[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
Classica et Orientalia made its debut in 2011, quickly establishing itself as a premier collection of both single- and multi-authored monographs, and here we are, barely a dozen years later, with volume 31 in this outstanding series. The present review is dedicated to the proceedings of the Third Payravi Conference on Ancient Iranian History, convened at the University of California (Irvine) on February 24th and 25th, 2020, just days before the Covid pandemic changed the world as we knew it. This volume marks an important, stimulating addition to the growing body of studies on the Seleucids in the East, with a particular focus on the Seleucids in Iran and their place in Iranian history, more broadly. Although it cannot be said that there has ever been a shortage of secondary literature on Alexander’s conquests and the Seleucid empire, works like Alfred von Gutschmid’s posthumously published Geschichte Irans und seiner Nachbarländer von Alexander dem Grossen bis zum Untergang der Arsaciden (1888) — a work cited by none of the contributors to this volume, it might be noted — are few and far between. Tackling the subject matter as a classicist or ancient historian is very different from looking at it as an Iranologist. The volume under review seeks to bridge that divide and spark conversations across disciplinary boundaries.
Having said that, the title is somewhat misleading for, as Daryaee and Rollinger write in their Introduction, “This volume attempts to evaluate the effect of Seleucid rule over the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia, not in the context of Seleucid imperial history, but rather primarily in the context of ancient Iranian history” (p. 2). As the comments below make clear, this was not always successfully achieved. Moreover, Mesopotamia is not the same as Iran, even if it became a political center from which authority over parts of Iran was exercised. Nor are Syria, Assyria or Bactria, specifically the site of Ai Khanum, unless one wants to use the boundaries of the preceding Achaemenid empire as the baseline for studies of Iran, sensu lato, and the Seleucids. The geographical spread in the papers here is less a reflection of how scholars view the Iran-Seleucid nexus, than it is of how few specialists there are who actually deal with Iran per se in the Seleucid period.
Focusing then on those papers that are more tightly focused on Iran, we begin with Rolf Strootman who asks how, or in what sense, the Seleucid empire may be considered Iranian? His answer is that it was “partly Iranian, for two reasons,” namely, because the Iranian (i.e. ex-Achaemenid) provinces of Media, Bactria and Sogdiana “were major sources for manpower, war horses, and elephants;” and, further, because of the co-optation of “Iranian elites…by the empire as local (vassal) rulers and allies” (p. 11). With respect to the first consideration, Strootman suggests that the notion that Seleucia-on-the-Tigris or Antioch-on-the-Orontes were, successively, capitals of the Seleucid empire “is a modernism,” i.e. an anachronism, whereas, in his opinion, during the third century, the empire “was in essence a multipolar network polity: it had an itinerant court and a variety of imperial centers, including Bactria, Ecbatana, Susa, Seleucia on the Tigris, Babylon, Seleucia in Pieria, and Sardis” (p. 19). Regarding Strootman’s second consideration, he admits that, “Of course, Iranians in Seleucid service may be invisible to us because they used Greek names” (p. 25), but he still believes Iranian participation was critical in recruiting troops, a point that reminds one of the obligations of subaltern tribal khans and governors in the Safavid and Qajar periods who were required to provide a specified number of irregular cavalry on demand.[1]
Privileging the Achaemenids, Arsacids and Sasanians, many scholars of Iranian history have neglected to consider the Elamites as part of the Iranian historical tradition, let alone as a force of any importance after the early first millennium BC. In his treatment of the Babylonian Astronomical Diaries as a source for Iranian history in the period c. 145–120 BC, Johannes Haubold, however, begins with a diary entry from the reign of Demetrius II that describes an Elamite invasion of Babylonia by Kammaškiri, i.e. Kamniskires (p. 173). That the Elamites, or Elymaeans as they are better known in literary sources of this period, continued to play an important role, particularly in the years that witnessed the loss of Seleucid control over their eastern territories and the assumption of control by the Arsacids, has long been recognized.[2] Haubold stresses the perspective of the Babylonian priesthood, i.e. the writers of the Astronomical Diaries, contending that their reaction to the Elamite invasion was less about the actual terror it caused in the land, than it was about the historical memories it rekindled of Elamites who “had haunted the Babylonian collective consciousness ever since they sacked Babylon in the dying days of the Kassite dynasty and abducted the statue of Marduk” (p. 174). There may have been an element of this, but one should not discount the very real destruction and loss of life that may have been brought about by the Elamite invasion of Babylonia, even an opportunistic and short-lived raid. More historical precision, or at least a recognition of some of the problems surrounding the identity of the rulers mentioned in the diaries, would have been helpful, and achievable, had Haubold referred to some of the relevant, newer numismatic literature.[3]
Although the important city of Susa and Susiana are mentioned only in passing in this volume,[4] Omar Coloru addresses the province of Media and one of its main cities, Ecbatana. Notwithstanding the title of his contribution, “Seen from Ecbatana: Aspects of Seleucid Policy in Media,” Coloru emphasizes the fact that Media was much greater than just the area around Ecbatana, modern Hamadan, in western Iran. Other important cities, further to the northeast, included Rhagae (p. 203), on the outskirts of the modern capital Tehran.[5] Coloru does not make very much of the important stele in the Iran Bastan Museum bearing a copy of an edict of Antiochus III, dated to 193 BC, which attests to the cult of Antiochus and his “forefathers” (progonoi), as well as a cult honoring his wife, queen Laodice.[6] In fact, Coloru notes merely that “the honorary inscription from Laodicea in Media attests to the commitment of Menedemus [satrap of Media] toward the kings” (p. 210).[7] Nor does he dwell on the well-known revolt of the satrap Molon which took place early in the reign of Antiochus III, focusing more on what became of the office of satrap in Media after Molon’s defeat and on the extent to which the satrap of Media was also responsible for the Upper Satrapies (p. 209). The lurking question of “boots on the ground” is barely broached. The attempt by Antiochus VII “to regain control of Media not only by force of arms but also by resorting to a traditional practice of (re)affirmation of royal authority” (p. 213) invites the question: how large was the Seleucid military presence in Media? How was this extensive territory controlled? How might Kleomenes and the Heracles relief at Bisotun, which Paul Kosmin termed “a colonial–imperial religious intervention at the Bisotun sanctuary, deploying the authorized iconographic and textual markers of the Seleucid kingdom,”[8] in the last years of Seleucid control, fit into this picture?
Finally, Christoph Schäfer’s study “The Seleucids and the Seas” misses an opportunity to engage with a fascinating topic, the Erythraean Sea and the Iranian seaboard of the Persian Gulf, devoting instead far more attention to Seleucid naval activity in the Mediterranean (pp. 275–282). No mention is made of Paul Kosmin’s attempt, now over a decade hence, to grapple with the very notion of “the Seleucid Gulf.”[9] Nor is the opportunity taken to engage with the thorny problem of the location of Antioch-in-Persis, sometimes located at or near modern Bushehr, on the Iranian coast, on which Georges Rougemont has authored an outstanding analysis.[10] Getzel Cohen’s work on Seleucid settlement in the Persian Gulf region[11] rates no mention whatsoever.
There is much in this valuable volume to ponder, but there is much that has not found its way onto its pages. Looking through the list of authors, one gets the feeling that, for a variety of historical and disciplinary reasons, Iran and Iranian history form the “core business” of very few of them. A deeper engagement with Iran is, in many cases, missing, which is not to question the fact that each and every one of the authors is an outstanding scholar; simply to stress that, for many of them, Iran is peripheral to much of their work. Iran is a landmass that is difficult to appreciate for those who have not visited it. Political developments in recent years have, if anything, made this even harder to achieve. “The effect of Seleucid rule over the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia” is not the same thing as “the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia” under Seleucid rule. The emphases, in each case, are very different. Iran deserves the attention of anyone interested in the Seleucids in the East, and this book will surely serve to whet the appetites of many historians who have not given much thought to the subject. But much more remains to be said on the topic.
Authors and Titles
Touraj Daryaee and Robert Rollinger, Introduction: Seleucid and Iranian History in Dialogue
Rolf Strootman, How Iranian was the Seleucid Empire?
Stanley M. Burnstein, The Seleucid Conquest of Koile Syria and the Incense Trade
Sara E. Cole, Seleucid and Ptolemaic Imperial Iconography in the Syrian Wars (174–168 BCE): The Role of Dynastic Women
Krsysztof Nawotka, Seleucus I and the Seleucid Dynastic Ideology: The Alexander Factor
Vito Messina, Seleucia-on-the-Tigris: Embedding Capitals in the Hellenizing Near East
Julian Degen, Seleucus I, Appian and Seleucia-on-the-Tigris: The Empire Becoming Visible in Seleucid ktíseis
Johannes Haubold, Iran in the Seleucid and Early Parthian Period: Two Views from Babylon
Rocco Palermo, From Sennacherib to the Seleucids: The Settled Landscape of the Assyrian Heartland during the Hellenistic Period
Omar Coloru, Seen from Ecbatana: Aspects of Seleucid Policy in Media
Laurianne Martinez-Sève, Seleucid Religious Architecture in Ai Khanum: A Case Study
Kai Ruffing, The Economy (-ies) of the Seleucid Empire
Christoph Schäfer, The Seleucids and the Seas
Sören Stark, Some Observations on the Early Seleucid Northeastern Frontier
Matthew P. Canepa, The Seleucid Empire and the Creation of a New Iranian World
Notes
[1] D.T. Potts, Nomadism in Iran: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, New York 2014.
[2] See e.g. D.T. Potts, The Archaeology of Elam: Formation and Transformation of an Ancient Iranian State, 1st ed., Cambridge 1999, 375–384; 2nd ed., Cambridge, 2016, 348–406; D.T. Potts, “Five Episodes in the History of Elymais, 145–124 B.C.: New Data from the Astronomica Diaries,” Cahiers de Studia Iranica 25 (2002), 349–362; M. Rahim Shayegan, Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia, Cambridge 2011, Table 3; Davide Salaris, The Kingdom of Elymais (ca. 301 BC–224 AD). A Comprehensive analysis (textual, archaeological and artistic) of one of the most important minor reigns in southern Iran, unpubl. PhD dissertation, Macquarie University 2017.
[3] G.R.F. Assar, “History and Coinage of Elymais during 150/149–122/121 BC,” Nāme-ye Irān-e Bāstān 4/2 (2004–2005), 27–91; P.A. van’t Haaff, Catalogue of Elymaean Coinage ca. 147 B.C.–A.D. 228, Lancaster/London 2007.
[4] The bibliography on Susa is large. See, in addition to the synthesis of archaeological, epigraphic and literary evidence in Potts, The Archaeology of Elam, the important works of G. Le Rider, Suse sous les Séleucides et les Parthes, Paris 1965; B. Kritt, The Early Seleucid Mint of Susa, Lancaster PA 1997; L. Martinez-Sève, “La ville de Suse à l’Époque hellénistique,” Revue archéologique 33/1 (2002), 31–53; and the relevant parts of G. Rougemont, Inscriptions grecques d’Iran et d’Asie centrale, London 2012.
[5] For which see now R. Rante, Rayy: From its Origins to the Mongol Invasion. An Archaeological and Historiographical Study, Leiden/Boston 2015.
[6] Rougemont, Inscriptions grecques, no. 67. On the use of Greek on Iranian territory see the important studies of P. Huyse, “Die Begegung zwischen Hellenen und Iraniern. Griechische epigraphische Zeugnisse von Griechenland bis Pakistan,” in C. Reck and P. Zieme, eds., Iran und Turfan: Beiträge Berliner Wissenschaftler, Werner Sundermann zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet, Wiesbaden 1995, 99–126; and “Die Rolle des Griechischen im ‘hellenistischen’ Iran,” in B. Funck, ed., Hellenismus: Beiträge zur Erforschung von Akkulturation und politischer Ordnung in den Staaten des hellenistischen Zeitalters, Tübingen 1996, 67–76; and G. Rougemont, “Les inscriptions grecques d’Iran et d’Asie centrale. Bilinguismes, interférences culturelles, colonisation,” Journal des Savants (January–June, 2012), 3-27; and “The Use of Greek in Pre-Sasanian Iran,” in D.T. Potts, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, New York 2013, 795–801.
[7] A fuller discussion can be found in S. Sherwin-White and A. Kuhrt, From Samarkand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire, London 1993, 202–204
[8] P. Kosmin, “Alexander the Great and the Seleucids in Iran,” in D.T. Potts, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, New York 2013, 685.
[9] P. Kosmin, “Rethinking the Hellenistic Gulf: The New Greek Inscription from Bahrain,” JHS 133 (2013), 61–79 (especially 62–70).
[10] G. Rougemont, “Que sait-on d’Antioche de Perside? Studi Ellenistici 30 (2016), 197–215.
[11] G.M. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in the East from Armenia and Mesopotamia to Bactria and India, Berkeley/Los Angeles 2013.