The Seleucid Empire: In the Shadow of Rome
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2022
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At its height, the Seleucid Empire stretched from Thrace (modern day Bulgaria) to the Indus River Valley. Emerging from the tumultuous ‘Successor Wars’ that followed Alexander the Great’s passing, for over a century it was a superpower of the eastern Mediterranean. This, however, ultimately led it into conflict with Rome at the beginning of the 2nd century BC. The result was a devastating defeat for the Seleucid King Antiochus III ‘the Great’ at the Battle of Magnesia, fought around this time of year in either December 190 BC or January 189 BC. Following the battle, the Seleucids were humbled by a damaging treaty, but what happened next? What followed for the Seleucids, having been humbled by the Romans? Did they descend from superpower to suppliant? Or did they experience a resurgence? In today’s podcast, Eduardo Garcia-Molina, a PHD Classics student at the University of Chicago, argues the latter. Focusing in on the reign of Antiochus IV, Eduardo highlights how the Seleucid Empire remained a powerful entity in the wake of Magnesia and their Roman defeat.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast |
| 0:18.3 | where we are talking about one of the great empires of the Hellenistic period, arguably |
| 0:24.6 | the greatest of the empires. And this was the Solucid or the Solucid Empire. It emerged |
| 0:30.6 | in the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death, fronting the tumultuous wars of the |
| 0:34.9 | successes and at its height the Solucid Empire stretched from the Indus River Valley in the |
| 0:41.6 | east all the way to modern day Bulgaria and the western coastline of Anatolia in modern |
| 0:49.0 | day Turkey. It was an extraordinary Hellenistic superpower that dominated much of the ancient |
| 0:55.3 | Near East following the death of Alexander the Great. But in the early second century BC |
| 1:01.2 | disaster struck this kingdom when it came into conflict with the Romans, the Roman Solucid |
| 1:08.3 | War of the 190s BC. It culminated in a devastating solucid defeat at the Basil of Magnesia which |
| 1:16.5 | also resulted in a treaty, the Treaty of Appermere which saw among many other clauses as you're |
| 1:23.4 | going to hear in this podcast the Solucids losing basically all their land west of the Taurus |
| 1:29.6 | mountains so much of one day and the Toliah ancient Asia Minor. But what happened to the |
| 1:35.9 | Solucid Empire after that? When the Solucids this empire based on Syria and ancient Mesopotamia when |
| 1:42.0 | it was really in the shadow of Rome. Sometimes we portray the Solucids following their disastrous |
| 1:48.5 | clashes against Rome as one of decay of an empire in decline but was that really the case in the |
| 1:56.2 | early second century BC? Well join me to argue that that was not the case particularly during the |
| 2:02.2 | reign of King Antiochus the Fourth I was delighted to get on the podcast Eduardo Garcia Molina from the |
| 2:10.0 | University of Chicago. Eduardo he's currently studying for his PhD at the University he's a classic |
| 2:16.6 | student he knows a lot about the Solucid Empire particularly looking at the Solucid Empire post |
| 2:22.3 | Magnesia post apermere and arguing why in the early second century BC this former Hellenistic super |
| 2:30.4 | power it wasn't the sick man of Syria at least not yet. This was an awesome chat as I'm sure you |
... |
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