The Stoics and Hellenism (2)

We know the broad outlines of the political history of Greece at this time; it is a closed field where the successors of Alexander, particularly the kings of Macedonia and the Ptolemies, confront each other. The cities or leagues of cities know only how to rely on one of the two powers to avoid being dominated by the other. The constitution of the cities changes according to the masters of the day who, depending on the case, rely on the oligarchic or democratic parties. Athens in particular only passively suffers the results of a conflagration which extends throughout the East.

After a vain attempt to recover its independence, it surrendered, by the Peace of Demades (322), to the Macedonian Antipater who established the aristocratic government there and made himself master of all Greece: For a time the regent of Macedonia who succeeded him, Polysperchon, reestablished democracy there to ensure his alliance (319); but Cassander, the son of Antipater, chased Polysperchon, reestablished the aristocratic government in Athens under the presidency of Demetrius of Phaleron, and maintained himself in Greece despite the efforts of the other Diadochi, Antigonus of Asia and Ptolemy, who relied against him on the league of the Aetolian cities. In 307, new change. Demetrius of Phaleron was driven out of Athens by the son of Antigonus of Asia, Demetrius Poliorcetes, who restored Athens to its freedom, took all of Greece from the Macedonian and proclaimed himself the liberator of Greece: the Athenians abandoned by him were strong enough to stop, with the help of the Aetolian line, Cassander of Macedonia who crossed Thermopylae in 300 and was defeated at Elatea.

A few years after the death of Cassander, Demetrius Poliorcetes took the throne of Macedonia in 295, which his descendants would keep. From this moment on, Macedonian influence was almost unopposed in Athens; In 263 only, under the reign of Antigonus Gonatas, son of Demetrius, Ptolemy Euergetes declared himself the protector of Athens and the Peloponnese, and Athens, supported by him and by Lacedaemon, made a last and vain effort to recover its independence (the Chremonid War). From that moment on, it remained indifferent to events: however, resistance to the Macedonians was still very strong in the Peloponnese, where Macedonia sought to support its influence on the tyrants of the cities; we know how, around 251, Aratus of Sicyon established democracy in his homeland, then, taking the presidency of the Achaean line, drove the Macedonians out of almost the entire Peloponnese and recaptured Corinth. But, despite his efforts, and although he even tried to bribe the Macedonian governor of Attica with money, he could not bring the Athenians into the alliance, and he relied on Ptolemy.

We know the sad end of this last effort of Greece towards independence; Aratus found before him a Greek enemy, Cleomenes, king of Sparta, who, renovator of the old Spartan constitution, wanted to regain hegemony in the Peloponnese; against this enemy, Aratus appealed to the alliance of the kings of Macedonia, who, since the death of Poliorcetes, had been the traditional enemies of Greek liberties: Antigonus Doson and his successor Philip V in fact helped him to defeat Cleomenes (221), but regained a foothold in Greece as far as Corinth. Aratus was the victim of his protector who had him poisoned, as well as two Athenian orators who were too popular with the people. It was the Romans who, in 200, delivered Athens from the Macedonian yoke, but not to make it independent.

References

3. Plutarch, The Contradictions of the Stoics, chap. rv (Arnim, I, n° 26)
   4. Diogenes Laertius, VII, 169, 15-24. *
   5. Index stoïcorum herculanensis, col. XIII (Arnim, I, n° 441); ATHENAEUS, Deipnosophiste, VI, 251 b (Arnim, I, n° 342); Pausanias, Description of Greece, II 8 4 – ‘ Diogenes Laertius, VII, 143.

Source: Émile Bréhier(1951). Histoire de la philosophie, Presses Universitaires de France. Translation and adaptation by © 2024 Nicolae Sfetcu