Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/160

Rh 142 MACEDONIAN EMPIEE queror. Alexander seems also to have had a description (anagraphe) of the empire drawn out. After his return through the desert of Baluchistan, along the Indian Ocean, he devoted himself to consolidating the internal administration and checking the oppression exercised by his officers ; but he was planning new conquests in the West, from all parts of which he had received ambassadors, when he died of marsh fever at Babylon (323 B.C.), at the early age of thirty-two. All attempts to keep his empire together inevitably failed, but his work was done, since, whether for good or evil, the Helleuizing of the East determined the whole course of history. The army resolved that his child (not yet born) by his Bactrian wife Roxane, and his imbecile half-brother, Philip Aridoeus, should bear rule jointly. First Perdiccas was named regent, but the generals began to combine against him, and he perished in trying to reduce to obedience Ptolemy, the satrap of Egypt, the man who saw most clearly and earliest the tendency of events. Then Antipater, who had with difficulty defeated the gallant attempt of the Greeks under the leadership of Athens to regain their freedom in the Lamian War, was made regent. On his deathbed he transferred the office to Polysperchon, who soon proved unequal to his task, and even gave up Phocion, the leader of the Macedonian party at Athens, to death. Antigonus, the comrnander-in-chief in Asia, destroyed Eumenes, who was faithful to the -royal Louse but was a Greek from Cardia and not a Macedonian. He then tried to reunite the satrapies ; but Ptolemy of Egypt, Lysimachus of Thrace, and Seleucus of Babylon combined with Cassauder of Macedon against him, and he fell (301 B.C.) at the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia. This decided the final break up of the empire. Several native princes retained their dominions and formed a kind of neutral zone between the new kingdoms, and the Getae on the Danube maintained themselves against Lysimachus. The customary feuds in the royal house, and its intrigues with the generals, soon led it to destruction. Roxane, the mother of the child Alexander, began by murdering Alexander s other wife Statira, the daughter of Darius. Alexander s Epirote mother Olympias killed Philip Aridceus and his wife Eurydice, and Cassander killed Olympias herself, and afterwards Roxane with her son. There were similar feuds and murders in the houses of all Alexander s successors, except the early Antigonids. Their marriages, like those of Phfiip and Alexander, were of a very Oriental character; and &quot;in these families,&quot; says Plutarch, &quot;murders of sons, mothers, and wives were frequent, murders of brothers were even common as a necessary precaution for safety.&quot; The generals assumed the title of king after Demetrius s defeat of Ptolemy off Cyprus (307 B.C.), and their example was followed by Agathocles at Syracuse, and Dionysius at Heraclea on the Euxine. Demetrius, after his father s death at Ipsus, fled to Greece, and occupied much of the country. His viceroy in Boeotia was the historian Hieronymus of Cardia, the friend and fellow-citizen of Eumenes. Demetrius for a time even gained Macedonia, but his Oriental rule disgusted the people, and he had to fly to Seleucus, who married his daughter Stratonice. Seleucus detained him under honourable guard till his death, perhaps with some idea of using his help if the balance of power should again be threatened. When an empire breaks up, old geographical relations make themselves felt, the great masses and divisions of the land exert their influence and affinities of race begin to show their old power, the natural boundaries of mountain and river tend to reappear ; and so it proved now. After Cassander s death, and the defeat of Lysimachus by Seleucus, Seleucus reorganized Asia by breaking up the twelve large satrapies into more than seventy districts of a more manageable size. He then crossed to Europe to re unite Macedonia to Asia, but was murdered by Ptolemy Ceraunus, eldest son of Ptolemy of Egypt who had chosen his second son Philadelphus as his heir instead of the wild Ceraunus, Seleucus s death ended the generation of Alexander s generals. A new state of things followed. Ceraunus fell in battle against the invading Gauls, whose migrations gave a final blow to the old system. Part of the Gauls passed on into Greece, where the free states destroyed them, while others crossed into Asia and occupied the country named from them Galatia, 276 B.C. Lastly, after Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose sister Deidamia married Demetrius, had more than once nearly gained possession of Macedonia, Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius, finally secured the succession, and restored the wasted realm to the position of one of the great kingdoms by the side of Egypt and Syria. The last struggle of Athens against him in the war of Chremonides (a pupil of Zeno of Citium) proved fruitless. He also regained the Macedonian frontier on the side of Epirus as it had been in Philip s time, and the Aous became the boundary towards the Dardanians on the north-west. Of the kingdom thus restored his family retained possession till Perseus was overthrown by the Romans at the battle of Pydna(lG8 B.C.), but the later kings wasted their strength in useless wars instead of doing what might have been done, conquering and Hellenizing the country up to the Danube. The Epirote kings Alexander and Pyrrhus had striven to found a new military empire in* Italy, but in vain. The Apennines can be seen from the coast of Epirus, and these kings were always stretching eager hands over the sea to the new lands in the West, but their power proved unequal to the task, and Pyrrhus s position in history is mainly important because his expedition brought Greece and Italy into close connexion. His geniality of character impressed his contemporaries, and has left its impress on Roman and Greek legend. In Asia Seleucus had in vain tried to preserve the most easterly provinces, for the Eastern nature had at once begun to react against the Macedonian conquest, and the Seleucid kingdom had no true centre or natural limits. Sandra- cottus, a native chief, founded a great kingdom in India with Indian and &quot; Javanic &quot;(Ionian, i.e., Greek) support; and Seleucus, after one campaign, gave up the eastern districts as far as the Paropamisadse west of Cabul. Sandracottus was perhaps supported by the Brahmans whom Alexander had opposed, but the Punjab has witnessed more than one revolt against the system of caste, which had its stronghold in the valley of the Ganges ; and Buddhism soon became predominant in the new kingdom. The edicts of Asoka, the second successor of Sandracottus, which made Buddhism the state religion (though Brahmanism was tolerated), mention Antiochus Ptolemy and Antigonus (see INDIA, vol. xii. p. 787, for a full account); and Buddhist missionaries began to spread the faith westwards as well as to the south, and some knowledge of the cycle of Eastern story and fable was communicated to the Greeks. But we have not the materials for estimating the influence exercised in Asia by the Greeks on the new kingdom. Similarly a Graeco- Bactrian kingdom, which was made independent by Theodotus or Diodotus about 256 B.C., lasted for two centuries. Many of its coins have been found with legends at first purely Greek, but becoming gradually barbarized. Some of the early ones resemble the gold coins of Antiochus II. of Syria, who ruled just before Diodotus made the new state independent. After the first five kings, however, the legends are in Prakrit as well as in Greek. The caravan routes were long kept open, and in this way trade with China was maintained, and silk and other Chinese commodities reached Europe. Farther weet