The Hellenistic World. F. Walbank W.

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СКАЧАТЬ into a cosmopolitan international force owing loyalty only to himself, in many ways anticipates the military foundation on which the personal monarchies of the hellenistic age rested. By 323 ‘King Alexander’ was the personal ruler of a vast spear-won empire which had little to do with Macedonia. His successors likewise were to carve out kingdoms for themselves with the help of armies bound to them only by personal bonds.

      (b) Similarly, there was an increase in Alexander’s autocracy foreshadowing that of the hellenistic kings. In distancing himself from Macedonia and its national traditions Alexander had moreover necessarily assumed an autocratic power. The growth of this can be traced in a series of events which aroused the army’s hostility and often involved the elimination of his opponents. The first such incident occurred in 330 at Phradah, when Philotas’ execution was used as a pretext to have Parmenion assassinated. The next was at Maracanda (Samarkand) in 328, when Alexander murdered Black Cleitus, one of the Companions – the group constituting the king’s intimate advisers – and a leading cavalry officer, after provocation in a drunken brawl. Alexander subsequently reacted with a theatrical display of remorse but was persuaded by the philosopher Anaxarchus that the king stood above the law (Plutarch, Alexander, 52, 4).

      In order that he might feel less shame for the murder, the Macedonians decreed that Cleitus had been justly put to death (Curtius, viii, 2, 12).

      In the hellenistic monarchies (except Macedonia) the king’s decrees normally had the force of law and the king could do no wrong.

      The third incident took place the next year at Bactra (mod. Balkh) and was the result of Alexander’s policy of surrounding himself with Persians as well as Macedonians. The presence of both at court led inevitably to difficulties, since the two peoples had very different traditions concerning the relationship between king and subject. To Macedonians the king was the first among his peers, to Persians he was the master and they were his slaves and the outward sign of this was an act of obeisance ( proskynesis), which a Macedonian or Greek was prepared to perform only to a god. Its exact character is controversial: some believe it to have involved physical prostration, others argue that it consisted merely in the blowing of a kiss from the upright, bowed or prostrate position. Whatever its precise form it was repulsive to Greeks and Macedonians when performed before a man, and when at Bactra in 327 Alexander tried to persuade the Macedonians to follow the Persians in according him this gesture, the Greek Callisthenes opposed him. There are two versions of what happened. According to the first, there was a debate between Anaxarchus and Callisthenes on Alexander’s proposal, in which the latter ‘while irritating Alexander exceedingly, found favour with the Macedonians’ (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 12, 1), and the whole plan was dropped. According to the second, Alexander sent round a loving-cup, which each was to take, offer proskynesis, and finally receive a kiss from the king; Callisthenes omitted the proskynesis and was denied the kiss (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 12, 3–5). Whatever the truth of the details – both versions could be true – the incident led to Callisthenes’ destruction, for he was soon afterwards accused of being privy to a murder-conspiracy by some of the royal pages.

      Aristobulus declares that they [sc. the conspirators] said that it was Callisthenes who had urged them to the plot; and Ptolemy agrees. But most authorities do not say so, but rather that through his dislike for Callisthenes . . . Alexander easily believed the worst about him (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 14, 1).

      Callisthenes was tortured and executed; the sources disagree only on the details. The whole incident smacks of the tyrant’s court.

      (c) Alexander’s authoritarianism revealed itself, as that of his successors was also to do, in his relations with the Greeks. The expedition, as planned by Philip, had as its excuse the avenging of the wrongs suffered by the Greeks at the hands of the Persians. At the outset Alexander had been at pains to emphasize the panhellenic aspects of the war (see p. 31 for the panoplies sent to Athens after Granicus) but unfortunately our evidence is not sufficiently clear to allow us to say what status was accorded by Alexander to the ‘liberated’ Greek cities of Asia Minor. According to Arrian

      he ordered the oligarchies everywhere to be dissolved, democracies to be set up, each city to receive back its own laws and to cease paying the taxes they had paid to the Persians (Anabasis, i, 18, 2).

      But an inscription from Priene (Tod, 185) shows Alexander interfering extensively in the city’s affairs and although the Prieneans are declared ‘free and autonomous’ and released from the payment of ‘contributions’ – the word used, syntaxis, suggests that these were payments made hitherto to Alexander for the prosecution of the war rather than tribute paid to Persia – it is not clear just what ‘free and autonomous’ meant to the king. Some scholars have argued that the Greek cities of Asia Minor became members of the League of Corinth. This seems to have been true of the cities of the Aegean islands for an inscription from Chios, dealing with Alexander’s restoration of exiles there (probably in 332), declares that ‘of those who betrayed the city to the barbarians. . . all still remaining there shall be deported and tried before the Council of the Greeks’ (Tod, 192), which suggests Chian membership of the League of Corinth. But there is no firm evidence to determine whether the same was also true of the cities of Asia Minor. In practice they certainly had to do what Alexander ordered, like Ephesus where he restored the democracy but ‘gave orders to contribute to the temple of Artemis such taxes as they had paid to the Persians’ (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 17, 10).

      This, however, also applied to the cities of the League, as the events of 324 clearly show. Faced with a problem of rootless men in Asia – unemployed mercenaries, political exiles, and settlers who (like 3000 from Bactria) had abandoned their new colonies and were on their way back to Greece – Alexander published an edict authorizing their return. According to Diodorus (xviii, 8, 4) he stated in this that ‘we have written to Antipater (who was in charge in Europe) about this, that he shall use compulsion against any cities that are unwilling to take back their exiles’. To ensure the maximum publicity for this decree, which, as an inscription from Mytilene (Tod, 201) shows, applied to Asia and Europe alike, Nicanor, Aristotle’s adopted son, was sent to Olympia to have read out to the Greeks assembled for the games a statement that ‘all exiles were to return to their countries, excepting those guilty of sacrilege and murder’ (Diodorus, xvii, 109, 1). A Samian inscription (Syll., 312) shows that Alexander had already previously made a similar announcement to the army. Though Diodorus says that the decree was welcomed, it certainly caused complications and even chaos over property, confiscated and sold, in every city (as inscriptions make clear) and it can hardly have pleased Antipater. It is a measure of Alexander’s disregard for the rights of the cities that he could take such a step without consulting them. In this, as in so much else, his actions were arbitrary and authoritarian. Traditional Greek rights were disregarded.

      (d) Both Alexander and, later on, the hellenistic kings reinforced their autocratic power with claims to divinity. About the same time as he ordered the return of the exiles Alexander published a further demand in Greece, which met with a mixed reception. According to Aelian ( Varia historia, ii, 19), ‘Alexander sent instructions to the Greeks to vote him a god’ and this is borne out by other sources, none of which, however, mentions the exact context in which this request was sent. However, according to the Athenian orator Hypereides (Funeral Speech, 6, 21, delivered 323), the Athenians had been forced

      to see sacrifices accorded to men, the statues, altars and temples of the gods disregarded, while those of men were sedulously cared for, and the servants of these men honoured as heroes.

      The reference must be to the worship of Alexander and to the heroic honours which he had accorded to his dead friend Hephaestion. In the spring of 323 Alexander was visited at Babylon by embassies from Greece ‘wreathed in the manner of sacred envoys arriving to honour some god’ (Arrian, Anabasis, vii, 23, 2). In view of this evidence and a number of other passages, often ironical like the report of Damis’ motion at Sparta – ‘if Alexander wishes to be a god, СКАЧАТЬ