Special officials were naturally attached to the service of the finances. Over the whole department in the Seleucid realm there presided a single chief. How far the financial administration was removed from the competence of the provincial governors, as it seems to have been in Alexander's system, we cannot say. Seleucus at any rate, as satrap of Babylonia, controlled the finances of the province and so, in the Ptolemaic system, did the governor of Cyprus.
With the exception of Ptolemaic Egypt, the Macedonian king doms followed in their coinage that of Alexander. Money was for a long while largely struck with Alexander's own image and super scription ; the gold and silver coined in the names of Antigonid and Seleucid kings and by the minor principalities of Asia, kept to the Attic standard which Alexander had established. Only in Egypt Ptolemy I. adopted, at first the Rhodian, and afterwards the Phoenician, standard, and on this latter standard the Ptole maic money was struck during the subsequent centuries. Money was also struck in their own name by the cities in the several dy nasties' spheres of power, but in most cases only bronze or small silver for local use.
Court Customs.—In language and manners the courts of Alexander's successors were Greek. Even the Macedonian dia lect, which it was considered proper for the kings to use on occa sion, was often forgotten. The oriental features which Alexander had introduced were not copied. There was no proskunesis (or certainly not in the case of Greeks and Macedonians), and the king did not wear an oriental dress. The symbol of royalty, it is true, the diadem, was suggested by the head-band of the old Persian kings but, whereas, that had been an imposing erection, the Hellenistic diadem was a simple riband. The king's state dress was the same in principle as that worn by the Macedonian or Thessalian horsemen, as the uniform of his own cavalry officers. Its features were the broad-rimmed hat, the cloak, and the high laced boots. There were other traces in the Hellenistic courts of the old Macedonian tradition besides in dress. One was the hon our given to prowess in the chase. Another was the fashion for the king to hold wassail with his courtiers, in which he unbent to an extent scandalous to the Greeks, dancing or indulging in routs and practical jokes.
The prominent part taken by the women of the royal house was a Macedonian characteristic. The history of these kingdoms fur nishes a long list of queens and princesses who were ambitious and 'For Ptolemaic Egypt, see ProLEmus and EGYPT.
masterful politicians, of which the great Cleopatra is the last and the most famous. The kings after Alexander, with the exception of Demetrius Poliorcetes and Pyrrhus, are not found to have more than one legitimate wife at a time, although they show unstinted freedom in divorce and the number of their mistresses. The cus
tom of marriages between brothers and sisters, agreeable to old Persian as to old Egyptian ethics, was instituted in Egypt by the second Ptolemy when he married his full sister Arsinoe Philadel phus. It was henceforth common, though not invariable, among the Ptolemies. At the Seleucid court there seems to be an instance of it in 195, when the heir-apparent, Antiochus, married his sister Laodice. The style of "sister" was given in both courts to the queen, even when she was not the king's sister in reality. The "friends" of the king are often mentioned. It is usual for him to confer with a council of his "friends" before important decisions, administrative, military or judicial. They form a definite body about the king's person, admission into which depends upon his favour alone, and is accorded, not only to his subjects, but to aliens, such as the Greek refugee politicians (e.g., Hegesianax, Athen. iv. 155b ; Hannibal and the Aetolian Thoas take part in the councils of Antiochus III.). The friends (at any rate under the later Seleucid and Ptolemaic reigns) were distinguished by a special dress and badge of gold analogous to the stars and crosses of modern orders. The dress was of crimson; this and the badges were the king's gift, and except by royal grant neither crimson nor gold might, apparently, be worn at court. The order of friends was organized in a hierarchy of ranks, which were multiplied as time went on. As to Macedonia, whatever may have been the constitution of the court, it is implied that it offered in its ex ternals a sober plainness in comparison with the vain display and ceremonious frivolities of Antioch and Alexandria. The position of a friend did not carry with it necessarily any functions ; it was in itself purely honorary. The ministers and high officials were, on the other hand, regularly invested with one or other of the ranks specified. The chief of these ministers is denoted eri T&P and he corresponds to the vizier of the later East. All departments of government are under his supervision, and he regularly holds the highest rank of a kinsman. When the king is a minor, he acts as guardian or regent. Over different departments of state we find a state secretary. Under each of these great heads of departments was a host of lower officials, those, for instance, who held to the province a relation analogous to that of the head of the department of the realm. Beside the officials concerned with the work of government we have those of the royal house hold: (I) the chief-physician; (2) the chief-huntsman ; (3) the maitre d' hotel; (4) the lord of the queen's bedchamber. As in the older oriental courts, the high positions were often filled by eunuchs.