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Alexander the Great Themes and Issues 1st Edition
Anson Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Anson, Edward M.;
ISBN(s): 9781441113900, 1441113908
Edition: 1st
File Details: PDF, 4.30 MB
Year: 2013
Language: english
Alexander
the Great
Alexander
the Great
Themes and Issues

Edward M. Anson

L ON DON • N E W DE L H I • N E W Y OR K • SY DN EY
 Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square 175 Fifth Avenue

London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10010
UK USA

www.bloomsbury.com

First published 2013

© Edward M. Anson, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Edward M. Anson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting

on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

EISBN: 9780826445216

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anson, Edward M.
Alexander the Great: Themes and Issues/Edward M. Anson
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 9781441113900 (hardcover) – ISBN 9781441193797 (pbk.)

Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

 CONTENTS

Preface vi
Maps viii
Abbreviations x
Chronology xii

Introduction 1

1 The Macedonian background 13

2 A father’s legacy: Philip II and the rise

of the Macedonian nation 43
3 Alexander and deification 83

4 Alexander and the administration

of an empire 121
5 The kingdom of Asia 153

6 Alexander’s legacy 181

Notes 189
Bibliography 201
Index 221
 PREFACE

Why another book on Alexander? It’s a good question with, perhaps,

not an adequate answer. I could blame Michael Greenwood of
Bloomsbury Academic for asking me to write one, but I guess that
would be disingenuous. After all, I did agree to do so. Why not
another biography? The events of Alexander’s life are by-and-large
clear and more than adequately set forth in a number of excellent
biographies. This book looks at certain aspects of his reign omitting
most of the details that are covered elsewhere. What is it that
fascinates me about Alexander? Do I like him, dislike him? That is
hard to explain. I have a fascination not only with him and his many
talents but also with his flaws. Could Philip have accomplished as
much, more? Could the Hellenistic Age have arisen without the
violence and bloodshed? Maybe. But, Philip died before whatever
he wished to accomplish in the East had hardly begun, and the new
Age did arise in violence and bloodshed. What might have been
or could have happened are moot points. The key to the changes
brought with the conquests of Alexander was Alexander. That in
and of itself makes him a central figure in the transformation. His
successes, his failures, his intentions, all are central to the process
that set in motion the creation of the Hellenistic Age. To understand
the man is to begin to understand the dramatic evolution of the
ancient world that began in the late fourth-century BC with the
conquest of the Persian Empire.
I have many people to thank, not so much for this particular
manuscript, for which I am almost entirely to blame, but for the
friendships, encouragements, and the willingness to share insights
and knowledge. Lindsay Adams has been my friend from our time
together in graduate school to the present day. For almost as long I
have known Beth Carney, who I first met as a colleague at Clemson.
I would also be remiss in not thanking Waldemar Heckel for the
years of friendship and encouragement, and especially for throwing
 PREFACE vii

me a lifeline after my many years lost in administration and campus

politics. There are also those colleagues of more recent vintage: Gene
Borza, Pat Wheatley, Victor Alonso-Troncoso, Brian Bosworth,
Elizabeth Baynham, Frances Pownall, Franca Landucci Gattinoni,
Joseph Roisman, Tom Boiy, Alexander Meeus, Sabine Müller, and
so many more. I have enjoyed our conversations and have profited
from their knowledge and insights. Finally, but certainly not last or
least, my wife Jeanne, who as a lay person read the manuscript and
is responsible for making its arguments clearer and its prose more
understandable.
 THRACE
PAEONIA

Strymon River

PELAGONIA Axius River

MAPS
Nestus River

EDONIS
ALMOPIA

Philippi
BOTTIAEA
BISALTIA
LYNCESTIS
CRESTONIA Amphipolis
Pella

EORDAEA EMATHIA
MYGDONIA

Methone
ORESTIS Pydna CHALCIDICE

Olynthus
Haliacmon River
PIERIA Potidaea
ELIMEIA

UPPER MACEDONIA
TYMPHAEA 0 10 30 40m
LOWER MACEDONIA

1. Ancient Macedonia
 S
L T
E C Y T H I
C S A N
Nicaea S E
A
E E
T an
A G sh
T A Ta n an
ea ak

I T
S ia
Aral S S SAKA T am

E
S ARMA K A ki

na
Illy
H M

G
TI
A
Rome e AN W

is
Danub

a
ria
n

a
C

T
L S A r ga Yarkand

n
R Fe

a
Y A
Z

TH
C A. Eschate

s
Epidamnos B l a c k a M
S IA 329

RA
u

p
Taras e c Pamir
EDONIA E a N Maracanda
MAC
a

C
s S

i
334 Sinope u s na
Phasis Nautaca dia

a
Pella Byzantium Heraclea PAPH LA- O Sog
Rock of

EP
IA GON IA xu

n
BITHYN

IRU
PO s 28 A. on the Oxos

CE
Carthage Granicus NTUS 3

S
llion Ancyra MARGIAN Drapsaca Hi
SIA Gordium Comana A ma
MY

S
la

EE
Syracuse Chaeronea E R A. in Margiana ya

sh
RIV Bactra NDHARA
Em pir e

Thebes
Athens 333 HALY
S
ARMENIA G A Arigaeum s

ku
GR Sardis PH BACTRIA
Corinth R YG Taxila
Ephesus LYDIA CAPPADOCIA 27

a
IA A. at the Caucasus 3
Susia Nicaea
Sparta
of Ca rth

Miletus AR ICIA Amida Kabul Khyber

M IA PAM C I L Gates Zadracaita IA d
u Pass Bucephala
32
6
Halicarnassus PH
AN PARTH
e Ae Edessa Nisibis A. A. on the

Hydaspes
Citician in

S f
gea Y Issus IA

RU o
d n Sea Y CI A A RC Hecatompylos AREIA

PO dom
Tarsus

L
Side 333 M l b HY H Hyphasis
i t 331

LI
Guagamela

SIA
o r z
ag

A. at Issus E

A
CR

g
Tripoli D A. in Areia

is
ETE Rhagae

kin
e Nicephorion Arbela IA
e

HO

as
r r

AR 29
M Caspian
ES rt

ph
3
AC
a n

IA
330

Tigr
Gates se

330
US Ecbatana De

Hy
R
R
e a CYP
Kavir

O
SY
Cyrene Prophtasia
n

PO
Multan

is
331
S e a

MAPS
Byblus z DRA A. in Arachosia

TA
Palmyra Eu a NGIANA

dus
Bolan Pass

I A
NAICA Sidon ph

MI
g
RE ra

Lu
A
tes Opis r

In
Aspardana
CY Tyre 31
Damascus o

D
t
LIBYANS 3
Susa s

us
D
332

IN
Panaetonium

6
Babylon B t

er
e
326
Cra

32
AB 5
32

s
Jerusalem f
YLONIA eo

4
A.

e
Gaza t
ut

32
THE EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER

r
Susia 324 Mull Pass
ne

NS

Ro
33 330 Pasargadae
334–323 BC 2 A. in CA
RM

EA
Susiane Persepolis Pattala
Conquest course of Alexander Siwah
331 Petra 324 AN
Memphis IA A. among the Oreitaians

TA
Battle PE
RSI Pura

P
BA S A. in Carmania
Siege 325

e
A
E

PUR
NA

Town founded by Alexander

r
G

Harmozia 325

s
Settlement of exiting town a
YP

i
NI

Mountain pass
n
LE

s
rchu
T

G f Nea
R

Greek colony u l Fleet o

A R A B f
e d

Persian royal road

Thebes I A
A. Alexandria
S

i a n O c e a
e a

0 500 km Syene I n d n

2. Alexander’s Empire

ix
 ABBREVIATIONS

Ael. Aelian, Varia Historia

Aeschin. Aeschines, 2 (On the Embassy); 3 (Against Ctesiphon)
Apollod. Apollodorus, Library (Bibl.)
App. Appian, Syrian Wars (Syr.)
Ar. Aristophanes, Birds (Av.)
Arist. Aristotle, Athenian Constitution (Ath. Pol.); Politics
(Pol.), Rhetoric (Rhet.)
[Arist.] Pseudo-Aristotle, Economics (Oec.)
Aristid. Aristides, Orations (Or.)
Arr. Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri (Anab.); Indica (Ind.);
Successors (Succ.)
Athen. Athenaeus, The Banqueteers
Caes. Caesar, Civil War (BC); Gallic War (BG)
Cic. Cicero, On Divination (Div.)
Curt. Curtius, The History of Alexander the Great of
Macedon
Dem. Demosthenes, 1 (First Olynthiac); 3 (Third
Olynthiac); 4 (First Philippic); 6 (Second Philippic);
7 (On the Halonnesus); 8 (On the Chersonese); 9
(Third Philippic); 12 (Philip); 18 (On the Crown); 19
(On the False Embassy); 20 (Against Leptines); 23
(Against Aristocrates); 56 (Against Dionysodorus)
Din. Dinarchus, 1 (Against Demosthenes)
Diod. Diodorus, Library of History
Diog. Laert. Diogenes Laertius, Live of Eminent Philosophers
Esther Book of Esther (Est.)
Eur. Euripedes, Heraclids (Heracl.)
Euseb. Eusebius, Chronica (Chron.)
Ezra Book of Ezra (Ezra)
FGrH Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker
Frontin. Frontinus, Strategems (Str.)
 ABBREVIATIONS xi

Heraclid. Pont. Heraclides Ponticus

Hes. Hesiod, Theogony (Theog.)
Hdts. Herodotus, Histories
Hom. Homer, Iliad (Il.); Odyssey (Od.)
Hyp. Hyperides, 4 (In Defense of Euxenippus), 5
(Funeral Oration)
IG Inscriptiones Graecae
Isoc. Isocrates, 4 (Panegyricus), 5 (To Philip), 12
(Panathenaicus); Letters (L.)
Just. Justin, Epitome of the Philippic History of
Pompeius Trogus
Liv. Livy, From the Founding of the City
Lucian Lucian, Slander (Cal.)
Lys. Lysias, Against Alcibiades 1
Nep. Nepos, Life of Eumenes (Eum.)
Ov. Ovid, Heroides (Her.); Metamorphoses (Met.)
Paus. Pausanias, Description of Greece
Pind. Pindar, Isthmian Odes (Isthm.)
Pl. Plato, Alcibides (Alc.); Gorgias (Grg.); Laws
(Leg.); Republic (Rep.)
Plautus Mostellaria (Mostell.)
Pliny Natural History (NH)
Plut. Plutarch, Life of Alexander (Alex.), Life of Aratus
(Arat.); Life of Cimon (Cim.); Life of Demetrius
(Demetr.); Life of Dion (Dion); Life of Eumenes
(Eum.); Life of Lysander (Lys.); Pelopidas (Pel.);
Life of Pericles (Per.); Life of Phocion (Phoc.); Life
of Pyrrhus (Pyrrh.); Life of Solon (Sol.); Life of
Themistocles (Them.)
Polyaen. Polyaenus, Stratagems
Polyb. Polybius, Histories
Scholia Demosthenes: Scholia Graeca ex codicibus aucta
et emendata. Arno Press. New York. 1983
Soph. Sophocles, Women of Trachis (Trach.)
Stob. Stobaeus, Anthology (Flor.)
Str. Strabo, Geography
Tac. Tacitus, Annals (Ann.)
Thuc. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
Val. Max. Valerius Maximus, Memorable Words and Deeds
Xen. Xenophon, Anabasis (Anab.), Cyropedia (Cyr.),
Hellenica (Hell.); Memorabilia (Mem.); Economics
(Oec.)
 CHRONOLOGY

ca.700 Perdiccas I, descendant of Temenus of Argos, first Argead

king of Macedonia
513 Persian invasion of Scythia; domination of Macedonia by
Persians
ca.498–ca. 454 Alexander I
393–370/69 Amyntas III
370/69–367 Alexander II
367–359 Perdiccas III
359 Death of Perdiccas III; Philip II becomes king
358 Philip defeats Illyrians, Paeonians, Argaeus, and unites Lower
and Upper Macedonia
356 Birth of Alexander; Phocis seizes Delphi, start of Third Sacred
War; foundation of Philippi
353 Battle of Crocus Field; Philip becomes Archon of Thessaly
346 End of the Third Sacred War
343 Aristotle becomes Alexander’s tutor
340 Alexander regent in Macedonia and founds Alexandroupolis
338 Battle of Chaeronea
337 Creation of the League of Corinth
336 Advance force to Asia; murder of Philip; Alexander III becomes
king; accession of Darius III to Persian throne
336/5 Alexander becomes Archon of Thessaly, Hegemon of the
League of Corinth
335 Alexander campaigns in the north and northwest; destruction
of Thebes
334 Alexander crosses to Asia; Battle at the Granicus; campaigns in
western Asia Minor, disbands fleet, Caria; siege of Halicarnassus
 CHRONOLOGY xiii

333 Moves into Phrygia; Gordian Knot; first flight of Harpalus;

Battle of Issus
332 Sieges of Tyre and Gaza
331 Founding of Alexandria in Egypt; journey to Siwah; Battle of
Megalopolis; Battle of Gaugamela; occupation of Babylon, Susa,
Persepolis
330 Burning of Xerxes’ palace in Persepolis; dismissal of allied
contingents at Ecbatana in Media; death of Darius III; revolt
of Satibarzanes; trial and execution of Philotas, Parmenion;
foundation of Alexandria at Caucasus
329 Alexander enters Bactria: surrender of Bessus; foundation of
Alexandria Eschate; revolt
328 Murder of Cleitus; death of Spitamenes
327 Capture of the Rock of Sogdiana; Alexander marries Roxane;
end of revolt; attempt to introduce proskynesis; Pages conspiracy;
death of Callisthenes; invasion of India
326 Hyphasis “unpleasantness”; journey down the Indus
325 Massacre of Mallians; crossing of the Gedrosian desert; second
flight of Harpalus
324 Susa marriages; mutiny at Opis; Exiles’ Decree
323 Alexander arrives in Babylon; death of Alexander; emergence
of the dual monarchy of Philip III and Alexander IV
 Introduction
Alexander the Great

Despite Alexander’s epithet, “the Great”—a title likely given to him

soon after his death, even though our first surviving reference comes
from the Roman comedic playwright Plautus (Mostell. 775)—his
enduring fame, his conquests spread over two million square miles,
his victories in every battle where he was present, and his role in
creating the Hellenistic Age, his greatness has been much challenged in
recent scholarly literature. While some might still call Alexander “the
Pretty Good,” many more would hail him as “the-downright-awful.”
A great many current scholars of Alexander and his Age accept Brian
Bosworth’s assessment put forth in his 1996 book Alexander and the
East: The Tragedy of Triumph. “The price of Alexander’s sovereignty
was killing on a gigantic scale, and killing is unfortunately the
perpetual backcloth of his regime” (30). Roughly a decade ago, Ian
Worthington asked, “Was the wastage in human lives, the incalculable
damage to foreign peoples, institutions, livelihoods, and lands, . . .
worth it?” and has answered his own question that it was not (1999:
53). Many today would accept his conclusion.
Alexander has been seen as a chronic alcoholic (O’Brien 1992),
suffering from paranoia (Worthington 1999: 49), and as living in
constant rivalry with his dead father (Fredricksmeyer 1990: 300–15),
due, perhaps, to an Oedipal complex (Thomas 1995). Prior to the
late 1950s, when Ernst Badian (1958: 425–44) began to challenge
the then prevailing view of Alexander, that commander was seen
as a civilizing force for the entire Near East (Droysen 1877: 4).
His expedition was viewed as an attempt “to reconcile the world,”
to bring together as one people all humanity (Tarn 1948: 444–8).
What is lost sight of in all of these assessments is that Alexander
2 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

was termed “The Great” because he conquered the Persian Empire.

For the ancients that was sufficient to grant him the epithet.
The likely apocryphal proclamation by the Delphic Oracle that
Alexander was invincible was apparently proven correct as he went
from one victory to another. Where his father had difficulty besieging
rather small cities, Alexander, in 335, captured the city of Thebes
within days of his arrival on the scene,1 and, later, fell the cities
of Miletus and Halicarnasus in 334,2 and Tyre and Gaza in 332.3
An army assembled from the forces of the Persian satraps in Asia
Minor was vanquished at the Granicus River in 3344; at Issus in
Cilicia, where, although heavily outnumbered, Alexander defeated
the Great King of Persia himself in battle in 333,5 and again with a
measure of finality at Gaugamela in 331.6 He marched unopposed
into Egypt in 332 (Arr. Anab. 3. 1. 1–2; Diod. 17. 49. 1; Curt. 4. 7.
1), into Babylonia in 331 (Arr. Anab. 3. 16. 3; Diod. 17. 64. 3–4;
Curt. 5. 1. 17–20), and was welcomed enthusiastically by both the
Egyptians (Diod. 17. 49. 1; Curt. 3. 7. 1) and the Babylonians as a
liberator (Arr. Anab. 3. 16. 3; Diod. 17. 64. 4). Indeed, his entrance
into Babylon was likely, looking at Alexander’s expedition as a
whole, his highpoint.
As part of the ongoing reassessment of Alexander, emphasis
today is placed on his Macedonian heritage, and especially in the
last few decades Macedonian studies have flourished,7 abetted by
the discovery of the Royal Tombs in Vergina in 1977–8 (Andronicos
1984), and also by current events in the Balkans. With the break-up
of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the emergence of a new state officially
recognized in 1993 by the United Nations as the Former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), the legacy of the ancient
Kingdom of Macedonia became an issue of contention between the
new Republic and the nation of Greece. The attention, in what for
years for Macedonia was more truly inattention, with the focus
of scholars concentrated on the southern Greek city-states that
dominated the Classical Age, has caused Macedonian archaeology
to flourish in recent years.
Perhaps, an even more significant change in Alexander studies
over the last 30 years has been the emphasis on the role played by
Alexander’s, until recently, far less heralded father.8 Philip II had
turned a northern, culturally backward area of the Greek peninsula,
from a fragmented land of powerful aristocratic land-owners and
poverty-stricken serfs into a unified nation state with cities and
 INTRODUCTION 3

a large free population. He also transformed the Macedonian

army from a force far inferior to the armies of the southern Greek
city-states into the best fighting force in the Western world, creating
a dominating Macedonian infantry where there had only been
light infantry before (Anson 2008: 17–30). Philip then used this
new Macedonia to make himself the master of most of the Greek
peninsula. His legacy to Alexander included the army and the
nucleus of the officer corps with which Alexander would conquer
the East, a united nation, and a federation of Greek states at first
under Philip’s leadership and subsequently that of Alexander. At
the time of Philip’s assassination in 336 he was preparing to invade
the Persian Empire, and, indeed, in the previous year already had
a force across the Hellespont to prepare for his coming, full-scale,
invasion. The king’s assassination in 336 made this another of his
legacies to his son.
Part of the difficulty in assessing Alexander has always been
the nature of the surviving sources. Given that he was even in his
lifetime almost a mythic figure, it is both peculiar and frustrating
that no contemporary narratives of his life have survived. These
had been written by his generals and confidants, by his admiral,
and a court supervisor. Alexander even had a court historian,
Callisthenes (Heckel 2007: 76–7). Nor is this deficiency corrected
by an abundance of surviving documents. The inscriptional
evidence is hardly substantial. All of our earliest surviving
narrative sources date from the Roman period, centuries after the
Conqueror’s death. While these histories are based on the earlier
accounts, they are neither clear in the attribution of their sources
nor are they mere ciphers of the earlier works. Recent scholarship
has focused on the importance of understanding the milieu,
purposes, and style of these surviving historians. As John Atkinson
(2000: 307) writes, we must “consider the writers’ aspirations,
their treatment of fashionable motifs and current issues, and
the limits of their originality.” Diana Spencer (2009: 251) puts
it more pointedly: “Thinking about Alexander the Great means
thinking about a character generated by the cultural politics
of the Roman world.” These cautions suggest that any attempt
to discover the “real” Alexander may ultimately be impossible
(Bosworth 1988: xi). Indeed, Alexander the myth began almost as
soon as he died, and the examination of the legend of Alexander
has become a major field of study in itself. The legend entered
4 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

the Middle Ages in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Hebrew, and Persian

versions, and survives in the national literatures of roughly 80
countries. Richard Stoneman’s Alexander the Great: A Life in
Legend, published in 2008 by Yale University Press, investigates
this vast body of literature associated with this mostly mythical
Alexander.
Despite the caveats placed on any true assessment of
Alexander, much study today has gone into attempting to gauge
what Alexander’s “real” aims were and who he was, and this
study is no exception. Moreover, this is simply a continuation
of a similar pursuit in the ancient past. The second-century AD,
Roman historian, Arrian (Anabasis of Alexander 28. 2) describes
Alexander as “zealous for honor” and “insatiable of glory alone.”
Plutarch, a Greek writing early in the second-century AD, in his
Life of Alexander (5. 5–6), comments that Alexander did not
desire wealth and luxury, but “virtue and fame.” Diodorus of
Sicily, writing a universal history from “mythical times” down
to the period of Julius Caesar, in his seventeenth book, praises
Alexander’s courage and intelligence, and calls his conquests,
“achievements that surpassed those of all kings from the beginning
of time” (17, 1. 3). A darker side to this theme is presented in
Justin’s Epitome of Pompeius Trogus, perhaps, composed in the
second-century AD, summarizing an earlier first-century work,9
and in Quintus Curtius Rufus’s The History of Alexander the
Great of Macedon, written likely in the first century of the Roman
imperial period (Baynham 1998: 201–19). Curtius (3. 12. 18–20)
portrays Alexander as a monarch corrupted by his good fortune.
Justin’s work describes the Macedonian king as a “visionary” (9.
8. 13), prone to anger and drunkenness (9. 8. 14–15), feared but
not loved (9. 8. 17). Yet, Justin (9. 8. 11), or his source, believes
that with respect to Alexander the good more than offset the
blemishes, and Curtius (10. 5. 26) excuses Alexander’s faults as
the result of “fortune or his youth.” While Alexander grew to
adulthood in his society quickly by today’s standards, already
serving as his father’s regent at the age of 16, king at 20, and dead
at 32, his history is still that of a young man.
A further complication is that our sources are replete with
speeches ostensibly given by the various participants in the historical
drama. Without a doubt these are not verbatim transcriptions, but
are meant to dramatize the material, often to serve as editorials
 INTRODUCTION 5

by the author, and always to demonstrate the rhetorical skills

of the historian in whose text they occur. In the case of the last,
even where a speech had appeared in a work being used by one
of our surviving sources, the latter would still likely rewrite the
material to exhibit his own stylistic ability (Brunt 1983: 529). The
difficulty for a modern historian, given the above, is in knowing
what weight should be given to these frequent embellishments in
the narrative. What is true, what is partially true, what is pure
fiction? Many believe that these speeches “deserve little credence”
(Carney 1996: 33; Bosworth 1988: 96–134), even proclaiming
the impossibility of distinguishing between truth and “plausible
fiction” (Brunt 1983: 528). While special care needs to be taken
with respect to these rhetorical flourishes, they are part of our
surviving narrative. That surviving narrative itself is subject to the
same framing, selection of material, interpretation, interpolation,
as are the speeches. As a consequence, while great care should be
taken in accepting this material, each speech should be analyzed
on its own merits. These speeches at the least could plausibly
have been made, and should reflect the author’s equivalent desire,
as in the narrative, to present what in his view is an accurate
reflection of the facts. Whatever biases exist certainly can more
easily be amplified in the speeches, but this does not necessarily
make the content automatically suspect. The core material could
be reasonably accurate within the general constraints of ancient
historical norms, which permitted a great deal more latitude
than currently expected of today’s professional historians’ search
for accuracy. This becomes important especially when speeches
present additional evidence not just of attitudes but of events.
Clearly with respect to the speaker’s motivation and beliefs
great care must be taken, but where in the paraphrased words
of Thucydides (1. 22. 1), the speaker appears to say what is
called for by the moment and in concert with his/her character
and actions, then, the gist of the comments should at least be
taken into account. As with the narration of events, so with the
speeches, rigorous examination should be made. In other words,
the general content, not the specific language, should be accepted
unless it can be shown to be inaccurate. To assume that the core
should be discarded solely on the basis that it appears in a speech
is carrying source criticism too far.
6 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Another serious part of the problem of unraveling this particular

Macedonian is that Alexander himself put forth an image of how
he wished to be seen and a corresponding presentation of his
motives. He sat for a portrait by Apelles of Cos, whose finished
product depicted Alexander holding a thunderbolt (Plut. Mor.
335A; Alex. 4. 3). Alexander was obviously pleased, granting
Apelles a handsome reward (Plin. NH 35. 92). Lysippus became
Alexander’s sculptor representing the king looking with his face
turned toward the heavens with a slight inclination of his head
to one side. Engraved supposedly on the statue were the verses:
“Eager to speak seems the statue of bronze, up to Zeus as it gazes.
Earth I have set under foot: Zeus, keep Olympus yourself!” (Plut.
Mor. 335B).
Among the many artists, philosophers, geographers, and so on,
who accompanied the army on the campaign, as noted, Alexander
also had his own historian to record his deeds for posterity.
Callisthenes, that court historian, in one of his surviving fragments
describing Alexander’s journey to the desert oasis of Siwah,
emphasizes that Alexander set off to rival the heroes Perseus and
Heracles (Str. 17. 1. 43=FGrH 124 F-14). Callisthenes’ account,
as reported by the Roman geographer Strabo, presents the entire
episode in epic form. While the journey across the desert was difficult,
it was one taken with some frequency, yet Alexander and his party
suffer from thirst, which is relieved by a sudden shower, and when
they become lost in the desert wastes, they are guided by crows or
snakes. The entire episode concludes with the priest of Ammon/
Zeus hailing Alexander as the son of Zeus. Dietmar Kienast (1987:
319–23) emphasizes the role of Callisthenes in giving the entire
incident an “epischen klang.” Timaeus, the early third-century BC
Sicilian historian, apparently called Alexander’s historian a flatterer
(Polyb. 12. 12b). As court historian, it is likely that Callisthenes’
work was reviewed by Alexander as it progressed and without
much doubt the king would have approved or censured what he
saw (Devine 1994: 97). His history did not, in any case, continue
to the end of Alexander’s reign. The historian was implicated in the
Conspiracy of the Pages in 327 (see later chapter) and died some
time thereafter (Heckel 2006: 77). That whatever had been written
prior to his death was published might be seen as further evidence
of Alexander’s approval, at least, of the early parts, although the
actual provenance of the work is unknown.
 INTRODUCTION 7

One particular aspect of Alexander’s life and goals may have

been the central theme of the court historian’s work. Callisthenes
reportedly had proclaimed his intention of gaining for Alexander a
“share of divinity” (Arr. Anab. 4. 10. 2). Our sources on a number of
occasions state that Alexander’s actions were dictated by his desire to
emulate or to surpass the achievements of other men or heroes. His
siege of Aornus was carried out in part because Heracles had failed in
a similar attempt (Arr. Anab. 4. 28. 2,30. 4; Curt. 8. 11. 2), and Arrian
(Anab. 6. 24. 2) states that Alexander crossed the Gedrosian desert
because “no one else with an army had done so successfully.” Given
that Callisthenes emphasizes the heroic character of the expedition
and our sources also present incidents in which Alexander attempts
to emulate or surpass the mythical heroes, and even the gods, it is
more than likely that this was the image that Alexander wished to
portray. The comment that Callisthenes would be responsible for the
attribution of divine birth for Alexander, if correct, shows Alexander’s
desire to be seen as more than a mere mortal.
His use of propaganda also went beyond the portrayal of
his self-image. He also used it with respect to his campaigns.
Alexander presented himself until the destruction of the palace
in Persepolis as an avenger of past wrongs committed by the
Persians upon the Greeks and as the liberator of those supposedly
long oppressed by Persian tyranny; themes exploited by his father
before him (Squillace 2010: 69–80; Flower 2000: 96–135). After
his occupation of the Persian heartland the propaganda changed.
The Persians became Alexander’s subjects and the proclaimed
nature of the expedition now changed to one of naked conquest
(see Chapter 5 ).
Even though the opinions of writers living hundreds of years
after Alexander’s death may not be trustworthy, these authors
relied on contemporaries, some of whom had first-hand knowledge
of the expedition and the king who led it. Today, we are much
further removed and almost totally dependent on these later
writers. As stated earlier, much has been written of the need to
evaluate these still ancient historians in light of their own times,
not just Alexander’s. This is even a better idea when applied to
today’s scholars. Much of the modern criticism of Alexander
comes from an evaluation of his career in terms of current values.
While such criticism is certainly a viable approach and much
that Alexander did should not be extolled to modern audiences,
8 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

such censure tends to hold Alexander and his contemporaries

to standards they likely would not have recognized. When one
considers that Alexander’s society practiced slavery as a natural
institution and engaged in warfare almost as a daily activity, his
world and ours apparently had very different mores. Heraclitus,
the pre-Socratic philosopher, wrote: “War is both king of all and
father of all, and it has revealed some as gods, others as men,
it has made some slaves, others free” (no. 22, fragment B53).
As one modern commentator has noted, “no Greek community
would have recognized ‘conscientious objection’ to war” (Dover
1974: 158). For both Plato and Aristotle, training for war was
essential for developing the leadership qualities necessary to
lead a state. In the Republic, war is a necessary component for
training the guardians, and therefore it is a necessary part of
the composition of a “just” city-state (467B). Wars are fought
to protect the commonwealth, to train its guardians, and “to
provide the community with sufficient resources” (Rep. 373D).
Even though Aristotle (Pol. 1333a30) states that wars must be
fought for the sake of peace, the philosopher went on to list just
reasons for going to war. Two of these were the acquisition of
material goods (1256b15) and the correct ordering of society, in
which some are by nature to be masters and others also by nature
slaves (1255a3, 1333b37). Racism was then very much part of a
Greek’s self-concept. In general, the Greeks divided the world into
Hellenes and barbarians.10 Aristotle further differentiates between
Hellenes, Europeans, and Asians, associating these distinctions
with climate (Pol. 1327b 23–8):

The nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe are
full of spirit but somewhat deficient in intelligence and skill, so
that they continue comparatively free, but lacking in political
organization and capacity to rule their neighbors. The peoples of
Asia on the other hand are intelligent and skillful in temperament,
but lack spirit, so that they are in continuous subjection and
slavery. But the Greek race participates in both characters, just
as it occupies the middle position geographically, for it is both
spirited and intelligent; hence it continues to be free and to have
very good political institutions, and to be capable of ruling all
mankind if it attains constitutional unity.
 INTRODUCTION 9

This theory might be called “the Goldilocks hypothesis” of racism:

not too hot, not too cold, just right.
Plato argues that Greeks are naturally at war with barbarians,
but should not be so with fellow Greeks. War, therefore, with fellow
Greeks according to this philosopher is contrary to nature, but war
with non-Greeks was proper (Rep. 5. 470C). In this belief, he is
followed by Isocrates. “That war is the most necessary and the most
righteous which we wage in alliance with the Hellenes against the
barbarians, who are by nature our foes and are eternally plotting
against us” [12. 163; Isoc. 4. 182]). Plato (Leg. 1. 625E–626A) speaks
of “lifelong war” and “peace . . . is nothing more than a name, the
truth being that every state, by a law of nature, engages perpetually
in an informal war with every other state.” With respect to the
ubiquity of warfare, one modern commentator (Hanson 1989: 89),
referring to the fifth-century BC, but the statement could equally
apply to the fourth, states that the average citizen of a city-state
saw combat on average two out of every three years. This is not to
say that ancient evils are not still practiced in our world, but that
slavery and warfare as a means to pursue glory or as an acceptable
form of theft through strength are in general thought to be aspects
of criminal activity, and so they are presented in the United Nations’
1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery and
the United Nations Charter, Article 51. The latter states that war is
only justified for self-defense. In contrast, the concept that there was
“a right of conquest” permeates Greek writing on war (Xen. Cyr.
3. 3. 45; Arist. Pol. 1255a5–7; Polyb. 2. 58. 9–10). In Alexander’s
day warfare as a means of wreaking revenge, or aggrandizement,
was seen as acceptable. Alexander himself claimed Darius’ domains
as a prize of war (Arr. Anab. 2. 14. 9; 3. 16. 2). Indeed, one of
the fourth century’s noted political thinkers, Isocrates, endorsed
war and slavery as a means of achieving what in a later time and
place might be called lebensrahm. In his Letter to Philip, he writes,
“Be assured that a glory unsurpassable and worthy of the deeds
you have done in the past will be yours when you shall compel the
barbarians . . . to be ‘helots’ [serfs] of the Greeks” (Isoc. Letter 3. 5;
see also 4. 17, 182; 5. 9).
Even given the mores of the time, Alexander on many occasions
exceeded even these common values in his brutality. When the city
of Thebes was captured after a brief siege, Alexander oversaw
10 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

its physical destruction and the enslavement of the population.

Even though the destruction of this Hellenic city technically was
ordered by his Greek allies (Arr. Anab. 1. 9. 9; Diod. 17. 14. 4),
it is clear that Alexander could have prevented the destruction, if
he so wished. Diodorus suggests that it was Alexander’s way of
giving possible future rebels a horrific warning. Alexander was
equally savage after the capture of Tyre (Arr. Anab. 2. 24. 5; Curt.
4. 4. 17; Diod. 17. 46. 4) and against the Malli, an Indian people,
where his campaign has been termed “a clear example of conquest
through terror” (Bosworth 1996A: 142). Slaughtering one’s
enemies, sacking cities, and enslaving populations, however, were
viewed as standard at the time. As one modern commentator has
stated, “The Greek law of war did not encompass humanitarian
ideals. Instead, it focused on protecting sacred objects and
observances. The great irony here is that despite the central role
played by religion and honor in the Greek laws of war, these laws
were indifferent to considerations of mercy and the protection
of noncombatants” (Lanni 2008: 470). The second-century BC
historian Polybius (5. 10. 6–8) praises Alexander for inflicting
his punishment on men and sparing temples and other religious
structures.
In their assessments of Alexander, our surviving authors present
an Alexander who loved “honor and danger” and “cared for
religion” (Arr. Anab. 7. 28. 1). While Curtius (10. 5. 29) comments
that his desire for “glory and renown” was greater than was proper,
he overlooks this fault proclaiming that Alexander was young
and had, indeed, accomplished “glorious deeds,” which is a view
that Plutarch (Alex. 1. 1) and Diodorus (17. 1. 4) both endorse.
Alexander was raised with the belief that he was the descendant
of both Heracles and Achilles, and as such he was expected to
exemplify the heroic ideals of personal achievement, honor, glory,
and renown, achieved primarily in warfare. As Macedonian king
and in line with Macedonian tradition, like his hero Achilles, he was
destined to be a warrior.
One success after another had augmented his view of himself
as more than just invincible. In Egypt, he had been proclaimed
the son of Zeus, and in Babylon his welcome was such that not
even the later celebrated Roman triumph could surpass it in pomp
(Curt. 5. 1. 20–2). In the end, he no longer viewed himself as just
a first among near equals according to Macedonian tradition. His
 INTRODUCTION 11

achievements put him in his own mind well above any and all.
After Babylon, however, while the campaign continued and success
was still most often the result, these were difficult campaigns with
fewer grand victories and with growing dissatisfaction among
his subordinate commanders and his troops, in part the result
of Alexander’s attempt to change the long-standing relationship
between himself as king and the Macedonians, from one of
camaraderie to that of transcendent figure and subordinates. He
had moved from being the King of Macedonia and the leader of
the Greek allies, to the self-proclaimed “King of Asia” and the
recipient of honors worthy of a god.
 1
The Macedonian
background

Prior to the reigns of Macedonia’s two most famous kings, Philip

II and his son Alexander III, the Great, the term Macedonian had
not achieved a national status (Diod. 16. 8. 1; see Billows 1995: 1).
This rural, mostly pastoral, society virtually broke on the world
scene from out of nowhere. Prior to the mid-fourth-century BC,
Macedonia had been subject to frequent incursions by her tribal
neighbors to the west, east, and north, chiefly and respectively,
the Epirotes, Thracians, and Illyrians; and also by the forces of
the southern Greek city-states, the poleis. The latter exploited the
region for its large resources of minerals and especially timber,
which was the mainstay of the naval forces of Macedonia’s southern
neighbors. Moreover, Macedonians were not commonly seen as
true Greeks before or even during the reigns of these illustrious
rulers. Throughout the Classical Age most Greeks acknowledged
a distinction between themselves and the Macedonians, despite
their many cultural affinities, due primarily to the lack of cities and
the city-state culture of the more urbanized south (Anson 2004:
201–3). The region was ruled by kings and powerful aristocrats,
not the assemblies that characterized the governments of the poleis.
This general belief that the Macedonians were not true Greeks is
evidenced by their inability to participate in the various Panhellenic
activities of the Greek world. Only the kings were permitted to
participate in the Olympic Games, the great celebration of the chief
Greek god Zeus (Hdts. 5. 22). The Argead or Temenid ruling family,
was generally acknowledged by contemporaries and vigorously
14 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

argued by the members of the royal family themselves, to have

arisen in the Peloponnesian city-state of Argos. The kings down to
the death of Alexander the Great’s son and heir, Alexander IV, were
by tradition descended from the Argive Temenus, thus the family
was often referred to as Temenid (Hdt. 8.137–9, Thuc. 2.99.3). The
ruling family was also called Argead, a term that apparently derives
from a tribal name, “Argeas, the son of Macedon” (Stephanus of
Byzantium, s.v. Argeou), but which also came to be associated with
their claimed Argive origin.
It is even questionable when the appellation Macedonia came to
be generally applied to the great plain formed by the Axius and the
Haliacmon Rivers and its surrounding mountains in the northern
Greek peninsula (Borza 1990: 99). Certainly by the fifth-century
BC, Herodotus and Thucydides both speak of the plain as Lower,
and the plateau, as Upper Macedonia.1 Lower Macedonia was at
least in theory a united country ruled by a king. The region of Upper
Macedonia was only permanently joined to Lower Macedonia
during the reign of Philip II (Diod. 16. 8. 1; Dell 1963: 62–99, 1970:
115–26; Hammond and Griffith 1979: 14–31, 650–6). Prior to this
time, although the peoples of Upper Macedonia, the Orestians,
Lyncestians, Tymphaeans, and Elimeians may have been brought
under the control of the Lower Macedonian king during the period
of Persian domination (c. 513–479 BC), these cantons had their
own separate governments, paying at most lip service allegiance to
the Lower Macedonian king (Thuc. 2. 99. 2; IG I3 89).
Prior to unification, the Upper Macedonians maintained their
independence often by armed conflict and alliances with the Lower
Macedonian kings’ enemies. In 433, Derdas I, king of Elimeia, had
allied himself with the Athenians and a pretender to the throne of
what was in effect Lower Macedonia (Thuc. 1. 57. 3). Derdas II
likewise ruled an independent Elimeia and formed an alliance with
the Spartans in 382 BC against the Olynthians (Xen. Hell. 5. 2.
38). In the late 420s, Arrhabaeus, the king of Lyncestis, was openly
hostile to the Lower Macedonian kings (Arist. Pol. 5. 8. 1311b;
Borza 1990: 150–1, 163–4).
Even with political unification, certain distinctions between
Lower and Upper Macedonia remained during the reigns of Philip
and Alexander. The Macedonian army was built on regional
recruitment with the command structure of the forces especially
from Upper Macedonia dominated by members of these areas’ local,
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 15

hereditary, nobility. When Alexander crossed to Asia, Perdiccas,

from the canton of Orestis (Arr. Anab. 6. 28. 4; Ind. 18. 5) and
descended from the former kings of that upland region (Curt. 10. 7.
8), commanded the battalion from Orestis and Lyncestis (Diod. 17.
57. 2); the Elimeian Coenus, that from Elimeia (Heckel 1992: 58–9),
and Polyperchon, that from his native Tymphaea (Diod. 17. 57. 2).
Later in 333, Polyperchon’s unit was commanded by Ptolemaeus,
the son of Seleucus, perhaps, another Tymphaean (Heckel 2006:
234–5).
While our only information comes from the reign of Alexander
the Great, it would still appear that the infantry during Philip’s reign
from Lower Macedonia was not ethnically organized, or routinely
led by aristocrats from that region. In the army at Gaugamela, the
overall commanders were Meleager, Philip, the son of Balacrus
(Diod. 17. 57. 3; Curt. 4. 13. 28), and Craterus (Diod. 17. 57. 2–3).
Of these Meleager was probably from Lyncestas (Heckel 2006: 159),
while Craterus was from Orestis (Arr. Ind. 18. 5), and Philip’s origin
is unknown (Heckel 2006: 211–12). It is most likely, however, that
before the reigns of these two monarchs, all infantry and cavalry
were commanded by local representatives of the nobility. It was only
in the reign of Philip II that Macedonia developed any significant
heavy infantry (see Chapter 2).
Another distinction between the two regions was, the greater
urbanization that existed in lowland Macedonia, while in the
period before Macedonian’s two most famous monarchs minimal
even in Lower Macedonia (Millett 2010: 480). During the reign
of Alexander the Great, Macedonians from the plain were often
associated with particular cities, not with regional areas. In the
listing of the honorary trierarchs for Alexander’s voyage down the
Indus in 326, most Macedonians associated with Lower Macedonia
are listed as from the cities of Pella, Pydna, Amphipolis, Mieza,
Alcomenae, Aegae, Aloris, or Beroea; those from Upper Macedonia,
from the districts of Orestis and Tymphaea (Arr. Ind. 18. 3–6).
However, many of those listed as from these lowland cities were
originally from Upper Macedonia, and must have received estates
from the king near these communities. For example, Leonnatus
is described in Nearchus’ list of the trierarchs of the Indian fleet
as a Macedonian from Pella (Arr. Ind. 18. 3), but was a member
of the Lyncestian royal house (see Heckel 1992: 91; 2006: 147;
Hammond and Griffith 1979; 352–3, 409–10). The different listing
16 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

of the individuals from the two districts and the close association
of troops from Upper Macedonia with commanders from the same
areas, and the seeming absence of such close association for troops
and commanders from Lower Macedonia might suggest that those
from the latter were more integrated into the Macedonian state,
having replaced their regional affiliations with a national one long
ago. However, lowland aristocrats are not always associated with
communities in Alexander’s command. Ptolemy, son of Lagus,
Peithon, son of Crateuas, and Aristonous, son of Peisaeus, are
listed as from Eordaea, a lowland district, without any reference
to a municipality (Arr. Anab. 6. 28. 4; Ind. 18. 5); there was also
a Bottiaean unit of the Companion cavalry (Arr. Anab. 1. 2. 5).
Moreover, apparently until relatively late in the campaign, the
troops, including new arrivals, were brigaded according to region
(Arr. Anab. 3. 16. 10–11). A similar sort of division was employed in
the Macedonian cavalry. Against the Triballians in 335, Philotas led
the cavalry of Upper Macedonia, and Heracleides and Sopolis led
the cavalry from Bottiaea and Amphipolis (Arr. Anab. 1. 2. 5). What
is remarkable is that while the upland regions had long maintained
their at least practical independence from their Lower Macedonian
neighbors, once joined, there is little evidence of dissatisfaction with
the union by these formerly independent districts. In the centuries
following Philip II’s annexation of Upper Macedonia (Diod. 16. 8.
1; see also 16. 1. 5), right up to the Roman conquest, there is only
one attested revolt of an area roughly corresponding to a former
Upper Macedonian kingdom, and that, if it occurred at all, took
place in 197 BC (Polyb. 18. 47. 6), one-and-a-half centuries after
its annexation. While A. B. Bosworth (1971: 105) believes this is
evidence that “the incorporation of the mountain kingdoms [Upper
Macedonia] proved ultimately unsuccessful,” Miltiades Hatzopoulos
(1996A: 103) challenges the very existence of the revolt, calling it,
perhaps, “a pious fiction invented by the Romans.” In any case, a
single revolt is hardly evidence of ongoing hostility to the merger
of the two Macedonian districts. That the union was so successful
relates to the accepted belief in the two districts’ common ethnicity,
and also to the benefits given to various groups by their new king
Philip (see Chapter 2).
With respect to the acceptance of a common ethnicity, the
earliest tradition holds that the original Macedonians were a group
of related tribes, part of whom moved from the western mountains
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 17

down into the central plain during the period from about 650 to
550 BC (Thuc. 2. 99. 1–3; 4. 83. 1).2 According to Strabo (7. 7.
8–9; 9. 5. 11), a geographer of the early Roman imperial period, the
tribes that came to inhabit Upper Macedonia were not Macedonian
at all, but from, the western neighboring district of Epirus.
However, the fifth-century BC historian Thucydides (2. 99. 2)
clearly saw these groups as Macedonians in an ethnic sense. When
the “Macedonian” tribes moved into the coastal plain either in the
early- or mid-seventh-century BC (Hammond and Griffith 1979:
4; Borza 1990: 87), most of those encountered were expelled from
their lands and replaced by Macedonian settlers. These included
the original Pierians, Bottiaeans, Edonians, Eordaeans, Almopians,
Crestonians, and Bisaltians (Thuc. 2. 99. 2–6; see Ellis 1976: 36).
With respect to the last two, the nature of the conquest is unclear.
They may have already migrated from Bisaltia and Crestonia into
the northern mountains to escape Xerxes’ advance into Greece
(Hdts. 8. 116. 1). Alexander I (498–454) then would have moved
into evacuated territory. Even though according to Herodotus the
Bisaltians fled north, where they maintained their independence
into the reign of Perseus (Livy 44. 45. 8; 45. 29. 7, 30. 3), many
Bisaltians and Crestonians are later found living in Chalcidice
(Thuc. 4. 109. 4), suggesting that the evacuations and expulsions
related to the Persians and to the campaign of Alexander were not
as complete as indicated by the sources with many of these peoples,
perhaps, remaining in their original homelands.
In addition to these, perhaps, holdovers from the initial conquest,
over the years many others migrated to Macedonia, coming from
southern Greece, Illyria, Paeonia, Thrace, and elsewhere. From at
least the time of Alexander I, migration of Greeks from the south
to Macedonia was encouraged. Even though many of these refugees
came as communities, they are not found subsequently as distinct
entities in Macedonia. When Mycenae was destroyed by Argos, over
half the population came to Macedonia on Alexander I’s invitation
(Paus. 7. 25. 6). Similarly in 446, when the Athenian Pericles captured
Histiaea on Euboea, the inhabitants took refuge in Macedonia
(FGrH 115 F-387). As people coming from poleis, it is possible
that they were associated with Macedonian urban populations,
but these at this time were few. While Hammond (1995A: 126 n.
20) argues on the basis of Thuc. 4. 124. 1, “Perdiccas meanwhile
marched . . . to Lyncus . . . [leading] a force of Macedonians, . . . and
18 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

a body of Hellenic hoplites domiciled in that country,” that these

Greek migrants maintained their identity, A. W. Gomme (1974:
612) rightly sees these “Hellenic hoplites” as coming from the
independent Greek coastal cities, such as Pydna. Hoplites are most
often associated with Greek city-states and by-and-large represent
these communities’ middle class. Typically these heavy infantrymen
were to supply their own equipment, the round, three-foot in
diameter shield, the seven-to-eight-foot stabbing spear, grieves, and
breastplate, since the cities themselves were seldom wealthy enough
to do so. Macedonia, although a wealthy region (Millett 2010), with
certain products even seen as royal monopolies, especially timber and
minerals (Hammond and Griffith 1979: 157; Borza 1987 B: 39–40;
1982: 11–12; Hatzopoulos 1996A: 43), possessed few hoplites.
This was a product of a number of factors. Much of the trade of the
hinterland was exported through the independent Greek cities along
the Macedonian coast, the hinterland often controlled by noble
barons. Additionally, with little urban population or middle class,
the state would have had to supply each soldier with the hoplite
panoply. These economic limitations when combined with the lack
of a tradition of heavy infantry warfare meant that until the reign
of Philip II, that arm of the military was always in short supply. The
dominant military arm of Macedonia was its aristocratic cavalry
with its infantry primarily being light-armed. The vast majority
of the Macedonian population prior to the reigns of Philip II and
Alexander III were likely much like that of the hectemoroi and the
pelatai of Solonian Athens (Ath. Pol. 2. 2; Plut. Sol. 13. 4–5). These
impoverished tenant farmer and dependent pastoralist hectemoroi
were Macedonians, and though similar to the Thessalian penestai,
the laoi of Hellenistic Asia, and the Spartan helots in their dependent
status, they were not an indigenous, conquered population, as were
the latter groups. A large number of these individuals would be
freed from this serf-like status by Philip II (see Chapter 3; Anson
2008B: 17–30).
Despite Macedonia being a land of much diversity, with its
population including a mixture of peoples ranging from southern
Greek immigrants to those from the neighboring regions of Thrace
and Illyria, among others, the evidence suggests that this region was
certainly part of the Greek cultural milieu in the fifth century and,
by the end of the fourth century, was recognized as such by the
inhabitants of the southern regions of the peninsula. While Aristotle
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 19

(Pol. 7. 1324b) listed the Macedonians among the barbarians,

others regarded them as either people related to the Greeks or even
as Greeks. In The Catalogue of Women, attributed in antiquity to
Hesiod, it states that “the district Macedonia took its name from
Macedon, the son of Zeus and Thyia, Deucalion’s daughter, and
she conceived and bore to Zeus who delights in the thunderbolt
two sons, Magnes and Macedon, rejoicing in horses, who dwell
round about Pieria and Olympus” (West 1985: 127–30, 169–71).
The ancestor of the Macedonians is then the nephew of Hellen, the
forebear of the Hellenes. However, by the end of the fifth century,
with Hellanicus, the Greek logographer, Macedon becomes the son
of Aeolus, a son of Hellen and ancestor of the Aeolians, and hence
in the direct line of descent from Hellen (FGrH 4 F 74). By the
fifth-century BC, if not before, Macedonia and the southern Greeks
shared most of the same gods, and the Greek alphabet and language
were employed for written communication. Of the roughly 6300
inscriptions recovered within the confines of what was ancient
Macedonia, approximately 99 percent were written in Greek
(Panayotou 2007: 436), and the legends on all currently discovered
Macedonian coins are in Greek (Price 1974). The evidence also
suggests that the language spoken by most Macedonians was a
dialect of Greek (Voutiras 1996: 678–82; Masson 1996: 905–6).
Politically the government of Macedonia was an autocracy.
Indeed, in theory, the Macedonian king was the kingdom. While
our evidence for earlier reigns is sparse, with respect to Philip
II, Isocrates (5. 107–8) notes that Macedonia was subject to the
rule of “one man,” and Demosthenes (1. 4) comments that Philip
was the sole director of his policy, “uniting the roles of general,
ruler, and treasurer,” and “was responsible to nobody: the absolute
autocrat, commander, and master of everybody and everything”
(Dem. 18. 235). G. T. Griffith (Hammond and Griffith 1979: 384)
correctly declares: “there was simply no government apart from the
king.” The king apparently on his own authority determined the
taxes to be paid and saw to their collection (Arr. Anab. 7. 10. 4;
Plut. Demetr. 42. 3–4; Mor. 178A–179C). Miltiades Hatzopoulos
(1996A: 431–5) argues that the king was only the trustee of the
“people’s” money. Even if this were technically true, there is no
evidence of any regulatory body overseeing or disciplining the king.
Moreover, the king’s control over his population in many ways could
be profound. Amyntas I in 505 BC had offered the entire region
20 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

of Anthemus and its people to the Athenian Hippias (Hdts. 5. 94.

1).3 The king controlled much of the kingdom’s natural resources
(Hammond and Griffith 1979: 157). He controlled foreign policy.
It was the Macedonian king to whom embassies were sent (Hdt. 5.
17; Dem. 18. 24, 19. 12, 229; Aeschin. 2. 12, 18), and from whom
embassies departed.4 This is clear in the reports of Demosthenes and
Aeschines on the Peace of Philocrates. It was to be a treaty between
the Athenians and their allies and Philip and his allies (Dem. 19.
159, 278; Aeschin. 2. 84, 137; 3. 65). The peace was to end a war
between Athens and Philip (Dem. 18. 235, 19. 93), and it was
ratified in Pella by solemn oaths taken by the Athenian ambassadors
on the one hand and by Philip on the other.5 Indeed, the Athenian
ambassadors had to wait a considerable period of time in Pella for
Philip’s return before the treaty could be ratified (Dem. 19. 155; see
also 19. 57). Moreover, it is always the Macedonian king’s name
alone, usually without even the suffix “of the Macedonians,” which
is mentioned by Greek contemporaries. Philip accepts the surrender
of the Phocians at the conclusion of the Third Sacred War (Dem. 19.
62), not the representatives of the Macedonians, and it is Philip who
receives the two seats on the Amphictyonic Council formerly held by
the Phocians (Diod. 16. 60. 1; Dem. 19. 111; Speusippas’ Letter to
Philip 8), not the Macedonian people. Diodorus, in particular, is very
clear that the two seats were Philip’s and his heirs.6 The other seats
were held by peoples: the Thessalians, Boeotians, Dorians, Ionians,
Perrhaebi, Magnetes, Dolopians, Locrians, Oetaeans, Phthiotians,
and Malians (Aeschin. 2. 116). This omission of any reference to
the Macedonians is common. The Pythian Games of 345 were to be
held by the Boeotians, the Thessalians, and Philip (Dem. 19. 128;
Diod. 16. 60. 2). Demosthenes (18. 36; 19. 83) routinely speaks of
Philip without title or reference to the Macedonians. This usage was
common practice well before the reign of Philip II. In Thucydides
(4. 82), the Athenians proclaimed Perdiccas their enemy, not the
Macedonians, and at the Congress of 371, it was Amyntas III, the
father of Philip II, who was entitled to a seat without reference to
the Macedonian state or people (Aeschin. 2. 32). In general, prior
to Alexander the Great, there are few references even to the title
“King of the Macedonians,” and these are meant to be primarily
geographically descriptive (Errington 1974: 20).
It was the king who declared war and made peace, commanded
the armies, and served as the intermediary between the gods and
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 21

the people (Anson 1985B: 304–7; Borza 1990: 238). There was
no professional priesthood; the monarch made the sacrifices and
obtained the favor of the gods,7 and presided over the sacred
festivals (Arr. Anab. 1. 11. 1; Dem. 19. 192; Diod. 16. 91. 4; Athen.
13. 572D-E). This religious aura carried over into the ceremonies
performed for a dead king. On the death of a monarch a lustration
was carried out (Just. 13. 4. 7; Curt. 10. 9. 11–12), funeral games
and sacrifices were performed (Diod. 18. 28. 4, 19. 52. 5; Just. 9.
7. 11, 11. 2. 1; Athen. 4. 155A). The body would then be formally
laid to rest in the royal tombs at Aegae (Borza 1990: 167, 256–60).
Thereafter, sacrifices were made to the dead king.8 This sacral nature
of the monarchy likely accounts for the success of the Argeads in
monopolizing the kingship.
Elizabeth Carney, followed by Gene Borza and Lynette Mitchell,
has concluded that in Macedonia it was the entire Argead clan that
possessed this sacral power, this charismatic authority (Carney
2000C: 7–8; Borza 1999: 14–15; Mitchell 2007: 62–3). Kings then
were simply the leaders or chiefs chosen from among the extended
Argead family. In the period prior to the reign of Philip II, the
Macedonian “kingship” had many residual qualities of its original
tribal beginnings, and every member of the Argead house was a
possible “charismatic” leader. It was the descent of the clan, not
that of any particular individual or family branch, that conferred
divine preference. Certainly the ability of the Argeads to dominate
the monarchy and that in almost every succession there appeared
numerous Argead pretenders to the throne supports this position.
Divisions, then, within the aristocracy or factions within the royal
family could, and most often did, lead to succession crises. However,
few Macedonian monarchs lost their lives in armed struggles over
the succession, but many died as the result of palace intrigues. No
Argead monarch lost his life as the result of a popular uprising.
Archelaus (Arist. Pol. 1311b 11–12),9 Amyntas II (Arist. Pol. 1311b
4), Pausanias (Diod. 14. 89. 2), Alexander II (Diod. 15. 71. 1;
FGrHist 135/6 p. 739 F 11=Athen. 14. 629D), and Philip II, himself,
were all killed in palace conspiracies of a highly personal nature.
The Macedonian kingship during the Argead dynasty did not
possess a very systematic succession process. There were, however,
elements that suggest the existence of certain nomoi (customs)
related to the royal succession within the Argead clan. Sons most
often did follow fathers on the throne. Herodotus (8. 139) lists the
22 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

first seven kings of Macedonia: “From that Perdiccas Alexander was

descended, being the son of Amyntas who was the son of Alcetas;
Alcetas’ father was Aëropus, and his was Philip; Philip’s father
was Argaeus, and his again was Perdiccas.” In the more historical
period, Alexander I was the son of Amyntas I10; Perdiccas II, son of
Alexander I (Thuc. 1. 57. 2); Archelaus, son of Perdiccas (Thuc. 2.
100. 2; Pl. Grg. 471a); Pausanias, son of Aëropus (with, perhaps,
the intervening rule of Amyntas II [Arist. 1311b3–15; Diod. 14.
84. 6]); Alexander II (Diod. 15. 60. 3; Just. 7. 4. 8; Aeschin. 2. 26),
Perdiccas III (Diod. 16. 2. 4; Schol. on Aeschin. 2. 29), and Philip II
(Diod. 16. 2. 1), the sons of Amyntas III.
The kingship was not a constitutional office in a highly developed
state and lacked most of the formality ordinarily associated
with royalty. Even the succession process lacked anything like
constitutional formality (Carney 1983: 260–72; Mitchell 2007:
61–74). Disputed successions were common with multiple
candidates often claiming a royal title through a show of force
and often with foreign assistance. Since the succession was tied to
membership in the clan and not a particular family, with no express
rules for primogeniture, there was no formal process for the creation
of regencies for an immature king. Such regencies would only occur
when someone outside of the Argead clan seized power and ruled
in the name of such an Argead, otherwise, given the very nature of
Macedonian kingship, some adult Argead would be king.
Kings, however, could be guardians for younger male relatives,
but the royal authority would rest with the adult Argead (Anson
2009A: 276–86). It is a misunderstanding of this possibility on the
part of Justin’s source or of Justin himself that leaves that author
to conclude that Perdiccas’ son Amyntas became king and Philip
II his regent (tutor), “rather than king himself” (Just. 7. 5. 9). Both
Diodorus (16. 2. 1) and the Scholiast on Aeschines 3. 51 state that
Philip became king in the archonship of Callimedes in the first
year of the 105th Olympiad (360/359) and reigned for 24 years
(Diod. 16. 1. 3). Since this monarch was assassinated in 336 (Diod.
16. 91. 1; 17. 2. 1), this would give very little time, if any, for a
regency. In addition, there is no reference to such a regency in either
Demosthenes or Aeschines, where, especially in Demosthenes, this
would appear a singular omission, given his penchant for listing
every real or imagined abuse of power by the Macedonian monarch.
He never accuses Philip of setting aside the “true king.” Also, the
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 23

context of Justin’s notice follows that author’s description of King

Perdiccas III’s death as the result of an assassination plot directed
by his mother Eurydice (7. 5. 6). Not only is this not mentioned in
any other source, but Diodorus (16. 2. 4), our main narrative source
for Philip’s career, declares that Perdiccas died on the battlefield
at the hands of the Illyrians. Justin’s chronological context further
calls his listing of a regency into question. Despite stating that Philip
was tutor for the young Amyntas for a long time (7. 5. 9), he goes
on to say that “at the start of his reign” Philip was “plagued with
trouble” (7. 6. 3), noting that his first contest was with a contingent
of Athenians (Just. 7. 6. 6). This must refer to the attempt by the
Athenian supported pretender Argaeus to wrest the throne from
Philip soon after Perdiccas’ defeat and death (Diod. 16. 2. 6, 3.
5–6; Dem. 23. 121; Just. 7. 6. 6). Argaeus marched to Aegae with
Athenian support and was ambushed by Philip on his return.
Justin, like too many modern commentators, assumes that
Macedon had a formal succession and regency process. Tutor, then,
should not be seen as referring to a formal regent, but rather to a
guardian. Philip II, then, at the time of his accession, became the
guardian for his potential heir, the son of his dead brother. Tutor
most often has the meaning of guardian. With the birth of Philip’s
likely first son, Arrhidaeus, the son of Philinna, probably born in 357
(for the date, Griffith 1970: 69–72, 79; Greenwalt 1985: 70; contra:
Ehrhardt 1967: 296–301), Amyntas became only a second-tier heir.
This likely accounts for the confusion in Justin. Philip, as king, was
the guardian for his young nephew not only for the sake of his
brother but also for the sake of the kingdom until he produced sons
of his own.
In addition to the doubtful regency for Amyntas Perdicca
mentioned above, there are two other claimed regencies; one for
Orestes, the son of King Archelaus I (413–399), and that for the
future Perdiccas III by Ptolemy of Alorus. In the case of Orestes,
while “still a boy . . . he received the rule” of Macedon after the death
of his father, and was subsequently killed by his erstwhile protector
Aëropus (Diod. 14. 37. 6). As with the case of Philip and his ward
Amyntas, the true nature of the situation has been misunderstood by
either Diodorus or his source. Aëropus became king and guardian
for Orestes, but having a son of his own, Pausanias, he eliminated
his ward to make way for this child (Diod. 14. 84. 6). Coins have
been found for both Aëropus and his son Pausanias, even though
24 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

the latter only served a year (Diod. 14. 89. 2), but none have been
found for Orestes. A true regent, then, in the sense of a place-holder
as opposed to a king and guardian of a young ward, would only
emerge when someone outside of the Argead family seized power.
Such a situation arose with Ptolemy of Alorus’s regency for Perdiccas
III. After the assassination of King Alexander II,11 Ptolemy became,
according to some sources the guardian (epitropos) for the slain
king’s brother, Perdiccas III (Aeschin. 2. 29; Plut. Pel. 27. 3), and
in other sources, basileus in his own right (Diod. 15. 71. 1, 77.
5; Euseb. Chron. 228). Despite the confusion in the sources, this
was a true regency (Anson 2009A: 276–86). Telling against Ptolemy
the guardian being the Argead ruler is the frequent reference to
Alorus, the demotic. In a society where kings are seldom referenced
other than by their name, this use of the demotic would be unique.
Additionally, no coins have been found that were issued in his name
(Beloch 1927: 3. 2. 67; Hammond and Griffith 1979: 183), and
his marriage to Eurydice, the wife of Amyntas III, along with his
previous one to her daughter, Eurynoe, suggest that Ptolemy needed
a marital connection to a member of the royal family to forge a
link to the Argead clan (Just. 7. 4. 7; Aeschin. 2. 29). While Ptolemy
of Alorus is called both epitropos and basileus by our sources, the
ascription of epitropos, but not basileus, by the contemporary
Aeschines indicates, along with the frequent use of the demotic, the
marriages into the Argead clan, and the absence of coinage in his
name, that he was never officially king, only regent.
While the Macedonian king was in theory an autocrat,
Macedonia was not a bureaucratic state. In fact, there was virtually
no bureaucracy until the reigns of Philip and Alexander. The king
ruled through his hetairoi, his companions. These individuals were
mostly members of the powerful landed Macedonian aristocracy,
although some were from different lands. They were in a very
real sense the government. They acted as the king’s ambassadors,
military commanders, governors, religious representatives, and
personal advisers. These hetairoi formed, apart from the king, the
basic political institution of the Macedonian state (Stagakis 1962:
53–67; 1970: 86–102). Their relationship, however, with the king
was regarded by them as personal, not institutional. The hetairoi
were formally tied to the monarch by religious and social bonds;
they sacrificed to the gods, hunted, drank, and fought with the
king. While there are a number of difficulties with the oft-repeated
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 25

statement that the Macedonian kingship was Homeric,12 in

the particular case of the hetairoi there are clear parallels. The
Myrmidons were the “hetairoi” of Achilles (Hom. Il. 16. 168–70,
269), and even the Trojan Aeneas had his own “hetairoi” (Il. 13.
489–92). With these individuals the respective hero enjoyed a
close personal relationship. The hero and his hetairoi, like their
Macedonian counterparts, fought and shared their leisure activities,
and the interaction of the Macedonian king and his companions
could be as fractious as that of the Greek champions in the epic. As
indicated earlier, it was not unusual for Macedonian kings to lose
their lives at the hands of disgruntled Macedonian aristocrats.
While the vast majority of the hetairoi were native Macedonians
from prominent aristocratic families, some were not, but rather
foreigners attracted to Macedonia by the direct invitation of the
king (FGrH 115 F-224). Of the 84 individuals identified as members
of Alexander the Great’s hetairoi, nine were Greeks (Stagakis 1962:
79–87). Foreign hetairoi, like their Macedonian counterparts,
would be given large tracts of land by the king (Athen. 6. 261A).
Land and booty were the means by which a monarch cemented his
relationship with his subordinates (Samuel 1988: 1276; see also,
Billows 1995: 137; Borza 1990: 215). This was certainly part of
the traditional hetairos relationship. Macedonian kings gave their
aristocratic companions vast tracts of land (FGrH 115 F-225B;
Plut. Alex. 15.3–6). Philip II granted all of the land north of Agora
to one Apollonides of Cardia ([Dem.] 7. 39, 7. 44; Dem. 8. 64).
Nearchus, Alexander’s fleet commander from Crete, and Laomedon,
the Mytilenian, are listed as Macedonians from Amphipolis (Arr.
Ind. 18. 4). These foreign hetairoi were obviously the recipients
of royal land. Even though the earliest reference to a Macedonian
hetairos dates from the reign of Archelaus I (413–399) (Ael. VH 13.
4) and it has been claimed that the institution derives from Persian
antecedents (Kienast 1973: 248–67), the relationship likely dates
back to the Bronze Age (Hammond and Griffith 1979: 158–9).
The very personal nature of the Macedonian monarchy made the
king a charismatic leader subject to constant review by his subjects.
Macedonian kingship also lacked most of the formality ordinarily
associated with royalty. As Lindsay Adams (1986: 43–52) has noted,
Macedonians of any social background believed that they had the
right to petition the king personally concerning their grievances. It
was part of Macedonian custom for the people to address the king
26 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

in person and express their opinions openly. There is a reported tale

that a Macedonian king (either Philip II [Plut. Mor. 179 C-D], or
Demetrius I [Plut. Demetr. 42. 11], the same incident is claimed for
both13) once begged off hearing the case of a “poor woman,” claiming
he was too busy, she responded that he should then give up being
king. The Macedonians saw themselves as having the right to have
their grievances heard (Adams 1986: 32–52). Demetrius Poliorcetes
later angered his Macedonian subjects during his brief reign as
king Demetrius I (294–288 BC) by not granting them access to his
person, refusing to accept and read their petitions. On one occasion
he accepted the petitions, but then tossed them unread in the river
Axius. As a result of this great familiarity between ruler and subject,
the de facto power of the king depended much on the personality
and ability of the particular monarch. Even the title of king was
apparently not an official part of Macedonian royal nomenclature
prior to the reign of Alexander the Great (Errington 1974: 20–37).
The king’s personal name without official title was sufficient when
the circumstances made the position of the Macedonian monarch
clear. This personal aspect of rule was especially true in the army
where the king was literally the first to engage and the last to leave
the battle (for a discussion of this royal role, see Carney 1996:
28–31).
This lack of much social separation between the king and his
subjects has suggested to many that ordinary Macedonians had
a direct say in their affairs through the existence of a national
Macedonian assembly empowered to elect kings and judge cases
of treason. First put forth by F. Granier (1931), the position has,
in recent years, been supported with modifications by Hammond
(Hammond and Griffith 1979: 161–2), L. Mooren (1983: 205–40),
and Miltiades Hatzopoulos (1996A: 261–322). The evidence,
however, is not convincing (see Errington 1978: 77–133; Anson
1985B: 303–16; 1991: 230–47). When supposed incidences of
assemblies are examined, they turn out to be not constitutional
entities but ad hoc assemblages called by the king for a variety of
reasons, but in no case involving any mandatory requirement that
they be summoned.
Part of the argument for the existence of an assembly in Macedonia
is the presence of some such body in the neighboring state of Epirus.
While the evidence is spotty, the prominence of tribal institutions is
here patent. During the time of Philip II there were 14 Epirote tribes
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 27

(Str. 7. 7. 5). According to Thucydides, in his time, the Chaonians

and the Thesprotians did not have kings (Thuc. 2. 80. 5). In the
case of the former two members of the royal family were selected
“to the chieftainship for that year.” The Molossians, however, did
have a king, who like his counterpart in Macedonia came from one
particular clan (Just. 17. 3. 9; Thuc. 2. 80. 6). According to Diodorus
(18. 36. 4) from the time when Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles,
was king until the reign of Aeacides, sons had always succeeded to
their fathers’ authority and had died on the throne. The Molossians,
however, may have had from earliest times, additionally, annual
officials and a “senate” (Just. 17. 3. 12). There was also a common
Molossian citizenship in the Koinon of the Molossians and an
assembly (ecclesia) (Hammond 1967: 525–9, 538; 1994: 431;
Larsen 1968: 277). In the latter, the king and the people annually
exchanged oaths both swearing to uphold the laws (Plut. Pyrrh. 5.
4). There is no such direct evidence for similar limitations on the
monarchy in Macedonia. Indeed, the only evidence for an oath in
Macedonia relates to one sworn by the Macedonians to their king
(Curt. 7. 1. 29); a reciprocal oath is not noted.
While both states had a tribal migratory history, what accounts
for the differences in their constitutional development can only be
guessed. Part of the reason for the distinction is that Epirus had
a different evolution than did Macedonia. As Hammond himself
points out, Epirus remained a pastoral state far longer than did
Macedonia, and in Epirus the author claims that herds and pasture
lands were held communally (Hammond 1991: 184–5, 188). Another
factor may have been the decades of Persian influence in the more
eastern territory. The Persians had a presence in this area beginning
in 513 (Hdts. 4. 143–4) and reportedly by 511 had subjugated
many peoples in the area “including the Macedonians” (Hdts.
6. 44. 1). Alexander I’s sister was married to the Persian general
Bubares, the son of Megabazus (Hdts. 7. 22. 1), and Alexander
himself was placed in command of the lands of Lower Macedonia
by the Persian king (Just. 7. 4. 1). The Persian presence and apparent
alliance with the Argead royal family likely enhanced the powers
of the Macedonian kings, but whether this merely augmented an
already existing relationship between the king and his kingdom, or
was more crucially involved in this process, cannot be determined
from the existing evidence. Even in Epirus, however, the evidence
is that the monarch may have shared power in some fashion with
28 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

powerful tribal leaders, not with common Molossians (Cross 1932:

17–18). J. A. O. Larsen (1968: 279) long ago recognized that it
is unclear who actually participated in the Epirote assembly, but
suggested that it was likely only “the more influential members of
the tribes.” Epirus was then a tribal confederacy whose king may
have shared power with a tribal council and with a number of lesser
constitutional officials (Hammond 1967: 527, 538–9). No such
evidence exists for similar tribal bodies in Macedonia.
With regard to the first claimed sovereign right of the proposed
Macedonian assembly, the control over the selection of a new king,
there is simply no evidence that clearly suggests that apart from the
power of a living monarch or powerful members of the hetairoi to
influence the selection, this authority rested with an assembly of
the army or of the people. Hatzopoulos (1996A: 278–9) believes
that the “Macedonian Assembly” in matters of succession both for
the kingship and for a regency had powers ranging from actual
selection to simple acclamation. He states that the latter would
be the result of a clear successor and where the “traditional rules
of succession” were followed. Landucci Gattinoni (2003: 32–3)
suggests that, if there was no clear heir, or where there were
conflicting claims, or when the clear heir was incapable of ruling,
then, the assembly would be called upon to decide. However, for
neither Philip II nor Alexander III, the two monarchs for whose
careers a relative abundance of information exists, is there more
than the acknowledgment of the accession, and for earlier Argeads,
virtually nothing. In the case of Philip II, Diodorus 16. 2. 4–5 relates
that “when (Perdiccas) . . . fell in the action, Philip . . . succeeded to
the kingdom.” Moreover, the throne was contested by the sons of
Archelaus, Pausanias and Argaeus (Diod. 16. 2. 6), and by Philip’s
three half-brothers (Just. 7. 4. 5, 8. 3. 10; FGrH 115 F-27). There
is in all of this no clear statement of the procedure by which Philip
became king, and the resulting struggle for power involving so many
claimants would suggest that there was no clear constitutional
process either. However, it is claimed, based on another passage in
Diodorus, that the people did formally select Philip as their king
(Hammond and Griffith 1979: 160–1). Diodorus 16. 3. 1 states:
“Philip bringing together the Macedonians in a series of assemblies
[ecclesiai] and exhorting them with eloquent speeches . . . built
up their morale,” and Justin 7. 5. 9, “compelled by the people he
accepted the rule.” While ecclesia most often is used in the sense of a
 THE MACEDONIAN BACKGROUND 29

formal sovereign assembly, it is also used by Diodorus (11. 26. 5–6,

35. 2; 13. 87. 4; 16. 79. 2) to refer to a called meeting by a military
commander to exhort his troops. Moreover, the passage says
nothing about an election. Justin’s comment involves his unlikely
claim (see above) that Philip was first regent for his nephew and
later became king in his own right. Even if the claim were true,
there is no clear reference to an electoral assembly. That, in the dire
circumstances following the death of Perdiccas, popular pressure
built demanding that Philip become king is a more valid explanation
of the passage. What evidence that does survive suggests that on
the death of a monarch there was little in the way of Macedonian
custom that produced an orderly transition of power. Other than
that the new king would come from the Argead clan, there were no
other requirements. Certainly, the principal hetairoi, or a significant
faction of them, would influence the selection. Moreover, if there
was a prominent male member of the family available, and especially
present, that individual most often succeeded to the throne. While
the evidence comes from the later and generally considered to be
more authoritarian Antigonid dynasty, the influence of a reigning
monarch on the succession can be seen in the various machinations of
Philip V regarding his successor and his actions are likely applicable
to the Argeads as well (Livy 40. 21. 10, 41. 23. 11). The nobility,
seeing Philip’s preference for his eldest son, abandoned any support
for his younger son, Demetrius. After the murder of Demetrius,
Philip became disenchanted with his eldest son and attempted to
secure the throne for his nephew Antigonus by commending him to
the Macedonian “principes” (leaders) (Livy 40. 56. 7). Livy, likely
reflecting Polybius, states that had Philip lived longer he might have
realized his project. However, not only did Philip die before he had
secured sufficient support for Antigonus, but Antigonus, also, was
not present when Philip died. Perseus arrived on the scene first and
secured the throne (Livy 40. 54. 3–4, 40. 56. 11, 40. 57. 1). Support
generated during the rule of a father and presence at court at the
time of a predecessor’s death has more to do with the succession of
adult sons, than with any constitutional basis for the practice. Any
and all candidates would then attempt to secure the acquiescence
of the general populace. This process might involve some public
acclamation before a prominent military unit or some important
Macedonian population such as the inhabitants of Aegae or Pella,
the former and the current capitals respectively. This would likely
30 ALEXANDER THE GREAT

be followed by a formal enthronement, if or when the particular

candidate was in control of the capital in Pella (Anson 1985B:
307–8; Errington 1978: 99–100). This acclamation was a mere
formality (Anson 1985B: 307–8; 1991: 236–7). The acquiescence,
if not full support, of the leading aristocrats, the army, and the
general population, in that order, would determine who would be
king. While foreign forces often did attempt and on occasion briefly
did impose their candidates, these usurpers would ultimately be
replaced by the candidate accepted by the above groups.
The only detailed description of a royal selection comes from
Quintus Curtius Rufus’ account of the elevation of Alexander the
Great’s half-brother Arrhidaeus to the throne as Philip III on the
death of the Conqueror. Despite the chaos surrounding the events
in Babylon where Alexander died, the selection of a monarch is
outlined clearly only here. This was certainly not a typical succession.
First, there were very few Argead candidates available, and of these
none currently capable of ruling on his own. Philip and Alexander
had effectively culled the ranks of the formerly populous clan. At
the death of the Conqueror, there were but three possible claimants:
Alexander’s half-brother, Arrhidaeus, who was mentally deficient14;
a three- or four-year-old son, Heracles, the result of an informal
liaison with Barsine, the former wife of Memnon of Rhodes, and
the daughter of Artabazus, advisor to Darius and Alexander’s one
time satrap of Bactria15; and the king’s as yet unborn child by his
Sogdian wife Roxane. She was pregnant, perhaps, and in fact as it
turned out, with Alexander’s only legitimate son (Curt. 10. 6. 9;
Just. 13. 2. 5; Arr. Succ. 1a. 8). Secondly, this selection of a new king
occurred well away from the confines and traditions of Macedonia
and after ten years of campaigning in foreign lands. Also, unusual,
there was present a near full complement of the chief hetairoi, not
a small faction or a well-placed few, and with no Argead personally
able to lobby for the throne, these would formally meet to decide
who would become the new monarch.16 Finally, the monarchy had
in many ways been transformed through the activities of Philip and
especially Alexander. There was now a bureaucracy and a great deal
more formality at court.
Since none of the surviving Argeads was capable of actually
ruling, there would need to be a regency: as indicated previously a
rare occurrence in Argead Macedonian history. To complicate the
Other documents randomly have
different content
this grace or gift of God were bestowed on the soul in the
creation and conception of the man, or afterwards by his
redemption. Another question will be, in what sense immortality
of torments can be called a gift, when all gifts suppose the thing
given to be grateful to the receiver. To the first of these, Christ
himself saith (Luke xiv. 13, 14): When thou makest a feast, call
the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be
blessed, for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be
recompensed at the resurrection of them that be just. It follows
hence that the reward of the elect is not before the resurrection.
What reward then enjoys a separated soul in heaven, or any
where else, till that day come, or what has he to do there till the
body rise again? Again, St. Paul says (Rom. ii. 6-8): God will
render to every man according to his works. To them, who by
patient continuance in well doing seek for honour, glory, and
immortality, eternal life. But unto them that be contentious, and
do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation
and wrath. Here it is plain that God gives eternal life only to well
doers, and to them that seek, not to them that have already,
immortality. Again (2 Tim. i. 10): Christ hath abolished death,
and brought life and immortality to light, through the Gospel.
Therefore before the Gospel of Christ, nothing was immortal but
God. And St. Paul, speaking of the day of judgment (1 Cor. xv.
54), saith, that this mortal shall put on immortality, and that
then death is swallowed up in victory. There was no immortality
of any thing mortal till death was overcome, and that was at the
resurrection. And John, viii. 51: Verily, verily, if a man keep my
sayings he shall never see death; that is to say, he shall be
immortal. But it is nowhere said, that he which keeps not Christ’s
sayings shall never see death, nor be immortal: and yet they
that say that the wicked, body and soul, shall be tormented
everlastingly, do therein say they are immortal. Matth. x. 28:
Fear not them that can kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul; but fear him that is able to destroy both soul and body in
hell. Man cannot kill a soul; for the man killed shall revive again.
But God can destroy the soul and body in hell, as that it shall
never return to life. In the Old Testament (Gen. vii. 4) we read: I
will destroy every living substance that I have made, from off the
face of the earth; therefore, if the souls of them that perished in
the Flood were substances, they were also destroyed in the
Flood, and were not immortal. Matth. xxv. 41: Depart from me,
ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels. These words are to be spoken in the day of judgment,
which judgment is to be in the clouds. And there shall stand the
men that are reprobated alive, where souls, according to his
Lordship’s doctrine, were sent long before to hell. Therefore at
that present day of judgment they had one soul by which they
were there alive, and another soul in hell. How his Lordship
could have maintained this, I understand not. But by my
doctrine, that the soul is not a separated substance, but that the
man at his resurrection shall be revived by God, and raised to
judgment, and afterwards body and soul destroyed in hell-fire,
which is the second death, there is no such consequence or
difficulty to be inferred. Besides, it avoids the unnecessary
disputes about where the soul of Lazarus was for four days he
lay dead. And the order of the divine process is made good, of
not inflicting torments before the condemnation pronounced.
Now as to the harmony of the two Testaments, it is said in the
Old (Gen. ii. 17): In the day that thou eatest of the tree of
knowledge, dying thou shalt die: moriendo morieris: that is,
when thou art dead thou shalt not revive; for so hath Athanasius
expounded it. Therefore Adam and Eve were not immortal by
their creation. Then (Gen. iii. 22): Behold the man is become as
one of us: now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the
tree of life, and eat, and live for ever, &c. Here they had had an
immortality by the gift of God if they had not sinned. It was
therefore sin that lost them eternal life. He therefore that
redeemed them from sin was the author of their immortality,
which consequently began in the day of judgment, when Adam
and Eve were again made alive by admission to the new tree of
life, which was Christ.
 Now let us compare this with the New Testament; where we
find these words (1 Cor. xv. 21): since by man came death, by
man came also the resurrection of the dead. Therefore all the
immortality of the soul, that shall be after the resurrection, is by
Christ, and not by the nature of the soul. Verse 22: As by Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Therefore since
we died by Adam’s sin, so we shall live by Christ’s redemption of
us, that is, after the resurrection. Again (verse 23): But every
man in his own order; Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that
are Christ’s, at his coming. Therefore none shall be made alive
till the coming of Christ. Lastly, as when God had said, that day
that thou eatest of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou
shalt die, though he condemned him then, yet he suffered him
to live a long time after; so when Christ had said to the thief on
the cross, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise, yet he
suffered him to lie dead till the general resurrection, for no man
rose again from the dead before our Saviour’s coming, and
conquering death.
If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he
made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to
give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave
any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of
immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot
piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the
canonical Scripture.
But though I have made it clear that it cannot be drawn by
lawful consequence from Scripture, that man was created with a
soul immortal, and that the elect only, by the grace of God in
Christ, shall both bodies and souls from the resurrection forward
be immortal; yet there may be a consequence well drawn from
some words in the rites of burial, that prove the contrary, as
these: Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great
mercy, to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here
departed, &c. And these: Almighty God, with whom do live the
spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord: which are words
authorised by the church. I wonder his Lordship, that had so
often pronounced them, took no notice of them here. But it
often happens that men think of those things least, which they
have most perfectly learnt by rote. I am sorry I could not,
without deserting the sense of Scripture and mine own
conscience, say the same. But I see no just cause yet, why the
church should be offended at it. For the church of England
pretendeth not, as doth the church of Rome, to be above the
Scripture; nor forbiddeth any man to read the Scripture; nor was
I forbidden, when I wrote my Leviathan, to publish anything
which the Scriptures suggested. For when I wrote it, I may
safely say there was no lawful church in England, that could
have maintained me in, or prohibited me from writing anything.
There was no bishop; and though there was preaching, such as
it was, yet no common prayer. For extemporary prayer, though
made in the pulpit, is not common prayer. There was then no
church in England, that any man living was bound to obey. What
I write here at this present time I am forced to in my defence,
not against the church, but against the accusations and
arguments of my adversaries. For the church, though it
excommunicates for scandalous life, and for teaching false
doctrines, yet it professeth to impose nothing to be held as faith,
but what may be warranted by Scripture: and this the church
itself saith in the twentieth of the Thirty-nine Articles of religion.
And therefore I am permitted to allege Scripture at any time in
the defence of my belief.
J. D. But they that in one case are grieved, in another must be
relieved. If perchance T. H. hath given his disciples any
discontent in his doctrine of heaven and the holy angels, and the
glorified souls of the saints, he will make them amends in his
doctrine of hell, and the devils, and the damned spirits. First of
the devils; he fancieth that all those devils which our Saviour did
cast out, were phrenzies; and all demoniacs, or persons
possessed, no other than madmen: and to justify our Saviour’s
speaking to a disease as to a person, produceth the example of
enchanters. But he declareth himself most clearly upon this
subject, in his animadversions upon my reply to his defence of
fatal destiny. There are in the Scripture two sorts of things which
are in English translated devils. One is that which is called Satan,
Diabolus Abaddon, which signifieth in English an enemy, an
accuser, and a destroyer of the church of God; in which sense
the devils are but wicked men. The other sort of devils are called
in the Scripture Dæmonia, which are the feigned Gods of the
heathen, and are neither bodies nor spiritual substances, but
mere fancies, and fictions of terrified hearts, feigned by the
Greeks, and other heathen people, which St. Paul calleth
nothings. So T. H. hath killed the great infernal Devil, and all his
black angels, and left no devils to be feared, but devils incarnate,
that is, wicked men.
T. H. As for the first words cited (Leviathan, vol. iii. p. 68) I
refer the reader to the place itself; and for the words concerning
Satan, I leave them to the judgment of the learned.
J. D. And for hell, he describeth the kingdom of Satan, or the
kingdom of darkness, to be a confederacy of deceivers. He
telleth us that the places, which set forth the torments of hell in
holy Scripture, do design metaphorically a grief and discontent of
mind, from the sight of that eternal felicity in others, which they
themselves, through their own incredulity and disobedience,
have lost. As if metaphorical descriptions did not bear sad truths
in them, as well as literal; as if final desperation were no more
than a little fit of grief or discontent; and a guilty conscience
were no more than a transitory passion; as if it were a loss so
easily to be borne, to be deprived for evermore of the beatifical
vision; and lastly, as if the damned, besides that unspeakable
loss, did not likewise suffer actual torments, proportionable in
some measure to their own sins, and God’s justice.
T. H. That metaphors bear sad truths in them, I deny not. It is
a sad thing to lose this present life untimely. Is it not therefore
much more a sad thing to lose an eternal happy life? And I
believe that he which will venture upon sin, with such danger,
will not stick to do the same notwithstanding the doctrine of
eternal torture. Is it not also a sad truth, that the kingdom of
darkness should be a confederacy of deceivers?
 J. D. Lastly, for the damned spirits, he declareth himself every
where, that their sufferings are not eternal. The fire shall be
unquenchable, and the torments everlasting; but it cannot be
thence inferred, that he who shall be cast into that fire, or be
tormented with those torments, shall endure and resist them, so
as to be eternally burnt and tortured, and yet never be
destroyed nor die. And though there be many places, that affirm
everlasting fire, into which men may be cast successively one
after another for ever; yet I find none that affirm that there shall
be an everlasting life therein of any individual person. If he had
said, and said only, that the pains of the damned may be
lessened, as to the degree of them, or that they endure not for
ever, but that after they are purged by long torments from their
dross and corruptions, as gold in the fire, both the damned
spirits and the devils themselves should be restored to a better
condition; he might have found some ancients (who are
therefore called the merciful doctors) to have joined with him;
though still he should have wanted the suffrage of the Catholic
church.
T. H. Why does not his Lordship cite some place of Scripture
here to prove, that all the reprobates which are dead, live
eternally in torment? We read indeed, that everlasting torments
were prepared for the Devil and his angels, whose natures also
are everlasting; and that the Beast and the false prophet shall be
tormented everlastingly; but not that every reprobate shall be
so. They shall indeed be cast into the same fire; but the
Scripture says plainly enough, that they shall be both body and
soul destroyed there. If I had said that the devils themselves
should be restored to a better condition, his Lordship would have
been so kind as to have put me into the number of the merciful
doctors. Truly, if I had had any warrant for the possibility of their
being less enemies to the church of God than they have been, I
would have been as merciful to them as any doctor of them all.
As it is, I am more merciful than the Bishop.
J. D. But his shooting is not at rovers, but altogether at
random, without either precedent or partner. All that eternal fire,
all those torments which he acknowledgeth, is but this, that after
the resurrection, the reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam
and his posterity were in, after the sin committed, saving that
God promised a redeemer to Adam and not to them: adding,
that they shall live as they did formerly, marry and give in
marriage; and consequently engender children perpetually after
the resurrection, as they did before: which he calleth an
immortality of the kind, but not of the persons of men. It is to be
presumed, that in those their second lives, knowing certainly
from T. H. that there is no hope of redemption for them from
corporal death upon their well-doing, nor fear of any torments
after death for their ill-doing, they will pass their times here as
pleasantly as they can. This is all the damnation which T. H.
fancieth.
T. H. This he has urged once before, and I answered to it, that
the whole paragraph was to prove, that for any text of Scripture
to the contrary, men might, after the resurrection, live as Adam
did on earth; and that, notwithstanding the text of St. Luke,
(chap. xx. 34-36), Marry and propagate. But that they shall do
so, is no assertion of mine. His Lordship knew I held, that after
the resurrection there shall be at all no wicked men; but the
elect (all that are, have been, and hereafter shall be) shall live
on earth. But St. Peter (2 Epist. iii. 13) says, there shall then be
a new heaven and a new earth.
J. D. In sum I leave it to the free judgment of the
understanding reader, by these few instances which follow, to
judge what the Hobbian principles are in point of religion. Ex
ungue leonem.
First, that no man needs to put himself to any hazard for his
faith, but may safely comply with the times. And for their faith it
is internal and invisible. They have the licence that Naaman had,
and need not put themselves into danger for it.
Secondly, he alloweth subjects, being commanded by their
sovereign, to deny Christ. Profession with the tongue is but an
external thing, and no more than any other gesture, whereby we
signify our obedience: and wherein a Christian, holding firmly in
his heart the faith of Christ, hath the same liberty which the
prophet Elisha allowed to Naaman, &c. who by bowing before
the idol Rimmon, denied the true God as much in effect, as if he
had done it with his lips. Alas, why did St. Peter weep so bitterly
for denying his master, out of fear of his life or members? It
seems he was not acquainted with these Hobbian principles. And
in the same place he layeth down this general conclusion: This
we may say, that whatsoever a subject is compelled to, in
obedience to his sovereign, and doth it not in order to his own
mind, but in order to the laws of his country, that action is not
his, but his sovereign’s; nor is it he, that in this case denieth
Christ before men, but his governor and the law of his country.
His instance, in a Mahometan commanded by a Christian prince
to be present at divine service, is a weak mistake, springing from
his gross ignorance in case-divinity, not knowing to distinguish
between an erroneous conscience, as the Mahometan’s is, and a
conscience rightly informed.
T. H. In these his two first instances, I confess his Lordship
does not much belie me. But neither does he confute me. Also I
confess my ignorance in his case-divinity, which is grounded
upon the doctrine of the Schoolmen; who to decide cases of
conscience, take in, not only the Scriptures, but also the decrees
of the popes of Rome, for the advancing of the dominion of the
Roman church over consciences; whereas the true decision of
cases of consciences ought to be grounded only on Scripture, or
natural equity. I never allowed the denying of Christ with the
tongue in all men, but expressly say the contrary (Leviathan, vol.
iii. p. 656) in these words: For an unlearned man that is in the
power of an idolatrous king or state, if commanded on pain of
death to worship before an idol, he detesteth the idol in his
heart, he doth well; though if he had the fortitude to suffer
death rather than worship it, he should do better. But if a pastor,
who as Christ’s messenger has undertaken to teach Christ’s
doctrine to all nations, should do the same, it were not only a
sinful scandal in respect of other Christian men’s consciences,
but a perfidious forsaking of his charge. Therefore St. Peter, in
denying Christ, sinned, as being an apostle. And it is sin in every
man that should now take upon him to preach against the power
of the Pope, to leave his commission unexecuted for fear of the
fire; but in a mere traveller, not so. The three children and Daniel
were worthy champions of the true religion. But God requireth
not of every man to be a champion. As for his Lordship’s words
of complying with the times, they are not mine, but his own
spiteful paraphrase.
J. D. Thirdly, if this be not enough, he giveth licence to a
Christian to commit idolatry, or at least to do an idolatrous act,
for fear of death or corporal danger. To pray unto a king
voluntarily for fair weather, or for anything which God only can
do for us, is Divine worship, and idolatry. On the other side, if a
king compel a man to it by the terror of death, or other great
corporal punishment, it is not idolatry. His reason is, because it is
not a sign, that he doth inwardly honour him as a God, but that
he is desirous to save himself from death, or from a miserable
life. It seemeth T. H. thinketh there is no Divine worship but
internal: and that it is lawful for a man to value his own life or
his limbs more than his God. How much is he wiser than the
three children, or Daniel himself, who were thrown, the first into
a fiery furnace, the last into the lions' den, because they refused
to comply with the idolatrous decree of their sovereign prince?
T. H. Here also my words are truly cited. But his Lordship
understood not what the word worship signifies; and yet he
knew what I meant by it. To think highly of God, as I had
defined it, is to honour him. But to think is internal. To worship,
is to signify that honour, which we inwardly give, by signs
external. This understood, as by his Lordship it was, all he says
to it, is but a cavil.
J. D. A fourth aphorism may be this, that, which is said in the
Scripture, it is better to obey God than man, hath place in the
kingdom of God by pact, and not by nature. Why? Nature itself
doth teach us it is better to obey God than men. Neither can he
say that he intended this only of obedience in the use of
indifferent actions and gestures, in the service of God,
commanded by the commonwealth: for that is to obey both God
and man. But if Divine law and human law clash one with
another, without doubt it is evermore better to obey God than
man.
T. H. Here again appears his unskilfulness in reasoning. Who
denies, but it is always, and in all cases, better to obey God than
man? But there is no law, neither Divine nor human, that ought
to be taken for a law, till we know what it is; and if a Divine law,
till we know that God hath commanded it to be kept. We agree
that the Scriptures are the word of God. But they are a law by
pact, that is, to us who have been baptized into the covenant. To
all others it is an invitation only to their own benefit. It is true
that even nature suggesteth to us that the law of God is to be
obeyed rather than the law of man. But nature does not suggest
to us that the Scripture is the law of God, much less how every
text of it ought to be interpreted. But who then shall suggest
this? Dr. Bramhall? I deny it. Who then? The stream of divines?
Why so? Am I, that have the Scripture itself before my eyes,
obliged to venture my eternal life upon their interpretation, how
learned soever they pretend to be, when no counter-security,
that they can give me, will save me harmless? If not the stream
of divines, who then? The lawful assembly of pastors, or of
bishops? But there can be no lawful assembly in England without
the authority of the King. The Scripture, therefore, what it is,
and how to be interpreted, is made known unto us here, by no
other way than the authority of our sovereign lord both in
temporals and spirituals, the King’s Majesty. And where he has
set forth no interpretation, there I am allowed to follow my own,
as well as any other man, bishop or not bishop. For my own
part, all that know me, know also it is my opinion, that the best
government in religion is by episcopacy, but in the King’s right,
not in their own. But my Lord of Derry, not contented with this,
would have the utmost resolution of our faith to be into the
doctrine of the Schools. I do not think that all the bishops be of
his mind. If they were, I would wish them to stand in fear of that
dreadful sentence, all covet, all lose. I must not let pass these
words of his Lordship, if Divine law and human law clash one
with another, without doubt it is better evermore to obey God
than man. Where the king is a Christian, believes the Scripture,
and hath the legislative power both in church and state, and
maketh no laws concerning Christian faith, or Divine worship, but
by the counsel of his bishops whom he trusteth in that behalf; if
the bishops counsel him aright, what clashing can there be
between the Divine and human laws? For if the civil law be
against God’s law, and the bishops make it clearly appear to the
king that it clasheth with Divine law, no doubt he will mend it by
himself, or by the advice of his parliament; for else he is no
professor of Christ’s doctrine, and so the clashing is at an end.
But if they think that every opinion they hold, though obscure
and unnecessary to salvation, ought presently to be law, then
there will be clashings innumerable, not only of laws, but also of
swords, as we have found it too true by late experience. But his
Lordship is still at this, that there ought to be, for the Divine
laws, that is to say for the interpretation of Scripture, a
legislative power in the church, distinct from that of the King,
which under him they enjoy already. This I deny. Then for
clashing between the civil laws of infidels with the law of God,
the apostles teach that those their civil laws are to be obeyed,
but so as to keep their faith in Christ entirely in their hearts;
which is an obedience easily performed. But I do not believe that
Augustus Cæsar or Nero was bound to make the holy Scripture
law; and yet unless they did so, they could not attain to eternal
life.
J. D. His fifth conclusion may be, that the sharpest and most
successful sword, in any war whatsoever, doth give sovereign
power and authority to him that hath it, to approve or reject all
sorts of theological doctrines, concerning the kingdom of God,
not according to their truth or falsehood, but according to that
influence which they have upon political affairs. Hear him: but
because this doctrine will appear to most men a novelty, I do but
propound it, maintaining nothing in this or any other paradox of
religion, but attending the end of that dispute of the sword
concerning the authority (not yet amongst my countrymen
decided) by which all sorts of doctrine are to be approved or
rejected, &c. For, the points of doctrine concerning the kingdom
of God, have so great influence upon the kingdom of man, as
not to be determined, but by them that under God have the
sovereign power.
 “———————— Careat successibus opto,
Quisquis ab eventu facta notanda putat.”

Let him evermore want success who thinketh actions are to be

judged by their events. This doctrine may be plausible to those
who desire to fish in troubled waters. But it is justly hated by
those which are in authority, and all those who are lovers of
peace and tranquillity.
The last part of this conclusion smelleth rankly of Jeroboam (1
Kings xii. 26-28): Now shall the kingdom return to the house of
David, if this people go up to do sacrifice in the house of the
Lord at Jerusalem; whereupon the king took counsel, and made
two calves of gold, and said unto them, it is too much for you to
go up to Jerusalem, behold thy Gods, O Israel, which brought
thee out of the land of Egypt. But by the just disposition of
Almighty God, this policy turned to a sin, and was the utter
destruction of Jeroboam and his family. It is not good jesting
with edge-tools, nor playing with holy things: where men make
their greatest fastness, many times they find most danger.
T. H. His Lordship either had a strange conscience, or
understood not English. Being at Paris when there was no bishop
nor church in England, and every man writ what he pleased, I
resolved (when it should please God to restore the authority
ecclesiastical) to submit to that authority, in whatsoever it should
determine. This his Lordship construes for a temporizing and too
much indifferency in religion; and says further, that the last part
of my words do smell of Jeroboam. To the contrary, I say my
words were modest, and such as in duty I ought to use. And I
profess still, that whatsoever the church of England (the church,
I say, not every doctor) shall forbid me to say in matter of faith,
I shall abstain from saying it, excepting this point, that Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, died for my sins. As for other doctrines, I
think it unlawful, if the church define them, for any member of
the church to contradict them.
 J. D. His sixth paradox is a rapper: The civil laws are the rules
of good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest; and
therefore what the lawgiver commands, that is to be accounted
good, what he forbids, bad. And a little after: Before empires
were, just and unjust were not, as whose nature is relative to a
command, every action in its own nature is indifferent. That is,
just or unjust proceedeth from the right of him that
commandeth. Therefore lawful kings make those things which
they command just, by commanding them, and those things
which they forbid, unjust by forbidding them. To this add his
definition of a sin, that which one doth, or omitteth, saith, or
willeth, contrary to the reason of the commonwealth, that is, the
(civil) laws. Where by the laws he doth not understand the
written laws, elected and approved by the whole commonwealth,
but the verbal commands or mandates of him that hath the
sovereign power, as we find in many places of his writings. The
civil laws are nothing else but the commands of him, that is
endowed with sovereign power in the commonwealth,
concerning the future actions of his subjects. And the civil laws
are fastened to the lips of that man who hath the sovereign
power.
Where are we? In Europe? or in Asia, where they ascribed a
divinity to their kings, and, to use his own phrase, made them
mortal gods; O king, live for ever? Flatterers are the common
moths of great palaces, where Alexander’s friends are more
numerous than the king’s friends. But such gross, palpable,
pernicious flattery as this is, I did never meet with, so
derogatory both to piety and policy. What deserveth he who
should do his uttermost endeavour to poison a common
fountain, whereof all the commonwealth must drink? He doth
the same who poisoneth the mind of a sovereign prince.
Are the civil laws the rules of good and bad, just and unjust,
honest and dishonest? And what, I pray you, are the rules of the
civil law itself? Even the law of God and Nature. If the civil laws
swerve from these more authentic laws, they are Lesbian rules.
What the lawgiver commands is to be accounted good, what he
forbids, bad. This was just the garb of the Athenian sophisters,
as they are described by Plato. Whatsoever pleased the great
beast, the multitude, they call holy, and just, and good. And
whatsoever the great beast disliked, they called evil, unjust,
profane. But he is not yet arrived at the height of his flattery.
Lawful kings make those things, which they command, just by
commanding them. At other times, when he is in his right wits,
he talketh of sufferings, and expecting their reward in heaven.
And going to Christ by martyrdom. And if he had the fortitude to
suffer death he should do better. But I fear all this was but said
in jest. How should they expect their reward in heaven, if his
doctrine be true, that there is no reward in heaven? Or how
should they be martyrs, if his doctrine be true, that none can be
martyrs, but those who conversed with Christ upon earth? He
addeth, before empires were, just and unjust were not. Nothing
could be written more false in his sense, more dishonourable to
God, more inglorious to the human nature; than that God should
create man, and leave him presently without any rules, to his
own ordering of himself, as the ostrich leaveth her eggs in the
sand. But in truth there have been empires in the world ever
since Adam. And Adam had a law written in his heart by the
finger of God, before there was any civil law. Thus they do
endeavour to make goodness, and justice, and honesty, and
conscience, and God himself, to be empty names, without any
reality, which signify nothing, further than they conduce to a
man’s interest. Otherwise he would not, he could not, say, that
every action as it is invested with its circumstances, is indifferent
in its own nature.
T. H. My sixth paradox he calls a rapper. A rapper, a swapper,
and such like terms, are his Lordship’s elegancies. But let us see
what this rapper is: it is this; the civil laws are the rules of good
and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest. Truly, I see no
other rules they have. The Scriptures themselves were made law
to us here, by the authority of the commonwealth, and are
therefore part of the law civil. If they were laws in their own
nature, then were they laws over all the world, and men were
obliged to obey them in America, as soon as they should be
shown there, though without a miracle, by a friar. What is unjust,
but the transgression of a law? Law therefore was before unjust:
and the law was made known by sovereign power before it was
a law: therefore sovereign power was antecedent both to law
and injustice. Who then made unjust but sovereign kings or
sovereign assemblies? Where is now the wonder of this rapper,
that lawful kings make those things which they command just,
by commanding them, and those things which they forbid
unjust, by forbidding them? Just and unjust were surely made. If
the king made them not, who made them else? For certainly the
breach of a civil law is a sin against God. Another calumny which
he would fix upon me, is, that I make the King’s verbal
commands to be laws. How so? Because I say, the civil laws are
nothing else but the commands of him that hath the sovereign
power, concerning the future actions of his subjects. What verbal
command of a king can arrive at the ears of all his subjects,
which it must do ere it be a law, without the seal of the person
of the commonwealth, which is here the Great Seal of England?
Who, but his Lordship, ever denied that the command of
England was a law to Englishmen? Or that any but the King had
authority to affix the Great Seal of England to any writing? And
who did ever doubt to call our laws, though made in Parliament,
the King’s laws? What was ever called a law, which the King did
not assent to? Because the King has granted in divers cases not
to make a law without the advice and assent of the lords and
commons, therefore when there is no parliament in being, shall
the Great Seal of England stand for nothing? What was more
unjustly maintained during the Long Parliament, besides the
resisting and murdering of the King, than this doctrine of his
Lordship’s? But the Bishop endeavoured here to make the
multitude believe I maintain, that the King sinneth not, though
he bid hang a man for making his apparel otherwise than he
appointed, or his servant for negligent attendance. And yet he
knew I distinguished always between the King’s natural and
politic capacity. What name should I give to this wilful slander?
But here his Lordship enters into passion, and exclaims: Where
are we, in Europe or in Asia? Gross, palpable, pernicious flattery,
poisoning of a commonwealth, poisoning the King’s mind. But
where was his Lordship when he wrote this? One would not
think he was in France, nor that this doctrine was written in the
year 1658, but rather in the year 1648, in some cabal of the
King’s enemies. But what did put him into this fit of choler?
Partly, this very thing, that he could not answer my reasons; but
chiefly, that he had lost upon me so much School-learning in our
controversy touching Liberty and Necessity: wherein he was to
blame himself, for believing that the obscure and barbarous
language of School-divinity, could satisfy an ingenuous reader, as
well as plain and perspicuous English. Do I flatter the King? Why
am I not rich? I confess his Lordship has not flattered him here.
J. D. Something there is which he hath a confused glimmering
of, as the blind man sees men walking like trees, which he is not
able to apprehend and express clearly. We acknowledge, that
though the laws or commands of a sovereign prince be
erroneous, or unjust, or injurious, such as a subject cannot
approve for good in themselves; yet he is bound to acquiesce,
and may not oppose or resist, otherwise than by prayers and
tears, and at the most by flight. We acknowledge that the civil
laws have power to bind the conscience of a Christian, in
themselves, but not from themselves, but from him who hath
said, Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. Either they
bind Christian subjects to do their sovereign’s commands, or to
suffer for the testimony of a good conscience. We acknowledge
that in doubtful cases, semper præsumitur pro rege et lege, the
sovereign and the law are always presumed to be in the right.
But in plain evident cases, which admit no doubt, it is always
better to obey God than man. Blunderers, whilst they think to
mend one imaginary hole, make two or three real ones. They
who derive the authority of the Scriptures or God’s law from the
civil laws of men, are like those who seek to underprop the
heavens from falling, with a bulrush. Nay, they derive not only
the authority of the Scripture, but even the law of nature itself,
from the civil law. The laws of nature (which need no
promulgation) in the condition of nature are not properly laws,
but qualities which dispose men to peace and obedience. When
a commonwealth is once settled, then are they actually laws,
and not before. God help us, into what times are we fallen, when
the immutable laws of God and nature are made to depend upon
the mutable laws of mortal men, just as one should go about to
control the sun by the authority of the clock.
T. H. Hitherto he never offered to mend any of the doctrines
he inveighs against; but here he does. He says I have a
glimmering of something I was not able to apprehend and
express clearly. Let us see his Lordship’s more clear expression.
We acknowledge, saith he, that though the laws or commands of
a sovereign prince be erroneous, or unjust, or injurious, such as
a subject cannot approve for good in themselves, yet he is
bound to acquiesce, and may not oppose or resist otherwise
than by prayers and tears, and at the most by flight. Hence it
follows clearly, that when a sovereign has made a law, though
erroneous, then, if his subject oppose it, it is a sin. Therefore I
would fain know, when a man has broken that law by doing
what it forbad, or by refusing to do what it commanded, whether
he have opposed this law or not. If to break the law be to
oppose it, he granteth it. Therefore his Lordship has not here
expressed himself so clearly, as to make men understand the
difference between breaking a law and opposing it. Though
there be some difference between breaking of a law, and
opposing those that are sent with force to see it executed; yet
between breaking and opposing the law itself, there is no
difference. Also, though the subject think the law just, as when a
thief is by law condemned to die, yet he may lawfully oppose the
execution, not only by prayers, tears, and flight, but also (as I
think) any way he can. For though his fault were never so great,
yet his endeavour to save his own life is not a fault. For the law
expects it, and for that cause appointeth felons to be carried
bound and encompassed with armed men to execution. Nothing
is opposite to law, but sin: nothing opposite to the sheriff, but
force. So that his Lordship’s sight was not sharp enough to see
the difference between the law and the officer. Again, We
acknowledge, says he, that the laws have power to bind the
conscience of a Christian in themselves, but not from
themselves. Neither do the Scriptures bind the conscience
because they are Scriptures, but because they were from God.
So also the book of English Statutes bindeth our consciences in
itself, but not from itself, but from the authority of the king, who
only in the right of God has the legislative powers. Again he
saith, We acknowledge that in doubtful cases, the sovereign and
the law are always presumed to be in the right. If he presume
they are in the right, how dare he presume that the cases they
determine are doubtful? But, saith he, in evident cases which
admit no doubt, it is always better to obey God than man. Yes,
and in doubtful cases also, say I. But not always better to obey
the inferior pastors than the supreme pastor, which is the king.
But what are those cases that admit no doubt? I know but very
few, and those are such as his Lordship was not much
acquainted with.
J. D. But it is not worthy of my labour, nor any part of my
intention, to pursue every shadow of a question which he
springeth. It shall suffice to gather a posy of flowers (or rather a
bundle of weeds) out of his writings, and present them to the
reader, who will easily distinguish them from healthful plants by
the rankness of their smell. Such are these which follow.
T. H. As for the following posy of flowers, there wants no more
to make them sweet, than to wipe off the venom blown upon
some of them by his Lordship’s breath.
J. D. 1. To be delighted in the imagination only of being
possessed of another man’s goods, servants, or wife, without
any intention to take them from him by force or fraud, is no
breach of the law which saith: Thou shalt not covet.
T. H. What man was there ever, whose imagination of anything
he thought would please him, was not some delight? Or what sin
is there, where there is not so much as an intention to do
injustice? But his Lordship would not distinguish between delight
and purpose, nor between a wish and a will. This was venom. I
believe that his Lordship himself, even before he was married,
took some delight in the thought of it, and yet the woman then
was not his own. All love is delight, but all love is not sin.
Without this love of that which is not yet a man’s own, the world
had not been peopled.
J. D. 2. If a man by the terror of present death be compelled
to do a fact against the law, he is totally excused, because no
law can oblige a man to abandon his own preservation; nature
compelleth him to the fact. The like doctrine he hath elsewhere.
When the actor doth anything against the law of nature by the
command of the author, if he be obliged by former covenants to
obey him, not he, but the author breaketh the law of nature.
T. H. The second flower is both sweet and wholesome.
J. D. 3. It is a doctrine repugnant to civil society, that
whatsoever a man does against his conscience, is sin.
T. H. It is plain, that to do what a man thinks in his own
conscience to be sin, is sin; for it is a contempt of the law itself;
and from thence ignorant men, out of an erroneous conscience,
disobey the law, which is pernicious to all government.
J. D. 4. The kingdom of God is not shut but to them that sin,
that is, to them who have not performed due obedience to the
laws of God; nor to them, if they believe the necessary articles
of the Christian faith.
5. We must know that the true acknowledging of sin is
repentance itself.
6. An opinion publicly appointed to be taught cannot be
heresy; nor the sovereign princes that authorized the same,
heretics.
T. H. The fourth, fifth, and sixth smell well. But to say, that the
sovereign prince in England is a heretic, or that an act of
parliament is heretical, stinks abominably; as it was thought
primo Elizabethæ.
J. D. 7. Temporal and spiritual government are but two words
to make men see double, and mistake their lawful sovereign, &c.
There is no other government in this life, neither of state nor
religion, but temporal.
8. It is manifest, that they, who permit a contrary doctrine to
that which themselves believe and think necessary (to salvation),
do against their consciences, and will, as much as in them lieth,
the eternal destruction of their subjects.
T. H. The seventh and eighth are roses and jessamine. But his
leaving out the words (to salvation) was venom.
J. D. 9. Subjects sin if they do not worship God according to
the laws of the commonwealth.
T. H. The ninth he hath poisoned, and made it not mine. He
quotes my book De Cive, cap. XV. 19, where I say, regnante Deo
per solam rationem naturalem, that is, before the Scripture was
given, they sinned that refused to worship God, according to the
rites and ceremonies of the country; which hath no ill scent, but
to undutiful subjects.
J. D. 10. To believe in Jesus (in Jesum), is the same as to
believe that Jesus is Christ.
T. H. And so it is always in the Scripture.
J. D. 11. There can be no contradiction between the laws of
God, and the laws of a Christian commonwealth. Yet, we see
Christian commonwealths daily contradict one another.
T. H. The eleventh is also good. But his Lordship’s instance,
that Christian commonwealths contradict one another, has
nothing to do here. Their laws do indeed contradict one another,
but contradict not the law of God. For God commands their
subjects to obey them in all things, and his Lordship himself
confesseth that their laws, though erroneous, bind the
conscience. But Christian commonwealths would seldom
contradict one another, if they made no doctrine law, but such as
were necessary to salvation.
J. D. 12. No man giveth but with intention of some good to
himself. Of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own
good. Moses, St. Paul, and the Decii were not of his mind.
T. H. That which his Lordship adds to the twelfth, namely, that
Moses, St. Paul, and the Decii were not of my mind, is false. For
the two former did what they did for a good to themselves,
which was eternal life; and the Decii for a good fame after
death. And his Lordship also, if he had believed there is an
eternal happiness to come, or thought a good fame after death
to be anything worth, would have directed all his actions towards
them, and have despised the wealth and titles of the present
world.
J. D. 13. There is no natural knowledge of man’s estate after
death, much less of reward which is then to be given to breach
of faith, but only a belief grounded upon other men’s saying,
that they know it supernaturally, or that they know those that
knew them that knew others that knew it supernaturally.
T. H. The thirteenth is good and fresh.
J. D. 14. David’s killing of Uriah was no injury to Uriah;
because the right to do what he pleased, was given him by Uriah
himself.
T. H. David himself makes this good, in saying, to thee only
have I sinned.
J. D. 15. To whom it belongeth to determine controversies
which may arise from the divers interpretations of Scripture, he
hath an imperial power over all men, which acknowledge the
Scripture to be the word of God.
16. What is theft, what is murder, what is adultery, and
universally what is an injury, is known by the civil law, that is, by
the commands of the sovereign.
T. H. For the fifteenth, he should have disputed it with the
head of the church. And as to the sixteenth, I would have asked
him by what other law his Lordship would have it determined
what is theft, or what is injury, than by the laws made in
parliament, or by the laws which distinguish between meum and
tuum? His Lordship’s ignorance smells rankly ('tis his own phrase
in this and many other places, which I have let pass) of his own
interest. The King tells us what is sin, in that he tells us what is
law. He hath authorized the clergy to dehort the people from sin,
and to exhort them, by good motives both from Scripture and
reason, to obey the laws; and supposeth them (though under
forty years old), by the help they have in the university, able, in
case the law be not written, to teach the people, old and young,
what they ought to follow in doubtful cases of conscience; that is
to say, they are authorized to expound the laws of nature; but
not so as to make it a doubtful case, whether the King’s laws be
to be obeyed or not. All they ought to do, is from the King’s
authority. And therefore this my doctrine is no weed.
J. D. 17. He admitteth incestuous copulations of the heathens,
according to their heathenish laws, to have been lawful
marriages. Though the Scripture teach us (Levit. xviii. 28)
expressly, that for those abominations the land of Canaan spued
out her inhabitants.
T. H. The seventeenth he hath corrupted with a false
interpretation of the text. For in that chapter, from the beginning
to verse twenty, are forbidden marriages in certain degrees of
kindred. From verse twenty, which begins with Moreover, to the
twenty-eighth, are forbidden sacrificing of children to Moloch,
and profaning of God’s name, and buggery with man and beast,
with this cause expressed, (For all these abominations have the
men of the land done which were before you, and the land is
defiled,) that the land spue not you out also. As for marriages
within the degrees prohibited, they are not referred to the
abominations of the heathen. Besides, for some time after
Adam, such marriages were necessary.
J. D. 18. I say that no other article of faith besides this, that
Jesus is Christ, is necessary to a Christian man for salvation.
19. Because Christ’s kingdom is not of this world, therefore
neither can his ministers, unless they be kings, require
obedience in his name. They have no right of commanding, no
power to make laws.
T. H. These two smell comfortably, and of Scripture. The
contrary doctrine smells of ambition and encroachment of
jurisdiction, or rump of the Roman tyranny.
J. D. 20. I pass by his errors about oaths, about vows, about
the resurrection, about the kingdom of Christ, about the power
of the keys, binding, loosing, excommunication, &c., his ignorant
mistakes of meritum congrui and condigni, active and passive
obedience, and many more, for fear of being tedious to the
reader.
T. H. The terms of School divinity, of which number are
meritum congrui, meritum condigni, and passive obedience, are
so obscure, as no man living can tell what they mean; so that
they that use them may admit or deny their meaning, as it shall
serve their turns. I said not that this was their meaning, but that
I thought it was so. For no man living can tell what a Schoolman
means by his words. Therefore I expounded them according to
their true signification. Merit ex condigno, is when a thing is
deserved by pact; as when I say the labourer is worthy of his
hire, I mean meritum ex condigno. But when a man of his own
grace throweth money among the people, with an intention that
what part soever of it any of them could catch he should have,
he that catcheth merits it, not by pact, nor by precedent merit,
as a labourer, but because it was congruent to the purpose of
him that cast it amongst them. In all other meaning these words
are but jargon, which his Lordship had learnt by rote. Also
passive obedience signifies nothing, except it may be called
passive obedience when a man refraineth himself from doing
what the law hath forbidden. For in his Lordship’s sense, the
thief that is hanged for stealing, hath fulfilled the law; which I
think is absurd.
J. D. His whole works are a heap of mis-shapen errors, and
absurd paradoxes, vented with the confidence of a juggler, the
brags of a mountebank, and the authority of some Pythagoras,
or third Cato, lately dropped down from heaven.
Thus we have seen how the Hobbian principles do destroy the
existence, the simplicity, the ubiquity, the eternity, and
infiniteness of God, the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, the
hypostatical union, the kingly, sacerdotal, and prophetical office
of Christ, the being and operation of the Holy Ghost, heaven,
hell, angels, devils, the immortality of the soul, the Catholic and
all national churches; the holy Scriptures, holy orders, the holy
sacraments, the whole frame of religion, and the worship of
God; the laws of nature, the reality of goodness, justice, piety,
honesty, conscience, and all that is sacred. If his disciples have
such an implicit faith, that they can digest all these things, they
may feed with ostriches.
T. H. He here concludes his first chapter with bitter
reproaches, to leave in his reader, as he thought, a sting;
supposing perhaps that he will read nothing but the beginning
and end of his book, as is the custom of many men. But to make
him lose that petty piece of cunning, I must desire of the reader
one of these two things. Either that he would read with it the
places of my Leviathan which he cites, and see not only how he
answers my arguments, but also what the arguments are which
he produceth against them; or else, that he would forbear to
condemn me, so much as in his thought: for otherwise he is
unjust. The name of Bishop is of great authority; but these
words are not the words of a bishop, but of a passionate
Schoolman, too fierce and unseemly in any man whatsoever.
Besides, they are untrue. Who that knows me, will say that I
have the confidence of a juggler, or that I use to brag of
anything, much less that I play the mountebank? What my
works are, he was no fit judge. But now he has provoked me, I
will say thus much of them, that neither he, (if he had lived), nor
I, if I would, could extinguish the light which is set up in the
world by the greatest part of them: and for these doctrines
which he impugneth, I have few opposers, but such whose
profit, or whose fame in learning is concerned in them. He
accuses me first of destroying the existence of God; that is to
say, he would make the world believe I were an atheist. But
upon what ground? Because I say, that God is a spirit, but
corporeal. But to say that, is allowed me by St. Paul, that says (1
Cor. xv. 44): There is a spiritual body, and there is an animal
body. He that holds there is a God, and that God is really
somewhat, (for body is doubtlessly a real substance), is as far
from being an atheist, as it is possible to be. But he that says
God is an incorporeal substance, no man can be sure whether he
be an atheist or not. For no man living can tell whether there be
any substance at all, that is not also corporeal. For neither the
word incorporeal, nor immaterial, nor any word equivalent to it,
is to be found in Scripture, or in reason. But on the contrary, that
the Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ, is found in Colos. ii. 9;
and Tertullian maintains that God is either a corporeal substance
or nothing. Nor was he ever condemned for it by the church. For
why? Not only Tertullian, but all the learned, call body, not only
that which one can see, but also whatsoever has magnitude, or
that is somewhere; for they had greater reverence for the divine
substance, than that they durst think it had no magnitude, or
was nowhere. But they that hold God to be a phantasm, as did
the exorcists in the Church of Rome, that is, such a thing as
were at that time thought to be the sprights, that were said to
walk in churchyards and to be the souls of men buried, do
absolutely make God to be nothing at all. But how? Were they
atheists? No. For though by ignorance of the consequence they
said that which was equivalent to atheism, yet in their hearts
they thought God a substance, and would also, if they had
known what substance and what corporeal meant, have said he
was a corporeal substance. So that this atheism by consequence
is a very easy thing to be fallen into, even by the most godly
men of the church. He also that says that God is wholly here,
and wholly there, and wholly every where, destroys by
consequence the unity of God, and the infiniteness of God, and
the simplicity of God. And this the Schoolmen do, and are
therefore atheists by consequence, and yet they do not all say in
their hearts that there is no God. So also his Lordship by
exempting the will of man from being subject to the necessity of
God’s will or decree, denies by consequence the Divine
prescience, which also will amount to atheism by consequence.
But out of this, that God is a spirit corporeal and infinitely pure,
there can no unworthy or dishonourable consequence be drawn.
Thus far to his Lordships first chapter, in justification of my
Leviathan as to matter of religion; and especially to wipe off that
unjust slander cast upon me by the Bishop of Derry. As for the
second chapter, which concerns my civil doctrines, since my
errors there, if there be any, will not tend very much to my
disgrace, I will not take the pains to answer it.
Whereas his Lordship has talked in his discourse here and
there ignorantly of heresy, and some others have not doubted to
say publicly, that there be many heresies in my Leviathan; I will
add hereunto, for a general answer, an historical relation
concerning the word Heresy, from the first use of it amongst the
Grecians till this present time.
 AN
HISTORICAL NARRATION
CONCERNING
HERESY,

AND

THE PUNISHMENT THEREOF.

“Nam veluti pueri trepidant, atque omnia cæcis

In tenebris metuunt: sic nos in luce timemus
Interdum, nihilo quæ sunt metuenda magis, quam
Quæ pueri in tenebris pavitant, finguntque futura.”
Lucretius, Lib. II. 54-57.

HÆRESEɷS LARVAS, SECTARUM IMMANIA MONSTRA

HOBBIUS INVICTO DISPULIT INGENIO.

CONCERNING HERESY,
AND

THE PUNISHMENT THEREOF.

The word heresy is Greek, and signifies a taking of any thing,
and particularly the taking of an opinion. After the study of
philosophy began in Greece, and the philosophers, disagreeing
amongst themselves, had started many questions, not only
about things natural, but also moral and civil; because every
man took what opinion he pleased, each several opinion was
called a heresy; which signified no more than a private opinion,
without reference to truth or falsehood. The beginners of these
heresies were chiefly Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus,
Zeno; men, who as they held many errors, so also found they
out many true and useful doctrines, in all kinds of learning: and
for that cause were well esteemed of by the greatest personages
of their own times; and so also were some few of their followers.
But the rest, ignorant men, and very often needy knaves,
having learned by heart the opinions of these admired
philosophers, and pretending to take after them, made use
thereof to get their living by the teaching of rich men’s children
that happened to be in love with those great names: though by
their impertinent discourse, sordid and ridiculous manners, they
were generally despised, of what sect or heresy soever; whether
they were Pythagoreans; or Academics, followers of Plato; or
Peripatetics, followers of Aristotle; Epicureans; or Stoics,
followers of Zeno. For these were the names of heresies, or, as
the Latins call them, sects, a sequendo, so much talked of from
after the time of Alexander till this present day, and that have
perpetually troubled or deceived the people with whom they
lived, and were never more numerous than in the time of the
primitive church.
The heresy of Aristotle, by the revolutions of time, has had the
good fortune to be predominant over the rest. However,
originally the name of heresy was no disgrace, nor the word
heretic at all in use: though the several sects, especially the
Epicureans and the Stoics, hated one another; and the Stoics,
being the fiercer men, used to revile those that differed from
them, with the most despiteful words they could invent.
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