The Queen and the City: Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities

Abstract

This article examines the interactions between the Seleukid queen Laodike III and the cities of Iasos, Teos and Sardis in Asia Minor, three communities whose commemorations of her patronage have survived in the known corpus of inscriptions, along with her own letters, a rare female voice in the world of Hellenistic interstate politics. Asia Minor was a major battleground for all the Hellenistic kingdoms, including the Seleukids and a number of Anatolian dynasties, and during the third and second centuries BCE it was a patchwork of changeable royal claims to control and demands of loyalty. Cities faced repeated conquest, occupation, exaction of tribute, abandonment and recriminations, and had to secure their existence with carefully devised allegiances and constant negotiation of political status. Ideologically autonomous, but with a history of foreign rule by the Persians and now the Hellenistic kings, cities fought to survive by mustering claims to traditional rights and rallying influential elites who might intercede on their behalf. Interactions with whichever king happened to be in control were fraught with tension and manipulation as city ambassadors sought to obtain royal favour, either to endure under that king's rule, or for protection lest the king hand them over to a rival power. In this context, Queen Laodike mediated royal goodwill, ameliorated the violence of her husband's conquests and opened up a positive chain of communication with beleaguered cities.Laodike's intervention in cities centred on her patronage of women, in particular their roles as wives and mothers to sustain the demos, or civic community. Her benefactions to women had demographic and political ramifications and, in return, the cities made Laodike the focus of female ceremonial activity in public life. Participation in the Greek cities depended on family membership, and throughout the Hellenistic period it was characterised by the increasing use of fictive kinship terminology to represent the bonds between members of the civic body. 1 This paper shows that the characterisation of Laodike as benefactress par excellence, as sister-wife to Antiochos and as highly esteemed mother mirrored the identities of women in the cities she helped. Laodike's patronage of women generated a reciprocal relationship between demos and royal dynasty, and both parties enhanced their own magnanimity and prestige by praising

Accommodating the Individual

“…Bern 2003, 59-76;The Female Element of the Political Self-Fashioning of the Diadochi: Ptolemy, Seleucus, Lysimachus, and their Iranian Wives", in: Alonso Troncoso and Anson (eds.) 2013, 199-214;Ramsey, Gillian. "The Queen and the City: Royal Female Intervention and Patronage in Hellenistic Civic Communities", in: Lin Foxhall and Gabriele Neher (eds.).…”

Virtudes domésticas / acciones públicas. Las reinas atálidas y las transformaciones de la feminidad helenística

“…Laodice III fue elogiada por su piedad hacia las divinidades y amor al marido, y en su agenda evergética tuvo especial presencia la promoción del matrimonio. Cf Ramsey, 2011..…”

Οι Γυναίκες Μουσικοί Στην Ελληνιστική Περίοδο

“…Μαντάς 2010: 57. Fulinska 2010. Ramsey 2012 προνόμια που απολαμβάνουν, όπως η οικονομική ανεξαρτησία, η εκπαίδευση, η δημόσια εικόνα και προβολή μέσω της τέχνης, η θεοποίηση, αντανακλούν τη μεταστροφή της ελληνιστικής εποχής στην αντιμετώπιση της γυναικείας παρουσίας.…”