Hellenistic Monarchs and the Macedonian Kings

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Hellenistic Monarchs
down to the Roman Empire


The Hellenistic Age suffers from some of the same disabilities as Late Antiquity, i.e. it doesn't measure up to the brilliance of the Golden Age of Greece and of late Republican and early Imperial Rome. http://www.friesian.com/history/alpha-g.gifHowever, the Hellenistic world, although mostly not bothering with characteristic Greek experiments like democracy, is where Greece actually became a cosmopolitan culture, a sort of pre-adaptation for the Roman world. Just saying that the Bible begins with the book of Genesis, a Greek word, reflects the degree to which the older cultures of the Middle East came to express themselves in Greek. Several of the Hellenistic Kingdoms, mainly in Anatolia (Armenia, Pontus, Cappadocia, etc.), are domains of non-Greek peoples. Meanwhile, although the literature does not seem as brilliant, mathematics, science, and technology develop rapidly. Archimedes very nearly develops calculus. Eratosthenes estimates the size of the Earth with an accuracy that will not be surpassed until Modern times. Hero of Alexandria builds a kind of steam engine. This remains little more than a toy, but the same cannot be said of the immense engines, often of war, that Hellenstic technology otherwise produces. It is all inherited by the Romans, perhaps symbolicly with the killing of Archimedes at Syracuse by a Roman soldier in 212 (during the Second Punic War, 218-201).
All of the tables are mainly based on E.J. Bickerman, Chronology of the Ancient World [Cornell University Press, 1968, 1982], C. Bradford Welles, Alexander and the Hellenistic World [A.M. Hakkert Ltd., Toronto, 1970], and Bruce R. Gordon's Regnal Chronologies (http://www.hostkingdom.net/regindex.html). Kingdoms listed under the Seleucids are those that broke away from the Asiatic part of Alexander's Empire that largely had been inherited by Seleucus, though a couple of them, like Armenia, were actually only under Seleucid control briefly. The genealogies now are supplied or corrected from the Erzählende genealogische Stammtafeln zur europäischen Geschichte, Volume III, Europäiche Kaiser-, Königs- und Fürstenhäuser, Ergänzungsband [Andreas Thiele, R. G. Fischer Verlag, Second Edition, 2001], which has a section specifically of Hellenistic monarchs.



Sometimes Alexander the Great's brilliance as a general is questioned. Such criticism is usually focused on his conduct of battles. However, that is not the most important point. Simply getting a functioning army all the way from Macedonia to India, and back to Babylon, is the most extraordinary feat. Winning every battle along the way, however basic the tactics, certainly helps. The Emperor Julian (http://www.friesian.com/romania.htm#constan), a competent general, couldn't even invade Persian Mesopotamia without getting himself into an awkward situation. After Alexander's untimely death, his half-witted half-brother Philip III was made King, awaiting the birth of Alexander's postumous child by Roxane. This child turned out to be a son, Alexander IV. Brother and son were thus the "Kings" in the custody of the Regents. Philip ended up murdered by Alexander's mother, Olympias, in league with Polyperchon, in 317. She was almost immediately murdered by Cassander. Alexander was murdered, together with Roxane, by Cassander around 310. Alexander IV's "official" reign, and the fiction of a unified empire, was maintained for five more years, until Antigonus, Demetrius, Lysimachus, Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Cassander (the Diadochi, "Successors") had all proclaimed themselves Kings in their own right.

The Hellenistic Macedonian Kings from PhD Thesis and Books on the Greeks (http://www.friesian.com/hist-1.htm)
excellent.

Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

[Ptolemy]

COLONIZATION, HELLENISTIC



Plutarch, in the eulogy of his hero Alexander the Great (De Alex, fort.), made the foundation of cities the linchpin of the achievement of Alexander, who wished to spread Greek civilization throughout his realm.

Although we must be mindful of the predictable ideology which has structured Plutarch's argument, as well as distrustful of the number of cities attributed to the conqueror (70!), it is nevertheless true that Alexander's conquest opened the countries of the middle east to Greek immigration.

The Greeks, however, could only imagine life in cities with Greek-style houses, streets, public buildings, civic institutions, and a rural territory where the colonists could hold plots of land (kleroi).

Begun by Alexander, usually as military colonies rather than cities proper (Alexandria in Egypt is an exception), this policy was followed by his successors and developed further by the Seleucids.

Every region of their empire was included, but it is possible to distinguish four arenas in particular:

Babylonia (including Susiana and the Persian Gulf), where Seleuceia on Tigris filled the role of royal residence (Akkadian "al sarruti"), and the military colonists of the islet of Icaros (modern Failaka) held land-grants;
north Syria, the 'new Macedon', sown with dynastic foundations (Antioch, Apamea, Seleuceia in Pieria, Laodicea-on-the-Sea);
Asia Minor, where new cities were planted on older sites (e.g. Celaenae/Apamea, Laodicea- Lycus, etc.); and, last but not least,
central Asia , where the best-documented example is Ai Khanoum (perhaps originally an Alexandria).
All the foundations received a Greek and/or Macedonian population, as the onomastic evidence shows; the Seleucids wanted, in effect, 'to create Greek colonies and to instal citizens of Greek cities in Phrygia, in Pisidia, and even in the Persian Gulf region' (L.Robert).

When Antiochus wanted to strengthen the city of Antioch-Persis, he asked Magnesia ad Maeandrum to send a contingent of new colonists. Even the most distant foundations remained in direct contact with their Aegean counterparts: we know, for example, that the philosopher Clearchus of Soli, a pupil of Aristotle, stayed at Ai Khanoum, leaving as evidence a copy of the Delphic maxims; the family of the Graeco-Bactrian king Euthydemus I (last quarter of the 3r century BC) came from Magnesia as Maeandrum, and influences from the Maeander valley are also detectable in a statuette found in the Bactrian sanctuary of Takht-i Sangin; the Greek inscriptions found in Arachosia use a language and syntax which imply regular links with the Aegean cities.

However, the Graeco-Macedonian dominance in the new cities implies neither an enforced Hellenization of the local peoples nor their marginalization.

In Babylonia, what is striking is the continuity and survival of traditional social, political, and religious institutions. Anu-uballit, governor of Uruk in the reign of Seleucus II, is a specially interesting case: he had received permission from the Seleucid king to add to his Babylonian name the Greek 'Nikarchos'; at the same time he continued to watch over and care for the Babylonian sanctuaries of the city.



P.Briant,

Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996), p.363