Rolf Strootman (Utrecht) Arrian has much to say about empire in the Anabasis. Some of this may be pertinent to the Roman Empire of his own time, the nature of Alexander’s empire. In this paper, I explore what we can deduct from Arrian concerning the ideology of Alexander’s empire (and perhaps the Achaemenid Empire, too, insofar as Alexander continued previous Persian practices). I argue that the ideal of a cosmopolitan, universalistic empire that recurs several times in the Anabasis, is based upon the actual Achaemenid-Argead notion of a world empire, and only in the second ing world unity was the prevalent ideology in western Eurasian empires before, during, and after Alexander’s time. Arrian however uses this commonplace notion to construct a unique personality for Alexander, as we will see. I discuss two episodes in the Anabasis a partial defense of that notion, arguing that the idea of a commonwealth of all people as expressed by Alexandrian propaganda (and idealized by Tarn) can be understood as a basic function of an imperial program that aspires to universality. Akademie für Wissenschaften, for organizing the excellent Contextualizing Arrian conference at DOI: 10.13173/9783447119085.381 Rolf Strootman Alexander ‘friendship and alliance’ just as had previously existed between Philip II and Artaxerxes III. This is reminiscent of the kind of ‘victory verdict’ as was sometimes acmediately end the war by negotiations, usually in favor of the victorious side. Alexander however rejected the proposal and sent his envoy Thersippos to Darius, carrying a letter demanding Darius’ submission: - fore as the lord of all Asia. While Alexander was still occupied in the siege of Tyre, envoys came to him from give Alexander his daughter in marriage and be his friend and ally. Though the details, and especially the date, viz., the number of embassies, vary, it is usually accepted as historical fact. It has to my knowledge no earlier parallel to legitimate its relegation to the realm of topoi. Anab Anab Anab tween states or countries instead of monarchs. Alex Cosmopolitan Empire in Arrian’s Anabasis: Achaemenid, Hellenistic, or Roman? autonomous empire on the basis of equality after Issos. The Achaemenid ideology of universal rule and Persian interests particularly in Anatolia precluded that. Also Arrithe Achaemenid Empire (‘Asia’) because of his victory at Issos clearly does not belong in that context, though he may have made such a claim after Gaugamela. Darius had not been captured or killed at Issos, and still had enough military resources at his disposal to destroy the Macedonian army in a second pitched battle. Though the defeat at Issos compelled Darius to open negotiations, the war was far from decided. roy’ of the western satrapies. The terminology Arrian uses to describe Darius’ desired teristic of Hellenistic imperialism, or perhaps the persistence of that language in Roman imperial times (and likely going back to the Persian period). The standard rhetoric of formal equality often expressed what was in fact an unequal relationship. The marriage arrangement did not signify equality either, as it would have made Alexander the son-in-law of Darius. The Achaemenid kings regularly gave their daughters ity. In Seleukid Iran, this type of hypogamous marriage of females became a means i.a philia was not an informal and loose type of ‘friendship’, but a reciprocal, treaty-like arrangement ia and Roman amicitia also see the discussion of diplomatic amicitia phil- as later among the Seleucids for the king to share the administration of his huge realm with the Rolf Strootman it moreover gave the imperial dynasty a foothold in the vassals’ households, as the daughters and sisters who married into them remained in contact with, and continued to represent, the interests of their parental households. A similar agency may be assumed for the Achaemenid royal womkings themselves engaged rather strictly in endogamous marriage with members of their own family. In other words, Darius III, the Great King and King of Kings, would have remained the superior of his son-in-law, Alexander. bounded Alexander in allegiance to Darius, had he accepted it. Alexander’s position within the Achaemenid system of domination, if he had accepted the proposal, perhaps would have been comparable with that of a karanos (from OP * na-), the title given by Darius II to his son Cyrus the Younger, which expressed Cyrus region. A similar system survived into the Seleukid Empire, where the satraps of Lydia and Media sometimes doubled as the viceroys of respectively Asia Minor and the Upper Satrapies. Alexander’s reply to Darius’ envoys again has been recorded by all major Alexander historians in comparable terms. According to Arrian’s version, Alexander said, daughter, he would marry her, even if Darius did not give her. And Darius must come to him, if he wished for favorable treatment at his hands. rightly notes that marrying the sister-wife of Darius III, perhaps also named Stateira (Plut., Alex. Stateira died ‘in childbirth’ shortly before the Battle of Gaugamela, i.e. about two years after her her stillborn child could have been Alexander, attempting to translate the Achaemenid monarchy Xen., Hell Arr., Anab Anab Cosmopolitan Empire in Arrian’s Anabasis: Achaemenid, Hellenistic, or Roman? more boldly about his imperial aspirations: He told the envoys that the earth could not preserve its plan and order if there were two suns nor could the inhabited world remain calm and free from war so long as two kings shared the rule. He bade them tell Darius that, if he desired the supremacy, he should do battle with him to see which of them would have sole and universal rule. count in the context of Hellenistic imperial ideology, and may well go back to propaganda fabricated at Alexander’s court in dialogue with Achaemenid imperial ideology. As we of the idea such as Theokritos’ encomium for Ptolemy II (Idyll control of territory that is claimed, but rather the unity of all the (civilized) peoples of the world under the king’s aegis. Arrian, though in a less exuberant formulation than Diodoros, presents basically the same ideology of world rule. In the context of the Marathos episode, he has Alexander write to Darius, history before Augustus had begun copying such universalistic imagery from the Ptolemies after characteristic of Argead ideology under Alexander (as the near-contemporary Alexander Mosaic Arrian may not be mistaken in dating it almost two years earlier, for Diodoros and Curtius state that Rolf Strootman write to me as an equal, but state your demands to the master of all your possessions. If not, I shall deal with you as a wrongdoer. The narrative sources unfortunately do not allow us to reconstruct the exact substance of the negotiations between Darius and Alexander after Issos, though the sequence of events Anabasis Issos as a decisive battle by which Alexander had established supreme rule over the whole of ‘Asia’ and made Darius his inferior, as well as Diodoros’ indirect reference to the Battle of Gaugamela as such a divine verdict, show that these universalistic claims must have It is true that this universalist ideology overlapped with Roman notions of world rule in Arrian’s own time, but this is because Roman imperial cosmology had been profoundWhat is certainly not typically Roman, is the conceptualization of battle as a contest between two kings. To be sure, the fact AlAchaemenid imperial ideology. The Old Persian word draujana- (‘liar’ or ‘wrongdoer’) occurs frequently in Achaemenid inscriptions to designate ‘false kings’ who have revolted against the king and against the divine world order he claims to protect. Only the proposal to have the Euphrates as a border between the empires seems out of place here, than anything, Achaemenid, Argead, or Seleukid. Arr., Anab the west by the Zagros Mountains and never included lowland Mesopotamia and Babylonia (see Cosmopolitan Empire in Arrian’s Anabasis: Achaemenid, Hellenistic, or Roman? Alexander and the Indian Ocean Arrian more often ascribed to Argead imperialism under Alexander a universalistic ideology, the idea of an imagined empire that encompasses the entire or even the and Beas (Hyphasis), ritually demarcating the border between an ordered, imperial world and a barbaric non-world beyond. Anabasis, Arrian relates borders of the civilized world again. The Danube, Arrian says, is not only the greatest river in Europe, but moreover served as a barrier holding back barbaric, warlike tribes. That is an imperial world view pur sang, propagated also in Roman imperial ideology. are known from contemporaneous sources to have done the same on the banks of the Syr Eastern practices. Like the Argeads and Seleukids after them, the Achaemenids used rivers to symbolically create ‘mental maps’ of their imagined world empire. From the invasion of Asia, if not earlier, the Argead court began to develop an imperial necessity after the victory at Gaugamela, the capture of Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, and the Danube/Ister: Arr., Anab Beas/Hyphasis: Arr., Anab Arr., Anab Arr., Anab Alex Anab NH Aen. Anab - i.e., the way that individuals or groups subjectively process and Rolf Strootman to integrate local elites, soon enough a more pretentious ideological framework was needed to challenge the Achaemenid promise of worldwide peace and prosperity (caused by the king’s military invincibility resulting from the grace of the gods). It should be remembered that the Argead dynasty had been integrated into a wider Aegean koine of interconnected royal and satrapal courts for two centuries. The Achaemenid view of the world was very much that of the Macedonians and Greeks, too (as is clear from e.g. the fact that what we now call the Persian Empire, in Greek writings of the period is mostly referred to simply as ‘the King’). Arrian of course ascribes the invention of Argead imperial ideology with its ritualistic expressions largely to Alexander’s personal psychology, in particular his so-called pothos. But Alexander’s alleged urge to outdo his predecessors and go where no man had gone before, makes perfect sense as an expression of imperial ideology. This is true especially sc for the great sea encircles all the land. And it will be for me to show Macedonians and allies alike that the Indian Gulf forms but one stretch of water with the Persian its entirety, and the boundaries of our empire here are becoming those which God set for the whole continent. gulf of the Indian Ocean, and thereupon ordered the exploration of the Caspian Sea bepothos monarchical ritual. - ibid i.a. Arr., Anab Anab Cosmopolitan Empire in Arrian’s Anabasis: Achaemenid, Hellenistic, or Roman? seas were connected, as they should be. The plan probably was never carried out in Alexander’s reign, but several decades later a Seleukid admiral, Patrokles, explored the Caspian Sea for Seleukos I, claiming in the Periplous he wrote for his king that the Caspian Sea who had correctly assumed that the Caspian was an inland sea. The obvious ideological implication of this, was that the empire of the Seleukids was bordered by the Ocean on all sides except the west, and thus encompassed the whole of Asia. found e.g. in the Epic of Gilgameš and visualized famously in the late Babylonian mappa mundi from Sippar that is now in the British Museum. the claim to have conquered territories beyond the Ocean became a powerful expression of world rule. important military and performative feat. It is all very similar to the image of an empire incorporating the whole of ‘Asia’, and aiming to also control Africa, such as Arrian has Alexander describe it in the passage cited above: another indication that Arrian’s view of Alexander’s empire is rooted in the world view propagated by Alexander’s court, or per- Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind According to a later far as known to him, becoming of one mind together and living in unity and concord, Anab. Meteor gen in press. - Rolf Strootman and it has been ridiculed ever since. But the notion of the unity of all the peoples in the world makes perfect sense in the context of imperial conquest and consolidation. To be sure, it could even be argued that without an ideology expressing an ideal of world unity and world peace, an empire is doomed to fail. The establishment of universal peace and harmony was perhaps the strongest claim to legitimacy for Alexander’s successors in the epigraphic record of Aegean cities, both royal For instance in a well-known inscription from Ilion honoring Antiochos I after his accession (c words reminiscent of Achaemenid imperial inscriptions, that after having taken over the kingdom and manifested an honorable and good policy, sought to bring the cities in Seleukis (sc harsh circumstances because of those who had rebelled against his regime, back to peace and their old prosperity, and, having advanced against those attacking his the divinity as a benevolent helper, he restored the cities to peace and his kingdom Alexander in current historiography as a ruthless imperialist equally well as the outdated image of Alexander as an idealistic explorer, perhaps better. Tarn knew what he was talking about: he belonged himself to the elite of a world emOf course, he made the mistake of thinking that Alexander introduced the mind, which supposedly prepared the world for the spiritual climate of Christianity, - I.Ilion either from Ilion’s long involvement in the Persian Empire, and/or from the fact that the text was likely formulated in consultation with the royal court. Tarn’s amalgamation of ancient Macedonian and modern British imperialism is most obvious in his other magnum opus, The Greeks in Bactria and India igin and brotherhood of all peoples is of course also a very Christian one, especially in imperial-age Britain. Cosmopolitan Empire in Arrian’s Anabasis: Achaemenid, Hellenistic, or Roman? Tarn based his views on some key passages in the Anabasis, especially the account of sians. In a lengthy attempt to discredit Tarn’s reading, Badian pointed out that it hinges as a whole, or that he wanted Macedonians and Persians to rule the empire together in harmony. But such a close reading depends on a very positivistic view of Arrian’s text as an accurate source for the beliefs and sayings of the historical Alexander. If however the many references to universal rule scattered throughout the Anabasis are read as relating to the ideology of the later Argead Empire in a general sense, rather than to Alexander as an individual, these speak in favor of Tarn’s view, a view that Arrian apparently could relate to as well. Like Tarn, Arrian belonged to the elite of an imperialist power and may have genuinely believed in the Roman Empire’s mission to create worldwide peace and harmony. Both Arrian and Tarn understood the workings of empire quite well. We need to be wary of course of intermingling Argead and Roman imperial ideologies. But while Tarn projected values from his own time on the distant past in retrospect, we can see a continuous process of direct inter-imperial transfers of imperial practices and ideas taking place in western and central Afro-Eurasia in Antiquity: the ideology of the Hellenistic empires, beginning with the Argead Empire under Philip II and Alexander III, built upon Achaemenid precedent. Having been ‘Hellenized’ to a certain degree by the Seleukids and Ptolemies for the sake of Aegean audiences, the ‘Oriental’ convention of seeing the world as a unity under a single, divinely protected monarch became acceptable for the Romans as well. Appropriated most of all by Augustus after the defeat of oped Hellenistic images of universal rulership. Arr., Anab Plutarch, and served to present Alexander as a philosopher-in-arms, and a follower of the stoic phimen to consider the whole inhabited world as their fatherland, his camp as its stronghold and garriDe Alex. fort i.e. barbarians or even non-humans, can be understood as derived from imperial ideology as well, as it calls to mind the worldview expressed i.a. Barbaricum beyond the Limes. adopted by the Principate include the notion of universal peace and prosperity (as expressed e.g. on impe- Rolf Strootman Conclusion in a region that always was, and still is, characterized by wide cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity. Second, because it presents this homogeneous ‘Oriental’ block as disconnected from the Aegean, and thus serves to sustain the notion of Greek exceptionalism. term, and the now popular alternative, West Asia, is even more Eurocentric), but in that case I would suggest that the Aegean, is included in it, as it originally was. For many centuries, the Aegean had been part and parcel of a wider East-Mediterranecenturies BCE can be said to have been integrated in a ‘globalized’ Achaemenid world. It should therefore not come as a surprise that the Argeads were well-acquainted with the functioning and ideology of the Achaemenid Empire. Alexander did not need to study Achaemenid world was not a foreign ‘state’ but a system of interaction that they themselves participated in. The Argead dynasty, I would argue, was equally well-integrated in the pan-Aegean koine of kings and satraps as it was in the world of Greek and Hellenized poleis. I hope to have shown that what Arrian says about the late Argead ideology of empire from Alexander’s court, with perhaps the addition of slightly later, Ptolemaic views on cosmopolitan empire derived from Ptolemy. It would be pointless, I think, to suggest a precise avenue of cultural origin of Alexander’s cosmopolitanism in general, be it pharaonand after Alexander’s reign, and Alexander had no other option than to tap into such secondary status as the vassal and son-in-law of Darius. Aeneid, which aimed at rivalling the great imperial epic of the Ptolemies’ Mediterranean naval empire, Apollonios’ Argonautica by the fact that we have to work from a scholarly tradition that tends to overemphasize the continu- The Ptolemaic elements in Ptolemy’s and then Arrian’s accounts of Alexander’s royal and imperial Cosmopolitan Empire in Arrian’s Anabasis: Achaemenid, Hellenistic, or Roman? and literary aspirations, in particular his ambition to create a new Alexander. Arrian presented Alexander’s pothos traits of his character. But in constructing a personality for Alexander, he in fact drew upon an historical ideology of empire that the later Argeads shared with both their predecessors, the Achaemenids, and their successors, the Seleukids. Thus, in Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandrou References in the First Millennium BC (Proceedings of the erung und geschichtlicher Wirklichkeit, Saeculum Historia Universal Kingship and Cosmopolitan Culture in the Hellenistic Ecumene, in: Universal Empire: A Comparative Approach to Imperial Culture and Representation in Eurasian History, Cambridge. Die Staatverträge des Altertums II, München. Die Strahlen der Herrscher. Theomorphes Herrscherbild und politische Symbolik im Hellenismus und in der römischen Kaiserzeit, Mainz. nach der Schlacht bei Issos, Chiron Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Alexander the Great (Brill’s Companions to ClasMonumente an ihren Grenzen. 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