everything that appealed to his variegated lusts.[83] The women whom
he took into his harem after his sister's death were given palaces
and race-horses, public statues,--in costumes which were not always
modest,--and even divine honors. Splendid new quarters were laid out
in Alexandria, and public works erected there and elsewhere in his
realm. The capital thronged with scientific, literary, and musical
celebrities, attracted by the endowments and collections of the Museum,
the richness of the library, the profusion of festivals, and the
liberality of the king, who wished Alexandria to become to the new
world what Athens had been to the old.
Yet despite all these manifold gratifications, life palled on the
much-experienced monarch. He turned from the doctors to the quacks,
and, shrinking from pain and death, experimented with draughts that
were alleged to confer immortality: a strange act for one who was
already a god! While suffering agony from the gout, he envied the lot
of the fellahs, whom he saw from his window stretched out on the sand
in the sun eating their simple meal. "Ye poor," he is said to have once
exclaimed, "would that I had been one of you."
"From behind the rich curtains of his palace," as his stout adversary,
Antigonus of Macedon,[84] phrased it, Ptolemy Philadelphus played
cautiously and adroitly the great game of international politics. His
emissaries, laden with gifts and money, were to be found at every
capital from the Ganges to the Tiber. "Mighty kings" and "great
cities," Theocritus tells us,[85] were in his pay; and in the harbor
of Alexandria many great battleships lay ready to give emphasis to
diplomacy, to support the agents whom his gold had brought into action.
By these means, too, he kept open the roads which led across the sea
from all directions to Alexandria; shut off, by a fringe of Egyptian
possessions, the great continental empire of the Seleucids from access
to the Mediterranean; and kept Greece so persistently in insurrection
against its suzerain, Macedon, that he was able to ward off all danger
from that quarter.
He enlarged his inherited empire by seizing Ionia when Eumenes I of
Pergamum threw off the suzerainty of the Seleucids and shattered their
authority in Asia Minor (263-261 B.C.); but the gains he then made he
had to abandon during the upheaval which accompanied the revolt of his
"son" in Ephesus (259-255 B.C.), and he suffered still further losses
in Asia during the war he waged thereafter (253-249 B.C.), with Macedon
and Syria combined. These, however, his son, Euergetes, at the opening
of his reign (246-242 B.C.), regained, and he acquired districts in
Ionia and the Hellespont besides; and the position which he thereby
secured he held till his death twenty years later. On the sea, however,
he showed himself less persistent than his father. Philadelphus had
lost control of the Ægean when beaten at Cos in 253 B.C. by Antigonus
of Macedon, but had not rested till he had regained it four years
later, when the league of the Islanders, which was the immediate
bone of contention, came again under the authority of his admirals.
Euergetes suffered a crushing naval defeat in 242 B.C. off the island
of Andros at the hands of the "veteran" Antigonus; whereupon he let
the Cyclades go altogether. That was not the only sequel, however;
for in consequence of the large outlay for little gain entailed in
building and keeping in readiness the huge battleships then employed,
and perhaps also in consequence of the failure of the Carthaginians,
despite great naval expense and preparations, to hold the sea against
the improvised fleets of Rome in the First Punic War (which had just
ended), the third Ptolemy, like the Barcid government in Carthage,
abandoned the policy of maintaining a fleet strong enough to drive all
enemies from their respective parts of the Mediterranean. It was a
great mistake in each case. When at the end of the third century B.C.
Macedon and Syria, the traditional and long-suffering enemies of Egypt,
were in a position to renew their joint struggle with the Ptolemies,
the far-spread Ptolemaic empire fell together like a house of cards,
and Rome alone saved the dynasty from complete destruction.
* * * * *
A variety of motives actuated the early Ptolemies in their struggle
for foreign dominions. Pride of possession was among them, of course.
The court poet Callimachus[86] struck a responsive chord when, in his
poem on the death of Arsinoë, the sister-wife of Philadelphus, he has
the sad news flashed from beacon point to beacon point till it reaches
Lemnos at the outer edge of the empire. National honor is a strong
motive for action, but it is commonly stirred by the fear of losing
something possessed rather than by the hope of acquiring something new.
Hence we must look deeper for the reasons which led cautious statesmen
like the first two Ptolemies to place round Egypt its girdle of power.
The motive suggested by Polybius[87] is quite different. It was with
regard to possible movements on the part of the monarchs of Syria, Asia
Minor, Thrace, and Macedon that the Ptolemies held, as he says, "the
most important towns, places, and harbors along the whole coast" of the
eastern Mediterranean. And there can be no doubt that he is right in
attributing this rather malicious aim to them. They were, doubtless,
great intriguers. But to Polybius, looking on from without, from one
of the districts which had been affected by the close proximity of
Egyptian garrisons and naval stations, the connection of these posts
with the foreign policy of the Ptolemies was apt to obtrude itself to
the exclusion of everything else. Nowadays historians are prone to
a similar onesidedness because of the close attention they give to
economic factors. They are quite right when they stress the importance
of Ptolemaic naval power and of the vantage-points held in Europe and
Asia for the development of Alexandrian commerce. The lighthouse which
Ptolemy erected at the mouth of the Nile at a cost of a million dollars
(eight hundred talents) was not only one of the seven wonders of the
world: it was a messenger of good will to the trading vessels which
came from all the dependencies with or without cargoes, to get for
Greek consumption the varied products of the Alexandrian factories, the
Egyptian grain-fields, and the Nile-borne traffic of Arabia, India,
Somaliland, and Ethiopia. What the lighthouse symbolizes, the growth of
Alexandria to half a million in a hundred years proves: the magnitude
of the commerce which the transmarine possessions of Egypt stimulated,
when they did not originate it.
Where the economic historians are wrong, however, is in doing what
Polybius did. _He_ made the imperial policy of the early Ptolemies
primarily foreign; _they_ make it primarily commercial. The truth is
that it was dictated also by the plain necessities of the domestic
situation. Let us see what that was.
* * * * *
The first Ptolemy had stepped into the place of the Pharaohs on
Alexander the Great's death. The only right he cared to acknowledge for
the obedience of the Egyptians was the right of conquest. As for them,
we may be sure that just as they created the myth that Alexander was
not really Philip's child, but a son begotten from Olympias by either
Nectanebus, the last native Pharaoh, or Ammon, the great god himself
who had taken the form of Nectanebus for the purpose; and just as they
in later times represented Cæsar and Antony as Ammon reincarnate, that
Cleopatra's bastard children might be legitimate Pharaohs: so, too,
they applied to Ptolemy the fiction by which for thousands of years
they had been wont to bridge over the gaps in the genealogy of their
kings.[88]
The bridge was necessary, however; for, in their thinking, the gods,
who had once lived among men, on withdrawing to the divine abodes, had
left one of their number to rule over the world--which, of course,
was Egypt. From him all their kings were descended. The Pharaoh was,
accordingly, the only god who resided upon the earth, and, as such,
fittingly the mediator between men and the great gods and goddesses of
the upper and nether world.[89] The Pharaoh was, therefore, both the
god-king and the chief priest. The whole land and people of Egypt were
his property. Without his presence and ministrations the earth would
literally languish and grow barren, and the men, women, and children
would perish. Egypt was, accordingly, bound to have a legitimate
Pharaoh. Ptolemy could be made Ammon's offspring as easily as Alexander
the Great; but how it was done we do not know.
On his arrival in Egypt, Ptolemy found there two other states in
addition to that of the Egyptians. These were the old Greek city of
Naucratis and the new city of Alexandria. A third arose when he himself
founded Ptolemais to be to Upper Egypt what Alexandria was to Lower
Egypt--the centre and rallying point of Hellenic interests. To these
three city-states he added a multitude of others in and about the
Mediterranean when he acquired for his house its foreign dominions.
The convenient thing for these to do was to bind themselves to him
by the Gordian knot of religious worship; and, as Ptolemy Soter,
or the Savior, he was in fact enrolled in the circle of deities
recognized by the several cities. In Alexandria we may be sure that
its founder, Alexander the Great, had been accorded divine honors
from the beginning, and that after his death the citizens appointed
each year a priest of Alexander, just as they had been in the habit
of doing while he was alive, and just as they appointed one for Zeus
or Apollo. However, at some date between 311 and 289 B.C., perhaps on
his assumption of the regal title in 306 B.C., Ptolemy took into his
own hands the administration of his capital, and thenceforth appointed
personally the priest of the city-god Alexander, who became therewith
an imperial god. To this cult Philadelphus did not add that of his
parents, "the savior gods," when he had them officially deified at
their death (283 B.C.); but he did add to it that of his deceased
queen and of himself when in 270 B.C. he inaugurated the worship of
"the brother gods." His example was followed by each succeeding pair
of rulers to the end of the dynasty, except that the savior gods were
inserted by the fourth Ptolemy in their proper place after Alexander.
So that central among the gods of the capital of the empire stood
ultimately the long series of the departed rulers and at its head the
living king and queen.
Outside the capital, in the city-states of the realm, as later on in
the provinces subject to the Roman emperors, the reigning monarchs
were alone the recipients of divine honors. The living Ptolemy, by
recognizing the divinity of his predecessors, assumed responsibility
for the validity of all their _acta_. They had issued their mandates
(_prostagmata_) as gods; so long as they remained gods their mandates
must be obeyed. The cities, on the other hand, had no concern except
to legalize the orders issued to them by their living rulers, once
their living rulers had legalized and thus become responsible for all
orders issued by the dead. At Rome the memory of certain emperors was
damned, and their acts rescinded. That was possible there because the
emperor was theoretically only an officer of the Roman people. One
means employed to invalidate the _acta_ of deposed rulers was to refuse
to have them among their gods after their death. The Alexandrians had
no such discretion. After about 306 B.C. they were subjects themselves,
not masters, of the Ptolemies. In their city it was the living Ptolemy
who willed his own deification, and he could withhold divine honors
from his predecessor only when, as in the solitary case of the founder
of the dynasty, the monarch neglected to have himself created a god
during his lifetime. Since his wish was decisive, it is not surprising
that he had the members of his family, his wife, sisters, children,
and concubines, elevated to Olympus along with himself. Curiously
enough, however, Philadelphus and his four immediate successors,
while demanding that their subjects should worship them as deities,
treated themselves simply as kings, and carefully refrained from
describing themselves as gods even in their public communications.
The fact seems to be that only by accepting the Egyptian theory of
a divine incarnation could the Ptolemies find a theological ground
for constituting themselves gods. This concession to native thinking
the proud early members of the dynasty refused, however, to make,
preferring to challenge by their own self-denial the divine honors
which they required from others. With this view accords the further
fact that the first Ptolemy deliberately to court a native support for
his throne--Euergetes II--was also the first to sign his edicts as
θεὁϛ, or "god."
While it is true that no great empire ever existed without a
constitutional fiction, it is also true that it never endured on a
fiction alone. The Macedonian soldiers whom Ptolemy found in Egypt and
those whom he brought with him and sent for later were essential for
the maintenance of his government. So long as the son of Alexander
the Great lived, and, indeed, for four years longer (till 306 B.C.),
Ptolemy was simply their general. Then he became their king, and to
legitimatize this practical usurpation, the legend arose that he
was not really the son of Lagos, but the son of Philip. It is to the
honor of Ptolemy that he had nothing to do with this libel on the good
name of his mother, and preferred rather to be an illegitimate king
than an illegitimate son. Besides, it was only necessary to go back a
generation or two to attach the line of Ptolemy to that of the ancient
"Zeus-born" kings of Macedon. The wife of Lagos had belonged, in fact,
to the royal family, as the Ptolemies took good care to observe.
The Ptolemaic empire was, accordingly, based on three concurrent
theories, one for the native Egyptians, one for the Greek city-states
and one for the Macedonians.
* * * * *
Appian of Alexandria,[90] writing about two hundred years after the
death of Cleopatra, cites the royal registers as authority for his
report that Philadelphus kept, for land operations 200,000 foot, 40,000
cavalry, and arms for 300,000 men; in addition, 300 war elephants and
2000 war chariots; for naval warfare, 2000 transports, 1500 battleships
with three to five banks of rowers, and oars and rigging for twice that
number. He had also, according to the same authority, 800 royal barges
with gilt poops and beaks, and in his treasury a reserve of 740,000
Egyptian talents, or $890,000,000.
That the reserve as given amounts to three times the value of the gold
and silver in the United States treasury shows that the enumeration
belongs only in the history yet to be written of the absurdities of
statistics. More credible estimates of the Egyptian army place it at
80,800 under the second Ptolemy and (exclusive of natives, who then
numbered 26,000) 49,700 under the fourth Ptolemy.[91] These are very
large totals. It will help to solve many questions of Ptolemaic policy
to observe where the soldiers came from.
But first we may notice that they could not come from the natives; for
their most important duty was to hold them in subjection. There were so
many people to keep down! Alexandria itself had a large native quarter.
The other two Greek cities in the land were but alien flecks in the
midst of a great multitude. Up and down the valley lay the native
hamlets, to the number of 33,333 according to Theocritus, teeming with
the seven million people whom Egypt then sustained. Alexander the
Great may have dreamed of Hellenizing these masses; Ptolemy, however,
had no such thought, as is shown conclusively by the fact that under
his dynasty and, indeed, for at least two centuries after its fall,
Naucratis, and probably also Ptolemais, forbade by law marriages
between their citizens and the natives.[92]
The sole landowner in Egypt was the king. The entire valley of the Nile
was literally his personal estate.
Except for certain portions "set apart" for particular purposes, which
we shall examine in a moment, the arable land surrounding the countless
native villages was in the possession of tenants of the crown, who
paid to the king about seven bushels of grain per acre as rent and
sowed their land according to royal orders with seed provided by him;
who might be dispossessed at any time, but could neither abandon their
plots (at least in seeding- and harvest-time) nor their villages
(except for short periods), at their own volition; who had numerous
services in connection with "geometry," irrigation, transport, post,
and similar matters to perform, and might be moved or forced en masse
to redeem and cultivate dry or marsh land situated near their hovels;
who paid a poll-tax and a house-tax to the king, and one sixth of
the yield of their vineyards and orchards, when they had any, to the
temple authorities whom the king appointed; who bought their beer, oil,
fish, honey, cloth, soda, bricks, wood, paper, and almost every other
article of common use either exclusively from the king, who was the
sole producer and seller, or in certain cases from private dealers,
who, however, paid so much for their license that they could not
undersell the king. Watchmen were everywhere in the fields to see that
the king was not defrauded. Gendarmes patrolled the country to guard
the roads and deserts, to prevent smuggling and "moonshining." Scribes
and bankers were in every village to keep account of all changes in
families and in leases; to visé every payment. Every village had its
storehouse of records, of grain, of money. And on the Nile went to and
fro the royal transports which carried the surpluses to Alexandria,
and the products of the royal factories to the local depots from which
they were sold. The king of Egypt was, accordingly, by far the greatest
merchant and manufacturer in the whole world. Even in far distant Delos
the price of paper, myrrh, and other articles was fixed by the pleasure
of the royal monopolist. That his interference "regulated the market"
to his own advantage may be inferred from the fact that the sheet of
paper which was sold in 296 B.C. for one obol (three and one half
cents) cost on the average eleven in 279-250 B.C.[93]
Thus set about by countless officials and shorn to the very skin, the
fellahs lived under the Ptolemies, "patient, laborious, cheerful,"
yet filled with hidden bitterness at the magnificence in which their
masters lived at their expense in Alexandria, venting their rage in
impotent prophecies that "the great city at the water's edge should
become a drying-place for the nets of fishers, and its gods should
migrate to the native capital Memphis."[94]
Clearly, the army of the Ptolemies could not be recruited from such
elements. The Egyptians might be put on the warships as rowers, used
in the transport service, and, occasionally when the need was great,
in small numbers as soldiers. But granted that they might be useful
in fighting abroad,--at home they belonged to the enemy from whom the
early Ptolemies had greatly to fear.
As such, the citizens of Alexandria, Naucratis, and Ptolemais were
apparently exempt from military service. Hence the great problem of
national defense could not have been solved by the founding of new
Greek cities of this type in Egypt had there been room for them, or by
the founding of any kind of cities, had Ptolemy thought it possible to
organize the natives in urban communities round a Greek or Macedonian
nucleus--as Alexander may have wished to do, as the Romans in fact did
in the year 202 A.D.; for, even if Ptolemy had cared for that kind of
thing, the Greek or Macedonian nucleus did not as yet exist in Egypt.
It had to be brought there from abroad. Hence it was a question of life
and death for the Ptolemaic dynasty to remain in constant communication
with the regions of the eastern Mediterranean whence came supporters of
their rule, soldiers for their armies.
"But shouldst thou really mean a voyage out," says one Greek peasant to
another in Theocritus,[95]--
"The freeman's best paymaster's Ptolemy.
(_Æschines_)
What is he else?
(_Thyonichus_)
A gentleman: a man
Of wit and taste: the top of company;
Loyal to ladies; one whose eye is keen
For friends, and keener still for enemies.
Large in his bounties, he, in kingly sort,
Denies a boon to none: but, Æschines,
One should not ask too often. This premised,
If thou wilt clasp the military cloak
O'er thy right shoulder, and with legs astride
Await the onward rush of shielded men:
Hie thee to Egypt."
Phoenicia and its hinterland were necessary to Ptolemy because of their
forests of timber for shipbuilding, which Egypt lacked. The rest of
his transmarine possessions were necessary because of their stock of
reliable soldiers, which Egypt also lacked. Hence, as stated already,
the imperial policy of the early Ptolemies was a plain consequence of
their domestic policy--of holding Egypt as a foreign country.
Let us now see what they did with the store of soldiers which they
possessed and with the new recruits whom they constantly added to
it.[96] I have already drawn your attention to certain lands which the
Ptolemies "set aside" for particular purposes. One complex of such
lands they assigned to the temples. And I may remark that while the
Ptolemies appointed and controlled the priests, they also conciliated
them, by leaving them valuable perquisites, paying to them stated sums
annually, building new temples and repairing old ones, and allowing
them to make for their own consumption the various articles which they
could buy only at the royal counters and at monopolistic prices. They
also set their land aside in a favored category. What is common to this
category is not a single fiscal arrangement, but a relinquishing by the
king of his right of direct management. To its members he binds himself
in a way that does not impair his ownership, but does restrict his
ability to take possession.
To this category belong the "gifts" of large blocks of land with
their villages to his courtiers, who received them free from rent
and taxes. The "friends" of the Ptolemies, though they resided in
Alexandria, were thus landed proprietors, absentee landlords, who
maintained their luxurious establishments in the capital on the rents
which their Egyptian tenants paid. Common soldiers could not expect
to become feudal lords by entering Ptolemy's service. But for his
"loyal comrades," as Theocritus[97] calls them,--his officers, court
dignitaries, and favorites,--he had such benefices to confer.
To the ordinary men-at-arms lots of land all over Egypt were
assigned; to those of the guard and the cavalry, sixty-five and
forty-five acre farms, to the infantrymen, farms of twenty acres.
For Egyptian conditions these were very large units, and since
under Philadelphus--who perfected this system of farming out his
soldiers--the army consisted of 57,600 foot and 23,200 horsemen, over
one quarter of all the arable land in Egypt would have been in their
possession, if only land naturally watered by the Nile had been given
to them, and if none of them were mercenaries serving only for hire.
Many, however, were doubtless mercenaries of this type; and to the
rest, land was commonly distributed which needed some expenditure of
capital and energy to be reclaimed from the desert or the water. Of
this kind of land the Ptolemies evidently inherited a goodly quantity
from the Persians, whose government had been rendered inefficient in
the fourth century B.C. by frequent revolts of the natives.