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Rh with lavish gifts and prodigal displays of wealth were, together with hunting and horsemanship, the chief recrea- tion of the king and his court, comprised of the Macedonian nobility and the new official class.

The highest office was that of 'minister for affairs', a continuation of the Persian office of vizir. The hierarchy included the head of the royal chancery, the finance minister, the financial secretary, the quartermaster and the chief physician. In the provinces the officials were satraps, district governors, secretaries and overseers of taxes. The ministry of finance was an especially coveted office. In general, the Seleucids and Ptolemies were monogamous but kept mistresses. Members of both houses practised sister mar- riage, as the Pharaohs and Persian kings had done. Members of the royal family and of the official corps had a plethora of slaves. Hellenistic society everywhere was poor in machines, rich in slaves.

The Seleucid army, which in its early stages consisted of all the male Macedonians and Greeks in the realm, was influential in state affairs, with the cavalry ranking higher and receiving more pay than the infantry. Like the navy, the army was the king's, and provided a principal means by which men could rise to power. Its nucleus was the phalanx, armed with swords and twenty-one-foot-long spears, and protected by helmets and shields. The missile shooters consisted of archers, slingers and javelineers drawn from the non-Hellenic element of the population. The artillery of the Hellenistic kings, including catapults, opened a new chapter in the history of siegecraft and provoked a corresponding improvement in the art of city fortification. Persian and Kurdish bowmen and slingers, Median cavalry and Arabian archers mounted on dromedaries fought along- side Greeks and Syrians.

The camel and horse as instruments of warfare had been known in south-western Asia for centuries, but the elephant was a new feature of the Seleucid army and appears as an Rh