chapter eighteen
THE NINTH, AND LAST, WAR
The wars for Syria which were waged between the Ptolemaic and Seleukid dynasties from bchad resulted essentially in the grievous weaken- ing of both powers. The Seleukid state was now shorn of its territo- ries to east and west, so that when the Romans arrived in its neigh- bourhood they came to refer to it as a ‘Syrian’ kingdom. The Ptole- maic state fared somewhat better, still retaining its Egyptian territory, though its two overseas lands in Cyprus and Cyrenaica were usually sep- arated under different kings after the death of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes in . In Syria itself, the land the two dynasties had been long fighting over had begun to fragment from the s. Complementing the still solid Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt was a still solid Seleukid kingdom in North Syria and Kilikia, but neither power was able to exercise control over Koile Syria completely or for long. Into the power gap they had cre- ated between them came several of the indigenous peoples of the dis- puted lands. The crucial event seems to have been the death of Antio- chos VII in and the destruction of his army. This decisive weakening of the Seleukid state permitted ambitious but small communities to strike out successfully for independence. The Jewish state of the Maccabees had struggled and ambushed and politicked its way to virtual indepen- dence by the s, and the long and successful reign—it had become a monarchy—of John Hyrkanos (–bc) finally established it as a permanent feature on the political scene. Along the Mediterranean coast the Phoenician cities had also worked their way into independence: Ara- dos, after repeated attempts, in /, when it seized its small empire along the nearby coast; Tyre and Sidon during the s—the murder of Demetrios II at Tyre rather indicates a willingness in that city to take desperate decisions, a good mark of independence. On the Arabian bor- ders the Nabataean kingdom resisted Maccabean attacks after , which impelled it to militarise and develop more competent governmental insti- tutions, so that it was clearly another fixture of some local power. The Seleukid kings held some of the ports, including much of the Palestinian coast, Damascus, all the aboriginal Seleukid lands in North Syria as far chapter eighteen as the Euphrates crossing at Zeugma, and Kilikia. But the kingdom was no longer more than one of several local powers, though more powerful than most. Both of the great dynasties, however, suffered still from divided and uncertain and disputed successions, aggravated by the power of the royal women. From two Seleukids disputed their throne; from two Ptolemies disputed their’s, after the deaths in that year of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes and Kleopatra II, and three Kleopatras were also involved in both dynasties. The final war between these dynasties over control of Koile Syria grew out of these internal family conflicts, but only after they had indulged in ten years of raids, marriages, and murders. In this case, however, the fighting was largely between rival Ptolemies; the internal Seleukid conflict produced a strained paralysis in which neither party could intervene in Koile Syria—Josephus compared to the situation to a wrestling match in which the two combatants did not dare relax for fear of ceding an advantage to the opponent.1 The dominating personality in the approach to this last war and inits conduct was Kleopatra III, the daughter of Philometor and Kleopatra II who had been Euergetes’ niece, stepdaughter and second wife. She sur- vived both kings and her mother, and she used her daughters to extend and bolster her own power and influence. Like her half-sister Kleopa- tra Thea she bypassed the direct hereditary succession and favoured her younger son, Ptolemy X Alexander, over the elder son, Ptolemy IX Soter, as successor to Ptolemy Euergetes on the Egyptian throne. As in the pre- vious generation, Cyprus became a separate kingdom for the rejected claimant, Ptolemy IX Soter, who refused to accept his exclusion from the main kingdom and constantly aimed to ‘recover’ it. In his will Euer- getes had allotted Cyrenaica to another son, Ptolemy Apion, the fruit of his long-standing liaison with a concubine, but Apion does not seem to have secured his inheritance for over a decade, until .2 The intermar- riages of Ptolemies and Seleukids had continued in the s with the mar- riage of Tryphaina, the daughter of Euergetes and Kleopatra III, to Antio- chos VIII Grypos, as a sign of their alliance against Alexander Zabeinas. Kleopatra III had two more daughters, Kleopatra IV, who was married to her brother Ptolemy IX as a child, and Selene. One of the first acts of Kleopatra III after Euergetes’ death was to compel Ptolemy IX to set aside Kleopatra IV and marry Selene. Meanwhile Ptolemy X, surnamed
1 Jos., AJ .. 2 Justin ..; Holbl, Ptolemaic Empire, .