Sonja Plischke’s Die Seleukiden und Iran is an attempt to study Seleucid empire building in Iran. In view of the fact that indigenous written sources from Iran are practically absent, Plischke decided to include Babylonia in this work, since the written cuneiform evidence from that region is fairly abundant. She detects some general tendencies—such as religious policy and the general wish to connect the different parts of the empire—supported by a personal conception of Seleucid kingship, beside more specific (...) treatment of different regions. In my view, the Seleucids probably did not pay sufficient attention to the East, so that their control weakened. I take the opportunity to discuss the Babylonian sources, correct errors in Plischke’s use of them, and adduce some new publications. (shrink)

Les émissions monétaires en argent des Séleucides en Coelé Syrie et en Phénicie, après la conquête de la province en 200, ne manquent pas de surprendre. Antiochos III n'y frappa pas de monnaies en ce métal. Ses premiers successeurs ouvrirent un atelier à Antioche-Aké-Ptolémaïs, mais les tétradrachmes de poids attique, aux types séleucides habituels, qu'ils y produisirent ne circulèrent pas dans la province, comme en témoignent les trésors. Pendant la lre moitié du 11e siècle, le numéraire lagide continua d'être utilisé. (...) À partir de 150, Alexandre Bala et les rois suivants frappèrent dans plusieurs ateliers un monnayage d'aspect inattendu : des espèces au portrait et au nom du roi séleucide, mais de poids lagide et montrant au revers l'aigle ptolémaïque sur un foudre. Cette étude cherche à expliquer les raisons d'un tel comportement, qui eut pour effet de laisser monétairement la Coelé Syrie et la Phénicie à l'écart des autres provinces du royaume. (shrink)

A major contention of our bookHellenism in the Eastwas that the most profitable way for making progress in understanding the Achaemenid and Seleucid empires was to try to evaluate, sensitively, the very disparate types of evidence within their own social and cultural contexts, however difficult this might be in practice. In the case of the Antiochus I cylinder we are confronted by an inscribed object whose significance lies as much in its physical form as in the content of the (...) text it bears. These aspects are inextricably intertwined as part of a tradition specific to Mesopotamian culture—object and text combined are the physical representation of a major, longstanding, sociopolitical institution for which a mass of earlier evidence exists. It is all too understandable that Greco-Roman scholars, who have been the primary students of the hellenistic world, should find it hard to know how to approach such material emanating from an unfamiliar cultural milieu. Yet, for once, this text isnotfragmentary—it is a long, well-preserved document, easy to read and readily accessible in translation which in itself demonstrates an acknowledgment by hellenistic historians of the potential importance of this non-Greek text for understanding Seleucid history. (shrink)

This paper proposes that living Seleucid kings were recognized as divine by the royal court before the reign of Antiochus III despite lacking an established centralized ruler cult like their fellow kings, the Ptolemies. Owing to the nature of the surviving evidence, we are forced to rely heavily on numismatics to construct a view of Seleucid royal ideology. Regrettably, it seems that up until now much of the numismatic evidence for the divinity of living Seleucid rulers has (...) not been fully considered. I argue that the evidence from silver coinage produced in the name of the Seleucid kings presents a version of the official image of the reigning king and that images which portray the king as divine reflect central acceptance of the king's divinity. This is clear from the epithets on the coinage of Antiochus IV and his successors, but I will argue that the same principle holds for all earlier Seleucid kings. Thus coinage with divine images of Seleucid kings provided one of the mechanisms through which the royal court transmitted the divine nature of the kings to the population. As we will see, in the case of Antiochus Hierax, local considerations also influenced the numismatic representation of the king. This blurring of boundaries between the local veneration of the king, which has long been accepted as normal civic practice in the Greek city-states and in non-Greek temples, and the royal images of the divine king calls into question the strict division between civic and centralized ruler cults. The reflection of local cults within royal ideology can be seen as a manifestation of a negotiating model of Seleucid power that relied heavily on a dialogue with a wide range of interested groups. This article argues that the inconsistencies in the development of an iconography of divine kingship before the reign of Antiochus IV is a manifestation of the same phenomenon. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze a fragment by Porphyry concerning Seleucid history and transmitted by Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicon. A short introduction on this work will be followed by a defense of the authorship of the fragment as Porphyrian, and by a cautious suggestion to assign it to the Contra Christianos. In the last section, the fragment will be examined at length and its ideological background will be highlighted. In particular, the account of Seleucid kings' (...) deaths shows that Porphyry turned to sources favorable to that dynasty. A critical voice seems to raise only when the author recounts of Demetrius I and of his descendants. (shrink)

Antiochos IV (175-164), dans la seconde partie de son règne, a diminué de moitié le poids du chalque, le portant à 4 g environ et instaurant entre l'argent monnayé et le bronze monnayé un rapport voisin de 1 à 50. Un peu plus tard Alexandre Bala (150-145), à Ecbatane, diminua de nouveau de moitié le poids du chalque, qui passa de 4 g à 2 g, si bien que le rapport argent monnayé/bronze monnayé s'établit autour de 1 à 25. J'ai (...) cherché à déterminer quelle pouvait être à cette époque la valeur commerciale du bronze (l'inscription d'Athènes IG³ 472 fournit à cet égard une précieuse indication), de façon à mieux apprécier la part de valeur fiduciaire qui entrait chez les Séleucides dans la valeur d'une monnaie de bronze. Je me suis interrogé aussi sur les raisons qui avaient pu inciter Antiochos IV à modifier le poids du chalque. (shrink)

The recent discovery in Bahrain of a Greek inscription, dating to the 120s BC, transforms our understanding of the Arab-Persian Gulf in the Hellenistic period. The inscription, recording the dedication of a shrine to the Dioskouroi on behalf of the first independent king of Characene, indicates that Bahrain was a garrisoned node within the Seleucid Empire and the centre of the previously unknown archipelagic administrative district . Seleucid and Characenian control of Bahrain is placed within the longue durée (...) political history of relations between southern Mesopotamia and Dilmun. The cultic dedication to the Dioskouroi traces the consciously Hellenizing modalities of Characenian emancipation from the Seleucid Empire and the development of a coherent maritime religious network in the Gulf. (shrink)

Alexander the Great’s conquests ushered in the Hellenistic era throughout the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East. In this period, the Seleucids, one of most successful of the Successor dynasties, ruled over most of the Middle East at the height of their power. Yet two rising powers in the ancient world, Rome and Parthia, played a crucial role in the decline and eventual fall of the Seleucids. In a prior article, I argued that geopolitical developments around the Eastern Mediterranean in the (...) middle third century BCE were indirectly responsible for the emergence of the Parthian state in Iran. Disastrous military conflicts at home and abroad in the west caused a sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 240s–230s, triggering what political scientists call a power-transition crisis. This article utilizes similar approaches to historical analysis and International Relations theory to contend that, after a period of recovery, a further sudden decline of Seleucid power in the 160s–130s triggered another power-transition crisis that brought an end to Seleucid hegemony over the Middle East permanently. The crisis facilitated the rapid transformation of the Parthian state from a minor kingdom to a major empire, drastically changing the international environment of the ancient world. (shrink)