cristoraul.org

THE SELEUCID EMPIRE. 358-251 BC. HOUSE OF SELEUCUS

CHAPTER 10.

SELEUCUS II (KALLINIKOS) AND SELEUCUS III (SOTER)
 

1

The War of Laodicea
 

The Seleucid power had ceased to be a unity. It was represented by two rival Queens, both masculine, resolute women, after the fashion of these Macedonian princesses, Laodice across the Taurus, Berenice in Syria. The son of Berenice, who was probably proclaimed King in Antioch, was of course an infant in arms; the eldest son of Laodicea, Seleucus, was a youth nearing manhood.

Seleucus was proclaimed King in Ephesus and Asia Minor. To support his right, as against the child of Berenice, Laodice resorted, according to one story, to the device of dressing up a certain Artemon, who bore a close resemblance to King Antiochus, and causing him to be laid in the royal bed before the King’s death was known, in order that in the presence of the magnates of the court he might solemnly declare his son Seleucus the true heir. Laodicea proclaimed her son King, but she kept the reins of government in her own hands.

It must come of course to an internecine straggle between the two Queen-mothers. In the kingdom itself Laodicea, the old Queen, was the stronger; Berenice had at her back the might of Egypt. It all depended on whether Laodicea could strike quickly enough. Even in Antioch she had partisans, among them Genneus or Caeneus, one of the chief magistrates of the city. She hit on the bold thought of kidnapping the child of her rival. Her emissaries, flying perhaps to Antioch almost with the post that brought the news of the King’s death, arranged the plot. It succeeded. The young prince vanished.

In this extremity Berenice showed the spirit of a lioness. The child was believed to have been carried to a certain house. Berenice instantly mounted a chariot, took in her own hand a spear, and galloped to the spot. On the way Caeneus met her. The Queen aimed her spear at him. It missed. Nothing daunted, Berenice followed it with a stone, which brought her enemy down. A crowd, partly hostile, surged about the closed doors, behind which the prince was understood to be. But they fell back before the fierce approach of the Queen. And here the story is broken off. Another author takes it up at a later point. The fate of the young prince is still mysterious; it is not known whether he is alive or dead. Obviously the popular feeling in Antioch is so strongly on the side of Berenice that the murderers dare not avow what they have done. To this body of sentiment Berenice appeals. She shows herself to the people in the guise of a suppliant, and the storm of public indignation is so strong that the guilty magistrates are obliged to dissemble. A child is exhibited to the people as the infant King and surrounded with all the due pomp; they have still authority enough to keep this child in their own hands. But they are obliged to come to some agreement with the Queen and allow her to establish herself in a defensible part of the royal palace at Daphne with a body of Galatian guards.

This was an awkward turn for the plans of Laodicea. Everything depended on crushing Berenice before the Egyptian force could be brought to bear in her favour. And shut up in the palace at Daphne, Berenice could gain time. The Ptolemaic power was at this moment in a position to strike strongly. The Cyrenaean difficulty had been at last settled to its satisfaction. The young Queen, Berenice the daughter of Magas, had discovered the relations of her husband Demetrius with her mother, and displaying the characteristic spirit of her race, caused him to be assassinated in Apama’s bed under her own eyes. She had then renewed her interrupted betrothal with the heir of the Ptolemaic throne. About the time that the other Berenice, her cousin, was defying siege at Daphne, the old King of Egypt died; the government passed into young and vigorous hands. Ptolemy III ascended the throne, married Berenice of Cyrene, and prepared to intervene with the whole force of his kingdom in his sister's defence. At the same time the struggle between the two Queens was being watched breathlessly throughout the Seleucid realm. A number of the Greek cities of Asia declared for Berenice, and put on foot the civic forces. Contingents began to glide out of their harbors or to move along the road to Antioch. Berenice had only to sit still in her fortress and wait.

The hope of Laodicea to reach her seemed desperate. But even so she succeeded. It seems an incredible folly on the part of Berenice that she exposed herself—to be instantly cut down. But she was led to trust to the oath of her enemies, and her physician Aristarchus, by whom she was guided, was really Laodice’s tool. And here we are told another of those strange impersonations which give the whole story of these events such a mythical complexion. Berenice’s women, it is said, after they had done their best to shield her with their own bodies and several of them had fallen, concealed her corpse, and put one of their number who was wounded, but not mortally, in her place, keeping up, till the advent of the King of Egypt, the delusion that the Queen and her son were still alive.

Meantime Laodicea was strengthening herself in Asia Minor. Miletus is found hastening to declare its adherence to Seleucus II; its embassy conveys to the young King a wreath of bay leaves, plucked in the sacred enclosure of the Didymaean temple. Many of the other Greek states must have acted likewise.

But the attack of Ptolemy III came with terrific effect upon the divided kingdom. He appeared at the head of his army in Syria, before the death of Berenice and her son was certainly known, and in many quarters was regarded rather as an ally than a conqueror. The states which had flown to arms in Berenice’s defence, finding themselves too late, had no option, now that they had compromised themselves, but to join him.

The great events of the following years are obscured by the character of our sources. In their loose description we seem to see a conquest of Asia which goes beyond the old invasions of Tothmes, and even resembles the triumphant march of Alexander. If we look more closely, however, we shall form, I think, a more moderate estimate of the exploits of Ptolemy Euergetes. The war called by contemporaries the “Laodicean War”, falls into two divisions—the maritime war and the land war. Of these the maritime is really the more important, and here the successes of Ptolemy are more solid. It was on the sea that the Ptolemaic power really lay; it had already, as we have seen, secured a number of points d'appui over the coasts and islands of the Levant, and what Ptolemy Euergetes did was to carry to its farthest extent the traditional policy of his house. On the coasts of Phoenicia, Lycia, and Caria, Ptolemy was already predominant; he possessed Cyprus and the federated Cyclades. The maritime war of Ptolemy III rounds off the work of his father and grandfather. What had been lost in recent years, the Cilician coast, for instance, and Ephesus, are recovered. The line of Ptolemaic power is carried still farther along the coasts. Even the acquisitions of the house of Seleucus in Thrace, from which it was necessarily cut off by a power dominating the sea, pass to Egypt.

A moment of this war is lit up for us in a curious way. The commander of a Seleucid squadron on the coasts of Asia sent home a sheet of papyrus giving a narrative of his operations. This paper, or pieces of it, worn but still partly decipherable, came the other day into the hands of modern archaeologists.

Where the dispatch begins to be decipherable the capture of some town by a detachment of the Ptolemaic forces is described, apparently one of the towns of Cilicia. A party among the inhabitants seem to have had an understanding with the attacking force, and the town was taken by a night surprise. A garrison was put in to hold it under an officer called Epigenes. Then, after a gap, the document seems to speak of a squadron of five ships in the Seleucid service, who, acting on the orders of “the Sister”, i.e. Laodicea, had collected all the money they could along the coast and deposited it in (the Cilician) Seleucia—1500 talents in all. In Seleucia the Seleucid governor of Cilicia, Aribazus, was commanding, and his purpose was to forward the moneys now collected to Laodicea at Ephesus. Before, however, he could do so, the town of Soli and the subordinate strategoi of Cilicia, the district officers, went over to the Ptolemaic side, and in concert with them a Ptolemaic force, under Pythagoras and Aristocles, attacked Seleucia. The town, even the citadel, was stormed. Aribazus essayed to escape across the Taurus, but fell into the hands of the native tribes who lived about the passes; they cut off his head and brought it presently to Antioch.

The rest of the document narrates operations on the Syrian, not the Cilician, coast, in which the writer would seem to have taken part in person. A Ptolemaic squadron of as many sail as the harbour of (the Syrian) Seleucia was understood to be capable of holding, puts to sea in the first watch of the night. Its place of starting is conjectured by Kohler to be Salamis in Cyprus. About three o'clock the following afternoon it strikes the Syrian coast at Posidium, a fort some twenty miles south of Seleucia. There it remains for the night, and at the next daybreak moves to Seleucia. Here it is received with open arms. The priests, the magistrates, the populace, the troops of the garrison flock down the road to the harbour to meet it in festival array. From Seleucia the Ptolemaic force moves upon Antioch itself, which was in those days accessible by water. In Antioch there is a considerable military force, and the district officers, the “satraps” of the neighboring country, seem to have gathered within its walls. And it looks as if Antioch had thought at first of offering some defence. But the sight of the Ptolemaic force convinces it that to do so is hopeless. Antioch, like Seleucia, receives the invader. A procession of the chief men, satraps, captains, priests, and magistrates, accompanied by the “youths from the gymnasium” and the populace, all wearing crowns, comes to meet the Ptolemaic force. “They brought all the animals for sacrifice into the road without the gate; some shook our hands, and some greeted us with clapping and shouting”. There the document leaves off, having shown us the chief city of Seleucid Syria in the hands of King Ptolemy.

For the land war our chief authority is the Monumentum Adulitanum, an inscribed stone seen at Aduli in Abyssinia in the seventh century AD by Cosmas Indicopleustes, who has left us a copy of it. It was a monument put up by some Ptolemaic official at that remote station on the Red Sea giving an account of the King's conquests. It describes how he advanced upon Asia with foot and horse and ships, “and elephants”, the official is careful to note, whose chief business in Aduli was no doubt to replenish the supply, “from the Troglodyte country (i.e. the Red Sea coast) and Ethiopia, which his father and he himself were the first to cause to be captured in these parts and brought down to Egypt, and to train for service in war, how he made himself master of all the country this side of the Euphrates (i.e. Northern Syria), Cilicia, Pamphylia, Ionia, the Hellespont and Thrace, and of all the forces in these countries and the Indian elephants, and made all the petty despots in these regions subject to him, and then how he crossed the Euphrates and plunged into the distant world of Iran,

It will be observed that till the passage of the Euphrates no country is mentioned as conquered which is not open to attack by sea. The Ptolemaic land forces never crossed the Taurus. Having once secured the road through Northern Syria (Antioch itself succumbed, as we saw, to an attack from the sea) they passed east. In Asia Minor, which hitherto rather than Syria had been the Seleucid base, the court of Laodicea and Seleucus was safe from molestation, except on the coast. And even the coast was only partially conquered by the Ptolemaic fleet. Ephesus indeed, where Laodice was still established when the Ptolemaic captain penned his dispatch, passed before long to Ptolemy, the Seleucid court returning, no doubt, to the safer distance of Sardis. But Miletus and Smyrna remained in the Seleucid alliance.

The loss of Ephesus can perhaps be traced in the story taken from Phylarchus. The court is residing at some place other than Ephesus, which is not mentioned, but which must surely be Sardis. Ephesus, however, is still held, as Sophron, the governor of the city, has been called to the royal presence. He has somehow incurred the displeasure of Laodice, and she has determined to make away with him. Among Laodicea’s women, however, is Danae, the daughter of that famous courtesan Leontion who had shone among the companions of Epicurus : Danae is always at the Queen’s side; all the Queen’s purposes are open to her. In past days Sophron was her lover. When Sophron stands before the Queen, Danae is sitting by the Queen’s side. As Laodicea and Sophron talk, the truth breaks upon Danaii that Laodicea is inviting him to his destruction. She makes him a quick imperceptible sign. It is understood. He feigns to agree generally with the Queen's proposals but asks for two days further to consider. Laodicea assents. The next night Sophron flies for his life to Ephesus. Then Laodicea understood what Danae had done. Instantly old friendship was swallowed up in vindictive fury. Danae was haled as a criminal before her, but the questions which Laodicea put to her she met with disdainful silence. She was led away to be hurled from a high place. As she went she made an utterance which those about her thought worthy of record. “The common run of men make small account of religion, and they are quite right. I saved the man that was my lover, and this is the recognition I get from the Powers which dispose of us. Laodice killed hers, and she is thought to deserve all that honor”.

Sophron fled to Ephesus. That was no safe place, if it was still to be in Laodicea’s possession. It was probably Sophron who now called in the Ptolemaic forces. It is found at any rate a few years later occupied by a Ptolemaic garrison, and a Sophron appears in command of a Ptolemaic fleet.

The young king Seleucus seems early to have gone at the head of an army across the Taurus to defend or to regain the Syrian and eastern provinces. It went hard in his absence, and the absence of the troops which followed him, with the adherents of his house along the coast. Smyrna, for instance, was exposed to attack, not only from the Ptolemaic fleets, but from its neighbor, Magnesia-on-Sipylus, where there was a great military settlement which declared against Laodice and Seleucus and harried its fields. Smyrna, at any rate, stood fast, and in this region the Seleucid cause held its own. The Magnesian colony was compelled to return to the old alliance, and at some subsequent date was incorporated by the Smyrnaeans in their own state.

On Smyrna in return for its fidelity the King was concerned to shower favors. He gave the usual promise that the city should continue autonomous and be free of tribute. He also guaranteed it in the possession of all the territory it already stood possessed of, and promised to restore any it had formerly owned. More than this, he interested himself warmly in what was the chief interest of the city, its great temple of Aphrodite-Stratonicis. Smyrna would secure a great advantage if it could shield itself by the sanctity of its shrine, if it could be treated as “holy and inviolable”. It could only obtain this advantage in so far as the independent powers of the world, any who had the material force to molest it, would consent to recognize its sanctity. To obtain this recognition was the object it had in view. It began by procuring a pronouncement of the Delphic oracle in favor of its claims. Armed with this, it approached the Seleucid king. Seleucus threw himself heartily into the cause of the faithful city. He addressed letters to all the states of the Greek world, “to kings and rulers and cities and nations”, asking them to recognize the temple of Aphrodite-Stratonicis as a sanctuary and Smyrna as a city holy and inviolable. One of the answers has been preserved, that of the city of Delphi, which, as the original oracle had proceeded from them, is naturally favorable. It charges the theoroi, who were sent round the Greek states to invite them to the Pythian games, to bestow special commendation on King Seleucus both for his piety in obeying the oracle and his honourable treatment of a Greek city.

Ptolemy did not continue to direct the Asiatic campaigns in person. After his raid into the eastern provinces he returned to Egypt, where troubles had broken out which called for his presence. But the war did not thereby come to an end. Ptolemy left officers to govern in his name both in the West and in the East, in Cilicia his “friend” Antiochus, in the provinces beyond the Euphrates “another general, Xanthippus”. One would like to know on what principle Ptolemy at this juncture framed his policy. He has been commended for wise moderation in withdrawing after his triumphal march. And indeed the traditional policy of his house was to set a prudent limit to ambition. But the texts hardly show the action of Ptolemy III in this light. His personal return is no evacuation of the conquered countries. In that moment of intoxicating glory, in the prostration of the rival house, Ptolemy III seems really to have contemplated making himself king of Asia as well as of Egypt. He actually intends to govern Iran from Alexandria as a dependency. It is not his prudence, but the force of circumstances, which makes him abandon the idea.

But although the return of Ptolemy to Egypt did not mean a suspension of hostilities, the absence of the King relaxed the pressure upon his enemies. Seleucus now took strenuously in hand the reconquest of Northern Syria and the revolted cities of the coast. A great armada was fitted out in one of the harbours of Asia Minor, and presently took the sea. It met, however, with a storm which completely shattered it—as the fleet of Seleucus’ son was later on shattered in the same dangerous waters—and few, according to Justin, beside the King himself escaped to land. After this, Justin goes on, the cities were so sorry for him that they joined him of their own accord—a passage over which modern writers make very merry, perhaps undervaluing the part which sentiment plays even now in human politics. As a matter of fact, it seems probable that the cities of Northern Syria were really attached to the house which had planted and fostered them, and that they had conceived themselves, not so much to be revolting against that house, as standing by its wronged representatives, Berenice and her son, in whose name the King of Egypt had summoned them. It would therefore be natural that as soon as it became apparent that the house of Seleucus was to be crushed altogether, and that they were to be annexed to Egypt, a great wave of compunction should sweep over them.

Of this phase in the war, that which is marked by the Seleucid house recovering Northern Syria, no detail is preserved except the bare statement of Eusebius that in the year 142-141 Orthosia on the Phoenician coast, which was being besieged by a Ptolemaic force, was relieved by Seleucus, who brought up reinforcements.

In the next phase of the war Seleucus passes from recovering his father’s share of Syria to attacking the Ptolemaic. The war of defence became a war of reprisals. An encounter, somewhere in Palestine, took place between the two hosts. Seleucus was completely beaten. He withdrew the shattered remnant of his army of invasion to Antioch. His position was once more critical, for he had no force left wherewith to meet the counterstroke of his enemy.

The operations in Syria had drawn the Seleucid King for the most part to the regions south of the Taurus; they had made Antioch on the Orontes rather than Sardis or Ephesus the pivot of his kingdom. But meantime the Queen-Mother, Laodicea, was still reigning in Asia Minor, and had her younger son, Antiochus, joined with her, a boy at that time of some fourteen years. In his extremity Seleucus now addressed an entreaty to his brother to cross the Taurus to his assistance. This request seems to show that a certain independent authority was exercised by Antiochus in Asia Minor, or rather by those who governed in the boy's name, his mother Laodice and her friends. And this inference finds a separate confirmation in an inscription from the temple at Branchidae, which contains a list of offerings made to the shrine by “the kings Seleucus and Antiochus”. The Antiochus here is therefore one who shares the royal authority; that he does so as a subordinate is shown by the fact that the letter accompanying the gifts runs in the name of King Seleucus alone.

To secure the co-operation of his brother’s court, Seleucus offered to make a partition of the Empire, to cede the trans-Tauric country to Antiochus. Whether the cession was to be absolute or whether he reserved to himself any right of suzerainty we are not told. If his mother and her friends were already the real rulers of that region, the offer of Seleucus amounted simply to a recognition of existing facts. The events which followed this proposition are touched on so summarily by Justin that it is scarcely possible to follow the connexions between them. At first the court of Sardis closed, or feigned to close, with it. The forces of Asia Minor were set in motion to join those in Syria. This co-operation between the two Seleucid courts seems not to have entered into Ptolemy’s calculations, although why it should not have done so, when it seems the most natural thing to expect, we cannot say. Perhaps there were already signs of rivalry and dissension between them. At any rate, on getting word of the advance of the trans-Tauric army, Ptolemy, instead of following up his recent victory, concluded a peace for ten years with Seleucus.

2

The Fraternal War
 

Antiochus, however, did not join his forces with those of Seleucus. The concession made by the elder king seems to have been used to bring all power in Asia Minor more absolutely into the hands of the court of Sardis. As soon as that had been done, the mask was thrown off and a claim was advanced to the whole Seleucid Empire. The people, who were acting behind the boy Antiochus, were of course the Queen-Mother Laodice and her friends. Amongst these the chief place was held by the Queen’s brother, Alexander, who probably performed the functions of viceroy of the trans-Tauric country.

With this breach between the brother kings there began for Asia Minor a period of civil war which must have dealt the country far deeper wounds than the war between Seleucid and Ptolemy, which affected only its seaward fringes. Seleucus, crippled as he had been by his recent defeat in Palestine, had still enough authority in the Empire to gather a force about him with which he crossed the Taurus to crush this new rebellion. Nowhere along the great high-road did the partisans of Antiochus arrest his march onwards. He was already in Lydia before his army met that of his brother. The first battle went in his favor. He fought another, and again successfully. But his victory was stayed by the strong city of Sardis, where the party of Antiochus found a sure retreat.

It was now, however, seen what danger to the central government lay in all those independent elements in Asia Minor. A disturbance such as the rebellion of Antiochus Hierax communicated unrest to all the peninsula. The task of Seleucus was indefinitely complicated. Antiochus had only to hold up his hand to bring up hordes of Galatians. In some quarters the cause of Antiochus and the Queen-Mother was more favorably regarded than that of the elder king, who indeed had been for much of the time since his accession absent from the country.

We last saw the dynast of Pontic Cappadocia employing Galatian bands against the Ptolemaic forces, apparently in alliance with the Seleucid King . Since then Mithridates the Founder had died in a good old age of eighty-four years, and had been succeeded by his son Ariobarzanes (in 266). Of the reign of Ariobarzanes we know nothing except that he got into difficulties with his Galatian mercenaries and has left no coins. He died about 250, and was followed by another Mithridates, who at his father’s death was still a boy. Under such circumstances the Galatian troubles grew worse, and the Pontic territory was so harried that famine stared the population in the face. Heraclea, whose friendly connection with the Mithridatic house continued, sent what help it could, and had in consequence to bear a Galatian attack in its turn. And now, some ten years later, the breach in the Seleucid house brings the Pontic king once more upon the stage. With this Iranian dynasty also, as with that in Southern Cappadocia, the great Macedonian house had mingled its blood. One sister of Seleucus II was the wife of Ariarathes; the other sister he gave in marriage to Mithridates II, with Greater Phrygia (or so the Pontic house afterwards asserted) for dowry. At this juncture Mithridates declares in favor of his younger brother-in-law, Antiochus, and enters the field at the head of a great army of Galatians.

The intervention of the Pontic king and his fierce mercenaries gave a new turn to the struggle. A great battle, one of the landmarks of that confused epoch, took place near Ancyra. The forces of Seleucus were swept down by the Galatian onset. Twenty thousand are said to have perished. At the end of that day of blood Seleucus himself was nowhere to be found. The news ran through the host of the victors that he was dead. The youth who by such an event became the sole and unrivalled possessor of the Seleucid throne displayed or affected great sorrow. Antiochus put on the garb of mourning and shut himself up to bewail his brother. Then the tidings came that he had lamented, or rejoiced, too soon. Seleucus was still alive. He had disguised himself as the armour-bearer of Hamactyon, who commanded the Royal Squadron, and had escaped so from the fatal field. He was now beyond the Taurus, safe in Cilicia, rallying once more about him what remained of his power. Antiochus came out of his retirement, offered a sacrifice of thanksgiving for his brother's welfare, decreed public festivities in the cities subject to him, and sent an army to cross the Taurus and crush Seleucus before he had time to recover.

One story which the Greeks remembered in connection with this battle was that of Mysta, Seleucus’ concubine. Like the old Persian kings, the Seleucids took women with them in their camps. As soon as she saw the day was lost, Mysta also disguised herself. She had been dressed as a queen; she now put on the habit of a common serving-maid and sat among the huddled women, who fell after the battle into the victor’s hands. She was put up for sale with others, bought by some slave-merchant, and carried to the great market of Rhodes. Rhodes was soil friendly to Seleucus, and once there she made herself known. The Rhodian state instantly paid her price to the merchant and sent her back with every due observance to the King.

3.

Antiochus Hierax and Attalus of Pergamos

The battle of Ancyra shattered the cause of Seleucus II in Asia Minor. It would be out of the question for some time to come for him to attack his brother. But the disappearance of Seleucus meant less the reign of Antiochus than anarchy. The Galatians knew their power; it was easy by their help to overthrow any existing authority, but it was not possible to base upon it any secure throne. Antiochus himself found his life full of vicissitude enough; at one moment marching over the Phrygian uplands at the head of his Galatian bands, levying a blackmail which can only by courtesy be described as the tribute due to the royal treasury; at another moment bargaining for his life with the same bands, or by hairbreadth escapes breaking away from them and throwing himself into friendly cities, like Magnesia; then meeting and beating them in open battle; then again raiding, as before in their company.

The unhappy Greeks of Asia looked round for a deliverer from the deluge of anarchy and barbarism. This then was what the Macedonian rule, which had ousted the Persian with such fair promises, had come to. There were two powers which seemed to offer resistance to the barbarian storm in the land of the Asiatic Greeks, the Ptolemaic and the Pergamene. Ptolemy saved at least the cities he held, like Ephesus and the Carian harbors, from barbarian dictation. We even hear, on an occasion when Antiochus had broken with his mercenaries, of help being sent him from a neighboring Ptolemaic garrison. But it was Attalus of Pergamos who now came forward as the main champion of Hellenism and order.

The figure of this man, who had succeeded his cousin Eumenes in 241-240, embodying so much of that age, is obscured for us by the defects of our tradition. And yet even so he is significant for us, connecting in his person an epoch that was passing away with one that began a new state of things. Now when he first appears in the eye of the world, the great Macedonian houses, the heirs of Alexander, are the cardinal powers of the Eastern Mediterranean; his last breath is spent in exhorting the peoples of Greece to accept the hegemony of Rome. It was his wars on behalf of civilization in Asia Minor against the barbarian tribes which first made him a name. These wars are a glorious, but almost forgotten, episode of Greek history. We may indeed believe that they were somewhat artificially magnified by the Pergamene court, which loved to put them in the same order as the classical struggles between light and darkness, order and chaos, Hellenism and barbarism, to set them beside the battles of Gods and giants, of Athenians and Amazons, of Greeks and Persians. It was these scenes, together with those of the Galatian wars, which the sculptors commissioned by the rulers of Pergamos had to set before the eyes of the Greek cities. But that the glory claimed by Attalus he did to a large extent deserve, there is no reason to deny. A genuine sentiment seems to have thrilled the Greek world as the contest was victoriously carried on. A current oracle, cited by Pausanias, represents Attains as a deliverer divinely raised up for the Asiatic Greeks, almost a demi-god himself —

          Then having crossed the narrow strait of the Hellespont

The destructive army of the Gauls shall pipe; they shall lawlessly

Ravage Asia; and God shall make it yet worse

For all who dwell by the shores of the sea

For a little while. But soon the son of Kronos shall stir up a helper for them,

A dear son of a Zeus-reared bull,

Who shall bring a day of doom on all the Gauls.

In days when art had begun to languish because the old enthusiasms were dying away, the struggle with the barbarism of Asia Minor called a new and original school into being, not indeed reaching the serene heights which the children of those who had fought at Marathon and Salamis attained, but displaying a vigorous realism, a technical mastery and a lively feeling for dramatic effect.

No narrative of these wars remains. Historians mention them summarily. When even the Seleucid house had come to pay blackmail to the Gauls, “Attalus”, says Livy, “first among all the inhabitants of Asia refused. His bold resolution was, contrary to the expectation of all, backed by fortune. He met them in fair field and came off victor”. “His greatest achievement”, Pausanias says, “was compelling the Gauls to retreat from the coast into the territory which they still occupy”. Sometimes a particular battle is spoken of, “a great battle”, Strabo calls it; a battle at Pergamos is mentioned in a Prologue of Trogus. According to the text of Justin the battle took place immediately after the battle of Ancyra, before the victors had had time to recover from the effects of that great day, Antiochus himself being still with the Galatians—if indeed it be the same battle which is meant in the narrative of Justin and in the Prologue, or the phrase “saucios adhuc ex superiore congressione integer ipse” be not an antithesis thrown in for mere rhetorical effect. It is difficult to see how the victorious army of Ancyra should have engaged Attalus at Pergamos, more than 250 miles away, before they had recovered from the wounds of their former battle.

When, however, we turn from the historians to what remains of the stones of Pergamos, the wars of Attalus appear no affair of one battle and instant victory. They show Attalus making dedication to the gods of trophies from a great number of battles. Sometimes the state of the stone allows us to read the denotation of the enemy and the site of the battle, sometimes both are conjectural. It is at any rate impossible to arrange the battles in any connected narrative or even to fix their order in time. In one Antiochus and two of the Galatian tribes, the Tolistoagii and the Tectosages, are coupled together; it is the battle fought “near the Aphrodisium”; unfortunately it is impossible to identify the Aphrodisium in question. In another the Tolistoagii are mentioned alone, the battle “by the sources of the Caicus”. In another Antiochus is mentioned alone, the battle in Hellespontine Phrygia. One inscription speaks of a battle in which Attalus defeated the Tolistoagii and Antiochus a second time, whether identical or not with any of those just mentioned we do not know. From all this we can gather little except that the struggle of Attalus with the forces of anarchy was prolonged and swept over the country between the valley of the Caicus and Bithynia.

This contest lifted the Pergamene dynast to an altogether new position in Asia Minor. As he had taken over from the house of Seleucus the work which they professed to perform in that country, the protection of Hellenism and civilization, so he stepped into their dignities. After the battle of Ancyra indeed, with the elder Seleucid king driven across the Taurus, and the younger turned into a captain of freebooters, Seleucid authority ceased in Asia Minor. In that part of the country which had once obeyed mandates from Sardis or Antioch it was now the armies of Attalus who marched along the roads, and his officers who began to claim the tribute of Lydian and Phrygian villages. From this time the dynast of Pergamos assumed the title of King.

To the Greek cities the substitution of the Pergamene for the Seleucid house was probably welcome. The Aeolian cities at any rate, as well as Alexandria, Ilion and Lampsacus, became his cordial allies. Even Smyrna, which had been so eminent for its loyalty to the Seleucid house, now changed about, swore fidelity to Attains, and was henceforward altogether alienated at heart from the Seleucid cause. Attalus presented himself to the Greeks in the most attractive light. Not only was he their champion against barbarism, as indeed the house of Seleucus in its better days had been, but he did everything to show himself an ardent Hellenist and to exhibit at his court a wholesome family life which would form a contrast in the eyes of the Greek bourgoisie to the barbaric vice and cruelty which were rife in the Seleucid and Ptolemaic courts. His mother Antiochis was a kinswoman of the Seleucid house, and his maternal aunt Laodice was the wife of Seleucus II, but Attalus himself elected for his queen Apollonis, the daughter of a plain citizen of Cyzicus, “a woman”, says Polybius, “deserving for many reasons remark and admiration, who rose from a private station to royalty, and kept her high place to the last by means of no meretricious seductions, but by a plain and sober dignity and goodness”. Instead of the fraternal feuds and family murders which seemed to be elsewhere the rule in royal houses, the children of Attalus and Apollonis showed the world a delightful picture of simplicity and natural affection. And whilst the house of Attalus recommended itself to the moral sentiments of the Greek republics, it did so equally to their literary and artistic susceptibilities. “Pergamos”, says the historian of Alexandrine literature, “was in all probability the source of that renewal of Atticism to which we owe in great part the preservation of the masterpieces of Attic prose”. Attalus maintained close relations with a number of the great literary men of his time, especially with the philosophers of Athens. An Athenian poet, Ctesiphon, was given a high place in his civil service. Research into the peculiarities of his own dominion was encouraged. Polemon of Ilion cast his essay on the local cults and deities into the form of a “Letter to Attalus”. Attalus himself wrote; from one work of his a fragment is still preserved, describing a certain pine-tree in the Troad. The school of artists, which developed under his patronage, has been already mentioned. And not only did Pergamos itself become a city gloriously beautified to the eyes of the Greeks with the monuments and altars which commemorated the Galatian wars, but works of art in other cities testified to the munificence of the Pergamene king. Athens especially he delighted to honour. If the ideal of the phil-Hellenic king, which had been more or less pretended to by all the successors of Alexander, was capable of realization at all, it seemed to be realized in Attalus.

On some points we are imperfectly informed. What were the relations between this new-grown power in Asia and the house of Ptolemy, which had so many footholds on the coast? We do not even know what the relations were between Attalus and Seleucus. Was the king who reigned on the Orontes content to see a new king arising in Asia Minor to counterbalance Antiochus Hierax, and the territory which he himself could not wrest from his brother passing at any rate out of his brother’s hands?

All this time Sardis continued to maintain the semblance of a Seleucid capital. How long Laodice reigned there we do not know. According to Appian her end was to be killed by Ptolemy Euergetes. The court over which she had presided continued to subsist as that of King Antiochus. If Attalus was supported by the Hellenic element in Asia Minor, Antiochus was in close association with the barbarian powers. He married a daughter of Ziaëlas, the Bithynian king. He was also, as we have seen, in alliance with Mithridates, and seems to have contemplated at some time before his death marrying a daughter of the Pontic king, whether in succession to, or side by side with, the Bithynian queen we do not know.

A daughter of Mithridates, at any rate, whom we may by her name, Laodice, conjecture to be the issue of Antiochus’ sister, is found to be at one time in his hands. Among the Pisidians Antiochus had his friends; Logbasis, a prominent citizen of Selge, was among his familiars, and it was at Selge, among the Pisidian hills, that Laodice, the Pontic princess, whom he probably intended to marry, grew to womanhood. Even with an Armenian petty king, Arsames, he had relations of close friendship. Pushed on the west by the victorious arms of Attalus, Antiochus began to think of restoring his fortunes at his brother’s expense in the east. He attempted to turn the position of Seleucus in Syria by crossing the Euphrates high up and then descending upon Mesopotamia by way of the friendly kingdom of Arsames. But in the plain the armies of his brother were waiting to receive him. They were led by Achaeus and his son Andromachus, two persons of the highest rank in the kingdom, for Achaeus was the father-in-law of King Seleucus. Antiochus fared badly at their hands. After his defeat a discreditable abuse of those courtesies which in ancient warfare were connected with the burial of the dead enabled him to cut down four thousand of his brother’s troops unarmed; but his cause was none the less lost. He took refuge at the court of Ariamnes in Cappadocia, where his sister Stratonice was queen. But he had not been there long before he discovered that though all was smiles about him, his host had an understanding with Seleucus, and was preparing to deliver him up. He once more fled. It seems that he made one last desperate attack upon Attalus (229-228). We hear of four battles, two “in Lydia”, one by Lake Coloë, and one in Caria. They only served to complete his ruin. Nowhere in Asia did he now seem safe from capture by either Attalus or his brother. He crossed into Europe, to Thrace, which had been held since the Laodicean War by Ptolemaic forces, and threw himself upon the generosity of the King of Egypt (228-227). On the orders of the Alexandrian court he was held under close guard. By the help, however, of some girl, whose heart had been won by the captive prince, he eluded his keepers. But the wild mountains of Thrace were no safe place for fugitives. His little company encountered a marauding band of Gauls, and by the hand of the Gauls, with whom he had had all his life long so much to do, Antiochus Hierax came to his end. A story was told by the contemporary historian Phylarchus that the horse of Antiochus, when the Gallic chief Centaretus mounted it, leaped over a precipice and avenged its master.

The disappearance of Antiochus Hierax from the scene extinguished the separate Seleucid court in Asia Minor. Attalus was left in possession of what had once been the Seleucid domain north of the Taurus. It remained for Seleucus Kallinikos to decide whether he would acquiesce in the severance of that country from his house or demand its restitution by force of arms from the Pergamene king. What he actually did we do not know with certainty. He was given but little time to do anything. A year after the death of his brother, Seleucus II perished by a fall from his horse (227-226). He had never come to his own again in the land where his reign had begun.

4

SELEUCUS III SOTER

The task of restoration, which devolved upon his successor, was a hard one. The geographical centre of the Empire, Syria, Babylonia, and the nearer Iranian provinces, were still held, but in the west and east great members had been broken away. The Ptolemaic power ruled the coasts of southern Asia Minor, even to some extent of Syria, possessing Seleucia and the mouth of the Orontes; the Pergamene power ruled the Ionian and Aeolian coasts, and as much of the interior as was not in the hands of barbarian princes. For this task the youth who succeeded Seleucus Kallinikos was little fitted. He was the elder of the two sons of Seleucus II by Laodice, the daughter of Achaeus. He had hitherto been known as Alexander, but on ascending the throne assumed the dynastic name of Seleucus. Seleucus Soter was his official style. He was of weak bodily constitution, liable, if one may judge by the nickname of Keraunos, which the soldiers gave him, to fits of uncontrolled passion. He seems, however, to have addressed himself without delay to the work of recovering his kingdom in the west. His younger brother Antiochus was apparently sent to represent the royal authority in the eastern provinces.

Of the two enemies in the west, the Pergamene king is the only one whom Seleucus III is said to have directly attacked. He seems to have prepared to strike a blow from the instant of his accession. The inscriptions of Attains record victories over the generals of Seleucus.

Presently the young King himself crossed the Taurus with a large army. From this time to the day of his death he was warring in Asia Minor. Was anything done meantime against the Egyptian power? In the Book of Daniel (11, 10) both the sons of Seleucus II are said to be “stirred up”, i.e. against the King of Egypt, and to “assemble a multitude of great forces”. If we had any ground for supposing an alliance between Pergamos and Egypt, the attack on Attalus might be considered an indirect attack on Ptolemy. But we have no ground. Niese supposes that hostilities between the Seleucid court and Egypt had again broken out before the death of Seleucus Kallinikos, and that they were closed by a definitive peace under Seleucus Soter. It is at any rate likely that preparations were made by Seleucus III for a renewal of the war with Egypt, especially as his chief minister, Hermias the Carian, was the main advocate of an aggressive policy against Egypt a few years later under Antiochus III. If Seleucus III made the war with Pergamos take precedence of the war with Egypt, it may have been that the attack on the Ptolemaic power was left by an understanding to the allied court of Macedonia. About the same time that Seleucus engaged Attalus in the interior of Asia Minor, Antigonus Doson, reigning as Regent in Macedonia for the infant Philip, whom the death of Demetrius about 230-229 had made King, descended upon the coasts of Caria and expelled the Ptolemaic garrisons.

How the war between Seleucus III and Attalus went we do not know. Seleucus was at any rate unable to maintain order in his own camp. The result was a conspiracy against the King's life, of which the leading spirits were Nicanor, no doubt a Macedonian officer of the King’s entourage, and Apaturius, a chieftain of the mercenary Gauls. Seleucus was in Phrygia in the summer of 223, when the design against him was brought to pass. His life was suddenly cut short, by poison according to one account. One disaster after another had come upon the house of Seleucus, and its extinction must have seemed at that moment a possibility of the near future.