Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great's Empire Read Online Free PDF

cities in whose interests he had claimed to conquer the east, and was riding roughshod over the conditions of the league. The decree was an attempt to address a genuine problem: there were large numbers of rootless men, who threatened disorder all over the Greek world. But it would also ensure that every Greek city had people within it who had reason to be grateful to Alexander personally.
    Alexander was right to anticipate trouble. It was not just the high-handed manner in which he issued the directive, but also the fact that at least two states would be particularly severely affected by the decree. The Aetolians had forcibly taken over Oeniadeae, a portbelonging to their Acarnanian neighbors, expelled its inhabitants, and repopulated it with their own people; the Athenians had done the same with the island of Samos, over thirty years previously. Not only would they have to find some way to accommodate their returning citizens, but they would lose these important gains. When, during the course of his flight, Harpalus arrived in Athens (where he was an honorary citizen), the mood, as a result of the Exiles Decree, was ripe for rebellion, and he immediately offered to finance their war effort.
    Trouble was looming, then, in Greece. In fact, it is possible that one of the reasons for Alexander’s displeasure with Antipater was that, nine months later, he had not yet shown much interest in enforcing the Exiles Decree. Antipater was a hard ruler of Greece, and had preferred to see oligarchic administrations in the Greek cities, backed up where necessary by garrisons. In one sense, then, the Exiles Decree undermined Antipater, since a number of the returning exiles would be precisely men who had been sent into exile by his puppets. One of the tasks Craterus had been given, once he had replaced Antipater, was to ensure the freedom of the Greeks; a strategy of noninterference meant that he would be able to stand on the sidelines and watch as rival factions and feuds tore the cities apart.
    But Greece was likely to be only one trouble spot. Alexander’s despotism also created the conditions for the brutal and divisive warfare that followed his death. By Macedonian tradition, the main check on the absolute power of the king was his entourage of Companions (or “Friends,” as subsequent kings called them), noble or ennobled Macedonians and a few Greeks; Alexander had added a few easterners. They acted as his advisers, and carried out whatever administrative duties were required of them; they served as staff officers in time of war, ambassadors, governors of provinces, representatives at religious festivals, and so on. In other words, they formed the basic structure of the Macedonian state. At the very least, then, one might have expected Alexander to have ensured that his Companions formed a tightly knit and harmonious cabinet. Instead, he sowed dissent.
    One aspect of the problem was that, in acting autocratically, he left his Companions with less responsibility, and was beginning to make flattery rather than friendship the criterion for inclusion in the inner circle of his court. Any given decision would therefore meet with approval from some of the court and disapproval from the rest. The most divisive issue was Alexander’s increasing orientalization. Many, including Craterus, agreed with Cassander and did not think it right that Alexander should demand the humiliating rite of obeisance fromMacedonians and Greeks, even if his eastern subjects were prepared to go along with it. Many more were disturbed by his explicit demand that he should be accorded divine honors.
    Then there was the purge. Of the twenty satraps of the empire, Alexander had just killed six and replaced two more within a few months. Four more conveniently died, of illness or wounds; two more provinces had changes of governor, without our knowing the circumstances. Those who replaced the dead or deposed satraps were often yes-men.
    By the end of the purge, only