Persianism in the Kingdom of Pontic Kappadokia. the Genealogical Claims of the Mithridatids Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Persianism in the Kingdom of Pontic Kappadokia. The Genealogical Claims of the Mithridatids Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen To cite this version: Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen. Persianism in the Kingdom of Pontic Kappadokia. The Genealogical Claims of the Mithridatids. M.J. Versluys; R. Strootman. Persianism in Antiquity, Franz Steiner Verlag, p. 223-235, 2017, Persianism in Antiquity. hal-02460921 HAL Id: hal-02460921 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02460921 Submitted on 30 Jan 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Oriens et Occidens – Band 25 Franz Steiner Verlag Sonderdruck aus: Persianism in Antiquity Edited by Rolf Strootman and Miguel John Versluys Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017 CONTENTS Acknowledgments . 7 Rolf Strootman & Miguel John Versluys From Culture to Concept: The Reception and Appropriation of Persia in Antiquity . 9 Part I: Persianization, Persomania, Perserie . 33 Albert de Jong Being Iranian in Antiquity (at Home and Abroad) . 35 Margaret C. Miller Quoting ‘Persia’ in Athens . 49 Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones ‘Open Sesame!’ Orientalist Fantasy and the Persian Court in Greek Art 430–330 BCE . 69 Omar Coloru Once were Persians: The Perception of Pre-Islamic Monuments in Iran from the 16th to the 19th Century . 87 Judith A. Lerner Ancient Persianisms in Nineteenth-Century Iran: The Revival of Persepolitan Imagery under the Qajars . 107 David Engels Is there a “Persian High Culture”? Critical Reflections on the Place of Ancient Iran in Oswald Spengler’s Philosophy of History . 121 Part II: The Hellenistic World . 145 Damien Agut-Labordère Persianism through Persianization: The Case of Ptolemaic Egypt . 147 Sonja Plischke Persianism under the early Seleukid Kings? The Royal Title ‘Great King’ . 163 Rolf Strootman Imperial Persianism: Seleukids, Arsakids and Fratarakā . 177 6 Contents Matthew Canepa Rival Images of Iranian Kingship and Persian Identity in Post-Achaemenid Western Asia . 201 Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen Persianism in the Kingdom of Pontic Kappadokia . The Genealogical Claims of the Mithridatids . 223 Bruno Jacobs Tradition oder Fiktion? Die „persischen“ Elemente in den Ausstattungs- programmen Antiochos’ I . von Kommagene . 235 Benedikt Eckhardt Memories of Persian Rule: Constructing History and Ideology in Hasmonean Judea . 249 Part III: Roman and Sasanian Perspectives . 267 Valeria Sergueenkova & Felipe Rojas Persia on their Minds: Achaemenid Memory Horizons in Roman Anatolia . 269 Richard Gordon Persae in spelaeis solem colunt: Mithra(s) between Persia and Rome . 289 Eran Almagor The Empire brought back: Persianism in Imperial Greek Literature . 327 Michael Sommer The Eternal Persian: Persianism in Ammianus Marcellinus . 345 Richard Fowler Cyrus to Arsakes, Ezra to Izates: Parthia and Persianism in Josephus . 355 Josef Wiesehöfer Ērān ud Anērān: Sasanian Patterns of Worldview . 381 Touraj Daryaee The Idea of the Sacred Land of Ērānšahr . 393 M. Rahim Shayegan Persianism: Or Achaemenid Reminiscences in the Iranian and Iranicate World(s) of Antiquity . 401 Abbreviations . 457 Bibliography . 459 PERSIANISM IN THE KINGDOM OF PONTIC KAPPADOKIA THE GENEALOGICAL CLAIMS OF THE MITHRIDATIDS Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen The kingdom of Pontic Kappadokia – which was not known as ‘Pontus’ until Eu- pator’s time1– was founded in the beginning of the third century BCE by Mithri- dates Ktistes . Mithridates was born into the Persian family that, according to Greek sources, ‘ruled’ the Greek city of Kios in Propontis under the Achaemenids . The last of the “masters of Kios”, who had maintained the city’s rule under the Diadochi, was assassinated by Antigonus I Monophtalmus in 301 BCE; his nephew Mithridates (later known as Ktistēs)2 subsequently fled to Pontic Kappadokia, where he founded a “kingdom of which he declared himself King (basileus)” in 281 or 280 BCE .3 The new dynasty, usually referred to by historians as the ‘Mithridatids’, rapidly integrated into the Hellenistic monarchies through intermarriage with the Seleukid house: Mithridates II (266–220) married Laodike, Seleukos II’s sister4, and pre- sented his daughter Laodice to Antiochos Hierax – she finally became Achaios’s wife5 . Her daughter, also called Laodike, married Antiochos III in 222 BCE . THE MITHRIDATIC DYNASTY AND REFERENCES TO THE “SEVEN” Polybius, describes the wedding, informs us of the Mithridatids’ genealogical claims: (Antiochos) was joined by Diognetos, the admiral from Kappadokia Pontica, bringing Laodice, the daughter of Mithradates, a virgin, the affianced bride of the King. Mithradates claimed to be a descendant of one of those seven Persians who had killed the Magus, and he had preserved in his family the government on the Pontus originally granted to them by Darius . 1 On this name see Reinach (1988) p . 161 . 2 The surname ‘Ktistes’ can only be found only in textual sources: see, e .g ,. Strabo 12, 3, 41; Lucian, Makrobioi 13. It is unknown whether Mithridates adopted it officially or not. 3 For this date, see Reinach (1888) . The tale of the Mithradatids’ origins, very largely hypotheti- cal, is a reconstitution obtained mainly through the combination of several source texts (Di- odorus Siculus 20, 111, 4; Strabo 12, 3, 41; Plutarch, Demetrius 4; Lucian, Makrobioi 13) . It has been established by Ed . Meyer (1879) and admitted by all the scholars; later it was shown that Ktistes was the nephew, and not the son, of Mithridates of Kios (see Olshausen (1978) . However, it raises many questions; one can wonder, for instance, which kind of ‘rule’ the Mithridatids family could exercise on Kios – we have no other example of a Persian family ‘ruling’ a Greek city in Achaemenid times . Briant (1996) p . 1051–1052 is quite skeptical about this ‘domination’, which seems to be an anachronic projection . 4 Porphyry FGrH260F . 32 = Eusebios, Chron . I, p . 251 Schoene; see also Justin 38, 5, 3 . 5 See Polyb . 5, 74, 5 and 8, 22 . See also the commentary by McGing (1986), p . 21–23 . This material is under copyright. Any use outside of the narrow boundaries of copyright law is illegal and may be prosecuted. This applies in particular to copies, translations, microfilming as well as storage and processing in electronic systems. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017 224 Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen ὁ δὲ Μιθριδάτης εὔχετο μὲν ἀπόγονος τῶν ἑπτὰ Περσῶν ἑνὸς τῶν ἐπανελομένων τὸν μάγον, διατετηρήκει δὲ τὴν δυναστείαν ἀπὸ προγόνων τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς αὑτοῖς διαδοθεῖσαν ὑπὸ Δαρείου παρὰ τὸν Εὔξεινον πόντον.6 This text shows that the Kings of Pontic Kappadokia claimed to be descendants of one of the seven noble Persians that assassinated the usurper Smerdis in 522 at the instigation of Darius, and thus enabled him to take royal power (this well-docu- mented episode is described by Greek sources, beginning with Herodotos, as well as by Darius’ engraved inscription at Behistun) 7. Not only the Mithridatids placed the Seven at the root of their family tree: two other Hellenistic dynasties that claimed Persian descent, namely, the Ariarathids of Kappadocia and the Orontids of Armenia, did likewise 8. Even though some scholars accept the idea that all these dynasties actually descended from one of the Seven, these genealogical assertions cannot be proven and are generally considered as false9 . Even if one of these Hellenistic rulers was linked to one of the Seven, it is very doubtful that this link would still be remem- bered three centuries after the murder of Smerdis . This tendency to link themselves to the Seven should probably not be under- stood as the remnant of an Achaemenid custom: nothing indicates that it became customary in the Achaemenid world to distinguish dignitaries by recalling their descent from one of the seven conspirators 10. The idea that Darius had given a 6 Polybius 5, 43, 1–2 . I chose to translate the word dunasteia as ‘government’ instead of ‘king- dom’, which appears in the LCL: dunasteia is a more neutral term . 7 Greek and Latin sources: Aesch ., Persians vv . 774–777; Hdt . 3 .30 .61–88; Ktesias F 13, 11–18; Justin 1 9. 0. .A transcription and German translation of the Behistun inscription of Darius by Weissbach (1931), p . 9–74, can be consulted at achemenet .com; the English translation by King and Thompson (1907) is available at livius org;. two recent French translations are those of Lecoq (1997); Vallat (2011) . The paragraphs concerning Smerdis’ assassination are paragraphs 10–14 and 68–69 . 8 For the Ariarathids see Diodorus Siculus 31, 19, 1–2 (Walton edition) (= Photius, Library 382a sqq): the Kings of Kappadokia say that their ancestor was Anaphas, ‘one of the Seven Persians who assassinated the Magian’ (τῶν ἑπτὰ Περσῶν τὸν μάγον ἐπανελομένων ἑνὸς), ‘to whom (…), because of his valour, the government of Kappadokia was granted, with the under- standing that no tribute would be paid to the Persians’ (ᾦ φασι δι ʹ ἀνδρείαν συγχωρηθῆναι τὴν Καππαδοκίας δυναστείαν, ὥστε μὴ τελεῖν φόρους Πέρσαις); for the Orontids, see Strabo 11, 14, 15: ‘The Persians and the Macedonians, who after that time held Syria and Me- dia, were in possession of Armenia; the last (who reigned over it) was Orontes, the descendant of Hydarnes, one of the seven Persians’ (… κατεῖχον τὴν Ἀρμενίαν Πέρσαι καὶ Μακεδόνες, μετὰ ταῦτα οἱ τήν Συρίαν ἕχοντες καὶ τὴν Μηδίαν· τελευταῖος δ’ὑπῆρξεν Ὀρόντης ἁπόγονος Ὑδάρνου, τῶν ἑπτά Περσῶν ἐνὸς) . I here adapt the Italian translation provided by R . Nicolai and G . Traina in their edition of l .11 of Strabo (Nicolai and Traina 2000), because the translations put forward by H .L . Jones in the LCL (1928) and by F .