WAR IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD

WAR AND THE IDEOLOGY OF HELLENISTIC MONARCHY
4
THE INTERACTIVE KING:
WAR AND THE IDEOLOGY
OF HELLENISTIC MONARCHY
4.1. War and the Acceptance of Monarchical Rule
One of the few definitions of monarchy that survive from the Hellenistic
period is found in the lexicon Suda (s.v. basileia; Austin 1981: no. 37; Sage
1996: no. 271): “Monarchical power [basileiai] is given to men neither by
nature nor by law; it is given to those who are able of commanding troops
and dealing prudently with [political] matters”. This statement summarizes
the experience of the Greeks during the period of the Successors of Alexander
the Great: Antigonos the One-Eyed and his son Demetrios, Ptolemy I,
Seleukos, Lysimachos, and Kassandros did not acquire the title of “king” on
the basis of dynastic legitimacy – as a matter of fact, Kassandros liquidated
Alexander’s son, who did have this legitimacy – but on the basis of their
success in wars. Antigonos the One-Eyed initiated this practice with his
carefully staged proclamation to kingship upon the announcement of the naval
victory of his son Demetrios in Cyprus (306 BC; Plut., Demetr. 17–18). As
soon as the messenger announced the victory, the “multitude” (plethos)
acclaimed Antigonos and Demetrios as kings, and Antigonos’ friends bound
a diadem around his head. The proclamation of the other Successors to
kingship followed soon after and gave the year 306 BC its designation as the
“year of the kings.”
The fact that the title basileus was not accompanied by an ethnic name
(e.g., basileus ton Makedonon, “king of the Macedonians”), is plausibly
taken to imply that the Successors were the kings of whichever land they
could conquer (see Gruen 1985). This intentional vagueness was an invitation
to conquest.
The imperialist impulse, which can be observed in the major Hellenistic
monarchies of the Antigonids, the Ptolemies, and the Seleukids, and which is
one of the causes of the never-ending wars, is intrinsically connected with the
fact that the acceptance of monarchical rule was founded on war and military
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