Person · Hellenistic king · Iraq
Seleucus I Nicator
Also known as Seleucus, Seleucus Nicator, Seleucid
Alexander's cavalry officer, who took the eastern half of the empire after his death and ruled it from Babylon and Seleucia. He marched against Chandragupta Maurya about 305 BCE, lost, and settled: the eastern satrapies as far as Gandhara and Arachosia for five hundred war elephants and a marriage alliance.
- Date
- -358–-281
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 32.535, 44.428
Worth knowing
The elephants decided the battle of Ipsus in 301 BCE and so the shape of the Hellenistic world, which makes an Indian treaty one of the causes of a Greek settlement in Anatolia. He sent Megasthenes to Pataliputra as his ambassador, and the marriage alliance is recorded by Appian and Strabo without saying whose daughter married whom.
About the place
Placed at Babylon, the capital he ruled the eastern satrapies from when he marched against Chandragupta Maurya.
Connections (2)
- Power passed toChandragupta Maurya
Seleucus marched east about 305 BCE to recover Alexander's Indian satrapies, lost, and settled: he ceded everything as far as Gandhara and Arachosia in exchange for five hundred war elephants, and a marriage alliance was concluded. Those elephants then decided Ipsus in 301 and so the map of the Hellenistic world, which makes an Indian treaty a cause of a settlement in Anatolia.
- Imperial administration ofMegasthenes
Seleucus sent Megasthenes to Pataliputra as resident ambassador after the settlement, and the Indika he wrote there is the earliest sustained foreign account of India. The book is lost and survives only in quotation, which is why the same passages are reproduced by Strabo, Arrian, Diodorus and Pliny with small differences that scholars have argued over for two centuries.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Seleucus I Nicator”. Appian, Syrian Wars 55; Strabo, Geography XV.2.9; Plutarch, Life of Alexander 62; Romila Thapar, Aśoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (1961).
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