Diadochi: a historical footnote?

[Severian Huizi]

Let it be known I'm not a historian by trade or education. I've never taken a university-level history course; as a journalism student the closest I've come are a handful of anthropology and geography courses.

So why is it that the time period between Alexander and (roughly) Sulla is glossed over in most media? At least in the world of U.S. public school K-12 history classes (the world I experienced), from what I can remember, the curriculum would go something like:

"Alexander subjugated most of the known world" ---> "Romans trampled all the successors and took his place"

The easiest answer would be to point out the atrocious lack of funding the public utility of education in the U.S. receives, which is true, but a simple book search on Amazon for "Diadochi" turns up 496 results, while "Alexander the Great" has 27,008 books. There are similar results for Web pages on Google.

The common explanation given for the omission of the successors in school is that they weren't nearly as "influential" or charismatic as Alexander and "just wasted all their time and resources fighting each other and contributing nothing to culture."

Any insights? Is this purely an oversight of school systems or a larger cultural trend? Is it justified to relegate the successors to something only to be learned about in college-level, upper-division history courses?-- obviously high school world history classes can hardly fit everything in, so is this time period as much or little important as they make it out to be?

[Sakkura]

I don't know, in my lessons Alexander was mainly introduced as the guy who set up Hellenism, which was explained as a big thing. And then the Romans became the next big thing.

But hey, I'm not from the US so maybe that's the reason.

[Spoofa]

I don't know, in my lessons Alexander was mainly introduced as the guy who set up Hellenism, which was explained as a big thing. And then the Romans became the next big thing.

But hey, I'm not from the US so maybe that's the reason.

It's explained that way in AP world history class that I'm taking now in HighSchool in the USA, but then again we're AP world history and we've gone from precivilization to the Song and Tang Dyansties/European Fuedalism in about 3 months, so there's not as much detail about each specific time period as I would like.

[Maksimus]

Any insights? Is this purely an oversight of school systems or a larger cultural trend? Is it justified to relegate the successors to something only to be learned about in college-level, upper-division history courses?-- obviously high school world history classes can hardly fit everything in, so is this time period as much or little important as they make it out to be?

It is a larger cultural trend,
I am from Serbia, and that is the case here as well in Europe or EU..
The point is realy, ...men are evil by their nature and what Diadokhoi wars presented is realy that - all successors lived and died in a violent way (exept Ptolomy Soter).
Those brother-killing-brother wars are just shame to Greek world and ancient history, it's a direction and a guide that show's that Alex made a great Empire and even greater fall of it - and the Empire success is realy less important if you can se that more men died after and during the colapse of his Empire - than during it's creation..
The shame of this larger cultural trend is felt today still, men and history tend to decive and hide things that they are ashame of... The Diadokhoi wars were a setback in Ancient history, the period you can compare to 'Dark Age' of Crusaider's Wars..

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

We never even talked of Alexandros in school. We started history with stone age, jumping to old Egypt, afterwards the world of the Greek Poleis, only some basics, no historical events at all... then came the Romans and a mention of the events at Teutoburg Forest. The first time I heard of Alexandros was surely in a tv-documentary, and the first time I heard about the Diadochi was... well, EB of course.

[Meothar]

We never even talked of Alexandros in school. We started history with stone age, jumping to old Egypt, afterwards the world of the Greek Poleis, only some basics, no historical events at all... then came the Romans and a mention of the events at Teutoburg Forest. The first time I heard of Alexandros was surely in a tv-documentary, and the first time I heard about the Diadochi was... well, EB of course.

Same here (well, no surprise as we both went to German schools, even in the same province).

Schools in Germany focus on the time between 1933-1945, so the rest of world history has to be educated in a short time. Sometimes this goes too far, so that the students don't know anything about how the nazis came to power and what happened before (WW1, Prussia, etc).

[Sakkura]

I guess there often tends to be one or more "holes" in the history teaching. Just depends on your school/country what holes you happen to run into. In my case, the history teachers left a gap from around 476 AD to 793 AD, as well as never mentioning China. Africa didn't get much attention either, mostly some stuff about the triangle trade and colonialism.

[beatoangelico]

in Italy ancient history is pretty much roman history in high school. Only the Greek V century BC is explained with some details (Persian Wars, Pericles and stuff, Peloponnesian War), the whole thing is "first there are the Cretans and the Achaeans, then all collapsed until VI century, then there is Athens and finally Alexander spreads hellenism in the world"

[konny]

The entire Hellenisitic periode has no "lobby" when it comes to write school books. Ancient History is about 10% Egypt, 10% Greece (when you are lucky you are presented a map "Conquests of Alexander the Great") and the other 80% are on Roman history from the very start to the Empire, that somehow usually ends with Augustus or Nero. Next thing you hear is that Barbarossa was elected Emporer and started his crusade....

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

The info I kept getting about this era, throughout my early schooling, was: Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire, when he died his empire was divided up between his generals, then with that one sentence it went straight to a short mention of the Punic wars, followed by Caesar and a history of the Roman empire.

[O'ETAIPOS]

Possibly the biggest reason is the state of sources: We have Herodotus for persian wars, Thukidydes and Xenophon for Peloponesian war and 1 half of 4 cBC. But after that only scraps until Alexander. Those end on his death or at last around 300 BC, and then next major work is Polybius covering around 260-160. This means that for example Philip II before Vergina finds was seen through eyes of Demosthenes - as brutal barbarian, alawys drunked and destroing Greece for the pleasure of destruction. This wiew dramaticaly changed after tomb atributed to him with all that gold and great art was found. Yet still he was shown from Dhemostenic perspective in movie Alexander.

On the other hand there are quite a few sources concerning romans. Most of them were writen much later and obviously try to show how inevitable was roman rule to the world, and how Greeks (Carthaginians etc) were unable to rule themselvs, how evil they were and how good the romas were to invest time in converting them to good roman ways.

School programmes were writen mostly many years ago, possibly in mid XX century. At that time it was still considered among scholars that hellenistic period is the age of fall, and is not worth studying. This means they concentrated on classical Greece, both historian and archeologists.

for example as far as macedonia is considered, before revealing "vergina tombs" and especially "tomb of Philip" it the 70s only few archeologists were digging in Macedonia. After that finds amount of works, and so obviously publications skyrocketed.

there are still reservations about hellenistic period though. Many still see it only as a period when Rome was growing to power. So no matter that we found many reasons to believe that as far as greeks are concerned the hellenistic period is just the opposite as was thought (so as the era of great technological ad scientifical developement) the old view still holds well and especially in school programmes that nobody bother to change.

[Treverer]

Hello there,

well, I remember that back in the early 80's when I was at the 8th class of the "lycée classique" here in Luxemburg, we spent the first trimester (mid-september - X-mas) entirely with the Hellenes: politics, culture, religion, etc & Alexander (a double-hour) & the Diadochi (another double-hour). The rest of the year was spent to the SPQR/Roman Empire (covering the time from the founding of the city till the disposal of the last WR Emperor in 473 A.D.). But I cannot tell exactly what was taken from our book, as I read those parts left in my off-time. And I was always interested in historical atlases (antlantes ?) ...

A little anecdote from the 7th class:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Well, I was called to my teacher to be asked about the stuff we had to learn ... near the desk, in front of the blackboard. At a certain moment, he asked at what places of the Northern European coasts there were Amber dispositions in the Ancient time. Young Treverer answered: "Well, at the coasts of Kurland/Lettonia/Lithuania, East-Prussia, Britannia/England & the east-coast of the Danish main, or was it the west-coast? I'm not sure about this now ... That must be all, IIRC."
My teacher had his mouth open for a short moment and then asked: "How does it come that a young one like you knows the names of 'East-Prussia/Kurland/Lettonia/Lithuania'?" (note: in was back in '82 and there was still the entire SSSR). Guess why ...

T.

Yours,
Treverer

Edit: corrected typos

[CirdanDharix]

The entire Hellenisitic periode has no "lobby" when it comes to write school books. Ancient History is about 10% Egypt, 10% Greece (when you are lucky you are presented a map "Conquests of Alexander the Great") and the other 80% are on Roman history from the very start to the Empire, that somehow usually ends with Augustus or Nero. Next thing you hear is that Barbarossa was elected Emporer and started his crusade....

That's a broad over-generalisation. It really depends where you are; as far the French curriculum is concerned, Julius Caesar might as well have been the first of the Romans. You have to take Latin classes if you want to hear about the Roman Res Publica prior to the the First Triumvirate. The way the Roman Empire is taught is pretty much "Julius Caesar took the the declining Roman Republic and conquered the world (well, mostly he conquered Gaul after a heroic fight, the rest was a piece of cake afterwards) and started the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire slowly declined over the next five hundred years, becoming Christian along the way, and was beset by barbarians on all sides. Then came Clovis, the king of the Salic Franks. He was the real inheritor of Roman power, because he became a Roman Consul and a Christian..." then they have loads of stuff about the Franks you probably don't find out in other countries without taking advanced classes. Really, how history is taught depends alot on what country you are in. And your country will never look bad in your history classes.

[Basileus Seleukeia]

That's a broad over-generalisation. It really depends where you are; as far the French curriculum is concerned, Julius Caesar might as well have been the first of the Romans. You have to take Latin classes if you want to hear about the Roman Res Publica prior to the the First Triumvirate. The way the Roman Empire is taught is pretty much "Julius Caesar took the the declining Roman Republic and conquered the world (well, mostly he conquered Gaul after a heroic fight, the rest was a piece of cake afterwards) and started the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire slowly declined over the next five hundred years, becoming Christian along the way, and was beset by barbarians on all sides. Then came Clovis, the king of the Salic Franks. He was the real inheritor of Roman power, because he became a Roman Consul and a Christian..." then they have loads of stuff about the Franks you probably don't find out in other countries without taking advanced classes. Really, how history is taught depends alot on what country you are in. And your country will never look bad in your history classes.

I totally aggree, over here in Germany 90 percent of our history lessons are about german history, and I'm in 10th grade Gymnasium (not Gymnasion, mind you) so that are a lot of passe history lessons. And, continuing this idea, which countrys would logically center on Diadochi? Iran? Iraq? Hell, the government of those countrys doesn't even give a crap about Parthian and Sassanid history, so why bother with the Greeks? It's a shame really, but perhaps The Persian Cataphracts knows somethings about modern day Iran and Iraq that doesn't depict their politicians and teachers as ignorant fools that do believe in "before Islam everybody was savage and all that don't worship Allah today are descendants of animals". Maybe I'm exxagerating on this, and I hope very much that I do, as the only other option would be that it is true.

[Sakkura]

Really, how history is taught depends alot on what country you are in. And your country will never look bad in your history classes.

1. I completely agree.

2. I completely disagree. Danish history classes... Well, it really is impossible to avoid the fact that the last 5 centuries of Danish history must be the biggest losing streak any nation has ever endured and lived to tell the tale. It's like:
"Oh, let's fight nearly isolated against the German Empire in the 30 years' war" - Denmark gets owned.
"Oh, let's fight against Sweden with their new uber army, while a freak of nature freezes over all the waterways protecting our capital" - Denmark gets owned hard.
"Oh, let's help this nice little guy from France" - Denmark gets owned by a one-eyed British admiral.
"Oh, let's get into a war with Prussia" - Denmark barely escapes without getting owned.
"Oh, let's get into a war with Prussia AND Austria and the rest of the German Confederation" - Denmark gets owned big time.
"Oh, hello nazis. We surrender." - Denmark surrenders before we even have a chance to get owned.
"Oh, let's send a contingent to this second invasion of Iraq. Hmm, what can we send... Oh I know, a submarine!" - Denmark looks silly but at least doesn't get owned. Well, not until the terrorists figure out that Denmark is not the capital of IKEA

[Watchman]

IIRC we actually have a passable coverage of history in schools here (even if the Diadochi tend to amount to mentions of Pyrrhus and Cleopatra...). Probably a side effect of the blunt fact we have preciously little history of our own that didn't directly overlap with whoever had staked a claim over the place at the time (Sweden, for the most part)... helps keep the egomania in check I guess.

[Krusader]

In Norway it is Vikings, Vikings, Christianity came to Norway by force mostly, Snorre and a bit on medieval Norway, then "400 years of darkness" (Danish rule), then shitloads on 1814 (Constitution we seemed to mainly copy from Americans + a law saying Jesuits & Jews were unwelcome), and then onwards. World War 2 and zie Nazis is also covered, especially in the very north were I'm from.

[Bellum]

My ancient history teacher (which I took in 7th grade) was a coach. We watched 'A Knights Tale' and waited for lunch.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Due to some lucky fate the whole nazi-shit didn't came over me in school, so I got a comparatively broader knowledge of school-history as many others in Germany.

P.S.: Regarding Denmark, the first time I heard that Denmark has been quite powerful and ruled the north was a few months ago on Wikipedia.

P.P.S.: Regarding Cleopatra, 99% of the people here even think she is Egyptian. Although I know comparatively much about history, I knew so little about it on the other hand that I even couldn't imagine that the vanilla Egytians were not very realistic.

[skuzzy]

American Undergrad General Education Western Civilization (a little less general than World but almost the same). This is from almost 3 years ago, why do I still have this crap on my computer?

Course Outline: Reading:
1/8: Introduction, Syllabus, Terms, Periodization none
1/15: MLK HOLIDAY?NO CLASS
1/22: The First Civilizations Chapter 1
1/29: Ancient Greece Chapter 3
2/5: Ancient Rome Chapter 5
2/12: Byzantium and Islam Chapter 7
2/19: The Early Middle Ages Chapter 8
2/26: The High Middle Ages Chapter 9
3/5: Mid-term Exam none
3/12: SPRING BREAK?NO CLASS
3/19: The Late Middles Ages Chapter 10
3/26: The Renaissance Chapter 11
4/2: The Age of Exploration Chapter 12
4/9: The Reform of Religion Chapter 13
4/16: Europe at War, 1555-1648 Chapter 14
4/23: State-building in the 17th Century Chapter 16

3 chapters to Feudalism and 1 for Greece and Rome and Byzantium

[russia almighty]

Diadochi here got a chapter . Even earlier rome got some coverage and the whole Polybian and Camillian thing got brought up .

[Severian Huizi]

It took me a couple of years and my own light reading as a history hobbyist to find out Egypt was conquered by Greeks and continued to be subjugated by a series of Mediterranean powers for quite awhile. Yes, I thought Cleopatra was native Egyptian. Let's not talk about how long it took me to find out who the Nubians were past Brand Nubian.

An interesting trend I find is that imperialism and colonialism by powers from around the 17th Century onwards are generally portrayed in a negative light (not that I disagree with that slant), but earlier imperial land grabs and subjugations are rattled off in a neutral tone, "And then Alexander seized the Levant and moved on," "The Crusaders/Seljuks annexed ____ fortress city" etc. Now I know it would be nigh-impossible to construct a labor history for these time periods purely off the limited archaeological record and written works (which tend to all be about the lives and bureaucratic maneuvers of nobility).

I was actually planning to start a new thread about this subject, but I doubt the change in regime to the Greeks must have been very liberating to the average Persian or Egyptian in the field or street. The successors were supposed to be unusually multicultural and inclusive for their day, but somehow I doubt that the native inhabitants of any region were treated as more than second-class citizens compared to the Greek colonists who arrived. Am I mistaken? How often did not-Greeks with no upper status granted to them beforehand by the Persians get land grants in successor states? How often were the new schools of Hellenism open to anyone except landed Persian or Central Asian nobles?

This may be an unfair comparison to the Han dynasty's Confucian civil service system where, supposedly, males from any class could qualify to work for the government.

[Watchman]

Eh, it's more the "old school empire" thing - it rarely mattered much for the common people who exactly their overlords were. More often than not much of the extant power structure remained in place, quite simply because it was far more convenient for everyone involved to retain it under a different master than go about trying to supplant it with an imported one (which attempt would have been quaranteed to cause trouble with the existing power groups, and tended not sit all that well with the commoners either who tended to prefer an aristocracy they had at least grown accustomed to to some weird foreigners who had no idea of local traditions and practices). Or as it has been summed up, "for the peasants it mattered naught had the mandarins conversed among themselves in French rather than Chinese" or something to that effect.

[bovi]

As far as I can remember, the Norwegian coverage of the ancient period can be summed up as:
Rome conquered the known world. Julius says "et tu, Brutus". Egypt had a female ruler called Cleopatra. Greeks were philosophers.

I think I learned more from Asterix.

[KARTLOS]

i did classics at gcse (that the exam in uk when you are 16) we didnt cover any diadochi. from what i recall we did a bit of athenian democracy, a bit of rome - specifically pompeii in detail and maybe the persian wars. its so long ago that i dont really recall.

i think if i hadnt taken classics i wouldnt have done any "classical" stuff at school, except we maybe did some roman britain in primary school.

i did history a-level (exam at 18) everything we did was much more modern. 50% of the course was nazi germany, which i wasnt that intersted in, and the rest was stuff like german unification, french revolution, 1848 etc

i wasnt overly impressed with any history at school, i have always been intersted in it, and i have a very wide knowledge now that is mostly self taught. i think history is taught in boring manner. they should teach about exciting personalities to get people intersted in it. needless to say alexander was never taught in school!

[CirdanDharix]

Eh, it's more the "old school empire" thing - it rarely mattered much for the common people who exactly their overlords were. More often than not much of the extant power structure remained in place, quite simply because it was far more convenient for everyone involved to retain it under a different master than go about trying to supplant it with an imported one (which attempt would have been quaranteed to cause trouble with the existing power groups, and tended not sit all that well with the commoners either who tended to prefer an aristocracy they had at least grown accustomed to to some weird foreigners who had no idea of local traditions and practices). Or as it has been summed up, "for the peasants it mattered naught had the mandarins conversed among themselves in French rather than Chinese" or something to that effect.

Really, there were very few differences between ancient conquest and more recent colonisation. I seriously doubt the commoners were indifferent to who ruled them; more likely, they didn't know how to write so they haven't left us a trace of their feelings and modern historians decided they mustn't have had any. In fact, we do have some traces of the common people's opinions, in cases where there behaviour became extreme, either revolting and violently resisting conquest, or else welcoming the conquerors as liberators; but in any case their reaction would have been conditioned largely by their feelings towards the existing rulers of their land, and hwo these were treated by the conquerors. If a very popular ruler was displaced, his peopel were likely to rally around him (or his heirs) and rebel against the conquerors as soon as they got an opportunity to do so. If a popular dynasty was exterminated, the new rulers would need generations to live down their reputation as heinous criminals. On the other hand, replacing a disliked ruler could make the conqueror quite popular.

Also, on the topic of colonisation and conquest being the same throughout history, Rani Lakshmi Bai (revolted against British rule 1857CE), is pretty much the same thing as Boudicca (revolted against Roman rule, 61CE); granted the Victorians were less barbaric than the Romans and Lakshmi Bai rode a horse rather than a chariot, but the causes of the revolt were the same.

Sakkura: well, maybe it's impossible to make Danish history look good
But I'm sure your teachers presented it as more bad luck or hopeless odds, rather than the Danes being incompetent, evil, and utterly deserving of what they got.

[Watchman]

Lemme put it this way. The fact was the commoners were going to be exploited anyway; generally speaking it didn't made much difference who exactly did it - or did it for, in the common enough case where a local aristocracy or similar "middle management" layer was retained - as long as the actual degree and severity of extraction did not increase. That is, it didn't really matter to the peasants who exactly called the shots in the distant capital so logn as it didn't directly interfere with their life - but if it did, they were obviously going to get as restless as any and only that more agreeable to any loyalist/revivalist movement or leader out to give a finger to the "foreign devils".

The characteristic Roman mistake was specifically not keeping the provincial governors and such in check, which resulted in conditions the common folk found intolerable in many parts and due revolts. AFAIK the British troubles in India were essentially similar; the place was little short of a private fiefdom of the East India Company and the locals not one bit happy with the squeeze they were putting on. After the Mutiny the colonial adminstration was reorganized to a more tolerable (if still exploitative) pattern that proved to be within the "tolerance limits" of the populace for the most part.

Conversely for example the creation of the Persian empire, or Alexander's hostile takeover thereof, primarily just changed the name of the faraway overlord the peasants' taxes ultimately went to without much altering their everyday circumstances.

[CirdanDharix]

Alexander conquering Persia would be somewhat of an exception, in that he was taking over a sprawling empire and replacing it with another sprawling empire--to your average Phoenician, that meant jack all as long as the new overlord didn't prevent him from getting on with his business. That said, your average peasant in Persia proper would probably have been very upset at his ethnic group no longer being dominant within the sprawling empire, which, incidentally, reduced his chances of climbing up the social ladder (for instance, by distinguishing himself in war and being recruited into an elite unit of professional soldiers); but ethnic Persians were very much a minority within the Achaemenid empire.

The subjugation of Gaul was a different matter entirely. The Gauls had been happy to turn a blind eye to were the king's orders really came from when they had been nominally independant; but the Gaulish peasants didn't wait for a tax squeeze before joining the revolts against Roman rule, once Caesar began behaving as if he owned the place. In this case ethnic pride ("Who's this Roman to come and give our kings orders?") and perhaps religious feelings ("Them Romans are dissing our Gods!") were what motivated the lwoer classes to support rebellious leaders like Vercingetorix.

What caused Boudicca's uprising was the Roman habit of despising the "barbarians" and trampling all over the national traiditions of their nominally independant allies; in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the main centres of uprising were Jhansi and Awadh, were the British had used the doctrine of lapse against popular dynasties (the same practice the Romans had used against Boudicca--"No male heir? Okay, we inherit the kingdom").