Thirdly, Macedon. The ancient dynasty from which Alexander himself came was exterminated, and possession of the land was fiercely contested, no doubt partly because it was Alexanders country, until in 276 Antigonus
Gonatas succeeded in establishing himself securely in power. His heirs, the Antigonid dynasty, ruled the country until it was conquered by Rome in 168 B.C.
Statue Of A Gaulish Chieftain, the so-called Ludovisi Gaul, thought to be a copy of a bronze original which formed part of a monument set up in Pergamum in the late third century B.C. to commemorate Attalus I's victory over
the Galatians. Various elements, including the arms of the warrior and the left arm of his dead wife, are modern restorations.
The Limits of Hellenism
Within the boundaries established by the conquests of Alexander there were dramatic cultural changes as Hellenization spread thousands of miles over the whole of the Middle East. This process used to be seen through rose-
tinted spectacles as the innocent gift of civilization to the benighted barbarians; after all the British were doing precisely the same thing in their empire. No doubt the Greeks themselves saw matters in this way. But our own post-
colonial age is more aware that culture is intimately bound up with politics: we can see that Greek culture dominated other, ancient cultures, and that this process of Hellenization was in part a product of the power of the kings.
The creation of new Greek cities was fundamental to the process of Hellenization (for their design see below, p. 501). Alexander himself was reported to have founded over seventy cities (the actual figure may be half that), while
the Seleucids created over sixty new settlements in the area from western Turkey to Iran. Some of these 'new' cities were in fact old settlements with a new, dynastic name and a Greek constitution. Others were in areas previously
not highly urbanized. For example, the second Seleucid king founded a new city on the Persian Gulf, naming it Antioch after himself, and later took steps to increase its population by 'inviting' Magnesia on the Maeander, an old
city in western Turkey, to send out colonists. New cities were founded even where there were perfectly adequate existing settlements. Thus in Egypt two Greek cities were founded, of which one, Alexandria, replaced the old
Pharaonic city of Memphis as the Ptolemaic capital; while the ancient city of Babylon was superseded by the new Seleucid capital Seleucia on the Tigris, some 50 kilometres away. There could be no clearer illustration than these
two cities of the dominance which the Greeks were to exercise over the non-Greek populations.