Una basileia militare e rivoluzionaria: il caso di Diodoto Trifone Autocratore

The paper aims to highlight the innovative features of Diodotus Tryphon’s basileia (142/141-138/137 BC), seeking to demonstrate (especially through the analysis and comparison of the few surviving literary sources: particularly, Diodorus, Strabo, and Josephus, in which Posidonius’s influence is quite evident) how this ruler of obscure origins nearly succeeded in founding a new dynasty and replacing the declining Seleucids on the throne of Syria, basing his regime almost exclusively on military power (as indicated, among other things, by the choice of the unprecedented royal epithet Autokrator and by the inedited numismatic military iconography) and his strong ties to the major cities of Syria (Apamea and Antioch in particular, where the urban plethos was in constant rebellion against the Seleucids), in a dialectical relationship of both rupture and continuity with the previous basileis (not only in the royal ideology and in the ways of self-representation, but also in the diplomatic relations with other Mediterranean powers). Furthermore, this research will try to show the longterm political and ideological consequences that Tryphon’s regime produced not only on the declining Seleucid kingdom and on the surrounding areas, but also in the distant context of the Second Servile Revolt in Sicily (104-100 BC), as evidenced by the political experience of the rebel leader Salvius, who became basileus with the support of the slaves and the proletarian masses of the island, assuming – not coincidentally –the royal name of Tryphon.