Edwyn Robert Bevan

“ So far as we can see Ptolemy's personality through the mists of time, he was a robust, full-blooded Macedonian, with the sound common sense which often characterizes the leaders of a people of country farmers, the shrewd caution which looks a long way ahead, and likes to play a safe game and secure solid advantages, an animal lustihood which made him take joy in many women, a genial bonhomie which attracted soldiers of fortune to his standard from all Greek lands — a man rather of vigorous bodily and mental constitution than of fine fibre. ”

“ Between the two extremes there was variation not only between city and city, but, no doubt, in one and the same city at different times. In Syria the independent action of the cities greatly increased during the last weakness of the Seleucid monarchy. With the extension of the single strong rule of Rome over this Hellenistic world, the conditions were changed. Just as the Macedonian conquest, whilst increasing the domain of Greek culture, had straitened Greek liberty, so Rome, whilst bringing Hellenism finally into secure possession of the nearer East, extinguished Greek freedom altogether. ”

“ Egyptians and Greeks had fought side by side against the common foe. Only ten years before Alexander's arrival, the last Pharaoh, whose Egyptian name the Greeks rendered as Nectanebo, had been overthrown and Persian rule restored. Thus the army of Alexander, coming in all the prestige of its astonishing victories, seemed to the Egyptians as strong friends and deliverers. [1] The struggle with Persia was still proceeding; Egyptians and Greeks were still natural allies. At that moment the Egyptians could hardly have realized that the Ionians came this time to Egypt not as allies, but as masters. ”

“ Yet Philip was not untouched by ideal considerations, as is proved by the respect, no doubt sincere, which he showed for Hellenic culture, by the forbearance and deference with which he treated Athens, the sacred city of that culture and his mortal foe. A special interest belongs to the Macedonian kingdom as it was shaped by Philip, since it forestalls a system which was not to find the time ripe for it in European history till many centuries later—the national kingdom quickened with the culture developed by the ancient city-states. ”

“ For the Greeks of Egypt, Alexander the Great had been a god from the beginning. The kings and queens of the house of Ptolemy soon came to be gods and goddesses as well. Educated Greeks no doubt regarded the official cult as merely a symbolic form. It had become so easy in those days to call a man a god without meaning very much by it.
The worship of a dead man was much more in accordance with the ancestral religion of the Greeks than the newfangled worship of men still living. ”

“ The brisk diplomatic intercourse between the Great King and the Greek states in the 4th century may have produced effects that were not merely political. We certainly find among those members of the Persian aristocracy, who came by residence in Asia Minor into closer contact with the Greeks, some traces of interest in the more ideal side of Hellenism. A man like the younger Cyrus invited Greek captains to his friendship for something more than their utility in war, and procured Greek hetaerae for something more than sensual pleasure. ”

“ From the coming of Alexander, for a thousand years Egypt would be subject to alien rulers of Hellenistic civilization, Macedonian and Roman, and at the end of the thousand years, the Egypt which became part of the body of Islam would be a different Egypt, with another language, another social system, another religion. The gods whom for thousands of years the land of Egypt had worshipped as its own gods would have been forsaken for ever, buried in its dust. ”

“ Government at the same time, as an Oriental despotism understands it, often has little in view but the gathering in of the tribute and compulsion of the subjects to personal service in the army or in royal works, and if satisfied in these respects will leave much independence to the local authorities. In the loosely-knit Seleucid realm it is plain that a great deal more independence was left to the various communities,—cities or native tribes,—than in Egypt, where the conditions made a bureaucratic system so easy to carry through. ”

“ There were plenty of men, it is true, in Egypt, but these were not the right kind of men, the men out of which one could make armies able to stand against armies of Macedonian and Greek soldiers such as Antigonus or Seleucus could put into the field. Ptolemy must have his sure supply of Macedonians, too. He could remember how the nucleus of the army, which under Alexander had conquered half the world, had been drawn from the man-power of old Macedonia, the horse-riding aristocracy, the stout pike-men who were farmers or field-labourers of the Balkan countryside in peace time. ”

“ The values honoured by the rulers of the world must naturally impress themselves upon the subject multitudes. The Macedonian chiefs found their pride in being champions of Hellenism. Of Alexander there is no need to speak. The courts of his successors in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt were Greek in language and atmosphere. All kings liked to win the good word of the Greeks by munificence bestowed upon Greek cities and Greek institutions. All of them in some degree patronized Greek art and letters, and some sought fame for themselves as authors. ”

“ Philometor’s infant son, Ptolemy Philopator Neos (?) [1] , was proclaimed king in Alexandria under the regency of his mother Cleopatra. Euergetes however, swooping from Cyrene, seized the throne and married Cleopatra, making away with his nephew. He has left an odious picture of himself in the historians—a man untouched by benefits or natural affection, delighting in deeds of blood, his body as loathsome in its blown corpulence as his soul. Something must be allowed for the rhetorical habit of our authorities, but that Euergetes was ready enough to shed blood when policy required seems true. ”

“ They were coming to Egypt to bring Egypt under a rule stronger and more durable than that of the Persians. After former invasions of foreign people, Hyksos and others, Egypt had again always in the end recovered its freedom and set up new dynasties of native Pharaohs, carrying on the immemorially old national tradition in government and culture and language; but now there would never again, to the end of time, be a Pharaoh of native blood ruling beside the Nile. ”

“ Even where there was no new foundation the older cities of Phoenicia and Syria became transformed from the overwhelming prestige of Hellenic culture. In Tyre and Sidon, no less than in Antioch or Alexandria, Greek literature and philosophy were seriously cultivated, as we may see by the great names which they contributed. The process by which Hellenism thus leavened an older city we may trace with peculiar vividness in the case of Jerusalem ”

“ In the Seleucid kingdom the territorial expanse of the realm made the creation of a distinct subordinate government for part of it a measure of practical convenience. Sometimes the joint-king is merely titular, an infant of tender years, as for instance Antiochus Eupator, the son of Antiochus Epiphanes, or Ptolemy Eupator, the son of Ptolemy Philometor. The object here is to secure the succession in the event of the supreme king’s dying whilst his heir is an infant. The king’s government was carried on by officials appointed by him and responsible to him alone. ”

“ He had beside him, as advisers, Timotheus the Athenian, a member of the priestly Eumolpid family, an authority on Greek religious practice, and the Egyptian priest, Manetho, who would speak with knowledge about Egyptian religion. And here it appeared that there was one Egyptian god, the Memphian Osiris-Apis, who was already invoked by the Greeks in Egypt under the name of Sarapis. Ptolemy laid hold of this as the nucleus of his new religion. ”

“ Even the barbarian courts, their neighbours or vassals, were swayed by the dominant fashion to imitation. But by the courts alone Hellenism could never have been propagated far. Greek culture had been the product of the city-state, and Hellenism could not be dissevered from the city. It was upon the system of Greek and Macedonian cities, planted by Alexander and his successors, that their work rested, and though their dynasties crumbled, their work remained. Rome, when it stepped into their place, did no more than safeguard its continuance ”

“ It might be naïve to posit such a motive in the case of a modern practical man, but it is thoroughly in accordance with the temperament of Alexander. There is certainly a problem here; but the problem is not why Alexander in particular wanted to consult the ram-headed god, but why this shrine, so far out of the world and so difficult of access, had ever become a place to which Greeks resorted.
It is plain that the prestige of Ammon in the Greek world had to do with the growth of the Greek colony, Cyrene, on the African coast. ”

“ Of course, in fact, the power of the king was so vastly superior that the Greek cities were in reality subject to his dictation, even in so intimate a matter as the readmission of their exiles, and might be obliged to receive his garrisons. Within the empire itself, the various communities were allowed, subject to the interference of the king or his officials, to manage their own affairs. ”

“ Certain arms in an army of the period were almost always furnished, not by Macedonian regulars, but by mercenaries from some particular region — archers from Crete, javelineers from Thrace. Of the Cretans, Thracians, Athenians, Spartans, Boeotians, Sicilians, who came in this way to Egypt, many apparently stayed there. Ptolemy seems to have exerted himself to be known all over the Greek world as the kind of genial, free-handed, valiant gentleman whom any young man inclined to the life of a soldier might cross the sea to serve. ”