Seleukid Lecture Series 5.2: "Ruling under Roman Hegemony", by Pierre-Luc Brisson

'Ruling under Roman Hegemony: The Cases of Eumenes II and Antiochos IV'
By Dr. Pierre-Luc Brisson, McGill University, Montreal, QC
Expert feedback by Dr. Germain Payen, Université de Lille.
Hosted by Altay Coskun (Waterloo, ON) and Benjamin E. Scolnic (Hamden, CT)
In the aftermath of the treaty of Apameia (188 BCE), which sealed the peace between Rome and Antiochos the Great, the Roman Republic became the leading power in the Hellenistic world. Scholars of international relations refer to this particular configuration of a system as unipolarity. The situation of unipolarity can significantly alter the relationships between state actors. It can accentuate the security concerns of the hegemon, which must ensure that the international status quo is maintained, just as it can fuel the concerns of the minor actors in the system, who must now deal with a single superpower.
The foreign policies of the Pergamene and Seleukid kingdoms in the first half of the second century BCE are of particular interest. The reigns and diplomacy of Eumenes II Soter and Antiochos IV Epiphanes provide us with food for thought regarding the new constraints under which two of the principal Hellenistic powers had to make their political choices. Although the behaviours of the kings were not predictable to their contemporaries, the theory of international relations allows us to better understand the structural conditions under which they acted and thus to appreciate their actions at critical moments of the establishment of the Roman power in the Mediterranean.