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==Introduction==

[[File: SeleucosCoin.jpg|200px|thumb|left|A coin of Seleucus I Nicator ]]

==Background==

Alexander the Great had invaded the Persian Empire in 333 BCE with a large army of Macedonian and Greek warriors. In a series of great battles including Issus, Gaugamela and Granicus River he smashed the mighty Persian army and conquered the entire Persian Empire. Alexander later campaigned in Central Asia and in North-West India. As he went he found cities and colonies of Greeks and Macedonians and soon he had established an Empire that stretched from the Danube to the Punjab in India. After returning from his campaign in India, Alexander fell ill, probably from a fever and he died. His son was too young to succeed him, and his brother was deemed to be unsuitable. Alexander had made many plans for further conquests, but he had failed to appoint an heir. Soon his empire began to fall apart. The power vacuum after the untimely death of Alexander was soon filled by his generals<ref> Green, Peter Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age (London, Phoenix, 2008), p. 256</ref>. The army of the great King was divided up by his former generals and they took over many territories and ruled as independent sovereigns. The various generals began to fight among themselves in a series of civil wars to reunite the Empire of Alexander or to carve out a kingdom for themselves. The first War of the Diadochi saw Perdiccas, attempt to marry Alexander’s sister and to reunite the Empire under him, but he was defeated by a coalition of generals led by Ptolemy. After the defeat of Peridiccas the Empire was portioned between the generals and they all recognized Alexander’s young son as the king of his father’s Empire, but the ‘real rulers were the generals’<ref> Bennett, Bob; Roberts. The Wars of Alexander's Successors 323–281 BC; Volume I: Commanders & Campaigns. Pen and Sword Books, 2008), p. 115</ref>. Soon they generals who were really only warlords began to style themselves as monarchs, often blending local ideas about monarchy with Macedonian ideas <ref> Bennett, Bob; Roberts, Mike (2009). The Wars of Alexander's Successors 323–281 BC; Volume II: Battles and Tactics. Pen and Sword Book, 2009), p. 113</ref>. The peace agreement did not last and there were to be two further civil wars, the Second and the Third Diadochi. During the second Diadochi War, the mother, wife and the son of Alexander were murdered in Greece and the dynasty of Alexander came to an end. In the Second Diadochi war, one of Alexander’s old general Antiochus I Monophthalmus (One-eyed) became the most powerful of all the successors. He came to dominate much of the modern Middle East, Turkey and most of Greece. The other generals were fearful of the growing power of Antiochus<ref>Bennet, vol ii,p. 45</ref>. The Third Diadochi War was a war between Antigonous I and Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander. They were joined by Seleucus who had seized some of the Far Eastern Satrapies of Alexander’s Empire. Seleucus had earlier been expelled by Antigonous from Babylon and had been forced to retreat to his Central Asian territories. He later returned, after receiving some support from Ptolemy. This was to lead to the Babylonian War, which is regarded as being part of the Third Diadochi War.

==Babylonian War==

Seleucus, reinforced with veterans of Alexander’s campaigns reached Babylon in 311. He was soon recognized as the new ruler. Antigonus had made himself unpopular in the city and its hinterland. Only the citadel defied him and was held by a garrison that was loyal to Antigonus. Seleucus was forced to besiege the fortress and in the end, he captured it by flooding it. The Macedonian monarch then sent two of his satraps to destroy Seleucus but he was an able general and even though he had inferior forces he ambushed the satraps and destroy them and their armies. Seleucus was a shrewd man and he could persuade the Iranians who served with the satraps of Antiochus, to join his forces. By now Seleucus was a serious challenge to Antigonus, he had largely been able to contain the attacks of Ptolemy from Egypt and was even expanding his territories at the expense of Cassander and Lysimachus. Seleucus could expand his territory and he seized southern Iraq and the greater part of Iran. Antigonus could secure his position and even forced his enemies to sign the Peace of Dynasts, which was greatly, to his advantage<ref> Plutarch, Life of Demetrius the Besieger, vii</ref>. Only Seleucus was defying Antiochus and the one-eyes monarch ordered his son to attack and seize Babylon. However, Seleucus could inspire not only the Macedonians and the Greeks in his army but also the local population<ref>Plutarch, vii</ref>. He was able to put up such resistance that he forced Demetrius to abandon his siege of Babylon. Antigonus was enraged and assembled a huge army in 310 BC and advanced on Babylon. In the autumn of 310 BCE, Antigonus was able to fight his way into Babylon, but he was forced back after stiff resistance. The aging monarch was forced to retire to the north but he returned the following year. He met the army of Seleucus outside Babylon<ref>Bennet vol ii, p 145</ref>. The night before the day the two armies were to clash, Seleucus ordered his men to eat their rations. The next morning while the Antigonous army was having its breakfast, Seleucus soldiers attacked Antigonus' soldiers and they achieve a total victory. After this Seleucus was the ruler of a vast territory that reached from Iraq to Afghanistan.

==Birth of the Seleucid Empire==

Before the Babylonian War, Seleucus was just another warlord. In the aftermath of the Babylonian War, he could greatly expand his empire. The victor turned east to consolidate his vast territories and after an unsuccessful campaign in modern Pakistan, he concluded a treaty with Chandragupta Mauryan. The Indian emperor received the extreme eastern parts of the of the Empire of Alexander and in return, gave Seleucus a formidable force of several hundred war elephants. Despite these concession by the Macedonian, he was the strongest of the Diadochi and this was to prove decisive in the years ahead. There are many reasons why Seleucus entered into an agreement with the Mauryan Empire. He recognized that he could not defend the territories he conceded, and their concession allowed him to concentrate on his core territories. The Macedonian on his return could use the wealth of Babylon to create a huge army. He also made Babylon and its hinterland in Southern Iraq the core area of his newly emerging Empire<ref> Bennet, vol ii, p. 67</ref>. With the resources available to him he could set up an administration and developed an efficient system of governance for his new territories. Seleucus founded the city of Seleucia, named after himself and this became his new capital<ref> Paul J. Kosmin, The Land of the Elephant Kings: Space, Territory, and Ideology in the Seleucid Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 114</ref>. By 305 BC Seleucus was the de-facto ruler of the greatest of the successor kingdom and he built a state that was to last. A brilliant administrator he created a state that was based on a system of semi-autonomous satrapies and Greek and Macedonian colonies. The state he built was enduring and it even survived his assassination in 281 BCE.

The victory of Seleucus in the Babylonian War was a turning point in the struggles of the successor of Alexander the Great. Because Antigonus was unable to recapture Babylon, it allowed Seleucus to create a vast Empire in the east. The resources that he could raise, including war elephants, proved decisive in the Fourth Diadochi War. The importance of Seleucus victory in the war of 311-309 BCE was that it virtually guaranteed the destruction of the Antigonid kingdom and ended the last attempt to unify the Macedonian successor kingdoms. After the death of Cassander and Lysimachus in rapid succession, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids controlled the majority of Alexander's former empire, with Macedonia being ruled by a member of the Antigonid dynasty until the 1st century. The other important consequence of the Babylonian War was that a new dynasty emerged; the Seleucid dynasty. Seleucus was so successful that he could hand his sprawling Empire over to this son and heir who was a competent leader and ruler. The Macedonian was able to establish a dynasty because of his victory over Antigonus. The dynasty that he found was to rule large areas of Asia for almost two hundred years and played a decisive role in the history of that region. The last Seleucid king was only deposed by Pompey the Great in the first century BC. This would not have been possible without his victory in the Babylonian War.

==References==