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

CHAPTER 29.

THE CRETAN TYRANNY

Alexander Balas had perished and the hand of Egypt was removed, but the throne which Demetrius ascended as Demetrius Theos Nicator Philadelphus was nevertheless a tottering one. It was only the influence of Ptolemy which had prevailed on Antioch to receive him. He could not trust the soldiery drawn from the native Greeks and Macedonians. The frequent revolutions had set up an agitation in the public mind which was favorable to further change. The one remedy would be a firm and considerate government to allay by degrees the dangerous unrest—at once to reconcile the people to their ruler and give a confidence in the stability of the existing regime. Such considerations were, however, far from the minds of the Cretan captains who now dominated the Seleucid throne. To them the kingdom they had seized was simply a source Of gain. The ambitious foreign policy of Demetrius Soter was not to be resumed; they were simply to settle upon the unhappy land and subordinate everything to the one end of gaining power and leisure to drain it. They had no permanent connection with the land or interest in its well-being. It was the government of pirates.

How ready they were to agree with any adversary quickly, in order to enjoy their prey undisturbed, is shown by what took place in Judaea. Jonathan, we saw, had gained under Alexander a supremacy in Judaea which was infringed by nothing but the garrison in the akra. He seized the occasion of the times to assail this last relic of the Seleucid government, and subjected the akra to a close blockade. The court made some show of protest. But Jonathan understood the temper of the new government so well that when the young King came to Ptolemais he presented himself before him with rich presents, although the siege of the akra still went on. He received not only pardon, but a confirmation of his honors. He was placed in the order of First Friends at the new court. His request was granted that a sum of 300 talents should be accepted in discharge of the annual tribute, taxes, and customs due from Judaea to the King. At the same time the Judaean territory was extended on the north by the addition of the three “toparchies” or “nomes” of Lydda, Aphaerema and Ramathaim, which had hitherto belonged to Samaria. Jonathan probably on his part agreed to leave the akra alone.

So the Cretans addressed themselves with a secure mind to the business of plundering the country. All pretence of conciliation was given up, and the government orders became more atrocious and flagrant every day. Outrageous penalties were laid upon all who had been the partisans of Alexander. Antioch revenged itself by pasquinade, and the Cretan soldiery punished the sharp words by spilling blood in the streets. The home-born troops regarded the strangers and their puppet king with bitter displeasure. As these troops might give trouble, and they were no longer necessary when the court did not dream of going to war, it was resolved to disband them. An order was issued which removed all the army from the active list, except the mercenaries from overseas, and the pay usually given to men in reserve was diminished for the benefit of the aliens. It was an unprecedented action, since all former kings had considered their interest deeply involved in binding the military class to their cause, and had usually been punctual in their payment even in times of peace. Nor were they only disbanded; they were also to be disarmed. The measure met in Antioch with the liveliest resistance; riots ensued in the streets, in which blood flowed freely. Recalcitrants were cut down in their houses, together with their women and children. Antioch was the theatre of a hideous intestine war.

The people, maddened, fought desperately. They barricaded the streets, and a yelling crowd of many thousands beat upon the palace doors. The mercenaries who attempted a sortie were driven back. But the crowd could not face the storm of missiles which presently fell upon them from the palace roof. They gave back, and the King’s men set the buildings adjoining the palace, which the people had held, on fire. The flames spread rapidly along the narrow wooden streets, and soon a great part of Antioch was in a blaze. A terrified stampede took place; every one pressed on to rescue his family and property, while the mercenaries charged the jammed, helpless mass through the cross allies, or, leaping along from roof to roof, shot into the thick of them below. The spirit of resistance did not survive such horrors. Antioch was cowed for the time. A band of Jewish fighting men, trained in the wars of the Lord, were among the King’s auxiliaries. They had been picked and sent by Jonathan. They returned home laden with the spoils of the great Gentile city, to tell in the courts of the Lord’s house the delight of that wild pursuit along the roofs, the unlimited massacre of panic-driven heathen, mad to save their children from the fire. The Book of Maccabees would persuade us that a hundred thousand persons were killed by the Jews alone.

The suppression of the revolt was followed in Antioch by a red reign of terror. A proscription of those supposed to be implicated was instituted, and their property flowed into the royal coffers. Executions and confiscations were everyday events. “Many of the Antiochenes were driven by fear or detestation to quit their native city, and were scattered as wanderers over all Syria, waiting for an occasion against the King”.

They had not long to wait. Diodotus—we have already become acquainted with him as one of the two men who ruled Antioch under Alexander Balas—read his opportunity in the disaffection of the home-born soldier class to the new regime. He probably was in closer touch with that class in that he was a citizen of Apamea, the military centre of the kingdom, having been born at Casiani, a village or small township dependent upon that great city. He had himself risen through the army. Within a few months of the death of Ptolemy Philometor, Diodotus betook himself to the wilderness, to the chieftain Yamlik, to fetch his old master’s son and proclaim him king. The Arab had a conscience as to his trust, and was somewhat suspicious of the Greek intriguer. But at last he consented to put the son of Alexander into Diodotus’ hands.

Diodotus showed himself with the boy in the region of Apamea. Here he proclaimed Antiochus Theos Epiphanes Dionysus king, and he called on the military colonies of the region to join his cause. His headquarters were first at Chalcis toward the wilderness, where the free Arabs, like Yamlik, could give him support from their strongholds. Soon the important town of Larissa, with its population of Thessalian horsemen, the proudest of the home-born troops, joined him. Demetrius—that is, of course, Lasthenes the Cretan—refused at first to regard Diodotus (who now assumed the name of Tryphon) as more than a common bandit, and haughtily sent some soldiers to arrest him. But the court at Antioch had soon so far to lower its dignity as to send a regular general with an army against him. The war went unfavorably for Demetrius. Tryphon got possession of the province of Apamea, with all its royal arsenals and the elephants of war.

How long it took Tryphon to consolidate his position in the province of Apamea we do not know. But the first proclamation there of Antiochus Dionysus was only a few months after the death of Alexander. Coins are found with the name and childish head of Antiochus which are dated the year 167 aer. Sel., i.e. before October 145. So that it was with this formidable rebellion growing that the atrocities were committed at Antioch in the name of King Demetrius.

The consequence, of course, was that when Tryphon assailed Antioch, the city was ready to welcome him with rapture. It had expelled Alexander Balas shortly before, but an experience of Cretan rule had convinced it that King Log was after all preferable to King Stork. So Antiochus VI entered Antioch in triumph.

The possession of Antioch and Apamea made the cause of Antiochus preponderant in Syria. But Tryphon was not strong enough to drive out the legitimate king altogether. The court of Demetrius was transferred to Seleucia on the coast, where the traditions of loyalty to the rightful line were firmer than at Antioch, or where they had not perhaps been put to so severe a test. And again, with two rival kings in the land, a confused civil war went on in the various provinces. It is naturally impossible to say how the two parties lost and gained in its vicissitudes. Roughly speaking, the power of Tryphon seems to have been firm in the Orontes valley from Apamea to Antioch, the central region, politically, of the kingdom. On the other hand, the outlying provinces—those away from the scene of the Cretan misrule—were faithful, as far as can be traced, to Demetrius. For Cilicia there is the evidence of a coin struck at Mallus, but it is not dated. But Tryphon had some footing in Cilicia, since we hear that he made the strong sea-side fortress of Coracesium a base for piratical expeditions against the Syrian coast, that in fact it was from the pirate body at his command that the great pirate power of the next seventy years grew. All the Syrian coast from Seleucia to the Lebanon, Demetrius held. We hear of him at Laodicea. The coins prove the continuance of his authority in Tyre and Sidon. In Mesopotamia and Babylonia also we have proof that Demetrius was the recognized king.

In Coele-Syria, on the other hand, the cause of Antiochus Dionysus prevailed. The Jews had lent their services to Demetrius for slaughtering the Antiochenes, but they were soon discontented when they found he did not remove the garrison from the akra. They were ready therefore to respond to the appeal of Tryphon to support the son of their old friend Alexander Balas. In the name of Antiochus, Tryphon sent to Jonathan the crimson robe and golden clasp of the King's Kinsmen, and his brother Simon was made the strategos of Antiochus in the whole province “from the Ladder of Tyre to the borders of Egypt”, i.e. of Coele-Syria without Phoenicia, which held by Demetrius.

Jonathan now, as the King's man, had royal troops as well as the Jewish levies at his disposal, and he was very active in the cause of Antiochus, moving about from city to city of Coele-Syria and summoning them to acknowledge the son of Alexander. Gaza offered stubborn resistance, but Demetrius had no means of relieving it, and it succumbed to a siege. Jonathan's operations extended as far as Damascus. The power of Demetrius ceased altogether for a time in the south of the kingdom.

Some collisions took place in Galilee between Jonathan and the generals of Demetrius, one by the sea of Merom in the plain of Hazor, and another farther north near Hamath, but as we have no account of them except the Jewish one their true description is unknown.

But while the Hasmonaean leaders were warring in the name of King Antiochus, they were improving the occasion for other ends than those for which authority had been lent them. Simon, having compelled the Gentile garrison to withdraw from Beth-sur, replaced it by a Jewish one. He also fortified Adida, which commanded the road from Joppa to the Judaean upland, as a Jewish stronghold. In Joppa itself, ostensibly to guard it against being occupied by Demetrius, Simon put a garrison of Jews. The blockade of the akra was resumed and drawn close. The fortifications of Jerusalem were repaired and strengthened.

At the same time the Jewish community began to act as an independent state toward foreign powers. Jonathan, as High-priest, sent envoys to Rome to regain the patronage which had been momentarily won by Judas in 161. The envoys were also to establish friendly relations between the Jewish state and some of the Greek states, notably Sparta, on their way.

All these proceedings on the part of the Jewish leaders did not naturally find favour at Antioch. Tryphon, who had risen to power as the representative of a national Greco-Macedonian movement, could hardly show himself less eager than former rulers to vindicate the Macedonian supremacy in Judea. He determined to strike a sudden and stealthy blow before it was too late. He moved with a force to Scythopolis (Beth-shan), and Jonathan came to meet him as a friend with a great following of Jewish troops. Trzphon received him with full honors and persuaded him to dismiss his army and accompany him with a thousand men only to Ptolemais. When once the gates of Ptolemais had shut upon Jonathan, his thousand men were suddenly massacred and he himself made prisoner.

The news of what had happened caused absolute panic at Jerusalem. But Simon rose to the occasion and caused the people to feel that they had yet a leader left. Instead, therefore, of giving way to despair, the Jews pushed forward the defences of Jerusalem and took strong action at Joppa. It was already held by a Jewish garrison; now the whole population was turned out neck and crop, and their place taken by Jewish families.

Tryphon advanced upon Judaea, bringing Jonathan with him. He demanded 100 talents, said to be due from Jonathan in his capacity of royal officer, and his two sons as hostages. Simon, lest his motives should be misconstrued, was obliged to comply. Needless to say, Jonathan was not released. Tryphon did not accomplish the invasion of Judaea. He marched round the upland, while the garrison in the akra, now at starvation point, sent him a bitter cry. But the ways were blocked, that on the west by the prudent fortification of Adida, and that on the south, from Adora, by an unusual fall of snow. He drew off to the other side of Jordan, and at Bascama (site unknown) put Jonathan to death. Thence he returned north. “And Simon sent and took the bones of Jonathan his brother, and buried him at Modin, the city of his fathers”. The great monument of the Hasmonaean house there could be descried from the ships at sea.

In 143-142 it was given out at Antioch that the young Antiochus had contracted an internal disease which required an operation. It was next declared that the operation had ended fatally. In after days nobody doubted but that Tryphon had tampered with the surgeons and that the boy had been murdered. His study of the situation in Syria, at any rate, had convinced Tryphon that he might now safely venture on a bolder step than that of removing the child of Alexander Balas; he believed the time was come when the house of Seleucus might be set aside. It had—so he read the times—lost its basis in the popular will, the will of the Macedonian people of Syria, and that will could now raise another to the place which the degenerate heirs of Seleucus had forfeited. He offered himself as the national king. A decree of the people or of the army was necessary to make his royal authority valid. This he exerted himself by the usual arts of the popular leader to procure, and an assembly at Antioch or Apamea which purported to be the Macedonian soldier-people elected Tryphon king. It was to be the beginning of new things. In the title of the new monarchy Autokrator was added to Basileus. The old era, which dated from the accession of the Seleucid line, was naturally dropped and a new era begun. The emblem of King Tryphon was the national helmet of the Macedonians.

But to give respectability in the eyes of the world to a new dynasty, the recognition of Rome was highly desirable. Tryphon thought he had discovered an ingenious means of getting a favourable decree of the Senate. He sent as a present to Rome a golden figure of Victory. The religious Senators would shrink from so ill-omened an action as to reject Victory, even if the splendor of the bribe (for the gold in the statue was equivalent to 10,000 gold pieces of money) did not overcome them. But the Senate was more ingenious than the adventurer. It accepted the gift certainly, but it inscribed as donor, not Tryphon, but the murdered boy-king Antiochus.

In Coele-Syria the immediate result of Tryphon’s action was that the Jews made the final step to practical independence. They had definitely broken with Tryphon at the seizure of Jonathan; the disappearance of the son of Alexander Balas removed the only link which bound them to the cause he represented. Simon sent envoys to effect a reconciliation with Demetrius, and the rival court, glad enough to detach them from Tryphon, was ready to grant anything. In the name of King Demetrius peace and a general amnesty were conceded to the Jews, but, more than that, all arrears of taxes were remitted, and for the future the Seleucid renounced any right to claim tax or tribute from the Jewish state. The new fortifications in Judaea were sanctioned. What remained to the Seleucid King of suzerainty was of a very shadowy and indefinite kind.

Another province was gone from the kingdom to make an independent state! The Jews regarded the King’s rescript as the beginning of freedom. “The yoke of the heathen was taken away from Israel”— the yoke that had been upon their necks since Josiah fell at Megiddo 466 years before. Jerusalem began a new era, and documents were dated “In the Year One, Simon being High-priest and General and Ruler of the Jews”. In the following year (171 aer. Sel. = 142-141 BC) the garrison in the akra, decimated by famine, at last surrendered. On the 23rd of Ijjar (May) 141 the victorious nationalists entered “with praise and palm branches and with harps and with cymbals and with viols and with hymns and with songs”. Even before the citadel fell, the fate of Joppa had overtaken Grazara (Gezer), another place which commanded the approaches of Judaea on the west Simon made a triumphal entry, with hymns to the One God. The houses of the idols were cleansed, and the heathen population expelled to make room for the “keepers of the Law”. John, the son of Simon, who was given the post of commander of the forces, had Gazara for his head-quarters.

In 140 a surprising departure was taken by Demetrius. He had then, perhaps, reached the age of twenty, and was old enough for his own personality to assert itself in distinction from the ministers who had given his reign such a bad name. And now, while the central region of Syria was held by a rival king, Demetrius set out to recover the lost provinces of the East from the Parthian!

In the East, as Antiochus the Great King had found, and as Antiochus IV had hoped to find, lay fresh sources of strength and replenishment when those in the West were failing. There the supremacy of the house of Seleucus was grounded firmly in the hearts of the Greek and Macedonian population. To that quarter it would be of no use for the upstart Tryphon to appeal. But possessed of these resources, the Seleucid King might turn and overwhelm the adventurer who had risen up in the West. Something of this sort must have been the rationale of the bold move of Demetrius.

Demetrius had not to appeal to the eastern Greeks; it was they who appealed to him. Men from the distant provinces were constantly arriving at the court on the Mediterranean coast, all carrying the same cry from their country-men, all telling the same story of hatred to the barbarian conqueror, of impatience to see the banners of the old house, of readiness to rally to its cause. The young man, lately become his own master, saw visions of military glory, of assured conquest, of renewed empire, and exhaustless treasuries.

Accordingly in 140 Demetrius set out for the East. During his absence the war in Syria against Tryphon was to be prosecuted by his generals. Queen Cleopatra was left at Seleucia under the protection of Aeschrion. At an earlier stage it might have been unsafe to leave that strong-willed woman to her own devices, it might have been questionable whether she would not prefer the cause of her son to that of a husband united to her by a loveless political marriage. Now Tryphon was not only her husband's enemy, but her son’s murderer.

How far the Parthian conquests extended when Demetrius II moved to the East may be matter of doubt. Mesopotamia we know was his; it was held for him by Dionysius the Mede. Babylonia is proved by a cuneiform inscription to have been his in 144. But if the phraseology of our inferior sources can be pressed, Babylonia had an the interval between that date and the expedition of Demetrius been conquered by the Parthians.

Of course, if Babylonia had really been conquered, Media must have been conquered first. But as to Media we have no direct evidence.

The Arsacid throne was still held by the able prince Mithridates I, against whom Antiochus Epiphanes had marched a quarter of a century before. Since then Mithridates had extended the Parthian power on the East at the expense of the Greek dynasties of Bactria.

Demetrius crossed the Euphrates into Mesopotamia and marched on Babylonia. His appearance in the East was the signal for a great rising, and he was received with enthusiasm wherever he came. Not only the Greeks of the Babylonian and the Median provinces rose, but all who felt menaced by the growing Parthian power were ready to make common cause with him—the Bactrian kings, the little kings in the mountains of Kurdistan, the new principality in Persis (mod. Fars). In a series of battles Demetrius defeated and drove back the armies of Mithridates. But when all seemed to promise fair, the successes of Demetrius came to a sudden end. By a treacherous peace (if our account can be trusted) the Parthians contrived to lay hold of his person. Demetrius became a prisoner; his great army disappeared.

The captive Seleucid was shown publicly in the cities under Parthian sway to teach the Greeks in whom they had trusted. But this lesson taught, Mithridates did not use his prisoner ill. Demetrius was conveyed to Hyrcania, a favorite residence of the Arsacid court, and, while closely guarded, was given the attendance and consideration which befitted his rank.

The Parthians were soon after this masters in Babylon.

And now that Demetrius was gone, Tryphon seemed to command the situation in Syria. He spurned, we are told, the arts of conciliation by which he had mounted. Probably he had also underestimated the hold which, in spite of everything, the Seleucid name had upon the Macedonians of Asia. His soldiers deserted in numbers to the legitimate side; Seleucia lay only some twelve miles from Antioch.

Of the war, as it went on during those days, we know only one incident. Sarpedon, one of the generals of Demetrius, made an attempt to wrest the city of Ptolemais from Tryphon, but was defeated and compelled to retire. After the victory the soldiers of Tryphon were marching along the shore, when they were overtaken by an enormous wave and drowned. The wave also deposited a quantity of fish, so that when the forces of Sarpedon returned, they found dead men and fish in mingled heaps. “The corpses of their enemies were a pleasant sight, and they carried away great abundance of fish. They sacrificed to Posidon Tropaios in the suburbs of the city”.