Seleucid Empire

The Seleucid Empire was a Hellenistic state founded in 312 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of the generals who divided the empire of Alexander the Great among themselves after his death. At its greatest extent under Seleucus I it stretched from Thrace and Anatolia in the west across Mesopotamia, Persia and Bactria toward the borders of India, governed from a series of capitals including Seleucia on the Tigris and, from the reign of Antiochus I onward, the newly founded city of Antioch. The empire steadily lost territory over the following two centuries, ceding its eastern satrapies to the rising Parthian Empire and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and its western holdings to Rome after defeat in the Roman-Seleucid War, concluded by the Treaty of Apamea in 188 BC. Reduced to a rump state centered on Syria and weakened by repeated dynastic civil wars, the Seleucid line ended when the Roman general Pompey deposed the last king, Antiochus XIII, and annexed the remaining territory as the province of Syria in 63 BC.