In Search of the Lost Testament of Alexander the Great
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Plutarch soberly reflected on the extraordinary state of affairs, possibly following the sentiment of Duris who was likely responsible for much of the scandaleuse attached to the period:
… so utterly unsociable a thing, it seems, is empire, and so full of ill-will and distrust, that the oldest and greatest of the successors of Alexander could make it a thing to glory in that he was not afraid of his son, but allowed him near his person lance in hand… Many killed their mothers and wives… as for the killing of brothers, like a postulation in geometry, it was considered as indisputably necessary to the safety of the reigning prince.294
Euripides had forewarned: ‘There is a something terrible and past all cure, when quarrels arise ‘twixt those who are near and dear’;295 this had truly become what Hesiod and Ovid (43 BCE-ca.18 CE) described as the bloody ‘age of iron’, when ‘loyalty, truth and conscience went into exile’.296
THE ECLIPSE OF ALEXANDROCENTRICITY
In The Prince, Machiavelli titled his fourth chapter Why the Kingdom of Darius, conquered by Alexander, did not rebel against his successors after his death. It supposedly illustrated how a principality, once conquered, is easily held if all are subservient to the monarch. He was, however, unconsciously arguing that Alexander’s successors, those who ‘ruled securely’, represented his second of two scenarios: nobles whose authority was already established independent of their king’s. Machiavelli may have been inspired by Polybius who first voiced the suspicion that an ‘Alexandro-centric’ universe was in fact contrived, for he too considered much of the credit for Alexander’s success was due to Philip II and that retinue of ‘helpers and friends’:297
… one could scarcely find terms adequate to characterise the bravery, industry and in general, the virtue of these men who indisputably by their energy and daring raised Macedonia from the rank of petty kingdom to that of the greatest and most glorious monarchy in the world.298
Polybius, influencing (or influenced by) the Stoic Panaetius (ca. 185-110 BCE),299 appears to have inspired Trogus too, for between brooding images of Macedonian dissent, his epitomiser, Justin, retains an otherwise unlikely encomium to the Diadokhoi:
Nor did the friends of Alexander look to the throne without reason; for they were men of such ability and authority, that each of them might have been taken for a king. Such was the personal gracefulness, the commanding stature, and the eminent powers of body and mind, apparent in all of them, that whoever did not know them, would have thought that they had been selected, not from one nation, but from the whole earth. Never before, indeed, did Macedonia, or any other country, abound with such a multitude of distinguished men; whom Philip first, and afterwards Alexander, had selected with such skill, that they seemed to have been chosen, not so much to attend them to war, as to succeed them on the throne. Who then can wonder, that the world was conquered by such officers, when the army of the Macedonians appeared to be commanded, not by generals, but by princes?300
Justin also captured the resulting conundrum: ‘Their very equality inflamed their discord, no one being so far superior to the rest, that any other would submit to him.’
Despite the remarkable Diadokhoi and their ambitious offspring, Macedonian superiority did pass irrevocably west in 190 BCE when the brothers Scipio Asiaticus and Africanus, along with their ally, Eumenes II of Pergamum (ruled 197-154 BCE, Polybius would later delicately argue his cause), defeated Antiochus III of the Seleucid line at the Battle of Magnesia in Lydia.301 Some believe that Hannibal, seeking sanctuary from a common foe, was present at the conflict that would, just a decade after the conclusion to the Second Punic War (ended 201 BCE), give Rome passage to Alexander’s former empire. If Hannibal was in Lydia it didn’t affect the outcome: the 15,000-talent war indemnity levied on Antiochus was crippling, as was the loss of much of Asia Minor. The Seleucids never recovered and Rome soon became the undisputed power in the Near East.
As the Seleucid Empire fragmented, the legacy of Alexander’s conquest did manage to hold out in the former eastern and upper satrapies in the form of Graeco-Bactrian kingdoms in the dynasties of Diodotus Soter, Euthydemus and Eucratides ‘the Great’ (broadly spanning 250-125 BCE). These principalities were centred in Bactria-Sogdia, Margiana and Arachosia, and in the Graeco-Indian kingdoms they fought to the east, extending into the Punjab until the close of the Hellenistic era. No doubt the descendants of the less rebellious Greek mercenaries settled by Alexander had participated in their founding, providing a cohesion that saw an uninterrupted arrival of Silk Road traders in the Levant.
Ai Khanoum on the Oxus River at the northern border of Afghanistan (possibly the site of ‘Alexandria on the Oxus’ or perhaps the later city of Eucratidia established ca. 280 BCE), and other recently excavated sites, have revealed Corinthian columns and tiles, huge Greek theatres, amphorae and sculptures, inscriptions and coin hoards with striking images, as well as textual evidence of Platonist philosophical doctrines. They paint a picture of remarkable Hellenic tenacity in the face of Parthian expansion and nomadic hoards, the southward migrations of the Scythians and the tribes of the Yuezhi from Central Asia (modern northwestern China).302 In 1909 inscriptions on the Heliodorus Column in central India, dating to ca. 113 BCE and Graeco-Indian rule of King Antialcidas Nikephoros (‘victorious’), were fully deciphered; Heliodorus had been a Greek ambassador to Taxila in the modern Punjab.303
Perplexingly, back across the Hellespont, having crushed every opponent from the Balkan kingdoms to the southern Greece poleis, and every tyrant, king or satrap from Asia Minor to the Indus Valley tribes, the Macedonians were said to be ‘shocked’ at the brutality of the Roman war machine, and yet awed by the precision and arrangement of its military camp; wounds caused by Roman slashing weapons, in particular, were gruesome compared to the more familiar puncture wounds from spears and lances.304 Although Rome was already conducting brisk business in slaves exported from captured Greek cities, what the Macedonians witnessed in the First Macedonian War of 212/211 BCE under King Philip V – who ascended the throne at just seventeen and who was himself responsible for the mass suicide of women and children in the city of Abydus – was confusing. The cruelty, discipline, efficiency and organisation were not the traits that coexisted in the usual ‘barbarians’ threatening the Pellan kings. But by now ‘the day of the professional long-service Macedonian army’ was over; it was ‘once again a levy of farmers called up when needed’. Macedonia was weary of war, the nationalistic fervour of the generations before had passed, and Greece aggregated itself into confederacies and new leagues in the face of Macedonian frailty.305
Rome was looking formidable; Hannibal had been defeated in 202 BCE and the young charismatic Philip V, likened to Alexander but loved throughout Greece (before turning into ‘a savage tyrant’, according to Polybius),306 was forced into the Second Macedonian War (200-197 BCE) which concluded at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly in 197 BCE, when the sarissa ranks finally broke. Thessaly was lost to the Senate’s legions espousing a familiar refrain: ‘the protection of Greek freedom’. The ratio of Macedonian cavalry to infantry had also decreased from its employment in Alexander’s early campaign army, perhaps again due to financial restraints, though this reduction in numbers exposed the vulnerable flanks of the pike phalanx. The Macedonian defeat, which included a 1,000-talent indemnity, had been portentously ‘predicted’ by an earthquake the year before.307
King Perseus faced Rome in the Third Macedonian War twenty-six years later (171-168 BCE), but like Philip V before him, he could only muster a modest core of stratiotai politikoi, home-grown citizen soldiers, so that Gallic, Thracian and Illyrian mercenaries were to be found in greater proportions in the ranks. The eclectic composition was not unique; Gauls even made it into the Ptolemaic armies of Egypt, some surely coming from the kingdom of Galatia formed after Gallic marauders made their way to Asia Minor in the wake of their earlier invasion of Thrace and Macedonia. With them had come the wider use of lighter and cooler chainmail, which replaced breastplat
es in hotter climes, and there arrived the infantry regiments of thureophoroi who fought with far larger oval shields that may have been inspired by Celtic or even Italian design.308
After successes in Thessaly in 171 BCE and inconclusive campaigning after, came the battle at Pydna on 22nd June 168 BCE announced by a further prodigy.309 To raise support for an invasion, Rome had lodged complaints against Perseus with the Delphic Amphictionic League. The date of the battle at Pydna (and the city’s exact location) is once again disputed following controversy over a lunar eclipse, a sine qua non when reinforcing how formative a clash of arms had been.310
Plutarch recorded that: ‘Taking command of the [Roman] forces in Macedonia, and finding them talkative and impertinently busy, as though they were all in command, Aemilius Paullus issued out his orders that they should have only ready hands and keen swords, and leave the rest to him.’311 Their trust was well placed; according to Livy, the general had wisely employed the lettered tribune, Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, to explain the celestial phenomenon in scientific terms to the troops who had been clashing bronze utensils and waving firebrands at the heavens ‘to avert fear’.312 Gallus’ speech must have been well received for he was inspired to write a book on eclipses which no doubt came to reside in the first ever library in Rome, stocked with scrolls from Perseus’ collection that would soon be liberated from Pella.
The bristling ranks of the sarissa bearers were still kataplektikos (broadly, ‘awe inspiringly intimidating’) and the most terrifying ever seen by the highly educated and Greek-speaking Lucius Aemilius Paullus ‘Macedonicus’ whose father had died at Cannae fighting Hannibal, for even now the Macedonian two-handed pike and its leaf-shaped blade could still (Plutarch believed) pierce Roman shields and armour. How the battle commenced is not clear though it is said Paullus waited for the sun to shine in enemy eyes, or he provoked the Macedonians to attack when entrails were not sufficiently propitious for him to do so himself; Livy blamed a skirmish over an escaped horse for the start of full-scale fighting.313
Although the Macedonians initially had the better of it on level ground, the pike-bearers’ tight formation, essential to success, was eventually prised open by uneven terrain they unwisely advanced on, by Roman flanking maniples, and by elephants; Macedonian morale finally fell once Perseus and his cavalry fled the field on the pretext of sacrificing to Heracles within the city walls.314 After the Macedonian king made good his escape with his ally, King Cotys (and his Odrisaeans on his tail), there was little to stop Rome marching on the capital. According to Livy’s unique description, the site for Pella’s fortifications had been chosen well:
It stands on a hill which faces the south-west, and is surrounded by morasses, formed by stagnant waters from the adjacent lakes, so deep as to be impassable either in winter or summer. In the part of the morass nearest to the city the citadel rises up like an island, being built on a mound of earth formed with immense labour, so as to be capable of supporting the wall, and secure against any injury from the water of the surrounding marsh. At a distance it seems to join the city rampart, but is divided from it by a river, and united by a bridge; so that if externally invaded it has no access from any part, and if the king chooses to confine any person within it, there is no way for an escape except by that bridge, which can be guarded with great ease.315
Strabo reported that the lake-fronted city, already the largest in Macedonia in Xenophon’s day, lay some 120 stades (approximately 14 miles) from the Thermaic Gulf up the still navigable Ludias River fed by an offshoot of the River Axius.316 But centuries before, when King Archelaus first surveyed the site, it was probably rather closer to being a seaport: sufficiently maritime for trade (and loading timber and pitch for Athenian ships) and yet protected from an invading fleet.317 But despite Livy stating ‘it can be guarded with great ease’, the stone capital at Pella, and the spiritual capital at Aegae (some 19 miles from Pydna as the crow flies) were pillaged and largely destroyed.318
Perseus fled from Pella to Amphipolis and then on to Galepsus in Thrace by sea. But at Amphipolis, ‘lacerated by his misfortunes’ and having slain his two treasurers in Pella, he initially let his badly needed Cretan supporters take riches worth 60 talents; he subsequently demanded the return of ‘certain objects made from the spoils captured by Alexander’. Perseus ‘… lamented to his friends that through ignorance he had suffered some of the gold plate of Alexander the Great to fall into the hands of the Cretans, and with tearful supplications he besought those who had it to exchange it for money.’
An extraordinary passage in Justin dealing with Antigonus II Gonatas’ seduction of the Gauls (who were ‘struck with the vast quantity of gold and silver set before them’) before battle near Lysimachia in 277 BCE, and those in Diodorus and Plutarch detailing the aftermath of Perseus’ defeat, provide evidence that a still substantial hoard of riches from Alexander’s campaigns must have remained in the Pellan vaults; astoundingly, it appears that even in the ruinously expensive Successor Wars the Macedonian kings dared not coin the conqueror’s gold and silver campaign spoils from Persia.
Perseus sought sanctuary in the temple of the Dioscuri in Thrace with his brother-in-law and son. Somewhat less remarkably, Perseus’ royal pages abandoned him on the Roman promise of freedom and property. King Perseus had no choice but to turn himself in.319 The Macedonian ‘play had been performed’; the woollen clamys of the new provincia Macedonia finally bowed to the Roman toga, and the sarissa now took second place to the gladius and the scutum, which slew 20,000 Macedonians on the day with a further 11,000 taken prisoner. The gleaming silver shields of the Argyraspides had long before dulled to the bronze of the Chalkaspides and white of the Leukaspides, and Greek celestial superstition kneeled to cosmic practicality.320 Livy claimed only one hundred Romans died, though the wounded count was far higher; these are victor-vanquished ratios resonant of Alexander’s battles with Darius III.321
Whilst Livy stated that Macedonia was (initially) to remain ‘free’ and with her mines unexploited, the country was divided into four civic regions (merides) and half of the royal tribute was now directed to Rome; in addition, all nobles and their children over fifteen years of age were to be shipped to Italy.322 Cicero was clearer on the consequences: mines were confiscated and over 5,600 talents, equivalent to some fifty-six years of tribute now set at 100 talents per year, ended up in Rome; the riches, he claimed, ‘did away with the need for a tax on property… for all time to come’. Although Diodorus focused on Aemilius’ lenient treatment of the defeated, Polybius captured the more calamitous detail: some 150,000 of the inhabitants of allied Epirus were sold into slavery and seventy cities were destroyed.323
The remaining Macedonian-governed domains of the Ptolemies and Seleucids were under the threat of direct occupation too. As blades met at Pydna, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (‘god manifest’, though Polybius used Epimanes, ‘the mad one’, due to his eccentric behaviour) proclaimed himself king of Egypt to conclude the Sixth Syrian War; Polybius had been chosen as part of the Achaean embassy to Antiochus a decade before when in his early twenties.324 Alexandria, surrounded by hostile troops, appealed to Rome which sent no army but the solitary Gaius Popilius Laenas as ambassador to demand the Seleucid withdrawal; standing alone in Antiochus’ path, he drew his famous line in the sand about the Seleucid king standing outside the besieged city. Antiochus requested time to consider his position, but Popilius demanded an answer on withdrawal before he stepped over the line, or he would deem it a declaration of war on a ‘friend’ of Rome.
Surely recalling that his predecessor, Antiochus III (then an ally of the Greek Achaean League), had been defeated at Magnesia twenty-two years before, Epiphanes quickly withdrew, allowing the previously hostaged Ptolemy VI Philometor (his nephew who had previously asked for help from the Achaean League) and his wife Cleopatra II (Ptolemy’s sister in Pharaonic style), along with his younger brother Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (nicknamed Physkon, ‘potbelly’ or ‘sausage’ for his obesity, ca.
182-116 BCE), to jointly rule. Even Greek cities like Lampsacus, close to the ruins of Troy, appealed to their ‘kinsmen’ in ‘the Rome of Aeneas’ for protection against their Seleucid overlords. Clearly, all including the ‘indolent’ Egyptian pharaohs, now knew the consequences of facing the legions of Rome.325
The great era of the Hellenistic warships of the Successors passed once Rome termed the Mediterranean mare nostrum, ‘our sea’, in which Rhodes and then the new Rome-protected clearinghouse of Delos became pre-eminent in trade (particularly in slaves), necessitating the minting of new coinage for the expanded market; the Delian sanctuary of Apollo became a prolific moneylender as a result. Ptolemaic Egypt lost out commercially to Syria as the traditional caravan routes were now terminating in Phoenicia and Palestine, and a Rome-backed Attalid Pergamum began to eclipse even Alexandria.326
By 146 BCE Macedonia finally became an official Roman province and Lucian would later describe Pella (ca. 180 CE) as ‘insignificant, with very few inhabitants’.327 The Koinon Makedonon, the nation’s traditional Common Assembly, became a Roman-supervised concilium although the new masters did learn the Greek language to administer their spoils, whereas the Greeks showed little interest in Latin.328 As one scholar put it, the Hellenes had given the world a culture, now Rome would establish a civilisation.329 Greece would not see her freedom again until 1832.330