The Seleukid Empire 281-222 Bc

In this book international scholars examine and reevaluate the Seleukid Empire, the easternmost of the Greek-speaking dynasties that succeeded Alexander the Great.

The Seleukids, the easternmost of the Greek-speaking dynasties which succeeded Alexander the Great, were long portrayed by historians as inherently weak and doomed to decline after the death of their remarkable first king, Seleukos (281 BC).The Seleukids, the easternmost of the Greekspeaking dynasties which succeeded Alexander the Great, were long portrayed as weak, doomed to decline after the death of their first king, Seleukos. Yet they succeeded in ruling much of the Near and Middle East for over two centuries. In this book international scholars argue that in the decades after Seleukos the empire developed flexible structures that successfully bound it together in the face of a series of catastrophes. The strength of the Seleukid realm lay not simply in its vast swathes of territory, but rather in knowing how to tie the new, frequently non-Greek, nobility to the king through mutual recognition of sovereignty.