page_title: Seleucia Pieria
section_title: Seleucid period
hierarchical_section_title: Seleucia Pieria / History / Seleucid period
caption_attribution_description: English: struck in 215-217 AD obverse: laureate head right AVT·K·M·A· ·ANTΩNEINOC CEB reverse: eagle facing, standing on thunderbolt, head right, wreath in beak ΔHMAPX·EΞ·_VΠATO&#160;? rederence: Bellinger 76; Prieur 1188 var. (distribution of obv. legend)
context_page_description: Seleucia in Pieria, also known in English as Seleucia by the Sea, and later named Suedia, was a Hellenistic town, the seaport of Antioch ad Orontes, the Seleucid capital, modern Antakya. The city was built slightly to the north of the estuary of the river Orontes, between small rivers on the western slopes of the Coryphaeus, one of the southern summits of the Amanus Mountains.
  According to Pausanias and Malalas, there was a previous city here named Palaeopolis. At present, it is located at the seaside village of Çevlik
  near the town of Samandağ in the Hatay Province of Turkey. Seleucia, Apamea, Laodicea, and Antioch formed the Syrian tetrapolis.
context_section_description: Seleucia Pieria was founded in ca. 300 BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of the successors of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great and the founder of the Seleucid Empire. The Macedonians called the landscape Pieria, after a district in their homeland that was also between the sea and a mountain range (the Olympus).
  When Seleucus I was murdered on his way to Macedon in 281 BC, his son, Antiochus I, buried his ashes in a building called "Nikatoreion", situated on Seleucia.
  The city was of great importance in the struggle between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies; it was captured by Ptolemy Euergetes in 246 BC. As the Ptolemies (Lagids) and Seleucids fought over the city, it changed hands several times until 219 BC, when the Seleucid Antiochus III the Great recaptured it during the Fourth Syrian War (219–217 BC) his general Ardys is recorded as having distinguished himself during the siege. Then it obtained its freedom and kept it even to the end of the Roman occupation. It had long enjoyed the right of coinage.
caption: silver tetradrachm struck in Seleucia by Caracalla 215–217 AD
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