The Hellenistic World and Rome
kingdoms throughout the third century..Antiochus IV’s final invasion of
Egypt in had as an immediate consequence the desecration of the Temple
in Jerusalem (or so it seemed to one contemporary, Daniel :–), and the
imposition of a Seleucid garrison. A mere six years later, with the escape of
Demetrius I from Rome, there began a series of civil wars over the succes-
sion to the Seleucid throne which did not end until the occupation of Syria
first by Tigranes of Armenia and then by the Romans.
The nature of the Seleucid state, as seen by its subjects, is suggested by the
importance of the right ofasylia(asylum) as granted to cities,^99 just as it is
by Ptolemaeus’ concern, immediately after the conquest of southern Syria,
to have his villages protected from billetting by the Seleucid army (see text
following n. above). Some decades later, after the death of Antiochus VII
Sidetes while on campaign against the Parthians in , hisstratēgos(gen-
eral) Athenaeus, when in flight, was refused entry or supplies by the villages
which had been ‘‘wronged in connection with theepistathmeiai[quartering
of soldiers]’’ (Diod Sic. /, , ).
It is worth suggesting the hypothesis that the remarkable absence of tan-
gible evidence from Syria in the Hellenistic period may not be an accident
which further discovery would correct, but the reflection of a real absence
of development and building activity in an area dominated by war and po-
litical instability. Given this absence of evidence, we cannot expect to know
much about the culture of Syria in this period, or whether there was, except
along the coast, any significant evolution towards the mixed culture which
came to be so vividly expressed in the Roman period. The hints which we
gain of such a culture are hardly worth mentioning: for instance the fact
that Meleager of Gadara, whose epigrams are entirely Greek in spirit, at least
knew what words were used as expressions of greeting both in Aramaic and
in Phoenician.^100 But there is nothing in the quite extensive corpus of his
poetry to show that he had deeply absorbed any non-Greek culture in his
native city, although no formal Greek or Macedonian settlement is attested
there.^101 On the contrary, he self-consciously represented his native city as
‘‘Attic Gadara situated among theAssyrioi,’’ and says of himself ‘‘If [I am] a
Syrian, what is the wonder? My friend, we inhabit a single homeland, the
world.’’^102 For evidence of non-Greek culture on the part of the inhabitants
. E. Bickermann,Institutions des Séleucides(), .
.Anth.Pal. .; A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page,TheGreekAnthology:HellenisticEpigrams
(), , no. iv.
. Schürer, Vermes, and Millar,HistoryII, –.
.Anth. Pal. .; Gow and Page (n. ), , no. ii.