The Seleucid Empire (312-150 BCE) succeeded the Achaemenid Persians. The fact that it had long been ruled by Assyria lead the Greeks to label the land Syria, which was in fact originally a 9th-century BCE Indo-European derivative of Assyria and had not previously referred to Aram, the Levant or its peoples (see Etymology of Syria). Eventually this led to the generic use of the terms Syrian and Syriac to describe both the actual Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia themselves, and the largely Aramean and Phoenician peoples of the Levant.[citation needed]