Professional Documents
Culture Documents
C REATING
A HELLENISTIC WORLD
Editors
Andrew Erskine
and
Contributors
Elizabeth Carney, Stephen Colvin, Andrew Erskine, Robin Lane Fox, Richard Hunter, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Alan B. Lloyd, Daniel Ogden, James I. Porter, Joseph Roisman, Peter Schultz, Shane Wallace, Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, Josef Wiesehfer, Stephanie Winder
First published in 2010 by The Classical Press of Wales 15 Rosehill Terrace, Swansea SA1 6JN Tel: +44 (0)1792 458397 Fax: +44 (0)1792 464067 www.classicalpressofwales.co.uk Distributor Oxbow Books, 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW Tel: +44 (0)1865 241249 Fax: +44 (0)1865 794449 Distributor in the United States of America The David Brown Book Co. PO Box 511, Oakville, CT 06779 Tel: +1 (860) 9459329 Fax: +1 (860) 9459468 2010 The authors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset, printed and bound in the UK by Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales
The Classical Press of Wales, an independent venture, was founded in 1993, initially to support the work of classicists and ancient historians in Wales and their collaborators from further afield. More recently it has published work initiated by scholars internationally. While retaining a special loyalty to Wales and the Celtic countries, the Press welcomes scholarly contributions from all parts of the world.
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CONTENTS
Page List of Contributors Abbreviations Introduction Andrew Erskine and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones vii xi xiii
PART I NEW WORLDS 1 The first Hellenistic man Robin Lane Fox 2 The koine: A new language for a new world Stephen Colvin 3 The letter of Aristeas Richard Hunter 1
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PART II RULERS AND SUBJECTS 4 The Silver Shields, Eumenes, and their historian Joseph Roisman 5 From satrapy to Hellenistic kingdom: the case of Egypt Alan B. Lloyd 6 Frataraka rule in Seleucid Persis: a new appraisal Josef Wiesehfer 61
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Contents PART III THE POLIS 7 Early Hellenistic Rhodes: the struggle for independence and the dream of hegemony Hans-Ulrich Wiemer 8 The significance of Plataia for Greek eleutheria in the early Hellenistic period Shane Wallace 123
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Part IV THE COURT 9 Between philosophy and the court: the life of Persaios of Kition Andrew Erskine 10 Being royal and female in the early Hellenistic period Elizabeth Carney 11 How to marry a courtesan in the Macedonian courts Daniel Ogden 12 A key to Berenikes Lock? The Hathoric model of queenship in early Ptolemaic Egypt Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Stephanie Winder
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Part V CHANGING AESTHETICS 13 Against : rethinking Hellenistic aesthetics James L. Porter 14 Style, continuity and the Hellenistic baroque Peter Schultz
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Index
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CONTRIBUTORS
Elizabeth Carney is Professor of History at Clemson University. She is author of Women and Monarchy in Ancient Macedonia (2000), Olympias, Mother of Alexander the Great (2006) and co-editor of Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and son, lives and afterlives (2010). Stephen Colvin is Reader in Classics and Comparative Philology at University College London. His main interests are Greek language, dialect and literature; the koine and Mycenaean Greek; historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Major publications include Dialect in Aristophanes (1999), The Greco-Roman East (2004), and A Historical Greek Reader (2007). Andrew Erskine is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The Hellenistic Stoa (1990), Troy between Greece and Rome (2001) and Roman Imperialism (2010). He is the editor of A Companion to the Hellenistic World (2003) and A Companion to Ancient History (2009). Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. His research interests include Hellenistic poetry and its reception in Rome, ancient literary criticism, and the ancient novel. His most recent book is Critical Moments in Classical Literature (2009), and many of his essays have been collected in On Coming After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek literature and its reception (2008). Robin Lane Fox is Reader in Ancient History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of New College. His publications range widely over the ancient world and include Alexander the Great (1973), Pagans and Christians (1986), The Classical World: An epic history from Homer to Hadrian (2005) and Travelling Heroes (2008). Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh with interests in the socio-cultural history of ancient Greece, Persia and Egypt and in reception studies. He is the author of Aphrodites Tortoise: The veiled woman of ancient Greece (2003) and Ctesias History of Persia Tales of the Orient (2009; with James Robson).
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Contributors
Alan B. Lloyd is Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and Classics at Swansea University. He was a member of the Saqqara Epigraphic Project in the 1970s and edited the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology from 1979 to 1985. He was chairman of the Egypt Exploration Society from 1994 to 2007 (now Vice-President) and is the author of numerous publications on Egyptological and Classical subjects. Daniel Ogden is Professor of Ancient History in the University of Exeter. His publications include Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death (1999) and Alexander the Great: Myth, genesis and sexuality (2010). He is the editor of The Hellenistic World: New perspectives (2002) and co-editor of Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and son, lives and afterlives (2010). James I. Porter is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Nietzsche and the Philology of the Future (2000), The Invention of Dionysus: An essay on the birth of tragedy (2000), and The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, sensation, and experience (2010), and editor, most recently, of Classical Pasts: The classical traditions of Greece and Rome (2006). Joseph Roisman is a professor of Classics at Colby College. His research interests include Greek social and military history from the Classical Age to early Hellenistic times. Among his recent publications are: with J. C. Yardley, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander (2010) and as co-editor with I. Worthington, A Companion to Ancient Macedonia (2010). Peter Schultz is Olin J. Storvick Chair of Classical Studies at Concordia College. He is the co-editor of Early Hellenistic Portraiture: Image, style, context (2007), Aspects of Ancient Greek Cult: Ritual, context, iconography (2009), Structure, Image, Ornament: Architectural sculpture in the Greek World (2009) and the author of numerous articles on Athenian art, architectural and topography. Shane Wallace is a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. Currently based at the British School at Athens, he is completing his thesis The Freedom of the Greeks in the Early Hellenistic Period, 336262: A Study in Ruler/City Relations.
Hans-Ulrich Wiemer holds the chair of Ancient History at the University of Erlangen-Nrnberg. His publications include Libanios und Julian (1995), Rhodische Traditionen in der hellenistischen Historiographie (2001), Krieg,
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ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviations for ancient texts follow OCD 3 for the most part or are easily identifiable. For papyrological abbreviations such as P.Berol., P.Cair.Zen, P.Herc see http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html. AB Agora AHB AJA AJP AncW APF BCH CAH 2 CEG CID CQ FD FGrH FHG G-P GHI GRBS HSCP I. Amyzon I. Erythrai I. Milet I. Mylasa C. Austin and G. Bastianini (eds), Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia. Milan, 2002. The Athenian Agora, New Jersey, 1953 Ancient History Bulletin. American Journal of Archaeology. American Journal of Philology. The Ancient World. Archiv fr Papyrusforschung. Bulletin de Correspondance Hellnique. Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd edn, Cambridge, 1961 P. A. Hansen (ed.), Carmina Epigraphica Graeca, 2 vols, Berlin and New York, 1983 and 1989. Lefvre, F., Corpus des Inscriptions de Delphes 4: Documents amphictioniques, Paris, 2002. Classical Quarterly. Fouilles de Delphes, Paris, 1902Jacoby, F., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 1923 Mller, C., Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, Paris, 184170. Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L., The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1965. Rhodes, P. J. and Osborne, R., Greek Historical Inscriptions 404323 BC, Oxford, 2003. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Robert, J. and L., Fouilles dAmyzon en Carie I: Exploration, histoire, monnaies et inscriptions, Paris, 1983. Engelmann, H. and Merkelbach, R., Die Inschriften von Erythrai und Klazomenai,197273. Milet, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabung seit dem Jahren 1899, Berlin 1906 Blmel, W., Die Inschriften von Mylasa, 198788.
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Abbreviations
I.Rhamnous I.Stratonikeia IG IK ISE JdI JEA JHS LGPN LSJ Michel, RIG OCD 3 OGIS PCPS Pros. Ptol. VI Petrakos, B., , 2 vols., 1812, Athens, 1999. Sahin, M. ., Die Inschriften von Stratonikeia, 198190. Inscriptiones Graecae, 1873Inschriften griechischer Stdte aus Kleinasien, Bonn, 1972 Moretti, L., Iscrizioni storiche ellenistiche, Florence, 196776. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archologischen Instituts. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Journal of Hellenic Studies. Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, Oxford, 1987 Liddell, H. G., Scott, R. and Jones, H. S., A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford, 9th edn, 1940. Michel, C., Recueil dinscriptions grecques, Brussels, 18971900. Hornblower, S. and Spawforth, A. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn, Oxford, 1996. Dittenberger, W., Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae, Leipzig, 19035. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society. Peremans, W. et al., 1968 Prosopographia Ptolemaica VI: La cour, les relations internationales et les possessions extrieures, la vie culturelle, Leuven, 1968. Welles, C. B., Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period, New Haven, 1934. A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, Realencyclopdie des classischen Altertumswissenschaft, 1893 Revue des tudes anciennes. Revue des tudes grecques. Schmitt, H. H., Die Staatsvertrge des Altertums 3: Die Vertrge der griechisch-rmischen Welt von 338 bis 200 v. Chr., Munich, 1969. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, 1923 Lloyd-Jones, H. and Parsons, P., Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin and New York, 1983. Lloyd-Jones, H., Supplementum Supplementi Hellenistici. Berlin and New York, 2005. Dittenberger, W. Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. 3rd edn, Leipzig, 1915-24. Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. Snell, B., Kannicht, R. and Radt, S., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Gttingen, 197185. Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
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INTRODUCTION
Macedonian kings dominating the eastern Mediterranean, their prayers recorded in Akkadian in Babylonia, their portraits sculpted in the manner of pharaohs in Egypt, Greek communities along the Nile, a flourishing Greek city at its head, Greek philosophy in furthest Bactria, a Macedonian garrison in the Piraeus and no Persian empire.1 All this would have struck an Athenian in the mid fourth century as a bizarre fantasy but in the mid third century it was reality. It is this world we study when we study the Hellenistic age. Alexander the Greats overthrow of the Persian empire was fundamental in enabling this transformation to take place but it was not, one suspects, sufficient. Counterfactual history may be frowned upon but it can sometimes be useful.2 What would have happened if, instead of dying in 323 BC, Alexander had lived long enough to ensure an heir and a stable succession? Assuming that he had managed to rule this conquered territory successfully, then it is likely that what would have emerged would have been rather similar to the Persian empire that had preceded it but with the addition of the Balkans. We might imagine some form of GrecoMacedonian (and -Persian?) court at its centre, and perhaps a Persian style satrapal system operating in its territories, but nonetheless wonder how widely diffused Greco-Macedonian culture would have been through this united Macedonian empire. In other words, if Alexander had lived, there might have been no Hellenistic world, at least not as we know it, and this book and books like it would never have been written. But Alexander died and his empire fragmented as leading figures of the Macedonian military struggled for control. It is out of that fragmentation that the Hellenistic world was born. Kings and kingdoms emerged, the Antigonids in Macedon, the Seleucids in Asia, the Ptolemies in Egypt and failed dynasties such as that of Lysimachos in Thrace and Asia Minor. But it is not the mere fact of these kingdoms that is significant but what those kingdoms brought with them. By their very multiplicity they needed a shared culture and that culture was derived from the Greco-Macedonian homeland, reinforced and sustained among other things by intermarriage and the needs of diplomacy.3 At the centre of each was a king whose primary means of expressing power was in Greek idioms; this had an impact within the kingdom itself but also beyond it in the smaller non-Greek kingdoms and states that adopted
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similar modes of expression to their more powerful neighbours.4 So at the international level it was Greco-Macedonian culture that was dominant but within the kingdoms outside the Greek mainland there was much cultural variety and the rulers took care to address the native population as well as the Greeks and Macedonians. Nonetheless, when combined with the Greek character of the centre of power, the presence of newly-founded Greek cities and the introduction of Greek settlers such as those in the Fayyum in Egypt meant that things Greek still had priority. So, although it is tempting to see Alexander as the founder or creator of the Hellenistic world, it may be more appropriate to see him as the catalyst; his actions set this transformation of the eastern Mediterranean in motion. An alternative candidate for the title of its creator might be someone more recent, the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen, who was responsible for coining the term Hellenistic. Without him it could be argued there would be no Hellenistic world. For Droysen what distinguished the Hellenistic age was the fusion of Greek and oriental culture, although as Robin Lane Fox points out in the opening chapter of this volume there are serious problems with this as a defining characteristic, not least because there is evidence for fusion of this sort long before the Hellenistic period. Fusion also suggests some form of equality of status whereas in practice the conquered had to find ways of reaching an accommodation with the conquerors. That the Hellenistic world was the product of conquest and colonisation is not something neglected by modern scholarship but at the same time it is not to the fore as much as it might be. Perhaps this is in part because these territories were not ruled from afar, for instance from Macedon or Persepolis, but instead by kings who were present, exiles from their ethnic homeland, as Graham Shipley puts it.5 But, although conquest and occupation were fundamental, the Hellenistic world was not like the Persian or the Roman empire because it was not a unity under the rule of one man or one state. It is the fragmented character of power in parallel with a coherence that comes from the acknowledgement of a common Greco-Macedonian culture that helps to make the Hellenistic world distinctive. The aim of the present volume is to explore this emerging Hellenistic world, its newness but also its oldness, whether real or imagined. It is important to bear in mind its scale and variety and be wary of easy generalisations. The two chapters on Persis and Egypt, by Josef Wiesehfer and Alan Lloyd respectively, offer case studies in Macedonian rule and give a sense not only of this variety but also of the nature of the transformation, all the more evident because both highlight the native reaction. The
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soldiers of Alexander whose final years are recounted by Joseph Roisman. These soldiers are presented as icons of a glorious Macedonian past but they are the past and according to one tradition at least they were deliberately done away with after swopping sides from Eumenes to Antigonos. The new world had room for their myth but not for the men themselves. This volume originates in an informative, instructive, and enjoyable international conference held at the University of Edinburgh early in 2006 on the theme of Creating a Hellenistic World, kindly sponsored by grants from the British Academy and the University of Edinburgh Development Trust. The conference coincided with the launch of a new postgraduate study programme in the Universitys School of History, Classics and Archaeology entitled Hellenistic Court and Society. Since its inception, we are pleased to see that the Hellenistic postgraduate programme has proved to be a major player in the recruitment and training of postgraduates at masters and doctorate levels, and the future of the study of the Hellenistic world at Edinburgh looks bright. Forthcoming plans include a close association with colleagues at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and their Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies (WIHS), and 2010 will see the launch of Edinburghs sister-site, The Centre for the Study of the Hellenistic World (CSHW), with more conferences and workshops planned thereafter. The editors are grateful to all the participants of the 2006 conference, most of whom (and more) are represented in this volume. We wish to thank our conference co-organiser Dr Stephanie Winder for her input in making the event such a success and we wish to acknowledge too the support and encouragement of all our colleagues in Classics at Edinburgh. The study of the history and culture of the Hellenistic world continues to grow apace, and scholars and students alike are recognizing the wealth of information to be mined from the diverse, disparate, sometimes frustrating, but always rewarding source materials of the period. This book, it is hoped, goes some way towards delineating the perimeters of that age by attempting to define why and how the Hellenistic world came into being. Andrew Erskine and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones Edinburgh, December 2009
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Bibliography Chamoux, F. 2003 Hellenistic Civilization, Oxford (first published in French, 1981). Cohen, G. 1995 The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands, and Asia Minor, Berkeley. 2006 The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin, and North Africa, Berkeley. Davies, J. 1984 Cultural, social and economic features of the Hellenistic world, CAH 2 7.1, 257320. Erskine, A. (ed.) 2003 A Companion to the Hellenistic World, Oxford. Ferguson, N. 1997 Virtual History: Alternatives and counterfactuals, London. Fraser, P. M 1972 Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford. Habicht, C. 1997 Athens from Alexander to Actium, Boston. Kuhrt, A. and Sherwin-White, S. 1991 Aspects of Seleucid royal ideology: the cylinder of Antiochus I from Borsippa, JHS 111, 7186. Ma, J. 2003 Kings, in Erskine 2003, 17795. Robert, L. 1968 De Delphes lOxus: inscriptions grecques nouvelles de la Bactriane, Comptes rendus de lAcadmie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 41657 (reprinted in L. Robert, Opera Minora Selecta 5, Amsterdam, 1989, 51051). Rowlandson, J. 2003 Town and country in Ptolemaic Egypt, in Erskine 2003, 24963. Shipley, G. 2000 The Greek World after Alexander 32330 BC, London. Stanwick, P. 2002 Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek kings as Egyptian Pharaohs, Austin.
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Strootman, R. 2007 The Hellenistic Royal Court. Court culture, ceremonial and ideology in Greece, Egypt and the Near East, 33630 BCE, Dissertation, University of Utrecht. (http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2007-0725201108/UUindex.html) Yailenko, V.-P. 1990 Les maximes delphiques dAi Khanoum et la formation de la doctrine du dhamma dAsoka, Dialogues dHistoire Ancienne 16, 23956.
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PART I
NEW WORLDS
II If the fusion of Greek and non-Greek does not characterize the Hellenistic age, what does? Warfare, we might think, but it varied over time: during the Roman dominance, cities in Greece have even been credited with ceasing to build or maintain walled defences after the 140s BC.15 Much depends, as usual, on the social level which we study. One level is the land and those who worked it, to whom the Hellenistic age certainly brought changes of status, economic connections and new crops and technology.16 Another is the world of Greek poleis whose numbers certainly mushroom in western Asia in Alexanders immediate wake. In this world of many more poleis we can study their network of peer contacts.17 But this network existed under yet another level, one which was universal, as never before in Greek history: Greek-speaking kings and their courts, including queens, concubines and daughters. I incline to Daniel Ogdens simple point: kings and courts are the really distinctive element in the Hellenistic age.18 There is, however, a problem: kings were not a constant element in its first eighteen years. From June 323 until autumn 317 one king was a halfwit, Philips son Philip III. From early autumn 323 until 310 the other king was a child, Alexanders son by Roxane, Alexander IV. In 319 the kings were escorted out of Asia where they were never seen again. Then from 310 until 306 there was no king at all: the competing Successors hesitated. In summer 306 Antigonos finally took the title, whereupon the other competitors (including Ptolemy) quickly followed suit.19 Taking the title meant wearing a diadem like Alexander. But why had they waited? After Alexander IVs death, one route to legitimacy, an attractive one, was to marry Alexanders sister Kleopatra. In consequence she was killed, in 308/7.20 Without her, a king needed to be sure of a capable son, the heir for a new dynasty. Ptolemy and Seleukos did not yet have one, but
Chapter XX
elephants still fought, but now on both sides of a battle; one Indian mahout, however, showed Greeks how spikes could be used against their soft feet (Ptolemy then copied him).49 Bosworth has written bleakly of the waste of forests in Alexanders grand expedition: here too the early Successors followed suit, felling big trees in the Lebanon and even some huge cedars (up to 130 feet high) which still grew on Cyprus.50 In their battles, the basic line-up and tactics were still Alexanders too. Tarn, however, suggested that the battle of Antigonos and Eumenes at Paraitakene in late 317 BC was something new, the first example of a battle directed throughout by a general.51 Tarns role for Antigonos here is not supported by Diodorus-Hieronymos, the only account of it, while at Gabiene a few months later we see the two generals, supercharged on Alexander as Lendon well puts it, still charging into combat among the first of their men.52 Under Alexander Ptolemy had killed a chieftain in single combat: even Eumenes had wrestled and duelled with Neoptolemos: prowess was in Alexanders generals blood as Pyrrhos and his sons exemplified, true followers of Alexanders style.53 Quite apart from the problem of dust-clouds there was no question of a general departing from Alexanders example and operating as a controller at a distance. Early Hellenistic generalship was not yet the generalship which Polybius admired many years later.54 Soldiers for these Hellenistic battles came increasingly from land-grants, the kle-roi in Ptolemaic Egypt and the katoikiai or military colonies, especially those in Seleucid Asia.55 Alexander had also, of course, founded poleis, not six (as Fraser claims) but at least 16. His example was followed by his Successors, especially outside Egypt. Curtius 7.10.15 (not discussed by Fraser) refers to his 6 newly-founded oppida on high hills in Margania and although the point has been disputed, I agree with Bosworth that the text should not be emended to Margiana, the Merv oasis. There may have been an Alexandria there too, but the oasis has no such hills.56 After Grenet and Rapin revisited some of the relevant territory on the Oxuss further bank, they suggested that Curtiuss topography is met precisely at one site: Termez.57 Sir William Tarn would be gratified if his site for an Alexandria had finally proved plausible, though not for the complex reasons which he constructed for it. However, Termezs excavator has vigorously rejected the suggestion: we need to look elsewhere, in my view further to the east along the Oxuss Sogdian bank.58 Meanwhile, Curtiuss precise topographic details cannot simply be rejected: he even adds that the six oppida there nowadays forget their origins and serve those whom they once commanded. He, or his source, did not believe that they quickly disappeared. Besides founding new cities, Hellenistic kings had to control existing
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Chapter XX
founded.101 The existing genre of fictitious letters was greatly increased by a flood of letters composed in his name. Elements of a long-lived fictitious Romance about him also began early. Above all there was a reshaping of the conquering heroes in Greek ethnographic prose-works, whether Egypts Sesostris and Osiris, eastern Dionysos or Herakles. Their legendary deeds were enhanced by prose-authors to keep up with Alexanders own, a process which began early with Megasthenes and with Hekataios of Abdera in Ptolemy Is Egypt.102 As for Hellenistic art, we still need to know more about it, but some of its obvious features had already been much publicized by Alexanders own taste.103 For Praux the Hellenistic age expresses itself in the baroque: the difficulty is to define what exactly is baroque and when it begins.104 Alexanders amazing funeral-cart combines Greek and non-Greek forms, but it is not quite baroque, at least in its best modern reconstruction: in sculpture, we must also do credit to Skopas, active before Alexander and already inventor of the nude of ecstasy, in Andrew Stewarts appraisal of him.105 The gigantism of Hellenistic art is nearer to being baroque and here Alexander certainly set the standards with his vast funerary monument for Hephaistion, even if he also refused a proposal to turn the cliff-face of mount Athos into a huge memorial to himself.106 Individualism was evident not only in his own portraits and coin-types but also in the widespread patronage of portraits by his officers, including such localized players as Peukestas.107 Hunting art was commissioned by Alexander while in the near East in 332/1, as was big battle-painting, still visible in our Alexander-mosaic.108 Emotional art appealed to him too, as we can see from his choice of a painting of a dying captive lady, with a baby crawling to her breast, fearing to find blood, not milk: he took this lost masterpiece from the spoils at Thebes, and significantly it was a picture which appealed to later Hellenistic taste.109 The often-cited theatricality of Hellenistic style was also already evident in Alexanders Tent City for the Susa weddings.110 As for a pronounced Hellenistic sweetness and a decorative use of myth, Aetions remarkable painting of the Wedding to Roxane in 327 had both in abundance: it was even displayed, we are told, at Olympia.111 The grotesque and the realistic were not in evidence around Alexander, but there were more general changes, ultimately more important for Hellenistic artists. Alexander vastly enriched all the courtiers and followers who survived him: he thus marks the start of a Hellenistic age in which rich art and preciously-worked objects were to be so much more widely patronized than ever before.112 We meet them, even, in Alexandrian poetry, especially in the epigrams on cleverly-worked gemstones in the recentlypublished poems by Posidippus.113 Even more widely-seen were coin-types
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Notes Droysen 1836, preface; Bichler 1983. 2 Praux I 1978, 59; II 1978, 542ff., 562, 5989; Praux 1965, 12939, a very important paper. 3 Stephens 2003; Koenen 1973, 25115; Sherwin-White 1983, 20921; Thompson 2001, 30122; Boiy 2005, 10510. 4 Millar 1983, 5571, esp. 68; P.-L. Gatier, 97115. 5 Droysen I 1883, 6967; Bravo 1968. 6 Momigliano, 1970, 13953; 1977, 30723. 7 Droysen 1925, 446, with 43247. 8 Droysen I 1883, 6968. 9 Reinach 1890, 249; Mayor 2009, 657 is excellent on Alexander as a source for Mithridates image. 10 Robert 1976, 2526. 11 Robert 1983, 117 sees Asandros, satrap of Karia under Philip III, as excuteur de la volont du dfunt Alexandre pour une symbiose irano-grecque. I doubt it. He was intervening in a local dispute (could an Iranian be Artemiss neokoros?)
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Bibliography Austin, M. M. 1986 Hellenistic kings, war and the economy, CQ 36, 45066. Bernard, P. 1982 Alexandre et Ai Khanoum, Journal des Savants, 12538. 1997 Les origines thessaliennes de lArmnie vues par deux historiens thessaliens de la gnration dAlexandre, in P. Briant (ed.) Topoi: Supplment I, 131216. Berve, H. 1926 Das Alexanderreich auf prosopographischer Grundlage, Munich.
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Stephen Colvin
world gradually taken over and reunited by the Roman state. The starting point is arbitrarily, and not unreasonably, set at the end of the fourth century BC when the Macedonian state overran the Greek world, first under Philip II (died 336 BC) and then under Alexander. There are reasons to believe that its linguistic forebear(s) had been crystallizing over the previous two centuries,1 but since the koine is a political and ideological term as much as a linguistic one, extending the term back in time would be confusing and misleading. As the liturgical language of the Greek church was more or less koine, and had a lasting and profound effect on the history of the Greek language, it is far more difficult to assign a convenient end-date; in practice texts later than Justinian (died AD 565) are rarely quoted to illustrate koine (as opposed to Byzantine) Greek. We shall return to this question at the end. The term koine has passed into modern linguistics to mean a language variety used over a wide area by speakers who engage in levelling (the levelling out of regional peculiarities) for the sake of communicational efficiency: a compromise across dialects, implying some degree of institutional standardization. The word has been used to denote a variety of different situations, but key overlapping features2 generally include the following: i) a koine arises from related dialects (or closely related linguistic varieties) rather than from languages which are wholly distinct from each other ii) levelling: it arises from several dialects, by a process in which local peculiarities are ironed out iii) it may be the result of the transportation of related varieties to new proximity in a new geographical location, or it may be due to a new social or political circumstance in an existing area iv) it may become a literary or national standard; it may become nativized3 An implication of the above is that there are likely to be identifiable stages in the evolution of a koine, each marked by salient characteristics which do not necessarily pertain to the whole lifecycle of the phenomenon. In general the notion of koine implies a lingua franca, though the two are not exactly equivalent and should not be confused (a lingua franca does not imply a koine). If we consider the features listed above in the context of the Greek koine it may lead to some useful distinctions between that situation and modern usage of the term. 2.1 Firstly, the Greek koine was common in the sense that it became a national standard, where previously dialectal diversity had existed. It was not common in the sense that the word seems often to have in a modern
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Some say that if in fact the Common Dialect is composed of four elements [sc. Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic] it should not be called common, but mixed for we do not call a salve that is made of four drugs common, but mixed. And this is a good argument against those who claim that the Common Dialect arose from a combination of the four dialects; and they have another good argument when they say that the Common Dialect is the mother [sc. of the other dialects]. For if somebody uses the expression in the Doric dialect, we say that this is equivalent to in common Doric, and the same for in Aeolic, or in Ionic, or in Attic.4
The koine was, rather, an expanded and Ionicized form of Attic, which (at least in its literary form) showed a small admixture of lexical items that appear poetic from the perspective of classical Attic. This may be because they were Ionic in origin, or simply because of the artificial nature of the literary koine: later writers drew on the lexical resources of the classical past, and this sometimes included the poets (especially epic).5 It is the case, however, that the Greek koine developed in a context of closely related dialects. To the extent that there was levelling, this ironed out some of the specifically Attic peculiarities of inflection, which led to a simplified morphological system.6 An example of this is the replacement of the Attic declension in which the change > followed by quantitative metathesis led to forms such as , from etc. The koine reintroduced from the non-Attic-Ionic dialects (and it was familiar from Homer). The treatment of this in the later grammatical tradition lumps it together with a separate phenomenon, the wavering over the adoption of the Attic inflection of i-stem nouns in place of the non-ablauting pattern common to the other dialects (including Ionic):
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. , , , .
(b) Hdn. (On the Declension of Nouns) Gr. Gr. III, 2. 7045:
It is worth enquiring why bous [nom.] ~ boos [gen.] is not affected by the Attic lengthening of o to o . One can state that those cases which lengthen o - also change this penultimate vowel to e, as in ophis ~ following a vowel to o ophios/opheos, polis ~ polios/poleos, na-os/neo-s, la-os/leo-s.
In the spoken language there can hardly have been any phonological difference between and at this time. The distinction is orthographic, and this is typical of the culture of the koine:
(c) (i) Hdn. (On Orthography) Gr. Gr. iii.2, 432:
. .
...for in the common idiom it is ophis ~ ophios. Speakers of Attic changed the i to e and the o to o- and there developed opheos and poleos.
, ... .
ophis ~ opheos ...the inflection with long o is the Attic one; such words are also inflected in the Ionic manner with a short o. However, it is our normal practice in writing to use the Attic inflection.
On the whole i-stem nouns (like all third-declension masc. and fem. nouns) ended up in a merger with the a-stem declension in post-classical Greek, but traces of an Atticizing inflection remain ( city can have a gen. sing. or in the modern language: the latter being less frequently used, but felt to be more correct by speakers).7 In other cases the compromise between Attic and Ionic led to forms which looked like dialect forms (West Greek, Aeolic): thus Attic and Ionic to do resulted in a hybrid , which was identical to the West Greek form. There were, indeed, some borrowings from West Greek in the koine: either for morphological reasons of the type noted above, whereby the word people replaced an awkard Attic form (Ion. ); or the unpredictable borrowings that all languages engage in. So, for example, hill, mountain entered mainstream Greek from the West Greek dialects (it was already known to Herodotos). The ancient tradition that the koine was a mixture of the old classical dialects may have reflected ideas of identity in the new Hellenistic world.
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Even now people speak in different ways in the various cities, though they all appear to speak in Doric (according to the prevailing opinion).
The synchronic picture will have been one of the koine emerging out of various dialect soups towards a common panhellenic standard.9 Since the Greek grammarians (and this seems often to be part of the culture of diglossia) confused historical and synchronic relationships when they thought about the five different types of Greek they recognized (Attic, Ionic, Doric, Aeolic and koine), it is easy to see how it was legitimate, and indeed appropriate, to conceive of the new panhellenic language as one which contained ingredients from the whole of its classical heritage. There is some evidence that early Attic attempts to appropriate the koine (in the sense of panhellenic standard) caused irritation in this context. The geographer Herakleides of Crete records a passage from Poseidippos (de urbibus Graeciae 3.7 = PCG 30) in which a character complains that the Athenians criticize the way that other Greeks speak:
(e) , , , , . , . ;
...the comic poet Poseidippos shows us that Greece comprises all the places we have enumerated, criticizing the Athenians because they say that their own dialect is Greek and their own city is Greece: There is only one
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Greece, but many cities. You speak Attic whenever you open your mouth, and the rest of us Greeks speak Greek. Why make such a fuss over syllables and sounds, turning your wit into unpleasantness? The ability of ancient grammarians to talk of the dialects as developments of the koine (implied in passages (a) and (c) above, for example) and at the same time to talk as though they were historically earlier is surprising to modern linguistic sensibilities:10 but this flexible approach to historical anteriority and genetic priority has parallels. Dante, in De vulgari eloquentia (ca. 13035) undertakes investigation of where and how the Italian illustrious vernacular (vulgare illustre) was to be identified. Dante sometimes talks of the vulgare illustre as something which could be created out of the vernacular Italian dialects (by a similar process of levelling and purification that creates a koine):
(f ) Itaque, adepti quod querebamus, dicimus illustre, cardinale, aulicum et curiale vulgare in Latio, quod omnis latie civitatis est et nullius esse videtur, et quo municipalia vulgaria omnia Latinorum mensurantur et ponderantur et comparantur. So we have found what we were seeking: we can define the illustrious, cardinal, aulic, and curial vernacular in Italy as that which belongs to every Italian city yet seems to belong to none, and against which the vernacular of all the cities of the Italians can be measured, weighed, and compared. (DVE 1.16, tr. Botterill)
At other times he talks of the illustre as prior to the dialects, a standard from which they have declined (proto-Italian in the words of Mazzocco 1993: 138); in 1.1011 he is explicit that the language of si had split from a single language (unum ydioma) to many vernaculars (multa vulgaria). It is a paterfamilias among the dialects (just as in (a) above the koine is the mother). Research into language attitudes among speakers of modern Arabic gives some insights into the origins of this uncertainty. Speakers of Arabic are speakers of a modern Arabic vernacular, a range of which spread across the Arab world, and which are not, unless contiguous, mutually intelligible at the lowest level. Insofar as educated speakers also know Modern Standard Arabic (more or less a variety of the classical language) they believe this to be their mother tongue. The vernacular has a low psychological awareness: speakers may deny that they speak it, and may think of it (if at all) as a casual or debased variety of the standard, rather than as a historical descendant of that standard (the modern linguistic view). It is likely that a similar linguistic culture prevailed in the world of the koine.11 2.2 In the modern world some of the koines that have been identified are the result of the transportation of related languages to a new geographical location: this was especially common in the context of slavery and indentured labour in the new world. Others have grown out of a new social
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By virtue of their naval power the Athenians have mingled with various peoples and discovered all sorts of delicacies...further, hearing every kind of language, they have taken something from each; Greeks on the whole prefer to use their own language, way of life, and type of dress, but the Athenians use a mixture from all the Greeks and barbarians.
Attic poetry and prose had always been heavily influenced by Ionic, and there is evidence that in the second half of the fifth century the educated lite started to adopt some Ionic idioms in speech. The new international Attic was apparently adopted as the official language of the Macedonian court in the fourth century BC, as the expansionist Macedonian kingdom sought to position itself for a leading role in Greek affairs. Since it had become the language of education and literary prose, it was a natural choice as a pan-Hellenic medium of administration and lingua franca when most of Greece fell under Macedonian control in the last decades of the century. However, that is only half the story of the koine. As the Macedonians expanded into former Persian territories in Anatolia, Egypt, the Levant and the Near East the koine was exported as the medium of communication at all levels. These new Macedonian subjects were not (with the exception of coastal Anatolia) previously Greek speakers, and the dynamics of the koine must have been very different in these regions. There was greater potential for simplification and regularization of Greek
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morphology, since the language was spreading rapidly as a contact language. There was no question here of a continuum between koine Greek and the speakers own dialect: indeed, the concept of nativization of the koine (say, on the part of speakers whose parents were mixed Macedonian/Greek and local) is more straightforward in the new territories, where local Greek substrate was not a complicating factor. We predict, therefore, a relatively high degree of nativization in the new Greek world; while at the same time throughout the Hellenistic world the literary koine became a national written standard. 3. It is important to arrive at a definition of what we mean by the Hellenistic koine in the present discussion: partly so that if others disagree with our suggestions, they will at least be able to see clearly where they disagree. For the Hellenistic world what I think we need to decide first of all is this: What kind of space do we want to locate the language in? Was it a written language? A spoken one? Or an abstract entity? All of these have been suggested by important scholars who have worked in the field.12 The answers to these questions will affect our decisions concerning the chronological extension of the koine: whether, for example, it is sensible to suppose that the language of the third century BC has much significantly in common with that of the fifth century AD. When we have reached some conclusions about the definition of the koine proper, then we can ask to what extent was koine a new thing? That is to say, was there koine (or indeed koinai ) in the Greek world before 320 BC? The term koine, as we have seen, has a range of meanings: to anticipate my answer I think that there were important koinai before Alexander which were diachronically essential for the constitution of the Hellenistic koine: but that the Hellenistic koine was new, and of a different order from anything which had preceded it. 3.1 The term koine has often been used to denote the whole of postclassical Greek. This would include at least three varieties of the language: i) the colloquial varieties spoken across the Greek world, ii) the formal written Greek of prose authors, and iii) the informal language of documentary papyri, etc. (In fact the first category, spoken Greek, is likely to include many disparate regional and social varieties, to which we shall return.) Linguists are generally interested in the history of Greek, and a common way of approaching koine Greek is to examine both literary and nonliterary documents, but especially the latter, for clues regarding the development of the spoken language. But this approach does not specify
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Western thought about language: linguists have used the term ever since while arguing about what it means and criticizing Fergusons first attempt to apply it (to Arabic). It describes a linguistic culture which has a distinct High form of the language, deriving ultimately from a canonical corpus: in the case of Arabic, the consciousness of speakers that they are Arabic speakers is the result of the canonization of the language of the Qurn as Arabic tout simple, and (as in Greece) the subservience of grammatical activity to textual exegesis. The Low form of the language is the everyday vernacular. Ferguson was criticised for failing to recognise a continuum of speech styles between these two poles: nevertheless, diglossia is a useful shorthand for referring to a specific type of linguistic culture. The development of a sense in the Greek world that there existed a body of canonical texts by the end of the fourth century was a vital factor in the subsequent history of Greek. It would be a mistake to suppose that the koine spread solely because it was the Macedonian language of administration, or because a new variety of Attic, which we may call expanded or international Attic, had developed over the course of the fifth and fourth centuries (this is the language that the Old Oligarch complains of, perhaps around the year 425): without the underpinning of koine it would have been just one more lingua franca that perished when the conditions which gave rise to it changed. The panhellenic text par excellence was of course Homer, and the Ionic flavour of the vulgate may indeed have contributed to the international clout of Ionic (though it can hardly, as some have suggested, be the main reason for the spread of the Hellenistic koine). The use of the term koinai to describe poetic traditions such as epic is well established. But the new canon, the one instrumental in setting the stage for the Attic-based koine, was the body of literature which emerged after the Persian wars in the context of Athenian political and cultural pre-eminence; and in particular, the status of Ionicized Attic as the language of formal prose (documentary or literary) and education. This was the situation which, hand in hand with the Macedonian adoption of the new Attic as a lingua franca, resulted in the peculiar linguistic and cultural circumstance that we call the koine. The two factors are intertwined: neither could have done it without the other. This is all by way of preface to returning to the Arabic model. I think that we have little prospect of retrieving the spoken vernaculars of the Hellenistic world, the language corresponding to Fergusons Low variety, since speakers of the Low variety do not read or write. I see no reason to believe that the old dialects disappeared in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, nor indeed the local languages such as Lycian. They certainly stopped being written; and, as in the case of modern Arabic vernaculars, may very soon have become
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suggest, especially since phonological change must have rendered ambiguous some important morphological categories (such as the dative and even the accusative). For example, Brixhe (1987: 21) has pointed out that in the vernacular of Termessos (Pisidia) in the third century AD epigraphic data indicate that both and were [imis]. These sound changes are likely to have occurred a good deal earlier in most spoken varieties of Greek;14 presumably the vernacular had reorganized the personal pronouns so that functional distinctions were maintained (compare modern Greek ). There remains the intriguing possibility that at the highest end of formal communication in the koine period (Oral Literary Greek) some elements of a classicizing pronunciation were adopted when this was necessary to maintain functional differences (compare also the indicative and optative verbal endings versus ). One could imagine this in declamation, for example. Morpurgo Davies (1987) showed that the Greeks in the dialectal diversity of the Classical period had the idea that they were speaking Greek. They did not contrast Greek with the dialects that they spoke, since the dialects collectively constituted Greek. In the koine period to speak Greek () meant to have the requisite Greek education to be able to participate in the new Greek world: to be able to read and write the formal language without barbarismos or soloikismos. The formal language was now contrasted with the (classical) dialects: this is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, there is a new distinction between Greek (the standard language) and the dialects; and secondly, the grammarians do not contrast the standard language with the vernaculars. The vernacular is not recognised: it does not exist qua language, is not a proper object of study. The same is true of the Arab world, and the mediaeval Latin world. The relationship between the standard and the vernacular, which in linguistic terms would be viewed as diachronic (the one is a later stage of the other), is conceived in synchronic terms: all speakers view the standard as their mother tongue, and to the extent that they think about the vernacular, it is viewed as a corrupted, informal version of the former. In the Greek situation the classical dialects are acceptable: not normative, but the proper object of attention and with a limited function (for example, in certain forms of literature). Here it may be useful to consider the vexed question of the change from Latin to Romance, where the link between linguistic consciousness and written standard seems to have played a central role.15 To name a linguistic variety is to make an ideological choice which is likely to have social or political implications: Latin turned into Italian when speakers stopped calling it Latin shortly after Dante established a new written standard.
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Notes 1 See, e.g., Lpez Eire 1993. 2 For which cf. Siegel 1985, 360. 3 i.e. it may become the first language for a group of speakers. 4 The argument seems to be that as Doric is the genus of which the individual Doric dialects are the species, so the koine bears the same relation to the four Greek dialects (and cannot therefore be composed of or derived from them). This mirrors the relation between panhellenic Greek identity and (for example) Athenian or Spartan citizenship. My translation mostly follows that of Consani 1993, 356. 5 So also Dante (de Vulgari Eloquentia 2. 1. 1) argues that writers of prose most often learn the koine (for him, the vulgare illustre) from poets. 6 Whether this is evidence that the koine had features in common with a creole is difficult to say; arguments on this subject have perhaps not distinguished clearly enough between the written and the vernacular language. Certainly the ancient grammatical obsession with analogy and anomaly as forces in language starts to look interesting in this regard.
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Horrocks 1997, 21920. More evidence for the persistence of Doric at Dio Chrysostom (2nd cent. AD), Or. 1. 60. 9 So Consani 1993, 345: ...les dialectes anciens ont exerc, avant de disparatre dfinitivement, une action complexe qui a produit des formes diversifies de koin parle. 10 See also Consani 1993, 357. 11 The parallel between the Greek koine and modern Arabic has been drawn by Ferguson 1959a, Versteegh 1986, Bubenik 1989, 1017 and others. 12 Ctait pour eux [sc. les anciens] le dialecte employ par des prosateurs de lpoque hellnistique ou impriale comme Polybe, Strabon ou Plutarque Meillet (1929, 253); La langue parle, dans des circonstances exigeant un style surveill, par laristocratie des cits grecques ou hellnises du dbut de notre re est donc la seule mriter vritablement le nom de koin, Brixhe 1987, 22; En dfinitive, la seule langue qui mrite rellement le nom de koin est le registre suprieur de la langue crite, Brixhe and Hodot 1993, 20, cf. also Brixhe 2010. 13 Suggested already by Versteegh 2002 and others. 14 Horrocks (1997, 1057) tentatively following the reconstruction of Teodorsson 1978. 15 See the essays of Lloyd, Janson and Wright in Wright 1991b. 16 Though in De vulgari eloquentia the term grammatica refers to any literary language (including classical Latin and Greek) whose rules have to be learned by instruction and application: non nisi per spatium temporis et studii assiduitatem regulamur et doctrinamur in illa, DVE 1.3.
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Editions Dante De vulgari eloquentia. Edited and translated by Steven Botterill, Cambridge 2005. Boissonade J.F. Boissonade, Herodiani Partitiones, London 1819. Gr. Gr. Grammatici Graeci. I,1: Dionysi Thracis Ars grammatica ed. G. Uhlig; I,3: Scholia in Dioysii Thracis Artem grammaticam rec. A. Hilgard; II,13: Apollonii Dyscoli quae supersunt rec. R. Schneider et G. Uhlig. III,12: Herodiani Technici reliquae coll. A. Lentz; IV,12: Theodosii Alexandrini Canones, Georgii Choerobosci Scholia, Sophronii Alexandrini Exerpta rec. A. Hilgard; Leipzig 18671910.
Bibliography Brixhe, C. 1987 Essai sur le grec anatolien au dbut de notre re, 2nd edn, Nancy. 1993 (ed.) La koin grecque antique: une langue introuvable? Nancy. 2010 Linguistic diversity in Asia Minor during the Empire: Koine and nonGreek language, in E. Bakker (ed.) A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Chichester. Brixhe, C. and Hodot, R. 1993 A chacun sa koin? in Brixhe 1993, 721
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and purpose, and of what we can actually learn from the work about the history of the Ptolemaic Library and of the Alexandrian Jewish community. Whether or not Ar is a real letter is essentially a non-question, but the ethical and quasi-private turn of this essay to Philokrates is something to be considered in the context of the making of the Hellenistic world and the particular quality of the writing and ideas it produced. Philokrates is chosen as the addressee for a number of explicit reasons, but prominent among these are his virtuous love of learning (12, cf. 322), his concern for his (soul) (5), and the impulse towards the (noble) (6) which he shares with Aristeas. History, and reading history, are now directed towards individual improvement. The prologue of Ar has often been connected with certain trends in Hellenistic historiography, and we may be reminded, in particular, of Polybius distinctions between types of potential reader and of the reasons why one might read history; one can read for pleasure or one can be, like Philokrates, (fond of learning).5 Like Thucydides History, the programmatic chapters of which Ar seems to echo,6 and indeed like Polybius Histories, Ar is written with (the useful) and (the beneficial) in mind, but it is now what is useful for the improvement of the individual mind and soul which is important. The encomium of paideia with which the prologue concludes tells us much about the world which produced Ar, and it is a world which is neither exclusively Greek nor exclusively Jewish: neither the charm of gold nor any other of the embellishments prized by the vainglorious confers as great benefit as education and attention devoted to culture.7 Whether or not anything remotely like the events of the Letter did indeed happen under Philadelphos (or indeed under any Ptolemy) is a matter of perhaps fiercer debate now than for a long time. It is easy enough to point to elements of the narrative which seem unhistorical thus, for example, there were very good reasons to include both Demetrios of Phaleron and Philadelphos, the two figures most closely connected with the legends of the Library, in the story of the translation, although most scholars accept that Demetrios scholarly activity in Alexandria did not outlive Ptolemy I Soter 8 but the historicity of the basic structure of the story remains a thornier problem. The linguistic and other arguments in favour of the historicity of some translation of Hebrew books into Greek in the first half of the third century are not to be lightly dismissed, and it cannot at any rate be doubted that translations existed by the middle of the second century. So too, the old view that, regardless of when the Hebrew scriptures were first translated into Greek, Ar misrepresents the procedure at least in presenting it as driven by the concerns of, and
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the citys foundation legends (cf., e.g., Alexander Romance 1.32). Dio Chrysostoms famously double-edged encomium of the Alexandrians makes them by implication the true mercantile heirs of Alexander who control the whole oikoumene- their trade reaches even to the Indian Sea and the most remote tribes (as did Alexanders conquests); the world is now a polis writ large: [Alexandria] is like the agora of a single city which gathers all men into the same space, shows them to each other, and as far as possible makes them members of the same race () (Dio 32.36).11 It is perhaps not too anachronistic to see something very like this rhetoric informing the emphasis in Ar on the intellectual, moral, and religious kinship of Greeks and Jews (even if Jewish culture always remains one step ahead). In Ar Demetrios is given the wherewithal to bring together (), if possible, all the books in the world (9); this is the intellectual heritage of Alexander, just as the citys trade represented his mercantile heritage. Demetrios is however represented, not unreasonably, as being particularly concerned with books (such as the Jewish holy books) which deserve a place in the Library; intellectual collection can never be divorced from selection and judgement.12 So too, the High Priest worries about the safe return of the Jewish scholars because he knew how the king in his love of excellence regarded it as a very great gain, wherever he heard of a man surpassing others in culture and intellect, to summon him to himself (124); the High Priest had heard that the King believed that by having about himself just and prudent men he would have the greatest protection for his kingdom, for friends frankly advise what is best (125). The gathering of (the best) books and the gathering of wise men are thus parts of the same project, in more ways than one. These elements of what we might call the Alexandrian myth, such as we have seen it in, say, Dio Chrysostom, are in fact familiar from the earliest days. Callimachus Aitia, which gestures both towards a potential claim to embody all the rituals and stories of the world and which demonstrates the inevitability of selection, is the key text here, both in its overall shape and in particular episodes. We may note, on the one hand, Pollis the Athenians transplantation of Athenian rituals to Alexandria (fr. 178 Pfeiffer = 89 Massimilla),13 a passage in which Alexandria, where the scene is all but certainly set, is again imagined as a place where everyone and every culture sooner or later washes up and is then preserved. On the other hand, we have the poets insistence (fr. 43 Pfeiffer = 50 Massimilla) that the Muses fill in a gap in his otherwise pretty comprehensive knowledge of the foundation stories of the cities of Sicily: the filling in of gaps is also what drives Demetrios activities in the Library (cf. Ar 29). Much has been written recently about
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change of any kind is to be permitted in the text (chapters 31011), so interpretation has (to some extent at least) been closed down, which is of course very far from what actually happened in the history of the reception and understanding of Jewish scripture. Later traditions invented, or at least elaborated, a predecessor for Ptolemy in this rle: Peisistratos and/or his sons are said to have arranged for the production of an authoritative text of Homer at Athens and for its regular performance at the Panathenaia, and the tyrant is said to have been the first to establish a public library at Athens. The reliability or otherwise of these accounts is not at issue here.17 If some at least of this is a retrojection from later ages and the very late story that Peisistratos established a group of 72 grammatikoi to produce his text of Homer is almost certainly influenced by the narrative of Ptolemy and the translation of the Pentateuch18 the parallelism may offer some comfort that we are not completely on the wrong track in these interpretations of representations of Ptolemaic cultural policy. Peisistratos is thus imagined to have tried to own (the genuine) Homer, who notoriously belonged to no individual city, and to have placed his prize possession at the heart of the principal display of Athenian identity and power, the Panathenaia; so, in the Alexandrian myth, Ptolemy tried to own all of Greek culture, though inevitably Homer, and the quest for the authentic text of the epics, took pride of place. At one level, Alexandria was consciously fashioned as the new Athens,19 as in its turn Rome was to be fashioned as the new Alexandria. How the Athenian paradigm of autochthony was transmuted in a city where still potent historical memory denied the possibility of autochthony cannot be pursued here, but the idea of Alexandria as the new Athens already informs Callimachus description of Pollis displaced rituals (above p. 000), as it seems clearly implied in Ar by the rle of Demetrios of Phaleron and the use, not just of Aristotelian traditions, but apparently also of specific Aristotelian texts.20 The importance of Athenian institutions as models for the Museum and Library is well recognised, but how selfconsciously that paradigm was elaborated is less clear. Thucydides makes Pericles declare to the Athenians that because of the size of [our] city everything arrives here from the whole world, and we have no freer enjoyment of our own splendid products than of those of other men (2.38.2). The parallel with the encomia of Alexandria which we considered earlier may just be a rhetoric shared by all imperial cities, but it may also be something more. It is the funeral speech of the Thucydidean Pericles which we also remember when reading the claim of Andron of Alexandria (first century BC?), as reported by Athenaeus, that the Alexandrians were
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courtly phrase of Demetrios (cf. above p. 000), they have not received royal attention (Ar 30). Here we might be tempted to think that Ar has more than one audience in mind; Greek or Jewish paradigms can be emphasised in accordance with the needs of different audiences.25 The peculiar mixture of stemmatics and collective discussion, which is represented by shutting the Jewish scholars up on an island to get on with their business, looks to more than one set of exegetical practices.26 Similar conclusions may be drawn from the long episode of the sympotic instruction of Ptolemy by the Jewish sages.27 The political questions posed by the king put flesh on the idea of Ptolemy as gods representative and reflection here on earth, an idea which was (inter alia) very powerful in Ptolemaic ideology 28 and in Hellenistic kingship theory more generally; as God benefits ( ) all men, so you, in imitation of Him, benefit those under you (281, cf. 190) is as clear a statement as one could wish. Some of what the sages advise the king hardly differs from, say, what Pindar advises Hieron or the terms in which Theocritus praises Ptolemy,29 and no reader, Greek or Jewish, is going to find material for surprise here. Some bits of the sages advice even sound like Greek gnomic wisdom: , do not aim for [too] much (211), , do not desire the unreachable (223). Philadelphos is, moreover, certainly depicted as sympotikos, if not in quite the same way as in other texts (cf. Theocritus 14.604); he is even depicted as a Plutarch before his time concerned with the appropriate conduct of symposia (286). Be that as it may, the whole episode reveals a union of philosophical, religious and political power which works to confirm both Philadelphos and the sages in their respective, and mutually inter-connected, spheres. Other ways of writing such a scene were certainly available. We may contrast Philostratus later account, written at a time when history provided more than one model of a bad king, of a dinner of the Indian sages which was attended both by Apollonius of Tyana and by the local Indian king, who used to consult the sages on all matters.30 Philostratus depicts the king as someone who does not know how to behave at symposia (he drinks too much, Life of Apollonius 3.30.1) and as someone who is too self-important to take advantage of the presence of such wise men; Philadelphos, by contrast, is the model of an enlightened king who constantly seeks self-improvement. I have labelled Ar an imaginative reconstruction, and that would seem to imply a view about how it was regarded by its first readers (whoever they were). The status of Ars claims to truth has always been at the heart of modern argument about the nature of the work. Sylvie Honigman argues that Ar does indeed present a true account, but that we have to understand that truth, reasonably enough, within the conventions of
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I suppose that everyone likely to get hold of this account will find it incredible. But to falsify concerning matters extant in writing is not what one should do; indeed, if I were to pass over any point, it would be an impiety in a subject of this sort. But I describe () the event exactly as it happened ( ), solemnly acquitting myself of all error. Accordingly I endeavoured to procure particulars of what transpired from those persons who transcribe the proceedings ( ) at the kings audiences and in his banquets, so impressed was I with the power of [the sages] discourse. For it is the custom, as you surely are aware, to record in writing everything said and done from the moment the king begins to give audience until he retires to bed a good and useful practice. On the day following, before audiences commence, the actions taken and the remarks uttered on the previous day are read through and if any procedure is incorrectly recorded it receives rectification (). As I have said, then, I obtained accurate information on all particulars from the archives, and have recorded it in writing because I know how you cherish useful learning. Letter of Aristeas 296300
Here again we have a Thucydidean concern with offering a clear account of what actually happened, together with a Thucydidean painstakingness for finding this out; the language of detail, , picks up a language of historiography (and epic poetry) familiar from Aristotle onwards.35 The appeal to written records offers a form of authorising fiction (Beglaubigungsapparat), which however is ambiguous in its implications.36 It is not, I hope, irreverent to be reminded of the scene between Peisetairos and the oracle-monger in Aristophanes Birds ( ...); if you dont believe me, go and consult the records is a challenge which few readers are likely to take up. I know that what I have written will seem incredible may be a device for emphasising the truth of the account,37 an instance of protesting too much, or a rather cheeky piece of selfknowingness. It is perhaps helpful to remember Lucians protestations in the True Histories, particularly in his account of life on the moon: I am reluctant to tell you about the eyes [of the moon-people], lest someone think that I am lying because the account seems incredible...anyone who does not believe that this is a true account, will realise that I am speaking the truth if ever he himself gets to the moon (1.256). What in fact places Ar firmly in the mainstream of Greek Hellenistic prose is its knowing anxiety about genre; it is a work filled with effects of the real, one of which of course is the simple fact that it is structured as an address to a single individual, and the history of its reception shows just how convincing (and how distracting) those effects have been. Here, as much as anywhere, it is a Hellenistic creation, as it also calls into creation a Hellenistic world of the imagination.
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On these texts cf., e.g., Pfeiffer 1968, 2523, Whitmarsh 2001, 79. Gruen 1998, 221 considers the matter now clearly decided in favour of a Jewish readership: those Gentiles who happened to read the work would not have found it particularly edifying. 23 Cf., e.g., Orlinsky 1989, 5428. 24 Zuntz 1959 is fundamental here. 25 I am conscious that this observation is not too far from one modern view, particularly associated with scholars such as Ludwig Koenen, Susan Stephens, and Dan Selden, of how Egyptian motifs, or what are alleged to be such, resonate in Alexandrian Greek poetry. 26 Honigmans claim (2003, 467) that this collective enterprise would rather have recalled the work of Alexandrian grammarians seems at best doubtful; Greek scholars notoriously worked alone and notoriously quarrelled with each other. 27 Cf. esp. Murray 1967. 28 Cf. Hunter 2003, 945. 29 With the stress on justice (193, 209, 212, 291 etc.) cf. Pythian 1.86; with the importance of benefactions and the proper use of wealth (205, 226) cf. Pythian 1.91; with the importance of truthfulness (206) cf. Pythian 1.87. 30 It is perhaps noteworthy that Murray 1967, 347 n. 3 compared Alexanders interview with the gymnosophists to the sympotic narrative of Ar. 31 Honigman 2003, 29. 32 Cf. Johnson 2004, xiixiii on how such texts persistently combine historical verisimilitude with patent fiction without betraying the least awareness of contradiction or absurdity. 33 Here, in particular, I have benefited from, but unwisely disregarded, the proper scepticism of the Edinburgh audience, particularly Robin Lane Fox. 34 Murray 1987, 22. 35 Cf. Hunter 2005, 15962. 36 I hope that it does not need saying that the historical reality of the courtly practice described in these chapters for the time of Philadelphos is not what is at issue here. 37 Cf. the phrases studied by Stinton 1976.
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Bibliography Allen, T. W. 1913 Pisistratus and Homer CQ 7, 3351. Birnbaum, E 2004 Portrayals of the wise and virtuous in Alexandrian Jewish works: Jews perceptions of themselves and others, in W.V. Harris and G. Ruffini (eds) Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece, Leiden and Boston, 12560. Calabi, F. 1995 Lettera di Aristea a Filocrate, Milan. Canfora, L. 1987 The Vanished Library, London. Carleton Paget, J. 2004 Jews and Christians in ancient Alexandria from the Ptolemies to Caracalla, in Hirst and Silk 2004, 14366.
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Murray, O. 1967 Aristeas and Ptolemaic kingship Journal of Theological Studies 18, 33771. 1987 The Letter of Aristeas in B. Virgilio (ed.) Studi ellenistici II, Pisa, 1529. Orlinsky, H. M. 1989 The Septuagint and its Hebrew text, in W. D. Davies and L. Finkelstein (eds) The Cambridge History of Judaism II, Cambridge, 53462. Pelletier, A. 1962 Lettre dAriste Philocrate, Paris. Pfeiffer, R. 1968 History of Classical Scholarship, Oxford. Platthy, J. 1968 Sources on the Earliest Greek Libraries, Amsterdam. Selden, D. 1998 Alibis Classical Antiquity 17, 289412. Shutt, R. J. H. 1985 Letter of Aristeas, in J. H. Charlesworth (ed.) The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. 2, London, 734. Stinton, T. C. W. 1976 Si credere dignum est: some expressions of disbelief in Euripides and others, PCPS 22, 6089 [= Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy, Oxford 1990, 23664]. Too, Y. L. 1998 The Idea of Ancient Literary Criticism, Oxford. Trapp, M. B. 2004 Images of Alexandria in the writings of the Second Sophistic, in Hirst and Silk 2004, 11332. Whitmarsh, T. 2001 Greek Literature and the Roman Empire, Oxford. 2004 Ancient Greek Literature, Cambridge. Zuntz, G. 1959 Aristeas studies II: Aristeas on the translation of the Torah, Journal of Semitic Studies 4, 10926 [= Opuscula Selecta (Manchester 1972) 12643].
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predecessor, who often discusses politics and power from the politais point of view, Hieronymos was much more interested in what powerful men did, said, and thought. Like Thucydides, however, Hieronymos is fond of distinguishing between alleged and real reasons, as he discerned them, normally reflecting the actors self-interest. Yet in spite of the allure of his utilitarian approach to actions and interactions, there is no guarantee that his identification of peoples underlying aims is accurate, given that motives are hard to decipher in any period.2 Hieronymos is also responsible for the sources favourable portrait of Eumenes, the man with whom the Silver Shields were mostly associated. Both men were born to Greek families from Kardia, and Hieronymos served under Eumenes and may even have been his relative. The story of Eumenes can be described here only briefly. He had served Alexander as chief secretary and occasionally as a military commander; in fact, he was the only Greek in Alexanders army to command a Macedonian unit. After Alexanders death, he threw in his lot with Perdikkas, which proved a poor choice. While in Asia Minor, Eumenes defeated the anti-Perdikkan general Neoptolemaios in 320, and then, to everyones surprise, the respected and popular Macedonian marshal, Krateros. The death of the latter in battle allowed Eumenes enemies to pass a decree in the royal army assembly that condemned Eumenes to death and held him responsible for the death of Krateros and presumably other Macedonians. In early 319, Antigonos Monophthalmos, who had been given the task of eliminating the Perdikkan forces, defeated Eumenes in battle, besieged him in the city of Nora, and then let him go, probably after making Eumenes beholden to him. Eumenes managed to collect a force of about 2,500 men, made up mostly of local recruits, and then accepted the offer of the regent Polyperchon and the Macedonian kings to become their chief commander in Asia against Antigonos.3 I shall discuss the history of the Silver Shields before they joined Eumenes with equal brevity. Scholars have persuasively shown that originally they had been Alexanders hypaspists elite units of the Macedonian phalanx and at that time probably already numbered 3,000 men. They were given the name Silver Shields no later than Alexanders Indian campaign. The Silver Shields played an active role in the riots against Antipater when he arrived at Triparadeisos in 320 to become the regent of the kingdom. Antipater sent them with their commander Antigenes, and presumably Teutamos as well, to bring money from the treasury in Susa to the sea. Their history from then until they met Eumenes in Kilikia in the summer of 318 and became a dominant force in his army is uncertain. They are nowhere attested, as is commonly assumed, to have served as the
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battlefield. Judging by the way Eumenes planned his battles and their ultimate results, the Silver Shields were neither capable of deciding or winning a battle on their own nor expected to. From the time of Alexander, it had been the cavalry that delivered the main blow to the enemy, and Eumenes followed this battle plan. Prior to his meeting with the Silver Shields, Eumenes relied chiefly on his cavalry both in defeat and victory, and not because he trusted the loyalty of his infantry less. In the battle of Orkynia in 319, which he had lost to Antigonos, Eumenes had 5,000 cavalry, as opposed to Antigonos 2,000, and 20,000 infantry, as opposed to Antigonos 10,000. His infantrymen even included Macedonian veterans, who fully supported him. Eumenes, however, pinned his hopes on the cavalry, which deserted him during the battle.9 He continued to rely on cavalry, as well as on elephants, after he had incorporated the Silver Shields into his forces, probably because Antigonos enjoyed a significant numerical advantage in infantry but less of an advantage in cavalry. This was especially true of the battle of Paraitakene , where Antigonos phalanx numbered 28,000 men, as opposed to Eumenes 17,000 (in addition to 18,000 lightarmed troops). The gap in cavalry was less pronounced: Antigonos had 8,500 horsemen and 65 elephants, as opposed to Eumenes 6,300 horsemen and 114 elephants (see below). Diodorus says that the right wing, which Eumenes commanded, had the best of the cavalry, and that he trusted these forces the most.10 Clearly, Eumenes expectations of his phalanx, including the Silver Shields, were lower (Fig. 1). At Paraitakene , Eumenes phalanx won a convincing victory over Antigonos phalanx, but his cavalry failed to destroy the opposing cavalry. Nevertheless, Eumenes did not change his tactics. He continued to rely on his cavalry and elephants to achieve victory, even though the sizes of the opposing armies became more balanced. At the battle of Gabn, Antigonos phalanx had been reduced from 28,000 to 22,000, while Eumenes presumably retained his phalanx of 17,000 and even increased his light-armed force by about 1,700 men (totalling 36,700 troops). In cavalry, Antigonos augmented his force from 8,500 to 9,000, as opposed to Eumenes 6,000 (300 horsemen less than in Paraitakene). The number of their elephants remained unchanged. Yet neither general changed his plan of deciding the battle with the cavalry, aided by the elephants. This is especially telling in the case of Eumenes, because he had the best infantry in the Macedonian world, who had proven their loyalty to him up to this point. He also never led the Silver Shields into battle in person, but left it to their commanders. Excellent as the Silver Shields were in fighting, and as much as they caught the sources attention, neither they nor the entire phalanx were supposed to decide the battle.11
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Fig. 1. The Infantry in the Battle of Paraitaken (winter 317/6). Source: Diod. 19.2732 Eumenes Forces: Right wing, cavalry (from left): 800, 900, 300, 300, 100, 200, 300, (subtotal: 2,900), 40 elephants with light armed Center, Infantry (from left): 6,000 mercenaries, 5,000 Macedonian-trained mixed troops, 3000 Silver Shields, 3,000 hypaspists, (subtotal: 17,000), 40 elephants with light-armed Left wing, cavalry: 50, 50, 100, 950, 600, 600, 500, 500, (subtotal: 3,400), 45 elephants with light armed Diodorus total: 35,000 infantry, 6,100 cavalry, 114 elephants Totals of individual units: 125 elephants; 6,300 cavalry, 17,000 infantry (with probably 18,000 light-armed) Antigonos Forces: Right wing, cavalry (from left): 500, 1,000, 500, 1,000, 300, 3 servile ilai (? 150), 3 ilai (?150), 100, (subtotal: 3,400 cavalry + 6 ilai (? 300), 30 elephants with light armed Center, infantry (from left): 9,000 mercenaries, 3,000 Lykians and Pamphylians, 8,000 Macedonian-trained troops, 8,000 Macedonians (subtotal: 28,000), most other elephants (30?) Left wing, cavalry: 1,000, 200 (emended no.), 1,000, 1,500, 400, 1 il, 800 (subtotal: 4,900+); few elephants Diodorus total: 28,000 infantry, 8,500 cavalry, 65 elephants Totals of individual units: 28,000 infantry; cavalry: 8300 + 6 ilai; elephants: 30 + unspecified number.
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The place of the Silver Shields in the lines of battles is of interest too. In both battles, Eumenes put his elephants and light-armed troops in the front, and, like Alexander, his cavalry on his wings, with the infantry at the centre. Antigonos arranged his troops similarly. In both battles, the cavalry fought cavalry and the infantry, infantry, fairly independently from one another. Finally, in both battles, Eumenes phalanx soundly defeated Antigonos phalanx, with credit given solely to the Silver Shields. Thus Diodorus reports that at Paraitakene, the opposing phalanxes fought each other for a long time, with many falling on both sides, but no one could face the Silver Shields, who excelled in daring and skill due to their long service. Even though there were only 3,000 of them, they became the edge, or spearhead () of the entire army. In this battle, Antigonos lost 3,700 infantrymen, as opposed to Eumenes 540. These accolades deserve scrutiny.12 At Paraitakene , Eumenes arranged the phalanx from right to left, as follows. Next to his stronger right wing, which he commanded himself, he put over 3,000 hypaspists. Next to them were over 3,000 Silver Shields. Both groups were led by Teutamos and Antigenes, probably respectively. Next to the Silver Shields, Eumenes placed an ethnically mixed force of 5,000 troops, who had Macedonian equipment, and he completed the phalanxs line with more than 6,000 mercenaries, who stood next to his weaker left wing, which was composed of cavalry.13 Generals placed their best troops where they expected the brunt of the battle to be, which was traditionally on the right of the phalanx. This was where the hypaspists stood, but not the Silver Shields. Indeed, Eumenes followed Alexander here, who had positioned the hypaspists on the right of the phalanx and next to the cavalry in all of his major battles. I agree with scholars who regard Eumenes hypaspists as his own creation. The information we have on the composition of his forces up to this battle excludes the identification of them, or of most of them, with Macedonian veterans.14 To ascertain which of Antigonos infantry the Silver Shields and the hypaspists faced, it is best to reconstruct the opposing phalanxes from the hills on Eumenes left, which can serve as an anchor point. Eumenes arranged his left wing, made up of 3,300 horsemen, starting from high ground in the hills. The mercenaries, the Macedonian-equipped troops, the Silver Shields, and the hypaspists were stationed next to them, from left to right. Antigonos drew up his lines after observing Eumenes battle order. This meant that the right end of his right wing paralleled the left corner of Eumenes left wing and did not extend beyond it to outflank Eumenes on the right, since the hills acted as a barrier. Antigonos right had about 3,600 cavalry, which only slightly overlapped Eumenes 3,300 horsemen. We can
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the hypaspists performance in this battle has not been properly recognised.18 Equally ignored is the contribution of Eumenes mercenaries on his left. We do not know at what point exactly the infantry fighting commenced, but if Antigonos line advanced obliquely while Eumenes phalanx held, or advanced in, a straight line, the first who saw battle or held the line were the mercenaries, who had to fight Antigonos Macedonians. I suspect that the reason for the silence about the hypaspists and the mercenaries is Hieronymos focus on Eumenes and the Silver Shields.19 In the account of the battle of Gabn, the sources go even further in assigning sole credit for the victory over the entire enemy phalanx to the Silver Shields. At Gabn, Eumenes changed his position from right to left to command this stronger wing, with the hypaspists following him to the phalanxs left. Yet they are completely ignored in the account of the battle, and all eyes are on the Silver Shields. These 3,000 troops are said to have killed 5,000 enemy troops and to have defeated a 22,000strong phalanx all by themselves.20 I do not wish to argue that the Silver Shields did not excel in fighting, but rather that the sources, and most probably Hieronymos, unduly privilege their contribution. There was more than one reason for this preferential treatment. The Silver Shields became an icon of a glorious Macedonian past of uninterrupted success in war and conquest. The Silver Shields themselves were highly vociferous in demanding attention to their wishes, reputation, and special status in camp. They also stood for the Macedonian authority and legitimacy so important to their employer. Lastly, the sources show practically no interest in troops that were not Macedonian. Asian troops and mercenaries stood on the lowest rung in the social and military hierarchy of the coalition army, and I suppose that the historian and his readers cared little about their accomplishments. 3. Eumenes and the Silver Shields: first encounter At the time the Silver Shields met Eumenes in the summer of 318, however, they had yet to prove their worth to him. Why did they agree to join his camp? Diodorus says that Antigenes and Teutamos, their commanders, obeyed the letters of Polyperchon, written in the kings names, that instructed them to help this new commander of Asia, and that the Silver Shields similarly met Eumenes with friendliness and great enthusiasm.21 Communication in this period was often restricted to members of the military elite, who were inclined to make decisions without consulting the troops. Here, however, the Silver Shields were notified of the royal request, though Diodorus does not explain why they and their
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they were excluded from the tent. Only the commanders took orders from Alexander, sacrificed and made proskynesis to him, and sat in council in his tent. Eumenes would use the same device later in Susiana, with similar actors and audience, when other generals challenged his command. Diodorus says that he called daily meetings of this council there, as if in a democratic city.25 But since there was no popular assembly to discuss its motions, the councils purpose was to reach a consensus of the kind practised in an oligarchy. Indeed, a story in Plutarch about the Macedonians in Asia clamouring for the ailing Eumenes, and only Eumenes, to lead them into battle, suggests their dissatisfaction with the solution provided by the Alexanders tent device, and that it was designed to regulate Eumenes relationship with the elite.26 The veterans seem also to have been little troubled by Eumenes nonMacedonian origin. Scholars have demonstrated that Eumenes problems with the troops had mostly to do with obtaining funds and provisions, rather than his Greek ethnicity.27 The ones said to resent, or make an issue of, his non-Macedonian status were, most frequently, Eumenes rivals and enemies, not the Macedonian troops. Later, after his loss to Antigonos at - Gabene, some Macedonian Silver Shields called him a plague from the Chersonese. But taking this often-quoted abuse out of context does not prove their bias against his Greek birth. Those who called him this were echoing the propaganda of his enemies and seeking to justify handing him over to Antigonos. Eumenes origins did not deter the veterans from strongly supporting him, at least until the catastrophic loss of their goods and families overwhelmed their loyalty (see below).28 The same can be said concerning the Macedonian resentment of Eumenes for using Macedonians to kill Krateros and other fellowMacedonians in battle. The Macedonian troops reluctance to fight each other was, at best, highly selective, and I do not know of a single veteran who is recorded to have left his general because of the commanders violations of Macedonian solidarity. Indeed, the ones who charged Eumenes with having Macedonian blood on his hands were his enemies among the Macedonian commanders, not the troops. It were also the generals, rather than the troops, who insisted that the latter should follow their own decrees and respect the authority and power of their own assembly, as in the case of Eumenes condemnation. The veterans who fought with Eumenes before or after his meeting with the Silver Shields repeatedly chose to ignore offers to kill him or desert his camp.29 This is not to say that the Silver Shields did not require persuasion to join Eumenes (which shows again that the kings letters or the veterans respect for Alexander and his house were insufficient to ensure obedience). Justin,
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who put him under arrest. Antigonos first had some of Eumenes troops executed, ordering Antigenes to be burned alive in a pit. Then, finally, after consultations, he had Eumenes killed too. The Silver Shields got back their baggage and joined Antigonos army. Later, however, Antigonos sent many of them to serve with Sibyrtios, the satrap of Arachosia, and on various garrison duties. According to Diodorus, he even instructed Sibyrtios to get rid of them. Both Diodorus and other sources treat their new assignments as retribution for their betrayal of Eumenes.32 I have omitted from this synopsis the many dramatic devices used by the sources to highlight the despicable treachery of the Silver Shields.33 This attitude dominates the ancient accounts and consequently much of the scholarship. The way this story is told is also one of the most blatant examples of an elitist approach to history. Let us examine what happened. Eumenes cavalry and elephants had been defeated. Although the Silver Shields had won a great victory over the enemy phalanx, their loss of everything that was dear to them, namely, their savings, their loved ones, and their other non-combatant dependents, marginalized any other considerations such as the future of the Macedonian empire or that of their general. The satraps proposed retreating east, which meant leaving the baggage train behind in Antigonos hands and moving farther away from it. Eumenes, whom the veterans probably held responsible for their loss, called on them to fight Antigonos again, but he was motivated by his own desperate need for victory, on which his leadership depended, rather than by their plight. The history of the Macedonian veterans shows a close relationship between their loyalty and discipline, on the one hand, and the winning record of their general, on the other. It also shows that set-piece battles were decided not by the phalanx, however excellent, but by the cavalry and there was no guarantee that Eumenes would be able to call on the satraps cavalry in a new battle. Moreover, the veterans were well aware that he had lost the - battle of Gabe ne even with the cavalrys support. In any case, fighting Antigonos again was in the interest of Eumenes and not that of the troops. Eumenes fate probably ran a distant second to the Silver Shields concern about their baggage, assuming they even gave it some thought. It is our sources who focus on him.34 The Silver Shields offered Antigonos their services in exchange for their baggage, Polyaenus tells us.35 In our sources, whenever troops act in their own interests, rather than those of their generals, they are called mutinous, undisciplined, and in this case, treacherous. Probably the most active among the argyraspides were their commanders, because the Macedonian veterans often depended on their leadership for initiative or
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of great generals and kings. Within this framework, the Silver Shields had one major role to play, which justified his praises and giving them a privileged status, namely, to fight for their general and serve his needs As long as they fulfilled this function, they were given accolades and exclusive credit for Alexanders victories or those of Eumenes phalanx. But when they looked after themselves rather than their commander, they became petty-minded, selfish, even cowardly men, who traded victory and glory for baggage. Yet to what extent were the Macedonians responsible for Eumenes fate? Firstly, they were not the only ones who lost their baggage and wanted it back. Nowhere is it said that Antigonos captured only the Macedonian baggage, and, according to Polyaenus, Antigonos proclamation that he would restore the soldiers possessions for free affected the satrap Peukestas and his 10,000 Persians, who moved to his camp following the Macedonians example.40 This is not to deny that the Silver Shields led the movement over to Antigonos camp. After all, their possessions had been accumulated since Alexanders campaign, while others had less baggage or no families at all (cf. Oros. 3.23.26). Yet it is clear that they did not have to force their views on others. Eumenes arrest seems to have triggered no protest, except for his own. Secondly, there are indications in the sources that not all the Macedonians were of one mind on this issue. According to Justin, Eumenes tried to shame the Macedonians into fighting Antigonos again by defining their loss as consisting merely of 2,000 women and a few children and slaves.41 This implies that not all Silver Shields, about 3,000 in number, had families, and hence a strong incentive to give Eumenes up. It is also conceivable that not all the Macedonians cared to the same extent about their possessions or dependants. Plutarch reports that before Eumenes became Antigonos prisoner, some Macedonians lamented the loss of their baggage, some told him not to lose heart, and some blamed other commanders for the defeat. It is true that the biographer presents these different reactions as a ploy to lull Eumenes into a false sense of security so that they could capture him off guard. But if we ignore this attempt to expose a hidden agenda, it could be that some of the veterans were surprised by their comrades decision to give Eumenes up.42 Lastly, Diodorus says that Antigonos sent the most troublesome Silver Shields away to Arachosia Polyaenus gives their number as 1,000 and that they included those who had betrayed Eumenes.43 This implies that not all of the Macedonians were active in, or in agreement about, the surrender of Eumenes. Thirdly, and more significant, there was no certainty that Eumenes would be put to death. His pre-surrender warning to the Macedonians of
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It may be fitting by way of a conclusion to retell a memorable story that is included in Diodorus account. A few months before Eumenes last battle, Antigonos tried to induce the Silver Shields and the satraps to defect to his side. The Macedonians declined, and Eumenes, who had not been present at their deliberations, came to praise them and tell them the following parable: A lion fell in love with a maiden and asked her father for her hand. When the father expressed concern that the lion might lose its temper and kill her, the lion yanked out his own claws and teeth. The father then took a club and killed the lion. Eumenes explained that Antigonos would keep his promises until he became the master of the army and then execute their leaders. To plthos approved and shouted Right On ().48 This story well illustrates the elitist outlook discussed in this chapter. It has the leader express himself in a speech and the troops exclaim approval. The tale is also hardly flattering to the rank and file, because it tells them that they are powerless and vulnerable without their general. The ostensible moral is that Eumenes was right, because the Silver Shields lost their claws and teeth when they surrendered him.49 In fact, they saved themselves and their families, but for Hieronymos and the historians who followed him, this was both inconsequential and disgraceful. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Andrew Erskine, Stephanie Winder, and Douglas Cairns for inviting me to the Creating the Hellenistic World conference and their most gracious hospitality. I am also grateful to Mel Regnell from Colby College for her invaluable help with the illustration. Lastly, I owe thanks to Brian Bosworth for his very useful comments and clarifications. My different interpretation is no indication of the excellence of his work.
Notes 1 This chapter is a product of a more extensive project on the history of Alexanders veterans. Due to space constraints, references to modern scholarship are often limited to more recent publications. I have also adopted a thematic rather than chronological approach. The chronology of the events under discussion is notoriously controversial. I follow here Boiys 2007 attempt at a compromise between the so-called high and low chronologies. All dates are BC. 2 Hieronymos sources: Rosen 1967; Hornblower 1981, 12053. For his causation and bias, see Roisman 2010a, cf. Brown 1947, 693; Hornblower 1981, esp. 152, 235. Diodorus must have found Hieronymos account appealing, given his own interest in great men, as well as in the theme of retribution, both of which Diodorus used to educate his readers: cf. Sacks 1990, 2336; Anson 2004, 12, 21. For our sources use of Duris of Samos, see, e.g., Landucci Gatinoni 1997, 194200; 2008, esp. XIIXXIV.
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Diod. 19.29.7. Billows 1990, 967. Light-armed troops position: Diod. 19.28.2, cf. 30.4. Compare Alexanders close formation against a numerically superior enemy in Gaugamela. Kahnes and Kromayer (1931, 41213) speculate that Eumenes mixed the depth of his infantry to prevent outflanking, but this is nowhere attested. 18 Bosworth 2002, 134. In a private correspondence Bosworth has modified his reconstruction of the battle and has tentatively placed the Silver Shields against Antigonos Lykians and Pamphylians and mercenaries. My reconstruction would place the Silver Shields against Antigonos Macedonian-style troops. Macedonians fought Macedonians in Babylon in 323, as well as in Antigonos campaigns against the Perdikkans in 319. A long infantry battle: Diod. 19.30.5. 19 On the elephants in Paraitakene, see Kahnes and Kromayer 1931, 418 with n. 1, but also Bosworth 2002, 1389. - 20 The phalanx at Gabe ne and the Silver Shields performance: Diod. 19.40.3, 41.13, 43.1; Plut. 16.68; and see Bosworth 2002, 154 with notes 199, 200. 21 Diod. 18.58.1, 59.3; cf. Plut. 13.15. 22 The Silver Shields royal reverence: Anson 1981, 11920. Eumenes reputation and ties to Polyperchon: Bosworth 2002, 1001. 23 Macedonians fought representatives of the throne in 320 under Neoptolemaios, Krateros and Antipater, and possibly Ptolemy, and in 319 under Eumenes, Alketas and his fellow commanders. Polyperchons instruction: Diod. 18.58.1. 20,000 talents: Simpson 1957. Loyalty to generals: Briant 1982, esp. 4181; Anson 2004, 118. 24 Diod. 18.60.161.3; Plut. 13.58; Nepos 7.13; Polyaen. 4.8.2. 25 Diod. 19.15.14; for different interpretations of this democracy, see Briant 1982, 80n3 and Rzepka 2005, 13839. 26 Plut. 14.411; cf. 16.1. Only commanders met and worshiped in the tent: Diod. 18.60.661.2; Plut. 13.78; Nepos 7; cf. Polyaen. 4.8.2. For views that Eumenes stratagem instituted a military cult for the veterans and the army, see e.g. Launey 1950, 9457, followed by Picard 1954, 47. I cannot share Schfers hypothesis (2002, esp. 2137) that Eumenes aimed to create an imperial cult common to Macedonians, Greeks, and barbarians, and see Bosworths (2005, 6856) criticism of it. 27 Briant 1982, 5081; Schfer 2002, 1256; Anson 2004, 23258; cf. Hornblower 1981, 1567. 28 Resenting Eumenes ethnicity: Diod. 18.60.13; 19.13.12; Plut. 8.13; Nepos 7.1, but see also Diod. 18.62.7, and cf. Plut. 3.1. Eumenes himself stressed his alien origin when he deemed it useful to play the inferior: Diod. 18.60.3. Chersonesan plague: Plut. 18.2; Anson 1980, 56. 29 Charging Eumenes with killing Krateros: Diod. 18.37.12, 62.12; 19.12.13; Arr. Succ. 1.30; Plut. 8.114, 18.2; Nepos 5.1; App. Syr. 53; cf. Arr. Succ. 1.40. The Macedonians ignoring the charges: Diod. 18.59.4; as well offers to kill or desert him: Diod. 18.62.163.5; 19.12.13, 25.24; Plut. 8.1112; Just. 14.1.914; Anson 1980, 55. Those who were tempted to desert Eumenes in the battle of Orkynia were not Macedonians: Diod. 18.40.58; Anson 2004, 128. Following this defeat, however, many left him: Diod. 18.41.1. 30 Just. 14.2.512. 31 For Gabn, see n. 11 above. 32 Diod. 19.43.144.3; Plut. 17.119.3; Nepos 10.112.4; Just. 3.14.21; Polyaen.
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Bibliography Anson, E. M. 1980 Discrimination and Eumenes of Cardia, AncW 3, 559. 1981 Alexanders Hypaspists and the Argyraspides, Historia 30, 11720.
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1988 Hypaspists and Argyraspides after 323, AHB 2, 1313. 2004 Eumenes of Cardia: A Greek among Macedonians, Boston and Leiden. Billows, R. A. 1990 Antigonus the One-eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State, Berkeley. 1995 Kings and Colonists: Aspects of Macedonian Imperialism, Leiden. Bing, J. D. 1973 A further note on Cyinda/Kundi, Historia 22, 34650. Boiy, T 2007 Between High and Low: A chronology of the early Hellenistic age, Frankfurt am Main. Bosworth, A. B. 1992 History and artifice in Plutarchs Eumenes, in P. A. Stadter (ed.) Plutarch and the Historical Tradition, London, 5689. 2002 The Legacy of Alexander: Politics, warfare, and propaganda under the Successors, Oxford. 2005 Review of C. Schfer. 2002. Eumenes von Kardia und der Kampf um die Macht im Alexanderreich. Frankfurt am Main, Gnomon 77.8, 6848. Briant, P. 1982 Rois, tributs et paysans, Paris. Brown, T. S. 1947 Hieronymus of Cardia, American Historical Review 52.4, 68496. Devine, A. M. 1985a Diodorus account of the Battle of Gabiene, AncW 12, 8796. 1985b Diodorus account of the Battle of Paraitacene (317 BC), AncW 12, 7586. Engel, R. 1971 Anmerkungen zur Schlacht von Orkynia, Museum Helveticum 28, 22731. 1972 Zum Geschichtsbild des Hieronymos von Kardia, Athenaeum 50, 1205. Hadley, R. A. 2001 A possible lost source for the career of Eumenes of Kardia, Historia 50.1, 333. Hammond, N. G. L. 1994 Collected Studies, vol. 3, Amsterdam. Heckel, W. 1982 The career of Antigenes, Symbole Osloenses 57, 5767. 1992 The Marshals of Alexanders Empire, London and New York. Hornblower, J. 1981 Hieronymus of Cardia, Oxford. Jacoby, F. 1913 Hieronymos von Kardia, RE 8, no. 10, 154060. Kahnes, E., and Kromayer, J. 1931 Drei Diadochenschlachten, in J. Kromayer (ed.) Antike Schlachtfelder, Bausteine zu einer antiken Kriegsgeschichte, 190331, Berlin, 4: 391446. Landucci Gatinoni, F. 1997 Duride di Samo, Rome. 2008 Diodoro Siculo, Biblioteca Storica Libro XVIII. Commento Storico, Milan. Launey, M. 194950 Recherches sur les armes hellnistiques, 2 vols, Paris.
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reign of Alexander in Egypt; 3. The Satrapy of Ptolemy; and 4. The establishment of the Ptolemaic kingdom. 1. The Second Persian Period The second Persian domination of Egypt was short-lived and unstable. It got off to a bad start which is vividly described by Diodorus of Sicily (16.51.23):
Artaxerxes, after taking over all Egypt and demolishing the walls of the most important cities, by plundering the shrines gathered a vast quantity of silver and gold, and he carried off the inscribed records from the ancient temples, which later on Bagoas returned to the Egyptian priests on the payment of huge sums by way of ransom. Then when he had rewarded the Greeks who had accompanied him on the campaign with lavish gifts, each according to his deserts, he dismissed them to their native lands; and, having installed Pherendates as satrap of Egypt, he returned with his army to Babylon, bearing many possessions and spoils and having won great renown by his successes.
It is extremely probable that this negative perspective on Artaxerxes is reflected in the Satrap Stele to which I shall need to refer at a number of points in this chapter; this text dates to Regnal Year 7 of Alexander IV but is known as The Satrap Stele because it was, in reality, set up by Ptolemy when he was still officially functioning as the satrap of Egypt.5 The stele reads:
Then His Majesty (i.e. Ptolemy) said to those who were beside him: This marshland, inform me (about it)!, so that they said before His Majesty: The northern marshland, whose name is The Land of Edjo, it formerly belonged to the gods of Pe and Dep, before the enemy Xerxes (i.e. Artaxerxes) revoked it.6 He did not make offerings from it to the gods of Pe and Dep. Horus the son of Isis, the son of Osiris, ruler of rulers, the ideal Upper Egyptian King, the ideal Lower Egyptian King, the protector of his father, the Lord of Pe, the foremost of the gods who came into existence afterwards, after whom there is no king, expelled the enemy Xerxes from his (Egyptian) palace together with his eldest son; thus it is perceived in Sais of Neith today beside the Gods Mother.
Artaxerxes reputation remained consistently bad. Plutarch (De Iside 11 [355C]) describes him as the most savage (o-mos), and most fearful of Egyptian kings who killed many Egyptians and, in the end, even butchered the Apis bull and feasted on the proceeds with his friends. We are told that, as a result, he was known as Knife in Egypt. Plutarch later adds (31[363C]) that Ochus was the most hated of the Persian kings and was identified with the donkey which was a Typhonic beast. Aelian (VH 10.28)
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achieved high rank in the late Saite Period and maintained that status under Cambyses and Darius.11 Somtutefnakht will not have been unique. During the First Persian Period Egyptian military assets were used on some scale,12 and, although the evidence for our period in general is minuscule, it is probable that Egyptian forces were present at Issos: Sabaces, the satrap of Egypt, was killed there (Arr. Anab. 2.11.8), and we are told by Curtius (3.11.910) that he had a large army which must surely have consisted of a significant contingent of Egyptian troops. On the economic front the beginnings of an Egyptian-generated coinage which we already find in the XXXth Dynasty were continued since we find coins of Artaxerxes with his name in demotic. These issues, which derive from Memphis, clearly take their lead from Athenian coinage, and they are supplemented by other issues made in the name of satraps whose names are inscribed on the verso in Aramaic.13 Overall there is enough evidence to make it clear that the Persian intention in Egypt was to apply their standard approach to imperial possessions, i.e. to accept the local system, if it worked, and impose an Achaemenid macrosystem of government on top whose major function was the economic exploitation of the province.14 2. The reign of Alexander the Great Alexander got to Egypt in the second half of November 332. It was by then under the control of Mazaces who surrendered the province without a fight (Arr. Anab. 3.1.2; 3.22.1; Curtius, 4.7). The native population were clearly more than happy to see the back of the Persians and acquiesced in the change of masters without opposition. Alexanders actions in Egypt show points of similarity and difference to the Persian approach. Curtius emphasizes (4.7.5) that he respected Egyptian traditions in his arrangements, and Arrian (Anab. 3.1.4) makes the pointed comment that he sacrificed to the Apis bull, evidently in contrast to the notorious contempt allegedly shown to this sacred animal by Cambyses and Artaxerxes III. Alexanders arrangements for the governance of the satrapy were very much in line with this conciliatory policy since he entrusted the civil administration initially to two Egyptians called Doloaspis and Petisis who were each to control half of the country, and, when Petisis declined the honour, Doloaspis was placed in charge of the whole of Egypt. This approach marked a considerable change from the Persian system; if Alexander had followed that model, he would have placed a Greek or a Macedonian in this position, as, indeed, he did with Libya which was placed under Apollodoros. The old system of provincial administration based on nomarchs was left in place to operate as it had done for centuries; it had proved its worth, and Alexander wisely left well alone, not least, of course,
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the Pharaohs. According to the Alexander Romance (1 34),20 Alexander was crowned as Pharaoh at Memphis. Nothing is more likely, but the Romance is a source of dubious historical reliability and does not provide a basis for total confidence. It is, however, beyond dispute that he was treated by the Egyptian elite as a Pharaoh in the fullest sense. A stele relating to the sacred Buchis bulls of Hermonthis represents Alexander engaged in worshipping the sacred animal,21 and there is a series of inscriptions referring to templebuilding activities during Alexanders reign, for example:
a) Inscription over the door of a sanctuary built in his time in the festival temple of Tuthmose III at Karnak:22 Life to the Horus, the valiant ruler who attacks foreign lands, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Meryamun23 Setepuenre, the Son of Re, Lord of Diadems, Alexandros. b) Inscription inside this chamber:24 The renewal of a monument performed by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Meryamun Setepuenre, the son of Re, Lord of Diadems, Alexandros, may he live forever, after he found it built under the Majesty of the Horus Strong Bull Khaemwaset, the Lord of the Two Lands, Menkheperre, son of Re, Tuthmose, beautiful (or uniter)25 of appearances, beloved of Amon-re, lord of heaven, king of the gods, creator of that which exists... c) Inscription of Alexanders reign from sanctuary in the temple of Amenhotep III at Luxor :26 The renewal of a monument performed by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Meryamun Setepuenre, the son of Re, Lord of Diadems, Alexandros, for his father Amon-re Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands, Foremost of Karnak, making the sanctuary anew from fine sandstone after it existed from the time of the Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Nebmaatre, son of Re, Amenhotep, Ruler of Waset. d) Inscription relating to the same monument (from the door):27 Amon-re, the Bull of his Mother, the Great God, Foremost of Karnak, given all life, all stability and power, all health, gives life to the Horus, Protector of Egypt, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Meryamun Setepuenre, son of Re, Alexandros who renovated the monument for his father Amon-re.
The first thing to do here is to define the context for these texts.28 It is often said of these and related inscriptions that they record that this or that king built the structure in question, but such statements involve a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that these operations were carried out. All such texts need mean is that the building works were carried out during Alexanders reign, and he probably had no knowledge of them
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b) Inscription from Karnak relating to the work in his reign at Karnak:34 The renovation of the monument by the Good God Meryamun Setepuenre. c) Inscription relating to the sanctuary built in his reign at Karnak:35 The Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Lord of the Two Lands, Lord of Action, Meryamun Setepuenre, Son of Re of his body, beloved of him, Philippos found the sanctuary of Amun fallen into ruin, which was built in the time of the Majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Menkheperre, son of Re of his body, beloved of him, Lord of Diadems, Djehutymose. His Majesty built it anew of granite as an efficient work of eternity, may he be granted all life, stability, power, all health and joy like Re eternally. The Horus, the Strong Bull, Merymaat, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Meryamun Setepuenre, Son of Re, Philippos. He made his memorial for his father Amon-re, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands, Foremost of Karnak.
The message emerging from these texts is very much of a piece with that in the inscriptions of Alexander. Philip is given a full royal titulary elements of which are shared with Alexander, suggesting continuity; it emphasizes his role as a protector and his rule over foreign lands; he is associated with the classic royal function of renovating Egyptian religious monuments, in this case the major shrines of Karnak and Hermopolis; and he is also associated with a great conqueror, i.e. Tuthmose III. The Satrap Stele of Alexander IV (311 BC) also presents the other putative Macedonian ruler as Pharaoh in the fullest sense of the term. It manages to misspell his name consistently,36 but we get a full titulary, even if the epithets are rather bland: they emphasize his youth and strength, his relationship to the gods of Egypt, his position as the heir of Alexander, and the extent of his rule. Intriguingly the first element of his prenomen is identical with that of the XXVIth Dynasty Pharaoh Apries, a congruence which could well be intentional.37 A particularly interesting feature of the Satrap Stele is the light it throws on the position of Ptolemy at this stage or, at least, the Egyptian perception of it. It is, to say the least, equivocal. Ptolemy is, in effect, the person in power in Egypt, but he is formally subordinate to the two successors of Alexander and carefully maintains that faade until 305 by which time other Successor rulers had already declared themselves kings. This curious position emerges strikingly in line 2 of the stele where we read: His Majesty (Alexander) is in the midst of the Asiatics, while a great prince is in Egypt, whose name is Ptolemy. Subsequently he is also given the Persian title satrap, but there is considerable ambiguity in the text and an oscillation between regarding him as the great prince or as a king, an ambiguity which
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inbuilt element of divinity. Not surprisingly, therefore, the right to rule was in some measure conferred by blood, but this was not sufficient in itself because no member of the royal bloodline could rule unless he had been acclaimed king by the army. The Macedonian king, once appointed, had three main functions: to command the army, to operate as a priest who guaranteed the good will of the gods towards the kingdom, and to act as judge.40 Another marked feature of the history of the Macedonian royal house was the power wielded de facto by strong and ambitious women which contributed not a little to endemic dynastic instability, and that was aggravated by the practice of royal polygamy and promiscuous relationships with concubines which inevitably generated multiple aspirants and claimants to the throne.41 Ultimately, therefore, the critical factors in determining who functioned as a Macedonian king were strength and ability. The author of the Suda (s.v. Basileia (2)) aptly wrote of the harsh realities of the Macedonian brand of kingship in the following terms:
It is neither descent nor legitimacy which gives monarchies to men, but the ability to command an army and to handle affairs competently. Such was the case with Philip and the Successors of Alexander.42
Not surprisingly, the translation of Ptolemy, son of Lagos, into a Macedonian king brought with it into Egypt this Macedonian pattern of behaviour whose operation within the history of the dynasty is all too easy to detect. Claiming kingship is one thing; gaining the assent of the ruled is quite another matter, and the early Ptolemies clearly took the view that simply assuming Argead ancestry was not an adequate legitimisation of the Ptolemaic royal house in Macedonian eyes. This deficiency Ptolemy I set about remedying with great skill. One strand in his strategy was almost inevitably to try to establish a close association with Alexander, an issue which he had already begun to address well before he claimed the kingship by grabbing the body of Alexander when it was being transported from Babylon to Macedon and interring it in Alexandria where it enjoyed considerably more than talismanic value.43 With this as their starting point the early Ptolemaic kings were able to develop yet another brand of kingship rooted firmly in a Greek context, i.e. the ruler cult, which made it possible to acquire the status of a living god and a cult to match. This was made all the easier by the fact that the line between the human and divine had always been pervious in the Greek world, and the vast power wielded by Hellenistic captains and kings made it even easier to cross the boundary, a process much helped by Hellenistic philosophical discussions of the nature of kingship: e.g. the Neopythagorean Diotogenes could comment
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things were necessary: an army, a fleet, and lamprots, splendour. These, in turn, required large resources, and that is where Egypt acquired cardinal importance. It was the fabled wealth of the country that was going to make all this possible, and efficient economic exploitation was very much a guiding principle of Ptolemaic rule, though we must be careful to readjust our perceptions of how exactly that worked. For it has only recently been realized that we have been working with a distorted image of this system which arose through privileging the evidence from the Fayum and that the picture of a highly centralized and directed economy suggested by evidence from that very untypical part of the country is greatly exaggerated. It is now clear that the Ptolemaic approach was based on the eminently sensible realization that the Egyptians had already devised the best way to run their country and, where this was running with acceptable efficiency, they left well alone.50 The critical requirement was that the economy should generate the resources which the Ptolemies needed, and all options were on the table to achieve that aim. It was very much part of this pragmatic policy that the Ptolemies particularly the early members of the dynasty took great care to keep the Egyptian elite happy, though there has undoubtedly been a tendency to underplay this issue in the literature. If this stratum was satisfied, the chances were that the kingdom would function successfully and make its full contribution to meeting the Ptolemaic agenda. The priests were key figures here; the High Priests of Memphis enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the Ptolemaic government,51 but the Ptolemies cast their net much more widely amongst the ecclesiastical community. Not surprisingly temple building became a major feature of Egyptian life under the Ptolemies, and many of the finest and most spectacular surviving temple structures belong to this period.52 This situation contrasts most strikingly with that visible during the First Persian Period for which, despite its length, there is surprisingly little evidence of large-scale architectural work, and the Second Persian Period has nothing to offer the Persians were quite simply more interested in economic exploitation and paid little more than lip-service to the cultural aspirations of their Egyptian subjects. We should see the close relationship between the first two Ptolemies and Manetho, a high priest from the Delta city of Sebennytos, in very much the same light; he is only the best known and most visible exemplar of a shrewd policy of identifying able ecclesiastics who could be mobilized to serve the ends of the government. This stalwart was commissioned to write a history of Egypt from its very beginnings down to the last native dynasty to the greater glory of Egypt in general and that of the Ptolemaic kingdom in particular. He is also alleged to have acted as an agent in the development
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trained up to fight in this modern fashion with which they had previously been quite unfamiliar. At this point it will be clear that the economic and administrative structure of the country had been well orchestrated to provide the resource-base for the early Ptolemies political and military ambitions, and it comes as no great surprise to find the historian Appian, a native of Alexandria, writing (History of Rome, Preface 10):
The kings of my country alone had an army consisting of 200,000 foot, 40,000 horse, 300 war elephants, and 2000 armed chariots, and arms in reserve for 300,000 soldiers more. This was their force for land service. For naval service they 2000 barges propelled by poles, and other smaller craft, 1500 galleys ranging from hemiolia to pentrs,60 and galley furniture for twice as many ships, 800 vessels provided with cabins, gilded on stem and stern for the pomp of war, with which the kings themselves were wont to go to naval combats; and money in their treasuries to the amount of 740,000 Egyptian talents. Such was the state of preparedness for war shown by the royal accounts as recorded and left by the king of Egypt second in succession after Alexander [i.e Ptolemy II Philadelphos], who was the most formidable of these rulers in his preparations.61
Even allowing for some exaggeration,62 we can take these figures as an indication of the enormous success that the early rulers of the dynasty enjoyed in building up the power and wealth of their kingdom. Apart from military muscle, all of this could, and did, contribute to the generation of that most desirable of acquisitions lamprots, splendour; the navy, in particular, with its emphasis on large and powerful polyremes could be used as a means of projecting an image of inexhaustible might and riches, but the Ptolemies went well beyond that and exploited many different devices. Alexandria itself was a tool of political and, above all, dynastic propaganda, and enormous sums were expended on the creation of a city which had no rival in the Hellenistic world so that Strabo (17.1.8), who visited Alexandria shortly after the Roman conquest, leaves us in no doubt of its capacity to dazzle the visitor or of the motivation of its creators:
The city has magnificent public precincts and the royal palaces, which cover a fourth or even a third of the entire city area. For just as each of the kings would from love of splendour add some ornament to the public monuments, so he would provide himself at his own expense with a residence in addition to those already standing, so that now, to quote Homer, there is building after building.
Other major features such as the Lighthouse, the Royal Tombs including that of Alexander, the splendid and conspicuous temple of Serapis which could be seen from far out to sea, the Library, and the Museum, can all be
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firmly under Macedonian control. However, short though his time in Egypt was, he was able to inaugurate a seismic shift in the kingdom whereby Egypt came to locate itself in the wider Graeco-Macedonian world rather than forming part of a great Asiatic empire, and this process accelerates between 323 and 305. Ptolemy I consolidated these trends, thereby making it once more an independent kingdom: he established himself and his dynasty in the country on a permanent basis, and, like Alexander, he showed sensitivity to the susceptibilities of the Egyptians and used Egyptians where he could. He even attempted through the development of the cult of Serapis to create a common religious bond, though this was conspicuously unsuccessful. The issue of the validation of Ptolemaic kingship was carefully addressed to meet the requirements of all major constituencies, but none of this could alter the basic fact that Egypt was to the Ptolemies the milch cow which supplied the resources needed to meet their political and military ambitions. As for the Egyptian population, at one level the issue of validation was straightforward. Whatever the origins of the ruler, his position could only be formulated for them in terms of the Pharaonic office. All rulers, conquerors or otherwise, were conceptualised as divine kings according to strict Egyptian royal dogma, and that is exactly what happened with all those whom we have considered. However, outside official contexts, where kings had to be treated formally as kings, attitudes could be very different. The Persians of the Second Domination were heartily detested, and no building operations were ever attributed to them, as far as we know. Alexander and the Ptolemies, on the other hand, were much more accommodating, and their respect for Egyptian tradition, well-calculated solicitude for the elites, and no doubt their admiration for the ancient culture of Egypt gained them an acceptance which made a fruitful symbiosis possible. Ultimately this was to lead to an ever greater acceptance of Egyptians into the higher levels of the court and the army which might have achieved complete integration, had it not been for the very different steer initiated by the Roman conquest which created a cultural environment which was to lead gradually but ultimately to the destruction of Pharaonic civilization itself.
Notes 1 For detailed discussions see Kienitz 1953, 99111; Olmstead 1960, 43741; Lloyd 1983, 2878; 1992, 365; 1994b, 3445; 2000, 390. 2 Kienitz 1953, 1859; Lloyd 1988b, 15960. 3 On the career of this most remarkable man see Turner 1984, 11933; Ellis 1994; Huss 2001, 90249.
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assume that Alexander and his half -brother used the same prenomen: cf. Quirke 1990, 75. 34 Sethe 1904, 9 no. 7. 35 Sethe 1904, 10 no. 8; Barguet 1962, 137. 36 It is written Ilksidrs, omitting the n. 37 Since Apries was a legitimate king deposed by a usurper, there may be a claim to legitimacy lurking here. For Apries career see Lloyd 1988c, 16982. 38 A recurrent motif in Ptolemaic texts: see Winnicki 1994. 39 See Hlbl 2001, 1420; Ritner, in Simpson 2003, 3934. 40 On Macedonian kingship and the state system see Granier 1931; Errington 1974; Lock 1977; Greenwalt 1984; Adams 1986; Hatzopoulos 1987; Hammond 1989, 4970, 38295; Borza 1990, 23152; Anson 1991; Ogden 1999, 340. 41 On these issues see the indispensable Ogden 1999. 42 See Austin 1981, 38. 43 See Fraser 1972, vol. 1, 222 ff; Stewart 1993; Erskine 2002. Note the prominence of references to Alexander in the great procession of Ptolemy II (see below). 44 Gardner 1974, 68. 45 Austin 1981, 5960. 46 Austin 1981, 624. 47 This process and its implementation is another important feature of Ptolemaic kingship which shows itself clearly in the Great Procession. Through Alexander the sacred family derived its ancestry from Zeus himself. The Zeus connection was also asserted through the close association of the Ptolemaic royal family with Dionysos, another son of the ubiquitous King of Gods and Men. In general see Koenen 1993; Hlbl 2001, 77123. 48 The Canopus Decree from the reign of Ptolemy III provides an excellent example of the workings of this phenomenon: see Austin 1981, 3668. On the nature of Hellenistic kingship see Goodenough 1928; McEwan 1934; Schubart 1937; Walbank 1984, 62100; Davies 2002; Ma 2003; Chaniotis 2003. 49 Hlbl 2001, 36, 112. Carneys discussion (1987) is still the most judicious. 50 See, in particular, Manning 2003. 51 Thompson 1988, 10654, particularly 108, 110, 13846. 52 For a key to Ptolemaic temple building see Wilkinson 2000, index, s.v. Ptolemy; Shafer 2005, index, s.v. Ptolemaic and Roman periods, Ptolemy. 53 On Manetho see Fraser 1972, index, s.v. Manethon; Thissen in Helck and Otto 1972, iii, 11801; Mosshammer 1979. 54 Much has been written on Serapis: see, e.g., Fraser 1972, vol. 1, 24659; Stambaugh 1972; Merkelbach 1995. 55 Huss 1994; Lloyd 2002, 119: cf. Baines 2004, 3361. 56 Lloyd 2002, 12331. 57 See references in n. 54. This view runs counter to canonical doctrine but is beginning to take root. 58 Satrap Stele, l.7; Ritner in Simpson 2003, 394. 59 Polyb. 5.107.13, Austin 1981, 3712. 60 The hemiolia or one-and-a-halfer was a relatively light, manoeuvrable, and very fast type of vessel which served much the same purposes as frigates in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Exactly how the oarage system was arranged has been much
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Bibliography Abd el-Raziq, M. 1984 Die Darstellungen und Texte des Sanktuars Alexanders des Groen im Tempel von Luxor, Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Abteilung Kairo, Archologische Verffentlichungen 16, Mainz am Rhein. Adams, W. L. 1986 Macedonian kingship and the rights of petition, Ancient Macedonia 4, 4352. Anson, E. M. 1991 The evolution of the Macedonian army assembly, Historia 40, 23047. Austin, M. M. 1981 The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest. A selection of ancient sources in translation, Cambridge. Baines, J. 1996 On the composition and inscription of the Vatican statue of Udjahorresne, in P. der Manuelian (ed.) Studies in Honor of William Kelly Simpson, I, Boston, 18392. 2004 Egyptian lite self-presentation in the context of Ptolemaic rule, in W. V. Harris and G. Ruffini (eds) Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece, Leiden and Boston, 3361. Barguet, P. 1962 Le temple dAmon-R Karnak. Essai dexgse (Recherches darchologie, de philologie et dhistoire 21), Cairo. Borza, E. N. 1990 In the Shadow of Olympus. The Emergence of Macedon, Princeton. Bouch-Leclercq, A. 19037 Histoire des Lagides, Paris.
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Carney, E. 1983 Regicide in Macedonia, Parola del Passato 38, 26072. 1987 The reappearance of royal sibling marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt, Parola del Passato 237, 42039. Casson, L. 1958 Hemiolia and Triemiolia, JHS 78, 1418. 1971 Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World, Princeton. Chaniotis, A. 2003 The divinity of Hellenistic rulers, in Erskine 2003, 43145. Curtis, J., and N. Tallis. 2005 Forgotten Empire. The World of Ancient Persia, London. Davies, J. K. 2002 The interpenetration of Hellenistic sovereignties, in D. Ogden (ed.) The Hellenistic World. New Perspectives, London, 121. Ellis, W. M. 1994 Ptolemy of Egypt, London. Errington, R. M. 1974 Macedonian Royal Style and its Historical Significance, JHS 94, 2037. Erskine, A. 2002 Life after death: Alexandria and the body of Alexander, Greece & Rome 49, 16379. 2003 (ed.) A Companion to the Hellenistic World, Oxford and Malden, Mass. Fraser, P. M. 1972 Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols, Oxford. Gardner, J. F. 1974 Leadership and the Cult of the Personality, London and Toronto. Goddio, F. 1998 Alexandria: The submerged royal quarters, London. 2000 Cleopatras Palace, London. Goddio F. and Bernand, A. 2004 Sunken Egypt: Alexandria, London. Goddio F. and Clauss, M. 2006 Egypts Sunken Treasures, Munich and London. Goodenough, E. 1928 The political philosophy of Hellenistic kingship, Yale Classical Studies 1, 55102. Granier, F. 1931 Die makedonische Heeresversammlung, Munich. Greenwalt, W.S. 1984 The search for Arrhidaios, AncW 10, 6977. 1989 Polygamy and succession in Argead Macedonia, Arethusa 22.1, 1945. Grimm, G. 1998 Alexandria. Die erste Knigstadt der hellenistischen Welt, Mainz am Rhein. Hammond, N. G. L. 1989 The Macedonian State. The origins, institutions and history, Oxford. Hatzopoulos, M. B. 1987 Succession and regency in Classical Macedonia, Ancient Macedonia 4, 27992.
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1994b Egypt, 404332 BC , in CAH 2 VI, 33760. 2000 The Late Period (664332 BC ), in I. Shaw (ed.) The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford, 36994. 2002 The Egyptian elite in the early Ptolemaic period. Some hieroglyphic evidence, in D. Ogden (ed.) The Hellenistic World. New Perspectives, London and Swansea, 11736. 2007 Darius I in Egypt: Suez and Hibis, in C. Tuplin (ed.) Persian Responses. Political and cultural interaction with(in) the Achaemenid empire, London, 99115. Lock, R. 1977 The Macedonian army assembly in the time of Alexander the Great, Classical Philology 72, 91107. Ma, J. 2003 Kings, in Erskine 2003, 17795. Manning, J. 2003 Land and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt, Cambridge. McEwan, J.F. 1934 The Oriental Origin of Hellenistic Kingship, Chicago. Merkelbach, R. 1995 Isis regina Zeus Sarapis. Die griechisch-aegyptische Religion nach den Quellen dargestellt, Stuttgart and Leipzig. Mosshammer, A. 1979 The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition, Lewisburg. Ogden, D. 1999 Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death. The Hellenistic dynasties, London and Swansea. Olmstead, A. T. E. 1960 History of the Persian Empire (Reprint of 1948 edn), Chicago. Porter, B., Moss, R. L. et al. 1927 Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs, and Paintings, 8 vols, Oxford. Pfrommer, M. 1999 Alexandria. Im Schatten der Pyramiden, Mainz am Rhein. Praux, C. 1978 Le monde hellnistique: la Grce et lOrient de la mort d Alexandre la conqute romaine de la Grce (323146 av. J.-C.), 2 vols, Paris. Quirke, S. 1990 Who were the Pharaohs? A history of their names with a list of cartouches, London. Ray, J. D. 1988 Egypt 525404 BC , in CAH 2 IV, 25486. 2001 Alexandria, in S. Walker and P. Higgs (eds) Cleopatra of Egypt from History to Myth, 2001. Rice, E. E. 1983 The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Oxford. Schubart, W. 1937 Das hellenistisches Knigsideal nach Inschriften und Papyri, APF 12, 116. Sethe, K. 1904 Hieroglyphische Urkunden der griechisch-rmischen Zeit. I. Historisch-biographische
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II In his small but, as usual, extremely important essay on Alien Wisdom, the late Arnaldo Momigliano dealt with, inter alia, the Greek view of the Persians after Alexander, saying that, if the Persians of old lingered on in the imagination of Hellenistic man, the contemporary Persians were almost forgotten.2 With this statement, Momigliano undoubtedly referred especially to Persis, the Persians original province, the cradle of the Achaemenid Kings of Kings. In fact, if one added up Greek and Latin literary and epigraphical testimonies referring to Fars and its history between 280 and 140 BC the Iranians themselves were relying on an oral historical tradition there would be only twelve references, mostly comments made in passing or short impressions rather than coherent accounts. It is, therefore, not surprising that for a long time Ancient
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Historians have paid little attention to this period of Iranian history. In addition, certain scholars of the past decades may have had a preference for Greco-Macedonian cultural achievements on Iranian soil. This does not seem tangible in Fars. In my Habilitationsschrift, I attempted to shed light on the dark ages of Fars and ever since, I have tried to make further progress.3 However, before trying to judge anew the history of southwestern Iran in pre-Sasanian times, we have to go back to the time of Alexanders arrival in Persis in the year 330 BC. Achaemenid rule ended, at least in western Iran, with the burning of Persepolis and the murder of Darius III. Alexander followed the Persian example in Persis, just as he had done earlier in the western part of the Persian Empire, and behaved like an Achaemenid. This is noticeable in his argumentation, his adoration of the memory of Cyrus II, his honouring of the dead adversary, Darius, his marriage policy, and so forth. The reason for this behaviour was so that he could be recognised as a rival and, later, as a legitimate heir to Darius III. The destruction of Xerxes palaces and treasuries on the terrace of Persepolis which can probably be explained by Alexanders unsuccessful attempt to enlist support from the inhabitants of Persis at the beginning of his rule did not result in his giving up these efforts, nor did the later execution of the satrap Orxines who was seen as a potential rival and adversary. The Persophile Peukestas turned out to be the man who was, on the one hand, absolutely loyal to Alexander and who, on the other, gave the inhabitants of Persis (or rather their nobility) the feeling that everything would remain the way it had been. These endeavours were successful with a large part of the nobility, because Alexander and Peukestas apparently did not touch either the Achaemenid system of local dependencies and local administration, or the basic ideas of the Persian ideology of kingship. There is no other way to explain the fact that nothing is heard about unrest in Persis after Peukestas appointment, that the new satrap could levy troops there without difficulty, and that a great number of nobles collaborated with Alexander.4 This support from the nobles for their new Persophile Macedonian masters continued until the second century BC, as will be shown later on. This does not mean that there was no opposition at all against Macedonian rule in Fars the negative image of Alexander in the Zoroastrian part of the Iranian tradition is proof of the hostile attitude of at least parts of the population;5 however, for a long time, this attitude did not lead to unrest and revolts in Fars. As far as religious policy is concerned, we can also find signs of Alexanders and Peukestas efforts to receive recognition in Persis. Here, two historical episodes should be sufficient. Shortly before the defeat of the diadoch Eumenes by Antigonos in 316 BC, Peukestas arranged a feast in
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was unable to guarantee an unequivocal date for the frataraka-. A new situation arose during the 1970s when excavations of the preceding decades gave a new impulse to the studies of ancient Iran. One thinks of the excavations at Pasargadae, Persepolis and at other sites where post-Achaemenid strata were exposed; in addition, there were also archaeological surveys in Fars, which showed that Persis had remained a fertile and densely populated region even after the rule of Alexander.12 Besides, successful attempts have been made to rediscover the archaeology of the Hellenistic period on the other side of the Persian Gulf. Here, the most important excavations are those on Failaka and Bahrain. Thus, in the 1990s, it seemed promising for me to examine anew the post-Achaemenid source material and available archaeological remains in order to shed light upon the so-called dark ages of Persis. This was a light which certainly did not promise to become radiant, but which was illuminating. According to my research, Persis remained relatively quiet for more than a century after Alexanders campaign.13 An exception was the internal Seleucid Molon conflict in 220 BC. Some unrest is also mentioned by Polyaenus 7.39, which can probably be dated to the rule of Seleukos I. According to Polyaenus, a Macedonian commander by the name of Seiles had instigated a massacre by his subordinate katoikoi of 3000 insurgent Persians under the pretence that these Iranians should have been his allies in his alleged fight against Seleukos. But this event seems to have remained a single episode. For a long time, and also recently, certain scholars most of them numismatists have tried to date the beginning of the frataraka- coinage to the period around 300 or 280 BC, and to associate the archaeologically detectable partial destruction of the citadel of Pasargadae, the Tall-i Takht, with a rebellion of the Persians under the frataraka Baydad.14 This thesis seems disputable, as numismatic-typological observations indicate a close connection between the coins of the frataraka- and those of the second century sub-Parthian kings of Persis.15 Furthermore, the literary, epigraphical and archaeological evidence also speaks for a rather late date of the frataraka- reign. For example, there is no indication whatsoever of a third century loss or reclaiming of Persis by the Seleucids. If a successful Persid revolt had occurred in the first half of the third century BC, Persis ought to have lost its independence again before the Molon rebellion, for which a Seleucid satrap of Fars, Alexander, is mentioned in the sources.16 Information about the founding of towns in south-western Iran by Antiochos I,17 about the rebellion of Molon, about Persid katoikoi at Raphia in 217 BC,18 and an inscription concerning Antiochos IIIs remarkable stay at Antioch-in-Persis in the year 205 BC19 all seem to indicate that Fars had
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the first dynasts who minted coins, Ardakhshir and Wahbarz, did not rule without the approval of the Seleucids, irrespective of the question of their dating. The similarity of the images and certain symbols on the early frataraka coins to Achaemenid iconography has long been emphasised, and it has been concluded that Baydad, who has until recently been considered to be the first frataraka,30 must already have broken away from the Seleucids. The images of ruler on the throne, or ruler in devotional pose in front of a fire altar on coins of Baydad (Figs 1 and 2) and his predecessors were actually modelled after the so-called treasury-reliefs from Persepolis and the funerary reliefs from Naqsh-i Rustam. Symbols, such as the standard, the throne with arms, the sceptre and the pole are also known from the Achaemenid period. Although such scenes and symbols may indicate that the frataraka saw themselves as custodians of the Persian heritage of the Achaemenids, they are not necessarily signs of independent
Fig. 1. Baydad, Tetradrachma (Klose and Mseler 2008, type 2/2, plate 3)
Fig. 2. Baydad, Tetradrachma (Klose and Mseler 2008, type 2/3, plate 3)
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Fig. 3. Wadfradad, Drachma (Klose and Mseler 2008, type 2/23, reverse, plate 6)
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We can therefore conclude that any period of political independence in Persis can only have been quite short. If Wahbarz had attempted a revolt, which might perhaps be connected with the destruction level at the end of Pasargadaes third settlement period,36 then Wadfradad I was the dynast who proclaimed Persid independence by means of his coins. Wahbarzs rebellion, which might have come to an end during Antiochos IIIs Elymaean campaign in 187 BC,37 cannot have been successful, since his successor Baydad as is proved by his coins and the historical circumstances was again a loyal governor of the Seleucids. If they are are not fakes, then the two previously-unknown coins that show Wahbarz-Oborzus killing a kneeling Macedonian soldier (Fig. 4) would be proof of the rebellion and a visual expression of Polyaenus 7.40.38 Wadfradad I, however, was probably the man whom the Seleucid king Demetrios II asked for assistance against the Parthian king Mithradates I in 140 BC.39 The immediate successor and namesake of Wadfradad, who was the last to mint tetradrachms, presumably already ruled his subjects on behalf of the Arsacids. That Mithradates I left the dynasts in office with their right to mint coins is an indication of a sub-Seleucid phase of frataraka rule. One would assume that the Parthians returned to the conditions in existence before Wadfradad I rather than granting partial autonomy to the Persis dynasts together with the right to mint coins as something completely new. This is all the more likely as the Arsacids came under heavy pressure from Antiochos VII and the Sacas between 140 and 129 BC. The seat of the frataraka- in the second century BC was presumably Persepolis and not yet Stakhr. In any case, there was intense building activity on and below the terrace during their reigns. Artaxerxes IIIs staircase faade was moved from palace G to Palace H. To the west, a wall
Fig. 4. Wahbarz, Drachma (Klose and Mseler 2008, type 2/16a, reverse, plate 6)
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As for religious life in Persis during the early Hellenistic period, contemporary burial practices show that early post-Achaemenid Persis was not completely Zoroastrian. The burials of the Persepolis Spring Cemetery, the cairn burials and the fact that most astodans and ossuaries must be dated to the Sasanian period, point to a religiously mixed southwestern Iran under the frataraka-, just as under the Achaemenids.48
III Thus, we can come to some conclusions. Although the frataraka- stressed their close ties to the Achaemenids, and although they recognised the close connection between Persid rule and divine choice and support they were not magi themselves nevertheless they did not consider themselves to be Achaemenids and Great Kings. They did not adopt this title, the headgear of the Great King or other symbols of Persian royalty. With their choice of the sub-Achaemenid satraps tiara they did express their claim to regional rule, first as subordinates of the Seleucids, later as independent rulers, but they did not take over the Achaemenid claim to power outside the borders of Persis. Thus, it is not surprising that their rule did not come to an end in the Arsacid era. With their limited goals, the frataraka were no serious danger and no obstacle to the legitimacy of the Parthians who called themselves Great Kings and acted as rulers of an Empire which went beyond the Iranian borders. Presumably, the Seleucids, for their part, had not been afraid of their rule being threatened by these dynasts after long periods of loyalty and peace in Persis. The Persid and the contemporary Babylonian evidence proves that at least the early Seleucid kings up to Antiochos III in accord with their Achaemenid predecessors acted flexibly, wisely and successfully towards their indigenous subjects, and respected and supported local traditions and institutions.49 Therefore, the Greek ignorance of Persian affairs in Hellenistic times noted by Momigliano should not be confused with the actual policy of the Macedonians. On the contrary, the silence of the sources might even reflect the success of this policy. It is not surprising that the previously loyal autochthonous Persian elite did not feel encouraged to break away from Seleucid rule until Antiochos IIIs defeat by the Romans (Wahbarz) and until the general weakness of that rule became apparent after the death of Antiochos IV ( Wadfradad I).
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2 1st half of 2nd Oborzus Century BC 3 1st half of 2nd Bagadates Century BC (Bades)
Baydad
Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Dietrich Klose (Staatliche Mnzsammlung Mnchen) for providing me with images of the Frataraka coins mentioned in the text.
Notes 1 See the excellent recent overview and commentary in Callieri 2007, especially pp. 115ff. 2 Momigliano 1975, 138. 3 Wiesehfer 1994; 2001; 2004, 10514; 2007. 4 The Achaemenid traits of Alexanders ideology and actions were clearly brought out by Briant 2002, 81771; 2003; 2005; cf. Wiesehfer 1994, 2349. 5 Wiesehfer 1995; forthcoming (a). 6 Diod. 19.22.23. 7 Wiesehfer 1994, 534. 8 Wiesehfer 1994, 723. Pictures of three of the inscriptions can be found in Rougemont 1999, 6; Callieri 2007, 57. 9 Wiesehfer 1994, 55f. 10 This is the main subject of Wiesehfer 1994. 11 Wiesehfer 1994, 1058. For the debate on the interpretation of the coin legend frataraka - bayan cf. Callieri 2007, 12830.
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Wiesehfer 1994, 63. Wiesehfer 1994, 57ff. 14 For the older literature, see Wiesehfer 1994, 11517. The most recent titles are Mseler 2005/6; Klose and Mseler 2008; Hoover 2008; Curtis, forthcoming. Klose and Mseler date the beginning of the frataraka-coinage to the early third century BC, noch zu Lebzeiten oder unmittelbar nach dem Tod Seleukos I. Nikator (p. 15). For the Tall-i Takht, cf. Callieri 2004. 15 Cf. Alram 1986, 16286; see, however, Klose and Mseler 2008, 33, who postulate a clear typological caesura between the first series of frataraka-coins (beginning to middle/second half of the third century BC: Baydad, Ardakhshir, Wahbarz, Wadfradad I) and the second one which is said to have started only a short while before the Parthians suzerainty over Fars ( Wadfradad II, Unknown King, Darayan I, Wadfradad III, Wadfradad IV (Alram: Wadfradad III, 2nd series)). Thus, they assume a minting break at Persepolis of about 100 years. In my view, apart from the obvious numismatic debate on the significance of typological criteria, both authors underestimate the importance of the literary tradition and the general political situation. 16 Polyb. 5.40ff. 17 OGIS 233; Steph. Byz. s.v. Stasis. 18 Polyb. 5.79.38. 19 OGIS 231. 20 Salles 1987, 919; 1994 a and b; 1996, 2602; Potts 1990, 927, 178f. 21 Sachs and Hunger 1989, no. -183 A rev. 1213 (= p. 358f.). 22 Wiesehfer 1994, 936, 115ff. 23 Livy 37.401. 24 Pliny, HN 6.152. 25 Shayegan, forthcoming, dates this episode to 164 BC. 26 Justin 36.1.4. 27 Wiesehfer 1994, esp. 11529. 28 In 1994, I postulated, like all other scholars, the following sequence of the first dynasts: Baydad, Ardakhshir, Wahbarz, Wadfradad I. With the help of overstampings, however, Hoover (2008) was able to prove that it should be Ardakhshir, Wahbarz, Baydad, Wadfradad I. 29 Strabo 15.3.24. 30 Cf. note 28. 31 Wiesehfer 1994, 1068. 32 Wiesehfer 1994, 11012. 33 Alram 1986, 168f., pl. 17f., no. 53343. For the man in the winged disc, cf. Wiesehfer 2003. 34 Alram 1986, 169, pl. 18, no. 544f. 35 Polyaen. 7.40. 36 Wiesehfer 1994, 129. 37 Shayegan, forthcoming. 38 First coin: Alram 1987a, pl. 20.7; second coin: Bivar 1998, fig. 26b; see also Klose and Mseler 2008, 36 and pl. 6, type 2/16a and b. However, some numismatists doubt their authenticity (M. Alram, personal communication March 2006), and the new sequence of Persid rulers which has Wahbarzs successor Baydad as a sub-Seleucid dynast does nothing to reduce those doubts.
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Bibliography Alram, M. 1986 Nomina Propria Iranica in Nummis (Iranisches Personennamenbuch IV), Vienna. 1987a Eine neue Drachme des Vahbarz (Oborzos) aus der Persis?, Litterae Numismaticae Vindobonenses 3, 14755. 1987b Die Vorbildwirkung der arsakidischen Mnzprgung, Litterae Numismaticae Vindobonenses 3, 11746. Alram, M. and Gyselen, R. 2003 Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum Paris Berlin Wien, vol. I: Ardashir I Shapur I, Vienna. Bivar, A. D. H. 1998 The Personalities of Mithra in Archaeology and Literature (Biennial Yarshater Lecture Series, 1), New York. Briant, P. 2002 From Cyrus to Alexander. A history of the Persian empire, Winona Lake. 2003 Darius dans lombre dAlexandre, Paris. 2005 Alexandre le grand, 6th ed., Paris. Callieri, P. 2004 Again on the chronology of the Tall-e Takht at Pasargadae, Parthica 6, 95100. 2007 Larchologie du Fars lpoque hellnistique (Persika, 11), Paris. Curtis, V. S. forthcoming Kings of Persis: bridging the gap between Achaemenid and Sasanian Persia, in J. Curtis et al. (eds), Proceedings of the Achaemenid Conference, London. Eddy, S. K. 1961 The King is Dead. Studies in Near Eastern resistance to Hellenism (33431 BC), Lincoln.
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Hoover, O. D. 2008 Overstruck Seleucid coins, in A. Houghton and C. Lorber, Seleucid Coins: A comprehensive catalogue, vol. II/1, New York, 20930. Klose, D. O. A. and Mseler, W. 2008 Statthalter Rebellen Knige. Die Mnzen aus Persepolis von Alexander dem Groen zu den Sasaniden, Munich. Momigliano, A. 1975 Alien Wisdom, Cambridge. Mseler, W. 2005/6 Die sogenannten dunklen Jahrhunderte der Persis. Anmerkungen zu einem lange vernachlssigten Thema, Jahrbuch fr Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 55/56, 75103. Panaino, A. 2003 The ba an of the Fratarakas: Gods or Divine Kings?, in C. G. Cereti, M. Maggi and E. Provasi (eds) Religious Themes and Texts of Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia. Studies in honour of Prof. Gherardo Gnoli on the occasion of his 65th birthday on 6th December 2002 (Beitrge zur Iranistik, 24), Wiesbaden, 26588. Potts, D. T. 1990 The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 2, Oxford. Rougemont, G. 1999 Inscriptions grecques dIran, in Empires perses dAlexandre aux Sassanides (Dossiers dArchologie, 243), Dijon, 67. Sachs, A. J. and Hunger, H. 1989 Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, vol. 2, Vienna. Salles, J.-F. 1987 The Arab-Persian Gulf under the Seleucids, in A. Kuhrt and S. SherwinWhite (eds) Hellenism in the East, London, 75109. 1994a Le Golfe arabo-persique entre Seleucides et Maurya, Topoi 4.2, 597610. 1994b Fines Indiae, Ardh el-Hind: Recherches sur le devenir de la mer Erythre, in E. Dabrowa (ed.), The Roman and Byzantine Army in the East, Krakw, 16587. 1996 Achaemenid and Hellenistic trade in the Indian Ocean, in J. Reade (ed.), The Indian Ocean in Antiquity, London, 25167. Shayegan, M. R. forthcoming Arsacids and Sasanians. Political ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia (Sasanidica, II), Los Angeles. Wiesehfer, J. 1994 Die dunklen Jahrhunderte der Persis (Zetemata, 90), Munich. 1995 Zum Nachleben von Achaimeniden und Alexander in Iran, in H. SancisiWeerdenburg, A. Kuhrt and M. C. Root (eds), Achaemenid History VIII: Continuity and Change, Leiden, 38997. 1996 Discordia et Defectio Dynamis kai Pithanourgia. Die frhen Seleukiden und Iran, in B. Funck (ed.) Hellenismus. Beitrge zur Erforschung von Akkulturation und politischer Ordnung in den Staaten des hellenistischen Zeitalters, Tbingen, 2956.
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PART III
THE POLIS
7 EARLY HELLENISTIC RHODES: THE STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE AND THE DREAM OF HEGEMONY Hans-Ulrich Wiemer
1. Introduction Independence and hegemony were to the Greeks closely related. This relationship was at once antithetical and complementary. For those who were subject to others, the struggle for independence of course meant throwing off the hegemony of those to whom they were subject. For those, however, who were able to maintain their independence, hegemony was an aim worth striving for. Freedom was conceived as being at its maximum if it included domination over others. Liberty was a relative and dynamic concept, and therefore hegemony seemed to be the perfect realisation of what independence really meant: a state in which the citizen-body was in full, unlimited control of the conditions of its own existence. If illustration were needed, the history of Classical Athens would supply it in abundance, both in the fifth century when for some decades it really was a hegemonic power on a grand scale, and in the fourth when it was haunted by what Ernst Badian has aptly called the ghost of empire.1 The Hellenistic Age by contrast is often seen as a time when city states were no longer able to pursue hegemonic aims, and there is clearly much to be said for this view. The decades following the death of Alexander saw the emergence of new kingdoms that held sway over huge stretches of land and controlled enormous resources. These new kingdoms could raise large armies of professional soldiers that were far superior in both numbers and
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skill to the troops that single city-states could muster and therefore attained the status of super-powers dominating the structure and course of political events.2 In these circumstances even powerful city-states that had up till then played a leading role in Greek politics were forced drastically to reduce the scale of their political ambitions. Athens was unable to rebuild the glorious fleet it had lost in 322 and fell under the domination of Macedon for much of the third century.3 Sparta, by now reduced to Lakonia proper, was only a shadow of its former self, desperately trying to reverse the losses of power and territory that it had suffered during the fourth century.4 Rhodes would seem to be an exception in this new world of Greek citystates that came to acquiesce in their subjection to superior powers, or at least in no longer being able to play a leading role themselves.5 The island of Rhodes formed the core of a state organized on the polis-model that is assumed by many to have experienced a meteoric rise to economic prosperity and political independence as soon as Alexander had died; this interpretation sees Rhodes as continually striving for the suppression of piracy, the promotion of peace, and the preservation of a balance of power among the great monarchies, until the Rhodians had to yield their independence under Roman pressure after the Third Macedonian War.6 These basic strategic objectives, so we are told, were determined by mercantile interests that were of paramount importance to the Rhodian state. If we leave aside the concept of a balance of powers which cannot be translated into Greek and is, of course, more than slightly anachronistic when applied to the Hellenistic world,7 most of the conceptual elements contained in this rosy picture of a republic that consistently followed a policy of promoting peace and fighting pirates can be traced back to sources, both literary and epigraphic, that either are by their very nature expressions of political ideology this holds true for public inscriptions or can at least be shown to express a specifically Rhodian view of the islands role in Greek history and politics taken over from the sources they were following this, I believe, holds true for most of what Diodorus and Polybius tell us about Rhodes.8 These programmatic statements should therefore be taken for what they are worth: as political propaganda that as such is quite interesting but cannot serve as a reliable guide to the aims and principles of Rhodian policy. They have to be tested against the facts, as our sources allow them to be reconstructed once we have freed ourselves from the mirage rhodien. In this chapter I intend to do two things: first, to look at how the Rhodians managed to break free from foreign domination to which they had been subject, with some short interruptions, throughout most of the
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fourth century, and, second, to examine what evidence there is for Rhodian claims to political hegemony before the middle of the third century. 2. The struggle for independence Rhodian history in the fourth century was one of internal strife and foreign domination.9 The political unification of the island brought about by the synoecism of the three old cities of Ialysos, Kameiros and Lindos had been achieved with Spartan help and was originally intended to ward off Athenian imperialism. This concentration of the islands resources did not, however, immediately result in giving the Rhodian state strength and stability. In the 390s Rhodes was torn between pro-Spartan and proAthenian factions until the democrats finally succeeded in ousting their opponents and brought Rhodes into an alliance with Athens again. In the Social War fought between 357 and 355 the Rhodians freed themselves from Athenian hegemony only to come under the domination of the Hecatomnid satraps of Karia. Ruled by an oligarchy that relied on Hecatomnid garrisons, the Rhodians were unable to form a foreign policy of their own and had no option but to follow wherever they were led. The arrival of Alexander the Great did little to change this pattern: when the Rhodians submitted to the king who had won the battle of Issos, they only changed masters again. Thus while the oligarchy made way for a democracy that was to remain stable for centuries to come, the garrisons under Hecatomnid command were replaced by one answering to the orders of Alexander.10 Only after Alexanders death did the Rhodians take their first steps towards independence, expelling their Macedonian guests soon after they heard the news from Babylon.11 This was a bold decision to make since it involved the risk of reprisals from whoever was to be ruler in Alexanders stead.12 Luckily for the Rhodians, Alexanders marshals at court were sharply divided and had more pressing concerns than tackling the Rhodians. Because of the Lamian war that broke out in July 323, Macedonian efforts at sea were at this time largely directed against Athens and her fleet that threatened to cut off the sea-lanes between Macedon and Asia Minor until it was decisively defeated near Amorgos in the summer of 322.13 Furthermore, the satrap of Karia had been deposed at Babylon, and his successor, Asandros, who does not seem to have had any roots in the area, needed local support to have his authority recognized and was therefore well advised not to antagonize the Rhodians;14 taking sides with Antigonos and Antipater against Perdikkas and Eumenes in 321,15 he was confirmed at the conference of Triparadeisos in winter 321/320, but suffered defeat at the hands of the Perdikkans Alketas and Attalos in the
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spring of 320. Before that, however, the Rhodians had repelled a large army led by Attalos alone that was attacking so Photius Epitome of Arrians History of the Successors tells us Knidos, Kaunos and Rhodes.16 These successes, remarkable as they are, did not protect the Rhodians from falling under the hegemony of a stronger power again. The sources are silent as to the Rhodians stance during the first two wars fought between the diadochs of Alexander, but during the Third Diadoch War (315311) we find them standing firmly on the side of Antigonos. They not only allowed Antigonos to build warships in Rhodian docks, thus enabling him to strengthen considerably his naval power. In 312, after Antigonos had in a brilliant campaign driven his enemies from Karia,17 they even entered into a formal alliance with him and subsequently provided ships for an expedition led to Greece by Antigonos nephew Polemaios.18 Any claims to being neutral were thus waived; the Rhodians had chosen to take sides for Antigonos and against Kassander, Lysimachos, and last but not least, Ptolemy. These events would be completely unknown to us if Hieronymos of Kardia had not thought fit to report them in his History of the Successors which is the main source used by Diodorus in book 1820 of his universal history.19 The Rhodian source which lies behind Diodorus account of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrios had no interest in handing down to posterity details that were detract from the view that the Rhodians had always had a special relationship with Egypt and the Ptolemies. This view, still fashionable with many modern historians, goes back to a tradition that only developed after the Rhodians had, with help from Ptolemy and others, been able to withstand the Great Siege led by Antigonos son Demetrios; on Rhodes itself it was enshrined in public rituals of commemoration instituted soon after the events,20 and it also found its way into the patriotic historiography which Polybius justly, if not without personal bias, accused of sacrificing objectivity to the aim of glorifying Rhodes.21 When the Rhodians early in 306 were faced with the demand to contribute ships for Antigonos expedition against Ptolemys bases on Cyprus they knew nothing of this supposed special relationship which in political terms was simply non-existent. But why then, one might ask, did they refrain from participating in the war against Ptolemy, unlike the Athenians, for example, who contributed no less than 30 ships to the fleet of their saviour and liberator Demetrios? 22 Two explanations that might at first sight seem attractive do on inspection turn out to be inadequate: first, the supposed economic symbiosis of Rhodes with Egypt and, second, the alleged Rhodian concern for a balance of power. Now economic interests can hardly have been the decisive factor when the assembled
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citizenry of Rhodes decided not to comply with Antigonos demand, because commercial relations with the realm of Antigonos were for the Rhodians just as close as those with Egypt; furthermore, a final victory over Ptolemy even offered the prospect of an eastern Mediterranean empire where trade would have found most favourable conditions.23 If the Rhodians had given absolute priority to economic interests they might as well have decided to join Antigonos. As for the balance of power, the anachronistic nature of this concept has been noted above. Of course, the Rhodians must have had political reasons for refraining from taking sides in the war between Antigonos and Ptolemy, if their decisions were not determined by commercial interests. But it seems unnecessary and positively misleading to ascribe to the Rhodians concern for interests other than their own independence. The Rhodians did not want to join Antigonos against Ptolemy because the outcome of the war was unforeseeable, because they stood to gain little by it, even if Antigonos won, and because they did not want to cede control over their military to a foreign power. That is, of course, what most Greek city-states wanted to avoid, if only circumstances would have let them. If the Rhodians felt strong enough to act accordingly, that does not, however, imply that they thought a military conflict with Antigonos was unavoidable. On the contrary, there are good reasons for believing that the Rhodians were convinced that their disobedience to Antigonos would go unpunished, as had their expelling of Alexanders garrison. We happen to know that the Rhodians were not alone in defying the wishes of Antigonos, since the city of Byzantion had shortly before refrained from participating in the Third Diadoch War, but nevertheless managed to keep up friendly relations with him.24 The Rhodians were less lucky. Being defeated in Egypt in the autumn of 306, Antigonos ordered his son Demetrios to lay siege to the city of Rhodes, unless the Rhodians came round to joining him against Ptolemy. When protracted negotiations led to nothing, the siege began in the summer of 305 and lasted until the summer of the next year, when Demetrios got orders to leave Rhodes in order to fight Kassander on the Greek mainland.25 3. The dream of hegemony When Demetrios left, the Rhodians had ample cause for rejoicing. They had withstood a siege that might have resulted in the physical destruction of their city, and prevented their island from being occupied by a foreign garrison that would have ensured that in the future Rhodian decisions were taken with due consideration of Antigonid wishes. They even got their autonomy formally recognized by Antigonos in the treaty concluded at the
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end of the siege.26 But the Rhodians still were far from having reached independence, since by virtue of this very treaty they became allies of Antigonos again and even had to hand over to him 100 hostages selected by Demetrios from among the political elite. Even if it were true, then, that the obligation to give military help to Antigonos did not extend to wars between Antigonos and Ptolemy, as the Rhodian tradition followed by Diodorus maintains, the Rhodians freedom of action was still severely restricted, as far as foreign affairs were concerned. If, however, the restrictive clause reported by Diodorus did in fact only apply to wars of aggression, as I am inclined to believe, the Rhodian hostages in Antigonid hands clearly were a powerful argument, in case there should arise any doubt as to who was the aggressor in a conflict between Antigonos and Ptolemy. We have no means of telling whether Rhodian troops really did participate in the great battle of Ipsos which in 301 marked the end of Antigonid power in Asia Minor. It is clear, however, that after this battle Rhodian dependence on the Antigonids was a thing of the past. As the end of the Great Siege in 304 had been due to political developments on the Greek mainland in which the Rhodians had no part, so their final breakthrough to full independence was in large measure the result of military events that were out of their control, but worked to their advantage. No narrative account of Rhodian history has survived to continue where the patriotic tale of the Great Siege told by Diodorus ends, and we have to wait for Polybius to get once again something like a coherent picture of events pertaining to the island. Accordingly, the 80 years or so of Rhodian history between 304 and 220 are shrouded in an almost impenetrable mystery. To be sure, there is one partial exception: Polybius famous digression on the donations made by kings and cities after Rhodes had been struck by an earthquake in 228 or 227.27 This account, however, does not help very much when it comes to understanding the aims and means of Rhodian policy in the period not covered by Polybius narrative, apart from revealing the fact that in the last third of the third century the Rhodians were courted by most of the great powers and not formally bound to any of them. For the earlier part of the third century one has to look at miscellaneous sources of a very heterogeneous nature, and to them I shall now turn. When the great siege ended, the island of Rhodes was thoroughly devastated. Demetrios troops had been ravaging and plundering the countryside for a whole year. The booty collected was sufficient for Demetrios to make a generous donation to the gods that had watched over
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the refoundation of Thebes.28 On the other hand, since Demetrios had left behind the siege-engines that had failed his expectations so disastrously, the Rhodians were able to raise the sum of 300 talents of silver from the proceeds of selling them.29 There can be no doubt that Rhodian finances recovered soon, since in 294, at the latest, work on the famous Colossus began, which must have been an enormously expensive enterprise.30 Though precise figures on how much the Colossus cost are lacking, we can at least form an idea of the scale of expenses involved. The author of an imperial treatise on the Seven Wonders of World known as Philon tells us that 500 talents of bronze and 300 talents of iron were consumed in building the monument, and from Polybius we learn that Ptolemy III donated 3000 talents of bronze for its repair after the earthquake of 228 or 227.31 Of course we do not know the precise equivalents of the measures used by the two authors. But even assuming the lowest equation (1 talent = 20.4 kg), Philons figures amount to more than ten tons of bronze and six tons of iron, certainly a huge investment to make in a monument that served no practical purpose. Clearly the symbolic value of the Colossus was to the Rhodians immense. In raising the issue of the Colossus political significance I do not intend to enter into the perennial debate on what the Colossus looked like, which in my opinion is bound to remain inconclusive unless perhaps one day new evidence turns up.32 What I would like to stress here is quite simply the sheer size of the Colossus that by far surpassed that of any victory monument erected by a Greek city-state up until then. The Colossus was, and was perceived to be, nothing short of gigantic.33 Athenaeus quotes from a play of the early Hellenistic poet Sopatros34 where for comic effect the huge bronze Colossus to be seen on Rhodes is juxtaposed with the Alexandrian predilection for lentil-dishes (I could not, looking upon the huge bronze Colossus, eat a loaf of lentil bread).35 That this impression was widely shared in early Ptolemaic Alexandria can now be demonstrated from one of the epigrams by the poet Posidippus of Pella that have only recently been deciphered.36 This epigram, composed in the first decades after the Colossus had been completed, has reached us in what seems to be a carefully structured book of poetry authored by Posidippus alone;37 it comes near the end of a sequence of nine epigrams on statues () centred on Lysippos as the culmination of a development towards naturalism and precision in sculpture. The Colossus is in this context singled out to demonstrate that the artistic achievement of Chares, a disciple of Lysippos, was based on a clear understanding of the importance of scale in sculpting statues that are larger than life:
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[] , [] [] [] [] [] , [ ] [] [ ][].
The Rhodians wanted to make the [gigantic] Sun Twice as big, but Chares of Lindos ensured That no artisan would build a colossus higher than this one. If Myron managed to reach the limit of four cubits he, that venerable fellow , Chares was the first with art to make a bronze figure [to match the magnitude] of the earth.
Posidippus here praises Chares not so much for making the largest of all statues as for knowing that there is a limit to the size of every work of art, even to that of a colossus.38 Without Chares sense of proportions Rhodian ostentation would have spoiled what was to become a unique work of art. His epigram should, therefore, be read as a critical comment on Rhodian megalomania that would have gratified readers who identified themselves with the Ptolemaic court (where Lysippan art was highly esteemed) and regarded Alexandria as the centre of the world in both politics and arts.39 This sort of criticism coming from a poet who was close to the court of Ptolemy II 40 presupposes that in Ptolemaic Alexandria the Colossus was not only acknowledged to be unsurpassable as a larger-than-life statue, but also understood to be the visual expression of Rhodian aspirations to greatness. There is little doubt that this is exactly what the Rhodians wished to convey by raising the Colossus. Unfortunately we still do not know exactly where this statue of Helios was placed. Wolfram Hoepfner has recently re-argued the case for placing the Colossus at the eastern end of the naval harbour of Rhodes where today stands the fort of St. Nicholas.41 To this proposal, Ursula Vedder has raised the objection that the Colossus would have been dedicated in the sanctuary of Helios; according to her, the Colossus stood on top of the acropolis where she locates the sanctuary of this god that has still to be identified on the ground.42 In any case, from the magnitude of the monument it seems clear that the Colossus was intended to serve as a visual point-of-reference for everyone entering the city from abroad. The statue of Helios rose to the staggering height of 70 cubits, which, depending on the measure used, works out at 30 to 35 metres. It thus made a powerful visual statement about the islands status as an independent player in Greek politics, serving as a symbol of its prosperity and might.
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But the Rhodians were not content with thus staking a symbolic claim to being a powerful and independent state. They also had an epigram incised on or near the Colossus that gave a more specific interpretation of how they understood their political role among the Greeks. This epigram, transmitted in the Palatine Anthology (6.171), the Anthology of Planudes (6.1) and the Suda (s. v. ), has by some been considered to be a purely literary exercise that was composed much later than the completion of the Colossus, and I must confess once to have adhered to this view myself.43 In the Palatine Anthology it comes in a group of miscellaneous epigrams on dedications (6.158178) that follows an unbroken sequence taken from the Garland of Meleagros of Gadara, the first comprehensive anthology of epigrams known to us. His collection was published not long after 100 BCE and had a profound influence on the transmission of Hellenistic epigrams, being excerpted around 900 CE for the common source of both the Palatine and the Planudean Anthology.44 Before stating the reasons why I have come round to joining those who believe that our epigram originally served as dedicatory inscription for the Colossus45 before it came to be included either in the Garland of Meleagros or some later collection, it will be convenient to give text and translation:
, , , . , .
To you, O Sun, did the people of Dorian Rhodes raise high to the heavens this brazen colossus, then, having laid to rest the wave of war, they crowned their country with the spoils of their foes. Dedicating it not only over the sea, but on the land, too, they raised the splendid light of unenslaved freedom. For to those who spring from the race of Herakles a heritage both on land and sea is leadership. 46
The reasons for preferring the view that the epigram in fact is what it purports to be an epideictic piece of political propaganda composed for public display on the Colossus it celebrates are twofold. First, if the epigram were a literary composition, one would expect the name of an author to be attached to it. That it has been transmitted anonymously can
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easily be explained if it was copied from the monument on which it was inscribed without giving an indication of authorship. Literary epigrams, on the other hand, were not published without naming their authors, and anthologists like Meleagros or Philippos of Thessalonike recorded them carefully.47 Of course it cannot be ruled out completely that the authors name somehow got lost, but that seems rather unlikely in view of the fact that collecting literary epigrams for the purpose of arranging them as an anthology began already in the late second century BCE (if not earlier) when information on their authorship cannot have been very difficult to obtain.48 Second, there is an epigram by Alkaios of Messene that clearly echoes our epigram in both form and substance, using similar language to ascribe to Philip V just the lordship by land and sea as is being claimed for the Rhodians in the one under discussion:
, . , .
Heighten your walls, Olympian Zeus; to Philip everything is accessible. Shut the brazen gates of the gods. Under Philips sceptre, earth and sea lie vanquished: there remains the road to Olympos.49
Considering that Alkaios was a writer seriously engaged with contemporary politics,50 it seems far-fetched to interpret his epigram as an exercise in intertextuality designed to outdo a literary composition of uncertain authorship. Read as a reply to the way the Rhodians presented themselves as dedicants of the Colossus, however, Alkaios epigram fits perfectly into the context of the war Philip led against the Rhodians from 201197.51 If the dedicatory epigram for the Colossus is authentic,52 it constitutes a priceless document of Rhodian self-representation in the early third century that deserves to be looked at closely. That the Colossus is here being praised as a skyscraping monument financed from the spoils of war is perhaps too obvious to need stressing. It does not seem necessary either to point to the fact that it depicts the Rhodians as valiant and victorious descendants of Herakles. According to Rhodian tradition, the three old cities were founded by the Homeric hero Tlapolemos, a son of Herakles.53 What does need emphasizing, however, is that the idea of freedom in this epigram is inextricably bound up with the idea of political leadership or, to use another word, with the idea of hegemony.54 The Rhodians have by raising the Colossus established the splendid light of unenslaved freedom this proud declaration implies the claim actually to have reached what
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all Greek city-states aspired to: independence from foreign domination. But this happy state of freedom amounts in their own perception to a position of leadership on both land and sea55 that raises them high above the others and leaves no doubt about who is in command. Considering the fact that we are reading a text that was in all probability commissioned and approved by the Rhodian assembly one could hardly ask for a more telling expression of the view that hegemony is the maximum realisation of freedom, if only for the hegemon. There are a few other pieces of evidence that tend, I believe, to corroborate the view that the Rhodians began to dream of hegemony as soon as they had shaken off the yoke of foreign domination. There was a famous precedent for a sudden change like this: two centuries earlier, the Athenians had quickly assumed a hegemonial role among the Aegean Greeks once Xerxess army had been driven from Greece. It is in this context that I would like to interpret the so-called Chariot of the Rhodians, known from a Delphian decree for Rhodian judges who in 179 vainly tried to arbitrate between Delphi and Amphissa.56 We know that this chariot was gilded and can infer that it was driven by Helios who was often represented as a charioteer. For maximum visibility, the quadriga was placed on a massive pillar almost eight metres high that to this day still carries the dedication by the Rhodian people to Pythian Apollo.57 To be sure, opinions are divided as to when the pillar was erected: while the dedicatory inscription has been dated to the first half of the third century by that eminent specialist in Delphian epigraphy and chronology Georges Daux,58 an investigation of the techniques used in building the pillar has led to the conclusion that the monument was raised in the last quarter of the fourth century.59 From a historical point of view, however, a date before the Great Siege seems unlikely, since advertising Rhodian freedom and might in a major Panhellenic sanctuary would have been pointless as long as their independence had not been finally secured against Alexanders successors.60 That Rhodian freedom and might is indeed the political message of the monument seems evident not only from its being dedicated in the Delphian sanctuary of Apollo but even more from its prominent position inside this very sanctuary: the pillar carrying the chariot of Helios stood just opposite the temple of Apollo and in close proximity to the famous tripod commemorating the Greek victory over the Persians at Plataea (Fig. 1). For this reason, the Delphian monument of the Rhodians makes much better sense when it is connected with the great siege: having fought off Demetrios, the Rhodians presented themselves to the Greek world at large as an independent power able to defend Greek freedom against kings who cultivated an image of being invincible.
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Fig. 1. The Rhodian pillar in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi seen from the east: hypothetical reconstruction ( Jacquemin and Laroche 1986: 305, EfA/D. Laroche).
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A decree of Argos gives further support to the assumption that already in the first half of the third century the Greek mainland was included in the range of political commitments into which the Rhodians were prepared to enter. This decree, passed sometime between 300 and 250, testifies to a loan the Rhodians had in the past given to the Argives and the other Greeks as the phrase runs; the decree gives thanks to the Rhodians for having granted the Argives further time for repayment after the original deadline had run out.61 In the present state of the evidence it would be futile to speculate on the precise circumstances in which this loan, amounting to the sizeable sum of 100 talents, was granted; but given the fact that it was given to what seems to be a coalition of states called The Greeks and was used for military purposes repairing the citys walls and improving its cavalry one can hardly doubt that it was prompted by one of the large-scale wars of the late fourth or early third century in which many states on the Greek mainland were actively or passively involved. The impression one gets is that the Rhodians were extending their political connections right across the Aegean, even though at this early date they apparently refrained from sending troops or ships to a region so far from their island. 4. Epilogue If such were Rhodian pretensions in the first half of the third century, reality lagged far behind their aspirations. The Rhodians were at this date still preoccupied with establishing their hegemony in the immediate neighbourhood of their island. Their possessions on the mainland opposite Rhodes were for much of the third century confined to small habour towns on the Karian Chersonesos proper; only when in about 240 by the grace of Seleukos II they got hold of the city of Stratonikeia did they get access to the interior of Karia.62 And it was not before the last quarter of the third century that the small neighbouring islands of Telos and Nisyros became part of the Rhodian state.63 Granted, Rhodian influence in the Cyclades began slowly to rise when the Ptolemaic protectorate over the League of the Islanders fell into abeyance after 250.64 But a new league of islanders under Rhodian leadership only came into being some decades later, after the Rhodians had in 201 decided to attack Philip V of Macedon, thus starting what was to be become the Second Macedonian War of the Roman Republic.65 It was in the brief period between the war of the Rhodians against Philip V and the end of the Third Macedonian War waged by the Roman Republic that the Rhodians came closest to realizing their long-held dream of hegemony. From 200 to 168 they were in firm control over the Cyclades.
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Like Athens in the fifth century they stationed garrisons on islands such as Tenos that were formally allied to them and served as naval bases for the Rhodian fleet.66 When the allied city of Keos was suspected of disloyalty against the people of Rhodes, Kean representatives were summoned to answer these charges before the Rhodian assembly.67 Rhodian imperialism reached its height after Antiochos III had been defeated by the Romans with the help of the Rhodian navy.68 Not long afterwards the Rhodians had the famous Nike erected as a victory monument in the sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace where in close proximity to donations and dedications made by Ptolemaic and Antigonid kings it was to proclaim the greatness and might of the Rhodian republic.69 The Roman senate showed its gratitude to the Rhodians by assigning them part of the territories ceded by Antiochos in the treaty of Apameia,70 and the Rhodians immediately set out to organize Karia and Lykia as parts of a Rhodian zone of hegemony.71 To be sure, the Rhodians promised liberty to the cities of Karia and Lykia, but it was liberty granted on Rhodian terms. These terms were negotiable, but they did not exclude Rhodian interference in internal affairs or the imposition of tribute; if necessary, they were enforced by Rhodian arms. This is not the place to retell the sombre story of how the Rhodians tried by force to impose their rule on Lykian cities unwilling to submit to foreign domination, and how this attempt finally failed, after many years of guerrilla warfare had caused enormous losses to Rhodian finances and devastated parts of Lykia.72 I must also refrain from analysing Rhodian attempts at gaining a hegemonial position in Karia by striking treaties of alliance with many cities on the coast and by stationing garrisons in some others like Stratonikeia and Kaunos.73 That this vast hegemonial zone comprising the whole Aegean plus Karia and Lykia soon proved to be a house of cards is hardly cause for surprise to us. Rhodian resources might have been sufficient to control the small city-states of the Cyclades, but they were clearly vastly overstretched when it came to controlling dozens of cities in Southwest Asia Minor many of which were quite sizeable and had a large inland territory. Because of this, Rhodian hegemony in Karia and Lykia was from the start dependent on its being seen to be supported by the will of Rome. When, therefore, the senate withdrew its favour after the crushing defeat of Perseus that Rhodian diplomacy had tried to prevent, Rhodian rule in these regions broke down quickly.74 Fearing Roman reprisals, the Rhodians now dropped all pretensions to neutrality and submissively asked to be accepted as allies of Rome. It took four long years of humiliation before in 164 the Rhodians finally were deemed worthy of becoming allies of Rome, albeit on unequal
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terms.75 The dream of hegemony on a more than local scale was over now, even if Rhodes continued to have allies of its own down into the first century BC.76 Acknowledgements I should like to thank Andrew Erskine for reading the manuscript and for helpful suggestions to improve it in both form and substance. As this chapter was completed in 2007 I have not been able to take full account of the literature published since then.
Notes 1 Badian 1995. 2 As a political history of the Hellenistic world Will 1979/1982 remains unsurpassed; in English there is now Errington 2008. For a recent synthesis on the hellenistic monarchies see Virgilio 2003. 3 On early Hellenistic Athens see the magisterial treatment in Habicht 1995. 4 A recent account of Hellenistic Sparta by Paul Cartledge is to be found in Cartledge and Spawforth 2002, 390 with notes at 23551. 5 There exists no up-to-date account of the Rhodian state to supersede that of Gelder 1900, 17888. The institutions are briefly surveyed in Gabrielsen 1997, 2431; the political decision-making process is analyzed in Wiemer 2002a, 212; Wiemer 2002b, 5812; Grieb 2008, 263353 (to be used with caution). For Archaic and Classical Rhodes see Nielsen and Gabrielsen 2004 (with ample bibliography) and for a fanciful account of Rhodian grandeur before the synoikismos Kowalzig 2007, 22466. 6 Berthold 1984, 58. 7 The belief that Rhodian policy was aimed at preserving a balance of power for the Hellenistic world generally is shared, inter alios, by Schmitt 1957, 55 and by Ager 1991, 10. On the history of the modern concept see Fenske 1975, 95996 and Anderson 1993, 149203. 8 A detailed analysis of the literary tradition is to be found in Wiemer 2001 (summarized in Wiemer 2002b, 56372). 9 On Rhodian history between the synoecism and Alexanders arrival in Asia Minor see Berthold 1984, 1937 and Wiemer 2002a, 5366. 10 Hecatomnid garrison: Dem. 15.15; Macedonian garrison: Curt. 4.8.1213, Diod. Sic. 18.8.1. 11 Diod. Sic. 18.8.1. 12 On the settlement reached in Babylon after Alexanders death see now the detailed treatment in Bosworth 2002, 2963. 13 On operations at sea during the so-called Lamian war see, e.g., Engels 1993, 38492. 14 On Karia in the late 320s see the detailed study by Varinlioglu et al. 1990. I accept the low chronology defended inter alios by Bosworth 2002. 15 Arr. Succ. F 1.37 = FGrH 156 F 9.37; Arr. Succ. F 25.12 = FGrH 156 F 10.7; Iust. 13.6.14; Diod. Sic. 18.39.6 (confirmation); Arr. Succ. F 1.41 = FGrH 156 F 11.42
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(defeat). Several inscriptions show Asandros to have been in control of inner Karia by 319/8: I.Stratonikeia 501 (323/2); I.Amyzon 2 (321/20); I.Mylasa 21 (319/8?); SEG 33.872 (319/8?); I.Stratonikeia 503 (319/8). But that does not necessarily apply to the coastal cities; the stephanephorate of Asandros in Miletos (I.Milet 122, col. II, line 101) dates from 314/3 or 313/2. 16 Arr. Succ. F 1.39 = FGrH 156 F 11.39 (on this see Wiemer 2002a, 6871). 17 On this see Billows 1990, 11621. 18 On this see Hauben 1977 and Wiemer 2002a, 717. 19 For Hieronymos as the main source of Diodorus in Book 1820 see the convincing analysis in Hornblower 1981, 1875. That the account of the siege of Rhodes is drawn from a Rhodian source, presumably Zenon, has been argued by Wiemer 2001, 22250. 20 Cult of Ptolemy I: Diod. Sic. 20.100.34; Gorgon FGrH 519 F 19 = Ath. 15.696F. A priesthood of Ptolemy I is attested as late as c. 200 BC: Segre 1941, 30, lines 1617. The best analysis is still to be found in Habicht 1970, 10910, cf. 2578. 21 Polyb. 16.1420, esp. 14.110; 17.811. I have commented on these passages in Wiemer 2001, 1927. 22 On relations between Athens and Demetrios in the period 307301 see Habicht 1995, 7688. Athenian ships in the sea-battle of Salamis: Diod. Sic. 20.50.3. The battle is analysed in Seibert 1972, 190206. 23 Polyaenus (4.6.16) reports that during the siege Rhodian seafarers were present in harbours all over the Levant. People from Syria, Phoenicia and Asia Minor form the majority of foreigners that are attested on Rhodian inscriptions: Morelli 1956, 1356; Sacco 1980. From the Testament of Alexander that was forged on Rhodes and became part of the Alexander Romance it is clear that the Rhodians imported as much corn from Asia Minor as they did from Egypt: Hist. Alex. 3.33.8; Epit. Mett. 108; cf. RC 3, lines 805. 24 Byzantine refusal to assist Antigonos in the Third Diadoch War: Diod. Sic. 19.77.7. Honorary statues for Antigonos and Demetrios raised in Olympia by the Byzantines between 305/301: Syll.3 349351. 25 I have analysed the literary tradition on the siege in Wiemer 2001, 23850 and tried to reconstruct the events and their causes in Wiemer 2002a, 8491. 26 Diod. Sic. 20.99.3. 27 Polyb. 5.8890 with ample commentary by Walbank 1957, 61622. On Polybius sources of information and the political message they were aiming to convey see Wiemer 2001, 339. 28 Attested in a well-known inscription (Syll.3 337) commented on by Holleaux 1938 and by Bringmann and Steuben 1995, no. 83. 29 Plin. HN 34.43. 30 The date depends on whether one reads in the Codex Bambergensis of Plin. HN 34.43 the numeral LVI or LXVI. 31 Philon Mirab. 4.6; Polyb. 5.88.3. 32 Older reconstructions are briefly reviewed and a new one is suggested in Hoepfner 2003. On the methodological problems involved see Vedder 2004. 33 A convenient collection of the textual sources on the Colossus known before the Posidippus-papyrus was deciphered can be found in Hebert 1989, 1645 Q 28103, a thorough analysis in Vedder 2000.
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Sopatros stemmed from Paphos on Cyprus, but seems to have migrated to Alexandria; according to Ath. 2.71ab his life extended from the reign of Alexander the Great down to that of Ptolemy Philadelphos. The testimonia on his life and the 25 fragments from his works (all from Athenaeus) are conveniently assembled in Kassel and Austin 2001, 27587. 35 Sopatros lines on the Colossus appear in a speech that Athenaeus (4.158D) puts into the mouth of the Cynic Kynoulkos: , ,
34
, , | . What exactly the character in Sopatros play was meaning to say by this is
unclear, and commentators have suggested widely differing interpretations. Of the two interpretations proposed in Kaibel 1909, 192 (sententia aut ego Alexandrinus Rhodii vivere nequeo aut Rhodiis cum licet, Alexandrinis panibus non vescor) and repeated by Kassel and Austin 2001, 276 (who refer to F 9 = Ath. 3.109E where Rhodian bread is mentioned) the first seems to fit the context much better since Kynoulkos describes lentil-dishes as an Alexandrian speciality (thus Fraser 1972, II 875 n. 16: The sense might be: I would not be able to eat my lentil bread if I went to live on Rhodes). Perhaps, however, something more specific is meant: that the Colossus was so breathtaking a sight that looking upon it took away completely the Alexandrians otherwise insatiable appetite for lentil-bread. 36 I quote text and translation from Austin and Bastianini 2002, 901 no. 68. There is a short commentary in the editio princeps by Bastianini and Gallazzi 2001, 1946. 37 See the contributions assembled in Gutzwiller 2005 and also Porter, this volume, who gives particular attention to questions of scale. 38 On this see Gutzwiller 2002, 567. 39 This is clear from the Posidippan epigram on a statue of Philitas of Kos that was dedicated at the order of Ptolemy II: Austin and Bastianini 2002, 867 no. 63 with Gutzwiller 2002, 468. 40 On this Fraser 1972, I 55960 with II 7967 n. 445 remains fundamental. 41 Hoepfner 2003, 5364. 42 Vedder 2004, 11112. The complex of buildings located on the foot of the acropolis where a series of honorary statues of priests of Helios and several other inscriptions have been found (Kontorini 1989, 12984) seems small to have served as the sanctuary of the most important god of Rhodes: Hoepfner 2003, 439. 43 Theodor Bergk (1872) ascribed the epigram to Alkaios of Messene, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff is reported by Beckby 1967/1968, I 691 (cf. IV 556) to have thought it unsuitable for inscription on the Colossus, and Silvio Accame (1947, 959 believed that it was composed not long after 200 BC (cited with approval by Wiemer 2001, 223). 44 On the sources of book VI of the Palatine Anthology see Waltz 1931, 326, Beckby 1967/1968, I 4413 and Cameron 1993, 1218. Gow and Page 1965 do not include Anth. Pal. 6.171 among the anonymous epigrams they attribute to Meleagros Garland, but Cameron 1993, 123 thinks that the whole group Anth. Pal. 6.158178 comes from Meleager, Philip, and Agathias combined which for Anth. Pal. 6.171 can only mean Meleagros. 45 Thus, e. g., Hiller von Gaertringen 1931, 781 and Gow and Page 1965. II 588:
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This epigram was plainly inscribed on or near the statue, presumably soon after its completion, and it may be assigned with some approval to the first quarter of the third century BCE . 46 Anth. Pal. 6.171. My translation is based on that of William Paton in the Loeb edition but with some alterations: In l. 3 I take to go with rather than with because there is a caesura after , and because there is no parallel for expanding the Aeschylean metaphor wave of war by adding the adjective brazen. In l. 5 I prefer the Planudean reading over the Palatine which in my opinion must refer to an object which in this context it was unnecessary to express. 47 According to the calculations of Gow 1958, 202 only 76 epigrams in Meleagros collection were unascribed. Anonymous epigrams form only a small fraction of the total transmitted via the Palatine and Planudean Anthologies. 48 On earlier collections of epigrams and their limited scope see Cameron 1993, 513. 49 Anth. Pal. 9.518. Translation adapted from that of William Paton in the Loeb edition. 50 Alkaios later turned against Philip (Anth. Pal. 9.519; 11.12) and praised Titus Flamininus as liberator of Greece: Anth. Pal. 16.5; Plut. Flam. 9.2 (with Anth. Pal. 7.247). On the anonymous Anth. Pal. 16.6 see Walbank 1942. 51 Thus, rightly, Walbank 1942, 1346. 52 The Planudean Anthology (16.82) preserves a iambic two-liner describing Chares as sculptor of the Colossus. Since it is already cited by Strabo 14.2.5, it may well have stood on the Colossus as well (thus Gow and Page 1965, II 5889), though the first four words seem inappropriate for that purpose and may be a late intrusion into the text replacing something like (proposed by Cameron 1993, 2945). 53 On his cult see Morelli 1959, 1756; on his representation in Rhodian mythology Wiemer 2001, 2115. I deal with Tlapolemos as a symbol of Rhodian identity in Wiemer, forthcoming (a). 54 This crucial point is also stressed by Gehrke 2003, 238. 55 On the meaning and history of this formula that can be traced back to the fifth and fourth centuries see Momigliano 1942/1960. 56 FD 3.383 = Syll.3 614 = Ager 1996, no. 117, I, l. 346:
[ , ] [ ] . 57 FD 3.378 = Syll.3 441: [][ ].
58 59
Daux 1943, 32932. Jacquemin and Laroche 1986, suggesting that the pillar was raised in commemoration of the expulsion of Alexanders garrison in 323. This suggestion, however, does not account for the fact that at the time it was far from clear whether the Rhodians would get through with their policy of independence. It had to be defended first against Attalos and then against Antigonos before it was generally respected. 60 In the same sense Rice 1993, 23942. 61 The different possibilities are discussed in the editions of Luigi Moretti (ISE 40) and Lopold Migeotte (1984: no. 19).
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The date when the Rhodians got hold of Stratonikeia has to be inferred from Poly. 30.31.6 and is highly disputed; I have defended my position in Wiemer 2002a, 1824. The complicated question of when and how Rhodian possessions on the mainland opposite their island developed is the subject of Wiemer, forthcoming (b). Among recent contributions to the debate are Gabrielsen 2000, Debord 2003 and Bremen 2004a and Bremen 2004b. 63 Evidence and discussion in Wiemer 2002a, 196. 64 More on this in Wiemer 2002a, 1928. 65 On the war of the Rhodians against Philip V see Wiemer 2002a, 198227. To the evidence there cited can now be added a decree of Eretria that has only recently been found and is reported to honour two Rhodians for having saved Eretrians who had been taken captives, presumably when L. Quinctius Flamininus conquered the city in 198: Knoepfler 2005, 3034. 66 For Rhodian presence on Tenos see the evidence discussed in Wiemer 2002a, 2734. 67 Keos: SEG 14.544 with my remarks in Wiemer 2002a, 219. 68 For Rhodian involvement in the war against Antiochos III see my discussion Wiemer 2002a, 23551, though Knoepfler 2005, 285308 has recently demonstrated that the decrees of Karthaia in honour of three officials of a king Antiochos which others, including myself, once believed to date from the reign of Antiochos III (SEG 48.1130) should rather be dated to the reign of Antiochos II and do not supply evidence for Seleukid control of the island of Keos. 69 Pending the final publication of the Nike monument by Ira Mark (for a preliminary report see Mark 1998), one has to have recourse to books like Knell 1995 whose general interpretation I share for the reasons given in Wiemer 2001, 1278. 70 On the settlement of Apameia see my analysis in Wiemer 2001, 12849; Wiemer 2002a, 2501; 277288. 71 On Rhodian domination in Lykia see Bresson 1999 and Wiemer 2002a, 26071. My interpretation would seem to be confirmed at least in principle, I believe by a new inscription from the little town of Melanippion in Lykia, see Adak 2007. 72 In addition to the contributions cited in the preceding note see my analysis of the literary sources in Wiemer 2001, 1518. 73 On Rhodian domination in Karia see Reger 1999, Wiemer 2002a, 2519 and Bresson 2003 and Wiemer, forthcoming (b). Rhodian garrisons in Kaunos and Stratonikeia are attested in Polyb. 30.21.3. The whole subject will have to considered anew in the light of an honorary decree passed by an anonymous city in honour of a Rhodian that has recently been found in Aphrodisias, for which see Chaniotis, forthcoming. 74 My views on Rhodian policy during the Third Macedonian War are set out in Wiemer 2002a, 298317. For different views see, e.g. Gruen 1975, 5881; Berthold 1984, 195212; Gabrielsen 1993. 75 On the Rhodian Treaty with Rome see my discussion in Wiemer 2002a, 3258. 76 Maiuri 1925, no. 18, l. 2930:
.
62
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Bibliography Accame, S. 1947 Alceo di Messene, Filippo V e Roma, Rivista Italiana di Filologia Classica n. s. 25, 94105. Adak, M. 2007 Die rhodische Herrschaft in Lykien und die rechtliche Stellung der Stdte Xanthos, Phaselis und Melanippion, Historia 56, 25179. Ager, S. L. 1991 Rhodes: The rise and fall of a neutral diplomat, Historia 40, 1041. 1996 Interstate Arbitrations in the Greek World, 33790 BC, Berkeley. Anderson, M. S. 1993 The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 14501919, London and New York. Austin, C. and Bastianini, G. 2002 Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia ediderunt, Milan. Badian, E. 1995 The ghost of empire. Reflections on Athenian foreign policy in the fourth century BC , in W. Eder (ed.) Die athenische Demokratie im 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Vollendung oder Verfall einer Verfassungsform, Stuttgart, 81106. Bastianini, G. and Gallazzi, C. 2001 Posidippo di Pella. Epigrammi (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309). Edizione a cura di G. B. e C. G. con la collaborazione di C. Austin, Milan. Beckby, H. 1967/68 Anthologia Graeca. Griechisch und Deutsch, 2nd edn, 4 Vols., Munich. Bergk, T. 1873 Ein Epigramm des Alkaios v. Messene, Philologus 32, 67881. Berthold, R. M. 1984 Rhodes in the Hellenistic Age, Ithaca and London. Billows, R. A. 1990 Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State, Berkeley. Boiy, T. 2007 Between High and Low. A chronology of the early Hellenistic period, Berlin. Bosworth, A. B. 2002 The Legacy of Alexander: Politics, warfare, and propaganda under the Successors. Oxford. Bremen, R. van 2004a Laodikeia in Karia, Chiron 34, 36799. 2004b Leon the son of Chrysaor and the religious identity of Stratonikeia in Caria, in S. Colvin (ed.) The Greco-Roman East. Politics, culture and society, Yale Classical Studies 31, Cambridge, 20744. Bresson, A. 1999 Rhodes and Lycia in Hellenistic times, in V. Gabrielsen et al. (eds) Hellenistic Rhodes: Politics, culture, and society, Aarhus, 98131. 2003 Les intrts rhodiens en Carie lpoque hellnistique jusquen 167 av.J.-C. in F. Prost (ed.) LOrient mditerranen de la mort dAlexandre aux campagnes de Pompe. Cits et royaumes lpoque hellnistique, Rennes, 16992. Bringmann, K. and Steuben, H. von 1995 Schenkungen hellenistischer Herrscher an griechische Stdte und Heiligtmer, Teil I:
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Zeugnisse und Kommentare. Bearbeitet von W. Ameling, K. Bringmann, B. Schmidt-Dounas, Berlin. Cameron, Alan 1993 The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Planudes, Oxford. Chaniotis, A. forthcoming New evidence from Aphrodisias concerning the Rhodian occupation of Karia and the early history of Aphrodisias, in R. van Bremen and J.-M. Carbon (eds) Hellenistic Caria, Bordeaux. Debord, P. 2003 Cit grecque village carien, Studi ellenistici 15, 11580. Debord, P. and Varinlioglu, E. 2001 Les hautes terres de Carie, Ausonius Publications. Mmoires 4, Bordeaux. Cartledge, P. and Spawforth, A. 2001 Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A tale of two cities, 2nd edn, London. Daux, G. 1943 Fouilles de Delphes, Tome III, Fascicule 3: Inscriptions depuis le Trsor des Athniens jusquaux bases de Glon, Paris. Engels, J. 1993 Studien zur politischen Biographie des Hypereides. Athen in der Epoche der Lykurgischen Reformen und des makedonischen Universalreiches, 2nd ed., Munich. Errington, R. M. 2008 A History of the Hellenistic World 32330 BC, Malden, Mass. Fenske, H. 1975 Gleichgewicht, Balance in O. Brunner et al. (eds) Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, Vol. II, Stuttgart. Fraser, P. M. 1972 Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 Vols., Oxford. Gabrielsen, V. 1993 Rhodes and Rome after the Third Macedonian War, in P. Bilde et al. (eds) Centre and Periphery in the Hellenistic World, Aarhus, 13361. 1997 The Naval Aristocracy of Hellenistic Rhodes, Aarhus. 2000 The Rhodian Peraea in the third and second centuries BC, Classica et Mediaevalia 51, 12984. Gelder, H. van 1900 Geschichte der alten Rhodier, The Hague. Gehrke, H.-J. 2003 Brgerliches Selbstverstndnis und Polisidentitt im Hellenismus, in K.-J. Hlkeskamp et al (eds) Sinn (in) der Antike. Orientierungssysteme, Leitbilder und Wertkonzepte im Altertum, Mainz am Rhein, 22554. Gow, A. S. F. 1958 The Greek Anthology. Sources and ascriptions, London. Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L. 1965 The Greek Anthology. Hellenistic epigrams, 2 Vols, Cambridge. Grieb, V. 2008 Hellenistische Demokratie. Politische Organisation und Struktur in den freien griechischen Poleis nach Alexander dem Groen, Stuttgart.
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Gruen, E. S. 1975 Rome and Rhodes in the second century BC: a historiographical Inquiry, CQ 25, 5881. Gutzwiller, K. 2002 Posidippus on statuary, in G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (eds), Il papiro di Posidippo un anno dopo, Studi e testi di papirologia n. s. 4, Florence, 4160. 2005 The New Posidippus. A Hellenistic poetry book, Oxford. Habicht, C. 1970 Gottmenschentum und griechische Stdte, 2nd edn, Munich. 1995 Athen. Die Geschichte der Stadt in hellenistischer Zeit, Munich. Hauben, H. 1977 Rhodes, Alexander, and the Diadochi from 333/332 to 304 BC , Historia 26, 30739. Hebert, B 1989 Schriftquellen zur hellenistischen Kunst. Plastik, Malerei und Kunsthandwerk der Griechen vom vierten bis zum zweiten Jahrhundert, Graz. Hiller von Gaertringen, F. von 1931 Rhodos, in: RE Suppl. V, 731840. Hoepfner, W. 2003 Der Kolo von Rhodos und die Bauten des Helios. Neue Forschungen zu einem der sieben Weltwunder, Mainz. Holleaux, M. 1938 Sur une inscription de Thbes, in idem, tudes dpigraphie et dhistoire grecques, Vol. I, Paris, 140. Hornblower, J. 1981 Hieronymus of Cardia, Oxford. Jacquemin, A. and Laroche, D. 1986. Le char dor consacr par le peuple rhodien, BCH 110, 285307. Kaibel, G. 1909 Comicorum Graecorum fragmenta, Vol. I, 1: Doriensium comoedia, mimi, phlyaces, Berlin. Kassel, R. and Austin, C. 2001 Poetae Comici Graeci, Vol. I: Comoedia Dorica, Mimi. Phlyaces, Berlin and New York. Knell, H. 1995 Die Nike von Samothrake. Typus, Form, Bedeutung und Wirkungsgeschichte eines rhodischen Sieges-Anathems im Kabirenheiligtum von Samothrake, Darmstadt. Knoepfler, D. 2005 La prtendue domination dAntiochos III sur Ks: propos de deux dcrets rcemment publis (SEG 48,1130), Chiron 35, 285308. Kontorini, V. 1989 II. Inscriptions indites de Rhodes II. Athens. Kowalzig, B. 2007 Singing for the Gods: Performances of myth and ritual in Archaic and Classical Greece, Oxford. Maiuri, A. 1925 Nuova silloge epigrafica di Rodi e Cos, Florence.
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Mark, I. S. 1998. The Victory of Samothrace, in O. Panagia and W. Coulson (eds) Regional Schools in Hellenistic Sculpture, Oxford, 15765. Migeotte, L. 1984 Lemprunt publique dans les cits grecques, Qubec and Paris. Momigliano, A. 1960 Terra marique, in idem, Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico, Rome, 43146 (reprinted from Journal of Roman Studies 32, 1942, 5364). Morelli, D. 1956 Gli stranieri in Rodi, Studi Classici ed Orientali 5, 12690. 1959 I culti in Rodi, Studi Classici ed Orientali 8, Pisa. Nielsen, T. H. and Gabrielsen, V. 2004 Rhodos, in M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen (eds) An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, Oxford, 1196210. Reger, G. 1999 The relations between Rhodes and Caria from 246 to 167 BC , in V. Gabrielsen et al. (eds) Hellenistic Rhodes: Politics, culture, and society, Aarhus, 7697. Rice, E. E. 1993 The Glorious Dead: Commemoration of the fallen and portrayal of victory in the late classical and the hellenistic world, in J. Rich and G. Shipley (eds) War and Society in the Greek World, London, 22457. Sacco, G. 1980 Su alcuni etnici di stranieri in Rodi, Rendiconti dellAccademia dei Lincei 35, 51728. Schmitt, H. H. 1957 Rom und Rhodos, Munich. Segre, M. 1941 Il culto rodio di Alessandro e dei Tolomei, Bulletin de la Socit Archologique dAlexandrie 34, 2939. Seibert, J. 1972 Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Ptolemaios I, Munich. Varinlioglu, E. et al. 1990 Une inscription de Pladasa de Carie, Revue des tudes Anciennes 92, 5978. Vedder, U. 2000 Der Kolo von Rhodos Mythos und Wirklichkeit eines Weltwunders, Nrnberger Bltter zur Archologie 16, 2340. 2004 Review of W. Hoepfner, Der Kolo von Rhodos und die Bauten des Helios, Gttinger Forum fr die Altertumswissenschaft 7, 110313. Virgilio, B. 2003 Lancia, diadema e porpora. Il re e la regalit ellenistica, 2nd edn, Pisa. Walbank, F. W. 1942 Alcaeus of Messene, Philip V, and Rome, CQ 36, 13445. 1957 A Historical Commentary on Polybius, Vol. I, Oxford. Waltz, P. 1931 Anthologie Palatine. Texte tabli et traduit, Tome III: Livre VI, Paris.
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Wiemer, H.-U. 2001 Rhodische Traditionen in der hellenistischen Historiographie, Frankfurt am Main. 2002a Krieg, Handel und Piraterie. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des hellenistischen Rhodos, Berlin. 2002b konomie und Politik im hellenistischen Rhodos, Historische Zeitschrift 275, 56191. forthcoming (a) Zenon of Rhodes and the Rhodian view of history, in B. Gibson and T. Harrison (eds) Polybius and his World: Essays in honour of F. W. Walbank, Oxford. forthcoming (b) Development and structure of the Rhodian Peraia: evidence and models, in R. van Bremen and J.-M. Carbon (eds) Hellenistic Caria, Bordeaux. Will, . 1979/1982 Histoire politique du monde hellnistique, 2nd edn, 2 Vols., Nancy.
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8 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PLATAIA FOR GREEK ELEUTHERIA IN THE EARLY HELLENISTIC PERIOD 1 Shane Wallace
Since the publication in 1973 of the honorary decree for Glaukon, son of Eteokles, of Athens, much attention has been placed not only on Glaukon himself but also on certain other features of the text, namely Plataia and the cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks.2 Plataia even alone resonated powerfully in Greek history, all the more so when combined with the concepts of freedom (eleutheria) and unity (homonoia). Much debate has focused on the origins of the cult of Homonoia of the Greeks. Two main schools of thought have developed: those who place its origin in the late fourth century in connection with Philip and Alexander and those who place it in the 260s, in connection with the political programme of the Chremonidean War.3 Both dates are possible, but I will argue for the former. A second point of debate is the origin of the Eleutheria Games, first attested in the early third century. Possibly originating in the fifth century, they were most likely re-organised in the late fourth century, perhaps under Alexander.4 My aim in this chapter is to look at Plataia and the cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks ensemble, from the re-foundation of Plataia in 337 until the Glaukon decree which is to be dated c.262245.5 In this way, the evidence may be treated both chronologically and in unison and new insights can perhaps be offered into the history and importance of both site and cult. I shall focus on Plataia at three points in time. All offer Panhellenic contexts, that is calls to Greek unity or freedom usually against a foreign power, and will be instructive for understanding the importance and function of Plataia at such times. Firstly, the years 337335 and the re-foundation of Plataia under Philip and Alexander. Here I shall argue that Plataias connection with Alexander and his presence in Boiotia in Boedromion 335 offers a prime context for the (re-)foundation of the Eleutheria Games and, perhaps, the joint cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks. Secondly, the Hellenic (Lamian) War of 323/2.6
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I contend that due to Plataias pro-Macedonian position the Greek alliance was unable to utilise her historical connections in the war for Greek eleutheria. Thirdly, the Chremonidean War (c.268262) and thereafter. Plataia formed an integral part of the wars ideology and we can see again her renewed importance in this struggle for Greek eleutheria. Throughout this chapter, my central argument will be that the dynamic and malleable nature of the memory of the Persian Wars allowed their historical tradition of unity, eleutheria, and the struggle against the barbarian to be continually appropriated by both Macedon and Athens to enforce their various hegemonies. Plataia was used by Macedon, specifically Alexander, to enforce Macedonian leadership in Greece and ensure support for the invasion of the Persian Empire. Her alliance with Macedon prevented Hyperides during the Hellenic War from invoking Plataias historical significance as a site closely connected with eleutheria. Later however, both during and after the Chremonidean War, Plataia was called upon again as a symbol of Greek eleutheria and unity against the barbarian, now Macedon. At the same time, however, Plataia itself conditioned the nature of these appropriations by providing an established ideological framework, both ideologically in the ideas encapsulated within its role in the Persian Wars and physically in the layout of the monuments commemorating this, onto which subsequent Panhellenic struggles had to conceptualise themselves. 1. Philip and Alexander, 337335 The duality of Alexanders position as patron of Plataia and destroyer of Thebes is so frequently discussed that it is in danger of becoming an academic topos. However, as is often the case, there is still something left to be said. Here I concern myself with two points, both of which deserve specific treatment. Firstly, the dogma passed by the League of Corinth in late 335 decreeing Thebes destruction. Contemporary with the patronage of Plataia, this dogma and its use by Alexander reveals much concerning his Panhellenism and use of the memory of the Persian Wars. Secondly, the important fact that Alexander was present in Boiotia and patronising Plataia in Boedromion 335, close to the anniversary of the battle of Plataia. The potential implications of this chronological point have yet to be explored. I contend here that Alexander actively used the memory of the Persian Wars, specifically as regards Thebes and Plataia, to enforce his control, formalised through the League of Corinth, over Greece and Greek historical memory. I will support the argument that the ideological context established by Alexander and the League of Corinth in Boedromion 335 led to the foundation of the Eleutheria and possibly the joint cult of Zeus
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Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks. Plataia was, however, a site of pre-existing ideological importance manifest through its history and standing monuments, both of which influenced the nature of any appropriation of Plataias historical significance. After Chaeronea Philip punished Thebes by installing an oligarchy of 300 and garrisoning the Kadmeia.7 Plataia was to be re-founded and the Delphic lists show that Plataia sent naopoioi from 337/6 onwards.8 During the siege of Thebes in 335 Plataians fought alongside Alexander (Arr. Anab. 1.8.8). Following Thebes revolt and destruction in late 335 the synedrion of the League of Corinth decided to re-build Plataias walls (Arr. Anab. 1.9.10) and it, along with other Boiotian cities, was awarded Theban land (Diod. 18.11.34). Plutarch adds that Alexander, flush with victory after Gaugamela, promised to rebuild Plataia and announced, at the Olympic Games of 328, that this was in gratitude for its actions on behalf of Greek freedom during the Persian Wars (Alex. 34.12, Arist. 11.9).9 These examples, limited though they are, reveal Plataias importance for Philip and Alexander on two counts. Firstly, and more generally, Macedonian support of Plataia went hand-in-hand with the punishment of Thebes and marked a new pro-Macedonian balance of power in Boiotia (Paus. 4.27.10, 9.1.8). Beyond Plataia, statues of Philip and Alexander at Thespiae imply that both patronised the city; Philip possibly re-founding it in 337 and Alexander donating Theban land in 335. Like Plataia, Orchomenos had its walls rebuilt by dogma of the League synedrion. AntiTheban sentiment ran deep and Thespiae, Orchomenos, Plataia, and Phokis fought with Alexander during the siege. Philips and Alexanders patronage of Plataia, and more generally the Boiotian cities, reversed the traditional model of Thebes as tyrant of the Boiotian cities, most notably Plataia, whom she destroyed in 373. A pro-Macedonian Boiotia kept Thebes in check, ensured the loyalty of central Greece, and allowed access to the Megarid and Peloponnese, as well as Attica. As proof of success, the Boiotians later fought with Macedon in the Hellenic War.10 Secondly, and emphasising the individual significance of Plataia, both Philips and Alexanders punishment of Thebes and patronage of Plataia marked an important ideological statement for Alexanders Panhellenism in the build-up to the forthcoming invasion of the Persian Empire.11 In 479 Thebes had ignominiously medised and it was at Plataia, on land ostentatiously given to Athens and the Greeks, that Greece was victorious and ensured its lasting freedom (Plut. Arist. 11.58).12 Since Philips and Alexanders Asian campaign was presented both as a war of revenge for Persian sacrileges in 480/79 and a campaign for Greek eleutheria, the punishment of Thebes and the patronage of Plataia formed central parts
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of the campaigns ideological manifesto.13 That Alexander saw fit, as late as 328, to acknowledge Plataias sacrifice in 479 shows that Plataias role in the Persian Wars was a central part of the presentation of his entire campaign.14 Thebes and Plataia were key to Alexanders Panhellenic policy and each should be analysed accordingly. Following the siege, Thebes was charged before a council of allies. With many members absent, such as Athens, the council consisted largely of Boiotian troops.15 Nonetheless, its judgement was presented and received as an official dogma of the League synedrion. As this has previously been doubted its validity should be re-emphasised here.16 Diodorus says that Alexander called together the synedroi and put the vote to the synedrion (17.14.1). Since synedrion denotes the League Council we must assume that it is to this that Diodorus refers.17 Justin reflects this: he says that judgement was passed in consilio (11.3.8), thus picking up on consiliumque, which he earlier used to denote the formalisation of the synedrion under Philip (9.5.2).18 Athens commended Alexanders punishment of Thebes (revolution), an act specifically outlawed by the League (Ps. Demosth. 17.15; cf. Schmitt, SdA 466, l. 4243), thus revealing that despite her absence from the council Athens sought at this juncture to mollify Alexander by ostensibly supporting his actions and commending Thebes destruction as League-authorised (Arr. Anab. 1.10.25). Furthermore, Alexander demanded the prosecution of the Athenian generals and orators in the synedrion, again emphasising its authority and activity at this time (Aeschin. In Ctes. 161).19 Evidence from Alexanders Asian campaign supports the view that this makeshift synedrion at Thebes passed an official dogma. Diodorus says that the synedroi passed a resolution to raze the city, to sell the captives, to make the Theban exiles outlaws () from all Greece, and to allow no Greek to offer shelter to a Theban. 20 Throughout the years 334330, Alexander consistently referred to a dogma of the Greeks on medising. He punished the Greek mercenaries who fought with the Persians at Granikos according to the dogma of the Greeks;21 he considered prosecuting Lampsakos for siding with the Persians;22 likewise Zeleia;23 trials on medism ( ) were initiated on Chios;24 both there and at Eresos proPersian fugitives were made outlaws () and barred from League cities according to the dogma of the Greeks;25 while finally Alexander threatened the last of Darios Greek mercenaries with acting against the dogmata of the Greeks.26 The only previous occasion when we know of a dogma being passed by the synedrion regarding medism and designating exiles as is the case of Thebes in late 335. Therefore, it is likely that the dogma at Thebes authorised Alexander, as he-gemon, to charge enemies for medism.27
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It is vital to note, as Bosworth has done, that the dogma harked back directly to the Persian Wars, building authority from them.28 Justin tells us that during Thebes trial before the synedrion the Oath (ius) of Plataia was repeated and its call for the destruction of Thebes was reiterated.29 The Oath is known to us from three similar fourth-century accounts, two literary and one epigraphic. Largely a fabrication of the fourth century, the Oath does however contain a kernel of truth.30 Its call for the destruction of Thebes expands on the Oath taken by the Hellenes in late 481 to punish medisers, and the similar decision taken after the battle of Plataia to besiege Thebes until it handed over its leaders for judgement in Corinth.31 Clearly, the League dogma of 335 drew a connection with the earlier resolutions of 48179 and paralleled the League of Corinth and the invasion of the Persian Empire with their ancestral counterparts. However, by building upon the traditions of the fourth-century Oath, the League sought historical validity through anachronistic elements of the Persian Wars tradition; elaborating historical circumstances around a text itself elaborated around historical circumstances.32 Historical fact was not definitive, it never is; rather it was the belief in what that historical tradition represented that was authoritative. In fact, it was essential, for other reasons, that Alexander and the League enforce their authority over the memory of the Persian Wars and Greek eleutheria. When Alexander arrived at Thebes he gave the Thebans a chance to capitulate and rejoin the peace. They refused. Instead, they called him tyrant, asserted that the Macedonian garrison denied their freedom, and called upon the Greeks to ally with them and the Great King, the true defender of Greek eleutheria, and rid Greece of its Macedonian oppressor.33 With every syllable a calculated insult, this jabbed at the exposed nerve of Alexanders Panhellenic pretensions.34 It challenged his role as he-gemon and undermined his propaganda by promoting the Kings Peace over the League of Corinth.35 It was therefore apt that Alexander used the League to punish Thebes. The reference to the Oath of Plataia authorised the destruction via the historical precedent of the Persian Wars, while the use of the League erased Thebes claims to be defending Greek eleutheria and displayed again Alexanders validity as he-gemon. At all stages Alexander countered threats by employing the League to define its (and his) authority as a continuation of the authority exercised by the Greeks during the Persian Wars. Although some have appreciated the importance of Alexanders use of a League dogma in Asia, it has not been adequately stressed that this dogma on medism was originally sanctioned by the synedrion of the League of Corinth at the time of the destruction of Thebes. This dogma, continually cited, formed a key component in the
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justification of Alexanders entire Asian campaign. Furthermore, it sought substantiation through a connection with the resolutions of the Greek League of 481479; present authority through historical precedent. It was by adapting the memory of the Persian Wars that Alexander attempted to ensure support for his ostensibly Panhellenic campaign. The destruction of Thebes took place at the same time as the patronage of Plataia and both, as appropriations of the history of the Persian Wars, were deliberately juxtaposed: rewards for the defenders of eleutheria, punishment for its enemies. However, with the destruction of Thebes and patronage of Plataia Alexander insulted not only Thebes, but also Athens and Sparta. Athens was unable to defend either her ancestral or present allies, Plataia and Thebes respectively. Her weakness was further emphasised through her swift capitulation on news of Alexanders victory and her commendation of the Leagues destruction of Thebes, thus validating Alexanders actions and ideology. Sparta had been the victor at Plataia in 479. She had, however, collaborated with the Theban mediser in destroying anti-Persian Plataia in 427 while openly denying her commitments to defend Plataia as a site of Greek eleutheria (Thuc. 3.53-68). By re-founding Plataia and condemning Theban medism, Alexander assumed in 335 the role that both Athens and Sparta had failed to fill in the 420s. But Alexanders actions had further implications. Sparta remained aloof from the League of Corinth and the Macedonian Common Peace, a situation supported by Philip and Alexander. This meant that the threat remained that Sparta might re-assert her traditional hegemony in the Peloponnese, as indeed she attempted to do during the subsequent revolt of Agis in 331. This threat unified the League by binding members together through a common fear. However, Alexander was careful to exploit Spartas absence from both the League and the new campaign for Greek eleutheria from the barbarian. The 300 Persian panoplies sent to Athens after the battle of Granikos as a dedication to Athena reflected the 300 Spartan dead at Thermopylae and contrasted Spartan defeat with the victory of Alexander and the Greeks. Furthermore, the inscription that accompanied the dedication drew attention to Spartas absence from the current campaign; Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks with the exception of the Lacedaimonians dedicate these spoils taken from the barbarians who live in Asia (Arr. Anab. 1.16.7; Plut. Alex. 16.8). Sparta was the only power to have led an invasion of Asia, indirectly under the 10,000, and later for eleutheria and autonomia under Derkylides and Agesilaos (Xen. Hell. 3.1.16, 201, 4.5, Ages. 1.10). Alexanders actions advertised Macedonian superiority over Sparta, as well as Athens and Thebes, both in
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Asia and in Greece. Alexander assumed the mantle of defender of Greek eleutheria, claimed by Sparta at Thermopylae and Plataia and expanded through the Asian campaigns in the early fourth century. A closer focus on Plataia, however, is now worthwhile. Under Philip and Alexander she was re-founded, had her walls built, received Theban land, and was generally patronised, owing in part to the importance of her role within the Persian Wars. Can we push the evidence still further? A penteteric Panhellenic festival for those who died at Plataia in 479, the Eleutheria, existed at Plataia from at least the early third century. Our earliest reference comes from Poseidippos of Kassandreia, active from about 289 onwards.36 Some have argued that the Eleutheria Games were of fifth-century origin, but there is no definite evidence for this.37 Since the early third-century Eleutheria is clearly Panhellenic, its origin must lie in the not-too-distant past. Let us take 280 as a terminus ante quem. Since Plataia was a ruin from 427386 and 373337, her re-foundation in 337 is a reasonable terminus post quem.38 The Glaukon decree of c.262245 informs us that the games were organised by (the common council of the Greeks) and that this body passed dogmata (l. 3, 256).39 Focusing on the terms synedrion and dogma, Roland tienne and Marcel Pirart suggested that the games were founded under Macedonian authority by the synedrion of either the League of Philip and Alexander (337323) or of Demetrios Poliorketes (302301), both of which passed dogmata and called themselves .40 Since the Eleutheria expanded on the Persian Wars, Greek eleutheria, and Plataias historical significance, we should look for a context for its (re-)foundation between 337 and 280 that fits this programme. Philip and Alexander in 337334 is most likely, and taking tiennes and Pirarts argument one step further I would like to propose a more exact date: Boedromion 335, the same time as the destruction of Thebes. Chronological considerations are of some significance here. The battle of Plataia took place on the 3rd of Boedromion 479.41 Word of Alexanders destruction of Thebes reached Athens during the Great Mysteries, the 15th to 23rd Boedromion.42 Since Alexander spent two to three days in camp outside Thebes before the siege, which itself lasted one day, news of Thebes destruction would have reached Athens about four to five days after Alexanders arrival (Arr. Anab. 1.7.711; Diod. 17.11.1). We can therefore accurately place Alexanders arrival at Thebes somewhere between the 10th and the 19th of Boedromion, between one and two weeks after the anniversary of the battle of Plataia. After the siege, Alexander evidently spent some time in Boiotia, probably about one to two weeks:43 demanding Athens orators and generals and charging her for having
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accepted Theban exiles. Pseudo-Callisthenes places Alexanders camp at Plataia, and there is nothing inherently illogical in this (Alexander Romance b.15).44 Plataia was friendly ground, the synedrion had just decreed that her walls be re-built, and as he-gemo-n Alexander might have overseen their commencement. Could the Eleutheria have been founded (even commissioned) at this time? We do not know in what years the Eleutheria fell but it most likely proceeded from the date of the battle of Plataia, Boedromion 3rd 479. Taking place every four years, Boedromion 335 is exactly 144 years (or 36 four year cycles) after the battle of Plataia and, incidentally, the first possible occasion for the Eleutheria since Plataias re-foundation in 337. We do not know precisely on what days the Eleutheria took place but it probably culminated with the anniversary of the battle on Boedromion 3rd. Diodorus states as much (11.29.1) and Albert Schachter supported this in his analysis of Boiotian cults.45 Plutarch also seems to support this, adding that the Hellenic synedrion convened yearly at Plataia on the 3rd of Boedromion when the Plataians sacrificed to Zeus Eleutherios (Plut. Arist. 19.7, 21.1).46 Noel Robertsons analysis of the dialogos (Atheno-Spartan debate over who should lead the procession at the festival) led him to suggest a date in Metageitnion for the Eleutheria, probably late in the month, but his conclusions are only secure for the late second century AD.47 Reconciling the evidence, a date could be possible of late Metageitnion leading into Boedromion and culminating in the meeting of the synedrion and the sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherios on Boedromion 3rd. Ultimate certainty is unattainable, but a date for the Eleutheria close to Boedromion 3rd is likely as it corresponds with both the synedrion meeting and the Plataian sacrifices to Zeus Eleutherios.48 Admittedly, Alexander and the Leagues actions within Boiotia are about two weeks or so after Boedromion 3rd. However, W. K. Pritchett has pointed out that the two dates given for the battle by Plutarch, Boedromion 3rd in the Athenian calendar and Panemos 27th in the Boiotian, could lead to a difference of up to seven days in their respective festival calendars.49 Further, the Eleutheria need only have been instituted (or even commissioned) in mid to late Boedromion 335, perhaps with some games, before subsequently, from 331 onwards, being held earlier, on the anniversary of the battle of Plataia. If Boedromion 335 saw the origin of these commemorations, then the importance of the third-century synedrion in organising the games (as seen in the Glaukon decree) could reflect the role played by its fourth-century counterpart. The synedrion was primarily made up of Boiotians who used it to follow their own agendas: destroying Thebes; condemning her medism;
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rebuilding the walls of Plataia. The League may plausibly have taken the opportunity to (re-)found a Panhellenic festival in honour of Plataias role in the Persian Wars. Alternatively, the impetus may lie with Alexander, who perhaps celebrated games after the destruction of Thebes, as he was to do with great frequency in Asia, commemorating victory and success (over Thebes?), celebrating new foundations (Plataia?), or acting as a prelude to a new campaign (invasion of Asia?).50 As a closer analogy, the Nemean Games returned to Corinth and gained renewed prominence through Macedonian patronage in the 330s.51 Ultimately, whether founded directly by either Alexander or the League and both are possible the new invasion of the Persian Empire and the historical and contemporary importance of Plataia and Thebes in Boedromion 335 offer an ideal context for the (re-)foundation of the Eleutheria as a remembrance of the Wars of 480/79 and Greek eleutheria. The events of Boedromion 335 may also provide the impetus for the addition of the cult of Homonoia of the Greeks to that of Zeus Eleutherios. Attested first in the Glaukon decree of c.262245, the joint cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks has been the focus of some debate.52 The worship of Zeus Eleutherios probably reflects both Pausanias sacrifices in the Plataian agora and the altar consecrated outside Plataia by the Hellenes in 479.53 Homonoia of the Greeks must have been added later. tienne and Pirart suggested the mid third century in connection with the Chremonidean War. This is possible, but the evidence for the concept of Homonoia of the Greeks at that time is slim.54 The same is to be said for Dreyers proposal of the Celtic invasion of 279. West has proposed a much more likely date of the late fourth century, probably in connection with the new war against Persia.55 He connects Homonoia of the Greeks with Gorgias, Lysias, and Isocrates, who consistently called for homonoia between the Greeks leading to a new war against Persia (e.g. Isoc. Phil. 16: ).56 Wests argument has not been widely accepted but due to the vast amount of literary evidence supporting it I find it quite plausible. It was in the fourth century that Homonoia first became personified,57 simultaneously with its continuous invocation as an aspect of a united Greek campaign against Persia. With this in mind, Homonoia of the Greeks was most likely added to Zeus Eleutherios at a time when calls for a Greek campaign against Persia were strong. The League of Corinth and the invasion of Persia is the perfect context, encapsulating as it does the ideals of Hellenic unity, eleutheria, and revenge against Persia. If this was the case, and one admits that it is speculative, then the joint cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks could have served
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a number of purposes. For Plataia, it asserted the citys right to exist based on its historical importance for eleutheria and the Persian Wars, something already promoted by Alexander and the League; a cry for stability and security in the wake of Plataias second re-foundation. For Alexander, the cult asserted the two key components of his campaign: peace at home and unity abroad.58 The joint cult gave to both these concepts a solidity and objectivity not previously possessed: Homonoia of the Greeks personifying the civic and inter-polis stability sought by the League of Corinth and Zeus Eleutherios personifying eleutheria, the war against Persia, and the ideal of Hellenic unity that arose from both.59 It seems clear that during the 330s there was a tri-partite discourse taking place around Plataia: Alexander, League synedrion, and the cult of Zeus Eleutherios. As he-gemon of the League, Alexander stood behind the Leaguesanctioned destruction of Thebes and patronage of Plataia. Nonetheless, he remained careful to defer authority nominally to the League, showing that the League played a key role in validating his actions through Panhellenic authority and defining them via the precedent of the Persian Wars and the Greek League of 481479. The League itself, however, was more than just a rubber stamp; it was an active partner in Alexanders ideology. Here it is important to remember the Boiotian make-up of the synedrion in Boedromion 335, ensuring that local, including Plataian, voices would have been heard. While the synedrions prosecution of Thebes and patronage of Plataia did in part follow Alexanders will, it was also a manifestation of the inherent anti-Thebism of the synedrion at this time. As evidence of the Leagues active role, it continued to organise the Eleutheria into the Imperial period. Again, the games reflected the will and propaganda of both Alexander and the predominantly Boiotian synedrion. Rather than a tool of the he-gemon, the synedrion was more a point of synergy, working in unison with the he-gemo-n on a Panhellenic policy expanded from the historical traditions of Plataia and the Persian Wars. Of course, after her destruction by Thebes in 373, Plataia lay in ruins. The recommencement of the worship of Zeus Eleutherios and the sacrifices to the dead, as well as the rebuilding and patronage of Plataia in 337, emphasised a new beginning after Thebes previous crimes against Plataia and against the very memory of the Persian Wars. By their continued existence after the destruction of Plataia and the exile of its citizens, monuments dating from the Persian Wars, such as the victory trophy, and the tombs of the Greek dead, and perhaps the altar to Zeus Eleutherios, underscored Plataias abiding significance for Greek eleutheria and the memory of the Persian Wars. Vicariously, then, these monuments testified to Thebes double destruction of Plataia, re-emphasised its
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medism during the Persian wars, and revealed it to be a continued enemy of eleutheria. The very act of patronising Plataia marked a clear statement on Theban violence and medism. An interesting dynamic lies in the importance of these monuments in developing, almost mythologising, Plataias Persian War history. In 335 the central standing monuments appear to have been the altar, the trophy, and the tombs.60 Although Th. Spyropoulos excavations have tentatively identified the altar to Zeus Eleutherios, no trace of the other monuments survives.61 Nonetheless, some comments can be made. These monuments defined Plataias cultic landscape and established pre-determined ideological limits into which later events and phenomena must be integrated. So, just as new additions to the cultic landscape, be they Homonoia of the Greeks or the Eleutheria, altered the ideology of this landscape, so too did the landscape itself constrain the import of these new additions. The pre-existing contexts of eleutheria, the Persian Wars, and the struggle against the barbarian altered and defined any new additions, while these additions appropriated the pre-existing ideological contexts in order to enforce themselves. While Alexander could use Plataia to promote Macedonian hegemony and leadership, he was limited by the contextualised ideology of Greek eleutheria from a foreign barbarian. This context, though flexible and manipulable, still prefigured and shaped the nature of the proMacedonian exploitation of Plataia. The geography of these monuments is also important in defining the physical, as much as the ideological, manipulation of Plataias historical context. So, the crowning event of the Eleutheria itself, the hoplite race, took place between the trophy and altar, both dating from the day of victory, with the victor being acclaimed best of the Hellenes.62 Upon its (re-)foundation, the Eleutheria was integrated directly into a predetermined ideological topography, from which it developed its own history and significance while similarly influencing the meaning of that topography. The patronage of Plataia by Alexander and the League, the foundation of the Eleutheria, and possibly the cult of Homonoia of the Greeks, all emphasised a very real Macedonian, or pro-Macedonian, appropriation of the memory of the Persian Wars, one which was, however, structured and conditioned by the very ideological topography it appropriated. 2. Plataia, Thebes, and the Hellenic War The Hellenic War was Athens great Panhellenic statement against Macedon. Hyperides Epitaphios preserves this sentiment, built upon the memory of the battles and individuals of the Persian Wars. It is therefore surprising that no mention is made of Plataia, particularly since Diodorus
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records Leosthenes victory there over pro-Macedonian forces. By comparing the accounts of Diodorus and Hyperides, I will argue that Hyperides deliberately avoided mention of Plataia and even ignored Leosthenes victory there. Under Alexander, Plataias Persian War history had been used to support Macedonian hegemony. When Hyperides sought to promote Greek freedom from Macedon via a parallel with the Persian Wars, he could not turn to the example of Plataia, because Athens now found herself fighting for Greek eleutheria at Plataia against Plataians allied with Macedon, the new barbarian threat. In his account of the Hellenic War, Diodorus says that the Athenian general Leosthenes employed mercenaries from Taenarum, moved to Aitolia securing the alliance of the central Greeks, before advancing on Thermopylae in autumn 323 in advance of Antipaters arrival (18.911). Athens dispatched citizen reinforcements to him, 5,000 foot and 500 horse, as well as 2,000 mercenaries. However, the Boiotian cities, remembering the benefactions they had received upon Thebes destruction, remained hostile to Athens, who apparently intended to restore Thebes and her land. With their pass through Boiotia blocked, Leosthenes joined forces with the Athenian troops and defeated the Boiotians by Plataia in mid to late autumn 323 ( , 18.11.35). He erected a victory trophy and returned to Thermopylae.63 Our contemporary source for events, Hyperides Epitaphios, delivered over the Athenian dead in early 322, distorts events. Hyperides says that Leosthenes left from Athens, defeated the Boiotians at Thebes and only then advanced on Thermopylae (5.1130).64 Interestingly, Plataia is not mentioned and Hyperides transposes the battle to Thebes, whose razed city, garrisoned acropolis, and enslaved populace spurred the Greeks to victory (5.1420, 7.217). Since the Epitaphios is suffused with references to the Persian Wars, eleutheria, and Athenian leadership, its omission of the Athenian victory at Plataia is surprising. Firstly, the audience would undoubtedly have been aware of the true order of events. Secondly, the Hellenic War itself was continually presented as a parallel to that of 480/79.65 Thirdly, Athens had frequently made use of Plataias historical connections during the fourth century, most notably in the Oath of Plataia, which had been quoted in the Ekklesia by Lycurgus only seven years previously (Lycurg. Leoc. 8082).66 Hyperides ignores Plataia, the site of the Greek victory over Persia, and instead focuses on Thebes, the famous mediser, whom he describes as
Tragically annihilated from the face of the earth, that its citadel was garrisoned by the Macedonians, and that the persons of its inhabitants were in slavery, while others parcelled out the land among themselves.67
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The enemy in 479, Hyperides now makes Thebes the victim in 323 and thus an inspiration to Greek eleutheria. In this scheme the enemy now becomes those who fought with Macedon, those who parcelled out the land among themselves, the likes of Plataia, Thespiae, and Orchomenos, who had been given Theban land by Philip and Alexander, had fought during the siege, and had prosecuted the Thebans in 335. In 323/2 Plataia, the site of the triumph of Greek eleutheria in 479, lay in the hands of those who fought against Greek eleutheria. Conversely, Thebes, the enemy of eleutheria in 479, stood as an inspiration to it in 323/2. The roles were reversed and Plataia in 323/2 echoed Thebes in 479: a Greek state siding with the barbarian against Greek freedom. This was particularly difficult for Hyperides to assimilate into his speech. Athens and Plataia had a close relationship extending back as far as the battle of Marathon, when both stood alone against Persia (Hdt. 6.10813). Their present conflict was too sensitive and complicated for a funeral oration, and so Hyperides ignored Plataia because it stood against Athens and her fight for Greek eleutheria. Indeed, he even went so far as to alter the events of the war to transpose the Athenian victory from Plataia to Thebes, thus removing entirely the embarrassment of Plataias medism and Athens necessary conflict with her. Simply put, the connection Hyperides sought to draw between the Hellenic and Persian Wars would not have admitted the fact that Athens fought the Plataians, at Plataia, for eleutheria.68 This cuts to the heart of the problem. Athens led the Hellenic War with great pomp on behalf of the freedom of the Greeks. Athens interpretation of freedom, however, was not the same as that of other Greeks, rather it was concerned primarily with ensuring her own best interests and hegemony. Therefore, when the Boiotians (including Plataia) and Euboeans fought against Athens, Hyperides damned them as the first opponents of Greek freedom.69 From a Boiotian (specifically Plataian) perspective, however, eleutheria was best served under a Macedonian enforced status-quo, where Theban hegemony ceased to exist and the land distributions of 335 remained in force.70 The Athenian goal of restoring Thebes (alleged in Diodorus, 18.11.34) did not appeal to the likes of Plataia, Thespiae, and Orchomenos, so recently patronised and re-founded by Macedon. The role of Plataia in the Hellenic War is a stark reminder that the meaning of eleutheria was firmly in the eye of the employer, and what Athens termed the freedom of the Greeks was not necessarily in the best interests of Plataian, Boiotian, or Euboean eleutheria. So, because of Plataias loyalty to Macedon in 335 and 323/2 her historical significance for Greek eleutheria was lost to Athenian propaganda during the Hellenic War. Plataias connection with the Persian Wars and
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Greek eleutheria had earlier been appropriated by both Philip and Alexander, and this appears to have remained prominent for some time. It forced Hyperides to ignore Plataias Persian War history and instead invert the importance of Plataia and Thebes for Greek eleutheria. His silence helps elucidate the key role Plataia played in developing the ideology of Alexanders new Persian War.71 3. Glaukon and the Third Century With the Chremonidean War Athens again led a supposedly Panhellenic campaign for Greek freedom from Macedon, once more based on the precedent of the Persian Wars. Unlike the Hellenic War, however, Plataia appears to have played a large role in developing and presenting this ethos, as evidenced in the honorary decree of the Greek synedrion at Plataia for Glaukon, son of Eteokles, of Athens. Something changed, and Plataias new role is worth analysing. Accordingly, I will argue that by the mid-thirdcentury Plataia had regained anew her significance for Greek freedom due to her presence on the Greek, rather than Macedonian, side before and during the Chremonidean War. Plataias historical traditions of eleutheria and Greek unity could again be asserted as a precedent for the current struggle against Macedon. Plataia witnessed a process of appropriation and re-appropriation by both Macedon and Greeks, and the cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks, possibly founded under Macedonian patronage in the late fourth century, may be a witness to this. Finally, I will again emphasise how Plataias historical traditions and cultic landscape influenced the nature of her significance for Greek eleutheria in the mid-third century. Found at Plataia in 1971, the Glaukon decree preserves a dogma of the Common Council of the Greeks ( ) honouring Glaukon for his benefactions to the cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks both before and after the Chremonidean War. The decree is to be dated between 262245, perhaps the later the better.72 It praises Glaukon for his goodwill towards the Greeks while in Athens and for the continuation of this policy when he later took up position at the court of King Ptolemy (l. 514), shortly after the Chremonidean War (Teles On Exile 23). He beautified the shrine, contributed to the sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia, and patronised the Eleutheria (l. 1524). He and his descendents are rewarded with proedria at the games, while the stele is to be erected next to the altar of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia, paid for from the temples finances (l. 2542). Although passed some years after the Chremonidean War (268262),
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numerous features within the decree help us establish an ideological context closely connected with it.73 The decree lays emphasis on Greek eleutheria from the barbarian, with the games at Plataia (l. 345) specified as being in honour of the heroes who fought against the barbarians for the liberty (eleutheria) of the Greeks.74 This eleutheria is directly connected with Greek homonoia through the dual cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks. The decree is also defined by the Persian Wars: the battle of Plataia, the Greek dead, and the altar and cult of Zeus Eleutherios all create a context for Glaukons benefactions infused with a memory of the Wars promoting specifically Plataias importance within the historical tradition. All these features echo the ideological context of the Chremonidean War, which, as we know from the Chremonides decree, was presented as a struggle for Greek eleutheria dependent upon homonoia between the Greek poleis (IG II2 686/7, l. 315). It was also paralleled with the Persian Wars and Macedon was presented as the new barbarian invader (l. 718).75 Glaukon himself supports this connection.76 As an Athenian ambassador, he toured the Peloponnese in the run-up to the war looking to garner support and was honoured with proxenia by an allied Orchomenos; he may have been synedros to the Greek alliance in 268262; he served as general of the equipment ( ) in 266/5; and he was perhaps honoured by Ptolemy Philadelphos with a statue at Olympia at this time.77 The Chremonidean War was fought under Ptolemaic auspices and with large naval help, thus tying Ptolemy Philadelphos closely to the cause of Greek freedom.78 Glaukons brother, Chremonides, proposed the decree declaring war and both he and Glaukon fled in 262 to pursue high-profile careers under the Ptolemies.79 Therefore, its thematic correspondences with the Chremonides decree, as well as its references to Glaukon and Ptolemy, place the Glaukon decree firmly in the ideological context of the Chremonidean War. That the honours for Glaukon were passed at Plataia adds a further dimension to their meaning. Although we have no evidence for Plataias role during the Chremonidean War, we can see from the benefactions of prominent anti-Macedonian individuals like Glaukon (and there would have been others) that Plataia and its historical tradition were of particular importance to the anti-Macedonian movement at that time.80 Plataia provided an ideological template, from which the new struggle for Greek freedom could assume, vicariously, a series of pre-defined goals and values. Since it post-dates the Chremonidean War, the decree also shows that, even after this defeat, Plataia remained important for the continuing Greek struggle against Macedon, again paralleled with the Persian Wars, and
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fought for Greek homonoia and eleutheria. A recently-published honorific decree for Eudamos of Megalopolis, dated c. 251245 by the editor E. Stavrianopoulou, elucidates the post-war context. Stavrianopoulou connects Eudamos with the Ekdemos/Ekdelos of the literary sources who is recorded as having overthrown Aristodemos the Good, pro-Macedonian tyrant of Megalopolis, around 251, a time when Antigonos power in Greece was severely threatened. The decree records that his honours were to be announced at the Eleutheria, again revealing the continued importance of the games and Plataia as a centre for the Greek struggle for freedom from Macedonian control and tyranny. With interest coming from as far away as Egypt and Megalopolis, Plataia, the Eleutheria, and the memory of the Persian Wars clearly remained ideologically important for the struggle for Greek freedom beyond even the defeat in the Chremonidean War. The site was a mid-third-century nexus for anti-Macedonianism.81 Plataia was also of significance as a physical space. It was there in 479 that Athens and Sparta stood side-by-side and guaranteed Greek freedom. Not having allied at Chaeronea, during Agis Revolt, or the Hellenic War, the Chremonidean War was the first time since 479 that both states stood united in common cause. The parallel was not lost, rather it was proudly emphasised within the Chremonides decree. Plataia served as a physical, as well as ideological, link with the Atheno-Spartan alliance of the Persian Wars.82 Homonoia of the Greeks offered a physical manifestation of this new unity, while the Eleutheria integrated it into the historical landscape. In the Glaukon decree the ago-n is said to have taken place at the tomb of the heroes (andres agathoi ) who fought against the barbarians for the liberty of the Greeks. 83 Undoubtedly, the tombs of the Athenians and Spartans formed an important part of this backdrop.84 This geography was, however, constructed. Sometime between Herodotus writing in the mid-fifthcentury bc and Pausanias in the second century AD the number of tombs at Plataia declined from many tombs of individual cities, to one Athenian, one Spartan, and one Greek tomb.85 The physical landscape, as much as the ideological, was altered. Although a slow process, this began early, as suggested by Herodotus account of the cenotaphs raised in shame by cities that missed the battle (9.85). The term andres agathoi, although used in the Glaukon decree to describe the heroes of the Persian Wars, was a key part of the Athenian civic ideal and may perhaps hint at some Athenian influence over the cult, probably in the later fifth and early fourth centuries. This would be expected since relations between Athens and Plataia were then close and both cities had cults of Zeus Eleutherios.86 However, it is only with the Chremonidean War in the mid-third century that we get a concerted promotion of Atheno-Spartan unity, presenting Plataia as a site
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of Spartan and Athenian importance first and Greek second.87 Glaukons benefactions to the Eleutheria, and their mention within his honorary decree, re-emphasise Plataia as the proto-typical site of Atheno-Spartan unity and assume this historical significance for the third-century alliance. In light of Plataias importance for Alexander and her loss to Greek freedom during the Hellenic War, what we see within the Glaukon decree is a re-appropriation of Plataia for Greek eleutheria. An example of this may perhaps be seen in the cult of Homonoia of the Greeks. West argued that the deification of Homonoia of the Greeks took place in the late fourth century, probably in the context of the new invasion of the Persian Empire.88 If this was the case then there was an interesting process of appropriation and re-appropriation taking place at Plataia. With the (possible) personification of Homonoia of the Greeks at Plataia in the 330s, and its addition to the cult of Zeus Eleutherios, the ideal of Hellenic unity leading to conquest of the barbarian was appropriated to the Macedonianled war in Asia and served to enforce the peace and leadership established by the League of Corinth. The ideology of homonoia between the Greeks leading to eleutheria from Macedon, as seen in the Chremonides decree, builds on this context by inverting the dynamic. Whereas previously Homonoia of the Greeks personified Greek peace under Macedonian leadership in a new Persian War for Greek eleutheria, now Homonoia of the Greeks defined the need for Greek unity in a common cause against Macedon for Greek eleutheria. Glaukons patronage of the joint cult of Zeus Eleutherios and Homonoia of the Greeks could mark therefore an adaptation of the pro-Macedonian additions to the cult of Zeus Eleutherios, a re-appropriation, conscious or not, that signified renewed control over Greeces historical authority. The dynamics of appropriation could, potentially, be quite interesting. If Homonoia of the Greeks was integrated with Zeus Eleutherios in the later fourth century, then there was by the time of the Chremonidean War a pre-existing cultic and ideological context at Plataia that promoted the ideal of homonoia as an element of eleutheria, something itself inherently connected with the Persian Wars. One wonders whether such a cult could itself have had a formative influence on the development of the Chremonidean Wars ideology of homonoia and eleutheria. At the very least, a pre-existing cult at Plataia would have furthered the precept, long claimed in fourth-century oratory, that homonoia between the Greeks was necessary for Greek eleutheria.89 The connection of Homonoia with the memory of the Persian Wars, as exemplified through Zeus Eleutherios, would only have supported this by providing a successful example of the precept in action.
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This ideological interaction would be all the more significant if the two cult deities had been integrated in the late fourth century in a strongly proMacedonian context. If so, then the use of the cult and associated ideology against Macedon would reveal yet another dynamic in the significance of Plataia and the Persian Wars for Greek eleutheria: the site, traditions, and cult that had previously been used to enforce Macedonian hegemony over Greece were now used to inspire Greek freedom from Macedon. What we may be seeing at Plataia is an example in cult form of the dynamic fluidity of both the concept of eleutheria and the memory of the Persian Wars, exemplified in dual by the site of Plataia and the cult of Zeus Eleutherios. If so, then this was possible because the Persian Wars themselves were an adaptive tradition that could be used against a foreign power, be it Persia, Macedon, or even the Gauls. As such, they allowed Macedon to enforce her own hegemony over Greece by turning attention to Persia, just as they allowed the Greeks to condemn Macedon, in both the Hellenic and Chremonidean Wars. 4. Conclusion The site of Plataia encapsulated the dynamic malleability of eleutheria and the memory of the Persian Wars in a way that possibly no other site could. Its topography was a constant visible reminder of the battle of 479. The tombs displayed to the viewer the sacrifice of the Greek heroes. Tombs of numerous states revealed the sites Panhellenism (if somewhat back projected, as Herodotus (9.85) informs us) while the individual tombs of Athens and Sparta similarly revealed the prominence of these two states. The victory trophy displayed the ultimate success of the Greek struggle and the validity of the sacrifice. The altar to Zeus Eleutherios defined the divinely sanctioned victory as a discovery of eleutheria, as stated in Simonides dedicatory epigram (Plut. Arist. 19; cf. Anth. Pal. 6.50). The Eleutheria honoured the heroes and in its events integrated the monuments into a continual, penteteric, celebration of eleutheria. Throughout the early Hellenistic period the history and site of Plataia were used by both Macedonian and Greek to enforce hegemony and inspire unity, be it for the invasion of the Persian Empire or the Chremonidean War. I have argued for the continued and dynamic significance of Plataia as a space intrinsically connected with the twin concepts of eleutheria and the Persian Wars. Tossed between Macedon and Greece, Plataia remained perpetually important because, through her physical monuments and historical context, she personified both these concepts in microcosm. Her utilisation by both Macedon and Greece was possible because the Persian Wars, as historical memory, developed in part
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as a conceptual prototype for understanding any war and its goals. So, the Persian Wars and Greek eleutheria could be used to promote war against the Persian, just as they could against Macedon or the Gauls; all with equal validity, if not success.90 However, Plataias role within the Persian War tradition worked on other levels. I have also argued that the site itself influenced the ways in which people viewed and employed it by providing a pre-existing ideological environment, both conceptual and topographical. While this helped develop the aims and significance of later events, it also restricted the ways in which these events could be understood by providing a pre-determined context into which the later event must conceptualise itself. I have argued that this can be seen not only in the ideological nature and import of the fourth- and third-century additions to the cult of Zeus Eleutherios, but also in the physical integration of the Homonoia cult to Zeus Eleutherios (being as they were theoi sumbo-moi ) and the Eleutheria into the existing monuments. In a wider sense this is indicative of the memory of the Persian Wars: a conceptual touchstone displaying the continued vitality of the Persian War tradition, but similarly acting as a conceptual straitjacket constricting and inhibiting the understanding of eleutheria just as it defines and promotes it. Acknowledgements My sincere thanks go to Andrew Erskine and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones who, as editors, have read this chapter and improved it throughout and, as supervisors, have shown the same generous care with my entire PhD. Joseph Roisman and Anton Powell kindly read drafts of this chapter and offered many useful insights. Versions of this chapter were presented at the 2009 Classical Association Conference in Glasgow and in Queens University Belfast. My research was funded by the AHRC. All opinions and errors remain my own.
Notes 1 Throughout this chapter, homonoia and eleutheria refer to concepts, but Homonoia and the Eleutheria refer to the cult of Homonoia and the Eleutheria Games at Plataia. Unless indicated, all dates are BC. 2 Spyropoulos 1973 (editio princeps); Jones 1974; Roesch 1974; tienne and Pirart 1975 (edition, photograph, and French translation); West 1977; Pouilloux 1978; Buraselis 1982; tienne 1985; Erskine 1990, 905; Schachter 1994, 12544; Thriault 1996a, 10130; 1996b, 13742; Austin 2006, no. 61 (English translation); Stavrianopoulou 2002, 1348; Jung 2006, 298343. 3 Late 4th century: West 1977; cf. Austin 2006, no. 61. Mid-3rd century: tienne and
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Pirart 1975; tienne 1985; Erskine 1990, 90-5; Stavrianopoulou 2002, 1367; Chaniotis 2005, 22830; Jung 2006, 3219. Fence-sitters: Thriault 1996a, 115; 1996b, 1412. Dreyer (1999, 2545) suggests that the incentive lay with the Celtic invasion of 279 and Athens role in defending Thermopylae. 4 See section 1. 5 For a similar approach see Jung 2006 who explores the continuing significance of Plataea (and Marathon) from the 5th century BC until the 4th century AD. For the dating of the Glaukon Decree, see below n. 72. 6 On the evidence for the Hellenic (epigraphic and late 4th century) rather than Lamian War (literary and derivative), see Ashton 1984; Lehmann 1988, 1434, 1489. 7 Just. Epit. 9.4.7; Diod. 16.87.3, 17.8.37; Paus. 9.1.8, 6.5; Arr. Anab. 1.7.1; cf. Plut. Reg. imp. apoph. 177d; Errington 1990, 85; Green 1970, 80; Lane Fox 1974, 86. Thebes remained in control of the Boiotian League (Arr. Anab. 1.7.11; Brunt 1976, 35 n. 6). 8 Kirsten 1950, col. 2312. 9 Fredricksmeyer 2000, 1378. The context of the Olympic Games is important. Because the synedrion met at the Panhellenic games it would have been sitting when Alexanders letter was read out. Thus, Alexanders announcement would have been connected with the synedrions earlier promise to rebuild Plataias walls. 10 Thespiae: Dio Chrys. Or. 37.42; Plin. HN 34.66. Orchomenos: Arr. Anab. 1.9.10. Allies at Thebes: Arr. Anab. 1.8.8; Diod. 17.13.5; Just. Epit. 11.3.8; Plut. Alex. 11.5. Destruction of Plataia, Thespiae, and Orchomenos: Xen. Hell. 6.3.1; Isoc. Plat.; Diod. 15.46.6, 51.3, 57.1, 79.6; Paus. 9.14.2; Buckler 1980, 22, 1824. Hellenic War: below section 2. 11 Flower 2000, 967; Poddighe 2009, 1079. Seibert (1998, 526) cautions against using ideologically loaded terms like crusade (Kreuzzug), national war (Nationalkrieg), panhellenic ( panhellenisch), and war of revenge (Rachekrieg) as they can precondition ones analysis of events. 12 P. Wallace 1982. Raaflaub (2004, 5865) analyses the development of eleutheria after the Persian Wars. 13 Both revenge and eleutheria were emphasised by Philip (Diod. 16.89.2, 91.2) and repeated by Alexander ( Just. Epit. 11.5.6; Diod. 17.24.1), see Flower 2000; Poddighe 2009, 105. The revenge motif appears frequently: Arr. Anab. 2.14, 3.18; Just. Epit. 11.12.56; Polyb. 3.6; Anth. Pal. 6.344; cf. Isoc. Paneg. 155, 183, 185. So too eleutheria/autonomia: GHI 86b; SEG XIX 698; cf. I.Erythrai 31; Diod. 17.24.1; Arr. Anab. 1.18.12; Theopompos FGrH 115 fr. 253; Plut. Adv. Col. 1126d; cf. Isoc. Paneg. 181, Phil. 124, Panath. 103, Epist. 9; Archid. 8-10. Polybius (3.6; analysis in Seibert 1998, 2758) distinguishes three phases leading to war: cause (Xenophon and Agesilaos campaigns), pretext (war of revenge), and beginning (Alexanders invasion). Brosius (2003) argues that the enmity leading to war between Macedon and Persia was created by Philip to keep Persia out of Greek affairs. 14 Fredricksmeyer 2000, 138; Poddighe 2009, 116. 15 Arr. Anab. 1.9.910. 3; Plut. Alex. 11.5; Just. Epit. 11.3.811. 16 Brunt 1976, 39 n. 1; Bosworth 1980, 88; 1988, 195; Yardley and Heckel 1997, 94. Others contend that it was a League meeting: Wilcken 1967, 735; Hamilton 1969, 301; Green 1970, 1457; Schachermeyer 1973, 117; Hammond and Walbank 1988, 636. 17 GHI 76, l. 21, 82, l. 4, 84a, ll. 145; Aeschin. In Ctes. 161.
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In error, Justin transposes authority from the synedrion to its he-gemo-n (11.4.9: interdictum regis). 19 Although Athens defied both the dogma and Alexanders authority as hegemon by - accepting landless Thebans (Paus. 9.23.5) and refusing to hand over her generals and orators (Arr. Anab. 1.10.46; Bosworth 1980, 926), she was careful to obtain, through Demades, Alexanders acquiescence in both these matters (Diod. 17.15). 20 Diod. 17.14.3:
18
11.3.811) preserves a similar account but mentions Thebes present support of Persia. Droysen (1952/3, 94 with n. 23) sees the terms of destruction as perhaps based on the terms of earlier Leagues, like the Second Athenian League (IG II 2 43, l. 5161). 21 Arr. Anab. 1.16.6: . 22 Paus 6.18.24: ; cf. Val. Max. 7.3 ext. 4; Bosworth 1980, 1078. 23 Arr. Anab. 1.17.2: ; cf. Bosworth 1980, 1278. Michel RIG 530 may preserve reference to a democratic revolution in Zeleia, which could have influenced Alexanders decision. The inscription dates c.334/3 (Rhodes with Lewis 1997, 421) and mentions the politai capturing the acropolis. 531 deals with the sale of the lands of the exiles (presumably pro-Persian) and, along with 530, preserves the democratic enactment formula, . 24 GHI 84b. 25 Chios: GHI 84a, ll. 103: and shall be liable to seizure in accordance with the resolution of the Greeks. Eresos: GHI 83 iv, ll. 25-8: | [] [|] , [] | and those whom he (Alexander) condemned to exile shall be exiled but shall not be liable to seizure. 26 Arr. Anab. 3.23.8: ; cf. 24.45 with Flower 2000, 117. 27 Cf. Poddighe 2009, 1079. 28 Bosworth 1988, 18990. 29 Just. Epit. 11.3.811; Yardley and Heckel 1997, 956. 30 Lycurg. Leoc. 81; Diod. 11.29.3; GHI 88; cf. Theopompos FGrH 115 fr. 153. On the Oaths authenticity see Habicht 1961; Kreutz 2001; GHI 88; Krentz 2007. Kernel of Truth: Burn 1962, 512-15; Siewert 1972, 6375; Barron 1988, 604. Theopompos considered it an Athenian fabrication designed to dupe the rest of Greece, cf. Shrimpton 1991, 802; Pownall 2008, 1201. 31 Medisers: Hdt. 7.132, 138.1, 145, 148; cf. Diod. 11.3.2; Brunt 1953, 1368, 1423. Thebes: Hdt. 9.86-8; cf. Diod. 11.33.4 32 GHI 88, p. 445. 33 Arr. Anab. 1.9.7; Diod. 17.9.5, 14.2; Plut. Alex. 11.78; Just. Epit. 11.3.9; cf. Din. 1.1920. 34 Bosworth 1988, 195. 35 Welles 1963, 143 n. 1; Tenedos and Mytilene joined Memnon in 333 on the terms of the Kings Peace (Arr. Anab. 2.1.14, 2.23). 36 Heraklides Kretikos 1.11 (Austin 2006, no. 101), quoting Poseidippos of Kassandreia. The Glaukon decree (c.262245) confirms that games were established
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by the mid 3rd century. For the Eleutheria, see Robert 1969; Pritchett 1979, 1546, 17883; Robertson 1986; Schachter 1994, 13243; Boedeker 1998, 2402; Chaniotis 2005, 22830; Jung 2006, 33140. 37 Vanderpool 1969; Amandry 1971, 61226; Boedeker 1998, 2402; cf. Jung 2006, 3323 with n. 122. 38 For Plataians being unable to celebrate their festivals because of exile, see Pausanias 9.13.4. 39 tienne and Pirart 1975, 523. 40 tienne and Pirart 1975, 68; Schachter 1994, 125-32; Stavrianopoulou 2002, 136 with n. 54. Dogmata: see above (Philip and Alexander); Schmitt, SdA 446, l. 79; CID IV 11 (Demetrios). Synedrion: see above (Philip and Alexander); Schmitt, SdA 446 passim; CID IV 11; Agora XVI 122; Plut. Demetr. 25.3 (Demetrios). Robertson (1986, 94 n. 25) suggests that the Eleutheria was founded by Athens and the Boiotian League sometime after 287. Jung (2006, 33140) suggests the Hellenic War (below section 2). 41 Plut. Cam. 19, De glor. Ath. 349f; cf. Pritchett 1957, 277. Graindor (1922) proposed that a scribal error is responsible for Plutarchs date of Boedromion 4th in his Aristides (19.7). Pritchett (1985, 1789 n. 90) discusses the difficulties in determining an accurate Julian date for the battle. 42 Arr. Anab. 1.10.2; Plut. Alex. 13.1; cf. Cam. 19.10; Bosworth 1980, 92; 1988, 33; Yardley and Heckel 1997, 1012. 43 He next appears at Dion for the Olympic Games (Arr. Anab. 11.12 with Bosworth 1980, 9697; Diod. 17.16). Although precise dates are difficult, the games took place on the first days of the Macedonian month Dios, corresponding roughly with the Attic month Pyanepsion. Alexander, therefore, spent the remainder of Boedromion in Boiotia and on the march to Dion. 44 The Romance also says that Alexander avenged Plataia ( ). 45 Schachter 1994, 136, 141. 46 For an analysis of Plutarchs account see Jung 2006, 27181. Robertson (1986, 923) distinguishes two separate commemorations: the synedrion meeting and Plataian sacrifice on Boedromion 3rd and the Plataian sacrifice to the Greek dead and Zeus and Hermes Chthonios on Maimakterion 16th. These distinct events were conflated by Pritchett (1979, 1556, 1789). 47 Robertson 1986, 8893. 48 Incidental evidence suggests that this should be the case. Both Plutarch (Arist. 21.1) and the Glaukon decree connect the Eleutheria with the synedrion and the sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherios. In general, Hellenic synedria met during Panhellenic festivals (Philip and Alexander: Curt. 4.5.1112; Diod. 17.48.6; cf. Brunt 1976, 213 n. 2; Aeschin. In Ctes. 254; Hammond and Griffith 1979, 6345. Demetrios: Schmitt, SdA 446, l. 667, 72-3; CID IV 11; Plut. Demetr. 25.3). The meeting of the synedrion and the sacrifice to Zeus Eleutherios would have marked the games climax (Pritchett 1979, 1556). 49 Plut. Arist. 19 with n. 41 above; Pritchett 1957, 277. 50 I thank Prof. Erskine for bringing these parallels to my attention. Victories and Successes: Arr. Anab. 2.5.8, 24.6, 3.6.1 (cf. Curt. 4.8.16), 16.9, 4.4.1, 5.8.3, 20.1, 6.28.3, 7.14.1; Indica 36.3, 42.6, 42.8; Diod. 17.46.6, 72.1; ISE 113; Curt. 3.7.2-5; Plut. Alex. 29.1, 67.4. New Foundations: Arr. Anab. 3.5.2, 5.20.1. Preludes: Arr. Anab. 1.11.1, 3.25.1, 5.8.3, 29.12; Indica 18.112, 21.2, 36.9; Diod. 17.16.34. See also, Arr. Anab.
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1.18.2, 4.4.1, 7.14.10, 23.5; Plut. Alex. 4.5-6, 72.1; Curt. 6.2.15. Stavrianopoulou (2002, 136) places the impetus with Philip or Alexander. 51 Miller 1990, 223. 52 Bibliography in n. 2. The joint cult is unattested in literary sources. Plutarch, however, mentions (de Herod. malig. 43) even though the gods share one altar in the Glaukon decree. Diodorus (11.29.2) and Aelius Aristeides (13.148) speak of homonoia in connection with Zeus Eleutherios and Plataia, although in the latter case this is probably a literary topos, see n. 56 below. 53 Thuc. 2.71.2; Plut. Arist. 19.720.4; Anth. Pal. 6.50 (Simonides dedicatory epigram). Strabo 9.2.31 refers to the Greeks consecrating a temple ( ). The Glaukon decree reveals that a temple ( ) to Zeus Eleutherios stood at Plataia by the mid-3rd century, but was clearly distinct from the altar (). Schachter (1994, 12532, 1345) argues that the altar and cult of Zeus Eleutherios were founded under Macedonian patronage in the late 4th century and that Pausanias sacrifice in 479 was simply a one-off. Jung (2002, 2657) feels that there is not enough evidence to decide whether or not a formalised cult and altar were founded in 479. Cf. n. 62 below. 54 Above n. 3. The principal pieces of 3rd century evidence are the Chremonides decree (IG II 2 686/7, l. 31-2: | ) and a fragment of Alexis Hypobolimaios (Ath. 11.502b; Arnott 1996, 686-91; cf. West 1977, 315). One could add the cult of Homonoia in Cilician Nagidos, a town with strong Ptolemaic connections (SEG XXXIX 1426, l. 368; Habicht 2006, 253). 55 West 1977. 56 Gorgias: Philostr. VS 1.493; Plut. Con. prae. 144bc. Lysias: 33.6; Dion. Hal. Lys. 2829. Isocrates is incessant: Paneg. 3 ( ); Antid. 77 ( ); Phil. 141; Panath. 13 ( ), 42; Epist. 3.2 ( ). 57 Evidence in Thriault 1996a. Roy (2008) now dates the Eleian inscription from Olympia concerning homonoia to c.350 ( | |). 58 Bosworth 1988, 18990. 59 Erskine 1990, 93 (on their mid-3rd century association). The League aided interpolis stability by outlawing the removal of the government in place at the time of a polis entry to the League. Naturally, this was used to support pro-Macedonian regimes, see [Dem.] 17 passim; Polyb. 18.14.3; Poddighe 2004; 2009, 113. 60 Altar: Simonides in Anth. Pal. 6.50; Plut. Arist. 19; Schachter 1994, 12532, 1345. Trophy: Plato Menex. 245a; Isoc. Plat. 59; Eudoxos fr. 311 (Lasserre); Schachter 1994, 13843. Tombs: Hdt. 9.85; Thuc. 3.58.4; Isoc. Plat. 6061; Eudoxos fr. 311; Schachter 1994, 1412; Flower and Marincola 2002, 2546; Bremmer 2006. 61 Spyropoulos 1973. 62 Robert 1969; cf. 1948; Pritchett 1979, 182. If the altar was built in the late 4th century, contemporary with the foundation of the Eleutheria and perhaps the cult of Homonoia of the Greeks, as Schachter (1994, 12532, 1345) suggests, then the integration of the games into the cultic landscape was both constructive and adaptive. It constructed part of the landscape itself by consecrating an altar and dedicating a Simonidean epigram; similarly it adapted the history by establishing both features anachronistically within a Persian War topography.
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Schmitt 1992, 76. Plutarch (Phoc. 23.4, 24.23) also mentions a battle against the Boiotians. It would be fascinating to know how Leosthenes trophy integrated itself into the Plataian landscape, particularly the Persian War monuments. Ma (2008), on Chaeronea, is an excellent analysis of ideology through topography. 64 Although most scholars follow Diodorus account (Oikonomides 1982; Worthington 1984; 1987; Schmitt 1992, 746), some favour Hyperides narrative (Williams 1982, 401; Habicht 1997, 38). Hyperides is constantly trying to parallel the Hellenic War with the Persian Wars. Therefore, his depiction of Leosthenes leading Athenian troops from Athens, through Boiotia, and past Thermopylae, though historically false, is designed to simulate the repulse of Mardonios troops in 479. 65 S. Wallace, forthcoming section 1. 66 See n. 30. 67 Epit. 7.913: E [ ] [ ]
63
[ ] [] . Trans. J. O.
Burtt, Loeb Classical Library. 68 I thank Prof. Roisman for his comments here. 69 Epit. 5.14-20: . Trans. Burtt. First, as in the first battle. 70 After his victory over the Greek forces at the battle of Krannon, Antipater camped on Kadmeia, further reinforcing the image of Boiotian loyalty to Macedon (Plut. Phoc. 26.3, 27.1). 71 Jung (2006, 33140) argued that Athens reorganised the Eleutheria and established the synedrion over it during the Hellenic War. Although there is no evidence for this, it is not impossible. Jung does not mention it, but an allied synedrion was based around Leosthenes and the army (IG II2 467; ISE 10 with Oliver 2009) and may have been at Plataia in Autumn 323. 72 tienne and Pirart 1975; tienne 1985. Buraselis 1982, Stavrianopoulou 2002, 1348, and Jung 2006, 3026 plausibly argue for a date c.251245, but an earlier one cannot be discounted. 73 Jung 2006, 31315. On the dating of the Chremonidean War see Osborne 2004; Oliver 2007, 12731. ONeil 2008 provides a thorough overview of the evidence for the Chremonidean War. One should add, however, the brief note of an unpublished inscription from Rhamnous dating to 267/6 (Petrakos 2003 [2004], 1516).
74 | | | | (l. 204). Trans. Austin 2006,
no. 63. 75 Editions: Syll.3 434/5; Schmitt, SdA 476. English translation: Austin 2006, no. 61. Analysis: Heinen 1972, 117-42. A copy of the alliance between Sparta and Ptolemy Philadelphos has recently come to light during works on the island of Schoinoussa. We await publication of this very important document. I thank Prof. Kostas Buraselis for bringing this to my attention. 76 LGPN 2 s.v. (12); Pros. Ptol. VI 14596; Habicht 1970, 32 n. 20; Pouilloux 1978. 77 Ambassador: ISE 53; IG II2 686/7, l. 24, 39. Synedros: Habicht 1997, 144. General: SEG XXV 186. Statue: Syll.3 462 with Criscuolo 2003, 3202. Buraselis (1982, 1536;
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SEG XXXII 415) identified the king as Ptolemy Euergetes and dated the statue posthumously, cf. Pouilloux 1978, 379; Jung 2006, 303. 78 IG II2 686/7, l. 1635. Commanded by Patroklos (Paus. 1.1.1, 3.6.46; I.Rhamnous 3, l. 237), Ptolemaic forces established military bases throughout Attica, sometimes close to Athens. Oliver (2007, 13859, esp. 1538) and ONeil (2008, 745) overview the archaeological evidence. 79 Teles On Exile 23. Chremonides served as a naval captain in the defeat by Rhodes, possibly in 258 (Polyaenus, Strat. 5.18; Huss 2001, 283), while Glaukon became eponymous priest of Alexander and the brother and sister deities in 255/4 (P. Cairo Zenon II 59173; Ijsewijn 1961, 70-71 no. 31; Fraser 1972, 222). Their sister, Pheidostrate, was priestess of Aglauros and is known from IG II2 34589, cf. Lambert 1999, 115 no. XX. 80 Jung 2006, 3413. ONeil (2008, 723) argues that the Glaukon decree shows that Athens was active beyond her borders during the war. 81 Stavrianopoulou 2002; SEG LII 447; Jung 2006, 304-11, 315-19. The honours are announced [ ] . 82 The Themistokles decree of Troizen may be of significance here (SEG XXII 274). Inscribed in the early to mid-third century, it purports to be a copy of the mobilisation decree of Themistokles from 481/0. Its promotion of Atheno-Spartan unity, eleutheria, and the Persian Wars may be influenced by the rhetoric of the Chremonidean War, see Mattingly 1981. Robertson 1982 sees the focus on Athenian naval power defending eleutheria as an analogy for the Ptolemaic fleet under Patroklos. 83 Above n. 74. tienne and Pirart 1975, 54: sur la tombe des hros morts en combattant contra les barbares pour la libert des Grecs. For the epitaphic sense of + dative, see tienne and Pirart 1975, 55. A parallel appears in a late 2nd century Athenian hoplite race (IG II2 1006, l. 22). 84 All we know of the integration of the Eleutheria into the memorial topography is that the hoplite race took place between the trophy, some 15 stades from the city, and the altar of Zeus Eleutherios, which was apparently not far (Paus. 9.2.5: ) from the common tomb of the Greeks. 85 Hdt 9.85; Paus. 9.2.5; Schachter 1994, 1412; Flower and Marincola 2002, 2546; Bremmer 2006. The nature of the sacrifices to the dead also changed (Schachter 1994, 126 n. 8). 86 I thank Dr. Julia Shear for raising this point with me. Heroes: Simonides in Diod. 11.11.6; Isoc. Paneg. 82; Eudoxos fr. 311; Marcus Antonios Polemon Declamationes 1.56; Plut. Arist. 18.2, 19.45, Cim. 13.2; cf. Them. 7.4. Civic Ideal: Loraux 1986, 99118. In 427 Athens naturalised the surviving Plataians (Kapparis 1995). 87 The development was also conceptual. From at least the late 2nd century onwards, a dialogos between Athens and Sparta alone decided which state was to lead the procession at the Eleutheria (Robertson, 1986). 88 West 1977; above section 1. 89 Above n. 56. 90 Both tienne (1985, 260) and Thriault (1996b, 1412) argued that Macedon could not have employed the mythe platen because it would have highlighted their own absence in 479 (cf. Brosius 2003, 230) and was only later used by the Greeks in the mid-3rd century. This, I hope to have shown, is to fundamentally constrain the importance and malleability of the mythe platen.
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Bibliography Amandry, P. 1971 Collection Paul Canellopoulos (I), BCH 95, 585626. Arnott, W. G. 1996 Alexis: The Fragments. A commentary, Cambridge. Ashton, N. G. 1984 The Lamian war-stat magni nominis umbra, JHS 104, 1527. Austin, M. M. 2006 The Hellenistic World from Alexander to the Roman Conquest. A selection of ancient sources in translation, 2nd ed., Cambridge. Barron, J. P. 1988 The liberation of Greece, in CAH 2 IV, 592622. Boedeker, D. 1998 The new Simonides and heroization at Plataia, in N. Fisher and H. van Wees (eds) Archaic Greece: New approaches and new evidence, Swansea, 23149. Bosworth, A. B. 1980 A Historical Commentary on Arrians History of Alexander, vol. 1, Oxford. 1988 Conquest and Empire: The reign of Alexander the Great, Cambridge. Bremmer, J. 2006 The rise of the hero cult and the new Simonides, ZPE 158, 1526. Brosius, M. 2003 Why Persia became the enemy of Macedon, in W. Henkelman and A. Kuhrt (eds) A Persian Perspective. Essays in memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Achaemenid History XIII, Leiden. Brunt, P. A. 1953 The Hellenic League against Persia, Historia 2, 13563. 1976 Arrian, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1, London. Buckler, J. 1980 The Theban Hegemony, 371362 BC, Harvard. Buraselis, K. 1982 , . . 121, 13659. Burn, A. R. 1962 Persia and the Greeks: The defence of the West, c.546478 BC, London. Chaniotis, A. 2005 War in the Hellenistic World. The ancient world at war, Oxford. Criscuolo, L. 2003 Agoni e politica alla corte di Alessandria. Riflessioni su alcuni epigrammi di Posidippo, Chiron 33, 31133. Dreyer, B. 1999 Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des sptklassischen Athen (322ca. 230 v. Chr.), Historia Einzelschriften 137, Stuttgart. Droysen, J. G. 195253 Geschichte des Hellenismus, Edited by E. Bayer, 3 vols., Tbingen. Errington, M. 1990 A History of Macedonia, translated by C. Errington, Berkeley.
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Erskine, A. 1990 The Hellenistic Stoa: Political thought and action, London. tienne, R. 1985 Le Koinon des Hellnes Plates et Glaucon, fils dtocls, in P. Roesch, and G. Argoud (eds) La Botia antique, Actes de Colloque International, 1620 May 1983, Paris, 25963. tienne, R. and Pirart, M. 1975 Un dcret du koinon des Hellnes Plates en lhonneur de Glaucon, fils dtocls, dAthnes, BCH 99, 5175. Flower, M. 2000 Alexander the Great and panhellenism, in A. B. Bosworth & E. J. Baynham (eds) Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction, Oxford, 96135. Flower, M. and Marincola, J. 2002 Herodotus Histories Book IX, Cambridge. Fraser, P. 1972 Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols., Oxford. Fredricksmeyer, E. 2000 Alexander and the kingship of Asia, in A. B. Bosworth and E. J. Baynham (eds) Alexander the Great in Fact and Fiction, Oxford, 13666. Graindor, P. 1922 Chronologie des archontes athniennes, Memoires Acad. Royal Belgique 8, 16971. Green, P. 1970 Alexander the Great, London. Habicht, C. 1961 Falsche Urkunden zur Geschichte Athens im Zeitalter der Perserkriege, Hermes 89, 135. 1970 Gottmenschentum und griechische Stdte 2, Munich. 1997 Athens from Alexander to Anthony, translated by D. L. Schneider, Harvard. 2006 A Hellenistic inscription from Arsinoe in Cilicia, in C. Habicht, Hellenistic Monarchies: Collected papers, Michigan, 24374. Hamilton, J. R. 1969 Plutarchs Alexander: A commentary, Oxford. Hammond, N. G. L. and Griffith, G. T. 1979 A History of Macedonia, vol. 2, Oxford. Hammond, N. G. L. and Walbank, F. W. 1988 A History of Macedonia, vol. 3, Oxford. Heinen, H. 1972 Untersuchungen zur hellenistischen Geschichte des 3. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. Zur Geschichte der Zeit des Ptolemaios Keraunos und zum Chremonideischen Kriege, Historia Einzelschriften 20, Wiesbaden. Huss, W. 2001 egypten in hellenistischer Zeit 33230 BC, Munich. Ijsewijn, J. 1961 De sacerdotibus sacerditiisque Alexandri Magni et Lagidarum eponymis, Brussels. Jones, C. P. 1974 A note on the decree for Glaucon son of Eteocles, ZPE 15, 179.
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Jung, M. 2006 Marathon und Plataiai. Zwei Perserschlachten als lieux de mmoire im antiken Griechenland, Gttingen. Kapparis, K. 1995 The Athenian decree for the naturalisation of the Plataeans, GRBS 36, 35978. Kirsten, E. 1950 Plataiai, RE 20, cols. 22552332. Krentz, P. M. 2007 The oath of Marathon, not Plataia?, Hesperia 76, 73142. Kreutz, N. 2001 Der Eid von Plataeae und der frhklassische Tempelbau, Thetis 8, 5767. Lambert, S. D. 1999 IG II2 2345, Thiasoi of Herakles and the Salaminioi, ZPE 125, 93130. Lane Fox, R. 1974 Alexander the Great, London. Lehmann, G. A. 1988 Der lamische Krieg und die Freiheit der Hellenen: Uberlegungen zur hieronymianischen Tradition. ZPE 73, 12149. Loraux, N. 1986 The Invention of Athens. The funeral oration in the classical city, translated by A. Sheridan, Harvard. Ma, J. 2008 Chaironea 338: topographies of commemoration, JHS 128, 7291. Mattingly, H. B. 1981 The Themistokles decree from Troezen: transmission and status, in G. S. Shrimpton and D. J. McCargar (eds) Classical Contributions. Studies in honour of Malcolm Francis McGregor, New York, 7987. Miller, S. G. 1990 (ed.) Nemea: A Guide to the Site and Museum, Berkeley. ONeil, J. L. 2008 A re-examination of the Chremonidean war, in P. McKechnie and P. Guillaume (eds) Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his World, Mnemosyne Supplement 300, Leiden, 6589. Oikonomides, A. N. 1982 Athens and the Phokians at the outbreak of the Lamian war, AncW 5, 1238. Oliver, G. J. 2003 (Re-)locating Athenian decrees in the Agora: IG II2 448, in D. Jordan and J. Traill (eds) Lettered Attica. A day of Attic epigraphy, Athens. 2007 War, Food, and Politics in Early Hellenistic Athens, Oxford. 2009 Honours for a public slave at Athens (IG II2 502 + Ag. I 1947; 302/1 BC), in A. A. Themos and N. Papazarkadas (eds) . Christian Habicht, Athens, 11124. Osborne, M. J. 2004 The archons of IG II2 1273, in A. P. Matthaiou (ed.) , Adolf Wilhelm, Athens, 199211.
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Petrakos, B. 2003 [2004] Anaskaphes: Rhamnous, 50, 1316. Poddighe, E. 2004 Una possibile identificazione del paidotriba di Sicione: Ps. Dem. XVII, 16, Quaderni di Storia 59, 18396. 2009 Alexander and the Greeks: the Corinthian League, in W. Heckel and L. Tritle (eds) Alexander the Great. A new history, London, 99120. Pouilloux, J. 1978 Glaucon, fils de tocls dAthnes, in J. Bingen, G. Cambier and G. Nachtergael (eds) Le monde grec. pense, littrature, histoire documents: hommages Claire Praux, Paris, 37682. Pownall, F. 2008 Theopompos and the public documentation of Athens, in C. Cooper (ed.) Epigraphy and the Greek Historian, Toronto, 11928. Pritchett, W. K. 1957 Calendars of Athens again, BCH 81, 269301. 1979 The Greek State at War III: Religion, Berkeley. 1985 The Greek State at War IV, Berkeley. Raaflaub, K. A. 2004 The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece 2, translated by R. Franciscono, Chicago. Rhodes, P. J., with Lewis, D. M. 1997 The Decrees of the Greek States, Oxford. Robert, L. 1948 Un athlte milsien, Hellenica 6, 11725. 1969 Recherches pigraphiques, Opera Minora Selecta 2, Amsterdam, 75867. Robertson, N. 1982 The decree of Themistocles in its contemporary setting, Phoenix 36, 144. 1986 A point of precedence at Plataia: the dispute between Athens and Sparta over leading the procession, Hesperia 55, 88102. Roesch, P. 1974 Note sur le dcret des Hellnes en lhonneur de Glaucon, ZPE 15, 1802. Rosen, K. 1967 Political documents in Hieronymus of Cardia (323302 BC), Acta Classica 10, 4194. Roy, J. 2008 Homonoia in Inschriften von Olympia 260: the problem of dating Concord in Elis, ZPE 167, 6772. Schachermeyer, F. 1973 Alexander der Groe: das problem seiner Persnlichkeit und seines Wirkens, Sitzungberichte der sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.hist. Klasse 285, Austria. Schachter A. 1994 Cults of Boiotia, Vol. 3: Potnia to Zeus, Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin Supplement 38.3, London. Schmitt, O. 1992 Der Lamische Krieg, diss. University of Bonn.
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Seibert, J. 1998 Panhellenischer Kreuzzug, Nationalkrieg, Rachefeldzug oder makedonischer Eroberungskrieg? berlegungen zu den Ursachen des Krieges gegen Persien, in W. Will (ed.) Alexander der Grosse, eine Welteroberung. Vortrge des Internationalen Bonner Alexanderkolloquiums, Bonn, 558. Shrimpton, G. S. 1991 Theopompus the Historian, Buffalo. Siewert, P. 1972 Der Eid von Plataiai, Vestigia 16, Munich. Spyropoulos, T. 1973 , 6, 3757. Stavrianopoulou, E. 2002 Die Familienexedra von Eudamos und Lydiadas in Megalopolis, Tekmeria 7, 11656. Thriault, G. 1996a Le culte dHomonoia dans les cits grecques, Lyon-Quebec. 1996b Lapparition du culte dHomonoia, Les tudes Classiques 64, 12750. Vanderpool, E. 1969 Three prize vases, Archaiologikon Deltion 24, 15. Walbank, M. B. 2002 Notes on Attic decrees, ZPE 139, 615. Wallace, P. W. 1982 The final battle at Plataia, Studies in Attic Epigraphy, History and Topography Presented to Eugene Vanderpool, Hesperia Supplement 19, 18392. Wallace, S. forthcoming History and hindsight. The importance of Euphron of Sikyon for the Athenian democracy in 318/7, in H. Hauben and A. Meeus (eds), The Age of the Successors (323276 BC ), Leuven. Welles, C. B. 1963 Diodorus Siculus, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 8, London. West, W. C. 1977 Hellenic homonoia and the new decree from Plataea, GRBS 18, 30719. Wilcken, U. 1967 Alexander the Great, translated by G. C. Richards, New York. Williams, J. M. 1982 Athens without Democracy: The oligarchy of Phocion and the tyranny of Demetrius of Phalerum, 322307, diss. Yale University. Worthington, I. 1984 IG II 2 370 and the date of the Athenian alliance with Aetolia, ZPE 57, 13944. 1987 The early career of Leosthenes and IG II 2 1631, Historia 36, 48991. Yardley, J. C. and Heckel, W. 1997 Justin: Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus I: Books 1112, Alexander the Great, Oxford.
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PART IV
THE COURT
9 BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY AND THE COURT: THE LIFE OF PERSAIOS OF KITION Andrew Erskine
1. A Hellenistic man Sometime in the 270s the Stoic philosopher Persaios of Kition headed north from Athens to the Macedonian court at Pella.1 The same journey had been made a hundred and thirty or so years previously by the Athenian tragedian Euripides, who is reported to have spent time at the court of the Macedonian king Archelaos.2 But whereas Euripides was leaving an imperial city to travel to the margins of the Greek world, Persaios was going to one of its centres of power. In Persaios day intellectuals were as likely to be found at the royal courts as in the meeting places of the polis. These courts and their kings were one of the distinctive features of the Hellenistic age, perhaps even the distinctive feature as Robin Lane Fox suggests in the opening chapter of this volume. Nor did this escape contemporary thinkers. Philosophers in particular took note of the changes that had taken place in the political landscape and of the power that was now held by kings. As a result the early Hellenistic period saw a glut of kingship treatises produced by the various philosophical schools, usually entitled On Kingship ( ) and all now lost. Treatises are attributed to the Peripatetics Theophrastus and Straton, to the Stoics Kleanthes, Persaios himself and Sphairos and to the father of Epicureanism Epicurus. Their approaches may have been very different but they all shared an awareness that this was a new and significant phenomenon and one that needed to be addressed. While some
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speculated about the circumstances in which it would be appropriate for a philosopher to join a kings court, Epicurus advised that living with a king was something best avoided. In this he seems to have disapproved of intellectuals in general at contemporary Hellenistic courts, literary scholars as well as philosophers; certainly he thought that royal symposia were the place for military anecdotes rather than discussion of literary and poetic problems.3 Modern scholarly attention usually focuses on the intellectual culture of the Alexandrian court but in this chapter I want to turn to the Macedonian court and explore it through the experience of one man, the philosopher Persaios. He is an enigmatic figure in Hellenistic history and philosophy. He was a witness to great men and transforming events, yet he himself is hard to recover. In Athens he was a pupil of one of the most influential of Hellenistic philosophers, Zeno of Kition, the founder of Stoicism. Later he became part of the court of the Macedonian king Antigonos Gonatas and so was able to experience Hellenistic monarchy from its centre. His association with Antigonos brought him to the Peloponnese just as the rise of federal states was challenging Macedonian hegemony on the Greek mainland. Thus he was at (and possibly in charge of ) the Acrocorinth when it was captured by a revitalised Achaian League under Aratos of Sikyon. The third century could be studied through his life if we did but know more about it.4 This, however, is the problem. Persaios is a man about whom nothing ever seems to be certain. The sources do not even agree on his place of origin or his status. He was, we are told, Persaios of Kition, son of Demetrios, but such a respectable background was called into question early on by those who said that he had been a slave. In one version he was even said to have been presented by Antigonos to Zeno.5 His death too was no clearer than his birth. He died, according to Pausanias, at the fall of the Acrocorinth in 243, but, according to Plutarch in his life of Aratos, he went on to teach philosophy and muse on his unsuccessful defence of the citadel. Philodemus in what survives of his history of the Stoics records elements of both versions, a heroic death in the face of overwhelming numbers and a rather more ignominious flight.6 Without his role at the Macedonian court we would know almost nothing about Persaios but with that role we are not sure what we know. Persaios comes across as a character in other peoples lives rather than the central character in his own. The real Persaios may now be beyond reach but the stories themselves reveal something of the situation of the philosopher at the court of a king. The present chapter is an examination of the tension that this position created. Stories repeatedly highlight the inconsistency between Persaios
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A good number of works are ascribed to him. Among them is a work on the Spartan constitution, an interest he shared with his Stoic contemporary Sphairos of Borysthenes. About his seven books attacking Platos Laws only the title and the number of books are known but this information alone implies a substantial treatise. His kingship treatise has already been noted above, although again nothing is known of it but the title, On Kingship.11 Yet his strictly philosophical works were rarely cited in antiquity, a neglect which was in marked contrast to the treatment afforded his racier Symposium Memoirs, which I consider in greater detail in section 4 below. An exception to this is his On the Gods, which appears to have offered some form of rationalising anthropocentric view of the gods, one influenced by the arguments of the fifth-century philosopher Prodikos of Keos. For such a point of view Persaios was cited first by Philodemus in his On Piety and subsequently by Cicero and Minucius Felix, most likely as a result of a reading of Philodemus rather than any direct contact with Persaios original text.12 This general silence about Persaios more philosophical writings suggests that unlike, for example, his contemporary Ariston of Chios his philosophy did not tend to be distinctive and instead he stayed quite close to the views of his teacher.13 As a philosopher Persaios not only wrote, he also taught. Among his pupils in Athens was said to have been Aratus of Soloi, the poet and author of the Phaenomena, who would also spend time at the court of Antigonos. A Macedonian connection may lie behind the Amphipolitan background of another of his pupils, Hermagoras, about whom nothing is known beyond his Suda entry. Hermagoras was serious enough about philosophy, although the titles attributed to him might lead one to think that he was not over-serious. They include an attack on the Academy entitled On Sophistry, a Dog-hater (), which presumably expressed his antagonism to the Cynics, and a puzzlingly entitled work, , to be translated perhaps as Outpourings, which the Suda notes is concerned with egg-divining. Persaios no doubt had other pupils, although like his works their names have not survived with the exception of Antigonos Gonatas son Halkyoneus whom he is reported to have tutored.14 Persaios comes across, therefore, as a credible if not especially impressive philosopher, but one very much in the shadow of his teacher Zeno. In Diogenes Laertius Lives of the Philosophers, in contrast to his contemporaries, Ariston, Kleanthes, Herillos and Sphairos, all pupils of Zeno, he does not merit a life of his own. Instead he and his publications are subsumed into the Life of Zeno where not even his suspected end on the Acrocorinth can earn him one of Diogenes famous light verses on the deaths of his subjects.15
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these writers and intellectuals at court. We can observe here, albeit in an anecdote, a degree of informality and intimacy in the relationship between king and poet but also something of the kings aspirations in acting as patron. Studies of Hellenistic courts have carefully plotted all the different grades, positions and titles and no doubt there were many permutations, although at this early stage they had not reached the complexity of the late Hellenistic period. What counted most, however, was proximity to the king or, if that was not possible, proximity to someone close to the king. The informal advisers who surrounded the king were known as his friends or philoi .22 It is not certain whether Persaios was part of this group, but sources make clear that he was close to the king and an influential figure at court; he is referred to as an hetairos of the king and several anecdotes suggest a considerable degree of familiarity.23 His influence with the king was observed by others. Timon of Phlios, author of the Silloi, three volumes of verse making fun of a wide range of philosophers, attacked Ariston of Chios, fairly or unfairly, for fawning round Persaios because he was so impressed by the latters closeness to Antigonos.24 Moreover Persaios was eventually to be entrusted with the Acrocorinth, a fortress crucial to the maintenance of Macedonian power in the Peloponnese. The nature of his position here is controversial. He is more likely to have been some form of civilian governor than a military commander; indeed Plutarch refers to him as archon, while both he and Polyaenus report that a certain Archelaos was general at the fall of the Acrocorinth.25 Whatever Persaios exact status here he was clearly important enough in the court to be given a position of some authority. The appointment of the historian Hieronymos of Kardia as governor of Boeotia by Antigonos father, Demetrios Poliorketes, might seem comparable but Hieronymos did have a fair degree of military experience.26 The presence of literary figures and intellectuals at court was a feature not only of Macedon but also of the other Greek kingdoms of the Hellenistic world.27 In Alexandria the Ptolemies made determined efforts to attract scholars and writers and established the Museum and Library as institutions that would give continuity and permanency to their endeavours.28 Here the future head of the Peripatetic school, Straton of Lampsakos, acted as tutor to the young Ptolemy II Philadelphos, and poets such as Callimachus of Cyrene and Apollonius Rhodius flourished.29 Later in the third century the Stoic Sphairos also spent time at the Ptolemaic court, most probably two visits, the first under Ptolemy III Euergetes and again under his successor.30 The Athenian comic poet Philippides was numbered among the friends of Lysimachos and his standing with the king
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For intellectuals at court it was no different as each competed for the attention and favour of the king, a pastime already well underway at the court of Alexander where the philosopher Anaxarchos and the historian Kallisthenes vied with one another.35 Few stood above this and to do so was to win praise. It was a sign of the excellent character of Philippides that he was free from the intrigue that was such a feature of court life, or so at least reports Plutarch: he caused no trouble and was not infected with the meddlesomeness of the court.36 In the Antigonid court three philosophers stand out for their rivalry and bitchiness as they seek to promote themselves in the eyes of the king and do down their opponents: Persaios of Kition, Bion of Borysthenes and Menedemos of Eretria.37 A second Stoic, Philonides of Thebes, is said to have accompanied Persaios to Macedon but very little is known of him except that he too joined in the mutual character assassination. Both these Stoics seem to have ganged up on Bion when he arrived at the Macedonian court and made disparaging remarks to Antigonos about the newcomers birth and background.38 Perhaps it was in response that Bion told a joke
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about the statue of Persaios mentioned above, a joke which is in fact our only reason for believing that a statue of Persaios existed at all. Bion said that he had seen a statue of Persaios inscribed , most plausibly translated as Persaios of Kition, pupil of Zeno, but, joked Bion, this was an engravers error and it should have read , Persaios, slave of Zeno.39 This joke may be the origin of the story that Persaios had been a slave of Zeno, but whatever the origin of that story it is apparent that both Persaios and Bion accused each other of low birth. This enclosed world of gossip and philosophical malice might be a suitable intellectual context for the anti-Cynic writings of Persaios Amphipolitan pupil Hermagoras, a text so vividly entitled Dog-hater, another hit at Bion perhaps.40 More vicious appears to have been the conflict between Persaios and another philosophical rival at the court, Menedemos of Eretria, in which Persaios went to even greater lengths to protect his position. Damning was Menedemos subsequent verdict on Persaios, delivered, as so often was the case, at a Macedonian drinking party and providing confirmation of Epicurus belief that it was best to keep intellectuals away from such places. Of Persaios he said, Philosopher he may well be, but he is the worst of men who live or have ever lived. The root of this quarrel is to be found in the two mens relations with Antigonos. When it looked as if Antigonos was prepared to restore democracy for the Eretrians as a favour to Menedemos, Persaios interceded with the king and prevented it.41 Whatever the truth of the story, it rests on a perception of Persaios as a man of great influence with the king who was prepared to assert himself in the face of others he perceived to be his rivals. This in-fighting was a product of a court culture in which the rewards in terms of wealth and influence were immense.42 The quantity of alcohol drunk at the Macedonian court probably did not help to calm tempers either.43 4. Between philosophy and the court Wealth and reputation may have been integral elements of court life, keenly fought over by the participants, and accusations of low birth may have offered a satisfactory way of demeaning others in front of the court and more particularly in front of the king. But in Stoic theory none of these things, wealth, reputation, birth, good looks or even life itself, were of significance. Only the morally good contributed to happiness (), everything else was treated as having no bearing on it, a category that Stoics called the indifferents ( ). Wealth, fame, health and so on may have been useful but they had no value in themselves.44 The Stoic wise man, knowing all this and living his life accordingly, would have been a
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of banquets, drinking and sexual abandon. His self-indulgence was limited to satisfying his liking for figs and lying in the sun.49 He was accustomed, according to Diogenes Laertius, to eating small loaves and honey with wine of good bouquet.50 In sexual matters he rarely used young boys and only occasionally prostitutes, and that was just to show that he had no hostility to women.51 Diogenes points up the contrast with Persaios by following this immediately with a story about how Persaios brought a young flute girl home while he was still living with Zeno in Athens. When Persaios introduced the girl to him, Zeno hurriedly led her back to him. A similar story is reported to have been told by the third-century BC biographer Antigonos of Karystos in his life of Zeno. On this occasion Persaios buys a flute-girl at a drinking party but is reluctant to bring her home because he lives with Zeno, but as soon as Zeno realizes the situation he drags the girl into the house and shuts her in a room with Persaios.52 Again the theme recurs of Zenos restraint and Persaios lack of it, but this time there is a sense of Persaios as a man caught between two ways of living, something that would be accentuated at the Macedonian court. This image of Zeno may be in part due to Persaios himself. He wrote a volume that went under several titles, notably Symposium Memoirs ( ) and Symposium Dialogues ( ). This proved to be the most cited of his works, largely because it suited Athenaeus purpose so well and consequently extracts, sometimes substantial, appear in his Deipnosophists (Sophists at Dinner). Nonetheless the nature of this work is not well understood. It was, writes Athenaeus, based on the memoirs () of Zeno and Stiplo, one of Zenos teachers, but in what way is not at all clear and the fragments suggest that Persaios experiences at the court of Antigonos Gonatas also helped shape it.53 Few of the attested citations of the Symposium Memoirs refer to Zeno, although it is likely that surviving evidence for Zeno may come from it without explicit attribution, perhaps some of the descriptions of his lifestyle that were mentioned above. Certainly Persaios did record in the Symposium Memoirs that Zeno usually refused invitations to dinner, an observation which fits well with such a picture. Yet, in spite of his frugal and ascetic way of living, our sources preserve a surprising number of anecdotes about Zeno concerning food and drink; this is especially surprising for a man who tended to avoid social functions where food was likely to play a major part.54 Thus, for instance, he knees a rude guest at a drinking party; he criticises a glutton; on one occasion he snatches back a fish that a glutton has taken; and he relaxes when drinking just as the bitter lupin becomes sweet when steeped in water.55 These stories occur not only in Athenaeus whose subject-matter revolves around drinking and dining
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Nonetheless, the references and allusions to his Symposium Memoirs give us a sense of his own attempt to place himself in relation to Antigonos and Zeno, the two men who embody the competing elements in Persaios life, the court and philosophy, a very Hellenistic dilemma. Acknowledgements This chapter began as a paper presented at a very stimulating conference on Hellenism in Cyprus in 2005, organised by Ioannis Taifakos, and a shorter version is due to appear in the proceedings; it was also given at a Hellenistic workshop in Edinburgh. Shane Wallace read a draft of the chapter and I am very grateful to him for his comments.
Notes 1 Jacoby 1902, 3689 for arguments on the date, suggesting a range of 276 to 270. 2 Hammond and Griffith 1979, 149, Borza 1990, 168, 1723, though note Scullion 2003s scepticism. Scullion may be right that Euripides did not die in Macedon but it is very likely that he visited it; certainly stories that placed him there were already current at the time of Aristotle (Pol. 1311b304). 3 On kingship treatises, Murray 2007 and Bertelli 2002; for Epicurus, see Plut. Mor. 1095c and 1127a together with Murray 2007, 1819. 4 H. von Arnim collects the testimonia and fragments of Persaios in Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (= SVF; 4 vols., Leipzig, 190524), vol. 1, nos. 43562. This contains much of the material cited in this chapter, but some updating is needed, especially in the light of Dorandi 1994, which gives the text of Philodemus history of the Stoics (P.Herc. 1018 = Philod. Stoa here) together with a translation and commentary. The fragments of his more historical works are also collected by Jacoby, FGrH 584. Among the more recent examinations of Persaios and aspects of his career are Bollansee 2000 (with full bibliography), Scholz 1998, 31825, 36870, Sonnabend 1996, 2437, Dorandi 1994, 1013, Steinmetz 1994, 5557, Erskine 1990, 803. 5 Diogenes Laertius (= D. L.) 7.36 (SVF I.435), Aul. Gell. NA 2.18.8 (SVF I.438), Athen. 4.162d-e (SVF I.452), Philod. Stoa 12 with Dorandis commentary. Stories of a servile origin may have stemmed from a cutting witticism of Bion of Borysthenes, see section 3 below and Dorandi 1994, 1112. The suggestion that Persaios was given to Antigonos would evaporate if the text of D. L. 7.36 were amended, see Bollansee 2000, 17 n. 4 with 278 and Susemihl 1891, 69 n. 263. 6 Paus. 2.8.4, 7.8.3, Plut. Arat. 1823, Polyaen. Strat. 6.5 (SVF I.4424), Philod. Stoa 15; the competing traditions are lucidly analysed by Bollansee 2000. Somehow the idea that Persaios committed suicide after the loss of the Acrocorinth has crept into some of the standard modern reference works (e.g. OCD 3, sv Persaeus, and CAH 2 7.1, 69, 229, 251); as Bollansee 2000, 20, n. 13, points out, there is no ancient authority for this. 7 Philod. Stoa, 13. 8 Tarn 1913, 232. 9 D. L. 7.14.
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Cf., with differing approaches, Elias 1983 [1969]s influential treatment, focussing on the court of Louis XIV, and Duindam 2003, esp 24954, treating both Versailles and the Habsburg court in Vienna. 34 Polyb. 5.26.1213 (trans. Paton); on the intrigues and dangers of Hellenistic court life, Herman 1997, Weber 19989. 35 Borza 1981. 36 Plut. Dem. 12.8. 37 Bion: Kindstrand 1976; Menedemos: Knoepfler 1991. 38 D. L. 4.467. 39 Athen. 4.162de, on which Kindstrand 1976, 28990, rejecting C. B. Gulicks Loeb translation. Kindstrand collects examples to show that the genitive could be used to indicate a master-pupil relationship, but the anecdote is still puzzling as any such inscription would seem to be most readily interpreted by an observer unfamiliar with Persaios as meaning Persaios, son of Zeno. 40 See above n. 14. 41 D. L. 2.1434; Menedemos comment may well be deliberately echoing Antisthenes on Socrates wife, Xanthippe, Xen. Symp. 2.10, so Tarn 1913, 233, n. 38. For Menedemos earlier political activity in Eritris, see Haake 2007, 17781. 42 Herman 1997, 21618. 43 Murray 1996. 44 Cf. D. L. 7.1047; for a review of Stoic ethics, Schofield 2003. 45 See n. 18 above. 46 D. L. 7.36 (SVF I.435), Themistius Or. 32.358 (SVF I.449). 47 Sphairos: D. L. 7.177 (SVF 1.625, the story is told with wax birds instead of pomegranates in Athen. 8.354e, SVF I.624); Ariston: D. L. 7.162. 48 Athen. 4.160ef (Sopater Frag. 6), Gutzwiller 2007: 1234. 49 D. L. 7.1. 50 D. L. 7.13. 51 D. L. 7.13. This same point, but with a very different tone, is made at Athen. 13.563de, where Antigonos of Karystos is cited as a source; both appear as fragments 33A and 33B in Dorandis Bud collection of the fragments of Antigonos (Dorandi 1999). The negative tone is likely, however, to be a consequence of the scathing verses of Hermeias of Kourion quoted shortly before rather than a reflection of Antigonos himself; on Hermeias, see Bing 2010. 52 D. L. 7.13, Athen. 13.607e, together as Antigonos of Karystos, frags 34A and 34B (Dorandi). 53 For citations of the Symposium Memoirs, Athen. 4.162bc, 13.607ae, D. L. 7.1 (= SVF I.4513); recent scholarship on Athenaeus has stressed that his method of citation is far more artful than previously realised so, however valuable he is, he needs to be approached carefully, Gorman 2007, Pelling 2000. 54 Dinner invitations: D. L. 7.1 (SVF I.453), Philod. Stoa 3 (Dorandi); frugality: D. L. 7.27 (SVF I.5). 55 Knees guest: D. L. 7.17; gluttons: D. L. 7.19, Athen. 8.345c, 5.186d, cf. Athen. 8.344a for a similar story told of Bion of Borysthenes, suggesting it circulated at the Macedonian court; lupins: Athen. 2.55f, D. L. 7.26, Galen, de anim. mor. 3, Eustathius on Hom. Od. 21.293, p. 1910.42 (collected together at SVF I.285). 56 Argued in greater detail in Erskine 1990, 802.
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Bibliography Algra, K. 2003 Stoic theology, in B. Inwood (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge, 15379. Bertelli, L. 2002 Peri Basileias: I trattati sulla regalit dal IV secolo A.c. agli apocrifi pitagorici, in P. Bettiolo and G. Filorama (eds) Il dio mortale. Teologie politiche tra antico e contemporaneo, Brescia, 1761. Bikerman, E. 1938 Institutions des Sleucides, Paris Billows, R. 1990 Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State, Berkeley. Bing, P. 2010 Hermeias of Kourion (Athenaios 13.563de = Powell, Coll. Alex. p. 237), in S. L. Ager and R. A. Faber (eds) Belonging and Isolation in the Hellenistic World, Toronto. Bollansee, J. 2000 Persaios of Kition, or the failure of the wise man as general, in L. Mooren (ed.) Politics, Administration and Society in the Hellenistic and Roman World, Leuven, 1528. Borza, E. 1981 Anaxarchus and Callisthenes: academic intrigue at Alexanders Court, in H. J. Dell (ed.) Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honour of Charles F. Edson, Thessaloniki, 7386. 1990 In the Shadow of Olympus: The emergence of Macedon, Princeton. Brouwer, R. 2002 Sagehood and the Stoics, in D. Sedley (ed.), Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 23, 181224. Capdetrey, L. 2007 Le pouvoir sleucide: territoire, administration, finances dun royaume hellnistique (312129 avant J-C), Rennes. Dorandi, T. 1994 Filodemo: Storia dei Filosofi: La Sto da Zenone a Panezio (PHerc. 1018), Leiden. 1999 Antigone de Caryste: fragments, Paris. Duindam, J. 2003 Vienna and Versailles: The courts of Europes dynastic rivals, 15501780, Cambridge. Dyck, A. 2003 Cicero: De Natura Deorum, Cambridge.
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Elias, N. 1983 The Court Society, Oxford (first published as Die hfische Gesellschaft, Neuwied and Berlin 1969). Erskine, A. 1990 The Hellenistic Stoa: Political thought and action, London. 1995 Culture and power in Ptolemaic Egypt: the Museum and Library of Alexandria, Greece & Rome 42, 3848. Fraser, P. M. 1972 Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols, Oxford. Gabbert, J. J. 1997 Antigonus II Gonatas: a political biography, London. Gorman, R. and V. 2007 The tryphe of the Sybarites: a historiographical problem in Athenaeus, JHS 127, 3860 Gutzwiller, K. 2007 A Guide to Hellenistic Literature, Oxford. Haake, M. 2007 Der Philosoph in der Stadt: Untersuchungen zur ffentlichen Rede ber Philosophen und Philosophie in den hellenistischen Poleis, Munich. Hammond, N. G. L. and Griffith, G. T. 1979 A History of Macedonia, Vol. 2, Oxford. Harrison, S. J. 1990 Lucretius, Euripides and the philosophers, De Rerum Natura 5.1321, CQ 40, 1958. Henrichs, A. 1974 Die Kritik der stoischen Theologie im PHerc. 1428, Cronache Ercolanesi 4, 532. Herman, G. 1997 The court society of the Hellenistic Age, in P. Cartledge, P. Garnsey and E. Gruen (eds) Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in culture, history and historiography, Berkeley, 199224. Hornblower, J. 1981 Hieronymus of Cardia, Oxford. Ioppolo, A.-M. 1980 Aristone di Chio e lo stoicismo antico, Naples. Jacoby, F. 1902 Apollodors Chronik: eine Sammlung der Fragmente, Philologische Untersuchungen 16, Berlin. Kindstrand, J. F. 1976 Bion of Borysthenes: A collection of the fragments with introduction and commentary, Uppsala. Knoepfler, D. 1991 La vie de Mndme dretrie de Diogne Larce, Basel. Le Bohec, S. 1987 Lentourage royal la cour des Antigonides, in E. Lvy (ed.) Le systme palatial en orient, en Grce et Rome, Strasbourg, 31426.
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Susemihl, F. 1891 Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, vol. 1, Leipzig. Tarn, W. W. 1913 Antigonos Gonatas, Oxford. Weber, G. 1995 Herrscher, Hof und Dichter. Aspekte der Legitimierung und Reprsentation hellenistischer Knige am Beispiel der ersten drei Antigoniden, Historia 44, 283316. 1997 Interaktion, Reprsentation und Herrschaft. Der Knigshof im Hellenismus, A. Winterling (ed.) Zwischen Haus und Staat: antike Hfe im Vergleich, Munich, 2772. 19989 The Hellenistic rulers and their poets. Silencing dangerous critics?, Ancient Society 29, 14774.
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10 BEING ROYAL AND FEMALE IN THE EARLY HELLENISTIC PERIOD Elizabeth D. Carney
The role of women in early Hellenistic dynasties, despite the similarities generated by the Macedonian past shared by all the ruling families, differed considerably from family to family and from generation to generation. These differences were reflected in the distinctive dynastic images of each family. This chapter attempts to trace the historical evolution of the position of royal women from the late Argead to the early Hellenistic period while addressing the factors that contributed to similarities in role as well as those that led to considerable difference. Justin described how Olympias, mother of Alexander, confronted death at the hands of her assassins:
She did not run from the sword or from wounds, nor did she scream like a woman. She faced death the way brave men do, upholding the glorious reputation of her ancient lineage; you could recognize Alexander even in his mothers death.1
Plutarch put into the mouth of Kleopatra VIIs loyal servant the pronouncement that her self-inflicted death was good and suitable for the descendant of so many kings. 2 According to Plutarch,3 Octavian, though irked because he had been cheated of the chance to parade her in his triumph, nonetheless admired her eugeneia (nobility of birth, both literally and figuratively) and allowed her a regal burial. These two death scenes, one from the beginning and one from the end of the Hellenistic period, exemplify how royal women encapsulated the qualities of their clans, those of birth and of marriage, in a way that royal males could not. At least at times, women could symbolize their dynasties.4 To some degree, common Hellenistic practices relating to royal women did emerge because women moved from one dynasty to another and because royal women in each royal oikos played a role in cult and patronage at the great international shrines. This continuing cross contamination of Hellenistic dynasties tended to generate additional similarities over time.
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One should not simply assume, however, that each kingdom treated royal women in the same way;5 even when a practice developed in one dynasty begins to be implemented by another, it is important to notice the date and motivation for borrowing the practice of another ruling family. Many scholars would give primacy to one explanation for these similarities: the similar nature of Hellenistic monarchy in general, across all dynasties. While I would not want to deny that the institution had many shared features in each dynasty, I am less inclined than some to stress them.6 Analysis of Hellenistic Monarchy tends to scant change over time (though the late third or early second century seems, if unstated, the basis for generalization) and consequently to de-emphasize the development of these features.7 In terms of Macedonian history, the assumption (implicit or explicit) that if the Macedonians ever did something, they always did it, has limited our understanding of the evolution of their political system.8 Discussions of Hellenistic monarchy necessarily entail making many exceptions for the Ptolemies in some areas and for the Antigonids in others. The Seleucids (along with the smaller dynasties that eventually appeared in Asia Minor) therefore become the de facto norm. One must question this presumed norm, particularly because the Antigonids were both the first of the ruling families to develop many practices that would be accepted by other Hellenistic dynasties and the last of the great dynasties to establish secure regional roots. Over-generalization about the role of women in Hellenistic monarchy is particularly dubious because, as we shall see, situations and events could so dramatically affect a position much less clearly defined than that of male rulers. Nonetheless, although several general discussions of women and Hellenistic monarchy exist,9 presently there are no lengthy general studies of the role of women in each dynasty.10 Moreover, in my view, there should be no dynastic studies until more research has appeared about individual women and groups of women. When generalizations appear before particulars, we risk imposing our expectations on the evidence. Circumstance most notably the absence of an adult male ruler could change the situation of women in a royal dynasty quickly. Although this chapter will discuss commonalities at some length, its focus will be on change and on the continuing singularities of the role of women in each ruling family and on the first two generations of Hellenistic monarchy (roughly 323250 BC). In this period these dynasties developed a public presentation and, to some degree, established a pattern for royal women in their families. Let me begin with commonalities, many of which have to do with a shared past. The role of royal women in Homer affected women in the
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of Olympias, mother of Alexander) that once stood in the Philippeion, a prominent and luxurious monument erected by Philip after his great victory at Chaeroneia, within the sacred area of Olympia, the most prominent of the Panhellenic sanctuaries. Philip used the Philippeion to define the main line of the dynasty in the immediate past, present and future and he chose to make his mother and the mother of his heir part of this presentation. In various ways the Philippeion and the images it housed alluded to the divine ancestry and divine qualities of the Argead clan, including the women. Philip generated a symbol of dynastic stability and continuity at the very time that the stability and continuity of the dynasty was at issue. The images of the women were there because they formed a part of dynastic power, however indirectly. Many Hellenistic rulers would construct dynastic statue groups on this model, some (not all) including royal women and typically portraying an image of dynastic unity and continuity, one often at odds with reality.23 In addition to physical monuments, Philip invented some monumental acts and ceremonies that Hellenistic kings would imitate. He employed a series of marriage alliances to create, reinforce and symbolize the centralization and expansion of his realm. The grand scale of his polygamy constituted an important if controversial part of the royal image, a statement in itself about his wealth and power and willingness to flout southern Greek practice. Many of the Successors copied Philips polygamy, though the practice later became less common.24 He turned the marriage of his daughter Kleopatra into a public event that served a number of purposes, many of them similar to those of the Philippeion: it advanced an image of dynastic harmony that was not always apparent in real life; advertised the wealth and culture of the ruler and clan to an international audience; and alluded to the god-like qualities of the ruler and perhaps to those of his family as well. Here too Hellenistic rulers followed in his footsteps.25 To a lesser but still considerable degree, Alexanders use of royal women also influenced subsequent rulers and dynasties. His marriages, like those of his father, helped to generate an image of monarchy, in this case of a half-Asian monarchy. His studied good treatment of the Persian royal women was part of his claim to be the legitimate successor of Darius; he used them to generate the appearance of continuity,26 a notion several of the Successors entertained about Alexanders full sister Kleopatra.27 During Alexanders reign, Olympias made dedications, almost certainly part of the plunder consequent on her sons victories, at Olympia,28 the first so far as we know of many Macedonian royal women to do so, advertising the wealth, piety, and military success of her family. Olympias and her daughter Kleopatra also engaged in grain patronage in times of scarcity.29 Such
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late Argead women did establish a precedent that some Hellenistic dynasties did follow. Argead women, though not usually participating in combat (Kynnane is the only clear exception), developed a military aspect. Some women commanded small bodies of troops or exercised administrative control over them. Adea Eurydike often addressed the army. Certainly she, like her rival Olympias, was present on campaigns.38 This indirect, somewhat symbolic military role for royal women would continue. An epigram of Posidippus39 includes an image of Arsinoe II with spear and shield;40 Arsinoe III was present at the battle of Raphia.41 Phila and at least one Seleucid woman acted as disciplinarians or patrons to soldiers and their families.42 Since the initial Hellenistic dynasties were all founded by members of the Macedonian elite, it is distinctly possible that the Successors and later rulers were influenced not only by Argead precedents, but also by the role of women in the Macedonian elite. There has been little discussion of this possibility for the very good reason that we know so little about what those habits were. The burials of elite female Macedonians imply a conventional Hellenic understanding of the female role: no weapons or armor but extensive displays of jewelry. Literary evidence, however scant, is more suggestive. Marriage alliances were clearly bread and butter politics to members of the elite. A web of blood and marriage ties united and divided them. An individual might ignore these ties in favor of self-interest or preservation but they were, nonetheless, the basis of political power. This is most obvious in the elite marriages made just after Chaeroneia and immediately after Alexanders death.43 The dynastic marriages of the Hellenistic period more clearly resemble those of the Macedonian elite than they do the marriages of Argead monarchs because Hellenistic monarchies existed as part of a collective of similar monarchies and generally married within the collective whereas the Argeads had no obvious peers and tended to arrange marriages with families of more disparate origin and less clearly equal status.44 Although it is possible that these aristocratic women were usually merely passive tools in these alliances, we know that royal women sometimes acted and were expected to act as representatives of their birth family to the family into which they had married.45 Plutarchs offhand reference46 to the involvement of Philip IIs last wife Kleopatra, after her marriage, in the vicious blood feud between her birth clan and that of Pausanias, the future assassin of Philip, indicates that elite women in Macedonia continued to act in support of and in concert with their original families. We underestimate the degree to which women in the Hellenic world continued to identify with the families of their birth.47 They were, in effect,
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The critical event in the evolution of the role of Hellenistic royal women is the appearance of a female title, basilissa. Argead women had not employed a title; they appeared in inscriptions with a patronymic alone. This circumstance is unsurprising, granted that Argead kings before Alexander had not themselves utilized a title; even Alexander did not do so on all occasions. Antigonos and his son, Demetrios Poliorketes, were the first of the Successors to employ a title (and wear a diadem), a step they took in 306, several years after the death of the last Argead king, in the context of a great military victory. The earliest evidence for the use of a female title again involves Phila, wife of Demetrios Poliorketes, and dates to about 305. Thus the appearance of the female title was apparently directly related to the adoption of the male title and indeed may have happened at the same time.55 Parallelism between the development of male and female titles is, however, limited. As we have seen, the male title had late Argead precedents but the female title did not. We know that basileus means male ruler, but the meaning of basilissa is unclear, ambiguous. It is best translated as royal woman because the term can refer to a royal wife, a royal daughter, a female regent, and to a female king. Instead of defining any sort of office or position, basilissa related to royal status, acquired by birth or marriage or both.56 The timing of its first use implies that it too was a legitimizing device, a tool in the establishment of dynastic power. It may convey the sense that men and women of a ruling family shared similar qualities, although not to the same degree. Conceivably the appearance of a female title may also reflect the temporary importance royal and elite women acquired as the Argead dynasty was disappearing and the new dynasties forming. The title institutionalized the public role of royal women to a greater degree than previously, but left the nature of that role undefined and extremely variable across dynasties and even individual reigns. Thus while the usage of basilissa became the rule in all the dynasties, its functional significance, at least within the kingdoms, may have differed dramatically from one monarchy to another, from one period to another. Soon after titles began to be applied to royal women, the precedents established by Thessalonike and Phila began to be followed by many other women. After 301, about the same time the dynasties of the Successors began to intermarry, many cities were named after dynastic women. Clearly the agenda was dynastic legitimacy, the elevation of the wives and mothers of kings, with implications about the kings and the dynastys superhuman nature.57 Similarly, cults connecting royal wives and mistresses now become common. One should, however, be cautious about assuming extensive similarity
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the distinctive role of women in each dynasty, beginning with the Antigonids. The degree of influence that Argead tradition had on Antigonid practice was comparatively modest because Antipatrid rule and a period of chaos intervened between the end of one dynasty and the establishment of the other in the rule of Macedonia. Monarchy was reconstituted in Macedonia, much altered.64 Tradition did influence Antigonid practice in two respects: the refusal to establish a royal cult within Macedonia itself 65 and the assertion of Heraklid ancestry.66 Argead monarchy, however, had been understood as the rule of the royal clan and the public presentation of the monarchy involved many members including, at least in times of scarcity of adult males, women. Antigonid monarchy was much more focused on the rule of a given individual, involved a narrow public presentation of the monarchy, and limited the role of royal women,67 possibly partly by defining it to a greater degree than before.68 The dynastic monument of the Antigonids at Delos, the Progonoi, exemplifies the change; judging by the surviving cuttings in the statue bases, the statues depicted only male rulers.69 The muting of royal polygamy contributed to this narrow image of monarchy. Instead of a plethora of heirs, there tended to be only one and so no need for royal mothers to act as succession advocates. The Argead era had been one in which the difference between Macedonian elite culture and that of southern Greece was comparatively marked and Macedonians self-identified as having a distinctive culture, but the degree of difference between Macedonia and southern Greece declined dramatically in the course of the second half of the fourth century and even more in the third century. Thus, the limited, more conventionally Hellenic role of women in Hellenistic Macedonia related to increasing urbanization and acculturation to institutions that had once characterized only central and southern Greece. In terms of royal women, this meant that Antigonid rulers presented themselves as though monogamous and royal women performed acts of conventional piety and patronage but apparently did not involve themselves in political action. If our information base remains the same for Antigonid women, there may not be much more to say about them. Literary evidence about the Antigonids, even the males, is poor and so far very few inscriptions of relevance to royal women, especially in Macedonia proper, have been found. The appearance of new inscriptions is, however, extremely likely. Moreover, the announcement of the discovery of an eight-chambered tomb at Pella with multiple female burials (though probably aristocratic not royal) reminds us that discovery of burials of Antigonid women is still possible.
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public presentation. For Ptolemaic Egypt there is a particularly great need for case-by-case studies of royal women. Currently, we have a lot of work on Arsinoe II and Kleopatra VII but too little about all the women in between.80 In all three families, the founding father began to develop a dynastic image but his heir was its main architect. In the case of the Ptolemies, however, Ptolemy Soter himself made a critical decision, one that proved a significant factor in the evolution of female royal power in Egypt. This decision is epitomized by the fact that we speak not only of Seleucids, Antigonids, and Attalids but also of Ptolemies. Soter decided to break with tradition and name two sons after himself and none after his father. In all monarchies, one tends to think, The king is dead, long live the king. Any monarchy implies the notion that the king never dies but simply is differently embodied. The Ptolemies made this explicit, possibly in connection to the pharaonic notion that the king is continually reborn.81 Certainly the nomenclature of Ptolemaic rulers meant that this was a dynasty, from the start, turned in on itself, in a kind of endless circle of dynastic power. If the king was always the king, always Ptolemy, then what of his consort? I would suggest that, in terms of the dynasty as a whole, this distinctive nomenclature encouraged the institutionalization of close kin marriages. Not all were sibling marriages, but most were.82 Sisters, especially full sisters, are as close as one can come to female versions of kings, mirror images but for gender.83 The appearance of Sheila Agers recent article on such Ptolemaic marriages84 has raised the level of analysis of sibling marriage dramatically. Nonetheless, despite the richness of her discussion and scholarship, much remains to be done, particularly in terms of political aspects of the issue. Indeed, as I once suggested,85 the topic surely merits book-length treatment. Not only was Ptolemy II the first Ptolemaic ruler to marry his own sister (Arsinoe II) but he was also really the founder of the dynastic cult and inventor of many other aspects of dynastic self-presentation. The tendency of Ptolemaic monarchy to turn in on itself, to intensify itself, already seen in the reign of Ptolemy I increases in the reign of Ptolemy II. He created the first paired dynastic images: a paired cult of his parents (Theoi So-teres c. 282) and later of himself and Arsinoe (Theoi Philadelphoi c. 272?), the two pairs visibly linked in coins on which both pairs appeared.86 To some degree, Ptolemy IIs sibling marriage functioned as the opposite of the polygamous marriages of his father, Ptolemy I. This initial brother-sister marriage, like the earlier ill-starred marriage of the half siblings Arsinoe and Ptolemy Keraunos, had its roots in the experiences of Ptolemy Soters children: the extended competition between his children
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This is not to say that the marriage occasioned no hostility but rather that it was not a major issue.98 Doubtless Greeks in Egypt and elsewhere found the idea of sibling marriage nasty, whatever the Egyptian view. Clearly Ptolemys courtiers acted in various ways to create a positive Greek public image for the marriage, suggesting that the king felt there was a need for such action.99 Hellenistic royalty, however, indulged in all sorts of nasty actions condemned in the behavior of ordinary people. Their subjects not only put up with their bad acts, but must, to some degree, have come to expect them. Indeed, up to a point, extreme behavior may have seemed... well, kingly. Unlike Ager,100 I doubt that sophrosyne- had much to do with either Macedonian or Hellenistic monarchy.101 Indeed, the dynastic image of the Ptolemies in effect stressed excess in terms of truphe- (luxury), with its implicit connection to benefaction, and Arsinoe II epitomized this image.102 Once invented, apart from other benefits of the marriage often discussed103 (most importantly, replication of the behavior of gods, Zeus and Hera, Osiris and Isis), it made possible those interlocking epithets, cults, and images so characteristic of the dynasty. It is not so much that incest was the dynastic signature of the Ptolemies, but rather it was incestuousness. The literal and figurative incest of the dynasty gave a prominence to royal women that tended to empower them and helped to generate the developing pattern of female co-rule. Pairing in cult and in marriage led ultimately to pairing in rule.104 Let me conclude by offering some general observations for those examining the role of women in all these monarchies. We should not underestimate the agency of women in marriage alliances: the presumption that they were always or usually genetic tokens needs to be questioned. We need to recognize them as dynastic go-betweens with enduring ties to the oikos of their birth. Similarly, we have scanted royal womens role in diplomacy via euergetism. Here we have not only underestimated female agency but we also need more focus on why rulers felt it necessary to encourage euergetism by their wives and daughters. In all these considerations, while avoiding the kind of wishful thinking that had Arsinoe II determining the domestic and foreign policy of Egypt or instigating the First Syrian War,105 we also need to steer clear of the kind of thinking which exaggerates the significance of the paucity of evidence about royal women and their acts or which denies that the influence Arsinoe demonstrably possessed was a kind of power.106
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On women in Persian monarchy, see Brosius 1996. For possible Persian influence on Argead monarchy, see Carney 1993. See Robins 1993, 2155 for a discussion of the role of women in pharaonic monarchy and Quaegebeur 1978 for pharaonic influence on Ptolemaic royal women. 14 Here I differ in part from Pomeroy 1984, 11 (followed by ONeil 1999, 2) who concludes that ...queenship was not a public office and therefore cannot be defined except as a private role. Queenship was not an office, but royal women certainly acted in public events and Philip and Alexander, at least, involved them in the public presentation of the monarchy. I have argued that, in the Argead period, office-holding was not generally the way in which power was understood and allotted in Macedonia. See further Carney 1995. 15 Savalli-Lestrade 2003, 667, speaking about the Hellenistic period; in fact, this phenomenon is clearly present by the second half of the fourth century. 16 Aeschin. 2.268. 17 On Eurydikes career, see Carney 2000a, 4046; on the role of Argead women in philia and xenia, see Carney 2006, 502. 18 See Carney 2006, 2930. 19 Savalli-Lestrade 2003, 634. Herman 1997, 2078 argues that xenia networks were how new philoi were recruited. 20 Kron 1996, 1812 so characterizes the euergetism of Hellenistic royal women but does not discuss pre-Hellenistic precedents. 21 See discussion and references in Carney 2006, 901. See Carney 2000a, 46, n. 34 for reference to and discussion of an inscription in which Eurydike is offering to citizen women. 22 Schmitt 1991, 84; Savalli-Lestrade 2003, 701 makes this point for Hellenistic royal women, but it appears in Argead times and, judging by Philas career, before the Successors had taken royal titles. Both Eurydikes Eukleia cult and the dedication on behalf of women citizens suggest this role of the royal wife-cum-mother as protector and sponsor of women, as did many of the cults in which a woman was somehow identified with Aphrodite (see below). 23 See Schultz 2007 and 2009 and Carney 2007 for discussion, analysis and references on the Philippeion and its influence. See Kosmetatou 2004a for discussion and references on the imagery of family groups more generally. Schmitt 1991, 789 points to Hellenistic stress on family unity, continuity over generations, often at odds with reality. See Palagia 2010 for an argument that the Eurydike in the Philippeion was Philips last wife, not his mother. 24 On Philips marriage alliances (his own and those he arranged for other family members) and his polygamy, that of the Successors, and its subsequent decline, see below and Carney 2000a, 5279, 22832. See also Ogden 1999, 3214. 25 Carney 2000a, 20307. 26 Carney 2000a, 937. 27 Diod. 20.37.36. 28 Syll.3 252N, 58, with n. 3. 29 SEG IX.2; Lycurg. Leoc 26. 30 See discussion and references in Carney 2006, 502. 31 On Olympias role in Macedonia, Molossia and the Greek peninsula during Alexanders absence, see Blackwell 1999, 81132; Carney 2006, 4959. Kleopatra
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Polyb. 5.83.3. For Phila see Diod. 19.59.4. See Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993, 267 for references and discussion of a 299 BC inscription from Miletos that honors Apamea for her goodwill and support to Milesians campaigning with King Seleukos. The Milesians in question were apparently mercenaries who took part in Seleukos conquest of Bactria-Sogdiana (c. 30705), Apameas homeland. Nourse 2002, 252 suggests that Stratonike, wife of Seleukos and later Antiochos I, was important because of continuing Antigonid loyalty, particularly to Stratonikes mother Phila, among Greek mercenaries and Macedonian soldiers in his territory. Also (2002, 2589; see below) she sees Stratonikes diplomatic negotiation as part of military involvement. 43 After Chaeroneia: Philip married Kleopatra, ward of Attalos; Attalos married a daughter of Parmenio as did Koinos. It is likely that other marriages happened then too. After Alexanders death, Perdikkas married a daughter of Antipater, as did Krateros and Ptolemy. Kleopatra tried to marry first Leonnatos and then Perdikkas and Kynnane tried to arrange her daughters marriage to Philip Arrhidaios (see Heckel 2006 passim for references). 44 While, for instance, Philips marriage to the daughter of a Molossian king is relatively similar to royal Hellenistic marriage alliances, his marriages to Phila or to Kleopatra, members of his own elite, and to Meda, a Thracian king, are not. 45 See Carney 2000a, 1923 for a discussion of royal marriage alliances. 46 Alex. 10.4. 47 Klapisch-Zuber 2002, 10304 describes a similar situation for women in early th century Florentine merchant families. She refers to the floating status of women 15 who frequently returned to the household of their birth, sometimes after an absence of thirty years or more, and who were never seen as full-fledged members of the lineage of marriage. I owe this reference to Peter Schultz. 48 On the career of Phila, see Wehrli 1964; Carney 2000a, 1659. 49 This is a complicated issue since we often do not know the date of an inscription or the current marital status of the woman referred to. Stratonike, however, daughter of Phila and Demetrios Poliorketes and wife (at different times) of both Seleukos I and Antiochos I, seems to be an example of a married dedicator continuing to focus on the interests of her birth family, though not necessarily to the exclusion of the interests of her spouses dynasty. See further Carney 2000a, 1712, 2268. 50 See Gruen 1985 for discussion of the date at which each Successor began to employ a royal title. 51 Dating city foundations is never easy, but most scholars believe that Kassander founded Thessaloniki soon after he took control of Macedonia. See Carney 1988, 1359. 52 Walbank 1984, 91 argues that an eponymous festival honoring them and dating to 311 probably involved divine honors. 53 Savalli-Lestrade 2003, 68 stresses the importance of philoi in the divinization of royal women; certainly this is the case with Phila. 54 See Carney 2000b for discussion and references; it is likely but not certain that the cults of Demetrius mistresses were slightly later in date; for Demetrios mistresses, see Ogden (this volume). Wheatley 2003, 33 suggests that, at least in Athens, Demetrius treated Lamia, his favorite hetaira like a royal woman; he cites the parallel of Harpalos
42 41
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that mentions the king and queen conjointly and some others as guarantors of the persons freedom. As noted, Hatzopoulos and Le Bohec do not interpret these inscriptions as I do. See further Carney 2000a, 197202. 69 Edson 1934, 218, who also notes that progonoi usually refers only to male ancestors, followed by Carney 2000b, 26, n. 27 contra Le Bohec 1993, 239. See further discussion and references in Carney 2007. 70 The women were Stratonike, daughter of Antiochos I and wife of Demetrios II (see Carney 2000a, 1847) and Laodike, daughter of Seleukos IV and wife of Perseus (see Carney 2000a, 1957). 71 See Meyer 19921993. She notes (19921993, 107) that no representation of female members of the dynasty survives from the 3rd century, but some do for the second. 72 Nourse 2002, 228. 73 Nourse 2002, 230, e.g. a slave freed on behalf of Antiochos I, Stratonike, and their children. 74 Nourse 2002: 228. As Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993, 128 point out queens could communicate with cities independently, like governors. 75 Schmitt 1991, 845 discusses the importance of royal legends in terms of dynastic loyalty and involvement of subjects in monarchy. 76 Nourse 2002, 234 dates this custom as early as Antiochos I (contra Ogden); there is clearer evidence (Nourse 2002, 236) for Antiochos III. 77 Sherwin-White 1993, 24, 27 and Nourse generally consider this practice helpful whereas Ogden 1999, 117 terms it disastrous. 78 Ogden 1999, 117. 79 See Nourse 2002, 2589 for references to an inscription in which Stratonike c. 287 received ambassadors from Troizen and Halikarnassos as part of negotiation to recover ships and men fighting on behalf of Demetrios Poliorketes that were captured by Seleukos. 80 See Llewellyn-Jones and Winder, this volume, for a discussion of the muchneglected Berenike II. 81 Like Ager 2005, 17, I would agree that it is no longer wise to dismiss the interest of even early Ptolemies in matters Egyptian. 82 Ager 2005, 16 stresses that not all marriages were sibling marriages. 83 Ager 2005, 18 observes that the practice meant that the Ptolemaic king came close to cloning himself. 84 Ager 2005. 85 Carney 1987, 420. 86 See brief overview and references in Hlbl 2001, 945. 87 Heckel 1989, 346; Carney 1994, 1234. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993, 23 point out that Seleukos made his heir co-king a full decade before Ptolemy I. Hazzard 2000, 46, n. 92 comments that Ptolemy I treated both sides of the family fairly evenly until at least 298. 88 Ager 2005, 1516 points out that modern studies link incest to family strife and suggests that some of the same psychological forces that created murder within family may have created incest within the family. 89 On Arsinoes career before her return to Egypt, see Lund 1992 passim and Carney 1994.
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even if unmarried and that the practice had begun in the lifetime of Ptolemy Is unmarried daughter Philotera (OGIS 35). This suggests that even early on, the Ptolemies understood the women of their dynasty as sharing in some aspects of monarchy. Savalli-Lestrade 2003, 62 points out that only this dynasty (with one exception) refers to royal couples as basileis. 105 See Burstein 1982, 2045 for references; Macurdy 1932, 11821 is typical. Bursteins article, though not convincing in all respects, functioned as a healthy corrective to these over-readings of the evidence, many of them based on sexual stereotypes about political women. 106 As Hazzard 2000, 82 himself notes, he goes much further than Bursteins minimalist approach and insists that there is no evidence that she was powerful or popular, that this is just a mistaken point of view based on taking propaganda seriously.
Bibliography Acosta-Hughes, B., Kosmetatou, E. and Baumbach, M. 2004 (eds) Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an Epigram collection attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309), Washington DC. Ager, S. L. 2005 Familiarity breeds: incest and the Ptolemaic dynasty, JHS 125, 134. Bielman Snchez, A. 2003 Rgner au fminine. Rflexions sur les reines attalides et sleucides, in F. Prost (ed.) LOrient mediterranen de la mort dAlexandre aux campagnes de Pompe: cits et royaumes l poque hellnistique, Rennes, 4164. Le Bohec-Bouhet, S. 2006 Rflexions sur la place de la femme dans la Macdoine antique, in SuimierSorbets, M. B. Hatzopoulos and Y. Morizot (eds) Rois, cits, necropoles: institutions, rites et monuments en macdoine, Meletemata 45, Athens, 18798. Bringmann, K. 1997 Die Rolle der Kniginnen, Prinzen under Vermittler, Actes du Xe Congrs International dpigraphie grecque et latine, Nmes, 49 octobre 1992, Paris, 16973. Brosius, M. 1996 Women in Ancient Persia (559331 BC), Oxford. Burstein, S. M. 1982 Arsinoe II Philadelphos: a revisionist view, in W. L. Adams and E. N. Borza (eds) Philip II, Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Heritage, Washington D.C., 197212. Carney, E. D. 1987 The reappearance of royal sibling marriage in Ptolemaic Egypt, Parola del Passato 237, 42039. 1988a Eponymous women: royal women and city names, AHB 2.6, 13442. 1988b The sisters of Alexander the Great: royal relicts, Historia 37: 385404. 1991 Whats in a name? The emergence of a title for royal women in the Hellenistic period in S. B. Pomeroy (ed.) Womens History and Ancient History, Chapel Hill, 15472. 1993 Foreign influence and the changing role of royal women in Macedonia, Ancient Macedonia 5,1, 31323.
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Klapisch-Zuber, C. 2002 Kin, friends, and neighbors: the urban territory of a merchant family in 1400, in P. Findlen (ed.) The Italian Renaissance: The essential readings, Oxford, 97123. Kosmetatou, E. 2004a Constructing legitimacy: the Ptolemaic Familiengruppe as a means of selfdefinition in Posidippus Hippika in Acosta-Hughes et al. 2004, 22546. 2004b Bilistiche and the quasi-institutional status of the Ptolemaic royal mistress, APF 50, 1836. Kron, U. 1996 Priesthoods, dedications and euergetism. What part did religion play in the political and social status of Greek women?, in P. Hellstrm and B. Alroth (eds) Religion and Power in the Ancient Greek World, Proceedings of the Uppsala Symposium, Uppsala, 13982. Lund, H. 1992 Lysimachus: A study in early Hellenistic kingship, London and New York. Ma, J. 2003 Kings, in Erskine 2003, 17795. Macurdy, G. H. 1932 Hellenistic Queens, Baltimore. Meyer, M. 1992/1993 Mutter, Ehefrau und Herrscherin. Darstellungen der Knigin auf Seleukidischen Mnzen, Hephaistos 1112, 10732. Mirn-Prez, M. D. 1997 Olimpia, Euridice y el origen del culto en la Grecia helenistica, Florentia Iliberritana 9, 21535. 2000 Transmitters and representatives of power: royal women in ancient Macedonia, Ancient Society 30, 3552. Mller, S. 2005 Die Geschwisterehe Arsinos II und Ptolemaios II im Spiegel der Forschung von 1895 bis 1932: Ein Verstoss gegen das normative Paarmodell, Ariadne 48, 419. 2006 Alexander, Harpalos und die Ehren fr Pythionike und Glykera: berlegungen zu den Reprsentationsformen des Schatzmeisters in Babylon und Tarsos, in V. Lica (ed.), Studia in honorem G. Wirth octogenario, Galati, 71106. Nourse, K. 2002 Women and the Early Development of Royal Power in the Hellenistic East, Unpublished Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Ogden, D. 1999 Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death. The Hellenistic dynasties, London and Swansea. 2008 Bilistiche and the prominence of courtesans in the Ptolemaic tradition, in P. McKechnie and P. Guillaume (eds) Ptolemy Philadelphus and His World, Leiden, 35385. ONeil, J. L. 1999 Olympias: The Macedonians will never let themselves be ruled by a woman, Prudentia 31.1, 114.
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Palagia, O. 2010 Philips Eurydice in the Philippeum at Olympia, in E. Carney and D. Ogden (eds) Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and son, lives and afterlives, New York. Pomeroy, S. B. 1984 Women in Hellenistic Egypt from Alexander to Cleopatra, New York. Quaegebeur, J. 1978 Reines ptolmaques et traditions gyptiennes, in H. von Maehler and V. M. Strocka (eds) Das ptolemische gypten, Mainz, 24562. Robins, G. 1993 Women in Ancient Egypt, London. Roy, J. 1998 The masculinity of the Hellenistic king, in L. Foxhall and J. Salmon (eds) When Men were Men: Masculinity, power and identity in classical antiquity, London and New York, 1135. Savalli-Lestrade, I. 1994 Il ruolo pubblico delle regine ellenistiche in S. Allessandr, Historie. Studie offerti dagli Allievi Giuseppe Nenci in occasione del suo settantesimo compleanno. 41532. 2003 La place des reines la cour et dans le royaume lpoque hellnistique, Les femmes antiques entre sphre prive et sphre publiques: actes du diplme dtudes avances, Universits de Lausanne et Neuchtel, Bern, 5976. Schmitt, H. H. 1989 Zur Inszenierung des Privatslebens des Hellenistischen Herrschers, in J. Seibert (ed.) Hellenistische Studien. Gedenkschrift fr H. Bengston, Mnchener Arbeiten zur Alten Geschichte 5, Munich, 7786. Schultz, P. 2007 Leochares Argead portraits in the Philippeion, in R. von den Hoff and P. Schultz (eds) Early Hellenistic Portraiture: image, style, context, Cambridge, 20533. 2009 Divine images and royal ideology in the Philippeion at Olympia, in J. Jensen, G. Hinge, P. Schultz and B. Wickkiser (eds) Aspects of Ancient Greek Cult: Ritual, context, iconography, Aarhus Studies in Mediterranean Antiquity 8. Aarhus, 12392. Sherwin-White, S. and Kuhrt, A. 1993 From Samarkhand to Sardis: A new approach to the Seleucid Empire, Berkeley. Stephens, S. 2004 For you, Arsinoe, in Acosta-Hughes et al. 2004, 16176. Thompson, D. J. 2005 Posidippus, poet of the Ptolemies, in Gutzwiller 2005, 26986. Walbank F. W. 1984 Monarchies and monarchic ideas, CAH 2 7.1, 62100. 1996 Two Hellenistic processions: a matter of self-definition, Scripta Classica Israelica 15, 11930.
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Weber, G. 1998/99 Hellenistic rulers and their poets: silencing dangerous critics? Ancient Society 29, 14774. 1997 Interaktion, Reprsentation und Herrschaft. Der Knigshof im Hellenismus, in A. Winterling (ed.) Zwischen Haus und Staat, Antike Hfe im Vergleich, Historische Zeitschrift 23, Munich, 2771. Wehrli, C. 1964 Phila, fille dAntipater et pouse de Dmtrius, roi des Macdoniens, Historia 13, 1406.
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directly the courtesan status of Philinna of Larissa, by whom the king fathered Philip Arrhidaios:
In listing the mistresses () of kings in his Histories of Philopator Ptolemy son of Agesarchos says: Philinna the dancing girl (), mistress of the Philip who exalted Macedonia, from whom he sired Arrhidaios, who became king after Alexander. Athenaeus 577f578a, incorporating Ptolemy of Megalopolis FGrH 161 F4
For Plutarch Philinna was without repute and common, , and her son illegitimate.6 For Justin she was a Larissan dancing-girl (saltatrix) and a Larissan whore (scortum).7 But a careful and deservedly famous fragment of Satyros, explicitly devoted to the marriages of Philip, which is also preserved by Athenaeus, makes it clear that Philinna was a wife amongst wives. Satyros, or Athenaeus commenting on the implications thereof, also suggests that this marriage, like Philips others, had a diplomatic purpose, and this obliges us to assume that Philinna was a scion of Larissas ruling Aleuads.8 The courtesan-characterisation of Philinna is accordingly best understood, opprobrious as it is in Plutarch and Justin at any rate, as generated in the contexts of succession competitions between Philips polygamously-held wives and their respective children. They result from the propaganda of rival aspirant wings of the kings families. We can point to obvious culprits: Olympias and her son Alexander. Alexanders direct competition with this lad is twice graphically documented in Plutarchs Life of Alexander. Olympias supposedly poisoned Arrhidaios to turn him into the idiot he was subsequently reputed to be.9 And Alexander was panicked when he perceived that Arrhidaios might gain some advantage for the succession in marrying the daughter of the satrap Pixodaros, and branded him a bastard, .10 Olympias hatred of Arrhidaios, furthermore, endured long after Alexanders death, until she finally had him killed in 317, whilst at the same time forcing his wife AdeaEurydike to hang herself with her own girdle.11 The Philinna case offers us a ready model for the interpretation of the vaguer data bearing upon Perdikkas II (ruled 454413). Plato, Aelian and a scholiast to Aristides seemingly allude to different aspects of a single tradition. This (to combine the information) held that Archelaos was the bastard son of Perdikkas by a slavewoman owned by Perdikkas brother Alketas, and that she was called Simiche.12 Simiche is a typical name for slavewomen in New Comedy, for what that is worth, if not actually for courtesans. The finger points similarly at Archelaos rivals for the succession, Perdikkas wife Kleopatra and her family. She was the mother of a son to Perdikkas called (probably) Aeropos, whom Archelaos took
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Other sources speak of her burning Persepolis in her desire to avenge her native Athens and to humiliate Persia with a womans hand, after remarking that the palaces luxuries had compensated her for the hardships of the baggage train.17 Athenaeus (or perhaps still Kleitarchos?) is emphatic that Thais married Ptolemy, but does his imply that she had previously been married to Alexander? It is possible that Thais inclusion in the traditions relating to the campaign court was retrospective. Were Ptolemy or those writing in his favour attempting to forge an indirect familial link to Alexander for him through her?18 If so, then an intimation that Alexander had himself married her might have been considered helpful. There is no suggestion of marriage in connection with the two further courtesans associated with Alexander by the tradition. According to Theophrastus Kallixeina, a Thessalian courtesan, was introduced to the adolescent Alexander by Philip and Olympias in order to cure him of or divert him from his condition as a gynnis (eunuch):
Hieronymos in his Letters tells that Theophrastus said that Alexander was not well predisposed towards sex. Accordingly, Olympias actually sent the outstandingly beautiful Thessalian courtesan Kallixeina to bed with him,
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and Philip abetted her in this, for they were wary lest/taking precautions lest he might/should be a gynnis. Olympias frequently begged her to have sex with Alexander. Athenaeus Deipnosophistae 435a, incorporating Hieronymos of Rhodes F38 Wehrli and Theophrastus F578 Fortenbaugh
The deployment of the relatively obscure term gynnis seems to have saluted Alexanders supposed effeminacy, his venture into the world of eunuchs, his Persianising and his Dionysiac associations.19 Credible or otherwise, it is noteworthy that this tale too was developed very soon after Alexanders death, with Theophrastus writing in the late fourth century or very early third.20 If the tale does have anything of value to offer us for the subject of marriage in association with courtesans at the Macedonian court, this may lie in its assumed premise: the pressure upon kings to secure heirs. Aelian tells that the artist Apelles, a highly romanticised figure,21 loved the concubine () of Alexander, whose name was Pankaste, and she was Larissan by birth. They say that she was the first woman Alexander had sex with. 22 Pankaste looks rather like a doublet of Kallixeina: both hail from Thessaly; both have a courtesan-like designation; and both are, ostensibly, the first woman with whom Alexander has sex.23 (It may be noteworthy that we have already now encountered the term Thessalian three times, in connection with Philinna, Kallixeina and Pankaste. Despite the highly, albeit variously, fictive nature of the data bearing upon the three women, we may wonder whether there was in fact some sort of historical tradition of Thessalian courtesans in the Argead court.) The nature of Alexanders first tangible relationship, that with Barsine, daughter of Artabazus, which endured four or five years from 332 before producing a son, Herakles, remains obscure to us. Plutarch seems not to have regarded it as a marriage: he employs the curious word of Alexanders acquisition of Barsine, and asserts that before marrying (sc. Roxane) Alexander knew no other woman than Barsine.24 But Barsine, married or otherwise, is nowhere represented as a courtesan in the source tradition, and so for this reason falls outside the framework of our investigation.25 3. Harpalos Before we pass on to the Antigonid dynasty, it will be worthwhile to consider the traditions relating to Alexanders rogue treasurer Harpalos, who to some extent seems to have projected himself as a king.26 The rich extant Athens-based traditions relating to his Attic courtesans Pythionike and Glykera and his lavish treatment of them appear to anticipate many aspects of the Athens-based traditions relating to Demetrios Poliorketes
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second century AD. Indeed, its foundations survive still.32 When was it actually built? During Harpalos brief residence in Athens, shortly before his death? Or did he already build it at long distance when still in Asia, through the agency of Charikles, and was it therefore part of his campaign to soften up Athens in advance of seeking refuge there? 33 It is conceivable that this extravagant memorial could have generated for its audience in Athens the notion that Harpalos had also built a tomb or a temple (or both) for Pythionike in Babylon. This notion is found in Theopompos who is at this point writing from an Athenocentric perspective,34 and in the Agen. There the concise description of Pythionikes temple in its proximity to the underworld entrance of the is intriguing, given Dikaiarchos association of Pythionikes tomb with Eleusis, and that too in a work On the descent into Trophonios cave, another underworld hole.35 The implication of this correspondence, if it is significant, is that the Agen was not produced for Alexander and his troops (let alone written by the king) at some Dionysia on some unidentifiable Hydaspes,36 but rather written for an Athenian audience, as one might normally expect a satyr play to have been. The preserved scraps of it would certainly suit an Athenian audience, discussing as they do Harpalos grain supplies to that very city, and his citizenship there. We may choose to believe, with Sutton, that the soubriquet applied to Harpalos, Pallides, declares him to be a son of Athene.37 The plays words of scene-establishment are reminiscent, for us, of the prologue of Menanders Dyskolos.38 Its themes carry more than a whiff of the Old-Comic stock-in-trade: the great mans hetaira as the cause of city-rocking mischief (cf. the Aspasia of Aristophanes Acharnians) and evocation of the dead (cf. Socrates and Chairephon in Aristophanes Birds).39 The request for news from Attica in an oriental setting reminds us of Aeschylus Persians in its entirety. The opening of Sophocles Electra is parodied at lies 23 of the fragment.40 And the notion of a desperately bereaved lover calling up the ghost of their lost beloved would resonate strongly for an audience familiar with Euripides Protesilaus or Alcestis.41 All this surely suggests that the play was written for an Athenian audience, not for the Macedonian Herresversammlung and assorted rabble. Whilst querying the pedigree of this text, we may also note the curious coincidence between Pythionikes name and that of its supposed, but quite mysterious, alternative author, Python; Pythionike is herself actually named Pythonike by Diodorus and Plutarch.42 Both Theopompos and the Agen-author may, therefore, be writing on the basis of Athenian fantasies spun around the relationship between Harpalos and Pythionike, and have little to tell us of what actually passed between them. The one detail, fantastic as it is, that gives pause for thought in the
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The cult can only be dated by the terminus ante of Philadelphos death: i.e., it must have been instituted prior to 246 BC.45 While this may in itself make a cult of Pythionike Aphrodite more plausible, it could be that Philadelphos and the Athenian rumour-mongers alike drew on traditions of courtesan-Aphrodites that are now lost to us. The notion of marriage is explicitly associated only with Pythionike (by Pausanias), whereas the notion of treatment as queen, which might or might not be thought also to entail marriage, or the projection of marriage, is predominantly associated rather with Glykera (by Theopompos). However, the Philemon fragment does imply that Pythionike also received queenly treatment: You will be queen () of Babylon, if this is what happens. You know about Pythionike and Harpalos. Whereas the Athenians can have had little idea about life at court with Harpalos and Pythionike, they may have imagined that they had some idea about his life with Glykera: she was initially installed closer to home, at Tarsos, rather than Babylon. It is possible, just, that the reference to her supplying Athens with grain on Harpalos behalf grew out of some sort of continuing relationship between the courtesan and the city. And it may be that Harpalos brought her back to Athens with him during his brief and unfortunate sojourn there. So it remains doubtful whether we can take the suggestion that Harpalos married Glykera seriously. And whether he did so or not, the notion is clearly used by Theopompos as an indicator of excess on Harpalos part. 4. Demetrios Poliorketes And so to the Antigonids. There is little to say of Antigonos I Monophthalmos. The only courtesan we find associated with him in amatory mode is Deomo, the courtesan of his son Demetrios Poliorketes;
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of her more anon. According to Herakleides Lembos, as recycled by Athenaeus, Antigonos had fallen in love with her, to the extent that he executed Demetrios associate Oxythemis for torturing her female attendants to death.46 This tale as presented is anachronistic, because Oxythemis survived the death of Monophthalmos.47 Its theme belongs with a small but distinct group of anecdotes Plutarch scatters through his Life of Demetrios which focus upon Antigonos, his sons and their courtesans. First, Antigonos jokingly (but to us somewhat obscurely) compares a kiss given him by Demetrios to a kiss the latter might have given to Lamia, with whom he was famously having an affair.48 Secondly, Antigonos visits his supposedly sick son Demetrios, only to bump into his fever as she leaves his bed.49 And, thirdly, Antigonos has his younger son Philip moved out of the supposedly narrow quarters he has found him to be sharing with three courtesans ().50 The common theme in these three tales as presented by Plutarch is one of mild, indulgent censure on Antigonos part. Demetrios I Poliorketes himself rivals Ptolemy Philadelphos in the extravagance and number of his associations with courtesans.51 He is associated with at least ten different names (although some of the attached anecdotes overlap), including:52 Antikyra,53 Chrysis,54 Demo,55 Melitta,56 Mania,57 Gnathaina,58 Leaina,59 and Myrrhine.60 But the most prominent by far of the courtesans associated with him, and the single hellenistic royal courtesan to whom the greatest amount of extant source material is devoted is Lamia, to whose cults as Aphrodite Lamia we have already referred.61 We owe the bulk of the material on Demetrios courtesans in the last instance to Plutarchs biography and to Athenaeus collection of material on courtesans, and in the first instance to such sources as the Athenian comic poets, Lynkeus of Samos, Machons Chreiai (which engagingly portray king and witty courtesans interacting in the context of Athenian-smart-set dinner parties) and Ptolemy of Megalopolis Histories of Philopator.62 Of all these women it is Lamia that is of interest for the current investigation. Courtesan and flutegirl, she was an Athenian citizen, the daughter of one Kleanor. She took up with Demetrios after she was captured amongst the booty at the battle of (Cyprian) Salamis in 306.63 The surviving anecdotes about her are heavily Atheno-centric,64 and none of them can easily be put in a historical context subsequent to Demetrios last departure from Athens in spring 302.65 This pattern of evidence may indicate that, despite their meeting at Salamis, the relationship was based in Athens and fizzled out after Demetrios final departure. Or it may just be a function of the Athens-centred nature of the sources upon which we depend for Lamia, just as we do for Harpalos Pythionike and Glykera. In this case Lamia may well have remained by Demetrios side after 302.
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would contend, thought about in terms of sacred marriage, or a parody thereof. And whether a sacred marriage would have entailed an actual marriage, I know not. It could be that we are explicitly told that Demetrios married Lamia in one or more sources. Favorinus, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius, tells that Demetrios lived with his girlfriend Lamia, who was both a citizenwoman and well born ( ).72 , whilst literally meaning live with, takes on the specific technical meaning of live with in a state of sanctioned marriage in Attic legal discourse.73 Could it carry such a meaning here? It could do: much depends on whether the phrase , both a citizenwoman and well born, is taken as corroborative of the concept marriage or adversative to the concept of cohabitation. A text of potentially great significance that I missed when compiling Polygamy, Prostitutes and Death was a fragment of Demetrios of Phaleron, F39 Wehrli: , : Loimia, a proper name; she became the wife of Demetrios of Phaleron. This text is seemingly full of confusion but also seemingly easy to disentangle to a certain extent, at any rate. It seems inevitable that there lurks here an assertion about Lamia, the courtesan of Demetrios Poliorketes. The confusion between the two contemporary Demetrii, the Besieger and the Phalerian, is common in what Wheatley winningly terms the peripheral sources.74 But we may ponder about the significance of Lamia becoming : is this just due to a meaningless error of transmission, or does it reflect an abusive or jocular reformulation of her name? Clearly the reformulation, if intentional, salutes , pestilence. The adjective , pestilential, of which the reformulated name constitutes the regular feminine form, is in fact attested in later Greek, via Macrobius, as an epithet of Apollo.75 The joke would seem quite an appropriate one for a courtesan; as we have just seen, another, nameless, courtesan in the Antigonid tradition was likened to a fever.76 But whether the fragment is talking about our Lamia or a distinct Loimia, and about Demetrios Poliorketes or Demetrios of Phaleron, it seemingly asserts that the one was the wife of the other. Wheatleys rendering, she became the woman of Demetrios of Phaleron, seems to me to to sidestep the familiar significance of the familiar idiom of when associated with an individual male, as here. But, on the assumption that this text was (once) trying to tell us that Lamia became the wife of Demetrios Poliorketes, what are we to make of the claim? If the form of her name owes its origin to a joke, then the claim that Demetrios married her may also have in origin been a comic over-representation. Nonetheless, it seems that it probably was the case
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In 272 he was holding high command, and defended Argos against Pyrrhos. This was just four years after the earliest possible date for Antigonos marriage to Phila, the mother of his eventual heir Demetrios II Aitolikos, and so it is clear that Halkyoneus was already adult by the time of Demetrios IIs birth. We also know that the Stoic Persaios was his tutor. Tarn guesses that he died fighting against Areus Spartans at Corinth in 264, since, had he been alive in 262, he and not Demetrios would have commanded the army invading Ephesus, as Demetrios was only 13 at the time. After Halkyoneus death Antigonos instituted and endowed a yearly festival at Athens in honour of his birthday. The festival was placed under the charge of the philosopher Hieronymos of Rhodes, who had possibly been a friend of Halkyoneus.85 There is nothing about the context of the Ptolemy of Megalopolis fragment to suggest that Demos representation as a courtesan derives from the context of a succession dispute, although there could theoretically have been one between Demo and Halkyoneus on the one hand and Antigonos wife Phila and her son, the subsequent Demetrios II, on the other. While the name Demo, Public one, seems entirely appropriate to a courtesan all too appropriate, some may think, the name Halkyoneus certainly does not look dynastic. Had Halkyoneus lived, would he have succeeded Antigonos? His premature death left this question importantly unresolved. As Lamias status under Demetrios Poliorketes had doubtless helped to boost that of Demo and Halkyoneus under Antigonos, so Halkyoneus status under Antigonos was to boost a courtesans son all the way to the throne in the next generation. Our understanding of Demetrios II Aitolikos relationship with his courtesan Chryseis has long been complicated by the groundless but popular scholarly conjecture that she is, somehow, to be identified with Demetrios wife Phthia of Epiros, whom he married at some point prior to 246 BC.86 The impulse for this identification comes from a preconceptionheavy concern that Demetrios son and heir, Philip V, whom the sources without exception (Porphyry, Syncellus and Etymologicum magnum) assert to have been born from the courtesan Chryseis, should rather have been born of a suitably prestigious wife.87 Porphyry is worth quoting:
He took a woman from his prisoners of war to wife, whom he called Chryseis. He had his son Philip [V ] from this wife. I say that this man, who first waged war with the Romans, was the cause of troubles for the Macedonians. Anyway Philip, who was left an orphan, was taken care of under the guardianship of a man from the royal family, who was nick-named Phouskos [i.e. Antigonos III Doson]. When they saw that Phouskos was behaving justly in his guardianship, they made him king, and they also
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Porphyry and Syncellus say that Chryseis was a Thessalian war-captive (). The name Chryseis well suits a woman that is a war-captive and a concubine: the famous Chryseis of the Iliad was such.89 This consideration of course suggests that the name of Chryseis was only given to the woman after her capture. Porphyry may be conscious of the Iliad parallel, for he makes Chryseis child Philip V the cause of troubles for the Macedonians, as one may argue that Chryseis had been for the Greeks at Troy.90 Chryseis was also a common name for hetairai (cf. Chrysis, the courtesan of Demetrios Poliorketes).91 Despite all this Porphyry explicitly says that Demetrios married Chryseis. The union must have commenced before 238, when Philip V was born.92 An indication that Philip had a mother of at any rate disputable marital status may be found in Polybius description of Philip as Demetrios IIs natural ( ) son, which could be read in implicit contrast to legitimate ( ). However, the phrase is more easily read in implicit contrast to adoptive ( ), for Philip was after all the adoptive son of Antigonos III Doson.93 It is difficult to interpret the data on Chryseis. Are we to see her as another Lamia, a practicing courtesan captured in war and either invited or compelled to take up with her captor? Or are we to see Demetrios as effectively contracting a marriage alliance with Thessalian nobility in the context of war as Satyros presents Philip IIs marriage to Philinna of Larissa to have been? In which case, Chryseis representation as a courtesan is likely to owe its origin to competition within the royal family, the most obvious candidate being Phthia and her circle, although she is not known to have produced any rival children of her own. But the tone of Porphyrys narrative does not invite this line of thought: there is no atmosphere of invective or moral reproach about it. So perhaps it is best to take Porphyrys account at face value. If we are to suppose that the name Chryseis was acquired by the woman within her new Macedonian context, then it seems that, whatever her original status in life, she was being openly projected as a courtesan by the throne. Since Demetrios is not known to have had any other children, the succession of Philip, so far as he himself will have been concerned, will have been his only serious option. But the boys actual succession marks the logical conclusion of a process traceable from Demetrios I onwards. Demetrios permitted his courtesan Lamia to rear a child, admittedly a relatively unthreatening girl, but the child was nonetheless given a name
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most honorific within the family. His son Antigonos II not only reared a son from his hetaira Demo but bestowed public honour upon him and was apparently grooming him for the sucession, or at least as a candidate for the succession. This question was left unresolved by the boys early death. But now in the generation of Antigonos son, Demetrios II, we appear to see the son of a courtesan, or of a woman ostensibly presented as a courtesan, completing the journey to the throne. And this was done, we may note, with the blessing of the Macedonian establishment which organised a most scrupulous regency for him. Antigonos III Doson too, as is even more emphatically clear from Porphyry (and other sources),94 married Chryseis in turn. In so doing he was continuing an old Macedonian practice of legitimating his rule by taking on one of his predecessors wives. 7. The end of the Antigonids The evidence for the unions and children of Philip V (221179) is difficult. It seems that, as we approach the end of the Antigonid dynasty, we return to the point at which we began with the Argeads, and tendentious accusations of hetaira-status cast between rival wives, their children and blood relatives. The clash in question was between the camps of Philips half-brother sons Perseus and Demetrios, closely documented by Polybius and Livy, which culminated in Philips execution of Demetrios.95 Livy presents us twice with the notion that Perseus was the son of a paelex (concubine). But for all that he generally writes in support of Romes choice for the succession to Philip, Demetrios, formerly a hostage in Rome where he had gone native, Livy does make it clear that the notion was a tendentious and contentious one. On both occasions the notion is associated with those arguing against the succession of Perseus.96 Although no source says it explicitly, it seems likely that Perseus was in fact, or was presented as, the son of the noble Argive Polykrateia, whom Philip had stolen from the younger Aratos and taken to wife in 213.97 The strongest indications that this was so are provided by the date of Perseus birth, which must have been very soon after 213, and by Plutarchs apparent refraction of another Demetrian attempt to destabilise Perseus claim to succeed. This is the tale that Philips (unnamed) wife passed off as her own the child of an Argive sowing-woman, Gnathainion.98 This tale at least serves to show that Perseus did officially pass for the child of a wife of Philip, and to supply the Argive connection. It remains unclear whether the figure of Gnathainion, whose name recalls that of Demetrios Poliorketes hetaira Gnathaina (and that Gnathaina was actually attributed with a daughter or granddaughter named Gnathainion),99 was supposed to
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The case of Lamia perhaps satisfies two categories: she may have married Demetrios at least in the context of a sacred marriage, but she may also have been avidly seized upon by the tradition as a mechanism for illustrating Demetrios immoderate behaviour. As a rider to our study, let us briefly consider what we know of the ethnicities of the courtesans associated with the Macedonian kings. Demetrios Poliorketes Myrrhine is said to have been Samian,104 and Philip Vs Polykrateia/Gnathaina, if relevant here, which is doubtful, we have seen to have been Argive. All the other courtesans associated with the Macedonian kings, where any ethnicity is attributed to them, are Thessalian or Attic: Thessalian are Philip IIs Philinna, Alexanders Kallixeina and Thais, Antigonos Gonatas unnamed courtesans and Demetrios IIs and Antigonos Dosons Chryseis. Attic are: Harpalos Pythionike and Glykera, Demetrios Poliorketes Lamia, Leaina and Mania. We have seen that in the cases of Harpalos and Demetrios Poliorketes the source-tradition is heavily Athenocentric, and this may well account for apparent prominence of Attic courtesans in the biographies of these men. This perhaps makes the Thessalian ethnicity attributed to the rest all the more significant, and we may tentatively suggest that the Macedonian kings had a tendency to favour courtesans from the land to their south.
Notes 1 Isaeus 3.17. 2 Menander Samia 12936; cf. Ogden 1996, 102 and 161. 3 For the notion that the Antigonids behaved in a more constitutional fashion than the Argeads before them, see Carney 2001a, 179233. 4 The methodological difficulties in studying courtesans and their traditions in the context of the Argead and Hellenistic courts are considerable: Ogden 1999, 21529. This is not the place to rehearse them, and so, whilst bearing them in mind, I will plunge in medias res. On the role of women in Hellenistic monarchies, see also Carney, this volume. 5 Athen. 11.508e. 6 Plut. Alex. 10 and 77. 7 Justin 9.8.2 and 13.2.11. 8 Satyros F21 Kumaniecki at Athen. 13.557b-e; cf. Beloch 191227:iii.2, 69, Berve 1926 no. 781 n.4, Prestianni Giallombardo 1976/7 esp. 91, Hammond and Griffith 1979, 225, Heckel 1981, 51, Greenwalt 1984, 6972, Tronson 1984, Ogden 1999, 17 20, Carney 2001a, 612 and Heckel 2006 s.v. Philine. Bosworth 1971a, 128 gives some credence to these sources in defining Arrhidaios as possibly illegitimate. Hammond 1983, 903 and 1994, 198 n. 3 implausibly argues that the origin of the abusive representation of Philinna lay in the democratic opposition in Larissa, and was relayed by Kleitarchos. 9 Plut. Alex. 77; cf. Ogden 1999, 256. For discussion of Arrhidaios condition, see
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and 2001, 1015 and 14950, Ellis 1994, 25 and Whitehorne 1994, 71. I expressed ambivalence at Ogden 1999, 43. 25 There is no suggestion either of courtesan status or of marriage in the context of the rather similar series of ostentatiously fictionalised traditions of transitory encounters between Alexander and queens who come to him for stud services. Thus Thal(l)estris, the Amazon queen, supposedly presented herself to Alexander, in the words of Diod. 17.77.13, for the sake of child-making, . It would be perverse in this context to read the term in the sense in which its cognate is sometimes found in Athenian legal discourse, that of siring legitimate children, for which see [Dem.] 59.17 and 122, with Ogden 1996, 80, 102, 227. For Thallestris see also Plut. Alex. 46 incorporating, inter alia, Kleitarchos FGrH 137 F16, Ptolemy FGrH 138 F28 and Aristobulus FGrH 139 F21, Curtius 6.5.2432, Justin 12.3.57. According to Justin, Cleophis or Cleophylis, the queen of Indian Beira (which Arrian calls Bazira), ransomed her captured citadel by sleeping with the king and going on to bear a son she named Alexander. For queens in similar roles in the Alexander tradition, cf. Cleophis ( Justin 12.7.911 [scortum regium, but the context does not suggest that the queen was Alexanders hetaira in any meaningful sense], Orosius 3.19.1 [concubitu regnum redemit], and Curtius 8.10.35), Ada of Alinda (Arrian Anabasis 1.23.8) and Candace, the Ethiopian queen expressing a desire for sons like Alexander ([Callisthenes] Alexander Romance 3.18). 26 Parts of this section and the following one run congruently with Ogden 2009. 27 Athen. 13.567f (incorporating Timokles Orestautokleides F27 K-A and Amphis F23 K-A), 13.586cd (incorporating Theopompos Chian Letter, FGrH 115 F254a, Kleitarchos FGrH 137 F30 and Python Agen TGrF 91 F1), 13.594d96b (incorporating Poseidonios FGrH 87 F14, Dikaiarchos On the Descent into Trophonius cave F21 Wehrli, Theopompos Letter to Alexander, FGH 115 F253 and Chian Letter, FGrH 115 F254b, Philemon Babylonian F15 K-A, Alexis Lyciscus F143 K-A, and again Python Agen TGrF 91 F1), and 605d (incorporating Klearchos F23 Wehrli), Diod. 17.108.56, Paus. 1.37.5 and Plut. Phoc. 22. For Pythionike see Berve 1926 no. 676 (), Heckel 1992, 21820 and 2006 s.v. Pythionike, Davidson 1997, 1067, Ogden 1999 and 2001 indices s.v., Carney 2001a, 21718, McClure 2003 esp. 1378, 1448, 153. For the Agen, see Snell 1964, 99138 (with earlier references), Lloyd-Jones 1966, Sutton 1980a and 1980b, 7581, Jaschinski 1981, 2344 (esp. 369), Worthington 1986 and Flower 1997, 25862. For Glykera see Berve 1926 no. 231 (), McClure 2003 index s.v. Glycera, hetaera and eromene of Harpalus (but beware that many of the entries here misleadingly direct one to other Glyceras than Harpalos, including that of Menanders Perikeiromene) and Heckel 2006 s.v. Glycera. For Harpalos more generally see Berve 1926 no. 143 (Harpalos), Badian 1961, Jaschinski 1981, Bosworth 1988 esp. 14950, 212, 21520, and Heckel 1992, 21327 and 2006 s.v. Harpalus. 28 Note that Pythionike is strongly associated with fish at Athen. 9.338ef (incorporating Antiphanes Halieuomene F27 K-A, dated by K-A ad loc. to shortly after 345) and 339d (incorporating Timokles Ikarioi F16 K-A). In the latter Pythionikes lovers are compared to fish. Cf. Davidson 1997, 10. 29 Snell 1964, 1068 argues that the magi would have been played by the satyrs on the ground that the satyr chorus is the only plural entity in a satyr play. Perhaps, but there is no certainty from the fragment that the magi appeared on stage. He also notes, interestingly, that satyrs would suit the role of necromancers of Pythionike well,
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There is also a reference to an unnamed courtesan at Plut. Demetr. 19. For Demetrios and his courtesans in general, see Ogden 1999, 21572 passim. 53 Plut. Demetr. 24. 54 Plut. Demetr. 24. 55 Plut. Demetr. 24, Athen. 13.578ab (including Ptolemy of Megalopolis FGrH 161 F4 and Herakleides Lembos FHG iii 168 F4), and Lucian Icaromenippus 15. 27. 56 Athen. 13.578a-579d (including Ptolemy of Megalopolis FGrH 161 F4, Machon F1415 Gow and quoting Diphilos [not K-A]). 57 Plut. Demetr. 24 and 27, Athen. 13.578a-579d (including Ptolemy of Megalopolis FGrH 161 F4, Machon F1415 Gow and quoting Diphilos [not K-A]). 58 Alciphron 4.16.2 (upon which the connection to Demetrios depends), Athen. 9.384f (incorporating Philippides Ananeousa F5 K-A), 13.558ab (incorporating Aristodemus and Anaxilas Neottis F22 K-A), 13.567f (incorporating Timokles Orestautocleides F27 K-A and Amphis Kouris 23 K-A), 13.577d and 578e585b (incorporating Machon F1618, Diphilos T8 K-A and quoting Aristophanes of Byzantium, Lynkeus of Samos and Aristodemos). 59 Athen. 6.252f253b (incorporating Demochares FGrH 75 F1 and Polemon F13 Preller) and 13.577df (incorporating Machon F12 Gow and Ptolemy of Megalopolis FGrH 161 F4). 60 Athen. 13.593a (incorporating Nicolaus of Damascus FGrH 90 F90). 61 Sources: Plut. Demetr. 10, 16, 19 and 237 (incorporating Philippides F25 K-A and adespota F698 K-A and quoting Lynkeus of Samos and Demochares of Soli), Athen. 3.101e (quoting Lynkeus), 4.128b (quoting Lynkeus), 6.252f253b (incorporating Demochares FGH 75 F1 and Polemon F13 Preller), 13.577cf (incorporating Polemon F456 Preller and Machon F1213 Gow) and 14.614ef (incorporating Phylarchos FGrH 81 F12), Clem. Protr. 4.48, Alciphron 4.16 and 17, Ael. VH 12.17 and 13.89, D. L. 5.76 (incorporating Favorinus of Arelate F37 Mensching = FHG iii 578 F8), Demetrios of Phaleron F39 Wehrli = Diogenianus Choeroboscus Orthographia at Cramer Anecdota Graeca Oxoniensia ii p. 239. See Ogden 1999 esp. 1737, 21968 passim, McClure 2003 index s.v. Lamia and especially Wheatley 2003, a most meticulous study. 62 See Ogden 1999, 2235. 63 I had assumed it to be Plutarchs implication that Lamia had been Ptolemys courtesan until Salamis, Ogden 1999, 2412 and 275; Wheatley 2003, 31 n.11 scrupulously maintains that Plutarch does not explicitly declare this. 64 Note the prominence of Athens in all the Lamia material at Plut. Demetr. 237; Machons Chreiai (even if written in Alexandria: Gow 1965, 5) focus on the smart-set dinner parties of early Hellenistic Athens, and at these Lamia is a witty guest alongside other courtesans; Athenian references also at Athen. 14.614ef (incorporating Phylarchos FGrH 81 F12), Athen. 6.252f253b (incorporating Demochares FGrH 75 F3) and Alciphron 4.16, Clem. Protr. 4.48. Lamia is also associated with the cities of Sikyon/Demetrias (Athen. 13.577cf, incorporating Polemon F456 Preller), Thebes (Athen. 6.252f253b, incorporating Polemon F13 Preller) and, perhaps, with Thessaly (Plut. Demetr. 27). As to the last, Plutarch asserts that the memorable soap tale he prefers to set in Athens was also told of Thessaly. Was this in fact the tales usual home, with Plutarch transferring it to Athens for the sake of coherence? Or did
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Cf. Syncellus 535.19 Dindorf and Etymologicum Magnum s.v. . For discussion of some of the difficulties with the Porphyry passage, see Dow and Edson 1937, 1502 and 161, le Bohec 1981, 369 and 1993, 37 and 147 and Ogden 1999, 180. 89 Hom. Il. 1.111, etc. 90 At Hom. Il. 1.1135 Agamemnon contrasts his war-captive concubine Chryseis with a wedded wife; cf. Dow and Edson 1937, 1546; see also Beloch 191227, iv.2 138, Tarn 1940, 4948 and Seibert 1967, 389. 91 Cf. Dow and Edson 1937, 1534 for parallels. Chrysis: Plutarch Demetrius 24. 92 Polyb. 4.5.3, with Walbank 195779 ad loc.; cf. Will 197982, i 360 and le Bohec 1981, 42. 93 Polyb. 4.2.5, with Walbank 195779 ad loc.; cf. Tarn 1924, 21. 94 Porphyry FGrH 260 F3.14, in the German translation of the Armenian offered by Jacoby: machten ihn zum knig und trauten ihm als gattin die gldene. und jener tat die shne, die <ihm> geboren wurden aus der gldenen. Nicht ernhren, damit er die herrschaft ohne untreu dem Philippos aufbewahrte... Etymologicum Magnum s.v. : . Plutarch Aemilius Paulus 8: . Cf. Syncellus 535.19 Dindorf = 340.234 ...
88
95 Livy 40.516, 40.204 and 40.547, Polyb. 23.1011, Plut. Aem. 8.67, Arat. 54.7 and Demetr. 3, Diod. 29.25 and Justin 32.23 and Zonaras 9.22. 96 Livy 39.53 and 40.9.2. For further suggestions that Perseus birth was inferior to that of Demetrios, see Polyb. 23.7, Diod. 29.25, Livy 41.23.10 and Ael. VH 12.43. 97 Plut. Arat. 49.2 and 51.2 and Cleom. 16.5, Livy 27.31.3 (supplying the name Polykrateia), 32.21 and 32.24 and Ael. VH 12.42; cf. Beloch 1901 and 191227, iv.2 13941, Macurdy 1932, 723, Dow and Edson 1937, 130, Edson 1935, 1916, Walbank 1940, 78, 241, 2467, Meloni 1953, 1015, Seibert 1967, 39, Gruen 1974, Will 197982, ii 255, Adams 1982, 2434 and Ogden 1999, 1837, Carney 2001a, 1934. 98 Plut. Aem. 8.7 and Arat. 54.3; the allegation that Perseus was supposititious is referred to also at Livy 40.9.2, and the allegation that his mother was Argive but at Ael. VH 12.43. 99 Athen. 13.581a582c (incorporating Machon F17 Gow), 583e and 585a (quoting Lynkeus of Samos); cf. Gow 1965, 710, Ogden 1999, 220, 227 n.28, and McClure 2003 index s.vv. Gnathaena and Gnathaenion. 100 Polyb. 36.10.34; cf. Livy 42.53 (unfortunately corrupt) for Philip, son of Philip V. 101 Diod. 32.15, Livy Epitome 49, Paus. 7.13.1, Porphyry FGrH 260 F3.19 = Eusebius Chronicles i 23940 Schne. 102 Diod. 32.15. 103 Cf. Ogden 1999, 18792, Carney 2001a. 104 Athen. 13.593a, incorporating Nicolaus of Damascus FGrH 90 F90.
Bibliography Adams, W. L. 1982 Perseus and the Third Macedonian War, in W. L. Adams and E. N. Borza (eds) Philip II, Alexander the Great and the Macedonian Heritage, Washington, 23756
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Dodds, E. R. 1959 Plato Gorgias edited with an introduction and commentary, Oxford. Dow, S., and Edson, C. F. 1937 Chryseis, HSCP 48, 12780. Edson, C. F. 1935 Perseus and Demetrius, HSCP 46, 191202. Ellis, W. M. 1994 Ptolemy of Egypt, London. Ferguson, W. S. 1911 Hellenistic Athens, Oxford. Fine, J. V. A. 1934 The mother of Philip V of Macedon, CQ 28, 99104. Flower, M. A. 1997 Theopompus of Chios, Oxford. French, V. and Dixon, P. 1986a The Pixodaros affair: another view, AncW 13, 7386. 1986b The source traditions for the Pixodaros affair, AncW 14, 2540. Gabbert, J. J. 1997 Antigonus Gonatas. A political biography, London. Gernet, L. 1953 Mariages des tyrans, in Eventail de lhistoire vivante, Homage L. Febvre ii, Paris, 4153. Reprinted in L. Gernet, Anthropologie de la Grce antique, Paris 1968, 34459. Geyer, F. 1925 Lamia 5, RE xii, 5467. Gow, A. S. F. 1965 Machon, Cambridge. Green, P. 1990 Alexander to Actium: The Hellenistic age, London. Greenwalt, W. S. 1984 The search for Arrhidaeus, AncW 10, 6977. 1989 Polygamy and succession in Argead Macedonia, Arethusa 22.1, 1945. Gruen, E. 1974 The last years of Philip V, GRBS 15, 2146. Hamilton, J. R. 1969 Plutarch, Alexander: A commentary, Oxford. Hammond, N. G. L. 1967 Epirus, Oxford. 1983 Three Historians of Alexander the Great: The so-called vulgate authors, Diodorus, Justin and Curtius, Cambridge. 1994 Philip of Macedon, Baltimore. Hammond, N. G. L. and Griffith, G. T. 1979 A History of Macedon, vol. II, Oxford. Hatzopoulos, M. B. 1982 A reconsideration of the Pixodarus affair, Studies in the History of Art 10, Washington DC, 5966.
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Reinsberg, C. 1993 Ehe, Hetrentum und Knabenliebe im antiken Griechenland, Munich. Scholl, A. 1994 . Zur literarischen und monumentale berlieferung aufwendiger Grabmler im sptklassischen Athen, Jahrbuch des deutschen archologischen Instituts 109, 23971. Seibert, J. 1967 Historische Beitrage zu den dynastischen Verbindungen in hellenistischer Zeit, Historia Einzelschriften 10, Wiesbaden. Snell, B. 1964 Scenes from Greek Drama, Berkeley. Sutton, D. F. 1980a Harpalus as Pallides, Rheinisches Museum 123, 96. 1980b The Greek Satyr-Play, Meisenheim am Glan. Tarn, W. W. 1909 The battles of Andros and Cos, JHS 29, 26485. 1913 Antigonos Gonatas, Oxford. 1924 Philip V and Phthia, CQ 18, 1723. 1940 Phthia-Chryseis, HSCP supplement vol. 1, Ferguson, W.S., hon. 483501. 1948 Alexander the Great, 2 vols, Cambridge. Travlos, J. 1988 Bildlexikon zur Topographie des antiken Attika, Tbingen. Tronson, A. 1984 Satyrus, the Peripatetic and the marriages of Philip II, JHS 104, 11626. Walbank, F. W. 1940 Philip V of Macedon, Cambridge. 195779 A Historical Commentary on Polybius, 3 vols, Oxford. Wehrli, C. 1964 Phila, fille dAntipater et pouse de Demetrius, roi des Macdoniens Historia 13, 1406. Wheatley, P. 2003 Lamia and the Besieger: an Athenian hetaera and a Macedonian king, in O. Palagia and S. V. Tracy (eds) The Macedonians in Athens 322229 BC, Oxford, 306. Whitehorne, J. 1994 Cleopatras, London. Will, E. 197982 Histoire politique du monde hellnistique. 2nd ed., 2 vols, Nancy. Worthington, I. 1986 The chronology of the Harpalus affair, Symbolae Osloenses 61, 6376.
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12 A KEY TO BERENIKES LOCK? THE HATHORIC MODEL OF QUEENSHIP IN EARLY PTOLEMAIC EGYPT Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Stephanie Winder
1. Another key to Berenikes Lock The starting point for the present study is a very small one: a lock of hair, specifically, the lock of Berenike II, dedicated to Aphrodite in connection with the safety of her husband, Ptolemy III Euergetes, in the Third Syrian War (246241 BC). The theme of this study, however, is bigger: it explores Ptolemaic queenship and the construction of the female royal image in literature and visual culture in the formative period for the ideology of Greco-Egyptian monarchy. Ptolemy I Soter was necessarily concerned with amassing and securing land; his son, Ptolemy II Philadelphos, instituted a socio-cultural and religious framework for the dynasty. Their goals and priorities were clear; but what was the role, or place, or orientation of Ptolemy III Euergetes reign in this dynastic progression? This examination approaches that question by focusing not on the image of the king, but on that of his wife, Berenike, whose situation, in many ways, like that of her husband also, epitomises the problems of a classic third child scenario.1 2. Berenike in Cyrene This investigation has its roots in a well-known piece of poetry, the wryly imaginative biography of Berenikes lock of hair by Callimachus, the Coma Berenices. The methodological approach adopted here, however, is concerned with the historical Berenikes biography and is essentially grounded in historical questions about Ptolemaic self-perception and self-promotion. It is necessary, therefore, to clarify the early events of the queens life, prior to the period of the locks adventures, since they play a formative role in her subsequent career management. Taking into account the events in the young Berenikes life which led up to the Egyptian marriage, a picture emerges of a desperately unstable family relationship (or dynamic) which, in turn, produced tensions at court and, as a consequence, a conflicted
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Fig. 1. Gold octdrachmon of a youthful Berenike II with a veil and diademed cornucopia (courtesy of Classical Numismatics Group, www.cngcoins.com).
marriageable age and, as Cyrenes heiress, a desirable commodity.7 For her part, Berenike gives the strongest indication that her vision of becoming queen of Egypt via marriage and of uniting the two kingdoms remained active policy during this period. Indeed, her ambition is given striking emphasis by the possibility, following Tarns reading of the evidence, that she minted coins in Cyrene on which she chose to depict herself as an eligible queen, very youthful, wide-eyed, and unveiled.8 Her elegant coinage bears the superscription of Queen Berenike and King Ptolemy, a tag by which Berenike decisively staked her claim as the First Lady of Egypt (Fig. 1). The message that the coins gave out to Egypt and Cyrene was clear: the young queen advertised her desire to continue the policies of Magas and Philadelphos by marrying the Egyptian heir. To prince Ptolemy the coins must have read like love letters. The events between Berenikes original betrothal and eventual marriage are crucial for understanding how she may have later reacted, as queen of Egypt, on both a personal and a political level. A detailed account of Cyrenian internal politics during this period is not yet accessible but what emerges is Berenikes unbending will to marry into the Ptolemaic family and reunite the two kingdoms. Given this, what did the disturbingly long gap between her betrothal and eventual marriage mean for the young princess who discovered herself fighting her own mother on one side and astute politicians on another, whilst determined to realise her own vision of her future? On her early coin portraits, Berenike, despite her pretensions of greatness and her proEgyptian aspirations, is revealed as actually in an uncomfortable state of limbo. She is, on the coins and in real life, parthenos and is destined to remain so until her progress to nymphe- and gyne- is confirmed through
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Fig. 2. Gold octdrachmon of a mature Berenike II with a veil and diademed cornucopia and the wreathed caps of Castor and Pollux (courtesy of Classical Numismatics Group, www.cngcoins.com).
Further evidence of Berenikes concern regarding the status of her marriage and her use of image to consolidate and control its public perception occurs early on in the course of the Third Syrian War when she departed from Egypt and sailed to Syria to rendezvous with the king. This important voyage is often overlooked in the scholarship, due to the understandably muddled readings of the often tattered Gurob Papyrus, our chief source for the early stages of the war.22 This document is written in the first person as King Ptolemy narrates, in summary form, the course of the war. The section relevant here describes the kings arrival at Antioch (in 246 BC), now under Egyptian control, to a rapturous welcome from the locals. He then talks about meeting his sister in the Antioch palace:
Nothing pleased us so much as the enthusiasm [they showed]. Then since...the offerings which were ready...and of private individuals, we poured libations, and now / that the sun was setting we immediately went in to see (our) sister, and after this we turned to practical business.
Here the confusion begins. It is often assumed that Berenike Syra and her child had already been murdered by Laodike at this point. In order to explain the reference to sister in the Gurob papyrus, historians have argued, following the testimony of Justin (or the even more bizarre account of Polyaenus)23 that Ptolemy either found his sister still alive in Antioch (and that she met her death while in Egyptian safe-hands somehow later) or that he covered up her death in order to perpetuate the fiction that the war was being waged in her defence.24 There is a more logical and economical solution to this problem: that the sister mentioned in the Gurob papyrus is the other Berenike, the wife and not the blood sister, following the standard Pharaonic terminology adopted
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This vision is not confined to Ptolemys and Berenikes honeymoon period, but is endorsed throughout the reign, and, more importantly, was one designed to function in both Greek and Egyptian terms. In fact, the individuality of Berenike emerges clearly only when the Egyptian aspect of her self-promotion is understood. Scholars of Ptolemaic queenship routinely connect royal women with Isis as the Egyptian counterpart of Aphrodite.30 There is, without a doubt, a vital interaction between queens and this most important goddess, who is seen as divine mother, lover and mourner. That Arsinoe II, in particular, managed to exploit these connections in spectacular and monumental manner is well known. In fact, if Berenike II wanted both to exploit this resource and carve her own niche in the Ptolemaic pantheon she had to forge an identity close enough to, yet far enough from, Arsinoe II. This was no easy task given Arsinoes expertise in cross-cultural propaganda and the fact that even Ptolemy III continued to promote his step-mothers cultic and cultural importance.31 Berenike could draw on the Aphrodite-Isis vision of queenship, but needed to nurture an individual aspect too. She found the key to the problem in the trials of her formative years as a queen, and from the post-Syrian War period onwards: she promoted the use of the Hathoric model of queenship and advanced a self-assimilation with the goddess Hathor. Seldens groundbreaking work on Egyptian imagery in Callimachus work acknowledges an element of Hathoric imagery employed in the Coma Berenices, albeit within an Isidic model.32 It is possible to go further and see that what the poem is drawing upon at those moments, is Berenikes own use of the Hathor image and, more importantly, Hathor separate from Isis as a tool throughout her political career in Egypt. Moreover, her use of Hathor works best as an Egyptian model, and it is in this form that Berenikes innovative vision of Ptolemaic queenship is located.
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Hathor is a supremely sexual goddess and, as not only the protectress of Horus, but also his wife, brings him joy through her beauty, her love and her nurturing.38 In this aspect, her image as the cow suckling pharaoh, giving him life, is important too. Hathor is also the goddess most closely connected to the divine queenship; in fact, she is fundamentally representative of royal women. As Robins and Troy have demonstrated, from the Middle Kingdom onwards, but increasingly from the Eighteenth Dynasty, queens wear a headdress of straight falcon plumes, representing the eyes of Re and as
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Here, the identification with Hathor as a distinct entity is promoted, even though she is linked to other goddesses too. In an inscription from Philae, however, Berenike is likened to Hathor alone, in her great love.41 It is important to realize that these titles which directly connect Berenike to Hathor are not made for any other Ptolemaic queen even though the Philae title was later appropriated for Arsinoe III. It is particularly surprising, given the repetitive nature of royal female titles, that even in Arsinoe IIs rich panoply of titulature, there are no Hathoric connections.
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Fig. 3. Ptolemy III and Berenike II (first couple facing left on the left hand side), followed by Thoth, Seshat, Ptolemy II, Arsinoe II, Ptolemy I and Berenike I face a procession of gods. Carved relief from the lunette of the Kom el-Hisn Stela, containing the Canopic Decree. Redrawn from Bianchi 1989 by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones.
Iconography stresses the relationship too: the carved relief on the Kom el-Hisn Stela (Fig. 3), which heads the Canopic Decree of 238 BC, shows Ptolemy III and Berenike II in the company of a number of gods, including the first two generations of the royal dynasty.42 The king stands opposite the personification of the third Egyptian nome, whose principal deity was Hathor, while Berenike balances the composition and stands behind her husband in exactly the same place occupied by Hathor in the opposite lineup. It should also be noted that Berenike is the only queen to wear the wty plumes, horns and sun disk of Hathor. In 237 BC, Ptolemy III began the construction of the temple of Horus at Edfu. A relief in Chapel 9 (Fig. 4) shows him offering to Horus, Hathor
Fig. 4. Ptolemy IV (or possibly VI) offers to a line of gods and deified monarchs: Horus, Hathor, Harpokrates, Ptolemy I, Berenike I, Ptolemy II, Arsinoe II; Ptolemy III and Berenike II bring up the rear of the procession. Edfu temple, chapel 9. Redrawn from Baum 2007 by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones.
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Fig. 5. Ptolemy III and Berenike II receive their royal titles and symbols of perpetual rule, all carefully recorded by the god Khonsu. The pharaoh wears the double crown while the queen wears the distinctive Hathor headdress of sun disk, horns, and plumes. Relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd LlewellynJones.
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Fig. 7. Ptolemy gives nu jars and Berenike II offers lotus garlands to the god Khonsu, accompanied behind the throne by Het Heret, a fertility aspect of Hathor. Relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones.
Fig. 6. Berenike II (face mutilated probably in the early Christian period) wears the distinctive crown of the goddess Hathor. Detail of a relief from the Euergetes Gate, temple of Karnak. Photograph: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones.
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Acknowledgements The authors are grateful to the Carnegie trust of Scotland for their support in providing funding for a research trip to Egypt to study primary artefacts in Alexandria, Cairo, and Luxor. The authors are also grateful to Andrew Erskine for his patience and perseverance. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of our Egyptian friend and brother Eltaher Marey known to all as Refaat who died unexpectedly and before his time in 2009.
Notes 1 Throughout, Berenike II, the wife and queen of Ptolemy III Euergetes, is referred to simply as Berenike; Euergetes sister, confusingly (but typically of the Hellenistic dynasties) also called Berenike, we will call Berenike Syra, after her Seleucid-Syrian connection. 2 An outline biography for Berenike (usually coupled with that of Ptolemy III) is provided by Bevan 1927, 745, 194216; Macurdy 1932, 1306; Ogden 1999, 801, 12732 and Hlbl 2001, 4551, 105. 3 Justin 26.3.2. See also Hlbl 2001, 45. 4 See Porphyry FGrH 260 F43 (= Jerome In Danielum 11.6a). This text suggests that Ptolemy II used military aggression to constrain Antiochos II to marry Berenike Syra. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993, 126 regard the marriage to Berenike Syra as a deliberate component of Seleucid foreign policy willingly negotiated by Antiochos. In either case, it would have been stipulated by Ptolemy II that Antiochos heir would be a child born by the Egyptian princess and not by his repudiated wife, Laodike. See further Seibert 1967, 80. 5 Justin 26.3.36; Catul. 66. 258. The reference to this event in Catullus version of Callimachus poem does not survive in the Greek original. It must be conceded that the political situation in Cyrene throughout this period is difficult to track, and that any reconstruction is necessarily highly speculative; for the problems of the period
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Bibliography Ager, S. 2005 Familiarity breeds: incest and the Ptolemaic dynasty, JHS 125, 134. 2006 The power of excess: royal incest and the Ptolemaic dynasty, Anthropologica: the Journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society 48, 16586. Allam, S. 1963 Beitrge zum Hathorkultbis zum Ende des Mittlern Reich, Berlin. Antelme, R. S. and Rossini, S. 1999 Sacred Sexuality in Ancient Egypt, Rochester.
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PART V
CHANGING AESTHETICS
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which was multi-stranded and far more attentive to the material dimensions of art and arts experiences than has previously been acknowledged. One aim of my general approach, then, is corrective. Aesthetics as a term and in its root meanings points us to the sensuous experience of art. The advantage of adopting a sensualist and non-formalist approach is that it can help us see how the various realms of ancient art were unified through the commonalities of experience (and not only vocabularies) which those arts can be shown to have shared.There will be more to say about such commonalities below. So much for the headier concepts. My particular aim in the present chapter is to begin rethinking the Hellenistic world of aesthetics, in part by aligning it with the root meaning of the term aisthe-sis (sensation, perception, feeling) and in part by putting some pressure on what has been taken to be the periods hallmark concept, at least in poetry and poetics: leptote-s provisionally, refinement. Hellenistic poetry, I wish to suggest, is frequently object-oriented, even object-obsessed: it is drawn to things in the material world, even if at times those things exist only, or ambiguously, in the minds eye. Aesthetic materialism is a natural consequence of such a focus. Given that this is so, if the Hellenistic poets sought to declare their generational difference from their classical predecessors, a question to ask is whether they did so by asserting a new kind of literary aesthetics, one we might call materialist (though of a particular cast), taking our cue from such objectoriented poetry as we find in Posidippus, but also in Callimachus and elsewhere, notably in their neoteric Roman offspring. I believe they did. But if this is right, then the presumed centrality of leptote-s to Hellenistic aesthetics will have to have to undergo some closer scrutiny. Accordingly, towards the end of this chapter I will attempt a brief but more general recharacterization of Hellenistic literary aesthetics in a way that takes advantage of this first redescription, only now in a slightly more heterodox manner, by moving away from the exclusive aesthetics of leptotes, or the conjunction of the refined with the poetics of the detail and the small-scale, which is the usual way of classifying this material though I have to confess that the logic of leptote-s is becoming less and less obvious to me the more I ponder it.2 Consequently, my approach will mark a revision in the current critical ideology, which unthinkingly, even cheerfully, labels Hellenistic poetry miniaturist, pointillist, and precious, with very few exceptions (Gerhard Lohse and Gregory Hutchinson stand out as the contrarians). But a further bit of background will first be needed in order to establish the tradition in which the Hellenistic aesthetic, revised as I wish to see it, deserves to be framed. One of the more intriguing crossovers among the realms of art in
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antiquity takes place between the language of poetry and the language of physical objects, large and small alike. Two kinds of issue come into view here: questions about the thing-like quality of language (its capacity to mimic material objects, to take on material features, or simply to have a share in appearances); and questions about size and scale (bigness, as in monuments, and smallness, as in epigrams, cups, gems, and the like). Consider the case of poetry and monumental architecture. These enjoy a close, but still not closely enough examined, relationship in ancient thought. Poets and literary critics frequently describe literary works as a kind of monument, and architects repay the complement by describing, whether through words or stone, what is in essence a kind of visual poetry. We might call this the la parole et le marbre theme, following Jesper Svenbros seminal and still unsurpassed work of the same title, though his book has spawned a small industry of scholarship on the theme, one sub-genre of which is known as ecphrastic speaking objects, or oggetti parlanti.3 These connections highlight what Svenbro calls the materiality of the poetic word. One way of putting this epigraphic tradition is to say that it conceived of texts as objects inscribed with writing rather than as writing inscribed on objects. Another way of characterizing this tradition is to say that it was interested in how monuments sound. The most obvious extension of the thematics of song and stone after the archaic and classical periods in Greek literature is to be found in the Hellenistic epigram, which consciously harks back to the earlier epigraphic tradition and aestheticizes it anew. As Peter Bing has observed about this genre, the boundaries between stone and scroll are quite permeable, and migration across them is easy, so much so that the distinction between inscription and quasi-inscription (or pseudo-inscription), that is, between real and fictional occasion, is impossible to determine.4 Of course, that boundary was already breached as early as the quasi-inscriptions that are found in Homer in statements of the form, Somebody will say someday, So-and-so once fought here and died, sometimes using the overt formulas of (this grave marker), and sometimes not.5 But the Hellenistic epigrams are a genre unto themselves, free-floating, and very like actual burial inscriptions. Real or not, the premise of the literary epigram is one of a physicality and immediacy that is being revived whenever the poem is being re-experienced by a reader. In presenting themselves as inscriptions on monuments, Hellenistic literary epigrams do not merely evoke materiality: they embody it inscribe it in their very substance. Hellenistic poets were fond of exploiting these ambiguities. In doing so, they were playing with the materialities of poetry.
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But this was not the only way in which materiality flourished in Hellenistic poetics, and if anything the recrudescence of the inscriptional epigram is but a symptom of a larger tendency. In order to bring out this larger trend and the object-oriented character of Hellenistic aesthetics, its intense capacity to think through things, I want to turn now to another, broader way in which materiality made itself felt in Hellenistic poetry, a fact that, happily, is slowly dawning on contemporary scholarship finally, after a hiatus of several millennia, ever since the Hellenistic era itself. For, coming into fashion among Hellenistic literary critics of today is willynilly an aesthetics of things or objects, what we might call a newfound aesthetic materialism, which I believe is peculiarly well suited to Hellenistic poetic production. There are good and obvious reasons for this refocusing of attention, the most recent being the discovery and subsequent publication in 2001 of the poetry book attributed with reasonable certainty to Posidippus of Pella, the Macedonian epigrammatist and contemporary of Callimachus. It is astonishing to see the terms aesthetics, objects, and occasionally materiality and material, cropping up with such frequency in Kathryn Gutzwillers recent collection on Posidippus.6 Within that collection, isolated pages and even whole chapters deal with inter-arts questions quite intensely across a wide range of art forms, from literature to sculpture to gem collections. And then there is the 2003 article by G. O. Hutchinson, inspired by the same ancient Posidippan collection, entitled, The Catullan corpus, Greek epigram, and the poetry of objects, in addition to other items in a slowly growing bibliography.7 This new turn bodes well for interdisciplinary studies in Hellenistic studies, which continue to remain underexploited, inexplicably for a field so rich in potential, given the then flourishing fields of literature, philosophy, art, urban design, religion, and sciences of the age all the more so since these fields were still in ways pre-disciplinary, or emergently disciplinary: they fruitfully intersected with one another. Aesthetics would surely be one way of producing something like a unified field theory for the Hellenistic era. But, as I said, my interest here is in detailing a particular tendency of Hellenistic aesthetics: its materialist urges. The table of contents of Posidippus work tells us almost all we need to know about the object-oriented nature of the criticism it has elicited: I. Stones(?) (]); II. Omens; III. Dedications (); IV. [Epitaphs ()]; V. The Making of Statues (); VI. Equestrian Poems; VII. Shipwrecks; VIII. Cures; IX. Turns (Characters?).8 Prior to this discovery it would have been hard to imagine an entire set of poems devoted to kinds of stones, even if treatises on stones and minerals are known to have existed at least since Theophrastus On Stones.9 One
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might have thought one would have to wait until the middle of the twentieth century before one could hit upon a literary fascination with such simple objects, as in Francis Ponges collection Le parti pris des choses (Siding with Things [1941]), which has its fair share of sensuous accounts of stones and pebbles. Consider one poem from that collection, The Pebble, which begins:
It isnt easy to define a pebble. If youre satisfied with a simple description you can start out by saying that its a form or state of stone halfway between rocks and gravel. But this already implies a concept of stone that must be validated. So dont blame me for going back even further than the flood.10
Of course, Ponges prose-poem is hardly concerned with the mere simplicity of pebbles, and neither is Posidippus Lithika, an example of which is AB 15 (20 G-P):11
It was not a river resounding on its banks, but the head of a bearded snake that once held this gem, thickly streaked with white. And the chariot on it was engraved by the sharp eye of Lynceus, like the mark on a nail: the chariot is seen incised but on the surface you could not notice any protrusions. And thats why the work causes such a great marvel: how did the pupils of the engravers eyes not suffer as he gazed so intently.12
, , , .
We will revisit this poem later on. For now, I simply want to get back to my original point about the critical turns I mentioned, the turns to both aesthetics and a newfound materialism. Thinking in things, the rediscovery of matter and experience, and the aesthetic turn, are all long overdue within classical studies, and I believe they can help to illuminate neglected aspects of ancient ways of thinking about art and poetry. Of course, if we go this route we will have to ignore the usual suspects, such as Plato and Aristotle, who are decidedly formalist and not materialist in their leanings, and who have colored (if not altogether distorted) all subsequent perspectives on the ancient attainments. But then, what could be more characteristically Hellenistic than this inversion of the classical canon?
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My goals in this chapter are two. First, I hope to take a few tentative steps towards synthesizing a view of Hellenistic materialism in art and aesthetics, focusing for the most part on poetry and poetics. Towards the end of this chapter, I will attempt a brief but more general recharacterization of Hellenistic literary aesthetics by moving away from the exclusive aesthetics of leptote-s. Such a move will mark a revision of the current ideology, which almost unthinkingly labels Hellenistic poetry miniaturist, pointillist, and precious. Just when this tendency first came into currency would be a problem worth investigating. But we can be certain of one thing: it is of relatively recent date. One possibility points to 1960 and 1964, the dates of Walter Wimmels Kallimachos in Rom and of Wendell Clausens essay, Callimachus and Latin poetry, respectively.13 Another is the insertion of the phrase into the reading of the papyrus preserving Callimachus prologue to the Aitia (fr. 1.11 Pfeiffer), which appeared to make leptote-s the explicit programmatic core of Callimachus great self-reflexive work from his ripest years. The reading was shockingly invalidated by Bastianini in 1996, as it will be again in Lehnus forthcoming edition of Callimachus, which reads ...() [ . (Lehnus speculates that the line may in fact have contrasted two kinds of largeness, i.e., reading ).14 The source of the error was a creative supplement by Rostagni from 1928. Rostagni never laid eyes on the papyrus, but he found the conjecture aesthetically attractive, and his solution won immediate acceptance.15 Wilamowitz and his pupils, especially Reitzenstein and later Pfeiffer, and Couat in France, doubtless paved the way, very likely on the coat-tails of eighteenth-century views (especially those of C. G. Heyne), which in turn were filtering later Roman but not necessarily Hellenistic views about the Callimachean aesthetic.16 As it turns out, a more reliable guide to Hellenistic aesthetics may be found in that periods greatest historian, J. G. Droysen, who coined the term Hellenismus in connection with the Alexandrian empire in all its vastness. Unfortunately, Droysen is not remembered for the implicit aesthetics of his history, though he ought to be, even if he did not have much to offer in the way of explicit commentary on the aesthetic production of the age. We will want to come back to him below. My point of departure will instead be another branch of Hellenistic aesthetic materialism, namely the best attested but also the most radical exponents of Hellenistic literary criticism, the euphonist critics known somewhat mysteriously from Philodemus as , those who are called critics. 17 I say mysteriously, because that is how they are introduced at one point, and there is a question whether they called themselves kritikoi or not (that is, whether Philodemus dubbed them with
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this label as a convenience) and if so, why they did so, and in any case what the etiquette means. But also, there is the very strange fact that we know about them in this capacity only from Philodemus. Why this should be so is unclear. Euphonism the exclusive attention to the sound patterns of texts at the expense of their meaning lives on in critics of the Roman era (Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Longinus both know this approach, as do Cicero, Quintilian, Plutarch, and others), and it is also a staple of much mainstream criticism after Aristotle.18 What is more, the theory and practice of euphonism have a heritage that reaches back into the earlier musical tradition, then into the classical era with its strong oral component and (what is less well documented) its own tradition of poetic sunthesis, and finally back to Pindar and Lasos.19 This long tradition, stretching across prose and poetic authors and grouped around the imagery of monuments, whether sculptural or architectural (ancient critics think of poems or paragraphs as sound sculptures or as exhibiting a verbal architecture), is a tradition that exploits the ambiguities of la parole et le marbre, or what may also be referred to as sublime monuments. I might add that monuments need not be whole or complete in order to evoke sublimity. And though I know of no one who has noted this before, we can be quite certain that the Hellenistic euphonists were aware of this continuity, which I believe they advertised through the metaphors, analogies, and images in which the theory is couched and through which significant aspects of that theory are conveyed. (One of the later preserved mentions, and utilizations, of Lasos in fact comes from a Philodemean context).20 Let me venture a first thesis, which I wont argue for now: in this tradition of criticism, euphony stands not for the proposition that all poetry is reducible to the way it sounds, as it is commonly imagined to do, but rather for the fact that poetry cannot be grasped unless it is appreciated as it is sensed and experienced, which is to say, as a felt phenomenon. Euphony stands for a kind of sensualism in art. In a way, the euphonists merely crystallize a tendency of all Greek literature, its aesthetic capacities as heard, whenever it is spoken or read aloud, which is almost always was. And though the language of the euphonists is philosophically tinged, it refuses to slot into ready-made schools and labels, despite the widespread myth that they were Stoics.21 2. Sound sculpture A restored text from Philodemus On Poems (square brackets indicating restorations) will serve as a good entre to the later euphonists theory, as it happens to act like a billboard for their views:
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The composition [alone, being ,] is the object of elaboration; and it stands as [engraved] in [stone] ( | [] []) for all the kritikoi . that euphony, which appears on the surface [of the composition] ( | [] []|), is to be considered idion (i.e. specific to a . poem or its audition), while the meanings and phrases (sc., the diction) must be considered external (, i.e. to the poetic art) and common (or: universal: ); but this notion is obviously nave, as my previous comments show.22
The language is indeed idiosyncratic. Lets try to translate it back into plain English. What Philodemus is saying, or rather restating, is nothing less than the significant core of the euphonist poetic program. The value of poetry for these critics lies not in what poetry means but in the way it sounds its musicality: they are euphonists, but with a vengeance. Poems on this way of thinking are aggregates of sound whence their favored term, sunthesis, which has to be taken literally: it stands for a sunthesis of the stoicheia, the elements or letter-sounds that make up, like building blocks, the sullabai (syllables) of the lexeis or words (or, at times, rhythmical times or durations, chronoi). Poems so conceived are indeed no more than soundeffects arising (in their own striking terms) epiphenomenally or on the surface of poetic compositions,23 thanks to the technical artistry (the techn or exergasia) of the poet, while the sounds are themselves ephemeral and, logically, specific to each audition (or reading): that is what is meant by being idion. In this way, these critics, unconventional by any standard, arrive at a theory about what might be called the absolutism of the poetic particular. A poems specificity, which is elusively of the moment and punctual, is grounded in its material coordinates: this sound here. Now, at stake in the present passage is nothing less than the value of the idion, which displaces the semantic aspects of poems (meaning, moral effects, but also a poems generic classification): these are sacrificed to the poems material surfaces and to the way these appear to an auditor (whence ), which is to say, to their acoustic appearance (their sound). The sole preoccupation of poets, according to these euphonist critics, lies, accordingly, in what is idion to their poetic productions, not in what is common to all other poems or what can be found outside their art whence the phrase we find elsewhere in their teachings, .24 This is their aesthetic matter their kath hauto, as they put it, in a conscious inversion of Aristotle, who located the poetic essence in the poetic form: the euphonists locate poetic essence in matter (this is their ) and in sensation and appearance ().25 Poetic idia, on this materialist and phenomenalist view, are deeply a part of the poetic matter, the true :26
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they are phenomena peculiar to their embedded context in a poem analyzed as a collection of sounds. In the sample from Posidippus quoted above, these would include a range of effects, from word-order to the role of pitches and accents to rhythms and meters, none of which would occur naturally in Greek prose, nor would they occur identically that is, as a koinon in any other poem either (except through quotation or plagiarism). The various meanings that the sounds can be said to express (or can be said to reduce to) could, however, be found in any number of settings, from mineralogical handbooks to art catalogues to the simple gushing of a nave onlooker, as the last verse implies: How did its sculptor not blur his eyesight on the job! 27 Hence, meaning is not idion: it is not rooted in the particular contingencies of this matter here at this moment of audition. It is common (koinon). In an immediately preceding column from Philodemus, the idion is claimed to reside not in the production of likenesses (for these are common, koinon, just by virtue of being alike, e.g., to painters and sculptors), but rather in the actual carving in metal and stone, which is specific to an instance of a given art (here, plastic art).28 The opponent committed a fallacy, Philodemus claims:
because, as I said, he adduced crafts that are different but have their goal in common. For just as it is not the peculiar function (idion)29 of the ring engraver to make a likeness for this is common to the sculptor and painter but [to make a likeness] in iron and gem stones through engraving ( []), though the good does not lie in this [sc., in the engraving qua engraving] but in making a similarity, which is common to all, in like manner it is claimed that the poet [wants] his peculiar function (idion) [to lie] in the composition (sunthesis) [sc., of the sounds],30 but hunts out the good in the common sphere, in meaning and diction a good which this <critic> says does simply no [moral] benefit or harm at all, just as he concluded from his examples, but not the opposite; therefore, poets ( he claims) derive what is common from others [and make it their own (idion) their by adding their own suntheseis].31
The analogies in this text make the same point as in its sequel, only now in a graphic way: if you fashion an image of a chariot in a gemstone and then reproduce the same image in bronze or paint, you will have produced something in common, a koinon; but what you will have lost in the translation is precisely the idion, the specific effect of the materiality of the likeness in this or that medium.32 For the same reason, the most obvious thing that gets lost in translation from one language to another is the sound of the original. The euphonists are making just this point. Only, they are doing so in an especially emphatic way. For the truly radical thrust of their
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program is encapsulated in another text of Philodemus: Good poets excel and they alone endure () on no other account than the sounds, by which is meant the sounds isolated in themselves ( ) apart from their meanings, the sound that appears on the surface of the composition ( ).33 This axiom, as it is usually understood, is taken to be a horrific inversion of all the hallowed values of classical poetics, at least as we grasp these today. Ive recently tried to show how the euphonist critics have to be understood as in fact sustaining the ideology of classicism by appealing to the irrational mainsprings of the habitus that underlie it, which is to say, the sources of feeling classical. 34 Nevertheless, there is something truly odd about the claim that poets excel and endure on account of their sounds alone, and this will turn out to provide a further key to understanding the euphonists rationale. It will also give us a way of linking them up to their Hellenistic contemporaries, in addition to connecting them to the lyric and epigrammatic traditions of the archaic and early classical periods. Let us begin by observing the stark paradox that underlies the euphonist program, though it is one that is all too easily overlooked. The source of poetic pleasure and of poetic excellence, on the euphonist theory, is at the same time of a punctual nature: individual specimens of euphonic sound, which offer the greatest evidence of sounds capture (this sound here), are also the most fleeting and evanescent imaginable they vanish as soon as they are uttered. And yet, the euphonist critics are staking poetic endurance on this very same feature: poets (endure) thanks to no other cause than their epiphanic presence in the ear. The Thucydidean canon of a of what should be a possession [composed] for all time, rather than a declamation composed () for the moment of hearing ( ) 35 is here being turned on its head, as are all (to us) customary literary values, until we pause to realize how central to the transmission and reception of ancient poetry the act of audition was. The euphonists are doubtless representing this centrality and giving it an aesthetic purchase, but not without pointing out the paradoxes that are, as it were, written into the very substance of that negotiated process. For one thing, the act of audition, to remain vital, has to be renewed at every moment, and with the fullest possible force. Secondly, a poems ticket of validity expires as soon as its performance is over. Sound decays, and then vanishes, only to leave an immaterial trace in the memory and the mind. Canonicity is a delicate, fragile thing; it lasts no longer than a breath, and yet it lasts, optimally, forever. How can poems, read aloud, achieve this effect of eternality?
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The verb above has an echo in the passage quoted earlier, which I doubt is accidental: and it stands as [engraved] in [stone] ( . [] []) for all the kritikoi. The opinions of the euphonists stand as . if written on stone (if the conjecture is right). Did they initiate, or at least suggest, the metaphor themselves? Even if they did not, and Philodemus was merely mocking them with the image, there would still be more to say about their possible connection to the epigraphical tradition. A kind of verbal architecture is in play here on either possibility, whereby composition is felt to create sublime (verbal) monuments. Thus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus can describe how builders pay close attention to the following three questions: what materials () will be put together ();36 next how each of the materials should be fitted ( ), whether stones, timber, tiling, or all the rest ; and thirdly, if anything is seated badly ( ), how that very piece can be pared down and trimmed and made to fit well ( ). And so those who are going to put the parts of speech together effectively ( ) should proceed in a similar way. 37 The author of On Style, probably Hellenistic in date,38 likewise develops the same analogies:
The members ( ) in a periodic style may, in fact, be compared to the stones ( ) which support () and hold together () a vaulted roof ( ). The members of the disconnected style resemble stones which are simply flung carelessly together ( ) and not built into a structure ( ). Consequently the older style of writing has something of the sharp, clean lines ( ) of early statues ( ), where the skill was thought to lie in their succinctness and severe simplicity. The style of later writers is like the sculpture ( ) of Pheidias, since it already exhibits in some degree the union of elevation and finish ( ).39
And finally, the radical euphonists from the Hellenistic era contribute to this tradition in their own way, as a passage from the second book of Philodemus On Poems illustrates (the view reported is that of a certain Pausimachos, who is otherwise unknown):
For just as a kind of glue ( ) or a bolt () or some such thing . is used for joining wooden things ([] [] []), so . is the soundless element of language [viz., the consonant or mute, ], when it is aptly employed, used for binding the diction ( ) [...] Indeed, just as in solid bodies the compact ( ) comes about when the whole body ( ) has all its parts .. arranged well, viz., when they are in agreement with the lengths and with the massive constituents ( ) and are symmetrical...40
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These two facets material and sound are closely connected, and they add more evidence of the kinds of connections between objects, stones, matter, and voice that we have been tracing so far. What is more, the tradition is an ancient one, reaching back at least to the archaic lyric poets. One such poet, possibly Simonides or Pindar, could write, I sculpt a measure ([] ()).41 (A precise parallel is to be found later in . Aristophanes Thesm. 986: , Drill [or emboss] all [parts] of your ode.)42 And Pindar had famously boasted, A gold foundation has been wrought for holy songs. | Come, let us now construct an elaborate | adornment that speaks words ( | | ).43 The final tag is an allusion to the tradition of oggetti parlanti, or speaking objects. As a rubric, it is not a bad way to account for the entire phenomenon of ecphrastic things, whether poems or stones, early and late.44 Euphony is what happens to language when it is reduced to an object that is then made to speak or better yet, to sing. That the euphonists were attuned to the materialities of inscription is plain from their use of the engraver analogy, which serves their views well. It brings out the felt specificities of poetry. One has to imagine the phonic equivalent of a cut or scrape, unique to a given chiseled stone, and proper to its delectation as such. Such is the materialist aesthetic purveyed by the euphonist critics. Roland Barthes theory of the grain of the voice is a contemporary version of the same sensibility.45 Recent thinking on sculptural aesthetics in the postclassical period suggests that this kind of attending to sensuous detail to material, tactile contingency, including facture (a term that takes in quality of artistry, workmanship, finish, and surface attributes all at once; in Greek: ) was one of the distinctive features of the early Hellenistic Baroque, if not of the Hellenistic aesthetic as a whole.46 If so, then the euphonists are at the very least entitled to an equally baroque theory of aesthetic contemplation. 3. Posidippus revisited Before moving on, we need to glance back briefly at Posidippus. The connection between Posidippus AB 15 and the Philodemean text about carving and gems has been noticed by Marco Fantuzzi, who is right to develop the observation by Elizabeth Asmis that the Philodemean text reflects the practice of Hellenistic poets. 47 This is an important point (and one could adduce other epigrams, such as AB 5, which contains an even closer verbal echo: ; the terms and appear elsewhere in the same collection).48 Plainly, the euphonist critics were not working in a total vacuum. What both Fantuzzi and Asmis see here is a convergence
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around the aesthetics of the refined detail (leptote-s), of self-conscious reflection upon artistry that is focused intently on a small and indeed a minute scale. In Asmiss words, the poet is viewed primarily as someone who does fine, exquisite work, not as someone who presents grand, monumental subjects. [This is the poetry of the] slender Muse.49 One might add another significant feature of gemstones: their uniquely individuated character: each is an idion.50 And though there is admittedly something miniaturist and pointillist about the euphonist theory of sound, I want to suggest that commonplaces of Hellenistic poetics and aesthetics like these get things only half right. But also, if we take this line, if the euphonists do supply us with a representative insight into Hellenistic literary aesthetics, then that aesthetics will have a very different look and feel from the way it is traditionally viewed. Consider the Lithika of Posidippus once again. My question is, to what extent do these epigrams reflect a poetics of the small-scale, of the , and a rejection of the monumental, the epic, and the grand? I believe the problem with the usual view of Hellenistic aesthetics lies in its onesidedness, and my suggestion will be that all of what is asserted about this aesthetics is correct, but only half-so: the other half of the picture needs to be brought back into view to complete the picture. In the case of the Lithika, this could be shown by appealing to any number of factors, which I will have to run through quickly. Lets start with v. 7 of the Posidippus poem we began from, the great marvel ( ) caused by this little piece of workmanship on the stone, whatever kind of gemstone it may be (it is usually called a sandstone by commentators in English, but its properties more properly match those of a white moonstone, both here and in Pliny HN 37.1345, draconitis sive dracontias).51 Plainly, the poem leaves us with an impression of magnitude, and not, or not only, of diminutiveness. Or rather, we should say that the stone object creates an impression of magnitude for all its smallness of scale. Aesthetically, it is the contrast of the two scales that is significant. Now consider the rest of the stones. They follow the same pattern. Individually small and precious objects (at least some of them), they simultaneously involve large-scale themes, while their dimensions swell as the poems progress (especially from AB 16 to the end of the book). They come from the far-flung corners or limits of the inhabited and explicitly Ptolemaic oikoumen, and are as it were vomited forth from the bowels of the earth or from rugged geographies. They come from India (Indian Hydaspes), Persia, Nabataea, Arabia (rolling yellow [rubble] from the Arabian [mountains]).52 And they come from these exotic places with force and violence: an Arabian stream rolls [a stone] along to the shore /
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of the sea, as it constantly tears it ( ) from the mountains, / a lump in vast quantities; do [not ] calculate] how many waves have [cast] out [this] great [rock] far from the raging sea ([] [] ) ... Polyphemos . . could not have lifted it. 53 One stone is nearly propelled by a gigantic hurricane, another uprooted () by Mysian Olympos. 54 Moreover, the stones sport immodest physical and aesthetic features to match their provenance. They are frequently described according to their bulk and mass ( [bulk] appears thrice, possibly four times; [mass] and [thickness], once each) or with dimensional terms such as [wide] and [] [three spans in circumference]), or else through reference to their hollow inner surfaces (, ). While the stones are occasionally colossal, many of their features are cosmic. An engraved chariot is spread out to the length of a span... It defeats the rubies of India / when put to the test, with radiant beams of equal strength... And this too is a marvel (). 55 A light spreads over the whole surface (), ...[a beguiling] marvel (), ...as it reaches for the beautiful sun. 56 Bellerophon crashed into the...plain / while his colt went up into the deep-blue sky, and so the stone that depicts the colt is said to be aetherial ( ).57 There is nothing leptos here. Quite the contrary. Indeed, as Kathryn Gutzwiller puts it well, the result...is a thematizing of nothing less than the physical nature of the universe in all its parts.58 But when she goes on to claim that all this is executed in the name of a new aesthetic of the small-scale and realistic in the end, I can no longer understand this judgment except as a reflex of contemporary criticism. Hellenistic poetry must be leptos not only refined, but small and pretty, never grand and sublime.59 I disagree. One could say, for instance, that Posidippus is invoking ogkos (massiveness, tumescence, grandeur) as a foil to his own aesthetic of elegance and miniaturization.60 The obvious counter-argument would be to say that he is smuggling in the qualities of the magnificent and the grand on the back of the small and the diminutive in order to have his cake and eat it too. But this wont do either. Its not a matter of creating foils or smuggling things in. It may be that the frequent evocations of the largescale have the effect of bringing bigness to mind despite the apparent focus on the small, with the result that Hellenistic poetry nevertheless produces an effect of the big for all its apparent obsessive focus on the minute. But even this formulation misses what is distinctive about this play with scale that we have begun to notice. AB 15 is again our best guide: what Posidippus is after is not an exclusivity of effects, not this effect and then that one, which would be a way of adding or juxtaposing two different aesthetics in a series, nor is he seeking to collapse these effects into one in
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the end, namely that of the small. What he is seeking to produce is the astonishing, indeed paradoxical, contrast of the two combined into a single, organized aesthetic of contrastive opposites the great marvel ( ) caused by this little piece of workmanship on the snakestone. We are being asked to view them together. It is their combined effect that is the true source of astonishment and wonder in this poem and in his entire collection. And leptos in the sense of small, polished, and refined simply fails to capture this complex interplay.61 The poems are literally structured by contrastive opposites, whereby the large and the small coincide in the description of each single object, whether in the form of jewelry evoking heavenly bodies (a bracelet shining like the moon, AB 4; a shell that flashes as it reaches for the beautiful sun, AB 13) or else surface attributes that are shown to be playing with their own appearances or with their own depths, as in AB 11, which concerns a Persian shell:
In its engraved cavity it has Agla[ias] shapeliness [resembling topaz]. The mass ( ) [now] spreads [out to view by means] of the wax which keeps [the light] over the hollow engraving (). (AB 11; trans. C. Austin)
Ogkos, a key term in the Lithika, is an importantly ambivalent term: it denotes bulk, but bulk of any dimension. (Ancient atoms are called ogkoi.)62 Elsewhere, Austin astutely chooses to render ogkos with surface (not given in LSJ), and the rendering captures something that mass lacks: it picks out the perceptual or, more broadly, aesthetic dimension of Posidippus poems on stones. For the stones are surface screens on which aesthetic effects appear and disappear, fleetingly, and then reappear. This play of appearances is a play of material surfaces. It occurs on and within the massy outer and inner dimensions of the poets chosen objects, which is to say their ogkoi, which are both large and small, aesthetically speaking. The net effect of this interplay is one of thauma, or marvel, as AB 13 illustrates again:
This stone is [deceptive] ([]): when it is anointed, . . [a light] spreads over the whole surface ( ), [a beguiling] marvel ([ ]). . But when [the surface] ([]) is dry, all at once an [engraved] Persian [lion] . flashes as it reaches for the beautiful sun. (AB 13; trans. C. Austin)
Viewed in this light, Posidippus genre of writing is a form of paradoxography, a genre that Callimachus either inaugurated or redefined.63 In fact, Posidippus is working somewhat within the genre of conventional
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paradoxography, though I want to expand the meaning of that term now and then apply it more generally to Hellenistic poetic production, insofar as one can generalize at all over the diverse output of this period. 4. Size matters: contrastive scales in Hellenistic poetry In order to grasp this expanded notion of paradoxography, we will first need to examine the logic of size and scale. The sense of wonder that little objects can generate comes about in different ways. A gemstone engraved with cosmic images is one. A miracle of technical precision is another. Heres a third, which Ill simply call scale of perspective. Small objects are calculated attention-grabbers: they demand to be viewed from up close. So we comply: we stoop down, hunch over, put on or remove our spectacles, as the case may warrant, and we gaze with our undivided attention, on cue. But as we do so, what happens? Something remarkable: as the background recedes and the object intrudes upon our field of vision, the object also grows in a way that is disproportionate to its actual size; it becomes magnified, it fills our visual field, and at the limit it assumes colossal proportions. What was once tiny is now gigantic, even grand. It is a sublime object. And now all of our aesthetic descriptors have to change accordingly. And they do. The euphonists were submerged in such aural details, to the point of inviting an intense spatialization and magnification of sound, as above, where Dionysius of Halicarnassus inspects sounds like a tourist strolling about a temple precinct amid columns of sound. But there is yet another aspect of the logic of the detail that we need to consider. Read even recent conventional accounts of the Hellenistic poets and you will hear such phrases as vast knowledge, Ptolemaic interest in the wider Greek world, boundless curiosity, at the sublime moment, colossal, monstrous, completely wild, extravagant, work of grandeur and the grandiose, and so on.64 I could go on, but I wont, because there is a more interesting and still stronger reason why this last point about scale ought to be self-evident. It lies in the nature of scale itself. Any detail implies a selection. Any part implies a totality from which it was drawn: context looms in every background, tacitly, often glaringly. The miniature cannot be understood as small unless it stands in a contrast to something colossal. A poet who dwells in the small-scale invites us to entertain both ideas in our minds simultaneously, and, as weve begun to see, frequently invites us to confuse our points of orientation, hoping that we will forget whether the object before us stands at one end of the scale or the other. The Alexandrians, I am quite certain, recognized this fact, and they actually cultivated this logic of scale and its effects. Cultural dictates furnish added incentives. A poet writes epigrams frequently to be displayed on
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monuments.65 Fine ware decorates gigantosymposia.66 Scholar-poets revel in details culled from across the face of the newly expanding and ever more exoticized oikoumen, collaborating in the imperial project of collection, gaudy display, the procession of objects, and spectacle.67 They revel in details culled from their massive card catalogues ( pinakes), which serve the same imperious project at the level of knowledge: control over local detail, local knowledge, local traditions and antiquities, the minutiae of which all verify the reach of the knowing subject, thus participating in what Rebecca Flemming has called empires of knowledge and Susan Stephens has called geopoetics.68 J. G. Droysens umbrella term for this, a century and a half ago, was Hellenismus. Droysen unabashedly associated Hellenism (which is to say, the Hellenistic era) with gigantism, one instance being Deinokrates colossal plan (Riesenplan) to fashion a statue of Alexander from Mt. Athos.69 Lesky takes this a step further and speaks of the divergence of powerful contradictions, antinomies, and antipodes in his description of the general characteristics of the age (which he called megalomaniacal).70 But lets go on with our own account of the logic of contrastive scales. Lemmata, quotations used as a basis for textual commentary and the prime matter of the grammatikos, could be assimilated to the Hellenistic aesthetic of the detail, if they havent been already. But as their name implies, lemmata are mere extracts of a whole.71 And as anyone who has ploughed through Erbses Homeric scholia to the Iliad in five heavy volumes knows, in their collective totality scholia both represent and are a mountain of learning, as massive as anything transmitted from antiquity. Or consider hapax legomena. Typically taken as proof of learned and choice elegance on the part of the poets who deploy them, they are in fact proof of a monstrous display of knowledge: to recognize the solitary occurrence of a word one has to have first scanned an entire corpus. And the recognition, incidentally, is a game played by poets and readers alike. Could leptote-s be a collective and collusive ruse, a cover for a different sort of enterprise? If so, there is no further reason for us to be taken in too.72 In fact, I am coming to be convinced that the term leptote-s has no more singular meaning or internal coherence than (say) the avant-garde label form had among the modern Russian Formalists, the formalists in art criticism (such as Clement Greenberg), or the New Critics, for whom form meant sensuous material: in all these cases, form is being asked to stand in for quite different, and often incompatible, things.73 A later parallel might be cool, as in cool jazz, which is likewise more associative than denotative (and could often be hot).74 Leptote-s, I suspect, played a similar, underdetermined, and contradictory function among the Hellenistic literary avant-garde.
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The Hellenistic aesthetic is not one of simple refinement and smallness of scale. It produces sharply contrastive effects. At issue here is a dynamic of extremes, not a choice between them. An excellent graphic equivalent, and a likely forerunner of the Hellenistic aesthetic, is the Herakles Epitrapezios by Lysippos, which is doubly apt, if it indeed existed in two versions. The first was a miniature statuette of the gigantic Herakles in a seated, feasting position, intended for Alexander the Great as a table ornament (Fig. 1), displaying the mythic hero as the ultimate consumer in miniature. The second, discovered only in 1960 at Alba Fucens, was a colossal temple dedication, possibly dwarfing even the imaginary Herakles figure himself (Fig. 2).75 The sculptor was playing with ambiguities of scale. The first version compressed the colossal hero into a diminutive scale, the second was its doublet or was it the other way round? Epitrapezios in Greek puns on both possibilities (on or at the table). The ambiguities are delicious. As J. J. Pollitt puts it well, Was Herakles, and by analogy a ruler who saw himself as Herakles, a small figure, in the sense that he began as a mere man, who did great things? Or was he a great figure who did trivial things? Does he belong in a temple or at a table? 76 A further irony, as we know from Statius (Silv. 4.6), is that the table on which the statuette was placed would have been laden with rich foods and exotic ornaments (laetis numen venerabile mensis, v. 60), itself being one such ornament ( gestamina mensae, 45).77 Statius must be alluding to Callimachus Aitia prologue: The Telchines in their caves under Mount Ida could not have produced such a jeu desprit out of a tiny mass of metal (479; trans. K. Coleman; cf. Call. Aet. fr. 1.1: ...] ).78 Just as Statius points to the contrastive scales at work in Vindexs (and originally Alexanders, or so Vindex would have us believe) statuette of the god ( parvusque videri sentirique ingens, small in appearance and mighty in impression, ...though his measure stands miraculously within a foot [3739; trans. Coleman]), so does Martials poem on the same figure (9.43.44) play on the same confusions of scale: Lysippum [codd.: edd. olim] lego, Phidiae putavi, I read the name of Lysippus, but I thought it was the work of Phidias. 79 Look at the noble head of any of the best surviving miniatures, or even at the full length of any of the miniatures from the proper angle, and your eye, too, will be cheated into believing it is gazing upon a colossus.80 Richard Hunter points to a similar ambiguity about Callimachus: Aristotle [in the Metaphysics] traces a progression from wondering enquiries about small matters to the larger subjects of astronomy. To which category would Callimachus enquiry [in one of his Aitia] fall? 81 The same questions can be posed about the epigrams of Posidippus, who not by chance was a great connoisseur of Lysippan sculpture, as his newly discovered
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Fig. 1. Miniature bronze statuette of Herakles, seated against a rock with a wine cup in one hand and his characteristic club in the other. Found near Pompeii. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Inv. 2828. H: 0.75 m. Photo courtesy of the Soprintendenza speziali per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.
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Fig. 2. Colossal marble statue of Herakles, seated and holding a wine cup and his club. Found at Alba Fucens. Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Chieti. Inv. 6029. H: 2.40 m. Photo courtesy of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell Abruzzo Chieti.
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poetry book amply confirms.82 And the very same questions can be shown to apply to the dynamics of the Hellenistic verse form. Tremendous grandeur was felt at the lowest levels of the sentence, the clause, the individual metron and the individual stoicheion of sound, which could produce sublime rapture in the mind of a euphonist critic, and, presumably, a poet as well. The grandeur is an effect of magnification. It occurs whenever one inspects the material of poetry from up close and that material suddenly fills, and overfills, ones field of vision or soundscape (things appear greater and more beautiful.).83 Any object is perhaps capable of provoking such sensations. Matter viewed in its brute materiality is particularly apt to do this, and the Hellenistic artists and beholders were particularly prone to look for such effects at the level of the material detail.84 In his researches into Homer, Krates somehow managed to discover the incongruity of two infinities brought into collision: the miniature of the shield of Achilles and the universe it reached out to embrace; the paradox of a Hephaestus now creating the cosmos, now falling more or less victim to it (as he is thrown down from Olympos onto Lemnos in an experiment in physics). The two infinities, already figured by text and cosmos, could converge dramatically in a single verse: Homer measured () the spherical shape of the cosmos ( ) for us through a single line ( ), namely Iliad 8.16 (a description of Eris, or Strife): as far () beneath the house of Hades as from () earth the sky (ouranos) lies.85 Longinus would label this verse and its effect sublime (probably in Krates wake).86 Somewhat earlier in the same tradition, there is Aratus, who famously wove a double acrostic into his Phaenomena with the word 87 and is known from Strabo to have written a collection, (nothing else is known about this work beyond its title).88 The Phaenomena, Hesiodic in manner, is devoted to the signs in the heavens and, as Hutchinson rightly notes, is remarkable for its general grandeur a fact that remains a source of ongoing puzzlement to upholders of Hellenistic leptots.89 His poem, a mere eleven-hundred-fifty-some lines long (but still longer than either the Theogony or the Works and Days), was correctly praised as an by Leonidas of Tarentum (Anth. Pal. 9.25 = 101 G-P): the praise alludes to the content and not only to the form of Aratus poem, which frequently invokes visual grandeur (ta megala: , a Homericism, is one of Aratus stock formulas).90 In the same poem, Leonidas also praises Aratus for his refined intellect, as did others, including Callimachus (Anth. Pal. 9.507 = 56 G-P).91 I would simply add that it is the contrastive urge for grandeur arising from and amidst refinement that stamps Aratus poem and marks it as specifically Hellenistic; and it
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was this very feature of contrasting scales that his contemporaries were registering (even if Longinus found him singularly unimpressive; Subl. 10.6). Much the same could be said of Theocritus Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphos (Id. 17), a mere 137 lines long, and yet brimming over with imperial pretensions and hyperbole, as in the political portion of the poem:
Within [Egypt] are built three hundred cities, and three thousand, and another ten thousand three times over, and three twice, and after them thrice nine: over all of these is lordly Ptolemy king. He takes slices of Phoenicia and Arabia and Syria and Libya and the dark-skinned Ethiopians; all the Pamphylians and the warriors of Cilicia he commands, and the Lycians and the Carians, who delight in war, and the islands of the Cyclades, for his are the finest ships sailing the ocean. All the sea and the land and the crashing rivers [of the world] are subject to Ptolemy... (8292; trans. R. Hunter)92
Towards the end of the tradition, or else reflecting it now in a Roman form, are the extraordinary but little studied Tabulae Iliacae, twenty-two marble tablets dating from around the late first century BC to the early first century AD, mostly depicting scenes from Homer or the Epic Cycle,93 all diminutive in scale, all luxury objects, all sporting Alexandrian erudition or pseudo-erudition, and all displaying more information than the eye can readily absorb.94 One tablet, the so-called Tabula Iliaca Capitolina, manages to pack all twenty-four books of the Iliad, in epitomized form, around a central image of the fall of Troy, in addition to depicting other cyclical epics besides. The texts are microscopic (easily legible with a magnifying glass)95 and, in their zeal for totality, obsessed with a gigantism that competes with their physical form. One clue to the works aesthetic principles is their inscribed signatures. Six of the works are proudly attributed, not to a certain Theodoros, as has been universally assumed in the past, but rather to a certain Theodorean kind of artistry, as in the following tags:
2NY: [ ] {} 96 5O: [] []
The formulas seem calculated to emphasize the contrast between the two parts of the expressions, assuming they add up to whole expressions. The problem does not lie in the visual presentation of the letters alone. Some of the tags appear in magic square patterns which all but defy decryption. In other cases, they appear in a straightforward linear sequence, but lacking verbs and other particles which might guide the reader through the sense. Theoretically, the expressions could also be taken as subject labels, as if naming the contents of the respective works like titles or headings,
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followed by authorial attributions, and that is roughly how they have been understood in the past. But on a different reading, their gist arguably comes down to this:
The Iliad is Homers, but the art is all Theodorean. The shield is Achillean, but the art is all Theodorean.97
The contrast is not merely one of genre (epic poetry versus ecphrastic objects), but also one of scale: Homers epic may be sprawling and grandiose, but the Theodorean art of miniaturization is even greater... The unusual and persistent use of the adjective Theodorean in place of the proper name98 prompts a speculation, one that I have never seen ventured until now: are we having to do not with the name of the artist or artists who produced the tablets, but with an allusion, that is, with a style? If so, the one (and probably only) artist who fills the bill is none other than Theodoros of Samos, the famed Greek architect and miniaturist from the sixth century known to Posidippus (as discussed earlier) and to Pliny (HN 34.83), among others, and mentioned above in connection with his hallmark style.99 The reference in Theodorean, in other words, could be a learned allusion by a self-effacing Hellenistic artist or series of artists,100 and one that is all the more layered, given that the Iliad is itself toying with scale. Concerning itself with a mere 50-odd days of a ten-year-long war, the vast epic both compresses and distends time, while whoever produced the tablets, invoking the Theodorean style, signaled this telescoping by way of an (epic) reductionism of their own on a scale hitherto unseen in the visual arts, and all but illegibly so a great marvel indeed, though very much in the literary tradition of Metrodoros, Aratus, and Krates.101 As unique as this particular contrast in scales may be, with its juxtaposition of learned visual and verbal allusions, it does nevertheless serve as a signature element of Hellenistic aesthetics. But this element or gesture is hardly contained by the qualifier leptos, as that term is understood today. The tablets are, in contrast, rather baroque, a term that should be understood not pejoratively but generously both in the sense that has been conferred on the formally complex and daring works from Pergamon and elsewhere,102 and in the sense that was been assigned to the early modern German Trauerspiel by Walter Benjamin, according to which the baroque signifier displays a dialectical structure in which sound and script confront each other in a tense polarity, forcing a division within discourse that impels the gaze into its very depths.103 Consider a further example of Hellenistic contrastive scales. Recently, Gyburg Radke has argued that a salient feature of Hellenistic poetry lay in its resort to myths of childhood, which (she claims) were intentionally
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sought out by poets so as to mark their own literary modernity as against the ancient, canonical past. One consequence of this gesture, according to Radke, was that gods were frequently presented as infants, but from the contrasting perspective of their later maturity and potency.104 Teasing out this insight, we arrive at the following curious mental picture: even as immature specimens of themselves, these divine infants were larger than life, endowed with extraordinary gifts and powers, and capable of unchildlike feats. They embodied, in other words, contradictions in terms, and above all of scale. Consider the way Callimachus depicts Zeus in his hymn to this god (Hymn 1.557):
Beautifully did you grow and were nurtured, heavenly Zeus, swiftly did you grow up, and rapidly did the first down come to your cheeks. But even as a child did you devise all your plans full-grown.
, , , , .
These verses by Callimachus encapsulate the contradictions just named simply by compressing the distance between youth and age and by nonetheless stressing the vast extremes that did, and did not, lay between them. So, for example, Zeus was a cosmic ruler from the beginning, even as a child, while all his plans were complete, teleia, from the beginning. He is the embodiment of a paradox.105 Finally, there are the paradoxes of euphony itself, one of which we have touched on already namely, sounds fragile ephemerality, which is the source of its everlasting powers. Callimachus cicada-like slender verses which feed off divine dewy air refer to this quasi-material quality of sound, while the pretensions to immortality that this enables are, on the contrary, as grand as one could ever hope for.106 This temporal paradox repeats another, that of the immateriality of sounds materiality, which was hinted at above: euphony manifests itself () on the combination () of the individual sounds (). But just when does sound cease to be a matter of matter? And how material is the sound of euphony? The question exercised the grammarians to no end, and it is also built into the paradoxes of euphonic criticism.107 The problem here is that sound is both material and phenomenal, matter and appearance, hard and soft, empirically grounded and an illusory synthesis (as a phantasia in the mind of the auditor).108 Sound is also a matter of tiny particles (stoicheia) that are capable of the most sublime grandeur:109 again, the Hellenistic aesthetic of sharply contrastive scales is at play here. And I am sure much of the same
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could be found in other art forms, as I have already suggested with my mention of the Hellenistic Baroque. Finally, it is crucial to note that attention to detail is not an automatic confirmation of an aesthetic of the detail. Aristotle makes a memorable point in his Poetics, though it is one that his Hellenistic successors would ultimately reject:
Beauty consists in amplitude as well as in order ( ), which is why a very small () creature could not be beautiful, since our view ( ) loses all distinctness () when it comes near to taking no perceptible time, and an enormously ample one () could not be beautiful either, since our view of it is not simultaneous, so that we lose the sense of its unity and wholeness as we look it over; imagine, for instance, an animal a thousand miles long! 110
While Aristotle is arguing for a compromise between conflicting scales, his argument inadvertently sheds light on another point that can be made for him. For just as an overwhelming mass of size can defeat aesthetic perception (as Longinus knows well, though he would argue this gives rise to another perception the sublime), so too details can actually help to reinforce the greatest possible quantity of an aesthetic perception. Details, in other words, can collaborate with large magnitudes of perception; they do not have to negate them. Think again of any large, indeed any immense object. Now think of the details that decorate it. It is these that draw the eye to the object and cause it to linger there, even in cases when the eye might otherwise risk being overwhelmed by the same object. ( Trajans column is a good case in point, but only one of many available). To summarize and to conclude, then: The exponents of Hellenistic culture had an urge for leptote-s, but they also knew the opposite urge: an urge for grandeur, for the spectacular, for cosmic aspiration (Eratosthenes, Aratus, Krates); whence too the urge, elsewhere visible, for the peculiar, the monstrous, and the baroque;111 for systems, collections, libraries, largescale unities (Euclid, Eristratus, Aristarchos of Samos and Aristarchos of Samothrace both); for empire, for Ptolemaic Egypt, Macedonia, Greek classical heritage, and the rest. What is remarkable in this period is not that they held both urges, but the way we find both urges inextricably combined which makes of the Hellenistic poets, critics, and writers paradoxographers in the truest sense of the word.112
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Notes 1 Porter 2010b; id. (forthcoming); id. (in progress). 2 Though see also Lohse 1973. 3 See Day 1989; Scodel 1992; Steiner 1993; Carson 1999. 4 Bing 1998, 34. 5 The epitaphic character of such statements was recognized already in antiquity (e.g., [Plut.] Vit. Hom. 135; schol. T Il. 6.45960). On this phenomenon, see most recently Scodel 1992. 6 Gutzwiller (ed.) 2005. See also Mnnlein-Robert 2007, ch. 4; and Prioux 2007. 7 Hutchinson 2008, ch. 5; ibid., 104. Cf. Gutzwiller 2002a on art objects and ibid., pp. 945 on aesthetic objects. Even Callimachus was interested in material remains: Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 46. See further the essays collected in Rouveret et al. 2006, some of which draw on Posidippus. 8 From Nisetichs translation of the poems in Gutzwiller (ed.) 2005, 1741. The tenth title is lost. 9 See Bing 2005, 143 at n. 4; Gutzwiller 2005, 3012. The elegiac poet Zenothemis and the mineralogist Sotakos (late 4th-early 3rd C. BC ) also wrote treatises on precious stones, as Pliny and others record. Zenothemis may have penned his treatise in the form of an elegiac didactic poem. 10 The Pebble (Le Galet), in Ponge 1994, 91. 11 On the other hand, the fascination with pebbles and their aesthetic properties is as old as human time itself. See the ongoing excavations into the Bronze Age patterned pebble beds in East Devon directed by archaeologist C. Tilley (http://www.pebblebedsproject.org.uk/poetics-of-pebbles.html). See further Tilley 2004. 12 Posidipp. AB 15 (trans. C. Austin); AB refers to the edition of Austin and Bastianini (2002). 13 Wimmel 1960; Clausen 1964; see Schiesaro 1998 on both. 14 Call. Aet. fr. 1.1112 Lehnus (forthcoming): schol. P.Lit.Lond. 181, 1112 (sscr. .. [Bell] vel .. [Hunt]) | . .. .. . () () edd. (Milne, re vera) Bell, Hunt: () (sscr. [Lobelms, Huntms]) disp. Bellms praeeunte fort. Huntms, . ... () disp. Bastianini, [] () [ (vel ) (sscr. [()]) Luppe [ Rostagni 1928
() [ ...]
suppl. Luppe,
I am grateful to Luigi Lehnus for allowing me to print the text and apparatus to these lines from his forthcoming edition of Callimachus, and for the following comment: Certainly was not in the scholion, and should be accordingly removed from Callimachus, disappointing though this is (one could re-introduce it, as a mere conjecture, only by speculating that the scholion did not reflect the text). My personal opinion is that [Idris] Bell was right in his first reading (), and that [ (or [both have been suggested by W. Luppe]) is very possibly what
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Callimachus wrote. Bastianini [i.e., Bastianini 1996] has independently though partially confirmed Bell! (Lehnus, per litt.) See next note. 15 Rostagni 1956, 26970 (reprinting the earlier article); Bastianini 1996; see Benedetto 1990 and Lehnus 2006 for detailed histories of the conjectures. 16 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1943 [1882]; id. 1924; Reitzenstein 1970 [1893]; id. 1931; Couat 1882; Pfeiffer 1955. For the same point, see Cameron 1995, 327, who, however, ultimately rejects it. On C. G. Heynes association of Hellenistic poetry with the genus tenue, a genre incapable of grandeur, and its roots in Roman antiquity, see Kassel 1987, 1112 and esp. Heyne 1785 [1763], e.g., 80 (tenue et subtile, ...nihil in iis celsum, generosum et sublime, nulla audacia, etc.), 81 (neque nobili argumento, nec magnis sententiis, etc., following ps.-Longinus condemnations of the Alexandrians), 92, 93 n. (), 94, 96, etc. 17 Phld. De mus. 4 col. 22.2526 Neubecker = col. 136.2526 Delattre. See Porter 1995. I find it increasingly unlikely that Philodemus should have awarded them this label ( pace Delattre 2007, 2: 434, who misconstrues my article on this point), and I doubt that , as opposed to , can bear the pejorative meaning of so-called in this context. 18 A case in point is Plut. Mor. 30D, where three kinds of literary attention are named: in the reading of poetry one person culls the flowers of the story, another rivets his attention upon the beauty of the diction and the arrangement of the words ( ), ...but as for those who are concerned with what is said as being useful for character (and it is to these that our present discourse directed)... 19 Porter 2001; id. 2010, ch. 5. 20 P. Herc. 994 col. 37.913; see Porter 2007, 15 at n. 86. 21 E.g., Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 451; contra, Atherton 1989; Porter 1989, 1501 n. 8. See, e.g., Dion. Hal. Comp. 4: When I decided to write a treatise on this subject [the -doctrine], I tried to discover whether my predecessors had said anything about it, especially the philosophers from the Stoa, since I knew that these men paid considerable attention to the subject of language: one must give them their due. But nowhere did I see any contribution, great or small, to the subject of my choice, by any author of repute (trans. Usher). The Stoics took not a rhetorical (and a fortiori, aesthetic), but only a dialectical view of language: Chrysippos writings are said to be (Dion. Hal., ibid., 22.13 U.R.).
22 [ ] | [, | [] []| . [], | | | [, ] . | [] [] |[], | [ ][] | . . (P. Herc. 1676 col. 6.111; text after Janko 2000, 125 n. 1). 23 Cf. the same expression: | [][] [sc., ]
(Phld. De poem. 5 col. 24.31 Mangoni). On epiphenomenalism, see Caston 1997. 24 Phld. De poem. 1 cols. 132.27133.1 Janko. 25 Arist. Poet. 25.1460b1516: the art must be judged ; cf. ibid., 4.1449a89: , not ; ibid. 7.1451a67: whatever is ; Phld. De poem. 5 col. 25.30: the poem qua poem ( ) is privileged; ibid., P. Herc. 1676 col. 7.717 N = col. 18 Sbordone 1976, refuting the euphonist claim that the composition in and of itself produces psuchaggia through the sound that the composition yields): []
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[][] [ ], [] [][] , [] . The resemblance in terminologies is striking and can hardly be haphazard.
I suspect it points to a conscious hearkening back to Aristotle. But it could just point to a high level of awareness of philosophical language in its aesthetic uses on the part of the euphonist critics, perhaps as such language was found in Peripatetic circles (though no intermediary texts after Aristotles writings spring to mind). There may be a further reminiscence (and inversion) in of Aristotles key idiom in the Poetics, (outside the plot). 26 My designation. is reserved by the euphonists for its customary, presumably Peripatetically derived usage, standing for plot, subject matter (hupothesis), and all that goes with this (meaning, lexeis, etc.). See Phld. De poem. 1 col. 74.8 Janko; P. Herc. 1081 col. 9.24; col. 13; P. Herc. 1676 col. 4.59 N = col. 15 Sbordone. 27 Trans. Nisetich (slightly adapted) in Gutzwiller (ed.) 2005, 20. 28 P. Herc. 1676 col. 5. 29 This is a different sense of idion than the one just discussed. 30 Cf. two columns prior: according to the sunthesis of the rhythms and the diction (P. Herc. 1676 col. 3.13 N = col. 14 Sbordone); and the subsequent column, which was quoted just above.
31
= col. 16 Sbordone (rev. and trans. Asmis 1995, 16061; trans. adapted; final supplement mine, based on the subsequent column). 32 By the way, we shouldnt be thrown off track by Philodemus, who seems to have introduced a second sense of idion into the discussion, viz., that of proper function, which is not part of the euphonists vocabulary (idion, for them, means, practically, original to the artist and his product), though it is found in, say, Aristotle. Philodemus is taking a quality of the object, or the artists contribution to the object, and making it into a function of the artist. But while were at it, we might as well notice how the euphonists point is rather different from Aristotles, for instance when he states (Poet. 13.1452b33) that the idion of the poet is to mimeisthai (imitate or represent). For Aristotle, there is no real hint that the imitation is colored by the particularity of the medium, whereas for the euphonists the imitation is made distinctive by the medium in which it is made indeed, its aesthetic value seems to lie not in imitation per se, but in this distinctive, material difference.
33 (Phld. De poem. 1, col. 83.1114 Janko); cf. ibid., col. 84.7, 84.12, 89.1112: ; (De poem. 5, col. 23.38 Mangoni). 34 35
, []|, ][ ]|, |[] .. . |. [] []|[] | [] . . . | [] [| |[ ] | . . . [],| [] [], ] | [], . .. .. |, , | [] [] | [ ] [ ]| [], | [][ ] [] |[] , | | , | [, ] | [] [] | (P. Herc. 1676 col. 5.328 N . .
. . Cf. Subl. 7.3, which echoes the passage: true sublimity does not endure only for the moment of hearing (
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P. Herc. 994 col. 34.411 and 1825; text after Janko 2000, 299 n. 8 and Sbordone). 41 Simonides(?) or Pindar(?) ap. P. Berol. 9571v col. 2.55 Schubart. 42 Austin and Olson 2004 suggest (ad loc.) make elaborate for (and refer the expression to the accompanying dance rather than to the song) but recognize that the metaphor is drawn from metal-work (toreutike-). 43 Pind. fr. 194 Maehler-Snell; trans. Race. 44 Longinus writes about the choice of correct and magnificent words, a feature that needs to be cultivated intensely: it makes grandeur, beauty (), old-world charm (), weight, force, strength, and a kind of lustre bloom upon our words as upon beautiful statues; it gives things life () and makes them speak () (Subl. 30.1; trans. Russell). 45 Barthes 1975, 667; and Barthes 1977. 46 Stewart 1993; id. 2006, 1712 (often regarded as the most characteristic and even the most important artistic innovation of the Hellenistic period); for a re-thinking of Hellenistic baroque, see Schulz, this volume. 47 Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 4534; more generally, van Groningen 1953. 48 , AB 7.4; , AB 8.4; , 14.2; [, 11.6; 12.6; , 11.3. 49 Asmis 1995, 162. 50 See Petrain 2005, 335. 51 Thanks to Jeffrey Feland for suggesting the moonstone. 52 AB 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 7; 10; 11; 13; 16.It can hardly be a coincidence that the Lithika is framed by two prominent geographical and ideological markers. The first two words of the first poem in the collection are [ . Alexander famously conquered . the inhabitants of the region around the Hydaspes river (present-day Jhelum river in Pakistan) in 326 BC before returning to Alexandria (see Strab. 15.1.25, etc., Plut. Alex. 344B, Arr. Anab. 5.3.6.; 5.9.1; 5.14.5; etc.) He was thereby establishing his dominion at the conventional outer limits of the Greek oikoumen (Arist. Mete. 2.5.362b2730). And the final two verses of AB 20, which also happen to close the Lithika, make explicit the geopolitical pretensions of the book, if not of the entire collection, and their nominal patron: Now, Lord of Geraestus, along with the islands, keep free from earthquakes Ptolemys land and shores. 53 AB 16; 19. Cf. Callimachus on the cost of Pheidias huge statue of Zeus at Olympos: it is [] [], incalculable, ironizing the surplus of measurements of this vast object strewn throughout poem (Callim. Ia. 6). Cf. also Callim. fr. 25.12 on the sheer quantity of Herakles deeds ( ), albeit with no detectable sense of irony, just as there is none here in Posidippus.
); on the contrary, it makes a strong and ineffaceable [viz., lasting] impression on the memory ( ). 36 This kind of language is ancient. Cf. Arist. EN 10.4.1174a23: . 37 Dion. Hal. Comp. 6 (28.516 U.-R.). 38 Chiron 2001, esp. 1533. 39 Demetr. Eloc. 1314; trans. Roberts and Innes, adapted.
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AB 20; 17. AB 8. 56 AB 13 57 AB 14. 58 Gutzwiller 2005, 302; cf. ibid., 303. 59 Ibid., 314. Similarly, and more recently, id. 2007, 2943 (the standard view of the slender style). 60 The epigram on the colossus of the sun by the Rhodian sculptor Chares (AB 68), as big as the earth, is compared with Myrons largest production, which reach[ed] the limit of four cubits, but the latter is still a life-scale production, not a miniature; for the epigram and its Rhodian context, see Wiemer, this volume, section 3. Modern commentators attempt to present this comparison as biased in favor of Myron (e.g., Kosmetatou 2004, 203), but there is no evidence for this in the poem or in the book that contains it that I can see. Invoking its predecessor (AB 67), a poem about a miniature sculpture by the archaic sculptor Theodoros, only reinforces my point about contrastive opposites. The choice of an archaic sculptor, incidentally, is interesting by itself: it shows (a) that the practice of miniaturization had precedents (cf. the allegory of Homer by Metrodoros of Lampsakos [DK 61A24]); and (b) that to draw a periodizing line using this criterion alone is to draw a line in the sand, whereas playful, contrastive uses of the conceit might give us a better purchase on the later period, if we only knew more about the earlier instances. See the ironies of the Ischia Cup from the eighth century BC (CEG 1.454) as read by Bing 1998, 33 n. 38, following Hansen 1976: diminutive in size (10.3 cm. = 4 in height x 15.1 cm. = 6 in diameter at the mouth), it projects itself as the huge, gold-decorated chalice of Nestor from Il. 11 which only that great hero can lift with ease and in abbreviated, epigrammatic form at that. In other words, the playful contrasts of scale appears to be an old game indeed, albeit possibly a rarer one (or a simply less well attested one?). For further considerations on Posidippus use of Theodoros, see also Gutzwiller 2002b, 5560, to which we can add another, namely its learned imitation of contemporary historical handbooks, and hence its mimicking the larger imperial project of Ptolemaic encyclopedism and all-encompassing knowledge (here, in miniature). On Theodoros and his contemporary Kallikrates (Pliny HN 36.43), and the genre of sculptural miniatures generally, see Bartman 1992, 170 and passim; also, below. 61 My use of contrastive scales is differently conceived from the usual idea of a large-small dynamics in Hellenistic poetry, which is typically put in the service of the power of the small (Onians 1979, 128) or the aesthetics of [the] miniature (Stephens 2004a, 756) or the conceit of the small (Bartman 1992, ch. 6). 62 One is reminded of Democritus epistemological injunction to search for true causes (DK B11). Was Democritus (or his reception) somehow a precursor to the Hellenistic aesthetic? If so, he will not have been this on the current understanding of the Hellenistic , but only on a materialist and sensualist understanding of this aesthetic, one that would incorporate contrastive scales (differently, Reitzenstein 1931, 279). 63 See Callim. frr. 40711 Pf.; Bing 2005, 13435; Krevans 2005, 8992. See further Susemihl 1891, 1. 46391. Prioux 2007, 110 and 123 notes the compatibility of two opposing styles in Posidippus, semnote-s and leptote-s, but stages a (rather speculatively assumed) polemic between Callimachus and Posidippus around
55 54
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this licensing of opposite styles, whereby Callimachus appears as an upholder of leptote-s pure and simple. 64 Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 43, 50; Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2002, 249 (sublime moment); Kuttner 2005, 149 (colossal, monstrous); cf. 162 (colossal); Hutchinson 1988, 61 (completely wild, extravagant), 83 (grandeur, grandiose). 65 Posidippus was known in antiquity as epigrammatopoios, a maker of epigrams, presumably also of monuments. Cf. IG IX, 12 1:17.24, from Thermon in central Greece, dating from 263/2 BC ([] ), and the gloss by Weinreich 1918, 439, who first published it, in terms of dedicatory or monumental epigrams on stone. Cf. P. Petr. II 49a = SH 961, an epithalamium of Arsinoe attributed to Posidippus; Posidipp. 11 G-P (= PFirmin-Didot ), a literary - epigram commemorating the lighthouse of Pharos and its statue of Zeus Soter; and the Milan papyrus, epigrams 19, 20, and 24, which are either cultic, dedicatory, or celebratory. See further Bing 2009. 66 See Bergquist 1990, 53; Bing 2005, 138. 67 See Kuttner 2005 on luxury collections and displays generally, and especially on gem encyclopedias, all of which the Lithika mimics. Ben Acosta-Hughes suggests ( privatim) a parallel with Faberg eggs, which work aesthetically as delicate miniatures (the majority standing at around 4 high) and as literal thaumata (each contains a surprise within), and also as emblems of imperial taste: gaudy and over-elaborate, they not only imply but also advertise the enormous scale of wealth, outlay, consumption, and display that sustains them. 68 Flemming 2003; Stephens 2004b, 1703. Nicely summarized in Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 50, where this tendency is contextualized as part of the great systematization of knowledge which so characterizes the Hellenistic and Roman periods. See now also Fuqua 2007, which I discovered only at copy-editing stage, but which I welcome as confirming my point about the ideological and political thrust of the Lithika. 69 Droysen 1998 [183643], passim, but, e.g., 3: 20: [Alexandrian] scholarship, too, did its part to help Greece develop well beyond its local boundaries into a universal power that encompassed the world as a whole. Droysens work is a study in gigantism on all levels. See further id. 1833, 236 (the great division of the world [by Alexander] into East and West; 546 (Deinokrates [even if Alexander rejected the plan in the end]), 5678 (Alexanders portentous entry into the colossal city [Riesenstadt ] of Babylon); id. 1998 [183643], 3:11: postclassical political entities tend towards larger, increasingly more comprehensive universalities (Allgemeinheiten); 3: 16970: the elegance [and] sheer abundance of life that underlay Hellenistic art and culture, which Droysen characterizes as being secure in its foundations, casting its gaze far and wide, majestic, capacious, rich, multifarious, and so on (ibid. and 3:41314); Ptolemy Philadelphos assembled at his court every art, every science the former to lend dignity to the luxury that he loved, the latter...to lend it substance and value; never before was life more delicately adorned, more brilliantly savored or more finely blandished than in this court (3:169). On the other hand, poetry for Droysen was apparently exempt from gigantism (id. 1833, 5467). Bravo may be right that Droysen had little understanding or knowledge of Hellenistic poetry, but neither did Droysen seek to cover poetry in his study of political formations (3:413). However see Bernhardy 1836, 371: A vigorous impulse for massive reading and writing, polymathy
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and polygraphy, were the levers of the world founded by Alexander (also quoted in Droysens review of Bernhardy in Droysen 189394, 2:70, and then again in the 1843 preface to Geschichte des Hellenismus, where the statement is claimed to have been one of the mainsprings of Droysens own historical researches on the period [id. 1998 [183643], 3: x]). Heyne 1785 [1763], esp. 7980 and 98134, is a predecessor of Droysen. On Droysen, see further Porter 2009, 911; and on Hellenistic gigantism, see further Praux 1978, 329; Bugh 2006; Stewart 2006 (on truphe-, the colossal, and the baroque). 70 Lesky 1971, 7846, followed up nicely, if narrowly (with reference to Callimachus only), by Lohse 1973. This is not to deny predecessors, or even certain continuities (Aristophanes Frogs is a case in point (Reitzenstein 1931), as is the aesthetics of the stoicheion (Porter 2010b). Nevertheless, one can still affirm that the Hellenistic poets and critics latch onto the motif of contrastive scales with a new and distinctive energy. 71 See Hutchinson 2008, ch. 3, id. 2006, esp. 10667: Different scales of form quickly begin to interact. The Hellenistic period...both pondered the large issues of structure which the Homeric poems exemplified and investigated the Homeric text in extremely close detail. 72 See G. O. Hutchinsons well-taken but little-heeded point (Hutchinson 1988, 834: This simple opposition [of the grand and the small] obscures the importance in his work of grandeur and the grandiose, and the complexity and variety with which they are exploited; also 767; and all of the first chapter on Callimachus). 73 E.g., Shklovsky 1962 [1923], id. 1965 [1917]; Greenberg 198693 [1940]; Ransom 1941. 74 Cf. Lohse 1973, esp. 41, rightly noting how the leptos-motif is consciously vague and self-obscuring. 75 See Visscher 1962. 76 Pollitt 1999, 194. Cf. Stewart 1990, 1: 2923. Cf. Feuerbach 1855, 25960: small to behold, the picture was felt to be large; so powerful a deception of art was contained in the smallest amount of space; the narrow vessel of a little image filled with infinite content, etc. These comments are all echoing Statius (ibid.), who is in turn echoing, it seems, the language (or rhetoric) of Posidippus, or else that of Hellenistic paradoxography: So great is the deception of that tiny form. What precision of touch, what enterprise in the skilled artist, at the same time to fashion by his pains a table ornament and to revolve in his mind a great colossus! (tam magna breui mendacia formae. / quis modus, quanta experientia docti / artificis, curis pariter gestamina mensae / fingere et ingentis animo versare colossos!; 446; trans. Coleman; emphasis added). 77 Cf. Bartman 1992, 150. 78 The allusion is also noticed by Newlands 2002, 78. 79 For the readings, see Schneider 2001, 7001. Cf. Sen. Ep. 53.11: At mehercules magni artificis est clusisse totum in exiguo (thanks to Gregory Hutchinson for this parallel). 80 These are conveniently reproduced in Bartman 1992. 81 Viz., in Callimachus treatment of the conduct of the Cretan Theodaisia at Haliartos in Boeotia in fr. 43.847 Pf.; Fantuzzi and Hunter 2004, 60. Further examples would include the Lock of Berenices (fr. 110.1; 110.934 Pf.); the ektheosis of Arsinoe (fr. 228 Pf.; cf. esp. 12: and 15: , etc.); small epigrams on big tragedies (P. Petrie II, 49b = SSH 985; see Hutchinson 2008, 56) and colossal statues (such as the archaic cult image of Apollo on Delos, fr. 114 Pf.; see
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Pfeiffer 1952, 223); the unwoundable Nemean Lion...parodied by Molorcus problem in dealing with the mice (Hutchinson 2008, 50, on SH 259 = fr. 177 Pf.). And the list goes on. 82 AB 62, 65, 70; Kosmetatou 2004; Stewart 2005; Prioux 2007, 123. 83 Pausimachus(?) ap. Phld. De poem. 1 col. 43.912 Janko: When Homers verses are read out (|[] .). they all appear greater and more beautiful ( [] | . [ ] []). Cf. Subl. 17.2: [And so,] emotional and sublime features seem . closer to the minds eye, both because of a certain natural kinship and because of their brilliance (). 84 Two modern works that excel in the aesthetics and poetics of the detail and plays of scale are Stewart 1993 and Schor 1987. Cf. also Clark 1999 (a reference I owe to Alex Purves). 85 [Heracl.] Quaest. Hom. 36.4; cf. 46.7, 47.16. 86 Subl. 9.4. 87 Jacques 1960. Because Aratus seems to have been the first to make the term programmatic, while Callimachus later adopted it, we should perhaps speak of Aratean, rather than Callimachean, leptote-s. See Cameron 1995, 3218. 88 Strab. 10.5.3. 89 Gutzwiller 2007, 98. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1924, 1: 200: [The Phaenomena] remains a [a fat and inelegant writing (Callim. 398 Pf., originally with reference to Antimachus Lyde)] just the same, and Callimachus will not have failed to recognize this. And nonetheless, Aratus poem met with unparalleled success upon its arrival in Alexandria (ibid.). See below. 90 (Arat. 1.43; 1.244; 1.397 = Il. 21.108 = Od. 6.276, all final); (Arat.1.210); pace van Groningen 1953, 2536. See Hutchinson 1988, 217 for the general point. If word-counts mean anything at all, - words appear fortyfour times in the Phainomena (not negated), while the formula appears three times and appears once. - words appear only four times. There are words for small, but see id. 1988, ch. 5 on the general grandeur of the poem. Leonidas may have been fond of such contrasts. Cf. Leon. Anth. Pal. 9.51 = 21 G-P, which begins: ... and ends, / . 91 Leon. Anth. Pal. 9.25; Callim. Ep. 29; Strab. 10.5.3; Ptolemaeus [Philadelphus] (= Page, FGE p. 84.4 = Vit. Arat. p. 79.314 Maass). 92 Cf. Call. H. 4.16870, likewise in praise of Philadelphos, and likewise on a grand, hyperbolic scale. 93 The one intruder is Stesichoros Sack of Troy. 94 See now Valenzuela Montenegro 2004, and the fine, close analysis in Squire forthcoming (2010). 95 Horsfall 1979, 33, though Michael Squire assures me that this is an overstatement, as the texts are barely legible even with the aid of a magnifying glass but what ancient would have possessed such a device? (The evidence is controversial. The possibility is affirmed in Forbes 1955, 19091, but emphatically denied by Plantzos 1997). See further Bienkowski 1891, 202: scritti con lettere piccolissime quasi invisibili all occhio nudo. 96 Cf. 3C: [] {} ; 4N: .
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Achillean, presumably because the object is itself shaped in the form of a shield and is reminiscent, in its ecphrastic character, of the ecphrasis in Homer from which it is derived. Cf. the bolder programmatic statement from another tablet (1A), in the light of which this and the remaining tablets can be seen at the very least to complete Homer and to give him his full measure: learn the Theodorean art so that, by grasping the order of Homer [whether this is Homers own narrative or the same as reassembled on the tablets], you may have the [full] measure of all wisdom ([ ] / ). There are difficulties, to be sure. The layout is a problem on any reading. And the meaning of is disputed: is it art (viz., artistry) or individual artwork? See Sadurska 1964, 39 and Kazansky 1997, 57 who opt for the first choice; contrast Horsfall 1979 and Valenzuela Montenegro 2004, 355, who opt for the second. The scholastic connotation of handbook, vel sim. is unlikely; see Horsfall 1979, 27; 31; epitome seems equally unlikely (pace Horsfall, ibid.). An intriguing parallel which could be brought into play here is Callim. fr. 196.1 Pf.: [] [], .) But even if one were to follow the view that the expressions on the tablets stand for titles and signatures, and if one were to take in the sense of artwork, the same meaning as I am proposing here could result: Homers Iliad: an artwork la Theodoros. Thanks to Gregory Hutchinson for helpful skeptical challenges on this point. 98 Cf. Sadurska 1964, 9: Cette faon de signer, trange et exceptionelle...; and ibid., p. 10 (cf. p. 39 and passim), noting how in the tablet inscriptions the noun is always qualified by the adjective . Further, the puzzlement of Kazansky 1997, 57. What follows is an attempt at an explanation. 99 See n. 60 above. Theodoros was, to be sure, much more than a miniaturist, but he was fondly remembered for this quality in later times. The archaizing character of the Capitoline inscription (n. 96 above) has been observed by Valenzuela Montenegro 2004, 352 and by Squire forthcoming (2010), 000, n. 36. The single best parallel, however, is Stesichoros S 89.78, from The Sack of Troy: [ ] | [] .. [ ; see Lehnus 1972, 545, who discovered the parallel, though an echo with a papyrus fragment from Eudoxos of Knidos is undeniable (Pack2: 369; see Bua 1971, 1920; Horsfall 1979, 31) , as is a hitherto unnoticed parallel, an inscription dating from ca. 450425 BC (CEG 82.3 = IG I3 1506): [] [ ]. (Cf. also AEM 4 [1880] 59, I; 4th c.) However, see also Thgn. 876: . For a use of similar to that translated in n. 97 above, viz., as taken in an agonistic and metapoetical sense, whereby Homeric poetics is again the rival, see Hes. Op. 6489: I shall show you the measures () of the much-roaring sea ( ), I who have no expertise () at all in seafaring or boats (trans. Most), with Rosen 1990. The phraseology appears to be wholly formulaic and archaic or classical, indeed. 100 See Valenzuela Montenegro 2004, 298304, arguing for multiple hands and signatories, against the assumption of a singular artist (held by Sadurska 1964, 1015, among others). If this is right, then my thesis that Theodorean picks out a style (modeled on the archaic artist) and not a single contemporary artist or his works ought to have even greater plausibility. The dating is likewise thought to be various (but harder to pin down). Two further considerations should be borne in mind. First, Theodoros of Samos was remembered the way he remembered himself, as the
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quintessential artist and technician of contrasting scales. In the account of his miniature chariot by Pliny, we learn that Theodoros cast himself in a (probably lifesize) bronze statue (ipse se ex aere fudit) holding the marvelous miniature object in his hand: Besides its remarkable celebrity as a likeness, [the statue] is famous for its very minute workmanship ( praeter similitudinis mirabilem famam magne suptilitate celebratur). Already, in other words, we are confronted with a contrast of scales, one that Plinys language mirrors (magne suptilitate). The right hand holds a file, and three fingers of the left hand originally held a little model of a chariot and four, but this has been taken away to Palestrina as a marvel of smallness (HN, 34.83; trans. Rackham). So the allusion to the technite-s Theodoros, or rather to the Theodorean techne-, seems absolutely warranted. Secondly, a further precedent is found once again in Posidippus, who in his own account of the same chariot resorts to the adjectival form of the artists proper name: ...of the chariot, observe from up close / how great is the labor of the Theodorean hand ( ) (AB 67). Was Theodoros work already identified with a style in the time of Posidippus? Or did Posidippus use of the adjective simply form an ingredient in the chain of coincidences that led to the identification of the style of the tablets with Theodoros miniaturizing labors some six centuries earlier? (But note again the contrast, great labor / diminutive scale.) Finally, was the act of producing the tablets a typically Hellenistic act, aesthetically speaking, or did it signal a harking back to an earlier aesthetic style? Surely, the attempt at a reduced Homer is a gesture typical of a later, postclassical age, though there are some earlier anticipations: the Cup of Nestor, Pigres EGF 65 (480 BCE), Metrodoros of Lampsakos, etc. Most likely, what is needed is an expansion of our view of the Hellenistic aesthetic to make provision for such continuities, rather than ruptures, with the past. My suggestion about the allusions to Theodoros of Samos in the Theodorean art named in the Roman tablets has already been adopted and developed in Squire, forthcoming,an excellent introduction to these ancient curiosities. 101 One of the tablets (8E) is exercised by this very question, still aflame from the Alexandrian era. It begins, ...by Zenodotos, possibly referring to a study he may have composed on the number of days in the Iliad. See Valenzuela Montenegro 2004, 204 206 for the text and a translation. 102 See n. 46 above (where, however, the emphasis has usually been on emotional rather than formal contorsion). 103 Eagleton 1998, 195. 104 E.g., Radke 2007, 213. 105 See the extended discussion in Radke 2007, 21218. Radke, in keeping with her literary-historical thesis, tends to emphasize the historical evolutions that are built into these retellings of myth. I am drawing attention to the simultaneity of factors and their shock value. To be sure, the divine childhood motif is borrowed from the Homeric hymns, and is found elsewhere as well (see Grant 1929). But as both Grant and Radke (and also Onians 1979, 1268) observe, its use in the Hellenistic period is both widespread and insistent, and hence arguably a literary and art-historical signature. 106 Callim. Aet. fr. 1fr. 1.2930 Pf.; cf. Aet. fr. 43.1617 Pf. See Acosta-Hughes and Stephens 2002 for an analysis of the sound dynamics of the poem, which is anticipated by Reitzenstein 1931 (a neglected aspect of his argument); Krevans 1993; Ambhl 1995, on Callimachus adoption of the slender and sweet sounding style (the
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) of the cicada over against the swollen noisy style (the ) of the braying ass (Callim. Aet. fr. 1.2932; ; 31: ; see Hopkinson 1988, 96, ad loc., on the pun). Further, Pendergraft 1995 on Aratus, who argues (in the wake of van Groningen 1953, 255) that leptos stands, in fact, for pleasing aural qualities. Clearly, there is more work to be done on Callimachus poetics of sound. 107 See Porter 2010a. 108 Dion. Hal. Comp. 22 (110.89 U. R.): ; cf. Aristox., Harm. 8: . 109 See Porter 2010b. 110 Arist. Poet. 7.1450b3451a6; trans. Hubbard, adapted. 111 The Hellenistic epigrammatic tradition ranges over everything from volcanic eruptions to destructive floods to magnets to stranded monsters (Wick 2000 (ms.), citing Anth. Pal. 6.2223, 7.76, 7.299, 9.424, 9.568, 12.152). 112 Thanks to the participants at the original conference in Edinburgh as well as to Ben Acosta-Hughes, Gregory Hutchinson, Luigi Lehnus, Maria Pantelia, Thomas Rosenmeyer, Michael Squire, and Andrew Stewart for invaluable comments on earlier versions of this chapter. Thanks especially to the organizers of the conference for their kind invitation to take part, which gave me the stimulus to think hard about a new topic, and to Andrew Erskine and Anton Powell for helpful editorial queries. A more developed version was later presented at UCLA and then at the Free University of Berlin, where I received further helpful feedback. Finally, without a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 200506, I would not have had the opportunity or leisure to undertake this project at all.
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Bastianini, G. 1996 in Callimaco (fr. 1.11 Pfeiffer), in F. Adorno and M. Serena Funghi (eds) . Le vie della ricerca: Studi in onore di Francesco Adorno, Florence, 6980. Benedetto, G. 1990 Una congettura di Augusto Rostagni (Call. fr. 1.11 Pf.), Quaderno di storia 32, 11537. Bergquist, B. 1990 Sympotic space: a functional aspect of Greek dining rooms, in O. Murray (ed.) Sympotica: A symposium on the symposion, Oxford, 3765. Bernhardy, G. 1836 Grundriss der griechischen Literatur, mit einem vergleichenden berblick der rmischen 2 vols. in 3, Halle. Bienkowski, P. 1891 Lo Scudo di Achille, Mitteilungen des Kaiserlich Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Roemische Abtheilung 6, 183207. Bing, P. 1998 Between literature and the monuments, in A. Harder, et al. (eds) Genre in Hellenistic Poetry, Groningen, 2145. 2005 The politics and poetics of geography in the Milan Posidippus, Section One: On Stones (AB 120), in Gutzwiller (ed.) 2005, 11940. 2009 Reimagining Posidippus, in P. Bing, The Scroll and the Marble: Studies in reading and reception in Hellenistic poetry, Ann Arbor,17793. Bua, M. T. 1971 I giuochi alfabetici delle tavole iliache, Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Memorie, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. ser. 8, v. 16, fasc. 1 Rome. Bugh, G. R. 2006 Hellenistic military developments, in idem (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, Cambridge, 26594. Cameron, A. 1995 Callimachus and his Critics, Princeton. Carson, A. 1999 Economy of the Unlost: Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan, Princeton. Caston, V. 1997 Epiphenomenalisms, ancient and modern, The Philosophical Review 106, 30963. Chiron, P. 2001 Un rhteur mconnu: Dmtrios (Ps.-Dmtrios de Phalre). Essai sur les mutations de la thorie du style lpoque hellnistique, Paris. Clark, T. J. 1999 Pollocks smallness, in K. Varnedoe and P. Karmel (eds) Jackson Pollock: New approaches, New York, 1531. Clausen, W. V. 1964 Callimachus and Latin poetry, GRBS 5, 18196. Coleman, K. M. (ed.) 1988 Statius: Silvae IV. Oxford.
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Couat, A. H. 1882 La posie alexandrine sous les trois premiers Ptolmes (324222 av. J. C.), Paris. Day, J. W. 1989 Rituals in stone: early Greek grave epigrams and monuments, JHS 109, 1628. Delattre, D. (ed.) 2007 Philodme de Gadara: Sur la musique. Livre IV, 2 vols., Paris. Droysen, J. G. 1833 Geschichte Alexanders des Grossen, Hamburg. 189394 Kleine Schriften zur alten Geschichte. Edited by E. Hbner, 2 vols., Leipzig. 1998 [183643] Geschichte des Hellenismus. Edited by E. Bayer. Introduction by H.-J. Gehrke, 3 vols., Darmstadt. Eagleton, T. 1998 Walter Benjamin: towards a revolutionary criticism (1981), in T. Eagleton, The Eagleton Reader, ed. by S. Regan, Oxford, 194211. Fantuzzi, M. and R. Hunter 2004 Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry, Cambridge. Feuerbach, A. 1855 Der vaticanische Apollo: Eine Reihe archologisch-sthetischer Betrachtungen, 2nd ed., Stuttgart and Augsburg. (1st ed. 1833, Nrnberg: Campe.) Flemming, R. 2003 Empires of knowledge: medicine and health in the Hellenistic world, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 44963. Forbes, R. J. 1955 Studies in Ancient Technology, vol. 5. Leiden. Fuqua, C. 2007 Two aspects of the Lithika, Classical Philology 102: 28191. Grant, M. A. 1929 The childhood of the gods, The Classical Journal 24, 58593. Greenberg, C. 198693 [1940] Towards a newer Laocoon, in id., The Collected Essays and Criticism. Translated by C. Greenberg, 4 vols., Chicago. 1: 2338. (First published in The Partisan Review, vol. 7, no. 4 [1940] 296310.) Gutzwiller, K. 2002a Arts echo: the tradition of Hellenistic ecphrastic epigram, in M. A. Harder, et al. (eds) Hellenistic Epigrams, Leuven, Belgium and Sterling, Va., 85112. 2002b Posidippus on statuary, in G. Bastianini and A. Casanova (eds) Il papiro di Posidippo un anno dopo: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Firenze 1314 giugno 2002, Florence, 4160. 2005 The literariness of the Milan Papyrus, or What difference a book?, in Gutzwiller (ed.) 2005, 287319. 2007 A Guide to Hellenistic Literature, Malden, MA. Gutzwiller, K. (ed.) 2005 The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic poetry book, New York. Hansen, P. A. 1976 Pithecusan humour: the interpretation of Nestors Cup reconsidered, Glotta 54, 2543.
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Heyne, C. G. 1785 [1763] Disputantur nonnulla de Genio Saeculi Ptolemaeorum, in id., Opvscvla academica collecta et animadversionibvs locvpletata. 6 vols., Gttingen, 1: 76134. Hopkinson, N. 1988 A Hellenistic Anthology, Cambridge. Horsfall, N. 1979 Stesichorus at Bovillae? JHS 99, 2648. Hutchinson, G. 1988 Hellenistic Poetry, Oxford. 2006 Hellenistic epic and Homeric form, in M. J. Clarke et al. (eds) Epic Interactions: Perspectives on Homer, Virgil, and the epic tradition. Presented to Jasper Griffin by former pupils, Oxford, 10529. 2008 Talking Books: Readings in Hellenistic and Roman books of poetry, Oxford. Jacques, J.-M. 1960 Sur un acrostiche dAratos, Rvue des tudes anciennes 62, 4860. Janko, R. 2000 Philodemus: On Poems. Oxford. Kassel, R. 1987 Die Abgrenzung des Hellenismus in der griechischen Literaturgeschichte, Berlin and New York. Kazansky, N. N. 1997 Principles of the Reconstruction of a Fragmentary Text (New Stesichorean Papyri). Saint-Petersburg: Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Linguistic Studies, Institute of Foreign Languages. Kosmetatou, E. 2004 Vision and visibility: art historical theory paints a portrait of new leadership in Posidippus Andriantopoiika, in B. Acosta-Hughes et al. (eds) Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an epigram collection attributed to Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309), Washington, D.C. and Cambridge, MA, 187211. Krevans, N. 1993 Fighting against Antimachus: the Lyde and the Aetia reconsidered, in M. A. Harder et al. (eds) Callimachus, Groningen, 14960. Kuttner, A. 2005 Cabinet fit for a queen: the as Posidippus Gem Museum, in Gutzwiller (ed.) 2005, 14163. Lehnus, L. 1972 Note stesicoree (Pap. Oxy. 2506 e 2619), Studi classici e orientali 21, 525. 2006 Prima e dopo , in G. Bastianini and A. Casanova, eds Callimaco centanni di papiri: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi, Firenze, 910 giugno 2005, Florence, 13347. Lesky, A. 1971 Geschichte der griechischen Literatur, 3rd ed., Berne and Munich. Lohse, G. 1973 Die Aitien Prolog des Kallimachos als Reproduktion von Wirklichkeit, Antike und Abendland 19, 2043.
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Mnnlein-Robert, I. 2007 Stimme, Schrift und Bild: Zum Verhltnis der Knste in der hellenistischen Dichtung, Heidelberg. Onians, J. 1979 Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age: The Greek world view 35050 BC, London. Pendergraft, M. L. B. 1995 Euphony and etymology: Aratus Phaenomena, Syllecta Classica 6, 4367. Petrain, D. 2005 Gems, metapoetics, and value: Greek and Roman responses to a thirdcentury discourse on precious stones, TAPA 135, 32957. Pfeiffer, R. 1952 The image of the Delian Apollo and Apolline ethics, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 15, 2032. 1955 The future of studies in the field of Hellenistic poetry, JHS 75, 6973. Plantzos, D. 1997 Crystals and lenses in the Graeco-Roman world, AJA 101: 45164. Pollitt, J. J. 1974 The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, history, and terminology, New Haven. 1999 Art and Experience in Classical Greece, Cambridge (1st edn 1972). Ponge, F. 1994 Selected Poems. Edited by M. Guiton. Translated by C. K. Williams et al., Winston-Salem, NC. Porter, J. I. 1989 Philodemus on material difference, Cronache Ercolanesi 19, 14978. 1995 : a reassessment, in J. G. J. Abbenes, et al., (eds) Greek Literary Theory after Aristotle: A collection of papers in honour of D. M. Schenkeveld, Amsterdam, 83109. 2001 Des sons quon ne peut entendre: Cicron, les kritikoi et la tradition du sublime dans la critique littraire, in C. Auvray-Assayas and D. Delattre (eds) Cicron et Philodme: La polmique en philosophie, Paris, 31541. 2006 Feeling Classical: classicism and ancient literary criticism, in J. I. Porter (ed.) Classical Pasts: The classical traditions of Greece and Rome, Princeton, 30152. 2007 Lasus of Hermione, Pindar, and the riddle of S , CQ 57, 121. 2009 Hellenism and modernity, in George Boys-Stones et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies, Oxford, 118. 2010a Language as a system in ancient rhetoric and grammar, in E. Bakker (ed.) A Companion to the Ancient Greek Language, Chichester, 51223. 2010b The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, sensation, and experience, Cambridge. forthcoming Literary Aesthetics After Aristotle, Cambridge. in progress On the Sublime. Praux, C. 1978 Le monde hellnistique: la Grce et lOrient de la mort dAlexandre la conqute romaine de la Grce, 323146 av. J.-C, 2 vols. in 6, Paris. Prioux, . 2007 Regards alexandrins: histoire et thorie des arts dans lpigramme hellnistique, Leuven.
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Radke, G. 2007 Die Kindheit des Mythos: die Erfindung der Literaturgeschichte in der Antike, Munich.. Ransom, J. C. 1941 Wanted: an ontological critic, in id., The New Criticism. Norfolk, CT. 279 336. Reitzenstein, E. 1931 Zur Stiltheorie des Kallimachos, in E. Fraenkel and H. Frnkel (eds) Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein zum 2. April 1931, Leipzig and Berlin, 2369. Reitzenstein, R. 1970 [1893 Epigramm und Skolion: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der alexandrinischen Dichtung, Hildesheim. Rosen, R. M. 1990 Poetry and sailing in Hesiods Works and Days, Classical Antiquity 9, 99113. Rostagni, A. 1956 Scritti Minori II, 1: Hellenica-Hellenistica, Turin. Rouveret, A., Dubel, S. et al. 2006 Couleurs et matires dans lantiquit: Textes, techniques et pratiques, Paris. Sadurska, A. 1964 Les tables iliaques, Warsaw. Sbordone, F. 1976 (ed.) Ricerche sui papiri ercolanesi, vol. 2, Naples. Schiesaro, A. 1998 Latin literature and Greece, Dialogos 5, 1449. Schneider, W. J. 2001 Phidiae Putavi: Martial und der Hercules Epitrapezios des Novius Vindex, Mnemosyne 54, 697720. Schor, N. 1987 Reading in Detail: Aesthetics and the feminine, New York. Scodel, R. 1992 Inscription, absence and memory: epic and early epitaph, Studi italiani di filologia classica 10, 5776. Shklovsky, V. 1962 [1923] Form and material in art, in P. Blake and M. Hayward (eds) Dissonant Voices in Soviet Literature, [New York], 208. 1965 [1917] Art as technique, in L. T. Lemon and M. J. Reis (eds) Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, Lincoln, Nebraska, 324. Squire, M. forthcoming (2010) Visualising epic on the Tabulae Iliacae, in H. Lovatt and C. Vout (eds) Visualising Epic, Cambridge. forthcoming Texts on the table: the Tabulae Iliacae in their Hellenistic literary context, JHS. Steiner, D. 1993 Pindars Oggetti Parlanti, HSCP 95, 15980. Stephens, S. 2004a Posidippuss Poetry Book: where Macedon meets Egypt, in W. V. Harris
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and G. Ruffini (eds) Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece, Leiden and Boston, 6486. 2004b For you, Arsinoe..., in B. Acosta-Hughes et al. (eds) Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an epigram collection attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309), Washington, D.C. and Cambridge, MA, 16176. Stewart, A. 1990 Greek Sculpture: An exploration, 2 vols. New Haven. 1993 Narration and allusion in the Hellenistic baroque, in P. J. Holliday (ed.), Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, Cambridge, 13074. 2005 Posidippos and the truth in sculpture, in Gutzwiller (ed.) 2005, 183205. 2006 Hellenistic art: two dozen innovations, in G. R. Bugh (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Hellenistic World, Cambridge, 15885. Stewart, S. 1993 On Longing: Narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection, Durham, (1st ed. 1984, Baltimore). Susemihl, F. 1891 Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, 2 vols., Leipzig. Tilley, C. 2004 The Materiality of Stone: Explorations in landscape phenomenology, Oxford and New York. Valenzuela Montenegro, N. 2004 Die Tabulae Iliacae: Mythos und Geschichte im Spiegel einer Gruppe frhkaiserzeitlicher Miniaturreliefs, Berlin. van Groningen, B. A. 1953 La posie verbale grecque: Essai de mise au point, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde n.s. 26, no. 4 Amsterdam. Visscher, F. de. 1962 Hracls Epitrapezios, Paris. Weinreich, O. 1918 Die Heimat des Epigrammatikers Poseidippos, Hermes 53, 4349. Wick, C. 2000 (ms.). The Best of Nature: Naturphnomene und Naturkatastrophen in hellenistischen Epigrammen, Paper read at Fifth Groningen Workshop, Hellenistic Epigrams, 30 August1 September, 2000. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von 1924 Hellenistische Dichtung in der Zeit des Kallimachos, 2 vols., Berlin. 1943 [1882] (ed.) Callimachus, Hymni editio in usum academicum iuxta quartam Wilamowitzianam iterata, Florence. (1st ed. 1882) Wimmel, W. 1960 Kallimachos in Rom: Die Nachfolge seines apologetischen Dichtens in der Augusteerzeit, Wiesbaden.
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Now, compare Robertsons query with an important remark recently made by Andrew Stewart:
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Greek art did change profoundly under Alexander, and the invigorating combination of an audacious, opinionated and uniquely successful young king and a set of supremely talented artists certainly had much to do with it. So the fact that some of the periods innovations had important classical antecedents is essentially irrelevant. Antecedents can help us to measure and contextualize innovations, but they can neither explain them nor exhaust their meaning.4
Of course, neither scholar ever adopts a rigid or polemic stance about the significance of stylistic continuity or evolution in the Hellenistic period.5 Even so, their remarks do exemplify two well-established interpretive positions. The first acknowledges the existence of stylistic precedents for certain characteristics of Hellenistic art and then suggests there might be something amiss with our chronological or interpretive categories. The second acknowledges the existence of stylistic precedents for certain characteristics of Hellenistic art and then suggests that we focus on the periods innovations. Both positions have much to offer. For the purposes of this brief chapter, however, I will avoid any kind of debate between the two. I choose this line for two reasons. First, since it can be shown that both perspectives provide useful bases for reading Hellenistic visual culture, arguments about which position is more correct inevitably become contests of subjective emphases and thus unhelpful for our present project.6 Second, I am unsure whether either position frames the problem of stylistic precedents for Hellenistic sculpture in a way that is useful for starting a discussion regarding possible connections between stylistic continuity and meaning. In other words, identifying theoretical and stylistic precedents is important, but pointing at them, questioning them or using them to challenge traditional style periodizations as important as these projects are may not allow us to begin asking what this stylistic continuity may have meant for the creators, audiences and communities of the Hellenistic age.7 And it is this last issue that seems to deserve some further attention. Indeed, since the Hellenistic baroque is often seen as a key aesthetic achievement of the Hellenistic period, discussing some possible connections between origins of the style and the styles significance seems like an appropriate subject for a book that explores the creation of the Hellenistic world. With this goal in mind, I will try to accomplish two objectives in this chapter. First, I will try to show that some underlying stylistic and conceptual components of the Hellenistic baroque were invented in Athens during the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC. Second, I will
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issues or agendas that may have permeated a particular moment of Greek society.12 There are two points to keep in mind here. First: One key aspect of understanding a cultural or aesthetic phenomenon like the Hellenistic baroque is a keen appreciation of the underlying cultural tradition from which the phenomenon comes as well as an appreciation of how that underlying tradition was viewed in the particular historical moment under consideration. This point has been made clear by Susan Alcock and Tanja Scheer, among others, in different contexts; it is also a fundamental basis of traditional art history.13 As a species, we build our identities on versions of the past and incorporate these versions, consciously or not, into our present reality. A particular style will thus necessarily reflect not just its particular age but will also reflect how the style itself developed before and during the period in question. A style will also reflect how its own development was understood and appreciated by the relevant communities in which the style was used or within which the style manifested. And style will itself be a medium through which these various intersections can be studied and understood. Second, and more importantly: Interpretive arguments that connect culture and style can be problematic. Especially when we are looking at style itself as evidence for cultural change or continuity or when we are looking to understand what stylistic change or continuity may have meant to ancient people of a particular historical moment. One of the most troublesome problems here is the often subjective nature of our stylistic comparisons specifically, the choice of objects that are compared that can often lead to forgone (rhetorical) conclusions. Here, Robin Osbornes recent discussion of the formal differences between two famous late Archaic images the Attic kouros, Aristodikos, and Myrons famous diskobolos is fundamental, especially Osbornes insistence that choosing these two emblematic pieces of sculpture and interpreting their stylistic differences as evidence for cultural revolution in late sixth- and early fifth-century Athens constitute political and rhetorical acts.14 This is important. Because Osborne could have easily picked the same famous images and, with a different rhetorical stance, argued convincingly and correctly as to their status as evidence of cultural and conceptual continuity. Indeed, since the potential for both change and continuity is always simultaneously present within any given historical moment or any cultural system, and since the potential for our recognizing both change and continuity is equally present, discussions of particular changes or continuities should probably be seen for what they are: the results of our own interpretive decisions.
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From a conceptual point of view, Hellenistic sculptors working in the baroque mode attempted to evoke a dynamic sense of movement, to stir potent feelings of powerful (usually hyperbolic) emotion and to place the action of their players within powerful theatrical and dramatic narrative frames. For the baroque sculptor, poetic and rhetorical principles such as auxe-sis (amplification), dialogia (repetition), megaloprepia (grandeur), deinosis -xis (shock) and enargeia (vividness) were both aesthetic goals (intensity), ekple and the means by which these goals were achieved.18 In order to accomplish this range of spectacular effects, Hellenistic sculptors working in the baroque mode consistently deployed three wellknown and interrelated formal strategies. First, Hellenistic sculptors consistently distorted and amplified baroque anatomies for extravagant impact (Figs. 13). Second, Hellenistic sculptors consistently alter and embellish baroque draperies and surface textures to create fluctuating impressions of dramatic torsion, extravagant space, grand motion and sharp contrasts (Figs. 47). And third, Hellenistic sculptors consistently exaggerate baroque physiognomies to unlock the intense, theatrical depths of pathos (Figs. 811). Always, these three formal characteristics interconnect. Always these formal traits are unified by a pervasive sense of vivid exaggeration and dramatic flux that is generated and reflected both by individual sculpted figures and by the larger sculptural narratives that they constitute. It is with good reason that our most respected scholars of Hellenistic art have suggested that the principal agenda of the sculptors working in the Baroque mode was psychago-gia the swaying of the soul.19 All of this is known. And there is no doubt that the sculptors of third and second centuries elevated the baroque mode to a new level of grandeur and scale. But there also seems little reason to believe that the basic aesthetic goals that I have described above were invented in the Hellenistic age. Let us look to form and style first and examine these three spheres in turn, beginning with baroque anatomies. The figure of Zeus from the east frieze of the Pergamon altar (Fig. 1) provides the classic starting point for exploring the exaggeration and amplification of the baroque body.20 Striding powerfully to his right, fist upraised, the god-king cuts a swath of carnage through his gigantic opponents. Even without his head, Zeus makes for a powerful figure. Indeed, his physical might and mythic persona are here indistinguishable. This idea is communicated both by his dramatic, lunging pose his lightning, added in bronze, would have followed the raking line of his right arm, torso and left leg and by the swirling drapery which frames his hyperbolically muscled torso. Both rushing pose and falling drapery suggest a divine epiphany, a grand vision in which Zeus status, appearance and
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Fig. 1. Torso of Zeus from the Great Altar at Pergamon. A view of Zeuss torso from the east side of the gigantomachy frieze of the Great Altar at Pergamon, Pergamonmuseum, Berlin. Marble, ca. 180150 BC. Photo: Author.
being are formally merged and re-presented.21 Indeed, the gods slashing stance across the frieze is the formal device by which the sculptors of the frieze sensually evoke a sort of divine metaphysic: Zeus is a personified thunderbolt the dea of divine power incarnate. This same action prompts the falling mantle and subsequent revelation of his super-human anatomy. And Zeus exaggerated body is indeed worth special attention. Each muscle group has been identified and inflated beyond the boundaries of anatomical reality.22 His pectorals ( pectoralis major) are huge, as are his abdominals (rectus abdominis). His ribs are not evident, since they have been obscured by multiple bands of inflated front-laterals (seratus interor). There is a real concern with testing the limits of the male form. Again, this concern with the physical seems to extend to the metaphysical. In addition to recalling the Stoic Kleanthes third-century Hymn to Zeus (ll. 67) So will I praise thee, ever singing of thy might, by whom the whole wide firmament is swayed! the gods torso also reminds us of Theocritus baroque warriorking Amykos (Id. 22. 4851) whose huge chest and broad back swelled
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like the iron flesh of a hammered statue and whose muscles jutted out like rounded boulders, polished smooth by the whirling onrush of a winter torrent. Considered within this poetic context, Zeus torso becomes a sensual manifestation of the gods divine power. 23 Zeus baroque anatomy suggests the colossal, the corporeal and the cosmic all made manifest in stone. Now, stand the Pergamene Zeus next to the image of Poseidon from the west pediment of the Parthenon carved 437432 BC at the height of the Periclean building project (Figs. 23). The comparison is well-known.24 Like the Pergamene Zeus, the west pediment Poseidon lunges dramatically sideways, this time to his left. From Carreys drawing, we know that Poseidon, like Zeus, held his weapon, the trident, in his upraised fist. Racing with Athena for the patronage of Athens, the sea god is a powerful and dynamic competitor captured in midst of dramatic action, a player in a spectacular, theatrical scene.25 While the pose and gesture of the two gods are very close, it is Poseidons over-emphatic musculature (seen particularly well from the side, Fig. 3) that makes the comparison compelling. Like the Zeus from Pergamon, each muscle group has been identified and expanded past the limits of the norm. Poseidons pectorals are very large and very pronounced, as are his abdominals. His ribs are evident and are paired with multiple bands of inflated front-laterals. While a hint of classical restraint might be detected here (although I wonder how much of that has to do with the fragmentary condition of the piece), there remains an intense emphasis on inflating the expressive range of the male torso. Again, this concern with the body extends to the spirit. Kleanthes and Theocritus verses could apply nicely to the west pediment Poseidon, but there is no need to look into the Hellenistic period. Pseudo-Arion, writing his Hymn to Poseidon at the beginning of the fourth century, is just as evocative of a baroque sensibility Highest of the gods, marine Poseidon of the golden trident, earth-holder bulging with might! Can there be a better lyric description of Poseidons mighty frame? Considered within this poetic context, Poseidons torso, like that of Zeus, becomes the physical embodiment or manifestation of the gods own kind of swelling, tidal force. Again, like our Hellenistic Zeus, his baroque anatomy suggests the colossal, the corporeal and the cosmic.26 When we see these images together, it seems clear that something connects them. While there are formal differences, to be sure the undercutting of Zeus anatomy is more emphatic than that of Poseidon, for example when we look at the two torsos side by side it becomes rather hard to tell which is the real baroque at all. In this sense, it is easy to see why Immo Beyer once argued that the Poseidon torso was, in fact, a
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Figs 23. Torso of Poseidon the Parthenon. The fragmentary torso of a central figure of the Parthenons west pediment, Athens. Parthenon West Pediment British Museum M.. Preserved ht. 83 cm, Pentelic marble, ca. 438432 BC, perhaps the work of Pheidias and his circle, although much controversy remains. Acr. Mus. 885 + 959 (front chest and abdomen) and BM London M (arms and back). Photo: Author.
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Hadrianic replacement modeled after the Hellenistic baroque! 27 And consider Adolf Borbeins thoughts on the two pieces:
The great influence of High Classical art was based not only on its utopian content and its art historical duality (it is simultaneously a pinnacle and a new starting point), but also, and critically, on its phenomenal formal standards. The original works we possess and here we refer to the Parthenon sculptures are far removed from anemic ideality and cold perfection. Instead, they are marked by a powerful presence, a sparkling life, and a richness of detail. Emotions appear subdued but not repressed and the ideal manifests as a tangible, physical reality. The commonly noted balance between aesthetic freedom and restraint (Gebundenheit) has moved slightly towards freedom in the late classical period; in the same way, the balance between naturalism and stylization has shifted towards naturalism. The powerful body of Poseidon from the west pediment of the Parthenon, for example, is easily comparable to Hellenistic works such as the gods and giants from the great frieze of the Pergamon altar in terms of its immediate sensual charisma. These formal concerns, which directly address the senses, help to overcome the emotional distance between the spectator and the classical work itself and, ultimately, to set in motion a process of understanding or appropriation.28
This kind of language makes perfect sense when applied to both Classical and Hellenistic masterpieces. Both torsos are marked by a powerful, physical presence. Both torsos rely on intense, sensual form as the means by which their energy and power is communicated. And both torsos seek to directly engage the viewer, to pull him into a dynamic, theatrical narrative in which some cosmic struggle (ago-n) is represented. In this sense, then, Poseidons body and perhaps the Parthenons entire baroque system seems to anticipate the Pergamene baroque by centuries, at least when it comes to the dramatic exaggeration of human anatomy. Of course, this does not mean that the anatomies of the two gods are indistinguishable. Hardly. Rather, this comparison suggests that a similar kind of aesthetic concern may have operated in the creation of both Classical and Hellenistic masterpieces, a concern that might be worth dwelling upon. When we consider baroque draperies carved during the Hellenistic period, a similar kind of formal continuity seems to exist. As noted above, Hellenistic sculptors are especially well known for their creation of elaborate drapery and surface textures in cloth that, in turn, generate fluctuating impressions of extravagant space, torsion, motion and chiaroscuro. Of course, by far the most famous example manifesting these sculptural ideas is the Nike of Samothrace (Fig. 4).29 While the problems of her date, authorship and historical context are notorious, the Samothracian Victory stands at the apex of the baroque mode in virtually every way. The Nike
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Fig. 4. The Nike of Samothrace. A victory dedication set in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Samothrace. Restored ht. 3.28 m (including wings), Parian marble, ca. 200 BC (although much debate remains on this point). The work has been attributed to a Rhodian workshop (with much controversy). Louvre MA 2369. Photo: Author.
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was originally fashioned from several pieces of Parian marble (a fact that allowed some dramatic liberties to be taken with her drapery) and was recovered in multiple fragments. Her dress is complicated and seems to be made up of two overlapping garments a heavy himation and a sleeveless chiton that are shown folded and refolded multiple times. The arrangement and position of these garments is controversial, primarily because of the wind-swept environment that they indicate.30 Nevertheless, the complexity, doubling and overlapping of her dress added to the richness and complexity of her garments and thus allowed her sculptor the freedom to explore and expand the formal possibilities of her drapery. Alighting on her ship, waves crashing beneath its prow, Nike embodies everything that we have come to expect from the baroque mode. While there always remains a sense of underlying, bodily mass in her form, the Nikes sculptor has worked hard to cut his drapery loose from all real restraint. On the one hand especially at her stomach and breasts Nikes drapery cradles, clutches and clings to her powerful and highly provocative body, both describing and obscuring the sensual flesh beneath.31 On the other hand at her legs and hips Nikes drapery seems to have been released from its task of outlining the human figure and is allowed to become raw, expressive form in its own right. The energetic, the momentary, the ephemeral all these traditional aspects of nike- are captured here. The subtle, light incisions that run over her drapery further this effect. The small, concentric furls of drapery that sweep over her proper left hip and then rise away from her body proper at her pubis have almost nothing to do with the rational fall of wind-swept cloth (indeed, should not the gusts Nike rides have carried this fluttering filigree in the opposite direction?) but everything to do with a baroque illusion of force and dynamism, torsion and energy. There is no doubt that the drapery of the Nike of Samothrace stands at the zenith of the Hellenistic baroque, especially when it comes to her drapery. And once again, as we saw with the Pergamene Zeus, the conceptual concerns that governed her style and form seem to have some important precedents in the fifth and early fourth centuries BC that speak to a long standing interest in a baroque aesthetic. Sometime around 380 BC, the citizens of the small Peloponnesian city of Epidauros launched a program of monumentalization at the nearby healing sanctuary of Asklepios. Whether in response to the Athenian plague or other political factors, Epidaurian Asklepios had acquired an international reputation during the last quarter of the fifth century.32 This change in status was accompanied by a demand for sumptuous material votives and thus attracted a number of important sculptors from Athens and elsewhere to work on the expensive Pentelic elements of Asklepios new cult building.33
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Fig. 56. Nike from the Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros. An akroteria from the eastern pediment of the temple of Asklepios at Epidauros, Athens. Restored height ca. 1.7 m, Pentelic marble, ca. 380 BC. This figure may be the work of Timotheos; his contract is recorded on IG IV2 102A lines 88 90. National Archaeological Museum, Athens 162. Photo: Courtesy Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Athens; Gsta Hellner, negs. 1974/1161 & 1170. All rights reserved.
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Several of the temples akroteria, made by the workshops of Theo (IG IV 2 102 BI ll. 9596; the rest of the sculptors name does not survive) and Timotheos (IG IV 2 102 BI ll. 8890) respectively, are particularly complex and seem to reflect a concern with a baroque aesthetic.34 A major fragment of a Nike, probably carved by Timotheos, from the northeastern corner of the temples roof provides important material evidence (Figs. 56) and helps to establish a concern with baroque effects at the very beginning of the fourth century BC.35 A rarely seen view from below reveals how the figure was conceived as a dynamic spiral of transparent drapery holding the slender torso of a Nike at its center (Fig. 6). Radiating from the proper right side of her torso, the curl of her mantle is characterized by and understood as a series of spiraling, concentric arabesques. While appropriately impressive from below, as all akroteria were, the dramatic effect of the sculptors skill is particularly impressive in front of the figure (Fig. 5). Here the arced edge of the Nikes mantle merges with, or emerges from, the unpinned peplos below her left armpit. Cupping and emphasizing her left breast, this mannerist fold curls up past the torso and then billows outwards in a blossom of windswept drapery let loose by the figures upraised right arm.36 Under the Peloponnesian sun, the sense of shadow, energy and movement created by this dynamic furl of drapery would have been potent. The subtle, light incisions that run over her drapery expand this effect. While these supple drapery effects are stunning (made all the more so by the fact that the preserved fragment, was carved from a single piece of Pentelic marble) the notion of a solid human figure as the conceptual and physical center of the composition is never lost. A series of parallel folds that rhythmically duplicates the opening on the right side of the Nikes peplos twist forward around her slender right side and serve to anchor the vortex of drapery on a figural axis that is itself set in torsion. The sculptors final tour de force came in the upper stretches of the mantle which were slung high between the Nikes outstretched wings. When vividly painted with an array of brilliant colors, this mantle would have provided a stunning theatrical backdrop for the entire figural composition.37 The aesthetic effects at which Timotheos aims with his Nike seem quite baroque in nature. While a certain amount of classical restraint is evident in the figure, the underlying structure, the deeper aesthetic project seems very much the same. A similar thing can, and has, been said for the famous Nike of Paionios erected ca. 420 BC.38 The sculptor cuts his drapery loose from all practical concerns and treats his marble fabric as pure form that almost seems to exist in its own right and for its own sake. (It is almost as if Timotheos drapery creates its own formal reality. Indeed, how can we
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Fig. 7. Iris from the west pediment of the Parthenon. A fragmentary torso from the Parthenons west pediment, Athens. Parthenon West Pediment British Museum N. Preserved ht. 1.35 m, Pentelic marble, ca. 438432 BC, perhaps the work of Pheidias and his circle, although much controversy remains. Photo: Author.
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observe this sculptors obsession with undercutting and believe Carpenter when he writes: Classical drapery, being strictly functional to the bodily form it reveals, does not employ such cavernous penetrations of the solid block if only because there was no need to do so? 39 Hardly! A sculptor like Timotheos is a baroque virtuoso!) These effects would have been made more noticeable when the pieces were painted and set in the open air where the transparent, powerful arabesques of Timotheos marble would have created deep pockets of void and shadow and the billowing mantle of his Nike would have served as a theatrical background against which this potent carving took place. Of course, the sculptors of the temple of Asklepios were also looking backward, once more to the sculpture of the Parthenon. For example, figure N from the Parthenons west pediment (Fig. 7) displays very similar visual characteristics and offers, perhaps, the first real example of a baroque aesthetic as exemplified through drapery.40 Figure N almost certainly Iris wears a sleeveless chiton with a short kolpos pinched beneath a shining belt of bronze. She was winged, as two large cuttings in her back indicate, and rushes to her right. Her drapery is quite complex. In a manner similar to that seen on the eastern pediments Aphrodite, the sculptor of our Iris seems obsessed with the expressive potential of cloth. While Iris sculptor does keep his drapery close to the figure although we cannot be sure how restrained he was in this respect considering the damaged condition of the torso he more than makes up for this moderation by the wild surface textures that he brings into play. (It is also important to remember that large masses of free standing marble marble that was drastically separated from the core of the sculpted figure were quite possible for the Parthenon sculptors, witness the mantle of Hebe on the Parthenons east pediment, for example.) Each fold of Iris garment is itself sculpted, cut and re-inscribed becoming, in a way, an exaggerated caricature of cloths movement and energy. Stewart captures Iris sense of drama, energy and passion when he writes about the Parthenons east and west pediments as compositions:
...whereas the Olympia Master had relied upon posture and gesture to indicate the character or ethos of his subjects, these sculptors [of the Parthenon] now pressed anatomy and drapery into doing so as well. Choosing expressive effect over stylistic consistency (so much for one of classicisms supposedly key components!), they both engaged the spectator more closely and laid the groundwork for later masterpieces... Once more Protagoras would have approved, for tapping into the spectators feelings into his own subjectivity was crucial to getting the cosmic implications of the scenes across.41
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Fig. 8. Alkyoneus from the Great Altar at Pergamon. A view of the suffering Alkyoneus from the east frieze of the gigantomachy of the Great Altar at Pergamon, Pergamonmuseum, Berlin. Marble, ca. 180150 BC. Photo: Author.
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Figs 910. Head of a warrior from Tegea. A fragmentary head from the pedimental sculpture of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. Preserved ht. 32.6 cm, marble, ca. 350340 BC. This figure may be the work of Skopas or his workshop, although much controversy remains. National Archaeological Museum, Athens 180. Photo: Author.
Fig. 11. Face of a centaur from the Parthenons south metopes. A detail of a centaurs face from the south metope 2 of the Parthenon, Athens. South Parthenon Metopes British Museum 2. Preserved ht. of metope ca. 1.37, Pentelic marble, 447442 BC, perhaps the work of Pheidias and his circle, although much controversy remains. Photo: Katherine Schwab 2006.
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baroque within several well-known discussions that connect power, authority and various forms of classicism.43 To wit: there can be little question that the Golden Age of Classical Athens captured the imagination of Hellenistic poets and artists.44 Indeed, the idea that the baroque mode was itself a kind of classical form seems beyond dispute, especially when we consider the examples noted above.45If we are willing to allow for the fact that the artists of the Hellenistic age were aware of these early baroque examples, of this baroque tradition a conceit that hardly requires much imagination when we consider how closely Athena and Pergamon were connected in the second century, to give only the most obvious example then the baroque mode becomes more than the means by which dramatic, sculptural scenes were produced: it also becomes one possible means by which cultural authority might be expressed.46 It also seems plausible to suggest that by laying claim to established baroque modes, Hellenistic patrons and sculptors also lay (at least) implicit claim to aspects of the cultural canon that formed the apex of the classical vision of fifth-century Athens: the memory of Pericles, his circle and their titanic building program, a building program that was both classical and baroque in both form and scale. In the same way that Augustus and his sculptors made use of the fifth-century doryphoros for the Primaporta type and in a way similar to how the designers of, say, Washington D.C. made use of Classical architectural form, so the kings and generals of the Hellenistic age may have used the Hellenistic baroque to suit their particular dramatic purposes and to suggest, engage and (even) appropriate the classical cultural legacy from which the tradition came. Indeed, recent work on the Little Barbarians dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis by Attalos I argues for something like this kind of understanding of this important set of baroque masterpieces.47 To be sure, the baroque is still a genre style, and as such was used for very particular types of subject matter, but it also was a style that had been tested for centuries within the context of theatrical scenes of conflict and strife, the Parthenon pediments most famously.48 This kind of symbolic, stylistic retrospection and the denotative weight it carries has been discussed in the context of neo-Classicism and archaistic sculpture of the Hellenistic age; perhaps we could see the baroque in a similar light?49 Stewart has recently noted: Clearly, by the mid-Hellenistic period [the baroque] was certainly the classic (i.e., exemplary, canonical, or definitive) way to render pathos. But compared with, for example, Alkamenes Prokne, it is hardly classic in the more accepted and restrictive sense of manifesting the standard classical virtues of unity, balance and moderation of
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Notes 1 For stylistic innovation in Hellenistic sculpture and the Hellenistic baroque see, for example: Krahmer 1924, 13840; Bieber 1961, 36; Stewart 1979, 1379; Pollitt 1986, 116; Smith 1993, 18; Stewart 2006, 1589; Schultz and von den Hoff 2007, 19. Some (see, for example, Havelock 1981, 113 and Carpenter 1960, 2089) would see the invention of the baroque as a late third- or second-century phenomenon. 2 For stylistic continuity in Hellenistic sculpture and the Hellenistic baroque see, for example: Schuchhardt 1959; Brown 1973; Stewart 1979, 5, 9, 11; Ridgway 1990, 312; Robertson 1993, 84101; Ridgway 1999, 78, 402; von den Hoff 2003 and Bergemann 2007. 3 Robertson 1993, 845. 4 Stewart 2006, 158. 5 See, for example, Robertson 1981, 1947 or Stewart 1993. 6 See, for example, Robertson 1993, 901; Fullerton 1998b; Donohue 2005; Osborne 2007 and Schultz 2007a on this particular issue of style, rhetoric and innovation.
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Indeed, most discussions of the Hellenistic baroque revolve around the definition of a set of stylistico-formal characteristics and the debate about when and where these characteristics can be observed in the archaeological record of the Hellenistic period. See, for example, Krahmer 1923/24; Thiersch 1931, 3647; Alscher 1957, 1624; Laurenzi 1965; Merker 1973, 1114; Stewart 1979, 925; Pollitt 1986, 11318; Andreae 1988, 11434; Osada 1993; Kunze 1996; Moreno 1994, 12746, 359413, 60546; Pollitt 2000; Ridgway 2000a, 3942. Pful 1930 is an important early step away from this tradition. Stewart (1993; 2005 and 2006) and G. Zanker (2004) provide the powerful and fundamental exceptions in English. 8 Style is here defined as the distinct combination of physical and formal characteristics scale, mass, shape, color, line and texture evident in a given set of objects and as the conceptual frame that these physical and formal characteristics mediate. In general terms, the arguments that sustain the use of stylistic analysis as a tool for investigating social and cultural meaning were first formulated by Winckelmann and then refined by Arnold Houser (1951), Meyer Schapiro (1953) and Ludger Alscher (1956; 1957). For the importance of style specifically in archaeological theory and practice, see Shanks and Tilley 1992, 13771, and Hodder and Hutson 2003, 5965, both with bibliographies. For socio-stylistic analysis of material culture, see Borbein 1973, Barnard 2001, 11542; 16893, Hlscher 2002, Elsner 2003 and now Bol 2004, all with bibliographies. Recent case studies by Shanks and Tilley 1992, 172240, Neer 2002 and Olson 2002, 13762, have reestablished the significance of this traditional type of analysis for contextual archaeologists and art historians. 9 Recent case studies in which the model is applied to Greek sculpture: Harrison 1988, Brouskari 1999, 1652, Touloupa 2002, 6876 and Bol 2004 among innumerable others. General critique of the normative model: Shanks and Tilley 1992, 1389. Specific critique of the model: Ridgway, e.g. 1997, 3646, and 2004, 53956, 62739, Keesling 2003, 3662 and Schultz 2003b and 2004a. 10 Recent case studies in which the model is applied to Greek sculpture: Palagia and Coulson 1998 with comprehensive bibliographies. General critique of the regional interaction model: Shanks and Tilley 1992, 1401. Specific critiques of the model applied to Greek sculpture: Jockey 1998, Mattusch 1998, Ridgway 1997, 2412 and Pollitt 2000. 11 Classic case studies of the model applied to Greek sculpture: Kjellberg 1926, Carpenter 1929 and Schuchhardt 1930. Recent examples of the same: Brouskari 1999, 5771, Symeonoglou 2004 and Harrison 2005. Personal styles in Greek sculpture: Pollitt and Palagia 1996 with comprehensive bibliographies. General critique of the motor habit variation model: Shanks and Tilley 1992, 141. Specific critique of the model applied to Greek sculpture: Carpenter 1960 and Ridgway, e.g. 1981, 58, 159 91; 1997, 237320. 12 Early case studies of the model applied to Greek sculpture include Krahmer 1923/24, Pfuhl 1930, Buschor 1947 and 1971 and Alscher 1956 and 1957. Recent examples of the same with various refinements in theory and practice: Pollitt 1972 and 1986, Whitley 1991, Neer 2002, Hlscher 2002, von den Hoff 2007 among many others. 13 Alcock 2002; Scheer 1993; 2005. See also Stewart 2004, 2206, and, now, Erll and Nnning 2008. 14 Osborne 2007, 3. 15 Which does not mean that it should be neglected; Jean Rudhardts famous remark regarding ancient Greek religion La difficult principale de ltude des religions me
7
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aber nicht nur auf ihrem utopischen Gehalt und auf ihrem kunstgeschichtlichen Doppelgesicht (sie ist Hhepunkt und Neuansatz zugleich), sondern entscheidend auch auf ihrem berragenden formalen Niveau. Die Werke, die wir im Original besitzen und erneut sei hier auf die Parthenon-Skulpturen verwiesen , sind von blutleerer Idealitt und kalter Perfektion weit entfernt. Sie zeichnen sich vielmehr aus durch kraftvolle Prsenz, sprhende Lebendigkeit, Reichtum im Detail. Affekte scheinen gebndigt, doch nicht unterdrckt, Ideales greifbare Realitt zu sein. Das oft bemerkte Gleichgewicht zwischen Freiheit und Gebundenheit hat sich im Verlauf der Hochklassik offenbar leicht zu Freiheit hin verschoben, ebenso das Gleichgewicht zwischen Naturalismus und Stilisierung zum Naturalismus hin. Der gerwaltige Torso des Poseidon (abb. 7) aus dem Westgiebel des Parthenon z. B. wird an unmittelbar sinnlicher Ausstrahlung von vergleichbaren hellenistischen Werken wie den Gttern und Giganten am Groen Fries des Pergamonaltars (abb. 8) nicht bertroffen. Die die Sinne ansprechende Form trgt aber entscheidend dazu bei, die Barriere der Fremdheit zwischen dem Betrachter oder Interpreten und dem klassischen Werk zu berwinden und schlielich einen Prove des Verstehens oder des Sich-Aneignens in Gang zu setzen. See also Stewart 2008, 1402, on the emotional effect of the Parthenon pediments. 29 The Nike of Samothrace: Bieber 1961, 1256 with earlier bibliography; Stewart 1993; Knell 1995; Hamiaux 1998, 2732; Ridgway 2000a, 1509; Stewart 2005. Michel Ellenbergers (2000) compilation of poetry and descriptions of the baroque masterpiece is a delight and worth tracking down. 30 Hamiaux 1998, 27; Ridgway 2000a, 155. 31 Of course, Nike as a type has been highly eroticized since the middle of the fifth century, another conceptual continuity worth noting. See Stewart 1997, 1489; Ridgway 2000a, 154, and now Munn 2009. 32 Contextual evolution of the sanctuarys development: Wickkiser 2003 and Riethmller 2005. Architectural evolution of sanctuarys development: Burford 1969; Gruben 2001, 14353, and Riethmller 2005 with bibliography. 33 Athenian sculptors and Epidauros: Burford 1969, 155 and 202 (Table 10); Yalouris 1992; Smith 1993; Ridgway 1997, 41 and 366; Feyel 1998; Rolley 1999, 2038; Levendi 2003, 1012, and Schultz 2007a, 16572. Sculptural and stylistic context of the decorative program: Brown 1973, 515; Yalouris 1992: 823; and Schultz 2007, 16579. 34 IG IV2 102 AI-BI, a famous inscription excavated at the site, records the expenses involved in these artists work and provides a contemporary picture of their various sculptural assignments. Translation and commentary: Roux 1961, 84130, and Burford 1969. Interpretation and context: Feyel 1998 and Schultz 2007a. 35 Style: Yalouris 1992, 6774. Social context: Schultz 2007a. 36 The sensuality of the specific pose and the connection of Nike to Aphrodite: Gulaki 1981, 8990; Picon 1993 and Levendi 2003, 99. 37 Painting of ancient architectural sculpture: Tiberios et al. 2002 and Brinkmann 2004 with bibliography. 38 Stewart 1990, 8992. 39 Carpenter 1960, 202. 40 West pediment Poseidon N: BM London M (arms and back). The fundamental discussions of the piece are given by Brommer 1954 and Palagia 1998, 489 with ns. 15564. For the Periclean building program see n. 24 above.
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