title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Since the early 1990s, the ROC eparchies in some newly independent states of the former USSR enjoy the status of self-governing Churches within the Moscow Patriarchate (which status, according to the ROC legal terminology, is distinct from the "autonomous" one): the Estonian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate, Latvian Orthodox Church, Moldovan Orthodox Church, Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (UOC-MP), the last one being virtually fully independent in administrative matters. (Following Russia's 2014 Invasion of Ukraine, the UOC-MP—which held nearly a third of the ROC(MP)'s churches—began to fragment, particularly since 2019, with some separatist congregations leaving the ROC(MP) to join the newly independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) despite strident objections from the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian government.)


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Similar status, since 2007, is enjoyed by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (previously fully independent and deemed schismatic by the ROC). The Chinese Orthodox Church and the Japanese Orthodox Churches were granted full autonomy by the Moscow Patriarchate, but this autonomy is not universally recognized.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Smaller eparchies are usually governed by a single bishop. Larger eparchies, exarchates, and self-governing Churches are governed by a Metropolitan archbishop and sometimes also have one or more bishops assigned to them.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: The highest level of authority in the ROC is vested in the Local Council ("Pomestny Sobor"), which comprises all the bishops as well as representatives from the clergy and laypersons. Another organ of power is the Bishops' Council ("Архиерейский Собор"). In the periods between the Councils the highest administrative powers are exercised by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, which includes seven permanent members and is chaired by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Primate of the Moscow Patriarchate.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Although the Patriarch of Moscow enjoys extensive administrative powers, unlike the Pope, he has no direct canonical jurisdiction outside the Urban Diocese of Moscow, nor does he have single-handed authority over matters pertaining to faith as well as issues concerning the entire Orthodox Christian community such as the Catholic-Orthodox split.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: The OCA has its origins in a mission established by eight Russian Orthodox monks in Alaska, then part of Russian America, in 1794. This grew into a full diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. By the late 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church had grown in other areas of the United States due to the arrival of immigrants from areas of Eastern and Central Europe, many of them formerly of the Eastern Catholic Churches ("Greek Catholics"), and from the Middle East. These immigrants, regardless of nationality or ethnic background, were united under a single North American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: World War II, the Patriarchate of Moscow unsuccessfully attempted to regain control of the groups which were located abroad. After it resumed its communication with Moscow in the early 1960s, and after it was granted autocephaly in 1970, the Metropolia became known as the Orthodox Church in America. But its autocephalous status is not universally recognized. The Ecumenical Patriarch (who has jurisdiction over the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America) and some other jurisdictions have not officially accepted it. The Ecumenical Patriarch and the other jurisdictions remain in communion with the OCA. The Patriarchate of Moscow thereby renounced its former canonical claims in the United States and Canada; it also acknowledged the establishment of an autonomous church in Japan in 1970.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Russia's Church was devastated by the repercussions of the Bolshevik Revolution. One of its effects was a flood of refugees from Russia to the United States, Canada, and Europe. The Revolution of 1918 severed large sections of the Russian church—dioceses in America, Japan, and Manchuria, as well as refugees in Europe—from regular contacts with the main church.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: On 28 December 2006, it was officially announced that the Act of Canonical Communion would finally be signed between the ROC and ROCOR. The signing took place on 17 May 2007, followed immediately by a full restoration of communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, celebrated by a Divine Liturgy at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, at which the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexius II and the First Hierarch of ROCOR concelebrated for the first time.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Under the Act, the ROCOR remains a self-governing entity within the Church of Russia. It is independent in its administrative, pastoral, and property matters. It continues to be governed by its Council of Bishops and its Synod, the Council's permanent executive body. The First-Hierarch and bishops of the ROCOR are elected by its Council and confirmed by the Patriarch of Moscow. ROCOR bishops participate in the Council of Bishops of the entire Russian Church.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: In response to the signing of the act of canonical communion, Bishop Agathangel (Pashkovsky) of Odessa and parishes and clergy in opposition to the Act broke communion with ROCOR, and established ROCA(A). Some others opposed to the Act have joined themselves to other Greek Old Calendarist groups.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: In accordance with the practice of the Orthodox Church, a particular hero of faith can initially be canonized only at a local level within local churches and eparchies. Such rights belong to the ruling hierarch and it can only happen when the blessing of the patriarch is received. The task of believers of the local eparchy is to record descriptions of miracles, to create the hagiography of a saint, to paint an icon, as well as to compose a liturgical text of a service where the saint is canonized. All of this is sent to the Synodal Commission for canonization which decides whether to canonize the local hero of faith or not. Then the patriarch gives his blessing and the local hierarch performs the act of canonization at the local level. However, the liturgical texts in honor of a saint are not published in all Church books but only in local publications. In the same way, these saints are not yet canonized and venerated by the whole Church, only locally. When the glorification of a saint exceeds the limits of an eparchy, then the patriarch and Holy Synod decides about their canonization on the Church level. After receiving the Synod's support and the patriarch's blessing, the question of glorification of a particular saint on the scale of the entire Church is given for consideration to the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: In the period following the revolution, and during the communist persecutions up to 1970, no canonizations took place. Only in 1970 did the Holy Synod made a decision to canonize a missionary to Japan, Nicholas Kasatkin (1836–1912). In 1977, St. Innocent of Moscow (1797–1879), the Metropolitan of Siberia, the Far East, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, and Moscow was also canonized. In 1978 it was proclaimed that the Russian Orthodox Church had created a prayer order for Meletius of Kharkov, which practically signified his canonization because that was the only possible way to do it at that time. Similarly, the saints of other Orthodox Churches were added to the Church calendar: in 1962 St. John the Russian, in 1970 St. Herman of Alaska, in 1993 Silouan the Athonite, the elder of Mount Athos, already canonized in 1987 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. In the 1980s the Russian Orthodox Church re-established the process for canonization; a practice that had ceased for half a century.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: In 1989, the Holy Synod established the Synodal Commission for canonization. The 1990 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church gave an order for the Synodal Commission for Canonisation to prepare documents for canonization of new martyrs who had suffered from the 20th century Communist repressions. In 1991 it was decided that a local commission for canonization would be established in every eparchy which would gather the local documents and would send them to the Synodal Commission. Its task was to study the local archives, collect memories of believers, record all the miracles that are connected with addressing the martyrs. In 1992 the Church established 25 January as a day when it venerates the new 20th century martyrs of faith. The day was specifically chosen because on this day in 1918 the Metropolitan of Kiev Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) was killed, thus becoming the first victim of communist terror among the hierarchs of the Church.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: During the 2000 Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, the greatest general canonization in the history of the Orthodox Church took place: not only regarding the number of saints but also as in this canonization, all unknown saints were mentioned. There were 1,765 canonized saints known by name and others unknown by name but "known to God".


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: The use and making of icons entered Kievan Rus' following its conversion to Orthodox Christianity in AD 988. As a general rule, these icons strictly followed models and formulas hallowed by Byzantine art, led from the capital in Constantinople. As time passed, the Russians widened the vocabulary of types and styles far beyond anything found elsewhere in the Orthodox world. Russian icons are typically paintings on wood, often small, though some in churches and monasteries may be much larger. Some Russian icons were made of copper. Many religious homes in Russia have icons hanging on the wall in the "krasny ugol", the "red" or "beautiful" corner. There is a rich history and elaborate religious symbolism associated with icons. In Russian churches, the nave is typically separated from the sanctuary by an iconostasis (Russian "ikonostas", иконостас), or icon-screen, a wall of icons with double doors in the centre. Russians sometimes speak of an icon as having been "written", because in the Russian language (like Greek, but unlike English) the same word ("pisat"', писать in Russian) means both to paint and to write. Icons are considered to be the Gospel in paint, and therefore careful attention is paid to ensure that the Gospel is faithfully and accurately conveyed. Icons considered miraculous were said to "appear." The "appearance" (Russian: "yavlenie", явление) of an icon is its supposedly miraculous discovery. "A true icon is one that has 'appeared', a gift from above, one opening the way to the Prototype and able to perform miracles".


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Bell ringing, which has a history in the Russian Orthodox tradition dating back to the baptism of Rus', plays an important part in the traditions of the Russian Orthodox Church.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: In May 2011, Hilarion Alfeyev, the Metropolitan of Volokolamsk and head of external relations for the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, stated that Orthodox and Evangelical Christians share the same positions on "such issues as abortion, the family, and marriage" and desire "vigorous grassroots engagement" between the two Christian communions on such issues.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: The Metropolitan also believes in the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Islam and Christianity because the two religions have never fought religious wars in Russia. Alfeyev stated that the Russian Orthodox Church "disagrees with atheist secularism in some areas very strongly" and "believes that it destroys something very essential about human life."


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: Today, the Russian Orthodox Church has ecclesiastical missions in Jerusalem and some other countries around the world.


title: Russian Orthodox Church

text: The ROC is often said to be the largest of all of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world. Including all the autocephalous churches under its supervision, its adherents number more than 112 million worldwide—about half of the 200 to 220 million estimated adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Among Christian churches, the Russian Orthodox Church is only second to the Roman Catholic Church in terms of numbers of followers. Within Russia the results of a 2007 VTsIOM poll indicated that about 75% of the population considered itself Orthodox Christian. Up to 65% of ethnic Russians as well as Russian-speakers from Russia who are members of other ethnic groups (Ossetians, Chuvash, Caucasus Greeks etc.) and a similar percentage of Belarusians and Ukrainians identify themselves as "Orthodox". However, according to a poll published by the church related website in December 2012, only 41% of the Russian population identified itself with the Russian Orthodox Church. Pravmir.com also published a 2012 poll by the respected Levada organization VTsIOM indicating that 74% of Russians considered themselves Orthodox. The 2017 Survey "Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe" made by the Pew Research Center showed that 71% of Russians declared themselves as Orthodox Christian, and in 2021, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) estimated that 66% of Russians were Orthodox Christians.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Elizabeth Ann Warren (née Herring; born June 22, 1949) is an American politician and former law professor who is the senior United States senator from Massachusetts, serving since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party and regarded as a progressive, Warren has focused on consumer protection, equitable economic opportunity, and the social safety net while in the Senate. Warren was a candidate in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, ultimately finishing third.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Born and raised in Oklahoma, Warren is a graduate of the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School and has taught law at several universities, including the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. She was one of the most influential professors in commercial and bankruptcy law before beginning her political career. Warren has written 12 books and more than 100 articles.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren's first foray into public policy began in 1995, when she worked to oppose what eventually became a 2005 act restricting bankruptcy access for individuals. During the late 2000s, her national profile grew after her forceful public stances in favor of more stringent banking regulations after the financial crisis of 2007–08. She served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and proposed and established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for which she served as the first special advisor under President Barack Obama.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In 2012, Warren defeated incumbent Republican Scott Brown and became the first female U.S. senator from Massachusetts. She won re-election by a wide margin in 2018, defeating Republican nominee Geoff Diehl. On February 9, 2019, Warren announced her candidacy in the 2020 United States presidential election. She was briefly considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in late 2019, but support for her campaign dwindled. She withdrew from the race on March 5, 2020, after Super Tuesday.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren was born Elizabeth Ann Herring in Oklahoma City on June 22, 1949. She is the fourth child of Pauline Louise (née Reed, 1912–1995), a homemaker, and Donald Jones Herring (1911–1997), a U.S. Army flight instructor during World War II, both of whom were members of the evangelical branch of the Protestant Methodist Church. Warren has described her early family life as teetering "on the ragged edge of the middle class" and "kind of hanging on at the edges by our fingernails." She and her three older brothers were raised Methodist.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren lived in Norman, Oklahoma, until she was 11 years old, when her family moved back to Oklahoma City. When she was 12, her father, then a salesman at Montgomery Ward, had a heart attack, which led to many medical bills as well as a pay cut because he could not do his previous work. After leaving his sales job, he worked as a maintenance man for an apartment building. Eventually, the family's car was repossessed because they failed to make loan payments. To help the family finances, her mother found work in the catalog-order department at Sears. When she was 13, Warren started waiting tables at her aunt's restaurant.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren became a star member of the debate team at Northwest Classen High School and won the state high school debating championship. She also won a debate scholarship to George Washington University (GWU) at the age of 16. She initially aspired to be a teacher, but left GWU after two years in 1968 to marry James Robert "Jim" Warren, whom she had met in high school.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren and her husband moved to Houston, where he was employed by IBM. She enrolled in the University of Houston and graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech pathology and audiology.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: The Warrens moved to New Jersey when Jim received a job transfer. She soon became pregnant and decided to stay at home to care for their daughter, Amelia. After Amelia turned two, Warren enrolled at Rutgers Law School. She received her Juris Doctor in 1976 and passed the bar examination shortly thereafter. Shortly before graduating, Warren became pregnant with their second child, Alexander.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In 1970, after obtaining a degree in speech pathology and audiology, but before enrolling in law school, Warren taught children with disabilities for a year in a public school. During law school, she worked as a summer associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. After receiving her Juris Doctor and passing the bar examination, Warren offered legal services from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In the late 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Warren taught law at several American universities while researching issues related to bankruptcy and middle-class personal finance. She became involved with public work in bankruptcy regulation and consumer protection in the mid-1990s.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren began her career in academia as a lecturer at Rutgers University, Newark School of Law (1977–1978). She then moved to the University of Houston Law Center (1978–1983), where she became an associate dean in 1980 and obtained tenure in 1981. She taught at the University of Texas School of Law as visiting associate professor in 1981 and returned as a full professor two years later (staying from 1983 to 1987). She was a research associate at the Population Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin from 1983 to 1987 and was also a visiting professor at the University of Michigan in 1985. During this period, Warren also taught Sunday school.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren's earliest academic work was heavily influenced by the law and economics movement, which aimed to apply neoclassical economic theory to the study of law with an emphasis on economic efficiency. One of her articles, published in 1980 in the "Notre Dame Law Review", argued that public utilities were over-regulated and that automatic utility rate increases should be instituted. But Warren soon became a proponent of on-the-ground research into how people respond to laws. Her work analyzing court records and interviewing judges, lawyers, and debtors, established her as a rising star in the field of bankruptcy law. According to Warren and economists who follow her work, one of her key insights was that rising bankruptcy rates were caused not by profligate consumer spending but by middle-class families' attempts to buy homes in good school districts. Warren worked in this field alongside colleagues Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook, and the trio published their research in the book "As We Forgive Our Debtors" in 1989. Warren later recalled that she had begun her research believing that most people filing for bankruptcy were either working the system or had been irresponsible in incurring debts, but that she concluded that such abuse was in fact rare and that the legal framework for bankruptcy was poorly designed, describing the way the research challenged her fundamental beliefs as "worse than disillusionment" and "like being shocked at a deep-down level". In 2004, she published an article in the "Washington University Law Review" in which she argued that correlating middle-class struggles with over-consumption was a fallacy.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School as a full professor in 1987 and obtained an endowed chair in 1990, becoming the William A. Schnader Professor of Commercial Law. In 1992, she taught for a year at Harvard Law School as Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law. In 1995, Warren left Penn to become Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. In 1996, she became the highest-paid professor at Harvard University who was not an administrator, with a $181,300 salary and total compensation of $291,876, including moving expenses and an allowance in lieu of benefits contributions. , she was Harvard's only tenured law professor who had attended law school at an American public university. Warren was a highly influential law professor. She published in many fields, but her expertise was in bankruptcy and commercial law. From 2005 to 2009, Warren was among the three most-cited scholars in those fields.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: She began to rise in prominence in 2004 with an appearance on the Dr. Phil show, and published several books including "The Two-Income Trap".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In 1995, the National Bankruptcy Review Commission's chair, former congressman Mike Synar, asked Warren to advise the commission. Synar had been a debate opponent of Warren's during their school years. She helped draft the commission's report and worked for several years to oppose legislation intended to severely restrict consumers' right to file for bankruptcy. Warren and others opposing the legislation were not successful; in 2005, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which curtailed consumers' ability to file for bankruptcy.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: From 2006 to 2010, Warren was a member of the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion. She is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an independent organization that advises the U.S. Congress on bankruptcy law, a former vice president of the American Law Institute and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren's scholarship and public advocacy were the impetus for establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On November 14, 2008, U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid appointed Warren to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. The panel released monthly oversight reports evaluating the government bailout and related programs. During Warren's tenure, these reports covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry and other topics.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren was an early advocate for creating a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The bureau was established by the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama in July 2010. In September 2010, Obama named Warren Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the CFPB to set up the new agency. While liberal groups and consumer advocacy groups urged Obama to formally nominate Warren as the agency's director, financial institutions and Republican members of Congress strongly opposed her, believing she would be an overly zealous regulator. Reportedly convinced that Warren could not win Senate confirmation as the bureau's first director, in January 2012, Obama appointed former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray to the post in a recess appointment over Republican senators' objections.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: A close high-school friend told "Politico" in 2019 that in high school Warren was a "diehard conservative" and that she had since done a "180-degree turn and an about-face". One of her colleagues at the University of Texas in Austin said that at university in the early 1980s Warren was "sometimes surprisingly anti-consumer in her attitude". Gary L. Francione, who had been a colleague of hers at the University of Pennsylvania, recalled in 2019 that when he heard her speak at the time she was becoming politically prominent, he "almost fell off [his] chair... She's definitely changed". Warren was registered as a Republican from 1991 to 1996 and voted Republican for many years. "I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets", she has said. But she has also said that in the six presidential elections before 1996 she voted for the Republican nominee only once, in 1976, for Gerald Ford.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren has said that she began to vote Democratic in 1995 because she no longer believed that the Republicans were the party who best supported markets, but she has said she has voted for both parties because she believed neither should dominate. According to Warren, she left the Republican Party because it is no longer "principled in its conservative approach to economics and to markets" and is instead tilting the playing field in favor of large financial institutions and against middle-class American families.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On September 14, 2011, Warren declared her intention to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2012 election in Massachusetts for the U.S. Senate. Republican Scott Brown had won the seat in a 2010 special election after Ted Kennedy's death. A week later, a video of Warren speaking in Andover went viral on the Internet. In it, Warren responds to the charge that asking the rich to pay more taxes is "class warfare" by saying that no one grew rich in the U.S. without depending on infrastructure paid for by the rest of society:


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren ran unopposed for the Democratic nomination and won it on June 2, 2012, at the state Democratic convention with a record 95.77% of the votes of delegates. She encountered significant opposition from business interests. In August, the political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce commented that "no other candidate in 2012 represents a greater threat to free enterprise than Professor Warren". Warren nonetheless raised $39 million for her campaign, more than any other Senate candidate in 2012, and showed, according to "The New York Times", "that it was possible to run against the big banks without Wall Street money and still win".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren received a prime-time speaking slot at the 2012 Democratic National Convention on September 5, 2012. She positioned herself as a champion of a beleaguered middle class that "has been chipped, squeezed, and hammered". According to Warren, "People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: They're right. The system is rigged." Warren said Wall Street CEOs "wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs" and that they "still strut around congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On January 6, 2017, in an email to supporters, Warren announced that she would be running for a second term as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, writing, "The people of Massachusetts didn't send me to Washington to roll over and play dead while Donald Trump and his team of billionaires, bigots, and Wall Street bankers crush the working people of our Commonwealth and this country. ... This is no time to quit."


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On November 6, 2012, Warren defeated Brown with 53.7% of the vote. She is the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, as part of a sitting U.S. Senate that had 20 women senators in office, which was the most in Senate history at the time, following the November 2012 elections. In December 2012, Warren was assigned a seat on the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the implementation of Dodd–Frank and other regulation of the banking industry. Vice President Joe Biden swore Warren in on January 3, 2013.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: At Warren's first Banking Committee hearing in February 2013, she pressed several banking regulators to say when they had last taken a Wall Street bank to trial and said, "I'm really concerned that 'too big to fail' has become 'too big for trial'." Videos of Warren's questioning amassed more than one million views in a matter of days. At a March Banking Committee hearing, Warren asked Treasury Department officials why criminal charges were not brought against HSBC for its money laundering practices. Warren compared money laundering to drug possession, saying: "If you're caught with an ounce of cocaine, the chances are good you're going to go to jail ... But evidently, if you launder nearly a billion dollars for drug cartels and violate our international sanctions, your company pays a fine and you go home and sleep in your own bed at night."


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In May 2013, Warren sent letters to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Reserve questioning their decisions that settling would be more fruitful than going to court. Also in May, saying that students should get "the same great deal that banks get", Warren introduced the Bank on Student Loans Fairness Act, which would allow students to take out government education loans at the same rate that banks pay to borrow from the federal government, 0.75%. Independent senator Bernie Sanders endorsed her bill, saying: "The only thing wrong with this bill is that [she] thought of it and I didn't".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: During the 2014 election cycle, Warren was a top Democratic fundraiser. After the election, Warren was appointed to become the first-ever Strategic Adviser of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, a position created for her. The appointment added to speculation that Warren would run for president in 2016.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In early 2015, President Obama urged Congress to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free trade agreement between the United States and 11 Asian and South American countries. Warren criticized the TPP, arguing that the dispute resolution mechanism in the agreement and labor protections for American workers therein were insufficient; her objections were in turn criticized by Obama.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Saying "despite the progress we've made since 2008, the biggest banks continue to threaten our economy", in July 2015 Warren, John McCain, Maria Cantwell, and Angus King reintroduced the 21st Century Glass–Steagall Act, a modern version of the Banking Act of 1933. The legislation was intended to reduce the American taxpayer's risk in the financial system and the likelihood of future financial crises.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In a September 20, 2016, hearing, Warren called on Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf to resign, adding that he should be "criminally investigated" over Wells Fargo's opening of two million checking and credit-card accounts without the customers' consent.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In December 2016, Warren gained a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which "The Boston Globe" called "a high-profile perch on one of the chamber's most powerful committees" that would "fuel speculation about a possible 2020 bid for president".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: During the debate on Senator Jeff Sessions's nomination for United States attorney general in February 2017, Warren quoted a letter Coretta Scott King had written Senator Strom Thurmond in 1986 when Sessions was nominated for a federal judgeship. King wrote, "Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge. This simply cannot be allowed to happen." Senate Republicans voted that by reading the letter from King, Warren had violated Senate Rule 19, which prohibits impugning another senator's character. This prohibited Warren from further participating in the debate on Sessions's nomination, and Warren instead read King's letter while streaming live online. In rebuking Warren, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor, "She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted." McConnell's language became a slogan for Warren and others.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On October 3, 2017, during Wells Fargo chief executive Timothy J. Sloan's appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, Warren called on him to resign, saying, "At best you were incompetent, at worst you were complicit."


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On July 17, 2019, Warren and Representative Al Lawson introduced legislation that would make low-income college students eligible for benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) according to the College Student Hunger Act of 2019.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In November 2020, Warren was named a candidate for Secretary of the Treasury in the Biden Administration.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren was at the Capitol to participate in the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. She called it an "attempted coup and act of insurrection egged on by a corrupt president to overthrow our democracy", and the perpetrators "domestic terrorists." The day after the attack, Warren joined the entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation to call for Trump's immediate removal from office through the invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or impeachment.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In the run-up to the 2016 United States presidential election, supporters put Warren forward as a possible presidential candidate, but she repeatedly said she would not run for president in 2016. In October 2013, she joined the other 15 women Democratic senators in signing a letter that encouraged Hillary Clinton to run. There was much speculation about Warren being added to the Democratic ticket as a vice-presidential candidate. On June 9, 2016, after the California Democratic primary, Warren formally endorsed Clinton for president. In response to questions when she endorsed Clinton, Warren said that she believed herself to be ready to be vice president, but she was not being vetted. On July 7, CNN reported that Warren was on a five-person short list to be Clinton's running mate. Clinton eventually chose Tim Kaine.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Until her June endorsement, Warren was neutral during the Democratic primary but made public statements that she was cheering Bernie Sanders on. In June, Warren endorsed and campaigned for Clinton. She called Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, dishonest, uncaring, and "a loser".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: At a town hall meeting in Holyoke, Massachusetts, on September 29, 2018, Warren said she would "take a hard look" at running for president in the 2020 election after the 2018 United States elections concluded. On December 31, 2018, Warren announced that she was forming an exploratory committee to run for president.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On February 9, 2019, Warren officially announced her candidacy at a rally in Lawrence, Massachusetts, at the site of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike. A longtime critic of President Trump, Warren called him a "symptom of a larger problem [that has resulted in] a rigged system that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren staged her first campaign event in Lawrence to demonstrate the constituency groups she hopes to appeal to, including working class families, union members, women, and new immigrants. She called for major changes in government:


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Following her candidacy announcement, Warren released several policy proposals, including plans to assist family farms by addressing the advantages held by large agricultural conglomerates, plans to reduce student loan debt and offer free tuition at public colleges, a plan to make large corporations pay more in taxes and better regulate large technology companies, and plans to address opioid addiction. She has introduced an "Economic Patriotism" plan intended to create opportunities for American workers, and proposals inspired by opposition to President Trump, including one that would make it permissible to indict a sitting president.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: One of her signature plans was a wealth tax, dubbed the "Ultra-Millionaire Tax," on fortunes over $50,000,000. Warren was credited with popularizing the idea of a wealth tax with Americans, leading competitor Bernie Sanders to release a wealth tax plan.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren became known for the number and depth of her policy proposals. On her campaign website, she detailed more than 45 plans for topics including health care, universal child care, ending the opioid crisis, clean energy, climate change, foreign policy, reducing corporate influence at the Pentagon, and ending "Wall Street's stranglehold on the economy".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In early June 2019, Warren placed second in some polls, with Joe Biden in first place and Bernie Sanders in third. In the following weeks her poll numbers steadily increased, and a September Iowa poll placed her in the lead with 22% to Biden's 20%. The Iowa poll also rated the number of voters at least considering voting for each candidate; Warren scored 71% to Biden's 60%. Poll respondents also gave her a higher "enthusiasm" rating, with 32% of her backers extremely enthusiastic to Biden's 22%.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: An October 24 Quinnipiac poll placed Warren in the lead at 28%, with Biden at 21% and Sanders at 15%. When asked which candidate had the best policy ideas, 30% of respondents named Warren, with Sanders at 20% and Biden 15%. Sanders was most often named as the candidate who "cares most about people like you," with Warren in second place and Biden third. Sanders also placed first at 28% when respondents were asked which candidate was the most honest, followed by Warren and Biden at 15% each.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: The "Los Angeles Times" reported that of the front-runners in the presidential race, only Sanders and Warren have previously won an election with almost exclusively small online contributions, and that no presidential primary in recent history has had two of the top three candidates refuse to use bundlers or hold private fundraisers with wealthy donors.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In January 2019, Warren said that she took no PAC money. In October 2019, Warren announced that her campaign would not accept contributions of more than $200 from executives at banks, large tech companies, private equity firms, or hedge funds, in addition to her previous refusal to accept donations of over $200 from fossil fuel or pharmaceutical executives.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In the third quarter of 2019 Warren's campaign raised $24.6 million, just less than the $25.3 million Sanders's campaign raised and well ahead of Joe Biden, the front-runner in the polls, who raised $15.2 million. Warren's average donation was $26; Sanders's was $18.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In February 2020, Warren began accepting support from Super PACs, after failing to convince other Democratic presidential candidates to join her in disavowing them.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: As of September 2019, Warren had attended 128 town halls. She is known for remaining afterward to talk with audience members and for the large numbers of selfies she has taken with them. On September 17, over 20,000 people attended a Warren rally at New York City's Washington Square Park. After her speech long lines formed with people waiting as long as four hours for selfies.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Due to the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Warren was unable to make final campaign stops in person and opted to send her dog, Bailey Warren, to meet with voters in Iowa.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In June 2020, CNN reported that Warren was among the top four vice-presidential choices for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, along with Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Representative Val Demings, and Senator Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris was officially announced as Biden's running mate on August 11, 2020. On August 13, "The New York Times" reported that Warren was one of Biden's four finalists along with Harris, Susan Rice, and Gretchen Whitmer.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In late April, CNBC reported that big-money donors were pressuring Biden not to choose Warren, preferring other candidates purportedly on his list, such as Harris, Klobuchar and Whitmer.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren and her first husband divorced in 1978, and two years later, Warren married law professor Bruce H. Mann on July 12, 1980, but kept her first husband's surname. Warren has three grandchildren through her daughter Amelia.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: On April 23, 2020, Warren announced on Twitter that her eldest brother, Don Reed Herring, had died of COVID-19 two days earlier. On October 1, 2021, she announced that her brother, John Herring, had died of cancer.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren is widely regarded as a progressive. In 2012, the British magazine "New Statesman" named Warren among the "top 20 U.S. progressives".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren supports worker representation on corporations' board of directors, breaking up monopolies, stiffening sentences for white-collar crime, a Medicare for All plan to provide health insurance for all Americans, and a higher minimum wage.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren was highly critical of the Trump administration. She expressed concerns over what she says were Trump's conflicts of interest. The Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, written by Warren, was first read in the Senate in January 2017. Warren was highly critical of Trump's immigration policies. In 2018, she called for abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren has criticized U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen in support of Yemen's government against the Houthis. In January 2019, Warren criticized Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan. She agreed that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Syria and Afghanistan but said such withdrawals should be part of a "coordinated" plan formed with U.S. allies.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In April 2019, after reading the Mueller report, Warren called on the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, saying, "The Mueller report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack."


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: After the June 24, 2022, ruling in which the Supreme Court overturned "Roe v. Wade", Warren wrote a "New York Times" op-ed requesting that President Biden unblock "critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: According to Warren and her brothers, older family members told them during their childhood that they had Native American ancestry. In 2012, she said that "being Native American has been part of my story, I guess, since the day I was born". In 1984, Warren contributed recipes to a Native American cookbook and identified herself as Cherokee.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: During Warren's first Senate race in 2012, her opponent, Scott Brown, speculated that she had fabricated Native ancestry to gain advantage on the employment market and used Warren's ancestry in several attack ads. Warren has denied that her heritage gave her any advantages in her schooling or her career. Several colleagues and employers (including Harvard) have said her reported ethnic status played no role in her hiring. From 1995 to 2004, her employer, Harvard Law School, listed her as a Native American in its federal affirmative action forms; Warren later said she was unaware of this.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: "The Washington Post" reported that in 1986, Warren identified her race as "American Indian" on a State Bar of Texas write-in form used for statistical information gathering, but added that there was "no indication it was used for professional advancement". A 2018 "Boston Globe" investigation found that her reported ethnicity played no role in her rise in the academic legal profession, and concluded there was "clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools", and that "Warren was viewed as a white woman by the hiring committees at every institution that employed her". In February 2019, Warren apologized for having identified as Native American.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Throughout his presidency, former president Donald Trump mocked Warren for her assertions of Native American ancestry, and pejoratively called her "Pocahontas". At a July 2018 Montana rally, he promised that if he debated Warren, he would pay $1 million to her favorite charity if she took a DNA test and "it shows you're an Indian". In October 2018, Warren released results of a DNA test that found that her ancestry is mostly European but "strongly support[ed] the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor", likely "in the range of 6 to 10 generations ago". She then asked Trump to donate the money to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center. Trump responded: "I didn't say that. I think you better read it again". The Cherokee Nation called the use of DNA testing to determine Native American heritage "inappropriate and wrong". According to "Politico", "Warren's past claims of American Indian ancestry garnered fierce criticism from both sides of the aisle", with "tribal leaders calling out Warren for claiming a heritage she did not culturally belong to."


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: During a January 2019 public appearance in Sioux City, Iowa, Warren was asked by an attendee, "Why did you undergo the DNA testing and give Donald more fodder to be a bully?" She responded in part, "I am not a person of color; I am not a citizen of a tribe. Tribal citizenship is very different from ancestry. Tribes, and only tribes, determine tribal citizenship, and I respect that difference." She later contacted leadership of the Cherokee Nation to apologize "for furthering confusion over issues of tribal sovereignty and citizenship and for any harm her announcement caused". Cherokee Nation executive director of communications Julie Hubbard said that Warren understands "that being a Cherokee Nation tribal citizen is rooted in centuries of culture and laws not through DNA tests". Warren apologized again in August 2019 before the Native American Forum in Iowa.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In February 2019, Warren received a standing ovation during a surprise visit to a Native American conference, where she was introduced by freshman Representative Deb Haaland (D-NM), one of the first two Native American women elected to the U.S. Congress. Haaland endorsed Warren for president in July 2019, calling her "a great partner for Indian Country".


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In 2009, "The Boston Globe" named Warren the Bostonian of the Year and the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts honored her with the Lelia J. Robinson Award. "The National Law Journal" has repeatedly named Warren one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America, and in 2010 named her one of the 40 most influential attorneys of the decade. Also in 2009, Warren became the first professor in Harvard's history to win the law school's Sacks–Freund Teaching Award for a second time. In 2011, she delivered the commencement address at Rutgers Law School, her alma mater, and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree and membership in the Order of the Coif. In 2011, Warren was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. In January 2012, "New Statesman" magazine named her one of the "top 20 U.S. progressives". Warren was named one of "Time" magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009, 2010, 2015, and 2017.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In 2018, the Women's History Month theme in the United States was "Nevertheless, She Persisted: Honoring Women Who Fight All Forms of Discrimination Against Women", referring to McConnell's remark about Warren.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Warren has mentored several people who have gone on to hold notable political office. U.S. Representative Katie Porter, a former law student of Warren's, is considered a protégée of Warren. Porter co-chaired Warren's presidential campaign. Another of Warren's political protégés is Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, who was a law student of Warren's and worked on her 2012 Senate campaign before running for Boston City Council herself in 2013. Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Tompkins got his start in politics working on Warren's 2012 Senate campaign. During his law school career, former U.S. Representative Joe Kennedy III considered Warren a mentor. A number of Warren acolytes serve in the Biden administration, including Bharat Ramamurti (a former economic policy advisor to Warren).


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In 2004, Warren and her daughter, Amelia Tyagi, wrote "". In the book they state that at that time, a fully employed worker earned less inflation-adjusted income than a fully employed worker had 30 years earlier. Although families spent less at that time on clothing, appliances, and other forms of consumption, the costs of core expenses such as mortgages, health care, transportation, and child care had increased dramatically. According to the authors, the result was that even families with two income earners were no longer able to save and incurred ever greater debt.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In 2005, Warren and David Himmelstein published a study on bankruptcy and medical bills that found that half of all families filing for bankruptcy did so in the aftermath of a serious medical problem. They say that three-quarters of such families had medical insurance. The study was widely cited in policy debates, but some have challenged its methods and offered alternative interpretations of the data, suggesting that only 17% of bankruptcies are directly attributable to medical expenses.


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: Metropolitan Books published Warren's book "A Fighting Chance" in April 2014. According to a "Boston Globe" review, "the book's title refers to a time she says is now gone, when even families of modest means who worked hard and played by the rules had at a fair shot at the American dream."


title: Elizabeth Warren

text: In April 2017, Warren published her 11th book, "This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class", in which she explores the plight of the American middle class and argues that the federal government needs to do more to help working families with stronger social programs and increased investment in education.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Kai Lukas Havertz (born 11 June 1999) is a German professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder or forward for club Chelsea and the Germany national team.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Having graduated from Bayer Leverkusen's youth academy in 2016, Havertz made his senior debut with the club at the same year. Upon making his debut, Havertz became the club's youngest-ever debutant in the Bundesliga, and he became their youngest-ever goalscorer when he scored his first goal the following year. He is also the youngest player to reach the milestones of 50 and 100 league appearances in the German top flight.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz's performances sparked the interest of several European clubs, with Chelsea signing him in 2020 for a transfer worth €84 million (£72 million), making him Chelsea's second-most expensive signing until Romelu Lukaku's signing in 2021. With Chelsea, Havertz won the 2020–21 UEFA Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, and the 2021 FIFA Club World Cup, scoring the winning goals in the Champions League final and FIFA Club World Cup, while assisting teammate Hakim Ziyech's goal in the UEFA Super Cup.


title: Kai Havertz

text: After appearing for Germany at various youth levels, Havertz made his senior international debut in September 2018, becoming the first player born in 1999 to represent the national team. He represented Germany at UEFA Euro 2020 and the 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz was born in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia. He grew up in Mariadorf, a district of Alsdorf. Later, the family moved to Aachen. His father is a policeman and his mother is a lawyer.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz received his first experience in football at the age of four when he joined amateur club Alemannia Mariadorf, where his grandfather, Richard, was chairman of the club. In 2009, he was signed by 2. Bundesliga club Alemannia Aachen where he spent only a year in the club's academy before joining Bayer Leverkusen at the age of 11. In the years that followed, he had to overcome the challenges associated with growth spurts and in 2016, after scoring 18 goals for the club's U-17 team, he was awarded the silver U-17 Fritz Walter Medal before breaking into Leverkusen's senior team the following year.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz made his debut for Bayer Leverkusen on 15 October 2016, coming on as a second-half substitute for Charles Aránguiz in a 2–1 Bundesliga loss to Werder Bremen. Upon entering the field of play, he became the club's youngest-ever Bundesliga debutant, at the age of 17 years and 126 days, although his record was broken (by 111 days) by Florian Wirtz in 2020. On 17 February 2017, he assisted teammate Karim Bellarabi to score the 50,000th Bundesliga goal. Four days later, following the suspension of teammate Hakan Çalhanoğlu, he was handed his first Champions League start in the first leg of a round of 16 loss to Atlético Madrid. He was ruled out of the return leg of the fixture in March, however, as the match clashed with the examinations period at his school. He scored his first goal for the club on 2 April, netting a late equaliser in a 3–3 draw with VfL Wolfsburg. Upon doing so, Havertz broke another club record to become Leverkusen's youngest-ever goalscorer in the Bundesliga, at the age of 17. He ultimately made 28 appearances across all competitions and scored four goals, including a brace against Hertha BSC on the final day of the season, as Leverkusen ended the campaign in 12th position.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On 14 April 2018, Havertz became the youngest player in the history of the Bundesliga to reach 50 appearances at 18 years and 307 days old, breaking the record previously held by Timo Werner. He went on to end his second full campaign with the club with 30 league appearances and three goals to his name as Leverkusen ended the season in fifth place.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz continued to impress during the following season, despite Leverkusen initially struggling in the league, and by the mid-way point of the campaign was the only player to have started every match for the club, scoring six goals along the way. On 20 September 2018, Havertz scored his first two goals in European competitions in a 3–2 win against Ludogorets Razgrad in the 2018–19 UEFA Europa League. On 26 January 2019, he became Leverkusen's youngest-ever penalty scorer when he scored from the spot in a 3–0 league win over Wolfsburg, aged 19 years, seven months and 16 days. The following month, he became the second youngest-ever player to achieve 75 Bundesliga appearances, behind Julian Draxler, when he started and scored in a 2–0 win over Fortuna Düsseldorf. On 13 April, he scored on his 100th appearance for Leverkusen to help the club to a 1–0 league win over Stuttgart. The goal, his 13th for the campaign, also saw him become the youngest player since Stuttgart's own Horst Köppel in 1967–68 to score 13 goals in a single league season. On 5 May, he scored his 15th goal of the campaign during a 6–1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt; a match which for the first time ever saw seven goals scored in the first half of a Bundesliga match. On the final day of the season, he became the highest scoring teenager in a single Bundesliga campaign when he scored his 17th goal during a 5–1 win over Hertha BSC. At the end of the season, he was named runner-up to Marco Reus for the German Footballer of the Year award, losing out by just 37 votes.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On the opening day of the 2019–20 campaign, Havertz scored in Leverkusen's 3–2 win over Paderborn, becoming the second-youngest player of all time behind Köppel to score 25 Bundesliga goals. In December, at the age of 20 years, six months and four days, he broke another of Werner's records to become the youngest-ever player to reach 100 Bundesliga appearances when he started in his team's 2–0 defeat to Köln. In the 2019–20 UEFA Europa League, Havertz scored in both matches against Porto in the round of 32, then he scored a goal in a 2–1 defeat to Inter Milan in the quarter-final.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On 4 September 2020, Havertz signed a five-year contract with Premier League club Chelsea. The transfer fee was reported to be worth an initial £62 million, which could rise to £71 million with add-ons, making him Chelsea's second-most expensive signing after Kepa Arrizabalaga. On 14 September, he made his Chelsea debut in the league opener against Brighton & Hove Albion, which ended in a 3–1 away win. On 23 September, Havertz scored his first career hat-trick and his first Chelsea goals in a 6–0 home win over Barnsley in the third round of the EFL Cup. Havertz scored his first-ever Premier League goal against Southampton on 17 October, in a 3–3 draw at home. On 4 November 2020, it was revealed that Havertz had tested positive for COVID-19.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On 29 May 2021, he scored the only goal of the game in the 2021 UEFA Champions League Final. It was his first-ever goal in the UEFA Champions League as Chelsea beat fellow English club Manchester City to win the competition for the second time in club history.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On 11 August 2021, Havertz won the UEFA Super Cup with Chelsea, beating Villarreal in the final on penalties, despite him missing his penalty. On 28 August, he scored his first goal of the season in a 1–1 draw at Liverpool.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On 12 February 2022, Havertz scored the winning goal in the 117th minute of the FIFA Club World Cup Final from a penalty kick.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On 3 September 2022, Havertz scored the winner in a 2–1 victory against West Ham United for his first goal of the season. On 25 October, he scored the winner in a 2–1 away victory against Red Bull Salzburg, which qualified his club to the knockout phase.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz made his debut for the Germany national under-16 team on 11 November 2014, starting in the friendly match against the Czech Republic before being substituted out in the 57th minute for Tom Baack. The match finished as a 3–1 win for Germany.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz was included in Germany's squad for the 2016 UEFA European Under-17 Championship in Azerbaijan. He appeared in all five of Germany's matches, scoring once before Germany were eliminated by Spain in the semi-final.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Following a 15-month absence from youth internationals, Havertz made his debut for Germany's under-19 team, debuting on 31 August 2017 in the 0–0 friendly draw against Switzerland, coming on in the 72nd minute for Palkó Dárdai. On 4 October 2017, in his third appearance for the under-19 team, Havertz scored four goals in a 5–1 win against Belarus in the first round of European Under-19 Championship qualifying. He was later named captain of the under-19 team.


title: Kai Havertz

text: On 29 August 2018, Havertz was called up to Germany's senior team for the first time by head coach Joachim Löw. He was included in the squad for Germany's UEFA Nations League match against France and friendly against Peru. Havertz made his international debut on 9 September 2018, coming on as a substitute in the 88th minute for Timo Werner against Peru, with the match finishing as a 2–1 home win for Germany. Upon making his debut, he became the first player born in 1999 to represent the national team. On 19 May 2021, he was selected to the German squad for the UEFA Euro 2020. On 19 June 2021, he scored Germany's third goal in the 51st minute in a 4–2 win over Portugal in the UEFA Euro 2020. He scored a goal in the final group fixture for a 2–2 draw against Hungary which saw his side qualify for the knockout phase of the competition.


title: Kai Havertz

text: In November 2022, he was selected in the final squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. On 1 December, he scored a brace in a 4–2 win over Costa Rica, yet Germany was eliminated from the group stage.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Havertz has been described as a technically gifted, two-footed attacking midfielder who is comfortable with the ball on either foot and adept with his head. During his formative years, his style of play drew early comparisons to compatriot Mesut Özil, with Havertz himself admitting the midfielder was a player he looked up to. By the age of 19, and following numerous impressive performances in the Bundesliga, further comparisons had been drawn between Havertz and former Leverkusen players such as Michael Ballack and Toni Kroos and some began describing him as a combination of all three and an "Alleskönner" – a player who can do everything. He has also been compared with Thomas Müller, as they both have the talent for finding spaces in congested areas and making the right runs, although Havertz has been described as a more elegant and skilful player than Müller. Havertz prefers the "false nine" role, which he played at Chelsea. However, during the 2021–22 season, he had no specific position and was experimented in different positions, though his best streak came when he played centrally as a forward/false nine, roles that he is very familiar with.


title: Kai Havertz

text: Due to his finesse and technique, Paul Merson called Havertz a "Rolls-Royce footballer" stating, "Havertz is one of Chelsea's best players. People forget he is class. He knits things together. He's a Rolls Royce, he glides round the pitch."


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The Seleucid Empire (; , "Basileía tōn Seleukidōn") was a Greek state in West Asia that existed during the Hellenistic period from 312 BC to 63 BC. The Seleucid Empire was founded by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire originally founded by Alexander the Great.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: After receiving the Mesopotamian region of Babylonia in 321 BC, Seleucus I began expanding his dominions to include the Near Eastern territories that encompass modern-day Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, all of which had been under Macedonian control after the fall of the former Persian Achaemenid Empire. At the Seleucid Empire's height, it had consisted of territory that had covered Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, and what are now modern Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and parts of Turkmenistan.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The Seleucid Empire was a major center of Hellenistic culture. Greek customs and language were privileged; the wide variety of local traditions had been generally tolerated, while an urban Greek elite had formed the dominant political class and was reinforced by steady immigration from Greece. The empire's western territories were repeatedly contested with Ptolemaic Egypt—a rival Hellenistic state. To the east, conflict with the Indian ruler Chandragupta of the Maurya Empire in 305 BC led to the cession of vast territory west of the Indus and a political alliance.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: In the early second century BC, Antiochus III the Great attempted to project Seleucid power and authority into Hellenistic Greece, but his attempts were thwarted by the Roman Republic and its Greek allies. The Seleucids were forced to pay costly war reparations and had to relinquish territorial claims west of the Taurus Mountains in southern Anatolia, marking the gradual decline of their empire. Mithridates I of Parthia conquered much of the remaining eastern lands of the Seleucid Empire in the mid-second century BC, while the independent Greco-Bactrian Kingdom continued to flourish in the northeast. The Seleucid kings were thereafter reduced to a rump state in Syria, until their conquest by Tigranes the Great of Armenia in 83 BC, and ultimate overthrow by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BC.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Contemporary sources, such as a loyalist decree honoring Antiochus I from Ilium, in Greek language define the Seleucid state both as an empire ("arche") and as a kingdom ("basileia"). Similarly, Seleucid rulers were described as kings in Babylonia.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Starting from the 2nd century BC, ancient writers referred to the Seleucid ruler as the King of Syria, Lord of Asia, and other designations; the evidence for the Seleucid rulers representing themselves as kings of Syria is provided by the inscription of Antigonus son of Menophilus, who described himself as the "admiral of Alexander, king of Syria". He refers to either Alexander Balas or Alexander II Zabinas as a ruler.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Alexander, who quickly conquered the Persian Empire under its last Achaemenid dynast, Darius III, died young in 323 BC, leaving an expansive empire of partly Hellenised culture without an adult heir. The empire was put under the authority of a regent, Perdiccas, and the vast territories were divided among Alexander's generals, who thereby became satraps at the Partition of Babylon, all in that same year.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Alexander's generals, known as "diadochi", jostled for supremacy over parts of his empire following his death. Ptolemy I Soter, a former general and then current satrap of Egypt, was the first to challenge the new system, which eventually led to the demise of Perdiccas. Ptolemy's revolt created a new subdivision of the empire with the Partition of Triparadisus in 320 BC. Seleucus, who had been "Commander-in-Chief of the Companion cavalry" ("hetairoi") and appointed first or court chiliarch (which made him the senior officer in the Royal Army after the regent and commander-in-chief Perdiccas since 323 BC, though he helped to assassinate him later) received Babylonia and, from that point, continued to expand his dominions ruthlessly. Seleucus established himself in Babylon in 312 BC, the year later used as the foundation date of the Seleucid Empire.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The rise of Seleucus in Babylon threatened the eastern extent of the territory of Antigonus I Monophthalmus in Asia. Antigonus, along with his son Demetrius I Poliorcetes, unsuccessfully led a campaign to annex Babylon. The victory of Seleucus ensured his claim of Babylon and legitimacy. He ruled not only Babylonia, but the entire enormous eastern part of Alexander's empire, as described by the historian Appian:


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Chandragupta Maurya (Sandrokottos) founded the Maurya Empire in 321 BC after the conquest of the Nanda Empire and their capital Pataliputra in Magadha. Chandragupta then redirected his attention to the Indus and by 317 BC he conquered the remaining Greek satraps left by Alexander. Expecting a confrontation, Seleucus gathered his army and marched to the Indus. It is said that Chandragupta could have fielded a conscript army of 600,000 men and 9,000 war elephants.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Mainstream scholarship asserts that Chandragupta received, formalized through a treaty, vast territory west of the Indus, including the Hindu Kush, modern day Afghanistan, and the Balochistan province of Pakistan. Archaeologically, concrete indications of Mauryan rule, such as the inscriptions of the Edicts of Ashoka, are known as far as Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. According to Appian:


title: Seleucid Empire

text: It is generally thought that Chandragupta married Seleucus's daughter, or a Macedonian princess, a gift from Seleucus to formalize an alliance. In a return gesture, Chandragupta sent 500 war elephants, a military asset which would play a decisive role at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. In addition to this treaty, Seleucus dispatched an ambassador, Megasthenes, to Chandragupta, and later Deimakos to his son Bindusara, at the Mauryan court at Pataliputra (modern Patna in Bihar state). Megasthenes wrote detailed descriptions of India and Chandragupta's reign, which have been partly preserved to us through Diodorus Siculus. Later Ptolemy II Philadelphus, the ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and contemporary of Ashoka the Great, is also recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Other territories ceded before Seleucus' death were Gedrosia in the south-east of the Iranian plateau, and, to the north of this, Arachosia on the west bank of the Indus River.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Following his and Lysimachus' decisive victory over Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, Seleucus took control over eastern Anatolia and northern Syria.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: In the latter area, he founded a new capital at Antioch on the Orontes, a city he named after his father. An alternative capital was established at Seleucia on the Tigris, north of Babylon. Seleucus's empire reached its greatest extent following his defeat of his erstwhile ally, Lysimachus, at Corupedion in 281 BC, after which Seleucus expanded his control to encompass western Anatolia. He hoped further to take control of Lysimachus's lands in Europe – primarily Thrace and even Macedonia itself, but was assassinated by Ptolemy Ceraunus on landing in Europe.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: His son and successor, Antiochus I Soter, was left with an enormous realm consisting of nearly all of the Asian portions of the Empire, but faced with Antigonus II Gonatas in Macedonia and Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Egypt, he proved unable to pick up where his father had left off in conquering the European portions of Alexander's empire.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Antiochus I (reigned 281–261 BC) and his son and successor Antiochus II Theos (reigned 261–246 BC) were faced with challenges in the west, including repeated wars with Ptolemy II and a Celtic invasion of Asia Minor—distracting attention from holding the eastern portions of the Empire together. Towards the end of Antiochus II's reign, various provinces simultaneously asserted their independence, such as Bactria and Sogdiana under Diodotus, Cappadocia under Ariarathes III, and Parthia under Andragoras. A few years later, the last was defeated and killed by the invading Parni of Arsaces – the region would then become the core of the Parthian Empire.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Diodotus, governor for the Bactrian territory, asserted independence in around 245 BC, although the exact date is far from certain, to form the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. This kingdom was characterized by a rich Hellenistic culture and was to continue its domination of Bactria until around 125 BC when it was overrun by the invasion of northern nomads. One of the Greco-Bactrian kings, Demetrius I of Bactria, invaded India around 180 BC to form the Indo-Greek Kingdoms.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The rulers of Persis, called Fratarakas, also seem to have established some level of independence from the Seleucids during the 3rd century BC, especially from the time of Vahbarz. They would later overtly take the title of Kings of Persis, before becoming vassals to the newly formed Parthian Empire.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The Seleucid satrap of Parthia, named Andragoras, first claimed independence, in a parallel to the secession of his Bactrian neighbour. Soon after, however, a Parthian tribal chief called Arsaces invaded the Parthian territory around 238 BC to form the Arsacid dynasty, from which the Parthian Empire originated.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Antiochus II's son Seleucus II Callinicus came to the throne around 246 BC. Seleucus II was soon dramatically defeated in the Third Syrian War against Ptolemy III of Egypt and then had to fight a civil war against his own brother Antiochus Hierax. Taking advantage of this distraction, Bactria and Parthia seceded from the empire. In Asia Minor too, the Seleucid dynasty seemed to be losing control: the Gauls had fully established themselves in Galatia, semi-independent semi-Hellenized kingdoms had sprung up in Bithynia, Pontus, and Cappadocia, and the city of Pergamum in the west was asserting its independence under the Attalid Dynasty. The Seleucid economy started to show the first signs of weakness, as Galatians gained independence and Pergamum took control of coastal cities in Anatolia. Consequently, they managed to partially block contact with the West.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: A revival would begin when Seleucus II's younger son, Antiochus III the Great, took the throne in 223 BC. Although initially unsuccessful in the Fourth Syrian War against Egypt, which led to a defeat at the Battle of Raphia (217 BC), Antiochus would prove himself to be the greatest of the Seleucid rulers after Seleucus I himself. He spent the next ten years on his anabasis (journey) through the eastern parts of his domain and restoring rebellious vassals like Parthia and Greco-Bactria to at least nominal obedience. He gained many victories such as the Battle of Mount Labus and Battle of the Arius and besieged the Bactrian capital. He even emulated Seleucus with an expedition into India where he met with King Sophagasenus (Sanskrit: "Subhagasena") receiving war elephants, perhaps in accordance of the existing treaty and alliance set after the Seleucid-Mauryan War.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Actual translation of Polybius 11.34 (No other source except Polybius makes any reference to Sophagasenus):


title: Seleucid Empire

text: When he returned to the west in 205 BC, Antiochus found that with the death of Ptolemy IV, the situation now looked propitious for another western campaign. Antiochus and Philip V of Macedon then made a pact to divide the Ptolemaic possessions outside of Egypt, and in the Fifth Syrian War, the Seleucids ousted Ptolemy V from control of Coele-Syria. The Battle of Panium (200 BC) definitively transferred these holdings from the Ptolemies to the Seleucids. Antiochus appeared, at the least, to have restored the Seleucid Kingdom to glory.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Following the defeat of his erstwhile ally Philip by Rome in 197 BC, Antiochus saw the opportunity for expansion into Greece itself. Encouraged by the exiled Carthaginian general Hannibal, and making an alliance with the disgruntled Aetolian League, Antiochus launched an invasion across the Hellespont. With his huge army he aimed to establish the Seleucid empire as the foremost power in the Hellenic world, but these plans put the empire on a collision course with the new rising power of the Mediterranean, the Roman Republic. At the battles of Thermopylae (191 BC) and Magnesia (190 BC), Antiochus's forces suffered resounding defeats, and he was compelled to make peace and sign the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC), the main clause of which saw the Seleucids agree to pay a large indemnity, to retreat from Anatolia and to never again attempt to expand Seleucid territory west of the Taurus Mountains. The Kingdom of Pergamum and the Republic of Rhodes, Rome's allies in the war, gained the former Seleucid lands in Anatolia. Antiochus died in 187 BC on another expedition to the east, where he sought to extract money to pay the indemnity.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The reign of his son and successor Seleucus IV Philopator (187–175 BC) was largely spent in attempts to pay the large indemnity, and Seleucus was ultimately assassinated by his minister Heliodorus.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Seleucus' younger brother, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, now seized the throne. He attempted to restore Seleucid power and prestige with a successful war against the old enemy, Ptolemaic Egypt, which met with initial success as the Seleucids defeated and drove the Egyptian army back to Alexandria itself. As the king planned on how to conclude the war, he was informed that Roman commissioners, led by the Proconsul Gaius Popillius Laenas, were near and requesting a meeting with the Seleucid king. Antiochus agreed, but when they met and Antiochus held out his hand in friendship, Popilius placed in his hand the tablets on which was written the decree of the senate and told him to read it. The decree demanded that he should abort his attack on Alexandria and immediately stop waging the war on Ptolemy. When the king said that he would call his friends into council and consider what he ought to do, Popilius drew a circle in the sand around the king's feet with the stick he was carrying and said, "Before you step out of that circle give me a reply to lay before the senate." For a few moments he hesitated, astounded at such a peremptory order, and at last replied, "I will do what the senate thinks right." He then chose to withdraw rather than set the empire to war with Rome again.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: On his return journey, according to Josephus, he made an expedition to Judea, took Jerusalem by force, slew a great many who had favored Ptolemy, sent his soldiers to plunder them without mercy. He also spoiled the temple, and interrupted the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice of expiation, for three years and six months.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The latter part of his reign saw a further disintegration of the Empire despite his best efforts. Weakened economically, militarily and by loss of prestige, the Empire became vulnerable to rebels in the eastern areas of the empire, who began to further undermine the empire while the Parthians moved into the power vacuum to take over the old Persian lands. Antiochus' aggressive Hellenizing (or de-Judaizing) activities provoked a full scale armed rebellion in Judea—the Maccabean Revolt. Efforts to deal with both the Parthians and the Jews as well as retain control of the provinces at the same time proved beyond the weakened empire's power. Antiochus died during a military expedition against the Parthians in 164 BC.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: After the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid Empire became increasingly unstable. Frequent civil wars made central authority tenuous at best. Epiphanes' young son, Antiochus V Eupator, was first overthrown by Seleucus IV's son, Demetrius I Soter in 161 BC. Demetrius I attempted to restore Seleucid power in Judea particularly, but was overthrown in 150 BC by Alexander Balas – an impostor who (with Egyptian backing) claimed to be the son of Epiphanes. Alexander Balas reigned until 145 BC when he was overthrown by Demetrius I's son, Demetrius II Nicator. Demetrius II proved unable to control the whole of the kingdom, however. While he ruled Babylonia and eastern Syria from Damascus, the remnants of Balas' supporters – first supporting Balas' son Antiochus VI, then the usurping general Diodotus Tryphon – held out in Antioch.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Meanwhile, the decay of the Empire's territorial possessions continued apace. By 143 BC, the Jews in the form of the Maccabees had fully established their independence. Parthian expansion continued as well. In 139 BC, Demetrius II was defeated in battle by the Parthians and was captured. By this time, the entire Iranian Plateau had been lost to Parthian control.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Demetrius Nicator's brother, Antiochus VII Sidetes, took the throne after his brother's capture. He faced the enormous task of restoring a rapidly crumbling empire, one facing threats on multiple fronts. Hard-won control of Coele-Syria was threatened by the Jewish Maccabee rebels. Once-vassal dynasties in Armenia, Cappadocia, and Pontus were threatening Syria and northern Mesopotamia; the nomadic Parthians, brilliantly led by Mithridates I of Parthia, had overrun upland Media (home of the famed Nisean horse herd); and Roman intervention was an ever-present threat. Sidetes managed to bring the Maccabees to heel and frighten the Anatolian dynasts into a temporary submission; then, in 133, he turned east with the full might of the Royal Army (supported by a body of Jews under the Hasmonean prince, John Hyrcanus) to drive back the Parthians.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Sidetes' campaign initially met with spectacular success, recapturing Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Media. In the winter of 130/129 BC, his army was scattered in winter quarters throughout Media and Persis when the Parthian king, Phraates II, counter-attacked. Moving to intercept the Parthians with only the troops at his immediate disposal, he was ambushed and killed at the Battle of Ecbatana in 129 BC. Antiochus Sidetes is sometimes called the last great Seleucid king.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: After the death of Antiochus VII Sidetes, all of the recovered eastern territories were recaptured by the Parthians. The Maccabees again rebelled, civil war soon tore the empire to pieces, and the Armenians began to encroach on Syria from the north.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: By 100 BC, the once-formidable Seleucid Empire encompassed little more than Antioch and some Syrian cities. Despite the clear collapse of their power, and the decline of their kingdom around them, nobles continued to play kingmakers on a regular basis, with occasional intervention from Ptolemaic Egypt and other outside powers. The Seleucids existed solely because no other nation wished to absorb them – seeing as they constituted a useful buffer between their other neighbours. In the wars in Anatolia between Mithridates VI of Pontus and Sulla of Rome, the Seleucids were largely left alone by both major combatants.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Mithridates' ambitious son-in-law, Tigranes the Great, king of Armenia, however, saw opportunity for expansion in the constant civil strife to the south. In 83 BC, at the invitation of one of the factions in the interminable civil wars, he invaded Syria and soon established himself as ruler of Syria, putting the Seleucid Empire virtually at an end.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Seleucid rule was not entirely over, however. Following the Roman general Lucullus' defeat of both Mithridates and Tigranes in 69 BC, a rump Seleucid kingdom was restored under Antiochus XIII. Even so, civil wars could not be prevented, as another Seleucid, Philip II, contested rule with Antiochus. After the Roman conquest of Pontus, the Romans became increasingly alarmed at the constant source of instability in Syria under the Seleucids. Once Mithridates was defeated by Pompey in 63 BC, Pompey set about the task of remaking the Hellenistic East, by creating new client kingdoms and establishing provinces. While client nations like Armenia and Judea were allowed to continue with some degree of autonomy under local kings, Pompey saw the Seleucids as too troublesome to continue; doing away with both rival Seleucid princes, he made Syria into a Roman province.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The domain of the Seleucids stretched from the Aegean Sea to what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, therefore including a diverse array of cultures and ethnic groups. Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, Georgians, Persians, Medes, Mesopotamians, Jews, and more all lived within its bounds. The immense size of the empire gave the Seleucid rulers a difficult balancing act to maintain order, resulting in a mixture of concessions to local cultures to maintain their own practices while also firmly controlling and unifying local elites under the Seleucid banner.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The government established Greek cities and settlements throughout the empire via a program of colonization that encouraged immigration from Macedonia and Greece; both city settlements as well as rural ones were created that were inhabited by ethnic Greeks. These Greeks were given good land and privileges, and in exchange were expected to serve in military service for the state. Despite being a tiny minority of the overall population, these Greeks were the backbone of the empire: loyal and committed to a cause that gave them vast territory to rule, they overwhelmingly served in the military and government. Unlike Ptolemaic Egypt, Greeks in the Seleucid Empire seem to rarely have engaged in mixed marriages with non-Greeks; they kept to their own cities.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The various non-Greek peoples of the empire were still influenced by the spread of Greek thought and culture, a phenomenon referred to as Hellenization. Historically significant towns and cities, such as Antioch, were created or renamed with Greek names, and hundreds of new cities were established for trade purposes and built in Greek style from the start. Local educated elites who needed to work with the government learned the Greek language, wrote in Greek, absorbed Greek philosophical ideas, and took on Greek names; some of these practices then slowly filtered down to the lower classes. Hellenic ideas began an almost 250-year expansion into the Near East, Middle East, and Central Asian cultures.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Synthesizing Hellenic and indigenous cultural, religious, and philosophical ideas met with varying degrees of success. The result was times of simultaneous peace and rebellion in various parts of the empire. In general, the Seleucids allowed local religions to operate undisturbed, such as incorporating Babylonian religious tenets to gain support. However, a rare exception proved one of the most heavily documented parts of Seleucid history: the Maccabean Revolt in Judea. While most Seleucid governments had ignored Judaism, under King Antiochus IV the government rather uncharacteristically banned and restricted its practice after a period of favoritism and apparently selling the High Priest position to the highest bidder. The result was the eventual loss of control of Judea to an independent Hasmonean kingdom, proving the wisdom of the usual policy of not overly interfering with local religious practice.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: As with the other major Hellenistic armies, the Seleucid army fought primarily in the Greco-Macedonian style, with its main body being the phalanx. The phalanx was a large, dense formation of men armed with small shields and a long pike called the "sarissa". This form of fighting had been developed by the Macedonian army in the reign of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. Alongside the phalanx, the Seleucid armies used a great deal of native and mercenary troops to supplement their Greek forces, which were limited due to the distance from the Seleucid rulers' Macedonian homeland. The size of the Seleucid army usually varied between 70,000 and 200,000 in manpower.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The distance from Greece put a strain on the Seleucid military system, as it was primarily based around the recruitment of Greeks as the key segment of the army. In order to increase the population of Greeks in their kingdom, the Seleucid rulers created military settlements. There were two main periods in the establishment of settlements, firstly under Seleucus I Nicator and Antiochus I Soter and then under Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The military settlers were given land, "varying in size according to rank and arm of service'. They were settled in 'colonies of an urban character, which at some point could acquire the status of a polis". Unlike the Ptolemaic military settlers, who were known as "Kleruchoi", the Seleucid settlers were called "Katoikoi". The settlers would maintain the land as their own and in return, they would serve in the Seleucid army when called. The majority of settlements were concentrated in Lydia, northern Syria, the upper Euphrates and Media. The Greeks were dominant in Lydia, Phrygia and Syria. For example, Antiochus III brought Greeks from Euboea, Crete and Aetolia and settled them in Antioch.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: These Greek settlers would be used to form the Seleucid phalanx and cavalry units, with picked men put into the kingdom's guards' regiments. The rest of the Seleucid army would consist of native and mercenary troops, who would serve as light auxiliary troops. While the Seleucids were happy to recruit from less populated and outlying parts of the Empire such as the Arabs and Jews in the south, Iranian peoples in the east, and inhabitants of Asia Minor to the north, they generally eschewed recruiting native Syrians and native Mesopotamians (Babylonians). This was presumably mostly from a desire not to train and arm the people who were an overwhelming majority in the trade and governmental centers of the Empire in Antioch and Babylon, risking revolt. To a lesser extent, this reticence to arm them flowed from the usual contempt a ruling class has for a conquered people. Following losses of territory in Asia Minor during the Roman-Seleucid War, King Antiochus IV sponsored a new wave of immigration and settlements to replace them and maintain enough Greeks to staff the phalanxes seen at the military parade at Daphne in 166–165 BC. Antiochus IV built 15 new cities "and their association with the increased phalanx... at Daphne is too obvious to be ignored".


title: Seleucid Empire

text: As a Hegemonic empire, much of the state's wealth accumulation centered around maintaining its sizable military. While the motive is simple enough, the Seleucid empire boasts of a sophisticated political economy that extracts wealth from local temples, cities (or "poleis"), and royal estates; much of which was inherited from their Achaemenid predecessors. Recent discussion indicates a market-oriented economy under the Seleucids. However, evidencing limits our understanding of the Seleucid economy to the Hellenistic Near-East; that is, through their holdings in Syria, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. Little is known about the economy of the Upper Satrapies.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Currency plays an increasingly central role under the Seleucids; however, we should note that monetization was nothing new in their newly acquired lands. Rather, the introduction and widespread implementation of currency is attributed to Darius I's tax reforms centuries prior; hence, the Seleucids see a continuation rather than shift in this practice, i.e. the payment of taxation in silver or, if necessary, in kind. In this regard, the Seleucids are notable for paying their sizeable armies exclusively in silver. Nevertheless, there are two significant developments of currency during the Seleucid period: the adoption of the "Attic Standard" in certain regions, and the popularization of bronze coinage.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The adoption of the Attic standard was not uniform across the realm. The Attic standard was already the common currency of the Mediterranean prior to Alexander's conquest; that is, it was the preferred currency for foreign transactions. As a result, coastal regions under the Seleucids —Syria and Asia Minor—were quick to adopt the new standard. In Mesopotamia however, the millennia-old shekel (weighing 8.33g Silver) prevailed over the Attic standard. According to Historian R.J. van der Spek, this is due to their particular method in recording price, which favored bartering over monetary transactions. The Mesopotamians used the value of one shekel as a fixed reference point, against which the amount of a good is given. Prices themselves are accounted in terms of their weight in silver "per ton", i.e. 60g Silver, Barley, June 242 BC. The minute difference in weight between a Shekel and Didrachm (weighing 8.6g Silver) could not be expressed in this barter system. And the use of a Greek tetradrachm would be "a far too heavy denomination…in daily trade."


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Bronze coinage, dating from the late fifth and fourth century, and was popularized as a "fiduciary" currency facilitating "small-scale exchanges" in the Hellenistic period. It was principally a legal tender which circulated only around its locales of production;[3]however, the great Seleucid mint at Antioch during Antiochus III's reign (which Numismatist Arthur Houghton dubs "The Syrian and Coele-Syrian Experiment") began minting bronze coins (weighing 1.25–1.5g) to serve a "regional purpose." The reasons behind this remain unclear. However, Spek notes a chronic shortage of silver in the Seleucid empire. In fact, Antiochus I's heavy withdrawal of silver from a satrap is noted by the Babylonian astronomical diary (AD No. –273 B 'Rev. 33'): "purchases in Babylon and other cities were made in Greek bronze coins." This was unprecedented because "in official documents [bronze coins] played no part"; it was a sign of "hardship" for the Seleucids. Nevertheless, the low denomination of bronze coinage meant it was used in tandem with bartering; making it a popular and successful medium of exchange.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Agriculture, like most pre-modern economies, constituted a vast majority of the Seleucid economy. Somewhere between 80 and 90% of the Seleucid population was employed, in some form, within the prevailing agricultural structures inherited from their Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid predecessors. These included temples, "poleis", and royal estates. We should clarify that the term "poleis", according to Spek, did not confer any special status to cities in the Seleucid sources; it was simply the term for "city"—Greek or otherwise. Regardless, agricultural produce varied from region to region. But in general, Greek "poleis" produced: "grain, olives and their oil, wine…figs, cheese from sheep and goats, [and] meat." Whereas Mesopotamian production from temple land consisted of: "barley, dates, mustard (or cascuta/dodder), cress (cardamom), sesame and wool"; which, as the core region of the Seleucid empire, was also the most productive.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: Recent evidence indicates that Mesopotamian grain production, under the Seleucids, was subject to market forces of supply and demand. Traditional "primitivist" narratives of the ancient economy argue that it was "marketless"; however, the Babylonian astronomical diaries show a high degree of market integration of barley and date prices—to name a few—in Seleucid Babylonia. Prices exceeding "370g" silver per ton in Seleucid Mesopotamia was considered a sign of famine. Therefore, during periods of war, heavy taxation, and crop failure, prices increase drastically. In an extreme example, Spek believes tribal Arab raiding into Babylonia caused barley prices to skyrocket to a whopping "1493g" silver per ton from 5–8 May, 124 BC. The average Mesopotamian peasant, if working for a wage at a temple, would receive 1 shekel; it "was a reasonable monthly wage for which one could buy one kor of grain= 180 [liters]." While this appears dire, we should be reminded that Mesopotamia under the Seleucids was largely stable and prices remained low. With encouraged Greek colonization and land reclamation increasing the supply of grain production, however, the question of whether this artificially kept prices stable is uncertain.


title: Seleucid Empire

text: The Seleucids also continued the tradition of actively maintaining the Mesopotamian waterways. As the greatest source of state income, the Seleucid kings actively managed the irrigation, reclamation, and population of Mesopotamia. In fact, canals were often dug by royal decrees, to which "some were called the King's Canal for that reason." For example, the construction of the Pallacottas canal was able to control the water level of the Euphrates which, as Arrian notes in his Anabasis 7.21.5, required: "over two months of work by more than 10,000 Assyrians."


title: Seleucid Empire

text: As a hegemonic empire, the state's primary focus was maintaining its sizable army "via" wealth extraction from three major sources: tribute from autonomous "poleis" and temples, and proportional land-tax from royal land. The definition of "royal land" remains contested. While all agree "poleis" do not constitute royal land, some remain uncertain over the status of temple land. Yet, they commanded notable economic power and functioned almost independently from the state. Nevertheless, the Seleucid manner of extraction, in contrast to earlier regimes, is considered more "aggressive" and "predatory".


title: Seleucid Empire

text: In theory, the Seleucid state was an absolute monarchy that did not recognize private property in our modern sense. Any land that was not delegated to the "poleis" or temples was considered private property of the sovereign; thus, considered as Royal Land and liable to direct tax by the state. Here, a "proportional land-tax", that is, a tax based on the size of one's plot, is collected by the local governor (or Satrap) and sent to the capital. However, there is no evidence for the amount that was taxed on any given region.