MACEDONIA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4422, 7 May 1941, Page 6

MACEDONIA

“A BUBBLE EMPIRE.” ( f ■ HISTORY’S PARALLEL. The parallel between the rise of the ancient “bubble” empire of Macedonia and the rise of Nazism in an attempt to dominate the world is remarkable—and the swift downfall of the Macedonian Empire has its significance and its lesson to-day. To-day Macedonia is a region of northern Greece and southern Yugoslavia. Once it was a powerful State dominating a world empire. During the reigns of two kings it rose from the position of a semi-barbarian buffer State of Greece against the wild Balkan tribes in the known world, which extended from Greece and Libya as far east as India. This empire was mainly made up of the Greek world and the great Persian Empire, both of which were suffering from weaknesses inherent in their widely different systems of government. That was in the third century B.C. The Greeks were democratic and independent, living in tiny States, which took their name from the central city in which the citizens assembled for voting, electing, sacrificing and performing the other public duties of their democracy. This extreme love of independence, together with a profound distrust of each other, made the Greeks strong intellectually, but weak politically. After forming a confederacy of Greek States to repel a Persian invasion, Athens, seat of the leading sea power, set herself at the head of the confederacy and ruled it so oppressively that Sparta, the “strong, silent man” of the Greek world, was appealed to to champion the cause of the weak States. The resulting Peloponnesian war, which lasted 27 years, temporarily robbed Athens of her empire and permanently weakened the whole of Greece. Afterwards fighting remained the normal occupation of most Greeks, and longcontinued inter-State strife made unity impossible. Asia Minor and the TigrisEuphrates valley were accustomed from the earliest times to the rule of warrior kings over vast numbers of subjects. The first great king of whom .anything is known was Sargon I. (2600 8.C.), and from his time onward a succession of empires— Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian existed in this region.

The Persian empire had been founded by a great line of conquerers —• Cambyses and Darius—in the sixth century. They conquered most of the known world exceptGreece, spreading to Asia Minor, Egypt and Afghanistan. Darius left the conquest of Greece to his son, Xerxes, who failed in this, but held the rest of the empire together. Government was carried on through satraps (absolute governors) appointed by the king, and it was obvious that With anyone less than avmilitary and political genius on the throne these satraps would quarrel and get out of hand. When family intrigues weakened the power - of the crown in the fourth century the satraps became virtually independent, and the Persian empire existed only in name. HITLER TECHNIQUE. Thus by the middle of the fourth century .Greece and the straggling Persian empire were comparatively easy prey for a strong invader. Macedonia, till now a feudal area north of Greece, chanced at this time to have an extraordinarily able chieftain, Philip IL, who so altered the whole structure of his country that it grew from a region populated by peasants and hunters into a national, military State. He then proceeded to acquire, by threats and empty promises, the land around Macedonia, containing rich gold mines, and cities which were populated largely by Athenian colonists. He had paid agents throughout the Greek cities who spread favourable propaganda, nourished inter-State troubles, and, if it were still necessary, assisted the invaders from within.

Philip took advantage of interstate clashes to march down into Greece, most of which he gained by one decisive victory at Chaeronea (338 8.C.). He was, however, a sincere admirer of Greek civilisation and its basis, the free City State, and he allowed the States freedom, except in external policy. A central congress was set up at Corinth which nominally recognised Philip as the champion of Greece against Persia, some of whose satraps were interfering with the cities on the coast of Asia Minor. Thus the Macedonian monarch was able to turn east.

But Philip’s career was suddenly cut short by the intrigue of a cast-off wife, Olympias, whose son, Alexander, succeeded to the throne. This youth, at the age of 20, was better trained for the business of ruling his fellows than any, other monarch in history. It has been said of him:— “In mental and moral endowment he was also favoured. With a boundless ambition, an iron will, and inexhaustible energy, he combined a brilliant imagination to envisage the need, and a swift, unerring ability to meet it.

“Alexander was the Hellenic ideal in physical beauty, intellectual genius

and adventurous initiative. His education and training were worthy of his endowment. Besides other notable Hellenic teachers, he had Aristotle for his mentor for three years.” It was this superman who resubdued Greece and spread its culture from the Danube to the Indus, from the Caspian Sea to the upper reaches of the Nile, in ten years of campaigning. ALEXANDER ACCLAIMED. Beginning with the satraps of Asia Minor in 334, Alexander took only two years to reduce this difficult region completely and set up his own governors, after which he marched down the coast of Syria and Palestine to Egypt. He rebuilt many Egyptian temples, founded Alexandria on the Nile delta, and set turning the wheels of benevolent and efficient government. Next, he marched north again across the desert to Babylon and Susa, the Persian capital. A decisive victory over Darius gave him this region, and the Great King himself was pursued north and eventually murdered by some of his own bodyguard in the wild region near the Caspian Sea. Alexander’s boundless ambition and curiosity now took him through the region between the Caspian and India, where he secured all the Punjab region with only one battle— the most difficult and brilliantly won of his engagements. He left garrisons in new cities found in the Greek style, and returned with many hardships along the coast to the Arabian Sea, so that he could study the possibilities of this route for commerce. In the wake of Alexander followed Greek geographers and scientists, traders and colonists, who mapped the seas, studied the new country and reopened the ancient trade routes of the east.

The king himself died of Babylonian swamp fever within a year of his return, aged 33. No other man could rule such an empire; his able and experienced generals divided iip the world between them, and quickly forgot any common allegiance as they struggled with revolts and built up new systems of government. They and theii - successors fought continually over their borders till the Romans came two centuries later and overpowered them all. The cultural unity of the east remained through the wars, and the Roman conquests, and eventually caused the break that gave rise to the Byzantine empire but even if this Hellenisation continued, the impressive Macedonian empire itself existed for only ten years. It was one of those bubble empires which must have seemed powerful to contemporaries, but which Was founded on sand.