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10-05-2015, 02:13

Bureaucracy

Lysimachus once identified the government as "Ourself [the king], our friends, our army, and our administration" (Ehrenberg 1969, 159). We have already considered much of what constituted the monarch himself or herself. The Friends (philoi) started out as Alexander's companions (hetairoi), all Macedonian. As time passed and the empires grew, the official Friends of the king(s) were a combination of Macedonians and local natives, the latter usually the elite of loyal cities. Informally, these Friends served as liaisons between the king and his subjects, and they were instrumental in securing benefits for their cities. At other times, these Friends might meet more formally in a type of synedrion or council to advise the king (Shipley 2000, 76)

The army was unique in Greek history, insofar as it consisted primarily of professional mercenaries rather than the common populace (see chapter 6). This had the distinct benefit of keeping those with arms more closely loyal to the crown than to any individual polis, at least as long as they were paid. This loyalty was not only important in the face of possible mutinies by the poleis, but also when matters of succession were in debate. A long-standing Macedonian tradition maintained throughout the Hellenistic period was that the king was formally pronounced and accepted by the army. Having the army on one's side made it infinitely easier to have one's preferred candidate set upon the throne in cases of contested inheritance.

Finally, there were the administrations (pragmata in Greek, literally "things"), which in the Hellenistic governments were combinations of traditional bureaucracies and Macedonian innovations. At the head of each bureaucracy were the king and queen, who were responsible for the proper functioning of their administrations. Complaints about inefficiency or corruption eventually wound up on their desks: "King Ptolemy (II) to Antiochus, greetings. Concerning the billeting of soldiers we hear that there has been increased violence as they are not receiving lodgings from the oikonomoi (governmental officials) but break into the houses themselves, expel the inhabitants and settle there by force. Give instructions therefore that in the future this is not repeated, but that preferably they provide themselves with accommodation [= barracks]" (translation by Austin 1981, 249, adapted).

Assisting the king and queen throughout the different empires were strate-goi—generals—each of whom controlled a limited territory and a certain percentage of the army. Likewise, all administrations possessed a bevy of scribes, who were almost exclusively Greek among the Macedonian Antigonids, but probably mainly Hellenized natives in the other kingdoms where, at minimum, bilingualism was required. These scribes recorded and publicized the

Letters and edicts of the monarchs, the foundation of all Hellenistic law, policy, and action. The most famous example is the Rosetta Stone, an edict written in 196 b. c.e. on the anniversary of the coronation of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The text is a list of benefits conferred upon Egypt by the king. More significant (at least for later Egyptologists) is that the edict appears in three scripts—Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphic, leading to the translation of hieroglyphics by Champollion in the 1820s.

The Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties made use of the bureaucratic systems already in place when Alexander conquered Egypt and Persia, respectively. Egypt was divided into cantons/nomoi (in place since the Old Kingdom, 2650-2180 b. c.e.), districts/topoi, and villages/komai. Strategoi and nomarchs controlled the various regions of the country, and the pharaoh was assisted by the Egyptian vizir, an age-old position. The Seleucids maintained the divisions of their land established by the Persians. These were called satrapies, each governed by a satrap and/or a strategos (Ehrenberg 1969, 180).

In spite of the huge territories and the mixture of ethnicities involved, the Hellenistic bureaucracies were nevertheless "personal." All functionaries functioned directly for and by the will of the monarch and were responsible to him/her personally. The rule of law that characterized Classical Greece was replaced by an absolutism the Archaic tyrants could not have imagined.



 

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