The Hellenistic World. F. Walbank W.

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СКАЧАТЬ shorn of everything east of the Euphrates, it was incorporated into the Roman empire. When in the fourth century AD the Roman empire itself split into two halves, the hellenistic world still enjoyed a ghostly existence in Byzantium.

2. Alexander the Great (336–323)

      I

      When Alexander succeeded his father Philip II as king of Macedonia in 336, he found it a country radically changed from what it had been when Philip assumed the crown twenty-three years earlier. Hitherto a backward frontier kingdom on the fringe of Greece proper, Philip had transformed Macedonia into a powerful military state with a tried army and well-chosen frontiers, dominating Greece through the League of Corinth (see p. 13) and all set for the invasion of Persia. The cultural level of the population had also risen. In a speech which Arrian (Anabasis, vii, 9, 2) puts into his mouth, Alexander described Philip’s transformation of the Macedonian people in these terms:

      Philip found you vagabonds and poor, most of you clothed in sheepskins, pasturing a few sheep on the mountains and putting up a poor fight in defence of these against the Illyrians, Triballians and Thracians on your borders. He gave you cloaks to wear instead of sheepskins and brought you down out of the mountains into the plains, making you a match in battle for the barbarians who were your neighbours, so that now you trusted in your own courage rather than in strongholds. He turned you into city-dwellers and civilized you by the gift of good laws and customs.

      When one has disallowed the rhetoric, this passage fairly describes the conversion of a pastoral people into settled farmers and town-dwellers, wearing woven clothing and enjoying the benefits of an ordered life. The population had also expanded. It has been calculated by G. T. Griffith on the basis of recorded troop figures that Philip’s economic policy brought about an increase of over 25 per cent in the numbers of men available for the army between 334, when Alexander mobilized 27, 000 Macedonians for his Persian expedition and for service in Greece (with some 3000 men already in Asia and perhaps 20, 000 old and young for home defence), and 323, when the figures reached about 50, 000 (including a margin for casualties meanwhile sustained in Asia).

      Philip’s army had won him control over Greece, but he could not afford to leave it idle. No sooner had he established peace there than he planned to invade Persia. The idea was not new. Ten years earlier the Athenian publicist Isocrates had addressed a speech to Philip urging this very course.

      I am going to advise you to become the leader both of Greek unity and of the expedition against the barbarians; it is advantageous to employ persuasion with Greeks and a useful thing to use force against barbarians. That is more or less the essence of the whole matter (Isocrates, Philip, 10).

      Isocrates continues a little later in the same speech:

      What opinion do you imagine everyone will form of you if you try to destroy the whole Persian kingdom or, failing that, to annex as much territory as you can, and to seize Asia, as some are urging you, from Cilicia to Sinope, and if as well you found cities in this region and settle in them there those men who are now wandering around through lack of their everyday needs, and doing outrage to whomsoever they fall in with? (Isocrates, ibid., 120).

      It is likely that Philip saw Asia as a source of wealth and new lands in which to settle the many exiles and dispossessed people who were at this time a general threat to both Greece and Macedonia, given that there were states with sufficient wealth to hire them as mercenaries. Whether the territorial limits suggested by Isocrates formed part of Philip’s original plan we cannot tell. Isocrates later admitted that his advice merely chimed in with Philip’s own inclinations, and perhaps what matters most is that such ideas were in the air. Philip, however, saw his enterprise in a much more obviously Macedonian context than Isocrates had envisaged. When in 336 Philip was assassinated, an advance force of 10, 000 men was already across the Hellespont. Thus on his accession Alexander found the Persian War half-begun but it had his wholehearted approval, for by it he hoped to win personal glory – and also to strengthen his position vis-à-vis the senior advisers whom Philip had left him (for he was only twenty). His first two years (336–4) were spent securing his northern frontiers in Thrace and Illyria and suppressing a revolt in Greece. Then in spring 334 he crossed over into Asia with a modest force of about 37, 000 men, of whom 5000 were cavalry. There were 12, 600 Greeks (7600 sent by the League and 5000 mercenaries), about 7000 tribal levies from the Balkans, nearly 2000 light-armed and cavalry scouts from Thrace and Paeonia and the remaining 15–16, 000 were Macedonians and Thessalians. Europe he left in the charge of his general Antipater with an army of 12, 000 infantry and 1500 cavalry – about as many Macedonians as he took with him (Diodorus, xviii, 17, 3 and 5). His finances were shaky and on arriving in Asia he planned to live off the country.

      Alexander’s army was to prove especially effective because of its balanced combination of arms. A great burden lay on the light-armed Cretan and Macedonian archers, Thracians and Agrianian javelin-men. But the striking force was the cavalry and, should the cavalry-charge leave the issue still undecided, the infantry phalanx, 9000 strong, armed with 15–18 foot spears and shields, and the 3000 hypaspists of the royal battalions would deal the final blow. The army was accompanied by surveyors, engineers, architects, scientists, court officials and historians. From the start Alexander seems to have envisaged an operation with no clear limits.

      After a romantic visit to Troy he won his first battle at the river Granicus near the Sea of Marmara, and as a gesture sent 300 suits of armour from the spoils as a dedication to Athena at Athens by ‘Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks (except the Spartans) from the barbarians who inhabit Asia’ (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 16, 7). His intention, underlined by the omission of all reference to the Macedonians, was clearly to emphasize the ‘panhellenic’ aspect of the campaign. At Dium in Macedonia on the other hand he set up brazen statues of twenty-five Macedonians who fell in the first encounter (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 16, 4). The victory gave access to western Asia Minor and by the spring of 333 Alexander was master of the western seaboard, most of Caria, Lycia and Pisidia, and could press ahead through Gordium (where tradition told of his loosing – or cutting – the famous Gordian knot, a feat which could only by performed by the man who was to rule Asia) to Ancyra and thence into Cilicia. In autumn 333 he encountered Darius himself at Issus (near Iskenderun) and by a second great victory laid open the route into Syria. There Tyre held out for seven months, but Alexander did not relax the siege, and meanwhile received peace proposals from Darius, whose family had fallen into his hands at Issus. Darius offered him a ransom of 10, 000 talents for his family, the cession of all lands west of the Euphrates and a marriage alliance (Arrian, Anabasis, ii, 25, 1) but Alexander’s ambitions had now clearly expanded and he rejected the offer. By the winter of 332 all Syria and Palestine was in his hands and he was in Egypt, where he founded a new city, Alexandria, before making a journey through the desert to consult the famous oracle of Amon at Siwah. His strategic object at this time seems to have been to seize the whole sea-coast and so protect his base in Greece and Macedonia from any possible naval attack. For he had already taken a bold step: he had ‘decided to disband his navy both from lack of money at the time and also seeing that his fleet was not capable of an action against the Persian navy’ (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 20, 1). Perhaps too he mistrusted the Greeks who manned it. In fact, the death of Darius’ admiral Memnon in 333 had deprived the Persian fleet of most of its bite, and on land a Persian counter-attack in Asia Minor in winter 333/2 had been defeated.

      In the summer of 331 Alexander once again met Darius’ army, this time at Gaugamela beyond the Tigris, not far from Nineveh. It was the decisive battle of the war and again Alexander was victorious, pursuing the retreating forces for thirty-five miles and then quickly advancing to occupy Babylon. Seizing the royal treasures, which amounted to 50, 000 gold talents, he advanced further into Persia proper, where he took Persepolis and Pasargadae. The burning of Xerxes’ palace at Persepolis was perhaps intended as a symbolic end to СКАЧАТЬ