Seleucia on the Tigris

Seleucus I Nicator. Bust at the Louvre, Paris (France). Photo Marco Prins.

Seleucus I Nicator (Louvre)

Seleucia on the Tigris: one of the residences of the Seleucid Empire, modern Tell Umar, on the west bank of the Tigris. The city is not to be confused with the royal residence named Seleucia in Pieria, or the little known Seleucia on the Euphrates.

Seleucia was founded by Seleucus I Nicator, one of the Successors of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great (Appian (Syrian Wars, 57). The date of the founding is not recorded, but must be after the Babylonian War (311-309) and before 301, when Seleucus visited Babylonia for the last time. The years 308-304 were devoted to Seleucus' eastern campaigns, so it can only have been in the second half of 309 and 304-301.

It was explictly designated as the capital of the empire (āl šarrūti in cuneiform sources, "city of kingship"). The city was opposite the ancient city of Opis at the confluence of the river Tigris and the Royal Canal, which connected the new city to the Euphrates. The ruins have been identified at Tell Umar, about 30 km south of Baghdad, and 60 north of Babylon, which appears to have lost some of its citizens to the new city (Pausanias, Guide to Greece, 1.16.3; Antiochus and the Sin Temple Chronicle).

Excavations have shown that the city was built according to a gridiron plan. As it was a Seleucid city, there will have been the usual, straight main street, perhaps decorated with colonnades. The course of the walls will have been determined by the shape of the site - Pliny the Elder compares the plan of the walls of Seleucia "is like an eagle spreading its wings" (Natural History, 6.122). A canal separated the official residence from the living quarters, where people were -according to a Babylonian custom- buried inside their homes. A theater and a market place have not yet been identified.

According to Pliny, the city had 600,000 inhabitants (6.122 again). This may, for once, be not exaggerated: Babylonia is extremely fertile and it was easy to bring food to the city. Baghdad was to have millions of inhabitants, which had to be fed from the same resources, using the same technology.

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Septimius Severus captures Seleucia; copy from the Museo nazionale della civiltà romana (Rome, Italy) of a relief on the Arch of Septimius Severus, Rome. Photo Marco Prins.

Septimius Severus captures Seleucia; copy of a relief on the Arch of Septimius Severus, Rome

The city was an important center of Greek civilization. Strabo mentions an astronomer named Seleucus, and adds that he was educated in the Babylonian traditions of stellar science (a "Chaldaean"; Geography, 16.1.6); he also mentions a Stoic philosopher named Diogenes (16.1.16), who was -interestingly- of native Babylonian descent (Plutarch, Fortune of the Alexander, 328d). According to Plutarch, the rhetor Amphicrates believed he could find a worthy position in Seleucia, was offered one, but in the end refused it, comparing the city to a stewpan (Lucullus, 22.5). Perhaps this is a reference to the climate.

The city was conquered in 141 BCE by the Parthian king Mithradates I the Great (171-138, who continued to use the city as one of the mints. The new rulers added a new city, Ctesiphon, on the east bank. Pliny (NH, 6.122) claims that in his age, the city still had some Macedonian customs. Other ethnic groups were the Greeks, the Babylonians, and a large group of Jews, which fled to the city after 35 CE, and was massacred (Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, 18.311).

The twin cities were captures several times by the Romans. The emperor Trajan took them in 116 (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 68.30.2), general Avidius Cassius during Lucius Verus' Parthian campaign (Cassius Dio, 71.2.3), and Septimius Severus in the winter of 198/ 199 (Herodian, History of the Roman Empire, 3.9). In the third century, Seleucia -renamed Veh-Ardašir ("the good city of Ardašir")- lost importance, but when Carus captured Seleucia and Ctesiphon in 283, this was still an important victory (Historia Augusta, Carus, 8).

In the fifth century, Seleucia was an important center of Nestorian Christianity; the Nestorian teachings were defined during the ecclesiastical council of 468.