Concept
Seleucid Empire
Overview
The Seleucid Empire ( sih-LEW-sid) was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great, and ruled by the Seleucid dynasty until its annexation by the Roman Republic under Pompey in 63 BC.
After receiving the Mesopotamian regions of Babylonia and Assyria in 321 BC, Seleucus I began expanding his dominions to include the Near Eastern territories that include modern-day Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, and Lebanon, all of which had been under Macedonian control after the fall of the former Achaemenid Empire. At the Seleucid Empire's height, it had consisted of territory that covered Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and what are now modern Kuwait, Afghanistan, and parts of Turkmenistan.
The Seleucid Empire was a major center of Hellenistic culture. Greek customs and language were privileged; the wide variety of local traditions had been generally tolerated, while an urban Greek elite had formed the dominant political class and was reinforced by steady immigration from Greece. The empire's western territories were repeatedly contested with Ptolemaic Egypt—a rival Hellenistic state. To the east, conflict with the Indian ruler Chandragupta of the Maurya Empire in 305 BC led to a political alliance and the cession of territories conquered by Alexander along the Indus river, east of Bactria.
In the early second century BC, Antiochus III the Great attempted to project Seleucid power and authority into Hellenistic Greece, but his attempts were thwarted by the Roman Republic and its Greek allies. The Seleucids were forced to pay costly war reparations and had to relinquish territorial claims west of the Taurus Mountains in southern Anatolia, marking the gradual decline of their empire. Mithridates I of Parthia conquered much of the remaining eastern lands of the Seleucid Empire in the mid-second century BC, including Assyria and what had been Babylonia, while the independent Greco-Bactrian Kingdom continued to flourish in the northeast. The Seleucid kings were thereafter reduced to a rump state in Syria after a civil war, until their conquest by Tigranes the Great of Armenia in 83 BC, and ultimate overthrow by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BC.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
In this we have 27 a portion of the water of the river which is not the smallest nor the least famous, and it is called the Sebennytic mouth. There are also two other mouths which part off from the Sebennytic and go to the sea, and these are called, one the Saïtic, the other the Mendesian mouth. The Bolbitinitic and Bucolic mouths, on the other hand, are not natural but made by digging.
Herodotus, The History of Herodotus — Volume 1
States what Seleucid Empire is.
A great part of Asia was explored under the direction of Darius. Being desirous to know where the Indus, which is the second river that produces crocodiles, discharges itself into the sea, he sent in ships Scylax of Caryanda and others on whom he could rely to make a true report. They accordingly set out from the city of Caspatyrus, sailed down the river toward the sunrise to the sea; then sailing on the sea…
Herodotus, The Boys' and Girls' Herodotus
States what Seleucid Empire is.
Tributes of grain and cattle, of precious stones and metals, and especially of valuable human material, were placed at the command of the Pharaoh, or of the Babylonian or Persian monarch, for the building of his canals, his temples, and his palaces, for military services, and for an officialdom more directly subject to his will than were free-born natives. Everything which the single State required for its…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Seleucid Empire; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Seleucid Empire
Related ideas
- Medes
- Armenia
- Greece
- Iran
- Indus River
- Jerusalem
- Lebanon
- Lydia
- Levant
- Chandragupta Maurya
- Parthia
- Mesopotamia
- Babylon
- Near East
- Judea
- Pakistan
- Sulla
- Roman Republic
- Rhodes
- Second Temple Judaism
- Alexandria
- Achaemenid Empire
- Thrace
- Antioch
Place in the tradition
Part of Exclusivism.