Babylonia as the center of the Early Selkid Empire

Abstract

The interest in the Seleucid empire and the problems of organizing the political space in the Hellenistic East has recently been due to a methodological turn in the historiography of the Hellenistic era. These changes actualized the study of the role of Babylonia in the empire of the first Seleucids according to narrative and epigraphic sources. The satrapy appears in them as the region where the political career of Diadochus and the founder of the Seleucus dynasty began after the death of Alexander the Great. It was here that his power was most entrenched, apparently supported by local priestly elites. Although the question of the political center of the Seleucid state has been considered in historiography, however, it has not received systematic study. The scientific novelty lies in the study of the early Seleucid state and the peculiarities of the eastern policy of the first Seleucids in the imperial context. The methodological basis is the methods used to study imperial and multicultural spaces, as well as general scientific philosophical and historical methods. The study of the legendary information about Seleucus revealed frequent references to Babylonia in predictions of his future power, which should be perceived as a vaticinium ex eventu. This indicates the ideological and "mythological" significance of the image of Babylonia for the Seleucids, which can be explained both by the strategic and economic role of the region and its significance in Alexander's policy, which can be interpreted as a manifestation of "imitatio Alexandri".