Philip II of Macedonia in Fourth Century Athens by Dina S. Guth
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Character and Rhetorical Strategy: Philip II of Macedonia in Fourth Century Athens by Dina S. Guth A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classical Studies) in the University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Sara L. Forsdyke, Chair Professor David S. Potter Professor Ruth S. Scodel Assistant Professor Ian S. Moyer Acknowledgements I would like to thank, first and foremost, my advisor Sara Forsdyke, for her mentorship and unfailing support. My first steps in uncovering the fascinating world of Greek oratory were taken under her guidance, and as my passion for that field has continually grown, so has my gratitude. I wouldn’t be where I am now, or doing what I am doing, without her. I am equally grateful to David Potter, whose insights on pretty much all topics have been a constant challenge and whose (good)humor has always been a support, both in research and in teaching. I would also like to thank Ruth Scodel for her advice in my research and in all matters professional, as well as Ian Moyer for his help on the peculiarities of Macedonian royalty. My thanks also to Julia Shapiro for all the long, late night discussions of matters Demosthenic and Aeschinean. And, speaking of late night discussions, I would like to thank Cashman Prince for keeping his door open and for humoring an undergraduate; I’m not sure how you managed, but I’m eternally grateful that you did. I also would thank the late Prof. Gagos, not only for his mentorship in the world of papyrus but for his example in all respects. Of course, none of this would have been possible without my family and my husband, who never had any doubts, and without Katya and Keesa, who proved that even cats can write dissertations. Finally, I would like to thank Shonda Tohm, Joe Groves, Jen Finn, Cassie Borges, Richard Persky, Amanda Regan, Evelyn Adkins, Karen Acton, Leah Long, Brian Calabrese, and Kathryn Seidl Steed, along with all the graduate students in ii Classics, IPGRH, and IPCAA, who made my graduate experience at Michigan an enjoyable one and whose collective wisdom never fails. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements................................................................................................................................... ii Chapter 1: Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Models of Macedonian Monarchy............................................................................. 22 Chapter 3: Philip in the Political Discourse before 346 BCE................................................ 72 Chapter 4: Philip in the Political Discourse from 346‐330 BCE .......................................134 Chapter 5: Isocrates and Philip.......................................................................................................188 Chapter 6: Conclusion.........................................................................................................................229 Bibliography............................................................................................................................................232 iv Chapter 1: Introduction Philip II, the man who conquered the Greek world and initiated a new age in the history of the Mediterranean, remains something of a mystery despite the breadth and variety of source material concerning his life. Indeed, in some ways the plethora of sources has complicated rather than clarified assessments of Philip. The ancients themselves came to widely differing conclusions in attempting to understand what kind of a man could take Macedonia from a backwater kingdom to the verge of being the most powerful nation in the known world. Modern scholarship has largely followed suit. Assessments of Philip’s character and abilities have ranged from claims that he was the greatest king of Europe to comparisons with Hitler.1 Evaluations of his historical importance in relation to his more famous – but perhaps no more singular or brilliant – son Alexander have only exacerbated the problem.2 1 The former was the assessment of Diodorus Siculus; Diod. 16.95.1; a more measured but in principle similar conclusion was recently reached by Worthington: see Ian Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008): 187-203 and Nicholas G. L. Hammond, Philip of Macedon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994): 188-91. On Philip as Hilter (or perhaps more properly on Hilter as Philip) see A. M. Adam, “Philip alias Hitler,” Greece & Rome 10 (1941). That paper was only written in 1941; it is by no means, however, alone in seeing parallels between the two: see John Buckler and Hans Beck, Central Greece and the Politics of Power in the Fourth Century B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 253. The question of Philip’s motives in his dealings with Greece have largely centered around his sincerity in negotiating peace with Athens in 346 BCE, which has been portrayed as either a sincere attempt to establish peace or a backhanded way of assuring Athens’ unreadiness for Philip’s incursion into central Greece. See for example T. T. B. Ryder, “The Diplomatic Skills of Philipp II,” in Ventures into Greek History: Essays in Honour of N. G. L. Hammond, ed. Ian Worthington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) and M. M. Markle, “The Strategy of Philip in 346 B.C.,” Classical Quarterly 24 (1974). 2 So for example Worthington, Philip II, 203: “Philip was a charismatic leader whose merits far outweighed his faults, though the latter were plentiful… he deserves to live beyond the shadow of his more famous son.” 1 This study turns away from the traditional questions posed by biographers of Philip and historians of late 4th century Macedonia.3 I focus instead to the responses elicited by Philip’s unprecedented career in the Athenian world, the same impressions from which our own interpretations of Philip are largely derived. I examine these responses as the product of a complex interaction between culturally-loaded symbolic categories and historical reality. For Philip - Macedonian but also Hellenic; king but also member of the Amphictyony; political outsider but also conqueror of Greece – was, above all, an individual who broke culturally-assigned identity categories.4 How then did Philip fit – or not - into the Greek, and specifically Athenian, cognitive framework? How, in short, did Athenians understand Philip’s rise to power? The study of the political response to Philip’s rise is made possible, but also inevitably delimited by, the source material available. The late 4th century is rich with evidence for the Athenian political discourse concerning Philip’s Macedonia. It includes speeches delivered by Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Hyperides as well as Isocrates’ and Speusippus’ pamphlets and letters. The variety of approaches the orators employed in discussing Macedonian policy allows us to develop a coherent picture of the political and 3 For biographies of Philip see most recently Worthington, Philip II; also Hammond, Philip of Macedon; Gerhard Wirth, Philipp II (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1985); G. Cawkwell, Philip of Macedon (London: Faber & Faber, 1978); J. R. Ellis, Philip II and Macedonian Imperialism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1976); Paul Cloché, Un Fondateur d’empire: Philippe II, roi de Macédoine (Saint Étienne: Éditions Dumas, 1955); A. Momigliano, Filippo il Macedone (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1934). 4 On the construction of Greek identity against the image of a barbarian “Other” see especially Lynette Mitchell, Panhellenism and the Barbarian in Archaic and Classical Greece (Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2007); Thomas Harrison, ed., Greeks and Barbarians (New York: Routledge, 2002); Jonathan Hall, Hellenicity. Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Irad Malkin, ed., Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Jonathan Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Pericles Georges, Barbarian Asia and the Greek Experience. From the Archaic Age to the Age of Xenophon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press: 1994); Jacqueline de Romilly, “Les Barbares dans la Pensée de la Grèce Classique,” Phoenix 47 (1993): 283-292; Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian. Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); François Hartog, The Mirror of Herodotus. The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). 2 sociological framework within which the ‘problem’ of Philip was addressed. Notably, both a popular view – as articulated in the speeches of Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Hyperides, all delivered before a popular audience – and an elite view - as articulated by Isocrates and Speusippus – are represented. I will show that the popular and the elite views of Philip had much in common in terms of the rhetorical resources upon which they drew; what primarily separated their views of Philip’s rise was their approach to national versus panhellenic ideals. The public orators spoke to a body of Athenians, and thus their rhetorical framework was Athenian; the philosophers, on the other hand, addressed themselves to a panhellenic audience and therefore preferred to emphasize the shared elite values of the Hellenic aristocracy, whose close personal ties had never quite been subsumed by local political loyalties.5 At the