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,