[Illustration: THE TYCHE OF ANTIOCH Vatican, Rome] How then did Seleucus seek to administer this vast agglomeration of peoples? Briefly he adopted the practice of Alexander. His schemes of military aggrandizement were shot through and through with efforts for the encouragement of commercial, scientific and artistic enterprises. He created centres of Greek influence all over his Empire. The foundation of Antioch, on the Orontes, furnishes a typical instance of the method of the Seleucidæ. Syria, the stretch of fertile country which bridges Europe and Asia as well as Africa and Asia, was clearly the keystone of the empire which Seleucus sought to establish. How could Syria be converted into an Asian Macedonia? As a first step Seleucus planned three cities in the Orontes Valley, through which the regular land-routes to Babylonia and Persia passed. Seleucia, in Pieria, guarded the mouth of the Orontes. Farther east was Apamea. At the spot where the Orontes ceased to be navigable, Antioch arose. Seleucus peopled the new city with a mixed population drawn largely from Macedonia and partly from Crete and Cyprus. It became the first city in the western world at the time. How close the contact with Greek ideas was in such a town as Antioch can be judged from the famous Vatican marble known as the “Tyche of Antioch.” The figure with the mural crown represents the tutelar goddess of the city. Holding the symbols of fertility in her hand, she sits upon the rocks above the Orontes. The sculptor, Eutychides of Sicyon, has carried out his task with the reserve and appreciation of formal effect which we should expect from a pupil or follower of Lysippus. But the whole conception lacks the emotional force of a really great Hellenic work. Comparing it with, say, the “Zeus Otricoli” or the “Hera Ludovisi,” we feel that centuries of time separate the two works. The “Tyche of Antioch” is a sound piece of work; it can hardly be said to be profound. It has the graces of a blossom reared in an alien soil. The sculptor is not working under the impulse of an overpowering emotion. Indeed it is easy to see that the old civic pride which had found vent in the Parthenon marbles was impossible in the Seleucidean Empire. A vigorous political life was out of the question in the semi-oriental kingdom. As rulers, the Seleucid princes have been likened to Albanian chiefs. Their position certainly had the smallest resemblance to the democratic tyrants of earlier Greece. The coins of the Seleucid rulers prove that even the facial type soon lost its Hellenic purity. The self-respect and self-control which had kept the actions of an Athenian within bounds were lost. We read of Antiochus IV. being carried by mummers into his own banqueting-hall as “a swaddled figure,” until, “at the first note of the symphonia, the figure started from its wrappings and there stood the king naked.” Seeing that “Nothing other than a noble aim Up from its depths can stir humanity,”