R. Strootman

Hellenistic imperialism and the ideal of world unity

In late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the rulers of the Christian Romano-Byzantine Empire and Islamic Arab empires cherished the ideal of a united world under one god and one ruler. Pagan imperialist ideology profoundly influenced the evolution of this imperialist ideal of the world as a unity. The conception of the whole (civilized) world as a single empire was continually propagated by Middle Eastern monarchies from the third millennium bce. Undoubtedly it appealed to some common belief. People living in the Achaemenid, Seleucid, or Sasanian Middle East adhered to a certain kind of belief in a legitimate Great King whose existence was in some way connected with the divinely ordained order of the world. The presence of a world ruler at the center of civilization was believed to be an essential condition for peace, order, and prosperity. Essentially a religious concept already in pagan times, the ideal of world unity became extremely forceful when imperialism and monotheism joined hands. After Constantine, the Roman imperator, Byzantine basileus, or Arab caliph could claim to be the exclusive earthly representative of a sole universal deity. Thus, what had formerly been a somewhat indei nite distinction between a civilized, ordered world and a chaotic, barbaric periphery now became a clear-cut dualism of believers and unbelievers.

The Serpent Column : The persistent meanings of a pagan relic in Christian and Islamic Constantinople

ABSTRACT In the heart of Istanbul, on the site of the former hippodrome, stand the remains of the Serpent Column, one of the most ancient and most enigmatic monuments in the city: a three-headed snake made of bronze to which various sacral and magical properties have been attributed in the past by pagans, Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Originally set up as a votive offering in Greeces central sacred site, Delphi, the column commemorated the Greek triumph in the Second Graeco-Persian War (480–479 BCE). This powerful icon of victory, couched in pagan principles of cosmology, was brought to Constantinople in the fourth century CE to become an emblem of the universal rule of the Christian Roman emperor. In late Byzantine and Ottoman times, the Serpent Column was seen as an apotropaic talisman safeguarding Constantinople from poisonous snakes. In this paper it is argued that the column retained its status as a powerful sacred object for so many centuries because in Constantinople it came to be associated with the Brazen Serpent lifted up in the desert by Moses (Numbers 21:4–9), which in turn was believed to prefigure the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ (John 3:14–15).

Babylonian, Macedonian, King of the World: The Antiochos Cylinder from Borsippa and Seleukid Imperial Integration

Babylonia was a core region of the Seleukid Empire for almost 175 years. This chapter describes the Antiochos Cylinder as a point of departure to investigate the entanglement of the global and the local in an imperial context, viz., the Seleukid Empire. It explores the hypothesis that the contact zone where the encounters between city and empire in the Seleukid Middle East took place was, apart from the court, the religious sphere, particularly local sanctuaries and local cults. The text of the Antiochos Cylinder describes the simultaneous rebuilding by the Seleukid ruler Antiochos I Soter of the temple named Ezida at Borsippa and the important Marduk temple Esagila in the heart of Babylon itself. Scholars have mostly considered the Antiochos Cylinder the foremost example of how king Antiochos, and the Seleukids in general, respected local traditions and carefully embedded their kingship in indigenous, viz., Babylonian culture. Keywords: Antiochos Cylinder; Babylonian culture; Seleukid Empire

Laodike, mother of Seleukos III

Laodike II was a Seleukid queen in the second half of the third century bce. She was the wife of Seleukos II Kallinikos (r. 246–226 bce) and the mother of two kings. Keywords: ancient Near East history; Greek history; political history

De ondergang van het Seleukidenrijk

Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der spaten Seleukiden (164-63 v. Chr.). Vom Tode des Antiochos IV. bis zur Einrichtung der Provinz Syria unter Pompeius