A Different Oikoumene

[Practical Lobster]

A feast for tyrants

Four decades after the Getic wars of Alkimakhos, the Sikyoni playwright Dinias penned a work which is now recognized as his masterpiece, a tragedy commemorating the Hellenic King’s hubris and ambition. It is notable primarily for the absence of its main antagonist, Zalmodegikos, prince of the Getai, oft alluded to but never seen. The play, in many respects, is beyond its time in the artistry of its creation. Alkimakhos struts and frets across the stage, never coming to grips with what vexes him, denying the audience an easy resolution. Contemporary audiences often left unfulfilled, and the play itself was ultimately censured by the Makedonian authorities whose hegemony extended over Sikyon in those days. Despite this censure, Alexandros Eusebes, son of Krateros, was reportedly a fan, for he saw much of himself in the tragic protagonist. “Carrion,” the play famously begins, “is the foundation of arkhe, and blood runs through our roots.”

In 266, Attalos, onetime companion of Demetrios, and current chiliarch of the Antigonid-Argead Empire, invaded Makedon and swept across Hellas like a thunderbolt, bearing a heterogeneous army of free Hellenes, Makedonian veterans and eastern auxiliaries. His heavily-armored horse crushed the Makedonian Hetairoi at the Battle of Dion, leaving Eusebes and his household on the run. The capital of Pella was briefly abandoned and occupied by Attalos, although the Phakos, the city’s legendary citadel, did not fall and the city was devastated in the fighting. Combined with the gradual silting of the city’s harbor, Pella’s days were numbered. Nearby Therma was growing in prestige, a city with its own assembly and autonomy - and indeed it was briefly made the capital of Attalos’ briefly organized “satrapy.” After Attalos was chased back into Anatolia, Therma increasingly overshadowed Pella, becoming the “second city” of Makedon and by far the larger and wealthier.

The bloody fighting that had been necessary to secure Makedon for Alexandros Eusebes seemed all the more futile for the fact that Attalos had never truly been defeated. Without having ever lost a battle, he returned to Syria to assist his patron in other wars out East. Eusebes’ hollow victory meant also that he would have to war for a decade to return Hellas to his authority. No wonder, then, that he sympathized so much with a portrait of a fellow king obsessed with chasing spectres!

Alikmakhos for his part never did truly come to grips with Zalmodegikos. Thrakia was a rich country, situated on the trade routes that brought grain down from the Kimmerian Bosphoros and the rich country there. He was able to establish fortifications and lines of supply along the Istros, strike treaties with the Sauromatai, and ultimately occupy much of the region. His policies were brutal when necessary - for a time, slave-markets overflowed with the spoils of his conquests and his soldiers did not hesitate to burn when they conquered. With these brutal policies he hoped to drive Zalmodegikos into open battle, but the Getai King was wily and clever. He recognized that battle was a matter of discipline, and that the phalanx were nigh-unbreakable in a frontal assault. He similarly recognized that Alkimakhos could draw upon an entire world of experience - cavalry from Kappadokia, archers from Krete and Syria. His own men fought in looser formations, ideal for swinging the long falx or performing acts of personal bravery. The slow innovations which had led to the adoption of an imitation phalanx were too little too late - Zalmdegikos had seen the Getai phalanxes crushed on the fields of Kapidava. The Getai would abandon this manner of warfare entirely, retreating when they could to the high mountains and other safe places when the Makedonians arrived in numbers, and returning to attack only when they left garrisons and smaller companies in place. These ambushes of close-order Makedonian infantry in the winding mountain passes and untracked backcountry would take on scriptural significance in time, as the ethnic religion of the Getai-Dakai became more ordered.


While this history has often sought to compare and contrast the reactions of the Ioudaioi with those of the Dakai and Getai, in this instance it is perhaps more worthwhile to contrast. Many Ioudaioi lived in the diaspora, and their civilization was literate, cosmopolitan, and as ancient as any in the near east. While the Getai and Dakai had small but nevertheless present literate and subliterate classes within their society, and they certainly adopted influences from the broader Keltic and Iranian steppe societies around them, they were a society unto themselves, whereas more often than not, the far-flung Ioudaioi settlements were necessarily integrated with the surrounding world.

The Getai and Dakai society thus felt the influence of Hellenism as a direct threat, whereas the Ioudaioi, more integrated with the broader Oikoumene from the beginning, had no unified response to external influence. The Dakai society as a whole became mobilized against the Hellenes. The trope of the cannabis-intoxicated fanatic throwing himself onto enemy spears without pain is distinct to Hellenes in Makedonia and Thrakia, but it certainly represents a genuine fear among the veterans of the Getic wars - seeming madmen whose trancelike religious ecstasy compelled them to incredible acts of valour.

Few other societies could resist the blurring of boundaries and states that accompanied the expansion of the Oikoumene. Keltic society in Esperia certainly could not - although the resistance of the Dakai and Getai certainly provided an alternative model for civilization - one based on a synergetic blend of church and state - theocracy. Religious and temple states were not unknown to the Hellenic world - for example, the hill-country of Pontos was rife with cultic landholdings which functioned with no small degree of autonomy. Sacred and ritual places in the Hellenic Oikoumene often were imbued with political authority. The universities of Taxila had their own land and in times of crisis and natural disaster provided monetary contributions to the state. Religion and civic life were frequently blurred. To some degree, Hellenic historians exaggerated when they defined the Dakai religion as something without precedent.

However, they were also not wrong to see the Dakai as something unique. The Dakai religion had an element of salvation - a cosmic battle between light and dark, between life and the grave, between the earthy material world and scintillant transcendence. The dichotomy itself was ancient - present in Iranian religious philosophy and to some extent within certain Hellenic mystery cults. However, the society that would develop in Dakia was one that embraced this worldview to its uttermost extent. Religion could not be an element of life - it was life entire.

In no small way, this worldview was born out of the trauma of the third century crisis. The formative experience of Dakia as a nation was Alkimakhos’ invasion of the Getai, which swiftly passed into their own lands. Theirs was a society rebuilt out of an apocalyptic invasion. Small wonder then, that they should damn the world even as they made lives in it.

Wine

In Iberia’s mountain gravel, grapevines sometimes grew. Their produce was astonishing for its unique flavor - like cherries and woodsmoke. Along the coasts wine of another sort entirely was made - famed for its peculiar effervescence. The Libyan settlers who harvested it thought it was a lesser product than was produced in Esperia, although they loathed the thick reds that came from Hellas. Persia, it was well known, produced the best wines, but these were expensive - rare gifts from across the seas.

Alcohol was a part of life for the civilized people across the Mesogeios. It kept the water fresh and prevented disease. It was critical to religious ritual and social custom. Among the Hellenes, the symposium was often a place of public drunkenness. The Persians, it was said, would debate a topic drunkenly and then repeat the same arguments sober, to see if they might stand up to scrutiny. For the Makedonians, intemperance was a sign of masculinity, and kings were expected to engage in hedonistic drunkenness with their officers. Such excess, some said, doomed Alexandros to an early grave. Others accused intoxication of being the downfall of Antigonos Didymos, who was drunk (for cowardice, many said) at the Battle of Zeugma.

Among the wine-drinking cultures of the Mesogeios, not drinking wine was a sign of barbarism. Such was true of the Libyans and Hellenes who settled Iberia and found wine already cultivated en masse among the indigenous Iberians. Their urbanism and sophistication impressed the Libyan settlers and facilitated a degree of assimilation which was simply impossible with the Keltiberian peoples of the interior, who resisted any encroachment upon their territory with violence. In time, the peninsula would essentially be divided - split between Karkhedon’s overseas arkhe and the confederal opposition provided by the Keltiberians and some isolated peoples on the western coast.

Adonibas, the son of Asdrubas, was reputedly a drunkard, a trait that endeared him to the men under his command during the campaigns of 293-291, and particularly to the Makedonian Amyntas, who was his second-in-command. A decade later, with Asdrubas dying of a fever and Ekuangnalos, elected Keltiberian King, on the warpath once more, the Assembly of Karkhedon decided it could not simply sit back and allow matters in Karabon to progress without interference. Adonibas was considered something of an easily manipulated lout and a drunk besides. Even if he had been a competent commander, the idea of allowing the son of a general to take power over his father’s forces was disturbing to the Assembly. They didn’t mind soldiers taking kingly prerogatives abroad, but this was a bridge too far. Besides, Iberia was rich, and tariffs on trade with the region were a not insubstantial portion of Karkhedon’s income.

Dispatching Maharabas, a veteran of the Sikelian Wars, seemed a prudent move. He was well connected and had familial ties to Annon. His arrival in New Karkhedon was thus a provocation only to the intended target - Adonibas.

Adonibas for his part, was torn. His army was primarily mercenary in nature - Libyans and Hellenes who had been settled in Iberia after the first Sikelian war. He could rebel if he wished, and perhaps carve out an independent polity for himself. But he was smart enough to know that the Phoenicians who made up the bulk of his administrative apparatus would never go along with such a plan. It is said that he did not long contemplate resistance. When Maharabas marched north to secure Karabon, Adonibas graciously “resigned” from his post (that was not his to resign). There was simply no other choice.

Politics in Karkhedon in those days were evidently remarkably civilized. Adonibas retired to a life of farming on the vast estates his family had carved out. There he was able to cultivate a substantial wine and olive trade near the Libyan colony of Harbizatia [Har biZayet], a city whose governorship he would attain later in life. This trajectory is typical of the landed gentry and the soldierly class of the time. Africa offered few opportunities for this new generation of landed men divorced from their home and capital. To return there was to come under the direct rule of the Assembly and the Sophetes. The system at home was stable and solid, but it did not provide for much opportunity. Karkhedon’s conquest of the hinterlands of Africa in the past centuries had left them in dire need of an outlet - and overseas territory provided just that.

The estates established across Iberia would have been distinct and yet recognizable to the Makedonians building their own colonial cities across the Near East. Urbanism developed more slowly in Iberia than it did across the Near East - in no small part because it was built on weaker foundations. The peoples of Iberia had their own cities, but these were small and their organization was limited and ad hoc. So too were the colonial establishments from North Africa - they lacked the sort of formalized systems the Hellenes imposed on their own urban foundations. Trade towns developed organically, spurred on by investment rather than royal authority. These emporia were still akin to the traditional Greek model, not the more novel style of the self-aggrandizing Diadokhoi monarchs. The Karkhedoi did not name their towns after monarchs, and did not promote settlement with any degree of zeal. Soldiers might retire to spear-won farmland, but this was never a true policy, executed on a grand scale. Land ownership patterns across Iberia evolved slowly and without any decisiveness.

The Karkhedoi conquest of Iberia was meteoric by many standards - nearly half a peninsula brought to heel where once the great city had relied on allies and tributaries to enforce order along a narrow band of coastline. However, little changed on the ground. The old tribal orders, the old systems, all essentially remained intact.

It is often said that Keltiberia, situated in the heart of the peninsula and unwilling to cede their mountain passes and strongholds from which they had sent so many proud armies fleeing in terror, was undone by wine. The merchants of Karkhedon set upon them not with swords but with promises of heavy amphorae full of intoxicating drink. Such a narrative aligns more with classical tropes than reality. The development and spread of wine had already reached Keltiberia long before the coming of the Karkhedoi - and Maharbas was more than willing to wage wars.

 

[souvikkundu25140017]

well written as always Practical Lobster, eagerly waiting for your update on indo-greek relations and situation and cultural mixture in India.

 

[Practical Lobster]

The Queen of Cities

Antigonos Didymos was a brilliant leader in his periods of sobriety, it was often said. His achievements in Aigyptian administration - balancing competing factions and societal interests and turning the immense state revenues into a fearsome mercenary army - were balanced by drunkenness and lingering rumors of cowardice. His military ventures had generally been disasters - disasters that had seen him ejected from Syria and confined to Aigyptos while others fought to win back his empire. For that reason, if no other, he increasingly delegated military and political authority, eager to avoid humiliation.

Alexandros Philopator, Antigonos’ twin brother and fellow son of the far-famed Demetrios had met an untimely end in 258 trying to wrest Syria back from Nikarkhides, a task that had since fallen to his brother-in-law, Philippos on behalf of his sixteen year old son Demetrios. In practice, Philippos was a capable commander, and, fortunately for Antigonos, he harbored no royal ambitions whatsoever. With the help of Attalos, Demetrios’ most loyal general, Philippos had turned Anatolia in general and Phyrgia in particular into a powerful base of operations. Their state had become a thorn in the side of almost every other power - striking with relative impunity into Makedon and Syria, funded by Antigonos and supplied with seemingly inexhaustible manpower from the Anatolian coasts. What they had not done, however, was win back what was theirs - the inheritance of the Argead-Antigonid state.

In a sense, that was irrelevant. Nikarkhides’ regime frequently boasted of great deeds in their royal propaganda and edicts. Nikarkhides claimed dominion over the Indos, for example, despite the strong rule of Seleukos’ heirs there. He also claimed that he ruled Syria, despite the fact that the region was a shifting battleground, oft contested between the Antigonid partisans and his own soldiers. It is true that where his army went, he was generally untouchable. His Baktrian cavalry, sheeted in armor, and his disciplined auxiliary archers made up for any deficiency in line infantry he might have possessed - and his own phalanx corps was at least capable of holding off the opposition, if not scoring decisive victories on its own.

So an uneasy status quo developed. Attalos launched his failed invasion of Makedon, hoping to retake the homeland and further bolster recruitment efforts. He was constantly on the move, always in an army camp or some Ionian city, planning and marching and fighting. If he had returned to Aigyptos he would have seen that his dreams were failing. Antigonos was increasingly drunk and dissolute, with little desire to leave the well-defended Aigyptian interior for risky gambles elsewhere. The state that Attalos fought to maintain was largely a fiction - a coalition of commanders related to Demetrios’ court by blood or service. In a sense, the Aigyptian part of his regime was unrelated.

It was, ironically, the arrival of an embassy from the Philetairids of Eudaimon Arabia in 255, led by one Xanthippos of Eumenia, that augured the end of the status quo. The Philetairids were technically satraps of the Great King, although they minted their own coinage, raised their own cities, and wore the diadem themselves. Like Seleukos and his heirs, they found an image of peripheral subservience easy to swallow in exchange for total autonomy and a steady, if limited, flow of colonists from the homeland.

Antigonos Didymos was well into his middle-age in 255, and by all accounts he appeared far older, a lifetime of the hard-drinking Diadokhoi lifestyle catching up to him in the end. His eldest daughter Arsinoe and her husband Diokourides had largely taken over the day-to-day affairs of state, but both were corrupt and aided in their corruption by the two primary ministers of state, Lysimakhos and Lysandros. They favored the status quo - war was costly and expensive, and Aigyptos was a fortress such as that Nikarkhides never posed it any genuine threat. At his most expansive, Nikarkhides had never made it past Antigonea Ake [Acre] on the Phoenician coast. By contrast, a second, weaker faction consisted of Antigonos’ eponymous son (Soter) and the mercenary general Kleomenes of Rhodes, who saw their destiny in reconquering the Empire from the Amyntids[1].

Xanthippos, for his part, hoped to arrange a marriage between the young prince and presumptive heir to the Arabian throne Philetairos [Philometor] and one of Antigonos’ daughters, Kleopatra. The current Arabian King hoped to position his own dynasty on equal footing to that of the crumbling Antigonid regime. Antigonos Didymos was more than happy to agree to the marriage. However, there was a complication. Xanthippos had used the meeting as a pretense to discuss a more detailed plan behind closed doors with Kleomenes and his mercenary faction. The Arabians brought word that Nikarkhides had approached them in secret, seeking to convince the Arabians to temporarily embargo the spice trade, crippling Aigyptian trade revenues. He hoped to use this shock as a way to give himself breathing space and finally advance into Koile Syria.

This plan, if it is not apocryphal, speaks to Nikarkhides’ ignorance of the systems which undergirded his world. A fine tactician though he might have been, and a man capable of playing monarch in front of his companions and soldiers, he did little to improve his territory or establish any lasting legacy. His failure to understand that Arabia itself could not simply shut down trade across the Red Sea (for its own interests would be enormously harmed) and his failure to understand the allegiance of the Philetairids to the Antigonid state, both cost him enormously here.

Prince Antigonos, for his part, knew that it was time to act. Nikarkhides was marching south into Koile Syria and he, a young man of twenty, was determined to lead the army against them. He proposed his plan to the court and found his dreams shut down immediately by Diokourides. Though the man’s only formal title was that of archikynegos or Chief Huntsman, he controlled the bureaucracy through his lackeys Lysimakhos and Lysandros. Lysimakhos was the oikonomos of Aigyptos, a position that had been established by Antigonos Didymos’ uncle to administer the revenues of Aigyptos. Lysandros, by contrast, was merely the royal secretary, but as the King’s competence declined this office basically determined what the King saw or heard. And so Prince Antigonos found himself in the embarrassing position of being denied easy access to his own father. Lysimakhos’ counter-proposal, which was ultimately decided upon, was to bolster the garrison at Ake - whose strong walls had held out against worse sieges before.

Prince Antigonos, for his part, went into hiding. He saw that Diokourides was planning to assume the diadem in time. Allowing Antigonos out of the city with an army was a gamble he could not afford to take. Risking what remained of the Antigonid Syrian possessions by contrast was a small gamble if it kept the young prince sidelined. Unlike the Antigonids, he was quite content with the notion of Aigyptos as a personal fief. He was not unduly concerned with the outside world except in the sense that it could threaten his fief. In a sense, his policy was logical. Aigyptos was wealthy beyond imagining. Only someone who grew up with stories of the entire world as their birthright could possibly need more, he decided.

As an administrative matter, Alexandria in that time was considered not to be Aigyptos itself, but rather adjacent to it. In contemporary documents, people often speak of making the journey from the city to Aigyptos. The city had an insular sense to it, caught as it was between the sea and the fresh water of the Mareotis. Everywhere there were barriers - the twelve canals that brought drinking water from the Canopic Nilos - the partition walls that divided the districts of the city and the houses within from one another - the Exhairesis, or merchants quarter, which was a special duty-free region adjacent to the wharfs. If it was a ployglot city, filled with all manner of people, from Hellenes and Makedonians to Aigyptioi and Syrioi, there were also laws dictating who could marry whom. The Hellenic word for those of mixed blood, migades, more properly referred to those who mixed Hellenic ancestry who were divided between tribes, rather than those who had mixed indigenous ancestry.

Still, it was the queen of cities - center of global trade, link between the Indian world and the Oikoumene. At the time of Antigonos Didymos, it was home to some three hundred thousand souls. It was noisy, it was vibrant, it was murderous. It was a good place to hide.

It was where Antigonos Soter had spent his entire life. He knew the fractitious allegiances of local phylai (tribes) and had the ear of many of the powerful demes[2], who resented the autocracy of Antigonos Didymos’ court. Before the coming of a monarch, they had been largely autonomous in their actions. Before this became a true Antigonid capital, the viceroy had largely kept to himself and the city had been run by them. They had been rich and important, rather than a staffing service for the royal bureaucracy.

It was not hard, with the allegiance of the mercenaries under Kleomenes and the demes, to pick away at the power of Diokourides and Arsinoe. The demes could frustrate royal tax collectors and cause problems with the royal revenue stream; once they perceived that a member of the royal family was on their side, and were aware that there would be no reprisals from the often vicious mercenary element of the city, they were emboldened substantially.

Things came to a head quickly. Diokourides convinced Lysandros to order the arrest of Antigonos Soter on trumped-up charges of treason. He was dragged before the diskaterion - the royal court of law. Prince Antigonos, however, had the best lawyers of the city to represent him. They went before the King, Antigonos Didymos, and offered a compromise. Faced with the unpleasant options of either convicting his son of treason or angering the potent court faction of Diokourides, Antigonos needed an alternative. He was well aware of his dependency on Diokourides’ bureaucracy and the fact that he was increasingly isolated and incapable of ruling. Stumbling in a stupor through his palace, he wept and raged until finally, he was persuaded by one of his companions, Antiokhos of Therma, that he lacked jurisdiction to try his son, given the particular nature of the corruption he was charged of. Jurisdiction, Antiokhos said, fell to the Assembly and the Exegetes[3].

No sooner did he do this than the Assembly declared his innocence. Things might have calmed down to some degree, but Antigonos Didymos died three days later, supposedly of drunkenness. Antiokhos of Therma fled to the young Antigonos and told him that Dioukourides had assassinated his son. Soon a mob was rioiting outside the royal apartments of Diokourides. He attempted to flee to the harbour but was interdicted by Kleomenes’ officers and captured. Dragged before the Assembly, the Alexandrine mob called for blood and received their wish. Antigonos presided over his brother-in-law’s grisly execution and then led Kleomenes’ soldiers in a vicious palace coup. Arsinoe and a huge number of royal officials were put to death. Antigonos was victorious. He placed the diadem on his head to chants of “Soter” or savior from the major tribes of the city.

Flush with victory, he marched north at the head of a substantial mercenary army. Nikarkhides did not retreat from him - his track record of triumphs against the Antigonid military machine were by now impressive. He had never been comprehensively defeated.

They met at the coastal plains north of the village of Kabarsion[4]. Nikarkhides considered retreating - drawing the Antigonids north and crushing them in the hilly country of Syria, but he reconsidered when he heard that Attalos was marching south as well, at the head of his own not insignificant army. He feared being caught in a pincer, and thus decided that he needed to crush Antigonos then and there.

The day was unseasonably dry. Nikarkhides’ elephants kicked up enormous dust clouds, to say nothing of forty-thousand soldiers and horse marching rhythmically across the fields. It was this dust, according to our accounts of the battle, which made it difficult to determine his formation. Antigonos, who had minimal military experience, established something of a standard formation, taking command of his companions and indeed much of the cavalry and leading them along the right flank. As the wind shifted and the dust began to clear, he saw that Nikarkhides’ forces had been confused by the storm, and were almost entirely out of formation. Seeing victory in hand, he charged home. But the distance was still significant, and as his soldiers charged, the Baktrian cavalry were able to rally and mount a counter-charge.

He never saw the lance that caught him in the chest and shattered, hurling him from his horse. He struck his head on a stone and did not rise. He never saw the heavy steel mace that crushed the skull of the royal standard bearer or the spear that killed his horse and brought it down on top of him.

He didn’t see Kleomenes’ forces lose heart at the sight of their King’s banner falling and their cavalry slaughtered and put to rout. He didn’t see the retreat that became a disaster as the emboldened Amyntid army surged forward. Antigonos Soter reigned for a period of mere days, and his defeat left Nikarkhides’ path towards Aigyptos seemingly open. Kleomenes fled back to Alexandria and began to prepare for the worst.

Fortunately, that was unnecessary. Attalos and Philippos had arrived from the north with a second army. Nikarkhides, flush with success, ordered his troops to make a forced march north, fearing that his supply depots were in danger of being cut off by Attalos’ own cavalry - a mix of Anatolian and Keltic mercenaries. He was not wrong to assume so. By the time he reached Antigonea-on-the-Orontes he found its gates closed to him and retreated back towards Zeugma, where two decades previously he had crushed Antigonos Didymos.

This time he would not be so fortunate. Attalos, whose record as a commander was variable at best, was able to pull out a substantial triumph and chase Nikarkhides back across the Euphrates. Demetrios [Keraunos], one of the few direct male descendents of his eponymous divine forefather left alive, was acclaimed Great King by his soldiers.

The period after Attalos’ victory is often known to historians as the Second Antigonid-Argead Empire[5], and the election of its first monarch coincided with a golden age of the Hellenistic Era that lasted for the better part of a century and a half, a time of unprecedented peace. Nikarkhides would live another four years, but he would never again enter into Syria in force and the loss of Media a year later to rebellion all but guaranteed that his realm would collapse on his death - as did the fact that on his deathbed he gave each of his territories to a different son. Attalos was able to mop up the remains with relative ease. However, Philippos did not live long enough to see his triumph. He passed away in 249, dying while his nephew Demetrios besieged Baktra and brought a final end to the war.

[1] Nikarkhides’ dynasty, named after his father.

[2] Families

[3] Originally a priestly role, by the Antigonid era the Exegetes was a sort of judicial office, entitled to wear a purple robe and interpret law. This office existed in parallel to that of the monarchy.

[4] North of OTL Nahariyya

[5] The Second Antigonid-Argead Empire was notable for its stability and prosperity, its artistic and intellectual achievement, and for providing the Near East a period of uninterrupted peace and security. Travel across the entire empire was facilitated by a renewed program of royal road building, riverine travel and the growing Hellenic presence in the Indian Ocean. The period of the Diadokhoi wars ended in a sort of mutual exhaustion, with Makedonia, Hellas, and much of the Aegean conceded to the Kraterid dynasty, the Seleukids given virtual autonomy in Gandhara and along the Indos, the Philetairids confirmed as Kings of Arabia, and the Lysimakhids in Thrakia and along the Istros. The Second Antigonid-Argead Empire lost much of its Anatolian focus, in favor of richer lands in Syria, Mesopotamia and Egypt, allowing the young Pharnakid State to expand dramatically during the period of civil war which lasted from 164 to 159. Five years after the establishment of the Pharnakids, Ionia would be lost to the Kraterids and the Syrian focus of the state would become somewhat cemented. Throughout the history of their regime, they generally accepted places such as Armenia and Media to be Hellenized "vassal" monarchies and did not interfere in their development overtly. Although their hands off approach to frontier governance was ultimately a failure, it had an impressive hundred and fifty year reign before it truly began to break down and the heirs of Alexandros Megas and Demetrios Theos Epiphanes were forced to once again fight tooth and nail for their legacy.

 

[Practical Lobster]

well written as always Practical Lobster, eagerly waiting for your update on indo-greek relations and situation and cultural mixture in India.

Soon, soon. Arabia and India coming up next. Then Italy, Gaul, and finally a pause for a look at cultural developments.

 

[Pischinovski]

Great update!

 

[Salvador79]

Wonderful updates. Thank you, @Practical Lobster!
I especially loved Dacian berserkers.
And I notice that you`ve done here what you´ve done in The World of the White Huns repeatedly, too:
Egypt-based dynasties and their monarchs becoming spoiled, idle, corrupted... (Makes a lot of sense of course.)

 

[Practical Lobster]

Wonderful updates. Thank you, @Practical Lobster!
I especially loved Dacian berserkers.
And I notice that you`ve done here what you´ve done in The World of the White Huns repeatedly, too:
Egypt-based dynasties and their monarchs becoming spoiled, idle, corrupted... (Makes a lot of sense of course.)

Thanks! I don't mean to make a habit or a trend of portraying Egypt as this place where dynasties go to be corrupted or fade away. If I can complicate the picture a little bit, bear with me...

I'll admit that the slow decline of the Heshanid dynasty (over a period of centuries) was related to a diminishing martial tradition and the fact that few Eftal and Arab settlers couldn't help but assimilate into the broader Coptic society. Nevertheless they maintained a floruishing and prosperous state, if not always a militarily successful one. After the Khardi invasion, Egypt was devastated and has been in something of a slump ever since, but the dynasties that have ruled it I wouldn't describe as spoiled or idle.

In two instances in Oikoumene, Egypt has had weak rulers whose policies have led to disaster. In the first case, it was OTL's Ptolemy Keraunos, who I have a rather low estimation of. In the second, it was Antigonos Didymos, who was introduced in the preceding update as something of a drunk and a coward, although capable in some other respects. What I sought to highlight, rather than the corrupting influence of a safe and wealthy country like Egypt was the dangers of Diadokhoi kingship when you ended up with an inept ruler on the throne. Nor would I call Antigonos Didymos spoiled or idle - more afraid of taking risks post-Zeugma, and an alcoholic because of the lifestyle of Makedonian kings. Both of which were encouraged by the particular position he found himself where he could hole up in Alexandria and raise troops for a war that never came.

 

[Practical Lobster]

The Library - an Excerpt from the Hekatompylos Scrolls

[Named after the town of a hundred gates in Northern Persia, the Hekatompylos Scrolls were fragments of a fragmentary tradition. According to historians and sophists, the scrolls represent an early and perhaps foundational text of the Eusebian religious tradition, one of the numerous competing philosophical and religious sects from the middle Diadokhoi era. Others disagree, seeing it as a derivation from Eusebian practices. Given our lack of knowledge and the rather short timeframe in which Eusebianism flourished as an independent belief system, it is difficult to say. That said, significant concepts found in the scrolls, such as the nonduality of the Monad, would reappear in countless formulations across the span of history.

The Hekatompylos scrolls have undergone significant deterioration - however, they nevertheless reflect a critical moment of divergence in the philosophical schools which comprised the ancient world, and thus are worthy of study for that reason alone.]

These Ultimate Ends

In the beginning was the infinite Monad, who gave rise to the measured self. The foundation of knowing is the measured self, which is the psukhe[1]. Without this principle there is no infinite self. The psukhe is the infinite breath. It is indivisible from limitlessness. What then is the ultimate end [2] of the psukhe? It is not bound to decay; it is pure form. It is not measured in terms of a span of years or lives.

Freed from the mud of flesh the psukhe undergoes metempsychosis.[3] The Monad is the ultimate end of the psukhe. Through the One which is Many one might attain excellence. Thus do the wise study the psukhe as the infinite self. Those who speak of [...]

Know then this: excellence then is the sensation of divinity. This is the foundation of what I have been taught. It is what I have come to testify to you. I am but a student, I am not the sophist. Still, what I have seen shall [...] and be known to you.

[...] in Herakleopolis they asked the traveler if he was a seer. He denied it. He claimed that all men were born with flawed perception.[4] They asked him if he denied the existence of the gods [...] took his leave [...] sea, where he encountered [...] holy man named Damis [...]

[1] Soul. In the Eusebian context, soul and mind are indivisible and identical reflections of the pure and infinite divine [the infinite self]. Understanding this is the first step towards the teleological attainment of excellence or unity with the Monad.

[2] In the teleological sense.

[3] Reincarnation has long been present in Hellenic philosophy and the philosophies of the mediterranean. The Pythagoreans in particular embraced it - the Eusebians and other such factions found themselves drawn to it as well. The fact that so many societies independently developed the concept of metempsychosis has been taken by believers to be proof of its veracity, ignoring the fact that many societies independently came up with entirely different afterlives bearing superficial similarities to one another.

[4] While this text is not properly Eusebian, one of the foremost tenents of Eusebianism is the impossibility of gaining perfect understanding in the material world. The measured self could only gain awareness of the infinite self during periods of death but before rebirth. This was in stark contrast to many of Eusebianism’s contemporaries, who believed that spiritual transcendence of some sort of other was possible in life. To the Eusebian, death was a veil and insights pulled from prior lives or of the world beyond the material were prone to error and fallacy. In a sense, it is mysticism that denies secret knowledge, and this both made it appealing and denied it the widespread acceptance that its more mainstream counterparts enjoyed.

Incense and Visions

The Nabatoi society represents a sort of dark mirror into the Hellenized Oikoumene. They had largely lacked urban society before the Diadokhoi era. However, they were always the gatekeepers of ancient overland trade routes. Inhabitants of the wide red desert between the Mediterranean and Arabia proper, their monopolies brought them in contact with a people they often strove to emulate in a variety of ways, a people they saw as more sophisticated and more powerful than themselves. And thus even though they remained unconquered - retreating into the desert and defying Demetrios Theos Epiphanes and his kin the slightest opportunity to subdue them - at the elite level they were conquered culturally.

The marzeh, or social club, represented one such Hellenistic adaptation of the Nabatoi. The men who took part in the marzeh were akin to the thiasoi of the Hellenic world. Theirs was a secretive and exclusive social club, one founded on shared cultic practice and the desire for community bonding. Akin to the symposion, women were similarly excluded from the society. Given that the early marzeh were aniconic and first hand accounts are all but unknown, it is difficult to reconstruct what they worshipped at the marzeh. Certainly the state religion - the veneration of deified kings and the worship of the god Dushara, whom the Hellenes often called Theos Ares - was a part of their ritual, but it was not the whole of it. Ancestors and other various gods, often feminine or secondary deities, were often part of the rituals. However, worship was only one aspect of the marzeh. They were primarily opportunities for revelry and discussion, for local political discussions to be hashed out and for communities to quietly resolve disputes.

The Nabatoi had a view of divinity was in many ways similar to that of the Ioudaioi. Gods were referred to by epithets and allusions rather than direct names. They were never represented, except by geometric symbols and polished faceless stones. While the Hellenic conception of divinity walked away from the human and familiar, increasingly seeking something transcendent and lofty, the Nabatoi god was already inhuman, already distinct from anything that might be represented as a man. The same held largely true in Eudaimon Arabia as well. Both peoples took no issue with depicting Hellenic deities or their rulers, but deep seated cultural taboos governed their own deities.

One curiosity of history is the fact that the Ioudaioi, ostensibly the more urban and settled of the Semitic peoples were more resistant to Hellenization than the Nabatoi and the people of South Arabia. The societies of Nabataia and Arabia Eudaimon took to foreign ideas with alacrity, blending them with their own culture as the Perses and the Aigyptoi did.Perhaps this is understandable for the people of Eudaimon, who were after all hosts to a Hellenic monarchy, but even the unconquered Nabatoi self-consciously modelled their regime after the Hellenes, wearing the diadem and hosting theatrical performers and philosophers from neighboring city states.

It is worth contrasting the way in which South Arabian Hellenism was distinct from that of the Nabatoi. Arabia Eudaimon, under the Philetairid monarchs, was a sort of frontier society. Under its early monarchs such as Ptolemaios the Philetairids were exceptionally keen to interface with Arabian civilization - knowing that they lacked the numbers and the understanding to survive in this world without compromise. They established themselves and their dynasty as priests and as federators within the complex tribal society, much as later Hellenic monarchs in Anatolia would attempt to bridge the widening gap between city-states, the temple states, and their settler colonies.

At the same time, the Philetairids knew it was critical to build deeper bridges. They turned tribal councils and their role as mediators of conflicts into a sort of Assembly, allowing their subjects to feel represented at the cost of angering the Hellenic settlers, who hated for a time that barbarians were allowed to take a seat beside them in politics. They saw the Philetairids, not incorrectly, as “barbarized” and though they too in turn would take Sabaean wives and raise polyglot children, it was a slow process of mutual assimilation. Hellenic culture, art, and literature permeated at all levels among the urban peoples of the region.

While the Hellenes in Eudaimon were becoming Saba, the Nabatoi were adopting Hellenic styles. Their kings put on simple and unadorned diadems where once they had modeled their dress after the Persians. They minted coins in profile, hiring Hellenic artists to cast their likeness. And yet for all this, Hellenism permeated primarily at the elite level. Gymnasions were popular with a certain class, but obviously were unavailable to the common herdsmen. Urbanism was still at a markedly low level, and the Nabatoi, even when they conquered parts of Koile Syria, made few efforts to accomodate the role of the city-state or assembly. They saw themselves as tribal kings, whatever the style they modelled as a concession to the great powers of the world. City-states under their dominion were treated as federate allies, neither possessions nor equals.

Fire From Heaven

Roughly between 286 and 275 the Fourth Sikelian War raged, but the outcome, it often seemed, was never really in question. A series of utter disasters for Karkhedon put them on the defensive almost from the beginning, and in the end they were reduced to holding on to their limited colonial possessions on the eastern coast. The final treaties came one by one, but each had a common factor: Alketas Chrysostomos.

Alketas had been born in a world shaped by the legacy of Alexandros, raised at the feet of the legendary Kerkyrian sophist Makhatas and in the army of Krateros Epigonos. He was a prince of the Aiakidai dynasty, the Molossian family which was by the third century BCE synonymous with Epirote royalty. Despite the fractitious and frequently violent nature of Epirote politics, he benefited greatly from the stabilizing measures of his predecessor, his grandfather Aiakides, who had nearly been overthrown by the mob while he was away at war with the Illyrians. The failed coup resulted in the death of his young son Pyrros, who had remained at the capital while his brother Teukros and father were on campaign. When Aiakides returned, he held his brother Alketas [the son of Arybbas] responsible and had him put to death. On Aiakides’ death, the throne passed to his nephew Hesioneus, who managed to die in a hunting accident after a mere few months. Many prominent Epirotes considered at this point inviting Kassandros, husband of Aiakides’ daughter Phthia, and son of Krateros Epigonos, to take the throne. However, the decision was dismissed out of hand when it became apparent that such a decision would see them placed even further under the yoke of Makedon. Kassandros' brother, Alexandros Eusebes, after all, was heir to the Makedonian throne, and co-king.

Finally, Alketas was identified. His father, Teukros, had died relatively young in war against the Illyrians, and he was still serving in the Makedonian military, a companion of Krateros Epigonos and married to a Makedonian noblewoman named Nereis. He was an outsider, but hopefully a pliable one, a neutral choice in a family that often found itself forced to play mediator between the ambitions of rival clans. As it transpired, the power brokers of Epirote society had no idea what they bargained for. Alketas turned out to be a brilliant rhetorician (hence his epithet, gold-mouthed) and had an individual with a keen eye for military reform. The Epirote army had already transitioned towards Makedonian tactics several decades before, but it was Alketas who finalized this transition and turned this army towards the cause of empire.

Alketas inherited an army of thousands of pikemen and theureos-bearing infantry, Illyrian and Keltic auxiliaries, Thessalian cavalry, a picked Agema, and critically, one of the most efficient logistical systems since Alexandros, a company of engineers whose skills were unprecedented on the peninsula. This was no mere citizen army - it was a professional force, one that could sustain itself in the field indefinitely in a way that many Esperian forces could not. And more than anything, it adapted.

Alketas would spend his whole career looking westwards. Sikelia and Esperia were his playground, a place where his ambitions could be fulfilled. He was also cautious and clever. Rather than rushing into war in Esperia, he came first as a mediator, assisting Taras and resolving the Saunitoi uprising without substantial bloodshed, as well as “rescuing” substantial portions of Demetrios’ former army. These early maneuvers positioned him a place where Demetrios’ isolated satrapy of Kabra fell into his hands, as did the yet unformed settler “colonies” that came with it.

Claiming to defend the liberties of the Hellenic poleis while simultaneously establishing an untenable buffer region was a stroke of political genius in a sense. Alketas was able to pay his soldiers in land and do so in such a way that was certain to provoke the Saunitoi and put him in a position to make himself defender of free peoples rather than an aggressor. Early on he had recognized that the Tarantines and the other polities of the region had a keen eye for appearances. The sort of oriental despotism that Demetrios represented was less popular here.

Alketas’ Esperian wars can be divided into three distinct phases - his first wars were defensive and focused on crushing Saunitoi forces that marched out from their central hill-country. The second phase, which happened to some degree contemporaneously, involved his intervention in the Sikelian War. The third and final phase, temporally distinct, involved his final conquest of the Saunitoi and the long period of war against the Kelts of Esperia. Most notably throughout his entire career, he won wars as often through the building of coalition and designing of clever compromises than through battlefield victories. Perhaps more than Krateros Epigonos, he deserves to be considered a political chessmaster - more than a mere opportunist he was a political artisan, crafting the circumstances that would ensure later victories.

Despite this work, he is often far less known and acknowledged than his contemporaries, a lesser counterpart to Demetrios and Alexandros.

[Questions, comments? I'm still sticking with the same rough schedule I posted above, but I'm jumping around a little as different things strike my interest. Hope that works with everyone!

Also I do hope that my genealogy of Alketas makes even slight sense. The problem with alt-history family trees is that half the people on them are invented and it can be tough to see how everything fits together.

Edit: Phthia is no longer married to Demetrios' son Alexandros but rather to Krateros Epigonos' son Kassandros, who is the brother of future Makedonian king Alexandros Eusebes ("the Pious"). This was just for my own logic. Alexandros Philopator instead marries a Median princess named Artakama - but theirs is not a particularly happy union and Alexandros Philopator dies childless.]

 

[Practical Lobster]

Also, while I'm not trying to make things even more confusing from a family tree perspective, I wanted to point out that Demetrios Keraunos, "nephew" of Alexandros Philopator is the child of Demetrios' daughter Stratonike, who married a satrap named Philotas. As such he's basically the only Antigonid-Argead family left alive. Fortunately, he'll have a lot of kids by his wife, a Seleukid princess royal named Apama, including another Demetrios, Antigenes, Kleopatra, Stratonike, Philippos and Seleukos. The Antigonid-Argead dynasty will never again come close to dying out.

Demetrios is Antigonos' only son in this TL, purely because I never could figure out what happened to his OTL brother due to a) lack of effort and b) the sheer number of guys in the Makedonian nobility named Philip.

In an interesting turn of events, the existence of Philotas, Demetrios Keraunos' dad, is basically ignored forever. He never did anything particularly noteworthy and doesn't seem to have been alive by the time of Demetrios' reign. In any case, Alexandros Philopator, Demetrios Theos Epiphanes, and the like end up getting all the veneration and praise and posthumous deification and hero-cults and Philotas gets pretty much squat. So either he sucked (as an eastern satrap he probably lost his lands to the Baktrians) or he just got shafted by virtue of not fitting the narrative.

Anyhow... next post will talk about India, the Seleukids, and maybe some Kelts? We'll see.

 

[B_Munro]

Good stuff, good stuff. I'm a little unclear as to the eastern borders of the
Second Antigonid-Argead Empire: does Media extend all the way from the borders of Mesopotamia to Gandhara, or do the Great Kings still hold some possessions in Persia proper?

 

[Practical Lobster]

Good stuff, good stuff. I'm a little unclear as to the eastern borders of the
Second Antigonid-Argead Empire: does Media extend all the way from the borders of Mesopotamia to Gandhara, or do the Great Kings still hold some possessions in Persia proper?

Media itself is akin to the historical region / province. The Second Antigonid-Argead Empire holds everything from Anatolia to Baktria but not Gandhara. Over time it hemorrhages some peripheral regions but it holds Persia itself for a very long time.

 

[B_Munro]

Media itself is akin to the historical region / province. The Second Antigonid-Argead Empire holds everything from Anatolia to Baktria but not Gandhara. Over time it hemorrhages some peripheral regions but it holds Persia itself for a very long time.

So, something along these lines?

 

[Practical Lobster]

@B_Munro - Really depends what year we're talking about. I also might have been confused - I really meant more like Media Atropatene. Ekbatana remains in the empire for quite some time - it's a site with too much historical prestige to give up lightly. In 249 it would resemble Antigonos' historical territories.


Seventy years down the line, (let's say 180 BCE) Baktria, Media Atropatene, and Baktria/Sogdia are all semi-autonomous, but it would be weird to make them a totally different color on a map per se. They're still satraps, just increasingly independent ones. The Antigonid dynasty has had a succession of weak rulers but it is still holding on. About fifteen years later, a stronger ruler reverses some of these centralizing tendencies - but at his death there's a civil war, and everything breaks apart. Makedon seizes large parts of Asia Minor (Ionia and Lydia) and indigenous rebellions claim OTL Pontos. Places like Rhodes, Kypros, Armenia, and Media (still more or less Atropatene) stretch their muscles. A Hellenized Baktro-Persian state establishes itself on the frontier, (all the "Upper Satrapies") paying only lip-service to the king of kings and frankly at times being a significant military threat to them. Still, the Antigonid-Argeads have Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia - the real prize, in their estimation. By around 100 BCE, there are family members clinging to power, but the empire has collapsed into feuding successor states.

I don't want to go too far ahead of myself, but Antigonid-Argead dynasts are still in the fight as late as the fifties, per earlier posts. There's resurgences and diebacks but they do hold on. By this point though, they're a shadow of their former selves. Another fifty years later and there's nothing anyone would call the Antigonid-Argead Empire outside of Egypt. And that's more of a successor state. Eternal Alexandrian Empire isn't really my style. It's the cultural and societal influences of Hellenism that live on - and plenty of Hellenic successor states.

Over the course of roughly three hundred years, we see a massive colonization of the Mediterranean and Near East and Northern India by various Greek peoples, bringing their language, religion, culture and worldview with them. This is basically a global transformation, one that IOTL was a little less expansive but nevertheless gets overshadowed by the rise of Rome. In this timeline there is no Rome to overshadow or to reshape the paradigm yet again. No universal empire to promote a single religion or state or way of thinking. The Persian Empire is the best example of what an Empire should look like and... oh wait, they got crushed. So is Alexandros the model? One might think, but it doesn't really take. Alexandros as a hero-cult is different anyways and his star shone brightly but briefly. So there's Demetrios... but he met a messy end and hated governing anyways.

So the closest thing we have to a vision for Empire is a cross between settler colonies, the Persian Empire, and Hellenic leagues. I'm trying to do something very different from White Huns in my approach to the themes of this world. White Huns has sort of a cyclical continuity to it. States rise and fall and oftentimes they look familiar to things that come before them. Universal empires rise and collapse and rise again. In a world without Rome I don't even think we'll be able to recognize a single region as "Europe" let alone worry about an endless cycle of history.

I'll go over this in more detail as we go, but I hope this clears up the timeline while still leaving plenty of mystery and questions to explore.

 

[Salvador79]

It is absolutely wonderful. I sometimes get confused with all the names, but the basic outline is fascinating, and so are many details.

 

[Pischinovski]

I agree with @Salvador79 . Despite not following a strictly chronological order, all your updates are very detailed and seem plausible and well thought-through. It must be extremly difficult for you to keep track of everything.
Do you have a detailed chronological outline of TTL's political history that you use when you write your updates?

 

[Practical Lobster]

It is absolutely wonderful. I sometimes get confused with all the names, but the basic outline is fascinating, and so are many details.

Thanks! I know the names are confusing. It will only get worse I'm afraid.

I agree with @Salvador79 . Despite not following a strictly chronological order, all your updates are very detailed and seem plausible and well thought-through. It must be extremly difficult for you to keep track of everything.
Do you have a detailed chronological outline of TTL's political history that you use when you write your updates?

Thanks! I can't say it's easy to track everything. That said any chronological outline I have, I will post. I'm hoping to make ruler lists for the major Greek dynasties at some point - the Kraterids, the Argead-Antigonids, the Seleukids, the Epirotes, and possibly some Indian and Keltic families of note as well. That said, my notes are very rough indeed. I have a general idea how whole regions evolve socially and politically but the details don't get posted until I write the posts. Then I cross check and try to avoid glaring contradictions.

 

[Daeres]

Thanks! I know the names are confusing. It will only get worse I'm afraid.



Thanks! I can't say it's easy to track everything. That said any chronological outline I have, I will post. I'm hoping to make ruler lists for the major Greek dynasties at some point - the Kraterids, the Argead-Antigonids, the Seleukids, the Epirotes, and possibly some Indian and Keltic families of note as well. That said, my notes are very rough indeed. I have a general idea how whole regions evolve socially and politically but the details don't get posted until I write the posts. Then I cross check and try to avoid glaring contradictions.

Oh god I recognise just about all of this. The amount of time I've spent cross-checking my own posts...

 

[245]

hows eastern Europe and Scandinavia and central Asia as well as north Arabia and the region were Yemen and Oman is. how far is this time line going to go and what happen to Plato and Socrates and Aristotle?

 

[Practical Lobster]

hows eastern Europe and Scandinavia and central Asia as well as north Arabia and the region were Yemen and Oman is. how far is this time line going to go and what happen to Plato and Socrates and Aristotle?

Plato, Socrates and Aristotle died before the beginning of the timeline. (Well Aristotle died as OTL in 322.) Yemen and North Arabia were just covered in the previous update. The Nabatoi inhabit North Arabia and Yemen is called Arabia Eudaimon...

Of those, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia have not diverged substantially from OTL yet except where noted in the timeline and the Persian Gulf deserves an update of its own. Also I don't know specifically what you want to know about their development. I can try to find some sources for you if you're interested in the regions themselves but quite simply nothing has changed at a macro level (except where noted) as of about 280 BCE.

Also in general I don't understand entirely what you're looking for. If you want updates on these specific regions I'll see what I can do, bearing in mind the focus of this timeline. Otherwise I need specific questions that aren't just "tell me about x."

 

[Daeres]

Speaking of Socrates and Plato, do you think you've thrown a wrench into the OTL Hellenistic philosophers and philosophies that emerged out of the post-Alexander era? You've spoken about the search for something more revalatory and substantial out of ritual/spirituality, so it seems like a fertile environment for the kind of radical lifestyle and spiritual movements that came out of the OTL Hellenistic era, but after a certain point a number of Hellenistic philosophers ended up becoming lifestyle experts for rich Romans, not to mention the influence of early Christianity (people often forget that early Christianity had an impact on traditional Mediterranean religious practice even before it became a majority religion). The shape seems to be that of, if not continued Hellenic domination over the Near East in the long run, continued Hellenic self determination, and that then suggests 'stronger' Hellenic spiritual and philosophical institutions as they won't be acting as tourist traps for centuries.