Part 12

The latter was defeated in a battle which ensued, and was driven into the fortified Thessalian town of Lamia, where he was besieged. Unfortunately, Leosthenes was killed during the progress of the siege, and a long interval occurred before a new commander could be agreed on. This gave Antipater time to obtain succor from Asia. A Macedonian army, under Leonnatus, crossed the Hellespont, and the besiegers of Lamia were forced to break up their camp in order to meet it. They did so with success; Leonnatus was slain and his army driven back. But meantime Antipater escaped from Lamia, joined the defeated troops and retreated into Macedonia. The war thus begun, and which took the name of the Lamian War, was continued, not unfavorably to the confederates, on the whole, until the following summer—August, 322 B. C.—when it was ended by a battle fought on the plain of Krannon, in Thessaly. Antipater, who had been joined by Kraterus, from Asia, was the victor, and Athens with all her allies submitted to the terms which he dictated. He established a Macedonian garrison in Munychia, and not only suppressed the democratic constitution of Athens, but ordered all the poorer citizens—all who possessed less than 2,000 drachmæ's worth of property, being 12,000 out of the 21,000 who then possessed the Athenian franchise—to be driven from the city; thus leaving a selected citizenship of 9,000 of the richer and more manageable men. The banished or deported 12,000 were scattered in Thrace, Illyria, Italy and even in northern Africa. The leaders of the anti-Macedonian rising were pursued with unrelenting animosity. Demosthenes, the great orator, who had been conspicuous among them, was dragged from a temple at Kalauria, to which he had fled, and took poison to escape the worse death which probably awaited him.

_G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 95 (volume 12)._

GREECE: B. C. 323-301. Wars of the Diadochi or Successors of Alexander.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 323-316; 315-310; and 310-301.

GREECE: B. C. 321-312. The contest for Athens and Peloponnesus, between Cassander and Polysperchon. Execution of Phocion. Restoration of Thebes.

"Antipater, after the termination of the Lamian war, passed over to Asia and took part in the affairs there.

See MACEDONIA: A. D. 323-316.

Being appointed guardian to the Kings, as the children and relatives of Alexander were called, he returned to Macedonia, leading them with him. … Antipater died (Olympiad 115, 3) shortly after his return to Macedonia. He directed that Polysperchon, his ancient mate in arms, should succeed him in his office, while to his son Cassander he left only the second place. But Cassander, an ambitious youth, looked upon his father's authority as his inheritance; and relying on the aid of the aristocratic party in the Grecian states, of Ptolemæus, who ruled in Egypt, and of Antigonus, the most powerful general in Asia, he resolved to dispute it with Polysperchon. {1600} Under pretext of going a-hunting, he escaped out of Macedonia, and passed over to Asia to concert matters with Antigonus. Polysperchon, seeing war inevitable, resolved to detach Greece, if possible, from Cassander. Knowing that the oligarchies established in the different states by Antipater would be likely to espouse the cause of his son, he issued a pompous edict, in the name of the Kings, restoring the democracies. … At Athens (Olympiad 115,4) [B. C. 317], Nicanor, who commanded in the Munychia, finding that the people were inclined toward Polysperchon, secretly collected troops, and seized the Piræeus. The people sent to him Phocion, Conon the son of Timotheüs, and Clearchus, men of distinction, and his friends; but to no purpose. A letter also came to him from Olympias, Alexander's mother, whom Polysperchon had recalled from Epeirus, and given the charge of her infant grandson, ordering him to surrender both the Munychia and the Piræeus; but to as little effect. Finally, Polysperchon's son Alexander entered Attica with an army, and encamped before the Piræeus. Phocion and other chiefs of the aristocracy went to Alexander, and advised him not to give these places up to the people, but to hold them himself till the contest with Cassander should be terminated. They feared, it is evident, for their own safety, and not without reason; for the people, ferocious with the recovery of power, soon after held an assembly, in which they deposed all the former magistrates, appointed the most furious democrats in their room, and passed sentences of death, banishment, and confiscation of goods on those who had governed under the oligarchy. Phocion and his friends fled to Alexander, who received them kindly, and sent them with letters in their favor to his father, who was now in Phocis. The Athenians also despatched an embassy, and, yielding to motives of interest, Polysperchon sent his suppliants prisoners to Athens, to stand a trial for their lives before the tribunal of an anarchic mob. … The prisoners were condemned and led off to prison, followed by the tears of their friends and the triumphant execrations of their mean-spirited enemies. They drank the fatal hemlock-juice, and their bodies were cast unburied beyond the confines of Attica. Four days after the death of Phocion, Cassander arrived at the Piræeus with 35 ships, carrying 4,000 men, given him by Antigonus. Polysperchon immediately entered Attica with 20,000 Macedonian foot and 4,000 of those of the allies, 1,000 horse, and 65 elephants, which he had brought from Asia, and encamped near the Piræeus. But as the siege was likely to be tedious, and sufficient provisions for so large an army could not be had, he left a force such as the country could support with his son Alexander, and passed with the remainder into Peloponnesus, to force the Megalopolitans to submit to the Kings; for they alone sided with Cassander, all the rest having obeyed the directions to put to death or banish his adherents. The whole serviceable population of Megalopolis, slaves included, amounted to 15,000 men; and under the directions of one Damis, who had served in Asia under Alexander, they prepared for a vigorous defence. Polysperchon sat down before the town, and his miners in a short time succeeded in throwing down three towers and a part of the wall. He attempted a storm, but was obliged to draw off his men, after an obstinate conflict. … The Athenians meantime saw themselves excluded from the sea, and from all their sources of profit and enjoyment, while little aid was to be expected from Polysperchon, who had been forced to raise the siege of Megalopolis, and whose fleet had just now been destroyed by Antigonus in the Hellespont. A citizen of some consideration ventured at length to propose in the assembly an arrangement with Cassander. The ordinary tumult at first was raised, but the sense of interest finally prevailed. Peace was procured, on the conditions of the Munychia remaining in Cassander's hands till the end of the present contest; political privileges being restricted to those possessed of ten minas and upwards of property, and a person appointed by Cassander being at the head of the government. The person selected for this office was Demetrius of Phaleron, a distinguished Athenian citizen; and under his mild and equitable rule the people were far happier than they could have been under a democracy, for which they had proved themselves no longer fit. Cassander then passed over into Peloponnesus, and laid siege to Tegea. While here, he heard that Olympias had put to death several of his friends in Macedonia; among the rest, Philip Aridæus and his wife Eurydice, members of the royal family. He at once (Olympiad 116, 1) [B. C. 316] set out for Macedonia; and, as the pass of Pylæ was occupied by the Ætolians, he embarked his troops in Locris, and landed them in Thessaly. He besieged Olympias in Pydna, forced her to surrender, and put her to death. Macedonia submitted to him, and he then set forth for Peloponnesus, where Polysperchon's son Alexander was at the head of an army. He forced a passage through Pylæ, and coming into Bœotia, announced his intention of restoring Thebes, which had now lain desolate for twenty years. The scattered Thebans were collected; the towns of Bœotia and other parts of Greece (Athens in particular), and even of Italy and Sicily, aided to raise the walls and to supply the wants of the returning exiles, and Thebes was once more numbered among the cities of Greece. As Alexander guarded the Isthmus, Cassander passed to Megara, where he embarked his troops and elephants, and crossed over to Epidaurus. He made Argos and Messene come over to his side, and then returned to Macedonia. In the conflict of interests which prevailed in this anarchic period, Antigonus was ere long among the enemies of Cassander. He sent one of his generals to Laconia, who, having obtained permission from the Spartans to recruit in Peloponnesus, raised 8,000 men. The command in Peloponnesus was given to Polysperchon, whose son Alexander was summoned over to Asia to accuse Cassander of treason before the assembly of the Macedonian soldiers. Cassander was proclaimed a public enemy unless he submitted to Antigonus; at the same time the Greeks were declared independent, Antigonus hoping thus to gain them over to his side. He then sent Alexander back with 500 talents; and when Ptolemæus of Egypt heard what Antigonus had done, he also hastened to declare the independence of the Greeks; for all the contending generals were anxious to stand well with the people of Greece, from which country, exclusive of other advantages, they drew their best soldiers. {1601} … Antigonus, to show the Greeks that he was in earnest in his promise to restore them to independence, sent one of his generals, named Telesphorus, with a fleet and army to Peloponnesus, who expelled Cassander's garrisons from most of the towns. The following year (Olympiad 117, 1) [B. C. 312] he sent an officer, named Ptolemæus, with another fleet and army to Greece. Ptolemæus landed in Bœotia, and being joined by 2,200 foot, and 1,300 horse of the Bœotians, he passed over to Eubœa; where having expelled the Macedonian garrison from Chalcis (the only town there which Cassander held), he left it without any foreign garrison, as a proof that Antigonus meant fairly. He then took Orôpus, and gave it to the Bœotians; he entered Attica, and the people forced Demetrius Phalereus to make a truce with him, and to send to Antigonus to treat of an alliance. Ptolemæus returned to Bœotia, expelled the garrison from the Cadmeia, and liberated Thebes."

_T. Keightley, History of Greece, part 3, chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 58 (volume 7)._

GREECE: B. C. 307-197. Demetrius and the Antigonids.

In the spring of the year 307 B. C. Athens was surprised by an expedition sent from Ephesus by Antigonus, under his adventurous son Demetrius, surnamed Poliorcetes.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 310-301.

The city had then been for ten years subject to Cassander, the ruling chief in Macedonia for the time, and appears to have been mildly governed by Cassander's lieutenant, Demetrius the Phalerian. The coming of the other Demetrius offered nothing to the Athenians but a change of masters, but they welcomed him with extravagant demonstrations. Their degeneracy was shown in proceedings of Asiatic servility. They deified Demetrius and his father Antigonus, erected altars to them and appointed ministering priests. After some months spent at Athens in the enjoyment of these adulations, Demetrius returned to Asia, to take part in the war which Antigonus was waging with Ptolemy of Egypt and Lysimachus of Thrace, two of his former partners in the partition of the empire of Alexander. He was absent three years, and then returned, at the call of the Athenians, to save them from falling again into the hands of Cassander. He now made Athens his capital, as it were, for something more than a year, while he acquired control of Corinth, Argos, Sicyon, Chalcis in Eubœa and other important places, greatly reducing the dominion of the Macedonian, Cassander. His treatment at Athens, during this period, was marked by the same impious and disgraceful servility as before. He was called the guest of the goddess Athene and lodged in the Parthenon, which he polluted with intolerable debaucheries. But in the summer of 301 B. C. this clever adventurer was summoned again to Asia, to aid his father in the last great struggle, which decided the partition of the empire of Alexander between his self-constituted heirs. At the battle of Ipsus (see MACEDONIA: B. C. 310-301), Antigonus perished and Demetrius was stripped of the kingdom he expected to inherit. He turned to Athens for consolation, and the fickle city refused to admit him within her walls. But after some period of wanderings and adventures the unconquerable prince got together a force with which he compelled the Athenians to receive him, on more definite terms of submission on their part and of mastery on his. Moreover, he established his rule in the greater part of Peloponnesus, and finally, on the death of Cassander (B. C. 297), he acquired the crown of Macedonia. Not satisfied with what fortune had thus given him, he attempted to recover the Asiatic kingdom of his father, and died, B. C. 283, a captive in the hands of the Syrian monarch, Seleucus. His Macedonian kingdom had meantime been seized by Pyrrhus of Epirus; but it was ultimately recovered by the eldest legitimate son of Demetrius, called Antigonus Gonatus. From that time, for a century, until the Romans came, not only Macedonia, but Greece at large, Athens included, was ruled or dominated by this king and his descendants, known as the Antigonid kings.

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapters 59-60 (volumes 7-8)._

GREECE: B. C. 297-280. Death of Cassander. Intrigues and murders of Ptolemy Keraunos and his strange acquisition of the Macedonian throne.

See MACEDONIA: B. C. 297-280.

GREECE: B. C. 280-279. Invasion by the Gauls.

See GAULS: B. C. 280-279.

GREECE: B. C. 280-275. Campaigns of Pyrrhus in Italy and Sicily.

See ROME: B. C. 282-275.

GREECE: B. C. 3d Century. The Hellenistic world.

As the result of the conquests of Alexander and the wars of his successors, there were, in the third century before Christ, three great Hellenistic kingdoms, Macedonia, Egypt, Syria, which lasted, each under its own dynasty, till Rome swallowed them up. The first of these, which was the poorest, and the smallest, but historically the most important, included the ancestral possessions of Philip and Alexander— Macedonia, most of Thrace, 'Thessaly, the mountainous centre of the peninsula, as well as a protectorate more or less definite and absolute over Greece proper, the Cyclades, and certain tracts of Caria. … Next came Egypt, including Cyrene and Cyprus, and a general protectorate over the sea-coast cities of Asia Minor up to the Black Sea, together with claims often asserted with success on Syria, and on the coast lands of Southern Asia Minor. … Thirdly came what was now called Syria, on account of the policy of the house of Seleucus, who built there its capital, and determined to make the Greek or Hellenistic end of its vast dominions its political centre of gravity. The Kingdom of Syria owned the south and south-east of Asia Minor, Syria, and generally Palestine, Mesopotamia, and the mountain provinces adjoining it on the East, with vague claims further east when there was no king like Sandracottus to hold India and the Punjaub with a strong hand. There was still a large element of Hellenism in these remote parts. The kingdom of Bactria was ruled by a dynasty of kings with Greek names—Euthydemus is the chief—who coined in Greek style, and must therefore have regarded themselves as successors to Alexander. There are many exceptions and limitations to this general description, and many secondary and semi-independent kingdoms, which make the picture of Hellenism infinitely various and complicated. There was, in fact, a chain of independent kingdoms reaching from Media to Sparta, all of which asserted their complete freedom, and generally attained it by balancing the great powers one against the other. {1602} Here they are in their order. Atropatene was the kingdom in the northern and western parts of the province of Media, by Atropates, the satrap of Alexander, who claimed descent from the seven Persian chiefs who put Darius I. on the throne. Next came Armenia, hardly conquered by Alexander, and now established under a dynasty of its own. Then Cappadocia, the land in the heart of Asia Minor, where it narrows between Cilicia and Pontus, ruled by sovereigns also claiming royal Persian descent. … Fourthly, Pontus, under its equally Persian dynast Mithridates—a kingdom which makes a great figure in Eastern history under the later Roman Republic. There was moreover a dynast of Bithynia, set up and supported by the robber state of the Celtic Galatians, which had just been founded, and was a source of strength and of danger to all its neighbours. Then Pergamum, just being founded and strengthened by the first Attalid, Philetærus, an officer of Lysimachus, and presently to become one of the leading exponents of Hellenism. … Almost all these second-rate states (and with them the free Greek cities of Heracleia, Cyzicus, Byzantium, &c.) were fragments of the shuttered kingdom of Lysimachus. … We have taken no account of a very peculiar feature extending all through even the Greek kingdoms, especially that of the Selucids—the number of large Hellenistic cities founded as special centres of culture, or points of defence, and organized as such with a certain local independence. These cities, most of which we only know by name, were the real backbone of Hellenism in the world. Alexander had founded seventy of them, all called by his name. Many were upon great trade lines, like the Alexandria which still exists. Many were intended as garrison towns in the centre of remote provinces, like Candahar—a corruption of Iskanderieh, Iskendar being the Oriental form for Alexander. Some were mere outposts, where Macedonian soldiers were forced to settle, and guard the frontiers against the barbarians, like the Alexandria on the Iaxartes. … As regards Seleucus … we have a remarkable statement from Appian that he founded cities through the length and breadth of his kingdom, viz., sixteen Antiochs called after his father, five Laodiceas after his mother, nine Seleucias after himself, three Apameias and one Stratoniceia after his wives. … All through Syria and Upper Asia there are many towns bearing Greek and Macedonian names—Berea, Edessa, Perinthos, Aclæa, Pella, &c. The number of these, which have been enumerated in a special catalogue by Droysen, the learned historian of Hellenism, is enormous, and the first question which arises in our mind is this: where were Greek-speaking people found to fill them? It is indeed true that Greece proper about this time became depopulated, and that it never has recovered from this decay. … Yet … the whole population of Greece would never have sufficed for one tithe of the cities—the great cities—founded all over Asia by the Diadochi. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that but a small fraction, the soldiers and officials of the new cities, were Greeks—Macedonians, when founded by Alexander himself—generally broken down veterans, mutinous and discontented troops, and camp followers. To these were associated people from the surrounding country, it being Alexander's fixed idea to discountenance sporadic country life in villages and encourage town communities. The towns accordingly received considerable privileges. … The Greek language and political habits were thus the one bond of union among them, and the extraordinary colonizing genius of the Greek once more proved itself."

_J. P. Mahaffy, The Story of Alexander's Empire, chapter 10._

See, also, HELLENIC GENIUS AND INFLUENCE.

GREECE: B. C. 280-146. The Achaian League. Its rise and fall. Destruction of Sparta. Supremacy of Rome.

The Achaian League, which bore a leading part in the affairs of Greece during the last half of the third and first half of the second century before Christ, was in some sense the revival of a more ancient confederacy among the cities of Achaia in Peloponnesus. The older League, however, was confined to twelve cities of Achaia and had little weight, apparently, in general Hellenic politics. The revived League grew beyond the territorial boundaries which were indicated by its name, and embraced the larger part of Peloponnesus. It began about 280 B. C. by the forming of a union between the two Achaian cities of Patrai and Dyme. One by one their neighbors joined them, until ten cities were confederated and acting as one. "The first years of the growth of the Achaian League are contemporary with the invasion of Macedonia and Greece by the Gauls and with the wars between Pyrrhos and Antigonos Gonatas.

See MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 277-244.