The Seleucid Empire expanded its territory to stretch from Thrace to India under the leadership of Antiochus III, making it one of the most expansive empires in the Hellenistic World. Antiochus III's subsequent loss at the Battle of Magnesia to Rome in 190 B.C. caused some of the satrapies of the empire to begin to rebel, and has led some historians to believe that the empire began an unrecoverable decline. In this investigation I will argue that the myth of decline in the post-Antiochus III era is invalid through analyzing the stability brought to the empire during the reign of his son, Antiochus IV. An investigation into Antiochus IV's stabilization of the Seleucid Empire has not been completed in English since 1966. Through analyzing his involvement in the southern and eastern regions of the Seleucid Empire as well as the internal reforms a clear picture of Antiochus IV's efforts towards stabilization becomes apparent.

No description available.

The Seleucid Empire (312–63 BCE) of the Hellenistic period was one of the largest and most ethnically diverse imperial systems of the classical world. Owing to the limited coverage of archaeological surveys and inadequately dated archaeological remains, however, very little is known about the Hellenistic and, specifically, Seleucid countryside. In this dissertation, I draw on two landscape-based archaeological surveys conducted in Hatay Province of south-central Turkey, the Mopsos Survey and the Yumurtalık Survey, and focus on three contiguous and naturally bounded coastal plains (Rhosus, Alexandreia, and Issus). Additionally, I present a full analysis and chronological revision of ceramics stemming from these surveys. I bring these two primary classes of evidence together to explore settlement dynamics in the Hellenistic countryside across discrete chronological periods: Early Hellenistic (300–225 BCE); Middle Hellenistic (225–150 BCE); Late Hellenistic (150–25 BCE); Early Roman (25 BCE–40 CE); and Middle Roman 1 (40–130 CE). To assess ancient settlement dynamics — here defined as variations in the configuration of human occupation across a given space — I employ archaeological survey data capable of reflecting settlement size, location, distribution, and quantity as well as physical landscape considerations such as the availability of natural resources and proximity to overland and maritime trading routes. This dissertation demonstrates that it is possible to pursue topics of study within the Hellenistic era and outside the major urban spheres using survey data and a detailed reading of associated ceramics with updated typologies. The Hellenistic countryside of south-central Turkey had different demographic trajectories, which ultimately led to different configurations of settlement within the three plains studied. From a regional perspective, this work has explained and delineated a settlement change first identified by early-to-mid twentieth century travelers and archaeologists. It has also heeded the calls of recent scholars bemoaning the poor state of archaeological evidence reflecting the Seleucid countryside by devising methods that, for the first time, give the Seleucid realm a discrete periodization scheme for areas outside well-studied urban spheres, thereby fostering a new avenue of scholarly inquiry. / 2017-12-31T00:00:00Z

No description available.

No description available.

This dissertation investigates how the agents and organs of the Seleucid Empire explored, bounded, and endowed with meaning its imperial territory. I argue that king and court responded to the enormous opportunities and challenges of such a landscape with a range of ideological constructions and practical interventions, from border diplomacy to colonialism, ethnographic writing to royal parade. The first half concentrates on the kingdom's "pioneering phase" during the reigns of Seleucus I and Antiochus I. It examines the closing of the empire's eastern frontier in India and Central Asia and the role of court ethnographers in naturalizing the shape of this landscape. I then shift to the western periphery and investigate the founder-king's failed attempt to conquer Macedonia and the consequent relocation of homeland associations to northern Syria. In the second half of the dissertation the focus falls on the mature kingdom in the later third and second centuries BCE and on its declining agony. I look at the modes in which the bounded imperial landscape was articulated and ordered - the itinerant court and the ways it forged a sovereign terrain around the king's body, and the colonial foundations and their evolving importance within the kingdom. It is argued that the spatial practices and ideology that brought the empire into existence also generated the fault-lines along which it fell apart. In terms of method, the dissertation engages with spatial theory and cultural geography, and full use is made of archaeological material and textual evidence, literary and epigraphic, Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Jewish, and Persian. / The Classics

<p>This dissertation examines the history of the military institutions of the Hellenistic kingdoms. The kingdoms emerged after years of war-fighting, and the capacity to wage war remained central to state formation in the Hellenistic Age (323-31 B.C.). The creation of institutions and recruitment of populations sufficient to field large armies took a great deal more time and continual effort than has generally been imagined. By bringing documentary evidence into contact with the meta-narratives of the Hellenistic period, and by addressing each of the major powers of the Hellenistic world, this project demonstrates the contingencies and complexities within the kingdoms and their armies. In so doing, it offers both a fresh perspective on the peoples and polities that inhabited the Hellenistic world after Alexander and a much-revised narrative of the process by which Alexander's successors built kingdoms and waged war. Inheritors of extensive political and military traditions, they were forced to reshape them in their new and volatile context, eventually establishing large and powerful kingdoms and armies that dominated the eastern Mediterranean and Near East for over one hundred years. </p><p>The early model of Hellenistic kingship was based on military successes and martial valor. It found a complement in the burgeoning mercenary market of the early Hellenistic period, which allowed Alexander's generals to field massive armies without relying on complex military institutions for recruitment and mobilization. As years of continual warfare stressed populations and war chests, several new kings, crowned in the era of war, sought to end their reliance on mercenaries by developing core territories, settling soldiers, and constructing powerful military institutions. These institutions did not develop seamlessly or quickly, and often functioned awkwardly in many of the locales that had recently come under Macedonian rule, whether in the cities of Syria or along the Nile valley in Egypt. My project involves several detailed studies of military mobilization during the Hellenistic period, as a way to analyze the structures and evaluate the successes of the kingdoms' respective military institutions. </p><p>I employ methodologies from both history and classical studies, moving between technical work with papyrological, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence, close reading of ancient texts, and comparative analysis of narrative and documentary texts, while drawing upon the large historiographies of each of the largest kingdoms. One of this dissertation's contributions is in making comparisons between these spaces and across time, when much of Hellenistic history has trended toward ever-greater partition. The papyrological material, in particular, permits the greatest access into both the social activities of individuals and the particular elements of human, legal, and customary infrastructure within a Hellenistic state, though it has rarely been used outside of particularly Ptolemaic histories. My dissertation argues against Egyptian exceptionalism, and offers a Hellenistic history drawn from the full array of available sources. Part of the narrative of Egyptian exceptionalism developed from the perception that it was in some sense less traditionally Macedonian than the other two kingdoms. A careful reading of the evidence indicates instead that in the violent and multi-polar world of the Hellenistic age, military identity was very flexible, and had been since the time of Alexander. Additionally, the strict adherence of the other kingdoms to the Macedonian way of war ended in defeat at the hands of the Romans, while the Ptolemies in Egypt innovated counterinsurgent activities that preserved their power in the wealthiest region of the Mediterranean.</p> / Dissertation

L’impôt joue un rôle important dans les relations de pouvoir en Judée aux époques hellénistiques et romaines, non seulement par son poids économique, mais aussi et surtout par ses aspects idéologiques. Car imposer une population revient à s’en prétendre maître. Or, en Judée, une première lecture des sources laisse croire que beaucoup voyaient d’un mauvais œil le tribut étranger, alors que le temple de Jérusalem prélevait déjà des impôts censés revenir à Dieu, seul véritable maître d’Israël. Un examen plus attentif montre l’aspect polémique de cette déclaration : cette opposition dialectique entre les prélèvements du temple et ceux revenant aux étrangers est une construction idéologique, dont le but est de fournir une légitimation de l’opposition politique. Apparue à l’époque des Maccabées et participant à l’argumentation théologique de leur soulèvement, cette rhétorique se repère, avec quelques variations, dans chaque mouvement contestataire jusqu’à Bar Kokhba. Mais les sources dissimulent quelques indications qui montrent que tous ne partagent pas cette vue, et que dans les faits, l’offrande n’est pas plus joyeusement payée que le tribut. L’objet de cette thèse est de mettre en avant cette construction représentationnelle en la confrontant aux données brutes, et d’en souligner les implications sociales, économiques, financières et politiques, depuis la conquête de la Judée par Antiochos III jusqu’à la disparition de la province de Judée en 135 apr. J. C. / Taxes are important matters for understanding relations of power in Hellenistic and Roman Judaea, not only because of its economic burden, but above all because of its ideological sides: to tax a population means to pretend being its master. In Judaea, a first look to the sources let believe that many saw with a bad eye the foreign tribute, while the temple of Jerusalem exacted some revenues supposed to return to God, the sole proper master of Israel. However, a close examination proves the polemical sides of such a declaration: this dialectical opposition between the revenues of the shrine and the ones returning to foreigners is an ideological construction, whose purpose is to furnish a legitimation to the political opposition. Appeared at the time of the Maccabean uprising and used for theologically founding the war, this rhetorical instrument is visible, with some variations, in each protest movement until Bar Kokhba. But the sources hide some indications that let see that not everyone shared this view, and that, in the facts, the “offering” is not more cheerfully paid that the “tribute”. The purpose of the present dissertation is to underline the social, economical, financial and political implications of this representational construction, since the conquest of Judaea by Antiochos III, until the disappearance of the Judaea in 135 C.E.

La cité de Séleucie-sur-le-Tigre fut fondée au 4e siècle avant J.-C. par Séleucos Ier, prétendant à la succession de l’empire d’Alexandre le Grand. La taille des ilôts créés lors de cette fondation est inégalée dans le monde hellénistique et témoigne de l’ambition manifestée par le nouveau dynaste. La cité prospéra pendant plusieurs siècles et acquit le statut de résidence royale et de centre administratif. Elle fut cependant conquise par les Arsacides, dynastie rivale, en 129 avant J.-C. Bien que le développement de Séleucie n’en ait pas été immédiatement affecté, la ville se mit à décliner à partir du 2e siècle et disparut vers 200. Pour expliquer ce retournement de situation, la critique moderne a insisté sur la culture des souverains la dominant. Dirigée par les Séleucides, ses fondateurs macédoniens, Séleucie aurait prospéré. Conquise par les Arsacides iraniens, elle aurait été traitée avec défiance et persécutée par ces derniers jusqu’à son effondrement. Cette idée repose notamment sur la mention du caractère grec de la cité par certains auteurs antiques et sur l’influence de ceux-ci sur les analyses des premiers archéologues à avoir fouillé le site. Cette thèse se propose d’étudier les rapports entre la cité et ses souverains tout au long de son histoire afin d’évaluer la part que cette rivalité culturelle supposée y joua. Elle repose sur la comparaison entre la tradition littéraire, essentielle pour établir un canevas chronologique mais orientée par des intérêts politiques, et les découvertes archéologiques des expéditions menées entre 1927 et 1989 à Séleucie. Celles-ci ont mis au jour de nombreux monuments et objets (monnaies, statuettes, sceaux) permettant de nuancer l’idée que la population de la cité ait été au départ ou ait conservé à travers les siècles un caractère grec qui lui aurait valu l’inimitié des Arsacides. D’autres facteurs expliquant le déclin et l’abandon de la ville, comme le déplacement du fleuve ou l’évolution du contexte géopolitique, sont donc proposés. / The city of Seleucia on the Tigris was founded in the 4th century BCE by Seleucos I, one of Alexander’s empire’s Successors. According to the size of it’s original dwelling-blocks, it was designed from the start to be a large and important city. It flourished for some time and became an administrative center and royal residence. In 129 BCE, it was conquered by the Arsacids, a rival dynasty. Seleucia’s development continued unbroken, but the city eventually declined and disappeared around 200 CE. To explain this change, historians underlined the importance of the perceived culture of its old and new sovereigns. Ruled by the Macedonian Seleucids, the city prospered. Under the Iranian Arsacids’ hostile administration, it was ill-treated until it got abandoned. Such analyses have been based on some passages of ancient texts insisting on the Greek character of Seleucia and its inhabitants. Those also influenced the interpretation of the results of the first archaeological digs conducted on the site. This thesis comes back on the relations between the city and both its Seleucid and Arsacid kings in order to evaluate the importance of this supposed cultural rivalry in the development of Seleucia. It compares the written tradition, essential but biased by political imperatives, and the buildings, coins, seals and figurines discovered by American, German and Italian archaeologists between 1927 and 1989. Our results suggest that the city and its population were of a mixed cultural backround and that its supposed Greek character did not play much of a role in its decline. We therefore suggest that other factors explain the disappearance of Seleucia, such as the Tigris changing bed and an evolution in the geopolitical situation of the Near East around 200.