Pat Wheatley

The first historical and historiographical biography of Demetrius Poliorcetes (336-282 BC) to be published in English. Also known as 'The Besieger of Cities', Demetrius is an outstanding, yet enigmatic figure who presided over the disintegration of Alexander the Great's Empire after 323 BC, and the most fascinating and high profile of the Diadochoi, or Successors to Alexander the Great. His campaigns, initiatives, and personal life bestride the opening forty years of the so-called 'Hellenistic' age and are pivotal in its formation as he became the first of the Hellenistic Kings.

As his name suggests, Demetrius was prodigious in his military adventures, and profligate in his private life, rendering him an icon for artists, writers, politicians, and soldiers for many centuries. He was especially famous for his spectacular siege operations against enemy cities, and gained his unique nickname from his innovation in building gigantic siege engines, which became legendary in the ancient world. However, much of Demetrius' life was enigmatic, oscillating wildly between successful and catastrophic ventures, and his intrinsic qualities remain debatable to this day. What is indisputable is that he presided over a formative period in history marked by great flux and enormous change. His endeavours resulted in the fusion of Asiatic and Greek cultures, producing the hybrid Hellenistic kingdoms which dominated the ancient world for some 200 years until the rise of the Roman Empire. The period is of crucial importance in ancient Greek history, and marks the point from which Hellenistic influence became fundamental in the development of modern Western culture.

The essays in this volume - written by twenty international scholars - are dedicated to Professor Brian Bosworth who has, in over forty-five years, produced arguably the most influential corpus of historical and historiographical research by one scholar. Professor Bosworth's name is often synonymous with scholarship on Alexander the Great, but his expertise also spreads far wider, as the scope of these essays demonstrates. The collection's coverage ranges from Egyptian and Homeric parallels, through Roman historiography, to Byzantine coinage.

However, the life of Alexander provides the volume's central theme, and among the topics explored are the conqueror's resonance with mythological figures such as Achilles and Heracles, his divine pretensions and military display, and his motives for arresting his expedition at the River Hyphasis in India. Some of Alexander's political acts are also scrutinized, as are the identities of those supposedly present in the last symposium where, according to some sources, the fatal poison was administered to the king. Part of the collection focuses on Alexander's legacy, with seven essays examining the Successors, especially Craterus, and Ptolemy, and Alexander's ill-fated surviving dynasty, including Olympias, Eurydice, and Philip III Arrhidaeus.

Pompeius Trogus, a Romanized Gaul living in the age of Augustus, wrote a forty-four book universal history (The Philippic History) of the non-Roman Mediterranean world. This work was later abbreviated by M. Junianus Justinus.

Alexander the Great's life has been examined in minute detail by scholars for many decades, but the period of chaos that ensued after his death in 323 BC has received much less attention. Few historical sources recount the history of this period consecutively. Justin's abbreviated epitome of the lost Philippic history of Pompeius Trogus is the only relatively continuous account we have left of the events that transpired in the 40 years from 323 BC. This volume supplies a historical analysis of this unique source for the difficult period of Alexander's Successors up to 297 BC, a full translation, and running commentary on Books 13-15.

This book was the fruit of my long-standing ambition to convene an international conference on Alexander the Great and his Successors, which was achieved at Otago in August 2006, and featured 21 papers by scholars from 9 countries. The papers range from reception studies through historiographic analysis to military and cultural history, and have particular focus on the death, divinity, and mythography of Alexander, and the evolving nature of the Macedonian kingship after his death. Some authors present new theories on the death, iconography and chronography of Alexander's age (chs 10, 11, 15, 17).
Specialist conferences in Alexander and Hellenistic Studies became a feature of the discipline from 2003 onwards, with the next one due in Edmonton, Canada, in 2018. This volume was the third in the series and the first produced in the Southern hemisphere, and is, as far as I know, the closest an Alexander conference has ever been held to Antarctica (so far!). The book comprises refereed versions of 17 of the papers delivered at the conference and an introduction by Dr Elizabeth Baynham (University Newcastle, NSW).

The growing fears of the other Successors over the burgeoning power of the Antigonid dynasty, which was impinging on their own kingdoms, led to the formation of a coalition aimed at removing the Antigonids from power. The actions of the coalition eventually culminated in the battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, which proved to be a watershed in the history of the Diadochoi. This chapter discusses the preliminaries to the battle, the location, and manoeuvring of the participants, and provides analysis concerning the merits of their strategies. Antigonus Monophthalmus was killed during the battle, and Demetrius became the sole king of the fragmented Antigonid domains.

The coinage of Alexander the Great primarily served a practical economic purpose, as might be expected of any currency in circulation, both ancient and modern. Armies had to be paid, and ambitious campaigns required financing. But this functionality aside, coins remain an indispensable form of evidence for the study of history for what they can reveal about the issuing authorities' policies and ambitions. One of the most interesting aspects of coinage is how a ruler might employ it as a tool to convey important aspects of their leadership they wish to promote, essentially using coinage as a form of propaganda. Due to their portable nature and the fact that coins have the potential to circulate widely and reach a varied audience, these objects are especially suited to this task. The term 'propaganda' often has particularly negative connotations. It usually describes a political use of deliberately misleading and biased information promulgated for the benefit of a political party. In the present context, the term is used more in the sense of presenting a carefully cultivated public royal image. Alexander was well aware of how to present such an image and took steps to ensure that he could exert as much control as possible over how he was perceived by his subjects. 1 Coinage is just one of the tools Alexander employed towards these ends, and his approach here is consistent with his actions and policies across other mediums, which could be employed similarly towards the creation and maintenance of an ideal royal persona. This was achieved most obviously through artistic formats such as sculptures or paintings but was complimentary to Alexander's behaviour, affectations, and public acts, all of which were deliberately intended to invoke positive ideas about Alexander as a leader. A study of Alexander's numismatic policy forms part of this story and is especially interesting as it reflects Alexander's position and political intentions, with certain changes corresponding to developments in his status and ambitions as his reign progressed. This chapter aims to discuss some of the ways in which Alexander used coinage in order to promote associations that were useful to the image of his kingship, as well as the general ways in which the control and Chapter 10

The extraordinary initiation of Demetrius Poliorcetes ('The Besieger of Cities') into the Eleusinian Mysteries in the late fourth century was viewed as an act of sacrilege by the biographer Plutarch 400 years later, and has passed into a canonical catalogue of iniquities perpetrated by Demetrius in Athens from 304-302 BC. Scholars have predictably followed Plutarch's lead, and added this incident to Demetrius' outrageous antics with his favourite courtesans in the opisthodomus of the Parthenon, and many other lamentable peccadilloes. The more shocking sin, however, is a historiographic one: Plutarch and Diodorus Siculus, the crucial literary sources, have BOTH misplaced the irregular Eleusinian initiation in their accounts. The odds against such a thing occurring are surely astronomical, and this has derailed scholarly analysis of these years for two millennia! But the occurrence of a single word in SEG 36.165, an Athenian inscription honouring one of Demetrius' officers, a certain Medon, corrects the chronography, and has profound repercussions for the historical narrative and modern scholarly interpretations and reconstructions of these years.

According to Diodorus, Demetrius, the son of Antigonus Monophthalmus, earned his famous sobriquet, 'Poliorcetes' during his spectacular siege of Rhodes in-BC. The ancient implications of this unique epithet are unremarkable, but modern scholarship has often taken the allocation of the surname, in retrospect, to be ironic. The thinking goes that, in the context of Rhodes, Demetrius was certainly the besieger, but he was not the taker of that city. This notion probably originates with Plutarch, whose Life of Demetrius is built around the trope that his famous subject aspired to much, but accomplished little. However, a systematic scrutiny of Demetrius' lifelong siege enterprises demonstrates that his nickname was, in fact, well-deserved. This paper suggests that the image of Demetrius as a 'Besieger' but not a 'Taker' of cities is more a construct facilitated by Plutarch and peddled by superficial modern analyses, than a reality.

This is my acknowledgement and sincere thank-you to my many many friends and colleagues who have encouraged and aided me over nearly TWO decades to produce a book on Demetrius the Besieger. I have named many of you specifically, but a few may have been overlooked, and to these individuals I apologise. These works cannot be done in a vacuum, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart!!

The year-long siege of Rhodes in 305 BC by Demetrius Poliorcetes, during which siege ma- chinery of a phenomenal scale was deployed, was a standout event in the period of the Diadochi, but it has never received a dedicated treatment in English. This essay therefore aims to provide an analytical survey of the campaign, and offers fresh insights into matters of motive, topography, tactics, chronology, and historiography. I also seek to supply a more balanced perspective on the trope of Antigonid ‘failure’ at Rhodes, which has persisted since the time of Plutarch.