The Hellenistic Age Podcast

The Greek city-states of the Peninsula and Asia Minor emerge from the post-Mycenaean dark ages, become powerful centers of intellectual and military tradition, and come into conflict with Persia and with one another.

Herodotus at his most wonderfully weird, advanced imperial administration and the question of decadence all come up in this prelude on the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Philip II of Macedon, 359 to 336 BC, often neglected beside his son, saves a crumbling backwater kingdom and through reforms, diplomacy and generalship makes it the dominant power of the Greek Peninsula.

The conclusion to the saga of Alexander the Great: the crossing of the Gedrosian Desert, management of the empire, and a case study on the king's cause of death, among other topics.

Alexander's travels and tribulations in Egypt and the nature of godhood, closing with the final confrontation with Darius at Gaugamela.

The early life of Alexander the Great, with omens of greatness and some jilted lovers, and a look at the historiography around it, in a remastered version with higher quality audio.

With Philip gone, can Alexander take the reins of the kingdom and keep it together through the Balkan campaigns, before even stepping foot into Asia?

Macedonia goes from backwater kingdom to supreme overlord of Greece, and the episode weighs the nature of its identity and whether it can truly be called Greek.

The Macedonian Phalanx and the Companion Cavalry as the bread and butter of the Macedonian Army, plus a discussion of whether Alexander deserves as much credit as he gets.

Ptolemaic explorers, elephant hunters and mining teams travel as far as Somalia, exploit African riches, build infrastructure that leads to Indo-Mediterranean trade routes, and meet the Kingdom of Meroë in contact and conflict.

After Menander I Soter the Indo-Greeks decline over 150 years as Indo-Scythians seize the Punjab and the last king disappears by 10 AD, though evidence points to Hellenistic culture surviving nearly five centuries after Alexander.

Ai Khanoum hints at a flourishing Hellenic culture among Greek colonists while Bactrian and Sogdian traditions stay powerful, ending with Greek collapse amid nomadic invasions and civil war in the mid-second century BC.

After the Mauryan collapse, Greco-Bactrian rulers invade India around 185 BC, Demetrius and Menander take Arachosia and Gandhara, and figures like Heliodorus and Sophytos hint at complex Greek and South Asian interactions.

Agathocles, 361 to 289 BC, rules Syracuse for over three decades as tyrant and king, bringing a golden age alongside political massacres, and takes his war with Carthage to the shores of Africa.

Possible encounters between Buddhists and Greeks: the Milindapañha portrays Menander I as a Buddhist convert, Ashoka has his beliefs inscribed in Greek near Kandahar, and Gandharan sculptors turn Heracles into Heracles-Vajrapani.

Ptolemy I Soter, a commander of Alexander turned King and Pharaoh of Egypt and perhaps the craftiest Successor, founds what becomes the longest lasting Hellenistic Kingdom in a reign of nearly 40 years.

Seleucus I Nicator goes from minor player in Alexander's campaigns to king of the largest Hellenistic realm, from administration in Babylon to wars against Chandragupta Maurya and the Diadochi.

A sightseeing tour of Alexandria in its heyday under the Ptolemies, founded by Alexander in 332/331: its cosmopolitan population, art and architecture, scholars, and monuments like the Lighthouse of Pharos and the Library.

Antiochus III invades Ptolemy IV's kingdom in 219 BC to reclaim Coele Syria, the Ptolemaic government revives its rusty army through mass recruitment and reforms, and over 140,000 men meet at Raphia.

Herodotus called Egypt the gift of the Nile, and the Ptolemies added the most rigorously developed, or exploitative, taxation system ever seen in Egypt, becoming the wealthiest people in the world of the 3rd century BC.

How Egyptians met Ptolemaic rule: Manetho writes his Aegyptiaca in Greek, the Greco-Egyptian family of Dryton and Senmonthis-Apollonia shows mixed identity, and tensions could explode in violence and rebellion.

Tristan Hughes of The Ancients Podcast on his book about the Perdiccas years, 323 to 320 BC, framed around the regent Perdiccas and covering events across Europe and Asia as the Argead Empire struggles.

The Jews of Judea and the Diaspora after Alexander embrace many aspects of Hellenistic culture while trying to uphold the Laws of Moses, produce the Septuagint, and face tensions that eventually culminate in the Maccabean Revolt.

Factional tension in Jerusalem ends in crisis as Antiochus IV attacks the city and plunders its Temple in 168, and persecutions inspire the revolt of Judas Maccabee and the Hasmoneans, who reclaim and purify the Temple.

Philip V's reign of nearly 42 years ends: after two decades of reforms Macedonia is a powerhouse again by 179, while infighting between the princes Perseus and Demetrius threatens the unity of the dynasty.

Demetrius II takes the throne in 145, Diodotus Tryphon endorses the infant Antiochus VI and then proclaims himself king, and Mithridates I of Parthia uses the instability in Syria to conquer Babylonia in 141.

Antiochus VII Sidetes slays the pretender Diodotus Tryphon, subdues John Hyrcanus, and gambles everything on a final anabasis in 130 BC to recover Babylonia from the inexperienced Phraates II.

Tens of thousands of Greeks immigrate to Egypt for posts in the bureaucracy or army, or perhaps to farm, and papyri show lives like Ptolemaeus, devotee of Serapis, and Kleon, chief engineer of the Fayyum reclamation.

Cleomenes III restores Sparta enough to bring the Achaean League to its knees in the Cleomenean War of 228 to 222, and Aratus of Sicyon turns to Macedon under the regent Antigonus III Doson.

Steppe nomads between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC: new tribes set on a collision course with the Seleucid Empire and Greco-Bactrians, alongside steppe society, relations with the sedentary Greeks, and the emergence of the Parthians and Kushans.

Pyrrhus invades Italy in the first great clashes of Legion against Phalanx, suffers his Pyrrhic victories, takes a shot at ruling Sicily, and retreats to Epirus before his reign ends in an absurd moment.

Ptolemy IV dies in 204, greedy ministers scheme around the boy-king Ptolemy V, and the Great Revolt of 206 to 186 takes Upper Egypt under a rival pharaoh, Haronnophoris, leaving the kingdom near collapse.

John McTavish on forty years of Successors carving up Alexander's empire: the problems of early Hellenistic sources and chronology, the causes of rapid disintegration, and indigenous responses to the power vacuum.

After a controversial rise, King Perseus proves an able ruler, and his rising popularity earns the enmity of those like Eumenes II of Pergamon, who accuses him of secretly planning war on Rome, leading to the Third Macedonian War.

The 240s and 230s shake up Greece: Macedon under Demetrius II struggles with Greek Leagues, Illyrian tribes and a monarch's premature death, while young King Agis IV seeks to return Sparta to her ancestral ways.

Twenty years of chaos end during the reign of Ptolemy V: his marriage to Cleopatra I Syra, the Great Revolt put down in 186, Egypt as a second-class power, and the history of the Rosetta Stone.

Pyrrhus, Molossian King of Epirus: a fragmented backwater becomes a major power in the Balkans, and the young Pyrrhus is shuffled from court to court during the Wars of the Diadochi before recovering his kingdom.

The Seleucids as prolific city-founders turn North Syria into a new imperial heartland standing in for Macedonia, and peoples from Babylonia and Jerusalem to Greek immigrants respond to Seleucid rule and Greek culture.

Emboldened by success in the Social War, Philip V allies with Hannibal Barca against Rome in 215, and the First Macedonian War of 215 to 206 BC is mainly a conflict among the states of Greece.

The ministers of young Ptolemy VI, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II campaign against Antiochus IV over Coele Syria, and he invades Egypt twice and besieges Alexandria, unless the Roman Republic has something to say about it.

Demetrius I Soter restores a degree of order, crushing Timarchos in Babylonia and the rebellion of Judas Maccabee, yet alienates kings like Attalus II and Ptolemy VI, who bankroll the usurper Alexander Balas.

The philosopher-king Antigonus II Gonatas hosts intellectual celebrities at Pella and Macedon prospers, while Greece stirs toward rebellion in the Chremonidean War and with Aratus of Sicyon and the Achaean League.

Galatia, a Celtic enclave in central Anatolia serving the Hellenistic kingdoms as mercenaries and foes, and Odrysian Thrace under Seuthes III, as case studies in self-identity, barbarians and Hellenization.

Ptolemy III and Berenice II oversee the apogee of Hellenistic Egypt: his Third Syrian War sees a near-total conquest of Syria and Mesopotamia, and Berenice, immortalized by Callimachus, holds unprecedented power for a royal lady.

Crowned at 18 after Antigonus III Doson dies in 221, Philip V proves a king in the mold of Pyrrhus and Alexander, campaigning against the Aetolian League in the Social War and sidestepping corrupt advisors.

After twelve peaceful years under Seleucus IV, Antiochus IV Epiphanes usurps the throne, gives generously to cities and temples often in honor of Zeus Olympios, and earns from Polybius the nickname Epimanes, The Madman.

Demetrius earns his title besieger of cities, the Diadochi assume the royal diadem, and Antigonus meets the other Successors in a final confrontation at Ipsus in 301 BC.

The formidable children of Ptolemy I, namely Ptolemy II Philadelphos, Arsinoe II, Magas and Ptolemy Ceraunus, and the incestuous royal sibling marriages that became standard policy of the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 282 to 246 BC, marks the height of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, and Alexandria's wealth and his foreign meddling invite the 1st and 2nd Syrian Wars and trouble from Magas of Cyrene.

Iranian civilization outlives the conquest of Persia as dynasties rule in their own right, among them Mithridates I Ktistes of Pontus, Orontes I of Armenia, and Amastris, last Achaemenid princess and first Hellenistic queen.

Robin Waterfield on his book The Making of a King, about Antigonus II Gonatas, who restored peace in Macedonia in a 40-year reign and of whom very little is known.

The Attalids of Pergamon, founded by the eunuch Philetaerus, are the first Greek monarchy outside the Successor Kingdoms and sponsor buildings and art celebrating them as defenders of Greek civilization against the Galatians.

After the Sixth Syrian War, Ptolemy VI, Cleopatra II and Ptolemy VIII share a tenuous rule amid rebellions, while the brothers' scheming for Egypt brings in the Roman Senate.

Antiochus I Soter takes over the gargantuan empire, and a Celtic invasion, the First Syrian War and a passionate forbidden romance fill the reign of the last King of the Universe.

How the Seleucids ruled the largest Hellenistic realm: kings seen through Macedonian-Greek, Near-Eastern or Iranian lenses, satrapies kept in check by a travelling court, and the revolutionary Seleucid Era.

A prelude to the Fourth Syrian War: Antiochus III and Ptolemy IV are crowned in 222 BC, and while Antiochus tries to hold his realm together, Ptolemy's laziness lets the Alexandrian court fall into conspiracy and corruption.

With the throne of Epirus secure, Pyrrhus fights for control of Macedon against Demetrius I Poliorcetes and Lysimachus, before turning his eyes west toward the Roman Republic.

Kyle Erickson on how Seleucid rulers came to terms with a large and diverse population, the variety and scarcity of sources including coinage, and how Seleucid kings and queens broadcast themselves.

After Raphia and the defeat of Achaeus in 213, Antiochus III marches from Armenia to India between 212 and 205, battling Arsaces II and Euthydemus I, restoring the borders and claiming the epithet Megas.

Antigonus II Gonatas, traditionally preferring philosophers over the camp, takes the throne of Macedon and seeks to restore order after nearly 25 years of anarchy, facing Celtic barbarians, cannibalistic tyrants and Pyrrhus.

The Bosporan Kingdom on the Strait of Kerch, settled by Greeks in the 6th century BC, becomes a powerful kingdom backed by grain exports, headed mostly by the Spartocids, Hellenized Thracians tied to steppe tribes as enemies and trading partners.

Antiochus II's brief reign and marriage to Berenice Phernophoros, then the true focus: governors-turned-kings like Andragoras and Diodotus rebel in Parthia and Bactria, and Arsaces leads the Parni in.

The Ptolemies' split identity: Hellenistic kings and queens in Alexandria who also adopted the role and iconography of pharaoh, promoted royal cults and new deities like Serapis, and legitimized their rule to Greeks and Egyptians.

The Fifth Syrian War, 202 to 195, finally delivers Coele Syria to the Seleucids after almost a century of conflict, and Antiochus III's ambition to claim Seleucus I's territories leads him to campaign in Europe.

Back from nearly twenty years of exile in 145, Ptolemy VIII Physcon terrorizes enemies and family, takes his niece Cleopatra III as second wife, and a civil war starting in 132 drives him and Cleopatra III out of Egypt.

The 3rd War of the Diadochi and the Babylonian War, 316 to 309 BC: Antigonos tries to conquer the Macedonian empire, Seleucus rises from underdog to empire builder, and the Argead house meets its tragic end.

Demetrius II returns from Parthian captivity to little welcome, Alexander II Zabinas arrives as a Ptolemaic-backed claimant, and Cleopatra Thea bids for sole power, willing to eliminate even her own children.

Over 20 unstable years under Seleucus II and Seleucus III: Ptolemy III's 3rd Syrian War, the Parni in Parthia, rebels in places like Pergamon, and above all the War of the Brothers with the usurper Antiochus Hierax.

The close of the series on the wars of the Diadochi: Demetrius falls, rises and falls again, the last successors to Alexander die, and the next generation of the Hellenistic World rises.

After Antiochus IV dies in Persia, the boy-king Antiochus V and regent Lysias face the Maccabean Revolt, usurpers and arrogant Roman emissaries, while Prince Demetrius escapes Rome with Polybius's help to reclaim his birthright.

Charlotte Dunn, co-author of the biography Demetrius the Besieger, on the sources for Demetrius I Poliorcetes and on his abilities as king and general in the struggle for Alexander's empire.

Civil war grips the Seleucid Empire as Demetrius II challenges Alexander I Balas, Ptolemy VI invades Coele Syria, and in August 145 BC the three armies meet at the Oenoparus River.

Despite Eleusis and trouble in Judea, Antiochus IV stages an enormous festival at Daphne to rival the games of Aemilius Paulus, then marches into the Upper Satrapies and dies in Iran in November 164.

Egypt's civil war ends with Cleopatra II reunited with her brother and daughter in 124, and Ptolemy VIII's death in 116 closes a ruthless fifty-year career that sets the tone for the rest of the dynasty.

An opening episode for a show covering from Alexander to Cleopatra: what the Hellenistic Age is, where the podcast is headed, and why listeners should learn more about this period.

Rome declares war on Perseus in 171, the Third Macedonian War drags on, and the consul Lucius Aemilius Paulus destroys the royal army at Pydna in 168, ending the Antigonid dynasty and the Macedonian kingdom.

Invited by the Aetolian League, Antiochus III invades mainland Greece in September 192 and declares war on Rome, is forced back to Asia, and meets Rome at Magnesia to decide the dominant Hellenistic power.

Christopher Gribbin on the 1st and 2nd Illyrian Wars of 229-228 and 220-219 BC, Teuta the Pirate Queen and Demetrius of Pharos, and their role in setting Rome on a collision course with the Hellenistic world.

The Second Macedonian War, 200 to 197 BC: Philip V holds his own against Rome until Titus Quinctius Flamininus forces a showdown at Cynoscephalae that radically changes the balance of power in Greece.

The Achaean League, on mostly amicable terms with Rome since 167, campaigns against Sparta, and through the brief Achaean War and the sack of Corinth in 146 Rome makes clear it alone decides Greece's destiny.

After Cynoscephalae, Flamininus declares the freedom and autonomy of the Greeks at the Isthmian Games of 196, but resistance from the Aetolian League and Nabis of Sparta eventually draws Antiochus III into Europe.

During the Illyrian Wars of 229-228 and 219 the Roman Republic intervenes in Greek affairs for the first time, and its swift defeats of Queen Teuta and Demetrius of Pharos draw the attention of Philip V.

Fifteen years after the Macedonian kingdom is abolished, Andriscus claims to be the lost heir of Perseus and invades Macedonia in 150, and the Fourth Macedonian War leads to a permanent Roman presence.

Defeat at Magnesia ends the war with Rome: Antiochus III gives up all territory north of the Taurus Mountains, owes an enormous indemnity, and his career ends abruptly in Elymais after 35 years on the throne.

Episode 50 answers listener questions: favorite history books, getting into podcasting, who was the greatest of Alexander's Successors, and who would win a wrestling match between Socrates and Antigonus the One-Eyed.

With Trevor Culley

Trevor Culley of the History of Persia Podcast on Oliver Stone's 2004 Alexander, a critical failure on release whose re-cuts have been praised as among the most historically accurate films of the ancient world.

Joseph Scales on how the Jewish literary tradition, from the prophecies of Daniel to Josephus, viewed Antiochus IV Epiphanes as both incompetent ruler and great persecutor, and as the prototype of the Antichrist.

Thomas Coward on the island city-state of Rhodes, its power and prestige in the Hellenistic and Roman eras, and his work on its role in Greco-Roman intellectual and cultural traditions.

With Osmund Bopearachchi

Osmund Bopearachchi on Gandharan art, credited with the first known depictions of the Buddha in human form, whose artists borrowed Hellenistic designs and mythological figures to tell the Buddha's story.

Silvannen Gerrard argues that the Seleucid military, heir to cataphracts, horse archers, scythed chariots and war elephants, was capable and adaptive, against a long scholarly view of such troops as a passing fad.

Hellenistic astronomy and geography: Eratosthenes calculates the circumference of the Earth, Hipparchus the distance of the Moon, Aristarchus of Samos proposes heliocentrism, and the Antikythera Mechanism closes the science series.

Nautical archaeologist Stephen DeCasien on the evolution of the navy in the Hellenistic Age, the practicalities of building the gargantuan Tessarakonteres, and why it fell out of favor after Actium in 31 BC.

Jewish authors under the Hellenistic kingdoms voice grievances and celebrate their own antiquity, read through the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, the histories of I and II Maccabees, and the writings of Flavius Josephus.

With Frank L. Holt

Numismatist Frank Lee Holt on how coins, the most enduring symbols of the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms, can be used or misused to tell their story, and their role in preserving threatened heritage.

With Lee Clarke

Lee Clarke, a PhD student in cross-cultural philosophy, on the idea of Greco-Buddhism, the Buddha's teachings in Gandhara, and Greek and Indian schools like Pyrrhonian Skepticism and Mahayana Buddhism compared.

With Angus Jacobson

PhD candidate Angus Jacobson on the Flight of Seleucus story told by Libanius of Antioch, how the Successors used or manipulated events in royal propaganda, and the challenge of separating fact from fiction.

The king as the ultimate authority of power in the Hellenistic world: how the kingship was created, what the job of a monarch actually was, and the divine ruler cult, among other topics.

Paul Johstono on his book on the Ptolemaic army from 323 to 204 BC, which challenges the view of Ptolemaic rulers as decadent and lazy, found in writers like Polybius, and reasserts Egypt as a significant military force.

Hellenistic medicine: in Alexandria Herophilus and Erasistratus practice human dissection on a scale unmatched until the Middle Ages, pharmacology follows Theophrastus, and Mithridates VI of Pontus experiments with poisons and antidotes.

The Hellenistic city from foundation to megalopolis, from Alexandria to Ai-Khanoum: royal building projects and military settlements, what makes a city Hellenistic, and its impact on disease and human health.

Hellenistic mathematics put to practical use: torsion catapults, enormous ships, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the pneumatics of Ctesibius and Hero, with the earliest known automatons and a predecessor of the steam engine.

Women in the Hellenistic Age, part one: the perils of childbirth, female poets and scholars, and the raunchier mimes of Herodas, as evidence for how women lived and died in a new cosmopolitan world.

Stoicism, arguably the most popular Hellenistic philosophy, whose famous followers included Marcus Aurelius, Antigonus II Gonatas and Seneca, urged rejecting emotion and embracing rationality to live in accordance with nature.

Elke Close of HellenisticHistory.com on the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues, federal states through which several poleis presented a unified front against the Successor dynasties, seen through writers like Polybius.

With Rachel Mairs

Rachel Mairs, author of The Hellenistic Far East, on Ai Khanoum, local Bactrian traditions and new identities, and how to reassess Greekness in a complex archaeological and epigraphical record.

Epicurus and his followers deny the afterlife, argue that death is nothing, explain the world through atoms and the void, and seek the best life by embracing pleasure and avoiding pain.

Menander of Athens, the most renowned comic author of antiquity and father of New Comedy, drew humor from everyday people through stock characters and romance plots; of his 108 plays only The Dyskolos survives complete.

Polybius of Megalopolis, an Achaean League nobleman taken to Rome as a political hostage, composes a universal history to explain to fellow Greeks how the Romans conquered the inhabited world in only 50 years.

Henry Bohun, a PhD student with an Egyptologist's perspective, on how the Macedonian Ptolemies nevertheless saw themselves as heirs and continuators of the Pharaonic tradition.

A round tour of three more Hellenistic schools: the ascetic and often crass Cynics, the hedonistic Cyrenaics who preceded the Epicureans, and the Peripatetics, heirs of Aristotle and the Lyceum.

Greek explorers, scientists and diplomats, many bankrolled by Hellenistic rulers, redraw the map of the inhabited world, from Megasthenes in eastern India to Pytheas of Massalia sailing the North Sea around Thule.

The elephant as an icon of the Hellenistic period: war elephants in battles like Ipsus and Zama, the insights of Aristotle and Megasthenes, and elephants as symbols of power for Hellenistic rulers.

The Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, the only surviving Hellenistic epic, follows Jason and the Argonauts after the Golden Fleece, paying homage to Homer while reinventing the genre for Alexandrian scholarship.

Two branches of Hellenistic Skepticism: the disciples of Pyrrho of Elis seek tranquility through indifference and lack of opinion, while the Academic Skeptics, modeled on Socrates, pursue perpetual inquiry to better reach the truth.

Ptolemaic Alexandria hosts Callimachus and Theocritus, Euphorion moves to Seleucid Antioch, and Aratus of Soli composes his Phaenomena under Antigonus II Gonatas, as poets redefine their art for centuries.

The third century BC's outburst of mathematics: Euclid of Alexandria's Elements, the geometry textbook for over two thousand years, and Archimedes of Syracuse, whose love of inquiry allegedly led to his own demise.

The four-hour 1963 epic starring Elizabeth Taylor: its troubled production, its presentation of Hellenistic Egypt, and the problem of telling the story of a powerful woman entangled with the men around her.

Theocritus of Syracuse, founder of bucolic or pastoral poetry, casts the humble shepherd as his main subject in idyllic countryside scenes later emulated by artists such as Virgil.

The anchor as the Seleucid dynastic seal, the omens and prophecies tying it to the destiny of Seleucus I, perhaps from the lost Seleucus Romance, and its use by later monarchies.

In April 1900 Greek sponge divers find a 2,000 year old wreck off Antikythera, and a century of expeditions yields bronze statues, glassware, and the Antikythera Mechanism, the world's oldest surviving analog computer.

A bonus episode on the critically panned 2004 Oliver Stone film Alexander, in which the host tries to offer his thoughts on why he likes it.