The Hellenistic World. F. Walbank W.

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СКАЧАТЬ the result of Ipsus. The hellenistic world of territorial states was now in being, with the Antigonids in Macedonia, the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in the area covered by Syria, Mesopotamia and Iran. In each monarchy the sons or (in the case of Macedonia) the grandson of Alexander’s successors were on the throne – Antiochus I, Ptolemy II and Antigonus II – and the dynastic principle was firmly established. Politically Alexander’s empire had fragmented but in many ways the new kingdoms had much in common. Before looking at the separate kingdoms, therefore, we shall in the next chapter consider to what extent the hellenistic world constituted a homogeneous whole, and how far the coexistence of Greeks and Macedonians alongside the indigenous populations created problems for both peoples.

4. The Hellenistic World:A Homogeneous Culture?

      I

      Towards the middle of the third century the inhabitants of a Greek city lying at the site of Ai Khanum beside the river Oxus (mod. Amu Darya) on the northern frontier of Afghanistan (its name is unknown) erected in a shrine in the middle of the city a pillar inscribed with a list of some 140 moral maxims copied from a similar pillar which stood near the shrine of Apollo at Delphi, over 3000 miles away. An adjoining verse inscription reads:

      These wise words of famous men of old are consecrated in holy Pytho. Thence Clearchus took them, copying them with care, to set them shining from afar in the sacred enclosure of Cineas (Robert, CRAI (1968), 422 = Austin, 192).

      Cineas – his name suggests that he was probably a Thessalian – will have been the city’s founder to whom the shrine was dedicated, and Clearchus has been identified by Robert as the Aristotelian philosopher, Clearchus of Soli, a man with an interest both in Delphi and in the religion and philosophy of the Indian gymnosophists, the Persian magi and the Jewish priests. If this Clearchus was indeeed he, we have here our first indication that he made a journey to the far east and there found distant Greek communities ready to hear him lecture and, at his prompting, to inscribe an authenticated copy of Delphic wisdom in the shrine of the city’s founder. To set up Delphic maxims, often in a gymnasium, was a common practice. Examples are known from Thera (IG, xii 3, 1020) and Miletopolis in Mysia (Syll., 1268). The list at Ai Khanum is fragmentary and in fact only five maxims now survive, but comparable lists elsewhere enabled the French epigraphist, Louis Robert, to reconstitute the whole collection – a striking illustration of how an inscription, of which the greater part is lost, can occasionally be restored with virtual certainty. An interesting feature of the Ai Khanum inscription is that despite the remoteness of this city the lettering is not at all crude or provincial. It is of the highest quality and in the best tradition of the Greek lapicide’s craft, worthy of the kingdom of Bactria, which also produced some of the finest Greek coins of the hellenistic period.

      This inscription was discovered in 1966, and nearby, in the gymnasium of Ai Khanum, was another, containing a dedication by two brothers, ‘Triballus and Strato, sons of Strato, to Hermes and Heracles’ (Robert, CRAI (1968), 422), who were the patron gods of the gymnasium. Subsequent excavation has revealed the full plan of the gymnasium itself, which incidentally contained a sundial of a type known, but not hitherto found. There was also a theatre holding 5000 spectators and, dating from about 150, a large administrative centre of palatial proportions, in which were found storing vessels labelled in Greek, a mosaic 5.7 metres square and, most remarkable of all, from what was evidently its library, imprinted on fine earth formed from decomposed wall-bricks, the traces of a still partially legible text from a now perished piece of papyrus, which was evidently a page in a philosophical work which appears to have been written by a member of the Aristotelian school (of which Clearchus himself was a member). These finds confirm the picture of a city in which, despite its later isolation, Greek traditions continued strong right down to the time of its destruction by the nomads of the steppes in the second half of the second century.

      But Ai Khanum was not the first site to furnish epigraphical evidence for a strong hellenic presence in Bactria, for only a few years earlier two Greek inscriptions, one with an Aramaic counterpart, had been found at Kandahar (see Schlumberger, CRAI (1964), 126–40). These contained fragments of the moralizing edicts of the Mauryan king Asoka and they too were elegantly carved and in an excellent Greek, which betrayed an intimate knowledge of the vocabulary of Greek philosophy and considerable skill in adapting it to render the thoughts of a Buddhist convert. Anxious to convey his lessons to those living in what now formed part of his dominions, Asoka used Aramaic, the official language of the Persian empire, and of course Greek. More recently a further Greek inscription has been found in Kandahar and more can be expected.

      This use of Greek, in the popular cosmopolitan form called the koine, the ‘common tongue’, is characteristic of the whole vast area covered by Alexander’s conquests. It pays no heed to the later frontiers and serves to bind the whole into a single cultural continuum. Its prevalence is the result not merely of political domination, but also of a great movement of colonization which began under Alexander and continued in full spate until about 250, after which it slackened off. Ai Khanum has provided clear evidence of this, for a study of the traces of habitation in a wide area around this city has shown it to be virtually unpopulated under the Achaemenid kings, but with a dense population in hellenistic times.

      II

      Under Alexander the agents of colonization were largely mercenaries whom he left behind to hold strategic points. Conditions were rough and lacking in civilized amenity and so (as we saw, p. 44) provoked revolt. But the finds on the Oxus and at Kandahar are not the only evidence that by the mid-third century or even earlier conditions had improved. The growth in the number of colonists had brought with it a deepening of Greek civilization, not least in Bactria, and we can occasionally trace the process. A decree passed by the assembly of Antioch-in-Persis, recognizing the international character of the festival of Artemis Leucophryene at Magnesia-on-the-Maeander, recalls the kinship existing between the two peoples, for when Antiochus I (281–261) was anxious to reinforce the population of Antioch, the Magnesians had responded to his invitation by sending ‘men sufficient in number and outstanding in merit for the purpose’ (OGIS, 233, 1. 18). A generation later the bond was still remembered. As in the great European emigration to the United States in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries many went out in groups but others would have gone individually to try their fortune in new lands. The new cities of the east contained a mixture of Greeks from all parts, a motley throng from every sort of environment and social class, from the main centres of civilization and from the fringe areas.

      Once in their new homes these Greeks and Macedonians sank their many differences to become the new master race – for Alexander’s notion of a joint Greco-Persian ruling class never took hold. From the outset these newcomers formed the governing minority in the areas where they settled. One of the great problems of the period is to define and analyse the shifting relations between this minority and the peoples whose lands they shared. It was not always a hostile relationship. Strabo (xi, 14, 12) describes how Cyrsilus of Pharsalus and Medius of Larissa, officers in Alexander’s army, set out to trace a cultural relationship between Armenia and Media and their native Thessaly. Their attitude was clearly open and friendly but what they were hoping to do was not to understand these people in their own environment but to prove that they were really some sort of Greeks. This, as we shall see (p. 228), is precisely what some Greeks tried to do when brought up against the phenomenon of Rome. Occasionally, especially in the early days, osmosis occurs between the different cultures. A dedication by ‘Diodotus, son of Achaeus, to King Ptolemy Soter’ (OGIS, 19) is bilingual, in Greek and demotic Egyptian, and we shall look at further similar evidence later (p. 117). It suggests some cultural interchange, but this is scanty and its importance must not be exaggerated nor is it safe to use material from one area to make generalizations applying to others. It is noteworthy that the inscription from Antioch-in-Persis mentions the sending of men from Magnesia, but not of women, presumably because СКАЧАТЬ