Текст книги "Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire"

Автор книги: Robin Waterfield

Соавторы: Robin Waterfield,Robin Waterfield,Robin Waterfield
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In both Egypt and Seleucid Asia, two sets of laws—native and Greek—ran in parallel for the two populations; the language of the case documents determined in which court the case was heard. The kings were likely to intervene in local law only if their revenues were threatened. Both kingdoms used two official languages (Greek and Aramaic; Greek and demotic Egyptian) and even had double calendrical systems. Year One of the new era that was ushered in by Seleucus’s recovery of Babylon began on the Babylonian new year—but also on the Macedonian new year, which fell about six months earlier. In Egypt, the gap was considerably greater; Ptolemy began to count his regnal years in Greek from his first gaining the province in 323, but native Egyptians counted from 305, when he formally became an Egyptian pharaoh. He was King of the Macedonians, but Pharaoh of the Egyptians, the first pharaoh of the thirtieth, final, and longest-lasting dynasty of the ancient kingdom of Egypt. Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Asia were not fully Greek states but slightly awkward amalgams.

The fact that local systems were allowed to run in parallel to the conquerors’ preferences indicates a considerable degree of local autonomy—more in Asia, because of its sheer size. There were plenty of crossover points, but the Greek-speakers kept themselves apart as much as possible. Their tolerance of the continuation of local administrative institutions mirrored their cultural isolation from the native populations. The separation between conquerors and subjects was most marked in the founding of new Greek enclaves, and best epitomized by the fact that the full title of the city of Alexandria, distinguishing it from all the other Alexandrias around the world, was not “Alexandria in Egypt” but “Alexandria by Egypt.” The title reeks of the supremacism inherent in the imperialist mentality. It is an often repeated but still telling fact that Cleopatra VII (the famous Cleopatra), the last Macedonian ruler of Egypt, was also the first to learn the Egyptian language.

Despite these measures, however, the fact that there was little trouble, at least for a good while, was due as much as anything to the long history, in both Egypt and Asia, of foreign occupation. Many of the native populations, especially in Asia, were so remote from the king that their lives hardly changed; they simply exchanged one distant master for another, while continuing to give their immediate allegiance to the same landowner for whom they had been working before.

Ptolemy’s and Seleucus’s regimes were authoritarian in nature, backed up by a strong military presence. Their appeasement measures could do no more than prevent passive acquiescence from escalating into active resentment. In Asia, where the Persians had been the top dogs, Seleucus tactfully let their heartland, Persis, retain a greater degree of autonomy than other provinces of his empire; Macedonians were described there in one document as “the demons with disheveled hair of the Race of Wrath.” ⁶In Egypt, Ptolemy took the precaution, after the Battle of Gaza in 312, of not employing a native Egyptian contingent in his army; his great-grandson, Ptolemy IV, took the momentous step over a century later of rearming native troops, and the cost was the first native rebellion in Ptolemaic times. The core of the Seleucid army, however, was made up right from the start of native troops, armed and trained in the Macedonian manner.

TAXATION

The program of appeasement was, of course, self-interested; what the kings were interested in was the generation of income. Both Seleucus and Ptolemy employed a large number of forms of taxation, from percentages of agricultural produce (different percentages for different products) to a monetary tax on certain other products, and even forms of poll tax. Border tolls and harbor dues were imposed. Seleucus took tribute from the Greek cities within his realm and also imposed a tax on slaves. In short, the kings exploited every area they could in order to maximize their income. ⁷

In general, central government interfered less in the lives of Greeks and other nonnatives (who all came to be classified as “Greeks” in both Asia and Egypt, provided they had received a Greek education), and they were taxed at a lower rate. This policy naturally risked increasing resentment, but it encouraged hellenization, and so helped to ensure an efficient and educated bureaucracy. Privileged organizations such as temples received the same kind of preferential treatment, at least for a while—the hands-off approach taken by both Ptolemy and Seleucus was gradually diluted by later kings, who were able to bring the temp les more fully into the royal bureaucratic system, and even took to despoiling them for cash. ⁸One is reminded of the way fifteenth– and sixteenth-century European kings expanded their power at the expense of the nobles and the Church. It would have been inexpedient for the Ptolemies and Seleucids to have done so straightaway, just as, in England, the dissolution of the monasteries had to wait until the reign of Henry VIII.

Alexander the Great had looted, or liberated, something in the region of five thousand tons of bullion from the Achaemenid empire—comparable to the weight of all the gold stored in Fort Knox—and a great deal of this had been and continued to be turned into coin. The money was used for the whole range of royal expenses, from paying troops and building ships to founding cities and, especially in Alexandria, maintaining a fantastically splendid court. Alexandria was like a gigantic maw, fed by the produce of the Egyptian countryside and the toil of native laborers; already by the middle of the third century it had a population of two hundred thousand. The income generated by taxation was enormous, but so were the kings’ expenses, and in addition to taxes they raised money by selling surpluses abroad and by profiting from the trade in luxuries that passed through their kingdoms—spices from Arabia, gems from the east, gold and ivory from Sudan and from across the Sahara.

Both countries had been to a degree monetized before the coming of the Macedonians, but this process increased at a rapid rate. Along with founding cities, it was one of the main ways in which the kings asserted their kingship and marked the regime change. The natives had to learn to sell at least some of their goods for cash and to accept their wages in cash, because not all their taxes could be paid in kind—some were to be paid in coin. Likewise, when the European imperial nations carved up Africa in the nineteenth century, they introduced coinage to many places which had never used it before, and for the same reason: to facilitate the payment of tax in a form that could readily be used by the central authority.

In due course, both the Ptolemies and the Seleucids developed state-run banks, whose primary purpose was to receive cash payments of tax and thus to act as the equivalent of the royal granaries where tax in kind was stored. Seleucus even encouraged the payment of taxes on cereal crops in cash rather than kind. City building was an important plank in this program, since the surrounding rural population could sell their goods in town for cash, with which they could then pay taxes. Both Ptolemy and Seleucus minted gold and copper or bronze coinage, but silver was the preferred metal—rare enough for the coins to have value, but common enough for even people low down the economic scale to participate in the monetary economy.

The relatively small size of Egypt meant that Ptolemy could control revenue collection more than was possible for Seleucus. Cereal farmers, for instance, were given their seed grain every year from the royal granaries, and by accepting it they accepted the obligation to repay a fixed percentage the following year. Every year, once the flood had subsided, a land survey was undertaken to determine how much good soil the flood had left that year, so that the Ptolemies knew roughly how much income to expect and could plan ahead. A vast and complex bureaucracy was put in place, if it did not already exist, from the court down to villages, to process such information and ensure the regular collection of taxes. ⁹Within each nome or county, three separate officers, each at the head of his own pyramid of assistants, were responsible, respectively, for agricultural production, finances, and record keeping. All of them reported to the king’s finance minister in Alexandria, the dioik t s. Censuses were carried out to determine who was to pay the poll tax and at what rate. Capitation tax was initiated by Ptolemy and imitated by Seleucus to the best of his ability, since accurate censuses were impossible in his kingdom.

The efficiency of the system under the first two Ptolemies meant that Egypt was regularly the wealthiest of the Successor kingdoms. In Ptolemy I’s time, it had an estimated annual revenue of about fifteen thousand talents of silver (about nine billion dollars) and eight million artabas of wheat (perhaps 320 million liters, or 72,500,000 U.S. gallons). ¹⁰Seleucus took in more (about thirty thousand talents a year), but the natural defenses of Egypt meant that Ptolemy could spend less on the armed services, which, along with city building, were regularly the biggest drain on Seleucus’s finances. As a result, Seleucus’s capital city, Antioch, glittered less brilliantly than Alexandria; he had more urgent demands on his resources.

Another economic measure Ptolemy put in place before the end of the fourth century was to break away from the monetary standard that had been adopted, following Alexander’s lead, all over the empire. Egyptian coins were minted to a considerably lighter standard, and no other coinage was allowed within the realm. All foreign coin brought into Egypt by commerce was surrendered and reminted to the Ptolemaic standard. This somewhat isolated Egypt from the rest of the world, but it “established a royal monopoly of exchange which was extremely profitable to the treasury.” ¹¹Imports were thereby discouraged, while exports could be sold abroad on the higher standard and then recoined at the lower standard, making an extra profit. Egypt was short of silver anyway; one way and another, this was one of Ptolemy’s masterstrokes.

But there was a limit, even in bureaucratized Egypt, to the degree of central control that could be exercised, and more flexible systems were put in place that accommodated existing native institutions. Alexandria intervened more directly in the lives of the new settlements in the Fayyum depression and around Ptolemais than it did elsewhere, where taxation was locally organized, as it always had been. A lot of the complaints that one reads in the papyri from native farmers were complaints against petty Greek prejudice and local corruption, not against the king in Alexandria. ¹²As long as the taxes came in, Ptolemy was content to let things carry on in the time-honored fashion, or develop in a haphazard way.

The collection of taxes was also decentralized, in keeping with the usual Greek system—or rather, the Greek system was grafted, somewhat awkwardly, on to local systems. The contract for the year’s taxes in a specific product was put up for sale. Tax farmers, wealthy men who were able to post a large surety bond, and often operating as a consortium, underwrote a guarantee of the revenues for a year from a specific tax. If what they collected fell short of the sum bid, the farmers were bound to pay the difference, but if there was the expected surplus, they retained it. But in Egypt (and probably also in Asia), they were not responsible for the actual collection of the taxes in at least some non-Greek areas, which was left in the hands of local agents. In Egypt, the crown similarly licensed the sale of certain key products such as flax, beer, salt, and some oil crops. As with tax farming, this served to protect the Ptolemies from unforeseen variations in revenue.

The size of Seleucus’s kingdom meant that he could not exercise even the limited degree of control that Ptolemy sought. He inherited workable systems and let them continue. In Asia Minor and Syria, Antigonus had replaced the Persian satrapies with smaller, more manageable units that would not give their administrators great wealth, power, or pretensions. Seleucus was therefore able to exert more administrative control there than farther east, where he retained the old satrapal system of the Achaemenid empire. Satrapies and even cities were allowed to retain many of their own institutions. A city in Syria would not necessarily feel itself part of the same “empire” as a city on the borders of Afghanistan or one in Asia Minor.

Just as in Ptolemaic Egypt, a hierarchical pyramid spread out under Seleucus. The first layer was occupied by trusted family members, who were awarded special commands, such as oversight of all the eastern satrapies (Antiochus) or of western Asia Minor as a whole (Achaeus). The second layer was occupied by his Friends, men we could call his ministers of state, chiefly with broad financial responsibilities; for such an enormous empire, there were very few such dedicated ministers. The third layer was occupied by the military and financial administrators of satrapies and other regions and by the city authorities. Each of these layers of officers had considerable power within their domains, while being answerable to the next level above; each officer had a considerable network of junior officials under him. As in Egypt, the jobs of all officials within the hierarchy were chiefly to ensure security and the smooth collection and storage of taxes.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE . . .

The Janus nature of Seleucid Asia and Ptolemaic Egypt—the choice not to impose uniformity—meant that kings had to be adaptable in their official discourses. It depended on who they were talking to: should they be king, conqueror, or god? In Egypt, if they presented themselves as kings, should it be in the Macedonian style or as a pharaoh? In some parts of the empire, they presented themselves as promoters of hellenization and spoke of defending the empire against barbarians; other parts, however, were populated precisely by “barbarian” peoples, and so in these areas the kings came across as preservers of local traditions and guarantors of freedom.

The degree to which long-established local systems were taken over, and kept separate from the instruments reserved for the new elite, meant that, in this sense, the coming of the conquerors made little difference. The greatest impact was in the acceleration of processes that were already taking place: goods could travel farther and more easily (though, apart from luxuries and hard-to-acquire necessities, most trade remained fairly local relative to the size of Alexander’s former empire as a whole), peripheries were brought into a closer relationship with the center, monetization rapidly increased.

Societies remained essentially unchanged in their ancient agricultural forms, only with an additional layer of Macedonian and Greek practices. Hellenization and collaboration with the new rulers were encouraged, but not required, because the new rulers could easily get by with mere acquiescence from the majority of their subject populations. Both Ptolemy and Seleucus were necessarily conservative, since the last thing they needed was to arouse opposition. They supported and even reinvigorated local institutions, and made their subjects’ lives easier and more profitable overall. They were authoritarian rulers and could easily have been despots, but both of them chose the less risky course of appeasement, so that at the same time they could accelerate change in the area that concerned them most—improving the state’s profitability and taxations systems. Their measures worked, in the sense that there was no real trouble in either of their kingdoms during their reigns, or indeed for many years afterward. They managed the most difficult of tricks—a smooth transition to foreign occupation and rule.

Demetrius Resurgent

THE EARLY HELLENISTIC period is studded with extraordinary personalities, but none of their stories is more amazing than that of Demetrius the Besieger over the next few years. It simply should not have happened. After Ipsus, the Antigonid cause seemed hopeless: Antigonus was dead and Demetrius in flight, his forces few and scattered. But then, if anyone was going to stage a remarkable recovery, it would be Demetrius, the most energetic and flamboyant of the kings. Within seven years, he had seized the throne of Macedon and, even if unrealistically, revived his hopes of imperial power.

It may be that some of our amazement would be mitigated if we could fill more of the gaps in the record. The narrative of the historian Diodorus of Sicily has sustained us so far, but his account ends on the eve of the battle of Ipsus, and the rest of his history, as of all others of the period, is lost. We are condemned to try to piece the picture together out of incomplete and often disparate fragments—of literature, and of archaeological and epigraphic data. Informed guesswork is sometimes the way forward. At least in Demetrius’s case some of the problems are offset by the fact that he earned a Life in Plutarch’s collection. But Plutarch was a biographer, not a historian, and he chose as his subjects men who could serve as paradigms to emulate or avoid. For Plutarch, Demetrius was a model of wasted talent.

AFTER IPSUS

Ipsus was a critical battle, but only in a counterfactual sense: ifAntigonus had won, there would have been little to stop him achieving his ambition of ruling all Alexander’s empire, or at least of bequeathing that distinct possibility to his son. But the fact is that Antigonus lost, and so Ipsus was critical only in that it stopped him. In other respects, little changed. True, ever since Alexander’s death, warfare had been given its impetus because someone aspired to rule over the entire empire: Perdiccas at first, and then Antigonus. After Ipsus there was at least the possibility of less warfare and more consolidation, so that a balance of power could emerge, but that did not happen immediately. It is illusory to think that Antigonus’s death “marks the final passing of the idea of an empire reviving that of Alexander.” ¹The remaining Successors, and Demetrius above all, still entertained imperialist ambitions, as we shall see. They did not see Antigonus’s death as ending grand imperialist dreams; they saw it as creating space for theirdreams. But first they had some consolidating to do. All Ipsus did was slow things down for a while.

After the battle, “the victorious kings sliced up Antigonus’s domain like an enormous carcass, each taking his portion.” ²The prisoners of war, and the three thousand talents Antigonus had brought from Cilicia, were divided among the victorious kings, but it was by partitioning the Antigonid realms that they made really significant gains.

Lysimachus, who had commanded the coalition forces, was the biggest winner, since he was awarded all of Asia Minor up to the Halys River. Asia Minor was not a whole, however. There were independent cities such as Heraclea, and the princelings of Cappadocia had taken advantage of the constant warfare to gain a kind of independence. The countries on the south coast of the Black Sea, protected by the sea on one side and formidable mountains on the other, had never been fully under Macedonian control, if at all. Bithynia had always been independent, and it is testimony to the survival skills of its ruler, Zipoetes, that he held his territory for forty-seven years, from 327 until his death in 280. A noble Persian called Mithradates had recently established himself in Pontus. Both Bithynia and Pontus turned out to be successful kingdoms, which lasted until, respectively, 74 and 63 BCE. Paphlagonia too had attained a similar kind of independence, but Lysimachus soon brought it within his sway. All these dynasts valued their independence, but had to accept the fact that they were surrounded by bigger fish than themselves.

Essentially, Lysimachus now held, in addition to Thrace, pretty much the same territory that Antigonus had held in 318, before his expansion eastward. It had been the foundation of Antigonus’s power; it could do the same for Lysimachus too. He was only sixty, or a little over; he had some time. His most valuable new possessions were the Asiatic Greek cities, famed for their wealth (from both commerce and natural resources) and rich in manpower. After Ipsus, many cities were cowed into surrendering of their own accord, but Antigonid garrisons remained in Ephesus, Miletus, and elsewhere. No doubt many cities had built or repaired their walls over the past few years of peace in their land, in preparation for just such an emergency. Lysimachus’s first job was the subjugation of these cities, to consolidate his hold over Asia Minor and gain the ability to exploit its wealth. It took a few years of almost unremitting effort.

Cassander (who traveled from Macedon to Asia Minor to attend the post-battle conference) gained nothing, but Greece was left vulnerable by Demetrius’s departure and the collapse of the Hellenic League he had revived a couple of years earlier. Cassander clearly expected to recover Greece, and just as clearly expected no interference from the others while he did so. In other words, he expected recognition of his kingship of Macedon, even after eliminating the last Argeads to obtain it. He got this, but no more; after all, he had not been present on the battlefield. By the same token, Ptolemy officially gained nothing either, but there was no resentment against him on the part of the others for the meager part he had played in the final campaigns. He had done his bit by fighting off the Antigonid invasion of Egypt a few years earlier.

Cassander’s brother Pleistarchus, however, who had taken part in the battle, was given Cilicia as his personal fiefdom. This may have been at Cassander’s insistence, since he looked out for his family’s interests: he also had a dotty brother called Alexarchus, who was allowed to found a utopian community called Ouranopolis, “The Heavenly City,” on the Athos peninsula, within Macedon. He dressed as the sun, and his citizens were the “children of heaven.” Official documents were written in a complex, archaic form of Greek—”too difficult even for the Delphic oracle.” ³In an era of literary utopias and escapist literature, one eccentric tried to make it real.

Seleucus added Mesopotamia and Syria to his enormous kingdom. The stretch of Mediterranean coastline he gained was critically important, but his pleasure was not unalloyed. First, northern Syria was an undeveloped region. The small population was relatively prosperous, but almost entirely rural, with only one city (Antigonus’s half-built Antigonea) and a few scattered trading towns—and Seleucus had rivals to the north and south. Second, the cities on the coastline south of the Eleutherus were currently in Ptolemy’s hands (with the extra anomaly that Demetrius held Tyre and Sidon), and, having finally reestablished himself in the region, Ptolemy was disinclined to make way for their new owner. Trouble therefore brewed once again for Phoenicia, but postwar fatigue on both sides gave Ptolemy the chance to settle in. Seleucus made out that he refrained from attacking Ptolemy out of friendship, but everyone knew that the real reason was that he was in no position to challenge Ptolemy at sea.

The known world, as it emerged from the settlement, appeared relatively stable. All the kings had core territories and sons who seemed destined to become kings after them. Phoenicia, Greece, and the western seaboard of Asia Minor were the most likely trouble spots in the short term, as the kings sought to gain firm control of the areas they had been allotted. But such consolidation was not their only focus; they still looked out for opportunities for expansion. What emerged after Ipsus was not so much a balance of power as a balance of fear. They also reverted to the default Successor position of helping one’s neighbor only in the direst emergencies—and then only if significant gains could be made out of it.

DEMETRIUS’S SITUATION

Demetrius fled from the battlefield with several thousand men, chiefly members of the cavalry contingent he had been commanding. He holed up in Ephesus, where he had a garrison, and took stock of his position. His last remaining strength was his command of the sea. He had a substantial fleet. He held Cyprus, Tyre, and Sidon; most of the original Cycladic League and other strategic Aegean islands, including Euboea; a few places on the Hellespont and the Aegean coast; and the most important ports on the Greek mainland. He had sufficient funds to be able to retain his men and maintain his fleet. He could certainly still make a nuisance of himself at sea, even if he was a spent force on land. It was not in his nature to give up. He determined to stay in the game, the only game he had ever known in his harsh life. He felt he had enough strength at sea to survive by moving between his safe havens and by making raids as the opportunity presented itself. He decided, then, on a course of grand piracy.

Demetrius set sail from Ephesus for the city he had come to regard as the center of his kingdom, Athens. But, possibly prompted by Lysimachus (who was to woo Athens with benefactions over the next few years), the Athenians turned against him. Embarrassed by their earlier obsequiousness, they passed a resolution that they would from now on strive for neutrality. One of Demetrius’s wives, Deidameia, was still resident in the city, along with his eighteen-year-old son by Phila, Antigonus Gonatas, who was being educated in the university town; the Athenians bundled them off to Megara.

An Athenian delegation found Demetrius on Delos. He accepted their insulting decisions with good grace, or icy calm, and asked for the return of some warships that were docked in Piraeus. The Athenians agreed, in keeping with their posture of neutrality. Demetrius settled the members of his family in garrisoned Corinth, a more secure bolt-hole than Megara. Then he sailed to Cilicia, where he recovered other family members, who were made safe on Cyprus. Then he waited. One thing he had going for him was the near certainty that the post-Ipsus rapport between his enemies would not last.

While he waited, he continued to provoke Lysimachus. In 300 or 299 he sent a sizable raiding party to the Thracian Chersonese. It was a nasty little campaign, in the course of which Lysimachus killed thousands of his own men to quell a mutiny after Demetrius captured their baggage train. ⁴Not one of Lysimachus’s former coalition partners raised a finger to help him.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SELEUCIS

Seleucus’s first priority after Ipsus was to secure northern Syria. Within a few years—a remarkably few years—he had demolished Antigonea and started to build five major cities, which were named, in typical Macedonian fashion, after himself and members of his family. The “Syrian tetrapolis” consisted of Antioch with its port of Seleucia Pieria, and Apamea with its port of Laodicea; and the fifth foundation, Seleucia-on-the-Euphrates (also known as Zeugma), controlled the main Euphrates crossing. The cities were ringed with protective forts and were designed with security in mind: each of them had a strong acropolis, which was not entirely surrounded by the rest of the city, so that in an emergency the garrison could still communicate directly with the outside world. The area as a whole was called Seleucis and was to be the heart of his kingdom, both secure and splendid. ⁵

Farther east, another Seleucia had already been started, not far north of Babylon. The ancient city had been badly damaged in the war of 311–309 and never fully recovered. Seleucia-on-the-Tigris was designed to supplement and partially replace Babylon as the center for trade routes from the east—for overland caravans from the Hindu Kush, or cargo that was offloaded at the head of the Persian Gulf. Babylon, on the Euphrates, was reduced to a lesser role and became more parochial, but it retained one of the most important Seleucid treasuries. Seleucia flourished, however, and within a short space of time the coastline of the Persian Gulf had become developed and important enough to the Seleucid economy that it became a satrapy in its own right. ⁶

These foundations served a number of functions. First, as with all the foundations of Alexander the Great and his Successors, they pleased the native populations (mostly nomads and peasant farmers) by increasing land use and stimulating the local economy. Second, they pleased the local Greek and Macedonian settlers, many of whom (in Syria, at any rate) had been brought in by Antigonus, and so might have been inclined toward the Antigonid cause. Third, they attracted new settlers, to develop the economy and strengthen the army. Fourth, they had military and long-distance commercial functions as ports, on roads or river crossings, or near borders. In short, within the space of a few years Seleucus succeeded in developing the rich potential of the farmland of northern Syria and turning it into a center of commerce and culture. The magnitude of the project and the speed of its execution constituted regal display on an unprecedented scale.

Seleucis was also a front line against southern Syria, a reminder to Ptolemy that, sooner or later, an attempt would be made to drive him out of his illegally held Phoenician ports. No fewer than six wars were fought over the region between 274 and 168, when some kind of balance was imposed by the Romans, who were by then the power brokers throughout the Mediterranean.

MARRIAGE ALLIANCES

Ptolemy knew that his claim to southern Syria was provocative. Rifts began to appear in the coalition that had defeated Antigonus when in 300, in the face of saber rattling from his former friend Seleucus, Ptolemy approached Lysimachus for an alliance. Lysimachus was happy to agree. The main attraction for him was Ptolemy’s navy, which he needed to facilitate his takeover of Demetrius’s coastal possessions within Asia Minor, and generally to take on Demetrius in the Aegean. The pact was sealed by Lysimachus’s taking Ptolemy’s daughter Arsinoe as his wife. It would prove to be a fateful marriage, not least because of Arsinoe’s ruthless ambition. ⁷