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Winner of the Runciman Award Winner of the Charles J. Goodwin Award
"Tells the story of how the Seleucid Empire revolutionized
chronology by picking a Year One and counting from there, rather
than starting a new count, as other states did, each time a new
monarch was crowned...Fascinating." -Harper's In the aftermath of
Alexander the Great's conquests, his successors, the Seleucid
kings, ruled a vast territory stretching from Central Asia and
Anatolia to the Persian Gulf. In 305 BCE, in a radical move to
impose unity and regulate behavior, Seleucus I introduced a linear
conception of time. Time would no longer restart with each new
monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years-continuous and
irreversible-became the de facto measure of historical duration.
This new temporality, propagated throughout the empire and
identical to the system we use today, changed how people did
business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger
world. Some rebellious subjects, eager to resurrect their
pre-Hellenic past, rejected this new approach and created
apocalyptic time frames, predicting the total end of history. In
this magisterial work, Paul Kosmin shows how the Seleucid Empire's
invention of a new kind of time-and the rebellions against this
worldview-had far reaching political and religious consequences,
transforming the way we organize our thoughts about the past,
present, and future. "Without Paul Kosmin's meticulous
investigation of what Seleucus achieved in creating his calendar
without end we would never have been able to comprehend the traces
of it that appear in late antiquity...A magisterial contribution to
this hitherto obscure but clearly important restructuring of time
in the ancient Mediterranean world." -G. W. Bowersock, New York
Review of Books "With erudition, theoretical sophistication, and
meticulous discussion of the sources, Paul Kosmin sheds new light
on the meaning of time, memory, and identity in a multicultural
setting." -Angelos Chaniotis, author of Age of Conquests
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year The Seleucid Empire
(311-64 BCE) was unlike anything the ancient Mediterranean and Near
Eastern worlds had seen. Stretching from present-day Bulgaria to
Tajikistan-the bulk of Alexander the Great's Asian conquests-the
kingdom encompassed a territory of remarkable ethnic, religious,
and linguistic diversity; yet it did not include Macedonia, the
ancestral homeland of the dynasty. The Land of the Elephant Kings
investigates how the Seleucid kings, ruling over lands to which
they had no historic claim, attempted to transform this territory
into a coherent and meaningful space. "This engaging book appeals
to the specialist and non-specialist alike. Kosmin has successfully
brought together a number of disparate fields in a new and creative
way that will cause a reevaluation of how the Seleucids have
traditionally been studied." -Jeffrey D. Lerner, American
Historical Review "It is a useful and bright introduction to
Seleucid ideology, history, and position in the ancient world."
-Jan P. Stronk, American Journal of Archaeology
In this eye-opening book, Paul J. Kosmin explains how the Seleucid
Empire's invention of a new kind of time-and the rebellions against
this worldview-transformed the way we organize our thoughts about
the past, present, and future. In the aftermath of Alexander the
Great's conquests, the Seleucid kings ruled a vast territory
stretching from Central Asia to Anatolia, Armenia to the Persian
Gulf. In a radical move to impose unity and regulate behavior, this
Graeco-Macedonian imperial power introduced a linear and
transcendent conception of time. Under Seleucid rule, time no
longer restarted with each new monarch. Instead, progressively
numbered years, identical to the system we use today-continuous,
irreversible, accumulating-became the de facto measure of
historical duration. This new temporality, propagated throughout
the empire, changed how people did business, recorded events, and
oriented themselves to the larger world. Challenging this order,
however, were rebellious subjects who resurrected their
pre-Hellenistic pasts and created apocalyptic time frames that
predicted the total end of history. The interaction of these
complex and competing temporalities, Kosmin argues, led to
far-reaching religious, intellectual, and political developments.
Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire opens a new window
onto empire, resistance, and the meaning of history in the ancient
world.
Sardis, in western Turkey, was one of the great cities of the
Aegean and Near Eastern worlds for almost a millennium-a political
keystone with a legendary past. Recent archeological work has
revealed how the city was transformed in the century following
Alexander's conquests from a traditional capital to a Greek polis,
setting the stage for its blossoming as a Roman urban center. This
integrated collection of essays by more than a dozen prominent
scholars illuminates a crucial stage, from the early fourth century
to 189 BCE, when it became one of the most important political
centers of Asia Minor. The contributors to this volume are members
of the Hellenistic Sardis Project, a research collaboration between
long-standing expedition members and scholars keenly interested in
the site. These new discussions on the pre-Roman history of Sardis
restore the city in the scholarship of the Hellenistic East and
will be enlightening to scholars of classical archaeology.
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