In 202 BC, Rome defeated Carthage after sixteen years of brutal warfare. The resulting peace treaty eliminated Carthage as a major power; she was stripped of her recruiting grounds in Spain and Numidia and deprived of her fleets and elephant herds. An indemnity of 200 talents per year for the next fifty years was imposed, designed to impoverish a state already out of nearly all sources of revenue. With Carthage crippled by this draconian peace treaty, Rome reigned supreme in the western Mediterranean.
When Attalus I arrived in Rome in 202, the Romans had much to fear from the secret pact between Philip V and Antiochus III. The war with Carthage had nearly ended in Roman defeat. Over 200,000 Roman and Italian soldiers had died in battle, including some 120,000 between 218 and 216 BC, a period of unprecedented military catastrophe. The war made the Romans sense the fragility of their own state: they appreciated afresh the vulnerability that came with sustained conflict. These feelings led to more than a hint of paranoia in matters of foreign relations. Now that the ‘balance of power’ was shattered in the eastern Mediterranean, Rome feared that Philip V or Antiochus III might grow too powerful with the addition of Ptolemaic resources and territories.23
For Rome, however, the most immediate enemy was Philip V. During the war with Hannibal, Philip V had made a logical decision. In 216, Hannibal enveloped and massacred a Roman army at Cannae. It was the third straight loss Rome had suffered in as many years. As many as 50,000 Roman soldiers were encircled and killed in a single horrifying day. To an outsider observer, it seemed that Carthage had won the war. Philip V sent envoys and signed a peace treaty with Carthage, promising aid and cooperation. Philip V was not obliged to join the war with Rome, nor was Carthage committed to any of Philip’s adventures.
A copy of the peace treaty was intercepted by Roman troops in 215, and the furious senate declared war upon Macedon. But with Roman armies engaged in Italy and Spain, Rome relegated the so-called ‘First Macedonian War’ to a mere sideshow. While Roman fleets chased Philip off the Adriatic Sea and a small Roman army operated in Illyria, Rome used the Aetolian League to fight a war by proxy. Without firm Roman support, the Aetolians made a separate peace with Philip V in 206, and the Romans concluded a separate peace with Philip the next year, called the Peace of Phoinike. The proxy war had done little but create bad blood between the two powers, and when the final battle with Hannibal took place at Zama, rumours circulated that 4000 Macedonians joined the side of Carthage.24 This was a total falsehood, although a few Macedonian mercenaries among the prisoners may have given credence to the tall tale. Nonetheless, if Rome were going to act against one of the two kings, there was reason to target Philip V first.
In 201 BC, after some reluctance, the Roman citizen assembly declared war on Macedonia. Modern historians refer to it as the ‘Second Macedonian War’. In 197 BC, a Roman army led by T. Quinctius Flamininus destroyed Philip V’s army at Cynoscephalae (‘the Dog’s Head’). Philip was allowed to keep his kingdom but was stripped of his external territories. He was also forced to surrender his eldest son, Demetrius, as a hostage to Rome and pay a hefty indemnity.
The Greeks, who by now had endured over 150 years of Macedonian subjugation, expected the Romans to set up permanent garrisons, in particular in the ‘fetters’ of Greece: strategic points at Corinth (Acrocorinth), the Athenian harbour at Piraeus, Demetrias, and Chalcis.
The Roman commander Flamininus was well aware of the diplomatic language of the Hellenistic world. Since the age of the successors, warlords and kings sought to position themselves as liberators of the Greek city, and liberty (eleutheria) was the operative word. While such liberty proved a very flexible concept, it was generally understood to reference autonomy in the realm of domestic policy, indeed the ability to remain under ‘one’s own laws’ (autonomos). The most desirable kind of eleutheria involved the absence of tribute (aphoros) and garrisons (aphylakes).
In 195 BC Flamininus attended the Pan-Hellenic Ishmean games near Corinth. Before the representatives of the assembled cities, he made a dramatic announcement, spoken in Latin and translated through Greek heralds: the Greek cities were to be free. The Romans would level no tribute nor install garrisons.25 The crowd went wild. If it had been a cynical announcement, it was certainly not received as such. Flamininus’ handlers feared he might be injured in the joyous rush to shake hands that followed.
Lysias and Hegesianax, two of the men who met with the pro-consul at Corinth, were not part of the general rejoicing. Antiochus had dispatched them as envoys to make contact with the victorious Romans and assess the situation in Greece and Macedonia.26 They met with the senatorial commissioners who had been sent over to help supervise Flamininus as he settled Greek and Macedonian affairs. The commissioners received the Seleucid envoys imperiously and gave them stark instructions as if they were the representatives from a defeated nation and not a waxing Mediterranean power:
They admonished the envoys of Antiochus to stay away from the autonomous cities of Asia and not to wage war against any of them, and to withdraw from whatever cities previously subject to Philip or Ptolemy he had just captured. They likewise forbade crossing into Europe with an armed force, for now none of the Greeks were to be warred upon or enslaved by anyone. They indicated, without going into details, that some of the commissioners would come to meet with Antiochus (Polybius 18.47.1–5).
Such blunt speech was not uniquely Roman, but rather common in ancient diplomacy. Today, modern diplomats speak in a measured and nuanced language that has been developed over the centuries. Such speech allows discussion without the type of frankness that might prompt outbursts of anger. Ancient diplomacy, on the other hand, frequently resembled schoolyard ‘trash-talking’.
The end of the fifth Syrian War
As Macedonian and Roman armies skirmished in Thessaly prior to the final showdown at Cynoscephalae, Antiochus continued his operations against Ptolemy V. With Koile Syria firmly in Seleucid hands and Philip occupied with the Roman war, Antiochus looked north to Asia Minor and Thrace. Philip V had claimed some of this territory, but at this time it seems the pact between kings was broken. With Philip fully distracted by his war with Rome, Antiochus prepared to seize some easy spoils.
In 197 BC, an army under the command of Mithradites and Ardys marched toward Sardis along the old Persian royal road. Mithradites was the younger son of Antiochus who had received his first important military command. Ardys was a senior soldier, who had served against Molon over twenty years before and taken part in the capture of Seleucia Pieria. His role was to advise and assist the young prince in his first military command.27
Meanwhile, Antiochus fit out a modest armada off the coast of southern Asia Minor, the first major Seleucid fleet to sail upon Mediterranean waters. Fleet and army now moved westwards in parallel thrusts, and Antiochus stopped his ships to force the submission of coastal towns along the way.
After a series of successes and submissions, a Rhodian delegation confronted Antiochus’ fleet. The Rhodians had joined the Roman coalition against Philip V, but they were alarmed about Antiochus’ naval incursions. The delegates from Rhodes demanded Antiochus halt his campaign until further negotiations take place between the two states. Even though Antiochus was a Great King and Rhodes a small island polis, he was obliged to halt and negotiate. Rhodes had a well-established navy, one far superior to his experimental fleet. The negotiations concluded to both parties’ mutual satisfaction, and Antiochus agreed to bypass the region of Halicarnassus in Caria, an old Ptolemiac possession that would fall under Rhode’s sphere of influence. Antiochus also agreed not to establish a naval base at Samos, a position that would threaten Rhodes’ Aegean thalassocracy.
With the Rhodian negotiations complete, Antiochus continued to attack up the Ionian coast. He bypassed a number of cities still in Macedonian possession: Bargylia, Iasos and Euromos, but then captured a string of Ptolemaic cities, finally arriving at Ephesus, a strategically located city with a strong citadel, which if captured would allow dominatio
n of the western coast of Asia Minor and access to the Hellespont.28 He occupied Ephesus without fanfare, and as expected, the city would become his capital in Ionia and an important base for further operations in the west.
While in Ephesus, Antiochus heard of the death of Attalus I, who had reigned at Pergamon for forty-three years, and of the accession of his son Eumenes II.29 Although Attalus’ defection in 241 had made him an enemy to the Seleucid dynasty, he had allied with Antiochus in the fight against Achaeus, and the two powers had maintained a tenuous peace ever since. Yet Attalus I had most recently been alarmed by Antiochus’ new campaign into Asia Minor, fearing that the capture of Ptolemaic territories would not satisfy the King’s ambition for more territory.
Yet Antiochus’ campaign season of 196 would be focused not against Pergamon but rather toward ensuring Seleucid dominance of the Hellespont. In the spring of 196 BC, a Seleucid garrison was installed in Abydos. This city had been a flash point in the Romano-Macedonian War, as Philip had captured it after a brutal siege in 201. Control of Abydos ensured Macedonian hegemony over the Hellespont and had prompted immediate Roman military intervention. However, Antiochus now occupied Abydos with little fanfare. Ilium, on the site of Homeric Troy, was also brought within the Seleucid sphere of influence at this time, at least according to an inscription from King Antiochus to the citizens of Ilium. Antiochus had his eyes also on the Ionian cities of Smyrna, Lampsacus, and Aeolis, and he sent detachments to the first two communities. But he was not willing to invest the military resources to besiege both cities, preferring to concentrate resources in order to secure the far side of the Hellespont. Still, Lampsacus was sufficiently alarmed by the display to appoint an envoy to travel to Greece and contact the Romans. Its envoy Hegesias met with Lucius Flamininus, the brother of the Roman commander.30 Antiochus was also represented before the Romans, having previously dispatched Lysias and Hegesianax to advocate in front of the victorious Romans. Meanwhile, Antiochus crossed over to the European side with an armed force and occupied the Chersonesos (modern-day Gallipoli), and after a short siege of the city of Madytos, the remaining communities submitted.
The Ptolemies had previously controlled the Chersonesos, but relinquished this authority after the cascade of dynastic misfortunes. Thracian war-bands took advantage of this power vacuum and ravaged the area, destroying the city of Lysimacheia. Antiochus secured the area, counter-raiding against the Thracians tribes on the borders. He sought to rebuild and repopulate Lysimacheia by ransoming captives sold into slavery and importing new settlers who were provided with cattle and agricultural tools.31 The rebuilt city provided Antiochus with a base to control the vital passage between the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
While Antiochus was in Lysimacheia, a Roman delegation arrived to confront the Seleucid king. It consisted of four commissioners sent by the senate to supervise Flamininus’ settlement. Led by Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, the group had been instructed by the senate to urge an immediate conclusion of the war with Ptolemy, but the overall purpose of the delegation was to discern Antiochus’ intentions and to intensify diplomatic engagement.
The diplomatic meeting had both public and private aspects. The public aspect consisted of contentious posturing: Lucius Cornelius demanded that Antiochus relinquish all cities captured from Ptolemy and refrain from attacking the free Greek cities of Asia Minor. He concluded by questioning Antiochus’ military operations in the Chersonesos, a campaign the Romans viewed as impinging on their settlement of Greece. Antiochus protested and argued the Romans’ overreach: just as he had no right to the affairs of the Italian peninsula, they had no right to dictate policy in Asia. He also defended his right to intervene in Lysimacheia. The Roman ambassadors responded by calling in representatives from Lampascus and Smyrna to protest Seleucid depredations. Caught in this Roman diplomatic ambush, Antiochus stormed out of the room and insisted that Rhodes mediate the dispute as a mutual ally. With this exit, he left behind a festering diplomatic conflict, ‘a study in Cold War’ as Ernest Badian famously called the situation in 1959.32 While some have criticized Badian for this analogy, a comparison of the Romans and Seleucids in the mid-190s BC to the cold war between the US and USSR may prove instructive. In both instances, unprecedented warfare had reduced a divided international system to two powers. The two victors saw each other across a ‘contested periphery’, territory that both sides claimed as spheres of influence: Greece in the case of Rome and Antiochus, Central Europe in the case of the US and Stalin. In both instances, diplomacy was terse and generally ineffective. Only the terror of nuclear annihilation prevented the US-USSR Cold War from turning hot.
Even as conflict festered between Rome and Antiochus, peace negotiations were underway with the Ptolemaic government, then controlled by the regents Aristomenes and Polykrates overseeing the boy king. By the time the Roman delegation arrived, the basic outline for peace had been decided. Ptolemy V recognized Antiochus’ right to Koile Syria, Asia Minor, and Thrace, and Antiochus’ daughter Cleopatra would marry young Ptolemy V.33 This was in keeping with Antiochus’ strategy of using female relatives to watch over vanquished kings. Cleopatra, born circa 215, was likely ten years older than her prepubescent husband. The only concession on the Seleucid side seems to have been that part of the revenue from Koile Syria would come with Cleopatra as a dowry (although this money was probably intended for her personal maintenance, rather than for the benefit of the Ptolemaic state treasury).34 Antiochus could thus confidently tell the concerned Roman delegation that he viewed the boy king not as an enemy but rather a son-in-law. He was also gaining an important ally and agent in the Ptolemaic court. The book of Daniel (c. 100 BC) prophesized retrospectively that ‘in order to destroy the kingdom, he (Antiochus III) shall give him (Ptolemy V) a woman in marriage’.
As the Roman envoys lingered in Lysimacheia, news arrived that Ptolemy V had died. If true, this threatened to upend the international structure of the Mediterranean once again, for the eleven-year-old Ptolemy V did not have an heir. The end of a major Hellenistic dynasty changed political and military calculations: it is possible that Antiochus now considered invading Egypt proper. He rushed to Ephesus and from there to Antioch, trying to confirm the report and make contingency plans to prepare his fleet for action.
The reports were false; Ptolemy V was still very much alive. Antiochus’ hasty response confirmed the Romans’ suspicions that he harboured continued territorial ambitions against Egypt. The issue of Smyrna and Lampsacus remained unresolved, a continued point of contention in Romano-Seleucid relations.
Having prepared his fleet to sail to Egypt, Antiochus made an assault on the island of Cyprus, a Ptolemaic possession important for its strategic location and substantial agricultural and mineral resources. The hastily conceived expedition was a complete failure. Worried about an expedition so late in the sailing season, the sailors briefly mutinied, and then a violent storm wrecked much of the fleet, killing many sailors and even some high-ranking ‘friends’. The fleet limped back to Seleucia Pieria, and the King proceeded up the Orontes River to Antioch.35 Frustrated in this endeavour as well and increasingly worried about tensions with the Romans, Antiochus prepared himself to sign the negotiated peace treaty with Ptolemy V.
Royal weddings
With the formal end of the fifth Syrian War and the diplomatic marriage between Cleopatra and Ptolemy V, Antiochus now sought to marry his remaining eligible children and return to the dynastic business neglected during the past five years of campaigning.
Antiochus’ attempted to betroth his middle daughter, Antiochis, to Eumenes II of Pergamon. Eumenes had a consequential diplomatic choice: he could accept the alliance and marry the daughter of a traditional enemy. But he had little reason to pursue this course of action: by refusing to marry Antiochus’ daughter, he gambled that the Roman Republic would prove a more reliable ally than the Great King. Antiochis was betrothed instead to Ariarathes, the king of Cappadocia.
The most notable marriage of 19
6, however, took place between Antiochus the Younger and his sister Laodice. For the first time, the Seleucid dynasty committed itself to incestuous marriage, mimicking Ptolemaic practice. The ultimate goal of this decision was the glorification of the dynasty, as incest rarefies royal bloodlines. While Antiochus forged marriage alliances with petty kings such as Ariarathes, the desire for purity of his own royal line reveals the rising status of the Seleucid monarchy. With Macedonia and the Ptolemies humbled, the Seleucid king saw no equal, and Antiochus therefore decided his heir ought not to interbreed with lesser kings. The recourse to incest may also imply a more assertive claim to divine status, as the phenomenon of royal incest is closely linked with claims of divine ancestry or actual divinity.
There is also evidence from this time that Antiochus established a state sponsored royal cult for himself and his wife Laodice. While the worship of Hellenistic kings dated to the era of Alexander and the successors, such cults were always organized on the initiative of subject communities as a gesture of loyalty and submission. Antiochus began to administer the royal cult through his own prerogative, yet another sign of an increasing sense of power and importance.
A refugee arrives in court
In 194, the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca arrived in Ephesus and presented himself before Antiochus.36 Although defeated at Zama in 202 BC, Hannibal remained an important fixture in Carthaginian politics for the next decade. In 195, he was elected suffet (‘judge,’ one of the two senior magistrates of the Carthaginian Republic) and he backed a number of reforms that strengthened democratic aspects of the Carthaginian constitution. Despite this involvement, Hannibal’s political opponents arranged for his exile in 195 and spread rumours in Rome that he was plotting to renew hostilities.37 Hannibal fled to Seleucid-controlled Tyre, the mythical homeland of the Carthaginians, where he was received with much fanfare. He then proceeded to the court at Ephesus. The Seleucid court was a logical destination for a political refugee of Hannibal’s calibre. Perhaps he hoped to obtain employment as a senior mercenary captain, but despite his polite reception he was not granted any significant command. The Romans, however, took notice of this movement: Hannibal’s presence in the Seleucid court was profoundly unnerving to them and strengthened their suspicions of Antiochus III.
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