an autocrat, above them and above the law, realizing the theoretical doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, as the true king, who is a god among men, bound no more than Zeus by a law, because “himself he is the law.” Thus the divine kingship of Alexander derives in direct line, not from the Oriental polities—which (Egypt apart) know nothing of royal apotheosis—but from these Hellenic theories of the state. Henceforward it becomes the form of every absolute monarchy in a civilized land, being formally mitigated only in Christian states by the assumption that the king is not God, but king “by the grace of God.” The expedition of 332 B.C. to the shrine of Ammon was a preliminary to this procedure, which, in 324, was sealed by his official elevation to divine rank in all the republics of Greece. To this corresponds the fact that, instead of acting on the doctrines of Aristotle and Callisthenes, and treating the Macedonians and Greeks as masters, the Asiatics as servants, Alexander had impartial recourse to the powers of all his subjects and strove to amalgamate them. In the Persians particularly he sought a second pillar for his world-empire. Therefore, as early as 330 B.C., he drafted 30,000 young Persians, educated them in Greek customs, and trained them to war on the Macedonian model. The Indian campaign showed that his Macedonian troops were in fact inadequate to the conquest of the world, and in the summer of 326 they compelled him to turn back from the banks of the Hyphasis. On his return to Persia, he consummated at Susa (Feb. 324 B.C.) the union of Persian and Macedonian by the great marriage-feast, at which all his superior officers, with some 10,000 more Macedonians, were wedded to Persian wives. The Macedonian veterans were then disbanded, and the Persians taken into his army. Simultaneously, at the Olympian festival of 324, the command was issued to all the cities of Greece to recognize him as god and to receive the exiles home.[1] In 323 B.C. the preparations for the circumnavigation and subjection of Arabia were complete: the next enterprise being the conquest of the West, and the battle for Hellenic culture against Carthage and the Italian tribes. At that point Alexander died in Babylon on the 13th of June 323 B.C.
Alexander left no heir. Consequently, his death not only
ended the scheme of universal conquest, but led to an immediate
Macedonian reaction. The army, which was
considered as the representative of the people, took
over the government under the direction of its
generals. The Persian wives were practically all
The Kingdoms of
the Diadochi.
discarded and the Persian satraps removed—at least from all
important provinces. But the attempt to maintain the empire
in its unity proved impracticable; and almost immediately
there began the embittered war, waged for several decades by
the generals (diadochi), for the inheritance of the great
king.[2]
It was soon obvious that the eastern rulers, at all events, could
not dispense with the native element. Peucestas, the governor
of Persis, there played the rôle of Alexander and won the Persians
completely to his side; for which he was dismissed by Antigonus
in 315 (Diod. xix. 48). A similar position was attained by
Seleucus—the only one of the diadochi, who had not divorced
his Persian wife, Apama—in Babylonia, which he governed
from 319 to 316 and regained in the autumn of 312. While
Antigonus, who, since 315, had striven to win the kingdom of
Alexander for himself—was detained by the war with his rivals
in the west, Seleucus, with Babylon as his headquarters, conquered
the whole of Iran as far as the Indus. In northern
Media alone, which lay outside the main scene of operations
and had only been partially subject to the later Achaemenids,
the Persian satrap Atropates, appointed by Alexander, maintained
his independence and bequeathed his province to his
successors. His name is borne by north Media to the present
day—Atropatene, modern Azerbaijan or Adherbeijan (see
Media). So, too, in Armenia the Persian dynasty of the
Hydarnids held its ground; and to these must be added, in the
east of Asia Minor, the kingdoms of Pontus and Cappadocia,
founded c. 301, by the Persians Mithradates I. and Ariarathes I.
These states were fragments of the Achaemenid Empire, which
had safely transferred themselves to the Hellenistic state-system.
The annexation of Iran by Seleucus Nicator led to a war for the countries on the Indian frontier, his opponent being Sandracottus or Chandragupta Maurya (q.v.), the founder of the great Indian Empire of Maurya (Palimbothra). The result was that Seleucus abandoned to the Indian king, not merely the Indian provinces, but even the Seleucus I. Nicator, and Antiochus I. frontier districts west of the Indus (Strabo xv. 689–724), receiving as compensation 500 elephants, with other presents (Appian, Syr. 55, Justin xv. 4; Plut. Alex. 62; Athen. i. 18 D.). His next expedition was to the west to assist Lysimachus, Ptolemy and Cassander in the overthrow of Antigonus.
The battle of Ipsus, in 301, gave him Syria and the east of Asia Minor; and from then he resided at the Syrian town of Antiochia on the Orontes. Shortly afterwards he handed over the provinces east of the Euphrates to his son Antiochus, who, in the following years, till 282, exercised in the East a very energetic and beneficial activity, which continued the work of his father and gave the new empire and the Oriental Hellenistic civilization their form. In order to protect his conquests Alexander had founded several cities in Bactria, Sogdiana and India, in which he settled his veterans. On his death, these revolted and endeavoured to return to Greece, but were attacked Greek Towns in Iran. and cut to pieces by Pithon (Diod. xviii. 7). Of the other Greek towns in Asia scarcely any were founded by Alexander himself, though the plan adopted by his successors of securing their dominions by building Greek cities may perhaps be due to him (cf. Polyb. x. 27). Most of these new cities were based on older settlements; but the essential point is, that they were peopled by Greek and Macedonian colonists, and enjoyed civic independence with laws, officials, councils and assemblies of their own, in other words, an autonomous communal constitution, under the suzerainty of the empire. A portion, moreover, of the surrounding land was assigned to them. Thus a great number of the country districts—the ἔθνη above mentioned—were transformed into municipal corporations, and thereby withdrawn from the immediate government of the king and his officials (satraps or strategi), though still subject to their control, except in the cases where they received unconditional freedom and so ranked as “confederates.” The native population of these villages and rural districts, at first, had no civic rights, but were governed by the foreign settlers. Soon, however, the two elements began to coalesce; in the Seleucid Empire, the process seems generally to have been both rapid and complete. Thus the cities became the main factors in the diffusion of Hellenism, the Greek language and the Greek civilization over all Asia as far as the Indus. At the same time they were the centres of commerce and industrial life: and this, in conjunction with the royal favour, and the privileges accorded them, continually drew new settlers (especially Jews), and many of them developed into great and flourishing towns (see further under Hellenism).
Shortly after his conquest of Babylonia, Seleucus had founded a new capital, Seleucia (q.v.), on the Tigris: his intention being at once to displace the ancient Babylon from its former central position, and to replace it by a Greek city. This was followed by a series of other foundations in Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Susiana (Elam). “Media,” says Polybius (x. 27), “was encircled by a sequence of Greek towns, designed as a barrier against the barbarians.” Among those mentioned are: Rhagae (Rai), which Seleucus metamorphosed into a Hellenic city, Europus, Laodicea, Apamea and Heraclea (Strabo xi. 525 Plin. vi. 43: cf. Media). To these must be added Achaea in Parthia, and, farther to the east, Alexandria Arion in Aria, the modern Herat: also Antiochia Margiana (Strabo xi. 514, 516 Plin. 46, 93), now Merv, and many others. Further, Alexandria in Aradrosia, near Kandahar, and the towns founded by Alexander on the Hindu-Kush and in Sogdiana.
- ↑ The discussion of these events by Hogarth “The Deification of Alexander the Great,” in the English Historical Review, ii. (1887), is quite unsatisfactory.
- ↑ See Ptolemies, Seleucid Dynasty.
