Erickson - The Early Seleukids, Their Gods and Their Coins

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While in general the iconography of Seleukid coins centres on Apollo, this was not the case at the start of the dynasty. As can be expected in the creation of a new ruling entity attempting to define its position in a shifting landscape, the representation of Seleukos Is dynastic images shows the greatest variety and the least consistency of any of the Seleukid monarchs. While both ancient commentators and modern scholarship on the Seleukids emphasise the link between the king and what became his houses patron god and ancestor, this link was not definitively present until the very end of the kings reign. In fact, as this chapter will demonstrate the ideological justification of Seleukos kingship shifts through three distinct phases during his reign and the full implications of this shift are not apparent until the reign of his son and successor.

I argue that early in his reign Seleukos looked back to Alexander and his personal connection to the king and to the traditional god of kingship Zeus to justify his power. This then shifted as Seleukos developed his own personal prestige to attempt to supplant Alexander as the founder of a new dynasty with his own connections to Zeus. The final phase of the transition to what became dominant Seleukid ideology occurred when Apollo supplanted Zeus as the patron of the royal house. This final change only occurred during the reign of Antiochos I. Furthermore, the important respect for native religions that appears to be consistent throughout the history of the house (with the notable exception of Antiochos IV) begins during Seleukos reign. Additionally, Apollo and Zeus were not the sole gods of the empire and Seleukos took care to offer the appropriate respect to both Greek and native gods throughout his kingdom. Seleukos I adopted the traditional role of the king as a pious benefactor of the gods and he does not seem to have missed any opportunity to reinforce his legitimacy through association with the local gods. This is especially evident in Babylon and Hierapolis, where native gods appeared on royal coinage (Baal and Atargatis), as such, a variety of Greek and non-Greek gods appeared on Seleukid coinage.

This chapter will examine how Seleukos attempted to develop a set of royal imagery that drew both on Alexander and on a personal connection to Zeus, in order to justify his rule over the largest portion of Alexanders empire. The limited contact that Seleukos empire had with the Mediterranean between his retaking of Babylon (312 BC) and the battle of Ipsos (301 BC) may have affected how Seleukos presented himself to his largely non-Greek subjects. In this connection, I believe that the horned-rider coins which I will discuss not only depict a Macedonian king but also draw on traditional local iconography. In the first instance, however, after successfully gaining a Mediterranean foothold with his victory at Ipsos, Seleukos was forced not only to rely on his personal connection to his citizens at Babylon and subjects further east, but also to compete directly with his former allies and other successors to Alexander: Lysimachos, King of Thrace, and Ptolemy, King of Egypt. Both of these could claim a closer connection to Alexander as they had held high positions within Alexanders inner circle. To succeed in his position at least as far as the contest over imagery was concerned Seleukos chose to continue many of Alexanders traditional coin types even after he took a royal title, as did the other successors. At the same time, however, Seleukos also began to create new personal connections to the traditional Macedonian royal god, Zeus. Seleukos was therefore able to legitimate his rule both through his connections to Alexander and through his own role as a Zeus-favoured king.