The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire by Paul Kosmin

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 361 in assessing the quality of an adaptation, to more novel considerations of the operations of irony, prophecy, and redemption. In every chapter Michelakis contextualizes his meticulous readings by scrupulously qualifying assertions that might be contested, and by indicating other possible directions that a discussion might have taken. The density and pace of Michelakis’s discussions frequently throw the reader in medias res; familiarity with scholarship in media studies and performance studies will greatly facilitate appreciation of what is at stake in each chapter, but copious footnotes and the bibliography direct readers to resources outside the field, and the filmography includes both the films that Michelakis treats in the text and those that appear only in the footnotes. In fact, one of the virtues of Greek Tragedy on Screen is its assembly of, if not a canon, then an aspirational viewing list that spans the first century of cinema and the globe, from Colombia (Oedipo Alcalde/Mayor Oedipus [1996]) to Hungary (Szerelmem, Elektra/Electra, My Love [1974]) to Japan (Bara no Soretsu/Funeral Parade of Roses [1969]). Multiple readings will likely be necessary in order to absorb the complexities and implications of Michelakis’s ambitious work, which proposes a new agenda for this burgeoning field of inquiry at the intersection of disciplines. Trinity College, Hartford Meredith E. Safran The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire. By Paul Kosmin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2014. Pp. 423, 15 figs. This book is a valuable contribution to the study of Seleucid political and cultural history. Kosmin utilizes the “Spatial Turn” (5–6), the idea that space is a social construct relevant to an understanding of history and a variety of other disciplines in the humanities,1 as a theoretical framework for interpreting the highly fragmentary evidence (Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern) for Seleucid history as it relates to the creation of uniquely Seleucid institutions of government and territorial sovereignty. On the whole, this book lives up to its objectives remarkably well, albeit with one minor methodological issue, discussed near the end of this review. Kosmin’s main argument is that the Seleucid kings went to considerable effort to demarcate clearly the geographical boundaries of their sovereignty and legitimize their rule through a variety of constitutive acts (4–5). Kosmin thus eschews the “weak view” of Seleucid rule in favor of the “strong view,” which sees the Seleucid empire as more formal, institutional, and state-like than is often supposed.2 In the first two chapters Kosmin examines how the Seleucid kings established the territorial limits of their rule. In Chapter One Kosmin argues that the “Indus Treaty” (305 b.c.), whereby Seleucus i Nicator relinquished Paropamisus, Arachosia, and Gedrosia to Chandragupta Maurya in exchange for a dynastic marriage, was a constitutive act, effectively demarcating the eastern terminus of Seleucid rule (33). The main evidence that Kosmin employs is Megasthenes’ Indika, which he sees as the product of Seleucid propaganda aimed at legitimizing the territorial concessions to Chandragupta under 1 B. Warf and S. Arias (eds.), The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (New York 2009) 1. 2 S. Sherwin-White and A. Kuhrt, From Sardis to Samarkhand: New Approaches to the Seleucid Empire (Berkeley 1993) 40–46. 362 PHOENIX the Indus Treaty (37–53). In Chapter Two Kosmin argues that the explorations and city-founding policies of Seleucus i and Antiochus i were likewise intended to mark a northern boundary for the Seleucid empire, both physically and ideologically, running from the Hindu-Kush to the Black Sea (65–75). In Chapters Three and Four Kosmin looks at accounts of dreams and oracles portending the rule of Seleucus i in Asia (cf. App. Syr. 56), which the author contends derive from official Seleucid propaganda, noting that these narratives appear to forbid Europe to Seleucus i, and thus delimit and legitimize the boundaries of Seleucid rule in Asia (94–100). The Seleucid kings further expressed their claims to legitimate rule in the region of the Seleucis (the Syrian tetrapolis of Seleucia Pieria, Antioch, Apamea, and Laodicea), which Kosmin sees as the heartland of the Seleucid kingdom, by adopting the Babylonian regnal dating system as their...