history

Lecture 6: Classical Greece and the Macedonian Empire

Lecture 6: Classical Greece and the Macedonian Empire

 

A. The Persian Wars

What we know of the Persian Wars comes from the man called “the father of history”, a Greek from the island of Halicarnassus named Herodotus. 

Herodotus grew up in the 460’s B.C. and was fascinated by the improbable Greek victories over the massive Persian Empire which occurred between 499 and 479 B.C. and so he set out to discover and chronicle how such a thing could have happen.  In doing so, his inquiry serves as the first true work of history that survives to us – though others that did not survive likely existed as well.  We also have to note that much of Herodotus reads like historical fiction – while he chronicles a meeting that took place between Darius and his generals, for example, he does so in the format of recording conversations between the parties involved that he could not have had knowledge of: A general advises Darius to do something and Darius responds in a certain way, all in a narrative format, like dialogue or conversation.  Remember, Herodotus is inventing the notion of historical inquiry and deserves more credit for his creativity, than blame for his rhetorical excesses.  No, he did not hear the actual conversations, nor discover a diary that transcribed them, but his narrative expresses the realities of attitudes and situations that occurred during the events he describes: Darius may not have said exactly what Herodotus writes he said, but his dialogue accurately reflects that of an absolute Persian ruler in conference with his generals and Satraps and, in any case, Herodotus gets the chief facts right concerning the events of the two Persian wars.  Herodotus presents the facts that surround events and presents various motives for the actors involved and invites his readers to decide concerning them.  His history also serves as a work of anthropology and ethnography – not just a study of war and politics, Herodotus also presents a study of people, cultures and societies involved in these conflicts.

The background that led to the Persian wars lies in the colonization of the Greek poleis and the rapid conquests of the Persian state after 550 B.C.  You’ll remember I discussed the Persians under Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Chaldean Empire, quickly followed by Persian victories that led them to control all of Mesopotamia, Anatolia and the Levant – in fact, when he attacked the kingdom of Sardis, the king there went to the oracle at Delphi and asked whether he should fight.  The oracle told him “if you fight, you will destroy a great kingdom” so he goes ahead and fights Persia.  After the Persians defeat him and conquer the city, he sends a petulant note back to Delphi, telling the oracle that it was wrong.  He receives a return message saying “didn’t you think your kingdom was great?”  In any case, these victories also brought them into conflict with Greek colonies and poleis that had been established on the west coast of Turkey, called Ionia, and in the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean over the preceding 200-odd years. 

The conflict between the two peoples began when the Persians attacked Egypt under Cyrus’ son Cambyses.  Remember that I mentioned how the Persians under Cyrus were generally tolerant of the cultures and traditions of the peoples they conquered, unlike the bloody Assyrians… well, when Cambyses conquered Egypt, he displaced all the Egyptian priests and tried to impose Zoroastrianism on the Egyptian people.  This led the Egyptians, and the Greeks who had been trading with them for two centuries, permanently suspicious of Persian motives and ensured that most Greek poleis would not surrender to the advancing Persian forces unless faced with overwhelming odds.  After Cambyses’ death, Darius ascended to the throne of Persia. In 499 B.C., partially inspired by events in Athens about a decade earlier, a number of Ionian Greeks revolted against their Persian masters.

On the surface, it would have seemed that the Greek poleis were destined to become provinces of the Persian Empire – Persia had a massive advantage in number of troops and in weaponry as well as resources and the Greek poleis were far too wealthy to be left untouched for long by an empire that was so oriented to conquest as was Persia – perhaps a Greek-Persian conflict would have been inevitable.  It began after these revolts by the Ionian Greeks.  After Darius sent a force to defeat the rebels while Athens sent 20 warships to support the Ionian Greeks.  This became the pretext for a full-scale invasion of Greece, which Darius began in 490 B.C.  He hired an Athenian politician named Hippias who had been one of the tyrants overthrown 20 years before by the people who elected Cleisthenes and placed him in charge of the invasion force.  Athens appealed to Sparta for help, but the Spartans said that they were in the middle of their religious festival and could not come right away – in truth, the speculation is that Sparta probably would not have minded at this point if Athens would have been defeated, since they felt that they could have cut a deal with the Persians, but in any case, the Persians landed on Attica, take the poleis north of Athens and then march on Athens itself.  The Athenian army marches up to meet them at the plain of Marathon, a narrow field that helps to negate the Persian army’s size advantage.  The two sides fight and the Athenian army wins – the general then sends a runner named Pheidippides to run back to Athens with the good news; he runs the 25 miles back to the Acropolis, tells the Council “rejoice, we conquer” and drops dead.  The Persians with no other choice sail away and all Greece waits for the renewal of the invasion – which won’t take place for 10 more years.

Over the course of that decade, the various Greek poleis fell to squabbling about how to best prepare for the next Persian invasion.  In Athens, a general named Themistocles emerges as the strategic leader (strategoi) of Athens. By 483 B.C., he uses the profits from a newly discovered silver mine to build a huge naval fleet, reasoning that Athens could never hope to defeat the Persians on land again, but could defeat them at sea.  This would prove vital to Athens’ survival. He also negotiates with Athens’ neighbors to form a mutual defense alliance. Darius spent the rest of his life after his defeat at Marathon preparing to re-invade Greece but he died in 486 B.C. before he could get his act and his army together.  The task thus fell to his son, Xerxes, but he was distracted by a rebellion in Egypt for a few years before he could turn his attentions to Greece and restoring his father’s honor. 

By 481 B.C., it becomes obvious that the Persian invasion is coming soon, so the Greek poleis begin forming alliances: Sparta heads the Peloponnesian League, which includes all the poleis of the Peloponnese except Argos, while Themistocles’ Athenian alliance soon joins forces with the powerful polis of Corinth, and, in 480 B.C., after Xerxes set out with an army of over 250,000 to invade Greece and conquer it once and for all, with the Peloponnesian League in a universal Greek alliance known as the Hellenic League.  Like 10 years before, the Greeks have to avoid fighting battles in large, open spaces and fight instead in narrow mountain passes and valleys to neutralize the Persians’ numerical superiority.  The pass the Greeks choose to defend is at Thermopylae, where a battalion of 300 Spartans under King Leonidas would try to hold off the entire Persian invasion long enough for Athens and the other poleisto get the navy together and destroy the Persian supply ships.  Amazingly, Leonidas’ Spartans hold the pass until a traitor shows the Persians how to go around it – the Persians then send the majority of the force around the pass and, with the rest, attack and kill all the Spartans except one who was sent back to Athens to ask the Greeks to surrender.  Themistocles evacuates Athens, sending the women and children to islands in the Aegean Sea and getting all the men to man the fleet, joining up with the rest of the Spartan army to attack the Persian fleet when it met up with the Persian army at Salamis as it tried to cross into the Peloponnese.  This is the largest naval battle in history to this point and it ends with the Greek fleet in total victory.  Xerxes’s own ship was almost sunk by an Athenian warship – terrified, he leaves behind a portion of his army and runs himself and the majority of his forces back to Persia.  This left-behind force is then attacked by the remainder of the Spartan army at Plataea in 479 B.C. and defeated, thus ending the Persian wars in victory for the Greeks.

These victories mark both a turning point and a watershed in Western history.  Had Greece fallen to the Persian Empire, it is unlikely that Western Civilization, as we have come to know it, would exist.  All the achievements of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the invention of drama and of philosophy and the notion of democracy, really only established in 508 B.C., less than a decade before the first invasion of Darius, all would have been unlikely to have occurred under the absolute law of a Persian Empire.  In fact, Herodotus attributed the Greek victories in part to the fact that “all Persians lived like slaves under their King” while Greeks “lived as free men, masters of their fate” – a belief widely accepted in Athens and the rest of Greece in the years following the wars.  These improbable victories also gave Greeks, particularly Athenians, a sense of superiority and destiny – that their way, their diké, truly was the right way – a similar attitude is recognizable in the US after defeating Great Britain to win independence or after WWII.  However, these attitudes and beliefs would also be the seeds of trouble after the Persian threat was clearly gone – as Athens and Sparta would now turn to see each other, and each other’s philosophies, as the enemy.  Within 50 years of the final defeat of Persia, Athens and Sparta and their respective allies would be fighting each other in the ruinous and fratricidal Peloponnesian Wars, which would end up weakening both, and Greek civilization, so much that it would eventually be conquered, not by Persian invaders, but by Alexander the Great and, eventually, Rome.

 

B. The 1st Peloponnesian War

After the Persians were defeated and Xerxes sailed back to Persia, the Greek poleis had to believe further invasions would come, after all, the Persians had invaded twice in the past dozen years.  The next year, the Spartans, always suspicious of outsiders, pulled out of the Hellenic League created by the Decree of Themistocles and concentrated on domestic issues and the leadership of their Peloponnesian League.  Without the Spartan military machine, the remaining smaller Greek poleis in Ionia and the Aegean islands turned to Athens and invited them into an alliance of mutual defense.  This group became known as the Delian League, as it met on the small island of Delos, which was considered sacred to the god Apollo.  Athens was supposed to be ‘first among equals’ – the most powerful partner, but a partner nonetheless.  The smaller island poleis contributed money to the League while the larger poleiscontributed ships and soldiers.  Decisions were made by having one representative from each polis meet on Delos and vote on issues – like the UN, one polis = one vote.  From the beginning however, Athens dominated the Delian League, which contained over 150 individual poleis.

After a brief conflict between the Athenians and Spartans over the status of an ally, the people of Athens elected Pericles was elected as one of the strategoi in 460 B.C.E. and subsequently reelected for 30 years – during that time, he became the singular leader of Athens and the period between 460-429 B.C. is often referred to as the Periclean Age, which coincides with the Golden Age of Athens.  Pericles built the Parthenon, rebuilt the acropolis, patronized art and literature, made numerous civic improvements to Athens and made certain that the thetes had a voice in government.  His era was also a time of terrible war between Sparta and Athens and exploitative tactics by Athens towards her Delian allies, who went from being partners to effectively being possessions of the Athenian Empire – more on Pericles later in the lecture.

There are two Peloponnesian wars – the first begins in 460 B.C.  Two of the poleis within the Peloponnesian League, Corinth and Megara, end up in a border dispute over their colonies.  After Sparta makes it clear that they will likely rule in favor of Corinth, Megara petitions Athens for help – Athens, eager to gain access to Megara’s ports, accepts the invitation and war begins.  At first, Athens has the slight advantage until Pericles makes a mistake.  The Egyptians rebel against Persia in 455 B.C. and ask the Delian League for help.  Pericles commits the League to help for both ideological reasons of opposing Persia and exporting democracy, as well as commercial reasons, since Egypt is the greatest source of grain and food in the ancient world – sound familiar anybody? – But unfortunately for Pericles, the Persians destroy much of the Athenian fleet in 454 B.C., leaving Athens vulnerable to attack by all her enemies, Persia as well as Sparta.  Pericles now seizes the Delian League treasury from the island of Delos and moves it to Athens to rebuild the Athenian fleet – this marks the final transition from Delian League of equal partners to an Athenian Empire. By 449 B.C., both sides are exhausted and each desire peace. Callias’ Peace of 449 divided the “world” into spheres of influence, Athenian and Persian, with a line drawn across Anatolia and in the sea – just like the treaty Spain and Portugal will sign in the 15thcentury that led to Brasil being colonized by Portugal and the rest of South and Central America being colonized by the Spanish - powerful people have been dividing the world between themselves without asking anyone affected for a really long time! When the five-year truce with Sparta expires in 446 B.C. a new 30-year peace treaty is signed between the two powers which recognized the Athenian Empire as well as Spartan control over the poleis of the Peloponnese and central Greece.  The two powers now settle in to a Cold War situation and Pericles was free to use the Delian treasury to improve the city of Athens.

Remember that Athens was a democracy after the reforms of Cleisthenes so it is not like Pericles acted as a dictator in instituting his policies – most of them had broad-based support from the majority of the Athenians.  One of the reforms enacted by Cleisthenes allowed for the citizens of Athens to vote to exile one man from the city per year for a period of 10 years – they did not lose their property, but did lose power and influence. This process was called “ostracism”, named after the broken pieces of pottery upon which the votes were cast, called ostrakon.  Anyone could name any other person to be ostracized and, as long as over 6000 votes were received, the person with the most votes was then ostracized.  In many years after 508 B.C., no-one was exiled in this way, but in the years after 446 B.C., the people of Athens voted to ostracize the chief opponent to Pericles’ policies three years in a row – clearly, the people of Athens were supportive of Pericles’ policies.

 

C. The Age of Pericles

The Age of Pericles was about many things, among them, massive building projects which saw the Acropolis rebuilt after the Persians had almost destroyed it and the construction of the Parthenon.  Pericles also led the state to patronize drama.  The origins of the drama lay in the performances of the Homeric epics – a man would take a lyre, a harp-like instrument, and accompany himself while he sang the verses of the poem.  It is from this that words in songs are called lyrics.  During the Archaic Age, other poets began to write stories which dealt more with everyday life, rather than the epic tales of heroes. The drama evolved from the readings of these and other poems, at festivals dedicated to the nature/party God Dionysus, usually by a chorus of males.  At the very end of the Archaic Age, a man named Thespis stepped forward alone to perform and thus became the first actor.  Later, a second actor was allowed, and then more, until a cast of actors performed the plays.  The first famous playwright of Athens was Aeschylus, whose plays were mainly concerned with hubris – overweening pride and arrogance which leads to a man’s downfall – much the same theme as is explored in Gilgamesh.  Aeschylus’ plays influenced Herodotus’ histories, as he cast Darius and later Xerxes as men suffering from hubris – in that, they thought they could conquer Greece.  During the Age of Pericles, other authors were patronized and a festival of drama was held once or twice a year wherein new plays would compete and the winning author would receive the same laurel wreath as did an Olympic champion.  Two of the playwrights of this period include Sophocles, who wrote Oedipus and Antigone, and Euripides.  Less than 20 of these plays, called tragedies, survive from this period. 

Philosophically, the Age of Pericles was also the age of the Sophists.  In the Archaic Age, philosophers (meaning lovers of knowledge) had been preoccupied with inquiring about the physical world, which represented a revolution in Western thought because it marks turning away from using Gods to explain natural phenomena.  Archaic Age philosophers include Pythagoras, who came up with that annoying theory that we all had to learn in algebra, and Archimedes, who discovered the principal of the lever.  The Sophists turned away from inquiring about the physical world and turned their attentions towards the individual – calling for each individual to cultivate their own arête, or excellence.  To maintain themselves, the Sophists would hire themselves out as teachers of rhetoric, grammar or music – it is this practice that would lead them to be criticized by Socrates, who not only pointed out that philosophers should not prostitute themselves intellectually but also argued that rhetoric was intellectually dishonest and, as a result, Sophist philosophy was tainted by falsehood.  We’ll return to the story of Socrates after the 2nd Peloponnesian War, for his downfall is directly attributable to its outcome.  The other great inquiry about the individual in this era was that of Hippocrates, who advanced medical science and for whom the Hippocratic Oath is named.

During this Cold War period between Sparta and Athens (446-431 B.C.), the Athenians were ruthless in suppressing any poleis that attempted to leave the Delian League.  Pericles also issued a coinage decree that made Athenian coins, called drachma, the only legal tender in all Delian League poleis.  While having a single currency is a huge advantage in organizational terms, it marks yet another example of how this League of equal partners had really become an Athenian Empire.  The great historian of this period was Thucydides, a man who started out as an Athenian general and who left service after being exiled for refusing an order.  He decided to write the facts about the war, which he saw as the greatest in human history, in the hopes that future readers would learn from events, and the mistakes, that led to the war.  Thucydides was a firm believer that “events similar to those that have occurred will occur again” and set out to allow future generations to be able to study similar events and their aftermaths so that they could better be avoided in the future.  The events of the last 2400 years suggest we still have not learned. 

 

D. The 2nd Peloponnesian War

As with most modern wars, Athens and Sparta were drawn into open conflict by their alliances and the actions and desires of smaller allied states.  In 432 B.C., a dispute between the strategically important small island of Corcyra and its metropolis Corinth, an ally of Sparta, arises and Corcyra appeals to Athens for aid.  The Athenians agree at the same time that Megara, a member of the Delian League, rebels against Athens and appeals to Sparta.  Sparta responds that Athens has violated the 30 year treaty and announced that Athens will be invaded unless Pericles is ostracized.  Athens refuses and the war begins.  Most contemporaries, including Thucydides, believe that war between Athens and Sparta was inevitable, given their different outlooks, ideologies and their competition for power in such a small space.  While this would also seem to describe conditions between the US and Soviet Union from 1945-1991, thankfully, that war stayed cold, or else we may very well all be dead.

The 2nd Peloponnesian war is fought in a number of phases.  The first major battles are fought in Attica, as the Spartan king invades Attica by land, Sparta’s strength, and Pericles pulls the citizens back into the city of Athens, letting the Spartans ravage unoccupied land, while hunting them with their fleet, Athens’ strength. Thucydides described the 2nd Peloponnesian War as a “conflict between an elephant [Sparta] and a whale [Athens]. In 430 B.C., Pericles gave a funeral oration that still stands as one of the most stirring statements of freedom and democracy being defended against tyranny and totalitarianism at the State funeral for the Athenian war dead – here is a link to the  Funeral Oration (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.  which is part of this week's required readings.  A year later, Pericles would be dead of a plague that ravaged Athens, killing nearly 33% of the population.

But how true was Athens to the ideals expressed by Pericles in his Funeral Oration?  An incident involving Melos, one of Athens’ Delian League allies, illustrates the all-too common gap between rhetoric and reality. Known as the Melian Dialogue, it clearly elevates pragmatism over justice - here is a link to the  Melian Dialogue (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.  so you can compare them. Note that it is not just the Athenians who elevate pragmatism over justice – as you would expect, so do the Spartans.  When one of the smaller poleissurrenders to Spartan forces with the condition that the leaders of the city receive a fair trial, the trial commences with a single question: each defendant is asked “what have you done to help Sparta win the war?”  Upon answering “nothing”, each is then executed.  But Sparta advanced no rhetoric about justice, unlike Athens, so its actions seem less hypocritical, if more brutal.

After five years of stalemate, the Athenians win enough naval battles to allow them to either accept peace on favorable terms, or invade the Peloponnese by land.  Blinded by their successes, they choose the latter and are soundly defeated by the superior Spartan land forces.  Finally, with each side having taken possession of important poleis from the other, a peace treaty is negotiated in 421 B.C. This treaty stops the fighting but does nothing to address the underlying causes of the conflict so war begins again six years later.  The problem for Athens is that, under their democracy, they do not have a single strong leader, like Pericles, to set a consistent course – the Athenians waver between wanting peace and war, between a defensive strategy and an offensive one and eventually, Sparta takes advantage of this indecision.  One of the first events after the war resumed was the incident involving Melos that I discussed earlier, after this, the Athenians set out to conquer all Sicily by attacking Syracuse and extend their influence in 415 B.C.  This expedition is a disaster as the Athenians appointed three generals to lead the troops who were political rivals and hated each other.  One of them, Alcibiades, after his plan is rejected by the other two generals, jumps ship and defects to Sparta, telling them of all the Athenian plans and giving them a plan for attacking Attica.  One problem: after convincing the Spartan king to set off in command of this plan, Alcibiades then seduces his wife, one of the Queens of Sparta.  This gets him exiled back to Athens where he claims that he was acting as a cunning double agent in Athens interest!  Meanwhile, the Athenian fleet is attacked and slaughtered at Syracuse, enslaving the army and navy and plundering the ships – Athens lost 50,000 men and 200 ships, neither of which it could afford.  This disaster prompts the Persians, seeing an opportunity to regain influence in Greece, to enter into negotiations with Sparta – promising to supply the Spartans with a fleet in exchange for Persian control over the Ionian and Aegean poleis that they had lost in the first Persian war.  The Spartans agree and, in 405 B.C., a combined Spartan-Persian fleet captured the Hellespont, cutting off Black Sea grain supplies to Athens.  Within months, with massive starvation in the city, Athens sues for peace and surrendered unconditionally in April 404 B.C.

 

E. The 4th Century and the Rise of Philosophy

The Peloponnesian wars, like all civil wars, devastated the economies and lives of all the Greek poleis, defeated Athens and victorious Sparta alike.  Property was destroyed, trade and commerce declined, and a generation of Greeks, those who survived, grew up knowing nothing but war, leading many to become mercenaries, which goes totally against the tradition of the hoplite citizen-soldier.  The presence of mercenaries also increases the likelihood of further war, since any man with money can now have an army loyal to him and his ambitions.  The same is true today – think of devastated lands such as Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Angola, Nicaragua – even after the war ends, the land and its people are devastated and conflict continues for years to come.  The same is true in Greece after 404 B.C. – each side suffered terrible losses in human terms and for the survivors, with trade and commerce down, Greek economies enter into a depression. 

After the war ends, the Spartans, under one of their kings, Lysander, established a government in Athens made up of 30 older, rich men, known to history as the 30 tyrants.  Their rule lasted only one year as Athenian democrats, rallied support and threatened rebellion, which caused the other Spartan king, Pausanius, to sign an agreement with the democrats that gave them control of domestic affairs but put Sparta in charge of Athenian foreign policy.  After the overthrow of the 30 tyrants, Athens began to rebuild its society, its walls and its navy.  They also searched for a scapegoat to blame their defeat on – the man they chose was the philosopher Socrates.  We have no writings of Socrates; in fact it is likely that he never wrote anything down himself.  What we have of his teachings is what has been written by his students, especially Plato, a great philosopher in his own right.  Socrates attacked the Sophists for two reasons, first, because they taught rhetoric, or the art of argument, which Socrates believed was inherently flawed with falsehood, since students were taught how to argue both sides of a question; second, because they accepted pay for their teachings, which Socrates believed compromised their integrity.  Socrates called for cynicism and reason to be used as the tools to discover truth and, not surprisingly, many of the people he turned his tools on were rich and powerful.  His searches for truth and willingness to speak his full mind without a hint of subtlety or politics, gained him the enmity of many of the powerful figures of Athens. Despite the fact that he had served in the Athenian army and had fought as a soldier in Athens’ defense, it seems almost natural, if tragic and unjust, that he would be made the scapegoat for the defeat at the hands of the Spartans and their allies: the charges against him were corrupting the youth of Athens and bringing new Gods into the city.  He was found guilty and sentenced to death under Athenian law – the authorities then gave him the chance to escape into exile, but Socrates refused, saying (as recounted by Plato) that if he escaped after he was found guilty under law, that he would be no better than those who he had criticized and who had convicted him.  In the end, he drank hemlock and died in 399 B.C.

Sparta was ill-equipped to rule over other poleis all across Greece, not only with their small population but also with the fear of allowing Spartans to spend too much time being influenced by other, non-Spartan ways.  In the end, it would be the polis of Thebes that would deal the final blow to the Spartans.  In 371 B.C., Thebes defeated the Spartans at Leuctra and marched into the Peloponnese.  They did not attack Sparta itself, they did something far worse – they marched into Messina and liberated the helots, building them a walled city called Messiniæ.  This effectively ends the Spartan way of life – no longer did they have a slave population to perform all the labor, not only that, they lost the vast majority of their food supply, as Messina had been producing 80-90% of their food.  In the aftermath, the Greek system spun into chaos, with no polis or alliance of poleis capable of acting as a stabilizing force.  This power vacuum would not last long; it would soon be filled by a new power to the north: Macedon.

While this was a time of social upheaval and political chaos, it was also a golden age of art and philosophy.  In drama, a writer named Aristophanes introduced a new form: the comedy.  Prior to Aristophanes, all drama was tragedy, dealing with serious themes and life lesions.  Aristophanes wrote plays about talking frogs, farting clouds and women who tried to end war by refusing to have sex with their husbands.  Many of his plays read like The Hangover or Birdesmaids, but unlike those farces, Aristophanes’ comedies all contain social messages – called satire. 

In philosophy, this is first the era of Socrates’ greatest student, Plato.  Plato was a systematic philosopher, he strove to construct systems by which the universe was governed and worked to discover truth through the search for and study of episteme, or universal truths.  After living in Syracuse for a time after the death of Socrates, in 386 B.C., he founded the Academy in Athens, a center of philosophical study as well as a school for training statesmen and citizens.  In fact, the Academy would stay open long after Greek civilization was in its Classical Age, staying open and holding classes for just under 1000 years.  Among his writings about systems and how things best worked, Plato wrote The Republic, which was a description of how an optimal government would work.  Plato believed that the democratic polis was the best structure of government and that the virtues of the polis were order, harmony and justice – not so far removed from what Hesiod had described.  Plato observed the chaos of his era and the failings of the Athenian democracy however and so he proposed a reform: his ideal republic would be administered by philosophers, who were those in the business of determining truth and were the wisest people in the society.  Since philosophers were the best qualified to be rulers, it would be justice if they were.  This leads to the Platonic definition of justice: that all men should do only that one thing to which they are best suited.  This is a moral philosophy, which is a departure from the philosophy that came before it – it is concerned with things like justice and right vs. wrong, rather than simply how natural phenomena worked.  See how this seems like a good idea, but in Medieval Europe, indeed in all Western societies until the late 18th century, this doctrine will be used to keep generations of peasants as peasants – it is just for you to be a peasant if that is what you are best suited for and, since we won’t educate you, you are clearly best suited to be a poor farmer.  If you are best suited to be a garbage man, then it is just for you to be that garbage man, because it is what you do best, which therefore will make you happiest and will be most efficient for society as a whole, which is what Plato is most concerned about, which makes sense given the chaos of Greek society in his time.

One of Plato’s students at the Academy was Aristotle, the third of the classical Greek philosophers.  After Plato’s death, he founded his own school, The Lyceum, where his students would gather as much information about the natural world as possible.  Whereas Plato would attempt to discover universal truths, Aristotle would try to determine truth by observation of the world at work and then applying reason to those observations to determine truths about what had been observed.  Aristotle agreed with Plato that the polis was the best structure of a government, but called Plato’s structure utopian – that is, it could not exist in the real world, which was the focus of Aristotle’s inquiry (“utopia” is made up of two Greek words that mean “No Place”).  Thus, Aristotle, while conceding that Plato’s structure would be the best government, searched for the best possible government.  Aristotle centered power in the middle class, which he saw as the most stable and conservative, less prone to wild policies or policy changes, also less prone to upper class arrogance or lower class anger.  He also called for a division of power between pure democracy and oligarchy, trying to take the best of each – participation and stability.  It is ironic, considering these beliefs, that he was to become the tutor for a young Macedonian prince who would go on to try to conquer the known world – but Alexander’s actions as a conqueror show the influence of Aristotle’s and Plato’s teachings, and it is now to Macedon that we turn.

 

F. Philip II, Alexander and the Hellenistic Empire

Macedonia lies in NE Greece, the language there in the ancient world is a cousin to Greek but not merely a dialect – it is worth noting that Alexander’s commands would have to be translated to his Greek troops.  This difference, and the fact that Macedon is a northern backwater which has seen no cultural achievement or real link to classical Greece, leads many in Athens and other poleis to consider the Macedonians as barbaroi – babblers who don’t speak Greek and are poor country cousins.  Macedon as a kingdom was said to have been founded by a mythic figure named Argeas, who was said to be a descendent of Hercules and the royal family of Argos in ca. 700 B.C. Geographically, Macedonia is different, with broad plains that allowed for better food production and also were a good source of natural resources, including gold, silver, and wild horses – the Macedonian cavalry was by far the best in the ancient world.  This geography also led to Macedon’s development as a single unified kingdom, rather than following the Greek pattern of the polis – this is another reason that the Greeks of the classical era considered Macedon backwards and lacking in civilization. While they were allied by treaty with Persia during the Persian Wars, Macedonia is also the most important source of timber for Athens when Themistocles built up the Athenian fleet in the 480’s B.C. between Persian attacks.  After Persia was defeated at Salamis and Plataea, the Macedonians attacked the Persian’s retreat and, by doing so, quadrupled their territory.

The first noteworthy king of Macedonia is Philip II, who became king in 359 B.C.  Prior to this, he was a captive in Thebes between 367-364 B.C., during the brief period of Theban hegemony after their defeat of Sparta.  Philip watched and learned both political and military tactics while in Thebes, and applied those lessons when he returned to Macedon.  Philip married Olympias, the wild, witch-like daughter of the king of Epirus (Angelina Jolie in the Alexander movie of a few years ago), to create an alliance with them in 358 B.C.  His first son, Alexander, is born two years later.  With the succession to his throne secure, Philip then uses a combination of diplomacy and military might – defeating the weak and marrying into the families of the equally powerful – over the next decade, taking advantage of the chaos in Greece, to establish a powerful kingdom that can, as of 350 B.C., challenge Thebes, Corinth, Athens, and the other poleis for supremacy of the Greek world.

Meanwhile at Athens, a debate ensues about what to do about Philip and Macedon.  The philosopher and orator Isocrates argues that the only way Athens can secure itself in this time of chaos is by conquest.  He argues that Athens should use Philip and his army to accomplish this goal, believing that the Macedonians were simple barbaroi whom the sophisticated Athenians could manipulate and control, also arguing that, in reality, the Macedonian army is the largest in the Greek world and it would better to use it than to oppose it.  On the other side of the debate is the orator Demosthenes, who argues that Athenian freedom depends on opposition to Philip and his Macedonian hordes, that Philip would never be a trustworthy ally and that Athenians must fight for their freedom – after all, the odds were far longer that Athens could defeat Persia a century and a half before.  Isocrates argues that fighting would destroy Athens, while Demosthenes argues that, had Isocrates been alive in the 490’s B.C., Athens would be a Persian colony.  When faced with huge odds – should you fight for freedom or make the best of it and try to achieve freedom later when circumstances are different?  You can decide for yourselves but Athens did the worst possible thing: they listened to Isocrates in the beginning when action against Philip may have been effective, then followed Demosthenes and fought Philip after it was too late. A combined Athenian and Theban army marches out to meet Philip on the plain of Chaeronea in 338 B.C., and Philip’s cavalry makes him the master of Greece.  He establishes the Confederacy of Corinth after the battle to govern Greece rather than becoming a tyrant, and the grateful delegates elect him hegemon so that he can attack Greece’s oldest enemy, Persia.  Before he can move against the Persian Empire, however, Philip is murdered at the wedding of his daughter in 336 B.C., and his son Alexander ascends to the throne.

Alexander was barely twenty years old when Philip is murdered.  He and the men who would become his generals had studied under Aristotle for three years and so he is no brute but a cultured man with a love of natural sciences, art and literature – in fact, he took scientists with him on his campaigns so that they could catalogue any phenomena they encountered in their travels.  Alexander exported Greek language, culture and achievements to all his conquests, built hundreds of cities, libraries and museums from Egypt to India.  He is also ambitious enough to want to conquer the whole world and to create a single ethnos, so as to end conflict, yet is not afraid to use brutality to accomplish his goals.  When he became king after Philip’s murder, the countries surrounding Macedonia saw an opportunity to free themselves. Thebes rebelled in 335 B.C. Alexander put this rebellion down, destroying every house in the city with the exception of the one belonging to the famous poet, Pindar, saying “I am no barbaroi, but I will not tolerate rebellion”. After this, the Greek poleis elect him leader of the Corinthian League and agree again to join him in the war against Persia.

In the same year Alexander became king of Macedonia, Darius III became the Emperor of Persia.  Darius doesn’t take Alexander’s threats seriously at first and sends only a small group of elite warriors to oppose Alexander as he tries to cross the Hellespont into Anatolia.  Alexander’s cavalry rushes across the Granicus River and routs the Persian forces in 334 B.C., which leaves all of Anatolia wide open to Macedonian conquest.  He goes to Troy and sacrifices to Athena, goddess of wisdom, and honors the memories of the heroes of the Iliad buried there.  Alexander then turns his attentions towards the old Phoenician cities of the Levant: Byblos, Tyre and Sidon, which are the key ports for Persia’s food supply.  Darius decides to meet him personally at Issus, north of modern-day Syria, with a full army in 333 B.C.  Within a day of fighting, Alexander’s army crushes Darius’ Persians, capturing Darius’ wife and all the royal possessions he had brought to the campaign.  Byblos surrenders without a fight as does Sidon, so now he turned his attentions to Tyre.  After a seven month siege Tyre falls and Alexander, to celebrate his triumph, renames the god Apollo, who had been seen as the city's protector, "Philalexander".  Alexander then leaves Tyre to conquer Egypt in 331 B.C.  Upon his arrival there, Alexander is hailed as a liberator by the Egyptians eager to rid themselves of their Persian overlords and by the High Priest as the son of Amon and the Living Horus.  He founds the city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile, which is destined to be the new commercial and intellectual center of the East Mediterranean world, takes a journey to an oracle in Libya, then turns back north to confront Darius III once and for all.

It is at Gaugamela on the Tigris River that Darius III awaits him with a large army in late 331 B.C.  Again, Darius has more troops but Alexander’s cavalry is unstoppable and he slaughters the Persian army, sending Darius fleeing in the night to avoid capture.  Alexander pursues Darius, who has fled with his court but is deserted by his generals and by his troops. After Darius’ cousin and a few followers murder Darius, Alexander now claims the throne of Persia.  He follows the Tigris down to Babylon and conquers it.  From there he proceeds to Susa, the end of the royal road of Cyrus, then on to the royal city of Persepolis with its enormous treasure. There he burns the palace and temple to the ground. Thus, by 330 B.C., Alexander has completely conquered the Persian Empire in only four years. He is 26 years old.

Alexander had now fulfilled as much as most men could have hoped to do, but he had a Universalist agenda: he wants to conquer the whole world, not just Persia.  He announces to his army that he will conquer further East, spreading Greek culture as he goes.  After some dispute, he allows anyone who wants to stop to do so – and many do.  The rest he takes across central Asia, north to the Caspian Sea, then East, where he conquers the Eastern kingdoms of Parthia (in modern-day Afghanistan), Arachosia (in modern-day Pakistan), Bactria (in modern-day NE Afghanistan and Uzbekistan), building cities, most called Alexandria, as he goes, then finally crossing the Indus River into India in 326 B.C., defeating the Indian general Pontius and his troops which included 200 elephants.  He builds a city on the battle site that he names Bucephalia for his horse, Bucephalus, who had died in the battle and who had been Alexander’s horse for half his life, since he was 15 years old and had first gained status at the Macedonian court by being the only man who could break and tame him. Macedonians love their horses. At this point, Alexander's Empire, shown in the map below, is the largest contiguous land empire in human history - it will only be surpassed by the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his successors ca. 1500 years later (we'll meet the Mongols in Unit 4).

 

Alexander wants to go even further to the East, but when the army reaches another river, the Macedonian army refuses to go farther, although Alexander believes he does not have far to go to reach the ocean and the eastern limit of the world – by the way, when you look at a map, he’s wrong (China is rather large after all!), though, compared to how far they’ve come, maybe he’s not so far off after all! He is obliged to give way, facing mass dissension, and the march home begins – a home that Alexander would never see again.  In the spring of 323 B.C. the army reaches Babylon. There he makes plans for the construction of a great fleet and the opening of a route by sea from Babylon to Egypt around Arabia. However, he falls ill, consumed by a raging fever. He dies towards evening on June 13, 323 B.C. at the age of thirty-three, leaving his Empire “to the strongest” – a sure recipe for conflict after his death.