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

CHAPTER 22.

THE INTERVAL OF PEACE

The history of the Seleucid dynasty up to the battle of Magnesia has been one of almost continuous war. “At the return of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle”, says the record of the old Hebrew monarchy, and in the Seleucid kingdom too it had come to be the normal thing for the King to march out at the end of every winter and spend his summer in the field. For the first time this activity is suspended after the stunning fall given Antiochus III by the adversary with whom he had rashly closed. For fourteen years after Magnesia there is a lull. Then new commotions begin, and cease only with the ceasing of the dynasty. It is the negative quality of these fourteen years which makes them remarkable.

It has hitherto been misleading to speak of the Seleucid kingdom as “Syrian”. Till the time of Seleucus II Kallinikos, Asia Minor, as we saw, was the land where the kings were most at home, and although by the division in the family itself the court of the elder king, Seleucus II, was fixed east of the Taurus, the Seleucid house was always straining towards the west, and in the last years before Magnesia we saw Antiochus residing as much in Ephesus as in Antioch. But now Asia Minor was barred against the house of Seleucus for ever; the empire, which had almost been the empire of Alexander, was become the kingdom of Syria. Let us see in what environment this kingdom found itself, with what neighbours it would have to do.

But in the first place we should observe that although the long wars of Antiochus III ended in the collapse of Magnesia, they were not altogether without fruit. Two provinces, which at his accession were politically separate from Syria, he left united with it—Cilicia and Coele-Syria (Palestine). The realm had thus to some degree gained in compactness what it had lost in extent. It embraced the whole country of Aramaic speech.

Asia Minor had passed from Seleucid rule, but the Seleucid kingdom must still be affected by its fortunes and maintain close relations with the powers that ruled there. For some time after Magnesia no one knew what the outcome of the battle would be. The Seleucid power had been thrust back across the Taurus; but Rome did not immediately intimate what she intended to do with the vacated territory. The following winter (190-189) was one of a great diplomatic scramble From every part of Asia Minor envoys hastened to Rome. All the states interested were eager to put their particular views before the Senate.

After the Peace of Apamea (188) the ten commissioners who had fixed its conditions proceeded to make the great territorial settlement in Asia Minor, which lasted with slight modifications till the extinction of the Pergamene dynasty sixty years later. Rome took nothing for herself; she trusted to influence rather than direct sovereignty. The net result of her arrangements was to put Eumenes of Pergamos in the place of the Seleucid King; almost the whole of the Seleucid domain fell to him as King of Asia.

It was not quite the whole of the Seleucid domain which Eumenes got. In the first place, Caria south of the Meander and Lycia were made subject to the other great ally of Rome, to Rhodes; the seaport of Telmessus only, on the confines of Lycia and Caria, was made over to Eumenes. In the second place, the Romans, having come to Asia with such high professions of freeing the Greeks, were bound to do something to make them good. They could hardly take away from Eumenes the cities which were his, and to satisfy at once his claims as an ally and the claims of the cities as Greek states was not a simple matter. The Romans found a practical way out of the difficulty by deciding that all those cities which formed part of the inherited domain of Eumenes should continue tributary to the Pergamene king. To these were to be added those cities which had held by Antiochus till after the battle of Magnesia. This “enslavement” of them could be justified as a punishment, although in many cases it must probably have been known that the city had had little choice in the matter, shaping its policy under the eyes of a garrison. All those states which had renounced their allegiance to Antiochus before the battle of Magnesia were to be free. Even so the new realm of Eumenes included some of the most illustrious cities of Asia Minor—Sardis, the old capital; Ephesus, the great harbor and commercial centre; Magnesia under Sipylus, Tralles, and Telmessus. Pamphylia, which the Seleucid court maintained to lie on the southern side of the Taurus, was ultimately assigned by the Senate to Eumenes.

There are now then four kingdoms in Asia Minor with whom the Macedonian houses of Seleucus and Antigonus have to treat on a footing of equality—the kingdom with its capital at Pergamos, the kingdom of Bithynia, the kingdom of Pontic Cappadocia, and the kingdom of southern Cappadocia. Besides the territories ruled by these four kings there are the continental domain of Rhodes, the territories of the independent Greek cities, certain petty principalities, and the lands held by barbarian tribes, such as the Pisidians and Gauls.

These last still constituted a danger for civilization. It was the Gauls who had furnished Antiochus with the most formidable part of his armies. In the year following Magnesia (189) the consul Gnaeus Manlius had made an expedition into Pisidia and the Galatian country, and inflicted upon the Gauls defeats so severe and sanguinary as must keep them quiet for some time to come. This was part of the necessary work of pacification which the Romans must do before they left Asia Minor to their allies.

Farther east also, the battle of Magnesia introduced a new state of things. We have seen before how events at one end of the Empire reacted upon another. And such a blow destroyed the prestige upon which the supremacy of the Seleucid house in all outlying lands rested. Already at the time of the repulse of Antiochus from Greece a great fear, according to the Ptolemaic envoys in Rome, had run through Asia Minor and reached even to Syria. And now to all the whispering multitudes under him the King was disgraced. “A commander had caused the reproach he offered” to the strong people of the West “to cease; sevenfold had his reproach been required”. The Empire which Antiochus had spent his life in reforming instantly dissolved.

In Armenia at the time of the battle Artaxias or Artaxas was ruling over one part of the country and a certain Zariadris over another part. They ruled as the strategoi of Antiochus, and had evidently replaced the old Armenian dynasty, which had used the style of kings, and claimed, like the other royal houses of Iranian origin, to be descended from one of the Seven. Xerxes, to whom Antiochus had given his daughter in 212, had been afterwards assassinated at the instigation of the Seleucid court. The old line came to an end, according to Strabo, in an otherwise unknown Orontes. Kings were replaced by strategoi—a sign that Armenia had been brought into straiter subjection. Whether Artaxias and Zariadris were native Armenian chiefs or whether they had come in from elsewhere by the appointment of Antiochus, we do not know. Their names at any rate show them to have been Iranians by race or culture. Magnesia made them renounce the Seleucid supremacy. They declared themselves friends of Rome, and the strategoi in their turn became kings. Northern Armenia formed the kingdom of Artaxias, the southern region, called Sophene, that of Zariadris. Artaxias built a new city in the valley of the Araxes, calling it, after his own name, Artaxata, to be the capital of his realm. According to the general belief, the site had been chosen and the laying out of the city directed by the great Hannibal, who in his wanderings after the defeat of Antiochus had come as far as the court of the new Armenian king.

In Iran itself Magnesia probably at once undid the work of Antiochus twenty years before. About the same time that Antiochus was making his last stand in Asia Minor, the Parthian king upon whom he had imposed his suzerainty, Arsaces III, was succeeded by Arsaces IV Phriapatius. The change of ruler perhaps meant a fresh declaration of independence.

Antiochus, hurled back from Asia Minor, turned his thoughts once more to the field of his old glories, the East. It was thence he had drawn the riches and the renown which he had dissipated in the war with Rome. And now that his coffers were empty and his armies broken, was it impossible that from the East he might again renew his strength, as Antaeus did from repeated contact with the earth?

As soon as the peace with Rome had been finally concluded and sworn to (summer 188), Antiochus left Seleucus in Syria as joint-king and plunged into the East. The Mediterranean lands never saw him again. The tidings came back to Antioch that he had adventured himself with a body of troops in the Elymaean hills (mod, Luristan), where the temple of some native god promised great spoil of silver and gold, and had been overwhelmed by the fierce tribesmen. That was the generally received version of his end. “He shall turn his face toward the strongholds of his own land: but he shall stumble and fall, and shall not be found” (187).

Seleucus IV Philopator, who now reigned as sole king, was not without experience of affairs. He had borne an active part in the war with Rome. The rôle which he inherited could hardly be a dazzling one, but it might be not unhonorable— to preside over the slow recovery of the kingdom from the day of Magnesia. The most serious consequence of that defeat was the empty coffers. It was an evil which could only be cured by time; and that it might be cured, a period of rest and the avoidance of all complications was absolutely necessary. The inaction of Seleucus Philopator’s reign has led to his being regarded as a weak ruler; hardly justly, since an ambitious policy would have been madness just then.

Anxious eyes in Syria watched every turn in the politics of the Mediterranean states; the Seleucid court continued to catch all whispers from Asia Minor, from Macedonia, from the Greek republics. It was a time when the thoughts of men were agitated by a great transition. The paramount city of Italy had interfered with a strong hand in the eastern Mediterranean. Rome had come in as the ally of some states, as the enemy of others, as the champion of Hellenic autonomy, but not ostensibly as a conqueror. It had annexed no territory east of the Adriatic. But now in the lull after Magnesia men became aware of the real significance of the clash of arms that they had witnessed. The allies, as well as the enemies of Rome, began to feel the impalpable bands grip them faster than the acknowledged supremacy of Macedonian kings. And with the feeling a great revulsion swept through the Greek world, a nightmare agony to escape the thing that was closing upon them before all power of resistance was gone.

This feeling was common to both the allies and the enemies of Rome, but it was not enough to do away the old division. It was alloyed in the enemies of Rome by nothing but the fear of Rome’s vengeance; in the allies of Rome it was alloyed by the desire for Rome’s continued support. They could not refrain under the pressure of the moment from carrying their quarrels to the Senate and soliciting Rome’s word on their behalf, although by so doing they wound themselves deeper and deeper in the toils.

Certainly at no previous moment could any one who stood forward as an antagonist of Rome have counted on such general sympathy in the eastern Mediterranean. And before long the eyes of men began to turn to the king of Macedonia. Philip was filled with resentment at the inadequate reward he had got for his help against Antiochus, and it became known that he was preparing on a vast scale for another fight. He died in 179, but his plans and preparations were carried on by his illegitimate son, Perseus, who succeeded to the Macedonian throne.

In such a time no one found himself in a more delicate position than King Eumenes. There was too much shrewdness at the Pergamene court for the inconveniences and dangers of the Roman patronage to be ignored. He could not, of course, do without it; he must not suffer his staunchness as the main ally of Rome to be clouded; but he saw the importance of giving Rome as little opportunity as possible to interfere in Asia.

On this principle Eumenes seems to have made his ideal a state of family concord between the Asiatic kings. Magnesia left him in a somewhat chill isolation. He alone among the kings was the friend of Rome. No sooner, therefore, was the house of Seleucus reduced to a position in which it ceased to threaten him, than Eumenes was ready with the hand of friendship. The envoys of Antiochus who came to the Roman camp after Magnesia were astonished to discover that the Pergamene king had apparently blotted all trace of past soreness from his mind. But the great diplomatic success of Eumenes was in Cappadocia. Ariarathes IV, linked both by his mother and his wife to the Seleucid house, had not only sent his troops to fight with those of Antiochus at Magnesia, but had even in the following year supported the Galatians against Manlius. After the Roman victory he made his submission, and was amerced in 600 talents of silver. Now Eumenes saw his opportunity. He offered the Cappadocian king his friendship, and asked the hand of his daughter Stratonice. On condition that he complied, Eumenes undertook to use his influence to get the fine reduced. Ariarathes was probably glad enough to close with such terms. Eumenes married Stratonice. The fine was lowered to one-half of the original amount Ariarathes and the Cappadocian people were received among the friends of Rome.

But the pacific policy of Eumenes was frustrated in other quarters. It was indeed almost a hopeless task to keep in with Rome and with the enemies of Rome at the same time. In proportion as the feeling against Rome in the Greek world grew stronger, more odium attached to the Pergamene house, which had served the alien with such zeal.

Presently it appeared that in Asia Minor also there was a power which might form the nucleus of an anti-Roman group. Since Antiochus III had fetched his bride from northern (Pontic) Cappadocia in 222 we have heard nothing of that kingdom. Its history during the rest of the reign of Antiochus III is for us a blank. Mithridates II, who appears to have died about the time of the battle of Magnesia, after a reign of some sixty years, is not mentioned as taking any part in the broils of his son-in-law, the Great king. But those unrecorded sixty years may have been years of steady internal consolidation. In 183, five years after the Peace of Apamea, the Greek world was horrified by the news that Sinope had been suddenly attacked and seized by Pharnaces, the son and successor of Mithridates. This was rapidly followed by fresh conquests along the northern coasts, till even Heraclea felt itself insecure. Pharnaces was thought to cherish large designs of aggression. He had found an ally in Mithridates, the satrap of Lesser Armenia. Asia Minor was at once divided into two camps. Eumenes, Ariarathes, and even Prusias II of Bithynia—the allies of Rome— took up arms in defence of the status quo.

All these developments on either side of the Aegean had been watched by the Seleucid court. An incidental notice shows us that Seleucus IV, if debarred from active interference in the west, was at any rate concerned to maintain close diplomatic relations with the states of Greece. Polybius describes a meeting of the Achaean Assembly held in the year following Seleucus’ accession, at which his ambassadors presented themselves to renew the amity subsisting between the Achaeans and the Seleucid house, and to offer them a present of ten ships of war (in the year 187-186). The amity was renewed but the ships declined. It is only the deficiency of our records, no doubt, which prevents us from seeing similar embassies at work to sound their master’s name in the ear of the other Greek states.

There could be no question that the sympathies of the house of Seleucus were with the antagonists of Rome. And as the anti-Roman movement defined itself more and more in the years following Magnesia, it was not an impossible contingency that Seleucus might compromise his neutrality. When the war between Pharnaces and the other three kings broke out in Asia Minor (183-179), Seleucus seemed at one moment about to intervene on the anti-Roman side. He marched with a considerable force towards the passes of the Taurus, but his nerve failed before he had taken the decisive step. He suffered Pharnaces to go down unaided before Eumenes and his allies. It was about this time that Titus Flamininus came in the quality of ambassador to the Seleucid court, and we may connect his presence there with the abortive schemes of Seleucus.

The hopes of all in the Greek world who wished to be rid of the Roman incubus were fixed, as has just been said, upon Macedonia, and in Perseus, who succeeded his father Philip in 179, it may have seemed that the hour had brought the man. Macedonia had armed to the teeth, and Perseus worked unremittingly at amassing all the means of victory. There was, of course, no overt hostility to Rome, but everybody knew for what cause Perseus stood. It was therefore significant of the general temper in the eastern Mediterranean when Seleucus Philopator made haste, upon the accession of Perseus, to press upon him the hand of his daughter Laodice, and when the Rhodians escorted the new queen of Macedonia with a great display of their ships.

It was perhaps in consequence of the suspicions which were entertained of Seleucus in Rome that his brother Antiochus, who had been kept since 189 as a hostage, was exchanged before 175 for his son Demetrius. The name Demetrius, we may stop to notice, now appears for the first time alongside of Seleucus and Antiochus in the Seleucid family. It was, of course, a declaration of its consanguinity with the house of Antigonus through Stratonice, the daughter of the great Demetrius. The adoption of the name by the Seleucid house might have two objects. It might be intended as a mark of friendship to their cousin in Macedonia at an hour when the two houses must draw together against the foreigner; or it might be a notice to the world, when the reigning Antigonid king had only one legitimate son, that the kings who reigned in Antioch were the next heirs by blood.

Of the internal administration of Seleucus Philopator we know only that the necessities of the time made its first object the replenishing of the empty treasuries. The war indemnity paid by annual instalments to Rome was a continuous drain. The country had now to pay the bill for the grandiose enterprises of Antiochus III, and it was squeezed at a time when it had not even the imaginative compensation of seeing its king in the lustre of military glory. For the first time the inhabitants of Syria saw the Seleucid King sitting, year in, year out, at home. Such a king was not worth paying for, and yet he made them pay more heavily than they had ever paid before. “And there shall rise up in his (Antiochus III’s) place an exactor, who shall cause the royal dignity to pass away, and in a few days he shall be broken, but not in battle array or in war”.

The government appeared to be merely a vast machine for expressing money, and the working of it was in the hands of the chief minister Heliodorus the son of Aeschylus, a citizen of Antioch. An inscribed base declares that the statue once upon it was that of Heliodorus, put up in Delos by a mercantile association of Laodicea in gratitude for his benefits. This may show that the administration of Heliodorus was adroit in encouraging commerce; it may, of course, only mean that the merchants sought to win his favor by such honors. A Jewish work gives us a picture of him making a progress through the cities of Palestine, accompanied by his bodyguards. His great position tempted Heliodorus to aspire still higher. He formed a conspiracy against the King, and in 176-175 Seleucus Philopator was suddenly murdered in the quiet of his kingdom. With Seleucus the quiet also came to an end.