The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome

by Bauer, Susan Wise

194 Cornel-wood comes from Cornus sanguinea, the “European dogwood,” and is still used for making bows because it will flex without breaking.

  195 Each stage of the battle is recorded in detail by Arrian (The Campaigns of Alexander, Book II) and Quintus Curtius Rufus (The History of Alexander, Book III), among others. I will not give a blow-by-blow description of Alexander’s battles here, but interested readers might see the readable Penguin translations of both books, done by Aubrey de Selincourt and John Yardley, respectively, for a more complete account.

  196 I am, believe it or not, simplifying. There were other minor players on the scene: Laomedon in Syria, Philotas in Cilicia, Peithon in Media, Menander in Lydia, Eumenes in Cappadocia, Polyperchon in southern Greece, and a handful of others. Even the simplified version is enough to make one’s head spin, and the full story of the Wars of the Diadochi requires a flow chart to follow. I am here trying to chart a middle course between giving every detail of the war (incomprehensible except to the specialist, and pointless for this sort of narrative since the end result was that the minor players all disappeared from the scene) and the usual textbook practice of saying that Alexander’s empire was split into three parts, which is true but leaves a little too much unsaid.

  197 This would be the case if, as the scholar Romila Thapar suggests, the “two seas” are the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal (Asoka and the Decline of the Mauriyas).

  198 The question of the relationship between the languages of the south, which were labelled “Dravidian” by nineteenth-century linguists, and those of the north (the so-called Indo-Aryan languages), has been much muddied by politics, since later struggles for power in India were portrayed as a conflict between “natives” and “invaders.” The relationship remains totally unclear.

  199 The “Third Emperor” is not recognized as a genuine Chinese emperor by many ancient sources.

  200 This brings an end to the Ch’in Dynasty period (221–202) and begins the Han Dynasty period (202 BC–AD 220). Sources which do not recognize the legitimacy of the Third Emperor date these periods 221–206 and 206 BC–AD 220.

  201 The Ptolemies are distinguished both by surnames and by numbers; for the sake of simplicity I have used only the numbers. The surnames of the Ptolemies in this chapter are: Ptolemy I Soter; Ptolemy II Philadelphus; Ptolemy III Euergetes; Ptolemy IV Philopator; Ptolemy V Epiphanes. Ptolemy I’s older son, Ptolemy Ceraunus, never got a number since he never ruled in Egypt, so I have retained his surname.

  202 This history was later lost, but one of my own sources, Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander, is based on it; so Ptolemy’s voice is still audible even in this book.

  203 The exact date of Ptolemy Ceraunus’s death is unknown.

  204 Roman history is generally divided into the Kingdom (753–509), the Republic (509–31), and the Empire (31 BC–AD 476). The Republic is often subdivided into Early Republic (509–264), Middle Republic (264–133), and Late Republic (133–31). There is a fair amount of variation between scholars as to the exact years that these periods begin and end.

  205 There were thirteen Seleucid kings named Antiochus. The surnames of the first five were Antiochus I Soter (“Savior,” possibly because he drove off the Gauls), Antiochus II Theos, Antiochus III the Great, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and Antiochus V Eupater.

  206 The ongoing trouble over the border is mentioned repeatedly in the biblical book of Daniel, which says that the “King of the North” and the “King of the South” will march against each other again and again with larger and larger armies (Dan. 11.2–29).

  207 At the time of Antiochus III’s invasion, Parthia was ruled by Arsaces II, son of the original Parthian rebel king; Bactria had been taken away from Diodotus’s heirs by a usurper named Euthydemus.

  208 This is an estimate; sources differ widely on the size of Hannibal’s army when he arrived in Italy.

  209 Books XXI–XXX of Livy’s The History of Rome from Its Foundation (the Aubrey de Selincourt translation is published separately by Penguin Books as The War with Hannibal) provides a detailed, year-by-year account of all major battles in the Second Punic War.

  210 This was a loathing of Rome as an entity, not necessarily a hatred for particular Romans. In the years after his exile from Carthage, Hannibal found himself in the same city as Scipio Africanus, who asked to meet him; the two spent some time amicably discussing military strategy, and Hannibal complimented Scipio on his ability as a commander (although he did remark that he himself was an even better general).

  211 The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees are historical accounts in the Apocrypha proper, a set of biblical books which falls between the Old and New Testaments in the Christian Bible. These books were not universally accepted by the early church fathers as divinely inspired, and debate about their place in the canon continued until the sixteenth century. In 1546, the Catholic Council of Trent declared the Apocrypha proper “sacred and canonical,” but Protestants generally rejected these books.

  212 In 165, Judas managed to bring the temple back under Jewish control, and set about ritually purifying it (the altar had been defiled, in the worship of Zeus, by having a pig sacrificed on it). According to 1 Macc. 4, the purification was finished and the temple rededicated in December 164, an event celebrated by the later Jewish festival of Hanukkah. According to the Talmud (a collection of written elaborations on the central texts of Judaism), the Maccabees did not have enough pure olive oil to use in the purification rituals, but the single flask that they used burned miraculously for eight days.

  213 The years 206 BC–AD 9 are assigned by historians to the “Western Han,” or “Earlier Han,” Dynasty; a brief interruption between AD 9 and 25 separates this from the “Eastern Han,” or “Later Han,” Dynasty (AD 25–220).

  214 “Xiongnu” is the Pinyin spelling; many histories still use the Wade-Giles “Hsiung-nu” instead.

  215 “Wendi” is “King Wen” in Pinyin; the last syllable is the royalty marker. I have kept Pinyin spelling for most Han Dynasty monarchs, since it is easy to confuse their names with the names of the Chinese states.

  216 Finley points out that this was markedly different from the Greek system, in which freed slaves became “free inhabitants who remained aliens in the political sphere” (Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology, Chapter Nine).

  217 Marius’s original service in North Africa was as aide to the consul Metellus; Marius thought that Metellus was not bringing the war to a speedy enough end, and spent a year campaigning to be appointed in his commanding officer’s place.

  218 The “Tiberius Gracchus” on behalf of the allies was a tribune named Drusus, who proposed that Rome give citizenship to all Italians, and also suggested that land be distributed to the poor. His reforms were blocked by the consul Philippus, who then arranged to have Drusus assassinated.

  219 Eupator Dionysius of Pontus (132–63) is more commonly known as Mithridates VI, and Roman sources often call him Mithridates the Great; I have decided to use his less common names to avoid confusion with the Parthian king Mithridates II (123–88), who was also known as “the Great” and whose reign overlapped that of Mithridates VI of Pontus.

  220 The first Roman gladiator fight is thought to have taken place in 264, when slaves were matched against each other as part of a private funeral festival.

  221 It was also known as the Third Servile War. The Second Servile War had been fought against a slave revolt in Sicily in 104; it was put down in less than a year.

  222 The offices of consul and tribune had been joined by a whole array of positions. Praetors were assistants to the consuls and helped them carry out their duties; quaestors ran the state finances; aediles were responsible for keeping up with public buildings and organizing festivals; governors ran Rome’s provinces; and censors supervised public behavior and punished the immoral (thus the English word “censorious”). Since Roman religion was state-run, religious officials also had secular duties; the Pontifex Maximus was a high priest who supervised the lesser rel
igious officials (such as the flamines, who looked after the worship of specific deities, and the Vestal Virgins) and also kept Rome’s state annals.

  223 All of these people were related to each other anyway, in a big Faulknerian mess of marriages. Caesar’s aunt was married to Marius. Caesar’s first wife was Cinna’s daughter, and his second wife was Sulla’s granddaughter (Pompeia Sulla, whose mother was Sulla’s daughter and whose father was a cousin of Pompey’s). Pompey’s second wife was Sulla’s stepdaughter, and his fourth wife was Caesar’s daughter, Julia. When Caesar broke Julia’s engagement, Pompey offered the jilted fiancéhis own daughter, even though she was already engaged to Sulla’s son. Crassus married his own brother’s widow and left it at that, although he was rumored to be carrying on an affair with one of the Vestal Virgins.

  224 The opening words of Bello Gallico, the Gallic War, are Omnis gallia est divisa in tres partes, “All of Gaul is divided into three parts.” This became one of the best-known Latin phrases in the English-speaking world, since generations of Latin students had to translate Caesar as their first “real” Latin assignment.

  225 Geoffrey of Monmouth says that one of the earliest kings of Britain was a man with the Welsh name Llur, who had three daughters named Koronilla, Rragaw, and Kordelia. To find out which of his daughters deserved the largest part of his kingdom, he asked which one loved him the most. Kordelia answered, “I will love you as a daughter should love her father,” which angered Llur tremendously; this, of course, was Shakespeare’s source for King Lear.

  226 During Caesar’s invasion of Alexandria, his troops set fire to various parts of the city; several ancient authors say that the Great Library at Alexandria, the greatest collection of texts in the ancient world, burned down at this time.

  227 Either way, he did not utter the famous Latin phrase Et tu, Brute?, which was invented by Shakespeare, fifteen hundred years later.

  228 Internal Parthian politics are very obscure, and all reconstructions are uncertain; this is a probable course of events.

  229 The priests in Jerusalem had divided into two groups, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The differences between them were mostly theological (chiefly, whether or not there would be a physical resurrection of the dead), but they formed distinct parties in the internal politics of Judea and Galilee. The Pharisees were the primary enemies of Jesus.

  230 In his will, Tiberius actually named Caligula joint heir along with Tiberius Gemellus, one of the sons of the dead Drusus, but Caligula first had the will declared void and then had Gemellus killed.

  231 Caratacus had been pushed back, but not defeated. Rome did not finally get rid of him until AD 49, when the queen of the Brigantes tribe, Cartimandua, agreed to trap and hand him over in return for Roman support.

  232 The Roman army prepared for the siege of Jerusalem by gathering at the strategically located city of Megiddo (called “Armageddon” in the book of Revelation). The siege ended, eventually, with the destruction of Jerusalem, which lent Megiddo particular apocalyptic significance in the Jewish imagination.

  233 Latin had no word for “emperor” as such; the English word is derived from imperator. The histories of Tacitus and Suetonius use the word princeps, which is often translated “emperor” even when it refers to Augustus or another early ruler of the Empire. For example, in Tacitus’s Annals I.7 he says that after Augustus’s death, the people of Rome were careful ne laeti excessu principis neu tristiores primordio, lacrimas gaudium, questus adulationem miscebant. The relevant phrase is translated, in the classic English version done by Church and Brodribb, “neither to betray joy at the decease of one emperor nor sorrow at the rise of another.” This tends to obscure the transition period in which republican ideals were slowly buried while the ruler of Rome mutated from First Citizen into Lord and God. I have chosen to use princeps before Domitian, and emperor afterwards, since it seems to me that his reign was the final transition point from one way of thinking to another.

  234 The Augustan History is a collection of biographies of the Roman emperors who ruled after 117. Although these biographies are attributed to six different authors, much of the collection was probably written by others, and there is no way of knowing what sources were used. It is not terribly reliable, but for some of the emperors, it is the only source that provides biographical detail.

  235 Roman emperors had two strings of names: birth names, and the names they chose when they were adopted as heirs. Other names were added when they acceeded to the imperial power. Antoninus Pius was originally named Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionus Arrius Antoninus; when he was adopted he became Imperator Titus Aelius Caesar Antoninus; “Pius” was added to his name after his accession. Marcus Aurelius was Marcus Annius Verus at birth, became Marcus Aelius Aurelius Verus on adoption, and then became Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus on accession. Lucius Verus was born Lucius Ceionius Commodus, became Lucius Aelius Aurelius Commodus upon his adoption, and became Imperator Caesar Lucius Aurelius Verus Augustus as emperor. In an attempt to actually keep this readable, I have chosen to simply use the abbreviated popular designation of each emperor rather than striving for unintelligible accuracy.

  236 This is a pocket definition only. A good historical survey of the development of Zoroastrianism is Mary Boyce’s Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, revised ed. (Routledge, 2001). A less academic introduction to the influence of the religion on surrounding cultures is Paul Kriwaczek’s In Search of Zarathustra: Across Iran and Central Asia to Find the World’s First Prophet (Vintage, 2004). Zoroastrianism is generally considered to be the world’s first creedal religion: one whose basic beliefs are defined in a set statement of faith.

  237 The accounts left by Roman historians and by Shapur’s own inscriptions are so contradictory that any reconstruction of the results is uncertain.

  238 Rome had had eight emperors since Elagabalus’s death in 222, four of whom ruled for mere months: Alexander Severus (222–235), Maximinus Thrax (235–238), Gordian I (238); Gordian II (238), Pupienus Maximus (238), Balbinus (238), Gordian III (238–244), and Philip (244–249).