Etazeta: Regent of Bithynia and Dynastic Struggles

Introduction

Etazeta (Greek: Εταζέτα; fl. 255–254 BC) was the second wife of Nicomedes I of Bithynia and served briefly as regent after his death. Nicomedes excluded the sons of his first marriage from succession and declared that the throne would pass to the children he had by Etazeta; because those children were still infants, he placed their guardianship under the Hellenistic monarchs Ptolemy II and Antigonus II and the city-states Byzantium, Heraclea and Cius.

On Nicomedes’s death, around 255 BC, Etazeta governed on behalf of her young sons. Nicomedes’s eldest son by his first wife, Ziaelas, rejected the succession arrangement and waged war to seize the kingdom. Etazeta sought to defend her children’s claim and married Nicomedes’s brother to strengthen her position, but about 254 BC Ziaelas drove her from power; she fled to Macedon with her sons. Her brief regency is recorded chiefly for its role in the dynastic struggle that brought Ziaelas to the Bithynian throne.