[Sidenote: [318-309 B.C.]]
We have already mentioned that Polysperchon with his army was in Phocis
when Phocion was brought before him, on his march towards Peloponnesus.
Before he reached Attica, Cassander arrived at Piræus to join Nicanor
with a fleet of thirty-five ships and four thousand soldiers obtained
from Antigonus. On learning this fact, Polysperchon hastened his march
also, and presented himself under the walls of Athens and Piræus with a
large force of twenty thousand Macedonians, four thousand Greek allies,
one thousand cavalry, and sixty-five elephants; animals which were now
seen for the first time in Greece. He at first besieged Cassander in
Piræus, but finding it difficult to procure subsistence in Attica for so
numerous an army, he marched with the larger portion into Peloponnesus,
leaving his son Alexander with a division to make head against Cassander.
Either approaching in person the various Peloponnesian towns, or
addressing them by means of envoys, he enjoined the subversion of the
Antipatrian oligarchies, and the restoration of liberty and free speech
to the mass of the citizens. In most of the towns, this revolution was
accomplished; but in Megalopolis, the oligarchy held out, not only
forcing Polysperchon to besiege the city, but even defending it against
him successfully. His admiral Clitus was soon afterwards defeated in the
Propontis, with the loss of his whole fleet, by Nicanor (whom Cassander
had sent from Piræus) and Antigonus.
After these two defeats, Polysperchon seems to have evacuated
Peloponnesus, and to have carried his forces across the Corinthian Gulf
into Epirus, to join Olympias. His party was greatly weakened all over
Greece, and that of Cassander proportionally strengthened. The first
effect of this was the surrender of Athens. The Athenians in the city,
including all or many of the restored exiles, could no longer endure
that complete severance from the sea, to which the occupation of Piræus
and Munychia by Cassander had reduced them. Athens without a port was
hardly tenable; in fact, Piræus was considered by its great constructor,
Themistocles, as more indispensable to the Athenians than Athens itself.
It was agreed that they should become friends and allies of Cassander;
that they should have full enjoyment of their city, with the port Piræus,
their ships and revenues; that the exiles and deported citizens should
be readmitted; that the political franchise should for the future be
enjoyed by all citizens who possessed one thousand drachmæ of property
and upwards; that Cassander should hold Munychia with a governor and
garrison, until the war against Polysperchon was brought to a close;
and that he should also name some one Athenian citizen, in whose hands
the supreme government of the city should be vested. Cassander named
Demetrius the Phalerean (_i.e._, an Athenian of the deme Phalerum), one
of the colleagues of Phocion.
This convention restored substantially at Athens the Antipatrian
government; yet without the severities which had marked its original
establishment, and with some modifications in various ways. It made
Cassander virtually master of the city (as Antipater had been before
him), by means of his governing nominee, upheld by the garrison, and by
the fortification of Munychia; which had now been greatly enlarged and
strengthened, holding a practical command over Piræus, though that port
was nominally relinquished to the Athenians. But there was no slaughter
of orators, no expulsion of citizens; moreover, even the minimum of one
thousand drachmæ, fixed for the political franchise, though excluding the
multitude, must have been felt as an improvement compared with the higher
limit of two thousand drachmæ prescribed by Antipater. Cassander was not,
like his father, at the head of an overwhelming force, master of Greece.
He had Polysperchon in the field against him with a rival army and an
established ascendency in many of the Grecian cities; it was therefore
his interest to abstain from measures of obvious harshness towards the
Athenian people.[b]
HELLAS AT PEACE
Subsequent events, in Greece itself first of all, offer sufficient
explanation of what the Peace of 311 meant, so far as the freedom of the
Grecian states was concerned. And yet it appears the old magic of the
word did not cease to delude the mind and inflame the heart--for did not
that word comprehend everything they thought they now lacked and had once
enjoyed?
Free their city republics could yet certainly be, or become--free after
a certain fashion; but independent, scarce one of them. Powers far
superior stood round on every side; and although full of active men ready
to be hired for fighting, these little states were too poor to bring up
considerable armies, too jealous and bitter about one another to make a
reliable alliance, and lastly the public spirit of their citizens was
too decayed to permit any possible hope of a radically better state of
things. Their day was over. Only the forms of a great monarchy could have
held together this restless life which was fretting itself away; but
whatever attempt had been made in this direction had taken no root among
a people who were entirely separatist, and whose ideas of citizenship
never went beyond the limits of their various cities. The very qualities
that so peculiarly fitted the Greek spirit to serve as the fermenting
leaven that should work through the peoples of Asia and forward their
development, incapacitated it for the work of retaining its independent
politics and keeping pace with the new developments of the time.
The situation of Sparta in these times is a strange one. The laws of
Lycurgus and the old forms still linger there, but the old spirit has
gone out, even to the last trace. It is a reign of the basest immorality.
The citizens have dwindled to a few hundreds, the constitution of
Lycurgus, formally observed, is a lie. The narrower the intellectual
circle in which thought may move, the cruder must be the notions that
obtain. Literature and science, the comfort and hope of the rest of
Greece, were still, even to this day, proscribed in Sparta. Sparta
had no other interest in the situation except that in her dominion
was the universal recruiting ground for all parties--the peninsula of
Tænarus--and distinguished Spartans were always glad to take the field as
mercenaries. Even the son of the aged king Cleomenes II, Acrotatus, led
a mercenary army to Tarentum and Sicily in 315, revolting those in whose
pay he fought by his bloodthirsty savagery and his unnatural passions.
He came home to Sparta dishonoured, and died before he could inherit from
his father.
At the death of Cleomenes (309), Cleonymus, a worthy brother to Acrotatus
in dissoluteness and arrogance, demanded the kingdom; the Gerousia
decided in favour of the young son of Acrotatus, Areus, and after a
few years Cleonymus entered the service of Tarentum with a force of
mercenaries, to bring the name of Sparta into ignominy by behaving even
worse than his brother. At home the power of the kings, since the state
no longer existed for its business of war, was as good as gone. The
ephorate ruled as an oligarchy, and the oligarchy wanted nothing but
quiet and pleasure, wrapped up in the dead laws of Lycurgus; nothing was
further from their thoughts than the idea of winning again their old
hegemony, at least in the Peloponnese--an idea which might now have been
justified by the distraction of Greece and the strife of parties that was
bursting afresh into flames.
ATHENS UNDER DEMETRIUS; SPARTA BEHIND WALLS
Athens affords us the most vivid glimpse into this unhappy time. How
often had the ruling party and the policy of the city changed since the
battle of Chæronea. At last in the autumn of 318, after the victory of
Cassander, the state was given a form which was anything but a democracy.
The man whom the people chose, and Cassander confirmed, as state
administrator, was Demetrius, the son of Phanostratus of Phalerus. He
had grown up in the house of Timotheus and had been educated in science
and for a political life by Theophrastus. He was a man as talented as
he was vain, as versatile in the realm of letters as he was politically
characterless--for the rest, a man of the world and its pleasures, who
fell on his feet wherever he was.
It may be that in his early years he had lived like a philosopher, that
his table was laid very frugally, “only with olives in vinegar and cheese
from the islands.” And then too, when he became master of the state he
showed himself, according to some, a humane, clear-sighted, excellent
statesman; while others declare that he spent but a small proportion of
the city’s income (which with subsidies from Egypt and Macedonia he had
raised to twelve hundred talents) in administration and in keeping the
city well prepared for war; the rest went partly in public festivities
and splendour, and partly in his own riotous and dissolute living. He
that would pose in his ordinances as a reformer of Athenian morals,
corrupted morals by his more than doubtful example. Every day, it was
said, he gave splendid dinners to which a great number of guests were
always invited; in his expenditure on his table he surpassed even the
Macedonians, in his elegance he outdid Cyprians and Phœnicians; spikenard
and myrrh were sprinkled for perfume, the floor was strewn with flowers,
costly carpets and paintings decorated the rooms; he kept so extravagant,
so luxurious, a table, that his cook, who had what was left over, was
able to buy three properties in two years out of the profits he made by
his sales. Demetrius spent the greatest care upon his choice of dress,
he dyed his hair fair, painted his face, anointed his head with precious
oils; he always showed a smiling countenance, he wanted to please every
one.
The most dainty and unbridled wantonness side by side with that subtle,
gracious, and witty culture, which has ever since been described by the
epithet Attic--both are characteristic of the life of Athens in those
days. It was the fashion to attend the schools of philosophy.
[Illustration: GRECIAN HEAD-DRESSES.]
Such words as home, chastity, modesty, were no longer heard in the Athens
of that time, or they were only words. Life had all become phrases and
epigrams, ostentation and occupied idleness. Athens distributed flattery
and entertainment to the mighty ones of the earth, and permitted herself
to receive in return their gifts and gratuities. She grew more servile
as she grew more oligarchic. She played as a state the rôle of parasite
to kings and such as held power, a sponging flatterer not at all ashamed
to buy admiration and pleasures at the price of dignity. There were only
two things her people were afraid of; they were afraid of being bored,
and they were afraid of being ridiculous--and there were rich occasions
for being both. Religion had disappeared, and with the indifference
of enlightenment superstition came in--magic, witchcraft, astrology.
Moral conduct, out of an old habit (for morality like the laws had been
reasoned away), was theoretically handled in the schools and made a theme
for debate and literary duels. The two standard philosophies of the next
centuries, the Stoic and the Epicurean, were evolving in Athens at this
period.
It was, of course, a proud thing for Demetrius that the city was much
and profitably frequented. Trade itself was probably livelier in Athens
during these years than at any other time and rivalled that of Rhodes,
Byzantium, and Alexandria. According to a census which was probably
undertaken during the year Demetrius was archon (309), the population
of Attica amounted to 21,000 citizens, 10,000 strangers, 400,000
slaves--certainly a great number of inhabitants for a territory of little
more than forty square miles.[c]
[Sidenote: [318-317 B.C.]]
The acquisition of Athens by Cassander, followed up by his capture
of Panactum and Salamis, and seconded by his moderation towards the
Athenians, procured for him considerable support in Peloponnesus,
whither he proceeded with his army. Many of the cities, intimidated or
persuaded, joined him and deserted Polysperchon; while the Spartans,
now feeling for the first time their defenceless condition, thought it
prudent to surround their city with walls. This fact, among many others
contemporaneous, testifies emphatically how the characteristic sentiments
of the Hellenic autonomous world were now dying out everywhere. The
maintenance of Sparta as an unwalled city was one of the deepest and most
cherished of the Lycurgean traditions; a standing proof of the fearless
bearing and self-confidence of the Spartans against dangers from without.
The erection of the walls showed their own conviction, but too well borne
out by the real circumstances around them, that the pressure of the
foreigner had become so overwhelming as hardly to leave them even safety
at home.
THE LAST ACTS OF OLYMPIAS’ POWER
[Sidenote: [317-311 B.C.]]
The warfare between Cassander and Polysperchon became now embittered by
a feud among the members of the Macedonian imperial family. King Philip
Arrhidæus and his wife Eurydice, alarmed and indignant at the restoration
of Olympias, which Polysperchon was projecting, solicited aid from
Cassander, and tried to place the force in Macedonia at his disposal. In
this however they failed.
Olympias, assisted not only by Polysperchon, but by the Epirot prince
Æacides, made her entry into Macedonia out of Epirus, apparently in the
autumn of 317 B.C. She brought with her Roxane and her child--the widow
and son of Alexander the Great. The Macedonian soldiers, assembled by
Philip Arrhidæus and Eurydice to resist her, were so overawed by her
name and the recollection of Alexander, that they refused to fight, and
thus insured to her an easy victory. Philip and Eurydice became her
prisoners; the former she caused to be slain; to the latter she offered
only an option between the sword, the halter, and poison. The old queen
next proceeded to satiate her revenge against the family of Antipater.
One hundred leading Macedonians, friends of Cassander, were put to death,
together with his brother Nicanor; while the sepulchre of his deceased
brother Iollas, accused of having poisoned Alexander the Great, was
broken up.
During the winter, Olympias remained thus completely predominant in
Macedonia; where her position seemed strong, since her allies the
Ætolians were masters of the pass at Thermopylæ, while Cassander
was kept employed in Peloponnesus by the force under Alexander,
son of Polysperchon. But Cassander, disengaging himself from these
embarrassments, and eluding Thermopylæ by a maritime transit to Thessaly,
seized the Perrhæbian passes before they had been put under guard, and
entered Macedonia without resistance. Olympias, having no army competent
to meet him in the field, was forced to shut herself up in the maritime
fortress of Pydna, with Roxane, the child Alexander, and Thessalonice
daughter of her late husband Philip, son of Amyntas.
Here Cassander blocked her up for several months by sea as well as by
land, and succeeded in defeating all the efforts of Polysperchon and
Æacides to relieve her. In the spring of the ensuing year (316 B.C.),
she was forced by intolerable famine to surrender. Cassander promised
her nothing more than personal safety, requiring from her the surrender
of the two great fortresses, Pella and Amphipolis, which made him master
of Macedonia. Presently however the relatives of those numerous victims,
who had perished by order of Olympias, were encouraged by Cassander to
demand her life in retribution. They found little difficulty in obtaining
a verdict of condemnation against her from what was called a Macedonian
assembly. Nevertheless, such was the sentiment of awe and reverence
connected with her name, that no one except these injured men themselves
could be found to execute the sentence. She died with a courage worthy
of her rank and domineering character. Cassander took Thessalonice
to wife, confined Roxane with the child Alexander in the fortress of
Amphipolis--where (after a certain interval) he caused both of them to be
slain.
While Cassander was thus master of Macedonia, and while the imperial
family were disappearing from the scene in that country, the defeat and
death of Eumenes (which happened nearly at the same time as the capture
of Olympias) removed the last faithful partisan of that family in Asia.
But at the same time it left in the hands of Antigonus such overwhelming
preponderance throughout Asia, that he aspired to become vicar and master
of the entire Alexandrine empire, as well as to avenge upon Cassander the
extirpation of the regal family. His power appeared indeed so formidable
that Cassander of Macedonia, Lysimachus of Thrace, Ptolemy of Egypt, and
Seleucus of Babylonia, entered into a convention, which gradually ripened
into an active alliance against him.
[Sidenote: [317-315 B.C.]]
During the struggles between these powerful princes, Greece appears
simply as a group of subject cities, held, garrisoned, grasped at, or
coveted, by all of them. Polysperchon, abandoning all hopes in Macedonia
after the death of Olympias, had been forced to take refuge among the
Ætolians, leaving his son Alexander to make the best struggle that he
could in Peloponnesus; so that Cassander was now decidedly preponderant
throughout the Hellenic regions. After fixing himself on the throne of
Macedonia, he perpetuated his own name by founding, on the isthmus of the
peninsula of Pallene and near the site where Potidæa had stood, the new
city of Cassandrea.
Passing through Bœotia, he undertook the task of restoring the city of
Thebes, which had been destroyed twenty years previously by Alexander
the Great, and had ever since existed only as a military post on the
ancient citadel called Cadmea. The other Bœotian towns, to whom the old
Theban territory had been assigned, were persuaded or constrained to
relinquish it; and Cassander invited from all parts of Greece the Theban
exiles or their descendants. From sympathy with these exiles, and also
with the ancient celebrity of the city, many Greeks, even from Italy and
Sicily, contributed to the restoration. The Athenians, now administered
by Demetrius Phalereus under Cassander’s supremacy, were particularly
forward in the work; the Messenians and Megalopolitans, whose ancestors
had owed so much to the Theban Epaminondas, lent strenuous aid. Thebes
was re-established in the original area which it had occupied before
Alexander’s siege; and was held by a Cassandrian garrison in the Cadmea,
destined for the mastery of Bœotia and Greece.
After some stay at Thebes, Cassander advanced towards Peloponnesus.
Alexander (son of Polysperchon) having fortified the isthmus, he was
forced to embark his troops with his elephants at Megara, and cross
over the Saronic Gulf to Epidaurus. He dispossessed Alexander of Argos,
of Messenia, and even of his position on the isthmus, where he left a
powerful detachment, and then returned to Macedonia. His increasing
power raised both apprehension and hatred in the bosom of Antigonus, who
endeavoured to come to terms with him, but in vain. Cassander preferred
the alliance with Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus--against Antigonus,
who was now master of nearly the whole of Asia, inspiring common dread
to all of them. Accordingly, from Asia to Peloponnesus, with arms and
money Antigonus despatched the Milesian Aristodemus to strengthen
Alexander against Cassander; whom he further denounced as an enemy of
the Macedonian name, because he had slain Olympias, imprisoned the other
members of the regal family, and re-established the Olynthian exiles.
He caused the absent Cassander to be condemned by what was called a
Macedonian assembly, upon these and other charges.
Antigonus further proclaimed, by the voice of this assembly, that all
the Greeks should be free, self-governing, and exempt from garrisons or
military occupation. It was expected that these brilliant promises would
enlist partisans in Greece against Cassander; accordingly Ptolemy, ruler
of Egypt, one of the enemies of Antigonus, thought fit to issue similar
proclamations a few months afterwards, tendering to the Greeks the same
boon from himself. These promises, neither executed nor intended to be
executed, by either of the kings, appear to have produced little or no
effect upon the Greeks.
[Sidenote: [315-312 B.C.]]
The arrival of Aristodemus in Peloponnesus had reanimated the party
of Alexander (son of Polysperchon), against whom Cassander was again
obliged to bring his full forces from Macedonia. Though successful
against Alexander at Argos, Orchomenos, and other places, Cassander was
not able to crush him, and presently thought it prudent to gain him
over. He offered to him the separate government of Peloponnesus, though
in subordination to himself; Alexander accepted the offer--becoming
Cassander’s ally--and carried on war, jointly with him, against
Aristodemus, with varying success, until he was presently assassinated
by some private enemies. Nevertheless his widow Cratesipolis, a woman of
courage and energy, still maintained herself in considerable force at
Sicyon.
Cassander’s most obstinate enemies were the Ætolians, of whom we now
first hear formal mention as a substantive confederacy. These Ætolians
became the allies of Antigonus as they had been before of Polysperchon,
extending their predatory ravages even as far as Attica. Protected
against foreign garrisons, partly by their rude and fierce habits,
partly by their mountainous territory, they were almost the only Greeks
who could still be called free. Cassander tried to keep them in check
through their neighbours the Acarnanians, whom he induced to adopt a
more concentrated habit of residence, consolidating their numerous
petty townships into a few considerable towns,--Stratus, Sauria, and
Agrinium,--convenient posts for Macedonian garrisons. He also made
himself master of Leucas, Apollonia, and Epidamnus, defeating the
Illyrian king Glaucias, so that his dominion now extended across from the
Thermaic to the Adriatic Gulf. His general Philippus gained two important
victories over the Ætolians and Epirots, forcing the former to relinquish
some of their most accessible towns.
The power of Antigonus in Asia underwent a material diminution, by the
successful and permanent establishment which Seleucus now acquired in
Babylonia; from which event the era of the succeeding Seleucidæ takes its
origin. In Greece, however, Antigonus gained ground on Cassander. He sent
thither his nephew Ptolemy with a large force to liberate the Greeks,
or in other words, to expel the Cassandrian garrisons; while he at the
same time distracted Cassander’s attention by threatening to cross the
Hellespont and invade Macedonia. This Ptolemy (not the Egyptian) expelled
the soldiers of Cassander from Eubœa, Bœotia, and Phocis; having taken
Chalcis, Oropus, Eretria, and Carystus, he entered Attica and presented
himself before Athens. So much disposition to treat with him was
manifested in the city, that Demetrius the Phalerean was obliged to gain
time by pretending to open negotiations with Antigonus, while Ptolemy
withdrew from Attica. Nearly at the same epoch, Apollonia, Epidamnus,
and Leucas, found means, assisted by an armament from Corcyra, to drive
out Cassander’s garrisons, and to escape from his dominion. The affairs
of Antigonus were now prospering in Greece, but they were much thrown
back by the discontent and treachery of his admiral Telesphorus, who
seized Elis and even plundered the sacred treasures of Olympia. Ptolemy
presently put him down, and restored these treasures to the god.
[Sidenote: [312-308 B.C.]]
In the ensuing year, a convention was concluded between Antigonus, on one
side, and Cassander, Ptolemy (the Egyptian) and Lysimachus, on the other,
whereby the supreme command in Macedonia was guaranteed to Cassander,
until the maturity of Alexander son of Roxane; Thrace being at the same
time assured to Lysimachus, Egypt to Ptolemy, and the whole of Asia to
Antigonus. It was at the same time covenanted by all, that the Hellenic
cities should be free. Towards the execution of this last clause,
however, nothing was actually done. Nor does it appear that the treaty
had any other effect, except to inspire Cassander with increased jealousy
about Roxane and her child; both of whom (as has been already stated)
he caused to be secretly assassinated soon afterwards, by the governor
Glaucias, in the fortress of Amphipolis, where they had been confined.
The forces of Antigonus, under his general Ptolemy, still remained in
Greece. But this general presently (310 B.C.) revolted from Antigonus,
and placed them in co-operation with Cassander; while Ptolemy of Egypt,
accusing Antigonus of having contravened the treaty by garrisoning
various Grecian cities, renewed the war and the triple alliance against
him.
Polysperchon--who had hitherto maintained a local dominion over various
parts of Peloponnesus, with a military force distributed in Messene and
other towns--was now encouraged by Antigonus to espouse the cause of
Heracles (son of Alexander by Barsine), and to place him on the throne
of Macedonia in opposition to Cassander. This young prince Heracles now
seventeen years of age, was sent to Greece from Pergamus in Asia, and
his pretensions to the throne were assisted not only by a considerable
party in Macedonia itself, but also by the Ætolians. Polysperchon invaded
Macedonia, with favourable prospects of establishing the young prince;
yet he thought it advantageous to accept treacherous propositions
from Cassander, who offered to him partnership in the sovereignty of
Macedonia, with an independent army and dominion in Peloponnesus.
Polysperchon, tempted by these offers, assassinated the young prince
Heracles, and withdrew his army towards Peloponnesus. But he found such
unexpected opposition, in his march through Bœotia, from Bœotians and
Peloponnesians, that he was forced to take up his winter quarters in
Locris (309 B.C.). From this time forward, as far as we can make out, he
commanded in southern Greece as subordinate ally or partner of Cassander.
The assassination of Heracles was speedily followed by that of Cleopatra,
sister of Alexander the Great, and daughter of Philip and Olympias.
She had been for some time at Sardis, nominally at liberty, yet under
watch by the governor, who received his orders from Antigonus; she was
now preparing to quit that place, for the purpose of joining Ptolemy in
Egypt, and of becoming his wife. She had been invoked as auxiliary, or
courted in marriage, by several of the great Macedonian chiefs, without
any result. Now, however, Antigonus, afraid of the influence which her
name might throw into the scale of his rival Ptolemy, caused her to be
secretly murdered as she was preparing for her departure; throwing the
blame of the deed on some of her women, whom he punished with death.
All the relatives of Alexander the Great (except Thessalonice wife of
Cassander, daughter of Philip by a Thessalian mistress) thus successively
perished, and all by the orders of one or other among his principal
officers. The imperial family, with the prestige of its name thus came to
an end.
PTOLEMY IN GREECE
[Sidenote: [308-307 B.C.]]
Ptolemy of Egypt now set sail for Greece with a powerful armament. He
acquired possession of the important cities--Sicyon and Corinth--which
were handed over to him by Cratesipolis, widow of Alexander son of
Polysperchon. He then made known by proclamation his purpose as a
liberator, inviting aid from the Peloponnesian cities themselves against
the garrisons of Cassander. From some he received encouraging answers
and promises; but none of them made any movement, or seconded him by
armed demonstrations. He thought it prudent therefore to conclude a
truce with Cassander and retire from Greece, leaving however secure
garrisons in Sicyon and Corinth. The Grecian cities had now become tame
and passive. Feeling their own incapacity of self-defence, and averse to
auxiliary efforts--which brought upon them enmity without any prospect of
advantage--they awaited only the turns of foreign interference and the
behests of the potentates around them.
The Grecian ascendency of Cassander, however, was in the following year
exposed to a graver shock than it had ever yet encountered, by the sudden
invasion of Demetrius called Poliorcetes, son of Antigonus. This young
prince, sailing from Ephesus with a formidable armament, contrived to
conceal his purposes so closely, that he actually entered the harbour of
Piræus (on the 26th of the month Thargelion--May) without expectation, or
resistance from any one; his fleet being mistaken for the fleet of the
Egyptian Ptolemy. The Phalerean Demetrius, taken unawares, and attempting
too late to guard the harbour, found himself compelled to leave it in
possession of the enemy, and to retire within the walls of Athens; while
Dionysius, the Cassandrian governor, maintained himself with his garrison
in Munychia, yet without any army competent to meet the invaders in the
field. This accomplished Phalerean, who had administered for ten years as
the viceroy and with the force of Cassander, now felt his position and
influence at Athens overthrown, and even his personal safety endangered.
He obtained permission to retire to Thebes, from whence he passed over
soon after to Ptolemy in Egypt. The Athenians in the city declared in
favour of Demetrius Poliorcetes; who however refused to enter the walls
until he should have besieged and captured Munychia, as well as Megara,
with their Cassandrian garrisons. In a short time he accomplished both
these objects. Indeed energy, skill, and effective use of engines in
besieging fortified places, were among the most conspicuous features
in his character; procuring for him the surname whereby he is known to
history. He proclaimed the Megarians free, levelling to the ground the
fortifications of Munychia, as an earnest to the Athenians that they
should be relieved for the future from all foreign garrison.
ATHENS PASSIVE AND SERVILE
[Sidenote: [307-304 B.C.]]
After these successes, Demetrius Poliorcetes made his triumphant entry
into Athens. He announced to the people, in formal assembly, that they
were now again a free democracy, liberated from all dominion either
of soldiers from abroad or oligarchs at home. He also promised them a
further boon from his father Antigonus and himself--150,000 medimni
of corn for distribution, and ship-timber in quantity sufficient for
constructing one hundred triremes. Both these announcements were received
with grateful exultation. The feelings of the people were testified not
merely in votes of thanks and admiration towards the young conqueror,
but in effusions of unmeasured and exorbitant flattery. Stratocles (who
has already been before us as one of the accusers of Demosthenes in the
Harpalian affair) with others exhausted their invention in devising new
varieties of compliment and adulation. Antigonus and Demetrius were
proclaimed to be not only kings, but gods and saviours; a high priest
of these saviours was to be annually chosen, after whom each successive
year was to be named (instead of being named after the first of the nine
archons, as had hitherto been the custom), and the dates of decrees and
contracts commemorated; the month Munychion was re-named as Demetrion;
two new tribes, to be called Antigonias and Demetrias, were constituted
in addition to the preceding ten; the annual senate was appointed to
consist of six hundred members instead of five hundred; the portraits and
exploits of Antigonus and Demetrius were to be woven, along with those
of Zeus and Athene, into the splendid and voluminous robe periodically
carried in procession, as an offering at the Panathenaic festival;
the spot of ground where Demetrius had alighted from his chariot, was
consecrated with an altar erected in honour of Demetrius Catæbates or
the Descender. Several other similar votes were passed, recognising, and
worshipping as gods, the saviours Antigonus and Demetrius. Nay, we are
told that temples or altars were voted to Phila-Aphrodite, in honour
of Phila wife of Demetrius; and a like compliment was paid to his two
mistresses, Leæna and Lamia. Altars are said to have been also dedicated
to Adimantus and others, his convivial companions or flatterers. At the
same time the numerous statues which had been erected in honour of the
Phalerean Demetrius during his decennial government, were overthrown, and
some of them even turned to ignoble purposes, in order to cast greater
scorn upon the past ruler. The demonstrations of servile flattery at
Athens, towards Demetrius Poliorcetes, were in fact so extravagantly
overdone, that he himself is said to have been disgusted with them, and
to have expressed contempt for these degenerate Athenians of his own time.
[Illustration: GREEK JUG]
The most fulsome votes of adulation proposed in honour of Demetrius
Poliorcetes by his partisans, though perhaps disapproved by many, would
hardly find a single pronounced opponent. One man, however, there was,
who ventured to oppose several of the votes--the nephew of Demosthenes,
Demochares; who deserves to be commemorated as the last known spokesman
of free Athenian citizenship. We know only that such were his general
politics, and that his opposition to the obsequious rhetor Stratocles
ended in banishment, four years afterwards. He appears to have acted as a
general during this period, and to have been active in strengthening the
fortifications and military equipment of the city.
The altered politics of Athens were manifested by impeachment against
Demetrius Phalereus and other leading partisans of the late Cassandrian
government. He and many others had already gone into voluntary exile;
when their trials came on, they were not forthcoming, and all were
condemned to death. But all those who remained, and presented themselves
for trial, were acquitted; so little was there of reactionary violence on
this occasion.
The friendship of this obnoxious Phalerean, and of Cassander also,
towards the philosopher Theophrastus, seems to have been one main cause
which occasioned the enactment of a restrictive law against the liberty
of philosophising. It was decreed, on the proposition of a citizen
named Sophocles, that no philosopher should be allowed to open a school
or teach, except under special sanction obtained from a vote of the
senate and people. Such was the disgust and apprehension occasioned by
the new restriction, that all the philosophers with one accord left
Athens. This spirited protest, against authoritative restriction on the
liberty of philosophy and teaching, found responsive sympathy among the
Athenians. The celebrity of the schools and professors was in fact the
only characteristic mark of dignity still remaining to them--then their
power had become extinct, and when even their independence and free
constitution had degenerated into a mere name.
[Illustration: CERES
(From a vase)]
Athenian envoys were despatched to Antigonus in Asia, to testify the
gratitude of the people, and communicate the recent complimentary
votes. Antigonus not only received them graciously, but sent to Athens,
according to the promise made by his son, a large present of 150,000
medimni of wheat, with timber sufficient for one hundred ships. He
at the same time directed Demetrius to convene at Athens a synod of
deputies from the allied Grecian cities, where resolutions might be
taken for the common interests of Greece. It was his interest at this
moment to raise up a temporary self-sustaining authority in Greece, for
the purpose of upholding the alliance with himself, during the absence
of Demetrius--whom he was compelled to summon into Asia with his army,
requiring his services for the war against Ptolemy in Syria and Cyprus.
The following three years were spent by Demetrius: (1) In victorious
operations near Cyprus, defeating Ptolemy and making himself master of
that island; after which Antigonus and Demetrius assumed the title of
kings, and the example was followed by Ptolemy, in Egypt, by Lysimachus,
in Thrace, and by Seleucus in Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and Syria; thus
abolishing even the titular remembrance of Alexander’s family. (2) In
an unsuccessful invasion of Egypt by land and sea, repulsed with great
loss. (3) In the siege of Rhodes. The brave and intelligent citizens of
this island resisted for more than a year the most strenuous attacks
and the most formidable siege-equipments of Demetrius Poliorcetes. All
their efforts however would have been vain had they not been assisted
by large reinforcements and supplies from Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and
Cassander. Such are the conditions under which alone even the most
resolute and intelligent Greeks can now retain their circumscribed sphere
of autonomy. The siege was at length terminated by a compromise; the
Rhodians submitted to enrol themselves as allies of Demetrius, yet under
proviso not to act against Ptolemy. Towards the latter they carried
their grateful devotion so far as to erect a temple to him, called the
Ptolemæum, and to worship him (under the sanction of the oracle of Ammon)
as a god. Amidst the rocks and shoals through which Grecian cities were
now condemned to steer, menaced on every side by kings more powerful than
themselves, and afterwards by the giant republic of Rome--the Rhodians
conducted their political affairs with greater prudence and dignity than
any other Grecian city.
[Sidenote: [304-302 B.C.]]
Shortly after the departure of Demetrius from Greece to Cyprus, Cassander
and Polysperchon renewed the war in Peloponnesus and its neighbourhood.
We make out no particulars respecting this war. The Ætolians were in
hostility with Athens, and committed annoying depredations. The fleet of
Athens, repaired or increased by the timber received from Antigonus, was
made to furnish thirty quadriremes to assist Demetrius in Cyprus, and
was employed in certain operations near the island of Amorgos, wherein
it suffered defeat. But we can discover little respecting the course of
the war, except that Cassander gained ground upon the Athenians, and that
about the beginning of 303 B.C., he was blockading or threatening to
blockade Athens. The Athenians invoked the aid of Demetrius Poliorcetes,
who, having recently concluded an accommodation with the Rhodians, came
again across from Asia, with a powerful fleet and army, to Aulis in
Bœotia. He was received at Athens with demonstrations of honour equal
or superior to those which had marked his previous visit. He seems to
have passed a year and a half, partly at Athens, partly in military
operations carried successfully over many parts of Greece. He celebrated,
as president, the great festival of the Heræa at Argos; on which occasion
he married Didamia, sister of Pyrrhus, the young king of Epirus. He
prevailed on the Sicyonians to transfer to a short distance the site of
their city, conferring upon the new city the name of Demetrias. At a
Grecian synod, convened in Corinth under his own letters of invitation,
he received by acclamation the appointment of leader or emperor of
the Greeks, as it had been conferred on Philip and Alexander. He even
extended his attacks as far as Leucas and Corcyra. The greater part of
Greece seems to have been either occupied by his garrisons, or enlisted
among his subordinates.
So much was Cassander intimidated by these successes, that he sent
envoys to Asia, soliciting peace from Antigonus; who, however, elate and
full of arrogance, refused to listen to any terms short of surrender at
discretion. Cassander, thus driven to despair, renewed his applications
to Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. All these princes felt equally
menaced by the power and dispositions of Antigonus, and all resolved upon
an energetic combination to put him down.
SUCCESS OF DEMETRIUS IN GREECE
[Sidenote: [302-301 B.C.]]
After uninterrupted prosperity in Greece, throughout the summer of 302
B.C., Demetrius returned from Leucas to Athens, about the month of
September, near the time of the Eleusinian mysteries. He was welcomed
by festive processions, hymns, pæans, choric dances, and bacchanalian
odes of joyous congratulation. One of these hymns is preserved, sung
by a chorus of ithyphalli--masked revellers, with their heads and arms
encircled by wreaths--clothed in white tunics, and in feminine garments.
Effusions such as these, while displaying unmeasured idolatry and
subservience towards Demetrius, are yet more remarkable, as betraying
a loss of force, a senility, and a consciousness of defenceless and
degraded position, such as we are astonished to find publicly proclaimed
at Athens. It is not only against the foreign potentates that the
Athenians avow themselves incapable of self-defence, but even against
the incursions of the Ætolians,--Greeks like themselves, though warlike,
rude, and restless. When such were the feelings of a people--once the
most daring, confident, and organising, and still the most intelligent,
in Greece, we may see that the history of the Greeks as a separate nation
or race is reaching its close; and that from henceforward they must
become merged in one or other of the stronger currents that surround them.
After his past successes, Demetrius passed some months in enjoyment and
luxury at Athens. He was lodged in the Parthenon, being considered as
the guest of the goddess Athene. But his dissolute habits provoked the
louder comments, from their being indulged in such a domicile; while
the violences which he offered to beautiful youths of good family led
to various scenes truly tragical. The subservient manifestations of the
Athenians towards him, however, continued unabated. It is even affirmed
that, in order to compensate for something which he had taken amiss, they
passed a formal decree, on the proposition of Stratocles, declaring that
everything which Demetrius might command was holy in regard to the gods,
and just in regard to men. The banishment of Demochares is said to have
been brought on by his sarcastic comments upon this decree. In the month
Munychion (April) Demetrius mustered his forces and his Grecian allies
for a march into Thessaly against Cassander; but before his departure,
he was anxious to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. It was
however not the regular time for this ceremony; the Lesser Mysteries
being celebrated in February, the Greater in September. The Athenians
overruled the difficulty by passing a special vote, enabling him to be
initiated at once, and to receive in immediate succession the preparatory
and the final initiation, between which ceremonies a year of interval was
habitually required. Accordingly, he placed himself disarmed in the hands
of the priests, and received both first and second initiation in the
month of April, immediately before his departure from Athens.
BATTLE OF IPSUS
[Sidenote: [301-294 B.C.]]
Demetrius conducted into Thessaly an army of fifty-six thousand men,
of whom twenty-five thousand were Grecian allies--so extensive was his
sway at this moment over the Grecian cities. But after two or three
months of hostilities, partially successful, against Cassander, he was
summoned into Asia by Antigonus to assist in meeting the formidable army
of the allies--Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Cassander. Before
retiring from Greece, Demetrius concluded a truce with Cassander, whereby
it was stipulated that the Grecian cities, both in Europe and Asia,
should be permanently autonomous and free from garrison or control.
This stipulation served only as an honourable pretext for leaving
Greece; Demetrius had little expectation that it would be observed. In
the ensuing spring was fought the decisive battle of Ipsus in Phrygia
(300 B.C.), by Antigonus and Demetrius, against Ptolemy, Seleucus,
and Lysimachus; with a large army and many elephants on both sides.
Antigonus, completely defeated, was slain; his age was more than eighty
years. His Asiatic dominion was broken up, chiefly to the profit of
Seleucus, whose dynasty became from henceforward ascendant, from the
coast of Syria eastward to the Caspian Gates and Parthia; sometimes,
though imperfectly, farther eastward, nearly to the Indus.
The effects of the battle of Ipsus were speedily felt in Greece. The
Athenians passed a decree proclaiming themselves neutral, and excluding
both the belligerent parties from Attica. Demetrius, retiring with the
remnant of his defeated army, and embarking at Ephesus to sail to Athens,
was met on the voyage by Athenian envoys, who respectfully acquainted him
that he would not be admitted. At the same time, his wife Didamia, whom
he had left at Athens, was sent away by the Athenians under an honourable
escort to Megara, while some ships of war which he had left in the Piræus
were also restored to him. Demetrius, indignant at this unexpected
defection of a city which had recently heaped upon him such fulsome
adulation, was still further mortified by the loss of most of his other
possessions in Greece. His garrisons were for the most part expelled,
and the cities passed into Cassandrian keeping or dominion. His fortunes
were indeed partially restored by concluding a peace with Seleucus,
who married his daughter. This alliance withdrew Demetrius to Syria,
while Greece appears to have fallen more and more under the Cassandrian
parties. It was one of these partisans, Lachares, who, seconded by
Cassander’s soldiers, acquired a despotism at Athens such as had been
possessed by the Phalerean Demetrius, but employed in a manner far more
cruel and oppressive.
Various exiles from his tyranny invited Demetrius Poliorcetes, who passed
over again from Asia into Greece, recovered portions of Peloponnesus, and
laid siege to Athens. He blocked up the city by sea and land, so that the
pressure of famine presently became intolerable. Lachares having made his
escape, the people opened their gates to Demetrius, not without great
fear of the treatment awaiting them. But he behaved with forbearance,
and even with generosity. He spared them all, supplied them with a large
donation of corn, and contented himself with taking military occupation
of the city, naming his own friends as magistrates. He put garrisons,
however, not only into Piræus and Munychia, but also into the hill called
Museum, a part of the walled circle of Athens itself (298 B.C.).
While Demetrius was thus strengthening himself in Greece, he lost all
his footing both in Cyprus, Syria, and Cilicia, which passed into the
hands of Ptolemy and Seleucus. New prospects however were opened to him
in Macedonia by the death of Cassander (his brother-in-law, brother of
his wife Phila) and the family feuds supervening thereupon. Philippus,
eldest son of Cassander, succeeded his father, but died of sickness after
something more than a year. Between the two remaining sons, Antipater
and Alexander, a sanguinary hostility broke out. Antipater slew his
mother Thessalonice, and threatened the life of his brother, who in
his turn invited aid both from Demetrius and from the Epirotic king
Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus being ready first, marched into Macedonia, and expelled
Antipater; receiving as his recompense the territory called Tymphæa
(between Epirus and Macedonia) together with Acarnania, Amphilochia,
and the town of Ambracia, which became henceforward his chief city and
residence. Antipater sought shelter in Thrace with his father-in-law
Lysimachus; by whose order, however, he was presently slain. Demetrius,
occupied with other matters, was more tardy in obeying the summons; but,
on entering into Macedonia, he found himself strong enough to dispossess
and kill Alexander (who had indeed invited him, but is said to have
laid a train for assassinating him), and seized the Macedonian crown;
not without the assent of a considerable party, to whom the name and the
deeds of Cassander and his sons were alike odious.
[Sidenote: [294-279 B.C.]]
Demetrius became thus master of Macedonia, together with the greater
part of Greece, including Athens, Megara, and much of Peloponnesus.
He undertook an expedition into Bœotia, for the purpose of conquering
Thebes; in which attempt he succeeded, not without a double siege of
that city. But Greece as a whole was managed by Antigonus (afterwards
called Antigonus Gonatas) son of Demetrius, who maintained his supremacy
unshaken during all his father’s life-time; even though Demetrius
was deprived of Macedonia by the temporary combination of Lysimachus
with Pyrrhus, and afterwards remained (until his death in 283 B.C.) a
captive in the hands of Seleucus. After a brief possession of the crown
of Macedonia successively by Seleucus, Ptolemy Ceraunus, Meleager,
Antipater, and Sosthenes--Antigonus Gonatas regained it in 277 B.C. His
descendants, the Antigonid kings, maintained it until the battle of Pydna
in 168 B.C.; when Perseus, the last of them, was overthrown, and his
kingdom incorporated with the Roman conquests.
Of Greece during this period we can give no account, except that the
greater number of its cities were in dependence upon Demetrius and his
son Antigonus--either under occupation by Macedonian garrisons, or
ruled by local despots who leaned on foreign mercenaries and Macedonian
support. The spirit of the Greeks was broken, and their habits of
combined sentiment and action had disappeared. The invasion of the Gauls
indeed awakened them into a temporary union for the defence of Thermopylæ
in 279 B.C. But this burst of spirit did not interrupt the continuance
of the Macedonian dominion in Greece, which Antigonus Gonatas continued
to hold throughout most of a long reign. He greatly extended the system
begun by his predecessors, of isolating each Grecian city from alliances
with other cities in its neighbourhood--planting in most of them local
despots, and compressing the most important by means of garrisons. Among
all Greeks, the Spartans and the Ætolians stood most free from foreign
occupation, and were the least crippled in their power of self-action.
The Achæan League too developed itself afterwards as a renovated sprout
from the ruined tree of Grecian liberty, though never attaining to
anything better than a feeble and puny life, nor capable of sustaining
itself without foreign aid.[b]
At this point Grote ends his immortal work and takes farewell of Grecian
history in the following words:
“With this after-growth, or half-revival, I shall not meddle. It forms
the Greece of Polybius, which that author treats, in my opinion justly,
as having no history of its own, but as an appendage attached to some
foreign centre and principal among its neighbours--Macedonia, Egypt,
Syria, Rome. Each of these neighbours acted upon the destinies of
Greece more powerfully than the Greeks themselves. The Greeks to whom
these volumes have been devoted--those of Homer, Archilochus, Solon,
Æschylus, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Demosthenes--present
as their most marked characteristic a loose aggregation of autonomous
tribes or communities, acting and reacting freely among themselves,
with little or no pressure from foreigners. The main interest of the
narrative has consisted in the spontaneous grouping of the different
Hellenic fractions, in the self-prompted co-operations and conflicts,
the abortive attempts to bring about something like an effective federal
organisation, or to maintain two permanent rival confederacies, the
energetic ambition and heroic endurance of men to whom Hellas was the
entire political world. The freedom of Hellas, the life and soul of this
history from its commencement, disappeared completely during the first
years of Alexander’s reign. After following to their tombs the generation
of Greeks contemporary with him--men like Demosthenes and Phocion,
born in a state of freedom--I have pursued the history into that gulf
of Grecian nullity which marks the succeeding century; exhibiting sad
evidence of the degrading servility, and suppliant king-worship, into
which the countrymen of Aristides and Pericles had been driven, by their
own conscious weakness under the overwhelming pressure from without.
“I cannot better complete that picture than by showing what the leading
democratical citizen became, under the altered atmosphere which now
bedimmed his city. Demochares, the nephew of Demosthenes, has been
mentioned as one of the few distinguished Athenians in this last
generation. He was more than once chosen to the highest public offices;
he was conspicuous for his free speech, both as an orator and as an
historian, in the face of powerful enemies; he remained throughout a
long life faithfully attached to the democratical constitution, and was
banished for a time by its opponents. In the year 280 B.C., he prevailed
on the Athenians to erect a public monument, with a commemorative
inscription, to his uncle Demosthenes. Seven or eight years afterwards,
Demochares himself died, aged nearly eighty. His son Laches proposed
and obtained a public decree, that a statue should be erected, with an
annexed inscription, to his honour. We read in the decree a recital
of the distinguished public services whereby Demochares merited this
compliment from his countrymen. All that the proposer of the decree, his
son and fellow-citizen, can find to recite, as ennobling the last half of
the father’s public life (since his return from exile), is as follows:
(1) He contracted the public expenses, and introduced a more frugal
management. (2) He undertook an embassy to King Lysimachus, from whom he
obtained two presents for the people--one of thirty talents, the other of
one hundred talents. (3) He proposed the vote for sending envoys to King
Ptolemy in Egypt, from whom fifty talents were obtained for the people.
(4) He went as envoy to Antipater, received from him twenty talents, and
delivered them to the people at the Eleusinian festival.
“When such begging missions are the deeds for which Athens both employed
and recompensed her most eminent citizens, an historian accustomed to
the Grecian world as described by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon,
feels that the life has departed from his subject, and with sadness and
humiliation brings his narrative to a close.”[b]
A kindred feeling seems to have actuated most of the other prominent
historians of Greece, with the notable exception of Thirlwall. Yet from
a slightly altered point of view, there is much of interest in the story
of the later struggles of this wonderful people, against a seemingly
predestined fate. Even were it not so, our present purpose, which regards
Greece not as an isolated entity but as a part of the scheme of world
history, requires that we should follow the tragic drama to its close.[a]
[Illustration]