Introduction
At least some members of the Seleukid royal family must have been rankled by the extravagant events of 28 March 268 BCE that took place just south-west of Babylon. It was then that Antiochos I commemorated laying the foundations of the Ezida Temple in Borsippa by deposing what would later be called the Antiochos I Cylinder among the bricks that he himself had allegedly brought from Syria.¹ The eighteen year-old man who would go on to become Antiochos II, along with his sisters Stratonike and Apama, would have perhaps bristled at a simple fact that is all too easily over- looked in the analysis of this complex and multivalent text: they were not mentioned as being members of the royal family. As has been noted, it is curious that the Cyl- inder’s closing prayer to Nabu only asked good fate for Antiochos (I), his son Seleu- kos, and his wife Stratonike.² The rest of the king’s family–these three other chil- dren who were alive at the time of the cylinder’s composition and deposition–are conspicuously absent from this eminently symbolic act of public religious dedica- tion.³ And this is neither the first nor last ancienttestimoniumin which the Seleukids present themselves as an artificially narrowed family. What lies behind this clearly constructed image that appears though various media in equally varied cultural con- texts?
This chapter aims to pull at the thread that was first pointed out by Kyra Nourse in 2002 and then most recently elaborated by Elizabeth Carney in 2011, when in the context of her analysis of royal women in the Hellenistic dynasties Nourse noted that The Seleucids generated an image of dynastic solidarity, one that cantered on the current royal couple and the heir…Instead of a long line of male rulers, there was the image of the current nuclear family, artificially narrowed to illustrate the succession plan.⁴
My thanks go to the editors of this volume for the kind invitation to contribute, and to Ms Ana Gar- cia Espinosa for her review of the manuscript.
Kosmin 2014b, 189–192, and Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1991, 74–77.
The other attested children for this marriage are: Stratonike (Grainger 2010, 132–3; Justin,Epit.
28.1.2; Eus.Chron.1.249) who would not yet have been married, Apama (Paus. 1.7.3; Por. F32.5) who at this point was married to Magas of Cyrene and there resident, and of course their younger son Antiochos who would go on to become Antiochos II.
Nourse 2002, 226–229 first noted the tendency of the family to present itself as a dynastic unit as a means of highlighting the exclusive and quasi-divine nature of the bloodline. Carney 2011, 205 then proposed the idea of the dynasty as an artificially narrowed family unit.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110755626-005
While Nourse and Carney identified this tendency in the context of discussions of female royal influence, I aim to broaden the discussion by putting this in its wider dynastic context. This artificially narrowed nuclear family that appears in represen- tations of Seleukid monarchy is what I label here the“Reigning Triad”, comprised of the three figures of king/husband, queen/wife, and heir/son. I argue that this device of the reigning triad was formulated by the Seleukids in order to delineate a clear path of succession from the first (Seleukos I) to the second generation (Antiochos I) of the dynasty. In the process, the empire that was won by Seleukos’individual military might and charisma was transformed into a familial realm whose inheri- tance was mediated and legitimized over subsequent generations by the image of the reigning triad. Despite the difficulty inherent in steering this dynastic chariot team, as it were, I argue that the image of the reigning triad nevertheless remained prominent in the dynastic ideology and practices of subsequent generations of the Seleukids themselves, while also being imitated by the client dynasties of the king- dom. To develop this argumentation, we shall begin by examining the emergence of the image in the later reign of Seleukos I and its dynastic ramifications, before turn- ing to its evolution from the reign of Antiochos I to Antiochos III. Finally, we shall identify some subsequent echoes of the reigning triad before considering this narrow family unit in the context of previous royal traditions and the unique milieu of the Seleukid Empire to hazard a guess at its provenance.
The Creation of Tradition: Seleukos I and Antiochos I
The notion that the Seleukid Empire was a familial space held together by a tightly- knit bond among its members can be seen as early as in the aftermath of Seleukos’
victory over Antigonos Monophthalmos in 301 BCE.⁵ The victorious king destroyed Antigonos’ eponymous city of Antigoneia in northern Syria and shortly thereafter founded the four cities that would later come to be known as the Syriantetrapolis:
Antioch near Daphne, Seleukeia in Pieria, Apameia, and Laodikeia.⁶It is not difficult to see the royal ideology embedded in the names of these cities, as Strabo relates that Seleukeia of course bears his own name, Antioch was named after Nikator’s father, Apameia after his wife Apama, and Laodikeia after his mother.⁷ On the surface the
On the empire’s structure, see Capdetrey 2007, 122–159 and 283–294 and Engels 2011. The old ar- guments of Bevan 1902 and Bikerman 1938 on the inherent structural weakness of the empire have recently been overturned by this feudalistic model of Seleukid imperial space. See also Kosmin 2014a.
On the foundation of these cities, see McAuley 2019, 62–65; Lib.Or. 11.97–99; John Mal.Chron.
8.12–25.
Str. 16.2.4, and it is telling that Strabo notices the image of family unity built into these city foun- dations when he describes them as the cities“which are called sisters of one another on account of their concord”(αἵπερ καὶ ἐλέγοντοἀλλήλωνἀδελφαὶδιὰτὴνὁμόνοιαν).
image is clear: this is meant to be a physical testament to the unity and strength of the king, his parents, and the queen, each of which complement and reinforce one another to create this critically-placed strategic stronghold. But there are also three double entendresembedded in the names of Antioch and Laodikeia that also project the unity of the royal family into the next generation: beyond his father, Antioch also evokes his eldest son by Apama, Antiochos, and Laodikeia similarly brings to mind the couple’s daughter Laodike, both of which were in turn named after their grand- parents, while Apameia could equally glorify the other daughter the couple possibly produced named Apama after her mother.⁸The Syrian tetrapolis is thus not just a monumental commemoration of the dynasty’s founder and his wife, but rather a pol- yvalent image of the family’s unity into the next generation as well. It is telling that even in the tumultuous aftermath of Ipsos when the Empire was still a shaky and uncertain endeavor, from its inception it is understood as a familial realm.
We can perhaps perceive an early formulation of the reigning triad in two de- crees passed by the Ionian city of Miletos at the behest of the early Seleukid general and courtier Demodamas. In the first (I. Didyma479), Demodamas proposes that the city praise“Antiochos I, eldest son of King Seleukos”for having followed in the foot- steps of his father by showing goodwill and benevolence to the city and sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma.⁹It is clear here that Miletus is honoring Antiochos with the impli- cation that he will succeed his father on the throne. In the second decree, Demoda- mas proposed similar honors but this time to Apama,“the wife of Seleukos the king”
for the goodwill and zeal she exhibited towards the Milesian soldiers fighting in her husband’s army.¹⁰The next lines of the inscription provide the first hint of the reign- ing triad as a self-conscious image of the royal family: according to the decree Apama displayed no ordinary devotion concerning the construction of the temple of [Apollo] at [Didy- ma], and Antiochos, [her son], zealously following the policy of his father Seleukos…has an- nounced that he would build [a stoa]…¹¹
The inscription captures the same image of a harmonious nuclear family marked by homophrosynewhose members strive towards common goals that will later be em- phasized in epigraphic depictions of Antiochos III and Laodike III.¹² Each member
On the parentage of Antiochos I, see Plut.Dem. 29 and App.Syr. 65. Two daughters of the couple are attested only in John Malalas (Dinforf, p. 198; discussed by Ogden 1999, 119). While their existence is plausible it cannot be certain.
I.Didyma 479 = OGIS 213, discussed by Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993, 25–27. Antiochos is identi- fied in ll. 2–3 as᾿Aντίοχοςὁπρεσβύτατο[ς]τοῦβασιλέως Σελεύκου<υἱὸς>. The reference to Seleukos’
goodwill is at ll. 5–8:‘καὶνῦνὁρ[ῶν τὸν] [π]ατέρα τὸν αὑτο[ῦτ]ὴν πᾶσαν σπουδὴ[ν ποιούμε]-[νο]ν.
I.Dydyma 480 = Austin2no. 51. Apama is identified as᾿AπάμηἡΣελεύκου τοῦβασιλέως γυνὴin line 3 of the inscription and is praised for herπολλὴν εὔνοιαν καὶπρο[θυμίαν] at l. 5. On the“career”, as it were, of Apama up to this point, see Ramsey 2016, 88–97.
Lines 9–13, following the translation of Austin2.
As discussed by Ma 1999, with dossier.
of the reigning triad contributes to the common agenda of the family in their own way. Seleukos of course is at the head of the imperial project just as he is at the head of the family, then Queen Apama supports the soldiers serving in her husband’s army, in this case Milesians. In both decrees, Antiochos ensures the perpetuation of his father’s–and thus his family’s–legacy by continuing his policies in the next generation of the dynasty.
Our first clear glimpse of the artificially narrowed nuclear family that is the reigning triad, however, is not found until the aftermath of the (in)famous wedding of Antiochos I to Stratonike less than a decade later in 294 BCE. The political context behind this curious episode of spousal transfer as well as its depiction and reception have been thoroughly discussed and need not detain us here.¹³ In our present discus- sion the marriage represents a seminal moment in the development of the Seleukid reigning triad for two reasons: first, the marriage occurred at the same time as Anti- ochos I was named co-regent with his father and viceroy of the East, thereby delin- eating the path of royal succession; and second, Stratonike’s marriage to Antiochos I represents the reconfiguration of the Seleukid nuclear family for the next generation by transferring the royal woman from father to son. In the process Seleukos confer- red some of his charisma and authority onto his son by elevating him to the level of an equal, an intention that was further facilitated by Antiochos’marriage to Strato- nike. Stratonike’s prominence in this mechanism is noteworthy as the carrier and sig- nifier of legitimacy: marriage to her makes Antiochos not only a king, but also the new head of the nuclear family. Nevertheless, Antiochos remains the principal figure in this new constellation, as Stratonike ultimately derives her prominence from her relationship to the male figures in this construct. Antiochos’new position as co- king is bolstered by this marriage but is not entirely contingent on it.
While the colder political calculations behind it certainly cannot be overlooked, the marriage of Antiochos and Stratonike seems to have been the catalyst for the emergence of the reigning triad in Seleukid self-representations throughout the Em- pire. Before turning to these attestations, however, it is salutary to pause and reflect on the strategic motivations for this unprecedented marriage.¹⁴Following the analy- sis of Eran Almagor, the transfer“was necessitated by certain realities of the Seleukid kingdom”, which he identifies as its sheer size, its dual character, its geographical
The ancient testimonia are Plut.Dem.38; App.Syr.59–61; Julian.Mispog.348. On the marriage of Stratonike to Seleukos I, see Harders 2016, and on the political context of her marriage to Antiochos I, see Engels and Erickson 2016, 45–51. See also Ogden 1999, 121–124; Grainger 2010, 264; Sherwin- White and Kuhrt 1993, 25.
There is of course the perennial debate surrounding the alleged lovesickness of Antiochos for Stratonike and the paternal compassion of Seleukos as the motivation for this unusual marital trans- fer, especially in the accounts of Appian and Plutarchloc. cit.For the cultural background of this trope, see Almagor 2016, 80–85. The strategic motivations I discuss are not incompatible with this tradition, and at any rate the end result of this marital transfer remains the same regardless of its motivations.
situation, and the need to secure the kingdom from western threats.¹⁵The marriage, as it were, of political and dynastic concerns that lies at the core of the reigning triad was inherent in this marital transfer as well. In the Seleukid context government and dynasty were, if not outright synonymous, inextricably linked. While on the one hand the transfer of Stratonike to Antiochos I represents the creation of another link in the familial chain and successfully re-configured the reigning triad for the next generation, on the other hand Seleukos set a precedent that could not be imi- tated in subsequent generations.
The Challenges of Continuity: Antiochos I to Antiochos III
The precise mechanism of transferring a king’s second wife to his son by his first wife and thereby marrying his stepmother as his queen to ensure dynastic succession was, unsurprisingly, beyond the practicable reach of subsequent generations of the royal family. Nevertheless, the notion of a reigning triad remained prominent even after the death of Seleukos I at the hands of Ptolemy Keraunos. Antiochos was quick to stabilize his succession by promoting an image of continuity with the reign of his father. Rather than ushering in a new regnal era he instead continued the dating system of his father, thereby“time became Seleucid, dynastic, and contin- uous”, as Sherwin-White and Kuhrt put it.¹⁶ Portraits of his late (divine) father abound in his early coinage. With the resurrected shade of Nikator in the background and his wife Stratonike at his side, it is almost as if the reigning triad could persist even after the death of one of its components. Hand in hand with this paternal me- morialization went the creation of the dynasty’s next generation. In Babylonian documents the last attested date for Seleukos I and Antiochos I is 2 December 281 BCE.¹⁷ Almost immediately after his father’s assassination, Antiochos then created another permutation of the reigning triad by appointing his aptly named son Seleu- kos as co-regent. The pair first appear in Babylonian documents in year 32 of the Se- leukid Era, thus at some point between 19 April 280 and 7 April 279 BCE.¹⁸It is strik- ing that one of the first dynastic manoeuvres of the new king Antiochos was the re- orientation the reigning triad towards another generation of Seleukid rule, this time with himself as king/father, Stratonike as queen/mother, and Seleukos as heir/son.
Almagor 2016, 70, and see his subsequent discussion of possible non-Greek precedents for this marital transfer.
Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1993, 27. See also Kosmin 2019.
Parker and Dubberstein 1946, 19–20.
Id. All regnal dates are taken from Parker and Dubberstein 1946.
The continuity of family power is unsubtly echoed onomastically by the generational alternation of male names.
Later in his reign we begin to see the internal dynamics of this reigning triad ex- pressed with more precision and nuance in the Antiochos I Cylinder from Borsippa mentioned at the outset of this chapter. Given that the cylinder is dated 28 March 268 BCE, by this point the co-regency of Antiochos and his son Seleukos would have been well established at court and in the broader geography of the empire, hence this snapshot afforded us by the cylinder is of a reigning triad that had matured over the course of a decade. Drawing from the analysis of Sherwin-White and Kuhrt in 1991 and most recently by the respective discussions of Stevens and Kosmin in 2014 and Anagnostou-Laoutides in 2017 it is clear that the cylinder projects a care- fully-manicured image of the royal family marked by an intriguing combination of traditional near-eastern elements along with some aspects of creative innovation.¹⁹ As noted, the closing lines of the inscription mention only Antiochos, Stratonike, and Seleukos (the son).²⁰This absence of the rest of the family combined with the already well-established co-regency of Seleukos implies that this was by no means an accidental omission. The double identification of Stratonike and Seleukos in the prayer to Nabu also accords neatly with the dual royal and familial role of each member: Seleukos is identified both as“[co‐]king”and “son”, Stratonike as both“queen”and “consort”, and thus Antiochos I is king, father to Seleukos, and husband to Stratonike. The fact that Seleukos was again doubly identified as king and son twenty lines earlier further reinforces this double role.²¹ It is likewise fitting that Antiochos identified himself as‘king’and‘foremost son of Seleukos, the king’in the opening lines (column i. ll. 1, 4) of the cylinder, thus the combination of familial and regnal ties is brought to fore at the beginning and end of this inscription. On a basic level the cylinder thus reflects the sense of familial and regnal continual that lies at the heart of the reigning triad as an aspect of Seleukid royal ideology. The gen- erational structure of the Seleukids is expressed here in Akkadian in the same man- ner as we have seen it in Greek in Miletos.²²
But it is above all the subtleties of the text that communicate a much more co- hesive and elaborate image of the reigning triad to the reader. First, the Akkadian terms with which Stratonike is identified in the text align with the sense of equality and unity that lies at the heart of the reigning triad. As has been discussed by Sher- win-White and Kuhrt, the fact that Stratonike is described by the termhirtu, an archa- ic term that in the longer tradition means not just wife but “equal” or“principal
On this in particular, see the conclusions of Kosmin 2014b.
Col II, ll.24–28. The principal commentaries on the cylinder are Stevens 2014; Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1991; Kosmin 2014b, and more recently Anagnostou-Laoutides 2017, 158–163.
Kosmin 2014b, 183.
Here though the conclusions of Kosmin 2014b, 188–190 regarding the innovation inherent in the Antiochos I cylinder are poignant. While this act was deeply rooted in Babylonian tradition, several aspects of the cylinder and its deposition are unprecedented in the Near Eastern tradition.
wife”.²³ The pair are thus on an equal footing with one another, rather than Antio- chos being the dominant husband and Stratonike being the subservient wife. In ad- dition to this familial identification Stratonike is also identified assarratu, an ar- chaizing literary term for queen. Stratonike’s mere presence in the inscription is noteworthy in and of itself: Sherwin-White and Kuhrt note that queens are never mentioned in Old Persian inscriptions or in this genre of Babylonian text.²⁴Their conclusion that“it was her role in maintaining the dynastic succession that led to her name being commemorated”in this inscription is certainly sound, and under- scores the notion that here, as elsewhere, the members of the reigning triad derived their status from their relationship with the others.²⁵Second, following the analysis of Paul Kosmin, the curious identification of Antiochos asaplu ašarēdualong with other idiosyncrasies of the text suggest that the genealogy of the royal family is not merely being delineated internally, but it is also being mapped on to the geneal- ogy of the gods.²⁶ As the first column of the cylinder identifies Antiochos’descent from Seleukos, the second column recounts Nabu’s descent from Marduk in parallel.
“The cylinder”, Kosmin concludes, “establishes two sets of equivalences: Marduk–
Zeus–Seleucus and Nabu–Apollo–Antiochus”, which not only hints unsubtly at the divinity of the royal family but does so in a way that is intelligible to these two religious traditions of the empire.²⁷The divine associations of Stratonike’s Akka- dian titles are strengthened by the cuneiform rendering of her name–as-ta-ar-ta-ni- ik-ku (col 2 l. 26), which clearly links her to the Syrian goddess Astarte and thus to Aphrodite as well.²⁸Seleukos the son, for his part, is set up to be the next heir of this divine legacy. The reigning triad as depicted by this document is not just a sim- plified nuclear family, it is a facsimile of the divine nuclear families found in both the Syrian and Babylonian corners of the empire.²⁹In politics as in religion, the royal family is the point at which the diverse traditions of the empire intersect. In so doing, the royal court selectively (and creatively) adapted certain elements of much older near-eastern traditions into a new and innovative articulation of dynastic solidarity through the reigning triad.³⁰
Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1991, 78–79,
Sherwin-White and Kuhrt 1991, 83–84.
Id.
Kosmin 2014b, 183–184.
Kosmin 2014b, 184.
Kosmin 2014b, 192.
While Kosmin 2014b, 187–188 is certainly quite right to highlight the similarity here with the Ptol- emaic context, we should stress that this similarity is simply mechanical in the sense that each dy- nasty identifies members of the reigning royal family with prominent deities in different cultural con- texts. It is not as if the Seleukids are simply copying and pasting the Ptolemaic dynastic model.
Kosmin 2014b, 190–192. This observation brings to the difficult question of the Cylinder’s author- ship, audience, and the extent to which the royal family and the court would have been involved. On these concerns there are several brief points to be made. First, as Anagnostou-Laoutides 2017, 150 writes this process of creating parallelism between the royal family and the family of the Babylonian
In our broader discussion, the most obvious point to be made is that the cylinder indicates that the idea of the reigning triad was not limited to Greek subjects of the Seleukids or to the empire’s western zone. But the presence of a similar depiction of the reigning triad in the western corner of the Empire only a few years later, this time in Greek, reveals that the device was consistently expressed across different cultures.
At some point between Autumn of 266 and 261 thekoinonof the Ionians resolved to celebrate the birthday of Antiochos I in the sacred precinct of the League–the only Hellenistic king to be given such an honor alongside Alexander (ll. 1–6).³¹ While such honors are common enough for individual kings in the third century, in the sub- sequent lines of the inscription we again find the inclusion of selected family mem- bers in these honors. The League decides to send two men from each city as an em- bassy to announce the good news to Antiochos and Queen Stratonike, while also seizing the occasion to represent the interests of the Ionian League and gently re- mind the king to“follow the policy of his ancestors”, that is, his father.³² While the inclusion of both the king and then queen in such inscriptions as this had been fairly well-established in the 260s BCE by both the Ptolemies and the Seleukids, the closing lines of the inscription contain an idiosyncratic reference to the Seleukid reigning triad. The delegates of the Ionian League“shall offer a sacrifice to all the gods and goddesses, and to the kings Antiochos <and Antiochos> and to Queen Stra- tonike”(ll.33–34), and later the priests and priestesses“shall open the sanctuaries and sacrifice with a prayer that the resolutions may bring advantage to Kings Anti- ochos and Antiochos, to Queen Stratonike”(35–30). Rather than the more common
(and Greek) gods began in the reign of Seleukos I. Anagnostou-Laoutides 2017, 150–156 then process to provide numerous examples of this parallelism and assimilation on Greek and Babylonian media, and the careful involvement of the early Seleukids in the ritual life of Babylonian religion is partic- ularly relevant here. Second,id.157–159 discusses the perpetuation of these policies by Antiochos I after his accession, thus the Antiochos Cylinder can be viewed as consistent with the public image of the royal family cultivated by the first generation of the dynasty and its court. Third, the concordance of the divine associations of the royal family attested in the cylinder with other media, particularly coinage, suggest that the Cylinder is part of a broader and coordinated public image propagated by the royal court. But this was not purely a top-down process: Anagnostou-Laoutides 2017, 161 as- serts (quite rightly, in my opinion) that“Seleucid expressions of religiosity, carefully designed–often with help from local priests–were a crucial part of their political program which aimed at creating a sense of historical continuity”. See alsoid.186 note 134, which cites an instance inBCHPof Antiochos I receiving instructions on ritual performance from“a certain Babylonian”. As among the Ptolemies, it is likely difficult to draw a hard and fast distinction between the elite Babylonian priesthood and the royal court. In sum, it seems likely that the image of the royal family captured in this document was only one of many products of a dialogue between the royal family, the court, and the Babylonian priesthood.
The inscription has been widely published asOGIS 222,IErythraiII, 504; Austin2169. Following the note of Ramsey 2016: 101 note 99, the inscription must date to after Autumn 266 given that the death of Seleukos son of Antiochos was recorded then. See also the revisions and comments of Piejko 1991 on this decree.
Ll. 19–20 of the decree.
inclusion of the generic ‘descendants’ (oi ekgonoi) or ‘children’ (oi teknoi) of the reigning king and queen, this decree mentions only their son Antiochos and not their other children.
Of course, since its last attestation the reigning triad has been reconfigured slightly with the replacement of Seleukos, the son of Antiochos and Stratonike, with their other son Antiochos. While the ever-conspiratorial Justin would have us believe that Seleukos the son was murdered by his father because of some nefarious plot, Del Monte’s argument that Seleukos died a rather less dramatic death at the hands of an epidemic.³³ This death created a vacancy in the reigning triad, into which Seleukos’ younger brother Antiochos seems to have stepped smoothly. The easy replacement of one designated heir with another bring to light the flexibility and adaptability of the reigning triad. In a sense, the triad only requires the presence of its three constituent personae, and as we shall see in the reign of Antiochos IV, precisely who fills these three roles can be quite fluid. At any rate, this lightly revised reigning triad carries all the connotations of unity andhomophrosynethat we have previously seen, and again the text’s reference to the policies of Antiochos’ancestors is a reminder that this unity and continuity are not unique to one generation of the family.
The presence of the reigning triad in this inscription from Ionia reveals more than just the contemporary royals who comprised it. First, its mention in a Greek text on the western edge of the empire further reinforces the conclusion that the reigning triad was communicated to various cultural and linguistic groups within the empire. Indeed, as Kosmin noted, the king, queen, and heir appear in the same order in the Antiochos I cylinder as they do in this decree.³⁴Second, the fact that this is a Greek civic text bearing a decree proposed and ratified by the Ionian League indicates that the reigning triad was communicated to and comprehended by the urban communities of the empire as well as the imperial core. Furthermore, the mechanism of this decree is remarkable: while the Antiochos I cylinder was a text that was likely crafted in whole or in part by the royal court, the Ionian decree was a resolution passed by one of the empire’s constituent communities in honor of the royal family. The reigning triad was not just understood by the subjects of the empire, they interacted with it as a means of communicating with the centre from the imperial periphery.
Del Monte 1995, 434–435, 441–444; Del Monte 1997, 37 and 228, as referenced by Ramsey 2016, 102.
Kosmin 2014b, 186–187, where he also notes that the Ionian decree equates Stratonike to Aphro- dite in the same way that she was equated to Astarte in the Antiochos Cylinder. The divine connota- tions of the reigning triad also appear to be a trans-cultural characteristic.
Later Echoes of the Reigning Triad
The detail with which we have discussed the emergence of the reigning triad in the first three generations of the dynasty is the product of its relatively robust attestation throughout the Seleukid Realm. While the evidentiary well of direct attestations of the triad nearly runs dry after the reign of Antiochos I, there is still the occasional rivulet of allusion to it that hints at its endurance as a Seleukid dynastic device both within the main dynasty and beyond. Though it is tempting to view the reign of Antiochos II as either dynastic confusion or an outright breakdown of succession, on closer examination there is at least some degree of consistent foresight in the monarch’s plans for the succession of his son Seleukos (II). Much of the ancient lit- erary tradition and modern scholarly consensus would hold that the accession of Se- leukos II to the throne was part of a spectacular series of“intrigues criminelles”, as Bouché-Leclercq put it, presided over by the nefarious Laodike I which included, inter alia, the murder of her husband, his second wife, and their child.³⁵ Seleukos II therefore owed his crown to the machinations of his mother following the murder of his father.
In 2016, however, Altay Coşkun systematically re-evaluated this tradition and found it lacking. Central to this new line of reasoning is the reconsidered status of Laodike herself: theopinio veteriorassumed that the marriage of Antiochos II to Be- renike Phernophoros automatically implied either the repudiation of Laodike or her demotion to the status of a concubine.³⁶If this notion, as Coşkun argues,“ought to be buried completely”, then Laodike, as Apama before her, would have remained the principal queen/wife figure in the royal family even after her husband’s marriage to Berenike Phernophoros–she is, after all, still referred to as‘Laodike the Wife’in the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries of 248/247 BCE.³⁷Indeed overlooking the implausi- bly lurid details of the literary tradition in favor of a more balanced evidentiary view makes it increasingly evident that Antiochos II had appointed his son Seleukos as co- regent while he was still alive, and had planned for his succession to the throne.³⁸As Coşkun argues, the broader strategic picture makes it highly likely that this appoint- ment took place in the months before Antiochos II’s death in July 246 BCE: Andra- goras, the satrap of Parthia, revolted against the Seleukids in 248/247 BCE, prompting a military response led Arsakes, the leader of the Parni. As had occurred in the reign of Seleukos I, the reigning king/father was detained by affairs in the West, and it fol- lows logically that he would have appointed his son Seleukos II as co-regent to sta-
Bouché-Leclercq 1913, 107cit.Coşkun 2016, 107. See also Coşkun 2016, 107–112.
See Coşkun 2016, 115–118 on the assumption (and repudiation of it) that Laodike was divorced or demoted. Ogden 199, 127–129 is among those who represent the older view.
Coşkun 2016, 118. For the entry in theBAD, see Sachs and Hunger 1989, II. 54–55. Against the assumption that Laodike murdered her husband, see Grainger 2010, 153–156, and Primo 2009, 123.
On the prevailing assumption that Antiochos II did not name Seleukos II co-regent before his death, see Coşkun 2016, 119 note 56 for the full scholarly history.
bilize the uneasy situation in the East.³⁹This sequence of events is further confirmed by the attestation of Seleukos as co-ruling king in Babylon in the Astronomical Dia- ries of 246/245 BCE. While it was decidedly not a smooth start to his reign, Seleukos II did indeed emerge from the fray of the 240s as the sole successful claimant to the throne.
This fairly dense argumentation and reconstruction of events is relevant to our understanding of the reigning triad for two reasons. First, despite the subsequent hostile tradition against Laodike I, her place as the principal queen/wife figure in the royal family was not compromised by the entry of Berenike Phernophoros onto the Syrian stage. While the literary tradition paints this as a generation of rupture, a closer examination hints at vectors of continuity with Seleukid traditions as they had thus developed. Second, Seleukos II’s appointment as co-regent in the East while his father was still alive and his subsequent succession to the throne after his father’s death is a sequence of events that is perfectly in keeping with previously established conventions of succession as encapsulated in the reigning triad. Under- neath the layers of Ptolemaic, Roman, and indeed contemporary distortion of the reign of Antiochos II perhaps lies a glimpse, however faint and ethereal, of a new generation in the Seleukid reigning triad.
From the reign of Seleukos II onwards it becomes difficult to argue for any mech- anism governing Seleukid succession beyond patrilineal transmission of kingship, given the paucity of the source material particularly when it comes to royal women. It is clear that Seleukos II had some sense of fidelity to dynastic continuity when he followed in his father’s footsteps by marrying another Laodike descended from the House of Achaios– likely a niece of his mother in a partially endogamic marriage.⁴⁰The apparently smooth accession to the throne of his eighteen-year-old son Alexander following his unexpected death in a riding accident in 227/6 implies that the path of succession had already been delineated. There is, however, no con- crete attestation of such a co-regency in either Greek or Babylonian sources, neither is there a clear indication of this generation as another iteration of the reigning triad.
Nevertheless the young king Alexander changed his name to Seleukos (III) in a ges- ture of filial piety and dynastic continuity⁴¹ At some point in his short reign of three to four years he must have made his brother Antiochos (III) co-regent in the East of the Empire in an unique episode of fraternal co-regency.⁴² In the process Seleukos III
For this sequence of events and relevant discussion, see Coşkun 2016, 119–122, especially notes 57 and 58 on p. 120. TheBADattest Seleukos II as co-king in month V of 246/245 BCE, see Sachs and Hunger 1989, II. 68–72. For the full chronology of relevant Babylonian documents, see Coşkun 2016, 121 n. 64.
Pol. 4.51.4, 8.33.1; Polyainos 4.17. For divergent viewpoints on the parentage of this Laodike, see Bevan 1902, 1.203–4; Bouché-Leclercq 1913, 2.562; and Macurdy 1932, 90.
Por. F32.9; Euseb.Chron.1.40.11; App.Syr.68; Pol. 32.71.4; Grainger 1997, 63. Sachs and Wiseman 1954, 206–207 note that this period in the Babylonian king list is particularly fragmentary.
Pol. 2.71.4; Porph. F45; Eus.Chron.1.40.12; Grainger 1997, 20.
unintentionally created the possibility of tension between paternal and fraternal suc- cession that would contribute to much of the dynastic instability seen after the reign of Antiochos III. At any rate, the new king’s reign brought with it a remarkable refa- shioning of Seleukid royal ideology in imitation of contemporary Ptolemaic practice.
As has been widely discussed, the frequent identification of the king and queen as brother and sister in public documents, the propagation of the queen’s royal cult, and the incestuous marriage of Antiochos Neos and his sister Laodike are all compo- nents of the broader Ptolemaicimitatio.⁴³ By this point, the prominence of reigning triad cultivated during the reigns of Seleukos I and Antiochos II had faded into a more obscure background, only to be overshadowed by the importation of a new tri- partite royal model from their dynastic cousins in Egypt.⁴⁴But it would not complete- ly disappear from view.
Conclusions: Legacies and Precedents
By means of conclusion we shall first search for subsequent echoes of the reigning triad within the Seleukid dynasty and then broaden our focus to include its client dynasts in the east and west of the empire. What follows is meant to be neither de- finitive nor exhaustive, and while there are not such clear-cutexemplaof the reigning triad as the Antiochos I cylinder in the later history of the dynasty, I would argue that the device remained prominent in Seleukid dynastic thought and its persistence can be seen obliquely. Within the main dynasty, the familial harmony and imperial sta- bility connoted by the reigning triad by all accounts seem to have been emphasized with new, perhaps desperate, vigor in the tumultuous aftermath of the reign of Anti- ochos III. Early in the reign of Seleukos IV at least from a distance it seemed that the dynasty’s mechanisms were functioning normally: the king was married to a Laodike (IV), his elder son Demetrios was widely expected to be the next king, and he had a spare heir, as it were, in his younger son Antiochos. It is in this period that the first coins are struck bearing a portrait of a Seleukid queen: a series of bronzes were is- sued from Antioch with a veiled female bust and the legendβασιλέως Σέλευκουon the reverse.⁴⁵Hoover argues that these coins were produced‘…in order to promote an image of family stability for his regime’in the midst of the exactions suffered at the hands of Rome as part of the peace settlement.⁴⁶It was precisely the widespread
Ma 1999 contains an appendix with the decrees of Antiochos and Laodike in which they refer to each other as brother and sister, for instance nos. 24 and 37, along withOGIS224, among others. The dynamics of this titulary and subsequent cultic honors are discussed by Ma 1999, 255; Nourse 2002, 235–238; Bielman-Sánchez 2003, 53–56.
On this adoption of Ptolemaic dynastic practices in the reign of Antiochos III, see Ogden 1999, 135 and Grainger 2010, 284–286.
On these issues, see Hoover 2002, 82–85 and Dodd 2009, 200–205.
Hoover 2002, 85.
identification of his son Demetrios I as heir apparent that created his political value as a hostage in Rome. The generation immediately after Antiochos III thus appears to have created a new iteration of the reigning triad to restore a sense of familial–and thus imperial–harmony.
Following the assassination of Seleukos IV in 175, the mints of Antioch on the Orontes, Tarsos, Antioch and Persis, and Tyre produced a fascinating series of issues whose iconography seems intended to capture the reigning triad through the medi- um of coinage–likely at the behest of Heliodoros to prop up the reign of the late king’s son Antiochos. Among these issues are silver tetradrachms struck in the name of king Antiochos but with a portrait of his late father (SC 1365), gold octo- drachms with the conjoined busts of Antiochos and his mother Laodike in the fore- ground, struck in the young king’s name (SC1368). Other lower value series struck in Antioch and Ptolemais feature the veiled, diademed Laodike minted in the name of her son (SC 1407 1477). According the sequence proposed by Benjamin Scolnic in 2014 the series reflects the development of the young king’s claim to the throne, his sources of legitimacy, and ultimately his growth into the role over a period of roughly five years.⁴⁷ The early coin issues in which the new king’s name appears as a legend to portraits of his mother and father seem particularly evocative of the reigning triad: even over a century after the marriage of Antiochos I and Stratonike, the Seleukids still conceptualize and communicate their legitimacy as being mediat- ed by the relationships of the nuclear family. The device was so effective that after his seizure of the throne Antiochos IV simply inserted himself in the place of his late brother on his own coin issues. Laodike features prominently on the early bronze coinage of Antiochos IV struck at Antioch, Seleukeia, and Ptolemais, just as she had in the reign of her previous husband.⁴⁸The pattern is consistent through this se- quence of events: the stability of the reigning king is buttressed by the presence of his wife/queen in their public imagery, and the legitimacy of the heir/son is ex- pressed as being predicated on his relationship to his father/king and mother/queen.
From then onwards it becomes nigh impossible to distinguish between more ge- neric familial legitimation and the specifically Seleukid device of the reigning triad.
While the reigning triad is difficult to pin down with any certainty within the main family, interestingly it seems to have been adopted with some enthusiasm by the cli- ent dynasties related to the main house through marriage. The idea of a dynasty as a nuclear family was among the many elements borrowed by the emerging Ariarathid dynasty of Kappadokia following the arrival of Stratonike, daughter of Antiochos II, into the family: Diodoros (31.19.6) recounts that when Stratonike was married to Ariarathes III, at the same time his father, Ariaramnes, placed a diadem on his
Scolnic 2014, 9–14. Note that his sequence differs from that ofSC.The implication in Scolnic’s reconstruction is that Antiochos the son succeeded to the throne immediately after the assassination of his father and ruled for a period of five years until the usurpation of Antiochos IV.
On these issues, see Dodd 2009, 205–206, and for the sequence of Antiochos IV’s epithets on his coinage, see Scolnic 2014, 14–23.
son’s head and elevated him to co-kingship.⁴⁹In the process, Ariaramnes seems to have creating his own Kappadokian reigning triad as a means of assuring smooth succession, no doubt inspired by his Seleukid overlords. The role of royal women as mediators of succession in Kappadokia continued until at least the 160s given Di- odoros’somewhat bizarre report of the actions taken by the Seleukid Princess Anti- ochis in her attempt to ensure the accession of her preferred son as heir to the throne.⁵⁰
At roughly the same time as Kappadokia was adopting Seleukid dynastic practi- ces, in the far east of the empire Eukratides I was consolidating its hold on the Bac- trian kingdom after having overthrown the Euthydemids.⁵¹ A set of commemorative medals minted in the 160s captures what seems to be an attempt by Eukratides to legitimize his claim to the throne by depicting his own reigning triad: the king him- self appears on the obverse with the legend“great king”, while the reverse contains jugate portraits of Heliokles and Laodike along with a legend featuring both names in the genitive. Following the reading of Wenghofer and Houle, the presence of these jugate portraits along with the fact that only Laodike is wearing a diadem implies
“that Eukratides was claiming his right to the Bactrian throne through his mother’s line”.⁵² The king seems to have also adopted the main dynasty’s expression of royal legitimacy through the reigning triad as well. The coin elegantly captures the image of unity inherent to the device, as Eukratides is depicted as son/heir on one side of the coin, while the other identifies his descent from the previous generation of Hiero- kles (husband/ruler) and Laodike (wife/queen).⁵³ Roughly a century later back in the West of the kingdom, Antiochos I Theos of Kommagene built a monumental tribute to his own fortunate ancestry on Nemrut Dag, whose extensiveAhnengalerientrace own descent from generations of royal ancestors on the maternal and paternal sides.⁵⁴ In a physical sense, Antiochos I of Kommagene portrays himself as the son and heir of not just a single royal couple, but rather of a series of fifteen gener- ations that have culminated in his rule.⁵⁵The imitation of the Seleukid royal triad was thus not limited to one corner or client dynasty of the empire.
To sum up, I have made three principal arguments regarding the Seleukid reign- ing triad: first, the image of the Seleukid kingdom as being ruled by a simplified nu- clear family emerged in the first generation of the dynasty and continue to be elabo- rated into family’s second generation. The reigning triad is thus as old as the dynasty itself. Second, the notion of Seleukid succession as being mediated and legitimized
McAuley 2018, 194–196 for this marriage and the Hellenization of Kappadokia.
Diod 39.19.7, and see again McAuley 2018, 196–200.
Wenghofer and Houle 2016, 204–5.
Wenghofer and Houle 2016, 205.
On this odd case usage, see Wenghofer and Houle 2016, 204–207.
Strootman 2016, 212–219 for a reconstruction of these Ancestor Galleries.
Strootman 2016, 215–218 traces fifteen male generations and seventeen female generations lead- ing to Antiochos I of Kommagene.
by the trio of king/husband, queen/wife, and son/heir continued until the reign of Antiochos III, only to re-emerge as a means of combating the dynastic instability fol- lowing the reign of Seleukos IV. The device was thus not limited to the earliest gen- erations of the dynasty and was not discarded following the shift towards more of a Ptolemaic-style royal family during the reign of Antiochos III. Third, the reigning triad appears to have been imitated along with various other aspects of courtly prac- tice and royal iconography by Seleukid client dynasties in the west and east of the empire during the second and first centuries BCE. The strategic marriages of Seleukid princesses into these client dynasties seems to have been the catalyst of thisimitatio regis.The reigning triad therefore was not exclusive to the dynasty’s main family, nei- ther was it confined to a single geographical or cultural portion of the empire. It seems, in short, to have broad appeal.
It is precisely the broad cultural and geographical appeal and comprehensibility of the reigning triad that I argue lies at the core of its initial adoption and subsequent prevalence throughout the empire. Given that the earliest hints of the reigning triad are found in the 290s as Seleukid power was being consolidated, the triad cannot be simply an imitation of the Ptolemaic reigning triad that would become so prevalent during and after the reign of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II.⁵⁶The polygamic complexity and consequent uncertainty regarding succession among the Argeads likewise rules out the Macedonians as the source of this Seleukid inspiration.⁵⁷The universal mo- narchic ideology of the Achaemenids which was almost completely focused on the reigning king is likewise too monolithic to have been used as a model by the emerg- ing dynasts.⁵⁸Something beyond the simple imitation of kings and queens past must lie behind the diffusion of power and legitimacy among the nuclear family that cha- racterises Seleukid self-representations. I would argue that the reigning triad was adopted alongside the conception of Seleukid imperial space as a dynastic web as
The influence of the Ptolemies on Seleukid dynastic practice prior to the reign of Antiochos III has, in my opinion, traditionally been exaggerated by the magnification of ambiguous cases of sib- ling marriage, such as Bouché-Leclercq 1913, 2.545–546; Bevan 1902, 1.169, 303, and 2.212 and 2.204.
Ogden 1999, 117–118 likewise accepts ambiguous cases of incestuous marriages as fact in recreating his trajectory of the dynasty’s shifting marriage strategies. The system of succession by co-regency among the Ptolemies does not appear until c. 28 March 284 following the logic of Bennett 2012 s.v. Ptolemy I. Berenike I, for her part, is not the subject of intensive public representation until the reign of Ptolemy II, as discussed by Bennet 2012 s.v Berenice I, note 15. The first reference to theTheoi Adelphoiof Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II is not found until 272/271 inP.Hibeh 2.199, and the co-regency of Ptolemy the Son is not attested until late in 267. If anything, the chronology would sug- gest that the Ptolemies were following Seleukid practices of co-regency, rather than the inverse. See also Ager 2005 on the adoption of incestuous marriage in the dynasty.
On the rather complex dynastic model of the Argeads, see Carney 1995, 367–369 and 382–383, and Ogden 1999, 3–6. Indeed, the early chapters of Ogden provide a fascinating analysis of the dis- ruptive influence of amphimetric strife on the Argeads.
My thanks go to my colleague Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones for his comments on this question.
The centrality of the king to Persian royal practice is aptly discussed in chapters 1 and 4 of Llewellyn- Jones 2013.
a means of overcoming the pluralistic diversity of the empire and its constituent peo- ples.⁵⁹In the reigning triad as elsewhere in Seleukid dynastic practice we find an em- phasis on the language of family and interrelation that would have been comprehen- sible across the diverse and often conflicting traditions of the empire’s complex cultural inheritance. The peoples of the nomadic tribes of Bactria, the former Persian satrapies of Anatolia, the old Greek civic communities of the Ionian coast, the Mes- opotamian heartland of the empire, and the settlers of new Greek cities founded throughout the empire all would have understood the loyalty, fidelity, obligations, and expectations that came with the simple nuclear relationships of the reigning triad. In the midst of diversity and complexity, the reigning triad provided an elegant- ly straightforward image of dynastic harmony.
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