Apartheid

246
be of utmost importance. 587 And this was apparently a view supported and even instigated by
the intellectual elite.
Ptolemy II not only nursed expansionist dreams, but liked to think of
himself qua Alexander’s successor, as a protector of Greeks and Greek
interests – but the underlying belief rested on that fundamental
Hellenocentrism, or Panhellenism, which had been a constant factor in
Greek affairs at least since the Persian Wars. The geographical
boundaries might have expanded…but this had merely sharpened the
Hellenic appetite for empire. The new world that emerged had
also…produced a deep sense of deracination among emigrant Greeks,
in particular the intellectuals of Alexandria. 588
A commonly overlooked feature of ancient Greek culture is its competitiveeliminative
aspect. People were out to eliminate their rivals on the battlefield, in court, in love,
sports, and business. 589 Public affairs were permeated by this ideology: ‘Greek politics...
were...an agonistic and zero-sum competition’ 590 , as were the arts: ‘Classical Greek
literature...like the culture as a whole was quintessentially agonal or competitive’ 591 This
attitude, combined with several recent instances of overwhelming military success, led to a
Greek self-image during Hellenistic times that Peter Green has described as more than superhuman,
namely as super-divine:
Philosophical precedent for this might-is-right attitude could be found
in the pronouncements of fifth-century sophists [philosophers who
sold wisdom by the lesson, the most famous of whom was the
relativist Protagoras who is accredited with ‘man is the measure of all
things’] such as Critias; the Athenians had given a notable, and
notorious, demonstration of the thesis in their savage treatment of
Melos during the Peloponnesian War: ‘You know as well as we do,’
they told the Melians…‘that justice in human debate results from a
balance of power, and that the strong exploit their advantage, while
the weak must perforce yield.’ Arguments of this type had not lost
their force, or their popularity, with time. It is, however, worth noting
that whereas in the fifth century such conduct had aroused a storm of
disapproval, little more than a hundred years later it was virtually
taken for granted: Alexander – after, characteristically, cutting the
Gordian Knot rather than untying it – had driven the point home with
ineluctable force. Gods…had been men, and now men were going the
gods one better, had indeed become the measure of all things in ways
Protagoras had never foreseen. . . . The full force of this militaristic
ethic, and its ramifying implications for every facet of Hellenistic
society, have not always been clearly recognised. 592
587 Bernal 2001: 74f. It should perhaps be added that ancient Greek racist biologism never reached the levels of
Northern and Western European racism since the invention and spread of racist slavery in the sixteenth through
the nineteenth centuries CE. See also Bernal 1991: 444; Swain 1996: 10f; and Chapter II.2.1, above.
588 Green: “These Fragments Have I Shored Against My Ruins”: Apollonios Rhodios and the Social Revalidation
of Myth for a New Age, 1997: 62f
589 Trampedach: Wer andern eine Tafel ritzt, Einschreiben aus dem Jenseits: Fritz Graf über den Schadenzauber
in der Antike (review of the book „Gottesnähe und Schadenzauber. Die Magie in der griechisch-römischen
Antike” by Fritz Graf), 1996
590 Cartledge 1993: 111
591 Ibid: 65
592 Green 1998 (1989): 183. Green goes on to dispel what he calls the ‘Victorian myth’ of Hellenism as a
‘missionary cult spread for the enlightenment of the heathen’ (Ibid: 184). Apparently, this myth still exists in
some conservative quarters. Of course, a few indigenous individuals did benefit: ‘[H]istory has found some
unpleasant names for such people. The Macedonian dynasties in Egypt and the Near East were exploitative