ears
that succeeded Ipsus, and Seleucus in a short time made it his ordinary
residence. The change weakened the ties which bound the Empire together,
offended the bulk of the Asiatics, who saw their monarch withdraw from
them into a remote region, and particularly loosened the grasp of the
government on those more eastern districts which were at once furthest
from the new metropolis and least assimilated to the Hellenic character.
Among the causes which led to the disintegration of the Seleucid
kingdom, there is none that deserves so well to be considered the
main cause as this. It was calculated at once to produce the desire to
revolt, and to render the reduction of revolted provinces difficult,
if not impossible. The evil day, however, might have been indefinitely
delayed had the Seleucid princes either established and maintained
through their Empire a vigorous and effective administration, or
abstained from entangling themselves in wars with their neighbors in the
West, the Ptolemies and the princes of Asia Minor.

But the organization of the Empire was unsatisfactory. Instead of
pursuing the system inaugurated by Alexander and seeking to weld
the heterogeneous elements of which his kingdom was composed into a
homogeneous whole, instead of at once conciliating and elevating
the Asiatics by uniting them with the Macedonians and the Greeks, by
promoting intermarriage and social intercourse between the two classes
of his subjects, educating the Asiatics in Greek ideas and Greek
schools, opening his court to them, promoting them to high employments,
making them feel that they were as much valued and as well cared for as
the people of the conquering race, the first Seleucus, and after him
his successors, fell back upon the old simpler, ruder system, the system
pursued before Alexander's time by the Persians, and before them perhaps
by the Medes--the system most congenial to human laziness and human
pride--that of governing a nation of slaves by means of a class
of victorious aliens. Seleucus divided his empire into satrapies,
seventy-two in number. He bestowed the office of satrap on none but
Macedonians and Greeks. The standing army, by which he maintained his
authority, was indeed composed in the main of Asiatics, disciplined
after the Greek model; but it was officered entirely by men of Greek or
Macedonian parentage. Nothing was done to keep up the self-respect of
Asiatics, or to soften the unpleasantness that must alw