The most important source for the HeNenistic period from 220 until 146 bc is Polybius of Megalopolis. He was born around the end of the third century and belonged to the 1,000 Achaians whom the Romans deported in 168. While he was detained in Rome, Polybius made the acquaintance of numerous influential Romans, most prominently P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the son of Aemilius Paullus who defeated Perseus at Pydna in 168.
After the destruction of Corinth in 146, Polybius returned home to a remarkably changed Greece which, although formally independent, was now under Roman domination. Civil wars were rapidly reducing both the Seleucid Kingdom and Ptolemaic Egypt to impotence, Rhodes had been humbled, and Macedonia was a Roman province. Within a few years of his return, Pergamum would become a Roman province as well.
Polybius, like most Greeks of his day, found these changes disconcerting, but on the basis of his long years of experience with leading Roman statesmen undertook to explain to his fellow Greeks how it had happened that within, by his reckoning, 53 years (the period from 220 to 167) Rome had come to dominate the entire world. The result was a gigantic book, forty volumes in length, of which less than a third has survived.
This is unfortunate since Polybius, methodical to a fault, provided a detailed narrative of events. Polybius' full narrative covered the period from 264 bc (the beginning of the First Punic War) down to 146 bc (the end of the Achaian and Third Punic Wars). From about 218 bc onwards, the narrative becomes fragmentary, and increasingly so as the work proceeds. As a result where one most needs Polybius, he is often missing.
On the other hand, some of what is missing is preserved in a different form. Livy, the first-century bc author of a vast compilation of Roman history, relied heavily on Polybius' work over long stretches of his own. In fact, Livy commonly just translates (or summarizes) passages from Polybius - cf., e. g., Pol. XVIII 44 with Liv. XXXIII 30. Much of Livy's work, where he covers the Hellenistic world, is Polybius in Latin translation. Unfortunately, Livy (unlike Diodorus) did consult other sources, usually subsumed under the head "the annalists." These were Roman writers who followed an annalistic (i. e., year-by-year) format; partisan bias and exegetical "creativity" (e. g., Liv. XXI 2, where a clause mentioning Saguntum is inserted into a treaty which contained no such clause - Pol. III 27) characterize their work to a high degree. Where Polybius is absent, it is not always easy to tell whether Livy is following Polybius or the much maligned "annalists."
In Chapters 23-25 Polybius is cited for preference, but where his narrative is absent or so fragmentary as to be useless, inevitably reference is made to Livy. The danger should be manifest. Occasionally, it is fairly clear that Livy is following Polybius (for example, in regard to King Nabis of Sparta - whom Polybius despised and whom Livy portrays in unrelentingly hostile fashion as well). Sometimes there is reason to suspect annalistic exaggerations (for example, Philip V's extraordinarily heavy losses at Liv. XXIV 40). But in all too many cases there is simply no good criterion for judging.
If feasible. to his recent conquest of Phoenicia, Antiochus III now possessed a fleet. With it he proceeded along the southern coast of Asia Minor while his army marched overland to Sardis. The towns of Rough Cilicia, Ptolemaic since the time of Ptolemy III Euergetes, mostly surrendered as Antiochus arrived, but Coracesium held out. Here, as Antiochus III besieged the town, an embassy from Rhodes arrived to dissuade Antiochus III from advancing (Liv. XXXIII 20). The Rhodians officially argued that they wished to prevent Antiochus III from assisting Philip V in his war against Rome. Antiochus III had no intention of so doing and in any case the news of Cynoscephalae nullified the Rhodians’ position - Rome and Macedonia were no longer at war.
So Antiochus III took Coracesium and moved forwards. No source mentions campaigning in Pamphylia, so it may have been captured from the Ptolemies at an earlier time (see chap. 23). Antiochus III next brought Lycia under his control (Porphyry, BNJ 260, Fr. 46). While he was there in Telmessus, the Rhodians began militarily aiding various towns in Caria (Liv. l. c.). Yet Antiochus III had no intention of fighting both Rhodes and Egypt at the same time. He ceded to Rhodes the town of Stratoniceia in Caria (Pol. XXX 31) thereby establishing a potentially useful comity with Rhodes (apparent at Pol. XVIII 52) while leaving his hands free to continue with the acquisition of all Ptolemaic possessions in Asia Minor - as well as of Macedonian ones since Philip V was now powerless to stop him. Cynoscephalae had allowed Antiochus III opportunistically to expand his program.
In Caria meanwhile several inscriptions suggest that Zeuxis, Antiochus III’s governor in Asia Minor, captured various cities for the Seleucids (Ma 1999, Nrr. 25, 29, 31). Nr. 31 B, lines 8-9, is particularly clear: “after we [i. e., Zeuxis] had recovered for the king the city [i. e., Heracleia under Latmus, in Caria] which had from the beginning belonged to his forefathers. . .” Besides the Ptolemaic possessions, the Seleucids captured all cities still in the hands of the Macedonians (Pol. XVIII 49-51).
Antiochus III next proceeded up to the coast, captured Ephesus, a Ptolemaic possession since the Third Syrian War, and spent the winter of 197 to 196 there (Liv. XXXIII 38; cf. Porphyry, BNJ 260, Fr. 46; and Pol. XVIII 40a). Now he made plans to take all the Greek cities in Asia Minor and the Hellespontine region - another expansion to his program. Smyrna and Lampsacus resisted, but Antiochus III left the sieges of these two cities to subordinates while he himself crossed the Hellespont and attacked the Celts in Thrace. He gained possession of the cities on the Chersonese as well as of the now deserted Lysi-macheia which he set about rebuilding (Liv. l. c.). In addition he took some territory on the northern coast of the Propontis, including, probably, Perinthus (Ma 1999, Nr. 35).
Thus in 196 Antiochus III could look over an empire which extended, as had that of his great-great-grandfather Seleucus I Nicator, from the Hellespont to the Indus. Yet the empire had changed since those days. Seleucus I’s empire had been divided almost entirely into satrapies with only an occasional tributary king (Armenia) whereas Antiochus III accepted Armenia, probably Cappadocia on the Taurus (Liv. XXXVII 40), Media Atropatene, Parthia, Bactria, and the realm of Sophagasenus as tributary realms within his empire alongside of the traditional satrapies. Antiochus III for now also had to accept an independent Pergamum as well as Rhodian possessions on the mainland. Cappadocia on the Pontus meanwhile was an ally bound by a diplomatic marriage (OGIS, 771). The crisis of the empire which had begun during the reign of Seleucus II Callinicus was now over. Contemporaries saw in Antiochus III a new Alexander the Great - hence his surname megas, “the Great.” A better comparison, however, might be to Artaxerxes III Ochus. For, like that great Persian king, Antiochus III had set the empire on a new foundation.
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