Part 14

According to invariable Greek practice, however, such a city controlled--with certain limitations--its own shrines. The great temples of Apollo at Delphi and Delos, for example, were governed by the citizens of those towns. Hence the natural policy for the Seleucids, and the one which they in fact followed wherever practicable, was to subordinate the high priests and clergy to the adjacent urban authorities, thus solving the ecclesiastical question in a way convenient for themselves and agreeable to European feeling. Where this did not prove practicable, they often despoiled the temple of its lands for the benefit of their followers. Thus the village of Bætocæce was taken from the local temple of Zeus and given to a certain Demetrius, and the sacred land of Zeus of Æzani was divided into lots, which were assigned to cleruchs, subjected to a tax, and attached to the financial jurisdiction of an adjoining city.[111] It is simply another aspect of the same general policy when king after king sought to lay "impious" hands upon the treasures stored up in the temples of Bel, Anaitis, Atargatis, and Jehovah.

The secularization of religious properties was a very difficult matter, and it was not pushed at all times with equal vigor by the Seleucids. When the monarchs were embarrassed by foreign or domestic troubles, they had to conciliate the priests even to the point of undoing what they had already done. How easily a reaction might occur we can perceive from the case recorded in the splendid inscription which Mr. Butler has recently found cut on the inner wall of the great temple of Artemis at Sardis.[112] A certain Mnesimachus, presumably a Macedonian officer or adventurer, had got a huge fief from King Antigonus. It consisted of the village of Tobalmura in the Sardian plain and its appurtenances, the villages of Tandu and Combdilipia. On these he had to pay annual dues of £50 to the proper chiliarchy, or subdivision of the satrapy. Near by, in Cinara was a _kleros_, or lot, on which he paid £3 yearly. The fief consisted, in addition, of the village of Periasasostra, of which the annual dues, payable to another chiliarchy, were £57. Close by, in Nagrioa was again a _kleros_, on which he paid £3 7_s._ yearly. The fief consisted, moreover, of the village of Ilu in the territory of the well-known city of Attuda, of which the dues, paid annually to the city of course, were £3 5_s._ The manor (_aule_) of the fief was in the village of Tobalmura, and together with certain lodges held by bailiffs and certain gardens and parks tilled by manorial serfs in Tobalmura and Periasasostra, it had once been assigned to Pytheus and Adrastus, likewise Macedonians; but later on it had seemingly come into the possession of Mnesimachus. The happy holder of this great estate enjoyed, doubtless, the total net yield of the manor and the lots, and, in addition, as the possessor of the manor and lots, rights to exact services in money, kind, and labor from the villeins of the villages. Had he been so minded he might have settled down in Lydia and become a baron like the Iranian nobles whom the Macedonians dispossessed; and, doubtless, many Macedonians and Greeks established themselves in Asia in this fashion. Mnesimachus, however, wanted money rather than "rights"; and, turning to the temple of Artemis in Sardis, he secured a loan of £1325 from the temple treasurers. The inscription cut on the temple wall records the sale to Artemis, with right to repurchase, of Mnesimachus's interest in the fief. His inability to repay his loan resulted in the aggrandizement of the temple.

Incidents of this sort were, doubtless, of frequent occurrence and show what the Seleucids had to guard against. Their land policy seems to have been prudent and far-sighted. They were bound to deal cautiously with their gigantic domain, since from it came the most valuable and stable portion of their revenues. On the other hand, they found a limit set to the quantity which they could profitably retain by the fact that, unlike the Ptolemies, they inherited from the Persians a public service adequate, not to administer, but simply to supervise administration. They did indeed increase the number of their satrapies, without, perhaps, diminishing the number of chiliarchies or hyparchies into which each satrapy was divided, and they seem to have paralleled the general service by a distinct fiscal service and by a distinct priestly service; but, none the less, they had to leave the details of fiscal, judicial, and religious administration to the villages. Though we are singularly ill-informed as to how they organized the villages, it is conceivable that they picked out certain persons, like the elders in the Egyptian villages, and held them responsible for the taxes of the villagers and for their general good behavior. These men would be rather hostages than officials, and would be nominees of the central government rather than of the villages. But we really know nothing of the facts, except that the villagers had some means by which they paid their taxes collectively.

One way by which the Seleucids could relieve themselves of the troubles of local administration and at the same time strengthen their hold upon the country was to make grants of whole blocks or complexes of their land, villages and villagers and all, to Macedonian and Greek feudatories, like Mnesimachus, who of course became responsible for the dues owing to the crown. But the evils of this system had been discovered by the Persian kings when they found their vassals more unruly than the villages. Hence the Seleucids refused to give a clear title to those to whom they made grants of portions of the royal domain, and in the case of Mnesimachus the temple of Artemis, to which he sold his rights, had to secure itself in the contract against the loss which it might sustain should the king recall his grant. On the other hand, when the king sold outright parts of the domain, as he frequently did, particularly in times of financial distress, and the lands and villages sold became with their peasants private property, he required that they should be added to the territory of some city-state, it being a privilege highly cherished by the purchasers that they should be given the liberty of deciding to which city their property should belong. The Seleucid policy that land should belong either to a city-state or to the crown was admirably calculated to destroy priestly and feudal sovereignties, and it was taken over by the Roman emperors, into whose patrimony in Asia Minor passed many temple lands which had either escaped secularization under their predecessors or had been regained by the priests during the later, weaker days of the Seleucid dynasty.[113]

By a similar sale, or by a gift outright, the colonists who formed a new city, or the old inhabitants of a village on being constituted citizens of a free town, obtained full ownership of the lots of land assigned to them. The citizens, in turn, had authority, subject of course to the city's laws and the constitutions of the realm, over the serfs when there happened to be any on their holdings. In this way the king lost control of his peasants and his property; for the foundation was not merely a new city, but at the same time a new state. Its sovereign was not, or not simply, the king: it was the body of its franchised inhabitants assembled in general assembly, and it proceeded to manage its public affairs by means of discussion and resolutions, by delegating functions to a council and magistrates, and by determining its own domestic and foreign policies. The language of public life was of course Greek. The code of public and private law was, doubtless, drafted according to Hellenic models. Gymnasia appeared and with them gymnastic and musical contests--the most characteristic marks of Greek education. The deities they honored were those whom they themselves chose: they chose native gods and goddesses as well as Greek; above all they chose as their chief city-god the living emperor.

The Seleucid empire was a state without a citizenship. If an Athenian settled in it, he remained an Athenian, even if he became a satrap, unless he were given citizen rights in some one of the free cities. In other words, the empire had as many different citizenships as there were different cities, and as many distinct states as there were distinct citizenships.

Accordingly, each city could adopt whatever policy it pleased in the matter of admitting foreigners, be they Greeks or Asiatics, newcomers or natives, to its body politic. It might prohibit the intermarriage of citizens with non-citizens altogether, or it might go so far as to open its doors to bastards. It is, therefore, impossible for us, without such sources of knowledge as the papyri afford for Egypt, to speak in any general way of the extent and effects of racial fusion in the Seleucid empire. Two things, however, seem clear: (1) Intermarriage between citizens of different cities was of frequent occurrence and, doubtless, of full legal propriety; (2) the great mass of the agricultural population was not much affected racially by the proximity of Greeks, Macedonians, Jews, or Iranians. The peasants were practically serfs. Their social inferiority protected them against assimilation by citizens. On the other hand, they were, doubtless, much more deeply stirred by the European immigration than were the fellahs in Egypt; for the influx into their land was much more abundant and more spontaneous than was that into the valley of the Nile. Here, too, Hellenism had much more effective agents for its diffusion than it had there. For within the hundreds of city-states in Asia we must presume that intermarriage was permitted among all citizens, whether the elements which mingled with the Greeks were Phrygians, Lydians, Syrians, Jews, Babylonians, or Iranians. We must presume that at least the men knew in a fashion the Greek language. They certainly tended to take Greek names, and in documents of Delos dating from the second century B.C. we meet with natives of Bambyce--now a _polis_ and renamed Hierapolis, or the Sacred City--who would be indistinguishable from native-born Greeks were it not for the Semitic names of their wives. Indeed, some of them may have been Greeks who had married Syrian women. The various circles of Europeans in Syria, and, though to a less degree, elsewhere in Asia, must have been surrounded at an early date by a penumbra of half-breeds, by means of which the sharp contrast of antagonistic civilizations was lessened. In these circumstances Greek ideas and customs became a ferment which stirred the peoples of Asia to the depths. The awakening of the Nearer East was in progress in the third century B.C., and had the Romans succumbed to Hannibal and the Greeks maintained their prestige unimpaired for a century or two longer, the whole course of history would have been changed.

The Greeks came to Asia "not to send peace but a sword." They came to fill the continent up with cantankerous little republics where formerly a dense multitude had lived in a state of political lethargy. And curiously enough those who directed the dismemberment of Asia into far more states than even mediæval Germany produced were the rulers who had the responsibility for the government of the whole region. How explain this anomaly?

The anomaly is more apparent than real. The ruler was not simply the great landed proprietor of the cities' neighborhood; he was the founder, or the descendant of the heroized founder, of most of them; he was the "benefactor" or the "preserver" of them all. As such he was deserving of their homage and entitled to their obedience. This they could proffer in an unobjectionable manner once Alexander had shown them the way. They had simply to make their proskynesis; to elect him to membership in their circle of deities, furnish him with a sacred precinct, temple, altar, image, procession, and contest, and designate a priest to attend to the sacrifices and other matters pertaining to his worship. This they did of their own volition during the reign of the founder of the dynasty. Apotheosis without territorial limitations Antiochus I demanded for Seleucus "after his departure from the life among men," and the second Antiochus demanded it for himself and his sister-wife during their lifetime as well as for their "departed" father; so that just as in Egypt and for the same reasons an imperial cult of the rulers dead and living was established throughout not only the satrapies and hyparchies but also the cities of the realm.[114]

The city had, accordingly, a dual character: it was at once both in theory and fact a nation and a municipality. In the former capacity it could grant or withhold allegiance to the king; in the latter it had simply to obey. It had for example to pay tribute to him (_phoros_ or _syntaxis_), which might be viewed as a rent for the land assigned to it, or as the price paid for military protection. It might have not simply a priest of the king and a priestess of the queen, but also a resident (_epistates_), who on occasion might also be _phrurarch_, or commandant, of the royal garrison when it had one. The double status of the city is further evidenced by the fact that its citizens were subject not only to the laws which they themselves passed but also to the mandates (_prostagmata_) which the king issued. In cases of conflict there could be no doubt which was superior. The king was in theory absolute as a god was absolute. He had, of course, citizenship in no state, but was simply _basileus_, or king. This title, attached to the name without an _ethnicum_, was the only one that the early Seleucids used; but the later members of the dynasty, beginning with Antiochus IV, added to it the title, such as Epiphanes, or God Manifest, by which their peculiar office as gods was indicated. Thereafter, on their coins and edicts the two titles appeared, and the monarchs were thereby classified in the two worlds to which they belonged--that of men and that of gods--as completely as were citizens when to their names were added the adjectival forms of their city's name. In either capacity they were superior to the cities. On the other hand, the Seleucid god-kings had to consider carefully the demands of their cities, since these, having the means to organize resistance, could easily revolt. When they did not get satisfaction they might choose some other god-king instead, as the cities in Parthia and Bactria actually did; or they might secure immunity from tribute, as did the cities in Asia Minor in the reign of Antiochus I. Room was, accordingly, left for a large measure of municipal liberty; and, in general, the activities of the citizens were numerous and important. They had to attend to the maintenance of order, the administration of justice, and the collection of taxes within their several territories. Hence the cities gave a stimulus to political interest and ambition such as Asia had never known before. They occupied, in fact, a place in the Seleucid empire quite as important as that of the municipalities in the early Roman empire, of which they were, indeed, the prototypes.

The Roman empire, however, had not yet come into existence. It was the Italian federation under Rome's leadership which defeated Hannibal and won the battles of Thermopylæ and Magnesia. When compared with this aggregate of incorporated and allied states, the Seleucid empire demonstrated fatal weaknesses. Rome had, perhaps, not many more citizens on her army list than there were males of military age in the franchised population of the Seleucid cities; and her public land, which, too, was her chief source of revenue, was far inferior in extent and yield to the royal domain of the Seleucids. Her advantages were twofold and their enumeration will help us to understand the disabilities under which the Asiatic monarchy labored. First, apart from the soldiers on Rome's army list there were few males of military age in Italy; in other words, there was no vast native population to hold in subjection. Second, Rome could mobilize her forces much more easily, quickly, and completely than could the Seleucids. The great distances, often of mountain and desert, which separated the cities of Asia from one another; the considerable trading, industrial, Asiatic, and otherwise unwarlike, element in the free population of the Hellenic and Hellenized cities; and the independence of the cities, particularly in the matter of giving or refusing military aid to their suzerain, had no parallel in Italy, where the territory was compact, the population mainly a warlike peasantry, and the cities all bound to provide troops at the call of Rome to the full extent of their power. Like the giant Antæus in his trial of strength with Heracles, Rome with every fall renewed her might from contact with her native soil. The Seleucids ruled over a cosmopolitan, denationalized world. They had no native soil on which to fall. It is of profound significance that there were and could be no fellow-citizens of Seleucus in all Asia. The loyalty of true men in his realm was due first of all to their cities, and it was only by the lapse of time that a secondary loyalty to the ruling dynasty ceased to imply treason to their native states. The cities stood always before the decision whether in any given case they had more to gain or to lose by abandoning the Seleucid and transferring their allegiance to his enemy or to some other king.

It was the tragedy of Antiochus IV that through an education in Italy he came to realize fully the political grounds for the military superiority of Rome, and that through a sentimental attachment for Athens and the art, letters, and philosophy for which Athens stood, he renewed his conviction as to the absolute superiority of Greek culture.[115] He attempted to push more vigorously than ever the dynastic policy of Hellenization, by which alone a new nation could be bred in Asia, at a time when native hopes were revived; and he tried to draw the city-states of his realm into more complete dependence upon himself by the only means available to him--the right which he possessed as one of their gods to unhesitating obedience in all matters--at the very time when this policy came into collision with a religion to which deification of kings was an abomination. For in 200 B.C. Palestine had passed from the control of Egypt into the control of Antiochus the Great, whereupon his dynasty had to deal with the Jews. The trouble was, of course, that the Jews were monotheists. Many Jews in Jerusalem, as well as in the other cities of the realm, were not averse to Hellenism, and frequented the gymnasia, enrolled their sons in the ephebe corps, and gave them Greek names, but the devout shrank with horror from worshiping the emperor, and the peasants from everything foreign. Accordingly an open revolt occurred in Judæa, chiefly among the country people, when Antiochus IV chartered Jerusalem as a Hellenized city, substituted for the bizarre law of Moses an enlightened, up-to-date, Greek code, and set down his own image as the Olympian Zeus in the Holy of Holies.

This is the same Antiochus who twice led his victorious army to the walls of Alexandria, once to retreat after dictating terms to the Ptolemies, once to meet a Roman embassy headed by his old friend Gaius Popillius. Before answering the king's pleasant greeting, the Roman handed to him the message of his Senate and curtly bade him read it. He found it to be an order to evacuate Egypt immediately. On asking for time to consider the proposal, he got a further surprise; for, drawing a circle round the king in the sand with his cane, Popillius demanded an answer "Yes" or "No" before he stepped outside of it. A few months earlier, by crushing Perseus of Macedon on the battle-field of Pydna (168 B.C.), Rome had rid itself of its last serious rival. Since for Antiochus to resist meant now to stand alone against the master of the world, the only answer he could give was "Yes"; yet it meant the ruin of the Seleucid empire. Thereafter, there was but one free will in the vast territory of Africa, Asia, and Europe which lay between the Euphrates River and the Atlantic Ocean--the will of the government of Rome. Instruments to give it continuous effect in Italy that sagacious and persistent corporation, the Roman Senate, had made and used already; and in its march to universal empire it had broken and hurled to the ground the instruments of authority raised against it by its Greek adversaries. To pick them up, mend them, and improve them for further use was the imperial task of the immediate future.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Schürer, E. _Geschichte des jüdischen Volks im Zeitalter Jesu Christi_, I^3 (1901), II^4 (1907).

2. Bevan, E. _The House of Seleucus_ (1902).

3. Niese, B. _Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischen Staaten._ Especially Vol. III (1903).

4. Beloch, J. _Griechische Geschichte_, III (1904).

5. Rostowzew, M. _Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates_ (1910), pp. 240 _ff._

6. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. _Staat und Gesellschaft der Griechen: D. Die makedonischen Königreiche_ (1910).

7. Bouché-Leclercq, A. _Histoire des Séleucides_ (1913).

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 101: Kromayer, _Historische Zeitschrift_, C, p. 50.]

[Footnote 102: Dittenberger, _Orientis Græcæ Inscriptiones Selectæ_, 224; if the king is Antiochus II, and not, as is now claimed (Pozzi, _Memorie della Reale Accademia di Torino_, serie II, tom. LXIII, p. 345, n. 4), Antiochus III. See, however, Kärst, _Geschichte des hellenistischen Zeitalters_, II, I, p. 422 and Bouché-Leclercq, _Hist. des Séleucides_, pp. 90 _f._, 470 _ff._]

[Footnote 103: See now Kromayer, _Hannibal und Antiochus der Grosse_ (_Neue Jahrbücher für d. klass, Altert._ XIX (1907), pp. 681 _ff._).]

[Footnote 104: Cordier, H., _Journal des Savants_ (1907), pp. 247 _ff._; Cunningham, _Numismatic Chronicle_ (1888), pp. 222 _ff._]

[Footnote 105: _Ruins of Desert Cathay_ (1912), I, pp. 274, 284.]

[Footnote 106: W.W. Tarn, _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, XXII (1902), pp. 268 _ff._, and _Antigonus Gonatas_, frontispiece; Gardner, P., _Numismatic Chronicle_ (1887), p. 177.]

[Footnote 107: _Encyclopedia Britannica_^11, _s. v._ _Hellenism_ (Bevan).]

[Footnote 108: _Syr._ 57; cf. Droysen, _Gesch. d. Hellenismus_^2, III, 2, pp. 254 _ff._]

[Footnote 109: XII, 2, 3, p. 535. Rostowzew, _Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Kolonates_, pp. 269 _ff._]

[Footnote 110: Butler, _Publications of an American Expedition to Syria_, II (1903), pp. 121 _ff._, 177; cf. Rostowzew, _op. cit._, p. 254.]

[Footnote 111: Dittenberger, _Orientis Græcæ Inscriptiones Selectæ_, 262, 502.]

[Footnote 112: Buckler and Robinson, _Greek Inscriptions from Sardis_. (_American Journal of Archæology_, XVI, 1912, pp. 11 _ff._)]

[Footnote 113: Calder, _Classical Review_, XXVII (1913), pp. 9 _ff._]

[Footnote 114: Kärst, _Gesch. des hellen. Zeitalters_, II, I, pp. 419 _ff._ Bouché-Leclercq's treatment of this subject (_Hist. des Séleucides_, pp. 469 _ff._), is inadequate.]

[Footnote 115: _Hellenistic Athens_, pp. 303 _ff._]

VII

THE EMPIRE OF THE ANTIGONIDS