Recorded: July 6, 2023
Event: Achaemenid Workshop 2
Citation: Lerouge-Cohen, Charlotte. "Philhellen" and Heirs to the Persians: The Arsacids, the Seleucids and the Greeks until the Death of Mithridates I (171-138)." Pourdavoud Institute: Achaemenid Workshop 2 (July 6, 2023).
by Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen (Université Paris Nanterre)
The paper investigates the role of the memory of the Persians in relations between the Arsacids and Seleucids in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. It discusses Seleucid representations of the Arsacids, as well as the role played by memories of Persian-Greek relations in the military campaigns of Demetrios II and Antiochos VII. It especially focuses on the relationships with the Greek cities of Babylonia. Finally, it discusses (once more) the “Philhellen” epithet which was adopted by Mithridates I on his coins.
About the Speaker
Charlotte Lerouge-Cohen is a teacher in Greek History at Paris-Nanterre University (France). Her scientific works deal with the Greek and Latin historiography pertaining to the Parthians, with the Arsacids themselves, as well as with the Hellenistic dynasties from Anatolia who were from Iranian descent, as the Mithridatids, the Ariarathids, the Orontids of Armenia and the Commagenian kings. She wrote two books: L’image des Parthes dans le monde gréco-romain: du début du Ier siècle av. J.-C. jusqu’à la fin du Haut-Empire romain (2007), which deals with the Parthians’ image and with the relationships which Parthians and Romans entertained; Souvenirs du passé perse à l’époque hellénistique (2022), where she explores the way Hellenistic dynasties tried to associate themselves with the Persian kings, and the way through which modern historians, sometimes, assigned to some dynasties (the Arsacids in particular) this desire to be linked to the Persian past.