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He died when only thirty-seven years of age, worn out by drunkenness; and the Jews, who had learnt to hate the Egyptian dominion, gladly received the soldiers of his enemy, Antiochus the Great, into Jerusalem, deserting his young son, who was only five years old; and thus, in the year 197, Jerusalem came to belong to the Seleucidae of Syria, instead of to the Ptolemies of Egypt.
With all their might, the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucidae in Syria hellenized the countries subject to their rule. In the old domain of the Pharaohs, as in Babylonia, in Phoenicia, and in Syria, the Greek language was currently spoken, Greek ceremonies were observed, the Greek mode of life was adopted.
The war appears to have been begun by Egypt; but king Antiochus Epiphanes gladly embraced the opportunity of once more and for the last time endeavouring to achieve the traditional aim of the policy of the Seleucidae, the acquisition of Egypt, while the Romans were employed in Macedonia. Fortune seemed favourable to him.
As with Macedonia in the war waged by Perseus, the Seleucidae in the war regarding Coelesyria made a similar and similarly final effort to recover their former power; but it is a significant indication of the difference between the two kingdoms, that in the former case the legions, in the latter the abrupt language of a diplomatist, decided the controversy.
But the restrictions thus stringently and laboriously imposed by custom and police on Roman poetry stifled its very breath, Not without reason might Naevius declare the position of the poet under the sceptre of the Lagidae and Seleucidae enviable as compared with his position in free Rome.
His own peace and the interests of Rome were now secured by his support of Nicomedes, the son of Prusias, who had won the favour of the Romans and was placed on the throne of his father. He had even interfered in the succession to the kingdom of the Seleucidae, when the Romans thought fit to support the pretensions of Alexander Balas to the throne of Syria.
On the death of his wife in 271 he proclaimed her deity and his own as well in the worship of the Theoi Adelphoi, the 'Gods Brethren'. Of course there was flattery in all this, ordinary self-interested lying flattery, and its inevitable accompaniment, megalomania. Any reading of the personal history of the Ptolemies, the Seleucidae or the Caesars shows it. But that is not the whole explanation.
Grecian literature and cultivation, the Seleucidae, the Antiochuses, and the Ptolemies followed, in nations which before had been sunk to the condition of brutes. Alexander was the builder, as notoriously as the destroyer, of cities." "And yet, sir, I am afraid that the pike and the battle-axe are not the right instruments for making men wise.
The result of this protracted contest was, that the Macedonian empire was broken into three principal states, Macedonia under the Antigonidae, the descendants of Antigonus; Egypt under the Ptolemies; Syria under the Seleucidae. Besides these, there were the smaller kingdoms of Pergamon and of Bithynia. Other states broke off from the Syrian realm of the Seleucidae.
The Seleucidae had not tried to conciliate their attachment, and it was impossible that they should dislike the rupture of ties which had only galled hitherto. Perhaps their feeling, in prospect of the change, was one of simple indifference.
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