Macedonia for the partition of the Ptolemaic possessions. Once more Antiochus attacked Palestine, and by 199 he seems to have had possession of it. It was, however, recovered for Ptolemy by the Aetolian Scopas. But the recovery was brief, for in 198 Scopas was defeated by Antiochus at the battle of the Panium, near the sources of the Jordan, a battle which marks the end of Ptolemaic rule in Palestine. In 197 Antiochus moved to Asia Minor to secure the coast towns which had acknowledged Ptolemy and the independent Greek cities. It was this enterprise which brought him into antagonism with Rome, since Smyrna and Lampsacus appealed to the republic of the west, and the tension became greater after Antiochus had in 196 established a footing in Thrace. The evacuation of Greece by the Romans gave Antiochus his opportunity, and he now had the fugitive Hannibal at his court to urge him on. In 192 Antiochus invaded Greece, having the Aetolians and other Greek states as his allies. In 191, however, he was routed at Thermopylae by the Romans under Manius Acilius Glabrio, and obliged to withdraw to Asia. But the Romans followed up their success by attacking Antiochus in Asia Minor, and the decisive victory of L. Cornelius Scipio at Magnesia ad Sipylum (190), following on the defeat of Hannibal at sea off Side, gave Asia Minor into their hands. By the peace of Apamea (188) the Seleucid king abandoned all the country north of the Taurus, which was distributed among the friends of Rome. As a consequence of this blow to the Seleucid power, the outlying provinces of the empire, recovered by Antiochus, reasserted their independence. Antiochus perished in a fresh expedition to the east in Luristan (187).
The Seleucid kingdom as Antiochus left it to his son, Seleucus IV. Philopator (reigned 187-176), consisted of Syria (now including Cilicia and Palestine), Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Nearer Iran (Media and Persis). Seleucus IV. was compelled by financial necessities, created in part by the heavy war-indemnity exacted by Rome, to pursue an unambitious policy, and was assassinated by his minister Heliodorus. The true heir, Demetrius, son of Seleucus, being now retained in Rome as a hostage, the kingdom was seized by the younger brother of Seleucus, Antiochus IV. Epiphanes (i.e. “the Manifest [god]”; parodied Epimanes, “the mad”), who reigned 176-164. In 170 Egypt, governed by regents for the boy Ptolemy Philometor, attempted to reconquer Palestine; Antiochus not only defeated this attempt but invaded and occupied Egypt. He failed to take Alexandria, where the people set up the younger brother of Philometor, Ptolemy Eurgetes, as king, but he left Philometor as his ally installed at Memphis. When the two brothers combined, Antiochus again invaded Egypt (168), but was compelled to retire by the Roman envoy C. Popillius Laenas (consul 172), after the historic scene in which the Roman drew a circle in the sand about the king and demanded his answer before he stepped out of it. Antiochus exercised his contemporaries by the riddles of his half-brilliant, half-crazy personality. He had resided at Rome as a hostage, and afterwards for his pleasure at Athens, and had brought to his kingdom an admiration for republican institutions and an enthusiasm for Hellenic culture—or, at any rate, for its externals. There is evidence that the forms of Greek political life were more fully adopted under his sway by many of the Syrian cities. He spent lavishly on public buildings at home and in the older centres of Hellenism, like Athens. Gorgeous display and theatrical pomp were his delight. At the same time he scandalized the world by his riotous living and undignified familiarities. But he could persevere in an astute policy under the cover of an easy geniality and had no scruples. It is his contact with the Jews which has chiefly interested later ages, and he is doubtless the monarch described in the pseudo-prophetic chapters of Daniel (q.v.). Jerusalem, near the Egyptian frontier, was an important point, and in one of its internal revolutions Antiochus saw, perhaps not without reason, a defection to the Egyptian side. His chastisement of the city, including as it did the spoliation of the temple, served the additional purpose of relieving his financial necessities. It was a measure of a very different kind when, a year or two later (after 168), Antiochus tried to suppress the practices of Judaism by force, and it was this which provoked the Maccabaean rebellion (see Maccabees). In 166 Antiochus left Syria to attempt the reconquest of the further provinces. He seems to have been signally successful. Armenia returned to allegiance, the capital of Media was recolonized as Epiphanea, and Antiochus was pursuing his plans in the east when he died at Tabae in Persis, after exhibiting some sort of mental derangement (winter 164/3).
He left a son of nine years, Antiochus V. Eupator (reigned 164-162), in whose name the kingdom was administered by a camarilla. Their government was feeble and corrupt. The attempt to check the Jewish rebellion ended in a weak compromise. Their subservience to Rome so enraged the Greek cities of Syria that the Roman envoy Graeus Octavius (consul 165 B.C.) was assassinated in Laodicea (162). At this juncture Demetrius, the son of Seleucus IV., escaped from Rome and was received in Syria as the true king. Antiochus Eupator was put to death. Demetrius I. Soter (reigned 162-150) was a strong and ambitious ruler. He crushed the rebellion of Timarchus in Media and reduced Judaea to new subjection. But he was unpopular at Antioch, and fell before a coalition of the three kings of Egypt, Pergamum and Cappadocia. An impostor, who claimed to be a son of Antiochus Epiphanes, Alexander Balas (reigned 150-145), was installed as king by Ptolemy Philometor and given Ptolemy's daughter Cleopatra to wife, but Alexander proved to be dissolute and incapable, and when Demetrius, the son of Demetrius I., was brought back to Syria by Cretan condottieri, Ptolemy transferred his support and Cleopatra to the rightful heir. Alexander was defeated by Ptolemy at the battle of the Oenoparas near Antioch and murdered during his flight. Ptolemy himself died of the wound he had received in the battle.
Demetrius II. Nicator (first reign 145-140) was a mere boy,[1] and the misgovernment of his Cretan supporters led to the infant son of Alexander Balas, Antiochus VI. Dionysus, being set up against him (145) by Tryphon, a magnate of the kingdom. Demetrius was driven from Antioch and fixed his court in the neighbouring Seleucia. In 143 Tryphon murdered the young Antiochus and assumed the diadem himself. Three years later Demetrius set off to reconquer the eastern provinces from the Parthians, leaving Queen Cleopatra to maintain his cause in Syria. When Demetrius was taken prisoner by the Parthians, his younger brother Antiochus VII. Sidetes (164-129) appeared in Syria, married Cleopatra and crushed Tryphon. Antiochus VII. was the last strong ruler of the dynasty (138-129). He took Jerusalem and once more brought the Jews, who had won their independence under the Hasmonaean family, to subjection (see Maccabees). He led a new expedition against the Parthians in 130, but, after signal successes, fell fighting in 129 (see also Persia, History). Demetrius (second reign 129-126), who had been allowed by the Parthians to escape, now returned to Syria, but was soon again driven from Antioch by a pretender, Alexander Zabinas, who had the support of the king of Egypt. Demetrius was murdered at the instigation of his wife Cleopatra in 126. The remaining history of the dynasty is a wretched story of the struggle of different claimants, while the different factors of the kingdom, the cities and barbarian races, more and more assert their independence. Both Demetrius II. and Antiochus VII. left children by Cleopatra, who form rival branches of the royal house. To the line of Demetrius belong his son Seleucus V. (126), assassinated by his mother Cleopatra, Antiochus VIII. Grypus (141-96), who succeeded in 126 the younger brother of Seleucus V., the sons of Grypus, Seleucus VI. Epiphanes Nicator (reigned 96-95), Antiochus XI. Epiphanes Philadelphus (reigned during 95), Philip I. (reigned 95-83), Demetrius III. Eukarios (reigned 95-88), and Antiochus XII. Dionysus Epiphanes (reigned 86?-85?), and lastly Philip II., the son of Philip I., who appears momentarily on the stage in the last days of confusion. To the line of Antiochus VII. belong his son Antiochus IX. Cyzicenus (reigned 116-95), the son of Cyzicenus, Antiochus X. Eusebes (reigned 95-83?), and the son of Eusebes, Antiochus XIII. Asiaticus (reigned 69-65). In 83 Tigranes, the king of Armenia, invaded Syria, and by 69 his conquest had reached as far as Ptolemais, when he was obliged to evacuate Syria to defend his own kingdom from the Romans. When Pompey appeared in Syria in 64, Antiochus XIII. begged to be restored to his ancestral
- ↑ Some of the indications of our documents would make him older, and these are followed by Niese (iii. p. 276, note 5). But in that case Demetrius I. must have already had a wife and son when he escaped from Rome, and it seems to me highly improbable that such a material factor in the situation would have been left out of account in Polybius's full narrative. After all, it is only a question of probabilities, and the difficulties of fitting a wife and child into the story seem to be very great, whether we conceive them left behind by Demetrius in Italy, or sent out of the country before him.
