Through its history, the Seleucid dominion included large parts of the Near East, as well as of the Asian territory of the earlier Achaemenid Persian Empire.

A major center of Hellenistic culture, it attracted a large number of immigrants from Greece who, encouraged by the Seleucids, formed a dominant political elite under the ruling dynasty.

[3] From the mid-second century BC, after its defeat at the hands of the resurgent Parthian Empire, the polity entered a state of instability with slow territorial losses and internecine civil wars.

The Seleucids, now reduced to a rump state occupying a small part of Syria succumbed to the Rome's annexation of their territory in 64 BC under Pompey the Great.

Seleucus (c. 358 – 281 BC) served as an officer of Alexander the Great, commanding the elite infantry corps in the Macedonian army: the "Shield-bearers" (Greek: Ὑπασπισταί, Hypaspistai), later known as the "Silvershields" (Ἀργυράσπιδες, Argyraspides).