Dividing the Spoils

by Waterfield, Robin

  The Museum functioned both as a temple of learning (literally, since its director was also its high priest) and as a residential college for scholars, focusing particularly on science and literature. All expenses were covered by the king. Their major resource was to be the library. This was not a separate building; the book-rolls were stored on shelves in the Museum itself.

  Ptolemy’s intentions in establishing the library were typically ambitious: first, to collect a copy of every single book ever written in Greek, wherever possible in original editions, and second, to translate into Greek the most important books written in other languages. The second aim led, most famously, to the translation within the Museum of the Old Testament into Greek. The work was undertaken by a group of about seventy Jewish scholars, which is why the Greek Old Testament, still considered the definitive version, is called the Septuagint, or “Translation of the Seventy,” septuaginta being the Latin for “seventy.” The project was begun under Ptolemy I—the first five books of the Bible were perhaps already translated in Alexandria during his time—and was completed about 150 years later. The Septuagint then became the body of law for the Jewish community of Alexandria.13

  It is impossible to estimate the number of papyrus rolls the library contained at any given time, and many books occupied more than one roll. If each roll held about thirty thousand words, this book, for instance, transcribed onto papyrus, would make three rolls. It is possible that it came to hold well over half a million rolls, little enough by today’s standards (the Library of Congress holds more than thirty-three million books and sixty-three million manuscripts, let alone other forms of media), but an incredible achievement in the ancient world. Even during the reign of Ptolemy I, it probably held about fifty thousand. By the end of the third century the catalogue alone ran to 120 volumes; it contained not only the title of the work, but the name and a brief biography of the author, listing all his other works, the opening line of every work, and the number of verses if the work was poetry. It was an inventory of Greek literature and thought. The library was finally burnt to the ground in 641 ce, but by then it had long been sadly neglected; apart from anything else, the city (and especially the palace compound by the sea) had been devastated by a severe tsunami on July 21, 365 CE.14

  As soon as the books began to arrive and to be studied, it was clear that there were many different versions even of well-known texts such as Homer’s epic poems, the first and foundational works of western literature. A certain amount of editorial work on Homer had taken place in sixth-century Athens, but it was clearly inadequate; and even though there were standard texts of the major Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, these texts were riddled with actors’ interpolations. The problem was compounded by the fact that librarians were prepared to pay well for texts, to the delight of forgers and the bane of future scholars. In any case, in Alexandria, the necessity of classifying every work for the catalogue had to be supplemented by the attempt to establish authentic texts of the work of every author, at least partly by drawing up rules for the use of the Greek language. Thus was literary scholarship born. This may be where we can distinguish the signature of Demetrius of Phalerum. He belonged to the Peripatetic school of philosophy, founded by Aristotle, and encyclopedic thoroughness was one of the hallmarks of the school.

  The library of Alexandria was not entirely without precedent. It is just possible that scientific research had become institutionalized in Babylonian temples in the fourth century.15 Certainly, private collectors had begun to accumulate libraries; Aristotle’s in Athens was especially famous (the library in Alexandria went to considerable pains to acquire it), and there were others. What was unprecedented, however, was the sheer scale of the project. As the Hellenistic period progressed, other cities came to establish fabulous libraries—those of Antioch and Pergamum, especially—but none ever compared with the library of Alexandria. Ptolemy’s intention fell little short of an attempt to monopolize Greek literary and scientific culture.

  It was always part of the Egyptian mirage that they were an old race, whose scribes kept records of the distant past,16 but more important to Ptolemy was the fact that Macedonian kings had long patronized Greek artists, philosophers, and scientists. From this perspective, the establishment of the Museum was simply a vast extension of this kingly function. Patronage was no longer to be governed by the particular whims of the king, but institutionalized and passed down from generation to generation of Ptolemies.

  All over the Hellenistic world, royal patronage was the main engine of cultural development in science, mathematics, medicine, technology, art, and literature. Philosophers generally stayed away, in horror of the opulence of court life. The kings had the money, and their cultural gestures enhanced their prestige as tokens of the extent of their resources. The painted Macedonian tombs of Vergina and elsewhere, tombs for the rich from the late Classical and early Hellenistic period, vividly show the connection between wealth and the development of fine art.

  Patronage was not just necessary but an honor, a sign that a poet or scientist had won or deserved international renown. Hence artists and writers were expected to pay for their privileged and comfortable lifestyles with the occasional work or passage in fulsome praise of the king.17 And nowhere were artists or scholars treated better than in Alexandria. In due course of time, there even came to be a daughter library in the city, for the use of scholars not settled by the Ptolemies themselves in “the birdcage of the Muses.”18

  The erudition that the Museum fostered had a powerful impact on the kind of literature that was written in Alexandria. A lot of poems were so incredibly learned that only the author could be expected to get all the allusions. In addition to learned references, obscure words and neologisms abounded. Whereas in the past poems had been written for public performance and accompanied by music, they were written now also for private readers, who had the time to linger over texts and pick up at least some of the allusions and nuances. Shorter verse forms predominated, and so anthologies began to be put together, allowing readers to compare within specific genres. To a certain extent, Alexandrian literature was a kind of refined game between author and reader. It is not surprising that clever tricks such as the use of acrostics and the writing of concrete poetry (poems where the overall shape of the lines on the page make a specific shape—a cup, say, for a poem on a cup) first make their appearance in Alexandrian writers.

  Overclever verse can of course be horribly frigid, and this would certainly be a fair description of some Alexandrian literature, but erudition and beauty are not necessarily incompatible, and there is plenty to charm and delight in Alexandrian literature. The best of it preserves the spirit of the Museum in which it was written in its attempt to honor the past by echoing, imitating, and parodying the old masters, while at the same time developing new forms and directions. A writer’s display of erudition mirrored in miniature the ostentation of the whole Museum. Wit, learning, experimentation, and technical mastery were the hallmarks of Alexandria.

  The End of Antigonus

  THE ANTIGONIDS WERE still immensely powerful. Even the fact that they had been forced to cede the east to Seleucus helped them in the sense that they were now fighting on only two fronts. In Greece, the Four-Year War pitted Demetrius against Cassander, and in the eastern Mediterranean the old antagonism between Antigonus and Ptolemy remained just as fierce as ever. Antigonus and his son were still on the offensive. Demetrius’s recovery of Athens was meant to be a platform from which to regain control of Greece—and then to take Macedon. Meanwhile, Antigonus was determined to deprive Ptolemy of Cyprus—and then Egypt.

  Nothing is certain in war, but even so, with their vast resources and their aggression, they might have succeeded against only these two rivals. But what if Lysimachus got involved as well? They might defeat two, but could they defeat three? And would Seleucus remain quiet? If he succeeded in conquering the eastern satrapies, would his ambitions be satisfied? These were the decisive que
stions of the Fourth War of the Successors (307–301).

  DEMETRIUS ON THE OFFENSIVE: CYPRUS

  Once Demetrius was established in Athens, the Athenians set about repairing their fortifications, and Demetrius secured the city by means of an alliance with the Aetolians and by expelling Cassander’s garrison from nearby Megara. But just when he was poised to launch a major offensive in Greece, Antigonus recalled him. Demetrius was reluctant to leave. He took what steps he could to secure Athens and other Antig onid allies against the certainty of counterattack by Cassander, and tried to suborn the Ptolemaic garrison commander of Sicyon and Corinth. But the man stayed true, and Demetrius simply had to abandon Greece for the time being. Over the next few years, Athens was subjected to repeated assaults by Cassander and his generals, “in order to enslave the city,” as an Athenian inscription tendentiously puts it1—that is, presumably, in order to reinstate Demetrius of Phalerum, who had done such a good job of keeping Athens secure for ten years.

  The mission for which Antigonus recalled his son was to finally take Cyprus from Ptolemy. Antigonus was too old to take charge himself; Demetrius was now his military right arm, and the chance of gaining Cyprus made even the prospect of success in Greece seem less urgent. The two sides had intrigued and fought over the island for ten years or more, but for several years it had been effectively part of Greater Egypt and in the firm grip of Ptolemy’s brother Menelaus. But Antigonus was preparing to sweep the Ptolemaic forces off the island once and for all. Cyprus was a good source of grain and salt, minerals (especially copper—hence the metal’s name—and silver), and timber, all of which Antigonus was anxious to secure for himself and deny Ptolemy. It also had a long history of shipbuilding and seamanship. Its command of the eastern Mediterranean is such that successive British governments have been moved to lie and cheat to retain their influence and military presence there.2

  Ptolemy’s possession of Cyprus was a major obstacle to Antigonid control of the sea. Even so, it seems strange that Antigonus recalled Demetrius from Greece when he was doing so well and was poised to do better. If something had happened to create at that particular time an opportunity for invasion, we do not know what it was. More probably, that was the deal Antigonus had offered Demetrius in the first place—that he was to go to Greece and do what he could, but be ready to return once Antigonus had mustered the forces and armament needed to take the island.

  At any rate, Demetrius left Athens early in 306 and linked up with the invasion force in Cilicia. On the way he asked the Rhodians for help, and they refused. The invasion was launched as soon as the weather permitted. Demetrius’s land army swept across the island from the north, ultimately pinning Menelaus inside the city of Salamis, while his navy came up to command the harbor mouth. A full siege ensued, with the help of professional siege engineers imported from Asia Minor. Siege towers had been in use for over thirty years, but for Salamis Demetrius built one that was tall enough to overtop the city walls and large enough to contain, as well as hundreds of troops, heavy artillery on the lower decks and lighter catapults on the upper levels.

  The defenders fought back heroically, while anxiously waiting to be relieved. Ptolemy arrived in force; he and his brother had twenty-five thousand men under their command, against Demetrius’s fifteen thousand. Whoever won this battle was going to dominate the eastern Mediterranean. In the greatest naval battle for a hundred years, involving almost four hundred warships, Demetrius crushed Ptolemy’s fleet off Salamis before it could make land. Ptolemy fled back to Egypt, while on the island his brother surrendered, followed by the commanders of all the remaining Ptolemaic garrisons. Demetrius allowed Menelaus to return to Egypt with his family and property intact, an exchange of courtesies initiated by Ptolemy after Gaza, when he had returned Demetrius’s regalia and captured courtiers.

  This was the star campaign of Demetrius’s career, and he was not quite thirty years of age. He more than doubled his forces by capturing Ptolemy’s mercenaries while they were still in their transport vessels at sea, and by taking over the garrison troops too. At a stroke, Ptolemy lost almost half his available forces, and without his previously unchallenged naval superiority it was impossible for him to defend his carefully constructed bulwark in southwest Asia Minor and the Aegean. The Antigonids recovered all their losses, and held Cyprus for the next ten years. Since Ptolemy had also withdrawn from Phoenicia in 311, he was reduced almost to the territories he had inherited in 323. Even worse, he was currently denied access to all the most convenient sources of ship-quality timber. We will find Ptolemy playing a reduced role for the next few years.

  THE ASSUMPTION OF KINGSHIP

  Immediately after the capture of Cyprus, Antigonus took the step which had been inevitable since the murder of Alexander IV: he allowed himself to be proclaimed king. This was done in a highly theatrical manner. Antigonus was in northern Syria, supervising the construction of Antigonea, when the news arrived of Demetrius’s conquest of Cyprus. The envoy, Aristodemus of Miletus, approached in a stately manner, and his first words were: “Hail, King Antigonus!”3 A diadem was quickly found by those of his courtiers who had been primed, and was tied reverently onto his head. An army assembly ratified his royal status by acclamation.

  By return of post, so to speak, Antigonus sent a second diadem to Demetrius in Cyprus, proclaiming him joint king—an unmistakable sign that Antigonus was intending to establish a dynasty. Within a very few years, all the other major players had also taken the title of king (and not long after, in a break from Macedonian tradition, their wives began to style themselves “queens”). In part, this was a reaction to the Antigonids’ move—they could not be allowed to get away with claiming the entire empire. A telling anecdote, however, shows that the Antigonids regarded only their claim to kingship as authentic; at best the others were, or should be, their subordinate officers. They were true kings in the sense that they wanted all of Alexander’s legacy for themselves, while Seleucus was just “commander of the elephant squadron,” Ptolemy “commander of the fleet,” and Lysimachus a miserly “treasurer.” Cassander was not even worth mentioning.4

  But the several declarations of kingship were, above all, declarations of independence; the Successors were no longer satraps within someone else’s empire but kings in their own right, obedient to themselves and to no other authority. The timing of this assumption of royal status is significant; had he lived, Alexander IV would have come of age in 305, aged eighteen. Cassander therefore had to admit openly by then that the king was dead—hence the “big bang,”5 the phenomenon of all the Successors beginning to style themselves kings in a very short space of time.

  As a result of the assumption of kingship, territorial divisions became clearer. Plainly, they could not all be kings of one empire. By declaring themselves as royal as Antigonus and Demetrius, the other Successors were claiming possession of the territory they currently occupied—and to whatever else they could win by the spear. There no longer was any single Macedonian empire that held the loyalty of officers or men. The disintegration of the overall empire meant that their loyalty became more parochial, something to be given only to themselves or their paymaster, their king.

  The Successors may by now have felt their territories to be relatively settled, but they still wanted more. That was their job as kings. Royal status was gained by war and maintained by war, and all Hellenistic kings, in our period and beyond, presented themselves, even by the clothes they wore, as men of war. In a never-ending, bloody cycle, military success brought wealth (from plunder and indemnities) and increased territory, which enabled a king to create more revenue, to pay for more troops, and hence to gain more military successes. That was the royal ideology; that was why the kings always clashed with one another. It took years for this destructive cycle to be broken, and for a balance of power to be recognized that would allow heredity rather than victory to determine kingship. Heredity was irrelevant to the Successors because they were the pioneers; their achievements, not th
eir blood, made them kings.

  The major contenders had often acted like kings before; they had even come close to naming themselves as such (Antigonus was already “Lord of Asia,” Ptolemy the de facto pharaoh of Egypt), or being acclaimed as such (Seleucus at Didyma, Antigonus and Demetrius at Athens), but these few years saw the official birth of the kind of monarchy that became the constitutional norm in Hellenistic times, when a dozen dynasties spawned over two hundred kings and queens. Almost two centuries of development were to follow, but even at this early stage many of the characteristics of Hellenistic monarchy are evident. Its roots lay not just in the Successors’ common Macedonian background but in the more autocratic blend of eastern and Macedonian kingship that, as we have seen, Alexander had developed. It was the beginning of the model of absolute kingship that was inherited, via the Roman principate, by medieval and early modern European kings.

  A king in the Macedonian style was the possessor of all the Homeric, manly virtues, and liked his subjects to know it. Lysimachus let it be known that he had killed a savage lion, Seleucus that he had wrestled a bull to the ground with his bare hands; hunting and fighting are the most common motifs in royal artwork; statues of kings, and written descriptions, portray them as young and virile (whatever the truth), and by far the most common way of sculpting kings was as heroic nudes. The culture of heavy drinking that all Macedonian nobles took for granted was part of the same spectrum of virility.