Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/613

EMPIRE.] PERSIA 585 might have resisted the foreign influence ; their numbers were too small, and Alexander pushed his plans too hastily and with too exclusive regard to surface -effect, to make any other issue possible. Nay, Alexander wished to have it so, and there was no surer path to his favour than to" wear a Persian coat and talk broken Persian like the schem ing Peucestas. Alexander liked Oriental splendour and the Oriental ceremony which placed an infinite distance be tween the king and his highest subjects ; great statesmen generally love to be absolute, and Alexander enjoyed Oriental despotism and mechanical obedience much more than councils of state and discussions of policy with the Macedonian soldier-nobility, whose sturdy independence was always asserting itself, and whose kings, unless in virtue of great personal qualities, had never been more than primi inter pares. Then, too, Alexander, in the splendour and magnitude of his conquests, lost touch of the movements that were going on at home. The true task of Macedonia in the world s history was to unite Greece under its hege mony, a task clearly marked out, and one which Philip had pursued with masterly skill. But the completion of this task called for a modest and unsensational line of action quite foreign to Alexander s spirit ; Antipater s hard- won victory at Megalopolis, but for which his father s work would have fallen to pieces behind him, was received with a characteristic sneer on the war of mice which seemed to be going on in Arcadia. 1 Philip s old generals judged otherwise and judged better ; it was not blindness to the conqueror s genius, but a just perception of what was practicable and desirable, and an instinctive dread of the unknown issues of the king s plans, which gradually estranged from him his truest councillors ; and it was an evil sign that his only close friend was a poor creature like Hephrestion, who could not boast of a single service. Then came the first conspiracy and the murder of the aged Parmenio, whose son Philotas was mixed up with it, a crime to which Alexander was led simply through fear. The wild extravagances of grief that marked the death of Hephaestion, and of which a pyre worth two and a half millions sterling was the least, show how Alexander lost him self more and more as he broke with the Macedonian char acter. His last orders, cancelled at his death by Perdiccas, included an invasion of Carthage by land and sea, with a further view to Spain, and the erection to King Philip of a tomb surpassing the Great Pyramid. The extravagance of these plans was as palpable to the Macedonian soldiery as to their leaders, and they too shared the growing aliena tion from the monarch. There were mutinies as well as conspiracies ; the soldiers were tired of following from adventure to adventure, and at the Hyphasis they had their way. In his later days Alexander was repeatedly wounded, a fact significant of a change in the spirit of the troops, for no great general would expose himself as Alexander did for example, in storming the city of the Malli unless his men required this stimulus. The want of coherence in the empire was seen even while Alexander was in India. Many satraps broke all restraint, renewed the old oppressions of the Persian time, hired mercenaries again, and only awaited a fit moment for open rebellion ; the generals of the army that lay in Media committed sacrilege and crimes of every kind ; the treasurer Harpalus violated his trust and escaped with his plunder. Alexander, on his return, soon restored order with terrible severity, but the ferment was still at work, especially in the west, and was increased through the dis banded mercenaries of the satraps who returned to the coast. There is one event of the time of anarchy when Alexander was in India which, though passed over in the official sources of Arrian, deserves special notice as a pre- l Pint., AffcsiL, 15. lude of what was to come (326 B.C.). The Greeks settled 331-312. in Bactria and Sogdiana rose against the Macedonians on a false rumour of Alexander s death. Three thousand of them seized the citadel of Bactra, gained the support of the natives, and, crowning their leader Athenodorus, pro posed to make their way home. Athenodorus was assassin ated, but his followers remained unmolested, and joined the mass of their countrymen in the general rising of the Greek military stations after Alexander s death. One Macedonian custom Alexander had retained, that Death of of carousing with his generals. A series of debauches in Alex- the malarious climate of Babylon brought on a violent an fever, which ended in his death (13th June 323). 2 The object of his life, the fusion of Macedonians and Persians, was not attained. The Persians still felt themselves subject to a foreign power, and in eastern Iran this feeling was bitter. The Macedonians again had been carried by Alex ander s genius far out of their true path of development into a giddy career, in which a capable and valiant nation found its ruin. Alexander did not die too soon, if he was not to see the collapse of his work. Terrible civil wars broke out at once on Alexander s Civil death, and lasted almost unbroken for forty-two years, wars - tearing his work to pieces, and scattering to the winds Macedonia s claims to universal empire. There was no legitimate heir, but the name of "king" was borne by Philip (323-317), a bastard of the elder Philip, and by Alexander II., Alexander s posthumous son by Roxana (323-311). The real power lay at first with Perdiccas, who as regent governed the whole empire from Babylon, and, after Per- diccas was killed in a mutiny in the Egyptian campaign of 321, passed for the moment to Pitho and Arrhidaeus, till in the same year the regency fell to Antipater. As he ruled from Macedonia, the eastern satrapies were pretty much left to themselves, but Pitho, who held the chief of these that of Media took the first place, and soon appears as strategus of all the upper satrapies. But his ambition united the satraps against him, and he was driven not only out of Parthia, which he had occupied after murdering the satrap Philip, but out of Media too. The satraps now joined hands with Eumenes and placed themselves under his leadership when he came to Susa in 316 as the king s strategus at the head of the argyraspids. Pitho had meantime fled to Seleucus, satrap of Babylon, and with him sought help from Eumenes s great enemy, Antigonus. A war in Media and Susiana ensued, and Eumenes, whose military successes were constantly frustrated by disobedi ence and treason in his followers, was betrayed to Antigonus and put to death in 315. Antigonus, already furnished with a commission as strategus from Antipater, now lorded it over all. Pitho, still greedy of power, and thinking of conspiracies to recover it, was executed ; the Persian satrap, Peucestas, who had led the allies against Pitho, was super seded, and Seleucus fled to Ptolemy. Soon, however, the Seleucus other potentates united against the threatening power of ! Antigonus, and in the war that followed Seleucus, with some help from Ptolemy s soldiers, repossessed himself of his satrapy of Babylon, an important event, which forms the epoch of the Seleucid era (1 Sel. = 312/311 B.C.). Presently a victory over Nicanor, who held Media for Antigonus, made Seleucus master of Media and the adjoining provinces. Antigonus had still some temporary successes, but at the end of the war Seleucus was acknowledged lord of Baby lonia and the upper satrapies. In these conflicts we can distinguish two main interests, represented by the cavalry and the infantry, or, what is 2 The exact date in our calendar, which cannot be calculated from the Macedonian date 27 or 29 Dsesius, is found by the aid of Pseudo- Callisthenes (Cod. A in C. Miiller s ed., p. 151 ; Arm. Tr. in Zacher, Pseudo-Col., p. 100). XVIII. 74