What really matters?

Is what matters about history the narration of the events that came before or the interpretation of the events? Are the events themselves, or the historians’ perception thereof, more significant than the analysis of how the causes? Are there historical events with a deeper truth that are more valuable than those without? Is the true value of history the series of stories that may be used to provide solid basis for analytical arguments? How much about history is sequencing and descriptions, and how much is nothing more than an exercise in self-discovery?

Whether consciously or not, these are all questions that must be addressed by a historian at some point or another and even more so by a would-be history teacher. Sciences tend to be about facts, statistics, proofs; history has no such luxury. There is no such thing as truly unbiased source information, be it modern or historical. Historical research is a journey into the human condition, biases and perceptions, as much as it is a journey into the story of what came before. Successive generations of historians seek to surpass their predecessors in point of style or in revealing new inner truths, to paraphrase Livy. Most often these author’s merely bring to light a new or, at most a slightly varied, perspective. Whether this validates the acclaim (or lack thereof), accorded to them is another matter entirely.

This point about perspective can be seen clearly in a brief review of two famous scholars and their work: the late N.G.L. Hammond, and Victor Davis Hanson. In his time, the former was the best known scholar of Macedonian and Illyrian history, concentrating on the time before and after Alexander III (the Great). To read his obituary is to discover a man who threw himself completely into the pursuit of ancient Macedonia. As a senior at Brandeis University, I found myself sputtering at what I wryly derided as the prattling of a dead Englishman. I wanted to throttle, argue and prove him wrong all at once. In time that feeling subsided and I was able to laugh at the presumptiveness of this upstart college student, full of himself and still sophomoric, despite two years’ removal. Later, I found renewed respect for this esteemed scholar, but I was no less convinced that his conclusions were wrong. This is an argument that will never be resolved; he is incapable of providing me with any more counterexamples or clarifying his argument; likewise, I am unable to elucidate my argument to him. However, I am able to use his work and perspective as a foundation for my own analysis.

Victor Davis Hanson is best known for his theory about the Western Way of War, which, simply put, is that “the West” prefers to settle conflicts and disputes with a decisive conflict or battle that is often horrifying. In contrast, “the East” prefers a prolonged conflict with light-armed troops, one that is less likely to provide a decisive victory, but will also prevent catastrophic loss. I would not call his views on this and other matters scripture, but I tend to agree with most of what Professor Hanson argues. In the grand conflict between East and West, as is the setting for the history of Herodotus, scholars may point to other fundamental differences or claim that Hanson’s is nonsensical, but their argument is as indicative of their perspectives as is Hanson’s. Neither One is not more valid than another. Once a perspective exists, the only barometer of validity is the ability to persuade; the ability to persuade resides in argumentation.

Alexander is the perfect example of this challenge of validity. At times it seems as though everyone under the sun has written a book on the greatest and worst of humans, and, invariably, entitled it “Alexander the Great.” Many of these are “whodunits” built around the claim that the author has discovered who really killed Alexander. Two of the more recent books claim that either Ptolemy or Roxane killed him and offer “definitive” proof that the cause of death was poison based on the symptoms. Neither of these books is persuasive, in large part because of the unreliability of the sources to the required degree of detail, and Alexander’s death will forever remain one of the world’s great mysteries, because of the dearth of evidence. If, on the other hand, someone were able to provide evidence and afterwards argue their theory, then it would gain validity and come into vogue.

My own thoughts on the subject of Alexander’s death not withstanding, for merit is these core philosophical truths about history that move it from the beyond the simple memorization of names and dates and into the realm of higher learning. To embrace the fundamental concepts of discourse, research, analytical thought, the written word and to connect it to the personal—and the more general human—story, is to embrace history. To embrace history is to embrace not only the stories, the events and the dates, but also the nature of people and the beauty of language. Whether an idle pastime or a vocation, history transcends names and dates of the simple timeline and the arbitrary boundaries of subjects; history is universal and should be taught as such instead of tedious memorization.

The Tapestry of History.

There is safety in simplicity. In limits. In boundaries.

There is safety in precision and detail.

There is mortal danger those traits too.

Aside from Thucydides, upon whom I could dwell ad nauseum, the two historians for whom I have the most respect and desire to emulate are Livy and Edward Gibbon. Whatever their faults, whatever their own limitations, both sought to see the broad picture. Both were undaunted by the enormity of their respective projects. Where other historians may blanch at the corners cut to achieve a unified vision and at the scope involved, I imagine that these two would, perhaps, view the historical ventures of today as too limited, too inconsequential to be of value.

Livy spent much of his life writing his history entitled Ab Urbe Condite, or From the Founding of the City. The story opens with his profession that he would rather dwell in the glorious past than the troubled present and that this pursuit is his passion; Livy, the first self-professed history nerd dedicated his life to this project because he loved it—and he loved Rome. The single-minded goal in this treatise was to prove that Rome was the greatest nation to ever exist.

Gibbon wrote about the opposite end of the Roman experience: the collapse into the middle ages, yes, but also into the “modern world.” In fact, Gibbon wrote so much on the topic that most editions today are abridged and it takes a daring soul to actually read the full text (Livy has no such problem, in part because most of his work is absent). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, whether abridged or in full, takes the reader through over a thousand years of Roman history, with examination of people, religion, government, and other causes throughout. While sticklers will be quick to point out that Gibbon was biased rather thoroughly himself, any pragmatist would be quick to point out that there is no such thing as an objective historian and that it is actually the core duty of the historian to judge that which has come before, both in the events and in what was written.

Neither the start of, nor the end of the Roman Empire is what I wish to spend my life studying and it is not what Livy and Gibbon were saying that I admire, it is how they sought to say it. Individual events, details and nuances have their value to history, but as clarification and elaboration upon a greater whole. From this logic, the ideal history must be entitled “The Concise History of Human Existence, a summation.” Of course this concept is too much for even the greatest of human minds to conceive and would therefore be broken down into subunits that would form the larger picture.

In the interest of practicality my suggested history should never be written. It would not further scholarship, but would only serve to entangle those writing it. At the same time historians should not be afraid of challenges, of using a wide-angle lens and of using scholarship on the particulars to draw together the larger themes into the grand tapestry of history.

Classes

First, I have been remiss in posting just because I have had a lot going on in life, almost none of which pertains to my study of history, but I hope to rectify this by writing about various things I pick up, mostly from the books I am currently reading.

Second, I have been designing classes for almost a year now, in effect just picking topics I am interested in knowing more about or that would make an interesting class or that I would like to teach.

The first class I made was with a fellowship from Brandeis University in which I designed a course on the fall of the Roman Empire, tracing it from the mid 200's until 1400, largely with the help of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I think I did well and could find myself teaching it if called upon, but it was not my favorite subject.

The second class that I decided upon was a class on classical eduction. It is designed as a freshman seminar (for Brandeis students, think USEM), wherein it looks at the classical tradition, why it is important and makes people think about requirements and what they want to do. In part I chose to do this because of one book I read, and in part it is because I think I would have benefited from a course about it. At present the course is about 1/3 set and I need to find some of the additional books I lined up for it.

The second class I am currently working on is one that I only thought of today. It is still in the brainstorming phase, but I am thinking it would be on scandals in the ancient world and going against cultural norms. Like I said, I don't have anything on paper yet, but I was thinking about selecting a number of scandalous situations and the characters involved and then going from there. The list so far includes The Queen of Bythinia, Alcibiades (his divorce and other scandalous behavior), Agrippina and Nero (Nero's boat designed to collapse and kill her), and Procopius' secret history.

How did I miss this?

One of the dark moments in the life of Alexander III was the assassination of Parmenion, his father's general par-excellence, which was stemmed from Alexander's execution of Parmenion's son Philotas. Now two theories exist about the incident, the first of which says that Alexander was trying to eliminate the Macedonian nobility and that he headed a conspiracy against Philotas in order to remove Parmenion. The second theory (and the one that I tend towards) is that Alexander led a bunch of willful soldiers, some of whom thought to attack Philotas in order to gain positions for themselves.

Various evidence is cited for both causes, both theoretical and non, but one that I hadn't seen, even though I mentioned it in my thesis is that Alexander clearly did not have a purely biased stance against Parmenion's family. According to Curtius Rufus 6.6.19 (yes, I memorized the location of the quote), Alexander is called the saddest person in the army at the news of Nikanor's death (Nikanor being Philotas' brother), and that he wanted to stay for the funeral, but was lacking in provisions so he had to carry on. This could be a purely literary issue to show Alexander to be a good guy, but I think it goes deeper towards indicating that Alexander was wary of Parmenion and Philotas, but this was true for almost every one of his officers--even those he liked, but that Alexander liked Nikanor and by extension actually liked or at least didn't hate Parmenion and Philotas. This may be a romantic notion, but I believe it, if for no other reason than that if we discount this as a purely literary device and Parmenion's advice as a purely literary device (as I say elsewhere), then we really don't have any sources for this time period and all of it should be thrown into the fiction category.

Murder at Babylon, the problem with pop-history, don't trust everything you read!

The new book Murder at Babylon is atrocious. [an inserted note is that I have not actually read the book, just skimmed a couple of chapters at the bookstore] True enough, it is laudable to go about trying to solve one of history's great mysteries in such a fashion (more on this presently), but troubling is how the information for the search was found, and this became more and more evident throughout.

I suppose that I should first comment on the methodology before proving why this is a mistake and to do this I should set the stage. The year is 323 BCE, sometime during the summer, the place is Babylon, which is Alexander's new capital, the center of the empire and the staging ground for a new wave of campaigns. The Macedonians who are left have been with Alexander since his rise to power after the murder of Philip and have since marched for 13 years and well over 25,000 miles.

Alexander had not been himself since Hephaestion died, nay, even before when he was wounded in India by some native dart. Newly recovered from sickbed, Alexander stormed through and conquered more territory, then crossed the desert, before presiding over a mass marriage and more campaigning, during which he lost his closest companion and even lover. To alleviate the depression that accompanied this loss, Alexander resumed a campaign to punish rebels before crossing into Babylon. Some months Later, Alexander died.

What this book does is approach Alexander's death the way a death in the modern world would be--first reaching the conclusion that it was an unnatural death, largely becuase "the symptoms" don't match any known disease; they do, however, match a number of poisons. After determining that it was poison, the author tracks eight suspects, looking for motive and opportunity to commit such a deed, before concluding that it was Roxane who killed Alexander, not Antipater, Seleukos, Meleagros or any of the other ludicrous possibilities.

Of course poison could have been used--and as much is suggested in the existing sources, but frankly this is rubbish. Poison had a very low success rate unless it was self inflicted, so it is not likely on that account, but also the author discredits himself with his historical research and source use.

None of the existing sources were written within 400 years of Alexander's life and all were based off of two accounts written shortly after Alexander died, by his contemporaries. This fact did not deter the author from using their testimony about symptoms as admissable, and creates an argument for poison based on which symptoms each author chose to use, discounting that any number of them could have been fictional and that there was noone taking down which symptoms were real when Alexander lay dying. As for the historical bent, his history is wrong. While reading the chapter on Seleukos, the author rewrites the plot against Philotas as a plot against Nikanor that was brought about by Seleukos, the second in command of the Hypaspists--with the other officers brought in at the last minute becuase Seleukos was low ranked. In the histories, however, Seleukos is nowhere mentioned, and Nikanor was six months dead by the time that the case against Philotas came to a head.

Rather than properly researching and coming up with suspects, the author has instead shoe-horned Seleukos and Nikanor into an unbelievable situation that is not based in fact while badly misportraying both. Though not to the same degree, he has done similar discredit to his work in the analysis of Meleager, who he judged a suspect because of his jealousy over being low ranked (which could be reasonable if that was not also the reason for his dismissal as a suspect), and Roxane who takes out her jealousy against Statiera and the son of Alexander by killing Alexander, instead of killing Statiera. I need to go back and review his arguments again, but it is much more feasible that if Alexander was poisoned by someone of note that it was done by Antipatros, but even then the most logical explanation is that Alexander was wounded a vast number of times, and that in the end he received an illness, be it malaria or pneumonia or something completely different, and his already weakened body, and lungs in particular, simply could not cope.

In an effort to bring this full circle to the title, there are two reviews of this book on Amazon. They both give the author five stars, though one person admitted that she didn't know what historians would say--that she started with the Oliver Stone movie of Alexander did not bode well for her, though. The other person considered himself an Alexander buff, owning every book made (I call bull on that, by the way, and I have problems with his type, but that is neither here nor there), but the point is that both of them chose this book for readability, not accuracy. I cannot talk about readability since I did not truly read it (though I shuddered at some of the organization), but it was inaccurate.

"North" is not "Up"

Just a quick note here:

An annoyance when it comes to geographical discussion is the concept of "north" and the basic assumption that that direction will also be referred to as "up" or "upper". The two best examples I know of both refute this assumption: Egypt had an "upper" and a "lower" kingdom. The Upper Kingdom was south and the Lower Kingdom was north since the Upper Kingdom was higher in elevation and up the Nile River; Macedonia had "upper" and "lower" regions as well, with the Upper Macedonian cantons being "up" in the mountains and upriver, but to the west, while lower was on the plain and centralized. North in the Macedonian kingdom was Palioura.

"Up" is a spacial term that is also used for rivers and the basic meaning, elevation.

"North" is a geographical concept of where the needle in the compass points.

Please do not confuse these again.

This is not one I had heard before

So Alexander died in 323 without a capable heir, and according to some sources he spoke one word to Perdikkas on his deathbed. In one account that word was "kratisto" (since I don't know how to get scripts in here, all Greek words are latinized) which means "the strongest", which implies that the people were going to slug it out. According to another account that word was krat'eroi (stronger), which has the same net effect as kratisto. What I find so interesting here (and this I got from the wikipedia article on Alexander) is that krat'eroi is an accent mark away from krater'oi, which is the dative form of Krateros, so the simplest meaning from it would be "to/for Krateros".

Perdikkas understandably would have changed the word since he had no interest in Krateros succeeding, but it puts Alexander's relationship with people and the position of officers into a whole new light. I find this fascinating, though I have not gone back to the sources to make sure that the wikipedia author is right on that account. The Greek is right though, and the statement is far from implausible.

Subodei

The list of military figures throughout history who I am in awe of includes this somewhat obscure Mongol general, Ghengis Khan's right hand man. I just finished reading Subotai the Valiant And while the book is not a serious academic exercise in any respect, it was an enjoyable read for someone dabbling in the time period.

What impresses me most about Subodei, the Mongols and their conquests was the apparent disregard for casualties; winning was all that mattered. In this particular warrior culture they continually went against opponents who vastly outnumbered them and always won, largely because of superior tactics, discipline and ferocity. For example, upon invading the Kwarzim Empire in central Asia the Mongols had two thrusts of their attack--the smaller force crossed over the Himalaya Mountains (not for the first time since they had also done so while circling around the Chin empire in China to attack from the south), while the larger thrust crossed a desert. The smaller force (think 20,000 troops) defeated an army of 50,000 upon getting back off the mountain, and the larger one massacred city after city.

Subodei ended up chasing the Shah west to the Caspian sea before being recalled whereupon he rode 1,200 miles in a bit over a week, campaigning some more, then returning to his force. Here he led his 30,000 troops on a reconnaissance mission that lasted three years, traveling 5,500 miles and winning numerous battles. On this scouting mission Subodei crushed the Georgian army (supposedly one of the greatest Christian armies in Europe) not once, but twice, entirely ending any hope they had of joining a crusade; then the Mongols entered Russia and smashed a joint army from the principalities. Even taking into account exaggeration, Subodei lost around 15,000 men in three years, a full half of his force, but killed upwards of 200,000 men in battle and countless other citizens. Survivors were a rarity from battles that the Mongols won simply because they gave chase and killed everyone.

Subodei had a brilliant tactical mind and an even better strategic one, making full use of his mobile forces and their ability to launch coordinated, continuous and ferocious attacks.

What Caused Alexander's Death

Since I am basically out of ideas, I have decided to steal topics from Waldemar Heckel's midterm essay topics.

The ancient sources suggest two possibly causes of death, both of which are likely wrong.

1) He drank himself to death. While drink may have impacted his later life, immediate cause of death was probably pneumonia and therefore not alcohol caused.

2) Someone had him poisoned. Yeah, like I said, pneumonia.


3) -- this is what I think-- Alexander campaigned continuously for fifteen years, marching with his men and receiving numerous wounds. The would that proved to be fatal was an arrow received jumping into an enemy fortress all alone. This arrow peirced his lung and took quite some time to heal. When pneumonia struck about a year and a half later his body simply could not cope.

Why I do what I do

I know I posted about the introduction to Livy back in January, but I want to bring it up again. Throughout the thesis process, one of the questions people keep throwing my direction is "Why are you writing this?" or "What relevance does your topic have?" (two variations on the same question).

There is value in studying history, even history several thousand years old. In the case of Greece and Rome there is something to be said for learning the roots of Western Civilization, but when you get into particulars in those societies, this value becomes obscured simply because you are not looking at the broad spectrum of influence. Instead you have what to most people seem inanities of the subject that you obsess over without any tangible practical value. Further, it is all too possible to get worked up over a piece of minutiae that someone who doesn't know the subject looks at without understanding in the least why you refuse to remove it, but insist that it is a crucial point.

Therefore when I am asked those two questions above, my first reaction is that there is no great value and you should only read it if you are genuinely interested, because otherwise it is just a waste of time for all parties. I do not claim that my writing is good enough, profound enough or relevant enough to life to cause an epiphany for the reader. If it draws them in and makes them want to know more, then I have done my job, but I will leave epiphanies to self help authors and priests, because that is just not what history is really about. More and more I want to explain myself by throwing the (slightly modified) words of Livy back at the interrogator:

"The task of writing history...fills me, I confess with some misgiving, and even were I confident in the value of my work, I should hesitate to say so. I am aware that for historians to make extravagant claims is, and always has been, all too common: every writer on history tends to look down his nose at his less cultivated predecessors, happily persuaded that he will better them in point of style, or bring new facts to light. But however that may be, I shall find satisfaction in contributing, not, I hope, ignobly..."

Livy wrote history as a distraction from his troubled times and because he wanted to. For these reasons I feel close to him. I, as he once did, want to discover the truth, figure out what happened and explain it.

Money, money, money

I don't remember off hand whether the 5,000 talents Harpalos requisitioned before beating his way out of Babylon were of gold or silver, but in either situation it is a lot of money and weighed a lot. For those who don't know the story, this guy really liked to spend money--more than any trophy wife I have ever heard of-- and when Alexander was returning from India he was also punishing people who were corrupt. Harpalos, the treasurer for the entire empire, decided to run away rather than face his cousin and left Babylong with 5,000 talents, which weighed around 140 tons.

If these talents were of silver, then the rough modern estimate for value is around 32.5 million dollars US. That is a lot of money, but not that huge an amount. Yes, it is enough that Alexander probably had to go chase him down and try and get it back, but not a jaw dropping amount (outside of the weight).

If the talents were of gold, however, the lower end for modern estimated value is 1.5 billion dollars. Yes, billion. The upper end for the estimate is around 3.3 billion. This amount is absolutely ridiculous and with that amount of money Harpalos could quite effectively make friends to oppose Alexander. Now I would be pissed if someone stole 32.5 million bucks from me, but I would be hiring hitmen and hunting that bastard down myself not even pausing to eat, sleep, or anything if someone stole 1.5 billion, let alone 3.3.

Yeah, that is a lot of money.

I am also willing to state right out that I think Diodorus has his wires crossed when it came to the Egyptian treasury Ptolemy inherited. He says that there were 80,000 talents in Egypt. If it was all silver that is around 520 million dollars, if all gold the upper limit is around 52.8 billion in modern equivalence--that is the amount saved, not the amount of income. Hyperbole anyone?

Biography and History

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
Biography -- 1 : a usually written history of a person's life
History -- 1: tale, story 2 a: a chronological record of significant events (as affecting a nation or institution) often including an explanation of their causes

What is the first thing that comes to mind when someone says they are reading a biography? It seems the usual answer is that they are reading a book about someone's life. In particular this book will recount where and when the subject was born, what happened during their life (e.g. career, marriage(s), relationships, acquaintances, accomplishments, major events), and then, of course, their death.

The definition above is quite apt. What we think of when we think biography is an encapsulated history of one specific person, the key word being "history". As for history, the above definition also covers what the modern idea of "history" is: a record of what goes on.

In antiquity both of these words had different meanings. A biography was not the history of someone's life, but rather a selection of events from that life. The selected items did not convey a narrative of the life, but were chosen for their moral value as lessons. Today we are forced to use them as fact simply because we lack other sources, but that was not their intent.

History, too, was different. Etymologically "history" is related to the latin word "story" or "narrative", but goes back further to Greek where it is "to inquire" and related to the word for "arbiter". Therefore, the root meaning of history is to inquire into events and make judgments about them--both in terms of their accuracy, and the intent of the participants, not simply to be an annalist.

This rant inspired by a friend discussing R.G. Collingwood.

Hammond: Still wrong, but with some good points

So I have come down off of my high horse and realize that Hammond actually has a point when talking about the Macedonian aristocracy as though it did not exist, just that it did exist. The following is now a piece of my thesis, but could be an entire book/thesis/article on its own and may seem odd, so bear with me.

Philip II caused the creation of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Alexander's father died in 336 BCE, Alexander followed in 323, and when Alexander's heirs finally died in 305, members of the Macedonian Aristocracy took the title of basileus (king). Even then, the final shape of the kingdoms was not established until around 280 BCE when Seleukos Nikator defeated Lysimachos, which allowed Demetrios Poliorketes (then Antigonos Gonatos) retake Macedonia. So the real question is how did Philip, who had died 31 years before the coronation and 56 years before the final shape of the kingdoms was established cause their creation?

Prior to Philip the aristocracy was quite independent, especially in Upper Macedonia, but they never seriously threatened the king beyond an occasional assassination because the Argead family had so much more power. The king controlled a monopoly on all metal mines (gold, silver, iron, tin, copper, etc), as well as timber resources. With these resources firmly in his grasp, the king was the state, plain and simple. Further, the king was the military commander at every battle and there was an instance of an infant king arriving at the battlefield for no other reason than that the the king had to be there.

The Macedonia Philip inherited (or stole from his nephew, however you want to read that), was weak, surrounded by enemies and not in control of all its own territory. Early in his reign Philip won victories militarily, but also diplomatically and financially (one of his most famous sayings was that no fortress is impregnable if he could get a donkey cart full of gold into it). Previously the kingdom had been small enough that the king was able to command every military venture, but as Philip expanded it and campaigned elsewhere, he was no longer able to lead all of the soldiers. Gradually more and more aristocrats rose to command segments of the army. Alexander continued this trend since he campaigned even further afield than did Philip, and had to leave troops behind to protect areas, such as half of the available military remained in Macedonia with Antipatros.

Another of Philip's policies that strengthened the aristocracy was that as the kingdom expanded, he also increased the number of aristocrats and strengthened the ones already in existence by giving out land grants in the conquered territories, and incorporating the Upper Macedonian noble families. While Philip kept the usual monopolies of the Macedonian aristocracy, expanding land grants meant that other families grew in strength vis a vis the Argead dynasty. Alexander then took a massive leap by giving away all land owned by the king in Macedonia in favor of whatever he could take in Asia, though he probably kept the mines and timber monopolies intact. Then in Asia land, treasure and honor was given to various aristocrats in the same way that Philip had distributed such prizes.

Finally in 305 the token fealty given to Alexander IV evaporated and the young man was killed. Afterwards the aristocracy took the provinces that they ruled and declared themselves kings over that territory. The obvious answer is that Alexander caused this divide by not providing an heir before leaving on campaign--if he had, the young man would have been around 12 when Alexander died and may have been old enough to grow into the kingship while loyalty to Alexander still existed, considering that it took nearly 18 years without a proper heir.

My contention, however, is that Philip caused the eventual creation of the Hellenistic kingdoms because he strengthened the aristocracy. Even for a 12 year old things could have easily degenerated into the same situation because there was no other Argead and the Macedonian aristocracy was so strong. Going down a contrafactual thread, even if the Hellenistic kingdoms didn't immediately emerge, the moment the Argead king suffered military setbacks the aristocracy could have killed him, or the first heir could have done well, but would have needed the aristocracy that they would have grown increasingly in strength until they removed the king in a generation or two.

Partly this is the nature of the Persian state Alexander transformed Macedonia into because the empire was so expansive that aristocrats had virtual autonomy in most places, but Alexander also tried to incorporate Persians who were used to the system. Philip started the trend of empowering the nobility and with so much of what he did, Alexander was not so much innovating as continuing the policies of Philip.

Why NGL Hammond is wrong.

In his book, The Macedonian State: Origins, Institutions, and History, N.G.L. Hammond makes an astounding error. He argues that Macedonia had no aristocracy (much less landed aristocracy) and that claims to the contrary mistakenly superimpose medieval feudalism on the Macedonian kingdom. Instead, his theory is that the Macedonian king was effectively all powerful and the royal family was the only aristocracy. The king had a monopoly on material resources, land and so on, and that there were no hereditary posts or lands, but people rose and fell on the whim of the Argead king. Each king then chose from a pool of eligible "hetairoi" or companions to supply advisers, officers and so on. Lucky hetairoi had their children at the head of the list for acceptance into the paides (royal pages), who then were educated with the royal princes and may have had a leg up for higher office under the next king.

Ignoring the consensus of EVERYONE other than Hammond and that his several paragraphs nullifies at least one dissertation, I am going to explain why Hammond is wrong.

1) The Argead kings ruled Macedonia for over 200 years by the time of Alexander, so even if the Argead family were the only aristocracy initially, their family had to marry outside of it. Of course many of these marriages would have been with Greeks, Illyrians, Upper Macedonians and Thracians, but some would have been Macedonians (Philip II had a Macedonian wife). Presumably the royal family would have married people in some way distinguished and not the shepherd's daughter. Further, after 200 years, even with the royal family being the only aristocracy, they would have been a broad group that would have constituted a broad aristocracy on their own.

2) The strength of Macedonia was it's cavalry. In ancient warfare, cavalry was a distinct sign of nobility as people had to supply their own equipment. In "Greece" one had to supply their own arms and armour and the same was true in Macedonia, or it would not have been as big a deal that Philip II reformed the army in part so that the cost was less and in part by supplying some of the equipment, allowing for the rise of the pike phalanx. Still, the greatest cost of this warfare was borne by the soldiers themselves. If this was true for the infantry, it could have been no less true for the cavalry, and only the aristocracy could afford the cost of weapons, armor and a horse. Since horses also required large amounts of land to breed on, the aristocracy probably also owned land.

3) In promoting some people over others, an imbalance was automatically created in the system. Since there were no assurances that someone would easily step down from his post when asked to by the new king and many are recorded serving more than one king, this by nature creates powerful families.

4) The Macedonian aristocracy *loved* hunting. Hunting was an activity only available to people who had free time, which probably meant that the aristocracy owned land. True, some of this is accounted by the king providing for his companions, but with the all encompassing nature of hunting for all hetairoi (they could not recline at meals until they had slain a boar), it is probable that they all owned land.

5) If land was redistributed under each king, there would have been even greater upheaval. A system that operated by regularly disenfranchising some while enfranchising others could not have lasted. Further, if this were true, then Philip taking the land around Amphipolis would not have been such a big deal. This land he distributed to hetairoi, including making new companions, but he did not redistribute huge amounts of land withing Macedonia proper.

6) Upper Macedonia had its own set of royal houses, but when the cantons merged with Lower Macedonia, the Lower Macedonian hetairoi still held a higher position than did these royals. The only way to explain this was that the hetairoi were an aristocracy and that the royalty from Upper Macedonia joined their ranks in the merge.

The paides were an institution for young nobles, an education and exposure to the Argead princes, but to enter the children had to be from families of some importance. The king was still the first amongst these nobles, but they had to have existed. Before the Persian campaign, Alexander gave away all the royal land, which was an enormous amount, but was not the entire kingdom. To think otherwise it utter nonsense. To call the system a form of feudalism is somewhat anachronistic, but yet is quite apt. The aristocracy owed an oath of fealty to the king and it was kept to with surprising regularity, but these men were far from tame.

I will go on more later, but words are escaping me. For now I will put my ego back in the box and let this simmer for a while in my head.

The spotlight effect

For two years now my greatest complaint about studying ancient history is a spotlight effect. This effect is that in the primary sources certain "great" men dominate the attention and it is impossible to know what else goes on. The best example of this is Alexander III who has at least three ancient works dedicated to him and another that covers him extensively, yet it is nigh impossible to know what some of his officers, in particular the more junior ones, are doing at a given time. Alexander has a spotlight on him that follows wherever he goes and we mostly know what the other men were doing as they entered the spotlight.

Of course there are other problems with the histories, not least of which is that their source was mostly Ptolemy who in turn rewrote history to slander his opponents and make himself show up more often, but Alexander also hogs the spotlight. Some of the time what Alexander ordered and the sparse information from elsewhere does provide adequate knowledge, but other times men who are not immediately around him disappear entirely.

With Alexander I can somewhat understand it because in terms of pure charisma he was by far the most dynamic person of his time, but it is a disservice to the men who served under him who were often brilliant military commanders (Parmenion likely had a better grasp of strategy, if not tactics than did Alexander, Krateros and Seleukos were each defeated but once, etc), fiery personalities (Krateros and Hephaestion fought each other at one point and only Alexander stepping in prevented a battle), and so on.

Still, this is a recurring trend in ancient scholarship, and really before there was information commonly available for what pretty much everyone did, and is one of the difficulties of scholarship at such a great length.

Erigyius

One of the more interesting people I have come across in my thesis is Erigyius, an older man typically ignored by modern scholars on account of him being Greek. He initially lived in Mytiline along the Ionian coast, but had moved to Macedonia where he was named as one of the Advisors to the young Alexander III. In the year before Alexander took the throne, Erigyius and the other advisers were exiled for their participation in the Pixodorus Affair in which Alexander usurped a plan of Philip's in which his mentally defunct half brother would have married the daughter of a Carian dynast. Alexander set up the marriage so it would be his marriage rather than his brother (Philip Arridheus). According to one variation, Parmenion's son Philotas was the person who ratted out the plan to Philip.

Erigyius and the others were recalled within the year when Alexander took the throne and went on to have distinguished careers, but when it came to the trial of Philotas, six years later, Erigyius was the only one listed participating who was a Greek. I asked why this was, as well as questioning one modern author stating effectively that he succumbed to peer pressure when it came to voting to arrest Philotas.

Through a degree of roundabout thinking, I think there is a case to say that Erigyius was more important than traditionally thought, and this may add to the argument that Philotas was actually the one who ratted on Alexander in 336.

Homeric Warrior Ethos in the Histories of Alexander the Great

There are any number of things which have peaked my interest as side projects since the start of my thesis, some not at all related, others just tangents. One of the tangents that I have been unable to shake off and will likely return to at some point down the line in actual research is the connection between Homer, Alexander III of Macedon (the Great), and the historians of Alexander.

In nearly all of the sources (Plutarch, Quintus Curtius Rufus, Arrian) are stories concerning Alexander compared to Achilles, Hephaestion to Patroclus, Philip to Peleus, and his tutor Lysimachus to Phoenix (the tutor of Achilles), and Alexander is reported to have taken a copy of the Iliad notated by Aristotle with him into Asia, sleeping with it and a dagger under his pillow. This obsession is generally qualified as Alexander seeking to be put on a level with Achilles, far above other mortal men, and in all likelihood he appeared as such to many of the rank and file soldiers--an invincible, ever victorious hero whose only comparison was with his ancestor Achilles (if I am remembering correctly, it was his mother Olympias whose family descended from Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, while his Philip's family descended from Hercules).

Now I am not an expert on the Homeric warrior ethos and how they were supposed to behave militarily and whatnot, but Alexander would have been aware of it, but more importantly to me is how writers at least four hundred years later were still picking up on it and superimposing the values onto their histories. One of the most confounding elements in these histories is how Alexander was supposed to be demoting various officers by giving them critical administrative or organizational posts, often with large contingents of troops, yet this repeatedly crops up either in word or in tone. My current thought is that this is where the warrior ethos kicks in because these men were no longer in the best position to be out winning glory with their king and as such "must have considered this a slight" (my own broad generalization).

Conspiracy theories abound about Alexander and some of my other problems with the scholarly work is how readily they abound, but there is not much to do about it. On the other hand, I think using this methodology could potentially open up new possibilities in the histories, while the main study of the histories themselves currently rest in the portrayal of the officers based on the actual primary sources written by Ptolemy, looking at his biases.

Dorks existed 2,000 years ago, too

A question that has intrigued me for some time now is "Why does a given person write about what they write?" Within this question one may look at all places and genres, including modern works writing reviews of other authors and on down through the ages. For me this interested primarily manifests itself in the purposes behind ancient historians, which is significantly aided by the admittance as to purpose in the author's own introduction.

"The task of writing a history of our nation from Rome's earliest days fills me, I confess, with some misgivings, and even were I confident in the value of my work, I should hesitate to say so. I am aware that for historians to make extravagant claims is, and always has been, all too common: every writer on history tends to look down his nose at his less cultivated predecessors, happily persuaded that he will better them in point of style, or bring new facts to life...

"...I am aware, too, that most readers will take less pleasure in my account of how Rome began and her early history; they will wish to hurry on to more modern times...My own feeling is different; I shall find antiquity a rewarding study, if only because, while I am absorbed in it, I shall be able to turn my eyes from the troubles which for so long have tormented the modern world..."

~Livy, The Early History of Rome
Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt

As a student of Ancient History and in particular one whose desire is to study in a history department, this passage is incredibly warming to me. Even today there is more enthusiasm for 'modern' history than there is for antiquity. Granted, this means there are fewer people job hunting in the field, but it also leads to less recognition.

Livy is admitting he is a dork in this passage. Despite what is trendy and popular, Livy is writing about something he is interested in and love. If there is a better reason to study something, I have not yet heard of it and it is the same reason I am intending to stay in school for years to come.

What happens when the note is wrong.

It is a common point of reference for a lot of people to be able to tell when a note is wrong. If you are just listening to a piece of music and something is wrong, then you will hear it off, but the further you go into music, the more it is evident and you can more exactly point to is what is wrong and things don't have to be as glaring to be noticed. This concept then can be expanded into all fields of knowledge when relating to what is heard or read. Hearing wrong information about a subject you are knowledgeable about is in many ways similar to hearing that wrong note.

For example, most everyone would react strongly if in a lecture or paper, someone mentioned that Caesar was gunned down in the forum by a bunch of Italian mobsters armed with pistols, because that is the glaring mistake that just sounds wrong to most people. On the other hand, if when listening to a lecture in which someone said that Athens was a democracy, or that Philip II of Macedon was a tyrant, most people would not bat an eye. In the former case they would know that Athens was the "birthplace of democracy", or that Philip II was an autocratic ruler who, from a modern perspective, would be a tyrant, but someone who has done extensive study into such situations would start wincing almost as much, if not more than the concept of Caesar getting gunned down. In the former case, yes, Athens was a democracy for some time, but it was also led by a king, by oligarchs and by tyrants depending on when you are talking, and for the latter, Philip was a king, he was a supreme ruler, but tyrant was a specific type of absolute rule, generally with a lower class, 'popular' backing.

This situation in particular is somewhat focussed on me, but it is a thought process that is true for any subject that you delve into the depths of. For me, this swathe of knowledge has resulted in some difficulty spending large amounts of time listening to under informed people talking as though they are experts on a subject. This does not mean I dislike it when people put forth a suggestion, admitting it is on less than perfect information, or asking questions to clear up mistakes, but when they act like experts and try and impress people with their 'knowledge'.