Antiochus I faced a difficult situation when his father died, as indicated by today’s episode title- an extract from Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’. The great distance messengers had to travel to notify Antiochus of the western situation following his father’s death meant that others had already begun carving out their own piece of the pie again. Yes, Seleucus has an obvious heir where Alexander did not, but that doesn’t mean that the Hellenistic world isn’t going to descend from unity into anarchy once again…
Sources for this episode: 1) Kipling, R. (1895), If-. Available at: Kipling Society [Accessed 15/06/2021]. 2) Bevan, E. R. (1902), The House of Seleucus (Vol. I). London: Edward Arthur. 3) Bevan, E. R. (1927), The House of Ptolemy. London: Methuen Publishing. 4-14) Wikipedia articles for Ptolemy Ceraunus, Arsinoe II, Bithynia, Zipoetes I of Bithynia, Kingdom of Pontus, Pergamon, Attalid dynasty, Cappadocia, Antiochus I Soter, Philetaerus and Antigonus II Gonatas [Accessed 10/03/2021]. 15) The Editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica (2020), Antiochus I Soter (online) [Accessed 11/03/2021]. 16) Rawlinson, G. (1869) A manual of ancient history from the earliest times to the fall of the Western Empire, comprising the history of Chaldea, Assyria, Media, Babylonia, Lydia, Phoenicia, Syria, Judea, Egypt, Carthage, Persia, Greece, Macedonia, Rome, and Parthia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.