THE HOUSE OF SELEUCUS. 358-251

11

SELEUCUS II (KALLINIKOS) AND SELEUCUS III (SOTER)

The War of Laodice

The Seleucid power had ceased to be a unity. It was represented by two rival Queens, both masculine, resolute women, after the fashion of these Macedonian princesses, Laodice across the Taurus, Berenice in Syria. The son of Berenice, who was probably proclaimed King in Antioch, was of course an infant in arms; the eldest son of Laodice, Seleucus, was a youth nearing manhood.

Seleucus was proclaimed King in Ephesus and Asia Minor. To support his right, as against the child of Berenice, Laodice resorted, according to one story, to the device of dressing up a certain Artemon, who bore a close resemblance to King Antiochus, and causing him to be laid in the royal bed before the King's death was known, in order that in the presence of the magnates of the court he might solemnly declare his son Seleucus the true heir. Laodice proclaimed her son King, but she kept the reins of government in her own hands.

It must come of course to an internecine straggle between the two Queen-mothers. In the kingdom itself Laodice, the old Queen, was the stronger; Berenice had at her back the might of Egypt. It all depended on whether Laodice could strike quickly enough. Even in Antioch she had partizans, among them Genneus or Caeneus, one of the chief magistrates of the city. She hit on the bold thought of kidnapping the child of her rival. Her emissaries, flying perhaps to Antioch almost with the post that brought the news of the King's death, arranged the plot. It succeeded. The young prince vanished.

In this extremity Berenice showed the spirit of a lioness. The child was believed to have been carried to a certain house. Berenice instantly mounted a chariot, took in her own hand a spear, and galloped to the spot. On the way Caeneus met her. The Queen aimed her spear at him. It missed. Nothing daunted, Berenice followed it with a stone, which brought her enemy down. A crowd, partly hostile, surged about the closed doors, behind which the prince was understood to be. But they fell back before the fierce approach of the Queen. And here the story is broken off. Another author takes it up at a later point. The fate of the young prince is still mysterious; it is not known whether he is alive or dead. Obviously the popular feeling in Antioch is so strongly on the side of Berenice that the murderers dare not avow what they have done. To this body of sentiment Berenice appeals. She shows herself to the people in the guise of a suppliant, and the storm of public indignation is so strong that the guilty magistrates are obliged to dissemble. A child is exhibited to the people as the infant King and surrounded with all the due pomp; they have still authority enough to keep this child in their own hands. But they are obliged to come to some agreement with the Queen and allow her to establish herself in a defensible part of the royal palace at Daphne with a body of Galatian guards.

This was an awkward turn for the plans of Laodice. Everything depended on crushing Berenice before the Egyptian force could be brought to bear in her favour. And shut up in the palace at Daphne, Berenice could gain time. The Ptolemaic power was at this moment in a position to strike strongly. The Cyrenaean difficulty had been at last settled to its satisfaction. The young Queen, Berenice the daughter of Magas, had discovered the relations of her husband Demetrius with her mother, and displaying the characteristic spirit of her race, caused him to be assassinated in Apama's bed under her own eyes. She had then renewed her interrupted betrothal with the heir of the Ptolemaic throne. About the time that the other Berenice, her cousin, was defying siege at Daphne, the old King of Egypt died; the government passed into young and vigorous hands. Ptolemy III ascended the throne, married Berenice of Cyrene, and prepared to intervene with the whole force of his kingdom in his sister's defence. At the same time the struggle between the two Queens was being watched breathlessly throughout the Seleucid realm. A number of the Greek cities of Asia declared for Berenice, and put on foot the civic forces. Contingents began to glide out of their harbors or to move along the road to Antioch. Berenice had only to sit still in her fortress and wait.

The hope of Laodice to reach her seemed desperate. But even so she succeeded. It seems an incredible folly on the part of Berenice that she exposed herself—to be instantly cut down. But she was led to trust to the oath of her enemies, and her physician Aristarchus, by whom she was guided, was really Laodice's tool. And here we are told another of those strange impersonations which give the whole story of these events such a mythical complexion. Berenice's women, it is said, after they had done their best to shield her with their own bodies and several of them had fallen, concealed her corpse, and put one of their number who was wounded, but not mortally, in her place, keeping up, till the advent of the King of Egypt, the delusion that the Queen and her son were still alive.

Meantime Laodice was strengthening herself in Asia Minor. Miletus is found hastening to declare its adherence to Seleucus II; its embassy conveys to the young King a wreath of bay leaves, plucked in the sacred enclosure of the Didymaean temple. Many of the other Greek states must have acted likewise.

But the attack of Ptolemy III came with terrific effect upon the divided kingdom. He appeared at the head of his army in Syria, before the death of Berenice and her son was certainly known, and in many quarters was regarded rather as an ally than a conqueror. The states which had flown to arms in Berenice's defence, finding themselves too late, had no option, now that they had compromised themselves, but to join him.

The great events of the following years are obscured by the character of our sources. In their loose description we seem to see a conquest of Asia which goes beyond the old invasions of Tothmes, and even resembles the triumphant march of Alexander. If we look more closely, however, we shall form, I think, a more moderate estimate of the exploits of Ptolemy Euergetes. The war called by contemporaries the "Laodicean War", falls into two divisions—the maritime war and the land war. Of these the maritime is really the more important, and here the successes of Ptolemy are more solid. It was on the sea that the Ptolemaic power really lay; it had already, as we have seen, secured a number of points d'appui over the coasts and islands of the Levant, and what Ptolemy Euergetes did was to carry to its farthest extent the traditional policy of his house. On the coasts of Phoenicia, Lycia, and Caria, Ptolemy was already predominant; he possessed Cyprus and the federated Cyclades. The maritime war of Ptolemy III rounds off the work of his father and grandfather. What had been lost in recent years, the Cilician coast, for instance, and Ephesus, are recovered. The line of Ptolemaic power is carried still farther along the coasts. Even the acquisitions of the house of Seleucus in Thrace, from which it was necessarily cut off by a power dominating the sea, pass to Egypt.

A moment of this war is lit up for us in a curious way. The commander of a Seleucid squadron on the coasts of Asia sent home a sheet of papyrus giving a narrative of his operations. This paper, or pieces of it, worn but still partly decipherable, came the other day into the hands of modern archaeologists.

Where the dispatch begins to be decipherable the capture of some town by a detachment of the Ptolemaic forces is described, apparently one of the towns of Cilicia. A party among the inhabitants seem to have had an understanding with the attacking force, and the town was taken by a night surprise. A garrison was put in to hold it under an officer called Epigenes. Then, after a gap, the document seems to speak of a squadron of five ships in the Seleucid service, who, acting on the orders of "the Sister," i.e. Laodice, had collected all the money they could along the coast and deposited it in (the Cilician) Seleucia—1500 talents in all. In Seleucia the Seleucid governor of Cilicia, Aribazus, was commanding, and his purpose was to forward the moneys now collected to Laodice at Ephesus. Before, however, he could do so, the town of Soli and the subordinate strategoi of Cilicia, the district officers, went over to the Ptolemaic side, and in concert with them a Ptolemaic force, under Pythagoras and Aristocles, attacked Seleucia. The town, even the citadel, was stormed. Aribazus essayed to escape across the Taurus, but fell into the hands of the native tribes who lived about the passes; they cut off his head and brought it presently to Antioch.

The rest of the document narrates operations on the Syrian, not the Cilician, coast, in which the writer would seem to have taken part in person. A Ptolemaic squadron of as many sail as the harbour of (the Syrian) Seleucia was understood to be capable of holding, puts to sea in the first watch of the night. Its place of starting is conjectured by Kohler to be Salamis in Cyprus. About three o'clock the following afternoon it strikes the Syrian coast at Posidium, a fort some twenty miles south of Seleucia. There it remains for the night, and at the next daybreak moves to Seleucia. Here it is received with open arms. The priests, the magistrates, the populace, the troops of the garrison flock down the road to the harbour to meet it in festival array.From Seleucia the Ptolemaic force moves upon Antioch itself, which was in those days accessible by water. In Antioch there is a considerable military force, and the district officers, the "satraps" of the neighboring country, seem to have gathered within its walls. And it looks as if Antioch had thought at first of ofiering some defence. But the sight of the Ptolemaic force convinces it that to do so is hopeless. Antioch, like Seleucia, receives the invader. A procession of the chief men, satraps, captains, priests, and magistrates, accompanied by the "youths from the gymnasium" and the populace, all wearing crowns, comes to meet the Ptolemaic force. "They brought all the animals for sacrifice into the road without the gate; some shook our hands, and some greeted us with clapping and shouting." There the document leaves otf, having: shown us the chief city of Seleucid Syria in the hands of King Ptolemy.

For the land war our chief authority is the Monumentum Adulitanum, an inscribed stone seen at Aduli in Abyssinia in the seventh century AD by Cosmas Indicopleustes, who has left us a copy of it. It was a monument put up by some Ptolemaic official at that remote station on the Red Sea giving an account of the King's conquests. It describes how he advanced upon Asia with foot and horse and ships, "and elephants", the official is careful to note, whose chief business in Aduli was no doubt to replenish the supply, "from the Troglodyte country (i.e. the Red Sea coast) and Aethiopia, which his father and he himself were the first to cause to be captured in these parts and brought down to Egypt, and to train for service in war", how he "made himself master of all the country this side of the Euphrates (i.e. Northern Syria), Cilicia, Pamphylia, Ionia, the Hellespont and Thrace, and of all the forces in these countries and the Indian elephants, and made all the petty despots in these regions subject to him", and then how he crossed the Euphrates and plunged into the distant world of Iran,

It will be observed that till the passage of the Euphrates no country is mentioned as conquered which is not open to attack by sea. The Ptolemaic land forces never crossed the Taurus. Having once secured the road through Northern Syria (Antioch itself succumbed, as we saw, to an attack from the sea) they passed east. In Asia Minor, which hitherto rather than Syria had been the Seleucid base, the court of Laodice and Seleucus was safe from molestation, except on the coast. And even the coast was only partially conquered by the Ptolemaic fleet. Ephesus indeed, where Laodice was still established when the Ptolemaic captain penned his dispatch, passed before long to Ptolemy, the Seleucid court returning, no doubt, to the safer distance of Sardis. But Miletus and Smyrna remained in the Seleucid alliance.

The loss of Ephesus can perhaps be traced in the story taken from Phylarchus. The court is residing at some place other than Ephesus, which is not mentioned, but which must surely be Sardis. Ephesus, however, is still held, as Sophron, the governor of the city, has been called to the royal presence. He has somehow incurred the displeasure of Laodice, and she has determined to make away with him. Among Laodice's women, however, is Danae, the daughter of that famous courtesan Leontion who had shone among the companions of Epicurus : Danae is always at the Queen's side; all the Queen's purposes are open to her. In past days Sophron was her lover. When Sophron stands before the Queen, Danae is sitting by the Queen's side. As Laodice and Sophron talk, the truth breaks upon Danaii that Laodice is inviting him to his destruction. She makes him a quick imperceptible sign. It is understood. He feigns to agree generally with the Queen's proposals but asks for two days further to consider. Laodice assents. The next night Sophron flies for his life to Ephesus. Then Laodice understood what Danae had done. Instantly old friendship was swallowed up in vindictive fury. Danae was haled as a criminal before her, but the questions which Laodice put to her she met with disdainful silence. She was led away to be hurled from a high place. As she went she made an utterance which those about her thought worthy of record. "The common run of men make small account of religion, and they are quite right. I saved the man that was my lover, and this is the recognition I get from the Powers which dispose of us. Laodice killed hers, and she is thought to deserve all that honor."

Sophron fled to Ephesus. That was no safe place, if it was still to be in Laodice's possession. It was probably Sophron who now called in the Ptolemaic forces. It is found at any rate a few years later occupied by a Ptolemaic garrison, and a Sophron appears in command of a Ptolemaic fleet.

The young king Seleucus seems early to have gone at the head of an army across the Taurus to defend or to regain the Syrian and eastern provinces. It went hard in his absence, and the absence of the troops which followed him, with the adherents of his house along the coast. Smyrna, for instance, was exposed to attack, not only from the Ptolemaic fleets, but from its neighbor, Magnesia-on-Sipylus, where there was a great military settlement which declared against Laodice and Seleucus and harried its fields. Smyrna, at any rate, stood fast, and in this region the Seleucid cause held its own. The Magnesian colony was compelled to return to the old alliance, and at some subsequent date was incorporated by the Smyrnaeans in their own state.

On Smyrna in return for its fidelity the King was concerned to shower favors. He gave the usual promise that the city should continue autonomous and be free of tribute. He also guaranteed it in the possession of all the territory it already stood possessed of, and promised to restore any it had formerly owned. More than this, he interested himself warmly in what was the chief interest of the city, its great temple of Aphrodite-Stratonicis. Smyrna would secure a great advantage if it could shield itself by the sanctity of its shrine, if it could be treated as "holy and inviolable". It could only obtain this advantage in so far as the independent powers of the world, any who had the material force to molest it, would consent to recognize its sanctity. To obtain this recognition was the object it had in view. It began by procuring a pronouncement of the Delphic oracle in favor of its claims. Armed with this, it approached the Seleucid king. Seleucus threw himself heartily into the cause of the faithful city. He addressed letters to all the states of the Greek world, "to kings and rulers and cities and nations," asking them to recognize the temple of Aphrodite-Stratonicis as a sanctuary and Smyrna as a city holy and inviolable. One of the answers has been preserved, that of the city of Delphi, which, as the original oracle had proceeded from them, is naturally favorable. It charges the theoroi, who were sent round the Greek states to invite them to the Pythian games, to bestow special commendation on King Seleucus both for his piety in obeying the oracle and his honourable treatment of a Greek city.

Ptolemy did not continue to direct the Asiatic campaigns in person. After his raid into the eastern provinces he returned to Egypt, where troubles had broken out which called for his presence. But the war did not thereby come to an end. Ptolemy left officers to govern in his name both in the West and in the East, in Cilicia his "friend" Antiochus, in the provinces beyond the Euphrates "another general, Xanthippus". One would like to know on what principle Ptolemy at this
juncture framed his policy. He has been commended for wise moderation in withdrawing after his triumphal march. And indeed the traditional policy of his house was to set a prudent limit to ambition. But the texts hardly show the action of Ptolemy III in this light. His personal return is no evacuation of the conquered countries. In that moment of intoxicating glory, in the prostration of the rival house, Ptolemy III seems really to have contemplated making himself king of Asia as well as of Egypt. He actually intends to govern Iran from Alexandria as a dependency. It is not his prudence, but the force of circumstances, which makes him abandon the idea.

But although the return of Ptolemy to Egypt did not mean a suspension of hostilities, the absence of the King relaxed the pressure upon his enemies. Seleucus now took strenuously in hand the reconquest of Northern Syria and the revolted cities of the coast. A great armada was fitted out in one of the harbours of Asia Minor, and presently took the sea. It met, however, with a storm which completely shattered it—as the fleet of Seleucus' son was later on shattered in the same dangerous waters—and few, according to Justin, beside the King himself escaped to land. After this, Justin goes on, the cities were so sorry for him that they joined him of their own accord—a passage over which modern writers make very merry, perhaps undervaluing the part which sentiment plays even now in human politics. As a matter of fact, it seems probable that the cities of Northern Syria were really attached to the house which had planted and fostered them, and that they had conceived themselves, not so much to be revolting against that house, as standing by its wronged representatives, Berenice and her son, in whose name the King of Egypt had summoned them. It would therefore be natural that as soon as it became apparent that the house of Seleucus was to be
crushed altogether, and that they were to be annexed to Egypt, a great wave of compunction should sweep over them.

Of this phase in the war, that which is marked by the Seleucid house recovering Northern Syria, no detail is preserved except the bare statement of Eusebius that in the year 142-141 Orthosia on the Phoenician coast, which was being besieged by a Ptolemaic force, was relieved by Seleucus, who brought up reinforcements.

In the next phase of the war Seleucus passes from recovering his father's share of Syria to attacking the Ptolemaic. The war of defence became a war of reprisals. An encounter, somewhere in Palestine, took place between the two hosts. Seleucus was completely beaten. He withdrew the shattered remnant of his army of invasion to Antioch. His position was once more critical, for he had no force left wherewith to meet the counterstroke of his enemy.

The operations in Syria had drawn the Seleucid King for the most part to the regions south of the Taurus; they had made Antioch on the Orontes rather than Sardis or Ephesus the pivot of his kingdom. But meantime the Queen-Mother, Laodice, was still reigning in Asia Minor, and had her younger son, Antiochus, joined with her, a boy at that time of some fourteen years. In his extremity Seleucus now addressed an entreaty to his brother to cross the Taurus to his assistance. This request seems to show that a certain independent authority was exercised by Antiochus in Asia Minor, or rather by those who governed in the boy's name, his mother Laodice and her friends. And this inference finds a separate confirmation in an inscription from the temple at Branchidae, which contains a list of offerings made to the shrine by "the kings Seleucus and Antiochus." The Antiochus here is therefore one who shares the royal authority; that he does so as a subordinate is shown by the fact that the letter accompanying the gifts runs in the name of King Seleucus alone.

To secure the co-operation of his brother's court, Seleucus offered to make a partition of the Empire, to cede the trans-Tauric country to Antiochus. Whether the cession was to be absolute or whether he reserved to himself any right of suzerainty we are not told. If his mother and her friends were already the real rulers of that region, the offer of Seleucus amounted simply to a recognition of existing facts. The events which followed this proposition are touched on so summarily by Justin that it is scarcely possible to follow the connexions between them. At first the court of Sardis closed, or feigned to close, with it. The forces of Asia Minor were set in motion to join those in Syria. This co-operation between the two Seleucid courts seems not to have entered into Ptolemy's calculations, although why it should not have done so, when it seems the most natural thing to expect, we cannot say. Perhaps there were already signs of rivalry and dissension between them. At any rate, on getting word of the advance of the trans-Tauric army, Ptolemy, instead of following up his recent victory, concluded a peace for ten years with Seleucus.