THE HELLENISTIC COURT THE HELLENISTIC COURT MONARCHIC POWER AND ELITE SOCIETY FROM ALEXANDER TO CLEOPATRA edited by Andrew Erskine, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Shane Wallace The Classical Press of Wales First published in 2017 by The Classical Press of Wales 15 Rosehill Terrace, Swansea SA1 6JN Tel: +44 (0)1792 458397 www.classicalpressofwales.co.uk Distributor I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 6 Salem Rd, London W2 4BU, UK Tel.: +44 (0) 20 7243 1225 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7243 1226 www.ibtauris.com Distributor in North America ISD, 70 Enterprise Drive, Suite 2, Bristol, CT 06010, USA Tel: +1 (860) 584-6546 Fax: +1 (860) 516-4873 www.isdistribution.com © 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-1-910589-62-5 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Typeset by Louise Jones, and printed and bound in the UK by Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion, Wales ––––––––––––––––– The Classical Press of Wales, an independent venture, was founded in 1993, initially to support the work of classicists and ancient historians in Wales and their collaborators from further afield. More recently it has published work initiated by scholars internationally. While retaining a special loyalty to Wales and the Celtic countries, the Press welcomes scholarly contributions from all parts of the world. The symbol of the Press is the Red Kite. This bird, once widespread in Britain, was reduced by 1905 to some five individuals confined to a small area known as ‘The Desert of Wales’ – the upper Tywi valley. Geneticists report that the stock was saved from terminal inbreeding by the arrival of one stray female bird from Germany. After much careful protection, the Red Kite now thrives – in Wales and beyond. CONTENTS Page List of Contributors ix Abbreviations xiii Introduction xv Andrew Erskine, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones and Shane Wallace PART I DEVELOPMENT 1 Court, Kingship, and Royal Style in the Early Hellenistic Period 1 Shane Wallace 2 At Home with Royalty: Re-viewing the Hellenistic Palace 31 Janett Morgan 3 The Seleucid and Achaemenid Court: Continuity or Change? 69 David Engels PART II LIFE AT COURT 4 Βίος αὐλικός: The Multiple Ways of Life of Courtiers in the Hellenistic Age 101 Ivana Savalli-Lestrade 5 Eunuchs, Renegades and Concubines: The ‘Paradox of Power’ and the Promotion of Favourites in the Hellenistic Empires 121 Rolf Strootman 6 Callimachus, Theocritus and Ptolemaic Court Etiquette 143 Ivana Petrovic v Contents PART III MARRIAGE 7 Symbol and Ceremony: Royal Weddings in the Hellenistic Age 165 Sheila L. Ager 8 Once a Seleucid, Always a Seleucid: Seleucid Princesses and their Nuptial Courts 189 Alex McAuley PART IV BEYOND THE PALACE 9 In the Mirror of Hetairai. Tracing Aspects of the Interaction Between Polis Life and Court Life in the Early Hellenistic Age 213 Kostas Buraselis 10 Image and Communication in the Seleucid Kingdom: the King, the Court and the Cities 231 Paola Ceccarelli 11 Outside the Capital: the Ptolemaic Court and its Courtiers 257 Dorothy J. Thompson 12 ‘Court-ing the Public’: the Attalid Court and Domestic Display 269 Craig Hardiman PART V CROSSING CULTURES 13 Hellenistic Court Patronage and the non-Greek World 295 Erich Gruen 14 Bithynia and Cappadocia: Royal Courts and Ruling Society in the Minor Hellenistic Monarchies 319 Oleg Gabelko 15 Deserving the Court’s Trust: Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt 343 Livia Capponi vi Contents PART VI DISLOYALTY AND DEATH 16 Misconduct and Disloyalty in the Seleucid Court 359 Peter Franz Mittag 17 The Hands of Gods? Poison in the Hellenistic Court 373 Stephanie Winder 18 The Royal Court in Ancient Macedonia: the Evidence for Royal Tombs 409 Olga Palagia Index 433 vii CONTRIBUTORS Sheila Ager is a Full Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and a Research Associate with the Waterloo Institute for Hellenistic Studies. Her publications include work on interstate relations (Interstate Arbitrations in the Greek World, 337–90 BC, 1996), Hellenistic monarchy, and the history of individual poleis. Kostas Buraselis is Professor of Ancient History and Vice Rector of Academic Affairs and International Relations at the University of Athens. His main scholarly interests are the political and institutional history of the Hellenistic world and the Roman imperial period in the Greek East, ancient ruler cult, and modern historiography on the ancient world. He has published and edited several volumes and articles on related subjects. Livia Capponi is a Researcher in Ancient History at the University of Pavia. She works on Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, papyrology, and Roman history. Her publications include Augustan Egypt: The Creation of a Roman province (2005), Il tempio di Leontopoli in Egitto: Identità politica e religiosa dei Giudei di Onia (2007), and Roman Egypt (2011). Paola Ceccarelli is Lecturer in Greek History at University College London. Recent publications include Ancient Greek Letter-writing: A Cultural History (2013) and an edited volume Water and Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean (2012). Her next project is an edition of the letters of the Seleucid kings and administrators. David Engels is Professor for Roman History at the Université libre de Bruxelles and director of the journal and series Latomus. His research interests focus on Roman religion, the Hellenistic East and the philosophy of history. He is the author of Das römische Vorzeichenwesen (2007) and Le déclin. La crise de l’Union européenne et la chute de la République romaine (2013). Andrew Erskine is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The Hellenistic Stoa: Political Thought and Action, Troy between Greece and Rome: Local Tradition and Imperial Power and Roman Imperialism. Edited books include A Companion to the Hellenistic World and, with Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Creating a Hellenistic World. He is a general editor of the Encyclopedia of Ancient History. ix Contributors Oleg Gabelko is Professor of Ancient History at the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities. His main research interests are Hellenistic Asia Minor, the genealogies of the Hellenistic monarchies, Thrace, and the Eastern Celts. He is the author of The History of the Bithynian Kingdom (2005, in Russian) and about a hundred articles. Erich S. Gruen is Gladys Rehard Wood Professor Emeritus of History and Classics, University of California, Berkeley. He works at the junction of Hellenistic, Roman, and Jewish history. His books include The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome, Heritage and Hellenism, and Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Craig I. Hardiman is an Associate Professor of Classical Studies at the University of Waterloo. He works and has published in the fields of Greek and Roman art, with special interests in Hellenistic sculpture, domestic art and decoration, ancient aesthetic theory and the applications of neuroscience to the study of ancient art. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. He specializes in Achaemenid Persia, Greek socio-cultural history and the reception of antiquity in popular culture. He is the author of Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece, Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient (co-authored with James Robson), King and Court in Ancient Persia 559–331 BCE, and of the forthcoming Designs on the Past – How Hollywood Created the Ancient World. Alex McAuley is Lecturer in Hellenistic History at Cardiff University. In addition to his main research on globalization and localism in the Hellenistic world, he has several current and forthcoming articles on Hellenistic dynastic practice, royal women, and ancient federalism. He is also the main author of the Seleucid Genealogy project: http://www.seleucid-genealogy.com. Peter Franz Mittag is Professor of Ancient History at Cologne University. His research interests cover Seleucid history, the contorniates and Roman medallions. His books include Antiochos IV. Epiphanes: Eine politische Biographie (2006). Currently he is working on the medallions of Antoninus Pius. Janett Morgan is Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research uses material and textual evidence to explore culture, gender and religion in classical Greece and Achaemenid Persia. She is the author of Greek Perspectives of the Achaemenid Empire: Persia through the Looking-Glass (2016). x Contributors Olga Palagia is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research interests are Greek sculpture and Macedonian painting. Her recent publications include two edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press, Art in Athens during the Peloponnesian War (2009) and Greek Sculpture: Function, Materials and Techniques in the Archaic and Classical Periods (2006). Ivana Petrovic is Hugh H. Obear Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia. She has published Von den Toren des Hades zu den Hallen des Olymp: Artemiskult bei Theokrit und Kallimachos (2007) and (with Andreaj Petrovic) volume 1 of Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion (2016). She has also co-edited volumes on the Roman triumph (2008) and on Greek Archaic epigram (2010). Ivana Savalli-Lestrade is Directeur de recherche du CNRS (Anthropologie et Histoire des Mondes Antiques, Paris), specialist in Hellenistic history. Her research focuses on the mobility of ancient Greeks, on the structure of Hellenistic royal power and on the interaction between cities and kings. She is the author of Les philoi royaux dans l’Asie hellénistique (1998). She edited Des Rois au Prince: Pratiques du pouvoir monarchique dans l’Orient hellénistique et romain (with I. Cogitore, 2010) and L’Éolide dans l’ombre de Pergame (2016). Rolf Strootman is associate professor of Ancient History at the University of Utrecht.