Alexander's satrapal appointments in Syria have long been a focal point of scholarly dissension, for the relevant passages in the ancient sources are uniformly inconsistent and sometimes disconcertingly corrupt. A running debate continued until 1935, when Oscar Leuze presented a monumental survey of the ancient evidence together with exhaustive refutation of the hypotheses advanced by earlier scholars. Since then the problems of Syria under Alexander have been left virtually undisturbed, which is a pity. In the first place, Leuze's treatment is (...) not impregnable. His massive discussion tends to convince through sheer accumulation of argument rather than by the cogency of its logic, which can often be faulted. (shrink)

New evidence often complicates as much as it clarifies. That truth is well illustrated by Stephen Tracy's recent and brilliant discovery that a tiny unpublished fragment of an Attic inscription belongs to a known decree. The decree has hitherto been recognised as an enactment of the oligarchy imposed by Antipater in 322. Its proposer, Archedicus of Lamptrae, was a leading member of the new regime and held the most influential office of state, that of anagrapheus, in 320/19.2 Appropriately enough the (...) decree confers honours upon members of the Macedonian court, but as the stone now reveals, it is phrased in a remarkable and anomalous manner: ‘in order that as many as possible of the friends of the king and of Antipater may be honoured by the Athenian people and confer benefactions upon the city’. There is no question about the meaning. The decree refers to friends of an unknown king, who are also friends of Antipater. But after Alexander's death there was a dual kingship. Philip III Arrhidaeus and Alexander IV reigned jointly and are generally termed ‘the kings’. How can the singular singular be explained? (shrink)

New evidence often complicates as much as it clarifies. That truth is well illustrated by Stephen Tracy's recent and brilliant discovery that a tiny unpublished fragment of an Attic inscription belongs to a known decree . The decree has hitherto been recognised as an enactment of the oligarchy imposed by Antipater in 322. Its proposer, Archedicus of Lamptrae, was a leading member of the new regime and held the most influential office of state, that of anagrapheus, in 320/19.2 Appropriately enough (...) the decree confers honours upon members of the Macedonian court, but as the stone now reveals, it is phrased in a remarkable and anomalous manner: ‘in order that as many as possible of the friends of the king and of Antipater may be honoured by the Athenian people and confer benefactions upon the city’. There is no question about the meaning. The decree refers to friends of an unknown king, who are also friends of Antipater. But after Alexander's death there was a dual kingship. Philip III Arrhidaeus and Alexander IV reigned jointly and are generally termed ‘the kings’. How can the singular singular be explained? (shrink)