Greek Imperialism

by William Scott Ferguson

"It was among the Greeks, in their free republics, that this feeling developed to its full strength. It finds typical expression in the story of the Spartan heralds, Sperthies and Bulis, who, although they had surrendered themselves to the Persian king to be executed, refused to prostrate themselves before him; 'for in their country,' Herodotus makes them say, 'it was not customary to kiss the dust before a man, nor had they come for that purpose.' The stories of Themistocles who rendered the required homage, and of Conon who on its account avoided an audience with the King altogether, despite the high value it would have had for him, are similarly significant. In demanding proskynesis, accordingly, Alexander offended Greek sentiment violently. Rather, what he thereby demanded was the acknowledgment that officially, in his capacity of king,—his private position is a different matter altogether,—he was no longer a man, but a god."

In other words, when Alexander demanded that Greeks and Macedonians fall at his feet and kiss the dust before him, he demanded that they recognize him as a god, as in fact the son of Zeus. This ceremony had no such implications for the Persians; but, as we shall see in a moment, in Alexander's thinking, the Persians were to cease to exist; they were to be made Hellenes by education.

Alexander set out for Asia with a firm belief in the absolute superiority of Hellenic culture; and in this belief he remained fixed to the end. To establish Hellenic life throughout Asia, he regarded as the main object of his conquests. His Hellenic ideals he revealed to the astonished natives at almost every halting-place on his march; for on such occasions he again and again held gymnastic and musical contests after the Greek pattern. As we have seen, he had learned from Aristotle that city-life and Hellenic life were synonymous, and that without political activity city-life was animal rather than human in character. Accordingly, he displayed a feverish energy in founding Greek city-states everywhere in the conquered territory, but particularly in the regions of the Far East where urban life had been hitherto lacking. Like mushrooms overnight, towns by the scores sprang up behind him on his line of march; so vast was the immigration into Asia from Greece and Macedon even during the thirteen brief years of his reign.

The fact was that by founding cities Alexander lessened enormously his military and administrative difficulties. For every city took from his shoulders responsibility for maintaining order, collecting taxes, and dispensing justice in the territory assigned to it—necessary tasks, now that a European state was arising in Asia, which could be performed otherwise only by the creation of a bureaucratic system of officials. This, however, was a non-Hellenic institution for which Alexander had naturally no liking. In the future he saw the whole world—that of Asia which he had already conquered and that of the Far West which he meant to conquer—honeycombed, like Greece itself, with a multitude of city-states, each a separate cell with a town in its centre, each possessed of a general assembly and a council, magistrates of its own choosing and laws of its own making or adoption, each the home of free men speaking the Greek language, fostering Greek art and letters, and fighting with Greek arms and tactics. It was a grand vision, which failed of realization in Alexander's time and thereafter; but it set forth an ideal toward which future generations moved for over five centuries.

It is clear that Alexander never lost faith in the absolute supremacy of Hellenic culture. Certainly the place of unlimited authority which he reserved for himself above the world of city-states and their law-bound citizens, was the one prescribed for the ideal wise man, the man of supreme political ability, by Aristotle his tutor. That Aristotle thought of a different pambasileus for each city-state and Alexander of a single "absolute monarch" for all, is a non-essential difference, and it is simply in the institutions which Alexander found necessary to translate the idea of the philosopher into the world of reality that Hellenic practice and custom were violated.

These outlandish institutions, however, Alexander employed as means for the better dissemination of Greek life and thought, without being conscious, perhaps, that they were destructive of the spirit which they were intended to preserve.

On the other hand, it is indisputable that Alexander revised his tutor's, and his own youthful, opinion as to the worth of the Asiatics. What he came to think of Semites and Egyptians we do not know; and it may be that he continued to regard them as naturally servile and, hence, condemned them to remain forever hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Hellenic or Hellenized citizens in whose cities they were to live. But as to the Medes and Persians and the kindred Iranian stocks of the Far East, the views of their conqueror changed radically when he came really to know them, and to appreciate fully the magnitude of the task which he had undertaken.

He found that they had spirit and capacity comparable to those of the Greeks and Macedonians themselves. That they caused him no physical repulsion is shown by his falling in love with and marrying Roxane. Teach them the Greek language, draw them along with the immigrant Greeks into the body politic of the new cities, equip them with Macedonian weapons, drill them in the Macedonian fashion, and distribute them in the Macedonian regiments; above all, use the nobles in the high administrative posts, and it seemed to Alexander possible, within a short time, to fuse the new masters of Asia with the old into a new cosmopolitan race.

With iron resolution he carried this policy forward despite all opposition. Then, choosing the dramatic moment of his return to Susa after his Indian campaign, he arranged an extraordinary marriage as a symbol of the contemplated fusion of the dominant peoples of Europe and Asia. "He himself," says Arrian in his Anabasis,[69] quoting Aristobulus, an eye-witness, "married Barsine (rather Stateira), the eldest of the daughters of Darius, and, in addition to her, another, the youngest of the daughters of Ochus (the able predecessor of Darius), Parysatis. Earlier, too, he had wedded Roxane, the daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria. To Hephæstion he gave Drypetis, who, too, was a daughter of Darius and sister of the wife he took himself; for he wished the children of Hephæstion to be cousins of his own children. To Craterus he gave Amastrine, the daughter of Oxyartes, Darius's brother; to Perdiccas, the daughter of Atropates, satrap of Media; to Ptolemy, his aide, and to Eumenes, his private secretary, children of Artabazus, to the one Artacama, to the other, Artonis. To Nearchus he gave the daughter of Barsine and Mentor, to Seleucus the daughter of Spitamenes of Bactria; and in like manner to his other companions he gave the most famous of the daughters of the Medes and Persians, to the number of eighty. The marriages were celebrated in the Persian manner. Seats were placed in order, and on them the bridegrooms reclined"; and at this point we may let Chares, master of ceremonies, interrupt Arrian and describe the setting which he had arranged for the service.

"It was," he says,[70] "a hall of a hundred couches, each large enough for two to recline at table, and in it each couch, made of twenty minas' worth of silver, was decked as for a wedding. Alexander's had feet of gold. And to the feast were bidden all his Persian friends, and given places on the opposite side of the hall from himself and the other bridegrooms. And all the army and the sailors and the embassies and the visitors were assembled in the outer court. The hall was decorated in most sumptuous style, with expensive rugs, and hangings of fine linen, and tapestries of many colors wrought with threads of gold. And for the support of the vast tent which formed the hall there were pillars thirty feet high, plated with silver and gold, and set with precious stones. And around about the sides were costly portières, embroidered with figures and shot through with gold threads, hung on gilded and silvered rods.