Antiochus the Great

Seleucid king (r. 223-187 b.c.e.)

• Born: c. 242 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Probably Antioch (now Antakya, Turkey)
• Died: 187 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Elymais, near Susa (now in Iran)

Antiochus went the furthest of any of the successors of Alexander the Great toward reuniting what had once been the vast Alexandrian Empire.

Early Life

Antiochus (an-TI-uh-kuhs), who was probably born in Antioch, the capital city of the Seleucid Empire, was the younger son of Seleucus II and Laodice II. Nothing is known about his early life. When his father died in 226, his older brother, Seleucus III, fell heir to the empire and all of its problems, not the least of which was Asia Minor, formerly held by the Seleucids but now controlled by Attalus I of Pergamum. One unsuccessful attempt had already been made to regain this territory. During the second, in 223, Seleucus was assassinated by two of his own generals. Because he had no heirs, his younger brother Antiochus succeeded him.

Antiochus was eighteen years old at the time of his brother’s death and living in Babylon—possibly as regent of the east, as that was the usual Seleucid practice—but many thought him too young for the throne. His cousin Achaeus, who had punished Seleucus’s murderers, was popular with the army, but he remained loyal to the ruling house. Finally, Antiochus was recognized as successor under the tutelage of Seleucus’s former adviser, Hermias; Achaeus was given control of military affairs in Asia Minor, and two brothers, Molon and Alexander, were sent as governors (satraps) to Media and Persia, respectively. Trouble began almost immediately: Although Achaeus remained loyal for some time and even regained much of Asia Minor from Attalus, Hermias became excessively arrogant, and in 221, the brothers in the east rebelled against Seleucid authority. These actions marked the beginning of an almost constant state of war, which would continue throughout the reign of Antiochus.

In 221, with Achaeus operating successfully in Asia Minor, the first priority for the Seleucid government was the rebellion of Molon. Hermias, who was still in control, appointed Xenon and Theodotus as commanders against Molon, while convincing the king to make war against Ptolemy IV Philopator of Egypt for possession of Coele-Syria. When Molon easily defeated his opponents and Antiochus’s southern campaign proved futile, the king turned to the recovery of his eastern territories. In early spring of 220, Antiochus held a council to plan his campaign. There were two important results of this meeting: Antiochus proved himself able to choose the best strategy—the immediate crossing of the Tigris River—and in crossing the river he, for the first time, split his army in three parts, initiating what would become his standard policy for advancing his forces. The majority of Molon’s army, refusing to fight a Seleucid king, surrendered to Antiochus at the first opportunity. The two rebel brothers committed suicide; Antiochus was now in full command in the east.

Three problems remained: Hermias; Achaeus, now the self-proclaimed king of Asia Minor; and the subjection of Coele-Syria. Antiochus ordered the assassination of Hermias, ignored Achaeus, whose men also refused to fight a Seleucid ruler, and marched his army south, where he was at first successful. His youthful inexperience, however, led him to delay battle against a Ptolemaic army until his opponent had the advantage, and in 217 he suffered a humiliating defeat at Raphia. Ptolemy fortunately agreed to a peace treaty, thus ending the war.

Life’s Work

Antiochus gained the title “the Great” because, through successful military strategy and shrewd diplomacy, he managed to reunite most of the territory that had been assigned to Seleucus I after the death of Alexander the Great. His prestige had suffered a blow at Raphia, but he redeemed himself by defeating Achaeus and regaining Seleucid Asia Minor. After a long siege, the capital city of Sardis fell in 214, and the citadel was betrayed a year later. Achaeus was first mutilated and then beheaded. Some sort of understanding with Attalus of Pergamum, his other rival in Asia Minor, seems to have been reached, because by 212 Antiochus had turned his back on the west in order to attempt the restoration of his eastern dominions. The Greek historian Polybius gives a fairly comprehensive account of Antiochus’s movements up to this time, although most of the war against Achaeus is missing. Now, unfortunately, the detailed history of Antiochus ends just as he begins his eastern campaigns.

By 212, Antiochus was in Armenia, where he settled affairs by arranging the marriage of his sister Antiochis to King Xerxes I. Two years later, he had arrived at the Euphrates River and in the next year he reached the limits of the Seleucid Empire in Media. He could have stopped there, but Parthia and Bactria, once part of the empire, had seceded in 250, and his plan was to regain all the lost territories, a very expensive endeavor. It was in Ecbatana, the old summer capital of the Persian kings, that Antiochus for the first time robbed a temple treasury, an act that was to become a policy for both him and his successors.

Although the Parthians put up a stiff resistance, by 209 they had been defeated and had agreed to an alliance. Bactria was invaded in the next year; peace came two years later with another alliance. Antiochus then continued on to India to renew Seleucid relations with the new border king, from whom he received 150 elephants. He had thought of invading Arabia, but after sailing down the Arabian coast, he abandoned the idea. He was back in Syria by 204, with a reputation second only to that of Alexander. From this time on, he would be called Antiochus the Great.

Now that the king had experience and maturity, he made his final attempt to gain Coele-Syria, this time backed by an alliance with Philip V of Macedonia. Appian (c. 160 c.e.) gives the terms of the agreement, but the sources are uniformly silent on this war, the Fifth Syrian War. Ptolemy V was still a child, but his general, Scopas, moved an army across the Sinai Peninsula. The two forces met at Panion in 200 in a battle in which Antiochus’s elephants played an important role in gaining for him a decisive victory. After winning the complete submission of Palestine, including Jerusalem, Antiochus decided against an invasion of Egypt and returned to Asia Minor. Ptolemy had agreed to a treaty in which he ceded Coele-Syria to the Seleucid Empire. The war finally ended in 195, when Ptolemy promised to marry Antiochus’s daughter Cleopatra (not to be confused with Cleopatra VII, who was involved with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony more than a century later).

Meanwhile, Philip V had been courting disaster in the north. Rhodes and Pergamum had allied against him and called on Rome for help. The Romans declared war on Philip in 200 but also sent an embassy to Antiochus warning him that Egypt was under Roman protection, a threat he could hardly take seriously. The embassy arrived shortly after his success at Panion. By the spring of 197, the Seleucid army was in Asia Minor, along with a navy of three hundred ships just off the southern coast. The navy was stopped for a while by a Rhodian ultimatum, but after news of Philip’s defeat by the Romans in 196 arrived, the Rhodians withdrew, leaving Antiochus free to take the western coast of Asia Minor to the Troas, his original plan. The city of Lampsacus appealed to Rome, but the Seleucid army was in Thrace before the Roman ambassadors caught up with it. Antiochus’s answer to Roman charges of aggression was that he did not meddle in Italian affairs and Rome had no business in Asia. Shortly after that, the king lost almost his entire fleet in a storm off the coast of Syria.

Antiochus was now at the height of his power; unfortunately, he did not know when to stop. The Aetolians, unhappy over Rome’s settlement with Philip, convinced Antiochus to join an anti-Rome coalition, which never materialized. In the latter part of 192, a small Seleucid army arrived, the forerunner of a much larger contingent, at Demetrias. The Aetolians, who had promised the king their full support, were distressed by the size of his force, and both Philip and the Achaean League to the south had decided to ally with Rome. In 191 a joint Roman-Macedonian army faced the Seleucid forces at Thermopylae. Antiochus’s reinforcements had not arrived, and the promised Aetolian aid proved illusory. When it became evident that he could not win, Antiochus fled, losing most of his army in what was more a skirmish than a battle.

Antiochus’s loss was the result not so much of Aetolian deceit as of the failure of his officers back in Asia to send him the necessary reinforcements. Even then, as was proved by Philip’s earlier losses, the clumsy phalanx was no match for the Roman legion. Antiochus discovered that for himself when the Romans invaded Asia Minor. The Roman historian Livy claims that the king, once he had escaped from Greece, believed that he had nothing more to fear from the Romans, that they would not follow him to Asia. If so, he had badly misjudged Roman determination to end the Seleucid threat forever. The Romans were also well aware that Antiochus had welcomed Hannibal, their most feared enemy, to his court. A Roman fleet first cleared the Aegean Sea of Seleucid ships, and by either late 190 or early 189 (historians do not agree on the date) Antiochus fought his last major battle in the field outside Magnesia and lost. He could do nothing more than ask for and accept whatever terms the Romans offered.

Even before Antiochus’s final defeat, his eastern dominions had begun to break away. After Magnesia, the Seleucid army was no longer a threat, and the empire dissolved. As soon as the peace was signed, Antiochus appointed his son Seleucus as joint king to rule Syria, which was all the Romans had left him, while he turned again to the east. In 187, Antiochus was killed while attempting to loot a temple in the Elymaean hills. His son succeeded as Seleucus IV.

Significance

With the defeat of Antiochus by the Romans, the Eastern world was lost to Western culture. The Seleucid Empire crumbled, and Rome could hold only the areas bordering the Mediterranean Sea. These were so systematically exploited by Roman policy that they almost gladly welcomed the Muslim armies of the seventh century c.e.

Antiochus was perhaps not a great king or a great general. He made the same mistake of pressing too hard with his right wing at Magnesia that he had made at Raphia, and he was very unwise in antagonizing the Romans by invading Greece. He had been raised on stories of Alexander, however, and he came closer than anyone else in his attempt to restore the empire to its original size. He could be cruel when necessary, as he was with Achaeus, but his eastern campaigns were marked by leniency and diplomacy, and he refused to hand over Hannibal when the Romans demanded it. There is no record of any domestic rebellion during his long reign. The worst charge against him is the one that led to his death. Ancient temples were also treasuries, and Antiochus was constantly in need of money. It is a sad commentary on his priorities that his last act was one of sacrilege.

Bibliography

Bar-Kochva, B. The Seleucid Army: Organization and Tactics in the Great Campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. This work contains several chapters giving the details from ancient sources on the major battles fought by Antiochus. Includes maps of the battlefields and interesting analyses of strategy.

Grainger, John D. The Roman War of Antiochus the Great. Boston: Brill, 2002. An archaeological and historical examination of the Seleucid king and his relations with Rome.

Kincaid, C. A. Successors of Alexander. Chicago: Argonaut, 1969. Kincaid presents brief sketches of four successors, concluding with Antiochus. A good summary of the campaigns and policies, but it excuses the weaknesses of the king.

Livy. Rome and the Mediterranean. Translated by H. Bettenson. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1976. An excellent translation of the part of Livy’s history concerning Rome’s move toward the East. A Roman interpretation of Antiochus’s actions. Includes an introduction by A. H. McDonald.

Ma, John. Antiochus III and the Cities of Western Asia Minor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. This study examines Antiochus’s activities in Asia Minor. Maps and bibliography.