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## VI- Which Seleucia? A note on a passage of Diodorus (XXXIV-XXXV, 39A)

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- Référence bibliographique

Bru Hadrien. VI- Which Seleucia? A note on a passage of Diodorus (XXXIV-XXXV, 39A). In: Dialogues d'histoire ancienne, vol. 48, n°2, 2022. pp. 481-498.

DOI : 10.3917/dha.482.0481

www.persee.fr/doc/dha_0755-7256_2022_num_48_2_5276

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Chronique d’Orient -Chronique 2022 481

DHA, 48/ 2, 2022 – CC-BY Which Seleucia? A note on a passage of Diodorus (XXXIV-XXXV, 39A)

To say that the houses of Ptolemy and Seleucus had a very rough end during the IInd century BC would be an understatement. Each of these dynasties had its own internecine conflict, which was caused by some family feud and was the cause of future ones, and, at several moments, these separate internal strives converged into a larger conflict. It would be too much to think that the causes of these wars were based on political reasons: they were nothing more and nothing less than family feuds and disputes, played with big armies and diplomat— the longer the conflict, the smaller the armies. When the two Seleucid brothers, sons of Kleopatra Thea with Demetrius II (i. e. Antiochus VIII Grypos) and Antiochus VII (i. e. Antiochus IX Cyzicenus) started their own feud, their cousins from Egypt were enjoying a brief moment of respiro. Not for long, though. It all started with an Alexandrian quadrille des dames, when the ruling queen, Kleopatra III, the sister of Kleopatra Thea, divorced both her sons (the elder being Ptolemy IX Soter II Lathyrus while the cadet being Ptolemy X Alexander I) from their sisters (Kleopatra IV and, respectively, Kleopatra Selene116) and attempted to have each brother marry the now divorced wife of the other. The plan, as (it could have been) expected, backfired, Kleopatra IV finding the ways (and the means) to recruit an army in Cyprus (right under the nose of her ex-husband, Ptolemy X, who was still ruling the island! 117) and escaped to Syria, where she married Cyzicenus. This act of disobedience generated ripples of conflict that shaped the sides for two already interconnected civil wars merging into a very complicated single one, generally known as the “ War of Sceptres”, 118 for which our main sources are (in chronological order): Trogus Pompeius,

116 As already pointed out, the present lines and pages being a collateral result of many notes I took and abandoned in the researching and the making of the paper dedicated to this enigmatic queen and therefore I can only refer to Dumitru 2016, p. 254-259, for the bibliography and the status quaestionis in what concerns the situation of the Ptolemaic house in the last decade of the IInd century BC, with, naturally, a particular focus on the events involving Selene.

117 In fact, Ptolemy Alexander ruled Cyprus from 114 BC (Nicolaou, Morkholm 1976, p. 100-101 ; Van’t Dack 1989b, p. 22-23) until at least 108/ 107 and he issued coins until 105/ 104, either in the mints of the island (Salamis, Kitium, Paphos, see Nicolaou, Morkholm 1976, p. 106) either at Alexandria, as if those coins were struck in Cyprus in his name, see Hölbl 1994 [ 2000], p. 208 and 220, n. 143, quoting the p. 106 from the Ptolemaic Prosopography in Cyprus by the same Ino Michaelidou-Nicolaou, also published in 1976, but in Göteborg.

118 See Van’t Dack et alii 1989, passim for a very thorough dossier of this conflict (with a focus on its climax between 103 and 101 BC), including a number of papyri and even some hieroglyphic inscriptions.