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The introduction highlights the two observations that underlie the book: first, a major feature of the intense power struggles that characterized the formation of the Hellenistic states was the foundation of massive urban centers; and, second, these city foundations were almost all synoikisms, the merger of smaller poleis or communities into a single city. This involved major settlement and population shifts and the reorganization, consolidation, or elimination of autonomous polities. The introduction then sketches the main problems the book addresses: the critical role that manipulating urban networks played in the creation and maintenance of large territorial kingdoms and the challenges that this forced consolidation of diverse city-state cultures presented the discrete civic, cultic, and ethnic identities of the groups forced to join these unions. It argues that this approach elucidates how the power of the kings depended on complex negotiations with cities, as well as how the traditional institutions of the Greek polis imposed limits on the authority and opportunism of the kings. At the same time, it engages the question of comparative imperial structures, exploring how this focus on centralization differentiates the Hellenistic kingdoms from other ancient empires that tended to rule through political fragmentation.

The indebtedness to China and Greece was inscribed into the profile of symbolic founding figures of the Japanese and Roman state. Some legends make Aeneas ethnically Greek, and Prince Shôtoku was recognized as the incarnation of the Chinese Buddhist patriarch Huisi. They could, however, not be more different: in the Aeneid Aeneas is a devoted city-builder. In contrast, in the Abridged Biography of Prince Shôtoku, the prince is most importantly a brilliant reader and writer of texts. Why was literacy so important for the Japanese state builder, but not for the Roman founding figure? This chapter argues that there was little advantage in making Aeneas into a hero of literacy, whereas it was highly profitable to make Shôtoku into a writing specialist. Authors such as Plato and Herodotus acknowledged that the most potent type of writing was not Greek alphabetic writing but oriental “signs” or hieroglyphs. But the “city-builder” identity was a perfect allegory for Augustus’ rebuilding of Rome after the destructive civil wars. From a Chinese perspective, however, the technology of writing (wen) embodied the essence of civilization (also wen) and statecraft. Therefore, Shôtoku’s textual mastery adorned him with the most coveted ornament of civilizing power in East Asia.

This chapter deals with Agathokles’ rulership and self-representation, arguing that the adoption of the title of king or basileus did not mark a fundamental rupture in Agathokles’ reign and rulership style—a transition from Sicilian tyranny to Hellenistic monarchy. Rather it was simply an attempt to re-establish his legitimacy after the conclusion of the war with Carthage. A number of features that have been identified as characteristic of a new Hellenistic model of rule are already apparent in the evidence for Agathokles’ conduct before his assumption of the royal title and in the regimes of his predecessors in Syracuse. A number of significant divergences from Hellenistic kingship are also divergences from the practice of Agathokles’ predecessors. Most can be explained by Agathokles’ financial situation, the biases of our evidence, or are also absent from the practice of some of the Diadochoi.