Етничка структура војске Антиоха III
The ethnic structure of Antiochus III’s Army

Summary/Abstract: Recent decades have witnessed growing interest in studying the Seleucid army, particularly the campaigns of Antiochus III. The Seleucid Empire spanned a vast territory. Significant military strength was essential to maintain control over such a diverse kingdom and manage threats from external attacks and internal discord. The army itself, composed of numerous ethnicities, became an integrative factor. This study provides a detailed overview of Antiochus' multiethnic army. While previous works have touched on this topic, they primarily aimed to reassess military tactics, weaponry, or view the army as a social phenomenon. This study focuses exclusively on the ethnic composition, with the hope that this would enable a better understanding of both the structure of the Seleucid army and the dynamics of its recruitment. The main challenge in conducting such analysis lies in the fact that in the vast corpus of narrative and epigraphic sources (this article cites only a few) ethnic identities are often mentioned incidentally, except for Polybius, whose books covering Antiochus are mostly lost.

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