Hellenistic Greece

• 1. Introduction

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  Hellenistic Greece began the moment Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, leaving behind an empire with no clear heir. His generals had marched beside him from Macedonia to India. Now they turned on each other to seize pieces of what he had built. Nearly three centuries later, in 31 BC, the story reached its close at the Battle of Actium. There Octavian defeated the Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and her ally Mark Antony. The following year Octavian took Alexandria, the last great center of the world Alexander's death had set in motion. Between those two points, how did a scattering of feuding city-states and rival kingdoms hold off, provoke, and ultimately lose to an expanding Roman Republic? And what happened to the culture of Greece itself while its political power drained away?

• 2. Shifting Centers

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  Alexandria and Antioch became the great centers of Hellenistic culture, serving as capitals of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kingdoms. Greece itself mattered less within the wider Greek-speaking world as the period went on. Cities such as Pergamon, Ephesus, Rhodes and Seleucia grew in importance alongside them. Increasing urbanization across the Eastern Mediterranean marked the era, pulling wealth, ambition and Greek settlers eastward and away from the old mainland cities.

• 3. Wars Of Succession

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  By 275 BC, the wars of the Diadochi had run their course. They toppled both the Argead and Antipatrid dynasties of Macedonia in favor of the Antigonids.

  Alexander's conquests had widened Greek horizons enormously, making the endless rivalries between cities in the 5th and 4th centuries BC look petty by comparison. Young and ambitious Greeks emigrated steadily to the new empires in the east, settling in Alexandria, Antioch and other new Hellenistic cities. Some traveled as far as what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan. There, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom survived until the end of the 1st century BC. Their defeat by Philip and Alexander had taught the city-states they could never again be powers in their own right unless they united or federated. Greeks valued local independence too much to accept real unification, though they experimented with federations.

  Macedon fell to Cassander, son of Alexander's leading general Antipater, who after years of warfare made himself master of most of Greece. He founded a new capital at Thessaloniki and ruled as a generally constructive leader.

  Antigonus, ruler of Anatolia, challenged Cassander's power by promising Greek cities their freedom in exchange for support, sparking successful revolts. In 307 BC his son Demetrius captured Athens and restored the democratic system Alexander had suppressed. But in 301 BC a coalition of Cassander and the other Hellenistic kings defeated Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus, ending his challenge.

  After Cassander died in 298 BC, Demetrius seized the Macedonian throne and gained control of most of Greece. A second coalition of Greek rulers defeated him in 285 BC, and mastery of Greece passed to Lysimachus of Thrace. Lysimachus was defeated and killed in 280 BC. The Macedonian throne then passed to Demetrius's son Antigonus II, who also turned back an invasion of Gauls then living in the Balkans. That battle against the Gauls united the Antigonids of Macedon with the Seleucids of Asia. The alliance was aimed at the wealthiest Hellenistic power, the Ptolemies of Egypt.

  Meanwhile the Epirote king Pyrrhus built Epirus into a state comparable to Macedon and Rome between 297 and 272 BC. His armies even attempted to invade Rome's home territory in Italy during an unsuccessful campaign in 280-275 BC. Pyrrhus died in 272 BC, leaving Antigonus Gonatas' Macedon the stronger power in Greece.

  Antigonus II went on to rule until his own death in 239 BC. His family would hold the Macedonian throne until the Romans abolished it in 146 BC.

• 4. Cities And Leagues

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  Classical city-states such as Athens and Ephesus continued to grow, even as Greece's overall political weight declined. Warfare between cities never fully stopped, but many now banded together into alliances, or attached themselves to a powerful Hellenistic kingdom that could defend them. A city under such protection could claim the status of asylos, meaning it was formally inviolate to attack by other cities.

  The Aetolians and Achaeans built the strongest federal states of the era, known as leagues or koinon. Councils of city representatives and citizen assemblies ran them. What began as ethnic leagues of related communities expanded to admit outside cities as well. The Achaean League eventually took in the whole Peloponnese apart from Sparta, while the Aetolian League pushed into Phocis. During the 3rd century BC these leagues held their own against Macedon, and the Aetolian League defeated a Celtic invasion of Greece at Delphi.

  In the Lamian War, Athens was defeated by Antipater, leaving a Macedonian garrison in its port at Piraeus. To counter Cassander, Athens courted an alliance with Antigonus I Monophthalmus. After Demetrius seized the Macedonian throne, Athens allied with Ptolemaic Egypt in hopes of winning independence from him. With Ptolemaic troops the city managed to rebel and defeat Macedon in 287 BC, though Piraeus remained garrisoned. Athens fought further unsuccessful wars against Macedon with Ptolemaic aid, among them the Chremonidean War. In 267 BC, Ptolemy II persuaded the Greek cities to revolt against Antigonus, sparking that conflict. It took its name from the Athenian leader Chremonides. The revolt failed, and Athens lost both its independence and its democratic institutions. The Ptolemaic kingdom became Athens' main ally from then on, backing the city with troops, money and material through multiple conflicts. In 224 or 223 BC, Athens repaid Ptolemaic Egypt by naming its 13th phyle Ptolemais and founding a religious cult called the Ptolemaia. Hellenistic Athens also saw the rise of New Comedy and of philosophical schools such as Stoicism and Epicureanism. By the turn of the century the Attalids of Pergamon had become Athens' patrons and protectors as Ptolemaic power weakened. Athens later established a cult of its own for the Pergamene king Attalos I.

  Antigonid control over the Greek cities remained intermittent throughout, since rival kings, especially the Ptolemies, subsidized anti-Macedonian factions to weaken it. A Macedonian garrison held Corinth, the strategic center of Greece, yet Rhodes, Pergamum and the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues kept substantial independence. Sparta stood apart from all of them, generally refusing to join any league at all.

• 5. Philip V's Gamble

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  Aratus of Sicyon emerged as the dominant figure leading a fresh revolt within the Achaean League. Demetrius II, Antigonus's son, died in 229 BC, leaving the throne to a child, Philip V, with the general Antigonus Doson serving as regent. The Achaeans were nominally subject to Ptolemy but in practice independent, and they controlled most of southern Greece. Athens stayed aloof from this conflict by common consent.

  Sparta remained hostile to the Achaeans, and in 227 BC its king Cleomenes III invaded Achaea and seized control of the League. Aratus preferred the more distant Macedon to nearby Sparta, so he allied with Doson. In 222 BC Doson defeated the Spartans and annexed their city, the first time Sparta had ever been occupied by a foreign power.

  Philip V came to power when Doson died in 221 BC. He was the last Macedonian ruler with the talent and the chance to unite Greece. His task was to resist what people then called the cloud rising in the west, Rome's ever-increasing power. Greeks called him "the darling of Hellas." Under his rule the Peace of Naupactus in 217 BC ended the conflict between Macedon and the Greek leagues. At that point he controlled all of Greece except Athens, Rhodes and Pergamum.

  Philip's own record had a weak spot: Macedon lost the Cretan War of 205-200 BC to an alliance led by Rhodes. That setback, combined with Philip's alliance with Hannibal of Carthage, drew Rome directly into Greek affairs for the first time. Rome quickly lured the Achaean cities away from their nominal loyalty to Philip. It also formed alliances with Rhodes and Pergamum, by then the strongest power in Asia Minor. The First Macedonian War broke out in 212 BC and ended inconclusively in 205 BC, but it marked Macedon as an enemy of Rome. Rome's ally Rhodes came away with control of the Aegean islands.

  Rome defeated Carthage in 202 BC and turned its attention east, urged on by its allies Rhodes and Pergamum. The Second Macedonian War broke out in 198 BC for reasons that remain unclear. Rome likely feared Macedon becoming an ally of the Seleucids, the greatest power in the east. Philip's allies in Greece deserted him, and in 197 BC the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flamininus decisively defeated him at Cynoscephalae.

  Flamininus, fortunately for the Greeks, was a moderate man and an admirer of Greek culture. Philip had to surrender his fleet and become a Roman ally, but he was otherwise spared. At the Isthmian Games in 196 BC, Flamininus declared all the Greek cities free, though Roman garrisons remained at Corinth and Chalcis. The freedom Rome promised, however, proved to be an illusion. Every city except Rhodes was enrolled in a new league that Rome ultimately controlled, and democracies gave way to aristocratic regimes allied with Rome.

• 6. Rome's Advance

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  Macedonia's perceived weakness after its wars with Rome encouraged the Seleucid king Antiochus III to invade mainland Greece. War broke out between Rome and Antiochus in 192 BC. Antiochus invaded Greece with an army of 10,000 men and was elected commander in chief of the Aetolians. Some Greek cities saw him as their saviour from Roman rule, but Macedon sided with Rome instead. In 191 BC the Romans under Manius Acilius Glabrio routed Antiochus at Thermopylae and forced him back to Asia. Roman troops crossed into Asia for the first time during this war, defeating Antiochus again at Magnesia on the Sipylum in 190 BC. Greece now sat astride Rome's line of communication with the east, and Roman soldiers became a permanent presence there. The Peace of Apamaea in 188 BC left Rome dominant throughout Greece.

  Rome was drawn deeper into Greek politics in the years that followed, since the losing side in any dispute now appealed to Rome for help. Macedon remained independent, though nominally a Roman ally. When Philip V died in 179 BC, his son Perseus succeeded him. Like every Macedonian king before him, Perseus dreamed of uniting the Greeks under Macedonian rule. Macedon, however, was now too weak to achieve that goal. Rome's ally Eumenes II of Pergamum persuaded Rome that Perseus was a potential threat to its position.

• 7. End Of Independence

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  Those suspicions pushed Rome to declare war on Macedon in 171 BC, sending 100,000 troops into Greece. Macedon was no match for this force, and Perseus could not rally other Greek states to his side. Poor Roman generalship let him hold out for three years, but in 168 BC Rome sent Lucius Aemilius Paullus to Greece. At Pydna the Macedonians were crushingly defeated. Perseus was captured and taken to Rome, and the Macedonian kingdom was broken up into four smaller states. Every Greek city that had aided Perseus, even in words alone, was punished, and even Rome's allies Rhodes and Pergamum effectively lost their independence. Rome also conquered Epirus the following year, in 167 BC.

  An adventurer named Andriscus led Macedon in rebellion against Roman rule in 149 BC. Macedon was directly annexed the following year, becoming the first of the Greek states to fall under direct Roman rule as a province. Rome then demanded that the Achaean League, the last stronghold of Greek independence, dissolve itself. The Achaeans refused and, reasoning they might as well die fighting, declared war on Rome instead. Many Greek cities rallied to their side, and even slaves were freed to fight for Greek independence. The Roman consul Lucius Mummius advanced from Macedonia and defeated the Greeks at Corinth, which was razed to the ground.

  In 146 BC the Greek peninsula, though not its islands, became a Roman protectorate. Rome imposed taxes everywhere except Athens and Sparta, and every city had to accept rule by Rome's local allies. In 133 BC the last king of Pergamum died and left his kingdom to Rome. This brought most of the Aegean peninsula under direct Roman control as the province of Asia.

  Final ruin came in 88 BC, when King Mithridates of Pontus rebelled against Rome. He massacred up to 100,000 Romans and Roman allies across Asia Minor. Some Greek cities, Athens among them, overthrew their Roman puppet rulers and joined him. The Roman general Lucius Cornelius Sulla drove him out of Greece, and Roman vengeance then fell on the cities that had allied with him. Mithridates was finally defeated by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known as Pompey the Great, in 65 BC.

  In 27 BC Augustus directly annexed Greece into the new Roman Empire as the province of Achaea. Rome's own civil wars had already brought further ruin, some of the fighting having taken place on Greek soil. The long struggle with Rome left parts of Greece depopulated and demoralized. Yet Roman rule finally ended the warfare, and cities such as Athens, Corinth, Thessaloniki and Patras recovered their prosperity.