CHAPTER IX.
Post-Alexandrian Greece.
Tumults of the Diadochi:
their intricacy;
§ 69. The period which follows the death of Alexander is one so complicated with wars and alliances, with combinations and defections, with reshapings of the world's kingdoms[168:1], with abortive efforts at a new settlement, that it deters most men from its study, and has certainly acted as a damper upon the student who is not satisfied with the earlier history, but strives to penetrate to the closing centuries of freedom in Greece. There is very little information upon it, or rather there are but few books upon it, to be found in English. Thirlwall has treated it with his usual care and justice; and to those who will not follow minute and intricate details, I have recently given, in my Greek Life and Thought, a full study of the social and
artistic development which took place in this and the succeeding periods of Hellenism in Greece and the East. Hertzberg's and Droysen's histories, the one confined in space to Greece proper, the other in time to the fourth and third centuries B.C., are both thorough and excellent works. Holm's final volume, which will include the same period, is not yet accessible, so that I cannot notice it.
their wide area.
The liberation of Greece.
A great part of this history was enacted, not in Greece, or even in Greek Asia Minor, but in Egypt, in Syria, in Mesopotamia, and even in Upper Asia. The campaigns which determined the mastery over Greece were usually Asiatic campaigns, and each conqueror, when he arrived at Athens, endeavoured to enlist the support of Greece by public declarations of the freedom, or rather the emancipation, of the Greeks. This constant and yet unmeaning manifesto, something like the Home Rule manifestoes of English politicians, is a very curious and interesting feature in the history of the Diadochi, as they are called, and suggests to us to consider what was the independence so often proclaimed from the days of Demetrius (306 B.C.) to those of the Roman T. Flamininus (196 B.C.), and why so unreal and shadowy a promise never ceased to fascinate the imagination of an acute and practical people.
Spread of monarchies.
The three Hellenistic kingdoms.
For, on the other hand, it was quite admitted by all the speculative as well as the practical men of the age that monarchy was not only the usual form of the Hellenistic State, but was the only
means of holding together large provinces of various peoples, with diverse traditions and diverse ways of life. From this point of view the monarchy of the Seleucids in Hither Asia, and that of the Antigonids over the Greek peninsula, are far more interesting than the simpler and more homogeneous kingdom of the Ptolemies in Egypt[170:1]. For the Greeks in Egypt were never a large factor in the population. They settled only two or three districts up the country; they shared with Jews and natives the great mart of Alexandria, and even there their influence waned, and the Alexandria of Roman days is no longer a Hellenistic, but an Egyptian city. The persecutions by the seventh Ptolemy, who is generally credited with the wholesale expulsion of the Greeks, would only have had a transitory effect, had not the tide of population been setting that way; the persecutions of the Jews in the same city never produced the same lasting results. The Syrian monarchy stands out from this and even from the Macedonian as the proper type of a Hellenistic State. Unfortunately, the history of Antioch is almost totally lost, and
the very vestiges of that great capital are shivered to pieces by earthquakes. Of its provinces, one only is tolerably well-known to us, but not till later days, through the Antiquities of Josephus, and the New Testament[171:1].
New problems.
§ 70. How did the Greeks of Europe and of Asia accommodate themselves to this altered state of things, which not only affected their political life, but led to a revolution in their social state? For it was the emigrant, the adventurer, the mercenary, who now got wealth and power into his hands, it was the capitalist who secured all the advantages of trade; and so there arose in every city a moneyed class, whose interests were directly at variance with the mass of impoverished citizens. Moreover the king's lieutenant or agent was a greater man in the city than the leading politician. Public discussions and resolutions among the free men of Athens or Ephesus were often convincing, oftener exciting, but of no effect against superior forces which lay quietly in the hands of the controlling Macedonian.
Politics abandoned by thinking men,
We may then classify the better men of that day as follows. First there was a not inconsiderable number of thoughtful and serious men who abandoned practical politics altogether, as being for small States and cities a thing of the past, and only leading to discontent and confusion. These men
adopted the general conclusion, in which all the philosophical schools coincided, that peace of mind and true liberty of life were to be obtained by retiring from the world and spending one's days in that practice of personal virtues which was the religion of a nation that had no creed adequate to its spiritual wants.
except as a purely theoretical question,
with some fatal exceptions.
Nevertheless among other topics of speculation these men sometimes treated of politics; and when they did condescend to action, it was to carry out trenchant theories, and to act on principle, without regard to the terrible practical consequences of imposing a new order of things on a divided or uneducated public. The Stoic philosophers, in particular, who interfered in the public life of that day, were dangerous firebrands, not hesitating at the murder of an opponent; for were not all fools criminal, and was not he that offended in one point guilty of all? Such men as the Sphærus who advised the coup d'état of the Spartan Cleomenes[172:1], and the Blossius who stimulated the Gracchi into revolution, and the Brutus who mimicked this sort of thing with deplorable results to the world in the murder of Cæsar,—all these were examples of the philosophical politician produced by the Hellenistic age.
Dignity and courage of the philosophers
shown by suicide.
But if there were mischievous exceptions, we must not forget that the main body of the schools kept alive in the Greek mind a serious and exalted
view of human dignity and human responsibility,—above all, they trained their hearers in that noble contempt for death which is perhaps the strongest feature in Hellenistic as compared with modern society; for there can be no doubt that Christian dogmas make cowards of all those who do not live up to their lofty ideal. The Greeks had no eternal punishment to scare them from facing death, and so we find whole cities preferring suicide to the loss of what they claimed as their rightful liberty[173:1]. People who do this may be censured; they cannot be despised.
Rise of despots on principle.
§ 71. Secondly, most philosophers had become so convinced of the necessity of monarchy, if not of the rule of one superior spirit, as better than the vacillations and excitements of a crowd, that many of their pupils considered themselves fit to undertake the duty of improving the masses by absolute control; and so we have a recrudescence, in a very different society, of those tyrants whose merits and defects we have already discussed at an earlier stage in this essay[173:2]. The long series of passages from essays That Monarchy is best, which we may read in the commonplace book of Stobæus[173:3], is indeed followed by a series of passages On the Censure of Tyranny; but the former is chiefly taken from Hellenistic philosophical
tracts, whereas the latter is drawn wholly from older authors, such as Xenophon, who lived in the days of successful republics.
Probably not wholly unpopular.
Even the literary men, who are always anti-despotic in theory, confess that many of these later tyrants were good and worthy men; and the fact that Gonatas, the greatest and best of the Antigonids, constantly 'planted a tyrant' in a free State which he found hard to manage, proves rather that this form of government was not unacceptable to the majority, than that he violated all the deepest convictions of his unmanageable subjects for the sake of an end certain to be balked if he adopted impolitic means. The force of imitation also helped the creation of tyrannies in the Greek cities; for were not the Hellenistic monarchies the greatest success of the age? And we may assume that many sanguine people did not lay to heart the wide difference between the requirements of the provinces of a large and scattered empire, and those of a town with a territory of ten miles square.
These then were phenomena which manifested themselves all over the peninsula,—aye, even at times at Athens and Sparta, though these cities were protected by a great history and by the sentimental respect of all the world from the experiments which might be condoned in smaller and less august cities.
Contemptible position of Athens and Sparta in politics,
except in mischievous opposition to the new federations,
§ 72. But despite these clear lessons, the normal condition of the old leaders of the Greek world
was hardly so respectable as that of the modern tyrannies. It consisted of a constant policy of protest, a constant resuscitation of old memories, an obsolete and ridiculous claim to lead the Greeks and govern an empire of dependencies after the manner of Pericles or Lysander. The strategic importance of both cities, as well as their hold upon Greek sentiment, made it worth while for the great Hellenistic monarchs to humour such fancies; for in those days the means of defending a city with walls or natural defences were still far greater than the means of attack, even with Philip's developments of siege artillery,—so that to coerce Athens or Sparta into absolute subjection by arms was both more unpopular and more expensive than to pay political partisans in each, who could at least defeat any active external policy. But if from this point of view these leading cities with all their dignity had little influence on the world, from another they proved fatal to the only new development of political life in Greece which had any promise for small and separate States. And this brings us to the feature of all others interesting to modern readers,—I mean the experiment of a federation of small States, with separate legislatures for internal affairs, but a central council to manage the external policy and the common interests of all the members.
whose origin was small and obscure.
§ 73. This form of polity was not quite new in Greece or Asia Minor, but had remained obscure and unnoticed in earlier and more brilliant times.
We may therefore fairly attribute to the opening years of the third century B.C. its discovery as an important and practical solution of the difficulty of maintaining small States in their autonomy or independence as regards both one another and the great Powers which threatened to absorb them.
The old plan of a sovran State not successful.
The old idea had been to put them under the hegemony, or leadership, of one of the great cities. But these had all abused the confidence reposed in them. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, had never for one moment understood the duty of ruling in the interests, not only of the governing, but of the governed. The Athenian law, by which subject-cities could seek redress before the courts of Athens, had been in theory the fairest; and so Grote and Duruy have made much of this apparent justice. But the actual hints we find of individual wrong and oppression, and the hatred in which Athens was held by all her dependencies or allies, show plainly that the democratic theory, fair as it may seem in the exposition of Grote, did not work with justice. Accordingly, we find both in northern and in southern Greece the experiment of federations of cities attaining much success, and receiving much support in public opinion.
The leading cities stood aloof from this experiment.
Athens and the Ætolians
It is most significant that these new and powerful federations were formed outside and apart from the leading cities. Neither Athens nor Sparta, nay, not even Thebes, and hardly even Argos, would condescend to a federation where they should have only a city vote in conjunction with other cities;
and so the new trial was deprived both of their advice and of the prestige of their arms and arts. If, for example, both Athens and Thebes, but especially the former, had joined the Ætolian League of wild mountaineers, who had wealth and military power, but no practice in the peaceful discussion and settlement of political questions, they would probably have influenced the counsels of the League for good, and saved it from falling into the hands of unprincipled mercenary chiefs, who regarded border wars as a state of nature, and plunder as a legitimate source of income.
But Athens stood sullenly aloof from this powerful organization, remembering always her long-lost primacy, and probably regarding these mountaineers as hardly Hellenes, and as unworthy to rank beside the ancient and educated States, which had once utilized them as mere semi-barbarous mercenaries. And yet the Ætolians were the only Greeks who were able to make a serious and obstinate struggle for their liberties, even against the power of Rome.
or the Achæans.
§ 74. But if to have rude Ætolians as co-equal members of a common council would have been too bitter a degradation for Athens, why not ally herself to the civilized and orderly Achæans? For the Achæan cities, though insignificant heretofore, had old traditions, legendary glories; and in later times Sicyon especially had been a leading centre, a chosen home for the fine arts. When Corinth and Argos were forced to join this League,
why should Athens stand aloof? Yet here was the inevitable limit, beyond which the Achæan League could never obtain a footing. It stopped with the Isthmus, because no arguments could ever induce Athens to give it her adhesion[178:1].
Sparta and the Achæans.
Within the Peloponnesus the case was even worse; for here Sparta was ever the active opponent of the Achæan League, and sought by arms or by intrigues to separate cities and to make any primacy but her own impossible. Thus the Leagues had to contend with the sullen refusal or the active opposition of the principal Powers of Greece; and if, in spite of all that, they attained to great and deserved eminence, it only shows how unworthy was the opposition of those States whose narrow patriotism could not rise beyond their own susceptibilities. This it was which made the success of the experiment from the first doubtful.
A larger question.
What right has a federation to coerce its members?
§ 75. But there was a constitutional question behind, which is one of the permanent problems of statecraft, and therefore demands our earnest attention. The mode of attack upon the Leagues, especially upon the constitutional and orderly Achæan League, adopted by Macedon, Sparta, and Athens, was to invite some member to enter upon separate negotiations with them, without consulting the common council of the federation.
And time after time this move succeeded, till at last the interference of the Romans in this direction sapped the power and coherence of the League.
Disputed already in the Delian Confederacy by Athens and the lesser members.
Duruy's attitude on this question.
The same kind of difficulty had occurred long before under the old dominations of Sparta, Athens, and Thebes; but I did not refer to it before, because this is the proper place to bring the problem in all its bearings before the reader. Under the Athenian supremacy many members had voluntarily entered into the Delian Confederacy; others had done so either under protest, or for some special object, such as the clearing of the Ægean from Persian occupation. Presently, when the particular object was fulfilled, and when the Athenian tax-gatherers insisted upon the tribute which was spent on public, but Athenian, objects, the separate members declared their right to secede, and revolted whenever they had the power. The Athenians argued that the peace and prosperity of the Ægean had been secured by the common effort of the Confederacy and by the zeal and self-sacrifice of Athens. They denied that each member which had so long profited by the arrangement had a right to secede, and in any case they declared that they would coerce the seceder. In Duruy's chapter on the passage of the Delian Confederacy into the Athenian empire[179:1] he shows little sympathy for the individual members and their hardships, and justifies Athens in her aggressive policy.
In a mere passing note he compares the case of the North against the South in the late American Civil War. But as he has not argued out the problem, I may be of service to the reader in discussing it here.
Greek sentiment very different.
It was to this dispute that the real origin of the Peloponnesian war is to be traced. And though most people thought Athens quite justified in holding what she had obtained, and not surrendering the empire which had cost such labour and returned in exchange such great glory, yet the general feeling of the Greek world was distinctly in favour of the seceder,—in favour of the inalienable right of every city to reassert its autonomy as a separate State[180:1], not only with communal independence, but with perfect liberty to treat as it chose with neighbouring States. Whenever, therefore, this conflict between Imperialism and Particularism arose, public sympathies sided with the assertion of local independence.
Nature of the Achæan League.
§ 76. The debate in the present case was somewhat different in its details. The Achæan League, a number of small cities situated upon a coast exposed to pirates, and able to foresee from lofty posts the coming raid, united voluntarily for attack and defence, and so formed a Confederacy, which
lasted a long time before the wealth gained by its members as mercenaries and the decay of the greater Powers of Greece brought it into prominence[181:1]. These cities had a common executive and a sort of cabinet, preparing the business for the general Assembly, which met for three days twice a year, and then decisions were obtained from this Assembly and measures ratified by its votes. But as the more distant members could not attend in great numbers, the members of each city present, whether few or many, gave that city's vote, which counted as an unit in the Confederacy. The result was of course to put political power into the hands of the richer classes, who had leisure to leave their own affairs and go regularly to the Assembly at Ægion[181:2].
Statement of the new difficulty
The difficulties which now arose were these: Had any of the original twelve towns, that had voluntarily formed this Union, the right to withdraw their adhesion? In a lesser degree, had the towns that afterwards joined in consequence of the pressure of circumstances, but by a deliberate and public vote, a right to rescind that vote? And in a still
less degree, had any town which had subscribed to the Achæan constitution any right to violate its observance in one point, as by negotiating separately with another State, or was it bound to observe in all respects the terms imposed by the Union from which it was not allowed to secede?
in its clearest form never yet settled except by force.
The first of these cases is by far the most perplexing, and I am not aware that it has ever been settled by any argument better than an appeal to force. To the Greeks, at all events, it seemed that the right of autonomy—the power to manage one's own affairs—was the inalienable right of every city; just as the Irish Nationalists may be heard daily asserting it for every nation[182:1].
Case of the American Union.
In our own youth we heard this right far more seriously urged by the seceding States of the American Union, some of which had been members of the first combination, and had voluntarily ceded certain portions of their political rights, at least their theoretical rights, in return for the protection and support of the Confederation as a whole. These States argued that if the Union began to
interfere in the domestic concerns of each,—such, for example, as the practice of permitting household slaves,—it was a breach of contract, and justified the State in formally repudiating the remainder of the contract. But even had there been no encroachment by new legislation, the Greek city claimed the right of returning to its isolated independence.
Arguments for coercion of the several members.
§ 77. On the other side, it has always been argued that though contracts for a definite period need not be renewed, there are many contracts intended by their very nature to be permanent, and which are so far-reaching in their consequences that for any one party to abandon them is a profound injustice to the remainder, whose lives have been instituted and regulated upon these contracts[183:1]. Let us take an illustration from everyday life. From the contract of marriage there arise such important consequences that a dissolution does not permit the contracting parties to resume their
original life; and therefore in all higher civilizations legal divorce has been made very difficult, and secession by either party without legal sanction a grave offence.
In like manner it was argued that the several cities had grown rich and powerful under the League. The lives of its members had been sacrificed to defend every city attacked; the funds of the League had been spent on each as they were needed. Was it just that after growing and thriving upon these conditions any one of them should, for its own convenience, repudiate the bond and regard all the accruing benefits as a private property, to be disposed of to any strange Power?
Cases of doubtful or enforced adherence.
To answer this question and to adjudicate between the litigants is hard enough, and yet I have stated the simplest difficulty. For in the case of many of the additions to the Achæan League a revolution had first taken place, the existing government had been overthrown, and then the new majority had placed themselves under the protection of the Confederation. If the old rulers returned to power, were they bound by the Government which had coerced them, and which they regarded as revolutionary? Others, again, had been constrained by the presence of an armed force, and by threats of imminent danger if they did not accept the League's protection. When circumstances changed, could they not argue that they were coerced, and that an apparently free plébiscite was wrung from them against their better judgment?
Various internal questions.
§ 78. Such were the profoundly interesting and thoroughly modern problems which agitated the minds of men in post-Alexandrian Greece. There were moreover various internal questions,—whether new cities which joined should have equal rights with the original members; whether large cities should have a city vote only equal to the vote of the smallest; whether the general Assembly should be held in turn at each of the cities, or in the greatest and most convenient centre, or in a place specially chosen for its insignificance, so that the Assembly might be entirely free from local influences? All these questions must have agitated the minds of the founders of the Swiss Union and the American Union, for the problems remain the same, however nations may wax and wane.
Looser bond of the Ætolian League.
The Achæan and Ætolian Unions were very popular indeed, especially the latter, which required no alterations in the administration of each State, but accepted any member merely on terms of paying a general tax, and obtaining in lieu thereof military aid, and restitution of property from other members if they had carried off plunder from its territory[185:1]. The Achæan League required more. A tyrant must abdicate before his city could become a member, and in more than one case this actually took place.
The most dangerous, though passive, enemy of
this hopeful compromise between the Separatist and the truly National spirit was, as I have said, the sullen standing aloof of the greater cities. Of course the ever active foe was the power of Macedon, which could deal easily with local tyrants, or even single cities, but was balked by the strength of the combination.
Radical monarchy of Cleomenes.
At last there arose a still more attractive alternative, which was rapidly destroying the Achæan League, when its leader, Aratus, called in the common enemy from Macedon, and enslaved his country in order to checkmate his rival. This rival was the royalty of Sparta, who offered to the cities of the Peloponnesus an Union on the old lines of a Confederation under the headship of Sparta, but of Sparta as Cleomenes had transformed it; for he had assassinated the ephors, abolished the second king, and proposed sweeping reforms in the direction of socialistic equality,—division of large properties, and protection of the poor against the oppression of aristocrats or capitalists. This kind of revolution, with the military genius of Cleomenes to give it strength and brilliancy, attracted men's minds far more than the constitutional, but somewhat torpid and plutocratic, League. Of course the fatal struggle led practically to the destruction of both schemes by the superior force and organization of Macedon.
FOOTNOTES:
[168:1] We may well apply to it the famous words of Tacitus at the opening of his Histories: 'Opus adgredior opimum casibus, atrox proeliis, discors seditionibus, ipsa etiam pace saevum; principes ferro interempti, bella civilia, plura externa ac plerumque permixta . . . pollutae caeremoniae; magna adulteria; plenum exiliis mare; infecti caedibus scopuli . . . corrupti in dominos servi, in patronos liberti; et quibus deerat inimicus, per amicos oppressi.'
[170:1] This judgment seems likely to be reversed by the wonderful accession of new materials upon the Ptolemaic age, the first instalment of which I have published in a monograph upon the Petrie Papyri (with autotype plates, Williams & Norgate, 1891). We shall presently know the conditions of life in one province at all events, the Fayoum, which was peopled with Greek veterans along with Jews and Egyptians. I have now under my hand their wills, their private letters, their accounts, their official correspondence in hundreds of shreds and fragments.
[171:1] The best special work on the conflict of the Greek settlements with the Jewish population, and with the Asmonæan sovrans all along the coast of Palestine, is B. Stark's Gaza und die Philistische Küste.
[172:1] Cf. Plutarch's Life of Cleomenes, cap. xi.
[173:1] Cf. the cases quoted in my Greek Life and Thought, pp. 394, 537, 541-543.
[173:3] Florilegium (ed. Teubner), ii. 247-284.
[178:1] The momentary acquisition (in 190 B.C.) of two unimportant towns, Pleuron and Heraclea, in northern Greece, need hardly count as a correction of this general statement. The acquisition of the island Zacynthos was prevented by the Romans.
[179:1] Hist. des Grecs, chap. xix.
[180:1] I need not pause to remind the reader that each Greek city, or pόlis, was in every constitutional sense a separate and independent State, just as much as the largest country is now. These cities severally made frequent treaties even with Rome, to which they stood in the same relations as a foreign king.
[181:1] These points were suggested for the first time in my Greek Life and Thought, pp. 7 seqq.
[181:2] This voting by cities seems to me the nearest approach to representation that the Greeks ever made in politics, as distinct from religious councils, such as the Amphictyonies; for of course a city far from the place of assembly could agree with a small number of its citizens that they should attend and vote in a particular way. Every citizen, however, might go if he chose, so that this would be a mere private understanding.
[182:1] The Greek city-polity (πόλις) was a perfectly clear and definite thing. A nation, on the contrary, may mean anything, for it may be determined by race, religion, language, locality, or tradition. Any one or all of these may be utilized to mark out the bounds of a nation according to the convenience of the case. I have often heard it asserted, and seen it printed, that in Ireland the Protestants of the North and East are quite a separate race. Such a statement, generally made to justify harsh measures against them from a Parliament of Roman Catholics, would also justify them in seceding from the rest of Ireland.
[183:1] Duruy even quotes, in connection with the earlier Athenian Confederacy (chap. xix. § 2), the words of the actual treaties between several of the smaller towns (Erythræ, Chalcis), which have been found graven on stone; and argues that because they assert permanent union with Athens, and invoke curses on him that hereafter attempts to dissolve this union, Athens was legally as well as morally justified in coercing any seceders. It is strange so acute a thinker should not perceive that this assertion of eternal peace and union was an almost universal and perfectly unmeaning formula. If such formulæ were really valid, we might find ourselves bound by our ancestors to very serious obligations. There is no case, except that of Adam, where the act of one generation bound all succeeding centuries.
[185:1] We now have recovered several inscriptions, which give us information on some of these points. Cf. Mitth. of the German Institute at Athens, xi. 262.
