De vrienden van de vorst. Het koninklijk hof in de Hellenistische rijken

Abstract

Historians studying the Ancien Régime have long recognised the importance of the royal court for the historical and cultural development of early modern Europe, especially the development of absolutism and the genesis of the European state system. Ancient historians, however, rarely see the court as a crucial aspect of monarchy or state formation. In this article it is argued that the study of court culture and political ritual in the Hellenistic age will yield new insights in the nature of Hellenistic kingship and the working of imperial politics in the Hellenistic kingdoms. Besides giving a brief overview of relatively well-known aspects of Hellenistic court culture – namely aulic titulature and the significance of filia and xenia (which have been studied by respectively Léon Mooren and Gabriel Herman) – the author discusses various much lesser known aspects of Hellenistic court life, such as gift exchange, the importance of honour and status, courtly etiquette, courtly behaviour, internal conflicts and the role of ‘favourites’. It is also argued, against the now prevailing view, that culture at the Ptolemaic and Seleucid courts was predominantly Greek, and deliberately so: pan-Hellenic high culture functioned as a means to construct internal coherence among the courtiers, and tied together the multifarious regional and local elites in the empires of the Ptolemies and Seleucids.