Seleukid1

Antiochos, a Macedonian aristocrat, who became a commander in the army of Philip II of Makedon. He married Laodikē and had issue:

• • 1) Seleukos I Nikatōr, First Seleukid King (see below)

  • 1) Laodike.

  • 2?) Didymaia. Named after the shrine of Apollo at Didyma, she is almost certainly fictional.

311 – 281 Seleukos I Nikatōr ("the Victor"), First Seleukid King.

Born between 358 and 354 at Europos (modern Evropus, Greece), later propaganda would assert he was the son of Apollo. A Macedonian aristocrat, he served as a Royal Page to Philip II of Macedon in his teens and as a junior officer in the army of Alexander the Great, which conquered Persia (334-323). He was made Commander of the Macedonian Royal Hypaspists during the army’s invasion of India in 326. After Alexander's death in 323, he was made leader of the Companion Cavalry, the most prestigious division of the Macedonian army, but the vast new Macedonian Empire lacked a king and rapidly dissolved into a number of factions, each headed by one of Alexander's former generals. Seleukos closely served the Regent, Perdikkas, but in 321, while participating in Perdikkas’ abortive invasion of Egypt (the First Diadoch War) he had him assassinated. Taking control of the army, he marched it out of Egypt and subordinated himself to Antipatros, who had arrived from Macedon, which he been governing for fifteen years, while Alexander was out conquering. Antipatros had no interest in the Empire, assigning provinces to military leaders and essentially leaving them independent. He appointed Seleukos Governor of Babylon.

Antigonos Monophthalamos, who ruled most of Anatolia invaded the east in the Second Diadoch War in 317 and added Susiana (southwestern Iran) to Seleukos’ realm, but in 316 he became suspicious of Seleukos and dislodged him. Seleukos fled to Egypt. In 315, during the Third Diadoch War, Seleukos fought for Ptolemaios of Egypt, against Antigonos,commanding his navy. He was present at the Battle of Gaza in 312, when Ptolemaios defeated the Syrian forces of Antigonos and, after the battle he raced to Babylon, with only a few hundred horsemen, and retook the city. He was invaded by the Satrap of Media in 311 with a force over five times the size of Seleukos's, but Seleukos defeated him in a night attack on the banks of the Tigris and thereby gained his territories of Media, Persia, Susiana, Aria and (probably) Parthia. Antigonos made peace with the other Diadochs to concentrate on Seleukos, who himself made peace in 308, in order to conquer Bactria. He attempted to invade India, but this had been unified by the Mauryans and was too strong to subdue. Having lost Arachosia and Gedrosia (Pakistan, southeast Iran and southern Afghanistan) to them he settled for peace and received a gift of war elephants. In 307 Seleukos mimicked the other successors to Alexander the Great by proclaiming himself King, a position he had long held in fact. Peace did not last long; for the Fourth and Final Diadoch War began in 307. He finally returned to the West in 303 and, at Ipsus in 301, finally defeated Antigonos for good, ending any prospect of reuniting Alexander’s empire.

He then fell out with Ptolemaios over possession of Coele-Syria, which had been promised to Seleukos in the Peace Treaty of 301, but was controlled by Ptolemaios. They did not then come to blows over the territory; but much of the subsequent (violent) history of the Seleukids and Ptolemies would revolve around this contested territory. Seleukos founded several cities: Antioch, Seleucia on the Tigris (near Baghdad), Laodicia (Latakia), Seleucia Pieria (port of Antioch), several Apamias, Edessa (Urfa), Beroea (Aleppo), and Pella (near Arbella). Throughout his empire Greeks formed a privileged class; Seleukos innovated by also raising the Jews to high status. Antigonos’s son Demetrios invaded his empire in 285 and was defeated, leaving Seleukos without serious rivals. Thereafter, he placed the eastern portion of his domain under the control of his heir, but he continued to wage wars in the west, attacking and defeating Lysimachos, King of Thrace in 282.

In 326, he married (first), in a mass-wedding organised by Alexander (the Susa Weddings), Apama, daughter of Spitamenēs, a Sogdian warlord who had fought very capably against Alexander. She was a great patroness of the oracle at Didyma. Most of the other participants in the Susa Weddings repudiated their Persian wives, but Seleukos did not; she only disappears from the record in 298. He married (second) Stratonikē, daughter of King Dēmētrios I of Makedon, whom he later divorced so that she could marry his lovesick son. She was Patroness of the Temple at Bambyke in Syria. He married (third) a relative of the Mauryan Emperor. He was assassinated in 281 at Lysimacheia (on the Gallipoli Peninsula) shortly after his victory over the King of Thrace, by an exiled member of the Egyptian royal family whom he had harboured. His ashes were interred at Seleukeia Pieria (Antioch). He had issue:

• • 1) Antiochos I Sōtēr, Second Seleukid King (son of Apama) (see below).

  • 1) Apama (daughter of Apama).

  • 2?) Laodikē (daughter of Apama). Grainger believes her to be fictional.

  • 3) Phila (daughter of Stratonikē). She married Antigonos II Gonatas, King of Macedon (277 – 239), grandson of Antigonos Monophthalamos and had issue:

    • • 1) Dēmētrios II Aitōlikos ("the Aetolian"), King of Makedon (239 – 229). He married his cousin Stratonikē, daughter of Antiochos I, Second Seleukid King, and had issue (see below).

  • 4) Nysa, possibly (daughter of the Mauryan Princess?). She married her possible half-brother Antiochos I Sōtēr, Second Seleukid King