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Title: A Royal Philosopher
Author: Evelyn Baring [
More Titles by Baring]
A ROYAL PHILOSOPHER[103]
_"The Spectator," August 2, 1913_
Those who are inclined to take a gloomy view of the future on the subject of the survival of the humanities in this country may derive some consolation from two considerations. One is that there is not the smallest sign either of relaxation in the quantity or deterioration in the quality of the humanistic literature turned out from our seats of learning. Year by year, indeed, both the interest in classical studies and the standard of scholarship appear to rise to a higher level. The other is that the mere fact that humanistic works are supplied shows that there must be a demand for them, and that there exists amongst the general public a number of readers outside the ranks of scholars, properly so called, who are anxious and willing to acquaint themselves with whatever new lights assiduous research can throw on the sayings and doings of the ancient world. Archaeology, epigraphy, and numismatics are year by year opening out new fields for inquiry, and affording fresh material for the reconstruction of history. More especially much light has of late been thrown on that chaotic period which lies between the death of the Macedonian conqueror and the final assertion of Roman domination. Professor Mahaffy has dealt with the Ptolemies, and Mr. Bevan with the Seleucids. A welcome complement to these instructive works is now furnished by Mr. Tarn's comprehensive treatment of an important chapter in the history of the Antigonids. It is surely the irony of posthumous fame that whereas every schoolboy knows something about Pyrrhus--how he fought the Romans with elephants, and eventually met a somewhat ignoble death from the hand of an old Argive woman who dropped a tile on his head--but few outside the ranks of historical students probably know anything of his great rival and relative, Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius the Besieger. Yet there can in reality be no manner of doubt as to which of these two careers should more excite the interest of posterity. Pyrrhus made a great stir in the world whilst he lived. "He thought it," Plutarch says--we quote from Dryden's translation--"a nauseous course of life not to be doing mischief to others or receiving some from them." But he was in reality an unlettered soldier of fortune, probably very much of the same type as some of Napoleon's rougher marshals, such as Augereau or Masséna. His manners were those of the camp, and his statesmanship that of the barrack-room. He blundered in everything he undertook except in the actual management of troops on the field of battle. "Not a common soldier in his army," Mr. Tarn says, "could have managed things as badly as the brilliant Pyrrhus." Antigonus was a man of a very different type. "He was the one monarch before Marcus Aurelius whom philosophy could definitely claim as her own." But in forming an estimate of his character it is necessary to bear constantly in mind the many different constructions which in the course of ages have been placed on the term "philosophy." Antigonus, albeit a disciple of Zeno, the most unpractical idealist of his age, was himself eminently practical. He indulged in no such hallucinations as those which cost the Egyptian Akhnaton his Syrian kingdom. As a thinker he moved on a distinctly lower plane than Marcus Aurelius. Perhaps of all the characters of antiquity he most resembles Julian, whose career as a man of action wrung from the Christian Prudentius the fine epitaph, "Perfidus ille Deo, quamvis non perfidus orbi." These early Greek philosophers were, in fact, a strange set of men. They were not always engaged in the study of philosophy. They occasionally, whilst pursuing knowledge and wisdom, indulged in practices of singular unwisdom or of very dubious morality. Thus the eminent historian Hieronymus endeavoured to establish what we should now call a "corner" in the bitumen which floated on the surface of the Dead Sea, and which was largely used for purposes of embalming in Egypt; but his efforts were completely frustrated by the Arabs who were interested in the local trade. The philosopher Lycon, besides displaying an excessive love for the pleasures of the table, was a noted wrestler, boxer, and tennis-player. Antigonus himself, in spite of his love of learning, vied with his great predecessors, Philip and Alexander, in his addiction to the wine-cup. When, by a somewhat unworthy stratagem, he had tricked the widowed queen Nikaia out of the possession of the Acrocorinthian citadel, which was, politically speaking, the apple of his eye, he celebrated the occasion by getting exceedingly drunk, and went "reeling through Corinth at the head of a drunken rout, a garland on his head and a wine-cup in his hand." Antigonus was, in fact, not so much what we should call a philosopher as a man of action with literary tastes, standing thus in marked contrast to Pyrrhus, who "cared as little for knowledge or culture as did any baron of the Dark Ages." When he was engaged in a difficult negotiation with Ptolemy Philadelphus he allowed himself to be mollified by a quotation from Homer, who, as Plato said, was "the educator of Hellas." Although not himself an original thinker, he encouraged thought in others. He surrounded himself with men of learning, and even received at his court the yellow-robed envoys of Asoka, the far-distant ruler and religious reformer of India. Moreover, in spite of his wholly practical turn of mind, Antigonus learnt something from his philosophic friends; notably, he imbibed somewhat of the Stoic sense of duty. "Do you not understand," he said to his son, who had misused some of his subjects, "that _our_ kingship is a noble servitude?" Nevertheless, throughout his career, the sentiments of the man of action strongly predominated over those of the man of thought. He treated all shams with a truly Carlylean hatred and contempt. Moreover, one trait in his character strongly indicates the pride of the masterful man of action who scorns all adventitious advantages and claims to stand or fall by his own merits. Napoleon, whilst the members of his family were putting forth ignoble claims to noble birth, said that his patent of nobility dated from the battle of Montenotte. Antigonus, albeit he came of a royal stock, laid aside all ancestral claims to the throne of Macedonia. He aspired to be king because of his kingly qualities. He wished his people to apply to him the words which Tiberius used of a distinguished Roman of humble birth: "Curtius Rufinus videtur mihi ex se natus" (_Ann._ xi. 21). He succeeded in his attempt. He won the hearts of his people, and although he failed in his endeavour to govern the whole of Greece through the agency of subservient "tyrants," he accomplished the main object which through good and evil fortune he pursued with dogged tenacity throughout the whole of his chequered career. He lived and died King of Macedonia.
The world-politics of this period are almost as confused as the relationships which were the outcome of the matrimonial alliances contracted by the principal actors on the world's stage. How bewildering these alliances were may be judged from what Mr. Tarn says of Stratonice, the daughter of Antiochus I., who married Demetrius, the son of Antigonus: "Stratonice was her husband's first cousin and also his aunt, her mother-in-law's half-sister and also her niece, her father-in-law's niece, her own mother's granddaughter-in-law, and perhaps other things which the curious may work out." Mr. Tarn has unravelled the tangled political web with singular lucidity. Here it must be sufficient to say that, after the death of Pyrrhus, a conflict between Macedonia and Egypt, which stood at the head of an anti-Macedonian coalition of which Athens, Epirus, and Sparta were the principal members, became inevitable. The rivalry between the two States led to the Chremonidean war--so called because in 266 the Athenian Chremonides moved the declaration of war against Antigonus. The result of the war was that on land Antigonus remained the complete master of the situation. With true political instinct, however, he recognised the truth of that maxim which history teaches from the days of Aegospotami to those of Trafalgar, viz. that the execution of an imperial policy is impossible without the command of the sea. This command had been secured by his predecessors, but had fallen to Egypt after the fine fleet created by Demetrius the Besieger had been shattered in 280 by Ptolemy Keraunos with the help of the navy which had been created by Lysimachus. Antigonus decided to regain the power which had been lost. His efforts were at first frustrated by the wily and wealthy Egyptian monarch, who knew the power of gold. "Egypt neither moved a man nor launched a ship, but Antigonus found himself brought up short, his friends gone, his fleet paralysed." Then death came unexpectedly to his aid and removed his principal enemies. His great opponent, the masterful Arsinoë, who had engineered the Chremonidean war, was already dead, and, in Mr. Tarn's words, "comfortably deified." Other important deaths now followed in rapid succession. Alexander of Corinth, Antiochus, and Ptolemy all passed away. "The imposing edifice reared by Ptolemy's diplomacy suddenly collapsed like the card-house of a little child." Antigonus was not the man to neglect the opportunity thus afforded to him. Though now advanced in years, he reorganised his navy and made an alliance with Rhodes, with the result that "the sea power of Egypt went down, never to rise again." Then he triumphantly dedicated his flagship to the Delian Apollo. The possession of Delos had always been one of the main objects of his ambition. It did more than symbolise the rule of the seas. It definitely brought within the sphere of Macedonian influence one of the greatest centres of Greek religious thought.
The rest of the story may be read in Mr. Tarn's graphic pages. He relates how Antigonus incurred the undying enmity of Aratus of Sicyon, one of those Greek democrats who held "that the very worst democracy was infinitely better than the very best 'tyranny'--a conventional view which neglects the uncomfortable fact that the tyranny of a democracy can be the worst in the world." He lost Corinth, which he never endeavoured to regain. His system of governing the Peloponnesus through the agency of subservient "tyrants" utterly collapsed. "It is," Mr. Tarn says, "a strange case of historical justice. As regards Macedonia, Antigonus had followed throughout a sound and just idea of government, and all that he did for Macedonia prospered. But in the Peloponnese, though he found himself there from necessity rather than from choice, he had employed an unjustifiable system; he lived long enough to see it collapse."
The main interest to the present generation of the career of this remarkable man consists in the fact that it is illustrative of the belief that a man of action can also be a man of letters. As it was in the days of the Antigonids, so it is now. Napier says that there is no instance on record of a successful general who was not also a well-read man. General Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, on being asked how he came to adopt a certain tactical combination which proved eminently successful at Louisbourg, said, "I had it from Xenophon." Havelock "loved Homer and took pattern by Thucydides," and, according to Mr. Forrest, adopted tactics at the battle of Cawnpore which he had learnt from a close study of "Old Frederick's" dispositions at Leuthen. There is no greater delusion than to suppose that study weakens the arm of the practical politician, administrator, or soldier. On the contrary it fortifies it. Lord Wolseley, himself a very distinguished man of action, speaking to the students of the Royal Military Academy of Sir Frederick Maurice, who possessed an inherited literary talent, said that he was "a fine example of the combination of study and practice. He is not only the ablest student of war we have, but is also the bravest man I have ever seen under fire"; and on another occasion he wrote: "It is often said that dull soldiers make the best fighters, because they do not think of danger. Now, Maurice is one of the very few men I know who, if I told him to run his head against a stone wall, would do so without question. His is also the quickest and keenest intellect I have met in my service."
[Footnote 103: _Antigonos Gonatas_. By W. Woodthorpe Tarn. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. 14s.]
[The end]
Evelyn Baring's essay: A Royal Philosopher
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