Death to Tyrants! (27 page)

Generally speaking, developments in the exterior game affected developments in the various interior games. They did so by affecting the threat credibility of the interior games' two factions. For example, if the Persians had the upper hand in the exterior game, they would be better able to support militarily a polis's anti-democratic faction. That faction would thus have increased threat credibility (and capability). That is, they likely could more effectively respond to a coup. The pro-democratic faction, consequently, would “cooperate” with the oligarchic regime: defecting would be too risky. If the Macedonians subsequently gained the upper had in the exterior game, however, the anti-democratic faction's threat credibility would be greatly diminished because the Persians would be less likely to support them militarily. The pro-democrats' threat credibility, on the other hand, would be greatly augmented, since their benefactor, the Macedonians, would be better able to support them militarily. The pro-democratic faction would thus calculate that it is worth the risk to defect from oligarchic status quo. And a new democratic equilibrium would be established and maintained due to the pro-democrats' threat credibility: now it would be too risky for the anti-democrats to defect.

Table 4.1
demonstrates the relationship between the exterior game and Eresos's particular interior game. It should be noted at the outset, however, that the development of Eresos's internal events is not entirely clear and has been debated: the issue of contention being the number of different tyrannical regimes and when and how they were established. The following remarks conform to the traditional interpretation as modified by Heisserer and accepted by Rhodes and Osborne.
¹⁷

Table 4.1
. Persian and Macedonian Games

a
. It is to be noted that, during this campaign, Parmenion “took by storm the (Greek) city of Gryneion and sold its inhabitants as slaves.” And he also besieged Pitane (Diod. Sic. 17.7.9). There clearly were limits to Macedon's policy of “liberation.”

b
. Arrian (
Anab.
1.11.3) wrote that Alexander marched to the Hellespont with “not much more than 30,000” infantry “and over 5,000 cavalry.” For the size of Alexander's army, see pp. lxix–lxxxii in the first volume of Brunt's Loeb translation of Arrian's
Anabasis
and Bosworth (1980: 98–99).

c
. At Sardeis, Alexander granted the Lydians their ancestral laws and declared them free. But there was still to be a satrap (Asander) and tribute. For this development, see Bosworth (1980: 128–29) and Badian (1966: 44–45).

d
. For the evidence of Alkimachos's mission, see Bosworth (1980: 134–36). Badian (1966: 53) concluded that Alkimachos's order was to join the cities of Ionia and Aeolis to the Korinthian League. One should also interpret the decree of the
dēmos
of Zeleia (
Syll.
3 279) in this context: Dittenberger suggests that its tyrant Nikagoras (Ath. 7 289c; Clem. Alex.
Protr
. 4 54) was overthrown after Granikos.

e
. For this campaign, see appendix II (pp. 453–56) in vol. 1 of Brunt's Loeb edition of Arrian's
Anabasis
. Badian (1966: 48–49) argues that the Persians attacked Priene and might even have taken Naulochos: he interprets the Priene decree (
RO
86)—a decree wherein Alexander hands over to the (Greek) citizens of Priene the harbor town Naulochos while laying personal claim to the countryside and the land of the (non-Greek) Myrseloi and Pedieis—as punishing Priene's non-Greek community for cooperating with Memnon.

f
. The events recorded in texts 1 and 2 of the dossier are remarkably similar to contemporaneous events in Mytilene recorded by Arrian (
Anab.
2.1.5), a nice check on Arrian.

g
. Date of the battle of Issos: Bosworth (1980: 219).

At the conclusion of his naval campaign, Hegelochos brought the captured leaders of the pro-Persian regimes in his theater of operation to Alexander, who was then in Egypt. According to Arrian (
Anab.
3.2.7), Alexander then made the following interesting and historically significant decision: “Alexander,” he wrote, “sent the tyrants to the cities from which they came, to be treated as the citizens pleased.” This is when and how the “tyrants” Agonippos and Eurysilaos ended up on trial in Eresos.

Thus, by 332, Alexander had essentially conquered the Aegean and western Asia Minor. Yet the recently conquered territory was volatile, littered with Greek poleis torn apart by years of stasis. Such a situation constituted a potential threat: the regimes in those cities could be overthrown and the cities subsequently ally with Persia and/or cities on the Aegean mainland. Supply routes from the west could be threatened. One would certainly expect, then, that Alexander sought to secure the dominance of his favored players (i.e., pro-democrats) in the various cities.
¹⁸

There is a considerable amount of evidence that demonstrates Alexander's involvement in postconquest stabilization efforts (i.e., efforts to consolidate the pro-democrats' control of the Greek poleis in western Asia Minor). Cases are known, for example, in Priene, Mytilene, Ephesos, Chios, and (likely) Erythrai and Zeleia.
¹⁹
Alexander's well-known “First Letter to the Chians” (
RO
84) is a particularly good example. Therein the king made it clear (line 17) that his desired end was reconciliation, apparently between two factions: the few, who were supported by Persia during the previous several years (many of whom had since been exiled), and the many who were supported by Macedon. However, Alexander insisted that the Chians have a democracy and that they elect law drafters who were to craft laws “so that nothing may be contrary to the democracy or to the return of the exiles” (lines 5–6).
Interestingly—and a sign of Alexander's then micromanaging style—the new laws were to be brought to Alexander; presumably he intended to inspect them himself.

It is thus reasonable—in light of the known historical context and both literary and epigraphic sources—to suspect that Alexander ordered the Eresians to try their tyrants (332) in order to stabilize the polis under the newly established democratic regime. It was an attempt, that is, to make his “player” dominant in Eresos's particular interior game. The next question, then, is clear: how could the trials help achieve political stability?

ANALYSIS

In order for the tyranny trials to have any stabilizing impact, they ultimately had to convince individual democrats to lower their revolutionary thresholds. That assertion is based, first, on the simple fact that, in order to stabilize their regime, the pro-democrats required a credible threat: they needed to convince anti-democrats that any coup attempt would fail and its participants would be harshly punished. Anti-democrats thus would be deterred from attempting a coup. Second, to acquire such a credible threat, the pro-democrats had to ensure that they could quickly mobilize a sufficient number of men in response to an anti-democratic coup. They had to ensure, that is, that they would not be handicapped by a revolutionary coordination problem wherein each individual waits for a prohibitively large percentage of the population to act in defense of the democracy before he does.

The cumulative effect of three important phases of the tyranny trials would have convinced Eresian pro-democrats to lower their personal revolutionary thresholds and thus would have established a credible threat. The first phase was the presentation of the advocates' (
συναγόροι
: text 1, line 28) case. The presentation of that case should not be viewed as an attempt to “prove” to the citizens of Eresos that Agonippos and Eurysilaos committed the acts listed in texts 1 and 2 of the dossier: everybody knew that they did. Instead, the advocates' task was to explain
why
the citizens of Eresos should punish the two “tyrants.”
²⁰
There is no way to know how they made their case. But they likely stressed that the citizens, should they vote to condemn the two men, would send a message to everybody—pro-democrats and anti-democrats alike—that the citizens of Eresos will defend their democracy and enforce the anti-tyranny law. As a result of this phase of the trial, then, every Eresian would have known what message he would be sending with his vote; the final verdict would thus be clearly interpreted by all.

The second important phase of the trials was the announcement of the verdict. The vote was overwhelming, of course: 876 to 7. Equally important,
however—perhaps more important—is the fact that the vote was taken by secret ballot (text 1, lines 15–16; text 2, lines 15–16). Thus there was no “voter intimidation.” Each individual therefore understood that the verdict revealed the genuine private preferences of the citizens of Eresos. Consequently, the verdict generated common knowledge of widespread, genuine support for enforcing their anti-tyranny law and defending the democracy from its internal enemies. The Eresians thus sent the message identified in the preceding paragraph.