Chapter 5 Macedonia and Greece

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I

One important part of the hellenistic world was free from the clash of cultures which characterizes the eastern monarchies. That was the homeland of Philip II and Alexander, the kingdom of Macedonia which from 276 until its dissolution at the hands of Rome in 168, was ruled by the Antigonid dynasty. As we have already seen in Chapter 3, Macedonia was the last of the three great areas to settle down to a regular dynastic succession. From 316 until his death in 297 it was controlled by Cassander, who used the title of king from about 305 onwards (p. 56) but during the next twenty years the country was torn apart by the rival attempts of Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Lysimachus, Seleucus and Ptolemy Ceraunus to seize and hold it, and stability returned only with the arrival of Antigonus Gonatas in 276 and Pyrrhus' death a few years later. As the son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, Antigonus II Gonatas belonged to a family which had continued longer than any other to assert a claim to the whole of Alexander's empire. When he became king of Macedonia such a claim was already meaningless but in another respect his position was very different from that of his rivals in Egypt and Syria.

In Macedonia, as we have already noted (p. 74), the monarchy was a national institution. By tradition Macedonian kings had to respect certain customary rights of the people. The experience of his father and grandfather (and himself hitherto) must have habituated Antigonus II to personal monarchy, as the hellenistic world had learnt to understand it. But in Macedonia he had to take national attitudes into account. How far these attitudes had

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their counterpart in any genuine share in state power is not easy to discern. An inscription recording the accounts of the Amphictyonic Council, responsible for administering Delphi, in autumn 325 (Bousquet, Milanges Daux, pp. 21 ff.) states that the Macedonian delegates (hieromnemones) are appointed 'by Alexander', but the payment of 10,000 staters was made by 'the Macedonians', and Diodorus (xvi, 71, 2) reports that when Philip II defeated the Thracians in 343/2 'he compelled them to pay tithes to the Macedonians'. But it is hard to envisage a separate 'national' Macedonian treasury, distinct from that controlled by the king, out of which payments to the Amphictyony were to be met, and the Macedonians are perhaps mentioned here merely because the other members of the Amphictyony were peoples. Similarly, Diodorus' reference to the Macedonians may be a verbal variant without significance.

On the other hand there are undoubtedly occasions when 'the Macedonians' are distinguished from their king. Justinus (xxiv, 5, 14) informs us that after Cassander's son Antipater perished, in 279, a certain Sosthenes, 'one of the leaders of the Macedonians', successfully warded off hostile attacks but, 'when he had been hailed king by the army, obliged the soldiers to take the oath to him not as king, but as general'. This passage is evidence that the army (probably representing the people) normally swore an oath to the new king. What form that oath took is not recorded. We know, however, from Plutarch (Pyrrhus, 5, 2) - who is probably following Hieronymus - that in the neighbouring kingdom of the Molossians (in Epirus)

it was customary for the kings, after sacrificing to Zeus Areius at Passaron ... to exchange solemn oaths with the Epirotes, the kings swearing to rule according to the laws and the people to maintain the kingdom according to the laws.

It may well be that the Macedonian oath took a similar form but clearly we cannot be sure. Nor have we any idea how often the Macedonians were called together. At the outset of Philip's reign, when morale was low, 'he gathered the Macedonians together in

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a series of assemblies and by his remarkable oratory inspired them with courage' (Diodorus, xvi, 3, 1) but this may have been exceptional, and it is perhaps significant that no inscription containing any decree emanating from a national Macedonian assembly has yet been found.

There is some evidence suggesting that the Macedonian people, or army (for in a state like that of the Molossians or Macedonians the two are almost indistinguishable), possessed a traditional right on the death of a king to appoint (not merely to acclaim) his successor. Philip II, for example, 'took the throne under compulsion of the people' Uustinus, vii, 5, 10) and after the murder of Cassander's son Alexander in 294,

the Macedonians . . . owing to their hatred of Antipater (another son of Cassander) who was a matricide, and for want of a better man, proclaimed Demetrius king of the Macedonians and at once led..him back to Macedonia (i.e. from Larissa, where these events took place) (Plutarch, Demetrius, 37, 1-2).

In fact, evidence for this popular right is rather scanty. In the case of Demetrius 'the Macedonians' were simply that section of the Macedonian army that had accompanied Alexander into Thessaly, and we do not know what legal significance resided in this acclamation: of its practical value to Demetrius there was of course no doubt. Similarly, the active role of Macedonian forces at Babylon immediately after the death of Alexander the Great and elsewhere during the early years of his successors is not surprising, given the irregular conditions. The active part played by the armies at this time could be the result of unruliness on the part of the troops or of calculations of expediency by the various generals, who naturally wanted to maintain the goodwill of their forces; it need not necessarily imply that traditional Macedonian popular powers were being exercised.

The other right attributed to the Macedonian people is that of judging cases of high treason. The main evidence for this lies in a general statement of Quintus Curtius about the nature of treason

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trials in Macedonia, introduced (vi, 8, 25) in the context of Alexander's action against Philotas, who had been charged with high treason.

It was the ancient custom of the Macedonians for the army to investigate criminal cases (inquirebat exercitus) - in peace time this was the function of the people - and for the power (potestas) of the king to count for nothing unless his influence (auctoritas) had earlier had weight with them.

The value of this passage is rendered somewhat doubtful because the words potestas and auctoritas both carry a flavour of the time just before Q Curtius was writing, for both figure in a central passage in The Deeds of the Divine Augustus (Res gestae divi Augusti), set up in an inscription shortly after Augustus' death in AD 14, and are concepts which attained notoriety at the outset of the Principate. They may therefore have been introduced anachronistically into Curtius' account of the powers of Macedonian kings three centuries earlier. However, the passage seems to mean that the army held the trial - for inquisitio is a legal investigation - and that the king did not determine the verdict by reason of his royal power, but could influence it through his prestige, perhaps by his intervention at the hearing. The problem has been unnecessarily complicated by the widespread adoption of a textual emendation in the passage so that the sense is 'the king investigated criminal cases, and the army passed judgement (inquirebat < rex, iudicabat > exercitus)'. This emendation rests upon a later passage (Curtius, vi, 9, 34), in which Alexander says to Philotas: 'The Macedonians are about to pass judgement upon you', and on the fact that in his speech Philotas addresses the army as his judges. But in fact it is Alexander and his companions, not the army, who take the final decision after the army has been dismissed. Since therefore the passage contains these contradictions, it is preferable not to tamper with the text of Curtius vi, 8, 25. As it stands, this passage affords good evidence that the people (or army) traditionally exercised power in treason trials and these popular judicial rights, together with the rather

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less clear rights exercised at the end of a reign, appear to place the king of Macedonia on a different footing from his rivals elsewhere.

In practice, however, these rights were little heeded. According to Plutarch (Aemilius Paulus, 8, 2) upon the death of Demetrius II in 229,

the leading Macedonians, fearing the anarchy that might result (sc. from the fact that his son Philip was only a boy), called in Antigonus, a cousin of the dead king, and married him to Philip's mother, making him first regent and general and then, finding his rule moderate and conducive to the general good, giving him the title of king.

This account, which makes no reference to any popular assembly, attributes the decision to 'the leading Macedonians', and it can be assumed that even on occasions when an assembly was called together, it was these leading Macedonians whose decision really counted.

Popular rights in Macedonia were thus somewhat vestigial. But the leading Macedonians represented an element in the state for which there was no counterpart in Syria or Egypt, where the king's Friends, as we have seen (pp. 75 ff.), were chosen by the king from all parts of the hellenistic world and bound to him only by personal ties (at any rate during the third century). This kind of courtier and administrator was not unknown at the Antigonid court, nor indeed at the court of Philip Il earlier, but at all times kings of Macedonia had to take account of a native nobility whose loyalty might be crucial to the safety and prosperity of the kingdom.

The Macedonians, moreover, survive as an element in the state, however slight and neglected their powers. In a rather fragmentary treaty made by Antigonus III Doson with the Cretan city of Eleutherna (SVA, 501), its people apparently undertake not to make any alliance which runs counter to 'that made with Antigonus and the Macedonians' and a Delian dedication set up after Antigonus III's victory over Sparta in

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222, reads: 'King Antigonus son of King Demetrius and [the Macedonians] and the allies from [the spoils of the battle of Sellasia to Apollo' (Syll. 518). In this inscription the allies are the members of the Hellenic Confederacy set up by Doson (see p. 97); and though the word 'Macedonian' is not visible on the stone, it is a certain restoration, which is confirmed by the text of a treaty sworn between the Carthaginian general Hannibal and Philip V and recorded by Polybius (vii, 9, 1), which refers to the plenipotentiaries sent to Hannibal by 'King Philip the son of Demetrius on behalf of himself and the Macedonians and the allies', and goes on to mention these three as parties in the treaty. The Macedonians are also referred to as a koinon, a Greek word with a wide connotation but meaning fundamentally 'common weal' or 'state' or 'public authority' or (very frequently at this period) 'confederacy'. A Delian dedication inscribed on a thirdcentury portico set up by Philip early in his reign reads: 'The koinon of the Macedonians in honour of King Philip son of King Demetrius on account of his merit and goodwill towards them' (Syll., 575). This koinon can be paralleled from the Molossian kingdom, where an inscription from Dodona, dated to 370-368, when Neoptolemus was king, records a grant of citizenship by 'the koinon of the Molossians' (Hammond, Epirus, pp. 530-1). But, judging from our evidence, the Macedonian koinon had far less power than that of the Molossians, and once on the throne the Antigonids reigned autocratically and with few limitations beyond the need to keep the goodwill of the people and the nobles.

The evidence for this is unequivocal. Macedonian treaties were usually made in the name of the king alone. The presence of the Macedonians in those with Eleutherna and with Hannibal is exceptional and may connect with a reference to Greek allies, which stands in the Punic treaty and has been plausibly restored in that with the Cretan city. There is no hint anywhere in the contemporary historian Polybius that the Antigonids had to take account of any joint authority. The Macedonians, to be sure, always employed a traditional frankness in addressing their king. Polybius (V, 27, 8) emphasizes this in his account

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of the outspoken manner in which a body of Macedonian troops demanded that their commander, who was under arrest ' should not be tried by the king in their absence. Moreover ' unlike the cities inside the country and many outside it, the Macedonians never made their king the object of ruler cult. But, despite all this, for practical purposes the Antigonids were the state.

II

In other respects too Macedonia grew increasingly like the other hellenistic states, notwithstanding the national basis of the monarchy and the fact that both king and people belonged to the same stock. The king's Friends, for instance, were chosen from outside as well as inside the kingdom. When the young Philip V wanted to assert his independence, one of his earliest actions was to rid himself of the group of Macedonians whom he had inherited as his Friends from Antigonus Doson - Apelles, Megaleas, Leontius, Crinon and Ptolemaeus. Subsequently outsiders occupy a prominent place in his counsels, men such as Aratus of Sicyon, Demetrius of Pharos, Heracleides of Tarentum, Cycliadas the Achaean and Brachylles the Boeotian, whom indeed Antigonus Doson had already enrolled in Macedonian service, when in 222 he put him in charge of Sparta (Polybius, xx, 5, 12). We also hear, mainly from the time of Philip V when Polybius becomes available as a source, of many of the typical posts characteristic of the hellenistic courts, such as the Secretary of State, the Captain of the Guard, the Treasurer and the Bodyguards (a group of officers employed by the king on confidential duties).

Antigonid Macedonia experienced a growth of urbanization, which brought it closer to the cultural level of southern Greece. Under Philip and Alexander the highlands had been divided into cantons governed by their own princes and if we disregard the Greek colonies on the coast, such as Amphipolis and Pydna, there were few cities in lower Macedonia, and most of these were

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little more than market towns. Under Philip the Greek colonies had been incorporated into the kingdom, and there is evidence that some of the Greeks eminent in Alexander's counsels and serving in his fleet had been allotted land within the territory of Amphipolis and had in that way acquired Macedonian citizenship. Under the successors cities multiplied. In V6 Cassander founded two important cities, Cassandreia on Pallene (Diodorus, xix, 52, 2) and Thessalonica, a synoecism of several towns at the head of the Thermaic Gulf (Strabo, vii, 330, fgS. 21, 24). Both these towns had large Greek populations, and it is perhaps a mark of the growing unity and national consciousness that during this period men from all the cities of Macedonia, whatever their origin, count themselves as Macedonians. Outwardly the cities had the structure and the institutions of Greek democratic states. Four inscriptions from Cos, recording decrees passed by Philippi, Cassandreia, Pella and Amphipolis (SEG, xii (1955), 373-4), and according freedom from reprisals (asylia) to the temple of Asclepios in 242, furnish information about their organization. Cassandreia had a council (boule) and Thessalonica both a council and an assembly (ecclesia). An assembly is also attested for Philippi and Amphipolis, and it seems highly likely that all the cities, including the older Macedonian cities such as Pella and Aegae, possessed both institutions. Like cities elsewhere they were divided into tribes and demes, and generals, lawguardians, treasurers, archons and priests are mentioned from various cities. Other inscriptions also show the cities of Macedonia actively cultivating an exchange of embassies and honorific grants ofproxenia (see P. 73) with cities throughout the Greek world, as if they were independent city-states. But in reality they were clearly under the entire control of the king. A letter written by Philip V to Andronicus, his representative in Thessalonica, indicates that the municipal authorities might not touch the revenues of the temple of Sarapis without permission from the royal governor (epistates) and judges (IG, X, 2, 1 no. 3). Such epistatai were stationed in the main cities of Macedonia and other areas under the king's control, and they had the assistance of financial officials like Harpalus at Beroea, to whom Demetrius II wrote a letter in 248/7, while still crown prince:

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Demetrius sends greeting to Harpalus. The priests of Heracles tell me that certain of the revenues of the god have been incorporated in those of the city. See to it therefore that they are restored to the god. May you flourish (Syll., 459).

These officials ensured that all decisions of importance had the royal consent. But within these limitations the cities possessed local autonomy and controlled their own funds and they were able to confer their own local citizenship on Macedonians from other cities.

It is not easy to make a definite estimate of Macedonian economic prosperity in the third century. Phenomenal progress had been made under Philip II, who, as we saw (p. 2C)), transformed the highlanders from skin-clad shepherds into civilized farmers and town-dwellers, and not only stimulated a growth in the native population, but also reinforced its numbers with Scythians, Thracians and Illyrians. He had also opened up new agricultural land through flood-control, drainage and deforestation. This programme had been financed by the acquisition and development of the silver mines of Pangaeum near Amphipolis, Philippi and Damastium near Lake Ochrid, and the mineral wealth drawn from this source also went to pay for the costly military developments essential to Philip's expansionist plans and the Persian expedition. The expedition itself was costly to Macedonia in men and money and though a few returned wealthy, during the fifty years following Alexander's death emigration to the new cities of the east must have exerted a strain on Macedonian prosperity, as must the constant wars. The issue of an abundant and reliable Silver coinage by Antigonus Gonatas has, however, been taken as evidence that his reign was prosperous and his adoption of a naval policy against Egypt must also indicate the possession of some resources. But from the mid-third century evidence is scanty.

On conditions under Philip V (221-179) and Perseus

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(179-168) rather more is known, since in addition to Polybius' (fragmentary) narrative and that of Livy derived from it, several inscriptions throw light on Macedonian economic affairs. An active military programme and a policy of patronage towards both major and minor religious centres abroad were both methods of asserting parity of status with richer rivals in other kingdoms but both laid a heavy burden on Philip V's treasury. His defeat by the Romans in the Second Macedonian War (200-197) saddled him with an indemnity of 1000 talents and shortly afterwards he embarked on a policy designed to expand his revenues.

He not only increased the revenues of the kingdom by taxes on agricultural produce and by import and export duties; he also restarted the working of old mines that had been abandoned and opened new workings in many places. Moreover, in order to restore the population to its ancient level after the losses sustained in the disaster of war, he not only sought to ensure an increase in the native stock by insisting that everyone must beget children and rear them, but he had also introduced a large number of Thracians into Macedonia. The considerable period of respite from warfare had enabled him to devote all his attention to increasing his kingdom's resources (Livy, xxxix, 24, 2-4).

The resemblance to Philip II's methods is striking and probably deliberate. Philip V also issued large quantities of coins and for the first time in the history of the dynasty coins were issued by regional mints and by several Macedonian cities. We have specimens of bronze ~oins in the name of the Macedonians, the Bottiaeans, and two Paeonian peoples on the northern frontiers, and also coins from Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Aphytus, Apollonia in Mygdonis, and Pella. There is no evidence that they were intended for the hiring of troops; the local designations would make them unsuitable for that purpose. A good coinage could assist commerce and the local districts and cities may have paid for the privilege of minting. Twenty years

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later in 169/8 Antiochus IV of Syria similarly encouraged municipal coining within his kingdom. It has been plausibly suggested that his object was to make the cities 'active partners in the internal regeneration of his kingdom' (Morkholm, Antiochus IV, P. 130). Perhaps Philip's object was similar - though indeed the local coinages were not accompanied in this case by any relaxation in the centralized power of the monarchy.

Philip's efforts to build up his resources were continued by his son Perseus, who continued to amass wealth. Livy, following Polybius, records accusations made by his enemy Eumenes of Pergamum to the Roman Senate about his resources on the eve of the Third Macedonian War: their source of course makes them a little suspect.

He had in store a ten years supply of grain for 30,000 infantry and 5000 cavalry, so that he could be independent of his own land and of the enemy countryside in the matter of provisions. He had by now so much money that there was in hand pay for io,ooo mercenaries for the same period of time, in addition to his Macedonian forces, apart from the annual revenue which he, received from the royal mines. Weapons enough for armies even three times as large had been piled up in his arsenals. And he now had the youth of Thrace under his control . . . if ever Macedonia's supply should fail (Livy, xlii, 12, 8-10).

Perhaps more to the point, the size of the armies which Perseus fielded in his war with Rome (172-168) shows that since 197 the national levy had risen by 9000 men.

The development of urbanization in Macedonia under its kings from Philip II to Perseus progressed further than was once supposed and excavations have shown how Demetrias in Thessaly, which remained under Macedonian control for most of the period, developed into a large and flourishing cosmopolitan port between 2oo and 150. Thessaly, so long as they held it, was always treated by the kings of Macedonia as part of their own realm and Demetrias, founded by Demetrius I in 293, was a

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favourite city of the Antigonids; recent excavations there have identified their palace. But many Macedonians still lived in the countryside as peasant farmers or as tenants farming the estates of the king or the nobles. We have no information on the political status of the labour imported from Scythia, Illyria and Dardania, and such evidence as we have suggests that apart from some domestic slaves in the cities, slavery was not widely developed in Macedonia.

The country never achieved the scale of wealth to be found in Egypt and some other hellenistic states. Plutarch (Aemilius Paulus, 28, 3), records that, after the Roman victory at Pydna in 168, the Macedonians 'were to pay the Romans 100 (silver) talents in tribute, a sum less than half of of what they used to pay the kings'. If, despite all the efforts of Philip and Perseus to increase the productivity of Macedonia, its land-tax was bringing in only a little over 2oo silver talents per annum, we are talking about a country with very modest resources. In 196 the Romans, who had a good idea of what the market could stand, imposed an indemnity of 1000 talents. In 188 Antiochus was required to pay 15,000 talents (in addition to 3000 already handed over). The difference is some measure of the relative wealth of the two powers.

III

Its situation ensured that Macedonia had a more direct and intimate relationship with mainland Greece than had any other of the hellenistic states, and that for the very simple reason that Macedonia was essential to their safety.

Flamininus, at a conference held in 198 during the Second Macedonian War, stated that:

It was decidedly in the interest of the Greeks that the Macedonian dominion should be humbled, but not that it should be destroyed. For in that case they would very soon

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experience the lawless violence of the Thracians and Gauls, as they had on more than one occasion (Polybius, xviii, 37, 8-9).

In fighting a series of wars against the Illyrians, Dardanians and Thracians, the Macedonians were indirectly protecting the Greeks and when the Romans in 148 took over Macedonia as a province the same task fell to them. It is necessary, in any assessment of the role of Macedonia in the hellenistic world to bear in mind that although our sources naturally, being Greek or based on Greek writers, lay their emphasis on Macedonian policy towards Greece, Macedonia was in fact equally a Balkan power for which the northern, western and north-eastern frontiers were always vital and for which strong defences and periodic punitive expeditions over the border were f6damental policy. It has to be remembered that Lysimachus was on one occasion a prisoner in Thracian hands (cf. p. 76), that Ptolemy Ceraunus fell in battle against the Gauls, that the deaths of both Demetrius II and Antigonus Doson are associated with Dardanian wars, and that the Romans enlisted Dardanian support in their war with Philip.

If however the Macedonians were an essential bulwark to the north of Greece, the Antigonids regarded control of Greece itself as essential to their security and since they never attempted to translate that control into outright conquest (as they did effectively in Thessaly), one must conclude that their object was to deny Greece to any other power - Ptolemy, Pyrrhus, the Aetolians (see pp. 152 ff.), Pergamum - which might constitute a threat to Macedonia itself. In addition there was the weight of precedent. Philip II had imposed his hegemony on Greece and Demetrius had occupied many strong points. It was probably a point of honour for Antigonus Gonatas to do no less.

From the time of Philip II onwards Macedonia was the subject of strong ideological passions in Greece. In a speech delivered at Sparta in 210 the Aetolian Chlaeneas, appealing for Spartan collaboration in the Roman alliance against Macedonia, is said by, Polybius (IX, 28, 1) to have opened with the truism: 'Men of Sparta, I am quite certain that nobody would venture to deny that the slavery of Greece owes its origin to the kings

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of Macedonia'. He goes on to describe in detail the outrages which Philip, Alexander and their third-century successors have inflicted on the Greek cities. This was in the grand tradition of Demosthenes, who had branded statesmen from Arcadia, Messenia, Argos, Thessaly and Boeotia as traitors for collaborating with Philip, an accusation which was to bring a sharp retort from Polybius (xviii, 14, 6), in whose opinion these men

by inducing Philip to enter the Peloponnese and humbling the Lacedaemonians, in the first place allowed all the inhabitants of the Peloponnese to breathe freely and to entertain thoughts of liberty and next by recovering the territory and cities of which the Lacedaemonians in their prosperity had deprived the Messenians, Megalopolitans, Tegeans and Argives, unquestionably increased the power of their native towns.

These remarks show clearly that the relationship with Macedonia was as loaded a question in the third and second centuries as it had been in the fourth. The Macedonian policy of controlling Greece was up against the Greek passion for freedom and autonomy. Yet some states, like those of the Peloponnese, had profited from the Macedonian connection and were still ready to collaborate with the Macedonian king against their neighbours.

IV

A general pattern can be detected in the attempts made over a century and a half by kings of Macedonia to achieve and maintain a firm control over Greece. The most usual method was the garrisoning of strong points in Greece. But this was varied - or at times supplemented - by declarations of Greek independence and, under Antigonus III, by the setting up of an organization of Greek states along the lines of Philip II's League of Corinth (p.

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13). Of these devices the first was generally no more than a hollow slogan. The second, as we shall see (p. 97), was designed to line up the Greeks behind Macedonian policy and eventually proved disastrous for Hellas.
On his death Antipater left Polyperchon as regent of Macedonia (see P. 5o) and he in 319 called a council of his Friends at which it was decided, in order to meet the threat from Antipater's son Cassander,

to liberate the cities of Greece and to dissolve the oligarchies set up there by Antipater. In that way they would most easily weaken Cassander and win themselves great renown and many noteworthy alliances (Diodorus, xviii, 55, 2).

Once raised, the slogan of 'Greek freedom' continued to be bandied about as a propaganda theme to win Greek support. Four years later, generalized to appeal to all Greeks, it was incorporated in the ultimatum sent to Cassander by Antigonus the One-eyed that (above, p. 51): 'all Greeks were to be free without garrisons and autonomous' (Diodorus, xix, 6 1, 3) and in fact this remained Antigonus' stated policy. A clause to that effect was included in the peace of 311 (Diodorus, xix, 105, ').

Unfortunately, whether translated into reality or as mere words (which is what they usually remained), freedom and autonomy did not provide control over Greece, and in 304/3 Antigonus and his son Demetrius tried to revive Philip II's League of Corinth as a method of marshalling the Greeks against Cassander. This interesting venture did not however outlive Antigonus' death at Ipsus in 301 and for the next twenty-five years both Greece and Macedonia served as a battleground for various generals hoping to gain possession of Alexander's homeland. In 276 Antigonus Gonatas, Demetrius' son, ended the chaos by seizing the Macedonian throne but his rival Pyrrhus of Epirus made a final attempt to dislodge him in 272. by invading the Peloponnese, and on that occasion 'he told Spartan ambassadors 'that he had come to free the cities which were subject to Antigonus' (Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 26, 7).

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Antigonus and Demetrius had not put all their cards on the League of Corinth. They also kept Acrocorinth itself firmly garrisoned and when Antigonus Gonatas became king of Macedonia he maintained this fortress as a vital link in his system of control over Greece. The Greeks themselves were under no illusions about the significance of this garrison. In winter 198/7 Greek envoys sent to Rome in the hope of securing Philip V's complete expulsion from Greece

all took pains to impress on the Senate that so long as Chalcis, Corinth and Demetrias remained in Macedonian hands, it was impossible for the Greeks to have any thought of liberty. For Philip V's expression when he pronounced these places to be the 'fetters of Greece' was, they said, only too true, since neither could the Peloponnesians breathe freely with a royal garrison established at Corinth, nor could the Locrians, Boeotians and Phocians feel any confidence while Philip occupied Chalcis and the rest of Euboea, nor again could the Thessalians or Magnesians ever enjoy liberty while the Macedonians held Demetrias (Polybius, xviii, i 1, 4-7).

With the aid of these garrisons, supplemented for many years by troops in Athens and Piraeus, Antigonus Gonatas aimed at securing southern Greece. There was a strong current of opposition and in 268/7 the intrigues of Ptolemy II bore fruit in the outbreak of a Greek revolt against Macedonia known as the Chremonidean War after the Athenian Chremonides, who organized an alliance between Athens and Sparta and the allies of Sparta in the Peloponnese and Crete. Ptolemy's motives are not clear but the most likely explanation of his initiative is that Antigonus' decision to build a fleet seemed to threaten his own maritime supremacy, thanks to which he was master rif the Asia Minor coastline and the Aegean islands. Chremonides' success in organizing the anti-Macedonian alliance is recorded in an Athenian inscription Of 268, part of which reads:

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In order that the Greeks, who enjoy a common unanimity against those who have recently acted with injustice and committed outrages against the cities (i.e. Antigonus), may be enthusiastic in the struggle together with King Ptolemy and each other and may for the future preserve the cities by their unanimity, with good fortune, the people decrees that friendship and alliance shall exist between the Athenians, the Lacedaernonians and the kings of the Lacedaemonians, and the Eleans and the Achaeans and the Tegeans and the Mantineans and the Orchomenians and the Phigaleans and the Caphyeis and the Cretans, who are in the alliance of the Lacedaemonians and Areus [the king] and the rest of the allies, valid for all time, as brought by the ambassadors (Syll., 434/5, ll.32 ff. = SVA, 476).

Of the war itself few details survive. Egyptian coins of Ptolemy II found exceptionally (see above, P. 26) in Attica and several contemporary forts on Attic soil probably indicate some Ptolemaic help, but this proved insufficient. The war ended in disaster for the Greeks, and in 261 Athens had to surrender. Areus of Sparta was killed fighting near Corinth, and for about ten years Antigonus' control of Greece was unchallenged. As governor of Corinth his half-brother Craterus was virtually an independent viceroy but upon his death Alexander his son, who succeeded to the command, revolted against Antigonus. This was a severe blow to Macedonian power and although in 245 Antigonus recovered Corinth, by a trick, from Alexander's widow, he lost it again two years later to the Achaean leader Aratus (243). Twenty years were to elapse before the Macedonian position in southern Greece could be restored.

It is probably to the years immediately following Alexander's revolt that we must attribute Antigonus' sponsorship of a system of tyrannies in the Peloponnese - though not all these are datable and some at least, like that exercised by the family of Aristippus at Argos, probably belong earlier. But it was as a supporter of tyrants that Antigonus was remembered. In his speech at Sparta (see p. 91) Chlaeneas asked his Spartan audience:

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Who is ignorant of the deeds of Cassander, Demetrius and Antigonus Gonatas, all so recent that reference to them is superfluous? Some of them by introducing garrisons to cities and others by implanting tyrannies left no city with the right to call itself free (Polybius, ix, 29, 5-6).

Elsewhere (ii, 41, 10) Polybius complains that Gonatas 'planted more tyrannies in Greece than any other king'.

Deprived of Corinth, Antigonus (and after him his son Demetrius II) was in no position to defend the tyrants against a concerted campaign by the Achaean Aratus. One by one they were expelled and their cities brought into the Achaean League, which from the beginning of the third century became as powerful in the Peloponnese as the Aetolian League was in central Greece. Both these institutions will be examined in Chapter 8 (see pp. 152-8). Allied from 239 onwards they offered a serious Pbstacle to Macedonian ambition under Demetrius II (239-229) and when he died in 229 leaving an eight-year-old son, Philip, as his heir, Macedonia was in serious trouble. The leading Macedonians chose a certain Antigonus (known as Doson), the cousin of Demetrius, as regent and very soon as king (see p. 83). His reign saw an unforeseen. reversal of Macedonian fortunes. At first the situation was black. Dardanians had overrun the northern frontiers, the Aetolians had seized much of Thessaly, and further south Boeotia had wavered in its loyalty, Athens had bought its freedom from the Macedonian garrison commander, and the tyrants in Argos, Hermione and Phlius had all laid down their powers and joined Achaea. But these Achaean successes coincided with the rise to power in Sparta of a vigorous young king, Cleomenes III, who sought to harness a programme of social revolution to a policy of Spartan expansion. A few years' campaigning saw Achaea in utter disarray and Aratus was driven to make a sensational volte-face,

which would have been unsuitable for any Greek to make, but was most shameful for him and most unworthy of his career as soldier and statesman. For he invited Antigonus into Greece

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and filled the Peloponnese with Macedonians, whom he himself had driven out of the Peloponnese when, as a young man, he delivered the Acrocorinth from their power (Plutarch, Cleomenes, 16, 3).

Aratus was in a quandary but his fear of social revolution - it was widely though quite unnecessarily feared in Achaea that if victorious Cleomenes would carry out land-redistribution and debt-cancellation (see pp. 172 ff.) - and his dread of being ousted by Cleomenes from the position of dominance which he had held for over twenty years, led him to prefer Macedonia to Sparta. By 224 Antigonus was in possession of Corinth.

This time Macedonian power was to rest on a new basis, an alliance consisting of federal organizations under the leadership of the king of Macedonia, who was very soon to be not Antigonus (who died in 221) but the young Philip, Demetrius' son, for whom he had kept the succession open. The new alliance signified a return to the policies of Philip 11 and Antigonus I, except that the new units were not city-states, but confederations, a change reflecting a new emphasis in the political shape of Greece, which we shall look at in Chapter 8. The original members of the new 'Symmachy' were the Achaeans, Macedonians, Thessalians, Epirotcs, Acarnanians, Boeotians and Phocians. The Council of the Symmachy could be summoned by the president and was charged with the responsibility for peace and war and matters of supplies and membership. There was no treasury, however, and decisions had to be ratified by member states, hence the fundamental weakness, which prevented this body ever developing an independent strength of its own. The Symmachy was from the outset a compromise between the Greek ideal of liberty and the Macedonian aim at control; it was at least tantamount to a renunciation of Gonatas' systemof tyrants.

The Symmachy encircled Aeotolia and it was used first to fight an inconclusive war against the Aetolian League (220-217). But subsequently it became the fatal means of drawing the Achaeans and the other Greek allies into a devastating war with Rome,

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provoked by the ambitions of the young Philip. In that war Aetolia took the Roman side and the outbreak of a second war between Rome and Macedonia in 200 put too great a strain on an alliance which had ceased to offer any advantages to the Greeks. In 198 the Achaeans voted to join Rome, and Philip's defeat at Cynoscephalae in 197 resulted in his confinement within the old limits of Macedonia. It was followed, at the Isthmian games of 196, by a theatrical pronouncement, which showed the Romans quick to learn how to exploit the ancient propaganda slogan of Greek liberty.

The Roman Senate and T. Quinctius the proconsul, having defeated King Philip and the Macedonians, leave the following peoples free, without garrison and subject to no tribute and governed by their countries' laws - the Corinthians, Phocians, Locrians, Euboeans, Phthiotic Achaeans, Magnesians, Thessalians and Perrhaebians (Polybius, xviii, 46, 5).

The peoples mentioned had all been under Macedonian control, some, like the Thessalians, since the time of Philip II. In the Roman war against Antiochus III of Syria (192-189) Philip fought on the Roman side and recovered some territories on the borders of Thessaly, including Demetrias, but in a series of adverse judgements the Romans gradually whittled these away and their hostility to his successor Perseus (179-168) culminated in the Third Macedonian War and the end of the Antigonid kingdom. From 168 to 150 Macedonia survived as four independent tribute-paying republics, then after a revolt led by a pretender called Andriscus, who claimed to be Perseus' son, it was made into a Roman province.

For Greece too the declaration at the Isthmus led not to a period of glorious independence, but to qualified freedom, compromised by the need to refer all serious problems to Rome (see pp. 233 ff.). The war with Antiochus and Aetolia brought new decisions and more Roman commissions. Finally in 146 the revolt of the Achaean League ended in the destruction of

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Corinth, the dissolution of the League and the subjection of many states to the control of the governor of Macedonia. The full significance of Roman domination in Greece and the hellenistic world generally is, however, a separate issue, which we shall consider in the last chapter.