Surviving the Seleucids: Subject Peoples and the Manipulation of Imperial Ideology

Abstract

This thesis seeks to create a new approach to the study of the Seleucid Empire. Existing Seleucid scholarship examines the empire from a ‘top-down’ perspective and is primarily concerned with the activities of the Seleucids themselves. This thesis offers a new approach to the study of the Seleucids by examining the interactions between subject and ruler from the perspective of the subjects themselves. Four case studies, tackling different types of evidence and different scales of communities, show a variety of ways in which subjects of the Seleucids could react to the imperial ideology of their overlords