Discuss the importance of identity in the Seleucid, Antigonid, and Ptolemaic kingdoms, and the challenges faced by each.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The three major kingdoms evolving from the breakup of Alexander's empire were different in their attempts to maintain Greek identity. A significant difference is that in the Hellenistic era, the change in politics was to primarily kingdoms and a focus on cities as commercial centers. The Antigonids were centered in Macedonia and therefore had less of an issue of trying to integrate or manage a foreign population. However, many of the Macedonian army had been retired and given lands throughout the empire. The depletion of the military and the costs of the wars left the Antigonids trying to hold control of the Greek states, largely through establishment of strategically located fortresses. The Ptolemies, in Egypt, were a dual society of Greeks and Egyptians. They imposed Greek style administration with native Greeks at the head of administrative positions. However, they also had to compromise and integrate some concepts of Egyptian identity into their rule, as the Egyptian culture held them as Pharaohs rather than just kings. They used a very centralized rule that incorporated Egyptians into the administration, at lower levels than Greeks. They actively sought to have Greeks immigrate and offered land to do such. The most complicated kingdom for maintenance of a Greek identity was that of the Seleucids, even before the partitioning of Pergamum. Because Alexander had embraced a multicultural fusion, had advocated intermarriage (including his own) and settled soldiers throughout Persia, there was a more heterogeneous population. Therefore, there was more religious tolerance (for example, in Mesopotamia, where a religious group afraid of repression from Persians supported the Greeks). The General Seleucis was one of the few Greeks who did not divorce his Persian wife. Realizing that his territory was too large to manage, he allowed local rule in satrapies.