The Empire of Alexander the Great

John Mahaffy

• Publisher: Ozymandias Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781531281120
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: History

Most of the great changes in the world's history come about gradually and wise men can see them coming, for it is very hard to run counter to the nature of average men, and all great advances and degradations of society are the result of persistent causes; but a few times, since our records have been kept, there has arisen a single genius, who has done what no number of lesser men could accomplish, who has upset theories as well as dominions, preached a new faith, discovered some new application of Force which has given a fresh start to the world in its weary and perplexed struggle for a higher life. These few great men have so changed the current of affairs that we may safely say they have modified the future of the whole human race. At any rate they have taught us what might and dignity is attainable by man and has so given us ideals by which the commonest of us can estimate his worth and exalt his aspirations. So, too, there have been gigantic criminals and imperial fools who have wrecked the peace of the world and caused the "ape and tiger" elements, which were repressed by long and anxious struggles, to break out afresh in their savagery.

THE THREE YOUNG KINGS A SKETCH OF ANTIGONUS GONATAS, HIS ACTS AND CHARACTER

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ANTIGONUS GONATAS WAS KING FROM B.C. 277-239, but claiming the sovereignty of Macedonia both through his father, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and his mother, Phila, daughter of Antipater. He had made every effort since the death of his father, imprisoned by Seleucus in Syria, to obtain what he considered his lawful heritage. During his youth he had not only had the advantage of a noble and spirited mother, to whom he owed, no doubt, the deeper traits of his character, but he had spent much time in Athens among the philosophers, while his father was wandering in wars and adventures through the Hellenistic world. Hence many anecdotes, preserved in the lives of the philosophers, attest his devotion to serious study, and his friendship with men of learning and character, especially Stoics. His devotion to his father was absolute. He offered himself as a prisoner in his father’s stead and when the latter died, brought him with great grief and pomp to Corinth, to be buried in the City of Demetrias. Then he claimed the throne of Macedonia, but with little effect against Lysimachus and Pyrrhus, both superior generals. Italy relieved him for a time of Pyrrhus, whom he even helped with ships; the battle of Coruped on of Lysimachus; but against old Seleucus he had no chance. When the veteran was murdered, Antigonus was at war with Ptolemy Keraunos, the murderer, who had the advantage of a great army ready at hand, when he succeeded to the place of his victim. But the invasion of the Galatae overshadowed all other differences, and when Keraunos was killed by them, it was Antigonus’ chief anxiety to defeat them, and so earn the throne of Macedon.

This was his first great victory. Then, in settling Macedon, he came in contact with the hideous tyrant Apollodorus, of Cassandreia (in Thessaly), whom he subdued with trouble and by strategem. This gave him a new claim on the gratitude of the northern

Greeks; but presently Pyrrhus who had in vain begged him for help against the Romans, when his first successes had shown him the arduous nature of the enterprise, came back from the west to assert a kingdom in Hellas and Macedonia, which he had been unable to conquer in Italy. Antigonus now lost his kingdom again, and was driven out by Pyrrhus, but with the aid of a fleet and of many Greek friends, kept up the struggle, till Pyrrhus was killed by an old woman with a tile from the roof of a house, while he was fighting in the streets of Argos. This time Antigonus became finally master of Macedonia, for though we hear that once again, while he was at war with Athens, he lost his kingdom to Alexander king of Epirus, his son recovered it so quickly by a second battle, that this strange and obscure episode need hardly been taken into account.

For more than thirty years then, he was one of the leading sovereigns of the empire, keeping a learned and refined court at Pella, cultivating Stoic philosophy and science, but at the same time having his hands full of complex policy. After a preliminary war with Antiochus, he made with this king a permanent peace, not only owing to the alliance with him by marrying his sister Phila—Antiochus’ wife Stratonice was already a bond of that kind, being Antigonus’ sister—but because Antiochus was obliged to permit several intermediate kingdoms, as well as the coast and island Greeks, to assert their liberty. Of this anon. Antigonus’ main struggles were with Ptolemy, and were carried on by each in the country of the other, by fomenting revolts, and supporting them with money and with ships. Thus Ptolemy was always urging the Greeks to claim their liberty; he even figures in inscriptions of the times as their generalissimo, and he produced at least one great coalition against Antigonus, headed by Athens—the so called Chremonidean war. On the other hand, Antigonus had a hold upon Caria from which he could threaten Egypt directly; and he sent his brother Demetrius (the Fair) to Gyrene, producing an important and effectual revolt against Egypt. The Chremonidean war he seems to have settled, first by defeating the Spartans, whose king, Areus, fell in the battle at Corinth, to which they had advanced in the hope of raising the siege of Athens; next by a great naval victory at Cos, in which the Egyptian fleet of relief was destroyed, and owing to which Athens was obliged to surrender (B.C. 266).

From that time onward, Antigonus had to contend with no further active interference from Philadelphus; though the relations of the two kingdoms were always strained, and their interests at variance.

The difficulties he had with Greece were more serious, because the intrigues of Ptolemy fell in with the spirit of the nation, and even with its noblest aspirations. The grave and solid system of the Stoics did not serve Antigonus only, as a rule of life, it seems to have affected the tone of Athens just as the eloquence of Demosthenes affected it towards the close of the struggle with Philip. Men became serious about politics and fought for conscience’ sake. These stoical people often opposed Antigonus on principle, and were not the least satisfied with the result of a battle; their opposition was irreconcilable. Still more serious was the rise of the Federal principle in Aetolia and Achaia, which brought together democracies of towns into democracies of states, and so created powers able to contend with the power of Macedonia. Antigonus strove all his life against these difficulties by establishing garrisons in strong places, such as Corinth, by isolating the petty states, and hence, by putting into them tyrants, devoted to his interests. These tyrants were not all high-minded Stoics, like their master, and committed many injustices and outrages. Hence the popular sentiment could easily be roused against the king.

Ptolemy Philadelphus, the second of these kings, ruled from 282 to 246 B.C., and unlike Antigonus, who had to fight over and over again for his crown, succeeded at the age of twenty-four peacefully, in his wise father’s lifetime and without trouble from his desperate elder brother, who set all the rest of the empire aflame. Indeed he took advantage of the confusion caused by Seleucus’ murder to seize Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, which Antiochus did not recover for ten years and during most of his life he was striving, with considerable success, to grasp the coasts of Lycia and Caria, to control the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and to extend his influence over the Black Sea, so as to close the northern trade-route from the East to Europe. He fought all his wars rather by political combinations and subsidies from his great wealth, than by actual campaigns, for he was no general, and never took the field. So he raise up enemies against Antigonus, as we have just seen, in Greece. He set the dynasts of Bithynia and Pontus against their suzerain Antiochus. He even sought the friendship of the Romans, to whom he sent a friendly embassy (B.C. 222) just after their defeat of Pyrrhus—an embassy received with great enthusiasm and every distinction by the Romans, for he was then the most powerful monarch in the world.

Let us first turn our attention to his capital. Alexandria, founded by the great conqueror, increased and beautified by Ptolemy Soter, vas now far the greatest city of Alexander’s Empire. It was the first of those new foundations which are a marked feature in Hellenism; there were many others of great size and importance—above all, Antioch, then Seleucia on the Tigris, then Nicomedia, Nicaea, Apamaea, which lasted; besides such as Lysimacheia, Antigoneia, and others, which early disappeared. In fact, Macedonia was the only great power in those days content with a modest capital, for the Antigonids had not taken up Casander’s foundation, Cassandreia, nor would they leave their old seat at Pella. Alexandria was the model for all the rest. The intersection of two great principal thoroughfares, adorned with colonnades for the footways, formed the centre point, the omphalos of the city. The other streets were at right angles with these thoroughfares, so that the whole place was quite regular. Counting its old part, Rhakotis which was still the habitation of native Egyptians, Alexandria had five quarters, one at least devoted to Jews who had originally settled there in great numbers. The mixed population there of Macedonians, Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians gave a peculiarly complex and variable character to the population.

Let us not forget the vast number of strangers from all parts of the world whom trade and politics brought there. It was the great mart where the wealth of Europe and of Asia changed hands. Alexander had opened the sea-way by exploring the coasts of Media and Persia. Caravans from the head of the Persian Gulf, and ships on the Red Sea, brought all the wonders of Ceylon and China, as well as of Further India, to Alexandria. There, too, the wealth of Spain and Gaul, the produce of Italy and Macedonia, the amber of the Baltic and the salt fish of Pontus, the silver of Spain and the copper of Cyprus, the timber of Macedonia and Crete, the pottery and oil of Greece—a thousand imports from all the Mediterranean—came to be exchanged for the spices of Arabia, the splendid birds and embroideries of India and Ceylon, the gold and ivory of Africa, the antelopes, the apes, the leopards, the elephants of tropical climes. Hence the enormous wealth of the Lagidas, for in addition to the marvelous fertility and great population—it is said to have been seven millions—of Egypt, they made all the profits of this enormous carrying trade.

We gain a good idea of what the splendors of the capital were by the very full account preserved to us by Athenseus of the great feast which inaugurated the reign of Philadelphus. The enumeration of what went in the state procession is veritably tedious to read but must have been astonishing to behold. It took the whole day to defile through the streets, at which we need not wonder, when we find that the troops alone, all dressed in splendid uniforms, numbered nearly 60,000. Not only was there gold and silver in infinite display, but every kind of exotic flower, forced out of its natural season, and troops of all the wild animals in the world, from the white polar bear, to the rhinoceros of Ethiopia—gazelles, zebras, wild asses, elephants, bisons. There were, moreover, great mummeries with mythological and allegorical figures, just like those of the Middle Ages; hunting scenes too and vintage scenes, with satyrs treading the wine-press, and the streets flowing with the foaming juice. There were negroes and Indians, mock prisoners in the triumph of Dionysus, and personification of all the cities, and the seasons of the year, and a great deal more with which it is not necessary to delay the reader.

All this seems idle pomp, and the doing of an idle sybarite. Philadelphus was anything but that. He was determined to drain life to the uttermost, and for that end he essayed every sort of enjoyment, except that of military glory, which his weak frame and delicate health precluded. After his accession he cleared away the possible claimants or disturbers of his throne with the quick and bloody ruthlessness of an Oriental despot, but from that time on his sway was that of gentleness, mildness, subtlety. Diplomacy was evidently one of his main pursuits, and he embraced in his practice of it all the known world. At every court he had his emissaries, and in every kingdom his supporters. He fought all his wars by raising up enemies to his opponents in their own land. He enjoyed the support and friendship of many potentates. It was he who opened up the Egyptian trade with Italy, and made Puteoli the great port for ships from Alexandria, which it remained for centuries. It was he who explored .Ethiopia and the southern parts of Africa, and brought back not only the curious fauna to his zoological gardens, but the first knowledge of the Troglodytes for men of science. The cultivation of science and of letters too was so remarkably one of his pursuits that the progress of the Alexandria of his day forms an epoch in the world’s history, and we must separate his University and its professors from this summary, and devote to them a separate section.

Nor was he content with pure intellectual pleasures, or the pleasures of diplomatic intrigue. Like Augustus of Saxony and Louis I of Bavaria, he varied his pursuits of art or politics with gallant adventures, and his amours were the talk of the capital. He had married his full sister Arsinoe when she was near forty years of age, and had already passed through a gale of fortunes, which may have made her weary of ordinary love and jealousy. She was deified by her husband, and associated with him in all his public acts. We do not hear that they ever quarreled; but she left her husband full liberty to follow his wild search for some new pleasure—perhaps on condition of his forming no other royal alliance. So the king’s favorites lived, like the Princess Dolgorouki the other day, in the Royal Palace, and their portraits were as common as are now the photographs of professional beauties—one in particular, in a single tunic without sleeves, as she had just caught his fancy drawing water with a pitcher. All this life was so full, with its diplomacy, its art, its science, its letters, its loves, that we do not wonder to hear that the king longed to enjoy it beyond the span of ordinary men, and sought in mystic rites for the elixir of immortality. Nevertheless he had his grieves too, especially from his feeble health, and when tortured with gout, he would look out upon the Fellahs at work in the broiling sun, or resting at their frugal noonday meal, and long that he could enjoy life as they did; and yet he and his sister wife were gods, worshipped as the Philadelphi; and the priestess (Canephorus) of Arsinoe the murderess, the adulteress, the traitoress, now queen of Egypt, was like the great priestesses of Argos and elsewhere, used to fix the date of all public events.

We are not astonished that Philadelphus, with all his physicians and his magic draughts, failed to reach the advanced age of his great rival Antigonus. He died about the age of sixty-three, worn out no doubt by the enjoyments and labors of his wonderful life. But he left a splendid empire and a full treasury to a brilliant son, and might justly boast that as he had handed on the torch of empire unquenched to his successor, so perfectly had he attained and perfected all that was great and good in Hellenism. Rhodes, Pergamum, Antioch, was all great and splendid in the peculiar style of this period, but none of them ever equaled Alexandria in their effects on the civilization of the world. We shall return presently to the literary side of Alexandria, when we have given, for completeness’ sake, a short sketch of the third monarch of the empire—Antiochus, who was established in the rival capital of Antioch, and sought to emulate both the commerce and the culture of Alexandria.

Antiochus Soter is the last of these kings. The Syrian monarchs had shorter reigns than those of the rival kingdoms. Antiochus I had fought at the battle of Ipsus, when the cavalry under him was defeated by Demetrius Poliorketes; he did not succeed till the age of forty-four, after having long governed the “Upper provinces” of Seleucus’ great empire with his wife Stratonice, sister of Antigonus Gonatas, who had been married to his father Seleucus, but whom the old king gave up to his son, when he found that he was dying of love for his stepmother. These Diadochi were indeed very lax about their marriage relations! Succeeding upon the sudden murder of his father by Keraunos then finding his realm invaded in the north-west by the Galatae, in the south-west by Ptolemy, the valiant king was unable to hold all that was bequeathed to him. He made peace with Antigonus, ceding to him Macedonia, which he had never possessed, and giving him his sister Phila in marriage. Then he was obliged to give up his sovranty over Pontus, Bithynia, and the Greek cities in the north of Asia Minor. His victory over the Galatae earned him the name of Soter (Savior) and gave him a sort of suzerainty over the lesser kingdoms which the barbarians threatened. Even Armenia maintained its independence, and in the south he was unable to wrest Coele-Syria and Palestine from Ptolemy.

Nevertheless he kept great state at his mighty capital Antioch, which from its lovely situation, its splendid water-supply from the overhanging mountains, its fairy suburbs, especially Daphne on the higher slopes, its fine seaport (Seleucia on the Orontes), and its proximity to many other cities and rich plains of Inner Syria, became one of the world’s resting-places. The city was built on the plan of Alexandria, but stretched along the Orontes, as the overhanging mountains forbade extension in breadth. Every private house had its own water-supply, all the public places their fountains; people of all nations came there together, to enjoy the fruits of Greek culture, and to commune in the Greek tongue. Antiochus was fond of letters also. Aratus the astronomer was at his court as well as at that of Antigonus; it was Antiochus who began that remarkable fashion of having the books of other nations translated into Greek. Berosus, the Chaldean, published the mythology and history of Babylon from the cuneiform records, by order of the king, and then settled in Cos, where he taught astrology. It was doubtless at his suggestion that Manetho translated a similar work from the hieroglyphics on the history of Egypt for Philadelphus. Nay, it is more than probable that the early Greek version of the Pentateuch, with which our Septuagint version began, was made at the same time, and with the same object—to acquaint Greek speaking people with the wisdom and the mysteries of all ancient and cultivated races; for true Hellenism was, like Christianity, no respecter of persons or of races. All peoples who showed culture, who could contribute to human learning or happiness, and who could do it in Greek, were welcome to take their place within the sphere of great civilization. Hellenism was then an expression such as “European culture” is now.

Though we know little personally of Antiochus Soter, we can feel that he was a worthy and useful promoter of the great spirit of his time, and when he died at the age of sixty-four, just after a defeated endeavor to subdue Eumenes, the new prince of Pergamum, who refused him submission, the world must have felt a serious loss.

He was succeeded by his son, called Theos (the god) by the Greek cities (Miletus, &c.), which he declared free when he found he could no longer control them. About this king we know even less than we do about his father. We are informed that he made conquests as far as Thrace—endeavoring to make good some of his father’s losses; that he was unable to subdue Pergamum, but liberated the neighboring great cities, probably to set them against the new dynast; also that he had a long and tedious war with Ptolemy Philadelphus, which so wearied that monarch that he settled it on the basis of a new alliance, whereby Antiochus was to give up his previous wife Laodice, banish her and her children, and marry Berenice, daughter of the Egyptian king. By this means the old diplomatist expected to secure a practical supremacy in Syria; but Philadelphus just lived long enough to hear of the fearful catastrophe which upset all his plans. The discarded queen and her party managed to entice Antiochus to visit them at Sardis. There he was poisoned, and forthwith the young Egyptian queen was pursued through Antioch to her retreat at Daphne and murdered. This tragedy gave rise to a great war, which will naturally be related under the reign of the next Ptolemy who undertook it immediately after his accession (B.C. 246).

Such were the events which agitated the East in the last years of the veteran Antigonus; but the reign of Antiochus Theos is far more deeply interesting, from another cause. It gives us the date when a series of revolts in the “Upper provinces” not only severed them for a time from the heritage of the empire, but brought a great Oriental reaction to bear upon Hellenism. The reader has already been told how the empire of Chandra-gupta had invaded the Eastern provinces of Seleucus, and how Seleucus had made a cession of what he could not hold. For the building of his capital Antioch and his whole policy showed that his eye was set on the West, on the Mediterranean as the true home of Hellenism and therefore of real culture and progress. Doubtless this fixing of his residence near the western extreme of his kingdom was one chief cause why the “Upper provinces” fell away. In the reign of the king now before us, it seems that Atropatene, named in honor of the satrap Atropates, who had declared himself king after Alexander’s death, took the lead. It was practically Northern Media, and its independence stopped the way from the East along the foot of the Caspian—the Seleucian Sea it had been called—and so the great northern highway of traffic to the Black Sea. No doubt Ptolemy’s far-seeing diplomacy promoted this revolt, though the facts are lost to us. Then we find that the provinces of Bactria and Sogdiana, separated from the empire by this revolt, set up kings of their own, but marvelous to relate, kings with Greek names (Euthydemus, Diodotus), who gave them a thoroughly Greek coinage, which has recently been discovered. The scanty remains of their architecture also show that the kings of this far remote Asiatic realm bordering upon the Tartars were Hellenistic in culture, and are still to be regarded as distinct descendants of Alexander. So far, then, Hellenism was still triumphant, but of course with many compromises and concessions as to religion and language. Above all the kingdom of Chandra-gupta was now in the hands of his pious grandson Agoka, whose adoption of the creed of Buddha was probably as great an event as the adoption of Christianity by Constantine. This great king’s influence gave free scope to the strong missionary spirit of the Buddhist priests, and we are told in his inscriptions that their apostles reached into the kingdoms of the Hellenistic world. Antiochus, Antigonus, Magas, Ptolemy, Alexander of Epirus, are all named. So, then, an influence strongly antagonistic to Hellenism was at work in the Eastern provinces, and we may take it as probable that Buddhist missionaries preached in Syria two centuries before the teaching of Christ (which has so many moral points in common) was heard in Northern Palestine. So true is it that every great historical change has had its forerunner, and that people’s minds must be gradually led to the great new truths, w...

Table of contents

• ALEXANDER’S PLACE IN HISTORY
• YOUTH AND ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER
• THE STRUGGLE FOR THE SUPREMACY OF THE WORLD (B.C. 334-330)
• THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE AND ITS LIMITS UP TO ALEXANDER’S DEATH (B.C. 323)
• THE PROBLEM OF THE SUCCESSION
• THE LATER WARS OF THE DIADOCHI DOWN TO THE BATTLE OF IPSUS (B.C. 313-301)
• FROM THE BATTLE OF IPSUS TO THE INVASION OF THE CELTS (B.C. 301-278)
• THE INVASION OF THE CELTS (GALATIONS) AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
• KING PYRRHUS OF EPIRUS
• THE GOLDEN AGE OF HELLENISM
• THE NEW LINES ADOPTED BY PHILOSOPHY UNDER DIADOCHI
• THE STAGES OF HELLENISM IN THE THIRD CENTURY B.C.
• THE THREE YOUNG KINGS A SKETCH OF ANTIGONUS GONATAS, HIS ACTS AND CHARACTER
• SCIENCE AND LETTERS AT ALEXANDRIA IN THE DAYS OF PHILADELPHUS
• THE THIRD GENERATION OF HELLENISM - THE THREE GREAT KINGDOMS
• THE RISE OF THE ACAEAN LEAGUE UNDER ARATUS; HIS POLICY
• KING AGIS OF SPARTA - THE POLITICAL THEORISTS OF THE DAY
• THE RISE AND SPREAD OF FEDERATIONS IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD - THE ACHAEAN AND OTHER LEAGUES UNION BECOMES POPULAR
• THE EVENTS OF KING DEMETRIUS II’S REIGN - THE FIRST INTERFERENCE OF THE ROMANS IN THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER
• COMMERCE AND CULTURE AT PERGAMUM AND RHODES
• THE RISE OF ANTIGONUS DOSON AND CLEOMENES (B.C. 229-223)
• THE CLEOMENIC WAR (B.C. 224-221) TO THE BATTLE OF SELLASIA - THE POLICY OF ARATUS
• THE CONDITION OF THE HELLENISTIC WORLD IN 221 B.C.
• THE LAST INDEPENDENT SOVEREIGNS OF THE EMPIRE - THE FATE OF ANTIOCHUS III AND PTOLEMY IV (PHILOPATOR)
• THE CONDITION OF PERGAMUM AND RHODES
• THE REIGN OF PHILIP V OF MACEDON, UP TO HIS INTERFERENCE IN EASTERN AFFAIRS - HIS WARS IN GREECE
• STATE OF THE HELLENISTIC WORLD FROM 204 TO 197 B.C. - THE FIRST ASSERTION OF ROME’S SUPREMACY
• THE HELLENISTIC WORLD FROM B.C. 197-190 - THE SECOND ASSERTION OF ROME’S SUPREMACY - MAGNESIA
• THE HELLENISTIC WORLD FROM THE BATTLE OF MAGNESIA TO THE ACCESSION OF PERSEUS (B.C. 190-179)
• THE STRUGGLE OF PERSEUS WITH THE ROMANS - THE THIRD ASSERTION OF ROME’S SUPREMACY - PYDNA (B.C. 168)
• THE LAST SYRIAN WAR AND FOURTH ASSERTION OF ROMAN SUPREMACY - THE CIRCLE OF POPILIUS LENAS (168 B.C.)
• THE INFLUENCE OF HELLENISM ON ROME