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Greek city of Seleukeia in Pieria
Silver Tetradrachm 26mm (14.76 grams) Struck City Year (CY) 12, 98/97 B.C.
Reference: HGC 9, 1382
Certification: NGC Ancients AU Strike: 5/5 Surface: 3/5 4241494-015
Veiled, turreted and draped bust of Tyche right, bead-and-reel border.
ΣΕΛΕYΚΕΩΝ-THΣ IEPAΣ-KAI-AYTONOMOY, filleted thunderbolt on throne; BI (date) under throne, ΔΩ monogram in inner right field, all in laurel wreath. HGC 9, 1382.
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 Tyche (meaning “luck”; Roman equivalent: Fortuna) was the presiding tutelary deity that governed the fortune and prosperity of a city, its destiny. She is the daughter of Aphrodite and Zeus or Hermes.
In literature, she might be given various genealogies, as a daughter of Hermes and Aphrodite, or considered as one of the Oceanids, daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, or of Zeus. She was connected with Nemesis and Agathos Daimon (“good spirit”).
The Greek historian Polybius believed that when no cause can be discovered to events such as floods, droughts, frosts or even in politics, then the cause of these events may be fairly attributed to Tyche.
Worship
Increasingly during the Hellenistic period, cities venerated their own specific iconic version of Tyche, wearing a mural crown (a crown like the walls of the city).
Tyche had temples at Caesarea Maritima, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople. In Alexandria the Tychaeon, the temple of Tyche, was described by Libanius as one of the most magnificent of the entire Hellenistic world.
She was uniquely venerated at Itanos in Crete, as Tyche Protogeneia, linked with the Athenian Protogeneia (“firstborn”), daughter of Erechtheus, whose self-sacrifice saved the city.
Stylianos Spyridakis concisely expressed Tyche’s appeal in a Hellenistic world of arbitrary violence and unmeaning reverses: “In the turbulent years of the Epigoni of Alexander, an awareness of the instability of human affairs led people to believe that Tyche, the blind mistress of Fortune, governed mankind with an inconstancy which explained the vicissitudes of the time.”
Depictions
Tyche appears on many coins of the Hellenistic period in the three centuries before the Christian era, especially from cities in the Aegean. Unpredictable turns of fortune drive the complicated plotlines of Hellenistic romances, such as Leucippe and Clitophon or Daphnis and Chloe. She experienced a resurgence in another era of uneasy change, the final days of publicly sanctioned Paganism, between the late-fourth-century emperors Julian and Theodosius I who definitively closed the temples. The effectiveness of her capricious power even achieved respectability in philosophical circles during that generation, though among poets it was a commonplace to revile her for a fickle harlot.
In medieval art, she was depicted as carrying a cornucopia, an emblematic ship’s rudder, and the wheel of fortune, or she may stand on the wheel, presiding over the entire circle of fate.
The constellation of Virgo is sometimes identified as the heavenly figure of Tyche, as well as other goddesses such as Demeter and Astraea.
Seleucia Pieria (Greek Σελεύκεια ἐν Πιερίᾳ, later Suedia) was a town in antiquity, the capital of Seleucus I Nicator. The city was built, a bit north of the estuary of the river Orontes, between small rivers on the western slopes of the Coryphaeus, one of the southern summits of the Amanus Mountains. The Macedonians called the landscape Pieria, after a district in their homeland that was also between the sea and a mountain range (the Olympus).
It functioned as the commercial and naval seaport of the western Seleucid capital of Antioch ad Orontes, present-day Antakya. According to Pausanias and Malalas, there appears to have been a previous city here named Palaeopolis (“Old City”). At present, it is located at the seaside village of Çevlik near the town of Samandağ in the Hatay Province of Turkey. Seleucia, Apamea, Laodicea, and Antioch formed the tetrapolis.
Seleucid period
Seleucia Pieria was founded in ca. 300 BCE by Seleucus I Nicator, one of the successors of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great and the founder of the Seleucid Empire. Seleucia was of great importance in the struggle between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies; it was captured by Ptolemy Euergetes in 246 BCE. As the Ptolemies (Lagids) and Seleucids fought over the city, it changed hands several times until 219 BCE, when the Seleucid Antiochus III the Great recaptured it during the Fourth War (219-217 BCE). Then it obtained its freedom and kept it even to the end of the Roman occupation. It had long enjoyed the right of coinage.
 Column plinths of possibly the main/harbour street
Roman period
When the Seleucid Empire was subdued by the Armenian conqueror Tigranes II, Seleucia Pieria resisted. Roman general Pompey the Great restored the Seleucids to power by giving the city to Antiochus I Theos of Commagene, a direct descendant of Seleucus I Nicator and a loyal ally of Rome. Under light Commagene rule, Seleucia enjoyed substantial autonomy, i.e. de facto independence.
Seleucia’s importance grew significantly over time, necessitating the enlargement of its harbours several times under Diocletian and Constantius. These harbours, called the “inner” and “outer” harbours, served from time to time the Roman navy.
Most buildings and structures today date from the Roman period.
Byzantine period
During Byzantine times the city went into a steady decline. The silting up of the city’s harbours hastened this process. In the fifth century CE the fight to keep them open was finally given up. It suffered severely in the devastating 526 Antioch earthquake.
Islamic period
Seleucia was captured by the Sasanids around 540 CE. While it never recovered as a port-city again, Al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik, Ummayad Caliph from 705-715, built a fortress in the city.
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