The House of Seleucus

It is not so much the character of the kings which gives the house of Seleucus its peculiar interest. It is the circumstances in which it was placed. The kings were (to all intents and purposes) Greek kings; the sphere of their empire was in Asia. They were called to preside over the process by which Hellenism penetrated an alien world, coming into contact with other traditions, modifying them and being modified. Upon them that process depended. Hellenism, it is true, contained in itself an expansive force, but the expansion could hardly have gone far unless the political power had been in congenial hands. As a matter of fact, it languished in countries which passed under barbarian rule. It was thus that the Seleucid dynasty in maintaining itself was safeguarding the progress of Hellenism. The interest with which we follow its struggles for aggrandizement and finally for existence does not arise from any peculiar nobility in the motives which actuate them or any exceptional features in their course, but from our knowing what much larger issues are involved. At the break-up of the dynasty we see peoples of non-Hellenic culture, Persians, Armenians, Arabs, Jews, pressing in everywhere to reclaim what Alexander and Seleucus had won. They are only checked by Hellenism finding a new defender in Rome. The house of Seleucus, however feeble and disorganized in its latter days, stood at any rate in the breach till Rome was ready to enter on the heritage of Alexander...