Greek intellectuals evolved an elaborate theory of monarchy to justify this new world of absolutist states. But given the background of deep Greek political distrust of absolutism, this theory also sought to tame royal power through an image of the ideal king - the fierce and effective but benevolent man who imposes order and provides benefits to his subjects, receiving in return a loyalty that was a reasonable response to his services for them.
After the disasters of the Peloponnesian War some Greek intellectuals were already thinking about monarchy as a good form of government. We see this in Isocrates’s essays on King Euagoras of Cyprus and his successor Nicocles (ca. 375), in Xenophon’s biography of Agesilaus of Sparta (ca. 370), and in his fictional account of Cyrus the founder of the Persian empire (the Cyropaedia). These works laid out the virtues of a model king: he was just, generous, and feared the gods; he was incorruptible, and self-controlled in food, wine, and sex; he was courageous in battle and patriotic.37 Plato, of course, went further; in the Statesman, he proposed monarchy as the best of all forms of government. Aristotle was more skeptical of monarchy, but still believed that a man with truly superior virtue could rightfully assume kingship over a city, ruling for the common good.3
These ideas had little impact at the time beyond a small cadre of intellectuals. But when, after Philip and Alexander and the Successors, the question became not which form of government was theoretically good, but how to provide a philosophical accommodation with the real monarchies that had emerged, the answers were already available. Our sources on the hellenistic treatises on kingship are fragmentary and often late, but they allow us to see that the ideas set out in the first half of the fourth century were now deployed both to educate monarchs on how to use their absolute power in a philosophically acceptable (i. e. benevolent) way, and to educate the population on why monarchical rule was acceptable.39 We also possess a great amount of surviving propaganda from the royal governments themselves, in the form of coinage, inscriptions on stone, and papyrus documents in the case of Egypt. These official statements enable us to see how the governments wished to view themselves and to be viewed by their populations. In sum: we can see fairly well how the good monarchy was supposed to work.
The king was, of course supposed to have martial virtues. He was not only to be a strategist but personally brave in battle - as we see in official inscriptions praising courageous royal behavior and in the passages in Polybius praising royal courage in battle and condemning royal cowardice.40 Because enemies included the tribal peoples (‘‘barbarians’’) who from ca. 280 bc constantly threatened the settled city-life of the Mediterranean coast from the north, there emerged the ideal of the monarch as defender of Greek civilization. It finds its finest artistic expression in
Eumenes II’s great Pergamene Altar of Zeus (ca. 170 bc), with its dramatic reliefs of the battles of the gods against the giants - symbolizing the Attalid kings as the protectors of the Asia Minor coastal cities against the terrible assaults of the Galatian Celts who had settled in upland Anatolia.4 The Antigonids fulfilled a similar role, protecting Macedon and Greece against the Thracians and Celts.42 Still, war was not waged against barbarians alone, as we see in the Canopis Decree of 238 bc, which praises Ptolemy III for having ‘‘maintained the country at peace by fighting in its defence against many nations and their rulers’’ (OGIS 96, lines 12-13, trans. Austin 1981: 336) - none of them, in this case, barbarians (Walbank 1984: 82).
The ideal king also had to be wealthy: it was part of his power to do good (Austin 1986: 457). Royal wealth derived primarily from taxes, though sometimes from war booty. In the ideal, it was to benefit the king’s friends and subjects, to relieve the needy, and to fund the armed forces necessary to defend the realm (see Stob. Ed. 4.7.62). No doubt the vast royal wealth and power displayed in the gigantic processions of Ptolemy II in Alexandria in 279/278 and Antiochus IV at Antioch in 166, or in the vast palaces and public buildings of Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamum or Nicomedia, also served to impress the kings’ subjects and hence led back once again to regime stability. Ideally, wealth also constituted a specific moral challenge: for the king as a superior man had to overcome the great temptations of sloth, luxury, and sensuality which wealth offered (Aristaeus, Letter to Philocrates 207).
Another central virtue of kings set forth by the theoreticians was the provision of justice and benevolent administration. The king made the laws for all; and though some thinkers argued that he did not have to obey the laws himself (as Anaxarchus allegedly told Alexander after Alexander murdered a friend in a drunken rage), the thrust of the treatises on kingship was otherwise - that the good king should voluntarily submit to the laws he made. Here was another area where the philosophers could depict monarchy as the most honorable of challenges toward moral behavior on the part of a man of superior quality.43 Similarly, magnanimity and generosity (megalopsuchl, philanthropia) are the most common royal virtues in intellectual treatises and on official inscriptions.44 And a major theoretical text asserts that a king must above all show self-control (enkrateia) toward his subjects, and indeed that to show such self-control was to gain ‘‘the greatest empire of all’’ - empire over oneself (Aristaeus, Letter to Philocrates 207 and 221). The result of a king showing such affection for his subjects was - supposedly - that they would in turn be affectionate and loyal toward him.45
This understanding of how to mitigate absolutist control is also shown in the official view of relations between kings and the ‘‘free and autonomous’’ cities both within and beyond their realms. Most Greek poleis were now democratic in form, so that the contrast with monarchy was stark; and at any one time there were dozens of cities in Greece and the Aegean free from direct monarchical domination (though only Rhodes and the Aetolian League could claim such a history continuously). Relations between kings and cities outside their power were polite (unless they were about to go to war). And in keeping with the ideals, kings liked to appear as great benefactors of cities: hence both the Attalids and Seleucids financed spectacular public buildings in free Athens after 229 bc.47 Even with subordinated poleis in his realm, there developed a rhetoric of highly polite communication, stressing the king’s benevolence and special favor on the one side, and corresponding good will and loyalty on the other. The king often granted formal freedom and autonomy, and aided these poleis economically and militarily. This is of course not the entire story (see below), but the rhetoric of benevolence and loyalty did act as a factor to mitigate the brutal imbalance of power.4
In sum, the hellenistic ideal of monarchy required a king ‘‘to throw his weight on the side of good,’’ employing his immense power to the benefit of all (Walbank 1984: 83). In this conception, monarchy became - as Antigonus II is supposed to have said - a ‘‘glorious servitude,’’ with the king taking constant care for the common interest.49 But in laying out the virtues necessary both for royal personal goodness and to justify monarchy to a people with a history of freedom, the theoreticians were not naive - for writings on royal virtue acknowledged the terrible temptations of unlimited hedonism, irresponsibility, and cruelty inherent in absolute power. To overcome those enormous temptations required a man of the highest moral stature (Walbank 1984: 83). How many men, in reality, achieved this goal?
World History
