|
Was Apama III the daughter of
Demetrius II of Macedonia and Stratonice II? For support, see: The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., vol.7, pt. 1: The Hellenistic world (1984), p. 487; Peter Green, Alexander to Actium (1990), p. 733; |
|
Was Apama III the daughter of
Demetrius II of Macedonia and Phthia? For support, see: Oleg L. Gabelko and Yuri N. Kuzmin, “Matrimonial Policy of Demetrios II of Macedonia,” Вестник древней истории / Vestnik drevnej istorii / Bulletin of Ancient History 1 (2008), pp. 141-164. |
|
This assumption (Phthia as mother of Apama III) provides a route for the transmission of the gemination mutation through Prusias Monodous' father; it is of special interest if we assume that Monodous was the son of Prusias II by his second wife.
Mark Passehl says (email of 10/2/2012): The problem with Phthia as mother of Prusias I's Antigonid queen Apama is that the Hellenized Persian name Apama should descend through the children of Antiochos I (such as Stratonike, wife of Demetrios II), but hardly via the children of Seleukos I and Antigonid Stratonike (such as Gonatas' queen Phila). Since Philip V was son of Phthia or Chryseis but not of Stratonike, the same applies to his daughter Apama who married Prusias II shortly after Perseus' accession. She should have received her Persian name from her (unknown) maternal line, rather than the paternal. On the other hand, Gabelko and Kuzmin discuss their reasons for believing that Apama III, wife of Prusias I, was a daughter of Demetrius II by Phthia in their article “Matrimonial Policy of Demetrios II of Macedonia,” cited above, as well as in note 65 in their chapter on two Seleucid Stratonices (“A Case of Stratonices”) to be published in 2014 in Seleukeia, the festschrift honoring Getzel Cohen. In this latter note 65 they propose that Demetrius may have given his daughter by Phthia the name Apama (paying homage to the female founder of the Seleucid dynasty) as part of a strategy of repairing his relations with the Seleucids after his breakup with Stratonice II. Elizabeth Carney, Women and Monarchy in Macedonia (2000), p. 197, says of an Apama in the next generation (Philip V's daughter Apama IV, Carney's Apamea 2): Naming an Antigonid princess after the founding mother of the Seleucid dynasty might seem odd but not perhaps if she had a half aunt of that name [Apama III]. Renzo Lucherini discusses this Apama (email of 11/27/2012): We are sure that Philip V had a daughter who he called Apama (the future queen of Prousias II) and equally we are sure he was not a descendant of Apama I, the wife of Seleukos Nikator. Why did he choose this name? In responding to this question I tend to agree with Elizabeth Carney. About Apama daughter of Demetrios and half-sister of Philip (Prousias I's wife) a solution it might be the one proposed by Gabelko and Kuzmin [that her mother was Phthia], united to the fact that certain names were felt to be royal. There were a lot of Seleukos, Ptolemy, Stratonike or Berenike who had nothing to do with the Diadochs' houses. In "Philip V's Maternity" Lucherini proposes that after a Seleucid, Ptolemaic or Antigonid king has satisfied the rule that a daughter must be named after his mother and another after his wife, "the king was free to call his daughters as he preferred, choosing among those names that were felt to be royal." Passehl says (email of 12/2/2012): While many court officials and citizens of the poleis might name their daughters after unrelated great royal women of the day, I don't accept that the dynasties themselves would do any such thing without a justifying lineage connection. Admittedly we are rather poorly informed about the names of Antigonid women (partly because of the lowly origins of Antigonos I, a great self-made man under Philip II), but they certainly didn't include Apama, which must have been introduced ... by an Antigonid queen with a direct lineage to the Bactrian Apama, and this excludes Gonatas' queen Phila. In note 41 on p. 311 of Women and Monarchy, Carney discusses the reference to Demetrius and his queen Phthia and "their children" in an Athenian inscription of 236-5 in honor of Aristophanes: Rather than assume, as Dow and Edson (1937: 148-49) do, that the references to multiple children by Demetrius and Phthia is conventional and implies nothing about their literal existence, I am inclined to take the reference seriously but note that royal daughters, even as adults, are often unknown and unnamed and that even male children who died very young are unlikely to be known to us. Phthia may have had several children by this date, none of them Philip V and none of them known to us. Note that from this perspective it is entirely possible for Demetrius and Phthia to have had daughters named Phila and Phthia who died before reaching adulthood. In line with Lucherini's proposal above, Demetrius would have then felt free to name a later daughter Apama; the motivation might have been (as proposed by Gabelko and Kuzmin above) to improve relations with the Seleucids, relations which had been at a low point since Demetrius' marriage to Phthia had caused his Seleucid wife Stratonice to flee to Syria. Passehl has further comments on names (email of 12/6/2012): I also think nomenclature is another reliable guide [to reconstructing royal genealogies]. I don't agree with Renzo's thoughts about the king's freedom in choosing daughters' names after using only those of the wife and the mother. This freedom was enjoyed by common folk and even courtiers and lesser royal officialdom, but hardly the great dynasties themselves. Surely taking names from their peers and rivals without direct genealogic warrant would have been to concede a superiority of importance to the rivals, at the expense of the dynasty's own inherited traditions. |
| Roger Powell pointed out (email of 12/8/2012) that the assumption by all modern historians has always been that Prusias I married a sister of Philip V, thus explaining the use of the term kedestes ["in-law", probably "brother-in-law"] by Polybius [15.22] in describing their relationship, but it is equally possible that Philip V married a sister of Prusias I. In fact, both marriages could have taken place, making Prusias and Philip doubly brothers-in-law. Powell also noted that Prusias I might have been married to two half-sisters, Apama (daughter of Demetrius II of Macedonia and Stratonice of Syria) and _____ (daughter of Demetrius II and Phthia of Epirus), and he might have had one or more children by each of these wives. |