Antiochus the Great

by Michael J. Taylor

  The capture of Seleucia Pieria (219 BC)

  Before beginning the long-delayed campaign into Koile Syria, Antiochus III reignited the war with Ptolemy IV by attacking the city of Seleucia Pieria. Founded as the maritime capital of Seleucus Nicator, Seleucia Pieria had been captured by Ptolemy III during the Laodicean War (246–241) and held by a Ptolemaic garrison ever since. This Seleucid humiliation gave the Ptolemies control of the mouth of the Orontes River and deprived the dynasty of a major Mediterranean port.

  It seems that Antiochus had initially planned to leave Seleucia Pieria in Ptolemaic hands, yet reconsidered after an impassioned plea from his newly empowered physician, Apollophanes. Apollophanes had private reasons for advocating an attack: he himself was from Seleucia Pieria, and had been living as an exile ever since the Ptolemaic capture of the town. The council of friends endorsed the physician’s opinion, and so the attack on Koile Syria proper was briefly postponed so that Seleucia Pieria might be reclaimed.

  Theodotus Hemiolios, evidently rehabilitated after his humiliating retreat before Molon, led a small force to block the northern pass of the Biqua valley in order to prevent potential Ptolemaic reinforcements from coming north to relieve the besieged city.

  Before the assault was launched, Antiochus made every attempt to try to bribe the garrison into surrender. Sieges were expensive and often frustrating enterprises; subversion was the most effective way of reducing a walled population. The commander of the Ptolemaic garrison, Leontius, refused these Seleucid attempts, but his lieutenants proved more vulnerable. A secret deal was cut: as long as Antiochus could capture the suburb of the city and its attached port, the corrupted officers would use this setback to pressure Leontius to surrender. Diognetus and Ardys spearheaded the main assault: Diognetus was the Seleucid admiral who escorted princess Laodice from Pontus, and Ardys had recently earned his spurs commanding a cavalry wing in the battle against Molon.30 Since most of the city was surrounded by steep, difficult terrain, the only plausible way to attack was from the sea. Diognetus’ ships landed an amphibious force to seize the port, while Ardys secured the suburb. When these fell, the Ptolemaic officers did as promised, using the calamity to urge their commander to surrender the entire garrison.

  With Seleucia Pieria captured, Antiochus made generous and unusual dispositions for the population. While civilians captured in a siege were normally sold into slavery as spoils of war, Antiochus III proclaimed that all free persons in the city, some 6000 inhabitants, would remain free and maintain their property. After all, many citizens were descendants of the original Seleucid settlers and had simply traded masters during the Third Syrian War. Antiochus also made arrangements for the return of those exiled by the Ptolemaic regime and the restoration of their property.31

  The defection of Theodotus the Aetolian

  While Polybius reports that Antiochus had previously decided to ignore Achaeus’ revolt in favour of renewing the war with Ptolemy IV, it seems that he changed his mind, for Polybius later states that preparations were underway to confront Achaeus in Asia Minor.32 While making these preparations, however, an extraordinary letter was brought to his attention, written by Theodotus the Aetolian, a Ptolemaic mercenary general and marshal (tetagmenos) entrusted with organizing the defence of the entire region. Theodotus had loyally served the Ptolomies, but had recently fallen out of favour, perhaps for his open condemnation of Ptolemy IV’s excessive and debauched lifestyle. After successfully repelling the young Antiochus two years before, Theodotus was recalled to the Ptolemaic court and now felt he was in great danger of being assassinated by his political enemies. Although restored to his command in Koile Syria, Theodotus no longer trusted Ptolemy and his ministers and decided to defect to Antiochus.33 Even before his letter reached the stunned Seleucid king, Theodotus raised the banner of rebellion by seizing the city Ptolemais in the Biqua valley and the Phoenician city of Tyre on the coast. After these initial acts of disloyalty, Theodotus immediately came under attack by Nicolaus, another Ptolemaic general.

  Upon receipt of this fortunate letter and notice of the response by Nicolaus, Antiochus immediately cancelled his operations against Achaeus. Leaving behind phalangites to attack the positions held by the Ptolemies, the King took a force of light infantry and rushed into the Biqua Valley. Nicolaus withdrew, and Theodotus joined Antiochus’ force. Together they now had control of the Biqua Valley and Tyre, although Ptolemiac mercenaries still controlled the northern Phoenician coast. At Tyre, Antiochus captured a squadron of the Ptolemaic fleet, some forty ships, which then joined the small Mediterranean fleet commanded by Diognetus.

  Ptolemy IV was shocked by the rapid pace of Antiochus’ campaign into Koile Syria. Rather than advance to challenge him, he ordered the irrigation canals in the Nile Delta flooded to halt any the Seleucids from entering Egypt itself. While Antiochus had hopes of marching to Pelusium and forcing a quick end to the war, he was soon occupied with the many tasks of managing the newly won territory, which included enforcing the submission and winning the loyalty of many small communities.

  Unable to stop the Seleucid advance, Ptolemy’s ministers offered a truce at the end of the campaign season in 219. Antiochus accepted this arrangement, hoping a negotiated settlement would give him a secure claim to the entirety of the region.34

  Chapter Three

  Seleucid Institutions

  The Seleucid army

  The most important royal institution was the Seleucid army; without it, the Seleucid Empire would simply cease to exist.1 Seleucid soldiers and sailors provided the coercive force that was necessary, if not always sufficient, to hold the realm together. The Seleucid army consisted of four main components: 1) citizen soldiers, drawn from the cities of the Empire, 2) a professional cadre of elite infantry and cavalry units, 3) native levies of subject peoples and 4) mercenaries hired from across the Mediterranean.

  The citizen phalanx

  The core of the Seleucid army was the Macedonian-style phalanx: a dense and deep formation of heavy infantry. The phalangite’s primary armament was an enormous pike called a sarissa, approximately 21 feet (6.3m) long.2 A phalangite also carried a round shield, between 2 to 2½ feet (.66-.75m) in diameter, smaller than the shield carried by Classical Greek hoplites, which allowed him to grasp his sarissa with both hands.3 As a secondary weapon he wore a short-sword (xiphos) or a small slashing machete called a machaira. The phalangite’s armour varied, but non-metallic armour made of laminated linen (kotthybos/linothorax) seems to have predominated.4 Since phalangites supplied their own equipment, there would have been reasonable variation, and metal cuirasses were likely also in use.

  Phalangites fought in close formation, with each man occupying nearly three feet when on the offensive and closing tighter on the defensive in order to form a wall of interlocked shields (synaspismos). A phalanx was usually sixteen men deep, although it was common to make the formation even deeper (doubling to thirty-two) to provide extra defensive mass. Men in the front five ranks projected their pikes outward, although only the first few ranks would have a reasonably clear line of sight in front of them. Men in the rear would angle their pikes forward to provide a screen against arrows, javelins, and other projectiles raining down on the formation. The overall manoeuvrability of the phalanx was limited by these close-order intervals of the soldiers and the unwieldy nature of the lengthy sanssa. 5

  Phalangites were recruited primarily from a class of military settlers who were descendents of Macedonian soldiers of Alexander the Great or the mercenaries of the diadochoi. Discharged veterans received a plot of land (kleros), which obligated them to serve as either Macedonian-style infantrymen or cavalrymen. Recipients of such land grants were most commonly referred to as katoikoi. While most veterans with kleroi were of Greek or Macedonian descent, other ethnicities could also obtain land grants, most notably 2000 Jewish military settlers granted land in Phrygia by Antiochus III in the 200s.6

  The citizen phalanx was drawn largely from the major cities
of the Seleucid Empire.7 Such recruitment was based on inheritable military obligation tied to land grants or through deeply rooted traditional patterns of military service. (The initial population of Greco-Macedonian settlers in cities founded by Seleucids may have been used to determine the rate of required conscription.) For example, Seleucus I had settled between 4000 and 6000 military settlers in each of the four cities of the tetrapolis, and the best attested Seleucid urban muster, from the city of Cyrrhus, produced a brigade of 6000 soldiers. Thus, from the urban centres in Syria and Mesopotamia (the tetrapoleis plus Seleucia on the Tigris and Cyrrhus), Antiochus could draw on 20–30,000 settlers with military obligations. This figure corresponds with the attested field strength of the Seleucid heavy phalanx, usually between 16,000 and 20,000 men.8 It is important to remember that the men of the Seleucid phalanx were not professional soldiers, but citizen soldiers mobilized in times of military crisis, though some might serve longer stints during protracted periods of warfare.

  Native levies

  In addition to the ‘Macedonian’ heavy infantry, the bulk of the Seleucid army consisted of lightly armed troops, most of whom wore native arms and armour. Native archers, slingers, and skirmishers proved a tremendous addition to the heavy and relatively immobile phalanx, but they also posed problems of command and control. It proved difficult to coordinate the actions of many different contingents, each with their own language, tactics, and native aristocrat commanders. This need to incorporate large numbers of non-Hellenistic light troops may have led to some unfortunate developments in Seleucid tactics, including excessive depth of troop formations and an over-reliance on pre-established battle plans. Nonetheless, the sheer numbers provided by native light troops were eminently valuable for garrison operations, foraging, securing and extending supply lines, and general skirmishing.

  Native equestrian traditions were critical to the recruitment of Seleucid cavalry. The vast Iranian plateau in particular supplied some of the best cavalry in the ancient world, and cavalry contingents from Persia, Media, and other parts of Iran are well attested. An important military development with potential Persian roots was the introduction of cataphractoi, a new type of heavy cavalry.9

  Traditionally Mediterranean cavalry rode and fought lightly armed and armoured. Horsemen were admired for their agility in the saddle and valued for their manoeuvrability, not the shock of their charges. While light Mediterranean cavalry was highly manoeuvrable, it lacked the ability to clash directly with heavily armed massed infantry. Instead, they manoeuvred at the flanks and harassed formations with javelins, butchering fugitives in the pursuit.

  Unfortunately, there is no good evidence on the exact nature of cataphracts during the Selecucid period. We do know that by the Roman period, the term ‘cataphract’ described heavy Iranian cavalry clad head to toe in scale armour, with a similarly armoured horse. These ‘boiler boys’ (clibanarii) were designed to shock. Their heavy armour gave them confidence to plunge their horses into the iron bristle of a heavy infantry formation, a manoeuvre that would have been suicidal for a lightly armoured cavalryman. We do not know if the Seleucid cataphracti were identical to the Parthian and Persian cataphracts attested during the Roman Empire or the late Roman units that mimicked them. However, there is reason to speculate that Seleucid cataphracts were far more heavily armed and armoured than most traditional Mediterranean cavalrymen, as they successfully defeated the Roman legionary infantry at the Battle of Magnesia.

  The professional cadre: Silver Shields and royal cavalry

  In addition to the standard phalanx, Seleucid kings also maintained a special unit of heavy infantry, the ‘Silver Shields’ (argyaspides). The Silver Shields had their origins in a special brigade of Hypaspists formed by Alexander the Great. Following Alexander’s death, diadoch generals granted favoured brigades of soldiers special status by allowing them to gild their shields with various metals: gold, silver and bronze shields are attested in the sources.10 By the reign of Antiochus, the Silver Shields were a professional brigade, with an attested strength of 10,000.11 This number would also correspond to the 10,000 ‘Immortals’, the full-time infantry brigade that accompanied the Persian king, whose strength was maintained at 10,000, and may represent an administrative survival from the Achaemenid military tradition.12

  Seleucid kings maintained two professional cavalry regiments of 1000 men apiece. The first was known as the hetaitroi or ‘companions’ (sometimes referred to as ile basilike, or ‘the king’s company’). The second elite cavalry regiment was called the agema. Both of these units were composed of professional soldiers recruited from across the empire, and were thus polyethnic. The agema was said to be men primarily of ‘Medes and a mixture of many peoples drawn from many regions’, while the hetairoi were drawn from ‘Syrians, mingled with Phrygians and Lydians.’13 Professor Bar Kochba has hypothesized that these cavalrymen were drawn from the sons of military settlers living in Media, Syria, Phrygia and Lydia, but there is no proof of this assertion. Like the Roman emperor with a Germanic bodyguard, the Seleucid king may have preferred to draw his closest ranks from outside peoples, whose loyalty was ensured by their outsider status and subsequent dependence on the king’s favour and goodwill for their position in society.

  Mercenaries

  Seleucid kings also employed mercenaries to supplement the field armies during major campaigns. Mercenaries remained the minority of Seleucid soldiers, and the overall characterization of Hellenistic armies as mercenary hordes is incorrect. Mercenaries seldom comprised more than 20 per cent of any large army fielded by Antiochus III. The most prominent mercenaries were the ferocious Galatians, who consistently provided both light infantry and cavalry contingents to the Seleucid army; while the most notorious were perhaps the Cretans. Known for their skill in archery, Cretans were widely sought as specialist troops, although they could also fight as conventional light infantry. Other sources of mercenaries included the nomadic Dahae (a tribal group of the Eurasian steppes), Thracians from Europe, and, of course, Greeks. Greek mercenaries were particularly valuable, as they could integrate tactically and linguistically with the main phalanx. Mercenary officers were heavily employed throughout the Seleucid army and even commanded non-mercenary units. Nor were all mercenaries opportunistic killers; many spent long careers in the service of a particular power. Rewarded afterwards with a land grant, many saw mercenary service as a form of honourable immigration.

  Elephants and chariots

  Elephants were considered a crucial military asset. Antiochus III’s herd peaked at 150 beasts, making it the largest in the world at that time (Carthage possessed perhaps 80 war-elephants in 202 BC). In this respect Seleucid kings benefited from the shared border with India. During the third century BC, two types of elephants were in use, the Indian elephant and the now extinct North African forest elephant (Loxodonta africana pharaoensis). The largest and most aggressive species of elephant, the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), was not used in Ancient Mediterranean warfare.14

  Significantly larger than the North African forest elephant, the Indian elephant (Elphas maximus indicus) was considered superior for war purposes. Furthermore, an elephant was worthless without a specially trained mahout, and the best mahouts also came from India. Antiochus III therefore enjoyed the best elephants and the best elephant drivers.15

  The rival Ptolemies were not so lucky in their access to the pachyderms. Ptolemy II had undertaken epic provisions to secure African bush elephants in the Sudan, establishing the garrison town of Ptolemais ‘of the Elephant Hunts’ and even digging a canal to transport the captured beasts. From these significant efforts, it is clear that Ptolemy II considered it vital to match the Seleucid war-herd. While some moderns have doubted the efficacy of war-elephants, ancient evidence suggests that they could prove a terrible and effective force on the battlefield. Trampling infantry and scattering cavalry, they could only be countered by heavy infantry formations with the highest levels of discipline and poise. The ph
ysical damage they inflicted was exceeded only by their psychological impact, as the size and appearance of such animals intimidated men unfamiliar with the animal. The smell of elephants was even believed to frighten cavalry horses. Despite these advantages, the deployment of elephants on the battlefield was problematic, as they could badly disrupt friendly formations if spooked.

  A less-useful weapon in the Seleucid arsenal was the scythed chariot, a weapon employed by the Persians for several centuries and used in a failed charge against Alexander at Guagamela.16 Molon used them with equal lack of effect against Antiochus. While these contraptions looked ferocious, and no doubt gave kings extravagant visions of easily mowing through enemy formations, they were difficult to employ effectively even on relatively level ground. Nonetheless, scythed chariots remained part of the Seleucid arsenal and were deployed against the Romans at the battle of Magnesia with little success. Their continued existence must be attributed almost entirely to their fearsome appearance.

  The court of Antiochus III

  Like any modern executive, the Seleucid king was obliged to delegate power in order to manage his kingdom.17 Unfortunately, individuals entrusted with this power could prove dangerous to the king if not carefully managed. In many court settings, kings disperse social favours with the hope that competition for these will forge a culture of loyalty and cooperation among otherwise ambitious and aggressive noblemen.

  It is important to note that the term ‘court’, a word derived from the European medieval and early modern experience, did not have a direct equivalent in Greek. Rather, Hellenistic courtiers described themselves using terms of friendship or kinship with the king. In the early Macedonian court in the fourth century BC, high-ranking noblemen who enjoyed the king’s favour were known as hetairoi, ‘companions’, a term that emphasized their personal relationship to the king and the rough equality they shared with the monarch, drinking, hunting, and fighting by his side.