Welcome to toldinstone. This video explores three ancient conspiracy theories: an outbreak
of hysteria in classical Athens, a plot at the court of Alexander, and a crusade against
a mysterious Persian cult. But before I tell those stories, I have an announcement.
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it. Thank you for your time – and now, without any further ado, ancient conspiracy theories.
A conspiracy theory arises in the hazy gulf between suspicion and fact. It is discussed,
accepted, rejected, dismissed. It may be definitively debunked; it may even be proven. But it exists
independently of any verifiable source, living in the court of public opinion, feeding on
itself. Ancient history is full of conspiracies, in
the sense of coordinated plots against power. Famous examples include the Catilinarian Conspiracy,
an attempt – thwarted by Cicero – to overthrow the Roman Republic; the Pisonian Conspiracy,
which sought to supplant Nero; and the Barbarian Conspiracy, an apparently concerted attack
on Roman Britain by the Picts, Saxons, and Irish.
There are fewer instances of conspiracy theories in the most familiar sense – i.e., the assumption
that a secret organization is pulling strings behind the scenes. Speculation about those
in power, of course, is as old as civilization itself, and our sources reverberate with rumors
about the undue influence of courtiers and relatives of rulers. Claims that the whole
political system was being subverted, however, tended to emerge only in periods of acute
crisis. The affair of the herms in Classical Athens
is one of the best-documented examples. Athens, famously, had a democratic government, in
which a large part of the citizen body participated. In combination with a lively tradition of
criticizing public figures – epitomized by the comedies of Aristophanes – the immediacy
of the democracy made the schemes and scandals of prominent politicians a popular conversation
topic. The most talked-about of all Athenian politicians
was the brilliant, charming, and utterly unscrupulous aristocrat Alcibiades. A scion of the same
family that had produced Pericles, Alcibiades made his name by promoting an aggressive foreign
policy against Sparta and her allies. He was admired for his compelling speeches
before the Assembly, and for such political stunts as entering no fewer than seven awesomely
expensive chariots in the Olympic race. His dissolute private life, however, led many
Athenians to distrust him, and set the stage for the affair of the herms.
Herms were small statues placed at crossroads and beside doorways. They consisted of a simple
stone pillar, topped by a god’s head and garnished with a prominent erect phallus.
In the spring of 415 BC, just as the Athenian government, spurred by Alcibiades, was about
to launch a vast armada to conquer Sicily, nearly all the herms in Athens had their noses
and phalluses knocked off. While this might seem like a harmless prank,
the mutilation of the herms threw Athens into a frenzy. Herms, after all, were images of
the gods, and any injury to them was sacrilege. That so many divine images had been damaged
at the outset of the Sicilian expedition seemed a bad omen, and a conspiracy theory arose
that the herms had been broken by a secret cabal that sought to destroy the government.
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Back to Classical Athens. A public investigation brought additional information to light: shortly
before the herms were mutilated, a group of young men had broken other religious statues
and mimicked the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most sacred Athenian ritual. One of the participants,
it was said, had been Alcibiades. It began to be whispered that Alcibiades had also been
responsible for smashing the herms, and that his acts of sacrilege were part of a plot
to overthrow the democracy. As one of the leaders of the Sicilian Expedition,
Alcibiades was forced to leave the city before he could clear his name. In his absence, the
conspiracy theory continued to grow, connecting the mutilation of the herms and violation
of the mysteries with an aristocratic scheme to replace the government. When a small Spartan
force was reported in the vicinity, it was immediately assumed that they had been summoned
by the conspirators. Arrests were made; armed patrols were posted in the city center; and
finally, Alcibiades himself was summoned back to Athens to be tried for his supposed crimes.
Although it’s entirely plausible that Alcibiades mimicked the mysteries with his friends, and
not impossible that he was associated with the men who mutilated the herms, there is
no reason to think that he was plotting to overthrow the democracy. Aristocratic coups
were a legitimate threat – there would be two within a decade of the Sicilian Expedition
– but Alcibiades had little to gain from overthrowing a government that had just awarded
him an important command. In this case, he seems to have been nothing more or less than
the victim of a conspiracy theory. To a degree that a democratic leader like
Alcibiades could only envy, monarchs dominated both public discourse and popular suspicion
in antiquity. The most familiar examples are the Roman emperors, whose plots, perversions,
and peccadilloes pervade our sources. Emperors were frequently implicated in conspiracy theories,
especially – and understandably – when their predecessors perished under suspicious
circumstances. Perhaps the most interesting conspiracy theory involving a classical ruler,
however, centers on the death of Alexander the Great.
Alexander died at Babylon on June 10, 323 BC, aged 32. According to his most reliable
ancient biographers, he had fallen ill ten days before, during or shortly after a wine-soaked
banquet. His illness began as a fever, mild enough – at first – for the king to ignore
as he prepared to invade Arabia. Within a few days, however, he had become too weak
to sit up or speak. Still burning with fever, he lapsed into a coma, and never woke.
An alternative tradition added dramatic details. At the final banquet, according to this version
of events, Alexander was draining a goblet of wine when he cried out in pain. Collapsing,
he was carried away by his friends, and lay in agony until the final coma overtook him.
Almost as soon as Alexander died, it began to be rumored that he had been poisoned. The
culprit, it was said, was Antipater, the king’s regent in Europe, who had sent his young son
Iollas to dose Alexander’s cup with a potion prepared by Aristotle.
Aristotle certainly had reason to resent Alexander. He had been the king’s tutor; and when the
Persian campaign began, he sent his nephew Callisthenes to accompany the Macedonian army
and write a history of its conquests. Alexander, however, proceeded to execute Callisthenes
on a trumped-up treason charge. As might be imagined, this did not improve his relationship
with the young historian’s uncle. According to the rumors that sprouted after
Alexander’s death, Aristotle had procured water from the bitter springs of the river
Styx, whose deadly water would dissolve any container besides the hoof of a mule. With
the connivance of Antipater, Antipater’s son Cassander, and a very literal drug mule,
the poison made its way to Babylon, and to the king’s cup.
The Styx water is legendary, and the involvement of Aristotle supremely unlikely. That Alexander
was poisoned, however, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Alexander’s mother Olympias
believed – or claimed to believe – that Antipater was responsible for her son’s
death. She executed several men on charges of involvement in the plot, and dishonored
the supposed poisoner Iollas by exhuming his body and scattering the bones.
Antipater’s son Cassander, Iollas’ brother, returned the favor by executing Olympias and
leaving her body to rot unburied. He also took vengeance on Hyperides, an Athenian orator
who had dared to propose honoring Iollas for poisoning Alexander. After Hyperides was captured
by Cassander’s bounty hunter, his tongue was cut out, he was executed, and his body
– like that of Olympias – was left to be devoured by the birds and beasts.
The dramatic sequence of accusations and murders that followed Alexander’s death does not,
of course, prove that the king was poisoned. Our most reliable ancient sources roundly
reject the theory, which seems to be a product of popular suspicion and political maneuvering.
Although we’ll never know for certain, malaria – exacerbated by alcoholism and old battle
wounds – is a far more likely culprit for Alexander’s death than poison.
Not far from Babylon, but more than half a millennium after the death of Alexander, the
deadliest of all ancient conspiracy theories began in a small Mesopotamian village, where
a prophet named Mani started to preach a new religion.
Mani’s creed, which we call Manichaeism, proclaimed a universal conflict between the
powers of Light and Darkness. To ensure the ultimate triumph of the Light, a chosen few
– the Elect – were called upon to renounce all worldly possessions and devote their lives
to rituals combatting the Darkness. It was the duty of all other believers – the Hearers
– to support the Elect with alms, and so gain a chance to be reborn as an Elect, and
finally escape the prison of the flesh. With the personal support of the shah, Mani
proselytized throughout the Persian Empire, proclaiming a religion that perfected and
replaced the teachings of Jesus, Zoroaster, and the Buddha. Missionaries were sent to
India, to the steppes of Central Asia, and into the Roman Empire.
Adda, one of Mani’s chief disciples, led the first Roman mission, which established
communities in the provinces of Syria and Egypt. Equipped with translations of Mani’s
scriptures and trained to engage philosophers and priests in theological debate, Manichaean
preachers gained converts rapidly, sowing cells of believers from Alexandria to Rome.
Traditionally, the Romans were tolerant of any religion that respected the established
social and political order. Sects that seemed to encourage rebellion or disloyalty, however,
were repressed. The most famous example is the Christian Church, but instances stretched
back to the Roman Republic, which had crushed the cult of Bacchus for inciting immoral behavior.
In 302, Diocletian was notified of disruptions caused by Manichaean preaching in the province
of Africa. The more the emperor learned about the new religion, the more alarmed he became.
Mani had been a friend of the Persian shah, the arch-enemy of all things Roman. To Diocletian
and his advisors, this seemed a clear indication that Manichaeism was nothing less than a Persian
plot intended to overthrow the Roman Empire. In an imperial edict, Diocletian proclaimed
that the Manichaeans were seeking to infect the “innocent, orderly, and tranquil Roman
people” with the “damnable customs and perverse laws of the Persians, as with the
poison of a malignant serpent.” Any Roman who converted to Manichaeism would be executed;
any official who supported the cult would be sent to the mines; and the Manichaean preachers
themselves were to be burned alive atop piles of their scriptures.
As the Great Persecution of the Christians would soon demonstrate, the provincial governors
responsible for enforcing imperial edicts were not always enthusiastic about doing so,
and most Manichaeans seem to have escaped punishment. Throughout the fourth century
and beyond, however, emperors continued to issue edicts stripping Manichaeans of their
civil rights, declaring them outlaws, and condemning them to death.
As the Roman Empire became Christian, the Manichaeans were branded heretics and corrupters
of the faith. St. Augustine – a former convert to Manichaeism – was the most famous of
the many Christian thinkers who attacked the so-called Persian heresy. Increasingly savage
penalties drove the sect underground, and eventually expelled it from the empire.
Manichaeism was never actually a Persian plot. Although Mani had indeed enjoyed court patronage
for a time, he had died in prison, and his religion was being persecuted in its native
land by the Zoroastrian priesthood long before Diocletian issued his edict.
Yet the Roman crusade against the Manichaeans lasted, with interruptions, for more than
two centuries. In keeping with the late imperial synthesis of church and state, it became an
issue of both policy and belief. But it had its origins in the fatal simplicity of a conspiracy
theory. Click the link in the upper right for the
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