26 CHAPTER ONEthe reduction of the Palestinian interior to a subordinate.^17 The following de-
cades, down to 301, were chaotic. Alexander died in 323, and his immense
empire, stretching from Greece to India, fell into several pieces, each ruled
by one of Alexander’s generals initially eager to seize the whole. Palestine was
especially controversial, since it was claimed by Ptolemy son of Lagos, whose
base was Egypt; Seleucus, the ruler of Mesopotamia and Syria; and Antigonus
the One-Eyed, the greatest of all of Alexander’s generals. In the event, Ptole-
my’s conquest of the region in 301B.C.E. was decisive, and Palestine remained
part of Ptolemy’s kingdom until 200B.C.E., when Seleucus’s descendant Anti-
ochus III wrested it from Ptolemy V. Although coastal Palestine and Phoenicia
in this century witnessed nearly constant warfare between the two dynasties,
Judaea, which was a poor hill country district off the main roads and of little
strategic interest, remained at peace.^18
Alexander and his successors retained much of the administrative structure
set in place by the Persians. Like the Persians, they tended to grant subject
nations, such as the Jews, limited autonomy. And like the Persians, they no-
where actively forced their own language or culture on their subjects. How-
ever, the rulers themselves were adamantly Gree k(despite, or because of,
not actually being Gree kat all, but Macedonian), instinctively assumed the
superiority of Gree kculture, and seem to have preferred Gree ks as administra-
tors, friends, and courtiers.^19 These preferences induced wealthier, politically
ambitious natives to adopt elements of Gree kculture. But Alexander also
introduced an unprecedented practice that had profound though probably
unintended consequences in all the lands he conquered. To secure his empire
throughout the Near East, he founded cities to be settled by his mainly Greek
or Greco-Macedonian veterans and other Gree kimmigrants. These cities
were “Greek,” that is, they had constitutions and a public life loosely modeled
on those of Athens, were legally autonomous (because “freedom” was an es-
sential characteristic of Greekness; in reality, of course, as opposed to self-
aggrandizing rhetoric, the cities were subjected to the kings), and had a rural
(^17) See V. Tcherikover,Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1959), pp. 41–50; S. Cohen, “Alexander the Great and Jaddus the High Priest According
to Josephus,”AJS Review7–8 (1982–1983) 41–68; Josephus’s story has had some defenders, such
as A. Momigliano, “Flavius Josephus and Alexander’s Visit to Jerusalem,”Athenaeum57 (1979):
442–48; and A. Kasher, “Some Suggestions and Comments Concerning Alexander Macedon’s
[sic] Campaign in Palestine,”Beth Mikra20 (1975): 187–208 (in Hebrew).
(^18) The standard studies of Ptolemaic Palestine remain Tcherikover, “Palestine under the Ptole-
mies,”Mizraim4–5 (1937): 9–90; and R. Bagnall,The Administration of the Ptolemaic Possessions
outside Egypt(Leiden: Brill, 1976), pp. 11–24. For a general political and military history of the
period, see E. Will,Histoire politique du monde helle ́nistique(Nancy: Presses Universitaires de
Nancy, 1979).
(^19) See Sherwin-White and Kuhrt,From Samarkhand to Sardis, pp. 141–87; on the potentially
profound cultural consequences for subjects of imperialpreferences, see K. Hopkins, “Conquest
by Book,” in John Humphrey, ed.,Literacy in the Roman World,JRAsuppl. 3 (1991) 133–58.