If there were no eternal consciousness in a human being, if underlying everything there were only a wild, fermenting force writhing in dark passions that produced everything great and insignificant, if a bottomless, insatiable emptiness lurked beneath everything, what would life be then but despair? If such were the case, if there were no sacred bond that tied humankind together, if one generation after another rose like leaves in the forest, if one generation succeeded another like the singing of birds in the forest, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea, as the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and futile activity, if an eternal oblivion always hungrily lay in wait for its prey and there were no power strong enough to snatch it away – then how empty and hopeless life would be! But that is why it is not so, and as God created man and woman, so he fashioned the hero and the poet or orator. The latter can do nothing that the former does, he can only admire, love, and rejoice in the hero. Yet he too is happy, no less than the former, for the hero is so to speak his better nature with which he is infatuated yet delighted that it is after all not himself, that his love can be admiration.

A Preliminary Outpouring from the Heart

An old adage drawn from the external and visible world says: “Only the one who works gets the bread.” Oddly enough, the adage does not apply in the world where it is most at home, for the external world is subject to the law of imperfection, and here it happens again and again that the one who does not work also gets the bread, and the one who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the one who works. In the external world everything belongs to the possessor; it toils slavishly under the law of indifference, and the genie of the ring obeys whoever has the ring, whether he is a Noureddin or an Aladdin, and whoever has the world's treasures has them no matter how he got them. In the world of spirit it is otherwise. Here an eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain on both the just and the unjust, here the sun does not shine on both good and evil, here it holds true that only the one who works gets the bread, only the one who was in anxiety finds rest, only the one who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved, only the one who draws the knife gets Isaac. The one who will not work does not get the bread but is deceived, just as the gods deceived Orpheus with an airy apparition instead of the beloved, deceived him because he was sentimental, not courageous, deceived him because he was a lute player, not a man.

There was once a man who as a child had heard that beautiful story about how God tested Abraham and how he withstood the test, kept the faith, and received a son a second time contrary to expectation. When the man became older, he read the same story with even greater admiration, for life had separated what had been united in the child's pious simplicity. Indeed, the older he became, the more often his thoughts turned to that story; his enthusiasm became stronger and stronger, and yet he could understand the story less and less. Finally he forgot everything else because of it; his soul had only one wish, to see Abraham, one longing, to have been a witness to that event. His desire was not to see the beautiful regions of the Far East, not the earthly splendor of the Promised Land, not that god-fearing married couple whose old age God had blessed, not the venerable figure of the aged patriarch, not the vigorous youth of Isaac bestowed by God – it would not have mattered to him if the same thing had taken place on a barren heath. His longing was to accompany them on the three day journey when Abraham rode with sorrow before him and Isaac by his side. His wish was to be present at the hour when Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw Mount Moriah in the distance, the hour he left the asses behind and went up the mountain alone with Isaac, for what engrossed him was not the artistic weave of the imagination but the shudder of the thought.

The Hellenistic period as conventionally understood is framed by two military conquests: the first, the Macedonian invasion of the Persian Empire under Alexander, rapid and deliberate (334–323 bc), the second, the Roman takeover of much of the Hellenistic world, hardly deliberate but a long-drawn process, which started in the late third century bc but was not complete till 30 bc with the overthrow of the Ptolemaic dynasty after the battle of Actium. War in this period was a constant presence which shaped the history of the times in many ways. Conquest and empire are the leading themes: they have had a long and varied life from antiquity to the present day, and are unlikely to lose their relevance in the foreseeable future.

Hellenistic studies are at present in a thriving condition, as a glance at any bibliography will show. When the first edition of this book was written only one general survey of the Hellenistic age in English was available (Tarn and Griffith (1953)), but since then they have multiplied and there has been a profusion of specialist studies. What George Grote once wrote in the Preface to his great History of Greece (12 volumes, first published 1846–56) now seems an outdated curiosity: ‘After the generation of Alexander, the political action of Greece becomes cramped and degraded – no longer interesting to the reader, or operative on the destinies of the world […] As a whole, the period between 300 bc and the absorption of Greece by the Romans is of no interest in itself, and is only so far of value as it helps us to understand the preceding centuries.'

Alexander's legacy to the world was a mess. His sudden death in Babylon in June 323 left Macedon in an unprecedented situation: there was no designated successor capable of taking over, and Macedon did not have the constitutional machinery to handle the emergency. The result was an open-ended power struggle between his leading followers which never came to a final conclusion. Within a generation three major monarchies established themselves in a lasting way – the Ptolemies in Egypt (chapter 7), the Seleucids in Asia (chapter 5), the Antigonids in Macedon (chapter 3) – but there was always room for newcomers, such as the Attalids of Pergamum (chapter 6), the Greek rulers in Bactria, and non-Greek monarchies, such as the dynasties in Bithynia, Pontus, and further afield Parthia and India.

The surviving literary sources place the leading Macedonians at the centre of the story. They evoke conflicting assessments. ‘All those who were associated with Philip, and afterwards with Alexander, showed themselves to be truly royal in their magnanimity, their self-control and their daring … After Alexander's death, when they became rivals for the possession of an empire which covered much of the world, they filled many history books with the glory of their achievements’ (Polybius VIII.10). Contrast Plutarch (Pyrrhus 12): ‘They are perpetually at war, because for them plotting and being envious of each other is second nature, and they use the words war and peace just like current coin, to serve their present needs, but in defiance of justice. Indeed they are really better men when they go to war openly than when they conceal under the names of justice and friendship those periods when they are at leisure and abstrain from acts of wrongdoing.’

It has often been said that after Alexander, in a world dominated by territorial monarchies, the Greek city was now ‘dead’ as an institution, but this view has come under considerable critical scrutiny. While it is true that the old leading cities – Athens, Sparta, Syracuse in Sicily, and a few others – could no longer maintain their former predominance, the position of many smaller ones was no more precarious now than before, and the aspiration for independence remained alive. Rhodes actually became more powerful in this period than she had been before, though this was an exceptional case. Thanks to the foundations of Alexander but especially his Successors Greek cities multiplied and were to be found scattered over a much larger area which now extended deep inland into Asia in Asia; in Egypt). The life and activities of many Greek cities are more fully documented in this period than before thanks to the spread of the ‘epigraphic habit’ in the post-classical world. It will be seen that the majority of texts in this chapter are inscriptions and not literary sources.

This chapter concentrates on what could be described as the ‘old Greek world’, centred around the Aegean basin (the west is largely omitted, though the ‘new Greek world’ of the monarchies in Asia and Egypt is covered in subsequent chapters. The chapter is divided for convenience into four sections. The first comprises texts arranged geographically: Central Greece, the Peloponnese, the Aegean and the islands, the Black Sea area.

The Seleucid empire, created by Seleucus I through conquest, was territorially the largest and most diverse of all Hellenistic empires. Starting from Babylonia, Seleucus expanded eastwards as far as Bactria, added North Syria after the battle of Ipsus, and at the end of his career western Asia Minor as well as a foothold in Thrace. Later Antiochus III added Coele Syria which he captured from Ptolemy V. Though comprising a multiplicity of non-Greek peoples and cultures, the Seleucid empire is known predominantly from Greek or Graeco-Roman evidence. Non-Greek perspectives are only rarely available, except for those parts of the empire that had their own literary or documentary traditions, notably Babylonia and Judaea. The empire was a conglomerate of many peoples and entities. The kings promoted the settlement of Greek-type cities, imported manpower from the Greek world as well as their own cults, but did not attempt to impose any cultural or religious uniformity on their empire contrast. The unifying element was provided by the king himself and his dynasty, his close followers, most of them apparently of Greek/Macedonian origin or culture, and his military forces, more mixed in composition. The kings were primarily warriors in action who campaigned personally throughout their empire and handled relations with subject states and foreign powers, either in person, or through their officials. What is known of the imperial administration shows varying degrees of complexity as well as efficiency, depending on the context.