Battle of Ipsus
The Battle of Ipsus was fought between some of the Diadochi in 301 BC near the village of that name in Phrygia. Antigonus I Monophthalmus and his son Demetrius I of Macedon were pitted against the coalition of three other companions of Alexander: Cassander, ruler of Macedon. Diodorus Siculus is the principal source for the history of the Diadochi, in his'Library of history'. Diodorus is derided by modern historians for his style and inaccuracies, but he preserves many details of the ancient period found nowhere else. Diodorus worked by epitomizing the works of other historians, omitting many details where they did not suit his purpose, to illustrate moral lessons from history However, since Diodorus provides the only continuous narrative for the history of the Diadochi, we have no alternative but to rely on his account. From book XXI onwards, including the actual Battle of Ipsus, the Bibliotheca only exists in fragments. Diodorus provides extensive details of the Fourth War of the Diadochi leading up to Ipsus.
It is thought that Diodorus's source for much of this period was the now-lost history of the Diadochi written by Hieronymus of Cardia. Hieronymus was a friend of Eumenes, became a member of the Antigonid court; the only full description of the battle available is in Plutarch's Life of Demetrius. Plutarch was writing some 400 years after the events in question, is therefore a secondary source, but he names his sources, which allows some degree of verification of his statements. Plutarch was primarily interested in moral lessons from history, rather than detailing history in depth, thus his description of the battle does not go into great detail. In the aftermath of the Second War of the Diadochi, the aging satrap Antigonus Monophthalmus had been left in undisputed control of the Asian territories of the Macedonian empire; this left Antigonus in prime position to claim overall rule over the Macedonian empire. Antigonus's growing power alarmed the other major Successors, resulting in the eruption of the Third War of the Diadochi in 314 BC, in which Antigonus faced a coalition of Cassander and Ptolemy.
This war ended in a compromise peace in 311 BC, after which Antigonus attacked Seleucus, attempting to re-establish himself in the eastern Satrapies of the empire. The resulting Babylonian War lasted from 311-309 BC, resulted in defeat for Antigonus, allowing Seleucus to re-claim the satrapy of Babylonia and overlordship of the territories to the east. While Antigonus was distracted elsewhere, Ptolemy had been expanding his power into the Aegean Sea and to Cyprus. Antigonus thus resumed the war with Ptolemy in 308 BC. Antigonus sent his son Demetrius to regain control of Greece, in 307 BC he took Athens, expelling Demetrius of Phaleron, Cassander's governor, proclaiming the city free again. Demetrius turned his attention to Ptolemy, invading Cyprus and defeating Ptolemy's fleet at the Battle of Salamis-in-Cyprus. In the aftermath of this victory and Demetrius both assumed the crown of Macedon, in which they were shortly followed by Ptolemy, Seleucus and Cassander. In 306, Antigonus attempted to invade Egypt, but storms prevented Demetrius's fleet from supplying him, he was forced to return home.
With Cassander and Ptolemy both weakened, Seleucus still occupied by attempting to assert his control over the East and Demetrius now turned their attention to Rhodes, besieged by Demetrius's forces in 305 BC. The island was reinforced by troops from Ptolemy and Cassander; the Rhodians reached a compromise with Demetrius – they would support Antigonus and Demetrius against all enemies, save their ally Ptolemy. Ptolemy took the title of Soter for his role in preventing the fall of Rhodes, but the victory was Demetrius's, as it left him with a free hand to attack Cassander in Greece. Demetrius thus returned to Greece and set about liberating the cities of Greece, expelling Cassander's garrisons, the pro-Antipatrid oligarchies; this occupied much of Demetrius's efforts in 303 and 302 BC. Seeing that Demetrius's war effort was aimed at destroying his power in Greece, in Macedonia, Cassander tried to come to terms with Antigonus. However, Antigonus rejected these advances, intent on forcing Cassander's complete surrender.
Cassander therefore held counsel with Lysimachus, they agreed on a joint strategy that included sending envoys to Ptolemy and Seleucus, asking them to join in combatting the Antigonid threat. Seeking to take the initiative, Cassander sent a significant portion of the Macedonian army under Prepelaus to Lysimachus, to be used in joint operations in Asia Minor. Meanwhile, Cassander took the rest of the Macedonian army into Thessaly to confront Demetrius. Lysimachus crossed over the Hellespont in 302 BC, intending to take advantage of Antigonus's absence in Syria by overrunning Asia Minor; the cities of Lampsakos and Parion submitted to him, but he had to storm Sigeion, after which he installed a garrison there. He sent Prepelaus with 7000 men to attack Aeolis and Ionia, while he besieged Abydos; this siege was unsuccessful however, since Demetrius sent the city reinforcements from Greece by sea. Lysimachus instead went on to win over Hellespontine Ph
Ancient Carthage
Carthage was a Phoenician state that included, during the 7th–3rd centuries BC, its wider sphere of influence known as the Carthaginian Empire. The empire extended over much of the coast of Northwest Africa as well as encompassing substantial parts of coastal Iberia and the islands of the western Mediterranean Sea. Phoenicians founded Carthage in 814 BC. A dependency of the Phoenician state of Tyre, Carthage gained independence around 650 BC and established its political hegemony over other Phoenician settlements throughout the western Mediterranean, this lasting until the end of the 3rd century BC. At the height of the city's prominence, it served as a major hub of trade, with trading stations extending throughout the region. For much of its history, Carthage was on hostile terms with the Greeks in Sicily and with the Roman Republic; the city had to deal with hostile Berbers, the indigenous inhabitants of the area where Carthage was built. In 146 BC, after the third and final Punic War, Roman forces destroyed Carthage redesigned and occupied the site of the city.
Nearly all of the other Phoenician city-states and former Carthaginian dependencies subsequently fell into Roman hands. According to Roman sources, Phoenician colonists from modern-day Lebanon, led by Dido, founded Carthage circa 814 BC. Queen Elissa was an exiled princess of the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre. At its peak, the metropolis she founded, came to be called the "shining city", ruling 300 other cities around the western Mediterranean Sea and leading the Phoenician world. Elissa's brother, Pygmalion of Tyre, had murdered the high priest. Elissa escaped the tyranny of her own country, founding the "new city" of Carthage and subsequently its dominions. Details of her life are sketchy and confusing, but the following can be deduced from various sources. According to Justin, Princess Elissa was the daughter of King Belus II of Tyre; when he died, the throne was jointly bequeathed to her brother and her. She married her uncle Acerbas known as Sychaeus, the High Priest of Melqart, a man with both authority and wealth comparable to the king.
This led to increased rivalry between the monarchy. Pygmalion was a tyrant, lover of both gold and intrigue, who desired the authority and fortune enjoyed by Acerbas. Pygmalion assassinated Acerbas in the temple and kept the misdeed concealed from his sister for a long time, deceiving her with lies about her husband's death. At the same time, the people of Tyre called for a single sovereign. In the Roman epic of Virgil, the Aeneid, Queen Dido, the Greek name for Elissa, is first introduced as a esteemed character. In just seven years, since their exodus from Tyre, the Carthaginians have rebuilt a successful kingdom under her rule, her subjects present her with a festival of praise. Her character is perceived by Virgil as more noble when she offers asylum to Aeneas and his men, who had escaped from Troy. A spirit in the form of the messenger god, sent by Jupiter, reminds Aeneas that his mission is not to stay in Carthage with his new-found love, but to sail to Italy to found Rome. Virgil ends his legend of Dido with the story that, when Aeneas tells Dido, her heart broken, she orders a pyre to be built where she falls upon Aeneas' sword.
As she lay dying, she predicted eternal strife between Aeneas' people and her own: "rise up from my bones, avenging spirit" she says, an invocation of Hannibal. Aeneas goes on to found the Roman Kingdom; the details of Virgil's story do not, form part of the original legend and are significant as an indication of Rome's attitude towards the city she had founded, exemplified by Cato the Elder's much-repeated utterance, "Carthago delenda est", "Carthage must be destroyed". The Phoenicians established numerous colonial cities along the coasts of the Mediterranean to provide safe harbors for their merchant fleets, to maintain a Phoenician monopoly on an area's natural resources, to conduct trade free of outside interference, they were motivated to found these cities by a desire to satisfy the demand for trade goods or to escape the necessity of paying tribute to the succession of empires that ruled Tyre and Byblos, by fear of complete Greek colonization of that part of the Mediterranean suitable for commerce.
The Phoenicians lacked the population or necessity to establish large self-sustaining cities abroad, most of their colonial cities had fewer than 1,000 inhabitants, but Carthage and a few others developed larger populations. Although Strabo's claim that the Tyrians founded three hundred colonies along the west African coast is exaggerated, colonies were established in Tunisia, Algeria, to a much lesser extent, on the arid coast of Libya; the Phoenicians were active in Cyprus, Corsica, the Balearic Islands and Sicily, as well as on the European mainland at present-day Genoa in Italy and Marseille in present-day France. The settlements at Crete and Sicily were in perpetual conflict with the Greeks, but the Phoenicians managed to control all of Sicily for a limited time; the entire area came under the leadership and protection of Carthage, which in turn dispatched its own colonists to found new cities or to reinforce those that declined with the loss of primacy of Tyre and Sidon. The first colonies were settled on the two paths to Iberia's mineral wealth — along the Northwest African coast and on Sicily and the Ba
Dynasty
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family in the context of a feudal or monarchical system, but sometimes appearing in elective republics. Alternative terms for "dynasty" may include "family" and "clan", among others; the longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, otherwise known as the Yamato dynasty, whose reign is traditionally dated to 660 BC. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a "noble house", which may be styled as "royal", "princely", "ducal", "comital" etc. depending upon the chief or present title borne by its members. Historians periodize the histories of numerous nations and civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties; as such, the term "dynasty" may be used to delimit the era during which a family reigned, to describe events and artifacts of that period. The word "dynasty" itself is dropped from such adjectival references; until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty: that is, to expand the wealth and power of his family members.
Prior to the 20th century, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. In nations where it was permitted, succession through a daughter established a new dynasty in her husband's ruling house; this has changed in some places in Europe, where succession law and convention have maintained dynasties de jure through a female. For instance, the House of Windsor will be maintained through the children of Queen Elizabeth II, as it did with the monarchy of the Netherlands, whose dynasty remained the House of Orange-Nassau through three successive queens regnant; the earliest such example among major European monarchies was in the Russian Empire in the 18th century, where the name of the House of Romanov was maintained through Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna. In Limpopo Province of South Africa, Balobedu determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mother's dynasty when coming into her inheritance.
Less a monarchy has alternated or been rotated, in a multi-dynastic system – that is, the most senior living members of parallel dynasties, at any point in time, constitute the line of succession. Not all feudal states or monarchies were/are ruled by dynasties. Throughout history, there were monarchs. Dynasties ruling subnational monarchies do not possess sovereign rights; the word "dynasty" is sometimes used informally for people who are not rulers but are, for example, members of a family with influence and power in other areas, such as a series of successive owners of a major company. It is extended to unrelated people, such as major poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team; the word "dynasty" derives from Latin dynastia, which comes from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to "power", "dominion", "rule" itself. It was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, "power" or "ability", from dýnamai, "to be able". A ruler from a dynasty is sometimes referred to as a "dynast", but this term is used to describe any member of a reigning family who retains a right to succeed to a throne.
For example, King Edward VIII ceased to be a dynast of the House of Windsor following his abdication. In historical and monarchist references to reigning families, a "dynast" is a family member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchy's rules still in force. For example, after the 1914 assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife Duchess Sophie von Hohenberg, their son Duke Maximilian was bypassed for the Austro-Hungarian throne because he was not a Habsburg dynast. Since the abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Duke Maximilian and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position; the term "dynast" is sometimes used only to refer to agnatic descendants of a realm's monarchs, sometimes to include those who hold succession rights through cognatic royal descent. The term can therefore describe distinct sets of people. For example, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, a nephew of Queen Elizabeth II through her sister Princess Margaret, is in the line of succession to the British crown.
On the other hand, the German aristocrat Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a male-line descendant of King George III of the United Kingdom, possesses no legal British name, titles or styles. He was born in the line of succession to the British throne and was bound by Britain's Royal Marriages Act 1772 until it was repealed when the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 took effect on 26 March 2015. Thus, he requested and obtained formal permission from Queen Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco in 1999. Yet, a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time, stipulating that dynasts who
Colonies in antiquity
Colonies in antiquity were post-Iron Age city-states founded from a mother-city, not from a territory-at-large. Bonds between a colony and its metropolis remained close, took specific forms during the period of classical antiquity. Colonies founded by the ancient Phoenicians, Rome, Alexander the Great and his successors remained tied to their metropolis, but Greek colonies of the Archaic and Classical eras were sovereign and self-governing from their inception. While Greek colonies were founded to solve social unrest in the mother-city, by expelling a part of the population, Roman and Han Chinese colonies were used for expansion and empire-building. An Egyptian colony, stationed in southern Canaan dates to before the First Dynasty. Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced in Canaan and exported back to Egypt, from regions such as Arad, En Besor and Tel ʿErani. Shipbuilding was known to the ancient Egyptians as early as 3000 BC, earlier; the Archaeological Institute of America reports that the earliest dated ship — dating to 3000 BC – may have belonged to Pharaoh Aha.
The Phoenicians were the major trading power in the Mediterranean in the early part of the first millennium BC. They had trading contacts in Egypt and Greece, established colonies as far west as modern Spain, at Gadir. From Gadir the Phoenicians controlled access to the trade routes to Britain; the most famous and successful of Phoenician colonies was founded by settlers from Tyre in 814–813 BC and called Kart-Hadasht, known to history as Carthage. The Carthaginians founded their own colony in the southeast of Spain, Carthago Nova, conquered by their enemy, Rome. According to María Eugenia Aubet, Professor of Archaeology at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona: "The earliest presence of Phoenician material in the West is documented within the precinct of the ancient city of Huelva, Spain... The high proportion of Phoenician pottery among the new material found in 1997 in the Plaza de las Monjas in Huelva argues in favour, not of a few first sporadic contacts in the zone, but of a regular presence of Phoenician people from the start of the ninth century BC.
The recent radiocarbon dates from the earliest levels in Carthage situate the founding of this Tyrian colony in the years 835–800 cal BC, which coincides with the dates handed down by Flavius Josephus and Timeus for the founding of the city." In Ancient Greece, a vanquished people would sometimes found a colony, leaving their homes to escape subjection at the hand of a foreign enemy. But in most cases colony-founders aimed to establish and facilitate relations of trade with foreign countries and to further the wealth of the mother-city. Colonies were established in Ionia and Thrace as early as the 8th century BC. More than thirty Greek city-states had multiple colonies, they became dotted across the Mediterranean world, with the most active colony-founding city, Miletus, of the Ionian League, spawning ninety colonies stretching throughout the Mediterranean Sea, from the shores of the Black Sea and Anatolia in the east, to the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula in the west, as well as several colonies on the Libyan coast of northern Africa, from the late 9th to the 5th centuries BC.
Greeks founded two similar types of colony, one known as an ἀποικία apoikía – a designation reflecting the Greek roots ἀπό + οἶκος – and the other as an ἐμπόριov – emporion. The first type of colony was a city-state on its own; the Greek city-states began establishing colonies around 900 – 800 BC, at first at Al Mina on the coast of Syria and the Greek emporium Pithekoussai at Ischia in the Bay of Naples, both established about 800 BC by Euboeans. Two waves of new colonists set out from Greece at the transition between the "Dark Ages" and the start of the Archaic Period – the first in the early 8th century BC and a second burst of the colonizing spirit in the 6th century. Population growth and cramped spaces at home seem an insufficient explanation, while the economical and political dynamics produced by the competitive spirit between the kingless Greek city-states – newly introduced as a concept and striving to expand their spheres of economical influence – better fits as their true incentive.
Through this Greek expansion the use of coins flourished throughout the Mediterranean Basin. Influential Greek colonies in the western Mediterranean – many of them in today's Italy — included Cyme, Rhegium by Chalcis and Zankle, Syracuse by Corinth/Tenea, Naxos by Chalcis and Agathe by Phokaia and Emporion by Phokaia/Massalia, Antipolis by Achaea, Alalia by Phokaia/Massalia and Cyrene by Thera; the Greeks colonised modern-day Crimea in the Black Sea. The settlements they established there included the city of Chersonesos, at the site of modern-day Sevastopol. Another area with significant Greek colonies was the coast of ancient Illyria on the Adriatic Sea. Cicero remarks on the extensive Greek c
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the era of classical Roman civilization beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom, traditionally dated to 509 BC, ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire. It was during this period that Rome's control expanded from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world. Roman society under the Republic was a cultural mix of Latin and Greek elements, visible in the Roman Pantheon, its political organisation was influenced by the Greek city states of Magna Graecia, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate. The top magistrates were the two consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, judicial and religious powers. Whilst there were elections each year, the Republic was not a democracy, but an oligarchy, as a small number of large families monopolised the main magistracies. Roman institutions underwent considerable changes throughout the Republic to adapt to the difficulties it faced, such as the creation of promagistracies to rule its conquered provinces, or the composition of the senate.
Unlike the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, the Republic was in a state of quasi-perpetual war throughout its existence. Its first enemies were its Latin and Etruscan neighbours as well as the Gauls, who sacked the city in 387 BC; the Republic nonetheless demonstrated extreme resilience and always managed to overcome its losses, however catastrophic. After the Gallic Sack, Rome indeed conquered the whole Italian peninsula in a century, which turned the Republic into a major power in the Mediterranean; the Republic's greatest enemy was doubtless Carthage, against. The Punic general Hannibal famously invaded Italy by crossing the Alps and inflicted on Rome two devastating defeats at the Lake Trasimene and Cannae, but the Republic once again recovered and won the war thanks to Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. With Carthage defeated, Rome became the dominant power of the ancient Mediterranean world, it embarked in a long series of difficult conquests, after having notably defeated Philip V and Perseus of Macedon, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, the Lusitanian Viriathis, the Numidian Jugurtha, the great Pontic king Mithridates VI, the Gaul Vercingetorix, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.
At home, the Republic experienced a long streak of social and political crises, which ended in several violent civil wars. At first, the Conflict of the Orders opposed the patricians, the closed oligarchic elite, to the far more numerous plebs, who achieved political equality in several steps during the 4th century BC; the vast conquests of the Republic disrupted its society, as the immense influx of slaves they brought enriched the aristocracy, but ruined the peasantry and urban workers. In order to solve this issue, several social reformers, known as the Populares, tried to pass agrarian laws, but the Gracchi brothers, Saturninus, or Clodius Pulcher were all murdered by their opponents, the Optimates, keepers of the traditional aristocratic order. Mass slavery caused three Servile Wars. In this context, the last decades of the Republic were marked by the rise of great generals, who exploited their military conquests and the factional situation in Rome to gain control of the political system.
Marius Sulla dominated in turn the Republic. These multiple tensions lead to a series of civil wars. Despite his victory and appointment as dictator for life, Caesar was murdered in 44 BC. Caesar's heir Octavian and lieutenant Mark Antony defeated Caesar's assassins Brutus and Cassius in 42 BC, but turned against each other; the final defeat of Mark Antony and his ally Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, the Senate's grant of extraordinary powers to Octavian as Augustus in 27 BC – which made him the first Roman emperor – thus ended the Republic. Since the foundation of Rome, its rulers had been monarchs, elected for life by the patrician noblemen who made up the Roman Senate; the last Roman king was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. In the traditional histories, Tarquin was expelled in 509 because his son Sextus Tarquinius had raped the noblewoman Lucretia, who afterwards took her own life. Lucretia's father, her husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Tarquin's nephew Lucius Junius Brutus mustered support from the Senate and army, forced Tarquin into exile in Etruria.
The Senate agreed to abolish kingship. Most of the king's former functions were transferred to two consuls, who were elected to office for a term of one year; each consul had the capacity to act as a check on his colleague, if necessary through the same power of veto that the kings had held. If a consul abused his powers in office, he could be prosecuted. Brutus and Collatinus became Republican Rome's first consuls. Despite Collatinus' role in the creation of the Republic, he belonged to the same family as the former king, was forced to abdicate his office and leave Rome, he was replaced as co-consul by Publius Valerius Publicola. Most modern scholarship describes these events as the quasi-mythological detailing of an aristocratic coup within Tarquin's own family, not a popular revolution, they fit a narrative of a personal vengeance against a tyrant leading to his overthrow, common among Greek cities and theorised by Aristotle
Seleucus I Nicator
Seleucus I Nicator was one of the Diadochi. Having served as an infantry general under Alexander the Great, he assumed the title of basileus and established the Seleucid Empire over much of the territory in the Near East which Alexander had conquered. After the death of Alexander in June 323 BC, Seleucus supported Perdiccas, the regent of Alexander's empire, was appointed Commander of the Companions and chiliarch at the Partition of Babylon in 323 BC. However, after the outbreak of the Wars of the Diadochi in 322, Perdiccas' military failures against Ptolemy in Egypt led to the mutiny of his troops in Pelusium. Perdiccas was betrayed and assassinated in a conspiracy by Seleucus and Antigenes in Pelusium sometime in either 321 or 320 BC. At the Partition of Triparadisus in 321 BC, Seleucus was appointed Satrap of Babylon under the new regent Antipater, but immediately, the wars between the Diadochi resumed and Antigonus forced Seleucus to flee Babylon. Seleucus was only able to return to Babylon in 312 BC with the support of Ptolemy.
From 312 BC, Seleucus ruthlessly expanded his dominions and conquered the Persian and Median lands. Seleucus ruled not only the entire enormous eastern part of Alexander's empire. Seleucus' wars took him as far as India, after two years of war, he was defeated by the armies of the Maurya Empire and made peace by marrying his daughter to king Chandragupta, whereupon he was rewarded a considerable force of 500 war elephants, which would play a decisive role against Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC and against Lysimachus at the Battle of Corupedium in 281 BC. Seleucus' victories against Antigonus and Lysimachus left the Seleucid dynasty unopposed in Asia and in Anatolia. However, Seleucus hoped to take control of Lysimachus' European territories Thrace and Macedon itself, but upon arriving in Thrace in 281 BC, Seleucus was assassinated by Ptolemy Ceraunus, who had taken refuge at the Seleucid court with his sister Lysandra. The assassination of Seleucus destroyed Seleucid prospects in Thrace and Macedon, paved the way for Ptolemy Ceraunus to absorb much of Lysimachus' former power in Macedon.
Seleucus was succeeded by his son Antiochus I as ruler of the Seleucid empire. Seleucus founded a number of new cities during his reign, including Antioch and in particular Seleucia on the Tigris, the new capital of the Seleucid Empire, a foundation that depopulated Babylon. Seleucus was the son of Antiochus. Historian Junianus Justinus claims that Antiochus was one of Philip II of Macedon's generals, but no such general is mentioned in any other sources, nothing is known of his supposed career under Philip, it is possible. Seleucus' mother was called Laodice, but nothing else is known of her. Seleucus named a number of cities after his parents. Seleucus was born in Europos, located in the northern part of Macedonia. Just a year before his birth, the Paeonians invaded the region. Philip defeated the invaders and only a few years utterly subdued them under Macedonian rule. Seleucus' year of birth is unclear. Justin claims he was 77 years old during the battle of Corupedium, which would place his year of birth at 358 BC.
Appianus tells us Seleucus was 73 years old during the battle, which means 354 BC would be the year of birth. Eusebius of Caesarea, mentions the age of 75, thus the year 356 BC, making Seleucus the same age as Alexander the Great; this is most propaganda on Seleucus' part to make him seem comparable to Alexander. As a teenager, Seleucus was chosen to serve as the king's page, it was customary for all male offspring of noble families to first serve in this position and as officers in the king's army. A number of legends, similar to those told of Alexander the Great, were told of Seleucus, it was said Antiochus told his son before he left to battle the Persians with Alexander that his real father was the god Apollo. The god had left a ring with a picture of an anchor as a gift to Laodice. Seleucus had a birthmark shaped like an anchor, it was told that Seleucus' sons and grandsons had similar birthmarks. The story is similar to the one told about Alexander. Most the story is propaganda by Seleucus, who invented the story to present himself as the natural successor of Alexander.
John Malalas tells us Seleucus had a sister called Didymeia, who had sons called Nicanor and Nicomedes. It is most the sons are fictitious. Didymeia might refer to the oracle of Apollo in Didyma near Miletus, it has been suggested that Ptolemy was the uncle of Seleucus. In spring 334 BC, as a young man of about twenty-three, Seleucus accompanied Alexander into Asia. By the time of the Indian campaigns beginning in late in 327 BC, he had risen to the command of the élite infantry corps in the Macedonian army, the "Shield-bearers", it is said by Arrian that when Alexander crossed the Hydaspes river on a boat, he was accompanied by Perdiccas, Ptolemy I Soter and Seleucus. During the subsequent Battle of the Hydaspes, Seleucus led his troops against the elephants of King Porus, it is that Seleucus had no role in the actual planning of the battle. He is not mentioned as holding any major independent position during the battle, for example, Hephaistion and Leonnatus – each of whom had sizable detachments under his control.
Seleucus' Royal Hypaspist
Heracles of Macedon
Heracles of Macedon was a reputed illegitimate son of Alexander the Great of Macedon by Barsine, daughter of Satrap Artabazus of Phrygia. Heracles was named after the Greek mythological hero of the same name, from whom the Argeads claimed descent, it can not be established definitively. Of the ancient sources, both Plutarch and Justin mention Barsine and Heracles but Arrian in the Alexander's Anabasis mentions neither. Plutarch recounts that Alexander took Barsine as his mistress, but on the arguably spurious grounds that she was recommended to him by Parmenion. Of Barsine, Mary Renault states that: If Heracles were Alexander’s illegitimate child it raises the pointed question as to why he, as Alexander’s only living son at the time of his death, was not drawn into the succession disputes, why he was passed over in favour of Philip Arrhidaeus - himself illegitimate -, only a son of Alexander’s father Philip, thus a more distant claimant than Heracles. Renault concludes that the romance with Barsine was invented retrospectively to validate Heracles' parentage.
Either way, Heracles lived in obscurity until Alexander IV's murder by Cassander in 310 BC or 309 BC. At that point Polyperchon, a regent of Macedon, replaced by Cassander and had all but disappeared for the previous six years, began championing Heracles as Alexander's true heir, Polyperchon began forming an army. Instead of fighting, Cassander negotiated with Polyperchon. By offering Polyperchon various bribes such as a sinecure and a large number of talents, Cassander persuaded him to murder Heracles, Polyperchon retired to obscurity once more. A detailed biography of Heracles' mother Barsine Children of Alexander III the Great on Web Archive A genealogical tree of Heracles
