Antiochus III the Great
The Seleucids re-founded the city as Antiochia Mygdonia (), mentioned for the first time in Polybius' description of the march of Antiochus III the Great against Molon (Polybius, V, 51). The Greek historian Plutarch suggested that the city was populated by descendants of Spartans. Around the 1st century CE, Nisibis () was the home of Judah ben Bethera, who founded a famous yeshiva there.