Crucial to the spread of Hellenism was the founding of cities, a tradition originally used as a strategy by the Macedonians for pacifying defeated enemies and sustained by Philip as well as by Alexander. The Seleucids scattered new foundations throughout the former Persian empire, in Syria, and Palestine, on the plains of Mesopotamia, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and as far east as modern Afghanistan. Some, Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, for example, were totally new cities. Others, such as Babylon and Susa, were older cities whose native inhabitants were now placed under Greek or Macedonian administrations. It took some time for many of these cities to become established, but by the third century adventurers, traders, and political refugees were migrating eastwards, shedding their old city allegiances to become citizens of this new world. There were new cities elsewhere: Thessalonica on the Macedonian coast was founded in 316. Greek trading ports were established along the coastline of the Red Sea.
Typically these cities were laid out on a gridiron pattern. This was not just an exercise in proportion, it was the most practical way of placing buildings that were usually rectangular in area (houses, for instance, were normally grouped around a rectangular courtyard), and the effect was not necessarily monotonous. Priene, a city on the western coast of Asia Minor, resited on higher ground in the fourth century, was one of the finest examples. Its streets ran up a hillside to the public buildings of the city with an innovative temple to Athene Polias, mixing Ionic and Doric elements, gracing the summit of the acropolis. (Priene remains an excellent choice to visit as it was never built over in Roman times.) All these foundations, however distant from Greece itself, were microcosms of Greek culture. Even Alexander’s military settlements had their own gymnasia and theatres. By the second century, when colonization had become more popular, a city such as that excavated at Ai Khanoum on the northern frontier of Afghanistan had not only a huge theatre and gymnasium but mosaics and a library. Among the ruins were found the remnants of a piece of papyrus with a Greek philosophical text on it, while in the gymnasium a stone pillar was inscribed with moral maxims taken from the oracle at Delphi.
So far as written records of a settlement’s foundation are concerned, none can rival the Zenon archive, 2,000 documents dealing with every aspect of one Egyptian estate’s management in the third century Bc. Zenon was one of the administrators of this estate, land situated between the Nile valley and the Fayum granted by Ptolemy II to a favoured courtier. The agricultural land itself and the neighbouring
Map 8
Fig. 6 The Acropolis at Pergamum. In addition to its temples the Acropolis shows the typical concerns of a Hellenistic monarch, for defence (arsenals and barracks) and for culture (a library and theatre). Unlike an earlier Greek acropolis it also holds a royal palace.
Town, Philadelphia, were both set out as rectangular plans, with irrigation canals and separate plots for selected crops, vines, olives, wheat, and even poppies. The temples in Philadelphia honoured Greek and Egyptian gods as well as the Ptolemies themselves. As with Ai Khanoum, there was a theatre and gymnasium.
The gymnasium was the most typical symbol of Greek culture. It was not simply a place for exercise. There were often libraries and lecture halls attached with classes held in rhetoric or philosophy. The most favoured gymnasia, especially those in the older cities such as Athens, were exclusive. They had long waiting-lists, and prospective entrants were carefully scrutinized for their suitability. Freeborn citizens whose income came from land were the most favoured, and there was a distinct prejudice against trade, a sign in itself that this was an important source of new wealth resented by more traditional landowners.
Philip and Alexander had perfected the art of siege warfare and there was no city that could withstand a determined attack on it. The Romans simply razed the prosperous port of Corinth to the ground in 146 when they wanted to set an example to resisters of Roman expansion. However, there was little sense in a Hellenistic ruler destroying the main centres of Greek culture, so in practice there had to be accommodation between king and city. Sensible kings paid lip-service to the traditions of the polis (it was part of the ideology of monarchical rule that a king would boast of his preservation of city independence) and city life remained vigorous. We are especially lucky to have a host of surviving inscriptions that record major events, honour benefactors, and detail arrangements for financing new buildings. Democratic assemblies continued to meet, day-to-day administration would be in the hands of appointed officials (maintaining grain supplies was a constant preoccupation), and ambassadors would be sent off to resolve disputes with neighbours. The cities themselves realized the
Futility of warfare among themselves—it would only attract the unwelcome attentions of the monarchs—and so arbitration of their differences became common instead.
The cities of the Greek mainland were not formally part of any of the Hellenistic kingdoms (for Macedonia, see further p. 389 below) and they saw the advantages in joining together for common defence against outsiders. In central Greece the Aeto-lian League gained its cohesion from a successful defence of the area against Celtic war bands. After saving Delphi in 279, the Aetolians absorbed most of the cities of the Amphictyonic Council (see p. 311). The League was a genuine federation. All its men of military age met twice a year in an assembly, there was a chief magistrate (in practice a general), and a council made up of representatives of the cities. The League became strong enough to be used by the Romans against Philip V of Mac-edon in the late third century (see p. 389).
Another League, the Achaean, drew on traditions of cooperation in the northern Peloponnese that stretched back for centuries. Like the Aetolian League, the Achaean had a presiding general and cavalry commanders and an assembly that agreed a common foreign policy, even though, in practice, this lacked coherence. Originally anti-Macedonian, the League sought the protection of Macedonia when threatened by Sparta, but then switched allegiance to Rome in 200 when it became aware of where power really lay. The switch did little good. The League was crushed by Rome in 146 (see p. 391).
Athens maintained her independence for most of the period, but in the third century the city faced an economic crisis. The details are difficult to ascertain, but it is possible that rising grain prices and falling olive oil prices (due to new areas of production) caused a balance-of-trade deficit. Furthermore, her famous pottery, already degenerate in quality by the fourth century, was now being replaced by the more fashionable silverware. The release of vast quantities of precious metals by Alexander’s campaigns drove down the price of silver, and Athens’s silver mines may even have been closed temporarily in the third century. However, the city’s fame as the traditional centre of moral philosophy (in contrast to that of Alexandria, which became the focus for mathematicians and scientists) remained. One of Aristotle’s followers, Theophrastus, drew in 2,000 students to his lectures. Although one third-century visitor complained of the meanness of the city’s streets, Athens benefited from the largesse of the surrounding monarchies. The Ptolemies introduced a sanctuary of the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis, while Attalus II of Pergamum, a former student in the city, built a fine stoa, over 100 metres long, along the east of the Agora. (It has been reconstructed and now houses a museum of the Agora excavations.)
World History
