The Seleucid Empire (312–64 BCE) was the largest of the three Macedonian empires that emerged after the death of Alexander the Great. It was created by SELEUKOS I NIKATOR (“the Victorious”), from his satrapy of Babylonia, incorporating and transforming the infrastructure of the preceding Achaemenid Empire. The Seleucid kingdom was an archetypal imperial state: a huge, composite entity characterized by wide ethnic, cultural, religious, and political diversity. The empire in its heyday stretched from the Pamir Mountains to the Aegean Sea, reaching its greatest extent around 200 BCE under Antiochos III the Great. From ca. 150 BCE, the empire rapidly declined.Its core territories were taken over by the Romans and especially the PARTHIANS, until in 64 BCE the Seleucid Dynasty disappeared from history virtually unnoticed.

The Seleucid state was in essence a military organization exacting tribute. Kingship was charismatic and intensely martial 
(see KINGSHIP, HELLENISTIC). The monarchy’s heroic ethos required of the king to be a successful war leader able to defend  the interests of his followers and the cities under his protection. Imperial ideology was universalistic, the self-presentation of the Seleucid monarch a continuation and elaboration of the age-old Near Eastern notion of a Great King.

Hellenistic court culture developed from the Argead household of Philip and Alexander (see ARGEADS), absorbing diverse Greek, Iranian, and other influences. The Hellenistic courts in turn profoundly influenced the development of the Roman imperial court. Court culture in the smaller Hellenistic kingdoms (Pontos, Bithynia, Kommagene, Judaea, and Armenia) underwent the influence of the Macedonian, particularly Seleucid, courts too. Due to intermarriage, diplomatic exchange, competition, and a shared Greco-Macedonian background, the courts of the three major Hellenistic empires were strikingly similar. There were also differences, of course. The Ptolemaic court was firmly based in Alexandria, while the Seleucid court moved around the empire almost continually. The SELEUCIDS and notably Ptolemies maintained an elaborate court culture, while the later Antigonid court (see ANTIGONIDS) retained a more simple Macedonian appearance (see ANTIGONIDS). Royal women played a more prominent roleat the courts of the Ptolemies and Seleucids than at the Antigonid court.

Because Hellenistic kingship was personal and charismatic (see KINGSHIP, HELLENISTIC), the royal court was essentially the household of the royal family and is often referred to as oikos in Greek sources. Another common designation is aule, literally “court,” probably derived from the fact that the core of Hellenistic palaces was an open courtyard surrounded by banqueting  rooms (see PALACES, HELLENISTIC). However, in ancient historiography and documentary evidence, the royal court is usually defined in social terms like “retinue” (therapeia), “courtiers” (hoi peri ten aulen or aulikoi), and notably “the friends of the king” (hoi philoi tou basileos).

Antiochos III the Great (243/2–187) was the sixth king of the Seleucid Empire. His thirty-five-year reign (223/2–187) was the longest in the empire’s history. Antiochos, whose rule is relatively well-known from Polybius and Livy and a large number of inscriptions (cf. Ma 2000), was also one of the most capable and successful Seleucid rulers, not withstanding a disreputable defeat against Rome at the end of his career. Campaigning in areas as far apart as India and mainland Greece, Antiochos restored Seleucid hegemony in the Far East, defeated the Ptolemies, and made important but short-lived conquests in the west. His contemporary title Megas (Great) perhaps referred to his authority of Great King, especially his practice of installing vassal kings as a means to reorganize the empire – a practice that would later form the basis for the creation of the Roman Near East. Yet Antiochos’ military triumphs were of little consequence: most of his territorial gains had been lost again upon his death in 187; the empire also lost control of Asia Minor as the result of the war with Rome.

During the Hellenistic Age – roughly the last three centuries BCE – the political history of the eastern Ancient World was dominated by three Macedonian dynasties: the Seleukids, ruling a vast empire in the Middle East and Central Asia (312-64 BCE); the Antigonid kings of Macedonia, who tried to control Greece and the Balkans until their kingdom was destroyed by the Romans in 168 BCE; and the Ptolemies (323-30 BCE), who ruled a maritime empire in the eastern Mediterranean from their capital Alexandria, an empire which comprised Egypt but was not therefore an Egyptian empire. In the second century BCE, the Attalid kingdom, based in Pergamon, emerged as the predominant state in the Aegean region, and around 100 Pontos on the Black Sea and Armenia temporarily became major Hellenistic powers.

This paper examines the organization, numbers and tactics of the Thessalian cavalry unit in the army of Alexander the Great. It is argued that already Philip II recognized the importance of Thessaly as a recruiting ground for heavy (noble) cavalry with regard to his planned invasion of Asia, and that it was partly for this reason that Philip closely integrated Thessaly in the Argead imperial system, cultivating personal relations with the Thessalian noble families also as a counterweight to the power of the traditional Macedonian noble cavalry, the hetairoi (Companions). Alexander inherited these arrangements. The Thessalians on their part joined Alexander’s expedition more enthusiastically than other Greeks because of these pre-existing bonds with the Macedonian royal family and because the promise of honor and booty agreed with the heroic mentality of the Thessalian aristocracy.

Volume seven of the first Cambridge ancient history, dedicated to the centuries after Alexander (1928), has on its cover an image of the Roman she-wolf. Thus there can be no doubt that this was the period of the rise of Rome and the decline of Greek civilization. The predominant view of the age by historians of the early twentieth century is outlined in an introductory essay by W.S. Ferguson. [1] Section IV on “The large state and the polis” is a lengthy complaint about the demise of “the polis ideal,” which was seemingly on the wane even before Chaironeia due to the rise of political and economical elites and royalist oligarchies. The single most important cause of the decline, however, was the loss of political autonomy after Chaironeia: “The fatal weakness of the Greek city-states as the custodian of civilization was their incapacity to form an all-embracing coalition” (p.22); as a result, they were “completely shorn of their statehood, [lacking] municipal rights and a voice in the affairs of the realm of which they formed part” (24-25).

The so-called Donations of Alexandria, a Ptolemaic royal ritual in 34 BCE, is an important but puzzling landmark in the development of the Roman Near East. At this theatrical, public ceremony, of which relatively detailed accounts survive in Plutarch’s biography of Antonius and Dio Cassius’ Roman History, [1] the triumvir Marcus Antonius solemnly promised to Kleopatra VII Philopator and her infant children rulership over the east “from the Hellespont to India”, a domain that was largely identical with the empires of both the Ptolemies and Seleukids at their greatest extent.

The celebrations lasted several days. The key ceremony took place in the gymnasion, the usual location for coronations in Alexandria. Like actors on a stage, Antonius and Kleopatra and her four children - three of whom were also Antonius’ children -  
performed on an elevated dais before the royal household, the royal guard and members of the Alexandrian citizenry. Kleopatra and her eldest son Ptolemaios XV Caesar (‘Caesarion’), with whom she shared the Ptolemaic kingship, were proclaimed Queen of Kings and King of Kings of the enormous empire outlined above. Antonius’ children by Kleopatra - Alexandros Helios, Kleopatra Selene, Ptolemaios Philadelphos - received lesser, albeit still magnificent royal titles. Kleopatra was dressed as Isis, Antonius presumably as Dionysos; Alexandros Helios wore the attire of an Iranian king, and Ptolemaios Philopator the generic royal dress of a Hellenistic king. The only participant, who was not awarded royal honours, was Antonius, the Roman.