[SPEAKER_00]: This show is a hopeful media podcast production. [SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone, welcome to the history of Persia. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Trevor Cully, and this is episode 158, a flawed inheritance. [SPEAKER_00]: Once again, I just want to remind everyone that I will be presenting at intelligent speech online as one of the keynote speakers on February 28, 2020, six.
[SPEAKER_00]: As if that wasn't enough 20s for you, early bird tickets are currently available for $20, but you can get that price reduced even further using my promo code Persia. [SPEAKER_00]: Go to IntelligentSpeechOnline.com and get your tickets today. [SPEAKER_00]: I really hope to see you all in February.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's not sugarcoat it, salucus the second kalinicus, a man whose beautifully triumphant epithet gets more ironic with every passing sentence, is on his way to the chopping block. [SPEAKER_00]: But first, as always, we need to talk about his family, and there's a lot going on here. [SPEAKER_00]: There are stories [SPEAKER_00]: Last time, everything fell apart.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Lucas II, fresh off a surprise, turnaround series of victories in Syria and Phoenicia, had to end his offensive against Talimit III, and go to war with his younger brother, Antiochist Hierax. [SPEAKER_00]: Hyrax successfully pushed Salukus out of Anatolia at the Battle of Angira, tried to set himself up as an independent king, and was immediately chased out of the region himself by a surprise onslaught from the newly crowned king, Adelis I of Pergamon.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, hierarchs went on to an ignoble death murdered by garlic bandits while trying to flee as an exile in Thrace. [SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, Silucus, based off with a series of revolts or riots in Babylon and marched to war against a new force in the east. [SPEAKER_00]: King Arsakez, a Soko Warlord who had made himself an independent kingdom in the former Silucid provinces of Parthia and Hircania.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simultaneously, bacteria struck for full independence, [SPEAKER_00]: and King Deodotus II fully embraced the Royal Titles II, founding the Greco-Bacterian Kingdom. [SPEAKER_00]: Celucus' calinecus was repelled from the region entirely by arse case, but there's a decent chance the only Iranian territories he had left were media, and not even all of media since the Kingdom of Atropatene was just quietly doing its own thing outside the scope of written history.
[SPEAKER_00]: On to the family, we are kicking things off with the queen mother. [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever happened to Laldike the first, right? [SPEAKER_00]: She was a major player at the start of Siluca's reign in 242, but kind of faded out of the picture once the civil war got started. [SPEAKER_00]: She has even considered one of the people who started this series of conflicts in the first place. [SPEAKER_00]: frankly, we don't really know what happened to her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'd be about 60 at this point in the narrative, so it's completely reasonable that she could have died of natural causes or some sort of illness. [SPEAKER_00]: It is the third century BCE and we're fresh out of those good old, accated genes that made everybody live into their 90s. [SPEAKER_00]: There are a few references to the possibility that she was captured and killed by Talimek forces, but it's not all that clear when it would have happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know she was based in Ephesus early on, but she also seems to have been active in the years after Talimek conquered that city. [SPEAKER_00]: It's also a bit odd that he would have a queen mother killed. [SPEAKER_00]: It could have been retaliation for the death of his sister, Baranique, but Laudique's safety would have been a powerful bargaining chip in the third Syrian war. [SPEAKER_00]: Ultimately, we just don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Laudique, the first, just seems to have died at some point before Adalis chased the [SPEAKER_00]: The second Laudique of the family usually portrayed as a sister, but possibly a niece, married Siluca's the second, so she's on hold for the moment. [SPEAKER_00]: Laudique the first's other sister and Tiyaki's can get her own coverage. [SPEAKER_00]: Based on the politics of this period, if Antiochis was alive when Salukis came to power, I would have to guess she died early on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because she was married to Adalis, the brother of Yuminis, Tyrant of Purgamon. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you can keep that family tree straight in your head, [SPEAKER_00]: Despite all of the people's involved, doing their best to curb it back on itself, then you already know that makes Antiochis, the mother of King Adelis I. Situating Adelis as a first cousin to the warring saluted brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm guessing Antiochis was dead, or at least had very minimal influence over her son. [SPEAKER_00]: but who knows, maybe she wholeheartedly supported Adelaide's chasing the rest of her family out of Anatolia. [SPEAKER_00]: Their brother, Alexander, Satrap of Lydia, also goes missing in the shuffle of poorly documented information, following the Civil War, and the Pyramine invasion.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was Antioch's higher axis, most important supporter up to that point, but his story is lost. [SPEAKER_00]: It's entirely possible that Sardis did fall to adolescent some point, but it's odd that the King of Pergamon wouldn't celebrate that on his victory inscription.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also possible that Alexander led higher axis forces in one of the other battles against [SPEAKER_00]: which may explain why there wasn't more of a notable victory at Sartis, the city would have been left undefended. [SPEAKER_00]: From that part of the family, we are just left with Andromoccus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlike his siblings, Andromoccus did not remain in Anatolia when Salukus went to war with Tala [SPEAKER_00]: He may even have already been in Syria before the war started, because he was taken captive by Tollamy III and sent to Egypt. [SPEAKER_00]: He may also have been exchanged as a hostage to secure the peace between the salutes and Egypt when the civil war with high racks started.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first few years of captivity in Egypt were fairly quiet, but we will come back to this and Ramakas at a later date. [SPEAKER_00]: We are pretty sure that this Andromoccus had at least one child as well, but there is room for confusion here. [SPEAKER_00]: And I promise this is the last time out terapart this particular branch of the Salukid family tree. [SPEAKER_00]: The child we definitely know existed was a son named Akaius, who is a young man at this point in the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there are actually two Andromacoi at play in this time and it is hard to say which is which, especially considering that they were probably father and son. [SPEAKER_00]: One of them, the father, was taken captive by Talami III, or exchanges in hostage. [SPEAKER_00]: The other continued to fight in Salukus' army as a general, and joined a chaos as co-commander in the final battle against Hierax in Mesopotamia.
[SPEAKER_00]: A chaos was definitely the son of whichever Andromakis went to Egypt. [SPEAKER_00]: However, if it was the younger Andromoccus in Egypt and the older Andromoccus was just old and still commanding troops, it does explain another discrepancy in the family tree. [SPEAKER_00]: Queen Laudique II, wife of Salukus II, is stated by Polybius to be the sister of Andromoccus, the father of Akaius.
[SPEAKER_00]: Medi-modern writers just assume this means the older Andromakis, but that would be a very unusual way for polybius to identify her, given that all of the other siblings in that branch of the family and their father were notable historical figures. [SPEAKER_00]: However, if the Andromakis in Egypt [SPEAKER_00]: The names of the siblings, their relative ages, and the level of activity over time all start to make more sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: It even accounts for the presence of a second Andromoccus in Mesopotamia. [SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, a version of this idea actually seems to have circulated among a few historians almost 150 years ago, without accounting for the second Andromoccus either leading to the theories abandonment. [SPEAKER_00]: Speculation aside, we can finally move on to the other side of the family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Antiochist II Theos had one sister, aka Aunt II, Calinicus, and Hi-Rax, who does come back into the story. [SPEAKER_00]: Stratanique of Macedon, who had been sent by her brother to marry then-untigated Prince Dmitrius. [SPEAKER_00]: But Dmitrius took other wives and Stratanike could hardly stand him to begin with. [SPEAKER_00]: Their personal dynamics here must have been intense, because when Stratanike left her husband, she was not able to take her daughter with her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Stratanike arrived in Antioch around the same time as her nephews Alukus, fresh off of his defeat at Ankira. [SPEAKER_00]: Stradineke tried to convince Silucus to turn around and declare war on Demetrius instead of going east to avenge whatever personal insult she felt. [SPEAKER_00]: Roman authors chalked this up to Demetrius's polygamy, but that wasn't unusual for Hellenistic kings, especially the antagonists.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Justin, she even tried to convince Salukus to marry her himself as a cause as Belly, but the king opted to steer clear of that particular political entanglement. [SPEAKER_00]: Stradinike or no, the Salukids and Antigonids were still allies.
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead, while Salukus was away, Stradinike latched out by stoking a revolt in Antioch [SPEAKER_00]: It's highly unlikely that any rebel sentiment in the Syrian capital district was motivated by strategy gay, a princess they hadn't seen in decades with a personal grudge and little else to her name. [SPEAKER_00]: More likely, it was a tax revolt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost 20 straight years of constant fighting, plus the Tala-Mayac occupation carrying off everything that wasn't nailed down, put a lot of pressure on the major cities that Salucus still controlled. [SPEAKER_00]: Stratoneke just tried to attach herself to this revolt in order to pressure her nephew.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of giving in after settling his affairs in Babylon, Salukus returned furious, besieged the city Citadel, took stradine Gai Prisoner and executed her for her role in the Rebellion. [SPEAKER_00]: With that, Salukus' elders are out of the way so we can move on to his siblings. [SPEAKER_00]: Let's get the obvious out of the way. [SPEAKER_00]: His brother was, and Tyak is high racks, you know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just did an episode all about how they kept trying to kill and steal from one another. [SPEAKER_00]: Despite officially having three wives by the time he died, higher acts did not have any children. [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't actually know any of his wife's names. [SPEAKER_00]: They are just the daughters of Ariaminis and Capodokia, myth-radades, the second from Pontus, and the daughter of Ziailis from Bethinia.
[SPEAKER_00]: That said, if I had to hazard a guess, myth-radades' daughter was at least called Laudique, because both of his other daughters were named that. [SPEAKER_00]: It's not quite as weird as it sounds, the Hellenistic period is full of double names for everyone who wasn't ethnically Greek or Macedonian to begin with.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very common from Egypt to Iran for people to have their personal name, fitting their native language, and a legal Greek name for dealing with the government. [SPEAKER_00]: And so their names were Iranian, when they married Hellenistic rulers, they often took Hellenistic names to match.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know what circumstances led, hierarchs and probably Lao D. Gay to not have any children, but just based on the timeline of succession, we can probably guess that his marriage [SPEAKER_00]: The girl would still have been a child at the time, engaged to hierarchs politically, but probably not conceiving. [SPEAKER_00]: That wasn't an unheard of arrangement in pre-modern political marriages at any rate. [SPEAKER_00]: From there, we move on to their sisters.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was not a whole lot to say here. [SPEAKER_00]: Salukus's sister, Laudique, married Mithredatees, the second, basically as the other end of the marriage packed with higher acts. [SPEAKER_00]: Like I mentioned a minute ago, Laudique and Mithredatees apparently had two daughters, [SPEAKER_00]: Both of whom were, at least, eventually called Laude Gay, in the grand tradition of Pontic Kings, they also had a son named Mythra deities.
[SPEAKER_00]: The family was not exactly fueled by creative naming decisions. [SPEAKER_00]: Through some political machinations, we don't fully understand the younger of these two loudly gays was actually fostered by another noble family in Pasidia, just east of Korea on the far side of the peninsula. [SPEAKER_00]: This too was a fairly common political arrangement to foster alliances.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, purely because he will never come up again, the son of Mithridade's II probably did go on to be Mithridade's III? [SPEAKER_00]: We know effectively nothing about him besides that. [SPEAKER_00]: Another of the royal sisters at this time, Stratanike, became Queen of Capodokia by Marion King Ariarath's III. [SPEAKER_00]: Capodokia is very obscure in this period, so all we can really say is they also had a son named Ariarathis who went on to be king.
[SPEAKER_00]: The third sister in Salukus and Antiochis hi-rax's generation was named Apama, and as I've said before, we only know that she existed because of one reference to her in Babylon. [SPEAKER_00]: That brings us to Siluca's the second's own immediate family. [SPEAKER_00]: We know he did have multiple partners, thanks to Polyionus's story of Mr. the Royal Conquivine, temporarily enslaved after the Battle of Ankira. [SPEAKER_00]: However, we only have references to one official wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was probably intentional. [SPEAKER_00]: Two of Hierax's political marriages came before this revolt. [SPEAKER_00]: And it seems that Antiochistaios and Laudique may have intentionally arranged political marriages for their younger son while only matching solucous with one partner to avoid the exact sort of dinastic schism that Antiochistaios' own polygamy produced. [SPEAKER_00]: So the only queen for the moment is Laudier the second.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of some sort of debatable parentage, but at least a cousin to the royal family. [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately for this episode, that's basically all we know about her. [SPEAKER_00]: Information for Siluca's the second strain is sparse to begin with, even major wars barely rate a mention. [SPEAKER_00]: So if Laudique wasn't directly involving herself in very dramatic political events, it's no surprise she is not well documented.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that just leaves us with Siluca's and Laudique's three known children. [SPEAKER_00]: a daughter named Antiochis and two sons, Alexander and Antiochis. [SPEAKER_00]: I suspect that Antiochis was the youngest given that we know very little about her other than her later marriage arrangement, and that didn't come until 2012 BC.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know much about him during his father's reign either, unsurprising, given that he was born around the same time that the third Syrian war started. [SPEAKER_00]: By the time Salukis marched off to fight high-racks, Alexander was at least old enough to reliably survive into adulthood, but he was still just 15 or 16 years old when his father returned from the war in Parthia. [SPEAKER_00]: Antiochist, the son of Salukus, was a couple of years younger.
[SPEAKER_00]: And likewise, we know nothing about his adolescence. [SPEAKER_00]: Given their relative youth, it's no surprise that neither of them were married yet, let alone having children. [SPEAKER_00]: And with that, I'm out of family members to talk about. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to go back to the narrative for a very short but eventful second half of [UNKNOWN]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: Now, we can return to the narrative properly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Salukus II, Kalinicus, returned from a defeat in Parthia and a revolt in Babylon. [SPEAKER_00]: Along the way, the generals Akiyos and Andromakis defeated high racks in one last battle, driving the rebel prince out of the empire and toward his death in Thrace. [SPEAKER_00]: When Silucas returned home, he defeated another rebellion in Antioch and executed on Stratinegay or her participation in the uprising.
[SPEAKER_00]: After so many defeats and troubles, he turned his sights on the last major enemy he had yet to personally fight, Adelis of Pergamon. [SPEAKER_00]: The Salukid Empire was on its last legs, and if he couldn't get Anatolia and its valuable ports and farmland, and heavily urbanized cities back, there was a good chance that the [SPEAKER_00]: either from one of the many breakaway kingdoms or Tala-mayak Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, from 228 to 225, Celucus prepared his armies for another campaign into Anatolia. [SPEAKER_00]: Then, in 225 BCE, he fell off his horse and died. [SPEAKER_00]: The details aren't clear, maybe he cracked his skull, maybe a broken bone got infected, who knows, either way, Siluca's clinic is the beautifully triumphant, although in the end, maybe his original title of the bearded was more appropriate, had been Vasileus, the King, for just over 21 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: That left 20 year old Alexander to assume the throne. [SPEAKER_00]: But the young new king must have recognized the hubris in trying to claim the throne with his birth name and chose to use a regnal name instead, undergoing coronation at Antioch as King Salukus III. [SPEAKER_00]: The army had apparently already taken to calling him Kerenouse, the Thunderbolt, which [SPEAKER_00]: Karenouse was used to describe all sorts of behaviors from rash in patients to general dynamism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why they called solucous the third that will probably never know for sure. [SPEAKER_00]: It quite literally might be because they needed a way to tell him apart from all of the other solucuses and Alexander's in their midst. [SPEAKER_00]: I cannot stress enough how bad a moment in time this was to be a new king, especially a young new king. [SPEAKER_00]: An empire barely holding on to its last fragments of stability once confident, experienced leadership and a backup plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: For all his failings, Salukus II had effectively beaten the odds, one back cereal when the empire was mostly on his side, and now that all of the fires were managed, he seemed to be planning to retake Anatolia and avenge the Slites committed by Adelis. [SPEAKER_00]: He was rebuilding his core base of financial and military support. [SPEAKER_00]: So Lucas II had not won, but two sons old enough to replace him, at least with a short Regency in Antiochus's case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Celucus III had none of that. [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, with a younger brother to leave behind in the capital, many nobles may have worried that Celucus III and Antiochus were just on track to repeat the failures of their father's [SPEAKER_00]: So the new king opted to move forward with his father's plans, at least acting like everything could still work. [SPEAKER_00]: He, at least, decided to proceed with caution.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Lucas split his army into three branches, with the first two seemingly moving ahead of his own column. [SPEAKER_00]: These two forces were commanded by epigenes and lyseous. [SPEAKER_00]: based on other possible references to these two, they were powerful nobles, with epigenes based in the Celucaa district in Syria and Lissius probably representing a loyalist faction that had remained in Anatolia during the Pyramine conquest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Celucus and Akaios, the same general, I referenced as a possible royal cousin, led the third column together. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing. [SPEAKER_00]: We only know about Lissius's column due to a line on Adelis's victory inscription at Purgamon. [SPEAKER_00]: And though that line is damaged, it also references a victory over a Saluca general whose name started with Epsilon, aka the English letter E as in Epigenes. [SPEAKER_00]: The invasion launched in 224.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the summer of 223, Lissius had already been defeated by Adelis. [SPEAKER_00]: News of a Paganese defeat that summer was apparently the final straw. [SPEAKER_00]: A Galatian mercenary commander named Apaturios and a salucid officer named Nicanor conspire together in Salucus III's War camp to slip some poison into the King's food one night and by morning. [SPEAKER_00]: Celucus III was called Karanous, the Thunderbolt.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had been Vasileus, the King, of a dying empire for less than three years. [SPEAKER_00]: Just long enough for his younger brother and Tyakus to officially assume the throne under his own power. [SPEAKER_00]: But that is a story we will put on hold for a few episodes. [SPEAKER_00]: We have a lot of other topics to cover. [SPEAKER_00]: So until next time, if you want more information about this podcast, you can go to hopfullmedia.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where you'll find things like my bibliography, episode imagery, and additional resources. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to hear more of my voice, you can listen to America's Secret Wars where I tell my friends and guests the story of forgotten and overlooked conflicts in American history. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to support my projects, you can go to hotfamedia.com.co to donate by merch or subscribe to get access to ad-free listening and bonus content.
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