The Hellenistic World. F. Walbank W.

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СКАЧАТЬ that the request was sent about the same time as the demand for the restoration of exiles, though there is little to be said for Tarn’s view in Alexander the Great, Vol. II, pp. 370–3, that ‘his divinity was intended by Alexander to give a political sanction to the latter request, which no existing powers authorized him to make’.

      The request for divine honours seems more likely to have been a final step in the direction in which Alexander’s thoughts had been moving for some time. His father Philip had been honoured at Eresus on Lesbos by the erection of altars to Zeus Philippios (Tod, 191, 11. 5–6), a statue to him stood in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus (Arrian, Anabasis, i, 17, 11) – though this need not necessarily imply a cult – and at Aegae in Macedonia for ‘because of the greatness of his rule he had counted himself alongside the twelve gods’ (Diodorus, xvi, 95, 1). Recently an inscription has been found which attests the existence of a cult to him at Philippi. As for Alexander himself, he had been recognized as a Pharaoh, and so as a divine being (see p. 217), and early in 331 he had visited the oracle of Amon at Siwah in the Libyan desert, where, Callisthenes reported, ‘the priest told the king that he, Alexander, was the son of Zeus’ (Strabo, xvii, 1, 43), a statement generally interpreted to mean that the priest greeted Alexander as ‘son of Amon’. Shortly afterwards, and quite independently, the oracles at Didyma and Erythrae put out the same story ‘concerning Alexander’s descent from Zeus’ (Strabo, ibid.). To Greeks and Macedonians it was common practice to identify foreign gods with their own and Callisthenes called Amon Zeus, just as Pindar had done in his hymn to Amon, where he addressed him as ‘Amon, lord of Olympus’, and in a Pythian ode (4, 16) where he speaks of Zeus Amon. That Alexander encouraged the connection with Zeus, as his son or (like Philip) identified with him, can be seen from a silver decadrachm issued later to celebrate his victory over Porus, which depicts Alexander on horseback charging Porus on an elephant and on the reverse shows a figure of Zeus, wearing a strange amalgam of dress and wielding a thunderbolt in his right hand, which has also been identified with Alexander.

      A further stage in the advance towards deification can be traced in the scheme, already discussed above (pp. 38–9), to introduce proskynesis at Bactra. In order to raise the topic, Anaxarchus, the amenable philosopher from Abdera, asserted that

      it would be far more just to consider Alexander as a god than Dionysus and Heracles;. . . there could be no doubt that when Alexander had passed away men would honour him as a god; how much more just was it then that they should so honour him in his lifetime rather than when he was dead, and the honours would be no use to him (Arrian, Anabasis, iv, 10, 6–7).

      But however attractive to Alexander, this argument went down badly with the Macedonians, as we have seen, and the plan to introduce proskynesis had to be shelved, largely in the light of Callisthenes’ speech in opposition. The final stage came with the request of 323, as a result of which several Greek cults of Alexander appeared – at Athens, probably at Sparta, and perhaps elsewhere. But Alexander’s death followed soon afterwards and any cults established seem to have been shortlived, at any rate on the Greek mainland. Cults established in Asia Minor, like the festival of the Alexandreia attested in an inscription found on the island of Thasos, seem often to date from his original campaigns of 334/3 and not to be a response to the message of 323. In their case the cult was often accompanied by the setting-up of a new dating era (as in Priene and Miletus), both being a spontaneous expression of gratitude for ‘liberation’. But the Greeks of the mainland needed no liberator and there cults were instituted only in response to pressure and soon disappeared. The difference is noteworthy. It is the Asian tradition which serves to throw light on the character of hellenistic ruler-cult during the next two centuries (see pp. 212 ff).

      (e) Finally we must consider Alexander’s cities. Throughout the lands covered by his march he founded Alexandrias, not seventy, as Plutarch (On Alexander’s Fortune, 1, 5, p.328e) alleged, but a substantial number, perhaps about a score in all, mainly east of the Tigris, where hitherto urban centres were rare. Most of these foundations are merely names in lists, official names moreover, which were not always those by which they were later known. They were intended to serve a variety of purposes, some to guard strategic points, passes or fords, others to supervise wider areas; they presupposed an adequate territory to maintain the colonists and, preferably, a local population who could be pressed into agricultural work. Some were later to develop into centres of commerce, while others withered and perished. It seems certain that the bulk of the settlers were Greek mercenaries. This can be deduced from calculations based on recorded troop movements and is confirmed by remarks in our sources. To take the latter first, Diodorus reports that the Greeks whom Alexander had settled in the upper satrapies (especially Bactria)

      were sick for Greek training and the Greek way of life and having been relegated to the frontiers of the kingdom they put up with this from fear so long as Alexander was alive, but when he died they revolted (xviii, 7, 1).

      They were in fact 23, 000 in number and had come out East to make their fortunes – their fate was to be disarmed by the Macedonians and massacred for plunder. The picture of reluctant settlers is confirmed from a speech which Arrian put into the mouth of the Macedonian Coenus when the troops in the Punjab mutinied rather than march further east. After mentioning the sending home of the Thessalians from Bactria, he continues:

      Of the rest of the Greeks some have been settled in the cities which you have founded, and they do not all remain there willingly; others including Macedonians, sharing in your toils and dangers, have in part perished in battle, while some have become invalids from wounds and have been left scattered here and there throughout Asia (Arrian, Anabasis, v, 27, 5).

      Firm numbers elude us but Griffith has calculated (The Mercenaries of the Hellenistic World, pp. 20 ff.) that in the course of his expedition Alexander received at least 60, 000 (and more probably 65, 000) fresh mercenaries, and that he left behind him as garrisons or settlers a minimum of 36, 000, which together with the numbers not recorded and casualties from battle or sickness must have reached a total equal to that of the new recruits. Eventually, at Babylon,

      having sent home the older of his soldiers to their native land (Diodorus (xvii, 109, 1) puts their numbers at 10, 000) he ordered 13, 000 infantry and 2000 horse to be selected for retention in Asia, thinking that Asia could be held by an army of moderate size, because he had distributed garrisons in many places and had filled the newly founded cities with colonists eager to maintain things as they were (Curtius, x, 2, 8).

      The Bactrian revolt shows how far Alexander had miscalculated the temper of these settlers.

      Not all, however, broke loose. And though many of the cities (like Bactra) must have incorporated a strong native element, they maintained their Greek organization and later under the Seleucids they were reinforced by the establishment of new settlements. The character of these will be considered below (pp. 130 ff.). Here we may conclude this brief consideration of Alexander’s programme, which foreshadowed the many later foundations of his hellenistic successors, by noting that his first Alexandria, that founded on the Nile in spring 331, and his only settlement west of the Tigris, survived to become one of the most famous centres of the Roman empire and indeed of later times.

3. The Formation of the Kingdoms (323–276)

      On his death Alexander left an empire stretching from the Adriatic to the Punjab and from Tadzhikistan to Libya. But much of it was loosely held and parts of northern Asia Minor had never come under Macedonian control at all. Whether, had he lived longer, Alexander could have organized and co-ordinated this inchoate area effectively is a moot question. Without him even the survival as a whole seemed unlikely. The history of the next fifty years – from 323 until 276 – is of a struggle between Alexander’s generals and their sons and successors to take what they could for themselves. For a time that could have meant the whole. But the СКАЧАТЬ