Keywords

• It is particularly hard for modern scholars to define the political traits of the Hellenistic monarchies. In all cases
• however
• debate springs from the analysis of Polybius's Histories
• the only historiographic work of the Hellenistic age that has
• at least partially
• survived. With the work of Polybius
• a new political "vocabulary" emerges
• used both by those who
• like Polybius himself
• denigrate the monarchy
• and by those who
• like the authors of the treatises On Royalty
• glorify it. The Hellenistic rulers are "warlords": with their "Friends"
• they exert "not accountable sovereignty"
• they dominate a "spear-won land"
• yet
• at the same time
• they are also "benefactors" who use their immense power as a "glorious servitude" in favour of their subjects