The Hellenistice World (323 - 30 B.C.)

From the breakup of Alexander's empire there arose numerous realms, including the Macedonian, the Seleucid, and the Ptolemaic, that served as the framework for the spread of Greek (Hellenic) culture, the mixture of Greek with other populations, and the fusion of Greek and Oriental elements.

Alexander's successors

Nothing shows the personality of Alexander the Great more clearly than the way in which people who had seemed pygmies at his side now became leaders of the world he had left behind. Blood still counted: the only male relative, a mentally impaired, illegitimate son of Philip, was proclaimed king as Philip III Arrhidaeus (c. 358-317), together with Rhoxane's son Alexander IV (323-310), born after his father's death in August; both were mere figureheads. For the moment Antipater was confirmed in authority in Macedon and Greece. At Babylon power was shared by two senior officers, Perdiccas (c. 365-321) and Craterus (c. 370-321). By common consent, Alexander's ongoing plans were abandoned. His generals had to be content with the office of governor. Antigonus Monophthalmos ("The One-eyed"; c. 382-301), like Antipater, was not in Babylon at the time of Alexander's death in 323. For almost 10 years he had been governing Phrygia and had shown himself a brave soldier and competent administrator. His firmness and tact were popular with the Greek cities. Of the generals in Babylon, it was Ptolemy (c. 367/366-283) who calculated from the first that the empire would not hold together. He secured for himself the governorship of Egypt, where he aspired to set up an independent kingdom. Lysimachus (c. 360-281) was given the less attractive assignment of governing Thrace. Two of the others, noted for their physical and military prowess, Leonnatus and Seleucus, waited on events. The soldiers discounted Eumenes of Cardia, who bore the main responsibility for civil administration, but he knew more about the empire than anyone else.

An uprising by Greek mercenaries who had settled in Bactria but wanted to return to Greece was crushed. Trouble in Greece, led by the Athenians and aimed at liberating the cities from Macedonian garrisons, was tougher to control. Sparta refused to participate, as did the islands, but a coalition of Athens with Argos, Sicyon, Elis, and Messenia, supported by Boeotians, Aetolians, and Thessalians, was a formidable challenge to Antipater's authority. For a time Antipater was hard-pressed in Lamia (the war of 323-322 is known as the Lamian War). Leonnatus intervened, nominally in support but in fact ambitious to usurp Antipater's power; he was killed in action, however. In the end Antipater won, Athens capitulated, and Demosthenes (the voice and symbol of anti-Macedonian feeling) committed suicide. Antipater reestablished Macedonian authority autocratically, with no nonsense about a "free" League of Corinth.

The story of the jockeying for power during the next two decades or so is inordinately complex. First Perdiccas, governing in the name of the two kings with the support of Eumenes, was charged with personal ambition and was assassinated. The armies made Antipater regent (Craterus had been killed in battle), and Antigonus, with Antipater's son Cassander (c. 358-297) as second-in-command, was placed in charge of the armies in Asia. Ptolemy was secure in Egypt; Seleucus (c. 358-281), governor of Babylon, and Lysimachus in Thrace continued to watch and wait; and Eumenes, a non-Macedonian with a fortune behind him, could claim to represent the kings against the ambitions of generals and governors.

Then, in 319, Antipater died and was succeeded by a senior commander but maladroit politician named Polyperchon, who tried to win the Greeks of the mainland by a new proclamation of their liberties. The result was that the Athenians used their freedom to execute the pro-Macedonians, including the worthy but compromising Phocion. War flared up. Eumenes, allied with Polyperchon, challenged Antigonus and secured Babylon, but he was betrayed and killed in 316. Seleucus escaped to Egypt. Polyperchon's position was weak, and he was soon ousted by the able, up-and-coming Cassander. In becoming master of Macedon and most of Greece, Cassander rebuilt Thebes and put the Aristotelian Demetrius of Phalerum in charge of Athens. Olympias, Alexander the Great's terrible mother, had eliminated Philip III. Cassander had her put to death, while keeping Rhoxane and Alexander IV under his protection—or guard.

Antigonus was now the dominant figure of the old brigade. Cassander, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus formed a coalition against him. For four years (315-311) they fought indecisively. Antigonus showed himself energetic, resourceful, and imaginative, but he could not strike a decisive blow. The only major change came in the brilliant coup by which Seleucus succeeded in recovering Babylon. In 311 the four leaders agreed to divide the world, leaving Ptolemy with Egypt and Cyprus, Antigonus with Asia, Lysimachus with Thrace, and Cassander with Macedonia and Greece, but only until Alexander IV came of age in 305. Seleucus was left out.

Royal blood, however, was quickly forgotten in the pursuit of power. Cassander murdered Rhoxane and young Alexander in 310, soon after Antigonus had vainly tried to crush Seleucus. Seleucus, however, held on to a damaged Babylon and the eastern provinces, except for India, which he had to yield to the Indian king Chandragupta. Antigonus now had the effective support of his brilliant son Demetrius (336-283), known as Poliorcetes, or Besieger, who ousted the other Demetrius and restored the democracy and eventually the League of Corinth; he was hymned with divine honours and given the Parthenon as his palace. Demetrius, also in 306, crushed Ptolemy in a naval battle and secured Cyprus and the Aegean, though he failed in a famous siege of Rhodes (305-304). Antigonus and Demetrius now proclaimed themselves joint kings in succession to Alexander. Antigonus, however, failed to conquer Egypt, and the other rulers also took the title of king. Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy formed an alliance against Antigonus and Demetrius, and at Ipsus in 301 the allies, with the help of a force of elephants brought from India by Seleucus, defeated and killed Antigonus. Demetrius escaped, retaining Tyre and Sidon and command of the sea. Lysimachus took large portions of Anatolia; Seleucus assumed control over Mesopotamia and Syria, except for a part in the south occupied de facto by Ptolemy; and Cassander was content with Macedonia and parts of Greece.

Cassander, who was a statesman, had founded two great cities, Cassandreia and Thessalonica, as well as rebuilding Thebes. His death in 297 was a prelude to more disturbances. Demetrius conquered most of Greece and secured Macedonia in 294, but he was ousted in 288 by Lysimachus in alliance with King Pyrrhus of Epirus (319-272). Demetrius now concentrated all his forces on winning Asia and all but succeeded. He fell ill, however, and surrendered to Seleucus, who gave him every opportunity to drink himself to death. The stage was set for a confrontation between Lysimachus and Seleucus.

Ptolemy gained command of the sea by Demetrius' fall. He died in his bed, the only one of Alexander's successors to do so, and was succeeded peacefully by his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus (308-246). However, a son by his first wife, Ptolemy Ceraunus, the Thunderbolt (grandson of Antipater), was stirring the waters round Lysimachus, and the latter soon lost support. Seleucus defeated and killed Lysimachus, and Alexander's empire, except for Egypt, seemed to be his for the asking. Lysimachus' army, however, supported Ceraunus, who assassinated Seleucus in 281. Seleucus' son by a Sogdian noblewoman succeeded him as Antiochus I (324-261). In Greece proper the strongest powers were Antigonus Gonatas (c. 320-239), son of the brilliant Demetrius and himself a man of high character, ability, and culture, and Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. Pyrrhus was about to embark on his ill-starred expedition to Italy, where he soundly defeated the growing power of Rome but at an enormous cost to himself.

At this point, migrating Celts under the command of Bolgius and Brennus caused an added complication, not least by the defeat and death of Ceraunus. Brennus pushed down into Greece but was repulsed by the Aetolians. The dangers posed by the invading Celts led, in 279, to a treaty between Antigonus and Antiochus, who agreed not to interfere in one another's spheres of influence. Each won a decisive victory over the Celtic invaders, who eventually settled in Serbia, Thrace, and Galatia in central Anatolia. Antigonus was able to secure Macedonia. Lysimachus' kingdom was never revived. The three centres of power were Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt.

The mid-3rd century

The power of the rulers was not yet secure. Ptolemy II had already launched an offensive after the death of Seleucus and somehow secured Miletus. He made a new drive in 276 to gain Seleucid Syria only to be repulsed. About that same time, however, he renounced his first wife and married his sister Arsinoe, who was actually widow to both Lysimachus and Ceraunus. She was a woman of dynamic authority who inspired Ptolemy's armies to sweep up the coast and secure Phoenicia and much of coastal Anatolia. Her brief years were years of brilliant culture. When she died on July 9, 270, the court poet Callimachus wrote a poem on her deification.

In the west, Pyrrhus, returning to Epirus full of thwarted ambition, overran Macedon but abandoned it to attack southern Greece. He failed, however, to take Sparta and died in street fighting in Argos, after being struck to the ground by a tile hurled down by a woman watching from the roof. Pyrrhus had fostered the Hellenization of northwestern Greece and built the magnificent theatre at Dodona; he was more than a military adventurer.

Antigonus was influenced by stoic philosophy (see below); he had a high sense of duty and once said that the power of kings was merely a spectacular form of servitude. He also was a friend of the poet Aratus. There was no serious challenge to his power in the north. In the south, Athens, led by the handsome Chremonides, allied with Sparta and other cities against him; the alliance was backed by Egypt and received some support from Epirus. The war was hard-fought for four years (266-262), but the alliance fell apart. The political power of Athens was finally broken, but the city survived as a cultural centre. Antigonus left Sparta to itself and placed dictators (tyrants) of his own choice in other cities.

Antiochus I of Syria died in 261. He was succeeded by his son Antiochus II (287-246), who formed an alliance with Antigonus against Ptolemy II. In the Second Syrian War (259-255), Antiochus recovered most of the coast of Anatolia and Phoenicia, while Antigonus won a naval victory and with it command of the sea; he even was able to put a half-brother into power in Cyrene. The death of Antiochus II in 246, however, brought on a fresh power struggle in Syria, and Ptolemy III Euergetes (c. 284-221), succeeding his father in the following year, was able to march through the distraught realm. Seleucus II Callinicus (c. 265-225) eventually restored stability and recovered some but not all of the lost territory. Yet he was again challenged by civil war and had to abandon Bactria, Parthia, and the eastern provinces (Cappadocia had already been lost before the civil war).

The weakness of the Seleucids brought a new power onto the scene. Pergamum had great resources in silver, agriculture, and stock breeding but had not come to marked prominence. Attalus I Soter (269-197), who ruled from 241 to 197, made Pergamum a great power. He defeated the resurgent Celts of Galatia, took the title of king, for a period held mastery of much of Anatolia, intervened in the west, and all the while made his city a major centre for literature, philosophy, and the arts.

During the middle of the century some remarkable developments in confederation occurred on mainland Greece. Epirus had been a form of confederacy between Molossians, Thesprotians, and Chaonians. Pyrrhus had established an autocratic monarchy, but after his death in the 230s the people reverted to a federal constitution. In Boeotia, a confederacy composed of officials predominantly from Thebes (the largest city in a system that gave all citizens the right to vote in the primary assembly) modified its pattern to grant equality to the constituent cities regardless of size. In Aetolia, there was a confederacy with a strong primary assembly that met twice a year and a council with proportional representation of the member states based on each state's military contingent; the existence of tribal districts intermediate between the cities and the whole confederacy was an unusual feature. Neighbouring Acarnania also had a federal constitution. The two neighbours were generally hostile, but at one point they actually agreed on limited mutual rights of citizenship.

The best-known of the confederacies was the Achaean League. It had existed earlier, to be revived in 280 by the cities of Dyme, Patrae, Tritaea, and Pherae; it was joined by Aegium, Bura, and Cerynea. "For the first 25 years," wrote the historian Polybius, "the above-mentioned cities shared in a confederacy, appointed a common secretary according to a rota, and two generals. After that they took a fresh decision to appoint a single general and to entrust him with plenary authority. Margus of Cerynea was the first." There were also 10 magistrates called demiourgoi. Then, in 251, the Greek statesman Aratus (271-213), incorruptible, adventurous, persuasive, skilled in diplomacy, passionately attached to freedom and implacably ambitious for his own position, rid his native Sicyon of its tyrant and brought it into the league. By 245 he was elected general and held the office in alternate years. Aratus heartily loathed tyrants and Macedon alike. A notable guerrilla fighter, he led the league in the work of liberation, freeing Corinth and winning Megara and some cities of the Argolid but not Argos or Athens. Then he clashed with the revolutionary nationalism of Cleomenes III of Sparta (c. 260-219), and, rather than seeing his life's work imperiled by Cleomenes' revolution, he preferred to sell it back to the imperialists of Macedon. Macedon came and conquered. Aratus and the league were allowed to retain a shadow of independence, but no more than that. The league, however, remained intact. Executive power lay with the Council, which seems to have been a large body constituting a kind of representative government. What the Achaean League did, for a limited period over a limited area, was to combine the distinctive character of the city-state with a wider vision. On the coins the local Aphrodite of Corinth and Hera of Argos yield place to the more widely recognized Zeus Homagyrius and Demeter Panachaea. According to Polybius, the whole Peloponnese during the most important phase of the Achaean League could be considered a single polis.

Sparta, always different from the rest of Greece, was a shadow of its former self. There were no more than 700 Spartan citizens, and the land, far from being equally distributed, was in the hands of only a few. Agis IV, coming to power in 244, essayed economic and social reform by abolishing debts and redistributing land. He succeeded in the former but was killed by those whose power he threatened. His widow was married to Cleomenes, son of the other king, Leonidas II. She, however, won him to the need for revolution. In this she was supported by Cleomenes' stoic tutor Sphaerus, who seems to have read a remarkable utopian narrative composed c. 250 by an otherwise obscure author named Iambulus. Cleomenes came to the throne in 235; in 227 he began to break the power of the oligarchy within the aristocracy, abolish the debts owed by poor farmers to rich landlords, and redistribute the land. He also reintroduced the common meals and restored the simplicity of life and the education for character that were traditional in Sparta. Cleomenes III combined a narrow Spartan nationalism with a visionary idealism. The revolution spread; everywhere there was demand for "division of land and cancellation of debts." Cleomenes, however, was stopped by Aratus, an adamant opponent of his reforms, the Macedonians were called in, and at Sellasia, in the summer of 222, the Spartans were beaten and Cleomenes forced into exile, where he died.

The coming of Rome (225-133)

In the 3rd century, Rome had been encroaching on the Greek settlements of southern Italy and Sicily. Pyrrhus, as noted above, had been called in by Tarentum in the Tarentines' fear of Rome. Hieron (c. 306-215), a Syracusan supporter of Pyrrhus, seized power in his city; he was made king in 269 and actually reigned for 54 years. For a year or two he continued to oppose Rome, but then he formed an alliance with it, helping it in its wars with Carthage. Farther away yet, Massalia (modern Marseille), an outpost of Greek culture, took care to maintain good relations with Rome; at the same time, it maintained a strong independent navy and a stable oligarchic government. (Massalia is a classic example, often forgotten, of the durability of the Greek city-state in the Hellenistic age; even in 121 BC, when the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis was established, Massalia was still an equal ally of the Roman Republic.)

In the late 220s new monarchs acceded to the throne in the three great kingdoms of Syria, Egypt, and Macedon, and Polybius chose that point for the formal start of his history. Antiochus III (c. 242-187), called the Great, succeeded his brother Seleucus II in Syria, and from the first he showed a desire for imperialist expansion. His attempt to conquer Egyptian territory in the Palestinian area in the Fourth Syrian War (219-216) was foiled at the battle of Raphia. His campaigns in the east were more successful: he secured Armenia, Parthia and Bactria became his vassals, and he carried out impressive demonstrations near the northwestern frontier of India and across the Persian Gulf. He turned to adventures in Europe but came up against a Rome resurgent after its war with Hannibal; by the peace of Apamea in 188 he was confined to his still considerable Asian domains. In Egypt, Ptolemy IV Philopator (c. 244-205) succeeded to power in 221. He repelled Antiochus III at Raphia with Egyptian soldiers, and his reign was marked by the power of native Egyptians and of Nubian rulers in the south. He died in 205, leaving a five-year-old son. There occurred an uprising, which deposed his minister Agathocles, and disturbances throughout the reign. Philip V of Macedon (238-179) came to the throne in the same year. Although popular with the common people and quite capable on the battlefield, he showed unsound judgment and lacked stability of temperament. Like Antiochus, he had expansionist ambitions, but he supported Hannibal against Rome and was roundly defeated by the Romans at Cynoscephalae in 197.

Rome was almost forced into the Greek world. In 229-228 and again in 219 it had been campaigning against pirates in Illyria. Then, from 218 to 201, it was preoccupied with and became drained by the Second Punic War with Hannibal. Even so, Rome kept Philip V at bay and, once Hannibal was eliminated, defeated him in the Second Macedonian War. Rhodes and Pergamum had checked Philip's enterprises in the Aegean but were understandably nervous about his future intentions. They called in the Romans, who were equally suspicious of Philip. Their victory over him at Cynoscephalae, where the Macedonian phalanx of heavy infantry showed that it was hard to beat if it kept its ranks but vulnerable if it did not, demonstrated Rome's supremacy. Rome, however, annexed no territory; the narrow oligarchy governing Rome had no desire to take on administrative responsibilities that might require extending the circle of those in power. The young commander Titus Quinctius Flamininus (consul in 198) was a philhellene. At the Isthmian Games in 196 he proclaimed the freedom of Greece. A priesthood to him was set up at Chalcis, which still survived in Plutarch's time, and a paean was composed to Titus, Zeus, and Roma, ending "Hail Paean Apollo, hail Titus our Saviour" (or "Liberator"). He checked the ambitions of Nabis of Sparta, who combined the revolutionary program of Cleomenes III with imperialism and cruelty. Yet in 194 all Roman troops were withdrawn from Greece.

The next challenge came from Antiochus, as already indicated. The Romans returned to Greece to fight him. They defeated him in Asia, strengthening Pergamum and Rhodes at his expense but annexing no territory themselves. Then Perseus (c. 212-165), son to Philip V, succeeded to his throne and power in 179. He secured his position by dynastic marriages; he wedded the daughter of Seleucus IV (c. 218-175) and was allied by marriage to Prusias I Cholus of Bithynia. In addition, he used diplomacy to extend his influence. Nevertheless, in 172 Eumenes II of Pergamum (d. 159), who had succeeded his long-lived father in 197 and who was a great builder in his capital, felt threatened by the growth of Macedonian power and appealed to Rome. The result was the so-called Third Macedonian War (172-168), which ended with the defeat of Perseus by Lucius Aemilius Paullus at Pydna. Macedonia was divided into four republics—and yet again the Romans withdrew without annexations. If Rome, as its enemies avowed, was a dragon, it was a reluctant dragon.

Meantime, Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria (c. 215-163) had come to power in 175. He had been a hostage in Rome and was a passionate philhellene; he paid lip service to the political traditions of both Athens and Rome. The Romans, however, prevented him from annexing Egypt and Cyprus, which he had invaded in 168.

Antiochus actively pursued a policy of Hellenization as a means to unify his kingdom. This policy, however, led to an uprising in Judaea, though it should be emphasized that it was a pro-Syrian party among the Jews that applied to the king for permission to build a gymnasium, with all that this implied. Party conflict among the Jews—i.e., the supporters of Hellenization and the orthodox Jews who fiercely opposed it—was a major factor in the disturbance. Equally, Antiochus' sense of his own divinity, represented by the title Epiphanes (God Manifest), was unacceptable to the orthodox Jews who recognized the absolute claims of the God of Israel. Antiochus forbade the practices of the Jewish faith and placed an altar to Olympian Zeus ("an abomination of desolation") on the altar of the temple. Resistance flared up, first passive, then, under the leadership of Judas Maccabaeus (who made "a league of amity and confederacy" with the Romans), active and military. The details of the conflict as it spread over decades and the reigns of successive rulers of Syria are complex: suffice it to say here that for virtually a century the Jewish people enjoyed a large measure of de facto independence.

By 146 the Romans were impatient with Greek instability, and at the same time they were determined to have done with Carthage. The city was razed and a province established in the fertile farmland of modern Tunisia. A pretender, who had arisen in Macedon, invaded Thessaly; he was defeated, captured, and executed, and Macedonia was annexed as a Roman province. The Greeks clashed with the Romans; patriotic sentiment ran high but to no effect. The Romans treated Corinth as Alexander had treated Thebes—they leveled it. In the rest of Greece the leagues were dissolved, democracies abolished, and power placed with the rich. Intercity peace was established and left to the governor of Macedonia to enforce. The ironic result was that the city-states had, imposed from outside, a degree of autonomy and peace they had previously lacked. Then, in 133, Attalus III of Pergamum (c. 170-133) bequeathed his kingdom to Rome—an odd, though perhaps realistic bequest. It aroused opposition, led by a pretender named Aristonicus, who was driven by a combination of personal ambition, nationalist resentment, and utopian idealism. The movement was backed by a stoic philosopher named Blossius, who had been concerned with the reforms of the Gracchi in Rome. It spread among the oppressed and aimed to establish a utopian "City of the Sun." Roman military power, however, was too strong. Aristonicus was defeated and killed; Pergamene territory became the Roman province of Asia.

For the most part the story of the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria during the 2nd and 1st centuries was one of stormy and deeply divisive feuds. In Egypt brother-and-sister marriage in the royal house was frequently practiced. The rulers were for the most part an undistinguished lot, yet the country remained wealthy, and there was expansion to the south. In Syria civil war and division seemed to be the rule rather than the exception. Antiochus VII Sidetes (c. 159-129), after a victorious campaign in Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and even Media, looked briefly as if he might restore the lost glories. The Parthians, however, rallied, surprising and killing him in the winter of 130-129, and regained all he had recovered. Thereafter the kingdom became weak and divided, and neighbouring states were constantly gnawing at its edges. Far to the east the Greek dynasty that had ruled Bactria since about 256 was coming to an end by the middle of the 1st century. In western India, however, Menander, a hero of Indian legend, was in power; the art of the Gandhara region (present northwestern Pakistan) shows marked Greek influence.

Mithradates (Mithridates) VI Eupator of Pontus (c. 132-63 BC) was still a minor in 120—the year that his father was murdered—when he was named joint ruler with his mother and brother. For some years he was a refugee from his mother's power. Then, in a sudden sally, he secured the throne, imprisoned his mother, killed his brother, and married his sister. Pontus, sprawling along the southern coast of the Black Sea, included Greek colonies and a native population; the largest section of the people, including the rulers, were Iranian. Mithradates was able, cunning, and ambitious. He secured money and men by expanding to the north and then turned to Anatolia, the Aegean islands, and even Greece, where the financial oppression of the Romans made him appear a liberator. The Romans defeated him time and again, but he showed a subtle resilience until his final defeat by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (106-48 BC). In 67 Pompey made his greatest contribution to peaceful trade and development by his systematic destruction of the pirates. He put an end to the danger from Mithradates, who was driven from his kingdom and committed suicide in 63. Pompey in his celebrated settlement of the East annexed Syria as a Roman province, settled Judaea, and planted Roman colonies.

Henceforth the Greek world was dominated by Rome. Julius Caesar and Pompey faced one another at Pharsalus in Thessaly in 48. Mark Antony and Octavian faced Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus at Philippi in Thrace. The brilliant Cleopatra VII (69-30 BC), last of the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt, was ambitious to rule the world. In the realism of power politics she had to conquer Rome: the path lay through marriage with whoever held the power there. The surviving portraits show that she was no great beauty. Nonetheless, she charmed Caesar and held Antony in the power of her personality. Yet she backed the wrong man. A third conflict for the mastery of the world in two decades was held in Greece, culminating in the naval battle of Actium off the western coast in 31. The victor was Octavian (63 BC-AD 14), the future Caesar Augustus. The last kingdom of Alexander's successors fell to Rome. (Encyclopędia Britannica)