A family with a strong self-image and thirst for power can become a dynastic institution, carrying power and making history over the course of generations.
The vision of Alexander III of Macedon and the glory of his achievements was worn like a mantle by his immediate successors, who created their own kingdoms in a failed attempt to inherit the vast empire. One of these Diadochi was Lysimachus.
Lysimachus (ca 360 BCE – 281 BCE) was one of the immediate bodyguards of Alexander during his Persian campaigns, and crowned in recognition for his actions in India.
After Alexander’s death, he was made the strategos of Thrace. We will see that much of the greatness attributed later to Alexander was due to his successors, as they designed and built the Alexandrian cities across the Hellenistic world, stretching from the Indus River to the Nile.
Even the face of Alexander, made famous on a vast array of coinage, was produced not by him, but his successors, most notably Lysimachus. Is it Alexander who people wonder at, or his bodyguard?
The cognomen Lysimachus becomes in time a family name, appearing – like fingerprints – across the history of the Levant throughout Classical Antiquity, reaching its first peak of power within the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, and then, on its own by subverting Roman power in the first two centuries of this era.
The bodyguard and general Lysimachus did not survive all the rival successors. His city of Lysimachia, founded 309 BCE on the modern Gallipoli peninsula, commanded the strategic road from Sestos to the north and the mainland of Thrace. Lysimachus no doubt made Lysimachia the capital of his kingdom and it must have risen rapidly to the great splendour and prosperity it enjoyed for centuries after.
Two of his children married into the family of another Diadochus – Ptolemy, who became ruler of Egypt (323 —283 BCE) and in 305/4 he took the title of pharaoh.
Above: Genealogy of Ptolemy II by Tynedale House
Arsinoe was the daughter of Ptolemy and at the age of 15, married King Lysimachus, to whom she bore three sons, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Philip. As wife of King Lysimachus, she was queen of Thrace, Asia Minor and Macedonia, and later co-ruler of Egypt with her brother and husband Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
Left: Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II. Alexandria. Hermitage
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy I by Berenice I, was born 309/8 BCE on Cos, was incorporated in the dynastic cult with Arsinoe II as the Sibling Gods, Qeoi Adelfoi (Qeoi Adelfoi).
This dynasty is known to history as Ptolemaic, which ruled the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt during the Hellenistic period, ruling for 275 years, from 305 to 30 BCE.
The name of the dynasty results from the convention of following the male line of the founder. The descendants, though, come equally from the two Diadochi, Ptolemy and Lysimachus, and we can be sure that the descendants valued this signal honour.
The kingdom of Lysimachus became eventually the Kingdom of Pergamon, under the Attalid dynasty, 281–133 BCE and was the rump state left after the collapse of the Kingdom of Thrace. This kingdom enjoyed good relations with Ptolemaic Egypt.
Genealogies, such as the one above, tend to follow the main lines of descent and the branches of the children from each generation are generally ignored, then lost. The common practise of nobility, however, is for the lesser lines to become, first, the national aristocracy, then as the line descends and diffuses further, the landed gentry.
We should expect to see, therefore, the name Lysimachus crop up at intervals, when a member of one of these minor lines becomes prominent in their own right and this is what we see. A prosopographical study of this dynasty would be of value and may provide a more firm framework.
The last Ptolemaic ruler is Cleopatra VII (69 – August 12, 30 BCE), made famous through her relationships with Julius Caesar, then Mark Anthony. These have tended to overshadow the history of her as ruler of Egypt.
Cleoptra declared herself to be Isis reincarnated and during her reign, it was believed that she was the re-incarnation and embodiment of the goddess of wisdom. Cleopatra’s coinage hailed her as Isis, the ‘New Goddess,’ and she was actively worshipped as such in Egypt. After the ‘Donations of Alexandria’ she was never in public without her Isis robes. Caesar erected a golden statue of Cleopatra represented as Isis in the temple of Venus Genetrix (the mythical ancestress of Caesar’s family), situated at the Forum Julium.
The Goddess Isis, wall painting, c. 1360 BCE, in the tomb of of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings (KV17).
Hellenistic Egypt is far removed from the Ancient Egypt of pharaonic times, to which belonged the mother of Horus. First mentions of Isis date back to the Fifth dynasty of Egypt 2498 – 2375 BCE. In later myths, the Egyptians believed that the Nile River flooded every year because of her tears of sorrow for her dead husband, Osiris. This occurrence of his death and rebirth was relived each year through rituals. The worship of Isis eventually spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.
Josephus, in Book XV of The Antiquities of the Jews (Containing The Interval Of Eighteen Years — From The Death Of Antigonus To The Finishing Of The Temple By Herod), describes an attempt by Cleopatra to annex Idumea/Edom from Herod the Great, using his brother-in-law Costobarus:
(i) But some time afterward, when Salome happened to quarrel with Costobarus, she sent him a bill of divorce and dissolved her marriage with him, though this was not according to the Jewish laws; for with us it is lawful for a husband to do so; but a wife; if she departs from her husband, cannot of herself be married to another, unless her former husband put her away. However, Salome chose to follow not the law of her country, but the law of her authority, and so renounced her wedlock; and told her brother Herod, that she left her husband out of her good-will to him, because she perceived that he, with Antipater, and Lysimachus, and Dositheus, were raising a sedition against him; as an evidence whereof, she alleged the case of the sons of Babas, that they had been by him preserved alive already for the interval of twelve years; which proved to be true. But when Herod thus unexpectedly heard of it, he was greatly surprised at it, and was the more surprised, because the relation appeared incredible to him. As for the fact relating to these sons of Babas, Herod had formerly taken great pains to bring them to punishment, as being enemies to his government; but they were now forgotten by him, on account of the length of time [since he had ordered them to be slain].
(ii) He was still sorely afflicted, both in mind and body, and made very uneasy, and readier than ever upon all occasions to inflict punishment upon those that fell under his hand. He also slew the most intimate of his friends, Costobarus, and Lysimachus, and Cadias, who was also called Antipater; as also Dositheus, and that upon the following occasion.
So the name Lysimachus reappears in the last century of the past era, as an agent of the Ptolemies. Nobody has connected this Lysimachus with those of the following century. Is this because his kinsman and Saul oppose the messianic Judaism that prompted the first Jewish-Roman war and is parodied with the New Testament, in which Saul also appears and kills James the Just (as ‘Stephen’), Essene leader at Qumran?
The Lysimachus family then appears in Alexandria: Philo, Alexander the Alabarch and another sibling.
Lysimachus is mentioned in Philo’s On Animals as his brother:
LYSIMACHUS OF ALEXANDRIA (of uncertain date), author of several mythographical works and a book on Egypt. In addition to the scurrilous versions of the Exodus given by Manetho and Chaeremon, Josephus adds the account of Lysimachus, who, he says, “surpasses both in the incredibility of his fictions” (Apion, 1:304–20). According to Lysimachus’ version, in the reign of Bocchoris (perhaps a corruption of bekhor, in allusion to the plague of the first-born during which the Jews left Egypt), king of Egypt, the Jews (see also *Tacitus, Historiae, 5:3), afflicted with leprosy and scurvy, took refuge in the temples. A dearth ensued throughout Egypt, and an oracle of Ammon informed the king that the failure of the crops could be averted only by purging the temples of impure persons, driving them out into the wilderness and drowning those afflicted with leprosy. After the lepers had been drowned, the others, numbering 110,600 were exposed in the desert to perish. A certain Moses, however, advised them to proceed until they reached inhabited country, instructing them to show goodwill to no man, to offer not the best but the worst advice, and to overthrow any temples which they found. When they came to the country now called Judea, they built a town called Hierosyla (“town of temple-robbers”). At a later date they altered the name to avoid reproach and called the city Hierosolyma. Josephus attempts to refute the account, not by offering other evidence, but by showing its intrinsic improbability.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Gudeman, in: Pauly-Wissowa, 27 (1928), 32–39; Reinach, Textes, 117–20; Schuerer, Gesch, 3 (19094), 535f.
- http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0013_0_12928.html
Philo followed the practices of both Jewish exegesis and Stoic philosophy, using allegory to fuse and harmonize Greek philosophy and Judaism: the Logos was God’s “blueprint for the world”, a governing plan. Modern scholarship has described his work as the first christology.
An event in the life of Philo that can be determined chronologically is his participation in 40 CE in the embassy which the Alexandrian Jews sent to the emperor Caligula at Rome as the result of civil strife between the Alexandrian Jewish and Hellenised communities.
A third brother is Alexander Lysimachus and according to Josephus (Antiquities 20.100), Alexander surpassed his fellow local Jewish citizens in Alexandria in both ancestry and wealth.
This Alexander Lysimachus became the steward of the estates of Antonia Minor, daughter of Mark Anthony; she was the hostage-holder of Rome (31 January 36 BCE – September/October 37CE).
His financial dealings are reasonably well-known – he became the Roman tax-farmer of Egypt with the office of alabarch. Less well-recognised is his pivotal role in bringing to power Titus Flavius Vespasianus as emperor in 69, which founded the Flavian dynasty in Rome.
One of the son’s of Alexander Lysimachus – Tiberius Julius Alexander – gave up the pretence of being Jewish to become procurator of Judea (c. 46 – 48) and Prefect of Egypt (66 – 69). A damaged papyrus refers to Alexander as holding the position of “Praetorian Prefect” – probably means that he became Prefect of the Praetorian Guard at Rome, which in later years became a common position for former Prefects of Egypt. At the Siege of Jerusalem in 70, Titus, the son of Vespasian was in command with the son of Alexander Lysimachus as his deputy.
The second son of Alexander Lysimachus is Marcus, mentioned in the Petrie Ostraca, for his activities between 37-44 at Myos Hormos and Berenice Troglodytica, ports located in the Red Sea. In 41, he married princess Berenice, daughter of Herod Agrippa I. Agrippa had been raised at the home of Antonia Minor, along with many other provincial royalty and nobility.
Through these relationships – financial, political and familial – the Lysimachus continued its dynastic role beyond the end of the Ptolemaic period.
Just as Judaism was syncretic in the Greco-Roman period, so the Lysimachus of Alexandria – as evidenced by the philosophy of Philo and the probable apostasy of Tiberius Julius Alexander – made of Judaism a convenience.
Zodiac and months from Tetrabiblos of Ptolemaios
Manuscript from the 8th century CE. Geographia of Ptolemy; Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana.
Helios in the centre, identified as the Christ by the cross, twelve naked female figures represent the hours, twelve clothed apostles represent the twelve months, and surrounding that the twelve zodiac signs.
Philo and later, Ptolemy, used the Royal Library of Alexandria to develop their syncretic theme, starting with the first christology, then developing Greek magic, from which spring the divine men of Classical Antiquity.
The Lysimachus sought power and that is expensive. Jewish merchants dominated trade with the East and tax on trade became the single most important source of imperial funds after the Roman conquest of Britain, which stablised the imperial border and ended the instant revenue derived from the slaves and gold of conquest.
The alabarch financed Jewish kings and the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as the Flavians. Their wealth depended on stablity, giving them the urgent motive to resolve the threat to Pax Romana of Messianic Judaism.
They also sought to return to the old stamping ground of the general Lysimachus, in Thrace and Asia Minor, which is the context for the marriage of Marcus and the campaigning of Tiberius with Corbulo in Armenia.
In 1838 an inscription was found in Aradus, in which the council and the people of Aradus pay homage simultaneously to Pliny the Elder and to Alexander (Corpus Inscriptionum Græcarum, iii. 1278, No. 4536 et seq.). The dignities of Alexander are stated in this inscription as follows: 
(this appellation is found here only, and is equivalent to vice-procurator; see Mommsen in “Hermes,” xix. 640); eparch of the Jewish host; governor of Syria; eparch of the twenty-second legion in Egypt. The stone bearing this inscription was brought to Paris in 1864 (Renan, “Mission en Phénicie,” 1864, p. 29).
Over the last century, many inscriptions and documents from this period have been found, of which most have yet to be understood fully. Even so, we may expect in the near future for more flesh to be added to the Lysimachus prosopography.
Two specific areas of this dynasty I suggest could be beneficial to study are:
- The syncretisms of Cleopatra and Philo and if any relationship exists between them.
- Possible confusions between the histories of Alexander, son of the alabarch, and Alexander, son of Herod the Great. The account by Josephus of a pretender to the Herodian prince may be a hint at something more.
There are many related areas worthy of study.
The role of Jewish merchants in general in the East-West trade, and how this impacted belief systems, perhaps through the astrological symbolism attached to trade goods (and appearing in synagogue mosaics), and the role of the Lysiamchus in trade – both with the East and within the Mediterranean, looks promising. Parallel to this is the study of early synagogues and Buddhist monasteries, and their relationship to trade.
There are some important archaeological projects touching upon these, however, they tend to lack an overview.
Related posts:
- The Royal Library of Alexandria in the first century
- When evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world
- An army of divine men and the secret army of Mithras
- Claudius Ptolemy – a Ptolemy
- The Ptolemaic zodiac: from where the sun shines
- Chrest Magus
- Chrestians and the lost history of Classical Antiquity
- Augustus: the Roman Messiah
- Mauretanian glassmakers in Roman Britain
- Dynastic power in the Greco-Roman world
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