DescriptionThe Seleukid kingdom came into being when Seleukos, a general of Alexander the Great, being in Mesopotamia at the time, just kept it, and went to war with his fellow generals to establish the zones of influence. The Seleukids hung on for a couple of centuries. Kleopatra was daughter of Ptolemy VI of Egypt, married three Seleukid kings, ruled alone for a bit, then was forced by the opinion of people who mattered to take on her son, Antiochos VIII, as figurehead king. They just couldn’t get their heads around a female leader.The big change that Alexander the Great brought about was the union of the Greek spirit of inquiry with the methods of imperial bureaucracy. His empire fell apart immediately after his death, but the centralizing methods of governance persisted and developed, now here we are.Ancient Coins includes Greek and Roman coins and those of neighbors and successors, geographically from Morocco and Spain all the way to Afghanistan. Date ranges for these begin with the world’s earliest coins of the 8th century BC to, in an extreme case, the end of Byzantine Empire, 1453 AD.
