In the chaos that followed the death of Alexander the Great his distinguished marshal Seleucus was reduced to a fugitive, with only a horse to his name. But by the time of his own death, Seceucus had reconstructed the bulk of Alexander's empire, built Antioch, and become a king in his turn, one respected for justness in an age of cruelty. The dynasty he founded was to endure for three centuries. Such achievements richly deserved to be projected into legend, and so they were. This legend told of Seleucus' divine siring by Apollo, his escape from Babylon with an enchanted talisman, his foundations of cities along a dragon-river with the help of Zeus' eagles, his surrender of his new wife to his besotted son, and his revenge, as a ghost, upon his assassin. This is the first book in any language devoted to the reconstruction of this fascinating tradition.

The first full reconstruction of and investigation into the vibrant and fascinating legend of King Seleucus, successor to Alexander the Great.

When the vast empire of Alexander the Great broke up, the Macedonian general Seleucus secured the lion’s share for himself and went on to become the longest-lived of Alexander’s successors. His tactical skills and his military innovations – including his use of war elephants on a scale never seen before in the West – earned him the epithet Nicator, “victorious”. When he died at the hands of an assassin in 281 BC, Seleucus ruled over a larger territory than any Hellenistic monarch before or since his time, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. This book is a study of his life and achievements, his time and his legacy. It is based on Graeco-Roman and Babylonian written sources as well as on the rapidly growing body of archaeological evidence. Lise Hannestad is professor emerita of Classical Archaeology at Aarhus University. Her main research areas are the Near East in the Hellenistic period, the Etruscans and Black Sea archaeology.

This outstanding introductory survey collects, presents and examines, for the very first time, the portraits and representations of Alexander the Great on the ancient coins of the Greek and Roman period. From 320 BC to AD 400, Karsten Dahmen examines not only Alexander’s own coinage and the posthumous coinages of his successors, but also the re-use of his image by rulers from the Greek world and the Roman empire, to late antiquity. Also including numismatic material that exceeds all previous published works, and well-illustrated, this historical survey brings Alexander and his legacy to life.

First comparative analysis of the role of local elites and populations in the formation of the two main Hellenistic empires.

When Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-two, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea in the west all the way to modern-day India in the east. In an unusual compromise, his two heirs—a mentally damaged half brother, Philip III, and an infant son, Alexander IV, born after his death—were jointly granted the kingship. But six of Alexander’s Macedonian generals, spurred by their own thirst for power and the legend that Alexander bequeathed his rule “to the strongest,” fought to gain supremacy. Perhaps their most fascinating and conniving adversary was Alexander’s former Greek secretary, Eumenes, now a general himself, who would be the determining factor in the precarious fortunes of the royal family. James Romm, professor of classics at Bard College, brings to life the cutthroat competition and the struggle for control of the Greek world’s greatest empire.

Combines ancient coins and innovative digital technologies to study the citizens of Syrian Antioch and their imperial conquerors.