Seleucia

Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)

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Seleucia was a major Mesopotamian city of the Seleucid empire mentioned by Pliny. It stood on the west bank of the Tigris River, within the present-day Baghdad Governorate in Iraq.

Variants

• /sɪˈljuːʃə/; Greek: Σελεύκεια
• Seleucia-on-Tigris
• Seleucia on the Tigris
• Cauchæ/Coche (Pliny.vi.31)
• Seleucia (Pliny.vi.30, Pliny.vi.39)

Jat Gotras Namesake

• Sel = Seleucia (Pliny.vi.30)
• Selu = Seleucia (Pliny.vi.30)

Name

Seleucia (Greek: Σελεύκεια, Seleúkeia) is named for Seleucus I Nicator, who enlarged an earlier settlement and made it the capital of his empire around 305 BC. It was the largest and most important of the many cities to bear its name but is sometimes distinguished as Seleucia-on-Tigris or Seleucia on the Tigris (Latin: Seleucia ad Tigridem) from the name of its river.

Texts from the Church of the East's synods referred to the city as Salīq (Syriac: ܣܠܝܩ) or some times Māḥôzē (Syriac: ܡܚܘܙ̈ܐ) when referring to the metropolis of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.

The Sassanids named the eastern city as Veh-Ardashir (Persian: ویه‌اردشیر), Arabs called it Bahurasīr.

Seleucid Empire

Seleucid Empire: Seleucia, as such, was founded in about 305 BC, as the first capital of the Seleucid Empire by Seleucus I Nicator. Seleucus was one of the Diadochi successors of Alexander the Great who, after Alexander's death, divided his empire among themselves. Although Seleucus soon moved his main capital to Antioch, in northern Syria, Seleucia became an important center of trade, Hellenistic culture, and regional government under the Seleucids. The city was populated by Greeks, Syrians and Jews.

To make his capital into a metropolis, Seleucus forced almost all inhabitants of Babylon, except the local temple priests/supporting workers, to leave and resettle in Seleucia. A tablet dated 275 BC states that the inhabitants of Babylon were transported to Seleucia, where a palace and a temple (Esagila) were built. Standing at the confluence of the Tigris River with a major canal from the Euphrates, Seleucia was placed to receive traffic from both great waterways.

During the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, it was one of the great Hellenistic cities, comparable to Alexandria in Egypt, and greater than Syrian Antioch. Excavations indicate that the walls of the city enclosed an area of at least 550 hectares , equivalent to a square roughly 2.5 kilometers on a side. Based on this size, the population has been estimated to number over 100,000 initially and probably more later. Its surrounding region might have supported half a million people.

Polybius (5,52ff) uses the Macedonian peliganes for the council of Seleucia, which implies a Macedonian colony, consistent with its rise to prominence under Seleucus I; Pausanias (1,16) records that Seleucus also settled Babylonians there. Archaeological finds support the presence of a large population not of Greek culture.

In 141 BC, the Parthians under Mithridates I conquered the city, and Seleucia became the western capital of the Parthian Empire. Tacitus described its walls, and mentioned that it was, even under Parthian rule, a fully Hellenistic city. Ancient texts claim that the city had 600,000 inhabitants, and was ruled by a senate of 300 people. It was clearly one of the largest cities in the Western world; only Rome, Alexandria, and possibly Antioch were more populous.

In 55 BC, a battle fought near Seleucia was crucial in establishing dynastic succession of the Arsacid kings. In this battle between the reigning Mithridates III (supported by a Roman army of Aulus Gabinius, governor of Syria) and the previously deposed Orodes II, the reigning monarch was defeated, allowing Orodes to re-establish himself as king. In 41 BC, Seleucia was the scene of a massacre of around 5,000 Babylonian Jewish refugees (Josephus, Ant. xviii. 9, § 9).

In 117 AD, Seleucia was burned down by the Roman emperor Trajan during his conquest of Mesopotamia, but the following year it was ceded back to the Parthians by Trajan's successor, Hadrian, then rebuilt in the Parthian style. It was completely destroyed by the Roman general Avidius Cassius in 165.

Archaeology

The site of Seleucia was rediscovered in the 1920s by archaeologists looking for Opis.

Beginning in 1927, University of Michigan professors Leroy Waterman (1927–1932) and Clark Hopkins (1936–1937) oversaw excavations for the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology on behalf of the American School of Oriental Research of Baghdad with funds supplied by the Toledo Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. From 1964 to 1968 and then between 1985 and 1989, an Italian mission from the University of Turin directed by Antonio Invernizzi and Giorgio Gullini excavated at the site. They found a Seleucid archive building with about 30,000 seal impressions, all in a fully Greek style.

In an outer wall of the Parthian period, a reused brick dated by stamp to 821 BC, during the Neo-Assyrian period.

It appears to have incorporated both Greek and Mesopotamian architecture for the public buildings. Finds have indicated an extensive non-Greek population.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny mentions Mesopotamia....The whole of Mesopotamia formerly belonged to the Assyrians, being covered with nothing but villages, with the exception of Babylonia¹ and Ninus.² The Macedonians formed these communities into cities, being prompted thereto by the extraordinary fertility of the soil.

Besides the cities already mentioned, it contains those of Seleucia³, Laodicea⁴, Artemita⁵; and in Arabia, the peoples known as the Orei⁶ and the Mardani, besides Antiochia⁷, founded by Nicanor, the governor of Mesopotamia, and called Arabis.

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1 The great seat of empire of the Babylonio-Chaldæan kingdom. It either occupied the site, it is supposed, or stood in the immediate vicinity of the tower of Babel. In the reign of Labynedus, Nabonnetus, or Bel- shazzar, it was taken by Cyrus. In the reign of Augustus, a small part only of Babylon was still inhabited, the remainder of the space within the walls being under cultivation. The ruins of Babylon are found to commence a little south of the village of Mohawill, eight miles north of Hillah.

2 Nineveh. See c. 16 of the present Book.

3 On the left bank of the Euphrates, opposite to the ford of Zeugma; a fortress of considerable importance.

4 Its site is unknown. Dupinet confounds it with the place of this name mentioned in the last Chapter, calling them by the name of Lor.

5 Pliny is wrong in placing Artemita in Mesopotamia. It was a city of Babylonia, in the district of Apolloniatis. The modern Sherbán is supposed to occupy its site.

6 Burnouf, having found the name of these people, as he supposes, in a cuneiform inscription, written "Ayura," would have them to be called Aroei. The Orei are also mentioned in B. v. c. 20.

7 This Antioch does not appear to have been identified.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny mentions Mesopotamia....Babylon, the capital of the nations of Chaldæa, long enjoyed the greatest celebrity of all cities throughout the whole world: and it is from this place that the remaining parts of Mesopotamia and Assyria received the name of Babylonia. The circuit of its walls, which were two hundred feet in height, was sixty miles. These walls were also fifty feet in breadth, reckoning to every foot three fingers' breadth beyond the ordinary measure of our foot. The river Euphrates flowed through the city, with quays of marvellous workmanship erected on either side. The temple there¹⁸ of Jupiter Belus¹⁹ is still in existence; he was the first inventor of the science of Astronomy. In all other respects it has been reduced to a desert, having been drained of its population in consequence of its vicinity to Seleucia²⁰, founded for that purpose by Nicator, at a distance of ninety miles, on the confluence of the Tigris and the canal that leads from the Euphrates. Seleucia, however, still bears the surname of Babylonia: it is a free and independent city, and retains the features of the Macedonian manners. It is said that the population of this city amounts to six hundred thousand, and that the outline of its walls resembles an eagle with expanded wings: its territory, they say, is the most fertile in all the East.

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18 As to the identity of this, see a Note at the beginning of this Chapter.

19 Meaning Jupiter Uranius, or "Heavenly Jupiter," according to Parisot, who observes that Eusebius interprets baal, or bel, "heaven." According to one account, he was the father of king Ninus and son of Nimrod. The Greeks in later times attached to his name many of their legendary fables.

20 The city of Seleucia ad Tigrin, long the capital of Western Asia, until it was eclipsed by Ctesiphon. Its site has been a matter of considerable discussion, but the most probable opinion is, that it stood on the western bank of the Tigris, to the north of its junction with the royal canal (probably the river Chobar above mentioned), opposite to the mouth of the river Delas or Silla (now Diala), and to the spot where Ctesiphon was afterwards built by the Parthians. It stood a little to the south of the modern city of Baghdad; thus commanding the navigation of the Tigris and Euphrates, and the whole plain formed by those two rivers.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny mentions Tigris... Below the Eulæus is Elymais⁴⁴, upon the coast adjoining to Persis, and extending from the river Orates⁴⁵ to Charax, a distance of two hundred and forty miles. Its towns are Seleucia⁴⁶ and Socrate⁴⁷, upon Mount Casyrus. The shore which lies in front of this district is, as we have already stated, rendered inaccessible by mud,⁴⁸ the rivers Brixa and Ortacea bringing down vast quantities of slime from the interior,—Elymais itself being so marshy that it is impossible to reach Persis that way, unless by going completely round: it is also greatly infested with serpents, which are brought down by the waters of these rivers.

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44 Previously mentioned in c. 28.

45 The modern Tab.

46 Now called Camata, according to Parisot.

47 The modern Saurac, according to Parisot. The more general reading is "Sosirate."

48 Our author has nowhere made any such statement as this, for which reason Hardouin thinks that he here refers to the maritime region mentioned in c. 29 of the present Book (p. 69), the name of which Sillig reads as Ciribo. Hardouin would read it as Syrtibolos, and would give it the meaning of the "muddy district of the Syrtes." It is more likely, however, that Pliny has made a slip, and refers to something which, by inadvertence, he has omitted to mention.

References

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