Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East - Группа авторов - Страница 21

After Alexander’s death, even though the satrapies of the Near East were assigned to men of lower rank (such as Laomedon of Mytilene in Syria), it soon became obvious that anyone claiming succession would have to control this necessary point of passage between the upper satrapies and the Mediterranean. Starting in 319 BCE, Ptolemy undertook a systematic conquest of Syria, considered as an advanced defense of Egypt, but he had to evacuate most of it when faced in 316 BCE with the offensive of Antigonus Monophthalmos (“One-Eyed”), who captured Syria as well as Mesopotamia. However, after the heavy defeat of Demetrius, son of Antigonus, at Gaza (312 BCE), Ptolemy reoccupied Syria while Seleucus, unable to take control of North Syria, attacked Mesopotamia. Ptolemy soon had to evacuate the country faced with a counter-offensive launched by Demetrius, but the peace of 311 BCE stabilized the situation. When the new war, starting in 302 BCE, pitted the new kings against Antigonus, Ptolemy reoccupied Syria (302–301 BCE). After the defeat of Antigonus at Ipsus (301 BCE), the combined forces gave Syria in its entirety to Seleucus, but he was only able to establish himself in the northern part because Ptolemy, his friend and his ally, occupied the southern part. Seleucus refused to go to war against the man who had allowed him to conquer Mesopotamia but he also was determined to assert his legitimate rights over all of Syria: his successors consistently considered that their inheritance consisted of all of Syria.

For a century, the sharing of Syria between Seleucids and Ptolemy’s dynasty, the Lagids, stayed the same, with only slight variations. Despite several attempts of the Seleucids to reunite it all under their power, it was instead the Lagids who almost succeeded. One can discount the First Syrian War (274–271 BCE), of which almost nothing is known, and even the second one (260–253 BCE), which took place almost entirely in Asia Minor, because they had no lasting result. On the other hand, the death of Antiochus II in 246 BCE widowed the sister of the Lagid Ptolemy III, and left a newborn heir. However, the grown son of his first wife Laodice, Seleucus (II) proclaimed himself king and succeeded in ending the Lagid attempt at total dominance of Syria and Seleucid Mesopotamia (Third Syrian War or Laodicean War, 246–241 BCE). However, he could not prevent the Lagid garrisons from setting up camp in Seleucia Pieria, port of Antioch, and close to Laodicea by the Sea (Ras Ibn Hani). A new attempt to conquer Lagid Syria by Antiochus III in 219 BCE (Fourth Syrian War) was at first victorious, then failed miserably after the defeat of this king at Raphia in 217 BCE; the only positive result was the expulsion of the Lagid garrisons from Northern Syria. It was not until a new Syrian War, the fifth, in 202–199 BCE, that the entire country was finally reunited under one single authority. Despite the disputes and attempts at reconquest, the Syro-Mesopotamian Near East was finally placed under a single and unified royal authority, that of the Seleucids. With Antiochus III, Alexander’s empire seemed to be almost established again and the Syro-Mesopotamian whole formed the heart of an immense kingdom, stretching from the Aegean Sea to the borders of India and Central Asia. Yet in a few years, because of the king’s failures in Europe and then in Asia Minor when faced with Rome (the defeat at Magnesia in 190 BCE, the peace treaty of Apamea in Phrygia in 188 BCE), the kingdom was seriously diminished and weakened. When Antiochus III died in 187 BCE, the kingdom only included Syria, Mesopotamia, and western Iran. The heart of the kingdom had become almost the entire kingdom!