Genesis - Ktistes
“For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.” – Joseph Conrad (emphasis mine)
What comes first – the founder of cities
In ancient times, the Mediterranean [Mesogeios] Sea both facilitated and defied the ambitions of those who sought to rule it. Since the earliest maritime voyages of primitive man, the sea has at once divided and connected those wanderers who would seek to dominate it.
Sea travel is an efficient and affordable way to move cargoes, and yet it also complicates the hegemonic ambitions of those inland powers for whom the broad expanse of waters is more barrier than opportunity. The Akhaimenids [Haxāmanišiya] created a sprawling, if decentralized, dominion over all the disparate nations of the east. Yet for them too the water presented a barrier – their expeditions into the peninsula of the Hellenes were broadly marked by disaster, not in the least because they were unable to consistently maintain maritime dominance and project power across the Aegean. Their rivals, by contrast, had no such difficulties.
The Hellenes created empires of their own, albeit of a different sort. From the overcrowded metropoles of Hellas, they sent expeditions out to establish trading centers – emporia [market towns] and ultimately distant poleis [city-states] with their own khora [space or territory]. These expeditions ranged over the course of centuries, but slowly they established a pattern of Hellenic settlement – the ring of the Mediterranean coast was dotted with the commercial centers of Hellenic civilization. If their khora rarely penetrated deep inland, these younger cities nevertheless came into contact with and both influenced and were influenced by the indigenous inhabitants with whom they coexisted. The relationship between colony and metropole was rarely one of outright dominion or even hegemony – but a strong relationship nevertheless existed.
For many centuries, the closest flirtation that the Hellenes had with true Empire was Athenai, whose hegemonic dominion of the Aegean was backed by naval power and adept political control. But among the restless city-states of the region dominion was generally short lived and rivalries were constant. The feuds between poleis rarely were finally settled.
And yet this pattern was changing, as it inevitably must. Revolutions in politics and military tactics enabled the formation of enduring leagues and confederacies. For a while, it seemed the new dominant Hellenic form of government would be the koinon – until an aspiring Makedonian King named Philippos put an end to that and established a more personal rule over the very heart of the Hellenic world. Philippos, a visionary reformer of his once-peripheral state, forged the greatest military machine the world had yet seen and crushed the two greatest poleis, Athenai and Thebai, at a battle of Khaironeia. His son, Alexandros, would go on to earn his sobriquet of Megas by defeating the Akhaimenid King Dareios [Dārayavahuš], in a series of three battles – at the last of which, Gaugamela, Alexandros would personally slay Dareios while the Akhaimenid King attempted to flee.
Alexandros had already been declared the living son of Zeus-Ammon at the Oracle of Siwa. Now, he would declare himself Megas Basileos, Great King, over all Asia. He would lead his armies into India, conquering Taxila [Takshashila] and Poros before his army mutinied at the Hyphasis [Vipasa] and would go no further. He returned to Babylon, where he would rest and recover, dreaming of new conquests. He dreamed of circumnavigating Arabia and destroying or subverting the confederacies there. He dreamed of uniting the Hellenes and Persai into a single culture, with himself as immortal god and king.
It was perhaps inevitable that such a man would succumb to a level of megalomania. He found enemies in all quarters. The old guard of his father’s army were particular suspects. Parmenion, his father’s loyal general and a stalwart traditionalist was executed after his son was found to be plotting against Alexandros’ new regime. Kassandros, sent to Babylon by his father Antipatros, the regent in Makedon, was murdered in a fit of rage after he laughed openly about the idea of Makedonian men performing proskynesis to Alexandros. Antipatros was subsequently dismissed from his position, two others of the old Guard, Krateros and Polyperkhon, was sent to relieve him, and to build the fleet that would ultimately prosecute yet another fantastic scheme of Alexandros’ – a war against Karkhedon [Qart-Hadasht].
Despite the short span of Alexandros’ Empire, it would expand the horizons of the Hellenic world substantially. No longer did their colonies cling to the coast. Alexandros alone founded countless cities – from Alexandria on the Neilos, an unprecedented wonder of the world and center of learning, to Alexandria Eskhata, at the very edge of the settled world, to Alexandria on the Indus, which would in time become the archetypal melting pot between Hellenic and Indikoi cultures.
Alexandros, however, would never have an opportunity to turn west – although many of his Diadokhoi, or Successors, would. This was made possible by the bold ventures of their ancestors, Hellenic wanderers who’d established settlements across the shores of Esperia and the distant country of the Keltoi. In equal measure the Diadokhoi craved the chance to carve out a state of their own and to be hailed as Soteres Theoi, divine saviors and victors not unlike Alexandros himself. This would bring them into conflict with another diverse assortment of peoples – the Tyrsenoi, the Saunitoi, the Keltoi, and the Phoinikes [Phoenicians].
Karkhedon was the foremost polity of the Phoenicians, and after the conquests of Alexandros the only truly independent Phoenician city. They were an imperial power based on a similar paradigm to the old Athenian system, a metropolis that booked no competitors. By the late fifth century, they had established settler colonies and a robust agricultural system across the interior of Libya, a khora which surpassed the wildest ambitions of the Hellenic agricultural trade colonies. This land-based power, however, was nothing without their incredible naval infrastructure – a system of manmade fortified harbors which allowed them to project power across the Mediterranean and contest the dominion of Syrakousai there.
The Hellenes were quick to disparage the accomplishments of their Libyan rivals, describing them as an effete race of bookkeepers and merchants. They claimed the Phoenicians relied wholly on mercenaries, refusing to equate that practice with the substantial role of mercenary forces in their own armies. They claimed the Phoenicians built at best emporia, and refused to acknowledge in their histories the role the Phoenicians played in turning the Libyan desert into the garden, or the fact that their colonies, from Iberia to Esperia, had robust agricultural khora and legacies often every bit as antique as Karkhedon herself. Indeed, it was not until the early fifth and late fourth centuries that Karkhedon even embarked on an imperial project of conquest – previously, epigraphic evidence attests her power was primarily hegemonic in nature.
Even once Karkhedon came into her own as a power, the metropolis generally refused to use military force against her children. The scattered Phoenician settlements of the Western Mediterranean were brought to heel by commercial pressures and subtler incitements – only in the case of outsiders and barbarians did Karkhedon level brute force. This was not substantially different than the practice of any ancient power with an imperial project – it was generally easier and far less costly to compel submission than it was to destroy a foe outright. If Alexandros annihilated a few cities, more commonly he built them. If Karkhedon allowed a rebellious city to be crushed by Syrakousai, it was to teach a lesson to her other subjects that imperial protection was a precious thing not lightly thrown aside. The world was a dangerous one, filled with warlike nations and tribes who might turn and crush an unsuspecting power at a blow.
Any small upstart power would do well to heed the example of the countless Esperian cities overthrown by the Kelts, or the fate of the rebellious cities in the Indos or Kappadokia. These relationships of protection, so commonly seen to modern eyes as a purely imperial project for the sake of empire, were very much mutually beneficial. The Saunitoi accepted the dominion of a Diadokhoi king not purely because they were overthrown in battle but also because they feared the Senones of the Tiferis [Tiber] river. For another example, Motya [M-t-w] accepted Karkhedon’s yoke because it was a light yoke at best and because Karkhedon could rally a vast Libyan army to its defense.
Diadokhoi kingship very much depended on this notion. Kings were expected to demonstrate beneficence and eusebios in their dealings with subject cities. Isokrates, the famed rhetorician, once said that if a Hellene was to make himself Basileos, he should go out into the back-country and rule over barbarians. Aristoteles himself declared that it was meet for Hellenes to rule over barbarians, but decried monarchy in explicit terms. Hellenes were capable of managing their own affairs, and the koinon and the polis were their natural tools, rejecting all forms of external subjection in the process. The Diadokhoi thus tried to rule all peoples in the manner in which they expected to be ruled. This meant a very different thing for the Makedonians and for the Hellenes and for the Persai.
While the Diadokhoi played the heroic conqueror to their friends and armies, wearing the diadem and distributing spear-won lands to their followers, they cut a different approach in the hoary cities of Mikra Asia and Hellas, playing the role of temple patrons and saviors, accepting veneration with a certain humility and reverence, giving gifts generously and providing stipends to philosophers and their schools. Even Lysimakhos, who commissioned coins that showed him killing a lion and was famously tyrannical in his dealings in Thrakia, attempted to paint himself to the Hellenic cities as kallistos euergetes, or “beautiful benefactor” – the former of which only a truly generous historian would ever have used to define the man, and the latter of which was true only in quite subjective terms.
As interconnected as the Mediterranean political and economic networks would become, bound by ties of trade and commerce, protection and alliance, hate and distrust, no power ever emerged capable of uniting the entire vast sea under one umbrella. Alexandros, perhaps, came closest.
It is rare for the legendary founder of an Empire to not pass on some filial legacy, but Alexandros, in his single-minded devotion to global conquest died without heirs. Opinions differ on the final manner of his death, but he was undoubtedly beaten down by the constant fighting and drinking he put himself through, to say nothing of his numerous wounds. At the time of his death he had given birth only to an infant girl, Kleopatra, and his only brother, the epileptic Arrhidaios, had died of a fit several months before. Hephaistion, his lover, was chiliarch and epimeletes [regent] of the Empire, but even with the assistance of his friend and fellow general Perdikkas, he was only one man, and the intrigues arrayed against him were many – especially when he devoted himself wholeheartedly to fulfilling every last one of Alexandros’ unfulfilled ambitions, such as the circumnavigation of Arabia, before bothering to stabilize his own position. If his generals considered any alternative, more distant heirs, they did so only half-heartedly, each man deeply aware of the prize that lay open to them by defecting from the tentative treaties struck in the aftermath of Alexandros’ death.
Megas Alexandros, the common joke goes, had the greatest funeral games of any Hellenic monarch. For their inheritance, all of his companions competed until they were dead.
[Here goes nothing.]
What comes first – the founder of cities
In ancient times, the Mediterranean [Mesogeios] Sea both facilitated and defied the ambitions of those who sought to rule it. Since the earliest maritime voyages of primitive man, the sea has at once divided and connected those wanderers who would seek to dominate it.
Sea travel is an efficient and affordable way to move cargoes, and yet it also complicates the hegemonic ambitions of those inland powers for whom the broad expanse of waters is more barrier than opportunity. The Akhaimenids [Haxāmanišiya] created a sprawling, if decentralized, dominion over all the disparate nations of the east. Yet for them too the water presented a barrier – their expeditions into the peninsula of the Hellenes were broadly marked by disaster, not in the least because they were unable to consistently maintain maritime dominance and project power across the Aegean. Their rivals, by contrast, had no such difficulties.
The Hellenes created empires of their own, albeit of a different sort. From the overcrowded metropoles of Hellas, they sent expeditions out to establish trading centers – emporia [market towns] and ultimately distant poleis [city-states] with their own khora [space or territory]. These expeditions ranged over the course of centuries, but slowly they established a pattern of Hellenic settlement – the ring of the Mediterranean coast was dotted with the commercial centers of Hellenic civilization. If their khora rarely penetrated deep inland, these younger cities nevertheless came into contact with and both influenced and were influenced by the indigenous inhabitants with whom they coexisted. The relationship between colony and metropole was rarely one of outright dominion or even hegemony – but a strong relationship nevertheless existed.
For many centuries, the closest flirtation that the Hellenes had with true Empire was Athenai, whose hegemonic dominion of the Aegean was backed by naval power and adept political control. But among the restless city-states of the region dominion was generally short lived and rivalries were constant. The feuds between poleis rarely were finally settled.
And yet this pattern was changing, as it inevitably must. Revolutions in politics and military tactics enabled the formation of enduring leagues and confederacies. For a while, it seemed the new dominant Hellenic form of government would be the koinon – until an aspiring Makedonian King named Philippos put an end to that and established a more personal rule over the very heart of the Hellenic world. Philippos, a visionary reformer of his once-peripheral state, forged the greatest military machine the world had yet seen and crushed the two greatest poleis, Athenai and Thebai, at a battle of Khaironeia. His son, Alexandros, would go on to earn his sobriquet of Megas by defeating the Akhaimenid King Dareios [Dārayavahuš], in a series of three battles – at the last of which, Gaugamela, Alexandros would personally slay Dareios while the Akhaimenid King attempted to flee.
Alexandros had already been declared the living son of Zeus-Ammon at the Oracle of Siwa. Now, he would declare himself Megas Basileos, Great King, over all Asia. He would lead his armies into India, conquering Taxila [Takshashila] and Poros before his army mutinied at the Hyphasis [Vipasa] and would go no further. He returned to Babylon, where he would rest and recover, dreaming of new conquests. He dreamed of circumnavigating Arabia and destroying or subverting the confederacies there. He dreamed of uniting the Hellenes and Persai into a single culture, with himself as immortal god and king.
It was perhaps inevitable that such a man would succumb to a level of megalomania. He found enemies in all quarters. The old guard of his father’s army were particular suspects. Parmenion, his father’s loyal general and a stalwart traditionalist was executed after his son was found to be plotting against Alexandros’ new regime. Kassandros, sent to Babylon by his father Antipatros, the regent in Makedon, was murdered in a fit of rage after he laughed openly about the idea of Makedonian men performing proskynesis to Alexandros. Antipatros was subsequently dismissed from his position, two others of the old Guard, Krateros and Polyperkhon, was sent to relieve him, and to build the fleet that would ultimately prosecute yet another fantastic scheme of Alexandros’ – a war against Karkhedon [Qart-Hadasht].
Despite the short span of Alexandros’ Empire, it would expand the horizons of the Hellenic world substantially. No longer did their colonies cling to the coast. Alexandros alone founded countless cities – from Alexandria on the Neilos, an unprecedented wonder of the world and center of learning, to Alexandria Eskhata, at the very edge of the settled world, to Alexandria on the Indus, which would in time become the archetypal melting pot between Hellenic and Indikoi cultures.
Alexandros, however, would never have an opportunity to turn west – although many of his Diadokhoi, or Successors, would. This was made possible by the bold ventures of their ancestors, Hellenic wanderers who’d established settlements across the shores of Esperia and the distant country of the Keltoi. In equal measure the Diadokhoi craved the chance to carve out a state of their own and to be hailed as Soteres Theoi, divine saviors and victors not unlike Alexandros himself. This would bring them into conflict with another diverse assortment of peoples – the Tyrsenoi, the Saunitoi, the Keltoi, and the Phoinikes [Phoenicians].
Karkhedon was the foremost polity of the Phoenicians, and after the conquests of Alexandros the only truly independent Phoenician city. They were an imperial power based on a similar paradigm to the old Athenian system, a metropolis that booked no competitors. By the late fifth century, they had established settler colonies and a robust agricultural system across the interior of Libya, a khora which surpassed the wildest ambitions of the Hellenic agricultural trade colonies. This land-based power, however, was nothing without their incredible naval infrastructure – a system of manmade fortified harbors which allowed them to project power across the Mediterranean and contest the dominion of Syrakousai there.
The Hellenes were quick to disparage the accomplishments of their Libyan rivals, describing them as an effete race of bookkeepers and merchants. They claimed the Phoenicians relied wholly on mercenaries, refusing to equate that practice with the substantial role of mercenary forces in their own armies. They claimed the Phoenicians built at best emporia, and refused to acknowledge in their histories the role the Phoenicians played in turning the Libyan desert into the garden, or the fact that their colonies, from Iberia to Esperia, had robust agricultural khora and legacies often every bit as antique as Karkhedon herself. Indeed, it was not until the early fifth and late fourth centuries that Karkhedon even embarked on an imperial project of conquest – previously, epigraphic evidence attests her power was primarily hegemonic in nature.
Even once Karkhedon came into her own as a power, the metropolis generally refused to use military force against her children. The scattered Phoenician settlements of the Western Mediterranean were brought to heel by commercial pressures and subtler incitements – only in the case of outsiders and barbarians did Karkhedon level brute force. This was not substantially different than the practice of any ancient power with an imperial project – it was generally easier and far less costly to compel submission than it was to destroy a foe outright. If Alexandros annihilated a few cities, more commonly he built them. If Karkhedon allowed a rebellious city to be crushed by Syrakousai, it was to teach a lesson to her other subjects that imperial protection was a precious thing not lightly thrown aside. The world was a dangerous one, filled with warlike nations and tribes who might turn and crush an unsuspecting power at a blow.
Any small upstart power would do well to heed the example of the countless Esperian cities overthrown by the Kelts, or the fate of the rebellious cities in the Indos or Kappadokia. These relationships of protection, so commonly seen to modern eyes as a purely imperial project for the sake of empire, were very much mutually beneficial. The Saunitoi accepted the dominion of a Diadokhoi king not purely because they were overthrown in battle but also because they feared the Senones of the Tiferis [Tiber] river. For another example, Motya [M-t-w] accepted Karkhedon’s yoke because it was a light yoke at best and because Karkhedon could rally a vast Libyan army to its defense.
Diadokhoi kingship very much depended on this notion. Kings were expected to demonstrate beneficence and eusebios in their dealings with subject cities. Isokrates, the famed rhetorician, once said that if a Hellene was to make himself Basileos, he should go out into the back-country and rule over barbarians. Aristoteles himself declared that it was meet for Hellenes to rule over barbarians, but decried monarchy in explicit terms. Hellenes were capable of managing their own affairs, and the koinon and the polis were their natural tools, rejecting all forms of external subjection in the process. The Diadokhoi thus tried to rule all peoples in the manner in which they expected to be ruled. This meant a very different thing for the Makedonians and for the Hellenes and for the Persai.
While the Diadokhoi played the heroic conqueror to their friends and armies, wearing the diadem and distributing spear-won lands to their followers, they cut a different approach in the hoary cities of Mikra Asia and Hellas, playing the role of temple patrons and saviors, accepting veneration with a certain humility and reverence, giving gifts generously and providing stipends to philosophers and their schools. Even Lysimakhos, who commissioned coins that showed him killing a lion and was famously tyrannical in his dealings in Thrakia, attempted to paint himself to the Hellenic cities as kallistos euergetes, or “beautiful benefactor” – the former of which only a truly generous historian would ever have used to define the man, and the latter of which was true only in quite subjective terms.
As interconnected as the Mediterranean political and economic networks would become, bound by ties of trade and commerce, protection and alliance, hate and distrust, no power ever emerged capable of uniting the entire vast sea under one umbrella. Alexandros, perhaps, came closest.
It is rare for the legendary founder of an Empire to not pass on some filial legacy, but Alexandros, in his single-minded devotion to global conquest died without heirs. Opinions differ on the final manner of his death, but he was undoubtedly beaten down by the constant fighting and drinking he put himself through, to say nothing of his numerous wounds. At the time of his death he had given birth only to an infant girl, Kleopatra, and his only brother, the epileptic Arrhidaios, had died of a fit several months before. Hephaistion, his lover, was chiliarch and epimeletes [regent] of the Empire, but even with the assistance of his friend and fellow general Perdikkas, he was only one man, and the intrigues arrayed against him were many – especially when he devoted himself wholeheartedly to fulfilling every last one of Alexandros’ unfulfilled ambitions, such as the circumnavigation of Arabia, before bothering to stabilize his own position. If his generals considered any alternative, more distant heirs, they did so only half-heartedly, each man deeply aware of the prize that lay open to them by defecting from the tentative treaties struck in the aftermath of Alexandros’ death.
Megas Alexandros, the common joke goes, had the greatest funeral games of any Hellenic monarch. For their inheritance, all of his companions competed until they were dead.
[Here goes nothing.]
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