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CHAPTER XXII
THE STRUGGLE OF EGYPT AGAINST SYRIA AND MACEDONIA
I.
INTRODUCTION: THE FIRST SYRIAN WAR
THE period covered by this chapter exhibits the normal
grouping of the three great Powers as a state of hostility, often passing into
war, between Egypt on the one hand and Seleucid Asia and Macedonia on the
other, Egypt at first being most definitely the aggressor in both spheres; but
it is not certain that Macedonia and Asia were ever allies, except in the
Second Syrian War. Obscure as the details often are, the general tenor of
events is clear: the period opens with Egypt, supreme at sea, aiming at
something like the empire of the Aegean and its coasts; she ultimately secures
much of the Asiatic and Thracian seaboard, but loses the sea to Macedonia and
is finally herself threatened with invasion by the Seleucid. As regards
Macedonia, the Ptolemies believed that a strong Macedonia, dominating Greece,
would be a danger to their rule in the Aegean, and their policy was to stir up
trouble for Macedonia in Greece by posing as the champions of Greek freedom;
they never employed their own land-forces in these wars, but attacked Macedonia
by sea and by subsidizing her enemies in Greece. Asia, on the other hand, they
attacked by land or sea or both, as occasion served, but the principle, if any,
involved in these wars is obscure; though commonly called the Syrian Wars, they
were, prior to 221, fought rather for the control of the coast of Asia Minor
than because of the Syrian question.
It has been suggested that they were really wars for
the eastern trade; but this suggestion would require very definite
qualifications. Down to 221 the Ptolemies were not threatened in their
possession of Tyre, the head of the great Seleuceia-Damascus route from India
and the East, even if they fought for the Marsyas valley partly to strangle
Seleucid Damascus; while, in spite of their ephemeral success in 246, they
could not seriously hope to deprive the Seleucids of the alternative routes
from Seleuceia to northern Syria and Asia Minor, though the struggle in Ionia
was perhaps partly a fight for the head of these routes, which connected at
Apamea in Phrygia and reached the sea at Ephesus and Smyrna. Doubtless one
object of the Ptolemies was markets and revenues —the control, for instance, of
the wool trade of Miletus; but it looks as if these wars were primarily wars
for power, initiated by the dynastic ambition of Ptolemy II. The age considered
such wars legitimate; but they ultimately did harm to Egypt, and they helped to
prevent the consolidation of Seleucid rule in Asia, a rule which had many
meritorious aspects, and to bring about the set-back which the brilliant
civilization of the third century was ultimately to undergo. That century, in
fact, never secured the leisure to establish its civilization as firmly as it
might have done; the Hellenistic world had already fallen a victim to itself
before it fell a victim to Rome.
The coalition
treaty of 303 against Antigonus had assigned all Syria to Ptolemy I, but
Ptolemy had sent no troops to Ipsus, and in the
subsequent partition of Antigonus’ kingdom Syria had fallen to Seleucus; that
is, the victors treated the assignment to Ptolemy in 303 as conditional upon
his helping to fight Antigonus. But in 301 Ptolemy had occupied Syria south of
the Lebanon and of Damascus, including Palestine, together with Phoenicia south
of the Eleutherus1, except Tyre and Sidon, which he acquired in 286 from
Demetrius; and the Ptolemies apparently claimed that in 282 Seleucus, as the
price of Egypt’s neutrality in his war with Lysimachus, had confirmed their
title to Phoenicia and southern Syria, in which they included both Palestine
and Coele-Syria in the narrow sense, i.e. the Marsyas or Massyas valley with the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and
Damascus. It had been the policy of every strong Pharaoh thus to safeguard
Egypt by pushing out the frontier into Syria. The Seleucids on the other hand
continued to claim all Syria down to Egypt, including Phoenicia, under the
partition of 301. This was the Syrian question.
So long as Seleucus I and Ptolemy I both lived, there
was bond enough between them to prevent a conflict; and when after Seleucus’
death the first of the long series of wars broke out, it actually started, not
in Syria, but with the aggression of Ptolemy II in Asia Minor. Ptolemy I had in
309 acquired some places in Caria and Lycia, but had lost them again in 306.
Whether Egypt’s first permanent acquisitions in Lycia were made by Ptolemy I in
295 when he took Cyprus from Demetrius, or by Ptolemy II after 280, cannot be
said: but in 285 Ptolemy I took and retained Caunus in Caria, and Miletus at some time became his ‘ally,’ probably in 286, when he
secured Demetrius’ fleet there; but Miletus subsequently became Lysimachus’
again, perhaps on his daughter’s marriage to Ptolemy II, and on his death in
281 it passed to Seleucus, for his son Antiochus I became eponymous magistrate
in 280.
Down to 280, therefore, Egypt had not interfered with
Seleucid territory; for neither Lycia nor Caunus had
ever belonged to Seleucus. But once Seleucus was dead, Ptolemy II became
aggressive; he recognized Keraunos as king of Macedonia, which Antiochus
claimed, and by 278 he was in possession of Miletus—how, is unknown—and
restored to her a long-lost piece of territory which must have become King s
Land; clearly, if he took King’s Land from Antiochus, it meant war. Antiochus,
however, in 279 was in no position to resent anything which Ptolemy did; he was
still at war with Antigonus and the Northern League, and perhaps already faced
by the revolt in the Seleucis, the very home-land of
the Seleucids on the Orontes, where the rebels at some time apparently held
Apamea and all the elephants there; and though in 279 he made peace with
Antigonus, a peace in which fear of Ptolemy’s aggression may conceivably have
been a factor, in 278 Nicomedes brought the Gauls over to help the Northern
League, and Antiochus’ difficulties grew worse. Apparently he had made peace
with the Northern League before 276, for no more is heard or it, and Seleucid
policy was henceforth friendly to Pontus; but this peace made no difference to
the Gauls, who were completely out of Nicomedes’ control. Probably 277 was the
worst year of the Gallic terror in Asia Minor; but though Antiochus mastered
the revolt in the Seleucis that year, he was not able
to leave Syria till winter.
He and his eldest son Seleucus, whom he had made
co-regent in 280, wintered at Sardes, but he was not fated to deal with the
Gauls as yet; for in spring 276 Ptolemy’s troops invaded Coele-Syria and took
Damascus and the Marsyas valley. Antiochus, leaving Seleucus to guard Asia
Minor, recrossed the Taurus, defeated the invaders and drove them out, and
retook Damascus. Syria occupied him throughout 276, and he wintered there; but
it may have been in autumn 276 that his land forces in Asia Minor and his fleet
invested Miletus; he presumably had an open sea, for he could send his sister
Phila to Pella, and the powerful Egyptian fleet was doubtless supporting
Ptolemy’s Syrian campaign. It was probably in 275 that the Egyptian admiral
Callicrates of Samos, who had succeeded Philocles after 278, raised the naval
investment of Miletus; but the pressure by land was severe, and Ptolemy after
his defeat in Syria could only write to the Milesians exhorting them to stand
firm and saying that he would try to defend them; while in 276 and 275 the god
Apollo became Miletus’ eponymous magistrate, a regular sign of trouble. Whether
Antiochus failed to take Miletus, or took it and lost it again in Eumenes’ war,
is unknown. But about March 275 his troops from Babylon had reached Syria,
preceded a month earlier by twenty elephants which, during the Gallic terror of
277, when he had lost the elephants at Apamea, he had ordered the general of
the Bactrian satrapy to obtain from India; and when in April or May he crossed
the Taurus, he took these elephants with him. He counted on the fact that
elephants were deadly against men who had never met them before, and they
justified his confidence; though only sixteen were battle-worthy, he defeated
the Gauls in the so-called ‘elephant victory’ now seen to have been a
considerable and well-calculated success’ and by the end of 275 he seemed at
last, after an astounding display of energy, to have reached smooth water; it
was now that Ilium praised him for giving peace to the cities and restoring his
kingdom to an even more glorious condition than after Ptolemy’s defeat, and
honoured him, as did other cities, as Soter, the Saviour for his defeat of the
Gauls. Soter later became his cult-name; but the Gallic trouble was not ended,
though it perhaps changed its character. Antiochus, as he deserved, had won the
first round of the war. But where Ptolemy and the Gauls had failed, a woman was
to succeed. Ptolemy’s sister Arsinoe (II), widow of Lysimachus and Keraunos,
had not remained long at Samothrace; she had returned to Egypt, and was again
intriguing for power. The ultimate result was that Ptolemy repudiated his wife
Arsinoe (I) on the ground of conspiracy against him, and married his sister; he
adopted as his son her son by Lysimachus, Ptolemaeus, and she adopted his
eldest son by Arsinoe I, afterwards Ptolemy III. Ptolemaeus, driven out of
Macedonia by Antigonus in 276, was governing Miletus some time in 275;
Ptolemy’s reason for adopting him was doubtless that, as Lysimachus’ son, he
had hereditary claims in Ionia which Ptolemy could utilize, and probably
partisans. It is possible that Ptolemy’s marriage with Arsinoe was in 277, and
that it was her ambition which led to the invasion of Syria in 276; but it is
far more likely, from Ptolemaeus’ movements, that it took place late in 2761 or
early in 275, a date which would indicate the reason for this much-discussed
step, which had nothing to do with Egyptian custom. For, though the idea of the
marriage was doubtless Arsinoe’s, Ptolemy must have had some strong reason for
marrying his full sister, knowing how repugnant it must be at first to Greek
sentiment, and the reason may have been his defeat in 276; despite his ambition
and political ability—for he was a man of affairs and no mere dilettante—he did
not understand fighting and never led an army himself, and he needed her brain
and will-power to manage the war which he himself was losing, as he lost the
Second Syrian War when she was not there to help him. Certainly by the end of
275, perhaps earlier, Arsinoe had taken the war into her strong hands. She was
not merely queen, but co-ruler, with her head on the coinage; like her mother,
she wore the diadem; and opposition to her marriage not only died out as soon
as her ability made itself felt, but that marriage was presently glorified as
the counterpart on earth of the ‘sacred marriage’ of Zeus and his sister Hera
in heaven.
Antiochus was supposed to be intending to invade Egypt
in 274; and he secured as an ally Ptolemy’s half-brother Magas, governor of the
Cyrenaica, who married Antiochus’ daughter Apama and declared himself independent;
but whether he took the royal title is more than doubtful. In 274 Magas himself
started and, owing to a mutiny of Ptolemy’s Gauls, nearly reached Alexandria;
but the Libyan Marmaridae, doubtless subsidized by
Arsinoe, rose in his rear and compelled him to return, and the Gauls were
isolated on an island and destroyed; while later in the year Arsinoe ensured
Antigonus’ non-interference by subsidizing Pyrrhus against him. But Antiochus
never started to support Magas, if such were his intention; he was held fast in
Asia Minor, for Callicrates’ fleet, well-furnished with transports and
mercenaries, was sent to attack his key-province of Cilicia and compel him to
fight for his communications between Antioch and Sardes, while pirates were
hired to ravage all his coasts; perhaps the Gauls again harried his rear.
Perhaps at the same time some Arabs, whether instigated by Antiochus or not,
raided Egypt from the desert; for in Athyr (January)
273 Ptolemy and Arsinoe were at Heroopolis and he
took counsel with her for ‘the protection of Egypt against the foreign peoples
there; by 269 a protecting canal and also a wall had been constructed. Egypt in
274 made extensive conquests along the coast of Asia Minor, but it cannot be
said if it was in 273 or 272 that Antiochus had to make peace. He managed to
hold eastern Cilicia; but Ptolemy’s possessions at the peace embraced the
western half beyond the Calycadnus, where a
Philadelphia and an Arsinoe appear: the eastern coast of Pamphylia, with
Phaselis and perhaps Aspendus; most of Lycia south of
the Milyad, where Patara became another Arsinoe; and,
in Caria and Ionia, Caunus, Halicarnassus, Myndus,
Cnidus, and (probably) Miletus. In the Aegean, beside Samos, Thera and the
Cyclades, Ptolemy held Samothrace, which perhaps Arsinoe brought him as her
dower, and Itanus in Crete. In Syria he retained or
reconquered the Marsyas valley, and though Damascus remained Seleucid he
acquired Aradus and Marathus, making all Phoenicia
Egyptian. Magas again acknowledged his brother’s overlordship. It was a great
success for Egypt.
The years from 272 to 270, when on July 9th Arsinoe
died, were golden years for the Egyptian monarchy. Alexandria was fast growing
in material magnificence and intellectual achievement: Theocritus produced his
panegyric on Ptolemy as the greatest and wealthiest of kings, master of 13,333
cities; and Callimachus in his Hymn to Delos, perhaps written at
Arsinoe’s request for the Delian Ptolemaieia, prophesied that Ptolemy would
rule the world from the rising to the setting sun. The Island League set up a
statue of Callicrates, Viceroy of the sea like Philocles, and at Samos some one
honoured him jointly with the king and queen, an unique event for a subject.
But Arsinoe, ‘Lady of Abundance’ and ‘Lady of Victory,’ who had taught Egypt
how to use her fleet and had turned failure into triumph, was honoured, both in
life and after death, as few women have been. She had a throne-name like a
king; her statue stood among those of the Ptolemies before the Odeum at Athens,
and beside that of Ptolemy II (both dedicated by Callicrates) at Olympia. Many
streets in Alexandria, many cities round the Aegean, bore her name; legend gave
her a statue carved from Red Sea topaz, and planned for the Arsinoeion a magnetic room where an iron figure of her should float free in mid-air, like
an immortal. An immortal she became. In every native temple she stood beside
the immemorial gods of Egypt and shared the adoration of their worshippers; to
Greeks she was the goddess Philadelphos, lover of her
brother, like Hera, queen of heaven; among her cult-names were Hera’s own, and
her cult spread beyond Egypt throughout the island world. After death she
became Aphrodite and Isis; in the official worship of the dynasty she had her
own place and priestess apart; chapels rose to her in Alexandria and Delos, and
Callicrates built a temple at Zephyrion to her as
Aphrodite Zephyritis, celebrated by the poet
Poseidippus. But what the men who served her really thought about her was
perhaps best shown by the nesiarch Hermias, Ptolemy’s Resident in the Islands, who shortly
after her death founded at Delos the vase-festival Philadelpheia in honour of the gods of Delos and the new deities, Ptolemy II and Arsinoe;
while in the dedication on the vases Ptolemy’s name came last, Arsinoe’s came
first of all, taking precedence even of Apollo himself.
II.
THE CHREMONIDEAN WAR
The death of Pyrrhus in 272 greatly strengthened
Antigonus’ position; and it became clear that, if a strong Macedonia were
really a threat to Egypt, his progress must be checked. Arsinoe, however, aimed
higher than merely checking Antigonus; she had herself been queen of Macedonia,
and she wanted the Macedonian throne for her son Ptolemaeus, who as Lysimachus’
heir had a workable claim; possibly she dreamt of reconstituting for him
Lysimachus’ empire. Doubtless the combination which was now formed against Antigonus
was her doing, for her cult-name Chalkioikos suggests relations with Sparta; and though the attack was not launched till
after her death, it is expressly stated that Ptolemy was following her policy,
though one may believe that, had she lived, the war would have been fought
differently. The scheme actually adopted was to attack Antigonus by means of a
powerful Greek alliance, supported by Egypt. There was indeed a risk that
Ptolemaeus, once king of Macedonia, might adopt the Macedonian standpoint of
hostility to Egypt; and it was probably to meet this that Ptolemy, when war was
certain (267), made him joint-king with himself, in which capacity he was to
rule Lysimachus’ former possessions, including Macedonia, just as Antiochus I
when joint-king with Seleucus had ruled the far East. Though after 271
Antigonus’ friends again governed Athens, the Nationalists, who desired
complete independence of Macedonia, were still the strongest party in the city,
and it was easy for Egypt to gain their support; for, as Athens depended on
imported corn, and as there was practically no source of supply which was not
controlled by, or which could not be cut off by, either Macedonia or Egypt,
they could not attack Macedonia, as they longed to do, without being sure of
Egypt’s help. An Egyptian embassy visited Athens, and various philosophers,
including Zeno, were collected to meet them at dinner; that the talk was
vehemently anti-Macedonian is shown by one envoy asking Zeno, who sat silent,
what he should say about him to Ptolemy; Zeno replied ‘Tell him there is one
man in Athens who knows how to hold his tongue.’ By August 267 the
pro-Macedonian government was overthrown and the Nationalists came into power
and allied themselves with Egypt; their leaders were Glaucon son of Eteocles,
prominent in the revolution of 288; his younger brother Chremonides,
a pupil of Zeno’s and the mainspring of the cause; and Callippus, who had
commanded at Thermopylae against the Gauls. Egypt had secured the alliance of
Sparta, where Areus’ power and ambition had been increased by his share in
Pyrrhus’ overthrow, and Sparta brought with her Elis and Achaea; and Athens
sent an embassy, which included Glaucon and Callippus, to try to secure
Arcadia. In this they failed; but eastern Arcadia—Tegea, Mantinea, Orchomenus
and Caphyae—broke away from the Arcadian League and
joined Sparta; Phigalea also joined.
In September 2671 Chremonides moved the resolution
which was in effect the declaration of war. The preamble, after alluding to the
great deeds of Athens and Sparta together against the Persians, stated that the
same evil days had again come upon Greece at the hands of men (Antigonus is not
named) who were attempting to destroy the laws and the ancestral constitution
of each city, and that King Ptolemy, following the policy of his father and his
sister, was resolved to free Greece; it was then decreed that there should be
alliance between Athens and Sparta with her allies, so that all Greeks might be
of one mind together and might with good courage fight shoulder to shoulder
with King Ptolemy and each other against those who had wronged and broken faith
with their cities, and so save Hellas. It is a ringing document, which conceals
the fact that, in the event of success, Athens would merely have become a
dependency of Egypt. But the alliance was insufficient for its purpose; Boeotia
and Aetolia were neutrals friendly to Antigonus, while Argos and Megalopolis
adhered to him; and he held the Isthmus. Antigonus had not desired war, but he
had no option. In spring 266 he invaded Attica in force, while Areus came
northward with the Peloponnesian army. The Egyptian fleet, under its new
admiral, the Macedonian Patroclus, Callicrates' successor, who had been
Alexander-priest in 270, took station at a little island off Cape Sunium, long known as Patroclus' Camp, whence it could
command the Saronic Gulf; its advanced base was Poiessa in Ceos, renamed Arsinoe. Antigonus was too weak at
sea to interfere. Patroclus however had apparently no troops, and could only
worry Antigonus’ communications; but he told Areus that if he would attack
Antigonus he would land his crews and take him in rear. But Antigonus’ brother
Craterus, his general in Corinth, had fortified lines across the Isthmus, which
Areus could not pass; and Patroclus did not ferry Areus' army across and turn
Corinth, as Cassander had once done, probably because Antigonus controlled
every possible landing-place. Antigonus himself advanced through the Megarid to
meet Areus; but his Gauls mutinied, and though he destroyed them his operations
were paralysed, and in autumn both Areus and Patroclus went home. Areus returned
next year, 265, and Antigonus defeated and killed him in a hard battle outside
Corinth, in which probably Antigonus’ son Halcyoneus also fell; and the
Peloponnesian alliance broke up, Achaea seceding and Mantinea rejoining the
Arcadian League. What Patroclus was doing is unknown. Perhaps Ptolemy really
had small desire to destroy Antigonus for Ptolemaeus’ benefit; one can only
guess at the use to which Arsinoe would have put that powerful fleet, properly
supplemented with mercenaries, along the Macedonian coast. Patroclus took
Methana in the Argolid, which Egypt held for a
century, and renamed it Arsinoe; his only other recorded action is that, having
presumably captured Antigonus’ supplies, he sent him a present of fish and
figs, the food of the rich and the poor, which Antigonus told his Council meant
that they must get command of the sea or starve. The king did not forget.
Ptolemy’s bad management enabled Antigonus to deal
with his enemies piecemeal. Alexander of Epirus had been engaged after his
father’s death in a struggle with Mitylus of Illyria,
but had finally defeated him and had kept Pyrrhus’ Illyrian possessions;
fortunately for Antigonus, it was not till after Areus’ death, probably in 264, that he entered the war and overran part of Macedonia. Antigonus had to
quit Greece, but was apparently soon able to leave matters to his home defence
force, nominally commanded by Demetrius, his son by Phila, now thirteen, who
defeated Alexander and drove him out. By 263, if not earlier, the Egyptian
fleet was diverted to Asia Minor, and Athens was left to maintain the struggle
unaided, for the attempt of Areus’ son Acrotatus in
263 or 262 to recover Mantinea would hardly affect Antigonus, who was now able
to bring his strength to bear on Athens. One story remains of the end of the
city’s days as a leading Power; the aged poet Philemon, who could remember
Demosthenes and who died during the siege, saw in a dream nine maidens leaving
his house, and when he asked them whither they went the Muses replied that they
must not stay to witness the fall of Athens. The city held out to the
uttermost, but was starved into surrender by the end of 262; and in 261 Ptolemy
and Antigonus made a short lived peace. The consequences of this war to Greece
are dealt with in chapter 6.
III.
THE WAR OF EUMENES
What was passing in Asia during the Chremonidean war is most obscure, and it is not known if
Antiochus was trying to help Antigonus. As Apollo was eponymous magistrate at
Miletus from 266 to 263 there was evidently trouble; either Antiochus was
trying to retake the city, if it was Egyptian, or else Ptolemy did take it if
it was Seleucid. Internal difficulties had arisen in the Seleucid house, for
some time before April 266 Antiochus removed Seleucus from the co-regency and
replaced him by his second son Antiochus. In 263 Ptolemy found a new ally in
Eumenes, who that year succeeded his uncle Philetaerus as dynast of Pergamum, and marked his accession by founding, under Ptolemy’s
shield, the vase-festival Philetaireia at Delos.
Though Philetaerus had become in fact independent,
ruling the lower Caicus valley with Pergamum’s port
of Elaea, he had always maintained a proper attitude
towards Antiochus; he probably acknowledged him as suzerain, and put the head
of the deified Seleucus on his coins. But Eumenes—commonly called Eumenes I,
though he was never king—desired an acknowledged independence, and initiated
what was to be the regular policy of his house, opposition to the Seleucid and
alliance with Egypt, a state which Pergamum was in many respects to imitate. As
an enemy of the Seleucids, Pergamum was useful to Egypt; but perhaps an
economic reason for Ptolemy’s support may also be detected. Egypt, being a
great sea-power, needed much pitch; but the Syrian supply was seemingly small,
and the Hellenistic world was really furnished from Macedonia and from Mount
Ida in the Troad; the Idaean pitch-collectors had
their own traditional lore and method of preparation, which differed somewhat
from the Macedonian. It seems that Antigonus, by means of export licences and
probably duties, raised or lowered the price of Macedonian pitch to a city according
as that city was in Egypt’s sphere or his own; and Antigonus and Antiochus
between them could make Egypt pay heavily for pitch in peace, and perhaps cut
her off in war-time. It would therefore be a boon to Egypt if some friendly
state like Pergamum could obtain a share in the control of idaean pitch; and Eumenes’ foundation of Philetaireia under
Ida suggests that at some time he did manage to obtain such a share.
In 263 Eumenes entered the war, and Antiochus, some
time before April, restored Seleucus to his position as co-regent; before
December Seleucus was dead. A late tradition makes Antiochus execute him for
treason; coins exist which point to an attempt on his part to set up an
independent kingdom, probably in Babylonia. Whatever events lie behind the bare
facts, Antiochus must have been badly hampered in prosecuting the war.
Evidently by 263 Patroclus’ fleet had been diverted to Asia; and by 262 Egypt
was in possession, not only of Miletus, but of the coveted Ephesus, which was
also placed under Ptolemaeus’ governorship, and of the Carian coast between
Miletus and Halicarnassus; while Eumenes, having with Ptolemy’s help raised a
large army of mercenaries, defeated Antiochus in 262 near Sardes, established
his independence, and enlarged his principality, which by 261 embraced both
sides of the whole Caicus valley from source to sea,
with a long strip of coast, including Pitane and
Atarneus, and extended south-eastward almost to Thyateira. About now, too, the
Persian Ariarathes successfully established an independent kingdom in Seleucid
Cappadocia. Between October 262 and April 261 Antiochus died. A man of unknown
personality, overweighted by perpetual wars and disturbances in an unwieldy
empire, he had somehow managed to do much for the spread of Hellenism in Asia,
and as a founder of cities he was inferior to Alexander alone; how he found
time for all he did is a mystery. He was succeeded by his younger son as Antiochus
II.
IV.
THE SECOND SYRIAN WAR
Antiochus II began his reign as a ruler of energy; in
our untrustworthy literary sources he figures as a drunken sot, but a
contemporary inscription reveals a king who, drunkard or not, seemed genuinely
anxious to deal fairly by the Greek cities, and was ready to order his friends
to restore city land in their possession to its rightful owners. The peace of
261 was short-lived, and in the ensuing war Antiochus and Antigonus, who both
had a heavy score to settle with Ptolemy, certainly co-operated; but though it
was apparently waged on a great scale, how it started is unfortunately unknown.
This is the most obscure decade of an obscure time; a narrative cannot be
given, and one can only indicate various events and the result, the success of
the allies.
Though victorious in the Chremonidean war, Antigonus had not damaged Egypt herself; she was still secure in her
command of the sea and the mobility it gave. But Demetrius had once ruled the
seas; and Antigonus’ desire to recover his father’s domain had been sharpened
by Patroclus’ taunt. Naturally therefore he used the peace of 261 to create a
new fleet. Through his principal naval base, Corinth, he would learn from
Syracuse the details of the fleet Rome was building; but his own adventure was
more audacious than Rome’s. For at one period Ptolemy’s navy-list apparently
numbered over 300 warships, many so large that the average power of the whole
may have been that of a quinquereme, an average never attained by Demetrius or
Rome, and he controlled Phoenicia, which had supplied Demetrius’ best vessels;
even allowing for possible exaggerations, the odds were great, for analogy,
both of territorial resources and tradition, shows that Antigonus could not
hope to equip much over the equivalent of 100 to 120 quinqueremes.
But he had one advantage. Corinth, like Syracuse, had
always had her own traditional method of sea-fighting; while Athens and
Phoenicia had preferred speed and manoeuvring for the ram, they had believed in
grappling and boarding with heavier if slower vessels; and as Rome learnt from
Syracuse, so Antigonus must have learnt from Corinth. And once a Macedonian
fleet could board, the battle was over; no marines at Egypt’s disposal would
stand against Macedonians. That Antigonus relied on boarding is shown by his
famous flagship. All large warships were now cataphracts, i.e. the
ship’s sides were carried up to the deck over the rowers to protect them from
missiles; this ship probably had also an upper deck over the boarding troops,
with similar protection for them, just as Demetrius’ siege machines had
protected their crews. If it be correct that timber enough for some fifteen
quadriremes was built into her, and that her motive power nevertheless, in
relation to that of a quadrireme, only bore the ratio 9 : 4 (presumably nine
men to an oar), she may have been slow; Ptolemy, like Demetrius, had vessels of
far higher ratio. The story that before her battle parsley, the victor’s crown
at the Isthmian games, sprouted on her poop, and that after it Antigonus
changed her name to Isthmia, indicates that she was
built at Corinth and named Corinthia; she was in some sense the predecessor of
Hiero’s more extraordinary Syracosia.
In Asia the war
possibly began with Ptolemaeus’ revolt. He realized that with Egypt’s failure
against Antigonus his chances of the crown of Macedonia were over, whether
Ptolemy had at the peace formally abandoned his claim or not; but he thought
that Lysimachus’ son might still have prospects in Ionia, and in 260, at
Ephesus, he rose against Ptolemy. Antiochus welcomed the rising and sent him
some Thracian troops, and he was supported by his commander in Miletus, the
Aetolian Timarchus; that year Apollo again became eponymous magistrate of
Miletus, and Timarchus boldly captured Samos, one of Egypt’s naval bases,
naturally when the fleet was at sea. But Ptolemaeus could not maintain himself;
the Thracians murdered him, possibly in conjunction with a rising of Seleucid
partisans, and Antiochus recovered Ephesus (259). Timarchus then made himself
tyrant of Miletus and plundered the people, but Antiochus, who had brought up
his eastern troops, put him down early in 258; he recovered Miletus, where his
wife Laodice was honoured, and subsequently took Samos, drove Egypt out of
Ionia, and restored to the cities freedom and autonomy; the grateful citizens
named him ‘the god,’ a sign that his position as regards these his free allies
was now that of Alexander, and that his footing in them depended solely on his
divinity. Ptolemy’s ally Eumenes of Pergamum could not help him, as he had to
deal with a revolt of his kinsman Eumenes, which must belong to this war and
was possibly inspired by Antiochus; and at some period his mercenaries
mutinied. Antiochus subsequently expelled Egypt from Cilicia and Pamphylia,
recovering all that his father had lost in those provinces; but Lycia he did
not take, and seemingly Egypt held her possessions in Caria. However he took
Samothrace and various places in Thrace, and even threatened Byzantium; but
Heraclea reinforced the Byzantine ships with her powerful fleet, and Antiochus
let them alone. In Syria Antiochus took all Phoenicia north of Sidon, and gave Aradus freedom, to which Seleucus II subsequently added
very substantial privileges. In the Asiatic sphere, Antiochus had secured full
revenge for Ptolemy’s attack on his father.
In Greece one solitary fact is known: Antigonus
executed the Athenian historian Philochorus for
treason. There must therefore have been a rising at Athens; probably he now
exiled the remaining leaders of the war-party, as it never appears again. In
Africa however events gave him an opening. Magas of Cyrene died about 259,
leaving a daughter and heiress of fourteen, Berenice, whom on his death-bed he
betrothed to the future Ptolemy III. But though there was an Egyptian party in
Cyrene, the large Nationalist opposition, led by the young queen-mother,
Antiochus’ sister Apama, which desired independence, offered the throne to
Antigonus’ half-brother, Demetrius the Fair; as he too was a grandson of
Ptolemy I through his mother Ptolemais, it was hoped that the Egyptian party
would accept him. Demetrius came, and was made king; a possible interpretation
of the Cyrenaic League coins with the monogram dem,
combined with Eusebius’ statement that he founded a new kind of monarchy, is
that he formed the Cyrenaica into a federal League with himself head for life,
precisely the relationship of the Antigonids to Thessaly. Doubtless this
antagonized the Egyptian party, while he also alienated Berenice (though there
is nothing to show he was betrothed to her) by a love-affair with her mother,
who hoped again to be queen; finally he was assassinated with Berenice’s
privity, tradition says in 258, but probably some years later. Party strife
followed, and in or after 251 the Nationalists invited the famous ‘liberators,’ Ecdemus and Demophanes, who
‘preserved’ the country’s freedom, i.e. reorganized the League. But at
some time before Ptolemy III received his cult-name Euergetes he recovered the
Cyrenaica, Euhesperides at least having to be taken; Euhesperides was renamed Berenice, Teucheira Arsinoe, and Barce replaced by Ptolemais, and Ptolemaic hostility to the dead
League was exhibited by Ptolemaic regal issues being often over-struck upon
League coins.
But apparently the decisive event of the war took
place at sea. Antigonus and Antiochus had secured the alliance of Rhodes, who,
though normally Egypt’s friend, regarded Ptolemy’s continued aggression as a
menace to the balance of power; her fleet, though small, was the best in the
Aegean. Early in the war the Egyptian squadron covering Ephesus, commanded by
the Athenian exile Chremonides, was defeated by the Rhodian admiral Agathostratus, who then helped Antiochus to recover Ephesus
(259); and at some time the main fleets of Egypt and Macedonia, the latter
commanded by Antigonus in person on his flagship, met off Cos. Cos was fought
during the Isthmian games; and 258 seems more probable than 2562, for some of
Antiochus’ successes presuppose that Egypt was crippled at sea. Though heavily
outnumbered, Antigonus won a complete victory, which gave him command of the
sea and ended the chance of the Aegean becoming an Egyptian lake. In 255
Ptolemy made peace; a story remains that his ambassador Sostratus of Cnidus,,
architect of the Pharos lighthouse at Alexandria and of the hanging porticoes
at Cnidus, obtained better terms from Antigonus by an apt quotation from Homer.
Ptolemy ceded to Antigonus the Islands of the League, but kept Thera,
afterwards Egypt’s base in the Aegean—perhaps the concession made to Sostratus.
Antiochus doubtless secured his conquests by joining in the peace. Some have
supposed that he continued at war with Ptolemy till 252, but this seems
impossible; for had Antigonus deserted him in 255, their good relations must
have ended, whereas in 253 his sister Stratonice married Antigonus’ son
Demetrius.
Antigonus at
once emphasized before the world the recovery of his ancestral heritage, the
sea, by building the portico on Delos which bore his name; there too he set up
a monument which carried his pedigree sculptured in marble, fifteen statues of
his ancestors, while Delos set up a statue of his queen, Phila, and the Island
League one of Agathostratus. But most of the
commemorations of his success centre on his flagship, which before the battle
he had vowed to Apollo in the event of victory. He issued a new set of
tetradrachms, as after Lysimacheia, bearing on the obverse the head of the
Corinthian Poseidon, god of the Isthmia’s home port,
and on the reverse the Delian Apollo seated on her prow. The ship itself he
dedicated to Apollo on Delos—a thing as unique as had been Arsinoe’s honours in
her day—and probably housed it in the building, recently discovered, which
Ptolemy I had erected to house Demetrius’ flagship, thus using his vow to
release his father’s vessel from the servitude of its dedication by an enemy,
an act of filial piety which would accord with his character. But if a recent
theory be well-founded, he raised a finer monument than porticoes or coins; he
imitated Demetrius, who after Salamis had set up a statue of Victory standing
on a ship, by setting up, on what had been Arsinoe’s own island, one of the
world’s masterpieces, the winged Victory of Samothrace, who must have borne in
her upraised hand the Isthmian victor’s crown. Antigonus’ wars, once so real,
are to-day dreary and dead; but they may have left behind for us one thing
which cannot die, that glorious figure of the goddess with the sea-wind
sweeping through her draperies as she alights on the prow of his great galley.
V.
THE THIRD SYRIAN OR LAODICEAN WAR
In 253 Antigonus founded two vase-festivals at Delos,
the Antigoneia in connection with the dedication of his portico that year, and
the Stratoniceia, instituted on behalf of Stratonice,
to celebrate the marriage of his son Demetrius with Stratonice, Antiochus’
sister. He did not much longer enjoy his sea-command undisturbed; late in 253
or in 252 Ptolemy instigated or supported the revolt of Alexander of Corinth,
which deprived Antigonus of his naval bases in Greece, Corinth and Chalcis, and
probably of the squadrons there, and left him partially crippled. What happened
at sea is obscure. Possibly in 250 Antigonus still held Delos; and though
Ptolemy recovered the island in 249, when he founded the vase-festival called
the second Ptolemaieia, the Island League broke up about this time, which
suggests that Antigonus managed to retain certain islands, and that Ptolemy’s
success at sea was perhaps somewhat indeterminate.
In Asia, however, Ptolemy secured a diplomatic
triumph: about 253 he brought Antiochus over to his side. Antiochus had married
his cousin Laodice, daughter of Achaeus, a younger brother of Antiochus I; she
had borne him two sons and two daughters, but she was a masterful woman, and
Ptolemy succeeded in buying him outright for a younger wife and a large sum of
money; he was to marry Ptolemy’s daughter Berenice and receive a dowry which
became proverbial, with the understanding that the kingdom should go to Berenice’s
son. On Ptolemy’s part it was a master-stroke; but why Antiochus agreed is
incomprehensible. He sent Laodice and her children away to Ephesus; Berenice
came to Phoenicia by sea late in 253 and the marriage took place the next year;
she bore Antiochus a son, and by 250 it looked as if Egypt had more than
recovered by gold what she had lost by the sword.
But Ptolemy’s plans were spoilt by three deaths.
Alexander of Corinth died about 247, and by 246 Antigonus had recovered Corinth
and his ships. Antiochus, on the known evidence, may have died any time between
October 247 and April 246; but unless the expedition of Ptolemy III was not
till 245, which seems very unlikely, he must have been dead by the end of 247.
Ptolemy himself died in January 246, and his eldest son succeeded as Ptolemy
III; he married Berenice of Cyrene, and his later cult-title Euergetes, the
Benefactor, may refer to the union of the two countries. At Delos he founded on
his accession the vase-festival called the third Ptolemaieia, and the Delians
erected a statue to him; but he soon had to think of other matters.
As soon as Antiochus was dead a conflict broke out
between the rival queens. Laodice naturally fought for her son’s inheritance;
she was strong in Asia Minor, where her brother Alexander was general of the
Lydian satrapy, and her eldest son, now about nineteen, was there proclaimed
king as Seleucus II; but the story that Antiochus on his death-bed was
reconciled to her and named Seleucus as his successor, though possible, reads
like propaganda. Berenice had support in Antioch, where some generals favoured
her; some cities too believed her son to be the rightful heir, and her friends
naturally spread the time-honoured story that Laodice had poisoned Antiochus.
An Egyptian force from Syria or Cyprus came to her support, and took the
seaport of Seleuceia in Pieria, the garrison perhaps declaring for her; the
governor of Cyprus then entered Seleuceia with a squadron and himself went on
to Antioch, where he had a royal reception from generals, magistrates, and
people, and saw Berenice, to concert measures with her. Part of a report
remains written in his name and based on his official Journal; in it he
calls Berenice his ‘sister,’ and some believe that he was Ptolemy III himself.
Certainly a subordinate must have given the queen her title; but Ptolemy III
was not governing Cyprus, which moreover had always been a younger brother’s
province; most likely the writer was his brother Lysimachus. To isolate Laodice
and secure 1500 talents intended for her, Lysimachus sent the Egyptian force on
to Cilicia, where it captured Soli and the money; the general of the satrapy, Aribazus, was killed trying to reach Laodice, and
ultimately Egypt held the whole province. What happened meanwhile in Antioch is
obscure, but obviously the strength of Laodice’s party had been miscalculated;
Lysimachus’ account of his reception there reads like an apology after the
event, and his virtual banishment to Upper Egypt later may suggest a failure to
retain sufficient force in the capital. Laodice’s party rose, and somehow
Berenice and her son were murdered.
These events come down to spring 246, when Ptolemy III
started for Antioch with the land army and the African elephants his father had
trained, leaving his wife Berenice to dedicate a lock of her hair for his safe
return; the Alexandrian astronomer Conon had the good fortune to discover that
lock in the heavens, and as the constellation Coma Berenices it still
figures in our star-atlases. Ptolemy met with little resistance in Syria, for
both cities and officials were distracted between the rival factions, and none
knew who was the legitimate king. It seems probable that Berenice’s women
really did manage to conceal her death and her son’s till Ptolemy arrived, and
that he kept up the useful fiction; he was thus not a foreign invader, but the
champion and representative of the rightful heir. His own record of his
campaign claims that he conquered all Asia up to the borders of Bactria;
Egyptian scribes subsequently added Armenia, Thrace, and Macedonia, this last
being a very typical amplification of his later occupation of Abdera; by
Jerome’s time he had frankly conquered almost all Asia, thus fulfilling
Callimachus’ prophecy of Ptolemaic world-rule. What he undoubtedly did do was
to go to Seleuceia on the Tigris and receive the adhesion of the generals of
the eastern satrapies by sending them letters in Berenice’s name. He appointed
a general over the eastern satrapies, and went home again with his plunder; he
never crossed the Taurus. His own account supports the tradition that he was
recalled by a rising in the Delta; possibly, once his concealment of Berenice’s
death broke down, he found the excuse useful. His ‘conquests’ were probably
little but a parade through countries where his claim to represent the
legitimate ruler was not challenged ; but he must have left strong forces in
Cilicia and Syria.
The war that followed was early known as ‘Laodice’s
war’; she must at first have been the driving force, though the young Seleucus
soon showed himself competent. In 245 the tide turned; the deaths of Berenice
and her son were known, and the issue was clear to all: it was Seleucus or
Ptolemy. The Greek cities, grateful for the freedom given them by Antiochus II,
rallied to his son; Seleucus began to collect an army, and got a Greek fleet to
sea. A vivid picture remains of Smyrna, about 244, working heart and soul for
the king in complete freedom; she was almost more than an ally, for she had
power in Seleucus’ name to make promises entailing expenditure by his treasury.
He married his sister Laodice to Mithridates of Pontus, with a slice of Phrygia
as dower, and his sister Stratonice to Ariarathes of Cappadocia, and thus
secured these rulers as allies. In the spring of 244 he crossed the Taurus, and
the Egyptian rule, except along the coasts, collapsed as quickly as it had
arisen; he recovered the east, and most of Seleucid Syria, and his later
cult-name was Callinicus, the Victorious. An attempt to invade southern Syria
was however defeated, and he returned to Antioch; subsequently an Egyptian
force besieged Damascus, but he was able to relieve it. The end of the war saw
the old boundary in Syria itself reestablished, though Egypt kept Seleuceia in
Pieria and all Phoenicia.
At sea Seleucus was less successful, his fleet being
destroyed by a storm; but there the matter had for a moment passed into other
hands. The action of Antiochus II in joining Egypt in 253 had put an end to the
long co-operation, tacit or express, between Antigonid and Seleucid, and
nothing suggests that in 246-245 Antigonus was Seleucus’ ally; Seleucus would
have to guard his own coast if he could. But by 246 Antigonus had recovered
Corinth and his fleet, and the ‘Old Man’ saw his chance of repaying Egypt for
her support of Alexander of Corinth and of regaining Delos. Either in 246 or
spring 245 he appeared in the Aegean in force; off Andros he defeated the
Egyptian fleet, which was watching Corinth, and recovered Delos and many of the
Cyclades, though Egypt kept Thera. His joy at the recovery of Corinth now found
its complement in the two vase-festivals which in 245 he founded at Delos to
celebrate his victory; in one, the Paneia, the vases were dedicated to his
patron Pan, who had doubtless helped him at Andros as before at Lysimacheia;
the other, the Soteria or Festival of Deliverance, honoured the Saviour gods,
that is, all gods whatsoever who had aided him to victory. Probably Egypt never
actually made peace with him, for beside her alliance with the Achaean League
in 243 she subsidized Aratus for very many years; but as regards fighting
Andros was final; Egypt never again challenged Macedonia on the water, and the
Antigonids held the command of the sea till they allowed their fleet to decay
and left the Aegean without a master.
But Andros did not of course annihilate Egypt’s great
navy; and while Seleucus was recovering northern Syria, Egypt had used her sea
power to transfer the war to her old battle-ground, the coast of Asia Minor,
where circumstances were favourable to her. Ephesus was betrayed to her by the
Seleucid commander, Sophron; Miletus joined her as an ally; she took Samos
(before 243); an Egyptian governor is found in Priene. By 241 Egypt held
southern Ionia, where Lebedus was renamed Ptolemais;
but the north—Smyrna, Erythrae, Clazomenae, probably
Teos, with Magnesia on the Maeander and Colophon inland—remained Seleucid.
Eumenes secured a small extension of territory. Egypt retained her former
possessions in Caria and Lycia, where Telmessus suffered in some fighting, and probably regained some places in Pamphylia; she
lost eastern Cilicia again except Soli, Mallus, and
Seleuceia, but retained the western part. Northward of Ionia Ptolemy
considerably extended his power; Chios found safety under Aetolia’s shield, but
he took Lesbos (if it was not already Egyptian), Samothrace, possibly Abydos,
the Thracian Chersonese with Lysimacheia and Sestos, the Thracian coast with Aenus and Maronea, and Cypsela on
the Hebrus, where he executed the dynast Adaeus. At
some period, probably after Antigonus’ death, his general in Thrace, as the
coins show1, also occupied Abdera, which according to the treaty of 279 was
Macedonian, not Seleucid. In 241 Seleucus made peace. Ptolemy III now held a
stronger position along the eastern and northern coasts of the Aegean than
Ptolemy II had had in 272; against that, he had lost the command of the sea to
Macedonia and therewith (though he still held Methana) the possibility of
effective interference in Greece.
One thing this war really settled: the Far East was
definitely lost to the Seleucids. Antiochus II had had no son old enough to
govern in Babylonia, and neither he nor Seleucus II had time to attend to the
east. The great Bactrian-Sogdian satrapy had always been somewhat detached in
feeling, and under Diodotus, Antiochus’ general of the satrapy, it secured
independence, in the tradition about 250; the coins however prove that
Diodotus’ assumption of independent rule was a gradual process, and it is not certain
that he ever took the crown; his son Diodotus II was king some time before 227.
Ambition apart, Diodotus believed that resistance to the perpetual incursions
of nomads could be better organized from Bactra than from Antioch. About the
same time one Arsaces, chief of the Parnoi, a nomad
tribe, probably Iranian, invaded Parthia, killed the Seleucid general
Andragoras (probably not the Andragoras of the coins) and secured Astauene; after his death his brother Tiridates, who called
himself Arsaces II, conquered Hyrcania and Parthia (before 227) and established
the Parthian kingdom, whose rulers dated their Era at Babylon from 1 Nisan
(March—April) 247.
VI.
THE WAR OF THE BROTHERS: ATTALUS I
At some time during the struggle waged by Seleucus II
in Syria against Ptolemy he made over Asia Minor north of Taurus to his brother
Antiochus, nicknamed Hierax, the Hawk, not as co-regent, but as an independent
king, an extraordinary step which could only have been the result of sheer
necessity. Tradition says that Laodice exacted it as the price of help from the
troops in Asia Minor, but much of the tradition about Laodice is untrustworthy.
Obviously however there was some form of revolt, which helps to explain the
speed of Ptolemy’s conquests along the coast. But once peace with Ptolemy freed
his hands, Seleucus attempted to recover Asia Minor, where Ptolemy perhaps
supported Antiochus in order to weaken the Seleucid empire. It is not known
that Laodice took any part in this war, though she was alive in 236. Seleucus
successfully invaded Lydia, and detached several cities, including Smyrna, from
his brother, but could not take Sardes. Next year he attacked Mithridates, who
was aiding Antiochus, and Antiochus allied himself with the Gauls of Galatia
and came to Mithridates’ aid; near Ancyra a battle was fought between the
brothers in which Seleucus’ army was cut to pieces by the Gauls and he with
difficulty escaped over the Taurus. Antiochus strengthened himself by marrying
a daughter of Ziaelas of Bithynia, and some time
before 236 a peace was made between the brothers by which Seleucus abandoned
Asia Minor north of Taurus to Antiochus.
This war threw Asia Minor into confusion, and allowed
little independent dynasts to grow up, as Olympichus in Caria, the line of Moagetes in Cibyra,
and others; about Philomelium in Phrygia the
Macedonian family of Lysias was already established. It also encouraged the
Gauls to hope for the overthrow of settled rule. Whatever their virtues—bravery
in the men, chastity in the women, love of freedom in both—the Gauls were still
only destroyers, enemies of that civilization for which the Seleucid line
stood; and Antiochus’ alliance with them, a different thing from employing
Gallic mercenaries, was very like treason to the higher purposes of Hellenism.
Another ruler saw his chance of seizing the place vacated by the Seleucid
prince. Eumenes of Pergamum had died childless in 241, and had been succeeded
by his nephew Attalus, son of his brother Attalus and of the Seleucid Antiochis, Laodice’s sister; the ambitious Pergamenes were now allied to the older dynasty, and
Antiochus and the younger Attalus were first cousins. Attalus’ wife Apollonis, daughter of a plain citizen of Cyzicus, was a
notable woman; she took no part in politics, but became celebrated for her
goodness and virtues; like Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, her pride was in
her four sons, whom she had trained to such mutual harmony that the younger
ones could enter the presence of the eldest armed, apparently a rare phenomenon
outside the Antigonid house.
It seems that every state in Asia Minor, even the
Seleucids, had long been paying tribute to the Gauls to exempt their lands from
plunder; and some time before 230 Attalus issued his challenge for the vacant
position of champion of Hellenism in Asia Minor by refusing to pay the tribute.
The Gauls still maintained their original spheres of plunder, and the tribute
of Aeolis belonged to the Tolistoagii; this tribe at
once attacked Attalus, but were defeated by him on his frontier near the source
of the Caicus. They then applied for help to the Tectosages and to Antiochus; and Antiochus became the ally
and instrument of the Gauls in order to overthrow a hellenized state. The
allies penetrated as far as the temple of Aphrodite before the walls of
Pergamum, where Attalus completely defeated them, and after his victory took
the title of king. After their defeat the Gauls broke with Antiochus and
isolated him by killing his father-in-law Ziaelas,
whereon Attalus took a thorough revenge; he defeated Antiochus in three
battles, one in Hellespontine Phrygia, one in 229 at Koloe in Lydia, and one at Harpasus in Caria—that is, he
cleared the sea-provinces systematically from north to south; Ptolemy had
probably transferred his subsidies to him as being his hereditary friend and
likely in his turn to weaken Seleucus. By 228 Attalus had driven Antiochus
eastward and brought under his own rule all Seleucid Asia Minor north of the
Taurus. In commemorating his victories he emphasized the defeat of the Gauls
alone and treated his success as that of Hellas over barbarism; few kings have
advertised themselves better. At Athens, on the north wall of the Acropolis, he
set up four groups of statuary, two mythical and two historical; the battle of
Athenians and Amazons balanced that of Athenians and Persians, while the battle
of the gods with the Titans found its counterpart in that of Attalus with those
whom Callimachus called ‘late-born Titans,’ the Gauls; the implication that
Attalus (though never officially deified) was in truth a god on earth could not
well be missed. On his great monument of victory on the terrace of Athena’s
temple at Pergamum stood a wonderful series of representations in bronze of his
triumphs; the dying Gaul of the Capitol, immortalized by Byron as the ‘dying
Gladiator,’ and the group of the Gaul who has killed his wife and is stabbing
himself, are marble copies, probably contemporary, of single figures. This war
gave an impulse to a new school of realism in sculpture; but the artists of the
monument have caught, beneath the rugged rough-hewn exterior of the Gauls,
something of the pathos of the race of the losing battle.
It may have
been in 227 that Antigonus Doson of Macedonia invaded Caria. For fifty years
Macedonia had not interfered in Asia, and Doson’s expedition seems so strange that some believe it never took place at all. But
it stands in line with the Carian expeditions of Cassander and Philip V, and
the evidence for it seems sufficient; as Doson was extending his influence at
sea beyond that of Gonatas and Demetrius II, he may have been trying to draw a
cordon across the Aegean to keep Egypt away from Macedonia; apart from her aid
to Athens in 229 and her subsidies to Aratus, her occupation of Abdera, which
brought her unpleasantly close, was a direct challenge. Doson took some places
in Caria, and some Macedonians appear in the Miletus proxeny-lists,
but events in Greece soon recalled him, and his conquests were not held;
possibly he ceded them to Ptolemy in 223 to detach him from Cleomenes.
Attalus had had a free hand in 228, because Seleucus
was engaged in an attempt to recover Parthia from Arsaces II, which failed
owing to troubles in Syria. In 227 Antiochus, driven out of Asia Minor, made a
compact with his aunt Stratonice, the divorced wife of Demetrius II who was
living in Antioch, to overthrow Seleucus and seize the whole kingdom; possibly
he promised to marry her if successful. She raised a rebellion in Antioch,
while Antiochus invaded Mesopotamia and forced Seleucus to quit Parthia. Ultimately
Seleucus drove him out, recovered Antioch, and executed Stratonice; but he died
in summer 226 before he could deal with Attalus. Antiochus, now a mere
adventurer, had various wanderings and escapes, till some Gauls in Thrace ended
his useless life.
Seleucus was succeeded by his son Alexander as
Seleucus III Soter; he sent his younger brother Antiochus to govern Babylonia,
and his uncle Andromachus to recover Asia Minor from Attalus; Andromachus was
aided by the dynast Lysias, but Attalus was consistently victorious, captured
Andromachus and sent him to Egypt, and instituted a festival of victory (Nikephoria). Seleucus then crossed the Taurus himself; in
Phrygia he was assassinated (summer 223), but his popular general Epigenes got the army home safely. Andromachus’ son and
Seleucus’ cousin Achaeus, nominated by Seleucus to govern Asia Minor, at once
took control; he was an able man and some expected him to seize the crown, but
he proclaimed Antiochus king, punished the murderers, and returned to his province.
There he attacked Attalus, drove him back within the limits of Pergamum itself,
and by 220 had recovered the whole of Seleucid Asia Minor.
VII.
ANTIOCHUS III
In 221, two years after Antiochus’ accession,
Polybius’ history begins, and at last we enjoy a connected narrative. Antiochus
III, whatever his character in later life, displayed in his earlier years both
capacity and energy, with a fair measure of generosity and sense. His
contemporaries were to give him the Oriental title of Great King, occasionally
bestowed upon Antiochus I and Ptolemy III; by Polybius’ time he was ‘The
Great.’ But at his accession, though he had governed for his brother in
Babylonia, he was a comparatively inexperienced boy of eighteen, overshadowed
by the reputation of his cousin Achaeus and dominated by the imperious Carian Hermeias, whom Seleucus III had made minister ‘for
affairs’—that is, in effect, vizier. Antiochus entrusted Asia Minor to Achaeus,
for no other course was possible, and, as the east could be properly governed
only from Seleuceia, and no member of the royal house was available, he
delegated certain powers to Molon and his brother Alexander, generals
respectively of the Median and Persian satrapies; probably he revived the old
general command over the eastern satrapies, which Seleucus I had replaced by
government by the crown prince. A divided authority might seem less dangerous;
but in fact Alexander merely followed Molon’s lead.
But an ambitious governor who was not a Seleucid was
as dangerous as no governor at all, and within a year Molon, with Diodotus’
example before him, was in open revolt; should fortune be favourable,
Media-Persis could support an independent kingdom as well as Bactria-Sogdiana
or Parthia-Hyrcania, especially if it embraced Babylonia. A weak force sent
against him achieved nothing, and he occupied the wealthy district of Apolloniatis along the Tigris, assumed the diadem, and in
autumn 222 took winter quarters at Ctesiphon opposite Seleuceia, his main
objective. Antiochus’ Council next spring (221) was divided; the popular
general Epigenes urged him to attack Molon in person,
while Hermeias advocated that the king should invade
southern Syria and send a general against the rebel. Epigenes’
advice had ultimately to be taken; southern Syria and Palestine, though
valuable, could not compensate the loss of Babylonia. But though Polybius
represents Hermeias as self-seeking and all but
disloyal, there are hints of a background hidden from us; Egypt was probably
trying to win Achaeus, and possibly Hermeias and
Ptolemy’s minister Sosibius were engaged in a diplomatic duel, and Hermeias was afraid to let Antiochus quit Syria and leave
Egypt a free field. Hermeias had his way, and the
Achaean Xenoetas was sent against Molon, while
Antiochus, who in the winter had married Laodice, daughter of Mithridates of
Pontus, later in the year invaded the Marsyas valley. He was held up, however,
by the strong fortresses of Brochi and Gerrha, dominating the southern outlet of the valley, where
Ptolemy’s general Theodotus of Aetolia was in command.
Xenoetas was joined by some loyal governors, and crossed the Tigris to attack
Molon. Both commanders displayed a high degree of military incompetence, but
Molon recovered himself sufficiently to surprise and destroy Xenoetas’ army; following on his victory he took Seleuceia
and secured Babylonia and Chaldaea, though Diogenes
of Susiana successfully held Susa against him. He then conquered Parapotamia
as far north as Doura-Europus on the Euphrates, and was besieging Doura on the
Tigris in Mesopotamia when Antiochus appeared. Xenoetas’
defeat had made it inevitable that Antiochus must himself take command; he
abandoned the invasion of Syria and concentrated his army at Apamea. But he was
short of money, as no revenue was coming in either from Asia Minor or the east,
and some unpaid troops mutinied; and Hermeias seized the opportunity of offering to pay the men himself if his rival Epigenes were left behind. Antiochus had to agree, and Hermeias presently procured Epigenes’
murder; but the incident led to a revolt in Cyrrhestice, probably Epigenes’ own province, which lasted into 220.
In December Antiochus reached Antioch-Nisibis, and early in 220 he
crossed the Tigris, marched down the eastern bank, and raised the siege of
Doura. On the news that Antiochus had come in person Molon began to
experience trouble with his army; for his best troops, the
Graeco-Macedonian settlers, were loyal to the Seleucid house. He gave
battle as the less dangerous alternative; but the wing that faced Antiochus
went over when it saw him, and Molon and his brothers slew themselves to
avoid torture. It is regrettable that the Seleucids, who in many respects
deserved well of civilization, should have adopted oriental methods
of dealing with rebels, even though their subjects expected
them. Molon’s corpse was ostentatiously crucified; otherwise
Antiochus showed clemency, and when Hermeias began killing and torturing the leading men at Seleuceia he managed to stop the
savagery and reduced the fine imposed upon the city from 1000 talents
to 150. Having settled the satrapies, and rewarded Diogenes
with Media, Antiochus crossed the Zagros and compelled Artabazanes of Aderbaijan, possibly Molon’s ally, to acknowledge his
suzerainty—an extension of his power, since this dynasty had long been
independent. Antiochus’ friend and physician Apollo-phanes now took the risk of suggesting to him that he might govern better without Hermeias; and as Antiochus felt the same, Hermeias was carefully assassinated, whereon the women
of Apamea murdered his wife and family—a horrible incident, but not
without parallels in Greek history.
Late in 220 Antiochus returned to Syria; but his
absence had produced results in Asia Minor which rather justify Hermeias. Achaeus had seemingly been loyal, though
both Egypt and Molon had probably made overtures to him; but in 220 he
thought Antiochus might never return home, and he set out to join
the rebels in Cyrrhestice and seize Antioch and
the crown. But he too, like Molon, had miscalculated the feeling among his
men; he assumed the diadem at Laodicea in Phrygia, but when
the military colonists in his army guessed that they were
marching against Antiochus they mutinied, and he had to take refuge
in the expedient of attacking some Pisidian tribe instead.
Though Antiochus now knew he was disloyal, he also thought it safe to let
him alone; and in fact down to 217 Achaeus was fully employed in Asia Minor. A
strange position thus arose: Antiochus invaded Egypt in comparative
security with a powerful’ rebel in his rear because that rebel’s troops
would not march against him, thus enabling him to take (as yet) no
official notice of the fact that he had really lost Asia Minor.
Achaeus during this period conquered the Milyad, not previously Seleucid, and part of Pamphylia,
where Egypt had lost any hold she had; but he failed in an attempt on the
powerful semi-Greek city of Selge in Pisidia,
though Selge ultimately had to buy peace for 700
talents. He was also interested as Byzantium’s ally when Rhodes in 219 declared
war on her for levying tolls on merchantmen passing through the
Dardanelles in order to pay her tribute to the Gauls of Tylis, a war in
which Rhodes and her ally Prusias of Bithynia
compelled Byzantium to re-establish the freedom of the Straits. With
Achaeus thus occupied, Attalus, champion of Hellenism against the
Gauls, brought over from Europe a new tribe of Gauls, the Aigosages, and with their aid began to recover from
his disasters; he won over or took a number of cities, among them Cyme,
Myrina, Phocaea, Teos and Colophon, wrested some territory
from Achaeus’ generals, and by 217 was strong enough to be again
a threat to Achaeus. The Aigosages subsequently
ravaged the Dardanelles region on their own account, till Prusias destroyed them.
VIII.
THE FOURTH
SYRIAN WAR
The energy which had characterized the early years of
Ptolemy III had hardly been maintained. Some fanciful portraits have been
drawn of this king as the greatest of the Ptolemies; in fact, little is
known about him beyond the bombastic account of his Asiatic ‘conquests.’
Eratosthenes’ friendship may speak well for him; he remitted some taxes
during a famine; and after 241 Egypt enjoyed the blessing of twenty years
of peace, for he confined his military activities to subsidizing Aratus and
Cleomenes in Greece and probably Hierax and Attalus in Asia. But the
long peace, which depended on the difficulties of Egypt’s
rivals, revealed much weakness in his rule; for though he did a little
to foster those difficulties, he let Pamphylia slip from his
hands, endured Doson’s attack on Caria, and
abandoned Cleomenes as his father had abandoned Athens; Egypt maintained
her ancient repute as a ‘broken reed.’ Above all, the once powerful
land army was allowed to decay; and when in 221 he died—perhaps in
July, certainly by October—Egypt was no longer a military power.
He was succeeded by his eldest son, Ptolemy IV Philopator, whom Polybius represents as a worthless person,
given up to wine and women; but the picture needs qualification. Philopator was a lazy man; but his heavy face, like a
peasant’s, looks neither weak nor vicious. He neglected foreign affairs because
he thought he had nothing to fear from the two boys, Antiochus III and Philip
V, who now ruled in Syria and Macedonia; but if one smiles at his temple to
Homer and the plays he wrote, or at his monstrous warship, with a power-ratio
to that of a quinquereme as 40 : 5, which cannot have been of practical
use—though he showed taste in his house-boat, a superb villa mounted on a barge
for excursions on the Nile—his enthusiasm for the worship of his ancestor Dionysus
may stand on a very different footing. He must have learnt from his tutor
Eratosthenes that other races beside Greeks were of the human brotherhood; and
very possibly, deceived by the current identification of Dionysus’ name Sabazius with the Jewish Sabaoth, he thought of uniting
Jews and Greeks in Dionysus-worship as Ptolemy I had tried to unite Greeks and
Egyptians in the worship of Sarapis; and as Sarapis, being Osiris-Apis, could also be equated with
Dionysus, Philopator may have dreamt a dream, no
unworthy one, of a universal religion which, while promising immortality to its
initiates, should reconcile the three chief races in his composite empire. He
perhaps made certain approaches to the Egyptians; a cameo portrays him as
crown-prince with the attributes of Horus, and he was possibly crowned at
Memphis in Egyptian fashion; but if he really tried to introduce Dionysus into
Judaea, the Jews took a thorough revenge by blackening his memory. His later
years, when he was dominated by his new mistress Agathoclea and her brother Agathocles, doubtless exhibited much evil; but at first his
palace-life may have meant art and dreams of a world-religion rather than mere
debauchery. But he was undoubtedly a negligent ruler, and he left the
government to Sosibius of Alexandria. If Sosibius be the man for whom
Callimachus wrote the Victory of Sosibius, he had in youth been a famous
athlete; by 246 he was important enough to be honoured at Delos, and by 241 he
was perhaps finance minister (dioiketes). As a
criminal he takes high rank; to render Philopator’s throne secure he murdered that monarch’s mother Berenice, his uncle Lysimachus,
and his brother Magas; and after Cleomenes’ death he uselessly murdered the
wives and families of Cleomenes’ followers. But he was faithful to his master;
and when the crisis came his strength and courage served his country better
than the virtues of a weaker man might have done.
Philopator’s abdication of his duties naturally made Antiochus think that the time
had come to wrest southern Syria and Palestine from Egypt. In spring 219 he
attacked Seleuceia in Pieria; some officers there were accessible to bribery,
and the strong seaport was soon in his hands. Theodotus, who had held Brochi and Gerrha against him in
221, but who considered that a subsequent attempt made on his life by his
government was an inadequate reward for his services, was ready to join him;
and Antiochus, without waiting to secure the Marsyas valley, fought his way
across the hills to the coast, whereon Theodotus handed over to him Tyre and
Ptolemais (Acre), with forty warships, and entered his service. But south of Mt
Carmel Antiochus was held up by the fortress of Dora (Tantura),
supported by Ptolemy’s general in Syria, the Aetolian Nicolaus. Nicolaus
however was too weak to risk a battle, and had Antiochus masked the fortresses
in his path and marched on Pelusium Egypt lay at his feet; but he let himself
be deceived by a report skilfully spread by Sosibius that the Egyptian army was
holding Pelusium in strength, and agreed to a four months truce. He left
Theodotus to govern his new territory, returned to Seleuceia, sent his army
into winter quarters, and sat down to await the expected negotiations for the
surrender of Palestine.
There was no Egyptian army, but Sosibius, having
realized that, in spite of Achaeus, Antiochus meant business, intended to make
one; and he was ably seconded by Agathocles, whatever his subsequent misdeeds.
They brought from Greece the best mercenary leaders that money could procure,
men who had fought under Demetrius II and Doson and knew the Macedonian
tradition ; the settlers in Egypt were called up, mercenaries hired, and a vast
camp formed near Alexandria and kept as secret as possible; there the Greek
leaders worked hard at training their troops. But, even so, they were far short
of Antiochus’ numbers; and Sosibius, perhaps at Ptolemy’s instigation, took the
critical step of enlisting native Egyptians. No native had ever borne arms
since Gaza in 312; but there had once been a warrior class in Egypt, though
under the Saites it had been largely of Libyan
(Berber) descent. Sosibius however took any likely man without regard to class,
and enrolled 20,000 natives in the phalanx, who counted as Egyptians, though
some may perhaps have been of Berber blood. After much delay his envoys reached
Seleuceia; they discussed the Syrian question at great length, and, when that
gave out, the equally contentious question of the inclusion of Achaeus in the
peace; finally they discovered that they had no powers to settle anything.
Meanwhile the army drilled.
By spring 218 Antiochus had seen through the
negotiations, and recalled his troops. Sosibius reinforced Nicolaus, and
trusted that the fortresses would hold Antiochus for a time; every month gained
was valuable. Still Antiochus did not march on Egypt, but began methodically to
reduce southern Syria. Whether he was welcome there is uncertain. The rule of
the early Ptolemies in Palestine has sometimes been represented as a golden
age, and certainly Polybius says the common people favoured Egypt, but about
200 the aristocratic author of Ecclesiastes drew a very different picture: the
land was full of the tears of the oppressed, and the dead happier than the
living; Ptolemy’s spies were so ubiquitous that a bird of the air would carry
the matter. Whether this can be referred back to 218, or whether it really was
the result of Ptolemy subsequently trying to introduce Dionysus worship into
Palestine, may be doubtful; but probably there was in any case, as later, a
Seleucid party among the aristocracy, and seemingly Ptolemy had to quell a
rising after Raphia. Antiochus took the land route through Phoenicia,
accompanied by his fleet under his admiral Diognetus.
At the Plane-tree pass between Berytus and Sidon
Nicolaus met him, supported by the admiral Perigenes with an Egyptian squadron; after a hard fight by land and sea Antiochus
captured the pass. He did not wait to besiege Sidon, but struck inland from
Ptolemais; Philoteria on the Sea of Galilee and Scythopolis (Beisan) both
surrendered, which gave him Galilee, and he reduced the strong Gadara and other
cities beyond Jordan, while some Arab tribes joined him; but the impregnable
Philadelphia (Rabbath-Ammon) delayed him till he took it by cutting off the
water supply. He left a force to hold it and another to occupy Samaria, and
returned to Ptolemais to winter. Some Ptolemaic leaders had deserted to him,
including Ptolemaeus son of Thraseas, who with
Andromachus of Aspendus had been appointed to lead
the phalanx.
In 217 Antiochus advanced to the frontier town of
Raphia, south of Gaza. He had 62,000 foot, 6000 horse, and 102 Indian
elephants; some of his light-armed were inferior material, but his phalanx,
composed of European settlers, was 20,000 strong, and was supported by 10,000
picked men of every nationality armed as hypaspists.
The Egyptian army numbered 50,000 foot, 5000 horse, and 73 African elephants;
the phalanx comprised 5000 Greeks and 20,000 Egyptians, and there were 6000 hypaspists, of whom half were Libyans; Sosibius himself,
though not young, took Ptolemaeus’ place as phalanx-leader beside Andromachus.
Whether the Greeks formed separate battalions of the phalanx, or whether the
important ranks, the two front ones and the rearmost, were Greek and the rest
Egyptian, cannot be said. In this crisis of the State, Ptolemy, like many
another voluptuary, played the man; he took command, and his command was not to
be a nominal one. He was accompanied by his popular young sister Arsinoe,
subsequently his wife, who had dedicated a lock of her hair for victory and who
won her tragic crown in the battle. The Ptolemaic leaders were too confident
merely to hold the river line; they advanced through the desert to meet
Antiochus.
South of Raphia the two huge armies faced each other,
each having the phalanx in the centre, the other infantry on either wing, and
cavalry on the two flanks; Ptolemy, with Arsinoe beside him, commanded his left
wing, facing Antiochus, while before him forty African elephants were opposed
to sixty of Antiochus’ Indians; both kings had their hypaspists under their own command. Ptolemy offered battle, which after some delay
Antiochus accepted on June 22nd; and as he approached, Arsinoe rode along the
Egyptian front, exhorting the men to strike hard. Ptolemy’s right wing drove
Antiochus’ left off the field, but on his left his elephants gave way; the
Indian elephants fell on his hypaspists and broke the
line, and Antiochus, riding round from the flank, completed the rout of the
whole wing. Young and keen, Antiochus threw generalship to the winds and thought only of pursuit. But Ptolemy extricated himself from
his flying cavalry, rode to his centre, which, like Antiochus’, had not yet
been engaged, and put himself at its head; and the two great masses of heavy
infantry, with both flanks uncovered, met face to face to decide the day. Then
the long year’s drill told; Antiochus’ Graeco-Macedonian phalanx broke before
the shock of the Egyptians, better trained and unexpectedly fighting under
their king’s lead; and Antiochus got back in time to join the universal flight
to Raphia. Thence he hurried to Antioch, fearful of being caught between
Ptolemy and Achaeus. But Ptolemy used his victory with moderation—some said slackness;
he let Seleuceia go and only took back southern Syria, Palestine and Phoenicia,
and Sosibius went to Antioch to sign the treaty of peace. Andromachus was
rewarded with the Syrian governorship, and the army with 300,000 gold pieces.
Ptolemy himself, accompanied by Arsinoe, now his wife, campaigned in Syria and
Palestine for four months to complete their reduction, was overwhelmed with
honours in many cities, and then went back to his old life in the palace at
Alexandria.
Great personal triumph as was the victory for Sosibius
and his king, it had another side, its effect on the native population of
Egypt. To them it meant that, where Greeks had given way, they had stood; their
Greek rulers, unable to meet Antiochus alone, had called on them to save Egypt,
and they had saved her. Down to 217 the Graeco-Macedonians had governed an
inferior race; from the day of Raphia the Egyptian element begins to reassert
itself against the Greek. Native risings started the year after; and the
priests lost no time in issuing their challenge. They met in synod to decree
honours for Philopator, as they had once done for his
father, but, unlike Ptolemy III, Ptolemy IV no longer figured in their decree
as a Greek king; to his name was now attached, in a Greek document, the
orthodox list of titles drawn from the Egyptian religion which was proper to a
native Pharaoh
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