos
the price of paper, myrrh, and other articles was fixed by the pleasure
of the royal monopolist. That his interference "regulated the market"
to his own advantage may be inferred from the fact that the sheet of
paper which was sold in 296 B.C. for one obol (three and one half
cents) cost on the average eleven in 279-250 B.C.[93]

Thus set about by countless officials and shorn to the very skin, the
fellahs lived under the Ptolemies, "patient, laborious, cheerful,"
yet filled with hidden bitterness at the magnificence in which their
masters lived at their expense in Alexandria, venting their rage in
impotent prophecies that "the great city at the water's edge should
become a drying-place for the nets of fishers, and its gods should
migrate to the native capital Memphis."[94]

Clearly, the army of the Ptolemies could not be recruited from such
elements. The Egyptians might be put on the warships as rowers, used
in the transport service, and, occasionally when the need was great,
in small numbers as soldiers. But granted that they might be useful
in fighting abroad,--at home they belonged to the enemy from whom the
early Ptolemies had greatly to fear.

As such, the citizens of Alexandria, Naucratis, and Ptolemais were
apparently exempt from military service. Hence the great problem of
national defense could not have been solved by the founding of new
Greek cities of this type in Egypt had there been room for them, or by
the founding of any kind of cities, had Ptolemy thought it possible to
organize the natives in urban communities round a Greek or Macedonian
nucleus--as Alexander may have wished to do, as the Romans in fact did
in the year 202 A.D.; for, even if Ptolemy had cared for that kind of
thing, the Greek or Macedonian nucleus did not as yet exist in Egypt.
It had to be brought there from abroad. Hence it was a question of life
and death for the Ptolemaic dynasty to remain in constant communication
with the regions of the eastern Mediterranean whence came supporters of
their rule, soldiers for their armies.

"But shouldst thou really mean a voyage out," says one Greek peasant to
another in Theocritus,[95]--

      "The freeman's best paymaster's Ptolemy.

      (_Æschines_)

      What is he else?

      (_Thyonichus_)

                       A gentleman: a man

      Of wit and taste: the top of company;
      Loyal to ladies; one whose eye is keen
      For friends, and keener still for enemies.
      Large in his bounties, he, in kingly sort,
      Denies a boon to none: but, Æschines,
      One should not ask too often. This premised,
      If thou wilt clasp the military cloak
      O'er thy right shoulder, and with legs astride
      Await the onward rush of shielded men:
      Hie thee to Egypt."

Phoenicia and its hinterland were necessary to Ptolemy because of their
forests of timber for shipbuilding, which Egypt lacked. The rest of
his transmarine possessions were necessary because of their stock of
reliable soldiers, which Egypt also lacked. Hence, as stated already,
the imperial policy of the early Ptolemies was a plain consequence of
their domestic policy--of holding Egypt as a foreign country.

Let us now see what they did with the store of soldiers which they
possessed and with the new recruits whom they constantly added to
it.[96] I have already drawn your attention to certain lands which the
Ptolemies "set aside" for particular purposes. One complex of such
lands they assigned to the temples. And I may remark that while the
Ptolemies appointed and controlled the priests, they also conciliated
them, by leaving them valuable perquisites, paying to them stated sums
annually, building new temples and repairing old ones, and allowing
them to make for their own consumption the various articles which they
could buy only at the royal counters and at monopolistic prices. They
also set their land aside in a favored category. What is common to this
category is not a single fiscal arrangement, but a relinquishing by the
king of his right of direct management. To its members he binds himself
in a way that does not impair his ownership, but does restrict his
ability to take possession.

To this category belong the "gifts" of large blocks of land with
their villages to his courtiers, who received them free from rent
and taxes. The "friends" of the Ptolemies, though they resided in
Alexandria, were thus landed proprietors, absentee landlords, who
maintained their luxurious establishments in the capital on the rents
which their Egyptian tenants paid. Common soldiers could not expect
to become feudal lords by entering Ptolemy's service. But for his
"loyal comrades," as Theocritus[97] calls them,--his officers, court
dignitaries, and favorites,--he had such benefices to confer.

To the ordinary men-at-arms lots of land all over Egypt were
assigned; to those of the guard and the cavalry, sixty-five and
forty-five acre farms, to the infantrymen, farms of twenty acres.
For Egyptian conditions these were very large units, and since
under Philadelphus--who perfected this system of farming out his
soldiers--the army consisted of 57,600 foot and 23,200 horsemen, over
one quarter of all the arable land in Egypt would have been in their
possession, if only land naturally watered by the Nile had been given
to them, and if none of them were mercenaries serving only for hire.
Many, however, were doubtless mercenaries of this type; and to the
rest, land was commonly distributed which needed some expenditure of
capital and energy to be reclaimed from the desert or the water. Of
this kind of land the Ptolemies evidently inherited a goodly quantity
from the Persians, whose government had been rendered inefficient in
the fourth century B.C. by frequent revolts of the natives.

The soldiers might sublet their lots in whole or part and live in
Alexandria or elsewhere. Or they might take possession and till them
with their own hands. To facilitate the actual distribution of the
army over the country, the king attached to the lots "quarters" on
the premises of the neighboring Egyptians. This was not at all to the
liking of the latter, as the following letter of a quartermaster to a
county official shows:[98] "We have discovered that certain owners of
houses in Crocodilopolis, which were once used for quartering troops,
have taken off the roofs, and walled up the doors and built altars in
their places. This they have done so as not to have them occupied. If
then you agree, in view of the shortage of quarters, write Agenor that
he make the owners of the houses take the altars down, and build them
up again better than before upon the most suitable and conspicuous
parts of the roofs, so that we may be able to take possession." The
gods had never objected to having old altars replaced by finer ones.
Henceforth, not the entrances, but the roofs, were to be protected by
religion. The ancient quartermaster knew his business.

It was decidedly to the interest of the government that it should have
a sort of garrison in residence in all the _nomes_, or counties, of
Egypt--trained soldiers ready to take their places in their companies
at the command of the chief nome official, who was also their general.

These men were by no means all Macedonians or Greeks. Some of them
were Persians who had been in the land when Ptolemy arrived; some were
Libyans, Jews, Thracians, Mysians, Galatians; nearly all were from the
regions tapped by the empire of the Ptolemies.

They paid no rents for their lots, no poll-tax, and one tenth, in
place of one sixth, of the yield of their gardens and orchards. Like
the Hellenes generally, they might give commutation money in lieu of
manual labor on dykes and canals. In other respects they were taxed
rather more severely than the "royal tenants"; and, in addition, they
had to pay certain feudal "aids" to the king. If they failed to pay
these "aids," or if they fell in arrears with their taxes, they lost
their holdings. Hence they were under a financial constraint to make
the land, which they commonly received as waste land, productive. The
soldiers were, accordingly, the "pioneers" of Ptolemaic Egypt, steadily
at work enlarging the arable areas of the country and redressing the
agricultural wrongs which it had sustained during the troubles of the
later Persian régime.

Their lots reverted to the king when they died or left the army. The
king could then add them to his domain or reassign them to other
soldiers. During the imperial period of Ptolemaic history he seems to
have taken the former course whenever the land was in a condition to
bring him in a rent in addition to the taxes. However, from the very
beginning, he undertook to make a new or a re-grant to the sons of dead
or superannuated soldiers who were trained for military service. These
were officially designated "men of the _epigone_, or increase," and
they entered the army at the same time that they entered upon their
inheritance. In this way the Ptolemies bred a crop of new soldiers
in Egypt, so that they might look forward to being gradually less
dependent upon mercenaries recruited from beyond the seas. Egypt was
being enriched by a new military caste which should take the place by
the side of the new dynasty which the "_machimoi_" or "warriors" had
occupied during the old days of the native Pharaohs.

Multiracial though the soldiers were, they all spoke Greek. They had
to regulate their private conduct and their business affairs by the
special laws established in Egypt for the benefit of the various ethne,
or nationalities, to which they belonged. For in Ptolemaic Egypt,
as in the Turkish empire to-day, foreigners brought their own legal
restrictions and safeguards with them, which, however, were formulated,
for use in the Ptolemaic courts, in ethnic codes. These codes, however,
were either couched originally in Greek, or, like the laws of Moses,
which the Jews observed, they were translated into Greek at an early
date. How much political freedom the various nations enjoyed, it
is difficult to say; but in general they seem to have tempered the
absolutism of the Ptolemies only where they were massed together in
large numbers, as in Memphis and, above all, Alexandria. Elsewhere the
ethnic groups were, doubtless, constituted chiefly of the territorial
soldiers, or _cleruchs_, as they were called.[99] These, however,
ceased to have any civil rights when called by the king into active
service. With them political agitation could become effective only when
it became mutiny.

Prominent among the institutions which the Hellenic and Hellenized
foreigners brought into Egypt were those that centred in the gymnasia.
Some of them were, doubtless, at first and for long, a subject of
scandal and wonderment to the natives. As the Greeks ran and tumbled
stark naked in the palæstræ, or in the contests for which, as for the
army, the palæstræ were the training-grounds, the story of Heracles and
Busiris was constantly reënacted; except that in time Busiris came to
see whence sprang the strength which he could not resist. It was in the
gymnasia also that the Greeks received their higher education and by
its means that they secured for their sons the ideas which the poetry
and philosophy of Hellas alone could give. In the gymnasia temples of
Hellenism appeared in county after county of Egypt.

The foreigners brought with them into Egypt their native religions,
and, when they were not monotheists like the Jews, they came easily
into sympathy with the myriad cults of the natives. A religious
_rapprochement_ was thus established and a bi-religious _milieu_
created, by which a new half-Greek, half-Egyptian god, Sarapis,
whom Ptolemy I introduced from Sinope, prospered. Before long this
Janus-like deity, who was endowed with a sanctity and miraculous
power which hoary Egypt could alone give, and with a plastic beauty
peculiarly Greek, became distinctively _the_ great god of Egypt,
and, in conjunction with Isis, Anubis, and Harpocrates, the most
active religious force in the whole world of the Ptolemaic empire.
Sarapis-Osiris, the monarch, judge, and savior of the world of the
dead: Ptolemy-Pharaoh, the monarch, judge, and savior of the world
of the living;--these two and these two alone received the divine
homage of Greeks and Egyptians alike. The early Ptolemies willed
the impossible; to accept the native deities, cults, creeds, and
hierarchies as the active element in the fused Græco-Egyptian religion;
to let the two civilizations represented in their realm coalesce in so
far as their religious ideas, practices, aspirations, and hopes were
concerned; and at the same time to keep them apart in other respects:
to preserve in other matters the unapproachable superiority of the
invaders.

Certainly, success in this attempt to graft the ancient religion which
he as Pharaoh was bound to accept and preserve on the new stock of
Hellenism without corrupting the fine flavor of the fruit hitherto
borne by it in Greece, depended on making the Greek cities, Alexandria,
Naucratis, and Ptolemais, and the Græco-Macedonian military colonies
simply the Egyptian portion of a Græco-Macedonian realm reaching over
the seas to the head of the Ægean. This necessary support to his
position in Egypt the third Ptolemy jeopardized when he neglected to
replace the great fleet after 242 B.C. For twenty long years, moreover,
he left his army at work farming in Egypt, with the inevitable result
that it became immobile. Such a neglect of military matters seemed
warranted by the impotence of his two great rivals. For during this
entire period Asia was rent by a dynastic struggle and Macedon was
paralyzed by a general insurrection in Greece. His weak and indolent
son paid the penalty for his father's neglect. By strengthening his
army with 26,000 natives, whom he armed and drilled in the Macedonian
fashion (221-217 B.C.), he saved the empire for seventeen years, when
it fell before the combined attack of Macedon and Syria (202-200 B.C.);
but he tempted the Egyptians to lay claim with the sword to partnership
with the foreigners in the government. Thus presented, their claim was
rejected, as was natural; but once the empire was lost and the flow of
immigration into Egypt ceased, the Ptolemies of the "domestic" period
were forced to acknowledge its justice.

They constituted their territorial army more and more from native
soldiers, to whom they gave increasingly larger lots, while they
progressively diminished the size of those held by the foreigners. They
ceased to take back the holdings on the death or superannuation of the
occupants, thus admitting the right of sons and other male descendants
to get, in return for military service, not dry or marsh land, as in
the early days, but land already redeemed by their father's capital and
labor. Soldiers ceased to be soldiers spending their spare time winning
new land from the desert and the swamp for their master's estate; and
became farmers to whom service in the army was a nuisance and a loss.
The army became thereby hopelessly immobile.

The age was generally one of economic decline and not of economic
advance; for Egypt had gained more, as the sequel proved, from the
vigorous government of the early Ptolemies than it had lost by the
expenditure of its surpluses on the empire. In this decadent age the
Egyptians gained admission freely to the police and administrative
service as well as to the army. Thus elevated in social esteem,
they were able to intermarry with their ancient lords; so that a
considerable half-breed and bilingual population developed--Greek in
the outward things, fellaheen, according to Polybius, in character and
culture. Alexandria, he says,[100] "three strata occupy: the Egyptian
and the native race, sharp and (un)civilized. Then the mercenary
troops, oppressive and numerous and dissolute; for from old custom
they kept armed troops who had learned to rule rather than to obey, on
account of the worthlessness of the kings. The third stratum was that
of the Alexandrians, nor was even this truly a civilized population
owing to the same causes, but yet better than the other two, for though
of mixed breed, yet they were originally Greeks, with traditions of
the general type of the Greeks. But this part of the population having
disappeared mainly owing to Ptolemy Euergetes Physkon (145-116 B.C.) in
whose reign Polybius visited Alexandria,--for Physkon, when revolted
against, over and over again let loose his troops on the population and
massacred them,--and such being the state of things, to visit Egypt was
a long and thankless journey." Foreign enemies the omnipotent Roman
Senate kept off during the second century B.C.

But unnerved by the menacing patronage of the great republic, the
Ptolemies, now represented by men of vigor and no character or of
character and no vigor; by women, who were sprung mostly from adelphic
unions, of remarkable ability, beauty, and morals, prefaced with a
period of long-continued dynastic and national strife the dramatic
epoch of Ptolemy the Piper and Cleopatra the Great.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

 1. Mahaffy, J.P. _The Empire of the Ptolemies_ (1895), and _The
 Ptolemaic Dynasty_ (1899).

 2. Beloch, J. _Griechische Geschichte_, III (1904).

 3. Bouché-Leclercq, A. _Histoire des Lagides_, especially vols. III
 and IV (1906).

 4. Rostowzew, M. _Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates_
 (1910).

 5. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. _Stoat und Gesellschaft der
 Griechen_: D. _Die makedonischen Königreiche_ (1910).

 6. Lesquier, J. _Les institutions militaires de l'Égypte sous les
 Lagides_ (1911).

 7. Kornemann, E. _Ægypten und das (römische) Reich._ In Gercke and
 Norden's, _Einleitung in die AItertumswissenschaft_ (1912), pp. 272
 _ff._

 8. Mitteis, L., und Wilcken, U. _Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der
 Papyruskunde_ (1912).

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 77: Diodorus, XVIII, 4.]

[Footnote 78: Omitting the shadowy Eupator, Philopator Neos, and
Alexander II.]

[Footnote 79: Bouché-Leclercq, _Histoire des Lagides_, II, p. 278;
Plut., _Antony_, 54; Dio Cassius, XLIX, 41.]

[Footnote 80: _Pensées_, VI, 43 bis. Ed. Havet; cf. Bouché-Leclercq,
_Hist. des Lagides_, II, p. 180, n. 1.]

[Footnote 81: _Gesammelte Schriften_, IV, p. 256.]

[Footnote 82: _Idyll_, XVII. (Translation of Calverley.)]

[Footnote 83: See Droysen, _Geschichte des Hellenismus_,^2 III, pp. 262
_ff._]

[Footnote 84: Plut., _Aratus_, XV.]

[Footnote 85: _Idyll_, XVII, 110 _f._]

[Footnote 86: Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Sitzb. d. Berl. Akad._ XXIX
(1912), pp. 524 _ff._]

[Footnote 87: V, 34, 6-8.]

[Footnote 88: Bouché-Leclercq, _Histoire des Lagides_, III, pp. 1 _ff._]

[Footnote 89: Breasted, J.H., _Development of Religion and Thought in
Ancient Egypt_ (1912).]

[Footnote 90: _Prooem._ 10. Tarn, _Antigonus Gonatas_, pp. 454 _ff._]

[Footnote 91: Athenæus, V, 202 _f._; Polybius, V, 65.]

[Footnote 92: Wilcken, _Grundzüge_, 13, 17, 47.]

[Footnote 93: Glotz, _Journal des Savants_ (1913), pp. 16 _ff._]

[Footnote 94: Wilcken, _Grundzüge_, 22.]

[Footnote 95: _Idyll_, 14, 58 _ff._ (Translated by Calverley.)]

[Footnote 96: For the following section the works of Rostowzew,
Bouché-Leclercq (vol. IV), Wilcken, and Lesquier cited in the Select
Bibliography at the end of this chapter are fundamental.]

[Footnote 97: _Idyll_, XVII, 111.]

[Footnote 98: Wilcken, _Chrestomathie_, 449.]

[Footnote 99: See for this section Lesquier, _op. cit._, pp. 142 _ff._;
Mitteis, _Grundzüge_ Einl. XII; Schubart, W., _Spuren politischen
Autonomie in Ægypten unter den Ptolemäern_, _Klio_, X (1910), pp.
41 _ff._; cf. _Id._ _Archiv für Papyrusforschung_, V, pp. 81 _ff._;
Jouguet, P., _La vie municipale dans l'Égypte Romaine_ (1911);
Plaumann, G., _Ptolemais in Oberægypten_ (1910).]

[Footnote 100: XXXIV, 14 (Translated by Mahaffy, _The Ptolemaic
Dynasty_, p. 191.)]

VI

THE SELEUCID EMPIRE

The main portion of the conquests made by Alexander the Great lay
in the continent of Asia. On the establishment of the regency this
vast district had been divided among over twenty satraps. Ten years
afterwards, in the fall of 313 B.C., one of these, Antigonus, known
in history as Monophthalmus, or the "One-eyed," had now held for two
years all the territory that lay between the fan-shaped offshoots of
the Himalaya Mountains and the sea. The whole Asiatic coast of the
Mediterranean from the Hellespont to Gaza on the Egyptian frontier was
in his possession. His fleet ruled the sea.

The spring of 312 B.C. was one of the most critical moments in ancient
history. In Antigonus the man seemed come with the will, ability,
and power to take the place of Alexander. By his side stood a son
of remarkable attractiveness and brilliancy, Demetrius, surnamed
Poliorcetes, or "Taker-of-Cities"; so that a dynasty seemed assured.

The work to be done was plainly indicated and preparations for its
accomplishment were already completed. After having stirred up an
insurrection in Greece in the preceding year, the fleet of Antigonus
had joined his main army which was massed at the Hellespont in
readiness to cross into Europe for the conquest of Thrace and
Macedon. In this district Antigonus conducted operations in person.
His son Demetrius was stationed with a minor army in Palestine with
instructions to avoid an engagement, and simply to keep Ptolemy cooped
up in Egypt till the European campaign was ended. If beaten in his
attack on Thrace and Macedon, Antigonus had nothing serious to fear so
long as he was master of the sea; if victorious, he could then fall
with irresistible force upon Egypt and complete the unification of
Alexander's empire. The whole campaign was admirably planned and the
troops well distributed for its successful execution.[101]

That it did not even get started was partly due to Ptolemy, who,
impelled by the magnitude of his danger, took the desperate step of
adding many natives to his army; and partly due to Demetrius, who,
despite his numerical inferiority, his instructions, and the judgment
of his staff officers, risked a pitched battle at Gaza, and was
decisively defeated. That the project could never again be renewed on
similarly advantageous terms was due to Seleucus, the son of Antiochus.
For taking a thousand men with him this accomplished officer, old in
service though still young in years, set out straightway after the
battle of Gaza for Babylon, his own satrapy, whence he had fled to
Egypt for fear of Antigonus four years earlier. Ten years afterwards,
in 302 B.C., when Antigonus again proceeded to conquer Macedon and
Thrace, after having beaten Ptolemy back into Egypt, his great aim
was frustrated, not only because the king of Thrace, Lysimachus,
outmanoeuvred him by getting an army across into Asia Minor, but also
because Seleucus, now master of all the territory in the rear of
Antigonus between the Euphrates and the frontiers of India, threw the
decisive weight of his new army into the scale, and joined Lysimachus
in crushing their common enemy at the great battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C.

Thereby Seleucus advanced his western frontier from the Euphrates to
the edge of the Mediterranean, shifted his capital from Babylon to
newly founded Antioch, and brought his empire into immediate proximity
with the districts whence alone Greek and Macedonian immigrants could
come. The Seleucids dated the founding of their dynasty from the return
of Seleucus to Babylon in 312 B.C. There is, however, much to be said
for the view that their empire was first established after the battle
of Ipsus.

For the next twenty years (301-281 B.C.) Seleucus had the great good
fortune to remain in secure possession of the vast territory which
called him king; and while he failed to pass on to his descendants all
the fruits of his crowning victory over Lysimachus at Corupedion in 282
B.C., he left to his son Antiochus I, surnamed Soter, or the Savior,
and he in turn about twenty years later, to _his_ son Antiochus II,
surnamed Theos, or the God, the fabric of their dominions, somewhat
tattered at the edges, to be sure, but otherwise whole.

The evil genius of the Seleucid empire during the century when it
was a great power was a woman--Laodice, the wife of Antiochus II and
mother of his successor, Seleucus II, surnamed Callinicus, or the
Glorious Victor (246-226 B.C.). Her power as queen is attested by
other evidences, and also by the fact that she was associated with
the king in the worship accorded by the satrapies of the realm to
their rulers, every satrapy being required by Theos to establish a
chief-priesthood in her especial honor.[102] None the less, she had
to yield her place to Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus,
when that crafty monarch seduced her husband from his alliance with
Macedon by giving to him along with his daughter a prodigious dowry
and extensive territorial concessions (249 B.C.). She retired to Asia
Minor, where she owned large estates secured in earlier days at the
expense of the royal domain, and where she could live in almost regal
state. For the death of her former husband, which occurred three
years later, she was probably not responsible,--though rumor held her
guilty,--since Theos had already, on his deathbed apparently, and for
reasons of sound dynastic policy, designated her oldest son, then a
"youth nearing manhood," as his successor, to the exclusion of the boy
with whom his Egyptian queen had recently presented him. Nor is she
to be condemned harshly for having had her rival and her son's rival
put out of the way; for she acted not only in self-defense, but also
to save the Seleucid empire from becoming simply an appanage of Egypt
during the long minority of Berenice's child. For conducting to a
successful termination, despite initial disasters, the campaign against
Ptolemy III, by which she put her son in possession of his throne, she
is deserving of high credit. It was when this was accomplished, and her
son was king, that her ambition led her into maternal and political
crime; for, in order to retain the government, which her oldest son,
now arrived at years of discretion, threatened to take from her, she
set up against him her younger son Antiochus, surnamed the Hawk, for
whom she got the administration of Asia Minor. The Seleucids became
thereby divided against themselves, and for twenty years (242-223 B.C.)
they were so weakened by a dynastic feud that they not only neglected
vital questions of foreign policy, but had to permit the total loss of
certain frontier satrapies and the rebellion of almost all the rest.
Antiochus III, surnamed the Great, opened his reign with an error--the
attempt to deal with the foreign situation before he had put his house
in order; and he ended it with a great disaster--his irreparable defeat
by the Romans at Magnesia in 190 B.C.; but in between he restored
his authority over what Bevan in his _House of Seleucus_ calls "the
essential body of the Empire" and his suzerainty over its "outside
sphere." The latter he accomplished by an impressive campaign, in
Armenia (where ruled Xerxes, betrayed by his name as an Iranian), in
Parthia (where Arsaces, the third king of a barbarian line from the
Turanian desert, which had mastered that country a little less than
forty years before, had just come to the throne), in Bactria (where
Euthydemus, a Greek from Magnesia, had recently founded a new Hellenic
dynasty in the place of an old one established nearly fifty years
earlier by Diodotus, "lord of the thousand Bactrian cities," as he is
called), and in India, where a certain Sophragasenus, following the
examples of Arsaces and Euthydemus, recognized the superior power of
the Seleucid.

On his return to Antioch after five years of marching and fighting in
the Far East (210-205 B.C.), Antiochus wrested Palestine from the now
feeble grasp of the Ptolemies. This exploit gave him the long-desired,
long-lacked, and long-fought-for access to the sea; and for the first
time in the history of the realm an opportunity was secured for the
construction of a great fleet. Simultaneously, Philip of Macedon fell
before the Romans at Cynocephalæ (197 B.C.); whereupon Antiochus went
vigorously to work dislodging all "foreigners" from the Mediterranean
seaboard of Asia Minor. This led in 192 B.C. to conflict with Rome.

Antiochus the Great has been late in coming into his due.[103] The mere
fact that Hannibal, whom the undying hatred of Rome had driven into his
service, worked out for him a plan of campaign against the Romans which
he rejected, and that he put the greatest general of his age in charge
of a new squadron of his extemporized fleet, have sufficed to rule out
of court in advance any apology for his defeat. The issue showed that
the view taken by Hannibal of the power of Rome was right. It is true
that it could have been checked only by a great combination of all the
Mediterranean states. But it is equally true that such a combination
was impracticable. Antiochus had to deal with the situation as he found
it. He risked too much for a few frontier districts and a possible
hegemony in Greece. But he seems to have greatly underestimated the
power of Rome, and to have credited the Senate with far less energy and
tenacity of purpose than it actually possessed. Once his vanguard was
thrown out of Greece by the incomparable Roman legions, his main hope
of defending Asia Minor did actually rest with his fleet. Hannibal was,
accordingly, in the right place. But the fleet was too new and too weak
as well as too scattered to hold the Romans in Europe; and, once the
veterans of the Second Punic War were across the Hellespont, no army in
Asia could have resisted them.

The Seleucids learned a terrible lesson on the battle-fields of
Thermopylæ and Magnesia: the fatality was that all the peoples in Asia
learned it also. That Antiochus the Great consented to surrender all
his possessions in Asia Minor and to pay to the Romans an indemnity
of one thousand talents a year for twelve years; to hand over his
battleships and to limit his fleet to ten decked vessels and a few
small craft; to give up all his war elephants and to keep no others
in the future; to take no Italians into his service as mercenaries,
and to throw open his empire to the merchants and traders from Rhodes,
proclaimed only too clearly to the Orientals that the days of the
lordship of the Macedonians in the world were past.

It was not, however, till after the untimely death of his son,
Antiochus IV, surnamed Epiphanes, or the "God Manifest," in 164 B.C.
that the storm broke in all its fury. The forces then set in motion for
the destruction of the Seleucid empire were of two kinds, external and
internal. Of the external forces we have already considered one--the
advance of the Roman power toward the East. The Roman Senate had at
this time only one concern in its dealings with Syria, namely, to make
the Seleucids harmless. This it accomplished in a variety of ways.
Immediately after the death of Antiochus IV, it sent commissioners
into Syria who executed an unenforced article of the treaty struck
after the battle of Magnesia: they burnt the Seleucid battleships found
in the cities of Phoenicia and hamstrung the war elephants which
they discovered in the royal arsenals. By jealously restricting the
military establishment of the Seleucids the Senate broke their power
in all respects. Not content, however, with binding the feet of its
victim, the Senate held out an encouraging hand to all rebels against
his authority. A case in point is that of the Jews. Again and again,
between 164 and 120 B.C., Judas and Jonathan Maccabæus and Hyrcanus I
sought and obtained Roman recognition in their struggle against their
overlords. They had national causes for their repeated outbreaks and
religious stimuli to resist desperately, but it is doubtful whether
they could have carried their war of independence to a successful
termination without the assurance that Rome sympathized with their
enterprise. The Senate helped on the disruption of the Seleucid realm
by still another unfriendly act: it joined with Pergamum and Egypt in
lighting the fire of dynastic war in Syria in 153 B.C. and in adding
fuel to it from time to time thereafter, with the result that the realm
was devastated by civil war almost continuously from that date till
the end of the dynasty, ninety years later. Then, the blackened hulk,
manned by a mutinous crew, lay helpless in a sea infested with pirates,
when Pompey picked it up and towed it into a Roman harbor.

The other external force which contributed to this inglorious end
of a voyage begun with such fair promise was set in motion from the
Farthest East. I do not reckon it in this account that the Parthians
again rebelled and in 140 B.C. advanced their western frontier to the
Euphrates, thus forming the philhellen kingdom of west Iran which grew
behind the breastwork of the Seleucid empire to such power that later
it disputed with some success Rome's claim to suzerainty in Asia. Nor
do I enter it here that Armenia established its complete independence,
and under Tigranes the Great annexed for a time (83-69 B.C.) all of
the Seleucid realm then remaining. For these are internal movements
analogous to the insurrection of the Jews. It was from the banks of the
Hoang-Ho that an advance toward the west occurred in the early part of
the second century B.C. which may be paralleled with the simultaneous
advance eastward of the Roman power from the banks of the Tiber.[104]
The oncoming Eastern assailant was the conglomerate of Indo-European
peoples whom the Chinese call the Yue Tchi. They came along the edges
of the great desert of shifting sand in Eastern Turkestan down which
flows the mouthless Tarim River, not with the _élan_ of conquerors,
but retreating slowly before the superior strength of the Huns (Hioung
Nou), their former subjects, with whom they had recently fought an
unsuccessful war for the possession of North China. It was against
their conquerors, we may remark in passing, that the Chinese emperors,
Chi-Houang-ti and Wou-ti of the Ts'in and Han Dynasties respectively,
constructed in the third and second centuries B.C., to the south of
the Desert of Gobi, the great Chinese _Limes_, or Wall. In 159 B.C.
the Yue Tchi occupied Sogdiana. Twenty years later (139 B.C.) they
crushed the Greek kingdom of Bactria; so that in this general region
it was only in India, in the vast district drained by the Indus River,
that Greek kingdoms existed thereafter. Somewhere near the opening of
the Christian era these, too, succumbed to the Yue Tchi, now properly
designated Indo-Scythians by the Greeks. For several centuries the
Indo-Scythians, like the Huns who followed them in the fifth century
of our era, and the Turks who followed the Huns in the sixth, kept
open the trade routes along which they had themselves advanced when
driven westward from the Hoang-Ho. Their successors transmitted to
the frontiers of China Manichæism, the cosmopolitan religion of Iran:
_they_ did a greater work. They not only forwarded Buddhism to the
Chinese; but before it, and with it, the pure as well as the debased
art of Greece. Among the priceless treasures which Dr. Stein has
brought back from the desert cities of Cathay, none are more remarkable
than certain clay seals attached to documents of the third century of
our era, found at Niya in a district then under Chinese control;[105]
for one of them might have been made for Diodotus, the first Greek
king of Bactria, while on others appears Athena Alcis, the haughty,
helmeted, _promachus_ Athena, hurling the thunderbolt, whom the
Antigonid kings of Macedon and the Greek kings of India had put on
their coins.[106] Not without some reason, therefore, is the view now
being advanced that the art of China and Japan is derived, like that of
Europe and America, from Greek sources.[107] It is an amazing spectacle
to observe how Hellenistic civilization flowed simultaneously back the
channels to the springs in Italy and China whence came the floods which
overwhelmed the Seleucid empire.

After this rapid survey of the political history of the Seleucids,
I wish to devote the remainder of this chapter to considering the
domestic policy of the dynasty. I shall point out that Seleucus and his
successors continued Alexander the Great's work of founding city-states
in Asia, and that, having to deal with priestly communities and feudal
lords as well as with the occupants of the widespread royal domains,
they refused to exempt from their direct control any lands not placed
under the jurisdiction of a city-state. I shall discuss briefly the
internal structure of the city-states and more at length their relation
in theory and fact to the monarch. This will finally bring up for
examination the policy of Antiochus IV, in whose reign the internal as
well as the external development of the Seleucid empire culminated.

Seleucus had been advanced to high position in Alexander's service
after Alexander had disclosed his purpose of fusing the Macedonians,
Greeks, and Iranians into a new cosmopolitan race. The promotion
obtained by him during the course of the bitter struggle which this
policy occasioned suggests that he made Alexander's point of view his
own. This surmise as to the attitude of Seleucus is confirmed by the
fact that he took his place, after Alexander's death, with those who
upheld the cause of Alexander's family, and left it for his Babylonian
satrapy only when it became clear that to remain meant to perish
without accomplishing anything.

Seleucus was the only one of the great Macedonian captains who did not
take Alexander's death as a license to discard their Iranian wives. The
Bactrian maiden assigned to him at the great Susian marriage--Apama,
daughter of Spitamenes--became his queen and the mother of his heir,
Antiochus. The Seleucid dynasty was, accordingly, half Iranian from
the start; and for the policy which it inherited from Antigonus and
Alexander, and which it prosecuted vigorously till the death of
Antiochus IV in 164 B.C., namely, the Hellenization of Asia, it had as
warrant the practice of its idealized founder.

Of the Greek cities which Seleucus planted in his realm, fifty-nine
are named by Appian.[108] They lay especially in Syria, in the district
between the Euphrates and the sea which he sought to make a second
Macedonia. His son Antiochus, to whom he gave the administration of the
eastern satrapies in 293 B.C., was particularly active in developing
cities on the Greek model in that region; and to him and his son
Antiochus Theos belongs the honor of establishing the urban habits of
Hellenic life in the interior of Asia Minor. In the arm of their realm
which reached through this peninsula to the rear of the Greek strip
on the Anatolian coast, new cities sprang up under their auspices by
the score. Nor did the movement come to an end with the reign of the
second Antiochus in 246 B.C., though it probably weakened at that time.
Over two generations later, in the reign of Antiochus IV, it was again
resumed actively and directed especially into Palestine, which had been
newly added to the realm.

The most striking feature in the internal policy of the Seleucids is
the attempted transfer into Asia of the urban form of life theretofore
characteristic of Hellas. Evidently, these monarchs believed with
Aristotle, Alexander, and, we may add, Polybius, and, indeed, all
Greeks, that men who did not live in cities were uncivilized men.
Evidently, too, they thought it wise and possible to civilize their
dominions.

It is not easy to form a definite impression of the political
situation in the Seleucid realm when the Macedonians first took
possession, but cities in the Greek sense seem to have been entirely
absent. This does not mean that towns were lacking altogether,
since, even if we disregard administrative centres like Babylon,
Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, we may use the term "town" properly of
places like Bambyce in Syria, fourteen miles west of the Euphrates.
There, in a fertile, well-watered valley, stood a famous temple of
Atargatis, the Syrian goddess. It was a wonderful establishment, as
readers of Lucian know, with its wide approaches, its obelisk-like
_phalli_, its sacred fish-pond, its shocking rites. At its head were
emasculated priests, who not only conducted the ceremonies and directed
a far-reaching proselytism, but also governed the community of temple
slaves (_hieroduli_) who tilled the land of the neighborhood for
their own support and that of the church. This clerical form of local
organization had been carefully fostered by the Persians. We all know
how in reorganizing Judæa they put the common people, who were there
simply to pay tithes, under the control of the high priest, elders, and
Levites, and made the so-called law of Moses the civil law of the land.
They proceeded in similar fashion throughout Asia Minor. There Seleucus
found scores of towns, big and little, to which the description, given
by Strabo[109] of the sacred city of Ma at Comana in Cappadocia, is
applicable: "In itself it is," he says, "a notable city, but most of
its inhabitants are god-possessed, or temple slaves. They are all of
Cataonian stock and are subject generally to the authority of the
king, but are under the immediate control of the priest. He is lord at
once of the temple and of the temple slaves, of whom there were more
than six thousand, including men and women, at the time of my visit.
Attached to the temple is much land, of which the priest enjoys the
revenues, and there is no one in Cappadocia of higher dignity than he
except the king." Similar to this was the temple of Zeus at Venasa with
its three thousand temple slaves and its land which yielded to its
priest an annual income of twenty thousand dollars (fifteen talents);
the temple of Zeus Asbamæus near Tyana, of Apollo in Cataonia, Mater
Zizimene near Iconium, and Artemis Perasia in Castabala. Similar, too,
was the temple of Ma in Pontic Comana with its swarming mart, its wide
acres, and its six thousand temple slaves, of whom the young women,
here as elsewhere, were sacred prostitutes; the temple of Anaitis in
Zela, of Men in Cabira, of Selene in Iberia, of the Great Mother at
Pessinus, of Zeus at Olba, and of other gods in other places scattered
through Phrygia, Pisidia, and Lydia, as well as Palestine, Syria, and
Babylonia. The Seleucids must have found the body of their empire
thickly studded with religious communities, each subject to its own
code of divine law, each dominated by a masterful and long-petted
theocracy. Under this baleful rule the whole country had settled
gradually down during the Persian time in progressive political and
economic stagnation.

Apart from the mountains and the deserts, where tribal and nomadic
liberty reigned,--a constant menace to central government,--the peoples
of Asia lived in villages when the Macedonians came. Many of these
villages, villagers and all, were owned by princelings and noblemen,
who, if natives, had been undisturbed by the Persians, if Iranians,
had come into their possessions by reason of royal grants. All through
Syria and Asia Minor may be seen to-day the ruins of "square towers"
(_tetrapyrgiæ_) and manorial castles such as these grandees built and
fortified for defense against their neighbors and, if need be, against
the royal authority itself.[110] Those who built them had apparently
had little loyalty to the Persian king, but also little inclination to
obey his successor. They were, accordingly, ejected right and left. Of
the estates thus obtained, the Macedonian kings could dispose at their
pleasure. They formed again part of the royal domain, which stretched
in all directions at the edges of the deserts and the mountains, among
the temple lands, the feudal fiefs, and administrative cities--a
veritable archipelago of landed property, tilled for the crown by
myriads of royal serfs. Here was the ὑλη the material, of which the
Seleucids founded many of their city-states.

The handle for reorganization which the priestly towns offered to the
new government was often the non-ecclesiastical part of the population.
That the temple was regularly the centre of local trade and the scene
of a recurrent bazaar tempted to its proximity money-changers and the
like. When the Greek immigration began this element was naturally
strengthened. It was, therefore, possible for the Seleucids to give it
an urban organization--a general assembly, a council, and magistrates;
and in this way to create a new city-state.

According to invariable Greek practice, however, such a city
controlled--with certain limitations--its own shrines. The great
temples of Apollo at Delphi and Delos, for example, were governed
by the citizens of those towns. Hence the natural policy for
the Seleucids, and the one which they in fact followed wherever
practicable, was to subordinate the high priests and clergy to the
adjacent urban authorities, thus solving the ecclesiastical question
in a way convenient for themselves and agreeable to European feeling.
Where this did not prove practicable, they often despoiled the temple
of its lands for the benefit of their followers. Thus the village of
Bætocæce was taken from the local temple of Zeus and given to a certain
Demetrius, and the sacred land of Zeus of Æzani was divided into lots,
which were assigned to cleruchs, subjected to a tax, and attached to
the financial jurisdiction of an adjoining city.[111] It is simply
another aspect of the same general policy when king after king sought
to lay "impious" hands upon the treasures stored up in the temples of
Bel, Anaitis, Atargatis, and Jehovah.

The secularization of religious properties was a very difficult
matter, and it was not pushed at all times with equal vigor by the
Seleucids. When the monarchs were embarrassed by foreign or domestic
troubles, they had to conciliate the priests even to the point of
undoing what they had already done. How easily a reaction might occur
we can perceive from the case recorded in the splendid inscription
which Mr. Butler has recently found cut on the inner wall of the great
temple of Artemis at Sardis.[112] A certain Mnesimachus, presumably
a Macedonian officer or adventurer, had got a huge fief from King
Antigonus. It consisted of the village of Tobalmura in the Sardian
plain and its appurtenances, the villages of Tandu and Combdilipia. On
these he had to pay annual dues of £50 to the proper chiliarchy, or
subdivision of the satrapy. Near by, in Cinara was a _kleros_, or lot,
on which he paid £3 yearly. The fief consisted, in addition, of the
village of Periasasostra, of which the annual dues, payable to another
chiliarchy, were £57. Close by, in Nagrioa was again a _kleros_, on
which he paid £3 7_s._ yearly. The fief consisted, moreover, of the
village of Ilu in the territory of the well-known city of Attuda, of
which the dues, paid annually to the city of course, were £3 5_s._
The manor (_aule_) of the fief was in the village of Tobalmura, and
together with certain lodges held by bailiffs and certain gardens and
parks tilled by manorial serfs in Tobalmura and Periasasostra, it had
once been assigned to Pytheus and Adrastus, likewise Macedonians; but
later on it had seemingly come into the possession of Mnesimachus. The
happy holder of this great estate enjoyed, doubtless, the total net
yield of the manor and the lots, and, in addition, as the possessor of
the manor and lots, rights to exact services in money, kind, and labor
from the villeins of the villages. Had he been so minded he might have
settled down in Lydia and become a baron like the Iranian nobles whom
the Macedonians dispossessed; and, doubtless, many Macedonians and
Greeks established themselves in Asia in this fashion. Mnesimachus,
however, wanted money rather than "rights"; and, turning to the temple
of Artemis in Sardis, he secured a loan of £1325 from the temple
treasurers. The inscription cut on the temple wall records the sale to
Artemis, with right to repurchase, of Mnesimachus's interest in the
fief. His inability to repay his loan resulted in the aggrandizement of
the temple.

Incidents of this sort were, doubtless, of frequent occurrence and show
what the Seleucids had to guard against. Their land policy seems to
have been prudent and far-sighted. They were bound to deal cautiously
with their gigantic domain, since from it came the most valuable and
stable portion of their revenues. On the other hand, they found a
limit set to the quantity which they could profitably retain by the
fact that, unlike the Ptolemies, they inherited from the Persians a
public service adequate, not to administer, but simply to supervise
administration. They did indeed increase the number of their satrapies,
without, perhaps, diminishing the number of chiliarchies or hyparchies
into which each satrapy was divided, and they seem to have paralleled
the general service by a distinct fiscal service and by a distinct
priestly service; but, none the less, they had to leave the details of
fiscal, judicial, and religious administration to the villages. Though
we are singularly ill-informed as to how they organized the villages,
it is conceivable that they picked out certain persons, like the elders
in the Egyptian villages, and held them responsible for the taxes of
the villagers and for their general good behavior. These men would be
rather hostages than officials, and would be nominees of the central
government rather than of the villages. But we really know nothing of
the facts, except that the villagers had some means by which they paid
their taxes collectively.

One way by which the Seleucids could relieve themselves of the troubles
of local administration and at the same time strengthen their hold
upon the country was to make grants of whole blocks or complexes of
their land, villages and villagers and all, to Macedonian and Greek
feudatories, like Mnesimachus, who of course became responsible for
the dues owing to the crown. But the evils of this system had been
discovered by the Persian kings when they found their vassals more
unruly than the villages. Hence the Seleucids refused to give a clear
title to those to whom they made grants of portions of the royal
domain, and in the case of Mnesimachus the temple of Artemis, to which
he sold his rights, had to secure itself in the contract against the
loss which it might sustain should the king recall his grant. On the
other hand, when the king sold outright parts of the domain, as he
frequently did, particularly in times of financial distress, and the
lands and villages sold became with their peasants private property, he
required that they should be added to the territory of some city-state,
it being a privilege highly cherished by the purchasers that they
should be given the liberty of deciding to which city their property
should belong. The Seleucid policy that land should belong either to a
city-state or to the crown was admirably calculated to destroy priestly
and feudal sovereignties, and it was taken over by the Roman emperors,
into whose patrimony in Asia Minor passed many temple lands which had
either escaped secularization under their predecessors or had been
regained by the priests during the later, weaker days of the Seleucid
dynasty.[113]

By a similar sale, or by a gift outright, the colonists who formed
a new city, or the old inhabitants of a village on being constituted
citizens of a free town, obtained full ownership of the lots of land
assigned to them. The citizens, in turn, had authority, subject of
course to the city's laws and the constitutions of the realm, over
the serfs when there happened to be any on their holdings. In this
way the king lost control of his peasants and his property; for the
foundation was not merely a new city, but at the same time a new state.
Its sovereign was not, or not simply, the king: it was the body of its
franchised inhabitants assembled in general assembly, and it proceeded
to manage its public affairs by means of discussion and resolutions, by
delegating functions to a council and magistrates, and by determining
its own domestic and foreign policies. The language of public life was
of course Greek. The code of public and private law was, doubtless,
drafted according to Hellenic models. Gymnasia appeared and with them
gymnastic and musical contests--the most characteristic marks of Greek
education. The deities they honored were those whom they themselves
chose: they chose native gods and goddesses as well as Greek; above all
they chose as their chief city-god the living emperor.

The Seleucid empire was a state without a citizenship. If an Athenian
settled in it, he remained an Athenian, even if he became a satrap,
unless he were given citizen rights in some one of the free cities.
In other words, the empire had as many different citizenships as
there were different cities, and as many distinct states as there were
distinct citizenships.

Accordingly, each city could adopt whatever policy it pleased in the
matter of admitting foreigners, be they Greeks or Asiatics, newcomers
or natives, to its body politic. It might prohibit the intermarriage
of citizens with non-citizens altogether, or it might go so far as
to open its doors to bastards. It is, therefore, impossible for us,
without such sources of knowledge as the papyri afford for Egypt,
to speak in any general way of the extent and effects of racial
fusion in the Seleucid empire. Two things, however, seem clear: (1)
Intermarriage between citizens of different cities was of frequent
occurrence and, doubtless, of full legal propriety; (2) the great mass
of the agricultural population was not much affected racially by the
proximity of Greeks, Macedonians, Jews, or Iranians. The peasants were
practically serfs. Their social inferiority protected them against
assimilation by citizens. On the other hand, they were, doubtless,
much more deeply stirred by the European immigration than were the
fellahs in Egypt; for the influx into their land was much more abundant
and more spontaneous than was that into the valley of the Nile. Here,
too, Hellenism had much more effective agents for its diffusion than
it had there. For within the hundreds of city-states in Asia we must
presume that intermarriage was permitted among all citizens, whether
the elements which mingled with the Greeks were Phrygians, Lydians,
Syrians, Jews, Babylonians, or Iranians. We must presume that at least
the men knew in a fashion the Greek language. They certainly tended
to take Greek names, and in documents of Delos dating from the second
century B.C. we meet with natives of Bambyce--now a _polis_ and renamed
Hierapolis, or the Sacred City--who would be indistinguishable from
native-born Greeks were it not for the Semitic names of their wives.
Indeed, some of them may have been Greeks who had married Syrian women.
The various circles of Europeans in Syria, and, though to a less
degree, elsewhere in Asia, must have been surrounded at an early date
by a penumbra of half-breeds, by means of which the sharp contrast of
antagonistic civilizations was lessened. In these circumstances Greek
ideas and customs became a ferment which stirred the peoples of Asia
to the depths. The awakening of the Nearer East was in progress in
the third century B.C., and had the Romans succumbed to Hannibal and
the Greeks maintained their prestige unimpaired for a century or two
longer, the whole course of history would have been changed.

The Greeks came to Asia "not to send peace but a sword." They came
to fill the continent up with cantankerous little republics where
formerly a dense multitude had lived in a state of political lethargy.
And curiously enough those who directed the dismemberment of Asia into
far more states than even mediæval Germany produced were the rulers
who had the responsibility for the government of the whole region. How
explain this anomaly?

The anomaly is more apparent than real. The ruler was not simply
the great landed proprietor of the cities' neighborhood; he was the
founder, or the descendant of the heroized founder, of most of them;
he was the "benefactor" or the "preserver" of them all. As such he was
deserving of their homage and entitled to their obedience. This they
could proffer in an unobjectionable manner once Alexander had shown
them the way. They had simply to make their proskynesis; to elect him
to membership in their circle of deities, furnish him with a sacred
precinct, temple, altar, image, procession, and contest, and designate
a priest to attend to the sacrifices and other matters pertaining to
his worship. This they did of their own volition during the reign of
the founder of the dynasty. Apotheosis without territorial limitations
Antiochus I demanded for Seleucus "after his departure from the life
among men," and the second Antiochus demanded it for himself and his
sister-wife during their lifetime as well as for their "departed"
father; so that just as in Egypt and for the same reasons an imperial
cult of the rulers dead and living was established throughout not only
the satrapies and hyparchies but also the cities of the realm.[114]

The city had, accordingly, a dual character: it was at once both in
theory and fact a nation and a municipality. In the former capacity it
could grant or withhold allegiance to the king; in the latter it had
simply to obey. It had for example to pay tribute to him (_phoros_ or
_syntaxis_), which might be viewed as a rent for the land assigned to
it, or as the price paid for military protection. It might have not
simply a priest of the king and a priestess of the queen, but also a
resident (_epistates_), who on occasion might also be _phrurarch_, or
commandant, of the royal garrison when it had one. The double status
of the city is further evidenced by the fact that its citizens were
subject not only to the laws which they themselves passed but also
to the mandates (_prostagmata_) which the king issued. In cases of
conflict there could be no doubt which was superior. The king was in
theory absolute as a god was absolute. He had, of course, citizenship
in no state, but was simply _basileus_, or king. This title, attached
to the name without an _ethnicum_, was the only one that the early
Seleucids used; but the later members of the dynasty, beginning
with Antiochus IV, added to it the title, such as Epiphanes, or God
Manifest, by which their peculiar office as gods was indicated.
Thereafter, on their coins and edicts the two titles appeared, and
the monarchs were thereby classified in the two worlds to which they
belonged--that of men and that of gods--as completely as were citizens
when to their names were added the adjectival forms of their city's
name. In either capacity they were superior to the cities. On the other
hand, the Seleucid god-kings had to consider carefully the demands of
their cities, since these, having the means to organize resistance,
could easily revolt. When they did not get satisfaction they might
choose some other god-king instead, as the cities in Parthia and
Bactria actually did; or they might secure immunity from tribute, as
did the cities in Asia Minor in the reign of Antiochus I. Room was,
accordingly, left for a large measure of municipal liberty; and, in
general, the activities of the citizens were numerous and important.
They had to attend to the maintenance of order, the administration of
justice, and the collection of taxes within their several territories.
Hence the cities gave a stimulus to political interest and ambition
such as Asia had never known before. They occupied, in fact, a place in
the Seleucid empire quite as important as that of the municipalities in
the early Roman empire, of which they were, indeed, the prototypes.

The Roman empire, however, had not yet come into existence. It was the
Italian federation under Rome's leadership which defeated Hannibal
and won the battles of Thermopylæ and Magnesia. When compared with
this aggregate of incorporated and allied states, the Seleucid empire
demonstrated fatal weaknesses. Rome had, perhaps, not many more
citizens on her army list than there were males of military age in the
franchised population of the Seleucid cities; and her public land,
which, too, was her chief source of revenue, was far inferior in
extent and yield to the royal domain of the Seleucids. Her advantages
were twofold and their enumeration will help us to understand the
disabilities under which the Asiatic monarchy labored. First, apart
from the soldiers on Rome's army list there were few males of military
age in Italy; in other words, there was no vast native population to
hold in subjection. Second, Rome could mobilize her forces much more
easily, quickly, and completely than could the Seleucids. The great
distances, often of mountain and desert, which separated the cities of
Asia from one another; the considerable trading, industrial, Asiatic,
and otherwise unwarlike, element in the free population of the Hellenic
and Hellenized cities; and the independence of the cities, particularly
in the matter of giving or refusing military aid to their suzerain, had
no parallel in Italy, where the territory was compact, the population
mainly a warlike peasantry, and the cities all bound to provide troops
at the call of Rome to the full extent of their power. Like the giant
Antæus in his trial of strength with Heracles, Rome with every fall
renewed her might from contact with her native soil. The Seleucids
ruled over a cosmopolitan, denationalized world. They had no native
soil on which to fall. It is of profound significance that there were
and could be no fellow-citizens of Seleucus in all Asia. The loyalty
of true men in his realm was due first of all to their cities, and it
was only by the lapse of time that a secondary loyalty to the ruling
dynasty ceased to imply treason to their native states. The cities
stood always before the decision whether in any given case they had
more to gain or to lose by abandoning the Seleucid and transferring
their allegiance to his enemy or to some other king.

It was the tragedy of Antiochus IV that through an education in Italy
he came to realize fully the political grounds for the military
superiority of Rome, and that through a sentimental attachment for
Athens and the art, letters, and philosophy for which Athens stood,
he renewed his conviction as to the absolute superiority of Greek
culture.[115] He attempted to push more vigorously than ever the
dynastic policy of Hellenization, by which alone a new nation could be
bred in Asia, at a time when native hopes were revived; and he tried
to draw the city-states of his realm into more complete dependence
upon himself by the only means available to him--the right which
he possessed as one of their gods to unhesitating obedience in all
matters--at the very time when this policy came into collision with a
religion to which deification of kings was an abomination. For in 200
B.C. Palestine had passed from the control of Egypt into the control
of Antiochus the Great, whereupon his dynasty had to deal with the
Jews. The trouble was, of course, that the Jews were monotheists. Many
Jews in Jerusalem, as well as in the other cities of the realm, were
not averse to Hellenism, and frequented the gymnasia, enrolled their
sons in the ephebe corps, and gave them Greek names, but the devout
shrank with horror from worshiping the emperor, and the peasants from
everything foreign. Accordingly an open revolt occurred in Judæa,
chiefly among the country people, when Antiochus IV chartered Jerusalem
as a Hellenized city, substituted for the bizarre law of Moses an
enlightened, up-to-date, Greek code, and set down his own image as the
Olympian Zeus in the Holy of Holies.

This is the same Antiochus who twice led his victorious army to the
walls of Alexandria, once to retreat after dictating terms to the
Ptolemies, once to meet a Roman embassy headed by his old friend Gaius
Popillius. Before answering the king's pleasant greeting, the Roman
handed to him the message of his Senate and curtly bade him read it.
He found it to be an order to evacuate Egypt immediately. On asking
for time to consider the proposal, he got a further surprise; for,
drawing a circle round the king in the sand with his cane, Popillius
demanded an answer "Yes" or "No" before he stepped outside of it. A
few months earlier, by crushing Perseus of Macedon on the battle-field
of Pydna (168 B.C.), Rome had rid itself of its last serious rival.
Since for Antiochus to resist meant now to stand alone against the
master of the world, the only answer he could give was "Yes"; yet it
meant the ruin of the Seleucid empire. Thereafter, there was but one
free will in the vast territory of Africa, Asia, and Europe which lay
between the Euphrates River and the Atlantic Ocean--the will of the
government of Rome. Instruments to give it continuous effect in Italy
that sagacious and persistent corporation, the Roman Senate, had made
and used already; and in its march to universal empire it had broken
and hurled to the ground the instruments of authority raised against it
by its Greek adversaries. To pick them up, mend them, and improve them
for further use was the imperial task of the immediate future.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

 1. Schürer, E. _Geschichte des jüdischen Volks im Zeitalter Jesu
 Christi_, I^3 (1901), II^4 (1907).

 2. Bevan, E. _The House of Seleucus_ (1902).

 3. Niese, B. _Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischen Staaten._
 Especially Vol. III (1903).

 4. Beloch, J. _Griechische Geschichte_, III (1904).

 5. Rostowzew, M. _Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates_
 (1910), pp. 240 _ff._

 6. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. _Staat und Gesellschaft der
 Griechen: D. Die makedonischen Königreiche_ (1910).

 7. Bouché-Leclercq, A. _Histoire des Séleucides_ (1913).

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 101: Kromayer, _Historische Zeitschrift_, C, p. 50.]

[Footnote 102: Dittenberger, _Orientis Græcæ Inscriptiones Selectæ_,
224; if the king is Antiochus II, and not, as is now claimed (Pozzi,
_Memorie della Reale Accademia di Torino_, serie II, tom. LXIII,
p. 345, n. 4), Antiochus III. See, however, Kärst, _Geschichte des
hellenistischen Zeitalters_, II, I, p. 422 and Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist.
des Séleucides_, pp. 90 _f._, 470 _ff._]

[Footnote 103: See now Kromayer, _Hannibal und Antiochus der Grosse_
(_Neue Jahrbücher für d. klass, Altert._ XIX (1907), pp. 681 _ff._).]

[Footnote 104: Cordier, H., _Journal des Savants_ (1907), pp. 247
_ff._; Cunningham, _Numismatic Chronicle_ (1888), pp. 222 _ff._]

[Footnote 105: _Ruins of Desert Cathay_ (1912), I, pp. 274, 284.]

[Footnote 106: W.W. Tarn, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, XXII (1902),
pp. 268 _ff._, and _Antigonus Gonatas_, frontispiece; Gardner, P.,
_Numismatic Chronicle_ (1887), p. 177.]

[Footnote 107: _Encyclopedia Britannica_^11, _s. v._ _Hellenism_
(Bevan).]

[Footnote 108: _Syr._ 57; cf. Droysen, _Gesch. d. Hellenismus_^2, III,
2, pp. 254 _ff._]

[Footnote 109: XII, 2, 3, p. 535. Rostowzew, _Studien zur Geschichte
des römischen Kolonates_, pp. 269 _ff._]

[Footnote 110: Butler, _Publications of an American Expedition to
Syria_, II (1903), pp. 121 _ff._, 177; cf. Rostowzew, _op. cit._, p.
254.]

[Footnote 111: Dittenberger, _Orientis Græcæ Inscriptiones Selectæ_,
262, 502.]

[Footnote 112: Buckler and Robinson, _Greek Inscriptions from Sardis_.
(_American Journal of Archæology_, XVI, 1912, pp. 11 _ff._)]

[Footnote 113: Calder, _Classical Review_, XXVII (1913), pp. 9 _ff._]

[Footnote 114: Kärst, _Gesch. des hellen. Zeitalters_, II, I, pp.
419 _ff._ Bouché-Leclercq's treatment of this subject (_Hist. des
Séleucides_, pp. 469 _ff._), is inadequate.]

[Footnote 115: _Hellenistic Athens_, pp. 303 _ff._]

VII

THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTIGONIDS

Of the Hellenistic empires the one from which Rome suffered most and
learned least was that of the Antigonids in Macedon and Greece. We say
"Macedon and Greece": the kings of Macedon from Philip II to Perseus
said "Hellas"; for they never ceased to claim that Macedon was a part
of Hellas--_the_ part of Hellas which had earned by the achievements
of Philip II and Alexander the right of hegemony for its kings. It
was an imperial nation for which its king, nobles, and commons had
an intense loyalty and pride, but which stood in their thinking to
Hellas as Virginia did to the United States in the _ante-bellum_ days,
or as Prussia does to Germany, rather than as Austria does to the
Austro-Hungarian empire.

It taught the Romans least because it had least to teach them. The one
thing in which the Macedonians were masterful was the art of war; yet
in this the Romans by native accomplishment were their superiors. They
invented the phalanx, but the phalanx succumbed to the legion. In the
art of government the Antigonids were resourceful, but to lift up a
jellyfish on a spear-point is an impossible task. Yet that is what they
had to do in Hellas. The only lessons of government they could teach
were lessons of failure; but that this is not to their discredit is
shown by the inability of Rome itself to cope with the same situation
till Hellas was dead and desiccated. They were sagacious enough to
realize that for a people with the customs, piety, and bluntness of the
Macedonians a kingship was best which, to speak with Aristotle, was
a perpetual magistracy and not an absolute monarchy. Hence they were
under no necessity to demand that the Macedonians worship them as gods,
and the Macedonians, having inherited rights which no Antigonid dared
to ignore,[116] were under no legal necessity to thrust divinity upon
their rulers. Hence the Antigonids alone of the Hellenistic dynasties
governed as men supported by their people's loyalty, and not as gods to
whom all things were permitted. They, moreover, organized no official
cult of their family in Hellas, for reasons which will appear later. It
was not Macedon but Greece which took the proud Roman victor captive
and bore the arts to rustic Latium. For the Macedonians remained
themselves a rustic people, and added little or nothing to the poetry,
painting, sculpture, architecture, and science of Hellas.[117] Their
élite were rulers and officers, their commons farmers and soldiers.
From the time Philip II came to the throne (359 B.C.) to the battle of
Cynocephalæ (197 B.C.), it is impossible to find a decade, and not
easy to find half a one, during which the able-bodied men of Macedon
were not called to the standards at least once either to defend their
country against foreign attack or to march north, south, east, or west
against their lord's enemies.[118] Their dead were to be found in
every valley of Hellas, and their emigrants in every land of Asia; but
theirs was a prolific race, so that, despite their many losses in the
interval, they put 29,000 Macedonians in the field in the last struggle
with Rome, or 2000 more than stood under the command of Alexander the
Great when he had completed his arrangements for the conquest of Asia.

Rome suffered more from the Antigonids than from any other Hellenistic
dynasty because it had there alone to do with a nation of veterans
under arms. The Macedonians were, as has been said, an imperial people,
loyal to their kings, and ambitious to maintain their ascendancy in
the world. While at war with Rome--the wielder of armies 100,000
strong--they were assailed simultaneously by their Hellenic vassals
and rivals and attacked or abandoned by their Macedonian kinsmen
in Asia and Africa; yet they held out under the Antigonids, in the
first struggle for eight years (212-205 B.C.), in the second for four
(200-197 B.C.), in the third for still another four (171-168 B.C.); and
even after one half of their men of military age had fallen at Pydna,
and their last king had died in captivity and his only son as a clerk
at Alba Fucens, their conquerors were so seriously disturbed by the
"throbbings of their ancient loyalty" that the Senate had finally to
place a Roman proconsul on the throne of the great Alexander (148 B.C.).

Though sprung from a Macedonian stock, the dynasty of the Antigonids
was bred in Asia, and it was transplanted into Macedon only in its
third generation. That came about in the following way. The first
Antigonus was made ruler of Phrygia when Alexander the Great left Asia
Minor in 333 B.C., and he was still in possession of that satrapy when
his sovereign died ten years later. With Phrygia as a starting point
and a nomination as commander-in-chief of the royal forces in Asia as
a pretext, he planned and fought with such success in the next decade
that in the spring of 312 B.C. he seemed destined to add Macedon to
Asia, which he already possessed; and with it to support and not to
oppose him, he counted on being able to master the whole of Alexander's
empire. We have already seen why this project failed, and also how a
later attempt to accomplish the same purpose cost him his life and his
Asiatic realm. He may have been over-ambitious. Possibly no one could
have prevented the dismemberment of the Græco-Macedonian world. Perhaps
the centrifugal tendencies would have proved too strong for Alexander
himself had he lived long enough to test them. That, however, does
not make the issue less of a calamity for the Hellenes; for on the
battle-fields of Gaza and Ipsus it was decided that the alien Romans
and not the kindred Macedonians were to unite the world under a single
government. With the person of the first Antigonus went to the grave
the hope of a great people.

The sharer of his aspirations and the cause in considerable measure
of his defeat was his son Demetrius, surnamed Poliorcetes, or
"Taker-of-Cities." By his disobedience to orders at Gaza and his
impetuosity in action at Ipsus, he had done most to lose his kingdom;
but after the death of his father he still retained the dominion of
the sea, and, with it, value as an ally and ability to use his forces
at such points as he himself chose. After some years of aimless
adventuring and galling inactivity he chose to use them in the attempt,
twice vainly made already in coöperation with his father, to seize
Greece and Macedon. His strength was incomparably inferior to that
used on the earlier occasions and he had still watchful enemies on
all sides. The essential difference was that the house of Antipater,
which had ruled Macedon and Greece since Alexander the Great had
crossed into Asia, was now represented, not by Antipater's able son,
Cassander, who died in 297 B.C. after a reign of nineteen years, but
by his weakly and dissentious children. These looked on inactive while
he blockaded Athens (295-294 B.C.) and starved it into submission;
whereupon he brushed them aside and took their place as king of
Macedon and suzerain of Greece. Since his wife was Phila, Cassander's
sister, his son, Antigonus, surnamed Gonatas, was a grandson of
Antipater I, no less than Antipater II, who was now the sole survivor
of Cassander's family. Hence, if the right of Demetrius Poliorcetes to
the Macedonian throne rested upon nothing more substantial than the
frustrated ambition of his father, the right of his son was flawless
after the death of Antipater II. This, however, occurred in 288-287
B.C. at the very time when Demetrius, on being expelled from Macedon,
abandoned Greece and went to meet captivity in Asia for the rest of his
life. Left behind in Greece, Antigonus Gonatas exercised a watchful
suzerainty there without being king of Macedon, which Pyrrhus of
Epirus and Lysimachus of Thrace shared for a few years (288 to 284-283
B.C.), Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy Ceraunus held alone in rapid
succession for another interval (283-280 B.C.), and Celts from the
north plundered and harried for three years. It was not till 277 B.C.
that Antigonus succeeded in freeing it from its troubles and making it
the base of his operations in Greece. He therewith planted in Europe
the dynasty which ruled Macedon till the Roman conquest (168 B.C.).

Antigonus I and Demetrius Poliorcetes had formed their political
ambitions and ideas during the age of the _diadochi_, when the empire
of Alexander stood in all its magnificence and promise as a golden
prize for the able, courageous, and unscrupulous. They had aspired to
rule as god-kings over a world in which men and cities rendered homage
(proskynesis) to them, as they had rendered it to Alexander. They had
viewed Greece and Macedon as alike desirable,[119] the common charm
being that they were the mother of the soldiers and settlers of whom
their limitless realm had need. They may have coveted Greece even more
than Macedon. Certainly, Athens, not Pella, was the city of Demetrius's
dreams. He had gloried in being its liberator in 307 B.C., and when
it dashed his hopes by excluding him after his defeat at Ipsus, he
had suffered bitter disappointment. None the less, and despite the
desperate resistance which it had offered to him in 295-294 B.C., he
treated it with clemency when he was once again its master. What his
father had thought of the approval of Athens he expressed by calling it
the beacon tower of the world. How highly he had esteemed the culture
of its inhabitants he demonstrated by making a colony of Athenians
the nucleus of Antigonia (later Antioch), which he founded as the new
capital of the empire that had been Alexander's, but was now, he hoped,
to be his.

Antigonus I had never had the good fortune to rule in the land of his
birth, but Demetrius Poliorcetes was its king for six years (294-288
B.C.).[120] As such he showed conclusively that he had no intention
to reign there patriarchally, as Cassander and Antipater, following
the example of Philip II and his predecessors, had done. He displayed
an utter disregard for the established customs of the court and for
the limitations imposed by usage upon his royal authority. The court
he surrounded himself with was the richly appointed, ceremonious,
uniformed affair devised by Alexander in his later, more splendid, more
arrogant days; and by requiring proskynesis of the Macedonian noblemen
and commons, he offended, unnecessarily, as it proved, the sturdiest
sentiment of the nation.[121] His attempt to establish absolute
monarchy in unsophisticated Macedon was the most direct cause of the
loss of his kingdom; for when his foreign enemies, anticipating the
attack which he designed against them, assailed him from all sides, his
subjects hastened to abandon him and joined hands with the invaders.
They had no longer heart for the wild imperialistic projects into
which, almost without perceiving it, they had been led by Alexander the
Great.

Antigonus Gonatas had never known the lure of the East. He had spent
his early manhood in Athens (294-290 B.C.), where an unworthy liaison
with the courtesan Demo and an intimacy that does him honor with Zeno,
the founder of the Stoa, attest the range of his activity. He won his
spurs in his father's Boeotian campaigns of 292-291 B.C., and spent
the formative years of his career as a general and statesman in Greece
(288-280 B.C.). Only once, when hard pushed in 280B.C., did he show
that the blood of Demetrius Poliorcetes and Antigonus I flowed in his
veins, namely, when he tried to seize Asia Minor, then temporarily
without a master. Normally, he acted like the child of Phila and the
heir of the policy of Cassander and Antipater. And it was in the spirit
of his mother's line that he established his government in Macedon on
expelling the Celts in 277 B.C.

His reign opened auspiciously. Having obtained--how, when, and at what
price, we do not know--the friendship of Egypt, he got the opportunity
to order affairs to his liking in Greece. On the other hand, his
accession to the throne was accompanied by his marriage to Phila, his
own niece, the sister of Antiochus I, the new king of Asia. This union
sanctioned an agreement by which Antigonus abandoned his claim to Asia
Minor and Antiochus his right, as Seleucus's son, to the Macedonian
throne. It inaugurated a policy by which Macedon secured for eighty
years (277-197 B.C.) immunity from attack or intrigue on the part of
the Seleucids. His friendship with Egypt was less enduring, but it
gave him ten years (277-267 B.C.) in which to consolidate his power--a
period of quiet activity, interrupted only by the return of Pyrrhus
from Italy and the startling upheaval in Macedon and Greece (274-272
B.C.) which accompanied that adventurous monarch's vigorous assertion
of his right to rule those countries. The fall of Pyrrhus in battle at
Argos relieved the tension of this situation, but till the time of his
death thirty-two years afterwards, Antigonus had always to count Epirus
among his possible enemies when it was not actually his assailant.
On his northern frontier he faced the threatening Dardanians, and on
the northeastern the marauding Celts, who had reduced Thrace to the
condition of barbarity that prevailed throughout Central Europe. By
keeping these peoples in check he did a great service to Greece, which
he thereby protected; but for it he got little gratitude, and it was
his suzerainty over Greece which brought to him and his successors most
of their many troubles.

Just as he was faithful to the traditional policy of the Macedonian
kings in his dealings with his own people, so, too, in regard to the
Greeks the plan he followed was in general the old-fashioned one,
of making them his dependent allies. In states ostensibly free and
self-governing he secured a preponderating influence by designating an
individual as his representative and making him practically governor.
Naturally, the domestic opponents of such a person called him a tyrant,
and such, in fact, the nature of his position forced him to become,
since he could not hold his place without breaking both the public and
private laws. But outward appearances were preserved, even when he
called in Macedonian troops to his aid, by the old practice whereby he
and his adherents assumed the responsibility for their coming.

Antigonus Gonatas and some at least of his governors were pupils of
Zeno. That meant in this connection that, whereas Alexander the Great,
for example, had been obliged to discard what was most characteristic
in the politics of Aristotle when he identified himself with the man
of transcendent virtue, who, his teacher had urged, should be made
absolute monarch when found, Antigonus drew from his philosophy an
obligation to let none but the sage rule.[122] As against the wisdom
of the ideal wise man the laws of states which he ignored or broke had
no avail; for, according to his creed, they were unnatural and hence
unwholesome. The wise man could do no wrong. In his actions, since
he was a law unto himself, morality triumphed over mere legality.
Antigonus Gonatas disdained to seek a justification for his acts by
claiming, though a man, the prerogatives of the gods, and, though
there was nothing in the pantheistic theory of Stoicism to prevent
his being worshiped if people wanted to worship him, he was under no
legal necessity to pose as a god; whereas, had he done so, he must have
come into conflict with the religious conservatism of his philosophy.
He, accordingly, had no difficulty in rendering an account to his own
conscience for setting up "tyrants" in his Greek dependencies and for
practicing or authorizing lawlessness. But he was too shrewd a man
to suppose that because Zeno and he thought his conduct justified he
could do what he pleased to the Macedonians or Greeks with impunity.
They could not be expected to know that their ruler was a Stoic sage
who could do no wrong, or to make allowances for his behavior on that
account. Hence, while he could justify his system of government on
philosophic grounds, there is no evidence that he was not a scrupulous
Macedonian king and a considerate suzerain of Greece. And had he been
left alone to work out the problem of Hellenic administration without
outside interference it is probable that his high sense of duty and his
skill and forbearance would have given Greece a long period of peace.

The founder of the first Macedonian empire, Philip II, had been opposed
in Greece by Persia, but the resistance he had encountered because of
the diplomacy of Artaxerxes Ochus was as nothing when compared with
the difficulties raised up for Antigonus Gonatas's uncle, Cassander,
by the promises and armies of his grandfather, Antigonus I, or with
the obstacles he himself had to meet in the intrigue, money, and
expeditions of Ptolemy Philadelphus.

The situation which existed in the first ten years of his reign
(277-267 B.C.) was not of Antigonus's creating, nor was Philadelphus
responsible for it. It was Ptolemy I Soter who had seized the dominion
of the sea on the final _débâcle_ of Demetrius Poliorcetes (287-286
B.C.) and with it the control of the league of the Islanders. This
established a long and, in fact, indefinable frontier between the
realm of Philadelphus and that of Antigonus. The lordship of the sea
Gonatas seems not to have bothered about at first, and, indeed, the
great war which broke out in 266-265 B.C. between the two monarchs--the
so-called Chremonidean War--was clearly incited by Egypt and not by
him. Notwithstanding that she was dead four years when the actual
conflict began, its real instigator was, doubtless, Arsinoë, the
sister-queen of Philadelphus. Acting on her policy, Philadelphus first
formed an alliance with King Areus I of Sparta and his allies (Achæa,
Elis, Mantinea, Phlius, and part of Crete) and with Athens, and then
backed them up in the concerted effort they decided to make to free
Greece from Antigonus and his "tyrants." What the real object of the
"brother-gods" was, is a matter of conjecture. All they accomplished,
in any case, was to give Antigonus five years of hard fighting[123] and
to complete the ruin of Athens and the enforced quietude of Sparta.

Therewith was accomplished, what had been long in the preparing, the
overthrow of the leadership which city-states had held from time
immemorial in European Greece. Henceforth it was not from cities
that significant movements sprang, but from ethne. Macedon itself was
an ethnos, or, at least, a group of ethne, and it seemed possible to
enlarge it by adding to it all the other ethne in the peninsula. The
difficulty was that two other ethne, Ætolia and Achæa, the first in
Central Greece and the second in the Peloponnesus, had each a similar,
if less far-reaching, ambition; and while the aspirations of Ætolia to
acquire territory in the Peloponnesus, and the aspirations of Achæa to
expand into Central Greece, kept them normally in conflict with one
another; and while each in turn (Ætolia in 245-241, Achæa in 220-217
and 212-206 B.C.) got the help of Macedon against the other, and both
united only once (238-229 B.C.) in a war against Macedon, Achæa offered
till 224 B.C. and Ætolia till 200 B.C. an attractive alternative for
Macedonian suzerainty to ethne and city-states which could not stand
alone. The natural desire of the new ethne, as of the old city-states,
was, however, to be independent--a sentiment which Ætolia and Achæa
shared completely; and against this powerful force Antigonus had to
contend, after the Chremonidean War no less than before it.

He had come so brilliantly out of the Chremonidean War, however, that
ten years elapsed before his suzerainty was again challenged. His most
formidable enemy, Ptolemy Philadelphus, was absorbed meanwhile with a
dangerous disturbance in Ionia, occasioned by the revolt of Ptolemy,
his "son", and Timarchus, his admiral, to whose aid his watchful enemy,
Antiochus II, and his daring maritime rivals, the Rhodians,[124] had
come (258 B.C.); but when this outbreak was brought to a close with
the peace of 255 B.C.,[125] Antigonus had to anticipate a renewal of
his troubles in Greece. He, accordingly, determined to cease being
the anvil and to become the hammer. That meant the construction of a
fleet with which to take from Egypt control of the Ægean, which had
been possessed prior to 288-287 B.C. by his father and grandfather. To
accomplish this end he renewed his alliance with Syria, and arranged
a marriage between his son and heir, Demetrius, and Stratonice,
Antiochus's sister. This being done, he sought out the admirals of
Ptolemy at Leucolla near Cos, and defeated them in a great naval battle
(253 B.C.). Suzerainty over the league of the Islanders was the most
striking gain; but a more substantial advantage was that with his fleet
he could now ward off trouble in Greece and stir it up in Ptolemy's
realm. The latter he accomplished by dispatching his half-brother,
Demetrius the Fair, to Cyrene and by snatching that kingdom, which had
just been vacated by the death of Magas (251-250 B.C.), from the grasp
of Egypt. In the former he had a rather surprising lack of success.
For in 251 B.C. Aratus, the somewhat melodramatic hero of the Achæan
league, on mastering his native city Sicyon by a coup d'état, not only
chose to accept a subsidy from Philadelphus rather than from himself,
but added Sicyon to the neighboring ethnos of the Achæans. And almost
immediately thereafter Ptolemy struck a second blow which made the
first of importance. In 250 B.C. Alexander, Antigonus's nephew and
chief lieutenant in Greece, egged on by Egypt doubtless, revolted and
set himself up as an independent monarch, with Corinth and Calchis,
which he had held for his uncle, and the Macedonian fleet of which
these were the naval stations, as his basis for action. He at once
allied himself with the Achæans and forced Argos and Athens to pay
him tribute (before 250-249 B.C.). This rebellion paralyzed the naval
power of Antigonus. It was doubtless precipitated by the disloyalty of
Antiochus II to Macedon; for that monarch (now, in or before 249 B.C.)
broke faith with Antigonus and allied himself with Egypt, retaining
the conquests he had made during the war and receiving in marriage
Berenice, the only daughter of Philadelphus, whose intrinsic worth was
augmented by an enormous dowry. This base and, as it proved, foolish
action freed Ptolemy to devote all his energies to the war with
Macedon. The fleet of Egypt once more mastered the Ægean and regained
control of the league of the Islanders (249 B.C.). Simultaneously,
the pro-Egyptian party in Cyrene slew the fair Demetrius, and by the
marriage of their young queen Berenice to Philadelphus's heir, effected
the reunion of the two kingdoms, which had been estranged since the
revolt of Berenice's father, Magas, in 274 B.C.[126] The triumph of
Ptolemy was complete, and when his daughter promptly bore to her
Seleucid husband a son, who by the marriage stipulation was to be his
heir, the future of the Ptolemies seemed bright indeed.

Between 250 and 245 B.C. the fortunes of Gonatas were at a low ebb.
He evidently bent before the storm, unable to confront Alexander and
Aratus in Greece and the admirals of Philadelphus in the Ægean. Relief
came to him from an unexpected source--the renewal of the war between
Egypt and Asia, when, on the death of Antiochus II, his sister-wife
Laodice took up arms against the Egyptian queen and her babe on behalf
of her son Seleucus Callinicus. For, helped by the untimely death of
Philadelphus, and despite the intervention of the Egyptian fleet, she
succeeded in compassing the death of her rivals;[127] whereupon the new
Ptolemy, Euergetes, took the field in person and made a general attack
by land and sea upon her and her adherents. This tragic incident was
one of the few pieces of good luck experienced by Antigonus. Another
was the premature death of his nephew Alexander (246 B.C.), followed
as it was by the Ætolian conquest of Boeotia, and the decision of
Nicæa, Alexander's widow, to surrender Corinth and the rest of her
kingdom to Macedon, the arrangement being that she was to take the
place of the barren and discredited Stratonice as wife of the crown
prince Demetrius. In 245-244 B.C. the balance in Asia inclined sharply
in favor of Laodice, and at the same time Antigonus, aided by his
patron god Pan, recovered Delos and the Islands. Having thus regained
what the rebellion of Alexander had cost him, and having settled his
account with Egypt, Antigonus had now to deal with Aratus of Sicyon
alone. The Achæan was too quick for him, however. By a night attack,
in time of peace, he treacherously seized Corinth (243 B.C.), and at
once added it, together with Megara, Epidaurus, and Troezen, to the
Achæan league. The response of Antigonus to this audacious coup was
to form a pact with his old friends the Ætolians to divide Achæan
territory between them; whereupon, as the only escape from so great a
peril, Aratus put the responsibility where the responsibility really
belonged, by having Ptolemy Euergetes elected general of the Achæan
league on land and sea for 242 B.C. Euergetes brought the Laodicean
War to a point where an advantageous peace was possible by a victory
over Callinicus in this critical year; but his attempt to help
Aratus, who tried to "liberate" Athens while his "commander" engaged
Gonatas in the Ægean, was frustrated by the defeat sustained by his
admiral Sophron at the hands of the veteran Antigonus off the island
of Andros. Macedon still held the Ægean. In the mean time its allies
the Ætolians, already dangerously strengthened by the occupation of
Boeotia, had worsted Olympias, the queen regent of Epirus, in several
engagements, and were on the point of incorporating all of Acarnania
in their league. Antigonus thought the time had come to call a halt.
Euergetes and Callinicus were of the same mind. Accordingly, the long
war was concluded in 242-241 B.C. by a general peace arranged on the
basis of _uti possidetis_. Antigonus held Argos, Hermione, Phlius,
Ægina, Megalopolis, and Orchomenus in the Peloponnesus, in Central
Greece Athens alone, and in the Ægean Euboea and the Cyclades, as well,
seemingly, as Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, the colonies of Athens.
Thessaly was of course his. His garrisons stood in Demetrias, Chalcis,
and Piræus. Of the "shackles" of Greece Corinth alone was out of his
hands. In 240-239 B.C. he died at the age of eighty, having been a king
forty-seven years, all but ten of them in Macedon.

I have sketched the career of Antigonus Gonatas in some fullness
chiefly because it has only recently become possible to give anything
like chronological precision to an account of this remarkable
man.[128] His reign deserves detailed consideration, however, because
of the position it occupies at one of the culminating points of Greek
imperialism, the only other point of equal importance being that in
which Alexander the Great introduced deification of rulers. The record
given above shows clearly, I think, that the power of Macedon did
not suffice to hold Greece in subjection on the principles followed
by Antigonus Gonatas, and against the opposition of Egypt. Even the
final triumph of 242-241 B.C. left Egyptian garrisons in Thrace, the
Hellespont, Ionia, and islands as far advanced into the Ægean as Thera
and Astypalæa, Samos and Lesbos, Thasos and Samothrace. It left Achæa
in possession of Corinth and Megara, Epidaurus and Troezen, as well as
Sicyon and at least a foothold in Arcadia. It left Ætolia in possession
of part of Acarnania, Dolopia, Æniania, Malis, Doris, Locris, Phocis,
and in close alliance with Boeotia. Heraclea at Thermopylæ and Delphi
with its Amphictyonic council were Ætolian. Hence when the new king
of Macedon, Demetrius II, married Olympias's daughter Phthia, and
took Epirote Acarnania under his protection (240-239 B.C.); and when
Ætolia, thus check-mated, entered into a defensive and offensive
alliance with Achæa, the territory of the two leagues, now united in
opposition to Macedon, met, and inclosed completely the Corinthian
Gulf. The one had grown strong despite Antigonus and the other with
his connivance. He had been forced to give Ætolia a free rein from
need of its aid against Egypt, Epirus, and Achæa. Now the policy of
Epirus was subservient to that of Macedon as it had been prior to the
accession of Pyrrhus to its throne in 295 B.C., but the two leagues
were able to fight on fair terms with the two monarchies, and in 238
B.C. they defied Macedon, now supported by Epirus, without having Egypt
as their ally. The failure of the Greek policy of Antigonus Gonatas may
be best gauged by the fact that twenty-seven years earlier Athens and
Sparta had dared to do the like, but only when Egypt, and probably also
Epirus, were fighting on their side.

The chief reason for this striking difference is that in the interval
the Achæans, following the lead given to them by the Ætolians, had
come to life and shed their ethnic cocoon. They had long since been
a _koinon_, or league; but up to 251 B.C. their league, like that of
Boeotia prior to 387 B.C., like that of the Ætolians prior to the
seizure of Delphi in 292 B.C., had been confined strictly by the limits
of their ethnos. The Ætolians had enlarged their territory under the
ægis of the Delphian Amphictyony. The Achæans had no such favoring
circumstance. In their case expansion by the incorporation of "foreign"
peoples was the policy and achievement of a citizen of the first
"foreign" city to be absorbed, Aratus of Sicyon, who saw a greater
opportunity for power as the head of the neighboring league than as
the "tyrant" of his native state, holding office, like the priest at
Nemi, till murdered, or till he had lost the confidence of Antigonus.
At his instigation the Achæan league was carried into the territory
of the "foreigner," the necessary prerequisite for such a development
being, however, that the ethnic bond between the Achæan cities had
been canceled and replaced by a federal bond. The tenacious theory
that common citizenship presupposed community of descent was therewith
discarded. Its abandonment opened to the league possibilities of growth
never possessed by either the city-state or the ethnic state. Of these
the Ætolians and the Achæans took advantage to the best of their
abilities.

They were wise enough, moreover, to perceive that not only were city
institutions indispensable for an up-to-date polity--whence the
Ætolians on forming their league in 322-314 B.C. abandoned their three
ancient tribes and their multitudinous villages and organized in their
stead a score or two of cities[129]--but also that their federal system
must recognize and accept the preexistent city-states as its units.
This, as we have seen,[130] had not been done in Boeotia or in the
Hellenic league organized by Philip II, in each of which the federal
synod, being constructed on the idea of representation according to
population, made districts and not cities the units; so that the
smaller cities felt themselves discriminated against and tended to
rebel against being clubbed together. How far equality of cities
prevailed among the Achæans it is impossible to say with certainty:
we are simply informed that the voting there was by cities. But we
are, I think, permitted to infer that the principle followed was
"one city one vote." For it is unlikely that the old Achæan cities,
on admitting Sicyon, Corinth, Megalopolis, and Argos, deliberately
exposed themselves to the fate of the little lake cities in Boeotia by
giving these large "foreign" cities voting power proportionate to their
populations. This conclusion holds, I believe, both for the Achæan
representative assembly, or synod, which was made up, seemingly, of
successive fractions of the citizens of the constituent cities,[131]
and for the Achæan primary assembly, or _syncletus_, which was open
to all citizens over thirty years of age. It holds, too, it seems,
for the two Ætolian assemblies, the ordinary and the extraordinary,
which were both primary,[132] but not for the Ætolian council which
was constituted of delegates apportioned to the constituent cities
according to their size. The Achæan and the Ætolian leagues represent
in this respect a reaction from the earlier leagues. Their hope was
to change the stress of the cities, which came into play, from a
centrifugal into a centripetal force by basing their federations
squarely on the city-states.

This they could do, up to a certain point, the more easily because
each ethnos had lacked a city-state of outstanding political and
economic power. Equality of city-states did not conflict flagrantly
with realities in either Achæa or Ætolia. Hence the principle that each
city-state, irrespective of strength in the Aristotelian sense, should
have a single vote in the federal assembly, and an equal voice in the
choosing of the federal cabinet (_demiurgi_; _apocleti_), and the
federal executive (_strategus_, hipparch, secretary of state, treasurer
or treasurers) appeared equitable. In Boeotia and Hellas in the earlier
time the league had been created by the superior strength of Thebes
and Macedon respectively; and these capital states had taken care that
the initial leadership should be preserved by the institutions of the
leagues. The Achæan and the Ætolian leagues, on the other hand, were
partly, no doubt, the result of a compromise between the constituent
units, but mainly the consequence of foreign pressure. The federal
movement was not based primarily upon the activity of any one city, but
upon a need generally felt. Hence the capital of the Achæan league
was Ægium, and the capital of the Ætolian league Thermon--neutral
meeting-places, like Washington, Ottawa, and Canberra. That was
something new in the annals of the Greek leagues.

The creative force of foreign policy is manifest in still other
characteristics of these Hellenistic leagues. It was almost
inevitable that in those days of executive efficiency states should
be monarchically organized. Hence, whereas there had been eleven
Boeotarchs in the Boeotian league and seven generals in early
third-century Acarnania, a single general stood at the head of
the Ætolians from the founding of their league and at the head of
the Achæans after 255 B.C. That gave a unity of action otherwise
impossible, the lack of which, though negligible perhaps in domestic
affairs, had been found disadvantageous in foreign affairs. It was a
necessary concession to a monarchical age, one which, however, had been
made reluctantly and with an important reservation which took from
the serum its malignancy: the generalship could be held by the same
individual only every alternate year. He might be the uncrowned king of
the league one year; the next he must be a private citizen.

In still another respect distrust of monarchy and aversion to the
"tyranny" on which Antigonus Gonatas had based his Greek empire, are
betrayed in the institutions of the Achæans. The rule of a city by a
tyrant and membership in the league were regarded as incompatible
with one another. This was, doubtless, a requirement of the federal
laws, which, consisting of treaties negotiated between the original
cities in 275 B.C. and at the admission of new cities thereafter,
of oaths by which these treaties were sanctioned, and of general
enactments made from time to time by special legislative process,
bound the citizens of the individual cities no less than did the local
laws which they themselves passed. Otherwise the city-states were at
liberty to adopt whatever form of government they chose. The league
championed neither democracy nor oligarchy, though its working favored
the well-to-do classes. At most it compelled a certain uniformity in
local administration, its general attitude being admirably symbolized
by its monetary arrangements, wherein the standard was determined by
the federal authority while the coins were issued by the constituent
cities.[133]

The very constitutions of the Achæan and the Ætolian leagues disclose
the importance of the part which the Greek policy of Antigonus Gonatas
played in the creation of these dangerous adversaries of himself and
his country. It is true that his son, Demetrius II, fought them to a
standstill, wrested from Ætolia a large part of its acquisitions, and
might have dissolved both leagues by force, had not Epirus deserted him
and gone over to their side; had not the Illyrian pirates whom he let
loose on this new enemy provoked the Romans to cross the Adriatic; and
had not the Dardanians moved down on Macedon and defeated and killed
him in battle. Such "had nots" belonged, however, to the constant
possibilities, and complications of this sort were ever occurring in
the struggle of Macedon for the hegemony of Greece. On this occasion
their issue was so disastrous for Macedon that the hour of the two
leagues seemed come.

But what should have been their triumph proved to be their destruction.
For the frustration of their hopes Polybius,[134] who voices the
opinion of Aratus, held the Ætolians responsible, and it is likely that
he was in the main right. For just at this critical moment, when the
Achæans were face to face with the most serious problem which their
federal system presented, namely, the reluctance of states, like Sparta
and Athens, which were markedly stronger than the common run of the
Achæan cities, to accept mere equality with them, the Ætolians not only
left them in the lurch and made an advantageous peace for themselves
with Antigonus Doson, the new king of Macedon, but, by ceding to Sparta
their Arcadian cities (Tegea, Mantinea, Orchomenus, and Caphiæ), they
made it possible for Cleomenes, the young Spartan monarch, to rally
round himself all the Peloponnesian opposition to the Achæans, and to
make a brilliant effort to establish once again the Spartan hegemony
in the peninsula. Another view of the matter is that the downfall of
the Achæan league--which, to escape Cleomenes, threw itself into the
arms of Antigonus Doson--was due to the intervention of Ptolemy III,
who backed up Sparta, Athens, and Ætolia by his friendship and his
money,[135] and would have gladly seen Achæa eliminated in order that
Greece might present a united front to Antigonus Doson. In any case it
was Antigonus Doson who reaped the benefits, and it seems unlikely that
they were wholly an unearned increment. What he was capable of he had
already shown by joining heartily in the international guarantee of
the neutrality of Athens which had robbed Aratus of that choice prize.
He was clearly no common man, and had he not died an untimely death
shortly after the great victory he gained over Cleomenes at Sellasia
(222 B.C.), he would probably have been much better known in history.
His energetic and tactful conduct in this crisis contrasts sharply with
the nerveless backdown of Egypt, for which the only excuse was the
imminent demise of Euergetes and the threatening attitude of Antiochus
the Great. It cannot be denied that Antigonus Doson made a good use of
all his opportunities.

His settlement of Hellenic affairs was characterized by the revival of
the general synod established by the great Philip.[136] Representatives
of the Hellenic states met in formal assembly at Corinth (224 B.C.),
and chose the king of Macedon as their hegemon. Subsequently the synod
was to meet at a time and place to be designated by its head. A mere
enumeration of the states which took this action tells the story of
the constitutional development of Hellas in the Macedonian age. They
were Macedon, Thessaly, Epirus, Acarnania, Locris, Phocis, Boeotia,
Euboea, Achæa, and probably the Islanders. Of these the first was a
kingdom,[137] but all the others were leagues. The city-states, which
had been everything in Philip's synod, have disappeared, swallowed
up in the federations. Whether each of the units had now an equal
number of votes, or, as in the time of Philip, a number proportionate
to its size, we do not know, though the second alternative is the
more probable one. In both cases Macedonian deputies took part in the
meetings of the synod and served as heads of the Macedonian interest.
Together with the deputies from Thessaly and other subservient states
they probably formed a majority in the synod. In both Philip II and
Antigonus Doson, Macedon had, accordingly, at once hegemons and kings.
We hear of nothing in the revived Hellenic league comparable with the
Committee of Public Safety of the old one; but nothing similar was
now required, since the generals of the constituent leagues were the
natural representatives of these bodies when the synod was not in
session. They had thus a place provided for them in the scheme of
Antigonus Doson.

The republican reaction against the policy of Antigonus Gonatas had
by no means spent its force. This is shown in the seriousness with
which it was now reckoned with by Antigonus Doson. He could not ignore
the well established practice of the league assemblies to decide all
important questions of foreign policy. Hence his synod differs from
that of Philip II particularly in this important respect, that its
action in declaring war, concluding peace, and other like matters was
taken subject to ratification by the league authorities, and was,
seemingly, binding only on such of them as ratified it.[138] His synod,
in other words, stood to the league assemblies as the Achæan synod
stood to the Achæan _syncletus_. Naturally, the confederates could not
withdraw from the hegemony at pleasure, much less join its enemies;
so that the refusal of a league to accept a decision of the synod to
declare war meant only that it assumed a position of neutrality. In
Philip's time each city had had to pay per day a fine of thirty drachmæ
for every horseman, twenty drachmæ for every hoplite, ten drachmæ
for every light-armed soldier, and seven or eight drachmæ for every
sailor who was absent from a duly authorized expedition.[139] Now the
leagues could refuse to coöperate without suffering any penalty. They
surrendered their liberty to fight one another, and their right to
contract alliances with outside states; but they did not surrender
their diplomacy entirely to the hegemon, though they agreed to enter
into no negotiations with any outside king.[140] They gave their
hegemon no right whatever to interfere in their local concerns.[141]

Such were the generous concessions to local sentiment by means of which
Antigonus Doson sought to place the hegemony of the kings of Macedon
in Hellas on a secure basis. Never before in the history of the people
had a conqueror made so noble a use of his power. Antigonus Doson went
in fact so far in conciliating the Greek states that had he withdrawn
Macedonian troops from Demetrias, Chalcis, and Corinth,--the three
shackles of Hellas,--added new conquests like Orchomenus, Sparta,
and Messene to the constituent leagues instead of to the central
organization, and possessed less personal prestige, it is difficult
to imagine how the Hellenic league could ever have been brought into
action. Probably all that he cared to be absolutely sure of was the
neutrality of the confederates who did not support him in the field.

In any case that was all that his successor Philip V was able to
accomplish, when, in 220 B.C., he had the Hellenic synod accept the
repeated challenge of war offered to him by the Ætolians, who, taking
advantage of the accession of a young and untried king to the throne
of Macedon, assailed his hegemony in Greece while it was still
precarious. Had Doson lived to wage the Social War (220-217 B.C.),
he might have crushed the Ætolians by sheer weight of numbers, and
have completed the unification of Hellas. Philip V fought bravely and
skillfully and won the respect of both his friends and his foes; but
before any definite issue of the struggle had arrived, the campaign
between Hannibal and the Romans had reached such a point that the
hegemon of Hellas dared not neglect it any longer.

"Let Greece," said Agelaus of Naupactus at the peace conference which
followed,[142] "be united; let no Greek state make war upon any other;
let them thank the Gods if they can all live in peace and agreement,
if, as men in crossing rivers grasp one another's hands, so they can
hold together and save themselves and their cities from barbarian
inroads. If it is too much to hope that it should be so always, let
it at least be so just now; let Greeks, now at least, unite and keep
on their guard, when they behold the vastness of the armies and the
greatness of the struggle going on in the West. No man who looks at
the state of things with common care can doubt what is coming. Whether
Rome conquers Carthage or Carthage conquers Rome, the victor will not
be content with the dominion of the Greeks of Italy and Sicily; he will
extend his plans and his warfare much further than suits us or our
welfare. Let all Greece be on its guard, and Philip above all. Your
truest defense, O King," he continued, "will be found in the character
of the chief and protector of the Greeks. Leave off destroying Greek
cities; leave off weakening them till they become a prey to every
invader. Rather watch over Greece, as you watch over your own body;
guard the interests of all her members as you guard the interest of
what is your own. If you follow such a course as this, you will win
the good will of Greece; you will have every Greek bound to you as
a friend and as a sure supporter in all your undertakings; foreign
powers will see the confidence which the whole nation reposes in you,
and will fear to attack either you or them. If you wish for conquest
and military glory, another field invites you. Cast your eyes to the
West; look at the war raging in Italy; of that war you may easily, by
a skilful policy, make yourself the arbiter; a blow dealt in time may
make you master of both the contending powers. If you cherish such
hopes, no time bids fairer than the present for their accomplishment.
But as for disputes and wars with Greeks, put them aside till some
season of leisure; let it be your main object to keep in your own hands
the power of making war and peace with them when you will. If once the
clouds which are gathering in the West should advance and spread over
Greece and the neighboring lands, there will be danger indeed that
all our truces and wars, all the child's play with which we now amuse
ourselves, will be suddenly cut short. We may then pray in vain to the
Gods for the power of making war and peace with one another, and indeed
of dealing independently with any of the questions which may arise
among us."

The speaker was right, and Philip took his advice. But when he became
embroiled with Rome, it was the speaker's own countrymen, the Ætolians,
who, by attacking Macedon in the rear, contributed most to the dreaded
sequel: that never after 212 B.C. did the Greeks have an opportunity
of dealing independently with any of the questions which arose among
them. At the time of the Social War Macedon missed its last chance of
establishing a single state in European Hellas.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

 1. Droysen, J.G. _Geschichte des Hellenismus_,^2 III: _Geschichte der
 Epigonen_ (1877).

 2. Freeman, E. _History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy_^2
 (1893). Ed. by J.B. Bury.

 3. Niese, B. _Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischen Staaten._
 Especially vol. II (1899).

 4. Beloch, J. _Griechische Geschichte_, III (1904).

 5. Kärst, J. _Geschichte des hellenistischen Zeitalters_, II, I (1909).

 6. Ferguson, W.S. _Hellenistic Athens_ (1911).

 7. Pozzi, Emilio. _Le Battaglie di Cos e di Andro e la Politica
 marittima di Antigono Gonata._ In _Memorie della Reale Accademia delle
 Scienze di Torino_: serie II, tom. LXIII (1912).

 8. Tarn, W.W. _Antigonus Gonatas_ (1913).

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 116: Tarn, W.W., _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, XXIX (1909),
pp. 269 _f._; Beloch, _Griechische Geschichte_, III, 1, pp. 386 _f._;
_Hellenistic Athens_, p. 190.]

[Footnote 117: Mahaffy, _The Progress of Hellenism in Alexander's
Empire_ (1905), p. 32.]

[Footnote 118: Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von, _Staat und
Gesellschaft der Griechen: D. Die makedonischen Königreiche_, pp. 139
_ff._]

[Footnote 119: For their revival of the Hellenic league, in which
Macedon formed simply one unit, see Klotzsch, _Epirotische Geschichte_,
p. 130, n. 1, and _Hellenistic Athens_, pp. 121 _f._]

[Footnote 120: For the date see Mayer, _Philologus_, LXXI (1912), p.
227.]

[Footnote 121: _Hellenistic Athens_, p. 148.]

[Footnote 122: Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, _Antigonos von Karystos_, p.
218; Kärst, _Geschichte des hellenistischen Zeitalters_, II, 1, pp.
121, 125. Tarn (_Antigonus Gonatas_, pp. 276 _ff._) bases Antigonus's
system of tyrants on expediency, not on philosophy.]

[Footnote 123: For the peace between Egypt and Macedon made in 261 B.C.
see _Inscriptiones Græcæ_, XI, 2, 114.]

[Footnote 124: The enmity of Rhodes and Philadelphia is proved by
Blinkenberg's _La chronique du temple Lindien_. It is, accordingly,
probable that the defeat of Chremonides by Agathostratus at Ephesus
belongs to this struggle, though something may still be said, I think,
for 242 B.C. See _Hellenistic Athens_, p. 197, n. 2.]

[Footnote 125: For this peace see _Inscriptiones Græcæ_, XI, 2, 116.
Its effect is perceptible in Athens (_Hellenistic Athens_, p. 191) and
in Achæa (_Ibid._, n. 1).]

[Footnote 126: Tarn (_Antigonus Gonatas_, pp. 321 _ff._, 449 _ff._)
has Demetrius slain in 258 B.C., and Berenice married to Euergetes, in
247-246 B.C. This position, which Beloch challenged (_Griech. Gesch._,
III, 2, pp. 133 _ff._), leaves unexplained the extraordinary delay
in the marriage of the young couple and in the reunion of the two
kingdoms.]

[Footnote 127: De Sanctis, _Contributi alla Storia dell' Impero
Seleucidico_ (_Atti della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino_,
XLVII, pp. 11 _ff._).]

[Footnote 128: The account given in the text differs from that given in
_Hellenistic Athens_ mainly because (led by Dürrbach, _Inscriptiones
Græcæ_, XI, 2, pp. vi _f._ and Pozzi, _op. cit._ in Select Bibliography
at the end of the chapter) I now return to Homolle's Delian chronology.
It differs only in a few details from that given by Pozzi. Tarn's
masterly biography (_Antigonus Gonatas_) reached me only when this
chapter was already in type. The complete data which it contains agree
well, I believe, with the construction given above.]

[Footnote 129: Swoboda, _Die ätolische Komenverfassung_ (_Wiener
Studien_, XXXIV, 1912, pp. 37 _ff._).]

[Footnote 130: Above, chapter I.]

[Footnote 131: De Sanctis, _Rivista di Filol._ XXXVI (1908), pp. 252
_ff._]

[Footnote 132: Swoboda, _Studien zu den griechischen Bünden_, I
(_Klio_, XI, 1911, pp. 456 _ff._).]

[Footnote 133: Swoboda, _Studien zu den griechischen Bünden_, II. _Die
Städte im achäischen Bünde_ (_Klio_, XII, 1912, pp. 17 _ff._).]

[Footnote 134: II, 45.]

[Footnote 135: _Hellenistic Athens_, pp. 240 _f._]

[Footnote 136: Freeman, _History of Federal Government_, pp. 379 _ff._]

[Footnote 137: And in all probability, a league as well. Tarn,
_Antigonus Gonatas_, p. 54. n. 36.]

[Footnote 138: Polybius, IV, 26.]

[Footnote 139: Wilhelm, _Attische Urkunden_, I, p. 36.]

[Footnote 140: Plut., _Aratus_, 45.]

[Footnote 141: Polybius, IV, 24.]

[Footnote 142: Polybius, V. 104. (Translated by Freeman, _History of
Federal Government_, pp. 435 _f._)]

THE END

INDEX

INDEX

      Absolutism, creation of, 135;
        legalized in Greece, 147 _f._

      Acarnania, 234.

      Achæa. _See_ League.

      Ætolia. _See_ League.

      Agelaus of Naupactus, speech of, 246.

      _Agon_, in Athens, 58 _ff._

      Alexander of Corinth, rebellion of, 230;
        death of, 232.

      Alexander the Great, 4;
        deification of, 36;
        accession of, to throne, 116, 123 _f._;
        character of, 119;
        training of, 119 _ff._;
        and Aristotle, 119 _ff._;
        love of symbolism of, 123, 128, 139;
        destroys Thebes, 123 _f._;
        spares Pindar's house, 124;
        visits Troy, 124 _f._;
        cuts Gordian knot, 125 _f._;
        plan of Persian campaign of, 126 _f._;
        son of Zeus, 128, 133, 162 _f._;
        in Persepolis, 129;
        dissolves Hellenic league, 129 _f._;
        ceases to be hegemon of Hellas, 130;
        ceases to be king of Macedon, 130 _f._;
        marries Roxane, 130;
        adopts Persian costume, 130;
        tries to establish Hellenism in Asia, 133 _f._;
        founds city-states, 134 _f._;
        plans conquest of West, 134;
        and absolute monarchy, 135;
        changes opinion as to Iranians, 135 _f._;
        tries to fuse dominant peoples of Europe and Asia, 136 _ff._;
        marries Persian princesses, 137;
        plans of, 144,
        rejected by the Macedonians, 150;
        demands recognition as a god, 146;
        departs from the life among men, 149.

      Alexandria, 155, 157, 163, 213;
        new Athens, 158;
        trade of, 161 _f._;
        imperial cult of Ptolemies in, 164 _ff._;
      _vs._ Memphis, 170;
        laws of, 177;
        classes of population in, 181.

      Ammon, god of Cyrene, 126 _ff._;
        visited by Alexander, 139.

      _Ancient City_, of Fustel de Coulanges, criticized, 7.

      Andros, battle of, 159, 233.

      Antigonids, constitutional government of, 216;
        wars of, with Rome, 217 _f._;
        alliance of, with Seleucids, 223.

      Antigonus I, Monophthalmus, 183;
        tries to take Alexander's place and fails, 184 _f._;
        policy of, 218 _f._;
        monarchy of, 220 _f._

      Antigonus II, Gonatas, victories of, at Cos and Andros, 159;
        rightful heir of Macedonian crown, 220;
        suzerain of Greece, 220;
        king of Macedon, 220, 223;
        education of, 222 _f._;
        reign of, 223-233;
        peace of, with Egypt, 223;
        hostility of, with Epirus, 224;
        protects Greece from barbarians, 224;
        tyrants of, in Greece, 224 _ff._;
        relation of, to Stoa, 225 _f._;
        refuses deification, 225 _f._;
        struggle of, with Ptolemy Philadelphus, 226, 229;
        renews alliance with Seleucids, 229;
        deserted by Antiochus II, 230;
        recovers Ægean, 232;
        treaty of, with Ætolians, 232;
        empire of, 233;
        death of, 233;
        failure of, in Greece, 235.

      Antigonus III, Doson, Hellenic league of, 34;
        makes peace with Ætolians, 241;
        hegemon of Hellas, 243.

      Antiochus I, Soter, 185.

      Antiochus II, Theos, 185;
        deserts Macedon, 230.

      Antiochus III, the Great, 187 _ff._;
        wrests Palestine from Egypt, 188;
        and Hannibal, 189;
        peace of, with Rome, 190.

      Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, policy of, 212;
        and the Jews, 212 _f._;
        invades Egypt, 213.

      Antiochus Hierax, 187.

      Antipater, house of, 219.

      Antipater II, 220.

      Antony, and Cleopatra, 153;
        as Ammon, 162.

      Apama, wife of Seleucus, 195.

      Aratus, of Sicyon, 236;
        seizes Sicyon, 230;
        seizes Corinth, 232.

      Areus I, correspondence of, with Jews, 79.

      Aristocracy, supported by Sparta, 20;
        defined, 20 _f._;
        destroyed in Sparta, 83;
        championed by Sparta, 94.

      Aristophanes, view of, as to extending Athenian citizenship, 31.

      Aristotle, 26, 36;
        on equality of states, 33;
        training of, 108;
        a poor historian, 108 _f._;
        theory of progress of, 109;