The Abstract King: Hellenistic Royal Wills and the Immortal State

This article treats the corpus of Hellenistic Royal Wills and argues that the regal testament helps conceive of a State that is not coterminous with the ruler but that is, instead, an entity that keeps on living when the king dies. The article makes this claim by drawing upon legal material, particularly the Roman law of inheritance and the Hellenistic sources on royal and other public wills. Tracing the ability of the testament to secure continuity, the article uncovers a quasi-corporation engendered by the public use of the will and offers a new perspective on the idea of the State.