Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

This intensification of Greek settlement led, apparently, to the expropriation of the nearby native Libyans from their lands. They therefore formed an alliance with the Egyptian Pharaoh Apries, who marched to their aid with a strong army, but in a battle near the spring of Theste in the region of Irasa, in the year 570, the Egyptians were heavily defeated,[71] perhaps because of the Pharaoh’s reluctance to rely on his best troops, who were Greek mercenaries. As Herodotus, who wrote in the middle of the 5th century, records no Libyan tribes eastward as far as the Gilgamae of Marmarica, while in the 4th century Pseudo-Scylax[72] found Cyrene’s eastern frontier beyond Cherronesoi (in the vicinity of Ras al-Tin), it has been concluded[73] that the clash was caused by the Greek occupation of the lands to the east of the city towards Derna.

Apries’ successor was Amasis, a hellenizing ruler who signed a treaty with Cyrene, married a Cyrenean wife and sent statues of himself and of the goddess Athena, to Libya.[74] Signs of commerce between Cyrene and Egypt in this period are not wanting in the archaeological evidence: objects of gold and alabaster as well as scarabs, have occurred among the 6th-century dedications in the Temple of Artemis at Cyrene,[75] and Cyrenean coins form a high percentage among contemporary hoards found in Egypt.[76] A common political trend may indeed be traceable in the developments of Egypt and Cyrene in this period.

Cyrene was ruled between 560 and 544 by the son of Battus II, Arkesilaos II, known as “the hard” (χαλεπός).[77] According to Herodotus, Arkesilaos fell out with his brothers, who seceded to found a joint settlement with the Libyans at Barka in the west of the country. They further incited the Libyans to revolt against the King, who suffered a severe defeat in the battle of Leukon in the east of his territory, with the loss of 7.000 hoplites. The King was also at odds with his nobles, whom he put to death or drove into exile with the aid of one Learchos, the commander (according to Plutarch)[78] of a force of mercenaries obtained from Amasis. Finally Learchos slew the king and so seized power, but himself fell a victim to the vengeance of Arkesilaos’ widow Eryxo. She, aided by her brother Polyarchos, made peace with Amasis, and restored the former regime — Arkesilaos’ son, Battus III, a sickly youth, acceding to the throne.

The Egyptian alliance with Cyrene, as Schafer remarked,[79] “indicates Cyrene’s entry into the Greek and oriental political world of the eastern Mediterranean basin.” We may add that the second wave of Greek settlement which had been promoted by Delphi and by Battus II, came at a time of great changes in the Greek economy and during the floruit of the Greek tyrannies in various Greek states. This was also the period of a prolonged agrarian crisis in Greece and the islands, expressing itself in peasant indebtedness and expropriation, and in a sharp struggle between the nobility and the rising class of merchants, peasants and craftsmen. Important too, if not decisive in this period, were the introduction of coinage, and the associated intensification of trade. These conditions, which certainly influenced the Battiads, produced multitudes of land-hungry emigrants eager to exploit the new allotments promised by Battus II.

Plutarch says explicitly that Arkesilaos “became a tyrant instead of a king”,[80] and of Learchos, that he “conspired for the position of tyrant”.[81] Plutarch, it may be claimed, was influenced by events then occurring in other Greek lands, but his estimate can be shown to be accurate where contemporary Cyrenean reality was concerned.

The internal political difficulties created by Battus III’s youth and inexperience, induced the Cyreneans to appeal once again to Delphi for advice; the Oracle sent to Libya as arbiter and reformer Demonax of Mantinea.[82] By his reforms, only royal properties (τεμένεα) and the prerogatives of priesthood were left to the king, all other affairs being handed over to popular control (τὰ ἄλλα πάντα τὰ πρότερον εἶχον οὶ βασιλεὶς ἐς μέσον τοῦ δημῶ ἔθηκε). Demonax further reconstituted the citizens of Cyrene as three new tribes, the Therans and perioikoi (περίοικοι); the Peloponnesians and the Cretans; and the islanders. It is clear, therefore, that the royal powers were stringently curtailed, while the citizen-body was enlarged to include new settlers and some of the native Libyans living in the vicinity of the city (the perioikoi). Chamoux,[83] indeed, has argued that the perioikoi were Greeks, but one can hardly ignore the testimony of Herodotus, who himself visited Cyrene, and makes explicit mention of the Libyan perioikoi.[84] Among the royal properties, one can be identified, namely, the monopoly of the silphium trade, mentioned by several sources.[85] Furthermore the famous picture on the Arkesilaos kylix,[86] hardly suits the usual interpretation that silphium is here being weighed and stored: Lane rightly commented[87] that the material is not silphium, but wool.[88] All agree that the King represented, designated “Arkesilaos” on the kylix, is the second of that name.[89] Accordingly it seems probable that the king also traded in wool and agricultural produce on a wide scale.

The paintings on the Arkesilaos kylix are certainly satirical, as Sylvia Benton noted.[90] We see the king sitting and supervising the weighing and storage of wool. The animals appearing in the painting (a stork and a lizard) indicate the action as taking place at the end of the shearing, i.e. in the spring or early summer, for the flocks in Cyrenaica have to be driven to water in April or May, when they come north to the Jebel from their winter sojourn in the southern steppe.

The satirical element of the painting lies in the fact noted by Sylvia Benton, that wool is being weighed against wool, a futile process here represented, it would seem, as a criticism of the royal wool production and export overseas. The country’s sheep breeding is evidenced by various ancient sources,[91] and as the royal monopoly of silphium is known, there is no reason to deny to the royal house a decisive share in the production and marketing of wool. An analysis of the country’s structure and climatic character has shown the importance of the rhythmic seasonal transmigration of flock-owners from the southern steppe to the plateau and back; it also emphasized the antagonistic ways of life of the nomadic pastoral tribes and the settled agriculturalists and cattle-owners concentrated on the plateau. It is further clear that the seasonal northward transhumance of flockowners in summer plays a vital part in the fertilizing of the agricultural areas. In much of mainland Greece, agriculture occupies the valleys, and the flocks graze in the hills in summer; when the livestock descends to the plains in the winter, ploughing and sowing have already begun, restricting the grazing areas, hence the soil suffers from shortage of organic manure and the stock from shortage of food. The opposite is the case in Cyrenaica, where the flocks spend the winter in the steppe, and on passing to the plateau in summer find increasing areas of stubble on which to feed as the harvest progresses over the Jebel from south to north and from west to east. Hence the farmer enjoys adequate manuring of his land, and this was a vital factor for obtaining the country’s high yields in ancient times.[92] In other words, in Cyrenaica the fertility of the plateau’s arable and the seasonal flock transhumance were mutually complementary, and essential for the obtaining of surplus crops in a country that suffers quadrennial drought. The agriculture of the Plain of Barka, on the other hand, was less dependent on the seasonal transhumance of livestock. Its water supply is furnished by springs at Barka itself, and its population was initially attracted by its fertile corn-producing red soil and by the rearing of cattle and horses which could be carried on with the help of its summer fallows.[93] It was not by chance, therefore, that Barka remained an independent political unit till the end of the century.[94]