The Defeat of Achaeus
The next three years of Seleucid history, from 217 to 214, are largely undocumented, as Polybius becomes distracted by the centrepiece of his history, the epic confrontation between Rome and Carthage. Nonetheless, it is clear that Antiochus spent these ‘lost’ years slowing grinding away at Achaeus’ realm.
The rebel still controlled much of Asia Minor. With Antiochus distracted fighting Ptolemy IV, Achaeus had further expanded his domain with a successful campaign against an Anatolian people known as the Selgians.1 The size of the rebel army is uncertain. At one point Achaeus was able to detach a force of 6000 infantry and 500 cavalry under a subordinate,2 but his overall force was likely several times this. This strength would still have been no match for Antiochus’ royal army, although the King probably campaigned with far fewer than the 68,000 troops he commanded at Raphia. There is no record of any set piece battle. Instead, Achaeus waged a defensive campaign, and it took Antiochus two full years (from 216 to 214) to fight his way up the old Persian royal highway and finally besiege Achaeus in the capital of Sardis.
Sardis was an old city, first the royal seat of the dynast Croesus’ midsixth century Lydian empire and then the regional capital of the Persian Empire. It was well fortified and dominated by an imposing acropolis. Once Achaeus and his remaining forces drew behind Sardis’ walls, the war reached a stalemate, as reported by Polybius:
Around Sardis were endless skirmishes and combats, both by night and day, as the soldiers devised every manner of ambush, retaliation and assault against each other. To write about these things one after the other would be not only profitless, but altogether timeconsuming. (Polybius 7.15.1)
The siege had lasted for over a year when one of Antiochus’ frustrated mercenary officers sought to infiltrate the city.
This officer, named Lagoras, was a Cretan mercenary with considerable combat experience. He had fought under Ptolemy IV during the recent war and suffered defeat at the hands of Antiochus in Beruit.3 The end of the Syrian war closed off his opportunities with the Ptolemies, and he now turned to Antiochus, as did many other Ptolemaic mercenary officers. On his own initiative, Lagoras observed Sardis’ defensive walls, looking for areas of weakness. He knew from experience that sections of the wall overlooking rough terrain were often times inadequately guarded, and he observed a cliff where the besieged inhabitants dumped refuse: human corpses as well as the entrails of dead horses and mules (the defenders were by now hungry enough to eat dead animals, but not so hungry as to feel compelled to eat the tripe!). Vultures flocked to this area, and the fact that these birds did not abandon the cliff after they had eaten their fill suggested to Lagoras that no guards were regularly posted in this spots. Acting on his own initiative, Lagoras sneaked up to the cliff at night and confirmed that it was unguarded and could be scaled with ladders.
Lagoras took this scheme to the King, who approved it instantly and gave him permission to lead the attack. Perhaps fearful of blame in the event of failure, Lagoras asked that two of the King’s favourites join the assault, Theodotus the Aetolian and Dionysius, the commander of the hypaspists, an elite subset of the Silver Shields.4
Three special units were organized. The first consisted of fifteen men, selected for their strength, which would carry the ladders to the cliff, scale the wall, and enter the city, along with Lagoras, Theodotus, and Dionysius. They would then proceed to the nearest gate, where they would pull out the pins and remove the bar.
A second platoon of thirty soldiers would rush to the gate from the outside and assist in the demolition. Once opened, a special battalion of two thousand men (possibly the hypaspists themselves) would rush to take position at the top of the city’s theatre, seizing key urban terrain that would allow follow-on forces to overrun the remainder of the city.
The plan required a moonless night to cover the movement to the cliff face. After waiting for the moon to wane, the operation was set into motion: the three units took their position at the base of the cliff and waited for daybreak to scale the wall. As expected, the steep cliffs shielded the attackers from Achaeus’ sentries. However, the soldiers in Antiochus’ main army, many of whom had front-row seats to the dramatic operation from their siege lines, caused an unforeseen and unfortunate commotion. The King feared that these undisciplined cheers might betray the assault force as it scrambled up the ladders, and to divert the defenders’ attention, he launched an impromptu diversionary assault at one of the other gates into town, known traditionally as the Persian Gate. Unaware of the larger strategy, Achaeus’ garrison commander, Aribazus, dispatched a force to repel Antiochus’ attack; he even opened the gate to facilitate a counter-attack against Antiochus’ diversionary force. Achaeus himself ordered the opposite gate to be reinforced as a precaution, but the reinforcements did not arrive in time.
Lagoras and his special force quickly tore down the gate from the inside, permitting the 2000 men stationed outside to rush into the city and seize the theatre. Aribazus sought to recall his troops to deal with this new threat, but opening the Persian gate was a grave mistake. The rebel soldiers withdrew back into the Persian gate, but failed to close it. Antiochus’ men followed in close pursuit, and secured this second gate after a brisk struggle. The King led his assembled forces into the city, and Seleucid units burst through gate after gate. Aribazus, realizing the situation was hopeless, withdrew his troops to the inner defences of the city’s imposing citadel, where Achaeus and his family were already secured, and watched as Antiochus and his men inflicted the traditional punishment upon a besieged city. On this scene, Polybius nonchalantly reports:
Some murdered anyone they happened to encounter, while others burned down the dwellings and others prowled about in search of spoils and loot. The destruction and sack of the city was total. In this way, Antiochus became lord of Sardis. (7.18.9–10)
Now in control of the city, Antiochus needed to access the steep citadel in order to capture Achaeus and end the rebellion once and for all. Back in Egypt, Ptolemy IV’s minister Sosibus was eager to ensure that Achaeus escaped alive from Sardis. While Ptolemy IV was technically at peace with Antiochus, the energetic minister knew that active war had merely been replaced by a cold war of subterfuge and containment. Any Seleucid loss would be a Ptolemaic gain. Sosibus also knew the narrow margins of Ptolemaic victory in the previous war. It would be advantageous to the fragile Ptolemaic state if Sosibus could sabotage Antiochus by smuggling Achaeus out of Sardis: the rebellion’s persistence would continue to compromise the Seleucid position in Asia Minor.
With this in mind, Sosibus commissioned Bolis, a Cretan mercenary captain, to facilitate a dangerous rescue mission. Bolis had previously visited Sardis and was familiar with the terrain of the citadel. Even more significant, Bolis was friends with another high-ranking Cretan mercenary commander then in the service of Antiochus, a man by the name of Cambylus, whose unit of Cretans secured a forward outpost in rough terrain near the citadel. Sosibus provided Bolis with encoded letters of recommendation, as well as ten talents of silver to cover travel expenses and the cost of bribing Cambylus to agree to the plan.
Bolis made his way to Sardis via Rhodes and Ephesus, meeting with Ptolemaic agents and confidants of Achaeus along the way. He finally met with his friend and relative Cambylus, and the two men engaged in a plot that seems to confirm ancient stereotypes that portray Cretans as untrustworthy and treacherous. The two men agreed to split the ten talents between them, and then betrayed the entire plot to Antiochus in the hopes of receiving an additional reward. Antiochus was thrilled when the double agents presented themselves and immediately endorsed their plan. Bolis would cross enemy lines and offer to slip Achaeus to a friendly Ptolemy, only to treacherously deliver him directly to Antiochus.
Bolis sent letters, supposedly smuggled through Seleucid lines, urging Achaeus to accept his offer of rescue, and Achaeus decided the proposal was his best chance of escaping a hopeless military situation. But he decided to hedge his bets. When Bolis arrived, Achaeus dressed himself as an attendant and instructed a friend to impersonate him. To prevent betrayal, he told no one of his plans to depart, save for his loyal wife Laodice.
Achaeus and his followers linked up with Bolis in the middle of the night, and sneaked down the crags surrounding the citadel. As they moved over the steep terrain, Bolis noticed that the seemingly lowly attendant was receiving excessive deference from the better-dressed members of the party, especially when he required assistance down steep sections of the path. Having uncovered the switch and identified his target, Bolis gave a whistle that initiated the prearranged ambush. Bolis tackled Achaeus, overpowering him and preventing him from attempting suicide with a hidden blade; the King wanted his quarry alive. Polybius describes the scene that follows, emphasizing the irony of Achaeus’ suddenly degraded position:
The king, for a long while waiting the outcome in suspense, dismissed his courtiers and remained awake in his tent with only two or three bodyguards. When Cambylus and his men arrived and deposited Achaeus upon the floor bound hand and foot, Antiochus was utterly speechless at this incredible sight and remained silent for some time. Finally, full of sympathy, he wept and was deeply affected and burst into tears, affected, it seems to me, by seeing how difficult it was to withstand or anticipate such a turn of fortune (tyche). For Achaeus was the son of Andromachus, the brother of the Laodice who married Seleucus. He married Laodice the daughter of King Mithridates, and was lord of the whole of Asia this side of the Taurus. At that moment, it was believed by both his own troops and those of the enemy that his was in the safest spot in the whole world, but in fact he sat bound upon the ground, in the hands of his enemies, no one knowing what had just happened except those who carried it out. (Polybius 8.20.8–12)
For all the King’s tears, he would have no mercy upon the rebel. The King’s friends were summoned to witness the unhappy Achaeus and debate the proper punishment. They crafted a grisly execution protocol: Achaeus’ genitals were cut off, and his misery ended shortly afterward with decapitation. His head was sewn into the skin of a donkey, while his headless body was crucified for display by the army. While this punishment was the ad hoc product of the more sadistic urges of Antiochus and his council, the habit of mutilating pretenders had Persian precedent and recalled the grim treatment of Molon’s corpse almost nine years previously.
In the citadel, Laodice despaired at the joyous commotion in the Seleucid camp and realized that her husband’s escape attempt had failed.5 Shortly afterwards a royal herald arrived at the citadel to announce the gruesome execution and demand an immediate surrender. Despite this, the rebels maintained position, but there was no clear notion of who might succeed Achaeus. Both Laodice and the citadel commander Aribazus claimed to be in charge, and their quarrelling divided the garrison, prompting an eventual surrender. Eight years after the initial revolt, the rebellion of Achaeus and Laodice was over.6
The city of Sardis faced harsh punishment in the aftermath of the revolt. An additional 5 per cent tax was levied upon the inhabitants. Half the houses in the city were appropriated to quarter royal troops, and the city gymnasium converted to use for military purposes.7 Soon, however, a more conciliatory policy emerged that focused on reconstructing the war-ravaged city, as evidenced by an inscribed royal letter:
…. and immediately to cut the wood for the reconstruction of the city and to take it from the forests of Taranza, as Zeuxis may decide. We also exempt you from the on-twentieth tax that had been added to the city tax, and have ordered that the gymnasium you used previously be restored for you.8
In this respect, Antiochus III appears not as a mindless conqueror but rather a pragmatic imperialist. His wars caused significant destruction, but he also took measures to help affected communities rebuild. Yet this was not done out of compassion for individual or collective suffering: all of his conquests were designed for tributary exploitation. Antiochus and his administrators seemed particularly aware of the need to ‘prime the pump’, to jumpstart war-torn economies so that they might quickly return to reliable sources of tax revenue. Other royal benefactions to Sardis followed that pushed the city forward economically. The number of houses occupied by royal troops was reduced from half the houses to one third. A generous gift of 200 measures of oil was granted for use by the young men in the gymnasium, although this also supported the physical training necessary to provide future recruits for the Seleucid army.9 When Sardis proved its loyalty by celebrating the Laodician festival in honour of the King’s wife, Antiochus exempted the city from taxation for the three days of the festival.10 John Ma has used a series of inscriptions around Sardis to illustrate the ongoing process of negotiation between subject communities and the royal administration. The King, of course, negotiated from a position of military strength, but the King and his army could not possibly be everywhere at once. In order to achieve desired ends, he was obliged to employ incentives as well as military coercion. Benefactions, even to a formerly disloyal city such as Sardis, provided additional glue that bound the empire together after troops departed. And indeed, Antiochus would soon depart Asia Minor with his royal army. He left behind Zeuxis, who would loyally serve as governor of the region for the next twenty-three years.11