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Protein Electrophoresis in Clinical Diagnosis
This page intentionally left blank
Protein Electrophoresis in
Clinical Diagnosis

David F Keren

Medical Director, Warde Medical Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI

Department of Pathology, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, Ann Arbor, MI

Clinical Professor of Pathology, The University of Michigan Medical School,

Ann Arbor, MI

Hodder Arnold
A MEMBER OF THE HODDER HEADLINE GROUP
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by
Hodder Arnold, a member of the Hodder Headline Group,
338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH

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Distributed in the United States of America by

Oxford University Press Inc.,
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

© 2003 Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically,
including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval
system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or a
licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences
are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency: 90 Tottenham Court Road,
London W1T 4LP.

Whilst the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and
accurate at the date of going to press, neither the author[s] nor the publisher
can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions
that may be made. In particular (but without limiting the generality of the
preceding disclaimer) every effort has been made to check drug dosages;
however it is still possible that errors have been missed. Furthermore,
dosage schedules are constantly being revised and new side-effects
recognized. For these reasons the reader is strongly urged to consult the
drug companies’ printed instructions before administering any of the drugs
recommended in this book.

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ISBN-10: 0340 81213 3

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To my wonderful family
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Protein structure and electrophoresis 1
2 Techniques for protein electrophoresis 15
3 Immunofixation, immunosubtraction, and immunoselection techniques 33
4 Proteins identified by serum protein electrophoresis 63
5 Approach to pattern interpretation in serum 109
6 Conditions associated with monoclonal gammopathies 145
7 Examination of urine for proteinuria 217
8 Approach to pattern interpretation in cerebrospinal fluid 259
9 Laboratory strategies for diagnosing monoclonal gammopathies 285
10 Case studies for interpretation 304
Index 395
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface

This text presents the use of protein electrophoresis resulted in better detection of bisalbuminemia by
of serum, urine, and cerebrospinal fluid in clinical laboratories using capillary zone electrophoresis.
diagnosis. It is a revision of two previous books on That technique also has enhanced our ability to
this subject with several substantive and many detect genetic variants such as α1-antitrypsin
trivial changes. The title has been changed from inhibitor deficiencies (PiZZ and PiSZ) as well as
High-Resolution Electrophoresis and Immuno- benign variants.
fixation: Techniques and Interpretations to the In addition to technical advances in the general
present one in recognition of the fact that the infor- detection and quantification of specific proteins, the
mation in this book may be useful to individuals techniques available to identify the monoclonal
who interpret a wide variety of electrophoretic gels proteins have also changed significantly. Immuno-
(high-resolution or not). subtraction using capillary zone electrophoresis was
There have been several significant changes in the not even mentioned in the second edition. Now,
field since the second edition of High-Resolution immunosubtraction by automated technology is
Electrophoresis and Immunofixation: Techniques used in many laboratories that employ capillary
and Interpretation was published in 1994 by zone electrophoresis. It is highly efficient, but suf-
Butterworth-Heinemann. That text was largely fers from a lack of sensitivity and flexibility when
written in 1993, making it 10 years old at the time compared with immunofixation. This is discussed
of publication of this book. At the time the second in the present text. For laboratories using some of
edition was written there was no high-resolution the newer semi-automated gel-based techniques,
technique available that provided automated or semi-automated immunofixation is now available.
semi-automated methods for laboratories with a Beyond the instruments, there are new reagents
large clinical volume of testing. There are now available such as the ‘Penta’ (pentavalent) reagent
several products presented, with examples. Some of that one company supplies as a potential screen for
them are gel-based, others use capillary zone monoclonal proteins. Immunoselection was also
electrophoresis. Some automated gel-based systems just touched on in the second edition. Now that g
have achieved an excellent degree of resolution that heavy chain disease is more readily recognized, a
allows efficient performance of high-quality tech- broader discussion of immunoselection is provided.
niques by even moderately sized institutions. At the Advances have also been made in reagents avail-
time of the second edition, capillary zone electro- able for measurement of monoclonal free light
phoresis itself was quite new with no methods avail- chains by nephelometry in both serum and urine.
able that had been approved for use in the clinical Recent publications indicate that measurement of
laboratory by the Food and Drug Administration. I free light chains in serum may be useful not only to
discussed it only briefly. Now two such instruments follow patients with known monoclonal free light
are already in place in many laboratories and there chains (Bence Jones proteins), but also to assist in
have been several publications about the advan- the difficult diagnoses of amyloid (AL) and even
tages, artifacts and limitations of these techniques. non-secretory myeloma. This is discussed in
Improved resolution especially of protein bands has Chapters 6 and 7.
x Preface

In the second edition, high-resolution agarose gels from our clinicians. Our current sign-outs are pre-
were preferred for detecting oligoclonal bands in sented in tabular form and readers are encouraged
the cerebrospinal fluid from patients whose differ- to use them if they wish.
ential diagnosis included multiple sclerosis. Now, A couple of concepts were removed from this
the recommendation is the use of isoelectric focus- edition. The technique of two-dimensional electro-
ing or an immunofixation technique to identify the phoresis, while useful in research has not caught on
bands as immunoglobulins. One company cur- in the clinical laboratory and is not discussed in
rently offers a semi-automated immunofixation this volume. Further, the indirect immunofluores-
method for detecting oligoclonal bands (O-bands) cence techniques reviewed in the previous texts has
in cerebrospinal fluid on unconcentrated fluid. been replaced by immunohistochemical and flow
There have also been improvements in the detec- cytometry studies.
tion of leakage of cerebrospinal fluid into nasal and Finally, in this text I recommend the use of the
aural fluids; these are discussed in Chapter 8. term monoclonal free light chain (MFLC) to
Beyond technical issues, there have been improve- replace the term Bence Jones proteins. It is both a
ments in our knowledge of proper utilization and practical and a technical improvement. Some indi-
interpretation of protein electrophoresis when viduals confuse the presence of an intact
searching for the presence of a monoclonal immunoglobulin monoclonal gammopathy in the
gammopathy. In 1998, the College of American urine with a Bence Jones protein. It is not. Bence
Pathologists Conference XXXII convened a panel Jones protein is a monoclonal free light chain and
of experts to provide recommendations for the has much greater significance to the patient’s diag-
clinical and laboratory evaluation of patients sus- nosis and prognosis than an intact immunoglobulin
pected of having a monoclonal gammopathy. monoclonal gammopathy in the urine. The term
These guidelines were published in 1999 and MFLC says exactly what we found (i.e. a mono-
provide an important framework that emphasizes clonal free light chain). So it is technically correct
the partnership of clinicians with laboratory and removes any possible ambiguity. This has the
workers. advantage that individuals will no longer use a
Urine evaluation has improved with the newer hyphen that Dr Henry Bence Jones never used on
technologies and has been complicated by some any of the papers or books that he wrote.
current procedures. For example, individuals I hope you enjoy this book, or at least find it
receiving a pancreas transplant may have the useful. Your comments and questions help to
exocrine pancreas drainage empty into the urinary provide a focus for making this text more relevant
bladder. As discussed in Chapter 7, this results in g- to the use of electrophoresis in clinical diagnosis.
migrating bands that may be mistaken for Please feel free to contact me via e-mail:
monoclonal gammopathies. They are exocrine [email protected].
pancreas secretions.
The method I suggested in the first edition and David F. Keren, MD
expanded in the second for tailored reporting with Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
detailed sign-outs has been improved by feedback January 12, 2003
 Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my family and especially my wife Jeffrey S. Warren provided helpful suggestions in
for their great patience with me as I worked reviewing selected portions of this book. Their
through this task. input kept many outrageous statements out of the
I am deeply grateful to the many people who final copy, and corrected several errors of omis-
helped in the development of the materials for this sion.
and previous editions of this book. They allowed Special thanks are due to Ron Gulbranson and
me to use their clinical material or illustrations to Debbie Hedstrom who prepared many of the elec-
give the reader a first-hand view of the potential trophoretic gels, electropherograms, and special
uses and limitations of electrophoretic techniques studies that are in the present book. They have had
in the clinical laboratory. Figures, Tables or spe- endless patience with me while I cluttered their
cific cases were kindly provided by Dr R. S. work area with capillary zone electropherograms
Abraham, Dr Francesco Aguzzi, Dr Arranz-Peña, and gels containing interesting cases.
Dr Gary Assarian, Cynthia R. Blessum, Dr Xavier Finally, I also thank the many individuals who
Bossuyt, Dr Arthur Bradwell, Dr. Stephen O. have taken the time to write, telephone or speak to
Brennan, Chrissie Dyson, Dr Beverly Handy, me personally about some aspect of my work.
Margaret A. Jenkins, Carl R. Jolliff, Dr Jerry They have framed many questions about concepts
Katzmann, Dr Robert H. Kelly, Dr Joseph M. or omissions from previous work that I hope to
Lombardo, Dr A. C. Parekh, Dr Jeffrey Pearson, clarify in this text.
Dr Arthur J. Sloman, Dr Lu Song, Dr Tsieh Sun, Dr
E. J. Thompson, Dr Adrian O. Vladutiu and David F. Keren, MD
Dorothy Wilkins. Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Drs John M. Averyt, John L. Carey, III, and January 12, 2003
This page intentionally left blank
 1
Protein structure and
electrophoresis

Protein structure 1 Early clinical applications of electrophoresis 9

Electrophoretic techniques in clinical laboratories 5 References 12

The term ‘electrophoresis’ refers to the migration These are the D- and L-forms (Fig. 1.2). In proteins,
of charged particles in an electrical field. The the L-form is almost always present.1
success of electrophoresis in separating serum,
L-Serine D-Serine
urine and cerebrospinal fluid proteins into clini-
COOH COOH
cally useful fractions results from the heterogeneity | |
of the charges of these molecules. It is useful, there- H2N ⎯ C ⎯ H H⎯ C ⎯ NH2
| |
fore, to review briefly the structural features that CH2 CH2
result in the observed migration. | |
H2 COH H2 COH

Figure 1.2 The L and D forms of serine.

PROTEIN STRUCTURE
When in solution, at the typical intracellular pH,
The major structural and functional molecules pro- many amino acids behave as both acids and
duced by cells are proteins. They are important in bases. This results in the formation of a zwitte-
host defense, cell structure, movement, and as rion, a molecule in which both the amino and
regulatory molecules. Proteins are composed of carboxyl ends are ionized, yet the molecule is
individual units called amino acids; the general electrically neutral (Fig. 1.3). Since this molecule
structure is shown in Fig. 1.1. As the name implies, is electrically neutral, that is, isoelectric, it does
each amino acid contains an acidic carboxyl group
(-COOH) and a basic amino group (-NH2). The R H
groups (sequences specific for each amino acid) |
attached to the alpha-carbon can be neutral, acidic, H+ H3+N ⎯ C ⎯ COOH
|
or basic. Unless the R group is a hydrogen atom R
(glycine), the structure around the alpha carbon is H
|
asymmetrical. Therefore, amino acids can exist as H3+N⎯ C⎯COO−
one of two stereoisomers that are mirror images. |
R
H
COOH |
| OH −
H2N ⎯ C ⎯ COO−
H2N ⎯ C ⎯ H |
| R
R Figure 1.3 Zwitterion and effect of acidic and basic solutions on
Figure 1.1 General structure of amino acids. amino acid charge.
2 Protein structure and electrophoresis

not migrate in an electrical field. Of course, the most hydrophobic amino acids exist as zwitterions
charge on each amino acid depends on both the R (Fig. 1.3). However, when large numbers of
group and the pH of the solution in which it is hydrophobic amino acids occur in other molecules,
dissolved. such as occasional products of malignant plasma
By altering the pH of an aqueous solution, the cell clones, they may exhibit properties that cause
charge on an amino acid can be changed. In acidic solubility problems. Hydrophobic amino acid
solution, the amino acid accepts a proton on its content is not the only factor that relates to solu-
carboxylate group, resulting in a net positive bility problems. For example, the complex cold-
charge on the molecule (Fig. 1.3). The positively precipitating property of cryoglobulins (see
charged cation thus formed will migrate toward Chapter 6) is not thought to be related to an excess
the negative pole (cathode) in an electrical field. of hydrophobic amino acids.2
Conversely, in basic solution the ammonium group
gives up a proton, leaving the amino acid with a Aliphatic Amino Acids
net negative charge (Fig. 1.3). This negatively
Glycine Alanine Valine Leucine
charged anion migrates toward the positive pole | | | |
(anode) in an electrical field. The pH of the solu- H CH3 CH CH2
|
tion and the nature of the R group (Fig. 1.4) have H3C CH3 CH
an important effect on the migration of individual
H3C CH3
amino acids. For example, both aspartic acid and
glutamic acid at pH 7.0 or greater are always non- Isoleucine Serine Threonine
protonated (negatively charged) and consequently | | |
H⎯C⎯CH3 CH2 H⎯ C ⎯ OH
are referred to as aspartate and glutamate. At | | |
neutral pH, arginine, histidine and lysine are all CH2 H2COH CH3
|
protonated (positively charged). These differences CH3
in charge are important in determining the migra- (a)
tion of proteins during electrophoresis. Further, in
Aromatic Amino Acids
genetic variants such as a1-antitrypsin deficiency,
the substitution of a charged amino acid for a Phenylalanine Tyrosine Tryptophan

neutral amino acid, or the converse, will alter the CH2 CH2 CH2
migration of the variant form that allows us to
detect the abnormality. NH
The solubility of proteins also is related to their
amino acid composition. For example, tyrosine, OH
threonine and serine have hydroxyl moieties in
their R group, and readily form hydrogen bonds
with water. Similarly, asparagine and glutamine
Sulfur-Containing Amnio Acids
have amide R groups that are hydrophilic. In con-
trast, several amino acids are hydrophobic. Large Cysteine Methionine

numbers of these hydrophobic amino acids (pheny- CH2 CH2

lalanine, tryptophan, valine, leucine, isoleucine,
proline, alanine or methionine) in a protein render SH CH2
it, or portions of it, relatively insoluble in aqueous S
solutions. Functionally, hydrophobic amino acids
serve as key constituents of proteins, sometimes as CH3
the parts of proteins that interact with the lipid (b)
(hydrophobic) membranes of cells. At neutral pH, Figure 1.4 (a–b) R-Group structure of amino acids.
Other documents randomly have
different content
and to legitimatize this practical usurpation, the legend arose that he
was not really the son of Lagos, but the son of Philip. It is to the
honor of Ptolemy that he had nothing to do with this libel on the
good name of his mother, and preferred rather to be an illegitimate
king than an illegitimate son. Besides, it was only necessary to go
back a generation or two to attach the line of Ptolemy to that of the
ancient "Zeus-born" kings of Macedon. The wife of Lagos had
belonged, in fact, to the royal family, as the Ptolemies took good
care to observe.
The Ptolemaic empire was, accordingly, based on three concurrent
theories, one for the native Egyptians, one for the Greek city-states
and one for the Macedonians.

Appian of Alexandria,[90] writing about two hundred years after the

death of Cleopatra, cites the royal registers as authority for his
report that Philadelphus kept, for land operations 200,000 foot,
40,000 cavalry, and arms for 300,000 men; in addition, 300 war
elephants and 2000 war chariots; for naval warfare, 2000 transports,
1500 battleships with three to five banks of rowers, and oars and
rigging for twice that number. He had also, according to the same
authority, 800 royal barges with gilt poops and beaks, and in his
treasury a reserve of 740,000 Egyptian talents, or $890,000,000.
That the reserve as given amounts to three times the value of the
gold and silver in the United States treasury shows that the
enumeration belongs only in the history yet to be written of the
absurdities of statistics. More credible estimates of the Egyptian
army place it at 80,800 under the second Ptolemy and (exclusive of
natives, who then numbered 26,000) 49,700 under the fourth
Ptolemy.[91] These are very large totals. It will help to solve many
questions of Ptolemaic policy to observe where the soldiers came
from.
But first we may notice that they could not come from the natives;
for their most important duty was to hold them in subjection. There
were so many people to keep down! Alexandria itself had a large
native quarter. The other two Greek cities in the land were but alien
flecks in the midst of a great multitude. Up and down the valley lay
the native hamlets, to the number of 33,333 according to
Theocritus, teeming with the seven million people whom Egypt then
sustained. Alexander the Great may have dreamed of Hellenizing
these masses; Ptolemy, however, had no such thought, as is shown
conclusively by the fact that under his dynasty and, indeed, for at
least two centuries after its fall, Naucratis, and probably also
Ptolemais, forbade by law marriages between their citizens and the
natives.[92]
The sole landowner in Egypt was the king. The entire valley of the
Nile was literally his personal estate.
Except for certain portions "set apart" for particular purposes, which
we shall examine in a moment, the arable land surrounding the
countless native villages was in the possession of tenants of the
crown, who paid to the king about seven bushels of grain per acre
as rent and sowed their land according to royal orders with seed
provided by him; who might be dispossessed at any time, but could
neither abandon their plots (at least in seeding- and harvest-time)
nor their villages (except for short periods), at their own volition;
who had numerous services in connection with "geometry,"
irrigation, transport, post, and similar matters to perform, and might
be moved or forced en masse to redeem and cultivate dry or marsh
land situated near their hovels; who paid a poll-tax and a house-tax
to the king, and one sixth of the yield of their vineyards and
orchards, when they had any, to the temple authorities whom the
king appointed; who bought their beer, oil, fish, honey, cloth, soda,
bricks, wood, paper, and almost every other article of common use
either exclusively from the king, who was the sole producer and
seller, or in certain cases from private dealers, who, however, paid so
much for their license that they could not undersell the king.
Watchmen were everywhere in the fields to see that the king was
not defrauded. Gendarmes patrolled the country to guard the roads
and deserts, to prevent smuggling and "moonshining." Scribes and
bankers were in every village to keep account of all changes in
families and in leases; to visé every payment. Every village had its
storehouse of records, of grain, of money. And on the Nile went to
and fro the royal transports which carried the surpluses to
Alexandria, and the products of the royal factories to the local
depots from which they were sold. The king of Egypt was,
accordingly, by far the greatest merchant and manufacturer in the
whole world. Even in far distant Delos the price of paper, myrrh, and
other articles was fixed by the pleasure of the royal monopolist. That
his interference "regulated the market" to his own advantage may
be inferred from the fact that the sheet of paper which was sold in
296 b.c. for one obol (three and one half cents) cost on the average
eleven in 279-250 b.c.[93]
Thus set about by countless officials and shorn to the very skin, the
fellahs lived under the Ptolemies, "patient, laborious, cheerful," yet
filled with hidden bitterness at the magnificence in which their
masters lived at their expense in Alexandria, venting their rage in
impotent prophecies that "the great city at the water's edge should
become a drying-place for the nets of fishers, and its gods should
migrate to the native capital Memphis."[94]
Clearly, the army of the Ptolemies could not be recruited from such
elements. The Egyptians might be put on the warships as rowers,
used in the transport service, and, occasionally when the need was
great, in small numbers as soldiers. But granted that they might be
useful in fighting abroad,—at home they belonged to the enemy
from whom the early Ptolemies had greatly to fear.
As such, the citizens of Alexandria, Naucratis, and Ptolemais were
apparently exempt from military service. Hence the great problem of
national defense could not have been solved by the founding of new
Greek cities of this type in Egypt had there been room for them, or
by the founding of any kind of cities, had Ptolemy thought it possible
to organize the natives in urban communities round a Greek or
Macedonian nucleus—as Alexander may have wished to do, as the
Romans in fact did in the year 202 a.d.; for, even if Ptolemy had
cared for that kind of thing, the Greek or Macedonian nucleus did
not as yet exist in Egypt. It had to be brought there from abroad.
Hence it was a question of life and death for the Ptolemaic dynasty
to remain in constant communication with the regions of the eastern
Mediterranean whence came supporters of their rule, soldiers for
their armies.
"But shouldst thou really mean a voyage out," says one Greek
peasant to another in Theocritus,[95]—
"The freeman's best paymaster's Ptolemy.

(Æschines)

What is he else?

(Thyonichus)

A gentleman: a man

Of wit and taste: the top of company;

Loyal to ladies; one whose eye is keen
For friends, and keener still for enemies.
Large in his bounties, he, in kingly sort,
Denies a boon to none: but, Æschines,
One should not ask too often. This premised,
If thou wilt clasp the military cloak
O'er thy right shoulder, and with legs astride
Await the onward rush of shielded men:
Hie thee to Egypt."
Phœnicia and its hinterland were necessary to Ptolemy because of
their forests of timber for shipbuilding, which Egypt lacked. The rest
of his transmarine possessions were necessary because of their
stock of reliable soldiers, which Egypt also lacked. Hence, as stated
already, the imperial policy of the early Ptolemies was a plain
consequence of their domestic policy—of holding Egypt as a foreign
country.
Let us now see what they did with the store of soldiers which they
possessed and with the new recruits whom they constantly added to
it.[96] I have already drawn your attention to certain lands which the
Ptolemies "set aside" for particular purposes. One complex of such
lands they assigned to the temples. And I may remark that while the
Ptolemies appointed and controlled the priests, they also conciliated
them, by leaving them valuable perquisites, paying to them stated
sums annually, building new temples and repairing old ones, and
allowing them to make for their own consumption the various
articles which they could buy only at the royal counters and at
monopolistic prices. They also set their land aside in a favored
category. What is common to this category is not a single fiscal
arrangement, but a relinquishing by the king of his right of direct
management. To its members he binds himself in a way that does
not impair his ownership, but does restrict his ability to take
possession.
To this category belong the "gifts" of large blocks of land with their
villages to his courtiers, who received them free from rent and taxes.
The "friends" of the Ptolemies, though they resided in Alexandria,
were thus landed proprietors, absentee landlords, who maintained
their luxurious establishments in the capital on the rents which their
Egyptian tenants paid. Common soldiers could not expect to become
feudal lords by entering Ptolemy's service. But for his "loyal
comrades," as Theocritus[97] calls them,—his officers, court
dignitaries, and favorites,—he had such benefices to confer.
To the ordinary men-at-arms lots of land all over Egypt were
assigned; to those of the guard and the cavalry, sixty-five and forty-
five acre farms, to the infantrymen, farms of twenty acres. For
Egyptian conditions these were very large units, and since under
Philadelphus—who perfected this system of farming out his soldiers
—the army consisted of 57,600 foot and 23,200 horsemen, over one
quarter of all the arable land in Egypt would have been in their
possession, if only land naturally watered by the Nile had been given
to them, and if none of them were mercenaries serving only for hire.
Many, however, were doubtless mercenaries of this type; and to the
rest, land was commonly distributed which needed some
expenditure of capital and energy to be reclaimed from the desert or
the water. Of this kind of land the Ptolemies evidently inherited a
goodly quantity from the Persians, whose government had been
rendered inefficient in the fourth century b.c. by frequent revolts of
the natives.
The soldiers might sublet their lots in whole or part and live in
Alexandria or elsewhere. Or they might take possession and till them
with their own hands. To facilitate the actual distribution of the army
over the country, the king attached to the lots "quarters" on the
premises of the neighboring Egyptians. This was not at all to the
liking of the latter, as the following letter of a quartermaster to a
county official shows:[98] "We have discovered that certain owners
of houses in Crocodilopolis, which were once used for quartering
troops, have taken off the roofs, and walled up the doors and built
altars in their places. This they have done so as not to have them
occupied. If then you agree, in view of the shortage of quarters,
write Agenor that he make the owners of the houses take the altars
down, and build them up again better than before upon the most
suitable and conspicuous parts of the roofs, so that we may be able
to take possession." The gods had never objected to having old
altars replaced by finer ones. Henceforth, not the entrances, but the
roofs, were to be protected by religion. The ancient quartermaster
knew his business.
It was decidedly to the interest of the government that it should
have a sort of garrison in residence in all the nomes, or counties, of
Egypt—trained soldiers ready to take their places in their companies
at the command of the chief nome official, who was also their
general.
These men were by no means all Macedonians or Greeks. Some of
them were Persians who had been in the land when Ptolemy arrived;
some were Libyans, Jews, Thracians, Mysians, Galatians; nearly all
were from the regions tapped by the empire of the Ptolemies.
They paid no rents for their lots, no poll-tax, and one tenth, in place
of one sixth, of the yield of their gardens and orchards. Like the
Hellenes generally, they might give commutation money in lieu of
manual labor on dykes and canals. In other respects they were
taxed rather more severely than the "royal tenants"; and, in
addition, they had to pay certain feudal "aids" to the king. If they
failed to pay these "aids," or if they fell in arrears with their taxes,
they lost their holdings. Hence they were under a financial constraint
to make the land, which they commonly received as waste land,
productive. The soldiers were, accordingly, the "pioneers" of
Ptolemaic Egypt, steadily at work enlarging the arable areas of the
country and redressing the agricultural wrongs which it had
sustained during the troubles of the later Persian régime.
Their lots reverted to the king when they died or left the army. The
king could then add them to his domain or reassign them to other
soldiers. During the imperial period of Ptolemaic history he seems to
have taken the former course whenever the land was in a condition
to bring him in a rent in addition to the taxes. However, from the
very beginning, he undertook to make a new or a re-grant to the
sons of dead or superannuated soldiers who were trained for military
service. These were officially designated "men of the epigone, or
increase," and they entered the army at the same time that they
entered upon their inheritance. In this way the Ptolemies bred a crop
of new soldiers in Egypt, so that they might look forward to being
gradually less dependent upon mercenaries recruited from beyond
the seas. Egypt was being enriched by a new military caste which
should take the place by the side of the new dynasty which the
"machimoi" or "warriors" had occupied during the old days of the
native Pharaohs.
Multiracial though the soldiers were, they all spoke Greek. They had
to regulate their private conduct and their business affairs by the
special laws established in Egypt for the benefit of the various ethne,
or nationalities, to which they belonged. For in Ptolemaic Egypt, as
in the Turkish empire to-day, foreigners brought their own legal
restrictions and safeguards with them, which, however, were
formulated, for use in the Ptolemaic courts, in ethnic codes. These
codes, however, were either couched originally in Greek, or, like the
laws of Moses, which the Jews observed, they were translated into
Greek at an early date. How much political freedom the various
nations enjoyed, it is difficult to say; but in general they seem to
have tempered the absolutism of the Ptolemies only where they
were massed together in large numbers, as in Memphis and, above
all, Alexandria. Elsewhere the ethnic groups were, doubtless,
constituted chiefly of the territorial soldiers, or cleruchs, as they
were called.[99] These, however, ceased to have any civil rights
when called by the king into active service. With them political
agitation could become effective only when it became mutiny.
Prominent among the institutions which the Hellenic and Hellenized
foreigners brought into Egypt were those that centred in the
gymnasia. Some of them were, doubtless, at first and for long, a
subject of scandal and wonderment to the natives. As the Greeks
ran and tumbled stark naked in the palæstræ, or in the contests for
which, as for the army, the palæstræ were the training-grounds, the
story of Heracles and Busiris was constantly reënacted; except that
in time Busiris came to see whence sprang the strength which he
could not resist. It was in the gymnasia also that the Greeks
received their higher education and by its means that they secured
for their sons the ideas which the poetry and philosophy of Hellas
alone could give. In the gymnasia temples of Hellenism appeared in
county after county of Egypt.
The foreigners brought with them into Egypt their native religions,
and, when they were not monotheists like the Jews, they came
easily into sympathy with the myriad cults of the natives. A religious
rapprochement was thus established and a bi-religious milieu
created, by which a new half-Greek, half-Egyptian god, Sarapis,
whom Ptolemy I introduced from Sinope, prospered. Before long this
Janus-like deity, who was endowed with a sanctity and miraculous
power which hoary Egypt could alone give, and with a plastic beauty
peculiarly Greek, became distinctively the great god of Egypt, and, in
conjunction with Isis, Anubis, and Harpocrates, the most active
religious force in the whole world of the Ptolemaic empire. Sarapis-
Osiris, the monarch, judge, and savior of the world of the dead:
Ptolemy-Pharaoh, the monarch, judge, and savior of the world of the
living;—these two and these two alone received the divine homage
of Greeks and Egyptians alike. The early Ptolemies willed the
impossible; to accept the native deities, cults, creeds, and
hierarchies as the active element in the fused Græco-Egyptian
religion; to let the two civilizations represented in their realm
coalesce in so far as their religious ideas, practices, aspirations, and
hopes were concerned; and at the same time to keep them apart in
other respects: to preserve in other matters the unapproachable
superiority of the invaders.

Certainly, success in this attempt to graft the ancient religion which

he as Pharaoh was bound to accept and preserve on the new stock
of Hellenism without corrupting the fine flavor of the fruit hitherto
borne by it in Greece, depended on making the Greek cities,
Alexandria, Naucratis, and Ptolemais, and the Græco-Macedonian
military colonies simply the Egyptian portion of a Græco-Macedonian
realm reaching over the seas to the head of the Ægean. This
necessary support to his position in Egypt the third Ptolemy
jeopardized when he neglected to replace the great fleet after 242
b.c. For twenty long years, moreover, he left his army at work
farming in Egypt, with the inevitable result that it became immobile.
Such a neglect of military matters seemed warranted by the
impotence of his two great rivals. For during this entire period Asia
was rent by a dynastic struggle and Macedon was paralyzed by a
general insurrection in Greece. His weak and indolent son paid the
penalty for his father's neglect. By strengthening his army with
26,000 natives, whom he armed and drilled in the Macedonian
fashion (221-217 b.c.), he saved the empire for seventeen years,
when it fell before the combined attack of Macedon and Syria (202-
200 b.c.); but he tempted the Egyptians to lay claim with the sword
to partnership with the foreigners in the government. Thus
presented, their claim was rejected, as was natural; but once the
empire was lost and the flow of immigration into Egypt ceased, the
Ptolemies of the "domestic" period were forced to acknowledge its
justice.
They constituted their territorial army more and more from native
soldiers, to whom they gave increasingly larger lots, while they
progressively diminished the size of those held by the foreigners.
They ceased to take back the holdings on the death or
superannuation of the occupants, thus admitting the right of sons
and other male descendants to get, in return for military service, not
dry or marsh land, as in the early days, but land already redeemed
by their father's capital and labor. Soldiers ceased to be soldiers
spending their spare time winning new land from the desert and the
swamp for their master's estate; and became farmers to whom
service in the army was a nuisance and a loss. The army became
thereby hopelessly immobile.
The age was generally one of economic decline and not of economic
advance; for Egypt had gained more, as the sequel proved, from the
vigorous government of the early Ptolemies than it had lost by the
expenditure of its surpluses on the empire. In this decadent age the
Egyptians gained admission freely to the police and administrative
service as well as to the army. Thus elevated in social esteem, they
were able to intermarry with their ancient lords; so that a
considerable half-breed and bilingual population developed—Greek in
the outward things, fellaheen, according to Polybius, in character
and culture. Alexandria, he says,[100] "three strata occupy: the
Egyptian and the native race, sharp and (un)civilized. Then the
mercenary troops, oppressive and numerous and dissolute; for from
old custom they kept armed troops who had learned to rule rather
than to obey, on account of the worthlessness of the kings. The third
stratum was that of the Alexandrians, nor was even this truly a
civilized population owing to the same causes, but yet better than
the other two, for though of mixed breed, yet they were originally
Greeks, with traditions of the general type of the Greeks. But this
part of the population having disappeared mainly owing to Ptolemy
Euergetes Physkon (145-116 b.c.) in whose reign Polybius visited
Alexandria,—for Physkon, when revolted against, over and over
again let loose his troops on the population and massacred them,—
and such being the state of things, to visit Egypt was a long and
thankless journey." Foreign enemies the omnipotent Roman Senate
kept off during the second century b.c.
But unnerved by the menacing patronage of the great republic, the
Ptolemies, now represented by men of vigor and no character or of
character and no vigor; by women, who were sprung mostly from
adelphic unions, of remarkable ability, beauty, and morals, prefaced
with a period of long-continued dynastic and national strife the
dramatic epoch of Ptolemy the Piper and Cleopatra the Great.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Mahaffy, J.P. The Empire of the Ptolemies (1895), and
The Ptolemaic Dynasty (1899).
2. Beloch, J. Griechische Geschichte, iii (1904).
3. Bouché-Leclercq, A. Histoire des Lagides, especially vols.
iii and iv (1906).

4. Rostowzew, M. Studien zur Geschichte des römischen

Kolonates (1910).
5. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von. Stoat und
Gesellschaft der Griechen: D. Die makedonischen
Königreiche (1910).

É
6. Lesquier, J. Les institutions militaires de l'Égypte sous les
Lagides (1911).
7. Kornemann, E. Ægypten und das (römische) Reich. In
Gercke and Norden's, Einleitung in die
AItertumswissenschaft (1912), pp. 272 ff.
8. Mitteis, L., und Wilcken, U. Grundzüge und
Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde (1912).

FOOTNOTES:
[77] Diodorus, xviii, 4.
[78] Omitting the shadowy Eupator, Philopator Neos, and
Alexander II.
[79] Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides, ii, p. 278; Plut.,
Antony, 54; Dio Cassius, xlix, 41.
[80] Pensées, vi, 43 bis. Ed. Havet; cf. Bouché-Leclercq, Hist. des
Lagides, ii, p. 180, n. 1.
[81] Gesammelte Schriften, iv, p. 256.
[82] Idyll, xvii. (Translation of Calverley.)

[83] See Droysen, Geschichte des Hellenismus,2 iii, pp. 262 ff.
[84] Plut., Aratus, xv.

[85] Idyll, xvii, 110 f.

[86] Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Sitzb. d. Berl. Akad. xxix (1912),
pp. 524 ff.
[87] v, 34, 6-8.
[88] Bouché-Leclercq, Histoire des Lagides, iii, pp. 1 ff.
[89] Breasted, J.H., Development of Religion and Thought in
Ancient Egypt (1912).
[90] Prooem. 10. Tarn, Antigonus Gonatas, pp. 454 ff.
[91] Athenæus, v, 202 f.; Polybius, v, 65.
[92] Wilcken, Grundzüge, 13, 17, 47.
[93] Glotz, Journal des Savants (1913), pp. 16 ff.
[94] Wilcken, Grundzüge, 22.
[95] Idyll, 14, 58 ff. (Translated by Calverley.)
[96] For the following section the works of Rostowzew, Bouché-
Leclercq (vol. iv), Wilcken, and Lesquier cited in the Select
Bibliography at the end of this chapter are fundamental.
[97] Idyll, xvii, 111.
[98] Wilcken, Chrestomathie, 449.
[99] See for this section Lesquier, op. cit., pp. 142 ff.; Mitteis,
Grundzüge Einl. xii; Schubart, W., Spuren politischen Autonomie
in Ægypten unter den Ptolemäern, Klio, x (1910), pp. 41 ff.; cf.
Id. Archiv für Papyrusforschung, v, pp. 81 ff.; Jouguet, P., La vie
municipale dans l'Égypte Romaine (1911); Plaumann, G.,
Ptolemais in Oberægypten (1910).
[100] xxxiv, 14 (Translated by Mahaffy, The Ptolemaic Dynasty, p.
191.)
 VI
THE SELEUCID EMPIRE
The main portion of the conquests made by Alexander the Great lay
in the continent of Asia. On the establishment of the regency this
vast district had been divided among over twenty satraps. Ten years
afterwards, in the fall of 313 b.c., one of these, Antigonus, known in
history as Monophthalmus, or the "One-eyed," had now held for two
years all the territory that lay between the fan-shaped offshoots of
the Himalaya Mountains and the sea. The whole Asiatic coast of the
Mediterranean from the Hellespont to Gaza on the Egyptian frontier
was in his possession. His fleet ruled the sea.
The spring of 312 b.c. was one of the most critical moments in
ancient history. In Antigonus the man seemed come with the will,
ability, and power to take the place of Alexander. By his side stood a
son of remarkable attractiveness and brilliancy, Demetrius, surnamed
Poliorcetes, or "Taker-of-Cities"; so that a dynasty seemed assured.
The work to be done was plainly indicated and preparations for its
accomplishment were already completed. After having stirred up an
insurrection in Greece in the preceding year, the fleet of Antigonus
had joined his main army which was massed at the Hellespont in
readiness to cross into Europe for the conquest of Thrace and
Macedon. In this district Antigonus conducted operations in person.
His son Demetrius was stationed with a minor army in Palestine with
instructions to avoid an engagement, and simply to keep Ptolemy
cooped up in Egypt till the European campaign was ended. If beaten
in his attack on Thrace and Macedon, Antigonus had nothing serious
to fear so long as he was master of the sea; if victorious, he could
then fall with irresistible force upon Egypt and complete the
unification of Alexander's empire. The whole campaign was
admirably planned and the troops well distributed for its successful
execution.[101]
That it did not even get started was partly due to Ptolemy, who,
impelled by the magnitude of his danger, took the desperate step of
adding many natives to his army; and partly due to Demetrius, who,
despite his numerical inferiority, his instructions, and the judgment
of his staff officers, risked a pitched battle at Gaza, and was
decisively defeated. That the project could never again be renewed
on similarly advantageous terms was due to Seleucus, the son of
Antiochus. For taking a thousand men with him this accomplished
officer, old in service though still young in years, set out straightway
after the battle of Gaza for Babylon, his own satrapy, whence he had
fled to Egypt for fear of Antigonus four years earlier. Ten years
afterwards, in 302 b.c., when Antigonus again proceeded to conquer
Macedon and Thrace, after having beaten Ptolemy back into Egypt,
his great aim was frustrated, not only because the king of Thrace,
Lysimachus, outmanœuvred him by getting an army across into Asia
Minor, but also because Seleucus, now master of all the territory in
the rear of Antigonus between the Euphrates and the frontiers of
India, threw the decisive weight of his new army into the scale, and
joined Lysimachus in crushing their common enemy at the great
battle of Ipsus in 301 b.c.
Thereby Seleucus advanced his western frontier from the Euphrates
to the edge of the Mediterranean, shifted his capital from Babylon to
newly founded Antioch, and brought his empire into immediate
proximity with the districts whence alone Greek and Macedonian
immigrants could come. The Seleucids dated the founding of their
dynasty from the return of Seleucus to Babylon in 312 b.c. There is,
however, much to be said for the view that their empire was first
established after the battle of Ipsus.
For the next twenty years (301-281 b.c.) Seleucus had the great
good fortune to remain in secure possession of the vast territory
which called him king; and while he failed to pass on to his
descendants all the fruits of his crowning victory over Lysimachus at
Corupedion in 282 b.c., he left to his son Antiochus I, surnamed
Soter, or the Savior, and he in turn about twenty years later, to his
son Antiochus II, surnamed Theos, or the God, the fabric of their
dominions, somewhat tattered at the edges, to be sure, but
otherwise whole.
The evil genius of the Seleucid empire during the century when it
was a great power was a woman—Laodice, the wife of Antiochus II
and mother of his successor, Seleucus II, surnamed Callinicus, or the
Glorious Victor (246-226 b.c.). Her power as queen is attested by
other evidences, and also by the fact that she was associated with
the king in the worship accorded by the satrapies of the realm to
their rulers, every satrapy being required by Theos to establish a
chief-priesthood in her especial honor.[102] None the less, she had to
yield her place to Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus, when
that crafty monarch seduced her husband from his alliance with
Macedon by giving to him along with his daughter a prodigious
dowry and extensive territorial concessions (249 b.c.). She retired to
Asia Minor, where she owned large estates secured in earlier days at
the expense of the royal domain, and where she could live in almost
regal state. For the death of her former husband, which occurred
three years later, she was probably not responsible,—though rumor
held her guilty,—since Theos had already, on his deathbed
apparently, and for reasons of sound dynastic policy, designated her
oldest son, then a "youth nearing manhood," as his successor, to the
exclusion of the boy with whom his Egyptian queen had recently
presented him. Nor is she to be condemned harshly for having had
her rival and her son's rival put out of the way; for she acted not
only in self-defense, but also to save the Seleucid empire from
becoming simply an appanage of Egypt during the long minority of
Berenice's child. For conducting to a successful termination, despite
initial disasters, the campaign against Ptolemy III, by which she put
her son in possession of his throne, she is deserving of high credit. It
was when this was accomplished, and her son was king, that her
ambition led her into maternal and political crime; for, in order to
retain the government, which her oldest son, now arrived at years of
discretion, threatened to take from her, she set up against him her
younger son Antiochus, surnamed the Hawk, for whom she got the
administration of Asia Minor. The Seleucids became thereby divided
against themselves, and for twenty years (242-223 b.c.) they were
so weakened by a dynastic feud that they not only neglected vital
questions of foreign policy, but had to permit the total loss of certain
frontier satrapies and the rebellion of almost all the rest. Antiochus
III, surnamed the Great, opened his reign with an error—the
attempt to deal with the foreign situation before he had put his
house in order; and he ended it with a great disaster—his irreparable
defeat by the Romans at Magnesia in 190 b.c.; but in between he
restored his authority over what Bevan in his House of Seleucus calls
"the essential body of the Empire" and his suzerainty over its
"outside sphere." The latter he accomplished by an impressive
campaign, in Armenia (where ruled Xerxes, betrayed by his name as
an Iranian), in Parthia (where Arsaces, the third king of a barbarian
line from the Turanian desert, which had mastered that country a
little less than forty years before, had just come to the throne), in
Bactria (where Euthydemus, a Greek from Magnesia, had recently
founded a new Hellenic dynasty in the place of an old one
established nearly fifty years earlier by Diodotus, "lord of the
thousand Bactrian cities," as he is called), and in India, where a
certain Sophragasenus, following the examples of Arsaces and
Euthydemus, recognized the superior power of the Seleucid.
On his return to Antioch after five years of marching and fighting in
the Far East (210-205 b.c.), Antiochus wrested Palestine from the
now feeble grasp of the Ptolemies. This exploit gave him the long-
desired, long-lacked, and long-fought-for access to the sea; and for
the first time in the history of the realm an opportunity was secured
for the construction of a great fleet. Simultaneously, Philip of
Macedon fell before the Romans at Cynocephalæ (197 b.c.);
whereupon Antiochus went vigorously to work dislodging all
"foreigners" from the Mediterranean seaboard of Asia Minor. This led
in 192 b.c. to conflict with Rome.
Antiochus the Great has been late in coming into his due.[103] The
mere fact that Hannibal, whom the undying hatred of Rome had
driven into his service, worked out for him a plan of campaign
against the Romans which he rejected, and that he put the greatest
general of his age in charge of a new squadron of his extemporized
fleet, have sufficed to rule out of court in advance any apology for
his defeat. The issue showed that the view taken by Hannibal of the
power of Rome was right. It is true that it could have been checked
only by a great combination of all the Mediterranean states. But it is
equally true that such a combination was impracticable. Antiochus
had to deal with the situation as he found it. He risked too much for
a few frontier districts and a possible hegemony in Greece. But he
seems to have greatly underestimated the power of Rome, and to
have credited the Senate with far less energy and tenacity of
purpose than it actually possessed. Once his vanguard was thrown
out of Greece by the incomparable Roman legions, his main hope of
defending Asia Minor did actually rest with his fleet. Hannibal was,
accordingly, in the right place. But the fleet was too new and too
weak as well as too scattered to hold the Romans in Europe; and,
once the veterans of the Second Punic War were across the
Hellespont, no army in Asia could have resisted them.
The Seleucids learned a terrible lesson on the battle-fields of
Thermopylæ and Magnesia: the fatality was that all the peoples in
Asia learned it also. That Antiochus the Great consented to
surrender all his possessions in Asia Minor and to pay to the Romans
an indemnity of one thousand talents a year for twelve years; to
hand over his battleships and to limit his fleet to ten decked vessels
and a few small craft; to give up all his war elephants and to keep
no others in the future; to take no Italians into his service as
mercenaries, and to throw open his empire to the merchants and
traders from Rhodes, proclaimed only too clearly to the Orientals
that the days of the lordship of the Macedonians in the world were
past.
It was not, however, till after the untimely death of his son,
Antiochus IV, surnamed Epiphanes, or the "God Manifest," in 164 b.c.
that the storm broke in all its fury. The forces then set in motion for
the destruction of the Seleucid empire were of two kinds, external
and internal. Of the external forces we have already considered one
—the advance of the Roman power toward the East. The Roman
Senate had at this time only one concern in its dealings with Syria,
namely, to make the Seleucids harmless. This it accomplished in a
variety of ways. Immediately after the death of Antiochus IV, it sent
commissioners into Syria who executed an unenforced article of the
treaty struck after the battle of Magnesia: they burnt the Seleucid
battleships found in the cities of Phœnicia and hamstrung the war
elephants which they discovered in the royal arsenals. By jealously
restricting the military establishment of the Seleucids the Senate
broke their power in all respects. Not content, however, with binding
the feet of its victim, the Senate held out an encouraging hand to all
rebels against his authority. A case in point is that of the Jews. Again
and again, between 164 and 120 b.c., Judas and Jonathan
Maccabæus and Hyrcanus I sought and obtained Roman recognition
in their struggle against their overlords. They had national causes for
their repeated outbreaks and religious stimuli to resist desperately,
but it is doubtful whether they could have carried their war of
independence to a successful termination without the assurance that
Rome sympathized with their enterprise. The Senate helped on the
disruption of the Seleucid realm by still another unfriendly act: it
joined with Pergamum and Egypt in lighting the fire of dynastic war
in Syria in 153 b.c. and in adding fuel to it from time to time
thereafter, with the result that the realm was devastated by civil war
almost continuously from that date till the end of the dynasty, ninety
years later. Then, the blackened hulk, manned by a mutinous crew,
lay helpless in a sea infested with pirates, when Pompey picked it up
and towed it into a Roman harbor.
The other external force which contributed to this inglorious end of a
voyage begun with such fair promise was set in motion from the
Farthest East. I do not reckon it in this account that the Parthians
again rebelled and in 140 b.c. advanced their western frontier to the
Euphrates, thus forming the philhellen kingdom of west Iran which
grew behind the breastwork of the Seleucid empire to such power
that later it disputed with some success Rome's claim to suzerainty
in Asia. Nor do I enter it here that Armenia established its complete
independence, and under Tigranes the Great annexed for a time
(83-69 b.c.) all of the Seleucid realm then remaining. For these are
internal movements analogous to the insurrection of the Jews. It
was from the banks of the Hoang-Ho that an advance toward the
west occurred in the early part of the second century b.c. which may
be paralleled with the simultaneous advance eastward of the Roman
power from the banks of the Tiber.[104] The oncoming Eastern
assailant was the conglomerate of Indo-European peoples whom the
Chinese call the Yue Tchi. They came along the edges of the great
desert of shifting sand in Eastern Turkestan down which flows the
mouthless Tarim River, not with the élan of conquerors, but
retreating slowly before the superior strength of the Huns (Hioung
Nou), their former subjects, with whom they had recently fought an
unsuccessful war for the possession of North China. It was against
their conquerors, we may remark in passing, that the Chinese
emperors, Chi-Houang-ti and Wou-ti of the Ts'in and Han Dynasties
respectively, constructed in the third and second centuries b.c., to
the south of the Desert of Gobi, the great Chinese Limes, or Wall. In
159 b.c. the Yue Tchi occupied Sogdiana. Twenty years later (139
b.c.) they crushed the Greek kingdom of Bactria; so that in this
general region it was only in India, in the vast district drained by the
Indus River, that Greek kingdoms existed thereafter. Somewhere
near the opening of the Christian era these, too, succumbed to the
Yue Tchi, now properly designated Indo-Scythians by the Greeks. For
several centuries the Indo-Scythians, like the Huns who followed
them in the fifth century of our era, and the Turks who followed the
Huns in the sixth, kept open the trade routes along which they had
themselves advanced when driven westward from the Hoang-Ho.
Their successors transmitted to the frontiers of China Manichæism,
the cosmopolitan religion of Iran: they did a greater work. They not
only forwarded Buddhism to the Chinese; but before it, and with it,
the pure as well as the debased art of Greece. Among the priceless
treasures which Dr. Stein has brought back from the desert cities of
Cathay, none are more remarkable than certain clay seals attached
to documents of the third century of our era, found at Niya in a
district then under Chinese control;[105] for one of them might have
been made for Diodotus, the first Greek king of Bactria, while on
others appears Athena Alcis, the haughty, helmeted, promachus
Athena, hurling the thunderbolt, whom the Antigonid kings of
Macedon and the Greek kings of India had put on their coins.[106]
Not without some reason, therefore, is the view now being advanced
that the art of China and Japan is derived, like that of Europe and
America, from Greek sources.[107] It is an amazing spectacle to
observe how Hellenistic civilization flowed simultaneously back the
channels to the springs in Italy and China whence came the floods
which overwhelmed the Seleucid empire.

After this rapid survey of the political history of the Seleucids, I wish
to devote the remainder of this chapter to considering the domestic
policy of the dynasty. I shall point out that Seleucus and his
successors continued Alexander the Great's work of founding city-
states in Asia, and that, having to deal with priestly communities and
feudal lords as well as with the occupants of the widespread royal
domains, they refused to exempt from their direct control any lands
not placed under the jurisdiction of a city-state. I shall discuss briefly
the internal structure of the city-states and more at length their
relation in theory and fact to the monarch. This will finally bring up
for examination the policy of Antiochus IV, in whose reign the
internal as well as the external development of the Seleucid empire
culminated.
Seleucus had been advanced to high position in Alexander's service
after Alexander had disclosed his purpose of fusing the
Macedonians, Greeks, and Iranians into a new cosmopolitan race.
The promotion obtained by him during the course of the bitter
struggle which this policy occasioned suggests that he made
Alexander's point of view his own. This surmise as to the attitude of
Seleucus is confirmed by the fact that he took his place, after
Alexander's death, with those who upheld the cause of Alexander's
family, and left it for his Babylonian satrapy only when it became
clear that to remain meant to perish without accomplishing anything.
Seleucus was the only one of the great Macedonian captains who did
not take Alexander's death as a license to discard their Iranian
wives. The Bactrian maiden assigned to him at the great Susian
marriage—Apama, daughter of Spitamenes—became his queen and
the mother of his heir, Antiochus. The Seleucid dynasty was,
accordingly, half Iranian from the start; and for the policy which it
inherited from Antigonus and Alexander, and which it prosecuted
vigorously till the death of Antiochus IV in 164 b.c., namely, the
Hellenization of Asia, it had as warrant the practice of its idealized
founder.
Of the Greek cities which Seleucus planted in his realm, fifty-nine are
named by Appian.[108] They lay especially in Syria, in the district
between the Euphrates and the sea which he sought to make a
second Macedonia. His son Antiochus, to whom he gave the
administration of the eastern satrapies in 293 b.c., was particularly
active in developing cities on the Greek model in that region; and to
him and his son Antiochus Theos belongs the honor of establishing
the urban habits of Hellenic life in the interior of Asia Minor. In the
arm of their realm which reached through this peninsula to the rear
of the Greek strip on the Anatolian coast, new cities sprang up under
their auspices by the score. Nor did the movement come to an end
with the reign of the second Antiochus in 246 b.c., though it
probably weakened at that time. Over two generations later, in the
reign of Antiochus IV, it was again resumed actively and directed
especially into Palestine, which had been newly added to the realm.
The most striking feature in the internal policy of the Seleucids is the
attempted transfer into Asia of the urban form of life theretofore
characteristic of Hellas. Evidently, these monarchs believed with
Aristotle, Alexander, and, we may add, Polybius, and, indeed, all
Greeks, that men who did not live in cities were uncivilized men.
Evidently, too, they thought it wise and possible to civilize their
dominions.
It is not easy to form a definite impression of the political situation in
the Seleucid realm when the Macedonians first took possession, but
cities in the Greek sense seem to have been entirely absent. This
does not mean that towns were lacking altogether, since, even if we
disregard administrative centres like Babylon, Susa, Ecbatana,
Persepolis, we may use the term "town" properly of places like
Bambyce in Syria, fourteen miles west of the Euphrates. There, in a
fertile, well-watered valley, stood a famous temple of Atargatis, the
Syrian goddess. It was a wonderful establishment, as readers of
Lucian know, with its wide approaches, its obelisk-like phalli, its
sacred fish-pond, its shocking rites. At its head were emasculated
priests, who not only conducted the ceremonies and directed a far-
reaching proselytism, but also governed the community of temple
slaves (hieroduli) who tilled the land of the neighborhood for their
own support and that of the church. This clerical form of local
organization had been carefully fostered by the Persians. We all
know how in reorganizing Judæa they put the common people, who
were there simply to pay tithes, under the control of the high priest,
elders, and Levites, and made the so-called law of Moses the civil
law of the land. They proceeded in similar fashion throughout Asia
Minor. There Seleucus found scores of towns, big and little, to which
the description, given by Strabo[109] of the sacred city of Ma at
Comana in Cappadocia, is applicable: "In itself it is," he says, "a
notable city, but most of its inhabitants are god-possessed, or
temple slaves. They are all of Cataonian stock and are subject
generally to the authority of the king, but are under the immediate
control of the priest. He is lord at once of the temple and of the
temple slaves, of whom there were more than six thousand,
including men and women, at the time of my visit. Attached to the
temple is much land, of which the priest enjoys the revenues, and
there is no one in Cappadocia of higher dignity than he except the
king." Similar to this was the temple of Zeus at Venasa with its three
thousand temple slaves and its land which yielded to its priest an
annual income of twenty thousand dollars (fifteen talents); the
temple of Zeus Asbamæus near Tyana, of Apollo in Cataonia, Mater
Zizimene near Iconium, and Artemis Perasia in Castabala. Similar,
too, was the temple of Ma in Pontic Comana with its swarming mart,
its wide acres, and its six thousand temple slaves, of whom the
young women, here as elsewhere, were sacred prostitutes; the
temple of Anaitis in Zela, of Men in Cabira, of Selene in Iberia, of the
Great Mother at Pessinus, of Zeus at Olba, and of other gods in
other places scattered through Phrygia, Pisidia, and Lydia, as well as
Palestine, Syria, and Babylonia. The Seleucids must have found the
body of their empire thickly studded with religious communities,
each subject to its own code of divine law, each dominated by a
masterful and long-petted theocracy. Under this baleful rule the
whole country had settled gradually down during the Persian time in
progressive political and economic stagnation.
Apart from the mountains and the deserts, where tribal and nomadic
liberty reigned,—a constant menace to central government,—the
peoples of Asia lived in villages when the Macedonians came. Many
of these villages, villagers and all, were owned by princelings and
noblemen, who, if natives, had been undisturbed by the Persians, if
Iranians, had come into their possessions by reason of royal grants.
All through Syria and Asia Minor may be seen to-day the ruins of
"square towers" (tetrapyrgiæ) and manorial castles such as these
grandees built and fortified for defense against their neighbors and,
if need be, against the royal authority itself.[110] Those who built
them had apparently had little loyalty to the Persian king, but also
little inclination to obey his successor. They were, accordingly,
ejected right and left. Of the estates thus obtained, the Macedonian
kings could dispose at their pleasure. They formed again part of the
royal domain, which stretched in all directions at the edges of the
deserts and the mountains, among the temple lands, the feudal
fiefs, and administrative cities—a veritable archipelago of landed
property, tilled for the crown by myriads of royal serfs. Here was the
ὑλη the material, of which the Seleucids founded many of their city-
states.
The handle for reorganization which the priestly towns offered to the
new government was often the non-ecclesiastical part of the
population. That the temple was regularly the centre of local trade
and the scene of a recurrent bazaar tempted to its proximity money-
changers and the like. When the Greek immigration began this
element was naturally strengthened. It was, therefore, possible for
the Seleucids to give it an urban organization—a general assembly, a
council, and magistrates; and in this way to create a new city-state.
According to invariable Greek practice, however, such a city
controlled—with certain limitations—its own shrines. The great
temples of Apollo at Delphi and Delos, for example, were governed
by the citizens of those towns. Hence the natural policy for the
Seleucids, and the one which they in fact followed wherever
practicable, was to subordinate the high priests and clergy to the
adjacent urban authorities, thus solving the ecclesiastical question in
a way convenient for themselves and agreeable to European feeling.
Where this did not prove practicable, they often despoiled the
temple of its lands for the benefit of their followers. Thus the village
of Bætocæce was taken from the local temple of Zeus and given to a
certain Demetrius, and the sacred land of Zeus of Æzani was divided
into lots, which were assigned to cleruchs, subjected to a tax, and
attached to the financial jurisdiction of an adjoining city.[111] It is
simply another aspect of the same general policy when king after
king sought to lay "impious" hands upon the treasures stored up in
the temples of Bel, Anaitis, Atargatis, and Jehovah.
The secularization of religious properties was a very difficult matter,
and it was not pushed at all times with equal vigor by the Seleucids.
When the monarchs were embarrassed by foreign or domestic
troubles, they had to conciliate the priests even to the point of
undoing what they had already done. How easily a reaction might
occur we can perceive from the case recorded in the splendid
inscription which Mr. Butler has recently found cut on the inner wall
of the great temple of Artemis at Sardis.[112] A certain
Mnesimachus, presumably a Macedonian officer or adventurer, had
got a huge fief from King Antigonus. It consisted of the village of
Tobalmura in the Sardian plain and its appurtenances, the villages of
Tandu and Combdilipia. On these he had to pay annual dues of £50
to the proper chiliarchy, or subdivision of the satrapy. Near by, in
Cinara was a kleros, or lot, on which he paid £3 yearly. The fief
consisted, in addition, of the village of Periasasostra, of which the
annual dues, payable to another chiliarchy, were £57. Close by, in
Nagrioa was again a kleros, on which he paid £3 7s. yearly. The fief
consisted, moreover, of the village of Ilu in the territory of the well-
known city of Attuda, of which the dues, paid annually to the city of
course, were £3 5s. The manor (aule) of the fief was in the village of
Tobalmura, and together with certain lodges held by bailiffs and
certain gardens and parks tilled by manorial serfs in Tobalmura and
Periasasostra, it had once been assigned to Pytheus and Adrastus,
likewise Macedonians; but later on it had seemingly come into the
possession of Mnesimachus. The happy holder of this great estate
enjoyed, doubtless, the total net yield of the manor and the lots,
and, in addition, as the possessor of the manor and lots, rights to
exact services in money, kind, and labor from the villeins of the
villages. Had he been so minded he might have settled down in
Lydia and become a baron like the Iranian nobles whom the
Macedonians dispossessed; and, doubtless, many Macedonians and
Greeks established themselves in Asia in this fashion. Mnesimachus,
however, wanted money rather than "rights"; and, turning to the
temple of Artemis in Sardis, he secured a loan of £1325 from the
temple treasurers. The inscription cut on the temple wall records the
sale to Artemis, with right to repurchase, of Mnesimachus's interest
in the fief. His inability to repay his loan resulted in the
aggrandizement of the temple.
Incidents of this sort were, doubtless, of frequent occurrence and
show what the Seleucids had to guard against. Their land policy
seems to have been prudent and far-sighted. They were bound to
deal cautiously with their gigantic domain, since from it came the
most valuable and stable portion of their revenues. On the other
hand, they found a limit set to the quantity which they could
profitably retain by the fact that, unlike the Ptolemies, they inherited
from the Persians a public service adequate, not to administer, but
simply to supervise administration. They did indeed increase the
number of their satrapies, without, perhaps, diminishing the number
of chiliarchies or hyparchies into which each satrapy was divided,
and they seem to have paralleled the general service by a distinct
fiscal service and by a distinct priestly service; but, none the less,
they had to leave the details of fiscal, judicial, and religious
administration to the villages. Though we are singularly ill-informed
as to how they organized the villages, it is conceivable that they
picked out certain persons, like the elders in the Egyptian villages,
and held them responsible for the taxes of the villagers and for their
general good behavior. These men would be rather hostages than
officials, and would be nominees of the central government rather
than of the villages. But we really know nothing of the facts, except
that the villagers had some means by which they paid their taxes
collectively.
One way by which the Seleucids could relieve themselves of the
troubles of local administration and at the same time strengthen
their hold upon the country was to make grants of whole blocks or
complexes of their land, villages and villagers and all, to Macedonian
and Greek feudatories, like Mnesimachus, who of course became
responsible for the dues owing to the crown. But the evils of this
system had been discovered by the Persian kings when they found
their vassals more unruly than the villages. Hence the Seleucids
refused to give a clear title to those to whom they made grants of
portions of the royal domain, and in the case of Mnesimachus the
temple of Artemis, to which he sold his rights, had to secure itself in
the contract against the loss which it might sustain should the king
recall his grant. On the other hand, when the king sold outright parts
of the domain, as he frequently did, particularly in times of financial
distress, and the lands and villages sold became with their peasants
private property, he required that they should be added to the
territory of some city-state, it being a privilege highly cherished by
the purchasers that they should be given the liberty of deciding to
which city their property should belong. The Seleucid policy that land
should belong either to a city-state or to the crown was admirably
calculated to destroy priestly and feudal sovereignties, and it was
taken over by the Roman emperors, into whose patrimony in Asia
Minor passed many temple lands which had either escaped
secularization under their predecessors or had been regained by the
priests during the later, weaker days of the Seleucid dynasty.[113]
By a similar sale, or by a gift outright, the colonists who formed a
new city, or the old inhabitants of a village on being constituted
citizens of a free town, obtained full ownership of the lots of land
assigned to them. The citizens, in turn, had authority, subject of
course to the city's laws and the constitutions of the realm, over the
serfs when there happened to be any on their holdings. In this way
the king lost control of his peasants and his property; for the
foundation was not merely a new city, but at the same time a new
state. Its sovereign was not, or not simply, the king: it was the body
of its franchised inhabitants assembled in general assembly, and it
proceeded to manage its public affairs by means of discussion and
resolutions, by delegating functions to a council and magistrates,
and by determining its own domestic and foreign policies. The
language of public life was of course Greek. The code of public and
private law was, doubtless, drafted according to Hellenic models.
Gymnasia appeared and with them gymnastic and musical contests
—the most characteristic marks of Greek education. The deities they
honored were those whom they themselves chose: they chose native
gods and goddesses as well as Greek; above all they chose as their
chief city-god the living emperor.
The Seleucid empire was a state without a citizenship. If an Athenian
settled in it, he remained an Athenian, even if he became a satrap,
unless he were given citizen rights in some one of the free cities. In
other words, the empire had as many different citizenships as there
were different cities, and as many distinct states as there were
distinct citizenships.
Accordingly, each city could adopt whatever policy it pleased in the
matter of admitting foreigners, be they Greeks or Asiatics,
newcomers or natives, to its body politic. It might prohibit the
intermarriage of citizens with non-citizens altogether, or it might go
so far as to open its doors to bastards. It is, therefore, impossible for
us, without such sources of knowledge as the papyri afford for
Egypt, to speak in any general way of the extent and effects of racial
fusion in the Seleucid empire. Two things, however, seem clear: (1)
Intermarriage between citizens of different cities was of frequent
occurrence and, doubtless, of full legal propriety; (2) the great mass
of the agricultural population was not much affected racially by the
proximity of Greeks, Macedonians, Jews, or Iranians. The peasants
were practically serfs. Their social inferiority protected them against
assimilation by citizens. On the other hand, they were, doubtless,
much more deeply stirred by the European immigration than were
the fellahs in Egypt; for the influx into their land was much more
abundant and more spontaneous than was that into the valley of the
Nile. Here, too, Hellenism had much more effective agents for its
diffusion than it had there. For within the hundreds of city-states in
Asia we must presume that intermarriage was permitted among all
citizens, whether the elements which mingled with the Greeks were
Phrygians, Lydians, Syrians, Jews, Babylonians, or Iranians. We must
presume that at least the men knew in a fashion the Greek
language. They certainly tended to take Greek names, and in
documents of Delos dating from the second century b.c. we meet
with natives of Bambyce—now a polis and renamed Hierapolis, or
the Sacred City—who would be indistinguishable from native-born
Greeks were it not for the Semitic names of their wives. Indeed,
some of them may have been Greeks who had married Syrian
women. The various circles of Europeans in Syria, and, though to a
less degree, elsewhere in Asia, must have been surrounded at an
early date by a penumbra of half-breeds, by means of which the
sharp contrast of antagonistic civilizations was lessened. In these
circumstances Greek ideas and customs became a ferment which
stirred the peoples of Asia to the depths. The awakening of the
Nearer East was in progress in the third century b.c., and had the
Romans succumbed to Hannibal and the Greeks maintained their
prestige unimpaired for a century or two longer, the whole course of
history would have been changed.
The Greeks came to Asia "not to send peace but a sword." They
came to fill the continent up with cantankerous little republics where
formerly a dense multitude had lived in a state of political lethargy.
And curiously enough those who directed the dismemberment of
Asia into far more states than even mediæval Germany produced
were the rulers who had the responsibility for the government of the
whole region. How explain this anomaly?
The anomaly is more apparent than real. The ruler was not simply
the great landed proprietor of the cities' neighborhood; he was the
founder, or the descendant of the heroized founder, of most of them;
he was the "benefactor" or the "preserver" of them all. As such he
was deserving of their homage and entitled to their obedience. This
they could proffer in an unobjectionable manner once Alexander had
shown them the way. They had simply to make their proskynesis; to
elect him to membership in their circle of deities, furnish him with a
sacred precinct, temple, altar, image, procession, and contest, and
designate a priest to attend to the sacrifices and other matters
pertaining to his worship. This they did of their own volition during
the reign of the founder of the dynasty. Apotheosis without territorial
limitations Antiochus I demanded for Seleucus "after his departure
from the life among men," and the second Antiochus demanded it
for himself and his sister-wife during their lifetime as well as for their
"departed" father; so that just as in Egypt and for the same reasons
an imperial cult of the rulers dead and living was established
throughout not only the satrapies and hyparchies but also the cities
of the realm.[114]
The city had, accordingly, a dual character: it was at once both in
theory and fact a nation and a municipality. In the former capacity it
could grant or withhold allegiance to the king; in the latter it had
simply to obey. It had for example to pay tribute to him (phoros or
syntaxis), which might be viewed as a rent for the land assigned to
it, or as the price paid for military protection. It might have not
simply a priest of the king and a priestess of the queen, but also a
resident (epistates), who on occasion might also be phrurarch, or
commandant, of the royal garrison when it had one. The double
status of the city is further evidenced by the fact that its citizens
were subject not only to the laws which they themselves passed but
also to the mandates (prostagmata) which the king issued. In cases
of conflict there could be no doubt which was superior. The king was
in theory absolute as a god was absolute. He had, of course,
citizenship in no state, but was simply basileus, or king. This title,
attached to the name without an ethnicum, was the only one that
the early Seleucids used; but the later members of the dynasty,
beginning with Antiochus IV, added to it the title, such as Epiphanes,
or God Manifest, by which their peculiar office as gods was
indicated. Thereafter, on their coins and edicts the two titles
appeared, and the monarchs were thereby classified in the two
worlds to which they belonged—that of men and that of gods—as
completely as were citizens when to their names were added the
adjectival forms of their city's name. In either capacity they were
superior to the cities. On the other hand, the Seleucid god-kings had
to consider carefully the demands of their cities, since these, having
the means to organize resistance, could easily revolt. When they did
not get satisfaction they might choose some other god-king instead,
as the cities in Parthia and Bactria actually did; or they might secure
immunity from tribute, as did the cities in Asia Minor in the reign of
Antiochus I. Room was, accordingly, left for a large measure of
municipal liberty; and, in general, the activities of the citizens were
numerous and important. They had to attend to the maintenance of
order, the administration of justice, and the collection of taxes within
their several territories. Hence the cities gave a stimulus to political
interest and ambition such as Asia had never known before. They
occupied, in fact, a place in the Seleucid empire quite as important
as that of the municipalities in the early Roman empire, of which
they were, indeed, the prototypes.
The Roman empire, however, had not yet come into existence. It
was the Italian federation under Rome's leadership which defeated
Hannibal and won the battles of Thermopylæ and Magnesia. When
compared with this aggregate of incorporated and allied states, the
Seleucid empire demonstrated fatal weaknesses. Rome had,
perhaps, not many more citizens on her army list than there were
males of military age in the franchised population of the Seleucid
cities; and her public land, which, too, was her chief source of
revenue, was far inferior in extent and yield to the royal domain of
the Seleucids. Her advantages were twofold and their enumeration
will help us to understand the disabilities under which the Asiatic
monarchy labored. First, apart from the soldiers on Rome's army list
there were few males of military age in Italy; in other words, there
was no vast native population to hold in subjection. Second, Rome
could mobilize her forces much more easily, quickly, and completely
than could the Seleucids. The great distances, often of mountain and
desert, which separated the cities of Asia from one another; the
considerable trading, industrial, Asiatic, and otherwise unwarlike,
element in the free population of the Hellenic and Hellenized cities;
and the independence of the cities, particularly in the matter of
giving or refusing military aid to their suzerain, had no parallel in
Italy, where the territory was compact, the population mainly a
warlike peasantry, and the cities all bound to provide troops at the
call of Rome to the full extent of their power. Like the giant Antæus
in his trial of strength with Heracles, Rome with every fall renewed
her might from contact with her native soil. The Seleucids ruled over
a cosmopolitan, denationalized world. They had no native soil on
which to fall. It is of profound significance that there were and could
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