Outside mainland Greece and Macedonia, the Greek cities were set in a sea of native peoples, Persians, Indians, Egyptians, Jews, or Celts. It is difficult to disentangle the complex relationships that evolved as a result, but in many cases social distinctions between Greek and native remained rigid. In the city of Seleucia-on-the-Eulaeua (the former Persian capital of Susa), there is no record of any citizen (in the legal sense of the word) who was not Greek by birth. It takes three generations before the Seleucid rulers are found employing the first non-Greek in their administration, while it was said that Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, was the first in the dynasty to learn the local language. The formal title of
Her capital Alexandria was Alexandria by Egypt, a telling illustration of its isolation from the native culture.
Despite the legal restrictions, the social boundaries between cultures were, inevitably, fluid. Greek values and customs were spread by a host of individuals and groups, traders, mercenaries, pilgrims to shrines and oracles, embassies from one city-state to another, who criss-crossed the Mediterranean and the east. Greek dialects that had remained distinct through the classical period now became absorbed in a common language, koine. Greek became the lingua franca of what was a highly mobile world (see further Chapter 29). Many non-Greeks would acquire a veneer of Greek culture to provide them with tools for survival. Native mercenaries had to pick up a smattering if they were to serve in the Hellenistic armies, and the experience stuck with them. When they retired they often adopted Greek styles for their tombs that they would embellish with Greek inscriptions as a sign of their rise within the cultural hierarchy.
Egypt provides the best-documented examples of the relationship between ruler and ruled. Once again the survival of papyrus in the dry climate is the reason. Greeks flocked to settlements along the Nile, from as many as 200 home cities according to the records. Usually Greeks guarded the privileges of citizenship for themselves and Alexandria itself was closed to Egyptian incomers other than those servicing the city. However, the Greeks always retained respect for the longevity and sophistication of Egyptian culture and in practice, in many areas outside Alexandria, Greek and Egyptian homes were not segregated and families intermarried. In Alexandria Egyptian styles of art merged with Greek, with the Ptolemies presented as traditional pharaohs. The further south one travelled, the less influence was exercised by Greeks. In Thebes the ancient and wealthy Egyptian families continued much as they had done before, maintaining their traditional legal system, for instance.
The Ptolemies had little option but to work closely with existing institutions. They needed revenue with which to maintain their capital city and to defend their kingdom against their Seleucid rivals and others. The traditional pharaonic administrative structure was still intact and so the surplus could be channelled upwards. The consequence, however, was a petty and intrusive bureaucracy that aroused deep resentment among the local peoples. By the beginning of the third century Upper Egypt had broken away and accepted ‘pharaohs’ from Nubia in place of the Ptolemies. In a desperate attempt to keep control, the Ptolemies were forced to bring Egyptians into the administration (usually only after they had received a Greek education) and make concessions to the temples, which had always been the most independent of the Egyptian institutions. The Ptolemies did not dare to challenge the priesthoods of Thebes but temples at Philae and Edfu were built under Ptolemaic patronage. The yawning cultural gaps could, however, hardly be bridged. By the time of Cleopatra VII the kingdom was already disintegrating, and it was hardly surprising that the scheming queen should look to powerful Roman commanders such as Caesar and Antony to bolster up her power (see Chapter 24). (For Hellenistic Egypt, see Roger Bagnall and Dominic Rath-bone, Egypt from Alexander to the Early Christians: An Archaeological and Historical
Guide, Los Angeles, 2005, and Alan Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs, 322 Bc to AD 642, Berkeley and London, 1986.)
World History
