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,