The last half of the second century B.C., following on Rome’s destruction of Corinth (146), saw the virtual eclipse of independent history throughout mainland Greece, at least in any meaningful sense. The revolt under Mithridates in 88 can be seen as one last, hopeless act of rage against the dying light (below, pp. 561 ff.). Documents now begin to date in terms of an “Achaean era,” thus implicitly conceding the existence of a watershed in Greek affairs, “after which the fortunes of Hellas could never be the same.”1 Macedonia was now a Roman province. The assemblies (synedria) of the Achaean League and other groups that had fought Rome were dissolved; Mummius introduced a limited franchise based on a property qualification. However, after a few years the old basis of government was restored (140), on the highly pragmatic grounds that the Romans wanted efficient administration, but still preferred not to supply it themselves.2 The date suggests that this reversal of policy may have been due to Scipio Aemilianus and his traveling commission (cf. p. 539), which had as its object the regularization of government and administration throughout the oikoumenē.3
Those Greek cities that had been pro-Roman or neutral during the Achaean War were allowed to retain their titular autonomy from the start: they included Sparta, the members of the Aetolian League, and, above all, Athens,4 which had been aligned with Rome ever since the Second Macedonian War—less out of positive conviction than through her traditional and long-standing antipathy to Macedonia.5 Thus in 170 (above, p. 431), when most of the Greek states threw their support behind Perseus, sinking local differences in the face of this new common foe that was Rome, Athens had ended up in the western barbarians’ camp, and got small thanks for her loyalty: the Roman commanders turned down (with what implied contempt we do not know) her offer of troops, and instead demanded—requisitioned—no less than a hundred thousand medimnoi of grain,6 a severe imposition, met notwithstanding. The appearance in Rome of the three leading philosophers of Athens to defend her actions against Oropus exposed the Romans to Greek thinking and oratory at their current best, and made a great impression (156/5; see p. 449): it is from now on that the reputation of Athens as a center of culture and the arts seems to have firmly established itself with them, and the notion of a year or two’s higher education there to have become de rigueur among the Roman upper classes.
If it is true that from 200 on the Roman nobility “had eaten of the apple of knowledge and knew themselves to be culturally naked,”7 it is equally true that many of the Greeks—though not those primarily responsible for this state of mind—had themselves grown increasingly addicted to commerce. Trade was flourishing, and the world of big business—not least through Athenian control of the free port of Delos—steadily encroached on old constitutional freedoms.8 The Areopagus, that venerable and long-largely-decorative body of ex-archons, nonfunctional in any real sense since Ephialtes had clipped its powers in the mid-fifth century, now began to regain limited authority and prestige. Romans warmed to it; it was the nearest thing Athens had to the Roman Senate.9 That the people’s courts lost their judicial powers should not surprise us. Though Ferguson’s theory of an “oligarchical revolution” around 103/2 cannot be sustained (cf. below, p. 562), there was now a definite conservative, commercial-slanted bias to Athenian government,10 and this reflected, among other things, the determination of the business community to keep in well with Rome. Rhodes was there as a grim reminder of what was liable to happen to a flourishing maritime republic that ignored this simple precaution (above, pp. 378 ff.).
Visiting Romans—especially if they happened to be senators, or were otherwise well connected and influential—got preferential treatment: a special platform (bēma) from which to harangue the Athenian dēmos,11 an escort of ephebes, their own residential club:12 since 152 they had been classified en bloc as benefactors (euergetai), and were thus entitled to divine honors, while Rome, duly deified as an eponymous goddess, enjoyed her own special festival, the Romaea. The immanent cultural prestige of Athens—and, one suspects, the fact that she was now so clearly hors de concours in political terms—encouraged various Hellenistic rulers and home-grown nouveaux riches to win borrowed artistic luster by adding to the city’s already cluttered monumental record, turning it still further into a commemorative museum. Eumenes II and Attalus II of Pergamon built huge stoas on the south and east sides of the Agora (it is Attalus’s that has been rebuilt in situ by the American School).13 Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 174 had work resumed on the huge temple of Olympian Zeus, begun by Peisistratus or his sons (530–515), and completed only by the emperor Hadrian (A.D. 131/2): the assertive gigantism of its ruins still reminds us that, from start to finish, only authoritarian rulers had any part in it.14
With the abolition of the old individual liturgies, the state had become responsible for public works; but millionaires eager for municipal office were still not slow to adorn the city with highly visible, and costly, embellishments. These offices in fact were largely honorific or ritual (the number of festivals multiplied, rather like Ptolemaic titles, as real Athenian power and influence diminished). They still, nevertheless, attracted fierce competition. Both the theater and athletics showed an ever-increasing trend toward professionalism: one more symptom of that move away from all-round amateur involvement that had been the hallmark of the polis in its classical heyday; one more similarity with our own age, a world of spectator sports, or organized shows, of passive, nonparticipating audiences. Gigantism and ostentation were everywhere. The so-called Pythaïs, the sacred procession sent by the Athenians from Delos to Delphi to sacrifice to Pythian Apollo, and bring back fire from the sacred hearth (abandoned during the Macedonian interregnum, renewed in 138/7, and staged thereafter at irregular intervals), was aggressively showy, if not quite in the Ptolemaic class: led by the ephebes, one hundred strong, with every civic bigwig, and the knights, and the light cavalry, and “a great chorus of flute-players, singers, poets, actors, and all the various gentry who belonged to the guild of Dionysiac artists.”15
The Athenian ephēbeia went through its elaborate two-years’ training still, but now no longer for the defense of the realm. The armed forces in general were minimal, and only kept up for ceremonial purposes. The pax Romana imposed a blanket peace on the Greek states; like most public activities in Athens, ephebic exhibitions of skill had become a nonfunctional exercise, a genuflection to ancient custom, a show to attract the tourists.16 The year of the philosophers’ visit to Rome was also that selected by the elder Pliny as the point from which Greek art began to recover itself after a century and a half’s eclipse17 (above, p. 336). What he in fact meant was that the conservative, academic, classicizing artists of Athens—who had gone on working in the realistic but restrained tradition of Praxiteles or Lysippus, avoiding the adventurous, baroque emotionalism that marked the Rhodian and Pergamene schools—now suddenly found themselves with a whole new, and virtually insatiable, clientele: the Romans (below, pp. 566 ff.). The plunder of Greek works of art, from Syracuse to Pella, by conquering Roman generals, had given well-heeled Romans a taste for more. Statues of contemporary notables, copies of famous Old Masters, paintings, bronzes, cameos, mosaics: the commissions never stopped, and Athenian ateliers expanded to meet the demand. The mood was eclectic, a sterile (and often mechanical) re-creation of the past.
The attitude of the Romans to Greek art is summed up to perfection by an anecdote told of Lucius Mummius. After the sack of Corinth, with priceless art treasures being piled up on the quayside for removal to Rome (Polybius says he saw soldiers playing draughts on stacks of classical paintings),18 Mummius—who, as Strabo says with demure wit, was a generous patron rather than an art lover—apparently insisted on retaining one regular clause in his contract with the shipping agency: if any of these objets-d’art were lost or destroyed in transit, they were to be replaced by others of equal value.19 This was an attitude that the businessmen of Piraeus, who were quite ready to honor Mummius when he turned up at Olympia or Delphi, and would not be sorry to get some of the trade that Corinth lost,20 could understand very well; and it was they, now, who exercised the real power in Athens. Many of them, inevitably, also extended their operations to the great trading center, and slave mart, of Delos (cf. p. 384).21
One direct and far-reaching consequence of the anarchic, widespread warfare of the Mediterranean from the mid-third century onwards was, as we have seen (above, pp. 382–83), a glut of slaves: mostly prisoners of war, the majority of them from the East, but including Epirotes, Carthaginians, and many other formerly free men, whose built-in resistance to the servile condition would be in direct proportion to their previous independence, not to mention their degree of civilization and technical or other skills. With thousands of such newly enslaved prisoners thrown on the market, and bearing in mind the depressed economic conditions that Polybius describes,22 it was inevitable that ambitious royal claimants such as Andriscus in Macedonia (p. 447) or Aristonicus in Pergamon should consider tapping this new source of resentful manpower.
Though in most of the revolts the immediate cause was gross ill treatment of individual slaves (especially in the mines, or on the great cattle ranches [latifundia] of Italy and Sicily),23 and though the Pergamene rising, at least, seems to have had some kind of ad hoc programmatic backing, it remains clear that both Andriscus and Aristonicus simply exploited servile unrest (and a vastly increased pool of slaves) for their own ambitious ends,24 while in the case of slave-led rebellions (Eunus-Antiochus and, later, Spartacus) the aim, as we have seen (p. 391), was pragmatic: to escape from servitude, if possible to create an alternative state, but not in any sense to abolish slavery as such or to attack it in principle. From this viewpoint the pseudo-Seleucid court of Eunus-Antiochus is highly suggestive.25 Clearly by the mid-second century the Mediterranean world was swarming with unlucky war captives who had nothing against slavery provided it was not they themselves who were forced to wear the shackles. It is also of interest that though the risings were initially successful, and extremely hard to put down, once they had been crushed there was no recurrence. Apart from a second Sicilian insurrection (104), and the famous revolt under Spartacus (73–71), all these slave outbreaks took place in the decade between 140 and 130, and were in all likelihood interconnected.
Further, the whole free population (with few and doubtful exceptions) was against such movements: Andriscus or Andronicus may have used servile support in an emergency—just as Nabis, also in an emergency, freed the helots (above, p. 392)—but it was a dangerous precedent, with unpredictable consequences. It is, at the very least, highly improbable that Aristonicus, had he been successful, would actually have set up a classless Sun City (Hēliopolis) along Stoic lines,26 rather than go the route of every other ambitious Hellenistic ruler actually in power—as even the slave-king Eunus-Antiochus clearly intended to do. It is worth noting that we hear nothing about Heliopolis until Aristonicus had suffered a severe naval defeat at the hands of the Ephesians and was forced back into the hinterland, where he rallied the landless and the slaves, as well as a cadre of anti-Roman Macedonians,27 as a last desperate measure.28 There is no reason to suppose that he began his revolt as anything but a blood claimant to the Pergamene throne, the bastard son of Eumenes II by an Ephesian concubine, who styled himself Eumenes III, issued his own coinage,29 and was determined to frustrate his half-brother’s legacy of the kingdom to Rome.30
In fact, Aristonicus’s inflammatory propaganda, whatever its true purpose—his invocation of Helios may even have been royal self-promotion borrowed from Antiochus Epiphanes (above, p. 437)—played straight into Rome’s hands.31 Attalus III’s much-debated bequest of Pergamon in 13332—by making Rome his legatee he seems to have been trying to forestall Aristonicus’s royal ambitions33—came as something of an embarrassment, initially, to the Senate (how was it to be administered, or who was to get the benefit of it?),34 and, by tempting the greed of the cash-hungry Gracchan reformers, was in part responsible for the conflict in which Tiberius Gracchus lost his life.35 But Aristonicus’s refusal to accept the terms of his eccentric and reclusive half-brother’s will,36 his determination to win the throne and keep Pergamon out of Roman hands, his fomenting a rebellion that sounded like raw social revolution—all this made things much easier for Rome, and goes a long way to explain the zeal with which neighboring kingdoms such as Bithynia, Pontus, and Cappadocia fought to bring the Pergamene revolutionary down. It is generally asserted that their aid was co-opted by the Senate;37 but none of our sources in fact says this,38 and it seems far more likely that they converged on Pergamon of their own volition, in the spirit of vultures who scent a really juicy carcass. Though their unsolicited support may, to begin with, have been welcome—Rome had no adequate troops on the spot—there was always the obvious danger that these allies, not noted for altruism, would end by carving up the Attalid legacy for themselves.39
In the emergency, this prospect may have been regarded as the lesser of two potential evils. Aristonicus turned out to have an unexpectedly solid power base, which, after a typically sluggish Roman start, it took no less than three years to destroy:40 years during which the countryside was continually ravaged and plundered by both sides,41 and one Roman commander, Crassus Mucianus, was defeated and killed, his severed head being brought in triumph to Aristonicus.42 The job was finally done by Marcus Perperna, consul for 130, fresh from his victory in Sicily over Eunus-Antiochus,43 and thus presumably regarded as an expert in the breaking of slave rebellions.44 Perperna died in Pergamon: this avoided an unpleasant confrontation with his successor, Manius Aquillius, equally anxious for a share of the glory.45 Aristonicus was sent to Rome in chains, and there strangled by order of the Senate (128). Even after his removal the rebellion sputtered on until Aquillius, who had no gentlemanly qualms about poisoning local wells, finally stamped out all resistance, and then, aided by a ten-man senatorial commission, set about restoring law and order, Roman style.46
Once Aristonicus was out of the way (130), Pergamon could be policed as a protectorate, the original nucleus of what was to become—not earlier than 129, and perhaps not until 123—the vast and immensely profitable province of Asia.47 Applying the Attalid legacy proved a hazardous and divisive business. Rome had never really trusted Pergamon, even though the Pergamene kings held their buffer state through Rome’s good will. When Eumenes II defeated the Gauls in 166 (and, after all, keeping the Gauls of Galatia in order was, from Rome’s viewpoint, one main reason for the Pergamene kingdom’s existence), the Senate promptly declared them autonomous, presumably to stop Eumenes getting too big for his royal boots (cf. above, p. 429). Attalus II, writing about 159 to the priest-king Attis of Pessinus (a Gaul himself, but “a partisan of Pergamum and so of law and order”),48 showed a clear understanding of the situation, in particular of Rome’s juggling with the balance of power in Asia, remarking that he dared undertake no enterprise without Roman approval, because if he succeeded he would incur jealous enmity, while if he failed he could count on no help, but only on satisfaction at his failure.
Despite their ostentatious munificence, the Attalids were by no means popular with their fellow Greeks, either. In 172, probably through resentment of Eumenes’ pro-Roman policies and his stand against Macedon (above, p. 427), the Greek cities of the Peloponnese decreed the destruction of all those “improper and illegal honors” previously granted him.49 Thus Attalus III’s decision to end the dynasty and turn its assets over to Rome (whether in self-defense against Aristonicus’s ambitions or not) had a certain grim logic about it: it merely anticipated what was bound to happen sooner or later anyway, bequest or no.50
So Rome, reluctant as always, laid the foundations for her first province on Asiatic soil, with careful instructions to her generals and administrators to uphold all royal decrees and regulations of the Pergamene kings down to the death of Attalus III (thus excluding those of the soi-disant Eumenes III): the emphasis was on continuity rather than change, still—to borrow Badian’s telling distinction—hegemonial rather than truly annexationist.51 It may well be premature to speak, immediately, of provincialization, though the Attalid treasury and royal estates, being cash on the barrel, came as a welcome instant bonanza, and were, in all likelihood, responsible for the postponement of organized taxation until Gaius Gracchus (as Marcus Antonius later claimed)52 in 123 used the Lex Sempronia to authorize state contracts for farming the Asiatic revenues, and thereby opened up one of the biggest gold mines in all Roman history.53 Did the first post-Aristonican administrators—like the settlers of Chalcedon, who for years remained blind to the immense advantages of Byzantium across the straits—see none of this? It seems unlikely; and we may note that one of Manius Aquillius’s first tasks after 129 was to repair, improve, and extend the road system: this is exactly comparable to the development of the Via Egnatia after the dismemberment of Macedonia (above, p. 447), and has far-reaching military, commercial, and administrative implications. Nothing, indeed, could have been more characteristic of a Roman provincial administrator.54
Aquillius stayed in Asia Minor for three years (eloquent testimony to the magnitude of his task), and was rewarded with a triumph (11 Nov. 126).55 For whatever motive, a buffer state had been eliminated at the precise moment when the strife-torn and shrunken Seleucid realm was failing before vigorous pressure from Parthia.56 How conscious a choice this was, and whether the Senate in Rome was aware of the inevitable need for Rome to annex more and more territory in Asia if she meant to stabilize the Eastern balance of power, must remain a matter for speculation. But within a century the whole of the Hellenistic East had passed under Rome’s provincial administration:57 the client-patron relationship, never formal in the Roman sense, had been abandoned for good.
In Parthia, that ill-defined and mountainous tribal region south and east of the Caspian, which had broken away from the Seleucids in the mid-third century (p. 293), Mithridates I Arsaces V, known as “the Great,” had ascended the throne about 171;58 about 148, after a protracted and sporadic war,59 he had annexed Media, and by July 141 was in possession of Babylonia (including its capital, Seleucia-on-Tigris), and poised for further westward expansion.60 Though Demetrius II Nicator had in 145 defeated Alexander Balas, with Ptolemy VI Philometor also dying of his wounds after the battle (above, p. 447), he was not destined, to put it mildly, for a quiet reign.61 He bought off the Jewish leader Jonathan with yet more privileges and promises, so that when the Antioch mob rose against him, it was a Jewish army that put down the riot: not gently, since the Jews had old scores to settle.62 The young son of Alexander Balas and Cleopatra Thea was set up as rival claimant to the throne by Diodotus, the military commander in Apamea, and proclaimed king as Antiochus VI Epiphanes Dionysus, with Diodotus as his “tutor” (epitropos). Once again Antioch took to the streets for an enjoyable bout of king making, and Demetrius was forced to flee from the capital (summer 144). Since he reneged, perhaps involuntarily, on his promises to Jonathan, the Jewish leader changed sides and joined Diodotus, who, in the name of the boy-king Antiochus VI, confirmed him in all his previous honors, and made his brother Simon governor of all territory “from the Ladder of Tyre to the Egyptian frontier.”63
Jonathan now set about consolidating his power (cf. above, p. 446). By a series of well-fought campaigns, from Gaza to Damascus, from Ascalon to the Sea of Galilee, he began to encroach on the sensitive frontier area of Coele-Syria. He built fortresses throughout Judaea, strengthened the defenses of Jerusalem, made diplomatic approaches to Rome, Sparta, and other foreign powers, and in general acted as an independent, not to say fiercely ambitious, ruler.64 These moves, not unnaturally, alarmed both Demetrius and Diodotus, neither of whom had any room for local supporters who developed unseasonable dynastic urges of their own. While Demetrius moved troops against Jonathan, Diodotus, more brutal and pragmatic, lured him to Ptolemaïs-Ake, slaughtered his bodyguard, marched him around the country under close arrest, and finally, after botching a scheme to make the Jews pay ransom for his release, had him executed (143).65 He then deposed and murdered the young Antiochus VI (142), putting it about that the boy had in fact died under the surgeon’s knife, and proclaimed himself king, with the title of Tryphon (“the Magnificent”).66 The rival dynasts split what was left of the Seleucid empire between them, Tryphon holding coastal Syria, while Demetrius retained Cilicia and the eastern satrapies toward Babylon. Demetrius, hard-pressed, now made the final deal with Jonathan’s brother Simon that gave the Jews full independence (above, p. 523). The year 143/42 was subsequently established as the first year of the Hasmonean era, while Simon himself, as we have seen (p. 524), took office in 140 as the first priest-king.
Demetrius was now free to deal with Tryphon; but before he could attend to his rival, the news from Babylonia made it clear that Mithridates of Parthia constituted a far greater threat, and would have to be neutralized first. So Demetrius, faute de mieux, left Tryphon to his own devices for the time being and marched east. He crossed the Euphrates and scored some initial successes;67 but when he penetrated Iran he was defeated and captured by Mithridates (summer 139?), who then paraded him through the provinces he had been bent on recovering, a broad hint to Greeks and Macedonians that Parthian rule was not so easily shaken off.68 Demetrius was kept in honorable captivity, and even married off to one of Mithridates’ daughters, Rhodogune: as Tarn says, “it was convenient for Mithridates to have the legitimate king of Syria in his hands, as a piece to play, should occasion arise.”69 Mithridates himself died in 138/7, but the Parthian empire was now solidly established, a force to be reckoned with and still looking for further westward expansion.
If Tryphon was expecting, as a result of this démarche, to be left as sole ruler in Syria,70 he had reckoned without the imprisoned Demetrius’s younger brother, Antiochus, known from his childhood residence, Side, as Sidetes, resident in Rhodes, and now proclaimed king as Antiochus VII Euergetes.71 When the news of Demetrius’s capture reached him, he at once set out for Syria. In the spring of 138 he was about twenty-one. Demetrius’s wife, Cleopatra Thea, holding out in Seleucia-in-Pieria,72 appealed to this opportune brother-in-law for help. Antiochus not only rescued her, but, with something more than fraternal solicitude, became her third husband. He then hunted down Tryphon, captured him, and forced him to commit suicide.73 This was late in 138. He also took a tougher line with the Jews, showing himself scrupulous over respecting their religion, but pressing for tribute, making territorial demands, and in general doing all he could to cut back their newly won political independence. In 131/0, after a long, tough siege, while Hyrcanus I was High Priest (appointed 134, after the assassination of his father, Simon),74 Jerusalem fell to Antiochus—he had carefully sent animals into the beleaguered city so that the Jews could celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth)—and though Hyrcanus retained the priesthood, the Jews, for a brief period, reverted to Seleucid rule.75
Having settled affairs at home, Antiochus, like his brother before him, set out to reconquer the East (130/29), at the head of a vast if heterogeneous army, including various Parthian allies and a Jewish brigade led by Hyrcanus in person.76 At first he succeeded beyond all reasonable hope. Babylonia and Media fell to him; a little prematurely, he assumed the title of “the Great” that his great-grandfather Antiochus III had used.77 This suggests that he, too, dreamed of winning back the whole of Seleucus Nicator’s original empire. The new Parthian ruler, Mithridates’ son Phraates II, was ready at this point to negotiate; but Antiochus, fatally, overplayed his hand. He demanded the release of Demetrius, who had already made several unsuccessful attempts to escape, and whom Antiochus had not the slightest intention of leaving behind to be used as a wild deuce against him;78 the evacuation of all newly won Parthian territory, which would leave Phraates with only Hyrcania and his homeland of Parthyene; and the payment of tribute.79 The Parthian king, not surprisingly, refused.
Cunningly, perceiving that Antiochus’s solicitude for his brother concealed the determination to remove him as a rival,80 Phraates now set Demetrius free and sent him back to Syria, in the hope of stirring up yet another dynastic quarrel;81 and in anticipation of renewed conflict with Antiochus he also hired large numbers of wild “Scythian” (i.e., Saca or Tokharian) mercenaries from the steppes. It was a harsh winter, and the requisitions of Antiochus’s army had not made him popular with the local inhabitants.82 In the spring of 129 the Seleucid army was defeated, and Antiochus himself killed (the wily Hyrcanus survived to escape and fight another day in Judaea):83 all temporary conquests made during the campaign now reverted to Parthia.84 Phraates sent Antiochus’s body back to Syria in a silver coffin, and established his young son Seleucus as a prince in his own court.85 “Thus the last serious attempt by a Seleucid monarch to regain the lost eastern provinces ended in complete failure.”86 Hard-drinking,87 ambitious, large of vision, Antiochus Sidetes was the last Seleucid to display the driving energy and courageous ambition that had distinguished his more famous ancestors.
For Phraates, however, this proved a Pyrrhic victory. Any westward advance he might have contemplated was aborted by his Tokharian mercenaries, who turned up too late for the battle, insisted on getting paid regardless, and, when Phraates refused, set about looting the countryside: Phraates, having defeated Antiochus, now met his own death trying to put down these rampaging barbarians he had conjured up. The remnants of Antiochus’s army, forcibly conscripted by Phraates, changed sides during the battle and helped the Tokharians complete their work of destruction.88
Demetrius, meanwhile—unwanted, like the Devil at prayers—reappeared in Syria, to the irritation of everyone, not least of Cleopatra Thea, who had not survived her first and third husbands in order to welcome back the second. Besides, Demetrius had acquired, while in captivity, not only a beard and Parthian habits, but, rather worse, a Parthian wife.89 Cleopatra Thea hustled off her youngest son by Antiochus Sidetes to a safe retreat in Cyzicus, and prepared for war. In Judaea, Hyrcanus was busy restoring the Jewish freedoms that Antiochus had briefly snatched away,90 and Demetrius, who lacked his brother’s drive, did nothing to stop him, then or later. The cities of Syria, Antioch in particular, had no great enthusiasm for Demetrius. On the other hand, his Ptolemaic mother-in-law, Cleopatra II, saw him as the one possible solution to her many troubles, of which by no means the smallest was her gross brother, and wrote begging for his help. In return, he was offered nothing less than the throne of Egypt. What, we may well ask, had been going on in Alexandria since Ptolemy VI Philometor’s death in 145?91
When Philometor died, his brother Physcon (“Potbelly,” “Bladder”), still waiting in Cyrene like some vast malevolent spider (above, p. 447), saw his chance, and took it. Cleopatra II, Philometor’s widow, had her son—now about sixteen years old, and already, earlier that year, appointed co-ruler by his father92—proclaimed king as Ptolemy VII Neos Philopator, under her regency. Physcon’s agents in Alexandria whipped up the mob, which rioted, yelling for Physcon.93 Cleopatra found her support largely restricted to the Museum intellectuals and the Alexandrian Jews, an inadequate power base, even if it did include her Jewish-officered palace guard.94 The potbellied one duly arrived,95 preceded by a general amnesty as earnest of his good intentions,96 having traveled by way of Cyprus to secure himself a safe retreat at need. He could not get rid of Cleopatra directly, so he did the next-best thing and married her. The proposal was that he, she, and the young Ptolemy VII should rule conjointly—an uneasy compromise, as became clear when the hapless boy-king was assassinated during the wedding feast. Physcon does not come across, from our scanty evidence, as a man who believed in wasting either time or subtlety.97 With the elimination of his nephew there remained no legitimate claimant to the throne but himself. For a quarter of a century Ptolemy VII suffered damnatio memoriae, was an unperson: not until 118 does his name reappear in the ruler-cult formulas.98
Physcon took the official title of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, the latter appellation deliberately recalling Ptolemy III, with reference to that monarch’s territorial gains in Syria and Asia Minor during the Third Syrian War (above, p. 150). The irreverent Alexandrians soon converted Euergetēs, “Benefactor,” into its antonym Kakergetēs, “Malefactor.”99 A year later the new king had himself enthroned as pharaoh at Memphis (144).100 He also celebrated his return by mass purges and expulsions of those Alexandrians, most notably the Jews101 and the intellectuals,102 who had sided against him. He not only drove out the mercenary officers loyal to Philometor and Cleopatra, an obvious precaution,103 but also executed, apparently in mere personal pique,104 the Cyrenaeans who had followed him back to Egypt. Though not without intellectual pretensions himself—he wrote a critical study of Homer105—he was responsible, through executions and exile, for so emptying Alexandria of serious scholars and artists that the consequent intellectual impoverishment persisted for almost a century. Among those who fled the country were Aristarchus, then chief librarian, and Apollodorus the geographer. Things came to such a pass that Physcon was forced to replace Aristarchus with a nonentity named Cydas, described as “one of the spearmen.”106 Polybius, who probably visited the city in 140/39 with Scipio Aemilianus (see below), found the Greek and Jewish population of Alexandria “virtually wiped out.” Among other horror stories, we hear of Physcon’s mercenaries surrounding an ephebic gymnasium and massacring everyone inside it. Menecles of Barca reported that the vast diaspora of skilled professionals—artists, musicians, philosophers, mathematicians, doctors, philologists, among others—created a cultural renaissance (ananeōsis paideias) in the Aegean and mainland Greece.107
The reign that began in so grotesque and inauspicious a fashion turned out one of the longest, and by no means the least notable, of the Ptolemaic dynasty: Physcon survived until 116. Despite his obnoxious and obsessional character, he was no fool; but his undoubted intelligence was for too much of the time wasted on the pursuit of rancorous private intrigue, so much so that it is sometimes hard to see how the government of Egypt continued to function—just as we may wonder at the self-destructive rivalries, ambitions, and jealousies of a dynasty whose real power was so visibly crumbling around them. Everything wrong with the Ptolemies is summed up in the gross person of Physcon: the unswerving pursuit of sensual gratification (through food, drink, sex, or power), unhindered by any moral restraints, guilt, or fear of retribution; the acts of wanton, indeed sadistic, cruelty against his subjects;108 the treatment of a whole country as the monarch’s vast private estate, to be milked for personal profit; the inability to see beyond the cycle of self-perpetuating rule that these assumptions engendered. There is also, less often noted, a strong and obvious component of fantasy, of megalomaniac unreality, due to the accident of Egypt’s secure frontiers and virtual immunity to external invasion.
On top of everything else, Physcon infuriated Cleopatra II (on whom in 144 he had sired a son)109 by first seducing, then marrying his pubescent niece Cleopatra III, her daughter by Philometor (143): habitual incest seems to have brought out both the worst and the best in the Lagid genes.110 This union not only exacerbated family tensions, but in a very real sense proved the beginning of the end for the Ptolemaic dynasty.111 Cleopatra III is often referred to from now on in inscriptions as “Cleopatra the Wife,” with Cleopatra II as “Cleopatra the Sister.” It was this ill-assorted triad that in 140/39 welcomed the peripatetic Roman commission headed by Scipio Aemilianus.112 Scipio compelled the bloat king to accompany him from his ship to the royal palace on foot, through the crowded streets of Alexandria, carefully setting a pace that made Physcon sweat, pant, and waddle in his billowing, semitransparent chiffon robes. The bystanders got the point. “The Alexandrians owe me one thing,” Scipio told Panaetius, his Stoic mentor; “they have seen their king walk!” The members of the commission, whose main task (like that of so many modern diplomats) seems to have been the collection of intelligence, carefully noted the country’s wealth, resources, fertility, teeming fellahin (an ideal cheap labor pool), and advantageous terrain. It occurred to them, and they so reported,113 that “a very great power could be built there, if this kingdom should ever find rulers worthy of it.”114
Weak or not, Physcon somehow clung to power: his more obnoxious qualities hindered neither his capacity for survival nor his very considerable administrative talents. For some years he and his incestuous consorts survived together, a triad of misrule, persecution, and bickering bloody-mindedness. But in 132/1, not surprisingly, there were riots again. The mob this time was on Cleopatra II’s side, having had more than enough of Physcon’s outrages, and, clearly with her connivance, set fire to the royal palace. Physcon, Cleopatra III, and their children left in a hurry for Cyprus. In places Cleopatra II seems to have been recognized, briefly, as sole sovereign.115 However, the only possible male replacement for Physcon was his twelve-year-old son by Cleopatra II, Ptolemy Memphitis, so named because he was born at the time of Physcon’s enthronement there. His mother duly had him acclaimed in absentia by the Alexandrian mob116—an unwise move when the boy was elsewhere, and there was a chance of her husband laying hands on him. Physcon, faced with this dynastic threat, indeed got hold of the unsuspecting boy (who either was in Cyrene, or else had been removed by Cleopatra II at the time of the royal flight), killed him, and sent his dismembered corpse back to Cleopatra the Sister as a birthday present.117 At this the Alexandrian populace “went totally berserk with fury.”
Nevertheless, by 130 Physcon was back in Egypt, and securely based at Memphis.118 His previous cultivation of the native priesthood and the rural population now began to pay off: for one thing, it gave him a secure field of operations in the chōra. The Alexandrians of the capital, in particular the Jewish community and the more intelligent Greeks, were, as we have seen, supporting Cleopatra II. So it came about that, during the bloody civil war that followed, Cleopatra II, blockaded in Alexandria, offered her Seleucid son-in-law Demetrius II Nicator the throne of Egypt in return for his assistance against her hated brother-cum-husband.119 Contemporary documents refer to the state of affairs in Egypt as amixia, nonintercourse, a proverbial confrontation of oil and water. It seems an accurate description.120
Demetrius took the bait, and also swallowed the hook. His attempt to relieve Alexandria got no farther than the frontier city of Pelusium, where his advance was blocked by Physcon’s troops (who already controlled all Upper Egypt).121 In any case, events in Syria soon forced him to march back north to protect his own interests (see below). Physcon then moved in on Alexandria, and at this point Cleopatra II judged it prudent to follow Demetrius to Syria, taking the royal treasure with her (127).122 Alexandria in fact held out for another year, but by 126/5 Physcon was back in power, carrying out further atrocities against the Greek population, and cementing his counteralliance with the still-powerful Egyptian priesthood.123
In Syria, meanwhile, Demetrius was faced with mutiny and rebellion, almost certainly encouraged by his reluctant wife Cleopatra Thea, Cleopatra II’s daughter. The rebels had applied to Physcon asking for a claimant, any claimant, to the Seleucid throne (129/8?). Physcon, with fine cynicism, and by no means averse to making trouble for the in-law who had so disobligingly tried to make trouble for him, sent them a pretender who pretended to be a pretender’s son, an Egyptian passing himself off as the offspring of Alexander Balas.124 The Antiochenes had no illusions about this character: they gave him the Aramaic nickname of Zabinas, “The Bought One.”125 On the other hand they figured that he was preferable to Demetrius: at least he had traits of generosity and kindliness, on account of which “he was much loved by the populace.”126 His coin portraits show a smiling, almost girlish face.127 Alexander Zabinas’s forces duly trounced Demetrius in Lebanon. When Demetrius fled to Ptolemaïs-Ake his ex-wife not only refused to give him shelter, but was probably responsible for his subsequent murder, after torture, in Tyre (126/5).128
What part, if any, Physcon and Cleopatra II played in these events we can only speculate;129 but the surprising fact remains that early in 124 Cleopatra the Sister was back in Alexandria, reconciled—though for reasons of Machtpolitik rather than love, as one might expect130—not only with Physcon, but also with her daughter and rival consort, Cleopatra the Wife. Presumably she brought the treasure, in whole or part, back with her as a sweetener. With Demetrius dead, Physcon saw no point in continuing to support Zabinas rather than his own niece Cleopatra Thea, who did at least have a legitimate claim to represent the house of Seleucus; besides, the puppet Zabinas was showing an alarming degree of independence, popularity, and staying power.131 From her various sons Cleopatra Thea—that enterprising matriarch—selected as her co-regent Antiochus, known as Grypos (“Hooknose”), educated in Athens and now about sixteen (125).132 This honor was in the nature of a domestic siege perilous: Antiochus’s elder brother, briefly elevated as Seleucus V (126/5), had been tried, found too independent, and murdered—a target, if we can believe Appian, for his mother’s archery practice.133
In 124/3 Physcon sent off his second daughter by Cleopatra III (the Wife), Cleopatra Tryphaena (“Lady Magnificence”), to marry Antiochus Grypos,134 now portrayed on coins135—behind his mother—as Antiochus VIII Philometor. Alexander Zabinas, hard-pressed by an opposition army now reinforced from Egypt, and short of cash for his own troops, followed the time-honored but hazardous Seleucid practice of raising funds in an emergency by robbing temples. This very soon dispelled his popularity with the Antiochenes, who were louche but superstitious. In 123 he was captured by Antiochus VIII, and put to death.136 Success went to Grypos’s head. He became progressively less amenable to domination by his terrible mother, and increasingly wary—with good reason—of her intentions toward him. Cleopatra Thea waited until 121/0, and then decided it was time to remove this insubordinate son as she had removed his brother. He came in one day hot from exercise, and she offered him a cup of poisoned wine. The solicitude was uncharacteristic, and in any case Antiochus had been tipped off as to her plans. He thereupon, with matricidal relish, forced her to drink off the cup herself.137
This sensible if unfilial act left Antiochus Grypos as sole ruler over the miserable Syrian remnants of the once-great Seleucid empire, and for a few years—at least until 114—he was left to enjoy his pleasures in peace. Like so many late Seleucids and Ptolemies, he was a self-indulgent fribble and dilettante. There were great feasts at Daphne, though the exchequer was perilously low. There were didactic verses to be written, in imitation of the third- or second-century poet Nicander, on the topic of poisonous snakes: a popular Hellenistic theme, and in Grypos’s case of more than symbolic appropriateness. Grypos, in short, now enjoyed a brief Indian summer, a lull before the renewed domestic storm.138
The impact of these unedifying dynastic struggles on society at large is superbly evoked by Cavafy in his portrait of a penniless but ambitious Syrian Greek:139
I’m reduced to near-poverty and homelessness.Has swallowed up all my money,This fatal city with its extravagant lifestyle.With a quite staggering mastery of Greek—Poets, orators, anything, you name it;I’ve some notion of military affairsAnd close friends among the mercenary top brass.I also have an entrée to the world of government—I know (now this is useful!) something of the scene there,The Malefactor’s schemes, his low tricks, etcetera.So I figure I’m well and trulyMarked out to serve this country,My beloved fatherland of Syria.Into whatever job they stick me I’ll do my damnedestTo be of use to the country. That’s my intention.But if they obstruct me with their machinations—We know these fine fellows, a word’s enough to the wise—If they obstruct me, I’m not to blame.And if that clod doesn’t appreciate me,I’ll turn to his rival, Grypos.And if that idiot likewise fails to make me an offer,One of the three is bound to want me, whatever.And my conscience is at restAbout not caring which of them I choose:All three are equal disasters for Syria.But I’m a ruined man, I’m not to blame—Just a poor wretch trying to patch things up for himself.The gods in their power should have taken the troubleTo fashion a fourth man, a good one.I’d have been delighted to throw in my lot with him.
In Egypt, meanwhile, the formal reconciliation of 124 was followed in 118, after further domestic ructions,140 by a detailed amnesty decree, proclaiming a series of benefactions (philanthrōpa) that made some concerted effort, by long-overdue concessions, to set the royal estate that was Egypt in order, and to strengthen its revenues.141 The temple hierarchy, in accordance with Physcon’s established policy (above, p. 540), was given substantial concessions. Arrears of taxes were written off, official abuses were condemned, various punitive penalties canceled. This occasion also saw the rehabilitation of the murdered Ptolemy VII (above, p. 537), presumably as a sop to Cleopatra the Sister, in which aim it proved, as events were to show, singularly unsuccessful. It was all too little, too late. As Austin rightly observes, “it goes without saying that the proclamations of 118 were no more effective than those which preceded them.”142 Physcon might legislate against officials arresting anyone “in pursuit of a private enmity,” but who was to enforce the law? A corrupt bureaucracy is not so easily discouraged. Such superficial patching could neither cure the country’s deep social ills, nor restore its ruined economy. All it did was enable Physcon to live out the rest of his self-indulgent life in relative peace. He died on 26 June 116, aged about sixty-five, “after thirteen years’ unbroken possession of the desirable things for which he had intrigued and murdered,”143 bequeathing his power to Cleopatra III, the Wife, and whichever of her sons she might prefer (a loaded clause, as we shall see). After his death the brief lull that had overtaken events in both Syria and Egypt was soon to be broken.
