The Accession of Archelaus Philopatris

Abstract Archelaus, on whom Pompeius Magnus bestowed the principality of Comana in Pontus, met his end on an ambitious venture, fighting for a bride and a throne in Egypt (s 5 B.C.). His son inherited Comana, but did not hold it for long. Caesar installed an adherent of his own, Lycomedes the Bithynian, of royal ancestry. After that, Fontus knows the family no more. The wife—or rather the widow-of the dynast of Comana, a lady called Glaphyra, subsequently turns up in Cappadocia along with her young son, another Archelaus. Cappadocia, afflicted with a feeble and discordant dynasty, an unruly baronage, was a refuge for an adventurer with a pedigree. The grandfather of young Archelaus claimed to be a bastard of Mithridates Eupator; and there was a genuine link between Pontus and Cappadocia in the person of Athenais, the queen-mother, widow of Ariobarzanes II—she was a daughter of Eupator. As for Glaphyra, one historian describes her as a ‘hetaera’. The term baffles exact definition but implies an active and variegated existence. Glaphyra had talent as well as charm.