Evacuation West of Taurus and Ban on European Operations

Treaties often hinge on one sentence. Polybius writes it cleanly: Antiochus “shall withdraw from all the cities, lands, villages and forts west of the Taurus as far as the river Halys” [1]. Livy’s Book 38 agrees and adds the prohibition on operations in Europe and the islands, an explicit end to Seleucid pretensions in Thrace and the Aegean [3]. Modern summaries treat this as the war’s decisive legal effect [12].

Evacuation meant more than garrisons marching home. It meant issuing orders to satraps in Hellespontic Phrygia and Lydia to pack archives, arrange escorts, and hand keys to commissioners. It meant turning over cities like Ephesus and Tralles to Pergamon, and coastal stretches around Patara and Caunus to Rhodes. The sound in those weeks was administrative: door bolts drawn, seals impressed, and oaths taken anew [6][1][12].

The ban on European operations clarified the map’s long edge. No more campaigns in Thrace where Antiochus had once paraded; no more island adventures that might unsettle Rhodes. The Sarpedonian promontory and the Calycadnus served not only as naval limits but as psychological ones. Beyond them, any Seleucid advance would read as a treaty breach [1][3].

For cities west of Taurus that had known Seleucid governors, the change promised Pergamene or Rhodian rule instead. The color shifted on official buildings—from royal purple standards to Pergamene emblems or Rhodian badges—while the language of decrees often stayed Greek and the coinage kept familiar faces for now. The structure changed even when the street market did not.

For Antiochus, signing this clause conceded five years of ambition in a sentence. Yet it preserved his throne and the core of his realm. The Halys and Taurus, ancient markers, now became his dynasty’s western wall [1][12].