A recap of Lecture 14, followed by introductions to the two twenty-minute pair tasks. The discussion timeline supplies the evidence for each task, which ends with one paragraph of 80–100 words.
The bronze head identified as Seuthes III, king of the Odrysians in Thrace, is 32.5 centimetres high, with eyes made separately from stone and glass. Inscriptions from the tomb and comparisons with coins support its identification. Analysis of material left inside the casting is compatible with production in the southern Balkans or north-eastern Greece. Seuthes used Greek writing and commissioned sculpture while defending his authority against Macedonian rivals. His kingdom belonged to a world in which royal courts had long existed alongside the poleis.
Philip II strengthened Macedon through military reform, territorial expansion, alliances and marriage. His victory over Athens and Thebes at Chaironeia in 338 BC allowed him to organise the League of Corinth and begin a war against Persia. After Philip’s murder in 336, Alexander secured the army’s loyalty, eliminated rivals and obtained recognition of his command. He crossed into Asia in 334, continuing his father’s project while seeking personal glory and resources with which to reward service. His conquest created new claims to land, revenues and office.
Coins made royal authority part of transactions far beyond the court. Alexander’s silver carried Heracles in the lion’s skin and a seated Zeus beside his own name. A tetradrachm weighed roughly seventeen grams, and its metal helped determine its acceptability. Captured reserves at Susa and Persepolis supplied resources that could be minted, paid to soldiers and spent on food, transport and goods. Later, Lysimachus issued coins under his own name with Alexander’s horned portrait. The issuer, represented figure and date each help establish what a coin was intended to communicate.
Conquest also transferred people and property. At Thebes, the suppression of revolt in 335 BC brought destruction, enslavement and the distribution of land. Diodorus and Arrian both describe decisions by the Greek allies, with different emphases on Alexander’s purposes and the interests of neighbouring communities. The gains available to victors came from losses imposed on the defeated. Acquiring resources through conquest and collecting revenue regularly were connected parts of royal power, sustained through soldiers, officials and communities with interests of their own.
At Babylon, Alexander appointed the Persian Mazaeus as satrap while assigning military command and revenue collection to others. Government drew on experienced people and established institutions, with new appointments changing their relationships. At court, Persian dress and the gesture of obeisance called proskynesis raised questions about the standing of Macedonian companions. Marriages at Susa connected leading officers with Iranian noble families. These arrangements required the king’s continuing authority; after his death in 323, commanders competed for territories that eventually formed several kingdoms.
Cities continued to organise public life within and beside those kingdoms. At Priene, a royal exemption from payment was preserved in an inscription alongside obligations imposed on neighbouring villages. Assemblies, magistrates, courts and festivals still gave citizens work to do and interests to defend. At Ai Khanoum, in northern Afghanistan, a theatre and gymnasium stood within a settlement containing a large palace and buildings drawing on western and central Asian traditions. Sayings copied from Delphi were installed at the shrine of Kineas, connecting local commemoration with respected Greek instruction.
The Rosetta Stone records another arrangement between a dynasty and established institutions. In 196 BC, Egyptian priests honoured Ptolemy V for gifts, remissions and support for temples, while prescribing royal images and ceremonies. Copies were to stand in temples. The stone uses two languages in three scripts: Egyptian in hieroglyphs and Demotic, and Greek. Its versions drew on different religious vocabularies, identifying gods through names familiar to their readers. Greek served royal government while Egyptian writing and priestly authority remained active in the same act of recognition.
Koinē, the common Greek language, developed principally from Attic Greek and became useful in correspondence, government and exchange. People acquired it with different degrees of fluency, and scribes could compose requests or read letters aloud. A worker writing to Zenon around 256–255 BC complained about unpaid wages and connected his treatment with being a foreigner unable to hellēnizein, to speak or behave as a Greek. His appeal survives in Greek. Access to a written request could coexist with difficulties of language, acceptance and obtaining payment from an employer’s agents.
Greek also sustained communities’ own traditions. Translations of Jewish scripture made ancestral law available to Greek-speaking readers, and the author of 2 Maccabees defended Jewish observance in Greek. At Jerusalem, Jason’s gymnasium involved an initiative by members of the priestly elite with royal permission. The later compulsory measures against ancestral practices changed the conditions under which people acted. The disputes concerned worship, offices and authority within particular relationships; people using Greek could take different positions on the obligations that bound their community.
At Kandahar, Aśoka used Greek after Macedonian rule had ended. Greek texts expressed Mauryan royal purposes in familiar ethical terms, including piety and self-control. The surviving Greek account of Kalinga described the suffering caused by conquest and the king’s distress at its consequences. Readers far from Kalinga could follow this account in a language used by earlier Macedonian rulers. Its continued usefulness depended on people able to translate, write and read it under another dynasty.
The marble sarcophagus in the Walters Art Museum belongs to Roman rule, around AD 190, more than five centuries after Alexander. Dionysus rides in a panther-drawn chariot among followers and animals including elephants; his birth appears on the lid. The Indian triumph recalls a story used in Arrian’s account of Nysa, whose envoys claimed Dionysus as founder when seeking freedom from Alexander. The king welcomed a comparison that let him surpass a divine predecessor, granting freedom while requiring cavalry. Arrian’s narrative and the Roman sarcophagus give the Indian journey different uses. On a burial chest, the victorious procession could express hope of triumph over death. A Greek story associated with conquest had acquired a purpose in Roman commemoration.
Lecture summary: 964 words
Setting up the two tasks
Allow about twenty minutes for each task, working in pairs. The discussion supplies the coin, metal analysis, ancient documents and linguistic findings. These notes introduce the same two activities.
Task A · 20 min Silver and the resources of conquest
Compare the silver tetradrachm attributed to Susa and found at Pasargadae with the paraphrase of Arrian’s account of the captured treasury and the table of lead isotope findings. The measurements identify compatible sources for metal, while Arrian describes its reported acquisition and the coin connects payment with a royal name and images. Discuss how conquest changed the control and use of existing wealth. Write one paragraph of 80–100 words explaining how captured resources could sustain royal power, using one finding from the analysis and a precise detail from each of the other two sources. Open Task A in the discussion.
Task B · 20 min What made Greek a common language?
Compare the worker’s letter to Zenon with the Rosetta decree, then consider the corpus study of selected words and diminutive forms in Ptolemaic documents. The letter seeks payment; the decree publishes royal honours through Greek and Egyptian writing. The table identifies differences in word choice between kinds of writing. Discuss what a common Greek language enabled people to do and how its uses differed. Write one paragraph of 80–100 words explaining how koinē connected people with different positions and purposes. Use a detail from each document and one table finding, distinguishing access to Greek writing from equal access to authority. Open Task B in the discussion.