By Lucia Carbone for American Numismatic Society (ANS) ……
In the winter of 88 BCE, the Roman proconsul Gaius Cassius found himself in a bind. Earlier that year, Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, had invaded the Roman province of Asia (modern Turkey) and killed more than 80,000 Italians residing there. The Pontic king had then swiftly invaded the rest of the Province of Asia, while important cities like the Phrygian Laodicea willingly handed over Roman generals to Mithridates.
Cassius and his troops, barricaded in the neighboring city of Apamea, were about to face a difficult winter since the enemy armies had cut off their supply lines. Then, right when it was needed most, an exceedingly rich man from the Lydian town of Nysa—Chaeremon son of Pythodorus–asked for a private audience from Cassius. Their meeting had game-changing effects for Cassius and his men, as the proconsul himself later wrote in a letter to the magistrates of Nysa. Chaeremon offered to send 60,000 modii of wheat flour to the Roman camp for free. In order to understand the enormity of Chaeremon’s gift, it is important to note that 60,000 modii of wheat corresponded to 633,800 pounds of wheat, which was enough to feed 5,300 men for two months. Thanks to Chaeremon, C. Cassius’ army had enough to survive through the winter.
However, this was not enough to stem Mithridates’ triumphal advance into the province early in the following year.
The Pontic king did not take Chaeremon’s initiative lightly, as made evident by the letter he wrote to one of his lieutenants, the satrap Leonippus, wherein he offered 40 talents of silver to “anyone who apprehends Chaeremon or Pythodorus or Pythion living” or 20 talents to anyone bringing in the head of any of these.” A talent was the equivalent of about 100 pounds of silver, which implies that Mithridates was willing to pay a bounty in the enormous amount of 4,000 pounds of silver for Chaeremon’s family.
The wealthy Nysan was thus compelled to flee in order to save his and his sons’ lives. His sons Pythodorus and Pythion were sent to Rhodes along with Cassius, and Chaeremon himself took refuge in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. However, Chaeremon seems to have survived the ordeal. An eponymous magistrate by the name of “Chae()” appears on a Nysan cistophoric didrachm at an uncertain date between 90/89 and 68/67 BCE. Though incomplete, this name suggests not only Chaeremon’s return to his city but also that he had retained his social rank and possibly his wealth, as he was serving as a moneyer for the city.
Much more certain is the presence in Nysa of the younger son of Chaeremon, Pythion. As suggested by P. Thonemann and W. Metcalf, he should be identified with the ΠΥΘΙΩΝ/ΧΑΙΡΕ, who signed a Nysan cistophorus dated to the 16th year of the Nysan Era, i.e., around 74/73 BCE.
Chaeremon’s older son Pythodorus relocated to Tralles, where he retained his father’s fortune, which was valued by the geographer and historian Strabo (14.1.42) at 2,000 talents. The Roman orator Cicero (In Favor of Flaccus 52) unsurprisingly considered Pythodorus one of the richest men in Tralles.
Pythodorus married Antonia, known only from an inscription from Smyrna, where she is defined as a benefactress of the city. Some scholars have suggested she was the daughter of the triumvir Mark Antony and his second wife Antonia Hybrida Minor, but without any substantial proof. Antonia’s Roman nomen, and the status possessed and exploited by her descendants, must have derived from a citizenship grant by Antonius, who bestowed Roman citizenship to several of his supporters in Asia after the end of the Parthian War. The loyalty of this family to the Romans was thus key to its success, as will become even clearer in the following generations.
One of Pythodorus’ sons, Chaeremon, owner of an estate named Siderous in the vicinity of Tralles, was instrumental in getting much-needed help for Tralles after the devastating earthquake of 26 BCE. Through a personal embassy to the first Roman emperor Augustus, he secured funds for the reconstruction of the city that, from that moment on, added “Caesarea” to its name in order to commemorate the generosity of the emperor.
Another of Pythodorus’ offspring, his daughter Pythodoris, married the Laodicean Polemon, son of Zeno. Polemo and his father, the orator Zeno, had risen to Roman favor in the summer of 40 BCE, when they defended Laodicea, their city, from the Parthian army led by the renegade Roman general Labienus.
Whether their attempt was successful or not, Mark Antony, on the eve of the reconquest of the province at the hands of the Romans in 39 BCE, established Polemo as a tetrarch in Lycaonia and Rough Cilicia. In 37 or 36 BCE, Polemo became king of Pontus (Appian, Civil Wars 5.75), a position he retained until his death in 8 BCE
The marriage of Pythodoris and Polemo was intended to unite two of the leading pro-Roman families of the province of Asia: the descendants of Chaeremon of Nysa and the Zenonids of Laodicea. The joint destinies of these two families of philorhomaioi (“friends of Rome”) led to the birth of a number of client kings who would rule the Roman East under the Julio-Claudian emperors. The political success of their union is demonstrated by the fact that two of their three children would come to rule kingdoms in their own right. Pythodoris herself, after Polemo’s death, married King Archelaus of Cappadocia.
After Archelaus’ death in 17 CE, Pythodoris returned to Pontus, where she ruled until her death in 38 CE. Her coinage adopted the Augustean Capricorn on the reverse, giving visual evidence to the clientele relationship between the Roman Empire and Pontus.
Pythodoris’ eldest son Zeno, later known as Artaxias III (18–34 CE), was made king of Armenia by Germanicus (Tacitus, Annals 2.56). His coronation is represented on silver coins from Caesarea in Cappadocia bearing the portrait of Germanicus on the obverse, and on the reverse Germanicus crowning Artaxias. These coins might have been issued at the same time as the coronation of Zeno Artaxias or as late as the reign of Emperor Claudius (CE 41–54).
Independently of their precise date of production, it is evident that the central theme is the clientele relationship between Zeno Artaxias and Roman power, further highlighted by local monetary production, where the emperor Tiberius and his wife Julia are invoked as “Imperial Gods”.
Polemo and Pythodoris’ daughter, Antonia Tryphaena, married Kotys VIII of Thrace and bore him three sons who also became kings in turn: C. Iulius Polemo II of Pontus, Rhoemetalces II of Thrace, and Kotys IX of Lesser Armenia. Although she was never queen of Pontus, she is styled as queen on some of the issues struck by her son Polemo II.
The third child of Polemo I and Pythodoris, M. Antonius Polemo, never became king and stayed in Laodicea, where he was presumably responsible for the production of a bronze issue in the name of Antonius Polemo Philopatris around 5 BCE.
The historian Strabo (12.3.29) tells us that “as a private citizen, [he] was assisting his mother [Pythodoris] in the administration of her realm.” However, royal power passed on to one of his sons, M. Antonius Polemo, who became dynast of Cilicia at time of the emperor Gaius (Caligula).
The success of these two families, who ascended from the rank of local notables to client kings (and queens) under the Julio-Claudians, shows how advantageous the friendship to Rome was for provincial elites. Their support to Roman provincial power during the momentous years of the Mithridatic Wars first and of the Parthian campaign later made them the ideal candidates to the new dynasties put by the Romans on the thrones of strategically important kingdoms in the outskirts of the Empire.
At the same time, it reveals the inclusivity of the provincial organization of the Roman East in the first century of the Roman Empire, when well-off provincial families could aspire and obtain dynastic power simply on the basis of their good services to Rome.
Originally Published on the ANS Pocket Change Blog
