Antiochus I Soter

Antiochus inherited the Seleucid throne from his father Seleucus I Nicator in 281 BC, stepping into an empire already cracking at the seams. His reign played out as a twenty-year effort to contain instability across territories stretching from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. He managed to hold most of it until his death on 2 June 261 BC. History remembers him with the epithet Soter—"the Savior"—and as the final known bearer of a title older than Greece itself.