READING HALL

THE DOORSOF WISDOM

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

CHAPTER X.

THE FIRST WAR WITH EGYPT

The death of Pyrrhus left the Peloponnese in a very disturbed state. Nearly every city was divided against itself; if one party had declared for Pyrrhus, the other had naturally stood by Antigonus. This can be seen most clearly in the case of Argos and Elis; but it must also be true of many other towns, notably of Megalopolis, to which Pyrrhus had been admitted by his partisans. According to the tradition, those towns which had not actually joined Antigonus were in a state of civil war; and there is no need to disbelieve this. The state of parties in nearly every city was a reflection of that which obtained at Athens; that is to say, the old labels of oligarch and democrat had been replaced by two new parties, the friends   and the friends of ‘Egypt’, and the latter had welcomed Pyrrhus. Now Pyrrhus was dead and Egypt had no help to give them; and the triumphant partisans of Macedonia were not likely to deal any too gently with their rivals. Greek faction-fights were not as a rule waged in kid gloves.

There was no question as to who was master of the situation. Antigonus was on the spot, without a rival, and with a victorious army. Egypt had not helped her friends in the hour of trial—indeed it would have been difficult for Egypt to know what to do, with Pyrrhus and Sparta fighting each other—and Egypt had no claim to any voice in a settlement, save as the ally of Sparta. And Sparta, though her deep-seated hostility to Macedonia was not of course diminished one whit by the fortuitous occurrence of their recent cooperation, could not for the moment do otherwise than assent to such measures as Antigonus in reason might take; she could not in decency quarrel at once with the man who had just rescued her from Pyrrhus. 

It has been well said that, putting Aetolia aside, the one weighty question of politics in the Greece of this epoch was the question, where the influence of Egypt ended and that of Macedonia began. This question, on Pyrrhus’ death, had suddenly become clear-cut. Antigonus had hitherto had to reckon with the everpresent threat of Pyrrhus; now that Pyrrhus was dead and Epirus no longer dangerous, he could see what had lain behind, the far more dangerous threat of Egypt. Egypt had emerged stronger than before from her war with Antiochus, though for the moment she had suffered a severe check through the defection of Pyrrhus from her interest, a defection that had left Antigonus arbiter of the Peloponnese. Sparta indeed was bound to Egypt’s interest hand and foot, if only by her hostility to Macedonia, and Egypt could strike at Antigonus through Sparta as and when she would; but at present this was out of the question. Sparta could not at once make war on her preserver; Egypt could not touch Antigonus’ victorious land-army directly; the sea-power could do nothing for the moment, in face of the overthrow of her friends in the different cities, but watch, wait and work. The difference, however, between the two great Powers had now definitely come out into the open; Egypt claimed the crown of Macedonia, Macedonia was soon to be brusquely reminded that she had once had, and lost, the rule of the sea. Everything that was to happen in Greece, Aetolia apart, for the next twenty-six years was to be affected by this rivalry.

Antigonus was now face to face with the question of his policy towards Greece. In the circumstances he could probably have recovered parts of it without any great difficulty; for in many of the towns he possessed a strong, even a dominant, party devoted to his interests, as the event was to show. Large parts of it had once belonged, first to his father Demetrios, and then to himself; would he attempt to recover them? How would he deal with those who had helped Pyrrhus? Would he take and garrison what he could and rule by the strong hand, as he had done before he became king of Macedonia, or would he revive Demetrios’ discredited policy of a union of hearts? 

Antigonus’ first aim was a prosaic one; he wished to be free to return to Macedonia, where everything that he had already done was waiting to be done over again. The unstable base of his power there made any schemes of new conquest absolutely impossible, even had he desired such. He did not desire to be king of Greece; he was first and foremost king of Macedonia. Had he desired acquisitions in Greece, he could have made them now; and the fact that he held his hand shows that he held it deliberately. His problem was a different one; how to keep Greece neutralized, keep it from actual interference with his own kingdom and policy, without imposing a strain on the finances and forces of Macedonia which Macedonia at present could not bear.

The first thing was to consider what was the minimum that was vital to Macedonia. Antigonus’ conception of his sphere has already been noticed. Peloponnese, except Corinth, was outside the sphere: but the war had shown once more that the importance of Corinth could not be overestimated. Consequently Corinth and its communications northward must be safeguarded fin every way; apart from this, the Peloponnesian question resolved itself merely into keeping a sufficient check on Sparta, and through Sparta upon Egypt. The natural checks on Sparta to the northward were Argos and Megalopolis. Both these large cities were divided; each contained a strong Macedonian party, but each had opened her gates to Pyrrhus. To take and garrison them was not at all what Antigonus desire ; he was not yet strong enough to spare too many garrisons, even if he had wished to. It is probable, too, that he had long since mastered the fact that a city garrisoned against its will was no source of strength to him, though it might be a source of weakness to the enemy. An alternative was to establish his own party in office in each town; but such a government might be overthrown, and would almost certainly be overthrown at any moment of crisis just when he wanted it. What applied to these two cities applied also to the smaller ones that had once been under Macedonian rule.

Antigonus’ solution as regards the Peloponnese was, not merely to establish his own party in power in such of the cities as were necessary to him, but to aid the leading man of that party to rule the city as a ‘tyrant’, that is to say, an unconstitutional ruler, who maintained his power by means of mercenaries, acted in Antigonus’ interest, and was assured of Antigonus’ support. Such a scheme would in effect enable Antigonus to garrison the cities without having to bear the cost, and would ensure stability and continuity. The tyrant would have the support of the pro-Macedonian faction; he could hold in check the patriotic or democratic opposition, which would naturally look to Egypt for help, and the very fact of this opposition would keep him, from motives of self­preservation, faithful to Antigonus’ interest. It may be that Antigonus had in his mind Alexander’s system of governing the lands outside his sphere—that is to say, to the east of the Indus—by means of protected native rulers; but there was a good deal of difference between hereditary kings of Indian races, like Taxiles and Poros, and tyrants in Greek cities.

That Antigonus supported a certain number of tyrants, and found them useful allies, is undoubted. That he himself actually installed them, or was responsible for their seizure of power, is not always clear. We must bear steadily in mind that it is just at this point of Antigonus’ history that we lose the guidance of Hieronymus, who, even at third hand, has kept tradition in a sound path; and that henceforth we depend on sources of information avowedly hostile, often bitterly hostile, to the Macedonian king. The one contemporary document, the decree moved by Chremonides, a document whose business it is to represent Antigonus in the worst possible light, says in general terms that he wronged and broke treaty with the cities and tried to subvert their laws and their ancestral constitutions; but it does not mention the establishment of tyrants. A reference to ‘ancestral constitutions’, however, very often imports something to do with a tyranny, but the phrase need not mean more than a general support of tyrants. In Polybius dramatized view of Antigonid policy, the Aetolian Chlaineas, who plays the devil’s advocate, is allowed to lay great stress on Antigonus’ policy of ‘planting’ tyrants, but is also allowed to exaggerate in grotesque fashion. Polybius’ own verdict is given elsewhere, more soberly, but almost in the Aetolian’s words; it is, however, qualified by ‘it is said that’; Polybius was clearly not satisfied with the evidence on the matter. Lastly, Trogus is plain and emphatic, but cannot carry things further than Polybius does.

The actual number of tyrants known is not great, and only one can be dated with certainty to the years following the death of Pyrrhus, though it is clearly implied that it was at this time that Antigonus originated the system. Aristotimos of Elis was leader of the party in Elis which was opposed to the friends of Pyrrhus, and, though he looked to Krateros for aid when once in power, accounts differ as to whether he was installed by Antigonus or whether he himself seized the tyranny in the ordinary way. The tyrant Abantidas in Sicyon did not establish himself there till about 264, eight years after Pyrrhus’ death, and there is no evidence whatever that he was a partisan of Antigonus. In any case the fact that Antigonus acquiesced in the continued independence of the little Sicyonian democracy, which had been established in 274 or thereabouts, is eloquent of the fact that he sought no conquests in the Peloponnese, and was not stabilising tyrants for amusement; Sicyon was not dangerous to him and was not engaged in civil war, and he left the town alone. One or two tyrants of smaller cities, mentioned at a later time, may conceivably be the successors of tyrants set up by Antigonus, but this is quite uncertain. The two towns that really matter are Megalopolis and Argos. How and when Aristodemos of Megalopolis and Aristomachos of Argos came by their power is unknown; there are difficulties alike in the way of supposing that they did, or that they did not, establish themselves in the years immediately following Pyrrhus’ death. Certainly Aristodemos, if not already in power by the time of the battle of Corinth, was ruling at Megalopolis shortly after that event. Aristotimos of Elis turned out to be abominably cruel, and was assassinated after five months of power; even so, it is clear that his misdeeds have lost nothing in the telling. But Aristomachos and Aristodemos were capable rulers. The latter was called ‘the Good’; while Aristomachos founded a secure dynasty, which had a history almost unique among the houses of tyrants; for after the Argives had twice refused to aid the Achaean League to expel his elder son Aristippus, when success would have been certain, his younger son, another Aristomachos, who succeeded his brother, voluntarily laid down his power and became elected general of the League instead. In what light the dynasty was regarded at Argos can be deduced from the interesting fact that inscriptions relating to it have survived ; it was indeed a rare event for a tyrant’s monuments to outlast his rule.

It is evident then that later writers indulged in a good deal of general exaggeration, and are not to be too credulously followed; such things, for instance, are found as the commander of a Macedonian garrison, or even the stalwart champion of a democracy, being spoken of as ‘tyrants’. The only cities in which, as far as is known, Antigonus supported his system were those which were, absolutely necessary to him, if he was to safeguard the position of Macedonia as a great power; Argos and Megalopolis as checks on Sparta, Elis, which had aided Pyrrhus, as some check on a disaffected Aetolia. Further than this he made no attempt to go. He himself was certainly not actuated by any tyrannical feelings. He acquiesced in the revolt and federation of the little towns of Achaea, as he had already acquiesced in the revolt and independence of Boeotia; Messene and Sicyon he left alone as strictly as he left the communities of Northern Greece. Mere conquest in Greece was not a thing which he ever contemplated or desired; this is written plain on every page of his history.

At the same time, though greatly exaggerated, the accusation that he installed tyrants may, the accusation that he supported tyrants does, correspond to a fact. That fact excited much feeling throughout Greece; and it will be as well to consider for a moment what it means. There are a good many ways of looking at it. First, there is the Macedonian view, which was probably that of Antigonus. From this standpoint, the sole question was the benefit of Macedonia. For the good of the Greek cities, Antigonus was (he might have said) not responsible; they were not his; if they all cared to combine, they could drive him out of Greece at any moment; if they did not, it was their affair. Moreover, they had objected to his garrisons, and to his tribute ; they were now free from both garrisons and tribute.

Secondly, there is the Greek view. It was no gain to exchange a responsible garrison-commander and a fixed tribute for an irresponsible and perhaps cruel tyrant, who could plunder as he wished: it was an unjustifiable and wicked interference with the rights and liberties of a free city­state and its members. To this we shall return.

Lastly, there is our own view, the point of view of modern morality. Let it be assumed that private morality does apply in the sphere of government: and let it further be assumed that we may, if we please, apply our own moral standards to the men of 2,000 years ago—a large assumption. Then the truth is, that Antigonus was doing at (say) Argos on a large scale exactly what every citizen of Argos did all his life on a small scale, and that both were very reprehensible people. A democratic Argive would have put it, that the king had enslaved the Argives; but the democratic Argive himself owned slaves, and was a member of a community and a civilization whose brilliance was entirely based on, and due to, slave labour. That, so far as is known, he generally treated his slaves well is beside the point; so far as is known, Aristomachos the tyrant treated Argos well. The point is, that the moment we introduce our own moral standard, the whole of Greek ‘freedom’ becomes a myth. There was no such thing as a free Greek city; liberty was the prerogative of certain people only; a large part of the population of the peninsula were slaves. If it is to be granted to Polybius’ Chlaineas that Antigonus was bound to take thought for independent Greek cities, that he was in fact his brother’s keeper, then the same unfulfilled obligation would clearly lie on every slave-owning democrat in Greece.

This being so, it may look at first sight as if, both parties being tarred with the same brush, there was nothing to do but to consider the question of expediency; that is to say, that the Macedonian view is the right one, and that the only question is, Did the policy pay from the point of view of Antigonus’ kingdom of Macedonia? But this will hardly do. It was, it is true, quite illogical that a slave-owner should object to a tyrant. It was, it is true, quite abominable that a free democracy should, as often happened, sell the population of another free city for slaves, or that a people rejoicing at its delivery from the cruelty of a tyrant should, as happened, proceed to treat the tyrant’s harmless women-folk with equal cruelty. The stern Hebrew lawgiver, who declared that the sins of the fathers should be visited on the children, at least assigned the visitation to his God; the Greek democrat often enough took it into his own hand.

But for all this, we are bound to take into consideration the Greek view. We are bound, it would seem, to take Greek ‘freedom’ as we find it, according to the standard of the time, and not apply to the men of the time a standard which they had no means of knowing or reaching. And the men of the time did not yet see clearly that domestic slavery and political slavery, which they called tyranny, were alike parts of one evil. Hence the paradox, that while lie Greek ever raised his voice against slavery in the abstract, hardly any Greek ever doubted that it was a meritorious act to assassinate a tyrant. But in spite of this, the feeling of the ordinary Greek citizen toward tyrants in the third century was no doubt being gradually strengthened by the fact that, though no one protested against slavery, there was a better feeling growing up with regard to the treatment of the slave; his loss of freedom, it was said, should render him a subject for compassion rather than blows : and the number of manumissions was steadily growing. All this must, it seems, have reacted on the sentiment of the ordinary citizen toward a tyrant, a man who, he would say, had enslaved himself and his friends. There is no need to multiply well-known instances of that sentiment; but it may be useful to quote some almost contemporary cases in Greek law. At Eresos an old statute provided that a tyrant if taken was to be tried on the capital charge, and his descendants banished for ever; it is known that under this law two tyrants at least were condemned to death, and that both Alexander and Antigonus I on appeal allowed the city to enforce its law against the banished descendants of former tyrants who desired to return. Again, at Ilion, a law passed about the beginning of the third century provided beforehand what honours were to be paid to anyone who should thereafter assassinate any tyrant of the city. In the case of a tyrant, killing was indeed no murder. Whatever then his attitude toward others’ freedom, the ordinary Greek citizen had got to the length of a passionate desire for his own. The feeling was far indeed from the modern one; it sometimes embraced only the circle of the subject’s fellow­citizens; at best, it extended only to the citizens of other Greek cities, men of equal standing with himself. But everything must have a beginning; and, such as it was, this was one of the beginnings of the idea of liberty, and, as such, is to be recognized as one of the highest expressions of the moral standard of the times, even though it worked, as it often did work, by the most unworthy means.

Consequently Antigonus’ policy deliberately fell short of the highest standard of the time. Doubtless he knew this perfectly; very likely he held a view which, whether it be right or whether it be wrong, has always commanded a large, following, the view that the business of a states­man is not morality, but the good of his country. It is fair to suppose that he saw no practical alternative, and, in adopting the policy of expediency, was content to take the usual risks of such a policy. Sentiment had been tried by Demetrios, and failed; to garrison the cities he was not strong enough; a third course, to retire altogether from the Peloponnese, would have been absolutely inconsistent with his duty to Macedonia as he understood it; it would only have given Egypt a free hand, and produced a worse war than the Chremonidean. He therefore allowed the end to justify the means; that is to say, he did evil that good might come of it. What came of it the sequel will show.

Emphasis has been laid here upon the fact that Antigonus’ policy was one of expediency’ only, because a different view has found large acceptance. According to this view, Antigonus was prompted to set up a system of tyrants by his Stoic sympathies and training; he thought he was setting up in this or that city the rule of the One Wise Man. This view seems to be peculiarly wide of the truth; a Stoic would never for an instant have confused the rule of king and tyrant, the legitimate monarch of willing, and the unconstitutional monarch of unwilling, subjects. Plato and Aristotle indeed, though outwardly emphasizing the distinction between king and tyrant, had gone near to saying that the true monarch, when he came, would (save for his willing subjects) be merely a glorious tyrant; he would transcend all laws, which would merely be hindrances and shackles upon him. But since then the world had seen Aristotle’s dream of the ‘god among men’ realized in the universal divine kingship of Alexander; and the Stoics, however much their speculations owed to Alexander’s career, were no longer inclined to put the true monarch above all law; he was rather to be the interpreter of law, not indeed of this or that code, but of the divine law immanent in the universe and binding on all men alike. And when the Stoic brought his speculations down to earth, nowhere do we find the distinction between the true king and the tyrant drawn more sharply, or with more just understanding of realities, than in one of the surviving fragments of Stoic literature. Throughout history Stoics fought against the ‘tyrant’ whenever they found one. And even in the case of that other third-century monarch whom they trained, Cleomenes III of Sparta, though he brought about a revolution and was called a tyrant by his enemies, a Stoic if questioned would undoubtedly have said that, on the contrary, he had overthrown a tyranny, a condition of things in conflict with the ‘common law ’; and can it be said that he would be wrong?

The next question for Antigonus’ consideration was the communications of Corinth. Apparently this was not taken in hand till 270, a proof that Antigonus’ first care had to be Macedonia, where he must have spent the year 271. But in 270 he recovered Euboea, and again placed it under Krateros. It was perhaps at this time that he occupied Megara, though this is uncertain. He had now all of Greece that he wanted; a chain of territory, or rather of fortresses, binding Corinth to Demetrias.

The brief independence of Eretria was marred by a sad incident. Menedemos was suspected (we hardly need to be told, falsely) of a desire to betray the city to his friend the king, and was sent into banishment. He went first to Oropos, and in the temple of Amphiaraos awaited events; there he was seen by Hierokles, Antigonus’ general in Piraeus, who thought to please the exile by an account of how Antigonus had taken the town. Menedemos’ savage rebuke to him showed that the old man’s heart was still with the city that he had done so much to render illustrious; and it is said that he now returned secretly, took his wife and daughters, and went to Antigonus to plead for his country’s freedom. Antigonus himself would have given it, even with the knowledge that it must probably mean another war; Persaios dissuaded him. Menedemos died soon after at Antigonus’ court; it is said that he fell into deep dejection, and no longer cared to live.

In Northern Greece the only question that needed attention was Aetolia. Antigonus had sought no compensation, territorial or otherwise, from Epirus for Pyrrhus’ attack on him; he had sent home Helenos and his Epirots, and left the country intact to Pyrrhus’ son and successor Alexander; presumably he made peace with him on the basis of each country keeping what it had prior to 274. This generous treatment meant that he desired a friendly Epirus as neighbour. Alexander had a war on his hands forthwith with the Illyrian king Mitylus, who doubtless aimed at recovering the territory taken from Illyria by Pyrrhus; but Mitylus was presently defeated, and Alexander succeeded in keeping together his much shaken kingdom.

Aetolia, however, had definitely favoured Pyrrhus, and she had also given shelter to the Eleans exiled by Aristotimos, whose rule was marked by great cruelty. With Aetolian help the exiles returned, and fortified a post in the country; a conspiracy was formed against Aristotimos; he was struck down by one Kylon, after a rule of five months; Krateros came up from Corinth too late to aid him. The Aetolians erected a statue at Olympia to Kylon, and the Delphians afterwards passed a decree in his honour. But the populace of Elis gave a signal illustration of how a democracy can vie even with the worst of tyrants; as a great favour, and at the request of a woman, they allowed the tyrant’s two young daughters to hang themselves, in lieu of worse. The pathetic narrative of the girls’ death is told by the same writer who relates the cruelties of their father; both stories must stand or fall together.

Antigonus saw that, if he would have peace in the north, as he desired, he must come to an arrangement with Aetolia, the one Power strong enough to stand in complete independence even of Egypt. The subject is excessively obscure, in the absence of any inscriptions that might throw light on the details; but it can be stated with confidence, from subsequent events, that Antigonus thought that peace was worth some concessions, and that an arrangement mas come to. The main lines of it can be tentatively gathered. What was past was to be past. Pyrrhus was dead and Antigonus alive, and there was room enough in the North for both Aetolia and Macedonia without either troubling the other. Antigonus sought nothing from the states of Northern Greece, which he regarded as outside his sphere; and probably he gave Aetolia a free hand, so far as he was concerned, to bring them into her League at her pleasure, while he treated Aetolia’s control of the Amphictyonic body as a religious matter than a political matter, and not one for interference. Aetolia in fact obtained from Macedonia the, recognition she wanted ; henceforward (leaving Epirus aside) there are two leading and rival powers north of the Isthmus of Corinth. In return, Aetolia promised neutrality. It sounds little, but it sufficed. Antigonus formally abandoned that which he had never had any intention of trying to possess, in return for an undertaking by Aetolia never to act against him; let her do what she wished to emphasize her neutrality before the world, but she must not join with Macedonia’s enemies, that is to say, with Sparta or Egypt. And so long as Antigonus lived, Aetolia’s undertaking was observed.

It will be seen from this brief review that Antigonus’ interests in Greece (Athens apart) now fell into two groups; first, those states of the Peloponnese   friendly to him; and secondly, a group of fortresses with territory stretching northward from Corinth towards Demetrias, the most important being Corinth, Piraeus, Chalcis. These fortresses held Athens in their arms, so to speak, as a glance at a map shows ; and the connecting knot of both groups was Corinth. Outside these two groups, Greece was free and was not interfered with. Mainland communication between Corinth and Demetrias there was none; Boeotia, Locris, part of Aetolia all intervened; the only route was by sea, or through Euboea. Right along the sea route, from Cape Sounion to the mouth of the Gulf of Pagasai, on which stood Demetrias, stretched the long island of Euboea, protecting and landlocking it. The interdependence of the whole system is clearly shown on the map; how Corinth knots up both groups, how Chalcis commands the route to Corinth, and how the two together dominate Athens, now that she has lost Piraeus.

A subject that unfortunately very obscure is Antigonus’s dealings with Athens after the war. The nationalist government was still in power in 271; Athens still kept her place in the Amphictyonic council, and in the year 271/70 the Athenians, on the motion of Demochares’ son Laches, passed a decree in honour of Demochares, who had recently died. Though the decree was carefully worded, so as not to allude either to Demetrios or to Antigonus, or even to Macedonia, its import is obvious : honours for the good democrat, who had disdained to serve under any oligarchic (i.e. pro-Macedonian) government, who had borne exile for his opinions, and who had obtained money from all Demetrios’ enemies, Lysimachus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus’ son-in-law Antipatros, every hearer knowing well what that money had been used for: all this shows that the party in power, while anxious to preserve neutrality and avoid hostility to Antigonus, was not pro-Macedonian. But in 270 Athens vanishes from the Amphictyonic lists; and as this is the year in which Antigonus was campaigning in the neighbourhood and recovering Euboea, we must suppose that it was in this year that the government was overthrown once more, the pro-Macedonians returned to power, and Antigonus’ vague suzerainty was again recognized. Doubtless the change came about peaceably; the overthrown government had merely sought neutrality and had not acted against Antigonus; with the restoration of the pro­Macedonians to power Athens merely returned to the position of the favoured city which she had held from 277 to 274.

One event of the first importance marks the year 270; in July died Arsinoe. She had enjoyed her power for four years only; but the impress which she gave to Egyptian policy lasted long after her death. Had she lived, no doubt the Chremonidean war would have been fought sooner, and fought with more energy by Egypt, even as the first war with Syria had been fought; but the events of 272 had for the time tied the hands of Sparta, and of Egypt through Sparta; and before it was again possible to force events Arsinoe was dead. She was deified as the goddess Philadelphus, she who loves her brother; by a strange chance the name, which that brother never bore either in life or after death, became attached to him, and he is universally known as Ptolemy Philadelphus. He carried out one of Arsinoe’s wishes shortly after her death; she had been more than titular queen, she had been co-ruler, and Ptolemy replaced her, so far as possible, by promoting her son by Lysimachus, Ptolemaios, whom he had adopted, to be co-ruler of the empire with himself in her place.

One of the things on which Arsinoe had left the distinct mark of her strenuous personality was Egypt’s rule of the sea. Philokles and his contemporary nesiarch, Bacchon of Boeotia, were apparently dead; and both Philokles’ successor, Kallikrates, son of Boiskos, and Bacchon’s successor, Hermias, displayed much devotion to the queen. It is possible that their appointments were due to her, more especially as Kallikrates came from Samos and Hermias (probably) from Halicarnassus, both formerly possessions of Lysimachus; but, as regards Kallikrates anyhow, this is far from certain. It is certain, however, that if he had once been an adherent of the other Arsinoe, the first wife of Ptolemy II, he had known how to transfer his worship to the rising sun. He dedicated statues of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe at Olympia; and he built for her worship, as Aphrodite Zephyritis, a temple at Zephyrion, which he only completed after her death. Arsinoe herself took an interest in Delos; there was erected on the island, either by her or in her honour, a building called the Philadelpheion, which contained her picture; and it was no doubt at her request that Callimachus wrote his Hymn to Delos, to be sung at the federal Ptolemaieia, with its allusion to the events of 274 and its curious attempt to show that Ptolemy had borne his part in the contest against the Gauls no less bravely than Antigonus or anyone else. The meaning of the stones, of which so many have been found in the Islands, bearing simply the words ‘Of Arsinoe Philadelphus’, is not known; neither is it known if Arsinoe had any part in what was to be the one lasting monument of Egypt’s sea-power, the book of the chief steersman Timosthenes of Rhodes ‘On Harbours’, which filled, for the sailors of the third century, the place taken today by the Mediterranean Pilot and the charts issued by the British Admiralty. But it is significant that one of the best harbours in the Aegean, which the Egyptian fleet was to use as its base in the Chremonidean war, was re-christened by her name, as was the naval post which Egypt was to seize later in the Argolid. What she would have done had she lived can only be guessed; but what the men who served her thought, we know. After her death the nesiarch Hermias made a vase foundation on Delos, of the usual type, which came to be known as the Philadelpheia. But the vases did not bear the customary inscription. Along with the usual dedication to the gods of Delos, Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, appears a dedication to two other deities, Ptolemy the king and Arsinoe Philadelphus; and while Ptolemy’s name comes last in the inscription, Arsinoe’s comes first of all, taking precedence even of Apollo himself.

Here, with the year 270, the curtain falls not to rise again till the year 266. The events of the three intervening years are in our tradition almost a blank. Antigonus was hard at work consolidating his power in Macedonia, and trying to get the country on to a sound footing, work that was this time to end in success; he also came periodically to Athens, where his half-brother, Demetrios the Fair, son of Demetrios the Besieger and Ptolemais, was studying philosophy under Arkesilaos,  just as his son Halcyoneus was doing at Pella under Persaios. Ptolemy in the meantime was quietly preparing to carry out Arsinoe’s policy. He had now a formal alliance with Sparta; and Sparta was reforming the old Peloponnesian League; she had already by 266 found a number of allies, Elis, the Achaean League, Tegea, Mantineia, Orchomenos, Phigaleia and Kaphyai—that is to say, practically the whole of Arcadia except Megalopolis—and some of the Cretan cities. Megalopolis and the Argolid held to Antigonus; Messene was able, as so often to maintain complete neutrality, and possibly Sicyon also; but the League embraced the larger part of the Peloponnese, and, so far as the Peloponnese alone was concerned, a great superiority in force. Discontent with Antigonus’ system, and the natural Greek hatred of a tyrant, probably had a good deal to do with bringing Sparta recruits.

That the initiative in the ensuing war came from Egypt is fairly plainly shown in Chremonides’ decree. But though Egypt has been desirous of attacking Antigonus, she favoured the plan of attacking him by deputy; she proposed that others should do the actual fighting. She had secured as much of the Peloponnese for her ]purpose as she could hope to do; she now attempted to induce some of the other states of Greece to join. It is possible that she had some success; Histiaia in Euboea, for instance, is found about 266/5 exercising an Amphictyonic vote, which can best be explained by a revolution from Antigonus; and it does not follow that no other cities joined in the war beyond those which Chremonides in 266 enumerated as already in the Spartan League. But the great triumph was the winning over of Athens. At some time prior to 266 a Ptolemaic embassy visited the city. All that is known about it is that someone collected a number of philosophers to meet the envoys at dinner, and that Zeno, who was among them, refused to talk : and when the envoys asked him what they were to say about him to their king, he bade them tell him that there was one man in Athens who knew how to hold his tongue. It needs no guessing to see what Egyptian envoys were there for, or what sort of talk passed round at that dinner. Zeno adhered inflexibly to his rule of political neutrality; but the envoys must have received the promise of the Athenian nationalists to join the coalition.

In the autumn of 266 we emerge again for a moment—the last for years—into the full blaze of historical daylight. The pro-Macedonian government in Athens has fallen, and the revolution has brought to the helm not merely the nationalist party but the extreme wing of it. The more moderate men who had responsible for the policy of neutrality of 273-271 were either not in office or overborne by more impetuous colleagues. Athens has formally entered into an alliance with Egypt; and the ekklesia, perhaps on the motion of Chremonides has passed a decree to invite the rest of Greece to follow the same policy.

The guiding men of the new movement at Athens were Chremonides, son of Eteocles of the deme Aithalidai, and his brother Glaukon. Glaukon had been one of the men of the nationalist government of 288-281, and had fought against Antigonus; he was apparently older than his brother, and had held a number of offices, as already mentioned. More recently Delphi had decreed him the usual honours; his services to her must have been connected, either with the events following the retreat of the Gauls, or with the time of Pyrrhus’ invasion, when Athens had for a while cultivated the goodwill of Delphi and Aetolia. But, of the two, Chremonides was the leader. He seems to have been noted for his personal beauty; he was perhaps a pupil of Zeno; he was at any rate, like his opponent Antigonus, a friend of both Zeno and Kleanthes. In him appears, for the first time, the phenomenon afterwards so common at Rome; how the Stoic teaching, with its insistence alike on true kingship and on the importance of the individual, impelled men to resist whomsoever they considered a tyrant.

On the ninth day of Metageitnion 266—about the beginning of September—Chremonides moved the declaration of war against Antigonus. The preamble of the resolution recited that in olden times Athens and Sparta had fought many a noble fight together against the invader who attempted to enslave the cities of Hellas, winning glory for themselves and freedom for the rest of Greece; that the same evil days had again come upon Greece by the hands of men who were attempting to destroy the law and the ancestral constitution of each city; that King Ptolemy, following the policy of his father and of his sister, was openly showing an earnest resolve to free Greece; that the Athenians, having allied themselves with him, had passed a decree to call upon the rest of Greece to join in the same policy; and that the Spartans, the friends and allies of King Ptolemy, had passed a decree that they and their Peloponnesian allies (whose names are set forth) should be the allies of Athens, and had sent envoys to Athens to ratify the treaty of alliance. It was then formally decreed that there should be an alliance between Athens on the one hand and Sparta with her allies on the other, in order that all Greeks might be of one mind together, and might with a good courage fight shoulder to shoulder with King Ptolemy and with each other against those who had wronged and broken faith with their cities, and so save Hellas.

It is a noble document, a fitting prelude to the last great struggle entered on by Athens for the liberties of herself and of Greece. If Athens were to fall, the gods gave it to her to fall with all honour. But the very words of the decree itself show the hopelessness of the struggle, apart from the Egyptian alliance ; the curse of the Greek race was on this war, as on every Greek struggle against Macedonia; only the merest fraction of them could ever unite. The reference to Xerxes, who had been beaten by Athens and Sparta and their friends, in despite of the medizing states of Northern and Central Greece, shows how clearly this was present to the mind of Chremonides. There had been four chief military Powers in Greece. Athens and Boeotia had fought alone at Chaeronea, while Sparta and Aetolia had held aloof; the presence of either might have altered the world’s history. Sparta had then fought Antipatros by herself. Sparta and Boeotia had taken no part in the Lamian war, of which Athens and Aetolia bore the brunt. In the rising of 280 Sparta and Boeotia had fought against Antigonus; Aetolia had held aloof, and Athens was too exhausted to join. Now Sparta and Athens were again allies; Aetolia and Boeotia were strictly neutral. There was probably no time at which the four Powers, together would not have been more than a match for Macedonia; to bring more than two into line at once seems to have been impossible. This time it was thought that the Egyptian alliance would supply the deficiency; but casting out Satan by means of Satan has never been a hopeful policy.

With the passing of this decree the coalition against Antigonus was fairly launched. He had no option but to take up the challenge; right or wrong, great Powers cannot abdicate. But sympathy with Athens must not blind us to the fact that the war was forced upon Antigonus against his will, and at the bidding of Egypt; Egypt, and not Athens, was the real protagonist. Chremonides was of course quite justified in bringing up against Antigonus his policy of ‘tyrants’. But Antigonus’ policy toward a large part of Greece had been one of great moderation; time after time he had held his hand; much of the Greek world including many cities that had revolted from him, was as independent as if Macedonia did not exist. His relations with Athens had been of the best; with Sparta he in no way interfered. What he desired was peace for Macedonia. But there was the direct threat of the Egyptian pretender over his head; he could not do anything to weaken his position as against Egypt. Consequently, as regards Antigonus and Athens, the war was a conflict of two rights; each was right, Athens to struggle (as she believed) for complete independence. Antigonus to fight for his country’s place in the world. That Athens, if successful, would not have gained complete independence, but would merely have changed suzerains, does not alter the case. We may leave it so, subscribing neither to the opinion of those extremists to whom nothing in Greek history is of much value save the independent city-state, nor to that of those other extremists to whom the small city-state has little right to exist over against the stable rule of a great monarchy: opinions often conditioned by the political upbringing and environment of the writers.

It was too late to begin operations in what remained of the autumn of 266. Athens, however, signalized her change of government by again sending a representative to the Amphictyonic Council at the autumn meeting of 266; and it is probable that something was done in the way of provisioning the city, a cumbersome task with the Piraeus in Antigonus’ hands. But in the spring of 265 Antigonus invaded Attica with a large force, while Areus moved northwards from Sparta with the troops of Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. Neither Megalopolis nor Argos appears to have been able to delay his march, which may render it doubtful if they were yet in the hands of tyrants; and he easily reached Corinth. Here he was brought up short; for Craterus’ lines, based on the great fortress of Akrokorinthos, stretched from sea to sea; the position could neither be attacked nor turned. Meanwhile the Egyptian fleet, under its new admiral Patroclus, son of Patron, a Macedonian, Kallikrates’ successor, had reached the Attic coast. But Patroclus found the booms down across the harbour of Piraeus, and the town strongly held by Antigonus’ garrison; he took up his position at a little island off Cape Sounion, afterwards known as Patroclus’ camp, so as to co-operate with Areus. His base was one of the harbours in the island of Keos, either Koressos or Poiessa, which had been, as already noticed, renamed Arsinoe.

National qualities seem to have a habit of adhering to the, soil of a land, even if the race changes. Centuries before, Assyrian captains and Hebrew prophets had declared that Pharaoh king of Egypt was the staff of a broken reed, whereon if a man leant it would go into his hand and pierce it; and the words might have been spoken of Ptolemy II. The Egyptian fleet seems to have been equipped with native marines only; it did not even carry (as would have been indispensable for serious fighting), a force of Greek mercenaries, which the wealthiest power in the world could have had in abundance. Patroclus was therefore unable, or professed himself unable, to make any serious attack on Antigonus; his Egyptians, he said, could not face Macedonians; but he told Areus that if he would do the fighting, the fleet might land its marines and take Antigonus in the rear. But Areus could not pass Craterus’ lines. It was a good example of the limitations of sea-power.

One of the astonishing things in the story, at first sight, is that Patroclus, with the unquestioned command of the sea, did not ship Areus’ army either across the Saronic Gulf or the Gulf of Corinth, and turn  Craterus’ position. Kassandros had long since shown that Corinth could be thus turned. But here Antigonus’ foresight showed itself. There was nowhere to land. The Megarid was his, and he presumably, like Demetrios, held Aigosthena in strength. Piraeus was his, and with the interior lines he could probably have prevented a landing at one of the open roadsteads of Attica, such as Marathon or Eleusis. To land in Boeotia would probably have forced Boeotia into Antigonus’ arms; or it may be that his arrangement with Aetolia included some provision for Aetolian help in the event of a Boeotian rising. To land in Aetolia was of course out of the question; no one lightly put a hand into that hornet’s nest. It was a stalemate.

As against the allies, who could neither help Athens nor each other, Antigonus had the tremendous advantage both of the interior lines and of knowing his own mind. He had not mobilized his own inferior fleet, requiring all his force for the land; so he cared little for Patroclus. But the coalition had forced a war on him against his will; if they wanted a fight, they should have one. Leaving enough men behind to mask Athens, he moved with his main body through the Megarid to meet Areus. But he had enlisted a new tribe of Gauls for the war, in order to spare his Macedonians as much as possible; and these Gauls, who did not know him, for once played him false. Outside Megara they mutinied in a body, and Antigonus had after all to bring up the Macedonians; he attacked the mutineers, and in what is described as a great battle cut them to pieces. But his operations for that year were paralysed ; he returned and sat down outside Athens, while he recruited fresh men.

Somewhere about this time occurred an incident which illustrates Antigonus’ weakness at sea. Craterus was bringing a wife for his son Alexander from somewhere in the north­west; a quadrireme was sent to the Aetolian port of Naupactus to convey the lady, Nikaia, to Corinth; and the ship was captured by the Achaeans, whose naval strength was very small. They seem to have released Nikaia, but they kept the ship.

So came the winter. Areus and his army went home; he could not keep his citizen troops together for a winter campaign. Patroclus, too, must have gone home; his galleys could not keep the sea through the winter. Whether he returned the next year is not known. But at some period of the war, being unable to do much damage to Antigonus, he insulted him ; he sent him a present of fish and figs, which perplexed Antigonus’ Council, till the king with a laugh interpreted it to mean that the Macedonians must get command of the sea, or starve.] Possibly Patroclus, with his strong fleet, had done something in the way of cutting off Antigonus’ supplies; but to emphasize the fact was folly. Antigonus put the insult away in his mind with other matters; in due time it was to bear fruit. This was about all that came of the high-sounding phrases of Egyptian diplomacy.

But the Spartan was made of better stuff. In the spring of 261. Areus again came northward, and Antigonus came southward to meet him. The battle took place outside the fortifications of Corinth; Sparta and her allies were completely defeated, and Areus left dead on the field. It was probably here that Halkyoneus fell; his name does not meet us further, and he was killed in some battle. Antigonus bore the loss of his favourite son with Stoic fortitude; but the utterance attributed to him on the occasion is undoubtedly apocryphal. The battle of Corinth was the decisive action of the war.

It left Sparta weakened, and it broke up the Peloponnesian League. But it did more than this. It gave new strength to the partisans of Antigonus at Argos and Megalopolis. Whether Aristodemos was already ruling in Megalopolis may be doubtful; in any case his effective power dates from the battle of Corinth. The same is very likely true of Aristomachos at Argos, though he is not actually mentioned till after the end of the war. Areus was succeeded in his kingship at Sparta by his son Akrotatos, the hero of the defence against Pyrrhus; however much Sparta might have suffered from her defeat, it might be predicted with certainty that the fiery young man would make some effort to avenge his father’s death.

The appearance on the scene of a new opponent to Antigonus seemed to hold out to Akrotatos some prospect of a successful campaign. Egypt, though not willing to fight herself, was ready enough to persuade anyone else to join the coalition who seemed anxious to do so; and it seems, to have been shortly after the battle of Corinth that Alexander of Epirus took the field; his intervention a year earlier might have caused Antigonus considerable embarrassment. Alexander had come well out of his Illyrian war, and had recently made a friendly arrangement with Aetolia for the partition of Akarnania; that is to say, Aetolia was to help him to recover Akarnania, and was to receive the eastern part of it for her assistance. There might be some excuse for Alexander, for Akarnania had once belonged to Pyrrhus; but the action of Aetolia was peculiarly shameless, seeing that quite recently she had entered into a treaty with Akarnania which bound either state to aid the other if attacked. Aetolia was waxing fat, with the natural consequences; and this partition was one of the results of the free hand which Antigonus had given her. For Aetolia was presently to interpret her sphere as meaning, not merely the Amphictyonic States, but as much of the west coast of Greece as she could control; and the partition of Akarnania was the first of a number of acts of brigandage which were to make her by and by the best-hated state in the peninsula. The partition was duly carried out; and Alexander, having re­established his father’s kingdom, turned his thoughts to revenge for his father’s death, a matter which fell most opportunely for Egypt.

Alexander invaded Macedonia by the usual route through the Aoos pass; he overran part of the north, where there were still doubtless partisans of Epirus who joined him, and captured a few places. But he had neither the glamour nor perhaps the military talent of Pyrrhus and it was not difficult to plunder a land whose defenders were absent. Antigonus had to leave a small force before Athens and hurry back to meet him. What happened is entirely obscure, except that Antigonus in a short time was sufficiently master of the situation to return to Athens, leaving the conduct of the war against Alexander to his generals, with an army placed under the nominal command of the crown prince Demetrios, his son by Phila, a lad of not more than twelve or thirteen years old. This army met Alexander at a place called Derdia in Eleimiotis, beat him decisively, and invaded Epirus; Alexander was driven from his kingdom, and all danger from that quarter was at an end for the time being.

It was in all probability while Antigonus was engaged in the North that Sparta made one more hopeless effort to aid Athens; it is quite probable that Akrotatos and Alexander were definitely co-operating. Akrotatos, however, could command only a weak force, for he no longer had the Peloponnesian League behind him; and he never reached the Isthmus, if that was his objective. He was met by Aristodemos of Megalopolis, completely defeated, and killed in the battle. It was some years before Sparta could move again, and for a time she ceased altogether to be a force in the world’s politics. On the other hand, his victory gave Aristodemos a considerable increase of both prestige and power. That he was popular in Megalopolis is obvious, or he could not have fought the battle at all. He was now able to include in his dominions a large part of Arcadia; she adorned his city with temples; and out of the spoils of Sparta he built a pillared hall in the market-place of Megalopolis.

Meanwhile Antigonus had returned to Athens, and taken charge of the operations there. Whatever had been the case during the campaigning season of 263, from the winter of 263/2 the siege was vigorously pressed. No further help was to be expected. Both Sparta and Epirus had been thoroughly beaten, and Egypt was already in 262 turning her attention elsewhere. Athens was thrown back on herself. She must have been provisioned for such a contingency; otherwise she could never have resisted as she did. Legends clustered about the doomed city; the aged poet Philemon, who died at Piraeus during the siege, saw in a vision, the night before his death, nine maidens leaving his house, and when he asked them whither they went, the Muses replied that they must not stay to witness the fall of Athens. Men saw in the war the end of an epoch; and it was by the mouth of one who remembered the glorious days of Demosthenes that the Immortals foretold her fate to their beloved home. The city held out to the uttermost, but her spirit was greater than her strength; hunger did its work at the end; and some time in the winter of 262/1, four years from the commencement of the war, Athens surrendered.

With the surrender ended, once and for all, the period during which Athens had been a political force in the world : for thirty-two years the once imperial city was to be, in fact if not always in name, a dependency of Macedonia. The war had been forced upon Antigonus against his will; and he determined, very properly from the point of view of his own kingdom, that he would see to it that, so far as possible, he should never have to fight another of the sort. Leniency he had formerly shown in plenty; but the day for leniency was past. There were no reprisals; Chremonides and Glaukon were merely sent, or allowed to escape, into exile; they found refuge in Egypt, and no doubt with them went other leaders of the national resistance[ But the city Antigonus took into his own hands. He refortified the Mouseion, and placed a strong garrison there; he garrisoned all the Attic forts; he removed all the existing magistrates from office, and himself, following a precedent set by his father Demetrios, nominated the new ones: nothing remained to the people but to confirm the men of his choice. That they should belong to the pro-Macedonian party was a matter of course: and as a descendant of Demetrios of Phaleron—a man honest at any rate in his speech—was one of the new magistrates, we see how completely the pro-Macedonian party had absorbed the extreme oligarchs. Even offices which were religious and not political, such as the priesthood of Asclepios, changed hands; the sole exception was the eponymous archon, Antipatros, who, in pursuance of an unbroken precedent, was retained in office, the inconvenience of any other course being administration was altered, if at all, in one respect only : it was perhaps now that the generalship for home defence was divided into two separate commands, a recognition of the fact that the Piraeus, which separated the two halves of it, had become permanently Macedonian.

So far as form went; for in fact the administration was reduced to insignificance. Not only were all the Antigonid forces in Attica placed in the hands of one strategos, who represented the former strategos of the Piraeus with enlarged powers, but Antigonus also appointed and epistates or governor of Athens itself, and apparently governed the city very much as he governed Thessaloniki. Whether the two offices were in one man’s hand, or whether they were held by two different persons, cannot be ascertained; neither is it known who held either, though the strategos in command may well have been Hierokles, the former strategos of the Piraeus. This method of governing Athens worked one very important change. It would seem, from the cessation of the Athenian decrees, that the ekklesia can have no initiative apart from the epistates, unless in the most purely local concerns; he may have even introduced the resolutions which they were to pass, as was done, for instance, by the epistates at Thessaloniki. The only decree known to have been passed at this time at Athens was passed at Antigonus’ express request. Very damaging, too, to Athens was the abolition of the right of coinage. Antigonus’ silver tetradrachms—the type with Pan’s head on a Macedonian shield—replaced at Athens the well-known coins which for so long had carried the city goddess and her owl far and wide over the world. Coins were still struck at Athens, but not her own; she was henceforth a Macedonian mint, and struck Antigonus’ tetradrachms. Athens’ commercial supremacy had long been a vanishing tradition; the loss of her coinage may have given it the final blow.

It was indeed the end of an epoch; and it was marked in dramatic fashion by the death of Zeno. He was the last among the heads of the great schools who, during the past forty years, had made Athens famous ; with his death, all had passed into new hands. Epicurus had died in 271; Straton, the successor of Theophrastos as head of the Peripatetics, a year or two later; Polemon of the Academy in 268/7, at a great age, and his friend and successor Krates very shortly after. Zeno alone of that brilliant company had survived to witness the struggle between his two pupils and the overthrow of his home by his friend, with what feelings who can say. He was not a very old man, being only seventy-two when he died; but the story goes that he took a slight accident which happened to him to be a sign that his time was come, and ended his life by voluntary starvation. His death can be dated to some time between July and October 261, a few months after the surrender.

For thirty-nine years he had taught at Athens; and the Athenians had recognized the worth of this stranger within their gates, and had come to hold in high honour one whom they knew to be the friend of their enemy, because they likewise knew him to be a noble man. The story that they entrusted the city keys to him for safe custody is not likely to be true. But a crown of gold and a decree of honour had been voted him during his life; and now that he was dead the Athenians erected a bronze statue to his memory, and at Antigonus’ request, conveyed through an Athenian, Thrason of Anakai, gave him a public funeral in the Kerameikos. Antigonus himself honoured and lamented his friend by quoting over him a phrase made current by Zeno’s great rival; with Zeno, he said, he had lost his audience. The things he had had to do were not always of a nature to be popular with the gallery; but Zeno had understood, and if his approval were won, what mattered the others? But none but Athens could have paid to the dead Phoenician the tribute of the beautiful words that have come down to us. Antigonus’ friend, Thrason of Anakai, who drafted the decree whereby Athens honoured the dead, after recalling the many years which Zeno had spent in the service of philosophy and the insistency with which he had always urged the young to strive after virtue and temperance, said simply, ‘He made his life a pattern to all; for he followed his own teaching.’

CHAPTER XI

THE LOST YEARS

ANTIGONUS GONATAS