Commagene

Commagene (properly Kommagēnē) sat in a fertile pocket of the Taurus Mountains in what is now southeastern Turkey. In the Early Hellenistic period it served as a Seleukid border province with the Kingdoms of Cappadocia and Armenia. After the Seleukid state was definitively driven out of Anatolia by the Romans in 190 BC, the area increasingly drifted into independence. Around the 160's, the governor of the region, Ptolemaios, who claimed descent from the Orontid Kings of Armenia and the Achaemenid Kings of Persia, claimed the title of king. Details of the early kingdom are vague; sometime in the 130's Samosata was founded as capital city, on the shores of the Euphrates River (Now under Atatürk Dam Lake). Otherwise, very little is known of the early kingdom.

The Seleukids for their part were being pressed by Roman aggression in the west, Parthian aggression in the east and civil war between rival princes in the heartlands. They were far too busy to be concerned about tiny little Commagene drifting into independence; it continued to perform its role as a buffer region. None of the other powers were especially interested either. Thus, life was mostly peaceful for Commagene and, sitting as it did on a major mountain pass, it grew rich on the trade between Anatolia and Mesopotamia. The Commagenian kings lived in great luxury and developed enormously inflated egos; it was here, not in Ptolemaic Egypt or Seleukid Syria that the Hellenistic trend towards deifying their kings reached its zenith. At the kingdom's cult centre of Mount Nemrut, King Antiochos I erected a fifty metre high tumulus flanked by ten metre high statues, and inscriptions proclaiming the king as a god. There was still enough money left over to build a secondary cult centre at Arasmeia. The Kingdom was lauded as Pantrophos, all-nourishing, Commagene.

But, as the Seleukids completely collapsed, things became less secure. The Commagenian mountain pass encouraged trade but it was also an attractive route for armies; the Armenians probably passed through on their way to conquer Syria in 88, the Romans came through several times in the 60's as they fought the Armenians and reordered Syria, the Parthians passed through in 51 and again in 40, on their way to challenge the Romans, the Roman Triumvir Mark Antony attacked in 38. Each time an army passed through, the cost to the Commagenians was severe. Fortunately for them, their final enemy, Mark Antony, found himself on the losing side of a civil war with Augustus Caesar. Once Augustus had brought the entire Roman state under his control, he saw the value of Commagene as a buffer state between Roman Syria and the Parthian Empire, now his major rival. Commagene became a Roman vassal, an exceptionally loyal one at that. For a time Commagene could enjoy something of its former prosperity.

However, as the Roman prescence in their Syrian domains became stronger and their control more direct, the Emperors began to envy Commagene's wealth and desire its tax and excise incomes for themselves. The Emperor Tiberius was the first to abolish the kingdom, in AD 17, but a later king, managed to get the kingdom restored in AD 38 by flattering the young Emperor Caligula (corrupting him, the Romans claimed). It didn't last. Commagene supported Vespasian in his successful bid for the throne in AD 69, but, once he had been enthroned at Rome, he decided that Commagene was expensive and a security risk in the event of war. Rumours of revolt were manufactured and a Roman army dispatched to annex the kingdom. Even without a kingdom, the royal family remained wealthy; they became notable members of the developing Imperial aristocracy and their last notable scion, Philopappos built a massive mausoleum in Athens, opposite the Acropolis on the Hill of the Muses.

Sullivan, Richard D. "The Dynasty of Commagene." Aufsteig und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II 8. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977.