The Antigonid Imperial System: Sovereignty and Politics of Empire in the Pre-Modern Mediterranean

Abstract

This dissertation investigates how the Antigonid dynasty constructed an imperial project to pursue supremacy over the communities of mainland Greece, Macedonia, and the western Aegean after the collapse of Alexander the Great’s empire. I examine the formation, consolidation, contraction, and breakdown of the Antigonid imperial system through which the dynasty ruled over their subjects and territories from the late fourth century until the Roman conquest of Macedonia in 167 B.C. I demonstrate how the Antigonids built an empire that rested on a thalassocracy, linking ports and capitals through maritime corridors instead of territorial absorption, and a Pan-Hellenic ideology, that presented the dynasty as leaders of the Greek world. Chapters 1 and 2 explore the origins of the Antigonid empire, particularly through the occupation of coastal cities, a thalassocratic ideology, and the appropriation of the kingdom of Macedonia. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the system through which the dynasty ruled over their possessions in order to promote the integration of the imperial realm. The main characteristic was the military, administrative, and ideological interdependence of its parts. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the retraction and subsequent collapse of the Antigonid imperial system after the Roman intervention in Greece. I argue that the Antigonid empire became a territorially bounded kingdom only late in its life, which finally turned them into a Macedonia-based polity.