Seleucid Empire in 218 B.C.

Seleucid Empire — Spring 218 BC · The Fourth Syrian War.

Heir to the eastern conquests of Alexander, the Seleucid realm of 218 BC stretches in principle from the Aegean coast to the edge of India, the largest of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Its strength is a Graeco-Macedonian military aristocracy planted in a chain of royal cities over an immense patchwork of satrapies, native peoples and client dynasts. Its weakness is the same vastness: distance breeds revolt, and the young king Antiochus III has spent his first years in the saddle holding the empire together.

Antiochus III came to a tottering throne in 223 BC, aged barely twenty. He has since destroyed the great revolt of Molon, satrap of Media, who had seized Babylonia and crowned himself king; forced the submission of Artabazanes of Atropatene; and watched his cousin Achaeus tear Anatolia away as a rival kingdom. Now he presses his true ambition — to recover Coele-Syria from Egypt. In 218 his armies sweep down through Phoenicia toward the Egyptian frontier; the decision will come the next summer on the field of Raphia.