II. Local archaeology, new actors and their actions: the power of trade

This section seeks out political actors beyond the traditional state players such as kings, dynasts and cities, and introduces unnamed traders and merchants as crucial agents in the eastern Mediterranean. How does one speak about traders in Syria in the late second and first century without direct evidence of their associations, villas and receipts, as one can about traders from other regions and time periods for which this information is available?Footnote ¹³ Local archaeology offers a rich body of evidence for both state and non-state actors, but it must be noted that there is a significant contrast in local archaeology between the southern and northern Levant for the late second and early first centuries (fig. 1). In the south, at administrative centres, in cities like Samaria and Maresha and at individual farmsteads traces of destruction, or at least of local disturbance, are visible all along the border between the Seleucid and Hasmonean zones of interest.Footnote ¹⁴ In the north, local archaeology looks very different. Gindaros in northern Syria is a striking example. The ancient settlement next to modern Jindires, likely named after a village in Macedonia, is located on a plateau in the fertile lowlands of the Oinoparas, the modern river Afrin.Footnote ¹⁵ Situated ca. 50km northeast of Antioch, it is a stopping point on the road to Kyrrhus. Fine ware deposits at the site suggest a foundation in the early Hellenistic period, and geomagnetic prospecting demonstrates that the community was laid out on the Hippodamian grid.Footnote ¹⁶ As a Hellenistic village, it must have relied on local agriculture, as well as the likely production of wine and oil also for consumption at Antioch.Footnote ¹⁷ While the finds at Gindaros suggest a continuous connection to Antioch and the western Mediterranean from the time of its foundation,Footnote ¹⁸ it is striking that the quantity of fine ware, such as mould-made (so-called ‘Megarian’) bowls, black gloss and West Slope Ware, Eastern Sigillata A and other small items such as clay lamps, coins and, later, glass increases from the mid-second century onwards, peaking in terms of quality and quantity in the first century BCE.Footnote ¹⁹ Norbert Kramer persuasively argues that these finds strongly suggest a peak in the wealth and prosperity of the community, and he sees similar parallels in the growth of local fine wares in other regions in northern Syria, especially the surveys at Tel Rifʿat, Jabbul and around Antioch.Footnote ²⁰ While the growth in fine wares in Gindaros does not necessarily account for the fact that its inhabitants may also have been negatively impacted by the civil wars of the late second and early first centuries in the region, the local environment appears to be one of prosperity and growth.

Fig. 1.

Map of the Levantine coast and Babylonia, noting sites under discussion (© Lana Radloff).

Perhaps more importantly, at Gindaros and the other surveys of northern Syria, the overall increase in fine ware deposits may also suggest a level of local wealth that opens a window onto the activity of non-state actors in the region: that is, the world of traders. Fine wares, especially imported ones, inform us about local fashions and choices; hypotheses about how the wares got where they were discovered constitute important evidence. The sites of Gindaros in northern Syria, Jebel Khalid on the Euphrates, Gadara in the Decapolis, Tel Anafa in the Hula Valley north of the Sea of Galilee, and Samaria and Palmyra in the Syrian desert in particular provide crucial data for our argument, advocating for the the increased visibility in the archaeological record of a specific type of ceramic fine ware, conventionally referred to as Eastern Sigillata A (ESA).Footnote ²¹

This name, Eastern Sigillata, is a generic modern term for Roman red gloss ware. It continued to be very popular throughout the Roman period and was later even influenced by Italian shapes and forms.Footnote ²² At the same time, there is no question that ESA’s origins, in terms of its chronology, its geography and its semantics via its relationship with other eastern Mediterranean fine wares, are entirely Hellenistic. Even though the kilns have not yet been located, the discovery of some misfired vessels makes it almost certain that ESA was produced in northern Syria around Antioch near Daphne.Footnote ²³ Emerging around 145 BCE, ESA consisted of plates, bowls and drinking-cups, to which different shapes of the same items, as well as jugs and a crater, were added within a generation. The forms were wheel- or mould-made, and their distinctive feature was that they were usually covered by a very fine red slip. Their appearance was innovative: dishes covered by an oxidized red gloss simply looked very different from previous types of fine ware.Footnote ²⁴

This new ware, once it emerged, spread like wildfire throughout the Seleucid Empire and the eastern Aegean: by the first century, examples of ESA can be found in mainland Greece, on the coast of western Asia Minor, in Cyprus, most regions of the Levant and Ptolemaic Egypt and Libya.Footnote ²⁵ It seems to have proven so popular that it almost completely replaced other fine wares very quickly after its arrival. At Tel Anafa, a small site north of the Sea of Galilee, for example, ESA made up 94 per cent of the fine wares found in the second season of excavations.Footnote ²⁶ Gadara, situated on a hill east of the Sea of Galilee, was at the very southern edge of late Seleucid influence. After the Seleucid conquest of the region around 198 BCE, the highest place was heavily fortified using the latest wall and tower techniques.Footnote ²⁷ In the middle of the second century BCE, construction began for an extramural sanctuary that was highly visible in the surrounding landscape.Footnote ²⁸ Here, too, ESA arrived early and became the dominant ware.Footnote ²⁹ At Gindaros in northern Syria, ESA makes up 40 per cent of the local fine ware.Footnote ³⁰ Even at Palmyra, ESA emerges with the earliest wares in the second century and eclipses other fine wares, both imported and locally made, in the first century BCE.Footnote ³¹ At Maresha, early forms of ESA are present,Footnote ³² even if the end of the city around 112 BCE means that the proportion of ESA is lower than that of other imports. The ware’s rapid spread is clearly connected to ESA’s availability but also to local taste.

Even if the identification of ESA with the rhosica vasa from Laodicea in Syria described by Cicero in 50 BCE as fashionable tableware (Att. 6.1.13 [115] Shackleton Bailey) cannot be proven,Footnote ³³ the latter clearly became very popular with the elite in Cicero’s time. Athenaeus tells us the story that Kleopatra VII used to spend significant amounts of money daily on vasa rhosica (Deipn. 6.229d). Vasa rhosica had its origins in Rhosos in northern Syria, and some form of relationship with ESA can surely be envisioned even if the two wares are not identical. But even if they were one and the same, it would be taking a step too far to interpret ESA as solely a high elite luxury product based on these literary accounts. Yes, it was clearly more expensive than locally made wares, especially if it had to be transported over land, but ESA was mass-produced in moulds, and a high degree of efficiency in terms of costs was likely achieved, as John Lund envisions.Footnote ³⁴ The large quantity of ESA found at a broad range of archaeological sites, including not only elite farmsteads but also many urban places and more modest houses,Footnote ³⁵ however, should underline that ESA was a product consumed more widely across society than normal luxury products such as expensive silverware would have been.Footnote ³⁶ The quick and pervasive spread of ESA, then, should also offer us insight into the consumer behaviour of the sub-elite groups that are often invisible in regions of the Hellenistic world where papyri did not survive.

The spread of ESA, however, does not inform us only about local taste and consumer habits. For Kramer, it is ‘possibly the most important indicator of trade in Greater Syria in the Hellenistic and Roman periods’.Footnote ³⁷ The fact that the ware’s centre of production is in northern Syria near Antioch has strong implications for the trade routes and traders’ networks of the Seleucid Empire.Footnote ³⁸ The high volume of ESA at sites such as Antioch and Gindaros might be partially explained by proximity to the workshops. Ostensibly, being closer to the fine ware’s places of origin meant that more people at Gindaros could (and did) afford ESA as their dinner ware.

The people of Jebel Khalid seem to have had strong connections to the region of Antioch, but here also ESA is a clear indicator of the presence of trade routes.Footnote ³⁹ Further south, at Tel Anafa, ESA was found in such large quantities that it initially led excavators to seek the kilns that produced it on the Phoenician coast.Footnote ⁴⁰ The ware’s dominance at the site must tell us something about the trade networks that brought it to the local inhabitants and similarly to Gadara and Samaria further south.Footnote ⁴¹ The most important site in this regard, however, might be Palmyra, for which excavation reports of two Hellenistic layers have now been published. The finds at the Hellenistic/Roman street intersection demonstrate an ongoing link between Palmyra and the Levantine coast from at least the early Hellenistic period, and the excavators argue for significant trade at Palmyra by the third century BCE.Footnote ⁴² A discovery of significant numbers of ESA fragments located in the same trench further underlines that this heavy trade was not interrupted in the period under discussion in this paper, the later second and early first centuries BCE.Footnote ⁴³ The prominent role of Palmyra in the Roman civil wars, which led Appian to muse later that it was attacked by Mark Antony for its riches (B Civ. 9), should further suggest that while Palmyra rose to greater prominence when the Levantine coast was part of the Roman Empire, its foundation lay in the Hellenistic period, and it was an important ‘caravan city’ in the early first century BCE.Footnote ⁴⁴

Palmyra’s subsequent wealth was also based on its role in the Indian Ocean trade, and there is little reason to assume that this trade or its precursors began in a later period. A significant portion of Roman Indian Ocean trade was conducted via the Red Sea, as testified by the Periplus of the Erythraian Sea written around the middle of the first century CE,Footnote ⁴⁵ the Muziris Papyrus and extensive excavations in Egypt.Footnote ⁴⁶ That said, some of it also evidently came via Palmyra. In the Imperial period, Palmyrenes are attested at the island of Socotra in the Gulf of Aden; myrrh, indigo and imported textiles are already present in graves in Palmyra in the first century CE; and it seems likely that glass finds at Palmyra and Ed-Dur in the United Arab Emirates have the same origins on the Levantine coast, indicating Palmyra’s role in the glass trade.Footnote ⁴⁷ Already in the third century BCE, spices, especially cinnamon and cassia, arrived in Egypt via Palestine rather than the Red Sea. Much later, the Roman imperial medical philosopher Galen of Pergamon describes how ‘Indian lyicum’ and ‘Indian aloe’ were brought by camels to the Phoenician coast (Nat. Fac. 12.215 Kühn). It is uncertain whether all these commodities were transported directly from India or rather came up the East African coast, but what is essential for my argument is that by the first century BCE these trade routes existed and seem hardly to have been affected by the political changes in the Seleucid Empire.Footnote ⁴⁸ Nabataeans and nomadic groups from the Syrian and Arabian deserts had for centuries supplied valued commodities to the Levantine coast via the Red Sea and the Arabian desert (as also implied in Periplus 19), or via the Persian Gulf. One reason for Palmyra’s success might also be seen in Eivind Seland’s reassessment of the caravan trade, where he argued that the two routes via Palmyra and the Red Sea enabled trade throughout the year, rather than only in certain seasons.Footnote ⁴⁹

The significant number of fragments of ESA at Palmyra further underline the city’s role as a trading hub in the Syrian desert. Critically, it might also provide additional evidence for the Hanson termini of the trade routes from the Persian Gulf. The results of the Hellenistic excavations were published too late to be considered in his study, but Seland argued that for geomorphological reasons it is the region around Antioch that should be seen as a key western terminus for the Palmyrene trade, rather than Damascus and the Phoenician cities, as is sometimes argued.Footnote ⁵⁰ Bearing in mind Kramer’s contention that ESA is one of the most important signifiers of trade in the late Hellenistic and early Roman periods, it is tempting to connect ESA with long-distance trade. While in some instances ESA may easily have been the main cargo of short- and medium-distance trade, especially within close proximity to the kilns, the presence of ESA at Palmyra may enable us to go one step further. For this, a comparison with African red slip (ARS) pottery from the Roman Imperial period may be instructive.

Elizabeth Fentress, Sergio Fontana, Bruce Hitchner and Philip Perkins have argued persuasively that the movement of ARS ware around the western Mediterranean between the second and fifth centuries CE was intrinsically connected to the wheat and oil routes linking the North African coast, Sicily and Rome. ARS travelled as a by-product of the wheat and oil trades and was transported either by caboteurs or by cargo ships on their voyages between Carthage, Sicily, Rome and other places in the Empire. For Fentress et al. ARS is a key illustration of the integrated nature of the Roman economy.Footnote ⁵¹ The patterns of ESA in the Levantine world are similar enough to enable a comparative analysis: ESA is not only a proxy for local trade in northern Syria, but also becomes a signifier for the long-distance spice trade networks that at some point became the Indian Ocean trade. The caravan traders brought spices and other commodities to northern Syria and Egypt, where there were long-established markets, and the goods also found favour in Rome. Similar to ARS, ESA may have been an immediate object of trade or a by-product that piggybacked onto the trade of other commodities.Footnote ⁵² After unloading their goods at the western termini of the trade routes, the traders returned through the desert with stackable and easily portable ESA as return cargo, thus also avoiding an empty run.

One additional piece of evidence corroborates this reconstruction. While ESA also moved across the Euphrates, the fine ware does not seem to have had the same effect in eradicating all other fine wares on the other side of the river as it did in the Levant. As Kramer has noted, the overall quantity of ESA found to the east of the Euphrates is much lower than in the Levant, and also lower than, for example, in western Asia Minor;Footnote ⁵³ the Euphrates acted as an apparent border to the trade of ESA. There may be multiple reasons as to why glazed Parthian ware remained more popular east of the Euphrates. These types of borders are not unheard of in the ancient Mediterranean, although other factors such as availability, cost and consumer preferences may also be in play.Footnote ⁵⁴ If we envision the movement of ESA as a by-product of the caravan trade of Palmyra, however, the Euphrates acting as a border for trade might simply be an indicator of the general direction of the trade routes. Going eastwards from Palmyra, the caravans reached the Euphrates near Hit and then shipped their wares south along the river.Footnote ⁵⁵ More importantly, however, at Hit the caravans reloaded and returned west. While ESA was known at Failaka and imitated there around 100 BCE,Footnote ⁵⁶ before the late first century BCE there is very little ESA to be found in the Persian Gulf;Footnote ⁵⁷ ESA may therefore simply have been a product intended for Palmyra and for the local traders who took it from there. It moved across the Euphrates, but in smaller quantities, because the main trade routes went south.

Thinking about ESA as a proxy for the short- and long-distance trade in Greater Syria opens a window onto actors within the Seleucid Empire that are invisible in our literary and epigraphic documentation. As indicated by the pervasive and rapid spread of ESA, the traders must have been ubiquitous, and this points indirectly at the widespread existence of groups with disposable income beyond state (kings) or local power (dynasts and cities).

III. Diffused power and the wealth of trade?

The introduction of traders as actors in the Seleucid Empire and my hypothesizing about their role raise two key questions: if we accept the presence of actors beyond those who have traditionally been discussed, how do they fit into the larger geopolitical environment of the Seleucid Levant, and how do the findings in this article affect our macro view of the grand political events of the Seleucid state? Before attempting to answer these questions, we must discuss the landscape itself, a task that is complicated by the fact that the political environment of the late Seleucid Empire is poorly understood. Effectively, the empire was in a period of political transformation. Local warlords of the late second and first centuries had increasing latitude to follow their own political agendas and resist the Seleucid state, as is demonstrated most visibly by the rise of the Maccabees in the southern Levant, their territorial expansion and their effective independence from the Seleucids after 129 BCE.Footnote ⁵⁸ Similarly, some cities became independent, or were otherwise establishing a new position within the empire: Sidon celebrated itself with a new era on its coinage, possibly having announced its independence in 111/0 BCE, and a royal letter by a Seleucid king to the former capital of Seleucia in Pieria declared the city autonomous in 109/8 (RC 71–72).Footnote ⁵⁹ Askalon apparently followed suit in 104/3 BCE.Footnote ⁶⁰ Beginning in the last quarter of the second century, some major cities of the Levantine coast also began minting precious coinage on their own for the first time. Tyre was the first to claim its status as ‘sacred and inviolable’ on silver coinage in 126/5 BCE.Footnote ⁶¹ It is tempting to interpret the visibility of local dynasts and cities as evidence for a change in power relations between the centre and individual actors. While recent scholarship offers important nuance in interpreting localized movements,Footnote ⁶² their impact on the working of the empire deserves a fresh look.

In fact, the power of cities may at times have been very limited. As noted above, the independence of Seleucia in Pieria was proclaimed in a royal letter in 109/8 BCE, but after at least a decade of independence, the city issued coinage for the Seleucid king Demetrius III.Footnote ⁶³ The traditional interpretation has been that this demonstrates at least a temporary reduction of autonomy for Seleucia, but examples elsewhere in the empire suggest that this type of transaction was not novel. Oliver Hoover carefully demonstrates that local cities minted civic coinage to cover payments to the Seleucid kings throughout the history of the empire,Footnote ⁶⁴ and this is also what we see here. Seleucia was required to mint coinage to cover the expenses of the advance of Demetrius III and his army, a process that had no impact on the city’s formal status. This example also raises the critical question of who normally paid for these coins in the later second century. While it is assumed that Seleucid kings generally provided the bullion for the coinage that was struck in the empire’s mints, arguably the late second-century civic issues must have been paid for by local communities.Footnote ⁶⁵ The coinage of Seleucia for Demetrius III can therefore not be seen as a signifier of changed status. Rather, it was an exacted monetary payment. While the example from Seleucia is easily identifiable because the Seleucians used ‘royal coinage’, we cannot assume that all monetary exactions would have taken the form of royal coinage. Some civic issues may also have been minted for royal purposes. Ultimately, therefore, despite cities’ independence (their local autonomy, their ‘power to’), the fact that they minted coinage should not lead us to conclude that the kings had no influence (that is, ‘power over’) over them.

Where does this leave us regarding the independence of cities? The Levantine cities’ minting of coinage responds to broader Mediterranean trends, coming at the end of a long evolution of coinage in the Seleucid Empire.Footnote ⁶⁶ While at the outset it may be tempting to associate the visible independence of the cities with a growth in their power, it is difficult to substantiate to what degree this also led to a growth in their influence, their ‘power over’ other political actors in the empire. Nor does it tell us much about the loss of royal influence. In fact, it is possible that what we see here is the final transformation of the Seleucid Empire in the late second and early first century:Footnote ⁶⁷ rather than continuing the centralization of the empire that was a key interest to the kings of the early second century, the last generation of Seleucid rulers actively decentralized as much as possible. In a world of rivals competing for the diadem in which cities and territories frequently changed hands with a concomitant loss of resources, kings devolved the right to mint coinage to cities.Footnote ⁶⁸ Similar to parallel Roman approaches in western Asia Minor, this system forced cities to supply coinage to any Seleucid king who came by in a time of need.Footnote ⁶⁹ In this scenario, there are many more political actors, but the kings’ ‘power over’ the cities may not have changed significantly despite what the evidence seems to suggest.

Let us therefore turn to the power of dynasts and other power-holders. The visibility of a greater group of warlords is likely indicative of an increase in their local autonomy and influence. Dynasts had been an integral part of the empire since its very beginning.Footnote ⁷⁰ Powerful local warlords such as the Maccabees, the Itureans and the Arabian dynasts of the second and first centuries built up armies and took on the Seleucid kings in battle. Other dynasts who may not have openly opposed the kings also gained power during this period. The priest-dynasts of Olba in Rough Cilicia, for example, controlled the area around the sanctuary of Zeus Olbius and took part in the power plays of the Seleucid Empire from at least the middle of the second century onwards.Footnote ⁷¹ In the first century BCE, they played host to the Seleucid king Philip II and displayed their friendship with the Seleucid kings on inscriptions.Footnote ⁷² They also built large-scale structures within their area. Clearly these priest-dynasts were local power-holders acting within a Seleucid framework while also creating their own dynasties. It is also conceivable that despite their protestations of friendship with the kings, the power imbalance between themselves and the Seleucids diminished over time, and that they were recognized as the de facto rulers of Rough Cilicia.

A further example from Gadara exemplifies how we should interpret the power of these dynasts. It is unclear how long it took to complete the landmark temple at Gadara, but the temenos area was only paved in the early first century BCE.Footnote ⁷³ It is striking that this occurred around the same time as the ‘polis of Seleucia Gadara’ completed the rebuilding of its fortress walls, which the people of Seleucia Gadara proudly displayed on an inscription dating to 85/4 BCE.Footnote ⁷⁴ While Michael Wörrle emphasizes that the rebuilding of a wall strongly suggests that the city was subject to Judaean raids,Footnote ⁷⁵ simultaneous construction continued on the extramural sanctuary during this period, which suggests that there were funds for both. Someone must have paid for this, but who?

Adolf Hoffmann sees the beginning of the construction of the temple as having been initiated by the Seleucid king and financed from the royal coffers.Footnote ⁷⁶ Similarly, for Brita Jansen, the first-century fortress repair at Gadara was paid for by the Seleucid centre.Footnote ⁷⁷ Her argument for this rests on Siegfried Mittmann’s interpretation of a short building inscription marking the repair, which reads: ‘year 228 Philotas and the polis of the Sele[eucia]ns those in Mes[…]’. Mittmann argues that the name of the Seleucid city as well as the coins found in Gadara, minted at Damascus, strongly suggest that Philotas was an agent of the Seleucid centre at Damascus.Footnote ⁷⁸ If accepted, this hypothesis would offer us an image of a Seleucid centre that continued to have sufficient resources and interest in the region to fund the fortifications of its cities and to organize the completion of a local sanctuary. Both of these activities could provide evidence for the influence of kings over the region.

It must be stressed, however, that the phrasing of this inscription can have a different interpretation. Wörrle, in his editio princeps of the document, identifies this individual, who has a Macedonian name and is mentioned before the Seleucians, as a local warlord, typical of the late Hellenistic Levant. In this reconstruction Philotas seceded from the Seleucid centre and claimed Gadara and the surrounding region as his own.Footnote ⁷⁹ One has to presume that he was also the one who paid for the paving of the temenos area. Should we put him and local Arab chieftains, among others, in the same group as the priests from Rough Cilicia and the Maccabees discussed above? This interpretation has consequences: within this reconstruction, the rise of local agents’ autonomy also means that the Seleucid kings have lost their ‘power over’ these groups and their territories, as well as control over the revenues of their empire. Local warlords, and cities as in our coastal examples discussed above, achieved local autonomy and invested revenues locally. The Maccabaean revolt in the second century has been interpreted as an example of a conflict over local taxation,Footnote ⁸⁰ and arguably this is probably how we should read some of the historical processes. Again, we see many more actors within the empire than in previous periods.

At the same time, this question of dynasts’ power may also give us methodological pause. In Gadara, the building work in the first century has been used as evidence for both the power of the central state and that of the local dynasts. Yet both hypotheses are dependent on the interest of modern scholarship in identifying somebody who can provide local financial support. For the temple building at Gadara, there is an unspoken assumption that the funds provided were too large for the polis community and must have come from outside.Footnote ⁸¹ This hypothesis is not unusual, as there is a generally observable tendency among modern interpreters to place the agency for large building works in the hands of ‘big men’ and to downplay the agency of communities themselves.Footnote ⁸² Sometimes, as for example in the case of the original construction of the fortress walls at Gadara that was based on the latest contemporary building techniques,Footnote ⁸³ this is a reasonable assumption. At other times, this scenario is less likely as the agency oscillates between the centre (kings) and local agents (cities and warlords). Seeking ‘big men’ limits us from considering all available options.

Our discussion of ESA, the spread of fine ware and the suggested presence of traders as political actors may offer a fresh option. For Hoffmann and Mittmann, Gadara was an important regional market, at times even tentatively connected to the paved temenos.Footnote ⁸⁴ While there is little direct evidence for the sanctuary’s early role in the regional market, we can posit that our invisible power, the traders at Gadara who brought ESA as part of their cargo, may have had the financial means to pay for the temenos and the temple. They arguably had the most to gain. The presence of silver and bronze coins from Damascus at Gadara right up to the Judaean conquest tells us as much about trade as it does about political connections between Gadara and the Seleucid king at Damascus.Footnote ⁸⁵ Other regions may have been similarly dependent on the traders. At Gindaros and at Palmyra the stability and growth of the community, alongside the ability of a large group of people to spend their disposable income on ESA, should be connected to trade networks within the empire, likely as part of the growing Indian Ocean trade. The influence of traders was also clearly felt in other places: in 124 BCE, and thus around the same time, a trade association in Egypt lost its land in the chōra around Alexandria to the benefit of the Ptolemaic state, strongly suggesting a curtailment of the association’s income and thus power as a consequence of the civil war in Alexandria.Footnote ⁸⁶ Also, the opulent stone house at Palmyra from the Augustan period offers later evidence of the financial acumen of Palmyra’s traders.Footnote ⁸⁷ Mark Antony’s attempted raid on Palmyra further attests to the city’s traders’ wealth.

The spread of ESA is a clear testimony to the vitality and growth of local and long-distance trade in Syria in this period. The traditional focus on kings, cities and dynasts occludes other key (non-state) actors who were clearly important and enabled growth and stability in Gindaros, northern Syria and possibly at Gadara. While for Strange a world with many actors becomes ‘ungovernable’ (and one might suggest that this aligns with the interpretation of the politics of the late Seleucid Empire in scholarship in general), Cohen envisions such a world as just being very different from previous systems. I would argue that the latter is a more fruitful approach to the political reality of the later Seleucid Empire. Specific relationships are dynamic and require further interpretation,Footnote ⁸⁸ but the Seleucid Empire in its final transformation is simply a geopolitical landscape that is different from previous periods.

IV. The power of trade and the history of the Seleucid states

The findings regarding trade patterns are revelatory when we map them onto the key political cities and regions for the late Seleucid kings: Antioch and Damascus, and to a lesser extent Akko-Ptolemaïs and the region of Rough Cilicia. The power or attraction of Antioch, for example, is often seen in political and ideological terms. By the mid-second century, it was the capital of the empire, and its largest mint. We also have evidence of kings currying the favour of the people of Antioch from as early as the 160s BCE, and Antioch is one of the few cities of the Seleucid Empire where the population’s opinion of their kingship mattered to the kings.Footnote ⁸⁹ Antioch became an idea that was worth fighting for: even in the very late Seleucid Empire, controlling Antioch meant controlling the empire.Footnote ⁹⁰ Damascus is another key city, recently presented by Paul Kosmin as an ancient capital of the region. For the Seleucid kings Demetrius III and Antiochus XII made Damascus their base, and it has even been argued that the last Seleucid kings in Damascus styled themselves as kings of that city.Footnote ⁹¹ Similarly, Akko-Ptolemaïs, an important harbour on the Levantine coast, had become an important royal city from the mid-second century onwards, and the final seat of two widowed queens.Footnote ⁹² The territory of the priest-dynasts of Olba in Rough Cilicia seems to have become the haven of the last Seleucid king, Philip I; here, even in the twilight of the Seleucid state, the priests bore titles such as ‘Brother of Kings’ that underlined their close relationship with the Seleucid kings.Footnote ⁹³ I do not suggest that the analyses of Antioch and Damascus along the lines of ideologies of kingship and empire are implausible, but if my assessment of the role of ESA and of the routes of the spice and Indian Ocean trade is persuasive, ideology was not the only determining factor when it came to the control of these cities.

Kosmin has recently underlined the importance of trade with Damascus both regionally and for Mesopotamia.Footnote ⁹⁴ Additionally, Antioch may have been attractive to the kings and usurpers of the late Seleucid state not only as a seat of their kingship but also as the backbone of the trade economy of the Seleucid Empire. The regional prosperity of northern Syria in the late second and early first century, alongside the spread of ESA as an indicator of wealth and of the robustness of trade routes, may present a very different picture of early first-century Syria from what our literary sources of warring Seleucid princes might suggest. Northern Syria’s wealth could also be seen as a reason why Tigranes of Armenia sought to control Syria and the Levantine coast and to incorporate it into his kingdom for a brief period in the first century.Footnote ⁹⁵

More importantly, however, trade provides a different key to understanding the end of the Seleucid Empire. As part of Cn. Pompeius’ reorganization of the eastern Mediterranean after his defeat of Mithridates, the Roman imperator founded cities and confirmed many of the local warlords and princelings in their positions.Footnote ⁹⁶ The last Seleucids’ claim that they remained kings at Antioch was rejected, however. The late antique author Justin narrates that Pompeius argued that ‘he had not … taken away from Antiochus a throne that was his; nor would he give him a kingdom that Antiochus had ceded to Tigranes and which he could not defend’ (Just. Epit. 40.2.4), adding that this was ultimately caused by the infighting of Syria’s kings (40.2.5). While many reasons have been adduced for the destruction of the Seleucid state, of which the primary one appears to be failure to control the pirates, the weakness and inefficacy of the waning empire are always taken for granted.Footnote ⁹⁷ It may be the case that the decades-long feuds among the Seleucid princes just exhausted the Roman senators’ patience, or at least that of Pompeius.Footnote ⁹⁸ Alternatively, Pompeius may simply have wished to reverse his predecessor’s decisions about the Seleucid kings.Footnote ⁹⁹ It must be noted, however, that faults of kingship could surely also have been found for the other dynasts and princelings for whom this argument was apparently not made. Arguably, the Seleucid kings at Antioch and Damascus were somehow viewed differently.

The apparent and abundant wealth of the Seleucid princes was very well known in Rome in 70 BCE. We are informed about this wealth since one of the Seleucid princes seems to have fallen prey to the wiles the Roman governor Verres in Sicily and was mentioned by Cicero in a speech against the former governor. Based on my analysis, perhaps the power of trade in northern Syria, a prominent argument in early scholarship without much concrete evidence,Footnote ¹⁰⁰ was so visible that the continued rule of its kings was unacceptable to Pompeius. The squabbles of the late Seleucid kings provided a welcome excuse for the imperator, to whom it was obvious where the real treasures lay. The power of trade in Greater Syria, and the possibilities for prosperity offered by its spice trade termini, required it to be a Roman province, giving access to Roman negotiatores and Roman publicani.