READING HALL

THE DOORSOF WISDOM

ANTIGONUS GONATAS

CHAPTER VII.

ANTIGONUS AND MACEDONIA

Macedonia, as Antigonus found it, was in a state of anarchy. For a while, after Keraunos’ death, a kind of government had been kept together by the personality of Sosthenes; but Sosthenes died, probably in 278, and the country had since then had no effective government at all. Pretenders were numerous enough; Antipatros, king of the Dog-days, seems to have been exercising authority in some part of the country, where he had a following; possibly Arsinoe’s son Ptolemaios was ruling another: we hear also of one Arrhidaios or Alexander, who from his name must have claimed kinship with the house of Philip II, and who perhaps represented himself to be a son of Philip Arrhidaios and Eurydice. But none of the various pretenders could claim the allegiance of the people on any ground of descent: for even Antipatros the Regent had never been king; he had only ruled for another, and could give no better claim to his descendants than he had had himself. Antigonus himself, as Antipatros’ grandson, had no better claim than the king of the Dog-days had; Antigonus as son of the de facto king V Demetrios was in no better position than a son of the de facto king Lysimachus, and not in so good a one as Pyrrhus, who had been king himself, and who could at least, alone of all the pretenders, claim some connexion with the old royal line through the marriage of his second cousin Olympias with Philip II. Macedonia seemed like the apple of Paris, thrown down among men with the legend attached, ‘To the strongest.’ It had happened that the army had taken the view that this would prove to be Antigonus. The crown was legally in their hands, the hands of the Macedonian people under arms, to give to whom they would; and Antigonus’ title was derived direct from the Macedonian people, and not from any hereditary claim.

His first care was to diminish the number of his rivals. Pyrrhus, fortunately, was for the moment far off and fully occupied. Next in importance came Antiochus; and with the king of Asia, worried by the Northern League and the Galatian invasion, Antigonus was able to come to an arrangement, if indeed he had not made peace with him even before the battle of Lysimacheia. A line was drawn between their respective spheres,—probably it lay rather to the east of the old boundary between Thrace and Macedonia, the river Nestos, and gave Antigonus Abdera,—and it was agreed that Antigonus should not meddle to the east of that line or Antiochus to the west of it; Antigonus renounced his claims, if any, to the coast towns of Thrace, and Antiochus renounced his claims to the crown of Macedonia, which he could not hope to enforce in any case. By a further term of the treaty Antigonus was to marry Phila, the daughter of Stratonice by Seleucos, who in the already involved relation, ship of the two houses was Antiochus’ step-daughter and half-sister and Antigonus’ niece. Henceforth there was peace and friendship between the two kings down to Antiochus’ death.

This left Antigonus free to attack the king of the Dog-days. The name of Antipatros was one to conjure with, had this Antipatros been capable; he had a following, and Antigonus had to reckon up his means of settling with him. His own army of Greek mercenaries was not too numerous, and very precious; it was still his ultimate support, and he could not afford to waste it. To enroll Macedonians was quite out of the question. The country’s most bitter need was rest and recuperation; nothing could have been more unpopular than an immediate levy in a domestic quarrel, and Antigonus had no popularity to spare. He was as yet nothing to any Macedonian, except a strong man who might give rest to the people; if he wanted to remain on the throne, he would have to walk warily. It was by no means certain that Macedonians would fight for him, whether against Kassandros’ nephew or anyone else. To engage more Greek mercenaries, even if they could have been obtained, was expensive; and in fact the supply was no more unlimited than the resources of his treasury.

In these circumstances he took the audacious step of imitating his barbarian friend Nicomedes of Bithynia and enlisting a number of Gauls. The more part were probably the remains of the host which he had beaten at Lysimacheia; but it is quite possible that bands of Gauls were still moving about in Macedonia or on its northern frontier, and to enroll such would serve the double purpose of freeing the country districts from them and providing himself with troops. The first-step once taken, every king is found enrolling Gauls as a matter of course. The Gauls were not the equal, man for man, of the heavy-armed Greek or Macedonian foot-soldier; but they were numerous, courageous, and above all (to begin with) moderately cheap. Antigonus paid his Gauls, for the campaign against Antipatros, a lump sum of about 24 drachmai each; a Greek mercenary would have required a drachma a day at the very least. But the matter did not end there; for the Greek expected to be engaged by the year—the military year of either nine or ten months—and also expected provision to be made for him when past fighting, either by way of food or of an allotment of land; but the Gaul, at any rate at first, could be paid out of hand and dismissed. The Gauls swept Antipatros out of Macedonia; dead or otherwise, he vanishes from history, and with him the house of Kassandros.

Antigonus, however, had trouble with his Gauls when pay­day came. They had brought their families with them, and they now claimed that his promise of so much to ‘each Gaul’ included every woman and child in the camp, and threatened to kill the hostages in their hands if their demands were not complied with. Antigonus met them in the same sort; he sent for their chiefs to come and fetch the gold, seized them, and exchanged them for his hostages, after which he paid the warriors alone. The natural results followed; the barbarians conceived a new feeling towards a king who could neither be beaten nor bluffed; and three years later the Gauls in Antigonus’ service died for him to the last man.

At the same time Antigonus got rid, somehow, of two other pretenders, Arrhidaios, and Ptolemaios the son of Lysimachus and Arsinoe, who vanishes for a while to reappear in very different circumstances. These various successes no doubt did something to settle the minds of the country people; but the towns were another matter. While the Gauls had been ravaging the open country, the towns had closed their gates and withstood them; and although details are only known in the case of Kassandreia, it is likely enough that some of the other  large towns had also become somewhat detached from the central power, and had developed a desire for independence. Apollodorus of Kassandreia, however was powerful and dangerous; he had been in alliance with Antigonus’ enemies, and had to be dealt with as soon as possible. One of the consequences of the treaty between Antiochus and Antigonus must of course have been that Antiochus abandoned Apollodorus: and it may be that the tyrant had also undermined his position by his own wickedness. For scanty as our sources are, they are yet full of highly coloured references to the horrors of Apollodorus’ rule. We read of such things as the cannibal feast by which, when he set out to obtain power, he bound his fellow­conspirators to himself; and of the nightmare dream in which, in return, he saw himself being flayed alive and eaten by Scythians, while his daughters danced round him with their bodies turned to flame, and his evil heart screamed at him from the caldron in which it was seething, ‘See what I have done to thee.’ His cruelty passed into a proverb, and the sufferings of his townsfolk into a tragedy. His teacher in wickedness is said to have been a Sicel called Calliphon, who had learnt his business in the promising school of some Sicilian tyrant; and by his advice all who owned property in Kassandreia were not only plundered but were put to the torture, men and women alike, if their contributions fell short of the desired amount.

Antigonus was at last able to take Apollodorus in hand seriously. Of the course of this campaign only the termination is known, when Antigonus had already shut his enemy up in Kassandreia. Here he was confronted by the difficulty that the city was enormously strong for a siege, and Gallic mercenaries were of no use against fortifications. It may have been at this time that Sparta attempted a diversion in favour of her ally against the remaining possessions of Antigonus in the Peloponnese, and took Troizen from him; but this event more probably belongs to the war with Antiochus. In any case, Antigonus did not quit his grip of Kassandreia. But just as he had had to fashion a new instrument to dispose of Antipatros, so he saw that he required yet another to overcome Apollodorus; for he could not himself stay before the walls during a protracted siege. He found his instrument to his hand; the man who took Kassandreia for him was one Ameinias of Phocis, arch-pirate. Antigonus no doubt had some hereditary influence with the pirate chiefs, who had been Demetrios’ very good, friends; and it served him well. Kassandreia had already stood a lengthy siege when Ameinias was given a free hand. He at once opened sham negotiations with the garrison, lulled them into a sense of security and then made a night attack on the walls, the head of the storming column being formed by ten Aetolian pirates under the command of one Melatas. The attack succeeded; and Antigonus became master of the great city after a siege of ten months.

The next step was the recovery of Thessaly, which during the troubles of the Gaulish invasion had shaken itself free of Macedonia. This must have been carried out by Antigonus concurrently with the siege of Kassandreia by Ameinias; for it would appear that by the end of the campaigning season of 276 Antigonus was master of his kingdom. He naturally made no attempt at present to go beyond its existing bounds. It is not known whether the frontier provinces of Tymphaia and Parauaia were still in the hands of Pyrrhus, or whether they had been retaken by Lysimachus; but whatever the position, Antigonus did not seek to alter it, and he was also content for the present to acquiesce—(he may hardly have been in a position to do otherwise) in the independence of Paionia. That country had regained its independence after the Gauls retired, but not quite in the old way. It had been severely plundered, and Audoleon’s line was perhaps extinct; in any case, one Dropion reorganized the country as the ‘League of the Paionians’, and the League honoured him as ‘king of the Paionians and founder’. On his coins, however, Dropion does not style himself king; they merely bear his initials and the legend ‘of the Paionians’: he sometimes restruck Lysimachus’ money. The League would be of interest, if anything were known about it, for it was an experiment in the combination of the principles of monarchy and federalism, such as has been already noticed in Epirus. That a constitution of this sort emphasises a cleavage from Macedonia is clear; and it may be that Paionia took the obvious course of drawing near to Aetolia, for Dropion dedicated at Delphi the head, modelled in bronze, of a Paionian bison.

By the end of 276 it would appear that Antigonus had peace, except for the persistent movement towards freedom in the Peloponnese. One of his earliest acts, probably in the winter of 276/5, was to celebrate at Pella, with much circumstance, his marriage with Phila. He bade come all his friends of the old days at Eretria and Athens, and Aratos of Soloi wrote the marriage hymn in praise of the great god Pan, who had stood by Antigonus at Lysimacheia and spread his panic terror among the barbarian host. It may have, been at this time that Antigonus instituted the games called Basileia, “the festival of kingship”, to commemorate his achievement of the Macedonian crown; but it was the honours paid to Pan that were the keynote of the celebrations. He became something very like Antigonus’ patron deity. His worship, not perhaps unknown at Pella, was now officially instituted there and lasted long. Antigonus struck a new coinage of silver tetradrachms which continued to be issued throughout his reign, bearing the head of Pan, horned, on a Macedonian shield: he himself sat for the portrait of his protector, and in the features of the Arcadian god, on those of the coins which show Pan’s head bound with the royal diadem, may be recognized the only surviving likeness of the Macedonian king.

It may be well to pause here, and to take advantage of the peace which lasted from 276 to 274 in order to obtain some general view of the Macedonia of Antigonus and its relationships to other states, and in particular to the various states of Greece.

It has been strongly urged, that we cannot form a true judgement on the interrelationships of Greece and Macedonia without first seeking from ethnology an answer to the question, were the Macedonians Greeks or not? For, according as the answer be yea or nay, so must we consider the Macedonian either as the organizer of Greek unity or the destroyer of Greek freedom. The controversy over Macedonian ethnology has been much handled of recent years; yet perhaps the one thing which it is safe to say on the subject is, that the old question will never again be asked in quite the old way. For before we can argue whether the Macedonian be a Greek or no, we must first answer the question, what is a Greek? And as soon as even the most cursory glance is given at those modern theories which make the bulk of the Spartan nation hellenized Illyrians, or the bulk of the Athenian people hellenized ‘Hittites’, it is evident at once that the bald question, was the Macedonian a Greek, is already meaningless. Ethnology is hardly going to help our verdict on the issues between the Greek and the Macedonian.

When the tribe of the Macedones came down from Pindos and seized the Emathian plain, they found the country, afterwards geographically known as Macedonia, already peopled by a mixture of races. Anatolian aborigines had long since built a city at Edessa, the site of the future capital, and named it from their aboriginal spring-god, the mysterious deity Bedu, a god both of water and of air, like perhaps in this to the prototype of the Dodonean Zeus; and several other Macedonian cities show Anatolian name-forms. But these Asiatics had been overlaid by invasion after invasion from the North, and the country, as the Macedones found it, was essentially Illyrian and Thracian. But we know that conquest has seldom meant more than a change of masters, and that the lower stratum of population in any country is remarkably persistent: and it is likely enough that to the end there was in the Macedonian, as in the Athenian, a fair modicum of Anatolian blood. That the name of the old capital of Macedonia is not even Indo-European merely brings the country into line with many of the Greek states; for Corinth is as Asiatic a name as Tiryns, Athenai as foreign as Mycenai. But it is noteworthy that the name of the national weapon of Macedonia is apparently Asiatic also.

On, the Illyrian and Thracian tribes fell the Macedones, conquering, expelling, absorbing. The land was divided into a number of small principalities, and unity was not effected until far later; and the princedoms of Upper Macedonia, Lynkestis, Orestis, Eleimiotis, Eordaia, and others, for some time retained their independence. But all by degrees passed under Macedonian supremacy, and by Alexander’s time absorption was going on fast; some of his best generals came from Upper Macedonia; and in the third century the men of all the outlying districts were ready to call themselves Macedonians.

It is obvious that with the expansion of the dominant tribe, whatever its nationality, large Illyrian and Thracian elements must have been taken up into what subsequently was the Macedonian people. The Thracian clement shows itself clearly in the Macedonian religion. The hellenizing kings brought in the Olympians; but these were not to be the gods of the people. Their pantheon can still be traced; in Greek eyes it was essentially Thracian; we may suspect that part of it, the water-worships at any rate, dates from before the Thracians and goes back to the Anatolian aborigines. Beside Sabazios-Dionysos, we find a whole group of obscure deities; Darron, the god of healing; Thaumos or Thaulos, the god of war; the Arantides, possibly his attendants; a local goddess of hunting, graecized as Artemis Gazoria; a strange god of sleep, Totoes; Bedu, the eponymous god of Edessa, identified now with the air, now with the water; the Sauadai or Thracian Seilenoi, old water spirits, afterwards made ministers of the god of wine. An inscription shows a Macedonian of Europos in the third century calling himself by the name of his Thracian god. The Illyrian element must be traced on other lines. The Macedonian capital of Pella was certainly an Illyrian foundation, as its old name Bounomos shows; and the same may be true of other towns also, though, except in the case of Pella, we know only the names which they bore in historical times.

Into this land came, at a later time, the Greek. Chalcidice and the coast were full of his cities; and they must have begun at once to exercise an hellenizing influence on Macedonia, just as the Corinthian colonies did upon Epirus. Put on the Macedonian language their Ionic dialect produced no effect.

What now were the Macedones? The question is perhaps insoluble. Herodotus makes them close kinsfolk of the Dorians; if then the Dorians were Illyrians, so were their kin. But the Dorians had a vote in the Amphictyonic Council; and Hesiod affirms kinship of the Macedones with the Magnetes, another Amphictyonic people, a kinship that was an article of official belief in the third century. If then the Macedones were not Greeks, we must perhaps suppose that the Amphictyonic League included ‘barbarians’—a considerable difficulty. If they were Greeks, the story of the admission of Alexander the Philhellen to the Olympic games becomes, as often noted, incomprehensible. What little historical material bears on the point has been quoted over and over again; neither side can convince, and it may be noted in passing that much of the evidence usually cited has no value at all. The references to a Macedonian language are perfectly satisfied by a dialect; no Englishman could have followed a speech made in broad Scotch. On the other hand, the argument, that the Macedonian could not be an Illyrian because his history is characterized by opposition to Illyria, is not valid; no two peoples ever fought longer or harder than the English and the Lowland Scotch, peoples identical in race, language, and culture. Neither is it any argument that, in the time of Perseus, some Macedonian nobles could not speak Illyrian; there are plenty of Highland proprietors today, of unimpeachable Celtic descent, who can no longer speak Gaelic. Neither is it any use to quote lists of Macedonian towns with Greek names; for as at Pella an Illyrian name was certainly exchanged for a Greek one, any or all of the other town names may be equally modern. Once Greek got a footing anywhere, it was, like English, a conquering tongue.

Language, in fact, gives little help. If every gloss in Amerias were shown to be good Greek tomorrow, it would not necessarily prove more than thorough hellenization; for the words cannot be dated: they raying prove that the Macedones talked Greek to start with. Again, the fact that the language which the Macedonian spread throughout the world was Greek, and not any speech of his own, proves nothing beyond thorough hellenization. An Irishman is not an Englishman because he speaks and spreads English. It has been argued that if any other Macedonian language existed the conquering Macedonians must have carried it overseas; whereas all that we find is traces of their own Greek dialect. But if certain modern phenomena be considered it is seen at once that no argument can be drawn from this one way or the other. The Highlander has gone in great numbers to Canada and taken his Gaelic with him; it is largely spoken in some of the eastern provinces. The Irishman has gone in great numbers to the United States and has not taken Erse with him; he has spread the alien tongue. From which of these two contrary examples is the case of the Macedonian to be argued?

Another argument against hellenization has recently failed also. It could once be said that the Macedonian must be a Greek because his terms for everyday things were Greek. But the example has recently been adduced of a Romance language which has borrowed many of the names of common things from its Slav neighbours.

But if hellenization be the correct theory, it was an hellenization that was, as regards language, very old. For Macedonian Greek is akin to Thessalian, and is not influenced by the Ionic dialect of the cities of Chalcidice; it should therefore antedate their foundation. And some of the Macedonian proper names go back to the sixth and fifth centuries; while Hellanikus made Macedon a descendant of Aiolos.

Thus far, then, there seems little against the view that the Macedones were an Illyrian tribe who early learnt, from their Thessalian neighbours, to speak Greek. And it must always be borne in mind that Macedonia differed in two most essential particulars from the other states of Northern Greece. As .already noticed, she was monarchical through and through, and was never organized as a League, at any rate till after Gonatas’ death; and she had no definite religious centre. But there remains one most important matter still to consider. If the Macedonian was a barbarian, he differed absolutely and in a most essential point from all the other barbarians whom the Greeks had hitherto met, even from the Epirots; he, or at any rate his upper classes, possessed a quite unique capacity for hellenization. Of the common people we cannot speak; we know nothing. But the nobles took greedily to Greek culture, and this fact does suggest that their relationship to the Greek was not that of Illyrian barbarians. The fact is not, it is true, conclusive for any Greek affinity; for the same phenomenon appears in many Romans, and may merely be due to the not uncommon desire of a dominant and virile race to appropriate their best it can get, in culture as in other things. But it is so marked that it offers the firmest support we have for the theory that the Macedones were Greeks; and it may very well be that the truth will ultimately be found in the theory put forward by Kretschmer many years ago, that had the Macedones turned south instead of north they would have become a good Greek stem, while as it was they remained in a condition of arrested development. It is perhaps, however, tolerably safe to say that under the general term Macedonian, in the third century, were comprised men of most divergent and mixed blood, Anatolian, Illyrian, Thracian, Greek, Macedonian proper, who had nevertheless made a nation, precisely as Scotland today includes men of every variety of descent, Iberian and Gael, Briton and Angle, Norseman and Norman.

Consequently, in considering the relationship in the third century of Macedonia to Greece or, to be more accurate, to the various Greek states, many of whom had nothing whatever in common—the less we think about blood the better. Macedonia, or so much of it as counted, had become essentially Greek in language and culture; it could no longer be classed with the barbarian. But if the Macedonian were to be proved a Greek tomorrow, it would not prove that the League of Corinth was the accomplishment of Greek unity; for the material matter here is, that the Greeks refused so to regard it. What counted was not blood but mental attitude; true union imports a common will, and this was never present. Macedonian interference in Greece must be taken on its merits, and each case considered as we should consider the dominion of Athens over the Islands or the interference of Thebes in the Peloponnese. The circle of Greek culture had comprised a number of jarring units, of different and often mixed blood. Macedonia, on entering the circle, added a new unit, rather more powerful, more mixed in blood. New permutations and combinations of the jarring units became possible, and duly took place; they were no less ephemeral than the old had been. Macedonia was as far from unifying Greece in the fourth century as Athens had been in the fifth.

Whatever their blood, by the third century the Macedonians had acquired a strong sense of national unity, and their speech and culture were Greek. They stood nearer to their neighbours the Thessalians than to any other Greek people; their dialect, so far as known, was akin to the Thessalian. The relationship between the two had, as we shall see, been translated to the field of politics. But the rustic Macedonian speech was not the language of the Court; that place was held by the Attic. How the common Macedonian regarded the common Greek is, as usual, unknown; it is likely enough that the phalangite, who had helped to conquer the world, affected to look down on the Greek mercenary, so often fated to be the mainstay of the losing side. But among the Macedonian upper classes there was no affectation of despising the Greek, as some have supposed. If they looked down on Eumenes personalty, that was because Eumenes, while Alexander lived, had not wielded the sword but the pen; we do not hear of any difficulties incurred by the Cretan Nearchos, while the Thessalian Lysimachus, after an extremely successful career, actually became king of Macedonia. Alexander himself—it is true, in a rage—had said that Greeks among Macedonians seemed as demigods among beasts. Antigonus’ personal friends were all, as will be seen, Greeks. The Macedonians may perhaps have thought of themselves better men in the field; further than that we certainly cannot go.

The Macedonian sense of nationality, moreover, had become strong enough to assimilate quite definitely any foreign elements. Philip II is said to have made large settlements of strangers in the country. Kassandros brought in 20,000 Illyrian Autariatae, possibly refugees from the Celtic advance, and gave them land in Mount Orbelos. At a later time we hear of Gauls and Illyrians planted in the very heart of the country, no doubt in large part time-expired mercenaries settled on the land by Antigonus and his successors. But there is no trace of any of these becoming a source of discord in the country. Upon the complete hellenization of Macedonia had followed the growth of its towns. Macedonia had originally been a land of farmers and villages, and the few towns which existed were not cities in the Greek sense, with a municipal life and organization, but military strongholds. But by the fourth century the towns were becoming more populous and important; and, when in 382 Olynthus thought of including Pella and other Macedonian towns in her League, we are perhaps to understand that they were already in some sense autonomous communities. It is difficult to avoid the belief that, in the third century, Pella enjoyed a certain measure of autonomy. How large a measure we cannot say; but the men of Pella are treated as though they were a definite body of citizens, and they must at least have managed their own internal affairs. Most unfortunately the terms of the only decree known to have been passed at Pella are ambiguous; and all that can be said about them is that they are consistent with the most complete autonomy. It may, however, be pointed out that the mere fact of a decree being passed at all in the name of the inhabitants of Pella imports a body authorized so to pass it; for it does not bear the name of any governor or royal official, as does the decree of Thessaloniki presently to be mentioned, and it is dated by some unknown priest and not by the regnal year of Antigonus. Whatever applies to Pella applies also no doubt to towns like Beroia or Edessa. One thing is certain; these towns formed no enclaves in the kingdom as Greek cities would have done; they were an essential part of Macedonia, and their inhabitants described themselves indiscriminately either as men of such and such a town or as Macedonians. The original Greek cities of Chalcidice and the coast were on a different footing. These cities had nothing in common with Macedonia, and had in many cases been brought within the Kingdom by the strong hand. But Alexander had admitted their people to service in his army equally with the Macedonians, and we hear nothing, save in one case, of any disloyalty; while there are certain indications to show that they were fast becoming an integral part of the kingdom.

Antigonus, then, found himself at the head of a people who, as far as blood went, had become a united nation, As regarded feeling, however, there was a certain measure of the spirit of faction. Pyrrhus, for instance, (as the event was to show), possessed a strong following in the west of the country, whenever he should choose to call upon it; but this was probably due rather to the personality of Pyrrhus than to the workings of Epirot blood in the frontier provinces. It is possible also that one of the towns of Chalcidice, Sane, retained a sentiment for Kassandros’ house, so long as that house existed. For Kassandros’ half-mad brother Alexarchos, who thought he was the Sun, had refounded it by the name of Ouranopolis, ‘Heaven Town’; he had coined a new speech for the people, among other absurdities, and they had entered into the spirit of his whim; on their coins they call themselves, not ‘men of Ouranopolis’, but ‘Children of Heaven’.

But the most important element of discord was the great city of Kassandreia, which could hardly become on a sudden an extravagantly loyal town. It had worshipped Lysimachus as a god, and had been for a while independent of Macedonia, first under Lysimachus’ widow Arsinoe, and then under Eurydice, mother of Keraunos, a prince who posed as Lysimachus’ avenger and successor; and Lysimachus’ heir still lived. Since then it had had a career of its own, powerful if unhappy, under Apollodorus, and had stood along siege from Antigonus. It could hardly regard itself at once merely as an integral part of Macedonia. It contrasted strongly in this with its near neighbour Thessaloniki, Kassandros’ other great foundation, formed like itself of the inhabitants of various Greek cities. The tendency of two powerful and adjacent cities to take opposite sides in politics is well known; and Thessaloniki was loyal to Antigonus and the kingdom. The subject is obscure; but it can hardly be an accident that, while Antigonid rule lasted, men of Thessaloniki frequently, men of Kassandreia apparently never, called themselves Macedonians.

Here then were two sources of difficulty in Antigonus’ position; a widespread sympathy with Pyrrhus, and disaffection, actual or potential, in his greatest city. Other local disaffection there must also have been, with so many pretenders recently in the field. And, apart from this, the kingdom had developed certain weaknesses of its own. There was a heavy decrease in the population, at any rate in that part of it capable of bearing arms; and the most serious aspect of this was the wasting of the old landed aristocracy, whose numbers had been brought down both by two generations of ceaseless war, in which they had officered the armies of two continents, and by the settlement of a certain number of them in Asia and Egypt. One consequence of this was that Antigonus and his successors had not sufficient men of their own race for the numerous offices, civil and military, which required filling, and we are compelled, to some extent to fall back on Greeks, who were necessarily often adventurers, and who as such were sometimes conspicuous rather for cleverness than for more necessary qualities. Antigonus himself seems to have been well served; but at a later time treachery was not unknown.

Another source of weakness must have been the finances. Macedonia had been well plundered, and Antigonus had brought with him but an empty cash-box. To what extent he may have lightened the tribute formerly paid by the Greek dependencies, first to Demetrios and then to himself, is not known; but it must have been done to some extent in such possessions as remained after the revolt of 280. Macedonia, when in working order, could provide a fair yearly revenue, though not a great one; in Perseus’ time it was only something over 200 talents. The country paid a land tax, and the kings possessed the extensive remnants of the old state domains; and the harbour and customs duties counted for something, for, (though she can hardly have required many imports), Macedonia was in a position to export timber on a considerable scale, as well as other requisites for ship-building, such as pitch. A moderate sum could also be derived from the silver workings on Mount Pangaios and the mines of iron and lead which the country possessed; but the chief source of the income enjoyed by Philip II had failed. The great deposit of alluvial gold which had served Philip so well was worked out, and none other had been discovered; no gold to speak of now came from the district about Philippoi, and Antigonus never struck a gold coin. The Antigonid kings never had the possibility of amassing a treasure, like their brothers of Syria and Egypt; even the long peace between 197 and 168 only enabled a comparatively modest saving to be made, and the 6,000 talents which Aemilius Paulus found in the treasury after Pydna were all that remained over and above the by no means large sum spent by Perseus on the war. In a reign that began under such difficulties as did that of Gonatas, the ever presen problem at first must have been to balance revenue and expenditure. The country, however, was essentially sound; it possessed good cornland and forests, and a capable population, who in time of war could turn their hands to anything. It only required a few years of rest and good government to be again on a stable and moderately prosperous basis.

None of these sources of weakness would have mattered very greatly had Antigonus been sure of the support of the common Macedonian, the sturdy farmer who served in the phalanx and formed the backbone of the country: all that would then have been wanted was time and patience and good government. But this support was exactly what Antigonus was not sure of; and he knew it. He excited as yet no enthusiasm in Macedonia; to many of his subjects his philosophic training and tastes must have made him seem strange, as one who was too much of a foreigner; he had to bear the burden of the sins of his father Demetrios, and probably of his uncle Kassandros, even if he still derived some small advantage from being the grandson of Antipatros. He had no reserve of popularity to draw on; and the fact was soon to be as patent to the world as it was to himself.

Any weakness in the position of the king of course reacted on the State, for in Macedonia, far more than in most countries, the king and the State were identical. There was no distinction between the king’s privy purse and the State revenue. He had indeed his council, the ‘Friends’ whose privilege it was to be about his person both in peace and war; but they were advisers only, and they had no independent power, or at most judicial functions. What little power existed in the country outside the king resided, not in the nobility, but in the army, that is to say, in the Macedonian people under arms. They had certain obscure rights of judging in trials fort treason, perhaps on the ground that the king, being in effect a party, could not be judge himself. And they had one moment of real power, when it fell to them to elect, or to confirm, a new king. When the throne was empty, their election was valid; they had the crown in their hands to give; without their election no king could be. It used to be a fashion with some historians to call all the Successors usurpers. Whatever the case as regards Syria or Egypt, the phrase as applied to the Antigonid kings of Macedonia is a mere absurdity. The old royal house of the Argeadai was extinct; and the crown was legally in the hands of the Macedonian people under arms, to confer upon whomsoever they would. Antigonus was every bit as much a legitimate national king as was Alexander.

One obscure aspect of the identity of the king and the State id provided by the land question. The nobility were great landowners, but on what terms is not known, except that all did in fact serve in the army; while the relationship between the king and the common Macedonian of Macedonia proper is lost in antiquity. The latter is always treated as a free man, and probably owned his own farm, though evidence is lacking. The national Macedonian constitution has been called feudal, on the ground that the subordinate princes in Alexander’s army led their own followings; but neither this, nor the general obligation to military service, are any proof that Macedonia proper was on a feudal basis, i.e. that each man had a superior (in an ascending chain), of whom he held, and to whom his service was due. Rather, it seems that the service of the common Macedonian was due direct to the king. That every free Macedonian did serve may be taken for granted; for the army was the people under arms, and an incident such as the calling out of old men and boys by Philip V shows that every man of military age was out already. If this be correct, the comparatively small armies which Macedonia could furnish may give some idea of the scanty population of the country which had conquered half the world. And the constant calling out of the men must have meant bad farming and a smaller food­production; this again would tend to keep down the population, a tendency perhaps counteracted in part by the opportunities offered to the Macedonian in other lands.

But outside Macedonia proper the relation of the king to the soil is more easily visible. The special method in which the Macedonian kings, like their brothers of Egypt and Asia, developed military service was by means of ‘lot’. Greek civilization knew four methods of acquiring land, by inheritance, purchase, conquest, or gift from a superior; and the lot illustrated the two latter. The land owned by the Macedonian kings had been acquired by conquest. All conquered territory passed to the king; for ther king was the State. The royal domains in Macedonia proper were but the remains of a far more extensive ‘spear-won territory’, once possibly coterminous with Macedonia itself; but the working of the system can be seen most clearly in the lands recently conquered by Philip II, the lands of the Greek cities of Chalcidice and the coast. We seem to get no distinction here, as in Asia, between the land of the city and the land of the king the city land. or, the bulk of it belonged to the king, and he granted it in lots to whom he would, the Crown retaining certain rights. The tenure on which the Macedonian kings gave out these lots was a tenure of inheritance, under which the lot passed to the heir. It is immaterial whether we call this tenure a perpetual lease or a grant, for if both are burdened with the same payments there ceases to be any distinction, save in terminology; but as ‘lease’ in English always imports certain elements which are absent from the lot, it is preferable to treat the lot as the grant of a limited proprietorship? Probably it was originally inalienable; and the king retained a valuable estate in the land, the right of escheat on failure of heirs. The king also received payment from the klerouchos or grantee of the lot, in the shape of various taxes and duties; what they were cannot be exactly stated, nor is it known if the burdens on the Macedonian lot resembled the formidable list of payments that fell on the Egyptian lot-owner; probably they were far lighter. One other right the king may have had; no doubt the klerouchos, unless time-expired, held his lot on terms of rendering military service, and, on the analogy of the Egyptian practice, it would seem that the king might re­enter and declare the lot forfeit if this obligation were evaded.

It seems that klerouchoi were also established in Macedonia proper; Gauls and Illyrians were settled in Emathia, and they must have received lots out of the royal domains. The object of their settlement was doubtless military service; but as they are expressly referred to as hardworking cultivators, we are perhaps to understand that their lots were originally uncultivated land, held under that form of lease of which one of the conditions was that the lessee should bring the ground into cultivation, the form afterwards known as emphyteusis. Large parts, however, of the royal domains remained in the king’s own hand, and were cultivated by tenants.

To secure military service, inalienability of the lot was an obvious measure; such may have been the original idea. But at the time we are dealing with the lots known to us are alienable. In England, such inalienable estates as exist have been given by the nation as a reward for public services; it looks in Macedonia as if alienability came in when the lot was given as a reward for past service rather than as a security for service in the future. In the case of the alienable lot the klerouchos is expressed to have absolute powers of possession, sale, and exchange. In Asia he could also mortgage, by way of a sale subject to redemption; this power has not yet been expressly noted in Macedonia. On the supposition that, at the same time, the lot could be left by will, it had now come to differ in one respect only from the English fee simple (allowing for the differences in the arrangement and incidence of taxation), that is to say, in the power . of the king (if it existed) to re-enter for refusal to serve; and in a country as warlike and as patriotic as Macedonia the exercise of such a power can have rarely been needed. Once the lot was freely alienable, the king’s right of escheat became of as little practical value as the similar right still vested in the Crown over most of the land in England ; but it served in theory to mark the fact that the lot was still-king’s land and not city land. There is no evidence that the Macedonian kings ever made grants out-and-out, as did the Seleucids, grants under which the land granted ceased to be king’s land at all, and had to be joined to the territory of some city.

There was probably no national standing army at this time. The only permanent corps, besides the numerous Greek mercenaries in garrison, seem to have been the, horse­guards, of unknown strength, and the foot-guards, the agema, who in later reigns had a fixed establishment of 2,000 men; Gauls were probably enlisted as required. The Macedonian army itself had come back to where it and the Roman army alike began, a levy of farmers called out when a serious campaign was expected. The professional long-service soldiers who had grown up under Philip and Alexander ere either dead or settled on the land in Asia, Egypt, or elsewhere; and they were not replaced. Practically all garrison and oversea work at this time must have been performed by mercenaries, unless the forts on the northern frontier were an exception; even at the end of the century only the most important Macedonian garrisons, such as that of Corinth, had a scanty stiffening of home-bred troops. It will be seen, time and again, how loath Antigonus was to call out the Macedonians or to use them when called out; there were none to waste.

The court of an Antigonid king presents no aspects of interest and need not detain us. It has the regular features of any other court of the time, though perhaps less elaborate than the Egyptian. We meet with the little group of privileged officers who constituted the king’s personal body­guard; the corps of youths of good family—the so-called royal pages—which formed a nursery for the higher officers of the army; the boys who were selected to be ‘foster­brothers’ of the young heir to the crown. The titles of two high officials are also known, the captain of the guard and the king’s secretary. The former commanded the royal pages, and was responsible for the arrangements necessary to secure the king’s safety. The latter conducted the king’s correspondence, which involved (since the king was the State) the drafting of all decrees; since he wrote always in the king’s name and not his own, he must, practically, have achieved the coveted position of power without responsibility.

The arrangements made by Antigonus for the actual government of his empire are of more importance. The original kingdom of Macedonia probably remained in the personal hands of the king; but all acquired territory was governed through strategoi or generals, possessing military power. We find under Gonatas a strategos of the Piraeus and the districts that were ranged with the Piraeus, Mounychia, Sounion, Salamis; in some later reign Euboea was divided between more than one strategos; under Philip V there was a strategos of Paionia. Under Gonatas the most important strategia was that bestowed on his half-brother Krateros, who governed Corinth and Euboea and had a general supervision of the affairs of Greece south of Attica; he was perhaps rather a viceroy than a mere strategos. He had, however, no control over the strategos of Piraeus, who was independently responsible to the king.

The next office in importance to that of strategos was that of epistates, the governor of a town or district appointed directly by the king; he was a kind of administrator-general with very wide powers. There were epistatai in Macedonia and Thessaly; probably in Thessaly they governed the important towns. The epistates, however, in hellenistic kingdoms generally, is always connected with a subject district; and it is difficult to believe that any were ever appointed in Macedonia proper. No doubt the reference to epistatai of Macedonia means those over Greek towns of the coast. In any case we see the system of epistatai applied in the two countries outside Macedonia proper which the king ruled as lawful ruler, the system of strategoi in the lands held merely by right of recent conquest. The two systems seem not to be part of a whole but to run parallel. In one province, however—Chalcidice—it is possible that the two were worked together; for while we shall see reason to suppose that there was a strategos of Chalcidice, the great coast towns were certainly governed by epistatai. It may have been part of a reasoned policy, due to the enormous importance of holding the coast towns to the king’s interest: its logical basis could be found in the fact that these towns had once been conquered, but were now an integral part of the Macedonia of a Macedonian king. To govern these towns as dependencies and garrison them was a strong measure, but one that was to justify itself absolutely in the near future. The system lasted to the Roman conquest.

Details are available for one town only, Thessaloniki. Thessaloniki was an autonomous city of Greek blood, with the usual constitutional forms, a boule and an ekklesia; but it was governed for the king by an epistates or governor, a deputy-governor, and a board of five harmosts or subordinates of some kind; and at the head of a decree of the people of Thessaloniki are found the names of the deputy-governor and the harmosts. What degree of control they exercised over the meetings of the people is not apparent. The fact that the name of the governor himself is absent may suggest that he was responsible for several cities, with a deputy in each.

There are in existence a number of interesting inscriptions referring to a college of politarchs in several Macedonian cities, Thessaloniki, Amphipolis, Herakleia in Lynkestis. It is, however, unfortunately impossible to feel any certainty that any of these are pre-Roman; most of them certainty belong to the period after the Roman occupation, when a new system may have been established. They therefore do not call for notice here.

None of the cities of Macedonia possessed the right of coining, not even  Kassandreia or Thessaloniki;—and Greek Towns as a rule lost the right when incorporated in the kingdom. Ouranopolis, an exception in this as in much else, had indeed struck her own coinage under Kassandros; but it may be doubted whether this was not now a thing of the past, a mere episode connected with Alexarchos’ rule there. In all Antigonus’ empire, it appears, the only two cities that still coined for themselves were Athens and Corinth; and, apart from historical sentiment, and from the desirability of doing everything possible to keep two great communities contented,  there was a definite reason for this in the widespread use which the well-known money of each town served in the world’s commerce. The coinage of the Antigonid kings themselves issued from their royal mints in Philippoi, Amphipolis, and elsewhere; Antigonus, too, coined in Demetrias, and, after the Chremonidean war, in Athens. Athens lost her own right of coining at the same time; but Corinth continued to strike her Pegasos staters till lost to Antigonus in 243.

One very interesting question of organization is raised by Antigonus’ name cities of which mention may be made here, though it involves considerable anticipation of events. So far as is known, he founded three; an Antigoneia on the mainland of Chalcidice near Kassandreia, another in Paionia, a third in Atintania. The first was probably founded soon after the capture of Kassandreia, for its purpose is obvious; it was to keep watch on the disaffected great city, and was no doubt settled with Antigonus’ own partisans, time-expired mercenaries and others on whom he could rely. Though it never became a rival to Kassandreia, it did become a place of importance, and at a later time was strongly garrisoned. The other two name-cities were of course founded much later, after Antigonus had acquired the two provinces in question.

A whole series of cities, founded in the king’s own name, and never, like the Seleucid foundations, in the names of others, suggests a more famous, parallel. Alexander had founded in Asia a number of name-cities, and his plan on so doing can be conjectured. As he advanced into Asia and left behind him the old traditional seats of government, he began to found an Alexandria in each province of Darius’ empire; each was probably intended to be the seat of the satrap of the province. The plan was carried out so thoroughly that in Bactria, where there was a famous royal city, it was renamed. Alexander, however, had a very clear conception of something which we may call his ‘sphere’: he did not mean to extend his system beyond the bounds of Darius’ empire; hence not only was his name-city on the Jaxartes, where Persian rule had always ended, called ‘The last of the Alexandrias’; but when he did definitely overpass Darius' boundary and enter the Punjab, he founded no more name-cities or satrapies, but set up a system of protected native kings.

Now Antigonus, as will presently be seen, had just as sharp a conception of this ‘sphere’ as had Alexander, and outside it, i. e. in the Peloponnese, he ultimately adopted a similar system to that of Alexander, protected native ‘tyrants’; and it is at least probable that in the foundation of his name-cities he was consciously imitating Alexander, and that each was meant to be the seat of the strategos of a province. The three cities known were founded in three outlying provinces that, once Macedonian, had had to be reconquered; the outlying provinces were ruled by strategoi; and it seems very difficult to avoid drawing the inference that here we have, on the analogy of the Alexandrias, the seats of the strategoi of Chalcidice, Paionia, and Atintania respectively.

A question that must have arisen early for decision was that of the capital. Aigai had been the old capital of the Argeadai. The capital of Philip and Alexander had been Pella. Both Kassandros and Demetrios had built themselves new cities; and, whether Pella remained the nominal capital or not, Kassandros seems to have treated Kassandreia, where his worship was instituted, as his own seat. Lysimachus, and after him Arsinoe, may have done the same. Demetrios may have meant Demetrias for his personal capital, though it is not very clear. But the actual centre of power, as was natural in the then state of the world, had steadily shifted southward.

Antigonus wisely refrained from building himself yet another capital, and made Pella again the actual seat of government. It is possible, too, that from Pella had come the family of the old Antigonids. To have built a new great city, after the common fashion of the Successors, would have meant an expenditure of time, energy, and money, which could ill have been spared; it would have run counter to, instead of fostering, the national pride of the Macedonians; and at best in could only have produced a city of the second class. Another Kassandreia might have been possible; another Alexandria or Antioch was not, for the simple reason that Antigonus’  sphere already included one of the great cities of the world. And even though Athens, in the nature of the case, could not be his official capital, the attraction which she still exercised on every form of greatness must have prevented the formation of any real rival.

Pella, indeed, on its fresh-water lake, possessed distinct disadvantages. It was notoriously unhealthy, and it was situated too far to the north to be a convenient centre for overlooking the affairs of Greece. Antigonus is, naturally, often found at Demetrias or Athens. But Pella, where his marriage had been celebrated, and the worship of Pan capital, both of Antigonus and of all his dynasty ; and Antigonus had emphasized his return to the national centre of the kingdom by abandoning his father’s Poseidon upon his tetradrachms and substituting for the god of the lost seas the goddess of the most famous temple in Pella, Athene Alkis or Alkidemos. And if Pella lay far to the north, that had its advantages also. For Antigonus, by entrusting the affairs of Greece to Krateros, gained leisure to attend to Macedonia himself; and Pella was a convenient centre from which to carry out and maintain his measures for the defence of his northern frontier against the barbarian. For the northern frontier was constantly threatened with invasion: not only by secular enemies like the southern Illyrians, or the Thracian Maedi, but also by Gaulish tribes, who perpetually tended to overflow southward from the Danube valley, and one of whose peoples, the Scordisci, was already firmly established in Servia, while others had formed the kingdom of Tylis in the interior of Thrace. But most dangerous of all were the Dardanians, an Illyrian stock ,who held the country about the upper Axios and part of what is now Roumania, where they had enslaved the original inhabitants. Brave, barbarous, and dirty—they washed, ran the proverb, but thrice in a lifetime, at birth, marriage, and death—they could put into the field a large force of heavy­armed men, accompanied, after the Spartan fashion, by a host of armed slaves; and the Dardanian court became the refuge of every enemy of the Macedonian crown.

The measures for the defence of the North must have constituted far the most important of Antigonus’ acts. Naturally, the wretched fragments of the tradition scarcely contain a hint of them; but it is known that they were successfully carried through. Macedonia was not again seriously invaded from the north for nearly fifty years, when the conquests of the Bastarnae drove the Dardanians south to a war that ended in the death of Demetrios II, and precipitated the crisis that called Doson to the throne, a crisis not, however, for a moment comparable with that of 279. We may conjecture that among other things a system of fortified posts was introduced, exactly as Aetolia after the Gallic invasion was covered with hill-forts to prevent the repetition of any such catastrophe. But in addition to this, Antigonus, like every one of his successors—Demetrios II, Doson, Philip V, Perseus—must have been perpetually fighting on the northern frontier, though in his case the record is lost. The barriers could only be kept up by the strong hand; and Antigonus can hardly have escaped the common lot of his dynasty, to be recalled time after time to the northern frontier, leaving other undertakings half finished; while the necessity of keeping up a proper system of frontier defence deprived him, as it deprived every Macedonian king, of a considerable part of his effective strength in the field.

But the Antigonid kings had their reward; and many must have realized the ability with which Antigonus had handled the barbarians and secured the safety of the countries under his rule, when they looked across the sea to Asia Minor, and saw the great towns there humbly paying tribute with both hands; blackmail to the Galatians in return for impunity from plunder, and war taxes to Antiochus to enable him to bridle those same Galatians, who all the time—so rumour whispered—were blackmailing Antiochus himself. From 277 to 168 Macedonia, under the Antigonids, was the shield and bulwark of Greece, preserving Greek civilization from the possibility of being swamped by northern barbarism before its work was done, before it had yet taught Rome and through Rome the whole modern world; Macedonia and her kings stood in the gap till Rome, was ready and able, with greater resources, to take up the work. This is the text of the panegyric on Macedonia which Polybius of Megalopolis has put into the mouth of the Acarnanian Lykiskos; if Aetolia deserved thanks for saving Greece once, what do the Macedonian kings deserve, seeing that they spend nearly the whole of their lives in fighting barbarians to ensure the safety of Hellas? This is the argument with which the Roman conqueror of Philip V cut short the savagery of his Aetolian allies, when they clamoured for the abolition of the Macedonian kingdom; without Macedonia, Greece would lie under the heel of the Thracian, the Illyrian, and the Gaul. Republican Rome herself, when her time came, hardly and with many failures kept out the northerners; the Antigonids on the whole managed it with success. This is the real importance of the Antigonid dynasty in history: to this work Greek historian and Roman conqueror have alike paid their tribute

The attempt must now be made to ascertain what Antigonus considered his ‘sphere’, as a necessary preliminary to any treatment of his relations with other states, both at this time and later. He had very clear-cut ideas as to which parts of the world concerned him and which did not, ideas not of course recorded in the fragments of the tradition, but translated with unmistakable clearness into action at different periods of his life. The sweeping assertion of a modern historian, that the aim of the Antigonid kings was to reduce as large a portion of Greece as possible, is, as regards Gonatas, peculiarly ill-founded even for a sweeping assertion; the facts go so very far in the opposite direction. It may be well, therefore, to state very briefly how the case does really seem to stand; the remainder of this history will either prove or disprove what is here stated.

Antigonus was, and meant to be, a Macedonian king of Macedonians; nothing more, but that fully, with all that it implied. It implied that Macedonia was to be ruled in her own interest, and made a stable state again on her own foundations; and it also implied that matters must be so ordered, if possible, as to prevent Macedonia being deprived of, or imperilled in, her place as a great Power; her standing must not be threatened. Various consequences followed from this. One was that Macedonia proper must some day be restored to her most extended boundaries. Hence districts which had once been Macedonian, such as Paionia (now independent), or Atintania (now in the hands of Pyrrhus), fell within the sphere. A second was that the days of Asiatic adventure were absolutely at an end. Antigonus was on excellent terms now with Antiochus his brother-in-law; the good understanding between the two was to take its place for many years as one of the stable factors of current politics. The two empires did not clash at any point; and Macedonian interests ended with the Thracian frontier. Save in one matter of a guardianship, a purely personal affair, it is not recorded that Antigonus had anything to do with Asia again.

A third was, that the policy of Demetrios in Greece was reversed. Demetrios had definitely sought a preponderance of power over all the other states of the peninsula; Antigonus sought nothing of the kind. Demetrios had had ideas of world-rule; Antigonus wished to be a national king in his own country. Demetrios had thrust Macedonia into the background of his policy, and had toyed with sentimental phil-Hellenism; now the king of Macedonia was to put the interests of Macedonia before those of Greece. It had been, no doubt, a generous aspiration on the part of Alexander and Demetrios to desire to be head of a league of Greek states, to be a Greek as well as a Macedonian king; but, after all, this policy had been a complete failure, and Antigonus, as king of the Macedonians, can hardly be blamed for reverting, in the interests of his own people, to a policy which he had some chance of carrying through.

Save for two reasons, Antigonus might have left Greece alone altogether. The first was the danger to Macedonia. Rightly or wrongly, he thought that the security of Macedonia demanded that Greece must not unite, either of herself or under the hegemony of Egypt; and this, conditioned all Antigonus’ dealings with Greece. The central point of the situation was Corinth; that great fortress was to be held, at whatever cost. It had already proved its enormous value; it was to do so again and again. But if it was to be held, it could not be left in the air. Antigonus ruled Thessaly, to which he probably considered his title as legal as to Macedonia; but Aetolia and Boeotia cut land communication between Demetrias and Corinth, and Egypt ruled the sea. It was necessary, therefore, to hold Euboea as an alternative route. He who held Chalcis held Euboea; so Chalcis had become of necessity a great fortress, second only to Corinth : and both were in one hand, that of Krateros, so that the strategos of Corinth might also control the necessary communications northward. Antigonus was fortunate in his governor; for Krateros’ loyalty was undoubted, and indeed the good relations of the two brothers became proverbial. So far, then, as Corinth went, this was all that was at present necessary or possible; no more possessions in Greece were needed or desired; but at a later period it was found necessary to secure the communications of Corinth with Attica by conquering the Megarid.

The second reason was the sentimental, or spiritual, value of Athens, a matter none the less real and important because intangible. Antigonus must have looked on Athens as his intellectual capital; certainly he could not allow any other power to dominate the city, or even acquire preponderating influence there. It was for this reason that he held Piraeus. Piraeus was as vital to him as Chalcis, but for quite another reason; and as it was held for the sake of Athens and not for the sake of Corinth, it was therefore (as has been seen) not put under Krateros but under a separate strategos. The strategos at this time was Hierokles of Karia, a man who had already proved his loyalty in a subordinate position.

Outside these limits, Greece was free and independent. It is true that Antigonus in 276 still held a few small places in the Peloponnese; but these were merely a survival of his one-time Greek kingdom, and as they broke off one by one he made small effort to retain them. He had already lost Troizen without a struggle; in 275 he lost three of the remaining Achaean towns, Aigion, Boura, Keryneia. remaining three were probably lost in the war with Pyrrhus; if he continued to hold one or two small places in Arcadia or the Argolid, that is the most that he did; and there is no evidence that he did even this. Now that he had the revenues of Macedonia he no longer depended on taxes from Greek cities; while his proceedings after Pyrrhus’ death seem to show that he understood that the conquest and garrisoning of this or that city state, which in the nature of things his empire could not assimilate, was a source not of strength but of weakness. Peloponnese south of Corinth farmed no part of his sphere, and he had no more intention of setting up strategoi there than Alexander had of instituting satraps in India.

It will be seen then that, Thessaly excepted, the relations of Antigonus with Greece hinge on two absolutely unconnected points—Corinth for the sake of safety, Athens for the sake of culture. It may be as well now to indicate briefly the position of Macedonia with regard to the several states individually.

Thessaly had for long been essentially a part of Macedonia, and it may be that (as language suggests) the Macedonian was recognized as being nearer of kin to the Thessalian than to other Greeks. It had had an ancient League of its own, grouped round the federal cult of Athene Itonia, and under the headship of a sort of military dictator, the tagos; Pelopidas had reorganized the League on the Boeotian model, under an archon, and though Philip II had cut the League into four, he had had to end, in 344, by restoring its unity. Save for various assertions of independence—in the Lamian war, for instance, and during the Gallic invasion—the country had, since Philip, remained a Macedonian possession; but the Macedonian kings looked on it as occupying a peculiar position towards themselves, and considered that its loss would be, not as the loss of any other Greek possession, but almost as the loss of part of Macedonia. Thessalian cities, moreover, officially dated by the regnal years of the Macedonian kings. The best explanation of these facts, and also of the separate lists of the Macedonian kings as ‘kings of Thessaly’, which appear in the annalists, is that the Macedonian king had a legal position in Thessaly, and that he was the official head of the Thessalian League, occupying (but occupying for life) the position held by the old tagos and by the later federal archon, perhaps with the peculiar control over the troops of the state which the tagos had exercised. It agrees with this that the Macedonian kings took into their own hands the celebration of the national Magnesian festival, the Hetairideia, traditionally founded by Jason. In this way the effective sovereignty of Macedonia was reconciled with the continued existence of the Thessalian League: the autonomous government of the country remained in name, but was liable in practice to be overridden. Forms apart, the Thessalian differed nothing from the Macedonian: both alike did the bidding of the Macedonian king. The Thessalians can hardly have exercised any free choice in the appointment of Macedonian kings as presidents of their League; but no doubt all forms were observed.  The country, however, was at present a source of weakness to Antigonus. He had probably been compelled to reconquer by the sword. The Thessalian nobility had not played a very glorious part in the events of Brennus’ invasion; and many of them must have been correspondingly sore, not merely because they had done a discreditable thing which had failed, but also because they found themselves under a king whose title of honour was derived from the defeat of Brennus’ compatriots. We do in fact hear of irreconcilables, like that Theodoros of Larisa, a water-drinker, and therefore (in the eyes of the then world), a peculiar if not dangerous person, who remained a consistent opponent of Antigonus all his life. It is doubtful if Larisa ever became contented with Macedonian rule; and certainly Thessaly was to take the first opportunity of revolting against Antigonus.

With the affairs of Northern Greece Antigonus did not attempt to interfere. He sought as little to acquire influence as to conquer. Phocis, Locris, Doris, might remain as independent as Aetolia or Epirus for all that it concerned him. Even with Boeotia, for which his father had fought so hard and which he had once held himself, he did not seek to revise relations: it remained absolutely independent. Even had he desired to reconquer Boeotia—a thing of which no trace whatever remains—he could not at present have attempted it; there was far too much to do in Macedonia in the way of organization. Some participation in the affairs of the North could, however, hardly be avoided; for he was still bound to Pyrrhus by the secret treaty, and he was moreover in possession of a kingdom of which part had actually been in Pyrrhus’ hands. If and when Pyrrhus should return, the position might become acute; but till then Antigonus had nothing to fear from Epirus. The affairs of the North, at this time, really resolved themselves into his relationship with Aetolia.

The events of 279 had given Aetolia a sense of new national life and new ambitions. She had stood forward as the champion of Greece; she had done deeds which poets yet unborn were to sing of to her children’s children. Henceforth she began to dream of a career of greatness. She was in fact the one state in Greece that was able throughout all her history to stand absolutely alone, in complete independence of both Egypt and Macedonia; she steered her own course. She already knew the lines on which she would work; she meant to operate by means of the control of Delphi and of the Amphictyonic League.

Aetolia has been damned for ever in the pages of Polybius. But, in considering Aetolian policy at this time, we shall make a great mistake if we do not dissociate our minds from matters that belong to quite a later epoch. So far, Aetolia seems to have had only one recorded bad deed to her credit; few Greek states could boast of less. She was to commit others before Gonatas died; but this was not yet. She had succeeded in 304 in mediating between Demetrios and Rhodes; and her control of Delphi, for a time at least, was to be entirely honourable to both parties. Delphi, fallen on evil days since the oracle had medised in the fifth century, was to be quickened to new vitality and authority. She was to play a large and prominent part in that growing movement which led to so many well-known temples in Greece becoming the scene of an increasing number of manumissions of slaves. It had always been her tradition to use her influence for the purpose of humanizing war; but now Delphi and Aetolia between them were to bring about what was almost a new thing in the world. With the Aetolian domination over Delphi begins that most astonishing third century achievement, the creation of numerous fresh ‘asylums’ or centres of peace, under the shield of the Delphian Apollo, temples or towns or territory declared inviolable and placed outside the ravages of war by the formal consent of as many civilized states as could be obtained. If the Aetolians were traditionally a nation of robbers, at least they used their power over Apollo to exempt, in Apollo’s name, city after city from their depredations. Aetolia was, no doubt, on probation; to become a great power, she must be on her good behaviour. But there is no reason whatever to suppose that, at this time, her good behaviour was not entirely genuine.

The Aetolian control of Delphi did not become absolute at once. For instance, it is not known whether, as yet, she kept a governor in the town, as she certainly did later; and it is known that at this time she was not yet using Delphi as the repository of her archives, which were still kept at Thermos. In process of time she was to have all her decrees set up in duplicate at Thermos and at Delphi, as a matter of course; and her authority over Delphi became so absolute that she not only kept a governor there, but could and did pass decrees of her own regulating the internal affairs of the city. It does not appear that Delphi ever became a member of the Aetolian League; but it is noteworthy that, in freeing a slave, a citizen of Delphi would often date by the Aetolian strategos as well as by his own archon. It may be worth noticing that the movement for making ‘asylums’ grows in force as the Aetolian control of Delphi becomes more complete.

Politically, the ambition of Aetolia was clear-cut. Delphi was the centre of the Amphictyonic League, and Aetolia meant to control that League. Philip II had shown how the control of this religious body could be made a considerable instrument of temporal power; Aetolia meant that his mantle should fall upon herself and not upon Antigonus of Macedonia, and that she should be the League’s sword. The Amphictyonic states were to be her sphere; she looked forward to the day when she should include them all in her Own polity, and make the Aetolian League coterminous with the Amphictyonic. It was a policy that offered considerable scope; Amphictyonic decrees could be made to assume a very different importance in the world with Aetolia as executive. In fact, very shortly after the repulse of the Gauls, the Amphiktyons were already claiming to impose their decrees upon states that were no parties to them; and at no distant date cities that had been fined by the Amphiktyons found it to their profit to apply for remission, not to the Amphiktyons, but to the Aetolians direct. In the end, Aetolia did get complete control of the Amphictyonic League, though the fiction of its independence was still maintained. But it was a policy which, when first entered on, seemed bound to bring Aetolia into collision with Antigonus.

In 285 Aetolia, as the friend of Pyrrhus, had become the friend of Antigonus also. But in 276 she can have felt little goodwill toward the king whose Celtic victory had deprived her own exploits of some of their lustre; and she must have seen that, when Pyrrhus returned, a conflict between him and Antigonus would be inevitable, and she would have to choose her side. When the time came, both her traditional friendship for Pyrrhus and her traditional policy of supporting the second state against the first were to incline her, definitely if not heartily, to the side of the Epirot king. But in 276 the future was uncertain, and in view of eventualities she strengthened herself by that alliance with Acarnania—a country traditionally friendly to Macedonia—which has already been referred to, and which gave her the call of the Acarnanian levies should necessity arise. But this was a matter apart from the question of the Amphictyonic League.

Aetolia’s control of Delphi already gave her a strong position in this respect, she held the Amphictyonic meeting­place. Either now or later, too, she so managed that the secretary of the Amphictyonic League was always an Aetolian. But for the time being she did not control many votes; in this respect Antigonus had the advantage of her. Of the 24 votes, the Macedonian king controlled 7, namely those of the Thessalians, the Magnetes, the Achaeans of Phthiotis, and the Perrhaibians; all these peoples were included in Macedonian Thessaly. Aetolia was not even an Amphictyonic state; she had originally no votes of her own. But neither had Philip II. At the moment Aetolia owned two votes only; the incorporation of Western Locris in her League had given her one of the Locrian votes, the incorporation of Herakleia one of the Malian. But four votes had been ownerless. These were the votes originally of Phocis, Perrhaibia, and the Dolopes, which had been taken from them by Philip II after the Sacred War, leaving Phocis disfranchised and the Perrhaibians and Dolopes with but one vote apiece. Philip II had caused two of these votes to be given to Delphi, and two to himself as his personal possession; Alexander in some way acquired the two Delphic votes, and thus had four of his own, which, however, he seems to have exercised through Delphic citizens. These four votes never passed to Macedonia; they became the personal possession of Alexander’s heirs; and with the death of Alexander’s son they fell into abeyance. What happened to them in the interval is unknown. But the Amphiktyons at some time or other—it can hardly have been before Aetolia controlled Delphi—gave two of these votes back to the Delphians; and after the events of 279 Phocis was rewarded for her bravery against the Celts by the restoration to her of the other two votes. It is impossible not to see the hand of Aetolia in all this. Aetolia earned the gratitude of Phocis by restoring her to the position of which she had been deprived, the gratitude of Delphi by restoring her to the position in which she had been placed, by a Macedonian king ; and as Aetolia controlled Delphi, the Delphic votes would of course be cast as she directed. But as Aetolia had no power in the matter, and must have relied upon persuasion and the glamour of her victories, we see—it can be seen also in other ways—that at this time, among the small states of the North, Aetolia was popular.

Even so, however, Antigonus controlled seven votes while Aetolia actually controlled only four. But one point that comes out clearly from the Delphic inscriptions is that, between 279 and Cynoscephalae (so far as the records go), no hieromnemones from the peoples under Macedonian control ever attended or voted. It remains to seek the reason. To say, as has been said, that Aetolia excluded the Macedonian kings from the Amphictyony is unsatisfactory; how could Aetolia do this? Her military power was not adequate, at this time, to enable her to face Macedonia; and this is what exclusion must, in the ultimate resort, have meant. Moreover, why should Aetolia exclude (say) an Athenian hieromnemon from the Amphictyonic meeting while welcoming Athenian theoroi to the Soteria? The reason must be sought on other lines, in the action not so much of Aetolia as of Antigonus.

Aetolia was apparently popular with the states of the North. But Macedonia most certainly was not. Former kings of Macedonia had sought conquests among them; Boeotia or Phocis could not know, as yet, but that Antigonus might pursue the policy of Demetrios and his predecessors. It was therefore a moral certainty that if Antigonus sent his hieromnemones to Delphi they would be outvoted; Phocis, Boeotia, and the little peoples would vote against Macedonia on any question on which the interests of Antigonus and Aetolia conflicted. And Antigonus could not afford that his men should go to Delphi to be outvoted, that Macedonia should appear in the Amphictyonic Assembly as on a level with the Ainianes or Doris. The only alternatives before Antigonus were complete control or complete abstention. Control meant a policy of conquest sufficient to give him at least thirteen votes; it must have ended in a collision with Aetolia. In such a collision he might have been victorious. But none knew better than Antigonus how precarious his position in Macedonia was as yet; much was to be done, and years must elapse, before he should be secure on his throne. He did not desire aggression in Northern Greece; he did not desire war; most certainly he did not desire a war with Aetolia. He chose therefore the policy of abstention; he decided that his hieromnemones should never appear at Delphi, and that he would have nothing to do with the other Amphictyonic states or the Amphictyonic League. He recognized them as the sphere of Aetolia. The power of Aetolia certainly counted for something in his choice; but it is permissible to believe that the welfare of his own country counted for more. In a few years time his policy was to bear fruit; Macedonia was thenceforth, while he lived, to be on terms of peace with Aetolia, terms even of friendship. But his policy of abstention was to remain absolute; and no state whose representatives appear at an Amphictyonic session can be a state controlled, at the time, by Antigonus.

Such was the position in Northern Greece. In the Peloponnese Antigonus equally sought no conquests, and did not even trouble much to keep the cities which he had originally held. But here the situation differed. Here the strongest state was unalterably hostile to Macedonia; Sparta would attack him if and when she could. But at present Sparta was quiescent; and Argos and Megalopolis, though independent, were committed, both by traditional policy and immediate self-interest, to keeping a jealous watch on Sparta, and acted as a check on her, acted inevitably, though independent, in the interests of the northern power that was Sparta’s enemy. The situation was not one calling for any immediate action; and Antigonus, with more important matters on hand could let the Peloponnese be, so long as no new factor arose. Even had Sparta wished to attack him, she would have found considerable difficulty in doing so to any good purpose, for she had no fleet to and could not pass the Isthmus. Her hostility would not become of great moment unless she had the backing of some strong sea-power; and what happened in the Peloponnese depended primarily on the policy of Egypt.

That policy, as initiated by the first Lagid, was simple and intelligible. Hold the sea, and stir up trouble for the Macedonian in Greece by posing as the champion and protector of Greek independence; such was the sufficient formula. It was, it is true a policy that was bound to end in bringing Macedonia and Egypt into collision, if and when the former should be strong enough; at the same time, scientifically carried out, it might prevent Macedonia from ever becoming strong enough.

It looked, however, for the time being, as if this policy slept with Ptolemy Soter in his grave. For his son and successor, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, was of a very different nature. Alone of the kings of his time he was no warrior; his dealings with the war-god had consisted in putting two of his brothers to death in good Oriental fashion. The prince who presided over Egypt’s age of gold was but a sickly creature, a devotee of pleasure in all its forms, ever seeking new pastimes and new sensations, whether among his mistresses, or in the gorgeous pleasure-fleet that he kept on the Nile, or in his menagerie of strange animals from far-off lands; one who exhausted every form of luxury, and who, prostrated by gout, envied the simple joys of the beggars below his window, even while he dabbled in search after the elixir that should make him immortal. Extremely able, nevertheless; a man of high culture; the first diplomat of his time; governing Egypt well, from the point of view of the Macedonian ruling caste, and amassing from it great treasures, as from a well-managed estate; distinguished above all by the encouragement which, following his father’s example, he gave to learning, art, and science, whereby he has made his name famous. His own tastes seem to have been opposed to war, and the first ten years of his reign were uniformly pacific; secure in the command of the Aegean and the friendship of Sparta, there appeared to be no reason for his interference in Greece so long as Antigonus sought no conquests there. In the years following 276 men may conceivably have begun to dream that peace, so long an exile, had returned to the world.

There was, however, one cause of difference between Macedon and Egypt that was radical: Antigonus’ policy towards Greece hinged on the possession of Corinth; without Corinth, Macedonia might be grievously injured by some combination. And Corinth (Euboea notwithstanding) was cut off from Demetrias by the sea; and the sea was Egyptian. But the sea and its islands had once been the unquestioned possession of Demetrios; wherever he had ruled or not ruled upon land, for twenty years his fleets had been all-powerful; and on his fall the command of the sea had passed into the hands of Egypt without even a struggle. Granting that Macedonia could acquiesce without loss of honour in the independence of an ancient state like Boeotia, or in the federation of the tiny towns of Achaea, equid she so acquiesce in the continued dominion of another power over the League which the first Antigonus had created, and over Delos, the symbol of her lost sea-power? Antigonus must be irrevocably impelled, both by loyalty to his father and considerations of the welfare of Macedonia as he understood it, to attempt the recovery of the sea. Egypt then was the one power, beside Sparta, which was clearly marked out as his enemy. At present he had far too much to do to attend to the sea; but many at the court of Alexandria must have foreseen that some day he would try to recover this his father’s dominion. Meanwhile there was peace; and the gorgeous edifice of Egyptian power, the home of such dazzling patronage of science and learning as the world had never yet beheld, seemed four­square to every wind.

There remains only the city which for Antigonus was more important even than Egypt, these years were the golden age of his relations with Athens, which he frequently visited. The successor of Philip II was on the very best of terms with the city of Demosthenes; so cordial were they as almost to hide away the fact that Athens was under Antigonus’ suzerainty.

The nationalist government of Athens, which had come into power in 280, was still in power in November 277, when the administration was in the hands of a board; Athens must have remained free and independent until some time in 276. But in 276/5 the pro-Macedonians are again at the helm. The change of government is obviously connected in some with way with Antigonus’ accession to the throne of Macedonia; but how the altered position in which Athens thenceforth stood to the king was brought about is quite obscure. What is certain is that from 276 to 273 Athens stood in some loose connexion with Antigonus, under which Antigonus was treated as ‘king’, and for which connexion the term ‘suzerainty’ may be used; and that during these years a pro-Macedonian government was in power. In 276/5 this party put forward its political confession of faith in the guise of that decree in honour of the veteran Phaidros of Sphettos to which allusion has so often been made; and in 275/4 sacrifices were being offered at Athens ‘for the Senate and people of Athens, their wives and children, and Antigonus the king’, a phrase eloquent of Antigonus’ position. In the autumn of 274 the Great Panathenaia, omitted in the year 278 on account of the troubles of the Gallic invasion, were celebrated afresh at Athens with much pomp. A devoted partisan of the king, Herakleitos, son of Asklepiades of the deme Athmonon, adorned the stadium for the occasion, and dedicated to Athene, giver of victory, a series of pictures illustrative of Antigonus’ victory at Lysimacheia, or, as the Athenians put it, ‘his struggle against the barbarians for the deliverance of the Hellenes’.

It has been shown already how, at Athens, the old labels of oligarch and democrat gradually lost their meaning, and two new parties were formed, the pro-Macedonians and the Nationalists, each of course containing a more extreme and a more moderate wing. These two parties were to remain; but the Nationalists were already perhaps ripe for some change in their position. In the long war with Antigonus that succeeded Demetrios’ downfall the Nationalists had turned for help to many quarters, but had relied chiefly on Lysimachus of Thrace. Not only was Lysimachus dead, but his kingdom had ceased to be; there were in effect now but two great powers outside the peninsula, and one of them, Asia, was on permanently good terms with Antigonus. Hence we shall now find that the Nationalists tend more and more to become simply a pro-Egyptian party. The reason was as simple as inevitable; it arose out of Athens’ dependence on foreign corn.

The world contained at this time several much larger cities than Athens; but every one of them—Alexandria and Antioch, Seleucia and Syracuse, Carthage and Rome— easily fed herself. But Athens had for many years been dependent on foreign corn. So long as she had been a great naval power, the inconvenience of this had only occasionally been felt; but she was now no longer, in a position to guarantee her own supply of food. True, there was plenty of corn in the world to feed her; but, as it happened, there was no source of supply which was not open to the control of either Antigonus or Ptolemy, unless perhaps a very little might be got from Boeotia. Macedonia, Thessaly, and Euboea (if Euboea was still in a position to export corn, which is doubtful), belonged to Antigonus; and he cut communication with Paionia. Eastward, the Aegean was an Egyptian lake, which the Egyptian fleet ruled as it pleased: nothing could cross but by leave of Egypt. The islands, in fact, were all importing corn themselves, and so to some extent was Asia Minor, notably Ephesus; there may still be read an Ephesian decree of thanks to a Rhodian sea­captain who landed an emergency cargo and broke the local corn-ring. The only countries eastward that could export, putting aside Egypt herself (who could feed Athens and to spare), seem to have been the Thracian Chersonese, and the Crimea. The former belonged to the Seleucids, who were friendly to Antigonus on the one hand, and on the other hand could not have protected their traders against Egypt if they had wished to, having merely a negligible fleet. The Crimea, Athens’ old source of supply, could no doubt have fed her, though it has been thought that the amount of corn passing the Bosphorus at this time was small compared to what it had been in the days of Demosthenes; but the Crimean supply was exposed to a double danger. Antigonus’ friend Byzantion controlled the Bosphorus, and could, if desired, see that any corn ships were ‘brought ashore’, as the phrase went; while, if the political position were reversed, Egypt, from her watchtower of Samothrace, could pick them up as they emerged from the Hellespont. From the west, too, nothing could be hoped. The corn from Syracuse came to Antigonus’ port of Corinth; if Carthage exported, which is not known, the corn probably went to Egypt’s dependency Phoenicia in payment for the traffic of the east; while Athens could no longer depend upon the pirate-infested Adriatic, since the loss of her fleet had rendered useless the naval station of Adria, which she had founded there about 326/5 in order that ‘the people of Athens might at all times have a supply of corn’. There remained the great international corn markets, Delos and Rhodes; but Egypt controlled Delos, and neither could be reached but by leave of the Egyptian fleet.

Consequently, between them, Antigonus and Ptolemy controlled practically the entire supply of corn available for feeding Athens. On one of the two Athens must depend: choice there was none. She was like an island that could not feed itself and had lost its fleet. In time of peace it was well enough; food came in naturally, for the gain of the merchant; but should she offend Antigonus, she became by that very act dependent on Egypt, who alone could keep the sea open for her; unless she had used the time of peace to store up corn, a matter requiring considerable foresight. Independence was a word with a fine ring about it; but unfortunately even heroes must eat.

It is to be hoped that it is no longer necessary to enter any defence of the Athens of this epoch against charges of degeneracy or decadence. Of course there were many unworthy elements in the city; but how many cities are free of such? To point, as has been done, to the New Comedy and say, ‘behold Athens,’ is frankly absurd. The New Comedy may be of great importance in the history of literature; for the history of the time it has no importance at all. It may at the start have been drawn from life; even so, it was clearly only life of a sort; and not all the wit and elegance lavished on its presentation can conceal the fact that it soon became a convention. Leave the literary qualities aside, pass over the wit and the characterization, and a picture of Athens drawn from these plays is about as true as would be a picture of England drawn from (let us say) musical comedy. The real charge against the Athens of this epoch seems merely to be, that she failed; that is to say, that she was at grips with forces physically stronger than herself. Precisely the same charge might be brought against the Athens of Thucydides.

Athens has a right to be judged, not on her stage plays, but on such things as her many portraits left by Antigonus of Karystos, or the language of the noble resolution moved by Chremonides. Admiration for her great past need not blind us to her great present. In the two generations following Alexander’s death she did some of the hardest fighting in her history; and there was not much sign of degeneracy about the men who led the national war against Antipatros, who fought against heavy odds the two days’ sea-fight off Amorgos, who held their walls against Demetrios till they were glad to feed on dead mice, who stormed the Mouseion under Olympiodorus, and who at the last, when fall Athens must, fell with all honour in the great struggle which we call the Chremonidean war. There was little mark of decadence about the city that was still ‘Hellas of Hellas', the home of all the great philosophies and the spiritual centre of the civilized world, the city that could draw and keep such men as Zeno and Epicurus, Arkesilaos and Kleanthes, men utterly different save in noble aims. What Athens said the world still repeated; those whom Athens honoured were honoured indeed. Wealth and power might pass to others; Athens alone had the secret of the path that raises men to the heavens.

CHAPTER VIII

ANTIGONUS AND HIS CIRCLE

ANTIGONUS GONATAS