Chapter XCIV (5)

Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in Asia.[645] So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon up simple military posts, or borrow from the list of foundations really established by his successors. Except Alexandria in Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to have attained any great development. Nearly all were planted among the remote, warlike, and turbulent peoples eastward of the Caspian Gates. Such establishments were really fortified posts to hold the country in subjection: Alexander lodged in them detachments from his army; but none of these detachments can well have been large, since he could not afford materially to weaken his army, while active military operations were still going on and while farther advance was in contemplation. More of these settlements were founded in Sogdiana than elsewhere; but respecting the Sogdian foundations, we know that the Greeks whom he established there, chained to the spot only by fear of his power, broke away in mutiny immediately on the news of his death.[646] Some Greek soldiers in Alexander’s army on the Jaxartes or the Hydaspes, sick and weary of his interminable marches, might prefer being enrolled among the colonists of a new city on one of these unknown rivers, to the ever-repeated routine of exhausting duty.[647] But it is certain that no volunteer emigrants would go forth to settle at distances such as their imaginations could hardly conceive. The absorbing appetite of Alexander was conquest, to the East, West, South, and North; the cities which he planted were established, for the most part, as garrisons to maintain his most distant and most precarious acquisitions. The purpose of colonization was altogether subordinate; and that of hellenizing Asia, so far as we can see, was not even contemplated, much less realized.

[645] Plutarch, Fortun. Al. M. p. 328. Plutarch mentions, a few
lines afterwards, Seleukeia in Mesopotamia, as if he thought that
it was among the cities established by Alexander himself. This
shows that he has not been exact in distinguishing foundations
made by Alexander, from those originated by Seleukus and the
other Diadochi.

The elaborate article of Droysen (in the Appendix to his
Geschichte des Hellenismus, p. 588-651), ascribes to Alexander
the largest plans of colonization in Asia, and enumerates a
great number of cities alleged to have been founded by him. But
in regard to the majority of these foundations, the evidence
upon which Droysen grounds his belief that Alexander was the
founder, appears to me altogether slender and unsatisfactory. If
Alexander founded so many cities as Droysen imagines, how does it
happen that Arrian mentions only so comparatively small a number?
The argument derived from Arrian’s silence, for rejecting what
is affirmed by other ancients respecting Alexander, is indeed
employed by modern authors (and by Droysen himself among them),
far oftener than I think warrantable. But if there be any one
proceeding of Alexander more than another, in respect of which
the silence of Arrian ought to make us suspicious—it is the
foundation of a new colony; a solemn act, requiring delay and
multiplied regulations, intended for perpetuity, and redounding
to the honor of the founder. I do not believe in any colonies
founded by Alexander, beyond those comparatively few which Arrian
mentions, except such as rest upon some other express and good
testimony. Whoever will read through Droysen’s list, will see
that most of the names in it will not stand this test. The short
life, and rapid movements, of Alexander, are of themselves the
strongest presumption against his having founded so large a
number of colonies.

[646] Diodor. xvii. 99; xviii. 7. Curtius, ix. 7, 1. Curtius
observes (vii. 10, 15) respecting Alexander’s colonies in
Sogdiana—that they were founded “velut fræni domitarum gentium;
nunc originis suæ oblita serviunt, quibus imperaverunt.”

[647] See the plain-spoken outburst of the Thurian Antileon, one
of the soldiers in Xenophon’s Ten Thousand Greeks, when the army
reached Trapezus (Xenoph. Anabas. v. 1, 2).

This process of hellenizing Asia—in so far as Asia was ever hellenized—which has often been ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the Diadochi who came after him; though his conquests doubtless opened the door and established the military ascendency which rendered such a work practicable. The position, the aspirations, and the interests of these Diadochi—Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleukus, Lysimachus, etc.—were materially different from those of Alexander. They had neither appetite nor means for new and remote conquest; their great rivalry was with each other; each sought to strengthen himself near home against the rest. It became a matter of fashion and pride with them, not less than of interest, to found new cities immortalizing their family names. These foundations were chiefly made in the regions of Asia near and known to Greeks, where Alexander had planted none. Thus the great and numerous foundations of Seleukus Nikator and his successors covered Syria, Mesopotamia, and parts of Asia Minor. All these regions were known to Greeks, and more or less tempting to new Grecian immigrants—not out of reach or hearing of the Olympic and other festivals, as the Jaxartes and the Indus were. In this way a considerable influx of new hellenic blood was poured into Asia during the century succeeding Alexander,—probably in great measure from Italy and Sicily, where the condition of the Greek cities became still more calamitous—besides the numerous Greeks who took service as individuals under these Asiatic kings. Greeks, and Macedonians speaking Greek, became predominant, if not in numbers, at least in importance, throughout most of the cities in Western Asia. In particular, the Macedonian military organization, discipline, and administration, was maintained systematically among these Asiatic kings. In the account of the battle of Magnesia, fought by the Seleukid king Atiochus the Great against the Romans in 190 B. C., the Macedonian phalanx, constituting the main force of his Asiatic army, appears in all its completeness, just as it stood under Philip and Perseus in Macedonia itself.[648]

[648] Appian, Syriac. 32.

When it is said however that Asia became hellenized under Alexander’s successors, the phrase requires explanation. Hellenism, properly so called—the aggregate of habits, sentiments, energies, and intelligence, manifested by the Greeks during their epoch of autonomy[649]—never passed over into Asia; neither the highest qualities of the Greek mind, not even the entire character of ordinary Greeks. This genuine Hellenism could not subsist under the overruling compression of Alexander, nor even under the less irresistible pressure of his successors. Its living force, productive genius, self-organizing power, and active spirit of political communion, were stifled, and gradually died out. All that passed into Asia was a faint and partial resemblance of it, carrying the superficial marks of the original. The administration of the Greco-Asiatic kings was not hellenic (as it has been sometimes called), but completely despotic, as that of the Persians had been before. Whoever follows their history, until the period of Roman dominion, will see that it turned upon the tastes, temper, and ability of the prince, and on the circumstances of the regal family. Viewing their government as a system, its prominent difference as compared with their Persian predecessors, consisted in their retaining the military traditions and organization of Philip and Alexander, an elaborate scheme of discipline and manœuvring, which would not be kept up without permanent official grades and a higher measure of intelligence than had ever been displayed under the Achæmenid kings, who had no military school or training whatever. Hence a great number of individual Greeks found employment in the military as well as in the civil service of these Greco-Asiatic kings. The intelligent Greek, instead of a citizen of Hellas, became the instrument of a foreign prince; the details of government were managed to a great degree by Greek officials, and always in the Greek language.

[649] This is the sense in which I have always used the word
Hellenism, throughout the present Work.

With Droysen, the word _Hellenismus_—_Das Hellenistische
Staatensystem_—is applied to the state of things which followed
upon Alexander’s death; to the aggregate of kingdoms into which
Alexander’s conquests become distributed, having for their
point of similarity the common use of Greek speech, a certain
proportion of Greeks both as inhabitants and as officers, and a
partial streak of Hellenic culture.

I cannot but think that such an employment of the word is
misleading. At any rate, its sense must be constantly kept in
mind, in order that it may not be confounded with _hellenism_ in
the stricter meaning.

Moreover, besides this, there was the still more important fact of the many new cities founded in Asia by the Seleukidæ and the other contemporary kings. Each of these cities had a considerable infusion of Greek and Macedonian citizens, among the native Orientals located there, often brought by compulsion from neighboring villages. In what numerical ratio these two elements of the civic population stood to each other, we cannot say. But the Greeks and Macedonians were the leading and active portion, who exercised the greatest assimilating force, gave imposing effect to the public manifestations of religion, had wider views and sympathies, dealt with the central government, and carried on that contracted measure of municipal autonomy which the city was permitted to retain. In these cities the Greek inhabitants, though debarred from political freedom, enjoyed a range of social activity suited to their tastes. In each, Greek was the language of public business and dealing; each formed a centre of attraction and commerce for an extensive neighborhood; all together, they were the main hellenic or quasi-hellenic element in Asia under the Greco-Asiatic kings, as contrasted with the rustic villages, where native manners, and probably native speech, still continued with little modification. But the Greeks of Antioch, or Alexandria, or Seleukeia, were not like citizens of Athens or Thebes, nor even like men of Tarentum or Ephesus. While they communicated their language to Orientals, they became themselves substantially orientalized. Their feelings, judgments, and habits of action, ceased to be hellenic. Polybius, when he visited Alexandria, looked with surprise and aversion on the Greeks there resident, though they were superior to the non-hellenic population, whom he considered worthless.[650] Greek social habits, festivals, and legends, passed with the hellenic settlers into Asia; all becoming amalgamated and transformed so as to suit a new Asiatic abode. Important social and political consequences turned upon the diffusion of the language, and upon the establishment of such a common medium of communication throughout Western Asia. But after all, the hellenized Asiatic was not so much a Greek as a foreigner with Grecian speech, exterior varnish, and superficial manifestations; distinguished fundamentally from those Greek citizens with whom the present history has been concerned. So he would have been considered by Sophokles, by Thucydides, by Sokrates.

[650] Strabo, xvii. p. 797, ὁ γοῦν Πολύβιος, γεγονὼς ἐν τῇ πόλει
(Alexandria), βδελύττεται τὴν ταύτῃ κατάστασιν, etc.

The Museum of Alexandria (with its library) must be carefully
distinguished from the city and the people. It was an artificial
institution, which took its rise altogether from the personal
taste and munificence of the earlier Ptolemies, especially the
second. It was one of the noblest and most useful institutions
recorded in history, and forms the most honorable monument of
what Droysen calls the _hellenistic_ period, between the death
of Alexander and the extension of the Roman empire into Asia.
But this Museum, though situated at Alexandria, had no peculiar
connection with the city or its population; it was a College of
literary Fellows (if we may employ a modern word) congregated
out of various Grecian towns. Eratosthenes, Kallimuchus,
Aristophanes, Aristarchus, were not natives of Alexandria.

Thus much is necessary in order to understand the bearing of Alexander’s conquests, not only upon the hellenic population, but upon hellenic attributes and peculiarities. While crushing the Greeks as communities at home, these conquests opened a wider range to the Greeks as individuals abroad; and produced—perhaps the best of all their effects—a great increase of intercommunication, multiplication of roads, extension of commercial dealing, and enlarged facilities for the acquisition of geographical knowledge. There already existed in the Persian empire an easy and convenient royal road (established by Darius son of Hystaspes and described as well as admired by Herodotus) for the three months’ journey between Sardis and Susa; and there must have been another regular road from Susa and Ekbatana to Baktria, Sogdiana, and India. Alexander, had he lived, would doubtless have multiplied on a still larger scale the communications both by sea and land between the various parts of his world-empire. We read that among the gigantic projects which he was contemplating when surprised by death, one was, the construction of a road all along the northern coast of Africa, as far as the Pillars of Herakles.[651] He had intended to found a new maritime city on the Persian Gulf, at the mouth of the Euphrates, and to incur much outlay for regulating the flow of water in its lower course. The river would probably have been thus made again to afford the same conveniences, both for navigation and irrigation, as it appears to have furnished in earlier times under the ancient Babylonian kings. Orders had been also given for constructing a fleet to explore the Caspian Sea. Alexander believed that sea to be connected with the Eastern Ocean,[652] and intended to make it his point of departure for circumnavigating the eastern limits of Asia, which country yet remained for him to conquer. The voyage already performed by Nearchus, from the mouth of the Indus to that of the Euphrates, was in those days a splendid maritime achievement; to which another still greater was on the point of being added—the circumnavigation of Arabia from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea; though here we must remark, that this same voyage (from the mouth of the Indus round Arabia into the Red Sea) had been performed in thirty months, a century and a half before, by Skylax of Karyanda, under the orders of Darius son of Hystaspes;[653] yet, though recorded by Herodotus, forgotten (as it would appear) by Alexander and his contemporaries. This enlarged and systematic exploration of the earth, combined with increased means of communication among its inhabitants, is the main feature in Alexander’s career which presents itself as promising real consequences beneficial to humanity.

[651] Diodor. xviii. 4. Pausanias (ii. 1. 5) observes that
Alexander wished to cut through Mount Mimas (in Asia. Minor), but
that this was the only one, among all his undertakings, which
did not succeed. “So difficult is it (he goes on) to put force
upon the divine arrangements”, τὰ θεῖα βιάσασθαι. He wished to
cut through the isthmus between Teos and Klazomenæ, so as to
avoid the navigation round the cliffs of Mimas (σκόπελον νιφόεντα
Μίμαντος—Aristophan. Nub. 274) between Chios and Erythræ.
Probably this was among the projects suggested to Alexander, in
the last year of his life. We have no other information about it.

[652] Arrian, v. 26, 2.

[653] Herodot. iv. 44: compare iii. 102. That Arrian had not
present to his memory this narrative of Herodotus, is plain
from the last chapter of his Indica; though in his history of
Alexander he alludes several times to Herodotus. Some authors
have concluded from Arrian’s silence that he disbelieved the
fact: if he had disbelieved it, I think that he would have
mentioned the statement of Herodotus nevertheless, with an
intimation that he did not think it worthy of credit. Moreover,
Arrian’s disbelief (even granting that such was the state of his
mind) is not to be held as a conclusive disproof of the story.
I confess that I see no sufficient reason for discrediting the
narrative of Herodotus—though some eminent modern writers are of
an opposite opinion.

We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension of science, that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of 800 talents in money, placing under his directions several thousand men, for the purpose of prosecuting zoological researches.[654] These exaggerations are probably the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and Alexander in the early part of his reign, may have helped Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and specimens for observation—from esteem towards him personally, rather than from interest in his discoveries. The intellectual turn of Alexander was towards literature, poetry, and history. He was fond of the Iliad especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies of Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and the histories of Phlistus.[655]

[654] Pliny, H. N. viii. 17; Athenæus, ix. p. 398. See
Schneider’s Preface to his edition of Aristotle’s Historiæ De
Animalibus, p. xxxix. _seq._

[655] Plutarch, Alexand. 8.