Army.—The armies of Alexander's successors were still in the main principles of their organization similar to the army with which Alexander had conquered Asia. During the years immedi ately after Alexander the very Macedonians who had fought un der Alexander were ranged against each other under the banners of the several chiefs. The most noted corps of veterans, Argy raspides, played a great part in the first wars of the successors, and covered themselves with infamy by their betrayal of Eumenes. As the soldiers of Alexander died off, fresh levies of home-born Macedonians could be raised only by the chief who held the motherland. The other chiefs had to supply themselves with Macedonians from the numerous colonies planted before the break–up of the empire in Asia or Egypt, and from such Mace donians they continued for the next two centuries to form their phalanx. The breed—at least if the statement which Livy puts into the mouth of a Roman general can be relied on—degenerated greatly under Asiatic and Egyptian skies; but still old names like that of pezetairoi attached to the phalangites, and they still wielded the national sarissa. The latter weapon in the interval be tween Alexander and the time of Polybius had been increased to a length of 21 ft., a proportion inconsistent with any degree of mobility; once more indeed the phalanx of the 2nd century seems to have become a body effective by sheer weight only and dis ordered by unevenness of ground. The Antigonid kings were never able from Macedonian levies to put in the field a phalanx of more than 20,000 at the utmost ; Antigonus Doson took with him to Greece (in 222) one of i o,000 only. The phalanx of Antiochus III. at Raphia numbered 20,000, and Ptolemy Philo pator was able at the same time to form one of 25,000 men. The royal footguards were still described in Macedonia in 171 as the agema. So too the old name of "Companions" was kept up in the Seleucid kingdom for the Macedonian cavalry, and divisions of rank in it were still indicated by the terms agema and royal squadron. The Antigonid and Seleucid courts had much valuable material at hand for their armies in the barbarian races under their sway. The Balkan hill-peoples of Illyrian or Thracian stock, the hill-peoples of Asia Minor and Iran, the chivalry of Media and Bactria, the mounted bowmen of the Caspian steppes, the camel-riders of the Arabian desert, could all be turned to ac count. Iranian troops seem to have been employed on a large scale by the earlier Seleucids. At Raphia, Antiochus III. had 10,000 men drawn from the provinces, armed and drilled as Macedonians, and another corps of Iranians numbering 5,000 under a native commander. The experiment of arming the native Egyptians on a large scale does not seem to have been made be fore the campaign of 217, when Ptolemy IV. formed corps of the Macedonian pattern from Egyptians and Libyans. From this time native rebellions in Egypt are recurrent. To the troops drawn from their own dominions the mercenaries which the kings pro cured from abroad were an important supplement. These were mainly the bands of Greek condottieri, and even for their home born troops Greek officers of renown were often engaged. The other class of mercenaries were Gauls, and from the time of the Gallic invasion of Asia Minor in 27g Gauls or Galatians were a regular constituent in all armies. They were a weapon apt to be dangerous to the employer, but the terror they inspired was such that every potentate sought to get hold of them. The elephants which Alexander brought back from India were used in the armies of his successors, and in 302 Seleucus procured a new supply. Thenceforward elephants, either brought fresh from India or bred in the royal stables at Apamea, regularly figured in the Seleucid armies. The Ptolemies supplied themselves with this arm from
the southern coasts of the Red sea, where they established stations for the capture and shipping of elephants. Scythed chariots such as had figured in the old Persian armies were still used by the Greek masters of Asia, at any rate till the battle of Magnesia. The Hellenistic armies were distinguished by their external mag nificence. They made a greater display of brilliant metal and gorgeous colour than the Roman armies, for instance. The de scription given by Justin of the army which Antiochus Sidetes took to the East in 130 B.C., boot-nails and bridles of gold, gives an idea of their standard of splendour.
During the 3rd century B.C. Egypt was the greatest sea power of the eastern Mediterranean, and maintained a large fleet. Its control of the Aegean was, however, contested not without success by the Antigonids, who won the two great sea-fights of Cos (c. 256) and Andros (227), and wrested the overlordship of the Cyclades from the Ptolemies. Of the numbers and constitution of the Antigonid fleet we know nothing. At the Seleucid court in 222 the admiral appears as a person of high consideration ; in his war with Rome Antiochus III. had 107 decked battleships on the sea at one time.
The Macedonian kingdoms, strained by continual wars, in creasingly divided against themselves, falling often under the sway of prodigals and debauchees, were far from realizing the Hellenic idea of sound government as against the crude barbaric despotisms of the older East. Yet, in spite of all corruption, ideas of the intelligent development of the subject lands, visions of the Hellenic king, as the Greek thinkers had come to picture him, haunted the Macedonian rulers, and perhaps fitfully, in the in tervals of war or carousal, prompted some degree of action. Treatises "concerning kingship" were produced as a regular thing by philosophers, and kings who claimed the fine flower of Hellen ism could not but peruse them. Strabo regards the loss of the eastern provinces to the Parthians as their passage under a gov ernment of lower type, beyond the sphere of Hellenic In the organization of the administrative machinery of these kingdoms, the higher power of the Hellene to adapt and combine had been operative; they were organisms of a richer, more com plex type than the East had hitherto known. It was thus that when Rome became a world-empire, it found to some extent the forms of government ready made, and took over from the Hellen istic monarchies a tradition which it handed on to the later world.
For the events which brought the Macedonian empire into be ing see ALEXANDER III., THE GREAT. For detailed accounts of the separate dynasties into which it was divided after Alexander's death, see SELEUCID DYNASTY, ANTIGONUS, PERGAMUM, etc., and for its effect on the spread of Hellenic culture see HELLENISM.