READING HALL

THE DOORSOF WISDOM

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

CHAPTER XII.

THE SECOND STRUGGLE WITH EGYPT

With the conclusion of the peace of 255 it looked as though all danger of any further Egyptian-aggression had passed  away with the passing of the reason for that aggression. But this is not to say that all questions at issue between Egypt and Macedonia had been removed. Rather, whit the elimination of Athens and Epirus and the temporary eclipse of Sparta, the  two great Powers were left face to face without any buffer state intervening, and the radical cause of difference between them came more plainly into sight. Egypt had suffered loss on the coasts of Asia at Antiochus’ hands; but her naval supremacy had not yet been questioned. She still controlled the sea, and was still master of the League of the Islanders; the Aegean was still an Egyptian lake. But the League had been founded by Antigonus’ grandfather, and Antigonus’ father had for twenty years borne rule at sea as absolute and unquestioned as that of Ptolemy; and with all matters settled on the mainland, it was inevitable that Antigonus’ thoughts should at last turn to the reconquest as a practical matter, of what any son of Demetrios must have regarded as not the least part of his legitimate heritage.

Many reasons combined to urge this on his attention. It is not necessary to suppose that vengeance for the death of his half-brother in Cyrene was one of them; for, strictly speaking, Ptolemy had no responsibility for that death at all. Doubtless a desire to repay Ptolemy for the endless wars which the latter had inflicted on Macedonia counted for something. But two other reasons can be seen which, in the nature of things, must have played a part in reinforcing what, after all, was the sufficient compelling motive, the desire to recover what had belonged to Demetrios.

Macedonia had, throughout Antigonus’ reign, been at a disadvantage in one respect compared with the other two chief Powers in the north of the peninsula. While Epirus comprised Dodona and Aetolia controlled Delphi, Macedonia possessed no great religious centre recognized as such by the Greek race. For a Power that desired definitely to be well within the circle of Greek culture, a certain disadvantage may have been felt here. The control of Delos would do more for Macedonia than symbolize the rule of the sea; it would definitely bring within her sphere one of the very greatest of the religious centres of the Greek race, precisely as the control of Athens supplied her with her intellectual capital. But while the spiritual life of the Athenian schools, whatever it might mean to the court circle, can have meant nothing to the plain Emathian farmer, even the plainest could understand Delos and the worship of the Delian Apollo.

But the other reason was weightier and more practical than this. Egypt controlled the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean, absolutely and without question, so far as galleys could do it. It is not possible but that Macedonia had a sense of being hedged in. The Egyptian sea-power may of course have counted for something in the sphere of trading; undoubtedly the sea-command was of use in diverting the wealth and commerce of the world into the channels that led to Alexandria. But more important than any question of trade must have been the land-power’s feeling that she was ringed in, gripped on all sides by the sea-power's tentacles. Like the wrestler who has drawn a bye, and stands watching ready to encounter the wearied victor in the contest, so the sea-power watched her rival, ready and able to take advantage of each and every embarrassment. Even Corinth itself was under observation; from the all but island of Methana, the naval base in the Argolid which Egypt had seized some time in the late wars and aptly renamed Arsinoe, a fleet could watch Corinth and the Piraeus, and flank any Antigonid fleet based on Corinth.

The political position, then, being what it was, it is no wonder that Antigonus used the opportunity of the peace to create a new navy. In one way it was a fair enough venture. More than twenty years had passed since the Celtic invasion, and a new generation of young men in Macedonia had come to military age. If Patroclus’ challenge still rankled in Antigonus’ mind, Patroclus had also exposed the essential weakness of an Egyptian fleet; it was manned by Egyptian. And meanwhile the world had seen a new thing. A great land-power, by the adoption of a few simple expedients, had taken to the water with instantaneous and overwhelming success; and to Antigonus the victories which Rome was winning over Carthage must have been full of promise. He was better off than Rome for the necessary trained men, masters and steersmen; and, given a boarding fight, it was extremely doubtful whether any marines that Egypt could raise would stand against Macedonian troops. Egypt’s actual effective force of men of Greek or Macedonian blood settled in Egypt was none too great, and was her ultimate sheet­anchor; she could hardly risk such on shipboard, where few states employed their best troops. And Rome had done more than show how a boarding fight could be secured. Whatever form of grappling is implied by the corvus, Rome had learnt the system from Sicily; and the connexion between Corinth and Syracuse, in shipbuilding as in other matters, was still close. Whether the actual Roman device may not have been really Syracusan or Corinthian in origin is immaterial; for both-Corinth and her daughter city had always possessed a traditional method of sea fighting which depended on ships rather more heavily built than the light triremes of Athens and Phoenicia. It is certain that what Rome was doing would be well known in Corinth, and that the lesson of her victories lay at Antigonus’ service.

Still whatever the shortcomings of an Egyptian fleet as regards manning, the sea-power of Egypt was, to all appearance, very great; and the fact that tradition has exaggerated it out of all reason must not blind us to its real greatness. At some time or other in the reign of Philadelphus—doubtless toward its very end—the official Egyptian navy list seems to have recorded a grand total of at least 300 warships. Athens indeed had possessed as many or more in her time, perhaps Syracuse also; but, even so, Egypt was, in numbers, as strong on paper as Demetrios had ever been, a little stronger than contemporary Rome, half as strong again as contemporary Carthage. But these comparisons are merely keel for keel; and mere comparison of numbers is here misleading. For the size of warships had steadily tended to grow; and in the Egyptian navy even the quinquereme had given place to larger vessels. Two-thirds of the fleet, it is true, consisted of quadriremes and smaller vessels, doubtless principally of smaller vessels; but the strength of the navy was thought to consist in the great number of huge galleys of seven, nine, and even more men to the oar, of the type brought into favour, with such startling success, by Demetrios at Salamis. It is even possible that we may have to reckon with the Egyptian ships of the end of Philadelphus’ reign averaging the power of a quinquereme, a higher average than ever obtained at Rome or Carthage, a much higher average than that of the fleets which met at Salamis in 306, and an average, of course, out of all proportion to that of the Athenian navy of the time of Demosthenes. Moreover, the fleet enjoyed the very real, nay vital, advantage of operating in a sea studded with Egyptian bases and military posts, enabling easy movement in any desired direction.

Still, there were other weak spots beside the manning. The number of Egyptian interests would almost certainly, in the event of a great war, entail the dividing, perhaps the subdividing of the fleet; it could hardly operate as a whole. It is quite possible, even, that the fleet could not be manned as a whole, in spite of Egypt’s large population and her naval conscription; for the number of rowers required must have been enormous, even allowing for the fact that some of the best contingents came from, and were manned by men of Phoenicia and Cyprus. And, above all, it was a naval service that had never won a great victory. What it held, had come to it by default; and its record, when it had met the Antigonid, was a record of defeat.

Antigonus had no chance of creating a fleet that should, on paper, be anywhere near a match for that of Ptolemy. The better part of it would have to be manned from Corinth and Chalcis, though both Piraeus and the large coast towns of Chalcidice possessed ample facilities for building, and he had plenty of timber. But it was useless to build a fleet that could not be manned; and Gauls were no use on shipboard. He must of course have intended to use his Macedonians as marines; he was fortunate if he did not have to use them at the oar also, as was done by his grandson. His chance lay in this that unlike Egypt, he would be able to employ his fleet as a single unit, and would be able so to man it that, if he could secure the indispensable boarding fight, his victory would be as certain as that of the Roman fleet in similar circumstances. But in one way he was much less happily situated than Rome. Rome understood how to use her enormous resources; and in the third century Rome never fought at sea against odds. Antigonus had to use what resources he had, and to prepare deliberately for a contest in which he would be heavily outnumbered. For all analogy, both of territorial resources and of tradition, leads to the conclusion that if Antigonus could get to sea a fleet equivalent in power to about 100-120 quinqueremes he was doing very well indeed; if he ever succeeded in putting in line the equivalent of 150 quinqueremes, or say one-half of the paper strength of Egypt, he was doing wonders, the possibility of which is not easily to be credited.

Of the particulars of his fleet nothing is known. Of his flagship alone, a most famous vessel, it has been possible to recover, though dimly, a number of details. It is practically certain that she was built at Corinth, and more than probable that she was named after that city, Antigonus’ chief naval base. She was a tall heavy ship, with two decks over the heads of the rowers, so that with the deck on which stood the rower’s thwarts she could be, and was, called a three-decker; her motive power was that of an enneres, nine men to an oar; she was probably suggested by, and in some sort a development of the principle of Lysimachos’ extraordinary okteres, which had been so instrumental in the defeat of Antigonus in his naval battle with Ptolemy Keraunos in 280. That she was fitted for a very heavy catapult, carried grapnels, and was perhaps equipped with the towers on deck so familiar in the Roman battles of the civil wars, is tolerably certain; if the sources can be trusted, her relative weight may be guessed at from the fact that timber enough for something like fifteen quad­riremes was built into her. That she must have been somewhat slow, and intended to lead a fleet which meant to fight at close quarters and board, if possible, and not trust to manoeuvring for the ram, is obvious. Too little is known of third-century shipbuilding to enable any guess at what other developments may have taken place on these lines; but some of Antony’s ships at Actium may have been in a similar category, and the type (substituting catapults for guns) may have already begun to approximate to that of the mediaeval galleasse. One question of great interest must be answered in the negative. When it is remembered that the quinquereme and her sisters could mount one catapult only, as the mediaeval quinquereme mounted one gun; and when it is remembered how, at Lepanto, the power of the clumsy sailing galleon to throw a broadside ended at once and for ever the day of the handy oared galley as the ship of the line; it is natural to ask, whether in Antigonus’ ship, or in any successor, any trace is found of the idea of a broadside. All that can be said is, that no such trace appears; we must conclude, as is probable from other indications, that the catapult in naval warfare was comparatively ineffective.

It was obvious that to challenge at sea a Power whose effective naval strength was from two to three times as great as your own was no light matter; and Antigonus sought first to lessen the risk. He looked about for alliances; and drew both the two obvious bonds a good deal closer than they had been before. Both Antiochus and Aetolia were already his friends; with Antiochus he now formed a definite alliance, and it would seem that his relations with Aetolia became closer, though the subject is obscure.

Aetolia, during the years that had elapsed since Pyrrhus’ death, had made good use of the free hand which Antigonus permitted her. She had been expanding her League as opportunity offered, in part no doubt peacefully, in part aggressively; and she had steadily grown in power. Of the little Amphictyonic peoples, the Ainianes, the Dorians of the mother-city, the Dolopes, and the Malians, had joined the Aetolian League; their votes helped to swell the Aetolian vote on the Amphictyonic council. More important was the acquisition of part of Phocis, and of Eastern Locris. For a short time after Pyrrhus’ death Phocis appears to have three votes on the council; somewhere about the epoch of the Chremonidean war her votes seem to vanish altogether, and from about the time of the peace of 255 she reappears with one vote. It is known that at a date somewhere before 261, and perhaps not very long before, Phocis was engaged in war with some state and very doubtful of the issue; and the natural reading of the above facts is, that Phocis commenced to extend her territory, perhaps at the expense of the Eastern Locrians, and had thus taken their vote; that the Locrians had appealed to the Amphiktyones, that is in effect to Aetolia; and that war had followed, ending in the absorption by Aetolia of part of Phocis with one of the Phocian votes, while Eastern Locris or part of it, with its vote (which does not appear again), had joined the Aetolian League.

Aetolia had thus gained a large increase of territory, and now controlled nine Amphictyonic votes. Should Antigonus ever alter his mind about his relationship to the Amphictyony, Aetolia could now outvote him by herself. But with the new consciousness of power came the beginnings of its abuse. Luxury began to grow upon the Aetolians in a manner that was to become a byword; and with luxury came greed. It has already been told how Aetolia now began to put into practice that well-known instrument of her policy, partition, with its cynical interpretation of Hesiod’s maxim that the half is greater than the whole: she had already joined Alexander of Epirus in partitioning Akarnania.

So far, Aetolia had kept her pledge of neutrality to Antigonus, but no more. Indeed, she had rather gone out of her way to show the world that it was neutrality and not friendship; for directly the Chremonidean war was over, she had caused Delphi to pay Egypt the compliment of granting to the whole of the citizens of Alexandria in a body prior rights of consulting the oracle, while a little later, in 260/59, Delphi had passed a decree in honour of Areus II of Sparta. How and on what terms Antigonus succeeded in converting neutrality into friendship is not known, nor is it known whether, as yet, he had any definite alliance with the Aetolian League; but the fact from- henceforth of a closer-relationship, or entente, cannot well be doubted, in view of the course of events.

Antiochus had recently concluded a favourable peace with Egypt; but neither the late war, nor the peace, had touched the real question at issue between the two empires, the question of Hollow Syria. No doubt Arados, though now autonomous, was friendly to Antiochus; but the bulk of Phoenicia proper was still held by Ptolemy. Egypt had something which Antigonus regarded as his. A definite alliance was an obvious course; it was cemented by the marriage of Antigonus’ son Demetrios to a younger Stratonice, who was a daughter of Antiochus I and the elder Stratonice, and full sister of Antiochus II. To represent the involved relationships of the two houses is becoming impossible: the younger Stratonice was her husband’s first cousin and also his aunt, her mother-in-law’s half-sister and also her niece, her father-in-law’s niece, her own mother’s granddaughter-in-law, and perhaps other things which the curious may work out. The date of the marriage can be fixed with tolerable certainty to 253 It cannot have preceded the peace of 255, not only because of Demetrios’ age, but because the Egyptian fleet would have made the successful transfer of the bride from Antioch to Pella a precarious if not im­possible matter; and any date later than 253 is of course quite out of the question, owing to the rupture in the relations of the two kings. The year 253 coincides so well with other events that it may be definitely accepted.

That year saw Antiochus busy preparing for the new war in Support of Antigonus. At some time in the course of the year he sold a piece of territory to his wife Laodice for cash; and the purchase money, of which the first of the three instalments fell due in December 253, was to be paid into the war chest. This instructive occurrence which we need not suppose to have been an isolated one, shows that Antiochus was making ready for war; but it also shows that his resources were at a low ebb.

By the summer of 253 Antigonus’ new fleet, too, was ready; and at its head he sailed to Asia to fetch home his son’s bride. He received her from the hands of her mother, his sister Stratonice, whom he had probably not seen for twenty- four years.

Stratonice had had a career almost without parallel even in the third century; for her husband Seleucus had, after five years of marriage and the birth of a daughter, handed her over to his son Antiochus as his wife, and Antiochus’ wife she had remained till his death, bearing him several children. The reasons are lost, hidden away behind the well-known folk-tale with which later writers adorned the strange event: and naturally no one troubled to record Stratonice own opinions. Practically all that is known of her character, beside the usual Macedonian interest in literature, is that she was devoted to religion and to the memory of her father Demetrios. Her numerous offerings on Delos are well known; and a little temple containing her statue stood in the sacred precinct there. But she was not only a devotee of the orthodox worship of Apollo. She had been a friend of Arsinoe Philadelphus, and this may have led her into association with the more intimate creeds of Egypt; and at Smyrna, where she lived, she belonged to a religious body or club which worshipped Anubis. She herself was worshipped at Smyrna after her death, and the local cult of Aphrodite afterwards bore her name.

We need then never be astonished to find Stratonice associated with any religious act, especially as regards Delos. Her offerings there can be traced from the year 279 at least, the earlier records having almost entirely perished; and she had marked the occasion of the marriage of her daughter Phila to Antigonus in 277 or 276 by the dedication to Apollo of Demetrios’ necklace, which she had preserved, and her daughter’s ankle-rings. She now celebrated the marriage of her daughter Stratonice with Demetrios II by supplementing the gold crown of bay-leaves which adorned the head of the temple image of Apollo at Delos by a far more magnificent crown, containing four times the weight of gold of the old one; and she also provided new crowns for the little Graces who stood on Apollo’s hand. At the same time she dedicated another necklace to Leto.

Stratonice had done much for Apollo; it remained to do something for the memory of Demetrios. She possessed fer full share of Antigonid devotion to her father. She had preserved his necklace after his death; she always referred to herself as ‘daughter of Demetrios’ in her dedications; on one occasion she had made use of the style of her father and brother and called herself ‘the Macedonian’. On the base of the statue which she dedicated to Arsinoe, while she was Antiochus’ wife, she does not even call herself ‘queen’, but merely ‘daughter of King Demetrios’, as usual. Taken in conjunction with the fact that not one of all her numerous offerings and dedications makes the least reference to Antiochus, and remembering that Antiochus had put her eldest, son to death, it is difficult to avoid the supposition that Stratonice considered herself rather as the daughter of her father than as the wife of her husband. It has an important bearing on what follows.

For Antigonus had not put to sea merely to celebrate a wedding. On his way back he sailed to Delos, and there, in the centre of Ptolemy’s sea-power, he founded two festivals in honour for the Delian Apollo and the gods of Delos, vase foundations of the usual type. One series of vases bore his own name (Antigoneia); the other the name of his sister Stratonice (Stratonikeia). It is stated, as we should expect, that the latter foundation was made in fact by Antigonus on Stratonice behalf. The first vases of each foundation appear under the archon Phanos in 252, rendering the year 253 the most probable year for the actual foundation.

If any political event, any otherwise unknown victory, had led Antigonus to this foundation, the inclusion of Stratonice would be incomprehensible. She no longer played or no peace, it was well understood that Ptolemy was his enemy; and to make a merely religious foundation in the very centre of Ptolemy’s empire of the sea was an impossibility; no graver insult to Egypt could be imagined. No Macedonian had appeared at Delos for many a long year; and though there was nothing to prevent any private person making his offering during the religious truce, the fact that a Macedonian king, at the head of his fleet, should appear at Delos and make there a foundation to endure for all time meant one of two things only, a triumph or a challenge.

It was in fact u challenge. Antigonus was weary of being attacked; this time he meant to be the aggressor, and end it. The only bond between himself and Stratonice and Delos (religion and Seleucid politics being alike put out of the question) was simply this, that both he and Stratonice were children of Demetrios, sometime lord of Delos and the Aegean; and this is the explanation of his action. There were still many alive who remembered the last occasion on which Macedonian keels had furrowed the waters of the Egyptian lake; thirty years had passed since Antigonus and his warships had brought home Demetrios’ ashes. Now, at the head of a new fleet, Antigonus once more recalled his father’s memory; he announced plainly to Ptolemy and the world, that the son of Demetrios claimed, and was ready to fight for, his father’s heritage. Delos had been the centre of Demetrios’ rule of the sea, as it was now the centre of that of Ptolemy, and from Delos Antigonus dictated what was virtually his declaration of war. Whether for the time being he took actual possession of Delos or not is a question entirely immaterial.

Antigonus knew perfectly, as everyone must have known, that he could not not assume to act as lord of Delos till he had defeated Ptolemy’s fleet. It was enough that he had issued a challenge which no great Power could overlook; Ptolemy’s fleet must meet him in due time.

But the appearance of Antigonus in the Aegean, when the reason was understood created something like a panic there. It was known that he was now good friends with Aetolia; where he went, the dreaded Aetolian corsair might follow. Perhaps Egypt was not as strong as her dependants hoped, or feared; she had come badly out of the last war; did the new turn of events mean that Egypt might no longer be able to defend them? Kos, Ptolemy’s own birth-place, began to send messengers over half the world to get her great temple of Asclepios recognized as inviolable; and her invitation to Pella laid the greatest stress (as was only natural in the circumstances) on the goodwill she felt toward King Antigonus and the Macedonians. Apollo of Delos went straighter the point; he prayed to assistance from Apollo of Delphi; Aetolia could not decently support one sanctuary and sack the other. The Aetolians acted with correctness; they passed a decree guaranteeing to Delos safety from all corsairs of Aetolia or her League; a prominent citizen of Aetolia, Nikolaos son of Hagias, an elderly man already known at Delos, bore the decree to the island, and offered there to Apollo a valuable ring and a sum of money for a perpetual foundation of the usual type, known as the Nikolaeia. The grateful Delians voted a statue to Nikolaos; and in the Delian accounts for the year 250 can be seen an entry showing the sum paid to one Neogenes, a stone-cutter, for engraving on a stele the Aetolian guarantee. The larger world outside the Aegean must have watched with great interest to see what Ptolemy would do. To most men living, the Egyptian rule of the sea must have seemed one of the root facts of civilization; it had been undisturbed for thirty-four years.

The old voluptuary of Alexandria took up Antigonus’ challenge after his own fashion. He began, it is true, to build more great ships; but this was a precautionary measure only, in view of absolute eventualities. He did not intend to mobilize his fleet and put to sea; he had never yet looked on a drawn sword. But in the art of spinning diplomatic webs he was a past master; and there were plenty of others who would draw the sword in exchange for his gold. Antigonus might be well enough among the clumsy rustics of Macedonia; it was time to show the world that he was but as a clumsy rustic himself in the hands of the subtle king of Egypt.

The workings of Egyptian diplomacy are hidden from us; we only see the result. But the result stands out with startling clearness. Egypt neither moved a man nor launched a ship; but Antigonus found himself brought up short, his friends gone, his fleet paralysed, another set of dreary wars on hand. Of all the checks which he had suffered in his time, this must have seemed the worst; the world may very well have thought it checkmate. Ptolemy had read men a lesson in the power of gold; could Antigonus recover himself yet again, as he had done so often?

The first blow fell in a quarter where Antigonus may have thought himself more than secure. His trusted half-brother Krateros was dead, and his power and honours had been allowed to devolve on his son Alexander. But Alexander had other thoughts than loyalty; and his desire to be himself a king made him an instrument ready to Ptolemy's hand. In the winter of 253/2 he threw off his allegiance to Antigonus, and proclaimed himself king in his viceroyalty, Corinth and Euboea. It was not a great kingdom; but it was a vastly important one. It contained Antigonus’ two principal naval bases, Corinth and Chalcis; and it deprived Antigonus of the best part of his fleet, for the revolt was timed of course to take place when the squadrons of Chalcis and Corinth were laid up for the winter. There was no longer any question of the Egyptian sea-command being challenged. The fortresses, too, gripped Athens in their arms, and Alexander forthwith attacked that town. It was now seen how wisely Antigonus had acted in keeping Piraeus and the Attic forts separate from Krateros’ viceroyalty; for Herakleitos, their commander, remained loyal. Alexander secured the aid of certain pirates, probably from Crete, who may have been subsidized by Egypt: but Herakleitos received the hearty co-operation, not only of Athens herself, but also of Argos and its tyrant Aristomachos; and the two cities together maintained the war against Alexander. Once more, and for the last time, Antigonus’ system of tyrants appeared to be justifying its existence.

But Ptolemy succeeded in a greater achievement even than this. It had become almost a basic fact in politics that the Seleucid should be friendly to Antigonus and hostile to Egypt: and Antigonus in fact had a definite alliance with Antiochus. But Antiochus, though preparing for war, was in desperate need of money; and he may have been somewhat tired of his wife Laodice’s imperious nature. Ptolemy bought him outright for a younger wife and a huge sum in cash down. That was the essence of the transaction; it was of course decently veiled. Antiochus repudiated Laodice on some unknown charge and wedded Berenice, Ptolemy’s daughter; as her dowry she brought with her such a great sum in money that she became known to history as “the well-dowered”. Laodice and her sons retired to Ephesus; the relationship of Syria to Egypt became a close one; and when Berenice bore Antiochus a son, the friendship of the two courts, and the consequent hostility of Antiochus to Antigonus seemed to be permanently assured.

Even lesser powers did not escape Ptolemy’s far-reaching combinations. Bithynia, for instance, had been a consistent friend to Antigonus: but the new king, Ziaelas, had come to the throne in despite of his half-brothers, who were wards of Antigonus and Ptolemy jointly, and had therefore (whatever the exact nature of the compromise arranged by the Herakleots) entered on his career in a spirit of opposition to both the great Powers. Such an attitude, of course, could hot last; Ziaelas had to favour one or the other; and Ptolemy, possibly by playing upon the natural dread of Antiochus which the Bithynian felt, possibly by helping the young king to pay his Gallic mercenaries, had known how to win him to his side. Ziaelas, in an official letter written about this time, refers to Ptolemy as his ‘friend and ally’.

Ptolemy had indeed accomplished much. But fortune was doing even more for him than he had planned.

It has been seen that in the dark days that followed the surrender of Athens, the philosopher Arkesilaos, true in this to the spirit of Plato’s school, had, in his political detachment, kept alive the flame of patriotism, and something more. Some of those who surrounded him became passionate devotees of the freedom, not of this or that city only, but of Hellas—of any Greek community that needed help. Among these were two exiles from Megalopolis, named Ekdemos and Demophanes. Their very names are uncertain, and variously given in the tradition; their exploits became almost a legend. Born at Megalopolis, a city whose best days were yet before her, and whose sons were to add to the Greek roll of honour the names of Lydiades, Philopoimen, and Polybius, they belonged to a community which was the traditional friend of Macedonia possibly they had been banished because they had thought otherwise. Whether at Athens they made the acquaintance, as is generally supposed, of another pupil of Arkesilaos, Demetrios the Fair, and whether they may have accompanied him to Cyrene or not is entirely uncertain; it is not likely that Demetrios was in Athens after 266, and it is very possible that Ekdemos and Demophanes were not there so soon. What is certain is that somewhere about this time, most probably in 252, they slew Aristodemos the tyrant and ‘freed’ Megalopolis. Aristodemos was called ‘the Good’; but it was always immaterial, to a philosophic Greek republican, whether an unconstitutional monarch was good or bad; he was to be slain for being unconstitutional. It was an axiom with a Greek democrat, no less than with certain modern historians, that the very worst democracy was infinitely better than the very best ‘tyranny’—a conventional view which neglects the uncomfortable fact that the tyranny of a democracy can be the worst in the world. This reflection, however, does not affect Megalopolis, whose new democratic government justified its existence. It appears that the Arcadian League was revived for a few years, with Megalopolis at its head; for the fall of Aristodemos had freed the other towns which he ruled. It was a blow to Antigonus, with whom Megalopolis now ceased to be in direct relations; and it prevented him from securing the assistance of Arkadia in conjunction with that of Argos for the war against Alexander. But to the actual balance of power in the Peloponnese it made little difference; for the new league of necessity took up an attitude of opposition to Sparta.

But, for Antigonus, worse was yet to come. It is almost a common place that a great- idea is apt to strike more than one person at the same time; and the spirit of liberty was stirring in other places beside the classroom of Arkesilaos. To speak of it as the ghost of Grecian liberty rising from its tomb is absurd. The Greek love for freedom had never died, had never even slept, as the ceaseless struggles here recorded sufficiently show. What differentiated the new movement from its various predecessors was simply this, that, up to a certain point, it was successful. It owed its success to a number of reasons; an improved form of political organization was only one of them. But the principal cause was a man.

Of all the opponents whom Antigonus encountered in his time, Aratos of Sicyon  was far and away the most dangerous; and Antigonus met him very late in life. Aratos was not a great man; he was not even a good man. No one has ever made of him more than half a hero; his faults were too glaring. As statesman, politician, intriguer, he was no doubt supremely able; the influence which he came to wield over the Achaean League was amazing; his successes were great, and he was absolutely incorruptible. He planned in his time a number of night attacks and surprises that were capably and courageously carried through. There, from the material point of view, Aratos ends. It is not necessary to reproach him with his failures in the field; it was the fault of the polity under which he lived that he could not hold the office of president of the League, for which he was the obvious person, without being at the same time commander­in-chief, for which post he had every possible disqualification. We are bound to believe that he was a personal coward in battle; for the only alternative is that he was a traitor, and that seems out of the question. If Antigonus had once allowed the end to justify the means, Aratos did it whenever he chose. To hire assassins against a ‘tyrant’ was no doubt considered fair play by his contemporaries; but none were found to justify such acts as his attack on Athens in a time, of profound peace, or to believe his excuse, that a subordinate had acted without orders. He was too jealous to allow any other prominent man at his side; no means were too low to undermine or counter the influence of a rival. His relations with Lydiades, who was able and honest, form one of the most pitifully mean chapters of history; and there is no need here to relate how at the end he stultified his whole life’s work from jealousy and terror of Kleomenes of Sparta; an infinitely greater and nobler man than himself.

It may then well be asked, what it was that made Aratos so dangerous, and why he was such a force in his world. The answer is not far to seek. At the outset of his career, Aratos was a man utterly possessed by one great passion; and a man so possessed is perhaps the most formidable force known, Hannibal himself did not hate Rome more thoroughly than Aratos hated a tyrant. His whole being was filled with a single thought; that the Peloponnese must be freed, and that he must free it. It was with the stupendous driving power of this idea behind him that he went forward; and against an idea the swords of Gallic mercenaries are drawn in vain.

It is in the year 252/1, soon after the revolt of Alexander and the liberation of Megalopolis, that Aratos first appears on the scene. Sicyon had for many years been ruled by tyrants, but (as already narrated) a change had come about the time of the war with Pyrrhus, when for a short interval the city had been a democracy under the guidance of two leading citizens, Timokleidas and Aratos’ father Kleinias. Aratos was born in 271, the year after Pyrrhus’ death. Timokleidas died, and in the course of the year 264, perhaps as a consequence of the defeat and death of Areus of Sparta, one Abantidas slew Kleinias and made himself tyrant of the city. The little Aratos, however, then seven years old, escaped through the kindness of Abantidas’ sister, and was sent to Argos; Abantidas could not reach him there under the strong rule of Antigonus’ friend Aristomachos, and there he grew to manhood to reward Aristomachos in after years by trying to assassinate him. Abantidas remained in power till the general ferment of the year 252, when two men, Deinias, probably the historian, and one Aristoteles, a philosopher—perhaps another of Arkesilaos’ friends, for he is called a dialectician—rose against him and slew him. They could not, however, free the city, for Paseas, Abantidas’ father, succeeded in grasping the tyranny for himself, which means that he secured the allegiance of Abantidas’ mercenaries. One Nikokles, however, managed to slay Paseas by guile, and ruled in his stead. He ruled badly, and was nearly turned out by Antigonus’ friends the Aetolians; but he survived the attack, whatever it was, having strengthened himself by securing the friendship or alliance of Alexander of Corinth.

Meanwhile Aratos had grown up in Argos into a capable and athletic youth, and his own sense and his father's reputation caused the Sicyonian exiles, who had gathered at Argos, to look to him as their leader. The bloodshed at Sicyon turned their thoughts toward action, and Aratos applied for help both to Antigonus and Ptolemy. Ptolemy, of course, was not going to act against a friend of Alexander’s. Aratos says that Antigonus promised help and did not send it; but it is obvious, both that Antigonus had no means of reaching Sicyon himself, and also that he would have been glad enough, if he could, to have put down Nikokles, the friend of Alexander. As, however, Nikokles only ruled for a short time, it is more than likely that the Aetolian assault upon him, whatever it was, was Antigonus’ method of redeeming his promise, the only way in which he could do so.

Aratos thereon resolved to put down Nikokles himself; his confidants were another Aristomachos, a Sicyonian exile, and the famous friends Ekdemos and Demophanes, who came from Megalopolis to aid the new undertaking. The picturesque narrative of the night surprise of Sicyon in May 251 may be read in the pages of Plutarch; how Aratos threw Nikokles’ spies off their guard by an ostentatious devotion to eating and drinking; how the friends got the fortifications of Sicyon measured, and had scaling-ladders openly prepared by one of the exiles, a professed ladder­maker; how they hired some brigands, the ‘arch-klepht’ Xenophilos and his band; how on the appointed night they came up to the walls through a market garden, having locked the gardener in his house but failed to catch his dogs, which were small and quarrelsome and would not make friends; how the little dogs nearly wrecked the whole undertaking, which was saved by Aratos’ spirit; how Mnasitheos and Ekdemos were first over the wall, and Aratos secured the whole of the tyrant’s mercenaries as they slept; and how at dawn, as the citizens were clustering together, ignorant and in wonder of what had happened, on their ears fell the startling cry of the herald ‘ Aratos, o  KLeinias calls his countrymen to their freedom.’ The tyrant’s house was fired and plundered, the sight of the flames nearly bringing Alexander’s men from Corinth down upon them; but no blood was spilt, even Nikokles himself escaping. Aratos recalled all the Sicyonian exiles, whether banished by Nikokles or by earlier tyrants; and, seeing the difficulties of the time, he took the all-important step of finding support for Sicyon by uniting it, a Dorian city, to the league of the ten towns of Achaea, a league whose constitution he is said to have admired greatly.

Aratos had shown his quality; nor was he likely to stop here. His proceedings at this time were of course in no sense aimed at Antigonus; they were directed merely to the freeing of the Peloponnese. So far as he had a particular opponent, that opponent was Alexander of Corinth, who had been a friend of Nikokles, and was Antigonus’ enemy. Any opponent of Alexander was of use to Antigonus; and it was probably at this time that Antigonus sent Aratos a present of twenty-five talents, of which the Sicyonian made honourable use in freeing prisoners and aiding destitute citizens. Whether as a consequence of this, or merely in pursuit of his own Ideas, Aratos’ next move was an attempt on Corinth, which failed; but Alexander was alarmed, and managed to secure an alliance with the Achaeans. This must have taken place shortly after the accession of Sicyon to the Achaean League; and, to be just to Aratos, the alliance, at this time, can have been none of his doing; he had not yet the conduct of the affairs of the League, unofficially or otherwise. So far it had looked to be an open question, to any one not well acquainted with Aratos, whether Antigonus might not turn his exploits to his own advantage; the alliance between Alexander and the League definitely ranged the League, and Aratos as a member of it, on the side of Antigonus’ avowed enemy, Ptolemy.

Meanwhile the war between Antigonus and Alexander continued its dreary progress. An Athenian decree in honour of Aristomachos of Argos tells that Alexander offered the latter favourable terms to detach him from the alliance, but the ‘tyrant’ loyally refused to make peace apart from his allies, and even advanced the latter money; another decree shows that Herakleitos successfully defended Salamis from attack. Alexander, however, seems to have been too strong for the allies, and at some time which cannot be exactly ascertained compelled Argos and Athens to make peace and recognize him in his kingship. He still, of course, remained in a state of war with Antigonos.

It is difficult to make out what Antigonos was doing in this war. He was not doing nothing; and indeed Polybius expressly refers to the manifold activities of these later years of his life. There was no question of Aristomachos and Athens being left unsupported; for Herakleitos was Antigonus’ general in command, and no doubt properly furnished with troops. Bui Antigonus himself was engaged elsewhere; and it is never very hard to guess what a king of Macedonia is doing when he vanishes from view. Every one of Antigonus’ successors was perpetually being interrupted, even in the most important undertakings, by the  necessity of hurrying to the northern frontier to meet the Dardanians or some other foe; and it may be noted that about now a new force appears in the north. A Germanic people, the Bastarnae—the first Germans to appear in history—were on the move, shifting their seats from the Carpathians to the lower Danube; their movements may have set up corresponding movements in the tribes to the north of Macedonia. Trogus thought that the movements of the Bastarnae had sufficient bearing upon Antigonid history, long before the time of Philip V, to warrant an interruption in his narrative while he told the story of this new migration; and doubtless it was the incorporation of broken or fugitive clans that gave to the Dardanians that great access of strength which enabled them, a few years later, to wage their successful war against Demetrios II. It is very tempting to put the incorporation of Paionia by Antigonus at this time, and to connect it with the movements in the north just referred to, even if we do not suppose that Ptolemy’s far-reaching combinations extended to the Paionian king.

This, then, was the position by about the year 249. Alexander victorious and well established; Antiochus—firmly bound to the interests of Egypt; Megalopolis arid Arcadia detached from Antigonus, the Achaeans and Sicyon allied with Alexander; Antigonus’ influence in the Peloponnese resting solely upon Aristomachos of Argos, and perhaps on the rulers of this or that small city of the Argolid  above all, his new fleet paralysed, and in large part lost. The second round of the struggle was over, and it had given a crushing advantage to Egypt at every point, unless in the far north. The Egyptian fleets were again parading the Aegean without meeting a hostile keel; that sea was still an Egyptian lake; confidence in Egypt’s power was fully restored; and Ptolemy personally had nothing to do but to emphasize his bloodless victory in the eyes of the world by sending his fleet to Delos, in the year 249, and there establishing in Apollo’s honour the foundation which we know as the second Ptolemaieia. It was his proclamation to all men that he was still lord of the sea.

CHAPTER XIII

THE RECKONING WITH EGYPT

ANTIGONUS GONATAS