The Hellenistic World. F. Walbank W.

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СКАЧАТЬ and the special problems of interpreting it; this in turn makes it both possible and desirable for the more important evidence to be presented to the reader and discussed, so that he may see for himself the methods used in reconstructing the past, and judge for himself their success.

      The series aims, therefore, to give an outline account of each period that it deals with and, at the same time, to present as much as possible of the evidence for that account. Selected documents with discussions of them are integrated into the narrative, and often form the basis of it; when interpretations are controversial the arguments are presented to the reader. In addition, each volume has a general survey of the types of evidence available for the period and ends with detailed suggestions for further reading. The series will, it is hoped, equip the reader to follow up his own interests and enthusiasms, having gained some understanding of the limits within which the historian must work.

      Oswyn Murray

      Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History,

      Balliol College, Oxford

      General Editor

Preface

      When writing about the hellenistic world it is not easy to strike a balance between a chronological treatment of the political events, and the discussion of special problems – whether those peculiar to particular regions or those relevant to all areas. In this respect the present book is not alone in being something of a compromise. Furthermore its emphasis is largely on the third and early-second centuries, since the main lines were laid down then and the greatest achievements of the hellenistic world belong to that period. I have also borne in mind the fact that the later period, from the middle of the second century onwards, during which the power of Rome became increasingly dominant throughout the eastern Mediterranean, has already been treated from the Roman aspect in another volume in the series.

      The manuscript and proofs have been read by Dorothy Crawford, to whose vigilance I owe many corrections; I have also profited from many valuable suggestions which she made, especially in the parts concerned with Ptolemaic Egypt. Oswyn Murray also read the manuscript and suggested several improvements, for which I am grateful. I should also like to express my debt to the published works of Anthony Long and Geoffrey Lloyd, which have been reliable guides in areas where I was less at home. Other debts are to the Coin Department of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, for the photographs of coins and to the Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge, for the rest of the photographs; in particular I wish to thank Professor Snodgrass, Mr T. Volk and Mr E. E. Jones. The photograph of the inscription from Ai Khanum is reproduced by permission of Professor A. Dupont-Sommer, given on behalf of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, Paris; I should like to thank him warmly too. Finally I am grateful to Miss Helen Fraser and the staff of Fontana Paperbacks and in particular to Miss Lynn Blowers for their help in getting the book out.

      For any readers who wish to look at the original evidence quoted in the text I have provided a list at the end of the book indicating where the various items are to be found, together with further reading arranged under chapters and concentrating on books and articles in English. I have ventured to include a few titles in other languages, mainly French, where there was no satisfactory English equivalent. Unless otherwise indicated all dates are BC.

      Cambridge

      January 1980

1. Introduction: The Sources

      I

      For rather more than a century – from 480 to 360 BC – the city-states of Greece pursued their rivalries and feuds without serious challenge from outside. But from 359 onwards the growing power of Philip II of Macedonia threw a shadow over the Greek peninsula. In 338, at Chaeronea in Boeotia, Philip decisively defeated the armies of Thebes and Athens and through a newly constituted Council at Corinth imposed peace and his own policy on most of the cities. Already Philip had his eyes on Persia, the great continental power beyond the Aegean, whose weakness had been dramatically revealed sixty years earlier, when a body of Greek mercenaries in the pay of an unsuccessful rebel prince and led by the Athenian Xenophon had marched all the way from Mesopotamia to the sea at Trebizond (400/399). Polybius writes later:

      It is easy for anyone to see the real causes and origin of the war against Persia. The first was the retreat of the Greeks under Xenophon from the upper satrapies in which, though they traversed the whole of Asia, a hostile country, none of the barbarians ventured to face them (iii, 6, 10).

      Encouraged by this and by the campaign of the Spartan king Agesilaus in Asia Minor shortly afterwards, Philip planned to invade the ramshackle Persian dominions of Asia Minor in search of money and new lands – though as a pretext he alleged the wrongs done to Greece during the Persian invasions of the early-fifth century. Philip did not live to carry out his plan. In 336 he was assassinated and the projected invasion of Persia was left as part of the inheritance of his son Alexander.

      Alexander reigned for only thirteen years, but during that time he completely changed the face of the Greek world. In the great colonizing age from the eighth to the sixth centuries the shores of Spain, the Adriatic lands, southern Italy and Sicily, northern Africa and the Black Sea shores had been settled with Greek maritime colonies. The new expansion was of a different order. Advancing overland with his army – a mere 50, 000 at the outset – Alexander marched through Asia Minor and Palestine to Egypt, from there to Mesopotamia and eastward through Persia and central Asia to where Samarkand, Balkh and Kabul now lie; thence he penetrated the Punjab and after defeating the Indian king Porus brought his forces partly by land and partly by sea back to Babylon, where he died.

      The vast land empire which he left to his successors was without parallel in Greek history. It was in fact the old Persian empire under Greek and Macedonian management and it formed the theatre within which the events of Greek history were to be enacted during the next 300 years. The Greeks who during the seventy or so years following Alexander’s death flocked southwards and eastwards to join new settlements or enlist in mercenary armies, hoping to make their fortunes, found themselves no longer insulated within the traditions of a city-state but living in any one of a variety of environments alongside native peoples of every race and nationality. The term ‘hellenistic’ – derived from a Greek word meaning ‘to speak Greek’ – is commonly used to describe this new world in which Greek was in fact the lingua franca. It carries a connotation, not so much of a diluted hellenism, but rather of a hellenism extended to non-Greeks, with the clash of cultures which that inevitably implies. There were of course still city-states in Greece and the Aegean – often powerful like Rhodes – and the relations between the cities of Greece proper and Macedonia, though often strained, were not seriously complicated by cultural differences. But within the kingdoms established by Alexander’s successors in Egypt and Asia, whether we look at the armies or at the bureaucracies, Greeks and Macedonians occupied positions of dominance over Egyptians, Persians, Babylonians and the diverse peoples of Anatolia. The relationships thus established were uneasy and far from static. From the outset there were tensions, and as the flow of Greeks dried up the relative position of Greeks and barbarians changed gradually in many ways. The pattern of this development varied from kingdom to kingdom. Greeks influenced barbarians, and barbarians Greeks. It is indeed in this clash and coming together of cultures that one of the main interests of the period lies.

      From the late-third century onwards a new power appears in the hellenistic world, the Roman republic. The taking-over of one after another of the hellenistic kingdoms by Rome has already been recounted and discussed in another volume of this series (Michael Crawford, The Roman Republic) and will not be repeated here, though the cumulative effect of the first СКАЧАТЬ