Massacre of Jews by the Greek and Syrian population

Seleucia on the Tigris, a great Greek city of the Parthian empire, was inhabited by Greeks, Syrians, and Babylonians, and its Jewish community had grown with refugees from Babylon. These refugees were fleeing the collapse of the principality that the brothers Anilaeus and Asinaeus had held for about fifteen years in the region of Nehardea, with the tolerance of the Parthian king.

The Greeks and Syrians of the city, ordinarily rivals, united against them. The massacre was followed by a flight to Ctesiphon and then to the Jewish cities of Nehardea and Nisibis, which remained the heartlands of the Babylonian community — the very community from which, a few centuries later, the Babylonian Talmud would emerge.