Benefactors, Kings, Rulers: Studies on the Seleukid Empire between East and West

The present volume contains a series of critical studies devoted to the

political, institutional and ideological construction of the Seleukid

empire, with particular focus on the complex interplay between the

Seleukids’ Graeco-Macedonian background and their Achaimenid heritage.

In order to explore to what extent the Seleukids can be considered heirs

to the Achaimenids and precursors of the Parthians, and to what extent

they simply ‘imported’ cultural and political behavioural patterns

developed in Greece and Macedonia, the studies collected here adopt a

decidedly interdisciplinary and diachronic approach. They investigate

diverse fields, including the construction of the Seleukid royal court;

the title of ‘Great King’; the prosopography of early Seleukid Iran; the

integration of the ‘Upper Satrapies’ into the new Seleukid empire; the

continued importance of the Iranian religions under the early Seleukids;

the reign of the Persian Frataraka; the ‘feudalisation’ of the Seleukid

empire under Antiochos III; the construction of a Hellenistic gymnasion

in Seleukid Jerusalem; the importance of the Seleukid kingdom as model

for Eunous’ Sicilian slave-state; the evolution of the Syrian civic

elite; and the potential influence of Seleukos’ royal propaganda on the

religious self-legitimation of Augustus. Finally, a general comparison

is proposed between the Seleukid empire and 19th century European

colonialism.