Alexander the Great Failure

by John D Grainger

  control, albeit not quite directly, a large number of Greek, Phoenician, Karian and Lykian cities. These were accustomed to a large degree of autonomy, even

  under the former Persian regime, and there is no sign that Antigonos wished to change this. Indeed he made it a hallmark of his rule to respect their ‘freedom’, though by doing so he effectively restricted that freedom. The cities administered themselves, so he had a third administrative system to use as a pattern.

  Antigonos, a busy man with little time for refl ection and well set in his ways, did not develop a new government system to be applied throughout his realm,

  but over time an administration did evolve which was competent and provided

  a degree of security to the inhabitants. It also produced a substantial and reliable income for Antigonos. Above all, he had to work with an existing system; it could change only slowly and piecemeal if it was not to break down altogether.

  Like Kassander and Ptolemy, Antigonos’ administrative system grew out

  of the preceding situation. It had a stronger military fl avour than theirs, with strong Macedonian elements to it, and there were Akhaimenid elements also. 23

  The one thing common to all these rulers was their relationship with the cities, often Greek, within or next to their territories. Some of the kings had clearly felt that the best way to deal with such cities was to crush them; and several had been captured and destroyed in the previous century, notably by Philip II in the Chalkidike. The cities themselves were usually unwilling to be subordinated to the kings, but the kings were usually too strong for them.

  At the same time Philip and Alexander had founded new cities as a means

  of extending their control into new areas. Alexander left groups of soldiers in various places, as garrisons or colonists; or perhaps it was that the garrisons

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  developed into colonies as time went on. Garrisons are obvious tactics for

  military rulers, and are often only temporary, but it took a good deal of effort and expense to found a city, always intended to be permanent. Alexander’s later reputation as a city founder was exaggerated by the retrospective attribution

  to him of many places which had been garrisons. The establishment of a new

  city brought considerable renown to its founder, and it was a powerful political statement, but took time, attention and money.

  The Macedonian rulers after Alexander all founded cities. Ptolemy had a

  head start for he acquired responsibility for the new city of Alexandria, founded ten years before his appointment as Egyptian satrap; some progress was made

  by Kleomenes in its construction, but there was still much for Ptolemy to do,

  including the construction of Alexander’s tomb. By 313 the city was suffi ciently built up to become the location of his court – a construction period of about 20

  years. Ptolemy ruled a densely populated land. The Greeks who took up positions in the military and civil administration had to be spread throughout it, but

  Ptolemy had no wish to see them organized as autonomous cities; he founded

  just one city himself, in the south, calling it Ptolemais.24

  Seleukos found groups of Greeks and Macedonians scattered throughout his

  lands, usually former soldiers settled in old Persian centres or new Macedonian garrisons. He organized several of these places as new cities, each with a defi ned territory, a set of public buildings, including city walls. Each city also had a garrison established in an adjoining citadel; he established cities, but also ensured that he retained control. Some of these places were organized while he was in the east campaigning in Baktria and India, and he inherited Alexander’s foundations as well: at Alexandria at Kandahar, Alexandria-Eschate and Merv,

  in Margiane. 25

  In later years cities developed in Media. At the western end of the royal road were Ekbatana, the old Median capital, Laodikeia at modern Nihavend, Konkobar

  (now Kangavar) and a fourth at modern Khurra; and along the great road were

  cities at Rhagai (near Tehran) and Hekatompylos. 26 Media was the supervising satrapy for the whole east, a region called the ‘Upper Satrapies’, but the cities were units of administration within but separate from it. A similar situation is best seen in Syria, where the four great cities, Antioch, Seleukeia, Apamea and Laodikeia, and half a dozen other cities between the coast and the Euphrates,

  divided up the whole of Syria between them. There was never a satrap of Syria

  in the Seleukid kingdom, since it was governed through the cities. These city

  regions were called by the city’s name with the addition of the ending ‘ene’ – so, for example, Apamene.

  This is the governing system eventually organized by Seleukos, work continued

  by Antiochus I after him. There were two main elements, city regions and

  satrapies, but each was directly connected to the king, the satraps by their very

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  appointments, and the cities through an epistates, a philos of the king appointed as his liaison with a particular city. The responsibilities of the two were, of course, different; the satraps were largely military men with governing duties in rural areas; the cities ran themselves; both had the duty of collecting and forwarding the royal taxes.

  The contrast with the Macedonian personal monarchy is obvious; the Seleukid

  state, from the moment Seleukos united Media, Susiana, Persis and Babylonia

  in the aftermath of the defeat of Nikanor – that is, within a few months – was far too big to be governed by the king personally, hence the need for satraps. It was also different from the system of Ptolemy in Egypt. Babylonia might have

  been a suitable place for a detailed bureaucratic regime, but it was a land divided among self-governing cities. 27 Seleukos therefore developed an answer to the admin istra tive problem, and also solved his other major diffi culty, a shortage of skilled Greco-Macedonian manpower. The cities he founded were designed

  to support a Greco-Macedonian landowning class whose duty it was to supply

  soldiers for the royal army and administrators to the royal court and bureaucracy, as well as run their cities. These were the people who formed the citizens of the kingdom.

  It took time to devise this system and found the Greek and Macedonian cities

  all through the kingdom. Seleukos, until 300 or so, did not have the manpower

  to plant many cities, nor the access to the Mediterranean needed to attract people from Greece, but he made a start with his Iranian cities and a new imperial

  capital, Seleukeia in Babylonia, and with the frontier towns in Mesopotamia.

  Eventually he took over the system developed by Antigonos, and then he was

  able to organize the fi rst truly Hellenistic kingdom, later to become the pattern for the others, including Macedon and, ultimately, for Rome.

  Seleukeia-on-the-Tigris in Babylonia was one of a series of new, great cities

  founded by all Alexander’s successors on the model of Alexandria-by-Egypt.

  All these great lords copied Alexander’s one great city, and added other smaller cities. Kassander repaired some of the destruction perpetrated in Greece; he

  refounded Thebes, gathering up the surviving citizens, as early as 316 – though as usual the rest of the Boiotians were unwelcoming – and in Macedon he founded

  Kassandreia to replace the destroyed Potidaia, on the western fi nger of the

  Chalkidike, and Thessalonika (named for his wife) at the head of the Thermaic

  Gulf.28 Both cities were populated by gathering inhabitants from nearby towns and cities, a process called synoikism which saved a founder from the need to

  search for colonists. The results were substantial cities, which developed quickly into immediate fi nancial and military assets. The work
was also overtly political: Thebes had been Alexander’s victim, Potidaia Philip II’s, Olynthian survivors

  were collected for Kassandreia. Kassander was indicating his claim to be an

  alternative to the Argead dynasty while by marrying Thessalonike linking himself

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  with it. (No wonder Antigonos, having developed similar but greater ambitions, complained about Kassander’s cities.) Kassander’s brother Alexarchos was

  captivated by new ideas of perfect societies; he was allowed to found his own city, Ouranopolis – ‘city of heaven’ – on the Athos peninsula, close to the site of a city, Akanthos, destroyed by Philip II in his conquest of the Chalkidikian League. 29

  Lysimachos struggled to make his satrapy of Thrace a worthwhile offi ce. The

  Thracians, conquered by Philip II, had not wished to continue as Macedonian

  subjects, and it was all too easy for Antigonos to raise rebellion in Lysimachos’

  rear when they were in confl ict. Lysimachos founded a city, called Lysimacheia to nobody’s surprise, at the root of the Thracian Chersonese, where it replaced Kardia, which had always suffered from Thracian and Athenian attacks. So long

  as it was supported by royal favour, this was a successful city. 30

  Kassander did his founding work early in his rule, in 316 and 315; Lysimachos

  not till 309, and between these dates, both Seleukos and Antigonos founded

  cities. Antigonos was rather more active in this fi eld than his competitors,

  but then he was considerably richer, had more manpower, and in many ways

  was more in need of urban centres in his lands. Most of his foundations were

  small, basically garrisons, and tended to have names derived from Macedonian

  towns – Pella, Ichnai, Beroia. He was also responsible for some bigger projects, which can be recognized by being named for him. There was an Antigoneia

  in Syria (which did not last), another in the Troad, by the Hellespont, was a

  synoikism, which changed its name to Alexandria later, and there were three

  Antigoneias in Hellespontine Phrygia, an area liable to rebellion. Like Kassander, he refounded a destroyed city – Smyrna – by facilitating the return of its scattered citizens. 31

  Antigonos’ cities were concentrated in the north-west, near the Straits, and in Ionia, where Smyrna, Teos, Lebedos and Kolophon were all revived or refounded.

  Three urban centres established in Phrygia were at the intersection of a major north–south route with a major east–west route – Dokimeion, Synnada, and

  the city he used as his governing centre, Kelainai. Dokimeion was founded

  by Dokimos, a slippery Macedonian who changed sides very easily; nearby

  Themisonion was founded by another Macedonian, Themison; Antigonos was

  clearly quite amenable to such work; those cities were deep within his own

  territory and not liable to become independent principalities. Antigonos’ greatest city, where he spent his last years, was in northern Syria, on the Orontes.

  Seleukos had had to defend Babylon against more than one attack by

  Antigonos’ forces, and assisted its recovery after their ravagings, rebuilding the city’s public buildings. He also began the construction of a new city of his own, Seleukeia-by-the-Tigris, north-east of Babylon, and planned on a scale to rival Alexandria-by-Egypt. It was about two-thirds the size of Alexandria, but Alexandria had a huge palace area. This work was probably begun as soon as

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  Seleukos had returned to Babylonia in 311, and continued throughout the war

  with Antigonos and after. 32

  The founding of cities was part of the competition these men had with one

  another, and they were emulating, or competing with, Alexander. The use of

  Alexandria by Ptolemy as his capital was a clear statement of his assumption of part of the mantle of the dead king; Kassander’s refoundation of Thebes and his foundations on the sites of destroyed Chalkidikian cities were a repudiation of the policies of Philip and Alexander. Antigonos only founded a great city of the Alexandria and Seleukeia type in his last years. Neither Kassander nor Antigonos had been on the great expedition, so their relations with Alexander’s memory

  were tangential, where Ptolemy, while he was intent on subtracting Egypt from

  Alexander’s empire, was able to link himself convincingly with him, even to the extent of writing a version of the expedition as his own memoirs.

  Seleukos was the most insistent on claiming the heritage of the dead king.

  Between 308 and 303 he was campaigned in the east, where Alexander’s hardest

  wars had been fought, a task Antigonos had avoided; this was clearly a policy

  directly aimed at Antigonos, and his new city at Seleukeia-on-the-Tigris was

  the only one of the cities these men founded on an Alexandrian scale. For those attuned to the symbolism behind the doings of these great lords, it will have

  become clear by 308–307 that Seleukos had developed an ambition to restore

  the unity of the empire of Alexander. To make this quite clear, certain stories were being circulated, such as that he was born in the same year as Alexander, or that he had worn Alexander’s diadem when he had rescued it from the river

  in Babylon. 33

  Antigonos was free of the war with Seleukos from 308, and Seleukos’ eastern

  expedition mean he was no longer an immediate threat. Antigonos now broke

  the western stalemate. In 307 Demetrios, in command of a fl eet, captured Athens, claiming to restore the city’s freedom, removed Kassander’s garrisons, and ejected Demetrios of Phaleron. The Athenians overwhelmed both son and father with

  thanks and honours, and Antigonos sent in money and food, and timber for use

  in the Athenian shipyards. 34 The capture of Athens produced a solid block of allies across central Greece for him.

  This substantial political position, bolstered by Antigonid garrisons placed

  where requested, was suffi ciently deterring to block any Kassandrian riposte.

  Antigonos now had Demetrios take his fl eet and army to Cyprus. As a major

  Ptolemaic base, this threatened all the Antigonid coasts from Palestine to the Aegean. Demetrios performed brilliantly. He besieged Salamis, the main city of the island, and when Ptolemy came with relief, he defeated his fl eet and captured most of his army, then captured the city as well; some of the Ptolemaic soldiers were enlisted into his own service, and the captured ships reinforced his fl eet. 35

  This was the greatest military/naval victory since Gaugamela and seemed to

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  cut down Ptolemy’s power and pretensions. Yet neither Salamis nor Athens was

  decisive, for control of these places would not win the war. The victories were nevertheless major achievements, and Salamis was used by Antigonos to claim

  the empire of Alexander. When the news was taken to him at Antigoneia in Syria, both he and Demetrios were proclaimed as kings.36

  This was a political manifesto. Antigonos was stating that he was now, by

  virtue of the victories of his army and fl eet, the legitimate successor of Philip and Alexander. And by proclaiming Demetrios as king as well, the actual victor at Athens and Salamis, he was establishing a new dynasty, replacing the Argeads with the Antigonids. The problem was that victories do not mean a war is won,

  nor did the capture of Athens or the conquest of the island of Cyprus give him universal dominion. Proclaiming himself king did not make Antigonos the

  successor to Alexander’s kingdom, and by claiming it Antigonos was actually

  joining Kassander and Ptolemy in refusing to restore the empire as a whole. The royal proclamation was a gesture of defi
ance and a confession of overall failure.

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  Antigonos’ failure, 306–298 bc

  Antigonos’ proclamation as king took place in 306 because of the Salamis victory, but it was only the year before that the death of Alexander IV had become

  widely known, though it was surely rumoured before then. His death was

  blamed variously on disease, drugs, the commander of his guard and Kassander.

  Kassander staged a ritual cremation and ceremonially deposited the ashes in

  the Argead royal cemetery at Aigai, perhaps during 306. 1 This was one of the triggers for Antigonos’ self-proclamation, for the lords had been offi cially acting as Alexander IV’s subordinates until then. His name had been used by all of them in dating documents and on coins they issued.

  Antigonos’ was a personal title, not territorial, nor did it relate to a specifi c people. Alexander had been ‘King of the Macedonians’, and this was the title

  Kassander eventually used, but Antigonos and Demetrios were only ‘king’; had

  he controlled Macedon, no doubt this would have been Antigonos’ choice, but

  the plain title of king was one referring back to the Akhaimenid rulers. Antigonos’

  choice of title was thus designed to emphasize his claim to be the ruler of the whole of Alexander’s empire and successor to Cyrus and Dareios. It was a claim his rivals denied and disputed.

  The timing of the proclamation was regulated by the victory at Salamis, and

  he put on a particular show for the occasion. Demetrios sent one of his offi cers, Aristodemos of Miletos, with the news to Antigonos at Antigoneia in Syria.

  Aristodemos landed and walked silently and slowly to the city – a distance of

  perhaps 20 km. When he reached the palace, tension was great, and he broke it

  by shouting ‘Hail, King Antigonos’, and then explained the victory. Antigonos’

  philoi rallied round, a diadem was produced, and Antigonos was king. He then appointed Demetrios as king by sending him a second diadem.2

  This was not the spontaneous event it was supposed to seem, but it did

  emphasize two aspects: Antigonos’ monarchy was personal to him and his family, and it was connected with victory. These aspects became part of the process of king-making during the rest of the ancient world. Even Roman emperors of