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.