Seleucus I Nicator

Seleucus began the scramble for Alexander the Great's empire as a middle-ranking officer and ended it as master of almost all of Alexander's Asian conquests. The state he built, stretching at its height from the Aegean to the borders of India, was named after him, and his surname Nicator, "the victor", reflected a career of patient opportunism and well-timed battles.

Seleucus was born at Europus in Macedon, the son of a nobleman named Antiochus. His birth year is uncertain because ancient writers give different ages for him at his death: Justin's figure points to about 358 BCE, Appian's to 354 and Eusebius's to 356, the last perhaps a later attempt to make him the same age as Alexander. He crossed into Asia with Alexander in 334 BCE and by the Indian campaign commanded the elite infantry known as the shield-bearers, leading them against the elephants of King Porus at the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BCE. At the mass weddings at Susa in 324 BCE he married Apama, daughter of Spitamenes, and unlike most of his fellow officers he kept his Asian wife for the rest of her life.

After Alexander died in 323 BCE, Seleucus served the regent Perdiccas as commander of the Companion cavalry. When Perdiccas was murdered during his failed invasion of Egypt, some ancient sources say Seleucus was among the plotters, though this is unproven. In the redivision of 321 BCE he received the satrapy of Babylonia. He held it through years of fighting until about 315 BCE, when the powerful general Antigonus demanded its revenues. Seleucus fled to Egypt, reportedly with only fifty horsemen, and served Ptolemy as an admiral.

After Ptolemy's victory at Gaza in 312 BCE, Seleucus returned to Babylon with a small force, reported as 800 infantry and 200 cavalry, gathered more men on the way and retook the city. That year was later counted as the first of the Seleucid era. He surprised and absorbed an army sent against him, defended Babylonia against Antigonus and his son Demetrius, and over the following years brought the eastern provinces as far as the Jaxartes and Indus rivers under his control. He founded a new capital, Seleucia on the Tigris, which in time drained the life from Babylon. In 306 or 305 BCE he took the title of king, as the other leading generals did.

In the east he came up against Chandragupta Maurya, who had taken over the Indus lands. Little is known of the fighting, and ancient writers name no clear winner. A treaty around 303 BCE handed the borderlands west of the Indus to the Mauryas in exchange for 500 war elephants and an agreement on intermarriage; Seleucus sent the envoy Megasthenes to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra. The elephants proved decisive in 301 BCE, when Seleucus and his allies defeated and killed Antigonus at Ipsus. Seleucus gained Syria, where he founded Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, Laodicea and Apamea; Antioch became his main seat.

In 292 BCE he made his son Antiochus co-ruler for the eastern provinces. He outmanoeuvred Demetrius in 286 BCE, winning over his unpaid troops and holding him captive until his death. In 281 BCE he defeated and killed his last great rival, Lysimachus, at Corupedium in Lydia, adding Asia Minor; with Ptolemy already dead, he was now the last of Alexander's generation of successors. He then crossed into Europe to claim Macedon itself, but in September 281 BCE, near Lysimachia in Thrace, he was murdered by Ptolemy Keraunos, a son of Ptolemy I passed over for the Egyptian throne who had sought refuge at his court.

Antiochus I succeeded him and established a cult in his honour. The dynasty he founded remained one of the great Hellenistic powers until the Romans and Parthians whittled it away in the second and first centuries BCE.

Our 300 BCE map shows the Seleucid Empire soon after Ipsus, stretching from Syria and present-day Iraq to Iran, beside the Maurya Empire and the Ptolemaic Kingdom.