Revolt of Aristonikos (133–129 BCE)
- sulla80
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Updated: 4 hours ago
In 133 BCE, King Attalos III of Pergamum died without an heir and bequeathed his entire kingdom to Rome. Aristonikos, who claimed to be an illegitimate son of Attalos’ father King Eumenes II, rose to challenge Rome’s takeover. Aristonikos took the dynastic name Eumenes III, presenting himself as the rightful king and rallying support for his cause.
The Romans were slow to act on Attalos’ will – the Roman Senate hesitated to formally annex the kingdom, and internal political turmoil in Rome delayed a swift response. Tiberius Gracchus proposed plans to use Attalid wealth for land reform.
And now Attalus Philometor died, and Eudemus of Pergamum brought to Rome the king's last will and testament, by which the Roman people was made his heir. At once Tiberius courted popular favour by bringing in a bill which provided that the money of King Attalus, when brought to Rome, should be given to the citizens who received a parcel of the public land, to aid them in stocking and tilling their farms.
And as regarded the cities which were included in the kingdom of Attalus, he said it did not belong to the senate to deliberate about them, but he himself would submit a pertinent resolution to the people. By this proceeding he gave more offence than ever to the senate;
-Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, 14.1-2This interregnum provided Aristonikos an opportunity to seize Pergamene territories and build an independent power base. This coin issued in the city, Stratonikeia, where Aristonikos was ultimately captured. The pleasuant surprise is that this coin appears to be a plate coin (Plate 25, coin 130a) from Meadow's 2002 paper with specific hoard provenance.
Caria, Stratonikeia, 133-129 BCE, AR hemidrachm, Melantixos, magistrate.
Obv: Laureate head of Zeus right
Rev: Σ-Τ across field, eagle with wings spread standing left; above, magistrate's name: ΜΕΛΑΝΤΙΧΟΣ; to lower left, pileus surmounted by star; all within incuse square.
Course of the Revolt
Aristonikos moved quickly in the power vacuum following Attalos’s death. He seized key cities and strongholds in the former Attalid realm, using both land and naval forces. According to ancient summaries, he was initially successful on both land and sea. Several cities and areas in Asia Minor sided with him or were compelled to submit.
"...Leucae, a small town, which after the death of Attalus Philometor was caused to revolt by Aristonicus, who was reputed to belong to the royal family and intended to usurp the kingdom. Now he was banished from Smyrna, after being defeated in a naval battle near the Cymaean territory by the Ephesians, but he went up into the interior and quickly assembled a large number of resourceless people, and also of slaves, invited with a promise of freedom, whom he called Heliopolitae.
Now he first fell upon Thyateira unexpectedly, and then got possession of Apollonis, and then set his efforts against other fortresses. But he did not last long; the cities immediately sent a large number of troops against him, and they were assisted by Nicomedes the Bithynian and by the kings of the Cappadocians. Then came five Roman ambassadors, and after that an army under Publius Crassus the consul, and after that Marcus Perpernas, who brought the war to an end, having captured Aristonicus alive and sent him to Rome.
-Strabo, Geography, XIV.1.38The Greek cities that had benefited from Attalos’s will (many of which had been declared free or received gifts in the testament) were naturally hostile to Aristonikos’ usurpation. These cities quickly mustered troops to resist him. Furthermore, Nicomedes II of Bithynia and Ariarathes V of Cappadocia, along with other Cappadocian royal forces, joined the war against the pretender, eager to curry favor with Rome.
Roman Intervention
The Senate dispatched an embassy of five legates in 132 BCE, and by 131 BCE a Roman consular army arrived in Asia. The first Roman commander, Publius Licinius Crassus (consul of 131), met misfortune – he was defeated and killed in battle (reportedly ambushed near Leucae). This setback underscored the seriousness of the revolt. The following year (130 BCE), Marcus Perperna was sent as consul to continue the war.
Marcus Perperna managed to turn the tide. He pursued Aristonikos in the interior, decisively defeating his forces and besieging the pretender’s final stronghold. According to ancient accounts, Aristonikos fled and took refuge in Stratonikeia – a city in Caria – where he and his remaining followers were trapped. Perperna’s forces besieged Stratonikeia and systematically cut off supplies, starving out the resistance.
Ultimately, Aristonikos was captured alive at Stratonikeia in 130/129 BCE. and sent to Rome as a prisoner. His capture effectively ended the revolt. Perperna, however, did not long enjoy his victory – Strabo notes that Marcus Perperna died of disease shortly after the war. Aristonikos himself met a grim fate in Rome: the Senate ordered him strangled in prison (after being paraded in a triumph - see Sallust 4.9).
Now Aristonicus ended his life in prison; Perpernas died of disease; and Crassus, attacked by certain people in the neighbourhood of Leucae, fell in battle. And Manius Aquillius came over as consul with ten lieutenants and organised the province into the form of government that still now endures.
-Strabo, Geography, XIV.1.38In 129 BCE., the new consul Manius Aquillius arrived in Asia to organize the conquered territory. Aquillius is credited with pacifying the remaining Heliopolitae, (Ἡλιουπολίται) or “Citizens of the Sun”, who continued brief guerilla resistance. By 129 BCE, the former Attalid kingdom was transformed into the Roman province of Asia.
Social Dimensions of the Uprising
Although the revolt of Aristonikos began as a dynastic conflict, it quickly took on an aspect of social revolution. Aristonikos gathered an army of the poor and enslaved by offering them liberty, even giving his followers the aspirational name "Heliopolitae" (Ἡλιουπολίται) or "Citizens of the Sun". Aristonikos at least propagandized his cause as a fight for freedom and equality.
Ancient historians interpret this in various ways. Strabo implies that the inclusion of slaves was a pragmatic move by a desperate pretender rather than a genuine social revolution – “invited with a promise of freedom”.
Modern scholars have debated the true nature of the Heliopolitae and Aristonikos’s intentions. Some early interpretations (and later popular accounts) portrayed the revolt as a revolution of the downtrodden, emphasizing the egalitarian rhetoric of Aristonikos’s regime. Recent definitive studies, such as F. Daubner’s monograph Bellum Asiaticum (2006), carefully analyze the evidence and conclude that Aristonikos’s movement was to some extent focused on upending traditional social and political structures. At least, the widespread participation of lower classes and enslaved people shows that the revolt tapped into deep-seated grievances in Pergamene society.
Greek city elites and citizens – especially those in cities favored by Attalos III’s will – remained loyal to Rome, since the Attalid testament had guaranteed their autonomy and privileges. These cities (Ephesus, Pergamum, Smyrna, etc.) saw Aristonikos as a threat to the freedom that had been bestowed upon them. The Senate ratified Attalos’s will in 132 BCE and confirmed the free status of certain cities, which encouraged them to oppose the usurper.
Aristonikos found his strongest support in the rural regions populated by royal tenants, garrisons, disenfranchised natives, and others who did not benefit from the royal bequest. The revolt had an urban rural divide : a conservative alliance of Roman-allied cities versus a radical coalition of the landless, slaves, and perhaps disenfranchised locals rallying to Aristonikos’ banner. This theme also present in Rome and the time as illustrated by the social reforms of Tiberius Gracchus.
The Role of Stratonikeia
Stratonikeia features prominently in the saga. There were a two cities named Stratonicea/Stratonikeia involved: an inland Lydian town and a Carian city. The final acts of Aristonikos’s rebellion unfolded at Stratonikeia in Caria (modern Eskihisar).
In 130 BCE, this Carian city became the site of Aristonikos’s last stand and eventual surrender. After his defeat in the field, Aristonikos fled to Stratonikeia, and the Romans besieged him there. The siege was hard-fought with a protracted blockade that cut off supplies and starved the defenders into submission.
The Sullan Connection
The involvement of Stratonikeia in Aristonikos’ revolt had lasting consequences for the city. It is not entirely clear whether the city actively resisted Aristonikos’ forces or it was simply the place where he was cornered. However, evidence points to Stratonikeia being loyal to Rome. Many decades later (in 81 BCE), the Roman authorities explicitly acknowledged Stratonikeia’s support.
We have no direct evidence for Stratonikeia's role in this war, but the city is unlikely to have been wholly oblivious to the military activity elsewhere in Caria. Whether Aristonicus harassed the city is unknown. However, a later document is suggestive. In circa 81 BC the Roman dictator Sulla wrote to Stratonikeia to thank it for its loyaJty during the Mithridatic War, "I am not unaware of all the just acts you carried out towards our hegemony from the time of your ancestors, and that on every occasion you have conscientiously preserved your loyalty towards us, and that in the war against Mithridates you were the first of the cities in Asia to stand up to him ..." The nature of the previous, ancestral displays of propriety and loyalty towards Rome is obscure. It is difficult to think of any other test of these qualities prior to the Mithridatic irruption in the 80s, apart from the Aristonicus revolt. If Sulla did have this episode partly in mind, it seems likely that Stratonikeia had remained steadfastly in the Roman camp during this earlier conflict.
-Meadows (2002)The Roman dictator Sulla, in a letter around 81 BCE, thanked the city for its assistance during the war against Aristonikos. In the same year, the Roman Senate also rewarded Stratonikeia for its steadfastness against Rome’s enemies. According to an inscription, in 81 BCE the Senate recognized Stratonikeia’s “valiant resistance to their late enemy Mithridates VI of Pontus”.
Numismatic Evidence from the Period of the Revolt
Coins were issued during 133–129 BCE, from Stratonikeia in Caria, as an ally of Rome, and Cistophori were struck in Aristonikos’s name as a usurper king. Modern numismatic studies (Meadows 2002, Carbone 2021, etc.) have analyzed these issues in detail, correlating them with the historical narrative.
This Cistorphoric Tetradrach features the BA-EY for Basileus Eymenes, associated with Eumenes III from Robinson in 1954. While loyalist cities struck coins to support Rome, Aristonikos himself struck coinage to legitimize his rule. Notably, he took control of the former Pergamene royal mints (or set up new mints in captured cities) and issued silver cistophori (tetradrachms) in his own name.
The Hemidrachms of Magistrate Melantixos (133–129 BCE)
At last we get back to the coin: a tangible artifact of the city’s involvement and the Roman-aligned city’s emergency coinage struck during the rebellion.
Caria, Stratonikeia, 133-129 BCE, AR hemidrachm (14mm, 1.32g, 11h, Melantixos, magistrate.
Obv: Laureate head of Zeus right
Rev: Σ-Τ across field, eagle with wings spread standing left; above, magistrate's name: ΜΕΛΑΝΤΙΧΟΣ; to lower left, pileus surmounted by star; all within incuse square.
Ref: Meadows grp. 2, 130a (this coin) O56/R102; ex Muğla hoard.
During the war, Stratonikeia in Caria minted silver hemidrachms in limited quantities – an extraordinary measure for a city that usually produced only bronze small-change in peaceful times. My example (illustrated above) shows the typical features of this emergency coinage.
This coin from the Mugla hoard about which Meadows notes:
"The Mugla hoard was apparently discovered in the region of Mugla (ancient Mobolla), in south-western Turkey (ancient Caria) in 1965. The precise findspot remains a mystery. The town of Mugla, which has lent its name to more than one Greek coin hoard, is a provincial capital, and thus a focal point for antiquities found in a wide surrounding area. It should not, therefore, be taken for granted that the hoard was discovered in the immediate environs of the modern town. The hoard was apparently split soon after its discovery, and was first noted in commerce in Beirut and Istanbul where it was seen by Hans von Aulock."
-Meadows, 2002The head of Zeus, honoring Zeus Chrysaoreus, a chief deity of Caria, or Zeus Panamaros who was worshiped in Stratonikeia’s vicinity. The reverse depicts Zeus’s sacred eagle with wings spread. Notably, next to the eagle is a pileus (pilos cap) topped by a star. Panamaros designates the Zeus worshipped at the rural sanctuary of Panamara in Caria, c. 25 km W of modern Muğla and politically dependent on Stratonikeia.
Chrysaor is the name of the hero born from Medusa and Poseidon; Homer and later poets call him “golden‑sworded.” Chrysaoreus denotes Zeus “armed with a golden blade”. In Hellenistic Caria the title designates Zeus as the federal god of the Chrysaorian League—a confederation of Carian cities. The League’s assembly met in a common sanctuary of Zeus Chrysaoreus at Chrysaorium / Stratonikeia (later also at Alabanda).
The pileus was the cap given to freed slaves in Greek and Roman tradition – a clear symbol of liberty. Its presence, capped by a star, could allude to the city’s liberation or divine sanction of freedom. As an ally of Rome the liberty here is assocaited with the city's autonomy and Roman libertas, rather than the liberty for slaves of Aristonikos.
The legend on the reverse gives the magistrate’s name Melantichos (Melantixos) and the letters Σ-Τ in the field, an abbreviation of the city’s name (ΣΤ[ρατονικέων]). These identify the coin as an official civic issue of Stratonikeia.
Andrew Meadows’ study of Stratonikeia’s coinage demonstrated that this issue was specifically linked to the Aristonikos war. Stratonikeia had been politically free since 167 BCE, and it normally did not need to strike silver coins (which were typically used for paying soldiers or large expenses). The sudden appearance of silver hemidrachms in 133–129 BCE. indicates an extraordinary mobilization. Indeed, Meadows observes that in Stratonikeia, “silver coinage becomes an index not of prosperity but of financial drain and emergency, as well as a sign of the fiscal policy of the state being controlled from the outside”, whereas bronze coinage marks peaceful normalcy.
References:
ANS collection (Aristonikos cistophorus) (American Numismatic Society: Silver Cistophorus, Thyateira. 1944.100.37579).
Carbone, Lucia. “A New‑ish Cistophorus for the Rebel Aristonicus.” Pocket Change (blog of the American Numismatic Society), April 6 2021.
Cousin, Georges, and Charles Diehl. “Sénatus‑Consulte de Lagina de l’an 81 avant notre ère.” Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 9 (1885): 437–474. https://doi.org/10.3406/bch.1885.4085.
Daubner, Frank. Bellum Asiaticum: Der Krieg des Aristonikos (133–129 v. Chr.) und die Römische Eroberung Kleinasiens. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2006.
Meadows, Andrew R. “Stratonikeia in Caria: The Hellenistic City and Its Coinage.” The Numismatic Chronicle 162 (2002): 101–143.
Robinson, E. S. G. “Cistophori in the Name of King Eumenes.” The Numismatic Chronicle and Journal of the Royal Numismatic Society 14, no. 44 (1954): 1–8.
Sherk, Robert K. Roman Documents from the Greek East: Senatus consultum de Stratoniceis and L. Sulla’s Letter to Stratonikeia (RDGE). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969. Inscription 11, lines 3‑6.
van Bremen, Riet. “The Inscribed Documents on the Temple of Hekate at Lagina and the Date and Meaning of the Temple Frieze.” In Hellenistic Karia: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Hellenistic Karia, Oxford, 29 June–2 July 2006, edited by Riet van Bremen and Jan‑Mathieu Carbon, 483–503. Bordeaux: Ausonius; Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 2010.
H. von Aulock, “Zur Silberprägung des karischen Stratonikeia,” Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte (JNG) 17 (1967) pp. 7-16, with catalog of Stratonikeia’s silver on page 19 (Melantichos issue: SNG von Aulock 8143).
Yarab, Donald S. “Aristonicus of Pergamum: Rise and Fall.” Northcoast Antiquarian (blog), June 6 2024.
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