READING HALL

THE DOORSOF WISDOM

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

CHAPTER XIII.

THE RECKONING WITH EGYPT

Egypt’s success had indeed been great, but it was a success based on diplomatic combinations and on gold. It did not really touch the crucial question between the two great Powers at all. That which diplomacy and fortune had made, fortune and diplomacy might unmake; but the root of the matter, after all, was simply whether Egypt could face Antigonus’ Macedonians if and when the time came. The effective force in living men was on Antigonus’ side; it remained to be seen whether the substitute provided by diplomacy had any elements of permanence.

However, for a little longer, fortune smiled on Egypt. It had looked possible at one time that Aratos might be the friend of Antigonus; and Antigonus had even sent him a present of twenty-five talents, as already related. But twenty-five talents were of little use to Aratos. The return of the exiles to Sicyon had created the usual tangle of difficulties in the town, which Aratos was expected to put straight. Men who had had to leave home thirty or forty years before expected their property to be restored to them intact; that property had perhaps changed hands more than once in the interval, and was actually held by some innocent purchaser for value, who had not even notice of its origin. Aratos was constantly being called on to decide that hardest of hard cases, which of two innocent parties was to suffer; he could neither do justice—in such cases there is no possibility of justice—nor could he please the citizens and smooth out trouble. The only way out of the difficulty was to raise money enough to pay the claims of the exiles in cash; and, now that the Achaean League had become the ally of Antigonus’ enemy Alexander, the only, source of supply on a large scale open to Aratos was Ptolemy’s treasury—Some time after the formation of that alliance—probably in 249 or 248—things had become so bad that Aratos resolved to go to Egypt and see Ptolemy in person. Pressure of circumstances had thus thrown him entirely on to the side of Egypt, another great gain for the king who had the power of the purse.

Aratos could not reach the Egyptian harbour of Methana-Arsinoe, as the territory of Antigonus’ friend Aristomachos intervened; and, after his abortive attempt on Corinth, he did not care to put himself into his friend Alexander’s hands, as he would have done had he sailed from that, the obvious, port. To embark at Sicyon’s harbour, and sail down the Gulf of Corinth, was to risk capture by an Aetolian privateer; he and his friend Timanthes therefore travelled overland, through the neutral territory of Megalopolis and Messene, and took ship from the Messenian harbour of Methone, intending to round Cape Malea and make for Alexandria through the straits. They had hardly started, however, when a storm met them blowing in from the open sea; there was nothing to do but turn and run north blindly before it; whither they were going they had no more idea than the men on St. Paul’s ship had in similar circumstances ; and when the wind fell and they succeeded with difficulty in making land, they found themselves at Adria, a city on the Atintanian coast north of Kerkyra, and possibly the old Athenian colony of that name. This coast now belonged, as already stated, to Antigonus; and his men garrisoned the town. Aratos and Timanthes managed to avoid the garrison and hid for the night in a wood. Next day the commander of the town took possession of the ship and cargo, declaring that, as the Achaean League was Alexander’s ally, they were enemies’ goods; but he was put off Aratos’ track by the slaves of the latter, who, as instructed, met him and said that Aratos  himself had already escaped and was on his way to Alexander. A few clays after, Aratos and his friend had the good luck to be picked up by a Roman privateer, bound southward to work the trade route between Carthage and Phoenicia; they persuaded the captain to take them as far on his course as Caria, from whence in due course they reached Egypt. Aratos won Ptolemy’s ear by talking to the old dilettante about pictures, and promising him some good examples of the Sicyonian school of pairting, a promise he afterwards fulfilled; and when he returned home, he brought with him, partly in cash and partly in promises, the magnificent sum of 150 talents. There was no more trouble in Sicyon.

Somewhere, too, about the same time the breach between Antigonus and Antiochus widened. When and in what circumstances the younger Stratonice left her husband Demetrios cannot now be made out; all that is certain is the fact that she did leave him and returned to her brother Antiochus, and that this happened some time before 247, or at the latest early in that year. To attempt to reconcile the inconsistent notices of the matter in our wretched authorities is waste of time: it is enough to note that it marks a new cause of difference between the former allies. It was well for Antigonus at this time that he was on good terms with Aetolia; for except Aristomachos, he had no other independent friend.

Such was the state of things when, toward the end of 248, a new and irresistible actor appeared on the scene, and the imposing edifice reared by Ptolemy’s diplomacy suddenly collapsed like the card-house of a little child. It depended on certain men’s lives; there intervened Death. Within a year, or a little over, Alexander, Antiochus, and Ptolemy himself, all passed away; and the political position changed absolutely.

The first death was that of Alexander. It cannot have happened before the autumn of 249, or later than about the autumn of 248. It meant to Antigonus that Corinth was masterless : and the old king at once turned, his attention to that all-important fortress. His love for it is said to have, become the passion of his life; and there is no need to disbelieve this. Its importance had been demonstrated in all his wars ; Macedonians fought for Corinth as though for a bit of their homeland. Its possession, too, like that of Delos, was to some extent symbolical depending, on the desire of Alexander’s successors to attach themselves to him by any possible tie. If Ptolemy had his grave and name-city, Antigonus, having Corinth, had something more than the home land alone. Philip and Alexander had undertaken to conquer Persia as heads of a confederacy of Greek states formed at Corinth. When the elder Antigonus and his son were attempting to reconstitute for themselves the undivided heritage of Alexander, Demetrios’ first step had been to revive the League of Corinth : it was, so to speak, the regularization of his position. And Gonatas, when he held Corinth in fact, held in idea the heritage of Alexander in Europe, the potential headship of the Greek world: he represented the men who had formed and reformed the League. This must have been a useful counter in the political game played between Antigonus and Lagid; for although Ptolemy Soter’s attempt to reconstitute the League in 308 under his own presidency hac failed, the Lagid did not let slip the idea, witness the ceremony at the celebration of the isolympic games in honour of Ptolemy Soter. There in the procession were borne together the statues of Alexander and Ptolemy Soter, and beside Soter stood the city of Corinth crowned with a diadem of gold, symbolic of the Corinthian League and the headship of the Greek world.

But Antigonus’ desire for Corinth was more than all this. If he had had the best of the first round of his fight with Ptolemy, Ptolemy had scored heavily in the second; whether there ever would be a third depended entirely on whether he could regain Corinth and his fleet. He was seventy two years of age; he could not count on much more time being given to him. Small wonder that the desire for the great fortress became a consuming passion, even in an old statesman like the king.

But Alexander’s death seemed to bring Antigonus no nearer to his desire. If Corinth was masterless, it had mistress; Alexander’s widow Nikaia had taken over the mercenaries and intended to hold the fortress. As soon as Antigonus was certain of her resolution, he made his mind up; for once he might imitate Ptolemy, and offer a price. It is to be remembered that he was dealing with the widow and successor of a traitor, and of one who had been a traitor under peculiarly bad circumstances, one whose life by every known law would have been forfeit if caught. He saw that advantage could now be taken of the fact that Stratonice had left Demetrios; and he forthwith sent the crown prince to Nikaia, with the offer of his hand and the reversion of the crown of Macedonia. The middle-aged woman was ambitious; she had the common failing of so many women of the time, the desire to be a queen. She had been a queen, of a sort; Alexander had held his little court at Chalcis, and she had played patroness there to a youthful poet of great promise, Euphorion. Now a far larger prospect opened before her; and she made no difficulty about accepting thew young prince’s suit. The marriage was arranged to be celebrated in Corinth with great pomp; she placed the town in Antigonus’ hands before the event, but still held Akrokorinthos with her troops; and without the fortress, the town was of no value whatever. The day fixed for the marriage drew very near, and still there was no hint of Nikaia withdrawing her men. Antigonus made no sign : he gave himself up to the festivities of the occasion, as though he had no object in life but the ordering of shows and sacrifices; day after day he might be seen drinking at the banquet in joy and lightness of heart, as though he had not a care in the world. At last the chance, so eagerly awaited, came. Amoibeus was to sing in the theatre, and Antigonus himself escorted Nikaia thither in her litter, which, in anticipation of the marriage, he had had decked for the occasion with the royal purple. Nikaia’s mind was completely taken up with her new honours; and, when the festive procession reached the fork in the road where the path to Akrokorinthos turned off, neither she nor her friends marked that Antigonus hung back and signed to the bearers of the litter to pass on before him. Not another thought did the old king give to Amoibeus or Nikaia; he turned and set off up the steep path which led to the citadel at a pace, despite his seventy-two years, with which his guards could hardly keep up. Arrived at the gate, he rapped impatiently on it with his staff; the sentry, utterly dumbfoundered and without clear orders, opened it; resistance there was none, for most of the garrison were down at the show. Sheer audacity had made Antigonus again master of the almost impregnable fortress.

How he recovered Euboea is not known; possibly Nikaia had already put it into his hands. Neither is it recorded what happened to Nikaia; certainly she did not marry Demetrios. The story goes that Antigonus could not contain himself for joy of the recovery of Akrokorinthos, and was seen that night reeling through Corinth at the head of a drunken rout, a garland on his head and a wine-cup in his hand. It is the same story that is told of Philip II after Chaironeia. It may conceivably be true; but (like the whole incident) it comes from a source entirely hostile to the Antigonids, and quick to make the most of any occasion against them; it is as well to receive it with caution. That the old king was almost beside himself with joy we may well believe. He did not restore the viceroyalty of Corinth, so far as can be ascertained; the risk was too great. He divided the responsibility and the power, a proceeding apt to induce risks of another sort. One Archelaos was appointed strategos of Corinth, military commander of the garrison; with him as governor of the town, was associated the philosopher Persaios, on whose loyalty Antigonus thought he could absolutely rely.

Antigonus held a great sacrifice in Corinth as a thanksgiving for his success; and he paid Aratos, who had just returned from Egypt, the compliment of sending a portion of honour to him at Sicyon. His object was a twofold one. The brief kingdom of Alexander was at an end, and the Achaean League had ceased to be allies of a dead man and a vanished principality; they were no longer, theoretically, in a position of hostility to Antigonus, and in fact some little while was to pass before they were again actually his enemies. Antigonus therefore thought it worth making an effort to gain Aratos; if he failed, it was always possible that he might nevertheless have made Aratos suspect in Ptolemy’ eyes. At the banquet which followed the sacrifice he is said to have pronounced a eulogy of the Sicyonian. It was true that at first (so ran his speech) the young man had been dazzled by the wealth of Egypt, the elephants and the fleets and the splendour of the court, and had rather overlooked the less showy merits of a Macedonian alliance; but his liberal nature had now made him a juster critic of royalty; he had been behind the scenes, and he knew that the imposing fabric of Egyptian power was merely the lath and canvas of the playhouse. “So now he has joined us with his whole heart; I bid him welcome, for I know that he will aid me in every way I desire.”

Whether Antigonus ever said anything of the sort may be doubtful. The most interesting part of the speech is, that the writer attributes to Antigonus the statement, before Philadelphus’ death, that the power of Egypt was only a painted show; and this may be true enough: for Antigonus must of course have taken Egypt’s measure at sea long before. At any rate, neither the words, nor the honours had any effect on Aratos; and things were happening which for the time quite overshadowed that astute politician. For Antigonus’ sacrifices for the recovery of Corinth fall some time in 247, perhaps late in the year; and that winter was to see the deaths of the kings of Asia and of Egypt. Which came first is not known.

Things had not gone any too well with Antiochus since his change of policy. A native rebellion, in Parthia, and the revolt of Diodotos, the powerful satrap of Bactria, also backed by native feeling, had robbed his kingdom of the greater part of its possessions east of Persis and Media; for with Diodotos back in Syria, deprived of her prospect of the crown of Macedonia, and, as the event showed, ready for mischief : and he had little means of revenging himself on Macedonia if he wanted to, save through his friend of Egypt. It was said, however, that he was getting tired of his Egyptian wife and his Egyptian friends, and that his heart was really with Laodice. In these circumstances he suddenly died. Numberless stories were told; that he had been reconciled to Laodice; that he had named their son Seleucus as his successor; that Laodice had thereon poisoned him, lest he should again change his mind. At any rate, Laodice at Ephesus claimed the kingdom for her son; Berenice shut herself and her infant son up in the palace at Daphne, and waited for help from Egypt and the Greek cities; in some way unknown, Laodice captured Berenice and murdered her, but her women for a while maintained the fiction that she was yet alive

Some time that autumn or winter, Ptolemy II also died, perhaps in the midst of the actual clash of warlike preparation called forth by the events in Asia. His eldest son by the first Arsinoe succeeded to the throne. Ptolemy III was a very different character to Ptolemy Philadelphus; he was, at any rate at this period of his life, full of warlike energy; he had reunited the crowns of Egypt and Cyrene by his long deferred marriage with Magas’ daughter Berenice; his private life was a welcome contrast to that of his father. It looked as if Egypt had much to hope for from the new king; and it looked too as if he would be more inclined to use his magnificent fleet than to follow the patient and tortuous path of diplomatic intrigue; for one of his first acts had been to see that a foundation to celebrate his accession was made at Delos. It is in the usual form, and is known as the third Ptolemaieia.

With the spring of 246 came the news from Antioch; and Ptolemy, leaving his newly married wife to dedicate a tress of her hair for his safe return, started at once with all the force that could be gathered to try and extricate his sister. He seems, instead of waiting for the slow-moving army, to have gone with all speed to Cyprus, taken command of that part of the fleet which was there, captured Seleucia in Pieria, and thence made his dash up the Orontes for Antioch, actually entering the city, but too late to save Berenice. On the arrival of his land army, he for a short time swept the kingdom; Laodice and Seleucus were driven into Asia Minor; Ptolemy seems actually to have reached Seleucia on the Tigris, and there to have received deputations which the court annalists construed as the submission of all such of the upper satrapies as had not yet made themselves independent.

His success for the moment was overwhelming. It always took time for a Seleucid king to mobilize, and in this case the kingdom was divided; some of the governors, and some of the Greek towns, had adhered to Berenice. There is no need to suppose that Ptolemy had a very large field force with him; it is certain that he would depend largely for success on the celerity of his movements, as is shown by the ground covered. 

It looks as if Laodice and her son took the obvious course of turning to the traditional friend of their house, though no evidence on the point remains. Antigonus must have been ready, and more than ready; if he were ever going to follow up his challenge to Egypt. This was his opportunity. Delay might mean that the hour would pass and never return ; Ptolemy might destroy the Seleucid power altogether. Whether the whole fleet of Egypt was at sea is not known; but it is obvious that Ptolemy had the best of his land troops with himself on land, and that in consequence there was no possibility of properly strengthening the marines.

Antigonus, too, found a most useful ally. The Rhodians were the traditional friends of the king of Egypt, for they knew well that their country was nourished by his; but more important to them even than the friendship of Egypt was the preservation of the balance of power. It could not suit their commerce, or their position as the greatest of international bankers, that one state should become entirely preponderant in the Hellenistic world; and it was to hinder such preponderance that all their wars were fought. Their consistent policy was peace; but they knew that there is a peace that can be bought too dearly; and they fought in turn against all the great aggressors, Demetrios, Philip V, Antiochus III. Their policy in the matter was clear-cut and well known; and it was in pursuance of that policy that they now intervened to save the Seleucid from what, at the moment, must have looked like utter ruin. Their intervention was of great importance; for the Rhodian fleet, though small, was second to none in quality.

Before Antigonus and Rhodes the sea-power of Egypt went down, never to rise again. All that remains to record the catastrophe are a few broken allusions, and Antigonus’ triumphant offerings on Delos. We have to interpret them as best we can; we merely guess at the bare events. The old king, some seventy-three years of age, appeared in the Aegean in the spring of 246 at the head of his fleet, commanding in person on the flagship named after the much-desired fortress of Corinth; off Andros he defeated an Egyptian fleet stationed there to watch him, while another Egyptian squadron, under the Athenian exile Chremonides, was defeated off Ephesus by the Rhodian admiral, Agathostratos son of Polyaratos. Finally, whether that same year or possibly in 245, Antigonus crossed the Aegean and met the combined forces of Egypt in a great battle off the island of Kos. Though heavily outnumbered, he won a decisive victory; he had no trusted to the fighting powers of his Macedonians in vain. We would gladly know something of what took place, and of how Antigonus secured his boarding fight; we may suppose that he did not adopt the enveloping tactics of his Rhodian ally, which demanded superior seamanship, or the simple Roman device of each ship grappling with an opponent, which demanded equal or superior numerical strength, but that, like his father at Salamis, he trusted to Epaminondas’ theory, massed strength on the left wing.—But instead of telling something of what happened, all that the tradition can furnish is faint echoes of the legends that grew up round the great battle and Antigonus’ famous flagship, which he had, it seems, vowed to Apollo in the event of victory. One legend was, that when his captains commented on the numerical superiority of the enemy, Antigonus merely asked them how many ships they thought he was worth. Another was that parsley, the omen of victory to a Corinthian ship, sprouted on the vessel’s poop before she went into action; and after the battle, whichever it was, Antigonus altered her name to Isthmia, the name of the games at her home port at which parsley was the victor’s crown.

Antigonus, forthwith sailed to Delos, to notify Delos, the Island League, and the world that the sea had changed masters. There he dedicated two gold crowns to Apollo, to whom, on the conclusion of peace, he proposed to pay an honour that was unique. There he founded also, in the year 245, two festivals; they also were in their way unique, for though vase foundations of the usual type, the vases were in neither case dedicated as was usual to the regular triad of Delian divinities, Apollo, Artemis, and Leto. The usual rule had been broken once before, when in the heyday of Egyptian power Arsinoe’s name had appeared on a series of vases with those of the gods of Delos; and Antigonus was not unmindful of the fact. His festivals were known by the names of the Paneia and the Soteria, the festival of the god Pan and the festival of the ‘deliverance’, the deliverance of the sea and the Islands from the yoke of Egypt. The name was deliberately chosen with reference to the events of forty years before; the Islanders on Demetrios’ fall had honoured Ptolemy as Soter, the Deliverer, and had celebrated festivals of similar name for his viceroy Philokles; Antigonus proclaimed to the world, in similar fashion, that. Fortune’s wheel had at last come full circle and that the son of Demetrios had entered into his own. Neither set of vases had an inscription of the usual type; the vases of the Paneia were engraved with the words ‘King Antigonus the Mace­donian, son of King Demetrios, to Pan’; the vases of the Soteria bore a similar legend, but by great ill fortune the stone that gives the actual words is broken away at the god’s name. It is quite certain, however, that the missing word (or words) was the god’s name; and it is difficult to avoid the conjecture that the vases of the Soteria were offered to the Soteres, the ‘Saviour gods’, meaning thereby not Antigonus I and Demetrios, the founders of the League, whose well-known title this was, but Apollo of Delos and the gods associated with him, who had heard Antigonus’ vow of his flagship and had lent their aid to work the great ‘deliverance’. The festival in honour of Pan needs no explanation; fir thirty years he had been Antigonus’ patron deity; it is possible that on Delos Antigonus now built him a house. But the actual part played by the god in the campaign is lost; and it cannot be said with certainty whether the Soteria are to be referred to Kos and the Paneia to Andros, or whether, as is possible, both festivals are to be referred to the whole series of events which, beginning with the recapture of Akrokorinthos and ending with the victory of Kos, had given Antigonus possession of Delos and command of the sea.

Before coming to the terms of peace between Antigonus and Egypt, it is as well to take up, very briefly, the thread of events on land contemporaneous with Antigonus’ naval campaign.

Antigonus’ good understanding with Aetolia at this time has already been mentioned, as well as the rapid expansion of the Aetolian League. In one sense, his difficulties had Aetolia’s opportunity; she had seen her way to attempt a greater acquisition than any she had yet made; and we can now see the process at work by which Aetolia, two generations ago content to aid in maintaining a kind of balance of power in the north, and a generation ago content to have her sphere among the Amphiktyonic peoples recognized, henceforth discards all idea of her sphere and all notions of power save one; Aetolia is to be the equal and rival of Macedonia, exercising supreme influence over the western side of the peninsula, as Macedonia over the eastern. Elis and part of Akarnania were now hers, in fact if not in name; through her help Elis recovered, about 245, Triphylia and Lasion, and thus realized an ambition more than a century old; Aetolia herself may have already begun to extend her influence southward to Phigaleia and Messene. Meanwhile the larger half of Akarnania still belonged to Epirus, once the friend, one might almost say the patron, of Aetolia, but now fallen on evil days. Aetolia now meditated a fresh stroke; she saw the possibility of incorporating the independent part of Akarnania into her League.

It seems to have been about the year 246 or 245, while Epirot government was not in a good position to offer resistance. Alexander of Epirus was dead, and his widow and half-sister, Olympias, had been left regent for his sons Pyrrhus and Ptolemaios, both of whom were under age at the time. It seems probable that both were now of full age; but Olympias is represented as continuing to wield the actual authority, and neither Epirus nor Akarnania felt any confidence in her power to offer an effectual resistance to Aetolia. Epirus turned to her old enemy Macedonia, Akarnania (it is said) to Rome. This last rests on poor authority; but the details fit. Rome is represented as having suffered many defeats at the hands of Carthage; and this would suit with the period after 249, when Rome, driven from the sea by the double disaster of the year of Drepana, was failing on land to make any impression upon the stubborn resistance of Hamilcar Barca. Rome was in no condition to intervene, had she desired to; but it is said that she sent word to the Aetolians to leave Akarnania alone, an insolence to which the Aetolians made the only possible reply, telling Rome to finish with Carthage before she tried to bully Greeks. If true, it is the first appearance of that ‘cloud in the west’ which was so soon to overshadow the whole peninsula.

Olympias meanwhile had approached the young Demetrio, Antigonus’ son, who was governing for his father in Macedonia while the latter was at sea, offering him the hand of her daughter Phthia in marriage as the price of Macedonian aid. Probably the matter was not settled till Antigonus’ return; anyhow Demetrios did marry Phthia, granddaughter of the great Pyrrhus, and for a few short years Epirus must have been to a considerable extent under Macedonian influence. It was another great success for Antigonus; but it was bought at a price. For his side of the bargain was to restrain the Aetolians; and, as Aetolia did not manage to incorporate Acarnania, there is no doubt that he kept his undertaking. We need not suppose that he had any great difficulty; the Aetolians were still his very good friends, and were not likely to wish to face the formidable old king with the Macedonians flushed by a great victory. But it may be conjectured that the episode left its sting behind it, and that the working of the poison broke out in the Aetolian war of Demetrios II; though it may well be that, at the pace at which Aetolia was now expanding, a collision with Macedonia was only a question of time.

Yet another state was brought at this time within Antigonus’ sphere of influence. Boeotia, attempting a forward policy under the lead of Abaiokritos after long years of inactivity, had by the beginning of 245 come into conflict with Aetolia, probably over Phocis; a single-handed struggle was too formidable a matter even for a state of Boeotia’s military strength, now doubtless somewhat rusted; and she sought the alliance of the Achaean League. That League had taken the important step of electing Aratos as its general for the first time for the official year which began in May 245; and at the head of the Achaean fleet he at once put to sea and harried the Aetolian coast. But while he thus wasted time, the Aetolians did not; they invaded Boeotia in force. Aratos began shipping the federal troops across the Gulf of Corinth to the aid of his allies, but he came too late. On the ancient battle-ground of Chaironeia the Aetolians had already broken the strength of the Boeotian League: Abaiokritos and 1,000 men lay dead on the field : Boeotia had no option but to join the Aetolians. She did not become a member of the Aetolian League, but occupied the more informal position of ‘ally’ or ‘friend’; but therewith she came, informally under the influence of Macedonia,  and was treated as a friendly state. At the same time Aetolia seems to have added to her League the independent portions of Phocis and Locris.

It may be conjectured too, that it was about this time, in 246 or 245, that the recently formed Arcadian League broke up, and a revolution in Megalopolis again brought Antigonus’ adherents into power: and with their support a young man named Lydiades, who had successfully led the Megalopolitan troops against Sparta in a battle fought at Mantineia some three years before, made himself tyrant. Lydiades, if ambitious, was a noble-minded man, of whom a good deal more was to be heard; and meanwhile the revolution in Megalopolis, and his accession to power,  a great gain to Antigonus.

While Antigonus and his allies were thus piling victory upon victory, Ptolemy was finding himself unable to face all his enemies at once. His first sweeping’ successes had been won too rapidly; he could not hold what he had taken. It had been one thing for a Greek city to support Berenice against Laodice; it was quite another thing, now that Berenice and her son were dead, to stand by and see the rightful heir to the throne crushed by a foreign power. The Greek cities remembered the freedom they had enjoyed under the popular rule of Antiochus Soter and his son, a freedom that might not be guaranteed to them by a foreign conqueror; and under the leadership of absolutely loyal towns like Miletus and Smyrna probably soon after the Battle of Kos, by what is briefly described as ‘internal troubles’ in Egypt, perhaps not unconnected with the conscription necessary to man the great fleet that had been so decisively beaten; and Seleucus was encouraged by the Egyptian defeats and the aid of the Greek cities to get a fleet to sea himself, which, however, went to the bottom in a storm. On land, however, he fared differently; in the spring of 244 he triumphantly forced his way back over the Taurus; and began the series of campaigns in Assyria which won him the exaggerated name of Kallinikos, the ‘Famous Conqueror’, and only ended two or three years later with his abortive attempt to invade Egypt.

It was clear, by about the beginning of 244 that Ptolemy was no match for all his enemies at once; he must buy off one of them, and pay the price. As to which of them it was to be, there could be no doubt. The war against Seleucus was a war of vengeance for Berenice; it touched Ptolemy’s honour. The war against Antigonus did not. Moreover, Seleucus was young and in the flush of conquest; and behind him stood his grasping and imperious mother. Antigonus was old ; he had always been moderate in his, ambitions; he knew very well what he could and what he could not; it was likely that he would know exactly what he wanted, and probable that what he wanted was that which he already had and from which there was, in any case, no means of dislodging him. Ptolemy sent his envoys to Antigonus.

The envoy chosen was the old Sostratos of Knidos, a contemporary of Antigonus and of Philadelphus, and a man for long held in high esteem by all of Greek race for his masterly achievements in architecture. He had built the famous ‘hanging porticoes’ at Knidos, and something notable for the Knidians at Delphi. But his greatest glory was the Pharos, the lighthouse that illumined the entrance to the harbour of Alexandria : it was one of the wonders of the world, and many were the honours which its designer had received from Delos and the Island League. Nothing shows more clearly how wonderfully ready a Hellenistic king was to put intellectual ability before birth or station than Ptolemy’s choice of an architect as his ambassador, even though he was also a man of affairs; and Sostratos was a good choice. For when Antigonus took up the position that he did not care whether Egypt made peace or not, Sostratos, in falling back on Homer, as every Greek did in a difficulty, chose his quotation with consummate tact; using the words of Iris, Zeus’ messenger, he addressed Antigonus as Poseidon, Lord of the Sea, and t reminded him that a noble heart does not fear to relent. Antigonus must have thoroughly appreciated the delicate hint that if he were now Poseidon, Sostratos’ king was still Zeus, the greater deity.

All else that we know is the result, an it did Sostratos credit. Antigonus took Delos and the Cyclades, the Islands of the League, and no more. The peace left Egypt in possession of the southern limit of the Aegean, following the volcanic deep waterline, with a ring of posts at Methana, Thera, perhaps Astypalaia, and Samos; and she was left at liberty to do precisely what she pleased in the Seleucid sphere, or any sphere not claimed by Antigonus, that is to say, along the coasts of Asia Minor and Thrace. Antigonus secured the indispensable fruit of his victories and the object of his long effort; but it was no part of his design to aid Syria in an attempt to crush Egypt. The Seleucids had not treated him any too well ; it was much more to his interest that the two Eastern powers should balance each other; and the peace seems to have been deliberately calculated to save Ptolemy’s face to some extent. Doubtless Rhodes counted for some­thing in this; matters at sea had gone fully as far as those discreet islanders would care about.

Antigonus at once took a step which proclaimed to the world, even more emphatically than the foundation of the Soteria, that there was a new state of things in the Aegean, and that the League of the Islanders had a new master. He dedicated his flagship on Delos to the Delian Apollo. No more marked step was ever taken by any king. Macedonian kings were supposed not to erect trophies, though there seem to be a good many exceptions; but here was a trophy, not indeed of spoils taken from an enemy, but of an absolutely unique character. Greek naval history knows no parallel to this dedication. The common practice was to dedicate the prows or stern ornaments of the captured vessels; it was something quite exceptional when the Greeks in 480, after Salamis, dedicated in their entirety three Phoenician triremes, or when the Peloponnesians dedicated to Poseidon at Rhion an Athenian trireme taken from Phormion in the Gulf of Corinth. But Antigonus went far beyond this in offering to Apollo—it seems as the result of a previous vow —his own most precious possession,  his victorious flagship. And just as he had celebrated the victory of Lysimacheia, which gave him Macedonia, by striking a tetradrachm which did honour to Pan, so he now celebrated the victory which had given him the sea by striking another famous tetradrachm, which commemorates, so to speak, his vessel’s life-history. On the obverse the coin bears the head of the Corinthian Poseidon, under whose auspices she had been launched ; on the reverse it celebrates the dedication by the figure of Apollo of Delos, seated on the Isthmia’s prow. In commemorating his victorious galley, Antigonus contrived to honour alike the god of Delos and the god of the Sea.

A new series of honours forthwith appears at Delos. The League of the Islanders erected a statue to Antigonus’ ally Agathostratos; and long ago there was found in the Propylaia at Delos the base of a statue of Queen Phila erected by some private person, which must belong to this time. Phila, too, made a dedication jointly with one Patron son of Antiochus, the meaning of which is quite obscure; how completely the history of the time has been lost is illustrated by our entire ignorance of a man who must obviously have been among the first in Macedonia. To Antigonus himself no honours seem to have been paid. Consistently with precedent, the only thing which the Islanders could have done for him was to deify him; and Antigonus had no desire to become one of their gods. But if Delos could not honour Antigonus, the offerings have been recovered with which Antigonus honoured Delos. He set about building an addition to the sacred precinct there, the portico on the north side of the temenos, which has again become known to the world through the French excavations, and dedicated it to Apollo by his style of King Antigonus, son of King Demetrios, the Macedonian. There he set up the statues of his ancestors, some fifteen in number; they have perished, but the great monument on which they stood, with his dedication upon it, has been found. He felt that his rule was to be a permanent one, built upon solid foundations. And in fact Egypt, though she remained a considerable sea-power—she could not be otherwise, so long as she held Phoenicia—never again challenged the Macedonian upon the water: and the command of the sea, with the control of the Islands of the League, passed unquestioned to Antigonus’ two successors on the throne. They exercised judicial authority in the Islands; Delos was their granary; on Delos Antigonus’ son and grandson on their accessions made their foundations in honour of Apollo; on Delos Antigonus Doson set up the memorial of his great victory at Sellasia over Cleomenes of Sparta. It was not till after Doson’s death that the Macedonian command of the sea lapsed at last through sheer neglect of the fleet.

CHAPTER XIV

THE YOUNGER GENERATION

ANTIGONUS GONATAS