Hellenistic Civilizataion
Alexander's Empire Divides | More Commerce and Greek Culture | Privelege, Power and Failed Revolutions...
Alexander's conquests stimulated change, but what had not changed was an inclination to turn events into myth. Some would describe Alexander as having had godly powers. Persia's Zoroastrian priesthood, reeling from the damage that Alexander had done to the prestige of their religion, described him as one of the worst sinners in history, as having slain many Persian teachers and lawyers and as having quenched many sacred fires. Some others in Persia would describe Alexander as a biological member of Persia's royal family – the Achaemenids. In Egypt, Alexander would become known as the son of the last pharaoh, Nectanebus. Arabs would come to know him as Iskander and would tell fanciful stories about him. And in centuries to come in Ethiopia, Christians would describe his father, Philip, as a Christian martyr, and they would describe Alexander as an ascetic saint. An unreliable account of Alexander as he neared death describes him as offering rule to his generals. Another account describes him as putting the hand of one of his generals, Perdiccas, with the hand of his wife Roxana and naming Perdiccas as his heir. Perdiccas apparently did not wed Roxana – who was pregnant with Alexander's child. Perdiccas did favor making this yet to be born child Alexander's heir if the child was to be a son. But for some Macedonians it was unthinkable that their king would be the son of a "barbarian" woman from central Asia, and this was part of the conflict that produced the break-up of Alexander's empire. hose who didn't want Roxana's child as their king favored Alexander's half brother, Philip III. He was the illegitimate son of Philip II and one of Philip's mistresses, and he has been described as an epileptic and simpleminded. When Roxana gave birth, it was a son, and the conflict in opinions as to who should succeed Alexander intensified. War among former subordinates of Alexander was averted for a short time by a compromise in which it was agreed that Philip III and Alexander's son, Alexander IV, would reign jointly while each was supervised by a general. But agreement didn't last and soon there would be war.
The joint rule of Philip III and Alexander IV was subject to the regency of a one of Alexander the Great's old comrades: Perdiccas. Perdiccas saw holding the empire together his responsibility, but with Alexander the Great dead there was no center influential or strong enough to hold the empire together. Perdiccas came into conflict with an old general who was in charge of maintaining order in Macedonia and Greece, Antigonus, who thought he should be the empire's supreme authority. Antigonus allied with Antipater. Perdiccas died in 322, assassinated by his officers while he was leading an army and trying to assert his authority against a Macedonian in Egypt: Ptolemy.
Antipater fought attempts at independence by Greeks in Athens, Aetolia, and Thessaly – the Lamian War – which he won at the Battle of Crannon in 322. He appointed himself supreme regent of all Alexander's empire and died of an illness in 319. His son Cassader emerged as the dominant power in Greece.
In Macedonia, Alexander the Great's mother, Olympias, believed that under Cassander's rule, her grandson would lose the crown. As Alexander's mother she still had some power. She had Philip III executed, and she also executed his wife and a hundred friends of Cassander. Cassander and his army marched from Greece into Macedonia, and there he won battles against Olympias' armies. In 316 he had Olympias executed, and he put Roxana and Alexander IV under guard, and in a few years he had them executed.
Cassander ruled in Macedonia and much of Greece. One of Perdiccas' assassins, Seleucus, had taken power in Babylon and extended his rule eastward through Persia and fought a war from 305 to 303 with India's Mauryan Empire. Seleucus settled with the Mauryan emperor and withdrew from what today is Afghanistan.
The new rulers in Alexander's disintegrated empire made themselves monarchs in the Macedonian tradition. Drawing from the Alexander legend, they attempted to have a striking personal appearance. They wore headbands similar to the one Alexander had worn, which became a symbol of monarchy, and they continued Alexander’s use of the title “king.” In meeting visitors they postured haughtily, while visitors were obliged to gesture submission, respect and deference.
The new monarchs sought support in religion, pretending that their bloody wars were the will of the gods. As had Alexander, they claimed themselves divine. The ruler in Egypt, a Macedonian named Ptolemy, claimed that he was descended from Heracles (Hercules) and Dionysus. He staffed his administration with Greeks rather than Egyptians, and many Egyptians continued to view his rule as foreign. But he attempted to appeal to the glory of Egypt’s ancient past and portrayed himself as a new pharaoh.
Alexander's conquests had stimulated trade from the border of India to as far west as what is now the French port city of Marseille, with Greek as its common language. A common currency had developed, as had new roads that made transport easier.
With the increase in trade had come expanded mining, manufacturing and shipbuilding. Freight carrying ships were built much larger, up to five tons in size, using methods of construction first applied to warships. In the 200s BCE, Egypt's port city of Alexandria became a center of imports and manufacturing. The Egyptians and Phoenicians produced and traded cotton cloth, and the Egyptians produced silk, paper, glass, jewelry, cosmetics, salt, wine and beer. In West Asia (the Mid-East), large workshops appeared alongside the small family stores that were common, and there the manufacture of woolens increased, along with asphalt, petroleum, carpets, perfumes, bleach and pain relieving drugs.
Across what had been Alexander's empire, at least a few privately owned businesses grew into large enterprises. With the increase in circulation of money, credit became more sophisticated. Money-changing grew into banking. By the 100s BCE, thirty-five Hellenistic cities would include private banks. note8 Private banks would be making loans. The use of checks would appear, and people could deposit their savings for safekeeping and collect interest, which was around ten to twelve percent annually. Many aristocrats – traditionally landowners – gave up their contempt for trade and enterprise and enthusiastically joined in the accumulation of wealth.
n West Asia and North Africa well-to-do tradesmen, intellectuals and aristocrats developed an interest in Greek culture – to the annoyance of those who believed that the old ways were best. From Marseille to India, Greek became the language of intellectuals. The Greek gymnasium became popular. It was a place for bathing and physical exercise – without clothes for the sake of freedom of movement in their exercises. The gymnasium was also a place for training in grammar, rhetoric and poetry. Those who passed through training at the gymnasium acquired a status similar to a modern college degree.
There was an increase in the migrations of individuals from city to city and from the countryside to the city. Individualism was replacing tribal ties, and a new cosmopolitanism was rising.
Among city governments was a greater desire for cooperation with other cities, such as offering other cities freedom from import and export duties to encourage trade. Cities began offering other cities exchanges of citizenship. This occurred first between Athens and Rhodes, then between the Peloponnesian cities of Messene and Phigalia. The island of Paros offered exchanges of citizenship, as did Pergamum, Temnos, Miletus and others. Conflicts that previously might have erupted into war were now more inclined toward arbitration, with the arbiters often a commission from a third city.
Common legal formalities appeared among various cities. And, in place of trial by local juries, an inter-city system developed in which commissions came from other cities to hear cases and settle lawsuits that would otherwise have been subject to local prejudices, politics and passions.
An interest in science, art and literature increased. Rulers saw no threat in it, and they let it be. Some people read seriously, and many, including wives of the wealthy, read escapist works about life in the countryside with shepherds, shepherdesses, wooded valleys and true love.
Libraries collected serious works and grew in number. Pergamum had a great library. The library at Alexandria, Egypt, which opened in 283 BCE, became the most famous. It was to accumulate as many as four hundred thousand scrolls and several thousand original works and copies, and it had a scientific museum that attracted people from afar. The academy that Plato had founded still flourished, and Athens remained a famous center of philosophy, but Pergamum and Alexandria eclipsed Athens as intellectual and commercial centers.
The observation of fact was becoming widely recognized as important, and science was studied divorced from philosophy and metaphysics. People trained for various professions, including engineering and medicine. In medicine, corpses were dissected and studied. Doctors discovered the difference between motor nerves and sensory nerves, and for various parts of the body they created names that would be used into modern times. Specialists advanced the study of plants and herbs. Manuals were written on agriculture and farm management. In Alexandria, Euclid contributed to geometry by creating a system of proofs based on deduction.
Stimulated by what had been Alexander's expedition into Asia, map making and a study of geography improved. Pytheas of Massalia (Marseille) voyaged up the coast of Britain to Norway or Jutland and became the first Greek to hear of what today is called the Arctic Sea. One map maker, Eratosthenes (c273-194?) described the world as round and gave a reasonable figure as its circumference.
Philosophers and common people continued to believe that the sun revolved around the earth and that the earth was at the center of the moving heavenly bodies, but Hellenized astronomers began challenging these views. Astronomers calculated the movements of the sun, moon and planets with greater accuracy. Heraclides of Pontus (390-310) had discovered that the planets Venus and Mercury revolved around the sun. Then Aristarchus of Samos (310-c230) concluded that the sun was much larger than the earth, that the earth revolved around the sun and that the distance to the stars was enormous compared to the diameter of the earth's orbit around the sun. And other astronomers confirmed his views.
In the field of mechanics, Aristotle's school made advances in understanding levers, balances and wedges. In the mid 200s a Greek from Syracuse named Archimedes (287-212 BCE) worked on the relative densities of bodies and the theoretical principles of levers. He invented the ratio pi, the circuference of a circle compared to its diameter. And he invented numerous mechanical contrivances, including machines used in war.
In some cities, Alexander had favored the common people over local nobles, who had been potential competitors against his power. Alexander had backed the creation of councils to tackle local issues. And among the monarchs who arose following the disintegration of Alexander's empire were those who supported popular participation in local government while maintaining their central authority. But with the passing of time, the participation by common people in local government declined, as the gap between the rich and poor widened. While assemblies elected by the common citizenry continued to meet and pass decrees, real power and influence was passing into the hands of men of wealth.
City governments called on local men of wealth to help their city. Merchants contributed to the construction of temples, gymnasiums, schools and other city buildings, to the construction of bridges and covered sewers, and to other civic projects. They paid for city festivals and ceremonial sacrifices to the gods, for banquets, free meals for the hungry and prizes for school children. They patronized the arts, and they contributed to city beautification that included a proliferation of fountains and statues, and many of statues were of them.
With their rise in influence, these men of wealth began paying less in taxes than did common people. In Athens the courts were under the control of wealthy magistrates.
Being free from the daily labors that burdened poorer folk, men of wealth had the time to serve as diplomats. And in times of war, they profited from supplying armies with war material.
Continuous warfare added to the misery and insecurity of common people. And there was an endemic poverty. The population was small compared to modern times, but not small relative to the amount of food being produced. In Greece and West Asia a bad harvest still meant famine. In Greece, hunger prevailed because the area was not exporting enough in minerals or manufactured goods to exchange for food. Greece was still dependent upon imports to keep people fed. And in the place of exports in goods, men in Greece were still exporting themselves as soldiers.
Across Greece and West Asia, migration from the countryside to the cities created urban slums and overcrowding. With new supplies of slaves and an abundance of freemen looking for work came a drop in the wages, often while the price of food was rising. An abundance of slaves offered no incentives for creating devices that would replace muscle power and sweat, and those who labored were physically burdened beyond their ability to stay fit.
Mining was an especially hard occupation. Egypt's gold and quicksilver mines were worked by slaves, criminals and prisoners of war, including women, elderly men and children. Young men hacked the quartz loose. Older men broke the quartz into fragments. Children dragged the quartz to the grinders, powered by women who like others worked without rest, walking in circles and pushing levers that rotated a shaft. According to the Greek writer Agatharchides, in the mid-100s BCE, relief came only with death, which these miners welcomed.
As it was in Athens in the time of Solon, the wealthy feared revolt by those who were miserable. And from a few who empathized with the miserable came dreams of a better society. Some dreamed of a "brotherhood of man." In dreaming about a better world, some looked back to what they thought was an unspoiled past, to what they imagined were virtuous barbarians living according to nature. Some put into writing their ideas about a harmonious society. Around the mid-100s BCE a writer named Iambulus designed a society without class differences, a society in which people would be equal, sharing what they produced and taking turns in doing menial work. Iambulus saw his utopia as a democracy, and he saw people in his utopia acquiring equality in wisdom and relating to each other with love.
he most serious attempt at changing society came with hate and violence back in 279 BCE in the port city of Cassanderia – formerly Potidaea – in Chalcidice. There a man named Apollondorus rode a wave of discontent that gave him power. His followers vented their anger on the wealthy with physical violence, and they confiscated wealth and property. Apollondorus established a communist dictatorship, and with money taken from the rich he hired an army of mercenaries to defend the revolution. To succeed, the revolution would have had to grow in power by spreading to other cities. Instead, after a few months, forces directed by the king of Macedonia, Antigonus II, who had been busy uniting Macedonia under his rule, overran Cassanderia and ended the revolution.
Sparta still had two kings, one of them, a young man named Cleomenes III, led a Spartan army in war alongside other Greek cities opposing Macedonia's attempt to renew hegemony in Greece. When he returned with his army from one of his battles, he ousted Sparta's second king and installed one of his brothers in that position. Then he embarked upon his revolution. He abolished debts and divided the land into 4,000 lots for Spartans and 15,000 lots for those who had come to live in villages surrounding Sparta. He created a new constitution, and his reforms allowed Sparta's army to grow in size and morale.
Cleomenes encouraged reformers elsewhere in Greece, and, across Greece, men of wealth and land responded with fear. They opposed reforms more than they did Macedonian hegemony, and they sought help from Macedonia. War erupted between Sparta and cities led by those resisting reforms. Cleomenes allied Sparta with other Peloponnesian cities. But in the year 222 the Macedonians annihilated Sparta's army, and for the first time a foreign army entered Sparta in triumph. Cleomenes fled to Egypt, and there he again took up what he saw as the cause of social justice. In Alexandria in 219 he tried to raise a revolt, but he failed and that year took his own life.
Privilege, Poverty and Failed Revolutions
During the century that followed Alexander's death, societies around the Mediterranean provided education for the professions – mainly for sons of the wealthy. In some Hellenized cities, the children of common people were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and "civilized" behavior – with teachers using corporal punishment as their only recourse against the inadequacy of their pupils.
In western Asia Minor an elementary school education was also available to girls. Girls ended school at a younger age than did boys, who continued their education if their fathers cared to pay for it. But some upper class women did acquire higher education, and a few became philosophers. Women poets appeared. Around 218 BCE Aristodama of Smyrna was touring Greece, giving recitals and receiving honors. A woman named Hestiaea in Alexandria acquired a reputation as a scholar, and women were painting.In some cities, Alexander had favored the common people over local nobles, who had been potential competitors against his power. Alexander had backed the creation of councils to tackle local issues. And among the monarchs who arose following the disintegration of Alexander's empire were those who supported popular participation in local government while maintaining their central authority. But with the passing of time, the participation by common people in local government declined, as the gap between the rich and poor widened. While assemblies elected by the common citizenry continued to meet and pass decrees, real power and influence was passing into the hands of men of wealth.
City governments called on local men of wealth to help their city. Merchants contributed to the construction of temples, gymnasiums, schools and other city buildings, to the construction of bridges and covered sewers, and to other civic projects. They paid for city festivals and ceremonial sacrifices to the gods, for banquets, free meals for the hungry and prizes for school children. They patronized the arts, and they contributed to city beautification that included a proliferation of fountains and statues, and many of statues were of them.
With their rise in influence, these men of wealth began paying less in taxes than did common people. In Athens the courts were under the control of wealthy magistrates.
Being free from the daily labors that burdened poorer folk, men of wealth had the time to serve as diplomats. And in times of war, they profited from supplying armies with war material.
Continuous warfare added to the misery and insecurity of common people. And there was an endemic poverty. The population was small compared to modern times, but not small relative to the amount of food being produced. In Greece and West Asia a bad harvest still meant famine. In Greece, hunger prevailed because the area was not exporting enough in minerals or manufactured goods to exchange for food. Greece was still dependent upon imports to keep people fed. And in the place of exports in goods, men in Greece were still exporting themselves as soldiers.
Across Greece and West Asia, migration from the countryside to the cities created urban slums and overcrowding. With new supplies of slaves and an abundance of freemen looking for work came a drop in the wages, often while the price of food was rising. An abundance of slaves offered no incentives for creating devices that would replace muscle power and sweat, and those who labored were physically burdened beyond their ability to stay fit.
Mining was an especially hard occupation. Egypt's gold and quicksilver mines were worked by slaves, criminals and prisoners of war, including women, elderly men and children. Young men hacked the quartz loose. Older men broke the quartz into fragments. Children dragged the quartz to the grinders, powered by women who like others worked without rest, walking in circles and pushing levers that rotated a shaft. According to the Greek writer Agatharchides, in the mid-100s BCE, relief came only with death, which these miners welcomed.
As it was in Athens in the time of Solon, the wealthy feared revolt by those who were miserable. And from a few who empathized with the miserable came dreams of a better society. Some dreamed of a "brotherhood of man." In dreaming about a better world, some looked back to what they thought was an unspoiled past, to what they imagined were virtuous barbarians living according to nature. Some put into writing their ideas about a harmonious society. Around the mid-100s BCE a writer named Iambulus designed a society without class differences, a society in which people would be equal, sharing what they produced and taking turns in doing menial work. Iambulus saw his utopia as a democracy, and he saw people in his utopia acquiring equality in wisdom and relating to each other with love.
he most serious attempt at changing society came with hate and violence back in 279 BCE in the port city of Cassanderia – formerly Potidaea – in Chalcidice. There a man named Apollondorus rode a wave of discontent that gave him power. His followers vented their anger on the wealthy with physical violence, and they confiscated wealth and property. Apollondorus established a communist dictatorship, and with money taken from the rich he hired an army of mercenaries to defend the revolution. To succeed, the revolution would have had to grow in power by spreading to other cities. Instead, after a few months, forces directed by the king of Macedonia, Antigonus II, who had been busy uniting Macedonia under his rule, overran Cassanderia and ended the revolution.
Failed revolution in Sparta
An attempt at revolution failed also in Sparta. There, a few people had bought up lands and had combined them into plantations worked by slaves. Sparta had no middle class as a buffer between rich and poor. As elsewhere in Greece, many landless Spartan men sold themselves abroad as mercenary soldiers, and by the mid-200s, with citizenship tied to the ownership of property, only 700 Spartans were fully enfranchised.Sparta still had two kings, one of them, a young man named Cleomenes III, led a Spartan army in war alongside other Greek cities opposing Macedonia's attempt to renew hegemony in Greece. When he returned with his army from one of his battles, he ousted Sparta's second king and installed one of his brothers in that position. Then he embarked upon his revolution. He abolished debts and divided the land into 4,000 lots for Spartans and 15,000 lots for those who had come to live in villages surrounding Sparta. He created a new constitution, and his reforms allowed Sparta's army to grow in size and morale.
Cleomenes encouraged reformers elsewhere in Greece, and, across Greece, men of wealth and land responded with fear. They opposed reforms more than they did Macedonian hegemony, and they sought help from Macedonia. War erupted between Sparta and cities led by those resisting reforms. Cleomenes allied Sparta with other Peloponnesian cities. But in the year 222 the Macedonians annihilated Sparta's army, and for the first time a foreign army entered Sparta in triumph. Cleomenes fled to Egypt, and there he again took up what he saw as the cause of social justice. In Alexandria in 219 he tried to raise a revolt, but he failed and that year took his own life.
ROXXANEE
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