How could the fall of the Arche Seleukeia have been prevented?

[Basileus Seleukeia]

This is a question that has bugged me for quite a time, and I think it's an interesting subject to discuss.
One problem of the realm was the seleucid king being away for fighting nearly everytime, so administration was a nightmare, satraps had to be independent which fed thoughts of complete independence. The seleucid kings should have been more like the ptolemaic pharaos, staying in the capital and sending trustworthy generals to conquer regions . With this steps, more regions could have been put under the direct control of the king.
The other problem was that during the reign of nearly every king, some stupid relative came and made himself king in anatolia or somewhere, so he had to be ''persuaded'' to leave that post. Unfortunately I do not know any way how that could have been prevented.
Another problem: A lot of eastern provinces were under the controle of easterners. They had no thoughts of loyalty, why should they? More Makedonians should have been there to keep loyalty up.
And of course: The degeneration of the cavalry in the ''Hammer and Anvil'' tactic. Easy to erase.

But that are just my thoughts, I'm not a gigantic expert anyway, all what I know do I know from Wikipedia. So feel free to make suggestions.

[Boyar Son]

Sorounded by enemies too.

[Sarcasm]

You couldn't. You could have postponed it for a while but ultimately, all empires crumble.

[Boyar Son]

Yes eventually, but its up to the people to see if they care enough to serve there country and protect it.

EDIT- England has been around for a long time, and they're still here

[Sarcasm]

Not an empire anymore, now is it?

[Boyar Son]

But its still here! along with france.. which is waay older

[Foot]

But now you are talking about two different things. Seleukeia had an empire that was lost, but the actual city lasted long after that. England had an empire that was lost, but the actual kingdom is still around. What exactly are you asking?

Foot

[Sir Edward]

But its still here! along with france.. which is waay older

France may not be the best example for your arguemnt, seeing how they got devestated by fascist and in the past 300 or so years have had roughly 20 different constitutions.

[Boyar Son]

Oops going off target I'm sorry.

My response was to "ultimately all empires crumble" and thats when I brought in England ond so forth...

[Foot]

But England's empire did crumble, so I don't get how that is refutation. As I said, Seleukeia was still around, as a city state, long after the empire was lost. Obviously the dynasty changed, but that has happened often enough in England's past too.

Foot

[Callahan9119]

but england ist an empire, and it was a couple bad choices by hitler away from maybe not even being the U.K.

thats fate or fortune, plenty of cities from seleucia are around in some form or another, world goverment keeps "england" relevant and france barely

and the british "empire" was about as sustainable as the seleucids was...which is not very sustainable

[Boyar Son]

well then i didnt separate country and empire. but the point is England is still here.

[keravnos]

Back to Seleukeia, I have thought about this and here are my

1. Absolutely occupy Egypt, much like later Seleukids would have. This would destroy n.1 enemy and add a LOT of much needed income in the treasury. It would also close down a very difficult front and allow the Seleukids to focus their attention on their northern borders.

2. Much better co-operation with the local Persians, Medes, Arachosians. In spite of what you say, that eastern satrapies were govenred by locals, the Seleukid administration wasn't really good on them, in fact it was all Hellenic, and as the local Persians thought they had nothing to lose they rebelled. If they were to have made it a joint Hellenic-Persian co-dominium like the way I consider Alexander had conceived ruling his empire, A.Seleukeia might have survived more. It wouldn't have been easy, as "Czechoslovakias" are more common than "Canadas" in history. Still, had it worked, it would prevent the downfall.

3. Hannibal would somehow win and destroy Romani power. In all honesty, Had Antiochos 3 not lost against the Romani, A. Seleukeia would have been more longlasting than it was. It was only after the defeat against the Romani and the destruction of most of AS standing army that Pahlavi started becoming a major threat which became fatal for the kingdom.

4. (and most difficult of all), find a way to limit civil strife, war upon ascension to throne. In all honesty an empire who fight a civil war upon a king coming to power isn't exactly on the best path to survival. That or find a way to limit its reprecussions (Much like Sassanids did). I don't know how feasible that would be though, as even if the empire was crumbling, the only thing some people seeemed to care about was the ascencionto a non-existant throne, basically.

[Barbarossa82]

But its still here! along with france.. which is waay older

Errr....What??

[Geoffrey S]

well then i didnt separate country and empire. but the point is England is still here.

Which isn't really a point at all in this discussion, as has been made clear. Of course England is still here however in a form drastically different from when it was an empire; Seleukeia lost its empire but remained in existence as a regular city state for a while after that. Both are former centres of an empire remaining as independant states.

[mAIOR]

DOn't forget mentioning better Rullers... A.Seleukeia had realy lame kings apart from some exeptions. And, with Antiochus III (the one that inroduced Catraphacts I believe) they managed to hold the empire together that is until Pompey came and bribed them of their feet. so basically, they were too big for their managing skills.

Chers...

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

Even if the romans would have been defeated, eventually AS would have crumbled apart.

You don`t need a large army to kill a great empire. If you find just the right moment in history (and that right moment eventually comes), the empire will crumble appart easyly and will fall to conquest.

It`s not a matter of centuryes of decadence... less than 10 years of decadence can bring your empire down !

The Assyrians... they where the strongest people in Middle East under Assurbanipal, and under his son, Essar-Haddon, their entire empire crumbled appart !

Lydians, Babilonians... they had the glory and crumbled apart in less then a year.

Persians... again crumbled appart easyly.

Sassanian persian dinasty.... 30 000 arabs defeated them utterly in a matter of years, and imagine that less than 15 years before the Arabs came, the Sassanians have been a superpower having a strong grasp on all the Middle East, and almost wiped out completely the Byzantines !

This kind of things happen....
Social, echonomic, military and administrative reforms may make the fall of the empire longer (as it was in the case of the Roman, or Ottoman empire, but they cannot save you in the long term)

[KARTLOS]

Sassanian persian dinasty.... 30 000 arabs defeated them utterly in a matter of years, and imagine that less than 15 years before the Arabs came, the Sassanians have been a superpower having a strong grasp on all the Middle East, and almost wiped out completely the Byzantines !

forget the fall of the seleukia, the arab invasion and islamification of persia, now that was a true catastrophe!

[Basileus Seleukeia]

Argh, perhaps I should have formulated my question better: How could the fall of the Arche Seleukeia been delayed? I know that every empire falls apart but Eastern-Rome existed until 1453, which is nearly 2000 Years. Western Rome existed even longer, if you add the german emperors, who were nothing more than west-roman emperors.
On defeating Ptolemaics: Yes, defeating them would have helped very much, actually one seleucid king conquered all of North-Egypt until the romans forced him to give it back (that was after Antiochos III, I believe)
But, controling these regions would have been even harder than the eastern ones: The Galatians have been very loyal to the Pharaoh and lived nearly everywhere, so they would do some guerrilia like war to restore his power.
And these Machimoi even revolted in central ptolemaic territory, where the military was very strong. So you cant count on them either. So there are just the Macedonians and Greeks of Seleucid Core-land left, because a lot of these who have lived in egypt owed their power to the Ptolemies means:
high loyalty (not necessarily, the power of some could have even been improved by friendly Seleucid governors so they would be loyal to them)
And a revolt in Egypt would draw Seleukeia's eye to south, so north, east and west would be nearly undefended...
And I have come to the conclusion that they should really have had more confidence in their eastern people, as I now know these people were forced to rebellion straight on.

[Ailfertes]

Note: The german emperors didn't have any noticeable power at all in the middle ages (with some exceptions). They were elected, and most of them were just symbols of something that didn't exist.

I agree however that one of the causes certainly was the weak heirs that every dynasty has to cope with sometimes. A much better solution seems to be the Julian-Claudian one, namely adopting your heir rather than some Salic inheritance law, namely your oldest son being the heir.

[Redigo]

I'm not sure it could've lasted much longer, even in a vacuum. I can't think of a single ethnically-diverse land-based empire that lasted for any great length of time before the modern period.

...though I'm sure several are about to be listed.

This also goes to why the England/France debate misses the point, namely that they're still England/France because the people who live there are English and French. The question isn't maintenance of nationhood, but maintenance of empire.

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

forget the fall of the seleukia, the arab invasion and islamification of persia, now that was a true catastrophe!

I totally agree !

This also goes to why the England/France debate misses the point, namely that they're still England/France because the people who live there are English and French. The question isn't maintenance of nationhood, but maintenance of empire.

The same with the Seleukids.. greeks survived, but their empires fall appart.

[Boyar Son]

Which isn't really a point at all in this discussion, as has been made clear. Of course England is still here however in a form drastically different from when it was an empire; Seleukeia lost its empire but remained in existence as a regular city state for a while after that. Both are former centres of an empire remaining as independant states.

Shees people dont tear me to shreds, I went off target now my posts are being torn apart with replies like "Which isn't really a point at all in this discussion".

@Barbarossa82, Huh?

Stronger government would've helped imensely. Maybe the most important thing.

[CaesarAugustus]

Sassanian persian dinasty.... 30 000 arabs defeated them utterly in a matter of years, and imagine that less than 15 years before the Arabs came, the Sassanians have been a superpower having a strong grasp on all the Middle East, and almost wiped out completely the Byzantines !

That's just pathetic, I've lost all faith in everything Persian...


As for the Seleucids, the biggest factor that led to their decline was poor leadership and rebellious satrapies like Baktria and Parthia, especially. Also, thier continued battles with the Ptolemies of Egypt ate up a lot of their rescources. They just couldn't accept that that part of Alexander's empire wasn't theirs, and dedicate their efforts to secure their own borders.

[abou]

Seleukid leadership was hardly poor. They weren't worse than anyone else around them and instead managed to have a number of particularly excellent leaders whose biggest problems were sheer bad luck. Also, Parthia was hardly a rebelious satrap in the way you're thinking as no actual Selekid satrap rebelled in Parthia. Finally, if it wasn't for Rome's interference, Antiochus IV would have easily taken Alexandria. Don't neglect the problems the Ptolemaioi caused the Seleukids by funding dissidents.

[Zarax]

If the seleukids didn't try to expand out of anatolia pissing off Rome in the process chances are they would have fared better, Antiochus (III or IV, which was "the great"?) managed to kind of have a puppet pharaoh installed in egypt for a few years (which is what ultimately made the romans move as until late republic their policy towards the area was "don't touch my breadbasket")...

[Foot]

That's just pathetic, I've lost all faith in everything Persian...

Not really. How do you best defeat an army of heavily armed and armoured cavalry? Light cavalry. The arabs pushed out of the desert with the exact weapons needed to bring the sassanids to their knees. Obviously there were factors, but the military weakness of the persian heavy horse was expertly utilised by the Arabic army.

Foot

[CaesarAugustus]

If the Seleucid controlled Egypt thay might also make the Romans think twice about attacking them, since they controlled the Romans' (main) breadbasket....

[Zarax]

They didn't have direct control, they just were able to meddle into a small succession war into the ptolemaic dinasty and have a friendly ruler installed for a few years, even though this was lost after magnesia...

[The Errant]

That's just pathetic, I've lost all faith in everything Persian....

Your rather harsh on them. The Sassanids spent the last three centuries of their reign in an almost constant state of war with the Byzantines. They beat Belisarius and other Byzantine commanders on a number of occasions. They manage to grab all of Asia Minor and Egypt from the Byzantines and put Constantinople under siege.

When they fell the Byzantines had just mounted a counterinvasion into their territory, which had devastated parts of the Sassanid Empire. On top of that they had dynastic struggles with pretenders to the throne and the aristocracy trying to curtail the King of kings power in favor of their own intrests.

They actually beat back the first arab invasion but couldn't keep fighting with the nobles meddling in the governance of the state. Even after their capital fell after a long siege parts of Persia kept resisting the arabs for decades before being conquered.

One of the reasons they converted to Islam was that the arab conquerors imposed a "faith tax" on all non believers. Basically anyone who wasn't a moslem.

The great byzantine emperor did not fare any better against the arabs. He got beaten in Syria and lost Egypt, Africa and Palestine.

Both the Sassanids and the Byzantines had kept warring for centuries and were exhausted and almost broke. Small wonder that a bunch of religious fanatics on a holy war could beat them. The Byzantines were lucky that the arabs focused on the Sassanids rather than them. If they hadn't, I doubt in their weakened state they could have managed to survive any better.