We have written before on the Festivals at Antioch and more particularly, at Daphne. This was a subject on which Libanius opined.
In a recent presentation Rolf Strootman of the University of Utrecht has written of the particular festival in the reign of Antiochus IV is which he tried to impress upon the locals, neighbours and most particularly, the Romans, his power & prestige while appealing to cultural norms of the East.
The presentation is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nQ7sC_QivS_iQmeqOHU0Cja4pcnbPHcp/view?usp=drive_link
His sources are:
The Hellenistic Royal Court: Court Culture, Ceremonial and Ideology in Greece, Egypt and the Near East, 336–30 BCE (PhD dissertation; University of Utrecht 2007).
Courts and Elites in the Hellenistic Empires: The Near East After the Achaemenids, 330–30 BCE (Edinburgh 2014).
‘Antiochos IV and Rome: The festival at Daphne (Syria), the Treaty of Apameia and the revival of Seleukid expansionism in the West’, in: A. Coşkun and D. Engels eds., Rome and the Seleukid East (Brussels 2019) 173–216.
‘The introduction of Hellenic cults in Seleukid Syria: Colonial appropriation and transcultural exchange in the creation of an imperial landscape’, in: H. Bru, A. Dumitru and N. Sekunda eds., Colonial Geopolitics and Local Cultures in the Hellenistic and Roman East (3rd Century B.C.–3rd century A.D.) (Oxford 2021) 73–91.
‘The sacred grove of Daphne and the imperial landscape of Seleukid Syria’, in: A. Frejman, F. van den Eijnde, and C. Williamson eds., Distant Deities, Central Places: Reconsidering the "Extra-urban" Sanctuary (Athens, forthcoming).
