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The Persian king, Ochus, ordered that the noblest citizens should be put to death; whereupon the inhabitants set the city on fire, and destroyed themselves and their treasures in the flames. After the death of Alexander, the Phoenicians fell under the sway of the Seleucidae at Antioch, and, for a time, of the Egyptian Ptolemies. Both Tyre and Sidon were rebuilt, and flourished anew.
He drove Mithridates out of Pontus into Armenia. Tigranes laid his crown at the feet of the Roman general, and was permitted to retain Armenia. Mithridates fled beyond the Caucasus, and, in 63 B.C., committed suicide. Pompeius overthrew the Syrian kingdom of the Seleucidae.
Athens ceded her rights of primogeniture to New Athens, Alexandria, capital of Egypt, and cosmopolitan centre of the civilized world. By turns she owned the sway of the Ptolemies and the Seleucidae, until finally, in 203, she was declared a Syro-Macedonian province. Here, as in the other parts of their realm, the rulers devoted themselves energetically to the dissemination of Greek culture.
It is uncertain whether policy or inclination dictated the step which Phraates soon afterwards took of allaying himself by marriage with the Seleucidae. He had formally given his sister, Ehodogune, as a wife to Demetrius, and the marriage had been fruitful, Rhodogune having borne Demetrius several children. The two houses of the Seleucidae and Arsacidae were thus already allied to some extent.
The immediate result of the destruction of Antiochus and his host was the revolt of Judaea, which henceforth maintained its independence uninterruptedly. The dominions of the Seleucidae were reduced to Cilicia and Syria Proper, or the tract west of the Euphrates, between Amanus and Palestine.
Accordingly, within a few years the example set by Bactria was followed in the neighboring country of Parthia, but with certain very important differences. In Bactria the Greek satrap took the lead, and the Bactrian kingdom was, at any rate at its commencement, as thoroughly Greek as that of the Seleucidae. But in Parthia Greek rule was from the first cast aside.
Under his successors, the Seleucidae, this vast empire rapidly diminished; Bactria became independent, and a separate dynasty of Greek kings ruled there in the year 125, when it was overthrown by the Scythian tribes.
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