The Seleucids have been in power in Syria and the further east for more than two centuries at the beginning of the 1st Cent BC. The Seleucid empire was founded by Seleucus I amidst the scramble by Alexander the Great's generals for a piece of the pie left behind upon his death (the official founding was commemorated on 1 Oct 312 BC).
The Seleucids are most famously remembered in Jewish history as the key player in the hellenization of Jewish society; it was their 'indiscretion' that sparked the Maccabean Revolt by its imposition of pagan sacrifices on the altar in the temple in Jerusalem in 167 (of which see the timeline for the previous century).
Interference in Palestine was, however, only a side-show in Seleucid ambition. Already in 196, Antiochus III had taken Hannibal, one of Rome's most famous enemies, as an advisor in his court, gotten himself into an alliance with the Macedonians and, as a result, was badly mauled by the Romans at the Battle of Magnesia (190). It spelled the beginning of the end for the Seleucids (though they did not know it then). The Romans would never forget. In no small part, the fate that the Jews suffered at the hands of the Seleucids had to do with the dynasty's constant need for money to fight its many wars. Raiding temples (which served as the nations' treasuries in ancient times) and making kings and rulers of whoever would pay the best bribes was, for the Seleucids, the easy way to go. That could not, of course, go on forever and, in 64 BC, Pompey Magnus arrived in Syria and annexed the entire kingdom and turned it into a Roman province, ruled by a Roman legate from then on.
©ALBERITH
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