READING HALL

THE DOORSOF WISDOM

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

CHAPTER IV.

THE FALL OF DEMETRIOS

To such a kingdom, and to such power, was Antigonus again heir.

But the power was illusory, and the kingdom built on sand. Demetrios could conquer; he could not govern. He could win the hearts of strangers; he could not keep the hearts of his own people. The Macedonians had been accustomed to a line of kings who were the fathers of their people, kings whom the common man served willingly because he felt that they were national kings, having much in common with that same common man whose acclaiming voice, as one of the Macedonians in army assembled, was necessary to call them to their kingship. The king was not king of Macedonia, but of the Macedonians; a true distinction. The common man would have been loyal to Alexander’s house had he had the chance; but the old line was extinct, and the common Macedonian, the sturdy farmer who served in the phalanx and had helped to conquer the world, and who had the full pride of what he had done, had lost his bearings. Kassandros had possessed his full share of military and political ability, and seems to have done his duty by Macedonia as he conceived it; but the memory of Kassandros was execrated as that of a butcher, popular tradition believed that he had paid for his sins by a peculiarly horrible death, and it was at least doubtful whether any popularity that Demetrios might gain as the husband of Antipatros’ daughter was not more than counterbalanced by the dislike he incurred as the husband of Kassandros’ sister. The Macedonian army, too, had merely hailed him king in default of a better choice. Taken all round, it was a situation that required extremely careful and delicate handling on his part if it were to attain to elements of permanence.

But careful handling of the situation was the last thing that occurred to Demetrios. Bred up as a king over Orientals, where Oriental methods of rule were not merely pardonable, but certainly expected and perhaps required, he merely transferred the same methods to his government of the proudest nation in Europe. The generous impulses with which he had started on his career in Europe were running low; and ostentation began to replace ideas. Moreover for the last twelve years or more he had been worshipped as a god by subservient partisans in Greece, a proceeding which, (countenanced by the old Antigonus in Asia as a useful political measure), had appealed to the weakest side of Demetrios’ nature. It had not even been an ordinary State worship; he had lived in the Maiden’s Temple like Athene, he had given his oracles like Apollo. And at the same time he had learnt the bitter lesson that those who treated him as a god could not be trusted as men; and disillusionment had grown with self-exaltation. The natural consequences followed. What Macedonia required was rest from fighting for a while, and a statesmanlike government that should work among the people for forgetfulness of the past and attachment to the present ruler; what it got was careless tyranny and ceaseless war. Men might have pardoned the mere show of the play-actor, the luxury of the court, the double diadem and the slippers of gold and purple, even the display of the famous mantle that pictured the whole host of heaven,—the mantle that was left half finished and that the proudest of his successors dare not wear. They might have thought it little that the king, following the conceit of Kassandros’ half-mad  brother Alexarchos, should let himself be addressed as the Sun, or be portrayed charioted on the globe of the earth as its master; for these things were done in a Greek city, and not in Macedonia. But there were more serious matters than Eastern trappings and vanities. The Macedonians had been accustomed to kings who went in and out among them, hearing complaints and doing justice; Demetrios made himself inaccessible to his subjects, and his most faithful officer has spoken to his harshness. If on the road he received petitions, it was to drop them into the first river he crossed. It is recorded how an old woman once shamed him into doing, for a time, the duties of a king. Envoys were subjected to long delay, or received with small courtesy. Add to this his long-continued absences from Macedonia, and it must have been clear to close observers that little effort would be needed to cut away the props of Demetrios’ power.

But Demetrios himself seems to have had no misgivings. To him Macedonia was but a means to an end; his ambition was the recovery of his father’s kingdom and thus rule over Asia probably as a step to universal dominion. In the autumn of 289, being at peace with the world, he commenced his preparations to this end. A fleet of five hundred ships was to be got together, and the invasion of Asia undertaken on a grand scale; the dockyards of Corinth, Chalcis, and Piraeus, the shores of the lake on which stood the Macedonian capital of Pella, once itself a seaport, rang with the axe and hammer of shipwrights; the king himself hurried from point to point, ordering, superintending, taxing his mechanical talent for new and stupendous inventions; it was now that he launched those galleys of fifteen and sixteen men to the oar which excited universal admiration, not merely for their beauty, but for their speed and efficiency at sea.

The other kings saw the imposing exterior and the mighty preparations, and took fright. That winter a new coalition was formed by Seleucus, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus, to curb the would-be world-conqueror, and they succeeded in persuading Pyrrhus to break his treaty, partly by taunting him with having allowed Demetrios to carry off his wife. It is probable that the coalition was also joined by Audoleon, king of Paionia. The plan of campaign was comprehensive; Lysimachus was to invade Macedonia from the east and Pyrrhus from the west, while Ptolemy was to sail for Athens with his fleet and attempt to raise Greece. Seleucos apparently had no part in the projected operations.

The coalition succeeded in striking the first blow. In the spring of 288, before Demetrios was ready with his preparations, and while his existing fleet was, apparently, still laid up for the winter, the three kings started together. Leaving Antigonus to look after Greece, Demetrios hurried to meet the invaders of Macedonia; in face of the danger by land, there was no time to think of getting the fleet to sea. Of the three kings, Ptolemy had far the easiest route, and was not opposed. Some time prior to July, i. e. before the end of the archon year 289/8, an Egyptian squadron appeared before Athens; the actual ships sent were probably the division of aphracts or light cruisers mentioned afterwards as under the command of one Zeno, for the battle fleet must have been engaged in blockading or observing Demetrios’ naval bases, Corinth and Chaklis. On the advent of the Egyptians the nationalist party in Athens rose and overthrew the existing government, with the usual accompaniments of such a change; the then magistrates went, or were driven, out of office, and were replaced by others, and Athens declared herself independent. Demetrios had no time to attend to the town; what Antigonus was doing is not known, but no doubt Demetrios had most of the troops immediately available; and although Antigonus held the Piraeus, Zeno the cruiser captain succeeded, shortly before the eleventh day of Hekatombaion 288, in throwing a supply of corn into the town, for which the Athenians passed him a vote of thanks on the spot. Athens was now safe for the time, and Ptolemy was free to turn his attention elsewhere.

In Athens the change of government, brought about with the help of an Egyptian fleet, made the political situation very precise and definite. Everyone had to make up his mind to which of the two parties he belonged. All Demetrios’ friends, such as Phaidros, were of course excluded from office; but any enemy of Demetrios might serve the nationalist government, whatever had been his previous political label. We know a little of some of the more prominent nationalists of this time.

First came Demosthenes’ nephew Demochares, whom the nationalists at once recalled from exile. He was a man passably honest as politicians went; it was claimed for him that he was one of the few democrats in Athens who had never served under any other form of government. His sphere was finance, his policy retrenchment; he is said to have had some success here, and doubtless a revision of expenditure was entirely necessary after six years of Demetrios. He had been responsible for the repair of the walls and the strengthening of the fortifications of Athens at the time of the four years’ war against Kassandros, and also for the alliance with Boeotia: and he was to put one considerable feat to his credit before he died. But on the whole, in spite of undoubted patriotism, he gives an impression of ineffectiveness. He was a man of words rather than of deeds; his tradition was that of the speaker, and for the time being the day of formal oratory was over. He indeed made himself remembered as one who did not hesitate to say what he thought; but his provocative manner seems to have achieved little for him but a nickname and a number of enemies, among them the historian Timaios. It is unpleasant too to think that he had been among those whose idea of making war on Kassandros had been to attempt to drive Aristotle’s school out of Athens through the medium of Sophocles’ law. At best, it shows that he could only look back and not forward; for with the philosophers lay the future. The truth about him may well be that he deserves neither much praise nor much blame, but that he was simply the mediocre nephew of a great statesman, and heavily handicapped by that fact.

Philippides son of Philocalies of Kephale was a well-known writer of comedies, and a great personal friend of King Lysimachus of Thrace, in which capacity he had been able to render much service to Athens after Ipsos, securing the release of the prisoners whom Lysimachus had taken. He first came into prominence in the years that followed Demetrios’ liberation of Athens in 307; he seems at the time to have been a moderate democrat, bitterly hostile to Stratokles, and making full use of his position on the comic stage to assail him unsparingly. The friend of Lysimachus and the enemy of Stratokles was bound to be the enemy of Demetrios also; and when the democratic government fell after Ipsos and was replaced by a moderate oligarchy, Philippides, though not holding office in the new government, found himself so far in accord with them as to go as their envoy to Lysimachus in 299/8 to ask for corn for the city. There cannot at this time have been much difference of opinion between the moderate democrat Philippides and the quondam oligarch Phaidros, who held office under this government. The careers of the two men, thus for a time moving in the same orbit, furnish an instructive comparison; for after 295/4 they diverge sharply; while Phaidros joined Demetrios, Philippides, finding a moderate position no longer tenable, swung straight back and cast in his lot with the nationalists. Exactly when he took this step is not known ; he is not heard of again till after Demetrios’ fall.

Glaukon son of Eteocles of Aithalidai, better known as the brother of Chremonides than on his own account, must have been a comparatively young man, though he was general twice under this government and agonothetes in 282/1. He had the prestige of an Olympian victory in the chariot race; he was also proxenos of Rhodes. But his more important activity falls later.

But the best man at Athens at the time seems to be the one of whom we know the least. Oly iodorus was both a democrat and a friend of Theophrastus, and a noble example that a peripatetic could still be a patriot. He was a veteran of the wars against Kassandros; and in the year of Ipsos, when the whole world was in arms against Demetrios and Antigonus, he had won a great name by meeting Kassandros and beating him back from Elateia, one of the last acts of Athens in Demetrios’ interest. He had naturally taken no part in the events of 301/0-296/5; but he must be the archon-eponymous of 294/3, the year of the attempted union of parties. The attempt, as has been seen, miscarried, and Olympiodorus was not again active till Demetrios fell.

These were the men of the reaction of 288; and to a certain extent they were ready to fight for their beliefs. But either they or the people were not very earnest in the matter; for they took no steps to improve the Athenian military organization, or to restore compulsory service: the kings their friends would save them from Demetrios. One can only praise them half-heartedly. But the beginning was good. Olympiodorus called for volunteers; a few of the citizens remembered (it is said) the glorious deeds of their ancestors ; and at the head of what men he could raise, including boys and grey-beards, Olympiodorus attacked Demetrios’ garrison in the Mouseion, the garrison that held the city down. The ‘Macedonians’ sallied out and were beaten in the field; a captain of mercenaries, Strombichos, came over with his men; Olympiodorus followed up and stormed the fortress, one Leokritos being the first man over the wall; and for the moment the city was free. Leokritos’ shield was dedicated to Zeus, the Giver of Liberty; and those who fell at the wall were buried beside the long row of tombs where lay the men who, during two hundred years, had died for Athens.

While these events were passing in Greece, Demetrios had hurried north to meet the invaders of Macedonia. He first faced Lysimachus, as the more pressing danger. But the temper of the Macedonians was unsatisfactory, and a steady dribble of men left his camp, nominally to go home, in reality to join Alexander’s old general. Demetrios suddenly altered his plans, and turned instead to face Pyrrhus, who had reached Beroia; he at least was no companion of Alexander’s. But the pillars of sand suddenly crumbled away. The Macedonians refused to fight any long for Demetrios’ ambition. Part of the army, crowning themselves with the Epirot oak-leaf, went over to Pyrrhus openly; the rest commenced to plunder the camp; a few had the courage and honesty to tell Demetrios to his face that all was over, and that he had better save himself. The king changed his clothes and fled to Kassandreia; Pyrrhus and Lysimachus divided Macedonia between them.

At Kassandreia Demetrios found Phila. That sorely tried woman could support the blows of fortune no longer, and took poison. The reason is given as the loss of Demetrios’ kingdom; but this at best can be but the last of many reasons. Her life as Demetrios’ wife can hardly have disposed her to desire yet to live; and it adds but a small touch to her tragedy that in a few years she might have seen a king of another type in her son.

From Kassandreia Demetrios, giving up Macedonia as lost, hurried to Greece to save what he could from the wreck. Laying aside all insignia of royalty, he went round the cities in the garb of a private man, the traditional method of the playwright for exciting sympathy. But Demetrios was something other than a king in a tragedy, and his talents were never either so conspicuous or so formidable as when he appeared to be hopelessly beaten. There was a sudden reversal of the situation. The friends who commanded his garrisons rallied to him; his mercenaries stood by their oath; he secured Boeotia by restoring to the Thebans their constitution; and almost 'before the world had realized that he was not absolutely powerless, he was under the walls of Athens with a formidable army.

The alarm of the Athenians was great. They had fought against him before, and been forgiven; but were they not this time committed past redemption? They had received Ptolemy’s fleet, and honoured his captains; they had stormed the Mouseion, and slain Demetrios’ men; they had recalled Demochares, and proclaimed Athens free. They had put their trust in princes, and rejoiced openly at Demetrios’ fall; and Demetrios was at their gates, while Ptolemy’s fleet was back in harbour, and the princes were far off. Messengers were hastily sent off to both Pyrrhus and Lysimachus for help; but for some reason unknown Athens was not minded to close her gates and stand a siege, as she had so often done before and was to do again : possibly the walls were out of repair, while Demetrios still held Piraeus and all the forts. The arm of the flesh had failed; Athens turned to the arm of the spirit. It is one of the least honourable episodes in her history. She called on the aged Polemon to save her; and though the revered head of Plato’s School would not break his rule of quietude, he, as Achilles in like case, sent his friend. At the head of an embassy of philosophers, Krates of the Academy went out to meet Demetrios, and conjured him to spare the violet-crowned city in the name of her illustrious dead. Demetrios received his honoured suppliants with the respect due to their persons and their position. He was perhaps glad of an excuse to spare the city of memories; he was perhaps not uninfluenced by the fact that the arm of the flesh, in the shape of Pyrrhus, was coming unpleasantly close certain it is that the philosophers gained the indulgence prayed for. Demetrios had already raised the siege when Pyrrhus arrived hot-foot to the help of the city. There remained nothing for him to do, and he and Demetrios made peace on the basis of the status quo; Pyrrhus had no mind to leave his share of Macedonia at Lysimachus’ mercy, while all that Demetrios wanted was freedom to turn elsewhere. Pyrrhus entered the city, sacrificed to Athene, and went his ways, after brusquely telling the people that if they had any sense they would never admit another king within their gates. Athens was yet free.

Demetrios still had a considerable power. He retained all his Greek possessions but Athens; he possessed a fair force of mercenaries, and a good three-quarters of his fleet, even if Lysimachus had secured the ships at Pella; above all, he felt himself unhampered by any form of obligation. It was too late to think of conquering the world; but it was not too late for great adventures and a great revenge. Of the coalition there was one king who in Demetrios’ eyes stood on a different footing to the rest. Accommodation with Ptolemy or Pyrrhus was possible; with Lysimachus it was not. The reason of the intense, personal hatred which these two felt for one another is unknown to us; the fact of it is attested over and over again, and written in every page of their histories. And as after Ipsos, when Demetrios had lost one kingdom, he had at once sailed to attack the king of Thrace, so now the same causes produced the same result; he had lost a second kingdom, and his first thought was to turn and rend his personal enemy. Equipping what ships he could, and putting on board every mercenary that could possibly be withdrawn from the force left with Antigonus in Greece—he shipped 11,000 foot and some horse—he sailed for Caria, where he still held Miletus and Kaunos. The Egyptian fleet made no sign; Demetrios may still have been more than a match for it at sea, and perhaps Ptolemy was not sorry to see him quit Greece and throw himself against some power other than Egypt. Demetrios landed his force successfully at Miletus. There he was met by Eurydice, Phila’s sister, the divorced wife of Ptolemy Soter, with her daughter Ptolemais, to whom Demetrios had been betrothed when he made peace with Ptolemy in 299, Demetrios married Ptolemais, and in the spring of 286 set out northward, summoning Lysimachus’ cities as he went.

He had been popular in Asia. Lysimachus was not. Some of the cities opened their gates; some he stormed; men gathered to the great adventurer’s standard. Certain of Lysimachus’ old generals came over with money and troops; even the impregnable Sardis fell into Demetrios’ hands. Then came hurrying south Agathocles, Lysimachus’ capable son, with all the power he could raise. Demetrios felt unable to risk an encounter in the field, and retired inland through Phrygia, with the desperate purpose (it is said) of crossing the Armenian highlands into Media and raising the upper satrapies against Seleucos,—a design feasible enough could he have reached them, as Diodotos of Bactria was to show; but Agathocles hung on his rear, cutting off all supplies, and at last forced Demetrios in sheer hunger over the Tauros passes into Seleucos’ province of Cilicia. The rest of the tremendous story hardly concerns this history. It is not necessary to relate in detail how Seleucos first spoke his father-in-law fair and then attacked him; how Agathocles closed the Taurus passes, so that there was no escape northward; how Demetrios, driven to bay, turned on Seleucos, defeated him in every action, and mastered the passes into Syria, till Seleucos trembled even for his throne, and men flocked to Demetrios’ banner believing that he would yet win a third kingdom ; how at the critical moment Demetrios fell ill, and his army melted away like the summer snows; how Seleucos at length hunted him into a corner; how Demetrios tried one more attack with his starving few, and even so was invincible, till Seleucos, taking his courage in both hands, dismounted and ran forward bare-headed to the little band of mercenaries who had kept their oath to the end, begging them to come over and save useless slaughter; how Demetrios and his friends made one last vain attempt to reach Kaunos and the ships; and how at the end, in utter starvation, he surrendered to Seleucos. The world was to see no such man-hunt again till the days of Mithridates.

The foregoing narrative has anticipated the course of events in Greece, where Demetrios in the autumn of 287 had left Antigonus as his governor, with probably no more troops than were necessary to garrison the fortresses, and a treasury by no means overflowing. Antigonus regarded himself merely as a governor, and during 286 confined himself to the measures necessary to preserve intact what yet remained to his father. Meanwhile the new government in Athens was not idle. So soon as Demetrios withdrew from the city walls in 287, it had begun to send envoys to the various kings, with a view to strengthening its position. Philippides was sent to his friend Lysimachus, others to Audoleon of Paionia and Spartocos of the Crimea. They were to announce that Athens was free, and to pray for help to maintain that freedom and to recover Piraeus and the other forts, help in men if possible, in money anyhow; for the vital necessity of the city was corn. Spartacus sent them a little corn; Audoleon not quite so much, and some promises; Lysimachus sent his compliments, and said that Philippides had behaved very nicely. Obviously, Providence was going to help those who helped themselves. But whatever steps Athens might take to help herself, she could not feed herself; and next year another embassy went off to Lysimachus, headed by Demochares in person. The orator succeeded where the poet had failed; Lysimachus, in the throes of his struggle with Demetrios, was persuaded that any enemy of the latter was worth his support; the close-locked doors of his treasury opened a little way, and the democracy of Athens honoured its ambassador for returning with thirty talents in his pocket, the gift of a king. It was not perhaps as bad as it sounds; Demochares no doubt would have put it, in private, that he had plundered one king of the means to fight another. But many of those who acclaimed him were to live to realize the difficulties of casting out Satan by the help of Satan.

But thirty talents were by no means enough to be of much use to Athens. Demochares returned to Lysimachus, and this time succeeded in extracting a hundred talents from him and twenty more from his son-in-law, Kassandros’ son Antipatros. He also moved for an embassy to go to Ptolemy; they went and returned with other fifty talents. The nationalist government had now plenty of money.

Lysimachus, however, took more effective measures against Demetrios than subsidizing Athens. He approached Pyrrhus, and persuaded him to break the treaty he had just made with Demetrios and to attack Antigonus. It was the second time that Pyrrhus had so acted; but, to be just, it is extremely probable, on this occasion, that the prior treaty under which Pyrrhus and Lysimachus had partitioned Macedonia would contain a provision for mutual aid if either were attacked by Demetrios, and, as Demetrios was now attacking Lysimachus in Asia, this provision would have come into force, and Lysimachus might very properly claim that it must override any subsequent arrangement between Pyrrhus and Demetrios to which he was not a party. Pyrrhus at once proceeded to invade and overrun Thessaly; Antigonus could save nothing but Demetrias; and Pyrrhus dully appears in the list of Thessalian kings. He also attacked Antigonus’ garrisons in Greece; but it does not appear what success he had, or whether the attack was pressed. Pyrrhus may have been busy elsewhere; for though it appears that his recovery of Kerkira must fall later, it may well have been about this time that he succeeded in conquering the southern part of Illyria and incorporating it in his kingdom.

On the other hand, Antigonus was in no position to do more than stand on the defensive. Possibly he thought it his business to do so; but probably also he had no more men than were required for garrisons. He was not even in a position, quite apart from any treaty that his father may have made with the town, to attempt to recover Athens; on the contrary, it was Athens that was desirous of attacking him. Some time between autumn 287 and spring 286 Demochares had achieved the important success of driving Antigonus’ garrison out of the fort at Eleusis; an attempt made by Antigonus to recover the place had been defeated by Olympiodorus, in whose ranks Eleusinian volunteers found a place. And throughout the year 286 the nationalists were rejoicing in the belief that the days of Macedonian rule in Athens were definitely numbered. So long as Demetrios still commanded an army, they could count on the support of the other kings; and thanksgiving was the business of the hour. In January a decree was passed thanking Spartokos for his help. By April contracts were got out for the completion of the long-deferred work on the Stoa in the holy precinct of Eleusis. In June a vote of thanks for his assistance was accorded to Audoleon, and another to an officer of his, who had successfully landed the corn at one of the open Athenian roadsteads. Philippides, who had been elected agonothetes for the new year 286/5, was busy with preparations for a special festival which he intended to celebrate in honour of Demeter and Kora, as a memorial of the liberation of Athens. Demochares and his fellow envoys were home, bringing with them 170 talents from Lysimachus and Ptolemy. Above all, the recovery of the Mouseion and of Eleusis had shown plainly that garrisons of mercenaries were neither incorruptible nor invincible; and in the autumn of that year the recovery of Piraeus itself was hopefully taken in hand.

Piraeus must have been the key which Demochares had used to unlock Lysimachus’ treasury; and Lysimachus doubtless was ready to see that he received an adequate return for his 130 talents. Unfortunately the Athenians made the mistake of trusting to Lysimachus’ gold rather than to their own swords, and discovered, too late,   mercenaries were not mercenary. Herakleides, who held Piraeus for Antigonus with 2,000 men, was loyal; but two of the Athenian generals, Hipparchos and Mnesidemos, managed to open communications with one of his captains, a Karian named Herakles, as had been done before with Strombichos. Herakles led them on, promised to open the gates, and then laid the matter before Herakleides; at the appointed time the gates were opened; Mnesidemos and 420 Athenian burghers were admitted, and promptly cut to pieces. The Athenians buried them near the men who had stormed the Mouseion; but for that year enterprise was checked.

This chapter may fittingly conclude with some reference to the fate of the Aegean after Demetrios’ downfall, a story bound up with that of the somewhat enigmatical Phoenician who is known to us only under the Greek name of Philokles. This man, a prince of Sidon, had long been in Demetrios’ service;  and, as he appears later on as king of the Sidonians, he no doubt commanded the contingent of ships sent by Phoenicia to Demetrios’ fleet, perhaps the most important sent by any one country. Demetrios still held Tyre and Sidon in 287, and Philokles must have been high in command in his navy at this time. But when news came to the fleet at Miletus that Demetrios was flying eastward before Agathocles, the question of self-preservation at once occurred to the Sidonian king. The enormous importance of Phoenicia to Ptolemy, if he could obtain it, makes it exceedingly probable that he had already sought to open negotiations with Philokles; and in 286 Demetrios’ adherents in Miletus were thinking of saving themselves, each in his own way. The Milesians opened their gates to one of Lysimachus’ generals. That part of the fleet which remained loyal transferred its head-quarters to Kaunos; but Philokles, unlike the starving mercenaries who followed Demetrios to the end, went over in comfort to the wise and wealthy king of Egypt, carrying with him part of Demetrios’ fleet, the Phoenician ships at any rate, perhaps others. This put Tyre and Sidon peaceably into Egyptian hands, and transferred the whole balance of sea-power. Next year, on Demetrios’ surrender, that part of the fleet which had remained loyal returned to Antigonus; and Philokles rounded off his work by capturing for Ptolemy Kaunos, the last possession of the Antigonids in Asia.

For twenty years Demetrios, through every vicissitude of fortune, had been unquestioned Lord of the Sea; and he had now lost the sea without a struggle, owing to the faults of his policy on land. It was a marvellous piece of fortune for Egypt. She had not struck a blow; the command of the sea had just fallen into her hands as a ripe pear falls; and with it went much else, Phoenicia, the Islands, Delos. It may have been some little time before the rule of Egypt was established on what Egypt herself considered a thoroughly sound basis; there is reason for supposing that Ptolemy II did not consider himself free from all danger till Lysimachus fell at Kouroupedion. But the actual liberation of the Islands, that is to say, their transfer from the rule of Demetrios to that of Ptolemy, can be dated with tolerable certainty to the year 286, or very early in the year 285; it thus coincides with the only time that can be assigned for the defection of Philokles. That the two are connected is an obvious inference. The men of Delos gave Philokles his place alongside Ptolemy as their deliverer; and whether he was actually the instrument used by Ptolemy to bring about the secession of the Islands from Demetrios or not, the phrase at any rate recognizes that it was his action, in transferring the balance of sea-power, which had enabled Ptolemy to carry out his policy, a policy which the Islanders favoured.

For certainly, if we may take the Nikouria decree literally, Demetrios’ downfall was popular in the Islands. The Antigonid rule, which had begun with the proclamation of freedom and autonomy, had ended with the imposition of heavy taxation. But the wealthy Ptolemy began by remitting all taxation; it is also said that he ‘freed’ the cities and ‘restored their ancestral constitutions’. As a fact, he did not restore any ancestral constitutions; the inner autonomy of the cities had never been diminished; while as to outer relationships, what Ptolemy did was to continue the League under his own officers and his own rule. But the phrase in fact had no real reference to a real constitution. It had acquired a stereotyped meaning in Greece; to ‘restore the ancestral constitution’ in a state meant to overthrow a tyrant; and the liberated League passed under the benevolent aegis of Egypt. Ptolemy was not a hypocrite; the whole ‘liberation’ was no doubt perfectly genuine; but the nature of things was too strong for him. He had to protect the Islanders, just as Antigonus and Demetrios had had to do; he had to reimpose taxes in order to pay for the fleet which policed their waters; similar causes produced similar effects; and his rule became to all intents and purposes precisely the same thing as the rule of Demetrios.

The Islanders, meanwhile, welcomed Ptolemy as ‘Saviour’, built him an altar at Delos by that title, decreed to him divine honours, and carried the decree into effect by the foundation of the federal festival of the Ptolemaieia, the festival in which the League of the Islanders celebrated the worship of the god Ptolemy Soter. They presumably abolished at the same time the federal festivals of the Antigoneia and Demetrieia, which are not heard of again. Philokles, too, came in for his share of decoration. The pressure of Demetrios’ taxation had compelled many of the Island communities to borrow the money to discharge their obligations to the tax-gatherer, and they had of course borrowed from the most natural source, the temple of Apollo at Delos. Apollo was pressing for repayment, and could not always get it, though some communities borrowed from their own local temples in order to pay their debt to him. Apollo had to appeal to Ptolemy, and Ptolemy ordered Philokles to take the matter up. An admiral in such cases had powers denied to a god; and Philokles set the precedent of using a great fleet as a debt-collecting agency. His arguments were irresistible; the Islands paid; and the grateful Delians voted to Philokles the most exceptional honours.

A gold wreath of 1,000 drachmai was nothing out of the common; but in addition they passed a resolution to sacrifice soteria on his behalf both to the gods of Delos in Delos and to Zeus the Saviour in Athens, in return for his piety towards Apollo and his benefits to the people of Delos. It is this most instructive decree, passed by the Delians in Philokles’ honour, which has enabled us, taken in conjunction with the statue which the Athenians erected to him, to reconstitute to some extent what happened. It marks, for one thing, the formal reconciliation of those old enemies, Athens and Delos, under the aegis of the king of Egypt, a happy turn of events for which Philokles was largely responsible; and it shows that the honours decreed to Philokles related to other matters beside debt-collecting. Debt-collecting for the Temple was ‘piety toward Apollo’; it conferred no benefit on the people of Delos as such, it had no possible connexion with Athens, and it could hardly be rewarded with sacrifices offered under the high-sounding title of Soteria, ‘the feast of deliverance.’ Philokles therefore must have done some great thing which was equally beneficial to Delos and to Athens; and no explanation seems possible other than the transfer of the control of the sea to Ptolemy, the event which had enabled Delos and Athens alike to become ‘free’.

As was the greatness of his services, so was the measure of his reward at the hands of his new master. Egypt governed her conquered provinces by means of strategoi or generals; but the Islands, at any rate those in the League, could not be treated like conquests such as Cyprus or the Red Sea littoral, for they had not been conquered. In theory the League of the Islanders was an autonomous state in friendly relationship with Egypt. No strategos of the Cyclades was therefore ever appointed; but the powers that he would have exercised, had he existed, were conjoined with the office of admiral of all the fleets of Egypt and certain high civil powers, and the whole was bestowed upon Philokles. In effect he became Ptolemy’s Viceroy of the Sea. His powers were continued in the line of Egyptian nauarchs or admirals; but no Asiatic, in any Macedonian kingdom, was again to hold a position comparable to his.

CHAPTER V.

ANTIGONUS AS PRETENDER

ANTIGONUS GONATAS