Seleucus IV was not one of the most warlike kings of the Seleucid Empire and was therefore quite untypical of these monarchs in the successor states of the Alexander Empire. However, his financial room for maneuver was also extremely limited due to his father's defeat against Rome in 189 BC. When Seleucus was assassinated on Sept. 3, 175 BC, in the year 137 according to Seleucid counting, exactly 2200 years ago, his murderer Heliodorus became the ruler of the empire. Heliodorus was loyal to the king: he is best known for his failed attempt to seize the Jerusalem temple on behalf of Seleucus (2 Macc 3:4-40). In order to rule the empire, he had himself made guardian of the only son of the king available in Antioch. The boy Antiochus was just five years old. However, Heliodorus had not reckoned with the queen. Laodice IV, the widow of Seleucus, and probably also her husband's sister and not without prominence in his reign, as she was the first Seleucid queen on coins, now had gold coins issued herself that showed her with her son on the obverse. These octadrachms are extremely rare and make it unmistakably clear that the queen, who is depicted in the foreground with a diadem and a veil, claimed the regency. The regencies of her sister Cleopatra I over Egypt five years earlier and of their common grandmother Laodice I, who had even entered into a war for the succession after the death of her husband, which was already called the Laodicean War in antiquity, may have been models. Our Laodice must have trusted the murderer Heliodorus, who was an important functionary of the empire, for a long time, as can be seen not least from the stele found in Israel in the 2000s (SEG 57, 1838 and SEG 65,1640). In 178 BC, he had accompanied her daughter on the great bridal procession to Macedonia (Cotton/Wörrle 2007). The tide was to turn again when, just a few weeks after the murder of the king, the younger brother of the murdered king appeared and married the widow Laodice IV in order to rule briefly with the young Antiochus. We can read this event in two ways: the queen summoned him in order to secure her son's rule, which did not succeed in the long term, or the queen's prestige made her indispensable for taking over Seleucid rule, thus guaranteeing the transfer of power to the Seleucids. There is no doubt that the new king, Antiochus IV, legitimized himself through this marriage with his sister, especially as he had spent years in Roman captivity and would hardly have had sufficient local support. The kings of Pergamon helped him to expel Heliodorus militarily (Kunst 2021). If he had made any promises regarding the succession, he did not keep them, for after the king's widow and sister Laodice had borne him a son of her own, he had his nephew murdered (Diod. 30,7,2).
Christiane Kunst
Image: AI-generated
Literature: Cotton, Hannah M.; Wörrle, Michael (2007). "Seleucus IV to Heliodorus. A New Dossier of Royal Correspondence from Israel". Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. 159: 191-205.
