Seleucus' territorial demands (e.g., the surrender of …
Years: 303BCE - 303BCE
Seleucus' territorial demands (e.g., the surrender of Cilicia and the cities of Tyre and Sidon) soon rupture the previously harmonious relationship with Demetrius, who has retained control of the sea.
The possession of Syria gives him an opening to the Mediterranean, and he immediately founds, as a chief seat of government, the new city of Antioch (modern Antakya, a city in Hatay province in southern Turkey) on the banks of the Orontes River about fourteen miles (twenty-two kilometers) from the Mediterranean at the end of the fourth century CE.
He names the city in memory of his father, Antiochus, and imports colonists from Athens and Macedonia, intending it to be a western counterbalance to his eastern capital of Seleucia.
