Pages 190-197
From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire
(Susan Sherwin-White and Amelie Kuhrt. Duckworth: London. 1993.)
Armenia in the third century
Antiochus' eastern campaigns are often understated and underplayed, written off as insignificant and ephemeral. In fact, Antiochus was not only consolidating and clarifying relations with dynasts, but possibly also adding new territories to the Seleucid empire. Beginning in 212, Commagene, north of Syria, and north Armenia were brought under direct Seleucid control with the imposition of satraps and the king of south Armenia was made to pay arrears of tribute and contribute to Antiochus Ill's campaign:
When Xerxes was king of the city (polis) of Arsamosata, which lies near the 'Fair Plain', between the Euphrates and Tigris, Antiochus the king, encamping in front of this city, undertook its siege. When Xerxes saw the forces of the king, at first he made himself scarce, but after a time, fearing that if his palace was taken by the enemy, the rest of his realm would be destabilised too, changed his mind and sent a message to Antiochus, proposing talks. The Friends that Antiochus trusted advised him not to let the young man go once he had got hold of him, but, having taken possession of the city, to bestow the realm (dynasteia) on Mithridates, who was the natural son of Antiochus' sister (cf. Schmitt 1964, 28; later, probably adopted by Antiochus). The king paid no attention to these men, but sent for the young man and ended the enmity, remitting the greater part of the money which his father still owed for tribute (phoroi). Having received an immediate payment of three hundred talents from him, and a thousand horses, and a thousand mules with harness, he restored all his (Xerxes') dominions, and by giving his sister Antiochis in marriage (i.e. instead of giving the realm to Antiochis' son) conciliated and attached to himself all the inhabitants of those districts, and won a reputation for having handled affairs in a kingly and magnanimous manner. (Polyb. VIII 23)
Antiochus subsequently had Xerxes poisoned through his sister, for reasons that can only be guessed (John of Antioch F53 (FHGIV p. 557): on the date of this, in the last years of the third century (202/1?), see Schmitt 1964, 28 n. 7). An instructive analogy is provided by Sargon of Assyria's (721-705) attempt to secure the loyalty of the ruler of Bit-Burutash (in Cappadocia), lying along the extreme north-western frontier of the Assyrian empire: first, he installed a pro-Assyrian ruler; secondly, when the initial nominee's son succeeded, Sargon gave him his daughter in marriage together with the territory of a defeated, neighbouring state as dowry; when the king of Bit-Burutash nevertheless rebelled some years later, he was removed from the throne and deported with his retinue while, it has been plausibly argued, Sargon's daughter, together with a staff, continued to administer the region in her father's, hence Assyrian imperial, interest (cf. Hawkins 1982, 419; Postgate 1973, 31).
Although there are many uncertainties about Armenia under Alexander and the Seleucids, Strabo's description of the area (XI 14,1-16) does indicate that Alexander ruled it after the Achaemenids, and the Seleucids after Alexander (XI 15,1); and Appian (Syr. 55) lists Armenia among the possessions of Seleucus I. Alexander did not in person conduct any campaigns in Armenia, which lay remote from his main objectives. We know that after Darius' defeat at Gaugamela, Alexander appointed a Persian, Mithrines, as satrap (Arrian, Anab. Ill 16,5). How peaceful the transfer of power was is uncertain since no account of the takeover has survived. The next datable testimony belongs to 321 by which time Mithrines had been replaced, or succeeded, by a Macedonian (D.S. XVII 64,6). That Alexander sent an expedition of some sort to Armenia (north or south is uncertain) is inferable from Strabo; when describing the resources of Armenia Strabo cites gold-mines at a place called Hyspiritis (location unknown), to which Alexander sent a force of soldiers on reconnaissance (Strabo XI 14,9). The Macedonian 'conquest' of Armenia did arouse contemporary interest in so far as the Thessalian Medius of Larisa, an officer of Alexander, wrote an archaeologia of Armenia, postulating, inter alia, the Thessalian origin of the Armenians and the Thessalian derivation of certain aspects of their culture (e.g. dress, horsemanship, even population: Strabo XI 14,12). Pearson's suggestion (1960, 68-9)) that the point of Medius' stories was political - to represent Armenia as a hellenised area (a difficult task for his time) which Alexander liberated from alien Persian rule — is hard to prove since so little of the work remains. The tenor of Medius' writing, so revealingly that of a Thessalian, may also be explained as part and parcel of a lasting Greek taste for a cultural imperialism that consisted of deriving other civilisations from the Greek and an understandable (and familiar) approach to the assimilation of unfamiliar cultures by seeing similarities (real or imaginary). However, nothing further is learnt about the purpose or results of the Macedonian expedition.
We know very little about Armenia under Seleucid rule before the reign of Antiochus III (see above pp. 15-17). There are precisely three references to Armenia in the third century before this at points, characteristically for the sources, when it was aiding enemies of, or rebels against, the Seleucid kings. Diodorus (XXXI 19,5), drawing on an unnamed source which could be Polybius, described how the Seleucids lost Cappadocia in c. 260, when an Armenian king with a Persian name, Ardoates (perhaps to be corrected to Aroantes, and so identifiable with Aroandes-Orontes: Marquart 1928, 231), gave support to Ariarathes, who killed the Seleucid governor of Cappadocia, expelled the Seleucid forces and founded a dynasty. Memnon (FGrH 434 F14) refers to Ziaelas, son of Nicomedes I of Bithynia, taking refuge with 'the king of the Armenians', who is unnamed, in about the mid-third century. Finally, Polyaenus (IV 17) has a notice about the Armenian king Arsames, identifiable as the father of Xerxes, who showed some freedom of action in c. 229/8 by giving refuge to Antiochus Hierax after the latter had failed to oust the reigning and legitimate king, Seleucus II. It is notable that on the coins of Arsames (Head 1911, 754), which bear his name and title in Greek, he wears the satrapal tiara familiar from the coins of Achaemenid satraps, with a diadem tied around. He does not, in contrast to contemporary kings of Cappadocia, follow Greek fashion and appear bare-headed save for the diadem on coins. The Armenian kings never do this. The inference from this extremely sparse evidence is that Armenia was ruled by local dynasts, who seem to have been perceived by the Seleucids as under their suzerainty.
Strabo gives potentially useful information about a new direction given to Seleucid policy by Antiochus III in Armenia. In his account of historical Armenia, he notes briefly the rule of the Achaemenids, followed by that of Alexander and of the Seleucids. In the context of the Seleucids, he mentions a certain Orontes as 'the last' to rule (XI 14,15). He next relates Antiochus' reorganisation of Armenia, after Orontes' rule, by which the country was divided between two men with Persian names, Artaxias (Artaxerxes) and Zariadris, probably father and son (see below), who, Strabo states, ruled as 'generals' (strategoi, i.e. satraps) until, after Antiochus' defeat by Rome in 190, they asserted their independence, assuming the title basileus (XI 14,5; 14,15). There is no difficulty about Orontes' position since he could have been, as in the context seems right, one of the local kings of the Seleucid system; Strabo does not use the verb basilein (to rule as king) of him, but hyparchein (to govern/to rule as a subordinate). Orontes' absence from Polybius is not significant because we now have merely scattered fragments of Book VIII, where Antiochus' Armenian campaign was described.
Strabo, in his very concise account, does not explain the circumstances of Orontes' replacement. Had he died, or was he removed? But it is notable that Strabo specifically remarked that Orontes claimed descent from Hydarnes (Vidarna), i.e. one of the seven Persian nobles who set Darius the Great on the throne (DB §68 (IV, 84-5); Hdt. Ill 70) and as a result secured for themselves hereditary privileges within the Achaemenid kingdom. Strabo's comment should not, probably, be taken as casual genealogical information of merely antiquarian interest, but rather be set in a political context. It was the practice in the hellenistic period for Iranian kings of territories that were formerly Achaemenid satrapies to trace their descent from old leading Persian families linked by ties of marriage to the Achaemenid dynasty, or to the Seven who had helped establish Darius' usurpation. This is true of the kings of Pontus (Meyer 1879/1968, 31-8) and Cappadocia, and later those of Commagene (Dorner 1975, 26-31). The Cappadocian dynasty, for example, whose partially fictitious genealogy is preserved in Diodorus (XXXI 19,1-2), traced its line back both to the Seven and even to Cyrus the Great. Iranian dynasts in the hellenistic period found that descent from the Achaemenids or one of the six great Persian families, whether fictitious or not, helped to validate their claims to legitimate rule as rightful heirs to the Achaemenids. This, probably, is the significance of Strabo's reference to Orontes' descent from one of Darius' helpers. Indeed the late-third-century Orontes had a formidable array of Achaemenid satraps of Armenia named Orontes to cite. Thus, for example, at the time of Cyrus the Younger's revolt against Artaxerxes II an Orontes was satrap of Armenia; he remained loyal, a service for which he was well rewarded with Artaxerxes' sister, Rhodogyne, as wife (Plutarch Artaxerxes 27; Xenophon, Anab. II 4,8; III 4,13). In 331 an Orontes is again named as satrap of Armenia (Arrian Anab. Ill 8,5), commanding the large Armenian forces and cavalry at Gaugamela. Then, in 316, an Orontes emerges again as satrap of Armenia, writing in Aramaic to the Macedonian satrap of Persis, Peucestas (D.S. XIX 23,3; on the problems of sorting out the second and third generation of Orontes in the fourth century see Judeich 1892, 221-5; Osborne 1975, 291ff.; Hornblower 1982, 176ff. and nn. 48, 58). The importance of this marriage link of the Orontid family with the Achaemenids in hellenistic dynastic politics is reflected in the appearence of Orontes, husband of Rhodogyne, among the ancestors of Antiochus IV of Commagene (AD 38-72) at Antiochus' monumental tomb at Nemrud-Dagh (Dorner 1975, 26-31).
Manandian (1965: to be used with caution, cf. J. and L. Robert 1952, 184-5) saw the possibility of identifying our late-third-century Iranian Orontes as 'the last to rule' of the same family dynasty and suggested, as is also possible, the continuing rule of the Orontids in the earlier third century (cf. above). We could have here an instance, not unparalleled, of the survival of the quasi-dynastic rule of the old Achamenid satraps (and perhaps, therefore, of an ancient power structure). If so, this gives a more complex background to Antiochus' choice of a different Persian family, whom he apparently kept as satraps, perhaps out of tact to supporters of Orontes and any family, as well as a determination to exercise a more direct control over them. Artaxias (Greek Artaxerxes), one of Antiochus' two new satraps, is named on three 'boundary' stones, inscribed in Aramaic, which were discovered near Lake Sevan in the far north of Armenia (Frye 1962, 277ff. and nn. 35, 37; Dupont-Sommer 1946-8; Donner/Rollig 1973-9, nos. 274-5), mentioning Artaxias as king and son of Zariatr (Greek Zariadries), dated to the reign of Artaxias I (c. 190-164). Antiochus gave Artaxias north Armenia (Great Armenia) and Zariadris southern Armenia, specifically Sophene (Strabo XI 14,5; 14,15), as their respective satrapies, so that Zariadries succeeded to the kingdom of Xerxes and Artaxias to that of Orontes.
It is very probably to the reign of Antiochus III, possibly before the appointment of Artaxias and Zariadris, that a fascinating group of Greek rock inscriptions belongs, which have, with the exception of Manandian, been totally neglected by historians (Plates 23-6). In 1914 three Greek inscriptions were found carved on a rock face of the southern slope of a hill at Armavir (modern Echmiadzin), which lies north-west of Mount Ararat in the fertile plain of the river Araxes, within the Soviet Republic of Armenia. In 1927, four more inscriptions, also in Greek, were found at the same site at a distance of about twelve metres from the first series to be found. They were published in 1942, and again in 1946, in Russian and Armenian by the Russian and Armenian scholars, Boltunova and Manandian. They did not become accessible in the west until in 1952 the Roberts gave the texts and brief but valuable comments in the Bulletin Epigraphique (181-7). In 1953, Trever republished the texts in his Russian book on Armenian archaeology (pp. 134-7; 142-7). Since then, save for Manandian's work, used by Burney and Lang (1971, 191-2), they have not been utilised by hellenistic historians, no doubt largely because of their comparative inaccessibility and partly because of the time of their publication — after hellenistic scholars like Rostovtzeff, Bengtson and Bickerman had completed their major works on hellenistic history. The inscriptions can be dated approximately to 200, on the basis of the lettering (cf. J. and L. Robert 1952, 184-5). They are all inscribed in similar, rather irregular cursive lettering (cf. Plates 23-6) of a character paralleled by other examples of cursive style among Seleucid inscriptions of the late third and early second century (for example, the Eriza copy of the edict of Antiochus III (below p. 205) and early-second-century manumissions from Susa).
The inscriptions comprise: (1) a fragmentary text referring to Hesiod and to his brother Perses (Plate 23); (2) a compilation of extracts of dramatic verses, including a quotation from Euripides' Hippolytus (Habicht 1953), either a collection of copy-book sentences learnt by heart in elementary education, or else a gnomic anthology, illustrating a particular moral theme; (3) a list, perhaps an inventory, of uncertain significance (Plate 24). These inscriptions were separated (by a distance of about 12 metres) from nos 4-7; (4) The beginning of a letter from a King of the Armadoeiroi (unknown), named Mithras, to 'Orontes king', expressing in conventional language greetings, wishes for the king's good health and that of his offspring (eggona), and probably for his continuing prosperity in ruling his basileia, which is mentioned (Plate 25); (5) a list of the months of a calendar (Plate 26); (6) a partially preserved letter addressed to 'the Hellene Noumenios', perhaps from a king who is mentioned but not named in the surviving text; (7) an inscription, partially preserved, in which Noumenios reports to a female, described by the epithet philadelphos (brother lover), familiar in hellenistic royal terminology, apparently telling bad news in poetic language (?the death of Orontes). What are the meaning and functions of this strange medley of inscriptions?
There can be little certainty. Nos. 1-3, which are physically one group, may be functionally similar, i.e. school texts, since the practice, apparently followed here, of grouping extracts by literary genre, epic verse (no. 1) and dramatic (no. 2), is paralleled in surviving anthologies; lists of words (no. 3?) also survive as school texts, though usually the educational point of the list is clear. Nos. 4-7 seem to be of a different character. Nos. 4, 6 and 7, appear to be public documents -official correspondence, in Greek, of local rulers and an official, who was Greek. The calendar, no. 5, is not necessarily out of place since the order of the months establishes that it was that of the official Seleucid calendar, which any place within the Seleucid sphere would need to be familiar with and use. Letter no. 4 is particularly interesting. Orontes has the title basileus; his territory (like that of other Seleucid local rulers) is a basileia; he has offspring - a royal succession, for whose health it was traditional to express concern in the royal correspond¬ence of the hellenistic period. A ruler named Mithras is not otherwise known. Noumenios, the name of a later Seleucid satrap in the reign of Antiochus IV (but it is a common Greek name), could be either a Seleucid official, or a high-ranking official of Orontes. That the king Orontes of the Armavir inscription is to be identified as the Seleucid ruler of that name is very hard to disbelieve. If this second group of inscriptions constitutes a little group of authentic official documents, then it would appear from no. 4 that Orontes did have successors had Antiochus III wished to continue his dynasty. In fact, Antiochus chose to replace the existing dynasties in both north and south Armenia.
Apart from these Greek inscriptions, there is an almost total dearth of Greek material from hellenistic Greater Armenia. The comparative scarcity of excavated sites from the late fourth to the second century in both Turkish and Soviet Armenia, the lack of casual or 'illicit' finds from this period, plus the destruction by the early Armenian Church of pagan remains, means that the archaeological background is a virtual vacuum for the third to second centuries. The sole exception is the site of Garni, a fortified city, \svhich has been systematically excavated in the hills, 18 miles east of Erevan. It was used as a residence by the kings of North Armenia from the second century (Burney/Lang 1971, 250-1; Lang 1980, 144). The long-accepted view, based primarily upon the literary evidence, that public philhellenism and patronage of Greek culture was first manifested in the first century by the king Tigranes the Great (95-55), requires some modification now (cf. J. and L. Robert 1952, 184-5). While it might be conceivable that these inscriptions were to do with a Seleucid colony, of which otherwise there is no attestation, for example the school texts nos. 1 and 2, this guess does not fit well with nos. 4, 6 and 7. That the decision to memorialise in Greek some texts of official letters on the pattern of the Seleucid kings emanated from Orontes, or from high officials at court, seems probable. This suggestion is supported by several un-Greek characteristics of the inscriptions, apart from misspellings; for example, the choice of rock for the display of official documents is not Greek but a widespread practice of eastern kingdoms; the reference to Noumenios as 'the Greek' would not occur in Greek hellenistic royal correspondence, where officials are described simply by personal name and others by name, patronymic and city ethnic. This usage can be taken to indicate that the king of no. 6, possibly also Orontes, was not Greek, and furthermore, not surprisingly, that Greeks in this area were to be remarked upon. We know from their coins that in Sophene the kings Arsames and Xerxes were using Greek legends by the last quarter of the third century. There is no reason to doubt that communication existed between south and north Armenia and between the latter and the Seleucid empire; indeed the fact that the cursive Greek script used to inscribe the Armavir inscriptions mirrors the contemporary cursive used in Seleucid inscriptions of the period indirectly points to this communication. Furthermore, a little later, Artaxias I, Orontes' successor, was to coin in silver, with Greek legends naming him King Artaxias the Great (Seyrig 1955; Bedoukian 1968). He may, in his public use of Greek, have followed the example of Orontes, who seems to have made some use of Greek for the publication of at least some documents, while the school texts may reflect the teaching and learning of Greek, probably for his court or a section of it. How much earlier this goes back is unknown. Needless to say, it is important not to exaggerate, but to remember the continuing use of Aramaic, as Artaxias' inscriptions show; no doubt this remained the usual language for local government in this area during the hellenistic period.
