Chapter 12
In This Chapter
● Wrestling for power after Alexander the Great
● Feuding among the Hellenistic kingdoms
● Engaging with the Roman Empire
● Leaving a lasting legacy
Ancient Greece was never the same again after the death of Alexander the Great. In fact, historians call the period of Alexander’s life (356 to 323 BC) until about 150 BC the Hellenistic period (meaning ‘relating to Greece’) because of the spread of Greek influence around the Mediterranean that happened as a result of Alexander’s travelling (see Chapter 11 for all the details) and the population movements that followed. Notably, the various cities named Alexandria that Alexander founded put the Greeks in positions of power throughout the Mediterranean world and far beyond. But as this chapter explains, this prominence didn’t last. Within 150 years the Greek world was effectively under the control of the Roman Empire, and that’s why this period of ancient Greek history doesn’t get as much space in this book as other periods do.
Still, the Hellenistic period is full of characters and events that are well worth looking into. After all, don’t you want to know how the story of ancient Greece ends? Read on.
Having a Bad Heir Dag: Alexander's Successors
Alexander the Great was very good at many things (see Chapter 11), but detailed planning for the future wasn’t one of them. When he died in June 323 BC, he hadn’t clearly stated whom he wanted to act as his successor.
The situation was complex:
● Alexander left at least one child from his marriage to Roxanne, and Alexander’s mother Olympias still lived (see Chapter 11) - but neither of these women had any hope of taking over the empire because they didn’t command the respect of the army and any successor would have to fight to protect their position.
● Alexander and Roxanne’s small boy was named Alexander IV and was born shortly after his father’s death.
● Alexander also left a half-brother in Babylon, one of Philip II’s other children (see Chapter 10). Known as Philip III, this half-brother was an unfortunate man who suffered from severe mental disabilities and lived in an almost childlike state.
Auctioning off an empire
Because none of Alexander’s closest relatives were capable of ruling the vast territory that he acquired during his life, a regent was required and there was precedent for this in Macedonian tradition. The general Perdiccas (one of Alexander’s ‘Companions’) took the job and the rest of Alexander’s generals divided up the empire between them.
Before long, Perdiccas was murdered along with several others. Eventually, the empire was divided up into five parts and leaders assigned:
● Asia Minor: Antigonus
● Egypt: Ptolemy
● Eastern territories: Seleucus
● Macedonia and Greece: Antipater
● Thrace: Lysimachus
Although these territories changed hands regularly over the next century or so, they effectively made up what became known as the Hellenistic kingdoms. See the section ‘Raising Hell: The Hellenistic Kingdoms’ for more information.
Revolting (again) in southern Greece
Here’s a real shocker: Virtually as soon as Alexander had died, the southern Greeks revolted against Macedonia. Athens formed part of the revolt, and the movement was initially quite successful.
Ptolemy the body snatcher!
Ptolemy, the leader of Egypt, managed to secure his own kingdom following the death of Alexander. Alexander's body rested in Babylon for a while until the transfer to Macedonia began. The body travelled in state in a massive mobile tomb known as a 'catafalque'. It was about 13 feet wide by 20 feet long and constructed like a mini Ionic temple (see Chapter 18) with full decoration in gold and marble. As the tomb moved through Syria, Ptolemy and his men took control of it and transported it to Memphis in Egypt. After Ptolemy and Alexander's body arrived, Ptolemy kicked out the satrapappointed by Alexander and declared himself ruler. Ptolemy later moved to Alexandria to supervise the city's completion and installed Alexander's body in a permanent mausoleum in Alexandria. Body snatching - so much simpler than negotiation, don't you think?
Alexander's tomb has now been lost and debate continues to this day about where it might be located.
In late 323 BC, Antipater, the Macedonian in charge of the region, marched south to meet the Greek allies and was initially forced back and besieged in the town of Lamia. However, by the summer of 322 BC, Macedonian reinforcements arrived, and Antipater was able to take on the Greek allies in a pitched battle near the town of Krannon. The Macedonian victory wasn’t crushing, but the Greeks were forced to make terms - because they couldn’t agree among themselves how to continue the war!
Ending democracy in Athens (322 BC)
If you’ve read any of the preceding chapters, you won’t be surprised to find out that Antipater had to arrange peace terms separately with each city because none of the Greek allies trusted the others enough to negotiate a general peace.
As part of Antipater’s peace settlement, the Athenians were required to house a Macedonian garrison that supervised a new government run by Athenian aristocrats who the Macedonians had hand-picked.
The unpleasant squabbling after the revolt and during the peace process brought democracy in Athens to an end. Nearly 200 years of democratic rule - one of ancient Greece’s greatest achievements - was over, as was Athens’s role as a military power.
Raising Hell: The Hellenistic Kingdoms
After the final blow to Athens, the newly established Hellenistic kingdoms (see Figure 12-1) spent about 170 years bashing each other in the hope of making some territorial gains. Nothing much ever really changed and any gains that were made were usually lost fairly soon afterwards.
Figure 12-1: The Hellenistic kingdoms.
Developing dynastic struggles
The Hellenistic kingdoms were all individually powerful, but none was powerful enough to dominate the others. Throughout the third century BC the sons of Alexander’s generals fought with each other for territorial gains throughout the Mediterranean. This squabbling was very similar to the way that Greek city-states had continually fought each other throughout the century before (refer to Chapter 9).
One thing that the Hellenistic rulers did manage to achieve was the creation of dynasties that saw their descendants running the various kingdoms.
The dynastic tradition was particularly true of Ptolemaic Egypt where descendants of Alexander’s commander ruled all the way until Cleopatra (along with Mark Antony) was defeated at the battle of Actium in 31 BC. See the section ‘Attending the greatest show on earth: Alexandria’ for more on the exploits of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Laying siege on Rhodes: Demetrius
One of the more interesting successors to Alexander was Demetrius, the son of Antigonus who ruled in Asia Minor. Demetrius was known as Poliorcetes or ‘The Besieger’, although he seems to have spent more of his time eating and getting drunk.
In 304 BC, Demetrius laid siege to the island of Rhodes in a bid to expand his territory. Demetrius’s main tactic was to build a massive siege tower called Helepolis, which was as close as the Greeks got to developing a tank. This contraption was 43 metres (140 feet) high and made up of nine storeys. Each storey contained catapults and other siege machinery operated by hundreds of men. For protection, Helepolis was covered with iron plates on three sides. Weighing around 150 tons, it needed more than 3,000 specially trained men to pull it.
Impressive, huh? Well, the only problem was, it didn’t work. The citizens of Rhodes resisted the siege, and Demetrius left the Helepolis behind along with all his other siege equipment when he sailed home. The people of Rhodes celebrated Demetrius’s retreat by melting down the Helepolis and using it to build the famous statue known as the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the original Seven Wonders of the World (and covered in Chapter 18). A much more profitable end to a bad idea. You can read more about Demetrius in Chapter 26.
The activities of Demetrius are a good example of what the Hellenistic period was like. Demetrius had no real reason to attack Rhodes other than empire building. Treaties proved meaningless as successive generations broke them and carried on fighting.
Attending the greatest show on earth: Alexandria
For all the fighting that went on throughout the Hellenistic kingdoms, Ptolemaic Egypt was relatively stable, and the new city of Alexandria thrived as a result.
City planning panache
Alexandria was ideally placed to gather the revenues from trade all across the Mediterranean, and Egypt itself was hugely wealthy due to the fertile lands surrounding the Nile. The Ancient Egyptians For Dummies (Wiley) by Charlotte Booth offers more insight into this exceptional city.
A gift that keeps on giving
The library at Alexandria is hugely important to historians today because the work begun centuries ago to catalogue and preserve texts started a tradition that has carried on through the medieval period and the Renaissance. This tradition is solely responsible for the fact that you and I can still read the works of Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, and others - and that I'm able to write a book like this. Thanks, Ptolemy!
Alexandria was unusual because it was built from scratch to a definite plan for the location and design of all the major public buildings. A huge amount of money was spent on a large earth work that helped to form a double harbour and the construction of the mighty pharos (lighthouse) that dominated the skyline.
Checking out the library
One of the most famous public buildings in Alexandria was the library . The library was actually part of the museum of Alexandria. For the ancient Greeks, a museum was literally ‘a sanctuary of the muses’. (The muses were Greek goddesses associated with all areas of learning; see Chapter 20 for more on these lovely ladies.)
The library of Alexandria was founded by Ptolemy and thrived throughout the Ptolemaic period. It became the new centre of learning in the Mediterranean, replacing Athens in the process. Scholars travelled from all around to work and study there. Historians believe that at its height it contained 500,000 scrolls, which catalogued nearly everything that had ever been written in the Greek language at the time.
The library flourished throughout the Hellenistic period and beyond until it suffered a terrible fire in 47 BC when Julius Caesar was laying siege to the city. Several Roman emperors subsequently lavished money and attention on the library and attempted to replace its stock, but it may have been finally destroyed during the Byzantine period when the emperor Theodosius demanded the destruction of all pagan temples in AD 391.
The museum and library weren’t just about preserving things, but also about new discoveries. The Hellenistic period saw breakthroughs in science (see Chapter 26) and a new, more realistic style in art and sculpture (see Chapter 18). This new community also saw great developments in literature and distinctive poetry produced by men like Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus.
A cosmopolitan metropolis
One of the other great new developments in Alexandria was the cosmopolitan nature of its population. Alexandria’s new ruling class was Greek and Macedonian, but many other people came to live there.
In this way, Alexandria was rather different to the other major cities of the Greek world. In Athens and Sparta, for example, citizenship and the right to reside were zealously guarded. Alexandria was much more the kind of city that Rome became later, a large metropolis with a real cosmopolitan feel where people came from far and wide to live and work.
The Greek historian Polybius became a Roman citizen and was sent as an envoy to Alexandria in 180 BC. Here he describes the city’s population:
It is inhabited by three classes of people: first the native Egyptians, a volatile group, hard to control, secondly by the mercenaries [foreign soldiers from all over the Mediterranean resident in the city]; thirdly there are the Alexandrians themselves, a people not genuinely civilised. . . for though they are mixed they come from a Greek stock and have not forgotten Greek customs.
Clearly, the cosmopolitan city wasn’t to Polybius’s taste! Alexandria must have been an amazing place to be, because despite the multinational feel the city was very firmly under the control of its Ptolemaic rulers.
Fading Away: The End of Ancient Greece
Greek influence on the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic period had never been stronger. But ironically, this period was exactly the same time that the Greek world began to lose its independence and get swallowed up by the emerging Roman Empire.
Meeting the Romans
The Roman Empire was the successor to the Greek world and carried on for the best part of 650 years. The Romans themselves came from what was originally a small market town in Umbria that, according to myths, was originally populated by criminals and runaway slaves. By the third century BC the Romans had come to dominate the whole of Italy and were at war with the mighty Carthaginian civilisation based at Carthage in north Africa.
Death by old lady
Pyrrhus carried on his life of adventure, and by 272 BC he was fighting in Argos. During a street battle an old woman standing on the roof of her house saw Pyrrhus attack her son. She picked up a tile from the roof and flung it at him. It knocked him unconscious and he fell from his horse and was killed in the melee. Quite an appropriate end to the life of somebody who was characterised by heroic failure.
Although Rome’s rise was all going on in the western Mediterranean, the Greek world felt the impact through the Roman conquest of Sicily in 241 BC. It wasn’t long before the Romans began to look east.
Tangling with the Romans: Pyrrhus of Epirus
One of the first contacts between Greece and Rome came at the beginning of the third century BC. The Romans were beginning to expand their interests and the people of Tarentum in southern Italy appealed for help against them.
Their appeal was answered by Pyrrhus, an aristocrat originally from Epirus. Pyrrhus was the joint ruler of Macedonia after driving out Demetrius (of Helepolis fame) - see the earlier section ‘Laying siege on Rhodes: Demetrius’. But Pyrrhus had then been forced out by his co-ruler Lysimachus.
As something of a military adventurer, Pyrrhus was happy to try and further his ambitions in the west, and he landed at Tarentum in 282 BC. He brought a large army with him, including traditional Macedonian infantry with sarissas and about 30 elephants. Over the next three years, he fought a series of campaigns against Rome, heavily defeating the Romans on several occasions.
The problem that Pyrrhus faced was that every time he won a victory, the Romans, with all their available reinforcements, came back stronger, but Pyrrhus’s own forces diminished. Despite his victories, Pyrrhus eventually lost the war, leaving to fight in Sicily in 278 BC.
His campaigns are the source of the modern expression ‘a pyrrhic victory’ - winning the battle but not the war.
Clashing cultures: The Battle of Cynoscephalae
In 197 BC, the Macedonian king Philip V (no relation to Philip II) became engaged with the Romans. Philip was a bit of a chancer and had spent many years fighting small territorial wars against his Hellenistic counterparts. However, in 197 BC, Philip bit off more than he could chew.
During the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage (218 to 201 BC), Philip supported the Carthaginians and thus made himself an enemy of Rome.
The Romans used their friendship with Ptolemaic Egypt (see the section ‘Developing dynastic struggles’) as a reason to attack because Philip had recently helped the Seleucid king Antiochus against them. The Romans sailed across the Adriatic Sea and met Philip’s forces at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly.
The battle was a real test of military strategies with new, lightly armed, and mobile Roman legions set against the formidable and old school Macedonian phalanx. In the end, the Romans won the day. They surrounded the relatively slow-moving Macedonian phalanx. When the Macedonians lifted their pikes in surrender, the Romans failed to understand the gesture and cut them down. Philip’s army was destroyed, and his allies fled.
Becoming a Roman province
Commitments elsewhere meant the Romans were unable to finish the job they began against Philip V, but in 168 BC, they defeated the Macedonians again at Pydna. This time there was no coming back.
Roman forces split Macedonia into four tribal republics and placed a Roman governor in control in each region. After further trouble, the republics were eventually done away with in 146 BC. The country that had produced Philip II and Alexander the Great was made a Roman province.
Generally, the Romans were quite content to allow the Greek cities to rule themselves. The Roman governor in Macedonia kept an eye on things and (as ever!) the Greek cities were too busy squabbling among themselves to ever mount a serious threat against the Romans.
The last Greek hurrah
Following the Roman annexation of Macedonia in 146 BC, several Greek cities formed a coalition called the Achaean Confederacy, which rose up in revolt again Rome. Of course, the gesture was futile. The small army that the confederacy mustered never stood a chance against the professional Roman army. The confederacy was easily defeated and the city of Corinth destroyed in the process.
After the revolt, Rome more closely monitored the Greek cities from Macedonia, and in some cases, Roman garrisons were installed. Finally, in 46 BC a large part of southern Greece turned into the Roman province of Achaia. The ancient Greeks never really ruled themselves again.
Living On: Rome and Beyond
Although the Greeks as a powerful entity were no more by 46 BC, Greek civilisation thrived for hundreds of years after. The Romans and subsequent civilisations adopted many elements of Greek life:
● The Roman gods were broadly similar to Greek gods, even though they had different names.
● Greek art, architecture, literature, philosophy, and all manner of other elements of Greek society were incorporated into Roman and Byzantine life, and then rediscovered and reintegrated into Europe during the Renaissance.
Even today you’re reading a book about the ancient Greeks. So the Greeks never really went away; they just stopped existing in Greece!