A Pieria Seleucia

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A Pieria Seleucia

Postby Rapier09 » Thu Feb 10, 2011 8:05 pm

A forgotten city by a forgotten people,founded by a forgotten man. In this case Pieria means pier.

Not a bad little link though:
http://www.angelfire.com/sd/scevko/history2.html

Most of the text after the images is quite accurate.It should be noted that at least one Seleucid King sacrificed a pig in the Jewish High temple afterwards,so use of sacrifice with that particular people was quite common.The Romans who had a lot of contacts with the Seleucids, upon ruling Antioch,sacrificed many animals on the altars.

A city of Kings which had seen certainly better days.

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Antigonos, who caused a great confusion in Anatolia, was killed in a struggle in İpsos (at the southern feet of Sultan Mountains near Çay Country) in 301 BC. In this fight, the war elephants, that Seleucos brought from India, had important role. After this important fight, Seleucos became the inheritor of Alexander in the region between Anatolia and India.

During Ipsos War, the capital city of Seleucos was Seleucia near Tigris (Dicle) and the capital city of Antigonos was Antigonia at 8km. north of Antakya.

After war Seleucos, who became the ruler of a very wide area, realised that Seleucia, which was founded near Dicle was not a suitable place to be a capital city.

The Seleucoslar , who was an important state in history, had to reach the coasts to widen their land, to rule their neighbours and to have the Mediterranean Commerce in their hands. So they had to carry the capital city of Seleucos’s kingdom to west and found a new capital city there. Since Seleucia Pieria, which was one of the most beautiful harbours of Mediterranean, was found suitable to be the new capital because of its topography, its open location to sea and its acropolis which was very hard to capture, so Seleucia Pieria (today it is Samandağ, a country of Antakya, its previous name was Süveydiye) was founded as the capital city on April of 300 BC. The rule of the country was carried from Seleucia near Tigris (Dicle) to Seleucia near the sea.

There was an interesting mythological story about the foundation of the city. According to Malalas, Seleucos NicatorI went to Casius Mountain (Kel Dağı) and he sacrificed for Zeus to send him a sign to determine the location of the new capital city. An eagle seized the sacrificed meat, it flew for a long time and released the meat. So it was believed that the location of Seleucia Pieria was determined by Zeus. They suddenly built a tomb and its domination was given to Zeus.

The information about the foundation of Seleucia differ from each other in a few points. When Diodor dealt with the harbour cities which was founded in 305 BC, he didn’t mention Seleucia. Although Seleucia was founded at the feet of Amonos Mountains, it wasn’t mentioned when he dealt with the marketing place chain near the sea. This shows that the harbour was founded later. The foundation date of Seleucia was determined as 301 by Wolley and 301-300 by Malalas.

During Seleucos Era, the centre of the kingdom was carried here and Seleucia Pieria became the capital city. The inhabitants of Al-Mina and Sabuni moved here. But they soon realised that this place was not safe. Because Seleucia Pieria was founded near the sea and it was open to possible sea attacks. Also Seleucos didn’t have any navy. Seleucos Nicator soon founded Antiochia (Antakya) which had the same name as his father.

The capital was carried to the new city. Antiochia was a day further to Seleucia and its location was away from the coast which made it safe against the possible attacks. Seleucoslar built many new cities in order to consolidate the state order. Seleucoslar themselves founded 16 Antiochia, 9 Seleucia, 5 Laodicia and 3 Apemeia. Seleucia was his own name, Antiochia was his father’s name, Apemia (Hums) was his wife’s name and Laodicia (Laskiye) was his mother’s name. To separate Seleucia near Al-Mina from the others, it was named as Pieria.
Rapier09
 

Re: A Pieria Seleucia

Postby Caliban » Sun Feb 27, 2011 11:37 am

There was an interesting mythological story about the foundation of this post
"If you sit still the birds shit on you, even Buddha, life's short so get out there and do something"
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