Seleukid Ideology: Creation, Reception and Response 9783515134781, 3515134786

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Seleukid Ideology Creation, Reception and Response Edited by Altay Coşkun and Richard Wenghofer

Seleukid Perspectives | 1 Geschichte Franz Steiner Verlag Franz Steiner Verlag

88

contubernium Tübinger Beiträge zur Universitäts- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte

Seleukid Perspectives Edited by Altay Coşkun and Benjamin Scolnic Editorial Board Laetitia Graslin-Thomé, David Engels, and Kyle Erickson Editorial Assistant Deirdre Klokow Volume 1

Seleukid Ideology Creation, Reception and Response Edited by Altay Coşkun and Richard Wenghofer

Franz Steiner Verlag

Cover illustration: Tetradrachm of king Seleukos I, issued by Philetairos, Pergamon, ca. 281/80 BCE. Reverse depicting elephant (facing right), Seleukid anchor (below), and bee as control mark (above); BAΣIΛEΩΣ // ΣEΛEYKOY. Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18203077. Photo Dirk Sonnenwald. https://ikmk.smb.museum/object?id=18203077 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0) Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2023 www.steiner-verlag.de Druck: Beltz Grafische Betriebe, Bad Langensalza Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-13478-1 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-13479-8 (E-Book)

Seleukid Perspectives Edited by Altay Coşkun and Benjamin Scolnic Editorial Board Laetitia Graslin-Thomé, David Engels, and Kyle Erickson Editorial Assistant Deirdre Klokow Volume 1

Seleukid Ideology Creation, Reception and Response Edited by Altay Coşkun and Richard Wenghofer

Franz Steiner Verlag

Cover illustration: Tetradrachm of king Seleukos I, issued by Philetairos, Pergamon, ca. 281/80 BCE. Reverse depicting elephant (facing right), Seleukid anchor (below), and bee as control mark (above); BAΣIΛEΩΣ // ΣEΛEYKOY. Münzkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, no. 18203077. Photo Dirk Sonnenwald. https://ikmk.smb.museum/object?id=18203077 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0) Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2023 www.steiner-verlag.de Druck: Beltz Grafische Betriebe, Bad Langensalza Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-13478-1 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-13479-8 (E-Book)

CONTENTS Preface of the Series Editors.................................................................................... 7 Preface of the Volume Editors ................................................................................ 9 List of Figures........................................................................................................ 11 1. Richard Wenghofer and Altay Coşkun Introduction: The Dialectics of Seleukid Ideology ............................................... 13 SECTION I: FORMATION OF SELEUKID DYNASTIC IDEOLOGY 2. Kyle Erickson Royal Propaganda and the Creation of Royal Status for Seleukos I ..................... 33 3. Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides The King-Ship of the Seleukids: An Alternative Paradigm for the Anchor Symbol ..................................................................................................... 61 4. Altay Coşkun The First Seleukid Benefactions in Miletos and the Creation of a Dynastic Ideology ................................................................................................. 93 SECTION II: ENACTING SELEUKID KINGSHIP 5. Babett Edelmann-Singer Material Culture, Ritual Performance, and Seleukid Rule: Antiochos IV and the Procession at Daphne in 166 BCE .......................................................... 115 6. Stephen Harrison Antiochos at Daphne and Xerxes at Sardeis: A Comparative Perspective on the Seleukid Vision of Empire ...................................................................... 135 7. Rolf Strootman Ritual Mutilation and the Construction of Treason: The Execution of Molon and Achaios by Antiochos III ................................................................. 159 8. Benjamin E. Scolnic Second-Hand Propaganda: Polybios and Zeno on the Role of Antiochos IV at the Battle of Panion ................................................................... 177

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Contents

SECTION III: RESISTING SELEUKID ROYAL AUTHORITY 9. Deirdre Klokow Connectivity and Rural Spaces in the Seleukid Empire ...................................... 201 10. Gillian Ramsey Rebel Poleis: The Politics of Anti-Seleukid Violence ....................................... 219 SECTION IV: REFRAMING SELEUKID IDEOLOGY 11. Germain Payen Le royaume artaxiade dans l’Empire séleucide: de dominé à dominant ............. 237 12. Benjamin E. Scolnic Śar Wars – How a Judaean Author in the 160’s BCE Transformed a Ptolemaic View of Hellenistic History into a Theology for His Time ................ 261 13. Eran Almagor “To All Parts of the Kingdom”: The Book of Esther as a Seleukid Text ............ 283 SECTION V: RE-ASSESSING SELEUKID IDEOLOGY 14. Richard Wenghofer Diplomatic Resistance to Seleukid Hegemony ................................................... 319 15. Altay Coşkun The Efficacy of Ideological Discourse: Loyalty to the Seleukid Dynasty in Babylonia, Judaea, and Asia Minor................................................................. 343 About the Authors ............................................................................................... 367 Index of Names.................................................................................................... 371 Index of Sources .................................................................................................. 381

PREFACE OF THE SERIES EDITORS Seleukid Perspectives explores the kingdom that continues to fascinate students of history because of its wide geographical span, multicultural population, and unending dynastic and political turmoil. The Seleukid Empire was the largest successor to Alexander the Great’s empire and once extended from Asia Minor to the Hindukush. Hellenistic history is en vogue, and it seems that the Seleukids have dethroned the long-time favourite Ptolemies in the recent wave of scholarly production. The number of books on the Seleukids published in the past decade alone dwarfs the contributions to the field made throughout the previous century. This goes along with many conferences and their published proceedings, most of all the Seleukid Study Days and the Nancy conferences, both of which have emphasized a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach. The present book series has derived from the loosely defined Seleukid Study Group that had its start in numbered gatherings in 2011 but actually goes back to the Exeter conference in 2008. Some of the conferences coalesced as book projects: SSD III (Bordeaux 2012) became The Seleukid Empire 281-222 BC: War Within the Family, ed. by K. Erikson, Swansea 2018. SSD IV (Montreal, 2013) became Seleukid Royal Women: Creation, Representation and Distortion of Hellenistic Queenship in the Seleukid Empire, ed. by A. Coşkun and A. McAuley, Stuttgart 2016. SSD V (Brussels 2015) became Rome and the Seleukid East, ed. by A. Coşkun and D. Engels, Brussels 2019.

When faced with the obstacle of the Covid-19 pandemic, a dynamic digital format was created, to continue this international cooperation. Since May 2021, the monthly Seleukid Lecture Series (SLS) has offered a popular platform for work in progress and typically involves students, early researchers, and established scholars alike. The online program allows for watching the recordings of past events and announces upcoming lectures (http://www.altaycoskun.com/seleukid-lectures). The idea to streamline the publication of original Seleukid research in a book series was born in summer 2022 when work on the volume Seleukid Ideology was nearing submission for peer review and several other book projects were in progress or planning. Our proposal met with an enthusiastic response from Katharina Stüdemann at Franz Steiner Verlag, whose efficiency and attractive conditions we already knew well. We were likewise pleased that our colleagues Laetitia Graslin-Thomé (Nancy), David Engels (Poznań / Warsaw), and Kyle Erickson (Lampeter) accepted

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Preface of the Series Editors

our invitation to serve on the editorial board, which assists us with advice and the organization of peer review. We were very lucky that Deirdre Klokow (still a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California at the time of writing) was willing to become our editorial assistant. The release of the first volume would have taken so much longer without her diligence and energy. The first volume of this new series, Seleukid Perspectives, is partly a product of SSD VI (North Bay 2017) and partly of SLS (2021–2022), as will be explained in the Preface of the Volume Editors. Its focus on matters of ideology is both trendy and traditional in that this area has always represented a major emphasis of Hellenistic research but is now pursued with a growing range of theoretical approaches, sources in more than Greek or Latin, and from diverse international perspectives. We are particularly grateful to Laetitia Graslin-Thomé for organizing anonymous peer review of this first volume. We already have a line-up of more Seleukid book projects, hoping to publish volumes 2 on military matters and 3 on Jewish perspectives in 2024, and about three further volumes in the two years thereafter. Once we have dealt with the backlog, we shall also accept submissions from outside the Seleukid Study Group. It is our hope that Seleukid Perspectives will contribute to the stimulating dialogue that is the hallmark of this field. February 2023

Hamden, CT Benjamin Edidin Scolnic

Waterloo, ON Altay Coşkun

PREFACE OF THE VOLUME EDITORS Every book has a history of at least two parts. The first ends with the submission of the book to the press, the second starts thereafter. As editors, we would like to share with our readers some insights into the former, while leaving the latter to our hopes. The roots of this book go back to the beginning of our friendship in 2012. From early on, Seleukid history and modern political theory were among the preferred topics of our convivial conversations. They became the focus of our scholarly cooperation from Seleukid Study Day III on (Bordeaux, September 2012). By 2016, we decided to co-organize a Seleukid Study Day at Nipissing University, North Bay, ON, and we settled on a topic that naturally derived from the previous workshops, then also including Seleukid Study Day IV (Montreal 2013) and V (Brussels 2015). Since all our literary, epigraphic, numismatic, and visual sources on the Seleukids are so heavily imbued with ideological constructs, at times even in multiple and conflicting layers, we felt a more systematic approach was an important desideratum. Historians of the Hellenistic age have always shown some awareness of this aspect. They had thus already begun questioning the 19th-century frameworks that were either Christian-teleological (appreciating the spread of Greek to pave the way to the Gospel) or Nationalistic (decrying inter-ethnic marriages and intercultural exchange as decay). The narrowness of colonial perspectives had also become visible and insufficient in the face of the diversity and complexity of Seleukid materials. Yet, many historical narratives still carried forward uncritical readings of the partisan and moralizing Greek sources, echoed the prejudice of Seleukid weakness as a result of its cultural hybridity, or were slow to overcome the one-sided emphasis on Greek agency at the Macedonian courts. Seleukid Study Day VI thus encouraged the systematic analysis of ideology in all its appearances and sought to focus on the reception of and response to ideological messages. We tried to explore which impact the selections, additions, nuances, and reconfigurations from the perspective of the subjects, vassals, and neighbours had on the ideological discourse, as we find it in our sources. We gradually saw more clearly that all ideology is communication, hence also the legends and symbols shaped at the early-Seleukid court were designed in a dialectic process involving predecessors, neighbours, and subjects. The workshop on Seleukid Ideology resulted in a stimulating event, yet manuscripts came in slowly. Some of the participants had presented work in progress at an early stage, while others had committed their research elsewhere and did not want to duplicate publication. Three of the papers formed part of or developed into

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Richard Wenghofer and Altay Coşkun

independent book projects.1 Thus only four of the chapters of the present volume go back to earlier versions delivered in North Bay (Rolf Strootman, Germain Payen) or committed to the planned volume in 2017 (Babett Edelmann-Singer, Gillian Ramsey). We are grateful to these authors for their patience with us, and their revisions and updates (mostly in 2022). In 2018, our concentration shifted to the publication of the proceedings of Seleukid Study Day V and the preparation of the upcoming Seleukid Study Day VII (Sopot near Gdańsk 2019). The two of us continued our work on our own related research areas, Richard on the reaction to the Seleukids by the Greek poleis and Altay on the ambiguous Judaean-Seleukid relations. The conference Culture and Ideology under the Seleucids: An Interdisciplinary Approach, organized by Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides (Macquarie University, Sydney, 29-31 March 2019) revived our interest and allowed us to present important chapters of our research.2 Encouraged by these discussions, we began redesigning our project. However, the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in yet another slowdown. But then the launch of the digital Seleukid Lecture Series in May 2021 reinvigorated our efforts. We renewed our exchange with participants of former Seleukid Study Days and connected with many more students and scholars for the first time. Kyle Erickson, Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, Deirdre Klokow, and Eran Almagor were so kind as to develop their lectures into chapters for the present volume. Richard’s chapter also finds its place here, but likewise represents, together with Altay’s (chs. 14–15), the natural outflow of a discussion we have been entertaining for the past six years. One further chapter was offered by Ben Scolnic (after the conference held at Sopot in 2019) and by Altay (to replace his paper given in North Bay)3 to complete the volume. We would like to express our gratitude to the aforementioned authors for their trust and cooperation. In particular, we are indebted to Ben Scolnic and Deirdre Klokow for their energetic and unwavering support in the production of this book. Thanks also go to the anonymous reviewer and in particular to Laetitia GraslinThomé for her help with all matters Babylonian and Akkadian. Last but not least, a project like this does not come to fruition without the patience and background support of those whom we love most, Liz and Doro (respectively). February 2023

1

2

3

North Bay, ON Richard Wenghofer

Waterloo, ON Altay Coşkun

Kosmin, P.J. 2018: Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire, Cambridge, MA. A. Coşkun’s paper on the Seleukid era had been designed as a response to Kosmin; his research was developed further and partly published in ‘Expansion und dynastische Politik in Pontos: Zwei neue Ären unter Pharnakes I.’, Historia 77, 2022, 2–26; other materials will hopefully feed into a later Seleukid Study Day themed ‘Anchored in Time’. And see B. Scolnic and A. Coşkun, Jewish Responses to Seleukid Rule, in preparation as Seleukid Perspectives 3. A. Coşkun, ‘The Reception of Seleukid Ideology in 2nd-Century BC Judaea’, and R. Wenghofer, ‘Popular Resistance to Seleucid Claims to Hegemony’, in E. AnagnostouLaoutides and S. Pfeiffer (eds.), Culture and Ideology under the Seleucids. Unframing a Dynasty, Berlin 2022, 151–166 and 167–184 respectively. His ch. 4 on Miletos replaces his paper on the Seleukid era, see n. 1 above.

LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 2 Fig. 1: Fig. 2:

Silver tetradrachm from the Babylon II mint, struck in the name of Alexander......................................................43 Bronze coin from Seleukeia-in-Pieria, depicting Zeus and the thunderbolt.....................................................................................51

Chapter 3 Fig. 1a: Fig. 1b: Fig. 2: Fig. 3: Fig. 4: Fig. 5: Fig. 6: Fig. 7:

Alexander type tetradrachm, 311–305 BCE....................................65 Alexander type stater, 311–305 BCE..............................................65 Silver tetradrachm, Salamis mint, 300-295.....................................69 Seleukos I, lion tetradrachm, Babylon mint, c. 311–305 BCE.........72 Coin of Mazaios with lion and Ba’al...............................................73 Phoenician War Ship from Sennacherib’s Palace at Nineveh, 705–681 BCE..................................................................................77 Babylonian World Map...................................................................82 Nebuchadnezzar’s clay cylinder, 604–561 BCE.............................83

Chapter 5 Fig. 1:

Tetradrachm of Antiochos IV, Antioch on the Orontes.................122

Chapter 9 Fig. 1: Fig. 2:

Map of the Battle of Panion, following the account of Zeno..........183 Map of the Battle of Panion, following Scolnic.............................191

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION: THE DIALECTICS OF SELEUKID IDEOLOGY Richard Wenghofer and Altay Coşkun The Seleukid Empire (312–64 BCE) was forged in the crucible of war. Alexander III of Macedon had only just subjugated the territories of the erstwhile Achaemenid world under his yoke, when his sudden death in 323 BCE, at thirty-three years of age, unleashed a series of power struggles among his generals, hungry to succeed him as ruler over the newly-minted Macedonian hegemony. The ensuing wars lasted from 322 to 281 BCE, ending only with the death of Seleukos I, the last of the Diadochs, although the impacts of these struggles continued among their successors well beyond 281 BCE.1 Yet, starting in 306 BCE, the most successful of Alexander’s would-be successors (Antigonos I and his son, Demetrios, as well as Lysimachos, Ptolemy I Soter, and Seleukos I Nikator) began styling themselves ‘kings’ (basileis), with none recognizing any territorial limits over their claims to power as such.2 These kings ruled over any territory their spears could reach.3 The tenth-century Byzantine compilation, the Suda, thus defines monarchy (basileia) in this period after Alexander as one that rested neither on descent (phusis) nor justice (dike), but on the ability to competently command an army.4 Insatiable 1

2

3

4

Recent accounts of the Diadochs include Bennett and Roberts 2011/19; Alonso Troncoso and Anson 2013; Hauben and Meeus 2014; Wrightson 2019; Matyszak 2019; Capdetrey 2022. A bit more specific are Champion 2014 (Antigonos); Worthington 2016 (Ptolemy); Howe 2018 (Ptolemy); Grainger 2014 (Seleukos) and 2019 (Antipatros); Hannestadt 2020 (Seleukos); Wheatley and Dunn 2020 as well as Romm 2022 (Demetrios). On the Year of the Kings, see Plut. Demetr. 17f. On the universal claims, symbols, titles, and the courts of Hellenistic kingship, see Bikerman 1938; Ritter 1965; Virgilio 2003; Alonso Troncoso 2005; Michels 2009; Muccioli 2013; Strootman 2014; Engels 2017; AnagnostouLaoutides and Pfeiffer 2022. On the ideology of spear-won land and military victory as the essence of Hellenistic, and especially Seleukid, kingship, see, in addition to the references quoted in the previous note, Mehl 1980/81; Gehrke 1982; Bikerman 1938; Barbantani 2007; Koehn 2007; Coşkun 2012; Nelson 2022; for a more complete bibliography, see Coşkun 2022d, 36f. Suda B 147.2f. (ed. E. Adler) = Suda Online ed. D. Whitehead: Βασιλεία. οὔτε φύσις οὔτε τὸ δίκαιον ἀποδιδοῦσι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὰς βασιλείας, ἀλλὰ τοῖς δυναμένοις ἡγεῖσθαι στρατοπέδου καὶ χειρίζειν πράγματα νουνεχῶς: οἷος ἦν Φίλιππος καὶ οἱ διάδοχοι ̓Αλεξάνδρου. τὸν γὰρ υἱὸν κατὰ φύσιν οὐδὲν ὠφέλησεν ἡ συγγένεια διὰ τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀδυναμίαν. τοὺς δὲ μηδὲν

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ambition and the spectre of all-encompassing wars thus run like a red thread throughout the history of the Hellenistic monarchies.5 Yet, while scholars have long recognized the significance of the role warfare played in shaping the character of Hellenistic kingship in general, and Seleukid kingship in particular, it has also long been recognized that no king could rule only on the basis of violent coercion for very long. Seleukid kings, just like their Antigonid, Ptolemaic, and Attalid counterparts, had to find ways to clothe their rule with dike, as the Suda would say. To that end, Seleukid kings developed an elaborate repertoire of practices, behaviours, and propaganda aimed specifically at rendering their and their family’s claims to royal authority more acceptable to those they had subjugated. One way or another, ideological messages imply – or even state explicitly – the positive force that the rule of a king or dynasty brings to the subjects and vassals: victory, salvation and divine presence are most often enshrined in the epithets borne by or bestowed on a Seleukid king, as in Seleukos I Nikator, Antiochos I Soter and Antiochos II Theos. The notion of benefaction was reflected in the dynasty’s titulature officially only under Ptolemaic influence in 150 BCE with Alexander (Balas) Euergetes Philadelphos, although it had been attested in the king’s exchanges with cities inside and outside his territory from early on. The theme of noble ancestry and legitimate succession was most creatively developed under the first two kings but did not result in a royal title before Seleukos IV Philopator.6 Yet the development and dissemination of such ideological themes was an exceedingly difficult and complicated endeavour in the Seleukid context, as the polities over whom Seleukid kings claimed royal authority were incredibly diverse in terms of culture, language, ethnicity, and religion, as well as in social and political organization. Each of the polities encompassed by Seleukid domains, whether Greek city-states, temple states, nomadic tribes, or quasi-feudal polities all had their own ideas as to what constituted acceptable political authority, and these ideas no doubt shifted and changed over the long arc of Seleukid history.7 Seleukid kings thus found themselves in the position of having to be all things to all people if they were to maintain their status as kings. That the Seleukid dynasty managed to maintain royal authority for about two and a half centuries testifies to

5 6 7

προσήκοντας βασιλεῖς γενέσθαι σχεδὸν ἁπάσης τῇς οἰκουμένης. ‘Neither nature nor justice gives kingdoms to men, but to those who are able to lead an army and to handle affairs intelligently; such as Philip was, and the successors of Alexander. For family relationship did not benefit the natural son at all because of the weakness of his soul. But those who had no relationship becoming kings of almost the whole inhabited world.’ The provenience of this description is unknown, but it is generally regarded as pertinent for all Diadochs; cf. Austin 2006, no. 45; Wheatley and Dunn 2020, 37. And see the previous note on the military character of Hellenistic kingship. Cf. Chaniotis 2005. The most comprehensive treatment of royal epithets is by Muccioli 2013. For documentation, see Houghton and Lorber SC I; Houghton, Lorber, and Hoover SC II. Major recent accounts or studies of the Seleukids after 281 include Mittag 2006; Ehling 2008; Taylor 2013; Feyel and Graslin-Thomé 2014; 2017; 2021; Grainger 2015a and 2015b; Erickson 2018; Coşkun and Engels 2019; Oetjen 2020; du Plessis 2022; Kosmin and Moyer 2022; Wrightson 2022.

Introduction

15

the fact that they were, in the main, successful in compelling local acceptance of their claims to the rightful exercise of royal power. How Seleukid kings went about trying to win over the hearts and minds of the peoples they subjugated has been the subject of a flurry of recent scholarship. These studies have proven to be a tremendous boon to Seleukid scholars, and to our grasp of the social and political histories of the Hellenistic world more generally.8 As one might expect, the approaches to the question of the reactions and responses to Seleukid hegemonic claims are highly varied, as are the conclusions that have been reached. The reasons for this should be immediately obvious. As the contributions in this volume will demonstrate, the nature of Seleukid power – how it was exercised and how it was presented to the diverse communities of the Seleukid Empire – was circumscribed to a considerable degree by local social, cultural, and political conditions and expectations. While much of Seleukid royal image and royal propaganda was fashioned at the Seleukid royal court, none of it was developed in a vacuum. Ideas and iconography rather emerged in reaction to the same efforts being made by competing kings and dynasts, and in dialogue with local conditions prevailing on the ground in subject communities. Seleukid kings thus perforce donned many different guises, depending on local contexts, even if there were certain common elements present in each one.9 Yet examining the construction of Seleukid royal propaganda and royal identity, and assessing its effectiveness, based solely on the self-representations coming out of the Seleukid court would be a bit like listening to only half a conversation: much would be lost. The primary aim of this volume is, therefore, to not only explore further the construction of the Seleukid dynastic ideology and image of kingship, but also to provide the voice of the Seleukid interlocutors in their myriad responses to Seleukid rule in specific local milieus. One of the great challenges inhering in the recovery of the voices of subject communities revolves around sources, which are unfortunately few, scattered, and diverse. However, many a Greek inscription can still be revealing, if read against the grain, while the Jews with their rich literary tradition and the Babylonians with their prolific epigraphic bequest allow for recovering very specific local voices from the Near East. A detailed understanding of the required languages and material cultures is crucial for reconstructing the many local contexts and reactions relevant to the question of the reception of Seleukid royal propaganda. Some of the contributors to this volume do indeed bring such specialized skills to the table and have thus shed muchneeded light on important facets of Seleukid claims to royal authority. Yet other contributors have undertaken a re-examination of various aspects of Seleukid royal propaganda and ideology emerging from the royal court itself, effectively reading 8

9

In addition to the references cited in the previous notes, see Brodersen 1999/2000; Capdetrey 2007; Kosmin 2014 and 2018; Chrubasik 2016; Coşkun and McAuley 2016; Ogden 2017; Erickson 2019; Fischer-Bovet and von Reden 2021; Anagnostou-Laoutides and Pfeiffer 2022; Lorber 2022. Also note the more immediate context in which this volume has been produced, the Seleukid Study Days (2011–2019) and the Seleukid Lecture Series (2021–2022), which are introduced a bit further in the Preface to this volume. See notes 2, 3 and 7 above.

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the more traditional evidence against the backdrop of concrete local historical conditions to which royal propaganda was meant to respond, and which can then be used to suggest how local polities reacted to Seleukid royal authority. Another great challenge confronting the contributors to this volume is just the question of defining political ‘legitimacy’ in the Hellenistic context. The scholarly literature on this question is rather thin and there is really no agreement.10 And this may simply be for the good reason that formalist approaches to the question of ‘legitimacy’ are better avoided. The Hellenistic world, stretching as it does from the fringes of the Western Mediterranean to the Indus River in modern Pakistan, and from the Republics of Central Asia to the Arab peninsula and North Africa was inhabited by countless peoples bearing a bewildering variety of languages, cultures, and social and political organizations. Each of these peoples had their own ideas about what constituted an acceptable claim to the rightful exercise of political authority, royal or otherwise. And it should not be taken for granted that these perspectives remained the same throughout the Hellenistic period. All of the contributors to this volume were hence left to employ their own ideas about how royal authority was constituted, either explicitly or implicitly, in the variety of Seleukid domains. Our approach to the question of what constituted an acceptable claim to, and exercise of, royal authority thus remains impartial, agnostic, and without prejudice either for or against any particular theory of ‘political legitimacy’. As one mild exception to this open-minded approach, we would like to stress that this very notion of ‘legitimacy’ is post-Hellenistic and that we should look for other factors more conducive to the acceptance or rejection of the rightful claim to royal authority and its exercise in distinctively Hellenistic contexts. Consequently, we feel that an overarching definition of ‘political legitimacy’ uniquely applicable to the Hellenistic period would be both anachronistic and inappropriate.11 Seleukid, Ptolemaic, Antigonid, and Attalid kings no doubt all saw their right to rule as in some sense ‘legitimate’, but it is not clear that their subjects always or necessarily shared their understanding of what such a claim to ‘legitimate’ royal rule entailed.12 Be this as it may, it is nevertheless possible to gauge local reactions toward Seleukid claims to, and exercise of, royal authority, as a proxy for measuring local acceptance or rejection of Seleukid royal pretentions in specifically local social, cultural, and political contexts. This understanding will be exemplified by many studies gathered in the present volume. How to arrange the papers comprised in this volume has been a challenging question that occupied its editors until shortly before its submission to the press. Given the wide range of examples that most chapters draw on, a mere chronological or geographical structure would have been insufficient. One possible way of 10 The introductions to Trampedach and Meeus 2020 or Anagnostou-Laoutides and Pfeiffer 2022 do not reach very far in terms of theoretical reflection, nor do most other works referenced in notes 2–4 and 7 above. Cf. Coşkun 2023 on the ideological framework of Seleukid diplomacy. 11 For further discussion and references, see the last two chapters in this volume. 12 Besides the works listed in notes 1–4, 7, and 9 above, we point to Müller 2009 as an outstanding study on the construction of Ptolemaic royal status (cf. Coşkun 2022b). For the minor Hellenistic kingdoms, see especially Koehn 2007 and Michels 2009.

Introduction

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organizing the individual contributions might have been by splitting them according to royal or dynastic ideology, as some are more concerned with the appeal of the king himself, others exhibiting the greatness of his family and the noble line of succession observed within.13 Another option would have been an arrangement by ideological concepts. The choice that was eventually made was meant to emphasize various stages of the dialectic process in which ideology is shaped, communicated, received, reflected, nuanced, modified, or rejected. The contributions fall somewhat organically into two major parts, those dealing with the ambitions of the royal court to create and endorse ideological concepts in their dialectical contexts, and others focusing more directly on the manifold responses to them outside the court. We finally settled on a further subdivision into five distinct sections. The articles in Section I explore the dialectical formation of Seleukid royal ideology, identity, and strategies for establishing the acceptance of Seleukid claims to rightful royal authority, often in dialogue with ideas regarding acceptable claims to and exercise of political power prevailing in local cultures. Each of the authors has attempted to understand the construction of a specific iteration or face of Seleukid royal imagery and legitimacy as a response to specific, concrete local conditions. The articles in Section II shift attention away from the Seleukid court and toward local polities themselves in an effort to come to terms with the range of possible reactions and responses to Seleukid royal pretensions and the exercise of royal authority in local settings. In Chapter 2, ‘Royal Propaganda and the Creation of Royal Status for Seleukos I’, Kyle Erickson attempts to reconstruct how Seleukos I made full use of the various means he had at his disposal in order to garner acceptance for his rule. Seleukos developed his royal propaganda not in a vacuum, but as part of a dialogue between his court and various local political stakeholders, including other great dynasts such as the Antigonids and the Ptolemies, as well as the image of kingship established under Alexander. Seleukos’ strategies were thus both proactive and reactive. Erickson traces the development of Seleukos’ efforts to establish the acceptability of his reign through a close examination of his coin production and his city foundations and their accompanying foundation myths, noting that the longevity of Seleukid coin types and mythmaking beyond the Seleukid dynasty itself testifies to the effectiveness of those efforts. Seleukos, like Ptolemy and Lysimachos, employed imagery on coins, as well as a series of cleverly crafted myths, in order to present himself as Alexander’s worthy successor. Unlike his competitors, however, he appears to have abandoned this strategy after the Battle of Ipsos (301 BCE) and began to cultivate a new iconography and dynastic mythology that effectively effaced any connections with Alexander as a source of political authority, and presented Seleukos as a divinely ordained king in his own right. Erickson contends that this Seleukid mythmaking, both with regard to the divine sanction of Seleukos’ rule and with respect to his 13 Royal persona: K. Erickson, E. Anagnostou-Laoutides, S. Harrison, R. Strootman, B. Edelmann-Singer, B. Scolnic (on Panion), G. Ramsey, R. Wenghofer. Dynastic lineage or family: A. Coşkun (on Miletos); D. Klokow, B. Scolnic (on Śar Wars).

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city-foundations, is neatly, if incompletely, encompassed in Appian’s Syrian Wars, a series of narratives that originated in the Seleukid court and comprised both traditional Graeco-Macedonian and Near Eastern elements. Erickson’s treatment of Seleukid city foundation narratives is particularly helpful for shedding light on the varied reactions to Seleukid kingship in the reign of Seleukos I. He notes that Appian’s account of the foundation of Seleukeia-on-the-Tigris contains negative overtones suggestive of hostility and resistance among the nearby Babylonians, while the stories surrounding the foundation of Antioch-on-the-Orontes and Seleukeia-inPieria points to a more positive local reception of Seleukid royal authority in Syria, thus highlighting the varied local reactions to Seleukid claims to royal authority. With Chapter 3, ‘The King-Ship of the Seleukids: An Alternative Paradigm for the Anchor Symbol’, Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides presents what is in some respects a companion piece to Erickson’s study, as she undertakes an examination of how the Seleukids attempted to create a sense of acceptable royal authority in their Babylonian domains specifically. Anagnostou-Laoutides revaluates much of the scholarship on how the anchor became the Seleukid dynastic symbol par excellence, ubiquitous on Seleukid coinage and prominent in Seleukid court mythologizing. Modern scholarship traditionally connects the Seleukid anchor to the dynastic myth of Seleukid descent from the god Apollo, or else as a symbol evoking Seleukos’ I brief stint as an admiral for Ptolemy I between 315 and 312 BCE. Without rejecting either of these positions outright, Anagnostou-Laoutides, utilizing a variety of Babylonian and other Near Eastern sources, in addition to the more standard numismatic and literary evidence, argues that the use of the anchor symbol on Seleukid coins and in Seleukid myth was intended as a conciliatory gesture, meant to establish dynastic royal authority not only for Greeks and Macedonians settled in Seleukid domains, but for Seleukid subjects in Babylonia as well. Anchors, and nautical imagery more generally, Anagnostou-Laoutides contends, are surprisingly common in Babylonian myth and religious iconography, and are replete with political significance in Near Eastern images of legitimate kingship. In Babylonian, Neo-Assyrian, and Kilikian contexts, to name but a few, ships and their associated paraphernalia adorned temples and are frequently referenced in royal inscriptions. These nautical images appear to represent a ‘ship of state’ motif, common in Near Eastern myth and royal imagery, the stability, security, and good order of which is the prerogative of kings as the gods’ representative on earth. The meaning of the anchor is thus polyvalent, establishing images of Seleukid royal authority not only among their Graeco-Macedonian subjects, but among their Mesopotamian subjects as well. Altay Coşkun continues the theme of creating a sense of royal legitimacy in Chapter 4, ‘The First Seleukid Benefactions in Miletos and the Creation of a Dynastic Ideology’, undertaking a close examination of the Milesian honorary decrees. Coşkun argues that Seleukos I drew upon his warm relations with Miletos, established in 300 BCE through his marriage to the daughter of Demetrios I Poliorketes, who was then holding sway over Miletos, in order to articulate the prosperity of his kingship. It is Seleukos’ first wife Apama who is given prominence in the Milesian epigraphic decree. While recent scholarship has shed much light on the use of the

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basilissa role in the public representation of the king and his family, and further claimed some political importance for this specific queen, Coşkun infers from the inscriptions that the diplomacy with the sanctuary city was intended to give status to her as the mother of the designated successor Antiochos, rather than showing any specific individual agency. More importantly, the Milesian honorary decrees allow for reconstructing the character of relations between the Milesians and the Seleukid dynasty in the brief interval between the Battles of Ipsos and Korupedion. Coşkun notes that in the period between 301 and 279 BCE, Miletos, though under the sway variously of Demetrios I Poliorketes and then Lysimachos, Seleukos I, and Ptolemy, largely maintained both its independence and its democracy in the face of competing royal ambitions in the region. Moreover, Seleukos I, like Lysimachos, Ptolemy, and Demetrios, attempted to leverage the widespread popularity of the Didymeion as part of its broader strategy to advertise Seleukid rule in Asia Minor and beyond. Further, the arrival of the Milesian, Demodamas, at the Seleukid court of Antiochos I, together with the dynasty’s patronage of the Didymeion, was the catalyst for the Seleukid dynasty’s adoption of Apollo as their central divinity. Apollo was himself a polyvalent figure with deep political significance in both Greek and Near Eastern contexts. Coşkun’s analysis thus underscores the complexity of the entangled relations between king and city, as Miletos managed to pursue cordial relations with competing dynasts whilst maintaining its democracy and independence as a polis in the period covered by his analysis. Those relations could and did shift according to contingent circumstances on the ground, yet the case of the Milesian decrees specifically reveals what positive relations between Seleukid kings and Greek poleis might look like. Section II explores how later Seleukid kings reminded their subjects of their royal persona, while also reshaping and adapting its design. In Chapter 5, Babett Edelmann-Singer undertakes an examination of the famous pompe at Daphne in ‘Material Culture, Ritual Performance, and Seleukid Rule: Antiochos IV and the Procession at Daphne in 166 BCE’. Edelmann-Singer looks beyond the event as an expression of imperial power in answer to the triumph of Aemilius Paullus, and toward the procession as an expression of the legitimation of Antiochos’ rule. She focuses particular attention on the religious objects carried in the procession, as described by Polybios and Athenaios, arguing that while it is true that Paullus’ procession looms in the background of Daphne, Antiochos in fact intended his procession as a means to communicate his unique vision of kingship to all the peoples over whom he claimed royal authority. Edelmann-Singer notes that a Hellenistic pompe would typically maintain a strict separation between the spectators and the actors. In contrast, similar processions in most Greek poleis would not maintain such a separation (thus representing the city as a whole). But Antiochos did not follow the royal fashion of pompe and thus deliberately conflated his basileia and the oikumene. The universality of Antiochos’ claims is underscored by the presence of all the divinities, both Greek and non-Greek, which processed to the temple of Apollo and Artemis. This is modelled on Babylonian and Assyrian precedents. The pompe at Daphne thus unites Near

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Eastern and Greek traditions, and the enthusiastic participation of envoys from the various communities summoned represents a positive response to the claims to legitimacy that Antiochos intended to convey. In Chapter 6, Stephen Harrison provides a comparative analysis of Persian royal processions described by Herodotos, the Apadana relief carvings, the Behistun inscriptions, and the account of the pompe of Antiochos IV at Daphne in 166 BCE as found in Polybios, Athenaios, and Diodoros. In ‘Antiochos at Daphne and Xerxes at Sardeis: A Comparative Perspective on the Seleukid Vision of Empire and the Creation of a Dynastic Ideology’, Harrison examines how Xerxes used royal processions to provide a visual representation of the extent and hierarchical order of Achaemenid rule. The aim of such displays was to establish a sense of royal legitimacy by creating a sense of unity among the peoples under his rule, a unity that ultimately centred on the person of the king in both a figurative and real sense. In the Persian processions, the physical position of the king, relative to his diverse subjects, is made to be seen as the source of order and justice. Harrison then turns to accounts of Antiochos IV’s procession at Daphne, to argue that Antiochos similarly used the royal pompe as a vehicle to reconfigure dynastic space in a way that was consistent with the Seleukid view of empire. He next compares the discrepancies between the Achaemenid and Seleukid conceptualizations of imperial space through the lens of the royal procession. Ultimately, both the Achaemenid and Seleukid representations of kingship aim at establishing unity among ethnically diverse peoples, but do so in different ways according to their respective political ideals. In Chapter 7, ‘Ritual Mutilation and the Construction of Treason: The Execution of Molon and Achaios by Antiochos III’, Rolf Strootman continues the examination of the Seleukid construction of royal authority in a distinctively Persian cultural idiom. He undertakes a close analysis of Antiochos III’s post mortem treatment of the corpses of the usurpers Achaios and Molon as recorded in Polybios. Strootman establishes Persian and other Near Eastern precedents for those actions. He adds further context by examining Alexander’s treatment of Bessos’ corpse, which he sees as the link between Antiochos’ ritual mutilation and the earlier Persian and Near Eastern customary ways of dealing with rebels and usurpers. Strootman addresses the question of ideology and its reception in two key ways. First, the act of ritually mutilating a rebel’s corpse establishes the king’s authority by publicly and visually placing the rebel beyond the pale of civilized society. He is literally rendered monstrous and criminal. Second, the urgent extremity of the act of mutilation suggests a certain level of fear or anxiety on the part of the challenged king, fear that his authority is indeed in question, and not merely by the rebel himself. Ritual mutilation of a rebel, in the Near Eastern context, leverages not only the fear that such a gruesome act would engender in the minds of those contemplating rebellion, but is also a moral pronouncement that places rebels beyond the bounds of civilized humanity. Section II is rounded out with Ben Scolnic’s article, ‘Second-Hand Propaganda: Polybios and Zeno on the Role of Antiochos IV at the Battle of Panion’ (Chapter 8). Scolnic undertakes a reading of Polybios’ account of the Battle of Panion against

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the grain, in order to bring the pro-Seleukid sympathies of Polybios’ source, Zeno of Rhodes, to the surface. Zeno appears to have produced a rather tendentious and pro-Seleukid account of the actions of Antiochos IV at the Battle of Panion in pursuit of what, for Zeno, was ultimately a Rhodian political agenda. According to Scolnic, Zeno leverages propaganda from the court of Antiochos IV that aimed at the legitimization of his rule, especially in Koile-Syria and Judea. The narrative of the participation of a young Antiochos IV at the Battle of Panion is a fiction, modelled on the stories of Alexander’s precocious participations in Thrace and elsewhere, and must be rejected as unhistorical for a variety of reasons. Polybios is especially critical of Zeno’s narrative, noting that it is not uncommon for historians to engage in sensationalism or patriotic pride, when narrating certain events, notably not excluding himself from such criticism. Yet Polybios singles out this specific narrative from Zeno, whom he otherwise admires. Polybios’ (harsh) rejection of this specific account turns not merely on a penchant for accuracy, but on a profound personal dislike for Antiochos IV. In the tension that exists between Zeno’s characterization of Antiochos IV’s actions at Panion and Polybios’ perceptions of Antiochos, we can glimpse the range of reactions that could arise toward the possibility of Seleukid royal authority and attempts to promote it with illegitimate means. While the papers in Sections I–II address the question of the how the Seleukid dynasty attempted to create a sense of royal authority that was acceptable to the polities under their sceptre, each with implications for the question of the reception of and reaction to those efforts, the papers in Sections III–V explore more fully the variety of possible local reactions to those efforts. Those reactions could range widely from warm, enthusiastic endorsement of Seleukid claims to royal authority over passive indifference to outright violent resistance. Underpinning the scope of responses is the interplay between Seleukid claims to local authority on the one hand, as well as its variegated exercise in specific local contexts, local ideas about what constituted the legitimate exercise of political power, and local concerns and interests on the other hand. This interplay was far from stable, but shifting and changing according to geography, chronology, and the approaches to the exercise of royal authority adopted by specific Seleukid kings and courtiers, to name just a few of the factors conditioning the relationships between the dynasty and local populations. Section III presents to case studies of local resistance. It opens with Chapter 8 by Deirdre Klokow, ‘Connectivity and Rural Spaces in the Seleukid Empire’. She examines the close relationship between changing land use patterns within Seleukid dominions and what those changing patterns tell us about the relations between the kings and their subjects. Klokow analyses two pieces of evidence, OGIS 225, an inscription providing details of Laodike I’s purchase of Pannuokome in Hellespontine Phrygia from her husband Antiochos II, and the Lehmann Text, a cuneiform inscription which records a land grant of the same Laodike I and her sons Seleukos and Antiochos Hierax to the citizens of Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha. Through a close reading of these two documents, Klokow argues that the Seleukid dynasty shaped land-use patterns to solidify their grip on the territory they claimed as their

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own. She further attempts to gauge the effectiveness of those efforts by identifying local responses. Both inscriptions show the attention paid by Laodike, and hence by the dynasty through her, to local concerns, while manifesting the effective omnipresence of Seleukid rule even in remote rural regions. Klokow concludes that both texts can be read as evidence for the active participation of local landholders in different areas of the Seleukid dominions in the negotiation of Seleukid royal authority in two distinct localized contexts as well as of the positive, or at least willing, reception of Seleukid claims to the legitimate exercise of royal authority. In Chapters 10, ‘Rebel Poleis: The Politics of Anti-Seleukid Violence’, Gillian Ramsey examines the causes and character of popular urban revolt in the Seleukid dominions. She notes that violent revolt can be identified across the myriad polities throughout Seleukid realms, often driven by economic, political, and cultural concerns of local import. And yet the local character of such violent revolts is often obscured by the tendency of the surviving historical narratives to fold those revolts into the stories of great and powerful men seeking personal glory. Ramsey focuses her attention squarely on the polis, which she contends never relinquished its ideals of political autonomy and autarky, even in the teeth of an imposed royal authority. She notes that polis revolts against the Seleukid dynasty were not uncommon. Moreover, polis revolts appear to have been driven primarily by concerns of the citizens themselves, and not necessarily by the ambitions of rebel generals and satraps, although ‘rebel poleis’ might lend active support to such powerful figures. Polis revolts, Ramsey argues, arose when there was a failure of constructive communication between king and city. Such urban revolts were motivated by local issues of polis identity and function, such as economic security and self-determination. However, historiographic and epigraphic evidence documenting such revolts often occludes any reference to why the citizens revolted against the king, describing them generically as chance mishaps. Kings tended to assent to such language, in order to distract from the fact that their authority had indeed been rejected. Such assent to the diplomatic language used to describe urban revolts thus ironically contributed to the propagandistic pretentions of Seleukid kings, even if it masked rather different, less congenial sentiments on the part of polis citizenry. Next comes Section IV with three studies that look back onto Seleukid rule or else treat it as the distant or surreal frame of political existence within which Jewish sensitivities are redressed. In Chapter 11, Germain Payen examines the reception of Seleukid claims to royal authority by the Artaxiad dynasty in Armenia in ‘Le royaume artaxiade dans l’empire séleucide: de dominé à dominant (190–55 a.C.)’. Payen notes that Armenia was always peripheral to the Seleukid world, as it had been for the Achaemenids, in spite of some evidence of Hellenizing influence. But more important was a longstanding preference for freedom from outside imperial control. While it is generally thought that Armenia moved toward independence in the wake of the Peace of Apamea in 188 BCE, Payen contends that there is evidence that first steps were already made shortly before the anabasis of Antiochos III, thus adding weight to the observation concerning the preference for autonomous local rule.

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Payen demonstrates that the Artaxiad dynasty attempted to forge its local political legitimacy not through reference to the Seleukids or Romans, but through a purely Armenian, and specifically Orontid, pedigree. While Hellenization proceeded, the Artaxiad kings also went to some length to advertise their Iranian pedigree, marking themselves off from the Seleukid dynasty. Artaxiad diplomatic relations clearly indicated Armenia’s independence from the Seleukids and often militated against their interests, especially in Anatolia. Payen further notes that relations between the Artaxiads and the Seleukids after 179 BCE remained rather ambiguous, yet the exercise of independence only accelerated beginning with the troubled reign of Demetrios I. Payen demonstrates the Artaxiad rejection of Seleukid claims to royal authority in Armenia through a close reading of numismatic evidence. He shows that coin issues of Tigranes, while careful to weave together Greek, Anatolian, Iranian, and Syrian elements, nonetheless occlude the Seleukids and advertise the independent sovereignty of the Artaxiads. Ben Scolnic examines a more clearly anti-Seleukid narrative in Chapter 12, ‘Śar Wars: How a Judaean Author in the 160’s BCE Transformed a Ptolemaic View of Hellenistic History into a Theology for His Time’. Scolnic argues that the highly controversial eleventh chapter in the Book of Daniel must derive from a Ptolemaic source. It is thus anti-Seleukid, although as it stands, it is far from being a proPtolemaic text. Rather, this enigmatic account, composed ca. 166 BCE, though ostensibly set in the 6th Century as a prophetic narrative, addresses the anxieties and fears of many Jews living under the persecutions and occupation of the Seleukid king Antiochos IV. More specifically, Scolnic contends that a distinctly Ptolemaic narrative of the struggles of the Diadochs, likely forged at the Ptolemaic court in the aftermath of the Battle of Ipsos (301 BCE), was recast in a Jewish cultural (or even poetic) idiom. The text thus delegitimizes the royal authority of the Seleukid dynasty and, in particular, that of Antiochos IV, while giving the Jewish people hope that their God remained in control of the seemingly chaotic struggles raging around them. The principal message in Daniel is that God will ultimately succeed in affording his people their independence from foreign domination. After establishing the chronological context for the production of the Ptolemaic narrative underpinning Daniel 11, Scolnic disentangles the meaning of the word śar which is ubiquitous in that chapter. He notes that it can be applied to kings and their supreme commanders, as well as to divine entities that represent and fight for their respective nations on the cosmic level. As the author of Daniel uses the term śar in both ways simultaneously, the scholarship surrounding the most appropriate reading of chapter 11 has been rather confused. Scolnic articulates the author’s desire to represent the conflicts between the Seleukids and Ptolemies over Koile Syria as taking place not only on earth between competing kings and their generals, but in heaven as well between the divine avatars of those kings and their people. Daniel 11 thus predicts that the śar of the Seleukids, a regime which was treacherous and vile right from its inception, will trigger the apocalypse, but that the śar of the Jewish people, the archangel Michael, will ensure that God’s justice will ultimately prevail. Yet even Seleukid oppression is given its purpose in the temporary balance of earthly powers, which had to precede divine salvation.

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In Chapter 13, Eran Almagor continues the study of Jewish reactions to Seleukid royal authority by examining ‘“To All Parts of the Kingdom”: The Book of Esther and Other Jewish Responses to Seleukid Rule’. Almagor argues that some of the more hostile Jewish responses to Seleukid rule are largely reconstructed through the evidence produced in the orbit of the Hasmonaean court. However, other more congenial responses to Seleukid royal authority can be detected in a variety of other Jewish sources, such as the Book of Esther, a source that, he argues, was contemporary with Seleukid rule in the region. Almagor uses discrepancies between the Hebrew and Greek versions of the text of Esther to not only support his dating of its composition in the Seleukid era, but also to show that while the text is ostensibly about the Persians, they are actually stand-ins for the Seleukids. As the behaviour of Esther and her cousin Mordecai occur under the authority of the Persian king, bloody though those actions might be, they nonetheless connote loyalty to the Seleukid dynasty, or at least a recognition of the acceptability of Seleukid rule in Judaea. This disposition in the Book of Esther is in contrast with First and Second Maccabees, which are largely hostile to the dynasty and reflective of the Hasmonaean revolt. The Judaeans thus showed very different responses to the Seleukid dynasty. Almagor’s and Scolnic’s contributions hence demonstrate the nuance and range of possible reactions to the Seleukid exercise of royal authority among the same people, reactions that are conditioned by competing social and political interests at the local level. The two remaining chapters comprised in Section V go beyond the analysis of the dialectic process of the formation, modification, or rejection of royal ideology. They present two – partly conflicting, certainly complementary – perspectives on the effect of Seleukid royal ideology. While admitting the limitation of firm knowledge, they both look for ways around that allow us to explore how genuine the assent to Seleukid pretensions and expressions of loyalty to the king really were. The themes of resistance and tension between the official royal ideology and the desire of autonomy in the kingdom’s poleis form the subject of Richard Wenghofer’s article, ‘Diplomatic Resistance to Seleukid Hegemony’ (Chapter 14). Wenghofer re-examines civic decrees honouring various Seleukid kings, specifically those found in OGIS 222, 229, and 223. These official utterances are examined in light of anti-monarchical comments in Plutarch’s Life of Demetrios and other authors who claim that such decrees are sometimes made disingenuously, often masking intense hostility toward the tyrannical ruler. Wenghofer notes that cities often capitulated to Seleukid royal authority out of fear arising from the asymmetrical power relations between king and polis. However, he argues that such capitulation should not be read as evidence for the acceptance of Seleukid claims to legitimate exercise of royal authority over the polis. This same reasoning is applied to his reinterpretation of the significance of civic decrees honouring Seleukid kings. Wenghofer contends that, in these honorary decrees, poleis can often be seen leveraging the formulaic etiquette of Hellenistic diplomatic language and the carefully crafted public persona of Seleukid kings as a form of public moral suasion. The paradoxical aim was to curtail the exercise of this very royal authority over the

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polis. Although open revolt was not uncommon, as Ramsey notes in Chapter 13, this diplomatic approach to the resistance of royal authority was perhaps an even more common strategy on the part of ‘Seleukid’ poleis when confronted with the overwhelmingly superior military might of the kings. In such situations, open revolt rarely seemed to be a viable strategic option. Ultimately, Wenghofer calls for a methodological re-evaluation of our approach to the evidence commonly used to assess the effectiveness and reach of Seleukid royal propaganda in cementing affection and loyalty for the dynasty. The theme of the effectiveness of Seleukid royal ideology is resumed in Chapter 15 with Altay Coşkun’s paper, ‘The Efficacy of Ideological Discourse: Loyalty to the Seleukid Dynasty in Babylonia, Judaea, and Asia Minor’. His primary objective is to demonstrate that Seleukid propaganda was indeed successful at generating not merely compliance with royal writ, but genuine and authentic support for the dynasty on the part of many subjects. Coşkun chooses a Constructivist approach whereby royal propaganda gives voice to the alignment of interests negotiated between kings and local power stakeholders. He then turns this paradigm to the evidence. He produces examples of behaviour on the part of subject communities that can reasonably be read as attesting to the local acceptance of the claims articulated in Seleukid royal propaganda. In order to do this, he elaborates on specific instances where subject communities appear to willingly support a king’s claim to royal authority in the absence of any coercion, and often even at some cost to be shouldered. The prime example are the Babylonians, but other subjects and vassals are likewise drawn on to show that loyalty was indeed displayed at times when the dynasty was weak and mired in crisis, or when there was no immediate or obvious reason for showing allegiance to the king. Loyalty under such circumstances, Coşkun contends, could not have been coerced and so suggests that Seleukid royal propaganda must have been largely effective previously in cementing consensus surrounding the claims to royal authority. This final chapter thus presents us with a way of getting around some of the methodological problems discussed by Wenghofer in Chapter 14. The objective in all sections of this book is to demonstrate the role played by local conditions and expectations in shaping the construction of Seleukid royal authority and how it was received. The Seleukids expended great effort and wealth on rendering their right to exercise royal authority morally acceptable to their putative subjects, but they were not free to construct those claims to authority, and hence their royal image, just as they pleased. In addition to having to react to the pretentions and aggressions of other dynastic competitors, Seleukid kings were constrained by what local polities were willing to accept, and this could vary dramatically from one polity to the next or even within a single polity, as local circumstances or Seleukid kings themselves changed over time. Therefore, while much scholarship has attempted to reveal the contours and characteristics of Seleukid kingship in order to help explain the trajectory of Seleukid history more generally, we have preferred to emphasize the variety of local perspectives and reactions to Seleukid claims to royal authority.

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The Seleukid kings found themselves in radically different circumstances from their Ptolemaic, Antigonid, or Attalid counterparts when it came to forging a royal image and establishing the acceptability of their rule, if only owing to the much higher level of social, cultural, and political diversity in Seleukid dominions. Seleukid kings, if their reign was to be successful, thus effectively had to become chameleons, integrating themselves into local cultures of legitimacy to the maximum degree possible. This did not mean that Seleukid kings surrendered their ambitions for universal rule or their claim to universal royal authority, yet how they chose to express that authority had, perforce, to vary across their territories, and was something of a delicate balancing act. That the Seleukid dynasty was, in general, successful in their endeavours to create local acceptance of their claims to royal authority is patent. The Seleukids did, after all, manage to maintain their imperial pretensions in a realistic way until at least 150 BCE, after which it began a swift descent into ruination. They repeatedly attempted to reverse this course, but without lasting success. This means that Seleukid fortunes remained strong and the dynasty effective in producing claims for royal authority that subject communities and vassals found sufficiently palatable for a little over one hundred and fifty years.14 Less clear, however, are the reasons for this success or at least how to evaluate the significance of that acceptance. The view from the Seleukid court would, of course, have it that Seleukid royal authority was warmly accepted across all their domains. Revolt and resistance were simply framed as the result of a few malevolent individuals acting out of grossly inflated ambition. Acceptance of this view, the view proffered by Seleukid royal propaganda itself, would, however, be naïve. After all, what did it really mean to ‘accep