'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎166r] (336/862)

THE CLASSICAL PERIOD 229
maintained the characteristic Greek combination of athletics with
intellectual pursuits. This mixed ‘Hellenistic’ civilization outlived
the fall of the kingdom established by Alexander’s general Seleucus
and his successors in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran; under the
Parthian Empire (p. 233) Mesopotamia long continued to be a
‘Hellenistic’ country.
The main figures in the hellenization of Mesopotamia were
Seleucus I Nicator (301-280) and Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-
163). Seleucus was the founder of the Seleucid Empire, which
included most of the Achaemenid Empire except Egypt, and
established several Greek ‘colonies’ in Mesopotamia, not all of which
have been identified (fig. 53). Antiochus encouraged the helleniza
tion of native cities like Babylon and Uruk (Erech), a policy which
does not seem to have been resented in Mesopotamia, though it
stirred up the Maccabaean revolt in Palestine, where the mono
theistic Jews refused to secularize their theocratic state. The greatest
of the Greek cities was Seleucia-on-Tigris, downstream of Baghdad,
the eastern capital of the Seleucid Empire. Seleucia replaced Baby
lon as a commercial centre and grew to be a city of 600,000 souls,
containing three divisions: the Greek ‘citizens’ who ruled the
municipality as a whole, the ‘polity of the Arabs’ which included the
native population and had a measure of self-government, and the
Jewish colony which also managed its own affairs. This complex
whole was technically an independent republic, in alliance with the
Seleucid monarch, who, however, had his agent or overseer in
the city.
The Parthian Empire, 140 b.c.-a.d. 226
In the second century b.c. the Seleucids, who were excluded from
Anatolia Peninsula that forms most of modern-day Turkey. by the Romans in 189 b.c., began to lose control of their
eastern provinces. A new Iranian people, the Parni, had entered the
Persian plateau from the steppes east of the Caspian and established
a kingdom in the former satrapy of Parthia (c. 247-200 b.c.). The
dynasty was named Arsacid after its perhaps mythical founder
Arsaces, but the distinction between the Parni and the mass of their
subjects was soon forgotten, and both were called Parthians (fig. 52).
Under Mithridates I (160-138 b.c.) they wrested the western
satrapies of the Iranian plateau from Seleucid control and occupied
first Elymais (Susiana) and thence Babylonia and Assyria, now called
Adiabene (142-141 b.c.), and in 140 B.c. Mithridates took the old
Achaemenid title of King of Kings. At first the Arsacids led an