Seleucid era and its correlation with other ancient chronological systems

Table of contents:

A brief background ▪ Conversion table for Seleucid years 1→281 ▪ Illustrations for Seleucid years 282→579 ▪

Images of the coins ▪ Sources

This page shows how the years of the Seleucid era correlate with the years before/after the Birth of Christ (i.e. B.C./A.D.); with the regnal years of corresponding Roman emperors; and with a number of some other eras.

The Seleucid era began on October 1, 312 B.C., after Alexander the Great's (lived 356–323 B.C.) military leader Seleucus I Nicator (lived 358–281 B.C.) conquered Babylon (present-day Iraq) earlier that same 312 B.C.

Seleucid Era is known as «Anno Græcorum», i.e. «year of the Greeks» [see source 5], hence its abbreviations are: SE and AG. Besides the Seleucid Empire itself, this era has been in use among numerous Hellenistic civilizations, as well as later by the Parthians.

Now, let's take a look at the conversion tables! For the years of the Seleucid era from the 1^st to the 281^st inclusive, the table is given below:

Moving on, for the years of the Seleucid era from 282^nd to 579^th, for which it is important to show their correlation with the years B.C./A.D., with the Regnal Dates of the rulers of the Roman Empire, as well as with some other eras, below are 6 illustrations from the book [4] (see the SOURCES section at the very bottom of this page):

Let's illustrate the theoretical material provided above. The photo below is a tetradrachm minted in the Seleucid Empire during the reign of Alexander I Balas (died in 145 BC, ruler of the Seleucid State since 152 or 150 BC).

To the right from the eagle there are the characters denoting date: ΔΞΡ (see the Bithynian system to recall the correspondence of numerical values to the Greek letters), i.e. (from left to right) 4 + 60 + 100 = 164^th year of the Seleucid era → 149/148 B.C.

For more illustrations on this system, as well as illustrated examples of other chronological systems used in antiquity (including: Actium, Pompeian, Pergamon, etc), see sources [6] и [7].

SOURCES:

1. Elias Bickerman — [RUS] «ХРОНОЛОГИЯ ДРЕВНЕГО МИРА. Ближний Восток и античность» (1975), pages 66–68;

2. Elias Bickerman — [RUS] «Государство Селевкидов» (1985 [1938]), pages 197–220;

3. Zakharov E. V., Smirnov S. V. — [RUS] article «Монеты государства Селевкидов из собрания Государственного Исторического Музея» (Вестник Древней Истории, volume 77 № 3, 2017, pages 720–751 as well as the inserts with coin illustrations: the Tables I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X);

4. David R. Sear — «Greek Imperial Coins and their Values», 1982, reprint of 2001. The dates and eras of interest are presented on pages XXV–XXXI (pages with the Roman numbering!).

5. Description of the Seleucid era on Wikipedia (articles in Russian and in English).

6. Illustrated article [RUS] «Correlation of the different ancient chronological systems» from the web-site coins.msk.ru.

7. Illustrated article [RUS] «The dating of provincial coins» from the web-site coins.msk.ru (eras mentioned there are as follows: Seleucid, Pompeian, Caesarean (Caesarea), Actium, Pontian (also known as Bithynian, or Bosporan); as well as different provincial, local and urban eras).

This article was published on March 16^th, 2024.