Part 1
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GREEK IMPERIALISM
by
WILLIAM SCOTT FERGUSON
Professor of Ancient History Harvard University
Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge
Copyright, 1913, by William Scott Ferguson
All Rights Reserved
Published September 1913
TO MY MOTHER
PREFACE
This book contains seven lectures, six of which were delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston during February, 1913. In the first of them the main lines of imperial development in Greece are sketched. In the others I have tried to characterize, having regard rather to clearness than to novelty or completeness, the chief imperial growths which arose in Greece during the transformance of city-states from ultimate to constituent political units. I hope that these discussions of the theory and practice of government in the empires of Athens, Sparta, Alexander, the Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Antigonids will be found useful by the general reader, and especially by the student of politics and history. The idea I wish particularly to convey, however, is that there was continuity of constitutional development within the whole period. The city-state, indeed, reached its greatest efficiency in the time of Pericles, but the federation of city-states was being still perfected two hundred years afterwards. In government, as in science, the classic period was but the youthful bloom of Greece, whereas its vigorous maturity--in which it was cut down by Rome--came in the Macedonian time.
Briefly stated, my thesis is this: The city-states of Greece were unicellular organisms with remarkable insides, and they were incapable of growth except by subdivision. They might reproduce their kind indefinitely, but the cells, new and old, could not combine to form a strong nation. Thus it happened that after Athens and Sparta had tried in vain to convert their hegemonies over Greece into empires, a cancerous condition arose in Hellas, for which the proper remedy was not to change the internal constitutions of city-states, as Plato and Aristotle taught, but to change the texture of their cell walls so as to enable them to adhere firmly to one another. With a conservatism thoroughly in harmony with the later character of the Greek people, the Greeks struggled against this inevitable and salutary change. But in the end they had to yield, saving, however, what they could of their urban separateness, while creating quasi-territorial states, by the use of the federal system and deification of rulers. These two contrivances were, accordingly, rival solutions of the same great political problem. Nothing reveals more clearly the limitations of Greek political theory than that it takes no account either of them or of their antecedents.
Cambridge, Mass., June, 1913.
CONTENTS
I. IMPERIALISM AND THE CITY-STATE
I. DEFINITIONS 1-5
1. Of empire, 1.
2. Of emperor, 3.
3. Of imperialism, 4.
II. THE CITY-STATE 6-19
1. Its origin, 6.
2. Its characteristics, 9.
_a._ Fusion of agricultural, trading, industrial, and commercial classes, 9.
_b._ Theory of common descent of citizens, 13.
_c._ So-called worship of the dead, 14.
_d._ Educative power of the laws, 16.
_e._ Municipality and nation in one, 17.
III. MEANS OF OBSCURING IMPERIALISM 19-25
1. Symmachia the basis of the Peloponnesian league, 20.
_a._ Support of oligarchies, 21.
2. Stasis, or civil war, 22.
3. Symmachia the basis of the Athenian empire, 23.
_a._ Support of democracies, 23.
_b._ Maintenance of the union, 24.
IV. FAILURE OF HEGEMONIES 25-30
1. The idea of proportionate representation, 27.
V. MEANS OF EVADING IMPERIALISM 30-34
1. Grant of Polity, or citizenship, 30.
2. Grant of Isopolity, or reciprocity of citizenship, 31.
3. Grant of Sympolity, or joint citizenship, 32.
VI. MEANS OF JUSTIFYING IMPERIALISM 34-37
1. Deification of kings, 35.
II. ATHENS: AN IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY
I. ORIGIN OF THE IMPERIAL DEMOCRACY 38-41
1. Themistocles, 39.
2. Pericles, 41.
II. SIZE AND POPULATION OF ATHENS AND ITS EMPIRE 42-43
III. THE FUNERAL ORATION: THE IDEALS OF PERICLEAN DEMOCRACY 43-48
IV. THE INSTITUTIONS OF DEMOCRACY 49-65
1. Ecclesia and heliæa; their conjoined activity, 49.
2. The council of the 500 and the committees of magistrates, 51.
_a._ The ten prytanies, 52.
_b._ Election by lot; annual tenure of office; rotation, 52, 53, 55.
3. The ecclesia an assembly of high-class amateurs, 57.
_a._ Its use of experts, 58.
_b._ Its choice of a leader: ostracism, 60.
4. The economic basis of democracy, 61.
_a._ The place of slavery: simply a form of capital, 61.
_b._ The object of indemnities: political equality, 64.
V. THE EMPIRE 65-78
1. The advantages of sea power, 66.
2. The demands of the fleet, 68.
3. The complaints made against Athens, 70.
_a._ Misuse of tribute money, 71.
_b._ Misuse of judicial authority, 72.
_c._ Seizure of land in subject territory, 73.
_d._ Extirpation of the best, 74.
4. The destruction of the empire, 75.
III. FROM SPARTA TO ARISTOTLE
I. SPARTA IN HISTORY 79-97
1. Crushing of early Spartan culture, 81.
2. The military life of the Spartans, 84.
3. The effect of the Perioec ring-wall, 85, 88.
_a._ The Peloponnesian league: 550-370 B.C., 88.
_b._ The Hellenic league: 405-395 B.C., 89.
4. The hollowness of the Spartan hegemony, 90-95.
_a._ Cinadon, 91.
5. The age of reaction, 96, 97.
_a._ Urban particularism, 96.
_b._ The ancestral constitution, 96.
II. SPARTA AND ATHENS IN POLITICAL THEORY 97-114
1. Plato, 99-107.
_a._ Neglect of History, 99.
_b._ Plato's hatred of democracy, 102.
_c._ His idealization of Sparta, 107.
2. Aristotle, 107-114.
_a._ Relation to history, 108.
_b._ Aristotle's hatred of imperialism, 110, 113.
_c._ Comparison of his Politics with the Prince of Machiavelli, 111.
_d._ Aristotle's failure to let "strength" operate in international politics, 114.
IV. ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND WORLD-MONARCHY
I. IDEAS RECEIVED BY ALEXANDER FROM HIS PARENTS AND HIS TUTOR 116-123
_a._ Alexander and Philip, 116.
_b._ Alexander and Aristotle, 119, 135, 147.
II. ACTS BY WHICH ALEXANDER DISCLOSED HIS POLICIES 123-148
1. The destruction of Thebes, 123.
2. The visit to Troy, 124.
3. The Gordian knot, 125.
4. The visit to the oasis of Siwah, 126, 139.
5. The burning of the palace of the Persian kings, 129.
6. The discharge of the Greek contingents, 130.
7. _Proskynesis_, 131.
8. The great marriage at Susa, 136.
9. The _proskynesis_ of the city-states, 147.
V. THE PTOLEMAIC DYNASTY
I. HISTORY OF THE PTOLEMIES 149-160
1. Third period of Ptolemaic history: 80-30 B.C., 151.
_a._ Ptolemy the Piper, 152.
_b._ Cleopatra the Great, 152.
2. First period of Ptolemaic history: 323-203 B.C., 155.
_a._ Ptolemy I. Soter: 323-283 B.C., 150, 155.
_b._ Ptolemy II. Philadelphus: 285-246 B.C., 156.
_c._ Ptolemy III. Euergetes: 246-222 B.C., 159, 179.
_d._ Ptolemy IV. Philopator: 222-203 B.C., 160, 179.
II. EMPIRE OF THE PTOLEMIES 160-182
1. Grounds of the imperial policy of the early Ptolemies, 160.
_a._ Pride of possession, 160.
_b._ Checkmating enemies, 161.
_c._ Commercial advantages, 161.
_d._ Domestic policy, 162.
2. Triple theory of Ptolemaic state, 162.
_a._ For Egyptians, 162.
_b._ For Greek city-states, 163.
_c._ For Macedonians, 166.
3. The Ptolemaic army, 167.
_a._ Origin, 168.
_b._ Distribution of, in Egypt, 172.
_c._ Influence of, upon natives, 176.
_d._ Becomes immobile, 242-222 B.C., 179.
_e._ Opened to Egyptians, 180.
4. Second or domestic period of Ptolemaic history, 200-80 B.C., 180.
_a._ Absorption of Greek by native population, 181.
VI. THE SELEUCID EMPIRE
I. HISTORY OF THE SELEUCIDS 183-194
1. Antigonus the One-eyed, creator of the realm, 183.
2. Century and a half of progress, 184-190.
_a._ Seleucus I: 312-281 B.C., 184.
_b._ Antiochus I, Soter: 281-262 B.C., 185.
_c._ Antiochus II, Theos: 262-246 B.C., 185.
_d._ Seleucus II, Callinicus: 246-226 B.C., 186.
_e._ Seleucus III, Soter: 226-223 B.C.
_f._ Antiochus III, The Great: 223-187 B.C., 187.
_g._ Seleucus IV: 187-175 B.C.
_h._ Antiochus IV, The God Manifest: 175-164 B.C., 190, 213.
3. Century of decline: 164-163 B.C., 190.
4. External agents of destruction, 190.
_a._ Rome disarms Seleucids, incites revolt, and keeps alive dynastic struggles, 190.
_b._ Indo-Scythians (Yue Tchi) occupy East Iran, 192.
5. Internal agencies: revolt of Jews, Parthians, Armenians, 191, 192.
II. POLICY AND PROBLEMS OF THE SELEUCIDS 195-214
1. Seleucus I, heir of Alexander's ideas, 195.
2. Founding of city-states, 196.
3. Priestly communities and feudal states, how treated, 197.
4. Royal villages, how managed, 203, 205.
5. Land either property of king or of city-states, 204.
6. City-states, how far they Hellenized Asia, 206.
7. Relations of king to city-states, 208.
8. Comparison of Syria and Italy, 210.
9. Policy of Antiochus IV: conflict with Jews; submission to Rome, 212.
VII. THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTIGONIDS
I. RELATION OF MACEDON TO HELLAS 215
II. MACEDONIAN CONTRIBUTION TO ROME 215-216
1. War, 215.
2. Government--a constitutional and not an absolute monarchy, 216.
3. Culture, 216.
III. MACEDONIAN OPPOSITION TO ROME 217-218
IV. EARLY HISTORY OF THE ANTIGONIDS 218-222
1. Antigonus I--the exponent of unity in Græco-Macedonian world, 218.
2. Demetrius Poliorcetes--the adventurer, 219.
3. Antigonus and Demetrius not really kings of Macedon, 220.
V. ANTIGONUS GONATAS 222-234
1. Training got in Greece and Macedon, 222.
2. Peace with Asia and Egypt, 223.
_a._ Inroad of Pyrrhus, 223.
3. Protected Greece from northern barbarians, 224.
4. Governs Greece by "tyrannies," 224.
5. Stoic justification of "tyranny," 225.
6. Ptolemy Philadelphus opposes Antigonus in Greece, 226.
7. Rise of the _ethne_, 228.
8. Struggle with Egypt for sea power, 229.
_a._ Aratus seizes Sicyon: Alexander rebels, 230.
_b._ The Laodicean War saves Antigonus, 231.
_c._ Possessions of Antigonus at end of struggle, 233.
VI. POSITION OF ACHÆA, ÆTOLIA, AND EGYPT AT THE END OF STRUGGLE 234
VII. THE FEDERAL MOVEMENT 235-240
1. _Ethne_ become leagues, 236.
2. The city-state the federal unit, 237.
3. The league lacks an _hegemon_, 238.
4. Monarchical traits, 239.
5. Relation of federal to local authorities, 239.
VIII. DEMETRIUS II 240-241
1. War with Achæans and Ætolians, 241.
IX. FALL OF THE ACHÆAN LEAGUE 241-242
1. Treachery of the Ætolians, 241.
2. Desertion of Egypt, 242.
3. Policy of Antigonus Doson, 242.
4. Cleomenes of Sparta, 242.
X. THE HELLENIC LEAGUE OF ANTIGONUS DOSON 242-245
1. Leagues, not cities, the units, 243.
2. Macedon a unit, 243.
3. League assemblies recognized as sovereign authorities, 244.
4. Military weakness, 244.
XI. PHILIP IV AND THE LEAGUE 245-248
1. The Social War, 246.
2. The Roman peril: speech of Agelaus of Naupactus, 246.
3. End of Hellenic independence, 248.
GREEK IMPERIALISM
GREEK IMPERIALISM
I
IMPERIALISM AND THE CITY-STATE
It is my purpose in this opening chapter to define some terms which I shall have to use repeatedly in the book; to make a somewhat detailed examination of the character of the Greek states whose political integrity was threatened by imperialism; to trace the development of imperialism to its culmination in the divine monarchy of Alexander the Great and his successors; and, at the same time, to arrange a general political setting for the topics to be discussed in the six succeeding chapters.
* * * * *
An empire is a state formed by the rule of one state over other states. It is immaterial in this connection what form of government the ruling people prefers. Power may be exercised there by a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a majority without altering in any essential the relation of the sovereign to its dependencies. Still less does it matter whether the subject people is governed by the one, the few, or the many; for all kinds of governments may exist, and have existed, in dependencies.
Naturally, an empire is compatible with any kind of an administrative service among both governors and governed. The suzerain may attend to its affairs with the aid of professional and specially trained officials, as in a bureaucracy; and a vassal may entrust the details of its public business to successive fractions of its citizens, as in some republics: no imperial relation is established unless separate states or parts of states are involved. But when these are related in a whole as superiors and inferiors, an empire at once arises.
The relation of inferiority and superiority is, however, essential in any empire. In modern times this is acknowledged with the utmost frankness. Upon the higher capacity for government claimed by the Christian peoples, the Western cultures, or the Anglo-Saxons, as the case may be, modern pride, greed, or conscience bases its right to control inferior races. "Take up the white man's burden" is the modern substitute for the ancient commandment, "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." The possession of a better rule of public life imposes--it is affirmed--a missionary obligation no less weighty than the possession of a special rule of eternal life.
Less exasperating, perhaps, than this assumption of moral and political superiority is the candid profession of the right of the stronger. The right of conquest gives a title which is valid in international law when every other right is lacking. When superiority is stipulated to be absent, the product is a federation or something similar from which the name empire is withheld. When, in course of time, superiority dies out till a common right eventually embraces subject and sovereign alike, a new state arises, to which, as in the case of the present-day British world, the title empire is applied with some impropriety.
There is, however, still another kind of empire. In it the superior authority is not a people, but an individual. He is called an emperor, and his family a dynasty. His authority is bestowed, as the present German Emperor said at Königsberg in 1910, not by "parliaments, and meetings, and decisions of the peoples, but by the grace of God alone." He is "a chosen instrument of Heaven," to speak with the same high authority, and "goes his way without regard to the views and opinions of the day." An emperor, thus defined, is not properly a part of his state at all. He stands outside of it, and is equal or superior to it. He is a state unto himself; and his jurisdiction is not domestic but imperial, in that he exercises dominion over another state. _L'état c'est moi_ is an imperfect definition of this kind of empire, however; for it presumes the absence of political organization and activity among the subjects of the emperor. It presumes the permanency of the condition of absolute surrender (_deditio_) which, with the Romans, prefaced the work of restoration--the reëstablishment of civil rights within an enlarged state. In actual experience, moreover, a complete autocracy never exists. The will of every emperor is bound by the legislation which he has himself enacted, or accepted with the throne from his predecessor. If responsible to nothing else, he is responsible to his own past. He may withdraw his charters: he cannot violate them with impunity.
* * * * *
The policy by which a people or an autocrat acquires and maintains an empire, we call imperialism. The term is, of course, a legacy from Rome--a mute witness to the peculiar importance of the Roman empire in the history of state-building. And, I suppose, it is the policy of Rome that we think of most instinctively when we allude to imperialism. This is by no means an accident. For not simply the type, but also many of the most noteworthy varieties of this kind of policy, are found in the experience of the Romans; and the course of political progress has been such that in the triumph of Rome imperialism reached its logical issue more closely than either before or since in the history of the world.
For the logical issue of a thorough-going imperial policy--one in which the possession of physical ability may be presupposed--is the formation of an universal empire. And, in fact, the two most powerful and ardent imperialists of antiquity, Alexander the Great and Julius Cæsar, aimed to include in their dominions the entire inhabitable world. This issue was, however, never more nearly reached than in the long period before and after the Christian era during which only shifting nomads and intractable Parthians disputed successfully the will of the Roman Senate and the orders of the Roman emperors. For five hundred years after the triumph of Constantine the universality of the Roman empire was as mandatory in men's thinking as was the catholicity of the Christian Church. "There are many 'empires' in the world to-day," says Professor Bury[1] in explaining the coronation of Charlemagne in 800 A.D., "but in those days men could only conceive of one, the Roman _imperium_, which was simple and indivisible; two Roman empires were unimaginable. There might be more than the one emperor; but these others could only be legitimate and constitutional if they stood to him in a collegial relation." How thoroughly the Romans impressed the concept of universality upon the term empire may be judged by the fact that, in the face of all realities, the Frankish monarchs at Aachen and the Greek kings at Constantinople ruled as colleagues a Roman empire which stretched from the borders of Armenia to the shores of the Atlantic.
Transcendent as is the imperial achievement of the Romans, and unrivaled as is the political sagacity with which they consolidated their power and made it enduring, it must still be recognized that they were the heirs, in war, diplomacy, and government, of the Greeks, their predecessors. They worked with greater power and with larger units than did the Spartans and the Athenians. They benefited by the brilliant inventions and the costly errors of the Macedonians whose kingdoms they destroyed. But their success simply brought to a culmination the imperial movement in which Sparta, Athens, and Macedon were worthy co-workers. It is our task in this series of essays to examine in turn the imperial experiments by which the Greeks not only won a field for the display of their own talents, but also prepared the way for the unification of the ancient world in the empire of Rome.
* * * * *
I alluded a moment ago to the smallness of the units with which the imperial policy of Sparta and Athens had to deal. Before proceeding in the latter part of this chapter to trace the development of the forms by which imperialism was obscured, evaded, and ultimately justified in Greece, I should like to try to make clear the qualities which rendered the little Hellenic communities so hard for imperial digestion. In classic Greece, as in renascence Italy, the city was the state. It had not always been so; for in the past the land had been at one time in the possession of rudimentary nations, called _ethne_. But in the classic epoch these loose organisms persisted only in certain backward regions in the west and north. Elsewhere city-states had everywhere made their appearance as early as the sixth century B.C.
The circumstances in which these city-states arose are shrouded in the mystery which surrounds most beginnings. They, accordingly, present all the better opportunity for the construction of a theory; and perhaps the theory which had once the greatest vogue is that enunciated by Fustel de Coulanges in his brilliant book on _The Ancient City_. Of its main propositions, however,--that each city-state came into being at a single moment; that it was an artificial structure deliberately modeled on the preëxistent family; that the family was a religious association created and organized for the worship of ancestors; that the spirits of ancestors were the first gods, or, indeed, were gods at all,--not one has stood the test of a searching inquiry. On the contrary, it seems established that the city-state was the result of a natural growth, and that the incidents which accompanied its development, while varied and numerous, were all manifestations of political progress. Growth in the direction of a large number of distinct states was natural in Greece in view of the well-known physical features of the country; but the study of geography does not explain why these states were cities. For the true explanation of this phenomenon we must not confine our observation to Greece. Broadly speaking, high culture is everywhere city-bred, and the cities have regularly been the leaders in political development. In Babylonia that was the case, though the urban centres there were dominated from a very early date by Semitic tribes from the desert. Free cities, like Tyre and Sidon, were the prime sources of Phoenician enterprise. The home of Roman law and government was a city, and when Italy led the world a second time, she was a complex of city-states. The Hanse towns and the Flemish communes, the chartered cities of England and France, acquired political liberty or political rights long before the rest of Central Europe. Where, in fact, the cities have not been the mother, and the territorial states simply the foster-mother, of freedom and culture, exceptional conditions have existed--such as the need of regulating the Nile's overflow in Egypt, and the model and influence of the Roman empire in Mohammedan and Christian Europe.
The city enables men to coöperate easily. In it ideas and feelings spread quickly. Life, property, and privileges are there protected by walls, and, if need be, by street barricades. "Two voices are there," wrote Wordsworth in 1807, his vision limited by the peril of England and Switzerland,--
"one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty."
The voice of a city mob--that of Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Florence, or Paris, for example--was generally raucous and often cruel. But it made tyrants tremble and limited absolutism when the fear of assassination was powerless.