The Hellenistic World · Part 3 · Alexander’s heirs · B2
The Seleucids and the Hellenistic East
Part 3 of The Hellenistic World: while the Ptolemies ruled Egypt, another of Alexander’s generals, Seleucus, took Babylon, Syria and Iran, and his family ruled from the Mediterranean to the borders of India. Greek cities rose in Afghanistan, an Indian emperor sent messages in Greek, and a Greek king had himself written into Babylonian history in cuneiform. Quantifiers with of (most of, none of, each of) and verb agreement, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the other great kingdom of Alexander’s heirs: the Seleucids, the rivals of our Ptolemies.
And the ones who traded elephants with India, built a Greek city in the mountains of Afghanistan, and wrote their names in cuneiform in Babylon.
Syria, Mesopotamia, Iran and Central Asia, 312–63 BCE
Seleucus, one of Alexander’s officers, took Babylon in 312 BCE. From that year, his kingdom counted its years in a single, continuous series, the Seleucid Era: the first time a whole kingdom dated its documents from one fixed starting point. At its largest, his empire reached from the Mediterranean coast of Syria to the borders of India.
The Seleucids founded many cities with Greek names: Antioch in Syria, their capital, Seleucia on the Tigris, and cities called after their mothers and wives. Seleucus’s wife, Apama, was the daughter of a Sogdian noble from Central Asia, so the dynasty was half Iranian from the start. Greek was the language of the court, but Babylonians, Persians, Jews, Arabs and many other peoples kept their own languages, gods and laws.
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