Julia Domna

Syrian Empress

Barbara Levick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• eBook ISBN: 9781134323500
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

This book covers Julia's life, and charts her travels throughout the Empire from Aswan to York during a period of profound upheaval, and seeks the truth about this woman who inspired such extreme and contrasting views, exposing the instability of our sources about her, and characterizing a sympathetic, courageous, intelligent, and important woman.

This book contains a fresh re-assessment of the one of the most significant figures of her time and questions:

• Was Julia more powerful than earlier empresses?
• Did she really promote despotism?
• How seriously is her literary circle to be taken?

As part of a dynasty which used force and violence to preserve its rule, she was distrusted by its subjects; as a Syrian, she was the object of prejudice; as a woman with power, she was resented. On the other hand, Domna was the centre of a literary circle considered highly significant by nineteenth-century admirers.

1
The woman of Emesa

To understand Julia Domna’s upbringing and mental horizons, as far as that is possible, her geographical, cultural, and religious background must be understood, and its complex development through space and time. Only then can she be set against it. Syria is a strip of land stretching from the Taurus mountains in the north to the confines of Egypt in the south; from west to east it reaches from the Mediterranean to the Iraqi desert. ¹ This is the geographical term; political units called Syria, such as the Roman province and especially the modern state, have been more restricted. Geographers from the Arab period onwards have described the area as divided into parallel zones also running north–south.² Behind a narrow coastal plain lie broken mountain ranges separated from each other by the valleys of the Jordan and the Orontes. Further still to the east is undulating steppe and then the Arabian desert, watered at Damascus and elsewhere by rivers flowing from the mountain ranges or by local springs, as at Petra and Palmyra. The later Ottoman provinces of Aleppo and Damascus stretched to the Gulf of Aqaba, but they did not include the Mediterranean strip. The political result of the fragmented physical geography was that Syria was not likely to be a political unity but would be split into a number of small states, and, as the route between Egypt and powers to the north, whether based in Asia Minor or in Mesopotamia, a scene of conflict between them.

This geographical configuration meant that Syria was a crossroads for trade routes, most obviously up and down the coast and along the grain of the mountain ranges but more famously from east to west, through caravan routes. Against a background of village settlement there were towns on all these routes, several renowned, commercial dealings by caravan with the interior of Asia lending their names an exotic and romantic ring: Tyre and Sidon on the coast, Petra in the hinterland, Damascus and Palmyra in the desert. But the connecting river valleys were also important. ‘The international route’ has been described in some detail:³ from Damascus the main highway turns west, crosses the Anti-Lebanon and shoots north following the Orontes through Kadesh (later Laodiceia ad Libanum) into north Syria. On its way through Kadesh it sends a branch that connects it with the Mediterranean through the Nahr al-Kabir (Eleutherus) gorge – a course which, Hitti pointed out, is taken by the modern railway that branches at Homs from the Aleppo–Damascus main line towards Tripoli.

The most important city on the Orontes route, Antioch, was the capital of the Greek Seleucid kingdom that established itself in this area; Emesa was one of the settlements further upstream on the Orontes, standing one and half km. from the bank, at 495 m. above sea level and owing its importance to its position at the head of the gorge and at the centre of a fertile, irrigated plain running north and south, a plain that is still heavily cultivated, with wheat and barley, fruit and vegetable gardens and vineyards, but no longer with the olives attested by presses left from antiquity; in the middle of the twentieth century shepherds engaged in transhumance were bringing their herds from Mount Lebanon into the hills round Homs for the winter. Emesa’s connections were good: it stood on the Beroea–Damascus route, reached Antioch via Apameia and Tyre via Heliopolis, Palmyra and Aradus. Coins of the first century BC and of the reign of Augustus struck at Tyre, Aradus, and Seleuceia Pieria have been found in its necropolis, and a merchant from Salona in Dalmatia died and was buried there in AD 112.⁴

In 334 BC Persian suzerainty over Syria came to an end when Alexander the Great defeated Darius at the battle of Issus, but Alexander’s death led to a struggle for control of Syria between the Ptolemies in Egypt and other successor dynasts to the north, reduced by the end of the century to Seleucus I Nicator (312–280), founder of the Seleucid dynasty and empire. The usual boundary of their spheres for the next century was the river Eleutherus, close to Emesa, but the Ptolemies lost their hold to Antiochus III (the Great, 223–187) in 200 BC.⁵ We do not know how old the settlement at Emesa was, and that is the beginning of its historical obscurities. ⁶ It has been allowed ‘some antiquity’, with traces before the first century BC.⁷ That is not surprising, given its situation, where the Bouqaia gap gives easy access at low altitude to the Mediterranean coast.⁸ The Seleucids were responsible for colonies, refoundations, and the renaming of ancient communities in their kingdom. Twenty km. north of Emesa was Greek-sounding Arethusa, a native settlement with a name superficially hellenized under Seleucus I; still further downstream on the Orontes was biblical Hamath, which became Epiphaneia, while close by to the south was Laodiceia ad Libanum. These will have formed the northern and southern limits of Emesene territory.⁹

Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175–64) in particular promoted urbanization by granting autonomy and charters to a number of communities, including Jerusalem. He consciously gave an impetus to the hellenization of the area: the Greek language and nomenclature, Greek political institutions and styles in art were all being adopted. But the kingdom was beginning to break up. Antiochus III, after successful ventures into Asia, had taken on the Romans and was defeated at the battle of Magnesia in 189; that ended his claims to Asia Minor. The later second century BC saw the revolt of the Maccabees in 167 against the religious oppression of Antiochus Epiphanes and their establishment of an independent Judaea, the decline of the Seleucid monarchy, and the fragmentation of the kingdom into smaller independent units; Arabs under a dynast probably called Iamblichus – the name used by later rulers of Emesa, which brings us into contact with the earliest possible ancestors of Julia Domna that we can trace – were playing their part in the reorganization in 145 BC.¹⁰ The last two rivals for control of the kingdom, Antiochus XIII Asiaticus (69–64) and Philip II Barypous (65–64), are said to have been put to death by two phylarchs, as the sheikhs were known to the Greeks, Azizus and Sampsigeramus I, the latter certainly a dynast of the Emesenes. (Cicero awarded the name Sampsigeramus to their patron Pompey the Great to make fun of Pompey’s pretensions as an eastern potentate.) They did not succeed in taking the kingdom over but paved the way for Pompey, who brought it to an end in 63 BC. The core was annexed and outlying parts left to their existing dependent rulers as buffers against incursions from the east.¹¹ Emesa was not a candidate for the ‘freedom’ that Pompey granted many of the hellenized cities of Syria, but was left to its Arab dynasts under Roman suzerainty, and Sampsigeramus was confirmed in power. Arethusa went the same way and celebrated the change by adopting a new era, 64–63; according to the Augustan geographer and historian Strabo, Sampsigeramus governed it well.¹² Such men could police routes and preserve the integrity of the Roman Empire without cost to Roman manpower or to the Roman treasury; on the contrary, they probably paid dues for the privilege.

The next ruler of the Emesene district that we meet is the Iamblichus I, Sampsigeramus’ son, mentioned by Cicero, who as governor of Cilicia in south-eastern Asia Minor was thinking of him in 51 as a possible ally against the Parthians.¹³ Strabo writes of the territory of Sampsigeramus and his son Iamblichus at a time when the Emesenes had prudently given Julius Caesar support in Alexandria in 48; for he was their patron after Pompey had been defeated and killed.¹⁴

Power struggles between Roman politicians and the efforts of some to save the Republic naturally had an impact on dependent rulers. Doctrine was not important: what mattered as always was the nearness and effectiveness of the Roman commander in the area. There are variant stories of the fortunes of the Emesene dynasty during the Caesarian and Triumviral periods, from 48 to 31, but it looks as if Iamblichus, after a brief period in which he supported a governor of Syria who was one of Caesar’s assassins,¹⁵ acceded to Mark Antony in his government of the Greek-speaking provinces of the Empire. However, Iamblichus became suspect to Antony and was deposed and replaced by his brother Alexander.¹⁶ In turn Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus deposed and killed Alexander when he reorganized the east in 31 BC; for a few years the Emesenes were an autonomous community free of dynastic rule, though under the supervision of the governor of Syria.¹⁷ Clearly, however, it was most convenient for the Roman government to deal with an individual in effective control. Augustus restored Emesa to his victim’s nephew Iamblichus II, son of Iamblichus I, after another decade,¹⁸ and for a century, under Augustus and his Julio-Claudian successors, the ruling family need have had no doubt where its loyalties lay.

Another Sampsigeramus (II) was mentioned in 18/19 alongside Germanicus Caesar, who would have succeeded the Emperor Tiberius in power if he had not died on his mission to the east. That was in an inscription from the temple of Bel at Palmyra.¹⁹ Emesa was closely linked for its prosperity with its neighbour Palmyra and Sampsigeramus may have acted as an intermediary between Palmyra and Rome.²⁰ By that time he was permitted the designation of ‘Great King’ that Agrippa I of Judaea enjoyed and that Ti. Claudius Togidubnus was to be allowed at the other end of the Empire in his realm of Hampshire, Berkshire, and Sussex: C. Iulius Sohaemus and his father Sampsigeramus, probably the man named at Palmyra in 18/19, were both honoured with that title in a Latin inscription from Heliopolis.²¹ The position of all these monarchs in areas at the edge of direct Roman rule explains the advantages and prestige they enjoyed. Sohaemus was also patron of the Roman colony at Berytus. Sohaemus was the younger son of Sampsigeramus II, and succeeded his elder brother Azizus at the beginning of Nero’s reign. He seems also to have been king of Sophene for a short while, and Arca (Caesareia ad Libanum), later to be the birthplace of Alexander Severus, was also under him, if all these men are identical. ²² Sohaemus, the last attested king of Emesa, survived until the 70s. He supplied troops to the governor of Syria when Judaea went into revolt in 66 and soon like his forebears had become involved in a Roman civil war, that of 68–69. He provided solid help to another formidable Roman soldier and politician, Vespasian, who won the struggle for power.²³ He was still providing troops when the Romans deposed his fellow client and cousin Antiochus IV of Commagene in 72 or 73.²⁴

It looks as if the Arabs of the district were ruled for at least a century by a consistently successful dynasty, one that when necessary knew which potentate to follow and sometimes added to their domains for longer or shorter periods: Arethusa, Sophene, Arca. Julia Domna’s ancestors, if that is what they were, were playing prominent roles in Roman dynastic policy and as kings loomed large among their fellow dynasts in the area. This successful politicking was reflected in and promoted by marriage alliances and other ties with their peers: the networks they created helped in their dealings with Rome. One of the dynasts, Azizus, who died in 54, married two years previously into the family of Herod the Great of Judaea. The bride was Drusilla, the sister of Agrippa II of Chalcis, notorious for her serial marriages. Their father Agrippa I had been king of Judaea, and they continued to hope that the family might still come into his entire kingdom.²⁵ Sohaemus’ sister Iotape (IV), named after her mother, the child of Mithridates III of Commagene, whose wife was in turn a scion of the ruling dynasty of Media Atropatene, also married into the Herodian dynasty, redoubling the ties between the neighbouring principalities: her husband was Aristobulus, brother of Agrippa I.²⁶ Another marriage connection is possible but cannot be substantiated: a woman called Queen Julia Mamaea, wife of Great King M. Antonius Polemo II of Pontus (his second marriage), but the connection between her and the dynasty depends in the first instance on a relationship with her namesake the Empress, mother of Alexander Severus a hundred and fifty years later.²⁷ Such complex marriage connections between the families of dependent rulers were important: they gave enhanced prestige and potentially greater power, and they were not discouraged by the Romans, as long as there was no suspicion of independent policy or group diplomacy. The great independent power in the east, Parthia, was Rome’s business, and Agrippa I came close to being deposed by Claudius for organizing a summit conference of dependent monarchs in the region: the conclave, which was disp...

Table of contents

• Women of the Ancient World
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Family trees
• Maps
• Chronology
• Introduction
• 1 The woman of Emesa
• 2 Marriage
• 3 Domna on her travels
• 4 Empress
• 5 Plautianus and the struggle for the succession
• 6 The reign of Caracalla
• 7 Cultural activities
• 8 Image and cult
• 9 Aftermath
• Glossary of ancient terms
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of places
• Index of persons
• General index