CHAPTER VI

MACEDONIA AND GREECE

I.

ANTIGONUS GONATAS AND MACEDONIA

IN becoming king of Macedonia, Antigonus had succeeded to a kingdom likely to test his abilities as a statesman. Since Cassander’s death the country had had no enduring government; it had been mutilated, partitioned, tossed from hand to hand, and finally ravaged and reduced almost to anarchy by the Gauls. The first task of any ruler worth the name would be reconstruction; and for that the prime requisite was peace, and peace was not easy to secure. Antigonus had indeed disposed of the various pretenders, but the spirit of faction that made those pretenders was alive, and to win over the adherents of Lysimachus or Antipater time was needed; and whether time would be given depended on Pyrrhus, with whom Antigonus had not yet settled. Still, the spirit of faction was only political, and might be overcome; it had almost ceased to be local or racial. For the Macedonians had become one people, with enough sense of unity to absorb foreign elements, like the Autariatae settled there. They were of mixed blood; for the Macedones, probably an undeveloped Greek tribe akin to the Thessalians, had by conquering Emathia imposed themselves on earlier Anatolian, Illyrian, and Thracian layers of population. The existence of people formerly speaking an Anatolian language can be seen in place-names like Edessa, and in the name of the national weapon, the sarissa; the original name of Pella, Bounomos, is probably Illyrian; many Thracian elements have been traced in the names of places and persons. The country had developed a peculiar pantheon of its own: Thaulos, god of war; Gyga, afterwards equated with Athena; the hunting goddess Gazoria; Zeirene, the Macedonian Aphrodite; Xandos, god of light; Totoes, god of sleep; Darron, god of healing; Aretos, the local Heracles; the mysterious Bedu, the eponymous deity of Edessa, god, now of air, now of water; the Echedorides, nymphs; the Arantides, probably Furies; the Sauadai, water spirits; and of course the Thracian Sabazius-Dionysus. Some of these divinities may be Greek, but some are certainly much older; Gyga, who occurs in Lydia, might be Anatolian; Bedu corresponds to nothing Greek, the name being variously transliterated in compounds; while Thaulos, who in Macedonia became Ares, in Thessaly became Zeus, a fact which seems conclusive. But by the third century the Olympians (of whom Apollo and Artemis were perhaps of old standing in the country) were annexing or superseding the old gods, as Attic Greek was in the cities replacing the Macedonian dialect. Race and religion were fusing into a common type, though later the fashionable Egyptian and Syrian cults obtained a footing; the subordinate princedoms had vanished, and, though some local feeling persisted in Orestis, there was a Macedonian people, whose upper class at least had eagerly assimilated Hellenic culture. Even in the Greek coastal cities men had begun to call themselves Macedonians, and in Thessalonica this was usual, though Amphipolis remained Greek enough to worship Philip V. Cassandreia alone, which represented Olynthus, had perhaps no national feeling; there Cassander and Lysimachus had been worshipped, and for three years it had lain under a proletarian tyranny and had finally been stormed for Antigonus; it may have been disaffected toward his rule, for it can hardly be chance that, alone of the cities, its people never called themselves Macedonians.

Two generations of war, combined with wholesale emigration to the new kingdoms, had weakened the country; it was no longer Philip’s Macedonia, and probably could hardly raise 30,000 men. The heaviest loss had fallen on the aristocracy, and Antigonus and his successors often had to employ Greeks in their administration. The people were essentially sound and capable, and, given peace, the country would soon recover; but at present Antigonus only held his throne on condition that he should not call out the Macedonians. As yet he commanded little loyalty; he was king only in default of a better; if he could not give peace, there were others. His real support was his mercenaries, whom he kept distributed throughout the coastal cities. As regards revenue, Macedonia was never a rich country, and had been well plundered by the Gauls. The land tax produced little over 200 talents a year; some Greek cities were better off. This tax was probably, as elsewhere, fixed by tradition to 10 per cent, on the harvest, and though it would rise if wheat rose in price, wheat in 275 had long passed its maximum and was falling back toward the standard price of Demosthenes’ time. The silver mines of Mt Pangaeus would assist the revenue, and there were gold mines, though seemingly of small account; but the deposit of alluvial gold which had helped Philip to conquer Greece had been worked out. Macedonia produced timber and pitch besides corn, but had little else to export, and consequently could never do a large trade; so that Antigonus could only substantially increase his ordinary revenue either by developing his State domains like Ptolemy II, of which there is no sign, or by conquering and taxing Greek cities, which was not his policy. As in 275 he can hardly have possessed any reserve, finance must at first have been an ever-present difficulty.

The king was for most purposes the State, and his purse the Treasury; consequently the State domains, the ‘King’s Land,’ were his possession. There was probably no King’s Land in Macedonia proper, unless the State owned the forests. For Macedonia had been, and still to some extent was, a kingship of the heroic type; and (whatever the case elsewhere) the natural explanation of the constitutional rights, so jealously guarded, of the Macedonian people under arms is that the kingship had grown out of the nation and not vice versa; if so, the king can never have possessed the soil of Macedonia proper, and the Macedonian peasant probably owned his own farm. But in the conquered districts, like Chalcidice or (later) Paeonia and Atintania, doubtless the whole soil became, theoretically, the king’s; for in Cassander’s reign there was King’s Land in Chalcidice. Out of this he gave estates to his friends, and also maintained his military strength by granting lots to settlers. The lot was held on a heritable tenure, the settler paying land tax and rendering military service; probably the king could re-enter for failure to serve, and as grants ended with the king’s death1 it was seemingly customary for a new king to confirm titles, probably on payment of a fine, like the crown tax in Egypt. These military lots must have been in origin inalienable, but were now freely alienable, subject doubtless to the obligation to serve. The king however (as with freehold land in England to-day) still retained the right of escheat, though of little value; there is no sign that he ever granted lands out and out, as the Seleucids sometimes did, for that imported that the land should be joined to some city and become city-land, and the position of a city in Chalcidice was hardly that of Ephesus or Smyrna. The State domains not granted out were cultivated for the king by tenants or serfs, and produced much corn.

Outside Macedonia proper and Thessaly, which he governed directly (the latter as head for life of the Thessalian League), Antigonus, like all the kings, governed his possessions through generals with military powers; there were two for Greece, one later for Paeonia, and presumably one each for Atintania and Chalcidice. Under the generals, or under himself in Macedonia and Thessaly, were epistatai, governors of cities or groups of cities. In the Greek coastal towns of Macedonia, the epistates or (if he governed several cities) his lieutenant had some control over the Assembly; a decree of Thessalonica bears at its head the names of this lieutenant and a board of harmostai. As these cities were also garrisoned, and as part of their old city-lands had become King’s Land (they of course retaining enough to live on), their autonomy was strictly limited. In Greece proper Antigonus only employed this system of epistatai very exceptionally and under compulsion of events, and the city Assemblies were never controlled; probably also Cassandreia was fully autonomous, and its Assembly uncontrolled, as under Cassander. In Thessaly, though the cities were governed by epistatai, their Assemblies were uncontrolled, the governor’s name never appearing on decrees; and the same was the case in Macedonia proper. For one system must have applied there to all the principal cities; but while Pella (and therefore Beroea) was now an autonomous city on the Greek model, there was an epistates in Beroea (and therefore in Pella); but as no epistates’ name occurs on Pella’s unique decree, it follows that the Assemblies of the Macedonian cities were, like the Thessalian, uncontrolled. Pella dated by some priesthood and not by Antigonus’ regnal year; and the enacting words of its decree, ‘be it decreed by the city,’ though known elsewhere, were the regular formula in some Thessalian cities, as Gonni and Phalanna,—another instance of the intimate connection between Thessaly and Macedonia. City Assemblies therefore were formally controlled only outside Greece and in districts governed by a general, i.e. on a military basis; but, later, Thessalian cities are found obeying the king’s direct orders, even in domestic matters like grants of citizenship; his headship of the league was treated autocratically. Antigonus made Pella again the capital and substituted on his coinage its goddess, Athene Alkis, for his father’s Poseidon, god of the lost seas. He built Stratonice (Stratoni) near Stagirus, and three Antigoneias, one near Cassandreia and two later in Paeonia (near Tremmik) and Atintania1, commanding the two great passes into Macedonia. Presumably these Antigoneias were the seats of the generals who governed Chalcidice, Paeonia, and Atintania.

The day of the professional long-service Macedonian army was over, and that army was again a levy of farmers called up when needed; only the guards, and a few Macedonians in important garrisons like Corinth, were permanently under arms. Antigonus’ standing force was his mercenaries,—Greeks, Illyrians, and northerners. But Greek mercenaries had to be engaged and paid by the military year (nine or ten months), and expected allotments of land when past service; consequently for war Antigonus regularly hired Gauls from the Gallic kingdoms in Serbia and Thrace, who at first were cheaper and could be discharged when no longer needed. Later the Gaul mastered the market conditions, and Gauls, obviously time-expired mercenaries, were settled in Macedonia. The Bodyguards or Staff, and the Royal Pages, remained as under Alexander. But two other things changed; when, is unknown. In the old heroic monarchy one of the chief bonds of society must have been the ‘kin’, and the idea was still not quite dead in Alexander’s time, for the army at Opis reproached him for introducing Persians into the ‘kin’; but ‘Kinsman’ ultimately became a mere title, granted by the king. Similarly Alexander’s Companions (not the cavalry), last remnant of the king’s original retinue, had still ridden with him in battle; but the Companions finally became merely the ‘Friends,' again a title, lower than ‘Kinsman,’ conferred by the king. These formed a council with advisory powers only, but were still useful for filling offices.

The Macedonian people under arms still retained their constitutional powers, those of the old national asmbly of the heroic monarchy. But both monarch and people had come under the influence of Greek ideas. Greek writers called the assembly of the Macedonian people in arms to elect a king or try a treason case an ecclesia, as though it were the Assembly of an autonomous city; later their rights were to be crystallized under a Greek formula. Antigonus himself, saturated with Greek thought, trained by Greek philosophers, and with his principal friends all Greeks, may at first have seemed to the Macedonians a strange sort of national king; even his royal style was not the customary ‘King of the Macedonians,’ but ‘King Antigonus, son of King Demetrius, Macedonian,’ possibly a relic of the time when he had only been a king in exile, with claims upon Asia. He was of course a national king, constitutionally elected by the army. But he answered very much to the description of a Successor given in Stoic literature (Suidas, Basilía no. 2); he had found no established succession waiting for him, but had won his kingdom at Lysimacheia, and could only hold it by administering it well; his rule was founded on competence, not on birth. He was therefore anxious to find some unassailable theoretic basis for his kingship. Ptolemy II found such in being a god. But Macedonian kings, though worshipped in Greek cities, even in Cassandreia, had never been gods in Macedonia, and Antigonus was not likely to break with the national tradition, for Zeno’s friend had no fancy for being a god at all; the hearty snub he administered to some poet who so addressed him1 shows that he regarded the thing as a sham; and apparently he was never worshipped by anyone anywhere. He therefore sought the basis of his kingship in satisfying the demands of philosophy. To the Cynics the ideal king was Heracles, labouring incessantly for mankind; but this did not take one far, for every king worked hard. Then the Stoics said that as a king had to account to no one, you needed one who would know of himself how to conform to the Universal Law; the philosopher alone was such an one, but, as in real life philosophers were not kings, the philosopher must stand behind the throne and advise. Antigonus met this by inviting Zeno to Macedonia; but Zeno, unable to tear himself from Athens, sent his pupil Persaeus to Antigonus as his spiritual director. But the Stoics went further. With an eye on Ptolemy, they refused to approve of a king, however hardworking and enlightened, who treated the State as his private domain, and taxed his people as though their goods were his own; the true view was that kingship was the possession of the State. It was a startling phrase; but its unknown author was thinking, not of ethics, but of property; he was suggesting that a king, as opposed to a tyrant, could only tax his subjects with their consent. Antigonus went beyond this, for he laid stress on the ethical side of the idea; his son Halcyoneus had been ill-using some subjects, and Antigonus, after rebuking him, said ‘Do you not understand, boy, that our king-ship is a noble servitude?’ It has a very modern ring; for the first time it was now laid down that the king should be the servant of his people. The theoretic basis of the new Macedonian monarchy was to be the duty of service .

II.

ANTIGONUS AND HIS CIRCLE

Owing to the inclusion of Athens in his sphere Antigonus could not have set up another intellectual centre in Macedonia, even had he so desired; but, following Menedemus’ example, he formed a literary circle of his own; some of his friends came to Pella at his marriage, others appeared later; some spent their time between Pella and Athens. The circle was entirely Greek; the chief Macedonian writer of the time, the epigrammatist Poseidippus of Pella, lived in Alexandria. Poetry, history, and philosophy, in which Antigonus was interested, were all represented; but science, which to a Stoic had no meaning, he left to Alexandria. Aratus was Court poet; beside the marriage hymns , he wrote a Praise of Antigonus and some poems for Phila; and it was at Antigonus’ request that he produced his much-lauded Phaenomena, an astronomical poem, which owed its success to its illustration, drawn from the utility of the stars to sailor and husbandman, of the Stoic doctrine that the Supreme Deity does care for His children on earth. Other poets of the circle were Antagoras of Rhodes, best known for his beautiful epitaph on his friends Polemon and Crates of the Academy, and Alexander of Aetolia, writer of tragedies and mimes; while Timon of Phlius, the ‘Sillographer,’ a pupil of Pyrrhon the Sceptic, who wandered into many places besides Pella making money by preaching to men the worthlessness of wealth, almost belongs to the poets, for his name lived through his Silloi, an amusing skit on other philosophers written later in Athens. Whether the Craterus who compiled a history of Athens from her inscriptions —a very modern idea—were really Antigonus’ half-brother, as tradition asserts, is disputed; but history was worthily represented by Hieronymus, who in old age wrote at Antigonus’ court his history of the Successors from the death of Alexander to (apparently) that of Pyrrhus, a history in which he himself had played a not undistinguished part. He was the highest product of the reaction against the rhetorical school; his aim was not effect, but truth. Possibly he was the first historian to trace, in Demetrius, the development of character. But he had not the preservative of style, and his work, like much else of the time, was allowed to perish. It has been suggested that his place may be with Thucydides and Polybius; certainly it is difficult to read those books of Diodorus which very imperfectly reproduce part of his history without feeling that something really great lies behind them.

Philosophy was officially represented by Persaeus, who spent his life in Macedonia, and wrote for Antigonus the usual treatise on Government, and another on the Spartan constitution, showing that Antigonus studied his enemies. But Persaeus was not man enough to take Zeno’s place; he became the courtier, perhaps the boon companion; that Menedemus hated him is illuminating. More important were the appearances at Pella of the wandering semi-Cynic, Bion of Borysthenes, the first to popularize philosophy; the resemblance of some of his ideas and sayings to those of Antigonus points to some closer association than we know of. Low-born, perhaps a liberated slave, Bion was a new influence which was to spread far. On the surface he was full of flaws. He could be very vulgar; he could not refrain from displaying his wit, and none escaped its sting—Pyrrhus, Antigonus (who helped him and whom he really honoured), Persaeus, every lesser man; the Diatribe which he perfected—a method of talking with your audience instead of lecturing—easily lent itself to abuse, and he is called a patchwork sophist, who played to the gallery; even his admirer, the great Eratosthenes, accused him of prostituting philosophy. But Eratosthenes also said that all this was merely outer husk; there was a genuine Odysseus under the beggar’s rags. We can just distinguish traces of the real Bion, the man who protested against the belief that heaven would visit the fathers’ sins on the children, and whose pity for a tortured frog gives a glimpse of humanity towards animals strange at that epoch. There was a power in him that could draw even Rhodian sailors to his lectures; and if he had no new message to men, he forced them to listen to the old ones. And the one connected fragment of his teaching left is simple and manly enough. Not to seek wealth; to realise that happiness depends on yourself and not on circumstances; to do your duty, and be faithful in little as in much. Spread your sails, if you will, to the fair breeze; but should it change, bear without complaint what Fortune sends, and see that, if she strike you down, she strike down a man and not a worm—words which were still remembered in Pella two generations later.

One unique event may also be mentioned here: the Mauryan Emperor Asoka, who was converting Northern India to Buddhism, subsequently sent missions to several Hellenistic kings, including Antigonus. It is pleasant to let fancy play round the meeting of the Stoic king and the Buddhist missionary; but it is not known if Asoka’s envoys reached Macedonia.

III.

MACEDONIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS

We turn to the relations of the new Macedonian kingdom with the outer world. Here the most important thing, Antigonus’s measures to keep out northern barbarism, is utterly lost; all we know is that he succeeded, but, like Philip V, he must have been perpetually fighting on his northern frontier, though only one doubtful allusion to such a campaign remains. From 276 to 168 his dynasty was to be the shield of Greek civilization, a task which they performed far better than Republican Rome was to do; to their success high tribute was paid later even by their enemies, Polybius and their Roman conqueror Flamininus.

In reviewing Antigonus’ relations with Greece two things must be emphasized: Macedonia was now fast becoming completely hellenized, and merely formed another unit of the Greek circle, more powerful than others and rather more mixed in blood; and Antigonus was, first and foremost, the Macedonian king, and regarded things from Macedonia’s standpoint, which was that, as a united Greece would be stronger than Macedonia, Greece must not unite against her. Demetrius had sought in Greece a base for Asiatic conquest; Antigonus sought safety for Macedonia. The antiquated idea that Antigonus’ object was to conquer as much of Greece as possible has recently been revived, but is quite untenable on the known facts; he possessed a definite conception of something which may be called his sphere, beyond which he did not mean to go. The key of this conception was Corinth; while he held Acrocorinthus, Greece could not unite; and as Corinth safeguarded Macedonia, so he was prepared to do everything necessary to safeguard Corinth. In 275 Corinth was not safe; it had no land communication with Demetrias, Euboea was probably independent, and the sea was Egyptian; but after Pyrrhus’ death he established Corinth’s communications, and here, for security’s sake, he applied Cassander’s policy of garrisons. Certainly in 275, beside Corinth, he held another important point, the Piraeus; but the Piraeus was held for Athens’ sake, not for Corinth’s, and as he wanted Athens in his sphere only as his intellectual capital he did not apply to her Cassander’s policy, but revived that of Alexander, which had seemed dead, and left Athens free and ungarrisoned. This then was Antigonus’ sphere: Corinth and its communications, for safety; Athens and all that Athens implied, for culture; this and no more. He governed Corinth and the Piraeus, like his other external possessions, through generals; in Corinth his half-brother Craterus, and in the Piraeus the Carian Hierocles, who had proved his loyalty, but in a manner which Athenians could hardly forgive.

At Athens, Antigonus’ friends had overthrown the Nationalist government after Lysimacheia and seized power; it may have been a spontaneous swing of opinion, for possibly after his victory there was for a time a friendly feeling. The government restored the single superintendent of the administration, and held a specially splendid celebration of the Great Panathenaea of 274, designed to show that their side, no less than the democratic Aetolians, had deserved well of Greece; for this festival Antigonus’ partisan Heracleitus of Athmonon adorned the stadium and dedicated to Athena a series of pictures illustrating Antigonus’ victory in ‘his struggle against the barbarians for the deliverance of the Hellenes.’ The government also passed a long decree in Phaedrus’ honour, which seems like an answer to Demochares’ decree of 280 for Demosthenes; its date is now very uncertain and has even been placed after the Chremonidean war1, but in the writer’s opinion it probably falls soon after 275. Antigonus’ relationship to Athens at this time is difficult to define. Athens was called free; she held her own forts, except Munychia and the Piraeus, and sent sacred envoys (hieromnemones) to Aetolian Delphi; and she was not yet, apparently, offering sacrifices for Antigonus, as she did later. ‘Suzerain’ seems too explicit a word for Antigonus’ position ; one might suppose Athens was his free ally, but that alliance is never mentioned; perhaps the relationship was undefined, and merely illustrated that favourite conception of the time, Homonoia or a union of hearts; Athens was the most-favoured city, Antigonus’ spiritual capital. But he was behind the government if required, and he held the Piraeus; it was not a position which commended itself to earnest Nationalists. The idea, drawn largely from stage plays, that Zeno’s Athens was decadent can hardly be accepted; there was not much decadence about the men who fought the Chremonidean war, and Athens was still ‘Hellas of Hellas,’ the centre of the world’s thought. Wealth and power might pass to others; Athens ‘alone had the secret of the path which raises men to the heavens.’

Demetrius’ one-time possessions in Central Greece—Boeotia, Phocis, Eastern Locris—lay outside Antigonus’ sphere, and he never sought to recover them. In the Peloponnese the circumstances were peculiar; in 275 he still happened to hold a remnant of Demetrius’ former kingdom—Troezen, and some of the seven Achaean towns (Olenus being the seventh) not yet in the Achaean League. He did not withdraw; Macedonian kings were not altruists. But he did not reckon Peloponnese as in his sphere, so he made no effort to recover these towns after losing them, a process completed in 272. Possibly in 275 Craterus could be called his general in Peloponnese; by 271 there was probably nothing south of Corinth for him to govern. The system on which Antigonus afterwards regulated his relations with the Peloponnese, relations conditioned by Sparta’s ineradicable hostility to Macedonia, will be considered later; but prior to the Chremonidean war he really left the Peloponnese to Sparta; she would not be a danger north of the Isthmus unless Egypt supported her, while Megalopolis and Argos, though independent, acted as a check on her and so in his interest. North of Corinth he possibly had some arrangement with Boeotia, which was not his enemy and was soon occupied with other matters; and as Athens was his friend, and Pyrrhus abroad, he apparently had in 275 only one potential enemy of immediate importance, Aetolia.

There was, however, one Greek city outside Greece sufficiently powerful and energetic to affect his policy: Rhodes. The island city was prospering exceedingly, and her merchants would usually throw their weight upon the side of peace, but she was ready to fight against any aggressor for the balance of power or for a free sea; she was the scourge of piracy, and the skill of her sailors was proverbial. Her government was aristocratic, a limited democracy in which the leading families exercised a steadying influence; and she was to try an extraordinary experiment, a system of food liturgies under which the rich undertook to look after a certain number of poor, possibly one of the reasons of her stability; in Demetrius’ siege she had dared arm her slaves. She was the centre of international banking and exchange, and when the city was shattered by the earthquake which in 225 overthrew the Colossus, and a commercial crisis threatened, every Greekspeaking king and many cities came to her aid with lavish contributions in money, kind, and labour, the greatest demonstration of solidarity which the Hellenistic world ever made. Perhaps her famous maritime code is the only Greek law which ever remained law in a modern state; for some believe that, owing to its adoption by the Antonines, fragments of it were taken up into the Byzantine compilation called ‘The Rhodian Sea-law’ and thus reached Venice.

IV.

THE AETOLIAN LEAGUE

Aetolia was the parvenu among Greek states; she was backward in culture, and still raided her neighbours. But she had bought her place with her blood; she had never yielded a foot’s breadth to Macedonia, and she had saved Greece from the Gauls. As her young men went out freely as mercenaries, her field force was probably not over 12,000; but her mountainous wooded country, with bad roads, few cities, and numerous hill forts, was almost unconquerable. She had no capital, the largest city being her seaport Naupactus; the federal centre was the temple of Apollo at Thermum, which was not a town, but the ‘place’ where the Aetolians stored their booty and kept their archives. During the Lamian war they were still only a Folk, loosely organized in a cantonal League, or rather Commune, such as was the common inheritance of most states of Northern Greece; but after it they reorganized their League, and began to collect to some extent into towns; the units which composed the third century League were partly towns and partly country districts, whose villages were perhaps grouped round some fort. The towns at first were probably not all autonomous cities, but doubtless such continued to develop throughout the century. The League in 275 was an intensely democratic body; power resided in a primary Assembly, which was open to every citizen; the Assembly was the people, the civil counterpart of the army, the people under arms, from which it sprang. The Assembly met twice a year, before and after the campaigning season (though extraordinary Assemblies are known); the spring session, Panaetolica, was held in different towns in turn, the autumn, Thermica, at Thermum, when the year’s booty was stored and the annual officials elected. The Assembly controlled all policy; it made alliances, admitted new members, conferred League citizenship, sent and received ambassadors, elected religious envoys, and decided on peace and war; if the Aetolians had the reputation of being too fond of war, at least war was declared by the men who were themselves to do the fighting. The Assembly also made laws, but these were revised periodically by a board of nomographoi. The head of the League was a General elected annually, who was both President and Commander-in-Chief; re-election was only possible after some years’ interval. The officials were a cavalry leader, a secretary, an agonothetes to celebrate festivals, and seven financial stewards; there was no admiral, for at sea Aetolia only employed privateers.

The Council consisted of members elected by the League units in proportion to their military contingents, and was meant to sit permanently. It was the Federal court of justice, but otherwise had little power; its function was to keep touch with the officials, and decide such current matters as could not wait till the next Assembly. But, as the League grew, the Council, which ultimately numbered well over 1000, became too large to sit permanently, and during the century it threw up a small committee, called Apokletoi, who did sit permanently with the General; as they are never mentioned in inscriptions, they were presumably, like the British Cabinet, unknown to the Constitution. Aetolia never solved the problems inherent in government by mass-meeting; consequently, when the League’s subsequent expansion made it impossible for all citizens to attend the Assembly, the Apokletoi, with the General, became the real governing body; they took all foreign policy into their own hands, though the Assembly still kept the power of peace and war. As the Apokletoi also sat in secret session, the government between 275 and 220 developed from the most democratic into the least democratic in Greece. This evolution accompanied a similar evolution in the character of the Aetolian League, apparently very much for the worse; but it must be remembered that Aetolia produced no historian, and that her later history depends on the very vigorous narrative of an enemy. Art and literature were not Aetolia’s strong point; her national dedications at Delphi, with one exception, monotonously reproduced her generals and the Delphic gods; her one active man of letters, the tragic poet Alexander, lived elsewhere. Aetolia’s control of Delphi, however, was to be honourable to both parties; under it Delphi led the two movements which so greatly increased the manumission of slaves and the number of ‘asylums,’ movements which grew in force as the Aetolian control of Delphi became more complete. The numerous statues of Aetolian women dedicated at Delphi probably show that the position of women in Aetolia was higher and more free than was usual in some Greek communities; and of the known third-century poetesses, Alcinoe was an Aetolian, and Aristodama of Smyrna visited Aetolia and recited her epic on the glorious deeds of the Aetolian people in various League cities, where she received high honours.

The Aetolian League had already incorporated Western Locris and Malis, and was to expand greatly between 275 and 220. A country joining the League joined, not as a whole, but as a number of separate cities; hence part of another League, like Acarnania or Phocis, could be detached and taken in. All cities of the Aetolian League remained autonomous as regarded their institutions, territory, and citizenship; but sometimes a city joining assimilated its magistracies to those of the League, and the League alone could coin. A city whose territory adjoined that of the League entered into sympolity with it, that is, its citizens became for all purposes Aetolians,—a considerable attraction as Aetolia increased in power, though possibly some cities joined only to avoid being raided. A city at a distance entered into isopolity, an exchange of citizenships; the citizens of such a city potentially became Aetolians, but their Aetolian citizenship only came into play if they settled in, and (as they had the right to) became citizens of, some city of the Aetolian sympolity. In its expansion the Aetolian League set the example, afterwards followed by Boeotia and Achaea, of a League using its federal citizenship to enlarge its territory. This was a new thing in the world, but the events of 279 had given Aetolia new ambitions; she now aspired to be Macedonia’s rival, and felt strong enough to conduct her own policy quite independently of either Macedonia or Egypt.

Her aim was to control the Amphictyonic League, whose peoples she henceforth regarded as her sphere. Amphictyonic judgments would assume a new importance with Aetolia as executive; in 278 the Amphictyons had claimed to impose a decree upon cities not parties to it; and later Aetolia took Amphictyonic judgments into her own hands. Aetolia, it is true, had no Amphictyonic vote; but the Aetolian League exercised the votes of every Amphictyonic people who joined it, the Aetolian Assembly regularly electing their hieromnemones. In 275 the Aetolian League had only three votes, two Malian and one Locrian; but Aetolia had the advantage of controlling the Federal centre, Delphi, and she had persuaded the Amphictyons to give Delphi the two ownerless votes, once Alexander’s, which would be cast as she wished. That Delphi was in the Aetolian League, as some think, seems impossible, for then Aetolia must have exercised the Delphic votes; she was really suzerain of Delphi, as Ptolemy of Delos, and she sometimes took upon herself to regulate Delphi’s internal affairs, and later planted settlers and kept a civilian governor in Delphi and set up there duplicates of her decrees. Aetolia’s intention to control the Amphictyonic League might seem to threaten difficulties with Macedonia, who, by her possession of Thessaly, was also an Amphictyonic power; and Aetolia also had a second aim, access to the Aegean. She had reached the Malian gulf, but had no good harbour there; her ultimate objective was to be Phthiotic Thebes on the Gulf of Pagasae, at present Macedonian, but a possible rival to Demetrias; this would throw her right across Macedonia’s communications with Greece. It seemed therefore as if both her aims must ultimately render a collision with Macedonia inevitable. In 275, however, she was still friendly to Antigonus; it remained to be seen if his accession to the Macedonian throne would alter the position.

V.

SOCIAL CHANGES IN GREECE

Certain changes which began to affect Greece as a whole between 275 and 217 can only be briefly indicated here. One was a growth in the feeling of humanity and in dislike of war and its laws, natural after the great struggles of the Successors. While Polybius in the second century was to emphasize only the senselessness of material destruction, Phylarchus in the third rebels, with an energy not before seen, against the sale of free captives, however legal; and some cities, even in Crete, bound themselves not to enslave each other’s citizens. Under Delphic inspiration, some cities were to attempt to obtain from the Hellenistic world recognition of themselves and their territories both as ‘holy,’ that is, immune from war as a temple was immune, and as ‘asylums,’ that is, immune from reprisals or private war; the practical result was perhaps not great, but it shows the trend of men’s thoughts. Arbitration begins to increase enormously, and every boundary award is a strangled war; some cities even had treaties to refer all questions to arbitration. Certainly awards were not always observed, but at worst this meant, not war, but more awards; and if some cities seem to spend much time in boundary litigation, arable land was scarce and even a few farms made a difference. In connexion with the spread of arbitration may be noticed the growing system of having all private lawsuits in a city adjudicated by a commission from another city, which tended to approximate the various cities* legal outlook; and as these commissioners only sent to the juries a small residue of cases which they had failed to settle informally, one may almost call it the beginning of an international system of equity. Stoicism had begun to accustom men to the idea of a better treatment of slaves; manumission by will steadily increased, and the time is approaching when the slave will be able to purchase his freedom1.

There were changes too in the economic position. The centre of the world’s commerce had shifted from Greece to Asia, and with the substitution of Rhodes for Athens as the principal trade centre of the Aegean, Athens was becoming definitely, poorer; on the other hand Aetolia and some of the islands were growing richer, and, while Corinth maintained her commercial position, other cities beside Rhodes—Delos, Pagasae, possibly Ambracia—greatly improved theirs; Chalcis had the finest market-place in Greece. The great emigration to Asia was over, and a return flow was perhaps already beginning after 250, though some of the Asiatics met with may be liberated slaves. The extinction of various old families at Athens has been traced; but everywhere new men had become wealthy, and things like the number of new festivals, the growth of and immunities accorded to the Dionysiac artists, the spread of social clubs with a member’s subscription (eranoi), and the fall during the century in the rate of interest, testify to plenty of money. Alexander’s release of the Persian treasure had prior to 300 reduced the drachma to half its value, with a corresponding rise in prices; by the middle of the century it had largely recovered, but the effects of the great disturbance remained, the more so as wages had not risen with prices; working men were definitely worse off than in the fourth century, and the gulf between rich and poor had widened, which made for social unrest.

There was as yet no depopulation, but the process was beginning which would lead to depopulation and the introduction of alien stocks: the rich would not, and the poor could not, bring up families of any size. Toward the end of the century, as the inscriptions show, four or five children were extremely rare. A one-child system had become common; beyond that, though two sons (to allow for a death in war) were still fairly numerous, only about one family in a hundred reared more than one daughter. Among seventy-nine couples who settled at Miletus with their children, many young, there were only twenty-eight daughters to 118 sons; there is only one explanation of such figures. Local variations occur, like the frequency of adoptions at Rhodes; but undoubtedly by the latter part of the century the curse of infanticide, especially female infanticide, was becoming fearfully common. Greece was beginning to overdo its secular precaution against hunger.

VI.

PYRRHUS

In 275, it is true, Macedonia actually had peace; but conditions were far from being stable. Ptolemy II had already married his sister Arsinoe, who claimed the throne of Macedonia for her son by Lysimachus, Ptolemaeus; and though Egypt made no open move for years, there was now a direct threat to Antigonus. But the actual cause of war was Pyrrhus’ return from Italy in the autumn of 275; he came with a grievance, for Antigonus had refused him help against Rome. He brought back only 8000 men and no money; but throughout his life he never lost hope that the next throw of the dice would be the lucky one. In spring 274 he invaded Macedonia with a large army, and the money to raise it can only have come from one quarter; he was subsidized by Arsinoe. Antigonus hired Gauls, but he was in a dilemma; he could neither safely withdraw his mercenaries from the coastal cities nor meet Pyrrhus with Gauls alone; he had to call out the Macedonians, though he knew the danger. Pyrrhus out-manoeuvred him and then attacked him while retreating; the Gauls died to a man; the Macedonians refused to fight and went over to the enemy; Antigonus escaped to Thessalonica, and Pyrrhus overran most of Macedonia and Thessaly. The Macedonians’ behaviour was quite consistent; Pyrrhus seemed the stronger, and perhaps he would give them peace, if Antigonus could not. But Pyrrhus as usual failed to gather the fruits of victory; he allowed his Gauls to plunder the royal tombs at Aegae in revenge for Lysimachus’ desecration of the royal tombs of Epirus, and opinion in Macedonia turned against him. He made no attempt to consolidate his conquest; he left his son Ptolemaeus to govern Macedonia, and went home to dedicate his spoils at Dodona. Antigonus began to collect his mercenaries, and by summer 272 had recovered much of the country; Pyrrhus perhaps withdrew Ptolemaeus in 272 because he had to. But Antigonus’ overthrow apparently led to the overthrow of his friends in Athens; the Nationalists, with some understanding with Egypt, returned to power and sent envoys to Pyrrhus; it seems also, from the evidence of coins and Macedonian proxenies at Delphi, that Aetolia was on good terms with Pyrrhus, which imports a cleavage with Antigonus; Pyrrhus had probably helped to rebuild Callium, where a statue was erected to him.

But Pyrrhus was already seeking a new adventure. Among his generals was the Spartan Cleonymus, who was unpopular and had been passed over for the kingship in favour of his nephew Areus; he persuaded Pyrrhus to reinstate him. In spring 272 Pyrrhus, leaving his son Alexander to govern Epirus, invaded the Peloponnese with his sons Ptolemaeus and Helenus and a large army, including Macedonian troops. He landed in Achaea, and announced that he had come to free Antigonus’ cities; all the Achaean towns which had not yet joined the Achaean League now did so, and that League and Messene sent envoys to Pyrrhus, while Elis joined him; Antigonus, who had lost Troezen, probably retained nothing south of Corinth. But Pyrrhus did not attack Corinth; he marched to Megalopolis, which, though free, opened her gates; she must have guessed that his objective was her enemy Sparta, and so must Sparta,, for if Areus, who was in Crete, really returned just in time, he must have already been recalled. Pyrrhus assured the Spartan envoys who met him at Megalopolis that he had no intention of attacking Sparta; but after some delay he entered and plundered Laconia, reached Sparta one evening, and camped, not wishing to enter in the dark. Meanwhile Antigonus saw that it was more important to follow Pyrrhus than to complete the recovery of Macedonia, for Pyrhus’ activities gave no hope of peace; victor or vanquished, he must trouble the world till he died. While Pyrrhus was advancing on Sparta, Antigonus was shipping his troops to Corinth; with him were- his illegitimate son Halcyoneus, the old Hieronymus, and his general Ameinias the ex-pirate, who hurried on by forced marches from Corinth with the advance guard. Sparta was Macedonia’s secular enemy; but as Pyrrhus had done with Carthage and Rome, so he had done with Macedonia and Sparta; he had driven two consistent opponents into each other’s arms. Lack of statesmanship can go no farther.

Pyrrhus’ assault on Sparta has given Plutarch occasion for one of the most stirring narratives in the Greek language, but from the military point of view the story, drawn from Phylarchus, is unintelligible; Pyrrhus attacks only at the one point where Sparta is well fortified, and Areus’ son Acrotatus, the hero of the defence, is posted at a part of the circuit where there is no fighting. Sparta was apparently surrounded by a palisade and ditch; and during the night before Pyrrhus’ attack the women, who had refused to be sent away to Crete, dug a deep trench opposite Pyrrhus’ camp and lagered waggons at each end. For two days Pyrrhus assaulted the place with relays of troops, while the Spartan women kept their men supplied with food and missiles; on the second day he almost broke through, and only failed because his horse was wounded and threw him. Then, when the defenders, too few to fight in relays, were utterly worn out, Ameinias arrived and threw himself into the city; the same evening came Areus with 2000 fresh men; and Pyrrhus had lost his chance. A message from Argos then made him clutch at a new hope; he does not seem to have been pursuing any plan which can be understood. The dominant party in Argos, led by Aristippus, was, as always, friendly to Macedonia; their opponents thought to overthrow them by calling in Pyrrhus, who broke camp and started for Argos. On the way Areus ambushed him, and Ptolemaeus was killed; but though Pyrrhus took vengeance for his son he lost time, and on reaching Argos found Antigonus established in an impregnable position on the hills above the town; he challenged him to come down and fight it out, but Antigonus naturally declined to humour him.

The Argive government in alarm begged both kings to retire from Argos, and she would be friendly to both; both agreed, but Pyrrhus at least had no intention of keeping his word, for that night his partisans opened a gate and he poured in troops. But the Argives were roused by the noise and flew to arms, while Antigonus, in response to his friends’ request for help, came down to the plain and sent Halcyoneus forward to the city. Pyrrhus himself reached the market-place, but dawn showed him the Aspis full of Halcyoneus’ men; he tried to retreat, and was caught in the inextricable confusion of a soldiers’ battle in the narrow streets, where he was stunned by a tile thrown on his head by an old woman from a house-top; before he could recover his senses, an Illyrian mercenary of Antigonus’ recognized him, hacked off his head, and gave it to Halcyoneus, who galloped away with it and flung it at his father’s feet as he sat in his tent with his Council. Hieronymus, who was doubtless there, says that when Antigonus recognized it he struck Halcyoneus with his staff, calling him accursed and barbarian, and then covered his face with his cloak and wept; ‘for he remembered the fate of his grandfather Antigonus and his father Demetrius, and he knew not what Fortune might yet have in store for his house.’ Pyrrhus’ army surrendered; Antigonus received Helenus kindly and sent him back to Epirus, and himself rendered the funeral rites to Pyrrhus’ corpse. On the spot where Pyrrhus fell the Argives raised a temple to the goddess Demeter, who, their legend said, had taken a woman’s form to slay him.

VII.

GREECE AFTER PYRRHUS’ DEATH

With Pyrrhus’ death Hieronymus’ history apparently ended, and with it ends all possibility of a sympathetic understanding of the Macedonian kingdom; henceforth we possess only stories told by enemies, who had not even access to the Macedonian archives; the friends of Macedonia in Greece produced no historian. Antigonus was left master of the situation in the Peloponnese, where his partisans seized power in Megalopolis, Argos and other cities; Sparta could not at once quarrel with the man who had saved her, and had Antigonus desired to recover and garrison his father’s possessions, there was nothing to stop him. But he deliberately held his hand; he interfered neither with Achaea’s new League nor with Sicyon’s re-established democracy; he was anxious to return to Macedonia, and was content that Argos and Megalopolis, the natural checks upon Sparta, were governed by his friends; Craterus, if need were, could support them, as he did attempt to support Aristotimus, a man who seized power in Elis and was soon afterwards assassinated for cruelty. Antigonus probably spent 271 in reorganizing Macedonia. But he had realized that the Egyptian fleet could have prevented him reaching Corinth, had Egypt so desired, and he therefore took Corinth’s communications in hand, and as land connection with Demetrias was impossible, he annexed Euboea as an alternative route, perhaps in 270; he garrisoned Eretria, which had to be taken, and Chalcis, which became a third key fortress linking Corinth to Demetrias, and placed them under Craterus’ generalship; Histiaea perhaps remained free but in his friends’ hands, like Athens and Argos. Perhaps now, perhaps later, he also took Megara and garrisoned Nisaea. These possessions completed his system north of Corinth; except Athens, he was to conquer no more of Greece. Corinth’s communications were now well knit up; but the Piraeus remained a separate generalship under Hierocles, as it was held for the sake of Athens, not of Corinth.

A sad story is connected with Eretria’s loss of freedom. Before its capture, Menedemus was falsely accused of intending to betray the city to his friend Antigonus, and was exiled. He went to Oropus, where subsequently Hierocles saw him, and thought to please the exile by relating how Antigonus had taken Eretria. But the old man’s heart was with the city which he had done so much to render illustrious; he flung at Hierocles the foulest insult he could think of, and went to Antigonus to plead for Eretria’s freedom. It is said that Antigonus would for his sake have withdrawn the garrison, but that Menedemus’ enemy, Persaeus, dissuaded him; it was perhaps this which made Menedemus say that Persaeus might be a sort of philosopher, but as a man he was the worst that was or ever would be. Menedemus became deeply dejected, and died soon after at Antigonus’ court.

Antigonus had also to consider his disturbed relations with Athens and Aetolia. The Nationalists seemingly governed Athens during 271, for late in the year they passed the decree in honour of Demochares which indirectly branded Phaedrus and the moderate pro-Macedonians as oligarchs; but soon afterwards Antigonus’ friends regained power, which was all he sought, and Athens became again the most-favoured city; Antigonus used to visit her, and his half-brother Demetrius the Fair, son of Demetrius I and Ptolemais, who was barely sixteen in 270, studied there under Arcesilas, now head of Plato’s school, the Academy. With Aetolia, Pyrrhus being dead, Antigonus succeeded in coming to an arrangement. He attached little importance to the Amphictyonic League himself, for he controlled only the seven votes of his Thessalian possessions—two apiece for Thessaly, Magnesia, and Achaea Phthiotis, and one for Perrhaebia; Aetolia and her friends, the little peoples, could therefore outvote him, and he could not afford to send his men to be outvoted. No hieromnemones therefore had gone or were to go to Delphi from his Thessalian possessions. On these considerations his agreement with Aetolia was based; she was to be free to incorporate in her League any Amphictyonic people outside of Antigonus’ Thessalian possessions, and to manage the Amphictyonic League; in return she promised Antigonus neutrality while he lived. She publicly emphasized the fact that her engagement was neutrality, not alliance, for Delphi gave honours to Egyptians and Spartans; but she kept her undertaking never to assist Antigonus’ enemies, and this treaty formed a cornerstone of his power hardly less important than that with Antiochus.

One result of the treaty was that Aetolia insured herself against Pyrrhus’ son Alexander, who now ruled Epirus, by an alliance with Acarnania, lately Epirus’ vassal but Macedonia’s traditional friend; subsequently, however, for reasons unknown, she turned round, and disgraced herself by aiding Alexander to recover Acarnania and taking as payment Stratus, Oeniadae, and the south-eastern part of the country; Alexander probably governed Acarnania as titular head of the Acarnanian League. Aetolia’s expansion eastward after her treaty with Antigonus was obviously difficult; but in the absence of an established Delphian chronology detailed reconstruction is impossible. Her expansion was apparently disputed by Boeotia’s new leader Abaeocritus, with support from Phocis and Achaea, and a struggle ensued for the Locrian seaboard. In 272 Boeotia acquired Opuntian Locris, but lost it again. At some period Phocis had three Amphictyonic votes, that is, she held Epicnemidian Locris; but Aetolia secured one corner of Phocis, and before 261 the four Phocian archons had been replaced by three Phocarchs, modelled on the Boeotarchs, showing that the Phocian League, though with diminished territory, was Boeotia’s ally and under her influence. In 261 Phocis was at war, presumably with Aetolia; and about this time no Boeotian hieromnemones appear at Delphi, showing Boeotia also was at war with Aetolia. By this time Aetolia had acquired nine Amphictyonic votes, by incorporating in her League Malis (two), Epicnemidian and Western Locris (two), the Aenianes (two), the Dolopes (one), Doris (one), and part of Phocis with one vote; this number gave Aetolia control of the Amphictyonic body, for of the twenty-four votes the seven controlled by Macedonia were never exercised. Boeotia ultimately secured Opuntian Locris again for good—Opus, Halae, Larymna,—Aetolia retaining Epicnemidian Locris and exercising Eastern Locris’ vote. It seems as if this position lasted from the end of the war (? by 258) to 246,—Boeotia and Phocis allies and Aetolia exercising nine votes; but this period is utterly obscure. The noteworthy thing is that all these states conduct their affairs as though Macedonia did not exist, a sufficient proof that Antigonus confined himself to his sphere.

VIII.

GREECE AFTER THE CHREMONIDEAN WAR

By the time that the Chremonidean war broke out, Antigonus had definitely secured his position in Macedonia, and could trust the people, who doubtless realized that the war was not of his seeking; when his Gauls mutinied he could use his Macedonian troops to destroy them, and when Alexander of Epirus invaded Macedonia he could not raise the country, and was defeated and driven out again. Once Antigonus had won the loyalty of the Macedonians to himself and his house it was won for ever; and even when his line was extinct and his country dismembered, Rome was for long not safe from pretenders calling themselves Antigonids. The war relieved Macedonia of all further danger from Epirus; probably Antigonus now recovered Atintania1, which had belonged to Cassander, thus severing Epirus from Illyria, gaining access to the Adriatic, and securing the Aoüs pass, by which every western invader entered Macedonia. When he retook Paeonia, also once Macedonian, and secured the Axius pass into Macedonia, is uncertain. After Brennus’ invasion one Dropion had reorganized Paeonia as a League, which honoured him as king and founder, a combination of monarchy and federalism on the Epirote model; but he left no successor.

The Chremonidean war worked a considerable change in the Peloponnese. Before it broke out, eastern Arcadia—Tegea, Mantinea, Orchomenus, and Caphyae—had quitted the Arcadian League, which had subsisted since Alexander’s time, and joined the Spartan alliance; after the defeat of Areus of Sparta at Corinth, Mantinea apparently rejoined the League, and Areus’ son Acrotatus, attempting to recover the city, was defeated and killed by the League’s General, Aristodemus of Megalopolis, possibly with Achaean help. Aristodemus, called ‘the Good,’ was leader of the permanently anti-Spartan democratic majority in Megalopolis, and therefore Antigonus’ partisan. Soon after 259 he made himself tyrant of Megalopolis, though a mutilated Arcadian League still existed for a time; he adorned his city with temples and a pillared hall built from Spartan spoils, and his tomb, though a tyrant’s, was never disturbed. The leader of the anti-Spartan majority in Argos, Aristomachus, son of Antigonus’ partisan Aristippus, also seized power in Argos; he was capable and evidently popular, for he founded a dynasty of which inscriptions remain, a rare event, as a tyrant’s name on stone seldom survived his rule; in some places, as Ilium and Nisyrus, its erasure was provided for by a standing law. In 261, as in 272, Antigonus could have recovered his father’s possessions in the Peloponnese, but again he refrained; he was content with supporting his friends, the subsequent tyrants of Argos and Megalopolis. Possibly he supported tyrants in three other cities, Orchomenus, Hermione, and Phlius, where tyrants appear later, but every tyrant was not necessarily his man; Abantidas, who in 264 seized power in Sicyon, was Aristomachus’ enemy. Neither was every third-century tyrant of one type; there was little in common between Aristodemus, head of the greatest party in his city, and a proletarian dictator like the inhuman Apollodorus at Cassandreia. In supporting tyrants, Antigonus had reacted to an idea of Antipater’s; Sparta, with Egypt behind her, had threatened his position north of the Isthmus and had to be held in check for the future, and his tyrants enabled him to do this without wasting his mercenaries on garrison service or unwillingly ruling part of an unwilling Peloponnese himself. Late writers assert that Antigonus, like Antipater, also set up tyrants; but this is doubtful, for Polybius gives it only as what men said, and was perhaps merely quoting a popular saying or song1. To support tyrants was morally indefensible, but so were the aggressive wars of the democracies; the difference was that one shocked Greek sentiment, the other did not. In his Peloponnesian system Antigonus was merely doing what seemed politically expedient, without regard to morality; and he paid the inevitable price. The price was Aratus and the Achaean League.

Athens, after its surrender, Antigonus took into his own hands, and proceeded to apply Cassander’s policy; like most other kings, he ultimately came back to Cassander. Glaucon and his brother Chremonides were exiled and went to Egypt, where Glaucon became priest of Alexander in 255, and Chremonides commanded an Egyptian fleet; but there were seemingly no executions. Antigonus, however, garrisoned the Museum and all the Attic forts, which were placed under the general in Piraeus; he removed the existing generals and magistrates from office, appointed new ones himself, and governed Athens as a subject town through an epistates as Cassander had done through Demetrius of Phalerum; if the Assembly still passed decrees, they were few. Possibly the franchise was limited; but it does not appear that Athens lost the right of coining. The passing of Athens’ greatness was dramatically marked by Zeno’s death in autumn 261. He was the last survivor of the renowned group of philosophers who for forty years had rendered the city illustrious; what he felt in living through the struggle between his friend and his home none can say. He was a foreigner and the friend of Athens’ enemy; but the Athenians honoured him because he was also a noble man. At Antigonus’ request they gave him a public funeral; and Antigonus himself, adapting a phrase made current by Zeno’s rival Epicurus, lamented that with Zeno he had ‘lost his audience.’ But only Athens could have paid to the dead the tribute of the beautiful words, touched with strong feeling, which still remain; the draftsman of the decree for him, after recalling Zeno’s long services to philosophy and the insistence with which he had preached virtue and self-control to the young, said simply: ‘ He made his life a pattern to all, for he followed his own teaching.’ Athens did not long remain a subject town; after the peace of 255 Antigonus, secure in the command of the sea, withdrew the Museum garrison and the epistates and restored Athens’ autonomy; and she again became the most-favoured city, governed by his friends in his interest, and able to conduct her own affairs, like her war with Alexander of Corinth and her arbitration with Boeotia in 244. But the old relationship was not fully restored. Antigonus was now definitely suzerain; the pro-Macedonian government voted him honours and a statue, and regularly offered sacrifices for ‘the king’1; and his general in the Piraeus, now the Athenian Heracleitus of Athmonon, continued to hold the forts important for naval purposes, Salamis and Sunium, though Eleusis, Phyle, and Panactum were restored to Athens. Athens was again Antigonus’ spiritual capital; Lycon, now head of Aristotle’s school, was his friend, and when he desired to institute a birthday feast in honour of his dead son Halcyoneus it was at Athens he founded it; Hieronymus of Rhodes, the Peripatetic, had the management, and every year the philosophers of the city, including even the patriotic Arcesilas, dined together at Antigonus’ charges. But with the Chremonidean war Athens had for the last time played a leading part in the world’s politics. Never again was she to possess real power; her importance henceforth is purely intellectual.

It was probably late in 253 or in 252 that Antigonus’ newfound sea power was paralysed by the revolt, with Ptolemy’s support, of Craterus’ son and successor Alexander, which deprived him of much of his fleet, for Alexander proclaimed himself king in his generalship, Corinth and Euboea; Eretria honoured him as Benefactor, and he made Chalcis his capital, where his wife Nicaea played patroness to the poet Euphorion, an inferior imitator of Callimachus. War followed between Alexander, aided by some pirates, and Antigonus’ friends, Athens and Aristomachus of Argos, supported by Heracleitus; Heracleitus defeated an attack on Salamis, but by about 249 Alexander had compelled both cities to make peace. Antigonus’ actions during this war are utterly obscure; he may have been trying to save some of the Cyclades from Ptolemy. Megalopolis gave him no help, for about 252 Aristodemus had been assassinated by two Megalopolitan exiles, Ecdemus and Demophanes, friends of Arcesilas, who in his classroom had helped to keep alive the spirit of patriotism native to Plato’s school. The two were to earn further fame as ‘liberators’ at Sicyon and Cyrene; but they were soon overshadowed by the man who in 251 appeared on the stage which he was for so long to fill.

IX.

ARATUS OF SICYON

Aratus of Sicyon is one of the most perplexing personalities in Greek history. A hero and afraid; an upholder of constitutionalism who broke laws at his pleasure, a political idealist who allowed a good end to justify the most immoral means; neither virtuous nor great, but secure in a devotion often denied to the great and virtuous; inspired by a high idea which possessed his whole being and gave him amazing success against heavy odds, and at the end a traitor to that idea and to his whole life’s work: such was Aratus, largely drawn for us by himself.

He was born in 271, son of Cleinias, a democratic leader during Sicyon’s brief freedom. In 264 one Abantidas slew Cleinias and made himself tyrant; but Abantidas’ sister saved Aratus and he grew up under Aristomachus’ protection in Argos, to reward Aristomachus later by trying to assassinate him. In 252 Abantidas was assassinated, and ultimately one Nicocles, apparently a partisan of Alexander of Corinth, seized the tyranny. There were many Sicyonian exiles in Argos, and Aratus, who was now twenty, capable and athletic, decided that they might overthrow Nicocles; Ecdemus and Demophanes came from Megalopolis to help them, and they hired some brigands, from which, it seems, few districts in Greece were free. Aratus’ preparations were skilfully made, and on a night in May 251, after some exciting adventures, he surprised and freed Sicyon without bloodshed. Antigonus at first thought that Aratus might be useful to him, and sent him twenty-five talents, which Aratus used in freeing prisoners. He indeed felt that Sicyon, in view of Alexander’s possible enmity, could not stand alone; but instead of joining Antigonus he united his Dorian city to the League of the eleven Achaean towns, whose constitution he greatly admired. But an abortive attempt made by Aratus on Corinth alarmed Alexander, and he too safeguarded himself by an alliance with the Achaean League. It was not Aratus’ doing, but it placed him officially on Ptolemy’s side, and as Sicyon was full of the troubles that generally occurred when exiles returned and claimed compensation for their former property, he decided to seek Ptolemy’s help. He was shipwrecked on the way, but reached Egypt, interested Ptolemy, and returned with 150 talents, which enabled him to satisfy all claims.

About 247 Alexander died, and Nicaea took over his kingdom and mercenaries. Antigonus at once saw a chance of recovering Corinth; his son Demetrius’ wife Stratonice had left him, and Antigonus sent him to offer Nicaea his hand and the future queenship of Macedonia. Nicaea fell to the bait; but though she handed over Corinth, she kept Acrocorinthus, and without it the city was valueless. The story goes that just before the wedding, when Nicaea and her friends were on their way to some festival, Antigonus slipped away unperceived, climbed Acrocorinthus with his guards, and knocked at the fortress gate; the dumb-foundered sentry opened it, and Antigonus again held the key of his system. How he recovered Euboea is unknown, but he did not restore the great generalship of Corinth; he made Persaeus the philosopher epistates of the city, with a garrison commander at his side. Certainly Demetrius did not marry Nicaea. Tricking a woman, even the widow of a traitor, leaves an unpleasant impression; but the story comes from a source bitterly hostile to Macedonia. Antigonus recovered Corinth either in 247 or, at latest, some time in 246, and there is a story that after it he made another attempt to win Aratus, giving out that the young man had been disillusioned in Egypt and was ready to join him; he would receive a warm welcome. But there was no question of Aratus joining him. His mind was becoming full of one dominant thought: the Peloponnese must be freed from tyrants, and he must free it. And to him the worst of all tyrants was Antigonus.

CHAPTER VII.

ATHENS