Thursday, October 23, 2025
6:00 PM - 7:15 PM (ET)
PALMTN Emerson Auditorium
Event Type
Lecture
Contact
Department
Classics
Link
http://ems.skidmore.edu/MasterCalendar/EventDetails.aspx?EventDetailId=37429
FALL CLASSICS LECTURE
Professor Ben Abbott
Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics
EMPIRE AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
Colonization and Propaganda in Hellenistic Central Asia
Thursday, October 23, 2025
6:00 PM • Emerson Auditorium
This talk explores the colonizing activity of the early Seleucid Empire in Central Asia (ca. 311–261 BCE). While Central Asia has often been overlooked as an insignificant region on the edge of the Hellenistic world, new archaeological evidence reveals that the Seleucids heavily invested time and resources here into an unprecedented program of colonization. As this archaeological data sheds new light on this period, we can detect for the first time how the early Seleucid kings exerted imperial control by fabricating a fictional narrative of the past.