NO. XXVII.—SELEUCIA.
There were no less than thirteen cities, which were called Seleucia, and which received their name from Seleucus Nicanor. These were situated in Syria, in Cilicia, and near the Euphrates.
“It must be acknowledged,” says Dr. Prideaux, “that there is mention made of Babylon, as of a city standing long after the time I have placed its dissolution, as in Lucan[210], Philostratus[211], and others. But in all those authors, and wherever also we find Babylon mentioned as a city in being, after the time of Seleucus Nicanor, it must be understood, not of old Babylon, on the Euphrates, but of Seleucia, on the Tigris. For as that succeeded to the dignity and grandeur of old Babylon, so also did it in its name.”
“Since the days of Alexander,” says Sir R. Porter, “we find four capitals, at least, built out of the remains of Babylon; Seleucia by the Greeks; Ctesiphon by the Parthians; Al Maidan by the Persians; Kufa by the Caliphs; with towns, villages, and caravanserais, without number. That the fragments of one city should travel so far, to build or repair the breaches of another, appeared, on the first view of the subject, to be unlikely to myself; but, on traversing the country between the approximating shores of the two rivers, and observing all the facilities of water-carriage from one side to the other, I could no longer be incredulous of what had been told me; particularly when scarce a day passed without my seeing people digging the mounds of Babylon for bricks, which they carried to the verge of the Euphrates, and thence conveyed in boats to wherever they might be wanted.”
Seleucus built many cities; of which far the greater part was raised from superstitious motives; many were peopled from the ruins of places in their neighbourhood, whose sites were equally convenient; and only a very few were erected in conformity with those great military and commercial views, by which, in this particular, his master (Alexander) had uniformly been guided. He named nine after himself; and four in honour of four of his wives; three Apameas; and one Stratonice; in all thirty-five. Sixteen were named Antioch; five Laodicea, after his mother. Many foundations were laid of other cities. Some, after favourite scenes in Greece or Macedon; some in memory of glorious exploits; and not a few after his master Alexander.
This Seleucia was built of the ruins of Babylon; and Pliny, the naturalist, gives the following account:—“Seleucia was built by Seleucus Nicanor, forty miles from Babylon, at a point of the confluence of the Euphrates with the Tigris, by a canal. There were 600,000 citizens here at one time; and all the commerce and wealth of Babylon had flowed into it. The territory in which it stood was called Babylonia; but it was itself a free state, and the people lived after the laws and manners of the Macedonians. The form of the walls resembled an eagle spreading her wings.”
In a country, destitute of wood and stone, whose edifices were hastily erected with bricks baked in the sun, and cemented with the native bitumen, Seleucia speedily eclipsed the ancient capital of the East.
Many ages after the fall of the Macedonian empire, Seleucia retained the genuine character of a Greek colony; arts, military virtue, and a love of freedom: and while the republic remained independent, it was governed by a senate consisting of three hundred nobles. The walls were strong; and as long as concord prevailed among the several orders of the state, the power of the Parthians was regarded with indifference, if not with contempt. The madness of faction, however, was sometimes so great, that the common enemy was occasionally implored; and the Parthians[212] were, in consequence, beheld at the gates, to assist sometimes one party, and sometimes the other. Ctesiphon was then but a village[213], on the opposite side of the Tigris, in which the Parthian kings were accustomed to reside during the winter, on account of the mildness of the climate. The summer they passed at Ecbatana.
Trajan left Rome A. D. 112, and after subduing several cities in the East, laid siege to Seleucia and Ctesiphon. Chosroes, the king, being absent quelling a revolt in some part of his more eastern dominions, these cities soon surrendered to the Roman hero, and all the neighbouring country. “The degenerate Parthians,” says the Roman historian, “broken by internal discord, fled before his arms. He descended the Tigris in triumph from the mountains of Armenia to the Persian gulf. He enjoyed the honour of being the first, as he was the last, of the Roman generals who ever navigated that remote sea.” At his death, which occurred soon after his return to Rome, most of the cities of Asia, that he had conquered, threw off the Roman yoke; and among these were Seleucia and Ctesiphon.