It is unclear whether Molon’s retreat was a feint or a hasty withdrawal to reorganize his forces. Either way, he halted his retreat and countermarched back to his abandoned camp. Xenoitas had failed completely to establish an adequate security perimeter, and Molon caught the royal army utterly unprepared, butchering Xenoitas’ soldiers in their drunken stupor. Xenoitas avoided disgrace by fighting to the death, leaving Zeuxis to rally the survivors into a long retreat.13
Molon then crossed the Tigris and captured the major prize of Seleucia on the Tigris, the most important Seleucid foundation in Mesopotamia. He maintained his relentless momentum, occupying Babylonia and then moving to attack east. The former Persian royal capital of Susa resisted, and Diogenes, the Seleucid governor of the city, withstood the siege in the citadel.14 Leaving a small force behind to blockade the defenders, Molon returned to Seleucia-on-the-Tigris. He paused to allow his army to regain its strength, and then marched north, following the line of the Euphrates River, as far as the garrison town of Dura. He detached a force to besiege the town, and then returned south, effectively the master of Mesopotamia.
Meanwhile, Antiochus’ personal campaign against Koile Syria was quickly becoming a failure. The parallel ranges of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon mountains created a series of choke points, which funnelled the attacker into narrow avenues of possible advance. Modest Ptolemaic garrisons held these points, and they were well positioned to defend the passes against numerically superior attacking forces. Antiochus attempted to force the pass of Marsylus at the mouth of the Biqua Valley, but his assaults were repelled by a talented Ptolemaic mercenary commander called Theodotus the Aetolian. The young King had suffered significant casualties while making little progress when messengers arrived bearing news of Xenoitas’ humbling defeat.15
The startling setback in Mesopotamia forced Antiochus III to abandon his campaign against Koile Syria and prepare to confront Molon in the east. This decision tilted the court dynamics in favour of Epigenes, who had previously advocated for Antiochus’ direct engagement with Molon. The military setback was therefore a dire political setback for Hermeias, and the failure of his advice jeopardized his standing in the court. He sensed that Epigenes was now set to displace him as the King’s chief advisor. A meeting of the royal council exploded as Hermeias furiously abused Epigenes, leaving Antiochus alarmed by the fragmentation of his court. However, Hermeias realized that he had no choice but to support the decision of the young King, and he actively threw himself into preparations for the royal counterattack in Mesopotamia.16
An opportunity soon emerged for Hermeias to salvage his vulnerable position. The loss of Mesopotamia and the Upper Satrapies to Molon severely constrained Seleucid revenues, as some of the richest agricultural land in the empire was now in rebel hands. Antiochus III lacked cash to pay his armies, and a violent mutiny broke out due to arrears of pay. Since the campaign could not proceed until the soldiers were paid, Hermeias offered the King a bargain. He would pay the army from his personal fortune, on the condition that Epigenes retire permanently from political life. Antiochus was in a corner. If this campaign failed, it would prove disastrous for his nascent rule. He must have been aware, based on the experience of his late brother, how a dissatisfied army could prove lethal to a Seleucid king. Antiochus accepted the deal. Epigenes was popular with the army, but a long overdue payday was even more popular. The mutiny was thus quelled, save for a 6000-strong contingent that hailed from the city of Cyrrhus.17 This splinter group was a dangerous development, as these men were not just disgruntled native auxiliaries, but part of the main phalanx, descendants of Greek and Macedonian settlers. The Cyrrhestians left their barracks and marched toward their home city, which erupted in revolt. Subordinate generals eventually contained the rebellion, but such an uprising in the centre of the empire indicates the delicate and tenuous condition of the Seleucid body politic.
Epigenes retired to his home city of Apamea, but Hermeias still sensed danger from his rival. To rid the scene of his political enemy, Hermeias conspired with Alexis, the commander of the citadel (archophylax) of Apamea, to frame Epigenes for conspiring with Molon. Upon obtaining a forged letter indicating such cooperation, Alexis promptly executed Epigenes. Antiochus III was not informed of this judicial murder until after the fact and was carefully led to believe that Epigenes was indeed guilty.18
With his chief rival thus dispatched, Hermeias was now Antiochus’ most trusted advisor. Through his manipulation of court-protocols, he continued to control access to the King, making Antiochus a virtual prisoner of his ministrations. Now that Queen Laodice had given birth to a son, the King had reason to worry that Hermeias might murder him in order to become regent to the infant son.
But Hermeias’ position in the court was more tenuous than it appeared. A large portion of the royal council was becoming concerned with Hermeias’ power and influence. While his habit of labelling opposing voices as traitors stifled open dissent, it steeled many toward more drastic furtive actions. The King himself was increasingly uncomfortable with Hermeias’ high-handed ways.
As a result, the King found a new counterweight for Hermeias in Zeuxis, a military man of proven talents. A war council in Mesopotamia offered Zeuxis the opportunity to challenge Hermeias publicly on matters of strategy before the King. Hermeias advocated an advance along the Tigris that would use the banks of the river to cover the army’s flank. This plan sounded good in theory but ignored significant logistical concerns. It would take the army through the largely deserted territory on the eastern bank of the Tigris, making the provisioning the army difficult.
Zeuxis recommended instead that the army cross the Tigris and advance perpendicularly to the river toward the agricultural region of Apollonia. There was good reason to think that the population would welcome the King; either way, the rich Mesopotamian farmland could feed the army as it marched through. Furthermore, this plan would cut off Molon’s path of retreat back to his strongholds in Media and likely force a decisive battle. Antiochus formally backed Zeuxis’ plan in open council, a clear repudiation of Hermeias and a sign that his influence was on the wane.19
After a swift march, Antiochus and his troops arrived at Apollonia, now north of Molon, blocking his road to Media. Molon left his base at Seleucia-on-the Tigris and marched north toward Apollonia, seeking confrontation. After Antiochus’ pickets detected Molon’s vanguard, both the royal and the rebel armies encamped and then deployed for battle.
We have no information about the strength of the armies. Molon likely enjoyed an advantage in cavalry, given that Persia and Media were a source of horsemen. Given that the Syrian tetrapolis was the prime recruitment ground for the phalanx, the King likely enjoyed a superiority of heavy infantry.
Antiochus placed his phalanx in the centre, and on his right a body of Greek mercenaries, who also fought as heavy hoplite infantry, as well as Galatian and Cretan mercenaries. The Galatians generally fought as light infantry, while Cretan mercenaries were valued for their skills as archers, although they may have simply been light troops. Antiochus commanded the right, with a large body of xustophoroi cavalry, armed with lances called xustoi. On his left flank, under the command of Zeuxis, he placed his elite companion (hetairoi) cavalry. He had ten war elephants with him, which he placed to the front of his troops.
Molon likewise positioned his phalanx in the centre along with his own contingent of Galatian mercenaries. He placed his cavalry on either wing. In an unusual tactic, he moved his light troops beyond his cavalry on either flank, a rare case in antiquity where infantry, rather than cavalry occupied the extreme flanks. This may have been due to the rugged terrain of the battlefield, which required Molon to position his cavalry on the limited level terrain adjacent to his infantry formations, while he placed his light infantry in the rugged terrain on his flanks, providing both elevation and enfilading fires for archers and slingers. To the front, Molon positioned a number of scythed chariots to counter the imposing presence of Antiochus’
war-elephants. Molon commanded the right wing himself, while his brother Neolaus commanded the left.
Despite the careful tactical preparations on both sides, the battle itself proved anti-climatic. The appearance of Antiochus caused Molon’s advancing left wing to desert en-masse. The rebel infantry in the centre subsequently collapsed as Antiochus rolled up the entire battle line. Molon committed suicide, ending the rebellion.20
After his death, Molon’s corpse was subjected to a gruesome display, conspicuously crucified at the base of Mount Zagrus as a warning to future traitors and a symbol of the King’s reasserted control. Molon’s brother Neolaus escaped from the battle, and is said to have killed Molon’s children and their mother, presumably acts of mercy to preempt expected royal retribution. Neolaus and Alexander subsequently committed suicide.21
The rebel soldiers were dealt with leniently. After issuing a stern rebuke, Antiochus ‘gave his right hand’, which probably meant a public pledge that they would not be subsequently punished.22 The army was assigned to loyal officers and returned to Media, where most of the exrebels had served as garrison troops previously. Given that the same Persians, Medes and Iranians would serve with Antiochus in the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC, it does not seem that Molon’s revolt had particularly deep roots. With the pretender gone, the native inhabitants of Media, Persia, and central Iran returned their full loyalty to Antiochus.23
In the wake of this victory, Hermeias was given authority over the city of Seleucia-on-Tigris, and according to Polybius, he governed in a brutal fashion, exiling a popular local magistrate named Adeiganes and executing many others. He imposed a shocking 1000 talent fine on the city, the equivalent of 30 tons of bullion. Antiochus, playing good-cop to Hermeias’ bad-cop, reduced this fine to a more manageable 150 talents, which likely represented the city’s normal tax bill that had gone unpaid during the revolt.24 Antiochus then marched across Media with his army, proving to the rebel province that the King and his army were back in control. Diogenes, the governor of Susiana and defender of the citadel of Susa, was subsequently made the governor of Media.25
The fall of Hermeias
The episode in Seleucia-on-the-Tigris was another public rebuke to Hermeias, although the minister again lobbied for a royal attack against Egypt. But instead of resuming his campaign against Ptolemy IV, Antiochus marched into Media Atropatene, a former vassal state in the Caucasus whose loyalty to the Seleucid Empire had long since lapsed. Media Atropatene was ruled by a native dynasty descended from Atropanes, a Persian aristocrat who collaborated with Alexander and his successors. The current dynast was an elderly man named Artabarzanes, and the old King quickly acknowledged Selecuid suzerainty after a brief display of force. Antiochus allowed Artabarzanes to maintain his kingdom with nominal independence in exchange for a symbolic act of submission, an important precedent for future deals with breakaway kingdoms.26
Hermeias had now been slighted three times. This made him all the more dangerous, as there was a great risk that he might attempt to eliminate the King in an act of calculated desperation. Antiochus’ brother Seleucus III had suffered a similar fate at the hands of a disgruntled minister.
Sensing Hermeias’ intentions, Antiochus struck first. Since court protocol generally required the presence of the minister during the King’s meetings (hence the source of much of Hermeias’ power), Antiochus feigned illness, which allowed him to confer privately with his court physician Apollophanes. The doctor could have also been a leading partner in the conspiracy against Hermeias: Polybius’ account has him approach the King rather than vice versa. Either way, Apollophanes likely spoke for an anti-Hermeias faction in the court and was perhaps selected to broach the topic of a nascent conspiracy to the young king.
After his initial conversations with the doctor, Antiochus claimed to be suffering from a serious and prolonged illness. His normal cohort of bodyguards loyal to Hermeias was dismissed, replaced by physicians and attendants loyal to Apollophanes. While in this seclusion, the details of the plot were decided upon. One morning, when Hermeias joined the King on a rehabilitative walk in the cool of the dawn, he was surrounded and stabbed to death.
A gruesome, additional massacre was arranged in Antioch. Hermeias’ wife and sons were stoned to death in ceremonial fashion: the elite women of Antioch targeted his wife, while elite boys pelted his sons with stones. Antiochus perhaps wished to portray Hermeias as grasping at royal power for himself, an inappropriate ambition that required the extermination of his entire line. Whatever the motive, it is clear that the murder of Hermeias’ family was a typical but hideous act of royal spite.27
Polybius portrays Hermeias as the model of an ‘evil advisor’, with Epigenes cast in the role of the honest but doomed counsellor. However, Polybius’ narrative of this court schism has little nuance: wretched Hermeias is almost entirely evil and driven by ambition, noble Epigenes is the wronged innocent. One potential reason for these characterizations is Polybius’ reliance on official Seleucid versions of events, which required an obvious villain to justify so treacherous a murder. The reality was no doubt far more complex.28 We should doubt that Hermeias was a raging mad counsellor to the core, or that his advice was always bad or ill-timed. The allegation that he advised Antiochus to embark on dangerous wars after the birth of his son was mere gossip, although it may reflect the King’s legitimate fear of assassination. Despite these caveats and potential source biases, the basic outlines of the saga of Hermeias and Epigenes reflect common dynamics of court life in a monarchal government. Ambitious men vied for influence with the monarch, and like Hermeias, some were able to monopolize the King’s time and attention through manipulation of court protocol. In an age before gentlemanly letters of resignation or timed exits, murder was the only way for the King to rid himself of such a minister. The murder of excessively powerful advisors is a common feature of pre-modern monarchies across geographic areas: the court dynamic between Hermeias and Antiochus III was not terribly different from those between Sejanus and the emperor Tiberius or Thomas Cromwell and King Henry VIII.
The murder of Hermeias marks the point when Antiochus III matured as a ruler. Having discovered the power to control and thwart overreaching ministers when necessary, he would no longer be cowed by ambitious advisors. Also, Antiochus was no longer a teenager, but a twenty-two-year-old man: he had married, fathered a son, and gained his first significant military experience. With the revolt of Molon put down, he was now able to turn his attention to the more traditional dynastic rivalry with Ptolemy IV. Resources also seemed to be in greater abundance: the tax revenues and recruiting grounds of Mesopotamia and western Iran had returned to the empire, and he no longer had to devote tens of thousands of troops to containing the rebels. Yet these advantages and the defeat of Molon were tainted by the subsequent defection of Achaeus, his cousin and strategos in Asia Minor. Reunifying the troubled Seleucid Empire would be more difficult than he first envisioned.
The revolt of Achaeus (220 BC)
While Antiochus III was busy waging two wars simultaneously, his older cousin Achaeus, an experienced military commander who had served as viceroy in Asia Minor, rebelled and attacked south while the King was away in the east. Hoping to proceed into Syria through the Cilician Gates and proclaim himself king of the entire Seleucid Empire, Achaeus wished to join the remaining rebels in the north Syrian town of Cyrrhae. In a sense, Achaeus’ rebellion was akin to the revolt of Antiochus Hierax and the so-called ‘Brothers’ War’, in which a member of the royal family assigned as principal commander of Asia Minor launched a bid to rule the entire kingdom.
An army mutiny ended Achaeus’ grand ambitions. His soldiers refused to advance past Cilicia, the border region between Anatolia and Syria. The soldiers’ motives were likely two-fold. First, many of the troops with Greek or Macedonian descent retained residual loyalties to the Seleucid Crown. They would support Achaeus in his more local schemes of personal domination, but they were unwilling to venture into Syria to depose th
e royal family that had ruled legitimately for almost a century. Second, Achaeus’ army likely consisted of many soldiers recruited from Asia Minor. These local contingents may have been willing to support the creation of another breakaway kingdom within their homeland, but were uninterested in initiating a larger Seleucid civil war.
With the army unwilling to follow him, Achaeus turned back. To appease his soldiers and save face as a commander, he allowed the troops to pillage the town of Pisidia, in southern Anatolia. Although the Seleucid Crown was now out of reach, Achaeus consoled himself by assuming the trappings of royal power as a regional king in Asia Minor. He wore the diadem, set up a royal court in Sardis, and minted coins with the appellation AXAIOU BASILEW – ‘of Achaeus the King’.29
The mutiny in Cilicia eased Antiochus’ mind and military position. He learned that Achaeus lacked offensive power, unlike Molon, whose aggressive and unchecked expansion had required immediate royal attention. Thus, even though his rebel cousin was situated dangerously near Syria, Antiochus could return to the unfinished war with Ptolemy IV over Koile Syria. With Achaeus with his unruly troops safely on the defensive beyond the Taurus Mountains, Antiochus had the luxury of delay in dealing with him. In the meantime, he sent outraged correspondence to Achaeus, protesting the usurpation of royal power. Such diplomatic protest might seem strange, given that once Achaeus had assumed the diadem any hope of a peaceful settlement was moot, yet the missive makes more sense when understood as an item for public consumption within the Seleucid court. Antiochus, about to march south against Koile Syria, had to demonstrate that he would not allow such misbehaviour by a former subordinate and kinsman to stand. Confident in this response and in the coming campaign, Antiochus dismissed his troops for the winter at the end of 220 BC with orders to muster in Apamea the following spring.
Antiochus the Great Page 5