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The Seleucids: a Background Sketch

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The Seleucids: a Background Sketch CHAPTER TWO THE SELEUCIDS: A BACKGROUND SKETCH The establishment of the Seleucid Empire, 312-261 B.C. As a Macedonian adventurer, Seleucus had essentially only one title to his new kingdom, that of right by conquest, in succession to the conquering Alexander; though in Iran he had some shadow of a claim in preference to other alien pretenders through his marriage to Apama. Yet even there his only subjects with a real interest in upholding his authority were the Macedonians and Greeks who had helped him to establish it, and whose own prosperity and hopes of survival were bound up with his fortunes. They were relatively few in numbers, while the lands he ruled by 302 stretched from the Euphrates to the Jaxartes, with great ethnic and geo­ graphic diversity. To hold these wide regions he pursued Alexan­ der's policy offounding cities (or refounding as cities ancient towns or villages), to be peopled mainly by Hellenes and to serve as strongholds and points of dominance-along the main highways, at frontiers, and in places of economic importance. These new cities, "nests of an immigrant population devoted to their founder" 1, were centres of Greek habits and culture, each a polis, i.e. "a self­ governing community of free, land-owning citizens equal before the law", who spoke and wrote Greek, maintained Greek institutions, and diverted themselves in Greek ways. The most notable of Seleucus' foundations during these years was Seleucia-on-the­ Tigris, established to rival ancient Babylon, and destined to be­ come the eastern capital of the empire. 2 It was probably also he who refounded Susa as Seleucia-on-the-Eulaios;3 and another re­ founding of his, on the Iranian plateau, was of the holy city of the Median magi, Raga, which stood at a strategic point on the great Khorasan Highway leading from Babylon to north-eastern Iran.4 Seleucus acknowledged its importance by naming this new polis 1 Ramsay, Cities, I 10. 2 Bevan, House, I 253-5; Will, Hist. pol., l.60-l, 76. 3 G. Le Rider, Suse, 280. 4 Strabo Xl.l3.6; Bevan, o.c., I 264. On Raga as a Zoroastrian holy city see HZ II 8-9, and further below, pp. 70, 81-2. 24 INTRODUCTORY Europus, after his own birthplace. Europus may have been built beside ancient Raga, rather than incorporating it; but its close proximity, with all the alien comings and goings, must inevitably have been felt as pollution by the Zoroastrian priests. In due course Antigonus' unquenchable ambition brought a new coalition into being against him, to join which Seleucus hastened back from the Indian borderlands.5 In 301 he, Lysimachus and Cassander defeated and slew Antigonus at Ipsus in Phrygia, and divided his possessions between them. Seleucus obtained Cilicia and North Syria, where he founded the city of Antioch-on-the­ Orontes to be his new capital. He laid claim also to South Syria, but this was held by Ptolemy of Egypt and remained disputed territory, to be fought over by their descendants in a series of destructive wars. Not long afterwards Seleucus joined with himself as co-regent his son Antiochus, half-Iranian by blood, who thereaf­ ter ruled the eastern part of the empire.6 Antiochus had to fight against incursions by Iranian nomads in the north-east; and he was successful in this and in consolidating Seleucid rule over all Iran, where he continued the founding of cities. 7 It is seldom possible to determine which were established there by him, which by his father; but between them Greater Media received a number of new foundations, because of its wealth and strategic importance; and Hellenistic ·cities are recorded for Persis, Parthia, Hyrcania, Aria, and most densely of all for Sogdia-Bactria.8 The characteristic names ofSeleucus' foundations were Seleucia, Antiochia (for his father), Laodicia (for his mother) and Apamea (for his Bactrian wife); and this nomenclature continued to be used by his descendants. It is not always possible, however, to match the ruins of Seleucid cities with known names. Excavations at Ai Khanum on the Oxus, in ancient Bactria, show that the Hellenistic city there was founded either by Alexander or by Seleucus, and have established that, distant though it was, this city was thor­ oughly Greek in some of its aspects, with theatre, gymnasium, 5 Cf. above, pp. 21-2. 6 Will, o.c., I 264, 271. 7 J. Wolski, "Les Iraniens et le royaume greco-bactrien", Klio 38, 1960, 113-14; Will, o.c., I 268-70. 8 For details see below under the different regions. It has been argued that among the surprisingly large numbers of Greeks in Bactria there should perhaps be reckoned the descendants of small groups transported there from time to time by Achaemenian kings, who in one known instance, that of the Branchidae (Strabo XI.l1.4, Curtius VII.5.28-35) continued to live apart, keeping their own language and traditions. See A. K. Narain, The Indo-Greeks, Oxford 1962, 2-6 (criticised by J. M. Cook, The Persian Empire, 193, for probably exaggerating the numbers of such Greek deportees). .
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