months later, left to his dynastic successors an Asiatic empire of
seventy-two provinces, very nearly equal to Alexander's, with important
exceptions in Asia Minor.

In Asia Minor neither Seleucus nor the Seleucids ever held anything
effectively except the main lines of communication from East to West and
the district in which these come down to the Aegean Sea. The south
coast, as has been said, remained in Egyptian hands almost all through
the Seleucid period. The southwest obeyed the island republic of Rhodes.
Most of the Greek maritime cities of the northwest and north kept their
freedom more or less inviolate; while inland a purely Greek monarchy,
that of Pergamum, gradually extended its sway up to the central desert.
In the north a formidable barrier to Seleucid expansion arose within
five years of Seleucus' death, namely, a settlement of Gauls who had
been invited across the straits by a king of Bithynia. After charging
and raiding in all directions these intractable allies were penned by
the repeated efforts of both the Seleucid and the Pergamene kings into
the upper Sakaria basin (henceforth to be known as Galatia) and there
they formed a screen behind which Bithynia and Paphlagonia maintained
sturdy independence. The north-east also was the seat of independent
monarchies. Cappadocia, Pontus and Armenia, ruled by princes of Iranian
origin, were never integral parts of the Seleucid Empire, though
consistently friendly to its rulers. Finally, in the hill-regions of the
centre, as of the coasts, the Seleucid writ did not run.

Looked at as a whole, however, and not only from a Seleucid point of
view, the Ancient East, during the century following Seleucus' death
(forty-three years after Alexander's), was dominated politically by
Hellenes over fully nine-tenths of its area. About those parts of it
held by cities actually Greek, or by Pergamum, no more need be said. As