[SPEAKER_00]: This show is a hopeful media podcast production. [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, everybody. [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the history of Persia. [SPEAKER_00]: This is episode 157, Babylon Drift. [SPEAKER_00]: Last time, Antiochus II died, Laldike and her brothers proclaimed Selucus II, the rightful king, and Barinike Sierra declared her infant Antiochus the same. [SPEAKER_00]: A war of subterfuge and preparation launched immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: with King Tollamy III, tacitly occupying Saluki's period, until his sister was assassinated by Laldi Gaze agents in Antioch. [SPEAKER_00]: At that point, the Tollamyic army swept across the Saluki's in northern Syria and into Mesopotamia, successfully assaulting at least as far as the palace citadel inside [SPEAKER_00]: so began the third Syrian war.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, this is still a pretty substantial rewrite of how historians once interpreted tolemy the third's claims in the last 200 years. [SPEAKER_00]: It makes tolemy's later propaganda claims a lot more justifiable if still exaggerated. [SPEAKER_00]: At one of the Tolomeic outposts near the Red Sea in modern Eritrea, he erected an inscription commemorating the successes in the east.
[SPEAKER_00]: That inscription is now lost, but it was copied down and recorded in the 6th century AD by a Christian monk traveling through the region. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the version that has long made historians think, Tala-Mese claims were fantastical and exaggerated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Tala-Mese claimed this, but having become master of all the country, this side of the Euphrates and of Celicia and Pamphilia and Ionia and the Hela-spont and Thrace, and of all the military forces in these countries,
[SPEAKER_00]: and of Indian elephants, and having made the local dinasts in these regions his vassals, he crossed the Euphrates, and having brought it under him, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia, and Susiana, and Persis, and media, and all the rest as far as bacteria. [SPEAKER_00]: A similar inscription, written like the Rosetta Stone in traditional hyperglyphics, Egyptian demonic, and Greek was also erected in penoplas, modern acmean.
[SPEAKER_00]: Although the Greek inscription was far longer and more detailed in its description of Talaamese religious accomplishments. [SPEAKER_00]: In that decree, Talimid did not claim the whole bulk of the upper satrapies, but he did claim to go beyond Babylon. [SPEAKER_00]: Though how far actually varies between the three separate scripts on the monument.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Greek and Demotic versions, aka the two that would be most likely legible to anybody reading the inscription, told me he adds Parisis and Susiana to his list. [SPEAKER_00]: But in high-reglifices, the list stops at Susiana and does not include Persia. [SPEAKER_00]: Interestingly, the hieroglyphics are also the only one of the three to use wording that directly implies that the army went to all of the places listed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The so-called Alexandria decree is primarily a description of how tallamy ordered his forces to gather up any Egyptian artifacts they found in the former territory of the accatement [SPEAKER_00]: Several later sources attributed all of these reclaimed treasures to the malice of old canbices. [SPEAKER_00]: But given the sheer number of conflicts between the accaminids and Egypt, we can safely assume that plenty of Persian kings had stolen Egyptian works over the centuries.
[SPEAKER_00]: Either way, this inscription says that treasures that had once been taken to Persia were returned, but only directly suggests that troops might have traveled to Susiana. [SPEAKER_00]: The recaptured treasure was donated to various Egyptian temples, or potentially returned, which then earned Tolami his epithet Uair Gatiz, the benefactor. [SPEAKER_00]: It seems entirely plausible that the upper satirpies may have just sent Xanthipus their Egyptian relics to ward off further attacks.
[SPEAKER_00]: But given the situation at the end of the Tualami III Chronicle, it also seems entirely plausible that Babylon would have fallen, which would have left Celucaia on the Tigris as the only meaningful roadblock between Xanthipus and Elam. [SPEAKER_00]: A.K.A. [SPEAKER_00]: Susiana. [SPEAKER_00]: Even then, the Chronicle can be read as the Salukid Governor of Babylonia pulling his troops out of nearby Salukia to defend the stronger fortress.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Babylon fell, which, again, seems likely, but still uncertain, it seems possible that Tala-mayek forces could actually have crossed the Zagros, even if only as a token embassy to the local Sattraps. [SPEAKER_00]: None of that is settled by any stretch of the imagination, but it certainly speaks to the scale of Tala-mayek's success at this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me you, Ergatees, would not be the only Pharaoh to ever claim that he brought back all of the treasure stolen by the Persians. [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure it wasn't really all of it, but I'm willing to grant him some benefit of the doubt on this one for a pretty simple reason. [SPEAKER_00]: That claim is everywhere in his inscriptions and later sources describing his reign.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, we know that an abundance of repetition is not proof of an event, but in Uairgates' case, there is another point in his favor. [SPEAKER_00]: It's quite literally the explanation attributed to the title Uairgates in the first place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, he probably also honored Egyptian temples with plenty of foreign treasure as well, but especially if his troops plundered Babylon and Separ, I'm sure there was lots of accatemented era Egyptian loot to go around, or potentially accatemented era Egyptian [SPEAKER_00]: notably, told me the first and Alexander the Great both claimed to return ancient lost Egyptian works back to their homeland from looted Persian treasuries.
[SPEAKER_00]: That framing device also played into a new propaganda angle that told me Uair Gatiz pushed quite heavily, and one that would be adopted [SPEAKER_00]: They framed the Salukid dynasty as the new Persian Empire, rather than a truly Macedonian or Greek heritage.
[SPEAKER_00]: By taking objects that the Persians had stolen from the Salukids, [SPEAKER_00]: emphasizing where rather than who held the treasure at the time and listing off all of the relevant provinces like an old-accaminated inscription, told me repeatedly reinforced the comparison between salute and accaminated in many of his own monuments. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a play that played well with both of his primary audiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: The propaganda campaign proved so successful that many sources describing subsequent generations of salukids cast them in this light by default, often even describing them as coming from media, just as classical Greek writers described the accaminates, not just in the Egyptian perspective, [SPEAKER_00]: On one hand, you had the Greek and Macedonian aristocracy and military class, who would have viewed this through the lens of many Greco-Persian conflicts we have discussed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Likewise the native Egyptian populace would view it through the lens of the many many rebellions their ancestors had fought against Persia. [SPEAKER_00]: The salucids were the same as the accaminids and the accaminids were their ancestral enemies, regardless of which side of Tala-Maeic culture you found yourself on. [SPEAKER_00]: So if Tala-Mae had all but conquered Mesopotamia and Northern Syria, how do we keep going with a salucid empire after this?
[SPEAKER_00]: The answer, bizarrely, lies in volcanic activity, [SPEAKER_00]: on the other side of the world. [SPEAKER_00]: If you look at a timeline of major volcanic events worldwide, and a timeline of low water levels in the Niall River, they line up with the Niall's lowest levels often a few years behind the volcanic eruptions. [SPEAKER_00]: Between 247 and 244 BC, there were four major volcanic events. [SPEAKER_00]: to Injapan, one in Mexico, and the last on the island of Marginique.
[SPEAKER_00]: These eruptions released massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, ultimately disrupting wind patterns over the Indian Ocean, which in turn prevented the annual monsoon from raining down on Ethiopia. [SPEAKER_00]: and the cascading effect of the mostly annual influx of water was that the Nile would flood every year, nourishing the surrounding soil and giving rise to Egypt's powerful agricultural system. [SPEAKER_00]: So when that didn't happen, there was a famine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Femons are already expensive on their own, requiring food imports, but where exactly was autonomy going to import food from to begin with? [SPEAKER_00]: Salukis and Laudique controlled Anatolia and Southern Thrace, and by extension the hellest spot. [SPEAKER_00]: So the black sea trade would be cut off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mesopotamia had just been ransacked, and Egypt's primary western trade partner, Carthage, was in the middle of an increasingly desperate naval war with the Roman Republic. [SPEAKER_00]: On top of that, war is also expensive and required increasing taxes at home. [SPEAKER_00]: Entalemy had just launched an expansive war and occupation of hostile territory.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people of Northern Syria and Mesopotamia did not want to tolerate military occupation, which then required stronger and more expensive garrisons to maintain. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a perfect storm, thieves and other parts of Egypt went into revolt, both threatening the military security of Talimie's home front and cutting off a huge swath of the tax [SPEAKER_00]: And this was all before Tollamy even needed to fight his opponent in the field.
[SPEAKER_00]: Salukis had attempted to marshal a fleet and sail south from Anatolia, but that fleet was wrecked in a storm. [SPEAKER_00]: This became a small mercy to Tollamy but still assigned that the young Salukid King was coming to strike back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of fighting Salukus or trying to hold all of this together as an expanding empire, Tala-Me's troops, ransacked northern Syria, carrying off everything of value that wasn't nailed down to include elephants and ships of war before returning to Egypt. [SPEAKER_00]: He left a turncoat-celucid noble named Antiochist to command the Occupied Celician cities and placed Xanthipus in charge of Mesopotamia and northern Syria.
[SPEAKER_00]: But with all of the wealth removed, this was not really supposed to be a permanent occupation. [SPEAKER_00]: These governors and their troops were just there to stir up trouble and force Salukis to expand his resources retaking territory, instead of launching a revenge campaign against Banisha. [SPEAKER_00]: It's highly likely that some of Talimies' plunder included both food and cash that could be used to import more food, and ease the tensions that brought him home.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even though we don't hear any more about this revolt, it must have taken a lot of Egyptian time and resources because Tullimi did not return to advance in Syria again. [SPEAKER_00]: That said, Salukis did not make an immediate attempt to retake his capital. [SPEAKER_00]: By the end of 245 BCE, Antioch was firmly in Tolomea cans and taking extra time to recapture it did not make a big difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: The city had fallen without a fight, so all of its defenses were undamaged, and Antioch was already a capital city on a disputed border. [SPEAKER_00]: The TOLMAIC occupiers didn't have the resources to make it meaning more fortified than it already was, which hardly mattered because it was just about as fortified as possible. [SPEAKER_00]: Salukus probably did not worry about them stockpiling food and supplies for a siege either.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only would Antioch already have been stocked for a Tala May exceage by the Salukids ahead of time, we can probably assume that any excess resources from the occupied territory got funneled back to Egypt to help with famine relief. [SPEAKER_00]: After a storm disrupted Salukus' first attempt to retake Syria, he would also have to rebuild his navy if he wanted to take Salukia up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only was a fleet almost always required to take a coastal city, the Tala-Mea Strength was traditionally naval. [SPEAKER_00]: Though it was no longer unchallenged, Salukis would need a fleet of his own to defend from reinforcements sent out of Cyprus and Crete or the Gian Islands. [SPEAKER_00]: So while the shipyards of Ionia went to work, building a brand new Salukid Navy, Salukis and his family focused on preparing their supply lines and protecting the rear.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: After almost a century of tension with the unconquered petty kingdoms of northern Anatolia, Salukus wanted to make sure that none of them would ally with Tolami and attack Saluka territory once he could go south. [SPEAKER_00]: Capodokia was already a solid Saluka ally at this point, through the marriage of King [SPEAKER_00]: However, the young king wanted another friend in the north to keep the rest in check.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Salukus' other sister, a younger laldike, was quickly married off to King Mithredatee's 2nd of Pontus. [SPEAKER_00]: At this point, Mithredatee's was a young and very inexperienced king, probably just reaching the minimum age to rule on his own after a lengthy regency. [SPEAKER_00]: It seems likely that he was even younger than Laudique and Celucus, and this must have seemed like a great opportunity for the bride to be, to become an influence on her new husband's royal policy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Confusingly, some timelines of Hellenistic history just kind of leave Celucus and his army [SPEAKER_00]: As far as I can tell, this is just based on incomplete information, focused on the city of Arados in the Salukis District of Syria. [SPEAKER_00]: Arados was home to an important mint which the Talaamese kept until 242. [SPEAKER_00]: but Arados was right on the border of Tallamayek control at the best of times, and Salukid coinage returned to Antioch around 244.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can shift information around a little bit. [SPEAKER_00]: An undated inscription from the new Ish city of Smirna provides the framework for our narrative here. [SPEAKER_00]: At some point, probably in late 245 or early 244, Salukus and his uncle's forces crossed the Taurus mountains and entered the Salukis. [SPEAKER_00]: But they probably did not immediately go west and assault Antioch.
[SPEAKER_00]: That would have left Xanthipus and the Tolemek occupation force in Mesopotamia to their [SPEAKER_00]: It would also have left the agricultural heartland of the Salukid Empire in Tallah Mayak hands free to keep sending produce out through the Persian Gulf and into the Red Sea to relieve the Egyptian famine. [SPEAKER_00]: So Antiochis, most likely, went east and ran the invaders out of Babylonia first.
[SPEAKER_00]: Firmly reclaiming Celucaia on the Euphrates, Babylon, and whatever other territory had fallen under the Egyptian Yoke during the previous year. [SPEAKER_00]: A relatively short Mesopotamian occupation would also help explain why local scribes kept [SPEAKER_00]: There just wasn't that much time for them to make a switch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only after Xanthipus's defeat did Antiochist turn around and march back through Salukis, where resistance was seemingly minimal from the Tala-Maeic occupation in the cities between Central Mesopotamia and Antioch itself. [SPEAKER_00]: By 244, the capital was back in Salukid hands, and Salukis was honored with a new epithet, much better than the bearded. [SPEAKER_00]: Now he was Salukis Kulinicus, the beautifully triumphant.
[SPEAKER_00]: To celebrate, the king wanted to name a new city after his new title. [SPEAKER_00]: But alas, even the massive silucid empire was starting to run out of good places to build new colonial encampments, and even existing native cities to give a Greek name. [SPEAKER_00]: So he turned to Nicophoreon, previously known as the Babylonian city of Toul, renamed by Alexander the Great. [SPEAKER_00]: Silucus renamed it once again as Kalinikum.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kalinikum would undergo a few more renaming ceremonies before finally landing on its modern title, Raka. [SPEAKER_00]: With Radoos and Apemaia on the Orontis, aka the modern Naur al-Asi in Syria, remaining under Tolomeiic control until 242, we have to do some guesswork to fill in the next two years. [SPEAKER_00]: The probable explanation here lies in some very indirect references from three Roman historians.
[SPEAKER_00]: Appian, Polybius, and Livy, who all seem to be referencing a shared but now lost source about Salukus' successors when they say that an unspecified, tallamy conquered Thrace, [SPEAKER_00]: from an earlier saluted king. [SPEAKER_00]: Given that the third Syrian war is the only conflict we know about that fits into the timeline, Tulumi III must have launched an assault in the northern Mediterranean, once the rebellion in Egypt had settled.
[SPEAKER_00]: This seemingly coincided with an outbreak of conflict [SPEAKER_00]: When Celucus returned to Antioch, the city of Magnesia by Cipoulos rebelled, presumably in favor of Tolami, or maybe it was some sort of tax dispute who knows. [SPEAKER_00]: This Magnesia was not a big, or even all that important city, but it did play a role in guarding the inland river routes that facilitated trade between the coast and sardis.
[SPEAKER_00]: So retaking it was important, but did not require royal attention. [SPEAKER_00]: Seeing an opportunity to gain some royal favor, the neighboring city of Smirna rallied its local militia and went to war with Magnesia in the style of classical Greek city states. [SPEAKER_00]: They handily defeated the Magnesians and, as a reward, Silucous merged the two cities into one pole lace, with the smearning government in control.
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, Uair Gettys dispatched his uncle or half-brother, probably the son of one of Philadelphia's concubines named Andromicae, to conquer the northern [SPEAKER_00]: This was Tulumi and Dramaku, who we only know about from one very fragmentary scrap of papyrus in Egypt and one or two sentences from the later retician Athenias.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Dromaku seemingly began his assault in Thrace at the city of Inaus, modern Turkish N.S. [SPEAKER_00]: near the Greek border, and worked his way west along the Thrace encost to Marania, then cut down through the Siklides' islands. [SPEAKER_00]: and drama coup drew the attention of the Macedonian Navy, the Antigonids, which engaged him in a naval battle near the island of Andros around this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have an exact date for the battle, but it was seemingly while the third Syrian war was still happening. [SPEAKER_00]: However, the cause for this particular battle may have been more related to TOLAMI Uairgates taking a role in Greek politics around the same time. [SPEAKER_00]: Andro-smart another major naval victory for the Antigonids effectively driving TOLAMIic influence out of the cyclities altogether when they sunk and drama coup's own flagship.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, he still had enough naval force to threaten and seize control of Ephesus on the Ionian coast, conquering it away from the Salukians. [SPEAKER_00]: Although it was not the end of Tolomeic control in the city, Ephesus ultimately doomed and drama coup. [SPEAKER_00]: He had hired Thracian mercenaries to back up his sailors, but must not have been able to [SPEAKER_00]: because they rebelled after taking Episcis.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Dromaku and his mistress fled to the great temple of Artemis for sanctuary, but the mercenaries ignored that sanctity and murdered them both at the altar. [SPEAKER_00]: Despite these losses in the north, Silucus Calenicus redoubled his efforts in the south. [SPEAKER_00]: His army pushed forward, conquering Arados and Apemaia on the Orontis, before launching a counter-offensive to retake Damascus and deep into Tuala-Mayek, Phoenicia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, Tuala-Me the third could hardly allow that to stand. [SPEAKER_00]: He had come to terms with allowing Salukus to burn resources, reconquering Salukin territory, [SPEAKER_00]: but trying to capture new, tall-a-mayek lands could not be allowed. [SPEAKER_00]: Egyptian forces halted the saluted advance around the Phoenician trippily and pushed them back to the smaller port of orthosius, while another tall-a-mayek army marched inland to besiege the salukids at Damascus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Celucus successfully held both cities under siege, but needed reinforcements to continue this campaign. [SPEAKER_00]: That was fine, in theory. [SPEAKER_00]: He had left many troops in reserve back in Anatolia, officially under the command of his teenage brother Antiochis Hierax. [SPEAKER_00]: Around this time, Salukus did have two young sons, a little boy named Alexander, and a newborn, another Antiochus.
[SPEAKER_00]: However they were very young, Antiochus' hierarchs would have been the de facto heir to the throne. [SPEAKER_00]: Hyerax was made some sort of vice-roy, whether that was officially co-king or something akin to the Old Acme in its caronose, we don't know. [SPEAKER_00]: Antiochus was officially in command of all of Anatolia on his brothers' behalf, while Celucus went to war. [SPEAKER_00]: were the adults in the room, and had significant influence over young Antiochists.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know which of that royal trio, first hatched the plan, Antiochist was certainly old enough to be a willing participant even if it wasn't his idea, but whether he was [SPEAKER_00]: He was proclaimed king Antiochus during the third Syrian war. [SPEAKER_00]: when Salukus asked his younger brother for reinforcements, the younger king and uncle Alexander began organizing their troops, but they did not send the army to Syria.
[SPEAKER_00]: Under Salukus' leadership, they had lost Mesopotamia, two fleets, large chunks of the Ionian coast, and all of their European possessions. [SPEAKER_00]: Laudique, Alexander, and Young Antiochis decided that the empire really needed a change in management. [SPEAKER_00]: So they prepared for war, not with autonomy, but with salukus calinicus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Salukus, realizing that if he wanted to keep his empire, he could not press any further against Tollamy, negotiated a hasty piece that effectively solidified the borders as they were at this stage in the war. [SPEAKER_00]: Salukus had retaken territory in Syria, Mesopotamia, and the eastern edge of [SPEAKER_00]: Tollamy had taken all of Thrace a couple of islands and most of Ionia with the exception of Miletus because it's Miletus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm unclear on the current status of Damascus because a lot of historians tend to treat it as Tollamayek, but every source I can find describing this time suggests that it's in Salukid Hands. [SPEAKER_00]: It's entirely possible that the city fell at some point between our last reference in the written record and the peace treaty, though. [SPEAKER_00]: The only major city in Syria to remain in Tlamayekhans was, embarrassingly, the key port of Selukea, Peoria.
[SPEAKER_00]: The very first city that Tlamayu Ergates had conquered. [SPEAKER_00]: and like so many ports, one that Salukus simply did not have the naval capacity to reclaim. [SPEAKER_00]: That put a lot more distance between Antioch and the next nearest city on the coast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Regardless, the King of the North and the King of the South agreed to leave their war frozen in place for the time being, allowing Talimit to consolidate his newly-one territory and Celucus to turn his army around and march north for another war of the brothers. [SPEAKER_00]: But that is a story for next time. [SPEAKER_00]: Until then. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want more information about this podcast, you can go to hopfulmedia.com.
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