Scholarly interest in the Seleucids has increased significantly over the last decade or so (e.g. L. Capdetrey, Le pouvoir séleucide [2007]; S. Plischke, Die Seleukiden und Iran [2014]; P. Kosmin, The Land of the Elephant Kings [2014]; B. Chrubasik, Kings and Usurpers [2016]). The Seleukid Study Days have played an important role in this growth, both through their publications and by fostering an environment for the fruitful exchange of ideas. This volume represents the proceedings from the fifth Study Day, held in Brussels in 2015, and includes fourteen of the twenty-two papers presented there, with three additional contributions. The majority of the papers are in English, with three in French (G. Payen, A. McAuley and D. Engels).
After a brief introduction by the editors, the volume is divided into five sections. The first examines the Seleucid Empire during the reign of Antiochus III. A. Coşkun uses a fabricated letter in Suetonius (Claud. 25.3), addressed to a ‘King Seleucus’ regarding his relationship with Rome, as a way into examining the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the two powers, situating this around the year 200 BCE. M.S. Visscher, taking Hegesianax as a case study, shows how tension between Rome and Antiochus affected literature produced at the Seleucid court and, in turn, how this affected royal ideology. E. Almagor demonstrates the complex ways in which allusions to earlier Graeco-Persian conflicts were embedded into later accounts of this war, especially Plutarch's Life of Cato. Finally, K. Erickson uses the epigraphic evidence concerning the creation of a high-priestess for Laodice, Antiochus’ wife, to challenge the conventional distinction between royal and civic cults.
The second section turns to events after the crucial Treaty of Apamea. N.V. Sekunda explores how the Seleucids responded to the stipulation that they hand over their war elephants, suggesting that the animals that featured in later Seleucid armies were sourced from Bactria. R. Strootman tackles the assumption that Apamea was a watershed moment for the Seleucids, arguing that Antiochus IV's procession at Daphne was part of his rebuilding of power networks in the Seleucid west. B. Scolnic also focuses on Antiochus IV, arguing that his ‘persecution’ of the Judaeans was inspired by the repression of the Bacchants which he had witnessed while a hostage in Rome. Finally, R. Wenghofer rejects the view that Roman meddling had a fundamental impact on Seleucid decline. Instead, the Roman demand for hostages from the royal family after Apamea actually reduced the potential for dynastic strife – the real explanation for the weakening of the empire was a failure to separate authority from the personality of kings.
The final three sections explore specific regions that were at some point part of the Seleucid Empire. Payen, McAuley and C. Michels examine Asia Minor, which the Treaty of Apamea forced the Seleucids to relinquish. Payen shows that, while Seleucid influence unsurprisingly declined, it did not evaporate, McAuley that the region did not shift immediately from a Seleucid to a Roman sphere of influence; instead, the period was characterised by competition between powers once under Seleucid control. Michels focuses on the most important of those powers, the Attalids, arguing that the dynasty was not as distinct from other Hellenistic monarchies as some have argued. Collectively, the papers stress that the Romans did not attempt to direct affairs in the region and perhaps could not have done so. Coşkun and E. Dąbrowa then examine Judaea, focusing particularly on diplomatic exchanges between Rome and the Maccabees. This section is perhaps where the essays best complement one another since Dąbrowa picks up on Coşkun's point that diplomatic exchanges appear to have declined towards the end of the second century. This is not, Dąbrowa concludes, a sign of cooling relations between the two parties, but simply a reflection of geopolitics: Seleucid decline meant Judaeans were no longer in need of Roman support, and the Romans were in any case more concerned with Anatolia and the threat of Mithridates VI and Tigranes II. Discussion then shifts to the centre of the empire, with Engels and G. Ramsey looking at Babylonia in the longue durée. Engels re-examines the vexed issue of why Babylonian contingents are apparently absent from Seleucid armies and wonders whether they were perhaps integrated into the supposedly Graeco-Macedonian phalanx, thus raising important questions about identity within the empire. Ramsey uses a case study of the ‘four generals’ to show administrative continuity from Seleucid to Parthian rule of the region, just as similar observations have been noted for the transition from Achaemenid to Macedonian rule (e.g. S. Sherwin-White and A. Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis [1993]).
This brief overview highlights that the volume offers much more than is implied by its title – far from focusing only on instances of interaction between Rome and the Seleucids, this is a broader examination of the Seleucid Empire in the period of that interaction. Indeed, some of the contributions that I found most stimulating, namely those by Erickson, Engels and Ramsey, are not concerned with Rome at all. Nevertheless, the key question that binds these essays together concerns the repercussions of Antiochus III's defeat by Rome. The Treaty of Apamea is often understood as having instigated Seleucid decline, but this volume challenges that view by showing the vitality of the empire under Seleucus IV and Antiochus IV. This emerges most strongly from Strootman's contribution, which criticises convention for ignoring Antiochus IV's ambition and seeing him ‘as subservient to Rome – as if he could foresee that one or two generations later Rome would become, and remain, the sole hegemonic power in the eastern Mediterranean’ (p. 177). In this reading Apamea becomes a blip from which recovery was possible rather than the beginning of the end for the dynasty. By emphasising that Rome was only one factor in Seleucid decline, and far from the most important (Wenghofer, p. 272), the volume will challenge assumptions about the impact Rome had on the Seleucids. Indeed, Engels and Coşkun advocate a ‘shift of perspective … away from focusing on decline towards accounting for the persistent appeal of the dynasty’ (p. 19). The suggestion that we reassess our approach to the Seleucid Empire and its interaction with Rome is convincing and important, and gives the essays significance beyond the field of Seleucid studies.
One of the challenges of any edited collection is that contributors will often dissent from one another, but it is striking how often it happens here. For example, Visscher accepts Polybius’ claim that Antiochus III married a girl from Chalcis on Euboea and renamed her after the island. Ultimately, this leads her to argue that Antiochus ‘styled himself not as a conqueror … but as a Dionysiac lover’ (p. 78). Almagor, however, argues that the reports ‘are so reminiscent of stock stereotypes of the Persians in Greek literature that one may wonder whether the story of the marriage to Euboia is real at all’ (p. 93). Similarly, Sekunda assumes that the appearance of elephants in the armies of Seleucus IV and Antiochus IV was a violation of the terms of the Treaty of Apamea, but Strootman argues that the Treaty expired with the death of Antiochus III. In the next chapter, however, Scolnic seeks ‘an explanation as to why Rome did not mind Antiochos IV's military buildup in direct contradiction to the provisions of the Treaty of Apameia’ (p. 223). Here, the assumption that Antiochus should have been bound by the terms of the Treaty is the motivating factor for the essay. Furthermore, the answer Scolnic posits – that Rome had been involved in a conspiracy to put Antiochus on the Seleucid throne – evokes the image of an interventionist and destabilising Roman policy, which Wenghofer challenges.
At times these debates are only tangential to the author's main aim, but they are far from being insignificant. Rather, these disagreements cut to the very core of how the authors characterise Roman–Seleucid interaction and, more broadly, the Seleucid Empire in the second century. As such, they are useful for highlighting underlying scholarly positions and assumptions that may merit further investigation. For example, Antiochus III's marriage to Euboea opens up two strands of investigation. Firstly, we might connect Visscher's claim that Antiochus III associated himself with Dionysus to Strootman's argument that Dionysian elements were an important feature of Antiochus IV's procession at Daphne. Was this, therefore, how the Seleucids sought to counter the obvious parallel that their opponents could draw between them and the Achaemenids?
Secondly, and more significantly, it begs a simple question: can we trust Polybius? The contributors are all suitably sensitive to the problems with the extant evidence, but, as our understanding of the Seleucid Empire becomes increasingly advanced, I wonder whether this is an opportune moment to reassess our methodologies and frameworks. For instance, we happily acknowledge that Roman considerations shaped the sources we have for Alexander (e.g. D. Spencer, The Roman Alexander [2002]), but might we usefully talk of a ‘Roman Antiochus’, at least as a starting point? There is more contemporary evidence from within the Seleucid Empire than survives for Alexander, so the problem is perhaps not so severe, but the majority of essays in this volume tended to focus primarily on either external (i.e. Roman authors) or internal evidence (i.e. epigraphy, numismatics); the resultant contradictions are as much a product of the limitations and perspectives of the sources as they are a result of differing modern interpretations. Do we, therefore, need a broader conversation about the interplay between the available sources? The idea that Seleucid decline began with Apamea appears to reflect a Roman perspective, so this is a particularly pertinent question here.
Apamea is clearly an important question for the contributors. Engels noted in his initial report on the conference that participants could not agree on whether the treaty expired with the death of Antiochus III (H-Soz-u-Kult, 17.12.2015, www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-6288), so it is a shame that there is no reflection on this or on similar issues in the final proceedings. While edited volumes such as this rarely have a conclusion, this does leave the reader to join the dots together themselves. Seleucid specialists will recognise the patterns and be forced to examine their own underlying assumptions about the empire, but non-specialists might find this trickier. In their conception the Study Days are reminiscent of the Achaemenid Workshop of the 1980s and 1990s, and the papers here have the potential to make a similarly profound impact on scholarship. To ensure that this happens, I would encourage participants to do more to make explicit the key themes, assumptions and challenges that arise in future workshops; doing this will help the overarching ideas that emerge from the published proceedings prompt further research and frame future scholarship.
