Rolf Strootman
Rolf Strootman teaches World History and Ancient History at the University of Utrecht. He is an associate professor and chair of the research group Ancient History and Classical Civilizations.
He studies the interconnection between imperialism and premodern globalization during the Persian and Hellenistic periods (ca. 550 BCE-70 CE). His research interests further include religious interactions, the image of the "Orient" in Western culture, the cultural history of warfare, the Silk Road, and the reception of the Ancient World in modern popular culture (especially cinema and fantasy).
Keywords: Global Antiquity, Ancient Globalization, Imperialism and Colonialism, Court Studies, Ancient Persia, Ancient Macedonia, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hellenistic World, Seleucids, Ptolemies, Antigonids, Parthians, Silk Road
He studies the interconnection between imperialism and premodern globalization during the Persian and Hellenistic periods (ca. 550 BCE-70 CE). His research interests further include religious interactions, the image of the "Orient" in Western culture, the cultural history of warfare, the Silk Road, and the reception of the Ancient World in modern popular culture (especially cinema and fantasy).
Keywords: Global Antiquity, Ancient Globalization, Imperialism and Colonialism, Court Studies, Ancient Persia, Ancient Macedonia, Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, Hellenistic World, Seleucids, Ptolemies, Antigonids, Parthians, Silk Road
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Call for Papers by Rolf Strootman
The event is hosted by the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII) and co-organized by the Netherlands Institute in Türkiye (NIT) and Utrecht University.
Key Publications by Rolf Strootman
An analysis of the significance of Central Asia for the Seleucid Empire, as well as the geopolitical importance of Central Asia in the Hellenistic period from the perspective of world history. The importance of Central Asia as a hub of Eurasian connectivity and a source of military manpower, war horses and elephants for the Seleukids (and previously the Achaemenids and Argeads) is stressed. The chapter also gives an overview of the archaeology of the main Seleukid sites in Margiana, Arachosia, Baktria, and Sogdia.
This article argues that the Ptolemies in the third century BCE ran a vast, hegemonic empire whose maritime lines of communication united the eastern Mediterranean, and stretched into the Aegean, the Black Sea, the Red Sea and even the Indian Ocean. It was, in other words, an empire -- not a country ("Egypt") with "overseas possessions". I argue that the dynasty, and not the land, was the principal ideological focus of the Ptolemaic polity.
This empire, though military in nature, is defined more by its networks and personal relations than by territorial conquest per se. Universalistic imperial ideology and a cosmopolitan elite culture aimed at integrating the different cultural and linguistic elite groups within the Ptolemaic sphere of influence. Ptolemaic Alexandria was the empire's principal hub. The city was located, not "in" Egypt, but at the very heart of the Ptolemaic network empire, of which the Nile Valley was one of several constituents (albeit the most important one).
The article therefore also takes issue with the popular image of the Ptolemaic monarchy as "double-faced", i.e. Greek and Egyptian. Instead the multi-ethnic and multicultural nature is stressed of this empire, whose claims to hegemony included Greece, Karia, Lykia. Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Judea, Nabataea, Egypt, Libya, Nubia, and Ethiopia.
Papers by Rolf Strootman
How did premodern Afro-Eurasian empires anchor their rule in the past, and how did they position themselves vis-à-vis the empires they conquered or replaced? After an introductory discussion of the Roman appropriation of the figure of Alexander the Great, this paper aims to answer these questions through two case studies: (1) the Macedonian takeover of Babylon from the Persian Empire after 331 BCE, and (2) the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. We end with a shorter discussion of the replacement of the Parthian Arsakid dynasty by the Sasanian kings in third-century CE Iran. It will be shown that in all these cases the conquerors employed a policy of “jumping over” their immediate predecessors in order to connect to a more distant past – a past that could be rewritten to resemble the post-conquest present. This enabled them to portray their precursors as unworthy, incompetent tyrants that had rightfully been removed from power to allow the return of a Golden Age.
The article contextualizes Polybios' account of the ritual reception of Demetrios, the son of Euthydemos of Baktria, at the court of the Seleukid emperor, Antiochos III, outside of Baktra. In 206 BCE, after a long and inconclusive war, Antiochos III gave the title of king to the rebellious ruler Euthydemos. Euthydemos thereby gained legitimacy through imperial recognition of his royal status in return for his acceptance of Seleukid suzerainty and incidental military support. Creating a friendly satellite kingdom in Central Asia was more useful for the empire than reestablishing direct control. The alliance was sealed with a dynastic marriage. Baktria and Sogdia were thus reintegrated into the Seleukid imperial networks of connectivity and exchange, especially after Antiochos III reopened the ancient sea routes between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia.
In ancient monarchies, rebel leaders were not merely executed when caught; they typically were also often ‘dehumanized’ by the mutilation of their bodies and the denial of proper burial. The Seleukid Empire was no exception. When the rebel king Achaios was delivered into the hands of the imperial sovereign, Antiochos III, the Royal Council decided “that his extremities should be cut off, his head severed from his body and sewn up in the skin of an ass, and his body impaled” (Polybios 8.21.3). What was the purpose of inflicting such severe retribution, particularly on (alleged) traitors?
Believing that the wide attestation of the theatrical dismemberment of significant enemies is based on historical fact (rather than Orientalistic invention), I argue that it was not so much a punishment inflicted upon traitors, but a performative act by which treason, or rebellion, was constructed as a category of social conduct. Ritual mutilation and the denial of burial was a means to deny legitimacy to the executed ‘rebel’ by making their bodies resemble the graveness of their crime. In sum, the regime of the victor was made legitimate through the ritual deconstruction of the legitimacy of the rivals.
This is part of a broader research project (within the Dutch national Anchoring Innovation program) studying the agency of objects by focusing on things entering the Roman "objectscape" as war booty in the Hellenistic poeriod. The entire book is available in open access at the website of Brill Publishers, at https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004682702.
Alexander’s pothos, his indomitable yearning to surpass his predecessors and to go where no one had gone before, has been taken as an actual trait of the king’s character, as a concept rooted in Greek culture, or dismissed as a later invention or topos. In this paper I will take a different approach to pothos and reconsider it in the light of royal ideology and imperial universalism. I argue that Alexander’s pothos is in fact a derivation (or expression) of the universalistic ideology that developed at Alexander’s own court. This ideology of worldwide conquest has deep roots in the Ancient Near East, where the idea of reaching and crossing the extreme edge of the earth (the Ocean or a desert wasteland), and to surpass one's predecessors, is often expressed in royal representation of both previous and successive empires.
This article takes a court studies approach to ancient royal women, and its conclusions hopefully can also shed new light on the roles of royal women in other ancient dynasties, especially those of the Roman and Byzantone empires. It sees the Hellenistic royal households as meeting points where political and economic networks converged and where power was created, negotiated and distributed. This actor-based perspective offers an alternative for the conventional focus on institutions and “political philosophy” in the study of Hellenistic kingship, while a focus on networks and exchange offers an alternative for the anachronistic conceptualization of the Hellenistic empires as “states”. Circumventing the traditional search for formal state institutions also means that the agency of women at court can be understood as a cardinal aspect of the exercise of power rather than as merely ancillary and incidental.
Despite significant differences between the dynasties, royal women were central figures in the households of the Argeads, Antigonids, Ptolemies, and Seleucids. As mothers, heirs, and regents they played key roles in the maintenance of dynastic continuity. They sometimes had responsibilities that many cultures consider typically male, such as acting as benefactors of cities, or having leading roles in warfare. The article discusses their roles as intermediaries and power brokers, as public representatives of dynasties, and as the representatives of their paternal families.
In the Hellenistic period cities were the cornerstones of imperial rule. Cities where the loci for the acquisition of capital and manpower, and imperial agents (philoi) were recruited for a large part among Greek civic elites. This chapter is based upon the dual premise that premodern empires are negotiated enterprises and they are often networks of interaction rather than territorial states. The relentless competition between three rival superpowers in the Hellenistic Aegean – the Seleukid, Ptolemaic, and Antigonid empires – gave cities a good bargaining position vis-à-vis these empires. The fact that the imperial courts were dominated by philoi from the Aegean poleis moreover meant that these cities held a central and privileged place in Hellenistic imperialism, and benefited greatly from it. Royal benefactions structured imperial-local interactions. They were instrumental in a complex of ritualized, reciprocal gift exchange between empires and cities. Empires most of all needed capital, loyalty and military support; cities needed protection. Because kings were usually short of funds, the gifts by which they hoped to win the support of cities against their rivals often came in the form of immaterial benefactions like the granting of privileges and the protection of civic autonomy.
Summary: Seleucid city foundations were ritualized as acts of creation. These original foundational acts were continuously celebrated as important civic festivals which kept the foundation mythology alive. By presenting imperial city foundations as final acts in a cosmogonic process of creation, the establishment of the Seleucid Empire by Seleucus I was presented as a new beginning of time, an eschatological image also emanating from the introduction of the Seleukid Era by Antiochos I. In contrast to a popular modern cliché, there is no evidence that Alexander the Great figured in Seleukid ideology of the third century BCE: both Alexander and the Achaemenids where denied a role as predecessors and models.
Populations in these dynastic foundations never developed an exclusive relationship with a specific ‘mother city’. The focus for communal identity instead was the dynasty, together with the principal civic cults on the akropoleis of the cities – Thundering Zeus at Seleukeia and Zeus Keraunios at Antioch. These cults can be identified as based upon pre-existing local (Syrian) cults adjusted to the new ‘multi-cultural’ context of colonization by means of religious translation. Yet they were presented as very ancient Greek cults that had been rediscovered. Myths of shared ancestry came into being in which typical transcultural mediators such as Perseus and Herakles played leading roles; these tales connected the cities to Greece but most of all to the globalizing Hellenistic koinē that the Seleukids claimed to lead.
The notion of rediscovery and the ideology of a return created a sense of belonging for migrants coming from the Aegean; but most of all it facilitated the creation of a coherent Hellenic identity for the ethnically mixed communities of Antioch and Seleucia, which included many ‘Syrians’ too. Thus, the process of transcultural translation of deities and cults enabled the co-existence of varied migrant groups and local populations.
The dynastic representation created by Antiochos I of Kommagene continues to puzzle historians and archaeologist. Its meaning usually is considered either in the light of the Achaemenid past that Antiochos so emphatically refers to on Nemrut Dağı, or from the perspective of Roman history. In the first case, Antiochos is seen as an "eastern" monarch and his royal and religious imagery is accordingly decoded as ancient Persian traditions in Greek disguise. In the second case, Antiochos is seen as a client king whose main political aim was to position his small kingdom in a world dominated by Rome.
But for an alleged client king, Antiochos referred remarkably little to Rome in his self-presentation. Moreover, in the mid-1st century BCE, Roman dominance in the Near East was not a foregone conclusion: when Antiochos succeeded to the throne of Commagene the greatest power in the Near East was the Armenian Empire of Tigranes the Great; after Tigranes’ fall, the Parthian Empire successfully challenged Roman supremacy in the region. Moreover, for a local ruler, Antiochos made remarkably grand political statements: he adopted the imperial title of Great King, claimed to be a descendant of Alexander the Great and a successor to both the Seleucid and the Achaemenid empires.
This contribution aims to understand Antiochos’ kingship from neither the Persian past nor the Roman future. Instead, it considers Antiochos' monarchy in its contemporary late-Hellenistic context. It shows that Antiochus' royal representation overwhelmingly refers to the Seleucids (and only rarely to the Achaemenids). It argues that the alleged idiosyncratic imagery and rhetoric found on Nemrud Dağ and elsewhere in Commagene can be understood as part of a wider movement among local rulers in the Near East in response to Seleucid collapse.
This article studies how the Hekatomnids of Karia exploited the landscape and used architecture to create performative spaces for the social rituals of the court and the ‘theater of kingship’. Such rituals were instrumental in creating elite allegiance and cohesion. Their building activities focusing on ancestral tombs generated social memory while their patronage of sanctuaries created ‘authority of place’ through local gods. While Labraunda was instrumental in integrating territory into the system of Hekatomnid dominion, Halikarnassos functioned as a ‘magnet’ to attract representatives of local elites to the imperial center. The Hekatomnids thus provided a multifaceted template for the way that Hellenistic kings integrated territory and negotiated their power vis-à-vis local populations.
“Rolf Strootman and Christina Williamson’s chapter is actually pre-Hellenistic in focus, offering an examination of the Hecatomnid use of sacred sites in the construction of a ‘royal landscape’ in Achaemenid Caria. They argue that it was proto-Hellenistic in some respects, with a wide influence on Hellenistic royal architecture, yet also that the Hecatomnid building programme was additionally rooted in Achaemenid and Ionian models. Alongside functional and practical issues, how construction and landscape were used in royal and dynastic projections is a key focus of the chapter, as is involvement with imperial networks. This is a valuable study of the importance of place in the performance and negotiation of royal power, and it is helpful particularly for framing the dialogue between ‘local’ and ‘imperial’: in this respect, it will be an important read for historians of the Hellenistic empires. There are also some really excellent colour images in this chapter too.” John Holton in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.12.27.
The article studies cultural developments in Hellenistic-period Iran by looking at “Hellenistic” and “Persianistic” trends. It is shown that it is impossible to draw a line between “Greek” and “Iranian” culture. The prevalent notion of an antagonism between Greco-Macedonian and Iranian elites in the Hellenistic world, viz., the Seleukid Empire, is criticized.
The evidence for Hellenistic or Persianistic style in (Greater) Iran is invariably connected with imperial ideas and dynastic identities, not with ethnic groups per se. Though the top layer of philoi at the Seleukid imperial court may originally have been recruited mainly among Aegean civic elites, local rulers and military leaders in the Upper Satrapies were for a large part local Iranians, who interacted with their peers through a system of interconnected dynastic courts. In religion, eastern deities could be given the iconography of Greek gods and Greek names—but this does not imply that a syncretism of cults also took place.
Cultures are always in flux and changes occur most strongly when geopolitical circumstances change, especially when empires break down or are created. Despite the overall trans-Eurasian connectivity that came into being during the Persian and Hellenistic periods—forerunner of what Jack Goody called the remarkable “relative cultural unity” of later Silk Road societies—it is most of all the astounding variety and richness of local cultures in the globalizing so-called “Hellenistic World” that remains a wonderful and intriguing phenomenon.
The event is hosted by the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII) and co-organized by the Netherlands Institute in Türkiye (NIT) and Utrecht University.
An analysis of the significance of Central Asia for the Seleucid Empire, as well as the geopolitical importance of Central Asia in the Hellenistic period from the perspective of world history. The importance of Central Asia as a hub of Eurasian connectivity and a source of military manpower, war horses and elephants for the Seleukids (and previously the Achaemenids and Argeads) is stressed. The chapter also gives an overview of the archaeology of the main Seleukid sites in Margiana, Arachosia, Baktria, and Sogdia.
This article argues that the Ptolemies in the third century BCE ran a vast, hegemonic empire whose maritime lines of communication united the eastern Mediterranean, and stretched into the Aegean, the Black Sea, the Red Sea and even the Indian Ocean. It was, in other words, an empire -- not a country ("Egypt") with "overseas possessions". I argue that the dynasty, and not the land, was the principal ideological focus of the Ptolemaic polity.
This empire, though military in nature, is defined more by its networks and personal relations than by territorial conquest per se. Universalistic imperial ideology and a cosmopolitan elite culture aimed at integrating the different cultural and linguistic elite groups within the Ptolemaic sphere of influence. Ptolemaic Alexandria was the empire's principal hub. The city was located, not "in" Egypt, but at the very heart of the Ptolemaic network empire, of which the Nile Valley was one of several constituents (albeit the most important one).
The article therefore also takes issue with the popular image of the Ptolemaic monarchy as "double-faced", i.e. Greek and Egyptian. Instead the multi-ethnic and multicultural nature is stressed of this empire, whose claims to hegemony included Greece, Karia, Lykia. Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Judea, Nabataea, Egypt, Libya, Nubia, and Ethiopia.
How did premodern Afro-Eurasian empires anchor their rule in the past, and how did they position themselves vis-à-vis the empires they conquered or replaced? After an introductory discussion of the Roman appropriation of the figure of Alexander the Great, this paper aims to answer these questions through two case studies: (1) the Macedonian takeover of Babylon from the Persian Empire after 331 BCE, and (2) the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. We end with a shorter discussion of the replacement of the Parthian Arsakid dynasty by the Sasanian kings in third-century CE Iran. It will be shown that in all these cases the conquerors employed a policy of “jumping over” their immediate predecessors in order to connect to a more distant past – a past that could be rewritten to resemble the post-conquest present. This enabled them to portray their precursors as unworthy, incompetent tyrants that had rightfully been removed from power to allow the return of a Golden Age.
The article contextualizes Polybios' account of the ritual reception of Demetrios, the son of Euthydemos of Baktria, at the court of the Seleukid emperor, Antiochos III, outside of Baktra. In 206 BCE, after a long and inconclusive war, Antiochos III gave the title of king to the rebellious ruler Euthydemos. Euthydemos thereby gained legitimacy through imperial recognition of his royal status in return for his acceptance of Seleukid suzerainty and incidental military support. Creating a friendly satellite kingdom in Central Asia was more useful for the empire than reestablishing direct control. The alliance was sealed with a dynastic marriage. Baktria and Sogdia were thus reintegrated into the Seleukid imperial networks of connectivity and exchange, especially after Antiochos III reopened the ancient sea routes between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia.
In ancient monarchies, rebel leaders were not merely executed when caught; they typically were also often ‘dehumanized’ by the mutilation of their bodies and the denial of proper burial. The Seleukid Empire was no exception. When the rebel king Achaios was delivered into the hands of the imperial sovereign, Antiochos III, the Royal Council decided “that his extremities should be cut off, his head severed from his body and sewn up in the skin of an ass, and his body impaled” (Polybios 8.21.3). What was the purpose of inflicting such severe retribution, particularly on (alleged) traitors?
Believing that the wide attestation of the theatrical dismemberment of significant enemies is based on historical fact (rather than Orientalistic invention), I argue that it was not so much a punishment inflicted upon traitors, but a performative act by which treason, or rebellion, was constructed as a category of social conduct. Ritual mutilation and the denial of burial was a means to deny legitimacy to the executed ‘rebel’ by making their bodies resemble the graveness of their crime. In sum, the regime of the victor was made legitimate through the ritual deconstruction of the legitimacy of the rivals.
This is part of a broader research project (within the Dutch national Anchoring Innovation program) studying the agency of objects by focusing on things entering the Roman "objectscape" as war booty in the Hellenistic poeriod. The entire book is available in open access at the website of Brill Publishers, at https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004682702.
Alexander’s pothos, his indomitable yearning to surpass his predecessors and to go where no one had gone before, has been taken as an actual trait of the king’s character, as a concept rooted in Greek culture, or dismissed as a later invention or topos. In this paper I will take a different approach to pothos and reconsider it in the light of royal ideology and imperial universalism. I argue that Alexander’s pothos is in fact a derivation (or expression) of the universalistic ideology that developed at Alexander’s own court. This ideology of worldwide conquest has deep roots in the Ancient Near East, where the idea of reaching and crossing the extreme edge of the earth (the Ocean or a desert wasteland), and to surpass one's predecessors, is often expressed in royal representation of both previous and successive empires.
This article takes a court studies approach to ancient royal women, and its conclusions hopefully can also shed new light on the roles of royal women in other ancient dynasties, especially those of the Roman and Byzantone empires. It sees the Hellenistic royal households as meeting points where political and economic networks converged and where power was created, negotiated and distributed. This actor-based perspective offers an alternative for the conventional focus on institutions and “political philosophy” in the study of Hellenistic kingship, while a focus on networks and exchange offers an alternative for the anachronistic conceptualization of the Hellenistic empires as “states”. Circumventing the traditional search for formal state institutions also means that the agency of women at court can be understood as a cardinal aspect of the exercise of power rather than as merely ancillary and incidental.
Despite significant differences between the dynasties, royal women were central figures in the households of the Argeads, Antigonids, Ptolemies, and Seleucids. As mothers, heirs, and regents they played key roles in the maintenance of dynastic continuity. They sometimes had responsibilities that many cultures consider typically male, such as acting as benefactors of cities, or having leading roles in warfare. The article discusses their roles as intermediaries and power brokers, as public representatives of dynasties, and as the representatives of their paternal families.
In the Hellenistic period cities were the cornerstones of imperial rule. Cities where the loci for the acquisition of capital and manpower, and imperial agents (philoi) were recruited for a large part among Greek civic elites. This chapter is based upon the dual premise that premodern empires are negotiated enterprises and they are often networks of interaction rather than territorial states. The relentless competition between three rival superpowers in the Hellenistic Aegean – the Seleukid, Ptolemaic, and Antigonid empires – gave cities a good bargaining position vis-à-vis these empires. The fact that the imperial courts were dominated by philoi from the Aegean poleis moreover meant that these cities held a central and privileged place in Hellenistic imperialism, and benefited greatly from it. Royal benefactions structured imperial-local interactions. They were instrumental in a complex of ritualized, reciprocal gift exchange between empires and cities. Empires most of all needed capital, loyalty and military support; cities needed protection. Because kings were usually short of funds, the gifts by which they hoped to win the support of cities against their rivals often came in the form of immaterial benefactions like the granting of privileges and the protection of civic autonomy.
Summary: Seleucid city foundations were ritualized as acts of creation. These original foundational acts were continuously celebrated as important civic festivals which kept the foundation mythology alive. By presenting imperial city foundations as final acts in a cosmogonic process of creation, the establishment of the Seleucid Empire by Seleucus I was presented as a new beginning of time, an eschatological image also emanating from the introduction of the Seleukid Era by Antiochos I. In contrast to a popular modern cliché, there is no evidence that Alexander the Great figured in Seleukid ideology of the third century BCE: both Alexander and the Achaemenids where denied a role as predecessors and models.
Populations in these dynastic foundations never developed an exclusive relationship with a specific ‘mother city’. The focus for communal identity instead was the dynasty, together with the principal civic cults on the akropoleis of the cities – Thundering Zeus at Seleukeia and Zeus Keraunios at Antioch. These cults can be identified as based upon pre-existing local (Syrian) cults adjusted to the new ‘multi-cultural’ context of colonization by means of religious translation. Yet they were presented as very ancient Greek cults that had been rediscovered. Myths of shared ancestry came into being in which typical transcultural mediators such as Perseus and Herakles played leading roles; these tales connected the cities to Greece but most of all to the globalizing Hellenistic koinē that the Seleukids claimed to lead.
The notion of rediscovery and the ideology of a return created a sense of belonging for migrants coming from the Aegean; but most of all it facilitated the creation of a coherent Hellenic identity for the ethnically mixed communities of Antioch and Seleucia, which included many ‘Syrians’ too. Thus, the process of transcultural translation of deities and cults enabled the co-existence of varied migrant groups and local populations.
The dynastic representation created by Antiochos I of Kommagene continues to puzzle historians and archaeologist. Its meaning usually is considered either in the light of the Achaemenid past that Antiochos so emphatically refers to on Nemrut Dağı, or from the perspective of Roman history. In the first case, Antiochos is seen as an "eastern" monarch and his royal and religious imagery is accordingly decoded as ancient Persian traditions in Greek disguise. In the second case, Antiochos is seen as a client king whose main political aim was to position his small kingdom in a world dominated by Rome.
But for an alleged client king, Antiochos referred remarkably little to Rome in his self-presentation. Moreover, in the mid-1st century BCE, Roman dominance in the Near East was not a foregone conclusion: when Antiochos succeeded to the throne of Commagene the greatest power in the Near East was the Armenian Empire of Tigranes the Great; after Tigranes’ fall, the Parthian Empire successfully challenged Roman supremacy in the region. Moreover, for a local ruler, Antiochos made remarkably grand political statements: he adopted the imperial title of Great King, claimed to be a descendant of Alexander the Great and a successor to both the Seleucid and the Achaemenid empires.
This contribution aims to understand Antiochos’ kingship from neither the Persian past nor the Roman future. Instead, it considers Antiochos' monarchy in its contemporary late-Hellenistic context. It shows that Antiochus' royal representation overwhelmingly refers to the Seleucids (and only rarely to the Achaemenids). It argues that the alleged idiosyncratic imagery and rhetoric found on Nemrud Dağ and elsewhere in Commagene can be understood as part of a wider movement among local rulers in the Near East in response to Seleucid collapse.
This article studies how the Hekatomnids of Karia exploited the landscape and used architecture to create performative spaces for the social rituals of the court and the ‘theater of kingship’. Such rituals were instrumental in creating elite allegiance and cohesion. Their building activities focusing on ancestral tombs generated social memory while their patronage of sanctuaries created ‘authority of place’ through local gods. While Labraunda was instrumental in integrating territory into the system of Hekatomnid dominion, Halikarnassos functioned as a ‘magnet’ to attract representatives of local elites to the imperial center. The Hekatomnids thus provided a multifaceted template for the way that Hellenistic kings integrated territory and negotiated their power vis-à-vis local populations.
“Rolf Strootman and Christina Williamson’s chapter is actually pre-Hellenistic in focus, offering an examination of the Hecatomnid use of sacred sites in the construction of a ‘royal landscape’ in Achaemenid Caria. They argue that it was proto-Hellenistic in some respects, with a wide influence on Hellenistic royal architecture, yet also that the Hecatomnid building programme was additionally rooted in Achaemenid and Ionian models. Alongside functional and practical issues, how construction and landscape were used in royal and dynastic projections is a key focus of the chapter, as is involvement with imperial networks. This is a valuable study of the importance of place in the performance and negotiation of royal power, and it is helpful particularly for framing the dialogue between ‘local’ and ‘imperial’: in this respect, it will be an important read for historians of the Hellenistic empires. There are also some really excellent colour images in this chapter too.” John Holton in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2022.12.27.
The article studies cultural developments in Hellenistic-period Iran by looking at “Hellenistic” and “Persianistic” trends. It is shown that it is impossible to draw a line between “Greek” and “Iranian” culture. The prevalent notion of an antagonism between Greco-Macedonian and Iranian elites in the Hellenistic world, viz., the Seleukid Empire, is criticized.
The evidence for Hellenistic or Persianistic style in (Greater) Iran is invariably connected with imperial ideas and dynastic identities, not with ethnic groups per se. Though the top layer of philoi at the Seleukid imperial court may originally have been recruited mainly among Aegean civic elites, local rulers and military leaders in the Upper Satrapies were for a large part local Iranians, who interacted with their peers through a system of interconnected dynastic courts. In religion, eastern deities could be given the iconography of Greek gods and Greek names—but this does not imply that a syncretism of cults also took place.
Cultures are always in flux and changes occur most strongly when geopolitical circumstances change, especially when empires break down or are created. Despite the overall trans-Eurasian connectivity that came into being during the Persian and Hellenistic periods—forerunner of what Jack Goody called the remarkable “relative cultural unity” of later Silk Road societies—it is most of all the astounding variety and richness of local cultures in the globalizing so-called “Hellenistic World” that remains a wonderful and intriguing phenomenon.
The Treaty of Apameia was only a temporary setback for the Seleukid Empire. Antiochos IV Epiphanes (r. 175–164 BCE) aimed at reestablishing Seleukid hegemony in the Aegean, including Greece. He had a realistic assessment of Roman military strength, but he had no reason to consider his own empire secondary to that of the Romans. He introduced an elite unit of 5,000 Roman-style ‘legionaries’ into his army in order to be better prepared for a new military confrontation with Rome. As his propaganda at the Daphne Festival shows, Antiochos IV wished to be seen as the unequaled ruler of a universal empire, just as all Seleukid and Achaemenid emperors before him had done. The Daphne Festival showed the vast extent of Seleukid imperial space, and its huge miitary resources. The military nature and aggressive, expansionist ideology of Seleukid kingship left him no other choice than to be aggressive and expansionist. Of course, the reestablishment of wavering Seleukid hegemony in the Upper Satrapies (Iran and Central Asia)—the military powerhouse of the empire—to him was more important than a renewed confrontation with Rome.
The idea of Roman supremacy before c. 150 BCE is a creation from hindsight, first, and most famously, fabricated by Polybios. Roman influence in the Near East before that date in fact was negligible; Near Eastern sources show no awareness of the existence of a powerful Roman Empire at all. Polybios’ notion of “symploke”, often seen as the first formulation of a theory of globalization, presents a biased and very limited vision, as it does not take into account Mesopotamia, Iran, Central Asia, and the Indian Ocean world—regions that were integral parts of the “Hellenistic World” of cultural, political and economic interactions. Modern historians may debate the question whether the Mediterranean really was the core of the Ancient World, as Polybios posits, or rather its western periphery. Antiochos IV, the ‘King of Asia’ at any rate did not subscribe to Polybios’ view of the world.
I have noticed that this article is often interpreted as an argument against Parthian independence under Arsakes I and his immediate successors. That is not what I believe. I argue that in the later third century BCE, the Arsakid dynasty did become an independent polity but that it remained loosely integrated into a wider Seleukid imperial koine. I also argue that it is wrong to think of the Arsakid kingdom (or any ancient kingdom) as a sovereign territorial state comparable to the modern nation state, and that not every kingdom is also an empire. The Hellenistic ‘state’ system was hierarchical; it did not resemble the Westphalian chess board model. In other words, I argue not against Parthian independence but against the prevailing opinion among contemporary scholars that Parthian independence made the Arsakid royal dynasty the internationally recognized equal of the Seleukid imperial dynasty, and that Parthian independence immediately and irreversibly terminated Seleukid claims to imperial hegemony in the Upper Satrapies (Iran and Central Asia). There is evidence for an ongoing Seleukid presence in the Upper Satrapies until 148 BCE, while Arsakid coinage shows that an Arsakid empire was not established until after that date, when Mithradates I ‘the Great’, conquered western Iran and Babylonia, and appropriated Seleukid imperial titulature and imagery. I assume that during the decades preceding Mithradates’ conquest of Babylonia, Arsakids and Seleukids competed for hegemony in Iran: because premodern Eurasian empires usually are not bounded territorial ‘states’ but dynamic network polities aimed at accessing manpower and resources, it is perfectly possible that two (or more) empires simultaneously maintain networks of allegiance within the same region, in this case Iran. History rarely follows a clear-cut, unidirectional trajectory, and imperial histories in particular can be quite messy.
During the Hellenistic Period (c. 330-30 BCE), Alexander the Great and his successors reshaped their Persian and Greco-Macedonian legacies to create a new kind of rulership that was neither ‘western’ nor ‘eastern’ and would profoundly influence the later development of court culture and monarchy in both the Roman West and Iranian East. Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires approaches the Argead, Seleucid, Ptolemaic, and Antigonid empires not as territorial states but as network polities based on personal relations converging at the respective dynastic courts. Drawing on the socio-political models of Norbert Elias and Charles Tilly, and covering topics such as palace architecture, royal women, court factions, and monarchical ritual, the book shows how the Hellenistic courts were instrumental in the integration of local elites in the empires, and the (re)distribution of power, wealth, and status. It analyses the competition among courtiers for royal favor and the, not always successful, attempts of the Hellenistic rulers to use these struggles to their own advantage.
The Hellenistic Age was a period of intensified globalization, and it was through the royal court that writers and scientists were able to gain access to the extensive elite networks that connected communities throughout the Mediterranean and beyond. Literary authors contributed to the growth of interconnectivity by creating a common ‘Hellenistic’ imperial culture and language, as well as through the expression of imperial themes in their work. Most notable among the latter was the idea that the civilized world was, or ought to be, a single peaceful oikoumene, of which Alexandria was the glorious, magnetic heart.
There were some striking recurring themes and conclusions in the volume's different contributions. First the phenomenon of overlapping imperial spheres, which may be thought of as typical for maritime empires, and in addition the subsequent interimperial competition that was an important incentive for intra-imperial developments (Borschberg, Kirk, Lane, Mörke, Singh, Strootman, van Wijk). Three contributions pointed out the existence of unofficial “shadow networks” utilizing the same networks as the “official”, imperial ones (Antunes, Lane, Raben). The complex interweaving of economic, political and social motivations in the process of empire was emphasized by five contributors (Antunes, Borschberg, Heebøll-Holm, Kelder, Raben). Then there was the notion of multipolarity, as opposed to the conventional center-periphery model (Antunes, Singh, Strootman). And finally, an important point that merits more research especially in the field of ancient empire studies: the phenomenon of the commissioned “freelance” entrepreneur who invests in an imperial project for personal profit (Antunes, Heebøll-Holm, Strootman, Van den Eijnde).
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Abstract: Alexander III famously co-opted Persian nobles for the management of his empire, and initiated a policy of intermarriage with the leading families of the former Achaemenid Empire. Alexander’s ‘Iranian policy’ is considered a failure in conventional scholarship. In opposition to this perceived idea, I argue that Alexander's principal successors in western Asia, first the early Antigonids and then the Seleukids, successfully continued this policy. Iran and Iranians in fact were of pivotal importance especially to Seleukid rule and military power during the third century BCE. Seleukid decline in the course of the second century BCE allowed local Iranian dynasties to reassert themselves in the peripheries of the Seleukid world. Challenging the modernist interpretation of the so-called ‘Persian Revival’ of the later Hellenistic Period as a form of national resistance to foreign colonial rule, my paper aims to trace the development of Iranian elites between the fall of the Achaemenids and rise of the Arsakids, and their political and cultural significance in the period of Macedonian domination.
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the entanglement of popular culture and archaeology. From the early nineteenth century, the conceptualization of ancient Greek culture as “western” stimulated a profound interest in the alleged influence of Hellenism on Central Asia and India among European scholars. Archaeologists in British India looked for Greek influence on early Buddhist art while explorers ventured into Afghanistan in search of archaeological traces of Alexander’s campaign. The travel accounts they published inspired fictional accounts, most prominently Rudyard Kipling’s 1888 story “The man who would be king”.
The development of the “lost city” theme in Victorian literature—found also famously in Rider Haggard’s colonial fantasies King Solomon’s Mines (1885) and She (1887)—went hand in hand with sensational archaeological discoveries by actual treasure hunters such as Henri Layard, Heinrich Schliemann, and Aurel Stein. Central Africa and Central Asia were the main loci for such stories, which in the latter case were closely connected to the colonial myth of Central Asian remoteness. The idea that a substantial Hellenistic legacy was yet to be discovered in dangerous and isolated mountain lands of Central Asia became widespread in western popular culture. This in turn, I argue, influenced scholarly interest and encouraged attempts to travel through Central Asia “in the footsteps of Alexander”—until finally a forgotten "Greek" city was actually uncovered at the site of Ai Khanoum.
My paper explores the topic of Alexander’s presumed hidden legacy in Afghanistan by focusing on a lesser known but paradigmatic adaptation of the theme: “The lost valley of Iskander”, an adventure story by American pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) set against the background of the Great Game. My paper highlights the colonialist and even racist ideas underlying the modern western appropriation of the so-called Greco-Baktrian kingdoms and the western obsession with finding the traces of Alexander in Afghanistan.
The Old Persian imperial titles Great King and King of Kings (xšâyaθiya vazraka and xšâyaθiya xšâyaθiyânâm) disappeared after the Macedonian conquest of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BCE. But ca. 125 years later, the title Great King returned in a Greek version: basileus megas. That title was adopted around 205 BCE by the Seleukid emperor Antiochos III and several of his successors. Antiochos III moreover was given the title of Megas, ‘the Great’, even before Alexander of Macedon was awarded that epithet. The adoption of these titles marked a major shift in Seleukid Imperial politics, and can i.a. be associated with the increasing significance of Iranian elites in the empire.
In the mid-second BCE, the Parthian ruler Mithradates I (who is also known as ‘the Great’) adopted the title of basileus megas, too. He did so after his conquest of media and Mesopotamia. The adoption of this title coincided with the introduction of a fundamentally different iconography on Parthian royal coinage. Not long afterwards, another Parthian king, Mithradates II, switched to the title King of Kings (basileus basileōn) – yet another major break with the immediate imperial past.
In this lecture we will investigate what these tiles signified, and how they can be related to political change. We will also look into the question how far these titles referred to earlier imperial dynasties, especially the Achaemenids.
University of St Andrews, 11-14th July 2018.
Organized by Eran Almagor, Timothy Howe & B. Antela-Bernárdez
In the Seleukid Empire, king and court interacted with local communities by protecting local and regional sanctuaries. Moreover, the king and his itinerant court regularly visited cities. During such visits, the king personally participated in local cults, providing offerings and often performing the crucial act of sacrificing to a community’s principal deity. The religious sphere thus became a major contact zone for localized elites and the dynastic court: sanctuaries constituted ‘middle grounds’ where people could interact under the impartial supervision of a collectively recognized divine power, having accepted in advance certain ritualized modes of behavior.
Using globalization theory and a network approach to empire, this paper aims to investigate the impact of these local-imperial interactions on the development of religious cults and beliefs in the Near East, and on the wide distribution of certain deities and cult practices among the culturally diverse populations of the empire.
To register and to view the program and speakers' abstracts, visit https://www.nino-leiden.nl/event/4th-nino-annual-meeting-othering-identity.
Taking the reader from the Early Iron Age to the Imperial Period, this volume launches an essential inquiry into Greek power relations. Focusing on the myriad of patronage roles at the feast and making use of a wide variety of methodologies and primary sources, including archaeology, epigraphy and literature, Feasting and Polis Institutions argues that in ancient Greece political interaction could never be complete until it was consummated in a festive context.
This paper reviews the various ways in which a modernist East-West dichotomy has distorted historical interpretations of the Hellenistic world. The conventional equation of the Seleukid Empire with a European nation state by ascribing to it such modern features as official borders, average population density, a capital, an impersonal centralized administration, and so forth, is also discussed. As a new avenue of research, it is proposed to see ancient empires not as rigidly structured “states” but as dynamic, negotiated enterprises and flexible networks of personal relations centered on the dynasty and the court, and thereby to hook up with the Imperial Turn in World History.
Written in 2011; revised version 2012. Unpublished: peer reviewers' reactions to this paper were so hostile that I decided to see it as unpublishable in an academic journal (though times may now have changed in favor of a more nuanced view of culture and identity in the so-called Hellenistic World), as well as a more inclusive view of Classics and Ancient History, one in which the Near East, Iran, and Central Asia/India, as well as East Africa, are no longer viewed as peripheral to the Ancient World.
From Constantine's transfer of the Palladium from Rome to Constantinople, to Sultan Selim I's symbolic acquisition of the keys to the Ka'aba, objects, both tangible and symbolic, have played a pivotal role in shaping and symbolizing the connectivity between Constantinople and its urban counterparts. These objects can provide us with an unique lens through which to examine Constantinople's development, potentially revealing a kaleidoscope of inter-urban exchanges that contributed to the city's development and that of others. They enable us to conceptualize the convergence of real and imagined inter-urban connections on Constantinople, highlighting how the accumulation, curation, and distribution of objects intersected with the ambitions of the city's ruling elites, and the inter-civic networks fashioned by means of them. Through the complex history of objects, brought to the city from other cities, and distributed or forcibly taken from it, Constantinople emerges as a relational space, characterized by the movement of objects between cities and the inter-urban relationships maintained by them. This workshop seeks to explore the profound impact of such objects on the inter-civic
relationships between Constantinople and its counterparts, and offer new insights into the intricate dynamics of urban connectivity from antiquity to the present day. We intend to explore how objects served as key mediators in shaping, imagining, and maintaining inter-urban relationships between Constantinople and other cities.