Abstracts
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The Limits of Lineage: Family and Legitimacy in Late Sasanian Iran
This paper explores how family and kinship functioned as mechanisms of political power and dynastic legitimacy in the Sasanian Empire, with particular focus on the late Sasanian crisis of the seventh century. Sasanian kingship was grounded in descent from the House of Sasan and the inheritance of xwarrah (royal glory), making familial continuity central to claims of rule.
Drawing on Middle Persian legal texts, especially the Mādayān ī hazār dādestān and the Dēnkard, this paper examines how law, lineage, and moral authority structured succession, marriage alliances, and elite kinship networks. The collapse of dynastic stability after the death of Khosrow II exposed the limits of family based legitimacy. Focusing on the reign of Queen Boran, the paper analyzes how appeals to lineage and justice were mobilised to sustain authority amid political fragmentation, highlighting both the power and fragility of familial legitimacy in late antique Iran.
Family, Dynasty, and Genealogy in the Representation of the Ptolemies: A Prospective Community of Memory
(Keynote Presentation)
The paper investigates how the Ptolemaic dynasty constructed and represented its legitimacy through dynastic and genealogical narratives in both Greek and Egyptian contexts. It asks: In what ways did the Ptolemies employ concepts such as homonymy (shared names), similitudo (familial likeness), endogamy (sibling marriage), and divine ancestry to shape their dynastic image? How did Greek and Egyptian models of dynastic representation differ, and how were these differences reflected in religious and civic practices?
The analysis further explores whether the Ptolemies fashioned themselves as a prospective community of memory, linking royal authority to both mythical origins and the continuity of their line. Particular attention is paid to the reciprocal processes of adaptation by Greek and Egyptian elites, as well as the influence of cultic innovations and genealogical claims on broader perceptions of legitimacy.
Finally, the paper interrogates how these strategies evolved in the late period of the dynasty, especially under Cleopatra VII, and to what extent new forms of dynastic thinking emerged through her association with Rome. By framing these questions, the study invites a critical discussion of cross-cultural dynastic strategies and the dynamic interplay between memory, myth, and succession in Hellenistic Egypt.
Iranian Women in the Seleucid Dynasty: Asymmetric Marriage Strategies and Iranian Presence in the Imperial Family
This paper examines the Iranian influence on the configuration and functioning of the imperial family of the Seleucid Empire, focusing on dynastic marriage as a locus of cultural negotiation and political legitimation. It addresses a structural pattern within Seleucid matrimonial policy: the systematic deployment of Seleucid princesses as instruments of political projection in other Irano-Hellenistic states, contrasted with a marked reluctance to incorporate Iranian princesses into the dynastic lineage through royal marriages.
Drawing on a comparative analysis of literary sources, supplemented by onomastic evidence, the paper argues that this asymmetry was not the result of isolated contingencies, but rather a deliberate strategy aimed at preserving the Macedonian core of the dynasty, while maintaining effective influence over neighboring kingdoms. The circulation of Seleucid princesses enabled the monarchy to intervene indirectly in external political systems, establish networks of personal dependency, and forge durable alliances without jeopardizing control over succession. From this perspective, instances in which Seleucid kings married Iranian princesses should be mostly understood as contingent responses to moments of political crisis or dynastic weakness, rather than as the fulfillment of a coherent long-term dynastic program.
Finally, the paper examines the role of the Iranian element within the Seleucid dynasty itself and its impact on the imperial family, with particular attention to maternal lineage and the transmission of cultural, onomastic, and symbolic practices, in order to assess their influence on models of legitimacy and the representation of power in the Hellenistic East.
Families on the Move: A New Hellenistic Reality
Alexander’s conquests dramatically widened the borders and socio-economic opportunities of the Greek world, encouraging people’s mobility: better infrastructure, safer shipping routes, and a common Greek culture enabled goods, ideas, and people to move around at a scale never seen before. The ensuing bonanza swept away ambitious and desperate individuals alike, who had everything to win and nothing to lose, but it also affected their families. Never in Greek history were so many families on the go in search for a brighter future!
My paper follows some such individuals and their families as they relocated across the Hellenistic world, seeking to realize their dreams and improve their circumstances. As our evidence suggests, mercenaries in Alexander’s army, many of whom were mainland Greeks, insisted on journeying with their families. In the original campaign to the East, Alexander’s soldiers had left their families behind, which created complications especially when, following Alexander’s mixed marriage policy, many Macedonians on campaign begot children from other women (Arrian, An. 7.12; Plut. Alex. 71.5). Thus, Alexander’s successors had to revise their policy, especially since soldiers travelling with their families were more enthusiastic about resettling in foreign lands.
Bringing families along during military campaigns was a longstanding practice in the East: as is well known, Darius III travelled to Ipsus in 333 BCE with his family, who were captured by Alexander after his victory (Plut. Alex. 21.1-10). This, however, did not prevent many of the successors from following Darius’ example. Constant warfare during the Hellenistic period affected generals as much as their soldiers. Demetrius Poliorketes and his family offer an example of elite en famille travelling: Demetrius’ wife, the illustrious Phila, daughter of Antipater, was part of Demetrius’ military entourage in 316 BCE during which she held audiences with soldiers, easing tensions and arranging marriages for poor girls (Diod. Sic. 19.56.3-6). Demetrius and Phila raised their family in Phrygia where they had built strong connections with local communities, later relocating to Cyprus for safety, and eventually in Macedon, the ancestral home. When Demetrius lost the throne in 288 BCE, Phila, unwilling to move yet again, committed suicide.
The examples discussed will give us a rare glimpse into a distinctly Hellenistic, yet understudied, model of family life: the itinerant family.
This paper examines how Ptolemy III and Berenice II articulated royal power through a discourse of “family politics”, presenting the royal household as a central model of legitimacy and belonging in Ptolemaic Egypt. Taking the Canopus Decree as a starting point, and in particular the public prominence of the young princess Berenice, it asks why a priestly decree foregrounds a child and what this reveals about the communication of royal authority across Egyptian and Greek-speaking communities.
Family is approached not as a private institution, but as a symbolic and performative framework through which power was made intelligible via genealogy, fertility, and care. Building on the model established by Ptolemy II and the deified Arsinoe II as normative dynastic ancestors – whose cult had already constructed a powerful maternal paradigm for the dynasty – the Euergetes deliberately expanded this strategy. They also introduced a significant innovation: the public visibility of their own fertility. Berenice II emerged as a living maternal figure associated with fertility and protection, while Ptolemy III articulated a paternal role through benefaction and amnesty. The posthumous divinisation of the young Berenice at Canopus fused biological fertility, dynastic continuity, and the fertility of the land into a coherent political message.
I argue that, by embodying the dynastic model established by their predecessors in a living royal household, the Euergetes transformed dynastic fertility and parental care into a highly effective language of political legitimacy and belonging.
Like Mother, Like Daughter: Stratonice I and Phila II as Intermediaries between Nuptial and Natal Families
Forget elephants – inter-dynastic marriages were the Seleucid dynasty’s most powerful weapon in the consolidation and conservation of their kingdom. Since the ‘Treaty of Indus’ in 304/3, the Seleucids had developed a habit of offering female relatives – Seleucid ‘princesses’ – to external or client kings and nobles to resolve conflict, secure borders, or isolate enemies.
In his 2017 chapter ‘Once a Seleucid, Always a Seleucid: Seleucid Princesses and Their Nuptial Courts’, Alex McAuley critically challenged the consensus that these Seleucid princesses were but passive tokens in inter-dynastic politics, instead arguing that ‘they remained closely attuned to the currents of favour and opinion of both their nuptial and natal houses, frequently intervening in the affairs of the former in service of the interests of the latter’ (McAuley 2017, 189–90). This paper seeks to expand on McAuley’s research with a focus on two basilissai – Stratonice I, wife of Seleucus I and Antiochus I, and her daughter Phila II, wife of Antigonus Gonatas – who both helped to uphold the Seleucid dynasty’s most influential and long-lasting ‘marriage alliance’ – the Seleucid-Antigonid οἰκειότης (‘kinship’).
By comprehensively considering extant epigraphic evidence, in particular, it will argue that these basilissai acted as effective intermediaries of the Seleucid-Antigonid kinship, advancing the interests of both their paternal and marital families through consummate politics. While such a study lends further insight into inter-dynastic family dynamics and royal women’s familial roles, especially how they interacted with their natal household upon marriage, it also elucidates the queenship of Phila II, oft neglected in scholarship.
Hellenistic Queenship: A New Role with New Female Agency? (Keynote Presentation)
Irrespective of how we should interpret the few sources that might support such claims, the thrust of the available evidence is most of the time silent about the girls and women at the royal court; they are typically attested in the context of their wedding, their husbands’ death, or their sons’ succession. I shall argue that the introduction of the basilissa first by Seleukos I, and soon thereafter by most other kings, was meant to promote the wife who was also the mother of the designated successor.
My explanation will be similar to Alex McAuley’s ‘Reigning Triad’ (2022), except that, in my reconstruction, the status elevation to queenship did not go along with the grant of institutional power and that the triangle was only one among various geometric forms that the dynastic policy could take. Nevertheless, the boosted status of the royal wife and mother occasionally did result in her effective regency, but such exceptional power was limited by the willingness of the court, the army, the subjects at large, and the men in her royal family to tolerate a woman wielding power over them.
By drawing on examples among the Seleukid queens from Apama to Kleopatra Selene, I shall try to demonstrate what was expected from a Hellenistic basilissa in normal times, what was tolerated in exceptional times, and how the limits of this tolerance were enforced.
Follow the Money: Tobias, Joseph and Hyrcanus
Rabbath-Ammon (Amman) was refounded around 255 BCE under the name of Philadelphia. Not far away was the home of Joseph son of Tobias, who in about 222 won the tax contract for Ptolemaic Syria and Phoenicia, after his uncle, Onias II, high priest at Jerusalem, made a political miscalculation and planned to withhold payment of tax to Alexandria. Joseph held the concession for some twenty-two years, before the political wind changed once more. This paper will re-examine Joseph’s somewhat un-Hellenistic family, and engage with the place it had in the articulation of Syria and Phoenicia within successive Near Eastern empires.
We Are Family: The Children and Cousins of Early Hellenistic Sidon
The family unit and the successful rearing of children naturally form the heart of any community, ensuring both its physical continuity and the perpetuity of its fundamental cultural elements and traditions inherited from their ancestors. How this is expressed in different communities can reveal not only the expectations on children as keys to the future but also the nature of relationship between the community and the world around them.
This paper explores the community significance of children as expressed in statuettes and reliefs uncovered at the Sidonian temple of Bustan esh-Sheikh, which operated from the Persian and into the early Hellenistic eras. In these artifacts, the safe birth of children and their growth into adulthood was seen as a blessing from their tutelary deity, Eshmun, in whose temple they were installed, linking the god with the safeguarding of the community in the present and the future.
The significance of family relationships is further projected onto this wider milieu, not only in Sidon's colonies, but also with Greece, as reflected in the perceived shared ancestry – and continuing cultural kinship – from Phoenician king Agenor, as seen in the late third century BCE inscription by Diotimos of Sidon and Euripides’ fifth-century BCE play The Phoenician Women.