The House of Seleucus

Edwyn Bevan (1870-1943) remarks in his preface to this two-volume work of 1902 that there is ‘much to discourage an attempt to write a history of the Seleucid dynasty’, notably ‘how often the narrative must halt for deficiency of materials’. However, Bevan, a scholar of early Christianity as well as of the Hellenistic period, pulls together written and archaeological sources to present an account of the creation of an eastern empire by Seleucus, one of the successors of Alexander the Great. Beginning with an account of Hellenism in the east, Bevan describes the conflict between the generals after Alexander’s death, and the complexity of the events which led Seleucus from governorship in Babylon to exile, and to the eventual conquest of an empire which spread from the Aegean Sea to the borders of India. Volume 2 continues until the disintegration of the dynasty in the last century BCE.