Walbank F.W., Astin A.E., Frederiksen M.W., Ogilvie R.M. The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 7, Part 1: The Hellenistic World
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CHAPTER
8
CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC
FEATURES
OF
THE HELLENISTIC WORLD*
J. K. DAVIES
I. SOURCES AND APPROACHES
Four documents may serve as a framework for this chapter. The first is a
much-discussed papyrus of the mid third century B.C., P. Lille 29, now
generally agreed
to
be part
of
the municipal lawcode
of
Naucratis
or
Ptolemais.
1
In the surviving fragment, §1 concerns the procedure to be
followed
if a
slave
is
prosecuted
'as if a
free man'.
If
convicted
his
master may appeal, and if
he
loses the appeal, 'execution of penalty is to
be carried out according
to
the laws about slaves except insofar as the
royal ordinance forbids'.
§3
specifies that 'slaves
too may
give
evidence', and that they may be tortured 'unless (the judges) can judge
from the pleadings deposited'. §4 lays down procedures when a master
is or is not found responsible for a delict committed by his slave. In one
eventuality the slave is to be whipped at least one hundred strokes, to be
branded on the forehead 'as the royal ordinances enjoin', and to be sold
abroad: though
§2, in
apparent contradiction, forbids
the
export,
whipping, and branding
of
slaves (but a qualification may be lost
in a
lacuna). These laws, like those of Alexandria (P. Hal. 1), do not merely
reveal once again how 'there was no action
or
belief or institution
in
Graeco-Roman antiquity that was not one way or other affected by the
possibility that someone involved
might be
a slave'.
2
They also illustrate
the complex relationship, attested in all the monarchies, between royal
and civic law; the extent to which Greek-style slavery was taking root in
Egypt, at least in the three
poleis
(less so,
it
appears,
in
the countryside
{chord)
3
);
the debt which they owe, in dialect and content,
to
Athenian
style;
and the ambivalence, even clearer here than in classical Athenian
* Adequately to survey so broad a
field
within the confines of one chapter is beyond the capacity
of its author.
I
have tried instead
to do
two things: (a)
to
broach the theoretical problems
of
methods, approaches, and boundaries, and (b) to sketch the main topics, with their source materials
and references
to
pertinent scholarly work.
For the
subject matter
of
the chapter
as a
whole
Rostovtzeff
1953:
(A
j
2)
is still fundamental, with valuable supplements and
appiortiamenti
in Will
el
at. 1975: (A 68), Bianchi Bandinclli 1977: (H I I) and Preaux 1978:
(A
48).
1
Republished as Mitteis, Chr. 369: (F
9a)
= Meyer 1920, 243 no. 71: (H 142). Discussion and
bibliography
in
Biezunska-Matowist 1974, 122!?.: (F 209).
2
Finley 1980, 6j: (H 64).
3
Biezuriska-Malowist 1974,
m nn.
13—14: (F 209).
2
57
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
258 8 CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FEATURES
law, between slave as object of rights and slave as intermittent subject of
rights.
The second document
is a
statue base from Sidon recording,
in a
dedication
and a
twelve-line Greek elegiac poem,
the
victory
of
Diotimus
son of
Dionysius
in the
chariot race
at
Nemea.
His
victory,
c.
zoo,
was
claimed
to be the
first
by a
Sidonian.
4
His
name
and
patronymic are Greek, as are the title
of
his
civic office,
dikastes
('judge'),
and
the
phrase
Eihtov'iuiv r]
TT'OXIS
('city
of the
Sidonians'), while
the
poem invokes the
old
legend that Sidon was the mother city
of
Thebes.
Yet
he
was presumably
not
ethnically Greek,
and his
title
is a
caique
of
Aramaic
sufet.
Since other third-century documents reveal
an
extreme
sensitivity
to the
Greek/non-Greek boundary, Diotimus' invocation
of
Cadmus
may
have been
no
mere poetic decoration
but an
essential
cultural passport.
5
Yet Romans with no better mythic claim to be Greeks
were admitted
to the
Isthmia
of 228, and
were even diplomatically
allowed
to
win;
6
youths from Byblus
and
Sidon
won
contests
at the
Apollonia
on
Delos
as
early
as
c.
270;
7
and by the 180s
Tyrian
and
Sidonian corn-merchants with Greek names were getting proxeny-
status from Oropus
(ISE
64). Diotimus' victory,
and the way it was
recorded,
was
part
of a
complex network
of
cultural transformation
which
saw all the
hitherto distinct civilizations
of the
Mediterranean
littoral reach
out to
master
and
absorb
at
least some aspect
of
Greek
culture
or to
present themselves
in
Greek dress
to an
increasingly
hellenophone international audience
—
a
movement which Greeks
themselves welcomed complacently and enveloped within the matrix
of
a living
and
still fertile mythology.
The third document, brief enough
to be
quoted
in
full, is a letter sent
c. 185—175
B.C.
by a
Cretan town
to the
Aetolian government.
8
The marshals
and the
city
of the
Axians send greetings
to the
[synedroi]
and
the
general
and the
cavalry-general
of the
Aetolians.
You
know
Eraton our fellow-citizen,
who
sailed off on
a
military service to
Cyprus,
took
a
wife and had two sons, Epicles and Euagoras.
It
chanced that, Eraton having
died in Cyprus, Epicles and their mother were taken prisoner and Epicles was
sold
at
Amphissa. Epicles paid
off
the ransom money and lives among you
in
Amphissa.
He is a
fellow-citizen
of
ours,
as are his
children Erasiphon
and
Timonax
and his
daughter Melita.
You
will therefore
act
honourably
by
considering how,
if
anyone injures them,
he
may
be
prevented
by you
(from
4
Moretti 1953, no.
41:
(B
1
io)
=
Austin
121, with Bikerman 1939: (B
JO).
5
See n.
329.
The
logos
of
Hdt. vm. 137-9
on
'he
Argead kings
of
Macedon
had an
identical
function
(cf. Hdt.
v.22).
6
Polyb.
11.12.8;
Zonaras
vm.19.
For the
logoi
legitimating Roman kinship with Greeks
see
Momigliano
1975,
1
3S"-:
(A
40), and for other Hellenizing mythic pedigrees see Bikerman
1939,95:
(B
50).
7
/Cxi.2,
203
A68.
«
S1G
&ZIB
=
IC
n.v.19*.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SOURCES
AND
APPROACHES
259
doing
so)
both publicly
and
privately:
and how the
record
of
common
citizenship
may
endure
for
ever.
Inscribed
at
Delphi together with
a
formal acknowledgement
by the
Aetolians,
9
the
letter throws
a
harsh light
on
contemporary social
conditions
—
on
the
need
for
Cretans
to
seek employment as mercenaries
elsewhere;
on the
dangers
of
piracy
and the
slave trade (though
ironically enough
a
Cretan
is
the victim here rather than, as more usually,
a perpetrator);
on
the erosion of citizenship boundaries and the new kind
of interstate relationship commonly denoted
by the
word
isopoliteia;
and
on
the
need
for
protection
and the
forms
it
took.
The fourth document
is
from Phrygia,
a
decree
of
Apamea-on-the-
Maeander
10
which
may
date from
the
Galatian
War of
160—166.
11
It
honours
a
citizen, Cephisodorus
son of
Ariston,
who,
already
com-
plimented
in
previous decrees,
had
recently,
as
gymnasiarch, been
honoured by the young men and had erected statues
of
King Eumenes
II
and
of his
brother, later King Attalus
II.
More recently still,
if the
restorations
are
correct,
he had
dedicated 3,000 drachmas
on
behalf
of
the king
on an
occasion when corn supply
to
soldiers
was in
question,
and was now giving a further sum
of
money
the
income
of
which was
to
provide
for an
annual assembly
of the
ephebes
and
boys during
the
festivals
of
Hermes
and
Heracles.
The
document reflects much which
is
specifically Hellenistic:
the
dominant role
of the
wealthy citizen
in
running
and
financing
his
city's activities;
the
pivotal position
of the
prominent citizen
who is
also
a
courtier;
the
inter-penetration between
city finance
and
royal finance;
the
practice,
by now
widespread,
of
creating foundations
to
yield
a
steady income
for
cult
or
charitable
purposes; and the importance which the gymnasium had come
to
have as
the 'identifying institution
of
Greek culture' especially
in
colonial areas
such
as
inland Asia Minor.
Polybius
and the
poets apart,
and
especially
for the
social
and
economic
historian,
the
Hellenistic world
is a
world
of
documents such
as
these.
To decrees
of
individual cities, diplomatic correspondence, lawcodes
and regulations,
and
dedications
we may add
statue bases, decrees
of
religious, local,
or
semi-autonomous bodies, lists
of
office-holders
or of
victors
in
athletic
and
musical festivals, accounts
of
administrative
boards,
and
manumission-records
as
well
as the
ubiquitous inscribed
gravestones.
The
Greek
and
demotic material from Egypt adds
petitions, private letters, contracts, bureaucratic records
and mem-
oranda, certificates
and
land surveys
as
well
as the
evidence
for the
9
SIC
6
2
2A
= /C
IX
2
.1.1 78.
10
Buckler 1935, 71 no. 1:
(B
',i) =
Monumtnta
Asiae Minoris Antiqua
vi.ii>>,
w
'th Bull.
epig.
1939,
400,
and Hull. epig. 1961, 685.
11
Robert,
Hellenica
xi -xn (i960), 124 n. 6.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2<3O
8 CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FEATURES
literature in vogue, old or new. In this and other respects Hellenistic
documentation contrasts with that of the classical period. That most of
the documentation of the classical period emanates from Athens is not
an accident of survival but an index of Athens' untypical obsession with
making the records
of
government accessible.
In
contrast, the docu-
ments of the third and second centuries are spread geographically much
more widely and evenly. The bulk of it comes from Egypt, the Aegean,
Delphi, Asia Minor, and Crete, but the rest
of
mainland Greece, the
Black Sea and the Levant are well represented, with a scatter of evidence
from further east, though Sicily and Greek Italy remained epigraphic
deserts. As we have it, this material largely correlates with the spread and
distribution of Greek
poleis,
but that is not true for Egypt, and the kinds
of ephemeral public and private documentation preserved there will
certainly not have been unique to Egypt. Elsewhere, of course,
it
was
only documents inscribed on stone which survived, created in emulation
of the Athenian mania for publicity and reflecting the general though
unsystematic establishment
of
civic and local archives.
12
Such material presents acute difficulties of concept and method. First
and least, most documents are trivial as individual items of information.
They begin
to
yield their full potential
as
evidence only when
comparable documents
are
placed
in
sequence
or
viewed
in the
aggregate. True, much work of this kind has been done. One may cite,
for example, studies
of
charitable foundations,
of
the rise and fall
of
commodity prices, of royal letters, of Athenian prytany decrees, of laws
on land-distribution and debt, of decrees of
isopoliteia
and many others,
13
but large and crippling gaps still remain, e.g. in the study of liturgies and
voluntary gifts
{epidoseis),
of amphora-handles as evidence of the
flow
of
goods, or of emigration from Greece as a whole to the new territories.
14
Yet, and secondly, such studies carry the danger
of
interpreting
society through the particular category of document under discussion.
Even
in
the aggregate, they can feed the dangerous assumption that
existing evidence can
be
used inductively and positivistically
as
the
building-blocks of
an
interpretation of
a
whole area and epoch. The fact
is that there need be no correlation whatever between what is recorded
and what
is
structurally important
—
a proposition illustrated for this
period by the absence of population figures, or by the debate between
Wilhelm, Klaffenbach, and others over the actual importance and utility
to the recipients
of
the endless recorded grants
of
proxeny.
15
Those
12
Klaffenbach i960: (B 98).
13
For foundations seen. 387; for prices Glotz
I9I6:(H
80) (Delos)and Heichelheim 1930: (H91),
with Heichelheim 1935,
8j6ff.:
(H 92) (corn-prices). Other topics: Welles 1934 (RQ; Dow 1937 (2):
(H
49); Asheri 1966 and 1969: (H 4-5; Gawantka 1975: (H 76).
14
Cf. the comments
of
RostovtzefF 1953, in. 1463
n.
22: (A 52), and Schneider 1967, 1.130 n.
2:
(A
56).
is s
ee n
J
24J
below.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SOURCES
AND
APPROACHES
26 I
whose concern (as in this chapter) is with an overall large-scale
description of society have to seek a framework for themselves and to
justify it.
Here a third difficulty arises, stemming from the fact that cultural
historians such as Kaerst and Schneider
16
tend to see things differently
from social and economic historians. This is not just because their
primary source material is literary and physical
—
the poets and
geographers, Athenaeus, and the direct and doxographical tradition of
post-Aristotelian philosophy, or the surviving luxury or everyday items
of household or personal adornment, mosaics, statuary, coinage as an art
form, and the remains of houses, sanctuaries, and city walls. It derives
rather from the twin desires to see literary evidence as the mirror of
reality and to see the influence of literature and the history of ideas as
actively moulding the development of society. Yet such desires are
perilous. Granted, social historians would be much the poorer without
access to Theocritus xv (the
Adonia^ousai)
or the more lurid pieces of
Herondas, but questions of author's purpose (and obsessions), of
literary convention, and of the requirements of patronage must play at
least as much part in evaluating Hellenistic poetry for a historian's
purposes as they do in evaluating the artistic creations of any age.
17
Specific to our period, furthermore, is a preoccupation with social
extremes. The escapist fantasy involved can be obvious: few will
suppose that Theocritus iv—vi accurately reflect the living conditions or
cultural level of the goatherds of Magna Graecia. Elsewhere the fantasy
can be a subtle trap, illustrated all too well at the other end of the social
scale by the catastrophically misguided way in which Rostovtzeff used
the evidence of the size of dowries in Menander without qualms in his
sketch of
the
early third-century Athenian bourgeoisie. It has needed the
evidence for the median size of dotal
apotimemata
(property mort-
gaged as security) attested on the
horoi
(markers) to bring reality back
into the description.
18
The assumption that literature and the history of ideas are active
forces exemplifies
a
fourth difficulty. A sketch such as this chapter has to
choose and to reflect in its structure certain assumptions about the lines
of force in society, but cannot discuss them au
fond,
while the general
interpretative formulae currently available both cover an unconvinc-
ingly wide spectrum and are individually vulnerable. One may instance
the classic Marxist view of the Hellenistic period as a specific phase in the
18
Kaerst 1916-7: (A 28); Schneider 1967-9: (A 56).
17
Cf. for example the analysis (essential for its understanding) of Theocritus xvn as encomium
byMeincke 196),
85—164:
(H
139),
and Cairns 1972,
iooff.:
(H
32),
against Gov/ad/oc. or the verdicts
quoted by Meincke 196;, 144 n. 3: (H 139).
18
Rostovtzeff 1953,
1.163ff.:
(A 52); Finley 1952,
79-81:
(H 59).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
262 8 CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FEATURES
linear development of a slave-exploiting society, hindered from progres-
sing further
by its
inherent contradictions;
19
or
Tcherikover's view
of
it
as
a
period
of
revolution 'which
all
over
the
world broke
up the
fixed
framework of
tribe,
polis,
and family,
and put in
their place the will
of
the
strong individual';
20
or,
implicit
or
explicit
in
Rostovtzeff's great
treatise, notions
of
competition between slave
and
free,
21
of
two-way
interactions between Greek ambitions
and 'the
solid mass
of
Oriental-
ism'
(p.
133),
of a
Mediterranean-wide market,
of
price/demand
fluctuations, of mercantilist governments (e.g. p.
45 5),
and
of'the unity
and homogeneity
of
the
Hellenistic world from
the
point
of
view
of
civilization
and
mode
of
life'
(p.
1040). Even with respect
to
specific
institutions
the
interpretative gulf can
be
unmanageably wide.
One may
cite
the
widespread system of
paramone,
whereby
a
formally freed slave
was contractually bound
to
remain
in the
service
of
his/her ex-owner
until
a
fixed period
had
elapsed, until
the
ex-owner(s)
had
died,
or
until
other specified conditions were fulfilled.
The
system
is
well attested
in
over 1,000 manumission documents at Delphi from
201 B.C.
onwards,
22
as
well
as
in
others from elsewhere
in
central Greece,
the
Aegean,
and
further afield.
It
is
disputed whether
the
(common
but not
universal)
participation
of
a god in the
manumission-transaction
was
a
recently
developed additional sanction
23
or
reflects older practices
of
bierodouleia
(temple-slavery)
and
asylia
(asylum);
24
whether
the
participation
of
the
state
in
the
transaction,
as in
Thessaly
and
at
Oeniadae
(IG
ix
2
.1.2.419,
11.
iff.), stems purely from reasons
of
publicity
and
fiscal
interest,
or
has
deeper roots;
25
whether
theparamone-system
was purely Greek
in
form
26
and represented
a
formalization
of
older Greek customs,
27
or
whether
it
was adopted
and
adapted from Near Eastern practice;
28
whether
the
publication
of
theparawone-document
was intended
to
attest
and
protect
the ex-slave's 'free' status
or to
ensure
his
performance
of
the
duties
specified;
and
whether
the
system reflected
the
period's greater
humanity
and
leniency
in the
treatment
of
slaves
29
or
rather
the
desire
of
owners
to
recapitalize
the
values
of
older slaves
so as to
replace them
by
younger ones.
30
In
the
face
of
such deep diversities
of
view about these
19
Ranowitsch 1958: (H
180).
20
Tcherikover
1959, 159: (A 61).
21
Rostovtzeff 1953:
(A 52);
but
see now
Finley
1980, ch.
2:
(H 64).
22
In
general Radle 1969,
I4off.:
(H 178),
and
Roscoe
and
Hopkins
in
Hopkins
1978,
133—71: (A
24),
who cite the extensive previous bibliography. List of documents in Bomer i960, 29 n. 7:
(H
21).
23
Bdmer i960,
11: (H
21).
24
Cameron 1939:
(B 58);
Sokolowski 1955:
(H 216).
25
Thessaly: Babakos
1966,
H)ff.:
(H
7).
26
Robert
1936:
(B
138).
« Radle
1969, j6ff.: (H 178).
28
Koschaker 1931: (H 115); Schonbauer 1937: (H 204); Mendelsohn 1949:
(H
140); Samuel
1965:
(H
196).
a
Westermann 1955,40:
(H 240).
30
Roscoe
and
Hopkins
in
Hopkins
1978 (A
24).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SOURCES
AND
APPROACHES
263
and other phenomena, prudence requires that they should not be used as
the basis of
any
interpretative superstructure. Yet that is
to
preclude any
kind
of
creative understanding.
There remains
a
fifth difficulty,
at
once
the
most basic
and
most
intractable, that of defining the
field
of enquiry. The Hellenistic World
is
normally taken
to
denote areas where
the
language
of
government
and
literature is Greek, where the personnel of government, the leisure class,
and
the
clerisy
is
largely Greek
or
assimilated Greek, where there
is
interchange
of
Greek-style goods
and
perhaps their production as well,
and where forms
of
buildings (towns, houses, temples, palaces)
and
artistic production (sculpture, reliefs, jewellery, plate,
etc.) are
clearly
linked with Greek models
and
styles and belong
to
the international
to-
and-fro
of
ideas
and representations. That is too one-sided. What we are
following
is a
process
of
colonial expansion
and
settlement, wherein
Greek culture
and
institutions spread outwards
—
or are
encouraged
or
imposed
by
Greek-orientated governments
—
in
patterns which change
through time, yield markedly different consequences from one region
to
another,
or in
town
as
against country,
or
within
the
leisure class
as
against the peasantry, and tend
to
impinge first at the top
of
society.
One
has only
to
think
of the
very limited hellenization
of the
kingdom
of
Meroe,
31
initiated
by the
third-century King Ergamenes,
or,
clearest
of
all,
the
complex reaction
to
aristocratic hellenizers
in
Palestine after
180
B.C. Most historiography, ancient
and
modern,
has
accordingly
con-
centrated
on the
Greek component
in the
interaction
of
cultural
influences
in
the period and area. That attitude is made all the easier since
non-Greek literary productions
—
demotic Egyptian texts
and
inscrip-
tions,
Phoenician inscriptions, neo-Babylonian cuneiform texts,
Hebrew and Aramaic texts outside the Bible such as
the
Talmud and
the
Mishnah
-
are much less accessible than the Greek. When
no
such texts
are available it can even be hard
to
acknowledge that
a
culture exists at all
in
any but the
anthropological sense.
Yet it
hardly needs pointing
out
that such
an
intellectual framework
is
basically colonialist.
It
under-
values
the
non-Greek cultures
and
cultural components, often enough
by lumping them together in an undefined category
of'
Orientalism'.
(It
is probably
no
accident that
the
notion 'Hellenistic'
is not
conveyed
by
any word
in
contemporary Greek and
is a
specifically nineteenth-century
invention).
32
By
concentrating
on the
common element,
it
also
pre-
judges questions
of
the
unity
of
Hellenistic society,
to
which, as we shall
see,
much more complex
and
nuanced answers need
to be
offered.
31
For which see Shinnie 1967: (H 213); Schneider 1967, 1.587 n. 1 (references): (A 56); Fraser
1972,
11.295 n. 333: (A 15), and Hintze 1978: (H IOI).
32
Momigliano 1935: (H 145); Preaux 1965: (H 175); Bravo 1968: (H 26); Momigliano 1970:
(H
146).
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264
8
CULTURAL, SOCIAL
AND
ECONOMIC FEATURES
The essential will therefore be to beg as few questions as possible.
What follows
is
organized under three broad headings: (1) economic
activities and interactions (§§11—v), (2) the role of the kings in creating
the parameters of society ( §vi), and (3) the transformation of the
po/is as
a focus of social life ( §VII-VIII). Throughout, the emphasis will be not
so much on the delineation of broad patterns as on the co-existence and
interaction
—
close
or
loose, spasmodic
or
continuous
—
of
a
large
number
of
layers
or
loci
of
action. That this will yield
a
picture
of
incoherence and contradiction will simply
be
a
fact about
a
plural
society, wherein
the
members
of a
single political entity show
fundamental differences and discontinuities in institutions, culture, and
social structure, lack
a
common social will, and owe their political
juxtaposition
to
the influence
of
external factors, imprimis
to
power
wielded from the outside.
33
II.
DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS
The most basic demographic facts are unknown, for no reliable picture
can be drawn of population figures in most areas, or of changes in them.
The only exception
is
Egypt, for which Diodorus (1.31.7) reports
a
population of about 7 million 'in antiquity'
(TO
ndXaiov, by which he
probably means
the
early Ptolemaic period).
His
figure
for the
population in his own day is 'not less than 300 myriads [i.e.
3
million]',
but since he also reports the
'
free' population of Alexandria-by-Egypt in
his own day as 'over 300,000' (xvii.52.6), and since Josephus gives
a
figure of 7,500,000
for
Egypt excluding Alexandria (BJ 11.385),
it is
usually assumed that Diodorus' anomalous figure
of
3
million
is
mistaken or corrupt,
34
and that the
laos
(the tied peasantry) continued to
comprise
at
least
7
million. Diodorus' figures stem from the 'sacred
registers' and therefore have some authority. Figures
for
the slave
population of Egypt (P.
Harris
61) and of Ptolemaic Palestine (C. Ord.
Vtol.
21—2)
were similarly known to the government, but are not known
to us, so that estimates both for Alexandria and the
chora
vary widely.
Since even
in
the Roman period slaves appear to have comprised no
more than 13% of the total population
35
and at least in the
chora
may well
have been less during the Ptolemaic period,
36
estimates of 400,000 slaves
for Ptolemaic Alexandria are probably too high.
37
33
Thus
M. G.
Smith,
The
Plural Society
in the
British West Indies (Berkeley-London,
1965) and L.
Kuperand
M. G.
Smith, Pluralism
in
Africa (Berkeley-London, 1971), developing
the
ideas
of J. S.
Furnivall, Colonial Policy
and
Practice (London,
1948)
302—12.
34
C(.
Rostovtzeff
1953,
1136-7
and 1605 n.
73-4:
(A 52);
Fraser 1972,11.171
n.
358:
(A IJ).
55
WO
703:
(F
105); Westermann 1955, 88: (H 240). Even lower figures
are
reckoned
in
Karanis
(Westermann
1955,
120-2;
Geremek
1969, 40: (H 77)).
36
Biezuriska-MaJowist
1974,
134ff.,
esp. 140: (F 209).
37
EaJ.
141, against Fraser
1972,
11.171
n.
358: (A IJ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEMS
265
Elsewhere such figures barely existed,
for
the census known
to
have
been taken by Demetrius of Phalerum
for
Attica in
or
soon after
3
17
is
unparalleled,
38
and
of
its figures
of
21,000 (adult male) citizens, 10,000
metics, and 400,000 slaves the last
is
generally disbelieved.
39
At
most,
kings
and
cities
and
governments knew
the
size
of
their available
military manpower,
and
occasionally made lists
of
those available.
40
Otherwise demographic interest arose only
for
fiscal
or
moralizing
motives.
In
consequence, estimates
of
population have
to be
made
on
the basis of indirect indices such as the size of military forces,
41
the size of
excavated towns such
as
Dura
or
Priene,
42
or the
level
of
corn
donations.
43
The frailty
of
them
all is
patent.
Drifts of population are a little clearer. Basic to our period is the fact
that
the
movement
of
ethnic Greeks
and
Macedonians into
the new
kingdoms was substantial enough
to
form
a
cultural determinant
for
centuries. All the same, its scale should not be exaggerated. By the time
of Raphia (217) military colonization
in the
Seleucid empire seems
to
have allowed
a
recruitment potential
of
42,000 heavy-armed infantry,
mostly
of
Macedonian origin,
44
3,000 light-armed infantry
of
Thracian origin,
and
8,000—8,500 cavalry
of
more varied origin.
The
corresponding figure
for
Egypt
at the
same battle was rather lower,
probably
of the
order
of
30,000+ Greeks
and
4,000 Gauls
and
Thracians.
45
Though in assessing that figure it must be remembered that
Egypt had hitherto been able
to
recruit mercenaries without difficulty,
and that
the
boundary between mercenary
and
military settler
was
highly permeable,
yet for
this battle above
all
others
the
Egyptian
regime will have recruited every available Greek before adopting
the
dangerous expedient
of
recruiting 20,000 Egyptians
to the
phalanx
(Polyb. v.65.9).
46
It is true of course that military manpower is only part of the picture.
To these figures we must add those too old to fight (aTro/xaxoi), a trickle
of immigrants
in the
intelligentsia
and the
administration,
and a
38
Ctesicles, FCrH
245
Fi ap.
Athen VI.272C.
39
Ferguson
1911,
54 n. 3:
(D 89);
Gomme
1933, i8ff.: (H 82);
Westermann
1941: (H 236).
40
E.g.
IG
XII.9.241
(Eretria, early third century). Such lists
are to be
distinguished from those
of
particular forces
or
garrisons, mostly recruited from among professionals.
For
a
survey
of
known
lists
see
Launey 1949—50,
i.66ff.:
(j 143).
41
Thus Beloch
1886, 13?.: (H
10).
42
Rostovtzeff
1953,
11.1141:
(A
52).
43
E.g.
those
to
Miletus
by
Eumenes
II, as by
Hiller
von
Gaertringen
1932, 1610: (H
100).
44
This figure excludes
the
2,000 Jewish families sent
as
military colonists
by
Antiochus
III
from
Mesopotamia
and
Babylonia
to
Lydia
and
Phrygia
(Jos.
Ant, jud.
xn.147-52, with Bar-Kochva
1976,
213
n.
8:
(j
136),
and
Cohen
1978,
iff.:
(E
16).
45
Seleucid forces:
see
Bar-Kochva
1976, 39ff.:
(j
136), against
the
much lower estimates
of
Jones
1940,
23: (A 25)
(15,000 plus: Ehrenberg
1969,
149-51:
(A
1
3),
implies
a
low
estimate
but
gives
no
figures) or
the
much higher estimates
of A.
Segre
1934, 267:
(F
320),
and
Edson
1958:
(E 19).
Ptolemaic forces:
see
Walbank
1979,
in.773:
(B 37),
with references.
46
For a contrary view see Ch. 11, pp. 438-9.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
266 8 CULTURAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FEATURES
fluctuating number of mercenaries on short- or long-term contracts (of
whom some might well become military colonists),
as
well
as an
unquantifiable influx of traders, opportunists and general hangers-on.
Some of these latter are the immigrant Greeks and Carians of
the
Zenon
papyri,
47
who will no doubt have had their unrecorded counterparts in
Syria. Others will have come
to
strengthen the original foundations,
such as the men from Magnesia-on-the-Maeander sent on the urging of
Antiochus I to' help in increasing the people of Antioch \
48
Others were
to form a continually growing class of unprivileged 'Greeks' without
citizenship
at
Alexandria, and their presence elsewhere will help
to
account for the huge populations of formerly Seleucid cities recorded
for the Augustan period.
49
Yet mercenaries served only when they could
be paid, served where they were sent, might move from one employer to
another, might move west rather than east and south,
50
and might hope
to be more fortunate than Eraton of Axus (p. 258 above) and to return
home en grand
seigneur
like Stratophanes in Menander's
Sicyonius.
Again, it
is likely that many of the 'Greeks' in Alexandria or Antioch were either
freedmen, whose relocation therefore reflects the activity of the slave
trade rather than voluntary movement from Greece,
or
acculturated
non-Greeks such as Diotimus of Sidon (p. 258 above) may have been.
All in all, the drift of Greeks south and east to the new colonial areas
cannot have represented a mass exodus.
Nor were counter-drifts lacking. The Jewish diaspora into Asia
Minor, Greece, Egypt and Cyrene, Syria and Mesopotamia was
an
important demographic fact, though
it
cannot
yet be
quantified.
51
Equally unquantifiable (though not necessarily insignificant) are anec-
dotal references such as Plutarch's to the four Syrian brothers who were
resident in Corinth in 243
{A.rat.
18.3), or the evidence from Diogenes
Laertius and elsewhere for thepatris of the post-Aristotelian philosophers
who lived and worked in Athens. After 300 few of those he names were
Athenians (Polemon and Crates being exceptions) or mainlanders, fewer
still from the West till the later second century B.C.: most are from the
Aegean, Propontis, or Cyrene, with more and more (especially among
the Stoics) coming from Levantine and even Mesopotamian cities as the
47
Rostovtzeff
19s 3, n.
1073-7:
(A 52),
Fraser
1972, i.67ff.: (A I
J);
Pestman
et a/., 1981: (F 140).
48
OGIS
233
=
Austin
190, 11. 14?.
49
For
Alexandria
cf.
Fraser
1972,1.51:
(A
I 5).
Antioch: Straboxvi.2.5.C7josaysit
had a
slightly
smaller population than that
of
Alexandria
or
Seleuceia-on-the-Tigris, which allegedly
had
a
population
of
600,000
in
Pliny's time (NHvi.122). Apamea
is
said
to
have
had
117,000 citizens
at
the census
of
Sulpicius Quirinius
in
A.D.
6 (1LS
2683).
For
other figures
and
discussion
see
Cumont
1934:
(E 1J5),
Rostovtzeff 1953,1.498-9 with m.1439
n
-
2
7^ (A S*)> and R. P.
Duncan-Jones,
Tie
Economy
of
the
Roman Empire Quantitative Studies (Cambridge,
1974) 260,
n. 4.
50
E.g.
the
Attalid garrison
of
Lilaea
in
Phocis, recruited largely from Asia Minor
(FD
in.4.132—5,
with analysis
by
Launey 1949—50,
1.71
fF.:
(j
143)).
51
Tcherikover
1959,
287(1".:
(A 61).
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