Seleucia on the Tigris
History
Seleucia on the Tigris rose in the last years of the 4th century B.C. in the heart of Babylonia, founded by Seleucos I Nikator, successor of Alexander the Great and the first king of a dynasty that ruled over a vast part of Asia for over a century. The city became the new empire’s capital and one of the main centres of the Hellenistic East, a privileged point of encounters between the Seleucids’ Greek culture and ancient Eastern traditions. Thanks to its position as a crossroads between East and West, Seleucia enjoyed a considerable commerical development and became an immense metropolis by the period’s standards. Art was deeply influenced by the encounter between different cultures: elements of Greek, Mesopotamian and Iranian art were combined in entirely new ways, producing innovative and distinctive forms of expression.
Between the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C., a new population originating from central Asia, the Parthians, began to contend control over vast areas of the empire with the Seleucids, until in 141 B.C. their king Mithridates I, the first great ruler of the Arsacid dynasty, conquered Mesopotamia and the city of Seleucia too. With the advent of the Arsacids, Seleucia maintained constant ties with the West, i.e. with the Mediterranean basin, through trade and remained one of the most thriving trading posts of the empire, continuing to benefit from its autonomy, which also contemplated the right to issue its own coins in a municipal mint. In this period, it was one of the largest cities in the Parthian East, with a population of over 600,000, which allowed its importance to match that of Rome and Alexandria (Plin., Nat. Hist. 6,122; Strab., XVI,2:5; Tac., Ann., VI,42).
With the development in the 1st century B.C. of the new royal residence in Ctesiphon (approximately 3 Roman miles away from Seleucia), whose exact location is still unknown, the political and commercial focus did not shift and the two cities, close enough to be considered a single metropolis, remained a constant point of reference for the trade that developed along what eventually became the Silk Road. Ctesiphon was reinforced only in the mid-1st century A.D. by the ruling dynasty, but the city’s fortunes definitely declined only when Ardashir I (224 – 241 A.D.), the first great Sasanian ruler, having seized power from the Arsacids, decided to found a new citty, Veh Ardashir (Choche), on the opposite bank of the Tigris.