The rich pastures of Media and Armenia furnished excellent horses.  Bactria gave an inexhaustible supply of camels.  Elephants in large numbers were readily procurable from India.  Gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, were furnished by several of the provinces, and precious stones of various kinds abounded.  Moreover, for above ten centuries, the precious metals and the most valuable kinds of merchandise had flowed from every quarter into the region; and though the Macedonians may have carried off, or wasted, a considerable quantity of both, yet the accumulations of ages withstood the drain, and the hoarded wealth which had come down from Assyrian, Babylonian, and Median times was to be found in the days of Seleucus chiefly within the limits of his Empire.

The situation which nature pointed out as most suitable for the capital of a kingdom having the extension that has been here indicated was some portion of the Mesopotamian valley, which was at once central and fertile.  The empire of Seleucus might have been conveniently ruled from the site of the ancient Nineveh, or from either of the two still existing and still flourishing cities of Susa and Babylon.  The impetus given to commerce by the circumstances of the time rendered a site near the sea preferable to one so remote as that of Nineveh, and the same consideration made a position on the Tigris or Euphrates more advantageous than one upon a smaller river.  So far, all pointed to Babylon as the natural and best metropolis; and it was further in favor of that place that its merits had struck the Great Conqueror, who had designed to make it the capital of his own still vaster Empire.  Accordingly Babylon was Seleucus’s first choice; and there his Court was held for some years previously to his march against Antigonus.  But either certain disadvantages were found to attach to Babylon as a residence, or the mere love of variety and change caused him very shortly to repent of his selection, and to transfer his capital to another site.  He founded, and built with great rapidity, the city of Seleucia upon the Tigris, at the distance of about forty miles from Babylon, and had transferred thither the seat of government even before B.C. 301.  Thus far, however, no fault had been committed.  The second capital was at least as conveniently placed as the first, and would have served equally well as a centre from which to govern the Empire.  But after Ipsus a further change was made—­a change that was injudicious in the extreme.  Either setting undue store by his newly-acquired western provinces, or over-anxious to keep close watch on his powerful neighbors in those parts, Lysimachus and Ptolemy, Seleucus once more transferred the seat of empire, exchanging this time the valley of the Tigris for that of the Orontes, and the central position of Lower Mesopotamia for almost the extreme western point of his vast territories.  Antioch arose in extraordinary beauty and magnificence during the first few years