Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire

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Description

In this eye-opening book, Paul J. Kosmin explains how the Seleucid Empire’s invention of a new more or less time―and the rebellions against this worldview―transformed the best 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 keep an eye on behavior, this Graeco-Macedonian imperial power introduced a linear and transcendent conception of time. Under Seleucid rule, time no longer restarted with every new monarch. As a substitute, regularly numbered years, just like the system we use these days―continuous, irreversible, accumulating―became the de facto measure of historical duration. This new temporality, propagated during the empire, changed how people did business, recorded events, and oriented themselves to the larger world. Challenging this order, then again, 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.

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