Greek Imperialism

by William Scott Ferguson

In this respect the Scriptures of Euhemerus accorded with a strong current of both earlier and contemporary religious thought. Most men at that time recognized supernatural powers of a certain sort, like Tyche, "Chance,"—the favorite deity of the Hellenistic world,—whose play in human affairs modern disbelievers in religion also would be the last to deny. But they declined to recognize as efficacious the gods and goddesses in whose honor the cities maintained temples, priests, sacrifices, and games, except when they had lived on the earth as men and women.

At the best, therefore, these deities were simply prototypes of Alexander, who had founded seventy cities and given them their constitutions and laws, who had conquered all the territory which Dionysus had once overrun, and who was planning to build a highway along the coast of North Africa to the pillars set by Heracles at the limits of the world; who, moreover, was moulding the masses of Europe and Asia into a new race, and upheld, as no god had ever done, the social and political framework of the world.

Religion was unable to elevate a living man to godhood. Even in Egypt the sacred animals were but sacred animals till seventy days after their death, when they became deities. But irreligion, having degraded all gods to the level of human beings, had no reason to withhold from great men the homage which it accorded to the great dead.

The fundamental document on the deification of Greek kings comes to us stamped with the seal of the Athenian state. It was sung by the multitude at the official reception of its sovereign, the young Macedonian king, Demetrius Poliorcetes, on his return to Athens in 290 B.C.[75] "The king comes, light-hearted as befits a god, fair and laughing, yet majestic withal in his circle of courtiers, he the sun, they the stars: hail! child of mighty Poseidon and of Aphrodite. The other gods are a long way off, or have no ears, or no existence, or take no care of us, but thee we see face to face—a true god, not one of wood and stone." This catchy bit of blasphemy makes it impossible for any reasonable doubt to linger as to the regions of thought from which the worship of Greek rulers sprang.

But why should men who regarded the gods they already had as useless burden the state with the cult of another whose power was only too real? Why abandon King Log for a possible King Stork? It is on this point chiefly that scholars disagree to-day. There are those who make the apotheosis of Alexander a tribute paid by the Greeks to transcendant genius, a result of the reverence-compelling personality of the man. I confess, however, that enthusiastic admiration such as this presupposes does not seem to me to harmonize with the contemptuous expressions which marked the establishment of his cult in certain places in Greece.[76] In Sparta, Damis moved, in regard to Alexander's message that he be decreed a god, that the Spartans "let him be called a god if he wishes it"; while in Athens Demosthenes advised his fellow-citizens "to acknowledge the king as the son of Zeus, or, for all he cared, as the son of Poseidon, if such was his pleasure." In other places, however, the recognition seems to have been spontaneous enough, and to have been an expression of real gratitude for services rendered or expected. But Greeks on earlier occasions, and other peoples as well, were equally grateful and no less servile without deifying the object of those sentiments. Why then did admiration, gratitude, or servility take this form in this particular instance?

It is true that deification was demanded of the Greek cities by Alexander, and that it was in response to a mandate sent out by him from Susa in 324 B.C. that "sacred ambassadors," such as were sent to gods and not to kings or states, arrived at Babylon in the spring of 323 B.C. a few weeks before Alexander's death, bearing the decrees in which his request was granted. But for the following fifty years it was at the initiative of the Greek cities, and, at times, against the will and interest of the recipient, that such honors were conferred upon later rulers. Hence we may be certain that in the first instance deification was an accommodation both to Alexander and to the cities in his realm. Nor can we, I think, be in serious doubt as to the character of the service it rendered.

It gave a legal position to Alexander in the world of city-states which he was organizing. It was unjust, Aristotle had taught him, that a man of supreme political capacity—such as he had displayed—should be treated as worthy of mere equality in the cities of his realm. Yet he could be treated in no other fashion if he were to be a citizen of them. On the other hand, now that he had freed himself from the constitutional limitations placed upon the earlier kings of Macedon and from the treaties which he had formed with the Hellenic cities at the opening of his reign, he ran the risk of being put to death or outlawed or ostracized, if he were not, as Aristotle suggested, rated as a deity upon the earth.

From his point of view, his rule was legitimatized when he was enrolled among the deities recognized by each city; for thereafter he had a clear right to issue orders to all the citizens of his world. From their point of view, on the other hand, by deifying Alexander they escaped from the intolerable necessity of obeying the commands of a foreigner. They thereby gave their consent to be ruled by him. They subordinated their will to his.

The deification of rulers was, accordingly, simply the proskynesis of cities. Its consequences were an absolutism such as Europe—and for that matter Asia—had never known before and has never ceased to know since. And it is this melancholy consequence of apotheosis which has only too frequently obscured its signal service: that it made possible the lasting union of all the city-states of the world in a single great territorial state.