Political Organization and Administration

The Ptolemaic and Seleucid empires were states ruled by kings, like many early states. They should therefore not be labeled “personal regimes,” as is sometimes done.^[445] As Ma has pointed out, “personal monarchy” was an ideological construct, whereas each of these kingdoms was made up of a bundle of institutions.^[446] Recently, continuity between the Hellenistic empires and the previous ideology and institutions of Egypt and Achaemenid Persia has been emphasized, as has adaptation and innovation within that system, called “bricolage” by Briant and Joannes in the Seleucid case or a “hybrid” system by Manning, in the Ptolemaic case.^[447] This section shows how ideology and political organization were closely related and how these states, which were “personified” in the figure of the king, adapted existing administrative structures and integrated indigenous temples and citystates (depending on the region) more fully than did the former Persian Empire.

It also illuminates the interaction between the king and ruling coalitions, and more broadly, between central and local power. These states developed a more direct control than is usually assumed over the fiscal functions of the city-states within their territories, and they interfered more thoroughly in the management of temple estates, something that may have been a cause and/or consequence of domestic revolt. However, beyond extraction (and the three other basic functions of the early states identified by Tilly), the functions of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid states extended to production, distribution, and adjudication.

Divine Kings and Imperial Elites

The royal courts, and more generally the capitals and large cities of these empires, were centers of conspicuous consumption. Besides lavish banquets, the kings organized festivals with large processions, sometimes including their armies, as in Alexandria under Ptolemy II or in Daphne under Antiochus IV.^[448] Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II conceived Alexandria as the political and economic capital of their empire, with its royal palace quarter, the lighthouse, and the huge harbors.

They also conceived it as a center of knowledge—and of power over knowledge—with the library and its Mouseion, the equivalent of a research institute.^[449] The Ptolemies were worshipped as divine kings or as pharaohs, depending on the audiences, and associated themselves with the newly created Greco-Egyptian cult of Serapis. They furthermore deified their queens, who became associated with Aphrodite- Isis.^[450] And after Ptolemy I hijacked the body of Alexander the Great, on its way to Macedonia to be buried, they established a cult to him, as well. Ptolemy I buried him in a monumental tomb, the Sema, in Alexandria—the city of which Alexander was the patron. Later, the cult of each dynastic couple was associated with him. Seleucid royal ideology, on the other hand, capitalized less on their connection with Alexander, and although the Seleucid kings were also considered divine, there was no centralized dynastic cult until Antiochus III.^[451] This Antiochus also founded a library in Antioch, one of the Seleucid capitals, certainly influenced by Near Eastern and Ptolemaic precedents.^[452]

Next to the royal family were the Friends (Philoi), who served as counselors of the king and formed a sort of inner court.^[453] This was not a formal institution, but many of them held official functions within the state, notably as governors of provinces and military commanders, as well as honorary functions such as priests of dynastic cults. The fundamental role of the Friends becomes even clearer when empires are conceived of as networks of communications. Indeed, they provided the king and state their own social networks and influence in their home region. They thus also formed sets of interests with which the kings had to negotiate in terms of power and privilege (e.g., gift-estates).^[454] Since most were Greek or Macedonian in origin, at least in the third century bce, they have been described as a “dominant ethno-class” by Ma, a term coined by Briant for the Persian elite in the Achaemenid Empire.^[455] If, as stressed by Strootman, a “supranational imperial culture came into existence based on the Hellenic culture of the court,”^[456] there were also local influences that distinguished the nascent Ptolemaic culture from Seleucid.

Indeed, in territories beyond the Greek world, the priestly class formed a parallel elite structure, obtaining from kings land donations and financial support for temple building and for the cults.^[457] Some priests, especially those of important temples, were sometimes present at court and thus can be considered to be members of the outer court—in some cases even of the inner court, though this last point is debated (see next section IV).

Administration of Provinces and Districts

While the Ptolemies carefully positioned Alexandria as the center of their smaller empire, the Seleucids had no fixed capital but traveled as an itinerant court from one royal palace to another along the east-west axis of the Royal Road.^[458] In order to control their large territory, they used previous Achaemenid provincial capitals (e.g., Sardis, Bactra, Persepolis, Ecbatana) and kept the previous administrative languages (e.g., Aramaic and Akkadian), though they added Greek.^[459] They also founded many cities, some of them serving as capitals. In the west, Seleucus I established the so-called Syrian Tetrapolis with Seleucia-in-Pieria and Laodicea-by-the-Sea on the Mediterranean coast and Antioch-by-Daphne and Apamea-on-the-Axios in the Orontes Valley. In the east, he founded Seleucia-on-the-Tigris in order to balance the power of the old capital, Babylon. The provinces were administered by two parallel hierarchies, which sometimes made decisions jointly.^[460] A strategos was at the head of the “civil/military” administration of each province and was under a more direct control of the king than were the previous Achaemenid satraps.^[461] The hyparchoi supervised the subdivisions of each province and helped the strategos to maintain order and levy troops, while garrison-commanders (phrourarchoi) and cavalry-officers (hipparchoi) were the leaders of the troops stationed in garrisons and in so-called military colonies (katoikiai).^[462] In parallel, a dioiketes was at the head of the “financial” administration of each province and reported directly to the king.

With the help of the oikonomoi and of other financial officials, the dioiketes collected taxes, paid for expenditure, supervised royal land, and perhaps also regulated other financial offices (mints, registries) in his province. The Seleucids were able to collect more revenues than the former Achaemenid dynasty, being more aggressive in order to face the competitive pressures of interstate anarchy and consequently developing a more efficient administrative structure to extract revenues.^[463] Recent scholarship on Babylonia and Judea suggests that royal officials, often emerging from the local elite, supervised the administration and finances of local temples more closely from the 180s-160s все onward.^[464] The troubles in Judea that triggered the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 все), for instance, may be attributed to one such reform.^[465] In addition, the transformation of Babylon (and probably also Uruk) under Antiochus III and Antiochus IV into a polis, with the concomitant implementation of the political organization of a Greek city-state, removed political power from its mighty temple in favor of a citizen assembly. However, at least some of the priestly elite were integrated into the citizen body.^[466]

The terms used for the different officials in each empire are unsurprisingly similar, since both were influenced by the Achaemenid and Greco-Macedonian traditions. However, studies comparing their actual functions are still needed.^[467] In the Ptolemaic Empire, the regions outside of Egypt were administered either by strategoi or oikonomoi, who reported directly to the king on both civil and financial matters, while troops were stationed in garrisons. It is usually thought that, in taxing the Greek cities of Asia Minor, Ptolemaic and Seleucid officials—depending on who was in control of a given city—relied mainly on the fiscal institutions of the cities themselves, institutions that had developed since the Achaemenid occu- pation.^[468] Schuler has now shown that the taxes called phoroi refer to taxes within the city that were paid to the king, rather than to a lump sum levied as a tribute on the cities.^[469] In Egypt and in Coele-Syria, the Ptolemies developed a hybrid system wherein tax farmers (telonai) bid on how much they would pay the state for the right to collect a given tax, lowering risk to the Ptolemies. State officials, police, and guards supervised the bidders' collection of taxes.^[470] Ptolemy II, who organized the Ptolemaic fiscal system in Egypt, created monopolies for the production of special goods such as papyrus, textiles, and oil in order to lower their risks.

It is difficult, however, to evaluate how much profit they made since the state itself consumed these products, for instance by distributing allowances in kind.^[471] The Ptolemies kept the traditional division of Egypt, which was divided into administrative divisions called nomes (nomoi). In each, three administrative branches shared the work. The first one supervised agricultural production and was the responsibility of the nomarchos and his subordinates, the toparchai and komarchai. The second one administrated the finances through the oikonomos and his clerks. The third branch kept records of land management, including sowing schedules. Each nome had a royal scribe (i.e., the basilikos grammateus) to whom the topogrammateis, as well as the village scribes (i.e., the komogrammateis), reported.^[472] The Ptolemies' primary innovations included increasing the use of Greek in administration (though Demotic Egyptian was still sometimes used in local official documents). The king appointed a strategos in each nome as military commander, who functionally replaced the nomarchos by gradually gaining influence in civil matters, making him the top official in each nome by the early 220s bce.^[473] The head of each branch reported to the dioiketes in Alexandria, who was the equivalent of a finance minister. A preserved memorandum from the dioiketes to his subordinates records how carefully and fairly he wished them to work, and reflects both the royal ideology of the caring official as well as the reality of the sorts of misconduct and negligence that undoubtedly occurred.^[474]

As in the Seleucid case, there were already royal officials who supervised the finances of the native temples in the 30th dynasty (380-343 bce), but under the Ptolemies these became gradually more integrated into the state. This was made possible through the close relationship that the Ptolemies cultivated with the family of the high priests of Ptah in Memphis.

They became the primary authority over all local priesthoods in Egypt. Over time, more local priestly families were serving in the army or the royal administration, and the Ptolemies could also dispatch special royal officials to supervise the finances of a temple during a particular period, for instance during the construction of the Edfu temple.^[475] The state's payment of the syntaxis, literally a “contribution,” to the temples can be interpreted similarly, since the state likely paid it out of a pool of revenues from temple lands that it collected itself. Previously, such revenues had been paid directly to the temples.^[476] In the second century, particular officials—men who had accumulated functions within the temples, royal administration, and the army, and who were usually of Egyptian origin—accelerated the process of integration.^[477] After the Great Revolt in Upper Egypt, where the temples had always had a stronger control of land, the Ptolemies employed men from Egyptian priestly families who made a career in the military in order to regain control of the area.^[478]

Finally, in both empires, the precise status of Greek cities (poleis) and other settlements remains difficult to assess. In Egypt, the three poleis—Alexandria, Naucratis, and Ptolemais—were administrated separately. They were organized autonomously with their own political institutions, though Alexandria did not have a council during most of this period.^[479] They also had their own laws and tribunals, even if royal edict superseded any such decisions. Not all of the inhabitants of these poleis had the status of citizens.^[480] Outside Egypt, Ptolemy I interfered with the constitution of the Cyrenaeans, while on Cyprus all of the cities, by 217 bce, were under the authority of the strategos of the island.^[481] Asia Minor, where the Seleucids and Ptolemies competed for loyalty, was a patchwork of settlements with different statuses that were often difficult to disentangle and that were not homogeneously controlled. If some cities were autonomous, governing themselves freely and leading their own foreign policy (e.g., lasos), Ma has shown that many cities were simultaneously self-governed and subordinate. They paid the phoros to the king, and sometimes had a royal garrison and/or a royal governor. Royal edicts, meanwhile, superseded civic decisions, but kings could also grant exemptions from any of these burdens or grant inviolability (asylia).^[482] Without such privileges, some cities and settlements could be granted to high officials as personal, royal gifts (dorea). A few cities were governed by local dynasts. Ma makes a distinction between “subject/provincial” cities in the provinces (e.g., in Karia and Lycia, as well as the new foundations) and “subordinated” cities that were not located on “subject hinterlands,” such as Herakleia under Latmos. However, even subject cities organized themselves at times into regional leagues (e.g., the Chrysaorian League in Karia). The Seleucids also founded katoi- kiai, which were military settlements usually attached to preexisting civilian settlements and which were under the king's direct control.^[483] Most shrines and villages on the “king's land” (i.e., the territories between the cities' own) were also under the direct control of the royal administration. As a whole, however, one should be cautious about the terminology of subordination that reflects the ideology of imperial control, and should refrain from generalizations about what were, in fact, case-by-case negotiations of privilege and status.^[484]

The Royal Economy?

The abundant papyrological documentation available for Egypt makes it far easier to analyze its political and administrative organization than that of the Seleucid, but historians agree that Seleucid materials on stone and clay tablets suggest a similar level of sophistication.^[485] The term “royal economy” has been applied to the political economy of both empires, but is misleading if it is taken to imply the nonexistence of private economic activity and if it is understood as a total—or uniform—control of the extraction process by the king (or for the king's sole benefit).^[486] If the “royal economy” is defined as the set of institutions, with some regional variations, developed by the monarchic state to produce, extract, and redistribute resources, it comes closer to being an accurate label. But the concept of political economy is preferred here because it avoids any confusion and allows comparisons with other empires. Both the Seleucids and the Ptolemies extracted more revenues than the Achaemenids because of the constant pressures inherent in the interstate system and the need to develop more efficient fiscal institutions. Both states, in periods of instability, tended to tax their populations excessively, to make confiscations, and both had difficulties preventing corruption and the raising of unlawful taxes by their agents. This could trigger internal revolts, but was sometimes resolved by the cancellation of tax arrears in so-called amnesty decrees.^[487] Overall, however, both empires responded dynamically to changing circumstances through reform, especially in the first half of the second century bce. The functions of both states, moreover, went beyond extraction. They used surpluses to build monuments and temples that could benefit different segments of the population. Their royal decrees were a source of law and offered a system of adjudication as an alternative to existing systems found in native temples and in Greek city-states. The latter could also ask the king to send judges from other cities.^[488] The documentation from Egypt makes it clear that the Ptolemies aimed to provide a trustworthy system of arbitration and the means to secure private rights, notably through the development of the public notary in the second century.^[489] In addition, Ptolemaic officials issued taxreceipts, and law enforcement was supported by a system of police, though its first raison d’etre was certainly the protection of royal revenues and it was not immune to corruption.^[490]

IV.

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Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press,2020. — 1352 p.. 2020

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