Antiochus the Great

In the kingdom of Asia the diadem of the Seleucidse had been, worn since 531 by king Antiochus the Third, the great-great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty. He had, like Philip, begun to reign at nineteen years of age, and had displayed sufficient energy and enterprise, especially in his first campaigns in the East, to warrant his being without ludicrous impropriety addressed in courtly style as “the Great.” He had succeeded—more, however, through the negligence of his opponents and of the Egyptian Philopator in particular, than through any ability of his own—in restoring in some degree the integrity of the monarchy, and in reuniting with his crown, first, the eastern satrapies of Media and Parthyene, and then the separate state which Achseus had founded on this side of the Taurus in Asia Minor. A first attempt to wrest from the Egyptians the coast of Syria, the loss of which he sorely felt, had, in the year of the battle of the Trasimene Lake, met with a bloody repulse from Philopator at Eaphia; and Antiochus had taken good care not to resume the contest with Egypt, so long as a man—even though he were but an indolent one—occupied the Egyptian throne. But, after Philopator's death (549), the right moment for crushing Egypt appeared 205. to have arrived; and with that view Antiochus entered into concert with Philip, and had thrown himself upon CœleSyria while Philip attacked the cities of Asia Minor.