that, on their being again restored to him, Joseph was again restored to his offices, and died in it, about the beginning of the reign of Seleucus Philopator in Syria, this will solve all difficulties in the history which Josephus gives us of this matter. That his life could not end with these twenty-two years hath been already shown, for he was an old man before he died; and where then can the end of these twenty-two years of his office be better placed, than where ended in those provinces the authority of the king of Egypt; under which he held it? and this ending of these twenty-two years tells us where they did begin; and that they could not begin sooner than where I have said, the age of Onias sufficiently proves, for the history of Josephus tells us, it was when he was grown very old, which must determine us to the latter end of his life; and it was but eight years before his death where I placed it. They who put the beginning of these twenty-two years higher up, or end them with the end of Jeseph's life (as most chronologers do both,) can never make Josephus consistent with himself in that relation which he hath given us of this whole matter. 1 Seleucus, having continued a prisoner in Parthia till this time, there died of a fall from his horse, as he was riding abroad. Athenæus tells us,3 that Arsaces maintained him royally during his captivity; but that he released him (as some will have it,) doth not any where appear. Justin tells us, that he died in the manner as I have related, being then in banishment, and having lost his kingdom; which can be understood no otherwise than of the banishment and loss of reigning which he sustained, by being held in captivity by this Parthian king, till he died in it. His wife was Laodice, the sister of Andromachus, one of the generals of his armies. By her he had two sons and a daughter; the sons were Seleucus and Antiochus; the daughter he married to Mithridates, king of Pontus, with whom he gave Phrygia to him in a dowry. An. 225. Ptolemy Euergetes 22.]-Seleucus, being the eldest of the sons," succeeded him in the throne, and took the name of Ceraunus, i. e. the Thunderer, a title which very little became him; for he was a very weak prince, in body, mind, and purse, and never did any thing worthy of that name. His reign was very short, and his authority low, both in the army and the provinces; and that he was supported in either, was owing to his kinsman Achæus, the son of Andromachus, his mother's brother, who, being a wise and valiant man, regulated and guided his affairs, as well as the shattered state his father left them in, would admit. As to Andromachus, he having been taken prisoner by Ptolemy in the wars which he had with Callinicus, was detained a prisoner at Alexandria during all this reign, and some part of the next; till at length the Rhodians, to gain favour with Achæus, got him released, and sent him to him, while he reigned in Lesser Asia. An. 224. Ptolemy Euergetes 23.]-Attalus, king of Pergamus, having possessed himself of all Lesser Asia, from Mount Taurus to the Hellespont, Seleucus marched with an army against him, leaving Hermias, a Carian, his lieutenant in Syria, during his absence. Achæus his kinsman accompanied him in this expedition, and served him in it, as well as the circumstances of his affairs would admit. An. 223. Ptolemy Euergetes 24.]-But money being wanting to pay the army, and the weakness of the king rendering him contemptible to the soldiers, Nicanor and Apaturius, two of his chief commanders, conspired against him, while he lay in Phrygia, and, by poison, put an end to his life. But Achæus, being then in the army, revenged his death, by cutting off the traitorous authors of it, with all that were concerned with them in the treason; and afterward managed the army with that prudence and resolution, that he not only kept all there in order, but also prevented Attalus from reaping any advantage from this 1 Antiq. lib. 12. c. 4. 2 Justin. lib. 27. c. 3. 3 Lib. 4. c. 13. 4 Seleucus, amisso regno, equo præcipitatus finitur. Sic fratres quasi germanis casibus exules ambo post regna scelerum suorum pœnas luerunt. Justin. lib. 27. c. 3. Appian in Syriacis. 5 Polybius, lib. 4. p. 315. lib. 5. p. 386. 8 Polybius, ibid. Appian. in Syriacis. Justin. lib. 29. c. 5. 6 Polybius, lib. 4. p. 317. 7 Ibid. p. 315. Hieronymus in cap. xi. Danielis. accident, which otherwise might have ruined the whole interest of the Syrian empire in those parts. Seleucus dying without children, the army offered Achæus the crown:' and several of the provinces concurred with them herein. But he then generously refused it, though he was afterward, in a less favourable juncture, forced to assume it in his own defence, having then no other way left to secure himself against the designs which the ministers at court had contrived for his ruin. At present, instead of taking it to himself, he carefully preserved it for the next lawful successors, Antiochus, the brother of the late deceased king, who was then a minor not exceeding the fifteenth year of his age. When Seleucus marched into Lesser Asia, he sent him to Babylonia to be there educated; and there he was at the time of Seleucus's death: from whence being sent for to Antioch,' he there ascended the throne after his brother, and sat on it thirty-six years. By reason of the many great actions done by him, he had the surname of Magnus (i. e. the Great,) Achæus, the better to secure him in the succession, sent part of the army which followed Seleucus to him into Syria, under the command of Epigenes, one of the most experienced commanders of the late king; the rest he retained with him in the Lesser Asia, for the support of the Syrian interest in those parts. 4 An. 222. Ptolemy Euergetes 25.]-Antiochus, on the first settling of his kingdom, sent Molon and Alexander, two brothers, into the east, making the former governor of Media, and the other governor of Persia. All the provinces of Lesser Asia he committed to the charge of Achæus. Epigenes he made general of the forces which he kept about him, and retained Hermias the Carian to be his chief minister of state, in the same station which he held under his brother. Achæus soon recovered all that Attalus had wrested from the Syrian empire, and reduced him within the narrow limits of his own kingdom of PergaBut Alexander and Molon, despising the youth of the king, as soon as they were settled in the provinces which they were sent to govern, rebelled against him, and set up for themselves, each declaring himself sovereign of the country he had taken possession of. mus. 5 It While these things were doing, there happened a very violent earthquake in the east, which made great devastations in those parts especially in Caria and the island of Rhodes. In the latter it threw down not only the walls of the city of Rhodes, and their houses, but also the great colossus there erected in the mouth of their harbour, which was one of the seven wonders of the world. was a prodigious statue of brass, there erected to the sun, of seventy cubits, or a hundred and five feet in height, and every thing else of it was in proportion hereto. Demetrius Poliorcetes, having for a whole year besieged the city of Rhodes, without being able to take it, at length being wearied out with so long lying there, was content to make peace with them as I have already related in the eighth book of the first part of this history. On his departure thence, he left the Rhodians all his engines and other preparations of war, which he had there provided for the carrying on of that siege. These the Rhodians afterward sold for three hundred talents, with which money, adding other sums thereto, they erected this colossus. The artificer that made it was Chares of Lindus," who was twelve years in completing the work; and sixty-six years after, it was thrown down by this earthquake. It was begun, therefore, to be made in the year before Christ 300; it was finished in the year 288, and overthrown in the year 222. On this accident, the Rhodians' sent abroad ambassadors a begging to all the princes and states of the Grecian name or original, who, exaggerating their losses, procured vast sums for the repairing of them, especially from the 1 Polybius, lib. 4. p. 315. 2 At Seleucia, which stood in the province of Babylonia, and was then the metropolis of all the eastern parts, instead of Babylon, which was now desolated. 3 Polybius, ibid. lib. 5. p. 386. Hieronymus in cap. xi. Danielis. Appian. in Syriacis. Justin. lib. 29. c. 1. 4 Polybius, lib. 5. p. 386. 5 Idem, lib. 4. p. 315. 6 Idem, lib. 5. p. 386. 7 Eusebii Chronicon. Oroisus, lib. 4. c. 13. Polybius, lib. 5. p. 428, 429. 8 Plinius, lib. 34. c. 7. Strabo, lib. 14. p. 652; vide etiam Scaligeri Animadversiones in Eusebii Chronicon. No. 1794. p. 137. 9 Plinius, ibid. 10 Polybius, lib. 5. p. 428, 429. kings of Egypt, Macedon, Syria, Pontus, and Bithynia, which above five times exceeded the value of their damages. And, when they had got the money, instead of setting up the colossus again (for which most of it was given,') they pretended that an oracle from Delphos forbade it, and put the whole sum into their own pockets; whereby they very much enriched themselves. So this colossus lay where it fell, without being any more erected, and there was let lie eight hundred and ninety-four years; till at length, in the year of our Lord 672,2 Moawias, the sixth caliph or emperor of the Saracens, having taken Rhodes, sold the brass to a Jewish merchant, who loaded with it nine hundred camels; and, therefore, allowing eight hundred pounds weight to every camel's burden, the brass of this colossus, after the waste of so many years by the rust and wear of the brass itself, and the purloinings and embezzlements of men, amounted to seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds' weight. Toward the end of this year died Ptolemy Euergetes,3 king of Egypt, after he had reigned over that kingdom twenty-five years. He was the last king of that race that governed himself with any temper or virtue, all that after succeeded being monsters of luxury and vice. After having made peace with Syria, he mostly applied himself to the enlarging of his dominions southward; and he extended them a great way down the Red Sea, making himself master of all the coasts of it, both on the Arabian as well as the Ethiopian side, even down to the straits through which it dischargeth itself into the Southern Ocean. 6 5 An. 221. Ptol. Philopator 1.]-On his death, he was succeeded by Ptolemy Philopator his son, a most profligate and vicious young prince. He was supposed to have made away with his father by poison; and he had not been long on the throne ere he added to that parricide the murder of his mother," and of Magas his brother: and a little after followed the death of Cleomenes, king of Sparta, occasioned by the same measures of wickedness and barbarity. He having been vanquished and driven out of Greece by Antigonus," king of Macedon, fled to Ptolemy Euergetes, and was kindly received by him; but that king a little after dying, he had not that favour from his successor. However, being looked upon as a person of great wisdom and sagacity, Sosibius, who was Philopator's chief minister of state, thought fit to communicate to him his master's design of cutting off Magas, his brother, and to ask his advice about it; which Cleomenes, having dissuaded him from, and given some reasons for it which much displeased Sosibius, occasion was taken, from another matter, to cast him into prison: from whence having gotten loose, and gathered his friends and followers together, who came with him from Sparta, he took the advantage of Ptolemy's being absent from Alexandria, to call and excite the people to assume their liberty, and free themselves from the tyranny which they were then under: but not succeeding in this attempt, he slew himself in the streets of the city, as did also all the rest that were with him. Plutarch, in his life of Cleomenes, hath given us a full narative of this matter; and so also hath Polybius in the fifth book of his history. Antiochus taking the advantage of Euergetes's death," and the succession of so voluptuous and profligate a prince after him, thought it a proper time for him to attempt the recovery of Syria; and Hermias, his prime minister, pressed hard for his going in person to this war, contrary to the opinion of Epigenes, his general, who thought it chiefly concerned him to suppress the rebellion of Alexander and Molon in the east; and therefore advised him to march imme 1 Polyb. ibid. Strabo, lib. 14. p. 652. 2 Zonaras sub regno Constantis Imperatoris Heraclii Nepotis, et Cedrenus. Vide etiam Scaligerum loco modo citato. Ptolemæus Astronomus in Canone. 3 Polybius, lib. 2. p. 155. Justin. lib. 29. c. 1. Plutarch. in Cleomene. 4 Strabo, lib. 17. p. 796. 6 Ptolemæus Astronomus in Canone. 7 Plutarchus in Clemone. 9 Plutarchus in Cleomene. 11 Polybius, lib. 5. p. 387. 5 Monumentum Adulitanum. Eusebius in Chronico. 8 Justin. lib. 29. c. 1. 10 Plutarchus in Cleomene. Polybius, lib. 5. Strabo, ibid. Polybius, lib. 5. p. 380, 381. diately in person with the main of his army for the subduing of those rebels, before they should gather greater strength in the revolted provinces against him. But the opinion of Hermias taking place, Antiochus marched toward ColeSyria with one part of his army, and sent Zeno and Theodotus Hermiolius, two of his generals, with the other to suppress the rebels, While he was on his march toward Cole-Syria, being arrived at Seleucia near Zeugma, there was brought thither to him Laodice, the daughter of Mithridates, king of Pontus, to be his wife, which caused his stay for some time in that place to celebrate the nuptials. But the joy of his marriage was soon interrupted by ill news from the east: for his generals being there overpowered by the joint forces of Alexander and Molon, were forced to retire and leave them masters of the field. Hereon Antiochus, inclining to the advice given by Epigenes, resolved to desist from his expedition in Cole-Syria, and march directly with all his forces into the east for the suppressing of this rebellion, before it should grow to any greater head. But Hermias persisting in his former opinion,3 for the sake of some private views of his own which he had therein, overbore all opposition to it, and prevailed with the king to send another general with more forces into the east, and proceed himself in his former intended expedition into CœleSyria. The general sent into the east was Xinaætas an Achæan, whose commission was to join the forces which were there before under the two former generals, and take upon him the chief command of the whole army. But he came off with worse success than those whom he succeeded; for passing the Tigris, he was there drawn into a snare, and circumvented by a stratagem of the enemy's, and he, and all the forces that passed with him, were cut off and destroyed; whereon the rebels made themselves masters of the province of Babylonia, and almost all Mesopotamia, without any opposition. In the interim, Antiochus, proceeding in his expedition in Cole-Syria, penetrated as far as the valley which lieth between the two ridges of mountains called Libanus and Antilibanus; but there he found the passes of those mountains so well fortified, and such resistance made in them by Theodotus, an Ætolian, who was there governor for Ptolemy, that he was forced to retreat without making any farther progress that way: and the ill news, which he had by this time received of the loss of Xinætas and his army in the east, hastened his return; for now being fully convinced that he had nothing else to do but to follow the advice which Epigenes had at first given him," and march in person against the rebels, and all else about him being of the same opinion, he fully resolved on it; and Hermias durst not say any more against it. But to be revenged on Epigenes, for thwarting his designs herein, he did, by forged letters, fix a plot of treason upon him, and caused him to be cut off for it. In the interim Antiochus, though the year was now far spent, passed the Euphrates, and having there joined his other forces, that he might be nearer at hand for action, the next spring he put his army into winter-quarters in those parts, and there waited the proper season for the beginning of the war. An. 220. Ptol. Philopator 2.]-And, as soon as that approached, he marched directly to the Tigris, and having passed that river, forced Molon to a battle, wherein he got such an entire victory over him, that the rebel, finding his cause absolutely lost, out of despair slew himself. Alexander was then absent in Persia; but Nicolas, another brother, escaping from the battle, brought him the ill news thither: whereon they slew first their mother, then their wives and children, and lastly themselves, that so they might avoid falling into the hands of the conqueror. And thus ended this rebellion (as it is to be wished all rebellions might end,) in a most calamitous destruction of all that were concerned in it. After this victory, the remains of the conquered army submitted to the king, 1 Polybius, lib. 5. p. 388. 4 Idem, p. 391-393. 7 Idem, lib. 5. p. 395, 396. &c. 2 Idem, lib. 5. p. 389. 5 Idem, p. 390. 8 Idem, p. 398, 399. 3 Idem, p. 390. 8 who, after a severe reprimand upon them for their rebellion, received them to pardon, and ordered them into Media, under the command of those whom he sent to regulate the affairs of that province; and then returning to Seleucia on the Tigris, there continued, for some time, to give his orders for the resettling of his authority in the revolted provinces, and the reducing of all things again in them to their former order; which having effected by such proper instruments as he thought fit to employ herein, he marched against the Atropatians, a people inhabiting on the west of Media, in the country now called Georgia: Artabazes, their king, being then a very old man, and grown decrepit with age, was so terrified on the approach of Antiochus with his victorious army, that he sent ambassadors to make his submission, and agreed to peace with him on his own terms. 2 By this time Hermias, through his insolence and haughty conduct, growing intolerable to his master, as well as to all else, Apollophanes, the king's physician, who had at all times his ear on the occasions of his health, took the advantage of it to represent unto him the danger he was in from this minister, telling him, that it was time for him to look to himself, and take care that he did not meet with the same fate as his brother did in Phrygia, and be cut off by those he most confided in; that it was manifest Hermias was laying designs for himself; and that no time was any longer to be lost for the preventing of them. Antiochus, who had the same sentiments with his physician, but had hitherto suppressed them, out of diffidence to whom to communicate them, very gladly received the proposal, and immediately entered on measures for the ridding himself of this odious and dangerous minister; and accordingly, as it had been concerted, having drawn off from the army to accompany him on a walking abroad to take the air, as was pretended, for his health, as soon as he had thus decoyed him, at a convenient distance from all that might give him any assistance, he ordered him to be cut off by those that attended him; which was much to the satisfaction of all the provinces of the Syrian empire: for he being a man of great cruelty, pride, and insolence, managed all things with severity and violence, bearing no contradiction to his sentiments, or opposition to any thing he would have done, or suffering any person or thing to stand in his way to what he intended; which drew on him a general odium every where. But no where was there a more signal instance of it, than at Apamea in Syria; for there they no sooner heard of his death, but they fell on his wife and children, whom he had left in that city, and stoned them all to death. After this Antiochus having thus successfully managed his affairs in the east, and settled all the provinces there under such governors as he thought he might best confide in,' he marched back into Syria, and there put his army into winter-quarters; and at Antioch spent the remaining part of the year in consulting with his ministers and the officers of his army, about the operations of the next year's war. For he had still two dangerous enterprises to undertake for the restoring of the Syrian empire; the first against Ptolemy, for the recovery of Syria, and the other against Achæus, who had made himself master of all Lesser Asia. For Ptolemy Euergetes having, in the beginning of the reign of Seleucus Callinicus, seized all Syria, as hath been above related, a great part of it was still held by his successor the present Egyptian king; and Antiochus had reason to be very uneasy in having him so near a neighbour. And as to Achæus, it hath been already related how he refused the crown, when offered him, on the death of Seleucus Ceraunus; and instead of putting it on his own head, faithfully preserved it for Antiochus, the next rightful heir. Hereon Antiochus committed to him the government of all his provinces in Lesser Asia; which charge he having managed with that valour and wisdom of conduct, as to recover them all out of the hands of Attalus king of Pergamus, who had in a manner made himself absolute master of them, this success made him envied by the chief minister 1 Polybius, lib. 5. p. 400. 2 Idem. p. 400, 401. 3 Idem. |