This is a 1976 study of the organization and tactics of the Seleucid armies from 312 to 129 BC. The first part of the book discusses the numerical strength of the armies, their sources of manpower, the contingents of the regular army, their equipment and historical development, the chain of command, training and discipline. The second part reconstructs the great campaigns in order to examine the Seleucid tactics. The book provides a lesson in Hellenistic and military history and discusses several questions: how did the Hellenistic armies develop after Alexander? What distinguished the Seleucid army as superior to its Hellenistic contemporaries? The answers illuminate the expansion of Hellenism as we learn how the Seleucid army was used as a military, social and cultural instrument to impose the rule of the dynasty over the vast regions of the Empire and how it helped to shape Hellenistic society in the East.
With its emphasis on the dynasty's concern for control of the sea – both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea – and the Nile, this book offers a new and original perspective on Ptolemaic power in a key period of Hellenistic history. Within the developing Aegean empire of the Ptolemies, the role of the navy is examined together with that of its admirals. Egypt's close relationship to Rhodes is subjected to scrutiny, as is the constant threat of piracy to the transport of goods on the Nile and by sea. Along with the trade in grain came the exchange of other products. Ptolemaic kings used their wealth for luxury ships and the dissemination of royal portraiture was accompanied by royal cult. Alexandria, the new capital of Egypt, attracted poets, scholars and even philosophers; geographical exploration by sea was a feature of the period and observations of the time enjoyed a long afterlife.
Empires of the Sea brings together studies of maritime empires from the Bronze Age to the Eighteenth Century. The volume develops the category of maritime empire as a specific type of empire in both European and 'non-western' history.
Winner of the Runciman Award Winner of the Charles J. Goodwin Award “Tells the story of how the Seleucid Empire revolutionized chronology by picking a Year One and counting from there, rather than starting a new count, as other states did, each time a new monarch was crowned...Fascinating.” —Harper’s In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, his successors, the Seleucid kings, ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia and Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. In 305 BCE, in a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, Seleucus I introduced a linear conception of time. Time would no longer restart with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years—continuous and irreversible—became the de facto measure of historical duration. This new temporality, propagated throughout the empire and identical to the system we use today, changed how people did business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger world. Some rebellious subjects, eager to resurrect their pre-Hellenic past, rejected this new approach and created apocalyptic time frames, predicting the total end of history. In this magisterial work, Paul Kosmin shows how the Seleucid Empire’s invention of a new kind of time—and the rebellions against this worldview—had far reaching political and religious consequences, transforming the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future. “Without Paul Kosmin’s meticulous investigation of what Seleucus achieved in creating his calendar without end we would never have been able to comprehend the traces of it that appear in late antiquity...A magisterial contribution to this hitherto obscure but clearly important restructuring of time in the ancient Mediterranean world.” —G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books “With erudition, theoretical sophistication, and meticulous discussion of the sources, Paul Kosmin sheds new light on the meaning of time, memory, and identity in a multicultural setting.” —Angelos Chaniotis, author of Age of Conquests
Winner of the Runciman Award Winner of the Charles J. Goodwin Award “Tells the story of how the Seleucid Empire revolutionized chronology by picking a Year One and counting from there, rather than starting a new count, as other states did, each time a new monarch was crowned...Fascinating.” —Harper’s In the aftermath of Alexander the Great’s conquests, his successors, the Seleucid kings, ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia and Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. In 305 BCE, in a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, Seleucus I introduced a linear conception of time. Time would no longer restart with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years—continuous and irreversible—became the de facto measure of historical duration. This new temporality, propagated throughout the empire and identical to the system we use today, changed how people did business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger world. Some rebellious subjects, eager to resurrect their pre-Hellenic past, rejected this new approach and created apocalyptic time frames, predicting the total end of history. In this magisterial work, Paul Kosmin shows how the Seleucid Empire’s invention of a new kind of time—and the rebellions against this worldview—had far reaching political and religious consequences, transforming the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future. “Without Paul Kosmin’s meticulous investigation of what Seleucus achieved in creating his calendar without end we would never have been able to comprehend the traces of it that appear in late antiquity...A magisterial contribution to this hitherto obscure but clearly important restructuring of time in the ancient Mediterranean world.” —G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books “With erudition, theoretical sophistication, and meticulous discussion of the sources, Paul Kosmin sheds new light on the meaning of time, memory, and identity in a multicultural setting.” —Angelos Chaniotis, author of Age of Conquests
This book investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect on the Near East’s social fabric, including the fundamental changes that occurred to major social institutions. Its geographical coverage spans, from east to west, modern-day Libya and Egypt to Central Asia, and from north to south, Anatolia to southern Arabia, incorporating modern-day Oman and Yemen. Its temporal coverage spans from the late eighth century BCE to the seventh century CE during the rise of Islam and collapse of the Sasanian Empire. The authors argue that the persistence of large states and empires starting in the eighth/seventh centuries BCE, which continued for many centuries, led to new socio-political structures and institutions emerging in the Near East. The primary processes that enabled this emergence were large-scale and long-distance movements, or population migrations. These patterns of social developments are analysed under different aspects: settlement patterns, urban structure, material culture, trade, governance, language spread and religion, all pointing at movement as the main catalyst for social change. This book’s argument is framed within a larger theoretical framework termed as ‘universalism’, a theory that explains many of the social transformations that happened to societies in the Near East, starting from the Neo-Assyrian period and continuing for centuries. Among other influences, the effects of these transformations are today manifested in modern languages, concepts of government, universal religions and monetized and globalized economies.
This book traces the roots of modern notions of celebrity, fame, and infamy back to the Hellenistic period of classical antiquity, when sensational personages like Cleopatra of Egypt and Alexander the Great became famous world-wide.