Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire PDF Download

Author: Boris Chrubasik
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198786921
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire: The Men who would be King focuses on ideas of kingship and power in the Seleukid empire, the largest of the successor states of Alexander the Great. Exploring the question of how a man becomes a king, it specifically examines the role of usurpers in this particular kingdom--those who attempted to become king, and who were labelled as rebels by ancient authors after their demise--by placing these individuals in their appropriate historical contexts through careful analysis of the literary, numismatic, and epigraphic material. By writing about kings and rebels, literary accounts make a clear statement about who had the right to rule and who did not, and the Seleukid kings actively fostered their own images of this right throughout the third and second centuries BCE. However, what emerges from the documentary evidence is a revelatory picture of a political landscape in which kings and those who would be kings were in constant competition to persuade whole cities and armies that they were the only plausible monarch, and of a right to rule that, advanced and refuted on so many sides, simply did not exist. Through careful analysis, this volume advances a new political history of the Seleukid empire that is predicated on social power, redefining the role of the king as only one of several players within the social world and offering new approaches to the interpretation of the relationship between these individuals themselves and with the empire they sought to rule. In doing so, it both questions the current consensus on the Seleukid state, arguing instead that despite its many strong rulers the empire was structurally weak, and offers a new approach to writing political history of the ancient world.

Author: Boris Chrubasik
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191090611
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Kings and Usurpers in the Seleukid Empire: The Men who would be King focuses on ideas of kingship and power in the Seleukid empire, the largest of the successor states of Alexander the Great. Exploring the question of how a man becomes a king, it specifically examines the role of usurpers in this particular kingdom - those who attempted to become king, and who were labelled as rebels by ancient authors after their demise - by placing these individuals in their appropriate historical contexts through careful analysis of the literary, numismatic, and epigraphic material. By writing about kings and rebels, literary accounts make a clear statement about who had the right to rule and who did not, and the Seleukid kings actively fostered their own images of this right throughout the third and second centuries BCE. However, what emerges from the documentary evidence is a revelatory picture of a political landscape in which kings and those who would be kings were in constant competition to persuade whole cities and armies that they were the only plausible monarch, and of a right to rule that, advanced and refuted on so many sides, simply did not exist. Through careful analysis, this volume advances a new political history of the Seleukid empire that is predicated on social power, redefining the role of the king as only one of several players within the social world and offering new approaches to the interpretation of the relationship between these individuals themselves and with the empire they sought to rule. In doing so, it both questions the current consensus on the Seleukid state, arguing instead that despite its many strong rulers the empire was structurally weak, and offers a new approach to writing political history of the ancient world.

Author: Kyle Erickson
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1910589950
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The Seleukids, the easternmost of the Greek-speaking dynasties which succeeded Alexander the Great, were long portrayed by historians as inherently weak and doomed to decline after the death of their remarkable first king, Seleukos (281 BC). And yet they succeeded in ruling much of the Near and Middle East for over two centuries, overcoming problems of a multi-ethnic empire. In this book an international team of young, established scholars argues that in the decades after Seleukos the empire developed flexible structures that successfully bound it together in the face of a series of catastrophes. The strength of the Seleukid realm lay not simply in its vast swathes of territory, but rather in knowing how to tie the new, frequently non-Greek, nobility to the king through mutual recognition of sovereignty.

Author: Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110755688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
The volume offers a timely (re-)appraisal of Seleukid cultural dynamics. While the engagement of Seleukid kings with local populations and the issue of “Hellenization” are still debated, a movement away from the Greco-centric approach to the study of the sources has gained pace. Increasingly textual sources are read alongside archaeological and numismatic evidence, and relevant near-eastern records are consulted. Our study of Seleukid kingship adheres to two game-changing principles: 1. We are not interested in judging the Seleukids as “strong” or “weak” whether in their interactions with other Hellenistic kingdoms or with the populations they ruled. 2. While appreciating the value of the social imaginaries approach (Stavrianopoulou, 2013), we argue that the use of ethnic identity in antiquity remains problematic. Through a pluralistic approach, in line with the complex cultural considerations that informed Seleukid royal agendas, we examine the concept of kingship and its gender aspects; tensions between centre and periphery; the level of “acculturation” intended and achieved under the Seleukids; the Seleukid-Ptolemaic interrelations. As rulers of a multi-cultural empire, the Seleukids were deeply aware of cultural politics.

Author: Robin Waterfield
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019023430X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Covering roughly eight centuries from the age of Homer (8th century BC) to the end of the Hellenistic period (late first century BC), this book will provide general readers with a comprehensive and accessible narrative history of ancient Greece.

Author: Kyle Erickson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135181107X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Before Alexander, the Near East was ruled by dynasts who could draw on the significant resources and power base of their homeland, but this was not the case for the Seleukids who never controlled their original homeland of Macedon. The Early Seleukids, their Gods and their Coins argues that rather than projecting an imperialistic Greek image of rule, the Seleukid kings deliberately produced images that represented their personal power, and that were comprehensible to the majority of their subjects within their own cultural traditions. These images relied heavily on the syncretism between Greek and local gods, in particular their ancestor Apollo. The Early Seleukids, their Gods and their Coins examines how the Seleukids, from Seleukos I to Antiochos IV, used coinage to propagandise their governing ideology. It offers a valuable resource to students of the Seleukids and of Hellenistic kingship more broadly, numismatics, and the interplay of ancient Greek religion and politics.

Author: Daniel Ogden
Publisher: Classical Press of Wales
ISBN: 1914535405
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
The hellenistic royal families, from Alexander the Great to the last Cleopatra, took part in dynastic in-fighting that was vicious, colourful and instructive. In this they anticipated by centuries the better known excesses under Roman potentates such as Claudius and Nero. This new enhanced and revised edition of a major study explores the intricate quarrels and violence within the ruling hellenistic families. A main theme is the role of 'amphimetric' disputes, competition between a ruler's offspring from different women, and especially between the women themselves. The book also includes a full exploration of the role of courtesans in the political and sexual intrigues of the hellenistic courts.

Author: Lester L. Grabbe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567692957
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
This is the third volume of the projected four-volume history of the Second Temple period, collecting all that is known about the Jews from the period of the Maccabaean revolt to Hasmonean rule and Herod the Great. Based directly on primary sources, the study addresses aspects such as Jewish literary sources, economy, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Diaspora, causes of the Maccabaen revolt, and the beginning and end of the Hasmonean kingdom and the reign of Herod the Great. Discussed in the context of the wider Hellenistic world and its history, and with an extensive up-to-date secondary bibliography, this volume is an invaluable addition to Lester Grabbe's in-depth study of the history of Judaism.

Author: Rachel Mairs
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351610287
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 688

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Book Description
This volume provides a thorough conspectus of the field of Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek studies, mixing theoretical and historical surveys with critical and thought-provoking case studies in archaeology, history, literature and art. The chapters from this international group of experts showcase innovative methodologies, such as archaeological GIS, as well as providing accessible explanations of specialist techniques such as die studies of coins, and important theoretical perspectives, including postcolonial approaches to the Greeks in India. Chapters cover the region’s archaeology, written and numismatic sources, and a history of scholarship of the subject, as well as culture, identity and interactions with neighbouring empires, including India and China. The Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek World is the go-to reference work on the field, and fulfils a serious need for an accessible, but also thorough and critically-informed, volume on the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the Hellenistic East.

Author: G. G. Aperghis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113945613X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
The Seleukid empire, the principal successor-state of the empire of Alexander the Great, endured for over 200 years and stretched, at its peak, from the Mediterranean to the borders of India. This book provides a wide-ranging study of the empire's economy and the methods used by the Seleukid kings to monetise and manage it so as to extract tribute, rent and taxes as efficiently as possible. It uses a variety of Greek literary sources and inscriptions, cuneiform texts, archaeological, numismatic and comparative evidence to explore in detail the manner of exploitation of their lands and subjects by the Seleukid kings, their city-building activity, the financing of their armies and administration, the use they made of coinage and their methods of financial management. The book adopts a highly original, numerical approach throughout, which leads to a quantified model of the economy of an ancient state.