Part 1 || Iotape

IotapeAuthor(s): Grace H. MacurdySource: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 26, Part 1 (1936), pp. 40-42Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/296703 .

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IOTAPE

By GRACE H. MACURDY

Five different princesses named Jotape are mentioned by Plutarch, 1

Cassius Dio,2 and Josephus,3 and the name and title of one of them appear on coins of Commagene. The princesses belong to the kingdoms of Media, Emesa, Commagene, and Judaea. The first of them in point of time is Jotape of Media, who was betrothed as a child to Alexander Helios. In the next century an Jotape Philadelphus appears on coins as the sister-wife of Antiochus IV of Commagene, and a contemporary Jotape, daughter of Sampsigeramus of Emesa, is mentioned by Josephus.4 Both of these contemporary Jotapes had daughters named Jotape. I suggest in this paper that the Median Jotape was the grandmother both of Jotape, daughter of Sampsigera- mus, who married the Jewish prince Aristobulus, 5 brother of Julius Agrippa I and of Herod, king of Chalcis, and also of Jotape, sister- wife of Antiochus IV of Commagene, ' vetustis opibus ingens et seruientium regum ditissimus.' 6 My hypothesis requires two assump- tions,-first, that the name Iotape became dynastic in these little kingdoms, as Laodice became a dynastic name in the Seleucid house and Cleopatra in the Ptolemaic dynasty, and second, that the first Jotape had two daughters, both named Jotape, one of whom was married to Sampsigeramus of Emesa, and mother of his daughter Jotape, and the other to her brother, Antiochus III of Commagene, son of Mithradates III I of that kingdom and, as I suggest, of the Median Jotape.

I hope that the following argument may make plausible this attempt to account for the appearance of the non-Hellenic name lotape in the different dynasties of Media, Commagene, Emesa, and Judaea.

lotape,8 the Median princess, was in her early childhood em- ployed, after the age-old custom for princesses, to seal an alliance and treaty between her father, the Median king Artavasdes, and M. Antonius, by her betrothal to another child, Alexander Helios, son of Antonius and Cleopatra. She was taken to Alexandria in 33 B.C., the year following that of her betrothal, and there, after the battle of Actium and the deaths of Antonius and Cleopatra, Octavian found her among the many other hostages and children of friendly

I Plutarch, Ant. 53. 2 Cassius Dio, 49, 44; 5I, i6. 3 Josephus, A7, I8, I35 and 140.

4 lbid.

5 lbid. 6 Taci tus, Hist. 2, 8 I . I Cassius Dio, 54, 9. 8 Plutarch, loc. cit.: Cassius Dio, 49, 44; 5i, I6.



IOTAPE 4I

potentates whom Antonius, 9 in oriental fashion, had maintained in the court at Alexandria. Her name is mentioned twice by Cassius Dio, and the facts of her betrothal and her coming to Alexandria are recorded by Plutarch.

Jotape's father was pardoned by Octavian for following Antonius and was given by him the kingdom of Little Armenia. The young princess was restored to her father, who died a little before 20 B.C. 10

His new kingdom of Little Armenia was presented to Archelaus of Cappadocia. It was the acknowledged and well-known policy of Augustus to leave the government of the East, so far as possible, in the hands of native rulers, who had some claim to the thrones or some connection with the kingdoms. He desired, as Dessau says, 1 to control, but not to govern, these buffer states. So we find him about the year 20 B.C., among other arrangements for various kingdoms, placing on the throne of Commagene, the small but fruitful and wealthy kingdom whose king Mithradates 1112 had probably been a creation, and was certainly an ally, of Antonius, a certain young Mithradates, of whom Dio says only that the king of Commagene had killed the father of the young man. Little is known about this young Mithradates. He apparently survived at least to the year I2 B.C.13 He was succeeded by his son Antiochus III, who in turn ruled until A.D. I7, at which time Tiberius made Commagene into a Roman province. In A.D. 38 Caligula gave the kingdom to his friend Antiochus IV, who was the son of the deposed Antiochus 111.14 Antiochus IV ruled together with his sister lotape, with a brief inter- mission at the beginning of Caligula's reign, until A.D. 72, when they were deposed by Vespasian. The first Antiochus of Commagene, famed for his megalomaniac inscription, 15 carved on a rock among the hills near to the monuments commemorating himself and his ancestors, was the son of the first Mithradates and Laodice, a daughter of Antiochus VIII of Syria (Grypus). Antiochus I of Commagene reigned from 69 B.C. to 38 B.C., when he was replaced by Mithradates II, who had the favour of M. Antonius. The name Antiochus came into the family as a dynastic name by the descent from Antiochus Grypus. We should expect the potent Seleucid name Laodice also to become the dynastic name for the queens, but instead the name Iotape appears for the wife of Antiochus IV and for her daughter Iotape who married Alexander, son of Tigranes V and king of lotape and Elaeoussa in Cilicia. The name Iotape occurs also in the dynasty of Emesa for a daughter of Sampsigeramus, a contemporary and friend of Antiochus IV of Commagene and of

9 Cassius Dio, 5I, I5-i6. ? Id. 54, 9-

1 Geschichte der roinischen Kaiserzeit II, 2, p. 6zz. 12Plutarch, Ant. 6i. 13 Th. Mommsen in Ath. llitt., I (I876), pp. 28 ff.

Th. Reinach, ' La dynastie de Commagene' in

L'Histoire par les Monnaies (I906), p. 246, and Rev. des Et grecquies iii, i890, 377. (Cf. Geyer, 'Mithridates,' 29-31 in P-W I5, coil. 2213-221 ;)

14 Cassius Dio, 59, 8. 15 OGIS 383: Th. Reinach, op. cit., pp. 236 ff.:

E. Bevan, Later Greek Religion, pp. 6i-65.



42 IOTAPE

Agrippa I of Judaea. This lady married Agrippa's brother Aristobulus, and their child was also called Iotape.

My suggestion is that Augustus, who showed a great interest in arranging marriages for the princesses who were by various strokes of fate left within his disposal, in 20 B.C., when he provided the young Mithradates of Commagene with his ancestral kingdom, also provided him with a wife in the person of lotape, who had been betrothed to Alexander Helios and whose father 'The Mede,' finally king of Little Armenia, had just died. It would be the most suitable of marriage arrangements. If Antiochus III was the son of Mithradates III and this lotape, Antiochus IV and Iotape who began to reign in A.D. 38, would be the grandchildren of the original Iotape, the Median princess. This also leaves room for the pos- sibility of another Jotape, daughter of the Median princess, who may have married Sampsigeramus of Emesa, whose daughter Iotape married the Jew Aristobulus.

That such marriage ties are not pure fantasy may be seen by a study of the ties, actual and future, between the dynasts assembled by Agrippa I at Tiberias in the year A.D. 44, shortly before his death. 16

Josephus says that Agrippa was looked up to by all the rest. The kings were, in the order named, Antiochus of Commagene, Sampsigeramus of Emesa, Cotys of Little Armenia, Polemo of Pontus, and Agrippa's brother, Herod king of Chalcis. Agrippa's daughter Berenice was successively the wife of Herod of Chalcis and of Polemo of Pontus; his daughter Drusilla was betrothed to Epiphanes, son of Antiochus IV of Commagene, and later was married to Azizus, son of Sampsigeramus of Emesa. His brother was married to lotape, daughter of Sampsigeramus. The daughter of Antiochus of Commagene was later to marry a grandnephew of Agrippa and become Queen of Jotape and Elaeoussa in Cilicia. This leaves only Cotys, the brother of Polemo, unattached in this complex of relationships. It is not known whom he married.

In view of the predilection of Augustus for marrying off female royalties (witness Cleopatra Selene, Pythodoris, Glaphyra, Dynamis, etc.), and in view of the close relationships of the houses in question, the marriage of the Median Iotape with Mithradates III in the year 20 appears to be a very reasonable hypothesis to account for the dynastic name lotape which appears thereafter in the stemma of the house of Commagene.

l Josephus, Ay, 19, 338.



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