READING HALL

THE DOORSOF WISDOM

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

CHAPTER II.

THE EMPIRE OF DEMETRIOS ON LAND

During the five years which elapsed from 294 to the peace of 289, Demetrios was employed in extending the new Empire which he had won, and in attempting to consolidate his forces for a yet greater undertaking. It may be emphasized at the commencement that his kingship of Macedonia was never much more than an accident, and that he never regarded the country in any other light than that of a starting-place from which to recover his father’s Asiatic empire and perhaps aim afresh at the rule of the world. What he is seeking during these five confused years is so to order matters in the Balkan Peninsula that he shall acquire sufficient force for his undertaking, and shall be at liberty to use it. He does not indeed pursue his design with unbroken plan or unswerving tenacity; such was not Demetrios’ nature. But he does pursue it. The Greek possessions which required looking after are during this period under the government of Antigonus; Macedonia seems largely to have looked after itself. Demetrios had no fear of interruption from Kassandros’ heirs. Kassandros’ surviving nephew, Antipatros, son of his dead brother Philip, and his dead son Alexander’s widow, Lysandra, had taken refuge at the court of Lysimachus: according to one version, which may perhaps be believed, Kassandros’ son Antipatros was still alive and there also. He had married Lysimachus’ daughter Eurydice; and the king of Thrace now married Lysandra to his own son Agathocles. Lysimachus was a man of long views; it might one day be of service to him that he had thus gathered into his own hands all the claims of the house of Kassandros.

In the spring of 293 Demetrios turned southward to conquer or receive the submission of Thessaly; and on the Gulf of Pagasai he founded himself a new capital to bear his name. For one who desired to be a Greek as well as a Macedonian king, Pella was too far to the north; Kassandreia was better placed, but identified with the fallen dynasty. To found a capital on conquered territory may seem strange; but in fact, as will be explained later, the kings of Macedonia regarded their title to Thessaly as perfectly legal, as, in form, it was. The exact site of Demetrias is unfortunately unknown. It may be accepted with confidence that it was not the town situated on the hill of Goritza, near Volo; it is perhaps just as difficult to believe that it was only a new name for Pagasai, seeing that Pagasai retained its separate identity. It may be that the actual city of Demetrias was rather in the nature of an enlargement of, and comprehended, Pagasai, somewhat as London comprehends Westminster; but further excavation alone can solve its problem. Politically, however, Demetrias was something greater than its actual stones. Demetrios, in founding it, seems to have consciously imitated the arrangement which had originally made his beloved Athens into a great city. The town was an example on a large scale of a synoikismos, the combination of several communities into one; and, besides Pagasai, the greater part of the little towns of Magnesia—eleven at least are known—became members of Demetrias, perhaps bearing much the same relation to the capital as the Attic demes to Athens; and Demetrios and his successors took over the conduct of the national Magnesian festival, the Hetairideia, traditionally founded by Jason. Only a few small towns in the north of, Magnesia seem to have retained their independence; and the city territory included the whole of the long Magnesian promontory extending to Cape Sepias. It was as well for the Lord of Demetrias to have in his own hand the land connexions with the important Euboea.

It is not known whether Demetrias ever became a seat of art or learning, of wealth or commerce. But on one point tradition is clear. It was a very great fortress; a virgin fortress, impregnable to any direct assault. From their palace in this stronghold, like eagles from their eyrie, the Antigonid kings could look south across the Gulf of Pagasai to the Euripos, where lay the second of the three fortresses— Demetrias, Chalcis, Corinth—which gave them their grip on Greece: while northward it dominated the mountains as far as the Pass of Tempe, which gave the Macedonian entrance into Thessaly. The eagle, poised in the air over their stronghold, would see behind it Pelion rising fold upon fold, and over Pelion the pointed cone of Ossa, and on the north horizon, serrated against the sky, the snows of Olympos. It is the ladder of the Aloidai, lying as they dropped it; the ladder which the giants, in Homer’s story, raised on end in order to scale heaven and master the gods. They raised it Olympos uppermost, with its foot on earth near Demetrias; who dreamt of climbing to the highest, and mastering the undivided heritage of Alexander.

Passing on southward, Demetrios invaded Boeotia, and made a treaty on moderate terms with the Boeotians; but with the summer the Spartan Kleonymos came north with an army, and Boeotia rose in revolt. The leader in the movement was Pisis of Thespiai, a man who had been prominent in the state since, in 313/2, he had helped Ptolemaios, the general of Antigonus I, to drive Kassandros’ garrison out of Opous, an exploit celebrated by an ex-voto of the Boeotian confederacy at Delphi. Now, from an anti-Kassandrean and friend of the Antigonids, he had become an anti-Demetriean, a change of view which was to be common enough in the Greek world since Demetrios had taken Kassandros’ place. Demetrios met the revolt with his usual energy; he brought up his siege train; Kleonymos, unable to face him, retired; Thebes surrendered. Boeotia, as will be seen presently, was so necessary a part of Demetrios’ state system that he behaved with every clemency; and though a war indemnity was exacted, Pisis was not only pardoned but made polemarch of his native city. As governor of the country Demetrios left one of his best officers, Hieronymus of Kardia, the future historian.

These events had occupied the year 293. Next spring Lysimachus started on his expedition against Dromichaetes, king of the Getae; by summer, Demetrios had the news that the king of Thrace was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. Demetrios at once set out for Thrace, hoping to seize the kingdom in Lysimachus’ absence; but on his way he received information both that Dromichaetes had released his prisoner and that Boeotia had again risen. He returned as quickly as he had gone, to find that his son was already master of the situation. Antigonus had collected what troops he could, defeated the Boeotians in open field, and shut them up in Thebes. It appears that this his first battle was an extremely hard-won victory, if it be here that belongs the death of the Boeotian cavalry leader Eugnotos of Akraiphia. The inscription on his statue recorded that the Boeotians were outnumbered, that he himself charged eighteen times at the head of his squadron, and at the end flung himself on the enemy’s spears, disdaining to survive defeat; Antigonus restored the body of the patriot, unstripped and unspoiled, to lie in the tombs of his ancestors.

Boeotia, however, had not risen without prospect of support; she had made overtures to Demetrios’ old protégé, Pyrrhus king of Epirus, and possibly, though this is quite uncertain, to Aetolia. While Demetrios was pressing on the siege of Thebes, Pyrrhus attempted to create a diversion by raiding Thessaly. He actually penetrated as far as Thermopylae; but he had not yet got to the length of facing his former benefactor in the field, and he retired quickly when Demetrios, leaving Antigonus to continue the siege, appeared in pursuit. Demetrios did not follow him, and returning to Thebes threw new energy into the assault on the town. He brought up the celebrated Helepolis or ‘Taker of Cities’, a huge ironclad tower of his own invention, running, or rather crawling,—(for it took a month, it is said, to travel a furlong),—on eight wheels, and moved by 3,400 picked men to the sound of the trumpet; it was divided into nine stages, each furnished with portholes for the discharge of different sorts of missiles, and these again protected by mechanically controlled ports made of leather bags stuffed with wool, impervious to stones thrown from catapults. Thebes held out strongly against the Taker of Cities, and Demetrios’ attacks became so expensive that—Antigonus felt compelled to remonstrate with him on the unnecessary waste of life. Demetrios flew into a rage, and far from sparing his men’s lives began merely to expose his own, and ended by getting a bolt from a catapult through the neck. Nothing, however, would loosen his grip; and some time in the summer of 291 the protracted siege ended in the fall of Thebes. Demetrios again showed clemency of a sort, hanging only thirteen and banishing a few others; but Thebes was deprived of self-government and of course strongly garrisoned. Boeotia did not trouble Demetrios again.

The trouble in Boeotia had not been without its effect on Athens. The traditional position of parties there had been, that the democrats stood for an Athens free and independent, even if not Imperial; while the oligarchs had been the friends of Macedonia, and their aim (they would have said) before all things was peace and good government. From 317 to 307 Kassandros had ruled Athens through the oligarchs and Demetrios of Phaleron; peace and good government had indeed been the lot of Athens, presented to her on the points of Macedonian lances. In 307 Demetrios had freed the city, and been welcomed by the democrats with open arms as their helper against Kassandros; the most violent of the oligarchs of Kassandros’ faction had been banished. But some of the democrats,—Stratokles, Dromokleides, and their friends,—had disgraced their cause and their city by the most noisome adulation of Demetrios, (though we may suspect that their misdeeds have lost nothing in transmission); the party began to break up; there were changes in the government, and in 303 one of the most prominent men among the democrats, Demosthenes’ nephew Demochares, who had kept his self­respect, was exiled. He seems, as was natural in an opponent of Demetrios, to have gone to Lysimachus’ court.

With the fall of Demetrios at Ipsos fell the democratic government in Athens. It was succeeded in 301/0, not by the oligarchs,—all the extreme oligarchs were in exile,—but by a government of moderates, men of different shades of opinion but who on the whole stood half-way between the Kassandrean oligarchs on the one hand and the vehement partisans of Demetrios,—Stratokles and his friends,—on the other. They governed Athens from 301/0 to 296/5; their aim was to be independent of all kings, and their ambition to lead a quiet life. It was a good aim : but they shared the common fallacy that it takes two to make a quarrel, and they believed that if they threw away the sword none other would bear the sword against them. They threw away the sword accordingly; Athens renounced the compulsory military service which she had instituted after Chaironeia. The reward came quickly enough, for in 296/5 Kassandros’ friend Lachares, perhaps at the head of the more oligarchic section of the moderates, succeeded in a coup d'état and made himself tyrant, to be expelled after a severe siege by Demetrios.

Demetrios in forming his new government in 295/4 aimed at bringing about a union of parties. Fora moment it seemed as if he might accomplish this. Naturally he looked primarily to the democrats, his friends of aforetime; Stratokles again came to the fore, and a strong democrat and opponent of Kassandros’ old friends, Olympiodorus, became eponymous archon for 294/3. But Demetrios sought also to win the moderate oligarchs, the men who had governed Athens since 301 and had been overthrown by Lachares. Phaidros of Sphettos he gained outright, as will be seen; and in 294/3 Strategies moved a decree in honour of another moderate  oligarch, Philippides of Paiania, who had been active under the late government.

But two things overthrew Demetrios’ plans. The first was that in 294 he himself became king of Macedonia and so stood in the place of Kassandros; the other was that in 293/2 he carried his idea to its logical conclusion by issuing a general amnesty and recalling the friends of Kassandros, the old oligarchs who had gone into exile on the fall of Demetrios of Phaleron. The consequences were immediately seen. All the better elements of the democratic party fell away from Demetrios, and indeed took up an attitude of hostility to the new king of Macedonia, who had recalled the Kassandreanss Demochares even refused to avail himself of the amnesty and remained in exile. This left Demetrios nothing but Stratokles and the rump of the party, and inevitably threw him into the arms of the moderate oligarchs, the men of 301, who were not necessarily hostile to Macedonia on principle. This was the main line taken by the new division of parties; but in fact there was some cross-division, for everyman in Athens had to reconsider his political position. Henceforth the old labels of democrat and oligarch lose much of their meaning; the dividing line of parties was now tending to become simply this : were you for or against the house of Antigonus? In answering this question men considered their individual desires as well as their former party names. The result was the formation at Athens of two new parties : a new Nationalist party, of which the nucleus was composed of the sturdier wing of the old democrats, and who were to come into power on Demetrios’ fall; and a party of the ‘ king’s friends’, whom it will be easiest to call pro-Macedonians, and who undoubtedly tended to absorb oligarchs of all shades. That each party, like every party, had a more advanced and a more moderate wing, goes without saying. But, taken as a whole, the pro-Macedonians were the party that was to support Antigonus Gonatas throughout his long reign; and fortunately the career of one of them can be traced with exactitude.

In 275/4, when Antigonus was firmly in the saddle, the pro-Macedonians put out what may be called the political confession of faith of their party in the guise of a decree in honour of one of their most prominent men, Phaidros of Sphettos. His father Thymochares had been a devoted adherent of Kassandros, to whom he had rendered many services on sea and land as commander of the Athenian contingents that aided Kassandros against the elder Antigonus; and Phaidros also started life as an oligarch, a friend of Kassandros. He seems, however, to have managed in 307 to avoid banishment, and he served as one of the generals under the moderate Government of 301/0-296/5: and he continued to serve under Lachares when the latter made himself master of the city. On Lachares’ fall he again managed to avoid banishment; he went over to Demetrios. He must have possessed considerable pliancy and considerable popularity to have enabled him to steer so successfully between Scylla and Charybdis. However, to his credit, having once joined Demetrios, he never changed again. The king bridged over any awkwardness there might have been in utilizing Phaidros’ services by permitting him to be sent as Athenian envoy to Egypt, to seek corn for the empty granaries of the city; and by 292, after his return, his political development had completed itself, and the oligarch, the friend of Kassandros, had finally become a moderate, the friend of Demetrios. He held office regularly during Demetrios’ rule, and the party emphasized his loyalty to the king up to that monarch’s fall. We shall meet him once later.

In 293/2 Demetrios, as already mentioned, issued a general amnesty, under which he recalled Kassandros’ friends, the old oligarchs banished in 307. In what temper they returned may be guessed from many a similar event in Greek history. In 292 trouble was threatening at Athens, and the Boeotian revolt can hardly have been unconnected with the designs of the old oligarchs. Phaidros, however, who seems to have been the able man in the Government, kept his head; he succeeded alike in preventing any coup d'état on the part of the returned exiles, and in keeping Athens clear of the war, a service to Demetrios as well as a service to the city; and when he laid down his office at the end of the year it could be declared by his friends, without any overwhelming absurdity, that he left the city governed by its own laws under the form of democracy, and left it, as a friend of the king might construe the word, ‘free.’

The fall of Thebes gave Demetrios peace for the moment and leisure to settle his score with Pyrrhus, who had made on him an unprovoked attack. An opportunity, as it happened, offered itself of repaying Pyrrhus for his raid while still avoiding an actual war with Epirus. Pyrrhus, after the death of his Egyptian wife Antigone, had married Lanassa, the daughter of Agathocles of Syracuse, who brought him Kerkira as her dower; but Pyrrhus held the same polygamistic views as Demetrios, and for political reasons proceeded also to wed Birkenna, the daughter of the Illyrian king Bardylis. Lanassa’s pride refused to endure the concurrence of the barbarian woman, though she were a king’s daughter; she ran away to her dower town Kerkira, and from there, being ambitious and no more overburdened with morality than her husband, she issued an invitation to Demetrios to come and see her. Demetrios, notoriously easy-going on the subject of wives, came, saw, and married Lanassa; she put Kerkira into his hands.

It was probably in the spring of 290 that Demetrios went to Kerkira, though it is possible that he passed the winter of 291/0 there with Lanassa. For the moment his thoughts had turned to the west; he occupied himself in cultivating good relations with his new father-in-law, Agathocles; the tyrant sent his son to Demetrios, who sent him back in the company of his trusted friend Oxythemis, son of Hippostratos, to ratify the treaty which had been negotiated. Demetrios also planned to cut a canal through the Isthmus of Corinth, a work which had to wait twenty-two centuries for its accomplishment; but the story that he sent an embassy to Rome to complain of some pirates of Antium, whom he had captured, is at least doubtful. He seems also to have acquired Leukas; whether by conquest from Pyrrhus, or by gift from Lanassa, cannot be said.

Pyrrhus took the loss of his wife philosophically enough, a matter on which he was presently to be taunted by the other kings; but the questions at issue between himself and Demetrios were the outcome merely of an inordinate ambition on either side, and Lanassa was far less important than Kerkira. But the loss of Kerkira meant war; and Pyrrhus strengthened himself for the inevitable conflict by a definite alliance with the Aetolians. Aetolia, prompted alike by ambition and policy, was ready enough to join him; and Demetrios’ absence at Kerkira was her opportunity. Whether it was during the winter of 291/0 that Delphi came into Aetolian hands, or whether this most important event is to be placed earlier, is quite uncertain; but at any rate the Aetolians, in the summer of 290, used their authority over Delphi to fortify the passes and exclude all adherents of Demetrios, including the Athenians, from the Pythian games of that year.

Demetrios returned to Athens in the summer of 290; he probably brought Lanassa with him. It appears that she desired to be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries; and the two made a state entry into Athens as the divine pair Demeter and Demetrios. Demetrios found excitement running high over the insolent action of the Aetolians. Not merely were his friends excluded from Delphi; it was reported that some of them, probably some Athenian citizens, who happened to be there, had been illtreated, and had only been saved by the intervention of Aischron son of Proxenos, a man whom Athens afterwards rewarded with citizenship. Popular songs were sung in the streets, invoking Demetrios as a god, and begging him to put down this new Sphinx which was despoiling Hellas, and to restore peace. Demetrios agreed that this was his business. But as Athenians could not go to Delphi, the king took the extraordinary course of celebrating an opposition Pythian festival at Athens; he then returned to Macedonia to prepare for the inevitable campaign.

Pyrrhus had outmanoeuvred his teacher; he had committed Demetrios to the difficult business of an attack on Aetolia, with himself in reserve. This country of mountains and difficult forest paths, with few important towns and an elastic federal constitution, resembled one of those amorphous organisms which can be slashed in any direction and close again after the blow; magnificently adapted for guerrilla warfare, Aetolia could not be subdued by a blow at the heart, for heart there was none. Demetrios stormed through the country, laying it waste; and leaving his general Pantauchos with a large part of his force behind, he passed on to look for Pyrrhus, while Pyrrhus started to look for Demetrios. They missed each other; Demetrios did some raiding in Epirus, but Pyrrhus’ Aetolian allies brought him down on Pantauchos. The ensuing battle was a complete victory for the Epirot, and established his already considerable reputation as a general; he himself struck down Pantauchos with his own hand. Demetrios was forced to evacuate Epirus and Aetolia and return to Macedonia. Here he fell ill; and while he lay in Pella, Pyrrhus raided the country as far as Aigai, the old capital. This roused Demetrios from his sick bed; Pyrrhus fled before him, but was attacked on his retreat and lost part of his army.

To Demetrios the whole thing was an annoying episode, a hindrance to the development of his real ambition. He therefore came to an arrangement with Pyrrhus, on what terms is not known, except that it must have included the Aetolians and recognized their possession of Delphi; Demetrios kept Kerkira. By the late autumn of 289 Demetrios was at last at peace with all men.

Demetrios had at this time, to outward seeming, the strongest power in the world, or at any rate the world east of the Adriatic. He had taken scant pains, it is true, to secure nis position in Macedonia itself; he seems to have taken Macedonia for granted; but he had displayed considerable energy in carrying out his policy in Greece. His policy was fairly simple; he desired to have a definite preponderance of strength, not over this or that state, but over all the independent states of the Balkan peninsula taken together, neglecting of course the ‘barbarians’ to the north of Epirus and Macedonia. Why he sought this is not quite so easy to see. He may have looked on it as a necessity in order to guarantee himself,—and he had numerous enemies,—against any conceivable combination; he may have taken it simply for granted, a legacy of the days of Philip and Alexander. In any case, he sought it merely as a step to something further, to reconquest in Asia. There was a touch of the Oriental about Demetrios; and his ideas, if sometimes grand, were also sometimes grandiose. One thing, however, was quite clear; the preponderance of strength which he sought could only be obtained by bringing over to his side a large part of Greece. To this end the efforts of five years had been directed : and on the whole with success. He seems never to have considered the question whether he could found a stable state in Macedonia apart from the control of Greece. It was a question that had not occurred to any king of Macedonia for two generations; and it was not a question in which Demetrios, being such as he was, was likely to feel any interest.

On the whole, his five years had brought him success. He controlled Thessaly and the smaller peoples who went with Thessaly; Elateia and the northern part of Phocis; probably the Eastern Locrians; certainly Boeotia and Attica with Athens. The possession of Megara and (more especially) of Corinth gave him the Isthmus, and these, together with the great island of Euboea, also his, guaranteed him complete control of the communications with the Peloponnese. In the Peloponnese itself he held Argos and the Argolid, Achaea, and most of Arcadia, the exceptions being Mantineia and such other towns as had always looked to Sparta. Of the independent powers three only were of real importance; Epirus and Aetolia in the north, Sparta in the south. Of the smaller independent states, Elis, and perhaps some of the little Amphictyonic peoples, lay under Aetolia’s shield; Messene perhaps alone was in a situation to enjoy a true neutrality.

Omitting Macedonia, all the states of the north of Greece had one typical constitution, the koinon or League. Its peculiarity was that, generally speaking, it was not founded on city-organization. Omitting the Boeotian, which was a city­league and on a different footing, the Leagues in Northern Greece whose existence prior to this epoch can be proved are those of the Molossians, Aetolians, Thessalians, Phocians, Ainianes, and Acarnanians; possibly also those of the Eastern Locrians, the Phthiot Achaeans, and of this or that small people of the Amphictyonic circle. These Leagues were definitely cantonal. Each one, in all probability, had started as the natural organization of one particular stem, one Ethnos or Folk; even in the second century, in the case of a League so important as the Thessalian, Folk and League could. be used synonymously. In this natural organization of the Folk the original unit was the territory of some particular sept, with its villages : the town members, which must have come later, are more or less of an accident. This can be proved for the Leagues of the Molossians and the Aetolians; and it must be true of all. It takes some mental effort to realize that over a large part of what passed as Hellas there were really few cities of much importance, (unless like Ambrakia or Naupactus they had been founded by intruders from the south), and that the typical organization of the had nothing to do with cities at all. 

But many of these Leagues had not been able to maintain their independence. With Thessaly, Northern Phocis, and perhaps Eastern Locris in the hands of Demetrios, Akarnania subject to Pyrrhus, Western Locris and Delphi controlled by Aetolia, the Greek-speaking world north of Boeotia was really at this time divided between three powers; and the reality of the division, with whatever changes of boundary, was to be emphasized increasingly for many years with the growth of the Aetolian League.

Macedonia was still much the greatest of these three powers. But it was not the Macedonia of forty years before. The population had suffered heavily, both from constant war and from settlement abroad; Paionia was independent again under its king Audoleon, while the border provinces of Parauaia and Tymphaia had been ceded to Pyrrhus. A consideration of the social and political condition of the country may be deferred until Antigonus’ accession; but two things may be noted here which among others tended to distinguish Macedonia very sharply from its neighbours. All the Leagues of Northern Greece, like most other federations, were founded round about a religious centre, often one of great antiquity. Macedonia had no religious centre. There was never anything in Macedonia which meant for the country what Dodona meant for Epirus, what Thermos had meant and Delphi was to mean for Aetolia, what the worship of Athene Itonia was to Thessaly, or that of the Aktian Apollo to Acarnania; and Macedonia got on perfectly well without it. This was one of the things which made Macedonia seem alien to Greek eyes; another was its monarchical constitution. This went much deeper than the mere fact that Macedonia was always, and always had been, a monarchy. For the people themselves were devoted adherents of the monarchical principle; if they got a king they disliked they certainly ejected him, but merely took another. Even Epirus, before the end of the century, was to kill off the surviving members of Pyrrhus’ line and become a republic; but republican principles never took any real hold of the Macedonian. He remained devoted to his monarchy till the Roman forced ‘liberty’ upon him at the sword’s point.

Epirus is perhaps the first known instance of a state adopting a combination of the federal and monarchical principles. The country had only recently begun the astonishing development which, for a generation, was to raise it to importance for the present at the expense of its whole future. Its unification was comparatively recent. The population was a mixed one of many layers; so far as can be traced, Greek septs had entered the land at a very early period, overlaying the peoples they found there, people who worshipped at Dodona a god of running waters and provided him with priests of curious customs; but the Greek invaders had been in turn driven out or overlaid by the pressure of the Illyrian advance from the north. The Illyrian tribes had divided, some swamping a large part of northern Greece, others crossing the Adriatic and forming settlements in the south-east of Italy. To what extent Greeks again entered Epirus after the Illyrian settlements is doubtful. It is doubtful if Greek nationality can even be conceded to Pyrrhus and the royal house; and a great number of the Epirot personal names are not Greek. That the people were largely Illyrian by blood, and had derived their Hellenic civilization from the Corinthian colonies on the coast, seems to be a conclusion that is likely to become definitely established.

The leading tribe, the Molossians, appears under Alexander I (342-326) in the form of a League, which dates by the king and by one of its own officials, the League being constituted, as has already been mentioned, by clans and villages. It is probable, however, that the Molossian League antedates the fourth century, and it is possible that others of the large Epirot tribes were similarly organized; but it is certain that the Molossian League presently expanded beyond its own limits, for an unknown League is found inquiring of the god of Dodona if it shall join the Molossians. The process by which the Molossian League became the ‘Epirot alliance’ is obscure. It may be that we have here a successful attempt at self-assertion on the part of the Thesprotians and Chaonians; but however it came about, it is certain that by the end of the fourth century we find that the official designation of the tribes of Epirus is ‘the allies of the Epirot’s’; nevertheless they continue to date by the Molossian official called ‘prostates’, and the king. It seems probable that the Molossian League retained its separate existence, while forming part of the larger confederation; and the most helpful way of regarding it is undoubtedly the analogy put forward by a German writer, that the Molossians and their king in Epirus had somewhat the position of Prussia and her king in the German Empire. The state so  evolved contained both elements, the republican and the monarchical; and it is believed that the official called the prostates of the Molossians, who presided in the popular assembly, played the same part as the ephors at Sparta in representing and perhaps upholding the rights of the people against the principle of monarchy embodied in the king. This belief, and the frequent division of power between two kings, may tempt us to compare the Epirot state with the Spartan, not without reference to the Illyrian origin of the two peoples; but such a comparison is probably misleading. There is no real evidence for the part that has been assigned to the prostates of the Molossians; it is far from certain that the actual division of power in Epirus between two kings had ever a legal basis; and time was to show that the strongest element in the Epirot state was the federal principle. The state formula under Pyrrhus was ‘Pyrrhus the king and the Epirots’; and the money that bears the legend ‘of the Epirots’ probably belongs to the time of the kings and not to the Epirot League that was formed on the extinction of Pyrrhus’ house. Though the king led in war, his power had certain very definite limits. Apart from the continued existence of the prostates of the Molossians, the people never abandoned their ancient right of removing a king whom they disliked; and once a year, in the assembly of the people at the holy place at Passaron, the king covenanted with them that he would rule them according to the laws, and they with the king that they according to the laws would maintain his kingship. The history of Epirus is of great interest as an illustration of the difficulties inherent in its combined constitution; and if the struggle between the principles of monarchy and republicanism appeared to be settled in favour of the former by the activity of Pyrrhus, it was in fact definitely decided in favour of republicanism two generations later.

A kingship of this kind, however, in a military age must depend much on the personality of the king; and in the hands of the energetic Pyrrhus it no doubt came to differ little, for a time, from aji absolute, monarchy. It was about 295 that Pyrrhus had attained to sole power by the unification of all Epirus in his hand alone; and the difference was soon felt. The country had no great tradition, and had for a time been little but the humble vassal of Macedonia; but Pyrrhus possessed both inexhaustible ambition and military talent, and seems to have been well backed up by his people, who did not forget that the great Alexander had had an Epirot mother, and that their king was the Conqueror’s cousin. Pyrrhus accordingly soon developed his kingdom both in extent and military resources. As the price of aid rendered to Kassandros’ son Alexander, he had obtained the two western provinces of Macedonia, Tymphaia and Parauaia, together with the cession of the then subject-peoples of Akarnania, Ambracia and Amphilochia. At the same time he must have acquired Atintania, which from its situation could hardly have maintained its independence any longer; he thus bordered to the north directly upon Illyria, and somewhat later was able to extend his kingdom much further northward at Illyrian expense, and bring under his sway the considerable Greek city of Apollonia, though Dyrrachion remained in the hands of the Illyrian king Monunius, who had his mint there and was on friendly terms with the Aetolians. Pyrrhus’ marriage with Lanassa had already given him Kerkira; and though he lost the island to Demetrios for a time, it was afterwards recovered. Roughly speaking, therefore, his kingdom lay right along the Adriatic, stretching from the gulf of Corinth well into the barbarism of the north; his eastern frontier in its northern part adjoined Macedonia, while in its southern it lay along the Acheloos coterminous with Aetolia; he had completely cut Macedonia off from access to the western sea. With his back to Greece and his face to Italy, his sphere of action naturally appeared to include that Greater Greece which lay west of the Adriatic.

The acquired Greek character of his kingdom was well reflected in its spiritual capital. Far in the north of the Molossian territory, in a pleasant valley under Mount Tomaros, there lay among its fountains and huge oak-trees the famous sanctuary of Dodona. Its ancient spring-god, who had spoken to his votaries by his bubbling spring or ever the Greek came into the land, had long since acquired a respectable identification with the god of the conquerors as Zeus Naios; and the successors of his primitive priests, whose sanctity had been bound up with a very un-Hellenic abstinence from ablutions, now wrote the answers of the god upon their quaint lead tablets in good Greek surroundings. Pyrrhus may himself have built some part of the theatre and porticoes of modernized Dodona, and may have either founded or enlarged the festival, Naia, held in the god’s honour. He cannot have been insensible to the strength that it conferred on Epirus, in Greek eyes, to contain the second in fame of Panhellenic oracles; and he himself dedicated the spoils taken from the Macedonian and the Roman in the temple of the Dodonaean Zeus.

As Dodona was the spiritual, so Pyrrhus made Ambracia the political capital of his country, and adorned it with works of art. The Gulf of Ambracia became the centre of gravity of his power; he had already founded, on the isthmus where Nikopolis afterwards stood, the town of Berenicis, named after Antigone’s mother, a name which sufficiently indicates

The forces of which Pyrrhus could dispose can only be arrived at by an approximate reckoning. It will suffice to say here that Greater Epirus, as it existed in his time, reckoning in Ambracia, Acarnania, and the two Macedonian provinces, could probably raise a field force of from 18,000 to 20,000 men, omitting mercenaries.

Aetolia at this time was a land altogether undeveloped, but becoming conscious of a national life and considerable ambitions. At bottom the people had a close affinity to the Experts. Greek clans had held the land in the old heroic days of the hunt of the Kalydonian boar; they had been in part driven out or overlaid by the same Illyrian invasion that had swamped Epirus, and, isolated in their mountains, the people had been slow to acquire or reacquire Hellenic civilization. The barbarian descent of some of the Aetolian tribes was a common subject of reproach; and in the fifth century, on the testimony of Thucydides, their principal clan, the Eurytanes, still ate raw flesh and spoke the most unintelligible dialect in Hellas. They had kept some of the faults of the barbarian; they were fond of raiding their neighbours, and they had been known to be deceitful and cruel. But with barbarian faults went barbarian virtues; bravery, and a fierce love of freedom. It was said of them to the end that they were readier to die than any other men. Alone of Greek states, save Sparta, they had never yielded one foot’s breadth to the Macedonian; and though only an accident had prevented Antipatros from attempting to chastise them, their land had in fact afforded the one refuge open to those who, for whatever cause, feared the regent’s vengeance. In truth, the rugged country, with its absence of important towns and the immense adaptability of its people to guerrilla warfare, was almost unconquerable.

The origin of its famous League is lost in obscurity; though perhaps first mentioned in 314, it certainly antedates the third century, for these cantonal Leagues were the common inheritance of all the states of Northern Greece. Compared with such Leagues as the Boeotian or Thessalian, it was a very democratic form of government; hence no doubt some part of its popularity. Army and people were synonymous; the army was the folk under arms. The head of the League, the strategos or war-leader, possessed very great power during his year of office; as was usual in these Leagues, he combined the offices of military and civil head, Commander in chief and President, though the provision for him of a permanent council, the Apokletoi, no doubt restricted his powers. Twice a year the whole folk, or  all who chose, assembled in general council; the one council, called Panaitolika, was held before the campaigning season, in February or early March, and in all the principal cities of Aetolia in turn : the other, Thermika, was held in the autumn at Thermos after the harvest. The Council of the League, the synhedrion, has been claimed, on very insufficient grounds, as an early example of representative government.

The religious centre of the League was the temple of Apollo Thermios, an old sixth-century Doric building. It stood on a plain on the east of Lake Trichonis, in the very centre of the land. Thermos was as it were the citadel of Aetolia; the approaches to it were difficult, and easy of defence. No city stood about the temple; but a century later, when Philip sacked it, there were some houses and porticoes there, apparently rather storehouses of treasure than dwellings. It is described always, not as a town, but as a ‘place’; it was the holy place of the Aetolians, where they deposited their booty, kept their archives, and worshipped their god. The temple itself, which seems to have stood on the site of a still older altar, was entirely built of wood faced with baked polychrome tiles ; the columns were also of wood, perhaps painted or faced so that no wood actually showed. It was not replaced by a stone building till after the sack by Philip V.

Aetolia had already begun to expand her League prior to 290. Her first acquisition was Naupaktos, presented to her about 339/8 by Philip II; this town gave her a good seaport and some of her most intelligent citizens. The incorporation of the Western or Ozolian Lokrians followed, at an uncertain time, and, still at an uncertain time, she took the great step of annexing Delphi. The annexation appears as an accomplished fact in 290; the narrative would lead us to suppose that it took place only shortly before.

With the commencement of the expansion one of the sources of strength of the democratic people appeared. The Aetolians, though a people composed of several tribes and federated in a League, had an extremely close consciousness of national unity. Their League was, typically enough, not so much a League as an expanded Ethnos or Folk. Aetolia had a meaning quite other than that of (say) Boeotia or Achaea; for instance, while a statue of Achaea or Boeotia is unthinkable, a statue of Aetolia seems natural enough. She a League of units, she was one united people. And any state that entered into  sympolity with her, and joined her League, became by that act a part of the Aetolian people. The man of Doris or Keos could add to his own insignificant citizenship something far larger; he was not merely a member of a state that had federated with Aetolia; he became and was an Aetolian. The attraction of this, as Aetolia began to bulk large in the world, undoubtedly made for the League’s popularity.

The new aims and ambitions which dawned on Aetolia with the annexation of Delphi may be dealt with later. But she had already formulated a policy which she was to adhere to steadily for a good many years yet; the policy of attempting to preserve a kind of balance of power by always supporting the second state in the north against the first. She had aided Athens against Antipatros, Aiakides of Epirus and Demetrios in turn against Kassandros, Pyrrhus against Demetrios; and it will be seen, in the history of the next few years, how consistently this policy was to be carried out. Of the forces of which Aetolia could dispose we have, as usual, no very clear account; but it is safe to suppose that the country could raise at least 12,000 men, and probably for home defence a good many more. Even 12,000 would imply a very scanty population per square mile; but the habit of allowing their young men to leave the country and serve as mercenaries elsewhere,—a habit not fully developed till later,—tended to keep their force somewhat low. Probably the proportion of peltasts to hoplites in their armies was larger than was usual; they still used light-armed troops; at a later date their cavalry was famous.

A glance at a map would appear to show that Macedonia with Thessaly would be far more than a match for Epirus and Aetolia combined. Nothing of the sort was the case. Macedonia was thinly peopled, and had never been able to raise field armies in proportion to its size; still less could it do so now, with provinces shorn away, exhausted by many wars, and terribly in need of time to recuperate. The fairly trustworthy figures that remain show that the most that Demetrios could have raised for field service from Macedonia and Thessaly would be from 30,000 to 35,000 men, the latter quite an outside figure. He had of course a large force, perhaps 20,000 men, locked up in garrisons, especially in Greece and on his western and northern frontiers, on the latter of which, besides barbarians, Audoleon of Paionia had to be watched; he was no friend to Demetrios. Such garrisons, however, were a permanent factor and were generally composed of mercenaries; but it may be that, as mercenaries were not so numerous yet as after the Gallic invasion and the fall of Lysimachus, (which latter event threw open to recruiting many Thracian tribes broken by the Gauls), Demetrios had to use a larger proportion of Macedonians in garrison than was usual later, reducing his field force. 

The result, then, as regards the three chief states of the north, was a balance of power. Demetrios could put into the at most about 30,000-35,000 men; Pyrrhus and Aetolia combined at least 30,000-32,000. It is true that Kassandros had fought Aiakides of Epirus and Aetolia combined and been victorious; but Aiakides had not had the full force of Epirus behind him, and the country had meanwhile expanded very largely, in part at the expense of Macedonia, while Aetolia had also taken in new territory. Epirus, too, had produced a commander who was a match for Demetrios, at least upon land; and the events of 290 seemed to have shown that the two sides were not unequally matched.

If now we turn to the Peloponnese, we find existing much the same state of things. Here one power of distinct importance was still independent. Sparta was, perhaps, as yet not fully conscious of the grave economic difficulties that were to call out the reforms of Agis and the revolution of Cleomenes; at any rate, they did not affect her external policy. Areus her king is traditionally responsible for the introduction of ‘luxury' into the city about this time; but the luxury was not particularly luxurious, from our point of view, and its introduction merely corresponded to what must have been taking place in every state since Alexander’s conquest had thrown into circulation vast masses of hoarded Persian gold. It had certainly done nothing to impair the spirit of the proudest nation in Greece. And Sparta was ineradicably hostile to the Macedonian. The two peoples were probably close of kin, and Spartans believed that, whatever the one ‘Dorian’ kingdom might do in the north, headship in Hellas proper was the appurtenance of the other. Sparta consistently carried out her view. Like Aetolia, she had never yielded for a moment to the Macedonian. Alexander had done her the honour of excepting her by name from participation in his dedication of the spoils of Persia; she had given Antipatros a harder fight than had been any of the more renowned victories of Antipatros’ king. During the century that was to elapse between Antipatros’ hard won victory at Megalopolis and Antigonus Doson’s hard won victory at Sellasia, Sparta fought desperately and unceasingly with the greater state ; invariably defeated; for the odds were heavy against her, she returned time after time to the unequal contest with a spirit that can only arouse the utmost admiration. Save for her one year of heroism against the Persian, it is the most glorious epoch of Spartan history: and Sparta had the good fortune to find a historian who was not afraid of panegyric, and who can still move us even with the echoes of his stories of the defence against Pyrrhus, the death of the noble Agis, the gallant struggle of Agis’ greater successor. We have, it is true, a dark picture of the years immediately preceding the attempt of Agis at reform; but it is always conceivable that Phylarchos deliberately darkened his colours in order to enhance the splendour of Cleomenes.

The primary business of Demetrios in the Peloponnese, as it had been of Epaminondas, was to arrange matters so as to hold Sparta in check with his perpetual intervention- Epaminondas’ two foundations in this behalf had taken different courses; while Megalopolis remained hostile to Sparta and friendly to whatever northern power had the hegemony, Messene was by no means an uncompromising foe of her greater neighbour, and confined her undoubted strength, with considerable success, to ensuring her own independence and neutrality. It is conceivable that Messene, with her fruitful plain and impregnable capital, was at this time the happiest place in Greece: she has no history. Another city, however, was committed, even more than Megalopolis, to the friendship of the great power of the north. From the days of Xerxes, Argos had been ever ready to join Sparta’s enemies; and there was a real meaning behind the belief that the old royal line of Macedonia could trace descent from the Temenid kings of Argos. A preponderating party in the town was friendly to Macedonia; and Argos and Megalopolis acted as Macedonian watchdogs, to hold in Sparta.

When we come to consider the figures for the several Greek states, we find that often it is not possible to say how their population and armed strength in the third century compares with that in the fourth, and in the following comparison it has often been necessary to use fourth-century figures, of course with all necessary reserve. But as, about the beginning of the third century, Sparta and Boeotia were of much the same strength as before, the same may be reasonably assumed for other states, where there is no definite reason to the contrary, as for instance there is in regard to Athens and Corinth.

The Peloponnesian possessions of Demetrios, then, could probably supply him with a field force of some 16,000 to 17,000 men. The other states of the Peloponnese, if united, might dispose of an army of perhaps 15,000 to 16,000 men, of which not more than 6,000 would be Spartans. Sparta’s field force had for a long time been a practically constant quantity; more than 6,000 men she could not or would not put in the field, and of these only a proportion were Spartiates. Sparta had always with her her standing danger, the Helots, and this no doubt did more to hamper her action than did anything external to herself; but 6,000 men gave no measure of her potential strength, should it ever happen that her internal circumstances should be such as to enable her to use her reserve power. In fact, when the revolution did take place, her war strength more than doubled on the spot; Cleomenes put 14,000 Lacedaemonians into the field at Sellasia. The great potential possibilities of Sparta, over and above her actual field force, were then a matter with which an enemy had to reckon; and allowing for this, and for the fine Spartan quality, Demetrios’ position in the Peloponnese was anything but safe, Sparta often knew how to gain the help of Elis; of Mantineia she was sure; on the day that Messene should join her Demetrios would be absolutely insecure. Demetrios knew all this well enough; hence his desperate and unsuccessful attack on Messene in 295, an attack sometimes treated as mere irrational lust of conquest. Time, in fact, was to show that Argos and Megalopolis were not strong enough to contain Sparta; and Demetrios would scarcely have been able to claim even a balance of power in the Peloponnese without the additional security furnished by his garrisons of mercenaries.

Granted Demetrios’ policy, that it was vital to him to have a preponderance of strength in the peninsula, we can now understand his actions during his five years of rule. In the north there was a balance of power between his kingdom and Epirus with Aetolia. In the Peloponnese he barely balanced the independent states. He could redress the situation with mercenaries; but so could Pyrrhus or Areus, to both of whom the feel of Egyptian gold was not unknown. There was but one permanent way to safeguard himself; he must control Central Greece absolutely. It was no mere greed of territory, or love of adventure, that drove him south from Demetrias; it was the iron necessity, as he saw it, that lay on him to secure a preponderance of power. For the moment the decision lay in the hands of 10,000 Boeotian hoplites; and for their sake he forgave Boeotia again and again, while risking even his life to retain the country in his empire.

Boeotia was still the first military state of Central Greece. Her levy in 279, when she sent 10.000 hoplites and 500 cavalry to Thermopylae, shows that her federal force still remained at about the level at which it stood on paper at the beginning of the fourth century, 11,000 hoplites and 1,100 cavalry. The introduction of compulsory military service in the fourth century had compensated for any loss of power due to the destruction and rebuilding of Thebes; the ephebe lists show that the causes which were to lead later on to the decadence of the country were not yet operative. The other states of Central Greece, without Athens—Phocis, Euboea, Locris, Megara—could probably furnish some 7,000 to 8,000 men.

What Athens could do at this time is absolutely uncertain. She had adopted compulsory military service after the disaster of Chaeronea, but, unlike Boeotia, she had dropped it again. The ephebe lists show that the conscription, if  continued, would have given her a field force at this time of some 8,000 men; but the forces she did raise, on returning to a voluntary system, were trifling. She could still man her walls for desperate resistance to a besieger; but in none of her third-century struggles do we hear of an Athenian army taking the field, though the destruction of her naval power had freed the lowest class of citizens for service on land, if necessary. The small force of 1,500 men which she sent against the Celts perhaps gives something of the measure of the impotence in arms of the once Imperial city; she was fast ceasing, outside the circuit  of her own walls, to be a military factor at all, and habitually employed mercenaries. But for the actual defence of Athens, a call to arms could no doubt still raise a large volunteer force.

The strength of Central Greece, then, under Demetrios’ control, may be fairly put at something like 18,000 to 20,000 men, if in fact he controlled all Phocis and the eastern Locrians. This gave him the preponderance of power in the peninsula which he required. His total strength, on paper, was exceedingly great. If the figures here arrived at for his available troops be added up—Macedonia with Thessaly some 30,000 to 35,000 men, Central Greece about 18,000 to 20,000 men, the Peloponnese about 16,000 to 17,000—it is seen that Demetrios had a potential force of somewhere from 60,000 to 70,000 men, all Europeans, and excluding mercenaries. It is not to be supposed that he could have put anything like the whole into the field as an army; but what it does mean is that he disposed of resources which, compared with those of any other single state, were very great indeed. Always omitting mercenaries, the supreme effort made by Egypt at Raphia produced 40,000 men, of which perhaps 15,000 to 17,000 were of European blood; while Syria at Raphia had not more, if as much, European blood in the 60,000 troops put into the field. Demetrios had easily the greatest power in the Greek-speaking world.

But it is worthwhile for once reading the figures another way. If we can suppose such a thing as a united Greece, including Aetolia but excluding Greater Epirus and Thessaly, that united Greece could have put into the field something like 60,000 to 65,000 men. A united Greece, that is, would have been on paper more than a match for Macedonia and Epirus combined, and could have dealt as she pleased with any of the Eastern powers; Rome apart, she would have held in her hand the destinies of the world. Greece, therefore, and no other kingdom or kingdoms, is the central fact in the politics of the time; and the nightmare of the other kings is, that Demetrios may unite the whole of Greece in his own hand, and become irresistible.

CHAPTER III.

THE EMPIRE OF DEMETRIOS OVER THE SEA

ANTIGONUS GONATAS