'the Victorious': Seleucus Nicator and the world after Alexander
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Hey everybody, just to say I will be absent for just a couple of days. I've written much of the next chapter but have personal things to deal with this week so probably will post the next chapter this weekend. Sorry for the delay. I will also try to reply to any comments or questions then so feel free to drop any questions or comments here and I promise to get back to you all! Thank you so much for reading!
Oh alright then, that makes more sense lmao, I am not that versed on how much papyrus we have regarding Hellenistic Egypt, but again this timeline is making me learn.
Awesome that they do have some connections, and true the Romans at the moment are a none issue it's Egypt where they have their greatest rival.
Agreed, with Egypt in hand they would have basically all of Alexander's conquests and not to mention the boom of Egyptian grain and revenue.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Siege of Tyre Part One: Demetrius the Besieged
Map of the city of Tyre looking across from the west towards the coast of Phoenicia. The citadel of Philocrates and Pausanias lay near the western wall and close to both the Sidonian port and the Temple of Melqart.
Important Names:
Demetrius: Prince of the Seleucid Empire
Kallias: Head of the Seleucid garrison in the city of Tyre
Melqartamos: Leader of the Tyrian democratic movement
Hamilcar: General of the Tyrian army and former ally of Pausanias
Ptolemy III: King of Ptolemaic Egypt and commander of the Ptolemaic forces
Isokrates: Commander of the Ptolemaic phalanx
Gorgias: Commander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Demodocus: Subcommander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Kosmas: Commander of the Ptolemaic cavalry force
Pausanias I: Son of Philocrates and would-be King of Tyre
Philocrates II: Teenage son (and heir) of Pausanias
In the events to follow, there are a lot of names, characters, and events that can make the actual narrative of the siege of Tyre sometimes quite overwhelming and confusing. I have attempted here to break the narrative down into its most important events divided day by day with analysis of the literary context behind several key scenes in the story but there is no need to remember every detail of the account for a general understanding of its events. At the end, I have provided a summary timeline of the siege and its most important events beginning in June and ending, with the siege, in September. In truth, of course, the 'Siege of Tyre' is a misnomer. Despite being condensed into a single siege by many, the 'Siege of Tyre' actually comprises two separate and distinct sieges which are often known as the 'Pausanian Siege' (in June 227) and the 'Ptolemaic Siege' (August-September 227). In between are two months in which the city of Tyre was not under any form of siege. The condensing of these two separate sieges into a single historical event stems from Euphemios who also condensed the story; changing the inter-siege period from two months into a period of only a week or so. Between the Euphemian tradition and the fact that the protagonists of both sieges are (for the most part) similar, many historians have tended to treat the siege as a single event, on ongoing period of siege if you will in which the city was not consistently blockaded but, to quote one historian, 'remained in the frame of mind of a city under attack'. This chapter will largely deal with the period between the first arrival of Ptolemaic forces sometime before June 9th and the end of the Pausanian Siege on June 27th. The next chapter, then, will focus on the Ptolemaic siege between August 15th and September 13th.
Ptolemaic Arrival (Before June 9th):
Ptolemy's first arrival at Tyre came sometime in early June. Fresh from the surrender of Sidon, the Ptolemaic army marched unopposed to Tyre wherein he hoped to re-establish Pausanias as king. Once there, however, his initial offer of surrender was curtly refused. His first appeal was made to the people of Tyre themselves, hoping to convince them to open the gates and let Pausanias retake control with the promise that no harm would be done to the city or its people and that only the Seleucid garrison would be taken prisoner. Once that failed, he turned instead to Demetrius, offering to allow his garrison to exit the city and retreat intact to Syria on the condition they lay down their arms and Demetrius himself surrendered as a hostage. The terms were rather fair as well, promising Demetrius a safe captivity back in Alexandria and a return to the Seleucids upon the conclusion of the war. For his part, however, Demetrius seems to have been rather confident. Given the strong hostility within the city to Pausanias and his family, the Tyrians had no intention of simply letting him retake the city and Demetrius was set upon defending the city, possibly betting that Ptolemy himself would not waste time besieging the city for months but would, instead, move to confront the Seleucid army in the north. If so, he was correct and, not wanting to waste time, Ptolemy instead left some 3000 soldiers and 40 ships to keep the pressure on Tyre until he could defeat Antiochus.
The traditional explanation of this is that Ptolemy was betting on the Seleucid garrison being too low on numbers and the Tyrians too unwilling to fight for them to really do much while Ptolemy cleaned up elsewhere. Possibly, he expected that a major defeat against Antiochus would convince Demetrius to just surrender outright. It seems odd though that he would leave as few as 3000 troops and only 40 ships. Don’t misunderstand, the 3000 troops he left were far from a weak force, under the command of one of his phalanx commanders, Isokrates, they were a dangerous fighting force. His ships, meanwhile, led by Gorgias, an experienced marine and, apparently expert archer, were outfitted with siege weapons and may have fielded as many as 2500-3000 marines. Still, these are small numbers for the Hellenistic, especially considering that Demetrius, alongside the original garrison of 600 had some 2000 further soldiers brought to Phoenicia in 228 BCE. In all, we are talking about 6000 Ptolemaic soldiers to fight against a garrison of 2600 Seleucid soldiers and capture the entire city. Don’t forget that Demetrius had a rather huge advantage in the form of walls and a population already emboldened by already having thrown Pausanias out the first time.
It is rather odd, then, that Ptolemy didn’t try leaving more soldiers, at least to hedge his bets against Demetrius managing to raise a larger army and storming the Ptolemaic encampment. One explanation is that Ptolemy was betting on Pausanias’ own plans to take the city and truly believed that Pausanias could do so. On June 10th, Pausanias sent messengers to the new government of Sidon asking for military support and, in return, received another 4000 soldiers who arrived sometime between then and the 13th. According to Euphemios, he also managed to use his own personal fortune to hire more soldiers from pro-Ptolemaic governments in Judaea to the tune of some 1500-2000 extra soldiers. In all, he perhaps was fielding some 11500-12000 soldiers (if we include the marines) by the 19th when the first assault began. Of course, this is also confusing because the government of Sidon had only taken power a few days earlier. How, then, could they simply spare 4000 troops? And why, if Pausanias already intended to take the city (knowing that he would need soldiers to maintain power) had he not attempted to raise this support before he got to Tyre? Surely, he knew that, with Demetrius and Melqartamos at the helm, Tyre wouldn’t simply open the gates to another period of royal rule.
A recent reconstruction has attempted to parse a more reliable narrative out of this. The suggestion, made in an article published last year, is that Pausanias began raising support during the march through Judaea and that the soldiers only arrived during the period between June 10th and June 19th. It is also thought that these probably were not mercenaries so much as Ptolemaic military settlers or the armed forces of Ptolemaic subject cities incentivised by Pausanias’ cash to lend their support to his expedition. As for the 4000 Sidonian soldiers, they may not have been Sidonian at all but supporters of the various exiled governments of Phoenicia accompanying Ptolemy and moving from city to city to help each other get into power. In this case, Ptolemy leaving 3000 infantry is simply his contribution to what amounts to a large private expedition to reclaim Phoenicia organised by a network of aristocrats and monarchs trying to reclaim their power.
Regardless, by the time of the Ptolemaic strategy meeting on the 13th, Pausanias’ army had (at least on paper) swelled to perhaps as many as 12,000 soldiers, dwarfing Demetrius’ own garrison. Encamped on the landward side of the bridge to Tyre, the Pausanias, Gorgias and Isokrates envisaged a three-pronged strike against the city. Pausanias had been in contact with surviving supporters and anti-Melqartamos factions within the city, probing for a break in the Tyrian ranks that might open the gates and, by the 13th, seems to have been reasonably confident that he could have those gates open. The plan called for the gates to be opened during the night, allowing Pausanias’ land forces to sweep into the city and establish a bridgehead. If they hadn’t already taken the city by morning, they would be joined by Gorgias’ soldiers launching attacks on the Sidonian and Egyptian harbours in conjunction. Caught between them, Demetrius’ small forces would be forced to split their energies and ultimately be overwhelmed.
Back in the city, all was not well. Melqartamos was not a general but an orator and few of the pro-democrats had any military experience of any kind to speak of. Instead, Demetrius had turned to Hamilcar, an old supporter of the Philocritean and Pausanian regimes who had acted as a commander during the fights against the democratic insurgencies. During Demetrius’ initial overthrow of Pausanias, Hamilcar had been one of those that many had called upon to be executed but had ultimately been pardoned by Demetrius on the basis of preventing further civil bloodshed. It says something that, as of June 227, Hamilcar and Demetrius were, effectively, the most experienced generals in the city. The problem was that Melqartamos and many others disliked Hamilcar and had grown wary of a pro-Pausanian movement within the city. Fearing that Pausanias’ ex-supporters might, you know, betray the democracy, Melqartamos approached Demetrius asking to have many of them arrested. He was, of course, outraged when not only did Demetrius not have them arrested but instead recruited Hamilcar to act as a secondary military commander. Between them, Demetrius, Melqartamos, and Hamilcar took the official positions of ‘general’ with Demetrius famously refusing to use any royal titles to try and endear himself to the Tyrian populace.
It soon became clear, however, that Melqartamos and Hamilcar were too ideologically opposed. Both saw the other as an enemy and often refused to work together. In the end, Demetrius was forced to meet with each of them separately since every meeting between them soon devolved into, sometimes physical, fights. To his credit, Demetrius himself did not seem to fully trust Hamilcar either and, instead, assigned him to a command in the southern part of the city, near the Egyptian harbour and away from the citadel itself so that, even if he did turn on Demetrius, he wouldn’t be able to take the citadel. To hedge his bets further, he assigned a subcommander, one of his own retinue named Cleomenes, to act as Hamilcar’s second-in-command. Secretly, however, he gave Cleomenes authority to detain Hamilcar should he take any actions against the city or Demetrius.
Between them, the three (Demetrius, Hamilcar, and Melqartamos) began mobilising their forces. The exact population of Tyre is unknown at this date but has estimated at somewhere between 20-25,000 (still a ways lower than it had been before Alexander’s sack of the city but having recovered somewhat). Out of these, the three seem to have organised a truly monumental defensive effort on which no expense (or person) was spared. Between the 10th and 18th June, the men of Tyre were organised into units and equipped with whatever weapons could be scrounged up. Workshops were converted into makeshift weapons factories to produce all weapons and armour they could. Both men and women were brought up to dig trenches and erect makeshift barricades, sometimes out of old furniture or chunks of broken buildings. Merchant ships in the harbour were seized and renovated. Curfews were established and some form of martial law imposed with set regimens and night watches. Most of all, access to the main gates and harbours of the city was limited to only a few people.
June 19th – 20th: The Assault Begins
In the early hours of June 19th 227 BCE, a contingent of Pausanian supporters donned stashed weapons and armour, possibly smuggled into the city under cover of night a few days earlier (although the weapons and armour mentioned by Euphemios may just as well be those issued by Demetrius himself) and began making their way to the gates. Supposedly the band was small, only a dozen or so people, yet they managed to catch the guards by the surprise and kill many of them, taking control of the gates. From there, they sent a signal and began opening the gates for Pausanias’ soldiers.
Back at the citadel, Demetrius was awoken by a soldier frantically telling him of the attack but, even so, by the time he reached the city proper, Pausanias was already inside. Attempting to rally his soldiers, Demetrius mounted a horse and rode through the city, borrowing soldiers from Melqartamos’ forces near the Sidonian harbour and gathering any Tyrians or Seleucid soldiers he could to try and hold the line. Nevertheless, it was already too late and Pausanias’ soldiers were able to reach the Temple of Melqart nearly unopposed before the Seleucids could rally themselves enough to make a last stand. It was at the Temple of Melqart that the tide first began to turn. As his soldiers entered the district, Pausanias supposedly sent a contingent to demolish the nearby boule as a sign of his impending victory. Seeing their approach, the Tyrians are said to have rallied and launched a devastating counter-attack. At the same time, Demetrius launched his own counter-attack from the other side and, between them, the two killed hundreds of Pausanias’ soldiers.
This is the story in Euphemios but the real story is possibly less dramatic. In truth, Demetrius seems to have somewhat fortified the Temple of Melqart, possibly hedging against this very possibility and knowing that, as an important central location, it would be crucial for maintaining control should Pausanias enter the city. Demetrius, failing to push Pausanias back in the streets, instead made his way to the next fortified position to make his stand there. Nevertheless, the stand was no less impressive; according to Caiatinus, the Seleucid and Tyrian defenders held out at the temple for hours, pushing back no fewer than seven assaults on their positions, assisted by non-combatants on the roof of the temple (and nearby houses) who cast down tiles and stones on the attackers. In both Euphemios and Caiatinus, however, a particularly dramatic moment includes an attempt by Pausanias’ soldiers to storm a local house only to be beaten back by a local woman wielding a deadly combination of boiling water and chunks of stone.
A lot of these stories are possibly apocryphal but they are interesting in their own right. As far as we can tell, a lot of Euphemios and Caiatinus’ anecdotes came from Tyre itself and, as such, seem to reflect a degree of post-siege mythmaking by the populace. That said, there is no reason to doubt the general basis of what is being communicated here; the Tyrian population didn’t sit back and let their city be conquered because of course they wouldn’t. Instead, they fought back. It is very easy in history to look at the conquest of cities only through the lenses of armies and generals and to ignore the very real ability, and often desire, of people to resist. Part of what made this an interesting story for people was this element of communal resistance which is at the heart of Euphemios’ own stories. When he hear accounts such as the ‘Women’s Battalion’, a group of local weavers who donned armour and spears and ambushed some of Pausanias’ soldiers, or the story in which several merchants threw flour into the air and ignited it, apparently detonating several houses and some 50-odd soldiers, the important point isn’t the veracity of these specific events but the general sensation of communal resistance that drew Euphemios’ eye in the first place.
Caught between an enraged Tyrian populace and the refusal of Demetrius’ garrison to break, Pausanias instead changed tack, seeking instead to help secure the ports and simply wait out Demetrius’ forces in the Temple of Melqart. Sure, they couldn’t quite dislodge the prince here but they could try to take the rest of the city. Moving through the city, however, proved difficult. Every house became another potential battleground; Demetrius’ garrison had become scattered in some areas and while a few had surrendered or been killed, others were putting up desperate stands, supported by the citizenry, on houses or in streets. Even the walls hadn’t been fully pacified and, as morning approached, Isokrates was even forced to pull back to try and prevent some soldiers from retaking the gates. Sure, Pausanias’ soldiers may well have had better equipment than the majority of those they were fighting, and certainly better training, but the city itself acted as a potential death trap for all concerned.
As morning approached, Pausanias’ army quickly found itself unable to make any real headway. Sure, they were getting there but it was very slow going indeed. Interestingly, in Euphemios’ account, we see something quite familiar; the same mob tactics used in the original opposition to Pausanias and Philocrates seem to have been employed en masse here. We are talking about ambushes, a lot of skirmish tactics and a back-and-forth flow of citizenry in often unorganised waves that could easily catch soldiers unprepared. Houses and tight streets made for perfect kill boxes, especially for people wielding very heavy roof tiles or spears or a hundred and one another potentially deadly weapons (such as flour or boiling water as Euphemios claims). In truth, what had really undone Pausanias’ assault was most likely the strict rota imposed by Hamilcar and Demetrius and the general willingness of the Tyrians to resist. After years under the rules of Philocrates and Pausanias, the demos was not about to roll over and seems to have bought into the defensive measures rather quickly.
As such, Pausanias’ original assault took Demetrius by surprise but was quickly reported and the people amassed in much greater numbers than Pausanias may ever have expected. As morning dawned, Gorgias’ fleet made its approach. Their catapults had probably either been dismantled and left on the beach or otherwise were not being used, anticipating more of an amphibious assault than any attempt to make a breach in the walls. Gorgias himself was leading the southern attack, aiming for the Egyptian harbour while one of his subcommanders (Demodocus) led the northern assault.
As Demodocus approached the Sidonian port, everything seemed to be rather quiet. Probably thinking that Demetrius was holed up the Temple at Melqart, he sailed onwards, anticipating a quiet capture of the port. As he approached, however, he noticed that none of the merchant ships were actually beached but instead were floating free in the water. Reasoning, however, that they looked abandoned and were probably simply left as obstacles, he instead decided to push on to take the beach. The first of his ships reached the beach easily enough, and began unloading their marines.
However, as more ships approached, the idle merchant ships sprang to life and, apparently, began moving of their own accord. They travelled in two sets, targeting the ships closest to the beach (those which had not docked yet, that is) and those furthest away. As they collided with them, flames began to spew forth from the ships, enveloping those they hit. In the narrow confines of the harbour, Demodocus’ fleet was unable to properly manoeuvre and many of the ships soon caught fire. For those in the middle, unable to either advance or retreat, they found themselves soon going up in flames as well and, before long, several ships had sunk. Seeing their friends burning alive, hearing the screams and watching many others drown, Demodocus’ marines on the beach were demoralised and soon were even more demoralised when Melqartamos’ troops swarmed forward to surround them. Many threw down their arms and surrendered while others elected to fight and, promptly, die.
So what do we make of this story? The bones of it are true; in 2015, excavation around the port of Tyre found the submerged remains of an old Ptolemaic warship which showed very distinctive signs of burning. In fact, the ship had survived because of how close it was to the beach and had been covered in silt over time. What is certain is that the fire ship tactic was used in some form, possibly using amphorae full of flammable material and torches of some variety which were broken against the edges of ships. Another possibility suggested has been some variation of the flour tactic mentioned by Euphemios elsewhere. The merchant ships themselves must have been arrayed near to the beaches but close to the edge and manned by skeleton crews who began rowing once Demodocus was suitably lured in. Why exactly Demodocus failed to see the danger is uncertain, but it is very likely that he simply didn’t see the merchant ships as a threat. For all he knew, Demetrius was pinned in the centre of the city and, even if the merchant ships did have men in them, they lacked either the rams or the trained marines to take out a Ptolemaic warship.
The Sidonian port wasn’t that small either and it is quite possible that the trap relied largely on an attack from one side, probably the southern side of the port, smashing into ships and using the weight of the large, heavy merchant ships as well as the fire to try and force the others back, creating an effective wall of burning wood. It also worked because it was summer and the wood on the ships’ decks was drier as a result, allowing the fire to spread more easily. In all, Demodocus probably lost about 8-10 of his ships, a huge loss but not enough to really put his half of the fleet entirely out of action. He himself was not so lucky and joined those captured on the beach.
In the South, Gorgias had more luck. Despite another, less successful, fire-ship tactic which claimed a handful of his own ships, he was able to reach the beach and storm it. For the first couple of hours, his marines were able to steadily push Hamilcar and his contingent back, killing Cleomenes in the process. He was, however, unable to fully dislodge Hamilcar who soon took control of several houses on the edge of the port, using them as improvised fortifications to drive back several of Gorgias’ assaults.
With Gorgias hemmed in in the Egyptian port, Demodocus’ fleet neutered in the north and Pausanias making a slow advance through the city, the situation felt like something of a deadlock as night fell on June 19th. Gathering his forces, Pausanias took stock of the situation and resolved to launch an attack to the south to relieve Gorgias and link up with his forces. Isokrates and his Ptolemaic soldiers were to hold the gate. On June 20th, Pausanias made better headway, pushing back the Tyrian populace and inflicting heavy casualties (and, according to Euphemios, very serious war crimes) and reaching the port around midday. There, he was able to rout Hamilcar and his forces and take control of the port.
June 21st-24th: Height of the Battle
The next four days in Euphemios are a jumble of various engagements and battles. In short, Pausanias and Gorgias joined up on June 20th and rested overnight in the harbour. Hamilcar returned to the Temple of Melqart where he joined up with Demetrius and Melqartamos and the three made an attempt to take control of the gate, only to be forced back by Isokrates. As Pausanias and Gorgias approached, still harassed by the population in several more of Euphemios’ ‘communal resistance scenes’, they fell back again to the Temple of Melqart. This time, things went worse for them and the defenders fell back again and began a fighting retreat to the north, heading for the citadel.
On June 22nd, Demetrius staged a retreat, drawing Pausanias and Gorgias forward only to then ambush them in the streets. Once again, employing the Tyrian mob tactics used previously, a combination of skirmishing and set warfare in narrow streets allowed him to leverage his resources against a foe that, even now, was still stronger. Numbers are hard to gauge since few of our authors are very clear on the exact losses at each stage. In Euphemios, Pausanias loses hundreds of soldiers all the time and yet still seems to have endless forces. Generally, however, the understanding is that casualties were probably relatively low at this stage and probably higher on Demetrius’ side. Despite the communal resistance, the biggest impact was to delay, damage, unsettle and disrupt Pausanias’ formations which made movement hazardous. Fighting was brutal but, as in all ancient warfare, the truly high casualty numbers didn’t come until later.
For Demetrius, the biggest losses were probably mostly non-combatants and poorly trained Tyrian soldiers who seem to have lost most of their direct confrontations with Ptolemaic soldiers. What allowed him to keep fighting despite this was a mixture of popular sentiment and home ground advantage as well as the impact of constant skirmishing in helping break Pausanias’ momentum and formations. Until June 24th, the two basically fought back and forth. In Euphemios, this is full of personal anecdotes and duels and communal resistance stories. Amongst these we have Hamilcar duelling Gorgias, which almost certainly did not take place, Demetrius duelling Pausanias which also probably did not take place and may well have been written as foreshadowing for the more famous Demetrius vs Ptolemy duel during the second siege and a somewhat ridiculous story in which Demetrius tricks Pausanias into an ambush by sending a local Phoenician to pretend to be the ghost of Philocrates (again, probably not true but always worth mentioning).
June 25th-27th: Conclusion
The turning point came on June 25th. After several days of fighting, Pausanias himself was killed sometime in the morning. In Euphemios, he is killed by a Tyrian who, apparently, was a relative of a man killed by Philocrates’ father but we have no real idea of how Pausanias died. Nevertheless, his death seems to have finally broken the morale of his Phoenician allies who finally began to rout. A very real possibility is that his death accompanied another, possibly larger, ambush. In Euphemios, the events of the 23rd and 24th June have sometimes appeared strange because, despite the constant series of successes attributed by Euphemios to Demetrius’ forces, they seem to constantly be pulling ever further back. We hear, for instance, of Demetrius’ forces killing dozens of Pausanias’ troops on the 24th and yet, only a few hours later, they’re practically on the verge of retreating to the citadel.
One explanation for this is that Demetrius was staging another retreat-ambush, pulling back enough to give his forces time to move around and cut off Pausanias’ retreat. When Pausanias was killed, his forces (between the ambush and his death) began to rout en masse. In the end, the effect was the same; Pausanias’ Sidonian allies began to rout and the Ptolemaic army was forced back. As they reached the Temple of Melqart, Demetrius sent Hamilcar southwards towards the port, taking advantage of their greater knowledge of the city to cut off the Ptolemaic retreat and overrun the defences at the port and even capturing several ships. At the same time, he sent Melqartamos north-west, once again moving through the city faster than the retreating Ptolemaic army could, where he stormed the walls, killing many of the defenders in a brutal (and costly) assault, taking control of the gate and shutting the Ptolemies in.
Now hemmed in by Melqartmos, Demetrius and Hamilcar, the Ptolemies surrendered, throwing down their arms and accepting capture by the Seleucids. Isokrates and Gorgias were both taken as prisoners and the arms and armour of the Ptolemaic forces were stripped. The casualties on both sides had been, to be honest, rather steep. According to Caiatinus, the Tyrians had suffered some 15,000 casualties and Pausanias’ army was wiped out. In truth, the numbers were probably less dramatic. Modern estimates place the casualties amongst Demetrius’ force at close to 1000-1200 and perhaps 3-4000 Tyrians killed. The fighting was brutal and costly. When we envisage the Siege of Tyre, especially the Pausanian Siege, we should not imagine a clean or neat battle. Instead, especially compared to the later Ptolemaic siege, this was a brutal and close fight. In many areas, it was a battle of ambushes and skirmishing. While many of the stories in Euphemius are apocryphal, they capture the essence of what was a truly chaotic and brutal battle. We hear of a whole variety of war crimes on both sides; Pausanias’ soldiers slaughtering a family, the Tyrians executing prisoners (including after the battle during which Demetrius intervened when a group of Tyrian soldiers kidnapped Ptolemaic soldiers and began pushing them off the walls of the city to their deaths).
For all the glory and ‘communal resistance’ of Euphemios, the Pausanian Siege of Tyre was a tragedy of some sort. By the end of the second siege in September 227 BCE, the population of Tyre would have dropped dramatically. Some estimates have suggested that from the original pre-siege estimates of 20-25,000 people, the population by the end of 227 BCE might have dropped as low as 15,000 or even lower. This, of course, was just Tyre and gives us some insight into the true costs of the Great Syrian War. During the late 3rd Century and beginning of the 2nd, we find that Phoenicia seems to have been quite badly depopulated by the events of the war. Despite a rather great deal of post-war rebuilding, cities such as Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Tripolis and others saw a very real decline in their populations that would have serious impacts going forward.
Literature and Pausanias:
It is worth taking a second to step back and think about the literary impact of the Pausanian Siege. Despite often being lost in the events of the Ptolemaic Siege, Euphemios’ account of the Pausanian Siege is just as important and interesting. One of the overarching themes in Euphemios is the importance of the demos as a community in the protection and elevation of the city. Accordingly, the Pausanian siege is a key literary tool in Euphemios’ accounting of the events. For him, the defeat of Pausanias is the first real triumph of the Tyrian demos, it is the moment at which the monarchy of Tyre is fully cast off by its people whose embracing of their shared identity is what allows them to triumph.
In this, Pausanias is not strictly a villain (indeed, Euphemios’ characterisation of Pausanias is sometimes tragic, casting him as an ultimately pathetic figure who fails to understand the nature of the polis and loses everything for it) but an obstacle, a symbol of the inevitable anachronism of monarchy within the polis. In Euphemios, the Pausanian siege of Tyre is, in effect, the final Tyrian revolution and, to quote one scholar:
‘The rejection of Pausanias as king is a sign that the Tyrians have embraced the Athenian history of the Tyrannicides. In his death at the hands of a Tyrian citizen, Pausanias is cast as the final obstacle to the freedom of the people of Tyre, his death is a necessary outcome for the elevation and achievement of democratic rule. It is, we might say, the final triumph of democracy.’
In this, Euphemios seems to be basically following the tradition of Phoenician democratic writers such as Melqartamos. In the context of the Hellenistic, a political environment in which cities could often find their governments changed against their will, Tyre is an interesting case study of the means to which a people might go to resist the overarching and overwhelming powers of Hellenistic kings. We should not forget that, in the end, the history of cities such as Tyre is a human history in which the people of the city played their own roles in deciding their fates. That is why Euphemios saw the romance in the story of the siege and why, even as Demetrius is cast as its royal saviour, his triumph begins with casting off his royal regalia.
Throughout the story, Demetrius’ development is his move away from his royal status. At the outset of the siege, he casts off his royal regalia and demands he be addressed only as a general. By the time the siege concludes in September 227 BCE, Demetrius is included as part of the demos of Tyre. It is with some tragedy, then, that he ultimately is compelled to leave (against his will in Euphemios as he is called off by Antiochus to fight the Ptolemies) and return to royalty. The tragedy in Euphemios rests on our own knowledge. The rise and fall of Demetrius was well known to his contemporaries, allowing Euphemios to cast it as the result of his return to royal life. As the story ends, concluding with Demetrius leaving Tyre, we are left to wonder whether or not his status as a prince of Seleucid empire is ultimately what dooms him.
June 227:
Sometime before June 9th: Ptolemy III leaves 3000 infantry and 40 ships to put pressure on Tyre and drive a surrender.
First Siege of Tyre (June 10th-June 27th):
June 10th/11th: Pausanias rallies support
June 13th: Ptolemaic strategy meeting; Demetrius and Hamilcar organise Tyrian armed forces
June 19th: Initial naval assault on the Sidonian and Egyptian ports; Pausanias' allies open the gates; burning of the ships.
June 20th: Battle for the Egyptian Port
June 21st: Fighting near the Temple of Melqart
June 22nd: Demetrius' ambush and counterattack
June 23rd-24th: Urban fighting
June 25th: Pausanias is killed and his Sidonian allies rout; Tyrians capture the Ptolemaic ships
June 26th-27th: Urban fighting, Ptolemies driven back to the gates and captured; Ptolemaic encampment captured.
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Note: Bit of a long one today, sorry! The next one or two will also be quite long although I may split things somewhat, we'll see. Thank you all for reading and feel free to drop any comments or questions below!
Map of the city of Tyre looking across from the west towards the coast of Phoenicia. The citadel of Philocrates and Pausanias lay near the western wall and close to both the Sidonian port and the Temple of Melqart.
Important Names:
Demetrius: Prince of the Seleucid Empire
Kallias: Head of the Seleucid garrison in the city of Tyre
Melqartamos: Leader of the Tyrian democratic movement
Hamilcar: General of the Tyrian army and former ally of Pausanias
Ptolemy III: King of Ptolemaic Egypt and commander of the Ptolemaic forces
Isokrates: Commander of the Ptolemaic phalanx
Gorgias: Commander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Demodocus: Subcommander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Kosmas: Commander of the Ptolemaic cavalry force
Pausanias I: Son of Philocrates and would-be King of Tyre
Philocrates II: Teenage son (and heir) of Pausanias
In the events to follow, there are a lot of names, characters, and events that can make the actual narrative of the siege of Tyre sometimes quite overwhelming and confusing. I have attempted here to break the narrative down into its most important events divided day by day with analysis of the literary context behind several key scenes in the story but there is no need to remember every detail of the account for a general understanding of its events. At the end, I have provided a summary timeline of the siege and its most important events beginning in June and ending, with the siege, in September. In truth, of course, the 'Siege of Tyre' is a misnomer. Despite being condensed into a single siege by many, the 'Siege of Tyre' actually comprises two separate and distinct sieges which are often known as the 'Pausanian Siege' (in June 227) and the 'Ptolemaic Siege' (August-September 227). In between are two months in which the city of Tyre was not under any form of siege. The condensing of these two separate sieges into a single historical event stems from Euphemios who also condensed the story; changing the inter-siege period from two months into a period of only a week or so. Between the Euphemian tradition and the fact that the protagonists of both sieges are (for the most part) similar, many historians have tended to treat the siege as a single event, on ongoing period of siege if you will in which the city was not consistently blockaded but, to quote one historian, 'remained in the frame of mind of a city under attack'. This chapter will largely deal with the period between the first arrival of Ptolemaic forces sometime before June 9th and the end of the Pausanian Siege on June 27th. The next chapter, then, will focus on the Ptolemaic siege between August 15th and September 13th.
Ptolemaic Arrival (Before June 9th):
Ptolemy's first arrival at Tyre came sometime in early June. Fresh from the surrender of Sidon, the Ptolemaic army marched unopposed to Tyre wherein he hoped to re-establish Pausanias as king. Once there, however, his initial offer of surrender was curtly refused. His first appeal was made to the people of Tyre themselves, hoping to convince them to open the gates and let Pausanias retake control with the promise that no harm would be done to the city or its people and that only the Seleucid garrison would be taken prisoner. Once that failed, he turned instead to Demetrius, offering to allow his garrison to exit the city and retreat intact to Syria on the condition they lay down their arms and Demetrius himself surrendered as a hostage. The terms were rather fair as well, promising Demetrius a safe captivity back in Alexandria and a return to the Seleucids upon the conclusion of the war. For his part, however, Demetrius seems to have been rather confident. Given the strong hostility within the city to Pausanias and his family, the Tyrians had no intention of simply letting him retake the city and Demetrius was set upon defending the city, possibly betting that Ptolemy himself would not waste time besieging the city for months but would, instead, move to confront the Seleucid army in the north. If so, he was correct and, not wanting to waste time, Ptolemy instead left some 3000 soldiers and 40 ships to keep the pressure on Tyre until he could defeat Antiochus.
The traditional explanation of this is that Ptolemy was betting on the Seleucid garrison being too low on numbers and the Tyrians too unwilling to fight for them to really do much while Ptolemy cleaned up elsewhere. Possibly, he expected that a major defeat against Antiochus would convince Demetrius to just surrender outright. It seems odd though that he would leave as few as 3000 troops and only 40 ships. Don’t misunderstand, the 3000 troops he left were far from a weak force, under the command of one of his phalanx commanders, Isokrates, they were a dangerous fighting force. His ships, meanwhile, led by Gorgias, an experienced marine and, apparently expert archer, were outfitted with siege weapons and may have fielded as many as 2500-3000 marines. Still, these are small numbers for the Hellenistic, especially considering that Demetrius, alongside the original garrison of 600 had some 2000 further soldiers brought to Phoenicia in 228 BCE. In all, we are talking about 6000 Ptolemaic soldiers to fight against a garrison of 2600 Seleucid soldiers and capture the entire city. Don’t forget that Demetrius had a rather huge advantage in the form of walls and a population already emboldened by already having thrown Pausanias out the first time.
It is rather odd, then, that Ptolemy didn’t try leaving more soldiers, at least to hedge his bets against Demetrius managing to raise a larger army and storming the Ptolemaic encampment. One explanation is that Ptolemy was betting on Pausanias’ own plans to take the city and truly believed that Pausanias could do so. On June 10th, Pausanias sent messengers to the new government of Sidon asking for military support and, in return, received another 4000 soldiers who arrived sometime between then and the 13th. According to Euphemios, he also managed to use his own personal fortune to hire more soldiers from pro-Ptolemaic governments in Judaea to the tune of some 1500-2000 extra soldiers. In all, he perhaps was fielding some 11500-12000 soldiers (if we include the marines) by the 19th when the first assault began. Of course, this is also confusing because the government of Sidon had only taken power a few days earlier. How, then, could they simply spare 4000 troops? And why, if Pausanias already intended to take the city (knowing that he would need soldiers to maintain power) had he not attempted to raise this support before he got to Tyre? Surely, he knew that, with Demetrius and Melqartamos at the helm, Tyre wouldn’t simply open the gates to another period of royal rule.
A recent reconstruction has attempted to parse a more reliable narrative out of this. The suggestion, made in an article published last year, is that Pausanias began raising support during the march through Judaea and that the soldiers only arrived during the period between June 10th and June 19th. It is also thought that these probably were not mercenaries so much as Ptolemaic military settlers or the armed forces of Ptolemaic subject cities incentivised by Pausanias’ cash to lend their support to his expedition. As for the 4000 Sidonian soldiers, they may not have been Sidonian at all but supporters of the various exiled governments of Phoenicia accompanying Ptolemy and moving from city to city to help each other get into power. In this case, Ptolemy leaving 3000 infantry is simply his contribution to what amounts to a large private expedition to reclaim Phoenicia organised by a network of aristocrats and monarchs trying to reclaim their power.
Regardless, by the time of the Ptolemaic strategy meeting on the 13th, Pausanias’ army had (at least on paper) swelled to perhaps as many as 12,000 soldiers, dwarfing Demetrius’ own garrison. Encamped on the landward side of the bridge to Tyre, the Pausanias, Gorgias and Isokrates envisaged a three-pronged strike against the city. Pausanias had been in contact with surviving supporters and anti-Melqartamos factions within the city, probing for a break in the Tyrian ranks that might open the gates and, by the 13th, seems to have been reasonably confident that he could have those gates open. The plan called for the gates to be opened during the night, allowing Pausanias’ land forces to sweep into the city and establish a bridgehead. If they hadn’t already taken the city by morning, they would be joined by Gorgias’ soldiers launching attacks on the Sidonian and Egyptian harbours in conjunction. Caught between them, Demetrius’ small forces would be forced to split their energies and ultimately be overwhelmed.
Back in the city, all was not well. Melqartamos was not a general but an orator and few of the pro-democrats had any military experience of any kind to speak of. Instead, Demetrius had turned to Hamilcar, an old supporter of the Philocritean and Pausanian regimes who had acted as a commander during the fights against the democratic insurgencies. During Demetrius’ initial overthrow of Pausanias, Hamilcar had been one of those that many had called upon to be executed but had ultimately been pardoned by Demetrius on the basis of preventing further civil bloodshed. It says something that, as of June 227, Hamilcar and Demetrius were, effectively, the most experienced generals in the city. The problem was that Melqartamos and many others disliked Hamilcar and had grown wary of a pro-Pausanian movement within the city. Fearing that Pausanias’ ex-supporters might, you know, betray the democracy, Melqartamos approached Demetrius asking to have many of them arrested. He was, of course, outraged when not only did Demetrius not have them arrested but instead recruited Hamilcar to act as a secondary military commander. Between them, Demetrius, Melqartamos, and Hamilcar took the official positions of ‘general’ with Demetrius famously refusing to use any royal titles to try and endear himself to the Tyrian populace.
It soon became clear, however, that Melqartamos and Hamilcar were too ideologically opposed. Both saw the other as an enemy and often refused to work together. In the end, Demetrius was forced to meet with each of them separately since every meeting between them soon devolved into, sometimes physical, fights. To his credit, Demetrius himself did not seem to fully trust Hamilcar either and, instead, assigned him to a command in the southern part of the city, near the Egyptian harbour and away from the citadel itself so that, even if he did turn on Demetrius, he wouldn’t be able to take the citadel. To hedge his bets further, he assigned a subcommander, one of his own retinue named Cleomenes, to act as Hamilcar’s second-in-command. Secretly, however, he gave Cleomenes authority to detain Hamilcar should he take any actions against the city or Demetrius.
Between them, the three (Demetrius, Hamilcar, and Melqartamos) began mobilising their forces. The exact population of Tyre is unknown at this date but has estimated at somewhere between 20-25,000 (still a ways lower than it had been before Alexander’s sack of the city but having recovered somewhat). Out of these, the three seem to have organised a truly monumental defensive effort on which no expense (or person) was spared. Between the 10th and 18th June, the men of Tyre were organised into units and equipped with whatever weapons could be scrounged up. Workshops were converted into makeshift weapons factories to produce all weapons and armour they could. Both men and women were brought up to dig trenches and erect makeshift barricades, sometimes out of old furniture or chunks of broken buildings. Merchant ships in the harbour were seized and renovated. Curfews were established and some form of martial law imposed with set regimens and night watches. Most of all, access to the main gates and harbours of the city was limited to only a few people.
June 19th – 20th: The Assault Begins
In the early hours of June 19th 227 BCE, a contingent of Pausanian supporters donned stashed weapons and armour, possibly smuggled into the city under cover of night a few days earlier (although the weapons and armour mentioned by Euphemios may just as well be those issued by Demetrius himself) and began making their way to the gates. Supposedly the band was small, only a dozen or so people, yet they managed to catch the guards by the surprise and kill many of them, taking control of the gates. From there, they sent a signal and began opening the gates for Pausanias’ soldiers.
Back at the citadel, Demetrius was awoken by a soldier frantically telling him of the attack but, even so, by the time he reached the city proper, Pausanias was already inside. Attempting to rally his soldiers, Demetrius mounted a horse and rode through the city, borrowing soldiers from Melqartamos’ forces near the Sidonian harbour and gathering any Tyrians or Seleucid soldiers he could to try and hold the line. Nevertheless, it was already too late and Pausanias’ soldiers were able to reach the Temple of Melqart nearly unopposed before the Seleucids could rally themselves enough to make a last stand. It was at the Temple of Melqart that the tide first began to turn. As his soldiers entered the district, Pausanias supposedly sent a contingent to demolish the nearby boule as a sign of his impending victory. Seeing their approach, the Tyrians are said to have rallied and launched a devastating counter-attack. At the same time, Demetrius launched his own counter-attack from the other side and, between them, the two killed hundreds of Pausanias’ soldiers.
This is the story in Euphemios but the real story is possibly less dramatic. In truth, Demetrius seems to have somewhat fortified the Temple of Melqart, possibly hedging against this very possibility and knowing that, as an important central location, it would be crucial for maintaining control should Pausanias enter the city. Demetrius, failing to push Pausanias back in the streets, instead made his way to the next fortified position to make his stand there. Nevertheless, the stand was no less impressive; according to Caiatinus, the Seleucid and Tyrian defenders held out at the temple for hours, pushing back no fewer than seven assaults on their positions, assisted by non-combatants on the roof of the temple (and nearby houses) who cast down tiles and stones on the attackers. In both Euphemios and Caiatinus, however, a particularly dramatic moment includes an attempt by Pausanias’ soldiers to storm a local house only to be beaten back by a local woman wielding a deadly combination of boiling water and chunks of stone.
A lot of these stories are possibly apocryphal but they are interesting in their own right. As far as we can tell, a lot of Euphemios and Caiatinus’ anecdotes came from Tyre itself and, as such, seem to reflect a degree of post-siege mythmaking by the populace. That said, there is no reason to doubt the general basis of what is being communicated here; the Tyrian population didn’t sit back and let their city be conquered because of course they wouldn’t. Instead, they fought back. It is very easy in history to look at the conquest of cities only through the lenses of armies and generals and to ignore the very real ability, and often desire, of people to resist. Part of what made this an interesting story for people was this element of communal resistance which is at the heart of Euphemios’ own stories. When he hear accounts such as the ‘Women’s Battalion’, a group of local weavers who donned armour and spears and ambushed some of Pausanias’ soldiers, or the story in which several merchants threw flour into the air and ignited it, apparently detonating several houses and some 50-odd soldiers, the important point isn’t the veracity of these specific events but the general sensation of communal resistance that drew Euphemios’ eye in the first place.
Caught between an enraged Tyrian populace and the refusal of Demetrius’ garrison to break, Pausanias instead changed tack, seeking instead to help secure the ports and simply wait out Demetrius’ forces in the Temple of Melqart. Sure, they couldn’t quite dislodge the prince here but they could try to take the rest of the city. Moving through the city, however, proved difficult. Every house became another potential battleground; Demetrius’ garrison had become scattered in some areas and while a few had surrendered or been killed, others were putting up desperate stands, supported by the citizenry, on houses or in streets. Even the walls hadn’t been fully pacified and, as morning approached, Isokrates was even forced to pull back to try and prevent some soldiers from retaking the gates. Sure, Pausanias’ soldiers may well have had better equipment than the majority of those they were fighting, and certainly better training, but the city itself acted as a potential death trap for all concerned.
As morning approached, Pausanias’ army quickly found itself unable to make any real headway. Sure, they were getting there but it was very slow going indeed. Interestingly, in Euphemios’ account, we see something quite familiar; the same mob tactics used in the original opposition to Pausanias and Philocrates seem to have been employed en masse here. We are talking about ambushes, a lot of skirmish tactics and a back-and-forth flow of citizenry in often unorganised waves that could easily catch soldiers unprepared. Houses and tight streets made for perfect kill boxes, especially for people wielding very heavy roof tiles or spears or a hundred and one another potentially deadly weapons (such as flour or boiling water as Euphemios claims). In truth, what had really undone Pausanias’ assault was most likely the strict rota imposed by Hamilcar and Demetrius and the general willingness of the Tyrians to resist. After years under the rules of Philocrates and Pausanias, the demos was not about to roll over and seems to have bought into the defensive measures rather quickly.
As such, Pausanias’ original assault took Demetrius by surprise but was quickly reported and the people amassed in much greater numbers than Pausanias may ever have expected. As morning dawned, Gorgias’ fleet made its approach. Their catapults had probably either been dismantled and left on the beach or otherwise were not being used, anticipating more of an amphibious assault than any attempt to make a breach in the walls. Gorgias himself was leading the southern attack, aiming for the Egyptian harbour while one of his subcommanders (Demodocus) led the northern assault.
As Demodocus approached the Sidonian port, everything seemed to be rather quiet. Probably thinking that Demetrius was holed up the Temple at Melqart, he sailed onwards, anticipating a quiet capture of the port. As he approached, however, he noticed that none of the merchant ships were actually beached but instead were floating free in the water. Reasoning, however, that they looked abandoned and were probably simply left as obstacles, he instead decided to push on to take the beach. The first of his ships reached the beach easily enough, and began unloading their marines.
However, as more ships approached, the idle merchant ships sprang to life and, apparently, began moving of their own accord. They travelled in two sets, targeting the ships closest to the beach (those which had not docked yet, that is) and those furthest away. As they collided with them, flames began to spew forth from the ships, enveloping those they hit. In the narrow confines of the harbour, Demodocus’ fleet was unable to properly manoeuvre and many of the ships soon caught fire. For those in the middle, unable to either advance or retreat, they found themselves soon going up in flames as well and, before long, several ships had sunk. Seeing their friends burning alive, hearing the screams and watching many others drown, Demodocus’ marines on the beach were demoralised and soon were even more demoralised when Melqartamos’ troops swarmed forward to surround them. Many threw down their arms and surrendered while others elected to fight and, promptly, die.
So what do we make of this story? The bones of it are true; in 2015, excavation around the port of Tyre found the submerged remains of an old Ptolemaic warship which showed very distinctive signs of burning. In fact, the ship had survived because of how close it was to the beach and had been covered in silt over time. What is certain is that the fire ship tactic was used in some form, possibly using amphorae full of flammable material and torches of some variety which were broken against the edges of ships. Another possibility suggested has been some variation of the flour tactic mentioned by Euphemios elsewhere. The merchant ships themselves must have been arrayed near to the beaches but close to the edge and manned by skeleton crews who began rowing once Demodocus was suitably lured in. Why exactly Demodocus failed to see the danger is uncertain, but it is very likely that he simply didn’t see the merchant ships as a threat. For all he knew, Demetrius was pinned in the centre of the city and, even if the merchant ships did have men in them, they lacked either the rams or the trained marines to take out a Ptolemaic warship.
The Sidonian port wasn’t that small either and it is quite possible that the trap relied largely on an attack from one side, probably the southern side of the port, smashing into ships and using the weight of the large, heavy merchant ships as well as the fire to try and force the others back, creating an effective wall of burning wood. It also worked because it was summer and the wood on the ships’ decks was drier as a result, allowing the fire to spread more easily. In all, Demodocus probably lost about 8-10 of his ships, a huge loss but not enough to really put his half of the fleet entirely out of action. He himself was not so lucky and joined those captured on the beach.
In the South, Gorgias had more luck. Despite another, less successful, fire-ship tactic which claimed a handful of his own ships, he was able to reach the beach and storm it. For the first couple of hours, his marines were able to steadily push Hamilcar and his contingent back, killing Cleomenes in the process. He was, however, unable to fully dislodge Hamilcar who soon took control of several houses on the edge of the port, using them as improvised fortifications to drive back several of Gorgias’ assaults.
With Gorgias hemmed in in the Egyptian port, Demodocus’ fleet neutered in the north and Pausanias making a slow advance through the city, the situation felt like something of a deadlock as night fell on June 19th. Gathering his forces, Pausanias took stock of the situation and resolved to launch an attack to the south to relieve Gorgias and link up with his forces. Isokrates and his Ptolemaic soldiers were to hold the gate. On June 20th, Pausanias made better headway, pushing back the Tyrian populace and inflicting heavy casualties (and, according to Euphemios, very serious war crimes) and reaching the port around midday. There, he was able to rout Hamilcar and his forces and take control of the port.
June 21st-24th: Height of the Battle
The next four days in Euphemios are a jumble of various engagements and battles. In short, Pausanias and Gorgias joined up on June 20th and rested overnight in the harbour. Hamilcar returned to the Temple of Melqart where he joined up with Demetrius and Melqartamos and the three made an attempt to take control of the gate, only to be forced back by Isokrates. As Pausanias and Gorgias approached, still harassed by the population in several more of Euphemios’ ‘communal resistance scenes’, they fell back again to the Temple of Melqart. This time, things went worse for them and the defenders fell back again and began a fighting retreat to the north, heading for the citadel.
On June 22nd, Demetrius staged a retreat, drawing Pausanias and Gorgias forward only to then ambush them in the streets. Once again, employing the Tyrian mob tactics used previously, a combination of skirmishing and set warfare in narrow streets allowed him to leverage his resources against a foe that, even now, was still stronger. Numbers are hard to gauge since few of our authors are very clear on the exact losses at each stage. In Euphemios, Pausanias loses hundreds of soldiers all the time and yet still seems to have endless forces. Generally, however, the understanding is that casualties were probably relatively low at this stage and probably higher on Demetrius’ side. Despite the communal resistance, the biggest impact was to delay, damage, unsettle and disrupt Pausanias’ formations which made movement hazardous. Fighting was brutal but, as in all ancient warfare, the truly high casualty numbers didn’t come until later.
For Demetrius, the biggest losses were probably mostly non-combatants and poorly trained Tyrian soldiers who seem to have lost most of their direct confrontations with Ptolemaic soldiers. What allowed him to keep fighting despite this was a mixture of popular sentiment and home ground advantage as well as the impact of constant skirmishing in helping break Pausanias’ momentum and formations. Until June 24th, the two basically fought back and forth. In Euphemios, this is full of personal anecdotes and duels and communal resistance stories. Amongst these we have Hamilcar duelling Gorgias, which almost certainly did not take place, Demetrius duelling Pausanias which also probably did not take place and may well have been written as foreshadowing for the more famous Demetrius vs Ptolemy duel during the second siege and a somewhat ridiculous story in which Demetrius tricks Pausanias into an ambush by sending a local Phoenician to pretend to be the ghost of Philocrates (again, probably not true but always worth mentioning).
June 25th-27th: Conclusion
The turning point came on June 25th. After several days of fighting, Pausanias himself was killed sometime in the morning. In Euphemios, he is killed by a Tyrian who, apparently, was a relative of a man killed by Philocrates’ father but we have no real idea of how Pausanias died. Nevertheless, his death seems to have finally broken the morale of his Phoenician allies who finally began to rout. A very real possibility is that his death accompanied another, possibly larger, ambush. In Euphemios, the events of the 23rd and 24th June have sometimes appeared strange because, despite the constant series of successes attributed by Euphemios to Demetrius’ forces, they seem to constantly be pulling ever further back. We hear, for instance, of Demetrius’ forces killing dozens of Pausanias’ troops on the 24th and yet, only a few hours later, they’re practically on the verge of retreating to the citadel.
One explanation for this is that Demetrius was staging another retreat-ambush, pulling back enough to give his forces time to move around and cut off Pausanias’ retreat. When Pausanias was killed, his forces (between the ambush and his death) began to rout en masse. In the end, the effect was the same; Pausanias’ Sidonian allies began to rout and the Ptolemaic army was forced back. As they reached the Temple of Melqart, Demetrius sent Hamilcar southwards towards the port, taking advantage of their greater knowledge of the city to cut off the Ptolemaic retreat and overrun the defences at the port and even capturing several ships. At the same time, he sent Melqartamos north-west, once again moving through the city faster than the retreating Ptolemaic army could, where he stormed the walls, killing many of the defenders in a brutal (and costly) assault, taking control of the gate and shutting the Ptolemies in.
Now hemmed in by Melqartmos, Demetrius and Hamilcar, the Ptolemies surrendered, throwing down their arms and accepting capture by the Seleucids. Isokrates and Gorgias were both taken as prisoners and the arms and armour of the Ptolemaic forces were stripped. The casualties on both sides had been, to be honest, rather steep. According to Caiatinus, the Tyrians had suffered some 15,000 casualties and Pausanias’ army was wiped out. In truth, the numbers were probably less dramatic. Modern estimates place the casualties amongst Demetrius’ force at close to 1000-1200 and perhaps 3-4000 Tyrians killed. The fighting was brutal and costly. When we envisage the Siege of Tyre, especially the Pausanian Siege, we should not imagine a clean or neat battle. Instead, especially compared to the later Ptolemaic siege, this was a brutal and close fight. In many areas, it was a battle of ambushes and skirmishing. While many of the stories in Euphemius are apocryphal, they capture the essence of what was a truly chaotic and brutal battle. We hear of a whole variety of war crimes on both sides; Pausanias’ soldiers slaughtering a family, the Tyrians executing prisoners (including after the battle during which Demetrius intervened when a group of Tyrian soldiers kidnapped Ptolemaic soldiers and began pushing them off the walls of the city to their deaths).
For all the glory and ‘communal resistance’ of Euphemios, the Pausanian Siege of Tyre was a tragedy of some sort. By the end of the second siege in September 227 BCE, the population of Tyre would have dropped dramatically. Some estimates have suggested that from the original pre-siege estimates of 20-25,000 people, the population by the end of 227 BCE might have dropped as low as 15,000 or even lower. This, of course, was just Tyre and gives us some insight into the true costs of the Great Syrian War. During the late 3rd Century and beginning of the 2nd, we find that Phoenicia seems to have been quite badly depopulated by the events of the war. Despite a rather great deal of post-war rebuilding, cities such as Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Tripolis and others saw a very real decline in their populations that would have serious impacts going forward.
Literature and Pausanias:
It is worth taking a second to step back and think about the literary impact of the Pausanian Siege. Despite often being lost in the events of the Ptolemaic Siege, Euphemios’ account of the Pausanian Siege is just as important and interesting. One of the overarching themes in Euphemios is the importance of the demos as a community in the protection and elevation of the city. Accordingly, the Pausanian siege is a key literary tool in Euphemios’ accounting of the events. For him, the defeat of Pausanias is the first real triumph of the Tyrian demos, it is the moment at which the monarchy of Tyre is fully cast off by its people whose embracing of their shared identity is what allows them to triumph.
In this, Pausanias is not strictly a villain (indeed, Euphemios’ characterisation of Pausanias is sometimes tragic, casting him as an ultimately pathetic figure who fails to understand the nature of the polis and loses everything for it) but an obstacle, a symbol of the inevitable anachronism of monarchy within the polis. In Euphemios, the Pausanian siege of Tyre is, in effect, the final Tyrian revolution and, to quote one scholar:
‘The rejection of Pausanias as king is a sign that the Tyrians have embraced the Athenian history of the Tyrannicides. In his death at the hands of a Tyrian citizen, Pausanias is cast as the final obstacle to the freedom of the people of Tyre, his death is a necessary outcome for the elevation and achievement of democratic rule. It is, we might say, the final triumph of democracy.’
In this, Euphemios seems to be basically following the tradition of Phoenician democratic writers such as Melqartamos. In the context of the Hellenistic, a political environment in which cities could often find their governments changed against their will, Tyre is an interesting case study of the means to which a people might go to resist the overarching and overwhelming powers of Hellenistic kings. We should not forget that, in the end, the history of cities such as Tyre is a human history in which the people of the city played their own roles in deciding their fates. That is why Euphemios saw the romance in the story of the siege and why, even as Demetrius is cast as its royal saviour, his triumph begins with casting off his royal regalia.
Throughout the story, Demetrius’ development is his move away from his royal status. At the outset of the siege, he casts off his royal regalia and demands he be addressed only as a general. By the time the siege concludes in September 227 BCE, Demetrius is included as part of the demos of Tyre. It is with some tragedy, then, that he ultimately is compelled to leave (against his will in Euphemios as he is called off by Antiochus to fight the Ptolemies) and return to royalty. The tragedy in Euphemios rests on our own knowledge. The rise and fall of Demetrius was well known to his contemporaries, allowing Euphemios to cast it as the result of his return to royal life. As the story ends, concluding with Demetrius leaving Tyre, we are left to wonder whether or not his status as a prince of Seleucid empire is ultimately what dooms him.
June 227:
Sometime before June 9th: Ptolemy III leaves 3000 infantry and 40 ships to put pressure on Tyre and drive a surrender.
First Siege of Tyre (June 10th-June 27th):
June 10th/11th: Pausanias rallies support
June 13th: Ptolemaic strategy meeting; Demetrius and Hamilcar organise Tyrian armed forces
June 19th: Initial naval assault on the Sidonian and Egyptian ports; Pausanias' allies open the gates; burning of the ships.
June 20th: Battle for the Egyptian Port
June 21st: Fighting near the Temple of Melqart
June 22nd: Demetrius' ambush and counterattack
June 23rd-24th: Urban fighting
June 25th: Pausanias is killed and his Sidonian allies rout; Tyrians capture the Ptolemaic ships
June 26th-27th: Urban fighting, Ptolemies driven back to the gates and captured; Ptolemaic encampment captured.
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Note: Bit of a long one today, sorry! The next one or two will also be quite long although I may split things somewhat, we'll see. Thank you all for reading and feel free to drop any comments or questions below!
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Whoops! Fixing that now!
Just to point out, of course, that this won't necessarily be the same Antiochus III as in our timeline so who knows what is gonna happen? Right now, Seleucus is crown prince and in line to succeed as Seleucus III... assuming all goes according to plan.
I'm glad to see that everybody has identified Ptolemaic Egypt for what it is... the constant thorn in the side of the Seleucid empire. It's easy to forget just how powerful the Ptolemies were at points because they didn't make quite as impressive looking an empire as the Seleucids. Our timeline's Ptolemy III made it as far as Afghanistan in his war against the Seleucids and was only forced to turn back because of a revolt back home.
You forgot to threadmark this post, so the chapters after this need to be changed--chapter 21 is 22, and so on...
So I checked and the actual problem is that there are two chapter 21s. I’ll fix it later.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Siege of Tyre Part Two: Dionysus and Herakles
Important Names:
Demetrius: Prince of the Seleucid Empire
Kallias: Head of the Seleucid garrison in the city of Tyre
Melqartamos: Leader of the Tyrian democratic movement
Hamilcar: General of the Tyrian army and former ally of Pausanias
Ptolemy III: King of Ptolemaic Egypt and commander of the Ptolemaic forces
Isokrates: Commander of the Ptolemaic phalanx
Gorgias: Commander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Demodocus: Subcommander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Kosmas: Commander of the Ptolemaic cavalry force
Pausanias I: Son of Philocrates and would-be King of Tyre
Philocrates II: Teenage son (and heir) of Pausanias
June 27th-August 15th: Preparations; Demetrius rallies the Tyrians, Pausanias' body mutilated, the Tyrian assembly, Demetrius' call for help
Second Siege of Tyre (August 15th-September 14th)
August 15th: Ptolemy III arrives and lays siege to the city
August 15th-20th: Negotiations, prisoners ransomed
August 21st: Probing attacks against the Egyptian port
August 22nd-29th: Preparations for the assault
August 30th-September 3rd: Assaults on the walls, back and forth fighting, Demetrius and Ptolemy's duel
September 4th: Walls captured, Ptolemaic incursions begin
September 5th: The City of Tyre falls, Demetrius retreats to the Citadel
September 6th: Siege of the Citadel begins, Trial of the Rebels, uprising in the harbour
September 7th-8th: Precursor Uprisings
September 9th: Tyrian rebels capture the walls, coup in the Citadel, 'Dionysiac Miracle'.
September 10th: Ptolemaic assault broken, Ptolemy injured, Tyrians retake the gates
September 14th: Seleucid reinforcements arrive, Ptolemy retreats
Important Names:
Demetrius: Prince of the Seleucid Empire
Kallias: Head of the Seleucid garrison in the city of Tyre
Melqartamos: Leader of the Tyrian democratic movement
Hamilcar: General of the Tyrian army and former ally of Pausanias
Ptolemy III: King of Ptolemaic Egypt and commander of the Ptolemaic forces
Isokrates: Commander of the Ptolemaic phalanx
Gorgias: Commander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Demodocus: Subcommander of the Ptolemaic naval contingent at Tyre
Kosmas: Commander of the Ptolemaic cavalry force
Pausanias I: Son of Philocrates and would-be King of Tyre
Philocrates II: Teenage son (and heir) of Pausanias
Between June 27th and August 15th, Demetrius busied himself preparing for another run at the city. In the immediate aftermath of Pausanias' death, the Tyrian and Seleucid defenders swept out of the city, capturing the Ptolemaic encampment and scattering the guards there. With it, they captured food and weapons that would be brought back to the city and used to stock its granaries (kept in the citadel most likely) and equip its soldiers. For his part, Demetrius began trying to root out the supporters of Pausanias who had let the king into the city in the first instance. In the days following June 27th, dozens of suspected Pausanian sympathisers were hunted down and executed. Even Hamilcar, who had fought during the siege and helped defeat Pausanias, was not immune and found himself increasingly side-lined by Melqartamos' democratic movement. In Caiatinus, there is a general sense given of fear and anxiety within the city and an environment in which nobody knew who to trust and almost anyone could be caught out. This is a far cry from Euphemios who presents the post-siege purge as a simple act of rounding up known traitors and putting them to death. It is almost certain, however, that Caiatinus is a fair bit closer to the truth given the demotion of Hamilcar and elevation of Melqartamos to command over the entire Tyrian armed forces.
Demetrius also found himself having to contend with many of the demands being made from across the city. In the chaos of the battle, ships had been lost, cargoes drowned, houses burned and even the Temple of Melqart had suffered some serious damage in places. That is to say nothing of the loss of life and the social impacts already being felt across the city. Demetrius and Melqartamos found themselves beset by requests for financial support, rebuilding, compensation and, of course, help in organising body disposals. Indeed, the impact of this has been seen archaeologically in the so-called 'Demetrian' Cemetery, an apparently new cemetery built in 227 BCE near the site of the old Ptolemaic encampment. For their part, the Tyrian demos voted that the same Ptolemaic encampment be turned into a shrine to Melqart to which Demetrius lent financial... promises.
For the most part, very few issues were resolved just now despite a monumental effort. As it stood, goal was to reinforce and maintain the war-time government under the leadership of Melqartamos, the sufet for 227 alongside a man named Adirbaal about whom very little is known except for his singular appearance in Euphemios in which he is killed during the first few days of the Ptolemaic siege. In particular, Melqartamos and Demetrius put much of their focus upon reinforcing the defences of the city. Large chains were ordered to be created to block off the Sidonian and Egyptian harbours and new watches set up on the edge to keep an eye out for any naval assaults. Demetrius repaired parts of the walls using rubble from damaged buildings. Steps were also taken to house the newly homeless citizens of some parts of the city including temporary camps and even some citizens agreeing to house others. Alongside this, a messenger named Kleophrades was sent out to try and reach Seleukeia and ask for reinforcements, there to inform the king that Tyre still held under Demetrius' command. Supposedly, Kleophrades was only barely able to evade Ptolemaic forces and, at one point, was forced to abandon his horse and swim across a river under cover of night to escape. Nevertheless, he was able to arrive in Seleukeia and pass the message on to Antiochus who was still raising his army to meet Ptolemy in battle.
In early August, probably around the 2nd or 3rd of the month, Ptolemy defeated Antiochus at the Battle of Antioch and began making his way south. Hearing of his approach, Demetrius once again sent a second messenger but this time was captured. Having heard of Pausanias' death, Ptolemy was intent on ending the defiance of Tyre once and for all. From his perspective, the loss of Pausanias was both embarrassing (he had lost the very reason he had come to Phoenicia) and rather problematic given that Pausanias was a key part of the network of elite interests that he hoped to establish as friendly governments in the region. Luckily, he had a back-up in the form of Pausanias' 11-year-old son, Philocrates II (Hellenistic royal families had thrown originality in naming to the wind a long time ago). At the time, Philocrates was still in Alexandria but, at Ptolemy's request, was to be quickly brought up as far as... Sidon. There was simply no way that Ptolemy was about to risk throwing another would-be Tyrian king under the bus.
On August 15th, Ptolemy arrived at the city. As Pausanias had done, his first instinct was to negotiate, both with the demos and with Demetrius but to no avail. Even offers to depose Philocrates II and maintain the democracy were curtly rejected. That is not to say that some within Tyre would not have wanted to take these offers. In fact, Caiatinus gives us an interesting point of view when he claims that much of the demos was incentivised to take the offer and only overruled by Demetrius who gave a speech in which, to paraphrase, he effectively denounced Ptolemy as a liar who would burn the city to the ground and reimpose Philocrates as king over the bones and ashes. In fact, in a much later source, Demetrius had unilaterally renounced any and all negotiation even before Ptolemy met with the Tyrian populace, hoping to cut off any hope of an agreement. Demetrius, it seems, had no intention of surrendering or backing down, even with the renewed offer of a very comfortable house-arrest in Alexandria.
For the next five days, negotiations were ongoing while both sides attempted to position themselves for an increasingly inevitable confrontation. For his part, Ptolemy set about bringing up more ships (as well as the survivors of Gorgias' fleet) and probably began making preparations for an assault on the city. Not wanting to worry about feeding prisoners, Demetrius also was able to negotiate a trade of several prisoners from the last assault in return for a ransom. Amongst the prisoners returned were Gorgias and Isokrates, both of whom would later be seen during the fighting back on the front lines despite having been captured only recently. For Demetrius, the real goal had been achieved, reducing the mouths he had to feed in case of a prolonged siege and making a display of his previous victory to the besieging Ptolemaic army. Sure, the granaries had been restocked but he had no intention of maximising his food consumption.
Fighting Begins: August 21st-September 5th:
On August 21st, the Ptolemaic fleet made several probing attacks against the Egyptian harbour, hoping to break through but were foiled by a mixture of the harbour's chains and several attacks by Tyrians, now manning the very ships they had captured during the Pausanian siege. It was far from a major assault but it marks the beginning of the fighting and probably forced Ptolemy to change his tactics. Yes, Ptolemy could have attempted to starve Tyre out but Demetrius had had time to try and restock his food supplies and clearly no intention of just backing down. Who knows how long it would take to starve the city out or wait for a traitor to let him in, especially when the bodies of those who had helped Pausanias were still quite graphically displayed along the old Alexandrian mole to the city.
For the next few days, Ptolemy began reorienting his forces. He either built, or had brought up to the front, siege weapons and outfitted several of his ships with catapults. In return, Demetrius prepared his forces. He had probably also spent the last month or so training some of the Tyrians, preparing them for a much larger battle than the last one. According to Euphemios, the Tyrians knew how to fight in a phalanx and use sarissae although, even with their extra training, they were dismayed at the sheer size and strength of Ptolemy's army. They wouldn't have long to wait to feel the strength of Ptolemy's army because, on August 30th, Ptolemy began a direct assault on the city. During the night of the 29th, Ptolemy had sent his ships around to the west side of the city facing out into the Mediterranean from which they began using catapults and rams to assault the walls. Forced to react, Demetrius had assigned soldiers there to prevent against another naval landing but, when the walls fell, found that the ships didn't move in at all. Instead, they continued around the walls to assault another part. If the goal was exhaustion, it worked wonderfully and succeeded in distracting parts of Demetrius' forces and command structure. The ships simply could move quicker and there was no guarantee of when, or where, they would actually assault.
In the east, meanwhile, Ptolemy began his assault in the early morning. Bringing up siege towers and rams, his forces were soon at the walls. For the next few hours, the Ptolemies and Tyrians fought back and forth for control of the walls. The fighting, as described by Euphemios, was nothing short of brutal. In the melee, hundreds were killed as the Ptolemies attempted to establish themselves and Demetrius and his forces fought to stop them. In this, Demetrius was often seen on the front lines, fighting on the walls during all four days of the fighting there. Even Ptolemy took part in the fighting both in September 2nd and 3rd. Indeed, for the next few days, the assaults on the walls continued. In particular, Euphemios takes note of Ptolemy's Jewish and Nubian contingents which he describes as having fought 'with valour equal to that shown by any Greek'. According to the chronology laid down by Euphemios, it was a Nubian contingent that first took part of the walls. The first assault, on August 30th, was thrown back but many more were to follow. On September 2nd and 3rd, during the peak of the fighting, the Ptolemies assaulted the walls several times a day, failing each time to take them but making headway every single time. Meanwhile, the Ptolemaic fleet continued to probe for weaknesses elsewhere. According to Euphemios, they bombarded the city near constantly (although doing so would probably be impossible logistically) and made their own assaults (led by Gorgias no less) against some of the breaches with one contingent even reaching the citadel before being driven back.
The most famous incident of the early Ptolemaic siege came, however, on September 3rd. That morning, the Macedonian infantry of the Ptolemaic army made a brutal assault on the walls led by Ptolemy himself. Demetrius, leading some of his Seleucid garrison to meet them, soon found himself face to face with Ptolemy himself. In what Euphemios described as the greatest duel since Achilles and Memnon, the two leaders are said to have fought a furious battle against one another, both injuring the other but neither succeeding in landing a killing blow. This may sound apocryphal and was traditionally considered a work of fiction until, in 2017, a letter was uncovered by a Macedonian soldier who claims he 'fought alongside Ptolemy' and saw the king 'greatly injure the [Seleucid] prince'. This doesn't mean that the duel was anything like that in Euphemios but it does confirm that Ptolemy and Demetrius may well have actually met during the battle and fought one another. In Euphemios, of course, the duel between Ptolemy and Demetrius is one of the emotional highpoints of the story. To him, it is the single greatest engagement of the entire siege and is described in lavish detail by the author. In his account, the fighting stops around them to let the two duel until one winner can emerge. Of course, unlike the Ptolemaic letter mentioned above, in Euphemios they are equally matched although Demetrius takes something of a lead, wounding Ptolemy twice and only receiving a single blow himself.
More likely, however, is that Demetrius himself was wounded during the fighting, allowing Ptolemy to make his breakthrough the following day. By the end of September 3rd, the Ptolemies had captured several sections of the wall but fighting continued the next day when they attempted to extend this control beyond what they currently held. Despite resistance, they were able to slowly expand their control over more and more of the main wall and had soon captured the gates. Throughout the rest of September 4th, the Ptolemaic army began a slow, but steady, advance through the city. This continued the following day when they were able to dislodge Demetrius' forces from the Temple of Melqart led by Ptolemy's cavalry commander, Kosmas.
September 6th-10th: The Siege of the Citadel
By the end of September 5th, Demetrius had lost the city. Isokrates led a contingent south to the Egyptian port, capturing the Ptolemaic ships again and opening the harbour for Gorgias to sail in unopposed. That evening, Ptolemy's army reached the citadel but found it still held against them. Instead of beginning an assault that day, he sent Kosmas further north to take the northern reaches of the city and prevent any retreat from the citadel. This next period, between September 6th and 10th, marks the most desperate stage of the fighting. Demetrius, still recovering from his injuries, was holed up in the citadel alongside what remained of his garrison, perhaps as few as 3-4000 soldiers against Ptolemy's army. Melqartamos, captured over the course of the previous day alongside several other democratic leaders was kept in the Ptolemaic camp outside the city and news sent to Philocrates II to come to the city.
On September 6th, Ptolemy began his siege of the citadel, bringing up more siege weapons to batter the walls and setting out to establish the new pro-Ptolemaic government in the city. As part of this, he started bringing several of the democratic leaders to trial on charges of treason. The bodies of Pausanias' supporters had already been taken down and buried just outside the city in the old Tyrian cemetery and now, in a gory display of power, were to be replaced with those of his enemies. Several were executed by decapitation but, for the more resilient of his opponents, including Melqartamos, the punishment was significantly worse. Melqartamos was to be tied to a stake outside the citadel where, over the course of the next few days, he would slowly die of thirst in full view of the defenders. Of course, this is a Euphemian story so its reliability is hard to establish but what is certain is that, by September 10th, many of the leaders of Melqartamos' democracy had been executed including the sufet himself. News of the trial spread quickly, igniting another round of uprisings on September 7th and 8th, one attempting to take control of the Egyptian port only to be driven back and another focussing its energies on the boule. This culminated, however, on September 9th when the murder of a Tyrian woman by a Ptolemaic soldier led to another uprising and the capture of the gate for several hours until Isokrates was able to dislodge the rebels.
Back in the citadel, things had grown all the more desperate. Now back in the fighting, Demetrius found himself beset by Ptolemaic assaults. For days on end, the Ptolemies battered the walls of the citadel and, on several occasions, came within a hair's breadth of taking the citadel before being driven back. Demetrius' numbers were growing thin, morale was starting to waver and the walls seemed set to fall. News of Melqartamos' execution had done its job, demoralising the defenders and encouraging talk of surrender which Demetrius took drastic steps, including executions, to prevent. According to Euphemios, the height of this came on the evening of September 9th when a group of soldiers attempted a coup against Demetrius only to be captured before they could reach the gate and executed. Realising that his citadel was about to fall, Euphemios claims that Demetrius began a mass prayer to Dionysus, offering half of the remaining food in the citadel to the god and having it burned as an offering.
The Dionysiac Miracle
This is the precursor to Euphemios' 'Dionysiac Miracle', an event which requires some analysis. By the end of the 2nd Century BCE, the militaristic 'war god' version of Dionysus had become rather well-established. Following the Sosthenic tradition, a lot of interpretation of Dionysus as a god had focussed on his role as a traveller and wanderer, a theme very appropriate for the Hellenistic. This had split somewhat into very diverging traditions of the god throughout the 2nd Century. Back in the centres of power, a more literary version of Dionysus was very popular in which he was a traveller bringing all manner of great things back to the Greeks through his many wanderings. In a world where the Seleucid empire prided itself on his size and reach and ability to bring together products of places all across the world, this was a very appropriate and popular incarnation of Dionysus. Amongst soldiers, however, the Sosthenic tradition of Dionysus had broken up into a more militaristic version. Gone were the humorous journeys across the Afghan mountains, replaced instead with Dionysus as a bringer of Greek civilisation to every corner of the world. Where soldiers went, Dionysus had already been and thus he became something of a guide and patron for travelling soldiers. These two versions, named accordingly Dionysus-Planetes and Dionysus-Nikos were not alone, however, and joined by a third and somewhat more rogue version named Dionysus-Demos.
Dionysus-Demos first emerges in our record sometime in the mid-2nd Century in Ptolemaic Egypt in a letter in which an Alexandrian decries the 'excesses' of this version of Dionysus and its popularity 'in foreign places'. Dionysus-Demos enjoyed a somewhat complicated relationship with the Hellenistic kings, and, by the end of the 2nd Century, was very popular in a lot of cities throughout the Seleucid empire. To some, Dionysus-Demos represented a break from a social order that some had been trying to reject. Following Melqartamos, several cities in Phoenicia had developed notions of the 'perfection' of democracy, touting the system as an escape from oppression. We recognise this in the complex relationship between Euphemios' works and the Seleucid kings of his day. In short, some contemporary democrats were... uncomfortable about the influence that Hellenistic kings had over their, ostensibly democratic cities. Dionysus-Demos was a popular god because, in his role as a god of lowered inhibitions, he represented a potential threat and break to social establishments that were not especially popular in many cities. For some, he was effectively a 'people's god', a god for the demos interpreted as having the ability to free people from the constraints imposed upon them by a royal or aristocratic social order. No wonder, then, that many saw it as a threat.
In Euphemios, the 'Dionysiac Miracle' is both an example of Dionysus-Nikos and Dionysus-Demos, a ritualistic triumph of Dionysus as both a god of the soldier (that being Demetrius' garrison) and of the demos. In an environment where Dionysus-Demos was, at best, controversial, the choice to embrace two aspects of the god is ambiguous in a very Euphemian manner. It is never specifically stated which incarnation of Dionysus is responsible but, given the militaristic aspect and the context of a democratic movement, it is implied that it could be either and the reader can interpret this subversive democratic element if they so desire.
So why do I mention this? Because, in the 3rd Century, Demetrius was almost certainly not praying to Dionysus. Yes, a sacrifice and prayer may well have taken place but whatever did happen, it would have been to Herakles and not to Dionysus given the association between Melqart and Herakles. With that said, it is very interesting that, by the end of the 2nd Century BCE, the 'Demetrium' at Tyre was placed alongside a shrine to Dionysus and suggests that, by the time Euphemios was writing, the idea of Demetrius' prayer to Dionysus and the 'Dionysiac Miracle' was well-established.
What, then, is the Dionysiac miracle? Supposedly, on the night of the 9th September, Ptolemy's army began to get exceptionally drunk. The weird part was that they hadn't actually drunk anything. Dionysus had, apparently, stepped in and, as the Ptolemaic army began to grow more and more inebriated, the defenders were able to launch a devastating night attack. Swarming out from the gates, the defenders within the citadel killed thousands of Ptolemaic soldiers, burning their encampment and sending the rest running through the streets. But Dionysus wasn't done. As the Ptolemies fled, they were overtaken by a madness and turned on each other, seeing other soldiers in the streets and fighting amongst themselves leading to ever more thousands of deaths. By the next day, Demetrius had retaken the gates and Ptolemy had only just escaped with his life.
Of course, there is no way that this happened, right? One possibility is that there is a kernel of truth here. The murder of a Tyrian woman which had led to the uprising on September 9th may be used as an indication that Ptolemy had started to lose control of his army somewhat which, having taken the city, had already turned towards looting even before the citadel had fallen. It has been argued that the army simply lost control, getting exceptionally drunk in their 'victory' celebrations and being routed by the defenders during a last ditch night raid. Convinced they had no other way out (since Demetrius was clearly not about to surrender), the heightened morale of the desperate Seleucid soldiers allowed them to fight back the Ptolemaic army despite its much greater numbers, especially when aided by the darkness and the inebriated soldiers. Another possibility is that Demetrius, once again, launched a very successful night raid or ambush although we don't know where he would have gotten the soldiers from to do so. Another interpretation, suggested by some, is that Demetrius had been able to poison the wine of the Ptolemaic soldiers and they suffered heavy casualties during the night which, again, lowered morale and fitness amongst the survivors and allowed the Seleucids to overcome them.
Whatever the case, the Ptolemies had very suddenly lost control of the situation. This was a victory of morale; Demetrius had spent ages convincing his soldiers that the only way out would be over a mountain of Ptolemaic bodies while the Ptolemies had, through one means or another, allowed their discipline to slip which, under cover of night, led to a devastating rout. We shouldn't overestimate the damage here (nor should we underestimate it, of course; several Ptolemaic contingents kept their discipline and fought, even as the Tyrians, emboldened by the victory, rose up yet again. Regardless, by the morning of September 10th, Demetrius had pushed the Ptolemies back to the walls, killing Isokrates and Kosmas in the process, and taken control of the city once again. It was a huge turn in the tide and would mark the last time the Ptolemies would take control of the city in any meaningful way.
For the next four days, the two settled into a stalemate, licking their wounds while Ptolemy planned out his next move. In the end, of course, that next move wouldn't come. On September 14th, a Seleucid cavalry contingent (perhaps as many as 6000 strong) led by Prince Antiochus arrived and launched an attack on Ptolemaic supply lines, killing hundreds of Ptolemaic soldiers and forcing Ptolemy to retreat. See, since the defeat at Antioch, the king had not been idle. Aware of the ongoing siege, he remained hopeful that he could relieve it and quickly raised a cavalry force to try and drive Ptolemy back. Led by Prince Antiochus, the cavalry was largely made up of light cavalry with a contingent of some 600 cataphracts and, moving quickly, was able to outflank Ptolemy. While he outnumbered them still, the losses in Tyre and the low morale of his men was enough to convince him not to try and fight, especially against a more mobile force. Instead, still harassed by Prince Antiochus' cavalry, he began a retreat to Sidon where his army would rest and recuperate.
Analysis: The Siege of Tyre
So what do we make of the Siege of Tyre? Between June and September 227, the Ptolemies had made two attempts at taking the city from Demetrius and had been badly beaten both times. Despite the importance given to Tyre by Euphemios, it was not really a war-deciding engagement. In scale, it paled in comparison to the Battle of Antioch and Demetrius would fight plenty of other battles against Ptolemy. Certainly, by 226, Ptolemy was back in the field and would keep fighting for several more years. This was not some great decisive victory but, at most, a minor side conflict in a much larger war. So why have we given it so much importance? Because to Euphemios and his successors, the Siege of Tyre was an important story. There is a limit to the justice I can do to it here but the story was important to the culture of the 2nd and 1st Century BCE Hellenistic world and marked the beginning of Demetrius' very successful, and very popular, career. It is also simply an interesting story that gives us an insight into the workings of a city that we might not have had otherwise. We see the actions of people such as Melqartamos, Pausanias, Philocrates, Hamilcar and many others as well as a rare insight into the fact that the people, not just kings and queens, could have a very real impact on their situation.
It was, of course, brutal. Tyre suffered extensive damage and huge population losses and in a letter written as late as 160 BCE, the Seleucid king is still referring to places left abandoned after the siege. Thousands died, homes were lost and families destroyed. Demetrius would, of course, visit the city again on several occasions and his memory would be long within Tyre but so would the memory of tragedy and loss. When the Shrine to Melqart was constructed on the edge of the city during the 210s, it contained weapons and armour taken from the Ptolemies as well as a plaque commemorating those killed in the siege.
Timeline:
Demetrius also found himself having to contend with many of the demands being made from across the city. In the chaos of the battle, ships had been lost, cargoes drowned, houses burned and even the Temple of Melqart had suffered some serious damage in places. That is to say nothing of the loss of life and the social impacts already being felt across the city. Demetrius and Melqartamos found themselves beset by requests for financial support, rebuilding, compensation and, of course, help in organising body disposals. Indeed, the impact of this has been seen archaeologically in the so-called 'Demetrian' Cemetery, an apparently new cemetery built in 227 BCE near the site of the old Ptolemaic encampment. For their part, the Tyrian demos voted that the same Ptolemaic encampment be turned into a shrine to Melqart to which Demetrius lent financial... promises.
For the most part, very few issues were resolved just now despite a monumental effort. As it stood, goal was to reinforce and maintain the war-time government under the leadership of Melqartamos, the sufet for 227 alongside a man named Adirbaal about whom very little is known except for his singular appearance in Euphemios in which he is killed during the first few days of the Ptolemaic siege. In particular, Melqartamos and Demetrius put much of their focus upon reinforcing the defences of the city. Large chains were ordered to be created to block off the Sidonian and Egyptian harbours and new watches set up on the edge to keep an eye out for any naval assaults. Demetrius repaired parts of the walls using rubble from damaged buildings. Steps were also taken to house the newly homeless citizens of some parts of the city including temporary camps and even some citizens agreeing to house others. Alongside this, a messenger named Kleophrades was sent out to try and reach Seleukeia and ask for reinforcements, there to inform the king that Tyre still held under Demetrius' command. Supposedly, Kleophrades was only barely able to evade Ptolemaic forces and, at one point, was forced to abandon his horse and swim across a river under cover of night to escape. Nevertheless, he was able to arrive in Seleukeia and pass the message on to Antiochus who was still raising his army to meet Ptolemy in battle.
In early August, probably around the 2nd or 3rd of the month, Ptolemy defeated Antiochus at the Battle of Antioch and began making his way south. Hearing of his approach, Demetrius once again sent a second messenger but this time was captured. Having heard of Pausanias' death, Ptolemy was intent on ending the defiance of Tyre once and for all. From his perspective, the loss of Pausanias was both embarrassing (he had lost the very reason he had come to Phoenicia) and rather problematic given that Pausanias was a key part of the network of elite interests that he hoped to establish as friendly governments in the region. Luckily, he had a back-up in the form of Pausanias' 11-year-old son, Philocrates II (Hellenistic royal families had thrown originality in naming to the wind a long time ago). At the time, Philocrates was still in Alexandria but, at Ptolemy's request, was to be quickly brought up as far as... Sidon. There was simply no way that Ptolemy was about to risk throwing another would-be Tyrian king under the bus.
On August 15th, Ptolemy arrived at the city. As Pausanias had done, his first instinct was to negotiate, both with the demos and with Demetrius but to no avail. Even offers to depose Philocrates II and maintain the democracy were curtly rejected. That is not to say that some within Tyre would not have wanted to take these offers. In fact, Caiatinus gives us an interesting point of view when he claims that much of the demos was incentivised to take the offer and only overruled by Demetrius who gave a speech in which, to paraphrase, he effectively denounced Ptolemy as a liar who would burn the city to the ground and reimpose Philocrates as king over the bones and ashes. In fact, in a much later source, Demetrius had unilaterally renounced any and all negotiation even before Ptolemy met with the Tyrian populace, hoping to cut off any hope of an agreement. Demetrius, it seems, had no intention of surrendering or backing down, even with the renewed offer of a very comfortable house-arrest in Alexandria.
For the next five days, negotiations were ongoing while both sides attempted to position themselves for an increasingly inevitable confrontation. For his part, Ptolemy set about bringing up more ships (as well as the survivors of Gorgias' fleet) and probably began making preparations for an assault on the city. Not wanting to worry about feeding prisoners, Demetrius also was able to negotiate a trade of several prisoners from the last assault in return for a ransom. Amongst the prisoners returned were Gorgias and Isokrates, both of whom would later be seen during the fighting back on the front lines despite having been captured only recently. For Demetrius, the real goal had been achieved, reducing the mouths he had to feed in case of a prolonged siege and making a display of his previous victory to the besieging Ptolemaic army. Sure, the granaries had been restocked but he had no intention of maximising his food consumption.
Fighting Begins: August 21st-September 5th:
On August 21st, the Ptolemaic fleet made several probing attacks against the Egyptian harbour, hoping to break through but were foiled by a mixture of the harbour's chains and several attacks by Tyrians, now manning the very ships they had captured during the Pausanian siege. It was far from a major assault but it marks the beginning of the fighting and probably forced Ptolemy to change his tactics. Yes, Ptolemy could have attempted to starve Tyre out but Demetrius had had time to try and restock his food supplies and clearly no intention of just backing down. Who knows how long it would take to starve the city out or wait for a traitor to let him in, especially when the bodies of those who had helped Pausanias were still quite graphically displayed along the old Alexandrian mole to the city.
For the next few days, Ptolemy began reorienting his forces. He either built, or had brought up to the front, siege weapons and outfitted several of his ships with catapults. In return, Demetrius prepared his forces. He had probably also spent the last month or so training some of the Tyrians, preparing them for a much larger battle than the last one. According to Euphemios, the Tyrians knew how to fight in a phalanx and use sarissae although, even with their extra training, they were dismayed at the sheer size and strength of Ptolemy's army. They wouldn't have long to wait to feel the strength of Ptolemy's army because, on August 30th, Ptolemy began a direct assault on the city. During the night of the 29th, Ptolemy had sent his ships around to the west side of the city facing out into the Mediterranean from which they began using catapults and rams to assault the walls. Forced to react, Demetrius had assigned soldiers there to prevent against another naval landing but, when the walls fell, found that the ships didn't move in at all. Instead, they continued around the walls to assault another part. If the goal was exhaustion, it worked wonderfully and succeeded in distracting parts of Demetrius' forces and command structure. The ships simply could move quicker and there was no guarantee of when, or where, they would actually assault.
In the east, meanwhile, Ptolemy began his assault in the early morning. Bringing up siege towers and rams, his forces were soon at the walls. For the next few hours, the Ptolemies and Tyrians fought back and forth for control of the walls. The fighting, as described by Euphemios, was nothing short of brutal. In the melee, hundreds were killed as the Ptolemies attempted to establish themselves and Demetrius and his forces fought to stop them. In this, Demetrius was often seen on the front lines, fighting on the walls during all four days of the fighting there. Even Ptolemy took part in the fighting both in September 2nd and 3rd. Indeed, for the next few days, the assaults on the walls continued. In particular, Euphemios takes note of Ptolemy's Jewish and Nubian contingents which he describes as having fought 'with valour equal to that shown by any Greek'. According to the chronology laid down by Euphemios, it was a Nubian contingent that first took part of the walls. The first assault, on August 30th, was thrown back but many more were to follow. On September 2nd and 3rd, during the peak of the fighting, the Ptolemies assaulted the walls several times a day, failing each time to take them but making headway every single time. Meanwhile, the Ptolemaic fleet continued to probe for weaknesses elsewhere. According to Euphemios, they bombarded the city near constantly (although doing so would probably be impossible logistically) and made their own assaults (led by Gorgias no less) against some of the breaches with one contingent even reaching the citadel before being driven back.
The most famous incident of the early Ptolemaic siege came, however, on September 3rd. That morning, the Macedonian infantry of the Ptolemaic army made a brutal assault on the walls led by Ptolemy himself. Demetrius, leading some of his Seleucid garrison to meet them, soon found himself face to face with Ptolemy himself. In what Euphemios described as the greatest duel since Achilles and Memnon, the two leaders are said to have fought a furious battle against one another, both injuring the other but neither succeeding in landing a killing blow. This may sound apocryphal and was traditionally considered a work of fiction until, in 2017, a letter was uncovered by a Macedonian soldier who claims he 'fought alongside Ptolemy' and saw the king 'greatly injure the [Seleucid] prince'. This doesn't mean that the duel was anything like that in Euphemios but it does confirm that Ptolemy and Demetrius may well have actually met during the battle and fought one another. In Euphemios, of course, the duel between Ptolemy and Demetrius is one of the emotional highpoints of the story. To him, it is the single greatest engagement of the entire siege and is described in lavish detail by the author. In his account, the fighting stops around them to let the two duel until one winner can emerge. Of course, unlike the Ptolemaic letter mentioned above, in Euphemios they are equally matched although Demetrius takes something of a lead, wounding Ptolemy twice and only receiving a single blow himself.
More likely, however, is that Demetrius himself was wounded during the fighting, allowing Ptolemy to make his breakthrough the following day. By the end of September 3rd, the Ptolemies had captured several sections of the wall but fighting continued the next day when they attempted to extend this control beyond what they currently held. Despite resistance, they were able to slowly expand their control over more and more of the main wall and had soon captured the gates. Throughout the rest of September 4th, the Ptolemaic army began a slow, but steady, advance through the city. This continued the following day when they were able to dislodge Demetrius' forces from the Temple of Melqart led by Ptolemy's cavalry commander, Kosmas.
September 6th-10th: The Siege of the Citadel
By the end of September 5th, Demetrius had lost the city. Isokrates led a contingent south to the Egyptian port, capturing the Ptolemaic ships again and opening the harbour for Gorgias to sail in unopposed. That evening, Ptolemy's army reached the citadel but found it still held against them. Instead of beginning an assault that day, he sent Kosmas further north to take the northern reaches of the city and prevent any retreat from the citadel. This next period, between September 6th and 10th, marks the most desperate stage of the fighting. Demetrius, still recovering from his injuries, was holed up in the citadel alongside what remained of his garrison, perhaps as few as 3-4000 soldiers against Ptolemy's army. Melqartamos, captured over the course of the previous day alongside several other democratic leaders was kept in the Ptolemaic camp outside the city and news sent to Philocrates II to come to the city.
On September 6th, Ptolemy began his siege of the citadel, bringing up more siege weapons to batter the walls and setting out to establish the new pro-Ptolemaic government in the city. As part of this, he started bringing several of the democratic leaders to trial on charges of treason. The bodies of Pausanias' supporters had already been taken down and buried just outside the city in the old Tyrian cemetery and now, in a gory display of power, were to be replaced with those of his enemies. Several were executed by decapitation but, for the more resilient of his opponents, including Melqartamos, the punishment was significantly worse. Melqartamos was to be tied to a stake outside the citadel where, over the course of the next few days, he would slowly die of thirst in full view of the defenders. Of course, this is a Euphemian story so its reliability is hard to establish but what is certain is that, by September 10th, many of the leaders of Melqartamos' democracy had been executed including the sufet himself. News of the trial spread quickly, igniting another round of uprisings on September 7th and 8th, one attempting to take control of the Egyptian port only to be driven back and another focussing its energies on the boule. This culminated, however, on September 9th when the murder of a Tyrian woman by a Ptolemaic soldier led to another uprising and the capture of the gate for several hours until Isokrates was able to dislodge the rebels.
Back in the citadel, things had grown all the more desperate. Now back in the fighting, Demetrius found himself beset by Ptolemaic assaults. For days on end, the Ptolemies battered the walls of the citadel and, on several occasions, came within a hair's breadth of taking the citadel before being driven back. Demetrius' numbers were growing thin, morale was starting to waver and the walls seemed set to fall. News of Melqartamos' execution had done its job, demoralising the defenders and encouraging talk of surrender which Demetrius took drastic steps, including executions, to prevent. According to Euphemios, the height of this came on the evening of September 9th when a group of soldiers attempted a coup against Demetrius only to be captured before they could reach the gate and executed. Realising that his citadel was about to fall, Euphemios claims that Demetrius began a mass prayer to Dionysus, offering half of the remaining food in the citadel to the god and having it burned as an offering.
The Dionysiac Miracle
This is the precursor to Euphemios' 'Dionysiac Miracle', an event which requires some analysis. By the end of the 2nd Century BCE, the militaristic 'war god' version of Dionysus had become rather well-established. Following the Sosthenic tradition, a lot of interpretation of Dionysus as a god had focussed on his role as a traveller and wanderer, a theme very appropriate for the Hellenistic. This had split somewhat into very diverging traditions of the god throughout the 2nd Century. Back in the centres of power, a more literary version of Dionysus was very popular in which he was a traveller bringing all manner of great things back to the Greeks through his many wanderings. In a world where the Seleucid empire prided itself on his size and reach and ability to bring together products of places all across the world, this was a very appropriate and popular incarnation of Dionysus. Amongst soldiers, however, the Sosthenic tradition of Dionysus had broken up into a more militaristic version. Gone were the humorous journeys across the Afghan mountains, replaced instead with Dionysus as a bringer of Greek civilisation to every corner of the world. Where soldiers went, Dionysus had already been and thus he became something of a guide and patron for travelling soldiers. These two versions, named accordingly Dionysus-Planetes and Dionysus-Nikos were not alone, however, and joined by a third and somewhat more rogue version named Dionysus-Demos.
Dionysus-Demos first emerges in our record sometime in the mid-2nd Century in Ptolemaic Egypt in a letter in which an Alexandrian decries the 'excesses' of this version of Dionysus and its popularity 'in foreign places'. Dionysus-Demos enjoyed a somewhat complicated relationship with the Hellenistic kings, and, by the end of the 2nd Century, was very popular in a lot of cities throughout the Seleucid empire. To some, Dionysus-Demos represented a break from a social order that some had been trying to reject. Following Melqartamos, several cities in Phoenicia had developed notions of the 'perfection' of democracy, touting the system as an escape from oppression. We recognise this in the complex relationship between Euphemios' works and the Seleucid kings of his day. In short, some contemporary democrats were... uncomfortable about the influence that Hellenistic kings had over their, ostensibly democratic cities. Dionysus-Demos was a popular god because, in his role as a god of lowered inhibitions, he represented a potential threat and break to social establishments that were not especially popular in many cities. For some, he was effectively a 'people's god', a god for the demos interpreted as having the ability to free people from the constraints imposed upon them by a royal or aristocratic social order. No wonder, then, that many saw it as a threat.
In Euphemios, the 'Dionysiac Miracle' is both an example of Dionysus-Nikos and Dionysus-Demos, a ritualistic triumph of Dionysus as both a god of the soldier (that being Demetrius' garrison) and of the demos. In an environment where Dionysus-Demos was, at best, controversial, the choice to embrace two aspects of the god is ambiguous in a very Euphemian manner. It is never specifically stated which incarnation of Dionysus is responsible but, given the militaristic aspect and the context of a democratic movement, it is implied that it could be either and the reader can interpret this subversive democratic element if they so desire.
So why do I mention this? Because, in the 3rd Century, Demetrius was almost certainly not praying to Dionysus. Yes, a sacrifice and prayer may well have taken place but whatever did happen, it would have been to Herakles and not to Dionysus given the association between Melqart and Herakles. With that said, it is very interesting that, by the end of the 2nd Century BCE, the 'Demetrium' at Tyre was placed alongside a shrine to Dionysus and suggests that, by the time Euphemios was writing, the idea of Demetrius' prayer to Dionysus and the 'Dionysiac Miracle' was well-established.
What, then, is the Dionysiac miracle? Supposedly, on the night of the 9th September, Ptolemy's army began to get exceptionally drunk. The weird part was that they hadn't actually drunk anything. Dionysus had, apparently, stepped in and, as the Ptolemaic army began to grow more and more inebriated, the defenders were able to launch a devastating night attack. Swarming out from the gates, the defenders within the citadel killed thousands of Ptolemaic soldiers, burning their encampment and sending the rest running through the streets. But Dionysus wasn't done. As the Ptolemies fled, they were overtaken by a madness and turned on each other, seeing other soldiers in the streets and fighting amongst themselves leading to ever more thousands of deaths. By the next day, Demetrius had retaken the gates and Ptolemy had only just escaped with his life.
Of course, there is no way that this happened, right? One possibility is that there is a kernel of truth here. The murder of a Tyrian woman which had led to the uprising on September 9th may be used as an indication that Ptolemy had started to lose control of his army somewhat which, having taken the city, had already turned towards looting even before the citadel had fallen. It has been argued that the army simply lost control, getting exceptionally drunk in their 'victory' celebrations and being routed by the defenders during a last ditch night raid. Convinced they had no other way out (since Demetrius was clearly not about to surrender), the heightened morale of the desperate Seleucid soldiers allowed them to fight back the Ptolemaic army despite its much greater numbers, especially when aided by the darkness and the inebriated soldiers. Another possibility is that Demetrius, once again, launched a very successful night raid or ambush although we don't know where he would have gotten the soldiers from to do so. Another interpretation, suggested by some, is that Demetrius had been able to poison the wine of the Ptolemaic soldiers and they suffered heavy casualties during the night which, again, lowered morale and fitness amongst the survivors and allowed the Seleucids to overcome them.
Whatever the case, the Ptolemies had very suddenly lost control of the situation. This was a victory of morale; Demetrius had spent ages convincing his soldiers that the only way out would be over a mountain of Ptolemaic bodies while the Ptolemies had, through one means or another, allowed their discipline to slip which, under cover of night, led to a devastating rout. We shouldn't overestimate the damage here (nor should we underestimate it, of course; several Ptolemaic contingents kept their discipline and fought, even as the Tyrians, emboldened by the victory, rose up yet again. Regardless, by the morning of September 10th, Demetrius had pushed the Ptolemies back to the walls, killing Isokrates and Kosmas in the process, and taken control of the city once again. It was a huge turn in the tide and would mark the last time the Ptolemies would take control of the city in any meaningful way.
For the next four days, the two settled into a stalemate, licking their wounds while Ptolemy planned out his next move. In the end, of course, that next move wouldn't come. On September 14th, a Seleucid cavalry contingent (perhaps as many as 6000 strong) led by Prince Antiochus arrived and launched an attack on Ptolemaic supply lines, killing hundreds of Ptolemaic soldiers and forcing Ptolemy to retreat. See, since the defeat at Antioch, the king had not been idle. Aware of the ongoing siege, he remained hopeful that he could relieve it and quickly raised a cavalry force to try and drive Ptolemy back. Led by Prince Antiochus, the cavalry was largely made up of light cavalry with a contingent of some 600 cataphracts and, moving quickly, was able to outflank Ptolemy. While he outnumbered them still, the losses in Tyre and the low morale of his men was enough to convince him not to try and fight, especially against a more mobile force. Instead, still harassed by Prince Antiochus' cavalry, he began a retreat to Sidon where his army would rest and recuperate.
Analysis: The Siege of Tyre
So what do we make of the Siege of Tyre? Between June and September 227, the Ptolemies had made two attempts at taking the city from Demetrius and had been badly beaten both times. Despite the importance given to Tyre by Euphemios, it was not really a war-deciding engagement. In scale, it paled in comparison to the Battle of Antioch and Demetrius would fight plenty of other battles against Ptolemy. Certainly, by 226, Ptolemy was back in the field and would keep fighting for several more years. This was not some great decisive victory but, at most, a minor side conflict in a much larger war. So why have we given it so much importance? Because to Euphemios and his successors, the Siege of Tyre was an important story. There is a limit to the justice I can do to it here but the story was important to the culture of the 2nd and 1st Century BCE Hellenistic world and marked the beginning of Demetrius' very successful, and very popular, career. It is also simply an interesting story that gives us an insight into the workings of a city that we might not have had otherwise. We see the actions of people such as Melqartamos, Pausanias, Philocrates, Hamilcar and many others as well as a rare insight into the fact that the people, not just kings and queens, could have a very real impact on their situation.
It was, of course, brutal. Tyre suffered extensive damage and huge population losses and in a letter written as late as 160 BCE, the Seleucid king is still referring to places left abandoned after the siege. Thousands died, homes were lost and families destroyed. Demetrius would, of course, visit the city again on several occasions and his memory would be long within Tyre but so would the memory of tragedy and loss. When the Shrine to Melqart was constructed on the edge of the city during the 210s, it contained weapons and armour taken from the Ptolemies as well as a plaque commemorating those killed in the siege.
Timeline:
June 27th-August 15th: Preparations; Demetrius rallies the Tyrians, Pausanias' body mutilated, the Tyrian assembly, Demetrius' call for help
Second Siege of Tyre (August 15th-September 14th)
August 15th: Ptolemy III arrives and lays siege to the city
August 15th-20th: Negotiations, prisoners ransomed
August 21st: Probing attacks against the Egyptian port
August 22nd-29th: Preparations for the assault
August 30th-September 3rd: Assaults on the walls, back and forth fighting, Demetrius and Ptolemy's duel
September 4th: Walls captured, Ptolemaic incursions begin
September 5th: The City of Tyre falls, Demetrius retreats to the Citadel
September 6th: Siege of the Citadel begins, Trial of the Rebels, uprising in the harbour
September 7th-8th: Precursor Uprisings
September 9th: Tyrian rebels capture the walls, coup in the Citadel, 'Dionysiac Miracle'.
September 10th: Ptolemaic assault broken, Ptolemy injured, Tyrians retake the gates
September 14th: Seleucid reinforcements arrive, Ptolemy retreats
Truly a story for the ages. I can only wonder at what literary tropes it inspires down the road
This was really tense and it had a great ending with its very own miracle, no wonder the siege of Tyre became prime real state for literature. Will the extensive damage during the siege make the habitants migrate to Carthage perhaps? Also, how is the rest of the war coming along?
So Dionysus is becoming more of a militaristic god, I would assume as The Seleucid realm is rather extensive his presence will be perhaps like Mithras. Not necessarily on the mystery cult thing but on his milage from Asia Minor to the borders with India. Will Dio start to become The Seleucids preferred god? or will they keep with their Apollo origin myth?
Maybe they can go syncretic, and merge Apollo and Dionysus together?
I mean that could work in some regards as they are both sons of Zeus, and with that they could play up their relation to Alexander.
But I dunno how the myth itself could work? Any ideas for Phoebus-Dionysios.
Not an expert, but I'm thinking Sun, Harvest, Grape&Wine might do the job well enough...
Not to give too much away here but I’ve been working on the idea of a dualistic Apollo-Dionysus system of ideology in which the two become somewhat complementary deities within the Seleucid system.
That said, I also love the idea of a syncretised version of the two: Phoebus-Dionysus kinda thing…
Oh yeah that totally makes sense, can't believe it didn't come to mind . The Sun aspect is the ligthbringer if the world and gives life to the harvest and with it the vine.
Oh that's awesome! Dying to see that develop in the timeline. Phoebus-Dionysios does sound rather grand.
Why has Dionysus been adopted as a war god instead of the preexisting war god Ares? Greek mythology is not my strong suit, so any explanation would be appreciated. I know the Seleucids would probably not want to adopt the war goddess Athena given her close association with Athens, but Dionysus does not seem to me to be much of a warlike deity. Wouldn't Ares be a better fit? I've read previously however that Greeks didn't tend to actually worship Ares though (unlike the Roman devotion to Mars). Does that have something to do with it?
Sounds a little oppositional, one being the god of the heavens and light, of fire and exalted things, the other of earth and darkness, of messy and mortal things…
…you might even call it a little dualistic. Given Avestan thought, that could get interesting.
Well I think it's because Dionysus is a god that's associated with traveling and wandering far away from Greece, and The Seleucids have such a vast realm that it makes sense to identify with the god who's known for wandering and conquering as it is said Dio conquered India.
Also Dionysus is a somewhat terrifying and ruthless god when he's not on his party mode.
Ngl it'd be really ironic if Phoebus Dionysus becomes popular, considering that his historical origins seem to be as a cthonic deity
So the Greeks did worship Ares but you're right that he wasn't as popular as Mars was. In truth, Greek gods don't always really fit a single thing in the way we might expect? Athena and Zeus can be war gods, Apollo and Artemis can be war gods etc. so with enough framing, it entirely makes sense that Dionysus could be, especially given his oftentimes horrifying mythology. As Kaisar Maniodes said, though, the real focus here is on Dionysus as a traveller and, especially, the Dionysiac Conquest of India which is exactly what it sounds like. In our timeline, the Dionysiac conquest of India seems to have appeared during the Hellenistic (as it has in this timeline via Sosthenes' work) to create a divine precursor to Alexander's own conquest. In the Dionysiac conquest he, like Alexander, even founds cities for ex-soldiers. There's even some debate as to whether or not the diadem was Dionysiac in origin. Stanco (2012) notes that we see a fair few 'Dionysiac' scenes across the Hellenistic east although these were probably not the Hellenistic Dionysus but as local forms of Dionysus which may have had distinct identities and forms.
Spoilers Below:
My image here is of a Dionysus-Heracles syncretism of some sort in which, over time, the aspects of Heracles and Dionysus are merged somewhat into a militaristic Dionysus. This begins with Sosthenes' 'Dionysiac Invasion of India' and the idea of a subsequent Heraclean invasion (also very on point for Hellenistic belief) and, gradually, the two gods become two parts of this idea of Greeks going abroad (especially to India) and conquering stuff, bringing Greek culture and ideas. There is actually a precedent for this type of merging; both Dionysus and Heracles seem to have, at various points, been syncretised with Vajrapani, both gods are said to have invaded India, both gods were very popular in the east and saw a lot of variation in their forms and interpretations, providing an avenue for mixing and changing ideas. Why Dionysus and not Heracles? Because of the literary origin and a concomitant rise in Dionysiac ITTL in general. Sosthenes kicks everything off by popularising the idea of Dionysus as a conquering god, albeit in a somewhat satirical work which is poking fun at Seleucus I, Antiochus I and Antiochus II. Later authors pick this up and adapt it and, as Heracles becomes more popular in the east, the two 'conquests' become merged into a Dionysus-Heracles mixture. From this satirical origin, we thus end up with a 'war god Dionysus'. That said, I am conceiving of Dionysus less as an official war god and more as a god of soldiers. Originally, he will be placed alongside Heracles but later they become more and more merged into one.
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