Iran: Empire of the Mind
Page 5
Macedonia—Strange Fruit
Who were the Macedonians? Some have speculated that they were not really Greeks, but more closely related to the Thracians, or descended from some other Balkan people influenced by the arrival of Indo-European Greeks. They had at the very least come under heavy Greek influence by the time of Philip and Alexander—but even at that late stage the Macedonians themselves made a strong distinction between themselves and the Greek hangers-on who accompanied Alexander’s eastern adventure. In the fifth century BCE, Macedonians were normally, like other non-Greeks, excluded from the Olympic games. But at the same time the Persians seem to have referred to them as ‘Greeks with hats’, and Herodotus too seems to have accepted them as of Greek origin, albeit Greeks of what one might call the farthest shore. Like the Medes and Persians in the time of Cyrus, and many other militant peoples from mountainous or marginal areas, they had a strong sense of their collective superiority, but they also sustained many private feuds among themselves and were notoriously difficult to manage. Their identity probably concealed a variety of origins and influences.
Few stories from the classical world are better known than that of Philip of Macedon and his son Alexander. But often the importance of the father to the success of the son is neglected in favour of the latter’s more dramatic victories. Philip was born in around 380 BCE, became king of Macedon in 359 BCE, and immediately set about the expansion of his kingdom. One essential contribution to the success of Macedon was his training-up of a new, tightly-drilled infantry corps, equipped with a longer spear or pike than was normal in Greece at the time, who in favourable conditions usually swept aside or rolled over conventionally-armed infantry. Having established himself as the prime (if not wholly dominant) power in northern Greece and Thrace, Philip defeated the alliance of Athens and Thebes at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, and set up the League of Corinth, which established Macedonian hegemony and effectively ended the independence of the Greek city-states. The only exception was Sparta. When Philip demanded their submission, saying that if he came to Sparta he would wreck their farms, kill the people and destroy their city, the Spartans replied: ‘If ’. He and his son left the Spartans alone—perhaps not least for the sake of the legend of Thermopylae.
Fig. 3. Alexander (left) attacks the troops of Darius (centre right) at the battle of Issus—the second of a series of defeats that overturned the Achaemenid Empire.
Philip had other plans in any case—plans to invade the Persian empire. His preparations were quite open, and were justified in pan-Hellenic terms by reference to the Persian desecration of Athenian temples in the invasion of 480 BCE. But before he could put them into effect, he was murdered, in 336 BCE. The circumstances of the murder are murky and were disputed at the time—some have suggested that Alexander and his mother Olympias were involved, but it is possible that the Persians instigated the killing.
Alexander continued where his father had left off. He consolidated his authority in Greece, quickly crushing a rebellion in Thebes, and then crossed into Asia Minor in 334 BCE. He defeated a Persian army at the Granicus river (near the Dardanelles), conquered the towns of the Ionian coast, including the Persian regional base at Sardis, and then marched east. The following year he defeated Darius himself at the battle of Issus (on the Mediterranean coast near the modern border between Syria and Turkey), leading the decisive attack personally at the head of his Companion cavalry (hetairoi). Alexander then marched south, taking the coastal cities, conquering Egypt and founding Alexandria. Moving east again, in 331 BCE Alexander defeated Darius in a third battle, at Gaugamela, near Mosul and Irbil in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan. Darius left the battlefield and was killed some time after by Bessus, the satrap of Bactria.
This is not the place to consider Alexander’s conduct of war in any detail, but Alexander’s military brilliance illustrates something that may appear at first counter-intuitive: the feminine nature of military genius at the highest level. Successful high command has little or nothing to do with masculine attributes: brute force, bravado, machismo, arrogance—little even to do with courage—except insofar as it may be necessary from time to time to advertise these to inspire the troops. Rather it has to do with what one might regard as more feminine characteristics—sensitivity, subtlety, intuition, timing, an indirect approach, an ability quietly to assess strength and weakness (based perhaps on an intuitive grasp for the opponent’s likely behaviour as much as factual information), to avoid the strength, to baffle it, flow around it, absorb its force and strike unexpectedly at the weak spot at precisely the right moment. Military history shows again and again that predictable male behaviour, manifest in frontal attacks and reliance on strength alone, is at best a liability and at worst catastrophically wasteful at the command level. The maximum effectiveness of military force is achieved only by the more subtle methods associated with what one might call a feminine approach. Without making any crass connection to his bisexuality (which has its own very particular cultural context), or any wider points about the virtue or otherwise of his personality, Alexander’s conduct of warfare exemplifies this well.
Alexander continued on to Babylon, Susa and finally Persepolis, which he burned to destruction in 330 BCE after some weeks and months of celebrations. One story says that a courtesan accompanying the army, Thaïs, persuaded Alexander to destroy the palaces while he was drunk, in revenge for the burning of the Athenian Acropolis by Xerxes, and threw in the first torch herself. But it is likely that the destruction was a deliberate political act, to show that the Achaemenid dynasty was over for good. Notwithstanding the destruction of Persepolis, Alexander had been presenting himself at least since Gaugamela not so much as the revenger of Greece but as the successor to the Achaemenians.20 The previous Persian satraps of Babylon and Susa had been confirmed in their posts. From now on he appears to have followed a deliberate Persianising policy, encouraging his troops to marry local women and settling them in colonies. He himself married several Persian princesses, including Statira, the daughter of Darius III, and later Roxana (whose name is cognate with the modern Persian word roshan, meaning ‘light’), daughter of Oxyartes of Bactria. Alexander continued with his campaigns, into the furthest reaches of the former Empire, wiping out all resistance, and then beyond, into India and what is now the Punjab. But his troops grew increasingly weary of the never-ending wars, and disaffected with his perceived pro-Persian policy.
Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BCE, probably of natural causes, after a session of heavy drinking. The succession to his empire was left unclear, and the result was a lengthy series of wars between his generals to divide up his conquests, in which the murderous unruliness of the Macedonians emerged with full force. In these wars Alexander’s secretary Eumenes of Cardia for a time had some success in reunifying the centrifugal elements in support of Alexander’s young son, born to Roxana after his death. But the other generals and soldiers disliked Eumenes because he was a Greek and a scholar, and in 316 BCE he was betrayed and killed. Roxana and Alexander’s son were murdered in 310 or 309 BCE.
Despite his early death, Alexander’s aim, to bring Greek influence into Persia, Persian influence into Greece, and to create a blend of eastern and western civilisations, was realised to a startling extent. But ultimately it failed. Persia was ruled by the descendants of Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals, for more than a century, and Greek influence persisted after that. They were kings that ruled more in a Persian than a Greek style, and this was arguably the case for the Ptolemies who ruled in Egypt also. When Rome rose to dominate the entire Mediterranean basin, the Roman empire was divided between the Greek east and the Latin west, but still the style of the Greek east showed the influence of the vanished Achaemenid empire, and in turn influenced Romans with imperial ambitions from Pompey to Elagabalus.
Although the Iranians submitted to foreign rule, not for the last time in their history, Greek influence was ultimately passing and superficial despite the presence in the land of col
onies of Greek ex-soldiers, and some penetration of Greek culture. The Mazdaean religion persisted and consolidated, and seems to have served as a focus for hostility to the Greeks and to the memory of Alexander.
It is generally recognised that the historical accounts we have of Alexander and his life are partial, written mainly by authors who were writing at second hand, and somewhat in awe of their subject. They are all western accounts, and although there is an eastern tradition of Alexander (Iskander) as a warrior-hero, the Zoroastrian tradition about him is very negative, suggesting a different side to the story. There is little in the western sources about measures Alexander took to establish or consolidate his rule, but the Zoroastrian record says that he killed many Magi, priests and teachers; and that the sacred flames in many fire-temples were extinguished. This may simply reflect the incidental killing and destruction around the plundering by the Macedonian soldiery of the gold and silver of the temples. But it is likely that the Magian priests, proprietors as they were of the religion that underpinned the Achaemenian state and therefore the most likely centre for any continued resistance or revolt, would have been a target for repression in any case. Whatever exactly happened, it is unlikely that the Iranians cooperated as submissively in Alexander’s pacification policies as the western historians later suggested. In later Zoroastrian writings Alexander is the only human to share with Ahriman the title guzastag—meaning ‘accursed’.21
2
THE IRANIAN REVIVAL: PARTHIANS
AND SASSANIDS
We have made enquiries about the rules of the inhabitants of the Roman empire and the Indian states… We have never rejected anybody because of their different religion or origin. We have not jealously kept away from them what we affirm. And at the same time we have not disdained to learn what they stand for. For it is a fact that to have knowledge of the truth and of sciences and to study them is the highest thing with which a king can adorn himself. And the most disgraceful thing for kings is to disdain learning and be ashamed of exploring the sciences. He who does not learn is not wise.
Khosraw I Anushirvan
(according to the Byzantine historian Agathias)
The empire established by Seleucus Nicator in 312 BCE looked to be the most powerful of the successor states that emerged out of the collection of territories conquered by Alexander, controlling Syria, Mesopotamia and the lands of the Iranian plateau (as well as, at least in theory, other territories further east). Initially the capital was established at Babylon; later at a new site at Seleuceia on the Tigris, and finally at Antioch, on the Mediterranean. The Seleucid kings pursued the easternising policy of Alexander, established Greek military and trading colonies in the east, and used Iranian manpower in their armies, but their political attention was for the most part on the west, and particularly focused on their rivalry with the other major eastern Macedonian/Greek dynasty, that of the Ptolemies in Egypt. In the east, outlying satrapies like Sogdiana and Bactria gradually became independent princedoms, the latter creating an enduring culture in what is now northern Afghanistan, fusing eastern and Greek cultures under Greek successor dynasties.
Warrior Horsemen
The horse-based cultures of the north-east had given Alexander problems, and the Achaemenids before him. Tribes like the Dahae and the Sakae (speaking languages in the Iranian family group), with their military strength entirely on horseback, highly mobile and able, when threatened, to disappear into the great expanses of desert and semi-desert south of the Aral Sea, would always be very difficult for any empire to dominate. Within two generations of Seleucus Nicator’s death in 281 BCE one tribe or group of tribes among the Dahae, the Parni, established their supremacy in Parthia and other lands east of the Caspian (supplanting the local Seleucid satrap Andragoras, who had rebelled and tried to make himself an independent ruler in Parthia in around 250 BCE) and began to threaten the remaining territories of the Seleucids in the east. The ruling family of the Parni named themselves Arsacids after the man who had led them to take control of Parthia, Arshak (Arsaces). But as the Arsacids expanded their dominion (including into Hyrcania before 200 BCE), they were careful to preserve the wealth and culture of the Greek colonies in the towns, and later Parthian kings used the title philhellenos (friend of the Greeks) on their coinage.
Fig. 4. This bronze statue of a Parthian warrior from Shami demonstrates the confidence of an Empire that faced down the Romans, but also its fusion of steppe nomad and Greek elements.
Several Seleucid kings planned or carried out expeditions to the east to restore their authority in Parthia and Bactria, and the Parthian Arsacids chose on occasion to ally with them or submit to them rather than confront them. But the Seleucids were always drawn back to the west, and in the reign of the Arsacid Mithradates I (171-138 BCE) the Parthians renewed their expansion, taking Sistan, Elam and Media; then Babylon in 142 BCE and finally Seleuceia itself in 141 (while Seleucid pretenders were occupied with succession disputes and civil war). Mithradates gave himself the traditional Achaemenid title of King of Kings. In the decades that followed the Parthians were attacked by the Sakae in the East and by the Seleucids in the west. Fortunes swung either way. At one point the Parthians defeated a Seleucid army, captured it and attempted to use the prisoners against the Sakae; only for the Seleucid troops to make common cause with the Sakae and defeat and kill the Parthian king, Phraates (in 128 BCE). But Mithradates II (Mithradates the Great) was able to consolidate and stabilise Parthian rule in a long reign from about 123 to 87 BCE, subduing enemies in both east and west. He also took the title King of Kings, a deliberate reference back to the Achaemenid monarchy, which with other indicators suggests a new, Iranian self-confidence.
Concealed behind the long struggle between the Seleucids and the Parthians lie the origins of the silk trade, which was to be of central importance for the Iranian towns and cities along the Silk Route for more than a millennium. The initial involvement of Greeks and Greek cities in the silk trade (including, crucially, those of the Greek Bactrian kingdom north of the Hindu Kush, a large part of which was conquered by Mithradates I) may go some way to explain both the survival of Greek culture in the Parthian period, and the Parthian kings’ respect for it. They were friends to the Greeks not out of aesthetic sensibility, or out of deference to a superior culture, but because they wanted to protect the goose that laid the golden egg.1 Mithradates had diplomatic contacts with both the Chinese Han emperor Wu Ti and with the Roman republic under the dictator Sulla. Either he or his successor Gotarzes, to establish a lasting presence in Mesopotamia, founded a new city, at Ctesiphon near Seleuceia, which was to continue as the capital for over 700 years (though often Seleuceia, on the other side of the Tigris, was used as the centre of administration, and Ecbatana/Hamadan as the summer capital).
The Parthians established a powerful empire and ruled successfully for several centuries, but they did so with a relatively light touch, taking over and assimilating the practices of previous rulers and being content to tolerate the variety of religious, linguistic and cultural patterns of their subject provinces. A system of devolved power (parakandeh shahi, also called muluk al-tawa’if in later Arab sources) through satraps continued, often maintaining in power families that had ruled before, under the Seleucids2. Their scribes continued to use Aramaic, as in the time of the Achaemenids, and there appears to have been a continued diversity of religion. Names like Mithradates and Phraates (the latter a name thought to be related to the fravashi of the Avesta) show the Mazdaean allegiances of the Arsacids themselves, but Babylonians, Greeks, Jews and others were allowed to follow their own religious traditions as before, and Mazdaism itself in the Parthian period, as earlier, seems to have encompassed a variety of practices and beliefs. In the Jewish tradition (with the important exception of the reign of one later king) the Parthians were recorded and remembered as tolerant and friendly toward the Jews3 (this may in part reflect the fact that the rise of the Parthians in the east was helped by the prolonged struggle between th
e Maccabean Jews and the Seleucids in Palestine).
The succession struggles of the Arsacids were frequently protracted and bloody, but this had more to do with the nature of court politics and perhaps, the effect of the involvement of a group of noble families, than any other factor. Central to their rule seems to have been their alliance with a small group of wealthy families, including the Suren, Karen and Mehran. The Parthians were not just crude nomads assuming the culture of their subjects for lack of any of their own (or at least, they did not remain so). Parthian sculpture, with its strong emphasis on frontality and its own particular style, was different in kind from any predecessor. Parthian architecture, as excavated at Nisa for example, shows the emergence of the audience hall or ivan for the first time (to be of great importance in Sassanid and Islamic architecture later). The Parthians again exemplified the best of Iranian genius; the recognition, acceptance and tolerance of the complexity of the cultures and influences over which they ruled, while retaining a strong central principle of identity and integrity.