Alexander the Great Failure

by John D Grainger

  Macedon might look fi rm by early 279, but he had been king only a little over a year, had no hereditary claim to the throne, and was widely seen as an impulsive murderer and breaker of his word. To the Galatians, he looked extremely

  vulnerable, and it was upon the vulnerable that such raiders preyed.

  Needless to say the course of events is by no means clear, for Macedon was

  reduced to chaos by the invasions. The Galatian attack was well planned and

  comprehensive. Three different invasions came, one led by Bolgios aimed at

  western Macedon through Illyria; a second, under Brennos, came south along

  the valley of the Axios heading for eastern Macedon; the third, under Kerenthios, marched against Thrace and the Triballi. They were also a migration: the warriors were accompanied by their families.28

  Keraunos met the fi rst invasion, led by Bolgios. He was defeated, captured

  and killed; this let the invaders in. His defeat and death was the occasion for moralizing comments by historians, who quite possibly invented especially

  unpleasant ways of having him killed in order to make the moral even more

  gruesomely telling. Essentially he is depicted as over-confi dent, which may well be the case: the invasion was, it is worth repeating, unprecedented. 29

  Half a dozen local war leaders, elected or self-appointed, are known in the

  next two years or so: Keraunos’ brother Meleagros lasted two months, Antipater, a nephew of Kassander, lasted 45 days, a general called Sosthenes perhaps two

  years; Ptolemy, Arrhidaios and Alexander ruled part or all of the kingdom for

  uncertain periods. It is possible to put these men in sequence, but it is more likely they overlapped, operating in different parts of the country, some as kings, some as pretenders. 30 The sequence of invasions and the names of the invaders’

  leaders are similarly confusing, as the various Galatian bands split and rejoined in various ways. It does not seem possible to reconstruct events; 31 much that happened is quite unknown and unknowable. What is certain is that Macedon

  was comprehensively pillaged and burnt and looted, though the cities seem to

  have held out behind their walls, full of refugees and short of food. Eventually there was nothing left to steal or burn, no food to be found, and the invaders could not capture the cities. Macedonian casualties were undoubtedly appalling.

  Bolgios retired with his loot back to the north, taking many of the Galatians

  with him. 32 Brennos remained; he may have wanted more loot, or he and

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  his people were maybe looking to settle; he and his band moved south into

  Thessaly and then beyond, leaving much of Macedon under the occupation of

  others of his people. 33 Royal authority had either disappeared or fragmented, and political leadership was at a premium; the only successful fi ghter among

  the many, Sosthenes, refused the royal title, but soon died; Kassandreia came

  under the control of a man called Apollodoros, who quickly developed into a

  tyrant, perhaps as the only way to keep control of a panicky city.34 Even after Bolgios’ horde had left and most of Brennos’ people had moved into Thessaly,

  the Macedonians were quite unable to retake the land from the invaders. Had

  Brennos decided to stay in Macedon and make it his own kingdom, he may well

  have been successful.

  Brennos’ horde moved on from Thessaly to attack Thermopylai, where a

  varied collection of armed contingents, Aitolians, Boiotians, Phokians, men sent by Antigonos Gonatas and by Antiochos, and no doubt Malians and the local

  Lokrians, blocked the pass. He turned west to raid Delphi, but he was blocked

  and defeated by the Aitolians and the Phokians without reaching the sanctuary.

  The horde retired northwards.35 Presumably Brennos decided that his people would be satisfi ed with settling in Macedon.

  It was perhaps under the pressure exerted by these events that the war between Antigonos Gonatas and Antiochos I was settled with a peace treaty and marriage alliance in 278. The cause of the war is not known, but at base it was no doubt due to rivalry over Macedon. Neither king was able to establish himself in

  Macedon in succession to the dead Keraunos, presumably in part because of

  their rivalry, but the prospect of having to clear the Galatians out fi rst cannot have been tempting. Antiochos decided that it was a kingdom too far and never

  made another attempt. This left the way clear for Antigonos; the Galatians had accounted for every other possible claimant.

  Brennos was killed in the fi ghting in Greece, and his horde broke up. The

  survivors mainly followed Bolgios’ example and retired to their homeland with

  their loot. 36 Another horde headed eastwards into Thrace under Leonnorios and Loutarios, either now or earlier, where the third group of the original

  invaders, originally under Kernthios, had gone. During 277 all these forces were still in Thrace, presumably raiding, coalescing and splitting just as had those in Macedon, and by this time, they were no doubt wondering what to do next. One

  group was in the region of the Thracian Chersonese. There, for some unknown

  reason, but possibly concerned with relations with Antiochos, Antigonos was

  encamped with his fl eet and army, and he encountered and destroyed one of the Galatian bands. 37

  This battle, near Lysimacheia, took place in early 277; Antigonos’ agreement

  with Antiochos had been made late the previous year. In return for the marriage alliance, Antiochos renounced any claim to Macedon, and Antigonos agreed

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  to leave the Thracian Chersonese and the nearby cities to Antiochos. This

  effectively made Antigonos a subordinate ally of Antiochos’, and he was in

  Antiochos’ territory when he encountered and beat the Galatian band. He was

  clearly intending to use the area as his base in his new attempt to gain control of Macedon. His back was protected by the alliance with Antiochos, and he now

  had the prestige of a victory over the Galatians to wipe out the stain of the old defeat by Keraunos.

  One way to get rid of the Galatian invaders was to enlist them: besides being

  cheaper than Greek mercenaries they were infi nitely more expendable. Antigonos thus cleared Macedon of Galatians by recruiting them, using his own Galatians

  to drive out their fellows. His competitors were also removed: Antipater fl ed to Egypt, 38 Arrhidaios disappeared, Ptolemy also fl ed to Egypt. Antigonos also enlisted a Lokrian pirate leader, who succeeded in freeing Kassandreia from

  Apollodoros’ tyranny. The siege of the city lasted ten months, which suggests a good deal of internal support for the ‘tyrant’. 39 The Galatians did not actually go very far away. Apart from those who settled in the Belgrade area, others settled in Thrace and formed a kingdom inland of Byzantion, which city they laid

  under tribute for the next 60 years. 40 The northern borders of Macedon were as extensively disrupted as the country itself.

  All this time (279–277), Antiochos was involved in his war against the Northern League and Mithradates of Pontos. It was complicated by a simultaneous crisis in Bithynia, where the succession to King Zipoites was disputed between his sons, Nikomedes and Zipoites the younger. 41 Antiochos, despite distractions such as the brief war with Antigonos, was making progress with his enemies in such

  disarray. Everyone also had to watch the activities of the Galatians in Thrace.

  The two bands led by Leonnorios and Loutarios made more than one attempt

  to cross over into Asia, and when Nikomedes of Bithynia became desperate, he

  contacted Leonnorios, hired his band to fi ght his enemies, and brought them into Asia
. 42 The other band was in the Thracian Chersonese, and seized ships from Antiochos’ governor of Hellespontine Phrygia, who had attempted to negotiate

  with them.43 Once in Asia, they rejoined, drove Antiochos’ army from Bithynia, and headed south into the rich lands of Ionia and Lydia. The relief of Thrace and Macedon came at the cost of extensive ravaging in Asia.

  Macedon’s suffering had been extreme, but it had been its own fault. The

  repeated disputes over the royal succession could only cause neighbours to lick their lips in anticipation whenever a king died. Previous succession disputes had always been accompanied by invasions. The Galatians were worse than usual,

  but something of the sort was only to be expected. Since Philip II the kings

  had done nothing to resolve the problem and the threat. Alexander went to

  conquer in Asia; Kassander campaigned over his northern border at times, but

  gave more attention to Greece, as had his father. Demetrios emulated Alexander.

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  Lysimachos, though he conquered the Paeonians, was in control of Macedon too

  briefl y to have much effect.

  Once again, Macedon’s basic problem was the royal succession. By this time

  there were plenty of examples of what not to do – all Macedonian history

  showed that – and what should be done. Antigonos the One-Eyed, Ptolemy I

  and Seleukos I had shown that the way to ensure a smooth succession was to

  nomi nate and install one selected son as joint king before the old king died.

  The chosen one gained confi dence and experience, the old man could relax, and everyone could get used to what the future held. Even Demetrios, hardly the most responsible of kings, had made careful provision for the succession, leaving his European lands with his son Antigonos.

  This procedure relied on the senior king living long enough to produce a son,

  see him grow to be an adult and train him. To ensure the continuance of the

  kingdom was one of the duties of kings, and the lesson of Alexander’s negligence in this matter was graven into the minds of his contemporaries; it was surely one of the reasons for the measures the several kings took. No doubt the absence of an accepted hereditary scheme in the new kingdoms impelled the appointment

  of the junior kings, but the system was the beginning of such a scheme. A species of hereditary succession existed in Macedon, in that the kings were chosen from within the Argead family, but only rarely had it worked in a patrilineal way.

  The resulting murderous disputes ensured that the family died out by 308. The

  achievement of the kingship by Antigonos II, at the third attempt, from a family owing all of its renown to its heredity, promised to remedy the problem.

  The kingdom Antigonos took over was wrecked. No estimates of casualties are

  possible, nor any account of the physical damage. None of the cities appeared to have been taken by the invaders, though Kassandreia suffered a ten-month siege in the aftermath. Many people in the countryside survived by taking refuge in the cities; many died or were carried off into slavery, and the rural areas were surely very severely damaged. The kingdom had lost considerable numbers of men to

  the various expeditionary forces and reinforcements sent into the east in the past two generations. This was not necessarily a crippling loss, for the numbers of soldiers Kassander and Demetrios were able to raise were almost as substantial as those Alexander had taken with him. Yet it was certainly debilitating, and the Galatian ravaging even more so. The result, in international political terms, was to so weaken Macedon for the next generation that it had to shelter under the

  Seleukid wing, at least while Antiochos I and Antigonos Gonatas ruled.

  It seems probable that another result was the destruction of whatever gov-

  ernmental institutions existed. The personal monarchy of kings before Antigonos Gonatas continued under him and his successors, but virtually all the evidence for settled administrative institutions comes from the Antigonid period. Proof is lacking, but a reasonable conjecture would be that Antigonos was faced with

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  a wrecked country and society, in which for a long time he could not even

  raise much of a Macedonian army and had relied on mercenaries. He set about

  constructing a new system of government, to some degree bureaucratic, but

  building on the self-reliance exhibited by the cities in the invasion crisis. The old baronage, in so far as it had survived the earlier regime and the emigration, will have suffered disproportionately as victims of the Galatians in war. It had been the function of the barons to fi ght, and they had obviously lost, both their lives and in damage to their property. Antigonos had the fi rst opportunity in centuries to start more or less anew, and seems to have taken it.44

  This was as much a result of Alexander’s expeditions as of the Galatian

  invasions. He had removed much of the male Macedonian population, and he

  had carelessly failed to provide an adult male heir until it was too late; above all, he had diverted attention from Macedon’s own security to conquer an empire.

  The invasion of the Galatians in 279–277 was a direct consequence of Alexander’s work, though not of Philip, who had been exceptionally careful to extend and

  dominate his northern frontier. At the same time, there were many thousands of Macedonians and Greeks, mainly descended from the participants in Alexander’s

  adventure who were now scattered throughout Alexander’s conquests, and

  whose lives were much enriched by their relocation; and their children had it

  even better.

  15

  The new world, 277–272 bc

  By the end of 277 the invaders had left Macedon, going north, or into Thrace,

  or across into Asia Minor. Those in Europe gorged on loot, and settled into

  relatively stable kingdoms at some distance from Macedon; those in Asia spent

  another decade ravaging the Asian lands. Eventually, from about 270, they were compelled to settle in the interior, but for the next 50 years and more bands of raiders were liable to break out. One of the marks of a successful king or ruler in Asia during the third century bc was to be able to boast that he had defeated a Galatian raiding band.

  As in Macedon, the cities in Asia Minor were safe behind their walls, but the

  countryside, the fi elds, the villages, unwalled towns, country estates and anyone caught outside the cities, were in danger. Kyzikos suffered a ravaging of its lands,1

  unwalled Ilion was occupied and looted and damaged; Thyateira, Pergamon,

  Ephesos, Erythrai, Didyma, Miletos, Priene, Themisonion, Kelainai were all

  attacked and damaged. 2 Local defences were sometimes effective, and some cities paid ransom, but the main responsibility for combating the raids lay with King Antiochos. His Galatian war lasted several years, perhaps until about 270. The decisive battle, the ‘elephant battle’, was sometime between 275 and 270. 3

  The result of the Galatian invasion was to impose a decisive halt to any further expansion by the Seleukid state. Antiochos was fully occupied throughout the

  270s in settling affairs in Asia Minor. In that period Antigonos was similarly settling in as king of Macedon. Ptolemy II was less bothered by internal problems but more satisfi ed with his international position, and in 275 celebrated extrava gantly his kingship by a great parade in Alexandria; 4 that is, the Galatian invasions were decisive in fi nally forming the Hellenistic international world. The reunifi ca tion of Alexander’s empire, from Macedon to India, was still possible before they invaded. The damage they infl icted in Macedon and in Asia Minor

  compelled the kings they fought to concentrate on their own affairs, and so

  reduced their victims’ wealth and strength that no
ne was able to contemplate

  such an adventure again.

  The fact that the kings who took up their offi ces between 282 and 277 were

  of the next generation after Alexander’s contemporaries is crucial. The fathers, Seleukos, Ptolemy, Lysimachos, had all been born within a few years of Alexander and learned their early political skills in the time of Philip II and Alexander, fi rst as

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  pages at Philip’s court, and then as commanders with Alexander; even Demetrios and Pyrrhos were evidently in thrall to Alexander’s memory and achievements.

  These men could not help but be haunted by the possibility of the revival of the Macedonian empire which existed between 325 and 319, and their policies were

  directed at either seeking that reunifi cation or resisting it. Their sons, born after Alexander’s death, had no direct personal memories of such a political entity: their early political memories were of their fathers ruling as kings.

  Ptolemy II, king of the most solidly established kingdom, showed no wish

  to extend his father’s kingdom except in ways and areas designed to embarrass

  his rivals or to shore up his own defences. Antigonos Gonatas, despite his

  grandfather’s and his father’s ambitions and his own early experience of life at his grandfather’s court (he was born about 319), and his clear and vocal loyalty to his father, never showed any ambition beyond maintaining control of Macedon

  and Greece; this applies even to his life before Demetrios’ death; and a wrecked Macedon’s condition precluded any adventurism. Antiochos gave up any claim

  to Macedon once Ptolemy Keraunos was dead. All three kings had to work hard

  to hold what they had, so that even if they had wished to conquer new lands, they hardly had the time or the opportunity to do so.

  There was no predestined division of the empire into three kingdoms. The

  state Lysimachos ruled for two decades was stable until its last year or so, and western Asia Minor was the geographic base for a long series of states from the Late Bronze Age to the Byzantine Empire and on to the present Republic of