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

CHAPTER 32.

GOVERNMENT, COURT, AND ARMY

The kingdoms of Alexander and his successors show a mingling of several distinct traditions, which they did not succeed in altogether happily reconciling. We may distinguish three. (1) There was the Oriental tradition, the forms and conceptions which the new rulers of the East inherited from the “barbarian” Empires which went before them; (2) there was the Macedonian tradition; and (3) the Hellenic.

In the political constitution of the realm the Oriental tradition was predominant, for the kings were absolute despots. There was the same sort of government machine that there had always been since monarchy arose in the East, with the sovereign at the head of it and a hierarchy of officials who derived all their authority from him—satraps and district governors, secretaries, and overseers of taxes. Seleucus Nicator had publicly adopted the principle of despotism that the will of the King overrode every other sort of law. We have seen the Seleucid kings following in their practice the barbarian precedent—in the punishment of rebels (Molon and Achaeus).

But with all this, the successors of Alexander made a pride of distinguishing themselves from their barbarian predecessors—Pharaohs, Babylonians, and Persians. They would have the world remember that they were Macedonians. They avoided the use of titles which had an Oriental color. “King of kings”, for instance, no Seleucid is found to call himself. “Great King” was a title borne only when there was some special reason to emphasize the Oriental dominion, as in the case of Antiochus III and Antiochus Sidetes.

It is noteworthy that the inscription put up at Delos in honor of Antiochus III by the courtier Menippus, while giving him the title of Great King, qualifies it by describing him as “a Macedonian”.

Did anything of old Macedonian custom survive in the constitution of the Seleucid realm? In Macedonia, as we saw, before Alexander, while the King was supreme and apparently unfettered by any legal form, he was practically restrained both by the hereditary nobility and by the will of the people as expressed in the assemblies of the national army. The state of things was thus closely analogous to what we find among the Romans in the days of the kingdom. Do either of these forms of restraint appear in the Seleucid realm?

We certainly find a nobility, but it was not such a nobility as could restrict the King’s power. It was not a nobility of great families with a power resting on landed domains and local influence—such a nobility of barons as the old Macedonian kings, like the Persian kings and the kings of England, had to deal with : it was a nobility of court creation, the standing of whose members consisted in a personal relation to the King. We shall look more closely at it when we come to consider the court. In the train of the chiefs who made themselves kings after Alexander’s death there must have been many representatives of the old Macedonian aristocracy: they and their descendants after them may have been persons of influence at the new courts, but they had, of course, by being severed from their ancestral soil, lost any independent power as against the King, and must have soon been merged in the new nobility, consisting of those whom the King’s favor elevated. Such a family, we may divine, was that of Achaeus, of whom came the mother of Attains I and the queen of Seleucus II.

As in old Rome, so in the Macedonian kingdom under Philip the father of Alexander, the idea of people and army had coincided. The army acted as the Macedonian people assembled under arms. And during the career of Alexander we find it by no means passive : it judges the Macedonians accused of treason : its will, even when informally expressed, is a factor with which Alexander has to reckon.

The Roman popular assembly came into action especially at a transference of the royal power, for the election of a new king. So at Alexander’s death we find the Macedonian army electing Philip Arrhidaeus. In the first years of confused struggle we hear repeatedly of the army acting as a political body. The Regent Perdiccas brings a question before the “general assembly of the Macedonians”. Ptolemy is accused by Perdiccas before the Assembly and acquitted. After the death of Perdiccas, it is the Macedonian army which, on the proposition of Ptolemy, elects Pithon and Arrhidaeus to take his place. Then it passes sentence of death upon Eumenes and others of the adherents of Perdiccas. When Pithon and Arrhidaeus lay aside their power at Triparadisus, they do so before an Assembly, and “the Macedonians” choose Antipater as Regent. In the days that followed, the Macedonian army ceased to be a unity. It was broken up among the different chiefs. But we still find Antigonus following the old practice in 315 and assembling his Macedonian troops before Tyre to hear his accusation of Cassander and Vote him a public enemy.

Does the Seleucid realm show any trace of a similar assembly? Even if we had no reference to such a thing, we could not use the argument from silence, where our sources are so imperfect. But as a matter of fact, we have several references which seem to point to a survival of the practice, and just on the occasions we should expect from what has gone before—where a transference or delegation of the royal authority is in question. Seleucus I, having resolved to make his son Antiochus king of the eastern provinces, calls together the “army”, or, as Plutarch puts it, an “Assembly of all the people”, to give its approval. It is the army which calls Antiochus from Babylon to ascend the throne, on the murder of Seleucus III. The guardians of the child Antiochus V are said to have been given him “by the people”. Tryphon, when he would make himself king, to the exclusion of the Seleucid dynasty, solicits election at the hands of the “soldiery” or “the people”.

We see from all this that at important conjunctures an assembly of “the army” or the “people” was still called into action. But it is less clear of whom precisely the army in question consisted. The place of assembly can hardly have been anywhere but Antioch, the seat of government, but it is difficult to suppose that the Assembly which determined the government of the Empire was identical with the popular assembly, the demos, of the city Antioch. Although the military head-quarters were at Apamea, there must have been a camp near the King’s person at Antioch. And the soldiers who formed it consisted no doubt mainly of “Macedonians” i.e. the descendants (real or professed) of the Macedonians settled by Alexander, Antigonus, and Seleucus I in the East. On them, we may believe, the old customary rights of the Macedonian army devolved. There was apparently a large proportion of Antiochenes in the home-born army, and to that extent the people who voted in the civic assembly of Antioch as members of a Hellenic demos would also, we must suppose, take part in the imperial assembly of the Macedonian army. There was in this way a real popular element in the Seleucid realm. The Roman Empire also was a military despotism, but there was this difference, that the Roman troops who disposed of the imperial throne were largely barbarians from the outlying provinces or beyond, whilst the Seleucid army was mainly home-born. The attempt of the Cretan mercenaries under Demetrius II to get rid of the home-born army provoked, as we have seen, a national rebellion.

In the political frame Oriental despotism and Macedonian popular kingship were thus combined; the Hellenic tradition was opposed in principle to monarchy, and could therefore hardly find a place in the constitution. But it was seen in the policy and spirit of the administration. It was as Hellenic rulers that the kings created city-states in every quarter, and dealt tenderly with the popular forms, the “ancestral constitution” in the older Greek cities. There was, as has been said, a fundamental incompatibility between the desire to rule over Greeks and the desire to be a patron of Hellenism. But how far a Seleucid king could go in the latter direction we see in the case of Antiochus Epiphanes. Again, the intelligence and progressiveness which belonged to the intellectual part of Greek culture showed itself in the scientific exploration of the realm, the attempt to open new ways, which marked Seleucid rule, when it got a little respite from the sequence of war on war. But being above all things fighters, the Seleucid kings had less scope to show their Hellenic quality than Ptolemies and Attalids. As benefactors of the states of Greece they had, before Antiochus Epiphanes, been behind their rivals. The Macedonian in them seems to the end to predominate over the Hellene.

The régime of the palace we should probably at first sight pronounce to be Oriental There was the army of chamberlains and cooks and eunuchs. There was the display of crimson and gold, the soft raiment, the stringed instruments, the odours of myrrh, aloes, and cassia. But here again we shall see the Macedonian and the Hellenic tradition taking effect.

As we cast round our eyes, we should have observed that while material and colour were of an Oriental splendor, the form was Greek. By the fashion of column and doorway, the painted walls, the shape of candelabrum and cup, the dresses of men and women, we should have known ourselves in a Greek house. The King wore as the symbol of his royalty a band tied about his head. This use of the diadem was Oriental. But here again the form was Greek. The diadem of the Oriental kings was an elaborate head-dress; the diadem of the Greek kings was such as was common in Greece, as a sign, not of royalty, but of victory in the games—a narrow linen band. The royal dress was the old national dress of the Macedonians glorified. That had not been like the garb worn by Greek citizens in the city, but such as was worn for hunting and riding, and was therefore characteristic of the Northern Greeks and Macedonians, who lived an open country life. It consisted of a broad-brimmed hat, a shawl or mantle brooched at the throat or shoulder and falling on either side to about the knees in '”wings” (the chlamys), and high-laced boots with thick soles. Of these three parts — the hat, the chlamys, and the high boots—the royal dress of a Ptolemy or a Seleucid king was to the end composed. But it was gorgeously transfigured. The peculiar Macedonian hat, the kausia, had apparently no crown; it was a large felt disc attached to the head, and suggested a mushroom to the Athenian mocker. As worn by the kings, it was dyed crimson with the precious juice won by immense labor from the sea, and the diadem was in some way tied round it, or under it, its ends hanging loose about the neck. The diadem itself was inwrought with golden thread. The chlamys was no less splendid. That made for Demetrius Poliorcetes, when King in Macedonia, is described to us. It was of the darkness of the night-sky, covered with golden stars — all the constellations and signs of the Zodiac. The boots of the same king were of crimson felt, embroidered with gold.

We are told of Alexander that he wore on occasion the peculiar insignia of this or that deity, sometimes the horns and Egyptian shoes of Ammon, sometimes the bow and quiver of Artemis, or again the garb of Hermes, which, being that of a young man on travel, was not unlike the Macedonian dress—a crimson chlamys, an under robe striped with white such as, according to Persian custom, none but the King might wear, and a kausia with the diadem—only on giving audience in state the more distinctive emblems of Hermes, winged sandals and caduceus, were also assumed; or at other times Alexander appeared as Heracles, with the club and lion-skin. This statement is generally discredited as the gossip of a later generation, and unworthy of Alexander; but even if not true of Alexander, it points perhaps to a practice of impersonating deities at the courts of the successors. We hear of Themison, the favorite of Antiochus II, masquerading as Heracles, and the last Cleopatra of Egypt as Aphrodite or as Isis. In other cases, therefore, the royal dress was possibly modeled on the conventional garb of some god, and such emblems as horns and wings, which appear on the heads in coins, may have been actually worn. If so, the unfortunate suggestion of the theatre, which the Greeks found even in the gorgeous chlamys and high-boots of the kings, must have been doubly accentuated.

The special emblem of the Seleucid house was the anchor, which appears on many of their coins. Various stories were current in later times to explain it—that Laodicea, the mother of Seleucus, dreamed she had conceived of Apollo, and that the god had given her a signet with the device of an anchor, and just such a ring she actually found next day, which her son always wore; that his mother had given him the ring because she had been told in a dream that in whatever place it was lost, there he should be King; that when Seleucus was in Babylon he stumbled over a stone; the stone was raised and an anchor was found underneath, signifying that he was come to remain. As the anchor is already found on the coins which Seleucus strikes as satrap of Babylon (before 306), it was obviously a device belonging to his family before he had risen to empire. In that case its origin goes back into obscurity, and while the later stories are rejected, we are not likely to gain any result by guessing in the dark. The belief is note-worthy that all the descendants of Seleucus were born with the anchor marked upon their thigh.

The language of the court and government was, of course, Greek. That a Seleucid king knew the language of any of his native subjects—Aramaic or Phoenician or Persian—is highly improbable; it was thought a wonder in the last Cleopatra that she could speak Egyptian. How far Macedonian survived we do not know; it seems to have been thought the proper thing for a Ptolemy or a Seleucid to keep up the speech of his fathers, but some of them, we are told, omitted to do so. The intellectual atmosphere of the court was Greek; its degree would depend upon the individual king. In literary brilliance the Seleucid court did not compete with the Ptolemaic or the Pergamene; but a goodly number of Greek men of letters, philosophers and artists must always have been found at the King’s table. Aratus of Soli lived for a time at the court of Antiochus I and made an edition of the Odyssey on the King’s order. The poet Euphorion was made by Antiochus III librarian of the public library in Antioch, and ended his days in Syria. Antiochus IV was, of course, exceptional in his Hellenic enthusiasm, and made Antioch for the moment the chief center of artistic activity in the Greek world. A recently deciphered papyrus from Herculaneum throws a curious light upon the relations of this King with philosophers. The papyrus is a life of the Epicurean philosopher Philonides. Antiochus Epiphanes did not regard that school with favor, and Philonides went to the Syrian court with a large body of literary men to convert him. After Antiochus had been plied with a battery of no less than one hundred and twenty-five tracts he succumbed. He embraced the Epicurean doctrine and made admirable progress as a disciple. Later on Demetrius Soter treated Philonides with great consideration; he insisted on having the philosopher continually with him, that they might discuss and read together. Hence Philonides acquired great influence, which he did not use, his biographer throws in, reflecting on what other philosophers did under such circumstances, to be given a voice in the Council or a place in embassies and such like, but for helping the necessities of Greek cities like Laodicea-on-the-sea. Even Alexander Balas dabbled in philosophy and professed himself a Stoic. That Seleucid kings retained contact with Hellenic culture almost to the end of the dynasty we may infer from the places where some of the later kings were brought up—Antiochus Grypos at Athens, Antiochus IX at Cyzicus. Antiochus Grypos was even, as we saw, himself an author.

The letter of a King Antiochus cited by Athenaeus shows a very different attitude to philosophers. The official to whom it is addressed, Phanias, is instructed to suffer no philosopher to be in “the city” or its territory, as they did the young men such harm. The philosophers are to be all banished, all young men caught dealing with them to be hanged, and their fathers subjected to strict inquisition. Radermacher, who has discussed this odd document, shows that its Greek is of a popular kind, and he suggests that it is a Jewish forgery intended to discredit the Seleucid kings. That any Seleucid king wished to drive all philosophers out of the kingdom, as Athenaeus understands the letter, is certainly incredible. But it does not seem to me impossible that they might have been banished from a particular city, even from Antioch, if they were supposed to be instilling a dangerous republicanism. We must remind ourselves once more that there was a radical inconsistency in the position of a Seleucid king as a patron and defender of Hellenism and as a lord over Greek city-states. Which aspect was prominent depended on the circumstances of the moment, and during the last tumultuous years of the dynasty we see a strong movement towards independence in the Greek cities of Syria and Cilicia. And it was just these last kings, sunk to be almost captains of bandits, who might be expected to show as poor a Hellenism in their literary style as in their coins. The letter therefore seems to me a possibly one from an Antiochus of the generation of Philadelphus or Asiaticus. But that the hypothesis of Radermacher is equally possible I should not attempt to deny.

The ceremonial of the court I should judge to be much freer than in the Iranian kingdoms. There is, for instance, no record of any Seleucid attempting to introduce the Oriental practice of prostration, as Alexander had done. No doubt the main recreations were hunting and feasting, both of which had taken a large place in old Macedonian, as in old Persian, life. We have indications that the ancestral passion for hunting did not die out in the Seleucid and Ptolemiac houses. Demetrius I, we saw, Polybius knew as a keen sportsman, and even in the last degeneracy of the house Antiochus Oyzicenus was noted for his daring and skill in the field. The same thing is told us of Ptolemy V Epiphanes.

In the royal banquets the splendor and abundance of gold and silver plate, the profusion of choice wines, seemed to show Oriental luxury;  but at no time more than in his convivial hours was the difference between the Macedonian King and the Oriental Great King thrown into prominence. The seclusion and unapproachableness of the Oriental monarch were among his essential characteristics. On the other hand, even Alexander, for all his assumption of the Great King, maintained to the end the old Macedonian way of good-fellowship and familiarity over the wine-cup. The abandonment of all dignity at such hours which the Macedonian King permitted himself was an offence even to the more correct Greeks, and the stories told us of Antiochus Epiphanes are to some extent explained by Macedonian manners. For we hear that at the court of his father, Antiochus the Great King, the armed dance was gone through at dinner not only by the King's Friends, but by the King himself. And it is noteworthy that for the chief to dance a war dance after a feast is a custom shown us by Xenophon among the neighbors of the Macedonians, the Thracians.

When we turn to the Seleucid queens we see a curious mingling of all three traditions. The Hellenic is traced in the fact that the Seleucids and Ptolemies were so far monogamous that they had at one time only one legitimate or official wife. For the old Macedonian kings, like the Oriental, were polygamous;  and they were followed in this respect by Alexander, who was more inclined than his successors to preserve the fashion of Oriental courts. The monogamy was official only, for the kings kept mistresses at their pleasure, some of whom, like the mistress of Antiochus Epiphanes, might be openly invested with power. On the other hand, in the choice of their wives Ptolemies and perhaps Seleucids followed the Oriental practice in a way which outraged Greek morality by marrying their sisters. The practice had been allowable in Egypt, and among the ancient Persians was not only allowable, but especially pleasing to God. It must be admitted that there is no certain instance of the marriage of full brother and sister among the Seleucids; that of Antiochus, the eldest son of Antiochus III and Laodicea, is probably such, but Laodicea may have been only his half-sister, as Laodicea, the mother of Seleucus II, was of Antiochus II.

It was in the character and action of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic queens that the Macedonian blood and tradition showed itself. Both dynasties exhibit a series of strong- willed, masculine, unscrupulous women of the same type as those who fought and intrigued for power in the old Macedonian kingdom. The last Cleopatra of Egypt is the best known to us, but she was only a type of her class. There was no relegation of queens and princesses to the obscurity of a harem. They mingled in the political game as openly as the men. It was in the political sphere, rather than in that of sensual indulgence, that their passions lay and their crimes found a motive. Sometimes they went at the head of armies. We have seen one of them drive, spear in hand, through the streets of Antioch to do vengeance on her enemies. It is only in the intensity and recklessness with which they pursue their ends that we see any trace of womanhood left in them.

The King was surrounded by the nobility of the court, who bore the title of Friends. To their body the great officials of the kingdom, the ministers of the different departments, the higher officers of the army belonged. They furnished a Council, which regularly assisted the King with its advice on matters of state. The Friends were distinguished by the wearing of crimson, just as the nobility of the Achaemenian kingdom had been, and similar names were current among the Greeks to describe them. This is explained by the custom, both among the Persians and among the Macedonians, for the kings to make presents of costly dresses to their friends; according to Xenophon, no one at the Persian court might wear such dresses and golden ornaments except those who had received them as a gift from the King. We have an indication that the same rule held good in the Seleucid kingdom. In modern Persia the giving of a rich dress is an ordinary mark of the Shah’s favor.

Within the body of Friends we find a variety of grades. So far as the few notices relating to the Seleucid court take ns, they show a close analogy to the system revealed by the papyri at the Ptolemaic court in the second century B.C., and Strack, in his article on the Ptolemaic titles, advances the theory that the system was borrowed under Ptolemy V Epiphanes from the court of his great father-in-law, Antiochus III. The order of these classes is not clearly fixed by existing data ; it is certain that the highest was that of the Kinsmen. In writing to a Kinsman the King addresses him as “brother” or “father”. Next to the order of Kinsmen came, in Egypt, a set of people to which we cannot yet prove a parallel at the Seleucid court, nor have yet been discovered in a Seleucid document.

It is important to observe, as Strack points out, that these titles did not carry office with them, although they were, of course, regularly conferred upon those who held high positions in the government or army or court. Their nearest analogy in our world is the honorary orders of European courts.

Just as the Friends as a whole were distinguished by the crimson of their apparel, so it would seem that there was a graduated scale of splendor for the different grades. We hear of the golden brooch which it was customary to give to the King’s Kinsmen— some badge which makes the analogy with our orders still closer.

Admission to the class of Friends depended entirely upon the King’s will; the standing of the nobleman was not anything he possessed in himself or could transmit to his heirs; it consisted in a personal relation to the King. It ceased when the diadem passed to a stranger. No qualification, except to have pleased the King’s fancy, was necessary in order to be classed with the Friends. Any one of the crowd of parasites whom the chances of lucre or honor drew to the royal courts might be invested with the rank, whether his native place was within the King’s dominions or beyond, whether he was Greek or barbarian.

Of the great officers of state the highest is he who his position corresponds to that of a grand vizir in a Mohammedan kingdom. When the King is a minor, he is at the head of the administration, and combines with the office of prime minister that of regent or guardian. He probably in most cases, if not all, held the rank of Kinsman.

We hear also  “Secretary of State”. Dionysius, who holds the position under Antiochus IV, is able to put a thousand slaves into the procession at Daphne, each carrying a piece of silver plate of one thousand drachmae or over. Bithys, the Secretary of State of Antiochus Grypos, puts up a statue of that king at Delos, on the basis of which he gives his title of Kinsman.

Another of the principal offices was that of minister of finance, which Antiochus Epiphanes gave to his favourite Heraclides.

Of the functionaries of the court we get a notion from a Delian inscription in honor of Craterus the eunuch. He combines the offices of chief physician and “lord of the Queen’s bedchamber”; his rank is that of the First Friends. Two of the men who were connected as court physicians with the house of Seleucus left their mark in the history of Greek medicine, Erasistratus, the physician of Seleucus I, and Apollophanes of Seleucia, whom we saw at the court of Antiochus III.

A custom found in Persia of bringing up children of nobles at the palace together with the children of the royal house seems to have been followed both in old Macedonia and in the courts of the Successors. One gathers this from the frequency with which persons of high station are described as “foster-brothers” of the King. Under the Seleucids we have Philip, the foster-brother of Antiochus III, Heliodorus of Seleucus IV, Philip of Antiochus IV, Apollonius of Demetrius I.

From the sons of nobles grown old enough to bear arms a corps of attendants on the King was formed with the name of “Children of the King”. They figure more than once in the wars of Alexander, and we saw that Seleucus I was perhaps at one time their commander. The institution continued at the later Macedonian courts. And it still apparently served the purpose for which it was intended, that of a “seminarium ducum praefectorumque”. Myiscus, who commanded a division of the elephants at Raphia, is mentioned as having been promoted from the corps of the Children. They appear as a body, six hundred strong, in the pomp of Daphne.

We come now to consider the army of the Seleucid kingdom. As is implied in the nature of a military despotism, its part was a very important one. Its will might make and unmake kings. Its disposition is given a significant place in the factors which enable Antiochus I to surmount the difficulties which confront him on his father’s murder. Military service was one of the chief ways by which men could rise to power and greatness.

The nucleus of the army was the phalanx, recruited from the “Macedonians” of Syria. It was a standing body. All the troops of this kind are spoken of together as “the phalanx”. The name of “foot-companions”, which had been in use in the army of Philip, the father of Alexander, was still current to describe the Syro-Macedonian pikemen.

The phalanx was armed with the huge pike or sarissa, twenty-one feet long, and the men of the phalanx were known indifferently as phalangitai or sarissophoroi. They also wore swords, and were protected by a helmet, greaves, and a shield. The last must have been held by au arm-ring, since both hands were required for grasping the sarissa. When drawn up for battle the phalanx stood in a solid mass of sixteen ranks. The first five ranks stood with their sarissas at “the charge”, making the front a bristling hedge of steel.

At Raphia the numbers of the phalanx were 20,000; at Magnesia only 16,000. If this figure is right, the diminution may be accounted for partly by the enormous loss suffered the year before in Greece, partly by the heavier drain on the royal forces for garrison purposes since the extension of the Empire. In the pomp of Daphne the phalanx again reaches 20,000.

A lighter description of infantry than the phalanx were those who carried the round Macedonian shield, smaller than the old Greek shield, and decorated in a peculiar way with metal crescents. This light infantry, the hypaspistai, played a principal part in the campaigns of Alexander. Their corps d’élite was the celebrated Silver Shields, who ended by betraying Eumenes. The term hypaspistai is seldom found in our accounts of the Seleucid armies. But we hear of a corps which had shields covered with bronze or silver; and these, it may well be, are hypaspistai under another name.

They were the Guards of the Macedonian army, who specially attended upon the King’s person and stood to the infantry as the Companions did to the cavalry the corps in which it was proudest to serve. At Raphia, although they were armed in the Macedonian manner, they were not apparently Macedonian in blood, but picked men drawn from all provinces of the Empire—an indication that here again the policy of Alexander to bring young Orientals under the Macedonian drill-sergeant and close to his own person was not abandoned.

A still lighter infantry were those who carried, not the Macedonian shield, but the unmetalled pelte (originally a Thracian weapon), which had come into common use in Greece in the fourth century. It was as peltasts that the Greek mercenaries in the armies of the Eastern kings served, and it was to supply this arm that the recruiting officers of Ptolemy and Seleucid were continually going up and down Greece. Aetolians, we gather, were the branch of the Greek race who figured most largely in this line, till by the Peace of Apamea Antiochus was cut off from his source of supply and forbidden to recruit any more in the Roman sphere. Certain of the races of Asia Minor also furnished peltasts — the semi-hellenized Lycians, the Pamphylians and Pisidians.

Next in order of lightness to the peltasts came the Cretans, who formed a very important element—especially for mountain warfare. Crete seethed in chronic broils of one little state against another; the Cretans were born to arms, to ambushes in steep places and stealthy clambering. When they were not fighting at home they went to fight abroad in the service of foreign kings. They were found in all the armies of the time, ranged indifferently on both sides in the great battles.

With the Cretans are classed at Magnesia the Carians and Cilicians. The Cilicians are described, both at Raphia and in the Daphne procession, as “armed in the manner of men girt for running”— that is, everything was sacrificed to rapidity of movement on broken ground. The condition of things in Cilicia was very much the same as in Crete; both peoples made the strength of the great pirate power in the last century before Christ.

Some of the tribes of the Balkan peninsula, Thracians and Illyrians, also took service in the same capacity as the Cretans. In the Daphne procession there are 3000 Thracians.

The missile-shooters, those whose weapons were of long range—archers, slingers, javelineers—here drawn from non-Hellenic races in various parts of the world. We hear of Thracian slingers (Agrianes), of Mysian bowmen, Lydian javelineers, Elymaean, Median and Persian bowmen, slingers from the hills of the Kurds (Kyrtioi, Kardakes).

But none of the peoples of Asia were more dreaded as enemies or valued as allies than the Gauls. Their large limbs, wild hair, enormous shields and swords, the chanting, howling, and dancing with which they moved to battle, the deafening rattle of their shields, all contributed to strike terror. Perhaps from the time when the house of Seleucus was excluded from Asia Minor it became harder and harder to get Gaulish mercenaries. We hear of none in the later wars whose theatre was Syria. But Antiochus IV was still able to show 5000 in the Daphne procession.

The cavalry, by the Macedonian tradition, took a higher rank than the infantry. The name of Companions, which belonged to the old Macedonian nobility who followed the King on horse, was still borne by part of the Seleucid cavalry, but the relation of the different bodies is hard to make out. The étapí and the Royal Squadron are expressly distinguished from the agema; and yet the same description is given of both, that they were the corps d’élite of the cavalry. The Royal Squadron was the corps which surrounded the King in battle; it was probably the first squadron of the Companions. The agema, according to Livy, was composed of the chivalry of Iran. The Iranians were, no doubt, horsemen born; but still one suspects some confusion, as we are told that the Thessalians of Larissa in the Orontes valley served in the “first agema”. ®

Another division of the cavalry was, if not drawn from Iran, at any rate formed on an Iranian model— the “mailed horse”. Both horse and man were covered with armor. There were 3000 kataphraktoi at Magnesia, and 1500 appear in the Daphne procession. But this arm was not so important in the Seleucid armies as in the Parthian.

The cavalry hitherto mentioned were, no doubt, armed with lances. The cavalry lance called the xystos is spoken of, but whether it was a sort of lance peculiar to certain corps, or whether whenever a cavalryman had a lance it was a xystos, I do not know. But there were other mounted troops whose weapons were of a different sort. We hear of “Tarentines”—a kind of cavalry which had come into vogue since the Macedonian conquest; their peculiarity was that each man led a spare horse and was armed with javelins. There were also the Scythian horsemen from the steppes of the Caspian, the Daae, who fought with bows and arrows, like the cavalry employed by the Parthians which gave the Romans so much trouble, when —

quick they wheeled and, flying, behind them shot

Sharp sleet of arrowy showers against the face

Of their pursuers, and overcame by flight

We hear of them in the armies of Antiochus III, but after this time the Parthian power must have prevented more Central-Asian horsemen reaching the Seleucid King. From the South Antiochus drew Arabs, who formed a camel corps at Magnesia, and were armed with bows and immense swords, six feet long.

The elephants were a feature of the Seleucid armies, of which the kings made a great deal. For from the days of Seleucus Nicator they alone, of all the Western kings, could procure fresh supplies from India. The elephant became one of the Seleucid emblems upon the coins. To make up for their deficiency, the Ptolemies and Carthaginians caught and trained African elephants, but they were held inferior to the Indian ones. The elephant was tricked out for battle with frontlets and crests; beside the Indian mahout who bestrode his neck, he carried upon his back a wooden tower with four fighting men. It would seem that before a battle the elephants were shown an imitation of blood made from the red juice of fruit, either to excite them or prevent their being alarmed by the real bloodshed. All the Indian elephants of the Seleucid kingdom were destroyed by Octavius in 162, but Demetrius II got possession of the African elephants of Ptolemy Philometor. These, we saw, Tryphon captured, and that is the last we hear of the elephants of the Seleucid army.

Lastly, the Seleucids as late as Magnesia used the futile device of scythed chariots, in which the Persian kings had put faith. But it may be questioned whether after the experience of that day they were used again.

These statements as to the composition of the Seleucid army belong to the time of the dynasty’s greatness. As its dominion contracted it could no longer draw on such distant fields. The army probably became more exclusively Syrian, although the Taurus still furnished wild fighting men; and we have seen the Cretan mercenaries of Demetrius II take possession of the kingdom. But that the mass of the army of Antiochus Sidetes was drawn from Syria we are distinctly told; there was hardly a household unaffected by its loss.

The armies of the Greek kings of the East were distinguished both from the older Greek armies and the Roman by their external magnificence. The commanders and the Macedonian cavalry wore, like the King, the national dress —kausia, chlamys and high-boots—which was, in fact, a sort of military uniform. “Nothing anywhere but high-boots, nothing but men with the chlamys!” exclaim the Syracusan ladies who go to see a procession of troops in Alexandria. The kausia of the officers was crimson. The cloaks were in many cases gorgeously embroidered.

We remember that the foot-guards had shields covered with silver or burnished bronze. Even their high-boots, we are assured—it is hardly credible—had nails of gold. The bits of the principal cavalry corps were of gold.

A Seleucid army set out with an immense following of non-combatants—cooks and merchants. They were nearly four times as many as the combatants in the expedition of Antiochus Sidetes to Iran. But though this seems to have provoked the censure of the Greek historian whom Justin echoes, the proportion is not really very extravagant for Oriental warfare. The English at one time followed the fashion in India.

In the order of battle certain stereotyped rules can be observed. The phalanx made the center; light infantry, especially those who fought with missiles, and cavalry com- posed the wings. The battles opened with skirmishes between the wings; these prepared the way for the decisive shock of the heavy-armed infantry.

We have many descriptions of the extraordinary effect of these royal armies as they stood or moved forward in line of battle. In external show the Roman armies made but a poor figure before them. They were a blaze of gorgeous uniforms, of silver and gold, and moved with the precision of men who had spent their lives on the parade ground. The phalanx looked like a solid wall ; the elephants like the towers of it”.  “When the sun shone upon the shields of gold and brass, the mountains glistened therewith and shined like lamps of fire. . . . They marched on safely and in order. Wherefore all that heard the noise of their multitude and the marching of the company, and the rattling of the harness were moved”. “They went a little forward, and suddenly, as they surmounted some height, they came in view of the enemy descending into the plain. The golden armor flashed in the sun from the extremities of the agema. They moved in perfect order. There were the towers of the elephants on high, and the crimson housings with which they were dressed for battle. When the sight of it broke upon those who went in front, they stood still”. A description of the army of Perseus would fit that of Antiochus. “First marched the Thracians, the sight of whom, Aemilius says, made him blench more than any other thing—men of great stature, armed with white-shining shields and greaves, black tunics underneath, javelins resting on the right shoulder, uplifted for the throw. Next the Thracians the Greek mercenaries were stationed, with all sorts of gear, and Paeonians mingled amongst them. Third after these came the agema, the flower of the army, the choice of the Macedonians themselves for valor and person, ablaze in gilt armor and new crimson cloaks. And as these took their post, the battalions with bronze shields emerged from the trench and filled the plain with the flashing of steel and the shining of bronze, and the hills round with a noise and the shouting of commands. So boldly and swiftly they came on, that those who first fell dead were only two stades from the Roman entrenchment”. Or take the description of the Pontic army. “The other generals overbore Archelaus; they drew up the army in line and filled the plain with horses, chariots and shields, great and small. The cries and shouting were more than the air could contain when so many nations got into their ranks together. The bravery and splendor of their sumptuous equipment was not idle or with- out its moral effect; the flashing of armor brilliantly chased with silver and gold, the wonderful colors of Median and Scythian vesture, mingled with the gleam of bronze and steel—as it all shifted and moved hither and thither, the effect was really dazzling and overpowering. The Romans shrunk behind their palisade, and nothing that Sulla said could bring back their heart”.

I do not propose to discuss the strategy or tactics of the Seleucid battles. That would belong more properly to a study of the warfare of that age, and it is hoped that we shall soon have from Professor Oman something to throw a new light upon this domain. I should merely like to point out the persistence with which the tradition was adhered to —the brave folly— that the Kings themselves should fight in the thick of the battle. It was, of course, fatal to any proper direction of the battle, for the King had no idea what was going on in the rest of the field. In both the Seleucid battles described to us with any detail this was the main cause of defeat Antiochus had ridden away in pursuit with the cavalry of the right wing when the critical moment came. And yet how characteristic it was of Seleucid rule as a whole!

We have tried to get some idea in outline of the constitution and fashion of the Seleucid realm. To do so is interesting, not so much as calling up the picture of things long passed away, but as studying a phase in the tradition which has come down even to us. For when Rome became an Empire with a monarchic court and system, it followed to a large extent, both in its inner principles and its external forms, the Greek kingdoms which it superseded. A real continuity of tradition bound the court and government of the Caesars to the court and government of Seleucid and Ptolemy, and the tradition sanctioned by the authority and majesty of the Roman name continued as a sort of ideal in the Middle Ages, shaping institutions which in their turn have gone to making the modem world. If by our custom classical literature is the main part of a liberal education, not so much for its inherent excellence as because it is the origin of our own culture, we may with equal reason trace the far-off ancestry of our systems of government in those kingdoms where the Greek first took in hand to rule in the seats of ancient monarchy.

THE END

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THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY