Whenever we think of royal families our minds tend to go to the concept of the European noble House. The House of Habsburg, the House of Windsor, the House of Stuart etc. I understand that we should look at the Ancient Greek, Macedonian & Hellenistic royal families in a different way becuase of the different family & power dynamics - could you please help us understand the difference?
Ancient Court Societies vs. Modern
Probably the biggest difference is greater organization of hierarchy. Modern royal houses have had a lot of time to evolve.
Norbert Elias’s The Court Society has become the foundational study on court systems, although it’s western-focused by intent. Nonetheless, it’s a useful introduction to how courts function with inner courts, outer courts, etc.
The biggest things to keep in mind are:
The degree of formality between court members. How “deep” and structured is the hierarchy? (Smaller courts typically have far less formality than larger ones.)
How formalized are matters of succession and marriage ties? Particularly the presence (or absence) of royal polygamy can affect that.
Court societies inevitably progress from less formal and hierarchical to more of both. We can sometimes talk about earlier court societies as chieftain-level societies versus more organized royal, or even imperial societies.
Part of the struggle first Philip, then Alexander faced was transforming a chieftain-level court system into something that would work on a (much, for Alexander) larger scale. Unsurprisingly, there was push-back against, essentially, “bureaucracy.” Nobody likes it, but the larger an area controlled, the more necessary it becomes.
Traditional Macedonian courts were fairly informal, the king being primo inter pares (first among equals). No titles were used when addressing him—he was called by his name—and the only thing expected of the speaker was to take off his hat. “King” (basileus) was used when speaking OF him. We don’t see “King ___” employed in Macedonia (at least in inscriptions) until Kassandros, who needed it to buck up his claim.
None of that means the average person could wander into the palace and start chatting up the king. He was protected by his Bodyguards (Somatophylakes), who also apparently managed access to him. Yet he was expected to sit in judgement as an appellate court, where anybody could appeal a case before him. How often this occurred no doubt depended. Philip was gone a lot, and Alexander was permanently out of Macedonia two years into his reign. Presumably his regent fulfilled the role in his absence. (As I depicted near the beginning of book 2, Rise, when Alexandros is hearing cases.) Anyway, that’s one place the “average person” could get the ear of the king. Also, it seems that he was more approachable by soldiers in battle circumstances. We’re told Alexander got right in with his men to do work during sieges. It was to encourage them, but he was standing next to them so they could see and talk to him, if they wanted to. He seems to have known many of his veterans by name.
Another factor in Macedonia was lack of formal hierarchy among nobility. They had a nobility—the Hetairoi (King’s Companions)—but theoretically all Hetairoi were equal in status. In practice, they absolutely weren’t. The king also had an inner circle referred to as “Friends” (Philoi), who acted as chief advisors. The problem with both terms is their use as common nouns as well as special titles. When is a friend a Friend?
Also, at least some of this was hereditary. Yes, making (or removing) Hetairoi was in the power of the king. But it was much easier to do the former than the latter, and even strong kings didn’t do the former early in their careers, never mind the latter. For many, becoming Hetairos was a rubber-stamp. They were Hetairoi because their fathers had been. We’re also not sure if the title was extended only to the eldest male in a household, or more than one could hold it at once, but for most, it was a birthright.
So, when Alexander took the throne, he was stuck with his father’s Somatophylakes (Bodyguard) and inner circle of advisors. He absolutely could not toss them out on their ear to install his own men. He had to proceed sloooowly. Which is why we don’t see Hephaistion as a Somatophylax even by the Philotas Affair, five years into ATG’s reign. He was clearly an advisor (Philos), but didn’t become Bodyguard until sometime later. Same thing with Ptolemy, who apparently got Demetrios’s slot—the Bodyguard (almost surely one of Philip’s) behind the actual conspiracy of Dimnos, not the made up one of Philotas. When he was executed, Alexander promoted Ptolemy to his slot. Note that Ptolemy was made Somatophylax before Hephaistion. Politics, family status, and probably age trumped personal affection.
If Hetairoi couldn’t be kings themselves (unless they were also Argeads), they were king makers, and kings had to take their influence into account. Especially new kings.
As a chieftain level society, Macedonia operated on “rule by clan” with the king being the senior male Argead. His brothers, sons, nephews, and male cousins might all have important roles, as did the women, although theirs were primarily religious and the running of the royal household. Yet royal women could do limited politicking in the way of donations (eurgetisms) to create goodwill, promote the family, or make alliances—as well as (of course) the alliance created by their marriage itself. Most of these roles were informal and ad hoc, rather than titular, if also expected of them. For instance, the king’s wives were just that: king’s wives. The title queen (basileia) wasn’t used until the Hellenistic courts of the Diadochi.
Ancient near eastern courts were more stratified, with more distinct roles. In fact, it seems that Macedon, from Alexander I onward, borrowed offices from the Achaemenid Persian court, including the Bodyguard and the Royal Pages (King’s Boys). So as early as the late Archaic Age, Macedonia looked east for how to formalize a court. Certainly Philip did it well before Alexander. The notion that Alexander’s Persianizing was somehow new is bull malarky.
Anyway, in the ANE, kings tended to fit one of two traditions: shepherd king or heroic king. The Sumerian kings and Hammurabi (Old Babylon) were both examples of the shepherd-king model. Heroic kings began with the Akkadian, Sargon the Great, then the neo-Assyrian kings, especially the Sargonids. Cyrus cast himself as a heroic king, but we see a shift back to shepherd kings with Darius the Great. Another aspect of ANE kingship were three chief expectations: win wars, build big shit, and administer justice.
Due to a much longer tradition of kingship extending from the Early Bronze Age, as you may imagine, these court systems developed much more in the way of formalized structures and offices. If these changed from king to king, at least by Bronze-Age Babylon (Hammurabi), then Neo-Assyria, access to the king was severely curtailed. At least the Persian kings got out and moved around on a sort of “King’s Progress,” but that was to check up on satraps. The average citizen saw them only at a distance. In contrast the Sargonids of neo-Assyria emerged from their palace complexes almost exclusively when going to war.
The Medes and Persians, like the Hittites before them, fit themselves into ANE traditions after they arrived in the area. Less is known about pre-ANE Hittites, but if they kept some unique religious traditions, when it came to How to Run an Empire, they used Akkadian and Egyptian precursors. Similarly, the Medes and Persians who came from the steppes, also adopted ANE patterns while retaining some traditions—again particularly religious (Zoroastrianism). We know a wee bit more about them prior; they (like Macedon) seem to have had chieftain-level monarchy with rule by clan, plus tribal princes, before conquering the whole area.
I hope that helps in understanding ancient eastern Mediterranean and near eastern notions of a court. We know less about the Odrysian Thracian and Illyrian kings to Macedonia’s north, but I suspect they were similar to early Macedon. Just tooling around Thrace, it was very clear to me that we’re looking at a shared regional culture between that area and Macedonia. Similar vibes attended my visit to Aiani (ancient Elimeia) and Dodonna (Epiros). I didn’t get up into Illyria, but what I do know of the archaeology suggests the same. ALL these cultures, despite the ethnic and linguistic differences, influenced each other. Yes, ancient Macedonia was at least “Greek-ish,” but we can’t and shouldn’t dismiss the impact on them from their northern neighbors.
Last, let’s consider the role of royal polygamy. Well back into the Bronze Age, ANE kings might marry several wives and also kept concubines for political purposes. That’s why we call it royal polygamy, not just polygamy. Royal polygamy might exist in a society that otherwise limits the number of wives anyone not the king can have.
Macedonian kings also practiced it, and Thracian and Illyrian, but on a more limited scale. Greeks and Romans, then Christians, depicted any polygamy as a “barbaric Oriental” (= morally corrupt) practice that supported their general view of Asia as soft and indulgent. (Sex itself wasn’t a vice, but too much sex was: uncontrolled desire.)
In later Europe, kings might have mistresses, but it wasn’t “official,” and they certainly didn’t have multiple wives. Christianity frowned on that. Even before, Roman emperors didn’t employ royal polygamy, although they did use serial monogamy—a long-standing practice back into the Roman Republic. Yet that required divorce. When the Christian church made marriage both a sacrament and a vow (not a contract, as it had been pretty much everywhere else), they made divorce impossible without either a wife’s death or religious shell games like annulment. Until Henry VIII, European kings were largely stuck with just one marriage.
Ancient courts didn’t have that problem. And from a political point of view, monogamy is a problem. It reduces the number of political ties available. Having royal polygamy offers more fluidity in possible heirs, and increases, sometimes exponentially, avenues for political alliance.
That said, the downside can be messy inheritance. Two of the more infamous inheritance disputes (other than Alexander’s) involved Esarhaddon, youngest son of Sennacherib, and Cyrus the Younger vs. Artaxerxes II. The latter dispute resulted in civil war (thank you, Xenophon, for telling us about it). As for Esarhaddon, he was so in danger from his older brothers, his mother kept him out of the capital until claimants were dead. There are others, but these two leapt to mind. There are also Egyptian examples, but I’m far less knowledgeable about those dynasties. And, as we see later in Europe, disputed successions can occur without polygamy!
Anyway, when it comes to selection of the heir, two things that matter in polygamous courts: status of the mother, and (for the ANE) whether she was queen. Not all wives were also queens. In the case of Esarhaddon, his mother Naqiʾa was of lower status and not a queen, so when his father named him heir, his older brothers (and their court allies) blew a gasket. Both Assyrians and later Achaemenid Persian kings could marry as many women as they wanted, plus take concubines…but the heir was expected to be from his Chief Wife, or Queen. Of “pure” blood. Cyrus the Younger’s argument against his older brother rested on a similar status technicality: he’d been born after his father became king, while Artaxerxes II was born before. We’d say Cyrus was “born to the purple.” But it was just an excuse; he was the ambitious one, and their mother favored him. If Macedonia didn’t have queens, the status of the mother mattered to being selected as heir there as well.
So these are some of the chief differences between ancient Mediterranean and near eastern courts, compared to later European.
