#stratonice

Despite (or because of) its oddities, this anecdote is particularly alluring for our exploration of the poetic celebrations of Seleucid queens. Before going any further, however, we must assess the reliability of Lucian’s account. What should we make of this anecdote? And is it any truer than the author’s playfully apocryphal ‘True Stories’? Lucian is a difficult source, frequently inventive and creative in his handling of the (literary) past, so we must be extremely careful. […]

Nevertheless, however tempting it is to see Lucian up to his old tricks, in this case I believe there are substantial grounds for seeing the Syrian author building on some kind of prior tradition and not just freely inventing. For a start, it is significant that Lucian names Stratonice explicitly here, unlike the anonymous noblewoman of his first anecdote. Such specificity requires explanation. Either Lucian chose her as the butt of an invented joke (perhaps through fondness for her character and a sense of geographical kinship), or rather he drew on a pre-existing tradition attached to her name. Given the degree to which this episode maps onto other accounts attached to this Seleucid queen, the second of these options seems more plausible. Daniel Ogden has noted how well the whole episode coheres with Lucian’s account of Stratonice in the De Dea Syria, in which the queen (again, while still married to Seleucus) suffers from a serious illness after failing to heed a dream-request from Hera Atargatis to construct a temple in Hierapolis Bambyce (μιν μεγάλη νοῦσος ἔλαβεν, Syr. D. 19). Such a ‘serious illness’ (μεγάλη νοῦσος) parallels the ‘long illness’ (νόσου μακρᾶς) which caused her baldness in the anecdote and which ‘everybody was aware of’ (ἁπάντων εἰδότων, Pro imag. 5). In both these passages, Lucian appears to be building off different elements of the same Stratonice story.

Nor is the cohesion of this Stratonice story restricted to Lucian’s own corpus. As Ogden has further noted, the ‘healthy sense of self-deprecating humour’ which Stratonice seems to show in Lucian’s account is paralleled by another anecdote concerning the queen’s portrayal by a different creative artist, in this case a painter:

innotuit … Ctesicles reginae Stratonices iniuria. nullo enim honore exceptus ab ea pinxit volutantem cum piscatore, quem reginam amare sermo erat, eamque tabulam in portu Ephesi proposuit, ipse velis raptus. regina tolli vetuit, utriusque similitudine mire expressa. (Pliny, HN 35.140)

Ctesicles became famous as a result of his insult to Queen Stratonice. Because she did not receive him in honourable fashion, he painted her rolling around with the fisherman with whom she was rumoured to be in love. He put the picture on display in Ephesus’ harbour before making a quick escape by sail. The queen forbade its removal, because he had represented each of them with amazing accuracy.

Here too, we find a playfully subversive Stratonice who seems to revel in her unqueenly behavior (adultery with a fisherman), just as in Lucian she revels in her unqueenly appearance (baldness). This Pliny passage further highlights a recurring aspect of Stratonice’s character which is only implicit in the Lucianic anecdote: her erotic allure. The queen’s amatory escapades with the fisherman parallel other accounts of her alleged liaisons with her step-son Antiochus (Syr. D. 17-18; Plut. Dem. 38) and the courtier Combabus (Syr. D. 19-27), all of which seem to reflect her cultic association with Aphrodite. This same element is present in Lucian’s account, but on a more implicit level through the poet’s description of Stratonice’s ‘hair’. Flower similes are a staple feature of erotic literature, a topos which lends an underlying amatory flavour to the comparison of her locks to hyacinth and celery, especially given the erotic association of both flowers. And this is reinforced further by the Seleucid poets’ Odyssean echoes, which point to two specific Homeric moments in which Odysseus’ beauty is divinely enhanced before his encounters with Nausicaa and Penelope (scenes endowed with a great deal of erotic potential).

Stratonice’s ill health (νοῦσος, Syr. D. 19; νόσου, Pro imag. 5) may also reflect this erotic association. It is well known that the noun νόσος/ νοῦσος can refer to lovesickness as much as a real disease. Indeed, this meaning dominates the story of Antiochus’ love for Stratonice, in which the doctor explicitly recognizes the prince’s ‘illness’ as ‘love’ (ἔγνω τὴν νοῦσον ἔρωτα ἔμμεναι, Syr. D. 17). But one particular symptom of such extreme desire is hair loss. […] The whole story of Stratonice’s long illness and hair loss thus complements and resonates fruitfully against the queen’s larger association with immoderate passions.

Considered against the larger backdrop of the ‘Stratonice tradition’, therefore, Lucian’s anecdote in the Pro Imaginibus does not seem so fanciful. Indeed, it reflects key aspects of her character and story that can be found elsewhere: her illness, sly humour and erotic allure. Taking the evidence together, I think it likely that Lucian drew this episode from a pre-existing source.

Of course, this conclusion does not prove the strict historicity of the episode, something which is ultimately unprovable on current evidence. Rather, it suggests that traditions surrounding Stratonice were already circulating in antiquity before Lucian’s day, part of the larger canon of Seleucid legend which has been so well charted by recent scholars. Like many other elements of that legend, however, it is likely that this tale too can be traced back to the myth-making of the Seleucid court itself. At various other points in his works, Lucian appears to treat Seleucid myth in a way that seems to echo Seleucid ideology and literature. The romance of Antiochus and Stratonice (Syr. D. 17-18), for example, has been traced back to Seleucid propaganda, while Lucian’s account of Antiochus’ Elephant victory (Zeux. 8-11) also appears to reflect Seleucid commemorations in the wake of the battle. Given these parallels, it is likely that Lucian’s account of Stratonice’s baldness can also be traced back to Seleucid traditions, even if perhaps in a comically distorted form."