Antigonus Gonatas and some at least of his governors were pupils of Zeno. That meant in this connection that, whereas Alexander the Great, for example, had been obliged to discard what was most characteristic in the politics of Aristotle when he identified himself with the man of transcendent virtue, who, his teacher had urged, should be made absolute monarch when found, Antigonus drew from his philosophy an obligation to let none but the sage rule.[122] As against the wisdom of the ideal wise man the laws of states which he ignored or broke had no avail; for, according to his creed, they were unnatural and hence unwholesome. The wise man could do no wrong. In his actions, since he was a law unto himself, morality triumphed over mere legality. Antigonus Gonatas disdained to seek a justification for his acts by claiming, though a man, the prerogatives of the gods, and, though there was nothing in the pantheistic theory of Stoicism to prevent his being worshiped if people wanted to worship him, he was under no legal necessity to pose as a god; whereas, had he done so, he must have come into conflict with the religious conservatism of his philosophy. He, accordingly, had no difficulty in rendering an account to his own conscience for setting up "tyrants" in his Greek dependencies and for practicing or authorizing lawlessness. But he was too shrewd a man to suppose that because Zeno and he thought his conduct justified he could do what he pleased to the Macedonians or Greeks with impunity. They could not be expected to know that their ruler was a Stoic sage who could do no wrong, or to make allowances for his behavior on that account. Hence, while he could justify his system of government on philosophic grounds, there is no evidence that he was not a scrupulous Macedonian king and a considerate suzerain of Greece. And had he been left alone to work out the problem of Hellenic administration without outside interference it is probable that his high sense of duty and his skill and forbearance would have given Greece a long period of peace.
The founder of the first Macedonian empire, Philip II, had been opposed in Greece by Persia, but the resistance he had encountered because of the diplomacy of Artaxerxes Ochus was as nothing when compared with the difficulties raised up for Antigonus Gonatas's uncle, Cassander, by the promises and armies of his grandfather, Antigonus I, or with the obstacles he himself had to meet in the intrigue, money, and expeditions of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
The situation which existed in the first ten years of his reign (277-267 B.C.) was not of Antigonus's creating, nor was Philadelphus responsible for it. It was Ptolemy I Soter who had seized the dominion of the sea on the final débâcle of Demetrius Poliorcetes (287-286 B.C.) and with it the control of the league of the Islanders. This established a long and, in fact, indefinable frontier between the realm of Philadelphus and that of Antigonus. The lordship of the sea Gonatas seems not to have bothered about at first, and, indeed, the great war which broke out in 266-265 B.C. between the two monarchs—the so-called Chremonidean War—was clearly incited by Egypt and not by him. Notwithstanding that she was dead four years when the actual conflict began, its real instigator was, doubtless, Arsinoë, the sister-queen of Philadelphus. Acting on her policy, Philadelphus first formed an alliance with King Areus I of Sparta and his allies (Achæa, Elis, Mantinea, Phlius, and part of Crete) and with Athens, and then backed them up in the concerted effort they decided to make to free Greece from Antigonus and his "tyrants." What the real object of the "brother-gods" was, is a matter of conjecture. All they accomplished, in any case, was to give Antigonus five years of hard fighting[123] and to complete the ruin of Athens and the enforced quietude of Sparta.
Therewith was accomplished, what had been long in the preparing, the overthrow of the leadership which city-states had held from time immemorial in European Greece. Henceforth it was not from cities that significant movements sprang, but from ethne. Macedon itself was an ethnos, or, at least, a group of ethne, and it seemed possible to enlarge it by adding to it all the other ethne in the peninsula. The difficulty was that two other ethne, Ætolia and Achæa, the first in Central Greece and the second in the Peloponnesus, had each a similar, if less far-reaching, ambition; and while the aspirations of Ætolia to acquire territory in the Peloponnesus, and the aspirations of Achæa to expand into Central Greece, kept them normally in conflict with one another; and while each in turn (Ætolia in 245-241, Achæa in 220-217 and 212-206 B.C.) got the help of Macedon against the other, and both united only once (238-229 B.C.) in a war against Macedon, Achæa offered till 224 B.C. and Ætolia till 200 B.C. an attractive alternative for Macedonian suzerainty to ethne and city-states which could not stand alone. The natural desire of the new ethne, as of the old city-states, was, however, to be independent—a sentiment which Ætolia and Achæa shared completely; and against this powerful force Antigonus had to contend, after the Chremonidean War no less than before it.
He had come so brilliantly out of the Chremonidean War, however, that ten years elapsed before his suzerainty was again challenged. His most formidable enemy, Ptolemy Philadelphus, was absorbed meanwhile with a dangerous disturbance in Ionia, occasioned by the revolt of Ptolemy, his "son", and Timarchus, his admiral, to whose aid his watchful enemy, Antiochus II, and his daring maritime rivals, the Rhodians,[124] had come (258 B.C.); but when this outbreak was brought to a close with the peace of 255 B.C.,[125] Antigonus had to anticipate a renewal of his troubles in Greece. He, accordingly, determined to cease being the anvil and to become the hammer. That meant the construction of a fleet with which to take from Egypt control of the Ægean, which had been possessed prior to 288-287 B.C. by his father and grandfather. To accomplish this end he renewed his alliance with Syria, and arranged a marriage between his son and heir, Demetrius, and Stratonice, Antiochus's sister. This being done, he sought out the admirals of Ptolemy at Leucolla near Cos, and defeated them in a great naval battle (253 B.C.). Suzerainty over the league of the Islanders was the most striking gain; but a more substantial advantage was that with his fleet he could now ward off trouble in Greece and stir it up in Ptolemy's realm. The latter he accomplished by dispatching his half-brother, Demetrius the Fair, to Cyrene and by snatching that kingdom, which had just been vacated by the death of Magas (251-250 B.C.), from the grasp of Egypt. In the former he had a rather surprising lack of success. For in 251 B.C. Aratus, the somewhat melodramatic hero of the Achæan league, on mastering his native city Sicyon by a coup d'état, not only chose to accept a subsidy from Philadelphus rather than from himself, but added Sicyon to the neighboring ethnos of the Achæans. And almost immediately thereafter Ptolemy struck a second blow which made the first of importance. In 250 B.C. Alexander, Antigonus's nephew and chief lieutenant in Greece, egged on by Egypt doubtless, revolted and set himself up as an independent monarch, with Corinth and Calchis, which he had held for his uncle, and the Macedonian fleet of which these were the naval stations, as his basis for action. He at once allied himself with the Achæans and forced Argos and Athens to pay him tribute (before 250-249 B.C.). This rebellion paralyzed the naval power of Antigonus. It was doubtless precipitated by the disloyalty of Antiochus II to Macedon; for that monarch (now, in or before 249 B.C.) broke faith with Antigonus and allied himself with Egypt, retaining the conquests he had made during the war and receiving in marriage Berenice, the only daughter of Philadelphus, whose intrinsic worth was augmented by an enormous dowry. This base and, as it proved, foolish action freed Ptolemy to devote all his energies to the war with Macedon. The fleet of Egypt once more mastered the Ægean and regained control of the league of the Islanders (249 B.C.). Simultaneously, the pro-Egyptian party in Cyrene slew the fair Demetrius, and by the marriage of their young queen Berenice to Philadelphus's heir, effected the reunion of the two kingdoms, which had been estranged since the revolt of Berenice's father, Magas, in 274 B.C.[126] The triumph of Ptolemy was complete, and when his daughter promptly bore to her Seleucid husband a son, who by the marriage stipulation was to be his heir, the future of the Ptolemies seemed bright indeed.
Between 250 and 245 B.C. the fortunes of Gonatas were at a low ebb. He evidently bent before the storm, unable to confront Alexander and Aratus in Greece and the admirals of Philadelphus in the Ægean. Relief came to him from an unexpected source—the renewal of the war between Egypt and Asia, when, on the death of Antiochus II, his sister-wife Laodice took up arms against the Egyptian queen and her babe on behalf of her son Seleucus Callinicus. For, helped by the untimely death of Philadelphus, and despite the intervention of the Egyptian fleet, she succeeded in compassing the death of her rivals;[127] whereupon the new Ptolemy, Euergetes, took the field in person and made a general attack by land and sea upon her and her adherents. This tragic incident was one of the few pieces of good luck experienced by Antigonus. Another was the premature death of his nephew Alexander (246 B.C.), followed as it was by the Ætolian conquest of Bœotia, and the decision of Nicæa, Alexander's widow, to surrender Corinth and the rest of her kingdom to Macedon, the arrangement being that she was to take the place of the barren and discredited Stratonice as wife of the crown prince Demetrius. In 245-244 B.C. the balance in Asia inclined sharply in favor of Laodice, and at the same time Antigonus, aided by his patron god Pan, recovered Delos and the Islands. Having thus regained what the rebellion of Alexander had cost him, and having settled his account with Egypt, Antigonus had now to deal with Aratus of Sicyon alone. The Achæan was too quick for him, however. By a night attack, in time of peace, he treacherously seized Corinth (243 B.C.), and at once added it, together with Megara, Epidaurus, and Troezen, to the Achæan league. The response of Antigonus to this audacious coup was to form a pact with his old friends the Ætolians to divide Achæan territory between them; whereupon, as the only escape from so great a peril, Aratus put the responsibility where the responsibility really belonged, by having Ptolemy Euergetes elected general of the Achæan league on land and sea for 242 B.C. Euergetes brought the Laodicean War to a point where an advantageous peace was possible by a victory over Callinicus in this critical year; but his attempt to help Aratus, who tried to "liberate" Athens while his "commander" engaged Gonatas in the Ægean, was frustrated by the defeat sustained by his admiral Sophron at the hands of the veteran Antigonus off the island of Andros. Macedon still held the Ægean. In the mean time its allies the Ætolians, already dangerously strengthened by the occupation of Bœotia, had worsted Olympias, the queen regent of Epirus, in several engagements, and were on the point of incorporating all of Acarnania in their league. Antigonus thought the time had come to call a halt. Euergetes and Callinicus were of the same mind. Accordingly, the long war was concluded in 242-241 B.C. by a general peace arranged on the basis of uti possidetis. Antigonus held Argos, Hermione, Phlius, Ægina, Megalopolis, and Orchomenus in the Peloponnesus, in Central Greece Athens alone, and in the Ægean Eubœa and the Cyclades, as well, seemingly, as Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, the colonies of Athens. Thessaly was of course his. His garrisons stood in Demetrias, Chalcis, and Piræus. Of the "shackles" of Greece Corinth alone was out of his hands. In 240-239 B.C. he died at the age of eighty, having been a king forty-seven years, all but ten of them in Macedon.
I have sketched the career of Antigonus Gonatas in some fullness chiefly because it has only recently become possible to give anything like chronological precision to an account of this remarkable man.[128] His reign deserves detailed consideration, however, because of the position it occupies at one of the culminating points of Greek imperialism, the only other point of equal importance being that in which Alexander the Great introduced deification of rulers. The record given above shows clearly, I think, that the power of Macedon did not suffice to hold Greece in subjection on the principles followed by Antigonus Gonatas, and against the opposition of Egypt. Even the final triumph of 242-241 B.C. left Egyptian garrisons in Thrace, the Hellespont, Ionia, and islands as far advanced into the Ægean as Thera and Astypalæa, Samos and Lesbos, Thasos and Samothrace. It left Achæa in possession of Corinth and Megara, Epidaurus and Troezen, as well as Sicyon and at least a foothold in Arcadia. It left Ætolia in possession of part of Acarnania, Dolopia, Æniania, Malis, Doris, Locris, Phocis, and in close alliance with Bœotia. Heraclea at Thermopylæ and Delphi with its Amphictyonic council were Ætolian. Hence when the new king of Macedon, Demetrius II, married Olympias's daughter Phthia, and took Epirote Acarnania under his protection (240-239 B.C.); and when Ætolia, thus check-mated, entered into a defensive and offensive alliance with Achæa, the territory of the two leagues, now united in opposition to Macedon, met, and inclosed completely the Corinthian Gulf. The one had grown strong despite Antigonus and the other with his connivance. He had been forced to give Ætolia a free rein from need of its aid against Egypt, Epirus, and Achæa. Now the policy of Epirus was subservient to that of Macedon as it had been prior to the accession of Pyrrhus to its throne in 295 B.C., but the two leagues were able to fight on fair terms with the two monarchies, and in 238 B.C. they defied Macedon, now supported by Epirus, without having Egypt as their ally. The failure of the Greek policy of Antigonus Gonatas may be best gauged by the fact that twenty-seven years earlier Athens and Sparta had dared to do the like, but only when Egypt, and probably also Epirus, were fighting on their side.
The chief reason for this striking difference is that in the interval the Achæans, following the lead given to them by the Ætolians, had come to life and shed their ethnic cocoon. They had long since been a koinon, or league; but up to 251 B.C. their league, like that of Bœotia prior to 387 B.C., like that of the Ætolians prior to the seizure of Delphi in 292 B.C., had been confined strictly by the limits of their ethnos. The Ætolians had enlarged their territory under the ægis of the Delphian Amphictyony. The Achæans had no such favoring circumstance. In their case expansion by the incorporation of "foreign" peoples was the policy and achievement of a citizen of the first "foreign" city to be absorbed, Aratus of Sicyon, who saw a greater opportunity for power as the head of the neighboring league than as the "tyrant" of his native state, holding office, like the priest at Nemi, till murdered, or till he had lost the confidence of Antigonus. At his instigation the Achæan league was carried into the territory of the "foreigner," the necessary prerequisite for such a development being, however, that the ethnic bond between the Achæan cities had been canceled and replaced by a federal bond. The tenacious theory that common citizenship presupposed community of descent was therewith discarded. Its abandonment opened to the league possibilities of growth never possessed by either the city-state or the ethnic state. Of these the Ætolians and the Achæans took advantage to the best of their abilities.
They were wise enough, moreover, to perceive that not only were city institutions indispensable for an up-to-date polity—whence the Ætolians on forming their league in 322-314 B.C. abandoned their three ancient tribes and their multitudinous villages and organized in their stead a score or two of cities[129]—but also that their federal system must recognize and accept the preexistent city-states as its units. This, as we have seen,[130] had not been done in Bœotia or in the Hellenic league organized by Philip II, in each of which the federal synod, being constructed on the idea of representation according to population, made districts and not cities the units; so that the smaller cities felt themselves discriminated against and tended to rebel against being clubbed together. How far equality of cities prevailed among the Achæans it is impossible to say with certainty: we are simply informed that the voting there was by cities. But we are, I think, permitted to infer that the principle followed was "one city one vote." For it is unlikely that the old Achæan cities, on admitting Sicyon, Corinth, Megalopolis, and Argos, deliberately exposed themselves to the fate of the little lake cities in Bœotia by giving these large "foreign" cities voting power proportionate to their populations. This conclusion holds, I believe, both for the Achæan representative assembly, or synod, which was made up, seemingly, of successive fractions of the citizens of the constituent cities,[131] and for the Achæan primary assembly, or syncletus, which was open to all citizens over thirty years of age. It holds, too, it seems, for the two Ætolian assemblies, the ordinary and the extraordinary, which were both primary,[132] but not for the Ætolian council which was constituted of delegates apportioned to the constituent cities according to their size. The Achæan and the Ætolian leagues represent in this respect a reaction from the earlier leagues. Their hope was to change the stress of the cities, which came into play, from a centrifugal into a centripetal force by basing their federations squarely on the city-states.