After Alexander

The Time of the Diadochi (323-281 BC)

Victor Alonso Troncoso, Edward M. Anson

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781782970637
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'antica Grecia

When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC without a chosen successor he left behind a huge empire and ushered in a turbulent period, as his generals fought for control of vast territories. The time of the Successors (Diadochi) is usually defined as beginning in 323 BC and ending with the deaths of the last two Successors in 281 BC. This is a major publication devoted to the Successors and contains eighteen papers reflecting current research. Several papers attempt to unravel the source history of the very limited remaining narrative accounts, and add additional materials through cuneiform and Byzantine texts. Specific historical issues addressed include the role of so-called royal flatterers and whether or not Alexander's old guard did continue to serve into their sixties and seventies. Three papers reflect the recent conscious effort by many to break away from the Hellenocentric view of the predominantly Greek sources, by examining the role of the conquered, specifically the prominent roles played by Iranians in the administration and military of Alexander and his Successors, pockets of Iranian resistance which eventually blossomed into Hellenistic kingdoms ruled by sovereigns proclaiming their direct connection to an Iranian past and a continuation of Iranian influence through an examination of the roles played by certain of the Diadochis Iranian wives. The papers in the final section analyze the use of varying forms of propaganda. These include the use of the concept of Freedom of the Greeks as a means of manipulating opinion in the Greek world; how Ptolemy used a snake cult associated with the foundation of Alexandria in Egypt to link his kingship with that of Alexander; and the employment of elephant images to advertise the authority of particular rulers.

THE DIADOCHI HISTORY IN CUNEIFORM DOCUMENTATION

Tom Boiy

The deplorable situation of the sources for the Diadochi period is a well-known fact. Diodorus’ books 18–20 of his Universal History form the only history survey that is entirely preserved. Recent studies and discussions have clearly shown that the use of his sources (as far as we know them), methods and chronological framework of this first century compilator were perhaps not always what we hoped for or what we wanted them to be. The aim of this contribution is to see what Babylonia has to offer to add to our knowledge of the Diadochi period.

Worth mentioning in the first place is Berossus, a Babylonian priest who lived in Babylon during Alexander’s lifetime and who wrote a history of Babylonia from the beginning until his own time in Greek, the so-called Babyloniaca or Chaldaica (FGH 680 T 1–2). He dedicated his work to the Seleucid king Antiochus I (FGH 680 T 2). As an eyewitness he is without doubt a very attractive source, but unfortunately his work is not completely preserved, and the surviving fragments deal with Babylonia’s prehistory, with Neo-Babylonian kings and some episodes on the Achaemenid dynasty (especially Cyrus and his conquest of Babylon). The preserved fragments of Berossus’ Babyloniaca do not deal with the Diadochi period and they add therefore nothing whatsoever to our knowledge of this period (see De Breucker 2010).

There is nothing comparable to Berossus, Diodorus or Greek historiography in cuneiform literature. A first category of Babylonian historiographical works derived from lexical sciences, making lists of related subjects (see e.g. von Soden 1985, 150–51). King lists mentioned all Babylonian kings in their chronological order with their number of regnal years. The entire history was divided into dynasties. Since the Babylonian dating system used the king’s regnal years as a central reference point, these king lists obviously served a practical purpose. Although king lists were superfluous in the Seleucid period once the Seleucid era was in use, we still have two king lists from that period that also include the Diadochi period: the Babylon King List Iraq 16 pl. 53 (BKL) and the Uruk King List BaM Beih. 2 88 (UKL). BKL begins with the reign of Alexander the Great and UKL also includes earlier kings (earliest preserved kings date from the Neo-Assyrian period). If we compare the information from both sources, it is clear that they do not give exactly the same historical data:

	UKL	BKL
Philip Arrhidaeus	6	[ ]
Antigonus	6	no king for [ ] years, Antigonus ruled
Alexander IV	not listed	6
Seleucus	31	25

The differences in BKL and UKL are caused by different definitions of a reign and the complicated political situation of the Diadochi period. In BKL a purely legal point of view was adopted: the scribe indicated the period when Antigonus ruled the region as ‘kingless’ years because Antigonus chose to ignore the regnal years of the official king in the date formulas in favour of his years as stratēgos. At the return of Seleucus to Babylonia in 311 the scribe of BKL accepts Alexander the Great’s son Alexander IV as Babylonian king: while Alexander IV was indeed theoretically king of his father’s empire, he never actually ruled and for all but part of the first year of his life he did not reside in Babylon. The scribe of UKL, however, chose a more pragmatic point of view: the stratēgos Antigonus is accepted as effective ruler instead of the titular king Alexander IV and after Seleucus’ return the restoration of Alexander IV in the date formulas is ignored in favour of the later dynast and in 311 already de facto ruler Seleucus I. The differences between both lists can therefore be harmonised easily and both are confirmed by the information on the basis of the date formulas of legal and administrative cuneiform tablets from the Diadochi period (Boiy 2007, 93–94).

The chronicles constitute another type of historiographical cuneiform tablets. In the first published edition of all Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles, Grayson (1975a, 22) presumed that there was one continuous series of Babylonian chronicles starting from Nabonassar in the eighth century until the Hellenistic period (the last copy, ABC 13b, dates to Seleucus III).1 This series includes the famous Chronicle of the Diadochi (ABC 10), but also two other chronicles dealing with the Diadochi period: ABC 11 (BM 32440+32581+32585) on Antiochus I as − according to Babylonian conception – ‘crown prince’ and ABC 12 (BM 32235 and 32957) on the last years of Seleucus I.

The Chronicle of the Diadochi (BM 34660+36313; ABC 10) is the most informative cuneiform chronicle dealing with the Diadochi period and has been studied regularly. After the editio princeps by Smith (1924, 124–49), several transliterations and translations have appeared.2 The only autograph copy of the text was published in the editio princeps and Grayson added (hardly readable) photographs. The chronology of the chronicle has been studied intensively together with the chronology of the early Hellenistic period in general.3 The most urgent desideratum for further study and research of the Diadochi Chronicle now is a new line drawing copy to check the new readings in the recent transliterations and a full and up-to-date historical commentary.4

The new online publication Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic Period (BCHP) by Finkel and van der Spek (2006) also offers, apart from a new edition of the known chronicles, several new chronicles dating to the Hellenistic period, half of them dating to the Diadochi period:

BCHP 1:	Alexander chronicle (BM 36304; as ABC 8 originally dated by Grayson in the Late Achaemenid period; Glassner 1993, 206 redated it because of the appearance of Hanû, ‘Greeks’; van der Spek recognized Alexander in ma-lek-sa)5
BCHP 2:	Alexander and Arabia (BM 41080)
BCHP 4:	Arses and Alexander (BM 36613, published for the first time by Sachs (1977)
BCHP 6:	ruin of Esagila (BM 32248+32456+32477+32543 + an unnumbered fragment in the collection 76–11–17; not dated; Antiochus mentioned as prince)
BCHP 7:	Antiochus, Bactria and India (BM 32310+32398+32384)6
BCHP 8:	juniper garden (BM 32266)7

Another genre, closely related to historiography, is the so-called ‘prophecy’ texts. Although these texts use the omen terminology and they pretend to foretell events, they are rather post factum foretelling or vaticinium ex eventu (Biggs 1967, 117). There is one example of a Babylonian prophecy dealing with the period of Alexander: the so-called dynastic prophecy (BM 40623; Grayson 1975b, 24–37). The text foretells/describes the reigns of Babylonian kings starting from the Neo-Babylonian period until at least the arrival of Alexander in Babylonia;8 the rise and fall of each king is mentioned and the number of his regnal years. The end contains a problematic passage mentioning the defeat of Greek troops. Since Darius III obviously never defeated Alexander the Great, several solutions have been proposed for this enigma: an emendation from ‘Hanû’ into ‘Guti’ to make it a defeat of Persian troops instead of Greek troops, relating the passage to a different political situation by skipping two decades (which means that it refers to the wars between Antigonus and Seleucus during the Diadochi period) and the change from a vaticinium ex eventu into a real prophecy (possibly a warning for Alexander that he might lose all if he does not pay attention to the prediction of the Babylonian astronomers).9

There are no royal inscriptions or building inscriptions, an important source for the reconstruction of Mesopotamian political history until that time, preserved from the Diadochi period.10

A final genre of historiographical literature are the historical notes at the end of the Astronomical Diaries (AD). The Astronomical Diaries collect daily observations of the sky with special attention for the positions of the moon, for eclipses, for solstices and equinoxes, for the position of the planets and phenomena of Sirius. Apart from the astronomical observations some other topics are also treated at the end of each paragraph: weather conditions, the prices of basic commodities, the level of the River Euphrates in Babylon and some historical notes (see Slotsky 1997, 23–42). These notes provide us with valuable information on the history of Mesopotamia in the first millennium.

The Astronomical Diaries are now available in an accessible edition by Hunger based on a manuscript by the late A. Sachs.11 The Diadochi period is covered in AD 1 (Sachs and Hunger 1988). Not every single year is represented in the Astronomical Diaries, the passages are often fragmentarily preserved, and, compared to the later periods, the Diadochi period is especially underrepresented: there are a number of diaries from the reign of Alexander the Great, but after the second year of Philip Arrhidaeus not a single diary is preserved for more than a decade. In addition, the historical notes are rather small compared to those from, for instance, the Parthian period. The historical notes not only provide us with valuable information on Babylonia during the Diadochi period, but also the prices of commodities can be used for historical research: the high prices in 309, for instance, clearly demonstrate the hardship of life in Babylon and Babylonia during the years when Antigonus Monophthalmus waged war in Babylonia against Seleucus’ troops.12 In addition, some extra information appears in the enumeration of prices of the month Ayaru (May-June) 325: ‘the sale of barley and everything else was cut off in the streets of Babylon’ (AD 1‑324B ‘Obv. 12’–13’). Finally, there sometimes appears a historical note in the middle of the astronomical observations. The most famous example of this technique is the death date of Alexander the Great: AD 1–322B ‘obv.’ 8’ simply mentions ‘29: the king died’, but this small remark allows us to date Alexander’s death on 11 June 323.13

Legal and administrative documents are direct witnesses from the Diadochi period itself and are therefore also a potentially important source of information on Babylonia during the period. For the Hellenistic age in general there are only two cities from which a substantial number of cuneiform legal and administrative documents are preserved: the traditional capital Babylon (mainly administrative texts) and the southern centre Uruk (almost exclusively legal documents). While Borsippa, in the neighbourhood of Babylon, provides about one hundred cuneiform documents, other Babylonian towns, such as Cutha, Kish, Nippur, Larsa, Ur and Marad have not left us more than a handful of cuneiform tablets each.

As far as the Diadochi period is concerned, the situation with respect to cuneiform sources is quite similar: a substantial amount of tablets is preserved from Babylon, more or less 100 from Borsippa and a handful from the other Babylonian cities.14 The only exception appears to be Uruk: not more than 3 documents predate the Seleucid dynasty (305 BC), placing the city in the group of cities that have left us only a handful of documents. Compared to the relative wealth of tablets from Uruk in the later periods this is rather meagre and Uruk is, as far as the number of preserved documents is concerned, surpassed by Borsippa.

If we look at the content of these preserved tablets, there are also differences to be discerned. In Babylon most texts are administrative tablets belonging to the socalled ‘Esagil archive’ starting in the Late Achaemenid period until the beginning of the Seleucid period (Jursa 2005, 73–74). The majority of these texts are ration lists mentioning temple personnel with the amount of rations provided. In a header (repeated at the end of the reverse) the nature of the ration (barley, date or wool) is explained, the period for which the ration was intended and the person responsible for the rations of that group of personnel. As far as other tablets are concerned, especially ex-votos, donations given to Bēl and Bēltīya to prolong the life of the donor, are famous. These texts often stipulate that the money donated was intended to pay for ‘clearing the rubble of the temple Esagil’ (Boiy 2004, 110–11).

From Borsippa almost all preserved tablets are part of the so-called ‘brewers’ archive’ (Jursa 2005, 97). They are letter-orders and receipts dealing with the payment of rations and materials to brewers by their paymasters. The earliest texts date to the Late Achaemenid period and the bulk of the tablets originate from the period of Antigonus Monophthalmus and Alexander IV.

The cuneiform tablets from the other Babylonian cities are, as is the case for Uruk during the Hellenistic period, legal tablets dealing with daily transactions such a...