Empire and Imperialism - Hellenistic Imperialism Flashcards
Does Alexander’s conquest qualify as an empire?
Collapsed immediately after his death; was there any imperial structure or foreign rule, series of ad hoc arrangements?
Did Alexander want to rule over Persia etc.?
Originally a campaign to free Greeks, continued the expansion after the original conquest
What does Diodorus write about Alexander’s imperialism?
“… he told the envoys that the earth could not preserve its plan and order if there were two suns nor could the inhabited world remain calm and free from war so long as two kings shared the rule. He bade them tell Dareius that, if he desired the supremacy, he should do battle with him to see which of them would have sole and universal rule”.
Diodorus 17.54.5-6
What does Hammonn write about Alexander?
“In setting himself up as a super-racial, semi-divine emperor, Alexander changed the character of his rule from the imperialistic domination by himself as leader of the Macedonians and Greeks over the barbarian Persians to the union of many different peoples, each of whom preserved their local political and cultural integrity, in equal subservience to his single will”.
M. Hammond, ‘Ancient Imperialism: Contemporary Justifications’ (1948), p. 114
How did Alexander maintain and control his empire?
Adopted the practice of proskynesis
Tolerant to other religions
Did he become too Persian? Did he intend to be worshipped as a god?
Had his generals marry - against their will - noble women of the Persian dynasties; creating mixed-race bloodline and ‘diluting’ the Macedonian ‘superior’ bloodline
What does Plutarch say on Alexander?
“He brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men’s lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life”.
Plutarch, On the Virtue of Alexander 1.6
Plutarch was impressed by these marriages and Alexander’s attempts to overcome division in his empire
“….a super-racial, semi-divine emperor”
The amalgamation of race, unification instead of imperial rule?
Who helped to end the idealisation of Alexander in modern scholarship?
E. Badian, ‘Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind’ (1958)
Published before the 60s and the anti-imperialism era
East positioned itself as anti-imperial (despite being the Soviet Union)
Badian was a right-wing scholar, supported apartheid in South Africa, anti-socialist
Were the successor states to Alexander (Ptolemaic etc.) imperial states?
Happy establishing their own kingdoms, separate from the concept of imperial expansion - Alexander’s ‘dream’ left behind
How does Demetrius deliberately communicate his desire for global imperialism?
“His cloaks were a shiny reddish-black colour, and images of the night sky, complete with gold stars and the 12 signs of the Zodiac, were woven into them from one end to the other. (…) When the Demetria festival was celebrated in Athens, the proskenion features a picture of him being carried on the shoulders of oikoumene”.
Duris of Samos FGrH 76 F 14
Why were religious structures targeted fiscally in the Seleucid empire?
They were wealthier
Were Hellenistic kingdoms empires? Specifically the Seleucid empire
“This pattern of dynastic conflict followed quickly by revolt suggests quite clearly that neither the officials nor the ‘subjects’ of the Seleukid Empire had any allegiance to a putative Seleukid state, which did not of course exist, but to individual Seleukid kings personally”.
R. Wenghofer, ‘Roman Intervention in the Hellenistic East and the Preservation of the Seleukid Patrimony’ (2019), p. 264.
