Antiochus the Great

by Michael J. Taylor

  Philip II radically altered the court culture in Macedonia, modelling it upon more absolutist Persian lines. He forced powerful noblemen to send their sons to serve as ‘royal boys’ (bailikoipaides), effectively holding them hostage in his court and indoctrinating them into the mindset of royal service as playmates and friends of the heir apparent.

  The Macedonian royal page system survived in the Seleucid court, and we find former basilikoi paides holding important commands: Myiskos, for example, who later commanded a contingent of war elephants for Antiochus at the Battle of Raphia.18 Other men are referred to as ‘foster brothers’ (syntrophoi – literally ‘fellow nursling’) of the king, pages raised alongside the young prince.

  There was no established empire-wide aristocracy, although there were many local influential notables. Men earned high position in the king’s court not through lineage but by winning the king’s personal favour: the ability to drink, dance, and engage in witty conversation could lead to important political postings. Heavy drinking and banqueting was important in both the Macedonian and Persian court traditions. Persians were reported to consider courses of action at least twice: once sober and again drunk, while Alexander’s binges may have substantially shortened his life.19 According to the Roman author Athenaeus (c 200 AD?), whose literary cast of ‘clever diners’ (deipnosophistai) preserves scenes of courtly life, Antiochus drank heavily at banquets and danced wearing his armour and weapons, encouraging his entourage to do likewise. Dancing with weapons and armour echoed a very old Macedonian court custom called the telesias, attested as far back as the mid-fourth century BC.20 In one instance, the poet Hegesianax reportedly declined the King’s insistence to join the dance, but had a witty comment at the ready: ‘Shall I dance badly, O king, or would you rather have me recite my poems well?’ According to the story, Antiochus ordered an impromptu recitation, and was so pleased with the poem that he promoted Hegesianax to the rank of ‘friend’ (philos).21 And as such a ‘friend’, he was subsequently given important diplomatic assignments, including missions to the Romans in 196 and 193 BC.22

  Notable in this episode is Antiochus’ leadership role, even in fun and feasting. It is he who decides that his ‘friends’ will dance, and he subsequently takes the lead in dancing himself. He is the one who calls out courtiers such as Hegesianax who decline to participate in the revels, and he alone judges the quality of the poetry recital. The king is not an equal in drinking and dancing but rather remains fully in charge: elites at the party are socially honoured or humiliated as they compete for his attention and approval.23

  The social environment of the court maintained the fiction that courtiers were the friends or even relatives of the king. The senior soldier Zeuxis, it seems, enjoyed the title of ‘father’, and later Seleucid kings would refer to close advisors as ‘brother’.24 In 193, the general Minnio is described by Livy as the princeps amicorum.25 This may be the Latinization of the Greek ‘first friend’ (protos philos), a title later attested in the book of Maccabees.26 Other ‘friends’ enjoyed specific titles based on their occupation: one important courtier was the chamberlain who controlled the king’s private bedroom. Nicanor was one such chamberlain (koites), whom Antiochus later appointed to the lucrative position of chief-priest of Asia Minor.

  ‘Friends’ in court also enjoyed special privileges, such as the wearing of purple garments, access to the royal stables, and physical proximity to the king and his family. One story even reports that Seleucus I granted a favoured courtier the privilege of dropping by while he was having sex with his wife.27 Yet what the king could give, he could also easily take away. Antiochus III’s murder of Hermeias and his family is perhaps the most dramatic example of royal retribution against a fallen and disgraced courtier.

  A select group of friends constituted the king’s council, the boule or synednon, and here the king sought frank advice on various issues. The boule was likely relatively informal in its membership requirements and was based on the king’s preference of advisors. For example, Apollophanes the physician seems to have joined after demonstrating his loyalty during the Hermeias affair, despite lacking other military or administrative experience. Indeed, military talent did not on its own ensure a coveted spot: Hannibal Barca would later be relegated to the outer circle of the court due to Antiochus’ suspicion of his motives.

  Not all titles were ceremonial indications of friendship or kinship. Some men within the Seleucid court held more generally defined offices. Chief among these was the epi ton pragamaton, the ‘man of affairs,’ or ‘prime minister.’ The epi ton pragmaton was a powerful figure, although his powers and duties were never entirely specified, and could therefore be abused or manipulated. Other titles include the epi ton prosodon, the ‘finance minister’, and the epistolographos, or royal secretary. Junior positions in the court include an archivist (bibliophylax) and the master of the elephants (elephantarchos).28

  It comes as no surprise that doctors were also prominent players in the Seleucid court. We have already met Apollophanes, the ‘chief doctor’ (archiatros). Hailing from the island of Cos, the homeland of Hippocrates, Apollophanes was also the author of a treatise on cures for poisons, a field of research that likely made him even more useful in court.29

  Finally, the court contained what Greeks dubbed ‘parasites’, men who flattered the wealthy and powerful in exchange for a dinner invitation. We know of several parasites in the Seleucid court, although none for the court of Antiochus III: Sostratus during the time of Antiochus I and Apollonios during the reign of Antiochus VIII.30 Most of these men simply had the misfortune of being at the bottom of the court hierarchy.31 Ironically, the most notorious parasites such as Sostratus and Apollonios were probably closer to real friendship with the king than most of his official philoi, as they provided him with companionship and good cheer untainted by manoeuvres for position and power.

  In terms of the court’s physical location, the king moved frequently, maintaining a peripatetic lifestyle that took him through multiple palaces in major cities throughout the empire. Unfortunately, only limited archaeological work has been done on Seleucid royal palaces, but we know that these were massive buildings with monumental architecture in the Greek style. Like traditional Macedonian palaces, a Seleucid royal palace was constructed around a large central courtyard surrounded by a series of smaller dining rooms. They also incorporated Persian elements, most notably the paradision, an expansive and luxurious park. The most impressive ‘paradise’ was likely located at the Seleucid court at Daphne, nourished by natural springs and spacious enough to accommodate enormous parades and feasts of more than 9000 people.32 Paradise parks contained manicured orchards, opulent gardens and well-stocked hunting grounds,33 following a long Near Eastern tradition of parks as both places of royal pleasure where groomed gardens and slaughtered animals symbolized the king’s domination over nature. Palace complexes were large, imposing, and often removed from the general city: the palace at Antioch was located on an island in the Orontes river, and occupied over 25 hectares of land.34

  The maintenance of these palaces and of a court that required such feasting and entertainment was tremendously expensive. Theopompus, writing in the fourth century, claimed that the Persian king spent between twenty and thirty silver talents a day maintaining his court.35 Much of this went to support the Persian army, but G.G. Aphergis estimates that Seleucid kings still spent between 2000 and 3000 silver talents supporting the luxurious lifestyle of the king and his court.36

  The arts and culture under Antiochus III

  The Seleucids are generally not remembered for great patronage of Hellenic culture. The Ptolemies sponsored the Museion and Library in Alexandria, which became a great centre of scholarship and literary production in the ancient world.37 The Attalids to the north also established a vast library, and commissioned some of the most famous pieces of Hellenistic art: the Dying Gaul series and the reliefs of the great altar at Pergamon.

  While patronage of art, lite
rature, and other displays of culture was not a top priority for the Seleucids, there is evidence that Antiochus tried to compete culturally with his rivals in Alexandria in Pergamon. Antiochus patronized poets in particular: the prominent role of the court poet and historian Hegesianax has already been mentioned, and he also hired a Greek poet named Euphorion to head the public library in Antioch.38 The poet and historian Mnesiptolemos was active in the court of Antiochus III, so much so that Athenaeus claims that his presence ‘was especially prominent’.39 This is no doubt an exaggeration, or possibly an echo of the grumblings of rival courtiers, but it shows that men of letters claimed high standing in the Seleucid court as well as in Alexandria. Mnesiptolemos produced his histories in verse, including a poem about Seleucus II quaffing a potent draught of mead. Mnesiptolemos’ son Seleucus, the author of ‘cheerful songs’, was also a courtly poet. Athenaeus preserves a fragment of his work that praises pederasty in a military context:

  Better to love the boys than take a wife

  A boy lends a hand in times of strife.40

  The royal economy

  Like most other states in the ancient world, the economy of the Seleucid Empire was rooted in agriculture. More than 90 per cent of the population was devoted to farming or pastoralism. Most small farmers strove for self-sufficiency, but in reality no family or community could hope to achieve this. Variations in climate, soil, and weather patterns meant that the chance of local crop failures was high in any one area, and the grim reality of starvation enforced connectivity and cooperation; people had to trade and redistribute food to compensate for regional shortages. There was a brisk if low-level trade in basic foodstuffs, yet agricultural production focused on foods that were easy to store and redistribute: grain, wine, figs, and olive oil.41 The most important agricultural regions of the empire were Mesopotamia, the Amuk plain along the Orontes River, and following the capture of Koile Syria, the Gaza strip. Antiochus’ campaigns in Asia Minor primarily focused on the rich agricultural lands in that region.

  While perhaps less than 10 per cent of the population resided in cities, these were critical focal points of consumption, redistribution and craft production, although urban economies could also suffer from inefficient markets and local economic dislocation. The urban economy was driven in part by a phenomenon known as euergetism, or benefaction. Examples of euergetism might involve petty elites subsidizing grain and contributing to public works for a particular city. The most important benefactor was the king himself, with grants to individuals, cities, and peoples. Royal family members also engaged in the practice. For example, in 196 BC Antiochus’ queen Laodice gifted the city of Iasus with an annual gift of 45 tons of grain. The grain was to be sold at a subsidized price, and the town authorities were to utilize the cash proceeds to provide dowries for local girls.42 Such benefactions helped towns suffering from economic problems, and validated royal authority.

  Seleucid kings generated most of their revenues through the control of agricultural land. In theory, Seleucus I and his successors claimed ownership of all the land under his control as ‘spear-won’. Despite such rhetoric, much of the king’s territory was either administratively controlled by tributary cities, subject peoples (ethne), or temples. Land not granted to communities or individuals was then directly administered as the kings’ personal property. A major form of royal benefaction was the granting of land, parcelled out as kleroi to veterans and others.

  As discussed above, the recipients of kleroi were obliged to pay rent and provide military service in exchange for their land. Kleroi could take the form of vast seigniorial estates, complete with villages of serfs (laoi) who owed cash payments to the estate owner. In the third century BC, for example, a man named Mnesimachos was granted the right to exploit lands belonging to the Temple of Artemis, provided he paid tax to both temple and king. Estate holders and kleroi helped collect taxes from villages under their control, and forwarded these revenues to royal officials.43

  The king also established local monopolies over important salt flats and created royal forests to control timber resources, his ‘private domain’(idios logos). Although we do not have a clear picture of the Seleucid tax system, excises were extensive and varied, consisting of land taxes, guild taxes, taxes on cattle, poll taxes, road tolls, and excise taxes.44 Our best depiction of the procedures of tax collection comes from Judea in the Book of Maccabees. Here, the hard work of tax collection was farmed out to the High Priests, who extracted the revenue from their people and then paid a lump sum of 300 silver talents to the Seleucid treasury. The Judean arrangement is an example of a relatively common type of delegation that flowed to local officials and even to native leaders.

  No ancient source lists the exact revenues of the Seleucid king. According to Herodotus (3.90–96), Persian kings collected around 9000 (Attic) talents from the region controlled by Antiochus III, although significant economic development in Syria and Mesopotamia would have increased the revenues of these regions since the time of Darius I. Antigonus One-Eyed, whose reign in the 300s roughly overlapped that of Antiochus III, collected revenues of 11,000 talents.45 From both these textual references, there is reason to think that the minimum royal revenues of Antiochus consisted of approximately 10,000 talents, although Aphergis has estimated that they might have been close to double this.

  While Antiochus enjoyed revenues of 10–20,000 talents, he also had enormous expenses. An active army of 100,000 soldiers could cost over 6000 talents per year.46 Benefactions to cities, often through tax breaks, but also in the form of gifts of food or oil, dowries for the daughters of the local elite, and monumental building projects cost the king a great deal of money, even if the exact amount is impossible to reconstruct. Maintenance of the court was another large if poorly attested expense, as the king was expected to feed and entertain his friends and companions in high style, and also to lavish gifts and money upon favourites. Thus, while the king was rich, he was also continually strapped for cash.

  The Seleucid king had none of the sophisticated financial mechanisms available to modern governments. He did not issue government bonds or engage in deficit spending. There was no central bank. Private banks existed, but in very rudimentary form and not on a scale to assist state finance. In some cases, wealthy individuals might offer the state private loans for particular causes or initiatives: Hermeias loaned Antiochus cash to fund his army in 219 BC.

  As in most ancient economies, war loot played a critical role in Seleucid finances. Success or failure in war reinforced itself through a vicious cycle: military success provided large sums of cash, which could be used to cover the immense cost of waging war (including the expense of hiring thousands of mercenaries) and fund subsequent campaigns. Defeat in battle left the loser saddled with tremendous debt and looted cities and resources. If not quickly reversed by energetic leadership and compensating victories elsewhere, a serious military setback could lead to long-term state decline.47

  Seleucid religions and the royal cult

  The Selecucid Empire was characterized by sweeping cultural and religious diversity. The official attitude of the Seleucids toward this religious variation swung between two poles: tolerance on one side to full-blown participation in native religious rituals on the other. Seleucus I, for example, patronized the temple of Atargatis, a native goddess whose cult centred on Bambyke in Northern Syria,48 and Antiochus I rebuilt the temple to Nabu in Borsippa, a suburb of Babylon, claiming to shape the bricks with his own hands.49

  The Seleucid policy of toleration is best illustrated by Antiochus III’s policy toward the Jews, as he recognized the power of the Jewish priestly elite to enforce religious taboos with necessary force. After his capture of Jerusalem, he also would directly subsidize religious rituals performed at the Temple.

  Yet royal toleration had its limits: at the end of the day, Seleucid kings needed cash to pay their armies. Native temples doubled as repositories of dedicatory treasures, and these stockpiles of wealth often proved irresis
tible. Seleucus I despoiled temples in Ecbatana and Babylon to help finance his campaigns against Antigonus One-Eyed, and Antiochus III would also find the riches locked within native temples a temptation too difficult to resist.50

  With respect to the traditional Greek pantheon, Apollo stood out as a Seleucid favourite. Seleucus I Nicator claimed that he was, in fact, the natural son of Apollo, who had stamped him with an anchor birthmark as a sign of divine parentage.51 In many ways, this story mimicked earlier legends that claimed Alexander the Great was the natural son of Zeus Ammon.

  Antiochus I assiduously patronized the temple of Apollo at Miletus, and the Seleucids turned the springs of Daphne near Antioch into a major shrine of Apollo and his sister Artemis.52 The native Babylonian deity Nabu, a frequent recipient of royal patronage, was syncretised with Apollo: the polytheistic Seleucids were capable of interactions with nearly all the gods they came across.53 Antiochus III sacrificed to Athena at Ilium prior to his invasion of Europe, and his son Antiochus IV would later claim a special relationship with Zeus Olympios, helping to finance construction of the temple of Zeus in Athens.54

  In addition to Greek and native deities, Seleucid kings were themselves gods. Greeks had been honouring powerful persons as gods since the Classical era, most notably the Spartan admiral Lysander who received altars and sacrifices following a dramatic victory in the Peloponnesian War.55 Alexander the Great claimed divine honours for his companion Haephestion, and toward the end of his life seems to have demanded such a status for himself.56 In the age of the successors, successful warlords were the objects of voluntary worship by local communities: Antigonus One-Eyed and Demetrius Poliorcetes were welcomed as gods in Athens.57 As warlords transitioned into kings, many Greek cities bestowed them with divine honours, establishing cults for deceased kings as well as living monarchs and their families. These cults were for the most part voluntary and were initiated by the civic leadership of individual poleis.