Antiochus the Great Read online

  Seleucus by now had an adult son, Antiochus, a budding general who worked closely with his father.23 The two men expressed their close cooperation in a most unusual way. Seleucus had since married a young woman named Stratonice, the daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes (her name means ‘Victorious Army’). Demetrius was humbled by Ipsus, but still had fortresses and fleets that would make him a useful counterbalance to his tenuous northern ally Lysimachus.24 For Seleucus it was a political marriage, his second. He did not put away his first wife, Apame, but rather practised a form of traditional royal polygamy that prevailed in the Macedonian court.25 Soon young Antiochus became deeply enamoured with the comely Stratonice, who was now his stepmother. In some circumstances, this could have prompted his execution. Seleucus, however, used what could have been a scandalous affair to strengthen the impending dynastic succession. The father divorced the lovely Stratonice and generously married her to his son.26 An additional realist calculation may have influenced the King’s decision: he had recently fallen out diplomatically with Stratonice’s father, Demetrius Poliorcetes, making his marriage alliance to her less politically useful.27 Whatever Stratonice thought of this arrangement, she quickly began producing male heirs. Seleucus proclaimed Antiochus I co-king in 292 BC, and gave his son operational control over the Eastern satrapies.

  Demetrius Poliorcetes would eventually join his daughter in the Seleucid court, under less than ideal circumstances. In 287 BC, Demetrius was expelled from Macedonia, and decided to gamble his remaining force of mercenaries on a final adventure into Anatolia. Disease destroyed his dwindling ranks, and his demoralized army soon melted away. Seleucus captured Demetrius and confined him to gentlemanly captivity. Demetrius, who had always been a high-functioning alcoholic, soon drank himself to death.28

  In 281, Lysimachus, the potentate of Thrace, a former ally turned enemy, also invaded Anatolia. Seleucus marched north to meet him, and triumphed in the Battle of Corupedium. Lysimachus fell fighting, and his kingdom perished with him. Seleucus now stood ready to reunite the ancestral kingdom of Macedon with the Persian lands won by Alexander’s spear. He landed in Macedonia, where he was proclaimed king. But in the tumultuous world of the successors, this triumph was fleeting. The bastard son of Ptolemy I, called Keraunos (‘the Thunderbolt’) joined Seleucus in his entourage, but then coaxed the old king aside and stabbed him to death. Keraunos briefly proclaimed himself king of Macedonia, only to be killed shortly afterwards by an invading horde of Gauls.29 Macedonia descended into a decade of chaos; order would finally be restored when Demetrius’ son Antigonus Gonatas scored a crushing victory over the Gauls and reclaimed the kingship of Macedonia.

  With the death of Seleucus, his son Antiochus I became the sole ruler of a suddenly troubled empire. Central Syria revolted during the time it took Antiochus to make the journey from the Upper Satrapies in the east to the heart of the kingdom. Meanwhile, the Bithynians proclaimed their independence, and their self-proclaimed king invited a band of Gauls to cross into Asia in order to distract the Seleucids from his rebellion.

  These Gauls were part of the onslaught that struck Macedonia and Greece in 279 BC. Antiochus I confronted them with an army spearheaded by his impressive elephant corps, and the lightly armed Gallic warriors were routed in the so-called ‘Battle of the Elephants’.30 Victory over the barbarians allowed Antiochus I to portray himself as champion of Hellenism and civilization-at-large, as the Gauls became known as barbarians to the Hellenistic world: a race so violent and bestial, according to some fervid descriptions, that they would rape corpses and pluck infants off their mothers’ breasts in order to eat them.31 Yet it is unclear whether Antiochus was militarily capable of completely annihilating the Gauls, or that he wished to do so. Rather, Antiochus I and his successors confined them to a sizable reservation in central Anatolia, maintaining them as autonomous allies, as well as a convenient pool for mercenary recruitment. Most Seleucid armies would ultimately contain a large contingent of Galatian hires.

  Antiochus I also embarked on what would prove to be a series of wars with Ptolemaic Egypt, over the territory of Koile Syria. The First Syrian War, fought in the mid 270s BC, was brief, inconclusive and poorly documented. Seleucid ambitions against Ptolemaic holdings in Koile Syria would be passed down through the line of kings.32

  Antiochus I was succeeded by his son Antiochus II, the product of his ‘love-match’ with Stratonice.33 Antiochus II was, in fact, the second son of this union; the first son, named Seleucus, had been executed on unknown charges.34 Information on Antiochus II’s reign is limited. He fought another short war with Ptolemy II of Egypt (the Second Syrian War), but again failed to make any significant territorial gains. Antiochus II was guilty, however, of some deleterious dynastic mismanagement. His first wife and cousin, Laodice, was a member of the Seleucid royal family (one source suggests she was his half-sister),35 and she diligently bore her husband two sons and three daughters. But in his desire to make peace with Ptolemaic Egypt, Antiochus II divorced her and repudiated their children. Laodice was not cast out of the court, as the divorce settlement provided her with ample estates to allow her to continue to live in grand style.36

  In her place, Antiochus II married Berenice, the daughter of Ptolemy II by his sister Arsinoe. While Berenice bore a son and heir, Antiochus II died soon after, leaving his kingdom to a baby. This dynastic situation was made more complicated by the fact that an alternative and fully adult heir was available: Seleucus II, the natural son of Antiochus II and Laodice.37 Seleucus II had a powerful ally in his wronged mother, for Laodice still had many influential supporters in the Seleucid court.

  Yet Berenice had one very powerful advocate: her brother Ptolemy III, who had recently come to power in Egypt. Ptolemy III marched north with his army. The military details are sparse, but it is clear he won several major victories. He captured Apamea, Antioch, and Seleucia Pieria, while Seleucus II retreated into Mesopotamia. Laodice fled north, where she was instrumental in organizing further resistance from Anatolia. Ptolemy III celebrated in Antioch, even publishing an official account of a joyous reunion with his sister and nephew.38

  The official history was a lie. Berenice and her infant son were already dead, murdered by partisans of Laodice. While the Ptolemaic phalanx reached Babylon, Ptolemy III was eventually forced to withdraw and return to Egypt in response to internal unrest at home. No doubt bereaved by the death of his sister and nephew, he was nonetheless much enriched, carrying home over 1500 talents of looted silver bullion. He retained one great territorial prize: control of Seleucia Pieria, the Seleucid port and naval base, some twenty kilometres down the Orontes river from Antioch itself. The loss of Seleucia Pieria was a symbolic as well as strategic loss, as the city contained the tomb of Seleucus I. Once fortified and garrisoned with Ptolemaic troops, Seleucia Pieria would become a thorn in the side of the Seleucids for the next twenty-five years.

  Seleucus II and his mother had lost plenty of battles, but they emerged victorious in the Third Syrian War, which is often called the Laodicean War in honour of the iron lady who propelled her teenage son to power. Yet the crisis of Ptolemaic invasion had consequences through the east. Two satraps revolted: Andragoras of Parthia and Diodotus of Bactria. The rebels immediately faced a nomadic invasion by the Parni, led by their ferocious chieftain Arsaces I. Diodotus managed to expel the Parni from Bactria, but they soon swept into Parthia, killing the rebellious satrap Andragoras and establishing an independent kingdom of their own. Seleucus II marched east and claimed victories, but he accomplished little. Both Arsaces’ Parthia and Diodotus’ Bactria remained independent kingdoms.39 Seleucus II most likely acquired the epithet Callinicus (‘Glorious victory’) during these campaigns, a title that dramatically overstated his actual successes. In 238, a major revolt broke out in Babylon, although it seems to have been contained by 235.

  In a capstone to these woes and disorders, Seleucus II’s younger brother, Antiochus Hierax (‘the Hawk’) revolted and proclaimed himself ki
ng in Asia Minor.40 Hierax commanded a powerful army, and allied himself with various local powers: the king of Pontus, the king of Bithynia and the bellicose Galatians. Hierax won the first round, repulsing Seleucus’ attacks in the so-called War of the Brothers, which lasted from 239 to 236 BC.

  In the midst of this civil war, a new kingdom emerged in eastern Anatolia. A local dynast named Attalus, who had previously sworn fealty to the Seleucid king, now proclaimed himself king of an independent state based around the fortified city of Pergamon. Attalus I attacked Hierax and drove him from his base Asia Minor. Hierax fled into exile, and ultimately was murdered by brigands in Thrace. His revolt, along with the creation of the Attalid kingdom (the third independent kingdom hewn from Seleucid territory in less than ten years), demonstrates the fragility of the Seleucid realm, which was vulnerable to both territorial fragmentation and dynastic instability.

  A less dramatic breakaway occurred in Caria in the 240s, under a local official named Olympichos. While he did not claim the royal title, his actions were increasingly autonomous, as he issued decrees in his own name, without reference to the Seleucid king, and later conducted direct diplomacy with the kings of Macedonia. After the island city of Rhodes suffered a devastating earthquake in 226 BC, he made a contribution to the reconstruction of the city under his own authority as a ‘dynast’ (dunastes), independent of the contribution made by the Seleucid king.41 Olympichos was no usurper, but simply a local dynast operating in the power vacuum created by the virtual collapse of Seleucid authority in Asia Minor in the 240s and 230s. Whenever the Seleucid dynasty was riven by internal confusion, hundreds of officials like Olympichos simply carried on, collecting taxes, maintaining local garrisons and providing the basis for regional law and order.

  Seleucus II Callinicus had two sons. The elder of these was named Seleucus III Keraunos, another ‘Thunderbolt’.42 The youngest was Antiochus, who was not expected to become king.43 It was Seleucid royal custom to name the eldest son Seleucus after the dynasty’s founder and the younger son Antiochus. As a rule, Antiochoi only succeeded in the event of the premature death of their older brother.

  Seleucus III, then a young man of twenty, marched his army north to wage war against Attalus’ breakaway kingdom of Pergamon. Attalus I had done his father a great favour by efficaciously disposing of Hierax, but he had his own ambitions on the Anatolian territory traditionally claimed by the Seleucids. Having revoked his ancestors’ token loyalty, he now became a standing enemy of the dynasty.

  Seleucus III’s campaign quickly floundered and he was murdered by his army, perishing without a son. Thus the teenaged Antiochus assumed the diadem and became the basileus (king) of a very troubled realm in 223 BC. Modern historians have dubbed him Antiochus III, adopting the medieval European habit of using Roman numerals to distinguish Hellenistic kings with the same name. He would not have been called this by contemporaries, but was rather expected to acquire an appropriately magnificent epithet to distinguish himself: Seleucus I had dubbed himself Nicator (Victor), his son Antiochus I took the title Soter (Saviour), while his grandson Antiochus II adopted the hyperbolic epithet Theos (God). Antiochus’ father Seleucus II referred to himself as Callinicus (Beautiful Victory), while his brother Seleucus III also claimed the title of Soter (Saviour) during his fleeting reign.44

  Antiochus was related by blood to Seleucus I, but he maintained psychic kinship to two other royal lines. The first and most important line for the purposes of royal propaganda was the connection to Alexander the Great. Almost all Hellenistic kings were obsessed with the physical image of Alexander, the ultimate role model and prototype for Hellenistic kingship. Before Alexander, a copious and virile beard was the sign of a mature Greek man. But Alexander had died before he reached the age where it was customary for Greek men to grow a beard, and his youthful clean-shaven state was copied by his successors even into old age. As a result, beards went out of fashion in the Mediterranean for the next 450 years.45 Of all Hellenistic kings, Antiochus III could claim to come closest to emulating Alexander’s mighty deeds as well, in particular an ambitious march east to the border with India. Antiochus ultimately rewarded himself with the ultimate self-tribute: he took the cognomen Megas – ‘the Great’.46

  Yet Antiochus III ruled a vast Near Eastern realm. Of all Alexander’s boorish and parochial lieutenants, Seleucus I was perhaps the most sensitive to native cultures that remained in lands conquered by the Macedonian spear. Alexander had famously forced his reluctant Macedonian officers to marry Iranian wives in an effort to create a bi-cultural ruling aristocracy. This exercise in social engineering failed miserably; when Alexander died, every man except one divorced his barbarian wife. Seleucus maintained his union with the Bactrian princess named Apame; she was the mother of Antiochus I, and the great-great grandmother of Antiochus III. Apamea, the formidable garrison city, was named in her honour.

  With a sense of cross-cultural relations, Seleucus I and his progeny reached out to the native cultures of the land they ruled. In many ways, this choice was also a strategic necessity. Seleucus I started out with only a tiny army of 20,000 ethnic Greeks and Macedonians, and the population that identified itself as Greek or Macedonian may not have exceeded a few hundred thousand even in Antiochus III’s day. This was not enough to control the native population by force alone, and accommodation of native practices and communities would be critical for survival.

  In particular, Seleucus and his followers won the goodwill and cooperation of the priests of Babylon. The rolls of Babylonian kings show a continuity that spans from the Persian kings to Alexander to Seleucus and his sons. Thus, Antiochus was as much the heir of Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes as he was of Alexander. He assumed another royal title, one that carried historical baggage: Basileus Megas, or ‘Great King’, the same title that Greeks had given the Persian emperor. Kings of Babylon had been accustomed to refer to themselves as the ‘Great King’ (GAL LUGAL), while the Persian king Darius I called himself ‘the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing all kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide’.47

  Seleucid geography

  The Seleucid Empire encompassed vast expanses of land. This was a great handicap, as ancient empires generally required large bodies of water to transport materials and people. Rome relied on the unifying waters of the Mediterranean Sea, while Han China was bound together by the far reaches of the Yellow and Yangtze rivers. Land transport, whether of grain, bullion, bureaucrats, or troops, was prohibitively expensive and arduous: the cheapest form of transportation was by sea. As a general rule, it cost six times as much to transport goods by river as it did by sea. However, once goods were loaded onto wagons or pack animals, the price skyrocketed even further. It cost 60 times as much to cart goods overland than to transport them by sea; more to transport a bushel of grain 50 miles by land than it did to ship it 3000 miles across the entire length of the Mediterranean.48

  And yet, the Seleucids for much of their history were landlubbers, lacking an active Mediterranean navy. While Seleucus I had initially planned to establish his primary capitals at Seleucia Pieria, on the Syrian coast, Ptolemaic naval superiority forced him to make inland Antioch his main royal residence. While the Seleucids did maintain a modest naval presence on the Red Sea, which controlled a lucrative trade with the spice fields in Yemen and far-flung routes in India, they largely ceded the Mediterranean Sea to other powers. They controlled the island of Ikaros in the Persian Gulf (modern-day Failaka off Kuwait) as a colony and naval base, although Arab traders and pirates constantly challenged their position. Antiochus III would attempt to develop Seleucid naval power with mixed results.

  In landlocked and arid terrain, rivers shaped the patterns of both trade and agriculture. In Syria, the Orontes River watered the fertile agricultural lands of the Amuk plain that fed the growing population of Antioch and linked the capital city to the port at Seleucia Pieria and arsenal at Apamea. The Amuk plain was famous in ancient times for the olives and orc
hards; Syria was a leading exporter of dried fruit. In addition to agricultural bounty, the Orontes river and surrounding area also supported large urban populations: Antioch was a city on par with Ptolemaic Alexandria, Carthage, and Rome.

  In the southern part of the empire lay Koile Syria, still not yet part of the Seleucid realm, but much coveted. The Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains, parallel north–south ranges that formed the ‘hollow’ of the Biqua Valley, contained some of the finest timber in the Mediterranean, including the famous cedar stands of Lebanon. Further south lay modern-day Israel and the fields watered by the Jordan River: the coastal plain of the Gaza strip, now one of the densest urban areas in the world, was then splendid cropland fed by rains coming off the sea. Gaza was particularly known for fertile vineyards and excellent wines. The Phoenician coast contained merchant cities of great antiquity, most notably Tyre, Sidon Gaza and Arados. The Phoenician coast was also a major production centre for purple dye made of crushed murex shells.

  Moving east to modern day Iraq, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers bounded the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia (literally ‘between the rivers’). Today, salinization has reduced the fertility of this region, but then it was arguably the best agricultural land in the world. The fertile crescent was the site of some of the earliest human agriculture and the first urban civilizations. The most important native city in the area was Babylon, once the seat of a sizeable empire and home to important priestly authorities. Seleucus I established a royal residence near Babylon at Seleucia on the Tigris, replete with an opulent set of monumental buildings. Both the Tigris and the Euphrates could be used for transport, although their swiftness generally made them one-way highways.

  Beyond the fertile crescent lay the Iranian Plateau, once the heartland of the Persian Empire, particularly the satrapies of Persia and Media, an enormous tract of land transected by the Zagros mountain range. While Iran lacked unifying rivers such as the Orontes, Tigris, and Euphrates, mountain passes knit the region together. The mountains themselves provided their own rugged form of connectivity, as the scarcity of upland environments mandated vigorous low-level trade for inhabitants to maintain the necessities of life. The plains of Iran also bred fine horses, skilled riders, and tough warriors.